Imagine that he disconnects his LAN from the internet. . . . and keeps getting the DoD traffic!! OMFG!! The DoD is hiding somewhere in his house! Probably with a big butcher knife or a a hook or one of those chain saws with a silencer that government assassins are now using.
Now what's he doing? No, you FOOL! Don't go into the server closet!!!
I think it's more than possible. I think we can consider it as good as forked when we look at all of the interested parties, some of whom have a big financial interest in having a GPL 2 fork.
The pity is that it might not be possible to merge the forks down the road. That used to be one of the strengths of the GPL, the ability to merge.
But if your target complains about being spied on by a trained squirrel, people will laugh at them for being paranoids. You hit the nail on the head. Infowar. Actually implementing such a plan is stupid. Faking it is brilliant.
I think Robert Anton Wilson covered this a long time ago. Operation Mindfuck. Just follow the fnords. They'll lead you deeper and deeper into the squirrel hole. Or Detachment 2702. Same thing really.
I mean can't you just imagine some James Bond superspy, parachuting in to Iran and releasing squirrels with cameras or microphones glued to their heads? I can. I can see this being done just to fuck with the Iranians. What an amazing operation, once you spot the fnords.
From the summary:
. . . . Linspire agreed to is next to useless for many users Linspire is next to useless for many users There! Fixed it!
Essentially, under the agreement Linspire software is almost unusable Anyone want to take a swing at this one? It's reeeeealy easy. =)
There you go again, Chaotica, calling names as if it's going to make your argument. I decline to participate if that's how you're going to conduct yourself. The best way to deal with a bully is to ignore him, my mom used to say. I think she was right, as far as posting comments on the internet goes.
Unless you have something more compelling to offer than shoddy and rhetorical debate tactics and tired insults, consider me done with our little branch of this thread.
If the Wii comes to completely dominate the industry, there's a good chance a lot of really first-rate, complicated, serious games will never be released, in favor of hundreds of Wii sports clones.
If you don't regret this statement yet, you should. It's dumb. No, it's actually a pretty intelligent statement. Blockbuster games on Sony and MS consoles have insanely huge budgets that are only justified by the even more insanely huge profits. If Wii games eat into those profits (which by all accounts it should), there will be less justification for the big game developers to focus all their resources on the blockbuster candidates. Also, the big game developers are going to want a piece of the Wii pie. Any dollar they spend to develop games for the Wii is one less dollar for their risky big investments. It only makes sense that they'd want to spread the risk.
So, the upshot is that there will be fewer mega budget games. They won't go away (have mega budget movies gone away?), but the formula has definitely taken a hit.
When is Lucas gonna make a light sabre game!!!!! I can't wait.. gonna have to try out one of the sword games I guess... Are you retarded? Swords will fucking cut you wide open!
Remember Trip Fisk's Three Ds the next time you are tempted by a sword:
Dead - As in that is what you will be if you mess with swords
Dying - As in that's what your friends and family are going to be doing if you buy a sword.
Don't - fucking touch swords.
(Sorry about the profanity, but it was necessary to preserve the artistic integrity of the video.)
It's a really smart ju-jitsu type orthogonal move and the parallels to modern principles of warfare (which borrow heavily from some very old principles) are quite clear. In fact, a very basic principle of all war strategy is not to let the adversary pick the battleground. In this case, perhaps MS has been "scouting" the informal gamer territory, but Nintendo has concentrated a lot of force here, and now they (at least temporarily) own it. Now that they own it, they have considerable power to define it, which is a major force multiplier. And MS and Sony have so much invested into the hardcore gaming arena, it's going to be extremely difficult for them to reposition themselves (by releasing cheap consumer consoles). This will give Nintendo more time to consolidate its gains.
I think this miscalculation is especially telling of MS's ability to come up with a successful strategy and implement it. The whole raison d'etre for the Xbox was to get into the world's livingrooms via home entertainment appliances. MS correctly saw the strategic goal, but became entangled in battle with Sony for that market by directly competing with Sony on Sony's hard core gamer turf. MS has the resources for this sort of conventional business warfare and the jury is still out on whether Sony will hold on to the hard core gamer or lose to MS. But both MS and Sony have been blind sided by Nintendo, whom they foolishly dismissed.
This whole chapter is going to be standard reading in B-school textbooks for years to come. It's a perfect example of 4G Warfare theory being applied to the business battlefield.
You just say that because you're to cheap to buy hydrogen peroxide. (Will a hair joke work on Slashdot?)
Re:Nintendo is not neglecting its roots.
on
Where the Wii Fits In
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Dvoraking is so common it doesn't even bear mentioning these days. What is important to me is whether or not the article itself is just a troll/flame, or if it is thoughtfully written. Of course, if a writer or website burns me by not delivering the goods, I won't give them the attention they so desperately seek.
I'm not sure if the article submitter and the article writer are the same person (although the submitter is a tout from Angry Gamer obviously - AGFlamey? C'mon!). Still, the article itself is interesting and well written and the author is knowledgeable of the history of games. Perhaps his points are unoriginal and merely a rehash, but I don't keep up on the latest in gaming news and opinion, so it was still of interest to me.
The main thing that makes me doubt that AGFlamey and Lis Vender (the writer of the article in question) are the same person is the story summary's obligatory slashdot question (patent pending), "Is it such a bad thing that Nintendo are neglecting their roots?" The article makes no such claims, merely arguing that the Nintendo developers are weary of cranking out successive iterations of the cash cow titles. And logically, why would Nintendo neglect its cash cows? If a company is going to attempt to break new ground, it's going to need its established money makers to support that effort.
What the article does do is examine Nintendo's "new" strategy, and it argues that it's not new. Briefly mentioned as one of Nintendo's failures is the Power Pad accessory and its related games, but I would argue that while it might not have succeeded commercially, it represents Nintendo's willingness to stake out new territory (and not giving up when first efforts fail; is there a great conceptual difference between Family Fun Fitness and Wii Fitness?). Anyway, the theses of the article seem to be that 1) Nintendo has always been about just having fun, and 2) Nintendo has always been willing to stake out new territory based on thesis #1. In this sense, they are even more Apple than Apple. Apple's recent successes, the iPod and the iPhone (that might be a premature call*) are based on Apple's main thesis (ease of use), but Apple entered markets that already existed.
To return to your original complaint, bullshit sensationalism is an effect of so many voices clamoring for our attention. Sensationalism is nothing new. The problem arises when we are inundated by it as more and more take up this strategy for grabbing our attention. It's another tragedy of the commons, the commons in this case being our media space. I don't see any way to stop it other than to let it run its course. As more and more people become inured to sensationalism, other strategies will be adopted. (We're already seeing rudimentary developments of reputation systems, for example.)
* If I had use a bold exclamation point (i.e., iPhone!), we could call it a premature ejaculation.
Transistors? Why didn't you ask me about tubes? You're playing with definitions and trying to play a gotcha game. Get over your Tivo fetish and buy a neuros, for God's sake.
If you were intellectually curious, rather than an apologist for the the FSF, you might do your own research rather than ask others to do it for you.
How was that for evasive?
Why do I need to find you an example? Are you arguing that a hardware designer can use GPL 3 code and not worry about whether his hardware design fits today's FSF requirements?
I would argue that the device is an embodiment of a particular method (and should be a required part of most patent applications, as in days of yore).
Also, if only devices were patentable, what's to stop a competitor from changing some unimportant aspect of the device and selling or patenting that? That almost seems like patents would become glorified trademarks (under the concept of trade dress).
You've hit on why DRM is just a blip. It's going to die off of natural causes, sooner or more sooner. At the very worst, it will become so de-fanged as to not matter beyond some use like parental controls for your toddler.
The digital savvy people in the music business have hit upon a "new model" to replace their failing one. Subscriptions. They like this even better than the old model because it promises a more predictable and regular revenue stream. And they're going to try and steamroll anyone or anything that could threaten this new model (meet the new boss, same as the old boss). The biggest threat is net radio.
Yelling and swearing and accusing me of lying make your point brilliantly, Mr. Chaotica. Good show! Let me know when you'd like to discuss this without the emotion (or religion).
No, I think you (and the FSF) are confusing the issue. We were talking about users of software. Now you're bringing in hardware, and trying to control how some software users design their hardware. You're taking away a freedom to protect a freedom that isn't really being threatened by the hardware makers.
There is nothing physically stopping you from using a device as you see fit, assuming you have the desire, the time, and the technical ability to do so. The argument that all device makers must make it easy for anyone to do so just doesn't fly. If the DCMA is your problem, then you should address that by changing the law or committing civil disobedience or just ignoring the law.
On top of that, if you really want to hack your DVR, you can choose to buy an open DVR, such as products from Neuros. You're actually doing a disservice to open hardware makers by choosing a Tivo and hacking (or attempting to hack) it, because you're not supporting them with your dollars.
I'm starting to think that the FSF doesn't really think that open platforms are superior to closed ones and that open ones have no chance of success. Otherwise, why would they seek to cripple closed platforms instead of putting all their energy into supporting the open ones? I suspect that this has to do with RMS's socialist anti-property bias. Under a socialist system of the sort we saw in the Soviet Union, competition is bad. Choice is bad. You take what the state gives you and you better like it if you know what's good for you. Oh, yeah, let a thousand flowers bloom! (OK, that's Maoist rather than Stalinist, but it's the same principle.)
In the broadest sense, an algorithm is a method for doing something. A new method for removing particles from automobile exhaust is an algorithm in the broad sense. Assuming that this method meets other requirements for patentability, shouldn't it be patentable? What if we modeled or expressed the process in mathematical terms? Could that expression be part of the patent? (I'm assuming here that you aren't completely against patents outright.)
Make no mistake, the patent system needs an overhaul. And purely mathematical algorithms shouldn't be patentable (nor should genes or gene sequences). But there are some blurry areas, and we need to be clear and specific when discussing them and passing laws. If we pass laws based on unclear or incomplete analysis, we're back where we started, with a dysfunctional patent system that is wide open to absurd results and gaming of the system.
He's a well known freetard and he gets modded up by other freetards.
(Please don't think I'm against OSS. I'm not. I just don't like it when religious zealots will twist logic and facts to promote their agenda, i.e., freetards.)
So, according to your definition, only end users qualify as code users? A vendor isn't a user of code? How narrow a definition do you want? When does it get too narrow? The FSF sets the definitions and exceptions arbitrarily? What happens if the definition becomes: A user is any enduser except Burpmaster?
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine that he disconnects his LAN from the internet. . . . and keeps getting the DoD traffic!! OMFG!! The DoD is hiding somewhere in his house! Probably with a big butcher knife or a a hook or one of those chain saws with a silencer that government assassins are now using.
Now what's he doing? No, you FOOL! Don't go into the server closet!!!
I think it's more than possible. I think we can consider it as good as forked when we look at all of the interested parties, some of whom have a big financial interest in having a GPL 2 fork.
The pity is that it might not be possible to merge the forks down the road. That used to be one of the strengths of the GPL, the ability to merge.
By any chance are you in Korea?
I think Robert Anton Wilson covered this a long time ago. Operation Mindfuck. Just follow the fnords. They'll lead you deeper and deeper into the squirrel hole. Or Detachment 2702. Same thing really.
I mean can't you just imagine some James Bond superspy, parachuting in to Iran and releasing squirrels with cameras or microphones glued to their heads? I can. I can see this being done just to fuck with the Iranians. What an amazing operation, once you spot the fnords.
Will the 2.0 firmware change the squirting into spewing?
There you go again, Chaotica, calling names as if it's going to make your argument. I decline to participate if that's how you're going to conduct yourself. The best way to deal with a bully is to ignore him, my mom used to say. I think she was right, as far as posting comments on the internet goes.
Unless you have something more compelling to offer than shoddy and rhetorical debate tactics and tired insults, consider me done with our little branch of this thread.
If you don't regret this statement yet, you should. It's dumb. No, it's actually a pretty intelligent statement. Blockbuster games on Sony and MS consoles have insanely huge budgets that are only justified by the even more insanely huge profits. If Wii games eat into those profits (which by all accounts it should), there will be less justification for the big game developers to focus all their resources on the blockbuster candidates. Also, the big game developers are going to want a piece of the Wii pie. Any dollar they spend to develop games for the Wii is one less dollar for their risky big investments. It only makes sense that they'd want to spread the risk.
So, the upshot is that there will be fewer mega budget games. They won't go away (have mega budget movies gone away?), but the formula has definitely taken a hit.
Remember Trip Fisk's Three Ds the next time you are tempted by a sword:
Dead - As in that is what you will be if you mess with swords
Dying - As in that's what your friends and family are going to be doing if you buy a sword.
Don't - fucking touch swords.
(Sorry about the profanity, but it was necessary to preserve the artistic integrity of the video.)
It's a really smart ju-jitsu type orthogonal move and the parallels to modern principles of warfare (which borrow heavily from some very old principles) are quite clear. In fact, a very basic principle of all war strategy is not to let the adversary pick the battleground. In this case, perhaps MS has been "scouting" the informal gamer territory, but Nintendo has concentrated a lot of force here, and now they (at least temporarily) own it. Now that they own it, they have considerable power to define it, which is a major force multiplier. And MS and Sony have so much invested into the hardcore gaming arena, it's going to be extremely difficult for them to reposition themselves (by releasing cheap consumer consoles). This will give Nintendo more time to consolidate its gains.
I think this miscalculation is especially telling of MS's ability to come up with a successful strategy and implement it. The whole raison d'etre for the Xbox was to get into the world's livingrooms via home entertainment appliances. MS correctly saw the strategic goal, but became entangled in battle with Sony for that market by directly competing with Sony on Sony's hard core gamer turf. MS has the resources for this sort of conventional business warfare and the jury is still out on whether Sony will hold on to the hard core gamer or lose to MS. But both MS and Sony have been blind sided by Nintendo, whom they foolishly dismissed.
This whole chapter is going to be standard reading in B-school textbooks for years to come. It's a perfect example of 4G Warfare theory being applied to the business battlefield.
You just say that because you're to cheap to buy hydrogen peroxide. (Will a hair joke work on Slashdot?)
Dvoraking is so common it doesn't even bear mentioning these days. What is important to me is whether or not the article itself is just a troll/flame, or if it is thoughtfully written. Of course, if a writer or website burns me by not delivering the goods, I won't give them the attention they so desperately seek.
I'm not sure if the article submitter and the article writer are the same person (although the submitter is a tout from Angry Gamer obviously - AGFlamey? C'mon!). Still, the article itself is interesting and well written and the author is knowledgeable of the history of games. Perhaps his points are unoriginal and merely a rehash, but I don't keep up on the latest in gaming news and opinion, so it was still of interest to me.
The main thing that makes me doubt that AGFlamey and Lis Vender (the writer of the article in question) are the same person is the story summary's obligatory slashdot question (patent pending), "Is it such a bad thing that Nintendo are neglecting their roots?" The article makes no such claims, merely arguing that the Nintendo developers are weary of cranking out successive iterations of the cash cow titles. And logically, why would Nintendo neglect its cash cows? If a company is going to attempt to break new ground, it's going to need its established money makers to support that effort.
What the article does do is examine Nintendo's "new" strategy, and it argues that it's not new. Briefly mentioned as one of Nintendo's failures is the Power Pad accessory and its related games, but I would argue that while it might not have succeeded commercially, it represents Nintendo's willingness to stake out new territory (and not giving up when first efforts fail; is there a great conceptual difference between Family Fun Fitness and Wii Fitness?). Anyway, the theses of the article seem to be that 1) Nintendo has always been about just having fun, and 2) Nintendo has always been willing to stake out new territory based on thesis #1. In this sense, they are even more Apple than Apple. Apple's recent successes, the iPod and the iPhone (that might be a premature call*) are based on Apple's main thesis (ease of use), but Apple entered markets that already existed.
To return to your original complaint, bullshit sensationalism is an effect of so many voices clamoring for our attention. Sensationalism is nothing new. The problem arises when we are inundated by it as more and more take up this strategy for grabbing our attention. It's another tragedy of the commons, the commons in this case being our media space. I don't see any way to stop it other than to let it run its course. As more and more people become inured to sensationalism, other strategies will be adopted. (We're already seeing rudimentary developments of reputation systems, for example.)
* If I had use a bold exclamation point (i.e., iPhone!), we could call it a premature ejaculation.
Transistors? Why didn't you ask me about tubes? You're playing with definitions and trying to play a gotcha game. Get over your Tivo fetish and buy a neuros, for God's sake.
I think someone needs a nap. =)
If you were intellectually curious, rather than an apologist for the the FSF, you might do your own research rather than ask others to do it for you.
How was that for evasive?
Why do I need to find you an example? Are you arguing that a hardware designer can use GPL 3 code and not worry about whether his hardware design fits today's FSF requirements?
I would argue that the device is an embodiment of a particular method (and should be a required part of most patent applications, as in days of yore).
Also, if only devices were patentable, what's to stop a competitor from changing some unimportant aspect of the device and selling or patenting that? That almost seems like patents would become glorified trademarks (under the concept of trade dress).
You've hit on why DRM is just a blip. It's going to die off of natural causes, sooner or more sooner. At the very worst, it will become so de-fanged as to not matter beyond some use like parental controls for your toddler.
The digital savvy people in the music business have hit upon a "new model" to replace their failing one. Subscriptions. They like this even better than the old model because it promises a more predictable and regular revenue stream. And they're going to try and steamroll anyone or anything that could threaten this new model (meet the new boss, same as the old boss). The biggest threat is net radio.
Yelling and swearing and accusing me of lying make your point brilliantly, Mr. Chaotica. Good show! Let me know when you'd like to discuss this without the emotion (or religion).
No, I think you (and the FSF) are confusing the issue. We were talking about users of software. Now you're bringing in hardware, and trying to control how some software users design their hardware. You're taking away a freedom to protect a freedom that isn't really being threatened by the hardware makers.
There is nothing physically stopping you from using a device as you see fit, assuming you have the desire, the time, and the technical ability to do so. The argument that all device makers must make it easy for anyone to do so just doesn't fly. If the DCMA is your problem, then you should address that by changing the law or committing civil disobedience or just ignoring the law.
On top of that, if you really want to hack your DVR, you can choose to buy an open DVR, such as products from Neuros. You're actually doing a disservice to open hardware makers by choosing a Tivo and hacking (or attempting to hack) it, because you're not supporting them with your dollars.
I'm starting to think that the FSF doesn't really think that open platforms are superior to closed ones and that open ones have no chance of success. Otherwise, why would they seek to cripple closed platforms instead of putting all their energy into supporting the open ones? I suspect that this has to do with RMS's socialist anti-property bias. Under a socialist system of the sort we saw in the Soviet Union, competition is bad. Choice is bad. You take what the state gives you and you better like it if you know what's good for you. Oh, yeah, let a thousand flowers bloom! (OK, that's Maoist rather than Stalinist, but it's the same principle.)
In the broadest sense, an algorithm is a method for doing something. A new method for removing particles from automobile exhaust is an algorithm in the broad sense. Assuming that this method meets other requirements for patentability, shouldn't it be patentable? What if we modeled or expressed the process in mathematical terms? Could that expression be part of the patent? (I'm assuming here that you aren't completely against patents outright.)
Make no mistake, the patent system needs an overhaul. And purely mathematical algorithms shouldn't be patentable (nor should genes or gene sequences). But there are some blurry areas, and we need to be clear and specific when discussing them and passing laws. If we pass laws based on unclear or incomplete analysis, we're back where we started, with a dysfunctional patent system that is wide open to absurd results and gaming of the system.
He's a well known freetard and he gets modded up by other freetards.
(Please don't think I'm against OSS. I'm not. I just don't like it when religious zealots will twist logic and facts to promote their agenda, i.e., freetards.)
So, according to your definition, only end users qualify as code users? A vendor isn't a user of code? How narrow a definition do you want? When does it get too narrow? The FSF sets the definitions and exceptions arbitrarily? What happens if the definition becomes: A user is any enduser except Burpmaster?