I'm reading over meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/5282/… and thinking about the looming wow 5.0 patch this week. There are dozens of questions about situations that can no longer be encountered in the game, and no one can play an older version.
Many questions should get updated answers (I plan to do a bunch!), but many other questions are just not relevant any more. I hope there's some plan on what to do with them.
While joining different types of matches in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, I noticed in some of them Team collision is turned on and in some off. I didn't noticed any differences.
What does "Team collision" means in CS:GO?
@MartinSojka Like I said, we're not lawyers. But for the most part, if it's an iffy grey area, since StackExchange is based in the US, that's what we go off of. That's why we don't talk about piracy of any form.
Is it legitimate for a user to ask a question about a hacked or modded game console, provided said question is about gaming on it?
For example, would/should we shut down a question about running MAME on a hacked classic XBox?
FAQ only has a semi-related point as well, to avoid the following: "Piracy, and support with pirated games." Thing is, playing on a private server can, but doesn't necessarily have to involve piracy.
@fbueckert Because they are clean-room reverse engineered software? This was always legal.
There is even a Microsoft vs. IBM ruling about it, where IBM claimed Microsoft was breaking the law when reverse-engineering DOS and creating their own. IBM lost.
anyhoo, I've just spent the last few minutes looking for those "dozens" of questions that are no longer applicable, and not finding a single good example, I'll withdraw my question as to the plan to handle them.
@MartinSojka Gotta love how companies exploit loopholes in the very same laws that reportedly allow their continued existence in the market to begin with
Seriously: The legality of such servers isn't the question. The are undoubtedly legal servers for most major MMOs (I think EVE might be an exception). They often run older versions of the game, sometimes for practical reasons (newer version isn't supported yet), sometimes as "classic" servers.
because "you can't have creativity without copyright", "you can't have innovation without patents" obviously. Nothing of value was ever devised before the 1300s
@fbueckert No, really, it isn't. Do you really think NCSoft wouldn't shut down l2j by now? It's hosted in Germany, they had (until recently) a German office and presence.
Anyway, didn't you want to avoid the legalese stuff?
I know it sounds kind of silly but it is true enterprise-level stuff has enterprise-level hardware in enterprise-level cases and enterprise-level operative systems running enterprise-level software with enterprise-level problems etc. that come with it
@fbueckert By taking that stance, I don't see the problem with helping people who play with older versions of whatever MMO they want. That's legal in the US, as long as you legally obtained the client at some point.
> Illegal Use. Stack Exchange may not be used for illegal purposes. Examples of this include using Stack Exchange for fraudulent purposes or operating a phishing site (used to obtain account and password information).
Is aiding people in doing illegal stuff legal? Who knows!
(and who cares!)
We're not lawyers. All I know is that most of this community generally feels strongly against piracy and then that's how we'll roll.
This also means that if it bothers you we can open up something on Meta to discuss about it, but still I'd rather we didn't talk about what's legal and what's not
So do I - I wouldn't be able to do much money programming stuff if it wasn't for strong copyrights around here. So I'm obviously against piracy in any form, since it's threatening me with not being able to join fun and work (sure, sure, I can always do some other thing).
@fbueckert Well if we could avoid having the SE stuff scold us all and forcibly delete 10% of the site and write a blog post about it, that'd be better
@MartinSojka So, if you want to argue about whether or not questions about private servers (and previous versions of WoW) are allowed, you'll need to change the community viewpoint on it.
Patent law is the main reason I even had to dig deep into the whole IP law and learn a good part of it. Which sucks, law is like programming for morons.
@badp No. I'm fine with having copyright for works I create until I die. My descendants better fucking get off their lazy butts and create their own copyrightable work.
(to be honest it's got to be a pretty epic thing to net you profits until then, most of the time copyright simply means your book/record/program stops printing/airing/running and that's the end of it.)
Copyright is fine in principle, but today's time lengths are crazy and not sustainable, of course. Which is why there is already such a backlash in form of GPL, CC and so on.
Anyway, we have to work with what we have and tell our politicians what we want changed any chance we get. :)
@badp Yeah, but when you have tons of "copyrightable" material under your belt, you can just continue to remix and re-use, over and over to keep the profits coming.
I can imagine stuff like "GREETING BY MEANS OF A COMPUTER PROGRAM TO INDUCE A SENSE OF HUMAN INTERACTION WITH COMPUTER USERS", "DISPLAY OF UNNECESSARY TEXT MESSAGES BY PART OF A COMPUTER PROGRAM ON A COMPUTER SCREEN TO AID THE USER IN THE USE OF A PROGRAM" or "DISPLAYING OF MESSAGES BEFORE THE END OF A COMPUTER PROGRAM TO SIGNAL THE CORRECT HALTING THEREOF" being actual patents
> E. host, provide or develop matchmaking services for the Game or the Service, or intercept, emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard in any way, for any purpose, including without limitation unauthorized play over the internet, network play, or as part of content aggregation networks;
@fbueckert You have to google for it, you mean? That's not really that hard. :) And the facts are simply that: If you can legally obtain a client for the server (easy for most) and can get or create a server with software which isn't infringing on any IP law (open-source, clean-room reverse-engineered stuff without any assets from the company), you're clear.
@murgatroid99 Yes, which is why private server people shouldn't really agree to those ToS. That's easy enough: Never click "I Agree" on anything to that effect.
@DavidB No server I know makes use of art assets. Sure, it would be possible that there is one such, for anti-cheating purposes and whatnot, but I don't know of any server with it, official or not.
in order to play, you have to have a server and a client. the client can't be modified to connect to your private server (violates the client software agreement)
@murgatroid99 Well, the game engine, yes. You have to write your own. You can make one inspired by the official one (which is fine, ideas can't be copyrighted), or you can create your own.
@DavidB Oh, come on. You're in control of the whole network stack of your computer. You don't need to modify the client to make it connect to whatever the hell you want.
@murgatroid99 Depends on the game. Not playing WoW, so I can't tell for that, but for Lineage II, NCSoft put up full downloads of the client on a few different places after each major update.
@DavidB So that means - at most, if you even accept such EULAs to be valid - that people who use the clients are in breach of contract with Blizzard. Contracts aren't the law though. This isn't illegal, this isn't breaking any law - Blizzard (and nobody else!) just can demand damages.
@DavidB Because that's the MMO I actually know pretty well inside and out, so I try to avoid talking about things I don't know enough details about this way.
Breaking a licence agreement also isn't automatically illegal - that's for a court to decide, case by case. Some such agreements can be deemed null and void as well.
@Wipqozn Questions about older versions of MMOs, where the only way for the question to be useful is by not playing on an official server. Notice: playing on such a server (which is legal everywhere I know of), not running such a server (which ... depends).
@MartinSojka: Whether or not we allow a specific type of question is something which should be brought up in meta. It shouldn't just be limited to chat. If you feel so strongly about this, make a meta.
@MartinSojka but since we can't tell, it's safest to just assume that if a game does not explicitly allow private servers (the way Minecraft or TF2) does, we should not take questions about its private servers
I don't feel strongly about it (though if you'll start deleting old-version questions for Lineage II, I will :)), I just try to understand WTH some of the wrong ideas like "private server = piracy" come from.
Me and my brother want to play Minecraft on LAN, it has worked before but today it has decided to not work. On his computer we can see the server but can't connect, and on my one, his server doesn't show up at all. We are both on the same update, we don't have any mods, and the direct connect doe...
@fbueckert Sort of. Our users were municipal governments and they wanted to disobey provincial laws - so they weren't directly involved in creating them.
So, my last tech support job involved DOS software. Talking computer illiterate people through arcane DOS commands to determine the problem was not fun. "Where's the star key?" "No, you don't have to read C:\> to me every time."
@JasonBerkan Part of my tech support was ensuring the software worked on the client's computers; seeing as how the DRM used was STUPID restrictive, we'd often have to remote into the computer to help out.
@murgatroid99 They just don't work in a Q&A system. Troubleshooting is about going back and forth, guessing, trying random things, et cetera. That's not the kind of thing which works in a Q&A system.
I was wondering if anyone knew of a proper way to get a pressure plate to trigger a series of pistons instantly, but have their deactivation delayed by about a variable number of seconds.
I've tried this with a NAND gate and simply adding repeaters but this actually causes the door to open and c...
All I know is it normally works and today it's not. The Wifi works fine and We are using different accounts. Sadly I do not spend 23 hours a day on the computer so I don't know what the problem could be. — Anonymous16 secs ago
I need to make a contraption that takes a pulse and toggles a switch from on to off. Then when the pulse happens again, I need it to turn from off to on.
@OrigamiRobot I'm holding off on Borderlands 2 until Christmas.
Well, not christmas per say. Just until the Steam sale, at which point I'm sure it will be one sale for 25%. I'm not that concerned with picking up Borderlands 2 anytime soon, so I figure I mine as well wait. Plus I'll be busy with Guild Wars 2.
@OrigamiRobot His pinwheel always reminded me of the Umbrella corporation. I've always assumed he's secretly in charge of an evil corporation that makes zombies or something.
You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool th...
While joining different types of matches in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, I noticed in some of them Team collision is turned on and in some off. I didn't noticed any differences.
What does "Team collision" means in CS:GO?
Is it legitimate for a user to ask a question about a hacked or modded game console, provided said question is about gaming on it?
For example, would/should we shut down a question about running MAME on a hacked classic XBox?
potato SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I have tried everything, I don't want to create a new character because I have completed a lot. What do I do
I need to make a contraption that takes a pulse and toggles a switch from on to off. Then when the pulse happens again, I need it to turn from off to on.
What you are looking for is a t-flip flop. Just search Google, you should be able to find one that suits your needs.
