But under this law, you'd be forced to print someone else's blunder. As someone else points out, what if that in turn causes a third party to claim that THEY need a rebuttal printed too? Where does it end??
It ended with you publishing whatever you were forced to. The third party has no claim on you but rather on the second party. If the second party forced you to publish something slandering the third party then this third party can go after the second. If they can convince someone to right the perceived wrong inflicted upon them by the second party then this second party must figure out how to get the next rebuttal to the intended place. And at this point we are talking about compensation. The second party will have to pay you for the space and bandwidth to put up the foreign content. This alone should assure that the majority of people will be careful what they write in their original response (meaning that the thing is seen by a lawyer before being sent off), and that your average flamer will not get very far.
Wouldn't be long before user forums and blogs either go underground, collaspe under the sheer weight, or become bland useless places where nothing controversial is ever discussed.(emphasis added)
Another thought along similar lines: what if someone sends you a rebuttal that is an outright flame, which by this law you're forced to print -- and it's so embarrassing once seen in public that the flame's author wants you to remove it -- do you have to comply? can they sue you if you don't?
I doubt it. Unsaying something is very hard. Especially if you don't control the medium in which you said it. If you are stupid enough to respond in a way that might make you look even worse than the original accusation, than that's your fault. This legislation is not supposed to be destructive. It is not censorship, because it is not about removing existing content. It is about adding a different point of view. No one can force me to correct somebody else's blunder.
Does that mean that if I write a song that is critical of a company they would have to write a song for their reply?
If you only communicate your ideas in the form of songs then it would make sense that the response was an audio file as well. Not a song, but a recording of someone reading the response. If you only provide downloads then it wouldn't make sense to suddenly post a letter.
About the only other advice I can provide is to remember that you have a mount active, and then unmount before leaving work (easier said than done, of course).
I learned that after a long time. But before that I usually just re-launched the finder (either from the command line or the command-option-escape menu. That would get rid of the missing network drives and not really disrupt the system too much.
The response is supposed to be in the same format as the original. So if you wrote something then they should reply with writing. Furthermore you will not necessarily be forced to host their file. The proposal explicitly states, that links will be acceptable. So if someone decides to reply to you in form of a film you can tell them to host it themselves and just post the link. Same for audio. I can't think of any other form that would result in an extremely large file.
If I criticise SCO my Slashdot journal, and me being based in Europe, SCO demanded that I give them the right of reply, what does it entail?
When they respond you would have to do a new journal entry. It would start with a disclaimer along the lines of 'according to blabla I have to present the following. The views following express the opinions of SCO and are not mine.' Then you would print whatever they sent you. To actually force you to post their rebuttal they almost certainly need some kind of ruling by a judge. You can clearly mark what is from them and still write your opinions before and after.
If these declassified documents are truly complete, there HAS to be a reason they were classified in the first place.
Maybe the fact that Roswell, according to the article, was "home to the only atomic bomber unit (at Roswell Army Airfield) in the world" had something to do with it. We are talking 1947 here. The war has ended two years ago and the fight against commies is on. Could it be that all documents from that base were automatically kept secret? Were you able to look at the records from the 3rd of July 1947 before now? What about the 5th?
From the article: "One could argue that developers could write exact or very similar code, but the developers' comments in the code are basically your DNA, or fingerprints, for a particular piece of source code"
Find out who wrote it, ask who it was written for, and that should be the end of any doubt. But these are things that will happen in an eventual court case. SCO has definitely strengthened it's standing in the public eye. If their claims are any more valid, or actually simple deception remains to be seen.
Look at Sierra. I loed Kings Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. But when their product lines consisted of half a dozen games that only ran under windows 3, remakes of their old games, and boxed sets of their old games running under DOS, the handwriting was on the wall.
I'm not sure I get your point. Sierra still is very much around. Okay, they don't develop any games under that name (although two in-house studios owned by them do), but they publish some of the bigger names out there (Half-Life, Tribes) and, with Half Life 2, have one of the most anticipated PC games. With that out of the way I must say, that Sega better put a lot of effort into the remake of Phantasy Star. A game originating on the Master System is extremely simplistic by today's standards.
You started with the question: Why are they going to play paintball there? If they're aiming for an ultimate CS experience, they should be playing airsoft instead.
And finished with the answer: Do note that airsoft guns don't leave paint marks so each player must play honestly and call themselves out if they're hit - people who play in "godmode" are not looked well upon.(Emphasis is mine)
That's all there is to it, really. We are, after all, talking about Counter Strike.
I said: Of course CDs are easier to handle, and there is none of the static and other little noises you can get with a record. But for me music never was about the highest possible sound quality.
You react by writing two paragraphs, trying to refute some claims I never even made in the first place. I believe everything you said about vinyl records, and never claimed otherwise. I don't care about the best possible sound. I care about music. And that is what I said originally.
Then you continue with this little gem: BTW it's very silly to complain about the copy protection on CDs in this context. If you're happy enough to copy vinyl, you can similarly dub CDs simply by hooking your recording device to the analogue output of the CD player.
I don't know about you, but I have been faithfully ripping every new CD I bought to MP3 for years. Then the music industry decided that I no longer should be able to do that comfortably. By copy protecting the CDs they force me to record the analogue signal via the line in of my computer. The exact same technique I have to use If I want to rip from vinyl. The difference is one of personal philosophy. I decided not to buy crippled media and therefore went back to vinyl. Silly? If you say so,
I would like to check out the page, but the Slashdot effect was faster. I actually went back to buying records instead of CDs a while ago. With all the copy protection schemes on new CDs I have to rip them via line in anyway. With a record it's basically the same amount of work, but I don't support copy protected discs this way.
A nice side effect is that buying music became fun again. Browsing records and then putting them on the store's listening turntable is somehow a nicer experience than pressing a couple of buttons on a CD player. I now have a couple of albums that I didn't buy because of copy protection and couldn't be happier. Of course CDs are easier to handle, and there is none of the static and other little noises you can get with a record. But for me music never was about the highest possible sound quality.
I will not stop you. When I was caught between my deep seated love for music and my hate for the music industry I took the coward's way out: I went back to buying records. Sure, a lot of my money still goes to the executives, but at least I get my fix on media that will always work as advertised. I bought one copy protected CD by mistake. And it will be the last I ever bought.
The content creators are not necessarily the content owners. The flaw in this phrase is the thought that the trusted computing scheme would somehow expand the uses of a computer instead of reducing them.
I always thought that we already had ways of transmitting data securely between two points. How would the introduction of a company owned passport server help the user?
And I agree that hardly anyone will begrudge the content creators for wanting to earn money, but right now you can't hurt the RIAA without also hurting the artists.
Is there still room for side-scrollers, in this age of incredible 3D worlds with incredibly realistic world physics?
Not if they seem to be as badly done as this one. But looking at the praise that 'Viewtiful Joe' seems to get from those that have seen it, I think that the genre is not dead yet. As everywhere else developers still need to innovate, but provided they do I don't need incredible realistic world physics. Let me run faster and jump higher than I can do in the even more realistic world I live in. Otherwise I wouldn't need to play games.
So, these three games are very different in nature, and I'm very proud of all these three games and I hope that everyone gets to play these games and enjoy them.
Unfortunately you would need three different systems to play them all. The premise of Boktai is really cool, and previews seem to indicate that it will be fun. But isn't releasing this game in September really really stupid? Wouldn't it make much more sense to get it out in July or August, when many people might actually be on holiday in the sun? Depending on where you are September is the month when it slowly stops being fun outside.
I will probably get 'Twin Snakes' when it comes out, mainly based on Silicon Knights' strong performance on 'Eternal Darkness.' After the MGS2 trailer I really thought I would get a PS2 to play it eventually. That never happened and I'm not going to get one now.
Maybe someone should note that the mod is for GTA3. The original Grand Theft Auto had multiplayer right out of the box. I can't remember if it was LAN only or if internet play was possible as well. But then that was a PC only game, right.
I wonder if precious features such as multiplayer will get rarer, now that many hit titles are ported from various consoles to proper computers. In this case the game was released with the unfinished multiplayer code and some dedicated people are getting it to work. Why did the original programmers give up at what appears to be more than half way through?
I'd be interested to know if this kind of thing constitutes libel. This is a page that SCO has posted that tries to make Stallman and Perens look bad. The use it to back up their "case".
This page seems to contain a number of direct quotes. If Stallman and Perens indeed said those things (in a public forum) then there is no way to keep SCO from repeating them. Libel doesn't even begin to think about entering the picture unless the quotes are false.
Re:Price?
on
Saving MUDs?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Isn't there a big difference of price; MUDs are free and Everquest is very expensive?
And Everquest is sticking around while MUDs are shutting down. Coincidence?
Germany switched from their native currency to Euro a few years back... you still find vending machines accepting Mark only. Most of these places I've come upon, you just go to cashier and have a few Euros exchanged with a few old obsolete and dinged Mark coins for the machine.
Germany used to have the most convenient cigarette vending machines ever. Every pack would cost a single 5 DM coin. Depending on the actual store price there would be anything from 16 to 22 cigarettes in the pack. Some brands even had change inside the cellophane wrapper. With the euro other countries could share almost the same level of convenience for a little while. At 3 Euro a pack you could get it with just two coins. But most machines take bills now, which is just as nice.
Nobody's forcing you to buy a new printer. Just use the one you have now to print illegal material. It's good enough.
With computers I agree, but printers generally break faster. And if they don't break the day will come when there either are no more cartridges or no driver support in Windows. At least driver support should not be a problem as long as you use an open OS.
How likely would people be to cheat when they might get caught and have their reputations ruined? You could then set up servers where only registered players with sterling reputations could play.
This is one of those ideas that sound great but are horrible in theory. Don't forget then length griefers will go to destroy others enjoyment. Those that do everything to disrupt games now will do everything in their power to ruin the reputations of better players in the future. And then you will not only be removed from a single session, but from all future games.
Independent observers -- Some type of referee system would complement the above one and allow greater trust in the reputation system. If a player has a complaint logged against them, a referee could log into games where that player was playing and attempt to determine if the complaints were true.
That one is better, but those referees would either need to be volunteers (and there seem to be some organisations who try to do such a thing right now), or preferably people employed by the game companies (just like gamemasters in MMO games). The companies will only be willing to pay for a staff in subscription based products. But I could imagine that a lot of gamers would be willing to pay a monthly fee if they were guaranteed a fair(er) environement.
You're right. I mistook number of units ordered by retailers with pre-orders. Retailers ordered four million copies (beware: Splash advertising page when you follow the link). According to your link three million still have to be sold.
Slashdot Mirror
But under this law, you'd be forced to print someone else's blunder. As someone else points out, what if that in turn causes a third party to claim that THEY need a rebuttal printed too? Where does it end??
It ended with you publishing whatever you were forced to. The third party has no claim on you but rather on the second party. If the second party forced you to publish something slandering the third party then this third party can go after the second. If they can convince someone to right the perceived wrong inflicted upon them by the second party then this second party must figure out how to get the next rebuttal to the intended place. And at this point we are talking about compensation. The second party will have to pay you for the space and bandwidth to put up the foreign content. This alone should assure that the majority of people will be careful what they write in their original response (meaning that the thing is seen by a lawyer before being sent off), and that your average flamer will not get very far.
Wouldn't be long before user forums and blogs either go underground, collaspe under the sheer weight, or become bland useless places where nothing controversial is ever discussed. (emphasis added)
One might argue that this has already happened.
Another thought along similar lines: what if someone sends you a rebuttal that is an outright flame, which by this law you're forced to print -- and it's so embarrassing once seen in public that the flame's author wants you to remove it -- do you have to comply? can they sue you if you don't?
I doubt it. Unsaying something is very hard. Especially if you don't control the medium in which you said it. If you are stupid enough to respond in a way that might make you look even worse than the original accusation, than that's your fault. This legislation is not supposed to be destructive. It is not censorship, because it is not about removing existing content. It is about adding a different point of view. No one can force me to correct somebody else's blunder.
Does that mean that if I write a song that is critical of a company they would have to write a song for their reply?
If you only communicate your ideas in the form of songs then it would make sense that the response was an audio file as well. Not a song, but a recording of someone reading the response. If you only provide downloads then it wouldn't make sense to suddenly post a letter.
About the only other advice I can provide is to remember that you have a mount active, and then unmount before leaving work (easier said than done, of course).
I learned that after a long time. But before that I usually just re-launched the finder (either from the command line or the command-option-escape menu. That would get rid of the missing network drives and not really disrupt the system too much.
The response is supposed to be in the same format as the original. So if you wrote something then they should reply with writing. Furthermore you will not necessarily be forced to host their file. The proposal explicitly states, that links will be acceptable. So if someone decides to reply to you in form of a film you can tell them to host it themselves and just post the link. Same for audio. I can't think of any other form that would result in an extremely large file.
If I criticise SCO my Slashdot journal, and me being based in Europe, SCO demanded that I give them the right of reply, what does it entail?
When they respond you would have to do a new journal entry. It would start with a disclaimer along the lines of 'according to blabla I have to present the following. The views following express the opinions of SCO and are not mine.' Then you would print whatever they sent you. To actually force you to post their rebuttal they almost certainly need some kind of ruling by a judge. You can clearly mark what is from them and still write your opinions before and after.
It was the Ferengi!
That is a lie!
It was Zoidberg.
If these declassified documents are truly complete, there HAS to be a reason they were classified in the first place.
Maybe the fact that Roswell, according to the article, was "home to the only atomic bomber unit (at Roswell Army Airfield) in the world" had something to do with it. We are talking 1947 here. The war has ended two years ago and the fight against commies is on. Could it be that all documents from that base were automatically kept secret? Were you able to look at the records from the 3rd of July 1947 before now? What about the 5th?
Would an organism that sees with bat-like Sonar be able to convert a prime x prime grid of pixels into a recognisable image or set of symbols?
Probably not, but at least we might be able to kill them with horrible music should they ever decide to attack...
From the article:
"One could argue that developers could write exact or very similar code, but the developers' comments in the code are basically your DNA, or fingerprints, for a particular piece of source code"
Find out who wrote it, ask who it was written for, and that should be the end of any doubt. But these are things that will happen in an eventual court case. SCO has definitely strengthened it's standing in the public eye. If their claims are any more valid, or actually simple deception remains to be seen.
Look at Sierra. I loed Kings Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. But when their product lines consisted of half a dozen games that only ran under windows 3, remakes of their old games, and boxed sets of their old games running under DOS, the handwriting was on the wall.
I'm not sure I get your point. Sierra still is very much around. Okay, they don't develop any games under that name (although two in-house studios owned by them do), but they publish some of the bigger names out there (Half-Life, Tribes) and, with Half Life 2, have one of the most anticipated PC games. With that out of the way I must say, that Sega better put a lot of effort into the remake of Phantasy Star. A game originating on the Master System is extremely simplistic by today's standards.
You started with the question:
Why are they going to play paintball there? If they're aiming for an ultimate CS experience, they should be playing airsoft instead.
And finished with the answer:
Do note that airsoft guns don't leave paint marks so each player must play honestly and call themselves out if they're hit - people who play in "godmode" are not looked well upon.(Emphasis is mine)
That's all there is to it, really. We are, after all, talking about Counter Strike.
Did you even read what I posted originally?
I said:
Of course CDs are easier to handle, and there is none of the static and other little noises you can get with a record. But for me music never was about the highest possible sound quality.
You react by writing two paragraphs, trying to refute some claims I never even made in the first place. I believe everything you said about vinyl records, and never claimed otherwise. I don't care about the best possible sound. I care about music. And that is what I said originally.
Then you continue with this little gem:
BTW it's very silly to complain about the copy protection on CDs in this context. If you're happy enough to copy vinyl, you can similarly dub CDs simply by hooking your recording device to the analogue output of the CD player.
I don't know about you, but I have been faithfully ripping every new CD I bought to MP3 for years. Then the music industry decided that I no longer should be able to do that comfortably. By copy protecting the CDs they force me to record the analogue signal via the line in of my computer. The exact same technique I have to use If I want to rip from vinyl. The difference is one of personal philosophy. I decided not to buy crippled media and therefore went back to vinyl. Silly? If you say so,
I would like to check out the page, but the Slashdot effect was faster. I actually went back to buying records instead of CDs a while ago. With all the copy protection schemes on new CDs I have to rip them via line in anyway. With a record it's basically the same amount of work, but I don't support copy protected discs this way.
A nice side effect is that buying music became fun again. Browsing records and then putting them on the store's listening turntable is somehow a nicer experience than pressing a couple of buttons on a CD player. I now have a couple of albums that I didn't buy because of copy protection and couldn't be happier. Of course CDs are easier to handle, and there is none of the static and other little noises you can get with a record. But for me music never was about the highest possible sound quality.
Then I suppose I will hurt them both.
I will not stop you. When I was caught between my deep seated love for music and my hate for the music industry I took the coward's way out: I went back to buying records. Sure, a lot of my money still goes to the executives, but at least I get my fix on media that will always work as advertised. I bought one copy protected CD by mistake. And it will be the last I ever bought.
The content creators are not necessarily the content owners. The flaw in this phrase is the thought that the trusted computing scheme would somehow expand the uses of a computer instead of reducing them.
I always thought that we already had ways of transmitting data securely between two points. How would the introduction of a company owned passport server help the user?
And I agree that hardly anyone will begrudge the content creators for wanting to earn money, but right now you can't hurt the RIAA without also hurting the artists.
Is there still room for side-scrollers, in this age of incredible 3D worlds with incredibly realistic world physics?
Not if they seem to be as badly done as this one. But looking at the praise that 'Viewtiful Joe' seems to get from those that have seen it, I think that the genre is not dead yet. As everywhere else developers still need to innovate, but provided they do I don't need incredible realistic world physics. Let me run faster and jump higher than I can do in the even more realistic world I live in. Otherwise I wouldn't need to play games.
So, these three games are very different in nature, and I'm very proud of all these three games and I hope that everyone gets to play these games and enjoy them.
Unfortunately you would need three different systems to play them all. The premise of Boktai is really cool, and previews seem to indicate that it will be fun. But isn't releasing this game in September really really stupid? Wouldn't it make much more sense to get it out in July or August, when many people might actually be on holiday in the sun? Depending on where you are September is the month when it slowly stops being fun outside.
I will probably get 'Twin Snakes' when it comes out, mainly based on Silicon Knights' strong performance on 'Eternal Darkness.' After the MGS2 trailer I really thought I would get a PS2 to play it eventually. That never happened and I'm not going to get one now.
Maybe someone should note that the mod is for GTA3. The original Grand Theft Auto had multiplayer right out of the box. I can't remember if it was LAN only or if internet play was possible as well. But then that was a PC only game, right.
I wonder if precious features such as multiplayer will get rarer, now that many hit titles are ported from various consoles to proper computers. In this case the game was released with the unfinished multiplayer code and some dedicated people are getting it to work. Why did the original programmers give up at what appears to be more than half way through?
I'd be interested to know if this kind of thing constitutes libel. This is a page that SCO has posted that tries to make Stallman and Perens look bad. The use it to back up their "case".
This page seems to contain a number of direct quotes. If Stallman and Perens indeed said those things (in a public forum) then there is no way to keep SCO from repeating them. Libel doesn't even begin to think about entering the picture unless the quotes are false.
Isn't there a big difference of price; MUDs are free and Everquest is very expensive?
And Everquest is sticking around while MUDs are shutting down. Coincidence?
Germany switched from their native currency to Euro a few years back... you still find vending machines accepting Mark only. Most of these places I've come upon, you just go to cashier and have a few Euros exchanged with a few old obsolete and dinged Mark coins for the machine.
Germany used to have the most convenient cigarette vending machines ever. Every pack would cost a single 5 DM coin. Depending on the actual store price there would be anything from 16 to 22 cigarettes in the pack. Some brands even had change inside the cellophane wrapper. With the euro other countries could share almost the same level of convenience for a little while. At 3 Euro a pack you could get it with just two coins. But most machines take bills now, which is just as nice.
Nobody's forcing you to buy a new printer. Just use the one you have now to print illegal material. It's good enough.
With computers I agree, but printers generally break faster. And if they don't break the day will come when there either are no more cartridges or no driver support in Windows. At least driver support should not be a problem as long as you use an open OS.
How likely would people be to cheat when they might get caught and have their reputations ruined? You could then set up servers where only registered players with sterling reputations could play.
This is one of those ideas that sound great but are horrible in theory. Don't forget then length griefers will go to destroy others enjoyment. Those that do everything to disrupt games now will do everything in their power to ruin the reputations of better players in the future. And then you will not only be removed from a single session, but from all future games.
Independent observers -- Some type of referee system would complement the above one and allow greater trust in the reputation system. If a player has a complaint logged against them, a referee could log into games where that player was playing and attempt to determine if the complaints were true.
That one is better, but those referees would either need to be volunteers (and there seem to be some organisations who try to do such a thing right now), or preferably people employed by the game companies (just like gamemasters in MMO games). The companies will only be willing to pay for a staff in subscription based products. But I could imagine that a lot of gamers would be willing to pay a monthly fee if they were guaranteed a fair(er) environement.
You're right. I mistook number of units ordered by retailers with pre-orders. Retailers ordered four million copies (beware: Splash advertising page when you follow the link). According to your link three million still have to be sold.