Stinky or not, I don't see any evidence for either existing.
That said, I think we humans are all a lot happier pretending that free will exists, and I think that our laws and social mores should assume freedom of individuality/lifestyle/privacy/etc (taking the golden rule into account, of course).
Unlimited energy and control of the graviton? I'm guessing that the result would be... global warfare on an unprecedented scale, resulting in either A) an endless dictatorship or B) the end of humans. Probably B, when somebody's automatic war machine turns out to be an uncontrolled chain reaction.
Not to be too much of a cynic or anything, but I'm glad the mysteries of the universe aren't unlocked easily, and that they don't usually live up to the hype. Change is good, but sudden change is destabilizing.
A market looking for action and entertainment, not a foray into the depths of the human experience. Games don't even try to be high art, and I don't think they should.
Hmm. I'm going to disagree with you there. Maybe "art games" wouldn't be blockbusters, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be made. Would you say the same thing about movies? Should directors making art movies switch to making summer blockbuster style crap? No thanks.
Sometimes I want to check my brain at the door and just blast some baddies, but why wouldn't I also want to have a mind bending and thought provoking interactive experience? Just because most games don't offer that yet doesn't mean it isn't desirable... even without accompanying gunplay.
As another child post mentioned, it's not just backups. You may want to convert the data to different formats or store it in different ways. You may also want to change the data for your own use, which is legal, protected fair use of the data. You might want to extract a short clip for use in a demonstration. You may want to fix some shoddy subtitles. You may want to fix some of the content that is flagged as "unskippable". You may want to edit out a scene that you don't like.
As long as you're not distributing the content or playing it for large audiences, you're free to do all of these things -- or at least you were until the DMCA interceded. The DMCA makes it illegal to do things that are *legal* under copyright law. Now the content owners are kindly going to allow us to exercise our fair use rights (for an extra fee) - but wait! They're not really. This whole scheme is not really opening up the data that you paid for. It's just allowing you to make DRMed copies. It's less useful than the protected stuff, since the protection is already broken.
In other words, it's not just backups, and it's not just other practical considerations -- it's the goddamn principle! Even though I don't bypass the encryption on 90% of the DVDs that I own, I'm not going to buy a movie in an inaccessible format.
I second the vote for the Gamecube controller. By far the most comfortable and functional controller I've ever used. It remains to be seen how the Wii stacks up -- Metroid Prime 3 should provide a fair amount of data on that front.
I totally agree. The best puzzles are the ones that fit into the environment itself, and that are hard to figure out without requiring guesswork. I think the place that I was stuck the longest in TP was in the sky temple, trying to latch on to that last spherical basket thingie in order to turn on the fan -- you know, the one where you have to hang down from the room above where you got the big key? I messed around in the big central room below forever before I figured that one out.
I don't know, but "easily hackable" is certainly one of my top criteria in picking a format. HD-DVD is getting a lot of very good press the past couple of days.
The funny thing is, that means I would actually *buy* movies in the hackable format. I wouldn't make copies, I would purchase physical disks! I'm not interested in distributing copies, either - but if I want to cut out clips from movies and edit them together, or if I want to add funny subtitles for my own entertainment, or if I want to copy the data to a streaming server, or if I want to do a million other things with my copy of the data, then I'll be damned if I'm gonna buy it in a format with DRM that I can't easily get around.
HD-DVD is in the lead. (Yes, I know Blu-Ray uses AACS, but HD-DVD is the one getting all of the press coverage!)
Offtopic, but what is the deal with bumper stickers in Europe? I did a fair bit of driving in France last year, and I never saw *any* bumper stickers. I was starting to wonder if they were illegal (yet there were vans with ads covering the entire rear end). Sure, I can accept that most people think bumper stickers are hokey, but everyone? Do you never, ever see one of those funky old cars with 200 stickers on the back?
Songs on iTunes are more than 50 cents a pop? Geez.
I figure the average CD has between 10 and 15 songs on it, and they sell for between 10 and 15 bucks. That's a buck a song for lossless non-DRM music on physical media that has to be stamped and shipped and (traditionally) sold in a physical store.
Should digital distribution cut the cost in half? I would say yes, especially for music that has already been released in 10 different formats.
Let's see if we can get a pony with that, too.
I'm not stating my dream case fantasy, I'm explaining what would make me switch from CDs to downloads. If it's not realistic, then that's too bad for the music purveyor, not for me.
I'll take open and patent free, please. If there's an encoding that's "better for mobile playback" then I'll reencode the audio for my mobile device. For actually building up my music library, it's gotta be lossless, DRM-free, and as open as possible. So far CDs are still the best option in that regard, although they are 1) not electronically distributed and 2) too expensive.
I'll pass on the lossy encoding. If I could buy CD quality losslessly encoded and DRM-free audio on the web, then I would. I'd probably pay $0.5/song or something. MP3's are just a mobile form of my music, they're not going to form the basis of my library.
Hell, better yet, I'd pay even more for lossless DRM-free audio that's sampled at a higher resolution than CD. Maybe a buck a song or something. The market is there, I'm thinking, but nobody is selling the equivalent of CD audio, much less something better. CDs even come with a physical backup!
Moved on to Vista? Hardly. It's about time for me to build a new PC, and I'm actually planning on upgrading from 2000 to XP, as much as I hate to do so. I have software that *requires* XP, so it must be done.
I've actually been waiting for the price of XP OEM to go down, now that it's the "old" version of windows. Looks like MS is probably not going to do that -- if the customer doesn't want to upgrade, then force 'em!
Speaking of gamers requiring Vista, I'm thinking this will either A) kill PC gaming a little bit more or B) bring OpenGL into dominance. We'll see.
Slashdot Mirror
That makes it pretty clear that the "}" closes "function", and that "arg2){" is just a continuation of a long line.
"Mimed and failed?"
"Mimed and died."
Stinky or not, I don't see any evidence for either existing.
That said, I think we humans are all a lot happier pretending that free will exists, and I think that our laws and social mores should assume freedom of individuality/lifestyle/privacy/etc (taking the golden rule into account, of course).
Here's a comparison that I saw a while back on the dev blog for redfin.com.
Unlimited energy and control of the graviton? I'm guessing that the result would be... global warfare on an unprecedented scale, resulting in either A) an endless dictatorship or B) the end of humans. Probably B, when somebody's automatic war machine turns out to be an uncontrolled chain reaction.
Not to be too much of a cynic or anything, but I'm glad the mysteries of the universe aren't unlocked easily, and that they don't usually live up to the hype. Change is good, but sudden change is destabilizing.
Hmm. I'm going to disagree with you there. Maybe "art games" wouldn't be blockbusters, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be made. Would you say the same thing about movies? Should directors making art movies switch to making summer blockbuster style crap? No thanks.
Sometimes I want to check my brain at the door and just blast some baddies, but why wouldn't I also want to have a mind bending and thought provoking interactive experience? Just because most games don't offer that yet doesn't mean it isn't desirable... even without accompanying gunplay.
They'll give in eventually, or everyone will just start using OpenGL.
That makes no sense. After Fmail comes 10mail, right? What the hell is Gmail?
As another child post mentioned, it's not just backups. You may want to convert the data to different formats or store it in different ways. You may also want to change the data for your own use, which is legal, protected fair use of the data. You might want to extract a short clip for use in a demonstration. You may want to fix some shoddy subtitles. You may want to fix some of the content that is flagged as "unskippable". You may want to edit out a scene that you don't like.
As long as you're not distributing the content or playing it for large audiences, you're free to do all of these things -- or at least you were until the DMCA interceded. The DMCA makes it illegal to do things that are *legal* under copyright law. Now the content owners are kindly going to allow us to exercise our fair use rights (for an extra fee) - but wait! They're not really. This whole scheme is not really opening up the data that you paid for. It's just allowing you to make DRMed copies. It's less useful than the protected stuff, since the protection is already broken.
In other words, it's not just backups, and it's not just other practical considerations -- it's the goddamn principle! Even though I don't bypass the encryption on 90% of the DVDs that I own, I'm not going to buy a movie in an inaccessible format.
**SPOILERS**
I totally agree. The best puzzles are the ones that fit into the environment itself, and that are hard to figure out without requiring guesswork. I think the place that I was stuck the longest in TP was in the sky temple, trying to latch on to that last spherical basket thingie in order to turn on the fan -- you know, the one where you have to hang down from the room above where you got the big key? I messed around in the big central room below forever before I figured that one out.
The funny thing is, that means I would actually *buy* movies in the hackable format. I wouldn't make copies, I would purchase physical disks! I'm not interested in distributing copies, either - but if I want to cut out clips from movies and edit them together, or if I want to add funny subtitles for my own entertainment, or if I want to copy the data to a streaming server, or if I want to do a million other things with my copy of the data, then I'll be damned if I'm gonna buy it in a format with DRM that I can't easily get around.
HD-DVD is in the lead. (Yes, I know Blu-Ray uses AACS, but HD-DVD is the one getting all of the press coverage!)
I figure the average CD has between 10 and 15 songs on it, and they sell for between 10 and 15 bucks. That's a buck a song for lossless non-DRM music on physical media that has to be stamped and shipped and (traditionally) sold in a physical store.
Should digital distribution cut the cost in half? I would say yes, especially for music that has already been released in 10 different formats.
I'm not stating my dream case fantasy, I'm explaining what would make me switch from CDs to downloads. If it's not realistic, then that's too bad for the music purveyor, not for me.MP3's are just a mobile form of my music, they're not going to form the basis of my library.
Hell, better yet, I'd pay even more for lossless DRM-free audio that's sampled at a higher resolution than CD. Maybe a buck a song or something.
The market is there, I'm thinking, but nobody is selling the equivalent of CD audio, much less something better. CDs even come with a physical backup!
Hostfiles are definitely not the best way to blacklist servers... I was just making a funny. ;)
I've actually been waiting for the price of XP OEM to go down, now that it's the "old" version of windows. Looks like MS is probably not going to do that -- if the customer doesn't want to upgrade, then force 'em!
Speaking of gamers requiring Vista, I'm thinking this will either A) kill PC gaming a little bit more or B) bring OpenGL into dominance. We'll see.