I think both making a Scrabble clone, and making a clone of this game should be fine.
But it's more about playing them by their own rules, and the hypocrisy of the IOC, who AIUI are heavy handed when it comes to anyone they think might be infringing their IP, such as going after anyone using vaguely related names (even though the words have pre-existing meanings - even "Olympic" stems back to Ancient times; and they even insist on getting the Government to write a new law specifically for them), not to mention stupid rules about any items showing brands of non-sponsors being confiscated.
If the makers of Scrabulous had engaged in such behaviour, I bet the response to that story would be different too.
If Expert can produce a verifiable reference, whilst Joe 12-pack can't, it should be no contest what gets put on the page, and any edit warring should result in a quick ban.
At least that's how it is supposed to work. Do you have examples where the "true experts" have lost?
But for Wikipedia, it isn't (or isn't intended to be) what "DragonBallZFan" says - it should be based on verifiable sources. I.e., what that scientist is saying. And more importantly, what other scientists are saying too.
Comparing to scientists doesn't make sense anyway - Wikipedia should be compared to other encyclopedias, since it is not a place for original research.
I would also say that "User-Generated Content Vs. Experts" is a biased statement - it should be "User-Generated Content Vs. Non-User Generated Content"; i.e., the latter includes all sorts of things such as websites, the media, as well as scientists and encyclopedias. This group doesn't always consist of experts in the relevant field.
Products on all sorts of platforms succeed by at least as much, because they are also polished. And for Java, Opera Mini for example is polished and it succeeds. So I don't see how this is relevant.
And Apple's Quicktime on Windows is one of the worst offenders for not looking the same as other apps, so that's not something to complain about!
I don't agree at all - the Liberal Democrats have policies that are just as well defined as any other party.
And it is simply false to say that they occupy the same ground - with respect to authoritarianism (what we're discussing here), Nick Clegg has emphasised the party's liberal policies. I'm not sure what you mean by "Depending who's in charge" - Nick Clegg is in charge.
So who do you vote for?
Some combination of the Tories and the Lib Dems would be the ideal solution
In the UK, we vote for MPs, not parties. So vote for either a Tory or a Lib Dem MP depending on which in your constituency fits that ideal solution. Better that than complaining on Slashdot that there's no way out of authoritarianism.
Don't be an ass, researchers don't talk about their results before they publish. That's probably what's happening here.
But that's just it - he is talking about his research, and then only defending with "But I can't talk about it" when the conclusions are questionned. I'm all for waiting until his results are published before we can consider it anywhere on the same level as all the pre-existing studies in this area.
That's not why I posted. I posted with the intention of answering questions about the subject, because I thought there would be at least a smattering of individuals who would like to get some references and learn a few things.
But you haven't answered people's questions, nor have you given references.
I enjoy discussing the topic, although I have done too little of that as yet. And I find it very interesting that you say "blab" which has a pejorative connotation. Is information, even unverified, something you fear? Why?
I mean "blab" in the sense that, as you say, it would be blabbing to discuss your research before it is published. On the contrary, I'm interested in information, but you are unable to give it. (And no I don't fear unverified information, but rightly I question it and don't trust it either until it is verified.)
So this isn't a discussion - your OP was you telling us "Violent video games causes violence, the results are good, all you naysayers should remember we are professions" but then any questioning or criticisms are met with "Well I can't tell you anything". Sure, I understand you can't tell us, but then in that case your OP was never going to be a discussion on your research.
It's also misleading to imply that anyone who disagrees with the idea that games cause violence is a "naysayer", and not a professional. Plenty of professionals do not agree there is a causative link. For myself, I'll make up my mind based on published research.
It seems unlikely that you can adapt anything like a modern GPU (designed entirely for rasterisation) to do raytracing.
That's not immediate obvious, since GPUs are processors that can do any general computing that a CPU can (indeed, there are some general purpose tasks they can do much faster than CPUs). GPUs are designed for doing a large number of things in parallel, whilst CPUs are designed for doing single tasks as fast as possible. So raytracing at first appearances seems more in the former category, but maybe there's something else about raytracing that makes it more suited to a CPU than a GPU?
I agree, sadly. Much of the problem is that there are all sorts of studies on various forms of media and its supposed effects, some showing evidence, some not showing evidence, some showing a negative correlation. So overall there's no conclusion one could draw, but those supporting censorship can hand-pick the studies which do supposedly show an effect (even if they are old studies that have been discredited or later contradicted by other studies).
I saw this with the UK Government in its plans to criminalise possession of "extreme" porn - it commissioned three researchers with known anti-pornography views to dig out every possible study which showed some negative effect of porn (even though most the studies applied to porn that isn't being criminalised), producing the Rapid Evidence Assessment.
I replied to that post - yes, I know now you have reasons, but the point is we can't discuss, debate or speculate research before it is published.
So let's stick to the studies which have been published (which, as I understand it, claim a range of possible effects with no clear conclusion). Maybe the decades long debate of media and violence will be solved by your study, but then maybe that will be overturned by a study released the day after. Who knows.
I am not attacking anyone, btw, I apologise if my last line sounded flippant, but your OP didn't state the research had yet to be unpublished - my only lack of knowledge is what you did not tell us.
Are you able to answer my question on how you measured violence, at least?
On a similar line, you'd think if viewing material was really harmful for adults, then those working for the censors (like the BBFC in the UK) would be the most harmful violent people of the lot!
Strangely there are no calls to lock them up though, in case "one of them might go on to commit a violent crime"...
I'm sure our AC would be glad to give us some referenes to published studies, if you promise to look them up and read them.
My understanding is that there are published studies showing an effect, there are published studies showing no effect, and some even suggest a reverse correlation. So this doesn't really help us.
And we have no hope if questioning a study if it's just some AC saying so. If you like, I'll log out and post anonymously, claiming I have just been performing a study showing the reverse affect. But really - even if the AC is being sincere, we have no chance to see what his research is really telling us, or find any possible flaws.
As you say, researchers have reasons for being secretive - so why blab about it at all on Slashdot? Wait until it's published and reviewed, that's how science works - not on hearsay from anonymous commenters on the Internet!
My results show a temporary increase (lasting around 15-20 minutes) in violent behavior after playing a selection of video games with varying types of violence. Some of these are first person shooters, some are fighting games, etc.
How did you measure violence?
Also I'm glad that you point out that any effect, if at all, is temporary. Often there are studies which say "We showed some images and then asked them some questions", and those wanting to ban the media leap to the conclusion that viewing the material has a lasting effect.
I take it you have a link to your published results, Mr Anonymous?
"Personal responsibility" is a code-word for a refusal to look at contributory factors.
But how come it's only ever the "unpopular things" that are questionned as to whether they affect behaviour - fictional violence, video games, rock music, Marilyn Manson, porn?
No one questions the violence in religious texts when it turns out a murderer was obsessed with the Bible or killed someone because "God says so". Unless they're a pagan or satanist, in which case, it's back to the "unpopular things" which must be banned again.
I've nothing against providing parents with information, but note that people do use these claims to ban things, even for adults. I think "personal responsibility" is a valid response when the claim put forward is that media alone can turn people into violent criminals.
As for Intel, I do think it's fairly obvious that the inherent parallelization of ray tracing is a big part of what makes it attractive to them right now. That and they have enough cash to just screw around with it without having to market it. But there's no reason Nvidia wouldn't go to multi-core chips if they thought the demand was there.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but note that an NVIDIA 8800GT has 128 stream processors - it is multi-core, way more so than current CPUs.
The parallelization of ray tracing makes it appealing, but so does the parallelization of standard 3D polygon rasterization. I think people (not you, generally) have a tendancy to go "Ray-tracing is massively parallelizable" and "Oh look, CPUs are multi-core" and put the two together as if it means raytracing must win out, missing the point that bog standard 3D graphics have been utilising multiprocessing cores for years, and will continue to do so in future.
I wonder, could raytracing still benefit from being done on a dedicated processor for it - i.e., a GPU?
There's two issues here - CPU vs GPU, and raytracing vs polygon rasterisation. It's not immediately clear that one should go hand in hand with the other.
If you will publish my app on something of similar profile as Apple's installer, I will give you 99 bucks.
That's exactly the point I'm making - you make the decision on whether to give me $99 based on the value I offer, and nothing to do with whether you had the money to spend on another product.
But the fragmentation of licensing agreements (LGPL, GPL, CC, CC2.5, ETC) is just going to confuse people
Different licences for different purposes. And remember that before these licences came along, individuals would often release software under their own (often poorly worded) licences, or sometimes not at all. Sometimes the licences are ambiguous, or the authors feel compelled to add in all sorts of arbitrary restrictions (I guess that's their right, but it's annoying when there's no logical reason). Indeed some people still do that. When I see something that's licenced under "GPL" or "CC", I know exactly what I'm getting, and don't have to worry if I can or can't do something, or if even though it's advertised supposedly "free" I'm going to download it and find it's crippleware, trialware, or has all sorts of licence restrictions.
Recently I was looking for free graphics to use for writing games, and I came across one from years ago that had some licence saying it was free, but only for Windows because he wanted to be the one to "port" it to another platform. Huh? I thought, why should the graphics need to be changed for a different platform? Thankfully I then found a later version of the graphics which he'd sensibly released under CC.
I'm not sure that comparing to Linux distributions makes sense. You might as well complain that having thousands of pieces of software available is "confusing", and this is comparable to Linux distributions. If people just choose the first licence they come across because the rest are too confusing, that's fine.
A MS Windows Authenticode certificate costs roughly $400, and every serious Win32 developer who sells over the web buys one. So no this is really cheap.
I guess this makes me not serious then.
But I note, a not-serious developer who now has an extra $400 (or $99) to you.
(Note also there's nothing about this scheme which prevents you from posting your hacked iPhone apps for free.)
I can run non-certified Windows apps without any dodgy hacking. Can someone clarify this - is the $99 just for the Apple Store hosting, or is it a requirement for running apps at all (without hacking)? I was assuming the former, but that's atrocious if it's the latter.
What the GP is saying is, if you can't afford $99 for the developer program fee, you're probably too poor to be able to afford an iPhone anyway, or even to feed yourself. Basically if you don't have 99 bucks, you're too poor to live.
But it's a strawman argument - I don't think anyone is suggesting they only have $99 to their name.
They might have enough money for food and a computer, but limited resources beyond that - in which case, there is no "probably" about it.
Or if they do have the money, one might still question whether it's better to spend that money on other things, like beer, more gadgets, and so on. Only when you have a lot of money does a $99 cost become insignificant. I don't know, all this seems simple to me - do other people really weigh up purchases based purely on "Well I have money to spend on that, therefore I'll spend money on this"? No wonder the Iphone is able to sell!
Well, at the very least...if you can't afford the $99 for the dev. kit...you likely can't afford the mac you need to develop iPhone apps to begin with.
You've just repeated the same argument. Firstly, it's not true that having spent some money means you therefore have more money. Perhaps it's likely, but secondly, the issue with questioning the cost of things isn't to do with whether we have that money. I'm sure most of us have at least $99 to our name! But that $99 has an opportunity cost.
As I said elsewhere, it makes as much sense to say if you can afford a Mac, you can afford to pay me $99. Clearly that's not much of an argument - you'd judge whether it's worth paying me on its own merits.
Slashdot Mirror
I think both making a Scrabble clone, and making a clone of this game should be fine.
But it's more about playing them by their own rules, and the hypocrisy of the IOC, who AIUI are heavy handed when it comes to anyone they think might be infringing their IP, such as going after anyone using vaguely related names (even though the words have pre-existing meanings - even "Olympic" stems back to Ancient times; and they even insist on getting the Government to write a new law specifically for them), not to mention stupid rules about any items showing brands of non-sponsors being confiscated.
If the makers of Scrabulous had engaged in such behaviour, I bet the response to that story would be different too.
If Expert can produce a verifiable reference, whilst Joe 12-pack can't, it should be no contest what gets put on the page, and any edit warring should result in a quick ban.
At least that's how it is supposed to work. Do you have examples where the "true experts" have lost?
But for Wikipedia, it isn't (or isn't intended to be) what "DragonBallZFan" says - it should be based on verifiable sources. I.e., what that scientist is saying. And more importantly, what other scientists are saying too.
Comparing to scientists doesn't make sense anyway - Wikipedia should be compared to other encyclopedias, since it is not a place for original research.
I would also say that "User-Generated Content Vs. Experts" is a biased statement - it should be "User-Generated Content Vs. Non-User Generated Content"; i.e., the latter includes all sorts of things such as websites, the media, as well as scientists and encyclopedias. This group doesn't always consist of experts in the relevant field.
Java runs fine on my dirt cheap phone. I'm sorry your iphone isn't up to it.
Products on all sorts of platforms succeed by at least as much, because they are also polished. And for Java, Opera Mini for example is polished and it succeeds. So I don't see how this is relevant.
And Apple's Quicktime on Windows is one of the worst offenders for not looking the same as other apps, so that's not something to complain about!
Indeed - my Motorola V980 runs Java as standard, why not have an article for that? And one for every other phone that runs Java too?
Welcome to 1995 I guess.
I don't agree at all - the Liberal Democrats have policies that are just as well defined as any other party.
And it is simply false to say that they occupy the same ground - with respect to authoritarianism (what we're discussing here), Nick Clegg has emphasised the party's liberal policies. I'm not sure what you mean by "Depending who's in charge" - Nick Clegg is in charge.
So who do you vote for?
Some combination of the Tories and the Lib Dems would be the ideal solution
In the UK, we vote for MPs, not parties. So vote for either a Tory or a Lib Dem MP depending on which in your constituency fits that ideal solution. Better that than complaining on Slashdot that there's no way out of authoritarianism.
Don't be an ass, researchers don't talk about their results before they publish. That's probably what's happening here.
But that's just it - he is talking about his research, and then only defending with "But I can't talk about it" when the conclusions are questionned. I'm all for waiting until his results are published before we can consider it anywhere on the same level as all the pre-existing studies in this area.
That's not why I posted. I posted with the intention of answering questions about the subject, because I thought there would be at least a smattering of individuals who would like to get some references and learn a few things.
But you haven't answered people's questions, nor have you given references.
I enjoy discussing the topic, although I have done too little of that as yet. And I find it very interesting that you say "blab" which has a pejorative connotation. Is information, even unverified, something you fear? Why?
I mean "blab" in the sense that, as you say, it would be blabbing to discuss your research before it is published. On the contrary, I'm interested in information, but you are unable to give it. (And no I don't fear unverified information, but rightly I question it and don't trust it either until it is verified.)
So this isn't a discussion - your OP was you telling us "Violent video games causes violence, the results are good, all you naysayers should remember we are professions" but then any questioning or criticisms are met with "Well I can't tell you anything". Sure, I understand you can't tell us, but then in that case your OP was never going to be a discussion on your research.
It's also misleading to imply that anyone who disagrees with the idea that games cause violence is a "naysayer", and not a professional. Plenty of professionals do not agree there is a causative link. For myself, I'll make up my mind based on published research.
It seems unlikely that you can adapt anything like a modern GPU (designed entirely for rasterisation) to do raytracing.
That's not immediate obvious, since GPUs are processors that can do any general computing that a CPU can (indeed, there are some general purpose tasks they can do much faster than CPUs). GPUs are designed for doing a large number of things in parallel, whilst CPUs are designed for doing single tasks as fast as possible. So raytracing at first appearances seems more in the former category, but maybe there's something else about raytracing that makes it more suited to a CPU than a GPU?
I agree, sadly. Much of the problem is that there are all sorts of studies on various forms of media and its supposed effects, some showing evidence, some not showing evidence, some showing a negative correlation. So overall there's no conclusion one could draw, but those supporting censorship can hand-pick the studies which do supposedly show an effect (even if they are old studies that have been discredited or later contradicted by other studies).
I saw this with the UK Government in its plans to criminalise possession of "extreme" porn - it commissioned three researchers with known anti-pornography views to dig out every possible study which showed some negative effect of porn (even though most the studies applied to porn that isn't being criminalised), producing the Rapid Evidence Assessment.
Now this was criticised by academics in the field as being "extremely poor, based on contested findings and accumulated results. It is one-sided and simply ignores the considerable research tradition into "extreme" (be they violent or sexually explicit) materials within the UK's Humanities and Social Sciences." This statement was signed by ove forty academics - but did anyone pushing for this law pay any attention? Of course, sadly not - instead we continue to hear the Rapid Evidence Assessment being cited as proof that possession of naughty pictures needs to be criminalised.
I replied to that post - yes, I know now you have reasons, but the point is we can't discuss, debate or speculate research before it is published.
So let's stick to the studies which have been published (which, as I understand it, claim a range of possible effects with no clear conclusion). Maybe the decades long debate of media and violence will be solved by your study, but then maybe that will be overturned by a study released the day after. Who knows.
I am not attacking anyone, btw, I apologise if my last line sounded flippant, but your OP didn't state the research had yet to be unpublished - my only lack of knowledge is what you did not tell us.
Are you able to answer my question on how you measured violence, at least?
On a similar line, you'd think if viewing material was really harmful for adults, then those working for the censors (like the BBFC in the UK) would be the most harmful violent people of the lot!
Strangely there are no calls to lock them up though, in case "one of them might go on to commit a violent crime"...
I'm sure our AC would be glad to give us some referenes to published studies, if you promise to look them up and read them.
My understanding is that there are published studies showing an effect, there are published studies showing no effect, and some even suggest a reverse correlation. So this doesn't really help us.
And we have no hope if questioning a study if it's just some AC saying so. If you like, I'll log out and post anonymously, claiming I have just been performing a study showing the reverse affect. But really - even if the AC is being sincere, we have no chance to see what his research is really telling us, or find any possible flaws.
As you say, researchers have reasons for being secretive - so why blab about it at all on Slashdot? Wait until it's published and reviewed, that's how science works - not on hearsay from anonymous commenters on the Internet!
My results show a temporary increase (lasting around 15-20 minutes) in violent behavior after playing a selection of video games with varying types of violence. Some of these are first person shooters, some are fighting games, etc.
How did you measure violence?
Also I'm glad that you point out that any effect, if at all, is temporary. Often there are studies which say "We showed some images and then asked them some questions", and those wanting to ban the media leap to the conclusion that viewing the material has a lasting effect.
I take it you have a link to your published results, Mr Anonymous?
"Personal responsibility" is a code-word for a refusal to look at contributory factors.
But how come it's only ever the "unpopular things" that are questionned as to whether they affect behaviour - fictional violence, video games, rock music, Marilyn Manson, porn?
No one questions the violence in religious texts when it turns out a murderer was obsessed with the Bible or killed someone because "God says so". Unless they're a pagan or satanist, in which case, it's back to the "unpopular things" which must be banned again.
I've nothing against providing parents with information, but note that people do use these claims to ban things, even for adults. I think "personal responsibility" is a valid response when the claim put forward is that media alone can turn people into violent criminals.
As for Intel, I do think it's fairly obvious that the inherent parallelization of ray tracing is a big part of what makes it attractive to them right now. That and they have enough cash to just screw around with it without having to market it. But there's no reason Nvidia wouldn't go to multi-core chips if they thought the demand was there.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but note that an NVIDIA 8800GT has 128 stream processors - it is multi-core, way more so than current CPUs.
The parallelization of ray tracing makes it appealing, but so does the parallelization of standard 3D polygon rasterization. I think people (not you, generally) have a tendancy to go "Ray-tracing is massively parallelizable" and "Oh look, CPUs are multi-core" and put the two together as if it means raytracing must win out, missing the point that bog standard 3D graphics have been utilising multiprocessing cores for years, and will continue to do so in future.
I wonder, could raytracing still benefit from being done on a dedicated processor for it - i.e., a GPU?
There's two issues here - CPU vs GPU, and raytracing vs polygon rasterisation. It's not immediately clear that one should go hand in hand with the other.
Well, if there were multiple daily articles on Slashdot about that product as well, maybe people would complain about that too.
If you will publish my app on something of similar profile as Apple's installer, I will give you 99 bucks.
That's exactly the point I'm making - you make the decision on whether to give me $99 based on the value I offer, and nothing to do with whether you had the money to spend on another product.
Human level AIs are never going to be practical for real world problems because they'll have just as many ways of going wrong as human geniuses do.
And therefore humans are also never going to practical for real world problems?
I know some of us don't have that high an opinion of the human race, but I think that's going a bit far...
But the fragmentation of licensing agreements (LGPL, GPL, CC, CC2.5, ETC) is just going to confuse people
Different licences for different purposes. And remember that before these licences came along, individuals would often release software under their own (often poorly worded) licences, or sometimes not at all. Sometimes the licences are ambiguous, or the authors feel compelled to add in all sorts of arbitrary restrictions (I guess that's their right, but it's annoying when there's no logical reason). Indeed some people still do that. When I see something that's licenced under "GPL" or "CC", I know exactly what I'm getting, and don't have to worry if I can or can't do something, or if even though it's advertised supposedly "free" I'm going to download it and find it's crippleware, trialware, or has all sorts of licence restrictions.
Recently I was looking for free graphics to use for writing games, and I came across one from years ago that had some licence saying it was free, but only for Windows because he wanted to be the one to "port" it to another platform. Huh? I thought, why should the graphics need to be changed for a different platform? Thankfully I then found a later version of the graphics which he'd sensibly released under CC.
I'm not sure that comparing to Linux distributions makes sense. You might as well complain that having thousands of pieces of software available is "confusing", and this is comparable to Linux distributions. If people just choose the first licence they come across because the rest are too confusing, that's fine.
A MS Windows Authenticode certificate costs roughly $400, and every serious Win32 developer who sells over the web buys one. So no this is really cheap.
I guess this makes me not serious then.
But I note, a not-serious developer who now has an extra $400 (or $99) to you.
(Note also there's nothing about this scheme which prevents you from posting your hacked iPhone apps for free.)
I can run non-certified Windows apps without any dodgy hacking. Can someone clarify this - is the $99 just for the Apple Store hosting, or is it a requirement for running apps at all (without hacking)? I was assuming the former, but that's atrocious if it's the latter.
What the GP is saying is, if you can't afford $99 for the developer program fee, you're probably too poor to be able to afford an iPhone anyway, or even to feed yourself. Basically if you don't have 99 bucks, you're too poor to live.
But it's a strawman argument - I don't think anyone is suggesting they only have $99 to their name.
They might have enough money for food and a computer, but limited resources beyond that - in which case, there is no "probably" about it.
Or if they do have the money, one might still question whether it's better to spend that money on other things, like beer, more gadgets, and so on. Only when you have a lot of money does a $99 cost become insignificant. I don't know, all this seems simple to me - do other people really weigh up purchases based purely on "Well I have money to spend on that, therefore I'll spend money on this"? No wonder the Iphone is able to sell!
Well, at the very least...if you can't afford the $99 for the dev. kit...you likely can't afford the mac you need to develop iPhone apps to begin with.
You've just repeated the same argument. Firstly, it's not true that having spent some money means you therefore have more money. Perhaps it's likely, but secondly, the issue with questioning the cost of things isn't to do with whether we have that money. I'm sure most of us have at least $99 to our name! But that $99 has an opportunity cost.
As I said elsewhere, it makes as much sense to say if you can afford a Mac, you can afford to pay me $99. Clearly that's not much of an argument - you'd judge whether it's worth paying me on its own merits.