It'll be interesting to see how both the console version of the game, and the online version deal with expansion and customization- the two things that allowed The Sims to become among the most entertaining games ever.
No, that's ridiculous. Do you think an unexpanded version of the Sims wouldn't have been the mega hit that The Sims is currently? The Sims sold just fine before any expansion packs. Because lots of people want to manage a virtual family. Lots of people can and do love The Sims with no additions whatsoever.
Why must he see Freedom as an all or nothing thing? If I am running a totally free OS with all free applications, save for firmware that is loaded into my hardware at bootup, am I not MORE Free than if I had to run a non free OS to run my hardware? It seems to me that Stallman's position on this firmware binary issue actually REDUCES the amount of freedom in the world.
Not too mention that his GNU/Linux war has absolutely no effect on Freedom whatsoever except to associate it with annoying behavior by idealists.
That said, I think his analysis of BitKeeper is right on.
As was the Ingsoc party in 1984. He may have been socialist, but he certainly saw in many of his works how incredibly easy it is for socialism to be subverted.
And for that matter, Shaw was a pretty moderate socialist.
Computers and software are what I use for expression and creation. Human expression and creation being the only things that matter to me, I will fight to the vicious, bloody, violent end before I let some corportation take them from me.
History and literature are full of examples of people asked to leave the ones they love to fight for their cause. Just be greatful that you still have a love and cause to give you such a dilemmma.
Yeah, I didn't understand what they were talking about there. If you drop something while you're in orbit, it won't fall, it will just keep orbiting right beside you. If you throw it down, my guess is that it forms an eliptical orbit.
So the question is how fast do you have to throw it down so that the ellipse is narrow enough that it hits the earth?
My great, great grandchildren, and yours too, will be long dead and gone by the time we run out of coal to generate electricity to power electric cars, which in the future could very well be electic SUVs.
Yes, there used to be commercially viable computer games that were like... books. As opposed to current games, which are like... television.
But truly the best and most successful games, from tetris to the sims, look like neither books nor television, but like games
I'd probably be more interested in interactive fiction if I found more reason why a work of interactive fiction would have been better as plain old noninteractive fiction. I'm sure such reasons exist, anyone care to offer their favorite reason?
Re:What I found most interesting...
on
The Stallman Factor
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· Score: 4, Insightful
An idealist is just a farsighted pragmatist. Sometimes I use Linux even when Microsoft could do the job better, just because if you don't run free software today, you might not get the chance to tomorrow. If no one is running Mozilla/Konqueror, you can bet the number of IE-only websites will increase really fast, which means demand for Windows operating systems will increase, which means Microsoft's prices will skyrocket. I don't want that to happen, so I try not to use Windows, even if I like some things about it a lot better.
Sorry if it annoys you, but too bad: evangelism does serve a purpose! It's a prisoners dilemma, like voting. If I don't use Windows, but everyone else does, a year from now I'll need Windows too, and it will be just as monopoly priced for me as it will be for everyone who enjoyed the benefits of Windows in the short term. But if a significant number of ourselves can convince each other to use a competitor, that's in everyone's best interest.
To understand why there is a great need for evangelism, you only need two words: Network Effects.
The news agency is free to explain why they updated the story. Each of the reasons you described for changing a story you explained succinctly in a single sentence--the news agency should be able to do the same.
In the cases you describe, the reader doesn't have enough information to determine further information, but that isn't the news agency's fault. But if the news agency changes a previously written story with no notice of such change, that is actively lying, claiming that they knew the truth all along.
This is confusing if you read the original story, told someone about it, only to be "proven wrong". This scenario is an important one--it could happen to absolutely anyone who reads an online news source. You read online that the White House has exploded, you tell your coworkers, everyone's scared, and later one of them checks to discover that it wasn't the White House, it was just an ordinary residence painted white. The agency gives no indication of their earlier error, your coworkers think you're a moron.
There is nothing about that scenario that is limited to news-geeks of some sort--it could truly happen to anyone who happens to read an online news source at any frequency.
Most consumers of news aren't interested in older and less-accurate versions of a story. It's quicker and easier to read the most-accurate-so-far version than to read the initial version and then mentally overlay all the updates.
But we are interested in the fact than an older and less accurate version existed in the first place. It does not give us that much more information about the news event itself, but about the reliability of the news agency. Not too mention if that if I tell someone about an event I read about, I don't want them thinking I'm insane when they look it up and the news agency claims they never reported that event.
The N'Sync of Science Fiction are the big studio movies being churned out; big on special effects but very small on thought.
I dunno, people are always harping on sci fi movies not making people think as much as sci fi books do--but as a fan of (good) sci fi books, I don't think I'm really interested in seeing great new ideas of science discussed on the big screen. What scientific thought could be presented to me on screen that could not be presented more efficiently and with more depth in a book? When I watch sci fi movies, I'm watching for basically the same reason that I watch other movies--for drama and for visuals. I don't just want to see bold new ideas--I want to see how humans as represented by actors react to new bold new ideas.
OTOH, the only benefit that this would yield is that there might be more variety in the "music" that they provide. Possibly. The government might be more unitary, and only provide, e.g., Muzak. (Something that wouldn't offend anyone, or get anyone too excited... except about things that they wanted people to be excited about.)
Perhaps, but comparing the offerings of governmental PBS/NPR to corporate MPAA/RIAA, the opposite would seem to be the case. Not that I really give my attention to any of those acronyms very often anymore...
WHOEVER PUMPS THEMSELVES UP THE MOST goes fastest.
unfortunately, if you pump yourself up with capital letters, you encounter the lameness filter. i am staying very relaxed about the lameness filter. i too can pass through the lameness filter, like a peaceful ship passing under a quiet bridge. look at that dragon go.
Let me start out by saying that I despise the idea of the government forcing me to pay for content I may or may not consume and in fact wish no one else consumed, at least on a scale large enough to keep the RIAA afloat (a few pennies to PBS, NPR, NEA, eh...I don't like it, but it's not enough money to complain about.)
But disregarding that opinion for a bit, I must still oppose paying copywright holders instead of creators.
However, sometimes the creator is unable to pursue the commercial use of the work. In this case, the creator can sell his ownership of the absolute rights of the work to a new party.
Yes, but we must ask ourselves WHY this is the case. It used to be because in individuals weren't capable of distributing their music to the masses for sale. With the internet, this is no longer the case--anyone can put their mp3s on the internet. However, individuals have little ability to make a consumers receiving the mp3 conditional on their paying--so they still must sell their rights to the recording industry.
But if this potential legislation passes, it is an admision by the RIAA that it is no longer capable of providing this service on it's own! It can't stop consumers from getting songs without paying, it needs the government to bail it out. So it isn't needed to help distribute music, and it's no longer capable of restricting the distribution of music. Therefore the Recording Industry serves no purpose whatsoever, and the faster their employees are on the streets looking for jobs that actually accomplish something, the more productive our economy will become. However, if this pointless industry is kept alive by governmental fiat, like such piracy compensation legislation, it will be a great waste and a greater injustice.
In other words, because the ONLY remaining purpose of the RIAA members existance is to make people pay artists, the screwing over of artists MUST be addressed in piracy compensation legislation.
Of course, this all assumes that procedes to the copywright holders will be based on the number of times their song is downloaded--more likely, the government will just say "well, AOL Time Warner made X dollars before napster from record sales, so we can just assume they would make X inflation-adjusted dollars today if it were not for piracy". Thus, whether or not AOLTW actually produces more likable music, they still get paid, and THEN we'll see how much we can really screw over those artists!
This prospect offends me not merely because it is corporate welfare, but because it gives control of Art itself to an unelected, unappointed few.
So, both of you are right. The sentence he flagged was pretty evil, but everything else in the idea sucks too.
If we're going to have to pay content providers through ISP taxes (presumably with no way to determine which content is actually the most popular), why don't we just eliminate all pretense and give the money to public television/radio instead. If we must have socialist entertainment, then give us the real thing.
It doesn't make any sense to go quoting chapter and verse of the constitution when it comes to the First Amendment. Because amendments, well, amend. They change whatever the consititution said before it was amended. Exceptions to the first amendment must be either stated in the first amendment or in later amendments--anything in Article 3 is overridden by Amendment 1.
There are exceptions to the first amendment ONLY because the Supreme Court says there are, because they felt it was necessary for society, not because anything in the law justifies them.
On the other hand, it does say "Congress shall pass no law", which I guess means states, treaties, and the Constitution itself (see copywright) can make all the laws they want to regarding it. But thanks to an interpretation of the 14th amednment that came straight out of the bizarro world when we needed it most, states are now also restricted.
I don't think this new proposal sucks because of the first amendment, I just don't this this crime (kids playing GTA3) justifies a federal response. This should be solved at the state level--a small fine for the store if a kid is caught buying violent stuff. I also think the idea of a 17 year old not being allowed to play Doom is, if not unconstitutional, ludicrous.
I also don't know where you get this "personhood" crap, but your logic is clearly invalidated by any interpretation of the 14th amendment, which is to be expected as that was one of the amendments that got rid of your "non-free Chattel".
Yeah, another thing I wonder about...I'm kinda new to the whole Apple world (thank unixish OS X with Quartz eyecandy for that...) does Apple really deliver on new versions of their operating system being faster on same hardware? Have they even promised that? Sure, 10.1 was slightly faster that 10, I guess. Outside Apple world, the passage of time seems to be an excuse to make software more bloated. Is this inverted in Apple world?
My other computers are pretty big, so it doesn't bother me, and I suppose if I had a big Mac desktop it would bother me equally little...but my poor, cute, half-a-year-old, little iBook can only take so much punishment, for so long! Please Jaguar programmers--be easy on the poor baby! Be easy on me!
Forgive my naivete, but don't 3d transformations become 2d transformations if you just leave out the third (or, fourth, I guess for translations) dimension? Being too lazy to look up the patents tonight (whoops) maybe opengl doesn't directly support whatever they're doing with it, but it's seems like a nobrainer to draw the contents of a windows as a texture into memory (which explains why they want so gosh darn much video memory), draw that texture on a couple of triangles, then do all the scaling, translating, shearing, and rotating you want. If you can transform something by 3d (er...4d really) matrix in hardware, you can certainly transform it by a 2d (i mean....3d...i think....stupid translations) matrix in hardware.
I'm sure there's lots of 2d acceleration that wouldn't be just simple matrix transforms, but it would be a start.
Secondly, OpenGL just wasn't designed for 2D graphics! It has virtually NO support for 2D drawing, if you wish to display something it must either be sent directly to the card as pixel data (slow) or uploaded to video RAM and displayed as a texture on a polygon. This seems like a rather strange way to go about things.
But you only have to upload the texture once, and then you can make it undergo many transformations without having to send that data to the video card again, not to mention not having to have your CPU do the transformations...
Heh, if what you say is true, I'm glad I'm brining my 500 mhz iBook to 384 later this week, cause man I am tired of waiting 20 seconds between switching applications and a full minute from starting up a terminal session and seeing the prompt...
I've been disappointed with the speed of my iBook, and at first this 32mb video memory required thing kinda pissed me off, but really, I can't see how hardware quartz would solve my problem. Moving my pointer across the Dock results in icons scalling up and down fairly smoothly. The real problem on mine is stuff like switching between applications, waiting for the web browser to load the page...it's hard for me to say, but it does really feel like slow video is the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that's ridiculous. Do you think an unexpanded version of the Sims wouldn't have been the mega hit that The Sims is currently? The Sims sold just fine before any expansion packs. Because lots of people want to manage a virtual family. Lots of people can and do love The Sims with no additions whatsoever.
Not too mention that his GNU/Linux war has absolutely no effect on Freedom whatsoever except to associate it with annoying behavior by idealists.
That said, I think his analysis of BitKeeper is right on.
As was the Ingsoc party in 1984. He may have been socialist, but he certainly saw in many of his works how incredibly easy it is for socialism to be subverted.
And for that matter, Shaw was a pretty moderate socialist.
Computers and software are what I use for expression and creation. Human expression and creation being the only things that matter to me, I will fight to the vicious, bloody, violent end before I let some corportation take them from me.
History and literature are full of examples of people asked to leave the ones they love to fight for their cause. Just be greatful that you still have a love and cause to give you such a dilemmma.
So the question is how fast do you have to throw it down so that the ellipse is narrow enough that it hits the earth?
My great, great grandchildren, and yours too, will be long dead and gone by the time we run out of coal to generate electricity to power electric cars, which in the future could very well be electic SUVs.
Well this is certainly the best post I've seen on Slashdot today. Good job!
Except for glowing green rocks that turn you into a SUPERMUTANT!!!!!!
But truly the best and most successful games, from tetris to the sims, look like neither books nor television, but like games
I'd probably be more interested in interactive fiction if I found more reason why a work of interactive fiction would have been better as plain old noninteractive fiction. I'm sure such reasons exist, anyone care to offer their favorite reason?
Sorry if it annoys you, but too bad: evangelism does serve a purpose! It's a prisoners dilemma, like voting. If I don't use Windows, but everyone else does, a year from now I'll need Windows too, and it will be just as monopoly priced for me as it will be for everyone who enjoyed the benefits of Windows in the short term. But if a significant number of ourselves can convince each other to use a competitor, that's in everyone's best interest.
To understand why there is a great need for evangelism, you only need two words: Network Effects.
In the cases you describe, the reader doesn't have enough information to determine further information, but that isn't the news agency's fault. But if the news agency changes a previously written story with no notice of such change, that is actively lying, claiming that they knew the truth all along.
This is confusing if you read the original story, told someone about it, only to be "proven wrong". This scenario is an important one--it could happen to absolutely anyone who reads an online news source. You read online that the White House has exploded, you tell your coworkers, everyone's scared, and later one of them checks to discover that it wasn't the White House, it was just an ordinary residence painted white. The agency gives no indication of their earlier error, your coworkers think you're a moron.
There is nothing about that scenario that is limited to news-geeks of some sort--it could truly happen to anyone who happens to read an online news source at any frequency.
But we are interested in the fact than an older and less accurate version existed in the first place. It does not give us that much more information about the news event itself, but about the reliability of the news agency. Not too mention if that if I tell someone about an event I read about, I don't want them thinking I'm insane when they look it up and the news agency claims they never reported that event.
I dunno, people are always harping on sci fi movies not making people think as much as sci fi books do--but as a fan of (good) sci fi books, I don't think I'm really interested in seeing great new ideas of science discussed on the big screen. What scientific thought could be presented to me on screen that could not be presented more efficiently and with more depth in a book? When I watch sci fi movies, I'm watching for basically the same reason that I watch other movies--for drama and for visuals. I don't just want to see bold new ideas--I want to see how humans as represented by actors react to new bold new ideas.
When do we get to the part about sand worms?!!!! sand worm r pretty awesome
okay, maybe it wasn't just us...
Perhaps, but comparing the offerings of governmental PBS/NPR to corporate MPAA/RIAA, the opposite would seem to be the case. Not that I really give my attention to any of those acronyms very often anymore...
WHOEVER PUMPS THEMSELVES UP THE MOST goes fastest.
unfortunately, if you pump yourself up with capital letters, you encounter the lameness filter. i am staying very relaxed about the lameness filter. i too can pass through the lameness filter, like a peaceful ship passing under a quiet bridge. look at that dragon go.
But disregarding that opinion for a bit, I must still oppose paying copywright holders instead of creators.
However, sometimes the creator is unable to pursue the commercial use of the work. In this case, the creator can sell his ownership of the absolute rights of the work to a new party.
Yes, but we must ask ourselves WHY this is the case. It used to be because in individuals weren't capable of distributing their music to the masses for sale. With the internet, this is no longer the case--anyone can put their mp3s on the internet. However, individuals have little ability to make a consumers receiving the mp3 conditional on their paying--so they still must sell their rights to the recording industry.
But if this potential legislation passes, it is an admision by the RIAA that it is no longer capable of providing this service on it's own! It can't stop consumers from getting songs without paying, it needs the government to bail it out. So it isn't needed to help distribute music, and it's no longer capable of restricting the distribution of music. Therefore the Recording Industry serves no purpose whatsoever, and the faster their employees are on the streets looking for jobs that actually accomplish something, the more productive our economy will become. However, if this pointless industry is kept alive by governmental fiat, like such piracy compensation legislation, it will be a great waste and a greater injustice.
In other words, because the ONLY remaining purpose of the RIAA members existance is to make people pay artists, the screwing over of artists MUST be addressed in piracy compensation legislation.
Of course, this all assumes that procedes to the copywright holders will be based on the number of times their song is downloaded--more likely, the government will just say "well, AOL Time Warner made X dollars before napster from record sales, so we can just assume they would make X inflation-adjusted dollars today if it were not for piracy". Thus, whether or not AOLTW actually produces more likable music, they still get paid, and THEN we'll see how much we can really screw over those artists!
This prospect offends me not merely because it is corporate welfare, but because it gives control of Art itself to an unelected, unappointed few.
So, both of you are right. The sentence he flagged was pretty evil, but everything else in the idea sucks too.
If we're going to have to pay content providers through ISP taxes (presumably with no way to determine which content is actually the most popular), why don't we just eliminate all pretense and give the money to public television/radio instead. If we must have socialist entertainment, then give us the real thing.
There are exceptions to the first amendment ONLY because the Supreme Court says there are, because they felt it was necessary for society, not because anything in the law justifies them.
On the other hand, it does say "Congress shall pass no law", which I guess means states, treaties, and the Constitution itself (see copywright) can make all the laws they want to regarding it. But thanks to an interpretation of the 14th amednment that came straight out of the bizarro world when we needed it most, states are now also restricted.
I don't think this new proposal sucks because of the first amendment, I just don't this this crime (kids playing GTA3) justifies a federal response. This should be solved at the state level--a small fine for the store if a kid is caught buying violent stuff. I also think the idea of a 17 year old not being allowed to play Doom is, if not unconstitutional, ludicrous.
I also don't know where you get this "personhood" crap, but your logic is clearly invalidated by any interpretation of the 14th amendment, which is to be expected as that was one of the amendments that got rid of your "non-free Chattel".
My other computers are pretty big, so it doesn't bother me, and I suppose if I had a big Mac desktop it would bother me equally little...but my poor, cute, half-a-year-old, little iBook can only take so much punishment, for so long! Please Jaguar programmers--be easy on the poor baby! Be easy on me!
I'm sure there's lots of 2d acceleration that wouldn't be just simple matrix transforms, but it would be a start.
But you only have to upload the texture once, and then you can make it undergo many transformations without having to send that data to the video card again, not to mention not having to have your CPU do the transformations...
I've been disappointed with the speed of my iBook, and at first this 32mb video memory required thing kinda pissed me off, but really, I can't see how hardware quartz would solve my problem. Moving my pointer across the Dock results in icons scalling up and down fairly smoothly. The real problem on mine is stuff like switching between applications, waiting for the web browser to load the page...it's hard for me to say, but it does really feel like slow video is the problem.
For the record, I don't think guns have ever said "in my professional opinion, you should aim me at your wife and pull the trigger."