I've never seen a video game that was -that- malleable.
There are, but I'm not sure I've seen any that I'd call 'art'.
For example: Sim-type games. In these games, it really is the player being the artist.
Also: Multiplayer games. These have varying degrees of linearity, but I think Counter-Strike is what he was thinking of when he called games a 'sport', because it really is. In fact, you can be professionally sponsored, and paid to win Counter-Strike or Halo tournaments.
But it's difficult to get the sheer breadth of possible games out there without actually being a gamer. Even Halo -- play online, and it's a sport. Play campaign, and it can be a sport (if you're playing again, on Legendary, co-op but by yourself to make it harder), but it can also be a compelling story and as much a work of art as any movie.
There is another element here, though -- he would probably not see these truly artistic elements as being a property of the game. For example, a cinematic sequence is really a little movie in the middle of a game. But games can tell everything without leaving the mechanics of gameplay (like Half-Life), or use both those and cinematic sequences (like Halo).
But here's the essential problem -- he (and others) don't have the distinction between the mechanics of gameplay and the game itself. Gameplay is as much the game as the camera is the movie.
Which is to say: Usually, they are not. Every now and then you see a game that is pure gameplay, like Lugaru, or Geometry Wars, or classic arcade games. Every now and then you see a movie which is pure camera work, like 2001: A Space Oddessy. But usually, the pure-camera movie isn't presented as a movie, it's presented as a "demo" of some technological aspect of filmmaking or game design. In fact, we're much more likely to play the pure-gameplay game than watch the pure-camera movie, certainly more than once, because it can be fun to just play, but it's not really fun to just watch. You have to be watching something happen.
In fact, gameplay can do things a camera can't, yet. There's nothing like the purely visceral satisfaction of bludgeoning a Halo elite in the back of the head, or firing a rocket at some group of enemies (all clustered together nicely, or performing a perfectly-executed fatal combo in a fighting game, and feeling that solid vibration of the controller... All of these elements are under the control of the game developer, but the experience isn't complete unless you're the one doing it.
So, this is the common confusion -- parents walk in and see their kid playing Halo, and they're "just killing things". And maybe the kid is, but that's all the kid probably sees in most movies, too. When I play Halo, I'm not "just killing things", I'm saving the world, or I'm escaping from prison, or I'm negotiating the trade agreements and alliances that will govern Japan (or China) for the next hundred years. I'm living out a story. And it's a damned good story. Halo is good enough to make into a good movie, and with Peter Jackson still involved, it might be a very good movie.
There's also another point I'd like to drive home to Mr. Ebert: Games can do anything movies can. You could make a game which was pure cinematics, with zero interactivity, and people can play it on their PS3 or Xbox 360 hooked up to a high-def home theater system, invite 20 friends over, and they may as well be watching a movie -- WILL be watching a movie. Because you can control the amount of interactivity in a game, from zero to 100%. But you can't make a movie with any interactivity -- it's stuck at zero -- and there's no way you'll make a movie that has the viewer identifying as strongly with a character on the screen as they will with a role they are playing.
Understand, there's software and then there's software. There is actually a company which specializes in test-driven development to the point where they actually will develop a product in the same amount of time, but charge twice as much for it, because there will be NO bugs (or "defects") at release. Other companies would spend half their time developing, and the other half testing and squashing bugs, and there would still be a dozen bugs there.
So, the level of software that will be directly controlling the car will be pretty much un-crackable.
Now, the smart phones and laptops, maybe, but those won't be connected directly to steering and such. As much as everyone wants to have the James Bond car, which you can drive by remote control, I'm fairly sure auto manufacturers have thought of what you just did, and really, really don't want to be held liable for that kind of bullshit. So basically, no James Bond cars until the industry as a whole moves to that level of stability and security.
Google will have completed the transition from "do no evil" to "if you can't beat them, buy them" that started with YouTube.
How is that evil?
Well, actually, in the case of YouTube, it kind of is -- given that they still haven't unified YouTube with Google Video, and they both still use Flash excessively. (Flash does many things well; a media player isn't one of them.)
You can't even compare it to embedded Linux -- which is generally rock-solid and capable of running in almost anything -- because Linux is not real-time. (Neither is Windows or OS X or BSD, by the way.)
I mean, sure, there are plenty of so-called "real-time" applications that these OSes work perfectly well for. Audio, for instance -- Protools, Ardour, etc. But it's a bit like Java -- while on average, you know how long something is going to take to process, you don't have any guarantees. (In Java's case, the garbage collector might decide to run at exactly the moment you need something important to happen.)
"real-time" means that you can actually guarantee, often with mathematical proofs, that a given thing will happen by a given deadline, and usually the deadlines are much shorter than anything a modern desktop OS can handle. It means you can say things like "If the sensor reads foo, I need a shutdown command sent to the nuclear reactor within 20 milliseconds." Done properly, you can actually guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that this will happen -- and in 20 milliseconds, not 21. On a desktop OS, there's just no guarantee -- for all you know, a filesystem driver, of all things, could lock the whole IO system up for half a second.
That's not to say that you can't make Linux realtime -- there are projects to do so. It's also not to say that you can't build a desktop out of a realtime OS. But right now, as far as I know, there are no real-time OSes which are used for anything other than embedded apps which actually need the real-time capability.
The bulk of my work that isn't fixing stuff is done with vim over SSH and a web browser. Firefox is getting a bit heavy, but it only has the one or two tabs I need for the app I'm developing -- Konqueror can handle the rest.
There are other nice things you could do, if you bother to set it up. For instance, instead of carrying a half-dozen boot CDs or DVDs, you could bring this and a crossover cable, and use that to "jump start" someone's computer. Might even prove a good analogy, when someone asks what you're doing.
I want a computer like this with maybe a bit more internal flash memory (maybe 32 gigs would be enough, but I've lived with 15 gigs) so I can put movies on the thing before a trip.
And...
I want that internal memory to be accessable as Flash memory, to Linux, instead of pretending it's a spinning drive. I want to run JFFS2 on it.
It'd also be nice if it had more battery life. Here, what would be really nice is a quick, supported suspend-to-RAM (or suspend-to-disk), enough internal battery to run it suspended for maybe five minutes, and a cheap removable battery -- especially if said battery could be plugged in directly to charge, rather than having to be in a laptop. That would make this awesome for long trips, plane flights, etc -- it could light some "low battery" light and auto-suspend itself, and refuse to come back on until you swap batteries.
And being able to charge the battery separately is just convenience -- you could stay on the couch, just get up every 3 hours or so to swap out batteries, instead of being tethered to a power cable.
Interestingly, this sounds very close to my old Sharp laptop -- which cost me $1700 or so. It had some 256 megs of RAM (or was it 128?), a 1 ghz Crusoe that felt like 500 mhz, a 15 gig internal hard drive, and a 10" screen. Weighed about 2 pounds.
He stopped by my house and asked to put a sign in my yard for his reelection campaign (my front yard is on a very busy east-west corridor in Cincinnati). I said yes
Why?
I mean, if you say no, he might ask why. Then you get to tell him. Maybe he'll even listen.
If not, so what? If he's as bad as you seem to think, what makes you think he'll listen to your future requests, either?
It sounds to me like you're agreeing with me -- rudely, maybe, but:
So don't bother bringing up Germany to me -- we have our own home-grown examples to look to.
So what?
I mean, if you want a home-grown example, we could look at the Trail of Tears, or slaves on plantations...
I could also have brought up the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
I chose Germany because it was easy to think of, I'd actually read books about it, and hell, I was raised Jewish. You don't have to be offended because I didn't pick your tragedy to use in my analogy.
Anyone who sneers that someone "got off on a technicality" simply doesn't understand the concept of justice under LAW.
Anyone who says I was "sneering" there simply doesn't understand the concept of communication under the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I realize you didn't say that, but you did imply it -- else why did you quote me and then reply, if you agree with me?
I called it "winning". I didn't say it was bad -- in fact, I agree with you here:
The "technicalities" are exactly what reigns in the perverse behavior of law enforcement officials who feel too restrained by the written law.
Right. You have to let the occasional murdering bastard free, on a technicality, so that law enforcement officials don't try the same bullshit on the next suspect.
I'm not sneering at the law, or at the procedure, or the situation, or anything. If "on a technicality" is meant as a "sneer" at anything, it's the bastard who managed to get off, and the idiot who didn't follow procedure (resulting in said bastard getting off).
(This, in itself, is evidence that they were mere rubber stamps. Any court that finds for the prosecution in 99.999 percent of cases is just as illegitimate as any dictator who "wins" with 99.999 percent of the vote.)
Not necessarily. I tend to agree with you here, but maybe the prosecution just didn't bother to submit many wiretapping requests that they knew would be rejected out of hand.
And for that matter, I think a dictator with 99.999 percent of the vote is only illegitimate if the voting process was flawed. 99.999 percent of the vote means you should take a VERY close look at the voting process, yes, but that doesn't make it automatically flawed, just statistically likely to be flawed -- and we all know about "lies, damn lies, and statistics."
I also wouldn't label those who encourage encryption and privacy as "morons" and "zealots".
No, I labeled those who encourage encryption as "zealots", and I know that is not true -- not so long as you're only encrypting your own stuff. If you want all data, everywhere, to be encrypted, that's pretty much the definition of a zealot -- for instance, I used to want all computers, everywhere, to run Linux, which made me a bit of a Linux zealot.
I did, however, label those who modded grandparent +5 as "morons". That's a distinct group, a group of people who actually believe that crap about "police don't trust anyone".
This is not Germany Circa 1942.
I suggest you read "A Princess in Berlin" -- long story short, Germany circa 1930 was not Germany circa 1942. Nazism rose frighteningly quickly. It did not matter whether the country was free or not -- they were facing an imminent threat, so they ran to what they saw as the strongest thing going.
Besides, the whole purpose of a representative democracy is that if the majority of people are in favor of something (in this case data encryption) no elected representative will vote against it for fear of losing their cushy jobs.
More recommended reading: Empire, by Orson Scott Card. (It does manage to not be overly political, if you can manage to take it that way -- and it's a very good story, whether or not you think the premise is likely.)
First, the majority of people are not in favor of data encryption. The majority don't care.
Second, the power does NOT rest with the people. Not anymore. We're not a bunch of colonies with a ragtag militia anymore. We have an organized army, and that is where the power lies, ultimately. We're just lucky enough that the army is usually controlled by our civilian elected officials, and usually allows us to keep electing them, even if we elect morons. (I do think Bush is a moron.)
If the politicians enact martial law, even if it's not "official" and everyone is trying their hardest to vote or rally against it, the honest truth of it is, most of us won't do anything, because we don't want to die. Think about it -- if there's an armed guard outside the voting booth who says "Anyone in favor of a democratic republic will be shot down," are you still going to try to vote?
I try to be an optimist... Ultimately, I don't think the entire country will be jailed or shot or anything. But never, ever forget that it can happen.
I'm not suggesting that warrants require cooperation.
I'm just saying that no warrant means no cooperation -- from me, anyway. And in order to get a warrant, you either need Patriot Act bullshit, or you need to convince a judge that you have good reason to believe I'm guilty of something. Frankly, if all you've got is "His hard drive is encrypted", I think (I hope!) a decent judge will tell them to fuck off and refuse to sign the warrant.
And if you have a warrant that says you may search my house, but my laptop's in my car, then no, you may not have the keys to my laptop -- in fact, you can't even open the clamshell.
So in other words: I'm going to read your warrant and make sure it gives you the authority to compell me to give up my keys before I do it. Because once they have my data, it's a HUGE pain in the ass to go through and reset all my crypto keys, remote access to various servers, distribute GPG public keys, etc. Compare that to searching the rest of my house -- the worst that happens there is you'll make a mess, and it's already a mess.
For that matter, if they want specific documents, they get specific documents, and not my keys -- I'll decrypt them myself, thank you.
I think the technical problem can be dealt with, either by clever programming or by brute force. Eventually, we WILL all have gigabit pipes into our houses.
But even if you leave it as mostly hack'n'slash, there are other things you can do beyond Warcraft. I play Nexus TK, and I did play a Warcraft trial for 10 days, but the combat was just too slow and simplistic. And I can say "simplistic" despite that Nexus is a 2D game played on a grid -- meaning that while the grid isn't drawn, each square in the game either has a player, a monster, an obstacle, or it's empty (and shows ground).
Simple combat is really simple -- walk up to a creature, press spacebar, and your character swings their weapon -- or their fists. Hold it down and you'll keep swinging. Everyone swings at the same rate, something like 2-3 times per second -- so as you progress, it isn't your speed or agility increasing, it's your strength and your "grace" -- the chance that any particular swing will hit.
Casters are just slightly more complex at this level -- they get so little strength that they're better off throwing lightning spells at it. This involves pressing a number, targeting the creature (you could just click on it), and maybe pressing enter. Repeat to throw the spell again. Spells which deal damage are generally lightning-shaped and are called "zaps" -- unless they're particularly special, like the Mage's "Hellfire" at 99.
That's it -- that's what they started with. Certainly, you can imagine how more could be built on top of that -- the healers cast healing spells on players the same way the mages zap. But it doesn't really use more bandwidth than Warcraft, or if it does, not significantly so -- it is mostly playable over dialup.
But it is much more entertaining at a low level, I thought, so I stuck with it -- and the higher levels are nice. Higher levels of Warcraft might be better, I just haven't played enough of it -- by level 17 (out of 60), it was still boring.
An example of something I've never seen in another MMO -- Set maging. This is the art of paralyzing creatures in just the right places, relative to your fighters, for them to be able to do the most damage. It is difficult to do at any level, and does not get easier at higher levels. The creatures themselves certainly aren't going to want to cooperate.
A good set mage is valuable no matter what his level, so long as he can get into the cave and survive. That's a far cry from Warcraft, where unless you're level 70, we don't even want to talk to you, and assuming you are 70, we're still looking for the people with the best gear, etc...
It doesn't mean the game is over once you can set. You still want to be able to get into the higher caves, and see them, and there are still things a Mage can do (like Hellfire) that are dependent on their stats. But that's not their main function.
I suppose it's possible to be really bad at Warcraft (Leeroy Jenkins!), but I'm not convinced it's possible to be exceptionally skilled -- only exceptionally lucky or possessing an exceptional amount of free time. But oddly enough, it IS possible to be exceptionally skilled at Nexus, even though Nexus does not have a level cap.
If you don't have the skill to be a set mage, of course, you might feel left out. Or you could get over it and solo a lot, or play a different path, or play with people who don't mind a mage who is good at stopping the entire room (good for safety) but not forming sets. Or focus on something other than hunting. Or even play a different game, but I like to think that playing a different path is enough.
Artificial Intelligence
I think that the monster you've just created, while it shouldn't be true for all creatures, it would make a nice boss. That's one problem with existing MMOs -- if you don't like a challenge, you can always just grind, and in fact, I found at least the early levels of WoW to be completely without any chall
Specifically, things like bricking a device because a subscription has run out, or disabling it because DRM rights have been violated.
I believe both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have a method called "blacklisting".
Basically, each device has a key, probably specific to its model number or something similar. If someone finds a way of using that device to circumvent the DRM (and rip movies), that device key can be listed on new discs as "blacklisted". As soon as you pop the new disc in the player, it goes "Oh fuck, I'm blacklisted" and bricks itself.
Now, realistically, I think they're expecting that they can solve this kind of thing without bricking the whole device -- for example, I believe WinDVD (or was it PowerDVD? whatever) was cracked, so new discs blacklisted it, and it would then refuse to do anything until you downloaded a new version which defeated the crack.
But the fact that the capability is even there is just disgusting to me, and is the reason why I refuse to buy anything HD until we have the equivalent of DeCSS -- until I can pop any disc into my computer again, and expect it to rip and play on Linux with no hassle.
So here's the question I have: Malice or incompetence?
Did Apple not do a system like you describe because they want to exert more control? (You have to buy a new iPod if you lose your computer... You can't re-sell it or give it away as a gift... You have to buy a charger from Apple, nobody else...)
Or did Apple simply not think of it? Or reject it out of hand as being too hard? (Or even too insecure -- any computer you plug it into and enter the charging password is a place someone can now steal your iPod from.)
Except their partner on the beat. And Dispatch. And the Chief. And...
And the police expect total control of any given situation.
I don't think they do, realistically. They might want that, but doesn't everyone? I know I'd love to have total control of any given situation.
But realistically, any cop who has been around awhile should have seen the FBI take over an investigation, or a perp slip away because someone was stupid enough to violate their fourth-amendment rights. Or a good friend die in the line of duty.
Adding those two points simply will make that anyone who hides stuff from the police is automatically an ennemy that has to be controlled at once.
If, in the course of investigation, they come across someone hiding stuff, it might make them suspicious. It might even automatically make that person a suspect. But "suspect" doesn't mean "enemy", because they have to be willing to accept that they may have the wrong person. (That's not always true, of course -- sometimes they know they've got the right guy, but he's still a "suspect" until he becomes a "defendant".)
As a matter of fact, one cannot never win against the police. In a courtroom, yes, maybe, but not against the police.
Erm... you just refuted your own argument.
I mean, even your grammar disagrees with you here: "one cannot never win against the police." Cannot never. That means it is impossible for someone to never win against the police. Meaning that at least once in your life, you will win against the police.
It's tricky to figure out what you mean by "In a courtroom..." If you're saying that it's possible to win in a courtroom, then you're right. If you're saying it's not possible to win in a courtroom against the police, you're dead wrong. There have been cases where, for example, a cop opened the trunk of some guy's car without a warrant, and there was a dead body in the trunk -- but since it was obtained through an illegal search, it could not be used as evidence. Which means that the guy walked. (Might have been on Law & Order, actually, but there have been real cases like that.)
If you can get away with murder on a technicality, because some policeman (in this case a policewoman, I think) didn't follow procedure exactly, I call that "winning against the police."
So the obvious solution is that everyone should perform maximum obfuscation/encrypting of data, the idea being that one cannot jail a whole country.
Wrong again!
First, everyone will not do this. I think you'll only really get a few zealots (like whatever morons modded you +5 Insightful), but let's pretend for a moment that every technically-minded person followed you.
Now, I don't care how many that is, but there are overwhelmingly more people who actually feel good about AOL (and Earthlink, etc), spend all day on Myspace, have no clue what an operating system even is, etc etc.
And before you say "one cannot jail a whole class of people", I'll point you to Germany, circa 1942 -- several whole classes of people were not only jailed, they were also enslaved and killed wholesale.
I don't mean to say I expect another Holocaust here. What I am saying is that if you really believe that a truly massive number of people using encryption won't be jailed in this country, then you should also believe that even the small minority who seriously uses encryption today should be safe.
Right. I suspect that this could be used in, for example, subpeona-ing the IM logs of my friends who don't encrypt them, or of, say, Microsoft (for my MSN logs)...
I'm not sure it was meant to imply that the act of cloaking is itself incriminating, but rather that knowing you cloaked your data might tell them where to look. But then, it really was not worded very clearly.
And if you do have that warrant, I am going to read it, and unless it specifically requires you to give up my keys, I am going to tell you to fuck off.
Those are pretty important ones. Is there anything you actually agree with him on?
The problem I have with Libertarians and "small government" is, it tends to give entirely too much power to corporations, and puts entirely too much faith in the free market to resolve anything.
Let's face it -- if you're in an area where there's only one or two ISPs, the free market isn't going to do ANYTHING. They can basically do anything they want to you, as long as it's not quite enough to make you physically move to another location. It's called a geographical monopoly, and it is why the government already regulates other utilities.
And the same principle is true in all sorts of other places. Libertarians cry "slippery slope", that the mere hint of government intervention means next moment, we'll have to fill out six pages of government forms and pay three different kinds of taxes just to get Internet. But it goes both ways -- you start deregulating everything, and pretty soon you have anarchy -- which means "might makes right" -- which means none of the little guys that Libertarians are supposedly about will have a chance against the likes of Wall-Mart, Exxon, Sony, Microsoft, Monsanto, etc.
What we really need is a healthy moderate. Do they even exist anymore? Someone who decides we should grow up and stop wasting the public dialog with "think of the children", abortion, gay marriage, etc. Someone who has some sort of a plan for Iraq -- frankly, I don't care if they want to pull out or not -- but who will actually listen to their military advisers, and stop using the war one way or another as a political tool. Someone who might do patent reform, without ripping out the patent system entirely -- same with education.
Someone who is more intelligent than a yogurt. (Bush and Ted Stevens need not apply.)
I'm not sure my candidate exists, though! I guess I should write a letter to Obama or something, find out if he knows/cares about technological issues.
I tend to agree with you, except that they aren't actually common carriers, not by law. They're in this sort of odd position where if they get a complaint about you, they have to cut you off -- or something like that. I don't actually know how it works, but I would expect an entirely neutral ISP to even allow you to send spam, and simply be willing to provide your personal details to anyone who complains, so they know where to send the lawsuit.
I actually agree with you on that, but I was trying to present something reasonably close to "traditional values".
I'm not really going to win the hearts and minds of parents by suggesting that their children should be allowed to look at Guro. And really, that's the parents' decision to make, where they draw the line. I'm just pointing out that being totalitarian about it, especially if you aren't even willing to do the enforcement yourself, is not ever going to work.
Also, don't go too far liberal -- you might become a Libertarian, and, paradoxically, an even bigger supporter of corporate greed and abuse than Republicans!
If you listen to his speeches and read more about him, you will see that he is staunchly against any regulation of the Internet.
Does that mean he's against net neutrality?
By the way: Net neutrality means making it illegal for an ISP to mess with their traffic -- a neutral ISP would not filter or QoS, unless specifically asked to by a particular customer. This is what I support.
There is another definition of "net neutrality" which means that the government should not interfere with the Internet. This is NOT net neutrality, it is a deliberate hijacking of the term. He may support this; I do not, and I hate people who abuse language like that.
I have a lingering feeling that I've been trolled one of the subtlest trolls I've ever seen. Hello, "Velvet Flamebait".
I remember hearing on the radio that children as young as ten years old are learning how to bypass filtering.
I find that to be somewhat encouraging, actually. Children as young as ten already know more about the Internet than Ted Stevens ever will! So maybe, in another 10 years or so, he'll lose his job and the world will be a better place.
Perhaps we need ISPs willing to filter the web on their end for certain customers who request it?
Mine is, actually, but that's not a solution. What that does is it means your kids will go to their friends' house, where you can't monitor them yourself. Or they'll get a DS or a PSP ("Playstation Pornable" was the sensationalist headline), even a laptop (for the schools that give them laptops), and hop on the neighbor's open wireless access point.
Really, as a parent, you have three choices when it comes to "bad" influences:
Isolate. This is what you're trying to do. At one point, it worked -- you could move to Suburbia, where there's all kinds of friendly neighbors, and you could hide Playboy in the sock drawer, where the kids would never find it (or so you thought). You really could create a little bubble of security for them to grow up in, never mind that they'd be less equipped to deal with the real world.
Inoculate. Teach them your values. Actually teach them right from wrong. How you do this depends on your parenting style, but the idea is that even if they are exposed to material you don't approve of, they will know the correct response. In other words, a good kid might find that Playboy of yours, know he wasn't supposed to read it, and actually not open it.
Ignore. Don't sweat the small stuff. Maybe your kid finds that Playboy and reads it. Fine, it'll make the whole "birds and bees" talk easier. You don't have to like it, but it won't kill them, and this way, they will take you seriously when you tell them to stay the fuck away from child porn, snuff, drugs, etc.
There's a lot more to parenting than that, of course. But you do need all three of those things.
It's a lot harder to raise a kid in the inner city than it is in the suburbs, so you do want to at least do some geographical isolation. That way, even if they know about hookers from GTA, there aren't any around, unless you're really looking.
More importantly: If they're really looking, they will find gangs, drugs, and sex. (Sex, drugs, and rock & roll.) Same with the Internet. If you are trying to fight a battle to keep them isolated, you will lose. The only sure way to prevent them from being corrupted by all the evil out there (or whatever you think will happen) is to make them incorruptible, and that is what I mean by "inoculate".
And even more importantly: Give it up. I don't care how diehard of a Christian you are, I don't believe in a God who will send them to Hell just for looking at a naked body, or the act of love. (Well, sex, really, most porn isn't about love...) You also have to figure there is a fair chance that they will not become Christian -- or Muslim, or whatever your faith is, but that's really the point. And the list goes on...
It's up to you where to draw the line, but I think if your child grows up to be happy, considerate, honest, productive, and successful -- maybe I forgot a few, but it's pretty simple -- in other words, if your child grows up to be a good person, you've done your job. For example: they may play violent videogames that you don't approve of -- but never even come close to hurting someone in reality. I call that a win.
Slashdot Mirror
There are, but I'm not sure I've seen any that I'd call 'art'.
For example: Sim-type games. In these games, it really is the player being the artist.
Also: Multiplayer games. These have varying degrees of linearity, but I think Counter-Strike is what he was thinking of when he called games a 'sport', because it really is. In fact, you can be professionally sponsored, and paid to win Counter-Strike or Halo tournaments.
But it's difficult to get the sheer breadth of possible games out there without actually being a gamer. Even Halo -- play online, and it's a sport. Play campaign, and it can be a sport (if you're playing again, on Legendary, co-op but by yourself to make it harder), but it can also be a compelling story and as much a work of art as any movie.
There is another element here, though -- he would probably not see these truly artistic elements as being a property of the game. For example, a cinematic sequence is really a little movie in the middle of a game. But games can tell everything without leaving the mechanics of gameplay (like Half-Life), or use both those and cinematic sequences (like Halo).
But here's the essential problem -- he (and others) don't have the distinction between the mechanics of gameplay and the game itself. Gameplay is as much the game as the camera is the movie.
Which is to say: Usually, they are not. Every now and then you see a game that is pure gameplay, like Lugaru, or Geometry Wars, or classic arcade games. Every now and then you see a movie which is pure camera work, like 2001: A Space Oddessy. But usually, the pure-camera movie isn't presented as a movie, it's presented as a "demo" of some technological aspect of filmmaking or game design. In fact, we're much more likely to play the pure-gameplay game than watch the pure-camera movie, certainly more than once, because it can be fun to just play, but it's not really fun to just watch. You have to be watching something happen.
In fact, gameplay can do things a camera can't, yet. There's nothing like the purely visceral satisfaction of bludgeoning a Halo elite in the back of the head, or firing a rocket at some group of enemies (all clustered together nicely, or performing a perfectly-executed fatal combo in a fighting game, and feeling that solid vibration of the controller... All of these elements are under the control of the game developer, but the experience isn't complete unless you're the one doing it.
So, this is the common confusion -- parents walk in and see their kid playing Halo, and they're "just killing things". And maybe the kid is, but that's all the kid probably sees in most movies, too. When I play Halo, I'm not "just killing things", I'm saving the world, or I'm escaping from prison, or I'm negotiating the trade agreements and alliances that will govern Japan (or China) for the next hundred years. I'm living out a story. And it's a damned good story. Halo is good enough to make into a good movie, and with Peter Jackson still involved, it might be a very good movie.
There's also another point I'd like to drive home to Mr. Ebert: Games can do anything movies can. You could make a game which was pure cinematics, with zero interactivity, and people can play it on their PS3 or Xbox 360 hooked up to a high-def home theater system, invite 20 friends over, and they may as well be watching a movie -- WILL be watching a movie. Because you can control the amount of interactivity in a game, from zero to 100%. But you can't make a movie with any interactivity -- it's stuck at zero -- and there's no way you'll make a movie that has the viewer identifying as strongly with a character on the screen as they will with a role they are playing.
Understand, there's software and then there's software. There is actually a company which specializes in test-driven development to the point where they actually will develop a product in the same amount of time, but charge twice as much for it, because there will be NO bugs (or "defects") at release. Other companies would spend half their time developing, and the other half testing and squashing bugs, and there would still be a dozen bugs there.
So, the level of software that will be directly controlling the car will be pretty much un-crackable.
Now, the smart phones and laptops, maybe, but those won't be connected directly to steering and such. As much as everyone wants to have the James Bond car, which you can drive by remote control, I'm fairly sure auto manufacturers have thought of what you just did, and really, really don't want to be held liable for that kind of bullshit. So basically, no James Bond cars until the industry as a whole moves to that level of stability and security.
How is that evil?
Well, actually, in the case of YouTube, it kind of is -- given that they still haven't unified YouTube with Google Video, and they both still use Flash excessively. (Flash does many things well; a media player isn't one of them.)
You can't even compare it to embedded Linux -- which is generally rock-solid and capable of running in almost anything -- because Linux is not real-time. (Neither is Windows or OS X or BSD, by the way.)
I mean, sure, there are plenty of so-called "real-time" applications that these OSes work perfectly well for. Audio, for instance -- Protools, Ardour, etc. But it's a bit like Java -- while on average, you know how long something is going to take to process, you don't have any guarantees. (In Java's case, the garbage collector might decide to run at exactly the moment you need something important to happen.)
"real-time" means that you can actually guarantee, often with mathematical proofs, that a given thing will happen by a given deadline, and usually the deadlines are much shorter than anything a modern desktop OS can handle. It means you can say things like "If the sensor reads foo, I need a shutdown command sent to the nuclear reactor within 20 milliseconds." Done properly, you can actually guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that this will happen -- and in 20 milliseconds, not 21. On a desktop OS, there's just no guarantee -- for all you know, a filesystem driver, of all things, could lock the whole IO system up for half a second.
That's not to say that you can't make Linux realtime -- there are projects to do so. It's also not to say that you can't build a desktop out of a realtime OS. But right now, as far as I know, there are no real-time OSes which are used for anything other than embedded apps which actually need the real-time capability.
The bulk of my work that isn't fixing stuff is done with vim over SSH and a web browser. Firefox is getting a bit heavy, but it only has the one or two tabs I need for the app I'm developing -- Konqueror can handle the rest.
There are other nice things you could do, if you bother to set it up. For instance, instead of carrying a half-dozen boot CDs or DVDs, you could bring this and a crossover cable, and use that to "jump start" someone's computer. Might even prove a good analogy, when someone asks what you're doing.
I want a computer like this with maybe a bit more internal flash memory (maybe 32 gigs would be enough, but I've lived with 15 gigs) so I can put movies on the thing before a trip.
And...
I want that internal memory to be accessable as Flash memory, to Linux, instead of pretending it's a spinning drive. I want to run JFFS2 on it.
It'd also be nice if it had more battery life. Here, what would be really nice is a quick, supported suspend-to-RAM (or suspend-to-disk), enough internal battery to run it suspended for maybe five minutes, and a cheap removable battery -- especially if said battery could be plugged in directly to charge, rather than having to be in a laptop. That would make this awesome for long trips, plane flights, etc -- it could light some "low battery" light and auto-suspend itself, and refuse to come back on until you swap batteries.
And being able to charge the battery separately is just convenience -- you could stay on the couch, just get up every 3 hours or so to swap out batteries, instead of being tethered to a power cable.
Interestingly, this sounds very close to my old Sharp laptop -- which cost me $1700 or so. It had some 256 megs of RAM (or was it 128?), a 1 ghz Crusoe that felt like 500 mhz, a 15 gig internal hard drive, and a 10" screen. Weighed about 2 pounds.
Why?
I mean, if you say no, he might ask why. Then you get to tell him. Maybe he'll even listen.
If not, so what? If he's as bad as you seem to think, what makes you think he'll listen to your future requests, either?
And there really isn't a better option for a package manager on OS X.
I suppose you could run some sort of Gentoo in a chroot or something, but who knows how long it would last...
"Optimized drivers" my ass. Linux frequently has drivers that are as good or better than Windows, and I imagine the same is true for Linux vs OS X.
But really... If you only need those one or two apps on OS X, why not run a "just works" Linux (like Ubuntu, Kubuntu) and virtualize OS X?
It sounds to me like you're agreeing with me -- rudely, maybe, but:
So what?
I mean, if you want a home-grown example, we could look at the Trail of Tears, or slaves on plantations...
I could also have brought up the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
I chose Germany because it was easy to think of, I'd actually read books about it, and hell, I was raised Jewish. You don't have to be offended because I didn't pick your tragedy to use in my analogy.
Anyone who says I was "sneering" there simply doesn't understand the concept of communication under the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I realize you didn't say that, but you did imply it -- else why did you quote me and then reply, if you agree with me?
I called it "winning". I didn't say it was bad -- in fact, I agree with you here:
Right. You have to let the occasional murdering bastard free, on a technicality, so that law enforcement officials don't try the same bullshit on the next suspect.
I'm not sneering at the law, or at the procedure, or the situation, or anything. If "on a technicality" is meant as a "sneer" at anything, it's the bastard who managed to get off, and the idiot who didn't follow procedure (resulting in said bastard getting off).
Not necessarily. I tend to agree with you here, but maybe the prosecution just didn't bother to submit many wiretapping requests that they knew would be rejected out of hand.
And for that matter, I think a dictator with 99.999 percent of the vote is only illegitimate if the voting process was flawed. 99.999 percent of the vote means you should take a VERY close look at the voting process, yes, but that doesn't make it automatically flawed, just statistically likely to be flawed -- and we all know about "lies, damn lies, and statistics."
I wonder...
Wouldn't you still be able to use the Mass Storage?
I have to ask -- how many cops do you know?
No, I labeled those who encourage encryption as "zealots", and I know that is not true -- not so long as you're only encrypting your own stuff. If you want all data, everywhere, to be encrypted, that's pretty much the definition of a zealot -- for instance, I used to want all computers, everywhere, to run Linux, which made me a bit of a Linux zealot.
I did, however, label those who modded grandparent +5 as "morons". That's a distinct group, a group of people who actually believe that crap about "police don't trust anyone".
I suggest you read "A Princess in Berlin" -- long story short, Germany circa 1930 was not Germany circa 1942. Nazism rose frighteningly quickly. It did not matter whether the country was free or not -- they were facing an imminent threat, so they ran to what they saw as the strongest thing going.
More recommended reading: Empire, by Orson Scott Card. (It does manage to not be overly political, if you can manage to take it that way -- and it's a very good story, whether or not you think the premise is likely.)
First, the majority of people are not in favor of data encryption. The majority don't care.
Second, the power does NOT rest with the people. Not anymore. We're not a bunch of colonies with a ragtag militia anymore. We have an organized army, and that is where the power lies, ultimately. We're just lucky enough that the army is usually controlled by our civilian elected officials, and usually allows us to keep electing them, even if we elect morons. (I do think Bush is a moron.)
If the politicians enact martial law, even if it's not "official" and everyone is trying their hardest to vote or rally against it, the honest truth of it is, most of us won't do anything, because we don't want to die. Think about it -- if there's an armed guard outside the voting booth who says "Anyone in favor of a democratic republic will be shot down," are you still going to try to vote?
I try to be an optimist... Ultimately, I don't think the entire country will be jailed or shot or anything. But never, ever forget that it can happen.
I'm not suggesting that warrants require cooperation.
I'm just saying that no warrant means no cooperation -- from me, anyway. And in order to get a warrant, you either need Patriot Act bullshit, or you need to convince a judge that you have good reason to believe I'm guilty of something. Frankly, if all you've got is "His hard drive is encrypted", I think (I hope!) a decent judge will tell them to fuck off and refuse to sign the warrant.
And if you have a warrant that says you may search my house, but my laptop's in my car, then no, you may not have the keys to my laptop -- in fact, you can't even open the clamshell.
So in other words: I'm going to read your warrant and make sure it gives you the authority to compell me to give up my keys before I do it. Because once they have my data, it's a HUGE pain in the ass to go through and reset all my crypto keys, remote access to various servers, distribute GPG public keys, etc. Compare that to searching the rest of my house -- the worst that happens there is you'll make a mess, and it's already a mess.
For that matter, if they want specific documents, they get specific documents, and not my keys -- I'll decrypt them myself, thank you.
Replying to your categories:
Improving Combat
I think the technical problem can be dealt with, either by clever programming or by brute force. Eventually, we WILL all have gigabit pipes into our houses.
But even if you leave it as mostly hack'n'slash, there are other things you can do beyond Warcraft. I play Nexus TK, and I did play a Warcraft trial for 10 days, but the combat was just too slow and simplistic. And I can say "simplistic" despite that Nexus is a 2D game played on a grid -- meaning that while the grid isn't drawn, each square in the game either has a player, a monster, an obstacle, or it's empty (and shows ground).
Simple combat is really simple -- walk up to a creature, press spacebar, and your character swings their weapon -- or their fists. Hold it down and you'll keep swinging. Everyone swings at the same rate, something like 2-3 times per second -- so as you progress, it isn't your speed or agility increasing, it's your strength and your "grace" -- the chance that any particular swing will hit.
Casters are just slightly more complex at this level -- they get so little strength that they're better off throwing lightning spells at it. This involves pressing a number, targeting the creature (you could just click on it), and maybe pressing enter. Repeat to throw the spell again. Spells which deal damage are generally lightning-shaped and are called "zaps" -- unless they're particularly special, like the Mage's "Hellfire" at 99.
That's it -- that's what they started with. Certainly, you can imagine how more could be built on top of that -- the healers cast healing spells on players the same way the mages zap. But it doesn't really use more bandwidth than Warcraft, or if it does, not significantly so -- it is mostly playable over dialup.
But it is much more entertaining at a low level, I thought, so I stuck with it -- and the higher levels are nice. Higher levels of Warcraft might be better, I just haven't played enough of it -- by level 17 (out of 60), it was still boring.
An example of something I've never seen in another MMO -- Set maging. This is the art of paralyzing creatures in just the right places, relative to your fighters, for them to be able to do the most damage. It is difficult to do at any level, and does not get easier at higher levels. The creatures themselves certainly aren't going to want to cooperate.
A good set mage is valuable no matter what his level, so long as he can get into the cave and survive. That's a far cry from Warcraft, where unless you're level 70, we don't even want to talk to you, and assuming you are 70, we're still looking for the people with the best gear, etc...
It doesn't mean the game is over once you can set. You still want to be able to get into the higher caves, and see them, and there are still things a Mage can do (like Hellfire) that are dependent on their stats. But that's not their main function.
I suppose it's possible to be really bad at Warcraft (Leeroy Jenkins!), but I'm not convinced it's possible to be exceptionally skilled -- only exceptionally lucky or possessing an exceptional amount of free time. But oddly enough, it IS possible to be exceptionally skilled at Nexus, even though Nexus does not have a level cap.
If you don't have the skill to be a set mage, of course, you might feel left out. Or you could get over it and solo a lot, or play a different path, or play with people who don't mind a mage who is good at stopping the entire room (good for safety) but not forming sets. Or focus on something other than hunting. Or even play a different game, but I like to think that playing a different path is enough.
Artificial Intelligence
I think that the monster you've just created, while it shouldn't be true for all creatures, it would make a nice boss. That's one problem with existing MMOs -- if you don't like a challenge, you can always just grind, and in fact, I found at least the early levels of WoW to be completely without any chall
I believe both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have a method called "blacklisting".
Basically, each device has a key, probably specific to its model number or something similar. If someone finds a way of using that device to circumvent the DRM (and rip movies), that device key can be listed on new discs as "blacklisted". As soon as you pop the new disc in the player, it goes "Oh fuck, I'm blacklisted" and bricks itself.
Now, realistically, I think they're expecting that they can solve this kind of thing without bricking the whole device -- for example, I believe WinDVD (or was it PowerDVD? whatever) was cracked, so new discs blacklisted it, and it would then refuse to do anything until you downloaded a new version which defeated the crack.
But the fact that the capability is even there is just disgusting to me, and is the reason why I refuse to buy anything HD until we have the equivalent of DeCSS -- until I can pop any disc into my computer again, and expect it to rip and play on Linux with no hassle.
So here's the question I have: Malice or incompetence?
Did Apple not do a system like you describe because they want to exert more control? (You have to buy a new iPod if you lose your computer... You can't re-sell it or give it away as a gift... You have to buy a charger from Apple, nobody else...)
Or did Apple simply not think of it? Or reject it out of hand as being too hard? (Or even too insecure -- any computer you plug it into and enter the charging password is a place someone can now steal your iPod from.)
I'm curious -- how much does a second charger cost, and what guarantees that it's restricted to your iPod?
I just have this vision of some thief circumventing this in three seconds by simply not plugging it into a computer in the first place.
Bitter about something, are we?
Except their partner on the beat. And Dispatch. And the Chief. And...
I don't think they do, realistically. They might want that, but doesn't everyone? I know I'd love to have total control of any given situation.
But realistically, any cop who has been around awhile should have seen the FBI take over an investigation, or a perp slip away because someone was stupid enough to violate their fourth-amendment rights. Or a good friend die in the line of duty.
If, in the course of investigation, they come across someone hiding stuff, it might make them suspicious. It might even automatically make that person a suspect. But "suspect" doesn't mean "enemy", because they have to be willing to accept that they may have the wrong person. (That's not always true, of course -- sometimes they know they've got the right guy, but he's still a "suspect" until he becomes a "defendant".)
Erm... you just refuted your own argument.
I mean, even your grammar disagrees with you here: "one cannot never win against the police." Cannot never. That means it is impossible for someone to never win against the police. Meaning that at least once in your life, you will win against the police.
It's tricky to figure out what you mean by "In a courtroom..." If you're saying that it's possible to win in a courtroom, then you're right. If you're saying it's not possible to win in a courtroom against the police, you're dead wrong. There have been cases where, for example, a cop opened the trunk of some guy's car without a warrant, and there was a dead body in the trunk -- but since it was obtained through an illegal search, it could not be used as evidence. Which means that the guy walked. (Might have been on Law & Order, actually, but there have been real cases like that.)
If you can get away with murder on a technicality, because some policeman (in this case a policewoman, I think) didn't follow procedure exactly, I call that "winning against the police."
Wrong again!
First, everyone will not do this. I think you'll only really get a few zealots (like whatever morons modded you +5 Insightful), but let's pretend for a moment that every technically-minded person followed you.
Now, I don't care how many that is, but there are overwhelmingly more people who actually feel good about AOL (and Earthlink, etc), spend all day on Myspace, have no clue what an operating system even is, etc etc.
And before you say "one cannot jail a whole class of people", I'll point you to Germany, circa 1942 -- several whole classes of people were not only jailed, they were also enslaved and killed wholesale.
I don't mean to say I expect another Holocaust here. What I am saying is that if you really believe that a truly massive number of people using encryption won't be jailed in this country, then you should also believe that even the small minority who seriously uses encryption today should be safe.
Right. I suspect that this could be used in, for example, subpeona-ing the IM logs of my friends who don't encrypt them, or of, say, Microsoft (for my MSN logs)...
I'm not sure it was meant to imply that the act of cloaking is itself incriminating, but rather that knowing you cloaked your data might tell them where to look. But then, it really was not worded very clearly.
And if you do have that warrant, I am going to read it, and unless it specifically requires you to give up my keys, I am going to tell you to fuck off.
Those are pretty important ones. Is there anything you actually agree with him on?
The problem I have with Libertarians and "small government" is, it tends to give entirely too much power to corporations, and puts entirely too much faith in the free market to resolve anything.
Let's face it -- if you're in an area where there's only one or two ISPs, the free market isn't going to do ANYTHING. They can basically do anything they want to you, as long as it's not quite enough to make you physically move to another location. It's called a geographical monopoly, and it is why the government already regulates other utilities.
And the same principle is true in all sorts of other places. Libertarians cry "slippery slope", that the mere hint of government intervention means next moment, we'll have to fill out six pages of government forms and pay three different kinds of taxes just to get Internet. But it goes both ways -- you start deregulating everything, and pretty soon you have anarchy -- which means "might makes right" -- which means none of the little guys that Libertarians are supposedly about will have a chance against the likes of Wall-Mart, Exxon, Sony, Microsoft, Monsanto, etc.
What we really need is a healthy moderate. Do they even exist anymore? Someone who decides we should grow up and stop wasting the public dialog with "think of the children", abortion, gay marriage, etc. Someone who has some sort of a plan for Iraq -- frankly, I don't care if they want to pull out or not -- but who will actually listen to their military advisers, and stop using the war one way or another as a political tool. Someone who might do patent reform, without ripping out the patent system entirely -- same with education.
Someone who is more intelligent than a yogurt. (Bush and Ted Stevens need not apply.)
I'm not sure my candidate exists, though! I guess I should write a letter to Obama or something, find out if he knows/cares about technological issues.
I tend to agree with you, except that they aren't actually common carriers, not by law. They're in this sort of odd position where if they get a complaint about you, they have to cut you off -- or something like that. I don't actually know how it works, but I would expect an entirely neutral ISP to even allow you to send spam, and simply be willing to provide your personal details to anyone who complains, so they know where to send the lawsuit.
I actually agree with you on that, but I was trying to present something reasonably close to "traditional values".
I'm not really going to win the hearts and minds of parents by suggesting that their children should be allowed to look at Guro. And really, that's the parents' decision to make, where they draw the line. I'm just pointing out that being totalitarian about it, especially if you aren't even willing to do the enforcement yourself, is not ever going to work.
Also, don't go too far liberal -- you might become a Libertarian, and, paradoxically, an even bigger supporter of corporate greed and abuse than Republicans!
Does that mean he's against net neutrality?
By the way: Net neutrality means making it illegal for an ISP to mess with their traffic -- a neutral ISP would not filter or QoS, unless specifically asked to by a particular customer. This is what I support.
There is another definition of "net neutrality" which means that the government should not interfere with the Internet. This is NOT net neutrality, it is a deliberate hijacking of the term. He may support this; I do not, and I hate people who abuse language like that.
I have a lingering feeling that I've been trolled one of the subtlest trolls I've ever seen. Hello, "Velvet Flamebait".
I find that to be somewhat encouraging, actually. Children as young as ten already know more about the Internet than Ted Stevens ever will! So maybe, in another 10 years or so, he'll lose his job and the world will be a better place.
Mine is, actually, but that's not a solution. What that does is it means your kids will go to their friends' house, where you can't monitor them yourself. Or they'll get a DS or a PSP ("Playstation Pornable" was the sensationalist headline), even a laptop (for the schools that give them laptops), and hop on the neighbor's open wireless access point.
Really, as a parent, you have three choices when it comes to "bad" influences:
There's a lot more to parenting than that, of course. But you do need all three of those things.
It's a lot harder to raise a kid in the inner city than it is in the suburbs, so you do want to at least do some geographical isolation. That way, even if they know about hookers from GTA, there aren't any around, unless you're really looking.
More importantly: If they're really looking, they will find gangs, drugs, and sex. (Sex, drugs, and rock & roll.) Same with the Internet. If you are trying to fight a battle to keep them isolated, you will lose. The only sure way to prevent them from being corrupted by all the evil out there (or whatever you think will happen) is to make them incorruptible, and that is what I mean by "inoculate".
And even more importantly: Give it up. I don't care how diehard of a Christian you are, I don't believe in a God who will send them to Hell just for looking at a naked body, or the act of love. (Well, sex, really, most porn isn't about love...) You also have to figure there is a fair chance that they will not become Christian -- or Muslim, or whatever your faith is, but that's really the point. And the list goes on...
It's up to you where to draw the line, but I think if your child grows up to be happy, considerate, honest, productive, and successful -- maybe I forgot a few, but it's pretty simple -- in other words, if your child grows up to be a good person, you've done your job. For example: they may play violent videogames that you don't approve of -- but never even come close to hurting someone in reality. I call that a win.