by banning Google from reprinting their stories, they have shot themselves in the revenue-hungry foot. Without Google serving up ads for them or redirects to their pages that contain ads, I predict a massive drop in their Internet based income.
I know it is heresy to say this on Slashdot, but there are other search engines than Google.
Belgians will move to the one that serves them best. Unlike the Geek, they aren't bound to make the the pilgrimage to Mountain View.
The challenge, while difficult to overcome at first may potentially lead to Google winning the case and setting a precedent whereby all information publicly available on the internet would be entered into the public domain or at least break ground for fair use
"Fair Use" in the American context usually means very limited quotation. Reviews. Citations. It may apply to slightly extended usage rights within the home.
It does not mean that a commercial entity like Google can sweep up everything in sight for free and take it into the public domain. For its own profit.
after getting to the "comments" page, I'm greeted with an ad for "Vice City Stories"
If you want to "save the gamers," why not begin with the games themselves?
You model a game on Miami's gangster culture.
But your development team is in northern Scotland, far removed from the racial and ethnic tensions within the city itself. You market the game at $50 a pop to suburban white males and wonder why that doesn't win you many friends.
You are an adolescent nimcompoop who thinks that Columbine would make a fun RPG... The uncomfortable truth is that there are perfectly intelligible reasons why certain games make headlines.
But consider the past two American presidential elections. They have allegedly been so flawed and manipulated that it's doubtful that an increase in voting from video gamers, or any other group, would have any beneficial effect whatsoever.
When the electorate is evenly split you get a tally that approaches the statistical margin of error in the count.
Scream fraud all you want. But nothing good can come from seeing your own candidate limping uselessly into the presidency. The victim of a recount that ended in his favor. But left the House and Senate unchanged.
Even if it's of lower quality. If every news outlet of a region demands royalties, that region will be ignored.
A Canadian search engine that ignored the Globe and Mail, McClean's and the CBC would be next to useless. Searchers will simply move on the alternative search engine. If you index financial news, you won't be taken seriously unless you include the WSJ
Most everybody knows what "duplex" means. Why not let those who don't learn what it means instead of pretending the word doesn't exist, and encouraging people to forget.
maybe because microsoft markets to non-technical end users who don't have and don't want to keep the Geek OED on their desktop?
There will always be smaller news outlets who want to get additional daily viewers. They want Google to direct people to their site. If the large news organizations want to opt out, there will always be someone to take their place.
Do you have the faintest idea of what the cost of entry is here?
Most cities count themselves lucky to have a single marginally competent daily newspaper. One TV station that rises above the "Eyewitness News" level. Where I live there is one regional upstate paper that is worth a damn.
Let 'em wallow in their own stupidity, and they'll come around
There are sites and services Google News must access to remain credible. The throw-away weekly shopping paper from Nowhere, Nebraska is not a substitute for the WSJ.
Microsoft would like nothing better than to become the news channel, the portal, for the decision-makers in this world.
Individuals will use the free stuff online that comes from companies they know and trust online like Google
The same individuals that mine the MS Office site for free templates, tutorials, clip art, etc? The same individuals that have been using MS Office for the last ten years?
If nothing else, we'll have *several* super power-like nations, but it won't simply be because of China and others rising up as time goes on. The U.S. will contribute to it's own defeat, with DRM
Yada, yada.
The west exports DRM media content world-wide. China exports DRM media players world-wide. Which side of that equation do you think has greater long-term significance?
Retailers can buy generic hardware from any third-world country with a modest capacity for precision manufacturing. But Chinese culture for all its richness and antiquity is mostly consumed within its own borders.
militant right wing Christians aggressively pushing their ideas of morality to the masses
It would be difficult to find a regime more prudish and puritanical than the Chinese gerontocracy.
China has historically been competing with the West, at various levels throughout history and national inferiority complex notwithstanding
There are missed opportunites throughout history for societies that are dependent on cheap labor.
You don't introduce machines because machines bring change, machines cost money and machines displace the masses of low-skilled workers who have nowhere else to go.
One has to wonder why in the world OSS software developers don't band together and start their own collaborative patenting efforts?
I can see it now.
You can't use patent X unless you agree to license Y. No application that enforces DRM. No use by the military. Insert your favorite political cause here.
We are two months from an important mid-term election, two years from a presidential election. Patent reform ranks somewhere below The Bridge to Nowhere on the national political agenda.
Ah, you subscribe to the "if you think it, you did it" system of morality. Does it work the other way around? If I daydream about helping out in a soup kitchen or giving clothes to the salvation army it earns me brownie points with my local magic sky diety?
Maybe it does. If it points you in the right direction. But you are evading the issue. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! became more than a daydream for the shooter. It became an obsession.
It is not out of bounds to ask what there is in the social context of the game, the structure of the game, the play of the game, the marketing of the game, that attracts the unbalanced mind.
DVD and analog are doing fine for most mainstream applications. HD-DVD or Blu-Ray are nice as an expensive temporary backup solution and for some nimwits that don't know any better. People just bought into the whole "flat-screen-is-better-hype" replacing their 2-10y old color tv.
TIME estimate is HD in 20% of American households today.
I don't expect to buy another CRT monitor for home use nor do I expect to buy another 4:3 monitor for home use. The standard definition TV as a replacement for your primary TV set is disappearing even from Walmart. You don't always have to look outside to see which way the wind is blowing.
I'm sure there's WWII games where you played on the German side.
Name one. Just one.
More importantly, name one where you are role-playing the Gestapo interrogator or the SS officer in the Death Camps. "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" does not count.
There's always video games where you play the bad guy.
Usually at some "safe" psychological distance from your own situation. The closer you get to reality the more deeply you enter into territory where a clinical psychiatrist using role-playing techniques would be very, very cautious.
This is the root objection, the principled objection, to games like "Bully" and "Columbine."
We expect a psychoactive drug to be tested for safety before it is sold. When something appears to have gone seriously wrong we expect the product to be taken off then shelves until the problem is fixed.
He shouldn't feel guilty because someone who enjoyed playing his game was also crazy. Maybe it's what pushed him over the edge, maybe it's not.
I cringe a little at the thought of someone "enjoying" the events of Columbine as a role-playing experience. You could see the strain on the actress's face who played a Karla Holmuka-like serial sex killer of teens on Law and Order.
Actions have consequences.
It it is not unfair to ask of the author of Columbine to think a little longer and a little harder about what it is he has unleashed. Not to defend his game in a reflex action.
Not to fall back on the gamer's excuses, the clichés and platitudes, that would absolve him of any responsibility.
Also if you are looking for help seek your local Linux community. Linux servers are extremely easy to manage remotely so you can probably find some kind admins/gurus that will want to help you pro bono.
"Probably" isn't good enough.
What happens after this guy snd his buddies fade out of the picture?
The first question I would ask is what are the chances the school board will support a duct-taped Linux solution for this one school?
Home users are not desktop system builders in the numbers that matter. Fewer still even want to think about customizing a laptop.
Dual boot and virtualization are not (yet) mass market. They are for the enthusiasts who simply must be able to work in both the PC and the Mac environments.
OSX for the generic PC would require drivers for every random combination of PC hardware.
Vista is dead before it even arrives. What would I possibly want it for that I don't already have?
Lesson One.
Vista will be defined by what it offers users in business. Vista will be defined by what it offers users in the home. The Geek gets the crumbs that fall off the table.
Lesson Two.
The OEM system install is the gold standard in many markets where Microsoft is dominant. The home user doesn't simply buy into the new OS. He buys into the next generation of consumer grade hardware at OEM prices.
What was the name of that video game Hitler used to play?
Cut the jokes and look at the reality of the Nazi regime.
War games in the Hitler Youth begin at about age ten and are central thereafter. Racist themed board games and story books were distributed to younger boys and girls. Disney's "Education For Death" pretty much gets this right.
I haven't the slightest doubt that the regime would have used video game technology for indoctrination and propaganda had it been available and no illusions about the violence it would have endorsed and exculted in.
The Nazis had high hopes for television. They were expert in the manipulation of existing mass media: print, graphic art, radio and film.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's universe is about 95% of the domestic PC market and not much less than that world-wide. In this universe you build for the Windows API.
I know it is heresy to say this on Slashdot, but there are other search engines than Google.
Belgians will move to the one that serves them best. Unlike the Geek, they aren't bound to make the the pilgrimage to Mountain View.
"Fair Use" in the American context usually means very limited quotation. Reviews. Citations.
It may apply to slightly extended usage rights within the home.
It does not mean that a commercial entity like Google can sweep up everything in sight for free and take it into the public domain.
For its own profit.
If you want to "save the gamers," why not begin with the games themselves?
You model a game on Miami's gangster culture.
But your development team is in northern Scotland, far removed from the racial and ethnic tensions within the city itself. You market the game at $50 a pop to suburban white males and wonder why that doesn't win you many friends.
You are an adolescent nimcompoop who thinks that Columbine would make a fun RPG... The uncomfortable truth is that there are perfectly intelligible reasons why certain games make headlines.
When the electorate is evenly split you get a tally that approaches the statistical margin of error in the count.
Scream fraud all you want. But nothing good can come from seeing your own candidate limping uselessly into the presidency. The victim of a recount that ended in his favor. But left the House and Senate unchanged.
A Canadian search engine that ignored the Globe and Mail, McClean's and the CBC would be next to useless. Searchers will simply move on the alternative search engine. If you index financial news, you won't be taken seriously unless you include the WSJ
maybe because microsoft markets to non-technical end users who don't have and don't want to keep the Geek OED on their desktop?
let me know when you find a linux distro for home users where media play is not part of the core experience
Works for me. It will probably also work for the 99.9% of users who have ever clicked "Yes" when they should have clicked "No."
Do you have the faintest idea of what the cost of entry is here?
Most cities count themselves lucky to have a single marginally competent daily newspaper. One TV station that rises above the "Eyewitness News" level. Where I live there is one regional upstate paper that is worth a damn.
There are sites and services Google News must access to remain credible. The throw-away weekly shopping paper from Nowhere, Nebraska is not a substitute for the WSJ.
Microsoft would like nothing better than to become the news channel, the portal, for the decision-makers in this world.
The same individuals that mine the MS Office site for free templates, tutorials, clip art, etc? The same individuals that have been using MS Office for the last ten years?
Yada, yada.
The west exports DRM media content world-wide. China exports DRM media players world-wide. Which side of that equation do you think has greater long-term significance?
Retailers can buy generic hardware from any third-world country with a modest capacity for precision manufacturing. But Chinese culture for all its richness and antiquity is mostly consumed within its own borders.
militant right wing Christians aggressively pushing their ideas of morality to the masses
It would be difficult to find a regime more prudish and puritanical than the Chinese gerontocracy.
The thing is, you have to be realistic. You might see a slightly more centrist Congress after November. But that is all you are likely to see.
There are missed opportunites throughout history for societies that are dependent on cheap labor.
You don't introduce machines because machines bring change, machines cost money and machines displace the masses of low-skilled workers who have nowhere else to go.
I can see it now.
You can't use patent X unless you agree to license Y. No application that enforces DRM. No use by the military. Insert your favorite political cause here.
We are two months from an important mid-term election, two years from a presidential election. Patent reform ranks somewhere below The Bridge to Nowhere on the national political agenda.
these are not the questions the families of Columbine and Dawson are asking.
Maybe it does. If it points you in the right direction. But you are evading the issue. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! became more than a daydream for the shooter. It became an obsession.
It is not out of bounds to ask what there is in the social context of the game, the structure of the game, the play of the game, the marketing of the game, that attracts the unbalanced mind.
TIME estimate is HD in 20% of American households today.
I don't expect to buy another CRT monitor for home use nor do I expect to buy another 4:3 monitor for home use. The standard definition TV as a replacement for your primary TV set is disappearing even from Walmart. You don't always have to look outside to see which way the wind is blowing.
Name one. Just one.
More importantly, name one where you are role-playing the Gestapo interrogator or the SS officer in the Death Camps.
"Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" does not count.
There's always video games where you play the bad guy.
Usually at some "safe" psychological distance from your own situation. The closer you get to reality the more deeply you enter into territory where a clinical psychiatrist using role-playing techniques would be very, very cautious.
This is the root objection, the principled objection, to games like "Bully" and "Columbine."
We expect a psychoactive drug to be tested for safety before it is sold. When something appears to have gone seriously wrong we expect the product to be taken off then shelves until the problem is fixed.
He shouldn't feel guilty because someone who enjoyed playing his game was also crazy. Maybe it's what pushed him over the edge, maybe it's not.
I cringe a little at the thought of someone "enjoying" the events of Columbine as a role-playing experience. You could see the strain on the actress's face who played a Karla Holmuka-like serial sex killer of teens on Law and Order.
Actions have consequences.
It it is not unfair to ask of the author of Columbine to think a little longer and a little harder about what it is he has unleashed. Not to defend his game in a reflex action.
Not to fall back on the gamer's excuses, the clichés and platitudes, that would absolve him of any responsibility.
"Probably" isn't good enough.
What happens after this guy snd his buddies fade out of the picture?
The first question I would ask is what are the chances the school board will support a duct-taped Linux solution for this one school?
Home users are not desktop system builders in the numbers that matter. Fewer still even want to think about customizing a laptop.
Dual boot and virtualization are not (yet) mass market. They are for the enthusiasts who simply must be able to work in both the PC and the Mac environments.
OSX for the generic PC would require drivers for every random combination of PC hardware.
Lesson One.
Vista will be defined by what it offers users in business. Vista will be defined by what it offers users in the home.
The Geek gets the crumbs that fall off the table.
Lesson Two.
The OEM system install is the gold standard in many markets where Microsoft is dominant. The home user doesn't simply buy into the new OS. He buys into the next generation of consumer grade hardware at OEM prices.
Cut the jokes and look at the reality of the Nazi regime.
War games in the Hitler Youth begin at about age ten and are central thereafter. Racist themed board games and story books were distributed to younger boys and girls. Disney's "Education For Death" pretty much gets this right.
I haven't the slightest doubt that the regime would have used video game technology for indoctrination and propaganda had it been available and no illusions about the violence it would have endorsed and exculted in.
The Nazis had high hopes for television. They were expert in the manipulation of existing mass media: print, graphic art, radio and film.