All of those circumstances seem rather exceptional to me, as in certainly not a notable fraction of the target market. I do however agree that some games just made it on their total non-restrictiveness. I still play Diablo2.
A protection alternative I like is the hardware dongle method, but I think I'm rather in the minority there.
Low latency is one good reason. Not having several PCs clogging your internet connection is another.
If the gameplay is "over the internet" as well (which, I admit, seems to be what Blizzard is going for with SC2).
However, you can have validation over the internet, but play over LAN instead. I have several bits of software that are "activated" from an Internet connection but then never need an internet connection again.
We could probably chop the term length down to just the 5%, and it wouldn't materially reduce the number of works created and published (which is all the public wants badly enough to grant copyrights for), since the long tail amounts to rather little.
Actually, while speaking against my own original post, the "long tail" is by definition a tail where a substantial amount of the "population" is within the tail.
In other words, "long tail" IP would potentially become less attractive because most of the potential income lies beyond the end of protection.
However, if most IP is not "long tail", then having "long tail" protection for all IP (which I personally feel is the current state, but that is of course just an unstudied opinion) is overshooting the mark, and preventing more innovation than it is supporting.
Saying "it excludes anyone who don't have Internet" stopped being a serious argument years ago...
It excludes people that want to play the game on a computer not connected to the internet. There are some reasons to do so, but it does seem kind of odd to be playing games on a PC connected on a LAN, but not to the internet.
One could argue that the whole high fashion industry is *based* on the long tail of limited audience with very specific wants being catered to by a multitude of designers, each focusing on one of the niches.
Perhaps most designers are trying to carve out their niche in the long tail of clothing.
Even if your software is old, if it's solid and mature, people will want to built new shinies on top of its old reliable, and therefore, it was value to them.
If it was protected IP, you wouldn't be allowed to build on top of the old stuff unless you could get a license.
So in that light it has value only if it's not (overly) protected... the argument the FOSS movement has been making for quite some time.
This is not true of software, movies, music, etc. A lot of IP retains its value for decades or longer.
Bovine excrement.
Most modern IP loses most of its value quite quickly. A hit song quickly stops being a hit song as new songs claw up the charts. A movie drops out of theaters after a few months. Software might have a bit more longevity, but even there it's probably around 2 to 5 years, not decades.
Only a few classics retain value longer - but that's also true for the fashion industry. Some "vintage" haute couture is still very much sought-after.
You're only half right. The courts and lawyers have a duty to the law as written, not whatever-bleeding-heart-interpretation-is-most-appropriate-today.
If the law sucks, it should be the legislative branch that gets the stick. But of course, they have VERY short-term responsibility, so nothing serious ever happens.
At least Nokia still sells mobile phones for those people who want to use it for, say, phoning people, and being phoned.
Sometimes it seems to me like a lot of people are forgetting what these small pocket things are for.
On the other hand - I think it also has something to do with laziness and ignorance?
Laziness is the beginning of efficiency.
Good optimization is done ONLY on the current bottleneck, because you want to be too lazy to address the other parts until they really are the problem. Ignorance, maybe. I have noticed that a number of concepts (pointers, and with it memory management are the main ones right now) are slipping out of common developer knowledge.
Using ready made packages, objects, APIs, etc doesn't require even near the same skills as creating something yourself.
No, and it might just free up time to work on problems that have *not* been solved yet. Reinventing the wheel is useful to some extent, to learn how the whole thing works. But keep doing that for years and years, and you'll have the perfect wheel while everyone else is flying airplanes.
The cost of a rare black swan event like this one can be dwarfed by the cost of having a separate lab to test daily updates and a good system to deploy them. Sometimes you just have to think of the bottom line.
It also depends on the definition of "production". Mission-critical (and possibly life-critical) stuff, yes. That should be locked down like nobody's business anyway. Mass homogeneous systems, also probably yes, since if something gets in, it'll probably take everything with it. Large heterogeneous systems: it's just going to cost you more to test than to fix an occasional debacle.
Slashdot Mirror
Now wouldn't it be fun if the US government blocked Facebook now because they are offended by the violation of the right to free speech....
A protection alternative I like is the hardware dongle method, but I think I'm rather in the minority there.
Low latency is one good reason. Not having several PCs clogging your internet connection is another.
If the gameplay is "over the internet" as well (which, I admit, seems to be what Blizzard is going for with SC2).
However, you can have validation over the internet, but play over LAN instead. I have several bits of software that are "activated" from an Internet connection but then never need an internet connection again.
We could probably chop the term length down to just the 5%, and it wouldn't materially reduce the number of works created and published (which is all the public wants badly enough to grant copyrights for), since the long tail amounts to rather little.
Actually, while speaking against my own original post, the "long tail" is by definition a tail where a substantial amount of the "population" is within the tail.
In other words, "long tail" IP would potentially become less attractive because most of the potential income lies beyond the end of protection.
However, if most IP is not "long tail", then having "long tail" protection for all IP (which I personally feel is the current state, but that is of course just an unstudied opinion) is overshooting the mark, and preventing more innovation than it is supporting.
Saying "it excludes anyone who don't have Internet" stopped being a serious argument years ago...
It excludes people that want to play the game on a computer not connected to the internet. There are some reasons to do so, but it does seem kind of odd to be playing games on a PC connected on a LAN, but not to the internet.
Mod parent up - Visual Basic *SCRIPTING* is free on the windows platform.
One could argue that the whole high fashion industry is *based* on the long tail of limited audience with very specific wants being catered to by a multitude of designers, each focusing on one of the niches.
Perhaps most designers are trying to carve out their niche in the long tail of clothing.
Even if your software is old, if it's solid and mature, people will want to built new shinies on top of its old reliable, and therefore, it was value to them.
If it was protected IP, you wouldn't be allowed to build on top of the old stuff unless you could get a license.
So in that light it has value only if it's not (overly) protected... the argument the FOSS movement has been making for quite some time.
This is not true of software, movies, music, etc. A lot of IP retains its value for decades or longer.
Bovine excrement.
Most modern IP loses most of its value quite quickly. A hit song quickly stops being a hit song as new songs claw up the charts. A movie drops out of theaters after a few months. Software might have a bit more longevity, but even there it's probably around 2 to 5 years, not decades.
Only a few classics retain value longer - but that's also true for the fashion industry. Some "vintage" haute couture is still very much sought-after.
You're only half right. The courts and lawyers have a duty to the law as written, not whatever-bleeding-heart-interpretation-is-most-appropriate-today.
If the law sucks, it should be the legislative branch that gets the stick. But of course, they have VERY short-term responsibility, so nothing serious ever happens.
At least Nokia still sells mobile phones for those people who want to use it for, say, phoning people, and being phoned.
Sometimes it seems to me like a lot of people are forgetting what these small pocket things are for.
Maybe they should change their slogan to "there's no app for that yet" then.
Now we just upload to youtube, and viola, it works.
I don't understand, what does this string instrument have to do with it?
Ode to a lump of green putty I found under the transistors down my left side one morning.
"Thank F**k It's" Friday.
On the other hand - I think it also has something to do with laziness and ignorance?
Laziness is the beginning of efficiency.
Good optimization is done ONLY on the current bottleneck, because you want to be too lazy to address the other parts until they really are the problem. Ignorance, maybe. I have noticed that a number of concepts (pointers, and with it memory management are the main ones right now) are slipping out of common developer knowledge.
Using ready made packages, objects, APIs, etc doesn't require even near the same skills as creating something yourself.
No, and it might just free up time to work on problems that have *not* been solved yet. Reinventing the wheel is useful to some extent, to learn how the whole thing works. But keep doing that for years and years, and you'll have the perfect wheel while everyone else is flying airplanes.
The perfect DRM! They'll make billions!
Yes, billions of small nanodots. Until their budget runs out.
Because it takes longer to optimize the application than it takes for technology to overtake you and erase any commercial benefit your optimizations might have.
They'll stop letting you use B. Then who'll be laughing.
Wrong. They'll stop letting you use A, B and C, and instead offer a lame D.
I have dirt protection coating on my keyboard. It's just older dirt.
The cost of a rare black swan event like this one can be dwarfed by the cost of having a separate lab to test daily updates and a good system to deploy them. Sometimes you just have to think of the bottom line.
It also depends on the definition of "production". Mission-critical (and possibly life-critical) stuff, yes. That should be locked down like nobody's business anyway. Mass homogeneous systems, also probably yes, since if something gets in, it'll probably take everything with it. Large heterogeneous systems: it's just going to cost you more to test than to fix an occasional debacle.
That 'tard in a suit just got proven right by McAfee for not upgrading to SP3. Coincidence, yes. Fun, no.
Well played, well played. Shame the moderators didn't seem to get it.
I don't understand, could you rephrase it as a car analogy?
iPwnd?