I know it's been said somewhere in here, but it bears repeating:
@#%@$#%^@ derivative work!
I don't care what you think about copyrights, or how much you want to complain about how the software companies of today are somehow destroying the world/system worse than the industrialists of the past (hint: they're not), but it's right there. In the statute. Which gains its authority explicitly from the constitution.
You can't take other people's stuff, repackage or modify it, and distribute it without their consent.
Last I checked, the brain couldn't do much when it's missing or goo- she had a 2/3ds-of-her-brain lobotomy, if that aids your understanding of her condition. This man just had localized injury, not anything of that order.
So, by "your game" you mean "games that aren't available with native unix builds or are for PSX or PS2, and perhaps some windows games (for a fee)." That's... uh... a pretty big definition for "your game." Although it makes sense, since the "your game" category seems to be larger than the "not-your game" category.
If they had cause to subpoena MS's store of your information about your computer, they sure as heck have cause to order information straight from your computer via a court-ordered diagnostic. And if you did anything to the data you'd be in contempt of court. What a difference!
The install base isn't the same; you've fallen into the "Sold/Shipped" trap. Nintendo has reported more DSs sold than Sony has shipped. That is a huge gap.
You can't simply sign an executive order saying "the supreme court is wrong." Even given the rather permissive language the court uses in Kelo, it would be the legislature, not the executive, that would be given the opportunity.
Anyone who tries to justify this because they don't like Kelo is being intelectually dishonest. Good systems don't work like this.
I'm glad the subject got a such a vigorous debate.
Constraining piracy is good. Piracy is bad, it hurts the economy, it hurts businesses, not to mention it's against the law. You can try to justify it, but it's not yours to say that it is therefore right. It isn't.
And I agree, there should be a -1 Wrong moderation. For factual inaccuracy. As it were, we have someone with Excellent Karma at -1 for a post without getting either flamebait (it's obviously not) or troll (which, again, it obviously is not) simply because that user dared to play devil's advocate and bring up the unpopular argument.
And, for the record, I am completely against DRM. I'm just too intellectually honest to pretend that just because I believe something the opposite argument is utterly without merit.
It's a nice introduction to one side of the issue. I understand that/. is all about knee-jerk reactions and huge generalizations, but DRM itself isn't (if anything actually can be) evil. The concern is with the current use of it, along with a large echo chamber of people who are upset that it would destroy their ability to pirate.
DRM to constrain legitimate use = Bad DRM to constrain piracy = Good DRM written poorly and given too much control = Bad
That argument is silly. The only market segment Nintendo is actually abandoning is the "hardcore gamer" segment, which is really small anyway. Nintendo can say all they want about how they don't want to compete directly, but at the end of the day, they are, and perhaps even using the non-competition rhetoric to insulate themselves from any putative slugfest.
The sad and pathetic state of the "games media." Mainstream media likes to deal with a certain level of what they collectively define as professionalism; proper sourcing, investigation past press releases, no rumormongering, staying out of bed with the subject. Now, that sure as heck isn't always adhered to, but in the "games media," it's almost never adhered to. People reprint press releases, rampant speculation, and in almost all cases play favorites. Journalists talk to each other. To whom is a TIME reporter going to talk to about games? Kotaku? IGN? Joystiq? IGN separates their writers based on what company-based bias they have. Joystiq revoked an internet poll they themselves put up for discussion because they disagreed with the results. Kotaku is amusing, but rough around the edges and doesn't exactly reek of credibility. EGM and its ilk share similar problems. The only group I can think of that would qualify would be Magic Box, but I'm still not convinced that the site isn't just a giant spider script (which would explain a great deal about the write-ups that they do print.
That said, for stories that they can simply go it alone with, such as interviews, overviews of systems or financials, the mainstream media does a servicable job. TIME's article on Nintendo's new direction the day before E3 (in addition to having the first good set of Wii screens) was the best I saw before or during the show. It's just that there's not a whole lot of news to go around, and getting the extra news to fill in the gaps requires either rampant speculation or dealing with "unprofessional" people. To be quite frank, I don't blame them.
Aid programs for the poor is too complicated to get exactly right, so the government should not get involved. (People starve)
International policy with countries we have no direct relations with is too complicated to be entirely effective, so the government should not get involved. (Rouge states can ignore one of the most powerful nations)
Criminal justice is far too complicated for us to get right in every single case, so the government should not get involved. (Yay anarchy!)
You have an easter bunny argument; initially yummy and satisfying, but after the initial bite, ultimately hollow. If the government were bound to not do anything because of fear of the consequences, then we would have no country. Everything the government does nowadays is incredibly complicated- we do, after all, live in a complicated world. Legislation is generally slow because of endless meetings attempting to mitigate unwanted secondary effects. Are they always removed? Heck no. But to say that we should never do anything because something bad might happen is the kind of paralysis that kills any system, much less a government.
Shorter: "Damn that nintendo, what with its new products and its goofy shenanegans! Get off my lawn!"
Leaving aside the absurdity of cussing out people for being excited about something, you obviously haven't been paying a lot of attention to what's been going on with the Wii.
Super Mario Galaxy showed a polished and well-done platformer using the Wii's controls. Verdict: not gimmick, and can be a pattern for future platformers to expand on.
Metroid Prime 3 showed us how much better having something to point with is than the current (and absolutely ridiculous) dual-analog setup for controllers. Verdict: not gimmick, a good way to refine an existing genre to take advantage of the new technology.
Madden Wii and Wii Sports showed us how motion can intuitively work with sports games. Verdict: Kind of spotty, but the premise just makes sense, and even EA's sold on it. Juking should be shifting your controller, not trying to locate the second trigger (but don't hit the first trigger, or else you'll dive!)
Red Steel showed us what we all knew: we all want to be that loser kid on the star wars video. Verdict: Swords are freaking awesome.
The other thing you forget is that Nintendo doesn't need third parties. Without them, it won't capture the market. However, the N64 and GCs suffered massive third-party support problems, and are still very, very worthwhile systems just with Nintendo's offerings (Zelda, Fire Emblem, Mario, Paper Mario, Metroid, Mario Kart, Mario Sports, Pokemon, Smash Bros.). That's support for the console built-in.
You also forget that this idea makes sense. Ever see a new player sit down with a game? They instinctively try to move the controller through space to get the desired effect. Even experienced gamers do this under stress or when a quick reaction is called for.
You also say that since you are only interested in games, you won't talk about committing to a console company. Not only is this impossible, it's a bit silly. You need to give them money to play games. You're going to find games you like more than others, and since that game (or another you would want in the future) carries with it a high probability of being an exclusive, you're paying the console company to play the game. You can't separate the two, as you suggest. You might be picking it for a different reason than a hypothetical straw man (games vs. brand loyalty), but in the end, you're giving the same amount of dedication to the company by making an expensive (and at least temporarily exclusive) choice. The only difference is that you can duplicitously create enough room to look cool and snark at people getting excited about things that, just maybe, might be worth it for them to be excited about.
I'm trying to moderate this thread fairly, but I can't seem to find the "-1 Over-Generalizing Kneejerk and/or Poorly Thought-Out Rant" option on the list.
If you want to editorialize and generalize, write an editorial and submit it. Lord knows/. has enough random people with blogs as news. Don't write a mini-editorial in the submission of a real story, because it's dishonest and, to be frank, quite lame.
How about we blame both? Saying that it is either one or the other is simplistic and completely ignores the myriad of factors at play here. As it is, the only discussion on the subject is people from each camp yelling about how the games/parents are killing the children/irresponsible wankers. It's a ridiculous argument on both sides.
Very, very true. My point was to refute the idea that the "classics" are somehow outdated and bereft of value, not to suggest that high school students are the suitable audience.
That said, a lot of them are. Moby Dick is good, and I'd wager Bonfire of the Vanities would go over well.
Shakespeare, of course, does a good job of getting its point across if you can get the kids past the old english.
Yeah, Jane Austen is bad because she analyzed and satarized the social interaction of an incredibly important period and country in history. If you look beyond "haha, they're going to DANCES!" or "Why haven't they just built a gigantic robot army to fight for women's rights?" you might actually learn both about how high society operates and how humanity creates filters to force our superficial judgments of others to comport to our preconcieved notions of them.
That is what Austen's work is about. It's not "just" about parties and finding husbands. You're confusing meaning and rhetoric with action and plot, and if you can't get past that point, I'm not surprised you hate the classics- they all take a refined reader to understand and appreciate.
Literature is about nuance, not the rhetorical equivalent of the fish-slapping song.
Putting your hardware in a different kind of box is scamming? It was the Wii hardware in a GC box. So perhaps if there was a developer out there that was saying "We'll develop for the Wii if and only if it's in a GC box!" then I suppose they would be scamming. Good luck finding a dev that would say that.
Also, uh, input devices don't create much heat at all. They simply fire interrupts at the CPU and the CPU then does the legwork. The CPU itself generally creates a set amount of heat, regardless of what's firing through it, unless it's just sitting there doing nothing.
This isn't a technical challenge at all. It's a slower, cooler CPU and wireless remotes don't make it any hotter.
Slashdot Mirror
Constantly remind myself of my company's small army of trained ninja.
If by "slumping sales" you mean "increasing sales and spectacular profit" than sure!
I know it's been said somewhere in here, but it bears repeating:
@#%@$#%^@ derivative work!
I don't care what you think about copyrights, or how much you want to complain about how the software companies of today are somehow destroying the world/system worse than the industrialists of the past (hint: they're not), but it's right there. In the statute. Which gains its authority explicitly from the constitution.
You can't take other people's stuff, repackage or modify it, and distribute it without their consent.
It's as simple as that.
Apparently he is awake, and we shall worship him.
Last I checked, the brain couldn't do much when it's missing or goo- she had a 2/3ds-of-her-brain lobotomy, if that aids your understanding of her condition. This man just had localized injury, not anything of that order.
So, by "your game" you mean "games that aren't available with native unix builds or are for PSX or PS2, and perhaps some windows games (for a fee)." That's... uh... a pretty big definition for "your game." Although it makes sense, since the "your game" category seems to be larger than the "not-your game" category.
But you know, whatever.
"From the unhealthy-obsession department"
If they had cause to subpoena MS's store of your information about your computer, they sure as heck have cause to order information straight from your computer via a court-ordered diagnostic. And if you did anything to the data you'd be in contempt of court. What a difference!
The install base isn't the same; you've fallen into the "Sold/Shipped" trap. Nintendo has reported more DSs sold than Sony has shipped. That is a huge gap.
You can't simply sign an executive order saying "the supreme court is wrong." Even given the rather permissive language the court uses in Kelo, it would be the legislature, not the executive, that would be given the opportunity.
Anyone who tries to justify this because they don't like Kelo is being intelectually dishonest. Good systems don't work like this.
I'm glad the subject got a such a vigorous debate.
Constraining piracy is good. Piracy is bad, it hurts the economy, it hurts businesses, not to mention it's against the law. You can try to justify it, but it's not yours to say that it is therefore right. It isn't.
And I agree, there should be a -1 Wrong moderation. For factual inaccuracy. As it were, we have someone with Excellent Karma at -1 for a post without getting either flamebait (it's obviously not) or troll (which, again, it obviously is not) simply because that user dared to play devil's advocate and bring up the unpopular argument.
And, for the record, I am completely against DRM. I'm just too intellectually honest to pretend that just because I believe something the opposite argument is utterly without merit.
It's a nice introduction to one side of the issue. I understand that /. is all about knee-jerk reactions and huge generalizations, but DRM itself isn't (if anything actually can be) evil. The concern is with the current use of it, along with a large echo chamber of people who are upset that it would destroy their ability to pirate.
DRM to constrain legitimate use = Bad
DRM to constrain piracy = Good
DRM written poorly and given too much control = Bad
That argument is silly. The only market segment Nintendo is actually abandoning is the "hardcore gamer" segment, which is really small anyway. Nintendo can say all they want about how they don't want to compete directly, but at the end of the day, they are, and perhaps even using the non-competition rhetoric to insulate themselves from any putative slugfest.
The sad and pathetic state of the "games media." Mainstream media likes to deal with a certain level of what they collectively define as professionalism; proper sourcing, investigation past press releases, no rumormongering, staying out of bed with the subject. Now, that sure as heck isn't always adhered to, but in the "games media," it's almost never adhered to. People reprint press releases, rampant speculation, and in almost all cases play favorites. Journalists talk to each other. To whom is a TIME reporter going to talk to about games? Kotaku? IGN? Joystiq? IGN separates their writers based on what company-based bias they have. Joystiq revoked an internet poll they themselves put up for discussion because they disagreed with the results. Kotaku is amusing, but rough around the edges and doesn't exactly reek of credibility. EGM and its ilk share similar problems. The only group I can think of that would qualify would be Magic Box, but I'm still not convinced that the site isn't just a giant spider script (which would explain a great deal about the write-ups that they do print.
That said, for stories that they can simply go it alone with, such as interviews, overviews of systems or financials, the mainstream media does a servicable job. TIME's article on Nintendo's new direction the day before E3 (in addition to having the first good set of Wii screens) was the best I saw before or during the show. It's just that there's not a whole lot of news to go around, and getting the extra news to fill in the gaps requires either rampant speculation or dealing with "unprofessional" people. To be quite frank, I don't blame them.
Aid programs for the poor is too complicated to get exactly right, so the government should not get involved. (People starve)
International policy with countries we have no direct relations with is too complicated to be entirely effective, so the government should not get involved. (Rouge states can ignore one of the most powerful nations)
Criminal justice is far too complicated for us to get right in every single case, so the government should not get involved. (Yay anarchy!)
You have an easter bunny argument; initially yummy and satisfying, but after the initial bite, ultimately hollow. If the government were bound to not do anything because of fear of the consequences, then we would have no country. Everything the government does nowadays is incredibly complicated- we do, after all, live in a complicated world. Legislation is generally slow because of endless meetings attempting to mitigate unwanted secondary effects. Are they always removed? Heck no. But to say that we should never do anything because something bad might happen is the kind of paralysis that kills any system, much less a government.
Shorter: "Damn that nintendo, what with its new products and its goofy shenanegans! Get off my lawn!"
Leaving aside the absurdity of cussing out people for being excited about something, you obviously haven't been paying a lot of attention to what's been going on with the Wii.
Super Mario Galaxy showed a polished and well-done platformer using the Wii's controls. Verdict: not gimmick, and can be a pattern for future platformers to expand on.
Metroid Prime 3 showed us how much better having something to point with is than the current (and absolutely ridiculous) dual-analog setup for controllers. Verdict: not gimmick, a good way to refine an existing genre to take advantage of the new technology.
Madden Wii and Wii Sports showed us how motion can intuitively work with sports games. Verdict: Kind of spotty, but the premise just makes sense, and even EA's sold on it. Juking should be shifting your controller, not trying to locate the second trigger (but don't hit the first trigger, or else you'll dive!)
Red Steel showed us what we all knew: we all want to be that loser kid on the star wars video. Verdict: Swords are freaking awesome.
The other thing you forget is that Nintendo doesn't need third parties. Without them, it won't capture the market. However, the N64 and GCs suffered massive third-party support problems, and are still very, very worthwhile systems just with Nintendo's offerings (Zelda, Fire Emblem, Mario, Paper Mario, Metroid, Mario Kart, Mario Sports, Pokemon, Smash Bros.). That's support for the console built-in.
You also forget that this idea makes sense. Ever see a new player sit down with a game? They instinctively try to move the controller through space to get the desired effect. Even experienced gamers do this under stress or when a quick reaction is called for.
You also say that since you are only interested in games, you won't talk about committing to a console company. Not only is this impossible, it's a bit silly. You need to give them money to play games. You're going to find games you like more than others, and since that game (or another you would want in the future) carries with it a high probability of being an exclusive, you're paying the console company to play the game. You can't separate the two, as you suggest. You might be picking it for a different reason than a hypothetical straw man (games vs. brand loyalty), but in the end, you're giving the same amount of dedication to the company by making an expensive (and at least temporarily exclusive) choice. The only difference is that you can duplicitously create enough room to look cool and snark at people getting excited about things that, just maybe, might be worth it for them to be excited about.
I'm trying to moderate this thread fairly, but I can't seem to find the "-1 Over-Generalizing Kneejerk and/or Poorly Thought-Out Rant" option on the list.
This is CowboyNeal's department, right?
If you want to editorialize and generalize, write an editorial and submit it. Lord knows /. has enough random people with blogs as news. Don't write a mini-editorial in the submission of a real story, because it's dishonest and, to be frank, quite lame.
How about we blame both? Saying that it is either one or the other is simplistic and completely ignores the myriad of factors at play here. As it is, the only discussion on the subject is people from each camp yelling about how the games/parents are killing the children/irresponsible wankers. It's a ridiculous argument on both sides.
Usually referred to as "top-down"
We actually read Comedy of Errors and Much Ado About Nothing in HS, so we got a good selection and Shakespeare experience.
Counter-nit: I said "the old english," not "the Old English." I can understand the confusion.
Very, very true. My point was to refute the idea that the "classics" are somehow outdated and bereft of value, not to suggest that high school students are the suitable audience.
That said, a lot of them are. Moby Dick is good, and I'd wager Bonfire of the Vanities would go over well.
Shakespeare, of course, does a good job of getting its point across if you can get the kids past the old english.
Yeah, Jane Austen is bad because she analyzed and satarized the social interaction of an incredibly important period and country in history. If you look beyond "haha, they're going to DANCES!" or "Why haven't they just built a gigantic robot army to fight for women's rights?" you might actually learn both about how high society operates and how humanity creates filters to force our superficial judgments of others to comport to our preconcieved notions of them.
That is what Austen's work is about. It's not "just" about parties and finding husbands. You're confusing meaning and rhetoric with action and plot, and if you can't get past that point, I'm not surprised you hate the classics- they all take a refined reader to understand and appreciate.
Literature is about nuance, not the rhetorical equivalent of the fish-slapping song.
Sounds a bit "pay as you go".
Putting your hardware in a different kind of box is scamming? It was the Wii hardware in a GC box. So perhaps if there was a developer out there that was saying "We'll develop for the Wii if and only if it's in a GC box!" then I suppose they would be scamming. Good luck finding a dev that would say that.
Also, uh, input devices don't create much heat at all. They simply fire interrupts at the CPU and the CPU then does the legwork. The CPU itself generally creates a set amount of heat, regardless of what's firing through it, unless it's just sitting there doing nothing.
This isn't a technical challenge at all. It's a slower, cooler CPU and wireless remotes don't make it any hotter.