There are issues both with your so called, "enviro-nazis" and their opponents who will go out of their way to bash anything might be good for people in general just because it happens to be in line with the agendas of environmentalists. I think it's illogical and goes against reason to support shitting where you eat just to spite an environmentalist who points out that it's not a good idea to shit where you eat.
You say that 'humans are the most important thing in the world." One of the things that make people humans is the ability to reason. Abandoning reason for an emotional agenda regardless of whether it's pro-environmentalist or anti-environmentalist is the path toward losing our humanity and becoming no better than animals.
I have to agree with all your points except for the money thing.
You never want to lose your own identity in a relationship and combining the money starts to do that. When I make big purchases I still confirm it with her, but the reply is usually "do what you want. It's your money" or "Are you sure you really need to be getting that" So it's more of a sanity check from my best friend rather than asking for permission, but keeping the money separate helps us to keep our identities.
I'm sure you're speaking from the first-hand experience of overcoming adversity of growing up in an innercity environment and all that it entails by going to a library and learning what you needed to succeed so that you could brag about it on slashdot today.
They have the same chances as anyone else - if they worked hard they could make something of their lifes. Clearly they can't be bothered so thats their problem
I came from a very good public school district and used to wonder what all the fuss was about people not liking public school. I recently had the opportunity to talk to a school teacher who taught at a school that was split between my school district and a school district that encompasses some poorer communities. She happens to teach in the poorer district portion of the school. She said the difference between the quality of education between the two school districts just within this one building is like night and day as far as the resources that are available and quality of output from the students. Things that she would have to deal with is kids having immense pressure from their parents to do well not for academic reasons but because if they do well they would get free pizza which their parents expected them to bring home to help feed the family. Something like that happening in my school district was unfathomable thus I was never exposed to that reality.
This is just the tip of the iceberg and only dealing with the differences in educational opportunities. So if you can have the same chances as anybody else when playing with a loaded die, then yes I guess people in the inner city "have the same chances."
Anyway back to topic. I was trying to make light of the situation in China because I thought using a situation that's closer to home would give people some perspective, obviously I missed my mark by a wide margin.
I'm sorry but honestly why do I care what happens to projects in the inner city? They aren't innocent victums, they willingly bring in crack and sell it to their residents. As soon as they want to they can stop buying crack when they feel the health risks are too great... Until they do that, why should I feel bad for problems they have brought on themselves?
I think the view that the traditional play model of the player being the hero with the singular goal of "beating" the game is the only way to design and play a game is the problem here. The potential for a hero character that plays itself and allows you to jump into the game at any point would be much greater if you throw away that assumption.
Games initially had no end and were solely exercises in getting a high score. This was eventually replaced by the "reach the ending" model of gaming that you're referring to. I think this phase of game design is already starting to lose appeal and is giving way toward gameplay based on achievements. Even with achievements game designers are still putting too much emphasis on getting the player hero to the end as the end all be all goal of someone playing the game rather than allowing for other modes of gameplay.
The hero should be allowed to reach the "end" if left alone, but the player should be also be allowed to play as the antagonist who can choose to kill the hero character or try escaping before the hero reaches them. The player could also choose to play as the sidekick who may help the hero reach their destination sooner, backstab the hero and prevent them from reaching their destination or exact revenge on the antagonist who managed to kill the hero. So each different way of playing has its own set of achievements and associated scripted sequences.
The barnyard animal could choose to just sit back and let the hero reach the end while the "serious gamer" could try playing as the sidekick and reach the end of the game before the hero does.
One of my favorite quotes happens to be from Yamauchi via Miyamoto,
Do not try to compete with the others, try to be the only one.
I think it's a great quote in and of itself, but taken within the context of his anti-competitive practices it puts a whole new spin on things. I guess it makes sense that to not compete you either have to do something completely different from someone else or prevent someone else from doing the same thing as you.
As far as why people still have such a positive attitude towards such an "evil" company it's similar to why Walmart is so successful. The company gives its customers what they want. For Nintendo it is games that are fun and delivered in an accessible (cheap, easy learning curve) package. For Walmart this is cheap and plentiful products all in one location.
It's very difficult to be an angel consumer so we all have to pick and choose our fights. For me I buy Nintendo because the fun and cost beats out the evil but I don't buy Walmart because the evil beats out any advantages for me.
You can't just generalize about a city of millions. Try replacing New Yorker with a person from any country and listen to how offensive you sound.
I was born in NYC and am still living there currently. I also get really annoyed with the all the people who think New York is the greatest thing ever too, but you don't find me bashing it every chance I get on Slashdot. The amount of disdain you have for New Yorkers borders on the amount of homophobia you would find from a closeted homosexual. I'm not saying you're a closet New Yorker, but that's just what it comes off as... just saying...
Well you have the fans that complain about games being ruined by remakes then you have the fans who actually get up and do something about it and try their own hands at remaking the games.
I think there are some good examples of the latter being done over at Retro Remakes
For some good examples of the former check the rest of the comments.
I don't think there is any less creativity in games being created today. It's just that the most creative games don't get consumed by the mainstream public and thus are not exposed by the marketing machines of the major publishers. The games media is getting large enough that it has turned into media like books and film where you usually have to seek out the independent work in order to find the truly creative work.
If you go on sites like Game Tunnel or Kongregate and do some digging around you'll find some real innovation and creativity. The question is whether those games are executed at a quality level that the gaming public demands these days. Back then the playing field was fairly level due to limitations in technology and understanding of game design.
I am so tired of having to read forever on signs (like at home depot the other day) and product to find descriptions or instructions in fucking ENGLISH.
You can't blame immigrants for having instructions in multiple languages. You can blame globalization for that. It's cheaper to print a product in multiple languages than it is to print up separate packaging for each locale.
I'm happy to have other cultures contribute to our melting pot culture but some effort is required on their part too.
You can have your cheap products manufactured in foreign countries, but some effort is required on your part too, namely taking some time out of that extra precious Slashdot rant time to finding the English description.
Math is not invented. It is discovered. That's like saying that Columbus invented America.
I don't think your argument quite works.
You can also "discover" all of Shakespeare's works if you throw enough monkeys with typewriters at the problem by your rationale.
Part of inventing comes from discovering. Sure. I'll give you that, but the language of mathematics and the abstractions we've developed to lead us to our current understanding of mathematics were all invented.
Probably because that would have been another layer of complexity/confusion for any countries that aren't familiar with the Chinese writing system.
I kind of wished they showed the Chinese characters at the bottom of the screen with the country name so that at least we would have a better understanding of what they meant by counting strokes, but then again since they changed the order of the countries appearing that would explain why they didn't do that.
I didn't read the links that you posted, but the most abstracted version of what you talk about makes me think of progress quest, if progress quest had ability for a coop game and you could jump into any parts of the interface to interact with it when you want. Anyway, what you describe as a system sounds like what in programmer speak would be a rpg framework that implements certain rpg design patterns.
You could try to go to local user groups.
I know the Independent Game Developer's Association (IGDA) has chapters all around the country.
If you're doing Flash there are Flash user groups around the country too.
You could check out the forums at gamedev.net I think there are usually more programmers looking for artist than artists looking for programmmers there. If you want to learn how to program games it wouldn't hurt starting there either.
I'm actually working on my own game now, but I've always been interested in both art and programming sides so I'm doing both.
We can send a man to the moon but not inspect cargo. right?
What does inspecting cargo have to do with sending a man to the moon? Are you proposing that we give NASA the same budget they had for the moon mission to inspect cargo and that will solve our cargo problem?
There was this one time I was checking the internet and I happened upon this:
Latin for "it does not follow," a non sequitur is an inference that doesn't follow from the premises. In a sense, every fallacy is a non sequitur, an attempt to pass off two or more ideas as related though they are in fact not related (e.g., "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we find a cure for the common cold?").
I forgot how some geeks get bent out of shape about the use of the word, "stealing" vs. "copying", so when I said "stealing" I meant "copying".
I don't feel like debating with you or the rest of the internet on this matter any further. If you want to feel like you've won some argument on the internet feel free. I'd rather spend my time on more productive pursuits like catching up on sleep or learning to be a better programmer.
I can't see how the responses should be the same, because they are completely different.
Obviously the two groups aren't going to say exactly the same thing to completely different topics but the emotional level of response is the same. The point was that if you're going to do a jerk thing then you're going to get people pissed off at you. The comparison was meant to convey how pissed off designers will get if you copy a web design by comparing that to how pissed off geeks get at topics that really piss them off, but obviously that point completely flew over your head.
This is my last post on this matter. Your original post seemed to me like it was encouraging people to copy other people's website designs. I made a reply addressing that concern. I'm not going to continue debating with the internet about the finer points of whether that's right or wrong. I stand by my reply and obviously you stand by your original post. I'm going to leave it at that.
I was not comparing GPL violation to Patent trolling. I was comparing the RESPONSE from the geek community to the two to the RESPONSE from the design community.
geekResponse(gplViolation || patentTrolling) == designerResponse(siteDesignCopying)// angry and riled up
This is what you suggested in your original post: If you mimic some non-popular website's look, and your website also isn't that popular, nobody will notice or care (not that you can get in trouble for this as far as I know)
Which is quite different from: I'm not even suggesting copying some other website so closely you can tell one was copied from the other. I'm suggesting, you already have a website that needs to look nicer, borrow some ideas from other websites.
If this is what you had suggested originally then I wouldn't have bothered replying. It's normal to do that. Designers do it all the time.
First off, I'm not suggesting exact copying. I'm suggesting mimicking. Which I think is completely different from what you're accusing it of being (copyright violation)
mimic
to imitate or copy in action, speech, etc., often playfully or derisively.
to imitate in a servile or unthinking way; ape.
to be an imitation of; simulate; resemble closely.
I'm actually not accusing it of being a copyright violation. I'm saying following someone's else's design so closely that you can obviously tell that your design is completely based off their design is a douchbag thing to do which incurs anger from the design community equal to the anger incurred from the geek community when they hear about GPL violations or patent trolling.
So to reiterate - Am I saying that it's legally wrong? NO.
Am I saying that it's a jerk thing to do? YES.
Excuse me? How in the world do you "steal" something as abstract as a site design?
It's not abstract when they are taking html and css code verbatim, using text content verbatim, and using any graphics that were on the original site and just modifying some of the text on the graphics around. THAT is how they "steal" a site design. If you actually checked the pirated-site link you would have seen that for yourself. Of course you could just be a troll and in that case, my bad for replying.
Slashdot Mirror
There are issues both with your so called, "enviro-nazis" and their opponents who will go out of their way to bash anything might be good for people in general just because it happens to be in line with the agendas of environmentalists. I think it's illogical and goes against reason to support shitting where you eat just to spite an environmentalist who points out that it's not a good idea to shit where you eat.
You say that 'humans are the most important thing in the world." One of the things that make people humans is the ability to reason. Abandoning reason for an emotional agenda regardless of whether it's pro-environmentalist or anti-environmentalist is the path toward losing our humanity and becoming no better than animals.
I have to agree with all your points except for the money thing.
You never want to lose your own identity in a relationship and combining the money starts to do that. When I make big purchases I still confirm it with her, but the reply is usually "do what you want. It's your money" or "Are you sure you really need to be getting that" So it's more of a sanity check from my best friend rather than asking for permission, but keeping the money separate helps us to keep our identities.
If someone really wants to succeed they will.
I'm sure you're speaking from the first-hand experience of overcoming adversity of growing up in an innercity environment and all that it entails by going to a library and learning what you needed to succeed so that you could brag about it on slashdot today.
They have the same chances as anyone else - if they worked hard they could make something of their lifes. Clearly they can't be bothered so thats their problem
Clearly they have the same chances as anyone else
/sarcasm
I came from a very good public school district and used to wonder what all the fuss was about people not liking public school. I recently had the opportunity to talk to a school teacher who taught at a school that was split between my school district and a school district that encompasses some poorer communities. She happens to teach in the poorer district portion of the school. She said the difference between the quality of education between the two school districts just within this one building is like night and day as far as the resources that are available and quality of output from the students. Things that she would have to deal with is kids having immense pressure from their parents to do well not for academic reasons but because if they do well they would get free pizza which their parents expected them to bring home to help feed the family. Something like that happening in my school district was unfathomable thus I was never exposed to that reality.
This is just the tip of the iceberg and only dealing with the differences in educational opportunities. So if you can have the same chances as anybody else when playing with a loaded die, then yes I guess people in the inner city "have the same chances."
Anyway back to topic. I was trying to make light of the situation in China because I thought using a situation that's closer to home would give people some perspective, obviously I missed my mark by a wide margin.
I'm sorry but honestly why do I care what happens to projects in the inner city? They aren't innocent victums, they willingly bring in crack and sell it to their residents. As soon as they want to they can stop buying crack when they feel the health risks are too great... Until they do that, why should I feel bad for problems they have brought on themselves?
I think the view that the traditional play model of the player being the hero with the singular goal of "beating" the game is the only way to design and play a game is the problem here. The potential for a hero character that plays itself and allows you to jump into the game at any point would be much greater if you throw away that assumption.
Games initially had no end and were solely exercises in getting a high score. This was eventually replaced by the "reach the ending" model of gaming that you're referring to. I think this phase of game design is already starting to lose appeal and is giving way toward gameplay based on achievements. Even with achievements game designers are still putting too much emphasis on getting the player hero to the end as the end all be all goal of someone playing the game rather than allowing for other modes of gameplay.
The hero should be allowed to reach the "end" if left alone, but the player should be also be allowed to play as the antagonist who can choose to kill the hero character or try escaping before the hero reaches them. The player could also choose to play as the sidekick who may help the hero reach their destination sooner, backstab the hero and prevent them from reaching their destination or exact revenge on the antagonist who managed to kill the hero. So each different way of playing has its own set of achievements and associated scripted sequences.
The barnyard animal could choose to just sit back and let the hero reach the end while the "serious gamer" could try playing as the sidekick and reach the end of the game before the hero does.
One of my favorite quotes happens to be from Yamauchi via Miyamoto,
Do not try to compete with the others, try to be the only one.
I think it's a great quote in and of itself, but taken within the context of his anti-competitive practices it puts a whole new spin on things. I guess it makes sense that to not compete you either have to do something completely different from someone else or prevent someone else from doing the same thing as you.
As far as why people still have such a positive attitude towards such an "evil" company it's similar to why Walmart is so successful. The company gives its customers what they want. For Nintendo it is games that are fun and delivered in an accessible (cheap, easy learning curve) package. For Walmart this is cheap and plentiful products all in one location.
It's very difficult to be an angel consumer so we all have to pick and choose our fights. For me I buy Nintendo because the fun and cost beats out the evil but I don't buy Walmart because the evil beats out any advantages for me.
You can't just generalize about a city of millions. Try replacing New Yorker with a person from any country and listen to how offensive you sound.
I was born in NYC and am still living there currently. I also get really annoyed with the all the people who think New York is the greatest thing ever too, but you don't find me bashing it every chance I get on Slashdot. The amount of disdain you have for New Yorkers borders on the amount of homophobia you would find from a closeted homosexual. I'm not saying you're a closet New Yorker, but that's just what it comes off as... just saying...
Well you have the fans that complain about games being ruined by remakes then you have the fans who actually get up and do something about it and try their own hands at remaking the games.
I think there are some good examples of the latter being done over at Retro Remakes
For some good examples of the former check the rest of the comments.
I don't think there is any less creativity in games being created today. It's just that the most creative games don't get consumed by the mainstream public and thus are not exposed by the marketing machines of the major publishers. The games media is getting large enough that it has turned into media like books and film where you usually have to seek out the independent work in order to find the truly creative work.
If you go on sites like Game Tunnel or Kongregate and do some digging around you'll find some real innovation and creativity. The question is whether those games are executed at a quality level that the gaming public demands these days. Back then the playing field was fairly level due to limitations in technology and understanding of game design.
I am so tired of having to read forever on signs (like at home depot the other day) and product to find descriptions or instructions in fucking ENGLISH.
You can't blame immigrants for having instructions in multiple languages. You can blame globalization for that. It's cheaper to print a product in multiple languages than it is to print up separate packaging for each locale.
I'm happy to have other cultures contribute to our melting pot culture but some effort is required on their part too.
You can have your cheap products manufactured in foreign countries, but some effort is required on your part too, namely taking some time out of that extra precious Slashdot rant time to finding the English description.
The Eclipse plugin for Linux is still in alpha and can be found here:http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flexbuilder_linux.html
The SDK will work in Linux without Eclipse though.
Math is not invented. It is discovered. That's like saying that Columbus invented America.
I don't think your argument quite works.
You can also "discover" all of Shakespeare's works if you throw enough monkeys with typewriters at the problem by your rationale.
Part of inventing comes from discovering. Sure. I'll give you that, but the language of mathematics and the abstractions we've developed to lead us to our current understanding of mathematics were all invented.
Probably because that would have been another layer of complexity/confusion for any countries that aren't familiar with the Chinese writing system.
I kind of wished they showed the Chinese characters at the bottom of the screen with the country name so that at least we would have a better understanding of what they meant by counting strokes, but then again since they changed the order of the countries appearing that would explain why they didn't do that.
Don't tase him bro.
agh too much reading... =P
I didn't read the links that you posted, but the most abstracted version of what you talk about makes me think of progress quest, if progress quest had ability for a coop game and you could jump into any parts of the interface to interact with it when you want. Anyway, what you describe as a system sounds like what in programmer speak would be a rpg framework that implements certain rpg design patterns.
You could try to go to local user groups.
I know the Independent Game Developer's Association (IGDA) has chapters all around the country.
If you're doing Flash there are Flash user groups around the country too.
You could check out the forums at gamedev.net I think there are usually more programmers looking for artist than artists looking for programmmers there. If you want to learn how to program games it wouldn't hurt starting there either.
I'm actually working on my own game now, but I've always been interested in both art and programming sides so I'm doing both.
Might it have something to do with Samba?
What does inspecting cargo have to do with sending a man to the moon? Are you proposing that we give NASA the same budget they had for the moon mission to inspect cargo and that will solve our cargo problem?
There was this one time I was checking the internet and I happened upon this:
You can also use the marquee tool to choose the area you want to crop then go to Image > Crop.
http://www.pirated-sites.com/vanilla/comments.php?DiscussionID=534&page=1#Item_0
identical markup down to comments - some changed text content
I found this from the flickr group - http://flickr.com/photos/34923023@N00/
http://www.autodemontageverwijst.nl/ - original
http://www.sinotrad.com/ - copied - chunks of identical markup - same div class id names including misspellings.
I forgot how some geeks get bent out of shape about the use of the word, "stealing" vs. "copying", so when I said "stealing" I meant "copying".
I don't feel like debating with you or the rest of the internet on this matter any further. If you want to feel like you've won some argument on the internet feel free. I'd rather spend my time on more productive pursuits like catching up on sleep or learning to be a better programmer.
I can't see how the responses should be the same, because they are completely different. Obviously the two groups aren't going to say exactly the same thing to completely different topics but the emotional level of response is the same. The point was that if you're going to do a jerk thing then you're going to get people pissed off at you. The comparison was meant to convey how pissed off designers will get if you copy a web design by comparing that to how pissed off geeks get at topics that really piss them off, but obviously that point completely flew over your head. This is my last post on this matter. Your original post seemed to me like it was encouraging people to copy other people's website designs. I made a reply addressing that concern. I'm not going to continue debating with the internet about the finer points of whether that's right or wrong. I stand by my reply and obviously you stand by your original post. I'm going to leave it at that.
I was not comparing GPL violation to Patent trolling. I was comparing the RESPONSE from the geek community to the two to the RESPONSE from the design community. // angry and riled up
geekResponse(gplViolation || patentTrolling) == designerResponse(siteDesignCopying)
This is what you suggested in your original post:
If you mimic some non-popular website's look, and your website also isn't that popular, nobody will notice or care (not that you can get in trouble for this as far as I know)
Which is quite different from:
I'm not even suggesting copying some other website so closely you can tell one was copied from the other. I'm suggesting, you already have a website that needs to look nicer, borrow some ideas from other websites.
If this is what you had suggested originally then I wouldn't have bothered replying. It's normal to do that. Designers do it all the time.
mimic
I'm actually not accusing it of being a copyright violation. I'm saying following someone's else's design so closely that you can obviously tell that your design is completely based off their design is a douchbag thing to do which incurs anger from the design community equal to the anger incurred from the geek community when they hear about GPL violations or patent trolling.
So to reiterate - Am I saying that it's legally wrong? NO.
Am I saying that it's a jerk thing to do? YES.
Excuse me? How in the world do you "steal" something as abstract as a site design?
It's not abstract when they are taking html and css code verbatim, using text content verbatim, and using any graphics that were on the original site and just modifying some of the text on the graphics around. THAT is how they "steal" a site design. If you actually checked the pirated-site link you would have seen that for yourself. Of course you could just be a troll and in that case, my bad for replying.