Okay, I realize this got modded up because it is anti-Microsoft, but that comment is completely off-topic. You seem to think that the article is talking about Halo 2 (product of MS and Bungie), but the article is really talking about Half-Life 2 (Vivendi Universal and Valve).
And my impression is most of the "disabling crap" was put in by Valve themselves to cut down on piracy on the game... the question is does the drop in piracy (if any) make up for the extra frustration for users.
Back to your comment and Halo 2, things like this are WHY I game on a console instead of a computer these days. Console games just work... I buy it, pop it in, and I'm playing. (NOTE: I am not trying to use LIVE on a modded x-box. Once you mod the box, it is no longer really a console, so you can't count on everything to still just work).
Everything on the gamecube or PS2 (prior to the PS2 hard drive) saves to a memory card, not any internal storage. So, if you want two saves (or ten), it is trivially easy to just switch out the memory card. Plus, most RPGs (from my own experience on the gamecube, Tales of Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia, the first Baldur's Gate) will allow you to make as many saves as you like, limited only by the size of the memory card.
Moving on, the RPGs I've played on Xbox (Morrowind, Kotor) both allow you to make as many saves as you like, limited only by the space available on the hard drive (which is huge compared to the size of any single save).
Are there particular games you are complaining about, or was that just an anti-Xbox/console troll?
Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.
In addition, in 1984 the Supreme Court held that time-shifting (for example, private, non-commercial home taping of television programs with a VCR to permit later viewing) is fair use. (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984, S.C.)
Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:
* Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
* Making a personal back-up copy of content you own - for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.
Okay, you cited a very informative article from slate but you apparently didn't read it.
After all the bids are in, everyone who wins pays the same amount -- the amount of the lowest successful bid.
Here's the nutshell version: The firm offering the IPO sets an absurdly high asking price on the IPO, then everyone sends in their bid - "I want X shares for $Y each" (where $Y is something less than the original asking price). At the end of the bidding period, the computer puts the bids in order from highest to lowest. Then it starts counting down the list from the top awarding shares until they run out. The price when they run out is the price everyone who won pays.
So, given your numbers, everyone who buys the initial IPO would pay $75-85 regardless of what they bid. People that overbid don't get screwed, they just are assured of getting the stock (the last guy in usually gets fewer shares than they asked for).
Of course, Microsoft could REALLY kick ass if someone (them or a third party; preferably them, and in the box) came out with an emulation layer that let the Xbox2 play Playstation/Playstation2 titles as well... they're moving to a RISC processor, so it shouldn't be all THAT hard, especially since they're emulating something that ran at an order of magnitude less clock speed.
Regardless of the difficulty of emulating a playstation on the new hardware, they would still run smack into the illegality of doing that.
Remember Connectix and Bleem, the companies that got in trouble for making playstation emulation software for macintosh a few years back?
Since then, the DMCA come into prominence, and given things like the recent UK decision against mod chips, I would be surprised to see emulation make the cut at this time. As a Register article states in their announcement of Bleem closing shop:
With PlayStation and XBox code protected against emulation efforts, both legally, and through hardware- and software-based techniques, Bleem's scope for future expansion looked limited.
Actually, I'd be satisfied with a open, available server so that there'd be free competition in making servers ("worlds) available. That way the market itself would set fair prices.
Neverwinter Nights has sort of gone this route; the only problem is the license terms on the game don't allow persistent worlds to actually charge anything at all, so they are forced to make do with donations from the players to pay for server costs. (As an example, I submit Exaria, where I adventured while I had broadband access.)
From the article... Either way, according to Ewing, his tests in Sweden indicate that if 16 percent of the nodes are edge nodes (wireless routers with DSL or cable modem Internet connections), they can provide comparable broadband service to the other 84 percent who aren't otherwise connected to the Net.
So yes, 16% of the nodes need cable/DSL links. Bob implies that those people get their cable costs paid for by (and profit from) the other 84% who are piggbacking on the service for VoIP.
Say we have 5 alternate routes between two nodes and each route is 90% reliable. The probability of an outage (all routes down) is (1-0.9)^5 = 0.00001. Hence, the network reliability is 99.999%. Each additional parallel route adds a '9'.
That assumes, however, that all the outages are independent. If the nodes are closely located physically (maybe all five routes start off going through different houses in my neighborhood), a local power outage or similar problem could take them all out at once.
Yes, I know, get each one a UPS, their own generator, etc, but that adds significantly to the start up costs and invalidates part of Cringely's support for the idea.
I haven't downloaded it or tried them, but AceMoney Lite looks promising.
IngenMoney Pro is another freeware product that looks pretty good. Something screwy with licensing there, though... they say it is freeware for personal use, with a required registration after a year to continue using it.
I'm working through Philip K. Dick's works (finally being reissued gradually by Vintage over the past few years).
Most recently read? The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
Some recently published non-series sci-fi I've read...
Dennis Danvers' "The Watch" (he is a local (Richmond, VA, USA) professor/author) -- Peter Kropotkin is transported (by a mysterious man from the future) from Russia at the moment of his death to present day Virginia, restored to his youthful vigor -- a philosophical work, well-written, character driven, giving a fresh perspective on the things we take for granted
Connie Willis' Passage -- doctors studying near death experiences, hoping to understand them and to discover a way to save patients who code (in the medical sense) -- unlike most of her work, it does NOT involve time travel (though she does manage to channel her love of history through discussions of the Titanic and other disasters)
1. An unscrupulous person (UP) obtains a ballot.
2. UP fills it out to vote for the candidates of UP's choice.
3. UP then hands the ballot to a voter for them to turn in as their own in return for payment.
4. The voter goes in, picks up a new ballot, submits the pre-filled ballot as their own, then walks back out carrying a blank ballot.
5. The voter hands the blank ballot to UP, who pays them.
6. He has another blank ballot, so back to step 1...
Thus, a chain of voters go in, each voting exactly the way the unscrupulus person desires them to...
Now, an electronic system with paper trail can be hit with a similar method... let's assume the machine prints out a "receipt" for the voter, which he then deposits in a ballot box for use in recounts. Our UP simply has to get one of those receipts (UP votes, but forgets to drop off the receipt, or drops off a fake one or blank slip instead), then instruct the voters to use the same choices from the sheet, drop that one in the box (he could mark it slightly so that he knows they didn't bring back the same one), then bring back their own receipt as proof that they voted properly. The receipts wouldn't have any voter-identifiable information on them (ballot box secrecy and such), so that isn't a problem. And each receipt that ends up in the box would match the time-stamp or other identifiers for an actual voter... the only problem is that the last person's original receipt doesn't make it into the box (and the UP's item in the box is a fake), which a careful recount could discover.
USA does not equal democracy
on
Public Net-work
·
· Score: 1
We currently have a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. An e-democracy, with all the issues decided directly by the citizens, could certainly be much closer to a theoretically perfect democracy, where the government exactly matches the wishes of the citizens.
Note: I do not think such a government is a good idea, but it would be a "real democracy" in the purest sense of the word.
As seen above, this is not necessarily a good idea... A standard windows install won't have the drivers you need to run all the hardware in the laptop, so you'd be setting yourself up for hours of exploring their web site searching for all the extras to get it working again... which I'm sure is the reason they give you an image instead of install media in the first place.
Good modules you should check out...
The best online community (that is, multiplayer) I have found is Exaria .
As far as individual modules that I've enjoyed playing through, try Shadowlords, Lone Wolf, or Dreamcatcher.
*the only tricks here are (1) subtle and non-substantive changes in each e-mail making them different and (2) sending e-mails on behalf of many different sources (from 1000's of different e-mail accounts). The solutions can be readily addressed by (1) referring to the e-mail and "substantially similar" e-mails (the copyright standard); and (2) referring to e-mails sent by or on behalf of a particular individual. Thus, the person commissioning the spam is always liable for the crime -- regardless how many different persons send the spam on her behalf.
Thus making it impossible for any individual to prosecute, since you only see one recipient for a given email in your mailbox, and trying to sort all your received spam by source would be an absolute nightmare.
If you make forging headers illegal, then a single email with an invalid "from" is an obvious, enforcable violation.
figuring that somewhere in there they'll hit the real address? (And they'll figure it out even quicker once they notice they have both username-amazon@the.server and username-yahooGroups@the.server in their mail-lists)
Any technological solution (widely employed) will eventually be caught up to by the spammers, perpetuating the SPAM arms race, and bringing us down to their level (as the article alludes to).
The book is a good read to get a feel for Lessig's ideas about copyright, the Public Domain, and other commons. It was written while the Eldred case was still winding its way through the courts, so that section is now a bit dated (but his blog can get you up to date on the case, which was lost on appeal in the supreme court).
A large contributing factor to identity theft in the US is the ubiquity of the SSN. Basically, with that and an address, all sorts of bad problems start happening.
Seems like a global ID would just be that much worse: a new target that is even better than the SSN in the hands of thieves.
So, I agree with the parent that
Not relying on one single id system is, imho, an important part of protecting your id, because that makes you less vulnerable to id theft.
Yeah, it makes things more complex for govenrments (and even for us poor slobs with more things to remember), but a single target is just too tempting to criminals.
(cough... windows viruses.../cough)
This is a much larger problem in high schools than in college, for two reasons:
1. Many high schools have already gone to a 5.0 system, giving extra credit to students in Honors or AP classes (that B in honors is worth as much as an A in a normal class)
2. Colleges actually care about high school grades and use GPA in their admission process... how many times applying for a job have you been actually asked what your GPA was? (Excepting academic positions, grad school and such)
Employers tend to just not care about the level of academic achievement, only its existence (as proof that you could follow through enough to get the diploma).
Will Sony risk its $40 billion electronics division to help out it's 'slice of $20 billion' music division?
Well, as we saw in another recent article, Sony doesn't actually make any money on their electronics division, so I think I'd have to answer that particular question with a resounding "yes".
The article I read (on yahoo) states the unpatched servers were all on the internal network, not the internet, and that they were in use by researchers within microsoft.
Let's not jump too quickly on the bash microsoft bandwagon for that. (Of course, if they just did enough testing and didn't release buggy, vulnerable software in the first place...)
The article makes clear that the hardware side of the company is actually losing money; the content stuff (music, movies, Playstation) is funding the whole thing.
Basically, the profits from the music is what allows them to invest in developing new hardware products.
I've been very happy with my Kyocera 6035.
When the flip is closed, it is a tri-band mobile phone, with real keys and one touch access to the Palm address book.
With the flip open, you get the Palm 3.5 OS, and access to all the desktop connectivity and 3rd party programs available for Palm.
Downsides: A bit bulky and heavy, wider than most phones, thicker than most PDA's. Grayscale screen, small for PDAs (but this also makes for great battery life). A little cludgy to surf the web with, but it can easily get you the movie listings and such.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I realize this got modded up because it is anti-Microsoft, but that comment is completely off-topic. You seem to think that the article is talking about Halo 2 (product of MS and Bungie), but the article is really talking about Half-Life 2 (Vivendi Universal and Valve).
And my impression is most of the "disabling crap" was put in by Valve themselves to cut down on piracy on the game... the question is does the drop in piracy (if any) make up for the extra frustration for users.
Back to your comment and Halo 2, things like this are WHY I game on a console instead of a computer these days. Console games just work... I buy it, pop it in, and I'm playing. (NOTE: I am not trying to use LIVE on a modded x-box. Once you mod the box, it is no longer really a console, so you can't count on everything to still just work).
I have no idea what you are complaining about.
Everything on the gamecube or PS2 (prior to the PS2 hard drive) saves to a memory card, not any internal storage. So, if you want two saves (or ten), it is trivially easy to just switch out the memory card. Plus, most RPGs (from my own experience on the gamecube, Tales of Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia, the first Baldur's Gate) will allow you to make as many saves as you like, limited only by the size of the memory card.
Moving on, the RPGs I've played on Xbox (Morrowind, Kotor) both allow you to make as many saves as you like, limited only by the space available on the hard drive (which is huge compared to the size of any single save).
Are there particular games you are complaining about, or was that just an anti-Xbox/console troll?
Based on the text of the statute, personal backups fail every test that would make them fair use. Anyone disagree?
Well, the EFF and "many lawyers" would disagree.
From their website FAQ on Fair Use:
4. What's been recognized as fair use?
Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.
In addition, in 1984 the Supreme Court held that time-shifting (for example, private, non-commercial home taping of television programs with a VCR to permit later viewing) is fair use. (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984, S.C.)
Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:
* Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
* Making a personal back-up copy of content you own - for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.
Okay, you cited a very informative article from slate but you apparently didn't read it.
After all the bids are in, everyone who wins pays the same amount -- the amount of the lowest successful bid.
Here's the nutshell version: The firm offering the IPO sets an absurdly high asking price on the IPO, then everyone sends in their bid - "I want X shares for $Y each" (where $Y is something less than the original asking price). At the end of the bidding period, the computer puts the bids in order from highest to lowest. Then it starts counting down the list from the top awarding shares until they run out. The price when they run out is the price everyone who won pays.
So, given your numbers, everyone who buys the initial IPO would pay $75-85 regardless of what they bid. People that overbid don't get screwed, they just are assured of getting the stock (the last guy in usually gets fewer shares than they asked for).
Of course, Microsoft could REALLY kick ass if someone (them or a third party; preferably them, and in the box) came out with an emulation layer that let the Xbox2 play Playstation/Playstation2 titles as well... they're moving to a RISC processor, so it shouldn't be all THAT hard, especially since they're emulating something that ran at an order of magnitude less clock speed.
Regardless of the difficulty of emulating a playstation on the new hardware, they would still run smack into the illegality of doing that.
Remember Connectix and Bleem, the companies that got in trouble for making playstation emulation software for macintosh a few years back?
Since then, the DMCA come into prominence, and given things like the recent UK decision against mod chips, I would be surprised to see emulation make the cut at this time. As a Register article states in their announcement of Bleem closing shop:
With PlayStation and XBox code protected against emulation efforts, both legally, and through hardware- and software-based techniques, Bleem's scope for future expansion looked limited.
Actually, I'd be satisfied with a open, available server so that there'd be free competition in making servers ("worlds) available. That way the market itself would set fair prices.
Neverwinter Nights has sort of gone this route; the only problem is the license terms on the game don't allow persistent worlds to actually charge anything at all, so they are forced to make do with donations from the players to pay for server costs. (As an example, I submit Exaria, where I adventured while I had broadband access.)
From the article...
Either way, according to Ewing, his tests in Sweden indicate that if 16 percent of the nodes are edge nodes (wireless routers with DSL or cable modem Internet connections), they can provide comparable broadband service to the other 84 percent who aren't otherwise connected to the Net.
So yes, 16% of the nodes need cable/DSL links. Bob implies that those people get their cable costs paid for by (and profit from) the other 84% who are piggbacking on the service for VoIP.
Say we have 5 alternate routes between two nodes and each route is 90% reliable. The probability of an outage (all routes down) is (1-0.9)^5 = 0.00001. Hence, the network reliability is 99.999%. Each additional parallel route adds a '9'.
That assumes, however, that all the outages are independent. If the nodes are closely located physically (maybe all five routes start off going through different houses in my neighborhood), a local power outage or similar problem could take them all out at once.
Yes, I know, get each one a UPS, their own generator, etc, but that adds significantly to the start up costs and invalidates part of Cringely's support for the idea.
I can't find www.votingmethods.org...
did you mean election methods??
I haven't downloaded it or tried them, but AceMoney Lite looks promising.
IngenMoney Pro is another freeware product that looks pretty good. Something screwy with licensing there, though... they say it is freeware for personal use, with a required registration after a year to continue using it.
I'm working through Philip K. Dick's works (finally being reissued gradually by Vintage over the past few years).
Most recently read? The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
Some recently published non-series sci-fi I've read...
Dennis Danvers' "The Watch" (he is a local (Richmond, VA, USA) professor/author) -- Peter Kropotkin is transported (by a mysterious man from the future) from Russia at the moment of his death to present day Virginia, restored to his youthful vigor -- a philosophical work, well-written, character driven, giving a fresh perspective on the things we take for granted
Connie Willis' Passage -- doctors studying near death experiences, hoping to understand them and to discover a way to save patients who code (in the medical sense) -- unlike most of her work, it does NOT involve time travel (though she does manage to channel her love of history through discussions of the Titanic and other disasters)
1. An unscrupulous person (UP) obtains a ballot.
2. UP fills it out to vote for the candidates of UP's choice.
3. UP then hands the ballot to a voter for them to turn in as their own in return for payment.
4. The voter goes in, picks up a new ballot, submits the pre-filled ballot as their own, then walks back out carrying a blank ballot.
5. The voter hands the blank ballot to UP, who pays them.
6. He has another blank ballot, so back to step 1...
Thus, a chain of voters go in, each voting exactly the way the unscrupulus person desires them to...
Now, an electronic system with paper trail can be hit with a similar method... let's assume the machine prints out a "receipt" for the voter, which he then deposits in a ballot box for use in recounts. Our UP simply has to get one of those receipts (UP votes, but forgets to drop off the receipt, or drops off a fake one or blank slip instead), then instruct the voters to use the same choices from the sheet, drop that one in the box (he could mark it slightly so that he knows they didn't bring back the same one), then bring back their own receipt as proof that they voted properly. The receipts wouldn't have any voter-identifiable information on them (ballot box secrecy and such), so that isn't a problem. And each receipt that ends up in the box would match the time-stamp or other identifiers for an actual voter... the only problem is that the last person's original receipt doesn't make it into the box (and the UP's item in the box is a fake), which a careful recount could discover.
We currently have a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. An e-democracy, with all the issues decided directly by the citizens, could certainly be much closer to a theoretically perfect democracy, where the government exactly matches the wishes of the citizens.
Note: I do not think such a government is a good idea, but it would be a "real democracy" in the purest sense of the word.
As seen above, this is not necessarily a good idea... A standard windows install won't have the drivers you need to run all the hardware in the laptop, so you'd be setting yourself up for hours of exploring their web site searching for all the extras to get it working again... which I'm sure is the reason they give you an image instead of install media in the first place.
Good modules you should check out...
The best online community (that is, multiplayer) I have found is Exaria .
As far as individual modules that I've enjoyed playing through, try Shadowlords, Lone Wolf, or Dreamcatcher.
Except that it's happening here too... just called Total Information Awareness
*the only tricks here are (1) subtle and non-substantive changes in each e-mail making them different and (2) sending e-mails on behalf of many different sources (from 1000's of different e-mail accounts). The solutions can be readily addressed by (1) referring to the e-mail and "substantially similar" e-mails (the copyright standard); and (2) referring to e-mails sent by or on behalf of a particular individual. Thus, the person commissioning the spam is always liable for the crime -- regardless how many different persons send the spam on her behalf.
Thus making it impossible for any individual to prosecute, since you only see one recipient for a given email in your mailbox, and trying to sort all your received spam by source would be an absolute nightmare.
If you make forging headers illegal, then a single email with an invalid "from" is an obvious, enforcable violation.
Sounds great... but don't you think the spammers might catch on eventually and just send to:
...
username-amazo@the.server
username-amaz@the.server
username-ama@the.server
u@the.server
figuring that somewhere in there they'll hit the real address? (And they'll figure it out even quicker once they notice they have both username-amazon@the.server and username-yahooGroups@the.server in their mail-lists)
Any technological solution (widely employed) will eventually be caught up to by the spammers, perpetuating the SPAM arms race, and bringing us down to their level (as the article alludes to).
Quick book plug for people interested in this issue.
Lawrence Lessig had this topic as a major theme of his book "The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World."
The book is a good read to get a feel for Lessig's ideas about copyright, the Public Domain, and other commons. It was written while the Eldred case was still winding its way through the courts, so that section is now a bit dated (but his blog can get you up to date on the case, which was lost on appeal in the supreme court).
A large contributing factor to identity theft in the US is the ubiquity of the SSN. Basically, with that and an address, all sorts of bad problems start happening.
/cough)
Seems like a global ID would just be that much worse: a new target that is even better than the SSN in the hands of thieves.
So, I agree with the parent that
Not relying on one single id system is, imho, an important part of protecting your id, because that makes you less vulnerable to id theft.
Yeah, it makes things more complex for govenrments (and even for us poor slobs with more things to remember), but a single target is just too tempting to criminals.
(cough... windows viruses...
This is a much larger problem in high schools than in college, for two reasons:
1. Many high schools have already gone to a 5.0 system, giving extra credit to students in Honors or AP classes (that B in honors is worth as much as an A in a normal class)
2. Colleges actually care about high school grades and use GPA in their admission process... how many times applying for a job have you been actually asked what your GPA was? (Excepting academic positions, grad school and such)
Employers tend to just not care about the level of academic achievement, only its existence (as proof that you could follow through enough to get the diploma).
Will Sony risk its $40 billion electronics division to help out it's 'slice of $20 billion' music division?
Well, as we saw in another recent article, Sony doesn't actually make any money on their electronics division, so I think I'd have to answer that particular question with a resounding "yes".
The article I read (on yahoo) states the unpatched servers were all on the internal network, not the internet, and that they were in use by researchers within microsoft.
Let's not jump too quickly on the bash microsoft bandwagon for that. (Of course, if they just did enough testing and didn't release buggy, vulnerable software in the first place...)
The article makes clear that the hardware side of the company is actually losing money; the content stuff (music, movies, Playstation) is funding the whole thing.
Basically, the profits from the music is what allows them to invest in developing new hardware products.
I've been very happy with my Kyocera 6035.
When the flip is closed, it is a tri-band mobile phone, with real keys and one touch access to the Palm address book.
With the flip open, you get the Palm 3.5 OS, and access to all the desktop connectivity and 3rd party programs available for Palm.
Downsides: A bit bulky and heavy, wider than most phones, thicker than most PDA's. Grayscale screen, small for PDAs (but this also makes for great battery life). A little cludgy to surf the web with, but it can easily get you the movie listings and such.