Yes, from the article "In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers" - and just look how China's political system has benefited.
Which is easy to do because we have the technology to compare the recent history of our China with that of a parallel world where they have no engineers in top political posts.
No wait, my bad. That's only possible in the world where we have engineers in political positions. I guess we'll never know for sure.
I played through Oblivion but I've no idea how you can call that a FPS, most people would put that squarely in the RPG category even though most RPGs have bows and arrows as well as ranged spells.
I think there's room for a little overlap in the categories, myself. RPG means the game has role-playing elements. FPS means it's a first person viewpoint. IMHO, obviously. Granted, "shooter" is probably a bit of a stretch in the case of Oblivion.
When I think FPS I think more like Crysis, Call of Duty, Bioshock or Far Cry 2.
Well, if it helps I've played Crysis (lovely game, but too short and too buggy), Bioshock (loved it) and Far Cry. When I think about FC2, I imagine a scene at Ubisoft:
"Guys, we have a problem. We've got a FPS about diamond smuggling and malaria in Central Africa, and it's awful. This one is going to sink without trace and we don't know what to do to fix it."
"Let's licence Far Cry. Promote it as a sequel and the fans will buy it irrespective"
"You're nuts! Our game has absolutely nothing in common with Far Cry"
"It's got a jungle. What more do you want?"
"Genius!"
It's probably a better game than I give it credit for, but as a Far Cry sequel, it was a major disappointment.
I'd say the essence of an FPS is that it's a high intensity adrenaline rush game that requires good aim and staying on the move, not just good equipment and high level.
And yet in Cysis I spent most of my time in stealth mode evading patrols. Likewise in Far Cry. Bioshock has a couple of mad adrenaline moments, but you can usually play tactically and manage the size of your engagements. I think you're describing a style of play more than a game genre.
I think it's more of a preference, personally. I played Doom and Doom 2 and I'm still playing Fallout and Oblivion.
Of course there are FPS games that appeal to a more adult gamer, that resemble real life where you have to sneak and cover and a few shots will kill you and there's real penalties for dying
That's more or less saying "FPS games are for kids, and the ones adults enjoy don't count". I think you need to work a bit harder to establish your point here.
But the whole "fantasy" FPS games where you dance around each other trying to hit the other guy with the rocket launcher and pocket nukes to get a MU-MU-MU-MULTIKILL and it's all about your mouse twitching skill are things I doubt appeal to many people over 25
I knew there was a reason I stayed away from multiplayer...
Yeah, if you're a corporate buyer with an uneducated userbase, then fair enough. But there's a lot of cases where ClamAV is more than adequate. And I got the impression that the poster was talking personal use.
Do they have on file access scanners now? They didn't use to.
Nope. Which means they don't eat your CPU alive by constantly checking to see if someone, somewhere is opening a file
It does mean you need to exercise a little discipline and scan downloads before you run them, and take some basic precautions with javascript. But I'll take that any day over having some jumped up security program use up half my computing power on scans that I don't need in the first place.
As the saying goes - it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Fallout: New Vegas, on the other hand, is excellent. It's 3D Fallout done right. Great Fallout-style breadcrumb trail of a main quest that leads you through one quest hub after another, damn near every side quest is interesting, stuff you do matters for the ending (how the hell Bethesda screwed that up in F3 I have no idea--it's a voiceover and some stills, FFS!), even the most mundane quest can turn out to be far more than it seemed or take a weird twist, skill specialization is more-or-less restored, etc.
I agree. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote and yet... why do I enjoy playing Fallout 3 so much more than New Vegas? I've played through Fallout 3 half a dozen times by now. New Vegas? I finished the main quest early, and I've not really been able to summon the enthusiasm to play through and chase down some of the alternate paths. I'd like to side with the NCR or the Legion, even just faithfully side with Mr. House... but somehow my enthusiasm for the project evaporates bout the time I get to New Vegas. I don't really understand it.
I think you're right in so far as New Vegas is a better Fallout game. But I think Bethseda must have been doing something right, because I think Fallout 3 is the better game overall.
So long as PJ continues to censor posts she doesn't like the site has limited value
As long as PJ continues to delete flamebait, vulgarity and personal attacks, the site has limited value, to you. And you know what? That's all right. Not everything has to be organised for your convenience.
After all, it's not as though posts get deleted purely for offering a dissenting viewpoint. You'll find a few such attached to any Groklaw topic. So I find myself curious: in what way does PJ's editorial policy limit Groklaw's value to you, personally?
The continual stream of positive stories about filesharing that Slashdot has posted over my decade on the site suggest that a large enough percentage of readers enjoy trading music, films and ebooks that a generalization like "You Slashdotters..." is understandable.
Well, if we discount the prominent and vocal pro-rightsholder contingent, maybe. But yeah, it's understandable, if just a little lazy, and I'm sure we all do it from time to time.
In westlake's case though, it's not enough to project his straw man arguments onto merely the whole of Slashdot; he has to rewrite the opinions of "The Geek", as though every technically minded, mildly obsessive individual from petrolheads to stamp collectors must unarguably hold those exact opinions needed to make westlake's rant of the moment seem justified.
I wouldn't mind so much, but it's always struck me that there's something of the geek in the compulsive way he returns to those same stilted patterns of argument. Which would make him guilty of the very sins he decries on this board, at least to the extent that his logic holds up in the first place.
It never ceases to amaze the geek that the government actually gives a damn about the $200 to $300 million dollar investment in a major theatrical film
Ah, good old westlake. Taking millions of slashdotters, rolling them into one ponderous abstraction and then putting words in their mouth... that just never grows old for you, does it?
At least you've stopped capitalising the words, as if The Geek was some improbably enhanced superhero, and you his kid sidekick. I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies.
Yes, I do insist on viewing the slippery slope fallacy by its defining characteristics
Fair enough, I suppose. The point here is that while a slippery slope fallacy may exist, I don't think you can really argue that the poster was the phrase in that way.
Is there a better example of the slippery slope associated with any censorship?
That doesn't sound to me like a prediction of the future. That sounds like a statement of risk. Just because he used the term, that doesn't imply he was using it in the fallacious sense, you know?
By all means, you can speak out. Just don't expect to convince me by painting as bleak picture as you can conceive of. I don't actually think the UK will actually block porn by default, so this is more of an exercise in critically evaluating arguments.
Well. I don't have high hopes that I'll convince you at all. And from the response from UK ISPs (who share many of the concerns raised here, it seems) it doesn't look like the scheme will go ahead. That said, surely you'll concede there is a risk implicit in any degree of governmental censorship of the Internet? Once the measure is in place for one form of content, it becomes easier to add in others. And even if you trust the current government, you also need to trust all future ones as well.
Basically, I think it's a bad idea. And very much constitutes a slippery slope in the "thin end of the wedge" sense.
And the "slippery slope" argument is an example of this: there is an inference drawn ("they intend to ban this specific thing that is widely considered harmful" implies "they intend to ban many other things that are not widely considered harmful"), and that inference is unsafe.
Well if you're claiming knowledge of the future, that's always going to be unsafe. But I think it's fair "there is a danger here that this measure may be expanded beyond its relatively innocuous beginnings". Look at it as a logical proposition and yeah, it's rubbish. Look at it as a pattern of human behaviour and it's useful. Let's consider it in the useful way, shall we?
Yes, really it is. Nazism was an exceptional event, not the rule as you appear to believe
I have no idea where you got that from,
Or consider speed cameras. Opponents were quick to claim that they represent a slippery slope to a dystopian nightmare where all cars will be fitted with tracking devices and orbital lasers will vaporize anyone who violates any traffic law. (I exaggerate slightly.)
You don't say.
Let's look at smoking. When smoking was banned from public transport (in the UK at any rate) smokers were quick to point out that this would likely lead to banning tobacco use in the workplace nd in pubs and restaurants. And they were right. I gave up years ago, and I think the world is probably a better place for the legislation - but a slippery slope nevertheless. Look at the DMCA: legislation intended to stop people telling others how to rip CDs has been used to silence corporate criticism and to allow printer ink companies to sue people making cheap knock-offs. Slippery slopes are everywhere: It's something people do. Fascist dictators are not required.
In the same way, there is simply no reason to assume that censorship of porn sites will lead to censorship of anything else.
On the other hand, neither is there any reason to assume that the measure won't be abused. So why not stop trying to forecast the future and talk about the
dangers implicit in such a move? Seems rational to me.
Particularly given that this whole story is a made-up lie that is not real and bears no relation to any policy held by the British government. But that never stopped Slashdot's paranoid libertarians from doing their best Chicken Little impression.
A cabinet member is having discussions with ISPs about some form of "opt-in" mechanism for viewing porn. It hasn't reached the level of policy yet, and may never do so, and in any event we won't know for sure what if any level of coercion lies behind the measure until such time as a formal announcement is made.
Doesn't mean we can't discuss the possibilities and point out the possible dangers.
So, the question is, can we legitimately argue that coming for communists likely implies that we will then come for trade unionists? Or that that would subsequently imply they would come for the Jews? I know of many people who hate trade unions, but have absolutely no problem with the Jews
You asked for examples of a slippery slope; I provided one off the top of my head. I'm not presenting Pastor Niemöller's dictum as a syllogism here. It's just am example of a pattern of human behaviour.
I suppose if you insist on viewing the proposition as one of logical implication, then yes, it would be a fallacy, because the arguement would effectively become "any time anyone does a bad thing, it means they're going to do a badder thing next" and I doubt that accords with most people's experience of the world.
That said, I genuinely believe you're the only person using the term in that way. It's a behaviour pattern, maybe an assertion of intent in this case.But unless I didn't read far enough back up the thread, I don't think anyone is saying expanded censorship follows as a logical necessity of restricting Internet porn. That doesn't mean it isn't a valid concern, however.
Either way, this is not a typical slippery slope involved here
It was an archetypal slippery slope. Start by disregarding the civil rights of one small and unpopular minority, and when you get away with that one, move on to larger and less unpopular one. Repeat until political aims are met. I think the difficulty here lies in your insistence in viewing the term as presenting a logical argument.
You say that there is pressure to expand the scope of censorship. That is sometimes true, but always there is pressure to reduce it, or at least not to increase it (especially since the fall of Nazism), so we usually end up with very little censorship
I don't disagree with that, particularly. On the other hand you can't say "don't bother opposing Proposition X because people will oppose Proposition X and it all balances out". Because, of course, if everyone does as you suggest, then there will be no resistance to Proposition X and the measure will pass unopposed. So what you say may be true, but I don't think tells us very much about the intentions behind this case, or the dangers involved.
There aren't a lot of examples of a "successful" slippery slope because it is a fallacy
Well... no, it isn't. A fallacy means that there's an inference drawn (x implies y) where the inference is generally understood to be unsafe. As an example, the ad hominem fallacy. "You are an Harry Potter fan, therefore your opinions on logic are worthless". Even if you were an afficonado of J.K.Rowling (and I have no reason to believe this to be true) it has precious little bearing on your understanding of logic, so the inference is unsound.
Of course, as pointed out elsewhere, it's possible that you really do know nothing of logic, so the proposition could be true regardless of your literary preferences. What it boils down to is that the only thing we can conclude from a fallacious argument is that there is nothing we can safely conclude from that argument.
There aren't a lot of examples of a "successful" slippery slope
All that said, I don't think the slippery slope is as uncommon as you suggest. I believe it to be a fairly well established as a pattern of human interaction. At the risk of being "godwined":
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
~ Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
Now you can argue that a slippery slope is not intended here. You might even be right,
But based on experience, if the measure succeeds, there will be a lot of pressure to
expand the scope the censorship.
Looked at another way, some slopes are designed to be slippery. Others are manufactured after the fact
with axle grease and hydraulic jacks. It's the second case I'm more concerned about.
Hey.. Not cherry picking at all! Must be my sense of humour I guess.
Ah, sorry in which case. It's difficult to tell sometimes:) Doubly so given the po-faced delivery of some of the trolls around here. I mean we've had "it's only so VOIP will work" and we've had "it's just to stop bittorrent". Now the emerging theme seems to be "just bend down and grab your ankles; you'll love it, really". I just assumed you were running with that theme. My mistake.
Sigh, I thought I was being funny and creative but obviously not. I have worked in telecoms for too long.
Ahhhh! Don't all of you YEARN for the past? Of course you do!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you go back far enough, dinosaurs walked the earth and human beings hadn't even evolved yet.
It's always possible to cherry pick a point in time where things were worse than they are now. That doesn't imply
that every change going forward is necessarily for the better.
Multiplayer adds so much extra play time that it's some times hard to pick up a single player game when I know I'm buying something I will only play for 1/5th of what I would be playing something with it
Fair enough. I don't think anyone's disputing that muliplayer is a big draw to a lot of people. The point here is that there is also a large number of people who
don't much care for multiplayer gamimg. For these people lack of a single player game is a show-stopper.
EA are basically announcing their intention to ignore a sizeable market segment. I can't see that as being a healthy sign, even in a company as big as EA.
Thank God for that. Be sure to update us when you next buy a game.
The point is, trollface, that a company already infamous for churning out tired, low-quality sequels is adopting a policy aimed at further alienating a sizable portion of the market.
They're acting like they have enough of a grip on the marketplace to dictate trends, but I very much doubt that is the case. There are too many other game developers out there
I think that if we had a practical "electronic cash" system that was reasonably anonymous with effectively no per-transaction cost we would see the end of a lot of advertising on the net.
It'll just become another revenue stream. We'll see a lot more pay-for-access websites that also advertise at you, and also track you.
Think of subscription TV channels. In principle, these should be advert-free since the viewer has already funded the channel. In practice, I don't know a single one that doesn't also show adverts.
I admire your optimism, but I can't say I share it.
I pretty much agree with all of that, apart from one detail
1% idea. 48% hard work, and 51% dumb luck. What made Google any better than Yahoo, Altavista, Ask Jeeves, Metacrawler, etc, etc, etc. Dumb luck. They had a silly name, slightly less silly than Yahoooooooooo!, slightly less snobbish than asking your butler, slightly less creepy than a 10000 legged spider. Sorry, I couldn't think of anything for Altavista.
Nah. The reason that Google won out over Yahoo, AltaVista and the rest of them is that they didn't adulterate their search, presenting sponsored links as genuine results, and they didn't clutter the interface with a ads and "portal" crap that most of their userbase didn't care less about. Go to Yahoo now, and you've got to search to find the search box. That's like going into a fish shop, and finding nothing but greeting cards on display.
Granted, there was an element of luck in the viral buzz that lifted Google to the level where it could compete with Yahoo and AltaVista, but luck had nothing to do with what made it better.
I appreciated the longer version, but I'll reply to the condensed one:)
Basically, I think the usefulness of copyright is in protecting creators from other "creators" who would try to resell someone else's creation, in some form or another.
I tend to agree. Copyright does have some useful functions, and it would be useful if we could retain those without keeping the massive corporate abuse we see today. I'm not sure that's possible, and if not, I'd sooner junk copyright than keep the abuse. But that's not really the point, either.
The big problem is that human beings have different behaviour patterns for tangible, material property to the ones they display when dealing with information. With physical possessions we have a clear territorial response. With information however, our instinct seems to be to disseminate the data.
The result of this is that people fundamentally want to share information. The "rights holder" cartels would like to social engineer this out of us, but they've been trying for thirty or so years now, and it isn't happening.
As a result, the Internet is going to bring the public, especially the youngsters, increasingly into conflict with the cartels, and with copyright. Eventually, something's going to have to give, and it won't be human nature. It may take thiry years, long enough for a generation of kids who grew up file-sharing to become legislators, but eventually copyright as we know it is going to have to go.
Which is why I say the post-copyright world is coming. The important question how will we fund large creative projects in such a world. I don't know of any easy answers.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is easy to do because we have the technology to compare the recent history of our China with that of a parallel world where they have no engineers in top political posts.
No wait, my bad. That's only possible in the world where we have engineers in political positions. I guess we'll never know for sure.
I think there's room for a little overlap in the categories, myself. RPG means the game has role-playing elements. FPS means it's a first person viewpoint. IMHO, obviously. Granted, "shooter" is probably a bit of a stretch in the case of Oblivion.
Well, if it helps I've played Crysis (lovely game, but too short and too buggy), Bioshock (loved it) and Far Cry. When I think about FC2, I imagine a scene at Ubisoft:
It's probably a better game than I give it credit for, but as a Far Cry sequel, it was a major disappointment.
And yet in Cysis I spent most of my time in stealth mode evading patrols. Likewise in Far Cry. Bioshock has a couple of mad adrenaline moments, but you can usually play tactically and manage the size of your engagements. I think you're describing a style of play more than a game genre.
I think it's more of a preference, personally. I played Doom and Doom 2 and I'm still playing Fallout and Oblivion.
That's more or less saying "FPS games are for kids, and the ones adults enjoy don't count". I think you need to work a bit harder to establish your point here.
I knew there was a reason I stayed away from multiplayer ...
It's a fair point. ClamAV isn't a universal solution, certainly.
Yeah, if you're a corporate buyer with an uneducated userbase, then fair enough. But there's a lot of cases where ClamAV is more than adequate. And I got the impression that the poster was talking personal use.
Nope. Which means they don't eat your CPU alive by constantly checking to see if someone, somewhere is opening a file
It does mean you need to exercise a little discipline and scan downloads before you run them, and take some basic precautions with javascript. But I'll take that any day over having some jumped up security program use up half my computing power on scans that I don't need in the first place.
As the saying goes - it's not a bug, it's a feature.
ClamAV? ClamWin? Works for me :)
I agree. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote and yet ... why do I enjoy playing Fallout 3 so much more than New Vegas? I've played through Fallout 3 half a dozen times by now. New Vegas? I finished the main quest early, and I've not really been able to summon the enthusiasm to play through and chase down some of the alternate paths. I'd like to side with the NCR or the Legion, even just faithfully side with Mr. House ... but somehow my enthusiasm for the project evaporates bout the time I get to New Vegas. I don't really understand it.
I think you're right in so far as New Vegas is a better Fallout game. But I think Bethseda must have been doing something right, because I think Fallout 3 is the better game overall.
As long as PJ continues to delete flamebait, vulgarity and personal attacks, the site has limited value, to you. And you know what? That's all right. Not everything has to be organised for your convenience.
After all, it's not as though posts get deleted purely for offering a dissenting viewpoint. You'll find a few such attached to any Groklaw topic. So I find myself curious: in what way does PJ's editorial policy limit Groklaw's value to you, personally?
Well, if we discount the prominent and vocal pro-rightsholder contingent, maybe. But yeah, it's understandable, if just a little lazy, and I'm sure we all do it from time to time.
In westlake's case though, it's not enough to project his straw man arguments onto merely the whole of Slashdot; he has to rewrite the opinions of "The Geek", as though every technically minded, mildly obsessive individual from petrolheads to stamp collectors must unarguably hold those exact opinions needed to make westlake's rant of the moment seem justified.
I wouldn't mind so much, but it's always struck me that there's something of the geek in the compulsive way he returns to those same stilted patterns of argument. Which would make him guilty of the very sins he decries on this board, at least to the extent that his logic holds up in the first place.
Ah, good old westlake. Taking millions of slashdotters, rolling them into one ponderous abstraction and then putting words in their mouth ... that just never grows old for you, does it?
At least you've stopped capitalising the words, as if The Geek was some improbably enhanced superhero, and you his kid sidekick. I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies.
A lack which hopefully will be rectified by the time the complaint is heard by the German competition authorities.
Bizarre as it may seem, I don't think the OSI are in any way obliged to submit their legal arguments to Slashdot in advance of a hearing.
Fair enough, I suppose. The point here is that while a slippery slope fallacy may exist, I don't think you can really argue that the poster was the phrase in that way.
That doesn't sound to me like a prediction of the future. That sounds like a statement of risk. Just because he used the term, that doesn't imply he was using it in the fallacious sense, you know?
Well. I don't have high hopes that I'll convince you at all. And from the response from UK ISPs (who share many of the concerns raised here, it seems) it doesn't look like the scheme will go ahead. That said, surely you'll concede there is a risk implicit in any degree of governmental censorship of the Internet? Once the measure is in place for one form of content, it becomes easier to add in others. And even if you trust the current government, you also need to trust all future ones as well.
Basically, I think it's a bad idea. And very much constitutes a slippery slope in the "thin end of the wedge" sense.
Well if you're claiming knowledge of the future, that's always going to be unsafe. But I think it's fair "there is a danger here that this measure may be expanded beyond its relatively innocuous beginnings". Look at it as a logical proposition and yeah, it's rubbish. Look at it as a pattern of human behaviour and it's useful. Let's consider it in the useful way, shall we?
I have no idea where you got that from,
You don't say.
Let's look at smoking. When smoking was banned from public transport (in the UK at any rate) smokers were quick to point out that this would likely lead to banning tobacco use in the workplace nd in pubs and restaurants. And they were right. I gave up years ago, and I think the world is probably a better place for the legislation - but a slippery slope nevertheless. Look at the DMCA: legislation intended to stop people telling others how to rip CDs has been used to silence corporate criticism and to allow printer ink companies to sue people making cheap knock-offs. Slippery slopes are everywhere: It's something people do. Fascist dictators are not required.
On the other hand, neither is there any reason to assume that the measure won't be abused. So why not stop trying to forecast the future and talk about the dangers implicit in such a move? Seems rational to me.
A cabinet member is having discussions with ISPs about some form of "opt-in" mechanism for viewing porn. It hasn't reached the level of policy yet, and may never do so, and in any event we won't know for sure what if any level of coercion lies behind the measure until such time as a formal announcement is made.
Doesn't mean we can't discuss the possibilities and point out the possible dangers.
You asked for examples of a slippery slope; I provided one off the top of my head. I'm not presenting Pastor Niemöller's dictum as a syllogism here. It's just am example of a pattern of human behaviour.
I suppose if you insist on viewing the proposition as one of logical implication, then yes, it would be a fallacy, because the arguement would effectively become "any time anyone does a bad thing, it means they're going to do a badder thing next" and I doubt that accords with most people's experience of the world.
That said, I genuinely believe you're the only person using the term in that way. It's a behaviour pattern, maybe an assertion of intent in this case.But unless I didn't read far enough back up the thread, I don't think anyone is saying expanded censorship follows as a logical necessity of restricting Internet porn. That doesn't mean it isn't a valid concern, however.
It was an archetypal slippery slope. Start by disregarding the civil rights of one small and unpopular minority, and when you get away with that one, move on to larger and less unpopular one. Repeat until political aims are met. I think the difficulty here lies in your insistence in viewing the term as presenting a logical argument.
I don't disagree with that, particularly. On the other hand you can't say "don't bother opposing Proposition X because people will oppose Proposition X and it all balances out". Because, of course, if everyone does as you suggest, then there will be no resistance to Proposition X and the measure will pass unopposed. So what you say may be true, but I don't think tells us very much about the intentions behind this case, or the dangers involved.
Well ... no, it isn't. A fallacy means that there's an inference drawn (x implies y) where the inference is generally understood to be unsafe. As an example, the ad hominem fallacy. "You are an Harry Potter fan, therefore your opinions on logic are worthless". Even if you were an afficonado of J.K.Rowling (and I have no reason to believe this to be true) it has precious little bearing on your understanding of logic, so the inference is unsound.
Of course, as pointed out elsewhere, it's possible that you really do know nothing of logic, so the proposition could be true regardless of your literary preferences. What it boils down to is that the only thing we can conclude from a fallacious argument is that there is nothing we can safely conclude from that argument.
All that said, I don't think the slippery slope is as uncommon as you suggest. I believe it to be a fairly well established as a pattern of human interaction. At the risk of being "godwined":
Now you can argue that a slippery slope is not intended here. You might even be right, But based on experience, if the measure succeeds, there will be a lot of pressure to expand the scope the censorship.
Looked at another way, some slopes are designed to be slippery. Others are manufactured after the fact with axle grease and hydraulic jacks. It's the second case I'm more concerned about.
Ah, sorry in which case. It's difficult to tell sometimes :) Doubly so given the po-faced delivery of some of the trolls around here. I mean we've had "it's only so VOIP will work" and we've had "it's just to stop bittorrent". Now the emerging theme seems to be "just bend down and grab your ankles; you'll love it, really". I just assumed you were running with that theme. My mistake.
Yeah, I know the feeling :)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you go back far enough, dinosaurs walked the earth and human beings hadn't even evolved yet.
It's always possible to cherry pick a point in time where things were worse than they are now. That doesn't imply that every change going forward is necessarily for the better.
http://xkcd.com/350/
Fair enough. I don't think anyone's disputing that muliplayer is a big draw to a lot of people. The point here is that there is also a large number of people who don't much care for multiplayer gamimg. For these people lack of a single player game is a show-stopper.
EA are basically announcing their intention to ignore a sizeable market segment. I can't see that as being a healthy sign, even in a company as big as EA.
The point is, trollface, that a company already infamous for churning out tired, low-quality sequels is adopting a policy aimed at further alienating a sizable portion of the market.
They're acting like they have enough of a grip on the marketplace to dictate trends, but I very much doubt that is the case. There are too many other game developers out there
It's cool. I don't play multiplayer as a rule, so unless a game has a decent single player mode, I'm not going to buy it.
Of course, it's a long time since EA produced anything I wanted to play in the first place, so it's not a big deal.
EA can do as they please. It's not going to affect me :)
It'll just become another revenue stream. We'll see a lot more pay-for-access websites that also advertise at you, and also track you.
Think of subscription TV channels. In principle, these should be advert-free since the viewer has already funded the channel. In practice, I don't know a single one that doesn't also show adverts.
I admire your optimism, but I can't say I share it.
I pretty much agree with all of that, apart from one detail
Nah. The reason that Google won out over Yahoo, AltaVista and the rest of them is that they didn't adulterate their search, presenting sponsored links as genuine results, and they didn't clutter the interface with a ads and "portal" crap that most of their userbase didn't care less about. Go to Yahoo now, and you've got to search to find the search box. That's like going into a fish shop, and finding nothing but greeting cards on display.
Granted, there was an element of luck in the viral buzz that lifted Google to the level where it could compete with Yahoo and AltaVista, but luck had nothing to do with what made it better.
I appreciated the longer version, but I'll reply to the condensed one :)
I tend to agree. Copyright does have some useful functions, and it would be useful if we could retain those without keeping the massive corporate abuse we see today. I'm not sure that's possible, and if not, I'd sooner junk copyright than keep the abuse. But that's not really the point, either.
The big problem is that human beings have different behaviour patterns for tangible, material property to the ones they display when dealing with information. With physical possessions we have a clear territorial response. With information however, our instinct seems to be to disseminate the data.
The result of this is that people fundamentally want to share information. The "rights holder" cartels would like to social engineer this out of us, but they've been trying for thirty or so years now, and it isn't happening.
As a result, the Internet is going to bring the public, especially the youngsters, increasingly into conflict with the cartels, and with copyright. Eventually, something's going to have to give, and it won't be human nature. It may take thiry years, long enough for a generation of kids who grew up file-sharing to become legislators, but eventually copyright as we know it is going to have to go.
Which is why I say the post-copyright world is coming. The important question how will we fund large creative projects in such a world. I don't know of any easy answers.