When I was in college, there were groups going around telling women that "you may just not know you were raped." They had a clear goal of blurring the line between the words "rape" and "regret".
No, they had a clear goal of making women understand that having a guy cornering them in their room and not letting them out until they "give it up" isn't something they should be expected to live with, or that waking up in a frat house with no clothes on and no memory of last night, isn't just something that "just happens".
Women have an impressive double-standard to live with; if they get assaulted or raped, well, obviously they should have known better. But if they assume that a man might try to rape her if they are alone together, or doesn't want to be in a position where she can be overpowered or outnumbered, well, then she's obviously a man-hater/feminist/dyke. Nowhere in either of those equations is the man's behavior held to any standard.
It is nieve to believe that EVERY woman who claims rape really was raped.
The staistics for false claims of rape are in line with false claims for other crimes. (Well, it depends on who you ask and what time period the study in question covers; the numbers seem to swing from 1 percent to 25 percent of claims, with each end of the range having its defenders.) Also, many rapes go unreported, which would make the percentage of false claims vs. actual rapes even smaller still. But of course, any attempt to raise awareness or to encourage women to talk about what happened to them is "blurring the line between 'rape' and 'regret'".
By your reasoning, we should assume that any person who claims they were robbed or assaulted is lying just because some people lie about it, or live in fear that we could be sent to jail by having someone pointing a finger at us and saying "he stole from me" if we don't defend the reputation of accused thieves.
... instead of closing the accounts of and blocking the money transfers to these allegedly "suspicious" individuals, why not report them to the FBI and let them do the investigating and/or arresting?
Stupid corporate vigilantism -- almost worse than the amateur stuff.
Aside from the lovely consept art, most of the D&D content can be found in the SRD (System Reference Document)
The SRD does not contain the rules for the following:
The new base classes introduced in books such as the Eberron Campaign sourcebook, the Complete series, Heroes of Horror, Player's Handbook II, etc.
The voluntary poverty system described in Book of Exalted Deeds, which allows for a character who want to live a monastic lifestyle to be playable after the first few levels
The action point system used in the Eberron campaign setting (although a similar mechanic does exists in the Modern SRD, which is the OGL subset of WotC's D20 Modern roleplaying system)
The leadership score, commander rating and commander auras from Heroes of Battle, as well as the rules for simplfying large-scale combat
The corruption rules in Heroes of Horror (although an earlier version of the rules was made available under the OGL)
Rules for "magic events", large-scale magical effects that cannot easily be duplicated by existing spells, in Dungeon Master's Guide II
Teamwork benefits from Dungeon Master's Guide II, Heroes of Battle, and Player's Handbook II, which allow for groups of players to gain additonal benefits from training together and taking complementary skills and feats
The rules for the new magic subsystems, such as soulmelds (from Magic of Incarnum), truespeech, shadow magic and pact magic (all from Tome of Magic)
The rules for substitition levels (introduced in Manual of the Planes) and expanded class features (introduced in Player's Handbook II), which allow the base classes to be further customized
The hundreds of new prestige classes, feats and spells in virtually every book WotC has put out over the past three years
...and more to come
The core rules of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons is what is available in the SRD, which will probably satisfy many players (especially the ones who like making their own homebrew campaigns, or are updating pre-3rd edition campaigns to the new rules). But to claim that "most of the rules" are freely available is demonstrably false.
Marvel tried this before with the Mutant Registration Act of the late 1980's (which figured into the X-Men titles for a while before it quietly disappeared).
This thread is exactly why Slashdot needs a dedicated tabletop games editor; these kinds of stories need to come out more often, so people can work out their frustrations and actually get around to discussing the topic at hand.
It seems like 5% of the posts are about the actual story, and the other 95% of the posts end up being:
* D20/3e/3.5e sucks * (Insert campaign world) sucks * WotC sucks * Only losers need sourcebooks -- give me the core rulebook(s) and I'm happy * Tabletop gaming is for losers * Computer RPGs are for losers * Why not mention (insert gaming system)?
First, some background. I'm 34 years old, but I started playing 1st edition D&D when I was in 7th grade. I played D&D fairly consistently until college, but starting playing again after the 3.5 edition came out. Every campaign I've ever played in, with one brief exception for a Forgotten Realms game in high school, has been homebrew. But I'm currently playing two campaigns with the same gaming group; one person DMs their own homebrew campaign, and the other, a brand-new DM, is running an Eberron campaign.
These are some of the things I like about Eberron:
1) It takes familiar D&D staples and makes them interesting. For people who feel constrained to stick the to the Rules As Written, Eberron gently gives them permission to bend (or break) them; this can also serve to wake up players who might feel compelled to attack every goblin on sight, because "everyone knows goblins are evil". Chromatic dragons and metallic dragons are not constrained to their usual alignments. A cleric of an Eberron deity is not required to be within one step of their deity's alignment (although they still get the undead turning/rebuking options and, more importantly, the holy/unholy aura generated by the connection to their god). Clerics in Eberron are not tied to being a follower of a single deity; the Sovereign Host pantheon and the Dark Six pantheon are valid options, and Player's Guide to Eberron has clerics of an entire plane of existence and of the nation-state of Riedra. With two nations of non-humanoids -- the goblinoid empire of Darguun and the monstrous lands of the Shadow Reaches, ruled by a trio of night hags -- PC options are more varied while making intergrating backgrounds easy.
2) It makes it easy for the PCs to stand out. One of the design goals of Eberron was that the majority of NPCs will not have PC levels; they use the generic "NPC classes" from the DMG a lot, and introduce a new NPC class, the magewright (a magically-enhanced craftsmen). It also makes it easy for casual players to get up to speed in a relatively short amount of time. Many NPCs as written top out around 8th or 9th level -- the two exceptions that spring to mind are the Lord of Blades, a 12th-level NPC who is the leader of a group of warforged that assert superiority over the "fleshy" races, and the head of the Church of the Silver Flame, who has the powers of an 18th-level cleric so long as she remains in the capital city of Thrane. So in a relatively short amount of time, players can rise to the top of their game. One downside of this is that WotC provides few options for epic- or near-epic-level play in Eberron, although the Player's Guide to Eberron suggests taking one of the major themes and building a campaign around them.
3) The focus of many of the Eberron products is adding options for storytelling. There are certainly DMs who don't need a book to tell them what a human who was tainted at birth by the horrific daelkyr is capable of, or what a knight sworn to the service of the necromancy-friendly nation of Karrnath can do. But not everyone has the creativity (or more importantly, the time) to work such things out, and a gaming business doesn't make money off of the Dms who just need the core books. I tend to think of WotC products (or any D20 product, really) as options; you can either use what they provide you verbatim, you can tweak something for your own campaign -- maybe the bone knights of Karrnath become the sentinels of K'Dar, God of the Underworld in your campaign -- or you can simply use the ideas presented for inspiration. (Thrane, a nation under the mostly-benevolent rule of the Church of the Silver Flame, is a pretty good model for how a theocracy might operate in practice.)
4) Some of the Eberron products are really well-designed. Although the Ptolus sourcebook may end up surpassing it in size and depth, Sharn: City of Towers was a well-written product focused on the signature location in Eberron, taking you from the top of the highest towers t
...although not in computers, and not in Texas. (However, the supervisor who hired me became the department manager for computers, and half of my co-workers ended up as salespeople in that department; as a software sales supervisor, I worked fairly closely with them.)
All I have to say about this:
At no time did either of the [Fry's] representatives try to sell or push an extended warranty on us, but did explain the options when we asked.
is that either they were new to the sales department or they were "merchandisers", a second-tier salesperson who doesn't get commissions. Either that, or there's been a major corporate culture shift at Fry's (which would surprise me) because when I worked for them, a computer salesperson lived and died by the number of "performance guarantees" -- Fry's name for extended warranties -- they sold.
We even had periodic visits by the "PG guy" from the corporate office; a smarmy, used-car-salesman type who would do seminars on how to push PGs on people. (Thi$ guy was chee$y enough to u$e dollar $ign$ instead of $'$ in hi$ weekly PG $ale$ email$!)
I have a U.S. bank account, and I do my banking online.
The other day, my username and password were rejected. Since I had just been changing passwords on other sites, and assumed that I simply forgot what I set the new password to, I hit "Recover ID/Password".
Do you know what U.S. Online Banking wants to confirm you are who you say you are? Why, nothing more that your debit card number or account number, your PIN number, and your Social Security number. I shit you not.
Needless to say, I freaked. I checked it from another browser, viewed the certificate info, and even had my wife try to recover the password from our computer at home (I was at work) and it gave the same error messages and recovery options. Accessing my account info from phone wasn't working (it was after hours), and I needed to see if a check was deposited, so I bit the bullet and created a new password. That didn't work, either. Ultimately, I hit an ATM after work to check my balance.
The next day, I called U.S. Bank and talked to a human being. As it turned out, the reason I couldn't log in was because I had apparently used up my three failed login attempts, and it locked me out. (This was not stated in any error message; if it had, then I wouldn't have messed with the recovery feature.) I was also told that any further failed login attempts will automatically lock my account access, and I will have to call to have my access re-enabled.
Oh, and when I asked the nice human why they asked for such personal info, they say "that's how we can confirm that it's your account". I pointed out that many other online banks use custom question/answer challenges and that it conditions users to enter sensitive information without questioning, she gave the same response.
Needless to say, I plan on closing the accounts that I've had at U.S. Bank for over 16 years as soon as possible, and letting them know that their customer-hostile online banking solution is the reason why.
An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers.
Yeah, but as many others have pointed out, it inconveniences only a few thousand people (who were already having to jump through hoops to view the things in the first place).
An ironic twist would be the initial release of Wedding Crashers or Serenity being unplayable for the average person.
Games Workshop are probably the worst for this, but because their games are generally played by children nobody seems to notice/care
Where do you live that you have a bunch of kids that can afford to spend hundreds of dollars on Warhammer and WH40K? The last time I checked, you couldn't download and burn Eldar armies from the net; they take actualy money to acquire.
Around here, I don't see many people younger than 18 playing -- and those who are use armies they are borrowing from the older players (or buy at a discount).
The software in the detector picks up uncontrollable tremors in the voice that give away liars or those with something to hide, say its designers.
So if my wife and I are coming home from a vacation, and someone asks me if I have anything to declare, I get flagged as suspicious if I don't want to give away that I bought my wife's anniversary present on the trip? What about the fact that I think the female airline attendant off to the side looks great in a miniskirt?
"Something to hide" isn't always sinister, or a criminal offense.
I'll sincerely welcome iTunes. It will change the industry - mark my words.
Hell, video-on-demand was changing the industry before this. In a blog post about pitching TV shows, John Rogers gives a little background on the TV industry; how studios used to produce shows at a loss with the money recouped when the show sold into syndication, but now are starting to recoup that money faster by selling DVD box sets. (I wonder how much money the first season of Lost is making for ABC?)
It's a fairly well-known anecdote that the box sets for the first season of Babylon 5 made enough money to pay the production costs of that season. (IMO, the same would not be true if it had been direct-to-DVD from the start; I didn't like the first season of B5 originally, and it wasn't until the show was over and I re-watched the first season that I came to appreciate it, though it's still not my favorite.) Everybody who reads Slashdot is aware of the role the sales of the Firefly box set contributed to Serenity being made.
Personally, I've bought one TV episode from iTunes music store -- I bought the premiere of The Night Stalker both to see if the show was any good, and to see what the video quality was like. To me, the initial TV offerings aren't enough to make me want to spend a lot of money on it so far; but if Apple were to get SciFi on board, and offer episodes of Battlestar Galactica? Hmm...
A question for anyone with a new iMac G5 who has also bought a video from the music store. Do these videos integrate with Front Row at all?
Yes, they do. The "Video" segment of Front Row breaks your videos into "Music Videos", "TV Shows", "Video Podcasts", and "Movies" (which is a generic catch-all for any videos in your Movies folder in your Home directory as well as videos that you've imported into iTunes).
Because 1% of $20.5 billion is still over $20 million. Given the low production and distribution costs of most of these small games, revenues of $100,000 would still earn major profit.
I find it interesting that people think getting 1% of a $20 billion pie is worth the effort to develop games, yet when it's pointed out that non-Windows operating systems make up, say, 6%-10% of the user base for home PCs, the response is "you can't spend that much development time/money on such a small piece of the market, it doesn't make sense."
I realize that we're comparing Mackintosh and Red Delicious here (hmm, didn't realize the irony in that statement until I typed it) -- that Small Garage Studio turning out a Bejeweled or Tetris-style puzzler isn't the same, technically or logistically, as porting Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War to the Mac -- but it makes me think that there might be more to the anti-Mac and anti-Linux gaming crowd's viewpoint than mere "market forces".
Jay (=
I block ads that are obviously not targetted to me
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Why Do You Block Ads?
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· Score: 1
... which is to say: ads for items, or promotions, of dubious legality.
* "Get Windows XP and Office XP for only $80! Photoshop CS for $25!" * "Punch the monkey/shoot the spaceship/answer our idiotic trivia question and get a free iPod/XBox360/PSP/blahblah!" * "Download all the movies/TV shows your want for FREE!"
If the future of web advertising means an increasing amount of get-rich-quick schemes, scams, and "giveaways" that require me to surrender a major organ or yet-to-be-born offspring, then I expect to increase the usage of technologies that prevent me from being exposed to said advertising.
#1 is unlikely to happen - it's nigh impossible to contact every copyright owner in even a medium sized project and get their approval.
It depends on the project; some open source projects ask contributors to transfer copyright to the project, so there's no need to go hunting everyone down. Just because it's impractical or nigh-impossible in many cases doesn't mean it's not a legitimate option.
#2 is exactly what this so-called infection is about. The GPL has the nasty habit of making sure that every derived work will be GPL too. (what actually makes up a derived work is still up to debate, but according to the FSF it covers about everything. Regarding the so-called GPL-compatibility: I'll come to that.)
You still seem to believe that the license forces this "infection". It cannot. Licenses don't do anything; they are a piece of paper, enumerating rights and responsibilities. A judge might render a verdict making such a license change compulsory, or the copyright holder may accept such a change as part of a settlement, but that's not the GPL doing it.
#3 usually reads "Use something else". Which is a good solution indeed, if available, but you can question whether it serves the greater purpose. If GNU readline would've had a sensible license (like LGPL), there wouldn't have been people working on a replacement library under a less restrictive license. Now they have been, and this time could've been spent better.
Other that you have to reinvent the wheel, I fail to see why #3 is not a valid option. You seem to be confusing inconvenient options with invalid options.
#4 is just fine, if you weren't interested in distributing it to begin with. For example, when all you wanted to do is use it.
The GPLv2 doesn't cover use; it covers distribution. If all you want to do is use it, the GPLv2 has no power to force your code open.
The GPL, in fact, guarantees that if GPL'd software is used in another product, both products then become infected by the GPL and the resulting work is then covered by the GPL.
This is, sadly, a common misunderstanding when it comes to the GPL. By using the term "infected", you are either misinformed or attempting to misinform; I'll assume the former...
If you use code licensed by the GPL in your closed-source work and you get "caught" distributing it, you have four options:
You can try to obtain an exception to the GPL from the copyright holder(s) of the GPLed code for your particular work.
You can change the license of your work to the GPL (or, possibly, one of the licenses deemed "GPL-compatible"; IANAL, so consult a lawyer first).
You can rewrite the affected portion to remove the GPLed code from your work.
You can stop distributing your work so long as it contains the GPLed code.
The copyright holder of the GPLed code can not force you to pick any particular one of the options (except, by the definition of the GPL, you must do #4 if you can't or won't do #1, #2 or #3). You are the copyright holder of your code, and cannot have your license changed against your will any more than they can have the license of their work changed against their will.
Frankly I think if a person in the U.S. did get sued for using [Allfmp3.com], you could build a pretty strong case for plausible deniability of the fact you were doing anything wrong -- if in fact you are doing anything wrong under U.S. copyright law, which I'm not sure of. You're effectively legally purchasing something in Russia, but then importing it into the U.S.
1. Could a site claiming to hold foreign distribution rights be a legal way to download copyrighted music?
Sure. Music licensing agreements vary from distributor to distributor and from country to country. If Allofmp3.com has legitimately acquired Russian distribution rights, it would be legal to download from them the same way that copyright holders have licensed iTunes and Napster in the United States, according to James Gibson, who teaches law at the University of Richmond and wrote a brief supporting the music industry in the MGM v. Grokster case.
[Emphasis mine] But get out your balaclava, pop the caviar, and activate those frequent-flyer miles: Because in order to download legally from a Russian rights-holder, you'd likely have to actually go to Russia. Foreign-rights-holders usually only control the copyright within the country itself, and that includes Internet distribution.
2. Is Allofmp3.com actually legal?
Probably not. The discussion above about what Allofmp3.com is allowed to do with international distribution rights assumes the site actually owns those rights. [Emphasis mine] It doesn't--at least not according to the recording industry. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is the worldwide organization of recording companies, and it claims that Allofmp3.com has not been licensed to distribute its members' "repertoire" in Russia or anywhere else. While Allofmp3.com claims it owns distribution rights from the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society, the record companies say, "Nyet."
Bruce Boyden, a copyright lawyer at Proskauer Rose, which represents the international copyright holders in Grokster, concedes that there's some dispute as to whether Allofmp3.com has in fact obtained the Russian distribution rights. But he has his suspicions: "Allofmp3.com doesn't sound Russian to me, and it doesn't sound like they're aiming at a Russian audience." [Emphasis mine] Moreover, even if it does hold some Russian distribution rights, it certainly doesn't own worldwide Internet distribution rights.
no, what bittorrent needs to implement is some kind of encrypted protection or key for trackers so that any attempt to subvert them is a DMCA violation. turn their own weapon against them.
That doesn't work. The DMCA allows copyright holders or content distributors to use encryption/DRM to secure their own copyrighted works (or works that they have permission to distribute, e.g. iTunes Music Store).
Good luck trying to convince a judge that it should apply to your unauthorized distribution method.
Captain America Didn't they do this one and it sucked?
Yes. twice, if you count the crappy 70's TV show.
The Avengers A facless hero clan. I can't even name a single hero in this group.
The Avengers are Marvel's version of the Justice League -- all of the big-name characters in one book.
Which is why the movie will suck; they may get away with not having to do Captain America's origin (or the Hulk's if they stick to the classic Avengers origin), but they'll have to do Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man/Giant-man/Yellowjacket/Dr. Pym ( yes, the same guy in four different costumes); not to mention, which B-list Avengers will be in the movie? Scarlet Witch? Hawkeye? (who's a pile of ashes in the Avengers at the momentally)? Vision (an android that can vary his density)?
What villian(s) so you use? Loki? Kang the Conquerer? Ultron?
Nick Fury I guess because the Punisher movie worked so well......that we'll forget that we tried this once already -- with David Hasselhoff as Fury.
Black Panther Ah, a hero named after a hyper-racist group. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Aside from the unfortunate name (a holdover from an unfortunate time when Marvel prefaced many of the names of its black superheros with the word "Black", in case you couldn't figure it out from their skin tone), the recent incarnation of the series by Christopher Priest wasn't too bad. As it was deconstructing the character and his existing storyline, it kinda required you to have some familiarity with the character, though.
Ant-Man Honey, I shrunk the superhero!
Given the lack of name recognition, a good director and good script could make this work. (Of course, the current Ant-Man is also dead, a victim of the same storyline that killed Hawkeye.)
Cloak & Dagger Not that Cloak was a completely contrived character, or that Dagger wore far too little clothing, but how could this movie possibly be interesting?
Eh, I dunno. Make it more of a gothic horror story than a straight superhero story, and it might work.
Dr. Strange Who?
A powerful mage (the "Sorcerer Supreme"), whose origin recently was retold in a mini-series by J. Michael Straczynski. Think Constantine, but hopefully more faithful to the actual character. (He also got the bad 80's movie treatment, which wasn't too bad except for the horrible costume -- purple with a yellow cape! AIEEE!)
Hawkeye Ah, Daredevil without charisma, but empowered with a ridiculous costume.
And currently dead. (Not that that'd stop 'em.)
Power Pack Never heard of them.
This one might actually work very well, if they aim for the "Spy Kids"/Kim Possible crowd. (Okay, a bit higher than that...) Four young siblings, ages 5 to 13, find a crashed alien spaceship whose dying pilot transfers one of his powers to each of the siblings -- matter/energy conversion, flight, control over personal mass (going from super-small and super-dense to a large gaseous form), and gravity amplification/negation on himself and anything he touched -- to defend Earth against the alien invaders that were following him. (The nice thing about the original incarnation of the comic series is that the kids were written like real kids, not miniature superheroes. The powers could be transferred between the siblings, which led to some interesting stories...)
Shang-Chi Is this like the token Asian guy?
Kind of; your generic kung-fu action character.
I think they probably need to stick with their franchise heros and stay away from these B and C-list zeroes.
I hate to break it to you, but until the movie, Blade was among the "B- and C-list heroes". At the time the first movie came out, they were in the process of canceling his current series, after only about 6 issues; they didn't try to give him another one until after the second movie came out, IIRC
It covers basic cross-browser development techniques, and some developing strategies for overcoming the differences between both browsers.
Country and western?
A but oversensitive, are we?
The article is about porting an IE-based web app to Mozilla-based browsers.
Would you write an article comparing Mac OS X to Windows XP, then spend a paragraph talking about FreeBSD? If so, I hope you've got a good editor...
Re:The irony... MINOR SPOILERS
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P2P and TV
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I've watched the pilot. Clever, but the first half _sucks_. Uses pretty much every cliche in the book.
Clichés are clichés for a reason. They work because they meet the viewers' expectations.
I assume you're talking about the setup for the show, where we get the "what is the Global Frequency" talk, the introduction of the "new guy" into the world of the series, etc.
I'm curious how you would handle the following:
Introducing your principal cast of characters
Introducing the viewer to the premise of the show, e.g. the Global Frequency is a borderline-outlaw network of specialists and operatives that tackle Things Man Was Not Meant To Know
Establishing the plot of the story for the pilot
Establishing the elements that viewers can expect from the show: a rotating cast of characters, weird science, "black ops" action, and the Global Frequency effect
without ending up with either the pilot we got or having something like this at the beginning of the show?
By the way, this wasn't the final pilot; the GF ringtone was only a placeholder, and the music wasn't finished either. It was a version that was shopped around to networks, which would have been finished had they been picked up. John Rogers, the producer, said he would've reshot elements of the pilot they been picked up, particulaly the opening scene in the alley.
So they say Rosetta won't run OS 9 apps... isn't it time Classic is laid to rest once and for all? You need to step forward at some point.
No kidding. I made a conscious decision to not install OS 9 when I upgraded to Panther, and I haven't missed it at all.
Every major shrinkwrap product has had at least one, maybe two releases since OS X came out; there are probably lots of custom market apps that haven't, but if you're still using those, My guess is you're still happy with the hardware it's running on. (And there are plenty of 68K Macs floating around still, not to mention pre-G3 Power Macs.)
If people can get something from the commercial download experience that they can't get from the, um, "unlicensed" versions, they'll pay.
Since BTEfnet and the other TV sites went down, I've lost my handy RSS feed, which made my downloading a lot easier (and faster, with eveyone downloading from the same source at the same time). Right now I scrape several smaller torrent sites to find the 3 or 4 shows I can't live without.
Here's what I'd like to see from an internet TV distribution format (let's call it "iTV", to be completely unoriginal):
Decent-quality video and audio, without taking hours to download an episode. (There are plenty of high-quality transfers out on the net -- anyone who watched the SkyOne Battlestar Galactica torrents knows what I mean -- at about 350MB for a 44-minute episode)
Episodes automatically categorized by genre, season and episode number, with keywords for principal actors, etc. for easy searching and browsing.
"Season pass" rates where you pay a little less per episode to get a whole season, with new episodes automatically scheduled for download.
Trailers for upcoming shows; maybe letting me watch the first 5-10 minutes of an episode for free.
Even better, pre-releases where I can get the show a fews days or a week before everyone else.
No ads in the episodes (a "network badge" logo wouldn't be too intrusive). Advertising on the distribution site in the form of mini-banners or recommendations based on my purchasing habits wouldn't be too bad; I like the format of the iTunes Music Store for that.
I get the shows I want to watch, and only the shows I want to watch. "iTV" gets a wealth of detailed viewing habits which they could turn over to networks (aggregated, of course) to determine future programming.
The first big question mark is "how much do I want to pay?" It'd be hard for me to justify paying more than $2 an episode; at 22 episodes a season, that's $44, which is the price of a DVD box set (depending on the show). The second big question mark is "what kind of copy proection will the networks want?" I don't find the iTunes restrictions all that cumbersome -- 5 PCs, unlimited iPods, burning to a CD. Something where I can watch on a selected number of PCs, but be able to burn to disc for backups, or portable/loaner viewing, that would be nice.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in college, there were groups going around telling women that "you may just not know you were raped." They had a clear goal of blurring the line between the words "rape" and "regret".
No, they had a clear goal of making women understand that having a guy cornering them in their room and not letting them out until they "give it up" isn't something they should be expected to live with, or that waking up in a frat house with no clothes on and no memory of last night, isn't just something that "just happens".
Women have an impressive double-standard to live with; if they get assaulted or raped, well, obviously they should have known better. But if they assume that a man might try to rape her if they are alone together, or doesn't want to be in a position where she can be overpowered or outnumbered, well, then she's obviously a man-hater/feminist/dyke. Nowhere in either of those equations is the man's behavior held to any standard.
It is nieve to believe that EVERY woman who claims rape really was raped.
The staistics for false claims of rape are in line with false claims for other crimes. (Well, it depends on who you ask and what time period the study in question covers; the numbers seem to swing from 1 percent to 25 percent of claims, with each end of the range having its defenders.) Also, many rapes go unreported, which would make the percentage of false claims vs. actual rapes even smaller still. But of course, any attempt to raise awareness or to encourage women to talk about what happened to them is "blurring the line between 'rape' and 'regret'".
By your reasoning, we should assume that any person who claims they were robbed or assaulted is lying just because some people lie about it, or live in fear that we could be sent to jail by having someone pointing a finger at us and saying "he stole from me" if we don't defend the reputation of accused thieves.
... instead of closing the accounts of and blocking the money transfers to these allegedly "suspicious" individuals, why not report them to the FBI and let them do the investigating and/or arresting?
Stupid corporate vigilantism -- almost worse than the amateur stuff.
The SRD does not contain the rules for the following:
The core rules of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons is what is available in the SRD, which will probably satisfy many players (especially the ones who like making their own homebrew campaigns, or are updating pre-3rd edition campaigns to the new rules). But to claim that "most of the rules" are freely available is demonstrably false.
The biggest changes were just to the font and to use square corners.
I see rounded corners when I view the winning design, FWIW.
Watchmen. Astro City - Confession, etc.
Marvel tried this before with the Mutant Registration Act of the late 1980's (which figured into the X-Men titles for a while before it quietly disappeared).
This thread is exactly why Slashdot needs a dedicated tabletop games editor; these kinds of stories need to come out more often, so people can work out their frustrations and actually get around to discussing the topic at hand.
It seems like 5% of the posts are about the actual story, and the other 95% of the posts end up being:
* D20/3e/3.5e sucks
* (Insert campaign world) sucks
* WotC sucks
* Only losers need sourcebooks -- give me the core rulebook(s) and I'm happy
* Tabletop gaming is for losers
* Computer RPGs are for losers
* Why not mention (insert gaming system)?
First, some background. I'm 34 years old, but I started playing 1st edition D&D when I was in 7th grade. I played D&D fairly consistently until college, but starting playing again after the 3.5 edition came out. Every campaign I've ever played in, with one brief exception for a Forgotten Realms game in high school, has been homebrew. But I'm currently playing two campaigns with the same gaming group; one person DMs their own homebrew campaign, and the other, a brand-new DM, is running an Eberron campaign.
These are some of the things I like about Eberron:
1) It takes familiar D&D staples and makes them interesting. For people who feel constrained to stick the to the Rules As Written, Eberron gently gives them permission to bend (or break) them; this can also serve to wake up players who might feel compelled to attack every goblin on sight, because "everyone knows goblins are evil". Chromatic dragons and metallic dragons are not constrained to their usual alignments. A cleric of an Eberron deity is not required to be within one step of their deity's alignment (although they still get the undead turning/rebuking options and, more importantly, the holy/unholy aura generated by the connection to their god). Clerics in Eberron are not tied to being a follower of a single deity; the Sovereign Host pantheon and the Dark Six pantheon are valid options, and Player's Guide to Eberron has clerics of an entire plane of existence and of the nation-state of Riedra. With two nations of non-humanoids -- the goblinoid empire of Darguun and the monstrous lands of the Shadow Reaches, ruled by a trio of night hags -- PC options are more varied while making intergrating backgrounds easy.
2) It makes it easy for the PCs to stand out. One of the design goals of Eberron was that the majority of NPCs will not have PC levels; they use the generic "NPC classes" from the DMG a lot, and introduce a new NPC class, the magewright (a magically-enhanced craftsmen). It also makes it easy for casual players to get up to speed in a relatively short amount of time. Many NPCs as written top out around 8th or 9th level -- the two exceptions that spring to mind are the Lord of Blades, a 12th-level NPC who is the leader of a group of warforged that assert superiority over the "fleshy" races, and the head of the Church of the Silver Flame, who has the powers of an 18th-level cleric so long as she remains in the capital city of Thrane. So in a relatively short amount of time, players can rise to the top of their game. One downside of this is that WotC provides few options for epic- or near-epic-level play in Eberron, although the Player's Guide to Eberron suggests taking one of the major themes and building a campaign around them.
3) The focus of many of the Eberron products is adding options for storytelling. There are certainly DMs who don't need a book to tell them what a human who was tainted at birth by the horrific daelkyr is capable of, or what a knight sworn to the service of the necromancy-friendly nation of Karrnath can do. But not everyone has the creativity (or more importantly, the time) to work such things out, and a gaming business doesn't make money off of the Dms who just need the core books. I tend to think of WotC products (or any D20 product, really) as options; you can either use what they provide you verbatim, you can tweak something for your own campaign -- maybe the bone knights of Karrnath become the sentinels of K'Dar, God of the Underworld in your campaign -- or you can simply use the ideas presented for inspiration. (Thrane, a nation under the mostly-benevolent rule of the Church of the Silver Flame, is a pretty good model for how a theocracy might operate in practice.)
4) Some of the Eberron products are really well-designed. Although the Ptolus sourcebook may end up surpassing it in size and depth, Sharn: City of Towers was a well-written product focused on the signature location in Eberron, taking you from the top of the highest towers t
...although not in computers, and not in Texas. (However, the supervisor who hired me became the department manager for computers, and half of my co-workers ended up as salespeople in that department; as a software sales supervisor, I worked fairly closely with them.)
All I have to say about this:
At no time did either of the [Fry's] representatives try to sell or push an extended warranty on us, but did explain the options when we asked.
is that either they were new to the sales department or they were "merchandisers", a second-tier salesperson who doesn't get commissions. Either that, or there's been a major corporate culture shift at Fry's (which would surprise me) because when I worked for them, a computer salesperson lived and died by the number of "performance guarantees" -- Fry's name for extended warranties -- they sold.
We even had periodic visits by the "PG guy" from the corporate office; a smarmy, used-car-salesman type who would do seminars on how to push PGs on people. (Thi$ guy was chee$y enough to u$e dollar $ign$ instead of $'$ in hi$ weekly PG $ale$ email$!)
I have a U.S. bank account, and I do my banking online.
The other day, my username and password were rejected. Since I had just been changing passwords on other sites, and assumed that I simply forgot what I set the new password to, I hit "Recover ID/Password".
Do you know what U.S. Online Banking wants to confirm you are who you say you are? Why, nothing more that your debit card number or account number, your PIN number, and your Social Security number. I shit you not.
Needless to say, I freaked. I checked it from another browser, viewed the certificate info, and even had my wife try to recover the password from our computer at home (I was at work) and it gave the same error messages and recovery options. Accessing my account info from phone wasn't working (it was after hours), and I needed to see if a check was deposited, so I bit the bullet and created a new password. That didn't work, either. Ultimately, I hit an ATM after work to check my balance.
The next day, I called U.S. Bank and talked to a human being. As it turned out, the reason I couldn't log in was because I had apparently used up my three failed login attempts, and it locked me out. (This was not stated in any error message; if it had, then I wouldn't have messed with the recovery feature.) I was also told that any further failed login attempts will automatically lock my account access, and I will have to call to have my access re-enabled.
Oh, and when I asked the nice human why they asked for such personal info, they say "that's how we can confirm that it's your account". I pointed out that many other online banks use custom question/answer challenges and that it conditions users to enter sensitive information without questioning, she gave the same response.
Needless to say, I plan on closing the accounts that I've had at U.S. Bank for over 16 years as soon as possible, and letting them know that their customer-hostile online banking solution is the reason why.
An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers.
Yeah, but as many others have pointed out, it inconveniences only a few thousand people (who were already having to jump through hoops to view the things in the first place).
An ironic twist would be the initial release of Wedding Crashers or Serenity being unplayable for the average person.
Games Workshop are probably the worst for this, but because their games are generally played by children nobody seems to notice/care
Where do you live that you have a bunch of kids that can afford to spend hundreds of dollars on Warhammer and WH40K? The last time I checked, you couldn't download and burn Eldar armies from the net; they take actualy money to acquire.
Around here, I don't see many people younger than 18 playing -- and those who are use armies they are borrowing from the older players (or buy at a discount).
The software in the detector picks up uncontrollable tremors in the voice that give away liars or those with something to hide, say its designers.
So if my wife and I are coming home from a vacation, and someone asks me if I have anything to declare, I get flagged as suspicious if I don't want to give away that I bought my wife's anniversary present on the trip? What about the fact that I think the female airline attendant off to the side looks great in a miniskirt?
"Something to hide" isn't always sinister, or a criminal offense.
Jay (=
I'll sincerely welcome iTunes. It will change the industry - mark my words.
Hell, video-on-demand was changing the industry before this. In a blog post about pitching TV shows, John Rogers gives a little background on the TV industry; how studios used to produce shows at a loss with the money recouped when the show sold into syndication, but now are starting to recoup that money faster by selling DVD box sets. (I wonder how much money the first season of Lost is making for ABC?)
It's a fairly well-known anecdote that the box sets for the first season of Babylon 5 made enough money to pay the production costs of that season. (IMO, the same would not be true if it had been direct-to-DVD from the start; I didn't like the first season of B5 originally, and it wasn't until the show was over and I re-watched the first season that I came to appreciate it, though it's still not my favorite.) Everybody who reads Slashdot is aware of the role the sales of the Firefly box set contributed to Serenity being made.
Personally, I've bought one TV episode from iTunes music store -- I bought the premiere of The Night Stalker both to see if the show was any good, and to see what the video quality was like. To me, the initial TV offerings aren't enough to make me want to spend a lot of money on it so far; but if Apple were to get SciFi on board, and offer episodes of Battlestar Galactica? Hmm...
Jay (=
A question for anyone with a new iMac G5 who has also bought a video from the music store. Do these videos integrate with Front Row at all?
Yes, they do. The "Video" segment of Front Row breaks your videos into "Music Videos", "TV Shows", "Video Podcasts", and "Movies" (which is a generic catch-all for any videos in your Movies folder in your Home directory as well as videos that you've imported into iTunes).
(FYI, it is possible to use Front Row on machines other than the new iMac...)
Because 1% of $20.5 billion is still over $20 million. Given the low production and distribution costs of most of these small games, revenues of $100,000 would still earn major profit.
I find it interesting that people think getting 1% of a $20 billion pie is worth the effort to develop games, yet when it's pointed out that non-Windows operating systems make up, say, 6%-10% of the user base for home PCs, the response is "you can't spend that much development time/money on such a small piece of the market, it doesn't make sense."
I realize that we're comparing Mackintosh and Red Delicious here (hmm, didn't realize the irony in that statement until I typed it) -- that Small Garage Studio turning out a Bejeweled or Tetris-style puzzler isn't the same, technically or logistically, as porting Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War to the Mac -- but it makes me think that there might be more to the anti-Mac and anti-Linux gaming crowd's viewpoint than mere "market forces".
Jay (=
... which is to say: ads for items, or promotions, of dubious legality.
* "Get Windows XP and Office XP for only $80! Photoshop CS for $25!"
* "Punch the monkey/shoot the spaceship/answer our idiotic trivia question and get a free iPod/XBox360/PSP/blahblah!"
* "Download all the movies/TV shows your want for FREE!"
If the future of web advertising means an increasing amount of get-rich-quick schemes, scams, and "giveaways" that require me to surrender a major organ or yet-to-be-born offspring, then I expect to increase the usage of technologies that prevent me from being exposed to said advertising.
Jay (=
#1 is unlikely to happen - it's nigh impossible to contact every copyright owner in even a medium sized project and get their approval.
It depends on the project; some open source projects ask contributors to transfer copyright to the project, so there's no need to go hunting everyone down. Just because it's impractical or nigh-impossible in many cases doesn't mean it's not a legitimate option.
#2 is exactly what this so-called infection is about. The GPL has the nasty habit of making sure that every derived work will be GPL too. (what actually makes up a derived work is still up to debate, but according to the FSF it covers about everything. Regarding the so-called GPL-compatibility: I'll come to that.)
You still seem to believe that the license forces this "infection". It cannot. Licenses don't do anything; they are a piece of paper, enumerating rights and responsibilities. A judge might render a verdict making such a license change compulsory, or the copyright holder may accept such a change as part of a settlement, but that's not the GPL doing it.
#3 usually reads "Use something else". Which is a good solution indeed, if available, but you can question whether it serves the greater purpose. If GNU readline would've had a sensible license (like LGPL), there wouldn't have been people working on a replacement library under a less restrictive license. Now they have been, and this time could've been spent better.
Other that you have to reinvent the wheel, I fail to see why #3 is not a valid option. You seem to be confusing inconvenient options with invalid options.
#4 is just fine, if you weren't interested in distributing it to begin with. For example, when all you wanted to do is use it.
The GPLv2 doesn't cover use; it covers distribution. If all you want to do is use it, the GPLv2 has no power to force your code open.
Jay (=
The GPL, in fact, guarantees that if GPL'd software is used in another product, both products then become infected by the GPL and the resulting work is then covered by the GPL.
This is, sadly, a common misunderstanding when it comes to the GPL. By using the term "infected", you are either misinformed or attempting to misinform; I'll assume the former...
If you use code licensed by the GPL in your closed-source work and you get "caught" distributing it, you have four options:
The copyright holder of the GPLed code can not force you to pick any particular one of the options (except, by the definition of the GPL, you must do #4 if you can't or won't do #1, #2 or #3). You are the copyright holder of your code, and cannot have your license changed against your will any more than they can have the license of their work changed against their will.
Jay (=
Not necessarily...
From "Barely Legal: The hottest trend in file sharing"
no, what bittorrent needs to implement is some kind of encrypted protection or key for trackers so that any attempt to subvert them is a DMCA violation. turn their own weapon against them.
That doesn't work. The DMCA allows copyright holders or content distributors to use encryption/DRM to secure their own copyrighted works (or works that they have permission to distribute, e.g. iTunes Music Store).
Good luck trying to convince a judge that it should apply to your unauthorized distribution method.
Captain America
...that we'll forget that we tried this once already -- with David Hasselhoff as Fury.
Didn't they do this one and it sucked?
Yes. twice, if you count the crappy 70's TV show.
The Avengers
A facless hero clan. I can't even name a single hero in this group.
The Avengers are Marvel's version of the Justice League -- all of the big-name characters in one book.
Which is why the movie will suck; they may get away with not having to do Captain America's origin (or the Hulk's if they stick to the classic Avengers origin), but they'll have to do Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man/Giant-man/Yellowjacket/Dr. Pym ( yes, the same guy in four different costumes); not to mention, which B-list Avengers will be in the movie? Scarlet Witch? Hawkeye? (who's a pile of ashes in the Avengers at the momentally)? Vision (an android that can vary his density)?
What villian(s) so you use? Loki? Kang the Conquerer? Ultron?
Nick Fury
I guess because the Punisher movie worked so well...
Black Panther
Ah, a hero named after a hyper-racist group. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Aside from the unfortunate name (a holdover from an unfortunate time when Marvel prefaced many of the names of its black superheros with the word "Black", in case you couldn't figure it out from their skin tone), the recent incarnation of the series by Christopher Priest wasn't too bad. As it was deconstructing the character and his existing storyline, it kinda required you to have some familiarity with the character, though.
Ant-Man
Honey, I shrunk the superhero!
Given the lack of name recognition, a good director and good script could make this work. (Of course, the current Ant-Man is also dead, a victim of the same storyline that killed Hawkeye.)
Cloak & Dagger
Not that Cloak was a completely contrived character, or that Dagger wore far too little clothing, but how could this movie possibly be interesting?
Eh, I dunno. Make it more of a gothic horror story than a straight superhero story, and it might work.
Dr. Strange
Who?
A powerful mage (the "Sorcerer Supreme"), whose origin recently was retold in a mini-series by J. Michael Straczynski. Think Constantine, but hopefully more faithful to the actual character. (He also got the bad 80's movie treatment, which wasn't too bad except for the horrible costume -- purple with a yellow cape! AIEEE!)
Hawkeye
Ah, Daredevil without charisma, but empowered with a ridiculous costume.
And currently dead. (Not that that'd stop 'em.)
Power Pack
Never heard of them.
This one might actually work very well, if they aim for the "Spy Kids"/Kim Possible crowd. (Okay, a bit higher than that...) Four young siblings, ages 5 to 13, find a crashed alien spaceship whose dying pilot transfers one of his powers to each of the siblings -- matter/energy conversion, flight, control over personal mass (going from super-small and super-dense to a large gaseous form), and gravity amplification/negation on himself and anything he touched -- to defend Earth against the alien invaders that were following him. (The nice thing about the original incarnation of the comic series is that the kids were written like real kids, not miniature superheroes. The powers could be transferred between the siblings, which led to some interesting stories...)
Shang-Chi
Is this like the token Asian guy?
Kind of; your generic kung-fu action character.
I think they probably need to stick with their franchise heros and stay away from these B and C-list zeroes.
I hate to break it to you, but until the movie, Blade was among the "B- and C-list heroes". At the time the first movie came out, they were in the process of canceling his current series, after only about 6 issues; they didn't try to give him another one until after the second movie came out, IIRC
It covers basic cross-browser development techniques, and some developing strategies for overcoming the differences between both browsers.
Country and western?
A but oversensitive, are we?
The article is about porting an IE-based web app to Mozilla-based browsers.
Would you write an article comparing Mac OS X to Windows XP, then spend a paragraph talking about FreeBSD? If so, I hope you've got a good editor...
I've watched the pilot. Clever, but the first half _sucks_. Uses pretty much every cliche in the book.
Clichés are clichés for a reason. They work because they meet the viewers' expectations.
I assume you're talking about the setup for the show, where we get the "what is the Global Frequency" talk, the introduction of the "new guy" into the world of the series, etc.
I'm curious how you would handle the following:
without ending up with either the pilot we got or having something like this at the beginning of the show?
By the way, this wasn't the final pilot; the GF ringtone was only a placeholder, and the music wasn't finished either. It was a version that was shopped around to networks, which would have been finished had they been picked up. John Rogers, the producer, said he would've reshot elements of the pilot they been picked up, particulaly the opening scene in the alley.
Jay (=
So they say Rosetta won't run OS 9 apps... isn't it time Classic is laid to rest once and for all? You need to step forward at some point.
No kidding. I made a conscious decision to not install OS 9 when I upgraded to Panther, and I haven't missed it at all.
Every major shrinkwrap product has had at least one, maybe two releases since OS X came out; there are probably lots of custom market apps that haven't, but if you're still using those, My guess is you're still happy with the hardware it's running on. (And there are plenty of 68K Macs floating around still, not to mention pre-G3 Power Macs.)
Jay
As long as there are free episodes to download, charging won't work.
No kidding. Everyone knows that no one will pay to download music from the internet.
If people can get something from the commercial download experience that they can't get from the, um, "unlicensed" versions, they'll pay.
Since BTEfnet and the other TV sites went down, I've lost my handy RSS feed, which made my downloading a lot easier (and faster, with eveyone downloading from the same source at the same time). Right now I scrape several smaller torrent sites to find the 3 or 4 shows I can't live without.
Here's what I'd like to see from an internet TV distribution format (let's call it "iTV", to be completely unoriginal):
I get the shows I want to watch, and only the shows I want to watch. "iTV" gets a wealth of detailed viewing habits which they could turn over to networks (aggregated, of course) to determine future programming.
The first big question mark is "how much do I want to pay?" It'd be hard for me to justify paying more than $2 an episode; at 22 episodes a season, that's $44, which is the price of a DVD box set (depending on the show). The second big question mark is "what kind of copy proection will the networks want?" I don't find the iTunes restrictions all that cumbersome -- 5 PCs, unlimited iPods, burning to a CD. Something where I can watch on a selected number of PCs, but be able to burn to disc for backups, or portable/loaner viewing, that would be nice.
Jay (=