You're free to do whatever you want with those CDs: Use them at coasters, throw them at kids, grind them up and put the powder in your coffee. This is true with HL2, MS Windows, Adobe Photoshop, and most other software out there. Whether the game was downloaded or bought on CD isn't really important.
Am I free to copy that cd ? (whether for my own use or not).
The mere fact that you've paid your subscription fee motivates you to keep playing, even when it's not really "fun" to do so.
I gotta disagree, I pay a monthly subscription fee for cable TV, Internet access, even cable modem rental but I feel no increased urge to watch / surf then if I'd paid X dollars for Y hours.
I don't really think its the same, tv can never offer you an interactive pseudo existance like MMORPGs can. I have purposely decided to avoid such games not because I am likely to get addicted but just because it seems like so much effort (and money) for so little reward.
Its by no means certain that people can be weaned off the simplicity of a everyone being able to open a.doc file.
However it definitely won't happen if there is no format to rival ms word. I'll agree it seems unlikely that a new format will become number 1 but you never know. With SP2 for xp microsoft have basically admitted to their users that their software has "security issues". Security is something which could push people towards other software and new formats. If the format is ISO approved and many people are using it then MS might be forced to support it as well.
I think the parent posters point is that if you cant design, develop, manufacture, market, sell and support at a more affordable price point then you will be just as likely to go out of business.
The things that would bring these devices into the mainstream despite the cost are
What exactly is a mainstream use for these devices ?, why would everyone want one (even non geeks).
I think these are obviously speciality items, if need a small computer at your hand at any time then this is for you. But most people don't have any use for such a device.
If a simple low-cost receiver costing about $65, I think that's alot cheaper than U.S public education. I really don't know how edumacation money is spent in the U.S. Teachers are low paid, principal might be better, but all resources don't remotely add up to our tax dollars. Though all in all that's still better than colleges. Which now charges $65,000 easily in two years.
Education in the US must be bad judging your grammar and spelling.
Whore your vote out if you want, I vote for who I want to see run the country, not for who I don't.
You are very misguided.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the rest" - can't remember who said it
The power of democracy is not in voting people in, its in voting people out. Given enough time even the most honest man will be corrupted by power or screwup in some other way. Then its time to vote in the people that have learnt from the previous governments mistake.
It doesn't really matter exactly who gets in power and when, all that matters is that we keep changing our government regularly, pushing politicians to work for their people whatever party they ascribe to.
Democracy is as much of a negative process as a positive one.
It's been raised before on slashdot but I like the idea of a intellectual property tax. Copyrights should last for between 20 and 30 years after which the copyright holder must pay a tax each year to keep the intellectual property out of the public domain. This tax is effectively paying the government to uphold the copyright. If the copyright holder lets a work lapse into a public domain then there should be no way to reclaim it.
This would allow copyright holders to keep hold of the profitable intellectual property (the beatles for example, until they become unprofitable) whilst forcing them to let everything else into the public domain.
Copyright should encourage people to create new work by protecting their work in the short term so they can profit from it. The copyright system at the moment has been skewered towards letting copyright holders profit indefinitely form a single work. This isn't good for soceity and not good for true artists.
All four terrestrial analogue broadcasters have teletext services and the hundreds of terrestrial/cable/satellite broadcasters have similar digital services too.
Don't like to be picky but there are actually Five terrestial analogue broadcasters (although I personally can't get channel 5).
Both Doom and Quake 1 had fantastic level design that really broke new ground. ID also are responsible for basically creating the online multiplayer FPS genre (usually credited to Quake 2, it was present earlier but Q2 was the breakthrough).
But creatively they haven't done anything interesting since Quake 1.
I was dissapointed as well, fanboys will tell you that you have no right to criticise as this is "the original Doom updated, you knew exactly what you were going to get".
That just isn't true, there was more variation between the different levels in the original game than in Doom 3. The dark corridors do their job, this is an incredibly scary game, but gameplay wise it becomes boring and repetitive very quickly.
Graphically it is astounding and no doubt some great games will be made with the engine. But ID is now just a tech house if the lack of gameplay innovation in Doom 3 is anything to go by. We have all laughed at Romero's failings since leaving ID but they need more really creative people like him.
Doom3 isn't a awful game, just not a trailblazer like Doom and Quake were.
Man are you confused. World War One was 1914-1918. It was talked about quite a bit in 1939, actually.
I haven't seen the film but if they did refer to first world war as "World War One" before or during the second world war then that probably wouldn't make much sense. The second world was limited to eurasia and northern africa up until pearl harbour when it became a real world war.
That was bizzare that film, I managed to sit through the first 30 minutes and the story isn't that bad. However the way its all executed is unfathomable, travolta is playing his role very campy while the human characters are trying to be so earnest they seem almost inhuman.
Haven't read the book but i reckon they could of done something really good with it. Shame really.
I don't own a car, I make a point of not owning one but how do you convince Mr Tinyknob in his suv-sports-environment killer to drive something fuel efficient? He's never going to impress people any other way.
Well there is nothing you can practically do right now but just wait until oil prices start to rise (and I mean really rise). It doesn't matter how much westerners love their wasteful energy hungry cars once oil becomes scarce people will be forced to think greener.
While we shouldn't be complacent about pollution I am one of those who thinks that in the long term the earth will survive pretty much anything we throw at it (with the exception of all out nuclear war).
Back in the days when movies didn't open nationwide (let alone worldwide) Kubrick showed different cuts of 2001 a space odyssey in new york and los angeles.
Slashdot Mirror
You're free to do whatever you want with those CDs: Use them at coasters, throw them at kids, grind them up and put the powder in your coffee. This is true with HL2, MS Windows, Adobe Photoshop, and most other software out there. Whether the game was downloaded or bought on CD isn't really important.
Am I free to copy that cd ? (whether for my own use or not).
The sequel, Half-Life 2, has been in the works for almost six years and is one of the most hyped and anticipated games of 2004.
And 2003 as well, but thats a whole other story...
The span of the joint project is limited because type faces of printers used before 1836 are too difficult for optical scanners to read
Surely the OCR process could be recalibrated to identify a different typeface ?
Still not a law.
this is psuedo science at best.
A scientific law should be provable by repetation. You can't know somehting will go wrong every time.
Am I the only one who thinks of cars as functional items ? /couldn't care less what it looks like
I think it was supposed to be Q4 2004 in Japan, then Q1 2005 in the US, followed by a European launch when they can be bothered.
Ahhh, the big N showing there usual amount of respect for us european gamers.
The mere fact that you've paid your subscription fee motivates you to keep playing, even when it's not really "fun" to do so.
I gotta disagree, I pay a monthly subscription fee for cable TV, Internet access, even cable modem rental but I feel no increased urge to watch / surf then if I'd paid X dollars for Y hours.
I don't really think its the same, tv can never offer you an interactive pseudo existance like MMORPGs can. I have purposely decided to avoid such games not because I am likely to get addicted but just because it seems like so much effort (and money) for so little reward.
Why wouldn't this work?
Because this system doesn't give the RIAA their share.
Its by no means certain that people can be weaned off the simplicity of a everyone being able to open a .doc file.
However it definitely won't happen if there is no format to rival ms word. I'll agree it seems unlikely that a new format will become number 1 but you never know. With SP2 for xp microsoft have basically admitted to their users that their software has "security issues". Security is something which could push people towards other software and new formats. If the format is ISO approved and many people are using it then MS might be forced to support it as well.
Sounds like a great way to get rid of nuclear waste. We just have to get over that pesky little 0.5% chance of explosion on lift-off.
Space elevator anyone ?
Why couldn't we just put it on the bottom on the ocean and leave it there ? especially if we can turn it into a stable solid...
I think the parent posters point is that if you cant design, develop, manufacture, market, sell and support at a more affordable price point then you will be just as likely to go out of business.
Why develop something no one wants ?
The things that would bring these devices into the mainstream despite the cost are
What exactly is a mainstream use for these devices ?, why would everyone want one (even non geeks).
I think these are obviously speciality items, if need a small computer at your hand at any time then this is for you. But most people don't have any use for such a device.
If a simple low-cost receiver costing about $65, I think that's alot cheaper than U.S public education. I really don't know how edumacation money is spent in the U.S. Teachers are low paid, principal might be better, but all resources don't remotely add up to our tax dollars. Though all in all that's still better than colleges. Which now charges $65,000 easily in two years.
Education in the US must be bad judging your grammar and spelling.
Did you think it was strange that bert and ernie used to live together ?
Whore your vote out if you want, I vote for who I want to see run the country, not for who I don't.
You are very misguided.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the rest" - can't remember who said it
The power of democracy is not in voting people in, its in voting people out. Given enough time even the most honest man will be corrupted by power or screwup in some other way. Then its time to vote in the people that have learnt from the previous governments mistake.
It doesn't really matter exactly who gets in power and when, all that matters is that we keep changing our government regularly, pushing politicians to work for their people whatever party they ascribe to.
Democracy is as much of a negative process as a positive one.
It's been raised before on slashdot but I like the idea of a intellectual property tax. Copyrights should last for between 20 and 30 years after which the copyright holder must pay a tax each year to keep the intellectual property out of the public domain. This tax is effectively paying the government to uphold the copyright. If the copyright holder lets a work lapse into a public domain then there should be no way to reclaim it.
This would allow copyright holders to keep hold of the profitable intellectual property (the beatles for example, until they become unprofitable) whilst forcing them to let everything else into the public domain.
Copyright should encourage people to create new work by protecting their work in the short term so they can profit from it. The copyright system at the moment has been skewered towards letting copyright holders profit indefinitely form a single work. This isn't good for soceity and not good for true artists.
All four terrestrial analogue broadcasters have teletext services and the hundreds of terrestrial/cable/satellite broadcasters have similar digital services too.
Don't like to be picky but there are actually Five terrestial analogue broadcasters (although I personally can't get channel 5).
Both Doom and Quake 1 had fantastic level design that really broke new ground. ID also are responsible for basically creating the online multiplayer FPS genre (usually credited to Quake 2, it was present earlier but Q2 was the breakthrough).
But creatively they haven't done anything interesting since Quake 1.
I was dissapointed as well, fanboys will tell you that you have no right to criticise as this is "the original Doom updated, you knew exactly what you were going to get".
That just isn't true, there was more variation between the different levels in the original game than in Doom 3. The dark corridors do their job, this is an incredibly scary game, but gameplay wise it becomes boring and repetitive very quickly.
Graphically it is astounding and no doubt some great games will be made with the engine. But ID is now just a tech house if the lack of gameplay innovation in Doom 3 is anything to go by. We have all laughed at Romero's failings since leaving ID but they need more really creative people like him.
Doom3 isn't a awful game, just not a trailblazer like Doom and Quake were.
Man are you confused. World War One was 1914-1918. It was talked about quite a bit in 1939, actually.
I haven't seen the film but if they did refer to first world war as "World War One" before or during the second world war then that probably wouldn't make much sense. The second world was limited to eurasia and northern africa up until pearl harbour when it became a real world war.
That was bizzare that film, I managed to sit through the first 30 minutes and the story isn't that bad. However the way its all executed is unfathomable, travolta is playing his role very campy while the human characters are trying to be so earnest they seem almost inhuman.
Haven't read the book but i reckon they could of done something really good with it. Shame really.
I don't own a car, I make a point of not owning one but how do you convince Mr Tinyknob in his suv-sports-environment killer to drive something fuel efficient? He's never going to impress people any other way.
Well there is nothing you can practically do right now but just wait until oil prices start to rise (and I mean really rise). It doesn't matter how much westerners love their wasteful energy hungry cars once oil becomes scarce people will be forced to think greener.
While we shouldn't be complacent about pollution I am one of those who thinks that in the long term the earth will survive pretty much anything we throw at it (with the exception of all out nuclear war).
Film revisionism is new at all.
Back in the days when movies didn't open nationwide (let alone worldwide) Kubrick showed different cuts of 2001 a space odyssey in new york and los angeles.