I don't recall any campaign to censor game content for adults.
I do remember a campaign to restrict sales of adult-themed games to adults and a profound distrust of developers who pushed the limits of the M-rated game to protect their sales through Walmart.
If you want to know why videogames became the Bogeyman, you only have to look at adolescent idiocies like Hot Coffee and Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
It is not Fallout, or System Shock, Resident Evil or Half-Life, or any of a hundred other significant, popular, M-rated games published within the last ten years that make the headlines.
It is the handful of games from the handful of publishers we all know are aiming for the flashpoint.
Everyone should have a battery powered radio receiver.
Yes, but FM? I think AM will be more useful.
Ramsey Electronics sells 50 watt LPFM stations in a box starting at $4000. Low power demands. Instant set-up. Freedom from interference.
That powerful AM radio station may be trying to provide regional or multi-state coverage when you need something much more focused. That is the FM advantage.
reboot.
Good thing that this particular feature remains unchanged.
someday, perhaps, the geek may learn that the occasional reboot of XP is not an issue that most users give a damn about one way or the other. it will be even less an issue in Vista.
consider it filed and forgotten along with the geek's endless blather about the Microsoft Tax.
The problem is...that the major differences between XP and Vista are graphical. On my computer, I can't tell the difference in speed between XP (SP2) and Vista, but Vista sure looks prettier.
In other words, changes under the hood remain invisible to the non-technical end user. Apps carry over. Migration is painless.
That is what keeps Windows pegged at a comfortable 90-95% market share.
I wonder if there was a similar erosion of rights and freedoms during the second world war? And if so, was that erosion reversed during the period after WWII?
Freedom of Travel:
The only one travelling abroad will be in uniform.
Automobile production ends. Bicycle production ends. The buses are full. The trains are full. Hotels are booked solid. Nothing and no one is in the air unless they have a damn good reason to be there.
The "A" ration for civilians was three gallons of gasoline per week. When your tires wear out your car goes up on blocks.
Freedom of Communication:
Rationing means there are shortages everywhere. Photographic and motion picture film. Newsprint. Typewriters. The pulps begin to disappear.
Full wartime censorship is in place. The native fascist is more or less gently pushed off the stage.
Amateur radio is shut down for all but emergency purposes. Any unlicensed transmission is assumed to be that of an enemy agent. There are no pirate broadcasters out of jail.
In the federal system only 4% of all tort cases, ordinary civil actions, ever make it to trial.
90% will be the ordinary personal injury cases that clog every civil court. 30% of cases will be tried without a jury. 43% of plaintiffs will win at trial. 4,000 trials a year for a population of 50 states and 300 million people. Federal Tort Trails and Verdicts, 1994-95
Since the plaintiff is usually the guy who was sandwiched between a metro bus and an SUV and he loses 60% of the time, I'll not be taking any bets on the off chance that the copyright infringer wins as the defendant against the corporate plaintiff.
Since when is it not your responsibility that your hardware is compatible with the software you want to run?
Since the day when a Windows driver began to ship with everything from a SOHO office printer to an Orion telescope and a Singer sewing machine.
If I am in the mood for for self-torture I can (a) search an OSTG site in the hope of finding something useful or (b) have my next root canal done without the anesthetic. I chose (b).
However, this being the fifties or sixties, it doesn't occur to you to acquire rights to the song for other purposes, such as putting out soundtracks or home video versions of the show.
I think you'll find that studios have never been blind to the possibility of alternative markets.
I Love Lucy marks the beginning of the end for live tv production because in 16mm film you have a high quality media for domestic and foreign syndication.
Disney's Davy Crockett was produced in 35mm technicolor before color tv was commercially viable. There were theatrical releases. Records. Sheet music.
It's temporary in the sense that Earth is temporary - we're gonna get swallowed by the sun or "Big Crush"ed or something, but the fact is that there's no real reason to believe, given current trends, that copyrights are gonna expire, just like there's no reason to believe the sun won't rise tomorrow
This line of aegument would be a tad more convincing if P2P traffic didn't look like a mirror image of this week's "top forty" hit list in any genre.
We're not talking "Steamboat Willie" here. We're not even talking about rips from the Elvis '45s you found in Grandma's basement.
The groundling paid because the true market value of the ticket was one penny. Artificial scarcity through copyright was not an issue in his choice.
The theater companies were licensed and limited in number and each had a patron high up in the court of Elizabeth and James, and none higher than Shakespeare, who both found very useful.
Shakespeare deoesn't go to law, he speaks to his sponsor and the matter is settled privately.
The true market value of the series of bits which make up a music track is very low.
Distribution is not production.
You are not buying a random set of bits, you are paying for an edited copy of an original work of art. In Pixar's case, the source material represents five years of creative effort by over 400 people and an investment of $100 million dollars.
You could argue that the value could not exceed $1 since this is the going rate at iTunes and even that value is inflated by copyright issues.
I am sure the rights agencies would be more than pleased to recover $1 per upload/download based on a statistical estimate of a file's exposure on the P2P nets.
In somewhat the same manner as a broadcaster pays royalties based on the size of his estimated audience.
But are you really sure that is where you want to go? The numbers add up damn quickly.
I'd *LOVE* to see the RIAA storm in on a LAN party, especially mine. Mine involves some Iaido practice before we do any actual gaming, so we've got weaponry lying EVERYWHERE. Imagine Samurai Showdown in real life, you have my LAN parties
The RIAA doesn't storm anything.
What you get from them is a politely worded letter and ultimately a subpoena.
Resisting the process server will reserve you a room at Club Fed. Take your martial arts fantasies any further and you are looking at a slab in the morgue.
Copyright law is basically utilitarian, devoid of any morality at all. It is similar to zoning laws, laws regarding parking meters, etc. It's an amoral law, which we only have for useful purposes.
Bentham would have said that "utility" is the foundation of morality. But this is not the argument-from-convience that says that what is popular is also moral.
I can't see how it's moral to restrict knowledge and the pleasure of using works to only those that can pay.
The cultural enterprise is expensive, always has been.You don't get free.
What you get is a private or public subsidy. But your argument is bogus on its face. The price of entry to the P2P nets is a midline PC or better with a broadband connection.
P2P is a middle class entitlement.
Free entertainment financed by the rights holders and their legitimate, paying, customers.
The P2P services don't offer music, they offer files.
This sort of logic-chopping will earn you a humiliating put-down in the classroom. Here it gets modded up to +5.
You cannot communicate any information between individuals distant in time or space without first converting it into a "file" -- a form -- that can be conveniently stored and transmitted.
Shouted into the air. Scratched into a clay tablet. Mechanically cut into a wax cylinder.
You do understand that our forefathers were traitors by definition of english law, that civil rights protestors were breaking jim crow laws, union men during the time of rockafeller were breaking laws, and finally anyone who drank during prohibition was breaking the law. When the law is wrong people will fight for their right to do what is criminal. that said.. what is criminal is not necessarily morally wrong.
When the moral right to infringe on another's copyright is elevated to the same status as the fight against the Ku Klux Klan... I know I am hearing the voice of the eternal adolescent.
It is the thought of "something for nothing" that drives the user to P2P for movies that can be rented for $20 a month from Netflix or purchased for $20 each at Amazon.
Lime Wire is a beggar's market, a thief's market. Nothing more and nothing less.
Getting winamp or nero or whatever application you want is very easy if you know which app you need and where to get it. But show me where is the centralized application install function in XP, like Adept or Synaptic in Linux. Where is the simple way to look for a software to install, searching by category?
Download.com. will serve as an example. I could as easily have chosen a half-dozen others.
Programs neatly sorted in categories. Independent editorial reviews. User reviews. Screenshots. Tutorials. Licensing and prices.
Let me know when your typical Linux disteo provides that much help for the beginner.
You Microsoft guys have no idea how complicated is getting software for Windows if you are a newbie. You just think it's easy because you are so familiar with the whole thing
My youngest niece began with XP at age four. Her older brothers with Win95 in 1996. The truth of it is that there are no Windows newbies.
I may be out of date myself here, because it has been a long time since I did this, but I remember that even in 1998 automake/autorun were easier to use than solving all the incompatibility problems between windows applications and DLLs.
I made the move from Win 95 to Win XP in one leap and in little more than one day. Programs written for Win 3, Win 9x, XP and MSDOS still coexist on my system even now.
In other words, every fscking new computer sold had, and still has, a copy of this rot on it and people found they had to use it. After all, Joe Sixpack can hardly install any operating system from scratch without help.
It is crack-brained to think that the OEMs ever saw the MSDOS and Windows platform as anything other than a license to coin money.
Windows as a client OS is shaped by the needs and values of the non-technical end user.
It is middle class. It is mass market. That is how it has been sold from the beginning and that is how users have understood it from the beginning.
I became so fed up with troubleshooting my daughters xp box that I gave her the option of Linux or nothing. My wife on the other hand chose the xp route and while I was travelling crashed her computer. I get the phone call while on the road and simply told her I am not a window washer anymore.
"Father knows best."
Are your wife and daughter really happy with Linux or simply afraid to cross you?
Slashdot Mirror
I do remember a campaign to restrict sales of adult-themed games to adults and a profound distrust of developers who pushed the limits of the M-rated game to protect their sales through Walmart.
If you want to know why videogames became the Bogeyman, you only have to look at adolescent idiocies like Hot Coffee and Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
It is not Fallout, or System Shock, Resident Evil or Half-Life, or any of a hundred other significant, popular, M-rated games published within the last ten years that make the headlines.
It is the handful of games from the handful of publishers we all know are aiming for the flashpoint.
The Monday morning quarterback usually waits until after the game is played. It spares him the embarassment of an upset win.
If you are serious about purchasing a Freeplay radio, I would recommend C. C. Crane.
Yes, but FM? I think AM will be more useful.
Ramsey Electronics sells 50 watt LPFM stations in a box starting at $4000. Low power demands. Instant set-up. Freedom from interference.
That powerful AM radio station may be trying to provide regional or multi-state coverage when you need something much more focused. That is the FM advantage.
Good thing that this particular feature remains unchanged.
someday, perhaps, the geek may learn that the occasional reboot of XP is not an issue that most users give a damn about one way or the other. it will be even less an issue in Vista.
consider it filed and forgotten along with the geek's endless blather about the Microsoft Tax.
In other words, changes under the hood remain invisible to the non-technical end user. Apps carry over. Migration is painless.
That is what keeps Windows pegged at a comfortable 90-95% market share.
Freedom of Travel:
The only one travelling abroad will be in uniform.
Automobile production ends. Bicycle production ends. The buses are full. The trains are full. Hotels are booked solid.
Nothing and no one is in the air unless they have a damn good reason to be there.
The "A" ration for civilians was three gallons of gasoline per week. When your tires wear out your car goes up on blocks.
Freedom of Communication:
Rationing means there are shortages everywhere. Photographic and motion picture film. Newsprint. Typewriters. The pulps begin to disappear.
Full wartime censorship is in place. The native fascist is more or less gently pushed off the stage.
Amateur radio is shut down for all but emergency purposes. Any unlicensed transmission is assumed to be that of an enemy agent. There are no pirate broadcasters out of jail.
But they do have a telephone.
How do you make such a fragile fantasy work as a movie?
The closest example would be Robin Williams and What Dreams May Come.
I would have said it is Dell's wolf gray and black box that rules.
137 posts to the MS forum in two weeks.
How many MS-bashing Slashdot posts will this thread generate in two hours?
First, you have to get to trial.
That will take about 18 months. On your dime.
In the federal system only 4% of all tort cases, ordinary civil actions, ever make it to trial.
90% will be the ordinary personal injury cases that clog every civil court. 30% of cases will be tried without a jury. 43% of plaintiffs will win at trial. 4,000 trials a year for a population of 50 states and 300 million people. Federal Tort Trails and Verdicts, 1994-95
Since the plaintiff is usually the guy who was sandwiched between a metro bus and an SUV and he loses 60% of the time, I'll not be taking any bets on the off chance that the copyright infringer wins as the defendant against the corporate plaintiff.
If I am in the mood for for self-torture I can (a) search an OSTG site in the hope of finding something useful or (b) have my next root canal done without the anesthetic. I chose (b).
I think you'll find that studios have never been blind to the possibility of alternative markets.
I Love Lucy marks the beginning of the end for live tv production because in 16mm film you have a high quality media for domestic and foreign syndication.
Disney's Davy Crockett was produced in 35mm technicolor before color tv was commercially viable. There were theatrical releases. Records. Sheet music.
This line of aegument would be a tad more convincing if P2P traffic didn't look like a mirror image of this week's "top forty" hit list in any genre.
We're not talking "Steamboat Willie" here.
We're not even talking about rips from the Elvis '45s you found in Grandma's basement.
The theater companies were licensed and limited in number and each had a patron high up in the court of Elizabeth and James, and none higher than Shakespeare, who both found very useful.
Shakespeare deoesn't go to law, he speaks to his sponsor and the matter is settled privately.
The true market value of the series of bits which make up a music track is very low.
Distribution is not production.
You are not buying a random set of bits, you are paying for an edited copy of an original work of art. In Pixar's case, the source material represents five years of creative effort by over 400 people and an investment of $100 million dollars.
You could argue that the value could not exceed $1 since this is the going rate at iTunes and even that value is inflated by copyright issues.
I am sure the rights agencies would be more than pleased to recover $1 per upload/download based on a statistical estimate of a file's exposure on the P2P nets.
In somewhat the same manner as a broadcaster pays royalties based on the size of his estimated audience.
But are you really sure that is where you want to go? The numbers add up damn quickly.
The RIAA doesn't storm anything.
What you get from them is a politely worded letter and ultimately a subpoena.
Resisting the process server will reserve you a room at Club Fed. Take your martial arts fantasies any further and you are looking at a slab in the morgue.
Bentham would have said that "utility" is the foundation of morality. But this is not the argument-from-convience that says that what is popular is also moral.
I can't see how it's moral to restrict knowledge and the pleasure of using works to only those that can pay.
No deposit, no return.
The groundling paid one penny, a day's wages for the working man, for standing-room at the Globe. Who would have attended an original Shakespeare production? That's at least a $50-$70 ticket in modern terms.
The cultural enterprise is expensive, always has been.You don't get free.
What you get is a private or public subsidy. But your argument is bogus on its face. The price of entry to the P2P nets is a midline PC or better with a broadband connection.
P2P is a middle class entitlement.
Free entertainment financed by the rights holders and their legitimate, paying, customers.
This sort of logic-chopping will earn you a humiliating put-down in the classroom. Here it gets modded up to +5.
You cannot communicate any information between individuals distant in time or space without first converting it into a "file" -- a form -- that can be conveniently stored and transmitted.
Shouted into the air. Scratched into a clay tablet. Mechanically cut into a wax cylinder.
When the moral right to infringe on another's copyright is elevated to the same status as the fight against the Ku Klux Klan... I know I am hearing the voice of the eternal adolescent.
It is the thought of "something for nothing" that drives the user to P2P for movies that can be rented for $20 a month from Netflix or purchased for $20 each at Amazon.
Lime Wire is a beggar's market, a thief's market. Nothing more and nothing less.
Download.com. will serve as an example. I could as easily have chosen a half-dozen others.
Programs neatly sorted in categories. Independent editorial reviews. User reviews. Screenshots. Tutorials. Licensing and prices.
Let me know when your typical Linux disteo provides that much help for the beginner.
You Microsoft guys have no idea how complicated is getting software for Windows if you are a newbie. You just think it's easy because you are so familiar with the whole thing
My youngest niece began with XP at age four. Her older brothers with Win95 in 1996. The truth of it is that there are no Windows newbies.
I may be out of date myself here, because it has been a long time since I did this, but I remember that even in 1998 automake/autorun were easier to use than solving all the incompatibility problems between windows applications and DLLs.
I made the move from Win 95 to Win XP in one leap and in little more than one day. Programs written for Win 3, Win 9x, XP and MSDOS still coexist on my system even now.
It is crack-brained to think that the OEMs ever saw the MSDOS and Windows platform as anything other than a license to coin money.
Windows as a client OS is shaped by the needs and values of the non-technical end user.
It is middle class. It is mass market. That is how it has been sold from the beginning and that is how users have understood it from the beginning.
"Father knows best."
Are your wife and daughter really happy with Linux or simply afraid to cross you?
Dell doesn't force Windows on buyers.
This is as egotistical and lame a Geek fantasy as talk of the "Microsoft Tax."
Buyers in the millions flock to Dell because they know Windows, they want Windows, and they haven't the slightest interest in anything else.
Remember the big push for OEM Linux at Walmart? The revolving door of Linux distros and systems sold through Walmart.com?
Dead and buried.