Might I point our lovely Slashdot community to a friendly site full of Emulation Software? You can get an emulator for most any historical console system, under most any operating system you are presently running.
I spent the better part of last night flipping between Donkey Kong Junior and Metroid on NESticle. (My, how much easier Metroid is with save states..)
The original poster noted that the PS3 was being geared for online gaming along the lines of Everquest and Final Fantasy 11.. but FFXI is most assuredly coming out on the Playstation 2. One would like to think that Sony has plans even more fascinating in mind for its next generation hardware.
As for the backwards compatibility being bandied about in the thread - mm, kind of depends on what format the games come in, doesn't it? DVDs would make a good standard, but they've already *got* those, and may consider moving on as DVD writers become more prevalent in user's homes.
Ah, well. Rampant speculation is what it is. We've still got several years of the PS2 to enjoy at the very least.:)
I personally stayed away from Everquest due to its addictive nature; I've played MUDs before (though non-graphical)and know that they have a tendency to consume my free time. I really don't mind re-clearing areas over and over again while chatting with friends; I find it very catharthic after a long day at work.
Final Fantasy 11 is going to finish me.
I say this because I am, unashamedly, Squaresoft's Bitch. Anything they sell, I purchase. Chocobo Dungeon? Got that. Vagrant Story? Yup. 3D World Runner? Sure, child's play.
I can't pass up a Final Fantasy title, not after the first ten have given me such endless hours of fun and happiness. Turning it into an MMORPG just adds an addictive edge that may well be the end of me.
Speculation like this killed the Dreamcast. Oh.. the PS2's gonna be sooo good.
Then you get lame kiddies saying stuff like "I don't want an Xbox. I'm getting a PS3, it will wipe the floor with the Xshite"... yeah, in about 2 years! What are you going to do until then, keep playing your N64?
This is much like an old urban legend, made popular through Scott Adams' Dilbert books. Once upon the time there was a company trying to sell some hideously expensive piece of hardware. Prospective clients were wary, so the salesteam tells them "Hey, Every single concern you have will be fixed by Version 2 of this hardware!" The clients then do not buy version 1, and bide their time.
Just about the time Version 2 comes out, the clients come back, and the salesteam says "Here's Version 2!..but man, Version 3 is *really* gonna rock!" Clients then hold off to wait till Version 3 is ready because of the raw cost of the hardware and the legacy nature of the product.
Meanwhile, the company goes bankrupt because everybody's locked in a holding pattern.
This tired old legend doesn't really fit in right with the console market, as these toys are tools for entertainment -- not legacy hardware that you're expected to keep and maintain for five or ten years, such as cars and houses. Sure, some of us gamers do, but it's not the expectation.
I agree, MS could cut prices to such a level that they could flood the market with cheap units. However, unlike the old Vetrex system which had an asteroids-like game burned into the console ROM itself, the X-Box requires software - and there lies the deficiency.
Microsoft made all the same mistakes that Neo Geo did in releasing a console - all the same mistakes that 3DO did. (Please tell me I'm not the only gamer old enough to remember.) Impressive hardware, nice design specs, even a cool niche idea - but not enough support. The Neo Geo was only for NG games and didn't have third party support that I'm aware of. The 3DO had so few games that I hesitate to think of more than one offhand.
The X-Box has fallen into the same perilous pitfall. MS built a system that's a bear to develop for and they didn't secure enough games on release day. Hell - in their release year.
The Gamecube sells because Nintendo has the almighty power of branding in the console market, and because they've got games by legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto; that makes a lot of difference. Nintendo isn't about games, it's practically about franchises, esp when Miyamoto gets involved.
The Playstation 2 sells because, even though it's beastly hard to develop for, it was backward compatible with the libraries of PS1 games already out there. ("Look, Mom! You don't *need* to buy me all new games!") On top of that, they've got heavy duty third-party support: Konami's Metal Gear Solid series, and Squaresoft's Final Fantasy, to name two offhand.
MS didn't pay attention and has wound up in a bad way. On top of not paying attention to the console market, which they really didn't know, MS didn't even pay attention to the *PC* market, which is their bread and butter. They should know how tight the hardware markets are and how difficult it is to sell a third-party system; they've spent years ensuring this is how it would be. Yet, even so, they distribute the X-Box -- a scaled down PC, with the ability to port your PC games to it -- which places it directly in contention for a part of the PC Gamer market.
Alas, PC gamers have already bought their hardware and aren't bloody well likely to jump ship for Halo's sake.
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I just don't know. MS has made every mistake they possibly can make with the X-Box. I don't see that unit climbing out of obscurity. They should lick their wounds and prepare for round two, because this one is lost; maybe they should go read about Sega's console history, and see how Sega made the leap from the Master System to the Genesis. (and then *not* follow them down the same paths as the Saturn or the Dreamcast..)
The study from the University of Buffalo is nice, but neither fair play nor the promotion of new music is the goal of the RIAA. Like any sufficiently entrenched business, their goal is the acquisition of profit - in this case, by creating a saleable commodity out of what was once-upon-a-time free intellectual property.
The short form of this entire story is "same shit, different day". The RIAA whines about downloads; Studies show this doesn't harm musicians; People go right on downloading. In other news, the earth is round.
Go the route that we anime enthusiasts have been using for ages, and get involved in fansub distribution. Stick it to the MPAA, distribute content not-yet-licensed stateside to give even more newbies anime experience, and *gasp* spend a little time away from your console. woot.
Water cooling requires that the water, passing nearby a heat source, absorbs the heat and carries in on to a place where it can be safely transferred into the surrounding environment. The old Second Law, Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, etc etc.
So why would we opt for water, which would be a less than optimal coolant? Because hot water makes *coffee*. Imagine! You could have a water-cooled server *and a coffee machine* all in the same rackmount!
And thus Sony gaines the experience of running an MMORPG from the Playstation2, that they might pass it on to SquareSoft for Final Fantasy XI.. and the Lord looked upon it, and saw that it was good.;)
The biggest hurdle I see from FFXI is going to be all the subscribers trying to play all at once when the game is first released. Battle.net got swamped by players when Diablo 2 was released because they went through a million copies in about two weeks. With the popularity of the FF titles (FFX sold about 4 million copies world wide, about a million of those in the US) I can see PlayOnline getting hammered unless there's some alternate direct network play available.
The best thing about this argument is how you followed it up; by showing us that the hurdle has already been met and overcome. Not just by Blizzard, but also by Sony (Everquest) and countless other MMORPGs.
Square's stepping up to the plate to join the field of online rpgs -- not to pioneer it. They've seen the mistakes that Sega made, the mistakes that Blizzard made, and have learned from them. Best of all they've got *Sony* to work with on this (as FFXI is for the PS2 platform)..
And for Sony, this kind of endeavour should be old hat.:) I'm hopeful.
Back in the 50's, people dreamed feverishly of flying cars and robot maids, of amazing advances in science over the next decade. But what we're moving towards, ever so slowly, is more along the lines of "the kitchen that cooks meals by itself" - an integrated system where computers are so tightly woven into the construction of appliances that the appliances themselves become intelligent and teachable. (Programmable, teachable, use your own word or metaphor here.)
The human element can't be ignored in favor of fully robotic solutions. People enjoy feeling involved in what it is they're doing. Personally I'm all for having an entire race of robot slaves that do all the work for everyone, leaving people free to create Art, Science, and Music (and giving *me* time to finish Final Fantasy 10).. but I don't see it happening any time soon.
Flying cars would rock. Talking cars that remember your favorite radio stations, seat settings, A/C settings, and possibly directions to drive to your parent's house are far more likely.
I got started by being dropped into the middle of the mix, myself. I was doing web coding for the University of Florida's Office of the University Registrar, when, in short order, two previous admins bailed out (after being passed up for promotions and raises - ah, politics). As the only guy left who knew the systems, I had to take up the banner and carry us forth as best I could.
I just really took to systems administration. Few things please me more than to see my machines running quietly, humming along and making other people productive. I approach it like an art, treat it like an art, a chance for me to develop skills and express them while doing some good for the community I'm serving at any given time.
I guess it's really a matter of one's perception. At least my job satisfaction is usually pretty high.:)
Books like this need to be written, disseminated, and then force-fed to anyone who wants to touch Systems Administration for a profession - or even work with sysadmins tangentally. I've spent too much time justifying my practices and beliefs about administration to people who had precisely zero working knowledge of the art; would that we lived in a world where this was no longer necessary!
Matta Security Ltd. produced a detailed map of nonclassified CIA networks, including several that aren't readily available to the public. Matta's study also uncovered the names, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of more than three dozen CIA network administrators and other officials.
Wow. They mapped the DMZ! Should I be afraid now? It must take balls of solid steel to post the IP address of the publicly accessible web servers..
And *gasp*, phone numbers? Email addresses? Dare I say it - contact information for real live CIA employees?!... sounds like they read DNS registration info. whee.
OOH! Servers not accessible to the public!!.. meaning email servers residing closer to the inside of the DMZ.. meaning they know how to read an mx record. drat. I thought we had something cool here.
And I really liked the random link at the far upper left, pointing to the unidentified private IP range used by CIA boxes. How nice of them to add it in, given that they have zero information about it; they've got IPs of the NAT machine on the outside. wow. shocker.:)
Sorry for being so cynical, but this kind of tripe cracks me up. I work in the belly of the Pentagon, doing systems work now, and if the CIA's unclassified network is anything like ours, I doubt they have to worry.
I found that section 117 also has a provision built in due to Title III in the DCMA that grants limited licensing transference to bodyshops that do work on your PC. If they turn on the computer, and software runs, they are not violating the licensing by not being the authorized users. This came up because one PC repair shop sued another when shop 2's technician turned on a computer and it booted windows -- which shop 2 didn't own and had no license for. Windows entering RAM was considered to be a copyright violation due to the licensing restrictions. The modification to Section 117 prevented this lawsuit from happening.
But there are other concerns that are better, more poignant, as they impacts the emulation community. One court has held that Section 117 does not excuse the making of purported backup copies of a video game embodied in ROM, because that particular storage medium is not vulnerable to "damage by mechanical or electrical failure".
Excuse me?? I've seen ROM chips blasted right off circuit boards due to voltage spikes. I know that the CDROM in my Playstation could easily get off-kilter and trash a CD beyond repair before I could stop it. But alas, this is the language of the law - dumping ROMs of any form is illegal because ROMs aren't killable, so thinks the court system.
The report reads in a contradictory fashion. They solicit views from the public against the sections of the DCMA, then get opinions from copyright holders backing the DCMA. Even their own recommendations are contradictory! Example:
1) The people writing the report feel that arguments against Section 1201 generally aren't valid (detailing the `first sale` doctrine - once a work is sold, you can do whatever you want to it [`disposition of the work`]). This section limits the rights of the copyright authors after a sale is made.
The specific grievance they haul out is CSS/De-CSS. They feel that altering first sale priviledges to require that all devices be capable of playing DVDs would be like demanding that PCs could play VHS tapes -- when, clearly, this isn't the issue at hand. They reporting group intentionally misconstrues this in their report. Then they go on to say that while CSS and region encoding may well destroy a market for reselling the used DVDs due to limited playability, that this action is not covered as a right by the first sale doctrine, so nobody's really losing anything in the scope of this law.
2) Not a half page later, the reporting group proceeds to state, -in writing-, that using encryption technology to tether a program or medium to a particular system a la WMV encryption. They state that copying a tethered copy onto a zip disk or CDRW is a useless exercise, since taking it to another system wouldn't work, regardless of whether or not you own the copyright to the media in question. This limits the ability to exercise control over the disposition of the work.
The paper notes that this limitation halfway violates the first sale doctrine, because circumventing the tethering protection in order to exercise your rights under the first sale doctrine would entail violating section 1201 as amended by the DCMA.
Does not CSS encoding and regional encoding tether your DVD to a particular player-type? If I carry my region-1 DVD to Asia, is it not preventing me from watching my licensed and owned DVD? Furthermore, if I seek to alter the disposition of the work - say, rip the DVD to MPG form so I can watch it on my computer - does not CSS encryption prevent me from exercising my rights under section 1201, as tethering technology does?
I swear, the more I read, the more infuriated I become. And congress is -reading- this slop.
As for making backup copies -- and circumventing copy protection to do so, which the DCMA prohibits -- the reporting group found that the ability to make or not make archival copies of software has little real impact on consumers as a whole. Thanks, guys - I'm not your average consumer.
They state that, for one, most copy prohibition is due to the software license itself not allowing you to make copies, so Section 117 never comes into play, as you're limited before you ever even think about the Copyright Act. Next, they say that if the software has no copy protection or licensing restriction, you can go ahead and make your one archive copy -- as per 117. Third, they state that most software comes on CDROMs, and that CDROMs *are their own archive copy*. Remember, ROM media is not vulnerable to destruction via mechanical or electronic forces. I suppose they've never seen a CD scratched beyond all recognition. *shakes his head*
The report is also loaded with obviousness.
"The recent phenomenon of the popularity of using Napster to obtain unauthorized copies of works strongly suggests that some members of the public will infringe copyright when the likelihood of detection and punishment is low."
Indeed. I wonder how much that little gem cost America's taxpayers to prepare.
All in all, I'm highly disappointed in the scope of this report, the effort expended by the people who wrote it, and the recommendations they make. I suppose I'll simply have to continue being an outlaw; these laws do not suit my idea of my rights after the first sale doctrine has been applied.
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Wingchild
This author is full of shit.
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 1
This is an article that is basically against the concepts put forth by internet libertarians (like myself). It attempts to refuse "three basic myths" about the freedom of information. The only problem I have with the article is that it's completely inaccurate.
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Prologue
The author goes on to talk about this wonderful app, BearShare, that created a whole content network. The problem is that he's wrong; the
network is Gnutella, and Bearshare is just one of it's clients. The author makes that same mistake many times over in his work. He also states that people can download free tracking tools, like Traceroute and Sniffer. Traceroute is part of the TCP/IP stack, everybody's got it damn near, comes with TCP/IP! There IS no app called `Sniffer` -- there are apps that *are* sniffers, they're a class of product.
I was pissed off to begin with that this dick decided to write about what was and was not possible on the net without having a firm understanding of the technology.. but his conclusions bothered me even more.
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Myth 1: The internet is too international to be controlled
His refutation states that small countries often don't have the data pipes necessary to handle the kinds of traffic that Napster was capable
of. This is a fine point but it mistakes reality. The internet isn't about having a central storing place for illegal media, it's about
decentralization and distribution. If one off-shore spot has something that you can lay your hands on, and then you give it to someone else,
who gives it to someone else, you've effectively perpetuated the free flow of that information or media. Theft, piracy, whatever - I'm not talking moral implications here, I'm strictly refuting this idiot's arguments.
There doesn't have to be a huge high-speed network where we can get things. There needs only be one spot to do it, someplace. And it can be slow. After that we'll pass media on disks and CDROMs if we have to, just like we did back in the BBS days. Offshore depots will provide the software and music; stateside servers, with hidden existances and secured access, will spread the content throughout the US. It'll work
just like the old speakeasys did, and if this man thinks such a system
impractical, it's only because he never BBS'd in his life. I haven't
paid for software since 1994 or so. The web wasn't living until Netscape
3 was released -- in 1996. So where'd I get my pirated software, with no
Internet to leverage?
The author then makes a second refutation where he states that there are
laws that will allow a country to prosecute a website for violating it's
internal laws if that site can be accessed by the country in question.
Thus, imagine a nation where kiddie porn's legal. If someone in the US
is capable of accessing their site, they can be sued under US law, and
potentially imprisoned.
That's cute and impractical to implement and will never work, because
what happens in China, where sites promoting democracy are blocked by
the government? All they need do is turn off their blocking, and they
can begin imprisoning US citizens who post pro-democracy websites and
don't secure them so that chinese viewers can't reach them.
This kind of treaty requires ratification and international agreements
to have any impact at all. Past that, it's a phantom, a smokescreen.
Since buy-in of that magnitude would create *hairy* international
incidents related to political websites, I don't think it will ever come
to pass. The author's grasping at straws. Sorry.
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Myth 2: The net is too interconnected to control
His refutation starts out by stating that Gnutella is no longer
decentralized and is reliant on big reflector clusters and backbone
systems. That's bullshit. Those are extensions to Gnutella. The system
itself will still operate so long as two machines out there can find one
another, through any means. The bells and whistles just make it a nicer
place to work, but they are by no means requisite for Gnutella's ongoing
operations.
Next, he skips into claiming that Gnutella can't handle it's traffic.
Look, I'm sorry if you're still stuck on a 56k modem. Too bad. Stop
trying to pirate 640M ISOs; maybe then you won't bitch about your
connection speeds. People who participate in Gnutella know there's a
bandwidth hit that goes with it -- it's the nature of the beast. Oh
well. This is not something that kills Gnutella's usefulness.
Next, he goes on to claim that digital file tagging will be the death of
these apps, which is also bullshit, because for every tag they create,
we find a way around it. Big deal. This bitch is acting as a mouthpiece
for all things DMCA.
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Myth 3: The net is too filled with hackers to control
I love how this prick leads off with an example - SDMI being snapped
into bits - and then tries to contradict himself. He goes on and on
about how hardware modifications will be the death of all forms of
piracy, specifically with regards to music.
I laugh at his ignorance.
First off, if people want to copy things, they simply won't buy hardware
that lacks that capability. I won't purchase a CDROM that obeys
Macrovision's laws. I bought a DVD player that I could turn off
Macrovision and Regional Encoding on. That's the funny thing about how
alternatives work in a capitalist society; if you have money,
alternatives will appear for you.
Let me give a perfect example of a case where hardware copy protection
was the de facto standard, and it failed. I'm referring to the Sony
Playstation. While the CDROMs used in a Playstation were nonstandard, it
was relatively trivial to burn an ISO image of the disc and thereby make
duplicate after duplicate with nary a concern. The real problem was that
a Playstation refused to play burned CDs.
Well, clever hardware hackers created a device known as the Mod Chip.
You spent $20 for one, cracked open your Playstation's case, and
followed the printed instructions to solder the chip onto the board. Ta
da! Now your Playstation can handle burned games.
Hardware modifications are no less likely to propogate than software
ones are. They're less likely to be undertaken by those not committed to
piracy, but if people want free music (and want to scream *FUCK THE
RIAA* in bold style), they will resort to more drastic measures than
bitching and/or whining a lot about the unfairness of it all.
This author mistakes the commitment of digital libertarians. We will keep the internet free by any means necessary.
There's a lot yet undecided. The absentee ballots aren't counted yet, the recount hasn't happened yet, and god only knows how long that will take. Two of the heavily contested counties are Broward and Dade - both have a long history of "voter irregularity", as the media so nicely euphamises. Voter fraud has been rampant there for years. Everyone living in Florida knows it.
So we'll send Attorney General, Janet Reno, down to supervise the vote.. flanked by Republican Governor Jeb Bush's staff, no doubt.. so that they can not reach an agreement and argue some more about whether Buchanan voters *meant* to vote for Gore or not..
I expect resolution sometime after the second civil war.;)
Running on the concept of the Romans using nicks; I'm most of the way through a book called _First Man in Rome_ that goes into the culture in pretty good detail.
Romans were assigned a long name at birth that was typically descriptive of their family's heritage, especially in the case of the patrician families. As a Roman did things later in life (and most notably in the case of senators and other governing officials), he was apt to acquire a cognomen - a nick - sometimes assigned and sometimes personally chosen, to reflect something about him or something he had done.
Nicks aren't fundamentally different. I was a long-time BBS'er too, and still have friends that think of me handle-first, name-second. It doesn't bother me; in fact, it's very comforting. My handle and I aren't separate; we're the same identity, and we're comfortable with that.:)
You can probably expect to see specialty-shops that will cater to a more "adult" level of gaming soon enough. With alcohol restricted to an age group, we have bars as the natural result - a place where persons in that group can congregate.
With pornography, we've got adult shops that sell the requisite materials to those of the proper group.
I can see a few now-existing businesses expanding to cater to a market that legislation like this will create. (read: Dave and Busters, in my area, which is a combination bar/arcade restaurant; can't get in unless you're 21, and if you're under 21, you can't get in with someone I guess it's time to get into the industry..:) It'd be extremely humorous to see arcades in the mall that have to have their windows darkened, lest some passing child see a hint of violence on the screen.
Slashdot Mirror
(And yes, I own the cartridges. heh.)
The original poster noted that the PS3 was being geared for online gaming along the lines of Everquest and Final Fantasy 11 .. but FFXI is most assuredly coming out on the Playstation 2. One would like to think that Sony has plans even more fascinating in mind for its next generation hardware.
:)
As for the backwards compatibility being bandied about in the thread - mm, kind of depends on what format the games come in, doesn't it? DVDs would make a good standard, but they've already *got* those, and may consider moving on as DVD writers become more prevalent in user's homes.
Ah, well. Rampant speculation is what it is. We've still got several years of the PS2 to enjoy at the very least.
I personally stayed away from Everquest due to its addictive nature; I've played MUDs before (though non-graphical)and know that they have a tendency to consume my free time. I really don't mind re-clearing areas over and over again while chatting with friends; I find it very catharthic after a long day at work.
Final Fantasy 11 is going to finish me.
I say this because I am, unashamedly, Squaresoft's Bitch. Anything they sell, I purchase. Chocobo Dungeon? Got that. Vagrant Story? Yup. 3D World Runner? Sure, child's play.
I can't pass up a Final Fantasy title, not after the first ten have given me such endless hours of fun and happiness. Turning it into an MMORPG just adds an addictive edge that may well be the end of me.
Then you get lame kiddies saying stuff like "I don't want an Xbox. I'm getting a PS3, it will wipe the floor with the Xshite" ... yeah, in about 2 years! What are you going to do until then, keep playing your N64?
This is much like an old urban legend, made popular through Scott Adams' Dilbert books. Once upon the time there was a company trying to sell some hideously expensive piece of hardware. Prospective clients were wary, so the salesteam tells them "Hey, Every single concern you have will be fixed by Version 2 of this hardware!" The clients then do not buy version 1, and bide their time.
Just about the time Version 2 comes out, the clients come back, and the salesteam says "Here's Version 2! ..but man, Version 3 is *really* gonna rock!" Clients then hold off to wait till Version 3 is ready because of the raw cost of the hardware and the legacy nature of the product.
Meanwhile, the company goes bankrupt because everybody's locked in a holding pattern.
This tired old legend doesn't really fit in right with the console market, as these toys are tools for entertainment -- not legacy hardware that you're expected to keep and maintain for five or ten years, such as cars and houses. Sure, some of us gamers do, but it's not the expectation.
I agree, MS could cut prices to such a level that they could flood the market with cheap units. However, unlike the old Vetrex system which had an asteroids-like game burned into the console ROM itself, the X-Box requires software - and there lies the deficiency.
Microsoft made all the same mistakes that Neo Geo did in releasing a console - all the same mistakes that 3DO did. (Please tell me I'm not the only gamer old enough to remember.) Impressive hardware, nice design specs, even a cool niche idea - but not enough support. The Neo Geo was only for NG games and didn't have third party support that I'm aware of. The 3DO had so few games that I hesitate to think of more than one offhand.
The X-Box has fallen into the same perilous pitfall. MS built a system that's a bear to develop for and they didn't secure enough games on release day. Hell - in their release year.
The Gamecube sells because Nintendo has the almighty power of branding in the console market, and because they've got games by legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto; that makes a lot of difference. Nintendo isn't about games, it's practically about franchises, esp when Miyamoto gets involved.
The Playstation 2 sells because, even though it's beastly hard to develop for, it was backward compatible with the libraries of PS1 games already out there. ("Look, Mom! You don't *need* to buy me all new games!") On top of that, they've got heavy duty third-party support: Konami's Metal Gear Solid series, and Squaresoft's Final Fantasy, to name two offhand.
MS didn't pay attention and has wound up in a bad way. On top of not paying attention to the console market, which they really didn't know, MS didn't even pay attention to the *PC* market, which is their bread and butter. They should know how tight the hardware markets are and how difficult it is to sell a third-party system; they've spent years ensuring this is how it would be. Yet, even so, they distribute the X-Box -- a scaled down PC, with the ability to port your PC games to it -- which places it directly in contention for a part of the PC Gamer market.
Alas, PC gamers have already bought their hardware and aren't bloody well likely to jump ship for Halo's sake.
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I just don't know. MS has made every mistake they possibly can make with the X-Box. I don't see that unit climbing out of obscurity. They should lick their wounds and prepare for round two, because this one is lost; maybe they should go read about Sega's console history, and see how Sega made the leap from the Master System to the Genesis. (and then *not* follow them down the same paths as the Saturn or the Dreamcast..)
The study from the University of Buffalo is nice, but neither fair play nor the promotion of new music is the goal of the RIAA. Like any sufficiently entrenched business, their goal is the acquisition of profit - in this case, by creating a saleable commodity out of what was once-upon-a-time free intellectual property.
The short form of this entire story is "same shit, different day". The RIAA whines about downloads; Studies show this doesn't harm musicians; People go right on downloading. In other news, the earth is round.
Go the route that we anime enthusiasts have been using for ages, and get involved in fansub distribution. Stick it to the MPAA, distribute content not-yet-licensed stateside to give even more newbies anime experience, and *gasp* spend a little time away from your console. woot.
In other news, there's a KILLER VIRUS being sent 'round the net via email. If you receive an email with the subject "JOIN THE CREW", delete it!!!!
:P
Some people believe anything they read.
It also doesn't mention Duct Tape, the universal constant, so I question the veracity of the report.
Water cooling requires that the water, passing nearby a heat source, absorbs the heat and carries in on to a place where it can be safely transferred into the surrounding environment. The old Second Law, Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, etc etc.
So why would we opt for water, which would be a less than optimal coolant? Because hot water makes *coffee*. Imagine! You could have a water-cooled server *and a coffee machine* all in the same rackmount!
The possibilities are endless.
And thus Sony gaines the experience of running an MMORPG from the Playstation2, that they might pass it on to SquareSoft for Final Fantasy XI .. and the Lord looked upon it, and saw that it was good. ;)
The best thing about this argument is how you followed it up; by showing us that the hurdle has already been met and overcome. Not just by Blizzard, but also by Sony (Everquest) and countless other MMORPGs.
Square's stepping up to the plate to join the field of online rpgs -- not to pioneer it. They've seen the mistakes that Sega made, the mistakes that Blizzard made, and have learned from them. Best of all they've got *Sony* to work with on this (as FFXI is for the PS2 platform)..
And for Sony, this kind of endeavour should be old hat. :) I'm hopeful.
Back in the 50's, people dreamed feverishly of flying cars and robot maids, of amazing advances in science over the next decade. But what we're moving towards, ever so slowly, is more along the lines of "the kitchen that cooks meals by itself" - an integrated system where computers are so tightly woven into the construction of appliances that the appliances themselves become intelligent and teachable. (Programmable, teachable, use your own word or metaphor here.)
The human element can't be ignored in favor of fully robotic solutions. People enjoy feeling involved in what it is they're doing. Personally I'm all for having an entire race of robot slaves that do all the work for everyone, leaving people free to create Art, Science, and Music (and giving *me* time to finish Final Fantasy 10).. but I don't see it happening any time soon.
Flying cars would rock. Talking cars that remember your favorite radio stations, seat settings, A/C settings, and possibly directions to drive to your parent's house are far more likely.
I got started by being dropped into the middle of the mix, myself. I was doing web coding for the University of Florida's Office of the University Registrar, when, in short order, two previous admins bailed out (after being passed up for promotions and raises - ah, politics). As the only guy left who knew the systems, I had to take up the banner and carry us forth as best I could.
:)
I just really took to systems administration. Few things please me more than to see my machines running quietly, humming along and making other people productive. I approach it like an art, treat it like an art, a chance for me to develop skills and express them while doing some good for the community I'm serving at any given time.
I guess it's really a matter of one's perception. At least my job satisfaction is usually pretty high.
Books like this need to be written, disseminated, and then force-fed to anyone who wants to touch Systems Administration for a profession - or even work with sysadmins tangentally. I've spent too much time justifying my practices and beliefs about administration to people who had precisely zero working knowledge of the art; would that we lived in a world where this was no longer necessary!
:)
*sighs*. I can keep dreaming.
Wow. They mapped the DMZ! Should I be afraid now? It must take balls of solid steel to post the IP address of the publicly accessible web servers..
And *gasp*, phone numbers? Email addresses? Dare I say it - contact information for real live CIA employees?!
OOH! Servers not accessible to the public!!
And I really liked the random link at the far upper left, pointing to the unidentified private IP range used by CIA boxes. How nice of them to add it in, given that they have zero information about it; they've got IPs of the NAT machine on the outside. wow. shocker.
Sorry for being so cynical, but this kind of tripe cracks me up. I work in the belly of the Pentagon, doing systems work now, and if the CIA's unclassified network is anything like ours, I doubt they have to worry.
But there are other concerns that are better, more poignant, as they impacts the emulation community. One court has held that Section 117 does not excuse the making of purported backup copies of a video game embodied in ROM, because that particular storage medium is not vulnerable to "damage by mechanical or electrical failure".
Excuse me?? I've seen ROM chips blasted right off circuit boards due to voltage spikes. I know that the CDROM in my Playstation could easily get off-kilter and trash a CD beyond repair before I could stop it. But alas, this is the language of the law - dumping ROMs of any form is illegal because ROMs aren't killable, so thinks the court system.
The report reads in a contradictory fashion. They solicit views from the public against the sections of the DCMA, then get opinions from copyright holders backing the DCMA. Even their own recommendations are contradictory! Example:
1) The people writing the report feel that arguments against Section 1201 generally aren't valid (detailing the `first sale` doctrine - once a work is sold, you can do whatever you want to it [`disposition of the work`]). This section limits the rights of the copyright authors after a sale is made.
The specific grievance they haul out is CSS/De-CSS. They feel that altering first sale priviledges to require that all devices be capable of playing DVDs would be like demanding that PCs could play VHS tapes -- when, clearly, this isn't the issue at hand. They reporting group intentionally misconstrues this in their report. Then they go on to say that while CSS and region encoding may well destroy a market for reselling the used DVDs due to limited playability, that this action is not covered as a right by the first sale doctrine, so nobody's really losing anything in the scope of this law.
2) Not a half page later, the reporting group proceeds to state, -in writing-, that using encryption technology to tether a program or medium to a particular system a la WMV encryption. They state that copying a tethered copy onto a zip disk or CDRW is a useless exercise, since taking it to another system wouldn't work, regardless of whether or not you own the copyright to the media in question. This limits the ability to exercise control over the disposition of the work.
The paper notes that this limitation halfway violates the first sale doctrine, because circumventing the tethering protection in order to exercise your rights under the first sale doctrine would entail violating section 1201 as amended by the DCMA.
Does not CSS encoding and regional encoding tether your DVD to a particular player-type? If I carry my region-1 DVD to Asia, is it not preventing me from watching my licensed and owned DVD? Furthermore, if I seek to alter the disposition of the work - say, rip the DVD to MPG form so I can watch it on my computer - does not CSS encryption prevent me from exercising my rights under section 1201, as tethering technology does?
I swear, the more I read, the more infuriated I become. And congress is -reading- this slop.
As for making backup copies -- and circumventing copy protection to do so, which the DCMA prohibits -- the reporting group found that the ability to make or not make archival copies of software has little real impact on consumers as a whole. Thanks, guys - I'm not your average consumer.
They state that, for one, most copy prohibition is due to the software license itself not allowing you to make copies, so Section 117 never comes into play, as you're limited before you ever even think about the Copyright Act. Next, they say that if the software has no copy protection or licensing restriction, you can go ahead and make your one archive copy -- as per 117. Third, they state that most software comes on CDROMs, and that CDROMs *are their own archive copy*. Remember, ROM media is not vulnerable to destruction via mechanical or electronic forces. I suppose they've never seen a CD scratched beyond all recognition. *shakes his head*
The report is also loaded with obviousness.
"The recent phenomenon of the popularity of using Napster to obtain unauthorized copies of works strongly suggests that some members of the public will infringe copyright when the likelihood of detection and punishment is low."
Indeed. I wonder how much that little gem cost America's taxpayers to prepare.
All in all, I'm highly disappointed in the scope of this report, the effort expended by the people who wrote it, and the recommendations they make. I suppose I'll simply have to continue being an outlaw; these laws do not suit my idea of my rights after the first sale doctrine has been applied.
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Wingchild
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Prologue
The author goes on to talk about this wonderful app, BearShare, that created a whole content network. The problem is that he's wrong; the network is Gnutella, and Bearshare is just one of it's clients. The author makes that same mistake many times over in his work. He also states that people can download free tracking tools, like Traceroute and Sniffer. Traceroute is part of the TCP/IP stack, everybody's got it damn near, comes with TCP/IP! There IS no app called `Sniffer` -- there are apps that *are* sniffers, they're a class of product.
I was pissed off to begin with that this dick decided to write about what was and was not possible on the net without having a firm understanding of the technology.. but his conclusions bothered me even more.
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Myth 1: The internet is too international to be controlled
His refutation states that small countries often don't have the data pipes necessary to handle the kinds of traffic that Napster was capable of. This is a fine point but it mistakes reality. The internet isn't about having a central storing place for illegal media, it's about decentralization and distribution. If one off-shore spot has something that you can lay your hands on, and then you give it to someone else, who gives it to someone else, you've effectively perpetuated the free flow of that information or media. Theft, piracy, whatever - I'm not talking moral implications here, I'm strictly refuting this idiot's arguments.
There doesn't have to be a huge high-speed network where we can get things. There needs only be one spot to do it, someplace. And it can be slow. After that we'll pass media on disks and CDROMs if we have to, just like we did back in the BBS days. Offshore depots will provide the software and music; stateside servers, with hidden existances and secured access, will spread the content throughout the US. It'll work just like the old speakeasys did, and if this man thinks such a system impractical, it's only because he never BBS'd in his life. I haven't paid for software since 1994 or so. The web wasn't living until Netscape 3 was released -- in 1996. So where'd I get my pirated software, with no Internet to leverage?
The author then makes a second refutation where he states that there are laws that will allow a country to prosecute a website for violating it's internal laws if that site can be accessed by the country in question. Thus, imagine a nation where kiddie porn's legal. If someone in the US is capable of accessing their site, they can be sued under US law, and potentially imprisoned.
That's cute and impractical to implement and will never work, because what happens in China, where sites promoting democracy are blocked by the government? All they need do is turn off their blocking, and they can begin imprisoning US citizens who post pro-democracy websites and don't secure them so that chinese viewers can't reach them.
This kind of treaty requires ratification and international agreements to have any impact at all. Past that, it's a phantom, a smokescreen. Since buy-in of that magnitude would create *hairy* international incidents related to political websites, I don't think it will ever come to pass. The author's grasping at straws. Sorry.
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Myth 2: The net is too interconnected to control
His refutation starts out by stating that Gnutella is no longer decentralized and is reliant on big reflector clusters and backbone systems. That's bullshit. Those are extensions to Gnutella. The system itself will still operate so long as two machines out there can find one another, through any means. The bells and whistles just make it a nicer place to work, but they are by no means requisite for Gnutella's ongoing operations.
Next, he skips into claiming that Gnutella can't handle it's traffic. Look, I'm sorry if you're still stuck on a 56k modem. Too bad. Stop trying to pirate 640M ISOs; maybe then you won't bitch about your connection speeds. People who participate in Gnutella know there's a bandwidth hit that goes with it -- it's the nature of the beast. Oh well. This is not something that kills Gnutella's usefulness.
Next, he goes on to claim that digital file tagging will be the death of these apps, which is also bullshit, because for every tag they create, we find a way around it. Big deal. This bitch is acting as a mouthpiece for all things DMCA.
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Myth 3: The net is too filled with hackers to control
I love how this prick leads off with an example - SDMI being snapped into bits - and then tries to contradict himself. He goes on and on about how hardware modifications will be the death of all forms of piracy, specifically with regards to music.
I laugh at his ignorance.
First off, if people want to copy things, they simply won't buy hardware that lacks that capability. I won't purchase a CDROM that obeys Macrovision's laws. I bought a DVD player that I could turn off Macrovision and Regional Encoding on. That's the funny thing about how alternatives work in a capitalist society; if you have money, alternatives will appear for you.
Let me give a perfect example of a case where hardware copy protection was the de facto standard, and it failed. I'm referring to the Sony Playstation. While the CDROMs used in a Playstation were nonstandard, it was relatively trivial to burn an ISO image of the disc and thereby make duplicate after duplicate with nary a concern. The real problem was that a Playstation refused to play burned CDs.
Well, clever hardware hackers created a device known as the Mod Chip. You spent $20 for one, cracked open your Playstation's case, and followed the printed instructions to solder the chip onto the board. Ta da! Now your Playstation can handle burned games.
Hardware modifications are no less likely to propogate than software ones are. They're less likely to be undertaken by those not committed to piracy, but if people want free music (and want to scream *FUCK THE RIAA* in bold style), they will resort to more drastic measures than bitching and/or whining a lot about the unfairness of it all.
This author mistakes the commitment of digital libertarians. We will keep the internet free by any means necessary.
There's a lot yet undecided. The absentee ballots aren't counted yet, the recount hasn't happened yet, and god only knows how long that will take. Two of the heavily contested counties are Broward and Dade - both have a long history of "voter irregularity", as the media so nicely euphamises. Voter fraud has been rampant there for years. Everyone living in Florida knows it. So we'll send Attorney General, Janet Reno, down to supervise the vote.. flanked by Republican Governor Jeb Bush's staff, no doubt .. so that they can not reach an agreement and argue some more about whether Buchanan voters *meant* to vote for Gore or not..
I expect resolution sometime after the second civil war. ;)
Romans were assigned a long name at birth that was typically descriptive of their family's heritage, especially in the case of the patrician families. As a Roman did things later in life (and most notably in the case of senators and other governing officials), he was apt to acquire a cognomen - a nick - sometimes assigned and sometimes personally chosen, to reflect something about him or something he had done.
Nicks aren't fundamentally different. I was a long-time BBS'er too, and still have friends that think of me handle-first, name-second. It doesn't bother me; in fact, it's very comforting. My handle and I aren't separate; we're the same identity, and we're comfortable with that. :)
With pornography, we've got adult shops that sell the requisite materials to those of the proper group.
I can see a few now-existing businesses expanding to cater to a market that legislation like this will create. (read: Dave and Busters, in my area, which is a combination bar/arcade restaurant; can't get in unless you're 21, and if you're under 21, you can't get in with someone I guess it's time to get into the industry.. :) It'd be extremely humorous to see arcades in the mall that have to have their windows darkened, lest some passing child see a hint of violence on the screen.
Wingchild