Both forms of games- quick "coffee break" arcade-ish uncomplex games, and deep RPGs or involved, epic adventures- have their place, and neither is likely to go away.
I'm a "Wario Ware" addict. It's a Game Boy Advance collection of no fewer than 210 (actually more) little tiny games with little tiny five-second time limits. The goal is to see how many you can get through before you lose four times, as the games get faster and faster.
As you can imagine, they're not particularly complex. However, the fast pace of the game (a full set in Red Pig Mode only takes five minutes or so) and utter lack of depth make the game perfect for those little breaks between classes.
When I actually have time, however, I prefer the more complex games. Advance Wars is one of my favorites; Golden Sun is also up there. But they take a time dedication I don't usually have.
It's simple why the minigames are taking off: video games have become more accepted among the adult population. (Just ask my Dr. Mario addict mother.) But that adult population generally doesn't have time to get truly involved in a game- so the simple-but-still fun games, so perfect for coffee breaks, are getting played because that's what people have time for.
I prefer the more complex games, but I rarely have time to actually play them.
Ah, but your mother is biased towards making you have her values. A cellular phone would never do that, not even to advertisers who took the opportunity to get "bonus points" in a system that automatically gives them your money....yeah. Right.
People who would use it? Anybody panicked and overworked who doesn't have the time to do this themselves. If they don't mind that their information would probably be sold out, and they trust the machine's judgement, this idea might actually take off.
The inventor: Someone overworked who wished a computer would do it for him/her, sketched the design, and sold it to $CELLPHONEMANUFACTURER. $CELLPHONEMANUFACTURER saw all the commercial possibilities, and why people would use it anyway despite all the Gotcha!(TM) effects it would most definitely have.
The idea has potential. It also has potential for a lot of problems- I mentioned that in another post- but it does have some good underlying ideas.
The obvious concern, of course, is if the system is "cheated" by the authors of the sites referenced. What if the system "accidentially" tells the cell phone the wrong price of a hotel by exchanging the dollars and cents or somesuch, but is referenced by ID number and winds up costing $98.24/night instead of an incredible deal of $24.98 per night?
And I sincerely doubt that the company invovled would be altruistic enough to reject deals to make the selector have a preference for certain companies, even if it's not tied for best deal. It would definitely be logging what's used.
It would lead to an interesting opportunity: targeted ads sent to a cell phone, using the n00 shin3y color displays, eating minutes while they automatically download as an "additional cost" to the service- on the discount plan, of course. Imagine the chaos if they didn't disable such a disfeature during, say, roaming or overtime...
Although it might seem people would ignore them, what if your phone forced you to watch an ad before using certain features- and then quizzed you on the advertisement to make sure you saw it?
Primairly personal opinion, but mostly privacy concerns. Imagine every single device you buy telling a central advertising server when it's used- for that matter, imagine a copy machine that, at irregular intervals, downloads and prints advertisements!
That limit was probably put in there as a defense against the RIAA's fanatical anti-Kazaa/Napster/%FILESHARING position, so M$ can use that clause to avoid being charged with contributory copyright infringement. With the wild claims the RIAA is making- and winning- Micro$oft doesn't have much of a choice.
If it doesn't, it would be automatically elligible for warranty repair right out of the box.
Re:What I don't understand is...
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm pretty sure Linus is aware of that. I would not be surprised if he is fully aware of the fact that any security or DRM features in any open-source system can and will be circumvented.
Think, if you were in Linus' position: Would you rather raise a stink about DRM and try to ban it from the Linux kernel, probably getting arrested in the process, or just let it happen and not fight when people develop ways around it?
You are wrong. The recording industry is sinking fast, and the rats have jumped ship.
The weasels, on the other hand, are trying to force everybody else to bail them out.
I don't think it's online file trading killing them nearly as much as the boycotts against them becoming more and more effective. The RIAA might find things going better for them if they back off, not worse.
The advantage to the legaleese as it is: his use of the word "above." If carefully done, it can be ruled that his patent only counts for servers mounted on dirgiblrd.
MOD PARENT UP....Not that I agree with you. While I would understand someone wanting to patent something he/she actually did, doing it nine years after the fact? Seven years after the limitations expire?
And it's not always clear what the patent is actually for. It sounds like IRC, Apache, SlashDot, or all of the above; anybody have any guesses? It's such a basic, fundamental thing (as far as I can tell, reading through that 100-page-ish pile of gibberish) that it's a root part of the Internet- and if it is IRC or basic message board protocol, it's very provable that it existed long, long before '94.
I'm pretty sure he only pushed the patent through with either a few well-placed bribes, or more likely well-placed obfuscation so nobody can figure out what the hell he just patented.
Hopefully, if it's the latter, that trend will continue so he can't defend it either.
Even if my case- the pesimistic one- is right, he still missed the boat by nine years. He just obfuscated his patent enough to make it inobvious that he just described a very standard system that's been widely used for a really, really long time...
Well, it does help that my music bears almost no relation to anything else I've ever heard. (Check my link for free mp3 files!) It's rather a cross between "Skyroads," "Vertrix 2," and "Donkey Kong Country"- the musical scores of, anyway.
It's a nasty set of precedents, though. That someone can be sued for having a song that resembles someone else's... that's just freaky.
The dangers of this are entirely in the disturbing broadness in the definitions, and the "everything not permitted is forbidden" catch. I much prefer the "everything not forbidden is permitted" way of things.
This would make it illegal for me to use fake referrer IDs (which I sometimes use) on my web browser. This would forbid me to share the DSL connection I share with my father's computer- why would ISPs ever want to allow shared connections? This would forbid me from burning my own music to CD, meaning the music that I myself composed.
The way it's worded actually outlaws power-line networking! While I don't really see that as a bad thing- people picking up on that will oppose the bill, and I think power-line networking is a Really Bad Idea(TM), it's more devious than that- with the "express consent required," you would have to get written consent from the companies in question whenever you want to plug something in to a wall outlet if power-line networking occurs.
This is a truly horrid, debilitating law- which I have every intention to flagrantly violate if I get a chance- start a company that specializes in making nothing but those things, use resources that law would forbid...
The "must get permission" thing is the part that scares me the most.
It does, however, download a buffer of URLS to scan. If your buffer was less than clean when your computer gets searched, oops, you're in trouble...
Not to mention the fact that it still goes and hits all those sites, and with the government trying to smash that little thing we call "privacy," anything questionable will likely go on your permanent record- the one that doesn't exist, but they somehow have anyway.
A DDoS is only effective because it's a whole bunch of messages all at once to one target- in the 100,000,000 range for a full-scale attack, to always cover all the positions.
The database of "check-me"s is randomized rather evenly. Even if this takes off, I don't see how it could really do serious damage to any but the truly dinky servers: the hits will not come in all at once and flood the whole connection. While it very well could end up a constant stream, it's unlikely to be the massive stream that makes a DDoS.
It does have the potential to slow servers across the world, but that's okay- it will slow home users' connections across the world by using 1/4 of them, too, so nobody will actually notice.
Difference: You can show that you don't have direct control over it, and it is likely that they'd go for Grub instead of the users....other than that, not much. Note that I think the RIAA is full of excrement on their recent case as well.
The Church of Scientology has already threatened Google and gotten results moved; I can, in all honesty, see the RIAA going for it.
It would be an earthshattering case, but here's the thing: the RIAA stands a disturbingly good chance of winning.
I hope, I pray they don't were they to try it- and try they most certainly will, because they think they can get money out of the lawsuit and they want money. That's very likely a major motive.
Oh, and to mods-for-a-day: mod the parent of this post up. It's thoroughly underrated at zero.
According to the Grub FAQ, it respects robots.txt although not the META tags. Although it takes a week or two for it to listen to the robots.txt, it does eventually...
The sheer volume of this project concerns me, however. The very fact that it got Slashdotted may cause it to be a bit heavier than expected!
It sounds like a good use of spare bandwidth, but if it's going to wind up a superscanner, it's going to send a hell of a lot of requests.
I tried it and deleted it as quickly: it's not very good at being a bottom feeder, it redlined my system resources immediately and slowed everything down. Duration between installation and uninstallation: twenty-nine seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, it's magnetic. It would need something to damage the data or block electromagnetic waves, not just something to block visible light.
Sandpaper should do the trick for damaging the data. This strikes me as a very vulnerable-to-corruption format.
Both forms of games- quick "coffee break" arcade-ish uncomplex games, and deep RPGs or involved, epic adventures- have their place, and neither is likely to go away.
I'm a "Wario Ware" addict. It's a Game Boy Advance collection of no fewer than 210 (actually more) little tiny games with little tiny five-second time limits. The goal is to see how many you can get through before you lose four times, as the games get faster and faster.
As you can imagine, they're not particularly complex. However, the fast pace of the game (a full set in Red Pig Mode only takes five minutes or so) and utter lack of depth make the game perfect for those little breaks between classes.
When I actually have time, however, I prefer the more complex games. Advance Wars is one of my favorites; Golden Sun is also up there. But they take a time dedication I don't usually have.
It's simple why the minigames are taking off: video games have become more accepted among the adult population. (Just ask my Dr. Mario addict mother.) But that adult population generally doesn't have time to get truly involved in a game- so the simple-but-still fun games, so perfect for coffee breaks, are getting played because that's what people have time for.
I prefer the more complex games, but I rarely have time to actually play them.
Ah, but your mother is biased towards making you have her values. A cellular phone would never do that, not even to advertisers who took the opportunity to get "bonus points" in a system that automatically gives them your money. ...yeah. Right.
People who would use it? Anybody panicked and overworked who doesn't have the time to do this themselves. If they don't mind that their information would probably be sold out, and they trust the machine's judgement, this idea might actually take off.
The inventor: Someone overworked who wished a computer would do it for him/her, sketched the design, and sold it to $CELLPHONEMANUFACTURER. $CELLPHONEMANUFACTURER saw all the commercial possibilities, and why people would use it anyway despite all the Gotcha!(TM) effects it would most definitely have.
The idea has potential. It also has potential for a lot of problems- I mentioned that in another post- but it does have some good underlying ideas.
The obvious concern, of course, is if the system is "cheated" by the authors of the sites referenced. What if the system "accidentially" tells the cell phone the wrong price of a hotel by exchanging the dollars and cents or somesuch, but is referenced by ID number and winds up costing $98.24/night instead of an incredible deal of $24.98 per night?
And I sincerely doubt that the company invovled would be altruistic enough to reject deals to make the selector have a preference for certain companies, even if it's not tied for best deal. It would definitely be logging what's used.
It would lead to an interesting opportunity: targeted ads sent to a cell phone, using the n00 shin3y color displays, eating minutes while they automatically download as an "additional cost" to the service- on the discount plan, of course. Imagine the chaos if they didn't disable such a disfeature during, say, roaming or overtime...
Although it might seem people would ignore them, what if your phone forced you to watch an ad before using certain features- and then quizzed you on the advertisement to make sure you saw it?
Primairly personal opinion, but mostly privacy concerns. Imagine every single device you buy telling a central advertising server when it's used- for that matter, imagine a copy machine that, at irregular intervals, downloads and prints advertisements!
That limit was probably put in there as a defense against the RIAA's fanatical anti-Kazaa/Napster/%FILESHARING position, so M$ can use that clause to avoid being charged with contributory copyright infringement. With the wild claims the RIAA is making- and winning- Micro$oft doesn't have much of a choice.
If it doesn't, it would be automatically elligible for warranty repair right out of the box.
I'm pretty sure Linus is aware of that. I would not be surprised if he is fully aware of the fact that any security or DRM features in any open-source system can and will be circumvented.
Think, if you were in Linus' position: Would you rather raise a stink about DRM and try to ban it from the Linux kernel, probably getting arrested in the process, or just let it happen and not fight when people develop ways around it?
You are wrong. The recording industry is sinking fast, and the rats have jumped ship.
The weasels, on the other hand, are trying to force everybody else to bail them out.
I don't think it's online file trading killing them nearly as much as the boycotts against them becoming more and more effective. The RIAA might find things going better for them if they back off, not worse.
So it needs to be conditional. Technology patents get three years and can be renewed to five, max; all other patents at their current levels.
The difficulties would be in defining the categories- and then making heads or tails of the patent to figure out where it is.
Ah, but it's still provably nothing new since '92- assuming I'm reading the pile of gibberish correctly.
I really hope the thing doesn't stand up in court, but you never know...
The advantage to the legaleese as it is: his use of the word "above." If carefully done, it can be ruled that his patent only counts for servers mounted on dirgiblrd.
MOD PARENT UP. ...Not that I agree with you. While I would understand someone wanting to patent something he/she actually did, doing it nine years after the fact? Seven years after the limitations expire?
And it's not always clear what the patent is actually for. It sounds like IRC, Apache, SlashDot, or all of the above; anybody have any guesses? It's such a basic, fundamental thing (as far as I can tell, reading through that 100-page-ish pile of gibberish) that it's a root part of the Internet- and if it is IRC or basic message board protocol, it's very provable that it existed long, long before '94.
I'm pretty sure he only pushed the patent through with either a few well-placed bribes, or more likely well-placed obfuscation so nobody can figure out what the hell he just patented.
Hopefully, if it's the latter, that trend will continue so he can't defend it either.
I think the law is two years, but I'm not sure.
Even if my case- the pesimistic one- is right, he still missed the boat by nine years. He just obfuscated his patent enough to make it inobvious that he just described a very standard system that's been widely used for a really, really long time...
It seems to be describing IRC, a message board, and/or basic client-server architecture, all of which provably existed before '94.
It's quite likely I'm not understanding this correctly. What, in actually legible text, has he just patented?
And what laws are there that would permit him to retroactively sue anybody who was already using something like that?
Well, it does help that my music bears almost no relation to anything else I've ever heard. (Check my link for free mp3 files!) It's rather a cross between "Skyroads," "Vertrix 2," and "Donkey Kong Country"- the musical scores of, anyway.
It's a nasty set of precedents, though. That someone can be sued for having a song that resembles someone else's... that's just freaky.
The dangers of this are entirely in the disturbing broadness in the definitions, and the "everything not permitted is forbidden" catch. I much prefer the "everything not forbidden is permitted" way of things.
This would make it illegal for me to use fake referrer IDs (which I sometimes use) on my web browser. This would forbid me to share the DSL connection I share with my father's computer- why would ISPs ever want to allow shared connections? This would forbid me from burning my own music to CD, meaning the music that I myself composed.
The way it's worded actually outlaws power-line networking! While I don't really see that as a bad thing- people picking up on that will oppose the bill, and I think power-line networking is a Really Bad Idea(TM), it's more devious than that- with the "express consent required," you would have to get written consent from the companies in question whenever you want to plug something in to a wall outlet if power-line networking occurs.
This is a truly horrid, debilitating law- which I have every intention to flagrantly violate if I get a chance- start a company that specializes in making nothing but those things, use resources that law would forbid...
The "must get permission" thing is the part that scares me the most.
It does, however, download a buffer of URLS to scan. If your buffer was less than clean when your computer gets searched, oops, you're in trouble...
Not to mention the fact that it still goes and hits all those sites, and with the government trying to smash that little thing we call "privacy," anything questionable will likely go on your permanent record- the one that doesn't exist, but they somehow have anyway.
A DDoS is only effective because it's a whole bunch of messages all at once to one target- in the 100,000,000 range for a full-scale attack, to always cover all the positions.
The database of "check-me"s is randomized rather evenly. Even if this takes off, I don't see how it could really do serious damage to any but the truly dinky servers: the hits will not come in all at once and flood the whole connection. While it very well could end up a constant stream, it's unlikely to be the massive stream that makes a DDoS.
It does have the potential to slow servers across the world, but that's okay- it will slow home users' connections across the world by using 1/4 of them, too, so nobody will actually notice.
Difference: You can show that you don't have direct control over it, and it is likely that they'd go for Grub instead of the users. ...other than that, not much. Note that I think the RIAA is full of excrement on their recent case as well.
Here's the catch: it's going for scare tactics.
The Church of Scientology has already threatened Google and gotten results moved; I can, in all honesty, see the RIAA going for it.
It would be an earthshattering case, but here's the thing: the RIAA stands a disturbingly good chance of winning.
I hope, I pray they don't were they to try it- and try they most certainly will, because they think they can get money out of the lawsuit and they want money. That's very likely a major motive.
Oh, and to mods-for-a-day: mod the parent of this post up. It's thoroughly underrated at zero.
According to the Grub FAQ, it respects robots.txt although not the META tags. Although it takes a week or two for it to listen to the robots.txt, it does eventually...
The sheer volume of this project concerns me, however. The very fact that it got Slashdotted may cause it to be a bit heavier than expected!
It sounds like a good use of spare bandwidth, but if it's going to wind up a superscanner, it's going to send a hell of a lot of requests.
I tried it and deleted it as quickly: it's not very good at being a bottom feeder, it redlined my system resources immediately and slowed everything down. Duration between installation and uninstallation: twenty-nine seconds.
Well, it is genetic. If your parents didn't have any kids, you aren't likely to have any either.
I think they do. It seems that all the articles are copied from yesterday.