[T]he Court simply did not find the 'extensive plot and character development' referred to by the plaintiffs in the games it viewed
Someone should donate Everquest so the Judge can play it. I bet in three months he will be out of courts. Wearing black rags with a sword in his hands, and shouting "l00t!".
Than we can talk if it doesn't help to develop a character...
Yep, mod this down as a troll, flamebait, it's not my duty to care, hitting the karma cap is always nice so you can rant and wave your hand like you just don't care.
BUT.. c'mon. I am an avid newsgroup reader, specially at the limited range of "webmaster" stuff. Nice... Anyway, that's usually the question people do when they post for the second or third time. This, and including perhaps "What's a free web host?" and "Browser portability" would be what I call true newbie questions.
No offense to the original poster, who asked the question. We were all newbies someday (yes, even I couldn't understand this client-server crazy thing!). Anyway, that would be at the top of any webmastering and designing FAQ.
ANY faq.
What I would normally answer if this was in a newsgroup would be "STFW", or 'Search the Fucking Web". Or Google (like if it has a difference;-)
So, what's this? Part of a Slashdot new commercial endeavor, to attract different target audiences? Why the heck is this posted in Slashdot?
Like I said, we were all newbies one time or another. But we were... we were... that's now why we came to places like Slashdot, where I can get the news that fit my taste.
... with file sharing, specially music, were around these lines. First, a good friend of mine, who plays piano and is a sound technician, told me about this crazy sound from a band named Mahavishnu Orchestra. So I downloaded ~20 songs played by them, and I liked them all.
At a music store the other day, I saw Mahavishnu's cds, and there were songs that I have never seen on AudioGalaxy, Kazaa, Gnutella, Edonkey, no single file sharing program. I could go back to my home and search for more Mahavishnu on AudioGalaxy (and I did a few days later, and there are much more), but there, standing with the cd at my hands, I thought: "I gotta listen to these songs".
And this is when I paid 15 dollars for it. I bought a cd from a relative obscure band that, I confess, have downloaded songs from the Internet. But these moments at the store are what we call consumerism. I have to get this cd, the thought wouldn't stop crossing my mind. I have, because the band is cool, I have the necessary money, never heard these songs, and above all, they deserve.
Of course, that's an single example, since this situation happened many more times.
Moral of the history? If I couldn't download Mahavishnu's songs, the music industry wouldn't earn even these 15 dollars.
Second moral of the history? File sharing can be profitable, all we need is a reason to spend the money.
Opera and Omniweb are funded by smaller companies, companies that don't have deep pockets like AOL or Microsoft, so in some small way they can be forgiven for the steps that they take to make money to support themselves. These browsers at least offset their nagging with the ability to block popups and images.
Now, how about saving sets of opened page to continue browsing them anytime. I have several of them, one for each subject I commonly browse for. And continue to browse the last opened pages if your browser/operating system crashes. Import and Export bookmarks and email contacts. Browse offline content, delete every personal info left on your computer by your browser with two clicks (for the privacy freaks), multiple languages supported, pre defined texts to fills forms, 13 search engines available in a tab. Skins, layout customization, modify settings of html text and link tags, load your own css, zoom, block frames, load only cached images, report Javascript errors. Identify the browser as being another (right, "you must use IE to view this page" crap). Full control over cache and cookies. And password protection. Not to mention fully functionals email and newsgroup clients, low comsumption of computer resources, all in 3.2 megas.
And if everything here didn't catch your attention, two words:
"Mouse gestures".
That alone is worth a thousand dollars. Hover a link, right click and up+down with mouse. Page loads at the background. Open 25 links this way, hold mouse button, down+right, close current window. Do it for every page you have found. Hold mouse button and press another, back to pages you previously visited. Another way of buttons, forward the pages.
Opera was worth every cent I paid for. With it, my productivity raised so much I can't live without anymore. I do programming for living, and if having +20 windows opened at the same time, searching for information with Google, discussing at newsgroups, and reading mailing lists, weren't delivered so fast and nice over the last years that I am using Opera, I know a lot of work would not have been done.
I'm not a huge fan of patents, but software patents are one of the few types of patents that make sense. Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation. And the cost of innovation is often steep, it has always been much easier to ripoff someone's idea than develop it yourself. Often times, the inventor doesn't profit at all from his invention. (see Marijuana->Cocaine->Ecstasy)
For software companies, the cost to code is high, not just because of all the trial and error involved (although rational programming does help), but because of all the Standars Committees Specs involved. The patent system, as far as I know, is the only system that has been developed to offset the costs of getting a software User-approved.
Its not like a drug patent, where the costs of innovation are mostly stealling other researchers. I would like to see a better system for compensating software companies for the money they put into getting a software approved, but I have not seen one. Maybe instead granting software patents for a set number of years, we could grant them based on the time it takes to recoup the trial costs? At least then we could minimize the damage done by granting a monopoly on a life-saving feature.
1) The graphics are amazing for a game that will make you play during an entire month to finish, 4 or 6 hours a day. Indeed, if you look at just one screenshot, or one small movie, and compare to others, you may be disappointed. But, there are hundreds of spells in the game, each own with its own animation. Hundres (or thousands?) of monsters, npcs, buildings and itens.
The individual quality might be hard to appreciate, but overall the graphics are great.
2) BGII has somewhat the same problem. You can select a race, alignment and a "class" (fighter, mage, etc...). Sometimes, the game blocks you from maiking your stats bigger than a certain amount, depends on the race you choose. But overall, specially with the races bonus, there's a difference that affects gameplay.
3) Space bar pauses the game. Really, really easy to just thumb there and carefully build your strategy. The only problem was finding the right menu item after 8 hours of straight playing...
4) Althoug hard, leveling up in a decent time frame in BGII is possible, and you will notice your characters are getting stronger. Soloing (playing with one character the whole game) is the ultimate fight you will have. Lots of fun, and in later stages, if you choose the right race/class, you will have a war machine
5) Pffff...
Go play it. I don't think there's a humanoid that finished all quests. There are lot of connected quests, including the Strongholds (more information on any BGII site about this).
6) Sadly, there are some bugs (specially crashes). But usually they happen after 3 or 4 hours of play. Infimal compared to the total gameplay lenght.
It's fun! It's humorous! It's also scary! It got several different ways of finishing it!
I can't recommend the game enough, you should grab a copy and play.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...
on
The Next Generation
·
· Score: 1
The other day I was watching a movie, "The Doors". There's a part where nobody knows where Jim Morrison is, he's late for a show. Nobody really knows, everyone scared that they won't perform, etc...
He was with his *manager*, plus a few other fellows. Then it strike me, "if only they had cell phones, someone would call the manager".
And that was in the 70. Thiry years ago you had these strange problems trying to communicate with someone who wasn't in a "fixed position", i.e: Not at home, work, etc...
The great question is also one of the oldest: "What's the purpose?". "What's the meaning of life?".
I feel happy for people whou found their way. No matter how much the world changes, they stick to their values, morals, etc... Sadly, I haven't come with much conclusions about anything, but hey, maybe someday we all will. Maybe tech can help us? Hardly, but it's giving a little hand everyday.
Is Sid Meier. Game designer with total creativity control, lead programmmer and chief of everything technical, and knows how to handle the media extremelly well.
Plus his games are damn cool.
That said, programming is not a dead end job. There no "open end" jobs too, if you have the skills and the economy is doing fine. Do it right, in the right enviroment, and you shall grow.
There are condoms that glow in the dark. You haven't lived until you have used one of them and whisped "Swooooooosh, Vuuuummmm, Zuououoummmm" while making strange dances.
if your universities are doing work that can be commercialized, you will have IT jobs in your country.
You mean like TCP/IP and email? Of course! Commerce means trading goods, be it money for money, product for product, or a mix.
Does commerce exist when you trade US$ 0 for a product? Yes! It's called the gift society, and among us open source developers, the product is knowledge.
Not flying around through windows, since in our enviroment there are no walls, therefore, windows are useless.
IT jobs are NOT important. What's is important, for any country, is the well-being of their citizens. It's a simple matter of choice.
And you know, I mean, M$ doesn't provide choices and <insert Slashdot zealots comments to continue>.
There are alternatives. There are always alternatives.
Like when you submit the request:
if ($HTTP_POST_VARS == 'delete') { // mysql_query("DELETE FROM users WHERE email = '$email'"); } else {
mysql_query("UPDATE users SET status = 'ass' WHERE email = '$email'"); }
Re:What about the earth?
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
Are you saying the we don't know where a place was in the past or we don't know where it will be?
Maybe. But probaly not for the whole planet. It's easy to predict the planet with be X kilometers from the current waypoint or will be.
Once you have, you can make people time travel from or to a safe distance from Earth's ground. Then you just use a parachute or similar.
It's the anti-marketing these guys are doing. At least Dilbert's boss was clearly stupid. Nowadays what we have? We have companies that we used to trust selling not only our digital personas, but our real ones, by telephone and home address.
None could predict that corporations would be our parents, by giving us thousands of older brothers that not only watch you, but commercially punish a trusted relationship.
The internet was meant to be the ultimate anonymous reduct of our souls, and instead, for the hundreds of millions of users, has become a place where you pray for an digital communication medium (for example: email) where you won't be bothered.
I know/.'ers can't stand to this, but where the \. are?
Slashdot Mirror
[T]he Court simply did not find the 'extensive plot and character development' referred to by the plaintiffs in the games it viewed
Someone should donate Everquest so the Judge can play it. I bet in three months he will be out of courts. Wearing black rags with a sword in his hands, and shouting "l00t!".
Than we can talk if it doesn't help to develop a character...
The time for a counterstrike is now.
Supreme LAAAAAAAAAN Party!
Yep, mod this down as a troll, flamebait, it's not my duty to care, hitting the karma cap is always nice so you can rant and wave your hand like you just don't care.
;-)
BUT.. c'mon. I am an avid newsgroup reader, specially at the limited range of "webmaster" stuff. Nice... Anyway, that's usually the question people do when they post for the second or third time. This, and including perhaps "What's a free web host?" and "Browser portability" would be what I call true newbie questions.
No offense to the original poster, who asked the question. We were all newbies someday (yes, even I couldn't understand this client-server crazy thing!). Anyway, that would be at the top of any webmastering and designing FAQ.
ANY faq.
What I would normally answer if this was in a newsgroup would be "STFW", or 'Search the Fucking Web". Or Google (like if it has a difference
So, what's this? Part of a Slashdot new commercial endeavor, to attract different target audiences? Why the heck is this posted in Slashdot?
Like I said, we were all newbies one time or another. But we were... we were... that's now why we came to places like Slashdot, where I can get the news that fit my taste.
Oh well, rant is over.
forward looking statements are like when you don't expect people to say bs, capisce?
I've had too many Dooms already, and I hope Nxt-Life III wil seal them ;-)
At a music store the other day, I saw Mahavishnu's cds, and there were songs that I have never seen on AudioGalaxy, Kazaa, Gnutella, Edonkey, no single file sharing program. I could go back to my home and search for more Mahavishnu on AudioGalaxy (and I did a few days later, and there are much more), but there, standing with the cd at my hands, I thought: "I gotta listen to these songs".
And this is when I paid 15 dollars for it. I bought a cd from a relative obscure band that, I confess, have downloaded songs from the Internet. But these moments at the store are what we call consumerism. I have to get this cd, the thought wouldn't stop crossing my mind. I have, because the band is cool, I have the necessary money, never heard these songs, and above all, they deserve.
Of course, that's an single example, since this situation happened many more times.
Moral of the history? If I couldn't download Mahavishnu's songs, the music industry wouldn't earn even these 15 dollars.
Second moral of the history? File sharing can be profitable, all we need is a reason to spend the money.
Opera and Omniweb are funded by smaller companies, companies that don't have deep pockets like AOL or Microsoft, so in some small way they can be forgiven for the steps that they take to make money to support themselves. These browsers at least offset their nagging with the ability to block popups and images.
Now, how about saving sets of opened page to continue browsing them anytime. I have several of them, one for each subject I commonly browse for. And continue to browse the last opened pages if your browser/operating system crashes. Import and Export bookmarks and email contacts. Browse offline content, delete every personal info left on your computer by your browser with two clicks (for the privacy freaks), multiple languages supported, pre defined texts to fills forms, 13 search engines available in a tab. Skins, layout customization, modify settings of html text and link tags, load your own css, zoom, block frames, load only cached images, report Javascript errors. Identify the browser as being another (right, "you must use IE to view this page" crap). Full control over cache and cookies. And password protection. Not to mention fully functionals email and newsgroup clients, low comsumption of computer resources, all in 3.2 megas.
And if everything here didn't catch your attention, two words:
"Mouse gestures".
That alone is worth a thousand dollars. Hover a link, right click and up+down with mouse. Page loads at the background. Open 25 links this way, hold mouse button, down+right, close current window. Do it for every page you have found. Hold mouse button and press another, back to pages you previously visited. Another way of buttons, forward the pages.
Opera was worth every cent I paid for. With it, my productivity raised so much I can't live without anymore. I do programming for living, and if having +20 windows opened at the same time, searching for information with Google, discussing at newsgroups, and reading mailing lists, weren't delivered so fast and nice over the last years that I am using Opera, I know a lot of work would not have been done.
I only said:
;-)
"Please let Tom and his program Embed alone,
Thank you."
Can I copy your text and send it to them? I hope that if they get multiple copies someone will eventually get a clue
Also broke the law (some of these laws that are popping up lately):
Slashdot, who linked to it, Google and other usenet servers, because it's hosting the code, and perhaps even we, that saw it.
I'm not a huge fan of patents, but software patents are one of the few types of patents that make sense. Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation. And the cost of innovation is often steep, it has always been much easier to ripoff someone's idea than develop it yourself. Often times, the inventor doesn't profit at all from his invention. (see Marijuana->Cocaine->Ecstasy)
For software companies, the cost to code is high, not just because of all the trial and error involved (although rational programming does help), but because of all the Standars Committees Specs involved. The patent system, as far as I know, is the only system that has been developed to offset the costs of getting a software User-approved.
Its not like a drug patent, where the costs of innovation are mostly stealling other researchers. I would like to see a better system for compensating software companies for the money they put into getting a software approved, but I have not seen one. Maybe instead granting software patents for a set number of years, we could grant them based on the time it takes to recoup the trial costs? At least then we could minimize the damage done by granting a monopoly on a life-saving feature.
It's not the morallity of the defense that's questioned, but of the attacker.
In other words, how can you make a moral case about any cure when charging outrageous prices for it?
I can comment on BGII. It's a great game:
1) The graphics are amazing for a game that will make you play during an entire month to finish, 4 or 6 hours a day. Indeed, if you look at just one screenshot, or one small movie, and compare to others, you may be disappointed. But, there are hundreds of spells in the game, each own with its own animation. Hundres (or thousands?) of monsters, npcs, buildings and itens.
The individual quality might be hard to appreciate, but overall the graphics are great.
2) BGII has somewhat the same problem. You can select a race, alignment and a "class" (fighter, mage, etc...). Sometimes, the game blocks you from maiking your stats bigger than a certain amount, depends on the race you choose. But overall, specially with the races bonus, there's a difference that affects gameplay.
3) Space bar pauses the game. Really, really easy to just thumb there and carefully build your strategy. The only problem was finding the right menu item after 8 hours of straight playing...
4) Althoug hard, leveling up in a decent time frame in BGII is possible, and you will notice your characters are getting stronger. Soloing (playing with one character the whole game) is the ultimate fight you will have. Lots of fun, and in later stages, if you choose the right race/class, you will have a war machine
5) Pffff...
Go play it. I don't think there's a humanoid that finished all quests. There are lot of connected quests, including the Strongholds (more information on any BGII site about this).
6) Sadly, there are some bugs (specially crashes). But usually they happen after 3 or 4 hours of play. Infimal compared to the total gameplay lenght.
It's fun! It's humorous! It's also scary! It got several different ways of finishing it!
I can't recommend the game enough, you should grab a copy and play.
The other day I was watching a movie, "The Doors". There's a part where nobody knows where Jim Morrison is, he's late for a show. Nobody really knows, everyone scared that they won't perform, etc...
He was with his *manager*, plus a few other fellows. Then it strike me, "if only they had cell phones, someone would call the manager".
And that was in the 70. Thiry years ago you had these strange problems trying to communicate with someone who wasn't in a "fixed position", i.e: Not at home, work, etc...
The great question is also one of the oldest: "What's the purpose?". "What's the meaning of life?".
I feel happy for people whou found their way. No matter how much the world changes, they stick to their values, morals, etc... Sadly, I haven't come with much conclusions about anything, but hey, maybe someday we all will. Maybe tech can help us? Hardly, but it's giving a little hand everyday.
Doesn't prevent from having two versions. One that resumes the EULA, that explains in plain english what 3000 words mean.
Is Sid Meier. Game designer with total creativity control, lead programmmer and chief of everything technical, and knows how to handle the media extremelly well.
Plus his games are damn cool.
That said, programming is not a dead end job. There no "open end" jobs too, if you have the skills and the economy is doing fine. Do it right, in the right enviroment, and you shall grow.
There are condoms that glow in the dark. You haven't lived until you have used one of them and whisped "Swooooooosh, Vuuuummmm, Zuououoummmm" while making strange dances.
I hate to be repetitive, but you are right. Like when we had to see Celine Dion everywhere when Titanic was released.
If TFM was a commercial blockbuster like they were expecting, no matter what the "fans" had to say, AotC would get plenty of merchandising.
Nobody modifies a winning product, without risk. Maybe Lucas knew this risk, maybe he didn't see it all. But it's not working...
apparently, they are going to be killed by the Empire within seconds of their appearance.
Pop!
Read the other article linked at Yahoo's one, they are not going to appear anymore.
For some reason I have this huge fear the Episode II will be somewhat of a click flick. Please tell me I'm wrong.
Clusters of wannabe Portman teenager girls, worry about that for a second.
Matrix DVD: $0
Matrix Soundtrack: $0
Matrix Script: $0
To download a Gnutella client, PRICELESS!
if your universities are doing work that can be commercialized, you will have IT jobs in your country.
You mean like TCP/IP and email? Of course! Commerce means trading goods, be it money for money, product for product, or a mix.
Does commerce exist when you trade US$ 0 for a product? Yes! It's called the gift society, and among us open source developers, the product is knowledge.
Not flying around through windows, since in our enviroment there are no walls, therefore, windows are useless.
IT jobs are NOT important. What's is important, for any country, is the well-being of their citizens. It's a simple matter of choice.
And you know, I mean, M$ doesn't provide choices and <insert Slashdot zealots comments to continue>.
There are alternatives. There are always alternatives.
// mysql_query("DELETE FROM users WHERE email = '$email'");
Like when you submit the request:
if ($HTTP_POST_VARS == 'delete') {
} else {
mysql_query("UPDATE users SET status = 'ass' WHERE email = '$email'");
}
Are you saying the we don't know where a place was in the past or we don't know where it will be?
Maybe. But probaly not for the whole planet. It's easy to predict the planet with be X kilometers from the current waypoint or will be.
Once you have, you can make people time travel from or to a safe distance from Earth's ground. Then you just use a parachute or similar.
And every time you visit the log and say to themselves and their advertisers:
"Hey, email advertising does work! Look: We have a response, a click generated by the ad!"
Of course, telling only part of the truth has always been a good marketing tactic.
It's the anti-marketing these guys are doing. At least Dilbert's boss was clearly stupid. Nowadays what we have? We have companies that we used to trust selling not only our digital personas, but our real ones, by telephone and home address.
/.'ers can't stand to this, but where the \. are?
None could predict that corporations would be our parents, by giving us thousands of older brothers that not only watch you, but commercially punish a trusted relationship.
The internet was meant to be the ultimate anonymous reduct of our souls, and instead, for the hundreds of millions of users, has become a place where you pray for an digital communication medium (for example: email) where you won't be bothered.
I know