I use Videotron for my own internet access. I disagree with their reasoning on this though. What I am more interested in is exactly why they (or any other ISP) would take this position? The only real gain for an ISP would be the ability to kick bandwidth hogs, which is a win for them for obvious reasons.
But if they want to have that kind of power, then they would also make themselves at least somewhat liable for what their subscribers are doing over the internet. Do they really want to take on that liability to any degree? Or do they expect to be able to get the ability to throttle bandwidth while still not incurring any liability for user activities?
Microsoft is not asking for source code here. They just want to be able to publish applications for that platform. In fact, they are not asking for anything more on that platform then they permit for Windows or the Xbox.
Microsoft might not let you have the raw source code for the Windows OS. But they will happily hand you and SDK and a compiler and let you develop on it. They also do not care if you make boatloads of cash on the platform, as long as your a licensed developer. The same applies to the Xbox, even though the platform is more expensive to get a license for.
All they are advocating is that Apple let more developers publish software for the iPhone platform.
yup. the cost of video games is why i quit buying them. and no, i haven't resorted to alternate means of acquisition, either. i just quit buying new ones, content on playing the couple dozen or so that are on my gaming pc.
not buying any new games has also saved the money that would've otherwise had to gone into hardware upgrades to even play the new ones in the first place.
$20-30 for a game is much more agreeable to my checkbook than the $50-60 or more some games cost these days.
and then you have series like the sims, which gets you both coming and going. $50 for the game, $20+ for each addon pack. by the time you pick up the entire "set" for the kids, you're looking at a couple hundred bucks or more.
There are many game that quite frankly, are not worth the $50 or $60 price that they cost at launch.
However, even if you consider games that fall only in the center of the bell curve for quality, a typical video game will provide about 15 to 20 hours of entertainment value. (Yes, I know some like Portal are just short, and others like Civilization will consume months, I said typical).
How many forms of entertainment can provide you with 15 hours of entertainment? On a per hour basis, a $60 game is costing you $4 per hour, and multi-player games even less. A movie costs about $10 per person. That is at worst competitive with movies, and the Sims series goes well beyond 15 hours for those that like it enough to pay for any expansions.
You need to look at more than just the initial price of the game. You need to consider how much you are actually getting out of it.
It does not necessarily destroy his argument. Take a look at the Home section of VG Chartz, from your own link. Based on that site, the Wii has sold 42 million world wide. So that game sold to just under 4% of the install base, and is considered one of Capcom's primary franchises. The game cube total sales were about the same, and the Gamecube had a much smaller install base than the Wii.
That game is a financial success on the Wii because the dev costs were minimal. The game already existed, and the Wii supports Gamecube backward compatibility.
Gears of war is an undisputed hit on the Xbox 360. It has sold 5.56 million on an install base of 25.59 million. The game was able to appeal to 20% of the install base.
The Wii audience may be larger, but the Xbox / PS3 audience is still a more reliable consumer for most developers. If you want to put out a AAA game with mature themes, you probably want to hit about 6 million to consider it a monster it, and about 3 million to break even.
The marketing of the Wii has been effective from a bottom line point of view, but the platform has not done much to impress non casual gamers. I would like to think that the platform can still appeal to hard core as well as casual gamers, but it is pretty clear at this point that developers of games with mature themes are not targeting the Wii yet.
As a fan of the platform, and a hardcore gamer, I would very much like to see more studios put quality mature games on the Wii, but it does not seem likely at this point.
Like a smoker, or a motorist, you know exactly what will happen. You will make a crapload of noise about how stupid it is that these things are so expensive. You will vow to all within earshot that you will never surrender your hard earned money to such a blatant cash grab.
And then you will walk into the store within 3 days of its release and purchase all three games, probably pre-ordering them.
You will complain. You will whine. And in the end you will buy all three within days of their release. And ultimately you will enjoy them.
I know this because your not complaining that Starcraft sucks or is over rated. Your just angry that you are being gouged for something you know you will probably pay for no matter what.
Radical entertainment is a studio owned by Universal / Vivendi that passed to Blizzard. They are still in business, but they laid off about 100 people in Vancouver.
I know this because it has made my own job hunting a pain in the ass.
If the Glider source code makes use of either code or content belonging to Blizzard, they can argue that they own the copyrights (in part if not in whole) to Glider as a result.
If that is the case, than it cannot be open sourced by a 3rd party without Blizzards permission.
A key arguement for the GPL concerns the hypothetical situation of someone trying to withhold their own modifications to the original source. Even if the GPL license is for some reason not valid, than the code falls under traditional copyright, and the original rights holders can hold the GPL Violator in violation of existing copyright laws and pursue a legal remedy based on that.
You cannot make another persons copyrighted materials open source without their co-operation.
Please note that I in no way endorse game censorship of the sort that Jack Thompson advocates.
However, I do think that Video games should be handled differently than books movies and television. Videogames are more than just a depiction of an action or narrative. Videogames are an interactive immersion in an action or narrative.
It is one thing to portray a torture scene in a TV show such as 24. But to put the control of those actions in the hands of a player is different. It is not such a stretch to think that what may be acceptable in a movie may not be acceptable in a game as a result of the presence of the aspect of choice.
If you have a large enough population of players where nearly everyone plays co-operate, the 2 or 3 assholes who play to betray do quite well. They only pay the price if they play the same opponent a few times. Without paying the price, they will do quite well.
I cannot see anything that would come of being able to say one way or the other if Math is discovered or invented. So why would the distinction matter?
Consoles will continue to be the dominant platform, though they may very well converge with other tech. The simple fact is that the PC is not an especially profitable or popular platform to develop for.
PC gaming wont go away, but Consoles are not going to disappear either. At the moment many big PC titles are essentially ports of the Xbox 360 version. near the end of any given console cycle, that reverses for certain PC titles, but it is generally the rule, not the exception.
Until the PC version of most games is also the reference platform for development, the consoles will continue to be more important.
The question is useless if you have the mindset that the answer must always be yes for videogames to have a significant cultural impact.
Most games are not art. Some games come close, most do not. It simply does not matter. A more important and useful question would be 'Are Vidoegames culturally significant?'. There are many things that are culturally significant that are not in any great way considered art.
World of Warcraft is not art in and of its self. But you can say that it is a common experience shared by millions of people across different cultures. It is a medium in which people who may otherwise never interact with one another or meet one another may do so repeatedly. To me, that is culturally significant.
Video games have caused various laws to be passed and debated. In the US, those laws are generally along the lines of what content ought to be allowed. Content we would not think much about in a more passive form is much more sensitive when presented in an interactive form. In Japan, there have been laws passed to prevent the DragonQuest series from launching new games on work days because too many people skipped school and work.
Also, for a fad, videogames has endured and thrived for far longer than a typical fad would. How many fads persist beyond 25 years?
Who cares if they are not Art. They have become a rather important aspect of modern culture regardless.
If you have a means for a worm to tell a computer that it is really a fix, all a hacker has to do is spoof that, and the machine will accept a virus as the fix.
I think that copyrights ought to operate under a use it or lose it system, where if the item (game, music, movie, literature or software) is not being actively promoted or sold, that the copyrights lapse into the public domain after 25 years.
When you consider Mickey Mouse or James Bond, the original creator is long dead (or cryonically frozen if you believe the tabloids), but it is an ongoing enterprise, and the current owners of the IP still use it. The same can be said of Batman, Superman, and others.
But if enough time passes where no new works are created for a given property, it ought to become public domain. I also think that the copyrights on old IP should be something that can be challenged, so that owners of old content don not just put out marginal re-hashes to sustain the rights on the original and still profitable IP.
Being a Canadian, this probably affects me more than the majority of readers here.
I might go for this, but the implementation would be tricky. What I have in mind is the following.
1) Do not tack this directly onto the internet bill without consent of the user. 2) Should be $3.00 or lower, scaled to the quantity of songs downloaded 3) Should take the form of a hook (like an encryption key) that identifies the user of a file sharing app has having a legitimate license. 4) The key should be able to confirm that the license is legit and up to date, and nothing else (no way to trace a key to a particular user).
Disclaimer: I lack the knowledge to have a legitimate informed opinion on this topic.
Ram Accellerators may be cheaper in terms of raw dollars, but I wonder how well they scale relative to Rail guns? Specifically, economies of scale for mass production, and for the mass per projectile.
Once the technology is figured out for Railguns, I suspect the primary cost will be the power generation. The projectiles themselves will probably be very cheap, and be easier to manufacture than those used by a Ram Accellerator. Essentially, it sounds like the complex part of the rail cannon will be the gun, and the complex part of the Ram accellerator will be the projectiles.
Artillery works better when you can get mass quantities of bullets on the cheap.
The power requirements do seem to be the primary problem for the Railguns at the moment though. Are there any known projects using ram accellerators?
The only way to get the idiots wh repeat this kind of crap to shut up is to start going after the advertisers. Angry letters to Fox News its self wont make much difference. All that will do is tell them that you watched it, and disagree. Going after advertisers though can get them to reconsider advertising on programs or websites that spread these views, if they get a large enough and loud enough negative response. That in turn will have a greater effect on Fox.
At this point, we have yet to create a mechanical heart that is capable of being a universal replacement. Normal hearts beat, and the human body seems to work fine with that. If you want to reverse engineer a replacement, you may as well rip off what works.
If the fraud is real but cannot be proven with hard facts, than it will just be dismissed as a conspiracy theory for idiots. Voters can be forgiving of all sorts of implied corruption, but the moment it is proven, they are made to generally pay for it by whoever has an axe to grind.
As a hypothetical scenario, if an election was rigged by the Republicrats and the Democraticans were able to obtain proof, they would push the issue hard. The issue would go to court, and someone would end up in jail. It is also probable that the election would be declared fraudulent. This is what happened in the Ukraine a few years ago.
On a tangential note, has anyone ever been convicted of electoral fraud in any stable democracy?
Slashdot Mirror
I use Videotron for my own internet access. I disagree with their reasoning on this though. What I am more interested in is exactly why they (or any other ISP) would take this position? The only real gain for an ISP would be the ability to kick bandwidth hogs, which is a win for them for obvious reasons.
But if they want to have that kind of power, then they would also make themselves at least somewhat liable for what their subscribers are doing over the internet. Do they really want to take on that liability to any degree? Or do they expect to be able to get the ability to throttle bandwidth while still not incurring any liability for user activities?
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Microsoft is not asking for source code here. They just want to be able to publish applications for that platform. In fact, they are not asking for anything more on that platform then they permit for Windows or the Xbox.
Microsoft might not let you have the raw source code for the Windows OS. But they will happily hand you and SDK and a compiler and let you develop on it. They also do not care if you make boatloads of cash on the platform, as long as your a licensed developer. The same applies to the Xbox, even though the platform is more expensive to get a license for.
All they are advocating is that Apple let more developers publish software for the iPhone platform.
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yup. the cost of video games is why i quit buying them. and no, i haven't resorted to alternate means of acquisition, either. i just quit buying new ones, content on playing the couple dozen or so that are on my gaming pc.
not buying any new games has also saved the money that would've otherwise had to gone into hardware upgrades to even play the new ones in the first place.
$20-30 for a game is much more agreeable to my checkbook than the $50-60 or more some games cost these days.
and then you have series like the sims, which gets you both coming and going. $50 for the game, $20+ for each addon pack. by the time you pick up the entire "set" for the kids, you're looking at a couple hundred bucks or more.
There are many game that quite frankly, are not worth the $50 or $60 price that they cost at launch.
However, even if you consider games that fall only in the center of the bell curve for quality, a typical video game will provide about 15 to 20 hours of entertainment value. (Yes, I know some like Portal are just short, and others like Civilization will consume months, I said typical).
How many forms of entertainment can provide you with 15 hours of entertainment? On a per hour basis, a $60 game is costing you $4 per hour, and multi-player games even less. A movie costs about $10 per person. That is at worst competitive with movies, and the Sims series goes well beyond 15 hours for those that like it enough to pay for any expansions.
You need to look at more than just the initial price of the game. You need to consider how much you are actually getting out of it.
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It does not necessarily destroy his argument. Take a look at the Home section of VG Chartz, from your own link. Based on that site, the Wii has sold 42 million world wide. So that game sold to just under 4% of the install base, and is considered one of Capcom's primary franchises. The game cube total sales were about the same, and the Gamecube had a much smaller install base than the Wii.
That game is a financial success on the Wii because the dev costs were minimal. The game already existed, and the Wii supports Gamecube backward compatibility.
Gears of war is an undisputed hit on the Xbox 360. It has sold 5.56 million on an install base of 25.59 million. The game was able to appeal to 20% of the install base.
The Wii audience may be larger, but the Xbox / PS3 audience is still a more reliable consumer for most developers. If you want to put out a AAA game with mature themes, you probably want to hit about 6 million to consider it a monster it, and about 3 million to break even.
The marketing of the Wii has been effective from a bottom line point of view, but the platform has not done much to impress non casual gamers. I would like to think that the platform can still appeal to hard core as well as casual gamers, but it is pretty clear at this point that developers of games with mature themes are not targeting the Wii yet.
As a fan of the platform, and a hardcore gamer, I would very much like to see more studios put quality mature games on the Wii, but it does not seem likely at this point.
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Like a smoker, or a motorist, you know exactly what will happen. You will make a crapload of noise about how stupid it is that these things are so expensive. You will vow to all within earshot that you will never surrender your hard earned money to such a blatant cash grab.
And then you will walk into the store within 3 days of its release and purchase all three games, probably pre-ordering them.
You will complain. You will whine. And in the end you will buy all three within days of their release. And ultimately you will enjoy them.
I know this because your not complaining that Starcraft sucks or is over rated. Your just angry that you are being gouged for something you know you will probably pay for no matter what.
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Radical entertainment is a studio owned by Universal / Vivendi that passed to Blizzard. They are still in business, but they laid off about 100 people in Vancouver.
I know this because it has made my own job hunting a pain in the ass.
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Since he is not taking cash directly from the unions, I do not see why he would have a problem with going up against them.
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If the Glider source code makes use of either code or content belonging to Blizzard, they can argue that they own the copyrights (in part if not in whole) to Glider as a result.
If that is the case, than it cannot be open sourced by a 3rd party without Blizzards permission.
A key arguement for the GPL concerns the hypothetical situation of someone trying to withhold their own modifications to the original source. Even if the GPL license is for some reason not valid, than the code falls under traditional copyright, and the original rights holders can hold the GPL Violator in violation of existing copyright laws and pursue a legal remedy based on that.
You cannot make another persons copyrighted materials open source without their co-operation.
END COMMUNICATION
Please note that I in no way endorse game censorship of the sort that Jack Thompson advocates.
However, I do think that Video games should be handled differently than books movies and television. Videogames are more than just a depiction of an action or narrative. Videogames are an interactive immersion in an action or narrative.
It is one thing to portray a torture scene in a TV show such as 24. But to put the control of those actions in the hands of a player is different. It is not such a stretch to think that what may be acceptable in a movie may not be acceptable in a game as a result of the presence of the aspect of choice.
END COMMUNICATION
If you have a large enough population of players where nearly everyone plays co-operate, the 2 or 3 assholes who play to betray do quite well. They only pay the price if they play the same opponent a few times. Without paying the price, they will do quite well.
END COMMUNICATION
I cannot see anything that would come of being able to say one way or the other if Math is discovered or invented. So why would the distinction matter?
END COMMUNICATION
Consoles will continue to be the dominant platform, though they may very well converge with other tech. The simple fact is that the PC is not an especially profitable or popular platform to develop for.
PC gaming wont go away, but Consoles are not going to disappear either. At the moment many big PC titles are essentially ports of the Xbox 360 version. near the end of any given console cycle, that reverses for certain PC titles, but it is generally the rule, not the exception.
Until the PC version of most games is also the reference platform for development, the consoles will continue to be more important.
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Dave Arneson (that other guy who invented D&D with Gary) actually invented the HP concept as it was used in D&D.
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Its too bad, since his influence goes well beyond D&D. The impact on videogames is very far reaching too.
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No race has negative ability modifiers in 4th edition. So Elves no longer have -2 Con and Dwarves no longer have -2 Cha.
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The question is useless if you have the mindset that the answer must always be yes for videogames to have a significant cultural impact.
Most games are not art. Some games come close, most do not. It simply does not matter. A more important and useful question would be 'Are Vidoegames culturally significant?'. There are many things that are culturally significant that are not in any great way considered art.
World of Warcraft is not art in and of its self. But you can say that it is a common experience shared by millions of people across different cultures. It is a medium in which people who may otherwise never interact with one another or meet one another may do so repeatedly. To me, that is culturally significant.
Video games have caused various laws to be passed and debated. In the US, those laws are generally along the lines of what content ought to be allowed. Content we would not think much about in a more passive form is much more sensitive when presented in an interactive form. In Japan, there have been laws passed to prevent the DragonQuest series from launching new games on work days because too many people skipped school and work.
Also, for a fad, videogames has endured and thrived for far longer than a typical fad would. How many fads persist beyond 25 years?
Who cares if they are not Art. They have become a rather important aspect of modern culture regardless.
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If you have a means for a worm to tell a computer that it is really a fix, all a hacker has to do is spoof that, and the machine will accept a virus as the fix.
END COMMUNICATION
I think that copyrights ought to operate under a use it or lose it system, where if the item (game, music, movie, literature or software) is not being actively promoted or sold, that the copyrights lapse into the public domain after 25 years.
When you consider Mickey Mouse or James Bond, the original creator is long dead (or cryonically frozen if you believe the tabloids), but it is an ongoing enterprise, and the current owners of the IP still use it. The same can be said of Batman, Superman, and others.
But if enough time passes where no new works are created for a given property, it ought to become public domain. I also think that the copyrights on old IP should be something that can be challenged, so that owners of old content don not just put out marginal re-hashes to sustain the rights on the original and still profitable IP.
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Perhaps the fetus can gestate in a box?
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Being a Canadian, this probably affects me more than the majority of readers here.
I might go for this, but the implementation would be tricky. What I have in mind is the following.
1) Do not tack this directly onto the internet bill without consent of the user.
2) Should be $3.00 or lower, scaled to the quantity of songs downloaded
3) Should take the form of a hook (like an encryption key) that identifies the user of a file sharing app has having a legitimate license.
4) The key should be able to confirm that the license is legit and up to date, and nothing else (no way to trace a key to a particular user).
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Disclaimer: I lack the knowledge to have a legitimate informed opinion on this topic.
Ram Accellerators may be cheaper in terms of raw dollars, but I wonder how well they scale relative to Rail guns? Specifically, economies of scale for mass production, and for the mass per projectile.
Once the technology is figured out for Railguns, I suspect the primary cost will be the power generation. The projectiles themselves will probably be very cheap, and be easier to manufacture than those used by a Ram Accellerator. Essentially, it sounds like the complex part of the rail cannon will be the gun, and the complex part of the Ram accellerator will be the projectiles.
Artillery works better when you can get mass quantities of bullets on the cheap.
The power requirements do seem to be the primary problem for the Railguns at the moment though. Are there any known projects using ram accellerators?
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The only way to get the idiots wh repeat this kind of crap to shut up is to start going after the advertisers. Angry letters to Fox News its self wont make much difference. All that will do is tell them that you watched it, and disagree. Going after advertisers though can get them to reconsider advertising on programs or websites that spread these views, if they get a large enough and loud enough negative response. That in turn will have a greater effect on Fox.
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I still want to have a Beowulf cluster executing these commands in parallel.
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At this point, we have yet to create a mechanical heart that is capable of being a universal replacement. Normal hearts beat, and the human body seems to work fine with that. If you want to reverse engineer a replacement, you may as well rip off what works.
END COMMUNICATION
If the fraud is real but cannot be proven with hard facts, than it will just be dismissed as a conspiracy theory for idiots. Voters can be forgiving of all sorts of implied corruption, but the moment it is proven, they are made to generally pay for it by whoever has an axe to grind.
As a hypothetical scenario, if an election was rigged by the Republicrats and the Democraticans were able to obtain proof, they would push the issue hard. The issue would go to court, and someone would end up in jail. It is also probable that the election would be declared fraudulent. This is what happened in the Ukraine a few years ago.
On a tangential note, has anyone ever been convicted of electoral fraud in any stable democracy?
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