Sure, they can do anything they want. They can produce bad television and in the process, by doing whatever they want with no need to reference the rest of continuity, they can alienate the hardcore Star Trek fans who might keep them afloat. Super.
I don't know. Talking to Berman immediately after having his first Star Trek series cancelled mid run might be quite pleasurable for Wil...Lots of fake sympathy and inner laughter.
1. Writing those "ten lines of perl" is indeed worth it if you want the addresses from the site doing the obfuscation, especially if you know something about those contributing to the site and want to target particular types of people (probably not done often by spammers as they obviously prefer the shotgun approach). Spamming is a business and they can afford to pay programmers - and they DO, given that there are companies out there making software to service spammers.
2. If the obfuscation is automatic or defaults to "on" there really is no message being sent by the owner of the address.
I leave my address open (here and elsewhere) for two reasons: I don't really care what drops into that particular inbox and there's enough filtering on it, local and remote, that it's still useful as an open contact point.
Eliot Ness wasn't an agent of the FBI. He was an agent of the US Treasury Department Prohibition Bureau, performing duties that would later be taken over by the Bureau of ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms).
The most amusing thing about the whole spiel is the inherent assumption that the Internet is somehow magically going to have the bandwidth and reliability to permit the restrictions that he's describing. For example, the first time a customer's Internet connection goes out (due to outages, nonpayment of fees, whatever) and that customer can't play a game that s/he has already paid for, they're never going to buy such a pay-for-play game again. How about dial-up users? Getting closer to the source, what happens when the company's distribution servers go out? Or their authentication system? Is all this bandwidth they'll be using going to be free, too? It would cost a significant amount of money to send out hundreds of megs of data to every single customer every time they want to play a single-player game.
This is what happens when someone believes too strongly in the "slippery slope." They see one one service (Steam) applicable to one company (which, by the way, doesn't yet signal an end for even THAT company's boxed releases) and they stretch it out to accommodate their gloomy prognostication.
I know there are companies (see "Phantom") who are trying to tout this kind of plan, but the reality is that few are interested. Despite this article's claims to the contrary, there would be a revolt of sorts if all those predictions came true - I'm sure Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would experience a bump in sales, at the very least.:)
Did you have a point? Was it that Marvel has exploited their properties as much as they can or that they have properties that have been under-utilized?
Whether they were good or not (they weren't), Marvel has done an Iron Man cartoon, a Nick Fury movie relatively recently (and another one on at least the drawing board), a Captain America movie and even a terrible Fantastic Four movie. So, they're not ignoring entirely their lesser used characters.
I see this move by Marvel as something that can only improve their video game properties which, outside of Spider-Man and Capcom fighters, have been pretty bad. They clearly want to focus more on the industry because it's a natural. Whether the stories have been told before, or the characters used again and again, is irrelevant. Any number of video game characters have been over-used and some still take in big bucks when they drop their latest sequel.
As for Marvel not being "any more special" than anyone else doing a licensed property, that's bunk. Marvel has 40+ years of characters and stories built up - Fantastic Four alone has over 500 issues of their monthly comic with hundreds of villains, guest characters, spinoffs, etc. That's a pretty rich history with at least 23 pages a month (for the less mathematically inclined, that's well over 10,000 pages - eat your heart out, Tolstoy).
The secret, as always, is how you parlay that history into a new medium. Marvel has failed at video games in the past (assuming you blame them for their licensees' work) to be sure. But, then again, they had failed at movies in the past, too. Spider-Man and the two X-Men movies are great superhero movies. Daredevil and Hulk weren't that bad, either - compared to the 90s stinkers, they were top of the line.
If Marvel can turn around their video game properties as they did their movie properties, the sky's the limit.
My current comic book/video game geek fantasy: An X-Men RPG constructed in a fashion similar to a VII+ Final Fantasy telling the story of the All-New, All-Different X-Men, culminating in the Death of The Phoenix storyline. There would be some fun settings in there like Cheyenne Mountain, the Shi'ar Empire, Starcore, the Blue Area of the moon...It could be epic.
I hear the "NERD ALERT!" klaxon going off. Sorry about the noise.
I disagree with you overall (because HD formats, 720p and 1080i, are HUGE upgrades over 480i/NTSC), but I had to pick this out for special consideration:
Now, if they attempt to reimplement region coding, CSS, and other DRM technologies in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, as we can expect them to, its reasonable to assume that it will NEVER take off, resolution or not. The advantage in moving is just too small.
Most people don't give a rat's hind-quarters about whether or not a DVD has copy protection, and the same will be true for HD-DVD. As long as the average person can go to a store, rent or buy a movie, bring it home, stick it in the appropriate player and watch, all that tech talk is irrelevant to their experience. Even HDCP requiring DVI connections will be irrelevant for most people since most people haven't yet bought into HDTV and all but a few new HDTV-ready sets have DVI inputs anyway.
Poll a thousand (or five-thousand) random DVD-player owners asking them what CSS/DeCSS means and you'll get 99% responding with "I don't know what you're talking about."
Consumers follow the content. During the earliest days of DVD, very few people cared because they either couldn't get their favorite movie on DVD or would have to wait two months [or much longer] after the VHS release to buy or rent it. As more and more movies were released on DVD, more and more people bought DVD players. Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, et. al. dragged their feet too, until there was enough content to fill their shelves.
So, if the manufacturers can easily switch to HD-DVD or (more likely) have easy concurrent production of DVD and HD-DVD, content will be released quickly and consumers will adopt the format (including the purchase of HDTV-ready sets). In short, HD-DVD might be the kick in the pants that the whole HDTV "revolution" needs.
1) You need a place to put it. DishNetwork's HD PVR with a 250GB drive claims 25 hours of HD which would get you space for MAYBE 12-15 movies (depending on how they're encoded) on such a hard drive - a far cry from the number one can store with DVD rips.
1A) Most of the diehard movie downloaders archive their movies to CD or DVD. Considering that HD-DVD R/RW are even further down the road from read-only devices, people would have to span movies over multiple discs - a pretty big inconvenience, especially with the time it would take to chop and burn.
2) Most people AREN'T on college campuses, and even those who are would experience an even higher bandwidth saturation if the DVD movies shared today are instead shared in HD, not to mention the increased likelihood of campuses cracking down on this kind of file-sharing.
3) It obviously takes time to propagate a shared file so that it can be efficiently downloaded down the pike - 30-60GB rips (I get the impression we'll have some flipper discs again when HD-DVD hits - LOTR trilogy and the like) would take even longer.
In short, I think that commonplace sharing of HD-DVDs is a very long way down the pike even if the discs contain little to no copy protection.
It's interesting that the cited articles didn't mention two big Warner Brothers-controlled properties: Superman and Batman. Given that both of these comic book icons have been popular over the years, and that superhero videogames should be a natural, these two characters would seem to form a perfect area of focus for a new WB gaming division. This should be of particular interest to Warner given that both characters have been horribly treated by game developers in the near and distant past. Obviously, the entire DC Universe could be fodder, but if Warner could have as their debut game a good Batman and/or Superman title they could make quite a splash.
Then again, considering there are two Superman movies currently in some stage of development (a solo Superman outing and Batman vs. Superman), maybe that is WHY Warner is making this move now. Either or both of those movies could be huge, so why share any of the ancillary profits with an outside game developer?
Actually, it does make sense, though "inspiring" might be a better fit than "spawning." The author of the editorial never "spurned" Child's Play, though his article might have provided the impetus that "inspired" the creation of the charity.
Believe me, I knew that I was feeding a troll. But, since someone decided to mod it up, I felt a compulsion to respond. When such a post is at 0 (for anon) or 1 (for registered), it's much easier for me to ignore (after reading - interesting and insightful things often sit too long at 0 and 1).
The fact that there are actually people who think that governments making laws and spending money can solve any problem doesn't help.
So you're accusing republicans of being soft on drugs? That's hilarious.
While I'm in favor of educating children about the dangers of addiction [to anything], there's only so much a government can do in that area. If I decide to use heroin and at some point overdose on it, is that REALLY the government's fault? After all, no one - apart from the most hardcore Pollyanna - believes that drug abuse can be eliminated from the entire population, so what is the government's true responsibility beyond "due diligence" (i.e., doing the best one can)?
As for the original topic: Unless MMOGs are to be declared an addictive health hazard suitable for regulation, all any [democratic] government can really do is shrug and move on when the weak-willed fall victim to their addiction. Of course, if such a determination is to be made then how about we start instead with television? I would submit that far more people fall victim to TV addiction and the diseases/conditions related to the resulting sedentary lifestyle - the number of people addicted to MMOGs doesn't even represent a drop of water in an ocean compared to those addicted to TV.
One big difference: Relatively few people have DVD recorders while a majority of PC owners by now have a CD-R, and CDs are still the primary distribution method for big games. Second, slightly less-important difference: CD recordable media is dirt cheap while the price of DVD-/+R media is still significant.
Admittedly, I currently only play music files on two devices - my Windows PC and my Xbox (I keep waiting and waiting to figure out how much I want to spend on, and what I want out of, a digital music player). That being said, it seems to me that WMA files are just fine when you make them yourself and have no special DRM license attached to them, unless you specific the "copy protect music" option. Thus, WMA capability in the iPod would be very convenient for those who rip their own CDs and use the built-in Windows Media Player to do so.
The above would also apply to your situation, in that if you want to move your MP3s to WMA format (I can only assume this would be entirely due to wanting the smaller files) you're not going to have DRM problems unless you specifically ask the program to insert copy protection.
To continue this off-topic tangent just a little further, I agree that the big Xbox controller (the "Duke" - I've never heard that, good one) has a decent shape, but the face-button placement (particularly the black and white buttons) and shapes were awful. The S version, on the other hand, I consider my favorite console controller, despite my big hands.
Why? Because if they go far enough to convince one or two venture capitalists that they're serious (this is much harder post-bubble), they can get a nice cash infusion, coast for a while longer, buy Ferraris and then fold, citing technical, competitive and/or licensing problems as being too great to overcome.
I have a hard time believing in the company's sincerity, if only because they haven't even been able to demonstrate an early prototype, let alone one ready to be put into production. Seriously, even if all it could do was download and boot, say, Unreal Tournament (PC version, obviously) and then play on a television with whatever controller they're planning to use, that would be worth showing. Coming to CES with a box that doesn't do anything is unlikely to impress anyone but the gullible.
Actually, I think it's possible he was referring to the fact that Bungie literally sold out to Microsoft - you know, like, they were for sale and were subsequently purchased?
I think we can trace this sort of behavior to the availabilty and lack of stigma attached to owning formerly 'geek' tools like consoles and computers. The more we tap into the general populace, the more we can see that morons outnumber us.
I disagree completely. When I started hitting bulletin board systems in the 80s with my Commodore 64 and snazzy 300-baud modem, I quickly discovered a large number of "geeks" who loved cussing, insulting and intimidating other people online. I can recall a number of occasions where someone would procure a person's real name, find their phone number and start harassing them offline as well. Admittedly, taking grievances into real life wasn't the norm, but people turning into gutter trash when communicating online has been going on since the first consumer-grade modems started being used - in other words, since geeks "ruled the earth.":)
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, they can do anything they want. They can produce bad television and in the process, by doing whatever they want with no need to reference the rest of continuity, they can alienate the hardcore Star Trek fans who might keep them afloat. Super.
I don't know. Talking to Berman immediately after having his first Star Trek series cancelled mid run might be quite pleasurable for Wil...Lots of fake sympathy and inner laughter.
1. Writing those "ten lines of perl" is indeed worth it if you want the addresses from the site doing the obfuscation, especially if you know something about those contributing to the site and want to target particular types of people (probably not done often by spammers as they obviously prefer the shotgun approach). Spamming is a business and they can afford to pay programmers - and they DO, given that there are companies out there making software to service spammers.
2. If the obfuscation is automatic or defaults to "on" there really is no message being sent by the owner of the address.
I leave my address open (here and elsewhere) for two reasons: I don't really care what drops into that particular inbox and there's enough filtering on it, local and remote, that it's still useful as an open contact point.
Eliot Ness wasn't an agent of the FBI. He was an agent of the US Treasury Department Prohibition Bureau, performing duties that would later be taken over by the Bureau of ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms).
Of course. Also in "the future," I will also have a jet pack and a robot maid.
The most amusing thing about the whole spiel is the inherent assumption that the Internet is somehow magically going to have the bandwidth and reliability to permit the restrictions that he's describing. For example, the first time a customer's Internet connection goes out (due to outages, nonpayment of fees, whatever) and that customer can't play a game that s/he has already paid for, they're never going to buy such a pay-for-play game again. How about dial-up users? Getting closer to the source, what happens when the company's distribution servers go out? Or their authentication system? Is all this bandwidth they'll be using going to be free, too? It would cost a significant amount of money to send out hundreds of megs of data to every single customer every time they want to play a single-player game.
This is what happens when someone believes too strongly in the "slippery slope." They see one one service (Steam) applicable to one company (which, by the way, doesn't yet signal an end for even THAT company's boxed releases) and they stretch it out to accommodate their gloomy prognostication.
I know there are companies (see "Phantom") who are trying to tout this kind of plan, but the reality is that few are interested. Despite this article's claims to the contrary, there would be a revolt of sorts if all those predictions came true - I'm sure Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would experience a bump in sales, at the very least. :)
I was going to mention DC's similar and even longer history, but frankly I talked WAY too much before my last nap. :)
Whether they were good or not (they weren't), Marvel has done an Iron Man cartoon, a Nick Fury movie relatively recently (and another one on at least the drawing board), a Captain America movie and even a terrible Fantastic Four movie. So, they're not ignoring entirely their lesser used characters.
I see this move by Marvel as something that can only improve their video game properties which, outside of Spider-Man and Capcom fighters, have been pretty bad. They clearly want to focus more on the industry because it's a natural. Whether the stories have been told before, or the characters used again and again, is irrelevant. Any number of video game characters have been over-used and some still take in big bucks when they drop their latest sequel.
As for Marvel not being "any more special" than anyone else doing a licensed property, that's bunk. Marvel has 40+ years of characters and stories built up - Fantastic Four alone has over 500 issues of their monthly comic with hundreds of villains, guest characters, spinoffs, etc. That's a pretty rich history with at least 23 pages a month (for the less mathematically inclined, that's well over 10,000 pages - eat your heart out, Tolstoy).
The secret, as always, is how you parlay that history into a new medium. Marvel has failed at video games in the past (assuming you blame them for their licensees' work) to be sure. But, then again, they had failed at movies in the past, too. Spider-Man and the two X-Men movies are great superhero movies. Daredevil and Hulk weren't that bad, either - compared to the 90s stinkers, they were top of the line.
If Marvel can turn around their video game properties as they did their movie properties, the sky's the limit.
I too would enjoy opening up a giant can of Crimson Bands of Cyttorak on somebody's ass.
I hear the "NERD ALERT!" klaxon going off. Sorry about the noise.
Now, if they attempt to reimplement region coding, CSS, and other DRM technologies in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, as we can expect them to, its reasonable to assume that it will NEVER take off, resolution or not. The advantage in moving is just too small.
Most people don't give a rat's hind-quarters about whether or not a DVD has copy protection, and the same will be true for HD-DVD. As long as the average person can go to a store, rent or buy a movie, bring it home, stick it in the appropriate player and watch, all that tech talk is irrelevant to their experience. Even HDCP requiring DVI connections will be irrelevant for most people since most people haven't yet bought into HDTV and all but a few new HDTV-ready sets have DVI inputs anyway.
Poll a thousand (or five-thousand) random DVD-player owners asking them what CSS/DeCSS means and you'll get 99% responding with "I don't know what you're talking about."
So, if the manufacturers can easily switch to HD-DVD or (more likely) have easy concurrent production of DVD and HD-DVD, content will be released quickly and consumers will adopt the format (including the purchase of HDTV-ready sets). In short, HD-DVD might be the kick in the pants that the whole HDTV "revolution" needs.
1A) Most of the diehard movie downloaders archive their movies to CD or DVD. Considering that HD-DVD R/RW are even further down the road from read-only devices, people would have to span movies over multiple discs - a pretty big inconvenience, especially with the time it would take to chop and burn.
2) Most people AREN'T on college campuses, and even those who are would experience an even higher bandwidth saturation if the DVD movies shared today are instead shared in HD, not to mention the increased likelihood of campuses cracking down on this kind of file-sharing.
3) It obviously takes time to propagate a shared file so that it can be efficiently downloaded down the pike - 30-60GB rips (I get the impression we'll have some flipper discs again when HD-DVD hits - LOTR trilogy and the like) would take even longer.
In short, I think that commonplace sharing of HD-DVDs is a very long way down the pike even if the discs contain little to no copy protection.
Then again, considering there are two Superman movies currently in some stage of development (a solo Superman outing and Batman vs. Superman), maybe that is WHY Warner is making this move now. Either or both of those movies could be huge, so why share any of the ancillary profits with an outside game developer?
Actually, it does make sense, though "inspiring" might be a better fit than "spawning." The author of the editorial never "spurned" Child's Play, though his article might have provided the impetus that "inspired" the creation of the charity.
The fact that there are actually people who think that governments making laws and spending money can solve any problem doesn't help.
While I'm in favor of educating children about the dangers of addiction [to anything], there's only so much a government can do in that area. If I decide to use heroin and at some point overdose on it, is that REALLY the government's fault? After all, no one - apart from the most hardcore Pollyanna - believes that drug abuse can be eliminated from the entire population, so what is the government's true responsibility beyond "due diligence" (i.e., doing the best one can)?
As for the original topic: Unless MMOGs are to be declared an addictive health hazard suitable for regulation, all any [democratic] government can really do is shrug and move on when the weak-willed fall victim to their addiction. Of course, if such a determination is to be made then how about we start instead with television? I would submit that far more people fall victim to TV addiction and the diseases/conditions related to the resulting sedentary lifestyle - the number of people addicted to MMOGs doesn't even represent a drop of water in an ocean compared to those addicted to TV.
Pr0table pr0n.
More likely thrown by other people who demo his unit only to find the hard drive filled with Britney Spears and Poison.
One big difference: Relatively few people have DVD recorders while a majority of PC owners by now have a CD-R, and CDs are still the primary distribution method for big games. Second, slightly less-important difference: CD recordable media is dirt cheap while the price of DVD-/+R media is still significant.
The above would also apply to your situation, in that if you want to move your MP3s to WMA format (I can only assume this would be entirely due to wanting the smaller files) you're not going to have DRM problems unless you specifically ask the program to insert copy protection.
To continue this off-topic tangent just a little further, I agree that the big Xbox controller (the "Duke" - I've never heard that, good one) has a decent shape, but the face-button placement (particularly the black and white buttons) and shapes were awful. The S version, on the other hand, I consider my favorite console controller, despite my big hands.
I have a hard time believing in the company's sincerity, if only because they haven't even been able to demonstrate an early prototype, let alone one ready to be put into production. Seriously, even if all it could do was download and boot, say, Unreal Tournament (PC version, obviously) and then play on a television with whatever controller they're planning to use, that would be worth showing. Coming to CES with a box that doesn't do anything is unlikely to impress anyone but the gullible.
Actually, I think it's possible he was referring to the fact that Bungie literally sold out to Microsoft - you know, like, they were for sale and were subsequently purchased?
I disagree completely. When I started hitting bulletin board systems in the 80s with my Commodore 64 and snazzy 300-baud modem, I quickly discovered a large number of "geeks" who loved cussing, insulting and intimidating other people online. I can recall a number of occasions where someone would procure a person's real name, find their phone number and start harassing them offline as well. Admittedly, taking grievances into real life wasn't the norm, but people turning into gutter trash when communicating online has been going on since the first consumer-grade modems started being used - in other words, since geeks "ruled the earth." :)