And to all the original M:tG players out there. I remember what Magic was like back in '93 and '94 when it really ruled. There was this amazing sense of mystery and fantasy, you could really get INTO the game and be swept away by it. Nowadays, to forgive the cliched ranting, it's all become the slave of crass commercialism. Garfield was a hacker in the game inventing sense, a hacker of the first degree; Adkison was just an all around visionary and great guy.
The game they created will stand forever as a landmark of my life and many others my age. Despite the religious right's attempt to brand it as demonic or satan-worship, all it was was a chance for kids to make a fantastic world their playground for a few hours, in a fun and competetive game.
I don't really care what Hasbro does with it. They can hardly run it into the ground any worse than it already has been. So long WotC, twas good while it lasted.
The vast majority of users are what I call "OS blind". This is an affliction where they do not have the mental or perhaps educational tools to tell a useful OS from a worthless bloated toy OS. The end result of color blindness or OS blindness are the same: Microsoft could care less about the minority of users who might be dissatisfied with their product, as long as Joe Sixpack can download from windowsmedia.com and get his email and pr0n.
"Benjamin, my eyes are failing. Can you read to me what the First Commandment says?"
The old donkey sighed, then squinted at the side of the old barn... Finally, he spoke.
"Every animal is allowed freedom of his thoughts and ideals, as long as they are not expressed in a way that would offend others."
Kasreyn sighed. "I could have sworn it used to say something about freedom of speech... didn't you? Well, I guess it doesn't really matter - Comrade Napoleon is always right."
Does this strike anyone else as VERY FUCKING SCARY? This is the fucking U.N. charter, and it doesn't include freedom of speech, but everyone just *assumes* it does.
It really does feel to me like the part from the middle of Animal Farm, where the pigs were surreptitiously rewriting the Commandments, with no one the wiser. Finally they were able to abuse the other animals terribly, all the while claiming it was merely their virtuous prerogative under the laws.
I think Orwell's little attempt at humor or consolation, in calling it a "Fairy Tale", was misguided, even in as bleak a pessimist as he.
Last month a leader in the software industry, Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, predicted that the focus of the intellectual excitement will shift again.
"If I were 21 years old," he said at a company conference in New Orleans, "I probably wouldn't go into computing. The computing industry is about to become boring. I'd go into genetic engineering."
This rings true to me. Much of Comp Sci (my chosen profession, though I suck at it) seems to have a lack of discovery and / or innovation these days, with the exception of nanocomputing. Much of the rest of it is innovation, not invention / discovery. How many Turings do we have in Comp Sci now?
Now genetics, this stuff is freaking AMAZING. My girlfriend is going into it, and I'm regularly amazed by the discoveries that are being made in the field. It may well be that computer science is no longer the frontier of human knowledge; I don't know.
The article is, of course, dead wrong. Mr. Johnson needs to have his head examined if he thinks that just because computers are used as tools in many professions, that thereby all professionals are computer scientists. He wrote an article for the NYTimes online, probably using a word processor - thus by his definition he can claim to be a computer scientist.
The thing he's dimly perceiving, but failing to adequately put into words, is how computers have become ubiquitous in the professional and academic world, and how a working knowledge of how to USE computers is fast becoming utterly essential. However, he fails to see the vast difference between being a competent end user, and being a discoverer, an inventor, a creator-of-new-things in the computer world.
So all in all, the article is only interesting in that the author accidentally brings up something else that's worth thinking about: computers and their involvement in genetics research. Now what I want to see is more development in the field of biological computing... the day when genetics and microbiology combine with comp sci and nanotechnology / nanorobotics, will be a portentuous day.
This is a warning about a new email virus that's going around. It's called "FootAndMouth". You might get an email called "FootAndMouth" or an attachment called "moo.jpg" - DO NOT OPEN THEM!! This is a very dangerous virus which can delete files and make your computer unusable! Pass this warning on to EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Thank you.
I'm bored of this. You are now the first/. editor to have the amazing honor (nyuk nyuk) of being placed on my "please don't plague me with articles by this editor" list. In case you care why, it has something to do with a neverending string of pompous, self-important articles about this sort of thing, whose only apparent purpose is to inflate the average slashdotter's sense of superiority. Not only are you a huge Karma Whore (though you're an editor and don't need it), you are also in Dogbert's words "an elitist technology bigot", and I'm tired of it.
If I want to talk to self-important assholes with rampant ego problems, there's always alt.religion.kibology. I read/. for real news.
Sorry to post offtopic here, but I thought you deserved to know.
This system sits down and reviews the content BEFORE the child accesses it. The system then accesses an internal database of classifications ratings, also called "judgement", to determine whether the content is suitable for the child's consumption. The parent then stands by while the child plays the game / watches the movie / whatever and answers questions and provides guidance. THIS is an effective Ratings System; a parent that cares for its child and keeps a careful eye on their development.
DOOM is not responsible for Columbine and similar tragedies. The modern belief that institutionalized child care and upbringing is somehow effective is at fault. Children spend their early years in "day care" centers where they're usually just plopped down in front of a TV with no one to talk to, nothing to learn, and no one to love them. Then they go home to be ignored or even beaten by their parents, more and more of whom are having children younger and younger and are thus incompetents at the tough job parenting is. In their high school years, when they're most confused and trying to chart a tough course between learning to be good or evil, is when their parents are still not there for them and not interested in spending time with them. These children need their parents to BE there for them and notice when they're hurting, and they're not.
But, as someone once pointed out to me on/., no politician ever got (re)elected by telling his contituents they were bad parents. So it's little wonder the government is willing to waste resources so disgustingly, just to pamper parents' need to escape their responsibility: the parents are the voters, after all, and generally choose their own leisure over expending effort at parenting. The reason DOOM and such games are blamed for Columbines is because few parents would blame themselves. I place the blame nowhere else.
Which is what would happen if he used encryption. Don't you know that crypto turns law abiding citizens into pot-smoking, pipe-bomb-making terrorists? Sheesh. Bush is way smarter than YOU, apparently. =P
To be serious though, Colonel Klink (response just above mine) has it right on the nail. Though the guy deserves his right to privacy in his private life (a right which I think was stolen from Clinton by the Lewinsky circus), he IS the POTUS, and as such, his communications while acting as such are and should be openly available. The whole purpose of this law is to prevent things like Nixon's 18.5 minute gap from being used to deceive the public. If all our lawmakers started using crypto, we'd suddenly have no clue what they were up to until they did it.
Cnn reports: "And the Senate has, today, passed a bill striking down the Bill Of Rights. It was unkown to CNN that such a bill was being considered, as it was encrypted heavily and not made available to the public. The ACLU immediately registered a protest, and head ACLU officials are now being held in an undisclosed federal prison. And the Seargent who's holding a gun to my head has just handed me another amazing news break..."
Be glad our "leaders" are mostly too dumb to use crypto. Oh, and be glad our military isn't that dumb.;-)
...surprisingly, there are many people in this world who don't understand the concept of civil disobedience, ie., nonviolently disobeying unjust laws. If Freenet were outlawed, yes, it would still be hard to stop. But it would be mostly stopped.
The vast majority of people let their governments think for them. If the government says Freenet is the abode of perverts, terrorists, and hackers (a term that I expect will be even more vilified in the coming years), then the average person will see Freenet as a den of evil. Freenet users will be stigmatized and criminalized.
What's more, there may well BE ways to attack and/or shut down Freenet nodes. Freenet isn't that old and hasn't had as much extensive field testing as other networking protocols like TCP/IP; we don't know all the vulnerabilities yet. Furthermore, while hiding the node contents from the server sysadmin would seem to grant him "deniability", that only works in a sane country. I fully expect that such logic will be incomprehensible to judges and politicians, to whom any Freenet user will be seen as a sicko terrorist trying to hide behind the Constitution.
And remember kids, when sickos and terrorists hide behind the constitution, it's best to ignore the stupid thing so you can tell your constituents you're tough on crime! After all, who cares about some piece of paper written more than 200 years ago? Not us!
I'm not saying people should stop copying and swapping mp3's. If the RIAA had been more (much more) reasonable about this, then yes, I would have been in favor of stopping the pirating. But after their recent actions, including their attempts to weasel out of paying royalties to the actual ARTISTS they claim to represent, screw them. I think the RIAA deserves to go down hard, so swap those mp3's folks. Just don't do it on Freenet until AFTER the RIAA's dead (should only take a few years).
The thing we need to remember is that Freenet is MORE IMPORTANT than this. There are people in dictatorial nations (China etc) who should be able to speak freely. When we say that freedom of speech is an inalienable human right, we should mean what we say and extend it to ALL humans, no matter how evil a government they toil under. And personally, I see the U.S. becoming much more authoritarian, so don't be surprised when you see U.S. citizens turning to Freenet to protect their speech. Congress can't seem to get that "shall make NO LAW" part through their heads.
This is a bigger issue than swapping mp3's, people. For the sake of the people that desperately need Freenet, we need to keep our eyes on the goal.
..politically, just to survive. Freenet has to, and I mean HAS to, distance itself from the mp3 issue. If it gets heralded as the new free mp3 swapping online site, it will not last half as long as Napster did. Freenet needs to make it VERY clear that its primary concern is providing a network for freedom of speech online.
While this will be repugnant to many in power, if Freenet avoids being labelled "Napster II" by the mass media, the RIAA might not come down on it like a total ton of bricks. Or at least they might not throw enough money at it to buy any amount of judges and congresspersons. I'm not saying Freenet should lick the RIAA's boots, but it should definitely NOT come across with the "fuck you" attitude Napster had.
But if Freenet IS seen as the "new Napster", and if 15 million 14 year olds hop onto it so they can download Dr. Dre, you can be sure that no judge or congressperson will be capable of seeing a difference between the two, especially with the RIAA lobbyists battering down their doors. Freenet, instead of going massively public, should go *mildly* public and try to avoid being seen as the new mp3 swap system. Let Gnutella take that rap.
I'm as much against the RIAA as anyone here, but the more I learn about Freenet, the more I think it would be a tragedy to make this mistake and see Freenet ruined. This has real potential, and I'd hate to see it end prematurely because of the sympathy for the RIAA that arrogant Napsterites stirred in the government.
Not a flamebait, but what I really think. Try responding rather than moderating, huh?
"No points for originality, but how are they bad?"
Heheh, answered your own question.
What EA does is buy a little company that has made one or two creative games, then strings them along for as long as making unimaginative hack sequels remains profitable. EA *never* takes a risk on an "untested" game idea that isn't sure to sell like hotcakes; you will never see anything imaginative or new out of them. At EA, the marketing guys are in firm control of the game development guys, and it shows.
And I for one am VERY tired of same-old, same-old. My comp. game collection has grown to the range of over 70 titles. It will take something new and/or imaginative to make me open my wallet for a whole 50 bucks. I'm certainly not paying 50 bucks for a slick EA clone of a game I already have. C&C:RA2, DK2, and Diablo 2 (though EA doesn't own Blizz yet) were all so terrible, it's completely turned me off sequels.
It's up to the Peter Molyneux's and Sid Meiers of the world to think up something NEW for us. We need a creative mind, unhindered by questions of whether a game is a tried and tested big seller, to come up with something worth playing. Instead we have John Romero sitting back and brainstorming: Gamers want remakes! Nope, sorry, John. Go away.
-Kasreyn
P.S. If you don't think C&C:RA2 bites hard enough to bite in allcaps, play through the single player campaigns and watch the cut movies. Then watch them again. Keep a barf bag close at hand.
It's a new god sim, but everyone expects god sims from Molyneaux, that's his expertise... what makes B&W unique is your CHOICE.
In Populous, you were sometimes vengeful, but usually just power-oriented. Not really good or evil.
In the Dungeon Keeper games, you were very clearly focussed on pure, diabolical Evil. All the way.
B&W is cool because you can choose which path to walk... Good, Evil, or really anything in between as far as I've been able to figure out. This alone should more than double the replay value, as you take tactics in Good and see how they work in Evil. IE., how effective might a certain grand strategy be when applied by force and terror, or with caring and peace? Fascinating, Captain.
"I don't see any reason for the ASPCA to complain. I mean really, who here believes that the game Black and White would entice youngins around the world to commit cruelty to animals?"
...the same people who think digital images of fake child porn will entice pedophiles and thus should be illegal.
Oh, you meant that rhetorically? Either way, expect to see the game banned in places if the ACLU ever takes a look at it.
EA ruins every company they get. Westwood ruled (Dune II, C&C). Oh look, EA buys Westwood, damn, now it BITES (C&C:RA2). Bullfrog was brilliant(Populous, Dungeon Keeper). Oh look, EA buys Bullfrog, now it SUCKS (DK2).
I'm only hoping Lionhead can get off one great game before EA ruins it as well, with its lowest common denominator marketing style. B&W is the only comp game I intend to spend any money on this year... I was thinking on WC III, but after Blizz's recent actions and the suckiness of D2, I'm done with Blizzard. Not to mention WC III appears to be heading the wrong way (away from massive tactical epic warfare, towards small parties of warriors necessitated by each one being rendered like a Q3a bot). id's DOOM III is all set to be the biggest joke of a game in years. So it looks like we're all riding on Peter Molyneaux to strike creative gold again, either that or the Miller brothers can come out of the woodwork with another Myst clone. Other than that, I see very little of interest on offer this year.
Didn't really need/. just to tell me Fox are a bunch of slimeballs. This has been common knowledge for the past, oh, decade...
Lord only knows how a good show like The Simpsons managed to stay on Fox for so long... IIRC they even had an episode blasting Fox the way they attack everything else... I guess Fox is just asleep at the switch, either that or their legions of Simpsons fans have them by the short hairs.;-P
I'm not saying I *like* the idea of having my bandwidth monitored, but I don't see any options that aren't considerably worse. The internet is a new thing, it's still in flux, but I see it settling down as another "service" that everyone will want to have in his house.
The American Dream has been updated: Now it's not only a house in the suburbs, SUV, 2.2 kids, a dog and a wife, it also includes broadband internet access.
So if bandwidth is going to become a commonplace service, I'd MUCH rather pay for what I'm using instead of being forced to subsidize the RIAA just because I "might" download their stuff.
those that don't pay the extra fee can have the servers blocked. I don't see why it should be any more than a couple bucks per month, but any ISP would make it more than necessary.
Definitely this. I would refuse to use an ISP that charged extra across the board due to Napster and the RIAA. I don't use Napster or view streaming videos or any of that shit, why should I pay for everyone on my ISP doing so? Rather, I should pay a lower fee because a.) I'm not using up so much bandwidth and b.) I'm not getting copies of the RIAA's materials, so I don't owe them a fscking dime.
I much prefer the pay-per-bandwidth model, which I believe will be getting more accurate in the future until finally it will be metered as commonly and ubiquitously as power service is now. I can only hope that in the future all the bandwidth isn't controlled by AOL or its subsidiaries, who seem to be gobbling up every small ISP in sight... (sigh)
You *could* provide some commentary to let us know what this link IS before we go unleashing the/. effect hither, thither and yon, eh?
I'm personally wondering if some of/.'s editors could be replaced by a post sifting script that rates the value of a submission by whether it contains weighted words like "Linux", "Napster", "RIAA", "FBI", "Carnivore"... Hmmm, wonder if this is the case already? =P
I was kind of expecting someone to bring up Ellison's nice little vindictive anti-Roddenberry take... you beat me to the punch on the response though. =)
Glad to see Harlan can't get away with obscuring the truth too far... Gene didn't ever deserve the way Ellison treated him. =/
Of course, I only defend Roddenberry so much because he's my hero. =)
Take the time he was writing for Roddenberry on a ST Original Series. He wrote a great script for City on the Edge (IIRC), it was beautiful, emotional, masterful. And completely undoable as a television episode. Literally, it was impossible to do on a TV show in the 60's, especially on ST's limited budget. His script called for things like hundreds of extras and impossible special effects shots. So Gene asked Ellison for a rewrite, and Ellison refused. He went apeshit all over Roddenberry and flat out refused to rewrite his script so that it would be useful. Finally, they could wait no longer on him and had to drop his script and get a reworked one done up, Ellison screaming bloody murder the whole time. Then when he was honored with an award (I think it was a Hugo, not sure) for his original script, Ellison sent a big "I told you so" Roddenberry's way.
The man may have a distinct talent for the written word, but he seriously needs to grow up some. And he needs to jettison some of his attitude while he's at it. The ALLCAPS, though it's been mentioned above in this discussion, is just an indicator of his propensity for overreaction.
-Kasreyn
P.S. Harlan, I hand-copy manuscripts of your books for my friends and family. Come get me! =P
A little tip for you: if consumers are uninformed about their options, they will make poor buying decisions. This is the entertainment industry's entire goal in a nutshell. This is why, DECSS. This is why, CPRM. This is why,.NET If they don't KNOW computing can be any better than this, they won't be upset when it's taken away from them. You can't miss what you never knew you had.
Yeah, wow, you call for/. to boycott the new computer toys. Hmm, ok, if 1/10th of slashdotters take your advice (which I think is a VERY generous estimate) we're talking less than 40,000 people.
Hear that great, roaring noise? That's the RIAA laughing at you.
I don't own a TV precisely because there's nothing worth watching on it except the news and the Simpsons, and the news is mostly misreported and hugely biased (much like/.;-)
So why the hell do I want my PC to become a new form of TV? That's bullshit. I try to teach every net newbie I meet what the internet SHOULD be, what it was, at least.
It's a winnowing-out process, you see. First you add a huge amount of new users who don't know what the internet was originally like. To give an example, modern SAT tests could convincingly include "internet access" and "satellite TV" in an analogy. Then, you criminalize and dehumanize the few (relatively) remaining people online who refuse to be a cog in the marketing machine. Once you can criminalize them, you can get rid of them.
I foresee a time when anyone who is NOT online via AOL etc will be considered dangerous and a cybercriminal. IMO, if that's what's going to happen anyway: create a new net, hopefully based on Freenet's topology or something very like it, for the "digerati" to move to. (Gawd, I hate that term, makes me think of starbucks-frequenting latte-sipping Wired-reading twerps, or in Denis Leary's words, "haiku-writing motherfuckers")
This new net will have the disadvantage that it will also be looked on with suspicion and denounced by politicians as the abode of "hackers", "terrorists", and "child pornography"... But at least we evil monsters will be safely hidden away where the AOLers wouldn't be in any danger of catching our cooties. I think that may actually be a solution.
Then the computer plebes can stay on the old internet and use it for their mp3's and their Jerry Springer streaming video and their online shopping and their cotton-candy-censored-"for the children!!" content. Who cares? Let them have what they want. If a cable modem is just another form of satellite TV box in their opinion, who am I to stop them from enjoying it?
As for me, I would move to the "new" internet where one might be able to have an intelligent conversation and do some coding and/or get some pr0n and/or play violent games. And maybe NOT get 3 million unwanted ads for penis enlargement in my email (which is actually kind of an insult when you think of it;-). And the new internet might even resurrect Usenet if someone will get down to business and crack Google/Deja to get the old posts back.;-) Of course, I personally have nothing but disgust for posters who let anyone else have the rights to their posts, and they kinda deserve what they got.
I never spotted one for absolute certain before. He has no clue what he's talking about, but he gets +2 Insightful because he rubs/. moderators the right way.
This is what they've been doing. They alienate their fans by cracking down on "pirating", but whenever their profits show a dip, they immediately shriek that their business is being ruined by evil pirates.
They're not shooting themselves in the foot here... they're planning for the future. If they can bite the bullet and eat a loss now (as disgruntled 16 year olds quit buying music, waah), then they can whine about their losses to the government and get even MORE restrictive copy-protection laws passed. Their ultimate aim is to do away with fair use altogether, and go to a pay-per-listen model. And then they can rake it in.
Slashdot Mirror
And to all the original M:tG players out there. I remember what Magic was like back in '93 and '94 when it really ruled. There was this amazing sense of mystery and fantasy, you could really get INTO the game and be swept away by it. Nowadays, to forgive the cliched ranting, it's all become the slave of crass commercialism. Garfield was a hacker in the game inventing sense, a hacker of the first degree; Adkison was just an all around visionary and great guy.
The game they created will stand forever as a landmark of my life and many others my age. Despite the religious right's attempt to brand it as demonic or satan-worship, all it was was a chance for kids to make a fantastic world their playground for a few hours, in a fun and competetive game.
I don't really care what Hasbro does with it. They can hardly run it into the ground any worse than it already has been. So long WotC, twas good while it lasted.
-Kasreyn
This is why MS has made it big.
The vast majority of users are what I call "OS blind". This is an affliction where they do not have the mental or perhaps educational tools to tell a useful OS from a worthless bloated toy OS. The end result of color blindness or OS blindness are the same: Microsoft could care less about the minority of users who might be dissatisfied with their product, as long as Joe Sixpack can download from windowsmedia.com and get his email and pr0n.
-Kasreyn
Flashbacks to "Animal Farm"...
Kasreyn turns to Benjamin the Goat...
"Benjamin, my eyes are failing. Can you read to me what the First Commandment says?"
The old donkey sighed, then squinted at the side of the old barn... Finally, he spoke.
"Every animal is allowed freedom of his thoughts and ideals, as long as they are not expressed in a way that would offend others."
Kasreyn sighed. "I could have sworn it used to say something about freedom of speech... didn't you? Well, I guess it doesn't really matter - Comrade Napoleon is always right."
Does this strike anyone else as VERY FUCKING SCARY? This is the fucking U.N. charter, and it doesn't include freedom of speech, but everyone just *assumes* it does.
It really does feel to me like the part from the middle of Animal Farm, where the pigs were surreptitiously rewriting the Commandments, with no one the wiser. Finally they were able to abuse the other animals terribly, all the while claiming it was merely their virtuous prerogative under the laws.
I think Orwell's little attempt at humor or consolation, in calling it a "Fairy Tale", was misguided, even in as bleak a pessimist as he.
-Kasreyn
Last month a leader in the software industry, Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, predicted that the focus of the intellectual excitement will shift again.
"If I were 21 years old," he said at a company conference in New Orleans, "I probably wouldn't go into computing. The computing industry is about to become boring. I'd go into genetic engineering."
This rings true to me. Much of Comp Sci (my chosen profession, though I suck at it) seems to have a lack of discovery and / or innovation these days, with the exception of nanocomputing. Much of the rest of it is innovation, not invention / discovery. How many Turings do we have in Comp Sci now?
Now genetics, this stuff is freaking AMAZING. My girlfriend is going into it, and I'm regularly amazed by the discoveries that are being made in the field. It may well be that computer science is no longer the frontier of human knowledge; I don't know.
The article is, of course, dead wrong. Mr. Johnson needs to have his head examined if he thinks that just because computers are used as tools in many professions, that thereby all professionals are computer scientists. He wrote an article for the NYTimes online, probably using a word processor - thus by his definition he can claim to be a computer scientist.
The thing he's dimly perceiving, but failing to adequately put into words, is how computers have become ubiquitous in the professional and academic world, and how a working knowledge of how to USE computers is fast becoming utterly essential. However, he fails to see the vast difference between being a competent end user, and being a discoverer, an inventor, a creator-of-new-things in the computer world.
So all in all, the article is only interesting in that the author accidentally brings up something else that's worth thinking about: computers and their involvement in genetics research. Now what I want to see is more development in the field of biological computing... the day when genetics and microbiology combine with comp sci and nanotechnology / nanorobotics, will be a portentuous day.
-Kasreyn
This is a warning about a new email virus that's going around. It's called "FootAndMouth". You might get an email called "FootAndMouth" or an attachment called "moo.jpg" - DO NOT OPEN THEM!! This is a very dangerous virus which can delete files and make your computer unusable! Pass this warning on to EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Thank you.
This message has 1 attachment(s):
*moo.jpg
Opening attachment...
=P
-Kasreyn
I'm bored of this. You are now the first /. editor to have the amazing honor (nyuk nyuk) of being placed on my "please don't plague me with articles by this editor" list. In case you care why, it has something to do with a neverending string of pompous, self-important articles about this sort of thing, whose only apparent purpose is to inflate the average slashdotter's sense of superiority. Not only are you a huge Karma Whore (though you're an editor and don't need it), you are also in Dogbert's words "an elitist technology bigot", and I'm tired of it.
/. for real news.
If I want to talk to self-important assholes with rampant ego problems, there's always alt.religion.kibology. I read
Sorry to post offtopic here, but I thought you deserved to know.
-Kasreyn
It's called a Responsible Parent.
/., no politician ever got (re)elected by telling his contituents they were bad parents. So it's little wonder the government is willing to waste resources so disgustingly, just to pamper parents' need to escape their responsibility: the parents are the voters, after all, and generally choose their own leisure over expending effort at parenting. The reason DOOM and such games are blamed for Columbines is because few parents would blame themselves. I place the blame nowhere else.
This system sits down and reviews the content BEFORE the child accesses it. The system then accesses an internal database of classifications ratings, also called "judgement", to determine whether the content is suitable for the child's consumption. The parent then stands by while the child plays the game / watches the movie / whatever and answers questions and provides guidance. THIS is an effective Ratings System; a parent that cares for its child and keeps a careful eye on their development.
DOOM is not responsible for Columbine and similar tragedies. The modern belief that institutionalized child care and upbringing is somehow effective is at fault. Children spend their early years in "day care" centers where they're usually just plopped down in front of a TV with no one to talk to, nothing to learn, and no one to love them. Then they go home to be ignored or even beaten by their parents, more and more of whom are having children younger and younger and are thus incompetents at the tough job parenting is. In their high school years, when they're most confused and trying to chart a tough course between learning to be good or evil, is when their parents are still not there for them and not interested in spending time with them. These children need their parents to BE there for them and notice when they're hurting, and they're not.
But, as someone once pointed out to me on
Feels like an episode of "Sick Sad World". =/
-Kasreyn
Which is what would happen if he used encryption. Don't you know that crypto turns law abiding citizens into pot-smoking, pipe-bomb-making terrorists? Sheesh. Bush is way smarter than YOU, apparently. =P
;-)
To be serious though, Colonel Klink (response just above mine) has it right on the nail. Though the guy deserves his right to privacy in his private life (a right which I think was stolen from Clinton by the Lewinsky circus), he IS the POTUS, and as such, his communications while acting as such are and should be openly available. The whole purpose of this law is to prevent things like Nixon's 18.5 minute gap from being used to deceive the public. If all our lawmakers started using crypto, we'd suddenly have no clue what they were up to until they did it.
Cnn reports: "And the Senate has, today, passed a bill striking down the Bill Of Rights. It was unkown to CNN that such a bill was being considered, as it was encrypted heavily and not made available to the public. The ACLU immediately registered a protest, and head ACLU officials are now being held in an undisclosed federal prison. And the Seargent who's holding a gun to my head has just handed me another amazing news break..."
Be glad our "leaders" are mostly too dumb to use crypto. Oh, and be glad our military isn't that dumb.
-Kasreyn
...surprisingly, there are many people in this world who don't understand the concept of civil disobedience, ie., nonviolently disobeying unjust laws. If Freenet were outlawed, yes, it would still be hard to stop. But it would be mostly stopped.
The vast majority of people let their governments think for them. If the government says Freenet is the abode of perverts, terrorists, and hackers (a term that I expect will be even more vilified in the coming years), then the average person will see Freenet as a den of evil. Freenet users will be stigmatized and criminalized.
What's more, there may well BE ways to attack and/or shut down Freenet nodes. Freenet isn't that old and hasn't had as much extensive field testing as other networking protocols like TCP/IP; we don't know all the vulnerabilities yet. Furthermore, while hiding the node contents from the server sysadmin would seem to grant him "deniability", that only works in a sane country. I fully expect that such logic will be incomprehensible to judges and politicians, to whom any Freenet user will be seen as a sicko terrorist trying to hide behind the Constitution.
And remember kids, when sickos and terrorists hide behind the constitution, it's best to ignore the stupid thing so you can tell your constituents you're tough on crime! After all, who cares about some piece of paper written more than 200 years ago? Not us!
I'm not saying people should stop copying and swapping mp3's. If the RIAA had been more (much more) reasonable about this, then yes, I would have been in favor of stopping the pirating. But after their recent actions, including their attempts to weasel out of paying royalties to the actual ARTISTS they claim to represent, screw them. I think the RIAA deserves to go down hard, so swap those mp3's folks. Just don't do it on Freenet until AFTER the RIAA's dead (should only take a few years).
The thing we need to remember is that Freenet is MORE IMPORTANT than this. There are people in dictatorial nations (China etc) who should be able to speak freely. When we say that freedom of speech is an inalienable human right, we should mean what we say and extend it to ALL humans, no matter how evil a government they toil under. And personally, I see the U.S. becoming much more authoritarian, so don't be surprised when you see U.S. citizens turning to Freenet to protect their speech. Congress can't seem to get that "shall make NO LAW" part through their heads.
This is a bigger issue than swapping mp3's, people. For the sake of the people that desperately need Freenet, we need to keep our eyes on the goal.
-Kasreyn
..politically, just to survive. Freenet has to, and I mean HAS to, distance itself from the mp3 issue. If it gets heralded as the new free mp3 swapping online site, it will not last half as long as Napster did. Freenet needs to make it VERY clear that its primary concern is providing a network for freedom of speech online.
While this will be repugnant to many in power, if Freenet avoids being labelled "Napster II" by the mass media, the RIAA might not come down on it like a total ton of bricks. Or at least they might not throw enough money at it to buy any amount of judges and congresspersons. I'm not saying Freenet should lick the RIAA's boots, but it should definitely NOT come across with the "fuck you" attitude Napster had.
But if Freenet IS seen as the "new Napster", and if 15 million 14 year olds hop onto it so they can download Dr. Dre, you can be sure that no judge or congressperson will be capable of seeing a difference between the two, especially with the RIAA lobbyists battering down their doors. Freenet, instead of going massively public, should go *mildly* public and try to avoid being seen as the new mp3 swap system. Let Gnutella take that rap.
I'm as much against the RIAA as anyone here, but the more I learn about Freenet, the more I think it would be a tragedy to make this mistake and see Freenet ruined. This has real potential, and I'd hate to see it end prematurely because of the sympathy for the RIAA that arrogant Napsterites stirred in the government.
Not a flamebait, but what I really think. Try responding rather than moderating, huh?
-Kasreyn
"No points for originality, but how are they bad?"
Heheh, answered your own question.
What EA does is buy a little company that has made one or two creative games, then strings them along for as long as making unimaginative hack sequels remains profitable. EA *never* takes a risk on an "untested" game idea that isn't sure to sell like hotcakes; you will never see anything imaginative or new out of them. At EA, the marketing guys are in firm control of the game development guys, and it shows.
And I for one am VERY tired of same-old, same-old. My comp. game collection has grown to the range of over 70 titles. It will take something new and/or imaginative to make me open my wallet for a whole 50 bucks. I'm certainly not paying 50 bucks for a slick EA clone of a game I already have. C&C:RA2, DK2, and Diablo 2 (though EA doesn't own Blizz yet) were all so terrible, it's completely turned me off sequels.
It's up to the Peter Molyneux's and Sid Meiers of the world to think up something NEW for us. We need a creative mind, unhindered by questions of whether a game is a tried and tested big seller, to come up with something worth playing. Instead we have John Romero sitting back and brainstorming: Gamers want remakes! Nope, sorry, John. Go away.
-Kasreyn
P.S. If you don't think C&C:RA2 bites hard enough to bite in allcaps, play through the single player campaigns and watch the cut movies. Then watch them again. Keep a barf bag close at hand.
no text. Damn, I should really use Preview a bit more often. ;-)
It's a new god sim, but everyone expects god sims from Molyneaux, that's his expertise... what makes B&W unique is your CHOICE.
In Populous, you were sometimes vengeful, but usually just power-oriented. Not really good or evil.
In the Dungeon Keeper games, you were very clearly focussed on pure, diabolical Evil. All the way.
B&W is cool because you can choose which path to walk... Good, Evil, or really anything in between as far as I've been able to figure out. This alone should more than double the replay value, as you take tactics in Good and see how they work in Evil. IE., how effective might a certain grand strategy be when applied by force and terror, or with caring and peace? Fascinating, Captain.
-Kasreyn
"I don't see any reason for the ASPCA to complain. I mean really, who here believes that the game Black and White would entice youngins around the world to commit cruelty to animals?"
...the same people who think digital images of fake child porn will entice pedophiles and thus should be illegal.
Oh, you meant that rhetorically? Either way, expect to see the game banned in places if the ACLU ever takes a look at it.
-Kasreyn
EA ruins every company they get. Westwood ruled (Dune II, C&C). Oh look, EA buys Westwood, damn, now it BITES (C&C:RA2). Bullfrog was brilliant(Populous, Dungeon Keeper). Oh look, EA buys Bullfrog, now it SUCKS (DK2).
I'm only hoping Lionhead can get off one great game before EA ruins it as well, with its lowest common denominator marketing style. B&W is the only comp game I intend to spend any money on this year... I was thinking on WC III, but after Blizz's recent actions and the suckiness of D2, I'm done with Blizzard. Not to mention WC III appears to be heading the wrong way (away from massive tactical epic warfare, towards small parties of warriors necessitated by each one being rendered like a Q3a bot). id's DOOM III is all set to be the biggest joke of a game in years. So it looks like we're all riding on Peter Molyneaux to strike creative gold again, either that or the Miller brothers can come out of the woodwork with another Myst clone. Other than that, I see very little of interest on offer this year.
Yawn...
Where have all the good game makers gone?
-Kasreyn
Didn't really need /. just to tell me Fox are a bunch of slimeballs. This has been common knowledge for the past, oh, decade...
;-P
Lord only knows how a good show like The Simpsons managed to stay on Fox for so long... IIRC they even had an episode blasting Fox the way they attack everything else... I guess Fox is just asleep at the switch, either that or their legions of Simpsons fans have them by the short hairs.
-Kasreyn
I'm not saying I *like* the idea of having my bandwidth monitored, but I don't see any options that aren't considerably worse. The internet is a new thing, it's still in flux, but I see it settling down as another "service" that everyone will want to have in his house.
The American Dream has been updated: Now it's not only a house in the suburbs, SUV, 2.2 kids, a dog and a wife, it also includes broadband internet access.
So if bandwidth is going to become a commonplace service, I'd MUCH rather pay for what I'm using instead of being forced to subsidize the RIAA just because I "might" download their stuff.
-Kasreyn
those that don't pay the extra fee can have the servers blocked. I don't see why it should be any more than a couple bucks per month, but any ISP would make it more than necessary.
Definitely this. I would refuse to use an ISP that charged extra across the board due to Napster and the RIAA. I don't use Napster or view streaming videos or any of that shit, why should I pay for everyone on my ISP doing so? Rather, I should pay a lower fee because a.) I'm not using up so much bandwidth and b.) I'm not getting copies of the RIAA's materials, so I don't owe them a fscking dime.
I much prefer the pay-per-bandwidth model, which I believe will be getting more accurate in the future until finally it will be metered as commonly and ubiquitously as power service is now. I can only hope that in the future all the bandwidth isn't controlled by AOL or its subsidiaries, who seem to be gobbling up every small ISP in sight... (sigh)
-Kasreyn
You *could* provide some commentary to let us know what this link IS before we go unleashing the /. effect hither, thither and yon, eh?
/.'s editors could be replaced by a post sifting script that rates the value of a submission by whether it contains weighted words like "Linux", "Napster", "RIAA", "FBI", "Carnivore"... Hmmm, wonder if this is the case already? =P
I'm personally wondering if some of
-Kasreyn
I was kind of expecting someone to bring up Ellison's nice little vindictive anti-Roddenberry take... you beat me to the punch on the response though. =)
Glad to see Harlan can't get away with obscuring the truth too far... Gene didn't ever deserve the way Ellison treated him. =/
Of course, I only defend Roddenberry so much because he's my hero. =)
-Kasreyn
Take the time he was writing for Roddenberry on a ST Original Series. He wrote a great script for City on the Edge (IIRC), it was beautiful, emotional, masterful. And completely undoable as a television episode. Literally, it was impossible to do on a TV show in the 60's, especially on ST's limited budget. His script called for things like hundreds of extras and impossible special effects shots. So Gene asked Ellison for a rewrite, and Ellison refused. He went apeshit all over Roddenberry and flat out refused to rewrite his script so that it would be useful. Finally, they could wait no longer on him and had to drop his script and get a reworked one done up, Ellison screaming bloody murder the whole time. Then when he was honored with an award (I think it was a Hugo, not sure) for his original script, Ellison sent a big "I told you so" Roddenberry's way.
The man may have a distinct talent for the written word, but he seriously needs to grow up some. And he needs to jettison some of his attitude while he's at it. The ALLCAPS, though it's been mentioned above in this discussion, is just an indicator of his propensity for overreaction.
-Kasreyn
P.S. Harlan, I hand-copy manuscripts of your books for my friends and family. Come get me! =P
A little tip for you: if consumers are uninformed about their options, they will make poor buying decisions. This is the entertainment industry's entire goal in a nutshell. This is why, DECSS. This is why, CPRM. This is why, .NET If they don't KNOW computing can be any better than this, they won't be upset when it's taken away from them. You can't miss what you never knew you had.
/. to boycott the new computer toys. Hmm, ok, if 1/10th of slashdotters take your advice (which I think is a VERY generous estimate) we're talking less than 40,000 people.
Yeah, wow, you call for
Hear that great, roaring noise? That's the RIAA laughing at you.
(sigh)
-Kasreyn
I don't own a TV precisely because there's nothing worth watching on it except the news and the Simpsons, and the news is mostly misreported and hugely biased (much like /. ;-)
;-). And the new internet might even resurrect Usenet if someone will get down to business and crack Google/Deja to get the old posts back. ;-) Of course, I personally have nothing but disgust for posters who let anyone else have the rights to their posts, and they kinda deserve what they got.
So why the hell do I want my PC to become a new form of TV? That's bullshit. I try to teach every net newbie I meet what the internet SHOULD be, what it was, at least.
It's a winnowing-out process, you see. First you add a huge amount of new users who don't know what the internet was originally like. To give an example, modern SAT tests could convincingly include "internet access" and "satellite TV" in an analogy. Then, you criminalize and dehumanize the few (relatively) remaining people online who refuse to be a cog in the marketing machine. Once you can criminalize them, you can get rid of them.
I foresee a time when anyone who is NOT online via AOL etc will be considered dangerous and a cybercriminal. IMO, if that's what's going to happen anyway: create a new net, hopefully based on Freenet's topology or something very like it, for the "digerati" to move to. (Gawd, I hate that term, makes me think of starbucks-frequenting latte-sipping Wired-reading twerps, or in Denis Leary's words, "haiku-writing motherfuckers")
This new net will have the disadvantage that it will also be looked on with suspicion and denounced by politicians as the abode of "hackers", "terrorists", and "child pornography"... But at least we evil monsters will be safely hidden away where the AOLers wouldn't be in any danger of catching our cooties. I think that may actually be a solution.
Then the computer plebes can stay on the old internet and use it for their mp3's and their Jerry Springer streaming video and their online shopping and their cotton-candy-censored-"for the children!!" content. Who cares? Let them have what they want. If a cable modem is just another form of satellite TV box in their opinion, who am I to stop them from enjoying it?
As for me, I would move to the "new" internet where one might be able to have an intelligent conversation and do some coding and/or get some pr0n and/or play violent games. And maybe NOT get 3 million unwanted ads for penis enlargement in my email (which is actually kind of an insult when you think of it
-Kasreyn
I never spotted one for absolute certain before. He has no clue what he's talking about, but he gets +2 Insightful because he rubs /. moderators the right way.
Look at that beautiful plumage!!
-Kasreyn
This is what they've been doing. They alienate their fans by cracking down on "pirating", but whenever their profits show a dip, they immediately shriek that their business is being ruined by evil pirates.
They're not shooting themselves in the foot here... they're planning for the future. If they can bite the bullet and eat a loss now (as disgruntled 16 year olds quit buying music, waah), then they can whine about their losses to the government and get even MORE restrictive copy-protection laws passed. Their ultimate aim is to do away with fair use altogether, and go to a pay-per-listen model. And then they can rake it in.
Very clever, in fact.
-Kasreyn