I think we just made history. I can't remember the last time two people on opposite ends of a particular issue had a civil exchange on slashdot!
I can see your points, even though I disagree with them. While philosophically, and opt-in agreement would be preferable, such an agreement would result in a lot of obscure, out of print works never making it into the index. Thus, the opt-out arrangement.
Google is trying to get around this problem by making agreements with the libraries, thus creating what could be considered a card catalog on steroids. The legality of this is, based on the existence of the lawsuit, debatable.
I think the VHS case is a good comparison, largely because the same kinds of issues are being raised. Most people, myself among them, would like to see a similar outcome, but ultimately, people who know the actual law far better than I will decide what happens. I'll also concede that an outcome similar to the one in the VHS case may not be the best solution for all involved.
I will say that I can now see the shades of Grey in this. While I stand by my original points, the way in which I expressed them was overly harsh, and used overly hostile and aggressive terminology.
My major concern is that the issues being raised on slashdot are not going to be the focus of the lawsuit. The Guild does appear to be more interested in ensuring a slice of the profits than in the underlying IP issues. If this is the case, then instead of a real resolution,the lawsuit will merely server to further muddy the waters.
I don't remember the FPS, but I didn't notice any lag or flicker issues either. From a performance stand point, I found it very playable, it just wasn't my cut of tea.
I know, I know! The glaring hypocrisy of you spamming slashdot and you encouraging people to harass a SPAMmmer on your/. user blurb is just a subtle attempt at humor.
No, I'm just a cheap, self centered bastard.
I wasn't really incredulous about the GPU fans, I was trying to play the "Old Coot" card, and really screwed up on my attempt to convey humor on-line.
And yes, I'm aware of how old the games in question are. That was my point. I don't play many new games, which is probably the reason my GPU doesn't have a fan.
If you don't like it, you can have Google remove your works from the database.
If they haven't scanned your books yet, you can have them NEVER scan your works.
So, if you don't want the evil, nasty Google to make money trying to drive buyers to your door, you can tell them to shove off and take a long walk off a short pier, and they'll do it.
So, if you set up a referral account with Amazon, and post links to some books, and people buy those books through those links, do you think the writers should get part of your ad revenue, in addition to the royalties form the book sales?
After all, you;'re making money form those authors' hard work, without having paid them a licensing fee, just like Google!
I discuss piracy as part of this equation because Piracy is a real thing in the real world. I'm not advocating piracy. The Guild is using the digitizing of the works as part of their argument as to why this is a bad thing. The point I wanted to make was, the books are already digitized and in the wild. Claiming that the digitizing of these books is an evil thing that has to be prevented is foolish, as it's already been done. It's a flat argument, and they need another one.
I'm thinking of this from the viewpoint of a writer.
From the writer's viewpoint, Google is planning to offer search services that will, if it impacts me in any way, increase the number of people who buy my books.
A Guild, claiming to represent my interests, is insisting that Google pay for the privilege of offering me this service, a service for which I did not have to pay them.
If I were a member of this guild, I'd be sending them a notice that my membership is not going to be renewed.
As for the referral revenue, I'm not concerned about that. Let's say you set up a web site listing your favorite books along with a few of your favorite quotes form each book. You have an affiliate relationship with Amazon. The authors don't get a percentage of your referral profits. Aside from the issue of scale, how is that substantially different than what Google is doing?
As for the ad word placements, how is that different from the ad words beside a listing for any of these books in any site that offers them for sale? The author isn't getting a percentage of the ad word revenue in either example. Why should the author care about one source of ad word revenue and not the other?
I see what Google is doing as an evolution of existing trends. There really isn't anything different that what Amazon and other online retailers are doing, aside from the percentage of the book that's going to be searchable.
And why shouldn't Google make money off this whole project? Why shouldn't they turn a profit form offering search services to drive customers to another person's door? Most the arguments about how they're "making tons of money off this without paying for it" seems kind of hollow to me, because the authors will still have increased book sales.
And in the final analysis, any given author can opt out. If you feel this violates your IP rights, then you can opt out, you can decide not to let someone else shoulder the cost of driving customers to your door.
If you don't like it, let them know, and you'll be left alone.
It's the whole opt-in / opt out thing. Besides, if Google has to pay a license fee to list their authors, they might decide to just not list their authors.
In related news, the American Writers' Guild has filed a lawsuit to block Google from partnering with NASA.
A Guild Spokes-Weasel said, "We can't let them do NAYTHING until they resolve their issues with us. If they want to do anything, they have to pay us a licensing fee."
The AG just wants a licensing fee. This is all about getting a slice of the pie.
Most new books that reach any level of popularity end up being traded digitally anyway. OCR and scanners do their work, and as a result, the entire works of, for example, Anne Rice can be downloaded from the current Napster like application.
7: With everything already digitized, the moment the Author's Guild gets away from giving themselves a self-induced colonoscopy, Google starts selling full e-books of everything they already have digitized. PROFIT to Google, AND THE AUTHORS!
You missed a point.
The authors represented by the AG won't be part of ANY of this! The AG wants Google to pay them a licensing fee for the books. After the lawsuit, the AG will be out of the running, and it's members will have the handicap of not being in the largest index around, and will, as a result, not get any of the profits to be had from being in the index.
What would seem to make more sense is for Google to only scan this 20 percent of the text that they will use and not the full text
I was under the impression that the 20% would be determined by what portion of a book most frequently matched a given search criteria.
Alternately, they may be saying that only 20% will made available to a given IP address. If that's the case, then creative use of a few proxy servers can get you the whole book.
Of course, most books worth pirating have already been scanned and OCRed, and can be found in various file sharing networks already. The fact that the Author's Guild is going after Google for this only makes sense when you realize they want Google to pay them a licensing fee to offer this service.
Yep, they want Google top pay THEM for offering a Service that will make THEIR writers more money.
At this URL, they make it pretty clear that they want Google to pay the AG to index the AG works and offer free search services.
It's a bit like me demanding the trash man pay me for the right to take away my trash. After all, it's my property he's hauling away, so I should be compensated for the loss! Just because he's offering me a service isn't relevant!
Let me imagine a moment that I'm a publisher, or Writer's Guild.
Let me further imagine that a corporation wants to offer a free search engine, to make it easier for potential customers to search for and find the works written by the writers I represent.
I'll continue this pleasant little thought experiment by assuming they don't want to charge me or my writers any money. We don't even have to sign up.
It's not unlike what Amazon.com does for the books it sells, except this corporation wants to not only make the entire book searchable, while only making small segments available to readers, but offer a selection of purchase options, so potential readers will be even MORE likely to purchase the books.
What do I do?
Do I thank them for offering this free service that will only pour more money into the pockets of the writers I represent?
Do I start making arrangements to get them electronic copies of the books, so the writers I represent can get into the index that much sooner?
Oh, I know, I'll sue. I'll ignore all the long term benefits, and try to kill the project by blackmailing the corporation with a lawsuit and demands that THEY pay ME for providing a service to MY writers!
Brilliant.
I selecting the last option, I've guaranteed that the up and coming writers will never look twice at me or the organization I represent, assuming it's nothing but a club for Luddites, afraid of technology and more interested in scraping up a few pennies here and there than in actually turning a profit.
The FIRST thing I did when I got an iPod Mini as a gift, was to get a cover that had a hard, plastic shell that went over the screen. Even I could see it was fragile and would get scratched up fast.
So my iPod has a perfectly undamaged screen, because there's a hard plastic cover over it, keeping it nice and safe.
Of course, getting such a screen for the Nano would make the Nano almost as big as a Mini, which would defeat part of the purpose. At that point, you're only buying it because it's flash based instead of hard drive based, a negligible advantage.
rarely seen anybody with headphones, unless it's kids in the back of a car
You don't ride subways much, do you?:)
You still haven't convinced me that you have any reason to hate modern-day Nintendo and the GBA line other than you're too cheap to buy new things.
I gave up on Nintendo when I was shafted by the POS GBA. Your shots at me being too "cheap" to buy the new hardware are rather foolish, given all the coin I've spent on other products since then. I do spend money on gaming, just none of it on Nintendo gear. Refusing to spend money on crap does not make one "cheap."
I find it intersting that you ignore most of my other points to focus on the headphone adapter. What about the fact that the GBA was laughably fragile compared to any of the earlier models?
And I apologize for my rather liberal use of the phrase "Back Lighting." The earlier generations of Game Boys were quite visible in low light conditions, and had screens with fewer glare issues. I was trying to express that, and did not express myself clearly.
And you can write off what I say anyway I want, but the simple truth is I considered the GBA so abysmal, that I walked away from the product line.
As for your "evil Nintendo execs" crack, I will freely admit that the poor design I saw could easily have been explained by grotesque incompetence on the part of the designers, and simple stupidity on the part of the PHBs who gave the design the green light. You don't have to be hostile or evil to produce a crappy product.
I will ask you one last question though. Why do you think their market share in the console industry is shrinking? Could it be marketing, or the simple fact that the PS2 and even the Xbox are better pieces of hardware with better games?
It'll be interesting to see what happens to the Game Boy line when the Play Station Portable hits full swing. It would have been easy to sink Nintendo after the GBA release, as it's easier to kill off a deeply flawed device. It sounds like they hired some competent engineers for the subsequent models. I'm not going to waste my looking into one though, as I've largely outgrown the "need" for a portable gaming device. Even on planes, I'm more inclined to listen to some audio books instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Does that mean you charge anyone who takes away your recycling?
What if your city starts using one of the emerging technologies for turning waste products into oil? Will you charge the city for your trash disposal?
I think we just made history. I can't remember the last time two people on opposite ends of a particular issue had a civil exchange on slashdot!
I can see your points, even though I disagree with them. While philosophically, and opt-in agreement would be preferable, such an agreement would result in a lot of obscure, out of print works never making it into the index. Thus, the opt-out arrangement.
Google is trying to get around this problem by making agreements with the libraries, thus creating what could be considered a card catalog on steroids. The legality of this is, based on the existence of the lawsuit, debatable.
I think the VHS case is a good comparison, largely because the same kinds of issues are being raised. Most people, myself among them, would like to see a similar outcome, but ultimately, people who know the actual law far better than I will decide what happens. I'll also concede that an outcome similar to the one in the VHS case may not be the best solution for all involved.
I will say that I can now see the shades of Grey in this. While I stand by my original points, the way in which I expressed them was overly harsh, and used overly hostile and aggressive terminology.
My major concern is that the issues being raised on slashdot are not going to be the focus of the lawsuit. The Guild does appear to be more interested in ensuring a slice of the profits than in the underlying IP issues. If this is the case, then instead of a real resolution,the lawsuit will merely server to further muddy the waters.
The RIAA accused them, so they MUST be guilty!
The RIAA has whole teams gathering evidence. They wouldn't accuse an innocent person.
Anyone else finish the review and need a few glasses of water?
EQ2
Evercrack 2......
No, I'd better not. I already have enough things competing for the time when I should be sleeping.
GeForce FX Go 5200 in my work laptop.
800x600 with textures and dynamic lighting.
I don't remember the FPS, but I didn't notice any lag or flicker issues either. From a performance stand point, I found it very playable, it just wasn't my cut of tea.
I know, I know! The glaring hypocrisy of you spamming slashdot and you encouraging people to harass a SPAMmmer on your /. user blurb is just a subtle attempt at humor.
No, I'm just a cheap, self centered bastard.
I wasn't really incredulous about the GPU fans, I was trying to play the "Old Coot" card, and really screwed up on my attempt to convey humor on-line.
And yes, I'm aware of how old the games in question are. That was my point. I don't play many new games, which is probably the reason my GPU doesn't have a fan.
If you don't like it, you can have Google remove your works from the database.
If they haven't scanned your books yet, you can have them NEVER scan your works.
So, if you don't want the evil, nasty Google to make money trying to drive buyers to your door, you can tell them to shove off and take a long walk off a short pier, and they'll do it.
So, if you set up a referral account with Amazon, and post links to some books, and people buy those books through those links, do you think the writers should get part of your ad revenue, in addition to the royalties form the book sales?
After all, you;'re making money form those authors' hard work, without having paid them a licensing fee, just like Google!
I discuss piracy as part of this equation because Piracy is a real thing in the real world. I'm not advocating piracy. The Guild is using the digitizing of the works as part of their argument as to why this is a bad thing. The point I wanted to make was, the books are already digitized and in the wild. Claiming that the digitizing of these books is an evil thing that has to be prevented is foolish, as it's already been done. It's a flat argument, and they need another one.
I'm thinking of this from the viewpoint of a writer.
From the writer's viewpoint, Google is planning to offer search services that will, if it impacts me in any way, increase the number of people who buy my books.
A Guild, claiming to represent my interests, is insisting that Google pay for the privilege of offering me this service, a service for which I did not have to pay them.
If I were a member of this guild, I'd be sending them a notice that my membership is not going to be renewed.
As for the referral revenue, I'm not concerned about that. Let's say you set up a web site listing your favorite books along with a few of your favorite quotes form each book. You have an affiliate relationship with Amazon. The authors don't get a percentage of your referral profits. Aside from the issue of scale, how is that substantially different than what Google is doing?
As for the ad word placements, how is that different from the ad words beside a listing for any of these books in any site that offers them for sale? The author isn't getting a percentage of the ad word revenue in either example. Why should the author care about one source of ad word revenue and not the other?
I see what Google is doing as an evolution of existing trends. There really isn't anything different that what Amazon and other online retailers are doing, aside from the percentage of the book that's going to be searchable.
And why shouldn't Google make money off this whole project? Why shouldn't they turn a profit form offering search services to drive customers to another person's door? Most the arguments about how they're "making tons of money off this without paying for it" seems kind of hollow to me, because the authors will still have increased book sales.
And in the final analysis, any given author can opt out. If you feel this violates your IP rights, then you can opt out, you can decide not to let someone else shoulder the cost of driving customers to your door.
If you don't like it, let them know, and you'll be left alone.
It's the whole opt-in / opt out thing. Besides, if Google has to pay a license fee to list their authors, they might decide to just not list their authors.
There's Sarcasm on slashdot? I'm shocked, shocked to hear...
In related news, the American Writers' Guild has filed a lawsuit to block Google from partnering with NASA.
A Guild Spokes-Weasel said, "We can't let them do NAYTHING until they resolve their issues with us. If they want to do anything, they have to pay us a licensing fee."
Playing games made this millenium?
Hmmm, let's see.
Nerthack.
Freedom Force.
X-Com
Quake II and Quake III
Half Life
Civ III
Sim City 3000 Unlimited
Frozen Bubble.
Serious Sam
Diablo II
I tried Doom 3, and while it ran just fine, the gameplay left me cold. It just wasn't as fun as the games listed above.
The AG just wants a licensing fee. This is all about getting a slice of the pie.
Most new books that reach any level of popularity end up being traded digitally anyway. OCR and scanners do their work, and as a result, the entire works of, for example, Anne Rice can be downloaded from the current Napster like application.
7: With everything already digitized, the moment the Author's Guild gets away from giving themselves a self-induced colonoscopy, Google starts selling full e-books of everything they already have digitized. PROFIT to Google, AND THE AUTHORS!
You missed a point.
The authors represented by the AG won't be part of ANY of this! The AG wants Google to pay them a licensing fee for the books. After the lawsuit, the AG will be out of the running, and it's members will have the handicap of not being in the largest index around, and will, as a result, not get any of the profits to be had from being in the index.
What would seem to make more sense is for Google to only scan this 20 percent of the text that they will use and not the full text
I was under the impression that the 20% would be determined by what portion of a book most frequently matched a given search criteria.
Alternately, they may be saying that only 20% will made available to a given IP address. If that's the case, then creative use of a few proxy servers can get you the whole book.
Of course, most books worth pirating have already been scanned and OCRed, and can be found in various file sharing networks already. The fact that the Author's Guild is going after Google for this only makes sense when you realize they want Google to pay them a licensing fee to offer this service.
Yep, they want Google top pay THEM for offering a Service that will make THEIR writers more money.
At this URL, they make it pretty clear that they want Google to pay the AG to index the AG works and offer free search services.
It's a bit like me demanding the trash man pay me for the right to take away my trash. After all, it's my property he's hauling away, so I should be compensated for the loss! Just because he's offering me a service isn't relevant!
Perhaps they are secretly hoping their suit will fail.
I've read the talking points they have online.
They're convinced that this is a BAD thing, and want Google to pay a license fee to them for the right to index the books in question.
They want Google, to pay them, to provide a free service to their writers.
They're a bunch of scared Luddites, trying to kill something they don't understand, and if they can't kill it, milk it for all the cash they can.
It's just another scum sucking parasite organization.
I just sent them the following e-mail:
l king.htm
To: staff@authorsguild.org
Subject: Google Lawsuit
http://www.authorsguild.org/news/charity_handy_ta
Let me imagine a moment that I'm a publisher, or Writer's Guild.
Let me further imagine that a corporation wants to offer a free search engine, to make it easier for potential customers to search for and find the works written by the writers I represent.
I'll continue this pleasant little thought experiment by assuming they don't want to charge me or my writers any money. We don't even have to sign up.
It's not unlike what Amazon.com does for the books it sells, except this corporation wants to not only make the entire book searchable, while only making small segments available to readers, but offer a selection of purchase options, so potential readers will be even MORE likely to purchase the books.
What do I do?
Do I thank them for offering this free service that will only pour more money into the pockets of the writers I represent?
Do I start making arrangements to get them electronic copies of the books, so the writers I represent can get into the index that much sooner?
Oh, I know, I'll sue. I'll ignore all the long term benefits, and try to kill the project by blackmailing the corporation with a lawsuit and demands that THEY pay ME for providing a service to MY writers!
Brilliant.
I selecting the last option, I've guaranteed that the up and coming writers will never look twice at me or the organization I represent, assuming it's nothing but a club for Luddites, afraid of technology and more interested in scraping up a few pennies here and there than in actually turning a profit.
When did Graphics cards start needing fans to the point where one WIHTOUT a fan is news?
The graphics card in my PC, Linux Laptop and Work Laptop are all devoid of fans. There's the case fans, the CPU fans but that's it.
Has it really been that long since I upgraded my PC? Funny how not buying new games all the time reduces my desire to upgrade my computer.
I remember attaching the CPU fan from an old Pentium to my ATI card a while back just for the fun of it, but I didn't leave it there.
What gives? What am I missing?
What in the heck are you DOING with those graphics cards that you need a fan????
Good idea.
I'll gladly take that old, spyware infected computer off your hands. I can, er, use it for parts. Yeah, that's it. Parts.
The FIRST thing I did when I got an iPod Mini as a gift, was to get a cover that had a hard, plastic shell that went over the screen. Even I could see it was fragile and would get scratched up fast.
So my iPod has a perfectly undamaged screen, because there's a hard plastic cover over it, keeping it nice and safe.
Of course, getting such a screen for the Nano would make the Nano almost as big as a Mini, which would defeat part of the purpose. At that point, you're only buying it because it's flash based instead of hard drive based, a negligible advantage.
Look on the bright side. We're likely to see a Nethack port as a result of this.
That would be cool.
rarely seen anybody with headphones, unless it's kids in the back of a car
:)
You don't ride subways much, do you?
You still haven't convinced me that you have any reason to hate modern-day Nintendo and the GBA line other than you're too cheap to buy new things.
I gave up on Nintendo when I was shafted by the POS GBA. Your shots at me being too "cheap" to buy the new hardware are rather foolish, given all the coin I've spent on other products since then. I do spend money on gaming, just none of it on Nintendo gear. Refusing to spend money on crap does not make one "cheap."
I find it intersting that you ignore most of my other points to focus on the headphone adapter. What about the fact that the GBA was laughably fragile compared to any of the earlier models?
And I apologize for my rather liberal use of the phrase "Back Lighting." The earlier generations of Game Boys were quite visible in low light conditions, and had screens with fewer glare issues. I was trying to express that, and did not express myself clearly.
And you can write off what I say anyway I want, but the simple truth is I considered the GBA so abysmal, that I walked away from the product line.
As for your "evil Nintendo execs" crack, I will freely admit that the poor design I saw could easily have been explained by grotesque incompetence on the part of the designers, and simple stupidity on the part of the PHBs who gave the design the green light. You don't have to be hostile or evil to produce a crappy product.
I will ask you one last question though. Why do you think their market share in the console industry is shrinking? Could it be marketing, or the simple fact that the PS2 and even the Xbox are better pieces of hardware with better games?
It'll be interesting to see what happens to the Game Boy line when the Play Station Portable hits full swing. It would have been easy to sink Nintendo after the GBA release, as it's easier to kill off a deeply flawed device. It sounds like they hired some competent engineers for the subsequent models. I'm not going to waste my looking into one though, as I've largely outgrown the "need" for a portable gaming device. Even on planes, I'm more inclined to listen to some audio books instead.