I disagree slightly on the Apple-dictates-DRM point. How exactly does iTunes DRM help Apple?
It locks other mp3 players out of playing music bought from the iTunes store. This rocks for Apple (or did, back when anybody gave a shit about anything but the iPod) but I don't think they're going to do any better with the iPod than they already are, so this shouldn't be a concern for them anymore. DRM also gave Apple what it wanted in the first place -- the first serious entry into the online music market. The music publishers were (and still are) extremely paranoid about piracy, and wouldn't allow online music sales without a pretty good guarantee that their IP rights would be safe -- which Apple gave them. So DRM gave Apple entry into the market.
But in the three or four or whatever years since the iTunes music store opened, things have changed. Now there's eMusic and whatnot who don't have nearly the catalog of iTunes, but sell their music DRM-free and more cheaply. By being locked into their DRM by music publisher contracts, Apple is being forced to sell an inferior product for more, something that isn't going to help them maintain their market share. Of course Steve Jobs wants to get rid of DRM, it fucks Apple and makes them look bad. Admittedly, his written rhetoric is appealing directly to the anti-DRM masses instead of telling the bare truth: DRM is hurting Apple's bottom line in the long run. It's somewhat fair to call that insincere, but I still think he and Apple really want to sell DRM-free music.
It seems like there are two dimensions to the 'DRM problem,' and that Apple and the music companies disagree on which of these needs to be changed:
In Jobs' letter (whenever that was) he called for DRM-free music, because he said an open DRM standard wouldn't work (it would be too easily reverse-engineered, since many entities would have access to the code, or whatever).
An open DRM standard is exactly what the music companies want, however, and that's the point of this story. The music companies don't want to give up their (ill-gotten) rights over the music they sell but they want to appear like they're doing something for the consumer, so they argue for open DRM and call Jobs insincere. Ahh, it makes me angry.
.. that the point of the Maxwell's Daemon was to illustrate a hypothetical 'perpetual motion' machine which would generate gradients with no energy input.
In the classical example, the Daemon sits at a gate between two chambers, where both are filled with particles of random velocities. When a slow particle approaches from the left or a fast one from the right, the Daemon keeps the gate shut. When a fast one approaches from the left or a slow from the right, however, the Daemon opens the gate and lets the particle pass, thus passively generating a gradient of slow/fast particles.
As to its 'energy from nothing' nature, it's been shown that the actual switching could occur with zero energy use, but (I believe) the act of resetting the Daemon's velocity measurement device would require some energy.
Long story short, the reason that the idea of a Maxwell's Daemon is important is not because it's a nanomechanical switch, but because it was thought to be an anti-entropic system with no energy use. The actual action that the Daemon was performing is quite irrelevant, and so I take offense at the title of this story. That's all.
And I hear it's a good, operating system, but it has, some stunning, similarities to OS X. Also, the, author of the snippet, uses a few too, many, commas, and comes up, with wonderfully original, sentence, structures.
I think the point of this article was not to make any statements about physical determinism -- free will becomes a rather meaningless concept on the basest philosophical level (who can tell if they have free will?). The real point was finding the dividing line between mental health and mental illness, which is an incredibly contentious subject.
A study I read once compared serotonin levels in prisoners who committed violent crimes versus prisoners who did not, and found a significant difference -- so since these people showed some physical anomaly should they be allowed to plead insanity (essentially saying that they are not responsible for their own actions)?
The truth is that everything comes down to whether you can classify someone as deviant only because they deviate from 'normal' human physiology or 'rational' human behavior. I don't know the answer.
I'm sorry, this comment is ridiculous, I don't know wtf you're talking about.
I think the graphics are quite pretty (the shaders are nice, though the water shader looks a bit dated) compared to the original, but that's not the only improvement.
Linear, my ass. Compared to Diablo II or DS1 this game is most definitely NOT linear. I think there are about twice as many secondary (side) quests as there are main (plot-advancing) quests. You can choose to play it linearly, or you can do all the side-quests and make the game much more interesting. I also very much enjoy how they break up the linearity of the game world - there are many secondary quests that require you to return to parts of the game you visited previously. Very unlike Diablo/DS1.
The greatest improvement, in my opinon, is the multiplayer system. In DS1 multiplayer you couldn't add people to your party, while now you can. This lets you add awesome pets (like the pack mule.. god i love it) while still playing with your friends.
I had one (minor) problem with the game, however, which was performance.. (this may have been due to simply shitty old catalyst drivers) whenever there was text on screen (like item tags) the game would slow up considerably, because the text was highly antialiased. I solved this by turning off item labels for everyhting but magic ranged weapons and magic armor (i was playing an archer).
Seriously, great game though. Up there with Diablo II as one of the great hacknslashers.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree slightly on the Apple-dictates-DRM point. How exactly does iTunes DRM help Apple?
It locks other mp3 players out of playing music bought from the iTunes store. This rocks for Apple (or did, back when anybody gave a shit about anything but the iPod) but I don't think they're going to do any better with the iPod than they already are, so this shouldn't be a concern for them anymore. DRM also gave Apple what it wanted in the first place -- the first serious entry into the online music market. The music publishers were (and still are) extremely paranoid about piracy, and wouldn't allow online music sales without a pretty good guarantee that their IP rights would be safe -- which Apple gave them. So DRM gave Apple entry into the market.
But in the three or four or whatever years since the iTunes music store opened, things have changed. Now there's eMusic and whatnot who don't have nearly the catalog of iTunes, but sell their music DRM-free and more cheaply. By being locked into their DRM by music publisher contracts, Apple is being forced to sell an inferior product for more, something that isn't going to help them maintain their market share. Of course Steve Jobs wants to get rid of DRM, it fucks Apple and makes them look bad. Admittedly, his written rhetoric is appealing directly to the anti-DRM masses instead of telling the bare truth: DRM is hurting Apple's bottom line in the long run. It's somewhat fair to call that insincere, but I still think he and Apple really want to sell DRM-free music.
It seems like there are two dimensions to the 'DRM problem,' and that Apple and the music companies disagree on which of these needs to be changed:
In Jobs' letter (whenever that was) he called for DRM-free music, because he said an open DRM standard wouldn't work (it would be too easily reverse-engineered, since many entities would have access to the code, or whatever).
An open DRM standard is exactly what the music companies want, however, and that's the point of this story. The music companies don't want to give up their (ill-gotten) rights over the music they sell but they want to appear like they're doing something for the consumer, so they argue for open DRM and call Jobs insincere. Ahh, it makes me angry.
.. that the point of the Maxwell's Daemon was to illustrate a hypothetical 'perpetual motion' machine which would generate gradients with no energy input.
In the classical example, the Daemon sits at a gate between two chambers, where both are filled with particles of random velocities. When a slow particle approaches from the left or a fast one from the right, the Daemon keeps the gate shut. When a fast one approaches from the left or a slow from the right, however, the Daemon opens the gate and lets the particle pass, thus passively generating a gradient of slow/fast particles.
As to its 'energy from nothing' nature, it's been shown that the actual switching could occur with zero energy use, but (I believe) the act of resetting the Daemon's velocity measurement device would require some energy.
Long story short, the reason that the idea of a Maxwell's Daemon is important is not because it's a nanomechanical switch, but because it was thought to be an anti-entropic system with no energy use. The actual action that the Daemon was performing is quite irrelevant, and so I take offense at the title of this story. That's all.
And I hear it's a good, operating system, but it has, some stunning, similarities to OS X. Also, the, author of the snippet, uses a few too, many, commas, and comes up, with wonderfully original, sentence, structures.
I think the point of this article was not to make any statements about physical determinism -- free will becomes a rather meaningless concept on the basest philosophical level (who can tell if they have free will?). The real point was finding the dividing line between mental health and mental illness, which is an incredibly contentious subject.
A study I read once compared serotonin levels in prisoners who committed violent crimes versus prisoners who did not, and found a significant difference -- so since these people showed some physical anomaly should they be allowed to plead insanity (essentially saying that they are not responsible for their own actions)?
The truth is that everything comes down to whether you can classify someone as deviant only because they deviate from 'normal' human physiology or 'rational' human behavior. I don't know the answer.
... thus solving the problem once and for all.
But-
ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Seriously though, wouldn't it be great if global warming happened but nuclear winter canceled it out?
Read this great piece from ars. It's so sad that Bell labs and its ilk don't exist anymore.
India not pregnant.
I'm sorry, this comment is ridiculous, I don't know wtf you're talking about.
I think the graphics are quite pretty (the shaders are nice, though the water shader looks a bit dated) compared to the original, but that's not the only improvement.
Linear, my ass. Compared to Diablo II or DS1 this game is most definitely NOT linear. I think there are about twice as many secondary (side) quests as there are main (plot-advancing) quests. You can choose to play it linearly, or you can do all the side-quests and make the game much more interesting. I also very much enjoy how they break up the linearity of the game world - there are many secondary quests that require you to return to parts of the game you visited previously. Very unlike Diablo/DS1.
The greatest improvement, in my opinon, is the multiplayer system. In DS1 multiplayer you couldn't add people to your party, while now you can. This lets you add awesome pets (like the pack mule.. god i love it) while still playing with your friends.
I had one (minor) problem with the game, however, which was performance.. (this may have been due to simply shitty old catalyst drivers) whenever there was text on screen (like item tags) the game would slow up considerably, because the text was highly antialiased. I solved this by turning off item labels for everyhting but magic ranged weapons and magic armor (i was playing an archer).
Seriously, great game though. Up there with Diablo II as one of the great hacknslashers.
Why not .m?
Beneath the crunchy exterior lies a creamy core of dogg^H^H^H^H T-rex nougat!
criticizing the economy? You economic girlie-man!
uh... put down the mouse. FACE!