"Libertarianism requires that governments not intervene in the
marketplace, so that free actors may engage in legitimate contracts
with each other. "Intellectual property" is a government granted
monopoly. It's not compatible with the libertarian edict that that
government which governs least, governs best."
Yes, but we could use the "legitimate contract" system to essentially
recreate intellectual property via licensing agreements:
Party A agrees to provide Party B with a copy of information C. In
exchange, Party B agrees to provide Party A with cash of value X
(generally greater than the almost neglibile cost of transferring the
information but less than the total cost of producing the information)
and also agrees not to disclose the information to anyone else. Party
B is voluntarily giving up the ability to perform an completely legal
action (certainly legitimate, with the exception of waiving
inalienable rights), in exchange for receiving an intangible good that
still posses value to them (otherwise they wouldn't bother spending
money and entering into a contract over it).
The basic government granted monopoly of intellectual property
(i.e. plain old copyright law and not some of the crazier DMCA-type
stuff) merely automates the process a little (works great with books
and CDs; not so great with computer software, which still like to
carry around overly verbose license agreements) and helps idealize the
case where the contract is broken. Under the libertarian case,
despite knowing that all illegitimate copies stem from a broken
agreement, party A would only be able to recover damages from the
party B responsible for initially distributing a contractually-bound
copy. If you think RIAA damage claims are outrageous now, just wait
until they try and recover all their costs from a single
individual.
So while there are some differences, I'd argue that the two
philosophies aren't as unrelated as you make them out to be.
tags between the paragraph breaks. Sorry about that. I previewed it, but my brain was on autopilot at the time.
Fixed version:
I agree that Tux Racer, by using Tux as a mascot, is representing itself as pro-Linux. However, I believe that they fulfill that role (through the importance placed on the Linux version of the game). I do not believe that pro-Linux should automatically imply pro-OSS.
One of the most obvious strengths of Windows is the existence of commercial third-party software. If I could walk into, say, CompUSA and see just as much Linux software as I do Windows software, that would be another tickmark on the short version of the Linux World Domination TODO list.
Now in RMS's ideal world, all that commercial software would be open sourced, instead. While I appreciate some of the benefits of that ideal, I do feel it's too extreme. There's a benefit to being able to recoup software development costs from people other than your first customer, and the much touted "support model" of making money seems to be failing a lot of people.
Still, Linux at its core is a good example of what OSS can do. However, that doesn't mean that anything and everything associated with it has to be exclusively OSS. This is especially relevent in the area of games, where OSS is way behind what the commercial folks have done. There are some very good OSS games (Nethack is probably my all-time favorite game), but for each of those, there's many more good commercial games. It's hard for a volunteer effort to compete with a team of programmers and artists working full-time for 2+ years.
"Therefore, this could be considered a pro-linux - and by proxy - a pro OS game."
(As a quick aside, my comments were somewhat tongue-in-cheek -- especially the xbill one. However, I still think there's somewhat of a point to be made.)
I agree that Tux Racer, by using Tux as a mascot, is representing itself as pro-Linux. However, I believe that they fulfill that role (through the importance placed on the Linux version of the game). I do not believe that pro-Linux should automatically imply pro-OSS.
One of the most obvious strengths of Windows is the existence of commercial third-party software. If I could walk into, say, CompUSA and see just as much Linux software as I do Windows software, that would be another tickmark on the short version of the Linux World Domination TODO list.
Now in RMS's ideal world, all that commercial software would be open sourced, instead. While I appreciate some of the benefits of that ideal, I do feel it's too extreme. There's a benefit to being able to recoup software development costs from people other than your first customer, and the much touted "support model" of making money seems to be failing a lot of people.
Still, Linux at its core is a good example of what OSS can do. However, that doesn't mean that anything and everything associated with it has to be exclusively OSS. This is especially relevent in the area of games, where OSS is way behind what the commercial folks have done. There are some very good OSS games (Nethack is probably my all-time favorite game), but for each of those, there's many more good commercial games. It's hard for a volunteer effort to compete with a team of programmers and artists working full-time for 2+ years.
"I always enjoy it when Anne stresses that the point of the game is
to vote out the weakest player."
That drives me crazy -- not because I disagree with voting off the
weakest link, but because I disagree with Anne's criteria. The
evaluation used focuses exclusively on questions missed, with zero
regard for banking strategy or time wasted. For the most part, the
criteria used is good enough, but there've been too many cases where
Anne has failed to recognize the person who wasted an extra 20 seconds
getting a question wrong but didn't have the lowest total as being the
actual weakest player.
"Did you actually read what you typed? How is it that InfoGames
will recieve no money from Germans buying the US version and then
applying Kai's patch?"
Actually, you're the poster with a reading comprehension problem.
Both the poster you replied to and the original Slashdot
article text explain that Infogrames GERMANY doesn't get
credited with revenue from sales of the US version. The problem that
the patch causes is Infogrames's German division not receiving
revenue. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood of future German
translations, despite a potentially large German audience.
"a successful reboot of the system running the kernel is not in the
regression suite."
Well, considering that a successful compile of all the modules
isn't in the regression suite either, it's not exactly surprising.
2.4.14 required a patch to get the loop-back device to compile. One
of the 2.4.x releases a few before that had a problem with one of the
sound modules (IIRC).
"shows I really wish I could learn to like
Farscape (Saw it twice: blue-girl got a cold, and a monster in a cheap-looking mine. Lame.)"
Farscape's a show that you really have to catch at the right time to
get into -- they like to get tied up with long-running story arcs and
heavy continuity. I hated it the first time I tried to watch it, too.
It seems that Sci-Fi's daily reruns are going to catch up to "live"
within the next few weeks. If they restart it, I'd recommend trying
to watch from the beginning.
"I have suffered way too many "Still using CLI?" for using Linux,
haven't you? If someone want to *write* programs for OS/2, all the
power to them."
Except that, unlike Linux, OS/2 is somewhat of a developmental
dead-end. If a piece of current hardware doesn't work under Linux, I
know I only have to wait a month or two. On the other hand, it
must've been a year or two ago that I heard someone lament about his
inability to get OS/2 drivers for a piece of IBM hardware.
While there's nothing wrong with someone using OS/2, especially if it
does what they need, it is surprising that people are still
fighting the uphill battle of continuing to use a closed-source
operating system in the absence of support from the original vendor.
It's almost like taking the biggest gripe against Windows (lack of
source) and the biggest gripe against Linux (lack of commercial
support to the degree that it exists for Windows) and creating a
single system with both problems. (I may be wrong on the second
point, depending on how well OS/2 runs Win9x-based executables. I
know it did run the Win3.x stuff.)
That being said, if IBM were to dump OS/2 into the GPL, I would love
to play with a project that attempted to get it running with support
for more current hardware by snarfing drivers from, say, the Linux
kernel. I've always wanted to try it, but I was foiled by driver
issues back when I originally attempted to install it.
Re:Microsoft can't be to happy about this...
on
XBox Netplay Already
·
· Score: 2
"How would they not "allow" it? Someone tell me if I'm missing
something and Microsoft can pull a little DMCA action on this?"
While you're thinking of "allow" in the legal sense (for example, how
Microsoft doesn't allow you to distribute copies of Windows on a
website), everyone else is discussing "allow" in a technical sense
(for example, how the Playstation wouldn't allow you [unless you
modded it] to play imported games, even before the DMCA garbage).
Microsoft can finagle the hardware and/or software to make network
gaming more difficult. While no protection scheme is perfect, they
only need to make it difficult enough to break that most people won't
bother. For example, if playing a networked version of the game
requires you to physically modify the X-box's hardware (a la PSX
modchipping) and use a special burned disc to patch the game, they'll
probably eliminate a number of people from the unofficial networking
pool and boost their subscriber base.
"The only ones that i know of which you can do this with are
open-source, which means they can't legally license the DVD decryption
algorithms."
Right, but that's a problem with John Q. Programmer developing his own
system. A commercial entity that's already legally able to create a
DVD player can create a player capable of doing the overlay system.
There was a relatively recent Slashdot story about a
programmable DVD player designed to allow the end-user to
download/run scripts that edit the content of a DVD to remove
objectionable content. It's possible that a DVD player manufacturer
could expand this idea to support the overlay mechanism necessary for
an MST3K idea to work.
Still, I'm willing to concede that the DMCA does interfere with some
solutions that would make this project easy, but plenty of
alternatives exist and I do believe the original poster severely
overstated the DMCA's impact in this case.
"That's a great idea -- and yet another shining example of great innovation that the DMCA outlaws."
It does? I'm curious as to how the DMCA would prevent you from playing a second video/audio stream on top of video/audio being played from a legitimately owned DVD. I've yet to hear people claim that similar technologies (such as PIP or a regular partial on-screen menu/overlay generated by a cable box, Tivo, or DVD player) are illegal under the DMCA.
If you've got a legitimate reason why it would violate the DMCA, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I fear you're buying in to the over-villification of the DMCA that's been so prevalent on Slashdot lately. I hate the DMCA too, but there's only so many jokes people can make along the lines of "my brain is a circumvention device because I can remember movies" before it gets painfully stupid. And being painfully stupid isn't the sort of thing that'll win you credibility when you're trying to argue against a law.
"So if suicide is an adult theme, then it would have to be illegal to talk about suicide prevention."
If you'd actually read the article, you'd know that the "adult themes" comment is in the context of material that a majority of members of the Office of Film and Literature Classification deems to deserve an R rating. A suicide prevention website generally isn't R-rated material, unless it's doing something like showing graphic depictions of suicides in an effort to scare kids out of it. A very brief perusal site you referenced (and failed to hyperlink) didn't turn up an R-rated material.
I hate this bill as much as the next guy, but inventing arguing against what the bill isn't only serves to dilute credibility.
"Yes it is a Quake 3 specific optimization.... the ONLY time it does anything other than it's "normal" drivering is when you launch an app called "quake3.exe"."
I suggest you re-read the last sentence of the post that you replied to. The poster does not dispute that the thing being discussed is Quake-specific. Instead, the poser is (correctly) disputing that the thing being discussed is an optimization. It's not. It's a quality change designed to give the illusion of all-round superior performance.
"It's not trivial. Writing the code is trivial. Implementing an expert system is a pain in the arse."
Oops. Yup. I screwed up and was too busy thinking in terms of code and toy examples.
"After all, you would have to assume that the vast majority of alien lifeforms would fail the Turing test, given their psychology would be dramatically different to humans' - yet we're going to assume that a silicon sentience would be identical to a humans'?"
That's an interesting point. However, I think a silicon sentience built by humans is going to be very biased toward human psychology, given its "parentage". Futhermore, when I refer to the Turing test, I'm perhaps abusing the term a bit to refer to a vague, hand-wavy notion of "Does this program appear to be sentient to the end-user?" rather than the gimmicky implementation of the Loebner test. I know it's poor science, but when it comes to a sentient program, my criteria would be "I'll know it when I see it."
"Mistake number one is calling this "AI." I think the bar for that
title is a tad higher, no?"
No. Just as the term "virtual reality" is applied to a lot more than
just perfectly immersive, Matrix-like systems, "aritificial
intelligence" has a much wider scope than just HAL-like systems
capable of understanding human speech and providing coherent,
intelligent replies.
One example of part of the AI field that isn't close to the movie-like
image of AI is the expert system. At its simplest, it's a bunch of
yes/no questions about a given topic. An answer to each question
leads to either a new question or a conclusion. A classic application
of this system is a guessing game that operates somewhat similar to 20
questions -- the user picks something and the expert system asks
questions in an effort to guess what it is. If the system fails, it
prompts the user for a new question to add to the tree that
incorporates the new data item. All of this is trivial for anyone
with even rudimentry programming experience to implement, it's not
especially profound, and it'll never pass the Turing test, but it is a
legitimate part of the AI field.
This dance system, as near as I can tell, seems to be way ahead of
such a cut and dried expert system. It's using genetic algorithms to
assemble music based on feedback from users. That sounds like AI any
way you slice it. Sure the system isn't a conscious, self-aware
entity, but that's just a small bit of the AI field (and most likely
won't be realized for a long, long time).
"Too much software ignores that fact that spending five hours
reading documentation just to get one thing to work is an extremely
frustrating experience."
I certainly agree with you there. I suspect part of the problem is
that spending time writing documentation usually doesn't serve to help
scratch the "personal itch" that's generally considered the motivation
behind free software. I suspect it also doesn't help that it's easy
enough to consider the software as "still in development", allowing
the developers to put off documentation indefinitely.
Still, in the case of Fink, the documentation seems pretty
straight-forward. Checking the
Fink site, there are links for both documentation and a FAQ. The
user's
guide seems to be pretty straightforward. It has a couple extra
details in there (such as explaining the use of pico to edit the
user's.cshrc), but it looks like an experienced user could pull out
the important details in a few minutes (at most). The FAQ looks
like it does a decent job of picking up some of the more esoteric
problems that're too detailed to clutter the manual.
On the other hand, it's possible that the Fink user guide is a little
too brief. It's hard to tell without a further understanding of
exactly what the actual Fink software is beyond the Reader's Digest
description of the project (porting Unix utilities over to OS X).
"He's whining about what everyone else in the industry has to put up with every day."
I believe you mean: He's whining about what everyone else in the industry gets a paycheck for putting up with every day. Instead, this guy was volunteering his time and because of it, he was getting a bunch of extra shit he didn't want. We know beggars can't be choosers, but apparently philithranopists can't be, either.
"Lead Developer of a Major Software Project" or whatever his equivilant corporate world title would be would probably be worth six figures and would include support staff. The free software world usually doesn't have the luxury of having other people responsible for handling testing and the like.
"Yes, people who don't read the manuals are annoying, but when you YELL at someone you are turning them off big time."
I would gladly piss off a dozen users who are too obnoxious to bother reading the manual as opposed to pissing off one developer who's spending the majority of his time working on a free software project.
It seems to be a simple fact that running any sort of high profile project (software or otherwise) is an easy way to net yourself a world of shit. A vocal minority of users will bitch at the people in charge for anything and everything, even if the people are donating their time.
I honestly don't know whether this guy was abbrasive to begin with or if the continual grief just eventually took its toll. All I can really say is that someone who (according to all accounts) was quite talented and willing to put in quite a bit of time into the project got fed up with dealing with crap that, ideally, he shouldn't have to deal with.
"The phrase have found functions as the verb in that
sentence."
The phrase "have found" functions as the verb of the previous
sentence. The phrase that isn't a complete sentence is "Among them
many belonging to/. readers."
While your comment was treated as a joke, it's entirely possible that
this technology could be used to release more movies as the
uncut/unrated versions, with an option to "cut" it down to the
standard R-rated theatrical release version. So in a sense, the
answer may very well be "yes" (at least for some movies).
"While I don't have a particular problem with this technology (it's
technology, therefore it's morally neutral), I do see this as a
negative for the film industry."
Err... what? I see this technology as wonderful. By deferring
the censorship process until all material is in the hands of the
consumer, you're creating a system that allows people to still
sanitize what they want to sanitize without corrupting the
purity of the film that's on the DVD the consumer gets.
Remember that editting and censorship already exist. Before now, such
editting and censorship would entail releasing a version of the film
with those edits permanently applied. If this technology gains
wide-spread acceptance, that will no longer be the case.
"I see that I'm not alone in this being the first thing that came
to mind... Oh well, there's worse things than being redundant."
You think that's bad? Not only did someone beat me to mentioning the
Jar Jar-less Phantom Menace cut, but someone beat me to mentioning
that they were beaten to mentioning the Jar Jar-less Phantom Menance
cut.
(To clarify for everyone else, since it wasn't fully explained:
There's a recut version of The Phantom Menance floating around that
makes Jar Jar's role almost insignificant. It was alleged to have
been done by Kevin Smith, though he denied it. If the recut version
were to be translated into a set of editting commands to be applied to
a legitimate copy of The Phantom Menace, it would obviously circumvent
copyright issues.)
Also, it would be nice to see this technology used to insert cut
scenes back into the movie for DVDs that don't automatically support
it. For example, on the X-Men DVD, there's a "branching version"
option that automatically includes the alternate versions of the
scenes on the DVD into the movie in a somewhat seamless fashion
(except for a small delay). On the Goonies DVD, however, it features
a number of cut scenes (such as the kids fighting an octopus by the
pirate ship), but no way to watch the entire movie with those scenes
put back in.
"The Challenger exploded many years before the Internet was
publicly accessible"
Right, but my point was to illustrate the infrequency of such
wide-scale media events. Given the relatively young age of the widely
accessible, commercial Internet, we have to look before its time
for some of our data.
The sad thing is that it's probably not cost-effective. The only time
I've seen this happen is when it's been news so big (WTC and this
recent crash) that I've heard about it even though I'm at work. On
average, it seems that news big enough to get transmitted through the
school/office grapevine happens less frequently than yearly. It's
things like:
The Challenger exploding
The OJ verdict (someone actually left the class I was in, found
out the verdict, and wandered in whispering, "Not guilty"; even
weirder is that it wasn't my class -- I was taking notes for
fraternity brother that wanted to watch it on TV)
The WTC disaster
I'm probably leaving some out, as my memory isn't the best, but these
things are infrequent occurances. Unfortunately, news sites have to
worry about doing what turns a profit. CNN is, at least, transferring
servers over from less critical departments (such as Cartoon Network),
but it's hard for them to justify having servers there that're idle
99+% of the time.
It's a shame there's not a technology-based solution that
automatically kicks in for obscenely popular sites. Some sort of
popular site caching mechanism or a P2P system might do the trick (and
provide a more legitimate use for P2P technologies). Such a system
would also help out in non-emergency situations, such as when a given
novelty site gets its 15 minutes of Internet fame.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but we could use the "legitimate contract" system to essentially recreate intellectual property via licensing agreements:
Party A agrees to provide Party B with a copy of information C. In exchange, Party B agrees to provide Party A with cash of value X (generally greater than the almost neglibile cost of transferring the information but less than the total cost of producing the information) and also agrees not to disclose the information to anyone else. Party B is voluntarily giving up the ability to perform an completely legal action (certainly legitimate, with the exception of waiving inalienable rights), in exchange for receiving an intangible good that still posses value to them (otherwise they wouldn't bother spending money and entering into a contract over it).
The basic government granted monopoly of intellectual property (i.e. plain old copyright law and not some of the crazier DMCA-type stuff) merely automates the process a little (works great with books and CDs; not so great with computer software, which still like to carry around overly verbose license agreements) and helps idealize the case where the contract is broken. Under the libertarian case, despite knowing that all illegitimate copies stem from a broken agreement, party A would only be able to recover damages from the party B responsible for initially distributing a contractually-bound copy. If you think RIAA damage claims are outrageous now, just wait until they try and recover all their costs from a single individual.
So while there are some differences, I'd argue that the two philosophies aren't as unrelated as you make them out to be.
tags between the paragraph breaks. Sorry about that. I previewed it, but my brain was on autopilot at the time.
Fixed version:
I agree that Tux Racer, by using Tux as a mascot, is representing itself as pro-Linux. However, I believe that they fulfill that role (through the importance placed on the Linux version of the game). I do not believe that pro-Linux should automatically imply pro-OSS.
One of the most obvious strengths of Windows is the existence of commercial third-party software. If I could walk into, say, CompUSA and see just as much Linux software as I do Windows software, that would be another tickmark on the short version of the Linux World Domination TODO list.
Now in RMS's ideal world, all that commercial software would be open sourced, instead. While I appreciate some of the benefits of that ideal, I do feel it's too extreme. There's a benefit to being able to recoup software development costs from people other than your first customer, and the much touted "support model" of making money seems to be failing a lot of people.
Still, Linux at its core is a good example of what OSS can do. However, that doesn't mean that anything and everything associated with it has to be exclusively OSS. This is especially relevent in the area of games, where OSS is way behind what the commercial folks have done. There are some very good OSS games (Nethack is probably my all-time favorite game), but for each of those, there's many more good commercial games. It's hard for a volunteer effort to compete with a team of programmers and artists working full-time for 2+ years.
(As a quick aside, my comments were somewhat tongue-in-cheek -- especially the xbill one. However, I still think there's somewhat of a point to be made.)
I agree that Tux Racer, by using Tux as a mascot, is representing itself as pro-Linux. However, I believe that they fulfill that role (through the importance placed on the Linux version of the game). I do not believe that pro-Linux should automatically imply pro-OSS. One of the most obvious strengths of Windows is the existence of commercial third-party software. If I could walk into, say, CompUSA and see just as much Linux software as I do Windows software, that would be another tickmark on the short version of the Linux World Domination TODO list. Now in RMS's ideal world, all that commercial software would be open sourced, instead. While I appreciate some of the benefits of that ideal, I do feel it's too extreme. There's a benefit to being able to recoup software development costs from people other than your first customer, and the much touted "support model" of making money seems to be failing a lot of people. Still, Linux at its core is a good example of what OSS can do. However, that doesn't mean that anything and everything associated with it has to be exclusively OSS. This is especially relevent in the area of games, where OSS is way behind what the commercial folks have done. There are some very good OSS games (Nethack is probably my all-time favorite game), but for each of those, there's many more good commercial games. It's hard for a volunteer effort to compete with a team of programmers and artists working full-time for 2+ years.
Well, they are releasing a Linux version. Besides, no one complains that xbill uses Bill Gates in an open source game, so turnabout is fair play.
Now if they were using the FSF's GNU mascot, on the other hand, I think you'd have more of a point.
That drives me crazy -- not because I disagree with voting off the weakest link, but because I disagree with Anne's criteria. The evaluation used focuses exclusively on questions missed, with zero regard for banking strategy or time wasted. For the most part, the criteria used is good enough, but there've been too many cases where Anne has failed to recognize the person who wasted an extra 20 seconds getting a question wrong but didn't have the lowest total as being the actual weakest player.
Actually, you're the poster with a reading comprehension problem. Both the poster you replied to and the original Slashdot article text explain that Infogrames GERMANY doesn't get credited with revenue from sales of the US version. The problem that the patch causes is Infogrames's German division not receiving revenue. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood of future German translations, despite a potentially large German audience.
Well, considering that a successful compile of all the modules isn't in the regression suite either, it's not exactly surprising.
2.4.14 required a patch to get the loop-back device to compile. One of the 2.4.x releases a few before that had a problem with one of the sound modules (IIRC).
Farscape (Saw it twice: blue-girl got a cold, and a monster in a cheap-looking mine. Lame.)"
Farscape's a show that you really have to catch at the right time to get into -- they like to get tied up with long-running story arcs and heavy continuity. I hated it the first time I tried to watch it, too. It seems that Sci-Fi's daily reruns are going to catch up to "live" within the next few weeks. If they restart it, I'd recommend trying to watch from the beginning.
Except that, unlike Linux, OS/2 is somewhat of a developmental dead-end. If a piece of current hardware doesn't work under Linux, I know I only have to wait a month or two. On the other hand, it must've been a year or two ago that I heard someone lament about his inability to get OS/2 drivers for a piece of IBM hardware.
While there's nothing wrong with someone using OS/2, especially if it does what they need, it is surprising that people are still fighting the uphill battle of continuing to use a closed-source operating system in the absence of support from the original vendor. It's almost like taking the biggest gripe against Windows (lack of source) and the biggest gripe against Linux (lack of commercial support to the degree that it exists for Windows) and creating a single system with both problems. (I may be wrong on the second point, depending on how well OS/2 runs Win9x-based executables. I know it did run the Win3.x stuff.)
That being said, if IBM were to dump OS/2 into the GPL, I would love to play with a project that attempted to get it running with support for more current hardware by snarfing drivers from, say, the Linux kernel. I've always wanted to try it, but I was foiled by driver issues back when I originally attempted to install it.
While you're thinking of "allow" in the legal sense (for example, how Microsoft doesn't allow you to distribute copies of Windows on a website), everyone else is discussing "allow" in a technical sense (for example, how the Playstation wouldn't allow you [unless you modded it] to play imported games, even before the DMCA garbage).
Microsoft can finagle the hardware and/or software to make network gaming more difficult. While no protection scheme is perfect, they only need to make it difficult enough to break that most people won't bother. For example, if playing a networked version of the game requires you to physically modify the X-box's hardware (a la PSX modchipping) and use a special burned disc to patch the game, they'll probably eliminate a number of people from the unofficial networking pool and boost their subscriber base.
Right, but that's a problem with John Q. Programmer developing his own system. A commercial entity that's already legally able to create a DVD player can create a player capable of doing the overlay system. There was a relatively recent Slashdot story about a programmable DVD player designed to allow the end-user to download/run scripts that edit the content of a DVD to remove objectionable content. It's possible that a DVD player manufacturer could expand this idea to support the overlay mechanism necessary for an MST3K idea to work.
Still, I'm willing to concede that the DMCA does interfere with some solutions that would make this project easy, but plenty of alternatives exist and I do believe the original poster severely overstated the DMCA's impact in this case.
It does? I'm curious as to how the DMCA would prevent you from playing a second video/audio stream on top of video/audio being played from a legitimately owned DVD. I've yet to hear people claim that similar technologies (such as PIP or a regular partial on-screen menu/overlay generated by a cable box, Tivo, or DVD player) are illegal under the DMCA.
If you've got a legitimate reason why it would violate the DMCA, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I fear you're buying in to the over-villification of the DMCA that's been so prevalent on Slashdot lately. I hate the DMCA too, but there's only so many jokes people can make along the lines of "my brain is a circumvention device because I can remember movies" before it gets painfully stupid. And being painfully stupid isn't the sort of thing that'll win you credibility when you're trying to argue against a law.
If you'd actually read the article, you'd know that the "adult themes" comment is in the context of material that a majority of members of the Office of Film and Literature Classification deems to deserve an R rating. A suicide prevention website generally isn't R-rated material, unless it's doing something like showing graphic depictions of suicides in an effort to scare kids out of it. A very brief perusal site you referenced (and failed to hyperlink) didn't turn up an R-rated material.
I hate this bill as much as the next guy, but inventing arguing against what the bill isn't only serves to dilute credibility.
I suggest you re-read the last sentence of the post that you replied to. The poster does not dispute that the thing being discussed is Quake-specific. Instead, the poser is (correctly) disputing that the thing being discussed is an optimization. It's not. It's a quality change designed to give the illusion of all-round superior performance.
Oops. Yup. I screwed up and was too busy thinking in terms of code and toy examples.
"After all, you would have to assume that the vast majority of alien lifeforms would fail the Turing test, given their psychology would be dramatically different to humans' - yet we're going to assume that a silicon sentience would be identical to a humans'?"
That's an interesting point. However, I think a silicon sentience built by humans is going to be very biased toward human psychology, given its "parentage". Futhermore, when I refer to the Turing test, I'm perhaps abusing the term a bit to refer to a vague, hand-wavy notion of "Does this program appear to be sentient to the end-user?" rather than the gimmicky implementation of the Loebner test. I know it's poor science, but when it comes to a sentient program, my criteria would be "I'll know it when I see it."
No. Just as the term "virtual reality" is applied to a lot more than just perfectly immersive, Matrix-like systems, "aritificial intelligence" has a much wider scope than just HAL-like systems capable of understanding human speech and providing coherent, intelligent replies.
One example of part of the AI field that isn't close to the movie-like image of AI is the expert system. At its simplest, it's a bunch of yes/no questions about a given topic. An answer to each question leads to either a new question or a conclusion. A classic application of this system is a guessing game that operates somewhat similar to 20 questions -- the user picks something and the expert system asks questions in an effort to guess what it is. If the system fails, it prompts the user for a new question to add to the tree that incorporates the new data item. All of this is trivial for anyone with even rudimentry programming experience to implement, it's not especially profound, and it'll never pass the Turing test, but it is a legitimate part of the AI field.
This dance system, as near as I can tell, seems to be way ahead of such a cut and dried expert system. It's using genetic algorithms to assemble music based on feedback from users. That sounds like AI any way you slice it. Sure the system isn't a conscious, self-aware entity, but that's just a small bit of the AI field (and most likely won't be realized for a long, long time).
I certainly agree with you there. I suspect part of the problem is that spending time writing documentation usually doesn't serve to help scratch the "personal itch" that's generally considered the motivation behind free software. I suspect it also doesn't help that it's easy enough to consider the software as "still in development", allowing the developers to put off documentation indefinitely.
Still, in the case of Fink, the documentation seems pretty straight-forward. Checking the Fink site, there are links for both documentation and a FAQ. The user's guide seems to be pretty straightforward. It has a couple extra details in there (such as explaining the use of pico to edit the user's .cshrc), but it looks like an experienced user could pull out
the important details in a few minutes (at most). The FAQ looks
like it does a decent job of picking up some of the more esoteric
problems that're too detailed to clutter the manual.
On the other hand, it's possible that the Fink user guide is a little too brief. It's hard to tell without a further understanding of exactly what the actual Fink software is beyond the Reader's Digest description of the project (porting Unix utilities over to OS X).
I believe you mean: He's whining about what everyone else in the industry gets a paycheck for putting up with every day. Instead, this guy was volunteering his time and because of it, he was getting a bunch of extra shit he didn't want. We know beggars can't be choosers, but apparently philithranopists can't be, either.
"Lead Developer of a Major Software Project" or whatever his equivilant corporate world title would be would probably be worth six figures and would include support staff. The free software world usually doesn't have the luxury of having other people responsible for handling testing and the like.
I would gladly piss off a dozen users who are too obnoxious to bother reading the manual as opposed to pissing off one developer who's spending the majority of his time working on a free software project.
It seems to be a simple fact that running any sort of high profile project (software or otherwise) is an easy way to net yourself a world of shit. A vocal minority of users will bitch at the people in charge for anything and everything, even if the people are donating their time.
I honestly don't know whether this guy was abbrasive to begin with or if the continual grief just eventually took its toll. All I can really say is that someone who (according to all accounts) was quite talented and willing to put in quite a bit of time into the project got fed up with dealing with crap that, ideally, he shouldn't have to deal with.
The phrase "have found" functions as the verb of the previous sentence. The phrase that isn't a complete sentence is "Among them many belonging to /. readers."
While your comment was treated as a joke, it's entirely possible that this technology could be used to release more movies as the uncut/unrated versions, with an option to "cut" it down to the standard R-rated theatrical release version. So in a sense, the answer may very well be "yes" (at least for some movies).
Err... what? I see this technology as wonderful. By deferring the censorship process until all material is in the hands of the consumer, you're creating a system that allows people to still sanitize what they want to sanitize without corrupting the purity of the film that's on the DVD the consumer gets.
Remember that editting and censorship already exist. Before now, such editting and censorship would entail releasing a version of the film with those edits permanently applied. If this technology gains wide-spread acceptance, that will no longer be the case.
You think that's bad? Not only did someone beat me to mentioning the Jar Jar-less Phantom Menace cut, but someone beat me to mentioning that they were beaten to mentioning the Jar Jar-less Phantom Menance cut.
(To clarify for everyone else, since it wasn't fully explained: There's a recut version of The Phantom Menance floating around that makes Jar Jar's role almost insignificant. It was alleged to have been done by Kevin Smith, though he denied it. If the recut version were to be translated into a set of editting commands to be applied to a legitimate copy of The Phantom Menace, it would obviously circumvent copyright issues.)
Also, it would be nice to see this technology used to insert cut scenes back into the movie for DVDs that don't automatically support it. For example, on the X-Men DVD, there's a "branching version" option that automatically includes the alternate versions of the scenes on the DVD into the movie in a somewhat seamless fashion (except for a small delay). On the Goonies DVD, however, it features a number of cut scenes (such as the kids fighting an octopus by the pirate ship), but no way to watch the entire movie with those scenes put back in.
Right, but my point was to illustrate the infrequency of such wide-scale media events. Given the relatively young age of the widely accessible, commercial Internet, we have to look before its time for some of our data.
The sad thing is that it's probably not cost-effective. The only time I've seen this happen is when it's been news so big (WTC and this recent crash) that I've heard about it even though I'm at work. On average, it seems that news big enough to get transmitted through the school/office grapevine happens less frequently than yearly. It's things like:
I'm probably leaving some out, as my memory isn't the best, but these things are infrequent occurances. Unfortunately, news sites have to worry about doing what turns a profit. CNN is, at least, transferring servers over from less critical departments (such as Cartoon Network), but it's hard for them to justify having servers there that're idle 99+% of the time.
It's a shame there's not a technology-based solution that automatically kicks in for obscenely popular sites. Some sort of popular site caching mechanism or a P2P system might do the trick (and provide a more legitimate use for P2P technologies). Such a system would also help out in non-emergency situations, such as when a given novelty site gets its 15 minutes of Internet fame.