It's not that turn based games are decreasing, it's just that real time games are increasing.
Arguably because it takes a lot less effort to slap some new units onto a Star Craft engine and call it a new game than it does to produce a genuinely interesting turn-based strategy.
The article did mention them, actually. But yes... I installed the original X-Com a few months ago and spent many hours playing it. Lately I've been playing Jagged Alliance 2 incessantly. Screw real-time;)
No one wants to spend 8 hours to play one game of heroes of might and magic.
I think the thousands (millons?) of people who bought the Heroes of Might and Magic games might disagree with you. I think a better statement might be "No one wants to spend 8 hours to play one game of heroes of might and magic when four of those hours are waiting for the other player to go."
I agree with you that turn-based games suffer greatly (in most cases) in the multiplayer department. However, I think you underestimate the desire of many players (like myself) for good non-multiplayer strategy games. Many gamers I talk to are frustrated by the movement away from single-player games to multi-player ones, and more specifically to massively-multiplayer online games. My biggest worry is that someday in order to get my game fix I will be forced to play against 13 year old 31337 H4X0Rs because companies have stopped producing good opponent AI in the belief that everyone wants to play online.
I think one of the most ironic things in the "death of turn based games" is that many of the gamers who have abandoned turn based games for RTS are the same people that will spend hours playing a game of Chess or Go with friends
What drives wages is no unions or laws but competition for workers. By discouraging sweatshop formation you slow this process down and harm workers rather than helping them.
China has a population somewhere in excess of 1 billion people. The rest of Asia is far from underpopulated. You're trying to say that soon there will be a shortage of workers and companies will have to increase wages or face having their employees move to a different factory that pays better? Is this the "market force" you're talking about? The unemployment rate for many Asian countries (China, South Korea and the Phillipines as three examples) has actually increased between 1970 and the present, despite an increase in employment by sweatshops. This makes a worker shortage seem rather unlikely.
What happens if multinationals just fire their workers and bring production back to the states?
I hardly think that's much of an issue. Currently it's estimated that a "living wage" for most of Asia runs at about a couple dollars per day. Factory workers in North America typically earn between $10 and $20 per hour, so up to $160 per day. Not a whole lot of math involved in figuring out where the work force deals are.
How do you enforce this?
You seem to be reading a call for legislation into what I've said. You talk of enforcing, out-lawing, and of creating fiats. I'm fairly certain I didn't suggest any of these. Nike and similar multinationals sell well entirely because of branding. People want to buy into the lifestyle that these companies advertise as coming with the purchase of their product. If something is hurting the brand (like the swoosh being associated with sweatshops) companies will do what is necessary to protect their image. If that involves bettering worker environments in Asia to make Western consumers happy, that's what these companies will do (and indeed have done).
Actually I believe they will. It just won't be out of the goodness of their hearts or the browbeating of US activists. They'll raise wages because they have to to keep their workforce from going to another employer.
You can let me know when they start doing that. In the meantime, Nike (as an example) has already increased wages a number of times because of the "browbeating of US activists". Not much, mind you, but much more than any increases we've seen from "market forces".
Perhaps I'm over generalizing here, but it seems that we differ in viewpoint in this respect: You're suggesting a laissez-faire approach to sweatshops in the third world. Eventually economic factors will improve working conditions and wages, so first-worlders can sit back and enjoy their shoes until that happens. I'm suggesting that by disapproving of sweatshop labour and pressuring multinationals through boycotts and negative publicity we - as consumers - can help to improve working conditions in third world countries much more rapidly. Certainly not overnight, but such campaigns have already had success in influencing the decisions of Nike, McDonalds, and Shell Oil (to name three) with regards to human rights.
You've made the point a number of times that sweatshops are doing more good than harm - that they provide jobs that were previously unavailable, that they increase the standard of living of their employees. I won't try to argue that point with you anymore. Regardless, I think we can agree that sweatshops are not the desired end result. They are merely a means towards economic prosperity for third world countires. Yet you seem to be discouraging attempts to help them move towards this prosperity. I am less content than you seem to be to "wait and see" what happens to these economies when corporations are left to run freely. North American consumers have the ability to help speed these countries' progress through the sweatshop stage and should do so to the best of their ability.
You're correct in saying poverty was not created by multinational corporations. Simply in many cases it is being maintained by them.
I'm not entirely sure where I said that "evil corporations [I] loathe so much will spontaneously raise wages out of the goodness of their hearts." They're not going to. That's exactly why workers in these countries need to fight for improved wages and work conditions and why people who sympathize with them in the first world are supporting their cause.
You seem to be proposing that things are the way they are and we shouldn't be challenging these multinational corporations to change, that we should work to maintain the status quo. Without people fighting for their rights we wouldn't have women voters. We'd still have slavery in North America.
What's my proposal? My proposal is that multinationals start paying their workers a working wage. My proposal is that workers be guarnateed safe working conditions. My proposal is that workers be allowed to form unions without threat to their jobs or their lives.
As you've said, multinationals aren't going to do this on their own. They're going to do what's in their best interests. Thus it's up to morally-concious first-worlders to show these companies that they do not approve of the treatment of third world workers. With enough opposition, sweatshop labour will no longer be in multinationals' best interests, and genuine change can be enacted.
For a lot of very good information on this issue I'd recommend reading "No Logo" by Naomi Klein. It might correct some of the innaccurate assumptions you're making.
Sweatshop owners might be motivated by greed, but as a side effect they are improving conditions in the third world.
Granted, if these countries were seeing any taxes or revenue from the factories that Nike (and many other multinationals) set up in Asia and South America. Unfortunately, a large percentage of these factories are set up in what are called Export Processing Zones. Factories in these zones often pay no taxes whatsoever, and the host country sees no money from the companies that own them. There is typically some sort of deal that after ten years companies will start paying taxes (thus it's intended to act as an incentive for companies to invest), but most just pick up and move to a different EPZ before the time limit is up.
The EPZ's often also act outside of the jurisdiction of the laws and courts of their host country. So not only are factories inside not necessarily following the work standards of countries like the US, they often are not even living up to the standards of their host country
But if you're talking about a country where children have to work to stay alive...
But why should children have to work to stay alive? Because sweatshop owners won't pay their employees enough to support themselves, let alone their children. Don't argue that the companies can't afford to. These are the same companies that were previously paying American workers $15/hour. The same companies that are making literally billions of dollars per year. Now they can't afford to pay an asian woman $2/day to support her family?
Bad jobs at lousy wages is better than no job at all, yet sweatshop activists seem to believe that until coroporations are willing to pay a "living wage" the third-world poor shouldn't be allowed to have any jobs at all. I think that's a cruel and destructive policy.
I don't recall hearing any activists demanding that jobs should be taken away from the poor if they're not being paid a living wage. The demand is simply that these people should be payed a living wage. Period.
You seem to claim that the current situation is a necessary step on the way to prosperity for third world countries. If these countries were making any progress towards proseperity, I might be inclined to agree with you. Instead, they are largely being taken advantage of by large multinational corporations who refuse to pay their workers enough money to even feed and clothe themselves. I would suggest you do a little more research into the actual economic impact of this sort of investing before you argue in support of sweatshops. Again, I would recommend Naomi Klein's book.
I came across an interesting idea last week at marillion.com. They're pre-selling their next album online to raise the money to record it that would normally be put up by a record label.
For those unfamiliar with them, Marillion is a progressive rock band from the UK. They've been around for a while (early 80's) so they've developed a fairly large fan base and can afford to do this. They still plan to sign a distribution contract so that the album will be available in stores, but by raising the money to do the recording themselves they will be able to own all of the rights to the music.
Seems like a good idea to me. I wonder if we might see more already successful bands going this route if it works. The only unfortunate thing is that it won't work for new bands who need to get their music out there to be heard.
You can order Marillion's new CD from the link above (I've ordered mine). It's a little expensive with the exchange from the UK, but if you order by July 31 you'll get your name in the liner notes. That sold me:)
This was a few years ago, but I remember seeing some protoype GUI's done by a couple grad students at the University of Waterloo.
One of the big changes they had made was to use circular menus, rather than the traditional pull down ones. When you right-clicked the mouse on the screen, a menu appeared around the pointer with wedge-shaped menu-items. The idea was that with pull-down menus you always had to scroll down a long way to get to some of the useful commands (like "Exit"). With the circular menu, you eliminate the inequality.
The team was also working on some other projects like trying to display network traffic in a meaningful way. As I said, this was a few years ago, so I don't know what's become of it.
I don't know if anyone agrees with me or not (probably not, since companies must be packing things in bigger boxes for a reason), but I've always thought putting a product in a box larger than normal (8.5x11ish) makes it look cheap.
Maybe that's just because I used to work in a software store and from experience, almost all of the non-conformist boxes contained crap.
I agree with you there. I think there are two different issues being crammed together here that are entirely different, although I'm not an expert on IP, and IANAL
The first issue is the one you mentioned, and the one that I would say is not addressed by the article. I write a song, I don't have any IP rights to it, and someone comes along and sells breakfast cereal with it. Someone else is making money from work I've done without acknowledging me. I fade into obscurity because no-one except the ad exec who picked the song knows who I am.
The second issue is the one brought up with every discussion about MP3's. I record a song, you download it for free, and I don't see any money from that download. But, you know the song is by me, if you like it you can listen to it and say "hey, this guy put some work into this". Then he tells his friends, and maybe along the way someone buys my CD (or maybe they don't).
I may or may not make any money in the second situation, but at least I'm being acknowledged for the work I've done.
The article fails to mention anything close to what I would consider the abuse of the IP-less world in the first situation. Even with IP, bands (the Dave Matthews Band, for example) have to keep a look out for people using their in commercials without their permission.
I have to admit, I'm not intimately familiar with typical terms in shrinkwrap agreements, so please pardon my ignorance. I fully agree that people are far too sue-happy today, and if you lost ten years of work because Windows crashed and toasted something that you didn't back up, it's your own damn fault.
How about this (very hypothetical) situation though: I buy some software which includes a documented feature X that (say) sorts my data in some way. However, feature X was coded by some disgruntled employee, and instead of sorting data, it actually formats my hard drive.
I realize it'll be different with different licenses, but under a typical shrink-wrap license can I sue the company for this, or am I SOL?
I'd disagree. Having instructed students at a University, it's much easier to give instructions when you can say "Type this exactly at the command prompt" than to say "Okay, look for a little button that looks like this, and then click this and deselect that, then there should be a text area called such-and-such, then look for some other icon..."
Sure, once you're familiar with Windows or Gnome or MacOS or whatever, everything becomes pretty intuitive, but when you're trying to explain something to someone who's never used the GUI or whatever, giving explicit commands is much easier.
Well, having written that subject line, when you phrase it as "dead trees", books sound a little more cruel.
Anyway, to repeat what others have said, I much prefer reading a book in printed format. There really is something to be said for sitting down in a comfy chair with a good book and reading for a while. There's also something to be said for being able to walk into a book store and browse. Bookstores are great, used bookstores even better
The difference between Microsoft and nVidia is that nVidia is tops because they're better than a wide range of other video card makers, while Microsoft is tops because Windows is (marginally) better than no operating system at all (don't argue that you can get Linux - Joe Shmoe couldn't install Linux if his life depended on it).
Don't mistake market dominance due to a quality product with market dominance due to monopolistic practices.
If you check my post, I didn't propose that MP3's are helping sales - in fact I specifically said I didn't believe that. I just think that they're doing far less damage than the recording industry would like the world to believe.
I'm not saying I'm right. Just don't criticize what I didn't say.
And if you download it, would you go out and buy it afterwords? Sounds pretty unreasonable to me.
Maybe I'm unreasonable, but yes, I do go and buy the album. I'd say I use MP3's in three ways:
1) I download a catchy song that I like. This is about the only thing I use Napster for. If I want the latest single from a one-hit wonder, should I pay $17 for a CD otherwise full of crap? Should I pay $13 for the single which has less crap but only because there's fewer tracks? You'd probably say yes, but since I wouldn't have bought the album anyway, I can't see that me having that track hurts the artist. Sure it's not legal, but is it any more harmful than those mix tapes you've got?
2) I download a lot of bootlegs from newsgroups. These aren't being sold anywhere, and if they are the RIAA/Artist isn't seeing any of the cash anyway. A lot of the bands that I download (Dave Matthews, for instance) actually support bootlegs as long as they're not being sold.
3) I've downloaded some albums from newsgroups. I got the newest Cure album the day before it came out. I didn't like it, so I didn't buy it. I also didn't let it take up 100mb on my hard drive either (ie. it's gone). On the other hand I got the Crowded House Afterglow album, enjoyed it, and went out and bought it a few days later.
Admittedly, I'm probably in the minority here, and I don't believe that MP3's are helping artists, but I really don't think they're hurting them as much as the RIAA would have us believe. In fact, my suspicion is that if you had two worlds, one without MP3s and one without record execs, the artists in the MP3 world would be much better off.
I don't know how young the "younger generations" are that you're referring to, but as someone who recently finished highschool (I'm 20 now) I disagree that students today are reading too much 'crap'. With the exception of A Clockwork Orange, I had the opportunity to read all of the books mentioned above and a number of others most people would call "modern classics".
I really can't vouch for other schools (or school systems, for that matter) but when I went to highschool most of the books listed above were mandatory. Or, if not mandatory then still part of a grade 12 English lit class which was one of two choices for grade 12 English (does that make it 50% mandatory?). The course presented F-451, 1984, Brave New World, and a few others and discussed their recurring themes.
"Lord of the Flies" was a mandatory read in grade 11, and in grade 13 (I went to a Canadian school) we covered Joseph Heller's "Catch-22". Heck, in grade 8 I read the Chrysalids at my teacher's suggestion, though I can't claim that I fully grasped it at the time.
Just for reference, I read 4 Shakespeare plays in highschool - one for each grade except 12, and then I read Macbeth on my own time. There's something to be said for Shakespeare as well (though admittedly, 15 would be far too many).
Anyway, I certainly agree that most or all of the books mentioned should be taught in school, and my point is that they are. I think people are just too quick to criticize teachers and the educational system when they aren't fully aware of what is being taught.
I was reading the info on stationterminus.com and admittedly I didn't delve too deeply, but I didn't find any real discussion of what the Terminus "campaign" definition was. Someone mentioned in a previous post that the game looked like Privateer, and I'm wondering if that's the sort of structure it will have. I especially liked Privateer 2 which (despite a few bugs) had a huge universe and while there was a story, you weren't tied down to a set list of missions (a la Wing Commander).
On the other hand, last week I went out and bought Tachyon who's box made it seem right up there with Privateer 2 in terms of the freedom, but fell somewhere short, ending up somewhere between Privateer and Wing Commander.
So, I guess my question is, how much freedom do you have in Terminus? From what I've read it sounds great... it sounds like what I liked in Privateer II. I'm just hoping I won't be disappointed.
I can't say I have any definite knowledge of the senility/ghostwriting, but it makes sense. As I recall, the books got progressively worse (imo) up to the fourth (God Emperor of Dune). GED was really hard to get through and read more like a political philosophy textbook than a novel.
For the fifth and sixth books, iirc everything suddenly changed. Gurney Halleck shows up again ( I think... it's been a while) and develops super powers and exciting things actually happen. It's a complete departure from GED.
If we're thinking about the same versions, I've actually seen the "Director's Cut". Or at least, I've seen a longer version of the movie. It was an import with subtitles in an Asian language I didn't recognize. However, the director listed in the credits was "Alan Smithee (sp?)" which is the pseudonym directors commonly use when they're not happy with the film as it's been released.
This version of the film contained the scene where Paul kills the Fremen and takes Hanah/the kids as his, but it doesn't add as much to the film as you might think. Sure, it explains why they're hanging around later, but they hardly play any part in the film past that point. The real effect is that you're left wondering "What's that scene there for?" because it never goes anywhere.
On the other hand, there are some parts in the lengthened movie that serve to explain some other aspects that can be confusing if you haven't read the book.
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It's not that turn based games are decreasing, it's just that real time games are increasing.
Arguably because it takes a lot less effort to slap some new units onto a Star Craft engine and call it a new game than it does to produce a genuinely interesting turn-based strategy.
The article did mention them, actually. But yes... I installed the original X-Com a few months ago and spent many hours playing it. Lately I've been playing Jagged Alliance 2 incessantly. Screw real-time ;)
No one wants to spend 8 hours to play one game of heroes of might and magic.
I think the thousands (millons?) of people who bought the Heroes of Might and Magic games might disagree with you. I think a better statement might be "No one wants to spend 8 hours to play one game of heroes of might and magic when four of those hours are waiting for the other player to go."
I agree with you that turn-based games suffer greatly (in most cases) in the multiplayer department. However, I think you underestimate the desire of many players (like myself) for good non-multiplayer strategy games. Many gamers I talk to are frustrated by the movement away from single-player games to multi-player ones, and more specifically to massively-multiplayer online games. My biggest worry is that someday in order to get my game fix I will be forced to play against 13 year old 31337 H4X0Rs because companies have stopped producing good opponent AI in the belief that everyone wants to play online.
I think one of the most ironic things in the "death of turn based games" is that many of the gamers who have abandoned turn based games for RTS are the same people that will spend hours playing a game of Chess or Go with friends
What drives wages is no unions or laws but competition for workers. By discouraging sweatshop formation you slow this process down and harm workers rather than helping them.
China has a population somewhere in excess of 1 billion people. The rest of Asia is far from underpopulated. You're trying to say that soon there will be a shortage of workers and companies will have to increase wages or face having their employees move to a different factory that pays better? Is this the "market force" you're talking about? The unemployment rate for many Asian countries (China, South Korea and the Phillipines as three examples) has actually increased between 1970 and the present, despite an increase in employment by sweatshops. This makes a worker shortage seem rather unlikely.
What happens if multinationals just fire their workers and bring production back to the states?
I hardly think that's much of an issue. Currently it's estimated that a "living wage" for most of Asia runs at about a couple dollars per day. Factory workers in North America typically earn between $10 and $20 per hour, so up to $160 per day. Not a whole lot of math involved in figuring out where the work force deals are.
How do you enforce this?
You seem to be reading a call for legislation into what I've said. You talk of enforcing, out-lawing, and of creating fiats. I'm fairly certain I didn't suggest any of these. Nike and similar multinationals sell well entirely because of branding. People want to buy into the lifestyle that these companies advertise as coming with the purchase of their product. If something is hurting the brand (like the swoosh being associated with sweatshops) companies will do what is necessary to protect their image. If that involves bettering worker environments in Asia to make Western consumers happy, that's what these companies will do (and indeed have done).
Actually I believe they will. It just won't be out of the goodness of their hearts or the browbeating of US activists. They'll raise wages because they have to to keep their workforce from going to another employer.You can let me know when they start doing that. In the meantime, Nike (as an example) has already increased wages a number of times because of the "browbeating of US activists". Not much, mind you, but much more than any increases we've seen from "market forces".
Perhaps I'm over generalizing here, but it seems that we differ in viewpoint in this respect: You're suggesting a laissez-faire approach to sweatshops in the third world. Eventually economic factors will improve working conditions and wages, so first-worlders can sit back and enjoy their shoes until that happens. I'm suggesting that by disapproving of sweatshop labour and pressuring multinationals through boycotts and negative publicity we - as consumers - can help to improve working conditions in third world countries much more rapidly. Certainly not overnight, but such campaigns have already had success in influencing the decisions of Nike, McDonalds, and Shell Oil (to name three) with regards to human rights.
You've made the point a number of times that sweatshops are doing more good than harm - that they provide jobs that were previously unavailable, that they increase the standard of living of their employees. I won't try to argue that point with you anymore. Regardless, I think we can agree that sweatshops are not the desired end result. They are merely a means towards economic prosperity for third world countires. Yet you seem to be discouraging attempts to help them move towards this prosperity. I am less content than you seem to be to "wait and see" what happens to these economies when corporations are left to run freely. North American consumers have the ability to help speed these countries' progress through the sweatshop stage and should do so to the best of their ability.
You're correct in saying poverty was not created by multinational corporations. Simply in many cases it is being maintained by them.
I'm not entirely sure where I said that "evil corporations [I] loathe so much will spontaneously raise wages out of the goodness of their hearts." They're not going to. That's exactly why workers in these countries need to fight for improved wages and work conditions and why people who sympathize with them in the first world are supporting their cause.
You seem to be proposing that things are the way they are and we shouldn't be challenging these multinational corporations to change, that we should work to maintain the status quo. Without people fighting for their rights we wouldn't have women voters. We'd still have slavery in North America.
What's my proposal? My proposal is that multinationals start paying their workers a working wage. My proposal is that workers be guarnateed safe working conditions. My proposal is that workers be allowed to form unions without threat to their jobs or their lives.
As you've said, multinationals aren't going to do this on their own. They're going to do what's in their best interests. Thus it's up to morally-concious first-worlders to show these companies that they do not approve of the treatment of third world workers. With enough opposition, sweatshop labour will no longer be in multinationals' best interests, and genuine change can be enacted.
For a lot of very good information on this issue I'd recommend reading "No Logo" by Naomi Klein. It might correct some of the innaccurate assumptions you're making.
Sweatshop owners might be motivated by greed, but as a side effect they are improving conditions in the third world.
Granted, if these countries were seeing any taxes or revenue from the factories that Nike (and many other multinationals) set up in Asia and South America. Unfortunately, a large percentage of these factories are set up in what are called Export Processing Zones. Factories in these zones often pay no taxes whatsoever, and the host country sees no money from the companies that own them. There is typically some sort of deal that after ten years companies will start paying taxes (thus it's intended to act as an incentive for companies to invest), but most just pick up and move to a different EPZ before the time limit is up.The EPZ's often also act outside of the jurisdiction of the laws and courts of their host country. So not only are factories inside not necessarily following the work standards of countries like the US, they often are not even living up to the standards of their host country
But if you're talking about a country where children have to work to stay alive...But why should children have to work to stay alive? Because sweatshop owners won't pay their employees enough to support themselves, let alone their children. Don't argue that the companies can't afford to. These are the same companies that were previously paying American workers $15/hour. The same companies that are making literally billions of dollars per year. Now they can't afford to pay an asian woman $2/day to support her family?
Bad jobs at lousy wages is better than no job at all, yet sweatshop activists seem to believe that until coroporations are willing to pay a "living wage" the third-world poor shouldn't be allowed to have any jobs at all. I think that's a cruel and destructive policy.
I don't recall hearing any activists demanding that jobs should be taken away from the poor if they're not being paid a living wage. The demand is simply that these people should be payed a living wage. Period.
You seem to claim that the current situation is a necessary step on the way to prosperity for third world countries. If these countries were making any progress towards proseperity, I might be inclined to agree with you. Instead, they are largely being taken advantage of by large multinational corporations who refuse to pay their workers enough money to even feed and clothe themselves. I would suggest you do a little more research into the actual economic impact of this sort of investing before you argue in support of sweatshops. Again, I would recommend Naomi Klein's book.
I came across an interesting idea last week at marillion.com. They're pre-selling their next album online to raise the money to record it that would normally be put up by a record label.
For those unfamiliar with them, Marillion is a progressive rock band from the UK. They've been around for a while (early 80's) so they've developed a fairly large fan base and can afford to do this. They still plan to sign a distribution contract so that the album will be available in stores, but by raising the money to do the recording themselves they will be able to own all of the rights to the music.
Seems like a good idea to me. I wonder if we might see more already successful bands going this route if it works. The only unfortunate thing is that it won't work for new bands who need to get their music out there to be heard.
You can order Marillion's new CD from the link above (I've ordered mine). It's a little expensive with the exchange from the UK, but if you order by July 31 you'll get your name in the liner notes. That sold me :)
This was a few years ago, but I remember seeing some protoype GUI's done by a couple grad students at the University of Waterloo.
One of the big changes they had made was to use circular menus, rather than the traditional pull down ones. When you right-clicked the mouse on the screen, a menu appeared around the pointer with wedge-shaped menu-items. The idea was that with pull-down menus you always had to scroll down a long way to get to some of the useful commands (like "Exit"). With the circular menu, you eliminate the inequality.
The team was also working on some other projects like trying to display network traffic in a meaningful way. As I said, this was a few years ago, so I don't know what's become of it.
I don't know if anyone agrees with me or not (probably not, since companies must be packing things in bigger boxes for a reason), but I've always thought putting a product in a box larger than normal (8.5x11ish) makes it look cheap.
Maybe that's just because I used to work in a software store and from experience, almost all of the non-conformist boxes contained crap.
What's to stop you from doing that now? IP? Is IP stopping you from trading music on Napster?
(Just to make it clear, I'm not saying we should get rid of IP here)
I agree with you there. I think there are two different issues being crammed together here that are entirely different, although I'm not an expert on IP, and IANAL
The first issue is the one you mentioned, and the one that I would say is not addressed by the article. I write a song, I don't have any IP rights to it, and someone comes along and sells breakfast cereal with it. Someone else is making money from work I've done without acknowledging me. I fade into obscurity because no-one except the ad exec who picked the song knows who I am.
The second issue is the one brought up with every discussion about MP3's. I record a song, you download it for free, and I don't see any money from that download. But, you know the song is by me, if you like it you can listen to it and say "hey, this guy put some work into this". Then he tells his friends, and maybe along the way someone buys my CD (or maybe they don't).
I may or may not make any money in the second situation, but at least I'm being acknowledged for the work I've done.
The article fails to mention anything close to what I would consider the abuse of the IP-less world in the first situation. Even with IP, bands (the Dave Matthews Band, for example) have to keep a look out for people using their in commercials without their permission.
I think it was less the subliminal messages, and more the thought of how excruciatingly painful and drawn out such an exercise would be :)
I have to admit, I'm not intimately familiar with typical terms in shrinkwrap agreements, so please pardon my ignorance. I fully agree that people are far too sue-happy today, and if you lost ten years of work because Windows crashed and toasted something that you didn't back up, it's your own damn fault.
How about this (very hypothetical) situation though: I buy some software which includes a documented feature X that (say) sorts my data in some way. However, feature X was coded by some disgruntled employee, and instead of sorting data, it actually formats my hard drive.
I realize it'll be different with different licenses, but under a typical shrink-wrap license can I sue the company for this, or am I SOL?
I'd disagree. Having instructed students at a University, it's much easier to give instructions when you can say "Type this exactly at the command prompt" than to say "Okay, look for a little button that looks like this, and then click this and deselect that, then there should be a text area called such-and-such, then look for some other icon..."
Sure, once you're familiar with Windows or Gnome or MacOS or whatever, everything becomes pretty intuitive, but when you're trying to explain something to someone who's never used the GUI or whatever, giving explicit commands is much easier.
Well, having written that subject line, when you phrase it as "dead trees", books sound a little more cruel.
Anyway, to repeat what others have said, I much prefer reading a book in printed format. There really is something to be said for sitting down in a comfy chair with a good book and reading for a while. There's also something to be said for being able to walk into a book store and browse. Bookstores are great, used bookstores even better
The difference between Microsoft and nVidia is that nVidia is tops because they're better than a wide range of other video card makers, while Microsoft is tops because Windows is (marginally) better than no operating system at all (don't argue that you can get Linux - Joe Shmoe couldn't install Linux if his life depended on it).
Don't mistake market dominance due to a quality product with market dominance due to monopolistic practices.
If you check my post, I didn't propose that MP3's are helping sales - in fact I specifically said I didn't believe that. I just think that they're doing far less damage than the recording industry would like the world to believe.
I'm not saying I'm right. Just don't criticize what I didn't say.
And if you download it, would you go out and buy it afterwords? Sounds pretty unreasonable to me.
Maybe I'm unreasonable, but yes, I do go and buy the album. I'd say I use MP3's in three ways:
1) I download a catchy song that I like. This is about the only thing I use Napster for. If I want the latest single from a one-hit wonder, should I pay $17 for a CD otherwise full of crap? Should I pay $13 for the single which has less crap but only because there's fewer tracks? You'd probably say yes, but since I wouldn't have bought the album anyway, I can't see that me having that track hurts the artist. Sure it's not legal, but is it any more harmful than those mix tapes you've got?
2) I download a lot of bootlegs from newsgroups. These aren't being sold anywhere, and if they are the RIAA/Artist isn't seeing any of the cash anyway. A lot of the bands that I download (Dave Matthews, for instance) actually support bootlegs as long as they're not being sold.
3) I've downloaded some albums from newsgroups. I got the newest Cure album the day before it came out. I didn't like it, so I didn't buy it. I also didn't let it take up 100mb on my hard drive either (ie. it's gone). On the other hand I got the Crowded House Afterglow album, enjoyed it, and went out and bought it a few days later.
Admittedly, I'm probably in the minority here, and I don't believe that MP3's are helping artists, but I really don't think they're hurting them as much as the RIAA would have us believe. In fact, my suspicion is that if you had two worlds, one without MP3s and one without record execs, the artists in the MP3 world would be much better off.
Now that you mention it, maybe we shouldn't allow powerful applications like this.
Actually, we should stop all technological advances right now to prevent Big Brother from gaining anymore control over us.
Actually, we should go back to the thirties when the government didn't have the technology to store all my personal information.
I guess we'd have to send our posts to /. via telegraph...
I don't know how young the "younger generations" are that you're referring to, but as someone who recently finished highschool (I'm 20 now) I disagree that students today are reading too much 'crap'. With the exception of A Clockwork Orange, I had the opportunity to read all of the books mentioned above and a number of others most people would call "modern classics".
I really can't vouch for other schools (or school systems, for that matter) but when I went to highschool most of the books listed above were mandatory. Or, if not mandatory then still part of a grade 12 English lit class which was one of two choices for grade 12 English (does that make it 50% mandatory?). The course presented F-451, 1984, Brave New World, and a few others and discussed their recurring themes.
"Lord of the Flies" was a mandatory read in grade 11, and in grade 13 (I went to a Canadian school) we covered Joseph Heller's "Catch-22". Heck, in grade 8 I read the Chrysalids at my teacher's suggestion, though I can't claim that I fully grasped it at the time.
Just for reference, I read 4 Shakespeare plays in highschool - one for each grade except 12, and then I read Macbeth on my own time. There's something to be said for Shakespeare as well (though admittedly, 15 would be far too many).
Anyway, I certainly agree that most or all of the books mentioned should be taught in school, and my point is that they are. I think people are just too quick to criticize teachers and the educational system when they aren't fully aware of what is being taught.
I was reading the info on stationterminus.com and admittedly I didn't delve too deeply, but I didn't find any real discussion of what the Terminus "campaign" definition was. Someone mentioned in a previous post that the game looked like Privateer, and I'm wondering if that's the sort of structure it will have. I especially liked Privateer 2 which (despite a few bugs) had a huge universe and while there was a story, you weren't tied down to a set list of missions (a la Wing Commander).
On the other hand, last week I went out and bought Tachyon who's box made it seem right up there with Privateer 2 in terms of the freedom, but fell somewhere short, ending up somewhere between Privateer and Wing Commander.
So, I guess my question is, how much freedom do you have in Terminus? From what I've read it sounds great... it sounds like what I liked in Privateer II. I'm just hoping I won't be disappointed.
I can't say I have any definite knowledge of the senility/ghostwriting, but it makes sense. As I recall, the books got progressively worse (imo) up to the fourth (God Emperor of Dune). GED was really hard to get through and read more like a political philosophy textbook than a novel.
For the fifth and sixth books, iirc everything suddenly changed. Gurney Halleck shows up again ( I think... it's been a while) and develops super powers and exciting things actually happen. It's a complete departure from GED.
If we're thinking about the same versions, I've actually seen the "Director's Cut". Or at least, I've seen a longer version of the movie. It was an import with subtitles in an Asian language I didn't recognize. However, the director listed in the credits was "Alan Smithee (sp?)" which is the pseudonym directors commonly use when they're not happy with the film as it's been released.
This version of the film contained the scene where Paul kills the Fremen and takes Hanah/the kids as his, but it doesn't add as much to the film as you might think. Sure, it explains why they're hanging around later, but they hardly play any part in the film past that point. The real effect is that you're left wondering "What's that scene there for?" because it never goes anywhere.
On the other hand, there are some parts in the lengthened movie that serve to explain some other aspects that can be confusing if you haven't read the book.