There are people with addictions to pornography. For most of us, it's just the occasional urge, the same way you might buy a lottery ticket or go to Vegas. But for some people, it is a serious psychological problem much like gambling addiction. This could be used as a tool to help those people.
On the other hand, I share your abhorrence of its stated purpose.
Actually, Haldeman's The Forever War skewered--or rather respectfully rebutted--Starship Troopers, primarily through Haldeman's Vietnam expoerience of just how pointless war can be.
Only works if your friends bandwidth is substantially cheaper than what your customer is paying you. I suspect that you'd have to hammer them pretty fucking hard to make enough to pay your site fees and still make a profit.
Because names never ever change. Ever. Not even when the planet they originate on is nuked back to dust. I'm willing to accept that given the traditions of Sparta and the Imperial nobility, Chinese names among highly-placed members of Imperial society are treated as Western (Spartan, in this case) names. Also, Mote is set in Jerry Pournelle's future history, so you might try emailing him, I believe he answers his email.
Re:They Have Nothing To Fight About
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Ask Larry Niven
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Also, the Outsiders are much much faster than the protectors, so the Pak can't steal anyting they have. The Pak are smart enough to know that if they tried, the Outsiders would run away and never come back.
In some cases, yes. TCP/IP is built that way... I forget which is which, and I'm actually way out of my depth here, but one protocol basically sucks, and the other was built on top of it to make it reliable. Other examples, I do not know, and I'm not sure how wel this applies to other situations... Like I said, I'm out of my depth, but I think the principle is sound.
Not true. Google on media law. If a newspaper writes an article about me that depicts actions I took outside of a courtroom, and I am not a "public figure" (this includes elected officials, but is somewhat vague). The same goes for other journalists, and presumably dictionary editors are covered.
There's a big difference. It has to do with the way the Ministry of Defense censors British news. See, their system is supposed to work the same way the American one does, you want to censor something, you take it before a judge. But the MoD shortcut that with what's called a D-notice, which is basically a sort of intent-to-censor that says "We might decide to censor this, so if you don't want us taking you to court, why not just leave it out in the first place?" D-notices are used in a lot of cases where a judge would rule against the MoD, too. Whistle-blowers and such often take their stories to the French or American press to get around the issue.
Game names are trademarkable. Claiming that your game has anything to do with D&D/D20 will get you sued for trademark infringment. Sure, you can make a game based on the system, as long as it doesn't use any part of WotC's IP (class names are probably included here, as are any parts of the world, basically the whole Monster Manual, because while orcs and so forth are pretty much public domain, the WotC/TSR implementations are copyrighted, and most of the stuff in the MM is copyrighted in its own right).
The D20 Open Gaming License basically gives you the right to call something D20 and use D20 rules and some IP, as long as you don't re-pring or suppant other IP. It's basically a branding thing. Here, you can have some of our branding which is just about the best in the industry, and in exchange, you have to play nice with our rules.
In conclusion, yes you can work around the OGL and just go ahead and print some rules and stuff, but there's not much benefit to you since you might as well just go OGL, or if you need more licence it from Wizards, it'll save you tiptoeing through a legal minefield and maybe getting sued (even if you do a real good job of avoiding infringment, you could get sued anyway, and you might even lose, since you ripped of something they made, and judges, unlike RMS, do believe in intellectual property...)
How the hell is this flamebait? I don't get it. I'm not some sort of Welsh separatist... I mean, boring yes, off topic yes, pedantic yes, but not flamebait...
Yeah, 'cause I know I have to go to the hospital a lot when I use buggy software.
You realize there's a difference between something that's not as good as it ought to be and something that's dangerous.
A better analogy would be hair in food, or food just not tasting quite right.
I don't know, Philips might be okay with this... It's not like they're making more money from the restrictions, or losing money from his hack, or it's affecting other customers.
Microsoft doesn't want modded Xboxes on live because it affects service for others (really people, why does a linux xbox need to be on live? Sure, it's a pain to take the chip out every time, but it's also a pain to lose every other game to a 13 year old with a wallhack).
Printer makers don't like toner cartridge hacking because they lose money.
But Phillips doesn't have any financial reason to sue the guy... they may do so because they want to control their products, on the other hand.
Sure, I know that seems laughable to an open-source zealot. However, remember that most slashdot readers are on Windows machines. Also remember that a lot of people would prefer to use *nix, but for whatever reason it's not practical (they're at work, they need to do stuff for work and so need Windows apps, they like to play a lot of games that haven't been ported...)
Gorilla Arm!
Touchscreens have a tendancy to screw up your shoulder muscles if used for long periods of time. This is called gorilla arm. So they're great for short-term applications, like those computers in museums that you use for five minutes and then walk to the next exhibit, and they work okay if they're tilted up and you use them standing, but they'll never be a desktop interface.
On the other hand, voice recognition could very well be used... Highly trainable subvocal-recognition would work well. I liken current voice-rec to non-Bayesian spam filtering, though the analogy isn't perfect. I expect it to improve quite a bit.
Cryptographically, yes. I'll even assume for purposes of discussion that this can be done securely within RSA, or else by using DSA. I'm not sure of either of those, but we'll go with it. I do know that it's not been implemented in PGP/GPG. Which makes the whole thing a moot point, since that's what most folks use, and so if they can't it becomes more convenient to get it off the web.
Sure, which is great for *nixers. I'll bet the majority of Schneier's subscribers are on Windows machines and will need to go find/write something to ROT13 it. Or do it by hand. Both of which are more difficult than just finding it on the Web.
Sure. Assuming Schneier has the public keys of all his subscribers, AND the processing power to encrypt everything in a reasonable span of time. That second is a big if, considering the number of subscribers. It would be possible to use a symmetric algorithm and include the key in the message, but while most readers would have the knowledge to decrypt it, they would likely not have the software to do so easily, and so it would be much more convenient for them to just get the announcement and go check the website, as opposed to spending half and hour trying to find and configure software.
It's like the opposite of a made-for-TV. OVA/OAV=Original Video Animation or the other way 'round. Think of it like Highlander and Stargate and all those movies that got made into TV shows, only the other way around. The OVAs are often either better or possessed of higher production values, though this is merely a probability--there are many exceptions. In general, the difference between a movie and an OVA is that a)movies show in theaters, and b)OVAs tend to assume that you're at least slightly familiar with the TV series, while movies are often quite different.
I mean... For my part, I like anime, and I'm not a big fan of cartoons. But I know a lot of people who LOVE 'toons. So not only do I reject the notion that something that's popular must be good, but I don't think anime is really all that popular.
Remember that a company has one obligation and one obligation only: Obey the shareholders. In most cases all the shareholders want is money, so the company has to do whatever it can to get money, as long as it stays within the law. Invoking the DMCA will in some cases do that, so if Blizzard had failed to do so they would have failed in their moral obligation to the shareholders.
If you don't support the DMCA, donate to organizations and legislators who agree with you. But there's really nothing Blizzard can do about it.
Slashdot Mirror
There are people with addictions to pornography. For most of us, it's just the occasional urge, the same way you might buy a lottery ticket or go to Vegas. But for some people, it is a serious psychological problem much like gambling addiction. This could be used as a tool to help those people. On the other hand, I share your abhorrence of its stated purpose.
Actually, I would like him to lie naked on a bearskin rug. Thank you.
Actually, Haldeman's The Forever War skewered--or rather respectfully rebutted--Starship Troopers, primarily through Haldeman's Vietnam expoerience of just how pointless war can be.
Only works if your friends bandwidth is substantially cheaper than what your customer is paying you. I suspect that you'd have to hammer them pretty fucking hard to make enough to pay your site fees and still make a profit.
Because names never ever change. Ever. Not even when the planet they originate on is nuked back to dust. I'm willing to accept that given the traditions of Sparta and the Imperial nobility, Chinese names among highly-placed members of Imperial society are treated as Western (Spartan, in this case) names. Also, Mote is set in Jerry Pournelle's future history, so you might try emailing him, I believe he answers his email.
Also, the Outsiders are much much faster than the protectors, so the Pak can't steal anyting they have. The Pak are smart enough to know that if they tried, the Outsiders would run away and never come back.
In some cases, yes. TCP/IP is built that way... I forget which is which, and I'm actually way out of my depth here, but one protocol basically sucks, and the other was built on top of it to make it reliable. Other examples, I do not know, and I'm not sure how wel this applies to other situations... Like I said, I'm out of my depth, but I think the principle is sound.
Not true. Google on media law. If a newspaper writes an article about me that depicts actions I took outside of a courtroom, and I am not a "public figure" (this includes elected officials, but is somewhat vague). The same goes for other journalists, and presumably dictionary editors are covered.
There's a big difference. It has to do with the way the Ministry of Defense censors British news. See, their system is supposed to work the same way the American one does, you want to censor something, you take it before a judge. But the MoD shortcut that with what's called a D-notice, which is basically a sort of intent-to-censor that says "We might decide to censor this, so if you don't want us taking you to court, why not just leave it out in the first place?" D-notices are used in a lot of cases where a judge would rule against the MoD, too. Whistle-blowers and such often take their stories to the French or American press to get around the issue.
Game names are trademarkable. Claiming that your game has anything to do with D&D/D20 will get you sued for trademark infringment. Sure, you can make a game based on the system, as long as it doesn't use any part of WotC's IP (class names are probably included here, as are any parts of the world, basically the whole Monster Manual, because while orcs and so forth are pretty much public domain, the WotC/TSR implementations are copyrighted, and most of the stuff in the MM is copyrighted in its own right).
The D20 Open Gaming License basically gives you the right to call something D20 and use D20 rules and some IP, as long as you don't re-pring or suppant other IP. It's basically a branding thing. Here, you can have some of our branding which is just about the best in the industry, and in exchange, you have to play nice with our rules.
In conclusion, yes you can work around the OGL and just go ahead and print some rules and stuff, but there's not much benefit to you since you might as well just go OGL, or if you need more licence it from Wizards, it'll save you tiptoeing through a legal minefield and maybe getting sued (even if you do a real good job of avoiding infringment, you could get sued anyway, and you might even lose, since you ripped of something they made, and judges, unlike RMS, do believe in intellectual property...)
How the hell is this flamebait? I don't get it. I'm not some sort of Welsh separatist... I mean, boring yes, off topic yes, pedantic yes, but not flamebait...
And Wales, plus a couple of islands which are considered quasi-separate entities.
Yeah, 'cause I know I have to go to the hospital a lot when I use buggy software. You realize there's a difference between something that's not as good as it ought to be and something that's dangerous. A better analogy would be hair in food, or food just not tasting quite right.
I said that, actually. I just think companies are more likely to sue if there's money in it, or if it helps them.
I don't know, Philips might be okay with this... It's not like they're making more money from the restrictions, or losing money from his hack, or it's affecting other customers. Microsoft doesn't want modded Xboxes on live because it affects service for others (really people, why does a linux xbox need to be on live? Sure, it's a pain to take the chip out every time, but it's also a pain to lose every other game to a 13 year old with a wallhack). Printer makers don't like toner cartridge hacking because they lose money. But Phillips doesn't have any financial reason to sue the guy... they may do so because they want to control their products, on the other hand.
Umm... He says that. Above. The part where he says it's not GPL'ed yet because he's not done using it as a dissertation.
Sure, I know that seems laughable to an open-source zealot. However, remember that most slashdot readers are on Windows machines. Also remember that a lot of people would prefer to use *nix, but for whatever reason it's not practical (they're at work, they need to do stuff for work and so need Windows apps, they like to play a lot of games that haven't been ported...)
I stand corrected. I'd always assumed that option encrypted and signed, so never bothered, since that's basically redundant.
Gorilla Arm! Touchscreens have a tendancy to screw up your shoulder muscles if used for long periods of time. This is called gorilla arm. So they're great for short-term applications, like those computers in museums that you use for five minutes and then walk to the next exhibit, and they work okay if they're tilted up and you use them standing, but they'll never be a desktop interface. On the other hand, voice recognition could very well be used... Highly trainable subvocal-recognition would work well. I liken current voice-rec to non-Bayesian spam filtering, though the analogy isn't perfect. I expect it to improve quite a bit.
Cryptographically, yes. I'll even assume for purposes of discussion that this can be done securely within RSA, or else by using DSA. I'm not sure of either of those, but we'll go with it. I do know that it's not been implemented in PGP/GPG. Which makes the whole thing a moot point, since that's what most folks use, and so if they can't it becomes more convenient to get it off the web.
Sure, which is great for *nixers. I'll bet the majority of Schneier's subscribers are on Windows machines and will need to go find/write something to ROT13 it. Or do it by hand. Both of which are more difficult than just finding it on the Web.
Sure. Assuming Schneier has the public keys of all his subscribers, AND the processing power to encrypt everything in a reasonable span of time. That second is a big if, considering the number of subscribers. It would be possible to use a symmetric algorithm and include the key in the message, but while most readers would have the knowledge to decrypt it, they would likely not have the software to do so easily, and so it would be much more convenient for them to just get the announcement and go check the website, as opposed to spending half and hour trying to find and configure software.
It's like the opposite of a made-for-TV. OVA/OAV=Original Video Animation or the other way 'round. Think of it like Highlander and Stargate and all those movies that got made into TV shows, only the other way around. The OVAs are often either better or possessed of higher production values, though this is merely a probability--there are many exceptions. In general, the difference between a movie and an OVA is that a)movies show in theaters, and b)OVAs tend to assume that you're at least slightly familiar with the TV series, while movies are often quite different.
I mean... For my part, I like anime, and I'm not a big fan of cartoons. But I know a lot of people who LOVE 'toons. So not only do I reject the notion that something that's popular must be good, but I don't think anime is really all that popular.
Remember that a company has one obligation and one obligation only: Obey the shareholders. In most cases all the shareholders want is money, so the company has to do whatever it can to get money, as long as it stays within the law. Invoking the DMCA will in some cases do that, so if Blizzard had failed to do so they would have failed in their moral obligation to the shareholders. If you don't support the DMCA, donate to organizations and legislators who agree with you. But there's really nothing Blizzard can do about it.