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TimeOmnivore

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Everything posted by TimeOmnivore

  1. I just hope it won't have annoying coil whine. HeyListenHeyListenHeyListenHeyListenHeyListenHeyListenHeyListenHeyListenHeyListenHeyListen
  2. Path of Exile (a F2P aRPG) surprised everyone by releasing a PvP (with PvE mobs) battle royale mode with up to 100 players - which is surprisingly fun, if unbalanced. They also changed the name on Steam to PATH OF EXILE: ROYALE. Presumably, this is just an elaborate April Fools joke. But who knows, most of the community is loving it and people need to be put into short waiting rooms as there're too many people trying to log in to it at once. Unlikely this will actually be added to the game, but it would be miles ahead of the steaming pile of shit that is the current PvP system. In-game, they had a message going out saying they were going to restart the server to update to version 3.2.2 (current is 3.2.1) and that the patch notes were on their website. However, since there were no patch notes, I, and many others, assumed just that would be the April Fools joke, telling people the game was going to have a short period of downtime when it actually wasn't. Then the servers actually went down. And a 1GB update was queued up in Steam (possibly smaller on the standalone client). Then the Royale mode. Still no patch notes though. This is the kinda April Fools stuff I enjoy. EDIT: Watching an interview with the head of Grinding Gear Games (the devs of Path of Exile), Chris Wilson, and he said this has and would continue to cost them $10,000 per day just in server costs, due to having 100 people in the same instance. So, this is almost definitely not staying, sadly. Also, apparently this was put together with each member of their team only dedicating up to 12 hours total.
  3. EA's blog post EA has announced some upcoming changes to Star Wars Battlefront II's progression system, releasing March 21st, turning it from a gambling simulator into an actual video game. Credit where credit is due, EA, you are actually turning your gambling sim into a game where you earn progression naturally(hopefully). I'm legitimately impressed and applaud this move. Hopefully, this is a sign that these publishers are actually listening to their communities and are realizing that creating actual games is much more preferable than glorified slot machines. EDIT: While this may be a case of "too little, too late" for this game, I hope this is will be an indication that they at least won't fuck up the next one as badly. It would also be nice to have the cosmetics also only unlockable in-game (as opposed to microtransactions), but that's probably hoping for too much at this point, especially from EA.
  4. The fake, "Darren M. Griffin", was basically the guy the copyright holders created out of nothing so they could obtain the information they needed to sue a lot of people for copyright infringement. Basically, he claimed to have years of experience working in IT, and told the Courts false information (since he doesn't exist) that allowed the copyright holders (think Paramount Studios, or Sony Entertainment, although not them specifically) to illegally obtain the information needed from ISPs to sue the people using torrents. Griffin was on the side of the copyright people suing everyone for infringement, who otherwise shouldn't have been able to do so.
  5. ... I don't follow. He went through the trouble to make sure that the plaintiffs (who work for the copyright holders) in some of his cases weren't subverting the law after having noticed several inconsistencies with their stories. Turns out (allegedly) this particular group created a fake expert in order to get the Subpoenas necessary to sue thousands of individuals for breaching copyright. How does this indicate that Lynch hates BitTorrent?
  6. He noticed inconsistencies in some cases he was working on and delved deeper. Also, from my understanding, he's a trademark/copyright/IP defense attorney - he defends the people accused of copyright theft (such as by them torrenting movies), so I'm not sure where you got the idea that he hates BitTorrent. Though he very well might, I'm just not sure how you arrived at that conclusion.
  7. Right, so basically, J. Christopher Lynch, a copyright defense attorney from Washington, has submitted a Declaration to the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, in which he alleges, under penalty of perjury, that at least one expert who has been called upon by plaintiffs in a variety of copyright file-sharing BitTorrent cases is fictitious. This person's name is Darren M. Griffin. Griffin is claimed to be someone with a relation to "Crystal Bay Corporation" in South Dakota "in its technical department", using this position to have obtained Subpoenas in hundreds of cases (included several in the district this was filed in). Lynch has provided to the court several pieces of evidence to support his claim that Giffin is not real. To sum it up (as there's a lot of it), there is no technical department for Crystal Bay Corporation, and the address given for that location is a mailbox center. No one, including Giffin, has ever worked there. No one has claimed to have met or spoken to Darren M. Giffin, and there are no employment records, tax records, payment records, immigration records, no address, no family members, no computer science classmates (Griffin claimed to have a CS degree), no photographs, no correspondence, no voicemails, and no emails to be found involving "Darren M. Griffin". Lynch also claims to be suspicious that "Peter Kurtz", the so-called president of Crystal Bay Corporation, is also fictitious, but does not directly claim this, going on to say that Kurtz is, at the very least, not the president of Cyrstal Bay Corporation. He also claims that declarations made by Messrs Lowe, Perino, and Arheidt have glaring inconsistencies and should also be looked at (though he's not claiming these 3 aren't real people, just that there's some funny business going on). From Lynch's declaration: You can see more detailed information about this, here, at 33:06: Here is Lynch's conclusion, which he stated at the end of his declaration: There's a lot more info to be found if you're interested (such as fake signatures), and I highly recommend watching the video by Leonard French, which I linked above, in full, in which he goes over Lynch's entire declaration. But, yeah, it will be very interesting to see what happens from here on in - according to Leonard French, if a judge confirms these allegations, it would likely mean additional investigation, possibly by the state bar or a criminal prosecutor. From there, who knows, but I hope if this is true (and it looks like it is) that all cases in which Griffin was a key component of get looked at again and any future dealings with businesses or plaintiffs that involve Giffin's name get thrown out entirely and those trying to subvert the Courts get punished to the fullest extent of the law.
  8. I'm an adult, don't use social media very often - mainly a few subreddits, this forum, and a Twitter account I just use for current events (i.e. not for interacting) - and I don't live in the UK (currently in the USA), so this doesn't apply to me at all. That being said, I don't think it's a very good idea, at all, to have an online "central database" that you are required to be registered with in order to use online services such as social media. I also think it's a rather terrible idea for governments to try to decide for themselves how kids should be raised, as opposed to leaving that to their parents. Children should not be spending the (from what I've seen in the States) absurd amount of time they currently spend on social media, sure, but trying to legally limit that sets a poor precedent which could have farther reaching consequences than intended once they see they can get away with it.
  9. I'm personally of the mindset to let your kids do whatever they enjoy, so long as they're not neglecting their health nor harming themselves/others. If your kid enjoys spending their free time playing games, just let them play games. That being said, if your kid doesn't seem to do anything else, maybe sit down and talk with them about it and try to get them to broaden their horizons - whether that be going outside, getting IRL friends, or just some other hobbies they may be interested in. Depending on their age (e.g. less than 12-15), if they refuse to do any other things, maybe then consider using something like this. Also, if your kid is young, putting in stopgaps like this may help prevent them from developing addictive personalities in the future, but I'm not a child psychologist so I'm just guessing here. All that being said, I'm not a parent, will never be a parent, and generally dislike children... so my opinion may not count for much, but I genuinely think it's a good idea to let your kids do what they personally enjoy, particularly once they're past a certain age (which varies based on the specific child, I'd imagine).
  10. Hasn't news of this Best Buy/FBI partnership been known for a while now? Did something new happen to make it pop up again?
  11. So, if you live in Rhode Island, move to Washington, they won't block your porn.
  12. Well, this sucks. Hopefully, this will only be a thing in CT, as the whole reason I shop at Newegg is so I can save as much money as possible since there's no tax. Probably not though, I can see other states doing this same thing, which would kinda kill Newegg. At least they still have their review system over Amazon (seriously, Amazon's review structure is complete dogshit, I shouldn't be seeing reviews for completely different products when looking at any tech item).
  13. What annoys me most about this isn't the fact that they removed "View Image" (right-click still exists, not much more difficult), it's that they also removed "Search by Image". That was, by far, the most useful and convenient feature of Google Images - see a photo that you like, but in a really low resolution? just click "search by image" and your issues are solved (provided a higher quality image exists in the first place). Now it's significantly more cumbersome to do this - e.g. right-click -> copy image URL -> new tab -> go to google images -> click the camera in the search box -> paste URL and search. I really miss that simple click. Fuck you Google.
  14. Can confirm, am still using Office 2007. Although it's starting to break (a bit) on recent Windows 10 updates, so I may have to upgrade at some point soon.
  15. What is up with tech manufacturers having completely shit taste in naming new hardware? Yeah, sure, just call it literally the same thing as another product; brilliant plan right there, won't create any confusion at all. Seems like they could have used the time/resources for this to instead try to lessen the strain on current model GPU supply, but I don't know anything about building GPUs so that may or may not have been an option.
  16. I wonder what impact this may have, if any, on free to play card games like Hearthstone. I mean, Blizzard would probably do what they did in China - i.e. technically only buying 1 dust and getting a "bonus" pack for free - if this does affect them, though I'm not sure how Germany's laws work and if this sort of thing (which I can definitely see other publishers trying to pull) wouldn't be allowed under some sort of "spirit of the law" type of thing.
  17. Since bribery is legal here, it makes sense that a lot of these laws were basically written by large corporations, such as Disney. It gets really annoying though when these companies then try to pick and choose which parts of the law they actually feel like following and which they just pretend don't exist, or even just outright say that the opposite of the law is what's actually true.
  18. Fair enough. They were listed separately as defendants in the complaint, so I figured I may as well list them out here as well, though I gave up about halfway through since the title was getting a bit too long.
  19. The Legal Document - https://www.scribd.com/document/370078919/Redbox-Countersuit#from_embed As some of you may remember, Disney sued Redbox a month or so ago for copyright infringement. Now, however, Redbox has gone on the offensive. Redbox is basically suing Disney over the fact that Disney is trying to subvert the "First Sale" doctrine of copyright law - once you buy a product, it's yours, so you can resell, rent, or give it away - by telling consumers, such as Redbox, that reselling/renting is illegal in an attempt to, Redbox says, stifle competition for Disney's own planned digital distribution platform. Some key quotes from the complaint: Also, here's a video Leonard French, a well-respected copyright attorney, put out on the subject: What are your thoughts on this? Personally, I hope Redbox wins this case - you should absolutely have the right to resell, or otherwise get rid of, products you have purchased. Disney shouldn't have the power to subvert copyright law - which they themselves fought so hard for - for their own gain.
  20. Those that watched the live stream know he cleared everything with an Amazon PR rep. He got permission to test out their refund system - not to mention that Amazon's ToS state that you can refund any product for any reason and are under no obligation to return it (presumably using data from your Amazon account to determine if you're abusing the system). Also, at least in the US (possibly Canada as well), the word "tampon" is generally used to refer to any menstrual product, regardless if they are actual tampons or not.
  21. Seems likely that someone up the totem pole would likely be aware of Bitcoin and the advantages it offers in not-so-legal business practices, so street dealers would probably be at least somewhat knowledgeable of the idea, I agree. Also, I'm pretty sure the Silk Road (the illegal modern-day version) has been around quite a bit longer than 2013.
  22. Speaking of the Net Neutrality repeal - 22 State Attorney Generals have sued the FCC over the Net Neutrality repeal.
  23. Yeah, I agree that this having to do with the Logan Paul situation doesn't make much sense, and they should absolutely demonetize his videos (if not outright delete his channel), but I feel saying this move is causing others to be "sacrificed at the altar" is a bit much - the amount of money being lost from this move should be negligible at best.
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