oooo

pretty

time to chill it out

and wow, harpo took a serious hit in karma

he's decided to chillax to the extreme, my homie.

That is how the kids say it, right?

hey thats my house

Stare at the center for awhile and tell me what you see...

tip: blur or cross your eyes a little to see the 3D image

Who ever sees the 3D imageand can write what it is win!

It isn't and won't be because the ACTA is just more of the same old stuff.  Monitoring you without your knowledge or consent.  ISP's forced to turn over evidence against you, again without your knowledge or consent.  Local authorities forced to seize your equipment and arrest you with little to no proof of any wrong doing at all.  None of these 'treaties' will ever work because they always bar the consumer from participating in the negotiations and intentionally omit wording to protect the consumer who is wrongfully accused.  How easy is it for a consumer to be wrongfully accused?

Under current ACTA wording, if you visit a site that links to copy protected material in any way, your activities online can and will be monitored by any one of the copy right groups without your knowledge.  If large amounts of data are transferred between your computer and another, they have enough evidence to charge you with copy right infringement even if they cannot figure out what data was exchanged, and as an online game player you fall into this category every time you play, this means you're guilty in their eyes even though you've done nothing wrong.  They then have the legal authority to have the police seize your computer and arrest you, while your ISP is legally bound to turn over documentation that shows that you did visit a site that in the very least linked to copy righted material, and you repeatedly engage in activities where data is exchanged between you and at least one other computer.  Good luck proving you're innocent when they have an entire law firm take you to court stating you likely wiped your hard drive to destroy the evidence and produce documentation from your ISP that can be easily misinterpreted and all you got is a cheap ass lawyer out of the phone book.

None of this is a how likely will it happen issue, it's an issue of can it happen.  Even if there's only one millionth of a one billionth of a percent chance that it could happen...  If the consumer is not represented during the negotiations, then it's not a good plan.  Businesses and copy right holders were invited to participate.  Why not a single consumer advocate group?  I personally would never and won't ever support something that holds me criminally responsible without representation on my behalf, no matter how altruistic the intent behind it is.

Fortunately, some countries and organizations are seeing past the smokescreen and bullshit and continually reject it specifically because there are no consumer protections in it.

Edit: As for the image, it looks like fire, but I can't really tell.  As for the Karma, yes the doubled up stuff went away.  Verification is as easy as checking mine and Draak's.  We both lost some and the numbers now add up exactly.

Most games use barely any bandwidth for play.  Somewhere between 3 and 10K a second last I checked.  That isn't a large amount of data by any standards.

As to the rest I don't really care that much, just hoping.

Ok.  Let's run with your numbers.  Let's say you only play against one other opponent and you only transfer between 3 and 10k a second.  3 and 10k a second is 10.3Megs and 36Megs an hour.  More then enough to make the claim for a couple of songs to half a CD's worth of MP3's or a partial movie with either number.  Play online for 6 hours and you're up to between 61.8 and 216 megs of data transferred.  3 days in a row of the same amount of time playing at roughly the same time of day and now they have you for 185.4 to 648 megs, with a clear pattern of being on and transferring data at specific intervals.  Easily enough for a movie or several albums worth of music and we're only talking 18 hours of game play at 3 to 10k per second.

It doesn't take a whole lot per second for those numbers to pile up as you play, and play against more then one opponent and while you're sending that amount, you're receiving twice, three times, four times, 8 times that amount in return, and this is the evidence used against you proving your guilt when you've done nothing wrong.  Visit one site that has or links to copy righted material that's being watched don't even stay, an accidental click is all it takes to show that you visited the site, and you're done brother, which is exactly why there has to be consumer protection.

The sheer malice of some people is enough to make me rage:

Cereal?!?! Your gonna drop to that level about someone else? *Sigh* I dont get it. I really dont. Oh and I love how she post for both of them. Honestly what guy is gonna talk like that?!

It's not an assumption or my own personal interpretation of what it is, it's what it is.  The consumer is not protected, that's what law professors are saying, that's what countries and organizations such as the EU are saying as the reason why they're refusing to support it, some citing the same reasons I cite.  It's a boring read, I can promise you that.

Your assumption that no one will buy your creation is invalid at best, misguided at worst.  Seems like you buy into the statistics RIAA and MPAA publish regularly that have been proven by independent research to be overly inflated.  If it's popular enough to be pirated all around the world in large quantities, many more people will buy it from retailers to support you and give you reason to create more. 

Same here.

Once a man has power over another man.

Well history has proven what happens.

Man has dominated man to his injury.

Well lets consider what Stardock has done. They went ahead and assumed the pirates will be pirates. Minimal DRM (Impulse) is used. Sins/GalCiv2 were some of the best selling games around. And they are still selling even now. Yes, the games are still being pirated. But they are still being sold, plus they are older then some other games that have massive DRM and are still selling better.

God bless the underwater cam

Making the best of a bad situation doesn't make it any less of a bad situation.

Personally I'm considering not buying future Stardock games as I've barely played most of them, but I like Stardocks modus operandi so we shall see.  (Actually, I've already played more of Elemental than I did GC2 and Sins put together...Demigod gets plenty of play though.)