True. And if you redefine copyright infringement as "theft," I suppose a downloader would be liable for "misappropriation damages" under the Uniform Trade Secret Act. But damages could only appear if the downloader were to do something commercial with the code (or possibly put it up for upload). So I don't think that the trade secret angle matters that much here.
And if these people had not pirated the game, how many of them would have bought copies? Only I small percentage, I'll bet. So how much money was lost due to piracy is an open question. In fact, how many copies of Halo will be sold due to this piracy (which is advertising, if unintentional)? Perhaps this will eventually be money in the pocket of developers rather than a dagger in the heart. There is no way to tell without hard numbers, and those are probably unknowable.
"Given that IQ would be consistent across all nations"
Japan has a average IQ 5-10 points above the U.S. In fact, within the U.S., group crime rates vary by group average IQ as well -- showing a spectrum from black to Asian populations with whites in between (though closer to Asians).
For data on how nations differ, you may wish to check out "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Lynn. IQ ranges a great deal by country. My weblog actually has a table with Lynn's data on the subject here: http://thrasymachus.typepad.com/thras/2003/10/the_ iraq_war.html Scroll down to the bottom. You will see that average IQ ranges from a low of 59 in Equatorial Guinea, to a high of 107 in Hong Kong. The numbers should not be taken as exact quantities however.
But surely a person's "mental development" that you refer to is not entirely biological? Culture plays a large role in crime. Look at the crime boom in the 60s.
There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not a person turns into a criminal. The media is not the biggest one, but it is not a small one either. And since low IQ is also a very big factor, video games and movies are generally far more dangerous than books will ever be.
That could be the process, but my guess is that this is the process instead (and it is a political process, not a "thought" process):
AMD is a big company with money to spend (not bribes, but you know how it works). Being a single company, they also present a unified front for negotiations. The local government (or federal, I don't know with this deal) has few motivations to look unfavorably on AMD's requests.
On the other hand, income tax payers, sales tax payers, and property tax payers, do not have nearly the same forces to bring to the table in negotiations. So benefits of luring AMD into Dresden get magnified, while the benefits of cutting taxes on "the mob" get overlooked.
Same kind of thing goes on with building Sports Stadiums here in the U.S.
What you are saying is not wrong, exactly, but it is always a mistake to consider the state to be a reasonable actor.
Damn it. I was expecting a bit of coastal raiding action from this story. Maybe black flags with the skull and crossbones. A little rapine and pillaging of the Fermi Lab.
After your last comments, I am just dying to read your newest mountain of prose. I have bookmarked it and will get back to it when I have the time. Before 2006, I promise. Keep checking back religiously for my reply. It's coming.
All right, you have made me interested. How exactly did you manage to get upset over a discussion about how to market video games? You seem representative enough here. I have had a dozen heated replies and only one reply with any substance, all over what seems like a fairly pablum topic.
I would like to hear a bit more about how your thought patterns on this work. A subscription to your newsletter would be great too.
I am glad that out of all the comments in reply to my post, one person has finally posted some reasonable criticisms.
In answer:
Some engines do get licensed by other companies, but most do not. Even in the case of developing something that will be sold, I would argue for taking a hard look at how opening it would affect your ability to sell it later. It is extremely hard work to copy an engine without leaving enough evidence in the binary and game itself to provoke a lawsuit down the road. I doubt a respectable company would take the risk -- instead buying the code legitimately. In fact, having your engine stolen by less legitimate companies may in fact bring you more business from the legitimate ones. More developers will become familiar with the engine and want to use it, and some gamers will come to expect certain elements of the engine as standard in their games. It in not impossible that the Photoshop dynamic is most likely here.
As for trade secrets, I am skeptical about the actual monetary loss from opening the code. Code tricks worthy of being kept secret do exist, but are rare, and most often fairly insignificant to a big project. Code is simply hard to copy. The best coding tricks are harder still. Again, I would argue at taking a look at what you gain from opening the code and comparing it to what you lose.
I have the feeling that you did not read the first post that carefully. Examples of something that hasn't been tried? Well, anyway. The main point is that it is a way to keep customers up to date on release dates without embarassment. (If you don't think that release dates are a big deal, then you don't know the market.) If someone does not want to accept user contributions to code, then they don't have to. All I am saying is that code secrecy does not buy them as much as is commonly supposed.
I did not say that they would get charged with fraud. They won't, surely. I meant that if they claim more damages in court than exist in reality, that is fraud.
The "elves" and "leprechauns" part of you post suggests some sort of increasing impairment as you were writing.
The vast majority of game developers do it for money. Some do it because they like to bring enjoyment to others. I do not have a problem with you not being one of those; that you program for simple ego is none of my business, surely. But that does not make you in any way relevant. I suggested a way for those interested in making money to make more money. If you do not want money, that is fine.
If Valve tries to make the claim in court that HL2 was postponed until April because of the source code theft, that will become fraud on their part. Until now it was just harmless marketing lies. The delay had little if anything to do with the code theft -- that was only a convenient excuse.
Someday I would like to see a game company create a game in an open way. They should have all their engine code out in the open so anybody could follow the progress and even contribute if they felt like it. They would not need to make up stuff about release dates because the public could easily find out the status of completion themselves. And if their source code gets stolen by other companies, they can just go all SCO on their asses. On the other hand, they can also make clear that if a hobbiest uses the engine code that they own the copyright. Smart game companies do that last part already.
All it will take is one brave company to revolutionize the industry. Happens all the time.
Actually the number of games pirated is totally irrelevant. What game publishers actually look at is number of units sold. If you sell 1,000,000 units but have 10,000,000 units pirated you are sitting a hell of a lot prettier than if you sell 100,000 and only have 1,000 units pirated.
(Arr, avast and ahoy ther, matey!)
And I hope to be seeing in metamod the dumbass who modded the above post Flamebait.
Wait for detail on this. A reporter penned those lines, not the company. And they are somewhat vague. Does this mean that the company will stop production immediately? Does it mean that it will stop pursuing new lines? Does it mean heavy winnowing of the non-profitable lines of production? Remember that you are reading a reporter's version of what the company is doing, and the reporter is not being all that detailed. Wait for an announcement from the company.
Any fix for this is going to open up other problems. But the question that needs to be asked is "will this avoid more crashes than it creates?" To me it is a no-brainer. This sort of technology will save far more lives -- maybe from terrorism, but mostly from simple pilot error -- than it will kill.
I use instant messaging with some of my extended family members. It's a great way of staying in touch. The only excuse for instant messaging someone in your own household, however, is if you do not possess muscle control over your legs. I mean, good god. Walk down the hallway and get a little excercise at least. That much laziness and your computer chair will give you bed sores.
Slashdot Mirror
"Google Print"? Sounds neat. Is there a beta page for that yet?
True. And if you redefine copyright infringement as "theft," I suppose a downloader would be liable for "misappropriation damages" under the Uniform Trade Secret Act. But damages could only appear if the downloader were to do something commercial with the code (or possibly put it up for upload). So I don't think that the trade secret angle matters that much here.
I don't think anyone has ever been prosecuted for downloading copyrighted material. Certainly for uploading it. But downloading is another ballgame.
And if these people had not pirated the game, how many of them would have bought copies? Only I small percentage, I'll bet. So how much money was lost due to piracy is an open question. In fact, how many copies of Halo will be sold due to this piracy (which is advertising, if unintentional)? Perhaps this will eventually be money in the pocket of developers rather than a dagger in the heart. There is no way to tell without hard numbers, and those are probably unknowable.
"Given that IQ would be consistent across all nations"
_ iraq_war.html Scroll down to the bottom. You will see that average IQ ranges from a low of 59 in Equatorial Guinea, to a high of 107 in Hong Kong. The numbers should not be taken as exact quantities however.
Japan has a average IQ 5-10 points above the U.S. In fact, within the U.S., group crime rates vary by group average IQ as well -- showing a spectrum from black to Asian populations with whites in between (though closer to Asians).
For data on how nations differ, you may wish to check out "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Lynn. IQ ranges a great deal by country. My weblog actually has a table with Lynn's data on the subject here: http://thrasymachus.typepad.com/thras/2003/10/the
But surely a person's "mental development" that you refer to is not entirely biological? Culture plays a large role in crime. Look at the crime boom in the 60s.
There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not a person turns into a criminal. The media is not the biggest one, but it is not a small one either. And since low IQ is also a very big factor, video games and movies are generally far more dangerous than books will ever be.
That could be the process, but my guess is that this is the process instead (and it is a political process, not a "thought" process):
AMD is a big company with money to spend (not bribes, but you know how it works). Being a single company, they also present a unified front for negotiations. The local government (or federal, I don't know with this deal) has few motivations to look unfavorably on AMD's requests.
On the other hand, income tax payers, sales tax payers, and property tax payers, do not have nearly the same forces to bring to the table in negotiations. So benefits of luring AMD into Dresden get magnified, while the benefits of cutting taxes on "the mob" get overlooked.
Same kind of thing goes on with building Sports Stadiums here in the U.S.
What you are saying is not wrong, exactly, but it is always a mistake to consider the state to be a reasonable actor.
Roman Font. Just in time for Empire.
Fermi Lab Compromised by Pirate
Damn it. I was expecting a bit of coastal raiding action from this story. Maybe black flags with the skull and crossbones. A little rapine and pillaging of the Fermi Lab.
Damn corruption of the English language.
From the press release: similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission So a friendly "Don't Panic."
After your last comments, I am just dying to read your newest mountain of prose. I have bookmarked it and will get back to it when I have the time. Before 2006, I promise. Keep checking back religiously for my reply. It's coming.
All right, you have made me interested. How exactly did you manage to get upset over a discussion about how to market video games? You seem representative enough here. I have had a dozen heated replies and only one reply with any substance, all over what seems like a fairly pablum topic.
I would like to hear a bit more about how your thought patterns on this work. A subscription to your newsletter would be great too.
I am glad that out of all the comments in reply to my post, one person has finally posted some reasonable criticisms.
In answer:
Some engines do get licensed by other companies, but most do not. Even in the case of developing something that will be sold, I would argue for taking a hard look at how opening it would affect your ability to sell it later. It is extremely hard work to copy an engine without leaving enough evidence in the binary and game itself to provoke a lawsuit down the road. I doubt a respectable company would take the risk -- instead buying the code legitimately. In fact, having your engine stolen by less legitimate companies may in fact bring you more business from the legitimate ones. More developers will become familiar with the engine and want to use it, and some gamers will come to expect certain elements of the engine as standard in their games. It in not impossible that the Photoshop dynamic is most likely here.
As for trade secrets, I am skeptical about the actual monetary loss from opening the code. Code tricks worthy of being kept secret do exist, but are rare, and most often fairly insignificant to a big project. Code is simply hard to copy. The best coding tricks are harder still. Again, I would argue at taking a look at what you gain from opening the code and comparing it to what you lose.
I have the feeling that you did not read the first post that carefully. Examples of something that hasn't been tried? Well, anyway. The main point is that it is a way to keep customers up to date on release dates without embarassment. (If you don't think that release dates are a big deal, then you don't know the market.) If someone does not want to accept user contributions to code, then they don't have to. All I am saying is that code secrecy does not buy them as much as is commonly supposed.
I did not say that they would get charged with fraud. They won't, surely. I meant that if they claim more damages in court than exist in reality, that is fraud.
The "elves" and "leprechauns" part of you post suggests some sort of increasing impairment as you were writing.
The vast majority of game developers do it for money. Some do it because they like to bring enjoyment to others. I do not have a problem with you not being one of those; that you program for simple ego is none of my business, surely. But that does not make you in any way relevant. I suggested a way for those interested in making money to make more money. If you do not want money, that is fine.
If Valve tries to make the claim in court that HL2 was postponed until April because of the source code theft, that will become fraud on their part. Until now it was just harmless marketing lies. The delay had little if anything to do with the code theft -- that was only a convenient excuse.
Someday I would like to see a game company create a game in an open way. They should have all their engine code out in the open so anybody could follow the progress and even contribute if they felt like it. They would not need to make up stuff about release dates because the public could easily find out the status of completion themselves. And if their source code gets stolen by other companies, they can just go all SCO on their asses. On the other hand, they can also make clear that if a hobbiest uses the engine code that they own the copyright. Smart game companies do that last part already.
All it will take is one brave company to revolutionize the industry. Happens all the time.
Actually the number of games pirated is totally irrelevant. What game publishers actually look at is number of units sold. If you sell 1,000,000 units but have 10,000,000 units pirated you are sitting a hell of a lot prettier than if you sell 100,000 and only have 1,000 units pirated.
(Arr, avast and ahoy ther, matey!)
And I hope to be seeing in metamod the dumbass who modded the above post Flamebait.
Wait for detail on this. A reporter penned those lines, not the company. And they are somewhat vague. Does this mean that the company will stop production immediately? Does it mean that it will stop pursuing new lines? Does it mean heavy winnowing of the non-profitable lines of production? Remember that you are reading a reporter's version of what the company is doing, and the reporter is not being all that detailed. Wait for an announcement from the company.
They have not announced any stoppage of production on Mindstorms. You are reading a little too much into the story.
If those blobs at the end of the arrows are our probes, whose probes are all the rest of the blobs?
I am probably the only person on the planet who is a million times more interested in a Zork movie trilogy than those silly and boring LOTR movies.
That explains things. I think I've been attuned to Mars time for a while now.
After all, it's not like my caffeine addiction could be affecting me.
Any fix for this is going to open up other problems. But the question that needs to be asked is "will this avoid more crashes than it creates?" To me it is a no-brainer. This sort of technology will save far more lives -- maybe from terrorism, but mostly from simple pilot error -- than it will kill.
I use instant messaging with some of my extended family members. It's a great way of staying in touch. The only excuse for instant messaging someone in your own household, however, is if you do not possess muscle control over your legs. I mean, good god. Walk down the hallway and get a little excercise at least. That much laziness and your computer chair will give you bed sores.