Then you have a problem where the user is entering a command and nothing is happening. That is about the worst thing you can possibly do with video game controls- it frustrates the user, adds a barrier to immersion, and puts the AI at a distinct advantage.
Sure, a nice GUI is geeky and nice, but really, what's the point? The online service will have its own interface for each game, most likely. DVDs and BRDs have fixed resolutions, and I can't think of anyone that would be messing with that stuff, anyway. Most everyone has an ipod+dock or computer with their MP3s.
To paraphrase a rather successful political campaign, "It's the games, stupid."
Amazon should carry them. There's a shop with an online front called galaxy4.co.uk (nice reference) that may have them available- it's a very well-run shop.
So your theory is that people should simply not talk about things they don't like? Could you imagine the conversation?
Guy A: "Man, Thing was great yesterday." Guy B: "It was totally NOT great, it was THE BEST THING EVER." Guy A: "I dunno, man, it was very good, but I'm not sure it quite reaches that level of awesomeness."
Can you imagine if that idea was applied to, say, real, important conversations? Part of the value of a forum is to have your ideas and values questioned.
The supreme court has drawn a clear distinction between speech that can be censored by parents and speech that can't. You can send whatever in snail mail because, the court reasoned, adults have an opportunity to ensure that it doesn't reach the family proper by censoring it at the mailbox. The situation with spam is much more complicated. It'd make an interesting case.
Who controls the production? Who has the lowest cost of production? Even if it were legalized, there would still be significant public sentiment against it, and you would have to hire people to work fields. The columbian ex-cartel that has had giant fields in the hinterlands for the past 3 decades already has people working. It already has the ability to get a distribution plan set up. In fact, their costs would bottom out since they could simply ship in bulk, and when the market expanded, they would have lots of room to expand into, along with the same cheap labor force.
No American corporation could get an operation remotely within that scale running fast enough to seriously compete with the established subjects. And knowing these legitimate businessmen's histories, I would imagine they wouldn't want to take the risk of pissing them off, either.
As for the damage from "clean supplies," that's a cute way of sweeping the drug itself under the rug, waving your hands and blaming ill effects on foul play. These substances interfere directly with a lot of the body's most important functions. Not only that, but most are, as a group, some of the most addictive things we've yet encountered. The damage will still be done, probably exacerbated by even heavier use, regardless of what kind of education you can get. No classroom can teach your nervous system to reconstruct itself.
Yes, I forgot that permanently damaging your brain only affects yourself. And showing up to work high. Or not being able to hold a job. Of course, you never have families, or jobs, or spouses, or children, or significant others that it would affect.
And don't pull out the alcohol argument- alcohol is not nearly as addictive nor does it damage on the same level as "hard" drugs. Destroying your liver over the course of 30 years is much less bad than destroying your nervous system over the course of 10.
Though I would put more control on alcohol consumption. Blah blah blah fascist blah blah, the state has a right to protect people from their fellow citizens, and the way the laws work at the moment obviously aren't doing the job (witness the number of alcohol-related automobile fatalities).
Strychnine's effects closely mirror cocaine's effects in small dosages. That way, they can put in less smack, more analog, and add a bit of strychnine to get the same effect. On heavy users and those who push it too far, however....
Too often I see people generalize the prohibition on narcotics simply as marijuana. I'm rather neutral on the mrijuana argument, though I find the alcohol argument thoroughly unconvincing.
A lot of people do underestimate the subversive (on the person's psyche and ability to function as a productive member of society) effect that "harder" drugs have on people, since they're only really familiar with recreational cannibis. Not to mention the permanent damage that a drug like opium or heroin can do to a person.
Another problem is this: if narcotics were legalized, who would end up being the distributors? Likely the cartels and networks of dealers that have been selling it illegally for years. You know, the people that cut it with strychnine and analogs so they can inflate their volume and therefore profits, at the expense of the health and safety of their users. Or the brutal cartels that, if they were operating in the same sphere as legitimate businesses, would make every single corrupt corporation, combined in some voltron-like fashion, look like the local, friendly mom & pop.
Even if they did play fair and there way governmental oversight, the damage to the user would still be there. Furthermore, testing narcotics for purity, etc is somewhat time-consuming and actually consumes a portion of the drug, which would raise the costs phenomenally (provided the government did not make the distributors eat the costs. That would be a toss-up).
It's just generally a bad idea to open this all up so a few people can legally mess with their own heads.
Aside from the DMCA problem, this seems like a pretty clear copyright violation in and of itself (which would mean injunction, defeating more than one argument that they could pump money out of it until the suit is done) because Circuit City does not own rights to copy nor distribute the majority of movies the end-user would be bringing in. When they copy, then, they are fixating an existing work into a new medium, which requires rights to copy. By charging for the service, that would likely put them in the role of a distributor. If they were actually selling the movie on DVD in the store, that would be less iffy, but since it is still a copy, there would still be problems (as they only have the ability to distribute).
People keep talking about fair use as if it is some kind of magic bullet that will make everyone's paranoid copyright nightmares go away. It is not. It is a narrow exception that excludes copyright infringement when you, for your own enjoyment and by your own skill, are fixating something onto a new media or distributing in a very small scale. Circuit City is by no means small-scale. The company, not the consumer, is making the copies. While the copy is for the consumer's benefit, that is largely irrelevant, as they have no real relationship (usually a requirement for fair use duplication on behalf of someone else).
On a related note, people (especially in our industry- or rather my former industry, I should say) need to learn more about this law and how it works, rather than just trumpeting a half-baked idea that all copyright is inherently evil. What keeps MS from buying the load of a competitor's software at retail, rebranding it and selling it at a higher price to drive them out of a market? Antitrust law wouldn't help, the competitor is still making sales. Copyright is the only thing preventing that sort of thing. And allows small companies with a novel bit of program or code to stay in the market and not fear a large competitor simply ripping their code apart and inserting it into their own. And a multitude of other things.
Remember that what you think the law should be is hardly ever what the law actually is, and that laws are complex and intricate things. It takes a truly atrocious law to have no good effect. Aside from a very narrow application cherished by a loud minority, copyright law has been a great success and balanced the interests of consumers, creators and competitors remarkably well.
Yeah, except E3 wasn't about gamers to come, and only marginally for publishers to connect with gamers. In fact, up until recently (past 5-6 years) it was nearly impossible to get into E3 unless you actually had some genuine journalist gig.
Personally, I miss how E3 was. I want a lot of media. I don't want 60 billion people running around spouting off about how much fun they had at conference x. I don't care about that, and I certainly don't care about PAX.
Lots of people I know try google but don't realize that Google has a linux site-only engine, which is a huge asset, even over normal google search. Very helpful when looking for an application or the official site of a package you're working on getting running.
I always imagined the problem with the GBC adapter and the GBA cord were that third parties didn't want to rely on people having an extra bit of kit to make it work. If Nintendo did the whole shebang wirelessly, I imagine a lot more devs would buy into it (though probably not the majority, I imagine).
Unless the investors start thinking two generations of huge losses are enough. As a shareholder in a powerful and productive corporation, I'd be damned if I let them spend an extremely unprofitable decade trying to "crash into" a market-leader position when that money could be used elsewhere to make everyone a lot more money.
You just described the entire system. Over 90% of cases end in a settlement. Otherwise get ready for gigantic taxes, because we'd need 100 times as many judges, clerks, sheriffs to carry the workload. Plus, lawyers fees would go up because you'd have to hire more lawyers because you'd have so many running from court to court, preparing evidence and witnesses, etc.
People seem to say that him saying he owns it already is rebutting the fact that he downloaded it, rather than the fact that he was justified. Not only does it serve both purposes, he would be crazy to argue solely justification if he wants to win. Just as you can give multiple forms of a claim in the complaint, you can give multiple forms of defense against that complaint. So he is saying:
With regard to the charge of copyright violation, (1) I did not do it, as evidenced by my ownership of a legally-obtained copy of the movie in question; (2) Or in the alternative, I did download the copy, but since I own a legally-obtained copy of the movie in question, my infringement qualifies as fair use and I was therefore justified in downloading it
And, as I said in one response, court isn't just going in and flinging things at a jury, trying to convince them. The jury is given the law and has to apply what happened to it. If the instructions say "If he downloaded a copy from the internet he violated copyright" with no other instruction for a fair use defense, the jury is generally going to say he's in violation, regardless of whatever "The Man is out to get you" idea his lawyers get in through argument.
Uh, yes? Except when something comes up, the judge decides what law to give to the jury (or himself, if the jury is waved) to apply the facts to. When judges look to instructions for juries on close or new issues they look at a) mandatory authority (higher courts) and b) persuasive authority (other courts and academics). It's pretty important to keep up on that sort of thing, especially since you can't just go into a court and say "well, I think the law says this, so we should get X instruction." Both the judge and your opponent will say "Okay, what supporting authority do you have to tell me that the law is X?"
Just being in court and having an opinion only gets you so far.
Because distribution is a (very important) aspect of copyright. You do not have a right to distribute copies of what you have to anyone without permission of the copyright holder. There are exceptions, but getting something through bittorrent destroys the small number and familiarity requirements (remember, you're simultaneously uploading). Both the letter and spirit of the law that allows copying requires the "fixation" of the copyrighted work to be done by the person copying it, otherwise the sytem is wide-open for abuse.
Okay? Having the thing doesn't give you a right to download a copy. I've yet to see a respected scholar in the field of IP law say anything like that. The justifications (fair use, generally, under the umbrella of time-shifting and/or backup media) don't hold up under analogy; you're creating a new copy of someone else's thing, not your own, and it's not fair use because you do not know the person.
But, uh, sure. Extortion. Whatever. If he did (and we don't know if he did or did not) do this, than he'll likely get smacked for it. While the cartel's methods are utterly ruthless and uncalled-for, that doesn't diminish their legal rights.
As usual, I see a lot of people have confused the issues. Lots of complaining about the "nanny state" and "telling people what they can do with their own equipment" and how they have no right.
A condiminium board is a completely different entity than a local government. They are not held to the same standard, as far as most things go (the fair housing act being a major exception), as a local government is. The developer buys and develops the property all at once, then sells it (again, all at once) to the original investors (who generally start the 'condominium board'). Since everything was transferred and later subdivided at once, any covenants and hinderances written into the original title deed (usually binding the owner to the rules and regulations of the condo board, a provision implemented through the condominium board act in that particular state) are enforceable against the owner. Another vehicle for this is that people do not actually own the entire condominium; they own the interior in fee simple, but the exterior is owned by the condominium board, so the board retains an interest in the property to create legal leverage.
This is actually one of the more sane things I've seen out of condominium boards. Compared to, say, barring pets, this is simple and actually serves a good purpose.
It is pretty demonstrative of his character. However, in FFIVa, hide does have its uses. There are a few monsters, for instance, that have timed attacks, and Edward can simply hide to avoid them and then show and continue attacking. Also, after completing his trial Edward recieves a very nice command that uses shell and protect on everyone. Still nowhere near as good as some others (you can look at my nick to figure out whom) but not completely useless anymore.
I said it before, I'll say it again: DS browsing will be better than most other pocket experiences, because Decuma is light years ahead of everyone else. I'm just angry that Windows Mobile 2003 broke support for my mobile.
A lot of people miss the point of why FFIV was so great.
Complicated situation re: villian? Check. Complicated relationships with multiple party members (other than angsty crap)? Check. Good balance between different characters (a huge rarity in FF post-IV)? Check. Good music? Check.
There are also a few VERY important things that FFIV did that others mostly do not:
Tie the characters around the story (class change as plot device, the designers' ability to create dungeons with a set party in mind). It was an pretty good bit of technological workmanship, considering it was almost wholely designed for the NES. First to do ATB. ATB. ATB. Did I mention Active Time Battle?
People talk about how "deep" the newer RPGs are compared to the older ones. This is completely untrue. People often confuse "depth" with complexity, and say that either something is deep being it is overly complex, or because the writer hides the ball. One need only look to shakespeare to show that it is quality, not quantity or complexity, of character that makes a good plot. FFIV didn't have overly complex characters, nor massive amounts of dialogue to flesh them out, but the game used every bit that it did to create quality characters that worked well off each other.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you have a problem where the user is entering a command and nothing is happening. That is about the worst thing you can possibly do with video game controls- it frustrates the user, adds a barrier to immersion, and puts the AI at a distinct advantage.
Considering Molyneux's past record in... well... every aspect of game design, let me be the first to say: "Hooray! The Wii will be awesome!"
Sure, a nice GUI is geeky and nice, but really, what's the point? The online service will have its own interface for each game, most likely. DVDs and BRDs have fixed resolutions, and I can't think of anyone that would be messing with that stuff, anyway. Most everyone has an ipod+dock or computer with their MP3s.
To paraphrase a rather successful political campaign, "It's the games, stupid."
Amazon should carry them. There's a shop with an online front called galaxy4.co.uk (nice reference) that may have them available- it's a very well-run shop.
So your theory is that people should simply not talk about things they don't like? Could you imagine the conversation?
Guy A: "Man, Thing was great yesterday."
Guy B: "It was totally NOT great, it was THE BEST THING EVER."
Guy A: "I dunno, man, it was very good, but I'm not sure it quite reaches that level of awesomeness."
Can you imagine if that idea was applied to, say, real, important conversations? Part of the value of a forum is to have your ideas and values questioned.
Doctor Who.
The supreme court has drawn a clear distinction between speech that can be censored by parents and speech that can't. You can send whatever in snail mail because, the court reasoned, adults have an opportunity to ensure that it doesn't reach the family proper by censoring it at the mailbox. The situation with spam is much more complicated. It'd make an interesting case.
Who controls the production? Who has the lowest cost of production? Even if it were legalized, there would still be significant public sentiment against it, and you would have to hire people to work fields. The columbian ex-cartel that has had giant fields in the hinterlands for the past 3 decades already has people working. It already has the ability to get a distribution plan set up. In fact, their costs would bottom out since they could simply ship in bulk, and when the market expanded, they would have lots of room to expand into, along with the same cheap labor force.
No American corporation could get an operation remotely within that scale running fast enough to seriously compete with the established subjects. And knowing these legitimate businessmen's histories, I would imagine they wouldn't want to take the risk of pissing them off, either.
As for the damage from "clean supplies," that's a cute way of sweeping the drug itself under the rug, waving your hands and blaming ill effects on foul play. These substances interfere directly with a lot of the body's most important functions. Not only that, but most are, as a group, some of the most addictive things we've yet encountered. The damage will still be done, probably exacerbated by even heavier use, regardless of what kind of education you can get. No classroom can teach your nervous system to reconstruct itself.
Yes, I forgot that permanently damaging your brain only affects yourself. And showing up to work high. Or not being able to hold a job. Of course, you never have families, or jobs, or spouses, or children, or significant others that it would affect.
And don't pull out the alcohol argument- alcohol is not nearly as addictive nor does it damage on the same level as "hard" drugs. Destroying your liver over the course of 30 years is much less bad than destroying your nervous system over the course of 10.
Though I would put more control on alcohol consumption. Blah blah blah fascist blah blah, the state has a right to protect people from their fellow citizens, and the way the laws work at the moment obviously aren't doing the job (witness the number of alcohol-related automobile fatalities).
Strychnine's effects closely mirror cocaine's effects in small dosages. That way, they can put in less smack, more analog, and add a bit of strychnine to get the same effect. On heavy users and those who push it too far, however....
Too often I see people generalize the prohibition on narcotics simply as marijuana. I'm rather neutral on the mrijuana argument, though I find the alcohol argument thoroughly unconvincing.
A lot of people do underestimate the subversive (on the person's psyche and ability to function as a productive member of society) effect that "harder" drugs have on people, since they're only really familiar with recreational cannibis. Not to mention the permanent damage that a drug like opium or heroin can do to a person.
Another problem is this: if narcotics were legalized, who would end up being the distributors? Likely the cartels and networks of dealers that have been selling it illegally for years. You know, the people that cut it with strychnine and analogs so they can inflate their volume and therefore profits, at the expense of the health and safety of their users. Or the brutal cartels that, if they were operating in the same sphere as legitimate businesses, would make every single corrupt corporation, combined in some voltron-like fashion, look like the local, friendly mom & pop.
Even if they did play fair and there way governmental oversight, the damage to the user would still be there. Furthermore, testing narcotics for purity, etc is somewhat time-consuming and actually consumes a portion of the drug, which would raise the costs phenomenally (provided the government did not make the distributors eat the costs. That would be a toss-up).
It's just generally a bad idea to open this all up so a few people can legally mess with their own heads.
Aside from the DMCA problem, this seems like a pretty clear copyright violation in and of itself (which would mean injunction, defeating more than one argument that they could pump money out of it until the suit is done) because Circuit City does not own rights to copy nor distribute the majority of movies the end-user would be bringing in. When they copy, then, they are fixating an existing work into a new medium, which requires rights to copy. By charging for the service, that would likely put them in the role of a distributor. If they were actually selling the movie on DVD in the store, that would be less iffy, but since it is still a copy, there would still be problems (as they only have the ability to distribute).
People keep talking about fair use as if it is some kind of magic bullet that will make everyone's paranoid copyright nightmares go away. It is not. It is a narrow exception that excludes copyright infringement when you, for your own enjoyment and by your own skill, are fixating something onto a new media or distributing in a very small scale. Circuit City is by no means small-scale. The company, not the consumer, is making the copies. While the copy is for the consumer's benefit, that is largely irrelevant, as they have no real relationship (usually a requirement for fair use duplication on behalf of someone else).
On a related note, people (especially in our industry- or rather my former industry, I should say) need to learn more about this law and how it works, rather than just trumpeting a half-baked idea that all copyright is inherently evil. What keeps MS from buying the load of a competitor's software at retail, rebranding it and selling it at a higher price to drive them out of a market? Antitrust law wouldn't help, the competitor is still making sales. Copyright is the only thing preventing that sort of thing. And allows small companies with a novel bit of program or code to stay in the market and not fear a large competitor simply ripping their code apart and inserting it into their own. And a multitude of other things.
Remember that what you think the law should be is hardly ever what the law actually is, and that laws are complex and intricate things. It takes a truly atrocious law to have no good effect. Aside from a very narrow application cherished by a loud minority, copyright law has been a great success and balanced the interests of consumers, creators and competitors remarkably well.
Yeah, except E3 wasn't about gamers to come, and only marginally for publishers to connect with gamers. In fact, up until recently (past 5-6 years) it was nearly impossible to get into E3 unless you actually had some genuine journalist gig.
Personally, I miss how E3 was. I want a lot of media. I don't want 60 billion people running around spouting off about how much fun they had at conference x. I don't care about that, and I certainly don't care about PAX.
Lots of people I know try google but don't realize that Google has a linux site-only engine, which is a huge asset, even over normal google search. Very helpful when looking for an application or the official site of a package you're working on getting running.
I always imagined the problem with the GBC adapter and the GBA cord were that third parties didn't want to rely on people having an extra bit of kit to make it work. If Nintendo did the whole shebang wirelessly, I imagine a lot more devs would buy into it (though probably not the majority, I imagine).
Unless the investors start thinking two generations of huge losses are enough. As a shareholder in a powerful and productive corporation, I'd be damned if I let them spend an extremely unprofitable decade trying to "crash into" a market-leader position when that money could be used elsewhere to make everyone a lot more money.
You just described the entire system. Over 90% of cases end in a settlement. Otherwise get ready for gigantic taxes, because we'd need 100 times as many judges, clerks, sheriffs to carry the workload. Plus, lawyers fees would go up because you'd have to hire more lawyers because you'd have so many running from court to court, preparing evidence and witnesses, etc.
People seem to say that him saying he owns it already is rebutting the fact that he downloaded it, rather than the fact that he was justified. Not only does it serve both purposes, he would be crazy to argue solely justification if he wants to win. Just as you can give multiple forms of a claim in the complaint, you can give multiple forms of defense against that complaint. So he is saying:
With regard to the charge of copyright violation,
(1) I did not do it, as evidenced by my ownership of a legally-obtained copy of the movie in question;
(2) Or in the alternative, I did download the copy, but since I own a legally-obtained copy of the movie in question, my infringement qualifies as fair use and I was therefore justified in downloading it
And, as I said in one response, court isn't just going in and flinging things at a jury, trying to convince them. The jury is given the law and has to apply what happened to it. If the instructions say "If he downloaded a copy from the internet he violated copyright" with no other instruction for a fair use defense, the jury is generally going to say he's in violation, regardless of whatever "The Man is out to get you" idea his lawyers get in through argument.
Uh, yes? Except when something comes up, the judge decides what law to give to the jury (or himself, if the jury is waved) to apply the facts to. When judges look to instructions for juries on close or new issues they look at a) mandatory authority (higher courts) and b) persuasive authority (other courts and academics). It's pretty important to keep up on that sort of thing, especially since you can't just go into a court and say "well, I think the law says this, so we should get X instruction." Both the judge and your opponent will say "Okay, what supporting authority do you have to tell me that the law is X?"
Just being in court and having an opinion only gets you so far.
Because distribution is a (very important) aspect of copyright. You do not have a right to distribute copies of what you have to anyone without permission of the copyright holder. There are exceptions, but getting something through bittorrent destroys the small number and familiarity requirements (remember, you're simultaneously uploading). Both the letter and spirit of the law that allows copying requires the "fixation" of the copyrighted work to be done by the person copying it, otherwise the sytem is wide-open for abuse.
Okay? Having the thing doesn't give you a right to download a copy. I've yet to see a respected scholar in the field of IP law say anything like that. The justifications (fair use, generally, under the umbrella of time-shifting and/or backup media) don't hold up under analogy; you're creating a new copy of someone else's thing, not your own, and it's not fair use because you do not know the person.
But, uh, sure. Extortion. Whatever. If he did (and we don't know if he did or did not) do this, than he'll likely get smacked for it. While the cartel's methods are utterly ruthless and uncalled-for, that doesn't diminish their legal rights.
As usual, I see a lot of people have confused the issues. Lots of complaining about the "nanny state" and "telling people what they can do with their own equipment" and how they have no right.
A condiminium board is a completely different entity than a local government. They are not held to the same standard, as far as most things go (the fair housing act being a major exception), as a local government is. The developer buys and develops the property all at once, then sells it (again, all at once) to the original investors (who generally start the 'condominium board'). Since everything was transferred and later subdivided at once, any covenants and hinderances written into the original title deed (usually binding the owner to the rules and regulations of the condo board, a provision implemented through the condominium board act in that particular state) are enforceable against the owner. Another vehicle for this is that people do not actually own the entire condominium; they own the interior in fee simple, but the exterior is owned by the condominium board, so the board retains an interest in the property to create legal leverage.
This is actually one of the more sane things I've seen out of condominium boards. Compared to, say, barring pets, this is simple and actually serves a good purpose.
It is pretty demonstrative of his character. However, in FFIVa, hide does have its uses. There are a few monsters, for instance, that have timed attacks, and Edward can simply hide to avoid them and then show and continue attacking. Also, after completing his trial Edward recieves a very nice command that uses shell and protect on everyone. Still nowhere near as good as some others (you can look at my nick to figure out whom) but not completely useless anymore.
I said it before, I'll say it again: DS browsing will be better than most other pocket experiences, because Decuma is light years ahead of everyone else. I'm just angry that Windows Mobile 2003 broke support for my mobile.
A lot of people miss the point of why FFIV was so great.
Complicated situation re: villian? Check.
Complicated relationships with multiple party members (other than angsty crap)? Check.
Good balance between different characters (a huge rarity in FF post-IV)? Check.
Good music? Check.
There are also a few VERY important things that FFIV did that others mostly do not:
Tie the characters around the story (class change as plot device, the designers' ability to create dungeons with a set party in mind).
It was an pretty good bit of technological workmanship, considering it was almost wholely designed for the NES.
First to do ATB.
ATB.
ATB.
Did I mention Active Time Battle?
People talk about how "deep" the newer RPGs are compared to the older ones. This is completely untrue. People often confuse "depth" with complexity, and say that either something is deep being it is overly complex, or because the writer hides the ball. One need only look to shakespeare to show that it is quality, not quantity or complexity, of character that makes a good plot. FFIV didn't have overly complex characters, nor massive amounts of dialogue to flesh them out, but the game used every bit that it did to create quality characters that worked well off each other.
Cheers, FFIV. Still the best.