of course, since this news article is wrong about
D&D books being available for download, maybe
WotC won't send a cease and desist order to this
"pirate site".
they do have some out-of-print modules available
for download. looking at the list, I notice this
phrase repeated many times: "This is a link to the Wizards of the Coast web site's download section." the exceptions are some maps that were
missing from specific modules and one module that
seems to be a non-TSR release.
I remember reading that one of the sketches Chapman wrote (that was rejected) was something about a connoisseur having people sample what they think is wine, but it turns out the man is a "wee wee" connoisseur (yes, he used the phrase "wee wee".) John Cleese vetoed the sketch because he didn't think it was funny. doesn't sound very funny to me...
I can grasp that explanation; and you're right, it does seem easy. but here's another example: I recently bought an HP Pavilion 750n. one of the features I was specifically looking for was firewire, and since I planned on using more than one firewire device, more ports were better.
... that the link is to an order form on the Wal*Mart site?
as near as I can tell, Wal*Mart is not selling these in stores. so stereotypes aside, "legions of rednecks" are not going to be buying these computers.
I agree with some of your counterpoints, but this one is a little off:
Computerized dice roller. It's more than that. It completely handles the torrential rain of rules and tables that comprise D&D. Probably the biggest obstacle to people getting into P&P gaming is all the math they have to do. (Simple math, yes. But lots of simple math can still be tedious)
what, haven't you played The Fantasy Trip: In the Labyrinth?
there are still some games out there with that kind of simple elegance...
Am I going mad, or did I read "Well, this is not really in Slashdot's main focus" in the topic blurb?
First of all, if Slashdot HAS a focus (main or otherwise) I'd just love to see someone take a stab at describing what it is.
Second, geeks are gamers. Period. There's just no way in hell that those involved in computers and IT technology, especially those born sooner than 1970, haven't been exposed to gaming in some way. Maybe they didn't game, but some of their friends did. Heck, lots of folks cut their programming teeth on quick little apps to make RPGs easier to play.
he was probably thinking that "mailer daemons" and "deep wizardry" got their names from the satanic geek masters...
as for the contest: hell, it's worth it for the recognition. I have a couple world ideas I was planning to sell. I'm not submitting them to WotC, because I want to maintain control, but I'm willing to come up with a "spare" world background for this contest. even getting in the top three would be good: if they picked someone else's world, you still have a good chance at pitching a novel or adventure module in the winning background.
there was already a large scene of musicians who used computers to create tracks out of supposedly non-musical sounds. They were called 'experimental musicians', 'soundscapists' or 'musique concrete people'.
well, `experimental' covers a hell of a lot more than that, and `musique concrete' began in the '20s, but I catch your meaning... this isn't really new -- except to one group of people.
note that the article is written as part of wired's cult of macintosh category, and that the article suggests you have to have a mac to do lowercase music, because kids with macs "invented" it.
I'm sure all the experimental artists like klowd, crawl unit, and aube who don't use a computer at all, just contact mics directly on their chosen instrument, will be happy to hear about this rule.
what it all amounts to is kids getting excited about something they (re)discovered, but not being sufficiently "in the loop" to realize that they are part of a very long tradition.
which is all for the best, I suppose... if they were to join the larger community of noise musicians, those poor sheltered mac kids would probably cry once they find out that "harsh noise" people frown on "laptop" people.
and also:
star wars fans have been waiting about a year for AotC. the last spiderman movie was a made-for-tv jobber back in the '70s. people have been waiting longer for spiderman than AotC.
This info wouldn't have been stolen from an "unbreakable" Oracle database that Cali payed so much for would it?
probably not... unless things have changed drastically since I left stat service, the Teale Data Center did not use Oracle. it was some custom (read: out-of-date) database running on VMS. the Oracle database was for state clients -- in other words, citzens, licensees, businesses. it ran on Solaris.
I'm a little disappointed in the amount of information in the article. as I just mentioned, I used to work for the state. was any information on former employees compromised? they don't say. and probably won't answer if asked.
This court case is so banal it doesn't even deserve mention. The plaintiff was suing the defendant on the grounds that it basically ripped off the idea of having a FAQ at all, which is about as asinine as having one publisher sue another for putting a synopsis on the back of a book.
banal, yes, but I wouldn't say it doesn't deserve mention. it does deserve being described correctly, though.
it reminds me of a local free computer magazine/ad rag that sued a new rival. their complaint? the rival had a list of local BBSes, which "clearly" had been invented by the first computer rag.
rather than fight, the new struggling computer rag stopped carrying BBS listings. they later folded.
cases like these deserve mention because we need to convince people of the need to fight idiotic IP claims like this.
Re:there was an island between Sumatra and Bali...
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 1
The island that used to exist between Sumatra and Bali seems to have been wiped off the Net... At least, I went through the top 200 results of a Google search for "Java" a while back without finding any pages about it and, while some of the 1294 books at Amazon must surely be about the island, none of them make it into the first 200 results.
this is just another example of Gresham's Law. bad currency tends to drive good currency out of circulation.
look at how the term "RPG" has changed in just the last ten years...
me, too. there's a lot of things I dislike about microsoft software, but I'm not rabidly anti-microsoft. heck, they even had two decent programs (GIF animator and VIDCAP).
... but I've been reading the various microsoft objections to the various proposed punishments. the idea that keeps surfacing in the testimony of any microsoft exec is "this would limit our ability to compete."
DUH! that's what a punishment is! that's what happens when you break the law: the court takes away your rights and makes things hard for you.
the way I see it, the court now has to issue a sentence at least as severe as the proposal. otherwise, we'll be seeing convicted murderers arguing that a jail sentence would hamper their ability to make money.
Blizzard will argue that this will invalidate their copyright protection (cd-keys) because people can now play multiplayer without buying a license (cd-key). And they're right.
not really. sure, that is what they would argue, but they are not right in that argument.
if blizzard were selling server software (as other game makers have done) and people were cracking the built-in protection to play the game, then that would be a violation of the DMCA, and their argument would fly. however, what BnetD is doing is offering an alternate service to play games on. that service does not use cd-keys for a good reason: the programmers did not crack the program and blizzard refuses to release the cd-key test.
blizzard mentions the potential of profit for BnetD (or someone improving on BnetD) as the reason why they must bring suit, but this weakens their argument. clearly, blizzard is engaging in anti-competitive behavior. if they can prove that BnetD copied their software, they have a leg to stand on... otherwise, they have about as much chance as canon would if they were to sue companies that made ink refill cartridges that were compatible with canon printers.
as I recall from high school physics, a microwave oven works by emitting microwaves at the specific frequency that excites water molecules, which in turn cause things that contain water (most food products) to heat up.
call me crazy, but I bet those lunar generators would beam microwaves at a different frequency.
The person whose cage we should be rattling is in California. Dianne Feinstein. I'm a Democrat, yet I don't vote for her.
the problem is: feinstein has the democratic nomination locked down.
this means that the only challenge to her continued reign-of-terror would be a republican. aside from the moral problem with voting republican, they are even more beholden to corporate interests than feinstein.
as the saying goes: democrats tell you they're on your side, then screw you over. republicans are honest about it, though.
ok, I'm not exactly an expert, but I have recent practical experience in this area: I shot video of some live performances, bought a dazzle hollywood dv bridge and a P4 just for video capture, and have managed to capture one of my hi8 tapes at the highest resolution.
one gig equals about 5 minutes.
and I'm still not satisfied with the quality.
I have about 15-16 hours of footage I need to capture. THEN comes the movie making. the 15 hours of video alone will be 180 gigs. since some of the footage I have is from a yearly three-day event, I expect to have another 6 hours of footage a year. minimum.
120 terabytes sounds like a lot of breathing room, but I could easily see how video capture plus MP3s/DVDs plus maybe using a pc as a DVR plus the usual amounts of games and apps plus the results of using programs like blender and terragen... all of this could easily fill up some space.
of course, what I'm more worried about is: how would you defrag the thing?
Is it really the job of the RIAA to collect missed royalties for those they represent or merely to minimize piracy so people will go out and buy the music of those they are representing?
the RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America. it does not represent artists at all, and never has.
the recording industry has always worked to expand their share of royalties or licenses. for example, the whole internet radio fight we've been hearing about is based on the RIAA's dissatisfaction with the current arrangements with radio. radio stations pay fees to ASCAP and BMI, but not to the RIAA, because the law did not give them a share of the pie.
(this is why we saw payola scams on radio; since the RIAA gets no money from airplay, they have to consider it a form of free advertising to convince people to buy their records... which gives them an incentive to bribe DJs to play their records more than people actually request. however, they would prefer being paid per listen, have fought for just that... and have won it for web radio.)
compare that to the various pay-to-listen websites owned by RIAA members... they are fighting with ASCAP and BMI, the true representatives of the artists, because the RIAA claims it would be too difficult to compensate artists on such a new medium as the internet. this, in fact, was reported on slashdot.
so the short answer to the original question is: not one cent of that million dollars will go to artists, nor were they ever promised it; and further, if it turns out the RIAA every promised anything to artists, they plan to wiggle out of that promise.
another reason billg can claim that a web browser is an integral part of the OS.
I doubt he will use Sash as a defense of his claim. remember when microsoft didn't have a web browser, and netscape was the leading browser? and some pc magazines, caught up in the hype, suggested in the future, the OS could be replaced entirely by the browser?
remember how bill freaked out about it? and took everyone off the other projects and made the internet the top microsoft priority?
Sash does not sound like the sort of thing microsoft wants to endorse. especially since it does not need to run in a browser.
more to the point: I clicked on the link and read the original article, and it implies that the click-through licensing agreement will appear when they activate the software. in other words, no one has agreed to anything yet, and brilliant says they will not run the software without the end-user's permission.
Interland isn't doing that. If you actually pay one of Interland's renewal notices, you stay on your current registrar. They just want money for no work on their part.
actually, interland is slamming. I work for an ISP in the webhosting department. one of our customers called in, confused, because she had received two domain renewal notices: one from register.com and one from what she thought was verisign but which turned out to be from interland (it had their name on it.) I did a whois and found out she was registered through register.com, so I advised her to pay that one.
I've seen interland do even worse things, however. one of our customers signed up for hosting at interland, then switched to us. the site was fine for a couple months, then suddenly went down. turns out they left interland's name as the technical contact, so interland took the opportunity to switch DNS back to them. oh, and they also changed all the other contacts...
this is not to say that verisign isn't up to no good... I've seen my share of horror stories involving them, too. for example, customer switches registrars, but verisign cancels their domain. (to be fair, this may have been the fault of register.com, the new registrar... maybe they forgot to complete the switchover.)
I haven't had any personal problems with verisign, so I stick with them. in my personal experience, all the registrars screw up, so I aim to reduce the number of times I deal with registrars. it's the only safe way to deal with them.
I've come to the realization that the solution to spam is vigilante justice. That's how my emotions are, anyway.
you know, the link to the how-to on using sendmail to trapper spammers actually has some vigilante potential as well. once you convince spammers you're operating an open relay, all the mail "sent" through your system is spam... and you have the logs of their real IP addresses.
A simple solution would be for the TV Network's to make the shows avaliable (with adds) on a bunch of fast servers. For pay per view type programming, have a subscription style service... All they need to do is follow the p0rn industries model and they will be rolling in the dough
not the networks, the syndicators. remember, they are the ones the studios are really making the series for.
studios sell one season of a show to the networks with the option to repeat. the next year, sell it to the online syndicators, who could charge each user $15 for, say, 5 gigs of traffic per month, plus an extra $3 per gig over quota. sort of a rip-off, but the syndicators would make money, the studios would make money, and people would probably subscribe to such a service to get guaranteed quality on the rips. these would have to be ordinary MPEG-2 or DivX to be worth the subscription fees.
heck, the syndicators could even leave ads in. although maybe this would be bad, since the syndicators might opt for a proprietary format to force people to view ads.
it would be like paying the syndicators to be your VCR and time-shift for you. if they did this, the people we would hear complaining would be the VCR and TiVo/ReplayTV manufacturers.
Slashdot Mirror
o great, not only would the pizza be four hours late, it would be an empty grease-stained box!
of course, since this news article is wrong about D&D books being available for download, maybe WotC won't send a cease and desist order to this "pirate site".
they do have some out-of-print modules available for download. looking at the list, I notice this phrase repeated many times: "This is a link to the Wizards of the Coast web site's download section." the exceptions are some maps that were missing from specific modules and one module that seems to be a non-TSR release.
I remember reading that one of the sketches Chapman wrote (that was rejected) was something about a connoisseur having people sample what they think is wine, but it turns out the man is a "wee wee" connoisseur (yes, he used the phrase "wee wee".) John Cleese vetoed the sketch because he didn't think it was funny. doesn't sound very funny to me...
I can grasp that explanation; and you're right, it does seem easy. but here's another example: I recently bought an HP Pavilion 750n. one of the features I was specifically looking for was firewire, and since I planned on using more than one firewire device, more ports were better.
at Fry's, the display said one firewire port.
on the box, it says one firewire port.
in the documentation, it says one firewire port.
and on the website, it says one firewire port.
but there are two ports.
as near as I can tell, Wal*Mart is not selling these in stores. so stereotypes aside, "legions of rednecks" are not going to be buying these computers.
legions of wannabe geeks will.
I agree with some of your counterpoints, but this one is a little off:
what, haven't you played The Fantasy Trip: In the Labyrinth?
there are still some games out there with that kind of simple elegance...
he was probably thinking that "mailer daemons" and "deep wizardry" got their names from the satanic geek masters...
as for the contest: hell, it's worth it for the recognition. I have a couple world ideas I was planning to sell. I'm not submitting them to WotC, because I want to maintain control, but I'm willing to come up with a "spare" world background for this contest. even getting in the top three would be good: if they picked someone else's world, you still have a good chance at pitching a novel or adventure module in the winning background.
well, `experimental' covers a hell of a lot more than that, and `musique concrete' began in the '20s, but I catch your meaning... this isn't really new -- except to one group of people.
note that the article is written as part of wired's cult of macintosh category, and that the article suggests you have to have a mac to do lowercase music, because kids with macs "invented" it.
I'm sure all the experimental artists like klowd, crawl unit, and aube who don't use a computer at all, just contact mics directly on their chosen instrument, will be happy to hear about this rule.
what it all amounts to is kids getting excited about something they (re)discovered, but not being sufficiently "in the loop" to realize that they are part of a very long tradition.
which is all for the best, I suppose... if they were to join the larger community of noise musicians, those poor sheltered mac kids would probably cry once they find out that "harsh noise" people frown on "laptop" people.
it must be low, because I received the nigerian spam (first time in months) after this was posted to slashdot.
and also: star wars fans have been waiting about a year for AotC. the last spiderman movie was a made-for-tv jobber back in the '70s. people have been waiting longer for spiderman than AotC.
the glossary is broken, too.
type "google" in the glossary and it talks about itself. fair enough, but shouldn't it give you the mathematical definition of "google" as well?
banal, yes, but I wouldn't say it doesn't deserve mention. it does deserve being described correctly, though.
it reminds me of a local free computer magazine/ad rag that sued a new rival. their complaint? the rival had a list of local BBSes, which "clearly" had been invented by the first computer rag.
rather than fight, the new struggling computer rag stopped carrying BBS listings. they later folded.
cases like these deserve mention because we need to convince people of the need to fight idiotic IP claims like this.
this is just another example of Gresham's Law. bad currency tends to drive good currency out of circulation.
look at how the term "RPG" has changed in just the last ten years...
me, too. there's a lot of things I dislike about microsoft software, but I'm not rabidly anti-microsoft. heck, they even had two decent programs (GIF animator and VIDCAP).
DUH! that's what a punishment is! that's what happens when you break the law: the court takes away your rights and makes things hard for you.
the way I see it, the court now has to issue a sentence at least as severe as the proposal. otherwise, we'll be seeing convicted murderers arguing that a jail sentence would hamper their ability to make money.
not really. sure, that is what they would argue, but they are not right in that argument.
if blizzard were selling server software (as other game makers have done) and people were cracking the built-in protection to play the game, then that would be a violation of the DMCA, and their argument would fly. however, what BnetD is doing is offering an alternate service to play games on. that service does not use cd-keys for a good reason: the programmers did not crack the program and blizzard refuses to release the cd-key test.
blizzard mentions the potential of profit for BnetD (or someone improving on BnetD) as the reason why they must bring suit, but this weakens their argument. clearly, blizzard is engaging in anti-competitive behavior. if they can prove that BnetD copied their software, they have a leg to stand on... otherwise, they have about as much chance as canon would if they were to sue companies that made ink refill cartridges that were compatible with canon printers.
as I recall from high school physics, a microwave oven works by emitting microwaves at the specific frequency that excites water molecules, which in turn cause things that contain water (most food products) to heat up.
call me crazy, but I bet those lunar generators would beam microwaves at a different frequency.
the problem is: feinstein has the democratic nomination locked down.
this means that the only challenge to her continued reign-of-terror would be a republican. aside from the moral problem with voting republican, they are even more beholden to corporate interests than feinstein.
as the saying goes: democrats tell you they're on your side, then screw you over. republicans are honest about it, though.
ok, I'm not exactly an expert, but I have recent practical experience in this area: I shot video of some live performances, bought a dazzle hollywood dv bridge and a P4 just for video capture, and have managed to capture one of my hi8 tapes at the highest resolution.
one gig equals about 5 minutes.
and I'm still not satisfied with the quality.
I have about 15-16 hours of footage I need to capture. THEN comes the movie making. the 15 hours of video alone will be 180 gigs. since some of the footage I have is from a yearly three-day event, I expect to have another 6 hours of footage a year. minimum.
120 terabytes sounds like a lot of breathing room, but I could easily see how video capture plus MP3s/DVDs plus maybe using a pc as a DVR plus the usual amounts of games and apps plus the results of using programs like blender and terragen ... all of this could easily fill up some space.
of course, what I'm more worried about is: how would you defrag the thing?
the RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America. it does not represent artists at all, and never has.
the recording industry has always worked to expand their share of royalties or licenses. for example, the whole internet radio fight we've been hearing about is based on the RIAA's dissatisfaction with the current arrangements with radio. radio stations pay fees to ASCAP and BMI, but not to the RIAA, because the law did not give them a share of the pie.
(this is why we saw payola scams on radio; since the RIAA gets no money from airplay, they have to consider it a form of free advertising to convince people to buy their records ... which gives them an incentive to bribe DJs to play their records more than people actually request. however, they would prefer being paid per listen, have fought for just that ... and have won it for web radio.)
compare that to the various pay-to-listen websites owned by RIAA members... they are fighting with ASCAP and BMI, the true representatives of the artists, because the RIAA claims it would be too difficult to compensate artists on such a new medium as the internet. this, in fact, was reported on slashdot.
so the short answer to the original question is: not one cent of that million dollars will go to artists, nor were they ever promised it; and further, if it turns out the RIAA every promised anything to artists, they plan to wiggle out of that promise.
I doubt he will use Sash as a defense of his claim. remember when microsoft didn't have a web browser, and netscape was the leading browser? and some pc magazines, caught up in the hype, suggested in the future, the OS could be replaced entirely by the browser?
remember how bill freaked out about it? and took everyone off the other projects and made the internet the top microsoft priority?
Sash does not sound like the sort of thing microsoft wants to endorse. especially since it does not need to run in a browser.
more to the point: I clicked on the link and read the original article, and it implies that the click-through licensing agreement will appear when they activate the software. in other words, no one has agreed to anything yet, and brilliant says they will not run the software without the end-user's permission.
actually, interland is slamming. I work for an ISP in the webhosting department. one of our customers called in, confused, because she had received two domain renewal notices: one from register.com and one from what she thought was verisign but which turned out to be from interland (it had their name on it.) I did a whois and found out she was registered through register.com, so I advised her to pay that one.
I've seen interland do even worse things, however. one of our customers signed up for hosting at interland, then switched to us. the site was fine for a couple months, then suddenly went down. turns out they left interland's name as the technical contact, so interland took the opportunity to switch DNS back to them. oh, and they also changed all the other contacts...
this is not to say that verisign isn't up to no good... I've seen my share of horror stories involving them, too. for example, customer switches registrars, but verisign cancels their domain. (to be fair, this may have been the fault of register.com, the new registrar... maybe they forgot to complete the switchover.)
I haven't had any personal problems with verisign, so I stick with them. in my personal experience, all the registrars screw up, so I aim to reduce the number of times I deal with registrars. it's the only safe way to deal with them.
you know, the link to the how-to on using sendmail to trapper spammers actually has some vigilante potential as well. once you convince spammers you're operating an open relay, all the mail "sent" through your system is spam... and you have the logs of their real IP addresses.
not the networks, the syndicators. remember, they are the ones the studios are really making the series for.
studios sell one season of a show to the networks with the option to repeat. the next year, sell it to the online syndicators, who could charge each user $15 for, say, 5 gigs of traffic per month, plus an extra $3 per gig over quota. sort of a rip-off, but the syndicators would make money, the studios would make money, and people would probably subscribe to such a service to get guaranteed quality on the rips. these would have to be ordinary MPEG-2 or DivX to be worth the subscription fees.
heck, the syndicators could even leave ads in. although maybe this would be bad, since the syndicators might opt for a proprietary format to force people to view ads.
it would be like paying the syndicators to be your VCR and time-shift for you. if they did this, the people we would hear complaining would be the VCR and TiVo/ReplayTV manufacturers.