Thereby demonstrating that Code and Speech do need some slightly different approaches to enforcement and/or regulation.
Because the EULA is clearly a bunch of bullshit that I can ignore. Oh, they can write it, and waste a lot of money trying to enforce that I delete all of my laptop's files when someone borrows my CD and accidentally uses it as a toilet paper stand, but ultimately it's a work of madness.
Their rootkit, on the other hand, can f**k up my computer, and allow it to be used as a tool for spam, for DoS attacks, for general mayhem and chaos. It's beyond quixotic and it's beyond petulant (which their EULA is): it's destructive.
I'm not saying they can't just write stupid EULAs all they want. They should be able to, and the law should continue to laugh at their deranged pseudolegal ravings. But they shouldn't be allowed to put that kind of code on their CDs. They should be punished, and criminally.
I can't help but think that hearing voices associated with Star Trek, TNG and such will not exactly be making a positive contribution to the immersive suspension of disbelief which so distinguished Orson Welles' original broadcast.
I don't think thousandss of people are going to be running into the streets after hearing Patrick Stewart and Leonary Nimoy, f'rinstance, declaring that aliens are among us...
Ten million dollars is far, far less than the cost of marketing Sony's latest bomb in the theatres. Like, if they released "Monster in Law 2: Electric Boogaloo" J.Lo and J.Fo's poster airbrushing would cost more. They pay a pittance and "promise not to do it again"? This is punishment?
No, Payola isn't huge as far as its consequences for graver political issues, but it does help to silence the musical voices of this generation, basically pumping industry misinformation along the channels that are supposed to represent public opinion.
Seriously: astroturfing request lines? Like that's going to give them any real info on people's buying preferences? They bathe in their own bullshit, they deserve the hilarious business consequences. They should probably enjoy more legal consequences but that's just not how our system's built.
Besides, it's not like we're never going to hear good, original music again. I haven't listened to a radio DJ for a long fuckin' time.
Obviously, what we need to do is get rid of all the stupid people. I suggest telling them there is a giant space goat coming to eat the planet and putting them all on some kind of space ark.
So who's going to protect you from the scourge of dirty telephones?
'Cause I've seen what you do with your telephone when nobody else is in the room.
Not going to bother modding you down; just want to point out that you really, really didn't get it.
Stewart wasn't pushing a dialectical approach at all. He was launching a scathing attack on the approach that Crossfire takes to issues: attempting to reduce them to oversimplified generalizations, as "the left view" and "the right view". Neither side's commentator attempts to present a well-constructed or thoughtful argument, merely to attack the issue from a hamfisted, generalized trajectory.
Stewart's show attempts to do some degree of analysis, even if it is a satirical or ironic analysis. The point he was raising, with Begala and Carlson, was that there is no analysis whatsoever in Crossfire, nor in most media.
I think that the InterOperability loophole in the "worst law" will mean that Microsoft will come out with a hamstrung version for Apple and Linux, or that Jon Johanssen or someone of comparable proclivity will have to fight off another lawsuit...
Removal of LaTex is not all that good. Lots of scientific and mathematic users need that for their formula-laden documents. And surprise there are a LOT of Linux users who are sci/mathies. I guess one could argue "then they should just install a distro themselves" but if the portability and applicability of a Linux distribution is a consideration, ie. they're going to use Knoppix on their laptop or a secondary computer, wouldn't it be terribly useful to have a TeX formatting app installed?
I mean... isn't UNIX originally conceived for scientific and mathematical applications, for which... ack.
Anyway, I'll just assume that OpenOffice.org has some kind of TeX-formatting facility which justified LaTeX's removal. Can anyone give us an indication as to whether this is the case?
Wing Commander the game series, particularly III and IV, were actually great sci-fi cinema. The cutscenes themselves could be cobbled together with no changes (well, not all the branches, but one path through them) and played on a computer screen, into a camera, on the Sci-Fi channel and would probably get great ratings and sell DVD sets.
The *games were better movies than the movie* by a long way, and had bigger stars (Jason Bernard, Malcolm MacDowell, Mark Hamill, Biff from back to the future I wish I could remember his name, John Rhys-Davies, and John Spencer from West Wing).
Those games were full-on big-budget movies, certainly better than any sci-fi movie available at the time (the mid '90s being something of an abhorable drought as far as science-fiction cinema went). Wing Commander IV was actually a *great* movie.
PCs give a tremendous amount of control over the user experience, and a tremendous amount of flexibility for game design, that most consoles don't allow (or at the very most, exploit).
Keyboard and mouse control have already been mentioned. Let's take it a step further into oddball-land, with trackballs, spaceorbs, cyberman, joysticks, flight harnesses, USB peripherals, voice-activated microphone controls (UT2004)...
Then there's hardware modification. Modding a console voids your warranty and risks prosecution under the DMCA, or at the very least disqualifies you from online gameplay. This is compounded by the fact that to make consoles cost-effective, they need to have lowest-common-denominator performance profiles: the cheapest, minimal amount of RAM necessary to run anticipated games, the most cost-effective processor available when the entire line is published, basically minimal functionality beyond what the designers anticipate. A PC user can increase performance beyond the "specs" by loading up on RAM, high-performance video cards, hard disk space for more saved games, multiple-monitor output... basically, today's PCs have the capacity for levels of performance that even the "next generation" of consoles won't have when they're finally released. 3GHz processors with 1GB of RAM? With increasing bus speed and dedicated graphics processors, the kind of gameplay possible with PC hardware will doubtless exceed what any priced-to-sell console will do (keeping in mind that new consoles will probably go for $299-$399 and lose their vendors millions of dollars in the initial stages).
Of course, there's also software modification. 120GB hard drives mean that we can download Counter Strike and make Half Life into a whole new game. We can download Enemy Territory, Aliens for Doom, or Quake Rally, or any of thousands of mods which make our game into something wholly new. We can create, share, and seek out new third-pary maps, models, skins and rules for our FPSs, and gameplay experiences like Neverwinter Nights (as opposed to just MMORPGs) become possible. At the least, gameplay becomes more participatory and creative, and in many cases, game design careers are launched this way.
It's commonly noted that progress in technology is driven by two applications: porn and games. If consoles become the only venue for gaming, tech progress will face a glacial pace of innovation. While "the gameplay experience" hasn't been pushed on the PC recently thanks to gaming market stagnation into a few reasonably-successful genres, the capacity for PC gameplay innovation has always been vast; this can lead to new ideas in UI, in AI, in graphics quality and performance, sound, in modifiability (is that a word?).
The only real qualm people seem to have with the PC as a game platform is that games don't seem to sell too well. Well, some of them do. Others just don't seem to sell well enough to justify Hollywood-level production values. Ingenuity can come from smaller development studios too, and the nature of the PC and Internet allow these studios channels of distribution distinct from the Big Studio's dominance of shelf space in EBGames. Doom was an object lesson in this, but it doesn't end there. At least, hopefully it won't. Steam, for all its faults, is a bold new way to sell games; in an ideal world, Valve would open up Steam as a shareware distribution system, with new demos and for-purchase games showing up there from time to time.
Well, there's one more point to make about GameCube's similarity to Apple, and it's the presence of a PowerPC CPU (not to mention the cube form factor).
Still... the lack of DVD functionality can be a minor drawback if one is cramped for space, power outlets, or wiring acumen. It can be quite handy to have a single system do everything. On the other hand, it's better in the long run to have a few systems, each doing something well.
But I wanted to point out something related to Dr. Doombender's assessment of the "value-priced" field, and that's the "Player's Choice" line for GameCube (which already includes Pikmin, Animal Crossing, and Metroid Prime, probably among others). GameCube has the advantage that most of its first-party or platform-exclusive games are long-lived, rock-solid paragons of game design. You're correct that it suffers, on the other hand, from a lack of catalogue depth. If you're the type who grinds through games quickly and needs a new fix ASAP, the GameCube really doesn't have shelves and shelves of old, discounted, used, or legacy games to work with.
I mean, you could get the GameBoy Player, but that's a whole other story.
Loath to cite Ananova, but there's a "virtual keyboard" you might be able to look into. Projects light onto a surface, and you type by interrupting the beams.
We've gotta ban that stuff, all the kids are gonna start using it, and then we'll never get them to stop. It's addictive... I've had like 5 doses today...
Having now read Shirky's article, I think that the Slashdot headline should absolutely be changed to read "Fear of the RIAA". Right now it's misleading, resulting in ill-informed or slightly off-topic posts like the first one I made (*blush*)
Before I read the article, I'll just point out that the Cypherpunks' "eat your peas" approach actually gives the users control over how their anonymity and security takes place. Sure it gives you more responsibility -- you have to buy the locks yourself -- but it also gives you control over how it happens. You basically only have to trust the person who made the lock, but you can have the blueprints so that you know it works.
RIAA-style privacy is basically a Housing Company telling you that they'll take care of everything, and that you don't need to worry because you're probably safe. Note, of course, that the RIAA companies are the types whose security has been foiled by such stunning feats of ingenuity as writing on a CD with a magic marker, or an algorithm written by a 16-year-old that can be implemented using as much space as fits on the side of a pencil.
What the RIAA gets people to adopt is the style of "no-brainer" security people are used to when they get their lockers broken into at the gym, as opposed to asking us to take some frickin' responsibility for ourselves as the Cypherpunks would urge.
Indeed, the capture of Saddam will hopefully end the war. If we wanted less fighting, we wanted this to happen as soon as possible.
That they didn't capture him immediately meant the war went on, and on, and on... not that it was easy to find him, of course. Congratulations to the U.S. Army and the Coalition of the Recipients of Contracts.
He was wearing a red-striped sweater and toque, hiding in a crowd of people. Luckily we had a 7-year-old kid with us.....no, no, no. Well, at least there is no longer the excuse that Hussein is loose. If the attacks continue -- if this effort to suppress and dominate Iraq by US forces still meets with resistance -- there's not a lot of recourse anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.billywest.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID =2018 -- Billy gets more info from David X. Cohen which is cause for us to hedge our optimism.
I am sad and sorry, guys.
Thereby demonstrating that Code and Speech do need some slightly different approaches to enforcement and/or regulation.
Because the EULA is clearly a bunch of bullshit that I can ignore. Oh, they can write it, and waste a lot of money trying to enforce that I delete all of my laptop's files when someone borrows my CD and accidentally uses it as a toilet paper stand, but ultimately it's a work of madness.
Their rootkit, on the other hand, can f**k up my computer, and allow it to be used as a tool for spam, for DoS attacks, for general mayhem and chaos. It's beyond quixotic and it's beyond petulant (which their EULA is): it's destructive.
I'm not saying they can't just write stupid EULAs all they want. They should be able to, and the law should continue to laugh at their deranged pseudolegal ravings. But they shouldn't be allowed to put that kind of code on their CDs. They should be punished, and criminally.
I can't help but think that hearing voices associated with Star Trek, TNG and such will not exactly be making a positive contribution to the immersive suspension of disbelief which so distinguished Orson Welles' original broadcast.
I don't think thousandss of people are going to be running into the streets after hearing Patrick Stewart and Leonary Nimoy, f'rinstance, declaring that aliens are among us...
Ten million dollars is far, far less than the cost of marketing Sony's latest bomb in the theatres. Like, if they released "Monster in Law 2: Electric Boogaloo" J.Lo and J.Fo's poster airbrushing would cost more. They pay a pittance and "promise not to do it again"? This is punishment?
No, Payola isn't huge as far as its consequences for graver political issues, but it does help to silence the musical voices of this generation, basically pumping industry misinformation along the channels that are supposed to represent public opinion.
Seriously: astroturfing request lines? Like that's going to give them any real info on people's buying preferences? They bathe in their own bullshit, they deserve the hilarious business consequences. They should probably enjoy more legal consequences but that's just not how our system's built.
Besides, it's not like we're never going to hear good, original music again. I haven't listened to a radio DJ for a long fuckin' time.
Obviously, what we need to do is get rid of all the stupid people. I suggest telling them there is a giant space goat coming to eat the planet and putting them all on some kind of space ark.
So who's going to protect you from the scourge of dirty telephones?
'Cause I've seen what you do with your telephone when nobody else is in the room.
"Although it contains much that is apocryphal (or at least wildly inaccurate..."
Wikipedia is accessible and generally unpretentious. Also quite free (as in beer) to use and access. And it's got the awesome Trillian plugin now.
Even if it sucks, at least it's something along the lines of a collective, informal repository of information.
Donkey Kong Country, the lifeless CG-animated afternoon cartoon, was the worst example of dreary, unexpressive animation I've ever encountered.
My experience with Gamecubery is that they've come a very long way since those days. You know, I'd pay to watch The Wind Waker in a theatre.
Well, I'm smart enough to understand that 53% only equals 100% in really bad rounding algorithms.
Must be the ones used in the electronic voting machines.
Ah, crap. I meant departed Compy 386, not a link to a nonexistent Slashdot page...
Anyway, if you want to get a sense of the site, check out "The Interview" on the "Shorts" page, perhaps the best gateway 'toon on the site.
Maybe they can be used to replace the poor, departed, Compy 386. :'(
And if you don't get Strong Bad, then you don't. Who cares? Crapfully yours,
This whole debate is so murky and cavernous, I feel like I'm coming down with pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
Not going to bother modding you down; just want to point out that you really, really didn't get it.
Stewart wasn't pushing a dialectical approach at all. He was launching a scathing attack on the approach that Crossfire takes to issues: attempting to reduce them to oversimplified generalizations, as "the left view" and "the right view". Neither side's commentator attempts to present a well-constructed or thoughtful argument, merely to attack the issue from a hamfisted, generalized trajectory.
Stewart's show attempts to do some degree of analysis, even if it is a satirical or ironic analysis. The point he was raising, with Begala and Carlson, was that there is no analysis whatsoever in Crossfire, nor in most media.
And that is a disservice to the people.
I think that the InterOperability loophole in the "worst law" will mean that Microsoft will come out with a hamstrung version for Apple and Linux, or that Jon Johanssen or someone of comparable proclivity will have to fight off another lawsuit...
Removal of LaTex is not all that good. Lots of scientific and mathematic users need that for their formula-laden documents. And surprise there are a LOT of Linux users who are sci/mathies. I guess one could argue "then they should just install a distro themselves" but if the portability and applicability of a Linux distribution is a consideration, ie. they're going to use Knoppix on their laptop or a secondary computer, wouldn't it be terribly useful to have a TeX formatting app installed?
I mean... isn't UNIX originally conceived for scientific and mathematical applications, for which... ack.
Anyway, I'll just assume that OpenOffice.org has some kind of TeX-formatting facility which justified LaTeX's removal. Can anyone give us an indication as to whether this is the case?
Wing Commander the game series, particularly III and IV, were actually great sci-fi cinema. The cutscenes themselves could be cobbled together with no changes (well, not all the branches, but one path through them) and played on a computer screen, into a camera, on the Sci-Fi channel and would probably get great ratings and sell DVD sets.
The *games were better movies than the movie* by a long way, and had bigger stars (Jason Bernard, Malcolm MacDowell, Mark Hamill, Biff from back to the future I wish I could remember his name, John Rhys-Davies, and John Spencer from West Wing).
Those games were full-on big-budget movies, certainly better than any sci-fi movie available at the time (the mid '90s being something of an abhorable drought as far as science-fiction cinema went). Wing Commander IV was actually a *great* movie.
I'm repeating myself here.
PCs give a tremendous amount of control over the user experience, and a tremendous amount of flexibility for game design, that most consoles don't allow (or at the very most, exploit).
Keyboard and mouse control have already been mentioned. Let's take it a step further into oddball-land, with trackballs, spaceorbs, cyberman, joysticks, flight harnesses, USB peripherals, voice-activated microphone controls (UT2004)...
Then there's hardware modification. Modding a console voids your warranty and risks prosecution under the DMCA, or at the very least disqualifies you from online gameplay. This is compounded by the fact that to make consoles cost-effective, they need to have lowest-common-denominator performance profiles: the cheapest, minimal amount of RAM necessary to run anticipated games, the most cost-effective processor available when the entire line is published, basically minimal functionality beyond what the designers anticipate. A PC user can increase performance beyond the "specs" by loading up on RAM, high-performance video cards, hard disk space for more saved games, multiple-monitor output... basically, today's PCs have the capacity for levels of performance that even the "next generation" of consoles won't have when they're finally released. 3GHz processors with 1GB of RAM? With increasing bus speed and dedicated graphics processors, the kind of gameplay possible with PC hardware will doubtless exceed what any priced-to-sell console will do (keeping in mind that new consoles will probably go for $299-$399 and lose their vendors millions of dollars in the initial stages).
Of course, there's also software modification. 120GB hard drives mean that we can download Counter Strike and make Half Life into a whole new game. We can download Enemy Territory, Aliens for Doom, or Quake Rally, or any of thousands of mods which make our game into something wholly new. We can create, share, and seek out new third-pary maps, models, skins and rules for our FPSs, and gameplay experiences like Neverwinter Nights (as opposed to just MMORPGs) become possible. At the least, gameplay becomes more participatory and creative, and in many cases, game design careers are launched this way.
It's commonly noted that progress in technology is driven by two applications: porn and games. If consoles become the only venue for gaming, tech progress will face a glacial pace of innovation. While "the gameplay experience" hasn't been pushed on the PC recently thanks to gaming market stagnation into a few reasonably-successful genres, the capacity for PC gameplay innovation has always been vast; this can lead to new ideas in UI, in AI, in graphics quality and performance, sound, in modifiability (is that a word?).
The only real qualm people seem to have with the PC as a game platform is that games don't seem to sell too well. Well, some of them do. Others just don't seem to sell well enough to justify Hollywood-level production values. Ingenuity can come from smaller development studios too, and the nature of the PC and Internet allow these studios channels of distribution distinct from the Big Studio's dominance of shelf space in EBGames. Doom was an object lesson in this, but it doesn't end there. At least, hopefully it won't. Steam, for all its faults, is a bold new way to sell games; in an ideal world, Valve would open up Steam as a shareware distribution system, with new demos and for-purchase games showing up there from time to time.
Wow, I ranted.
What about for interoperability? Isn't it possible to reverse-engineer to use a piece of software with the equipment you have?
Well, there's one more point to make about GameCube's similarity to Apple, and it's the presence of a PowerPC CPU (not to mention the cube form factor).
Still... the lack of DVD functionality can be a minor drawback if one is cramped for space, power outlets, or wiring acumen. It can be quite handy to have a single system do everything. On the other hand, it's better in the long run to have a few systems, each doing something well.
But I wanted to point out something related to Dr. Doombender's assessment of the "value-priced" field, and that's the "Player's Choice" line for GameCube (which already includes Pikmin, Animal Crossing, and Metroid Prime, probably among others). GameCube has the advantage that most of its first-party or platform-exclusive games are long-lived, rock-solid paragons of game design. You're correct that it suffers, on the other hand, from a lack of catalogue depth. If you're the type who grinds through games quickly and needs a new fix ASAP, the GameCube really doesn't have shelves and shelves of old, discounted, used, or legacy games to work with.
I mean, you could get the GameBoy Player, but that's a whole other story.
Loath to cite Ananova, but there's a "virtual keyboard" you might be able to look into. Projects light onto a surface, and you type by interrupting the beams.
From the designer's site: Here
dihydrogen monoxide
We've gotta ban that stuff, all the kids are gonna start using it, and then we'll never get them to stop. It's addictive... I've had like 5 doses today...
Having now read Shirky's article, I think that the Slashdot headline should absolutely be changed to read "Fear of the RIAA". Right now it's misleading, resulting in ill-informed or slightly off-topic posts like the first one I made (*blush*)
Before I read the article, I'll just point out that the Cypherpunks' "eat your peas" approach actually gives the users control over how their anonymity and security takes place. Sure it gives you more responsibility -- you have to buy the locks yourself -- but it also gives you control over how it happens. You basically only have to trust the person who made the lock, but you can have the blueprints so that you know it works.
RIAA-style privacy is basically a Housing Company telling you that they'll take care of everything, and that you don't need to worry because you're probably safe. Note, of course, that the RIAA companies are the types whose security has been foiled by such stunning feats of ingenuity as writing on a CD with a magic marker, or an algorithm written by a 16-year-old that can be implemented using as much space as fits on the side of a pencil.
What the RIAA gets people to adopt is the style of "no-brainer" security people are used to when they get their lockers broken into at the gym, as opposed to asking us to take some frickin' responsibility for ourselves as the Cypherpunks would urge.
Indeed, the capture of Saddam will hopefully end the war. If we wanted less fighting, we wanted this to happen as soon as possible.
That they didn't capture him immediately meant the war went on, and on, and on... not that it was easy to find him, of course. Congratulations to the U.S. Army and the Coalition of the Recipients of Contracts.
He was wearing a red-striped sweater and toque, hiding in a crowd of people. Luckily we had a 7-year-old kid with us. ....no, no, no. Well, at least there is no longer the excuse that Hussein is loose. If the attacks continue -- if this effort to suppress and dominate Iraq by US forces still meets with resistance -- there's not a lot of recourse anymore.
A preview on aintitcool.com is not optimistic.
Looks sex-addled, low-action, and pretty scanty on the mythology. "Cylon Fembots" is all we need to know.
The mythology was pretty much all that made it distinctive, such as it was, in the original case.