Game companies doesn't necessarily want to create more games, they want money. If they can get that by forcing people to pay more for less by limiting competition in the field, then forming an alliance like this is a good way to do it.
I don't know where you get better value for your entertainment dollar than in a PC or video game.
You could begin with Half-Life and continue on through its sequels, spending maybe $60 for the lot, retail boxed. $1 an hour or less on game play before you even begin with multiplayer, mods and total conversions.
But the competition at this level is always going to be limited.
You need a good idea.
You need a game engine and all the tools needed to use it effectively.
You need writers who can script 100 hours of dialog and action. You need the guy who can create the formulas and illusions that the player sees as an artificial intelligence. The open, infinite world of the game.
You need motion capture, character animators, effects animators. Background artists, model builders. Voice actors. Foley artists. Composers. Musicians.
You need production designers, art designers, who can think in terms of both levels and stage sets - what an environment should look like, feel like, and how it should advance the game. Do it right and you get Rapture.
You need someone who can pull all this together, finance the project, and keep everything on track.
Because the General Public License (GPL) is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can't give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licenses. I don't get warm and fuzzy feelings reading this and I think that's the idea...
Because never in all its history has a geek's interpretation of the GPL ignited a flamewar on Slashdot
there is a HUGE difference between a 17 year old playing a violent video game and an 18 year old playing the same violent video game...
The distinction isn't between who gets to play the game but who gets to buy the game - anyone who has ever been maneuvered into buying a keg for his kid brother knows that much.
But, just for laughs, let's pretend that you have something serious to say here.
As a practical matter, you have to draw the line somewhere.
The alternative is "anything goes" or intense and intrusive physical and psychological testing.
Licensing the video game player, much as you license the student pilot. The aero-geek who still has to wait out clock and calendar until he reaches that magic age when he can solo.
Doom was cited as a supposed "cause" of Columbine.
Doom defined the first person shooter.
The game play was intense and - in a loose sense - "addictive."
It let you move in a plausible pseudo-3D environment. You could modify the game, introducing your own
environments, characters and weapons.
What Doom did not have was a story or narrative that "framed" the action in anything but the most minimal sense. You goal is to shoot everything that moves.
The tactical or stealth shooter like S.W.A.T or Rogue Spear introduced concepts like rules of engagement, collateral damage. You couldn't go rogue and win.
There were and are mods for Doom based on schools and other real-world settings. You could - however crudely - caricature real people. This is potentially dangerous ground and I think the gamer-geek should admit that much.
If Microsoft tried this 10 to 15 years ago, they might have gotten away with it as an original idea.
Surface doesn't have to be an "original" idea, whatever that means, it only has to be the better idea, the practical implementation of the idea. Surface is software that works with the simplest and most reliable of off-the-shelf hardware. It can read tokens printed or stamped into objects like game pieces. It might be able do biometric IDs.
Don't you think that EA et al. would like the politicians to stop telling their potential customers that their products will turn their children into mindless killers?
Quickly, now.
Name one - just one - developer whose name doesn't begin with the letter R that makes headlines for the violence of its video games. Whose PR trumpets the casts the player in the role of the psycho killer. The use of the Wii controller to mime torture porn kills. F.E.A.R, The Orange Box, Bioshock. These games and a hundred others enter the market to critical and popular acclaim and nary a whisper of complaint. You take Rockstar out of the picture and most of the problems disappear.
To take an example from television - and from Fox, of all networks: "The Sarah Conner Chronicles" has all the patented shock and thrills of the Terminator franchise. In a sense, the story begins with a shootout in a high school classroom. But there is a lot of fun to be had here too. You get to save Summer Glau by tossing her out of a twelve-story window. Fun is something we haven't seen much of in sci-fi since Battlestar Galactica turned so bleak.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department? It's perfectly alright for a Holocaust Denier to give a speech at memorial to Nazi genocide victims?
congrats on the +5 mod up and another proof of Godwin's Law.
The catholic church is desperate to hold on to its constituency and one of the ways to do that is to harden their stance on issues like these. You see, the vast majority of catholics in the world are poor, uneducated people for whom religion is a refuge from the usually harsh reality of existence.
If this is true, then the Catholic faith is in no more danger than the Islamic, or the Protestant Evangelical.
Which is to say that it is in no danger at all.
The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians, and is the largest organized body of any world religion. According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, the Catholic Church's worldwide recorded membership at the end of 2005 was 1,114,966,000, approximately one-sixth of the world's population.Roman Catholic Church
The geek assumes that because his world is secular, the rest of the world is following the same path.
Why the hell should any science department give a rat's ass what any religious leader has to say?
Because it might want to acknowledge one of the roots of Western civilization and an institution that has provided intellectual and moral leadership for over 2,000 years?
Because at a time when the secular culture of the West has become deeply suspect elsewhere it might make more sense to be building bridges than tearing them down?
Curious how this only affects unlocked iPhones. Just who is that to the benefit of?
That is a clever spin to put on a story whose moral is that you should download software only from sources you trust. The unknown hacker who unblocked your phone isn't always your friend-in-need.
Somewhat off-topic, but has it occurred to anyone here that services like Steam and XBox Live! are the models for trusted repositories of Windows software? That the "Linux advantage" of Click-And-Run could be very short-lived?
Hell, when the first smallpox vaccine was invented, there were very similair panics to what we see today over genetic engineering.
The first written account of variolation describes a Buddhist nun practicing around 1022 to 1063 AD. She would grind up scabs taken from a person infected with smallpox into a powder, and then blow it into the nostrils of a non-immune person. By the 1700's, this method of variolation was common practice in China, India, and Turkey. In the late 1700's European physicians used this and other methods of variolation, but reported "devastating" results in some cases. Overall, 2% to 3% of people who were variolated died of smallpox, but this practice decreased the total number of smallpox fatalities by 10-fold.The History of Smallpox
It is a bit of a strtch to call the smallpox vaccine an "invention."
Jenner simply observed that those who survived the less dangerous cowpox were immune to smallpox. His test subject was an eight year old boy. The ethics and methodology of his experiment were questionable even in 1796.
Throughout the nineteenth century you could have a perfectly rational fear of vaccination.
There was no mature germ theory of disease before the 1860s. Late Germ Theory of DiseaseThere was no federal regulation of vaccination before 1902:
The Biologics Control Act was passed in the United States on July 1, 1902 after two incidents involving the deaths of children caused by contaminated vaccines. The first involved The horse named Jim whose tetanus contaminated serum was used to produce a diphtheria antitoxin which caused the deaths of thirteen children in St. Louis, Missouri. The second involved contaminated smallpox vaccine which killed nine children in Camden, New Jersey. Both incidents were attributed to failure of proper procedures and testing by local officials.Biologics Control Act
Elephant's Dream was a huge technical achievement, but the final work was an abject failure as a film
If you want to understand the difference between a tech demo and a movie - and how the evolution of a story teaches you mastery of your craft - you need look no farther than this: Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1 [Blu-Ray $20]
It makes GIMP's UI look like it was designed by Apple.
now that hurts.
if you are developing a open source tool for artists - particularly in a market where the proprietary alternatives are deeply entrenched - why aren't you working with artists from day one to get the UI right?
Religion used to come all bundled together in a single package in the form of the Roman Catholic Church. Now we have the King James version of the bible, and also the Church of England as a result of the un-bundling process. Sometimes you need force to ensure that the un-bundling happens!
The Church of England was uncoupled from Rome. But burnt its own Dissenters.
And in 2008 which would you say was the healthier institution, the more influential world-wide?
With a half-zillion free email providers out there, blocking a kid's email address will last all of two minutes. All they have to do is create an alias at Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
assuming that parental control software doesn't intercept the creation of a new mail account or access to a social web site through anything other than an authorized account.
I'd just go with the 5th ammendment defense - I don't have to tell you things that could incriminate me.
"Compelled" in its historical context meant testimony given under torture.
The question then becomes how far the courts are willing to stretch the meaning the privilege when you are asked to unlock a file.
The privilege against self-incrimination is just that - a privilege - and a privilege not unlike that which protects communications with your lawyer. It is not a "defense" to any charge, simply a barrier to the collection and use of a particular class of evidence.
Meanwhile, everything on your drives, your networks, may be exposed to forensic analysis.
You could be forced under a offer of immunity to expose that kiddie porn stash, if the feds want the source more than they want you.
Your neighbors are not likely to be so forgiving, if the story comes out in open court.
Quit doing things that make other people want to knock our buildings down.
You destroy what you cannot build.
The two colossi must once have been a truly awesome sight, visible for miles, with copper masks for faces and copper-covered hands. Vairocana's robes were painted red and Sakyamuni's blue. These towering, transcendental images were key symbols in the rise of Mahayana Buddhist teachings, which emphasized the ability of everyone, not just monks, to achieve enlightenment. The Buddhas were cut at immeasurable cost probably in the third and fifth centuries A.D. Why the Taliban are destroying Buddhas
The Buddhas marked an oasis on the Silk Road.
They were products of a society that was prosperous in trade, confident in its mastery of the arts and engineering, and whose core beliefs were strong and generous and subtle.
everyone on the hate-Microsoft bandwagon can't shut up about how Apple is eating Microsoft's lunch, Vista is rejected by the public, Linux is eroding Windows on the low-end, Mac market share is increasing rapidly, blah blah blah.
Doesn't these memes directly contradict each other?
Of course they do.
Which can only mean that no one on the bandwagon really believes in one or the other or both.
When Standard Oil was broken up, do you think its customers fled in relief to the small independents? The Libertarians of the oil fields?
Not on your life.
The Standard played rough.
But in the consumer market, it delivered good value for the money.
The Populist who voted anti-trust at the polls each November aligned just as solidly with the Standard's operating companies when it came time to gas up his new Ford.
The anti-trust crusader began to look as antique as Bryan. Rockefeller retires into the life of the philanthropist. Big Oil remains Big Oil.
LAMP-stack webservers, compared to IIS and SQL Server-based ASP platforms. Think Perl, compared to other rapid-development, scripting, or reporting packages. IMHO, it's pretty simple to most people
all the examples you have named are "marketed" to the developer, the IT pro.
all are backed by a strong, stable, organization which understands the needs of the pro and which the pro can have confidence.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know where you get better value for your entertainment dollar than in a PC or video game.
You could begin with Half-Life and continue on through its sequels, spending maybe $60 for the lot, retail boxed. $1 an hour or less on game play before you even begin with multiplayer, mods and total conversions.
But the competition at this level is always going to be limited.
You need a good idea.
You need a game engine and all the tools needed to use it effectively.
You need writers who can script 100 hours of dialog and action. You need the guy who can create the formulas and illusions that the player sees as an artificial intelligence. The open, infinite world of the game.
You need motion capture, character animators, effects animators. Background artists, model builders. Voice actors. Foley artists. Composers. Musicians.
You need production designers, art designers, who can think in terms of both levels and stage sets - what an environment should look like, feel like, and how it should advance the game. Do it right and you get Rapture.
You need someone who can pull all this together, finance the project, and keep everything on track.
W2K had no penetration into the mass consumer market. You really need to move out of Granny's basement.
I don't get warm and fuzzy feelings reading this and I think that's the idea...
Because never in all its history has a geek's interpretation of the GPL ignited a flamewar on Slashdot
The distinction isn't between who gets to play the game but who gets to buy the game - anyone who has ever been maneuvered into buying a keg for his kid brother knows that much.
But, just for laughs, let's pretend that you have something serious to say here.
As a practical matter, you have to draw the line somewhere.
The alternative is "anything goes" or intense and intrusive physical and psychological testing.
Licensing the video game player, much as you license the student pilot. The aero-geek who still has to wait out clock and calendar until he reaches that magic age when he can solo.
Doom defined the first person shooter.
The game play was intense and - in a loose sense - "addictive." It let you move in a plausible pseudo-3D environment. You could modify the game, introducing your own environments, characters and weapons.
What Doom did not have was a story or narrative that "framed" the action in anything but the most minimal sense. You goal is to shoot everything that moves.
The tactical or stealth shooter like S.W.A.T or Rogue Spear introduced concepts like rules of engagement, collateral damage. You couldn't go rogue and win.
There were and are mods for Doom based on schools and other real-world settings. You could - however crudely - caricature real people. This is potentially dangerous ground and I think the gamer-geek should admit that much.
Surface doesn't have to be an "original" idea, whatever that means, it only has to be the better idea, the practical implementation of the idea. Surface is software that works with the simplest and most reliable of off-the-shelf hardware. It can read tokens printed or stamped into objects like game pieces. It might be able do biometric IDs.
To understand pain you need to have iTunes and QuickTime installed on your PC. The Real Player as well, for the truly masochistic.
Quickly, now.
Name one - just one - developer whose name doesn't begin with the letter R that makes headlines for the violence of its video games. Whose PR trumpets the casts the player in the role of the psycho killer. The use of the Wii controller to mime torture porn kills. F.E.A.R, The Orange Box, Bioshock. These games and a hundred others enter the market to critical and popular acclaim and nary a whisper of complaint. You take Rockstar out of the picture and most of the problems disappear.
To take an example from television - and from Fox, of all networks: "The Sarah Conner Chronicles" has all the patented shock and thrills of the Terminator franchise. In a sense, the story begins with a shootout in a high school classroom. But there is a lot of fun to be had here too. You get to save Summer Glau by tossing her out of a twelve-story window. Fun is something we haven't seen much of in sci-fi since Battlestar Galactica turned so bleak.
congrats on the +5 mod up and another proof of Godwin's Law.
If this is true, then the Catholic faith is in no more danger than the Islamic, or the Protestant Evangelical.
Which is to say that it is in no danger at all.
The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians, and is the largest organized body of any world religion. According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, the Catholic Church's worldwide recorded membership at the end of 2005 was 1,114,966,000, approximately one-sixth of the world's population. Roman Catholic Church
The geek assumes that because his world is secular, the rest of the world is following the same path.
Because it might want to acknowledge one of the roots of Western civilization and an institution that has provided intellectual and moral leadership for over 2,000 years?
Because Catholic contributions to science - and to a culture that makes science possible - have been by no means trivial? How the Catholic church built Western Civilization
Because at a time when the secular culture of the West has become deeply suspect elsewhere it might make more sense to be building bridges than tearing them down?
That is a clever spin to put on a story whose moral is that you should download software only from sources you trust. The unknown hacker who unblocked your phone isn't always your friend-in-need.
Somewhat off-topic, but has it occurred to anyone here that services like Steam and XBox Live! are the models for trusted repositories of Windows software? That the "Linux advantage" of Click-And-Run could be very short-lived?
The first written account of variolation describes a Buddhist nun practicing around 1022 to 1063 AD. She would grind up scabs taken from a person infected with smallpox into a powder, and then blow it into the nostrils of a non-immune person. By the 1700's, this method of variolation was common practice in China, India, and Turkey. In the late 1700's European physicians used this and other methods of variolation, but reported "devastating" results in some cases. Overall, 2% to 3% of people who were variolated died of smallpox, but this practice decreased the total number of smallpox fatalities by 10-fold. The History of Smallpox
It is a bit of a strtch to call the smallpox vaccine an "invention."
Jenner simply observed that those who survived the less dangerous cowpox were immune to smallpox. His test subject was an eight year old boy. The ethics and methodology of his experiment were questionable even in 1796.
Throughout the nineteenth century you could have a perfectly rational fear of vaccination.
There was no mature germ theory of disease before the 1860s. Late Germ Theory of DiseaseThere was no federal regulation of vaccination before 1902:
The Biologics Control Act was passed in the United States on July 1, 1902 after two incidents involving the deaths of children caused by contaminated vaccines. The first involved The horse named Jim whose tetanus contaminated serum was used to produce a diphtheria antitoxin which caused the deaths of thirteen children in St. Louis, Missouri. The second involved contaminated smallpox vaccine which killed nine children in Camden, New Jersey. Both incidents were attributed to failure of proper procedures and testing by local officials. Biologics Control Act
If you want to understand the difference between a tech demo and a movie - and how the evolution of a story teaches you mastery of your craft - you need look no farther than this: Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1 [Blu-Ray $20]
now that hurts.
if you are developing a open source tool for artists - particularly in a market where the proprietary alternatives are deeply entrenched - why aren't you working with artists from day one to get the UI right?
The Church of England was uncoupled from Rome. But burnt its own Dissenters.
And in 2008 which would you say was the healthier institution, the more influential world-wide?
That says it all, doesn't it?
If you are not a Geek you expect functionality out of the box - and all the better if the bundled apps look native to the system.
If you are not a Geek you have no interest in the bare bones of the OS.
there are many things a kid won't want to post - may not be able to post - from any other PC than his own.
assuming that parental control software doesn't intercept the creation of a new mail account or access to a social web site through anything other than an authorized account.
"Compelled" in its historical context meant testimony given under torture.
The question then becomes how far the courts are willing to stretch the meaning the privilege when you are asked to unlock a file.
The privilege against self-incrimination is just that - a privilege - and a privilege not unlike that which protects communications with your lawyer. It is not a "defense" to any charge, simply a barrier to the collection and use of a particular class of evidence.
Meanwhile, everything on your drives, your networks, may be exposed to forensic analysis.
You could be forced under a offer of immunity to expose that kiddie porn stash, if the feds want the source more than they want you.
Your neighbors are not likely to be so forgiving, if the story comes out in open court.
You destroy what you cannot build.
The two colossi must once have been a truly awesome sight, visible for miles, with copper masks for faces and copper-covered hands. Vairocana's robes were painted red and Sakyamuni's blue. These towering, transcendental images were key symbols in the rise of Mahayana Buddhist teachings, which emphasized the ability of everyone, not just monks, to achieve enlightenment.
The Buddhas were cut at immeasurable cost probably in the third and fifth centuries A.D. Why the Taliban are destroying Buddhas
The Buddhas marked an oasis on the Silk Road.
They were products of a society that was prosperous in trade, confident in its mastery of the arts and engineering, and whose core beliefs were strong and generous and subtle.
How many of the billion or so users on this planet give a damn about the formal definition of an OS?
The mass market votes for the PC with out-of-the-box utility. It expects to see a media player. It expects to see a browser.
Doesn't these memes directly contradict each other?
Of course they do.
Which can only mean that no one on the bandwagon really believes in one or the other or both.
When Standard Oil was broken up, do you think its customers fled in relief to the small independents? The Libertarians of the oil fields?
Not on your life.
The Standard played rough.
But in the consumer market, it delivered good value for the money.
The Populist who voted anti-trust at the polls each November aligned just as solidly with the Standard's operating companies when it came time to gas up his new Ford.
The anti-trust crusader began to look as antique as Bryan. Rockefeller retires into the life of the philanthropist. Big Oil remains Big Oil.
all the examples you have named are "marketed" to the developer, the IT pro.
all are backed by a strong, stable, organization which understands the needs of the pro and which the pro can have confidence.
I would begin with a simpler question: "How many units did they sell?"