When has Microsoft ever released small, tight, fast, bug free code that did one simple thing and didn't try to incorporate every other business agenda into a single offering? This software will be buggy, slow, not-really-open-source, bulky and have hooks into every single Microsoft package (in an effort to solidify the united front of Microsoft offerings).
Yawn. I've seen this movie before. It ends badly for Microsoft.
My comment makes perfect sense if you knew anything about the history of the PSP firmware. For years the PSP *would not* play full resolution videos off the memory stick. There were 2 hacks along the way which allowed this and Sony nerfed the hacks with firmware revisions.
ONLY in the latest version of the firmware does Sony permit full resolution video playback off the memory stick. Don't be confused and think Sony has "come around" to being a nice guy -- they've simply called the UMD dead and are now racing to the table with non crippled video -- a day late and many, many dollars short.
Hopefully this comment was easier for you to understand. You're clearly new to PSP video.
Not true entirely. You can't play a movie off your memory stick at the PSP's full resolution. Why? Because Sony crippled memory stick playback to give UMD a visual advantage. Once again, Sony's efforts to lock in greater profits end up biting them in the ass. The PSP wasn't half as 'usable' as it could have been, and no self respecting geek wanted one because it was too crippled for effective video download/playback. Once again, Sony limits the options of the consumer -- and loses.
Because its absurd. I can compose a.wav file right now in any piece of music software and upload it to a server.
I can define EXACTLY which license from GPL to Copyleft that I want to apply to *my* intellectual property. If someone else tries to override that license with their own -- well that's just plain funny. It can't be done. No. It's mine. And if I want it to be free, as in beer, and part of the public domain then that's my choice too.
SoundExchange is making hilariously grandiose claims. Let them try. Its so distantly removed from any bearing in enforceable legal reality that its funny. Laugh at them.
They didn't just rewrite the legal system. Or reinvent the notion of IP ownership.
With ownership comes control. If the RIAA is suggesting that ownership and control are 2 different things, and you have the former but not the latter.. then that's really cute guys. But no.
In other news, it has finally been confirmed that a company which may be Blizzard will be confirming an announcment regarding a final date at which confirmation will be given regarding a game which may be Starcraft, or may not be. Details will be announced after a final confirmation date is set -- and an announcement date will be confirmed no later than tuesday during a conference call which may be held at 4 o'clock or may not happen at all.
We're still waiting for one of the best selling titles... I personally may have never switched to a 360 had I known I'd be giving up Morrowind.... and Oblivion is no substitute...
Its great stuff. Its cheap. And the geographic location is perfect for it. (Hell, I've been thinking about Piecrete ever since I was a kid and I just want someone to do SOMETHING with it)
Sure beats spending $20 Billion anyway....my two cents.
I know Google has the public relations dollars, but one would think on Slashdot we'd be discussing the many (IMHO far better) online office suites. I have a hard time looking at Google Docs and thinking anyone would find it compares to say "Ajax13" ( http://www.ajax13.com/ ) or other independent offerings.
Likewise, Google's webtop pales in comparison to far slicker applications like DesktopTwo ( http://www.desktoptwo.com/ ). -- which by the way uses a web based java version of OpenOffice which is also slicker than any of Google's office apps.
I'm all for "free" and "freely distributed" web applications replacing the MS Office tax that we're all forced to pay, but I'm also for the best man winning. And IMHO, Google's not exactly deserving of the top spot here.
Given internet radio can still function if stations negotiate directly with the copyright holders (which of course is a whole lot of micro-negotiating) -- a better solution might be for independent record labels to just include in THEIR contracts with royalties companies that Internet Radio is "OK by them", and state that they don't want to collect the same royalties from stations under a certain size.
It seems to me that Indie labels could (and should) give a big thumbs up to Internet radio and craft their own royalties exceptions.
SomaFM's stations are actually vital to their respective scenes. Its up to the small labels and artists to stand up and take action now. If Internet radio fails, it will be the artists fault too.
Companies like Sony and Microsoft (and I hate to say it, but more recently: Apple) are constantly hitting consumers with products and policies that are painfully none-too-subtle efforts at benefiting the company first and consumers as a distant second (if at all). Take the last 25 "upgrades" to iTunes, or XP that I've received. What's the improvement to functionality? Zero. Improvement to our corporate overlords? Priceless.
The PSP falls into this category in at least a dozen ways, from UMD movies, inability to play movies off the memory-stick at full resolution, bluetooth limitations, etc. In a nutshell, protected platforms are anti-consumer. They limit consumer options in an effort to protect corporate profits.
I recently bought a no-name MP3 player which has one feature that Sony, Microsoft and Apple can't ever hope to touch: it has no software. It plugs into your USB port and you copy music to it. Done.
This, to me sums up the entire problem with big electronics corporations: they've stopped focusing on electronics and they've become crack-addicts for the killer business model. And its the easiest thing in the world for us to destroy. Consumers just have to say "no. enough is enough"....As Sony is finding out the hard way...
I'm not sure "fair" is the right word. I think most free-thinking individuals would agree that equal access to media is "fair". And any controls and limitations placed on speech are inherently and ultimately "unfair" and abusable.
I played Gridrunner on my C-64 for all of 20 minutes. It was sort of a crappy Centipede ripoff. What was most remarkable about the game, if anything, was that it said "A Game by Jeff Minter" on the title screen, which was unusual for the day (since credits were not given then).
Otherwise the game was wholly unremarkable.
With all the truly revolutionary games which have been written over the years, why on earth is the very average Mr. Minter acknowledged?
This isn't flamebait. I want to understand why we seem to credit Mr. Minter with some sort of bizarre auteur status?
IANAL, so forgive me if this is obvious to some... but is this covered by copyright? Turnitin isn't reprinting the works, or selling the works, which is what copyright covers. The works are sitting on their machines in a database. The profit being derived isn't from a re-sale of copyrighted work, but from a relational database service. This seems to be fair use to me (as much as they'd piss me off if I were still a student).
Because the public domain is precious and is a formative part of our culture.
You can rewrite and play with works like Charles Dickens or Washington Irving. You can allegorize the Bible. You can use, pull and reassemble cultural references at your will.
That is a precious gift that as a writer you should value and hold dear as part of your creative freedom. These building-blocks form part of your creative arsenal.
When culture becomes owned our culture stagnates.
If you were a filmmaker you'd also understand what a nightmare intellectual property has become:
Should you be allowed to film an actor standing in front of a building that you didn't design? Should you be able to dress her in clothes that you didn't design? Should you be able to show her wearing headphones? Whose headphones?
This is, of course, a different issue than copyright expiration -- but its illustrative of how laws intended to protect a creator can ultimately damage creativity.
Please understand the definition of the word "Crime" before posting such idiocy.
There is nothing "criminal" about copyright infringement. Someone can take you to court and sue you, but there is nothing criminal about that. It certainly isn't considered "theft" by the laws of this country: never was, never will be.
Secondly, how do you feel about being robbed? Because you were robbed. Something was taken away from you that is worth an enormous amount of money and it was taken away from you by the RIAA. When copyrights are extended indefinitely, instead of entering the public domain as they were originally deemed by law -- what is actually happening is that the RIAA is stealing from the public for their own interests.
Did you have a say in that? Did you agree to give up what was rightfully yours? Or was it just taken away from you with the stroke of a pen? Because that, my friend is theft. Plain and simple.
Copyright infringement is not theft. But taking public property for personal gain is absolutely theft. Now who is the guiltier party?
I challenge anyone who knows what they're talking about (as in, have taken art history, and art philosophy courses) to define art.
There are dozens of great philosophers from Danto, Dickie, Tolstoy, etc. who have tried to define it -- and failed.
The art world has done everything it can to break down boundaries of what can be called "Art" and the reality is that NOTHING (yes, nothing) that exists today cannot be considered an artistic medium or statement. (That includes bodily fluids, lights, video, noise, dance, interactive media,...the list is literally infinite.)
But the bigger point is that "Art" is no more a measure of merit than "Fiction", or "Drama". It doesn't take a curator or art dealer to tell you that "Most art is amateurish and atrociously bad". (After all if there are elite artists, there must be many more non-elite artists. So if most art is bad, then why would we compare anything to art? Are we asking: "Are video games mostly bad?"
Magnus: "Absolutely. The reason that people team up in corporations and then corporations team up in alliances is because there is this inherent big threat of dying and losing a lot of money. You can lose months of work in 30 seconds, and this forces people because of human nature, to band together and form relationships."
That was the prevailing mantra in fantasy based MMORPG's. And then WoW and GW came along and defied that mantra.... and kicked everyone else's asses.
Its pretty clear that from a market/business/popularity perspective that the "You can lose months of work in 30 seconds"-thing lost-out in a huge way to the "safer", "nice-warm-bath" approach. Which is why I think EVE is ultimately doomed -- more doomed than its management knows. When the space-based equivalent of WoW hits the shelves ("World of Starcraft", perhaps?) EVE is going to see far, far more attrition than they know. And for those who say "Yeah, but all those people with all that time invested -- those guys won't jump-ship"... well... that ain't what happened to DAoC, EQ, Asheron's or any of the others when WoW launched.
Slashdot Mirror
When has Microsoft ever released small, tight, fast, bug free code that did one simple thing and didn't try to incorporate every other business agenda into a single offering? This software will be buggy, slow, not-really-open-source, bulky and have hooks into every single Microsoft package (in an effort to solidify the united front of Microsoft offerings).
Yawn. I've seen this movie before. It ends badly for Microsoft.
Yeah, now -- in 2007 (now that the UMD is officially dead) you can play full screen video. Hardly a stellar performance from Sony.
My comment makes perfect sense if you knew anything about the history of the PSP firmware. For years the PSP *would not* play full resolution
videos off the memory stick. There were 2 hacks along the way which allowed this and Sony nerfed the hacks with firmware revisions.
ONLY in the latest version of the firmware does Sony permit full resolution video playback off the memory stick. Don't be confused and think
Sony has "come around" to being a nice guy -- they've simply called the UMD dead and are now racing to the table with non crippled video --
a day late and many, many dollars short.
Hopefully this comment was easier for you to understand. You're clearly new to PSP video.
Not true entirely. You can't play a movie off your memory stick at the PSP's full resolution. Why? Because Sony crippled memory stick playback to give UMD a visual advantage. Once again, Sony's efforts to lock in greater profits end up biting them in the ass. The PSP wasn't half as 'usable' as it could have been, and no self respecting geek wanted one because it was too crippled for effective video download/playback. Once again, Sony limits the options of the consumer -- and loses.
This actually makes me want to go and buy DVD's
(I meant to add this to the above)
This also flies directly in the face of the 1st Ammendment.
If I can't broadcast my own words without paying a royalty, I am having my speech limited.
So no. You (RIAA) can't charge me a royalty on my stuff if I want it to be free.
Because its absurd. I can compose a .wav file right now in any piece of music software and upload it to a server.
I can define EXACTLY which license from GPL to Copyleft that I want to apply to *my* intellectual property.
If someone else tries to override that license with their own -- well that's just plain funny. It can't be done.
No. It's mine. And if I want it to be free, as in beer, and part of the public domain then that's my choice too.
SoundExchange is making hilariously grandiose claims. Let them try. Its so distantly removed from any bearing
in enforceable legal reality that its funny. Laugh at them.
They didn't just rewrite the legal system. Or reinvent the notion of IP ownership.
With ownership comes control. If the RIAA is suggesting that ownership and control are 2 different things, and you
have the former but not the latter.. then that's really cute guys. But no.
In other news, it has finally been confirmed that a company which may be Blizzard will be confirming an announcment regarding a final
date at which confirmation will be given regarding a game which may be Starcraft, or may not be. Details will be announced after a final confirmation date is
set -- and an announcement date will be confirmed no later than tuesday during a conference call which may be held at 4 o'clock or may not happen at all.
We're still waiting for one of the best selling titles... I personally may have never switched to a 360 had I known ... and Oblivion is no substitute...
I'd be giving up Morrowind.
I don't think we'll be getting away from conditionals in some later version of AI.
Sure we'll have complex weighting, etc. But If/Then ain't going anywhere....
Build a bridge out of piecrete.
...my two cents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piecrete
Its great stuff. Its cheap. And the geographic location is perfect for it.
(Hell, I've been thinking about Piecrete ever since I was a kid and I just
want someone to do SOMETHING with it)
Sure beats spending $20 Billion anyway.
I know Google has the public relations dollars, but one would think on Slashdot we'd be discussing
the many (IMHO far better) online office suites. I have a hard time looking at Google Docs
and thinking anyone would find it compares to say "Ajax13" ( http://www.ajax13.com/ ) or other
independent offerings.
Likewise, Google's webtop pales in comparison to far slicker applications like DesktopTwo
( http://www.desktoptwo.com/ ). -- which by the way uses a web based java version of OpenOffice
which is also slicker than any of Google's office apps.
I'm all for "free" and "freely distributed" web applications replacing the MS Office tax that
we're all forced to pay, but I'm also for the best man winning. And IMHO, Google's not exactly
deserving of the top spot here.
Given internet radio can still function if stations negotiate directly
with the copyright holders (which of course is a whole lot of micro-negotiating) -- a better
solution might be for independent record labels to just include in THEIR contracts with
royalties companies that Internet Radio is "OK by them", and state that they don't want
to collect the same royalties from stations under a certain size.
It seems to me that Indie labels could (and should) give a big thumbs up to Internet radio
and craft their own royalties exceptions.
SomaFM's stations are actually vital to their respective scenes. Its up to the small labels
and artists to stand up and take action now. If Internet radio fails, it will be the artists
fault too.
Companies like Sony and Microsoft (and I hate to say it, but more recently: Apple) are constantly hitting
...As Sony is finding
consumers with products and policies that are painfully none-too-subtle efforts at benefiting the company first
and consumers as a distant second (if at all). Take the last 25 "upgrades" to iTunes, or XP that I've received.
What's the improvement to functionality? Zero. Improvement to our corporate overlords? Priceless.
The PSP falls into this category in at least a dozen ways, from UMD movies, inability to play movies
off the memory-stick at full resolution, bluetooth limitations, etc. In a nutshell, protected platforms
are anti-consumer. They limit consumer options in an effort to protect corporate profits.
I recently bought a no-name MP3 player which has one feature that Sony, Microsoft and Apple can't ever hope
to touch: it has no software. It plugs into your USB port and you copy music to it. Done.
This, to me sums up the entire problem with big electronics corporations: they've stopped focusing on
electronics and they've become crack-addicts for the killer business model. And its the easiest thing
in the world for us to destroy. Consumers just have to say "no. enough is enough".
out the hard way...
I'm not sure "fair" is the right word. I think most free-thinking individuals would agree that equal access to media is "fair". And any controls and limitations placed on speech are inherently and ultimately "unfair" and abusable.
I played Gridrunner on my C-64 for all of 20 minutes. It was sort of a crappy Centipede ripoff. What was most remarkable about the game,
if anything, was that it said "A Game by Jeff Minter" on the title screen, which was unusual for the day (since credits were not given then).
Otherwise the game was wholly unremarkable.
With all the truly revolutionary games which have been written over the years, why on earth is the very average Mr. Minter acknowledged?
This isn't flamebait. I want to understand why we seem to credit Mr. Minter with some sort of bizarre auteur status?
IANAL, so forgive me if this is obvious to some... but is this covered by copyright?
Turnitin isn't reprinting the works, or selling the works, which is what
copyright covers. The works are sitting on their machines in a database. The profit
being derived isn't from a re-sale of copyrighted work, but from a relational database
service. This seems to be fair use to me (as much as they'd piss me off if I were still
a student).
they--and gamers--will continue to miss out on these games' staggeringly awesome potential.
He is talking about the most successful new genre of games, isn't he?
...when you can buy one from Dell that's 100x faster?
Because the public domain is precious and is a formative part of our culture.
You can rewrite and play with works like Charles Dickens or Washington Irving.
You can allegorize the Bible.
You can use, pull and reassemble cultural references at your will.
That is a precious gift that as a writer you should value and hold dear as part of your
creative freedom. These building-blocks form part of your creative arsenal.
When culture becomes owned our culture stagnates.
If you were a filmmaker you'd also understand what a nightmare intellectual property
has become:
Should you be allowed to film an actor standing in front of a building that you didn't design?
Should you be able to dress her in clothes that you didn't design?
Should you be able to show her wearing headphones? Whose headphones?
This is, of course, a different issue than copyright expiration -- but its illustrative of
how laws intended to protect a creator can ultimately damage creativity.
And that can be stifling.
Please understand the definition of the word "Crime" before posting such idiocy.
There is nothing "criminal" about copyright infringement. Someone can take you to court
and sue you, but there is nothing criminal about that. It certainly isn't considered
"theft" by the laws of this country: never was, never will be.
Secondly, how do you feel about being robbed? Because you were robbed. Something
was taken away from you that is worth an enormous amount of money and it was taken
away from you by the RIAA. When copyrights are extended indefinitely, instead of
entering the public domain as they were originally deemed by law -- what is actually
happening is that the RIAA is stealing from the public for their own interests.
Did you have a say in that? Did you agree to give up what was rightfully yours?
Or was it just taken away from you with the stroke of a pen? Because that, my friend
is theft. Plain and simple.
Copyright infringement is not theft. But taking public property for personal gain
is absolutely theft. Now who is the guiltier party?
...who stand up and tell the RIAA to lay off the little girl.
1, 2...do we have a 3?
I challenge anyone who knows what they're talking about (as in, have taken art history, and art philosophy courses)
...the list is literally infinite.)
to define art.
There are dozens of great philosophers from Danto, Dickie, Tolstoy, etc. who have tried to define it -- and failed.
The art world has done everything it can to break down boundaries of what can be called "Art" and the reality
is that NOTHING (yes, nothing) that exists today cannot be considered an artistic medium or statement.
(That includes bodily fluids, lights, video, noise, dance, interactive media,
But the bigger point is that "Art" is no more a measure of merit than "Fiction", or "Drama". It doesn't take a
curator or art dealer to tell you that "Most art is amateurish and atrociously bad". (After all if there are
elite artists, there must be many more non-elite artists. So if most art is bad, then why would we
compare anything to art? Are we asking: "Are video games mostly bad?"
Magnus: "Absolutely. The reason that people team up in corporations and then corporations team up in alliances is because there is this inherent big threat of dying and losing a lot of money. You can lose months of work in 30 seconds, and this forces people because of human nature, to band together and form relationships."
... and kicked everyone else's asses.
That was the prevailing mantra in fantasy based MMORPG's. And then WoW and GW came along and defied that mantra.
Its pretty clear that from a market/business/popularity perspective that the "You can lose months of work in 30 seconds"-thing lost-out in a huge way to the "safer", "nice-warm-bath" approach. Which is why I think EVE is ultimately doomed -- more doomed than its management knows. When the space-based equivalent of WoW hits the shelves ("World of Starcraft", perhaps?) EVE is going to see far, far more attrition than they know. And for those who say "Yeah, but all those people with all that time invested -- those guys won't jump-ship"... well... that ain't what happened to DAoC, EQ, Asheron's or any of the others when WoW launched.
And I thought Valve launched it two years ago.