Oh -- and a while back, there was someone who had a ranking system for computer games, based on 'crates'. Basically, the more crates (or sooner you ran across them in a game), the greater the lack of originality in the game. I want to say it was done about the time of C&C2
"To test our theory, we installed and played the twenty-six games we had within easy reach of where we were sitting. To our scientific delight, all exhibited crates within the first one hundred and twenty seconds of play. Please note that by crates, we mean both crates proper and the circular crate, the barrel."
It's a shame that Old Man Murray stopped updating a while ago - the site possessed a unique sense of humour. I still can't help thinking about the Death of Adenture Games whenever I hear the name "Gabriel Knight".
They're claiming that by releasing these movies to BT for "free", that terrorist groups are making money. How does that work?
This is the bit that I don't quite get, either. I guess the presumption is that the money comes from these 'knockoff DVDs' - the distributors of which download the movies for free, burn them and sell them in pretty knockoff DVD cases.
They then give the money to their criminal overlords, who by virtue of being criminal overlords get paid for any and all illegal activity.
That ropy logic aside, combatting 'piracy' is more complex than simply shutting down all P2P networks.
Let's say I want to see a movie. Do I:
Pay to see it in the cinema / buy the DVD
Download it from the internet for free
Buy a copy from a guy on a street corner
Suppose for whatever reason, I decide that the legal option isn't for me. Let's say I don't want to spend any money. Or the movie could be awful. Whatever. That leaves the second two.
Even before adding the possibility of me giving money to organised crime or terrorists, I really don't see a contest there. (Obviously there are people who prefer spending a bit of money for the convenience of not messing with the 'complexities' of downloading stuff from the internet.)
Still, short of eliminating the desire to pirate the movies in the first place (which can never be removed), the only way to fight it is to stop the distributors. And I can imagine that if there is no way to get the stuff 'for free' from the internet, more people would choose the slightly more expensive legal version over the discount knockoff.
I can see where they are coming from, trying to stop distribution for free over the internet. But if organised crime does profit from piracy, I'm sure there is just as much profit to be regained and good publicity to be had by going after it, rather than the P2P networks. I don't think P2P networks are a great way to fund terrorism. (Imagine: A vast network of terror cells funded with illicit profits from spyware, spam and google adwords. We could call it... Tom Clancy's Net Force 2 - Electric Boogaloo.)
If they do decide to try to get royalties, they will find out that a lot of people are jumping to other technologies.
However a significant portion of buisnesses will not consider using either a home grown or open source solution... instead opting for the 'security' that technology produced by a 'well established company' brings.
Microsoft still has a hold on the minds of many a manager. Something like royalty fees just put a few more numbers on the cost, but since when has cost been the determining factor in choosing the technology to deploy?
There will always be people willing to pay Microsoft's taxes. The abstainers will not be missed by MS - they do not contribute a sufficient ammount income to be significant.
...is we really want.
Launch probe, collect asteroids, return to earth. The Japanese effort only returns _samples_, but with a bigger probe, and better targeting, anything is possible.
I wonder how many people will elect Redmond, Washington as the first target.
Asteroid mining is another (far more peaceful, and therefore boring and not as deserving of development resources) application.
This.sig typed manually, because I can't be bothered automate it
Each of the 6 episodes of FLCL comes on it's own DVD. Unusually, for a Japanese product, it actually has an english subtitle track, except for the first one. Apparently, Gainax discovered after releasing the first DVD, that by adding an english track allowed them to get some tax reduction for producing 'educational' tools for learning english. Of course anyone who watches FLCL is more likely to have their brain melted than learn english - but it is a good trend: Studios get better profit margins, and the fans get to see it as soon as it's released.
Microsoft: "Bringing down the world to it's knees since 1975"
One of the perils of having a single unified standard. When something nasty comes along, it has no problems finding vunerable systems. Maybe code forking ain't so bad?
I heard this a while ago (not sure how true it is) that the UK government is going to somehow provide (subsidising perhaps ?) digital TV to the population, turn off the analogue transmitters and sell all the frequencies off to the highest bidder. Could be good, could be evil. I wonder what the money would be used for though? Maybe they could give us a bigger tent.
Re:Moral Issues Abound
on
Protein Music
·
· Score: 2
Here are a few more (possibly absurd) considerations to make?
What would happen if a section of the music derived from your DNA just happened to match a well known musical hit? Would you be getting nastygrams from the RIAA? (Another reason for certain groups to lobby for a repository for everybody's DNA, perhaps).
In this unlikely case, who would own the copyright? The original artist / publisher, or me? What about prior works? Had I been born (or possibly even conceived) before the music was composed, would I have a legal leg to stand on? Or would I have to pay royalties, and at what point? Every time a cell divides, maybe. It could be split down to easy to make monthly payments, perhaps, determined by the average rate of cell division.
And don't you go giving your blood away either. It would be interesting to see the RIAA going after blood banks with the same force as Napster. Or maybe I would just be banned from giving blood instead.
Also, what if there was a program to convert DNA into code. Could the same copyright issues apply then? Maybe this explains the rift between Linux and Windows users?? Genetic predisposition maybe? In fact, if there is a method of producing some form of meaningful data from DNA, can you treat the two as the same?
I am reminded of the prime number that when un-gzipped produced decss, bringing up the issue of whether a number (or in this case, DNA) can be treated as the same as something that is decoded from it. Surely there are an almost infinite number of ways to decode DNA. If just one of those methods decodes a copyrighted work from DNA, what then?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh -- and a while back, there was someone who had a ranking system for computer games, based on 'crates'. Basically, the more crates (or sooner you ran across them in a game), the greater the lack of originality in the game. I want to say it was done about the time of C&C2
That would be Old Man Murray's Crate Review System - arguably the finest metric of game originality ever devised:
"To test our theory, we installed and played the twenty-six games we had within easy reach of where we were sitting. To our scientific delight, all exhibited crates within the first one hundred and twenty seconds of play. Please note that by crates, we mean both crates proper and the circular crate, the barrel."
It's a shame that Old Man Murray stopped updating a while ago - the site possessed a unique sense of humour. I still can't help thinking about the Death of Adenture Games whenever I hear the name "Gabriel Knight".
This is the bit that I don't quite get, either. I guess the presumption is that the money comes from these 'knockoff DVDs' - the distributors of which download the movies for free, burn them and sell them in pretty knockoff DVD cases.
They then give the money to their criminal overlords, who by virtue of being criminal overlords get paid for any and all illegal activity.
That ropy logic aside, combatting 'piracy' is more complex than simply shutting down all P2P networks.
Let's say I want to see a movie. Do I:Suppose for whatever reason, I decide that the legal option isn't for me. Let's say I don't want to spend any money. Or the movie could be awful. Whatever. That leaves the second two.
Even before adding the possibility of me giving money to organised crime or terrorists, I really don't see a contest there. (Obviously there are people who prefer spending a bit of money for the convenience of not messing with the 'complexities' of downloading stuff from the internet.)
Still, short of eliminating the desire to pirate the movies in the first place (which can never be removed), the only way to fight it is to stop the distributors. And I can imagine that if there is no way to get the stuff 'for free' from the internet, more people would choose the slightly more expensive legal version over the discount knockoff.
I can see where they are coming from, trying to stop distribution for free over the internet. But if organised crime does profit from piracy, I'm sure there is just as much profit to be regained and good publicity to be had by going after it, rather than the P2P networks. I don't think P2P networks are a great way to fund terrorism. (Imagine: A vast network of terror cells funded with illicit profits from spyware, spam and google adwords. We could call it... Tom Clancy's Net Force 2 - Electric Boogaloo.)
If they do decide to try to get royalties, they will find out that a lot of people are jumping to other technologies.
However a significant portion of buisnesses will not consider using either a home grown or open source solution... instead opting for the 'security' that technology produced by a 'well established company' brings.
Microsoft still has a hold on the minds of many a manager. Something like royalty fees just put a few more numbers on the cost, but since when has cost been the determining factor in choosing the technology to deploy?
There will always be people willing to pay Microsoft's taxes. The abstainers will not be missed by MS - they do not contribute a sufficient ammount income to be significant.
Corporate psychology is a strange thing.
...is we really want.
.sig typed manually, because I can't be bothered automate it
Launch probe, collect asteroids, return to earth. The Japanese effort only returns _samples_, but with a bigger probe, and better targeting, anything is possible.
I wonder how many people will elect Redmond, Washington as the first target.
Asteroid mining is another (far more peaceful, and therefore boring and not as deserving of development resources) application.
This
Actually, it is:
.sig was yped manually, for added security
http://www.animefu.com/index.pl?node_id=2541
this
Actually, on the topic of learning aids...
.sig was typed manually, for security,
Each of the 6 episodes of FLCL comes on it's own DVD. Unusually, for a Japanese product, it actually has an english subtitle track, except for the first one. Apparently, Gainax discovered after releasing the first DVD, that by adding an english track allowed them to get some tax reduction for producing 'educational' tools for learning english. Of course anyone who watches FLCL is more likely to have their brain melted than learn english - but it is a good trend: Studios get better profit margins, and the fans get to see it as soon as it's released.
I hope it catches on.
This
Microsoft: "Bringing down the world to it's knees since 1975"
One of the perils of having a single unified standard. When something nasty comes along, it has no problems finding vunerable systems. Maybe code forking ain't so bad?
- This sig was typed manually, for security.
I heard this a while ago (not sure how true it is) that the UK government is going to somehow provide (subsidising perhaps ?) digital TV to the population, turn off the analogue transmitters and sell all the frequencies off to the highest bidder. Could be good, could be evil. I wonder what the money would be used for though? Maybe they could give us a bigger tent.
What would happen if a section of the music derived from your DNA just happened to match a well known musical hit? Would you be getting nastygrams from the RIAA? (Another reason for certain groups to lobby for a repository for everybody's DNA, perhaps).
In this unlikely case, who would own the copyright? The original artist / publisher, or me? What about prior works? Had I been born (or possibly even conceived) before the music was composed, would I have a legal leg to stand on? Or would I have to pay royalties, and at what point? Every time a cell divides, maybe. It could be split down to easy to make monthly payments, perhaps, determined by the average rate of cell division.
And don't you go giving your blood away either. It would be interesting to see the RIAA going after blood banks with the same force as Napster. Or maybe I would just be banned from giving blood instead.
Also, what if there was a program to convert DNA into code. Could the same copyright issues apply then? Maybe this explains the rift between Linux and Windows users?? Genetic predisposition maybe? In fact, if there is a method of producing some form of meaningful data from DNA, can you treat the two as the same?
I am reminded of the prime number that when un-gzipped produced decss, bringing up the issue of whether a number (or in this case, DNA) can be treated as the same as something that is decoded from it. Surely there are an almost infinite number of ways to decode DNA. If just one of those methods decodes a copyrighted work from DNA, what then?
--please insert witty .sig here --