I never "got" Square games. Sure, they were among the prettiest out there, but as games they were clunky and repetitive, and as stories they were just silly anime plots with almost no interactivity.
In every Square-style console RPG I tried, I'd hit a "wall"--there would be some point at which I just decided it wasn't fun anymore, either because the incessant combat was no longer interesting, because the story had crossed the line into nonsensical, or because the game was unbalanced and I didn't feel like "levelling up" to correct the designer's mistakes. I never got that in Planescape: Torment (though Curst came close) or in Fallout.
Most people will claim that Zelda isn't an RPG, just an arcade adventure game with some power-up elements.
If you want to look at doing RPGs with limited computer power, I'd pay more attention to the PCs of the time. Console RPGs in the Square tradition didn't really take off until the SNES/Genesis, at least when compared to what was available on the Apple II. (Yes, I know Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior started on the NES, and Phantasy Star started on the SMS, but the first incarnations weren't very original.)
A Catch-22: how to initially draw people to a community when the a community itself is the selling point and your being drowned in information sea that the web has become?
Simple. You don't. The site admins can't create a community by themselves. They sell their sites with content and interface.
Comparing my rankings with the aggregate scores, here's my most overrated:
"To Otherwhere and Back": This game made no sense and was impossible without the walkthrough it was written around.
"The Gostak": Sure, it's neat to rewrite all the error messages in another language, but one needs referents to make sense of things.
"Film at Eleven": It wasn't bad, but it certainly didn't belong in the top ten.
And, conversely, the most underrated:
"Elements": This was the best of the abstract games, none of which fared well in this competition.
"A Night Guest": Sure, it's not epic, but it's well-written and it's fun.
"Best of Three": I suspect the conversation choice system bothered a lot of people, or perhaps they just wanted item puzzles. But this was a great story that had me playing long into the night.
"All Roads" won because nobody really hated it enough to give it a competition-killing score. The best game in the competition, "Moments Out of Time," had some funky menus and didn't work right on the most popular interpreter out there, causing some people to give it a 1 or 2.
Microsoft's a corporation. You can't incarcerate a corporation. (And no, it's not completely controlled by Gates, so you can't imprison him. Ask a lawyer about the corporate veil some time.) .
You could give groups of units enough AI smarts to implement strategies you give them autonomously ("General PFault, take your troops to the ambush point and wait for my signal; then support my troops"), but then it becomes more of a computer-vs-computer game instead of a human-vs-computer/human game.
I believe Master of Orion 3 is working on something like this, where you have AI-controlled subordinates doing the micromanaging for you. Should be interesting when it comes out...
Would it be possible to do what law schools do, and create university-published journals staffed by grad students? (Not that I know how to get here from there...)
Actually, though perhaps it should be, under today's laws it's not at all clear that simply publishing guitar tabs is a fair use. It's not necessarily for nonprofit educational purposes just because a beginning guitar player downloads it, and it certainly uses a lot of the work and erodes the work's value, which includes the sale of printed music as well as phonorecords.
I'm sure this list was culled from ClearChannel's playlist. Just because you can think of some bit of indie rock or deathmetal that's in questionable taste doesn't mean it belongs on a list; the radio stations probably don't even have a copy of the song.
(I don't think this is censorship--it's not like these songs can't be played or sold elsewhere. I do find it sad that they don't trust their DJ's to not play offensive material, but better safe than sorry.)
Anyhow, songs that I can't see belonging there:
Simon and Garfunkel, "Bridge over Troubled Water"
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, "Devil with the Blue Dress"
Songs that people could complain about, but I think are generally positive:
The Beatles, "A Day in the Life"
The Beatles, "Obla Di, Obla Da"
John Lennon, "Imagine"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Under the Bridge"
Frank Sinatra, "New York, New York"
Nena, "99 Luftbaloons"
Neil Diamond, "America"
Songs that probably do belong there:
REM/Cry Cry Cry, "Fall on Me"
Tom Petty, "Learning to Fly"
U2, "Until the End of the World"
Songs that would belong there if anyone ever played them:
Bad Religion, "Skyscraper"
Cowboy Junkies, "Angel Mine"
Cowboy Junkies, "Common Disaster"
Cowboy Junkies, "Miles From Our Home"
Cowboy Junkies, "Misguided Angel"
Dar Williams, "Alleluia"
Dar Williams, "Are You Out There?"
Eddie From Ohio, "Gravity"
Eddie From Ohio, "Stupid American"
Leonard Cohen/REM, "First We Take Manhattan"
Midnight Oil, "Beds are Burning"
Moxy Fruvous, "Fly"
Psychedelic Furs, "Ghost In You"
Renaissance, "The Vultures Fly High"
The Smiths, "Every Day is Like Sunday"
Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Fall Down"
Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Fly From Heaven"
MP3.com purchased all of the CDs containing those 900,000 songs. Why shouldn't they have right to compress them and put then in a database (that is what they were sued for in the inital lawsuit, not distributing the music afterwards)? That seems like fair use to me (but not judge Rakoff, I guess). Once you pay for the music, why shouldn't you be able to shift it to another format so that you can use it more easily? Forget for a second about what they wanted to use it for - they got in trouble for the shifting, not for the intended use.
No, they got in trouble for making it available to other people without the copyright holders' consent. No distribution, no foul.
How will you feel when the lawyers come after you, simply because you committed a lawful act that allowed someone else to commit a lawful act that in turn allowed someone else to commit an unlawful act?
Important nitpick: in this case the lawyers came after MP3.com because they committed an act deemed unlawful (putting copyrighted songs on My.MP3.com without permission) that allowed someone else to commit an unlawful act (putting copyrighted songs on Napster without permission). I still don't believe they should be responsible for Napster-related infringement (why would they encourage people to use a competitor?), but it's not quite as clear a case.
People throw around the term "fair use" all the time here, with no idea what it actually means. Gator does not have an affirmative "fair use" defense; the use is arguably (depending on who is creating the derivative works, Gator or the user) not a proscribed use at all.
(My apologies if this is multiposted; Slashdot is giving me errors.)
I am deeply concerned that this attitude could lead to horrible legislation to "protect" people from their own stupidity. The only solution that ever works is for people to be responsible for their own actions. In the case of software, that means that users are going to have to be more aware of what their computers are going, check reputations of software authors prior to trusting them, and if they're tech-heads, examining the source code (if available) prior to compiling and running it, and wondering why the source code is a secret, if it's not available.
Oh, not another one. 18-year-old libertarian, right?
The problem here is market failure: it is too costly for individual consumers to do all this checking if there aren't any mandatory disclosure laws. The cost of the consumers' research is much greater than the cost of proper disclosure by the producer, who already knows these facts. This results in a lot of waste.
The defense to this isn't "fair use". Section 107 of the Copyright Act gives four factors that must be considered when determining whether a use is fair:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Looking at these factors, Gator's replacement of banner ads is obviously unfair use, as it "steals" advertising dollars from an otherwise unchanged work.
However, it may not be copyright infringement; the argument used is that the work is not being published, performed, or publicly displayed. This depends on who makes the modifications: if the company behind Gator is creating the works, then they're publishing to their users and violating copyright. If the user of the software is creating the works, then it's no more illegal than Junkbuster.
The way to determine this, I think, is to look at who has control of the modifications made. In the case of Junkbuster, the user can determine what ads are stripped. The impression I get about Gator is that it doesn't inform the user, much less give her any sort of authorial control--and therefore it infringes the copyrights of the web pages it modifies.
Slashdot Mirror
I never "got" Square games. Sure, they were among the prettiest out there, but as games they were clunky and repetitive, and as stories they were just silly anime plots with almost no interactivity.
In every Square-style console RPG I tried, I'd hit a "wall"--there would be some point at which I just decided it wasn't fun anymore, either because the incessant combat was no longer interesting, because the story had crossed the line into nonsensical, or because the game was unbalanced and I didn't feel like "levelling up" to correct the designer's mistakes. I never got that in Planescape: Torment (though Curst came close) or in Fallout.
Most people will claim that Zelda isn't an RPG, just an arcade adventure game with some power-up elements.
If you want to look at doing RPGs with limited computer power, I'd pay more attention to the PCs of the time. Console RPGs in the Square tradition didn't really take off until the SNES/Genesis, at least when compared to what was available on the Apple II. (Yes, I know Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior started on the NES, and Phantasy Star started on the SMS, but the first incarnations weren't very original.)
Simple. You don't. The site admins can't create a community by themselves. They sell their sites with content and interface.
Closer. Try Capek's "R.U.R."
Obviously you can do it if you're in a jurisdiction that has a statute specifically for that situation. But contract law won't cut it.
If one of these bills were disputed in court, the guy would lose. You can't charge people for sending you e-mail without some sort of prior contract.
Comparing my rankings with the aggregate scores, here's my most overrated:
"To Otherwhere and Back": This game made no sense and was impossible without the walkthrough it was written around.
"The Gostak": Sure, it's neat to rewrite all the error messages in another language, but one needs referents to make sense of things.
"Film at Eleven": It wasn't bad, but it certainly didn't belong in the top ten.
And, conversely, the most underrated:
"Elements": This was the best of the abstract games, none of which fared well in this competition.
"A Night Guest": Sure, it's not epic, but it's well-written and it's fun.
"Best of Three": I suspect the conversation choice system bothered a lot of people, or perhaps they just wanted item puzzles. But this was a great story that had me playing long into the night.
"All Roads" won because nobody really hated it enough to give it a competition-killing score. The best game in the competition, "Moments Out of Time," had some funky menus and didn't work right on the most popular interpreter out there, causing some people to give it a 1 or 2.
Microsoft's a corporation. You can't incarcerate a corporation. (And no, it's not completely controlled by Gates, so you can't imprison him. Ask a lawyer about the corporate veil some time.) .
I believe Master of Orion 3 is working on something like this, where you have AI-controlled subordinates doing the micromanaging for you. Should be interesting when it comes out...
Would it be possible to do what law schools do, and create university-published journals staffed by grad students? (Not that I know how to get here from there...)
Actually, though perhaps it should be, under today's laws it's not at all clear that simply publishing guitar tabs is a fair use. It's not necessarily for nonprofit educational purposes just because a beginning guitar player downloads it, and it certainly uses a lot of the work and erodes the work's value, which includes the sale of printed music as well as phonorecords.
That's not a violation of the First Amendment, though it might be a violation of the Sherman Act.
So? Due to the title it's still in bad taste.
I'm sure this list was culled from ClearChannel's playlist. Just because you can think of some bit of indie rock or deathmetal that's in questionable taste doesn't mean it belongs on a list; the radio stations probably don't even have a copy of the song.
(I don't think this is censorship--it's not like these songs can't be played or sold elsewhere. I do find it sad that they don't trust their DJ's to not play offensive material, but better safe than sorry.)
Anyhow, songs that I can't see belonging there:
Simon and Garfunkel, "Bridge over Troubled Water"
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, "Devil with the Blue Dress"
Songs that people could complain about, but I think are generally positive:
The Beatles, "A Day in the Life"
The Beatles, "Obla Di, Obla Da"
John Lennon, "Imagine"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Under the Bridge"
Frank Sinatra, "New York, New York"
Nena, "99 Luftbaloons"
Neil Diamond, "America"
Songs that probably do belong there:
REM/Cry Cry Cry, "Fall on Me"
Tom Petty, "Learning to Fly"
U2, "Until the End of the World"
Songs that would belong there if anyone ever played them:
Bad Religion, "Skyscraper"
Cowboy Junkies, "Angel Mine"
Cowboy Junkies, "Common Disaster"
Cowboy Junkies, "Miles From Our Home"
Cowboy Junkies, "Misguided Angel"
Dar Williams, "Alleluia"
Dar Williams, "Are You Out There?"
Eddie From Ohio, "Gravity"
Eddie From Ohio, "Stupid American"
Leonard Cohen/REM, "First We Take Manhattan"
Midnight Oil, "Beds are Burning"
Moxy Fruvous, "Fly"
Psychedelic Furs, "Ghost In You"
Renaissance, "The Vultures Fly High"
The Smiths, "Every Day is Like Sunday"
Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Fall Down"
Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Fly From Heaven"
That's wrong. The independent artists have to agree to allow electronic distribution before they can upload their material.
No, it's not. It's the My.MP3.com distribution system that started this.
MP3.com purchased all of the CDs containing those 900,000 songs. Why shouldn't they have right to compress them and put then in a database (that is what they were sued for in the inital lawsuit, not distributing the music afterwards)? That seems like fair use to me (but not judge Rakoff, I guess). Once you pay for the music, why shouldn't you be able to shift it to another format so that you can use it more easily? Forget for a second about what they wanted to use it for - they got in trouble for the shifting, not for the intended use.
No, they got in trouble for making it available to other people without the copyright holders' consent. No distribution, no foul.
How will you feel when the lawyers come after you, simply because you committed a lawful act that allowed someone else to commit a lawful act that in turn allowed someone else to commit an unlawful act?
Important nitpick: in this case the lawyers came after MP3.com because they committed an act deemed unlawful (putting copyrighted songs on My.MP3.com without permission) that allowed someone else to commit an unlawful act (putting copyrighted songs on Napster without permission). I still don't believe they should be responsible for Napster-related infringement (why would they encourage people to use a competitor?), but it's not quite as clear a case.
People throw around the term "fair use" all the time here, with no idea what it actually means. Gator does not have an affirmative "fair use" defense; the use is arguably (depending on who is creating the derivative works, Gator or the user) not a proscribed use at all.
(My apologies if this is multiposted; Slashdot is giving me errors.)
I am deeply concerned that this attitude could lead to horrible legislation to "protect" people from their own stupidity. The only solution that ever works is for people to be responsible for their own actions. In the case of software, that means that users are going to have to be more aware of what their computers are going, check reputations of software authors prior to trusting them, and if they're tech-heads, examining the source code (if available) prior to compiling and running it, and wondering why the source code is a secret, if it's not available.
Oh, not another one. 18-year-old libertarian, right?
The problem here is market failure: it is too costly for individual consumers to do all this checking if there aren't any mandatory disclosure laws. The cost of the consumers' research is much greater than the cost of proper disclosure by the producer, who already knows these facts. This results in a lot of waste.
The defense to this isn't "fair use". Section 107 of the Copyright Act gives four factors that must be considered when determining whether a use is fair:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Looking at these factors, Gator's replacement of banner ads is obviously unfair use, as it "steals" advertising dollars from an otherwise unchanged work.
However, it may not be copyright infringement; the argument used is that the work is not being published, performed, or publicly displayed. This depends on who makes the modifications: if the company behind Gator is creating the works, then they're publishing to their users and violating copyright. If the user of the software is creating the works, then it's no more illegal than Junkbuster.
The way to determine this, I think, is to look at who has control of the modifications made. In the case of Junkbuster, the user can determine what ads are stripped. The impression I get about Gator is that it doesn't inform the user, much less give her any sort of authorial control--and therefore it infringes the copyrights of the web pages it modifies.
Funny how when Slashdot posts an article reaching the opposite conclusion (video games are good for you), everyone applauds.
Where do you think raves came from?
You might want to take a look at this.
I believe that even in the U.K. August is commonly regarded as the eighth month.