From a formal dictionary definition standpoint, I am sure you are probably correct.
In practice, any entity in a position to exert control over published media can censor that content. Its as simple as a publisher saying "I wont publish this unless you remove that". Since most authors / game developers / musicians end up signing agreements with a publisher in advance, its possible that the publisher may elect to censor the content, and put the author in a position where they are mostly screwed.
Hell, even Walmart is known to refuse to carry songs that have objectionable lyrics, leading to a Walmart version of the song, and the normal version.
I own both Monkeyball games. The second game has a few levels which I think should have been cut (Advanced 30 with the spider on the rings, and an expert level with a bunch of buttons, and you need to find the right button to raise the exit).
Those two levels aside, I figure that Super Monkey Ball, in general, as a prefect difficulty curve. If you take the levels in order, you always end up thinking you can defeat the level you are on, no matter how false that beleif may be.
Monkey ball is Old School Hard. Beating the latest Final Fantasy game is nothing to brag about. It just takes time. But Monkeyball requires a level of skill that can crush the egos of lesser gamers. On top of that, its one of the few games that reading an FAQ will simply NOT help you with. You know how to beat a level just by looking at it. Get to the end without falling off. What you dont know is if YOU can beat that level.
I can beat Expert mode in Monkeyball 1, and can get to Master Mode 3 when starting from Expert with 99 lives in Monkeyball 2. It is currently one of my favourite games because of its difficulty. Any game that can be that difficult and still be fun is doing something right.
I am Canadian. I will be affected by this law. And quite frankly, I dont see it being a problem.
You have to get your wallet out anyway to pay for the game. If they want to look at my ID when I buy the game, big deal.
I might give a crap if I were 17 or did not have ID handy. But I am not.
I see no problem with keeping mature themed games out of the hands of younger children. And the 17 year olds who want these games can cannot get them are resourceful. You not supposed to be able to get ciggarettes or booze at that age, yet they manage. I dont see games being a bigger problem.
Canada has many political parties. But the only parties that were covered by the mainstream media were the Liberals, the Conservative party, The Bloc Quebecois, and the NDP. There were certaintly other parties on our Ballots though. Two communist parties, the Green party, and a handfull of others.
The reason that the mass media does not cover the US 3rd parties or Canadian communist parties, is ratings. Not enough people vote for those parties to make an impact in an election. And as a corollary, citizens with those political views do not represent enough of a share of the ratings to make them worth catering to.
MMO does not work very well unless you have lots of people hoping to ride the bench.
But say, a 10 or 12 player hockey game, or Football, or Soccer might work a bit better. I dont see Baseball working very well for this, since the team currently on the offensive will have alot of players riding a bench.
As one poster already pointed out, its not like we slaughter cows just to wear their skins, and toss the rest of the cow in a landfill. Its not like it really improves the cows outlook once it reaches the slaughter house.
Even if this ends up being more economically viable then using cow hides, this will still offend those who view this kind of science as an abomination. Instead of slaughtering cows for their skins, were now tinkering in 'gods' playground, pissing around with the building blocks of life.
And the sort of person who complains about using leather is also likely to be the sort that complains about genetically modified foods.
While the typical hatred directed towards bureaucracies is often warrented, no one creates a bureaucracy for shits and giggles. Regulation is needed to keep commercial intrests honest.
Screwing over the citizens of a given country is the sole domain of the government of that country. New tech means that a new way to screw people over may have been created. So of course the Government is going to want to stay on top of it. They will figure out which agency should keep track of commercial space flight, and parcel it off to them. So you will not need to file a flight plan with 15 different agencies. Just one.
Would you prefer that the government kept its blinders on and did not update its laws to account for new tech?
I will concede, however, that bureaucrats usually do not serve their intended purpose as well as they ought to.
The regulation does need to happen, since the concerns are legitimate.
However, It is still quite early for such legislation to be written. The tech is still evolving. Just because SS1 took the X-Prize does not mean that their model will become the standard.
Once the differences in private space craft approach the level of similarity same as the differences in commercial air craft, then the regulation can be intelligently written.
Early legislation will probably focus on who has authority to sanction a flight plan, and what airports can double as space ports for various types of spacecraft.
This is more a thought exercise then a useful observation, however....
If the publisher was feeliug spiteful towards this censor board, whats to prevent them from setting up a server where australians can download the game for free?
What power does australias censorship laws have to prevent an offshore server from allowing australian citizens to download the game for free?
Some old movies hold up better then others. I doubt there will be any need any time soon to remake Gone with the Wind.
But Science Fiction fans are somewhat more demanding. And its easier to suspend your disbelief when the clothes and slang terms aren't 50 years out of date.
And ultimately, if you dont think that a remake of such a movie is a good idea, then dont watch it.
I think that this new section is worth keeping around long term. Many threads seem to get de-railed by political arguments / debates. And Politics is something worth discussing, even if the subject matter occasionally gets inflamitory.
It also provids a good counterpoint to the "Your Rights Online" section. As any Startrek fan could tell you, discussing what you can do with technology leads to discussing what you should / should not do with technology.
Having and using open source tools is a good thing. However, when it comes down to the content and gameplay, you end up nearing the part of game development that is more art then engineering.
Also, game developers like to be able to actually sell stuff for the purposes of supporting them selves.
I would say that using open tools in development, and releasing the source some time after development is a reasonable approach for those so inclined. After all, user mods are quite popular.
The internet may not be your livelyhood, but if you use ATM's or pay with credit cards often, you would probably notice a wholesale internet blackout.
Once in a while, one of the major banks in Canada has a hiccup related to its central servers, and you cannot pay by Interac / debit card. Since alot of people now use debit to buy shit like groceries, this can cause problems. I am sure the same sort of crap happens in the US or any other nation that uses Interac type transactions.
This means that 1 in 5 people or so cannot spend their money for a while, and that a similar number of stores cannot offer interac services. If that hit everyone at once, it would cause a huge problem. You could probably still go to a bank and obtain cash, but if everyone was doing this all at once, there would be pretty long lines.
As a rule of thumb, if something depends on getting info accessed over the internet, think of what not being able to access that information means.
I switched over to MSN because of the amount of spam coming in over ICQ. Aside from that, the interface for MSN simply feels better (messages sends when you hit enter by default, simple appearance). While ICQ can be setup to do all that MSN does by default, its the fact that MSN does it by default.
What the study does do is put into reasonably plain english (Or legal jargon that can be translated into reasonably plain english), the likely cause / effect consequences of various legal changes.
If we do X, then Y is likely to happen, which in turn results in Z.
Now all we need to do is come up with some sort of copyright scheme that manages to do all of the following:
1) Provides the best possible benefit for consumers. 2) Provides the most reasonable compensation for copyright holders. 3) Causes the least possible harm to copyright holder, consumers, and technology creators.
The problem with attempts to acheive the above goals, as I see it, is that 'best possible benefit for consumers' and 'least possible harm' is not guaranteed to be something that can be boiled down to a dollar value. Also, ultimately, the reasonable amount of compensation for IP is ultimately determined by the consumers who consume or not consume copyrighted works.
So while this is far from providing any answers, it does help us arrive at the correct questions.
They see a cheap investment with a huge potential payoff.
Mobile games are stupidly easy to make with modern tools since the target platform is about as complicated as a home console was back in 1985. The problems in making games suitible for such a target have been well documented and mostly solved. And while you cannot make an Xbox team with one or two people working out of a garage, you can do just that with a mobile game.
Assuming this e-mail address is valid and has a human at the other end...
I use 'END COMMUNICATION' at the end of my posts for the same reason as people use signatures at the end of their post. Because it amuses me. Because it sounds abrupt and borderline hostile. Because it actually looks like it might belong at the end of a forum post or e-mail.
That, and its an obscure simpsons quote from the episode where Kang and Kodos run for president.
But its not that I am that much of a Simpsons fan. It truly is because the quote amuses me, just as the movie Zardoz provided me with a somewhat cool sounding alias to use.
A better smart glass would not just block that extra thermal energy. It would find a way to convert that energy into a useable form or direct it to a useful purpose.
So it appears that Microsoft realized its initial approach was not going to work so well. And this resulted in them changing their approach. Is anyone else not suprised?
Microsoft may have gotten to where they are though questionable means, but they are not stupid. Far from it. If they were stupid, they would just stick their head in the sand and pretend that Linux was not a competitor worthy of notice.
I will grant that someone with the degree is likely to be more qualified then someone without the degree. Even after a great deal of experience, the university degree provides a much stronger platform of theory to build off of.
But it is far from necessary that every given software job out there requires such a degree. Like all education, you typically learn alot more then your likely to use. You dont need to be able to quote shakespeare to read and write in english. Also, education does not replace talent. And having a degree is no guarantee of skill. It is simply a guarantee that you have obtained a set of knowledge, not a guarantee that you will have any idea how to apply the knowledge.
I reccommend only getting as much education as you need to be able to do what you want. University level education is pretty damn expensive, and learning how to do what you want is not the same as doing what you want.
My opinion on this may be different if it were possible to obtain degrees without being required to take courses you have less intrest in. Especially while incurring huge debts without a guarantee of actually getting a job you want that can repay those debts.
Given all the slashdot stories about Wardriving and the like, how secure would these networks be? What prevents a competor with a wireless broadcast anteanna from parking in range of your factory, and sending false signals telling your machines to idle?
Slashdot Mirror
From a formal dictionary definition standpoint, I am sure you are probably correct.
In practice, any entity in a position to exert control over published media can censor that content. Its as simple as a publisher saying "I wont publish this unless you remove that". Since most authors / game developers / musicians end up signing agreements with a publisher in advance, its possible that the publisher may elect to censor the content, and put the author in a position where they are mostly screwed.
Hell, even Walmart is known to refuse to carry songs that have objectionable lyrics, leading to a Walmart version of the song, and the normal version.
END COMMUNICATION
I own both Monkeyball games. The second game has a few levels which I think should have been cut (Advanced 30 with the spider on the rings, and an expert level with a bunch of buttons, and you need to find the right button to raise the exit).
Those two levels aside, I figure that Super Monkey Ball, in general, as a prefect difficulty curve. If you take the levels in order, you always end up thinking you can defeat the level you are on, no matter how false that beleif may be.
Monkey ball is Old School Hard. Beating the latest Final Fantasy game is nothing to brag about. It just takes time. But Monkeyball requires a level of skill that can crush the egos of lesser gamers. On top of that, its one of the few games that reading an FAQ will simply NOT help you with. You know how to beat a level just by looking at it. Get to the end without falling off. What you dont know is if YOU can beat that level.
I can beat Expert mode in Monkeyball 1, and can get to Master Mode 3 when starting from Expert with 99 lives in Monkeyball 2. It is currently one of my favourite games because of its difficulty. Any game that can be that difficult and still be fun is doing something right.
END COMMUNICATION
I am Canadian. I will be affected by this law. And quite frankly, I dont see it being a problem.
You have to get your wallet out anyway to pay for the game. If they want to look at my ID when I buy the game, big deal.
I might give a crap if I were 17 or did not have ID handy. But I am not.
I see no problem with keeping mature themed games out of the hands of younger children. And the 17 year olds who want these games can cannot get them are resourceful. You not supposed to be able to get ciggarettes or booze at that age, yet they manage. I dont see games being a bigger problem.
END COMMUNICATION
But unless this tech can also aid in launching craft out of Earths gravity well, travel to more distant parts of the galaxy will not be routine.
I would read the article, but it appears slashdotted at this time. Unfortunate.
It would be intresting to see if this propulsion can work inside of earths atmosphere.
END COMMUNICATION
Canada has many political parties. But the only parties that were covered by the mainstream media were the Liberals, the Conservative party, The Bloc Quebecois, and the NDP. There were certaintly other parties on our Ballots though. Two communist parties, the Green party, and a handfull of others.
The reason that the mass media does not cover the US 3rd parties or Canadian communist parties, is ratings. Not enough people vote for those parties to make an impact in an election. And as a corollary, citizens with those political views do not represent enough of a share of the ratings to make them worth catering to.
END COMMUNICATION
MMO does not work very well unless you have lots of people hoping to ride the bench.
But say, a 10 or 12 player hockey game, or Football, or Soccer might work a bit better. I dont see Baseball working very well for this, since the team currently on the offensive will have alot of players riding a bench.
END COMMUNICATION
As one poster already pointed out, its not like we slaughter cows just to wear their skins, and toss the rest of the cow in a landfill. Its not like it really improves the cows outlook once it reaches the slaughter house.
Even if this ends up being more economically viable then using cow hides, this will still offend those who view this kind of science as an abomination. Instead of slaughtering cows for their skins, were now tinkering in 'gods' playground, pissing around with the building blocks of life.
And the sort of person who complains about using leather is also likely to be the sort that complains about genetically modified foods.
END COMMUNICATION
While the typical hatred directed towards bureaucracies is often warrented, no one creates a bureaucracy for shits and giggles. Regulation is needed to keep commercial intrests honest.
Screwing over the citizens of a given country is the sole domain of the government of that country. New tech means that a new way to screw people over may have been created. So of course the Government is going to want to stay on top of it. They will figure out which agency should keep track of commercial space flight, and parcel it off to them. So you will not need to file a flight plan with 15 different agencies. Just one.
Would you prefer that the government kept its blinders on and did not update its laws to account for new tech?
I will concede, however, that bureaucrats usually do not serve their intended purpose as well as they ought to.
END COMMUNICATION
The regulation does need to happen, since the concerns are legitimate.
However, It is still quite early for such legislation to be written. The tech is still evolving. Just because SS1 took the X-Prize does not mean that their model will become the standard.
Once the differences in private space craft approach the level of similarity same as the differences in commercial air craft, then the regulation can be intelligently written.
Early legislation will probably focus on who has authority to sanction a flight plan, and what airports can double as space ports for various types of spacecraft.
END COMMUNICATION
This is more a thought exercise then a useful observation, however....
If the publisher was feeliug spiteful towards this censor board, whats to prevent them from setting up a server where australians can download the game for free?
What power does australias censorship laws have to prevent an offshore server from allowing australian citizens to download the game for free?
END COMMUNICATION
What will become of the other X-Prize contestants who were on track to make their attempts but did not do so in time?
END COMMUNICATION
Will a successful attempt by scaled composites mean that the other X-Prize contenders will just walk away from it, or will they go ahead anyway?
END COMMUNICATION
Some old movies hold up better then others. I doubt there will be any need any time soon to remake Gone with the Wind.
But Science Fiction fans are somewhat more demanding. And its easier to suspend your disbelief when the clothes and slang terms aren't 50 years out of date.
And ultimately, if you dont think that a remake of such a movie is a good idea, then dont watch it.
END COMMUNICATION
I think that this new section is worth keeping around long term. Many threads seem to get de-railed by political arguments / debates. And Politics is something worth discussing, even if the subject matter occasionally gets inflamitory.
It also provids a good counterpoint to the "Your Rights Online" section. As any Startrek fan could tell you, discussing what you can do with technology leads to discussing what you should / should not do with technology.
END COMMUNICATION
Having and using open source tools is a good thing. However, when it comes down to the content and gameplay, you end up nearing the part of game development that is more art then engineering.
Also, game developers like to be able to actually sell stuff for the purposes of supporting them selves.
I would say that using open tools in development, and releasing the source some time after development is a reasonable approach for those so inclined. After all, user mods are quite popular.
END COMMUNICATION
The internet may not be your livelyhood, but if you use ATM's or pay with credit cards often, you would probably notice a wholesale internet blackout.
Once in a while, one of the major banks in Canada has a hiccup related to its central servers, and you cannot pay by Interac / debit card. Since alot of people now use debit to buy shit like groceries, this can cause problems. I am sure the same sort of crap happens in the US or any other nation that uses Interac type transactions.
This means that 1 in 5 people or so cannot spend their money for a while, and that a similar number of stores cannot offer interac services. If that hit everyone at once, it would cause a huge problem. You could probably still go to a bank and obtain cash, but if everyone was doing this all at once, there would be pretty long lines.
As a rule of thumb, if something depends on getting info accessed over the internet, think of what not being able to access that information means.
END COMMUNICATION
I switched over to MSN because of the amount of spam coming in over ICQ. Aside from that, the interface for MSN simply feels better (messages sends when you hit enter by default, simple appearance). While ICQ can be setup to do all that MSN does by default, its the fact that MSN does it by default.
END COMMUNICATION
While Fox may have been ok with Monolith developing this game, I dont think they would care to let Warner have any piece of that bit of IP.
END COMMUNICATION
What the study does do is put into reasonably plain english (Or legal jargon that can be translated into reasonably plain english), the likely cause / effect consequences of various legal changes.
If we do X, then Y is likely to happen, which in turn results in Z.
Now all we need to do is come up with some sort of copyright scheme that manages to do all of the following:
1) Provides the best possible benefit for consumers.
2) Provides the most reasonable compensation for copyright holders.
3) Causes the least possible harm to copyright holder, consumers, and technology creators.
The problem with attempts to acheive the above goals, as I see it, is that 'best possible benefit for consumers' and 'least possible harm' is not guaranteed to be something that can be boiled down to a dollar value. Also, ultimately, the reasonable amount of compensation for IP is ultimately determined by the consumers who consume or not consume copyrighted works.
So while this is far from providing any answers, it does help us arrive at the correct questions.
END COMMUNICATION
They see a cheap investment with a huge potential payoff.
Mobile games are stupidly easy to make with modern tools since the target platform is about as complicated as a home console was back in 1985. The problems in making games suitible for such a target have been well documented and mostly solved. And while you cannot make an Xbox team with one or two people working out of a garage, you can do just that with a mobile game.
END COMMUNICATION
Assuming this e-mail address is valid and has a human at the other end...
I use 'END COMMUNICATION' at the end of my posts for the same reason as people use signatures at the end of their post. Because it amuses me. Because it sounds abrupt and borderline hostile. Because it actually looks like it might belong at the end of a forum post or e-mail.
That, and its an obscure simpsons quote from the episode where Kang and Kodos run for president.
But its not that I am that much of a Simpsons fan. It truly is because the quote amuses me, just as the movie Zardoz provided me with a somewhat cool sounding alias to use.
END COMMUNICATION
A better smart glass would not just block that extra thermal energy. It would find a way to convert that energy into a useable form or direct it to a useful purpose.
END COMMUNICATION
So it appears that Microsoft realized its initial approach was not going to work so well. And this resulted in them changing their approach. Is anyone else not suprised?
Microsoft may have gotten to where they are though questionable means, but they are not stupid. Far from it. If they were stupid, they would just stick their head in the sand and pretend that Linux was not a competitor worthy of notice.
END COMMUNICATION
I will grant that someone with the degree is likely to be more qualified then someone without the degree. Even after a great deal of experience, the university degree provides a much stronger platform of theory to build off of.
But it is far from necessary that every given software job out there requires such a degree. Like all education, you typically learn alot more then your likely to use. You dont need to be able to quote shakespeare to read and write in english. Also, education does not replace talent. And having a degree is no guarantee of skill. It is simply a guarantee that you have obtained a set of knowledge, not a guarantee that you will have any idea how to apply the knowledge.
I reccommend only getting as much education as you need to be able to do what you want. University level education is pretty damn expensive, and learning how to do what you want is not the same as doing what you want.
My opinion on this may be different if it were possible to obtain degrees without being required to take courses you have less intrest in. Especially while incurring huge debts without a guarantee of actually getting a job you want that can repay those debts.
END COMMUNICATION
Given all the slashdot stories about Wardriving and the like, how secure would these networks be? What prevents a competor with a wireless broadcast anteanna from parking in range of your factory, and sending false signals telling your machines to idle?
END COMMUNICATION