If you read Singer's work, you'll realize it's a lot more nuanced than this. In fact, Singer would care that you killed him instantly and painlessly - he's still suffering because he's missing out on future experiences, and other humans are suffering because they'll miss him, will be scared of random painless deaths themselves, and so forth. He actually has a very rational framework for determining when killing a being is morally acceptable.
And he's not really pro-infanticide, he just uses that argument to make his point about animals. (That is, a common argument against animal rights is that they cannot reason and can't protest their treatment... In fact, exactly the argument that started this thread. Singer points out that infants, old people, and mentally disabled people often fit into the same categories, and thus the argument is specious, and speciesist).
Rather than shooting him in the head, you might try reading his books and understanding his arguments. You don't have to agree with him, but try to broaden your responses beyond "Kill him, the monster! Think of the infants!" Isn't it possible that a random Slashdot poster is perhaps not giving you the full perspective on his views?
The problem here is often lazy professors who set the same paper topics every year. Then again, universities are currently set up to pass as many students as possible, rather than work them hard so that their future employers benefit.
Students are going to school for the benefit of their future employer? What about working them hard *for their own benefit*?
Many people have already covered the fact that a real CS degree is a huge benefit in getting and keeping a game programming job. I'll only concur with that (I work in the industry) and move on to something else.
Go to college for four years. Work is something you'll do for the rest of your life, college is something that only happens once. It doesn't matter if you get a CS degree or an English degree, the experiences you have in college are some of the most important learning you'll do during your life. The amount of social, professional, and personal growth that most people go through in the course of going to school is staggering. If you miss out on that by rushing into your working life, I'm really sorry for you. You're going to be working for 40+ years anyway, why hurry up to get into that? Take the time to broaden yourself as a person. Take classes you wouldn't otherwise ever experience. Before shutting yourself up in the world of programming, learn about history, music, biology, or philosophy. Not only will you be a happier person, you'll be a more sought-after contributor to game projects.
Yeah, OK. So France in WWII brings up a couple immediate thoughts. First, of course, is the stunningly ineffective defense of the Maginot line - they were fighting the last war. Due to that, there's also the incredibly rapid invasion of the German forces and the subsequent surrender by the French government - an understandable move, when their main defense had just been subverted so entirely.
However, then there's the second thing that springs to mind: the famous La Resistance movement, that continued fighting an entrenched occupying German force. In some ways, that's a lot more courageous than standing up to an invading enemy toe-to-toe. It's also recognized as a major contributor to the eventual defeat of the Germans - without the French resistance, Hitler would have had a strong base in France when D-Day came about.
So it's very strange that the first part is the only part that's remembered on the Internet today. Especially since the Resistance was much more an expression of the French national character and less simply a reaction to strategic failure. I'm sure that the French commanders were spoken of unflatteringly, and the Vichy collaborators even more so, but the rest of the world absolutely recognized the French sacrifice and contribution to victory - at least, until relatively modern times.
There are differing accounts as to whether he was fired or resigned... Here's a quote from another story (this is the statement from his employer):
"Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise, Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effectively immediately," the statement said.
So here's my question: assuming that this is true, and he was fired... Is that legal? Especially the "company policy regarding outside political... commentary" part? That seems like obvious infringement of the right to political speech.
One of the scariest things that might come out of this is an "upgrade" of the DMCA. I've been reading the stories about the lawsuit, and it's really bizarre to see a tech company defending the DMCA and a content company saying it's a bad law.
Despite the fact that Viacom pushed for the adoption of the DMCA against the tech community's wishes, they're now claiming that it's *too nice* to copyright violators. Since it makes them issue takedown notices and limits the liability of hosting providers, they hate it in the YouTube scenario. They want a new law that doesn't even require takedown notices and instead forces hosting providers to actively police their content for violations - something that's obviously unworkable.
I really hope they fail with this, but it's probably too much to ask. If they win, all content hosts will be in big trouble, and if they lose the entertainment industry will push for a law that will let them win. A scary situation...
Yes. Unfortunately, unless you have the kind of cash the entertainment industry lobs her way, you will probably only get a polite letter that assures you she takes protecting copyright very seriously. (At least, that's what I got.) I think her aides just file them all under "copyright" and send the same pro-Hollywood letter out to everyone who wrote in.
It's not so much "punishing" them as it is "stop doing them special favors". They haven't threatened to sue or anything like that, they just said they wouldn't invite them to special press conferences and so forth.
Because it's Slashdot, here's a bad analogy:
I regularly loan my car keys to my neighbor, and let him borrow power tools and things. One day, he calls me up. He says he heard a rumor that I have leprosy. I ask him please not to spread the rumor around, I was planning on having a big meeting with all the neighbors in a week to talk about this. He goes ahead and spreads the rumor. So, in response, I stop loaning him my keys and so forth - our relationship becomes frosty. It's not like I'm trying to burn down his house, but he can't really expect me to keep doing him favors.
OK, I can agree with taking the first one seriously - even after they see the device that the person reported, and can visually verify that it's not a bomb, they can be safe and blow it up with a bomb squad and so forth. But then, they should say "Oh, OK, not a bomb, nothing to see here, move along."
Instead, they shut down the city over something that they had *verified* was not a bomb. This really does look, as another poster has suggested, very much like people willing to go to any lengths to avoid admitting they were wrong.
There's a great science fiction series about the colonization of Mars - Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars.
In it, the author talks about this very problem. The way in which it's solved is very practical. They isolate the group of mission candidates on Antarctica for long periods of time, and thus weed out/break those who can't hack it. (This is after all the other screening, of course).
Something like that would no doubt work well, but in the book it depended on a long list of people who were qualified and eager to go to Mars and make those sacrifices, as well as a public that was willing to fund and support such a venture.
You can't really share it with your friends. Or, you can, but you'd better trust them a lot. And anyone else that might use their computer. Or, for that matter, that might use your computer. And you'd better make sure you wipe your drives clean before throwing them out, and that you don't lose the burned DVD, and...
I think this sort of scheme has more potential to go drastically wrong for some innocent person than any other sort of DRM. All it takes is one person you share with (or yourself, for that matter) to be careless, and your name is plastered all over the internet as a pirate, and you have a hell of a time convincing a jury otherwise.
I don't know. Nintendo was originally claiming to be aiming to produce 4 million Wiis by year end. They only produced 1.1 million - I think they're definitely having supply issues. They haven't confirmed it, of course, but if you look at the numbers that's the case.
Personally, I suspect the accelerometers for the controllers.
I bet the whole "maybe the government needs to get involved" line is just put out there to scare content holders into playing nice. I bet it's tough for YouTube to get any respect from the content industry, and they're essentially saying "wouldn't it be a shame if we had to sic Regulators on you?" I imagine, faced with that prospect, content holders will be jumping over themselves to make it easier to get content.
I'll ignore the offtopic bit of your post, and just say you've got your analogy wrong. The article isn't lambasting the game industry for not showing up, but rather the gaming press. That's a little like the sports press not showing up for the congressional hearings on baseball steroids. It's a story that's important to the industry that they cover - more important, surely, than the release of new screenshots, snarky comments by company executives, or perhaps even more important than the launch of a new console.
Most games journalism is sitting back and being spoonfed information by talented PR people, then regurgitating it. Getting up and actually doing some investigation is alien to most games "journalists", but those that put in the work are going to be the Woodwards of their trade. Which the industry sorely needs.
If you're serious and you want a real, intelligent look at the ethical foundations of vegetarianism and animal rights, look at the writings of John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer.
The basic argument is that an action is unethical if it causes suffering, and that many classes of animals can suffer (although generally not as much as humans). Therefore, it's unethical to cause the suffering of animals. Note that this doesn't necessarily preclude eating them or making clothes out of them.
There's a lot more to it than that, of course, there are all sorts of interesting subtleties that are lost in the calls of the more strident animal rights movements. At the base of it, the reasoning is entirely rational and logical, and I think a scientifically, logically minded person could find very little to disagree with in the reasoning (while not necessarily accepting every conclusion wholesale).
I'm not a vegetarian, and I have a leather wallet in my pocket right now. Nevertheless, I find the reasoning very compelling.
But the content producers will simply not produce for computer platforms unless a sufficiently robust anti copying technology is present in the system. Hence MS have no option but to invest in DRM.
That's the case *now*, when there are plenty of people willing to watch broadcast TV, read print books, and listen to CDs. But it's moving more and more towards all-digital-over-networks. And if the current content producers are unwilling to produce content for that platform, then new businesses will. And they'll steal business from the old ones.
I don't think you'll get a scenario where the content producers refuse to distribute digitally, on PCs. They may fight it, but they have no choice.
PS - In all fairness, it may be the book publishers, not Sony, who is requiring the consumer to get screwed. They may have deals about minimum book prices or some such BS. I'd tempted to blame Sony, but the main point is that *someone* along the line - Sony, book publisher, etc - is being a greedy bastard and it makes me sad because the tech seems so cool.
Yeah, apparently this is the case - Sony says the publishers have complete control over the content pricing in the store. My guess is that the publishers saw what happened to music labels and iTunes, and demanded control. Hopefully content creators will eventually realize that DRMed digital works are worth less to consumers than the physical hardcopies.
The page turn bar looks cool, but some users complain about the fact that you flip it the wrong way.. That is, you flip left to go to the next page, rather than right. Apparently it's a bit confusing sometimes.
Also, Irex hasn't released the SDK or the GPL source, so you can't write your own reader yet. Even when that stuff is released, you need to distribute your reader through their official service, so that limits things somewhat.
Plus, the software is still buggy, with power management in particular being a huge downside. Also, PDF is basically the only readable format on the device.
I love the big screen, though. It could certainly have promise, along with the Hanlin V2 reader, if it's ever released.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read Singer's work, you'll realize it's a lot more nuanced than this. In fact, Singer would care that you killed him instantly and painlessly - he's still suffering because he's missing out on future experiences, and other humans are suffering because they'll miss him, will be scared of random painless deaths themselves, and so forth. He actually has a very rational framework for determining when killing a being is morally acceptable.
And he's not really pro-infanticide, he just uses that argument to make his point about animals. (That is, a common argument against animal rights is that they cannot reason and can't protest their treatment... In fact, exactly the argument that started this thread. Singer points out that infants, old people, and mentally disabled people often fit into the same categories, and thus the argument is specious, and speciesist).
Rather than shooting him in the head, you might try reading his books and understanding his arguments. You don't have to agree with him, but try to broaden your responses beyond "Kill him, the monster! Think of the infants!" Isn't it possible that a random Slashdot poster is perhaps not giving you the full perspective on his views?
The problem here is often lazy professors who set the same paper topics every year. Then again, universities are currently set up to pass as many students as possible, rather than work them hard so that their future employers benefit.
Students are going to school for the benefit of their future employer? What about working them hard *for their own benefit*?
...like speaking Latin about quantum physics.
Yes, we should be careful not to use any Latin in *quantum* physics.
Uranium isn't going to drop out of the sky on its own accord...
That's what *you* think.
Many people have already covered the fact that a real CS degree is a huge benefit in getting and keeping a game programming job. I'll only concur with that (I work in the industry) and move on to something else.
Go to college for four years. Work is something you'll do for the rest of your life, college is something that only happens once. It doesn't matter if you get a CS degree or an English degree, the experiences you have in college are some of the most important learning you'll do during your life. The amount of social, professional, and personal growth that most people go through in the course of going to school is staggering. If you miss out on that by rushing into your working life, I'm really sorry for you. You're going to be working for 40+ years anyway, why hurry up to get into that? Take the time to broaden yourself as a person. Take classes you wouldn't otherwise ever experience. Before shutting yourself up in the world of programming, learn about history, music, biology, or philosophy. Not only will you be a happier person, you'll be a more sought-after contributor to game projects.
Yeah, OK. So France in WWII brings up a couple immediate thoughts. First, of course, is the stunningly ineffective defense of the Maginot line - they were fighting the last war. Due to that, there's also the incredibly rapid invasion of the German forces and the subsequent surrender by the French government - an understandable move, when their main defense had just been subverted so entirely.
However, then there's the second thing that springs to mind: the famous La Resistance movement, that continued fighting an entrenched occupying German force. In some ways, that's a lot more courageous than standing up to an invading enemy toe-to-toe. It's also recognized as a major contributor to the eventual defeat of the Germans - without the French resistance, Hitler would have had a strong base in France when D-Day came about.
So it's very strange that the first part is the only part that's remembered on the Internet today. Especially since the Resistance was much more an expression of the French national character and less simply a reaction to strategic failure. I'm sure that the French commanders were spoken of unflatteringly, and the Vichy collaborators even more so, but the rest of the world absolutely recognized the French sacrifice and contribution to victory - at least, until relatively modern times.
There are differing accounts as to whether he was fired or resigned... Here's a quote from another story (this is the statement from his employer):
... commentary" part? That seems like obvious infringement of the right to political speech.
"Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise, Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effectively immediately," the statement said.
So here's my question: assuming that this is true, and he was fired... Is that legal? Especially the "company policy regarding outside political
One of the scariest things that might come out of this is an "upgrade" of the DMCA. I've been reading the stories about the lawsuit, and it's really bizarre to see a tech company defending the DMCA and a content company saying it's a bad law.
Despite the fact that Viacom pushed for the adoption of the DMCA against the tech community's wishes, they're now claiming that it's *too nice* to copyright violators. Since it makes them issue takedown notices and limits the liability of hosting providers, they hate it in the YouTube scenario. They want a new law that doesn't even require takedown notices and instead forces hosting providers to actively police their content for violations - something that's obviously unworkable.
I really hope they fail with this, but it's probably too much to ask. If they win, all content hosts will be in big trouble, and if they lose the entertainment industry will push for a law that will let them win. A scary situation...
Yes. Unfortunately, unless you have the kind of cash the entertainment industry lobs her way, you will probably only get a polite letter that assures you she takes protecting copyright very seriously. (At least, that's what I got.) I think her aides just file them all under "copyright" and send the same pro-Hollywood letter out to everyone who wrote in.
It's not so much "punishing" them as it is "stop doing them special favors". They haven't threatened to sue or anything like that, they just said they wouldn't invite them to special press conferences and so forth.
Because it's Slashdot, here's a bad analogy:
I regularly loan my car keys to my neighbor, and let him borrow power tools and things. One day, he calls me up. He says he heard a rumor that I have leprosy. I ask him please not to spread the rumor around, I was planning on having a big meeting with all the neighbors in a week to talk about this. He goes ahead and spreads the rumor. So, in response, I stop loaning him my keys and so forth - our relationship becomes frosty. It's not like I'm trying to burn down his house, but he can't really expect me to keep doing him favors.
But Slashdot was fine. In fact, Slashdot was where I learned the events first, since all the news sites were down.
OK, I can agree with taking the first one seriously - even after they see the device that the person reported, and can visually verify that it's not a bomb, they can be safe and blow it up with a bomb squad and so forth. But then, they should say "Oh, OK, not a bomb, nothing to see here, move along."
Instead, they shut down the city over something that they had *verified* was not a bomb. This really does look, as another poster has suggested, very much like people willing to go to any lengths to avoid admitting they were wrong.
There's a great science fiction series about the colonization of Mars - Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars.
In it, the author talks about this very problem. The way in which it's solved is very practical. They isolate the group of mission candidates on Antarctica for long periods of time, and thus weed out/break those who can't hack it. (This is after all the other screening, of course).
Something like that would no doubt work well, but in the book it depended on a long list of people who were qualified and eager to go to Mars and make those sacrifices, as well as a public that was willing to fund and support such a venture.
You can't really share it with your friends. Or, you can, but you'd better trust them a lot. And anyone else that might use their computer. Or, for that matter, that might use your computer. And you'd better make sure you wipe your drives clean before throwing them out, and that you don't lose the burned DVD, and...
I think this sort of scheme has more potential to go drastically wrong for some innocent person than any other sort of DRM. All it takes is one person you share with (or yourself, for that matter) to be careless, and your name is plastered all over the internet as a pirate, and you have a hell of a time convincing a jury otherwise.
I ran a virus scan for fun, once.
Your Friday nights must just be *wild*.
I don't know. Nintendo was originally claiming to be aiming to produce 4 million Wiis by year end. They only produced 1.1 million - I think they're definitely having supply issues. They haven't confirmed it, of course, but if you look at the numbers that's the case.
Personally, I suspect the accelerometers for the controllers.
You realize that the person you replied to was actually the defending lawyer in that case?
;-)
I think (I *hope*) that he would remember if his client won
Plus that would be an accurate symbol of the state of our democracy... I just hope they can keep in the "cha-ching!" sound.
I bet the whole "maybe the government needs to get involved" line is just put out there to scare content holders into playing nice. I bet it's tough for YouTube to get any respect from the content industry, and they're essentially saying "wouldn't it be a shame if we had to sic Regulators on you?" I imagine, faced with that prospect, content holders will be jumping over themselves to make it easier to get content.
I'll ignore the offtopic bit of your post, and just say you've got your analogy wrong. The article isn't lambasting the game industry for not showing up, but rather the gaming press. That's a little like the sports press not showing up for the congressional hearings on baseball steroids. It's a story that's important to the industry that they cover - more important, surely, than the release of new screenshots, snarky comments by company executives, or perhaps even more important than the launch of a new console.
Most games journalism is sitting back and being spoonfed information by talented PR people, then regurgitating it. Getting up and actually doing some investigation is alien to most games "journalists", but those that put in the work are going to be the Woodwards of their trade. Which the industry sorely needs.
If you're serious and you want a real, intelligent look at the ethical foundations of vegetarianism and animal rights, look at the writings of John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer.
The basic argument is that an action is unethical if it causes suffering, and that many classes of animals can suffer (although generally not as much as humans). Therefore, it's unethical to cause the suffering of animals. Note that this doesn't necessarily preclude eating them or making clothes out of them.
There's a lot more to it than that, of course, there are all sorts of interesting subtleties that are lost in the calls of the more strident animal rights movements. At the base of it, the reasoning is entirely rational and logical, and I think a scientifically, logically minded person could find very little to disagree with in the reasoning (while not necessarily accepting every conclusion wholesale).
I'm not a vegetarian, and I have a leather wallet in my pocket right now. Nevertheless, I find the reasoning very compelling.
But the content producers will simply not produce for computer platforms unless a sufficiently robust anti copying technology is present in the system. Hence MS have no option but to invest in DRM.
That's the case *now*, when there are plenty of people willing to watch broadcast TV, read print books, and listen to CDs. But it's moving more and more towards all-digital-over-networks. And if the current content producers are unwilling to produce content for that platform, then new businesses will. And they'll steal business from the old ones.
I don't think you'll get a scenario where the content producers refuse to distribute digitally, on PCs. They may fight it, but they have no choice.
PS - In all fairness, it may be the book publishers, not Sony, who is requiring the consumer to get screwed. They may have deals about minimum book prices or some such BS. I'd tempted to blame Sony, but the main point is that *someone* along the line - Sony, book publisher, etc - is being a greedy bastard and it makes me sad because the tech seems so cool.
Yeah, apparently this is the case - Sony says the publishers have complete control over the content pricing in the store. My guess is that the publishers saw what happened to music labels and iTunes, and demanded control. Hopefully content creators will eventually realize that DRMed digital works are worth less to consumers than the physical hardcopies.
The Iliad doesn't seem too bad, but some points:
The page turn bar looks cool, but some users complain about the fact that you flip it the wrong way.. That is, you flip left to go to the next page, rather than right. Apparently it's a bit confusing sometimes.
Also, Irex hasn't released the SDK or the GPL source, so you can't write your own reader yet. Even when that stuff is released, you need to distribute your reader through their official service, so that limits things somewhat.
Plus, the software is still buggy, with power management in particular being a huge downside. Also, PDF is basically the only readable format on the device.
I love the big screen, though. It could certainly have promise, along with the Hanlin V2 reader, if it's ever released.
Wow. That's a great euphemism right there. "Your pet puppy had his survival disabled by a truck, son."
Why can't they just say it kills bacteria?