I am joining in on the sex strike, but not in solidarity with Belgium. I am striking for mass transit and alternative fuel implementation in the U.S. I want them to replace 80% of our current oil use. I would enjoy remaining on strike until my demands have been met, but really. Instead I am engaging in no sex until next week.
Furthermore, "sounds like"'s post is blatant misinformation. Well researched plans on used vegetable oil have been well researched. Essentially used or dead plants can be implemented as a fuel source. The entire negative case is spurious.
You can't possibly believe that, just because you spend time on something, you're entitled to a paycheck, can you?
Let me tell you, there are LOTS of things people do, and few things people get paid for. I'll leave the mapping as an exercise for the class.
I'll back off a bit here. It doesn't always equate to pay. The ethics of the matter continue to concern me.
If I invite you into my home for dinner, you don't get to keep the place setting. Or the chair.
How about if I came as a guest, and you gave me a series of very strict rules I had to follow, then on a whim, and without warning, you changed them? I'd be pissed, wouldn't anyone?
What if as a part of the evening entertainment, you led a knitting class? The guests had to pay for the materials; you provided the instruction. At the end of the evening, we weren't allowed to take our projects home.
Professional football players make a considerable amount of money.
Football players don't really create any discrete items in-game, that could be sold off. At best you might be able to auction off your position. The analogy doesn't work.
You don't really own your character; the game company does--your character is subject to the alterations and whims of the company as needed, and access is even based upon whether they let you or not.
Some of you may have an entitlement complex going on--"But it's mine! I am paying for it!" No, you are paying to RENT it, to have access based on their terms.
That's my beef with the current legal state of affairs. The government is already in it, supporting the companies rights; that's status quo. A player contributes to a game. The player should be entitled to vproperty. Gamers invest a great deal of time and emotion, to the games they play. That's real time, and real emotion, and should be represented by a real dollar value.
"It" is your property? What do you mean by it? Do you mean a complex of rights defined by the game developers that you agreed to via EULA?
Is "it" an emotional thing you feel that deserves governmental protection (i.e., protection financed by tax dollars)?
What is "property" in your scheme? A bit arrangement on someone else's computer? Do you have rights in their computer? From what do your rights derive?
To address this question you need to address (a) your society's conception of property; and (b) your own conception of property. Fuzzy thinking is not helpful here.
It's intellectual property.
I don't think that my tax dollars should be spent enforcing property structures in vapid computer games. If people in the games really care about such stupid shit, then they ought to create virtual legislatures, virtual police, virtual courts, etc. (i.e., virtual dispute resolution). If people want to dork about in computer games equipped with virtual police, lawyers, and judges, more power to them. Just don't use my tax dollars to police your fantasy.
You do make it sound like a steady move towards Ludocracy, but it's much simpler than that.
1) Grant gamers the right to virtual property.
2) If they want to engage in any real-world transaction with that property, they pay a reasonable (we hope) fee on top of their monthly subscription. It covers the legal/taxation side of it, just like RL businesspeople have to deal with. No, the bureaucrats aren't VR, but may have appendages that occur in VR.
I used to pay a monthly fee to a chess club I was a member of.
I was never under the delusion that the pieces were "mine".
What if someone paid you to take over one of your games in mid-play? It's an unusual consideration, but theoretically possible. It's analogous to selling a character in an MMORPG.
Hell no. Thats like claiming as a Slashdot subscriber that you "own" your comments, and Slashdot is liable if they delete them.
You pay your monthly fee to be allowed to play with their toys in their sandbox. They have some rules to make it fun, including letting the toy solider you play with "own" toy swords.
Still their toys.
Slashdot owns the tools we use to create our comments, and at least to some degree, the space those comments inhabit. Does that mean it owns our opinions?
Taking it away from the net, ownership of a text is a major topic in contemporary Literary Criticism and Philosophy. Examples of ideas that are touted around are: If I read a Shakespeare play, and form my own images of the characters, does Shakespeare own the characters, or do I? Shakespear's dead, does he still own the play? The play is public domain, do we all own it, or is it still connected to Shakespeare, as he wrote it initially? What about the history, culture, and linguistic building blocks, that allowed Shakespeare to write? Don't those count as tools, owned by others, required for Shakespeare, to write his plays?
To move the discussion closer to Slashdot, consider the number of people who collaborate in order to put on a Shakespeare play. Someone posting a Slashdot comment, is similar to an actor in the play. The actor didn't write or direct anything, but does bring something of himself to it, which nobody else can do. In my opinion, he owns part of the play he is in, and has contributed something to the body of work we call Shakespeare.
You wrote it, you own it. Slashdot owns the machine you used to write it, but now you kinda do too.
Exactly, with fiat currency, the numbers in the bank only mean something because enough people say so.
Inside the crown of one of the kingdoms in the Society for Creative Anachronism (http://www.sca.org/)is the inscription "You rule because they believe".
Yes, from political power to the shoes on our feet, it's a matter of agreement. Now, the value and ownership of virtual items, is a facinating phenomenon.
Consider that people who play in virtual realities, online, in the SCA, in tabletop RPGs, or otherwise, do play within a set of rules. The players know what everyone owns, and have ideas as to the value of said items, irregardless of whether any meatspace value in currency is assigned to them.
If my Paladin has a +5 longsword, he'd better still have it the next day, save if the party's Rougue stole it, fair and square, within the rules of the game. I certainly place value on that longsword, as something useful to me in-game, and it does effect me personally in some manner, which is not described within the game. The game may describe how my character feels about the +5 longsword, but not me.
Selling the item for meatspace currency, is simply a translation of that understanding, into a market-value. I feel an emotional attachment to the sword; others share a similar attachment. This attachment occurs in RL, and is not in-game. It is appropriate that RL currency be assigned to an RL emotion.
I concur with "Anonymous Coward." The MMA isn't a true test of martial prowess. It is a sport. Someone entering into a Ninja Dojo will by nature take their art more seriously. It has always been geared towards practicality.
Slashdot Mirror
Aristophanes eh? Sounds like my type, if I were a woman.
I am joining in on the sex strike, but not in solidarity with Belgium. I am striking for mass transit and alternative fuel implementation in the U.S. I want them to replace 80% of our current oil use. I would enjoy remaining on strike until my demands have been met, but really. Instead I am engaging in no sex until next week.
The massive advantage to using Kimchi as a fuel source is that only the most badass customer would toy with the idea of eating your fuel.
Furthermore, "sounds like"'s post is blatant misinformation. Well researched plans on used vegetable oil have been well researched. Essentially used or dead plants can be implemented as a fuel source. The entire negative case is spurious.
we are at the outskirts.
and everyone knows that the rich flee to the suburbs. That goes in line with civs that flee the core.
All right, I'm old money.
You can't possibly believe that, just because you spend time on something, you're entitled to a paycheck, can you?
Let me tell you, there are LOTS of things people do, and few things people get paid for. I'll leave the mapping as an exercise for the class.
I'll back off a bit here. It doesn't always equate to pay. The ethics of the matter continue to concern me.
If I invite you into my home for dinner, you don't get to keep the place setting. Or the chair.
How about if I came as a guest, and you gave me a series of very strict rules I had to follow, then on a whim, and without warning, you changed them? I'd be pissed, wouldn't anyone?
What if as a part of the evening entertainment, you led a knitting class? The guests had to pay for the materials; you provided the instruction. At the end of the evening, we weren't allowed to take our projects home.
--
Arguing this three ways to China.
It is the player's property. He created the character. The game company designed and owns the world in which the character exists.
It's similar to creating an MS Word document. An individual user owns his document. MS owns the tool used to build that document.
Professional football players make a considerable amount of money.
Football players don't really create any discrete items in-game, that could be sold off. At best you might be able to auction off your position. The analogy doesn't work.
You don't really own your character; the game company does--your character is subject to the alterations and whims of the company as needed, and access is even based upon whether they let you or not.
Some of you may have an entitlement complex going on--"But it's mine! I am paying for it!" No, you are paying to RENT it, to have access based on their terms.
That's my beef with the current legal state of affairs. The government is already in it, supporting the companies rights; that's status quo. A player contributes to a game. The player should be entitled to vproperty. Gamers invest a great deal of time and emotion, to the games they play. That's real time, and real emotion, and should be represented by a real dollar value.
"It" is your property? What do you mean by it? Do you mean a complex of rights defined by the game developers that you agreed to via EULA?
Is "it" an emotional thing you feel that deserves governmental protection (i.e., protection financed by tax dollars)?
What is "property" in your scheme? A bit arrangement on someone else's computer? Do you have rights in their computer? From what do your rights derive?
To address this question you need to address (a) your society's conception of property; and (b) your own conception of property. Fuzzy thinking is not helpful here.
It's intellectual property.
I don't think that my tax dollars should be spent enforcing property structures in vapid computer games. If people in the games really care about such stupid shit, then they ought to create virtual legislatures, virtual police, virtual courts, etc. (i.e., virtual dispute resolution). If people want to dork about in computer games equipped with virtual police, lawyers, and judges, more power to them. Just don't use my tax dollars to police your fantasy.
You do make it sound like a steady move towards Ludocracy, but it's much simpler than that.
1) Grant gamers the right to virtual property.
2) If they want to engage in any real-world transaction with that property, they pay a reasonable (we hope) fee on top of their monthly subscription. It covers the legal/taxation side of it, just like RL businesspeople have to deal with. No, the bureaucrats aren't VR, but may have appendages that occur in VR.
Furthering on from my rushed comment earlier:
I used to pay a monthly fee to a chess club I was a member of.
I was never under the delusion that the pieces were "mine".
What if someone paid you to take over one of your games in mid-play? It's an unusual consideration, but theoretically possible. It's analogous to selling a character in an MMORPG.
--
Two Rooks for a Queen? Any takers?
Hell no. Thats like claiming as a Slashdot subscriber that you "own" your comments, and Slashdot is liable if they delete them.
You pay your monthly fee to be allowed to play with their toys in their sandbox. They have some rules to make it fun, including letting the toy solider you play with "own" toy swords.
Still their toys.
Slashdot owns the tools we use to create our comments, and at least to some degree, the space those comments inhabit. Does that mean it owns our opinions?
Taking it away from the net, ownership of a text is a major topic in contemporary Literary Criticism and Philosophy. Examples of ideas that are touted around are: If I read a Shakespeare play, and form my own images of the characters, does Shakespeare own the characters, or do I? Shakespear's dead, does he still own the play? The play is public domain, do we all own it, or is it still connected to Shakespeare, as he wrote it initially? What about the history, culture, and linguistic building blocks, that allowed Shakespeare to write? Don't those count as tools, owned by others, required for Shakespeare, to write his plays?
To move the discussion closer to Slashdot, consider the number of people who collaborate in order to put on a Shakespeare play. Someone posting a Slashdot comment, is similar to an actor in the play. The actor didn't write or direct anything, but does bring something of himself to it, which nobody else can do. In my opinion, he owns part of the play he is in, and has contributed something to the body of work we call Shakespeare.
You wrote it, you own it. Slashdot owns the machine you used to write it, but now you kinda do too.
Exactly, with fiat currency, the numbers in the bank only mean something because enough people say so.
Inside the crown of one of the kingdoms in the Society for Creative Anachronism (http://www.sca.org/)is the inscription "You rule because they believe".
Yes, from political power to the shoes on our feet, it's a matter of agreement. Now, the value and ownership of virtual items, is a facinating phenomenon.
Consider that people who play in virtual realities, online, in the SCA, in tabletop RPGs, or otherwise, do play within a set of rules. The players know what everyone owns, and have ideas as to the value of said items, irregardless of whether any meatspace value in currency is assigned to them.
If my Paladin has a +5 longsword, he'd better still have it the next day, save if the party's Rougue stole it, fair and square, within the rules of the game. I certainly place value on that longsword, as something useful to me in-game, and it does effect me personally in some manner, which is not described within the game. The game may describe how my character feels about the +5 longsword, but not me.
Selling the item for meatspace currency, is simply a translation of that understanding, into a market-value. I feel an emotional attachment to the sword; others share a similar attachment. This attachment occurs in RL, and is not in-game. It is appropriate that RL currency be assigned to an RL emotion.
--
Elvish grove for sale.
I concur with "Anonymous Coward." The MMA isn't a true test of martial prowess. It is a sport. Someone entering into a Ninja Dojo will by nature take their art more seriously. It has always been geared towards practicality.
Posted as a response to an article on slashdot? "News for nerds."