Novell backed off, but they did not entirely retract. SCO interprets it as being a total cave-in, but Novell's public statement merely said they were reviewing the situation, while their later correspondence shows they concluded that they were still in possession of the copyrights.
As you stated, lower costs, more people try, more people stick around.
A new game would get started a lot faster, because lots of people would jump on-board quickly, making it more likely that others will want to join in/stick with the action.
Cons:
Lowering the bar for entry too much brings in a lot more of the "unwanted element", who just show up, annoy everyone and leave.
Profitability: It's already nearly impossible to make money on a game given the up-front development costs, and losing the markup at the front end probably means higher monthly fees, which makes it less motivating to play in the long run. This could be mitigated somewhat though by the higher number of players as profitability per player generally increases with the number of players.
I guess my conclusion is this: the economics will work only if the gaming population is large enough. This requires two things: game quality, which the article addresses, and momentum, which cheaper clients would possibly address. Here's another thought: how about give two months free with purchase of the game?. I know I'd be harder pressed to abandon something I had been playing two months than a mere one month investment.
About a third of the spam I get could be construed as some sort of sexual harrassment or lewdity that should represent an initiation of force, that should therefore be prosecutable. It's like someone making obscene phone calls.
he mentions the thought of moving the control column to the side. why not have one on each side? probably a more comfortable position, allows your arms to help more in handling shock to the spine from bumps, and it definitely gives you more freedom to compensate for any sudden stoppage which might throw you forward.
What I want to know is, how do we get the general public to realize the BS that SCO's threats really are? Much as I hate to say this, perhaps it's time for one of those dreaded chain letters. As long as it's set up with a link to a reputable home page with more in depth information, it could be a useful tool to get the word out among the forward-happy masses. Heck, we could even tack on a free-copy, no-modification license to try to make sure the message doesn't get distorted along the way.
What good is Slashdot if all the techies just hand around and carp at each other about those evil people out there? We should put our collective muscle together to make some noise. I'm totally willing to get an e-mail campaign going, but I don't have any connections to a good reputable site to host the home. Any one wanna help?
If we truly believe that open-source tends to provide better security, we should be developing open-source voting software. I'm sure it would take a while to get much notice from the government, much less "certification", but we could start a grass-roots campaign for adopting it through, say, universities in student body elections (a target screaming for being hacked) or maybe even local elections.
Now for only $20 a processor, I will fully indemnify you for any damages you may be liable for to SCO as a result of their IP claims. Better hurry up, though, 'cause once the case goes to trial and they start showing the evidence, the price goes to $5000.
Unfrotunately, beer does itself contribute to the beer belly. It's not just a matter of how much carbs something has but what kind of carbs they are. Beer has maltose, which is actually one of the more troublesome carbs because it is digested quickly, spikes your blood sugar level quickly and brings with it an associated spike in insulin, which then brings your blood sugar level down low, and makes you hungrier. So, it is in fact the other stuff that makes you fat, but the beer often contributes to your wanting the other stuff. Different types of beer have different elements which modify the digestion process, so the effect varies. A nice stout seems to fill me up quite nicely, so it must have something going for it. But I have lost 25 pounds on my low-carb diet, so until I reach my target weight, I'm gonna hold back on the Guinness.
That would actually help the system because the more demand for something, the more likely something would be perceived to be. Insider trading in that respect would be encouraged! The real trick is sinking money in the counter-possibility in order to create a false sense of security.
I think the author is a little over-confident in things like Moore's law to predict what things will be like. Although the computing power is still increasing at a phenonmenal rate, the amount of things that can be done with that power is not increasing nearly as fast, as the relation between complexity of tasks and the resources required to perform them is more exponential than linear. So exponential increases in computing power only tend to add linearly to what we can do. His projections of computers with the "power" of a human brain seem woefully underestimated, and even then, the "power" will probably not equate to capability, because of the architectures involved.
That's not to say that a lot of the issues he brings up are not worth thinking about. Automation will continue to put a lot of people out of work. But, as other posters have said, humanity always finds new ways to occupy itself when older forms of employment become obsolete. It's not fun in the short term, but given the right environment, we can all put those brains of ours to work and learn new things to do. So the main consequence of all of this is that we must plan for re-training our human workforce, and probably re-design our education system to create more flexible workers who are able to excel at the things that humans excel at, things which computers are less capable of. We must be careful in how we do this, as many current school programs over-emphasize the use of calculators, leaving students unstimulated, and unnecessarily dependent on machines.
I guess we need to be able to do most things that we depend on machines to do for us, but be particularly trained to do things which they cannot do, even if that is a moving target.
Unfortunately, the majority opinion apparently threw away its rights and responsibilities to check and balance the legislature. The minority opinions dissented on two levels, one attacking this particular extension for _any_ copyrights having huge public cost with negligible public benefit, the other attacking any _retroactive_ extensions as over-reaching Congress' prerogative, despite their long history of doing it. But the precedent has been set and Big Media will run with it.
Come on, we couldn't expect too much geek-wise from Shatner. He's a little too cool. Now science officer Spock, and host of "In Search Of", now HE would make a great, and quite erudite, interviewee.
Or maybe Wil could suggest some other good interviewees from amongst the Trek casts. - Brent Spiner? - James Doohan? Get him before he's gone. I bet he'd have tons to say about fun stuff like inventing the first Klingon words.
Although I agree with many of my Christian sistren and brethren that there is a lot of hostility in certain areas of the government towards our faith, it is a self-reinforcing cycle. Christians feel persecuted and start flexing their muscle to change things. Their opponents feel that Christians are shutting them out and react.
I personally hate any sort of equation of "American" with "Christian". It cheapens both terms.
The _Mayan_ Calendar says _nothing_ about 2012. The Mayan Calendar just fixes a date at some point in the future based on astronomical projections and works backwards. The trick is correlating the fixed points and figuring out when it points to. There are convincing articles which talk about the winter solstice 12/21/2012 as astronomically (astrologically!) significant in Mayan culture.
I was one of the folks who did that. I don't think they ever got funding to put together the support system to make it run, though. Programming the original ENIAC entailed plugging in cables and turning dials, so we did our best to make the chip capable of doing that. However, it would've needed a little bit of hardware to connect to a computer, and then a software system to load in all the settings. There was another project a little bit earlier that did a software simulator, and we were going to use their GUI. But we all graduated, the 50th anniverary passed, so I doubt anyone carried it all the way through to completion. So we built the chip, but I have no way of knowing whether or not it actually works.
In my cursory reading of the patent, I think I see why they went after Prodigy, and if successful would go after AOL. The patent specifically talkes about using telephone lines as the communication link to the network. Thus, most of the internet is probably immune from this patent, but content providers that use phones and modems to connect to their clients are.
We (myself and mine) pull down $200/hr and if you're doing better, and still can't afford to participate, there's something seriously wrong with your world view.
I completely agree with you. If the reason for your hostility is you think we're making more money than you and still not sharing with the rest of the community, then let me assure you that this is not the case. If we could afford it, we would.
Maybe at some point in the future, we will be able to. But for now, we're not starving, but we aren't buying any yachts either.
Slashdot Mirror
Novell backed off, but they did not entirely retract. SCO interprets it as being a total cave-in, but Novell's public statement merely said they were reviewing the situation, while their later correspondence shows they concluded that they were still in possession of the copyrights.
Although the grandparent is informative, if we're looking at both sides we need to question the source, which this, and other posts have done.
WTFM! There, I said it.
Cons:
I guess my conclusion is this: the economics will work only if the gaming population is large enough. This requires two things: game quality, which the article addresses, and momentum, which cheaper clients would possibly address. Here's another thought: how about give two months free with purchase of the game?. I know I'd be harder pressed to abandon something I had been playing two months than a mere one month investment.
Try this.
About a third of the spam I get could be construed as some sort of sexual harrassment or lewdity that should represent an initiation of force, that should therefore be prosecutable. It's like someone making obscene phone calls.
he mentions the thought of moving the control column to the side. why not have one on each side? probably a more comfortable position, allows your arms to help more in handling shock to the spine from bumps, and it definitely gives you more freedom to compensate for any sudden stoppage which might throw you forward.
The Matrix Re* (visited, loaded, volutions, -done)
because i have the exact same question.
What good is Slashdot if all the techies just hand around and carp at each other about those evil people out there? We should put our collective muscle together to make some noise. I'm totally willing to get an e-mail campaign going, but I don't have any connections to a good reputable site to host the home. Any one wanna help?
Maybe we should get those Johns-Hopkins computer scientists to throw in some time on this.
If we truly believe that open-source tends to provide better security, we should be developing open-source voting software. I'm sure it would take a while to get much notice from the government, much less "certification", but we could start a grass-roots campaign for adopting it through, say, universities in student body elections (a target screaming for being hacked) or maybe even local elections.
Cases like this make me finally realize what is meant by "patently obvious". It means its as obvious and inevitable as patentable technology.
Now for only $20 a processor, I will fully indemnify you for any damages you may be liable for to SCO as a result of their IP claims. Better hurry up, though, 'cause once the case goes to trial and they start showing the evidence, the price goes to $5000.
Unfrotunately, beer does itself contribute to the beer belly. It's not just a matter of how much carbs something has but what kind of carbs they are. Beer has maltose, which is actually one of the more troublesome carbs because it is digested quickly, spikes your blood sugar level quickly and brings with it an associated spike in insulin, which then brings your blood sugar level down low, and makes you hungrier. So, it is in fact the other stuff that makes you fat, but the beer often contributes to your wanting the other stuff. Different types of beer have different elements which modify the digestion process, so the effect varies. A nice stout seems to fill me up quite nicely, so it must have something going for it. But I have lost 25 pounds on my low-carb diet, so until I reach my target weight, I'm gonna hold back on the Guinness.
That would actually help the system because the more demand for something, the more likely something would be perceived to be. Insider trading in that respect would be encouraged! The real trick is sinking money in the counter-possibility in order to create a false sense of security.
I think the author is a little over-confident in things like Moore's law to predict what things will be like. Although the computing power is still increasing at a phenonmenal rate, the amount of things that can be done with that power is not increasing nearly as fast, as the relation between complexity of tasks and the resources required to perform them is more exponential than linear. So exponential increases in computing power only tend to add linearly to what we can do. His projections of computers with the "power" of a human brain seem woefully underestimated, and even then, the "power" will probably not equate to capability, because of the architectures involved.
That's not to say that a lot of the issues he brings up are not worth thinking about. Automation will continue to put a lot of people out of work. But, as other posters have said, humanity always finds new ways to occupy itself when older forms of employment become obsolete. It's not fun in the short term, but given the right environment, we can all put those brains of ours to work and learn new things to do. So the main consequence of all of this is that we must plan for re-training our human workforce, and probably re-design our education system to create more flexible workers who are able to excel at the things that humans excel at, things which computers are less capable of. We must be careful in how we do this, as many current school programs over-emphasize the use of calculators, leaving students unstimulated, and unnecessarily dependent on machines.
I guess we need to be able to do most things that we depend on machines to do for us, but be particularly trained to do things which they cannot do, even if that is a moving target.
Unfortunately, the majority opinion apparently threw away its rights and responsibilities to check and balance the legislature. The minority opinions dissented on two levels, one attacking this particular extension for _any_ copyrights having huge public cost with negligible public benefit, the other attacking any _retroactive_ extensions as over-reaching Congress' prerogative, despite their long history of doing it. But the precedent has been set and Big Media will run with it.
Come on, we couldn't expect too much geek-wise from Shatner. He's a little too cool. Now science officer Spock, and host of "In Search Of", now HE would make a great, and quite erudite, interviewee.
Or maybe Wil could suggest some other good interviewees from amongst the Trek casts.
- Brent Spiner?
- James Doohan? Get him before he's gone. I bet he'd have tons to say about fun stuff like inventing the first Klingon words.
They can't do anything about most of the customizations, but they can control their custom software, like (presumably) Click 'n' Run.
Although I agree with many of my Christian sistren and brethren that there is a lot of hostility in certain areas of the government towards our faith, it is a self-reinforcing cycle. Christians feel persecuted and start flexing their muscle to change things. Their opponents feel that Christians are shutting them out and react.
I personally hate any sort of equation of "American" with "Christian". It cheapens both terms.
The _Mayan_ Calendar says _nothing_ about 2012. The Mayan Calendar just fixes a date at some point in the future based on astronomical projections and works backwards. The trick is correlating the fixed points and figuring out when it points to. There are convincing articles which talk about the winter solstice 12/21/2012 as astronomically (astrologically!) significant in Mayan culture.
I was one of the folks who did that. I don't think they ever got funding to put together the support system to make it run, though. Programming the original ENIAC entailed plugging in cables and turning dials, so we did our best to make the chip capable of doing that. However, it would've needed a little bit of hardware to connect to a computer, and then a software system to load in all the settings. There was another project a little bit earlier that did a software simulator, and we were going to use their GUI. But we all graduated, the 50th anniverary passed, so I doubt anyone carried it all the way through to completion. So we built the chip, but I have no way of knowing whether or not it actually works.
In my cursory reading of the patent, I think I see why they went after Prodigy, and if successful would go after AOL. The patent specifically talkes about using telephone lines as the communication link to the network. Thus, most of the internet is probably immune from this patent, but content providers that use phones and modems to connect to their clients are.
We (myself and mine) pull down $200/hr and if you're doing better, and still can't afford to participate, there's something seriously wrong with your world view.
I completely agree with you. If the reason for your hostility is you think we're making more money than you and still not sharing with the rest of the community, then let me assure you that this is not the case. If we could afford it, we would.
Maybe at some point in the future, we will be able to. But for now, we're not starving, but we aren't buying any yachts either.