music is art. but that doesnt mean it must be done for free. How many great songs and works of art were knocked up by people working part-time? Whats so special about making something creative that means you shouldnt be paid for it? you would rather everyone in the whole entertainment industry worked for free? grow up. If you work in software development, this attitude is gonna bite your ass big time, because as your product shows up on kazaa, so your redundancy letter heads your way.
At the current rate file-sharing will have wiped out all digital content providers by then. You dont expect people to keep making movies and music for nothing do you? do you? Why should artists work for free when you and I take an hourly wage?
there is a big difference. Years ago you might tape an LP for a freind. Here I can upload an MP3 and share copyrighted music with 10,000 people I have never met, and with no effort on my part. Are you hnonestly saying that music piracy hasnt gone up since the days of home taping?
Anyone who reckons that freely allowing people to take a product that costs money to make and giving copies to everyone on the internet for free, isnt going to wreck that industry must be smoking some serious drugs. OF COURSE it hurts the guys who make the digital content. In many cases they are rich superstars, but in a lot of cases they arent, and you are wrecking peoples incomes who might be no better off than you *just because you can*
Thought it worth mentioning the route I took into games programming. I started coding games in my spare time and eventually got good enough to sell them over the internet, even getting onto some compilations in retail stores, and making a few thousand quid for my efforts. Getting magazine reviews and coverdisk placements also helped. I coded and designed all the stuff myself, you can see the games i did at www.positech.co.uk. On the basis of this, I got a lot of interviews very quickly the minute I registered with an agency. In the end I got 3 job offers and ended up with the one I really wanted all along.
I dont have any formal programming qualifications at all, but I did have something hardly any other candidates have: My CV was just colour screenshots from 4 finished games, and a URL to my site where you could download and play them. That pretty much sold me as a candidate, and just goes to show that being a bedroom hacker CAN still get you a good job in the games industry.
(In this case at elixir-studios in the UK).
is this for real? i mean...The masons? Methinks this poster is living in the 18th century, they are about as influential as the womens institute. Am i the only person here who thinks this dosent sound such a bad idea? Sure there are privacy implications, but what we have here is a serious problem (deaths through road accidents). Surely us slashdotters should be commited to finding a technological solution, not going all luddite because we think we may be prevented form breaking the law. As to this bullshit about needing to accelerate away from danger, thats so damned simple, just make the first 60 seconds of acceleration 'free'. its easy to look at a graph of someones speed and distinguish between someone in trouble momentarily and someone just breaking the speed limit. Come on guys, wake up and be adult about this, dont behave like spoiled kids worried their favourite toys might be taken away. I was recently in a 4 car pileup thanks to some arrogant speeding driver and i think if there is a technological solution to car accidents we are fools to ignore it.
you make some very interesting points, however i must fundamentally disagree on the topic of id softwares right to use copy protection. To put my comments into perspective im an amateur games coder myself, even earn a few bucks from it (in a very small way). id software are not a bunch of kids knocking out Quake III in their spare time, they are a business that, like every other games company is taking a big gamble. I know...I know, quake 3 looks like it will sell like hot cakes, but it aint guaranteed, nothing is in the games world, especially when someone releases Unreal Tournament just before you! The amount of effort, time and money required to create a game like Q3 is astounding. It may take coders years to slave away on what you dismiss as 'just a game'. All that effort, all that time and work, and there are those who think that somehow they 'deserve' to have it for free. id Software are trying to stop people stealing their product. yes its ones and zeros, but its still the product of hard work, and if everyone took the attitude that they shouldnt have to pay for it, there would be no more games. i know you arent advocating piracy, but the flipside of the coin is that if you belive that id have the right to benefit from their work, then they MUST have the right to enforce that protection. We all know there are ways round any copy prot scheme, but we are slashdotters, do you think Joe public will be prevented from copying the game from his mates because of the key? YES he will, and so he should be. Copying games is theft, if you havent got your own unique Quake III key then you dont own it, and if you want to play it, BUY IT. The ONLY justification for complaining about copy protection is hwn it is unnecesarily inconvenient or can prevent legit owners from playing, and there is no eveidenc of this. Ill be getting my copy for Christmas, and one things for sure, i wont be divulging my CD key to anyone else. If you like the look of the game (and you can play the demo first). BUY THE GAME...
Im an ex music teacher and currently a programmer. I have long winded arguments with people about how anyone can learn music, in the same way they can learn bricklaying or brain surgery, its just a skill. people put in a 'cloud' called 'artistic talent' to disguise the fact that they dont have the discipline to learn something themselves. I see no problems with computers being able to write and perform music every bit as good as Hendrix et al, given time. nor do i think we should be bothered by this, we still have athletes trying to run faster, even though cheetahs cant be beat, and no human can beat a machine at arm wrestling. We should be happy to let computers do everything for us so we can concentrate on relaxing and having fun. (see 'The Player of Games' by Iain Banks for details.
Everyone seems to slam Bill gates but at the end of the day, hes a capitalist in a capitalist system, playing by that systems rules and winning. If you want an alternative system then fine, but dont knock bill for being too good at the game. Microsoft fights dirty, just like all small young eager companies do, they just get the hunger beaten out of them when they get older. If you had a chum running a little software company who fought just as eagerly for his company as Bill did, yet only tunred over $50k youd think he was an underground geek hero. The fact that this particular geek won big time shouldnt change that. I applaud Bill gates, hes one of the only hugely rich guys who is one of us (hes a coder just like most of us geeks). And BTW, I have 2 windows machines at home that never NEVER crash, despite one being used as a development environment. I may get flamed for this, but Windows98 is as stable as any other operating system ive seen...
Sorry but this is rubbish. Oters have already pointed this out, but i have to point out that you are swallowing the marketing and PR bull of huge multinationals who dont give a damn about third world countries, they just care about their share price. Im more inclined to listen to the likes of Freinds of The Earth or Greenpeace than someone with their eye on the mighty dollar like MS
A commendable attitude, but of lot of it is about age and circumstance. when I was 21, all i wanted was to play guitar at gigs every night, I earned a pittance and didnt care about earning more. Now im almost 30, have a mortgage and work for whoever pays the big bucks. Also its not just about you wanting the bucks, its a case of not wanting someone else to earn them off your back. If i code something and it sells, i want the money, not just because i like the money, but because if anyone deserves it, its me not a suit. Even so, if i earned megabux id give most of it to Greenpeace:-)
You are assuming that if you quizzed everyone what the ideal game was, they would say 'First person shooters please!". Face facts: not all games are snapped up by eager young pups saying "whoah! this is the game ive always wanted...", a lot of games are shifted just because they are everywhere, over-marketed and instantly avaialble. You can buy Half life in my local book store, but you cant get Alpha centauri there, so your casual gamer (or more likely - someone buying a present for a gamer) will go with the latest bland FPS. Remember that video games started off with pong and space invaders, the first person shooter was itself an innovation, a risky prospect if everyone was a slave to market forces as you recommend.. Long live the PC, innovation, and small development companies. I certainly dont want to stick with the same half dozen game genres we have for the next 50 years...
nobody is mentioning that the 3DFX cards have a tiny limit for maximum texture sizes, and dont support 32bit color. I have a TNT2 Ultra and it is absolutely awesome, as well as having a more forward-thinking feature set. With raw performance between nVidia and 3DFX so similar, youd have to be a fool to go with such a restricted and limited card as the 3DFX. Just my opinion.
Here in the UK we are bombarded with store cards everywhere. One big store (sainsburys) call em the 'Reward card' as though you are saving lives or something by buying your food in the same store every week. I am sick and tired of some sad little guy asking me if i have a reward card, a triumph card or a bonus-super-duper card, but the worse thing of all is the fact that they seem suprised or confused if you say you dont want one...
Slashdot Mirror
music is art. but that doesnt mean it must be done for free.
How many great songs and works of art were knocked up by people working part-time?
Whats so special about making something creative that means you shouldnt be paid for it?
you would rather everyone in the whole entertainment industry worked for free?
grow up.
If you work in software development, this attitude is gonna bite your ass big time, because as your product shows up on kazaa, so your redundancy letter heads your way.
even then people paid minstrels with food. You dont even want that to happen it seems....
At the current rate file-sharing will have wiped out all digital content providers by then.
You dont expect people to keep making movies and music for nothing do you?
do you?
Why should artists work for free when you and I take an hourly wage?
there is a big difference. Years ago you might tape an LP for a freind. Here I can upload an MP3 and share copyrighted music with 10,000 people I have never met, and with no effort on my part.
Are you hnonestly saying that music piracy hasnt gone up since the days of home taping?
Anyone who reckons that freely allowing people to take a product that costs money to make and giving copies to everyone on the internet for free, isnt going to wreck that industry must be smoking some serious drugs.
OF COURSE it hurts the guys who make the digital content. In many cases they are rich superstars, but in a lot of cases they arent, and you are wrecking peoples incomes who might be no better off than you *just because you can*
Thought it worth mentioning the route I took into games programming. I started coding games in my spare time and eventually got good enough to sell them over the internet, even getting onto some compilations in retail stores, and making a few thousand quid for my efforts. Getting magazine reviews and coverdisk placements also helped. I coded and designed all the stuff myself, you can see the games i did at www.positech.co.uk. On the basis of this, I got a lot of interviews very quickly the minute I registered with an agency. In the end I got 3 job offers and ended up with the one I really wanted all along. I dont have any formal programming qualifications at all, but I did have something hardly any other candidates have: My CV was just colour screenshots from 4 finished games, and a URL to my site where you could download and play them. That pretty much sold me as a candidate, and just goes to show that being a bedroom hacker CAN still get you a good job in the games industry. (In this case at elixir-studios in the UK).
is this for real? i mean...The masons? Methinks this poster is living in the 18th century, they are about as influential as the womens institute.
Am i the only person here who thinks this dosent sound such a bad idea? Sure there are privacy implications, but what we have here is a serious problem (deaths through road accidents). Surely us slashdotters should be commited to finding a technological solution, not going all luddite because we think we may be prevented form breaking the law. As to this bullshit about needing to accelerate away from danger, thats so damned simple, just make the first 60 seconds of acceleration 'free'. its easy to look at a graph of someones speed and distinguish between someone in trouble momentarily and someone just breaking the speed limit.
Come on guys, wake up and be adult about this, dont behave like spoiled kids worried their favourite toys might be taken away. I was recently in a 4 car pileup thanks to some arrogant speeding driver and i think if there is a technological solution to car accidents we are fools to ignore it.
you make some very interesting points, however i must fundamentally disagree on the topic of id softwares right to use copy protection. To put my comments into perspective im an amateur games coder myself, even earn a few bucks from it (in a very small way).
id software are not a bunch of kids knocking out Quake III in their spare time, they are a business that, like every other games company is taking a big gamble. I know...I know, quake 3 looks like it will sell like hot cakes, but it aint guaranteed, nothing is in the games world, especially when someone releases Unreal Tournament just before you!
The amount of effort, time and money required to create a game like Q3 is astounding. It may take coders years to slave away on what you dismiss as 'just a game'. All that effort, all that time and work, and there are those who think that somehow they 'deserve' to have it for free.
id Software are trying to stop people stealing their product. yes its ones and zeros, but its still the product of hard work, and if everyone took the attitude that they shouldnt have to pay for it, there would be no more games.
i know you arent advocating piracy, but the flipside of the coin is that if you belive that id have the right to benefit from their work, then they MUST have the right to enforce that protection. We all know there are ways round any copy prot scheme, but we are slashdotters, do you think Joe public will be prevented from copying the game from his mates because of the key? YES he will, and so he should be. Copying games is theft, if you havent got your own unique Quake III key then you dont own it, and if you want to play it, BUY IT.
The ONLY justification for complaining about copy protection is hwn it is unnecesarily inconvenient or can prevent legit owners from playing, and there is no eveidenc of this.
Ill be getting my copy for Christmas, and one things for sure, i wont be divulging my CD key to anyone else. If you like the look of the game (and you can play the demo first). BUY THE GAME...
Im an ex music teacher and currently a programmer. I have long winded arguments with people about how anyone can learn music, in the same way they can learn bricklaying or brain surgery, its just a skill. people put in a 'cloud' called 'artistic talent' to disguise the fact that they dont have the discipline to learn something themselves.
I see no problems with computers being able to write and perform music every bit as good as Hendrix et al, given time.
nor do i think we should be bothered by this, we still have athletes trying to run faster, even though cheetahs cant be beat, and no human can beat a machine at arm wrestling. We should be happy to let computers do everything for us so we can concentrate on relaxing and having fun. (see 'The Player of Games' by Iain Banks for details.
Everyone seems to slam Bill gates but at the end of the day, hes a capitalist in a capitalist system, playing by that systems rules and winning. If you want an alternative system then fine, but dont knock bill for being too good at the game. Microsoft fights dirty, just like all small young eager companies do, they just get the hunger beaten out of them when they get older. If you had a chum running a little software company who fought just as eagerly for his company as Bill did, yet only tunred over $50k youd think he was an underground geek hero. The fact that this particular geek won big time shouldnt change that.
I applaud Bill gates, hes one of the only hugely rich guys who is one of us (hes a coder just like most of us geeks).
And BTW, I have 2 windows machines at home that never NEVER crash, despite one being used as a development environment. I may get flamed for this, but Windows98 is as stable as any other operating system ive seen...
Cliffski
Sorry but this is rubbish. Oters have already pointed this out, but i have to point out that you are swallowing the marketing and PR bull of huge multinationals who dont give a damn about third world countries, they just care about their share price. Im more inclined to listen to the likes of Freinds of The Earth or Greenpeace than someone with their eye on the mighty dollar like MS
A commendable attitude, but of lot of it is about age and circumstance. when I was 21, all i wanted was to play guitar at gigs every night, I earned a pittance and didnt care about earning more. Now im almost 30, have a mortgage and work for whoever pays the big bucks. Also its not just about you wanting the bucks, its a case of not wanting someone else to earn them off your back. If i code something and it sells, i want the money, not just because i like the money, but because if anyone deserves it, its me not a suit. Even so, if i earned megabux id give most of it to Greenpeace :-)
You are assuming that if you quizzed everyone what the ideal game was, they would say 'First person shooters please!". Face facts: not all games are snapped up by eager young pups saying "whoah! this is the game ive always wanted...", a lot of games are shifted just because they are everywhere, over-marketed and instantly avaialble. You can buy Half life in my local book store, but you cant get Alpha centauri there, so your casual gamer (or more likely - someone buying a present for a gamer) will go with the latest bland FPS.
Remember that video games started off with pong and space invaders, the first person shooter was itself an innovation, a risky prospect if everyone was a slave to market forces as you recommend..
Long live the PC, innovation, and small development companies. I certainly dont want to stick with the same half dozen game genres we have for the next 50 years...
Cliffski
nobody is mentioning that the 3DFX cards have a tiny limit for maximum texture sizes, and dont support 32bit color. I have a TNT2 Ultra and it is absolutely awesome, as well as having a more forward-thinking feature set. With raw performance between nVidia and 3DFX so similar, youd have to be a fool to go with such a restricted and limited card as the 3DFX.
Just my opinion.
"I sense much fear in you" - Yoda
Here in the UK we are bombarded with store cards everywhere. One big store (sainsburys) call em the 'Reward card' as though you are saving lives or something by buying your food in the same store every week.
I am sick and tired of some sad little guy asking me if i have a reward card, a triumph card or a bonus-super-duper card, but the worse thing of all is the fact that they seem suprised or confused if you say you dont want one...