As a particularly comical example of this, have a look at the recent Dover County court decision (Kitzmiller). In it, the ruling Judge wisely points at that amongst the advocates of intelligent design, there was essentially no agreement as to its meaning. In fact, one school board member continually referred to it as "intelligence design [sic]", another believed it was the same as creationism, another believed it only referred to the emergence of intelligence, etc.
While I agree that "bricked" is both more common and more aesthetically pleasing, I think that the verb "to brick" is sufficiently new that it could be considered not to be dominant.
"Brickified" has a faux-nostalgic feel that may be intentional, I dunno.
I think you may have misunderstood my comment about athletics in college.
I am most certainly NOT against sports teams, etc. I was on varsity crew myself during my time in college.
I am most certainly against the use of sports ability as a determinitive factor in the admission of students. While interest in sports may lead to a different viewpoint (and thus contribute to diversity of ideas) just as being poor or of an ethnic minority, it is by no means definite. As such, I think it is an extremely poor choice for inclusion in admissions decisions.
Good for you for being in sports: athletics are an integral part of a healthy lifestyle, both as a means (to achieving a fitter and healthier self) and an end (as an enjoyable activity). I do my best to maintain my athletic links too. That doesn't make either of us better choices for any academic institution.
Wow, that's a fascinating decision by both Sanford (making a rather aggressive stance regarding education by endorsing it) and 20/20 (not to mention ABC, in putting their IP up for free on a website).
Oh, wait, you mean that by including all this concern for non-academic characteristics like sports, diversity (of background, not ideas), and the ilk our schools have lost the ability to test for the right skills?
I'm sure this thread will fill essentially instantly with anecdotal stories about how dumb everyone was at our colleges. Yes, great, whatever.
Frankly, I wish everyone could have seen the great 20/20 special on our school system last Friday. We're crippling our ability to compete internationally by focusing on the wrong things: we don't want kids to feel bad, so we've got helicopter parents; teachers don't want to worry about getting fired, so we've got horrible teachers' unions; we aren't willing to let some kids occasionally lose-out because a public school failed to compete with other nearby schools, so we don't have vouchers like most of the European nations; etc.
Now, someone will come complain about how vouchers are bad for schools (despite universally benefiting the quality of schools in Europe), how unions protect teachers (despite the fantastic proof of how bad such unions were by 20/20, including a 10 page diagram from the Unions showing how difficult it is to fire someone), etc.
Homosexuality doesn't imply crossdressing, nor does crossdressing imply homosexuality.
Beyond that, prior to the victorian era it was meaningless to talk about people being "straight" or "gay", but rather you could only refer to their actions as being "straight" or "gay". This disconnect between sex acts and personlity would only have furthered the seperation of what you're thinking of (effeminate behavior, not necessarily coterminus with crossdressing) from his sexual behavior.
"The ridigd and very specific legal definition of obscenity, thanks to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: "I know it when I see it.", circa 1967"
As often quoted as that is, it's not accurately used here. SCOTUS recognizes that so long as the state defines obscenity for itself, that state is free to regulate obscenity seperately from offensiveness. There are, as far as I know, no federal statutes on-point because the Federal government doesn't have any means to directly legislate such materials without infringing on state rights.
While I love the irony of someone named "Die444Die" complaining about the display of films of death, you're creating a straw-man by describing behaviors which aren't being discussed.
There is a clear difference between leaving access restrictions up to parents (i.e. letting parents handle whether or not Jimmy or Jessie buy GTA at the store with the money their parents give them) and openly displaying that material without restriction (i.e. having GTA out to be played by little children in a kindergarten). One provides control to parents, while the other deprives those parents of control.
Because the courts have a very specific legal definition of "obscenity" that includes (generally) pornography. The Court (here being SCOTUS) has ruled that the government interest in restricting access to obscene materials is different (and greater) than the government interest in restricting access to merely offensive (here including violence) materials.
You know, this points out the fact that these games - perhaps all games involving anything but purely abstract gameplay such as Tetris - are actually zero-sum problems, where SOMEONE must be unhappy comparatively.
(Is it still vaporware?)
I know this isn't the traditional sense of vaporware - i.e. there are actual hardware prototypes of all these different e-ink/e-paper/e-tc. - but I cant help but wonder when an actual product with these things will break through.
I mean, after all, we keep seeing prototypes of Duke Nukem Forever but that doesn't mean there's an actual product coming. Similarly, all these companies are so proud of their prototypes but none (except for Sony's illfated attempt) have actually come out with a real product.
I'm just bitter: I want my digital newspaper that I can roll up and shove in my bag.
I don't pretend to have a source on this, but I cannot think of a single English word that begins with a 'g' followed by a vowel that has a soft g (i.e. a 'j' sound) as opposed to a hard g (i.e. a 'guh' sound).
In other words, I'm not sure why anyone would think it was "Jiff" and not "Giff".
p.s., I can think of a few French words, e.g. garotte, that have been directly assimilated into English without being re-spelled, but I think that the general rule for words that have their origins in English to be as noted above...
Glass is both more expensive to manufacture (or rather, to manufacture into a given size) and to install, not to mention being heavier than plastic. There's also the fact that in certain situations it's more likely to break.
"However, if it's not profitable, then there are no damages to be won in a courtroom. If I make it for my personal use, all you can argue is that I saved money, but you can't prove that I would have otherwise spent it on the patented product or service."
Incorrect. There are at least two streams of damages for the patent-holder: (1) the direct loss-of-income to the patent-holder due to the public knowledge of your successful replication of their patented product (i.e. encouraging others to violate the patent), or (2) the dilution of value to the patent.
As a particularly curious note, concern (1) just received support in the Grokster decision: by making the software-developer responsible for damages due to copyright violations willfully enabled by the software, the court cemented the idea that a person can be held liable for the damages he/she encourages others to commit, at least insofar as he/she enables those others.
1) You must make it clear to the receiving (2nd) party that there is an approaching contract (either by direct notification, i.e. telling them, or constructively, i.e. by getting a reputation for always doing this).
2) Contracts cannot be unconscionable. Courts have invalidated contracts where the exchanged values were sufficiently incommensurate such that it was obvious one side had illegally cheated the other. Here, there might be a concern that $1 is so unacceptable that the contract would be unenforceable.
Actually, adding bump/normal mapping could triples the size of textures. The reason is simple: suppose it takes X megs to just account for the color texture. You then at a greyscale image of the same size for bump mapping but you ALSO need a color image for normal mapping. The normal map often is less compressed than the original to avoid blurring...
So by your reasoning, if Blizzard produces a Mac/Windows-only product and refuses to port it to another OS (here, Linux), that permits you (or other people outside of Blizzard) to disregard their contract w/ Blizzard in order to port it to Linux? Can I buy some crack from you?
Content producers are under NO obligation to produce their content in the format you like best. I don't get to pirate DVDs because they're not in 1080p format (and I want to up-convert them and distribute them on my own in that format). I don't get to steal US currency because I wish it was printed on plastic money like the Aussie bills are.
The problem isn't even that they individually violated the contracts, but in fact that they did so in a way DESIGNED to facilitate the violation of contracts by other users. These people weren't out just to play their own bought-game on Linux, since if they were they wouldn't have distributed their code! Their intent was to distribute a tool that has no legitimate purpose according to the game makers. Period.
Years before computers existed, there was a rule called the "mailbox rule", which basically stated that if someone sent you a contract form that said "All that is required is your signature", it was viewed as fully accepted when the recipient put the signed form in the mailbox. The idea was that the person who signed the contract (i.e. the 2nd party) has done all the parts required to accept and so they should both receive the benefits and responsibilities of that acceptance.
The reason EULA agreements were RIGHTFULLY enforced in the ProCD case is exactly the same: the software creator has given you a contract that says "all you need to do to accept is click yes/open the shrink wrap". Once you've fulfilled that requirement - clicking yes or opening it - you should incur the benefits (using the software) and responsibilities (the restrictions in the contract).
Think about the opposite, where you'd be allowed to benefit from the contract (i.e. use the software) but not incur the responsibilities (i.e. the limitations). How could such an asymmetry be reasonable, much less desireable?
Most contracts are signed without any negotiation other than the 2nd party consenting to a prepared contract from the 1st party. Typical examples: rentals, lease agreements, fed-ex/ups shipping, etc. Just try to 'negotiate' the contract in your local FedEx-Kinkos. There's no problem with the remoteness of the contract-writer, so long as they're content to let the 2nd party sign remotely.
You people who are so against Blizzard here need to ask yourselves what the situation would be if users were free to disregard the EULA. It would mean that either (a) the software content producers would have to accept anything you did with it or (b) there would have to be LEGISLATIVE limitations on your use that applied to all software content. I'm positive you don't want (b), and I don't think you'd reasonably want (a) either since it's entirely inhibitive of content creation. If you cannot control perfectly reproducable content (i.e. software) and thus cannot profit from your work, a significant number of people will be dissuaded from producing.
This whole argument has been hashed out before, and I find it just disheartening how many rapid anti-Blizzard people there are here who have yet to provide actual arguments for their side...
"Net result is the textures look more real, and properly react to the environment, they change as the light does and so on. That's actually how it's nearly always done on for high-end rendering. You don't texture map something, that won't look good, instead you use material shaders to describe the surfaces, and the engine calculates how it all looks."
Except you're wrong. Most textures in the highest resolution systems (e.g. movies, etc.) are most certainly NOT procedural. They're just extremely high-resolution texture maps (including high-resolution normal and bump maps).
Procedural textures are extremely important and useful, but there are certain effects (such as the texturing of a face - which requires coloring specific to the contours of a face, etc.) that are not viable via procedural textures but are easily accomplished with high-res textures.
Your comments indicate that you don't understand the workflow involved in high-end rendering, much less games (which involve more texture mapping and less procedural texturing than film work).
The installation of video cameras in public spaces is quite different from the collection and cataloguing of biometric data. Among other things, it's trivial (if it matters to you) to simply wear something like a burkha if you want to obscure your identity in public spaces where the cameras are present. You don't want to cover yourself head to toe in public spaces? Bummer for you.
This private company can do whatever it wants. That's the libertarian ideal. It would be very bad if the government could demand this info, and possibly illegal (depending on the Supreme Court's contents, frankly), but it's different from the cameras for at least the simple reason that one is a private company, one is the government.
"So you are 'claiming' that Disney is doing this for the next 9/11? I know that is an over simplification of your comment but that is the logical conclusion..."
No, I'm not saying that, and I don't appreciate that you knowingly "oversimplified" my comment in that way. I was suggesting that if something happened, e.g. a mundane crime, a lost kid, a kidnapped kid, etc. they'd be able to have a better idea who was in which park. If they had the scanners (or at least card scanners) at each ride, you'd be able to say where IN the park a given user such as a lost child was. True, if there were an outright terrorist attack this could be helpful, but only insofar as attaching the name used on entry with a possible attacker.
It's voluntary, btw, period. If you don't research your trip, it's your own damn fault. If I want to go to Disneyworld but I don't bother to look up when it's open, it's my own damn fault if I get there and it's closed. Same thing here: if you don't bother to look up the basic admission requirements to a private theme park before buying your tickets, then you've just paid for a valuable life lesson.
I believe the point is that - if something happens - they have a better record of who came in, etc. I'm not saying it's worth what some people would call an "invasion of privacy" (since it's voluntary, I refuse to call it that), but I believe that's the point.
What will be really interesting is how they use this to make more money. Undoubtedly, the installation of this system cost money, without any obvious profit as a result. Will they sell this database of prints? Will they track the size-shift in your prints and correlate it to age data? Will they track how often you come to the parks and extrapolate what attractions you're interested in?
Of course, the MOST interesting thing will be this: when you get assaulted/robbed/etc. on the property (and assuming the perp somehow dodged all the cameras) will they dust you/the area for relevant prints? Will police be able to subpoeana them?
Slashdot Mirror
As a particularly comical example of this, have a look at the recent Dover County court decision (Kitzmiller). In it, the ruling Judge wisely points at that amongst the advocates of intelligent design, there was essentially no agreement as to its meaning. In fact, one school board member continually referred to it as "intelligence design [sic]", another believed it was the same as creationism, another believed it only referred to the emergence of intelligence, etc.
While I agree that "bricked" is both more common and more aesthetically pleasing, I think that the verb "to brick" is sufficiently new that it could be considered not to be dominant.
"Brickified" has a faux-nostalgic feel that may be intentional, I dunno.
I think you may have misunderstood my comment about athletics in college.
I am most certainly NOT against sports teams, etc. I was on varsity crew myself during my time in college.
I am most certainly against the use of sports ability as a determinitive factor in the admission of students. While interest in sports may lead to a different viewpoint (and thus contribute to diversity of ideas) just as being poor or of an ethnic minority, it is by no means definite. As such, I think it is an extremely poor choice for inclusion in admissions decisions.
Good for you for being in sports: athletics are an integral part of a healthy lifestyle, both as a means (to achieving a fitter and healthier self) and an end (as an enjoyable activity). I do my best to maintain my athletic links too. That doesn't make either of us better choices for any academic institution.
Wow, that's a fascinating decision by both Sanford (making a rather aggressive stance regarding education by endorsing it) and 20/20 (not to mention ABC, in putting their IP up for free on a website).
Thanks for the link.
Oh, wait, you mean that by including all this concern for non-academic characteristics like sports, diversity (of background, not ideas), and the ilk our schools have lost the ability to test for the right skills?
I'm sure this thread will fill essentially instantly with anecdotal stories about how dumb everyone was at our colleges. Yes, great, whatever.
Frankly, I wish everyone could have seen the great 20/20 special on our school system last Friday. We're crippling our ability to compete internationally by focusing on the wrong things: we don't want kids to feel bad, so we've got helicopter parents; teachers don't want to worry about getting fired, so we've got horrible teachers' unions; we aren't willing to let some kids occasionally lose-out because a public school failed to compete with other nearby schools, so we don't have vouchers like most of the European nations; etc.
Now, someone will come complain about how vouchers are bad for schools (despite universally benefiting the quality of schools in Europe), how unions protect teachers (despite the fantastic proof of how bad such unions were by 20/20, including a 10 page diagram from the Unions showing how difficult it is to fire someone), etc.
Of course, the number is actually 616 (as determined by later-recovered copies of earlier instances of the text).
Bravo. I only wish I could have modded you up. Of course, you lose a point for not making a "War Games" reference of some type.
Homosexuality doesn't imply crossdressing, nor does crossdressing imply homosexuality.
Beyond that, prior to the victorian era it was meaningless to talk about people being "straight" or "gay", but rather you could only refer to their actions as being "straight" or "gay". This disconnect between sex acts and personlity would only have furthered the seperation of what you're thinking of (effeminate behavior, not necessarily coterminus with crossdressing) from his sexual behavior.
"The ridigd and very specific legal definition of obscenity, thanks to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: "I know it when I see it.", circa 1967"
As often quoted as that is, it's not accurately used here. SCOTUS recognizes that so long as the state defines obscenity for itself, that state is free to regulate obscenity seperately from offensiveness. There are, as far as I know, no federal statutes on-point because the Federal government doesn't have any means to directly legislate such materials without infringing on state rights.
While I love the irony of someone named "Die444Die" complaining about the display of films of death, you're creating a straw-man by describing behaviors which aren't being discussed.
There is a clear difference between leaving access restrictions up to parents (i.e. letting parents handle whether or not Jimmy or Jessie buy GTA at the store with the money their parents give them) and openly displaying that material without restriction (i.e. having GTA out to be played by little children in a kindergarten). One provides control to parents, while the other deprives those parents of control.
Thus I dub thee troll.
Because the courts have a very specific legal definition of "obscenity" that includes (generally) pornography. The Court (here being SCOTUS) has ruled that the government interest in restricting access to obscene materials is different (and greater) than the government interest in restricting access to merely offensive (here including violence) materials.
You know, this points out the fact that these games - perhaps all games involving anything but purely abstract gameplay such as Tetris - are actually zero-sum problems, where SOMEONE must be unhappy comparatively.
(Is it still vaporware?)
I know this isn't the traditional sense of vaporware - i.e. there are actual hardware prototypes of all these different e-ink/e-paper/e-tc. - but I cant help but wonder when an actual product with these things will break through.
I mean, after all, we keep seeing prototypes of Duke Nukem Forever but that doesn't mean there's an actual product coming. Similarly, all these companies are so proud of their prototypes but none (except for Sony's illfated attempt) have actually come out with a real product.
I'm just bitter: I want my digital newspaper that I can roll up and shove in my bag.
I don't pretend to have a source on this, but I cannot think of a single English word that begins with a 'g' followed by a vowel that has a soft g (i.e. a 'j' sound) as opposed to a hard g (i.e. a 'guh' sound).
In other words, I'm not sure why anyone would think it was "Jiff" and not "Giff".
p.s., I can think of a few French words, e.g. garotte, that have been directly assimilated into English without being re-spelled, but I think that the general rule for words that have their origins in English to be as noted above...
Glass is both more expensive to manufacture (or rather, to manufacture into a given size) and to install, not to mention being heavier than plastic. There's also the fact that in certain situations it's more likely to break.
"However, if it's not profitable, then there are no damages to be won in a courtroom. If I make it for my personal use, all you can argue is that I saved money, but you can't prove that I would have otherwise spent it on the patented product or service."
Incorrect. There are at least two streams of damages for the patent-holder: (1) the direct loss-of-income to the patent-holder due to the public knowledge of your successful replication of their patented product (i.e. encouraging others to violate the patent), or (2) the dilution of value to the patent.
As a particularly curious note, concern (1) just received support in the Grokster decision: by making the software-developer responsible for damages due to copyright violations willfully enabled by the software, the court cemented the idea that a person can be held liable for the damages he/she encourages others to commit, at least insofar as he/she enables those others.
There are a few obstacles:
1) You must make it clear to the receiving (2nd) party that there is an approaching contract (either by direct notification, i.e. telling them, or constructively, i.e. by getting a reputation for always doing this).
2) Contracts cannot be unconscionable. Courts have invalidated contracts where the exchanged values were sufficiently incommensurate such that it was obvious one side had illegally cheated the other. Here, there might be a concern that $1 is so unacceptable that the contract would be unenforceable.
Actually, adding bump/normal mapping could triples the size of textures. The reason is simple: suppose it takes X megs to just account for the color texture. You then at a greyscale image of the same size for bump mapping but you ALSO need a color image for normal mapping. The normal map often is less compressed than the original to avoid blurring...
Nipples on human males. Oh wait, you asked for a sign that ID is true? My mistake...there aren't any of those.
So by your reasoning, if Blizzard produces a Mac/Windows-only product and refuses to port it to another OS (here, Linux), that permits you (or other people outside of Blizzard) to disregard their contract w/ Blizzard in order to port it to Linux? Can I buy some crack from you?
Content producers are under NO obligation to produce their content in the format you like best. I don't get to pirate DVDs because they're not in 1080p format (and I want to up-convert them and distribute them on my own in that format). I don't get to steal US currency because I wish it was printed on plastic money like the Aussie bills are.
The problem isn't even that they individually violated the contracts, but in fact that they did so in a way DESIGNED to facilitate the violation of contracts by other users. These people weren't out just to play their own bought-game on Linux, since if they were they wouldn't have distributed their code! Their intent was to distribute a tool that has no legitimate purpose according to the game makers. Period.
Grow up.
The legal ignorance here is just disturbing.
Years before computers existed, there was a rule called the "mailbox rule", which basically stated that if someone sent you a contract form that said "All that is required is your signature", it was viewed as fully accepted when the recipient put the signed form in the mailbox. The idea was that the person who signed the contract (i.e. the 2nd party) has done all the parts required to accept and so they should both receive the benefits and responsibilities of that acceptance.
The reason EULA agreements were RIGHTFULLY enforced in the ProCD case is exactly the same: the software creator has given you a contract that says "all you need to do to accept is click yes/open the shrink wrap". Once you've fulfilled that requirement - clicking yes or opening it - you should incur the benefits (using the software) and responsibilities (the restrictions in the contract).
Think about the opposite, where you'd be allowed to benefit from the contract (i.e. use the software) but not incur the responsibilities (i.e. the limitations). How could such an asymmetry be reasonable, much less desireable?
Most contracts are signed without any negotiation other than the 2nd party consenting to a prepared contract from the 1st party. Typical examples: rentals, lease agreements, fed-ex/ups shipping, etc. Just try to 'negotiate' the contract in your local FedEx-Kinkos. There's no problem with the remoteness of the contract-writer, so long as they're content to let the 2nd party sign remotely.
You people who are so against Blizzard here need to ask yourselves what the situation would be if users were free to disregard the EULA. It would mean that either (a) the software content producers would have to accept anything you did with it or (b) there would have to be LEGISLATIVE limitations on your use that applied to all software content. I'm positive you don't want (b), and I don't think you'd reasonably want (a) either since it's entirely inhibitive of content creation. If you cannot control perfectly reproducable content (i.e. software) and thus cannot profit from your work, a significant number of people will be dissuaded from producing.
This whole argument has been hashed out before, and I find it just disheartening how many rapid anti-Blizzard people there are here who have yet to provide actual arguments for their side...
"Net result is the textures look more real, and properly react to the environment, they change as the light does and so on. That's actually how it's nearly always done on for high-end rendering. You don't texture map something, that won't look good, instead you use material shaders to describe the surfaces, and the engine calculates how it all looks."
Except you're wrong. Most textures in the highest resolution systems (e.g. movies, etc.) are most certainly NOT procedural. They're just extremely high-resolution texture maps (including high-resolution normal and bump maps).
Procedural textures are extremely important and useful, but there are certain effects (such as the texturing of a face - which requires coloring specific to the contours of a face, etc.) that are not viable via procedural textures but are easily accomplished with high-res textures. Your comments indicate that you don't understand the workflow involved in high-end rendering, much less games (which involve more texture mapping and less procedural texturing than film work).
The installation of video cameras in public spaces is quite different from the collection and cataloguing of biometric data. Among other things, it's trivial (if it matters to you) to simply wear something like a burkha if you want to obscure your identity in public spaces where the cameras are present. You don't want to cover yourself head to toe in public spaces? Bummer for you.
This private company can do whatever it wants. That's the libertarian ideal. It would be very bad if the government could demand this info, and possibly illegal (depending on the Supreme Court's contents, frankly), but it's different from the cameras for at least the simple reason that one is a private company, one is the government.
"So you are 'claiming' that Disney is doing this for the next 9/11? I know that is an over simplification of your comment but that is the logical conclusion..."
No, I'm not saying that, and I don't appreciate that you knowingly "oversimplified" my comment in that way. I was suggesting that if something happened, e.g. a mundane crime, a lost kid, a kidnapped kid, etc. they'd be able to have a better idea who was in which park. If they had the scanners (or at least card scanners) at each ride, you'd be able to say where IN the park a given user such as a lost child was. True, if there were an outright terrorist attack this could be helpful, but only insofar as attaching the name used on entry with a possible attacker.
It's voluntary, btw, period. If you don't research your trip, it's your own damn fault. If I want to go to Disneyworld but I don't bother to look up when it's open, it's my own damn fault if I get there and it's closed. Same thing here: if you don't bother to look up the basic admission requirements to a private theme park before buying your tickets, then you've just paid for a valuable life lesson.
I believe the point is that - if something happens - they have a better record of who came in, etc. I'm not saying it's worth what some people would call an "invasion of privacy" (since it's voluntary, I refuse to call it that), but I believe that's the point.
What will be really interesting is how they use this to make more money. Undoubtedly, the installation of this system cost money, without any obvious profit as a result. Will they sell this database of prints? Will they track the size-shift in your prints and correlate it to age data? Will they track how often you come to the parks and extrapolate what attractions you're interested in?
Of course, the MOST interesting thing will be this: when you get assaulted/robbed/etc. on the property (and assuming the perp somehow dodged all the cameras) will they dust you/the area for relevant prints? Will police be able to subpoeana them?