First they were big, resource-intensive, and used by people oblivious to what's around them. Now they'll blue-screen at the drop of a dime or pop up a dialog for you to confirm you really meant to use the brake pedal.
I worked on a project that simply had a long-term storage requirement. Given the amount of data and the retention they wanted, we went with a series of TB drives. We used this Hot swappable drive bay, it worked great and doesn't even require a sled to mount the drive in.
Does anyone play an "adult" video game to explore the human condition. Heck no. It's all about juvenile self-indulgence. Real adults are far past that stage and have no real desire to subject themselves to unsavory sights and sounds.
And there you have it. That barrier must be overcome for video games to be accepted as a dignified medium worthy of serious topics. It's the perception that must be overcome.
There is a sad truth to this, however there is also a large gray area. All media (books, comics, movies, TV, radio) have their own shining examples of controversial material. Many of them still have not quite been figured out by US society (likely others). As said in other replies, games are becoming an increasingly powerful medium with which to tell a story and directly involve the player. However, we quickly get into the area where "My rights end where yours begin", so while you may have a great story to tell, once it includes some risque nature to it, someone somewhere will be up in arms about it.
Consider other media for a moment. We're all aware of Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, as well as all the backlash Howard Stern received and his move to satellite radio, a move which also garnered media attention about the content of his radio show.
The truth of the matter is that these things all reside in a capitalistic society. They wouldn't be made if there weren't some market for them, no matter how obscure or small the market may be. It's true that many juveniles (18-70something) get kicks out of playing GTA, so there's a market for it. Personally I don't care for GTA, so I don't support it by buying a copy (or even downloading one). If you find something offensive in a movie, you don't buy the DVD. If you find something offensive on TV/radio, you change the station. If you find a game offensive, don't buy it. When the market for something becomes small enough, it goes away, just like VHS, just like 8-track, just like VHS.
To me it looks more like they took XNA and adapted it to something a bit more agnostic to underlying architecture. Almost like a Blackboard/XNA lovechild. They took the compartmentalized (class-driven) structure of XNA, gave a shared communication API in the same vein as Blackboard (think centralized communication system as opposed to shared discussion system... like the comm system in Quake 3 source), wrapped it up in a C# API, and called it a language.
Call me crazy... but in order for it to be truly a "language", it needs to have a compiler/interpretor, and not simply a few new keywords in an existing language (it's C# with some new datatypes).
The only thing a M.S. gains you is an extra bullet point on your resume, such that they will hire you instead of the B.S. candidate, but don't expect to earn any more money.
Do a quick look at the national labs (Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, etc...), or any of the large corporations. The labs in particular will hire a M.S. for ~30k more than a B.S. What they won't do, however, is hire a B.S. then give them the M.S. salary once they get that piece of paper.
What gets you more money is experience, especially experience in the field you're looking for work in, and the ability to negotiate. There's just no point to extra years of school in CS, you learn on the job or through self study everything you'd learn in the masters courses.
I whole-heartedly disagree with your statement. As someone that has 5 years "in the field" experience in CS and has been working on my Masters for 4, I can honestly say that the two go hand-in-hand. After applying to a few jobs at USAJobs, for the FBI and other gov agencies, you'll routinely run into a questionnaire that asks about both education and real world experience.
Digging a little deeper into that questionnaire, they ask how many years have you worked on a Masters (up to 3 I believe), and how many years of real world experience you have (no limit). They use those numbers in combination to determine what your pay grade will be for a particular job. Doing a couple of interviews after those applications further enlightened the subject. I found that if a person has a masters, that makes them more marketable as opposed to someone that does not. If the sum of the years of Masters and work experience are the same for two people, the one with the higher education gets looked at more.
There is a point in extra years of CS. At least in my school the Master's program is much more taxing than anything I did in undergrad or on-the-job. Those more advanced classes helped my understanding of those harder problems (image processing and pattern recognition) and low-level tricks (advanced OS classes) that normally get a "oh by the way, this is useful here" gloss over.
Except that Linux and Mac users aren't immune to viruses, they just aren't the big target. In fact, if you are working in a secure environment, *every machine* must have antivirus software installed, if it's available for the OS. To say that they would take a disproportionate amount of the (financial) burden is false. As those OS's gain more market share, or gain position in large targets (corporate servers), they too will become larger targets.
Norton AV for Mac
They do have SAV for Linux, just hidden behind obscure web design... so here's a Helpdesk page instead.
McAfee offers Linux/Solaris as well as Windows too.
As long as Linux is playing catch-up to Windows in terms of available applications (Gimp vs Photoshop, Dia vs Visio, Wine...), it will never become a successor in a Windows dominated world. What it needs is to either 1) Do something better or 2) Provide some need that Windows just can't/won't fulfill.
Look at the flip side of the coin, Windows has the games, familiar office applications (the de facto standard, actually), and the familiarity for people. Linux has fewer games, less commercial support, and is sufficiently different and scary for the computer illiterate. Ubuntu has done a great job at minimizing the fear factor, but it needs to go that extra step and beat Windows at it's own game: Solving the problems that users need to solve. Make email/web browsing as easy as possible. Make peripheral attachment as easy as possible (plug and play). Get as much support from software/hardware vendors as possible.
Linux in general has come a long way even in the past 3-4 years, but there is still a ways to go.
One of the largest problems I see is the imbalance of wages. Check out some executive salaries, then tell me if these Stamp Jockeys deserve to make their 8 digit salaries (or more). Stephen Lazco of Seagate technologies raked in over $28 million in 2008, Michael Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch made over $12 million in 2008, Robert J. Stevens of Lockheed Martin pulled in close to $26 million, Mark V. Hurd of HP made $34 million in 2008. Of course these are just the CEO's salaries, most corporations/companies have a lot of people at the top, and I'd bet that any of the direct reports for these people pull in 7 digits, and the people below them are in the mid-high 6 digits.
The other major piece of this puzzle is for those companies that are unnecessarily "top-heavy", they have too many people up top and too few workers to keep them afloat. It'd take serious dedication to the company for a CEO to take a pay cut so employees can stay on board, something Mr. Hurd did here. Given the choice between keeping your employees on the payroll and taking a pay cut, or firing thousands and giving yourself a bonus, how many CEO's do you think would pick the former?
It's not stealing though, it's breach of contract.
It's breach of contract for the original person who "made available". When you first click that EULA on software, part of it has the usual "unauthorized reproduction" legalese. If I buy a computer game, rip it to ISO and throw it on a torrent site, that's breach of contract. Likewise if I buy some other good that has some sort of disclaimer about unauthorized resale, say I pick up beer in bulk at Costco, then sell it to my friends in my own "bar". Or I just leave them on the front porch for whatever reason.
However, if I'm the one that sees the torrent and decide to download it, that can be construed as stealing. It's the same sort of deal as the guy that walks by my front yard, sees the beer, and helps himself.
IANAL and so on... If someone knows a better example, or cares to expand a bit, feel free.
2. Under American law you are required to give notice, and an opportunity to be heard, PRIOR to the court granting your motion. This has not occurred in the RIAA cases. It has been an ongoing flagrant violation of American law.
What does that mean for past cases that were not settled out of court? Do they get reheard? Do their verdicts get overturned?
It seems to me that if a court is found to have not followed the letter of the law, some action regarding those involved should be taken. It could be a slap on the wrist for the Judge presiding the case, perhaps the lawyers on either side.
Okay... so I gave up and RTFA. There's a lot of "it's pretty, it's pretty, it's quick, it's pretty"... but no details and no screenshots. What gives?
....making me suffer through reading so many words and not giving me pretty pictures...
I like AMD too, they've always been affordable, have pretty powerful chips, and amazing customer support. I picked up a Phenom 9550 around the time they hit the market, and either the mainboard or the CPU was flawed. I called them up, told them my trials, they sent me a new one within a week.
Now, concerning the AMD/Intel battle that's going on. I'd have to say that Intel would be in for a bunch of monopoly lawsuits if AMD were to ever go belly up. It's really in there best interests to maintain competition.
An hour too long, dull and unsympathetic characters, suspension of belief overchallenged, lame ending. I don't see how anyone who wasn't already a fan could have possibly enjoyed it.
I have a number of friends that never read the book, didn't know anything about the story, and loved the movie. Their responses? They liked the character interactions, the reality of the characters themselves, and the involvement in important events in recent history (Vietnam, Cold War, shaking hands with JFK, JFK assassination, etc...).
Bottom line, if you are the type of person that enjoys having the plot front and center, like the Spiderman movies, then this isn't the movie for you. However, if you actually go and read the book, you might actually find some of the little intricacies that had to be left out of the story. A lot of the character development had to be imposed in the movie simply because there wasn't enough time to keep everything in.
So... instead of looking to compete, seek legislation to put a competitor out of business?
What school of economics did TWC go to? I suppose if they offered that low of price in one locale, they'd have a customer uprising to get the price everywhere. Comcast already stated that it's cheaper to run the higher speed equipment, which could allow them to compete at that level and still run a profit. Guess the CEO's wallet just isn't fat enough.
The original intent of copyright is still being used correctly for those types of objects for which it was designed. We don't have a great number of Sony DS's, Ford Corolla's, or Sega Wii's. Not to mention the numerous other things that copyright has rightfully protected, such as the couple year old litigation over the 802.11/g wireless invented and copyrighted by research in Australia that has since had ~18 companies pay royalties for.
Copyright is not dead, it's just being misused for a medium that is not tangible. When we talk about mp3's, about.iso files, and other purely electronic media, we're talking about things that are trivial to duplicate, and incredibly hard to track. There's absolutely nothing stopping me from making thousands of copies of mp3's on my own computer. However, if I were to make and distribute thousands of my own form of DS's, you can bet your ass that Nintendo would be all over me.
It no longer makes sense to pretend that the point of reproduction is a choke point for publication. Yes, we do need to reward creativity, but no, corporate-controlled copyright focused on profit-maximization (based on an ancient paradigm of killing more trees) is NOT the solution.
You're absolutely right, we need to reward creativity. The problem is that once a band signs up to a major label, they no longer have exclusive rights to their music. Once a movie is made, it's owned by the studio, not the actors (who make too damn much anyway). If for every $20 album sold the artist only sees $0.32, then we have a bastardization of copyright. If you *really* want to support a band, see them in concert. In fact, I think a better business model would be for record labels to offer tons of free songs for every band, perhaps 2-3 tracks, let them spread like wildfire. Get the band out there. The real profit would be having more people attend concerts, and some side cash from services like the iTunes store or amazon digital downloads.
Let me get this straight... If I want to make myself unreachable via the internet:
1) Set up web server
2) Host "offensive" material
3) Get self on national IP blacklist
4) Get one step closer to being malware free, since no router will send crap my way
5) ???
6) profit???
or I suppose I could pull the plug, but that's just crazy talk
Slashdot Mirror
I still think Jon Stewart said it best:
Obama: "The H1N1 virus"
Stewart: "The who-now-what-now?... What do we get it from DROIDS?"
Just what we need, Microsoft Hummer.
First they were big, resource-intensive, and used by people oblivious to what's around them. Now they'll blue-screen at the drop of a dime or pop up a dialog for you to confirm you really meant to use the brake pedal.
All they really need to do is say the technology is already in use and widely accepted in Japan. That gets them every time.
I worked on a project that simply had a long-term storage requirement. Given the amount of data and the retention they wanted, we went with a series of TB drives. We used this Hot swappable drive bay, it worked great and doesn't even require a sled to mount the drive in.
gotta learn to re-read... make that second VHS something better, like Zune.
Does anyone play an "adult" video game to explore the human condition. Heck no. It's all about juvenile self-indulgence. Real adults are far past that stage and have no real desire to subject themselves to unsavory sights and sounds.
And there you have it. That barrier must be overcome for video games to be accepted as a dignified medium worthy of serious topics. It's the perception that must be overcome.
There is a sad truth to this, however there is also a large gray area. All media (books, comics, movies, TV, radio) have their own shining examples of controversial material. Many of them still have not quite been figured out by US society (likely others). As said in other replies, games are becoming an increasingly powerful medium with which to tell a story and directly involve the player. However, we quickly get into the area where "My rights end where yours begin", so while you may have a great story to tell, once it includes some risque nature to it, someone somewhere will be up in arms about it.
Consider other media for a moment. We're all aware of Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, as well as all the backlash Howard Stern received and his move to satellite radio, a move which also garnered media attention about the content of his radio show.
The truth of the matter is that these things all reside in a capitalistic society. They wouldn't be made if there weren't some market for them, no matter how obscure or small the market may be. It's true that many juveniles (18-70something) get kicks out of playing GTA, so there's a market for it. Personally I don't care for GTA, so I don't support it by buying a copy (or even downloading one). If you find something offensive in a movie, you don't buy the DVD. If you find something offensive on TV/radio, you change the station. If you find a game offensive, don't buy it. When the market for something becomes small enough, it goes away, just like VHS, just like 8-track, just like VHS.
To me it looks more like they took XNA and adapted it to something a bit more agnostic to underlying architecture. Almost like a Blackboard/XNA lovechild. They took the compartmentalized (class-driven) structure of XNA, gave a shared communication API in the same vein as Blackboard (think centralized communication system as opposed to shared discussion system... like the comm system in Quake 3 source), wrapped it up in a C# API, and called it a language.
Call me crazy... but in order for it to be truly a "language", it needs to have a compiler/interpretor, and not simply a few new keywords in an existing language (it's C# with some new datatypes).
The only thing a M.S. gains you is an extra bullet point on your resume, such that they will hire you instead of the B.S. candidate, but don't expect to earn any more money.
Do a quick look at the national labs (Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, etc...), or any of the large corporations. The labs in particular will hire a M.S. for ~30k more than a B.S. What they won't do, however, is hire a B.S. then give them the M.S. salary once they get that piece of paper.
What gets you more money is experience, especially experience in the field you're looking for work in, and the ability to negotiate. There's just no point to extra years of school in CS, you learn on the job or through self study everything you'd learn in the masters courses.
I whole-heartedly disagree with your statement. As someone that has 5 years "in the field" experience in CS and has been working on my Masters for 4, I can honestly say that the two go hand-in-hand. After applying to a few jobs at USAJobs, for the FBI and other gov agencies, you'll routinely run into a questionnaire that asks about both education and real world experience.
Digging a little deeper into that questionnaire, they ask how many years have you worked on a Masters (up to 3 I believe), and how many years of real world experience you have (no limit). They use those numbers in combination to determine what your pay grade will be for a particular job. Doing a couple of interviews after those applications further enlightened the subject. I found that if a person has a masters, that makes them more marketable as opposed to someone that does not. If the sum of the years of Masters and work experience are the same for two people, the one with the higher education gets looked at more.
There is a point in extra years of CS. At least in my school the Master's program is much more taxing than anything I did in undergrad or on-the-job. Those more advanced classes helped my understanding of those harder problems (image processing and pattern recognition) and low-level tricks (advanced OS classes) that normally get a "oh by the way, this is useful here" gloss over.
Except that Linux and Mac users aren't immune to viruses, they just aren't the big target. In fact, if you are working in a secure environment, *every machine* must have antivirus software installed, if it's available for the OS. To say that they would take a disproportionate amount of the (financial) burden is false. As those OS's gain more market share, or gain position in large targets (corporate servers), they too will become larger targets.
Norton AV for Mac
They do have SAV for Linux, just hidden behind obscure web design... so here's a Helpdesk page instead.
McAfee offers Linux/Solaris as well as Windows too.
As long as Linux is playing catch-up to Windows in terms of available applications (Gimp vs Photoshop, Dia vs Visio, Wine...), it will never become a successor in a Windows dominated world. What it needs is to either 1) Do something better or 2) Provide some need that Windows just can't/won't fulfill.
Look at the flip side of the coin, Windows has the games, familiar office applications (the de facto standard, actually), and the familiarity for people. Linux has fewer games, less commercial support, and is sufficiently different and scary for the computer illiterate. Ubuntu has done a great job at minimizing the fear factor, but it needs to go that extra step and beat Windows at it's own game: Solving the problems that users need to solve. Make email/web browsing as easy as possible. Make peripheral attachment as easy as possible (plug and play). Get as much support from software/hardware vendors as possible.
Linux in general has come a long way even in the past 3-4 years, but there is still a ways to go.
Just ask MediaSentry to look up the number of *nix distros flying around torrents. Then we'd have a good 30% market share.
Speaking of who we should tax...
One of the largest problems I see is the imbalance of wages. Check out some executive salaries, then tell me if these Stamp Jockeys deserve to make their 8 digit salaries (or more). Stephen Lazco of Seagate technologies raked in over $28 million in 2008, Michael Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch made over $12 million in 2008, Robert J. Stevens of Lockheed Martin pulled in close to $26 million, Mark V. Hurd of HP made $34 million in 2008. Of course these are just the CEO's salaries, most corporations/companies have a lot of people at the top, and I'd bet that any of the direct reports for these people pull in 7 digits, and the people below them are in the mid-high 6 digits.
The other major piece of this puzzle is for those companies that are unnecessarily "top-heavy", they have too many people up top and too few workers to keep them afloat. It'd take serious dedication to the company for a CEO to take a pay cut so employees can stay on board, something Mr. Hurd did here. Given the choice between keeping your employees on the payroll and taking a pay cut, or firing thousands and giving yourself a bonus, how many CEO's do you think would pick the former?
It's not stealing though, it's breach of contract.
It's breach of contract for the original person who "made available". When you first click that EULA on software, part of it has the usual "unauthorized reproduction" legalese. If I buy a computer game, rip it to ISO and throw it on a torrent site, that's breach of contract. Likewise if I buy some other good that has some sort of disclaimer about unauthorized resale, say I pick up beer in bulk at Costco, then sell it to my friends in my own "bar". Or I just leave them on the front porch for whatever reason.
However, if I'm the one that sees the torrent and decide to download it, that can be construed as stealing. It's the same sort of deal as the guy that walks by my front yard, sees the beer, and helps himself.
IANAL and so on... If someone knows a better example, or cares to expand a bit, feel free.
2. Under American law you are required to give notice, and an opportunity to be heard, PRIOR to the court granting your motion. This has not occurred in the RIAA cases. It has been an ongoing flagrant violation of American law.
What does that mean for past cases that were not settled out of court? Do they get reheard? Do their verdicts get overturned?
It seems to me that if a court is found to have not followed the letter of the law, some action regarding those involved should be taken. It could be a slap on the wrist for the Judge presiding the case, perhaps the lawyers on either side.
Okay... so I gave up and RTFA. There's a lot of "it's pretty, it's pretty, it's quick, it's pretty"... but no details and no screenshots. What gives?
....making me suffer through reading so many words and not giving me pretty pictures...
Gems like this?
VF Designer
Unfortunately the pain isn't limited to geocities... more pain here.
Makes you wonder just how much he'll get paid for letting them use his likeness in a movie... in a non-satirical manner.
I like AMD too, they've always been affordable, have pretty powerful chips, and amazing customer support. I picked up a Phenom 9550 around the time they hit the market, and either the mainboard or the CPU was flawed. I called them up, told them my trials, they sent me a new one within a week.
Now, concerning the AMD/Intel battle that's going on. I'd have to say that Intel would be in for a bunch of monopoly lawsuits if AMD were to ever go belly up. It's really in there best interests to maintain competition.
Your 'i' key is broken. ;-)
I couldn't disagree more.
An hour too long, dull and unsympathetic characters, suspension of belief overchallenged, lame ending. I don't see how anyone who wasn't already a fan could have possibly enjoyed it.
I have a number of friends that never read the book, didn't know anything about the story, and loved the movie. Their responses? They liked the character interactions, the reality of the characters themselves, and the involvement in important events in recent history (Vietnam, Cold War, shaking hands with JFK, JFK assassination, etc...).
Bottom line, if you are the type of person that enjoys having the plot front and center, like the Spiderman movies, then this isn't the movie for you. However, if you actually go and read the book, you might actually find some of the little intricacies that had to be left out of the story. A lot of the character development had to be imposed in the movie simply because there wasn't enough time to keep everything in.
So... instead of looking to compete, seek legislation to put a competitor out of business?
What school of economics did TWC go to?
I suppose if they offered that low of price in one locale, they'd have a customer uprising to get the price everywhere. Comcast already stated that it's cheaper to run the higher speed equipment, which could allow them to compete at that level and still run a profit. Guess the CEO's wallet just isn't fat enough.
>
Seriously, copyright is dead already.
The original intent of copyright is still being used correctly for those types of objects for which it was designed. We don't have a great number of Sony DS's, Ford Corolla's, or Sega Wii's. Not to mention the numerous other things that copyright has rightfully protected, such as the couple year old litigation over the 802.11/g wireless invented and copyrighted by research in Australia that has since had ~18 companies pay royalties for.
Copyright is not dead, it's just being misused for a medium that is not tangible. When we talk about mp3's, about .iso files, and other purely electronic media, we're talking about things that are trivial to duplicate, and incredibly hard to track. There's absolutely nothing stopping me from making thousands of copies of mp3's on my own computer. However, if I were to make and distribute thousands of my own form of DS's, you can bet your ass that Nintendo would be all over me.
It no longer makes sense to pretend that the point of reproduction is a choke point for publication. Yes, we do need to reward creativity, but no, corporate-controlled copyright focused on profit-maximization (based on an ancient paradigm of killing more trees) is NOT the solution.
You're absolutely right, we need to reward creativity. The problem is that once a band signs up to a major label, they no longer have exclusive rights to their music. Once a movie is made, it's owned by the studio, not the actors (who make too damn much anyway). If for every $20 album sold the artist only sees $0.32, then we have a bastardization of copyright. If you *really* want to support a band, see them in concert. In fact, I think a better business model would be for record labels to offer tons of free songs for every band, perhaps 2-3 tracks, let them spread like wildfire. Get the band out there. The real profit would be having more people attend concerts, and some side cash from services like the iTunes store or amazon digital downloads.
Just my $0.02
Piracy is rampant on the DS too, and there's tons of money being made there.
Look no further than r4ds, snesDS, neoDS. Sure, I could pick up more games for the DS... but I like playing super metroid.
Let me get this straight... If I want to make myself unreachable via the internet:
1) Set up web server
2) Host "offensive" material
3) Get self on national IP blacklist
4) Get one step closer to being malware free, since no router will send crap my way
5) ???
6) profit???
or I suppose I could pull the plug, but that's just crazy talk