This is one of those glorious ideas that look great on paper and have absolutely no effect on piracy.
There was a time when Microsoft began blocking SP1 downloads for WinXP for users using one of a list of very common keys. I suppose it may have prevented a few people from downloading the service pack, but the vast majority of users who were using these keys either found a hack to change their key to something randomly generated, or simply downloaded the service pack elsewhere.
Go back a little further and try to remember the furore over the required online or phone registration of new WinXP installs. For the poeple who do not desire to pay for their operating system, this was a similar inconvenience. Easily circumvented, but an annoyance to legitimate users.
The music industry implements protection so weak that it can be circumvented by pressing the 'shift' key, but breaks CDs for legitimate users. Nobody who wants an illegal track or two is deterred by this. If they can't get the music off the CD they'll just go to a P2P network and download it from there.
Time and time again we see media providers and software companies implement these rediculous attempts to spite casual pirates. The only people they ever end up bothering are there own customers, and in the rare case there is a backlash and their sales are hurt by their own arrogance, who do they blame? Pirates, of course.
A friend of mine is in a union shop, she pays the equivalent of ONE HOUR PER WEEK in dues. What does it get her? She gets to watch lazy good for nothings keep a job they don't deserve or work for. Is that the kind of place you want to work?
As a lazy good for nothing I can answer that question with a resounding YES.
There's real fun to be had using the Google calculator. For example, try One cubic AU in teaspoons for a very large number indeed. It can even work out the answer to this one faster than Deep Thought.
This noise reduction technology only cuts out whining, you say? Can I order one medium sized one for my wife, 3 smalls for the kids and an extra large for my mother-in-law? I'll pay extra for overnight delivery!
I sell Echostar's services for a living and really don't have any illusions about who the good guy is here. There is no good guy. This argument is born entirely of greed and the consumer is nothing but a little circle connected to the much larger Echostar circle with a thick black arrow marked 'income' on the easy to comprehend powerpoint presentation I'm sure is by now doing the rounds at Echostar's orbital death star. Having said that, The Dish Network product that Echostar offers seriously aims to offer a very high value for money proposition. They understand that the psychological barriers involved in switching to their product from cable are very strong. Those ads Comcast ran recently representing the disadvantages of satellite over cable really represent fears the average consumer has; unreliability, bulkiness, and long term contracts worry them. It's mostly FUD, but do not underestimate the power of it. With that in mind, Echostar has done away with a lot of these issues. They've dropped long term contracts and hardware lease fees, they've developed respectably advanced hardware that minimizes the number of receivers you need in order to watch TV in multiple rooms, and they've added service options for people who seriously think they need professionals to climb up on their roof and nudge their dish every few weeks. In short, they've invested hundreds of millions trying to create a quality proposition to compete with cable. Bearing that in mind, I have no problem believing that a 7 cents per consumer increase in programming price would result in a measurable, if not significant, decrease in Echostar's operating profit. Of course, as long as we're forced to pay for programs we don't watch in spite of the fact that we all have technology in our home that would empower us to only watch the channels we're interested in and pay the content providers who produce something worthwhile, we'll all have to put up with this crap in one form or another. Whether it's having to miss your Star Trek reruns because the company that ones the network that broadcasts the reruns that you want to see wants the company that allows you to receive those transmissions to force you to receive a cartoon channel that aforementioned company also happens to own and to pay seven cents for the privilige or something a simple as having television that's worthwhile being pulled off the air because ratings measure average viewing habits of incredibly average people with a below average degree of reliability, and executives multiply that by how much money they think they can suck out of these poor average people and equate the resulting dollar value to the word 'good' doesn't really matter. The only people actually being screwed are us, the consumers. If we're not being screwed, they're not doing their job. This whole discussion comes down to nothing more than 'who has the right to screw us more?'
This post is from August 25th of 1998, more than five years ago. It's the first mention of the movies being made that I could find on Slashdot. No comments, but it's interesting to realize that tonight's awards ceremony has been the the culmination of a story we've all been following here for more than half a decade.
This anti-piracy Seal, he's like a highly trained anti-piracy agent, whose stealth and clandestine methods of operation allows him to conduct multiple anti-piracy missions against targets that larger forces cannot approach undetected? He's been selected from the best of the best for his discipline, skill, and bravery? He'll strike terror into the hearts of media pirates near large bodies of water everywhere?
No? Not that kind of seal?
Then I expect he'll amuse children and adults alike with his antics, balancing balls on his adorable snout and clapping his flippers together, all the while conveying a powerful anti-piracy message to our youth?
No? Aw c'mon! You're not seriously telling me that the FBI signed up a washed-up early 90's soul singer to convey their anti piracy message? That's just so lame. It probably would have been more effective for them to just put some kind of. ..I dunno. ..logo or stamp or something on the damn disks saying "piracy is bad, m'kay?". Bloody lame if you ask me.
1. Tolkien didn't actually have Aragorn saying "Let's hunt some orc!". 2. There are no "Dwarf throwing" jokes in the book. 3. There is no elfish shield-surfing in the book. 4. I don't think Tolkien even knew what a cherry tomato is.
Straight from the horse's mouth:
Downspeed is 500 kbps, upspeed is 50. Service costs $59.99 or $99.99 a month, depending on your setup. If you opt for the 59.99 plan, you'll have to pay $399 for hardware, $100 for installation, and $100 for setup. The $99 a month plan subsidizes the cost of installation and equipment so you'll only pay the $100 steup fee up front. Both plans require a 15 month contract.
Having Direct TV is not a boon, since the dish required is a separate one. Professional installation is mandatory because setting these thin gs up requires a lot more precision than a simple sat. TV system. Reliability is better these days than it has been, but servicxe is still prone to interruptions caused by atmospheric consitions. The router is OS-agnostic and accounts come with a single dynamic IP addy.
I'm actually posting this form the browser window of Grokker. Been playing with it for just a few minnutes now, but I can see how something like this can make obscure or broad searches a lot easier. When you enter a search term, Grokker generates a series of circles, each of them representing a subcategory of results for your search term, and each of them in turn filled with subcategories of their own. Searching for "west coast museums", for example, gives me subcategories such as 'travel', 'west coast attractions', and 'history museums'. Once you find your desired subcategory you're presented with a smallish list of matching sites, represented as squares. The categorization seems to make sense most of the time, even if the overall visual effect is remniscent of 70's disco lighting.
Making a boardgame, or any other type of game, is about 90% playtesting. Once you have a concept for the flow of play and the game elements, you can use pretty much anything to represent them during the testing phase. Don't put too much effort into the bits and pieces though. They'll change often during the development of the game. During development consider using whatever stock elements you have lying around. Playing cards with index stickers on the back are great. A whiteboard makes an easily changeable game board, and beads are great game elements during development and testing.
When setting about your game design, ask yourself foremost "What do I want the game experience to be like?". Important things to consider are the number of random factors and their effect on the game. Almost any game has random factors of some sortl; chess is a marked exception. The difference lies in the effect the random factors have on the game. Childrens games are often won or lost entirely by the luck of the draw, whereas adults usually require a game won by skill, not luck. In order to achieve this, you'll have to either minimize the random factors to the point where they don't influence the outcome of the game too heavily (drawing 'event' cards in a strategic game, for example), or make them so integral a part of the game that they'll become statistically predictable (production in 'the Settlers of Catan").
Another important factor to consider in your game design is the gaming experience. Ideally a game will have elements built in that retard the progress of players who are closer to winning. Often, in games involving negotiation, the retarding factor is the players themselves.When given the option, players will often turn down the opportunity to do business with an opponent who may well win the game as a result of his actions. If your game contains no such human element, consider using some form of exponential maintenance to slow the progress and make the playing field more exciting. Failure to do so can result in the winner of a game being decided very early in the game. This makes for an unplleasant gaming experience for all involved.
Most important rule of game design is KEEP IT SIMPLE. Anybody who's played computer games is used to a complex gaming environment, but such an environment does not translate to board or cardgames. Complicated maintenance tasks should be avoided, as should factors or variables that are complicated to calculate or whose effect on the gamestate isn't instantly clear. Remember, the best games are easy to learn, but hard to master.
Most of all, enjoy yourself! Designing board and card games is a fun, if challenging pasttime.
The Americans are against building a huge, experimental nuclear fusion reactor in France because they don't like the French? I'd demand it be built smack dab in the middle of Paris. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, not really terrified I guess, but the whole "We've created life and it's procreating" thing is something that doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy,. And why did it have to be a virus. Why not a cute little kitten or something?
I've been playing Eve Online for a while now, and it really feels as much as a massively multiplayer Elite as anything possibly could. There are thousands of systems, each with their own market of supply and demand, there are dozens of ships and hundreds of upgrades a player can bolt on to them. Players go out hunting pirates, running missions, doing trade runs, or even mining asteroids. If you've ever spent time on Elite and wondered what the game would be like if there were thousands of other people playing at the same time, you could do much worse than giving this game a try.
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is a mind-bogglingly stupid animal. It has almost no capacity for learning from experience and is therefore surprised by virtually everything that happens to it. Here is an example of how stupid it is: it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you. Its behavior would be quite endearing if it wasn't spoilt by this one thing: it is the most violently carnivorous creature in the Galaxy. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
2.4 Ghz transmitter and receiver: $100 Bullet Camera: $75 Hosting at netspace.net.au: $44.95 / month up to 100 MB Having your 15MB mpegs slashdotted: Priceless
NiMH batteries last a factor 2-3 longer than NiCd batteries, are less environmentally unfriendly, and lack the memory effect that made people hate rechargeable batteries in the first place. What this means is that a fully charged MiMH battery will last as long, if not longer, than a regular alkaline battery in the same application. Capacity of batteries is rated in milliamp hours. A penlight rated at 2000 mAh will, in theory, provide 2 amps of power for an hour. It goes without saying that bigger is better.
This guy has tested several dozen different types of NiMH penlights for use in digital cameras. Although there are many other uses for the things, this seems to be one of the more common and at least vaguely representative of what to expect.
When choosing a charger, make sure it supports, and is set to charge NiMH batteries. Running a NiCd cycle on them will yield unsatisfactory results. There are fast chargers available that will charge your batteries in as little as an hour and it's commonly accepted that these don't harm the batteries much.
Says the chariman of the Fox group "We feel very strongly about the need to communicate that [. ..] illegally downloading movies is a blow to creativity"
This fron the people responsible for the term 'foxing' a show. I think Matt Groenig, Joss Whedon, and Ben Edlund, among others, may have a thing or two to say about what exactly constitutes a blow to creativity. Hint: It's not piracy. It's Fox.
I'm so mad I'm going to go off and dwonload a pirated copy of Daredevil and NEVER WATCH IT!
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of those glorious ideas that look great on paper and have absolutely no effect on piracy.
There was a time when Microsoft began blocking SP1 downloads for WinXP for users using one of a list of very common keys. I suppose it may have prevented a few people from downloading the service pack, but the vast majority of users who were using these keys either found a hack to change their key to something randomly generated, or simply downloaded the service pack elsewhere.
Go back a little further and try to remember the furore over the required online or phone registration of new WinXP installs. For the poeple who do not desire to pay for their operating system, this was a similar inconvenience. Easily circumvented, but an annoyance to legitimate users.
The music industry implements protection so weak that it can be circumvented by pressing the 'shift' key, but breaks CDs for legitimate users. Nobody who wants an illegal track or two is deterred by this. If they can't get the music off the CD they'll just go to a P2P network and download it from there.
Time and time again we see media providers and software companies implement these rediculous attempts to spite casual pirates. The only people they ever end up bothering are there own customers, and in the rare case there is a backlash and their sales are hurt by their own arrogance, who do they blame? Pirates, of course.
A friend of mine is in a union shop, she pays the equivalent of ONE HOUR PER WEEK in dues. What does it get her? She gets to watch lazy good for nothings keep a job they don't deserve or work for. Is that the kind of place you want to work?
As a lazy good for nothing I can answer that question with a resounding YES.
You mean the one where Carrie Fisher shoots first? Oh. . .wait.
82 73 80
There's real fun to be had using the Google calculator. For example, try One cubic AU in teaspoons for a very large number indeed. It can even work out the answer to this one faster than Deep Thought.
This noise reduction technology only cuts out whining, you say? Can I order one medium sized one for my wife, 3 smalls for the kids and an extra large for my mother-in-law? I'll pay extra for overnight delivery!
Army: Stop sending us your products. .
Microsoft: What if we don't?
Army: We'll make you
Microsoft: You and what army?
Army: . .
Microsoft: Oh.
I sell Echostar's services for a living and really don't have any illusions about who the good guy is here. There is no good guy. This argument is born entirely of greed and the consumer is nothing but a little circle connected to the much larger Echostar circle with a thick black arrow marked 'income' on the easy to comprehend powerpoint presentation I'm sure is by now doing the rounds at Echostar's orbital death star. Having said that, The Dish Network product that Echostar offers seriously aims to offer a very high value for money proposition. They understand that the psychological barriers involved in switching to their product from cable are very strong. Those ads Comcast ran recently representing the disadvantages of satellite over cable really represent fears the average consumer has; unreliability, bulkiness, and long term contracts worry them. It's mostly FUD, but do not underestimate the power of it.
With that in mind, Echostar has done away with a lot of these issues. They've dropped long term contracts and hardware lease fees, they've developed respectably advanced hardware that minimizes the number of receivers you need in order to watch TV in multiple rooms, and they've added service options for people who seriously think they need professionals to climb up on their roof and nudge their dish every few weeks. In short, they've invested hundreds of millions trying to create a quality proposition to compete with cable. Bearing that in mind, I have no problem believing that a 7 cents per consumer increase in programming price would result in a measurable, if not significant, decrease in Echostar's operating profit.
Of course, as long as we're forced to pay for programs we don't watch in spite of the fact that we all have technology in our home that would empower us to only watch the channels we're interested in and pay the content providers who produce something worthwhile, we'll all have to put up with this crap in one form or another. Whether it's having to miss your Star Trek reruns because the company that ones the network that broadcasts the reruns that you want to see wants the company that allows you to receive those transmissions to force you to receive a cartoon channel that aforementioned company also happens to own and to pay seven cents for the privilige or something a simple as having television that's worthwhile being pulled off the air because ratings measure average viewing habits of incredibly average people with a below average degree of reliability, and executives multiply that by how much money they think they can suck out of these poor average people and equate the resulting dollar value to the word 'good' doesn't really matter. The only people actually being screwed are us, the consumers. If we're not being screwed, they're not doing their job. This whole discussion comes down to nothing more than 'who has the right to screw us more?'
This post is from August 25th of 1998, more than five years ago. It's the first mention of the movies being made that I could find on Slashdot. No comments, but it's interesting to realize that tonight's awards ceremony has been the the culmination of a story we've all been following here for more than half a decade.
This anti-piracy Seal, he's like a highly trained anti-piracy agent, whose stealth and clandestine methods of operation allows him to conduct multiple anti-piracy missions against targets that larger forces cannot approach undetected? He's been selected from the best of the best for his discipline, skill, and bravery? He'll strike terror into the hearts of media pirates near large bodies of water everywhere?
.I dunno. . .logo or stamp or something on the damn disks saying "piracy is bad, m'kay?". Bloody lame if you ask me.
No? Not that kind of seal?
Then I expect he'll amuse children and adults alike with his antics, balancing balls on his adorable snout and clapping his flippers together, all the while conveying a powerful anti-piracy message to our youth?
No? Aw c'mon! You're not seriously telling me that the FBI signed up a washed-up early 90's soul singer to convey their anti piracy message? That's just so lame. It probably would have been more effective for them to just put some kind of. .
Here's the executive summary:
1. Tolkien didn't actually have Aragorn saying "Let's hunt some orc!".
2. There are no "Dwarf throwing" jokes in the book.
3. There is no elfish shield-surfing in the book.
4. I don't think Tolkien even knew what a cherry tomato is.
Straight from the horse's mouth: Downspeed is 500 kbps, upspeed is 50. Service costs $59.99 or $99.99 a month, depending on your setup. If you opt for the 59.99 plan, you'll have to pay $399 for hardware, $100 for installation, and $100 for setup. The $99 a month plan subsidizes the cost of installation and equipment so you'll only pay the $100 steup fee up front. Both plans require a 15 month contract.
Having Direct TV is not a boon, since the dish required is a separate one. Professional installation is mandatory because setting these thin gs up requires a lot more precision than a simple sat. TV system. Reliability is better these days than it has been, but servicxe is still prone to interruptions caused by atmospheric consitions. The router is OS-agnostic and accounts come with a single dynamic IP addy.
Hope this helps.
I'm actually posting this form the browser window of Grokker. Been playing with it for just a few minnutes now, but I can see how something like this can make obscure or broad searches a lot easier. When you enter a search term, Grokker generates a series of circles, each of them representing a subcategory of results for your search term, and each of them in turn filled with subcategories of their own. Searching for "west coast museums", for example, gives me subcategories such as 'travel', 'west coast attractions', and 'history museums'. Once you find your desired subcategory you're presented with a smallish list of matching sites, represented as squares. The categorization seems to make sense most of the time, even if the overall visual effect is remniscent of 70's disco lighting.
Making a boardgame, or any other type of game, is about 90% playtesting. Once you have a concept for the flow of play and the game elements, you can use pretty much anything to represent them during the testing phase. Don't put too much effort into the bits and pieces though. They'll change often during the development of the game. During development consider using whatever stock elements you have lying around. Playing cards with index stickers on the back are great. A whiteboard makes an easily changeable game board, and beads are great game elements during development and testing.
When setting about your game design, ask yourself foremost "What do I want the game experience to be like?". Important things to consider are the number of random factors and their effect on the game. Almost any game has random factors of some sortl; chess is a marked exception. The difference lies in the effect the random factors have on the game. Childrens games are often won or lost entirely by the luck of the draw, whereas adults usually require a game won by skill, not luck. In order to achieve this, you'll have to either minimize the random factors to the point where they don't influence the outcome of the game too heavily (drawing 'event' cards in a strategic game, for example), or make them so integral a part of the game that they'll become statistically predictable (production in 'the Settlers of Catan").
Another important factor to consider in your game design is the gaming experience. Ideally a game will have elements built in that retard the progress of players who are closer to winning. Often, in games involving negotiation, the retarding factor is the players themselves.When given the option, players will often turn down the opportunity to do business with an opponent who may well win the game as a result of his actions. If your game contains no such human element, consider using some form of exponential maintenance to slow the progress and make the playing field more exciting. Failure to do so can result in the winner of a game being decided very early in the game. This makes for an unplleasant gaming experience for all involved.
Most important rule of game design is KEEP IT SIMPLE. Anybody who's played computer games is used to a complex gaming environment, but such an environment does not translate to board or cardgames. Complicated maintenance tasks should be avoided, as should factors or variables that are complicated to calculate or whose effect on the gamestate isn't instantly clear. Remember, the best games are easy to learn, but hard to master.
Most of all, enjoy yourself! Designing board and card games is a fun, if challenging pasttime.
The Americans are against building a huge, experimental nuclear fusion reactor in France because they don't like the French? I'd demand it be built smack dab in the middle of Paris. What could possibly go wrong?
Google it.
Well, not really terrified I guess, but the whole "We've created life and it's procreating" thing is something that doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy,. And why did it have to be a virus. Why not a cute little kitten or something?
I've been playing Eve Online for a while now, and it really feels as much as a massively multiplayer Elite as anything possibly could. There are thousands of systems, each with their own market of supply and demand, there are dozens of ships and hundreds of upgrades a player can bolt on to them. Players go out hunting pirates, running missions, doing trade runs, or even mining asteroids. If you've ever spent time on Elite and wondered what the game would be like if there were thousands of other people playing at the same time, you could do much worse than giving this game a try.
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is a mind-bogglingly stupid animal. It has almost no capacity for learning from experience and is therefore surprised by virtually everything that happens to it. Here is an example of how stupid it is: it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you. Its behavior would be quite endearing if it wasn't spoilt by this one thing: it is the most violently carnivorous creature in the Galaxy. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
2.4 Ghz transmitter and receiver: $100
Bullet Camera: $75
Hosting at netspace.net.au: $44.95 / month up to 100 MB
Having your 15MB mpegs slashdotted: Priceless
Literally.
department.
:)
news dot com dot com
Yeah, yeah, I know. It made me smile. So there.
NiMH batteries last a factor 2-3 longer than NiCd batteries, are less environmentally unfriendly, and lack the memory effect that made people hate rechargeable batteries in the first place. What this means is that a fully charged MiMH battery will last as long, if not longer, than a regular alkaline battery in the same application. Capacity of batteries is rated in milliamp hours. A penlight rated at 2000 mAh will, in theory, provide 2 amps of power for an hour. It goes without saying that bigger is better.
This guy has tested several dozen different types of NiMH penlights for use in digital cameras. Although there are many other uses for the things, this seems to be one of the more common and at least vaguely representative of what to expect.
When choosing a charger, make sure it supports, and is set to charge NiMH batteries. Running a NiCd cycle on them will yield unsatisfactory results. There are fast chargers available that will charge your batteries in as little as an hour and it's commonly accepted that these don't harm the batteries much.
but it looks like the site has been. . .umm. . .flashmobbed.
Says the chariman of the Fox group "We feel very strongly about the need to communicate that [. . .] illegally downloading movies is a blow to creativity"
This fron the people responsible for the term 'foxing' a show. I think Matt Groenig, Joss Whedon, and Ben Edlund, among others, may have a thing or two to say about what exactly constitutes a blow to creativity. Hint: It's not piracy. It's Fox.
I'm so mad I'm going to go off and dwonload a pirated copy of Daredevil and NEVER WATCH IT!
Cool. That way SCO can claim they own the voting process.