Hey, am I the only one who recognizes this scenario from The Lurking Horror? The eerie underground tunnels, the Tomb of the Unknown Tool, all that stuff. (Not to mention the computer lab hacker who had keys on his belt to every door in the building.)
Of course, in the Lurking Horror the building hacking was necessary to:
1. Save the world from Eldritch Horrors.
2. And retrieve a misplaced paper.
Anyone, I think anyone who is into hacker culture at MIT would get a charge out of playing this old Infocom game. Moderation Totals:Offtopic=1, Informative=1, Overrated=1, Total=3.
Hmm, seems some moderator I offended a while back had it in for me on this post. So, I'll re-post it with my plus two bonus. (You know, I'm trying hard to get my karma score down to a negative number. ^_^) Yes, I still like Ranma 1/2
I've mentioned this before but Dino Crisis detected my mod chip. Of course, I'm betting that games for the new Sony PC (Otherwise knows as Playstation 2) will be able to really screw up the OS on the hard drives (otherwise known as memory cards).
Just think, you are using whatever mod for years, collecting an international movie collection, then one day you buy a legitimate movie or game and from then on the PS2 says, "Sorry, you are using an unauthorized, illegal and immoral set of drivers designed to defeat the regional coding," every time you turn it on until you get the latest version of the mod or change over to Sony's "legitimate" price-gouging/censorship version of the OS.
I wonder if MS will try stuff like this with X-box?
It really disturbs me that PS2 will probably become the console of choice, despite Sony's malevolence and incompetance.
Assuming Richard Garriot isn't just going to spend his time lounging around in his big house throwing Halloween parties, I'm looking foward to what he does next.
Is he still living in the same house? I remember when they showed it on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, it's all full of secret panels and passages as I recall. Here's a question, if he decides to do a new game, will he be allowed to put Lord British in it or will Origins lawyers come after him and say, "The character of Lord British(tm) is a trademark of Origin Systems, Inc." preventing him from doing so? That would be horrible especially if his leaving wasn't amicable.
In the TV series, I, Clavdivs when Augustus dies, Tiberius says, "The earth will shake!" That seems appropriate here.
First question, how is the Ultima series going to handle this? Will Lord British continue to exist in the game, as he has ever since I started playing them way back on the Atari 800?
I can't think of another game series where the presence of the games creator was such a firm and important part of the games universe. I can't imagine Origin without Lord British, I wonder what his "other interests" are (and whether they have something to do with the computer area). Does anyone know what the story behing Garriot's leaving is? Was it amicable or was it because of disagreements within Origin? (I'm hoping it wasn't a Nolan Bushnell leaving Atari, Gary Gygax leaving TSR type of thing....)
If you don't support it you don't support something in the linux community and people (the dumb bandwagon stock market people) start to wonder why a unique product like a Linux DVD player fails...and then boom you have them pulling money out of many Linux products.
Well, first of all, I'm not sure when it became fashionable for people in the Free Software movement to worship venture capitalists and investment bankers at the expense of deeply held philisophical beliefs. If you buy a licensed player from a consortium that says, "Unlicensed players are illegal," though some very shady legal tactics, you are helping to legitimize their position. Remember, their position is that "piracy protection" gives them the right to:
1. Arbitrarily censor content based on region. 2. Engage in region based price gouging. 3. Control the use of your property after you have bought and paid for it beyond what was allowed by traditional copyright law.
Now, it is possible (probable) that some recent Linux converts don't care about Free Software, Copyleft, or any of the things that made Linux possible. They just see Linux as a cool OS and they want it to grow. So for these people there is really no difference between Linux and say OS/2 on a philisophical level.
If you are trying to win the MPAA battle, which is much smaller in comparison, then you choose not to support it.
I'm not sure why you think the MPAA battle is smaller than the OS battle, unless, again, you see Linux only as a product. If the principles currently being affirmed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act end up permenently affirmed in this country, there exists the strong possibility that copyleft software (like Linux, Apache, and others) could be severely impacted by it in the long term.
Look at it this way:
1. Adoption of LinDVD kills open source DVD development due to lack of interest and the fact that people don't want to take on scary lawyers to work on an open source product
2. The MPAA decides to form a trust with Microsoft and Apple, and eliminate the license for LinDVD.
3. Linux is again left without a DVD player and no open source alternative.
I mean one of the biggest problems with Linux right now is its reliance on a quasi-abandonware Web browser called Netscape, which AOL didn't seem to care about much until Linux started to take off. The fact that IE seems more compatible with the Web than older versions of Netscape (hopefully version 6 will correct this) has hampered Linux's acceptance by the mainstrean more than the lack of a DVD player would.
Oh, one last thing, since if I by a DVD I don't actually own it but only a license to view it under restricted conditions, I see no reason to by DVDs. That being the case, why would I buy a DVD player for Linux or otherwise? Of course, for people who don't mind the idea of their movie collection existing under Draconian new copyright laws designed to screw them out of their rights under pre-DMCA copyright laws, I suppose it isn't a problem.
So, I don't think that LinDVD can be supported on a philisophical level because I don't think that the DVD formats problems can be supported on a philisophical level. (Anyone who is still buying DVDs for a set-top box, though, should buy LinDVD.)
Re:CNN has a report on this.
on
Protesting DMCA
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· Score: 5
By making a comment such as this it makes us Linux user look like a bunch of whining cheapskates (I mean no offense by this) to the rest of the world.
If all this were about were playing DVDs under Linux, then I wouldn't care. This is about a whole anti-consumer culture that has come into being lately, and has a grip on Washington.
What I want is a re-affirmation of the principal that if I buy a book/movie/tape/CD I own the book/movie/tape/CD and not just a license to use it under certain conditions as decided by the publisher. I am willing to deal with copyright protection, that is to say, "I will not re-publish this item under my own label for fun or profit. I will not make copies of this item and give them away, but I may make copies for personal use, such as archiving or interoperability." I am not willing to deal with, "I hereby admit that I have bought a license to use this item under certain conditions dictated to me by the copyright holder."
This is a fundamentally new idea, it recently saw its most obvious and egregious application with the late and unlamented Divx, but is seeing a rebirth under DVD restrictions. Up until recently, if I bought a book, copyright holders had no way to stop me from loaning it (or giving it) to my friend in Japan. It's my book, if I want to give it away, that should be my business. Suppose I want to do the same with a movie? The current copyright owners want:
1. Technological restrictions to prevent me from doing so.
2. Legal muscle to prevent me from doing so if the technological restrictions fail.
Therefore, I consider if I "buy" a movie on DVD, the people who sold me the movie consider that they still own it. Not just the right to copy the movie (otherwise known as copyright:), but they still own the actual disk they sold me.
Consumers rejected Divx, but the MPAA and its ilk never did. They just realized that Divx went to far too fast, and that they couldn't fool people into believing that a "gold" level Divx, which would play on your home Divx player.... as long as you kept your Divx account open and the player plugged into the phone line... but not on your friends player was equivalent to buying the same movie on a tape.
DVD restrictions seem mild by comparison, but they are still indefensible. There is no reason why geographic borders should be used as tools for censorship and price gouging. There is no reason why control of content should be used to maintain the monopoly of a company like Micros~1.
The DVD CCA may throw us all a bone, and allow a licensed binary for Linux. Heck, they might even give away a free version where you can view the source and just maintain their rights over it (i.e. give it away under there own license rather than GPL it, like AOL/Time/Warner did with the Netscape code). I would hope that the people who are against the MPAA and DVD CCA would see that that isn't the point, and that it was just, "Here, now maybe they'll shut their yaps and we can go back to screwing over the average consumer." They need to rethink their Draconian and absurd position on copyright, and return to fair use and a balanced view of consumers rights. Otherwise, I will resist them until I die. What's the point in buying something if you aren't really allowed to own it?
Well, see the Pinkerton's will be able to pick and choose who goes into the database. So, if Johnny X gets "called in" to the database, and he's on the football team and Daddy is a city councilman, the call gets labelled as a "prank call." On the other hand, Suzy Q., Wicca practitioner from a broken home, gets put on the list really quick. Remember the Cont^H^H^H^HPinkerton Detectives are detectives after all, unless they are swamped with calls they'll be able to decide which student would enhance their reputation by being on the list and which might bring lawsuits or political troubles. It's a win/win situation.
Do you know anything about the Pinkertons? The oh so friendly company responsible for this? Have you ever read Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett?
Frankly, it amazes me that after their part in the labor struggles of the 20th century that the Pinkertons are even still around, and successful. I mean I suppose historical evils like the Nazi's still hang around, but they aren't part of mainstream society or anything that decent people want to be associated with.
Oh, and incidentally it doesn't matter whether or not, "N.C. is trying to root out video game playing," what they are doing is giving High School kids a place to send poison pen letters. Want to get someone in your class you don't like? Just call the Pinkertons, they'll take care of it for you!
I mean seriously, you'd expect them to have at least done some research on the movies they show to school kids. My English teacher in junior high showed us all The Wave the same year she showed us the Diary of Anne Frank. It's comical that something which aspires to be a U.S. version of the Comintern/Hitler Youth would choose W.A.V.E. for their name.
Well, I guess we should all be happy that a company with a proud tradition of union busting, strike breaking and general oppression is bringing it's techniques to the American public school system. Of course, where I went to school we learned all about the Pinkertons, I wonder if they'll change the history books in the school districts where the friendly Pinkertons are helping out? Of course I did go to school in working class Irish NJ, I suspect they may already have different history books in NC...
As an anti-social, misanthropic loner, I prefer single player games. I can point you to some good ones.
I'm pretty sure that most Looking Glass studios games are heavily single player (like Thief and System Shock II). There was a rant about the whole multiplayer thing in Next Generation online before it got destroyed and absorbed by the vapid Daily Radar.
Anyway, check into the Looking Glass games, they are attractive and deep (and even though SS2 has a multiplayer mode, it is cooperative... what a concept!).
I've read about success using these with Wine, but I haven't seen it myself. I also signed a petition to get SS2 ported to Linux at Tux Games.
I find Heroes of Might and Magic III to be fun to play single player, too, and it's a native Linux app.
... by proving it will be used for rather nasty things like regional coding, price fixing and product tying. I sure wouldn't support a secure format for music because it would mean I couldn't buy import sountracks or music. Also, I'll have to play the music only on the correct kind of player, they'll probably create some form of Macrohearing for the audio format. That means I'm stuck because my Accord has a cassette deck (and even if I had a CD player, the goal will be to obsolete that in favor of DVD-Audio.).
I would be lying if I said I felt sorry for anyone who was part of the corrupt entertainment industry. I do not, however, delude myself into thinking that MP3 ripping and trading is done for altruistic reasons.
If the entertainment industry were less anti-consumer, maybe consumers would be less willing to "pirate." However, the entertainment industry is so corrupt, and so obvious and unrepentant in their corruption that no one gives (or ought) to give a damn about them. If you are going to use the phrase "hurting the artists" to justify suppressing the fair use rights of consumers, expect people to become cynical about your moral authority.
IBM wants now and has wanted since their earliest beginnings to be primarily a hardware vendor. We have a big, black, well made, incredibly expensive IBM server in our office right now. Linux, a Free Open Source OS gives them what their homegrown OS/2 couldn't because of its unpopularity, it let's them sell their hardware without paying anything for the OS. Now, if OS/2 had become a huge success (I've heard it was a good design with poor marketing) and provides real competition with the Apple OS and Micros~1, IBM wouldn't have bothered with Linux. However, it makes sense for them to use a good, fairly popular OS which doesn't cost them anything when they are in the hardware business but not the OS business. (I can't wait till they port Word Pro to Linux...)
Interesting thing about our IBM Netfinity server, it didn't come with any OS pre-installed. They sold us the hardware, getting an OS for it was our problem. I'm betting that future Netfinity's will either have Linux pre-installed or come with Linux disks.
What you do is make clients that work with Linux, Win9X, and BeOS. Still make it clear that you have to use their ISP, but make it so the mods can do this also. -- from the original post
It seems to me that the poster was say, "Let people mod it all they want, as long as they are required to subscribe to the ISP for X amount of time." Heck, make people buy a years worth of service when they get the box... or whatever it takes to make a decent profit.
That might've worked. As might selling the unit at full markup to people who want it as a Linux X-terminal ($500 maybe?).
...to get a 486 with a 1 Gig hardrive and a built in cheapo LCD screen from a company called Monorail. I know because I've got one. It has a pretty small footprint and made a good dorm computer. The old version of RedHat I had tried to install on it about two years ago seemed to have problems with the hardware configuration (mostly because X11 didn't seem to like the LCD). I tried to install a more recent version of Caldera on it, but it was too much for it. I'm thinking of trying my copy of Mandrake next, or looking around for a more stripped down *nix. Of course, I'll need an external modem to make it useful after I do it, I think. I think it has a WinModem inside it... bleah. None of this is a priority, just a project I have lined up for when I have some free time... provided Mom doesn't destroy it first since I left it at her house. Anyway, it seems Monorail stopped selling the things and went for more ordinary computers (no more built in LCDs) but you might be able to find one used.
We need an independant third party to examing the OGL and see if it is Copyleft compatible. If it is, then we can use it however we want, if not we should just ignore it.
I'd like to see it listed on this page, after Richard Stallman has looked at it:
Ok, a couple of points. First it is true, all pen and paper RPGs are inherently open source, or else they'd be unplayable. What the people writing about this mean is Copylefted not "open source."
Secondly, I have some of the Demons supplements for AD&D produced by Mayfair games, which were really well done, addressed a need in the community (I was one of the ones who felt TSR really screwed up by attempting to sate the appetite of the Fanatics for Family values by removing demons and devils from their games, when we all know that only the utter destruction of D&D and RPGs in general would ever do that.) and caused Mayfair to promptly get sued by TSR. See this page for information. What irritated me was that TSR and later Hasbro could be in a position to suppress D&D altogether is they had a motivation (eg, fundamentalist boycott) to do so.
For some information as to the chilling and horrifying goings on at TSR in those days, please read:
As someone who used to be avidly into pen & paper RPGs, I believe a popular, copylefted RPG would be the greatest thing to happen to RPGS since their original invention. I hope this is for real.
Ok, New Coke was a bad idea, but what it was was a big change in Coca-Cola's recipe to make their drink taste different. So, is it the recipe they care about or their precious brand name? I think the answer is the latter.
This is a definite part of the reason, but it is only one component. The other component is, "We can sell this disk for 15 dollars in the US, but only for 10 bucks in India. Hrm, we'll still make a profit at 10 bucks, but it would be nice to charge the US more. Oh, I know, we'll institute regional coding, that way no one can import 10 dollar disks and sell them for 12 dollars in the US. Think of all the money we'll make!!"
I also believe that the censorship aspect is an important part of it. I mean the reason why American movies are censored in the first place is to comply with the will of our government. However, you shouldn't think that only the Republicans are respnsible for the current heavy censorship of American media, people like Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Ms. Tipper Gore are a big part of it too.
This reminds me of Cardinal Richeliu's comment in one of the old Three Musketeers Movies, it was the one where he was played by Vincent Price and he said to the King:
I am the state.
Well, Sony can basically say "We are the MPAA, we are also the video game industry, the consumer electronics industry, the DVD CCA..." Ok, it's not 100% true (it wasn't true in the good Cardinal's case, either) but I think they are arrogant enough to believe it is true.
Sony is really big, I wonder how the President of Sony's income compares to that of Bill Gates.
Actually, it was almost exactly like comparing an Atari Lynx ( a.k.a Handy, note the historical Amiga link
Dave Needle: "I was at Apple, fed up with the brainless product management process and was ready to quit. RJ Mical was completing a game (I dont remember which) and was looking to do something else. We happened to be talking to our ex-boss (and still friend) David Morse (the founder, president, and leader of Amiga) and he suggested that we get together to talk about it.
Soon after, on a warm and sunny afternoon, at an outdoor table of a waterside Foster City seafood restaurant (Its gone now), David Morse said "My son wants to know if we can build a portable hand-held game?" and that was the start of "Handy" At that table, RJ and I sketched out an architecture, David discussed some business structures, and then we went off to "Just do it".
While RJ and I refined the product concept, David set up the corporate environment and acquired funding (no small feat). We joined Epyx, with David as our fearless leader and Handy as a hot product idea.
The actual hardware and software development was done by our teams of many dedicated, hardworking, creative engineers and artists. The company and project management was headed by David Morse. Almost always, his name is left out of the story. It was and is always a three pronged team, Management, Software, Hardware. All 3 are needed to create, start and complete the task."
) to a Gameboy. I got a Lynx, my brother got a Gameboy. It should've been devestating, I should have been able to laugh at his pitiful, mono-color handheld, sneering at him with contempt. (This was what we did for fun, besides playing games. Knocking each other's console of choice was great sport.) Instead it was he who got to be contemptuous, "Where are all the games?" he'd sneer, as he'd show me the latest Castlevania or Mega Man for his system, while I had to put up with stuff like Viking Child and extremely rare releases. I'd be incredulous, "Bbbutt, bbutt, my hardware is clearly superior! Hardware scaling and rotation, a color LCD, why is this happening..."
Brutus.1 represents the first step in engineering an artificial agent that "appears" to be genuinely creative. We have attempted to do that by, among other things, mathematizing the concept of betrayal through a series of algorithms and data structures, and then vesting Brutus.1 with these concepts. The result, Brutus.1, is the world's most advanced story generator. We use Brutus.1 in support of our philosophy of Weak Artificial Intelligence -- basically, the view that computers will never be genuinely conscious, but computers can be cleverly programmed to "appear" to be, in this case, literarily creative. Put another way -- as explained in Bringsjord's book What Robots Can & Can't Be -- we both agree that AI is moving us toward a real-life version of the movie Blade Runner, in which, behaviorally speaking, humans and androids are pretty much indistinguishable.
In this case, the scientists involved came up with a mathematical algorithm for the concept of betrayal and programmed a computer to write stories based on that concept.
Of course, I don't think I'd have chosed "betrayal" as the first concept to train a computer in Artificial Intelligence, but anything to get us closer to SHODAN is cool in my book.
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Just think, you are using whatever mod for years, collecting an international movie collection, then one day you buy a legitimate movie or game and from then on the PS2 says, "Sorry, you are using an unauthorized, illegal and immoral set of drivers designed to defeat the regional coding," every time you turn it on until you get the latest version of the mod or change over to Sony's "legitimate" price-gouging/censorship version of the OS.
I wonder if MS will try stuff like this with X-box?
It really disturbs me that PS2 will probably become the console of choice, despite Sony's malevolence and incompetance.
First question, how is the Ultima series going to handle this? Will Lord British continue to exist in the game, as he has ever since I started playing them way back on the Atari 800?
I can't think of another game series where the presence of the games creator was such a firm and important part of the games universe. I can't imagine Origin without Lord British, I wonder what his "other interests" are (and whether they have something to do with the computer area). Does anyone know what the story behing Garriot's leaving is? Was it amicable or was it because of disagreements within Origin? (I'm hoping it wasn't a Nolan Bushnell leaving Atari, Gary Gygax leaving TSR type of thing....)
1. Arbitrarily censor content based on region.
2. Engage in region based price gouging.
3. Control the use of your property after you have bought and paid for it beyond what was allowed by traditional copyright law.
Now, it is possible (probable) that some recent Linux converts don't care about Free Software, Copyleft, or any of the things that made Linux possible. They just see Linux as a cool OS and they want it to grow. So for these people there is really no difference between Linux and say OS/2 on a philisophical level.
I'm not sure why you think the MPAA battle is smaller than the OS battle, unless, again, you see Linux only as a product. If the principles currently being affirmed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act end up permenently affirmed in this country, there exists the strong possibility that copyleft software (like Linux, Apache, and others) could be severely impacted by it in the long term.Look at it this way:
1. Adoption of LinDVD kills open source DVD development due to lack of interest and the fact that people don't want to take on scary lawyers to work on an open source product
2. The MPAA decides to form a trust with Microsoft and Apple, and eliminate the license for LinDVD.
3. Linux is again left without a DVD player and no open source alternative.
I mean one of the biggest problems with Linux right now is its reliance on a quasi-abandonware Web browser called Netscape, which AOL didn't seem to care about much until Linux started to take off. The fact that IE seems more compatible with the Web than older versions of Netscape (hopefully version 6 will correct this) has hampered Linux's acceptance by the mainstrean more than the lack of a DVD player would.
Oh, one last thing, since if I by a DVD I don't actually own it but only a license to view it under restricted conditions, I see no reason to by DVDs. That being the case, why would I buy a DVD player for Linux or otherwise? Of course, for people who don't mind the idea of their movie collection existing under Draconian new copyright laws designed to screw them out of their rights under pre-DMCA copyright laws, I suppose it isn't a problem.
So, I don't think that LinDVD can be supported on a philisophical level because I don't think that the DVD formats problems can be supported on a philisophical level. (Anyone who is still buying DVDs for a set-top box, though, should buy LinDVD.)
What I want is a re-affirmation of the principal that if I buy a book/movie/tape/CD I own the book/movie/tape/CD and not just a license to use it under certain conditions as decided by the publisher. I am willing to deal with copyright protection, that is to say, "I will not re-publish this item under my own label for fun or profit. I will not make copies of this item and give them away, but I may make copies for personal use, such as archiving or interoperability." I am not willing to deal with, "I hereby admit that I have bought a license to use this item under certain conditions dictated to me by the copyright holder."
This is a fundamentally new idea, it recently saw its most obvious and egregious application with the late and unlamented Divx, but is seeing a rebirth under DVD restrictions. Up until recently, if I bought a book, copyright holders had no way to stop me from loaning it (or giving it) to my friend in Japan. It's my book, if I want to give it away, that should be my business. Suppose I want to do the same with a movie? The current copyright owners want:
1. Technological restrictions to prevent me from doing so.
2. Legal muscle to prevent me from doing so if the technological restrictions fail.
Therefore, I consider if I "buy" a movie on DVD, the people who sold me the movie consider that they still own it. Not just the right to copy the movie (otherwise known as copyright:), but they still own the actual disk they sold me.
Consumers rejected Divx, but the MPAA and its ilk never did. They just realized that Divx went to far too fast, and that they couldn't fool people into believing that a "gold" level Divx, which would play on your home Divx player.... as long as you kept your Divx account open and the player plugged into the phone line... but not on your friends player was equivalent to buying the same movie on a tape.
DVD restrictions seem mild by comparison, but they are still indefensible. There is no reason why geographic borders should be used as tools for censorship and price gouging. There is no reason why control of content should be used to maintain the monopoly of a company like Micros~1.
The DVD CCA may throw us all a bone, and allow a licensed binary for Linux. Heck, they might even give away a free version where you can view the source and just maintain their rights over it (i.e. give it away under there own license rather than GPL it, like AOL/Time/Warner did with the Netscape code). I would hope that the people who are against the MPAA and DVD CCA would see that that isn't the point, and that it was just, "Here, now maybe they'll shut their yaps and we can go back to screwing over the average consumer." They need to rethink their Draconian and absurd position on copyright, and return to fair use and a balanced view of consumers rights. Otherwise, I will resist them until I die. What's the point in buying something if you aren't really allowed to own it?
Well, see the Pinkerton's will be able to pick and choose who goes into the database. So, if Johnny X gets "called in" to the database, and he's on the football team and Daddy is a city councilman, the call gets labelled as a "prank call." On the other hand, Suzy Q., Wicca practitioner from a broken home, gets put on the list really quick. Remember the Cont^H^H^H^HPinkerton Detectives are detectives after all, unless they are swamped with calls they'll be able to decide which student would enhance their reputation by being on the list and which might bring lawsuits or political troubles. It's a win/win situation.
Hopefully, school districts in places where Pinkerton is a swear word won't be employing this system. But memories can be short so you never know.
Frankly, it amazes me that after their part in the labor struggles of the 20th century that the Pinkertons are even still around, and successful. I mean I suppose historical evils like the Nazi's still hang around, but they aren't part of mainstream society or anything that decent people want to be associated with.
Oh, and incidentally it doesn't matter whether or not, "N.C. is trying to root out video game playing," what they are doing is giving High School kids a place to send poison pen letters. Want to get someone in your class you don't like? Just call the Pinkertons, they'll take care of it for you!
I mean seriously, you'd expect them to have at least done some research on the movies they show to school kids. My English teacher in junior high showed us all The Wave the same year she showed us the Diary of Anne Frank. It's comical that something which aspires to be a U.S. version of the Comintern/Hitler Youth would choose W.A.V.E. for their name.
Well, I guess we should all be happy that a company with a proud tradition of union busting, strike breaking and general oppression is bringing it's techniques to the American public school system. Of course, where I went to school we learned all about the Pinkertons, I wonder if they'll change the history books in the school districts where the friendly Pinkertons are helping out? Of course I did go to school in working class Irish NJ, I suspect they may already have different history books in NC...
I'm pretty sure that most Looking Glass studios games are heavily single player (like Thief and System Shock II). There was a rant about the whole multiplayer thing in Next Generation online before it got destroyed and absorbed by the vapid Daily Radar.
Anyway, check into the Looking Glass games, they are attractive and deep (and even though SS2 has a multiplayer mode, it is cooperative... what a concept!).
I've read about success using these with Wine, but I haven't seen it myself. I also signed a petition to get SS2 ported to Linux at Tux Games.
I find Heroes of Might and Magic III to be fun to play single player, too, and it's a native Linux app.
I would be lying if I said I felt sorry for anyone who was part of the corrupt entertainment industry. I do not, however, delude myself into thinking that MP3 ripping and trading is done for altruistic reasons.
If the entertainment industry were less anti-consumer, maybe consumers would be less willing to "pirate." However, the entertainment industry is so corrupt, and so obvious and unrepentant in their corruption that no one gives (or ought) to give a damn about them. If you are going to use the phrase "hurting the artists" to justify suppressing the fair use rights of consumers, expect people to become cynical about your moral authority.
Interesting thing about our IBM Netfinity server, it didn't come with any OS pre-installed. They sold us the hardware, getting an OS for it was our problem. I'm betting that future Netfinity's will either have Linux pre-installed or come with Linux disks.
That might've worked. As might selling the unit at full markup to people who want it as a Linux X-terminal ($500 maybe?).
This is pretty much the same computer, though probably a more recent version.
...to get a 486 with a 1 Gig hardrive and a built in cheapo LCD screen from a company called Monorail. I know because I've got one. It has a pretty small footprint and made a good dorm computer. The old version of RedHat I had tried to install on it about two years ago seemed to have problems with the hardware configuration (mostly because X11 didn't seem to like the LCD). I tried to install a more recent version of Caldera on it, but it was too much for it. I'm thinking of trying my copy of Mandrake next, or looking around for a more stripped down *nix. Of course, I'll need an external modem to make it useful after I do it, I think. I think it has a WinModem inside it... bleah. None of this is a priority, just a project I have lined up for when I have some free time... provided Mom doesn't destroy it first since I left it at her house. Anyway, it seems Monorail stopped selling the things and went for more ordinary computers (no more built in LCDs) but you might be able to find one used.
I'd like to see it listed on this page, after Richard Stallman has looked at it:
http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/ph ilosophy/license-list.html
Secondly, I have some of the Demons supplements for AD&D produced by Mayfair games, which were really well done, addressed a need in the community (I was one of the ones who felt TSR really screwed up by attempting to sate the appetite of the Fanatics for Family values by removing demons and devils from their games, when we all know that only the utter destruction of D&D and RPGs in general would ever do that.) and caused Mayfair to promptly get sued by TSR. See this page for information. What irritated me was that TSR and later Hasbro could be in a position to suppress D&D altogether is they had a motivation (eg, fundamentalist boycott) to do so.
For some information as to the chilling and horrifying goings on at TSR in those days, please read:
The Gary Gygax FAQ
As someone who used to be avidly into pen & paper RPGs, I believe a popular, copylefted RPG would be the greatest thing to happen to RPGS since their original invention. I hope this is for real.
Ok, New Coke was a bad idea, but what it was was a big change in Coca-Cola's recipe to make their drink taste different. So, is it the recipe they care about or their precious brand name? I think the answer is the latter.
I also believe that the censorship aspect is an important part of it. I mean the reason why American movies are censored in the first place is to comply with the will of our government. However, you shouldn't think that only the Republicans are respnsible for the current heavy censorship of American media, people like Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Ms. Tipper Gore are a big part of it too.
This is one of the reasons I vote Libertarian.
Sony is really big, I wonder how the President of Sony's income compares to that of Bill Gates.
Actually, it was almost exactly like comparing an Atari Lynx ( a.k.a Handy, note the historical Amiga link
) to a Gameboy. I got a Lynx, my brother got a Gameboy. It should've been devestating, I should have been able to laugh at his pitiful, mono-color handheld, sneering at him with contempt. (This was what we did for fun, besides playing games. Knocking each other's console of choice was great sport.) Instead it was he who got to be contemptuous, "Where are all the games?" he'd sneer, as he'd show me the latest Castlevania or Mega Man for his system, while I had to put up with stuff like Viking Child and extremely rare releases. I'd be incredulous, "Bbbutt, bbutt, my hardware is clearly superior! Hardware scaling and rotation, a color LCD, why is this happening..."Handy: A Lynx (um.. the handheld machine) emulator
In this case, the scientists involved came up with a mathematical algorithm for the concept of betrayal and programmed a computer to write stories based on that concept.
Of course, I don't think I'd have chosed "betrayal" as the first concept to train a computer in Artificial Intelligence, but anything to get us closer to SHODAN is cool in my book.
Iä Iä SHODAN phtagn!!
The Horror, The Horror: Seamen
It'll give you nightmares...