Especially if it's the people who play Halo 2. I'm in that group myself, and I know I couldn't contribute to curing cancer. Thousands of person hours is only useful if it's the right people.
Why do you make that assumption? My phone is a great phone. I've never seen a phone that I like better as a phone. It also happens to be a computer, a camera, an MP3 player, and a game player. Is it great at all those things? No, but that's OK because it's primarily a phone. It does that very very well, and it does all those other things well enough and for not much money. What's the problem? Now you may not want it and that's fine, but don't assume that just because it does more than one thing means it doesn't do any of them well.
I disagree.:-) You specifically mentioned the Mature rating in your original post. The controversy over Hot Coffee came from upgrading (downgrading?) the rating from M to AO. So which one are you talking about? In either case, I can't imagine a stable situation without any form of ratings (which might or might not be censorship). What's the (practical) alternative that you favor?
I'm not worried about it. If such a law were enforced, I think the outcry would force the politicians to revoke it. Most people don't care if they can back up their DVDs, but they probably care whether they're allowed to send email without putting DRM on it. That's something that actually makes normal people's lives more difficult every day, and offends them to boot. Plus there's no way it would stand up in court. Despite all the hype and increased conservatism (which is very real), the Supreme Court does still make decisions that protect the Constitution. That presumes that the law would ever be passed, which I doubt to begin with.
The problem is, it would end up like buying other things that require ID. People will look at you, and they'll judge you if they see you buying an M rated videogame. You decide not to buy it because you'd rather not have to show your ID and admit to buying a game that the community looks down on.
I'm not sure I buy this argument. I don't get carded trying to buy or rent an R movie, and if that were the normal practice I don't think anyone would think twice at seeing someone getting out their driver's licence at the Best Buy counter. Same for games - if everyone buying an M game were carded, it wouldn't be a big deal. My 2 cents anyway.
I do think the rating system is working fairly well, except that I think there should be laws enforcing those ratings.
Good luck getting such a law past the 1st Amendment. Nobody has succeeded so far. Actually I take that back, I don't want to wish you luck in any such endeavor.:-)
You really think mainstream stores would stop carrying titles like Halo, DOA, Hitman, etc (I think those are all M)? Why, they like throwing away money? People like buying them, so the stores will stock them. They still carry rated R movies, don't they?
That's not civil disobedience. CD would be if you illegally obtained the game in a manner that would likely lead to your getting caught and arrested or sued. Then you would fight the action in court or simply let your incarceration stand as a protest against the law. Seeking to get what you want illegally without the possibility of getting caught is not IMO civil disobedience. It's also questionable whether it would accomplish your aim, since it's unlikely the publisher would conclude that their games are being pirated because stores won't sell M games to underage kids. In other words, it wouldn't send the intended message to the "bad guys".
Wikipedia claims (without a specific reference) that PS2 leads XBox by about 4 to 1. Maybe they're wrong, but I doubt they're so wrong that XBox is even close to PS2, and everything I've ever read indicates that PS2 is the dominant market leader.
You're not necessarily asking the right question, though. It might be possible to make a system that makes it not worthwhile to spam, even if it's not possible to make one that's impossible to spam. In other words, a system that can be spammed, but requiring so much effort or expense as to make it not economically feasible. Is that possible? I don't know, but I don't think the answer is obvious.
You call that a disaster? What about that Chinese dam failure in the 1960s? OK, I'll go look for a reference... so it was the Henan Province dams, 1975. Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, millions or tens of millions affected in one way or another, whether made homeless or without fresh water, etc. Kept secret by the Chinese government for something like 20 years.
Perhaps not so amazing. If I'm not mistaken, the Chernobyl disaster occurred because the design was set up (graphite-moderated rather than water-moderated) to make it easier to produce weapons-grade material. Presumably the designers knew of the risk involved in a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) with this design and were instructed to do it that way anyway in order to get the fissile material desired. This differs from the other accidents where a mistake, rather than a concious decision, resulted in failure.
I would say the time has come to ditch the question mark. I think we can probably figure out that it's just a headline and not the editor's position. They don't need to put a question mark on the end to maintain editorial neutrality.
Slashdot Mirror
Especially if it's the people who play Halo 2. I'm in that group myself, and I know I couldn't contribute to curing cancer. Thousands of person hours is only useful if it's the right people.
Why do you make that assumption? My phone is a great phone. I've never seen a phone that I like better as a phone. It also happens to be a computer, a camera, an MP3 player, and a game player. Is it great at all those things? No, but that's OK because it's primarily a phone. It does that very very well, and it does all those other things well enough and for not much money. What's the problem? Now you may not want it and that's fine, but don't assume that just because it does more than one thing means it doesn't do any of them well.
A) Reference?
B) How come my ducts are sealed with it?
I'm not worried about it. If such a law were enforced, I think the outcry would force the politicians to revoke it. Most people don't care if they can back up their DVDs, but they probably care whether they're allowed to send email without putting DRM on it. That's something that actually makes normal people's lives more difficult every day, and offends them to boot. Plus there's no way it would stand up in court. Despite all the hype and increased conservatism (which is very real), the Supreme Court does still make decisions that protect the Constitution. That presumes that the law would ever be passed, which I doubt to begin with.
I think he's talking about activities permitted by copyright law, but forbidden by DRM.
You really think mainstream stores would stop carrying titles like Halo, DOA, Hitman, etc (I think those are all M)? Why, they like throwing away money? People like buying them, so the stores will stock them. They still carry rated R movies, don't they?
That's not civil disobedience. CD would be if you illegally obtained the game in a manner that would likely lead to your getting caught and arrested or sued. Then you would fight the action in court or simply let your incarceration stand as a protest against the law. Seeking to get what you want illegally without the possibility of getting caught is not IMO civil disobedience. It's also questionable whether it would accomplish your aim, since it's unlikely the publisher would conclude that their games are being pirated because stores won't sell M games to underage kids. In other words, it wouldn't send the intended message to the "bad guys".
Wikipedia claims (without a specific reference) that PS2 leads XBox by about 4 to 1. Maybe they're wrong, but I doubt they're so wrong that XBox is even close to PS2, and everything I've ever read indicates that PS2 is the dominant market leader.
i de_shipped_figures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#World_w
You're not necessarily asking the right question, though. It might be possible to make a system that makes it not worthwhile to spam, even if it's not possible to make one that's impossible to spam. In other words, a system that can be spammed, but requiring so much effort or expense as to make it not economically feasible. Is that possible? I don't know, but I don't think the answer is obvious.
Nicely done. :-)
I don't really think six people dying puts that on the top ten engineering disasters list.
You call that a disaster? What about that Chinese dam failure in the 1960s? OK, I'll go look for a reference... so it was the Henan Province dams, 1975. Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, millions or tens of millions affected in one way or another, whether made homeless or without fresh water, etc. Kept secret by the Chinese government for something like 20 years.
t umbling.htmlS P=content&ContentID=13831
http://www.irn.org/basics/ard/index.php?id=050915
http://www.probeinternational.org/tgp/index.cfm?D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan
How is the car an engineering disaster? How would it be engineered to be substantially safer?
Perhaps not so amazing. If I'm not mistaken, the Chernobyl disaster occurred because the design was set up (graphite-moderated rather than water-moderated) to make it easier to produce weapons-grade material. Presumably the designers knew of the risk involved in a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) with this design and were instructed to do it that way anyway in order to get the fissile material desired. This differs from the other accidents where a mistake, rather than a concious decision, resulted in failure.
I would say the time has come to ditch the question mark. I think we can probably figure out that it's just a headline and not the editor's position. They don't need to put a question mark on the end to maintain editorial neutrality.
So there's no possibility of a bug whose cost to fix is so high that it doesn't justify the benefit?