Honestly, what did Apple really do to this guy? Sure, he has to return the SDK, but that just means that, in the future, he'll be unable to refer to it--if his code is well-documented (or, perhaps, when his code becomes well-documented between now and the time he returns the iSDK;-)), then it won't be an issue.
As for the order to stop distributing, that shouldn't hurt too much either. In a couple of weeks, "a friend of his" could "write a similar thing". Or the source might "find its way onto a public server". Apple could have done a lot worse than a cease-and-desist style ultimatum, with the legions of lawyers at their command, so I think this represents a measure of compassion towards Mac developers.
As for those of you pre-flaming Apple for the possibility that Apple developers will use iCommune code in the potentially file-sharing-enabled "iTunes x", isn't that what Open Source and Free Software are supposed to be about?
...is something that I would pay for. The idea of being able to pay for music that I would enjoy is very appealing to me. My main reason for not buying a CD is that I have to pay for one or two songs that I would actually enjoy listening to as well as eighteen or nineteen that I would never listen to in my life.
Some people have commented that $0.99 per song is too much to pay, but I think that's preopsterous! Compare $0.99 per enjoyable song to $10.00 per enjoyable song (assuming that you like two songs on the disc you purchase).
Although I'm sorry to say it, however, I don't think I would pay even for this, good idea though it is. The reason for that is simply that I have very fickle taste in music... my $10 or $20 investment might, in as little time as a month, seem completely foolish to me.
What strikes me as most interesting is that the record labels were willing to work with this site on this issue. They must be getting rather desperate for any money they can get. Food for thought, eh?
A company has to do business. Although it seems wrong to me that a country would want to censor the Internet, it is also not right for an American business to deny them service because the principles of the corporation differ from the principles of the country. They're simply doing what they do for a living, and they cannot be held responsible for the way in which their products are used.
Admittedly, however, this is a difficult distinction to make: when does it become wrong to supply one's products to another person, country, group, etc in the name of morals? IBM sold census machines to Nazi Germany, because IBM machines could provide the best means to Nazi ends. Was that wrong of them? Is this company then wrong as well? I think it's very difficult to say.
I agree. Perhaps I was looking at a small part of the issue. I would still, however, maintain that manpower is a good portion of a nation's resources (one needs citizens to make money, munitions, and such, after all), and one of the most basic.
I don't know about Russia, but the topic that I was referring to when I mentioned something a few years old was China's accumulation of a "hacker army", an army relatively cheap and easy to train. If China has these resources at our disposal, they could use our own "massive robot army" against us rather effectively.
Yes, it is important that we save American lives, but my point was more that without any lives at stake, what is the use of having a war? In your Russia example, it is true that we could, were we to spend all this time building an army and were Russia to sit its hands for the duration, quickly defeat them. This, however, would be terrible for foreign policy ("American Good Guys Slaughter Helpless Russians" does not sound like a good headline) and might provoke the anger of much of the world (including China, see above).
The rest of your post is a troll, as I made no reference to either AI or the Matrix.
That's a valid point, but as long as the terretory is defended by militia, as I see it, it is virtually impossible to acquire it. A strong defense would prevent terretorial acquisition, at least to some extent, don't you agree?
It's interesting...
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
...to think about this. It seems that it could possibly become the exclusive means for fighting wars in the distant future, which more or less flies in the face of the concept of war. As I see it, in the past, the goal of a nation at war with another has been to cause it the most casualties, thus preventing the other nation from defending itself against further attacks. With this method, however, (bearing in mind that we're in the distant future) the robots could be turned out quickly and cheaply. There would be no concept of morale among machines, and no loss of manpower to a nation that suffers great mechanical casualties. Does this alter the idea of war, making it a longer, more drawn out affair?
Additionally, someone commented that the system would not be impervious to a hack attack launched against it (what system is?). Thus, the concept of wars being fought almost exclusively from a command prompt comes into play (I seem to remember this being a hot topic not too long ago... power grids taken down at key times, etc). I suspect that things such as these will have very interesting ramifications in the way that war is fought...
the woman on this one. Honestly, freedom of speech is one thing, but I think it's quite another to be posting nude pictures of people without their consent. If this were to become permissable, then are we really moving towards civil liberty? It seems as though we would just be taking ourselves one step closer to allowing unconditional (perhaps even telescreenesque) monitoring of everyone, all the time.
Think about it. Today, Microsoft can post nude pictures of people on their sites. Tomorrow, they can use this new feature in Flash 6 to capture your audio and video inputs (and you can't turn it off). What will be next? This could just have been the first step down a slippery slope, at the bottom of which lies an Orwellian fantasy world.
I'd normally try to avoid flaming you, but this is definately a troll. What a big deal it is that you might get one of those/scary 404 messages/! The real shame here, oh cowardly one, is that you/do/ have Internet access.
I sincerely hope that you never post to Slashdot again. Myst was not only brilliant but engaging, and judging by your post I'd say that you had stopped playing in 5 minutes because you were confused by the opening menu, or one of these three:
1. You were confused by Atrus' talk of falling into the void (Myst) 2. You were confused by the fact that there were lines on your screen, so bought a new graphics card to fix the problem, only to realise that they were bars (Riven) 3. You got stuck on the balcony (Exile)
Oh, and in response to your signature, you are clearly an EXTREMELY arrogant person.
Myst was always a lot of fun, as a single-player game (boring my eye. interesting, complex, and full of wonderful intricate goodness, I say), but why make it multiplayer? I keep reading the article, but I still entirely fail to understand why anyone would want to make an Internet version of Myst. It seems kinda like a combination of the sweetness of the series with the aggrivation of AIM.
Sure, MMO games are lots of fun, but how could Cyan turn this series into one? My fondest memories of the Myst trilogy involve sitting at my computer in the wee hours of the morn, exploring amazingly fantastic worlds full of vengance, insanity, and puzzles, puzzles, puzzles! The last thing I want is to be standing at a particularly complicated device, scratching my head, only to have someone walk up behind me and say, "Oh, I got that one! The answer is..." The joys of Myst, at least for me, have always been found in solitary thought (along with breathtaking scenery), not in group efforts. Exile would not have been the same if played with other people, I can say that much. With Riven it might have been good to occasionally get a hand, but not a spoiler. With the original, the idea of a group constitutes sacrilige in my mind.
I doubt very much that I'll buy this, unless it rivals the previous three in graphics quality and playability (and the chat can be turned off!).
Oh, and a tip for Mr. Rand Miller: Myst is all about addiction.
...that this could be too successful. It seems like it's targeted almost at power users, most of who probably understand how to work their televisions already. Hell, my parents call me up when they need to shut the computer down. They're not going near a USB port... ever. Seems like it would be fun to play with, but just another piece of technology like any other: Too complex for the lay man, too easily broken for the family (leaving it crying for its old remote collection), but fun to mess with for the techie.
Just out of curiosity, what happens to the loser? One person gets real relaxed, and wins, then the loser gets even more ajada than before. Seems that there's an alternative to that, a cheaper one, at that, that I like to call yelling.
Hey, hey, different categories here. The majority of the things you mentioned are, well, poop. Quake and Wolfenstein are good for kicks, but had a masterpiece of a movie been made before them, I would still say that they were butchering the original concept. That's mostly what scares me here. Plus, I said repeatedly that the plot of the movie was good. I just don't know if it's conducive to making a game.
there is no need for the TV to be a two way device
Perhaps this represents a misunderstanding on my part, but the article seems to state that the device would be returning what you're watching on TV, not watchin you as you watch it. Why be freaked out? I would gladly wear something that would improve the current Nielsen system, especially because so many shows that I loved ("Bob Patterson", "Wednesday at 9:30 8:30 Central", and "Dilbert" specifically) were cancelled so quickly by their respective networks. Information should be collected to ensure that the networks program for what people are watching, not simply what they think is adequate.
I agree with the article's assessment of the current system as well. Too much relies on the person using it, for one thing, which means that the data collected are probably very inaccurate. Also, it seems that this device would report that a person watched even a show that he had taped, so ratings would not be lost to those shows that were put off until later. It seems to me that this system is reasonable, easy to use, and more reliable than anything proposed so far.
Telescreens a la 1984??
Furthermore, if I may nitpick, your telescreen analogy is groundless. With this device, I could quite easily place it in another room, leave it at home, or (I assume) turn it off. The telescreens were always on, were always watching, and were reporting their data to a mad government that wished to quash freedom. As I see it, this is giving me the freedom to keep the shows I like on the air, not taking any freedoms away.
I did enjoy the Tron movie very much, but I must admit that I'm skeptical of whether or not it can be turned to a game. It seems, really, that the movie was a technical masterwork, but not long enough to give a developer following the plot much to follow. Essentially, the plot could be summed up in three sentances:
1. Man goes into evil computer
2. Man fights evil computer's minions & evil computer itself
3. Man wins Of course, there was cool CGI while that was going on, but the movie itself did not seem to be very long (at least, to me), and the "cool graphics" defense might not fly with this game anymore. Does anyone know whether they will be adding extra features or levels to enhance the playability? Not to say I won't play it, extras or no, but I think it might be better to have the game's plot diverge a bit more.
We oppose the destruction of embryos. We believe, rightly or wrongly, that embryos are people and deserve protection
I can see that you would oppose the murdering of human beings, but why oppose use of excess embryos not used in in vitro fertilization clinics? The only protection that you can provide to them would be from the clinic to the trash bin where they're going to be put as things are. Why not use those cells that would have been garbage to save lives?
The only thing that I openly admit that I cannot understand is why you (meaning the rights and the religous folks in general) would oppose a technology that's turning garbage into the best medical advance since penicillin. Is it better to throw a person away, or turn that person into the most capable of surgeons?
This is an interesting development, but there's still something of a problem with the idea of using these stem cells. Adult stem cells are still pluripotent, but it is more difficult to have them become a certain type of cell. Embryonic stem cells are, well, "Uberpluripotent", because they change to any given somatic cell with relative ease.
I personally throw all of my support behind the idea of using excess fetuses from in vitro fertilization, as they would be thrown away in either case, but this way go to save lives. Why would this offend anyone at all?
You cannot look at a GC game and an XBOX game and know which system it is running on
Actually, I would refute this. I have seen games like Luigi's Mansion running on the Cube, and the fact of the matter is that the graphics are rather poor quality. When looking at the characters as they walk near to a light source, you can see clear distinctions between the shading... er.. zones. That is to say, you can see that there is a region of brightness, followed by a clear boundry, followed by a darker region, another boundry, et cetera. Compare that to Halo, and, well, all I can say is that it's over. I have a GC advocate sitting next to me who says that I can't compare it to Halo. So let's compare it to Blood Omen 2, Morrowind, Max Payne, or any other game, really.
The XBOX certainly has potential, but it needs games to reach that potential This page has a list of every wonderful game being developed for the XBox, and most anyone will begin to drool when reading the page. I haven't seen games this good since Pong. All you have to do is give it a year, and most of these games will be hitting the shelves. You've got to admit that you'd like to be playing these with a system that can do so much.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the onus to develop games does not necessarily fall on Microsoft. They spent a great deal of time and resources building a console that is quite analagous to the atom bomb, as far as obliteration of the competition goes. With a geForce3, PIII at seven hundred someodd MHz, and a very large hard drive, the XBox is the most powerful device on the market today. Furthermore, the XBox OS apparently uses APIs that are so close to those used in Windows, porting would be child's play for a large software company. Of course, the advantage of hardware-specific optimization is an obvious one but one that is even more significant when one is discussing such insanely powerful hardware.
Microsoft may be losing some money on the consoles, but it will be compensated for in the long run. Nintendo can cut the prices all they like, but they still could never rival the sheer power of the XBox console, and the potential for games to be developed in the future makes the system the better choice, by far. Also, Microsoft can afford to sell the XBox at a higher price because their target market is quite different from Nintendo's. The GameCube, based upon the power (or lack thereof), the controllers (the odd shape fits a child's hand much easier than an adult's), and the types of games that are primarily developed for the 'Cube, seems to be marketing towards the younger ages. The XBox, based on those things and more, seems to be geared towards adults.
Granted, this was a bit off topic, but I would still like to post it as a general rebuttal to the GC fanatics that exist. Sorry about that.
Please. For the past 13 years, the Simpsons have provided vulgar and offensive entertainment to people all across the nation. Oafish Homer, foolish Bart, and know-it-allish Lisa (it's a word if I say it is) aren't going anywhere anytime soon. For shame, you Anonymous Coward. In the future, engage your brain before putting your mouth in gear.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, what did Apple really do to this guy? Sure, he has to return the SDK, but that just means that, in the future, he'll be unable to refer to it--if his code is well-documented (or, perhaps, when his code becomes well-documented between now and the time he returns the iSDK ;-)), then it won't be an issue.
As for the order to stop distributing, that shouldn't hurt too much either. In a couple of weeks, "a friend of his" could "write a similar thing". Or the source might "find its way onto a public server". Apple could have done a lot worse than a cease-and-desist style ultimatum, with the legions of lawyers at their command, so I think this represents a measure of compassion towards Mac developers.
As for those of you pre-flaming Apple for the possibility that Apple developers will use iCommune code in the potentially file-sharing-enabled "iTunes x", isn't that what Open Source and Free Software are supposed to be about?
...is something that I would pay for. The idea of being able to pay for music that I would enjoy is very appealing to me. My main reason for not buying a CD is that I have to pay for one or two songs that I would actually enjoy listening to as well as eighteen or nineteen that I would never listen to in my life.
Some people have commented that $0.99 per song is too much to pay, but I think that's preopsterous! Compare $0.99 per enjoyable song to $10.00 per enjoyable song (assuming that you like two songs on the disc you purchase).
Although I'm sorry to say it, however, I don't think I would pay even for this, good idea though it is. The reason for that is simply that I have very fickle taste in music... my $10 or $20 investment might, in as little time as a month, seem completely foolish to me.
What strikes me as most interesting is that the record labels were willing to work with this site on this issue. They must be getting rather desperate for any money they can get. Food for thought, eh?
A company has to do business. Although it seems wrong to me that a country would want to censor the Internet, it is also not right for an American business to deny them service because the principles of the corporation differ from the principles of the country. They're simply doing what they do for a living, and they cannot be held responsible for the way in which their products are used.
Admittedly, however, this is a difficult distinction to make: when does it become wrong to supply one's products to another person, country, group, etc in the name of morals? IBM sold census machines to Nazi Germany, because IBM machines could provide the best means to Nazi ends. Was that wrong of them? Is this company then wrong as well? I think it's very difficult to say.
I agree. Perhaps I was looking at a small part of the issue. I would still, however, maintain that manpower is a good portion of a nation's resources (one needs citizens to make money, munitions, and such, after all), and one of the most basic.
I don't know about Russia, but the topic that I was referring to when I mentioned something a few years old was China's accumulation of a "hacker army", an army relatively cheap and easy to train. If China has these resources at our disposal, they could use our own "massive robot army" against us rather effectively.
Yes, it is important that we save American lives, but my point was more that without any lives at stake, what is the use of having a war? In your Russia example, it is true that we could, were we to spend all this time building an army and were Russia to sit its hands for the duration, quickly defeat them. This, however, would be terrible for foreign policy ("American Good Guys Slaughter Helpless Russians" does not sound like a good headline) and might provoke the anger of much of the world (including China, see above).
The rest of your post is a troll, as I made no reference to either AI or the Matrix.
That's a valid point, but as long as the terretory is defended by militia, as I see it, it is virtually impossible to acquire it. A strong defense would prevent terretorial acquisition, at least to some extent, don't you agree?
...to think about this. It seems that it could possibly become the exclusive means for fighting wars in the distant future, which more or less flies in the face of the concept of war. As I see it, in the past, the goal of a nation at war with another has been to cause it the most casualties, thus preventing the other nation from defending itself against further attacks. With this method, however, (bearing in mind that we're in the distant future) the robots could be turned out quickly and cheaply. There would be no concept of morale among machines, and no loss of manpower to a nation that suffers great mechanical casualties. Does this alter the idea of war, making it a longer, more drawn out affair?
Additionally, someone commented that the system would not be impervious to a hack attack launched against it (what system is?). Thus, the concept of wars being fought almost exclusively from a command prompt comes into play (I seem to remember this being a hot topic not too long ago... power grids taken down at key times, etc). I suspect that things such as these will have very interesting ramifications in the way that war is fought...
the woman on this one. Honestly, freedom of speech is one thing, but I think it's quite another to be posting nude pictures of people without their consent. If this were to become permissable, then are we really moving towards civil liberty? It seems as though we would just be taking ourselves one step closer to allowing unconditional (perhaps even telescreenesque) monitoring of everyone, all the time.
Think about it. Today, Microsoft can post nude pictures of people on their sites. Tomorrow, they can use this new feature in Flash 6 to capture your audio and video inputs (and you can't turn it off). What will be next? This could just have been the first step down a slippery slope, at the bottom of which lies an Orwellian fantasy world.
I'd normally try to avoid flaming you, but this is definately a troll. What a big deal it is that you might get one of those /scary 404 messages/! The real shame here, oh cowardly one, is that you /do/ have Internet access.
I sincerely hope that you never post to Slashdot again. Myst was not only brilliant but engaging, and judging by your post I'd say that you had stopped playing in 5 minutes because you were confused by the opening menu, or one of these three:
1. You were confused by Atrus' talk of falling into the void (Myst)
2. You were confused by the fact that there were lines on your screen, so bought a new graphics card to fix the problem, only to realise that they were bars (Riven)
3. You got stuck on the balcony (Exile)
Oh, and in response to your signature, you are clearly an EXTREMELY arrogant person.
Myst was always a lot of fun, as a single-player game (boring my eye. interesting, complex, and full of wonderful intricate goodness, I say), but why make it multiplayer? I keep reading the article, but I still entirely fail to understand why anyone would want to make an Internet version of Myst. It seems kinda like a combination of the sweetness of the series with the aggrivation of AIM.
Sure, MMO games are lots of fun, but how could Cyan turn this series into one? My fondest memories of the Myst trilogy involve sitting at my computer in the wee hours of the morn, exploring amazingly fantastic worlds full of vengance, insanity, and puzzles, puzzles, puzzles! The last thing I want is to be standing at a particularly complicated device, scratching my head, only to have someone walk up behind me and say, "Oh, I got that one! The answer is..." The joys of Myst, at least for me, have always been found in solitary thought (along with breathtaking scenery), not in group efforts. Exile would not have been the same if played with other people, I can say that much. With Riven it might have been good to occasionally get a hand, but not a spoiler. With the original, the idea of a group constitutes sacrilige in my mind.
I doubt very much that I'll buy this, unless it rivals the previous three in graphics quality and playability (and the chat can be turned off!).
Oh, and a tip for Mr. Rand Miller: Myst is all about addiction.
...that this could be too successful. It seems like it's targeted almost at power users, most of who probably understand how to work their televisions already. Hell, my parents call me up when they need to shut the computer down. They're not going near a USB port... ever. Seems like it would be fun to play with, but just another piece of technology like any other: Too complex for the lay man, too easily broken for the family (leaving it crying for its old remote collection), but fun to mess with for the techie.
Just out of curiosity, what happens to the loser? One person gets real relaxed, and wins, then the loser gets even more ajada than before. Seems that there's an alternative to that, a cheaper one, at that, that I like to call yelling.
Hey, hey, different categories here. The majority of the things you mentioned are, well, poop. Quake and Wolfenstein are good for kicks, but had a masterpiece of a movie been made before them, I would still say that they were butchering the original concept. That's mostly what scares me here. Plus, I said repeatedly that the plot of the movie was good. I just don't know if it's conducive to making a game.
there is no need for the TV to be a two way device
Perhaps this represents a misunderstanding on my part, but the article seems to state that the device would be returning what you're watching on TV, not watchin you as you watch it. Why be freaked out? I would gladly wear something that would improve the current Nielsen system, especially because so many shows that I loved ("Bob Patterson", "Wednesday at 9:30 8:30 Central", and "Dilbert" specifically) were cancelled so quickly by their respective networks. Information should be collected to ensure that the networks program for what people are watching, not simply what they think is adequate.
I agree with the article's assessment of the current system as well. Too much relies on the person using it, for one thing, which means that the data collected are probably very inaccurate. Also, it seems that this device would report that a person watched even a show that he had taped, so ratings would not be lost to those shows that were put off until later. It seems to me that this system is reasonable, easy to use, and more reliable than anything proposed so far.
Telescreens a la 1984??
Furthermore, if I may nitpick, your telescreen analogy is groundless. With this device, I could quite easily place it in another room, leave it at home, or (I assume) turn it off. The telescreens were always on, were always watching, and were reporting their data to a mad government that wished to quash freedom. As I see it, this is giving me the freedom to keep the shows I like on the air, not taking any freedoms away.
I did enjoy the Tron movie very much, but I must admit that I'm skeptical of whether or not it can be turned to a game. It seems, really, that the movie was a technical masterwork, but not long enough to give a developer following the plot much to follow. Essentially, the plot could be summed up in three sentances:
1. Man goes into evil computer
2. Man fights evil computer's minions & evil computer itself
3. Man wins
Of course, there was cool CGI while that was going on, but the movie itself did not seem to be very long (at least, to me), and the "cool graphics" defense might not fly with this game anymore. Does anyone know whether they will be adding extra features or levels to enhance the playability? Not to say I won't play it, extras or no, but I think it might be better to have the game's plot diverge a bit more.
We oppose the destruction of embryos. We believe, rightly or wrongly, that embryos are people and deserve protection
I can see that you would oppose the murdering of human beings, but why oppose use of excess embryos not used in in vitro fertilization clinics? The only protection that you can provide to them would be from the clinic to the trash bin where they're going to be put as things are. Why not use those cells that would have been garbage to save lives?
The only thing that I openly admit that I cannot understand is why you (meaning the rights and the religous folks in general) would oppose a technology that's turning garbage into the best medical advance since penicillin. Is it better to throw a person away, or turn that person into the most capable of surgeons?
This is an interesting development, but there's still something of a problem with the idea of using these stem cells. Adult stem cells are still pluripotent, but it is more difficult to have them become a certain type of cell. Embryonic stem cells are, well, "Uberpluripotent", because they change to any given somatic cell with relative ease.
I personally throw all of my support behind the idea of using excess fetuses from in vitro fertilization, as they would be thrown away in either case, but this way go to save lives. Why would this offend anyone at all?
You cannot look at a GC game and an XBOX game and know which system it is running on
Actually, I would refute this. I have seen games like Luigi's Mansion running on the Cube, and the fact of the matter is that the graphics are rather poor quality. When looking at the characters as they walk near to a light source, you can see clear distinctions between the shading... er.. zones. That is to say, you can see that there is a region of brightness, followed by a clear boundry, followed by a darker region, another boundry, et cetera. Compare that to Halo, and, well, all I can say is that it's over. I have a GC advocate sitting next to me who says that I can't compare it to Halo. So let's compare it to Blood Omen 2, Morrowind, Max Payne, or any other game, really.
The XBOX certainly has potential, but it needs games to reach that potential
This page has a list of every wonderful game being developed for the XBox, and most anyone will begin to drool when reading the page. I haven't seen games this good since Pong. All you have to do is give it a year, and most of these games will be hitting the shelves. You've got to admit that you'd like to be playing these with a system that can do so much.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the onus to develop games does not necessarily fall on Microsoft. They spent a great deal of time and resources building a console that is quite analagous to the atom bomb, as far as obliteration of the competition goes. With a geForce3, PIII at seven hundred someodd MHz, and a very large hard drive, the XBox is the most powerful device on the market today. Furthermore, the XBox OS apparently uses APIs that are so close to those used in Windows, porting would be child's play for a large software company. Of course, the advantage of hardware-specific optimization is an obvious one but one that is even more significant when one is discussing such insanely powerful hardware.
Microsoft may be losing some money on the consoles, but it will be compensated for in the long run. Nintendo can cut the prices all they like, but they still could never rival the sheer power of the XBox console, and the potential for games to be developed in the future makes the system the better choice, by far. Also, Microsoft can afford to sell the XBox at a higher price because their target market is quite different from Nintendo's. The GameCube, based upon the power (or lack thereof), the controllers (the odd shape fits a child's hand much easier than an adult's), and the types of games that are primarily developed for the 'Cube, seems to be marketing towards the younger ages. The XBox, based on those things and more, seems to be geared towards adults.
Granted, this was a bit off topic, but I would still like to post it as a general rebuttal to the GC fanatics that exist. Sorry about that.
Please. For the past 13 years, the Simpsons have provided vulgar and offensive entertainment to people all across the nation. Oafish Homer, foolish Bart, and know-it-allish Lisa (it's a word if I say it is) aren't going anywhere anytime soon. For shame, you Anonymous Coward. In the future, engage your brain before putting your mouth in gear.