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We are keeping this one happy family. But I think this thread serves an important reminder into how gullible some people can be, especially when they don't read the fine print.

Also, here's a Snopes Forum Article on the subject:

http://www.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/9/t/001657.html#000007

It seems this kind of thing has been happening since July.

I recently finished The 7th Guest -- My Dad bought it ages ago (when CD-ROMs first came out) but our family never got around to finishing it. It's an okay puzzle game for its time, but it's not really an adventure.

Also, the ending was shit, just like Myst.

[There is no way to cancel an account.]

Relik, even if it's not a scam, it's still an ad (and this includes any promotional material from marketing companies). And we decided not to have any ad-postings here a long time ago.

Sure, the iPod may seem like a good deal, but I always follow the maxim: "If something looks too good to be true, it probably is."

So, I decided to put my maxim into effect by reading the terms and conditions on the site. I noticed a few things that worried me such as:

"Users must be residents of the United States, and there can only be one account per shipping address." -- THis didn't actually worry me. It's a pretty basic comment, nothing big to worry about. It only rules out non-American resident. That includes me, which I'm happy about. Read on, and you'll find out why.

"By signing up for this website, the user agrees to receive emails we or another 3rd party may send about special offers on our website, as well as third party advertisements or offers." -- Interesting, especially when you consider the next part.

"There is no way to cancel an account. If a user no longer wishes to remain a part of this site, they should cease to access their account, and nothing more will happen with their information" -- The bold part worries me in particular.

"This website nor it's parent company, Gratis Internet, does not guarantee the availability of any product on our website; on occasion, products may be back ordered from our supplier or their manufacturer. In cases involving backordered products, we do not guarantee that the products will ship within any given period of time." -- An escape clause if they run out of iPods. How convenient.

I also read their privacy statement:

"We may send you offers on behalf of our business partners. Keep in mind that if you take advantage of an offer from a Gratis Internet business partner and thus, become their customer, they may independently wish to send offers to you. In the event that you are not interested in receiving future offers from these affiliates, you must contact them directly to fulfill your list removal request." -- This seems a little worrying.

"Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers/offer providers) may use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these types of cookies." -- This worries me as too.

Now, get ready for a real kicker because I saved the best for last:

"We may work with other third party businesses using the personal information that you supply to us on the main signup page to bring selected retail opportunities to our members via direct mail, email and telemarketing. These businesses may include providers of direct marketing services and applications, including lookup and reference, data enhancement, suppression and validation and email marketing."


Isn't it strange that there's a clause like this that basically says, "We have the right to give your personal information to other parties for mail, email, and telemarketing purposes." And remember that line in the terms and conditions where it said: "There is no way to cancel an account"

This basically means they own your personal information and can do whatever it wants with it. Even after you "cease access to your account", they've still given your information to third parties. They may not give you personal details to third parties after you "cease access", but they've still got those details on file and have probably already given them to other companies while you were a member. And the only way to stop the junk mail from those other companies is to "contact them directly to fulfill your list removal request". To which, I say "Good luck! HAHAHAHAH!"

Now get ready for this: since you've agreed to do this, these third party companies can use cookies in any way they want as stated in the privacy statement. Gratis has no control over how these cookies operate. So these third-party companies basically have a) your contact details, b) the potential to use cookies. And think about what they can do with all this.

Sure, it's not a scam, but it's a very sleazy way to allow a marketing company the right to post spam with your consent. And if you sign-up, you've agreed to all this, as per the terms and conditions and privacy statement.

I noticed that the privacy statement was reviewed by Trust-e. Who are Trust-e? According to their website, Trust-e is "an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling individuals and organizations to establish trusting relationships based on respect for personal identity and information in the evolving networked world. " Great, so why did they give the thumbs-up to a privacy statement that doesn't respect personal identity? Well, I looked at their webpage and found this:



And I reread that Wired article that Relik posted. Lo and behold, what did I find:

"it's a new form of online marketing supported by companies like eBay, AOL and Columbia House."

"Subscribers are given a choice of 10 different offers, including a 45-day trial of AOL and a two-week trial of Ancestry.com's genealogy service."

"Instead, they explained, Gratis Internet is paid a bounty for sending potential customers to sites like AOL, eBay or RealNetworks."

So, basically Gratis' privacy statement is worth diddly-squat. AOL sponsered the company that reviewed it. And of course they're going to stamp their seal of approval on it because AOL profits from Gratis' service. Think about it: if eTrust didn't stamp their seal of approval on the privacy statement, they'd risk their sponsership with AOL. Basically, Gratis can say whatever they like in their privacy statement and still get a "seal of legitimacy" from eTrust.

Also, Relik, I don't think Wired's is legitimate. At least not on their position on this issue. Wired is owned by Terra-Lycos, and their privacy statement is also approved by Trust-e, so obviously they're going to write a possitive story that promotes AOL. Plus, they also have a relationship with Doubleclick, another web-marketing company -- so much for an independent view on spam marketing companies.

Plus, the Wired article mentions this line: "FreeiPods.com is certified by Truste, which means the site adheres to the organization's privacy standards. It does not mean the site can be trusted to send out free iPods." Sure, the lack of trust over the iPods is mentioned in the article. However, there's no mention of your personal data being sent to third party companies in the article. Why? I already said why. Because Wired's parent company has a pretty strong relationship with Trust-e too.

And all this isn't some big secret, nor is it a conspiracy, because it's all spelt out in black and white. People just don't bother checking these things. I just did a 2 hour surf and found out all this information. It's easily available.

So, what this all is is just one big fishing exercise by ad companies. They grab a heap of potential customers by dangling an iPod on a stick, spam them per their approval, and there's nothing said victims can do about third party companies using their personal details even after they "cease access" to Gratis because they've already given their consent.

The question you have to ask yourself is: Is an iPod really worth all that spam you'll get in the future?

In any case, I've shown this is clearly just a spam marketing exercise. That's why stuff like this isn't allowed on our forum.

Straight from the rules:

7. No spam or ads -- They will be deleted.

I didn't see the links, but I'm guessing they were links to an ebay scam ad or something similar. I don't care anyway. Relik, if you'd read the rules you'd know we don't allow this sort of thing. It's doesn't matter how you justify it. We don't want that kind of stuff here.

And that goes for anyone else wanting to post something similar.

Rich's looks a lot like Guybrush.

These are some damn sweet entries!

We don't play Monopoly at our house anymore. Someone lost our bank.

Sylph, I'm interested in your answer, even if you can't elaborate further on it. Mind if I ask a few more questions, though?

When you say "dead", do you mean it in the sense that there's always a report in the media about such-and-such platform being dead?

And if you think both PC Games and console games have been commercially "dead" for ten years, then what gaming/entertainment format do you think is commercially "alive"?

Well, ROMS are illegal

roms are NOT elegal. They are elegal as long as you don't own the original game cartridge.
They are ment to be a personal backupcopy of your games (don't ask me why. If my cartridge broke I can't use the rom on my GBA or SNES).

This was discussed in another topic (the Breakdown XBOX one I think), but the back-up copy rules apparently don't apply to ROM cartridges.

ROMs are illegal, yes, but investigators generally don't waste time with some pissy under-25-year old downloading ROMs. They're generally more interested in mass distributors of warez.

With all this talk about which console is better, I wonder if PC gaming really is dead?

http://www.mobygames.com/featured_article/feature,11/section,45/

What do all you think? Harsh reality or media scare?

This was a tough one to choose. I thought a lot of them were very funny, but I nailed it down to Gilbert's and Darth's, mainly due to technical considerations.

In the end, I choose Gilbert's. His was funny, the manipulatation was good (especially the under the hood editing) and it fitted the image very well.

However, I must say Darth picked a great image combo. It really suited the pic and was funny. Thumbs up I say.

Nevertheless, he (like all others) must bow down to TEH GILBOT!!!1!

My opinion on online dating is summed up nicely in the following:

<Mary> Oh, John!!1 I am tingling under the touch of your letters!1
<John1980> Oh Mary, I love the way you take your finger off the shift key but continue to press '1'
<Mary> Take me John. Take me now!
<John1980> I slowly unbuton your blouse
<John1980> *unbutton
*Mary has quit IRC: <ping timeout>
<John1980> MARY!??? NOOOOOO. Fucking Dial Up Connections!
<BOYD1982> dont mind me. i'm just watching.
<Vel> Has anybody played 'Who Wants to Live Forever'?

I think it's better summed up with this: http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?topic=9059.0

I think it's more of a question of how they're listed on CJ's website.

I AERS LIEV IN BRISBAEN OMG I WILL CALL YAHZTEE IMEEDAITELY!!11!

Sounds like another P-P-P-Powerbook scam to me.

What you refer to as 'history' is part of what I refer to as 'depth', which also includes stuff like character quirks, relationships with others, etc (stuff that the personality thread focused on). I think it's very crucial when making a game, mainly because they explain character traits. Not all history is always explained within the game however, but the history is still there to give a sense of realism to characters.

I like a game like Day of the Tentacle. It requires no knowledge of Maniac Mansion, but it does allude to the previous game just enough to give the player a sense of the history (Plus, MM is included if one feels the need to play the 'history').

Do some of you have p3n1s envy??? 

As for the whole awards thing, I haven't heard of any complaints from any of the winners. I mean, It's not the sort of thing to be taken seriously and I don't think any of the winners take it THAT seriously. The AGS Awards are meant to be a bit of fun. Sure, they might indicate positive games, but it's not like spending 5 minutes playing a crappy game with ruin your life forever. Plus, some humourous games have been p3n1s winners and nominees, such as (my favs): Flashbax, Davey Jones C'est Mort, Warrior of Might, A Cup of Coffee is Worth a Thousand Bathroom Breaks, and Tikkle-Me-Andy & Andy Penis's Big Adventure

Also, I find people who spend time looking for games only winning AGS Awards are limiting themselves. It's good to throw a curveball every now and then just to keep people on their toes. That's kind of why I feel the p3n1s award is just as a legitimate award as any other. It shows the opposite end of the spectrum, which is never a bad thing.

And keep in mind that the Awards are just popular opinion anyway. The opposite end is just popular opinion, just the same as the award winners. Popular opinion doesn't always mean the same as quality. For example, I was honestly scratching my head as to why people nominated the very-playable Flashbax. Oh well, the people speaketh.

Yup, it's a Simpson thing. It's Radioactive Man. It was from an episode where Bart, Milhouse, and Martin bought issue #1 of Radioactive Man, and it ended up destroying their friendship. The comic was then struck by lightning and they became friends again. That torn piece was the last thing you saw in the episode.

Aye, go with Pinnacle. I consider them top-o-the-line.

As for software, I've got both MyDVD and DVD Workshop, and I found MyDVD to be very buggy. The Ulead range seems the way to go for that kind of thing (basic DVD compilations). However, if you're really serious about video editing and DVD authoring, I once again recommend the Pinnacle range. I found Pinnacle Studio way better for customising menus and so forth than either MyDVD or DVD Workshop. Prices for the different packages range from $99 (basic Studio) to $199 (Deluxe).

Also, a word of caution: no matter what software you use, be ready to have your PC out of action for a while, because all software needs to convert your video format into DVD format and thus suck up a lot of system resources. It takes a while when you're converting a 1-2 hr home movie

and for the ladies, they have male dolls too.

Not only that, for you shoppers with money to burn who also want the best of both worlds, they can add an "attachment" to a female doll.