Exactly. I don't run an anti-virus programs either at home, and I think the last virus I got was in 2000. I tried WinClam, or ClamWin or w{ever}tf it is called recently just to verify everything was OK.
If I do download a program, I try to find an open source version first, or failing that, look at it in hexdump to see if it looks suspicious.
I would say the main reason is that web browsing is safer these days. i.e. adblock, noscript, and good 'ol host blocking from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
You're talking about Artificial Ignorance. When you leave consciousness out of the equation, you will never get the answer. True Artificial Intelligence will involve biocomputing.
> The final stage of piracy is that no one can earn a living from their work that is benefiting society.
You haven't looked far enough into the future with your crystal ball.
The problem is not "piracy". Piracy is a SYMPTOM of a _much_ _bigger_ problem that society has still yet to come to terms with - that you're not allowed to "share" what you "own", that you have to "pay" to live on the planet you were born on in the first place, and ultimately pseudo-ownership. Computers have shown us that we can represent reality (audio, video, text, etc.) as numbers. Who owns a number?? It is related to the whole fucked up concept of money from the get go, based on the concept of artificial scarcity. When the cost of "duplicating" reality approaches zero, it is forcing people to question the basics: "Why am I not allowed to give away the things I 'paid' for such as books? Why does someone elses greed get to control who I can share my things & enjoyment with?" If I buy a DVD and watch it with my family, the artists and publishers got screwed out of N-1 sales since my family got to watch [it] for free. If I invite friends over, same thing, but yet if I show it to strangers it is now illegal?? The artist and publishers can go fuck themselves if they think they can dictate who I an show my movies to, or if I want to charge for the "event." In Canada you can legally share your [p2p] music, because common sense tells you that is NO DIFFERENCE if you loan your CD to your friend, he got to listen to it for free, and the artist got nothing, OR you just give him a dam mp3 to begin with.
When free energy arrives this century, copyright is going to be one of the first casualties. People will do things because they _enjoy_ it, not because of how much money they can make. The motivation will shift. I work on open-source programs in my spare time for the same reasons - to make the world a better place for myself and others. That the creative types can no longer afford to exclusively rely on a broken system shows that the underlying system is changing whether they like it or not.
Kurzweil in the loosest sense calls it the singularity event. I disagree with parts of his theory, but the general gist I agree with -- there is an oncoming paradigm revolution on how we view ownership, and it is literally going to blow the doors open on how we think, view, and treat "property", especially this "imaginary property rights."
> Because market value is not an attribute of a thing.
Exactly, it is the _relationship_ of the buy and seller that defines the value.
The only thing I would add to your excellent post is this point is this:
What complicates the issue is that the _same_ thing can have _multiple_ values. i.e. If some idiot wants to pay $1.8 million for a painting with 3 stripes, and someone offers $18, the "perceived" value is _relative_.
The other paradigm shift is that computers have shown us we can "represent" reality: via audio, video, text, information, pictures, etc. as pure numbers. How can you put a "price" on "artificial scarcity" when it is possible to "copy" a representation of reality unlimited times? Copyright is an archaic hold over before we realized that imaginary property doesn't have an intrinsic value - only the maximum amount someone is willing to pay for it and as compensation for the time and expertise it took to initially "create" the "thing" in the first place. What price do you place on Calculus? If it had been invented in today's age, you would be paying for the privilege for learning its "secrets."
> Just out of curiosity why are so many slashdotters pro Pirate Bay. Even if they may not breaking the letter of the law they are going against the intent of the law.
Copyright is a bogus law invented by publishers in the 17th century to maximize profit.
It is your civic duty to _not_ obey bad laws. It's one of the reasons you can legally give mp3 rips of your cds to your friends in Canada. If enough people demand the law(s) be changed, government has no choice but to follow suit. People create the government, not the other way around as much as they try to tell you otherwise.
By sticking up for Pirate Bay it sends the message that copyright is an archaic concept. Thank God this nonsense will eventually go away. The future starts today.
However, that is only 50% of the solution. Excite (before it became a web portal), and Altavista was also minimal, but google's search engine basically blew everyone else out of the water.
Of course I have to wonder about the validity of the psychological effects. In a simulation you _know_ when it is over, "Earth" is just an "exit door" away. On Mars, you are putting your life on the line and don't have your support system (friends, family) "next door" so to speak.
I don't need a passport to browse books in the library. I certainly don't need a passport to browse the web. Kaspersky can go fuck himself - he has no right to tell me how to use a computer.
Except you didn't address _why_ rubberbanding exists in the _first_ place, which is the point of the article.
** Without a challenge, there is no game. **
** It's all about the risk/reward ratio. ***
It's why most people get bored playing a game with cheats. The game loses its appeal when there isn't a challenge.
> and to justify why you should spend several days grinding your way through them.
That is old-skool mentality, for better or worse. Players don't want to waste (or invest) hours into doing the same stuff over and over for very little payoff (UNLESS you have a well designed game.) As you get older your patience gets shorter, and you realize don't have time for this bullshit of wasting hours trying to the same thing over and over, ala Mario Brothers. I blame this on bad game design, namely the lack of ROI. It is much easier to spot on old games.
More so in twitch games, it is a _balance_ between forcing the player to invest hours into physical skill so they always have a challenge and the satisfaction of doing a hard job well, and making the game easier so they have their rewards.
Going too far one way, you end up with a simulation. When GT3 came out, the first thing I did was get gold in all the B LICENSE EXAM. When I went to play the "real" game, I found this investment paid off quite nicely, as I would come across sections of the tracks that I knew intimately -- ala the best line helped me win. But after a while, investing in the harder license tests just didn't have the same reward.
Making everything too easy, and players lose interest as there is no challenge.
Finding the golden median of risk/reward is one of the hardest things to do well in game design.
> What's the point in grinding to upgrade your engine HP by 50% when, effectively, every single opponent just got the same upgrade?
Because game designers use rubberbanding as quick hack to keep the gameplay interesting to the player. I didn't say it was a good solution, just one solution.
When I was in college I remember warez beging traded via FSP, then FTP (with high-ASCII characters for folder names nested a few levels deep), then UseNet alt.binaries.*, then IRC, then P2P, then BitTorrent....
For the end-user, Steam is great. I've bought a lot more indie games then I normally would simply because I love seeing the weekend deals. Small developers don't have the marketing budget to pay for exposure and steam provides that. Even indirectly when I see my friends playing "Game X" and I decide to go check it out.
If you're a big publisher (or developer), such as Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, etc. you can afford the marketing budget.
The only "legit" complaint I could see is if you are a "middle" publisher and thus are having a hard time compete with both sides.
Gearbox has ported a LOT of First Person Shooters. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gearbox_Software) Instead of blaming publishers, why not make a good game that customers want?
Seconded. (The only zombie movie I enjoy is Army of Darkness. Can't stand anything else.)
L4D is great because it teaches:
a) awareness - especially listening to audio cues of a boomer, smoker, hunter, or panic event. Having the guys in front not make sudden, but predictable moves so they don't get shot in the back by their friends.
b) Teamwork - learning how to clear room; where to stand as a group; communicating what you're doing and about the environment, such as regrouping when a panic event is about to go off. Playing on Expert "forces" one to learn these things.
Most PUGs have total NOOBs, but when enough of my friends aren't online I still play them because:
i) Doing a normal campaign in ~35 mins. shows other people how to play as a team. I can't count the number of times people have said "that was a great team" -- presumably because they didn't see any one playing together as a team.
ii) Play enough games you run into some great people. Always nice to have acquaintances online when you need to fill out a versus game.
> If you really believe that the government will falter to such a degree
I suggest reading a little thing called "History." _EVERY_ government fails eventually; It is not a matter of IF, but WHEN.
> remove your funds from your bank
I never suggested for or against any action. Just merely pointing out that greed, aka, getting something for nothing via Interest is the cause of the problem. When you are able to loan out 99% of your assets, and not receive them back, that it is already too late of a problem. That's why Usury is banned in other monetary systems. Once you have a non zero-sum game, you have (hyper) Inflation _by_ definition.
> If you're talking about the dollar being backed by the gold standard, this is just as big of an illusion of security as current paper currency is.
I don't think you understand what fiat currency is. I would suggest reading "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" http://mises.org/money.asp
Physical backed currency made it harder to get something for nothing, but at the abstract level you are correct. Putting stock in physical items was a reminder of this; much more so then easy duplicatable paper. But the problem will become moot as humans learn to exist without money. The collapse of the various systems are just natural consequences of getting weaned off the tit of fiat money.
The Lord of the Flies is total shite. Some psuedo-intellectualism commentary about how imaginary (and unrealistic) boys behave with boring dialogue. I'd rather watch paint dry.
There is nothing wrong with pulp fiction when it is done well. At least its entertaining instead of a total snooze-fest. _Good_ fiction will be accessible at all levels. i.e. The Matrix. Contact. etc...
Riiiight. When the government is bankrupt, it _can't_ payout. Least in the old days you had _some_ assets to cover your debts, and one just couldn't "print" more pseudo-assets. Regardless, the problem is borrowing more then you can cover.
The ironic thing, is that jwz has never had to publish on a "real" console for Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. The iPhone dev process is a dream compared to any other platform. Hopefully Palm will take some lessons, and make it _easier_ for devs to get their app published (& noticed) without too much fuss. With apps (software), a platform (hardware) is dead / useless. Apple reached critical mass due to making it relatively easy to publish.
Of course, one could argue that it leads to [market] over-saturation. i.e. Just how many variations on "scientific calculators" do we actually need listed in the App Store??
But at least the consumer has _some_ choice in what to download.
-- Artificial Ignorance will become Intelligence when it adds the missing variable to the equation: Consciousness. Not the other way around of somehow it "magically" appearing.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. I don't run an anti-virus programs either at home, and I think the last virus I got was in 2000. I tried WinClam, or ClamWin or w{ever}tf it is called recently just to verify everything was OK.
If I do download a program, I try to find an open source version first, or failing that, look at it in hexdump to see if it looks suspicious.
I would say the main reason is that web browsing is safer these days.
i.e.
adblock, noscript, and good 'ol host blocking from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
You're talking about Artificial Ignorance. When you leave consciousness out of the equation, you will never get the answer. True Artificial Intelligence will involve biocomputing.
> The final stage of piracy is that no one can earn a living from their work that is benefiting society.
You haven't looked far enough into the future with your crystal ball.
The problem is not "piracy". Piracy is a SYMPTOM of a _much_ _bigger_ problem that society has still yet to come to terms with - that you're not allowed to "share" what you "own", that you have to "pay" to live on the planet you were born on in the first place, and ultimately pseudo-ownership. Computers have shown us that we can represent reality (audio, video, text, etc.) as numbers. Who owns a number?? It is related to the whole fucked up concept of money from the get go, based on the concept of artificial scarcity. When the cost of "duplicating" reality approaches zero, it is forcing people to question the basics: "Why am I not allowed to give away the things I 'paid' for such as books? Why does someone elses greed get to control who I can share my things & enjoyment with?" If I buy a DVD and watch it with my family, the artists and publishers got screwed out of N-1 sales since my family got to watch [it] for free. If I invite friends over, same thing, but yet if I show it to strangers it is now illegal?? The artist and publishers can go fuck themselves if they think they can dictate who I an show my movies to, or if I want to charge for the "event." In Canada you can legally share your [p2p] music, because common sense tells you that is NO DIFFERENCE if you loan your CD to your friend, he got to listen to it for free, and the artist got nothing, OR you just give him a dam mp3 to begin with.
When free energy arrives this century, copyright is going to be one of the first casualties. People will do things because they _enjoy_ it, not because of how much money they can make. The motivation will shift. I work on open-source programs in my spare time for the same reasons - to make the world a better place for myself and others. That the creative types can no longer afford to exclusively rely on a broken system shows that the underlying system is changing whether they like it or not.
Kurzweil in the loosest sense calls it the singularity event. I disagree with parts of his theory, but the general gist I agree with -- there is an oncoming paradigm revolution on how we view ownership, and it is literally going to blow the doors open on how we think, view, and treat "property", especially this "imaginary property rights."
Newton said it first, er third :-)
"For every action, there is an opposite and equal re-action."
You see the same meta-issue(s) with book censorship/banning, gun control, games being labeled as violent, etc.
Over-rated & Non issue.
The iPhone won't let you download apps over 10 Megs over 3G and instead asks for you use WiFi, let me know of _any_ iPhone apps that over 256 Megs.
> Because market value is not an attribute of a thing.
Exactly, it is the _relationship_ of the buy and seller that defines the value.
The only thing I would add to your excellent post is this point is this:
What complicates the issue is that the _same_ thing can have _multiple_ values. i.e. If some idiot wants to pay $1.8 million for a painting with 3 stripes, and someone offers $18, the "perceived" value is _relative_.
The other paradigm shift is that computers have shown us we can "represent" reality: via audio, video, text, information, pictures, etc. as pure numbers. How can you put a "price" on "artificial scarcity" when it is possible to "copy" a representation of reality unlimited times? Copyright is an archaic hold over before we realized that imaginary property doesn't have an intrinsic value - only the maximum amount someone is willing to pay for it and as compensation for the time and expertise it took to initially "create" the "thing" in the first place. What price do you place on Calculus? If it had been invented in today's age, you would be paying for the privilege for learning its "secrets."
> Just out of curiosity why are so many slashdotters pro Pirate Bay. Even if they may not breaking the letter of the law they are going against the intent of the law.
Copyright is a bogus law invented by publishers in the 17th century to maximize profit.
It is your civic duty to _not_ obey bad laws. It's one of the reasons you can legally give mp3 rips of your cds to your friends in Canada. If enough people demand the law(s) be changed, government has no choice but to follow suit. People create the government, not the other way around as much as they try to tell you otherwise.
By sticking up for Pirate Bay it sends the message that copyright is an archaic concept. Thank God this nonsense will eventually go away. The future starts today.
> I put forward that you cannot survive a year without touching/using a google technology.
It might be painful, but with Bing & Yahoo that is relatively easy.
> but why did google become so popular? It was great and very minimal.
Yes as pic confirms.
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/443/yahoovsgoogle1996to2005ys4.png
However, that is only 50% of the solution. Excite (before it became a web portal), and Altavista was also minimal, but google's search engine basically blew everyone else out of the water.
That's a good point.
Of course I have to wonder about the validity of the psychological effects. In a simulation you _know_ when it is over, "Earth" is just an "exit door" away. On Mars, you are putting your life on the line and don't have your support system (friends, family) "next door" so to speak.
> I admit I am a carmack fanboi but damn that's how good doom was. It didn't need a story.
No kidding - the original author doesn't understand game design to any depth.
Quick - what's the story of chess, go, bejeweled or tetris?!
_Some_ games don't _need_ a story - especially logic (or action) games when they have been around for thousands of years.
That's a very good point.
I don't need a passport to browse books in the library. I certainly don't need a passport to browse the web. Kaspersky can go fuck himself - he has no right to tell me how to use a computer.
Except you didn't address _why_ rubberbanding exists in the _first_ place, which is the point of the article.
** Without a challenge, there is no game. **
** It's all about the risk/reward ratio. ***
It's why most people get bored playing a game with cheats. The game loses its appeal when there isn't a challenge.
> and to justify why you should spend several days grinding your way through them.
That is old-skool mentality, for better or worse. Players don't want to waste (or invest) hours into doing the same stuff over and over for very little payoff (UNLESS you have a well designed game.) As you get older your patience gets shorter, and you realize don't have time for this bullshit of wasting hours trying to the same thing over and over, ala Mario Brothers. I blame this on bad game design, namely the lack of ROI. It is much easier to spot on old games.
More so in twitch games, it is a _balance_ between forcing the player to invest hours into physical skill so they always have a challenge and the satisfaction of doing a hard job well, and making the game easier so they have their rewards.
Going too far one way, you end up with a simulation. When GT3 came out, the first thing I did was get gold in all the B LICENSE EXAM. When I went to play the "real" game, I found this investment paid off quite nicely, as I would come across sections of the tracks that I knew intimately -- ala the best line helped me win. But after a while, investing in the harder license tests just didn't have the same reward.
Making everything too easy, and players lose interest as there is no challenge.
Finding the golden median of risk/reward is one of the hardest things to do well in game design.
> What's the point in grinding to upgrade your engine HP by 50% when, effectively, every single opponent just got the same upgrade?
Because game designers use rubberbanding as quick hack to keep the gameplay interesting to the player. I didn't say it was a good solution, just one solution.
WHOA! Someone else actually remembers FSP!
Totally agree. See my other post... http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1400201&cid=29711857
Yeah, no kidding.
When I was in college I remember warez beging traded via FSP, then FTP (with high-ASCII characters for folder names nested a few levels deep), then UseNet alt.binaries.*, then IRC, then P2P, then BitTorrent....
For the end-user, Steam is great. I've bought a lot more indie games then I normally would simply because I love seeing the weekend deals. Small developers don't have the marketing budget to pay for exposure and steam provides that. Even indirectly when I see my friends playing "Game X" and I decide to go check it out.
If you're a big publisher (or developer), such as Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, etc. you can afford the marketing budget.
The only "legit" complaint I could see is if you are a "middle" publisher and thus are having a hard time compete with both sides.
Gearbox has ported a LOT of First Person Shooters. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gearbox_Software) Instead of blaming publishers, why not make a good game that customers want?
Seconded. (The only zombie movie I enjoy is Army of Darkness. Can't stand anything else.)
L4D is great because it teaches:
a) awareness - especially listening to audio cues of a boomer, smoker, hunter, or panic event. Having the guys in front not make sudden, but predictable moves so they don't get shot in the back by their friends.
b) Teamwork - learning how to clear room; where to stand as a group; communicating what you're doing and about the environment, such as regrouping when a panic event is about to go off. Playing on Expert "forces" one to learn these things.
Most PUGs have total NOOBs, but when enough of my friends aren't online I still play them because:
i) Doing a normal campaign in ~35 mins. shows other people how to play as a team. I can't count the number of times people have said "that was a great team" -- presumably because they didn't see any one playing together as a team.
ii) Play enough games you run into some great people. Always nice to have acquaintances online when you need to fill out a versus game.
> If you really believe that the government will falter to such a degree
I suggest reading a little thing called "History." _EVERY_ government fails eventually; It is not a matter of IF, but WHEN.
> remove your funds from your bank
I never suggested for or against any action. Just merely pointing out that greed, aka, getting something for nothing via Interest is the cause of the problem. When you are able to loan out 99% of your assets, and not receive them back, that it is already too late of a problem. That's why Usury is banned in other monetary systems. Once you have a non zero-sum game, you have (hyper) Inflation _by_ definition.
> If you're talking about the dollar being backed by the gold standard, this is just as big of an illusion of security as current paper currency is.
I don't think you understand what fiat currency is. I would suggest reading "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" http://mises.org/money.asp
Physical backed currency made it harder to get something for nothing, but at the abstract level you are correct. Putting stock in physical items was a reminder of this; much more so then easy duplicatable paper. But the problem will become moot as humans learn to exist without money. The collapse of the various systems are just natural consequences of getting weaned off the tit of fiat money.
The Lord of the Flies is total shite. Some psuedo-intellectualism commentary about how imaginary (and unrealistic) boys behave with boring dialogue. I'd rather watch paint dry.
There is nothing wrong with pulp fiction when it is done well. At least its entertaining instead of a total snooze-fest. _Good_ fiction will be accessible at all levels. i.e. The Matrix. Contact. etc...
> FDIC insurance
Riiiight. When the government is bankrupt, it _can't_ payout. Least in the old days you had _some_ assets to cover your debts, and one just couldn't "print" more pseudo-assets. Regardless, the problem is borrowing more then you can cover.
An dedicated insert key on the keyboard for one.
s/Fox/Faux/
or
s/News/Propaganda/
Fixed it for you.
> and yet people don't import the more-naked-boobies versions of games like The Witcher from Europe to the US.
Bummer.
I was hoping to get that.
*sarcasm*
--
No, I don't want someone to Tell-A-Vision of their propaganda.
The ironic thing, is that jwz has never had to publish on a "real" console for Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. The iPhone dev process is a dream compared to any other platform. Hopefully Palm will take some lessons, and make it _easier_ for devs to get their app published (& noticed) without too much fuss. With apps (software), a platform (hardware) is dead / useless. Apple reached critical mass due to making it relatively easy to publish.
Of course, one could argue that it leads to [market] over-saturation. i.e. Just how many variations on "scientific calculators" do we actually need listed in the App Store??
But at least the consumer has _some_ choice in what to download.
--
Artificial Ignorance will become Intelligence when it adds the missing variable to the equation: Consciousness. Not the other way around of somehow it "magically" appearing.
You've never actually applied to get an official devkit, have you...
It's one more barrier of entry that simply doesn't exist on PC / Mac / iPhone development.
Maybe he is typing from a cell phone.
There _are_ legitimate reasons to abbreviate.
--
No, I don't watch Tell-A-Vision. I don't want to be Told-A-Vision of someone else's propaganda.