Archive for: stupid
- November 3, 2010 10:46 pm
Jammie Thomas, the single mother of 4 who’s more or less become the poster child for filesharing in the 2000′s has lost yet another case. That makes (3) times now that a jury has stood with a straight face and awarded a broken, backwards thinking company ridiculously high damages.
Jammie Thomas’ latest bill for sharing a mere 24 songs comes in at $1.5 million. Her last case totaled $1.92 million and her first was the lowest of them all at $222,000. Honestly, in all three cases the punishment is so completely disproportionate to the crime it’s repulsive to think about. Yes, she stole music. But is it really worth $1 million+? Absolutely not. Continue on…
My oh my, incompetent and mindless companies (and their PR departments) never cease to amaze me with their senseless comments. Take for example, THQ’s response to disapproval they’ve garnered after announcing that they won’t provide DLC for used games, specifically THQ’s new WWE: Smackdown vs. Raw 2011.
I don’t think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. We hope people understand that when the game’s bought used we get cheated. I don’t think anyone wants that so in order for us to make strong, high-quality WWE games we need loyal fans that are interested in purchasing the game. We want to award those fans with additional content.
It’s called Fist-Sale Doctrine — it’s a law…since 1908. Get over it. You are not entitled to every single shred of a sale that involves your product. You sold that right, remember…? And yet companies such as THQ make decisions that are so backwards in thinking it literally boggles my mind how the people in charge managed to turn a profit at all.
Just because someone doesn’t buy a game brand spakin’ new — Which at $60 for your typical game, is way too damn much! — doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be willing to purchase DLC later on down the road. Game developers such as EA and now THQ are missing a huge revenue stream. Used games sales is a fairly big market. Why purposely tell used game buyers that they are “not worth it” and as such, cannot spend any more money on your products in the future. THQ is actively turning away more money.
And if THQ really wants to get all high and mighty over their “new” game, we’ll shamelessy highlight the obvious — There hasn’t been a “new” wrestling game in years. Each one is exactly (and I mean exactly) the same as each previous game before it. Way to pick a fight with one of the most unoriginal and un-innovative genres you could possibly find.
Yes, THQ. You’ve won the most boneheaded decision award for the week. Congratulations.
Apparently ruffling the feathers of countless devs and customers over the whole Boobie Ban of 2010 wasn’t enough. Besides, if you sit there long enough, you could rationalize that porn really isn’t that big of a market. But what about something more useful, say WiFi scanning apps? While bare bones basic WiFi scanning is built into the phone for when connecting to a WiFi network, there are numerous WiFi scanner apps that divulge a slew of helpful information regarding IP addresses, DNS’s, etc. etc.
Apparently Apple has a problem with them, particularly because of a private API that a number of these apps were using. Solution: rip them all out of the App Store. Brilliant idea. /sarcasm. To be clear, GPS and database driven apps are still in the all clear. It is the apps which actively scan for networks on their own that are getting the axe.
I can somewhat understand removing xxx rated apps from the App Store (even considering the parental controls already built into the device and platform), but just because a private API is used — really? From the WiFi scanners I’ve seen so far, I’ve never seen anything malicious or shifty in what the app did. So why get all anal about it?
And since we’re at it, if this was such a big deal, why the hell wasn’t this private API caught the first time around? Seeing as how there are dozens of WiFi scanner apps being yanked, it’s not like it was simple oversight on a single app.
…and another shot in the foot for Apple…
Pocket-Lint > The Register
- February 23, 2010 5:20 am
Like heaping piles of BS early in the morning to get your morning off to the perfect cynical start? Well aren’t you a lukcy human, you’ve come to the right place. As you all may know, Apple recently went an a great purging of any titillating and “sexy” apps from the app store. Thousands of apps showing boobs, butts, and stomachs were removed from the App Store because apparently, “women and children were bitching in mass numbers”. The real factoid that pushes this from stupid to utter BS however is that apps such as Sports Illustrated (the only version that matters) and Playboy just to name a couple, are still alive and well. Their reasoning, according to Schiller:
The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format
Essentially, the booby ban only applies to those small developers and companies who aren’t already big household names — again, large names such as Sports Illustrated and Playboy.
Um, how are small companies and devs supposed to get big if the platform they’re trying to get big on bans them for utter BS? Ya, ya, ya, I know what some are saying: Don’t like it, don’t support. Well, I don’t as I got rid of my iPhone many months ago. But this is so much bigger than some stupid boobs bouncing on screen and some cheap thrills. Every single iPhone user that doesn’t voice disgust essentially is showing Apple that we as a consumer base (at least here in the US) rollover and take it whenever our freedoms get trounced on.
Ok, so they banned boobs in the name of women and children. Seems harmless, but what happens when they ban all calendar apps because they have some new 3/4 baked solution of their own. Or what happens when they put the kibosh on all voice controlled apps because someone called in a bomb threat with a voice note they recorded on their iPhone? Don’t laugh. Apple uses that same reasoning all the time. Just look at the whole “Fuck”/twitter timeline fiasco that happened early last year.
Before this get’s any longer, we’ll end saying that Apple is only hurting themselves. This is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to appease only a certain part of their large marketshare. While on the surface it may seem noble and clean, the precedent it sets is anything but. In the end, this whole saving of little johnny’s innocence could be largely helped if mom and dad did their jobs as parents, and further tweaking parental controls — not blatantly removing entire sections of the App Store.
Let yourselves be heard!
TechCrunch
[Image Source]
- February 17, 2010 10:53 pm
This whole massive fight against so called “piracy” that has been blamed for everything from the death of the music industry to the cause of world hunger is unfortunately, not going anywhere anytime soon. I can tell however, who will be going somewhere (as in out of business somewhere) very soon – Ubisoft. Let me clarify — Ubisoft will go out of business if they continue to release games with DRM like that of the cancer that’s found in recently released Settlers VII and Assassin’s Creed II.
Just like EA’s follies of the not too distant past, Ubisoft is requiring these two titles to maintain a constant internet connection in order to play the game — at all. If the game’s connection is interrupted even for a second, no matter where you’re at in the game, it’s lights off and game over. Best of all, your progress isn’t saved. Ya, it sucks.
You’d think these senseless idiots who run these companies would realize such restrictive DRM is the worst possible way to stop piracy when in fact, such measures will actually increase piracy. But that’s really what they want I guess…
ThatVideoGameBlog
By now, daily stories of Apple’s incompitent app store employees (specifcally the ones responsible for using 4th grade judgement to deem an app acceptable/unacceptable for mass public consumption) making completley incompetent decisions regarding apps are nothing. It seems they strive to entertain us and give us something to talk about. Apparently, these morons, fools, idiots, *insert insulting name here* are completely incapable of doing that very task. The latest blunder involves your typical retarded app store employee and Ninjawords Pocket Dictionary App. Apparently Apple loves to take this whole rule thing way to far. Case in point, the app developer was forced to remove all bad words, display a mature/17+ warning, and relable his app as mature/17+ — all for a damn dictionary! The developers even went out of their way to design the app so you had to manually type in every letter of bad words to find them as opposed to auto-complete like functions from finding the bad words in question. Clearly common sense is running thin at Apple HQ. According to the developers:
But Ninjawords for iPhone suffers one humiliating flaw: it omits all the words deemed “objectionable” by Apple’s App Store reviewers, despite the fact that Ninjawords carries a 17+ rating.
Apple censored an English dictionary.
A dictionary. A reference book. For words contained in all reasonable dictionaries. For words contained in dictionaries that are used every day in elementary school libraries and classrooms.
Keep it up Apple, you’re building yourself a nice reputation of stupidity, inconsistancy, incompitence, and did I mention stupidity?
Source: MobileCrunch
The music and copyright industry is so backwards, antiquated, and completley blind that a major fallout from the general popular is all but certain in the nearer future. While stories of stupid rulings on lawsuits centering around music copyrights is nothing new, a new action taken by Warner Music shows just how stupid these people that run these “organizations” really are. Time and time again we see that these mobs have absolutely no idea what copyright actually entitles them to as they abuse copyright law and power. So what exactly did Wonder Warner do this time?
It’s been several weeks since I’ve had a good post highlighting one of Apple’s oh so intelligent App Store rejections. After hearing out this latest rejection, you may be moved to pick up your rocket launcher and pitchfork and start marching with the masses….or not. Without further delay, it all revolves around karaoke, iKaraoke that is. Sad app was rejected because it apparently too closely resembles the iPod apps own functionality. OooooRLY? First off, a little alarm should be ringing in your head as the iPod doesn’t yet have a Karaoke feature. Just wait, it gets better…
