Re:What are the ethical implications here?
on
BoyCott Advance
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· Score: 1
Least to most:
Frank
Carl
Dave
Eddie
Adam
Bob
Eddie (assuming you mean a very brief preview)
Henry
People will get mad because I put Carl so low, but not having money doesn't entitle you to luxuries. Hell if he owns a computer, he isn't that bad off.
The list would be entirely different if this were an NES, or even SNES emulator, where only second hand retailers could possibly make any money.
Re:If you design art for money, you suck
on
BoyCott Advance
·
· Score: 2
The idea that art and money should be separated is intirely a late 20th century notation. Old artists were CERTAINLY in it for the money, whether from the church or noble patrons. As game technology, the idea that it should be an "art" created for love by some guy in his basement is ridiculous. The money is required. Modern games take hundreds of thousands of dollars (at the very least) to develop, and somebody wants a return on that kind of investment.
You say you'd work for a game company for free? What, for five, ten hours a week? What if they wanted you to work for sixty? How would you buy food and pay your rent?
Sure money incourages gross commercialism, but it also allows for real quality. Half Life, Black and White, Homeworld, Deus Ex, Quake, these are all quality games that would have been impossible to develop without large sums of money.
You can't do anything very seriously or proffessionally without devoting a very large amount of time to it, and eventually no matter how "noble" or "artistic" your profession is, you want the dough.
Nearly every great artist that has ever lived either sold their work or at least tried to. The trick is not sacrificing your integrity. You can remain true to your own ideals, create something that people want, and make a profit without "selling out." Hell even Fugazi live off of their royalties from record sales.
Re:Flywheels are a great solution
on
Flywheel UPS
·
· Score: 1
>>BTW: If you built portable flywheel "batteries", would they act like gyroscopes?
If my understanding of physics is correct, then a simple flywheel would *have* to act like a gyroscope. Maybe two wheels spinning in opposite directions or something.
How is this good for me? I'd love an answer other than "Ayn Rand Said So."
Ayn Rand had a chip on her shoulder and chose to express it with radical economic theories. Her theories weren't right in the '30s and they're not right now.
but, I will see to it that if anyone ever makes real working transformers, and I mean giant humaniods that turn into dinosaurs, fighter jets, big rigs, or 80's hot rods, then they will get millions upon millions of dollars.
Hell instead of spending half a trillion (at least) on missile defence that won't work lets spend it on tranformer research!
My friends and I were talking about this. We came to the interesting conclusion that America is short on political options. It seems that the constitution provides for only very slow control within the bounds of what the current government finds acceptable (i.e. elections) or rapid violent change (i.e. militia, guns, revolution) i think right now that there are serious problems with america that are not being addressed by the political parties, and thus no viable candidate could ever do anything about, but aren't fundamental enough to require an armed coup. It also ties into the problem that in any sort of election system, 51% of the people get 100% control.
How about fair use laws. If I own a CD then I should be able to get MP3 tracks from that CD. Back when Napster functioned the great majority of the things I downloaded I already owned on CD or Vinyl, and I just wanted to get for my MP3 player without the hassle of ripping (which they're trying to do away with as well.)
Where the entertainment industry is going with all of this is to turn the PC into a freely explorable tool into a walled off content-playback device. Sure it seems perfectly reasonable to shut down napster now. And in five to ten years it will seem perfectly resonable for them to have copyright monitoring systems forcefully installed on every hard disk sold in the USA. Its where we draw the line.
Personally I think they made a huge mistake. Napster had a big enough user base to start turning big profits, and they were going to fork over billions to the record companies. The RIAA court case made it pretty clear that something decentralized wouldn't be able to be shut down. It's only a matter of time now...
Basically there is a demand for free/very cheap music that is selectively downloadable. It is ridiculous to charge $16 for a downloaded album, the $16 you pay in the store covers shipping, storespace, and retail markup, the record company doesn't see more than $7 or $8 of that, once again they only see an immediate way to increase their profit margins in a new technology, like when they doubled album priced during the CD conversion. Frankly I say screw the RIAA, they steal from most artists (your favorite bands do not own their songs, the suits do) and are responsible for the past six or seven years of nearly pure crap on radio and mtv. It's been a long time since a Nirvana or Beck quality artist broke into the popular view, and there are plenty of good bands out there, but they don't fit with the spoonfed thirteenyear old market.
Hmmm.... that rambled.... perhaps I need to sleep more.
Not to mention giving you debilitating illnesses which your government and international orginizations are powerless to cure, and thus removing from you even the physical ability to work.
Yes perhaps the citizens of the third world can be critizised as being at fault for some of their misfortunes, but i'll be damned if any American who owns a car, enjoys police protection and was raised on three meals a day and antibiotics will do it.
Hell, if management skipped a $1000 raise for an improved quality of work experience, fine. You spend at the very least 1/3 of your waking hours at the office, and once you've paid off rent and food, you're just buying comfort and happiness with your money right? Why not forgoe a little salary and enjoy your day more?
I'm going to be finishing highschool in a week. I went to a pretty small "preppy" private school that prides itself on assigning crazy amounts of work. Taking four AP classes, I was supposed to be putting in 4+ hours per night. At the beginning of the year, they took the seven of us who were taking three or four APs aside and told us that we should seriously consider not getting a job and cutting back on extra-curriculars. All I can say is that four nights out of five, I found a way to put the work off until study halls and during class. I'm graduating with a 4.0 weighted average, I'm going to a good college with a scholarship, and I've had a pretty easy and relaxing highschool experience. I won't be valedictorian, and perhaps I could have been. But then again, I don't care.
So my advice to fellow highschoolers is: lighten up. Kids (and parents) seem to have a crazy notion that undergrad is so important that unless their super-student goes Ivy-leage or top 5 tech school, then they're going to be flipping burgers for the rest of their lives. Do what you feel comfortable doing. Don't let your self worth be determined by grades, test scores, and a resume filled with activities you don't even enjoy. This is a time of life to have fun. Make friends. Meet girls. Watch TV. Drink. There will be time enough for schedules and seriousness later on.
Or 3: someone who went to highschool and then worked through four years of (shitty) real-world jobs and had self-taught technical skills. For any but the most academically technical of positions, i'd take the real-world experience over the quite possibly meaningless diploma. Most American universities basically just sell diplomas and a four year camp away from mom and dad.
Actually, only the original author of the code can make that code GPL. If someone else used non GPL "free" code, and put as part of a GPL project, derivations of which would be under the GPL, but anyone could also go back to the original source and use it in a non-GPL (even comercial) project.
I'm not inclined to agree with much of the speach, but Microsoft is right about one thing. GPL is probably too restrictive of a license to put public domain code into. Truly free code would allow people to put it into closed source projects. The original code is still free, and the company keeps its own source. Nobody gets hurt.
Re:So where does the information come from?
on
A Map to Nowhere?
·
· Score: 1
doesn't know inside from out?... I won't bother with that part, but I feel I must contest the second law thing. There is NO second law problem with reproduction or evolution. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that the TOTAL disorder of a closed system (here the whole friggin' universe) will increase, not local disorder. Local disorder decreases all the time in very common chemical reactions, such as the freezing of water. Life is a local decrease in disorder, but if you think about it, with food consumed + broken down, waste released, environment degraded, and ultimately body decomposed, plants and animals contribute greatly to the DISORDER of the universe. Remember kids: universal disorder does not prevent local order. I'd listen to creationists a lot more if they didn't use such twisted and purposefully ignorant science.
Re:Object complexity != design complexity.
on
A Map to Nowhere?
·
· Score: 1
that information would probably also fit on much less than a CD-ROM
The authors slant seems to be pretty harshly critical. He bashes some pretty fundamental ideas of genetics without giving much reason or counter arguement. Especially the bit about skin pigment being multiple genes but we haven't found the genes. He seemed to be implying that the genes mix or something else outside of our current understanding. If thats true, which no one seriosly suggests, then our current understanding would have to be waaaaaay off, and there would need to be some other genetic material other than DNA.
But his most basic arguement is that finding the genetic cause for disease is pointless because we haven't cured the disease yet. Well we identified bacteria as the cause for most illness long before penicillin was discovered... there is no knowledge that is not useful, and unless this guy totally believes that genetics research is useless, then his suggestion that having a transcript of the human genome is "useless" is complete and total fallacy.
Scienctific practices often deserves critisism, but not from ignorant hotheads.
Scientists are in general pretty good about not overhyping things. The press on the other hand... Usually when you read a quote by some scientist apparently hyping some project or finding, read the whole transcript of the interview and she or he will sound a lot more resonable. I can think of a few exceptions, however, especially regarding supposed miraculous energy technologies discovered in the late 1980s. Note also science-publisists ("Scientists" who long ago gave up research and now just write books for the masses and do the news-talk circuit) do not fit into the above description.
because its fair use to have and modify roms for games you own and distribute them to other owners, but freeloaders who never owned the real cart can't do it. I've got my NES and original gold cart, how about you?
It is actually impossible for Nintendo to make any money off of the old Zelda cart now. The only way to acquire it is to buy it used, but that only gives cash to the store/person/ebay dealer that you purchase it from. Nintendo makes money when retailers purchase new carts to sell, retailers haven't stocked the first Zelda since oh... 1992 or so.
So while there might be an intellectual piracy violation or something, you aren't actually hurting Nintendo like you would if you played a ROM of a current N64 game that they might actually sell. The only way this could hurt Nintendo is if playing some hacked 8-bit rom somehow decreased your desire to play a real sequel. This is unlikely, as the only people interested in this type of thing are the nerdy rabid fans who will be purchasing anything with triforces and Dodongos.
Slashdot Mirror
Least to most:
Frank
Carl
Dave
Eddie
Adam
Bob
Eddie (assuming you mean a very brief preview)
Henry
People will get mad because I put Carl so low, but not having money doesn't entitle you to luxuries. Hell if he owns a computer, he isn't that bad off.
The list would be entirely different if this were an NES, or even SNES emulator, where only second hand retailers could possibly make any money.
The idea that art and money should be separated is intirely a late 20th century notation. Old artists were CERTAINLY in it for the money, whether from the church or noble patrons. As game technology, the idea that it should be an "art" created for love by some guy in his basement is ridiculous. The money is required. Modern games take hundreds of thousands of dollars (at the very least) to develop, and somebody wants a return on that kind of investment.
You say you'd work for a game company for free? What, for five, ten hours a week? What if they wanted you to work for sixty? How would you buy food and pay your rent?
Sure money incourages gross commercialism, but it also allows for real quality. Half Life, Black and White, Homeworld, Deus Ex, Quake, these are all quality games that would have been impossible to develop without large sums of money.
You can't do anything very seriously or proffessionally without devoting a very large amount of time to it, and eventually no matter how "noble" or "artistic" your profession is, you want the dough.
Nearly every great artist that has ever lived either sold their work or at least tried to. The trick is not sacrificing your integrity. You can remain true to your own ideals, create something that people want, and make a profit without "selling out." Hell even Fugazi live off of their royalties from record sales.
>>BTW: If you built portable flywheel "batteries", would they act like gyroscopes?
If my understanding of physics is correct, then a simple flywheel would *have* to act like a gyroscope. Maybe two wheels spinning in opposite directions or something.
How is this good for me? I'd love an answer other than "Ayn Rand Said So."
Ayn Rand had a chip on her shoulder and chose to express it with radical economic theories. Her theories weren't right in the '30s and they're not right now.
DAMN! I was going to make that joke...
but, I will see to it that if anyone ever makes real working transformers, and I mean giant humaniods that turn into dinosaurs, fighter jets, big rigs, or 80's hot rods, then they will get millions upon millions of dollars.
Hell instead of spending half a trillion (at least) on missile defence that won't work lets spend it on tranformer research!
Ummmm.... that didn't make any sense.
Keep government under control...
My friends and I were talking about this. We came to the interesting conclusion that America is short on political options. It seems that the constitution provides for only very slow control within the bounds of what the current government finds acceptable (i.e. elections) or rapid violent change (i.e. militia, guns, revolution) i think right now that there are serious problems with america that are not being addressed by the political parties, and thus no viable candidate could ever do anything about, but aren't fundamental enough to require an armed coup. It also ties into the problem that in any sort of election system, 51% of the people get 100% control.
How about fair use laws. If I own a CD then I should be able to get MP3 tracks from that CD. Back when Napster functioned the great majority of the things I downloaded I already owned on CD or Vinyl, and I just wanted to get for my MP3 player without the hassle of ripping (which they're trying to do away with as well.)
Where the entertainment industry is going with all of this is to turn the PC into a freely explorable tool into a walled off content-playback device. Sure it seems perfectly reasonable to shut down napster now. And in five to ten years it will seem perfectly resonable for them to have copyright monitoring systems forcefully installed on every hard disk sold in the USA. Its where we draw the line.
Personally I think they made a huge mistake. Napster had a big enough user base to start turning big profits, and they were going to fork over billions to the record companies. The RIAA court case made it pretty clear that something decentralized wouldn't be able to be shut down. It's only a matter of time now...
Basically there is a demand for free/very cheap music that is selectively downloadable. It is ridiculous to charge $16 for a downloaded album, the $16 you pay in the store covers shipping, storespace, and retail markup, the record company doesn't see more than $7 or $8 of that, once again they only see an immediate way to increase their profit margins in a new technology, like when they doubled album priced during the CD conversion. Frankly I say screw the RIAA, they steal from most artists (your favorite bands do not own their songs, the suits do) and are responsible for the past six or seven years of nearly pure crap on radio and mtv. It's been a long time since a Nirvana or Beck quality artist broke into the popular view, and there are plenty of good bands out there, but they don't fit with the spoonfed thirteenyear old market.
Hmmm.... that rambled.... perhaps I need to sleep more.
Not to mention giving you debilitating illnesses which your government and international orginizations are powerless to cure, and thus removing from you even the physical ability to work.
Yes perhaps the citizens of the third world can be critizised as being at fault for some of their misfortunes, but i'll be damned if any American who owns a car, enjoys police protection and was raised on three meals a day and antibiotics will do it.
Someone send me a card. It's my birthday too. Trent Reznor's as well.
I turned 19 today. Hoooooray!
All this debate is the best Adams tribute I've yet read.
Bike vs. Louisiana summer would be worse. Sure 10F cooler, but the humidity never gets below 75. You can't sweat and you'll pass out.
I remember once our car's AC broke and we nearly died. Why anyone lives in the southeast east of Texas and south of Atlanta, I'll never ever know.
Lets see... we kicked your asses in '76, saved your asses in '42, and have way cheaper CDRs in '01.
God bless the USofA!
yah, that would be reeeeeal popular
Hell, if management skipped a $1000 raise for an improved quality of work experience, fine. You spend at the very least 1/3 of your waking hours at the office, and once you've paid off rent and food, you're just buying comfort and happiness with your money right? Why not forgoe a little salary and enjoy your day more?
I'm going to be finishing highschool in a week. I went to a pretty small "preppy" private school that prides itself on assigning crazy amounts of work. Taking four AP classes, I was supposed to be putting in 4+ hours per night. At the beginning of the year, they took the seven of us who were taking three or four APs aside and told us that we should seriously consider not getting a job and cutting back on extra-curriculars. All I can say is that four nights out of five, I found a way to put the work off until study halls and during class. I'm graduating with a 4.0 weighted average, I'm going to a good college with a scholarship, and I've had a pretty easy and relaxing highschool experience. I won't be valedictorian, and perhaps I could have been. But then again, I don't care.
So my advice to fellow highschoolers is: lighten up. Kids (and parents) seem to have a crazy notion that undergrad is so important that unless their super-student goes Ivy-leage or top 5 tech school, then they're going to be flipping burgers for the rest of their lives. Do what you feel comfortable doing. Don't let your self worth be determined by grades, test scores, and a resume filled with activities you don't even enjoy. This is a time of life to have fun. Make friends. Meet girls. Watch TV. Drink. There will be time enough for schedules and seriousness later on.
Or 3: someone who went to highschool and then worked through four years of (shitty) real-world jobs and had self-taught technical skills. For any but the most academically technical of positions, i'd take the real-world experience over the quite possibly meaningless diploma. Most American universities basically just sell diplomas and a four year camp away from mom and dad.
Actually, only the original author of the code can make that code GPL. If someone else used non GPL "free" code, and put as part of a GPL project, derivations of which would be under the GPL, but anyone could also go back to the original source and use it in a non-GPL (even comercial) project.
I'm not inclined to agree with much of the speach, but Microsoft is right about one thing. GPL is probably too restrictive of a license to put public domain code into. Truly free code would allow people to put it into closed source projects. The original code is still free, and the company keeps its own source. Nobody gets hurt.
doesn't know inside from out?... I won't bother with that part, but I feel I must contest the second law thing. There is NO second law problem with reproduction or evolution. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that the TOTAL disorder of a closed system (here the whole friggin' universe) will increase, not local disorder. Local disorder decreases all the time in very common chemical reactions, such as the freezing of water. Life is a local decrease in disorder, but if you think about it, with food consumed + broken down, waste released, environment degraded, and ultimately body decomposed, plants and animals contribute greatly to the DISORDER of the universe. Remember kids: universal disorder does not prevent local order. I'd listen to creationists a lot more if they didn't use such twisted and purposefully ignorant science.
that information would probably also fit on much less than a CD-ROM
The authors slant seems to be pretty harshly critical. He bashes some pretty fundamental ideas of genetics without giving much reason or counter arguement. Especially the bit about skin pigment being multiple genes but we haven't found the genes. He seemed to be implying that the genes mix or something else outside of our current understanding. If thats true, which no one seriosly suggests, then our current understanding would have to be waaaaaay off, and there would need to be some other genetic material other than DNA.
But his most basic arguement is that finding the genetic cause for disease is pointless because we haven't cured the disease yet. Well we identified bacteria as the cause for most illness long before penicillin was discovered... there is no knowledge that is not useful, and unless this guy totally believes that genetics research is useless, then his suggestion that having a transcript of the human genome is "useless" is complete and total fallacy.
Scienctific practices often deserves critisism, but not from ignorant hotheads.
Scientists are in general pretty good about not overhyping things. The press on the other hand... Usually when you read a quote by some scientist apparently hyping some project or finding, read the whole transcript of the interview and she or he will sound a lot more resonable. I can think of a few exceptions, however, especially regarding supposed miraculous energy technologies discovered in the late 1980s. Note also science-publisists ("Scientists" who long ago gave up research and now just write books for the masses and do the news-talk circuit) do not fit into the above description.
because its fair use to have and modify roms for games you own and distribute them to other owners, but freeloaders who never owned the real cart can't do it. I've got my NES and original gold cart, how about you?
It is actually impossible for Nintendo to make any money off of the old Zelda cart now. The only way to acquire it is to buy it used, but that only gives cash to the store/person/ebay dealer that you purchase it from. Nintendo makes money when retailers purchase new carts to sell, retailers haven't stocked the first Zelda since oh... 1992 or so.
So while there might be an intellectual piracy violation or something, you aren't actually hurting Nintendo like you would if you played a ROM of a current N64 game that they might actually sell. The only way this could hurt Nintendo is if playing some hacked 8-bit rom somehow decreased your desire to play a real sequel. This is unlikely, as the only people interested in this type of thing are the nerdy rabid fans who will be purchasing anything with triforces and Dodongos.
I've never seen that formula before... very clever and quite accurate.