If Nintendo (for some insane reason) decided tomorrow to stop manufacturing Wiis, and let them sell out, they would still stand a good chance of winning this generation (which will probably only last 3-4 more years). They're that far ahead.
You're being dense. Poster was talking about current price of the Wii, versus the then-current price of the PS2 at the same point in its lifetime. Not the "as of 10/28/08" price.
(A implies B) does not imply (not-A implies not-B). The original poster was saying IF there is a god (of any sort, THEN life has value. This seems like a fairly reasonable thing to say. There is of course the possibility that God exists, but couldn't care less about puny mortals, but the consensus among most religions is that they do.
The statement DOES imply "If life has no value, then it's likely there is no god", but it says nothing about what might be true if there is no god.
There is also the not-at-all-a-small-issue of anonymity. Your voting mechanism must ensure that a particular account number (i.e. a voter's identity) can be used at most one time per election. And you have to record what it was used for anonymously so that what was done with the account literally cannot be traced back to the account holder.
Most of the common credit card fraud-prevention schemes (such as date/time stamping every transaction) violate this. Not really a surprise, since the credit card system is designed to enforce accountability, the antithesis of anonymity (the whole purpose of anonymity is to avoid accountability).
Fundamentally, anonymity is about removing traceability information, and fraud prevention is about maintaining it. These are both core requirements, and they directly work against one another.
I can see where you're coming from with this, but that isn't a 'right'. It's a 'demand', and a fairly selfish one at that. Nintendo should be forced to license their IPs out to their arch-nemeses? (I mean, aside from Sega;) Companies should be forced to release ports even for systems that can't handle the load?
In theory, this might be true. But in practice, it's bad for business indirectly. Most sales right now are thru traditional retail channels, and those channels will be really pissed off if a publisher were to do this. They would view it as a betrayal, as sabotage. From their perspective, if this is done, they will lose a lot of sales to the online transfers.
Sure, if it was the next Halo, they'd probably suck it up. But their displeasure will manifest itself in other ways that you won't really like -- the next time you want to do a heavy marketing campaign to shore up a mediocre game, for instance, they might block it in their stores. Pissing off your main partners -- the people who move 90% of your units -- is a death wish.
This is changing, as electronic distribution will change everything eventually. But even then, they might move to press-on-demand (they'll have a machine in the back to literally manufacture a copy on demand). The other main reason stores are good? People like to browse. They'll buy other games just because they see them in the store. Electronic distro threatens THAT as well.
The tidbit in this article that I found depressing? That nobody has been prosecuted for perjury on a patent application in thirty years. And why did this happen? The patent office axed the department that used to investigate this.
No wonder everything's all screwed up. There isn't even a fox there to guard the henhouse, it's just wide open.
Unicorn? Did the man say he believed in unicorns? Santa Claus, sure, but unicorns? You know how many letters Santa Claus gets from little kids who want unicorns? Any of them ever get one? Obviously ol' Saint Nick would come through... if unicorns were real.
The constitution specifically delegates this authority to the states: it is each state's resposibility to govern its own elections, including federal elections. You would need a constitutional amendment to make this happen.
I especially like his explanation for why he did this: "I found myself wondering why someone didn't do a nice unbiased comparison of this information. Then I realized I'm someone."
Would this idea sound silly if it were attached to other media? Then it's silly when attached to the Internet. And it seems to me applying this to conventional media would be a farce: imagine, for example, trying to come up with a "truthometer reading" for C-SPAN.
Agreed. They still programmed the game to self-destruct. On purpose. So it's still unacceptable; If there's even a chance that, should I want to replay the game in 10 years, but I pop the game in and can't install it, then I'm not buying it. And if your game isn't good enough I'd want to play it twice, it's probably not good enough I'd want to play it once either.
Fundamentally, there is an important point with DRM on works of culture that's not applicable when applied to the things DRM is usually applied to. At work, for example, the provider of our middleware application has implemented license checks that could cause the same kind of issue. But a middleware app won't work cause it won't activate anymore? It's probably out of support anyway, time to move to a new version.
Businesses don't usually need a particular version -- and if they do, and it's a big enough showstopper, the vendor comes out and does a hot fix so new-version does what old-version did better. (Yes you can, I've seen it. You just have to need it badly enough.)
Games are different. Halo 2 is not the same as Halo. Twilight Princess is a very different game from Zelda 64. The "upgraded" original Star Wars trilogy cuts are widely seen as inferior to the original versions. Then there are games like Planescape: Torment, which is essentially unreleaseable (Interplay died, D&D license expired, uses 2nd edition, content wouldn't pass Hasbro's restrictions). So while enforcing obsolesence on middleware *might* be OK, it's definitely not OK to make video games that are essentially guaranteed not to work in 10 years.
So nice try, EA. Good, but not good enough. Games have an aesthetic quality; a given game is totally unique and irreplaceable -- that's why we like them.
Furthermore, why did he need to get more than 30 seperate logins in order to do a "penetration test"?
But regardless. The bad guys are winning, even though this guy is an idiot, he was trying to help; If I was walking down the street, and saw someone's front door standing wide open with a roll of big bills clearly visible... and I walked inside, and looked around for the owner -- technically, that's breaking and entering. But does anyone actually get prosecuted for that?
So I dunno. On the one hand, we need to encourage the good guys, because the bad guys aren't following any rules anyway. On the other hand, this guy isn't exactly the best example of a good guy.
No, he's saying that there are plenty of old games that didn't stand the test of time. In fact, all the games that people remember from that time are the ones that DID.
Perhaps you were not aware that Pacman for Atari was an unmitigated disaster, that most analysts think contributed to the crash? That it was nothing like the arcade version - graphics, sound, and even the boards were different and inferior?
Slashdot Mirror
I am intrigued by your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your wailing list.
If Nintendo (for some insane reason) decided tomorrow to stop manufacturing Wiis, and let them sell out, they would still stand a good chance of winning this generation (which will probably only last 3-4 more years). They're that far ahead.
You're being dense. Poster was talking about current price of the Wii, versus the then-current price of the PS2 at the same point in its lifetime. Not the "as of 10/28/08" price.
Where is the "-1, Informative" moderation option?
This is a much better idea. But if you really must do it your way ... Hire me. I'll take care of everything.
(A implies B) does not imply (not-A implies not-B). The original poster was saying IF there is a god (of any sort, THEN life has value. This seems like a fairly reasonable thing to say. There is of course the possibility that God exists, but couldn't care less about puny mortals, but the consensus among most religions is that they do.
The statement DOES imply "If life has no value, then it's likely there is no god", but it says nothing about what might be true if there is no god.
There is also the not-at-all-a-small-issue of anonymity. Your voting mechanism must ensure that a particular account number (i.e. a voter's identity) can be used at most one time per election. And you have to record what it was used for anonymously so that what was done with the account literally cannot be traced back to the account holder.
Most of the common credit card fraud-prevention schemes (such as date/time stamping every transaction) violate this. Not really a surprise, since the credit card system is designed to enforce accountability, the antithesis of anonymity (the whole purpose of anonymity is to avoid accountability).
Fundamentally, anonymity is about removing traceability information, and fraud prevention is about maintaining it. These are both core requirements, and they directly work against one another.
Well, a kernel panic would be bad ... but what you really gotta watch out for? while(true) {fork(); }
...
I think Michael Crichton might have written a book about this already
I can see where you're coming from with this, but that isn't a 'right'. It's a 'demand', and a fairly selfish one at that. Nintendo should be forced to license their IPs out to their arch-nemeses? (I mean, aside from Sega ;) Companies should be forced to release ports even for systems that can't handle the load?
Not a bad idea, but needs a rethink.
Well, personally, I'd open the conversation with '; DROP TABLE Conversations. Just to make sure.
In theory, this might be true. But in practice, it's bad for business indirectly. Most sales right now are thru traditional retail channels, and those channels will be really pissed off if a publisher were to do this. They would view it as a betrayal, as sabotage. From their perspective, if this is done, they will lose a lot of sales to the online transfers.
Sure, if it was the next Halo, they'd probably suck it up. But their displeasure will manifest itself in other ways that you won't really like -- the next time you want to do a heavy marketing campaign to shore up a mediocre game, for instance, they might block it in their stores. Pissing off your main partners -- the people who move 90% of your units -- is a death wish.
This is changing, as electronic distribution will change everything eventually. But even then, they might move to press-on-demand (they'll have a machine in the back to literally manufacture a copy on demand). The other main reason stores are good? People like to browse. They'll buy other games just because they see them in the store. Electronic distro threatens THAT as well.
You'll be able to actually force choke people, and you're complaining that it's not efficient? So close, yet so far ...
The tidbit in this article that I found depressing? That nobody has been prosecuted for perjury on a patent application in thirty years. And why did this happen? The patent office axed the department that used to investigate this.
No wonder everything's all screwed up. There isn't even a fox there to guard the henhouse, it's just wide open.
Unicorn? Did the man say he believed in unicorns? Santa Claus, sure, but unicorns? You know how many letters Santa Claus gets from little kids who want unicorns? Any of them ever get one? Obviously ol' Saint Nick would come through ... if unicorns were real.
A 20 oz soda from a vending machine costs a buck. Why can't you get 2 ounces for 10 cents?
What do you mean? As long as the one text editor he learns is EMACS, he should be fine.
*duck*
That's why I always set people's heads on fire after I cut them off.
Just one? Tch, you lack imagination. But then, I suppose that's why you aren't designing 3D solar cells ...
The constitution specifically delegates this authority to the states: it is each state's resposibility to govern its own elections, including federal elections. You would need a constitutional amendment to make this happen.
I especially like his explanation for why he did this: "I found myself wondering why someone didn't do a nice unbiased comparison of this information. Then I realized I'm someone."
Would this idea sound silly if it were attached to other media? Then it's silly when attached to the Internet. And it seems to me applying this to conventional media would be a farce: imagine, for example, trying to come up with a "truthometer reading" for C-SPAN.
Agreed. They still programmed the game to self-destruct. On purpose. So it's still unacceptable; If there's even a chance that, should I want to replay the game in 10 years, but I pop the game in and can't install it, then I'm not buying it. And if your game isn't good enough I'd want to play it twice, it's probably not good enough I'd want to play it once either.
Fundamentally, there is an important point with DRM on works of culture that's not applicable when applied to the things DRM is usually applied to. At work, for example, the provider of our middleware application has implemented license checks that could cause the same kind of issue. But a middleware app won't work cause it won't activate anymore? It's probably out of support anyway, time to move to a new version.
Businesses don't usually need a particular version -- and if they do, and it's a big enough showstopper, the vendor comes out and does a hot fix so new-version does what old-version did better. (Yes you can, I've seen it. You just have to need it badly enough.)
Games are different. Halo 2 is not the same as Halo. Twilight Princess is a very different game from Zelda 64. The "upgraded" original Star Wars trilogy cuts are widely seen as inferior to the original versions. Then there are games like Planescape: Torment, which is essentially unreleaseable (Interplay died, D&D license expired, uses 2nd edition, content wouldn't pass Hasbro's restrictions). So while enforcing obsolesence on middleware *might* be OK, it's definitely not OK to make video games that are essentially guaranteed not to work in 10 years.
So nice try, EA. Good, but not good enough. Games have an aesthetic quality; a given game is totally unique and irreplaceable -- that's why we like them.
> It's hard to imagine how he could have been nicer than sending that 16-page paper detailing how
> he breached the university's security.
Asking first?
Furthermore, why did he need to get more than 30 seperate logins in order to do a "penetration test"?
... and I walked inside, and looked around for the owner -- technically, that's breaking and entering. But does anyone actually get prosecuted for that?
But regardless. The bad guys are winning, even though this guy is an idiot, he was trying to help; If I was walking down the street, and saw someone's front door standing wide open with a roll of big bills clearly visible
So I dunno. On the one hand, we need to encourage the good guys, because the bad guys aren't following any rules anyway. On the other hand, this guy isn't exactly the best example of a good guy.
No, he's saying that there are plenty of old games that didn't stand the test of time. In fact, all the games that people remember from that time are the ones that DID.
Perhaps you were not aware that Pacman for Atari was an unmitigated disaster, that most analysts think contributed to the crash? That it was nothing like the arcade version - graphics, sound, and even the boards were different and inferior?