At that price point, would it be worth it to buy an X-Box so I could get Halo, Extreme Beach Volleyball, and some of those other notoriously bouncy games?
Hmmm... to bounce or not to bounce, is that the question? No, the question is are the game any fun? I currently have no games on my pc because they were too easily beaten and not super replayable (Freelancer). Will an X-Box treat me any better?
Great for cheapskates
on
Games on Demand
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
... Like me.
Wouldn't this plan allow me to sign-up, download all the games available for $10 and then quit. I could then play those games for a few months without paying monthly. Then, later if they had more games I could sign up and repeat. If I can work it that way, this company will not get the recurring cash flow they expected.
On the other hand it is still a win. A bunch of games that otherwise were getting dusty in the bargain bin or bit bucket get another go round because they are available easily and cheap. $10 for all the games I could download in a month: Sounds GREAT!
This article shows that people are willing to put in the time, skill, and effort to crack *GAMES* for *FUN* just so they can say "ha ha I killed you". These cheaters put in all this effort for no financial gain. Then, how much more effort will people put in to crack DRM schemes when there is financial gain? $20 saved on a cd is $20 earned. $600 saved on some fancy paint program version 9 is $600 earned.
Considering that people will work so hard to cheat when there is almost nothing to gain ("ha ha I killed you") then it seems to me that DRM in hardware, software, and legislation is doomed because there is so much more to gain.
I wrote to NASA to see if I could buy an acre of the moon for $50 like an email claimed. After being forwarded a couple times, the email reply came back to me with a resounding "NO." Someone with more energy than me can probably find the right link that says individuals have no property rights on the moon.
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered; where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world we dreamed, but your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why The Matrix was redesigned to this...the peak of your civilization." -- Agent Smith, The Matrix
Having Linux on the desktop of three hundred users at a film studio is a nice little step in the right direction. But, it is still a long shot from having Linux on the desktop of large corportions. Large corporations make industries move. If GE says to Micorsoft "we need a feature" then Microsoft delivers. When Boeing says to Dell give this or give me that, Dell delivers. When GE's tens of thousands of desktops, -or CocaCola's, or Procter & Gamble's or any other Dow thirty bell weather company - uses Linux, then there will be parades in the street proclaiming Linux has arrived on the desktop.
I don't understand how IBM will compete against Google in this arena.
IBM's plan...
1) Pay uber bucks to create a utility
2) Market pays for computing time
3) Profit
Google's plan... [http://toolbar.google.com/dc/faq_dc.html]
1) Give away a low cost toolbar
2) Market pays for computing time
3) Profit
I'd bet on the Google horse: It costs less to feed, and wins the same races.
Re:One thing I've NEVER seen here....
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 1
Patents on software are hard on programmers. It is easiest to explain by analogy in other diciplines...
Imagine that it is 250 years ago and you want to study the stars. You study very hard, your teacher helps you. One of the excersises in class is to figure out where mars will be relative to the Earth and Sun in 30 years and 9 days (on the teacher's birthday). In the process of working on the problem, you discover a novel way of solving a problem by using very complicated math. But then the teacher invalidates your solution because it infringes on Sir Isaac Newton's patent on Calculus. Caluculs is really just a brilliant way of doing complex math. Your hard work goes away because someone owns Math! And that person owns any work you do that could have been done with that math unless you can defend yourself and show you didn't use that math. But in Math, there is always one proven best solution, and if someone owns it you have relegated your career to sub optimal solutions or royalty payements. You have a life of surfdom helping some schmoe get rich by taking his best solution whever you go to do your sucking job. Go be a blacksmith instead.
A little extreme, but near the point. When a company patents a very good algorithm or program, then the underlying math is cut off from the public domain. The founding fathers could not have intended for patent law to keep people from using good math! People not using the best math available does not equal the advancement of the useful arts and sciences.
Does anyone know of intellectual property besides software being distributed under the GPL? For example a book, article, or song?
The power of the GPL is in granting extra rights. Those rights have let software fly far wide and free. Maybe someone has tried getting other intellectual works GPLed in hopes of similiar results?
I thought Ebert died and that is why Roger & Ebert stopped comparing thumbs in movie reviews. Did Ebert not die? I think I heard that from my Mom and took it as fact. Can someone explain this confusion to me in such a way that my Mom is not wrong, and reality makes sense again?
There are many views on acceptable speech and those are reflected in the laws of individual countries, states, and municipalities. As capatilsm driven globalization merges the various entities into larger more homegenous governments, we will see many of the descrepancies smoothed over between groups that already had views that were pretty close. You can see this trend in lobbying for Universal Copyright Laws.
You will always be able to get in trouble somewhere for something you thought was reasonable at home. Not every governement will adopt the global laws - especialy not at first. But you will see time and again that countries that "never would" eventually do. Information wants to be free, remember? So countries have to adopt laws to tie some information up so they can turn a profit (taxes, fines, wars, etc).
The globalization of capitalism, and the laws that shape capitalism will really accelerate in the next 30 years. As China's middle class grows, as the EU finds its stride as a single republic, and as the countries of North America become more unified; the laws that set standards for what is acceptable speech will become more potent and affect more people.... If you don't want to end up in a Guyanan court for you website, please try to be active in shaping your government's views early and often.
Sorry for being so terse, but if you read the papers you will pick up the trends I am referring to. You will see it applies to your website regardless of location in the long term.... I don't have much insight for you short term - except to get a good lawyer if you do cause a rucous.
I do not like the idea of being personally searched. I don't like the idea of people with 'authority' looking at me with an eyebrow raised when I walk around. I am not a crook. I got nothing to hide. When I read the US constitution and I got the crazy idea my innocence would be assumed, and people wouldn't be out to prove me a bad guy without cause.
Is the cause for searching ME that someone else blew up a building? Is the cause for implying my guilt that someone else found exceptions to that 'thou shalt not kill' rule? People have always found those excpetions, so why impede my liberties and freedom from undue percecution, procecution, and processing?
Yesterday I wanted to cut through an alley as a short cut to the bus stop. A guy dressed like a cop (but not a cop) stopped me and told me I couldn't walk through the alley. What the f^@k? Didn't my taxes buy that darn alley? How dangerous the world has become that a plain old guy walking through an alley instead of on the sidewalk down the street has to be stopped by rent-a-cop!
Anyhow to get to the point, my solution for unreasonable searches is to carry nothing: No coat if I can help it, no backpack, no pocket knife (sorry grandpa), no nada except keys to get in the door where I am headed and bus fare. It does not keep me from being searched (like a common crook), but at least the searches go faster. As long as people feel 'unsafe' I know there will be searches, but the really ironic part is that that the searches make me feel LESS safe!
Would Moore's law work for fusion like it does with semiconductors? Once we had a computer, we used it to create better computers. Once we have a fusion reactor, we can use its energy to run stronger electromagnetic fields in better fusion reactors. More energy makes it possible to create higher temperature, higher density fusion, and the process feeds itself.
Of course, it would only make sense for the really long flights (like Chicago to Sidny), but the implications could be trans-global flights that cost less than regional flights.
If local travel is more expensive than global trans-global travel, would it finally make sense to bring the cost of local travel down by creating high speed rail networks on the large continents? I think the US would see large benefits by having high speed rail lines criss-crossing the country. Looking back, everytime transportation got better (canals, steam powered ships, trains, planes, autos, express ways) the strength of the economy and quality of life for individulas got better. The high upfront cost of high speed trains takes a lot of commitment, but the long term benefits would be felt for decades.
High speed rail: Good for the economy. Good for business. Good for you!
To understand how the govenment could react to the arrival of gray goo, look how it handles today's hot topics. On one hand the US government forbids cloning and on the other allows genes to be patented. yikes
Many points come to mind, here are the biggies:
1) First the rules for genes and clones contradict the rest of common law. If I can own land, my own body, and even ideas and do whatever I please with them, why can't I investigate my own body if it violates someone's patent on a gene, and why can't I investigate making copies of (cloning) myself? Both of these uses of my own body come under "fair use" - Good lord I hope so - so why is the government holding me down?
2) Further, the rules seem to contradict each other. If it makes sense to be able to own exclusive rights to a gene, then why not copies of the gene? And if copies of a gene are okay, then why not copies of sets of genes - aka chromosomes? And if it makes sense to have copies of sets of chromosomes - aka/me - then why can't we make a/little-me ?
Imagine the fun that comes to reality when systems similar to the gray goo are available. Governments are usually slow on imagination, and with innovation occuring so fast these days, it will probably take nothing short of a revolution to make things make sense again. But, then again well-formed democracies last a long time because they go through constant phoneix rebirths, and better ideas are encouraged to the top. Maybe not one big revolution, but lots of little ones.
Conclusion: The gray goo is gonna cause people to go through more revolutions in thought because things have to make sense eventually.
Tangent Point:
I would also like to point out that Native Americans had civilized culture for thousands of years without any real concept of land ownership. As today's civilized culture becomes more nomadic, maybe property in general is passe? Maybe that is why many slashdoters fight so hard against anything - patents, copyrights, DMCA, Microsoft - that keeps innovation low: it is not natural and nature always finds a way.:)
The world does not make sense when it can't make cents.
I was also stunned by article's implication that C > C.
If C is faster than was previously thought, does that mean that fusion & fission are more profitable than we thought? E=mc^2 still, so there is a lot more energy in the matter of reactors, bombs, and suns than we thought? Does that have implications for how old the sun is? Could it warp our understanding of how old the universe is (calculated based on the 'assumption' that light travels c fast)?
It is all pretty shady to me. I expect it will turn out to be some funky unrealized characteristic of photon tunneling... maybe a new medium in which tunneling can occur. See Scientific American for some more info.
If a person were in the process of being cured of a genetic disease via a viruses carrying the human gene fix, what would happen if the virus started its work, and then the immune system stopped the virus midway through its work. Is that person then SOL?
My understanding of biology says that once the body has the antibodies for a disease (ie the virus carrying the human gene fix), then that disease has almost no chance to infect a person from then on out. Since that is the case, would the engineers have to find several viruses to carry gene fixes just in case the first try was cured before it finished making the fix?
Being near the top of a mountain makes it easier to see the next mountain.
Slashdot Mirror
Has anyone geo cached the tiles? These tiles sound interesting enough that I would take a geo hunt to find some.
http://www.geocaching.com/
At that price point, would it be worth it to buy an X-Box so I could get Halo, Extreme Beach Volleyball, and some of those other notoriously bouncy games?
Hmmm... to bounce or not to bounce, is that the question? No, the question is are the game any fun? I currently have no games on my pc because they were too easily beaten and not super replayable (Freelancer). Will an X-Box treat me any better?
... Like me.
Wouldn't this plan allow me to sign-up, download all the games available for $10 and then quit. I could then play those games for a few months without paying monthly. Then, later if they had more games I could sign up and repeat. If I can work it that way, this company will not get the recurring cash flow they expected.
On the other hand it is still a win. A bunch of games that otherwise were getting dusty in the bargain bin or bit bucket get another go round because they are available easily and cheap. $10 for all the games I could download in a month: Sounds GREAT!
This space for rent
This article shows that people are willing to put in the time, skill, and effort to crack *GAMES* for *FUN* just so they can say "ha ha I killed you". These cheaters put in all this effort for no financial gain. Then, how much more effort will people put in to crack DRM schemes when there is financial gain? $20 saved on a cd is $20 earned. $600 saved on some fancy paint program version 9 is $600 earned.
Considering that people will work so hard to cheat when there is almost nothing to gain ("ha ha I killed you") then it seems to me that DRM in hardware, software, and legislation is doomed because there is so much more to gain.
This space for rent
I wrote to NASA to see if I could buy an acre of the moon for $50 like an email claimed. After being forwarded a couple times, the email reply came back to me with a resounding "NO." Someone with more energy than me can probably find the right link that says individuals have no property rights on the moon.
Boy oh boy that article was an epic read.
Anyone else feel like playing a game of Sid Meier's Civilization?
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered; where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world we dreamed, but your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why The Matrix was redesigned to this...the peak of your civilization." -- Agent Smith, The Matrix
Having Linux on the desktop of three hundred users at a film studio is a nice little step in the right direction. But, it is still a long shot from having Linux on the desktop of large corportions. Large corporations make industries move. If GE says to Micorsoft "we need a feature" then Microsoft delivers. When Boeing says to Dell give this or give me that, Dell delivers. When GE's tens of thousands of desktops, -or CocaCola's, or Procter & Gamble's or any other Dow thirty bell weather company - uses Linux, then there will be parades in the street proclaiming Linux has arrived on the desktop.
I don't understand how IBM will compete against Google in this arena.
IBM's plan...
1) Pay uber bucks to create a utility
2) Market pays for computing time
3) Profit
Google's plan... [http://toolbar.google.com/dc/faq_dc.html]
1) Give away a low cost toolbar
2) Market pays for computing time
3) Profit
I'd bet on the Google horse: It costs less to feed, and wins the same races.
Patents on software are hard on programmers. It is easiest to explain by analogy in other diciplines...
Imagine that it is 250 years ago and you want to study the stars. You study very hard, your teacher helps you. One of the excersises in class is to figure out where mars will be relative to the Earth and Sun in 30 years and 9 days (on the teacher's birthday). In the process of working on the problem, you discover a novel way of solving a problem by using very complicated math. But then the teacher invalidates your solution because it infringes on Sir Isaac Newton's patent on Calculus. Caluculs is really just a brilliant way of doing complex math. Your hard work goes away because someone owns Math! And that person owns any work you do that could have been done with that math unless you can defend yourself and show you didn't use that math. But in Math, there is always one proven best solution, and if someone owns it you have relegated your career to sub optimal solutions or royalty payements. You have a life of surfdom helping some schmoe get rich by taking his best solution whever you go to do your sucking job. Go be a blacksmith instead.
A little extreme, but near the point. When a company patents a very good algorithm or program, then the underlying math is cut off from the public domain. The founding fathers could not have intended for patent law to keep people from using good math! People not using the best math available does not equal the advancement of the useful arts and sciences.
Does anyone know of intellectual property besides software being distributed under the GPL? For example a book, article, or song?
The power of the GPL is in granting extra rights. Those rights have let software fly far wide and free. Maybe someone has tried getting other intellectual works GPLed in hopes of similiar results?
I thought Ebert died and that is why Roger & Ebert stopped comparing thumbs in movie reviews. Did Ebert not die? I think I heard that from my Mom and took it as fact. Can someone explain this confusion to me in such a way that my Mom is not wrong, and reality makes sense again?
Thanks.
There are many views on acceptable speech and those are reflected in the laws of individual countries, states, and municipalities. As capatilsm driven globalization merges the various entities into larger more homegenous governments, we will see many of the descrepancies smoothed over between groups that already had views that were pretty close. You can see this trend in lobbying for Universal Copyright Laws.
... If you don't want to end up in a Guyanan court for you website, please try to be active in shaping your government's views early and often.
... I don't have much insight for you short term - except to get a good lawyer if you do cause a rucous.
You will always be able to get in trouble somewhere for something you thought was reasonable at home. Not every governement will adopt the global laws - especialy not at first. But you will see time and again that countries that "never would" eventually do. Information wants to be free, remember? So countries have to adopt laws to tie some information up so they can turn a profit (taxes, fines, wars, etc).
The globalization of capitalism, and the laws that shape capitalism will really accelerate in the next 30 years. As China's middle class grows, as the EU finds its stride as a single republic, and as the countries of North America become more unified; the laws that set standards for what is acceptable speech will become more potent and affect more people.
Sorry for being so terse, but if you read the papers you will pick up the trends I am referring to. You will see it applies to your website regardless of location in the long term.
I do not like the idea of being personally searched. I don't like the idea of people with 'authority' looking at me with an eyebrow raised when I walk around. I am not a crook. I got nothing to hide. When I read the US constitution and I got the crazy idea my innocence would be assumed, and people wouldn't be out to prove me a bad guy without cause.
Is the cause for searching ME that someone else blew up a building? Is the cause for implying my guilt that someone else found exceptions to that 'thou shalt not kill' rule? People have always found those excpetions, so why impede my liberties and freedom from undue percecution, procecution, and processing?
Yesterday I wanted to cut through an alley as a short cut to the bus stop. A guy dressed like a cop (but not a cop) stopped me and told me I couldn't walk through the alley. What the f^@k? Didn't my taxes buy that darn alley? How dangerous the world has become that a plain old guy walking through an alley instead of on the sidewalk down the street has to be stopped by rent-a-cop!
Anyhow to get to the point, my solution for unreasonable searches is to carry nothing: No coat if I can help it, no backpack, no pocket knife (sorry grandpa), no nada except keys to get in the door where I am headed and bus fare. It does not keep me from being searched (like a common crook), but at least the searches go faster. As long as people feel 'unsafe' I know there will be searches, but the really ironic part is that that the searches make me feel LESS safe!
I am biased towards those with bias against me.
Would Moore's law work for fusion like it does with semiconductors? Once we had a computer, we used it to create better computers. Once we have a fusion reactor, we can use its energy to run stronger electromagnetic fields in better fusion reactors. More energy makes it possible to create higher temperature, higher density fusion, and the process feeds itself.
Of course, it would only make sense for the really long flights (like Chicago to Sidny), but the implications could be trans-global flights that cost less than regional flights.
If local travel is more expensive than global trans-global travel, would it finally make sense to bring the cost of local travel down by creating high speed rail networks on the large continents? I think the US would see large benefits by having high speed rail lines criss-crossing the country. Looking back, everytime transportation got better (canals, steam powered ships, trains, planes, autos, express ways) the strength of the economy and quality of life for individulas got better. The high upfront cost of high speed trains takes a lot of commitment, but the long term benefits would be felt for decades.
High speed rail: Good for the economy. Good for business. Good for you!
To understand how the govenment could react to the arrival of gray goo, look how it handles today's hot topics. On one hand the US government forbids cloning and on the other allows genes to be patented. yikes
/me - then why can't we make a /little-me ?
:)
Many points come to mind, here are the biggies:
1) First the rules for genes and clones contradict the rest of common law. If I can own land, my own body, and even ideas and do whatever I please with them, why can't I investigate my own body if it violates someone's patent on a gene, and why can't I investigate making copies of (cloning) myself? Both of these uses of my own body come under "fair use" - Good lord I hope so - so why is the government holding me down?
2) Further, the rules seem to contradict each other. If it makes sense to be able to own exclusive rights to a gene, then why not copies of the gene? And if copies of a gene are okay, then why not copies of sets of genes - aka chromosomes? And if it makes sense to have copies of sets of chromosomes - aka
Imagine the fun that comes to reality when systems similar to the gray goo are available. Governments are usually slow on imagination, and with innovation occuring so fast these days, it will probably take nothing short of a revolution to make things make sense again. But, then again well-formed democracies last a long time because they go through constant phoneix rebirths, and better ideas are encouraged to the top. Maybe not one big revolution, but lots of little ones.
Conclusion: The gray goo is gonna cause people to go through more revolutions in thought because things have to make sense eventually.
Tangent Point:
I would also like to point out that Native Americans had civilized culture for thousands of years without any real concept of land ownership. As today's civilized culture becomes more nomadic, maybe property in general is passe? Maybe that is why many slashdoters fight so hard against anything - patents, copyrights, DMCA, Microsoft - that keeps innovation low: it is not natural and nature always finds a way.
The world does not make sense when it can't make cents.
I was also stunned by article's implication that C > C.
If C is faster than was previously thought, does that mean that fusion & fission are more profitable than we thought? E=mc^2 still, so there is a lot more energy in the matter of reactors, bombs, and suns than we thought? Does that have implications for how old the sun is? Could it warp our understanding of how old the universe is (calculated based on the 'assumption' that light travels c fast)?
It is all pretty shady to me. I expect it will turn out to be some funky unrealized characteristic of photon tunneling... maybe a new medium in which tunneling can occur. See Scientific American for some more info.
If a person were in the process of being cured of a genetic disease via a viruses carrying the human gene fix, what would happen if the virus started its work, and then the immune system stopped the virus midway through its work. Is that person then SOL?
My understanding of biology says that once the body has the antibodies for a disease (ie the virus carrying the human gene fix), then that disease has almost no chance to infect a person from then on out. Since that is the case, would the engineers have to find several viruses to carry gene fixes just in case the first try was cured before it finished making the fix?
Being near the top of a mountain makes it easier to see the next mountain.