Eugene, if you read this - I've lost your email address over the years and several moves, and if you are interested in getting in touch, I would love it if you dropped me a line at dudeATcircularreasoningDOTcom
It is so cool to finally see a Jarvis story on Slashdot. Eugene Jarvis is arguably the greatest video game designer of all time, and he's also a really cool guy. I've met him on a couple of occasions - it all started when I was doing my CS undergrad degree. We had to do a cheezy html assignment on a "great figure in computer science" - they were looking for a Turing or a Von Neumann. Some folks did it on Gates. I did mine on Jarvis, because he was the reason I got into computer science. I wanted to make games... In any event, this was back in the day when you could actually email people you didn't know and get a response. I found Jarvis' email on the net, told him about the page I was making and asked him if he had any stuff I could put on it. He sent me a big envelope full of magazine articles, screenshots and floppy disks. Way cool, and it led to a 19/20 on the assignment.
I decided to leave the page up on the web, with a guestbook where people could talk about Jarvis games, and it achieved a very modest noteriety among geeks. A few years passed and it became hard to get people's email addresses. The producers of the TV show NewsRadio decided they wanted to feature Stargate in one of their episodes and wanted to have Eugene play a cameo. They couldn't figure out how to get a hold of him and asked me. I passed them on to him, and he was on the show. (He was one of the moving guys taking the Stargate machine out of the office, hiding his face the whole time).:-)
So, knowing that I wanted to get into the business, and I was a starving student, and I guess feeling a little grateful -- he flew me to a big video game show in Vegas. I got to walk around with a badge that said I was from Midway Games, which started to make me believe that I actually could do it. As an aside, I got severe food poisoning and spent 8 hours in a Vegas hospital - I'm sure glad he paid for my travel health insurance too! (Don't eat at the buffets in Las Vegas...).
A few years later I was driving through Chicago at the end of a big road trip and called him up and he invited us over to his place. His basement is one of the best arcades I've been in. Later we went out for dinner to a Thai place, and Larry DeMar just happen'd to be there (the other half of Vid Kidz) so I got to meet him too. I made a big show of paying for dinner (in thanks for the Vegas trip), whipped out my Mastercard and bzzt - Declined! Tough to describe how that felt... I had a friend of mine pay for dinner and then paid him back, so technically, I bought Eugene Jarvis dinner once.:-)
Anyway, a couple of years later I have my Master's degree in CS and I actually make games for a living! I'm a graphics programmer with BioWare - and I really have Eugene to thank for it. I never really believed it was possible until he let me peek into his world.
What you want to do is traditionally known as "fair use". There is a strong common law tradition in most countries, including the United States, establishing a person's right to make fair use of a copyrighted work. Specifically, with respect to audio recordings, this tradition has been codified into law under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.
However, in this case, no one is legally preventing you from making fair use of a work. No laws have been passed forbidding you to do it. You are well within your rights to circumvent that copy protection for fair use purposes. But, under the DMCA, you are forbidden from helping anyone else break that protection. That is, you are forbidden from publishing information or providing devices that aid in the defeat of encryption on a copyrighted work. Which is to say, under the DMCA, unless you have a hell of a lot of technical knowledge about breaking encryption, you can't make a backup of your CD (practically, but you are legally free to do so).
Does the DMCA violate your traditional right to fair use? Of course it does. Get pissed off! Write your representative...
Let the RIAA make it as hard as they like for people to share music from their artists. Give them enough rope to hang themselves. If the only tunes on Napster are free tunes, then free tunes will get traded and free tunes will get heard.
The more draconian the RIAA gets, the more people will want and seek out alternatives. This could be the start of something wonderful.
Hmmm. Wasn't that exactly the point of MP3.com? Didn't seem to matter that it only involved the fair use of music already owned by the subscribers - big money wins big lawsuits.
Note that almost none of this is due to governmental assistance.
How much of it was due to parental assistance? Be honest - how much of you and your sister's education was paid for by your family? What's the effect of growing up in a middle class neighbourhood with good schools and no gun fights? That's luck.
My point: There is no such thing as making 'too much'
I realize that you weren't replying directly to me, but I never advocated an maximum wage. I don't really understand how that could work. I haven't really thought about it much, but it seems to me that capitalism, the game, is the problem, not winning at it.
In the end, I hope that I can provide for my kid(s) in such a way that they do better than I. Please don't chastise or look down
upon me if I end up being pretty successful at it...
I just hope your kids realize that YOU provided for your kids in such a way that they do better than you. All three of us kids will do better than my mother did (financially, that is), and that is in very large part due to what she did for us. We are lucky to have a mother like that. Hell, I'm on scholarship right now and I make more money than she does. I don't for a minute believe I got where I am because I'm smarter or work harder than people who didn't get here. I'm just lucky.
If your Mother's job is so miserable, why does she stay?
She's over 60 years old, and there are no jobs in our city. She has a mortgage to pay, and she's putting my two brothers through university. What choice does she have?
I spend an equal amount of time in front of a computer screen at
work. So what?
I really doubt you spend as much time at work as my mother does. But assuming you do, you aren't looking through 60 year old eyes that give her migraines trying to read what's on the screen.
It doesn't have anything to do with luck.
It has everything to do with luck. Assuming you are a geek, you were lucky enough to be born to parents and an environment that allowed you to be aware of technology and pursue it. Everyone doesn't get dealt the same hand of cards. Perhaps your parents even paid for your school.
I'm not saying I'm not self absorbed. I don't find it to be my most appealing attribute. However, I don't see what it has to do
with my income.
One of the main contributing factors to people making big salaries, is that big salaries are important to them. This is invariably because they are self-absorbed - they want to buy toys for themselves, or they want status, or whatever. If my mom were more self-absorbed she might have put herself through university, or left me and my brothers with my father.
Who forced your mother into taking that job? Unless she made a mistake (in which case she has only herself to blame), she
probably took that particular job because of some kind of appeal to her — cheaper or easier to gain the qualifications
for it, better hours, not having to take her work home with her, friendlier work environment, not having to be creative or
make decisions on her own, employee benefits, etc.
This is going to get more personal than I'd intended, but what the hell. My mom took that job because she had to. My father was becoming increasingly abusive to my brothers and her so she left him taking me and my brothers with her. She had to provide for us ***immediately***. She only had some sort of business certificate - she's a bookkeeper - and had been out of the workforce for over 15 years. She didn't get to go to university because she worked to put my father through university (on the condition that the favour would be returned when he finished). Additionally, we live in one of the most economically depressed areas in Canada.
So, she certainly made mistakes - marrying my father was a huge one, and I'm not denying that. I am disputing the claim that salaries are reflective of how hard a person works, which is what the previous poster claimed. In fact, in my experience, it's almost inversely proportional. I should point out that none of what you said is true - she works horrible hours, takes her work home with her all the time, a terrible work environment, - she's not allowed to be creative or make decisions on her own - (I'm not sure how you could consider creativity and autonomy bad things), and zero employee benefits. She stays in the job because she isn't qualified for much else, is over 60 and has bills to pay.
For the most part, people make >$100K because there is a greater
demand for them, because fewer people have the ability to do it, whether it's because of longer hours, higher costs to gain
the qualification, more stress, cutthroat environment, decision-making ability,
Hmmm. Duh. I'm aware of how capitalism works. In this case, the most important thing is "higher costs to gain the qualification" - she didn't have rich parents to put her through school while she was raising 3 kids on her own. She worked her ass off, and has nothing to show for it. And it's not because she didn't work as hard as anyone making a six figure salary.
Why was my original post moderated down as flamebait? Because you didn't agree with me?
Hmmm, let me see, I'm Jon Katz, and I've been taking quite a beating on Slashdot. What do those bastard geeks like anyway? I've got it! Technology. So, they'll hate anyone who's anti-technology. Now, what don't I like: politicians, anti-hacker hysteria, moralizing right wing christians, censors,... they're all Luddites! They're going to love me this time...
Most of the ppl Katz mentions aren't Luddite at all. Fundies against sex and violence at the movies aren't against movie technology - they'd be against sex and violence in puppet shows. (I could go for some sex and violence in puppet shows). Calling the MPAA a bunch of Luddites is rediculous. They LOVE technology. Technology lets them extend their control to grotesque places and wring every last dollar out of the punters.
There's a lot to be said for neo-Luddism. People have a right to be concerned that they have to spend 8-10 hours each day behind a CRT to make a living. They should worry about how the lack of face-to-face interactions is changing society. They may be entirely justified in becoming angry that increased computerization has eliminated a lot of jobs that traditionally go to lower income people, while at the same time creating an obscenely wealthy industry populated almost entirely by already well off, highly educated, white males.
People who think that these issues and others indicate a bad deal for the average person and society as a whole are Luddites. This blatant attempt to trivialize the issue by lumping Luddites in with Jack Valenti and Tipper Gore is pretty repugnant. And the fact that the motivation is simply to pander to a hostile (to Jon Katz) technophile audience is reprehensible. It sure as hell ain't responsible journalism.
"political vulnerability" of us net people? Why, because our legal system is evolving a bit to put an end to this widespread theft?
How, exactly is this theft? If I buy a CD, I own it. What I do with it after that is none of Lars' business. By making a copy of a song, I haven't deprived anyone of anything, so it can't be "theft". I can't believe how many people fall for this "intellectual property" argument.
I've heard a lot of people whine about CD prices and how the record industry "rips" off artists. Well cousin, nobody forces bands to sign these contracts. And the way our free capitalist market works, if there was a cheaper way to produce, distribute and sell music, someone would start doing it and sell you cheaper cd's. Last time I checked, there are quite a few companies doing the same thing. Competition.
Collusion. The only way to get your money^h^h^h^h^h music onthe radio is to sign with one of the big 4. Period. So, there is DEFINITELY coercion involved, to say otherwise is to be insanely naive. On the subject of insanely naive, you have a pretty rosy view of capitalism. Monopoly is the logical conclusion of a "free" market economy. Period. The reason there aren't cheaper alternatives to the big 4 is that no one has the cash to compete. Same reason there aren't 30 office suites to choose from in Winblows.
Just because stealing music is convenient and easy, that doesn't mean the concept of intellectual property is bogus. It is, as the name implies, property...and that's the law of the land.
The concept of intellectual property is bogus, and flies in the face of conventional american views about property. The idea that I can sell you something and then tell you what to do with it is pretty unamerican. The idea that I can whistle a tune in your ear, but prevent you from whistling it in someone else's ear is some repugnant shit and tantamount to mind control.
Intellectual property is neither. Whether or not it is the "law of the land" is irrelevant, what we are talking about is SHOULD it be the law of the land? Laws change, to reflect the changing ethics of society (when they aren't simply purchased by the rich). If the majority of citizens have so little respect for a law that they continually break it, should it be the law?
Slashdot Mirror
I think you get those on the 11th day of Christmas.
That statement puts me in a glass case of emotion!
5,930 billion? What, are you including Mars in that number?
Eugene, if you read this - I've lost your email address over the years and several moves, and if you are interested in getting in touch, I would love it if you dropped me a line at dudeATcircularreasoningDOTcom
:-)
:-)
It is so cool to finally see a Jarvis story on Slashdot. Eugene Jarvis is arguably the greatest video game designer of all time, and he's also a really cool guy. I've met him on a couple of occasions - it all started when I was doing my CS undergrad degree. We had to do a cheezy html assignment on a "great figure in computer science" - they were looking for a Turing or a Von Neumann. Some folks did it on Gates. I did mine on Jarvis, because he was the reason I got into computer science. I wanted to make games... In any event, this was back in the day when you could actually email people you didn't know and get a response. I found Jarvis' email on the net, told him about the page I was making and asked him if he had any stuff I could put on it. He sent me a big envelope full of magazine articles, screenshots and floppy disks. Way cool, and it led to a 19/20 on the assignment.
I decided to leave the page up on the web, with a guestbook where people could talk about Jarvis games, and it achieved a very modest noteriety among geeks. A few years passed and it became hard to get people's email addresses. The producers of the TV show NewsRadio decided they wanted to feature Stargate in one of their episodes and wanted to have Eugene play a cameo. They couldn't figure out how to get a hold of him and asked me. I passed them on to him, and he was on the show. (He was one of the moving guys taking the Stargate machine out of the office, hiding his face the whole time).
So, knowing that I wanted to get into the business, and I was a starving student, and I guess feeling a little grateful -- he flew me to a big video game show in Vegas. I got to walk around with a badge that said I was from Midway Games, which started to make me believe that I actually could do it. As an aside, I got severe food poisoning and spent 8 hours in a Vegas hospital - I'm sure glad he paid for my travel health insurance too! (Don't eat at the buffets in Las Vegas...).
A few years later I was driving through Chicago at the end of a big road trip and called him up and he invited us over to his place. His basement is one of the best arcades I've been in. Later we went out for dinner to a Thai place, and Larry DeMar just happen'd to be there (the other half of Vid Kidz) so I got to meet him too. I made a big show of paying for dinner (in thanks for the Vegas trip), whipped out my Mastercard and bzzt - Declined! Tough to describe how that felt... I had a friend of mine pay for dinner and then paid him back, so technically, I bought Eugene Jarvis dinner once.
Anyway, a couple of years later I have my Master's degree in CS and I actually make games for a living! I'm a graphics programmer with BioWare - and I really have Eugene to thank for it. I never really believed it was possible until he let me peek into his world.
Thanks Eugene, I'm living the dream...
They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know
I hope they wrote some of it down...
Arbiters of cool:
More fibre.
- The aforementioned brother
What you want to do is traditionally known as "fair use". There is a strong common law tradition in most countries, including the United States, establishing a person's right to make fair use of a copyrighted work. Specifically, with respect to audio recordings, this tradition has been codified into law under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.
However, in this case, no one is legally preventing you from making fair use of a work. No laws have been passed forbidding you to do it. You are well within your rights to circumvent that copy protection for fair use purposes. But, under the DMCA, you are forbidden from helping anyone else break that protection. That is, you are forbidden from publishing information or providing devices that aid in the defeat of encryption on a copyrighted work. Which is to say, under the DMCA, unless you have a hell of a lot of technical knowledge about breaking encryption, you can't make a backup of your CD (practically, but you are legally free to do so).
Does the DMCA violate your traditional right to fair use? Of course it does. Get pissed off! Write your representative...
Let the RIAA make it as hard as they like for people to share music from their artists. Give them enough rope to hang themselves. If the only tunes on Napster are free tunes, then free tunes will get traded and free tunes will get heard.
The more draconian the RIAA gets, the more people will want and seek out alternatives. This could be the start of something wonderful.
Hmmm. Wasn't that exactly the point of MP3.com? Didn't seem to matter that it only involved the fair use of music already owned by the subscribers - big money wins big lawsuits.
I've lived in this "hellhole" you call Canada all my life.
Love it here.
Seems like in the movie, greed is evil (capitalism), and giving everything away for free is good (communism).
Ummmm, greed is evil and giving everything away for free is good, at least in my experience.
God, I hope that was irony.
If "open computing" is the most important issue for you in this election, please don't vote.
Note that almost none of this is due to governmental assistance.
How much of it was due to parental assistance? Be honest - how much of you and your sister's education was paid for by your family? What's the effect of growing up in a middle class neighbourhood with good schools and no gun fights? That's luck.
My point: There is no such thing as making 'too much'
I realize that you weren't replying directly to me, but I never advocated an maximum wage. I don't really understand how that could work. I haven't really thought about it much, but it seems to me that capitalism, the game, is the problem, not winning at it.
In the end, I hope that I can provide for my kid(s) in such a way that they do better than I. Please don't chastise or look down upon me if I end up being pretty successful at it...
I just hope your kids realize that YOU provided for your kids in such a way that they do better than you. All three of us kids will do better than my mother did (financially, that is), and that is in very large part due to what she did for us. We are lucky to have a mother like that. Hell, I'm on scholarship right now and I make more money than she does. I don't for a minute believe I got where I am because I'm smarter or work harder than people who didn't get here. I'm just lucky.
If your Mother's job is so miserable, why does she stay?
She's over 60 years old, and there are no jobs in our city. She has a mortgage to pay, and she's putting my two brothers through university. What choice does she have?
I spend an equal amount of time in front of a computer screen at work. So what?
I really doubt you spend as much time at work as my mother does. But assuming you do, you aren't looking through 60 year old eyes that give her migraines trying to read what's on the screen.
It doesn't have anything to do with luck.
It has everything to do with luck. Assuming you are a geek, you were lucky enough to be born to parents and an environment that allowed you to be aware of technology and pursue it. Everyone doesn't get dealt the same hand of cards. Perhaps your parents even paid for your school.
I'm not saying I'm not self absorbed. I don't find it to be my most appealing attribute. However, I don't see what it has to do with my income.
One of the main contributing factors to people making big salaries, is that big salaries are important to them. This is invariably because they are self-absorbed - they want to buy toys for themselves, or they want status, or whatever. If my mom were more self-absorbed she might have put herself through university, or left me and my brothers with my father.
Who forced your mother into taking that job? Unless she made a mistake (in which case she has only herself to blame), she probably took that particular job because of some kind of appeal to her — cheaper or easier to gain the qualifications for it, better hours, not having to take her work home with her, friendlier work environment, not having to be creative or make decisions on her own, employee benefits, etc.
This is going to get more personal than I'd intended, but what the hell. My mom took that job because she had to. My father was becoming increasingly abusive to my brothers and her so she left him taking me and my brothers with her. She had to provide for us ***immediately***. She only had some sort of business certificate - she's a bookkeeper - and had been out of the workforce for over 15 years. She didn't get to go to university because she worked to put my father through university (on the condition that the favour would be returned when he finished). Additionally, we live in one of the most economically depressed areas in Canada.
So, she certainly made mistakes - marrying my father was a huge one, and I'm not denying that. I am disputing the claim that salaries are reflective of how hard a person works, which is what the previous poster claimed. In fact, in my experience, it's almost inversely proportional. I should point out that none of what you said is true - she works horrible hours, takes her work home with her all the time, a terrible work environment, - she's not allowed to be creative or make decisions on her own - (I'm not sure how you could consider creativity and autonomy bad things), and zero employee benefits. She stays in the job because she isn't qualified for much else, is over 60 and has bills to pay.
For the most part, people make >$100K because there is a greater demand for them, because fewer people have the ability to do it, whether it's because of longer hours, higher costs to gain the qualification, more stress, cutthroat environment, decision-making ability,
Hmmm. Duh. I'm aware of how capitalism works. In this case, the most important thing is "higher costs to gain the qualification" - she didn't have rich parents to put her through school while she was raising 3 kids on her own. She worked her ass off, and has nothing to show for it. And it's not because she didn't work as hard as anyone making a six figure salary.
Why was my original post moderated down as flamebait? Because you didn't agree with me?
Are there folks using 'guns' for bad? -yes. Are there folks using computers for bad? -yes.
Are there folks using 'guns' for good?
Hmmm, let me see, I'm Jon Katz, and I've been taking quite a beating on Slashdot. What do those bastard geeks like anyway? I've got it! Technology. So, they'll hate anyone who's anti-technology. Now, what don't I like: politicians, anti-hacker hysteria, moralizing right wing christians, censors, ... they're all Luddites! They're going to love me this time...
Most of the ppl Katz mentions aren't Luddite at all. Fundies against sex and violence at the movies aren't against movie technology - they'd be against sex and violence in puppet shows. (I could go for some sex and violence in puppet shows). Calling the MPAA a bunch of Luddites is rediculous. They LOVE technology. Technology lets them extend their control to grotesque places and wring every last dollar out of the punters.
There's a lot to be said for neo-Luddism. People have a right to be concerned that they have to spend 8-10 hours each day behind a CRT to make a living. They should worry about how the lack of face-to-face interactions is changing society. They may be entirely justified in becoming angry that increased computerization has eliminated a lot of jobs that traditionally go to lower income people, while at the same time creating an obscenely wealthy industry populated almost entirely by already well off, highly educated, white males.
People who think that these issues and others indicate a bad deal for the average person and society as a whole are Luddites. This blatant attempt to trivialize the issue by lumping Luddites in with Jack Valenti and Tipper Gore is pretty repugnant. And the fact that the motivation is simply to pander to a hostile (to Jon Katz) technophile audience is reprehensible. It sure as hell ain't responsible journalism.
Jon Katz, shame on you.
It curtails my freedom to use open source code in commercial code.
The only freedom the GPL curtails is your freedom to restrict the freedom of your users.
"political vulnerability" of us net people? Why, because our legal system is evolving a bit to put an end to this widespread theft?
How, exactly is this theft? If I buy a CD, I own it. What I do with it after that is none of Lars' business. By making a copy of a song, I haven't deprived anyone of anything, so it can't be "theft". I can't believe how many people fall for this "intellectual property" argument.
I've heard a lot of people whine about CD prices and how the record industry "rips" off artists. Well cousin, nobody forces bands to sign these contracts. And the way our free capitalist market works, if there was a cheaper way to produce, distribute and sell music, someone would start doing it and sell you cheaper cd's. Last time I checked, there are quite a few companies doing the same thing. Competition.
Collusion. The only way to get your money^h^h^h^h^h music onthe radio is to sign with one of the big 4. Period. So, there is DEFINITELY coercion involved, to say otherwise is to be insanely naive. On the subject of insanely naive, you have a pretty rosy view of capitalism. Monopoly is the logical conclusion of a "free" market economy. Period. The reason there aren't cheaper alternatives to the big 4 is that no one has the cash to compete. Same reason there aren't 30 office suites to choose from in Winblows.
Just because stealing music is convenient and easy, that doesn't mean the concept of intellectual property is bogus. It is, as the name implies, property...and that's the law of the land.
The concept of intellectual property is bogus, and flies in the face of conventional american views about property. The idea that I can sell you something and then tell you what to do with it is pretty unamerican. The idea that I can whistle a tune in your ear, but prevent you from whistling it in someone else's ear is some repugnant shit and tantamount to mind control.
Intellectual property is neither. Whether or not it is the "law of the land" is irrelevant, what we are talking about is SHOULD it be the law of the land? Laws change, to reflect the changing ethics of society (when they aren't simply purchased by the rich). If the majority of citizens have so little respect for a law that they continually break it, should it be the law?