Perhaps, but it seems to me that legislation which could just as easily be titled "Decimating a Legitimate Industry That Generates Billions of Dollars In Revenue and Employs Tens Of Thousands Of People" deserves more than a single sentence.
Out of curiosity, do you have a cite from said USSC opinion? I was involved recently in a discussion regarding how and when you are required to provide ID for the police. An opinion stating that ID couldn't be mandated would go a long way toward saying police don't have the right to ask you for your "papers".
That's the real beauty of the ease of making digital copies. Sure, you can change the copy on your hard drive. But what about the million other copies out there? That's one of the reasons DRM has to die, if culture is made inaccessible, it will eventually be lost completely.
I was involved in a project several years ago that was tasked with digitizing the laws of Ghana. Ghana is in many ways very modern. There are still tribes living in huts, but the capital Accra is one of the most modern cities in Africa. After losing it's colony status (when it was known as Gold Coast) it maintained the basic British legal system but began passing it's own laws. They weren't codified, access to them was difficult. It was a mess.
It seems to me that knowing the laws of where you live is essential to being a part of the first world. Any economic divide is meaningless compared to the divide you have when the ruling class rules you without any way to know how they are ruling. So we could spend millions of dollars printing and distributing the books containing the laws of these various countries. Then spend millions more every time the laws change. Or we can let them jump straight to a better system of distribution of knowledge that uses computers. Seems like a no brainer to me. If something like the $100 laptop is available, why force third world nations to trudge through decades of printed media before they migrate to a superior media?
Poorly supported, but it was not bad. I and several of my friends actually owned them, and we would get together and hook them all up for 5 player Slime World, California Games and Warbirds.
Just curious about what video card you have, because I also still run an XP 2500 (though not overclocked and only 1GB of RAM) and recently picked up an AGP X800 GTO. I've been leery about picking up the more demanding games such as Oblivion, only to find out they run poorly.
Actually, the breakdown of free enterprise has been because of corporate collusion with government. The larger and more power government gets, the greater the incentive to control it. Hence large business interests control government and vote themselves even greater power and more protections.
There's a reason libertarians believe that "the government which governs least, governs best" and that's because the less direct control the government has over commerce, the less incentive to pay bribes and curry favors. Right now we're stuck in the messy middle ground between outright socialism and true free enterprise and we're stuck with the downsides of both, while the benefits of neither ideal are being realized.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Given a title like Grand Theft Auto where there are hundreds of nameless victims... errr.... models walking around, there is no reason that most of them need to look a certain way. Given current limits of memory/storage/bandwidth however, there are only a handful of models which each might have a handful of handful texture sets. The end result is that when you look down the street at 50 pedestrians, you see identical sextuplets walking toward you.
With procedural modeling and texturing, you can describe these characters with a single algorithm and simply seed it differently to get completely different results. They can all have unique hairstyles, clothes and skin without the need for hundreds of megabytes worth of models and textures. Then take that and apply it to all the objects you see. There will need to be some static art, things that algorithms may not be appropriate for such as signs. But those can be layered with other procedural textures to create unique looking objects. A gas station on the bad side of town could be identical to the one in a good neighborhood, but just given a grime factor and the correct textures are generated on the fly. Two of the same car, but one hasn't been washed in months and is covered in mud. That can be done to an extent with current graphics techniques, but it doesn't have nearly the flexibility of a procedural system.
That's where the next big jump in suspension of disbelief will occur. Not to mention the massive art creation savings that game creators could see.
I can think of one very good reason, variety of textures. The same algorithm with slightly different variables plugged in. Games are beginnning to require massive amounts of texture data. 2GB of main memory will be required to run things smoothly soon. The new top Nvidia card has 768MB of RAM. And still there are repeating textures everywhere: buildings looks the same, sections of tile, walls, windows. This takes the gamer out of the game. The more varied the environment, the more believable it is. To increase texture variety using the current design methods requires not only more and more memory, but more artist time. In the interest of lowering art costs and increasing quality games are starting to generate trees and foliage procedurally. The same will happen to textures.
While I agree that the government has no business regulating gambling, that issue exists offline as well and is a business/crime/corruption/taxation issue and not a free speech one.
Slashdot Mirror
Would you like us to call you Loretta?
Does your internet university have a Youtube Studies Department for distribution of classroom materials to potential students?
Heat to electricity? Bring on global warming!
Perhaps, but it seems to me that legislation which could just as easily be titled "Decimating a Legitimate Industry That Generates Billions of Dollars In Revenue and Employs Tens Of Thousands Of People" deserves more than a single sentence.
In English?
Me too, but they can never spell my name right. I keep telling them, it's Recipent.
Out of curiosity, do you have a cite from said USSC opinion? I was involved recently in a discussion regarding how and when you are required to provide ID for the police. An opinion stating that ID couldn't be mandated would go a long way toward saying police don't have the right to ask you for your "papers".
So... heads global warming is real, tails it isn't? I'll flip.
That's the real beauty of the ease of making digital copies. Sure, you can change the copy on your hard drive. But what about the million other copies out there? That's one of the reasons DRM has to die, if culture is made inaccessible, it will eventually be lost completely.
I need a Mercedes, but don't have the ability to buy one. Can somebody get on that?
That's just silly. Everyone knows ou can't enchant cloaks with +15 AGI, and even if you could, it'll be soulbound the first time you equip it.
I mean, haha, yeah, that's funny, haha...
I was involved in a project several years ago that was tasked with digitizing the laws of Ghana. Ghana is in many ways very modern. There are still tribes living in huts, but the capital Accra is one of the most modern cities in Africa. After losing it's colony status (when it was known as Gold Coast) it maintained the basic British legal system but began passing it's own laws. They weren't codified, access to them was difficult. It was a mess.
It seems to me that knowing the laws of where you live is essential to being a part of the first world. Any economic divide is meaningless compared to the divide you have when the ruling class rules you without any way to know how they are ruling. So we could spend millions of dollars printing and distributing the books containing the laws of these various countries. Then spend millions more every time the laws change. Or we can let them jump straight to a better system of distribution of knowledge that uses computers. Seems like a no brainer to me. If something like the $100 laptop is available, why force third world nations to trudge through decades of printed media before they migrate to a superior media?
"...nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBS extensions in their versions of Open Office."
Do people really think before posting? Any OO distributed by anyone other than Novell may be violating IP. Think damn it, think.
Poorly supported, but it was not bad. I and several of my friends actually owned them, and we would get together and hook them all up for 5 player Slime World, California Games and Warbirds.
What, you didn't like Night Trap?
Just curious about what video card you have, because I also still run an XP 2500 (though not overclocked and only 1GB of RAM) and recently picked up an AGP X800 GTO. I've been leery about picking up the more demanding games such as Oblivion, only to find out they run poorly.
Minneapolis/Hennepin County/State of Minnesota is screwing us over in the same way. I feel your pain.
Actually, the breakdown of free enterprise has been because of corporate collusion with government. The larger and more power government gets, the greater the incentive to control it. Hence large business interests control government and vote themselves even greater power and more protections.
There's a reason libertarians believe that "the government which governs least, governs best" and that's because the less direct control the government has over commerce, the less incentive to pay bribes and curry favors. Right now we're stuck in the messy middle ground between outright socialism and true free enterprise and we're stuck with the downsides of both, while the benefits of neither ideal are being realized.
I only ever knew him as the nerdy kid from Galaxy Quest.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Given a title like Grand Theft Auto where there are hundreds of nameless victims... errr.... models walking around, there is no reason that most of them need to look a certain way. Given current limits of memory/storage/bandwidth however, there are only a handful of models which each might have a handful of handful texture sets. The end result is that when you look down the street at 50 pedestrians, you see identical sextuplets walking toward you.
With procedural modeling and texturing, you can describe these characters with a single algorithm and simply seed it differently to get completely different results. They can all have unique hairstyles, clothes and skin without the need for hundreds of megabytes worth of models and textures. Then take that and apply it to all the objects you see. There will need to be some static art, things that algorithms may not be appropriate for such as signs. But those can be layered with other procedural textures to create unique looking objects. A gas station on the bad side of town could be identical to the one in a good neighborhood, but just given a grime factor and the correct textures are generated on the fly. Two of the same car, but one hasn't been washed in months and is covered in mud. That can be done to an extent with current graphics techniques, but it doesn't have nearly the flexibility of a procedural system.
That's where the next big jump in suspension of disbelief will occur. Not to mention the massive art creation savings that game creators could see.
I can think of one very good reason, variety of textures. The same algorithm with slightly different variables plugged in. Games are beginnning to require massive amounts of texture data. 2GB of main memory will be required to run things smoothly soon. The new top Nvidia card has 768MB of RAM. And still there are repeating textures everywhere: buildings looks the same, sections of tile, walls, windows. This takes the gamer out of the game. The more varied the environment, the more believable it is. To increase texture variety using the current design methods requires not only more and more memory, but more artist time. In the interest of lowering art costs and increasing quality games are starting to generate trees and foliage procedurally. The same will happen to textures.
You want to give hippies rifles and tell them to kill people?
Go ahead, send packets to that subnet on my LAN. Won't affect me.
While I agree that the government has no business regulating gambling, that issue exists offline as well and is a business/crime/corruption/taxation issue and not a free speech one.
Whatever you say, Cpt. Luddite. I suppose you think the metric system is silly compared to the genius that is the English measurement system.
When you can't even argue the topic and your only rebuttal is childish jabs at me, I think we can safely ignore your ignorant, anonymous opinion.