I went through the history page on the Tavares wiki article, and could not find the said offense. Was this iteration removed or is there a cited date for when the vibrator statement was added/removed?
We all agree that bureaucracy is not conducive to the efficiency of a project like Wiki, no news there, but fact checking and accurate history is more important.
The politics of who should be deciding this aside, the best layout for a computer lab of 20-30 computers I've seen is to have a central server with either linux or Win-Server2003, and have the students computers all network boot to the server image. This significantly reduces the maintenance for most of them if the student gets clever and starts killing his SVChost processes, or accidentally crashes his X server. All ya have to do is reboot and the OS is clean again.
Laptops are a bit more of a risk, they are dropped, they are by design slower than a desktop of equivalent value, battery life is an issue, and they can be stolen, in which case data security is a concern, although not a big one.
The portability of a laptop is good if only one class at a time will need them, but if multiple classes need access it's far cheaper and more effective to have seperate labs than buy more carts of expensive laptops. A simple network boot terminal shouldn't be more than $250 with a monitor(American dollars). The server might cost you about $2000 or so, for every 30 computers, but this setup is cheaper than buying a $400 laptop for 30 kids at a time.
Note that there are some drawbacks to this, each system does not have a hard drive or optical drive in it, but if local storage is needed flash drives should work fine for the students to use for homework. Newegg sells 8GB flash drives for less than $20, and in bulk you can probably find it less than that.
Just my 2 cents.
To be fair, Diablo bled into WoW long before diablo 3 was even in development. The whole idea of soulbound items didn't exist prior to wow, and was a direct response to all the item trading that was going on in Diablo 2.
For that matter, WoW's item system is noticeably decedent from that in Diablo 2. The random drops, sockets, the uncommon, rare, unique classifications that has become ubiquitous now. Even the bag/bank space is am obvious evolution from diablo 2 days.
America is also unique in that we are more proud of our politics than we are of our culture. Ask a frenchman or englishman which he would rather live without, his parliament or his favorite food?
You are right about one thing however, in the US our social studies (which encompasses politics, geography, etc) has declined severely from what it should be. I'm only just now learning in my college courses that half of my elementary teachers blatantly lied in some subjects.
Getting back to the point though, I'm not sure this survey is anything more than an outburst-of-common-sense. The main assertion is that games can be used for social interaction, not columbine practice. This isn't exactly a groundbreaking discovery. Games have definately become part of this culture, and should be taken seriously as a medium by all segments of that culture. It is unfortunate that some educators and interest groups still view games in this archaic fashion, and i hope i live to see the day that this digital medium is recognized universally as an art form.
The anti-piracy aspect of WoW is ambiguous, mainly that everyone plays on the legit servers, so theres little incentive to play on the free ones. And an infinitesimal number of people, if any, have connected to legit servers without a paying or trial account.
Compare Warden in wow, to Punkbuster for BF2 and the like. It is only smiled upon because it (like all blizzard code) is flawless almost to the point of perfection. Punkbuster (Made by EA, hmm) is a terribly buggy and resource intensive program that is ineffectual at BEST.
I'm interested in Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3's release to see how they deal with piracy. I wouldn't be surprised if in a week Starcraft 2 has more copies pirated than Sins of a Solar Empire has ever sold.
I would heartily disagree with the idea that video games are not art because they are interactive. I have seen more than one art gallery where the main exhibit is a blank canvas with spotlights cunningly placed so as to project the viewers shadow onto the canvas.
The result is that the viewer is involved in completing the piece. The shadow itself isn't the art here, the idea behind the shadow is.
A players immersion in a game is very necessary, even if you hate the idea. The art comes in how the developer presents his ideas.
Take for example Portal, a game i personally find beautiful. The plotline isn't really important, and neither are the characters, but the gameplay has an incredible effect on the player. It makes him rethink how you move in three dimensions.
Its subtle when playing the game, and most people don't notice when they change how they look at a room. By the end of the game, a player views his surroundings very differently as a result of the game design. This is intentional, and could never be done in film, paint, or music.
I refuse to believe this isn't art.
If they simply sold you a periodic license to listen to a song, rather than selling you a song itself, they could legally take it away after a month and have no repercussions.
Plenty of people pay for video games every month without actually getting anything more than the right to access a server for a while.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for laptop manufacturers to start waterproofing their systems. It would have a nice side benefit of helping against spilled liquids as well.
I actually went through those same steps with AT&T's dsl/cell/homephone plans. I asked a very simple question: how much would my monthly bill be assuming there are no surcharges? Here's a brief rundown of my conversation.
Happy Customer:So, i have these 3 plans, home phone for $9.95, cell service for $34.95, and internet service for $49.95 (numbers could be off), assuming i don't go over on minutes or anything extra like that, how much would that be with taxes and surcharges?
AT&T rep:about $20 a month, on average.
Happy Customer: Can you be more specific?
AT&T rep: I'm sorry sir, there simply isn't a way to calculate that in our system.
Happy Customer: Ok, well can you tell me what taxes are included and what percentage they are?
AT&T rep: It's all calculated with a formula in our system.
Happy Customer: Ok, can i have the formula?
AT&T rep: It's in our program, i can't access it. Honestly sir your only the second person in five years that has asked for that. I would only be able to tell you what taxes were on a previous bill.
Happy Customer: So let me get this straight, your saying that i would have to sign up for a contract with AT&T and sign a blank check for the first month before you would tell me how much it would be?
AT&T rep: Yes sir, is there anything else i can help you with today?
Happy Customer: Sure, get me the number for Verizon wireless and Time warner.
Oh, and just so you know? it took about 4 days of emailing and phone calls just to get them to admit it. Whenever the question came up i would get transfered to a different sales rep to repeat my question. Clever huh?
Ironic that it takes a pirate to spot corruption in the legal system. Perhaps if we hired some fellows in fluffy shirts and a bottle of grog we could get something done about the RIAA.
Given all the jaw dropping videos by johnny Lee (you know, wii vr headtracking) what makes you say that we will need keyboards in the future? at the very least, all we need is a camera and an LED projecting an image of a keyboard onto a flat surface to emulate a keyboard.
You want to know where the future is headed? INTUITIVE. USER. INPUT. That's if they don't have our brains directly wired into our cell phones in 20 years anyways.
That gives me a question, if microsoft discontinues this popular OS, is it still illegal to install a cracked copy? Probably yes i'm sure, but that makes me wonder: At what point does XP become so old that it becomes public domain and free of copyright?
The bot writer might actually be entitled to write his program without regards to how it is used.
It is certainly not illegal for someone to cheat at a video game, even though it violates the EULA. Blizzard would have to prove that this man selling a cheat program causes them damage, and that he is liable for that damage. Currently, cheat programs do not fall under the spam or malware category, they are not malicious code. It will be hard for Blizzard to convince a judge that a paying customer running a bot is costing them money.
On the one hand I root for blizzard to weed out griefers and farmers, they can hurt the gameplay experience. On the other hand though i'm not sure that what this man is selling is actually criminal. It's not very sportsmanlike, but i don't think it's illegal.
1)The FBI being concerned with your politics would be wrong in and of itself. If they decide to frame you for your political beliefs (even extremist beliefs) then democracy has already failed and your screwed anyways. At the moment, i can say all the nasty things i want about the current regime and be fine.
2)Even if you do click the link the worst they can do is raid your house and find that there is nothing there, unless they do find something in which case your a perv and probably deserve it.
3)You still have a right to a fair trial, and most juries would be forgiving to someone who clicked on the free iPod and got a face full of pr0n.
I for one will never buy a game that uses Starforce copy protection. When i bought Call of Juarez i was unable to play it without reinstalling windows because it was convinced that i was running a CD emulator.
Cd keys, online authentication and the like are fine, but there is a limit to what is really necessary. There will probably never be a game that cannot be cracked and redistributed (Although WoW came close) so the author is absolutely correct. Spend the time and resources on the game, not the pirates who will thwart you anyways.
Oh yea, the cracked copy of Call of Juarez I downloaded from pirate bay worked great, thanks pirates!
I think many people are underestimating just how much demand there is for starcraft 2. Almost every gamer 10 years ago played starcraft, and most of them are older with jobs and money now. Not to mention that blizzard has NEVER made a pc game that didn't sell millions. Take a look at some of the gameplay videos for SC2 sometime, it will definately give a much needed boost to PC game sales. Oh, and don't forget Spore!
and identifying objects by touch See, they hid their TRUE requirements in the fine print. All TSO personell have to be psychic, and identify bombs just by touching their luggage. I think we're safe in their capable hands...
Slashdot Mirror
so this toy you speak of, what exactly do you call an illegal RF detector?
I went through the history page on the Tavares wiki article, and could not find the said offense. Was this iteration removed or is there a cited date for when the vibrator statement was added/removed?
We all agree that bureaucracy is not conducive to the efficiency of a project like Wiki, no news there, but fact checking and accurate history is more important.
The politics of who should be deciding this aside, the best layout for a computer lab of 20-30 computers I've seen is to have a central server with either linux or Win-Server2003, and have the students computers all network boot to the server image. This significantly reduces the maintenance for most of them if the student gets clever and starts killing his SVChost processes, or accidentally crashes his X server. All ya have to do is reboot and the OS is clean again. Laptops are a bit more of a risk, they are dropped, they are by design slower than a desktop of equivalent value, battery life is an issue, and they can be stolen, in which case data security is a concern, although not a big one. The portability of a laptop is good if only one class at a time will need them, but if multiple classes need access it's far cheaper and more effective to have seperate labs than buy more carts of expensive laptops. A simple network boot terminal shouldn't be more than $250 with a monitor(American dollars). The server might cost you about $2000 or so, for every 30 computers, but this setup is cheaper than buying a $400 laptop for 30 kids at a time. Note that there are some drawbacks to this, each system does not have a hard drive or optical drive in it, but if local storage is needed flash drives should work fine for the students to use for homework. Newegg sells 8GB flash drives for less than $20, and in bulk you can probably find it less than that. Just my 2 cents.
correction: it's a good photoshop, because it fooled us enough to dig deeper. i think they succeeded in their prank marvelously.
To be fair, Diablo bled into WoW long before diablo 3 was even in development. The whole idea of soulbound items didn't exist prior to wow, and was a direct response to all the item trading that was going on in Diablo 2.
For that matter, WoW's item system is noticeably decedent from that in Diablo 2. The random drops, sockets, the uncommon, rare, unique classifications that has become ubiquitous now. Even the bag/bank space is am obvious evolution from diablo 2 days.
America is also unique in that we are more proud of our politics than we are of our culture. Ask a frenchman or englishman which he would rather live without, his parliament or his favorite food?
You are right about one thing however, in the US our social studies (which encompasses politics, geography, etc) has declined severely from what it should be. I'm only just now learning in my college courses that half of my elementary teachers blatantly lied in some subjects.
Getting back to the point though, I'm not sure this survey is anything more than an outburst-of-common-sense. The main assertion is that games can be used for social interaction, not columbine practice. This isn't exactly a groundbreaking discovery. Games have definately become part of this culture, and should be taken seriously as a medium by all segments of that culture. It is unfortunate that some educators and interest groups still view games in this archaic fashion, and i hope i live to see the day that this digital medium is recognized universally as an art form.
The anti-piracy aspect of WoW is ambiguous, mainly that everyone plays on the legit servers, so theres little incentive to play on the free ones. And an infinitesimal number of people, if any, have connected to legit servers without a paying or trial account. Compare Warden in wow, to Punkbuster for BF2 and the like. It is only smiled upon because it (like all blizzard code) is flawless almost to the point of perfection. Punkbuster (Made by EA, hmm) is a terribly buggy and resource intensive program that is ineffectual at BEST. I'm interested in Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3's release to see how they deal with piracy. I wouldn't be surprised if in a week Starcraft 2 has more copies pirated than Sins of a Solar Empire has ever sold.
I would heartily disagree with the idea that video games are not art because they are interactive. I have seen more than one art gallery where the main exhibit is a blank canvas with spotlights cunningly placed so as to project the viewers shadow onto the canvas. The result is that the viewer is involved in completing the piece. The shadow itself isn't the art here, the idea behind the shadow is. A players immersion in a game is very necessary, even if you hate the idea. The art comes in how the developer presents his ideas. Take for example Portal, a game i personally find beautiful. The plotline isn't really important, and neither are the characters, but the gameplay has an incredible effect on the player. It makes him rethink how you move in three dimensions. Its subtle when playing the game, and most people don't notice when they change how they look at a room. By the end of the game, a player views his surroundings very differently as a result of the game design. This is intentional, and could never be done in film, paint, or music. I refuse to believe this isn't art.
If they simply sold you a periodic license to listen to a song, rather than selling you a song itself, they could legally take it away after a month and have no repercussions.
Plenty of people pay for video games every month without actually getting anything more than the right to access a server for a while.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for laptop manufacturers to start waterproofing their systems. It would have a nice side benefit of helping against spilled liquids as well.
I actually went through those same steps with AT&T's dsl/cell/homephone plans. I asked a very simple question: how much would my monthly bill be assuming there are no surcharges? Here's a brief rundown of my conversation.
Happy Customer:So, i have these 3 plans, home phone for $9.95, cell service for $34.95, and internet service for $49.95 (numbers could be off), assuming i don't go over on minutes or anything extra like that, how much would that be with taxes and surcharges?
AT&T rep:about $20 a month, on average.
Happy Customer: Can you be more specific?
AT&T rep: I'm sorry sir, there simply isn't a way to calculate that in our system.
Happy Customer: Ok, well can you tell me what taxes are included and what percentage they are?
AT&T rep: It's all calculated with a formula in our system.
Happy Customer: Ok, can i have the formula?
AT&T rep: It's in our program, i can't access it. Honestly sir your only the second person in five years that has asked for that. I would only be able to tell you what taxes were on a previous bill.
Happy Customer: So let me get this straight, your saying that i would have to sign up for a contract with AT&T and sign a blank check for the first month before you would tell me how much it would be?
AT&T rep: Yes sir, is there anything else i can help you with today?
Happy Customer: Sure, get me the number for Verizon wireless and Time warner.
Oh, and just so you know? it took about 4 days of emailing and phone calls just to get them to admit it. Whenever the question came up i would get transfered to a different sales rep to repeat my question. Clever huh?
Ironic that it takes a pirate to spot corruption in the legal system. Perhaps if we hired some fellows in fluffy shirts and a bottle of grog we could get something done about the RIAA.
hey...no fair, you brought reality into this!
Given all the jaw dropping videos by johnny Lee (you know, wii vr headtracking) what makes you say that we will need keyboards in the future? at the very least, all we need is a camera and an LED projecting an image of a keyboard onto a flat surface to emulate a keyboard. You want to know where the future is headed? INTUITIVE. USER. INPUT. That's if they don't have our brains directly wired into our cell phones in 20 years anyways.
thats actually a great idea! maybe give em extra credit if they can sneak a script into the teachers gradebook.
That gives me a question, if microsoft discontinues this popular OS, is it still illegal to install a cracked copy? Probably yes i'm sure, but that makes me wonder: At what point does XP become so old that it becomes public domain and free of copyright?
The bot writer might actually be entitled to write his program without regards to how it is used.
It is certainly not illegal for someone to cheat at a video game, even though it violates the EULA. Blizzard would have to prove that this man selling a cheat program causes them damage, and that he is liable for that damage. Currently, cheat programs do not fall under the spam or malware category, they are not malicious code. It will be hard for Blizzard to convince a judge that a paying customer running a bot is costing them money.
On the one hand I root for blizzard to weed out griefers and farmers, they can hurt the gameplay experience. On the other hand though i'm not sure that what this man is selling is actually criminal. It's not very sportsmanlike, but i don't think it's illegal.
Spirit Rover: I'm doing science and i'm still alive!
Uncle Sam: Thats great! Unfortunately your costing us millions, so we've gotta put you down boy.
Spirit Rover: I knew the cake was a lie...
I don't know about you, but the Star Wars kid made me pretty insecure...
It's already been done, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099487/
There's a few problems with your argument there.
1)The FBI being concerned with your politics would be wrong in and of itself. If they decide to frame you for your political beliefs (even extremist beliefs) then democracy has already failed and your screwed anyways. At the moment, i can say all the nasty things i want about the current regime and be fine.
2)Even if you do click the link the worst they can do is raid your house and find that there is nothing there, unless they do find something in which case your a perv and probably deserve it.
3)You still have a right to a fair trial, and most juries would be forgiving to someone who clicked on the free iPod and got a face full of pr0n.
I for one will never buy a game that uses Starforce copy protection. When i bought Call of Juarez i was unable to play it without reinstalling windows because it was convinced that i was running a CD emulator.
Cd keys, online authentication and the like are fine, but there is a limit to what is really necessary. There will probably never be a game that cannot be cracked and redistributed (Although WoW came close) so the author is absolutely correct. Spend the time and resources on the game, not the pirates who will thwart you anyways.
Oh yea, the cracked copy of Call of Juarez I downloaded from pirate bay worked great, thanks pirates!
I think many people are underestimating just how much demand there is for starcraft 2. Almost every gamer 10 years ago played starcraft, and most of them are older with jobs and money now. Not to mention that blizzard has NEVER made a pc game that didn't sell millions. Take a look at some of the gameplay videos for SC2 sometime, it will definately give a much needed boost to PC game sales. Oh, and don't forget Spore!
So if i yell FIRE in the middle of their crowded secret session room, can they prosecute without evidence?