Arrow of Time confirmed... Wheel of Time fans disappointed.
I've been disappointed since I realized the books were very engaging, exceptionally self-consistent, and... not only sexist but was a central component of the story. That sorta ruined it for me. -- A sad panda geek girl.
How is spying on somebody who is obeying the law supposed to help make the activity illegal?
Apparently by showing how inhumane a turkey shoot is (figuratively).
Shouldn't they be spending all that time writing their congresscritters?
It's not for you or I to judge how a person chooses to excercise their first amendment freedoms.
. Poke, Poke, Poke, Poke, Poke... Wham "Ow mommy, he hit me!" Then post a slashdot article and presto! Instant support for your position.
A review of the comments so far seems to suggest very little support either for their political position or their method of surveillance. Perhaps they believe negative publicity is still better than no publicity.
They would be more specific about the arrow of time. I get that they have confirmed it and all, but which direction is it pointing?
As I understand it (greatly simplified), time is a consequence of matter and energy interactions in space; They don't all happen at once though because of separation, and the distance (relative or absolute) between them is what creates time. That's why they call it 'spacetime'; The smallest unit of time then is the fastest change in quantum state possible. As time is a byproduct of matter and energy interactions, and couldn't exist without it, there's still the question of the "arrow of time". We perceive it to be always moving "forward", but there's no reason why the reaction A-B-C shouldn't go C-B-A as well, or instead.
If I understand this experiment correctly, what they're saying is "as well" is bogus. It's not just that it isn't observable, but that it just doesn't happen. No matter which way the reaction chain goes, there's no mirror reaction that goes unobservable. But perhaps someone who actually is a particle physicist could provide a layman explanation better than mine... I'll be honest: Most of what they do is beyond my grasp because they talk mostly in math and seem to eschew visualization or story explanation. -_-
This issue is well-established in law. Ever seen those balloon rides or events? They tend to land on private property. In fact, it's pretty much inevitable. You know what happens? Nothing. The police don't show up. The land owner doesn't shoot the balloons out of the sky. Strangely, people seem to act civilized (shocking, I know). On occasion, the balloon chase vehicle and pilot need to pay for property damage, because they do land in crop fields from time to time, but this is well-understood by all parties to be the cost of doing business -- hand shakes resolve these issues more than lawsuits.
Then you have animal rights activists. They take a position not supported by law (pidgeon shoots are legal) and then fly a loud mini-copter with surveillance gear over an area filled with dozens to hundreds of sharpshooters who disagree with their position. And they then acted shocked and dismayed when their toys get shot down and the police do nothing. News flash: The police don't have to investigate any crime. They have broad discretion. Know why? Because your neighbors dropping the bass at 2am may not be as important as the shots fired call four blocks away. And just about everything is more important than some inflammatory political activists pissing off their neighbors on purpose to try and make something that's legal now illegal tomorrow. If I'm a police officer, I'm going to be dragging my ass responding to any call you make, if I respond at all... because you're being a nuisance. This is like insulting the girl hanging off Mike Tyson's arm. Dude, you're gonna lose.
Phones aren't secure because most people don't put a password on them, and any app you run for mobile payments on top of that can be hacked, since once you have physical access to the phone, you're pretty well doomed.
Just stick with the damn cards. If you lose it, your bank will send you a free replacement, and it's instantly disabled. The same cannot be said for access to your accounts with your phone, for which you will not receive a free replacement, and you may have to close your account since unlike a card, your login, password, social security number, date of birth, access to e-mail account, oh... and probably the phone number the bank would call you back at to verify your identity... are now all in the hands of the criminal.
Because/. has a very strong group think mentality these days as the number of technically minded people on the site has shifted away, leaving it a shell of it's former self. In turn, that leaves the fanboi's and trolls who disagree out for blood modding down anything they disagree with.
Yeah. It looks like slashdot, but it isn't anymore. Malda moved on. It was sold off to the highest bidder that now quietly inserts sponsored links and is trying to monetize the site, and our editors are slowly being rotated out for people that are marketdroids instead of geeks. I mean, look at the logo? See how it no longer says "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." ? Now it's just an ever-shrinking green strip along the top with an ever-increasing number of drop-down menus. Soon they'll start adding "sponsored links" and then in short order it'll become the next "expertsexchange"... a place where blithering idiots who think they're "techie" because they have an iphone and (gasp!) once installed a video card into their store-bought computer.
It's all part of the steady erosion of geek culture, which is rapidly filling up with these fucking hipster posers and their instamatic filters. It's the same thing that happened to the title Hacker. Once upon a time, it was a title of great respect, something earned after years of service to the gods of computational competence. Now it's a term used by the media to mean "terrorist on a computer." And if there's one thing the mainstream hates, it's anyone who is truly competent, intelligent, and has earned their bona fides because it makes the posers look like cheap imitation knock-offs next to them. And let's be honest: They outnumber us by a very large number. We can't hold back the barbarian hordes of trolls, hipsters, and posers for much longer, and there's no other site for us to flee to where they can't follow us.
They already have DRM in place that many people on the PC platform find to be a fair compromise of ability and annoyance. The game developers you want Valve to sell to have already bought into Steam!
Umm, no. Most of the applications available for Steam were developed as stand-alone applications and only later added into their store. To say they "bought into" Steam is stupid; They bought into the PC platform. Steam is just another method of distribution. We aren't talking about developing games for the PC platform here, but a new console. Whatever is released on this new console may use commodity hardware, and may even be PC-like, but it won't be a PC, and you probably won't be able to just load up PC games under it, anymore than you can play a Mac game on a PC or vice versa. That's sorta the definition of a platform.
I'm sure it's goats blood, or human blood, or whatever they use for their search engine magic...
This is Symantec we're talking about. Their entire business model is "Hey, that's a nice computer you got there. It'd be a real shame if something were to... happen... to it." And we all know the murderous rage that powers McAfee. So it's probably not animal blood...
Of course, you're assuming an either/or situation when it's not.
Umm, you're the only one making that assumption. I'm making a cost/benefit analysis and comparing it to other platforms. Whether they develop on one console and port it to others is not the question here. Everyone else seems to be making assumptions that the level of piracy won't be a problem, but nobody has provided any hard data to support this position. Let's say your game costs you $1 million to develop, and your per unit sales will be $10. Of that, $1 is spent on distribution, $1 on support, and the other $8 is income. In this theoretical example, you would need to sell 125,000 units to recover your development costs (ie, break even) if the piracy rate is zero. Let's say there are 15 million consoles out there, the average person purchases 5 games, and there are 40 other games on the market. For simplicity's sake, we'll ignore the fact that only the top 5% of games tend to make up the majority of those sales and the rest languish -- we're going to say in our hypothetical market, all games are purchased in equal numbers. That means 1,875,000 of your games will be sold -- well above break even. You're a rich game developer!
A few months ago, the Ubisoft CEO claimed the piracy rate is 93-95% on the PC platform. Now let's revisit our hypothetical market -- out of the 1.8 million people playing your game, only 112,500 have paid for it thanks to piracy. You needed 125,000 sales to break even. Sorry man, you're bankrupt.
Now, this is a highly theoretical model, and real economics are far more complicated than that, but it does demonstrate how piracy can cause development on one platform to succeed brilliantly, and the other to fail miserably. I don't want to argue numbers with anyone, I'm simply pointing out that the piracy rate will be brought up in meetings with gaming studio executives, and could be a determining factor in whether or not a game is released on the platform. Valve's statement that it'll be up to the companies to impliment DRM strongly suggests there will be no hardware-based validation method, which means we're looking at a security system that looks less like the PS3 and more like the PC. And it's been well-established for the past thirty years now that DRM on the PC is quickly broken, and products are readily and easily available with minimal effort and investment of time. The PS3, on the other hand, only very recently had all of its encryption broken, and has been on the market for many years -- which shows that while a locked-down console's security can be defeated (was there any doubt?), it doesn't have to happen quickly, which results in a greatly-reduced piracy rate.
Again, I'm not taking a position on the technical merits of the platform, or any ethical or moral arguments about an open system; I am merely stating that the piracy rate on an open system will almost certainly be higher than for a closed system, and this will be a factor in game developers' decision on whether to release on the platform. Valve's business model here is untested and unproven; In an industry that's already high-risk, they need to make a strong case that releasing for their console will be at least as profitable, if not moreso, than its competitors. Piracy is a question they can't ignore.
Will there be piracy, probably. Will it be rampant on the steambox? Probably not, just use your normal computer.
I'm not suggesting it would be rampant, just higher than on consoles. My point was -- if it's even slightly higher than other consoles, if their sales are the same, that means less profit. And my question was: Can the "steambox" be as profitable for a game developer as traditional DRM-enabled consoles? The factors to consider are development costs, distribution costs, per-unit sales, and aggregate sales. All of these contribute to the total net. My argument is because per-unit sales would be lower (due to piracy), aggregate sales would need to be higher. The question is... how much piracy can we expect on an open platform? If it's comparable to the PC market, whether steam-store or not -- it'll probably earn less in total net sales than developing on a locked-down console.
It's an untested concept -- so the question is, how much piracy can we expect on an open platform?
Why should game developers be complaining if their console runs Linux down below?
Because the console market is a lot smaller than the PC market; Almost everyone owns a computer. Not nearly as many own consoles. Bigger market means more piracy can be tolerated and still make an equivalent amount of profit. And cell phones and tablets compete in a very different market space. That's like saying smart phones compete with laptops and desktops. Yeah... right.
Steam is already on Windows and that can be considered 'open' too, since you are referencing console lockdown. It is not perfect but it seems to be working well enough.
The market is a lot bigger; The piracy rate is higher, but so is the purchase rate, so it evens out. But consoles are a small market -- almost everyone owns a computer. Not nearly as many own consoles. If the piracy rate on a console was the same as the PC, the market would collapse; it would be very difficult for all but the most successful titles to get a return on investment.
How is it trolling to ask a question that any developer who's going to give serious consideration to this platform is going to ask? The console market thrives mostly on store-bought purchases, many of which are recycled into the used-games market a year after their release, but 95% of the games aren't pirated. The PC gaming market, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite: Most games, especially single-player games, sitting on PCs are pirated. So to get the same profit, you'd have to sell games for this console either at about 20 times the volume or 20 times the profit margin, to make up the difference.
This is math guys. It's business. I'm making no arguments as to technical feasibility of producing such a console, but one of the reasons for the success of the PS3 and one reason so many developed for it was because it had strong DRM: If you wanted to play a game on the PS3, you either had to buy it, or go through convoluted steps or modify the hardware in ways that often left you unable to use that console online for multiplayer games. Every console marketed in the last decade has tried to follow the same business model.
Now you have Valve coming along with a new, untested, business model. The burden of proving feasibility is on them; And I really, truly, and sincerely want to know what their argument is either for limiting piracy on their platform or describing how it won't affect sales or the profitability of games developed for the console. It is not trolling to point out a legitimate concern about an untested and unproven business model in an industry where game development costs many millions and the industry itself is prone to failure. Look at the (very) long list of failed games and gaming companies. Entertainment is a risky business.
So the question has to be answered, solidly, how those risks are mitigated. Not. A. Troll.
Okay, perfectly serious question, and one the game developers and studios are going to ask you: How are you going to protect against piracy if the platform is open? Explain how if it's made trivially-easy for people to download and pirate the games, how their revenue stream benefits from this... because open platforms encourage piracy. Or at least, that's the argument that's going to be made.
Please guys, serious answers only, not a giant flag of a penguin and patriotic music playing while you explain in great detail why open is better, etc. Pretend I'm a game developer and sell me on the concept. You can start by telling me how it'll be at least as profitable, if not more so, than the competitors. I don't care about linux, or the GPL, or open source: I want a business case made.
This one even cheerfully tells us how to think, calling us to see the patent system as broken because of one particular patent. The sensationalism really adds something to Slashdot... It's not like I come here for actual news or anything.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine how a broken patent system, the traditional means by which inventors protected themselves from large businesses' simply taking their idea and adding it to their product line, thus eliminating any monentary incentive for innovation, would be of interest to a site that caters to inventors, tinkerers, engineers, etc. We should probably just drop any discussion about the trend of rising illiteracy, the "brain drain" to other countries, how many entrepreneurs are starting up in China to cut through the exorbinantly high costs of doing business here, all due to legal fees, and how small businesses here often now have to hire more lawyers than engineers. Discussing a pervasive and growing problem in our industry isn't thinking really, it's just repeating dogma, and nothing good has ever come from a group of like-minded citizens getting together to discuss the common problems of their community.
I'll just be over here now, reading the "actual news" then. Things that matter like sex scandals, new hair-styles for this winter, and what ring-tone best fits my personality...
It's no use. I have a patent on a methodology whereby old technologies are patented as new by simply changing the names of the components and/or adding the letter 'i' to the front of it. Pay up, sweet cheeks.
The nice thing about Doctor Who is if they screw up, it's just a one minute visual effect and a new actor away from being fixed. So relax people, have some custard and fish sticks.
oh, you got slapped down in mid flight did ya,. Oh well, I guess your point will remain a mystery to me.
It's really for the best. The last time I tried to correct someone on the internet who was wrong, I woke up three days later in a cornfield covered in hot sauce and little else...
Slashdot Mirror
Arrow of Time confirmed... Wheel of Time fans disappointed.
I've been disappointed since I realized the books were very engaging, exceptionally self-consistent, and... not only sexist but was a central component of the story. That sorta ruined it for me.
-- A sad panda geek girl.
How is spying on somebody who is obeying the law supposed to help make the activity illegal?
Apparently by showing how inhumane a turkey shoot is (figuratively).
Shouldn't they be spending all that time writing their congresscritters?
It's not for you or I to judge how a person chooses to excercise their first amendment freedoms.
. Poke, Poke, Poke, Poke, Poke... Wham "Ow mommy, he hit me!" Then post a slashdot article and presto! Instant support for your position.
A review of the comments so far seems to suggest very little support either for their political position or their method of surveillance. Perhaps they believe negative publicity is still better than no publicity.
They would be more specific about the arrow of time. I get that they have confirmed it and all, but which direction is it pointing?
As I understand it (greatly simplified), time is a consequence of matter and energy interactions in space; They don't all happen at once though because of separation, and the distance (relative or absolute) between them is what creates time. That's why they call it 'spacetime'; The smallest unit of time then is the fastest change in quantum state possible. As time is a byproduct of matter and energy interactions, and couldn't exist without it, there's still the question of the "arrow of time". We perceive it to be always moving "forward", but there's no reason why the reaction A-B-C shouldn't go C-B-A as well, or instead.
If I understand this experiment correctly, what they're saying is "as well" is bogus. It's not just that it isn't observable, but that it just doesn't happen. No matter which way the reaction chain goes, there's no mirror reaction that goes unobservable. But perhaps someone who actually is a particle physicist could provide a layman explanation better than mine... I'll be honest: Most of what they do is beyond my grasp because they talk mostly in math and seem to eschew visualization or story explanation. -_-
>> your neighbors dropping the bass at 2am
>Isn't that animal abuse too?
Only if the neighbors survive the first shots you fire.
at any altitude? what about public airspace?
This issue is well-established in law. Ever seen those balloon rides or events? They tend to land on private property. In fact, it's pretty much inevitable. You know what happens? Nothing. The police don't show up. The land owner doesn't shoot the balloons out of the sky. Strangely, people seem to act civilized (shocking, I know). On occasion, the balloon chase vehicle and pilot need to pay for property damage, because they do land in crop fields from time to time, but this is well-understood by all parties to be the cost of doing business -- hand shakes resolve these issues more than lawsuits.
Then you have animal rights activists. They take a position not supported by law (pidgeon shoots are legal) and then fly a loud mini-copter with surveillance gear over an area filled with dozens to hundreds of sharpshooters who disagree with their position. And they then acted shocked and dismayed when their toys get shot down and the police do nothing. News flash: The police don't have to investigate any crime. They have broad discretion. Know why? Because your neighbors dropping the bass at 2am may not be as important as the shots fired call four blocks away. And just about everything is more important than some inflammatory political activists pissing off their neighbors on purpose to try and make something that's legal now illegal tomorrow. If I'm a police officer, I'm going to be dragging my ass responding to any call you make, if I respond at all... because you're being a nuisance. This is like insulting the girl hanging off Mike Tyson's arm. Dude, you're gonna lose.
Dude, wrong article. Next time, check the title in the tab before you click submit. :/
Phones aren't secure because most people don't put a password on them, and any app you run for mobile payments on top of that can be hacked, since once you have physical access to the phone, you're pretty well doomed.
Just stick with the damn cards. If you lose it, your bank will send you a free replacement, and it's instantly disabled. The same cannot be said for access to your accounts with your phone, for which you will not receive a free replacement, and you may have to close your account since unlike a card, your login, password, social security number, date of birth, access to e-mail account, oh... and probably the phone number the bank would call you back at to verify your identity... are now all in the hands of the criminal.
The police did respond
Near his mud hut by the pond
Found bath salts and money
But no sign of the dummy.
They released to the press
a story of the man's drug distress,
how his license to kill had expired
and the renewal fee was inspired.
Because /. has a very strong group think mentality these days as the number of technically minded people on the site has shifted away, leaving it a shell of it's former self. In turn, that leaves the fanboi's and trolls who disagree out for blood modding down anything they disagree with.
Yeah. It looks like slashdot, but it isn't anymore. Malda moved on. It was sold off to the highest bidder that now quietly inserts sponsored links and is trying to monetize the site, and our editors are slowly being rotated out for people that are marketdroids instead of geeks. I mean, look at the logo? See how it no longer says "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." ? Now it's just an ever-shrinking green strip along the top with an ever-increasing number of drop-down menus. Soon they'll start adding "sponsored links" and then in short order it'll become the next "expertsexchange"... a place where blithering idiots who think they're "techie" because they have an iphone and (gasp!) once installed a video card into their store-bought computer.
It's all part of the steady erosion of geek culture, which is rapidly filling up with these fucking hipster posers and their instamatic filters. It's the same thing that happened to the title Hacker. Once upon a time, it was a title of great respect, something earned after years of service to the gods of computational competence. Now it's a term used by the media to mean "terrorist on a computer." And if there's one thing the mainstream hates, it's anyone who is truly competent, intelligent, and has earned their bona fides because it makes the posers look like cheap imitation knock-offs next to them. And let's be honest: They outnumber us by a very large number. We can't hold back the barbarian hordes of trolls, hipsters, and posers for much longer, and there's no other site for us to flee to where they can't follow us.
They already have DRM in place that many people on the PC platform find to be a fair compromise of ability and annoyance. The game developers you want Valve to sell to have already bought into Steam!
Umm, no. Most of the applications available for Steam were developed as stand-alone applications and only later added into their store. To say they "bought into" Steam is stupid; They bought into the PC platform. Steam is just another method of distribution. We aren't talking about developing games for the PC platform here, but a new console. Whatever is released on this new console may use commodity hardware, and may even be PC-like, but it won't be a PC, and you probably won't be able to just load up PC games under it, anymore than you can play a Mac game on a PC or vice versa. That's sorta the definition of a platform.
I'm sure it's goats blood, or human blood, or whatever they use for their search engine magic...
This is Symantec we're talking about. Their entire business model is "Hey, that's a nice computer you got there. It'd be a real shame if something were to... happen... to it." And we all know the murderous rage that powers McAfee. So it's probably not animal blood...
Of course, you're assuming an either/or situation when it's not.
Umm, you're the only one making that assumption. I'm making a cost/benefit analysis and comparing it to other platforms. Whether they develop on one console and port it to others is not the question here. Everyone else seems to be making assumptions that the level of piracy won't be a problem, but nobody has provided any hard data to support this position. Let's say your game costs you $1 million to develop, and your per unit sales will be $10. Of that, $1 is spent on distribution, $1 on support, and the other $8 is income. In this theoretical example, you would need to sell 125,000 units to recover your development costs (ie, break even) if the piracy rate is zero. Let's say there are 15 million consoles out there, the average person purchases 5 games, and there are 40 other games on the market. For simplicity's sake, we'll ignore the fact that only the top 5% of games tend to make up the majority of those sales and the rest languish -- we're going to say in our hypothetical market, all games are purchased in equal numbers. That means 1,875,000 of your games will be sold -- well above break even. You're a rich game developer!
A few months ago, the Ubisoft CEO claimed the piracy rate is 93-95% on the PC platform. Now let's revisit our hypothetical market -- out of the 1.8 million people playing your game, only 112,500 have paid for it thanks to piracy. You needed 125,000 sales to break even. Sorry man, you're bankrupt.
Now, this is a highly theoretical model, and real economics are far more complicated than that, but it does demonstrate how piracy can cause development on one platform to succeed brilliantly, and the other to fail miserably. I don't want to argue numbers with anyone, I'm simply pointing out that the piracy rate will be brought up in meetings with gaming studio executives, and could be a determining factor in whether or not a game is released on the platform. Valve's statement that it'll be up to the companies to impliment DRM strongly suggests there will be no hardware-based validation method, which means we're looking at a security system that looks less like the PS3 and more like the PC. And it's been well-established for the past thirty years now that DRM on the PC is quickly broken, and products are readily and easily available with minimal effort and investment of time. The PS3, on the other hand, only very recently had all of its encryption broken, and has been on the market for many years -- which shows that while a locked-down console's security can be defeated (was there any doubt?), it doesn't have to happen quickly, which results in a greatly-reduced piracy rate.
Again, I'm not taking a position on the technical merits of the platform, or any ethical or moral arguments about an open system; I am merely stating that the piracy rate on an open system will almost certainly be higher than for a closed system, and this will be a factor in game developers' decision on whether to release on the platform. Valve's business model here is untested and unproven; In an industry that's already high-risk, they need to make a strong case that releasing for their console will be at least as profitable, if not moreso, than its competitors. Piracy is a question they can't ignore.
(looking at picture in article) I really have to wonder why malware authors use command and control servers covered in rust...
Will there be piracy, probably. Will it be rampant on the steambox? Probably not, just use your normal computer.
I'm not suggesting it would be rampant, just higher than on consoles. My point was -- if it's even slightly higher than other consoles, if their sales are the same, that means less profit. And my question was: Can the "steambox" be as profitable for a game developer as traditional DRM-enabled consoles? The factors to consider are development costs, distribution costs, per-unit sales, and aggregate sales. All of these contribute to the total net. My argument is because per-unit sales would be lower (due to piracy), aggregate sales would need to be higher. The question is... how much piracy can we expect on an open platform? If it's comparable to the PC market, whether steam-store or not -- it'll probably earn less in total net sales than developing on a locked-down console.
It's an untested concept -- so the question is, how much piracy can we expect on an open platform?
Why should game developers be complaining if their console runs Linux down below?
Because the console market is a lot smaller than the PC market; Almost everyone owns a computer. Not nearly as many own consoles. Bigger market means more piracy can be tolerated and still make an equivalent amount of profit. And cell phones and tablets compete in a very different market space. That's like saying smart phones compete with laptops and desktops. Yeah... right.
Steam is already on Windows and that can be considered 'open' too, since you are referencing console lockdown. It is not perfect but it seems to be working well enough.
The market is a lot bigger; The piracy rate is higher, but so is the purchase rate, so it evens out. But consoles are a small market -- almost everyone owns a computer. Not nearly as many own consoles. If the piracy rate on a console was the same as the PC, the market would collapse; it would be very difficult for all but the most successful titles to get a return on investment.
How is it trolling to ask a question that any developer who's going to give serious consideration to this platform is going to ask? The console market thrives mostly on store-bought purchases, many of which are recycled into the used-games market a year after their release, but 95% of the games aren't pirated. The PC gaming market, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite: Most games, especially single-player games, sitting on PCs are pirated. So to get the same profit, you'd have to sell games for this console either at about 20 times the volume or 20 times the profit margin, to make up the difference.
This is math guys. It's business. I'm making no arguments as to technical feasibility of producing such a console, but one of the reasons for the success of the PS3 and one reason so many developed for it was because it had strong DRM: If you wanted to play a game on the PS3, you either had to buy it, or go through convoluted steps or modify the hardware in ways that often left you unable to use that console online for multiplayer games. Every console marketed in the last decade has tried to follow the same business model.
Now you have Valve coming along with a new, untested, business model. The burden of proving feasibility is on them; And I really, truly, and sincerely want to know what their argument is either for limiting piracy on their platform or describing how it won't affect sales or the profitability of games developed for the console. It is not trolling to point out a legitimate concern about an untested and unproven business model in an industry where game development costs many millions and the industry itself is prone to failure. Look at the (very) long list of failed games and gaming companies. Entertainment is a risky business.
So the question has to be answered, solidly, how those risks are mitigated. Not. A. Troll.
Okay, perfectly serious question, and one the game developers and studios are going to ask you: How are you going to protect against piracy if the platform is open? Explain how if it's made trivially-easy for people to download and pirate the games, how their revenue stream benefits from this... because open platforms encourage piracy. Or at least, that's the argument that's going to be made.
Please guys, serious answers only, not a giant flag of a penguin and patriotic music playing while you explain in great detail why open is better, etc. Pretend I'm a game developer and sell me on the concept. You can start by telling me how it'll be at least as profitable, if not more so, than the competitors. I don't care about linux, or the GPL, or open source: I want a business case made.
(The last Episode with the Angels is quite good really EXCEPT THE ENDING SUCKS.
You have to watch the last few minutes very closely or you'll miss why it's awesome. You probably blinked.
Listed here for your convenience.
Touche.
This one even cheerfully tells us how to think, calling us to see the patent system as broken because of one particular patent. The sensationalism really adds something to Slashdot... It's not like I come here for actual news or anything.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine how a broken patent system, the traditional means by which inventors protected themselves from large businesses' simply taking their idea and adding it to their product line, thus eliminating any monentary incentive for innovation, would be of interest to a site that caters to inventors, tinkerers, engineers, etc. We should probably just drop any discussion about the trend of rising illiteracy, the "brain drain" to other countries, how many entrepreneurs are starting up in China to cut through the exorbinantly high costs of doing business here, all due to legal fees, and how small businesses here often now have to hire more lawyers than engineers. Discussing a pervasive and growing problem in our industry isn't thinking really, it's just repeating dogma, and nothing good has ever come from a group of like-minded citizens getting together to discuss the common problems of their community.
I'll just be over here now, reading the "actual news" then. Things that matter like sex scandals, new hair-styles for this winter, and what ring-tone best fits my personality...
It's no use. I have a patent on a methodology whereby old technologies are patented as new by simply changing the names of the components and/or adding the letter 'i' to the front of it. Pay up, sweet cheeks.
The nice thing about Doctor Who is if they screw up, it's just a one minute visual effect and a new actor away from being fixed. So relax people, have some custard and fish sticks.
... Researchers would have finished the work sooner, but they were just so damned tasty.
oh, you got slapped down in mid flight did ya,. Oh well, I guess your point will remain a mystery to me.
It's really for the best. The last time I tried to correct someone on the internet who was wrong, I woke up three days later in a cornfield covered in hot sauce and little else...