Slashback: Attenuation, Maturity, Packaging

In this episode of slashback, there's more on NanoStuff, censorship in various forms and venues, and further proof that the word "upstart" uttered or tapped in computer journalism regarding Linux is ever so much twaddle. You have been warned.

Sorry, but the print doesn't get any smaller. If the recent release of the Foresight Institute's nanotech guidelines intriguing to you, you might want to check out the new forum for nanotech advances and issues. bento writes: "From the press release: "I'm happy to report that one of Foresight's long-term goals -- to have a way to meet online that truly works -- is now a reality at http://nanodot.org. We think of this site as our daily newspaper -- all the news that's fit to "print" -- combined with a continual Nanoschmooze discussion. No login is needed to read the site." For those who are interested in nanotechnology's social and technological implications, this site should prove a great resource in finding out what's up in the field of nanotechnology."

One man's trash is other people's trash, too. psxndc writes: "FGNOnline has the scoop about the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association unveiling new packaging options for PC Games at their annual conference. It brings up the point about games with large documentation not fitting into smaller DVD-type Keep Cases, but wasn't the digital revolution supposed to cut down if not eliminate the need for paper in the first place?? Most game-box contents are a jewel-cased CD, some docs, some ads, and a whole lot of unused space? Why?" Well, in the bad old days of the CD longbox (which are not that long ago), the most commonly cited reasons for the box of mostly-air were 1) the space is helpful for marketing purposes (pictures and blurbs and artwork, oh my!) and 2) everyone's favorite eupehmism for shoplifting, "shrinkage." Probably the same rules apply; game makers want to "stand out on the shelf." But if CDs can handle the switch, I bet games can, too.

How will the children survive? CuriousGeorge113 writes: "In a major decision today, a Federal Appeals Court has struck down COPA (The Children's Online Protection Act). According to this ACLU Press Release, a federal appeals court has deemed the law unconstitutional in nature and 'impossible to establish one "community standard" by which Internet speech could be governed.' You can also see the official court case here."

And in news that can only be called related ... Rude Turnip writes: "It looks like Mattel, one of the most despised toy companies discussed on Slashdot, is sellling off its notorious Cyber Patrol censorware. Cyber Patrol's parent company, The Learning Co., which is also owned by Mattel, is being sold off separately. Mattel said they would like to concentrate on their "core competency" of toys. The lucky buyer of Cyber Patrol is the British firm, JSB Software Technologies, PLC, who paid $100 million. With people like Jamie McCarthy out there fighting these purveyours of censorship and great sites like peacefire.org, I bet JSB will soon realize they paid just a little too much :-)" Maybe it's just not a sellers market; the article indicating that Cyber Patrol was to be sold went up a few months ago.

In six years, Tux will be driving. xannax writes: "I just bought a new IWILL VD133 motherboard, and after the usual setup and such, popped in the configuration cdrom - and was suprised to see a Linux kernel boot up on the monitor. When the cd boots, it gives users without an fdisk'ed partition a chance to make disks for board and chipset config; but the neat thing is the use of Linux for the cd. I mean, two years ago, when I wore my "Penguin Power" t-shirt, most of the attention I got was from hockey fans. But just as the logo on the shirt has faded from repeated washing, the exact opposite has happened to the visibility of the Linux OS; it's gone from hackers and nerds only to mainstream. Great to see a company with a reputation like IWILL use Linux in this fashion."

Come sirrah Jack Straw! MrM writes: "An IDG.net story on CNN says that in the face of increasing pressure from privacy groups, business groups and Internet service providers (ISPs), the U.K. government is backing away from some of the more controversial aspects of its e-mail surveillance bill currently under consideration in the House of Lords." The controversy is mostly over little things like, oh, (from the article) "Under the provisions of the RIP bill, the U.K. government -- specifically the Home Office and its head, the Home Secretary -- can demand encryption keys to any and all data communications with a prison sentence of two years for those who do not comply with the order."

Comments

Game packaging

[coldguy]

I don't know about anyone else, and maybe it's some sort of crime or something to say this here, but I like printed material and almost always prefer it to online or CD based documentation. Here's my reasoning.

• Books are portable. Yeah, so are CDs, but to use them, I also need to haul around some portable computer-like device, which would cost me at the very least around $300 to accquire.
• Books are durable. Nobody freaks when you knock a book off the table. The same can't be said for laptops. Spilled beverages might result in stains and wrinkled pages on books, instead of the major damage they often do to electronic devices. With CDs, you have to worry about scratches...
• Books are malleable. What I mean by this is that I can fold pages, make notes in margins, highlight sections, etc, all with the simple and cheap tool known as a pen.
• Books are easier to read than screens. This one is completely subjective, but I find that it's a lot more tolerable to stare at print for 8 hours straight than it is to stare at a CRT or LCD.
• Books are reliable. They don't run out of batteries, they don't run out of bandwidth and they never ever crash
• Books are easier to use. You don't have to wait for them to boot, and flipping pages is even simpler than clicking a mouse.
• Print makes more efficient use of display space. You can fit a lot more readable text on one 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper than you could ever fit on a standard 17 inch monitor.

The only possible advantages I see in online documentation:

• It has the potential to pull fresh, updated content from a remote location.
• You can do full-text searches.
• You can embed video, audio, 3D worlds, whatever into it.

Those are nice features, but I'd still choose paper any day of the week. I'm particularly fond of the emerging trend of packaging books with a CD-ROM containing the text of the book plus extra goodies - that way, you get the best of both worlds.

In summary, if it comes down to a choice between large packaging and online-only docs, I'll take the large packaging any day. Maybe I'm just selfish, but hey, I like books.

That last thing...

[Greyfox]

I was just talking to a friend about encryption stuff the other day. He's of the opinion that if encrypted information on your hard drive is supoenaed, you have to provide the passphrases to decrypt it or face jail time for contempt of court. I'd think this would violate the 5th ammendment here in the states, but IANAL so what do I know? Discuss.

While we're on that topic, if they're looking for evidence that you killed OJ's wife and find that you're innocent of that crime (Headline: Real Killers Still At Large!) but found that you bought a pound of crack and are the primary provider of Live Goat Porn for the east coast, can they legally convict you on those things? Touchy stuff, eh?

Meanwhile, I'm merrily encrypting data from /dev/random to (similarly random) keys and mailing it off to an assortment of random UK Citizens with various amusing filenames like "murderconfession.txt.pgp," "your_herion_is_in.txt.pgp" etc. Guess you guys will be pretty fucked when they come a knocking and demanding that you provide the keys. God I'm a bastard sometimes, really.

On the plus side, perhaps this would persuade people that it really IS a good idea to set the expiration date on those PGP keys. Nothing worse than being locked up for a couple of years because you can't remember the passphrase for the key you generated 8 years ago. And I expect Belgium will welcome the exodus of businesses leaving the UK. Have you been to Belgium? Every cloud has a silver lining, eh?

I like game manuals..

[Danse]

I'd be perfectly happy if manuals for most apps were in digital form only, but when it comes to games, the printed manual is much preferred. This is mainly because when I'm playing a game, it's rather difficult to switch to a text editor to read up on how to do something, and then switch back to the game. Much easier to just keep the manual in my lap.