NWN is close... but it is not designed to support a persistent world, it's designed for episodic adventures.
Not that that's stopping people. I was involved with one group of people planning a persistent world set in the Forgotten Realms. And it wasn't the only one. But there were two big problems:
First, the game isn't designed to represent a persistent world, and the game system isn't designed to be played in real time. One spell per day? Hah! Who's going to play a first level wizard. There are some ways to get around this, but as of the last developer chat I attended, none of the developers had the time to worry about persistent world problems... they had enough on their plate already. And I'm sure it's only gotten worse. Some did express interest in going back after release (and after bug patches) and looking into a persistent world addon, but it was only talk. So, everytime we turned around, there was another hurdle to overcome, or question unanswered, specifically because we wanted a persistent world.
The other problem is cost. It costs a lot to run a server and provide the bandwidth necessary. How are you going to pay for it? Advertising? Monthly dues? Subscription fees? Sales of in-game items? Suggest any of these to your prospective audience and you'll get flamed and derided. The proposal to charge just $10/month pretty much ended our aspirations... the discussion forums where we GMs were coordinating and soliciting comments descended into namecalling and bagbiting, and I left. Eventually the project server went offline and never came back up.
The other thing we discovered was that there are a lot of people who don't want to roleplay -- they want to hack and slash, PK, or do both while playing a Drizzt clone. I can't tell you how many people introduced themselves with a character description of "Dark Elf with two scimitars" and half of those wanted to play an evil paladin or something equally far outside the rules. We got sick of munchkins even before we got our first look at the design tools.
Despite all that, there's going to be people using NWN to set up persistent worlds. But because it isn't designed for them, they aren't going to be very common nor very good. The best ones will probably be distributed over many interconnected servers with "portals" between them. However, until someone designs a toolkit for building persistent MUD-like worlds, DIY multiplayer online RPGs will be a thing of the future.
I was heavily addicted to Gemstone III when they introduced Dragonrealms, and so I spent a couple weeks over there.
I really liked the game, and miss the combat system dearly, and was able to design and attire a character any way I wanted, from tough to spooky to sexy (or any combination of the above). But they seemed to replace Gemstone's "kill-rest-kill-rest" experience with endless "practice-practice-practice" experience. It got tedious sitting there trying to learn how to commune with my powerstone or wand or whatever. I practiced for hours every night and got very little out of it. The game was only a few weeks old, then... back in 1996 or thereabout. Perhaps it's changed since.
But I will have to say that MUDs (and PBEMs) have offered the only real computer roleplaying experiences I've had yet. The addictiveness is twofold - there's the anonymous (or pseudonymous) socialization that IRC has, and then there's the challenge/reward feedback of gaining expereience to level-up that most RPGs have.
The interplay with other humans is essential to roleplaying. You can't roleplay with a computer program... at least not until we achieve true AI. Sure, you can make gameplay choices "in character" but that's not truly roleplaying. MUDs and MMORPGs will be the only way to truly roleplay on a computer for a long time.
I'm looking forward to Neverwinter Nights, and hoping intensely that the developers will eventually support the folks who are trying to put together persistent worlds. That's the next step -- homegrown persistent worlds with a rich graphical interface.
It's been long known that the cerebellum, those two lobes at the back of the brain, is where complex motions are learned and "hard wired." My neuroanatomy professor expressed his awe at how well our brains can learn exactly how far to swing and where to grab, or precisely how to swing a bat, or balance on ice skates... and all without conscious control. It's done mostly in the cerebellum, and is established only through practice, practice, practice.
Now, when it comes to catching a ball, that's something that a child learns early in his or her life, and it is generic enough that we get lots and lots of practice, so it becomes very firmly entrenched. No wonder it's hard to "unlearn."
This experiment proves nothing except that our brains are adapted to learn and adapt further. It would have been better if they had taught the astronauts a new skill a few weeks before launch, and then measured how quickly they could relearn it after arriving on station.
Well, there's a guy at NASA's Glenn Research Center, Marc Millis, who does a very good job explaining the physics behind the reasons why interstellar travel is such a challenge, and what kind of technological solutions are needed to explore the stars. The best page on his site is Warp Drive When?.
If you read this you'll understand why NASA is spending money on this kind of science. If we're going anywhere farther than the planets then we need a breakthrough. They are not ready to ignore the possibility that this guy might be right, even though he's acting like a crackpot.
And really, $600k -- or even $6M -- isn't that much money from the NASA budget, especially when spread over several years. I work on NASA projects and they spend hundreds of thousands per researcher per year to build and test prototypes of scientific instruments, rocket motors, what have you, just to incubate technologies that NASA thinks will be useful in the future. And it keeps industry and its talent ready and able to perform on future contracts.
Why would a site that is so anti-MPAA give a hairy orcs ass what the MPAA thinks of a movie?
Well, perhaps partially because the Oscars are awarded by AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), not the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).
The former represent the actual artists and creative individuals, while the latter represent the investors who fund the pictures and take the majority of the profits. While the former may be petty and superficial at times, they're not solely motivated by greed and lust for every fraction of a percent of profit margin.
Another good argument was mentioned in the Wired article: this proposed legislation is unnecessary interference in the market. The marketplace can and will arrive at a solution by itself. Interference by legislation is not only irresponsible, it's damaging. By legislating copy protection in all devices, we're propping up a dying business model.
Worse yet, it's clear that this legislation is a paid for by the studios and labels. It's legislating maximized profits for an industry that is already reporting record profits. If copy protection were reasonable, effective, and even possible, why aren't the content holders and information technology industry using it? They certainly have the money to develop it.
Finally, this will NOT stop copyright violations. Any copy protection scheme can be circumvented, and once one person does it, the means will propogate widely. And a recording of the analog output of a digital source, once compressed to MP3 format, is indistinguishable from an all-digital copy. This law will do nothing to stop file sharing.
Make these points in your correspondance with your lawmakers. Be short, concise, and convincing. Open and close with grace and respect. Don't threaten them with your vote... they'll know where you stand and can predict where your vote will go.
I have severe myopia, my optometrist says I'm just this side of being legally blind. I'm 20/400 in one eye... don't remember the other.
And yet I can still use standard contacts. The local MacOptometrist wanted to charge me over $200, also, until I did some research and notified them that I could get the same contacts online. They matched the price.
Field of view will be limited to the Centre of the Retina, mostly for reading purposes... you can't exactly look over to the far-right of your retina.
You're right, most of us aren't good at reading text in our peripheral vision. I would presume that the Nomad doesn't bother trying to locate the direction of your gaze and keep a stable image with respect to your retina, but project a steady image onto the back wall of your eye that you can explore with your fovea (the center of your field of vision).
Some people have weak/damaged retina's, is a laser safe?
A laser is as safe as any other light source, presuming the intensity is low enough. The article clearly states that this uses a very low-power diode laser.
I presume it's at least as safe as radial keratotoomy, which has gained wide acceptance despite the lack of long term test results...
For people with severe Myopic conditions and the like, how clear will the image be after going through corrective lenses?
Well, since a laser beam is collimated, and the area of the field is small, you would probably see little effect other than a shift of the entire projected display... something you could adjust for by positioning the headpiece. At worst, there may be some pincusion or keystoning; both can be compensated for in software. The real challenge to overcome is astigmatism.
Also, the article says that uncorrected myopia doesn't interfere with perception of the display, so one could wear the projector inside one's glasses, between the lens and the eye.
Or just go get some contacts. I just picked up six pair of flex wear disposables for $44.
Everyone else has access, but it is supposed to be restricted to lunch/break time only.
That shows your ignorance.
I'm an EE, and I used to keep an entire bookshelf full of component data books for reference. And they were necessary... every book on that shelf that was there because I had needed to refer to it at one point or another.
Then along came the www. Within a year, every semiconductor and IC maker had their entire catalogue on the web, in PDF format. The latest info for their full line at your fingertips. It's invaluable.
I've still got most of my library, but it's been moved to an empty cubicle and is collecting dust. Unless they shut off my internet access, I'll never need it. The web is so much better, especially when you need to survey the available parts for a particular application.
I have no fear of letting my boss know when I have time to surf the web... Some days things are slow... other days I don't have time to launch a browser at all. If there were no web, I'd be reading newspapers or trade magazines or whatever. It's not IT's job to police me that closely. Sure, block porn and games and other things that clearly violate company policy, but beyond that, you've got more important work to do than play Sheriff.
That's what gets me riled. Realtime encryption doesn't just happen... it takes ops... lotsa ops. And the government is going to mandate that I have to buy the hardware to perform it all. In every device I use, the cost will have been inflated by law.
And, gee, can you imagine the value of the contract to make all those little black boxes?
No effing way. It'll never fly. It's too much of a burden on the market to ensure that studios and record companies can continue their streak of record-setting profits and counteract a threat that they can't clearly demonstrate...
And it seems they did mushrooms [totse.com] to go beserk. Cool guys.
Not only that, but the way they did them is remarkable too... it seems that the mushrooms they ate are also toxic, but the psychoactive component is not metabolized -- it is filtered out by the kidneys unchanged.
I presume you can see where this is going... it is told that a tribe's strongest warrior would eat the mushrooms and endure the brunt of the toxic effects, and the rest of the warriors would dose up on his urine before a good plundering.
I can only speculate on how this discovery was made: "Hey, I know, let's give it to Olag - he's strong as a bull! Then we'll drink his bodily wastes and go on a murderous rampage!" Medieval male bonding at it's finest...
I've also read fictional accounts where the women of the tribe were forced to eat the mushrooms, and the men drank their urine. Whether this has any basis in fact is debateable, but I'd be a lot more inclined to drink my wives' or daughters' micturations than that of Olag the Ugly. (Heck, I personally have had more than one girlfriend who... umm, never mind.)
So, the moral of the story is that the next time you dose up for a Phish/Crowes/Other Ones concert, you should save your piss! I recommend the "Stadium Buddy."
My ghod, after reading the article, I expected this page to be filled with suggestions for color names, but the only comment that even addresses the researchers' call for names doesn't even have a mod point.
You know, maybe it's because they complained about "beige" and then called it something horrid like "I11 E Gamma."
OK, how about
Putty
Toast
Sand
Grits with Redeye Gravy
Natalie Portman's Naked Flesh in March
The really scary thing is that it does indeed look like the precise color of my company-issued IBM PIII/800 workstation.
No, but Congress might... the MPAA is just the big studios, no longer afraid of being prosecuted for anticompetitive practices, openly colluding to fix prices, manipulate markets, and buy legislation that favors them and hurts their competitors. They can't legislate themselves... thank God.
I predict that what the MPAA will try to do is buy a law that requires us to pay for every viewing of a movie in a home equipped with high-end equipment.
No, at least with respect to those genres, I buy more because of streaming MP3 sites. The recent royalties ruling is going to kill the last good thing left about distributed MP3s... And it will wind up costing the small labels more, because those are the ones that publish the good stuff that MP3 radio programmers select.
Techno and electronica recordings are especially difficult to buy because they get very little exposure thanks to the consolidation of radio station ownership, the monotonous format terrain, and payola. If it weren't for [LA deejay] Chris Doridas' programs on KROQ and KCRW, there would be ZERO airplay of techno artists other than those that cross over to alt rock, like Chemical Brothers and Crystal Method.
I used to be able to walk into Tower Records and pick out $100 worth of techno/electronica CDs, confident that Tower's return policy would allow me to exchange discs that I didn't like for new selections, eventually finding $100 worth of discs worth keeping. But since they no longer exchange opened CDs for anything but identical titles, they no longer see me in there spending $100 at a pop.
The problem is that the big labels aren't run by music professionals, they're run by bean counters. And they way they think, if you can't count it, it doesn't exist. But they fail to understand the inquantifiable factors that go a long way into creating a sale that otherwise wouldn't exist. Done right, these could easily outweigh any losses due to casual piracy.
It's frustrating and angering to a real music lover...
Heh - when I was an undergrad at CU, the school of engineering held a springtime engineering fair with fun events like paper airplane contests, and the ubiquitous egg drop. The engineering building had an 8-story office tower perfect for the event. Each of the engineering societies would compete in these events and it was a much needed distraction.
Of course, the object of the exercise was to analyze the forces on the egg and devise a means to limit them during descent and deceleration. But being lazy hackers, we of the ACM chapter took an old dumb terminal shell, and filled it with lime Jello, suspending the raw egg in the middle. We wound up using about 6 gallons of Jello and it took nearly two days to set. Due to its weight, three people were required to heave it out the 8th floor window.
And guess what? It worked! Even better, the ME senior who was officiating the event had obvious disdain for our brute force approach and stuck his thumb thru the egg after he pulled it out of the still oscillating pile of Jello at the target. Someone caught this on videotape and took it to the dean's office. The ACM chapter was later awarded a special ribbon or something for being screwed by a screwhead...
but can anyone think of what us non-us people can do?
Support the EFF. Support the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Support any organization that can rally opposition. Donate as much as you can. And if you happen to make the Forbes list one day, then start your own foundation.
Remember, money doesn't come with citizenship. Washington D.C. is lousy with lobbyists representing foreign interests.
Re:The biggest problem IN THE UNIVERSE!
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 2
I've got mod points, but your comment doesn't need them anymore... and besides, I'd rather reply.
You are getting close to the reason why I'm not afraid of this legislation: consumers aren't as stupid as the RIAA and MPAA think, and have already demonstrated it.
Remember the DIVX format? The industry tried to implement a DRM format, and the consumer didn't buy it. In a fair and open market, DIVX failed miserably. It barely lasted a year. This experience gives a clear precedent that the consumer has and expects to retain some degree of control over fair use, and ownership of a personal copy of a digitally recorded work.
SSSCA will crumble under any competent court challenge, and I have every confidence that there are plenty of people with the interest, ability, and money to bring such a challenge to the courts.
I read this story about the RIAA's survey yesterday, and wondered where the/. article was. I wasn't expecting such a cognizant editorial that cleanly and easily penetrated the cloud of FUD and BS that has accreted around this issue.
In just a few paragraphs, jaime has identified all the flaws in the RIAA's report, called them on their fouls, and even laughed at their expense... without introducing any sort of strained metaphors or forced parables (unlike some columnists we know). We even got a precisely pertinent quote from one of the 20th century's most venerable and prescient SF authors. This brief little editorial is a gem. If forced to criticize it, I would only suggest a final paragraph after the quote, to drive home the point that the survey is manipulative BS and to end in your own voice. But even as is, it deserves exposure in a forum larger than Slashdot. The message needs to go out: Corporate entitlements to maximize profits at society's expense must end, and will end. And the RIAA's arrogance will help bring that about.
I will enjoy reading more of your editorials in the future. And thanks, jaime, for reminding me of that passage from Life-Line -- I am often reminded of that short story by current events, but have never recalled that specific quote. I won't ever forget it, now.
As time moves forward, information will be replicated into infinity. Deal with it.
That's just what he's trying to do. Jack and the MPAA (and RIAA, etc.) see that the incremental cost of delivering a recording to a consumer has dropped to an infinitesimal pittance. But instead of passing this economy along to the consumer, these worshippers of untempered greed would rather continue pricing copies according to the old hard media model, coveting every percentage of profit margin they can possibly eke out of your wallet.
Of course they see that eventually infinite copies will be made... and along with it, they also see infinite profits. What they don't see is that infinity is infinity... it doesn't matter what they charge for royalties.
Looks like the FBI will be raiding the federal government next, then.
No, because the Constitution isn't being overthrown by violence, but by money and FUD. Apparently, these are the only remaining legal ways to petition our government for a redress of grievances.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that that's stopping people. I was involved with one group of people planning a persistent world set in the Forgotten Realms. And it wasn't the only one. But there were two big problems:
First, the game isn't designed to represent a persistent world, and the game system isn't designed to be played in real time. One spell per day? Hah! Who's going to play a first level wizard. There are some ways to get around this, but as of the last developer chat I attended, none of the developers had the time to worry about persistent world problems... they had enough on their plate already. And I'm sure it's only gotten worse. Some did express interest in going back after release (and after bug patches) and looking into a persistent world addon, but it was only talk. So, everytime we turned around, there was another hurdle to overcome, or question unanswered, specifically because we wanted a persistent world.
The other problem is cost. It costs a lot to run a server and provide the bandwidth necessary. How are you going to pay for it? Advertising? Monthly dues? Subscription fees? Sales of in-game items? Suggest any of these to your prospective audience and you'll get flamed and derided. The proposal to charge just $10/month pretty much ended our aspirations... the discussion forums where we GMs were coordinating and soliciting comments descended into namecalling and bagbiting, and I left. Eventually the project server went offline and never came back up.
The other thing we discovered was that there are a lot of people who don't want to roleplay -- they want to hack and slash, PK, or do both while playing a Drizzt clone. I can't tell you how many people introduced themselves with a character description of "Dark Elf with two scimitars" and half of those wanted to play an evil paladin or something equally far outside the rules. We got sick of munchkins even before we got our first look at the design tools.
Despite all that, there's going to be people using NWN to set up persistent worlds. But because it isn't designed for them, they aren't going to be very common nor very good. The best ones will probably be distributed over many interconnected servers with "portals" between them. However, until someone designs a toolkit for building persistent MUD-like worlds, DIY multiplayer online RPGs will be a thing of the future.
I was heavily addicted to Gemstone III when they introduced Dragonrealms, and so I spent a couple weeks over there.
I really liked the game, and miss the combat system dearly, and was able to design and attire a character any way I wanted, from tough to spooky to sexy (or any combination of the above). But they seemed to replace Gemstone's "kill-rest-kill-rest" experience with endless "practice-practice-practice" experience. It got tedious sitting there trying to learn how to commune with my powerstone or wand or whatever. I practiced for hours every night and got very little out of it. The game was only a few weeks old, then... back in 1996 or thereabout. Perhaps it's changed since.
But I will have to say that MUDs (and PBEMs) have offered the only real computer roleplaying experiences I've had yet. The addictiveness is twofold - there's the anonymous (or pseudonymous) socialization that IRC has, and then there's the challenge/reward feedback of gaining expereience to level-up that most RPGs have.
The interplay with other humans is essential to roleplaying. You can't roleplay with a computer program... at least not until we achieve true AI. Sure, you can make gameplay choices "in character" but that's not truly roleplaying. MUDs and MMORPGs will be the only way to truly roleplay on a computer for a long time.
I'm looking forward to Neverwinter Nights, and hoping intensely that the developers will eventually support the folks who are trying to put together persistent worlds. That's the next step -- homegrown persistent worlds with a rich graphical interface.
It's been long known that the cerebellum, those two lobes at the back of the brain, is where complex motions are learned and "hard wired." My neuroanatomy professor expressed his awe at how well our brains can learn exactly how far to swing and where to grab, or precisely how to swing a bat, or balance on ice skates... and all without conscious control. It's done mostly in the cerebellum, and is established only through practice, practice, practice.
Now, when it comes to catching a ball, that's something that a child learns early in his or her life, and it is generic enough that we get lots and lots of practice, so it becomes very firmly entrenched. No wonder it's hard to "unlearn."
This experiment proves nothing except that our brains are adapted to learn and adapt further. It would have been better if they had taught the astronauts a new skill a few weeks before launch, and then measured how quickly they could relearn it after arriving on station.
Here, have a smoking monkey!
Neutronium.
If you read this you'll understand why NASA is spending money on this kind of science. If we're going anywhere farther than the planets then we need a breakthrough. They are not ready to ignore the possibility that this guy might be right, even though he's acting like a crackpot.
And really, $600k -- or even $6M -- isn't that much money from the NASA budget, especially when spread over several years. I work on NASA projects and they spend hundreds of thousands per researcher per year to build and test prototypes of scientific instruments, rocket motors, what have you, just to incubate technologies that NASA thinks will be useful in the future. And it keeps industry and its talent ready and able to perform on future contracts.
Well, perhaps partially because the Oscars are awarded by AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), not the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).
The former represent the actual artists and creative individuals, while the latter represent the investors who fund the pictures and take the majority of the profits. While the former may be petty and superficial at times, they're not solely motivated by greed and lust for every fraction of a percent of profit margin.
So that may have something to do with it.
I mean, "Operation Clambake" and the tossing of clam chowder and other clam products at scientologists... this isn't a random thing...
I've read quite a bit online about CoS and their malfeasances, but I'm still left wondering... WTF?
Worse yet, it's clear that this legislation is a paid for by the studios and labels. It's legislating maximized profits for an industry that is already reporting record profits. If copy protection were reasonable, effective, and even possible, why aren't the content holders and information technology industry using it? They certainly have the money to develop it.
Finally, this will NOT stop copyright violations. Any copy protection scheme can be circumvented, and once one person does it, the means will propogate widely. And a recording of the analog output of a digital source, once compressed to MP3 format, is indistinguishable from an all-digital copy. This law will do nothing to stop file sharing.
Make these points in your correspondance with your lawmakers. Be short, concise, and convincing. Open and close with grace and respect. Don't threaten them with your vote... they'll know where you stand and can predict where your vote will go.
At the worst, in cases of myopia even worse than yours, all that would be needed is a simple focal length adjustment.
And yet I can still use standard contacts. The local MacOptometrist wanted to charge me over $200, also, until I did some research and notified them that I could get the same contacts online. They matched the price.
Try 1-800-CONTACTS.
Some people have weak/damaged retina's, is a laser safe?
A laser is as safe as any other light source, presuming the intensity is low enough. The article clearly states that this uses a very low-power diode laser.
I presume it's at least as safe as radial keratotoomy, which has gained wide acceptance despite the lack of long term test results...
For people with severe Myopic conditions and the like, how clear will the image be after going through corrective lenses?
Well, since a laser beam is collimated, and the area of the field is small, you would probably see little effect other than a shift of the entire projected display... something you could adjust for by positioning the headpiece. At worst, there may be some pincusion or keystoning; both can be compensated for in software. The real challenge to overcome is astigmatism.
Also, the article says that uncorrected myopia doesn't interfere with perception of the display, so one could wear the projector inside one's glasses, between the lens and the eye.
Or just go get some contacts. I just picked up six pair of flex wear disposables for $44.
That shows your ignorance.
I'm an EE, and I used to keep an entire bookshelf full of component data books for reference. And they were necessary... every book on that shelf that was there because I had needed to refer to it at one point or another.
Then along came the www. Within a year, every semiconductor and IC maker had their entire catalogue on the web, in PDF format. The latest info for their full line at your fingertips. It's invaluable.
I've still got most of my library, but it's been moved to an empty cubicle and is collecting dust. Unless they shut off my internet access, I'll never need it. The web is so much better, especially when you need to survey the available parts for a particular application.
I have no fear of letting my boss know when I have time to surf the web... Some days things are slow... other days I don't have time to launch a browser at all. If there were no web, I'd be reading newspapers or trade magazines or whatever. It's not IT's job to police me that closely. Sure, block porn and games and other things that clearly violate company policy, but beyond that, you've got more important work to do than play Sheriff.
I could attach it there and cowabunga! Look who's talkin' now, sweetheart! [insert obligatory "make sweet music" reference here]
I'd call it my "bone phone" but that name's already taken.
That's what gets me riled. Realtime encryption doesn't just happen... it takes ops... lotsa ops. And the government is going to mandate that I have to buy the hardware to perform it all. In every device I use, the cost will have been inflated by law.
And, gee, can you imagine the value of the contract to make all those little black boxes?
No effing way. It'll never fly. It's too much of a burden on the market to ensure that studios and record companies can continue their streak of record-setting profits and counteract a threat that they can't clearly demonstrate...
Not only that, but the way they did them is remarkable too... it seems that the mushrooms they ate are also toxic, but the psychoactive component is not metabolized -- it is filtered out by the kidneys unchanged.
I presume you can see where this is going... it is told that a tribe's strongest warrior would eat the mushrooms and endure the brunt of the toxic effects, and the rest of the warriors would dose up on his urine before a good plundering.
I can only speculate on how this discovery was made: "Hey, I know, let's give it to Olag - he's strong as a bull! Then we'll drink his bodily wastes and go on a murderous rampage!" Medieval male bonding at it's finest...
I've also read fictional accounts where the women of the tribe were forced to eat the mushrooms, and the men drank their urine. Whether this has any basis in fact is debateable, but I'd be a lot more inclined to drink my wives' or daughters' micturations than that of Olag the Ugly. (Heck, I personally have had more than one girlfriend who... umm, never mind.)
So, the moral of the story is that the next time you dose up for a Phish/Crowes/Other Ones concert, you should save your piss! I recommend the "Stadium Buddy."
You know, maybe it's because they complained about "beige" and then called it something horrid like "I11 E Gamma."
OK, how about
- Putty
- Toast
- Sand
- Grits with Redeye Gravy
- Natalie Portman's Naked Flesh in March
The really scary thing is that it does indeed look like the precise color of my company-issued IBM PIII/800 workstation.No, but Congress might... the MPAA is just the big studios, no longer afraid of being prosecuted for anticompetitive practices, openly colluding to fix prices, manipulate markets, and buy legislation that favors them and hurts their competitors. They can't legislate themselves... thank God.
I predict that what the MPAA will try to do is buy a law that requires us to pay for every viewing of a movie in a home equipped with high-end equipment.
Techno and electronica recordings are especially difficult to buy because they get very little exposure thanks to the consolidation of radio station ownership, the monotonous format terrain, and payola. If it weren't for [LA deejay] Chris Doridas' programs on KROQ and KCRW, there would be ZERO airplay of techno artists other than those that cross over to alt rock, like Chemical Brothers and Crystal Method.
I used to be able to walk into Tower Records and pick out $100 worth of techno/electronica CDs, confident that Tower's return policy would allow me to exchange discs that I didn't like for new selections, eventually finding $100 worth of discs worth keeping. But since they no longer exchange opened CDs for anything but identical titles, they no longer see me in there spending $100 at a pop.
The problem is that the big labels aren't run by music professionals, they're run by bean counters. And they way they think, if you can't count it, it doesn't exist. But they fail to understand the inquantifiable factors that go a long way into creating a sale that otherwise wouldn't exist. Done right, these could easily outweigh any losses due to casual piracy.
It's frustrating and angering to a real music lover...
Of course, the object of the exercise was to analyze the forces on the egg and devise a means to limit them during descent and deceleration. But being lazy hackers, we of the ACM chapter took an old dumb terminal shell, and filled it with lime Jello, suspending the raw egg in the middle. We wound up using about 6 gallons of Jello and it took nearly two days to set. Due to its weight, three people were required to heave it out the 8th floor window.
And guess what? It worked! Even better, the ME senior who was officiating the event had obvious disdain for our brute force approach and stuck his thumb thru the egg after he pulled it out of the still oscillating pile of Jello at the target. Someone caught this on videotape and took it to the dean's office. The ACM chapter was later awarded a special ribbon or something for being screwed by a screwhead...
Support the EFF. Support the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Support any organization that can rally opposition. Donate as much as you can. And if you happen to make the Forbes list one day, then start your own foundation.
Remember, money doesn't come with citizenship. Washington D.C. is lousy with lobbyists representing foreign interests.
You are getting close to the reason why I'm not afraid of this legislation: consumers aren't as stupid as the RIAA and MPAA think, and have already demonstrated it.
Remember the DIVX format? The industry tried to implement a DRM format, and the consumer didn't buy it. In a fair and open market, DIVX failed miserably. It barely lasted a year. This experience gives a clear precedent that the consumer has and expects to retain some degree of control over fair use, and ownership of a personal copy of a digitally recorded work.
SSSCA will crumble under any competent court challenge, and I have every confidence that there are plenty of people with the interest, ability, and money to bring such a challenge to the courts.
In just a few paragraphs, jaime has identified all the flaws in the RIAA's report, called them on their fouls, and even laughed at their expense... without introducing any sort of strained metaphors or forced parables (unlike some columnists we know). We even got a precisely pertinent quote from one of the 20th century's most venerable and prescient SF authors. This brief little editorial is a gem. If forced to criticize it, I would only suggest a final paragraph after the quote, to drive home the point that the survey is manipulative BS and to end in your own voice. But even as is, it deserves exposure in a forum larger than Slashdot. The message needs to go out: Corporate entitlements to maximize profits at society's expense must end, and will end. And the RIAA's arrogance will help bring that about.
I will enjoy reading more of your editorials in the future. And thanks, jaime, for reminding me of that passage from Life-Line -- I am often reminded of that short story by current events, but have never recalled that specific quote. I won't ever forget it, now.
That's just what he's trying to do. Jack and the MPAA (and RIAA, etc.) see that the incremental cost of delivering a recording to a consumer has dropped to an infinitesimal pittance. But instead of passing this economy along to the consumer, these worshippers of untempered greed would rather continue pricing copies according to the old hard media model, coveting every percentage of profit margin they can possibly eke out of your wallet.
Of course they see that eventually infinite copies will be made... and along with it, they also see infinite profits. What they don't see is that infinity is infinity... it doesn't matter what they charge for royalties.
- Looks like the FBI will be raiding the federal government next, then.
No, because the Constitution isn't being overthrown by violence, but by money and FUD. Apparently, these are the only remaining legal ways to petition our government for a redress of grievances.