I'm not really clear on what the resistance is to this. The moviemakers are publishing original content to the web that does not appear in the movie. This content enhances and expands upon a popular science fiction universe. Even if the viewer had no intention of seeing the movie, these scenes expand on the Firefly series in a way that anyone who has watched the show can appreciate.
This is less like Linus selling paper cups, and more like Linus releasing a mini-distro. It is geeky, it is interesting, and it is free. I, for one, am quite glad that this news made it to Slashdot.
If you look at the site amarodeeps linked to in his comment, a cardstealer like the one shown would be able to steal swipes without too much difficulty. If you haven't seen the ATM before and don't know what it is supposed to look like, it will look quite natural. Most folks don't use the same ATM often enough to remember that the card guides on the sides weren't there last time.
I would guess that political reasons figure into the picture. Building rocket facilities further south would likely raise the concerns of a number of nations. By placing the facility to the north, they probably avoided a great deal of slowdown.
If one equates different looking graphics with innovation, then all Mods are doomed to fail. Each engine does indeed have its own look to the lighting and textures of the world.
In my mind, making original material is more about changing the actual gameplay.
Half-Life Multiplayer: - Kill one another repeatedly, racking up the most frags to win
Counterstrike: - Play on as team to eliminate the other side through force of arms, or by completing mission objectives. If you are killed, you are out for the rest of the round. Performance during a round results in money to buy new equiptment.
Natural Selection: - Aliens and Marines battle against each other to destroy one another's bases. A commander leads the marines from a top-down perspective, ordering them to build defensive structures, purchasing upgrades and equiptment, and giving them directions. Each alien chooses at any time which of the available forms it wishes to become, be it a structure builder, wall walking killer, or giant beast.
The engine gives a framework, but new engines are becoming more and more flexible as to what they can do, allowing a great opening for those who want to play a new style of game.
Engines like Half-Life can go a long way from what they were originaly built for. Take a look at Natural Selection where the gameplay is nothing at all like the original Half-Life. It has elements of RTS, top down commander views, structure building, classes, equiptment, etc.
When an engine is exposed to modding, many many interesting things can be done with it.
The trouble with this is that the law is amazingly broad, as many have pointed out. It bars 'violence against law enforcement officials'. Even if it presumably excludes officials of other/mythical countries (SS officers, stormtroopers, police of the dark lord Exoth, etc), it also would bar games where a player was in the role of an officer.
Minors in Washington State will not be able to play a game where a Detective Friday fights drug kingpins, if those criminals shoot at him. It's violence against an officer.
Using laws to regulate morality is always a dicy proposition. In this case, the law bans an amazingly large number of games one would otherwise deem acceptable.
Presumably they are trying to paralell the tower of babylon and the twin towers. Supposedly, the tower of babylon failed because the builders could not speak to one another.
Their logo seems to be implying that sept 11 could have been prevented with better communication and understanding of language. Like the TOB, the WTC might not have fallen if people could actually speak to one another (or gather better intelligence, or not anger other nationalities, etc, etc). The 'remember' at the bottom also seems to back this up - trying to tie the lessons of the past to the events of the present.
Many people have suggested that there was a failure in airport security which allowed the terrorists to get onboard the plane... this is not necessarily the case. It appears at this point that the terrorists used knives and "box cutters" to take over the planes. If under 4 inches the knives would have easily (and legally) passed the checkpoints without question. As small as box cutters are (essentially razor blades with handles), they would also be considered fine for flight by security checkpoints. In this case, there *was* no failure in airport security.
As for longer blades, I found an interesting discussion on airport knife policies, and the ease of sneaking knives longer than 4" here.
If a person wishes to have a weapon onboard an airplane, there are any number of legal or undetectable ways to carry on, construct, or even fake one. No number of regulations can prevent this... there can only be adequate security measures onboard the plane to deal with such problems.
Massively Multiplayer games could certainly benifit from this tech - Imagine defining your own dwarven accent during character creation. The downside to such a feature is that with any global chat, you wouldn't be able to hear the environment in all the chatter.
~Giddeon
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not really clear on what the resistance is to this. The moviemakers are publishing original content to the web that does not appear in the movie. This content enhances and expands upon a popular science fiction universe. Even if the viewer had no intention of seeing the movie, these scenes expand on the Firefly series in a way that anyone who has watched the show can appreciate.
This is less like Linus selling paper cups, and more like Linus releasing a mini-distro. It is geeky, it is interesting, and it is free. I, for one, am quite glad that this news made it to Slashdot.
Having seen a preview showing, I can tell you that they are exclusive original content.
In my mind viral marketing is not a bad thing - it's like a company giving out free swag. Everyone loves swag!
Fabien Cousteau: "I took nature's most perfect killing machine, and needlessly turned it into a robot!"
If you look at the site amarodeeps linked to in his comment, a cardstealer like the one shown would be able to steal swipes without too much difficulty. If you haven't seen the ATM before and don't know what it is supposed to look like, it will look quite natural. Most folks don't use the same ATM often enough to remember that the card guides on the sides weren't there last time.
Firefly is a canceled science fiction program that once aired on Fox, and is now being made into a movie.
Dregonfly BSD is a fork of FreeBSD, taking a look at scalability.
I would guess that political reasons figure into the picture. Building rocket facilities further south would likely raise the concerns of a number of nations. By placing the facility to the north, they probably avoided a great deal of slowdown.
Time.
If not in making products, then in transporting them from one place to another.
If one equates different looking graphics with innovation, then all Mods are doomed to fail. Each engine does indeed have its own look to the lighting and textures of the world.
In my mind, making original material is more about changing the actual gameplay.
Half-Life Multiplayer:
- Kill one another repeatedly, racking up the most frags to win
Counterstrike:
- Play on as team to eliminate the other side through force of arms, or by completing mission objectives. If you are killed, you are out for the rest of the round. Performance during a round results in money to buy new equiptment.
Natural Selection:
- Aliens and Marines battle against each other to destroy one another's bases. A commander leads the marines from a top-down perspective, ordering them to build defensive structures, purchasing upgrades and equiptment, and giving them directions. Each alien chooses at any time which of the available forms it wishes to become, be it a structure builder, wall walking killer, or giant beast.
The engine gives a framework, but new engines are becoming more and more flexible as to what they can do, allowing a great opening for those who want to play a new style of game.
Engines like Half-Life can go a long way from what they were originaly built for. Take a look at Natural Selection where the gameplay is nothing at all like the original Half-Life. It has elements of RTS, top down commander views, structure building, classes, equiptment, etc.
When an engine is exposed to modding, many many interesting things can be done with it.
Sounds like a wonderful geek tracking project in the making.
The trouble with this is that the law is amazingly broad, as many have pointed out. It bars 'violence against law enforcement officials'. Even if it presumably excludes officials of other/mythical countries (SS officers, stormtroopers, police of the dark lord Exoth, etc), it also would bar games where a player was in the role of an officer.
Minors in Washington State will not be able to play a game where a Detective Friday fights drug kingpins, if those criminals shoot at him. It's violence against an officer.
Using laws to regulate morality is always a dicy proposition. In this case, the law bans an amazingly large number of games one would otherwise deem acceptable.
Presumably they are trying to paralell the tower of babylon and the twin towers. Supposedly, the tower of babylon failed because the builders could not speak to one another.
Their logo seems to be implying that sept 11 could have been prevented with better communication and understanding of language. Like the TOB, the WTC might not have fallen if people could actually speak to one another (or gather better intelligence, or not anger other nationalities, etc, etc). The 'remember' at the bottom also seems to back this up - trying to tie the lessons of the past to the events of the present.
It's the fire-breathing cat I can't figure out.
Many people have suggested that there was a failure in airport security which allowed the terrorists to get onboard the plane... this is not necessarily the case. It appears at this point that the terrorists used knives and "box cutters" to take over the planes. If under 4 inches the knives would have easily (and legally) passed the checkpoints without question. As small as box cutters are (essentially razor blades with handles), they would also be considered fine for flight by security checkpoints. In this case, there *was* no failure in airport security.
As for longer blades, I found an interesting discussion on airport knife policies, and the ease of sneaking knives longer than 4" here.
If a person wishes to have a weapon onboard an airplane, there are any number of legal or undetectable ways to carry on, construct, or even fake one. No number of regulations can prevent this... there can only be adequate security measures onboard the plane to deal with such problems.
~Giddeon
Massively Multiplayer games could certainly benifit from this tech - Imagine defining your own dwarven accent during character creation. The downside to such a feature is that with any global chat, you wouldn't be able to hear the environment in all the chatter. ~Giddeon