Has anyone considered a service which would be composed of hackers (in the correct sense of the word) that would offer to run the gambit of security attacks at a given IP range, and then report back on this with suggestions of how to lock the system down more? Like the services that Redford and co. were doing for physical security in the movie Sneakers?
Sure, there would be a lot of initial paperwork (guarentee said requestor owns or manages the IP range), and a LOT, I mean a LOT, of trust between the requestor and said team that if there was a security problem, the team would not take advantage of it. In addition, this group would have to stay ahead of the script kiddies, possibly roaming in their irc channel so that they keep up on lame attacks.
Sure there are programs like Saint that can capture some of this, but this certainly isn't best that one can ask for. I also know there are industral groups that you can pay $$$$ for to have this done, but they tend to be about a month behind (roughly). So this isn't good for the hom user.
Note that I don't think many home linux box users are lazy. Most keep up with the distro updates, and take advice that is given in the articles here (like the inetd stuff). However, there are holes found all the time, not necessarily reported to lists like bugtraq, and even if reported, it is hard to check to see if one is truely vunerable from inside your own network. The service I describe is not meant to be a replacement for your own work in securing the box. But it should help supplement it, and make finding those last security holes easier.
Only problem with the advisor idea is the same problem with Kaplan and his former employment with TW in the decss case - any person involved with the judical system and employed on a permanent basis can be in no way imparitial to every case he sees. Most judges are ethical and step down or pass the case along to a different judge if there is a conflict, and I would suspect similar advice could apply to a tech advisor, but I would expect that there would be very few of these compared to the number of judges, and so passing on the task will not be easy.
OTOH, if the case could call for a technically qualified person in that field, maybe the two parties could pick an advisor from said case as with jury selection -- but again, the numbers of people that will be willing here would be low and this basically amounts to having the expert witness. Generally expert witnesses are supposed to be unbiased and are necessary to clear up the scientific mumblings of the law, just to so the side that does bring him in that *science*, not what the guy said, but the fundamental laws of science, are in that side's favor.
1) I doubt tech courts would have helped 2600 -- as the other article today points out, this is more of a free speech issue as 2600 never created the code, though there are issues as the use of the code. But the creation of such courts could be a good think.
2) Unfortunately, there are too many issues at stack *right now* that by the time the tech courts would be in place, these issues would have exhausted their appeals process. Take a look at the problems with the Patent office in getting computer technological compenent people into place.
3) Very very commonly, cases involving sciences use an expert witness, generally a scientist or engineer that is unrelated to the case but an expert in the field. I would think a similar system would work for computer experts, however, there is something of an informal fraternity of
geekdome throughout this area, so that finding a computer expert that was imparital to the deCSS case would probably be very difficult. But I don't see why this can't be attempted at least.
On a related note, if you haven't followed the entertainment news, tomorrow night should be an interesting night on the show Big Brother. I don't watch it myself, but it's like watching a train wreck - you know it's terrible but you can't help looking anyway.
The deal is, last week the producers offered the remaining 6 contestants $500k to walk out of the house; the contestant that left would be replaced by a buxom young blonde (seriously!) for the remainder of the show. None of the contestants took it, and were themselves outraged that all 6 are threatening to walk out of the house at the same time as to end the show and to split the grand prize 6 ways. CBS is of course furious if this happens, but many predict this might be the windfall for the 'real life' gameshows if networks try to intervien too much into them.
I'm not saying that there isn't a difference, but beyond the type of gameplay (shoot-first-ask-later, vs, look-first-shoot-later), it's the similar control set, and similar challenges can be done in both views. In IJ, I still had to look in the right direction within a few degrees to aim, though there was a bit of auto-aiming allocated. But, it was no worse in Doom (for horizontal aiming, lets ignore the vertical problems:D) or Quake, which are true FPS. Some of the puzzle challenges that were in Half-Life were of similar nature to those in IJ, and didn't require you to look at the third person to see everything going on. IMO, the choice of first vs third person camera is a personal preference, and ought to be an option in most games, unless there is good reason not to (For example, Populous the Beginning).
Plus the third person view can give you problems you don't expect. One thing I recall was in IJ; as you rotate the camera up over Indy, you could see over walls that from a first person view, you couldn't; this could include things like enemies or objects that you needed to aquire. Certainly not cheating, but somewhat unrealistic; how much it can detract from gameplay is questionable.
But getting back to the original point; whether a FPS or TPS, these games tend not to have the same traits as puzzle games like Monkey Island or Myst.
Another possible measure, if what the Napster execs would like everyone to believe, is to look at the variety of CDs sold, not neccessary just total sales.
For example, assume 1 million CDs were sold, up from 900,000 last year, adjusted for a GNP-like indicator. That might indicate that Napster helped, but then one needs to look at the breakdown of the average number of sales per album. An audience that is buying a wider variety of music would cost the average numbers of sales per album to drop, as there are more albums being bought across the board. On the other hand, if one or two albums dominate the market and artificially increase the market, then the average number goes up. So if last year, there was an average of 50,000 sales per CD title, and that number didn't change even though album sales were up, it would tend to indicate that nothing has really changes. If it went up to 75,000/CD, then the market saturation problem is in effect and nullifies Napster's arguement. If it dropped to 25,000/CD, then there's good evidence that people are buying a wider range of music, and thus there's a bit more evidence for Napster here.
Of course, probably the only people with the ability to analyze such numbers is RIAA. In addition, these numbers would probably poorly reflect on the non-RIAA independent music distributors' contribution to the CD market -- most good alternative titles come from here, but doubtful that RIAA would track their sales too.
True, I do know that you can't technically call IJ a first person from the standpoint of where the camera angle is. However, given the engine and the style of play, there is no reason why this could be a first-person type camera -- it's just the way the programmers wanted it. Same with Tomb Raider and Heretic II, for example. Some games allow the switch back and forth (Half-Life allows this for example). The fact that it can be done so easily and the choice between a 'first-person' and a 'third-person' camera is a programming decision means that I'd classify all such games as "FPS". That doesn't mean there's more distinctions within this group; Tomb Raider and Heretic II, from the demo, for example, is mostly shooting, while IJ is a mix of puzzle solving and shooting.
On the other hand, games where the first person view is impossible to do, such as Baulder's Gate or Diablo I/II, would be a Thrid Person game, but these generally fall into the RPG catagory. Probably the best example of a true TPS would be a game like Space Invaders.
First, the/. title seems to be misleading, as it suggests that only text-adventure games are 'targetted' by the article, but my reading of the piece in question suggests that any non-free-form games, such as Monkey Island, Myst, etc, are a dying breed.
People need to realize that action games and puzzle games (the ones listed above) are two different genres that have yet to compete with each other except in a few isolated titles [*]. For every puzzle game that is put out, there are easily 3 if not more quake-like clones, the action market gets that much more visibility.
Additionally, at this point in time with technology, it's very hard to do a truely complete puzzle game that is completely free-form, as the mustache example tries to emphasize. You'd have to create a small subset of the Grand Unified Theory in order to deal with every sitution that the player may attempt. This, of course, is impractical, so there is a very limited subset of actions that you can do.
But my biggest beef is the choice of example. Gabriel Knight's not very good as a puzzle game. Better examples tend to be anything from LucasArts, including the Monkey Island triology and Grim Fandango. The objects that you collect tend to have very unique properties, that fit in the game at only one place, but generally have good, funny responses if you try to use them elsewhere that are a near match. To that extent, it shows that the game designs tried to anticipate all actions the users might want to do, and add appropriate actions or responses for flavoring. They also drop more than enough hints, but you have to make sure you talk to everyone and look at everything.
Puzzle gaming is far from dead. It's just that there's a vast difference for most players of puzzle genre and fps genre.
[*] Some of the recent FPS/RPG combos (System Shock 2, Deus Ex) come somewhat close, while Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is more puzzle that FPS, even though it is a FPS.
According to what was posted, it is sugggested that the guy's idea at former company X was written into a patent and then more fluff was added then the guy deamed necessary to be patentable.
In my research during chemical engineering, this situation is not only common, it's generally the way to approach chemical patents. In otherwords, say you develop Chemical Y. Chemical Y has a certain compositional makeup that might involve a metal and lots of other bits. You run and find chemical Y is good for a certain process, thus naturally you want to patent Y. Most patent lawyers and experts suggest that you want to patent as many chemicals that are close in composition to Y as you can (for example, if the metal you had was platinum, they'd insist you also claim the similar chemical based on palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, etc. because these all have similar chemical properties), even though you never actually made those materials or tested them.
What will then happen is that unless there's a major conflict with prior patents, you'll get all those derivatives of Y, including Y, patented. Later, someone may come down the road and ask to invalid your claim to a derivative of Y because you never made it, and you'd probably lose that claim in the patent, which is no big loss, because your Chemical Y is still bringing in the licensing bucks. Individual claims of a patent can be invalided, but not necessarily the whole patent itself.
On the other hand, if you only patented Y, and then find down the road that a derivative of Y is much better and would lead you more profit margins, you would have to reapply for that patent. And between the time that the Y patent comes out and you start the derivative of Y patent, someone may have beat you to the punch and gotten the patent on the derivative of Y already, especially if the change between Y and it's derivative is 'intuitively obvious', (eg, someone used a palladium version of Y instead of platinum that is part of Y).
The analogy (arrrg!) I've heard here is that if you want a bathtub of water, ask for the ocean -- it's easier to deny you parts until you get your bathtub and maybe a bit more, than it is to ask for a glass of water but you really want the bathtub.
Sure, this applies easily to chemical patents, but could also apply to business model or computer-related patents. When you read the patents here on slashdot, they seem to cover everything and the kitchen sink, but just like above, they are trying to include as much as possible to make the patent just that more valuable. If you want to see what the real meat of a patent is, the part that the company really wants to make sure they have, look at the Examples section or the support information, or look at the first claim, and nothing else. Consider every Claim beyond the first, especially those that start "The same as in Claim 1 expect where...", as the icing on the cake.
Not that I agree with the actions that those have these large encompassing patents, but this is how the patent field, as I've been exposed to it, seems to work. And it should be noted that for at least chemical patents, there *are* competent people on the patent board and generally frivolous patents there don't get issued, but as last I heard, they are still striving to fill positions for computer experts to help with the newer technology patents.
Not disagreeing here, but to throw the monkey wrench into the works....
For 20 years, there was never a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. Oh, sure, there
were thousands of papers and reports that said such, but until only the last few years were Big Tobacco able to pay off and deflect these attacks, usually by attacking the integrity of the researchers or practices used. Thus, for 20 years, the warning on a cigarette box label always read : "Smoking *may be* hazardous to your health". We've finally gotten to the point where it is indeed hazardous to your health, and the relation between smoking and cancer is a fundamental scientific fact.
I very much doubt cel phone makers are going out and buying off or attacking anyone that does research relating tumors and cel phone radition. But this is a hint of doubt there. And since the masses generally are unable to (or are negligent in how to) access scientific literature, they depend on media (which can be bought off) for such information. A few billion dollars could easily go a long way in this area.
Definitely agreed, as long as the non-value added thing remains free (as in beer). Can we say "Remastered Star Wars movies"?
Another option that I would do that would work well for e-books is embedded ads. For example, between chapters of a book as you read it in Acrobat would be a full 'page' ad for Pepsi,
or something that would target the book's intended readers well. Then you shouldn't have to
give up any parts of the work in the free version,
and yet still have the same result. Note of course that the ads have to be static with no phone-home effect like most banner ads -- I'll accept ads as long as its not trying to collect information on me. And of course, this really only works in the realm of books, because as pointed out, there is a drastic difference between the reading experience of an ebook and a real book, compared with an MP3 or a CD, and the fact that the technology won't be there for several years to handle all cases where people read books (such as sunglare on LCD problems) which are nonexistant for mp3 players.
While I have my own reservations on on the China bill and the H1-B visa bill, the others are generally positive for 'net growth. As stated, there *are* some bills that are good for us in addition to those admittedly poor.
Now, while it's important to write your congressperson when a bad bill is approaching, I think we should also write showing our support of these bills. At worst you might get ignored, but
given how much negative push we give the lawmakers, writing lettings that let them know that us, the consumers and users of the internet, are strongly in favor of said bills is very important.
From what everyone hints at, all it does is that if it sees a mail packet go through the ISP's routers[*], it looks at the mail message until it has FROM: and TO: (and possibly other relay headers), then if needed, it grabs
the rest of the email for storage.
Which means that using the standard email protocols, you can encrypt the message itself to your heart's content, but you're still sending delievry information in the clear, which means Carnivore will still pick it up. It's akin to being able to look at envelopes that are spitted out through the post office system, and plucking out the ones that have the address you are interested in. But in the case of email, it's generally a bit worse as most text is sent in the clear. (And no, I don't think that encryption for everyone is the answer -- it should not have to come to this, is the point).
[*] I suspect it has to be on routers (the last point before the packet is sent to the internet backbone) as opposed to on the mail server as 1) many ISPs have multiple mail servers, and 2) any person smart enough with a home box can easily bypass their ISP's mailserver if they don't rely on that email address, including either using their own box or a 'friendly' open relay box for smtp processing.
Technically, it should be Omnivore -- as it looks at *all* email. (If it was truly targeted at only one email address, then Carnivore would make more sense.).
Re:Who really needs a lesson
on
Lawsuits Suck
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· Score: 3
I would say that most of us at least here on/. are doing as much as we can against a corrupt gov't system that has too much influence by business interests. It all comes down to money, we the have-nots against the haves.
Corporations have battled and gotten overly strong IP protection, ability to enforce licenses that counteract fair use, and nearly to the point of power of policing consumers without gov't interference. Yet consumers, by far the people that the gov't should be most worried about, can't get the gov't to pass decent privacy regulations (instead, the gov't passes it down to a industry committee, just lovely). And all because corporations can easy toss millions to the right ears and get what they want.
I would like to believe the myth that if every constituent writes their rep and tells them they are against a bill, that the rep will vote against the bill. It's probably also a myth that every congressperson is under the thumb of some corporate interest, and listens to one person rather than 1 million people they are supposed to represent. Reality is somewhere in between, but I would suspect it's closer to the latter.
So even if we were given plenty of opportunity to respond to DCMA, I believe that the outcome would have been the same - it would have passed by a voice vote without question. Only rare cases occure where corporate-endorsed laws may get revoked, such as the "work for hire" case, but that's because every famous artist (PEOPLE WITH MONEY) jumped at the cause.
Not to turn this political, but this is why this election is important to me -- I'm voting against special interests. Get rid or limit the ability of special interests to influence the lawmaking ability, and then the constituents have a fair chance of affecting their congressperson's vote.
A story that I tried to submit but was rejected was on 4 major medical groups (AMA was one) connecting violent games to violent behavior.
But as this report stated - not all violent game players are violent, and not all violence comes from violent game playing. Only that there is significance in the data connected violent actions of youth to violent game playing. I don't doubt the result, considering that they probably lump things like tempertantrums, disobedience, and such rather mundane things into violent actions.
I completely agree -- it's not censorship (though you'll notice that Kmart doesn't sell anything above M ratings, though I can't imagine what those might be:). This is *not* like removing all copies of Soldier of Fortune, or hiding violent video games from non-violent ones. This is more akin to beer sales -- intoxication by beer can lead to violent and dangerous actions, and while/. ppl may want to deny it, violent video games have a causal link to violent actions as well (but not all violent game players are violent, as much as not all beer drinkers are violent). And if you and your parents think that you can handle the game, you can have them buy it for you, or if you even want to avoid your parents, there's plenty of on-line places to plop your money down.
However, I do think that we set a rather high and arbitrary age for what is considered to be an adult. The only reason 18 sticks out is that 99.9+% of the ppl have finished puberty, and therefore will be sane the rest of their lives winkwink. I'm in favor of what I call an adult card - you automatically get one when you turn 18, but prior to that point, if your parents and at least two other people outside relatives ( teachers, employers, coaches) believe that you are sufficiently responsible, you can get an adult card as early as 13. Having an adult card grants you those privalegies, such as being able to see R-rated files w/o parents, buying M rated games, and so forth. However, at that time, you are now considered an adult by a court of law -- you have adult privalegies, so you also have adult responsibility.
Certainly if implemented, 90% of the parents wouldn't do a thing about it and wait for 18 to roll around, but I know of teenagers that show remarkable intelligence and responsibilty that they are more mature then some adults, and deserve to be considered as one.
IMO, college is still a necessary thing for a serious IT firm to consider when hiring. It's not that college will teach a student everything they need to learn about programming or whatnot prior to their job (I'm sure many here are in high-school yet have at least as much programming knowledge now as would be taught to them in so
many years of school). It's the non-technical aspects, which include:
Communication skills - most high schools, even good ones, seem to avoid this, and though they offer the standard college-prep course, it's laughable (Let's analyze works of fiction, instead!). In my school back in the 80s, parents would call up teachers and complain that their children had too much schoolwork (HA!) and the first thing would be dropped would be essays and papers. Even a decent college education will tell you how to present ideas appropriately for both formal and personal communication, and this is NOT a skill that can be easily picked up by programming -- you need to have the critiquing that completes this. And given that code should be 50% comments, I'd think this is highly necessary.
Teamwork - I hate it too, as I was always an individual learner, but you have to be able to work in a team in today's society. While the way many OSS projects are run are like that, you sometimes don't have the choice of who's on board your team, and you have to work with them personally, thus the group assignments they give in college are very necessary.
Responsibility - College is odd - you go typically from an envirnoment that you don't control (due to parents, teachers, etc), to one where you have nearly full control. Many students have problems adjusting to this, as seen by freshmen dropout rates, the Freshmen 15, and how many go running back home to find part-time jobs to pay for extras that they initially thought they could afford. However, after 4 years of this, most learn how to handle their time and money to be able to do well in classes and still enjoy themselves. Showing this type of responsibility can be impressive to a potental boss, knowing that you know how to manage time and resources. Many (not all) high school kids can do that.
Those are just a few, I strongly believe there is more. And there are cases where skipping college may certainly be justified, but that doesn't work for 99% of those going into IT out there.
But with colleges now aiming towards 5 yr programs, costing more and more, and the fact that IMO computer science/eng training tends to be about 3 years behind the rest of the world and focuses too much on specific aspects instead of a general feel for it, suggests that those that doubt the need for college will feel justified in skipping, and may or may not succeed later in life. It would be nice for companies that do actively hire students out of high school to provide tuition credit for night classes or online degrees, if only to help train their employee better.
It's not necessarily their fault -- a voice vote can be called by a simply majority, and thus those that were opposed to both the DCMA and voting by the normal means are grouped in with those that are truly to blame.
I would love to see how most of these regulations would turn out if the constituents were to vote for the issues, and depending on the majority there, the congressperson would be required to do the same. I bet things like the DCMA and UTICA would fall flat, though others like the CDA would pass with a large majority. There is some advantage of the democratic/representative gov't, but corruption easily destroys it.
The big problem with this is: the DMCA was passed by a VOICE VOTE. You have no idea if your rep was for or against beyond writing them and finding out.
The other problem , as it is apparent this election, is that issues that have higher social impact, such as health care, is overshadowing the smaller issues - as it is , while 10 years from now the DMCA and like could be VERY important to all citizens, it's really only important to a small fraction (those in the entertainment/software industry and the/.-type crowd), and while you might be able to privately get a word from your rep on the issues, it's unlikely to be a platform stance that will be made apparent in public forums.
The better thing to do is to educate the masses, rather than the reps -- send letters to the editors to local papers and (calmly) explain the problems with the DCMA -- and the fact that our elected officials passed this anonymously, fear of consumers in their districts showing their dislike of this law by voting against them. Make sure that you explain the future implications of all these laws and how they are anti-consumer. Maybe that will help Nader get some more presidental votes...
I just finished reading "Hammer of the Gods" by
Clarke -- definitely a bit higher level than
Armageddon. While certainly the society there is a bit more advanced than our current one, Clarke does give a good sense of scale -- such as long *long* sub-light speeds take to get from point A to B in the solar system, and just how much damage something small at those speeds can do.
And besides, it was worth it to get to a quote in the epiloge: "A meteor hit a parked car in New York City -- what else was it going to hit?"
What's not implicated stated in this particular slashdot story, but refered to previously, is that
when you swipe with the scanner, the first part of the mumbojumbo you get back is a unique identifier for that scanner. This gets sent back
to the server, and gee, at that point, what do you think it's used for?
At which point, the software for Linux is compariable to clean room interoperability
(legal by DCMA) and to junkbuster. Both which are legal, AFAIK.
In the toysmart case, their privacy policy up to the moment of sale read that user information would not be sold. On the sale, they tried to sell it, and the judge is saying they're breaching their contract if they do.
Amazon is learning a lesson, and has now made their sale of user data legit by their policy.
If Amazon went under tomorrow, it would be hard for a judge to stop such a sale.
The biggest problem here is that the US has no
regulation on privacy data, and there are very few mouths that are catching the ears of ppl in Congress to get stronger privacy info set up - possibly because the US Gov't has a rather juicy database as well that probably goes above and beyond the needs for maintaining taxes. The CNN article mentions an industry group that is formed to consider privacy issues, including Amazon and DoubleClick. I'm surprise they didn't invite Spamford to their party as well.
The only true way to go with privacy is the opt-in model, and making sure that your records with any company can be accessed by you and can be deleted at your request (Of course, in some cases, there might not be even information to be able to do part securely).
The/. blurb mistakenly says that user data will only be sold if Amazon is aquired or liquidated. This is not quite correct: unless what I've read so far is misleading, Amazon may sell your data at any time. I think they are specificially mentioning the sale of data if Amazon ceases to exist to substatiate it from the toysmart (or whatever that toy site was) case where even though their privacy policy said user data won't be sold, it was attempted to be aquired when the dot.com was sold.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, there would be a lot of initial paperwork (guarentee said requestor owns or manages the IP range), and a LOT, I mean a LOT, of trust between the requestor and said team that if there was a security problem, the team would not take advantage of it. In addition, this group would have to stay ahead of the script kiddies, possibly roaming in their irc channel so that they keep up on lame attacks.
Sure there are programs like Saint that can capture some of this, but this certainly isn't best that one can ask for. I also know there are industral groups that you can pay $$$$ for to have this done, but they tend to be about a month behind (roughly). So this isn't good for the hom user.
Note that I don't think many home linux box users are lazy. Most keep up with the distro updates, and take advice that is given in the articles here (like the inetd stuff). However, there are holes found all the time, not necessarily reported to lists like bugtraq, and even if reported, it is hard to check to see if one is truely vunerable from inside your own network. The service I describe is not meant to be a replacement for your own work in securing the box. But it should help supplement it, and make finding those last security holes easier.
OTOH, if the case could call for a technically qualified person in that field, maybe the two parties could pick an advisor from said case as with jury selection -- but again, the numbers of people that will be willing here would be low and this basically amounts to having the expert witness. Generally expert witnesses are supposed to be unbiased and are necessary to clear up the scientific mumblings of the law, just to so the side that does bring him in that *science*, not what the guy said, but the fundamental laws of science, are in that side's favor.
2) Unfortunately, there are too many issues at stack *right now* that by the time the tech courts would be in place, these issues would have exhausted their appeals process. Take a look at the problems with the Patent office in getting computer technological compenent people into place.
3) Very very commonly, cases involving sciences use an expert witness, generally a scientist or engineer that is unrelated to the case but an expert in the field. I would think a similar system would work for computer experts, however, there is something of an informal fraternity of geekdome throughout this area, so that finding a computer expert that was imparital to the deCSS case would probably be very difficult. But I don't see why this can't be attempted at least.
The deal is, last week the producers offered the remaining 6 contestants $500k to walk out of the house; the contestant that left would be replaced by a buxom young blonde (seriously!) for the remainder of the show. None of the contestants took it, and were themselves outraged that all 6 are threatening to walk out of the house at the same time as to end the show and to split the grand prize 6 ways. CBS is of course furious if this happens, but many predict this might be the windfall for the 'real life' gameshows if networks try to intervien too much into them.
Plus the third person view can give you problems you don't expect. One thing I recall was in IJ; as you rotate the camera up over Indy, you could see over walls that from a first person view, you couldn't; this could include things like enemies or objects that you needed to aquire. Certainly not cheating, but somewhat unrealistic; how much it can detract from gameplay is questionable.
But getting back to the original point; whether a FPS or TPS, these games tend not to have the same traits as puzzle games like Monkey Island or Myst.
For example, assume 1 million CDs were sold, up from 900,000 last year, adjusted for a GNP-like indicator. That might indicate that Napster helped, but then one needs to look at the breakdown of the average number of sales per album. An audience that is buying a wider variety of music would cost the average numbers of sales per album to drop, as there are more albums being bought across the board. On the other hand, if one or two albums dominate the market and artificially increase the market, then the average number goes up. So if last year, there was an average of 50,000 sales per CD title, and that number didn't change even though album sales were up, it would tend to indicate that nothing has really changes. If it went up to 75,000/CD, then the market saturation problem is in effect and nullifies Napster's arguement. If it dropped to 25,000/CD, then there's good evidence that people are buying a wider range of music, and thus there's a bit more evidence for Napster here.
Of course, probably the only people with the ability to analyze such numbers is RIAA. In addition, these numbers would probably poorly reflect on the non-RIAA independent music distributors' contribution to the CD market -- most good alternative titles come from here, but doubtful that RIAA would track their sales too.
On the other hand, games where the first person view is impossible to do, such as Baulder's Gate or Diablo I/II, would be a Thrid Person game, but these generally fall into the RPG catagory. Probably the best example of a true TPS would be a game like Space Invaders.
People need to realize that action games and puzzle games (the ones listed above) are two different genres that have yet to compete with each other except in a few isolated titles [*]. For every puzzle game that is put out, there are easily 3 if not more quake-like clones, the action market gets that much more visibility.
Additionally, at this point in time with technology, it's very hard to do a truely complete puzzle game that is completely free-form, as the mustache example tries to emphasize. You'd have to create a small subset of the Grand Unified Theory in order to deal with every sitution that the player may attempt. This, of course, is impractical, so there is a very limited subset of actions that you can do.
But my biggest beef is the choice of example. Gabriel Knight's not very good as a puzzle game. Better examples tend to be anything from LucasArts, including the Monkey Island triology and Grim Fandango. The objects that you collect tend to have very unique properties, that fit in the game at only one place, but generally have good, funny responses if you try to use them elsewhere that are a near match. To that extent, it shows that the game designs tried to anticipate all actions the users might want to do, and add appropriate actions or responses for flavoring. They also drop more than enough hints, but you have to make sure you talk to everyone and look at everything.
Puzzle gaming is far from dead. It's just that there's a vast difference for most players of puzzle genre and fps genre.
[*] Some of the recent FPS/RPG combos (System Shock 2, Deus Ex) come somewhat close, while Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is more puzzle that FPS, even though it is a FPS.
I think I'll go do a bit of "tweaking" and have fun playing a real life version of Frogger with a guy in a wheelchair...
In my research during chemical engineering, this situation is not only common, it's generally the way to approach chemical patents. In otherwords, say you develop Chemical Y. Chemical Y has a certain compositional makeup that might involve a metal and lots of other bits. You run and find chemical Y is good for a certain process, thus naturally you want to patent Y. Most patent lawyers and experts suggest that you want to patent as many chemicals that are close in composition to Y as you can (for example, if the metal you had was platinum, they'd insist you also claim the similar chemical based on palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, etc. because these all have similar chemical properties), even though you never actually made those materials or tested them.
What will then happen is that unless there's a major conflict with prior patents, you'll get all those derivatives of Y, including Y, patented. Later, someone may come down the road and ask to invalid your claim to a derivative of Y because you never made it, and you'd probably lose that claim in the patent, which is no big loss, because your Chemical Y is still bringing in the licensing bucks. Individual claims of a patent can be invalided, but not necessarily the whole patent itself.
On the other hand, if you only patented Y, and then find down the road that a derivative of Y is much better and would lead you more profit margins, you would have to reapply for that patent. And between the time that the Y patent comes out and you start the derivative of Y patent, someone may have beat you to the punch and gotten the patent on the derivative of Y already, especially if the change between Y and it's derivative is 'intuitively obvious', (eg, someone used a palladium version of Y instead of platinum that is part of Y).
The analogy (arrrg!) I've heard here is that if you want a bathtub of water, ask for the ocean -- it's easier to deny you parts until you get your bathtub and maybe a bit more, than it is to ask for a glass of water but you really want the bathtub.
Sure, this applies easily to chemical patents, but could also apply to business model or computer-related patents. When you read the patents here on slashdot, they seem to cover everything and the kitchen sink, but just like above, they are trying to include as much as possible to make the patent just that more valuable. If you want to see what the real meat of a patent is, the part that the company really wants to make sure they have, look at the Examples section or the support information, or look at the first claim, and nothing else. Consider every Claim beyond the first, especially those that start "The same as in Claim 1 expect where...", as the icing on the cake.
Not that I agree with the actions that those have these large encompassing patents, but this is how the patent field, as I've been exposed to it, seems to work. And it should be noted that for at least chemical patents, there *are* competent people on the patent board and generally frivolous patents there don't get issued, but as last I heard, they are still striving to fill positions for computer experts to help with the newer technology patents.
For 20 years, there was never a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. Oh, sure, there were thousands of papers and reports that said such, but until only the last few years were Big Tobacco able to pay off and deflect these attacks, usually by attacking the integrity of the researchers or practices used. Thus, for 20 years, the warning on a cigarette box label always read : "Smoking *may be* hazardous to your health". We've finally gotten to the point where it is indeed hazardous to your health, and the relation between smoking and cancer is a fundamental scientific fact.
I very much doubt cel phone makers are going out and buying off or attacking anyone that does research relating tumors and cel phone radition. But this is a hint of doubt there. And since the masses generally are unable to (or are negligent in how to) access scientific literature, they depend on media (which can be bought off) for such information. A few billion dollars could easily go a long way in this area.
(Did someone say conspiracy? :D)
Another option that I would do that would work well for e-books is embedded ads. For example, between chapters of a book as you read it in Acrobat would be a full 'page' ad for Pepsi, or something that would target the book's intended readers well. Then you shouldn't have to give up any parts of the work in the free version, and yet still have the same result. Note of course that the ads have to be static with no phone-home effect like most banner ads -- I'll accept ads as long as its not trying to collect information on me. And of course, this really only works in the realm of books, because as pointed out, there is a drastic difference between the reading experience of an ebook and a real book, compared with an MP3 or a CD, and the fact that the technology won't be there for several years to handle all cases where people read books (such as sunglare on LCD problems) which are nonexistant for mp3 players.
Now, while it's important to write your congressperson when a bad bill is approaching, I think we should also write showing our support of these bills. At worst you might get ignored, but given how much negative push we give the lawmakers, writing lettings that let them know that us, the consumers and users of the internet, are strongly in favor of said bills is very important.
Which means that using the standard email protocols, you can encrypt the message itself to your heart's content, but you're still sending delievry information in the clear, which means Carnivore will still pick it up. It's akin to being able to look at envelopes that are spitted out through the post office system, and plucking out the ones that have the address you are interested in. But in the case of email, it's generally a bit worse as most text is sent in the clear. (And no, I don't think that encryption for everyone is the answer -- it should not have to come to this, is the point).
[*] I suspect it has to be on routers (the last point before the packet is sent to the internet backbone) as opposed to on the mail server as 1) many ISPs have multiple mail servers, and 2) any person smart enough with a home box can easily bypass their ISP's mailserver if they don't rely on that email address, including either using their own box or a 'friendly' open relay box for smtp processing.
Technically, it should be Omnivore -- as it looks at *all* email. (If it was truly targeted at only one email address, then Carnivore would make more sense.).
Corporations have battled and gotten overly strong IP protection, ability to enforce licenses that counteract fair use, and nearly to the point of power of policing consumers without gov't interference. Yet consumers, by far the people that the gov't should be most worried about, can't get the gov't to pass decent privacy regulations (instead, the gov't passes it down to a industry committee, just lovely). And all because corporations can easy toss millions to the right ears and get what they want.
I would like to believe the myth that if every constituent writes their rep and tells them they are against a bill, that the rep will vote against the bill. It's probably also a myth that every congressperson is under the thumb of some corporate interest, and listens to one person rather than 1 million people they are supposed to represent. Reality is somewhere in between, but I would suspect it's closer to the latter.
So even if we were given plenty of opportunity to respond to DCMA, I believe that the outcome would have been the same - it would have passed by a voice vote without question. Only rare cases occure where corporate-endorsed laws may get revoked, such as the "work for hire" case, but that's because every famous artist (PEOPLE WITH MONEY) jumped at the cause.
Not to turn this political, but this is why this election is important to me -- I'm voting against special interests. Get rid or limit the ability of special interests to influence the lawmaking ability, and then the constituents have a fair chance of affecting their congressperson's vote.
A story that I tried to submit but was rejected was on 4 major medical groups (AMA was one) connecting violent games to violent behavior. But as this report stated - not all violent game players are violent, and not all violence comes from violent game playing. Only that there is significance in the data connected violent actions of youth to violent game playing. I don't doubt the result, considering that they probably lump things like tempertantrums, disobedience, and such rather mundane things into violent actions.
However, I do think that we set a rather high and arbitrary age for what is considered to be an adult. The only reason 18 sticks out is that 99.9+% of the ppl have finished puberty, and therefore will be sane the rest of their lives winkwink. I'm in favor of what I call an adult card - you automatically get one when you turn 18, but prior to that point, if your parents and at least two other people outside relatives ( teachers, employers, coaches) believe that you are sufficiently responsible, you can get an adult card as early as 13. Having an adult card grants you those privalegies, such as being able to see R-rated files w/o parents, buying M rated games, and so forth. However, at that time, you are now considered an adult by a court of law -- you have adult privalegies, so you also have adult responsibility.
Certainly if implemented, 90% of the parents wouldn't do a thing about it and wait for 18 to roll around, but I know of teenagers that show remarkable intelligence and responsibilty that they are more mature then some adults, and deserve to be considered as one.
- Communication skills - most high schools, even good ones, seem to avoid this, and though they offer the standard college-prep course, it's laughable (Let's analyze works of fiction, instead!). In my school back in the 80s, parents would call up teachers and complain that their children had too much schoolwork (HA!) and the first thing would be dropped would be essays and papers. Even a decent college education will tell you how to present ideas appropriately for both formal and personal communication, and this is NOT a skill that can be easily picked up by programming -- you need to have the critiquing that completes this. And given that code should be 50% comments, I'd think this is highly necessary.
- Teamwork - I hate it too, as I was always an individual learner, but you have to be able to work in a team in today's society. While the way many OSS projects are run are like that, you sometimes don't have the choice of who's on board your team, and you have to work with them personally, thus the group assignments they give in college are very necessary.
- Responsibility - College is odd - you go typically from an envirnoment that you don't control (due to parents, teachers, etc), to one where you have nearly full control. Many students have problems adjusting to this, as seen by freshmen dropout rates, the Freshmen 15, and how many go running back home to find part-time jobs to pay for extras that they initially thought they could afford. However, after 4 years of this, most learn how to handle their time and money to be able to do well in classes and still enjoy themselves. Showing this type of responsibility can be impressive to a potental boss, knowing that you know how to manage time and resources. Many (not all) high school kids can do that.
Those are just a few, I strongly believe there is more. And there are cases where skipping college may certainly be justified, but that doesn't work for 99% of those going into IT out there.But with colleges now aiming towards 5 yr programs, costing more and more, and the fact that IMO computer science/eng training tends to be about 3 years behind the rest of the world and focuses too much on specific aspects instead of a general feel for it, suggests that those that doubt the need for college will feel justified in skipping, and may or may not succeed later in life. It would be nice for companies that do actively hire students out of high school to provide tuition credit for night classes or online degrees, if only to help train their employee better.
I would love to see how most of these regulations would turn out if the constituents were to vote for the issues, and depending on the majority there, the congressperson would be required to do the same. I bet things like the DCMA and UTICA would fall flat, though others like the CDA would pass with a large majority. There is some advantage of the democratic/representative gov't, but corruption easily destroys it.
The other problem , as it is apparent this election, is that issues that have higher social impact, such as health care, is overshadowing the smaller issues - as it is , while 10 years from now the DMCA and like could be VERY important to all citizens, it's really only important to a small fraction (those in the entertainment/software industry and the /.-type crowd), and while you might be able to privately get a word from your rep on the issues, it's unlikely to be a platform stance that will be made apparent in public forums.
The better thing to do is to educate the masses, rather than the reps -- send letters to the editors to local papers and (calmly) explain the problems with the DCMA -- and the fact that our elected officials passed this anonymously, fear of consumers in their districts showing their dislike of this law by voting against them. Make sure that you explain the future implications of all these laws and how they are anti-consumer. Maybe that will help Nader get some more presidental votes...
And besides, it was worth it to get to a quote in the epiloge: "A meteor hit a parked car in New York City -- what else was it going to hit?"
At which point, the software for Linux is compariable to clean room interoperability (legal by DCMA) and to junkbuster. Both which are legal, AFAIK.
Amazon is learning a lesson, and has now made their sale of user data legit by their policy. If Amazon went under tomorrow, it would be hard for a judge to stop such a sale.
The biggest problem here is that the US has no regulation on privacy data, and there are very few mouths that are catching the ears of ppl in Congress to get stronger privacy info set up - possibly because the US Gov't has a rather juicy database as well that probably goes above and beyond the needs for maintaining taxes. The CNN article mentions an industry group that is formed to consider privacy issues, including Amazon and DoubleClick. I'm surprise they didn't invite Spamford to their party as well.
The only true way to go with privacy is the opt-in model, and making sure that your records with any company can be accessed by you and can be deleted at your request (Of course, in some cases, there might not be even information to be able to do part securely).