OK, more seriously now, throwing all IP out the window probably would result in chaos, regardless of whether IP is or isn't harmful. I think there's a very good case for reducing the protections, however, because as it stands IP is having seriously negative effects on society and the internet in particular.
I feel the same way with the AC. Microsoft seems to use this marketing technique a lot, after picking it up from Apple. It tells people "Hey, this thing is like SO popular, everyone is doing it, so you need to do it too" to use artificial peer pressure to make them use its products. I personally think it's a despicable way to operate, and makes me like them even less.
Boo hoo, save the starving artists. Because, as we all know, IP is totally about the artists, right? Without IP none of them would ever make a cent, huh? If they aren't able to sell recordings of their work, they'll put down their guitars and keyboards and go work at McDonalds.
Instead of repeating industry propaganda, how about you give some EVIDENCE that content creation would suffer without government-mandated monopolies, and without an army of lawyers and advertisers leeching off the artists' revenues?
If they had a "Share via Slashdot!" tool, then a few paragraphs from their articles may be on Slashdot... which means unless those bastards are stopped, there's a good chance they might sue geeknet for copywrong infringement at some point.
If you are describing what I think you are describing, then they may not be too difficult to write. If you consider the market share that XP still has, it would be a very worthwhile project.
The internet is such an amazing, useful and indispensable tool... yet I keep seeing a bunch of retards from a bygone age trying to subdue and control it using petty excuses such as copyright. This is seriously over "entertainment", like movies and music? Are we seriously expected to stand aside and let them take the the internet with such a lame excuse? Fuck the entertainment industries, they should either figure out a more consumer-friendly way to operate, or POAD because they are completely useless and their products are pure shite. Fuck the pirates who are giving those asshats an excuse to screw everyone over, and then don't have the balls to vote for the Pirate Parties to mitigate some of the damage. And most of all, fuck the douchebag politicians who are colluding with the "entertainers" to introduce anti-consumer, anti-democratic, anti-civil-rights laws like this, and who have no business being in office.
Is this a car metaphor but with horses which I see before me? The real problem is when the barn owner sells the horses, but also trains them to return to his barn as soon as their new owner is asleep.
Why must one side frame games as "The work of the devil, corrupting our youth!!!1" and the other as "The university of life, teaching useful skills!!!1"? Can't we all just be reasonable people and say "Games are games, they are only supposed to be fun. If some people are able to learn from them, that's good for them (I know I have done, but not everyone can, so don't abolish schools just yet). If some people are homicidal maniacs, it's because they are homicidal maniacs, it's not because of the games they play."? We don't need to pass games off as good or evil.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I'll attempt to make a couple of hopefully useful suggestions.
I believe there are two important lessons to take home regarding game design:
Branching storyline design. Unlike traditional storylines, which are linear, game storylines have the potential to change based on player choices. Think choose-your-own-adventure type of storyline design.
Balance. For instance, keeping weapons and power-ups weak enough and the enemies just powerful enough so the gameplay stays challenging. Similarly, you don't want the units in a strategy game to be too powerful.
Get either of those wrong, you lose suspension of disbelief, and have a bad game. You want to look at the "Game Design" section here: www.gamedev.net/reference
Now, as to how to teach this.. Perhaps you can ask them to produce short design documents, with justifications about their choices and require them to script something very simple (I take it they are already quite confident doing graphics.). Perhaps they could work in teams, using something like AGS (Adventure Game Studio -- adventuregamestudio.co.uk) to create small 2D point-and-click adventure games (in the style of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis -- see youtube) with branching storylines.
Give me a BREAK! How is it "common sense" to treat minors like idiots? Do the "adults" running that freakshow just want to feel superior to their kids? Do they seriously think that fake violence will corrupt their youth? Do they think those kids will not grow up if they keep them away from some kinds of stimuli?
There has never been a time when children were as shielded from violence as they are now, and violent video games are hardly the same as kids helping slaughter animals at dad's farm, or kids shooting enemy soldiers in the head.
A lot of Ubuntu's critics say what they say because they think they are "too good" for it since it comes with training wheels on. Ubuntu, being a distro, has no obligation to write source code -- that is done by thousands of programmers elsewhere, and they are doing a damn fine job. A distro is meant to package the work of those programmers in a way that people can use it without needing a CS degree, and Ubuntu is getting that right imo.
So, the critics need to stfu and stick with their obscure distros.
This is the "cool people" phenomenon, like we see in music. These people will go round telling everyone how much they like X niche band as long as nobody knows about it, but if/when that band becomes popular, they'll start saying "Oh, I don't like that any more!". Same here, except with niche software.
The thing is, step 3 is not as huge as it sounds. Only the most densely-populated areas will benefit from better usage of available frequencies, so new infrastructure is only needed for big cities and such.
Imo, TV signals are a waste of bandwidth... There must be other ways to transmit TV these days, so they should free a lot of those frequencies for use by wireless networks. It probably won't happen any time soon, but I have no doubt that's the way forward.
"Stop pushing your agenda," said the IP supporter on Slashdot. I don't really have an agenda to push; I only express what is a common belief within the tech sector. However, I have to ask, are you an IP lawyer by any chance?
Also prey tell me, what facts did I retort? That the roots of copyright are in censorship? They are, just google it. That copyright is increasingly being abused for censorship seeing how well it lends itself to the task? Well, unless the original article is lying, it is.
And please don't refer me to your first post. It had nothing to do with my comment, and all it did was set up a strawman to be knocked down.
I think you may be confusing me with some random internet pirate. I'm not. But, I still believe IP is holding back knowledge and progress, and is bringing us dangerously close to a police state. You wouldn't try to put lip-stick on this pig, unless you have a vested interest and an agenda.
I'm saying that it doesn't matter if you broke the law or not, they can still accuse you of breaking the law and rain fire down upon you anyways. Also, I'd need to assume you have intelligence before I can insult it.
"Copyright as censorship" is not a new idea. In fact, it's what copyright was originally meant to be when it was first devised, and now it's simply returning to its roots. With the far-reaching scope of intellectual "property" today, pretty much anyone can be accused of piracy, and oppressive governments can just pick who they want to target and point their finger.
Companies like Microsoft are just being opportunists (read: "free-market capitalists") -- they know that if they are copyright holders, they have the power to negotiate with governments who are inclined to use copyright as censorship. Who knows what rewards Microsoft will get from the Russian government? Perhaps this is how that official Russian Linux distro was discontinued.
And don't think the Russian government is the only one to do this sort of thing. Hardly! They are guilty of not being subtle about it, but the US government is just as bad. There's even a "Department of Homeland Security" conducting raids in the name of copyright, so yes I'd say we have a serious problem.
Slashdot Mirror
She should just pay her $.99. Whoever downloaded from her should pay his own share.
If you must have imaginary property, you must also have imaginary damages. I'm actually not kidding, that's what statutory damages are.
OK, more seriously now, throwing all IP out the window probably would result in chaos, regardless of whether IP is or isn't harmful. I think there's a very good case for reducing the protections, however, because as it stands IP is having seriously negative effects on society and the internet in particular.
I feel the same way with the AC. Microsoft seems to use this marketing technique a lot, after picking it up from Apple. It tells people "Hey, this thing is like SO popular, everyone is doing it, so you need to do it too" to use artificial peer pressure to make them use its products. I personally think it's a despicable way to operate, and makes me like them even less.
Boo hoo, save the starving artists. Because, as we all know, IP is totally about the artists, right? Without IP none of them would ever make a cent, huh? If they aren't able to sell recordings of their work, they'll put down their guitars and keyboards and go work at McDonalds.
Instead of repeating industry propaganda, how about you give some EVIDENCE that content creation would suffer without government-mandated monopolies, and without an army of lawyers and advertisers leeching off the artists' revenues?
If they had a "Share via Slashdot!" tool, then a few paragraphs from their articles may be on Slashdot... which means unless those bastards are stopped, there's a good chance they might sue geeknet for copywrong infringement at some point.
If you are describing what I think you are describing, then they may not be too difficult to write. If you consider the market share that XP still has, it would be a very worthwhile project.
I thought Gallium was mostly cross-platform, so it may be possible to port DX10/11 to XP.
The internet is such an amazing, useful and indispensable tool... yet I keep seeing a bunch of retards from a bygone age trying to subdue and control it using petty excuses such as copyright. This is seriously over "entertainment", like movies and music? Are we seriously expected to stand aside and let them take the the internet with such a lame excuse? Fuck the entertainment industries, they should either figure out a more consumer-friendly way to operate, or POAD because they are completely useless and their products are pure shite. Fuck the pirates who are giving those asshats an excuse to screw everyone over, and then don't have the balls to vote for the Pirate Parties to mitigate some of the damage. And most of all, fuck the douchebag politicians who are colluding with the "entertainers" to introduce anti-consumer, anti-democratic, anti-civil-rights laws like this, and who have no business being in office.
The village people?
Is this a car metaphor but with horses which I see before me? The real problem is when the barn owner sells the horses, but also trains them to return to his barn as soon as their new owner is asleep.
Why must one side frame games as "The work of the devil, corrupting our youth!!!1" and the other as "The university of life, teaching useful skills!!!1"? Can't we all just be reasonable people and say "Games are games, they are only supposed to be fun. If some people are able to learn from them, that's good for them (I know I have done, but not everyone can, so don't abolish schools just yet). If some people are homicidal maniacs, it's because they are homicidal maniacs, it's not because of the games they play."? We don't need to pass games off as good or evil.
Who pays for this shit? The british taxpayer I'll bet.
Pedo-pope should stick his jesus fairy-tales up his arse and go swim in the coffers of blood-money he keeps under the vatican.
Geeks enjoy reinventing the wheel. Marketers enjoy telling lies about how "New and improved!!!1" it is.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I'll attempt to make a couple of hopefully useful suggestions.
I believe there are two important lessons to take home regarding game design:
Get either of those wrong, you lose suspension of disbelief, and have a bad game. You want to look at the "Game Design" section here: www.gamedev.net/reference
Now, as to how to teach this.. Perhaps you can ask them to produce short design documents, with justifications about their choices and require them to script something very simple (I take it they are already quite confident doing graphics.). Perhaps they could work in teams, using something like AGS (Adventure Game Studio -- adventuregamestudio.co.uk) to create small 2D point-and-click adventure games (in the style of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis -- see youtube) with branching storylines.
Give me a BREAK! How is it "common sense" to treat minors like idiots? Do the "adults" running that freakshow just want to feel superior to their kids? Do they seriously think that fake violence will corrupt their youth? Do they think those kids will not grow up if they keep them away from some kinds of stimuli?
There has never been a time when children were as shielded from violence as they are now, and violent video games are hardly the same as kids helping slaughter animals at dad's farm, or kids shooting enemy soldiers in the head.
A lot of Ubuntu's critics say what they say because they think they are "too good" for it since it comes with training wheels on. Ubuntu, being a distro, has no obligation to write source code -- that is done by thousands of programmers elsewhere, and they are doing a damn fine job. A distro is meant to package the work of those programmers in a way that people can use it without needing a CS degree, and Ubuntu is getting that right imo.
So, the critics need to stfu and stick with their obscure distros.
This is the "cool people" phenomenon, like we see in music. These people will go round telling everyone how much they like X niche band as long as nobody knows about it, but if/when that band becomes popular, they'll start saying "Oh, I don't like that any more!". Same here, except with niche software.
I rarely watch TV, yet I use my wifi all the time. I'd gladly trade off TV for "wifi with longer range and stronger power".
The thing is, step 3 is not as huge as it sounds. Only the most densely-populated areas will benefit from better usage of available frequencies, so new infrastructure is only needed for big cities and such.
Imo, TV signals are a waste of bandwidth... There must be other ways to transmit TV these days, so they should free a lot of those frequencies for use by wireless networks. It probably won't happen any time soon, but I have no doubt that's the way forward.
"Stop pushing your agenda," said the IP supporter on Slashdot. I don't really have an agenda to push; I only express what is a common belief within the tech sector. However, I have to ask, are you an IP lawyer by any chance?
Also prey tell me, what facts did I retort? That the roots of copyright are in censorship? They are, just google it. That copyright is increasingly being abused for censorship seeing how well it lends itself to the task? Well, unless the original article is lying, it is.
And please don't refer me to your first post. It had nothing to do with my comment, and all it did was set up a strawman to be knocked down.
I think you may be confusing me with some random internet pirate. I'm not. But, I still believe IP is holding back knowledge and progress, and is bringing us dangerously close to a police state. You wouldn't try to put lip-stick on this pig, unless you have a vested interest and an agenda.
http://torrentfreak.com/fed-busted-movie-site-informed-of-investigation-months-ago-100701/
Ye of little faith.
I'm saying that it doesn't matter if you broke the law or not, they can still accuse you of breaking the law and rain fire down upon you anyways. Also, I'd need to assume you have intelligence before I can insult it.
"Copyright as censorship" is not a new idea. In fact, it's what copyright was originally meant to be when it was first devised, and now it's simply returning to its roots. With the far-reaching scope of intellectual "property" today, pretty much anyone can be accused of piracy, and oppressive governments can just pick who they want to target and point their finger.
Companies like Microsoft are just being opportunists (read: "free-market capitalists") -- they know that if they are copyright holders, they have the power to negotiate with governments who are inclined to use copyright as censorship. Who knows what rewards Microsoft will get from the Russian government? Perhaps this is how that official Russian Linux distro was discontinued.
And don't think the Russian government is the only one to do this sort of thing. Hardly! They are guilty of not being subtle about it, but the US government is just as bad. There's even a "Department of Homeland Security" conducting raids in the name of copyright, so yes I'd say we have a serious problem.
You need to get out more ;)