It looks like you started off my suggesting that the world be split geographically, then you end up with something about splitting people between log-in servers. I can't work out what you are trying to say. I agree that parts of the game should be kick-ass, though, nice idea.
Re:Will they ever be truly give-away items?
on
Flash Drive Roundup
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I don't like to use optical media in the same way - they aren't as re-usable so there's the environmental concern, they're easily scratched, you have to find a separate case to put them in (whereas 3.5" disks had their own protective casing). I used to have stacks of 3.5" disks lying around without ever having to go to the effort of buying them - cover disks, old software installation sets, we had about a hundred sets of Microsoft Office install media at my old work place that got wiped and re-labelled. What price are DVD-Rs nowadays? Last time I bought some I think they were about £1 each, which is almost throw-away price, but nowhere near the ubiquity of floppies.
Will they ever be truly give-away items?
on
Flash Drive Roundup
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· Score: 5, Interesting
10 years ago, I could give someone a file on a floppy disk and not worry about getting the disk back. I had an essentially unlimited supply of blank disks, you could get a stack of 10 for £1. Nowadays, I do have to worry about getting my USB stick back, as I only have three of them. I suspect that USB memory sticks will never really get to the same point that 3.5" floppy disks got to in that respect. The market value of, say, an 8MB memory stick might be similarly negligible, but no-one's making them.
He isn't trying to stop car-boot pirates, the only place he mentions pirates is a throwaway line at the end "cheap and easy licensing that would turn yesterday's pirates into tomorrow's partners". He's talking about people who want to use your material but not to just rip you off. Maybe "would turn the people who yesterday had no choice other than to be pirates into tomorrow's partners" would have been clearer, but less snappy.
Yes, I guess there's some "trick" to it, but no matter what we did with the mouse, it just seemed to jiggle around meaninglessly. After a whole afternoon taking turns and discussing it, we gave up. We're all gamers, fans of Doom, Quake, Half-Life, various RTSes, and one of the people there was a puzzle fanatic (interlocking loops, tangled strings, block dis-assembly etc.), but it just didn't click with us.
I don't know if it was Thief 2 or 3, but I got hold of a demo of one of them, and my friends and I spent about 4 hours trying to do the lockpicking stage and none of us could do it, so it became a drinks mat.
So far the only "crap" that I have spouted is that the Writers Guild and other defendants don't have the authority to cut a deal of this nature. Far from being "uninformed", I read this opinion in this interview with Professor James Grimmelmann, of New York Law School.
I'm trying to work it out, but it's complex and fast-moving, and you aren't helping by being such a jerk. You may be right, but just saying "shut up, I'm right" isn't a way to get any thing constuctive done, unless you're just trying to win.
I don't think a class action suit has the remit to grant such a licence. Damages for past violations is one thing, creating a new framework is another. There's no precedent for this.
The settlement only applies to books published prior to January (5th I think) 2009 so in 10 years time you will only be able to get books from Google that are older than 10 years. In 50 years, only 50-year-old books. They will need to break the law again and get sued to extend their range of books.
The option should be left open for the publishers to negotiate similar deals with other services in the future.
No, the option should be left open for another party (e.g. Internet Archive, Amazon, etc.) to compete with Google under the same terms. Also having a hard cut-off publishing date (Jan 5th 2009) for books that can be covered by this deal. In 50 years, you will only be able to get 50-year-old books from Google Books. They'll have to break the law again in order to get sued and make another class action settlement in order to update their service. The deal is a stupid one - nice idea, but it needs to be fixed. Here's a suggestion from Professor James Grimmelmann, of New York Law School:
My settlement would start from this one. It would have maybe the same basic economic outline. It would be completely non-exclusive, so that other people could assume Google's various payment and security obligations and do the same thing it did. It would have provisions that protect privacy, that protect reader's first sale and fair use rights, that protect library's rights, it would have anti-trust oversight of the Registry in it, and it would have a more accountable Registry that was really operating in the interests of readers and society and was being watched carefully rather than just having a few author and publisher people running it.
I don't care about any individual copyright holder that doesn't know about this deal. I don't really care about Google. What I care about is that no-one else can compete with Google in the same market, because they haven't been sued yet.
A class action is ok for assigning damages for past actions, but this agreement also sets up a clearing house to handle Google's on-going payments for its future violations as well, which is a little odd. It in effect sets Google up with an on-going business model that no-one else can compete against them on without having a class-action lawsuit of their own brought against them first that they can settle in the same way.
I don't see the Authors Guild trying to shut down all scanners and web servers on the off-chance that they are used for copyright violation, in the same way that the movie studios have attacked BitTorrent and DeCSS. They are targeting a specific organization that is trying to profit from copyright works. If Google started uploading entire movies onto YouTube I doubt that most people would support them either. There's a big difference between going after a big corporation that is running a system for money than subpoenaing the private data about individual downloaders and destroying their lives with million$ lawsuits for downloading a few songs. Big, big difference.
Since when did the Writers Guild have the right to sell the rights to a book written by someone who is not a member of their organization? This isn't an instituted trade body with special legal status, it's just a lobbying group. I think the deal that Google are trying to strike is probably a good one for keeping orphaned books available, but the people that sued them in the first place have no authority to make that deal, it needs legislation.
They've settled with the Authors Guild, a group that has no legal standing to represent anyone other than their members, plus a few others, yet the settlement covers every book published in the US whose copyright owner hasn't opted out.
If the Savannah service goes off-line due to the FSF all being locked up for Un-American Activities, then someone in the free world with the technical knowledge can do the hard work and set up a new version that you can import your backup of your project into. If Amazon go down the river, you're totally screwed if you used a proprietary Amazon service.
If you can export your data from the Savannah service, download the Savannah source, and run it yourself, then I think that's good enough for RMS. The software is free (as in freedom), and you can free yourself, that's the important thing.
I would wager that in the past year they are more linked to than any other domain on Slashdot. Their Google rankings reflect this.
Wait, you think that Google rankings are based on actual pageviews? okaaay...
No, it's based on how many other web sites link to them. Establishing a link to Wikipedia is like an internet "vote", and their system does eliminate self-reinforcement networks (ballot stuffers).
I play fairly seriously, but I also have a "casual" realm that I play on with a different group of friends. They are all casual, some of them play 3 hours a week maximum, and they are enjoying it tremendously. They don't buy gold, they just like questing and slowly levelling up.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like you started off my suggesting that the world be split geographically, then you end up with something about splitting people between log-in servers. I can't work out what you are trying to say. I agree that parts of the game should be kick-ass, though, nice idea.
I don't like to use optical media in the same way - they aren't as re-usable so there's the environmental concern, they're easily scratched, you have to find a separate case to put them in (whereas 3.5" disks had their own protective casing). I used to have stacks of 3.5" disks lying around without ever having to go to the effort of buying them - cover disks, old software installation sets, we had about a hundred sets of Microsoft Office install media at my old work place that got wiped and re-labelled. What price are DVD-Rs nowadays? Last time I bought some I think they were about £1 each, which is almost throw-away price, but nowhere near the ubiquity of floppies.
10 years ago, I could give someone a file on a floppy disk and not worry about getting the disk back. I had an essentially unlimited supply of blank disks, you could get a stack of 10 for £1. Nowadays, I do have to worry about getting my USB stick back, as I only have three of them. I suspect that USB memory sticks will never really get to the same point that 3.5" floppy disks got to in that respect. The market value of, say, an 8MB memory stick might be similarly negligible, but no-one's making them.
He isn't trying to stop car-boot pirates, the only place he mentions pirates is a throwaway line at the end "cheap and easy licensing that would turn yesterday's pirates into tomorrow's partners". He's talking about people who want to use your material but not to just rip you off. Maybe "would turn the people who yesterday had no choice other than to be pirates into tomorrow's partners" would have been clearer, but less snappy.
Capturing light that is freely flying around in the air shouldn't be a crime. If it's secret, cover it.
Yes, I guess there's some "trick" to it, but no matter what we did with the mouse, it just seemed to jiggle around meaninglessly. After a whole afternoon taking turns and discussing it, we gave up. We're all gamers, fans of Doom, Quake, Half-Life, various RTSes, and one of the people there was a puzzle fanatic (interlocking loops, tangled strings, block dis-assembly etc.), but it just didn't click with us.
There were quite a few other idiots there pointing at the empty space where the Old Man used to be.
Fixed.
I don't know if it was Thief 2 or 3, but I got hold of a demo of one of them, and my friends and I spent about 4 hours trying to do the lockpicking stage and none of us could do it, so it became a drinks mat.
Windows ME HARDER!
Ah, a fellow lexiconnoisseur!
Is the "aholic" suffix really any worse than "-gate" for any scandal?
So far the only "crap" that I have spouted is that the Writers Guild and other defendants don't have the authority to cut a deal of this nature. Far from being "uninformed", I read this opinion in this interview with Professor James Grimmelmann, of New York Law School.
I'm trying to work it out, but it's complex and fast-moving, and you aren't helping by being such a jerk. You may be right, but just saying "shut up, I'm right" isn't a way to get any thing constuctive done, unless you're just trying to win.
I don't think a class action suit has the remit to grant such a licence. Damages for past violations is one thing, creating a new framework is another. There's no precedent for this.
The settlement only applies to books published prior to January (5th I think) 2009 so in 10 years time you will only be able to get books from Google that are older than 10 years. In 50 years, only 50-year-old books. They will need to break the law again and get sued to extend their range of books.
The option should be left open for the publishers to negotiate similar deals with other services in the future.
No, the option should be left open for another party (e.g. Internet Archive, Amazon, etc.) to compete with Google under the same terms. Also having a hard cut-off publishing date (Jan 5th 2009) for books that can be covered by this deal. In 50 years, you will only be able to get 50-year-old books from Google Books. They'll have to break the law again in order to get sued and make another class action settlement in order to update their service. The deal is a stupid one - nice idea, but it needs to be fixed. Here's a suggestion from Professor James Grimmelmann, of New York Law School:
My settlement would start from this one. It would have maybe the same basic economic outline. It would be completely non-exclusive, so that other people could assume Google's various payment and security obligations and do the same thing it did. It would have provisions that protect privacy, that protect reader's first sale and fair use rights, that protect library's rights, it would have anti-trust oversight of the Registry in it, and it would have a more accountable Registry that was really operating in the interests of readers and society and was being watched carefully rather than just having a few author and publisher people running it.
Interview with Grimmelmann
I don't care about any individual copyright holder that doesn't know about this deal. I don't really care about Google. What I care about is that no-one else can compete with Google in the same market, because they haven't been sued yet.
A class action is ok for assigning damages for past actions, but this agreement also sets up a clearing house to handle Google's on-going payments for its future violations as well, which is a little odd. It in effect sets Google up with an on-going business model that no-one else can compete against them on without having a class-action lawsuit of their own brought against them first that they can settle in the same way.
I don't see the Authors Guild trying to shut down all scanners and web servers on the off-chance that they are used for copyright violation, in the same way that the movie studios have attacked BitTorrent and DeCSS. They are targeting a specific organization that is trying to profit from copyright works. If Google started uploading entire movies onto YouTube I doubt that most people would support them either. There's a big difference between going after a big corporation that is running a system for money than subpoenaing the private data about individual downloaders and destroying their lives with million$ lawsuits for downloading a few songs. Big, big difference.
Since when did the Writers Guild have the right to sell the rights to a book written by someone who is not a member of their organization? This isn't an instituted trade body with special legal status, it's just a lobbying group. I think the deal that Google are trying to strike is probably a good one for keeping orphaned books available, but the people that sued them in the first place have no authority to make that deal, it needs legislation.
They've settled with the Authors Guild, a group that has no legal standing to represent anyone other than their members, plus a few others, yet the settlement covers every book published in the US whose copyright owner hasn't opted out.
I accidentally your mum.
If the Savannah service goes off-line due to the FSF all being locked up for Un-American Activities, then someone in the free world with the technical knowledge can do the hard work and set up a new version that you can import your backup of your project into. If Amazon go down the river, you're totally screwed if you used a proprietary Amazon service.
If you can export your data from the Savannah service, download the Savannah source, and run it yourself, then I think that's good enough for RMS. The software is free (as in freedom), and you can free yourself, that's the important thing.
I would wager that in the past year they are more linked to than any other domain on Slashdot. Their Google rankings reflect this.
Wait, you think that Google rankings are based on actual pageviews? okaaay...
No, it's based on how many other web sites link to them. Establishing a link to Wikipedia is like an internet "vote", and their system does eliminate self-reinforcement networks (ballot stuffers).
I play fairly seriously, but I also have a "casual" realm that I play on with a different group of friends. They are all casual, some of them play 3 hours a week maximum, and they are enjoying it tremendously. They don't buy gold, they just like questing and slowly levelling up.