You don't seem to understand the problems involved with your use of jury nullification. What you don't understand is that all government is broken into administrative and political branches.
You are mistaking your role as a juror for an aspect of the political branch when really it's an aspect of the administrative (all judicial rulings below the supreme court are considered administrative).
Now the reason for laws is to define which behaviors society wants it's citizens to follow. (I assume you live in a "democracy") it's basically the guidelines that everyone is expected to follow so we can all get along, these are set at diffrent times but they are not changed often because the government is concerned over the avarice of people. (ex. Everyone wants a new tv so tuesday they decide stealing tv's should be legal).
They don't have you in the jury box in order to decide policy, they have you in the jury box to decide whether the accused is guilty of a crime (law says a, accused did a = guilty a,b!=guilty). Emotions get in the way of factual judgements, whether they impact your understanding of what the law says or bias your opinion of what the accused did.
So why are you there? Well first there are twelve of you, this is to hopefully weed out an individual's emotional issues regarding an issue. Second it is so the government can't cover up crimes. Twelve people will have seen what the government is doing and be able to speak out against it.
In conclusion don't take advantage of your role as an administrator to accomplish political goals. History has shown that a society can rush to judgement (60 war/anti-war, 30's America almost went communist,45 America wanted Japan destroyed, ). Democracy's slow march has prevented as many disasters as it has caused. I am a firm believer that almost all information should be available for free. Know your rights, know how to be politically active, and if you have the majority behind you and the government doesn't listen, well there's always the second ammendment.
In the genre's that traditionally brought the most inovation it has been lacking recently. However some other genre's are still paving the way, if you find yourself losing interest just go back and play a classic or two. Don't worry you won't get caught in a loop listening to the rolling stones in 20 years. Revisiting a classic isn't the same as losing track of modern games.
Turn based games are still running strong, Racing games are breaking new ground, Rpg's are still fighting the good fight and "stealthy FPS's" are coming into their own. As a true gamer you should try out all the genre's, if you enjoy starcraft for example try out Alien VS Predator or Natural Selection to experience the world first hand.
Try checking out some of the "underapprciated games from the past" sites. They were created with the intention of helping you through this dark time in gaming.
Personally I think the biggest problems are in modern FPS's, it seems no one can combine story, graphics, physics, weapons, and play balance in a interesting stew anymore.
For those feeling this go and check out Hitman and Hitman 2. Also if you like multiplayer gaming get Quake 1(GLquake), you will learn how FPS's should work and the mod community has created some increadibly polished products.
If you don't know you are infringing on a copywrite how can they sue? I mean a cease and desist backed by the law seems more than ample, they can't possibly prove the Linux community knew the code was infringing. It's completely absurd, no judge will ever rule that SCO can do anything of the sort, especially when the intellectual property of the Linux community was available for them to check against from day 1. No (canadian anyway) judge would ever even hear this case. Please explain this to me.
Similarity dude, but you still rock. Unfortunatly the coders being similar is part of the problem. If SCO found out it's unix programmers went off and started working on Linux, (especially making money off it) using code that they owned they would have extra rights to be pissed. I'm not saying they'd be all the way right but stealing from the company is not justifiable.
Now we can get into endless Paycheck or Snow Crash refrences but I've said my bit.
If I say the word mod does that give me 4 extra points? Just wondering.
It might actually, Nintendo is really pushing it (Cube and New Gameboy). And it seems like the kind of thing that, if you get used to it, you can't live without.
The old atmosphere lives on to a small degree in Internet Cafes. Tonnes of guys playing, it's a little bit more communal than arcades seem but all the other elements are there, if they put out some multiuser games for pc those would increase the similarity. Hotseat worms is today's arcade.
As far as actual arcade content goes games need to move from the pc to the arcade, it's just that simple. Putting together a microatx pc that is powerful enough to run emulators or 2D games and giving people choices, if they have to resort to open source games to beat out restrictive liscensing agreements it's not the end of the world.
The X-Box has been all I expected it to be and more. Unfortunatly for M$oft that has been because of third party bioses/software/hardware and interest. It should be obvious to M$ what to do to make a successful console next time, unfortunatly it's all illegal.
A nasty article was posted receently outlining AMD's x86 instruction set which they got from Intel. Intel in exchange has the right to all the plans for AMD cpu's. In other words they can copy AMD's cpu's!
Lawsuits would be ugly:)
AMD shares most of it's really low level research with IBM and Sun, this combination allows them to produce chips increadibly cheaply while still maintaining decent profit margins. They are a few months from opening a new fab in Germany which should dramatically increase yield and processor availablility.
They fear games could be a dead end like comic books ? valuable as a social phenomenon, but outside a select few titles like Art Spiegelman's Maus,
Quite frankly we live in a generation that doesn't crave depth, we can only pray that the future holds some intellectualism. Between youth these days it's considered a disadvantage to be too intelligent. Media is clearly designed for the lowest common denominator and it's much more expensive to try and pursue anything stimulating, thank god for project Gutenburg and bookwarez.
If anyone still thinks games are not artistic they simply don't understand the nature of art. Art is meant to be open to interpretation and interaction.
There is a philosophical dichonomy within art of the high(intellectual and low(popular) variety, video games definitly fall into these catagories(1vs1 high, DM low?).
A simple example of games as art comes with the map paradox within the game SiN. Download it or read a review of the map. Basically it represents an area with crossed dimensions (think Escher).
Having just started creating games I am starting to really appreciate how much of game creating is directed towards the perceptions of the gamer.
This is exactly what slashdot needs more of. Pointing out the exact problems with the laws.
Unfortunatly there are several things about laws that need to be considered before looking at laws. 1: blanket laws - Everyone can be arrested for something, the government only takes advantage of this if you really piss em off, (Al capone tax fraud?).
2:Right wing mentality - Government's of the world are increasingly right wing in that they are of the mentality that wealth/power should be given out in cases where it will motivate future performance. Not as a reward. The government won't throw money at Linux because it will continue just fine without funding.
3. What is government(Oxford Dictionary Paraphrase) - The body with the power to control a society.
4.) The governement has a stake in the current system, it brought it to power, it provides the mandates and power which allow it to opperate and it is proven successful (success defined by providing the above). The members of society who are given freedom of movement have "chosen" to exist within this framework and therefore are responsible for it.
First year poli-Sci is the most boring class in the world but it is an eye opener.
Although this seems to lead to marxism you forget that only the common man benefits from equality and reasonable copywrite law. If someone could charge you for air and shoot you for going outside of their monopoly they would win. Government's are established along these lines, power = control.
Interesting examples are north American imperalist policies in other countries, Nike in Asia, Cadbury in Africa, just about everyone in south America.
Cadbury gives the women who work for them a milk suplement for their babies when the women's breasts have stopped giving milk they start charging for the milk. Who do you think the soldiers shoot when someone complains.
I'm not sure if I was clear. I don't have a problem with paying the tax. $.50 a dvd is well within the range where someone could purchase more media than they could ever consume even on our social security.
I don't lie to myself that information is being stolen, of course I don't lie to myself that good artists are getting screwed either. The Cadian solution solves both problems, now I can pirate music and money goes to starving Canadian artists not useles American executives.
Despite all the arguements I think this whole thing is pretty increadible. The Canadian government has been taxing media and using the funds gathered to pay artists. Now they are allowing the RIAA to pursue a legal recourse (albeit through nominally Canadian channels). It appears Paul Martin is Bushs .
Canada has a pretty decent history of not prosecuting laws that are still being debated (While weed legalization was being discussed police stopped small scale arrests,[Still busted some big grows]) I don't think there are any (Canadian, American's are stupid) politicians who don't have doubts about enforcing the ridiculous American IP laws.
My only conclusion is that this issue has been sacrificed as part of a deal. I'm enough of a realist to know that deals of this nature need to be struck. I don't think that whoever allowed this to happen realizes the consequences.
First we are bowing to the American's in such a way as to forever compromise Canada's reputation as an honest unbiased power (Lester B. Pearson, etc.), second we are an example to other countries. If we fold IP law will remain restrictive and useless until society once again returns to a sane level of socialism or another technological breakthrough on the order of magnitude of the internet takes place causing people to reconsider intellectual property. (Trying to think of something that fits this description leads me to a short list.) Either way you are condemning people in the third world to ignorance and poverty for another hundred years, the death toll is on your head. Depending on how seriously you think knowledge = power = life, Paul Martin might be worse than Hitler.
Simple form: Paul, if you are willing to negotiate our intellectual freedom we may decide to negotiate for it back, is one life too much to pay?
Looks like you slept throught the DMCA. Um I dunno what to tell you, American's got screwed? Know your rights? Don't live under an evil oppresive government? Words fail me.
First off lag, anti cheat technology means it takes longer to connect to servers and there is lag present once you arrive. Not a big problem anymore but no one likes losing a fps or two for no reason.
Restrictive net code often leads to problems inside the game, several games have issues where if you walk around a corner the opponent may not be there for a second then suddenly appear, this is a bigger problem than cheating.
There will always be cheating, there is nothing you can do about it. Ventrillo is supposedly a feature but it is just the perfect way to cheat. People used to wacth each other's screen's now they don't even need to do that anymore, expect it. If you are playing on a server there will be people who cheat, some of them may not even think they are cheating by your definition. Just enjoy the satisfying feeling you get when you awp a speed hacker or wall fire a wall hacker. Don't cheat, it makes you a worse player.
Unfortunatly it is easily accessible through XML scripts, trackers don't keep the information but any other downloader has access to it. Even more important they can see the I.P's where files originate something that is not possible on KAZAA, so they know who originally distributed the file:(. Fortunatly they may be able to make this technology use variations on I.P. masking to at least make it a challenge.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't seem to understand the problems involved with your use of jury nullification. What you don't understand is that all government is broken into administrative and political branches.
You are mistaking your role as a juror for an aspect of the political branch when really it's an aspect of the administrative (all judicial rulings below the supreme court are considered administrative).
Now the reason for laws is to define which behaviors society wants it's citizens to follow. (I assume you live in a "democracy") it's basically the guidelines that everyone is expected to follow so we can all get along, these are set at diffrent times but they are not changed often because the government is concerned over the avarice of people. (ex. Everyone wants a new tv so tuesday they decide stealing tv's should be legal).
They don't have you in the jury box in order to decide policy, they have you in the jury box to decide whether the accused is guilty of a crime (law says a, accused did a = guilty a,b!=guilty). Emotions get in the way of factual judgements, whether they impact your understanding of what the law says or bias your opinion of what the accused did.
So why are you there? Well first there are twelve of you, this is to hopefully weed out an individual's emotional issues regarding an issue. Second it is so the government can't cover up crimes. Twelve people will have seen what the government is doing and be able to speak out against it.
In conclusion don't take advantage of your role as an administrator to accomplish political goals. History has shown that a society can rush to judgement (60 war/anti-war, 30's America almost went communist,45 America wanted Japan destroyed, ). Democracy's slow march has prevented as many disasters as it has caused. I am a firm believer that almost all information should be available for free. Know your rights, know how to be politically active, and if you have the majority behind you and the government doesn't listen, well there's always the second ammendment.
In the genre's that traditionally brought the most inovation it has been lacking recently. However some other genre's are still paving the way, if you find yourself losing interest just go back and play a classic or two. Don't worry you won't get caught in a loop listening to the rolling stones in 20 years. Revisiting a classic isn't the same as losing track of modern games.
Turn based games are still running strong, Racing games are breaking new ground, Rpg's are still fighting the good fight and "stealthy FPS's" are coming into their own. As a true gamer you should try out all the genre's, if you enjoy starcraft for example try out Alien VS Predator or Natural Selection to experience the world first hand.
Try checking out some of the "underapprciated games from the past" sites. They were created with the intention of helping you through this dark time in gaming.
Personally I think the biggest problems are in modern FPS's, it seems no one can combine story, graphics, physics, weapons, and play balance in a interesting stew anymore.
For those feeling this go and check out Hitman and Hitman 2. Also if you like multiplayer gaming get Quake 1(GLquake), you will learn how FPS's should work and the mod community has created some increadibly polished products.
Don't despair!
If you don't know you are infringing on a copywrite how can they sue? I mean a cease and desist backed by the law seems more than ample, they can't possibly prove the Linux community knew the code was infringing. It's completely absurd, no judge will ever rule that SCO can do anything of the sort, especially when the intellectual property of the Linux community was available for them to check against from day 1. No (canadian anyway) judge would ever even hear this case. Please explain this to me.
Similarity dude, but you still rock. Unfortunatly the coders being similar is part of the problem. If SCO found out it's unix programmers went off and started working on Linux, (especially making money off it) using code that they owned they would have extra rights to be pissed. I'm not saying they'd be all the way right but stealing from the company is not justifiable.
Now we can get into endless Paycheck or Snow Crash refrences but I've said my bit.
If I say the word mod does that give me 4 extra points? Just wondering.
It might actually, Nintendo is really pushing it (Cube and New Gameboy). And it seems like the kind of thing that, if you get used to it, you can't live without.
The old atmosphere lives on to a small degree in Internet Cafes. Tonnes of guys playing, it's a little bit more communal than arcades seem but all the other elements are there, if they put out some multiuser games for pc those would increase the similarity. Hotseat worms is today's arcade.
As far as actual arcade content goes games need to move from the pc to the arcade, it's just that simple. Putting together a microatx pc that is powerful enough to run emulators or 2D games and giving people choices, if they have to resort to open source games to beat out restrictive liscensing agreements it's not the end of the world.
The X-Box has been all I expected it to be and more. Unfortunatly for M$oft that has been because of third party bioses/software/hardware and interest. It should be obvious to M$ what to do to make a successful console next time, unfortunatly it's all illegal.
TV has built in anti aliasing in it's display and low resolution. Also try sitting accross the room from your monitor.
No company that fell behind in graphics ever came back, say goodbye to Nvidia.
A nasty article was posted receently outlining AMD's x86 instruction set which they got from Intel. Intel in exchange has the right to all the plans for AMD cpu's. In other words they can copy AMD's cpu's!
:)
Lawsuits would be ugly
AMD shares most of it's really low level research with IBM and Sun, this combination allows them to produce chips increadibly cheaply while still maintaining decent profit margins. They are a few months from opening a new fab in Germany which should dramatically increase yield and processor availablility.
They fear games could be a dead end like comic books ? valuable as a social phenomenon, but outside a select few titles like Art Spiegelman's Maus,
Quite frankly we live in a generation that doesn't crave depth, we can only pray that the future holds some intellectualism. Between youth these days it's considered a disadvantage to be too intelligent. Media is clearly designed for the lowest common denominator and it's much more expensive to try and pursue anything stimulating, thank god for project Gutenburg and bookwarez.
If anyone still thinks games are not artistic they simply don't understand the nature of art. Art is meant to be open to interpretation and interaction.
There is a philosophical dichonomy within art of the high(intellectual and low(popular) variety, video games definitly fall into these catagories(1vs1 high, DM low?).
A simple example of games as art comes with the map paradox within the game SiN. Download it or read a review of the map. Basically it represents an area with crossed dimensions (think Escher).
Having just started creating games I am starting to really appreciate how much of game creating is directed towards the perceptions of the gamer.
This is exactly what slashdot needs more of. Pointing out the exact problems with the laws.
Unfortunatly there are several things about laws that need to be considered before looking at laws.
1: blanket laws - Everyone can be arrested for something, the government only takes advantage of this if you really piss em off, (Al capone tax fraud?).
2:Right wing mentality - Government's of the world are increasingly right wing in that they are of the mentality that wealth/power should be given out in cases where it will motivate future performance. Not as a reward. The government won't throw money at Linux because it will continue just fine without funding.
3. What is government(Oxford Dictionary Paraphrase) - The body with the power to control a society.
4.) The governement has a stake in the current system, it brought it to power, it provides the mandates and power which allow it to opperate and it is proven successful (success defined by providing the above). The members of society who are given freedom of movement have "chosen" to exist within this framework and therefore are responsible for it.
First year poli-Sci is the most boring class in the world but it is an eye opener.
cough 2 year.
50% Riaa watchdogs anyone?
Although this seems to lead to marxism you forget that only the common man benefits from equality and reasonable copywrite law. If someone could charge you for air and shoot you for going outside of their monopoly they would win. Government's are established along these lines, power = control.
Interesting examples are north American imperalist policies in other countries, Nike in Asia, Cadbury in Africa, just about everyone in south America.
Cadbury gives the women who work for them a milk suplement for their babies when the women's breasts have stopped giving milk they start charging for the milk. Who do you think the soldiers shoot when someone complains.
I'm not sure if I was clear. I don't have a problem with paying the tax. $.50 a dvd is well within the range where someone could purchase more media than they could ever consume even on our social security.
I don't lie to myself that information is being stolen, of course I don't lie to myself that good artists are getting screwed either. The Cadian solution solves both problems, now I can pirate music and money goes to starving Canadian artists not useles American executives.
Watching you techies trying to understand the dichonomy between the practice and intent of law is like watching a Lawyer try and install GenToo
:)
Don't do that American's stop buying the albumns after they know.
Despite all the arguements I think this whole thing is pretty increadible. The Canadian government has been taxing media and using the funds gathered to pay artists. Now they are allowing the RIAA to pursue a legal recourse (albeit through nominally Canadian channels). It appears Paul Martin is Bushs .
Canada has a pretty decent history of not prosecuting laws that are still being debated (While weed legalization was being discussed police stopped small scale arrests,[Still busted some big grows]) I don't think there are any (Canadian, American's are stupid) politicians who don't have doubts about enforcing the ridiculous American IP laws.
My only conclusion is that this issue has been sacrificed as part of a deal. I'm enough of a realist to know that deals of this nature need to be struck. I don't think that whoever allowed this to happen realizes the consequences.
First we are bowing to the American's in such a way as to forever compromise Canada's reputation as an honest unbiased power (Lester B. Pearson, etc.), second we are an example to other countries. If we fold IP law will remain restrictive and useless until society once again returns to a sane level of socialism or another technological breakthrough on the order of magnitude of the internet takes place causing people to reconsider intellectual property. (Trying to think of something that fits this description leads me to a short list.) Either way you are condemning people in the third world to ignorance and poverty for another hundred years, the death toll is on your head. Depending on how seriously you think knowledge = power = life, Paul Martin might be worse than Hitler.
Simple form: Paul, if you are willing to negotiate our intellectual freedom we may decide to negotiate for it back, is one life too much to pay?
Looks like you slept throught the DMCA. Um I dunno what to tell you, American's got screwed? Know your rights? Don't live under an evil oppresive government? Words fail me.
First off lag, anti cheat technology means it takes longer to connect to servers and there is lag present once you arrive. Not a big problem anymore but no one likes losing a fps or two for no reason.
Restrictive net code often leads to problems inside the game, several games have issues where if you walk around a corner the opponent may not be there for a second then suddenly appear, this is a bigger problem than cheating.
How does it discourage us/them more than CDkey's?
There will always be cheating, there is nothing you can do about it. Ventrillo is supposedly a feature but it is just the perfect way to cheat. People used to wacth each other's screen's now they don't even need to do that anymore, expect it. If you are playing on a server there will be people who cheat, some of them may not even think they are cheating by your definition. Just enjoy the satisfying feeling you get when you awp a speed hacker or wall fire a wall hacker. Don't cheat, it makes you a worse player.
Unfortunatly it is easily accessible through XML scripts, trackers don't keep the information but any other downloader has access to it. Even more important they can see the I.P's where files originate something that is not possible on KAZAA, so they know who originally distributed the file :(. Fortunatly they may be able to make this technology use variations on I.P. masking to at least make it a challenge.