Allow me to introduce my brother, Joe (actually not his real name). To my brother a computer exists for two things, playing games and writing screenplay stuff. (At work, he uses Macs for editing film, but that's another story.) My brother is completely clueless when it comes to PCs (he knows all about running video equipment, lighting, and details of filmaking that I don't, I'm not putting him down.)
Currently, my brother's computer is sitting in NJ, a useless doorstop. Why? I can't tell, but whatever is wrong with it, he can't fix it. We think a virus may have eaten his hard drive, but we aren't sure. (He's had virus/trojan problems in the past... because of Email attachments his equally clueless friends have sent to him.)
Actually, my brother currently resents his Windows PC, and wishes he had bought a Mac, which is more popular in his business anyway. He's called me for technical support a few time, and I tried to give him basic advice, such as trying to get in in safe mode and remove recent programs. I also tried the old standby, "Have you tried reinstalling Windows from scratch?" but you know, even though he tried is, he isn't equipped to do it. I helped him add a bunch of new hardware to his computer, such as a DVD ROM drive, and I don't think he will be capable of getting all the various drivers he needs re-installed, even if he hasn't lost the disks in his move.
So, right now my brother's $1,800 PC is just sitting there, useless. I suggested he take it somewhere to get it fixed, but he's kind of cash-poor right now being an unpaid intern.
Is this a slam at Windows? Not exactly, though I do hate Micros~1 like poison. No, rather it is the point that, "the clueless PC user who can't even manage to do simple tasks in DOS probably shouldn't have a PC anyway." Really, do you honesly think a Joe or a Grandma can really manage something as complex as a PC? Especially if he or she is going to install new hardware or software without some kind of technical support?
If my brother had one of those Internet appliances, a simple wordprocessor or electric typewriter, and a game console, he'd be in much better shape.
PC's are for people who can run them, know someone who can run them, or afford to pay someone to run them. Most people fall into one of these three catagories. Since I accept that a PC is too complex for a clueless user to run without support, it doesn't really matter what OS it runs.
I know Eazel is proprietary software, but on the other hand we are talking about a switch from Windows because it is going to be ridiculously overpriced, not based on the virtues of Free Software.
Eazel is supposed to make Linux easy to use for the very people Windows/Mac OS targets, and it will run on top of Linux:
Re:[OT Rant] Tea, Earl Grey, Hot
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3D Printers
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· Score: 1
Maybe the "hot" part is a safety override. You know, the way that replicators create non-alchohlic alcohol? Well, maybe if Ensign Phips orders tea, he gets, only-slightly-above-room-temperature-not-quite-hot -more-like-tepid-or-lukewarm tea. You know, otherwise someone might scald themselves.
I also assume that the default tea is some kind of health food-type tea, like green tea with all its anti-oxidents, and that, again, earl grey might not be available to the rank and file.
This is just my extrapolation from the "nanny state" mentality of the Federation, and is probably just over-analysing something that was intended to be an charming idiosyncrasy of our ?French? Captain Picard....
Hey, wait a second, shouldn't it be "Wine, Red, Cold," why in the heck does our "French" Captain Jean-Luc Picard seem so British???
Never mind the huge implications for high-tech industry, 3D printing is being hailed by many as the "Santa Claus machine". "Toy manufacturers will put their file of Mickey Mouse on the Internet and people will simply pay to download it," says Chris Ryall of Warwick University.
I can see it all now:
Today the AFAA (Action Figure Association of America) applied for a court injunction against the new 3-D printers that have become so popular. 'Until these printers can be prevented from creating copyrighted designs, they need to be kept out of consumer's hands,' said an AFAA spokesperson. Congress reacting quickly, after being handed huge bags with $ signs on them, quickly enacted, the Save the Children Act, which made it illegal for anyone outside of a corporation to own one of these printers. When asked why, a congressman said, "Um... Oh, I saw this movie once where this guy made a plastic gun, we have to think of the children!" This reporter is suspicious as it is well known that congressmen don't watch movies...
Perhaps they don't have easy access, but a library would provide Net access. Or a bookstore would provide other points of view. Or training in how to detect specious arguments could help them tell when mainstream news is misleading them.
Remember, though, the agents of the reactionary mainstream media, specifically target each of these options.
Filters in the libraries to keep out alternative views.
Attacks on books or anything else controversial (the more accessible it is, the more likely it is to be attacked, which is why controversial TV and Movies are attacked more often than books).
Attacks on critical thinking skills in the schools, by making the school's repressive places where students expressing opinions that don't fit the party line will be squashed.
Riders are a way to get unpopular issues, or controversial issues, passed without raising a huge ruckus. They can also be useful for putting the other party in a bad spot. Look at this case, if this rider gets accepted, the Democratic party gets a pro-immigration victory, which might help them win over more of the increasingly importent Latino vote. On the other hand, if the rider fails they can say "Look the Republican party is really anti-Latino." It's good politics for the Democrats.
This type of rider is actually less sinister than riders that both parties want passed, but which the public or interested parties might find sinister or disgusting. Ane example was the "Work for Hire" rider (to some satellite bill) which for a time took away the rights of American musicians to their own music.
If they were actually serious about debating the merits of each issue they wouldn't go around attaching their pet projects to ride the coattails of truely important issues.
Mainstream American politicians aren't interested in debating the merits of their issues, and would rather just get their way all the time without a debate. Americans put up with it, for reasons I don't understand.
Recently, in responding to an article on the technology worker "shortage," I decried the fact that workers in the technology sector are unwilling to organize for their own benefit. I also pointed out that H1-B visas were bad, the main reason being that they create an exploitable workforce that has no right to vote and which has the fact of potential deportation hanging over their heads.
I was accused of xenophobia for this point of view, but the truth is I have had more contact with the Immigration and Naturalization Service than many people because my wife is Thai. One of the things I immediately saw about the H1-B visas was the fact that they allow people only long-term temporary residence in the United States. Think about this, if you moved to a state and lived there for six years, would you still consider your old state "home?" I wouldn't, I would certainly have made friends and set down roots after living someplace for six years. I'd want to have a say in elections (which would effect me) and otherwise be part of the community. People on H1-B visas are not given these opportunities. You could say that people on H1-B visas are "second class citizens" but the truth is even worse, they are not citizens at all. I assume, from my own life, that they must deal with the INS breathing down their neck, demanding that form X be filled out on time if they want to work and permit B recieved before they can travel.
The real truth of this is that it is cynical politicians using the economic fears and, yes, xenophobia of the populace to "divide and conquer." We should all accept the idea of foriegn workers, and once we've accepted the idea, we should realize that granting citizenship to these people (if they want it) is best for all Americans, not just the ones who were born elsewhere.
I can only compare people's attitudes toward H1-B visas, the ones who are glad that they are harsh and inevitably temporary, to the attitude of people who, upon hearing that a blight is affecting crops all over the country say, "Good, I hate those damn farmers anyway." The same percentage (in fact a greater percentage) of our workforce will be foriegn born whether we offer people H1-B's or citizenship. If a person is a citizen, they have the same stake in this country as the rest of us, the same need to protect our civil liberties, the same desire to see that good people are elected to public office. On the other hand, people who are denied citizenship have every reason to be apathetic. Whether they want to speak out on technological issues or not, their voices have less weight with people in power. They certainly can't help elect people who are savvy on tech issues if they can't vote. I often see people posting, "write congress about DMCA, write congress about UCITA," non-citizens have very little reason to care about such things, and would not be listened to if they did.
One last point: It may be that given the choice between an American citizen and an H1-B worker, some companies will choose the H1-B worker. It is possible that one of the reasons they choose an H1-B worker is because these people can be more easily exploited. (I'm not saying it is true, I'm just saying the possibility exists.) However, if the same two workers were both citizens, the only thing the employers could take into account would be competance. If you support citizenship for foriegn workers, you are making certain that you are competing for jobs based on competance and not on your prospective employers desire for the worker who is most easily exploited.
One other thing, about 1984. I don't exactly know where people get the idea that 1984 was unrealistic. It was basically based on the idea, What if the Stalin Era Soviet Union were the whole world? (instead of just a large part of it, as it was when 1984 was written).
The only differnece, beyond that, was that the State as it existed in 1984 was somewhat more efficient at opression than the Stalinist USSR, but not by much.
Surely you don't take Kahuna Burger (or today's apparently fascist sympathizer moderators) to be typical of Slashdot attitudes, do you?
Remember, if it were up to Kahuna Burger, the Sega Dreamcast itself would be illegal, since all video games do is stir people up and make them into zombie killbots in his warped world view. He certainly wouldn't want a free development kit for Dreamcast, no one would be able to censor it. Kahuna Burger is a fascist, he'd easily adjust to the future portrayed in the letter, probably landing a job as copyright enforcer and shooting violaters.
My suggestion to you is to keep working on it, and when you've finished it, release it. If Bleem is legal, and SOA allows Bleem on Dreamcast, your development kit should be ok.
...beat em. What all of these various legal attacks by the content industry are about making sure that the information technology industry doesn't end up controlling them. That in the US, that they'll lead the content economy and information technology will be, at best, a junior partner. Basically, they know they won't be able to adapt, or even come up with, to a new business model in the age when scarcity of their products doesn't exist.
In fact, this sort of reminds me of DeBeers. Recently, I was watching an episode of Nova which shows that they have figured out how to synthesize gem quality diamonds which are 100% indistinguishable from natural diamonds. I can tell you, DeBeers is panicking over this, they've kept the price of diamonds high by keeping the supply artificially low.
So, one of the best things IT workers can do is to keep working on things like Ogg Vorbis (hopefully quietly enough that anti-Vorbis legislation won't be passed) and other content delivery systems. In the long run, by doing this, we'll have left an opening for people with the courage and business sense to take on the old corrupt structure and drive it into bankruptcy.
My guess is that, ultimately, if the content industry doesn't manage to turn the US into a planned economy, a new business model which can take advantage of the abundance of content the way the old one took advantage of scarcity will emerge. I'm not sure how, it might be hardware related (say MP3 player makers paying bands and having their own in house content creation) or sorting related (finding appropriate content for individual tastes against a sea of information).
I'm not a businessman though, but I do know one thing. The US doesn't control the world, and I believe the US is currently tops in the world economy. If we cripple our information technology industry to protect our content industry, we will eventually be bypassed in both by countries that don't take such a narrow, shortsighted view.
You forget about broadband TV, which is something else these people want to control. What is broadband TV? Well, put simply it is when enough people have broadband connections to the Internet, and video has been compressed enough to allow near instant video downloads.
It's considered a serious enough possiblity that one of the things the actor's guild is considering striking over is the fact that the actors in old reruns that are beamed out via pay-per-download TV won't see a dime of that theoretical money.
The big question is, what new laws will be enacted to prevent a private citizen like me from broadcasting my own show in this way?
Besides, Gore and Lieberman have been going on and on and on about how important it is to protect children from these things... but I haven't heard anything about that on this site. Oh, wait, didn't this site endorse Al Gore?
Why is it not considered newsworthy when there is a bipartisan witch hunt accross American culture going on, calling for regulation or at least threatening it, but the library in Holland, Michigan gets mentioned? Is it just snobbery (censoring movies and video games is ok, but censoring the Internet in Libraries isn't) or is it something else?
You know in cryptographic slang, when you forcibly decrypt code, they call it cracking not hacking (or at least the did when I was a lad.)
Therefore, this is a cracking contest, not a hacking contest.
Whether or not it could be cracked in a contest wouldn't prove whether it could be cracked in real life (indeed, I believe that there is no such thing as an uncrackable cipher) but I'm glad people are boycotting this. The reason I'm glad is because it is a public show of contempt for the content industry, and I'm glad it's getting a lot of press.
The best way to get the decss song into the news is to have MP3.com remove it for offensive lyrics.
I mean if it does, everyone will be downloading it from Gnutella, Napster, etc. just out of curiousity.
Of course, it might not work, however it has just that absurd quality that might tempt some newspapers to run it...
The point of all the DeCSS stuff, in the long run, is publicity. If public opinion can't be turned against the DMCA, we'll never get our fair use rights back.
I really think that a lot of the christian hating is just based on a "please leave us alone" attitude. People aren't objecting to say, the Amish, because the Amish aren't trying to force their views on anyone else, despite the fact that most pro-technology people would find the Amish lifestyle anathema.
I do think, however, that there is something seriously wrong in knocking Bush's conservatism and not knocking Gore's conservatism. After all, I'm pretty well convinced that Bush's pandering to the Christian right is just based on vote getting... whereas I believe Gore is a true believer.
At any rate, one or the other is going to get elected and it is going to suck for gamers and people who believe in Free Speech in general no matter which way the election goes.
I suggest computer and console game developers read up on the Comics Code authority, because I forsee something similar in gaming's future:
Comic books were forced to adhere to a code which simplified and neutered the westerns, crime and romance genres. The horror comic books all but disappeared, while the funny animal comics flourished. Over a half dozen publishers went under, and a number of talented industry professionals moved into other fields for a while. --Origin Of The Comics Code Authority
The political arena thing is amusing, but it reminds me of, Are You a Red Dupe?, a final attempt at political satire from an industry that is about to have the life and creativity crushed out of it.
Why is this man still the president of the MPAA? The statistics have shown that vhs and casette tapes helped the industry.
In all likelyhood, there is going to be an actor and writer strike against the multinationals in Hollywood soon. See this article: Variety: Thesps set for strike. At the heart is the feeling that the multinationals are out to keep all the money for themselves and give as little as possible to the actors and the writers.
I was reading an article about it in my sister's Entertainment Weekly (cover "A Year Without Movies?"), which basically said that the last time a strike like this was coming, one of the Hollywood moguls was able to negotiate a deal. However, huge multinationals, so says the article, are apparently incapable of negotiating... they'll just have to break the strike.
One of the points that the strikers are upset about is that they are pretty sure that "pay-per-download" TV is coming, but that the writers and the actors who created the original shows used by this system won't get a penny of the profits from it.
I keep wondering if there was some way the people involved with the anti-MPAA lawsuits could hook up with the anti-MPAA strikers. I doubt they'd see eye to eye though.
The irony of this is that it all started with The Lord of the Rings, a Christian allegory in the form of a fantasy tale.
However, back when LotR was getting big, in the 70's (also when a lot of the big computer milestones were being met) one of the ways the love of fantasy it engendered was express was through Fantasy Role Playing Games. The history of Fantasy role playing games is that they grew out of tabletop miniature games with wonderfully complex rules and cool little figurines (don't forget the sand tables!) Eventually, fantasy elements were added to medieval miniature wargames, and that evolved (sorry for offending any Kansans reading this!) into the earliest versions of Dungeons and Dragons. It seems to me that Dungeons and Dragons was very popular among computer programmers. Either that, or the complex rules of D&D were just perfect for creating computer games. Whatever the reasons, a lot of the earliest computer games I played, Zork,Ultima, Temple of Apshai were more or less ripoffs of Dungeons and Dragons.
Of course, D&D was legally forbidden to use the concepts and mythology present in Tolkien, so the creators borrowed from many sources, as diverse as H.P. Lovecraft and Ancient Greek and Egyptian religions. Besides, that stuff was cool, and in the early days, D&D liked to include stuff that was cool.
Well, some fundamentalist preachers eventually decided that they needed to unite their sheep against an enemy, and unfortunately one of them discovered D&D. It was perfect, it contained demons and pagan gods, so the simple minded members of the faith could be convinced that the complex rulebooks (which were... ahem... beyond the level of the average sheep's reading ability) contained actual evil incantation for summoning Lucifer and Demogorgon.
I can remember even Infocom got somewhat caught up with this, someone sent a letter into The New Zork Times telling them how evil their games were and how they were all going to Hell. (If you've ever played an Infocom game, you'll know why this is ridiculous... the Frobozz Magic Glue factory is not the stuff of real magick.)
So, I suspect this is where the myth that hackers were more likely to be pagans or into alternative religion comes from.
Now... it may be that there is more actual alternative religious belief among hackers than among more average society. Certainly, California seems to be more open to alternative religions than the rest of the country. I don't think there has ever been an actual scientific poll take to determine numbers. Myself? I used to be Catholic and now basically consider myself mostly agnostic.
Ia, Ia Cthulhu ftagn!!
Re:Someone beat this guy with a clue stick
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Lawsuits Suck
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I know, that's why we get such bad choices from the Whig party every year. But what can you do? They may be more or less identical to the Democrats but it isn't like those upstart Republicans will ever win an election. How dare I have the temerity to imagine that voting for some candidate who cares about none of the issues I do would ever swing an election! What do I think this is, a representative democracy?
Oh, and, "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodoss!"
History is on your side, of course, no third party has ever had an effect on the American system. That's why we have to put up with the South and their "peculiar institution" of slavery to this very day.
I wish you Whigs good luck in the general election, as for me, I'll continue to vote Libertarian.
SirWinston, K-Mart and Walmart are not the villains here. Brownback and Lieberman wanted them to do what Montgomery Ward and Sears did, which is refuse to sell M games altogether.
I'd rather video games weren't a political football but with Lieberman for VP they're going to be, and carding is better than de facto censorship.
Slashdot Mirror
Currently, my brother's computer is sitting in NJ, a useless doorstop. Why? I can't tell, but whatever is wrong with it, he can't fix it. We think a virus may have eaten his hard drive, but we aren't sure. (He's had virus/trojan problems in the past... because of Email attachments his equally clueless friends have sent to him.)
Actually, my brother currently resents his Windows PC, and wishes he had bought a Mac, which is more popular in his business anyway. He's called me for technical support a few time, and I tried to give him basic advice, such as trying to get in in safe mode and remove recent programs. I also tried the old standby, "Have you tried reinstalling Windows from scratch?" but you know, even though he tried is, he isn't equipped to do it. I helped him add a bunch of new hardware to his computer, such as a DVD ROM drive, and I don't think he will be capable of getting all the various drivers he needs re-installed, even if he hasn't lost the disks in his move.
So, right now my brother's $1,800 PC is just sitting there, useless. I suggested he take it somewhere to get it fixed, but he's kind of cash-poor right now being an unpaid intern.
Is this a slam at Windows? Not exactly, though I do hate Micros~1 like poison. No, rather it is the point that, "the clueless PC user who can't even manage to do simple tasks in DOS probably shouldn't have a PC anyway." Really, do you honesly think a Joe or a Grandma can really manage something as complex as a PC? Especially if he or she is going to install new hardware or software without some kind of technical support?
If my brother had one of those Internet appliances, a simple wordprocessor or electric typewriter, and a game console, he'd be in much better shape.
PC's are for people who can run them, know someone who can run them, or afford to pay someone to run them. Most people fall into one of these three catagories. Since I accept that a PC is too complex for a clueless user to run without support, it doesn't really matter what OS it runs.
Eazel is supposed to make Linux easy to use for the very people Windows/Mac OS targets, and it will run on top of Linux:
Eazel
I also assume that the default tea is some kind of health food-type tea, like green tea with all its anti-oxidents, and that, again, earl grey might not be available to the rank and file.
This is just my extrapolation from the "nanny state" mentality of the Federation, and is probably just over-analysing something that was intended to be an charming idiosyncrasy of our ?French? Captain Picard....
Hey, wait a second, shouldn't it be "Wine, Red, Cold," why in the heck does our "French" Captain Jean-Luc Picard seem so British???
Today the AFAA (Action Figure Association of America) applied for a court injunction against the new 3-D printers that have become so popular. 'Until these printers can be prevented from creating copyrighted designs, they need to be kept out of consumer's hands,' said an AFAA spokesperson. Congress reacting quickly, after being handed huge bags with $ signs on them, quickly enacted, the Save the Children Act, which made it illegal for anyone outside of a corporation to own one of these printers. When asked why, a congressman said, "Um... Oh, I saw this movie once where this guy made a plastic gun, we have to think of the children!" This reporter is suspicious as it is well known that congressmen don't watch movies...
Filters in the libraries to keep out alternative views.
Attacks on books or anything else controversial (the more accessible it is, the more likely it is to be attacked, which is why controversial TV and Movies are attacked more often than books).
Attacks on critical thinking skills in the schools, by making the school's repressive places where students expressing opinions that don't fit the party line will be squashed.
Just out of curiousity, what kind of technical questions?
I mean, could you give an example?
This type of rider is actually less sinister than riders that both parties want passed, but which the public or interested parties might find sinister or disgusting. Ane example was the "Work for Hire" rider (to some satellite bill) which for a time took away the rights of American musicians to their own music.
Mainstream American politicians aren't interested in debating the merits of their issues, and would rather just get their way all the time without a debate. Americans put up with it, for reasons I don't understand.I was accused of xenophobia for this point of view, but the truth is I have had more contact with the Immigration and Naturalization Service than many people because my wife is Thai. One of the things I immediately saw about the H1-B visas was the fact that they allow people only long-term temporary residence in the United States. Think about this, if you moved to a state and lived there for six years, would you still consider your old state "home?" I wouldn't, I would certainly have made friends and set down roots after living someplace for six years. I'd want to have a say in elections (which would effect me) and otherwise be part of the community. People on H1-B visas are not given these opportunities. You could say that people on H1-B visas are "second class citizens" but the truth is even worse, they are not citizens at all. I assume, from my own life, that they must deal with the INS breathing down their neck, demanding that form X be filled out on time if they want to work and permit B recieved before they can travel.
The real truth of this is that it is cynical politicians using the economic fears and, yes, xenophobia of the populace to "divide and conquer." We should all accept the idea of foriegn workers, and once we've accepted the idea, we should realize that granting citizenship to these people (if they want it) is best for all Americans, not just the ones who were born elsewhere.
I can only compare people's attitudes toward H1-B visas, the ones who are glad that they are harsh and inevitably temporary, to the attitude of people who, upon hearing that a blight is affecting crops all over the country say, "Good, I hate those damn farmers anyway." The same percentage (in fact a greater percentage) of our workforce will be foriegn born whether we offer people H1-B's or citizenship. If a person is a citizen, they have the same stake in this country as the rest of us, the same need to protect our civil liberties, the same desire to see that good people are elected to public office. On the other hand, people who are denied citizenship have every reason to be apathetic. Whether they want to speak out on technological issues or not, their voices have less weight with people in power. They certainly can't help elect people who are savvy on tech issues if they can't vote. I often see people posting, "write congress about DMCA, write congress about UCITA," non-citizens have very little reason to care about such things, and would not be listened to if they did.
One last point: It may be that given the choice between an American citizen and an H1-B worker, some companies will choose the H1-B worker. It is possible that one of the reasons they choose an H1-B worker is because these people can be more easily exploited. (I'm not saying it is true, I'm just saying the possibility exists.) However, if the same two workers were both citizens, the only thing the employers could take into account would be competance. If you support citizenship for foriegn workers, you are making certain that you are competing for jobs based on competance and not on your prospective employers desire for the worker who is most easily exploited.
The only differnece, beyond that, was that the State as it existed in 1984 was somewhat more efficient at opression than the Stalinist USSR, but not by much.
Remember, if it were up to Kahuna Burger, the Sega Dreamcast itself would be illegal, since all video games do is stir people up and make them into zombie killbots in his warped world view. He certainly wouldn't want a free development kit for Dreamcast, no one would be able to censor it. Kahuna Burger is a fascist, he'd easily adjust to the future portrayed in the letter, probably landing a job as copyright enforcer and shooting violaters.
My suggestion to you is to keep working on it, and when you've finished it, release it. If Bleem is legal, and SOA allows Bleem on Dreamcast, your development kit should be ok.
In fact, this sort of reminds me of DeBeers. Recently, I was watching an episode of Nova which shows that they have figured out how to synthesize gem quality diamonds which are 100% indistinguishable from natural diamonds. I can tell you, DeBeers is panicking over this, they've kept the price of diamonds high by keeping the supply artificially low.
So, one of the best things IT workers can do is to keep working on things like Ogg Vorbis (hopefully quietly enough that anti-Vorbis legislation won't be passed) and other content delivery systems. In the long run, by doing this, we'll have left an opening for people with the courage and business sense to take on the old corrupt structure and drive it into bankruptcy.
My guess is that, ultimately, if the content industry doesn't manage to turn the US into a planned economy, a new business model which can take advantage of the abundance of content the way the old one took advantage of scarcity will emerge. I'm not sure how, it might be hardware related (say MP3 player makers paying bands and having their own in house content creation) or sorting related (finding appropriate content for individual tastes against a sea of information).
I'm not a businessman though, but I do know one thing. The US doesn't control the world, and I believe the US is currently tops in the world economy. If we cripple our information technology industry to protect our content industry, we will eventually be bypassed in both by countries that don't take such a narrow, shortsighted view.
It's considered a serious enough possiblity that one of the things the actor's guild is considering striking over is the fact that the actors in old reruns that are beamed out via pay-per-download TV won't see a dime of that theoretical money.
The big question is, what new laws will be enacted to prevent a private citizen like me from broadcasting my own show in this way?
Besides, Gore and Lieberman have been going on and on and on about how important it is to protect children from these things... but I haven't heard anything about that on this site. Oh, wait, didn't this site endorse Al Gore?
Why is it not considered newsworthy when there is a bipartisan witch hunt accross American culture going on, calling for regulation or at least threatening it, but the library in Holland, Michigan gets mentioned? Is it just snobbery (censoring movies and video games is ok, but censoring the Internet in Libraries isn't) or is it something else?
Therefore, this is a cracking contest, not a hacking contest.
Whether or not it could be cracked in a contest wouldn't prove whether it could be cracked in real life (indeed, I believe that there is no such thing as an uncrackable cipher) but I'm glad people are boycotting this. The reason I'm glad is because it is a public show of contempt for the content industry, and I'm glad it's getting a lot of press.
I mean if it does, everyone will be downloading it from Gnutella, Napster, etc. just out of curiousity.
Of course, it might not work, however it has just that absurd quality that might tempt some newspapers to run it...
The point of all the DeCSS stuff, in the long run, is publicity. If public opinion can't be turned against the DMCA, we'll never get our fair use rights back.
A fat, balding astronaut releases ruffled potato chips on the transport...
The experimental ants get loose, prompting Peter Jennings to welcome our "New Ant Overlords..."
And the day is saved by... an inanimate carbon rod.
Should I be pleased or scared when real life imitates The Simpsons?
A little from column A and a little from column B?
Gore Takes Tough Stand on Violent Entertainment
I really think that a lot of the christian hating is just based on a "please leave us alone" attitude. People aren't objecting to say, the Amish, because the Amish aren't trying to force their views on anyone else, despite the fact that most pro-technology people would find the Amish lifestyle anathema.
I do think, however, that there is something seriously wrong in knocking Bush's conservatism and not knocking Gore's conservatism. After all, I'm pretty well convinced that Bush's pandering to the Christian right is just based on vote getting... whereas I believe Gore is a true believer.
At any rate, one or the other is going to get elected and it is going to suck for gamers and people who believe in Free Speech in general no matter which way the election goes.
I suggest computer and console game developers read up on the Comics Code authority, because I forsee something similar in gaming's future:
The political arena thing is amusing, but it reminds me of, Are You a Red Dupe?, a final attempt at political satire from an industry that is about to have the life and creativity crushed out of it.
I was reading an article about it in my sister's Entertainment Weekly (cover "A Year Without Movies?"), which basically said that the last time a strike like this was coming, one of the Hollywood moguls was able to negotiate a deal. However, huge multinationals, so says the article, are apparently incapable of negotiating... they'll just have to break the strike.
One of the points that the strikers are upset about is that they are pretty sure that "pay-per-download" TV is coming, but that the writers and the actors who created the original shows used by this system won't get a penny of the profits from it.
I keep wondering if there was some way the people involved with the anti-MPAA lawsuits could hook up with the anti-MPAA strikers. I doubt they'd see eye to eye though.
However, back when LotR was getting big, in the 70's (also when a lot of the big computer milestones were being met) one of the ways the love of fantasy it engendered was express was through Fantasy Role Playing Games. The history of Fantasy role playing games is that they grew out of tabletop miniature games with wonderfully complex rules and cool little figurines (don't forget the sand tables!) Eventually, fantasy elements were added to medieval miniature wargames, and that evolved (sorry for offending any Kansans reading this!) into the earliest versions of Dungeons and Dragons. It seems to me that Dungeons and Dragons was very popular among computer programmers. Either that, or the complex rules of D&D were just perfect for creating computer games. Whatever the reasons, a lot of the earliest computer games I played, Zork, Ultima, Temple of Apshai were more or less ripoffs of Dungeons and Dragons.
Of course, D&D was legally forbidden to use the concepts and mythology present in Tolkien, so the creators borrowed from many sources, as diverse as H.P. Lovecraft and Ancient Greek and Egyptian religions. Besides, that stuff was cool, and in the early days, D&D liked to include stuff that was cool.
Well, some fundamentalist preachers eventually decided that they needed to unite their sheep against an enemy, and unfortunately one of them discovered D&D. It was perfect, it contained demons and pagan gods, so the simple minded members of the faith could be convinced that the complex rulebooks (which were... ahem... beyond the level of the average sheep's reading ability) contained actual evil incantation for summoning Lucifer and Demogorgon.
I can remember even Infocom got somewhat caught up with this, someone sent a letter into The New Zork Times telling them how evil their games were and how they were all going to Hell. (If you've ever played an Infocom game, you'll know why this is ridiculous... the Frobozz Magic Glue factory is not the stuff of real magick.)
So, I suspect this is where the myth that hackers were more likely to be pagans or into alternative religion comes from.
Now... it may be that there is more actual alternative religious belief among hackers than among more average society. Certainly, California seems to be more open to alternative religions than the rest of the country. I don't think there has ever been an actual scientific poll take to determine numbers. Myself? I used to be Catholic and now basically consider myself mostly agnostic.
Ia, Ia Cthulhu ftagn!!
Oh, and, "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodoss!"
History is on your side, of course, no third party has ever had an effect on the American system. That's why we have to put up with the South and their "peculiar institution" of slavery to this very day.
I wish you Whigs good luck in the general election, as for me, I'll continue to vote Libertarian.
~moron~
I'd rather video games weren't a political football but with Lieberman for VP they're going to be, and carding is better than de facto censorship.
http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/09/07/1658220&cid=341
That's like saying I never lived in the Soviet Union, so how dare I criticize it. What a disgusting parasite you are!
Moderators, note the redundant comments, if ever there were a need for the redundant tag, it's this guy!
http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/09/07/1658220&cid=341
I realize I've had to be redundant myself to do it!
http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/09/07/1658220&cid=341
I don't care if I get modded to redundant as long as every one of your redundant comments gets modded down too!