Mail carriers might have to start using ROBOTIC EXOSKELETONS to deliver mail safely. (Nothing makes you feel as safe as a shoulder mounted rail-cannon...)
PCs have a few advantages themselves for games, themselves...
No licencing fees. To develop something on most console systems, you have to pay the company who makes the system a licensing fee. If you want to write psx games, you need to give $$ to Sony. If you want to make PC games, you just write it. So in general, more games get made on PC. (Granted, a lot of it ends up crap, but there are usually still a few gems to make it worth it)
More controls. PCs come equipped with a MINIMUM of a keyboard and a mouse nowdays. Usually a joystick too. That's a LOT more buttons than any controller I've seen on a console. This gives PC games quite a bit more flexibility in designing interfaces. (if you don't believe me, just try any FPS game on a console, and tell me that interface on consoles isn't a problem)
Different evolution rates: PCs are sort of constantly evolving, as soon as a technology comes out, it is available on PCs... Consoles on the other hand, only come out every couple of years. So consoles are usually supperior when they come out, but within a year or two, PCs have caught up. (And a couple of years after THAT, PCs have usually progressed to the point that someone can write an emulator that plays console games better than the console system did!)
Upgradability: PC games have the advantage that they can be modified, even after they are released. Patches are one side of this. Buggy games can be fixed. (Although some companies abuse this ability by releasing TERRIBLY buggy games before they're ready to be released, and then trying to patch them after release... *cough* daggerfall battlecruiser300AD *cough*...) On the other hand, for companies like Blizzard, who generally release fairly solid games, the ability to patch after release is quite useful. They can respond to cheats and exploits, fix the few bugs they have, and even tweak game balance, as the need arrises. You can't really do that on console systems. (and don't tell me console games never have bugs. Granted they usually have fewer (because ones WITH bugs don't sell) but heck, even FF6 (FF3 U.S.) had a bug capable of crashing the game and destroying save games.) The other side of this coin is mods. After a game has been released, people can do COOL things to it! Look at how long halflife has survived, thanks to mods! Counterstrike, TFC, etc... People keep playing, since they are given more things to try. You can't DO mods on consoles. (well, you sort of can, if you count the little cartridge feed-throughs like sony used to put knuckles into sonic 3. But they're a lot more expensive.)
And finally, PCs have assurance of existance: PCs will ALWAYS exist, since they are used for a lot of vital things besides games. (or so I've been told.;) As long as these uses exist, PCs can never go the way of the dodo. Since of course, even if you've got the most kick-a$$ accounting computer on the planet, there will always be the temptation to see what kind of framerates you can get out of Quake3 on it...
So I think it's safe to say that PC gaming isn't going anywhere any time soon.
I don't know if it's true or not, but if it is, that could be kind of cool. Just think. You could paint it black, attach some green LEDs inside the case, and call it an iBorg. You could even rig up SimpleText to say things like "you will be assimilated", etc. Yes, it'd be more creepy if it were a windows box saying that, but hey, take what you can get. Also, if your computer looks like a Borg cube, you can steal spare parts from your roommate's computer, and if he asks where his new 3d card went, just say "it has been assimilated..."
If there IS a large amount of radiation comming from the cell phones, then why put good radiation to waste? What we need is not so much a way of blocking it, but of putting it to constructive uses. For example, if you focused it a bit, maybe you could make a servicable microwave attachment to your phone! Think about it... Save yourself from getting brain tumors, all while preparing a warm and tasty buisness lunch! Neat! Or if culinary exploits arn't your style, why not focus it into a tight beam, to be used as a leathal, cancer causing, death ray!!! Take that, Mr slow driver in the fast lane! Eat brain cancer beam! How about it, science?
Napster stands for nothing that Slashdot does, but because they give music away free (as in beer, but not in speech) everyone loves them. Anyone care to explain?
I'll take a stab at explaining... Or at least why *I* would rather see Napster win than RIAA:
Part of it, of course, is my [probably over simplistic] ideology as a programmer. The guys at napster and gnutella each came up with a neat idea, and translated it into program code. It was never originally intended to be malicious, or to cause harm to anyone or any individual. IMHO, acts of creativity that are not inherrantly malicious should not be made illegal.
And as for the point that Napster is a corperate entity, and profits from people using it, my general reaction is "so what?". So they've managed to find a way to offer a service for free, and profit themselves in the process. So has Yahoo, along with most search engines. So have a lot of websites. (Slashdot included, I believe). The fact that someone profits from something does not, in my mind, immedietly make it evil.
I hope Napster wins this one, because if it doesn't, it will set what is in my mind a VERY dangerous precedent. Consider: Napster is not specifically designed to pirate, it is simply designed to move.mp3 files around from user to user. There are pleanty of.mp3 files out there that are NOT copywrited, or are public domain. Yes, Napster can be used as a tool for piracy, but as has often been pointed out, nearly ANYTHING could be used as a tool for something bad. Telnet can be used to hack systems. Compilers can be used to write viruses. Ecetera, ad nausium. The point is, you can't (well, shouldn't, in my mind) outlaw something, because it MIGHT be used by someone bad to do something bad.
If RIAA wins and shuts down Napster, then all they will have done is cured a symptom, not a disease. The problem is the people. If they want to pirate things, they will. Using whatever tools they find most convienent. Napster is under fire because at the moment, it is an extremely convienent tool. If you remove Napster, then all that you will accomplish is to remove one outlet, and force people to move to a different one. And if you continue the precedent of outlawing anything that could be used in a criminal activity, then before too long, we'll all end up living in a world of Nerf, programming in BASIC.
Actually, I think Connectix won the injunction that Sony brought against them. I'm pretty sure Bleem won theirs. (Bleem & Connectix Virtual Game Station are two fairly developed Playstation Emulators.) So far Sony has been the most agressive company about going after emulators. With the loss of those two lawsuits, it looks like emulation may have some precedent.
IANAL, but I think that it came down to "Well, the playstation is a black box. We don't know what happens inside, just that these patterns of input equal these outputs. Our program responds the same way as the playstation, but the insides are probably very different."
I much prefer SEGA's method of dealing with emulators: hire the guy who was good enough to write them. (As far as I know, Steve Snake, author of KGen, [probably one of the 2-3 best sega genesis emulators in existance] is currently working for sega to produce all those "Sega PC" titles you see on discount racks for $10. (Sonic & Knuckles, etc) They're actually mini-emulators, with the rom image!)
Gnutella is a fileshare program but that is the only relation that is has to Napster.
Ahh, but you see...
Music can be transformed into files, through the miracle of modern technology.
Gnutella lets you share files.
Thus, Gnutella lets you get music you shouldn't have.
Thus... Gnutella = SATAN!
After the evil people who wrote gnutella get shut down, the government and RIAA intend to look into other sinister methods of getting music you havn't paid for, including something used by "31337 h5x0rz" called "FTP"...
Re:Do we want to hear about criminals like Steed?
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Paul Steed Interview
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...It makes companies write better games, and gives player more to enjoy.
Somehow though, Quake 3 isn't what comes to mind when I think of "great games".
As far as I'm concerned, ID software exists to make mediocre games with cool engines. Then, in a year or two, other companies who know how to make games (Valve, Ion Storm [Well, at least the part of Ion Storm responsible for Deus Ex and Anacronox], etc) license the engine, and we get something actually COOL out of the process.
Unfortunatly, Quake 3 IS the sort of game encouraged by the CPL. (As opposed to things like Thief, or Deus Ex) So at least from my point of view, the CPL doesn't directly encourage companies to make better games, it encourages them to make glitzy, high framerate, multi-player twitch-fests.
It would be far simpler (and cheaper) to put it in Antartica, another remote area not controlled by any government (though the environment is nearly as hostile).
Hostile? Whatever! Just think: Not only could you run a fairly safe data haven there, but with temperatures THAT low, just think of how much you could overclock your Quake III server!
I truely regret this turn of events, and I think I may actually wear black tomorrow, and mourn their passing.
And I think I speak for many of us when I say this: AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOWCOULDYOULEAVEUSLOOKINGGLASSNOWWEAREATTHEMERCYOF JONROMEROOHWOEI SUSWOEISUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Katz wasn't saying that the band didn't have a right to protect their intellectual property. The point that Katz was making is that their actions were pointless if their goal was to establish legal precedents for distributing music on the internet. MP3.com is already dealing with negotiations about that.
But Metallica's actions don't seem to be geared towards legal precedents. They seem to be geared towards terrorizing young netizens, so that they are afraid to download music, no matter WHAT gets decided.
Metallica's seem to be aimed a lot more towards terrorizing people than anything else.
And that is what the point of the article was. Katz was not condoning the actions of napster users. He was condemning Metallica's intimidation tactics.
3. The technology just forces "programmers" to learn more and more stuff to become competitive in any forseeable way. Forcing people to learn massive ammounts of data and forcing them to accept some lousy paradigm is rather akin to a criminal act.
That's kind of a bad aditude to take, IMHO. As technology improves, we always have to learn how it works in order to use it. Years ago, C++ came out, and everyone moves to that. Now, nearly everyone uses C++, with the "object oriented programming paradigm". Who knows what the next one will be. No one is forcing people to learn new things. It's just that people who know new (and hopefully useful) things will be in demand, and hired by people seeking programmers with that certain set of skills.
On the topic of biological computers, however, there is an interesting point worth noting: There's been quite a bit of media hype recently about quantum and biological computers and other massivly parallel devices, and what untold wonders they can accomplish. Consider, however: There are very few problems that can really take advantage of that much parallelism... One of the few ones that can is finding primes to crack many of today's encryption methods. And as soon as someone mentioned that potential application to the government.... BAM instant funding. Hmm....
Does research need to have a "point" or "application"? Is there anything wrong with pursuit of knowledge for it's own sake?
(never mind the fact that it almost always ends up being useful in the end anyway... Look at the branch of mathematics known as number theory: For many years, college professors who taught it would brag that it was one of the few fields of study that was completely and utterly without practical application. Now it's one of the central fields of research in cryptology. That'll teach'em to brag.)
Here we can kill two very important computer problems with one proverbial stone! And even reap a nifty side effect as well!
Problem one: The heat problem. Computers have it, and this represents an alternative to other methods. It has a few definate advantages over traditional heat sinks.
Problem two: Just think how cool the inside of your computer could look with some of these babies installed! Flashing lights! Cool lasers! You might even be able to get them to do cool scanline effects! You might even end up leaving your case off, to both facilitate air flow, and to enjoy the cool techo-ness of the inside of your computer! Get a fog machine, and your heat sink could probably match anything you see at a concert or other "professional" laser show!
Nifty side effect: Lasers are cool! They are one of those items which for some reason, are simply undeniably cool. (Other examples include lightsabers, NINJAs, and walls covered entirely by TV screens and flashing LEDs.) So if you put something that cool in your computer, then your computer will become slightly cooler by proximity, and you, as the owner of the now coolness-enhanced machine will find yourself reaping the benifits of coolness as well!
As I see it, there are two ways we can fight this. The first way is by trying to get DMCA and it's friends struck down. (And while we're at it, someone should go over to MPAA and RIAA and start striking things (people?) down, as well. But I digress) This is one way of fighting this. Fight legislation with legislation.
There is another way.
We can also fight this, even if the law stands, by the other force we have, and which big corperations understand quite well: Economics. But not the way that most slashdot readers seem to think it should be applied. Everyone seems to constantly talk about boycotts, and simply going wihtout that product to make a point. Unfortunatly, there are not enough people posessing that kind of resolve to make such a boycott effective. But there are other kinds of economic forces.
The artical linked to mentioned "people voting with their feet". People will buy whatever gives them the best product for the least money and hassle. This last part is quit important. Cost to value ratios are definatly a factor, but as consumers have demonstrated numerous times, so is convienence! If I am Joe Consumer, and I have a choice between two nearly identical products, except one costs slightly more, but has less restrictions and control measures built into it, then I am of course going to choose the slightly more expensive one. It will be worth it to me. The as the artical mentions, the software game industry already discovered this when they tried making elaborate code wheels and other copy protection measures.
There is one other piece to consider. DMCA can only be legally enforced by the owner of the intellectual property in question! In other words, all that needs to happen for change is for people to start releasing their works without access control measures. All we need here is some version of the GLP that can be applied to other forms of intellectual property!
Well, ok, I oversimplified. There is one other major thing we need here. Enough selection to make the non-protected media a viable alternative to the protected media.
I think that the situation is quite analogous to the whole open source movement, actually... Open source really took off after enough open source programs were released to form a sort of foundation. Then, when it became clear that it was a stable community, people began to join it, and release more work as open source. And the community took off, until it is where it is today, with Linux a serious competitor to Windows.
The analogy, of course, is that we need enough people to release their work as "DCMA-free", without access control measures, and with some legal disclaimer saying that the work should be left in it's original form. You could probably use the sort of thing that shows up at the top of most FAQs as a guide.
If we could get some DVD publishers to start publishing DVDs without region codes, for example, then as soon as the selection of DVDs without region codes got large enough we would almost certainly see a preference on the part of the consumer towards the non-protected DVDs. And you can bet that the companies would notice this as well.
But for this to work, there must be alternatives for the consumers to "vote with their feet" on. Viable alternatives.
So if we can convince enough people to start releasing their work with provisions against the DMCA, then consumers can start the foot-voting, and... Well, with luck we may see a time when the DMCA is as unused as code-wheel copy protection.
Just think! A black market filled with DANGEROUS CRIMINAL MASTERMINDS will soon spring up, centering around ilicit "original PS2 trade". PS2 cartels will come into power, and rule japan and other countries with an iron fist of TERROR, doling out favors and original PS2s to those that please them, and curry favors... While they ruthlessly withHOLD these blessed units from those whom do NOT please them, condemning such individuals to an eternety of region coded gaming and DVD watching. OH THE HUMANITY! OH THE PATHOS. Ok, I'll stop.
You know, there is another potential problem with this whole thing. JonKatz touched on it briefly, but never stated it explicitly in his artical: The rampant growth of databases here in the US, maintained for profit. Hmm. Let's look at the facts:
WAVE will maintain a large database
WAVE is a profit organization
Many organizations sell their databases to other companies
When you consider all of this, it isn't too much of a stretch to consider the possibility of WAVE's Orwellian database being sold to other companies, (who then sell THEIR databases), until WAVE's dubiously aquired data is in so many places that it is basically impossible to get rid of. You could end up with permenate changes to your record as a result of WAVE's database. Which is largly contributed to by high school students?!?
Now don't get me wrong here, I have nothing against high school students. (having been one at one point) But I also remember high school experiences. And the majority of my class in HS I wouldn't trust with anything more dangerous than string. And I most definatly would not trust them with a means of adding potentially damaging reports to each other's permenate records!!! High school is still quite full of petty, vindictive individuals. (so is the rest of our society, but we've fortunatly set most of it up to work around them) Even without the added inducements of cash bonuses for turning each other in, I still have no trouble imagining students turning each other in, just because they bugged each other, or had annoyed each other, or whatever. High school is full of small rivalries. And as has constantly been pointed out, the most likely target of this new weapon we are cheerfully putting into the hands of high school students will be the social outcasts, the "geeks", and other "deviants" and "noncomformists".
Now, don't get me wrong here, the program could catch potential killers, too. One thing that tends to be forgotten in these discussions is that not all outcasts are bright students who are merely ostracized because of their intelligence. There are also outcasts who are outcasts because they ARE really messed up psychologically, or are on drugs, or whatever. And these individuals do need help. However, I think it is safe to say that the plan outlined by WAVE has the potential to cause a lot more permenate harm than it can justify by catching a few messed up students.
I think that I have to agree with Jon Katz on this one. This is downright scary, and yet another reason that I am incredibly glad that I am no longer in high school, and so am not directly affected by this. However, that doesn't mean that I can ignore it in good concience. Profiling in general tends to lead to problems. And when you turn it over to high school students, encourage them with financial rewards, and already aim it at the segment of the school population that is most likely to be damaged by further stigmatization, I think it is very likely that you will cause considerably more harm than good, no matter what the intentions behind it were. I think that this is yet another example of compensation for inaction by sudden spurts of overreaction. Must be human nature, I guess. That does not, however, make it any less damaging, or much of a consolation for the students who have to endure it.
Why does it take the threat of a judge making a ruling on a case to actually get these two together and try to work out an arrangement/resolution to this mess? Wouldn't it have saved both Microsoft and the taxpayers a ton of money if they could have tried this out in the first place.
Well, the amount it would have saved microsoft is probably quite a bit less than the amount that they made by continuing buisness as usual this long. And I doubt that the amount of money that it cost taxpayers is a huge overriding concern of microsofts. (In fact, if it becomes a PR fiasco for the government because of how much the trial costs, then so much the better for microsoft, since it will then be less likely to continue the lawsuit, and more likely to settle favorably for microsoft) And as for why it takes this kind of serious threat to make microsoft actually seriously consider a resolution to this mess, consider: what incentive is there for microsoft to spend resources finding a resolution? Morals? Hah. Not to unduley rip on microsoft, but consider these three points:
We live in a capitolist economy.
There is very little incentive to pursue anything in a capitolist system besides fiscal gain.
Microsoft is a very successful company, financially, under the capitolist economy.
Therefore... It is likely that microsoft got to be sucessful by acting the way that the system encourages: By pursuing profit. Morals and fair play are all fine and good, (and good PR), but only as long as they don't get in the way of the pursuit of the great green buck.
You sort of have to wonder where companies are going, when the time that they spend in suing each other over patent violations to defend their intellectual property begins to exceed the time that they spend creating new intellectual property...
If they are THAT interested in recieving public feedback in order to better refine their product, then far be it from me to deny them my small contribution of opinions. Thank you for supplying the contact info.
I, at least, intend to use it.
Others should do so as well. Come forth, slashdot legions! Let us carry the word of "not-counting-a-site-as-obscene-just-because-you-d on't-like-it" to the unenlightened infidels at Mattel!
Actually... This might be one of those situations where a slashdot hoard is JUST what we need. If they got enough customer service complaints about their criteria for blocking sites, it might just convince them that something was wrong....
Slashdot Mirror
Mail carriers might have to start using ROBOTIC EXOSKELETONS to deliver mail safely. (Nothing makes you feel as safe as a shoulder mounted rail-cannon...)
If for-pay mp3s came out - I would _gladly_ sponsor it.
Then go check out fairtunes.com, which slashdot was even kind enough to post a story on today.
- No licencing fees. To develop something on most console systems, you have to pay the company who makes the system a licensing fee. If you want to write psx games, you need to give $$ to Sony. If you want to make PC games, you just write it. So in general, more games get made on PC. (Granted, a lot of it ends up crap, but there are usually still a few gems to make it worth it)
- More controls. PCs come equipped with a MINIMUM of a keyboard and a mouse nowdays. Usually a joystick too. That's a LOT more buttons than any controller I've seen on a console. This gives PC games quite a bit more flexibility in designing interfaces. (if you don't believe me, just try any FPS game on a console, and tell me that interface on consoles isn't a problem)
- Different evolution rates: PCs are sort of constantly evolving, as soon as a technology comes out, it is available on PCs... Consoles on the other hand, only come out every couple of years. So consoles are usually supperior when they come out, but within a year or two, PCs have caught up. (And a couple of years after THAT, PCs have usually progressed to the point that someone can write an emulator that plays console games better than the console system did!)
- Upgradability: PC games have the advantage that they can be modified, even after they are released. Patches are one side of this. Buggy games can be fixed. (Although some companies abuse this ability by releasing TERRIBLY buggy games before they're ready to be released, and then trying to patch them after release... *cough* daggerfall battlecruiser300AD *cough*...) On the other hand, for companies like Blizzard, who generally release fairly solid games, the ability to patch after release is quite useful. They can respond to cheats and exploits, fix the few bugs they have, and even tweak game balance, as the need arrises. You can't really do that on console systems. (and don't tell me console games never have bugs. Granted they usually have fewer (because ones WITH bugs don't sell) but heck, even FF6 (FF3 U.S.) had a bug capable of crashing the game and destroying save games.) The other side of this coin is mods. After a game has been released, people can do COOL things to it! Look at how long halflife has survived, thanks to mods! Counterstrike, TFC, etc... People keep playing, since they are given more things to try. You can't DO mods on consoles. (well, you sort of can, if you count the little cartridge feed-throughs like sony used to put knuckles into sonic 3. But they're a lot more expensive.)
- And finally, PCs have assurance of existance: PCs will ALWAYS exist, since they are used for a lot of vital things besides games. (or so I've been told.
;) As long as these uses exist, PCs can never go the way of the dodo. Since of course, even if you've got the most kick-a$$ accounting computer on the planet, there will always be the temptation to see what kind of framerates you can get out of Quake3 on it...
So I think it's safe to say that PC gaming isn't going anywhere any time soon.I don't know if it's true or not, but if it is, that could be kind of cool. Just think. You could paint it black, attach some green LEDs inside the case, and call it an iBorg. You could even rig up SimpleText to say things like "you will be assimilated", etc. Yes, it'd be more creepy if it were a windows box saying that, but hey, take what you can get. Also, if your computer looks like a Borg cube, you can steal spare parts from your roommate's computer, and if he asks where his new 3d card went, just say "it has been assimilated..."
If there IS a large amount of radiation comming from the cell phones, then why put good radiation to waste? What we need is not so much a way of blocking it, but of putting it to constructive uses. For example, if you focused it a bit, maybe you could make a servicable microwave attachment to your phone! Think about it... Save yourself from getting brain tumors, all while preparing a warm and tasty buisness lunch! Neat! Or if culinary exploits arn't your style, why not focus it into a tight beam, to be used as a leathal, cancer causing, death ray!!! Take that, Mr slow driver in the fast lane! Eat brain cancer beam! How about it, science?
Napster stands for nothing that Slashdot does, but because they give music away free (as in beer, but not in speech) everyone loves them. Anyone care to explain?
.mp3 files around from user to user. There are pleanty of .mp3 files out there that are NOT copywrited, or are public domain. Yes, Napster can be used as a tool for piracy, but as has often been pointed out, nearly ANYTHING could be used as a tool for something bad. Telnet can be used to hack systems. Compilers can be used to write viruses. Ecetera, ad nausium. The point is, you can't (well, shouldn't, in my mind) outlaw something, because it MIGHT be used by someone bad to do something bad.
I'll take a stab at explaining... Or at least why *I* would rather see Napster win than RIAA:
Part of it, of course, is my [probably over simplistic] ideology as a programmer. The guys at napster and gnutella each came up with a neat idea, and translated it into program code. It was never originally intended to be malicious, or to cause harm to anyone or any individual. IMHO, acts of creativity that are not inherrantly malicious should not be made illegal.
And as for the point that Napster is a corperate entity, and profits from people using it, my general reaction is "so what?". So they've managed to find a way to offer a service for free, and profit themselves in the process. So has Yahoo, along with most search engines. So have a lot of websites. (Slashdot included, I believe). The fact that someone profits from something does not, in my mind, immedietly make it evil.
I hope Napster wins this one, because if it doesn't, it will set what is in my mind a VERY dangerous precedent. Consider: Napster is not specifically designed to pirate, it is simply designed to move
If RIAA wins and shuts down Napster, then all they will have done is cured a symptom, not a disease. The problem is the people. If they want to pirate things, they will. Using whatever tools they find most convienent. Napster is under fire because at the moment, it is an extremely convienent tool. If you remove Napster, then all that you will accomplish is to remove one outlet, and force people to move to a different one. And if you continue the precedent of outlawing anything that could be used in a criminal activity, then before too long, we'll all end up living in a world of Nerf, programming in BASIC.
Actually, I think Connectix won the injunction that Sony brought against them. I'm pretty sure Bleem won theirs. (Bleem & Connectix Virtual Game Station are two fairly developed Playstation Emulators.) So far Sony has been the most agressive company about going after emulators. With the loss of those two lawsuits, it looks like emulation may have some precedent.
IANAL, but I think that it came down to "Well, the playstation is a black box. We don't know what happens inside, just that these patterns of input equal these outputs. Our program responds the same way as the playstation, but the insides are probably very different."
I much prefer SEGA's method of dealing with emulators: hire the guy who was good enough to write them. (As far as I know, Steve Snake, author of KGen, [probably one of the 2-3 best sega genesis emulators in existance] is currently working for sega to produce all those "Sega PC" titles you see on discount racks for $10. (Sonic & Knuckles, etc) They're actually mini-emulators, with the rom image!)
Ahh, but you see...
- Music can be transformed into files, through the miracle of modern technology.
- Gnutella lets you share files.
- Thus, Gnutella lets you get music you shouldn't have.
- Thus... Gnutella = SATAN!
After the evil people who wrote gnutella get shut down, the government and RIAA intend to look into other sinister methods of getting music you havn't paid for, including something used by "31337 h5x0rz" called "FTP"......It makes companies write better games, and gives player more to enjoy.
Somehow though, Quake 3 isn't what comes to mind when I think of "great games".
As far as I'm concerned, ID software exists to make mediocre games with cool engines. Then, in a year or two, other companies who know how to make games (Valve, Ion Storm [Well, at least the part of Ion Storm responsible for Deus Ex and Anacronox], etc) license the engine, and we get something actually COOL out of the process.
Unfortunatly, Quake 3 IS the sort of game encouraged by the CPL. (As opposed to things like Thief, or Deus Ex) So at least from my point of view, the CPL doesn't directly encourage companies to make better games, it encourages them to make glitzy, high framerate, multi-player twitch-fests.
It would be far simpler (and cheaper) to put it in Antartica, another remote area not controlled by any government (though the environment is nearly as hostile).
Hostile? Whatever! Just think: Not only could you run a fairly safe data haven there, but with temperatures THAT low, just think of how much you could overclock your Quake III server!
This is a truely sad state of afairs.
! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOWCOULDYOULEAVEUSLOOKINGGLASSNOWWEAREATTHEMERCYOF JONROMEROOHWOEI SUSWOEISUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I truely regret this turn of events, and I think I may actually wear black tomorrow, and mourn their passing.
And I think I speak for many of us when I say this:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Just think... with a hydro-pneumatic, 120% capacity cold fusion perpetual motion flywheel array in my laptop...
Quake 3 would FLY!!!!!
...if a political candidate makes a comment in public, isn't THAT public domain?
Um... Did you read the article?
Katz wasn't saying that the band didn't have a right to protect their intellectual property. The point that Katz was making is that their actions were pointless if their goal was to establish legal precedents for distributing music on the internet. MP3.com is already dealing with negotiations about that.
But Metallica's actions don't seem to be geared towards legal precedents. They seem to be geared towards terrorizing young netizens, so that they are afraid to download music, no matter WHAT gets decided.
Metallica's seem to be aimed a lot more towards terrorizing people than anything else.
And that is what the point of the article was. Katz was not condoning the actions of napster users. He was condemning Metallica's intimidation tactics.
3. The technology just forces "programmers" to learn more and more stuff to become competitive in any forseeable way. Forcing people to learn massive ammounts of data and forcing them to accept some lousy paradigm is rather akin to a criminal act.
That's kind of a bad aditude to take, IMHO. As technology improves, we always have to learn how it works in order to use it. Years ago, C++ came out, and everyone moves to that. Now, nearly everyone uses C++, with the "object oriented programming paradigm". Who knows what the next one will be. No one is forcing people to learn new things. It's just that people who know new (and hopefully useful) things will be in demand, and hired by people seeking programmers with that certain set of skills.
On the topic of biological computers, however, there is an interesting point worth noting: There's been quite a bit of media hype recently about quantum and biological computers and other massivly parallel devices, and what untold wonders they can accomplish. Consider, however: There are very few problems that can really take advantage of that much parallelism... One of the few ones that can is finding primes to crack many of today's encryption methods. And as soon as someone mentioned that potential application to the government.... BAM instant funding. Hmm....
It's pretty sad when sits get shut down for what they might post somday.
It's even more sad when the sites that are being taken down are anti-censorship ones.
Lock up all people now, sice someday they might do something bad!!!
Does research need to have a "point" or "application"? Is there anything wrong with pursuit of knowledge for it's own sake?
(never mind the fact that it almost always ends up being useful in the end anyway... Look at the branch of mathematics known as number theory: For many years, college professors who taught it would brag that it was one of the few fields of study that was completely and utterly without practical application. Now it's one of the central fields of research in cryptology. That'll teach'em to brag.)
You mean you don't already know?!?
Think people!!!
Here we can kill two very important computer problems with one proverbial stone! And even reap a nifty side effect as well!
- Problem one: The heat problem. Computers have it, and this represents an alternative to other methods. It has a few definate advantages over traditional heat sinks.
- Problem two: Just think how cool the inside of your computer could look with some of these babies installed! Flashing lights! Cool lasers! You might even be able to get them to do cool scanline effects! You might even end up leaving your case off, to both facilitate air flow, and to enjoy the cool techo-ness of the inside of your computer! Get a fog machine, and your heat sink could probably match anything you see at a concert or other "professional" laser show!
- Nifty side effect: Lasers are cool! They are one of those items which for some reason, are simply undeniably cool. (Other examples include lightsabers, NINJAs, and walls covered entirely by TV screens and flashing LEDs.) So if you put something that cool in your computer, then your computer will become slightly cooler by proximity, and you, as the owner of the now coolness-enhanced machine will find yourself reaping the benifits of coolness as well!
And THAT's what the point is!As I see it, there are two ways we can fight this. The first way is by trying to get DMCA and it's friends struck down. (And while we're at it, someone should go over to MPAA and RIAA and start striking things (people?) down, as well. But I digress) This is one way of fighting this. Fight legislation with legislation.
There is another way.
We can also fight this, even if the law stands, by the other force we have, and which big corperations understand quite well: Economics. But not the way that most slashdot readers seem to think it should be applied. Everyone seems to constantly talk about boycotts, and simply going wihtout that product to make a point. Unfortunatly, there are not enough people posessing that kind of resolve to make such a boycott effective. But there are other kinds of economic forces.
The artical linked to mentioned "people voting with their feet". People will buy whatever gives them the best product for the least money and hassle. This last part is quit important. Cost to value ratios are definatly a factor, but as consumers have demonstrated numerous times, so is convienence! If I am Joe Consumer, and I have a choice between two nearly identical products, except one costs slightly more, but has less restrictions and control measures built into it, then I am of course going to choose the slightly more expensive one. It will be worth it to me. The as the artical mentions, the software game industry already discovered this when they tried making elaborate code wheels and other copy protection measures.
There is one other piece to consider. DMCA can only be legally enforced by the owner of the intellectual property in question! In other words, all that needs to happen for change is for people to start releasing their works without access control measures. All we need here is some version of the GLP that can be applied to other forms of intellectual property!
Well, ok, I oversimplified. There is one other major thing we need here. Enough selection to make the non-protected media a viable alternative to the protected media.
I think that the situation is quite analogous to the whole open source movement, actually... Open source really took off after enough open source programs were released to form a sort of foundation. Then, when it became clear that it was a stable community, people began to join it, and release more work as open source. And the community took off, until it is where it is today, with Linux a serious competitor to Windows.
The analogy, of course, is that we need enough people to release their work as "DCMA-free", without access control measures, and with some legal disclaimer saying that the work should be left in it's original form. You could probably use the sort of thing that shows up at the top of most FAQs as a guide.
If we could get some DVD publishers to start publishing DVDs without region codes, for example, then as soon as the selection of DVDs without region codes got large enough we would almost certainly see a preference on the part of the consumer towards the non-protected DVDs. And you can bet that the companies would notice this as well.
But for this to work, there must be alternatives for the consumers to "vote with their feet" on. Viable alternatives.
So if we can convince enough people to start releasing their work with provisions against the DMCA, then consumers can start the foot-voting, and... Well, with luck we may see a time when the DMCA is as unused as code-wheel copy protection.
Just think! A black market filled with DANGEROUS CRIMINAL MASTERMINDS will soon spring up, centering around ilicit "original PS2 trade". PS2 cartels will come into power, and rule japan and other countries with an iron fist of TERROR , doling out favors and original PS2s to those that please them, and curry favors... While they ruthlessly withHOLD these blessed units from those whom do NOT please them, condemning such individuals to an eternety of region coded gaming and DVD watching. OH THE HUMANITY! OH THE PATHOS.
Ok, I'll stop.
- WAVE will maintain a large database
- WAVE is a profit organization
- Many organizations sell their databases to other companies
When you consider all of this, it isn't too much of a stretch to consider the possibility of WAVE's Orwellian database being sold to other companies, (who then sell THEIR databases), until WAVE's dubiously aquired data is in so many places that it is basically impossible to get rid of. You could end up with permenate changes to your record as a result of WAVE's database. Which is largly contributed to by high school students?!?Now don't get me wrong here, I have nothing against high school students. (having been one at one point) But I also remember high school experiences. And the majority of my class in HS I wouldn't trust with anything more dangerous than string. And I most definatly would not trust them with a means of adding potentially damaging reports to each other's permenate records!!! High school is still quite full of petty, vindictive individuals. (so is the rest of our society, but we've fortunatly set most of it up to work around them) Even without the added inducements of cash bonuses for turning each other in, I still have no trouble imagining students turning each other in, just because they bugged each other, or had annoyed each other, or whatever. High school is full of small rivalries. And as has constantly been pointed out, the most likely target of this new weapon we are cheerfully putting into the hands of high school students will be the social outcasts, the "geeks", and other "deviants" and "noncomformists".
Now, don't get me wrong here, the program could catch potential killers, too. One thing that tends to be forgotten in these discussions is that not all outcasts are bright students who are merely ostracized because of their intelligence. There are also outcasts who are outcasts because they ARE really messed up psychologically, or are on drugs, or whatever. And these individuals do need help. However, I think it is safe to say that the plan outlined by WAVE has the potential to cause a lot more permenate harm than it can justify by catching a few messed up students.
I think that I have to agree with Jon Katz on this one. This is downright scary , and yet another reason that I am incredibly glad that I am no longer in high school, and so am not directly affected by this. However, that doesn't mean that I can ignore it in good concience. Profiling in general tends to lead to problems. And when you turn it over to high school students, encourage them with financial rewards, and already aim it at the segment of the school population that is most likely to be damaged by further stigmatization, I think it is very likely that you will cause considerably more harm than good, no matter what the intentions behind it were. I think that this is yet another example of compensation for inaction by sudden spurts of overreaction. Must be human nature, I guess. That does not, however, make it any less damaging, or much of a consolation for the students who have to endure it.
Well, the amount it would have saved microsoft is probably quite a bit less than the amount that they made by continuing buisness as usual this long. And I doubt that the amount of money that it cost taxpayers is a huge overriding concern of microsofts. (In fact, if it becomes a PR fiasco for the government because of how much the trial costs, then so much the better for microsoft, since it will then be less likely to continue the lawsuit, and more likely to settle favorably for microsoft) And as for why it takes this kind of serious threat to make microsoft actually seriously consider a resolution to this mess, consider: what incentive is there for microsoft to spend resources finding a resolution? Morals? Hah. Not to unduley rip on microsoft, but consider these three points:
- We live in a capitolist economy.
- There is very little incentive to pursue anything in a capitolist system besides fiscal gain.
- Microsoft is a very successful company, financially, under the capitolist economy.
Therefore... It is likely that microsoft got to be sucessful by acting the way that the system encourages: By pursuing profit. Morals and fair play are all fine and good, (and good PR), but only as long as they don't get in the way of the pursuit of the great green buck.If so, the the agreement maay end up being worthless, and Mattel will go back after them again.
Golly! You mean that Mattel might make them give back their dollar?!?
You sort of have to wonder where companies are going, when the time that they spend in suing each other over patent violations to defend their intellectual property begins to exceed the time that they spend creating new intellectual property...
Well.
d on't-like-it" to the unenlightened infidels at Mattel!
If they are THAT interested in recieving public feedback in order to better refine their product, then far be it from me to deny them my small contribution of opinions. Thank you for supplying the contact info.
I, at least, intend to use it.
Others should do so as well. Come forth, slashdot legions! Let us carry the word of "not-counting-a-site-as-obscene-just-because-you-
Actually... This might be one of those situations where a slashdot hoard is JUST what we need. If they got enough customer service complaints about their criteria for blocking sites, it might just convince them that something was wrong....