I should know better than to allow myself to be emotional on a site full of pedants. You're correct, of course, in the literal sense.
My bad...I'm just angry at the decision-making process that Blizzard has described. I'm unhappy at the thought of what the EULA and TOS for SC II are likely to say.
Yes, I'm going to miss LAN play (spawn copies, moreso), but I will buy the game. I'd rather be able to connect to people online, than in my living room. Most of my old friends who I used to play against in the 90's live rather too far way now to haul their rig into my living room.
I played multiplayer games with my 8-year-old son around 40 times this year. In our living room. With zero lag. While the cable (and thus internet) was out.
I'm not a hard-core nerd...I'm just somebody who knows why I won't want a version with no LAN play. I understand why some people don't care, or think it's not a big deal, but without LAN as an option, it's a waste of money for me to buy more than one copy.
You read that funny...you believe that it needs to be said that in *some* cases, LAN play is "legitimate"? WTF? It's my game, right? That I'm potentially paying for? Why is there a question about whether my deciding to play someone via LAN is legitimate?
The second half of the comment is equally unnecessary. At some point, there was a converstation at Blizzard in which someone had to be persuaded that "hey, it's not *just* that there are these people that refuse to buy a modem or are crazy and weird and living in a closet", but that there are other "legitimate" reasons...that's the most ass-backwards thinking I've seen put to paper in a while.
That comment pisses me off almost as much as the comment in the article...
Dustin Browder: These are issues that we continue to address as we go forward. Some of these things we have some plans for, but not all of them. It is something that we definitely plan on working on as we go forward to make sure we have things in place to handle every possible user case out there. We just know from WoW that most people can connect online and play. There are some cases out there, some legitimate-use cases â" that aren't just people that refuse to buy a modem or are crazy and weird and living in a closet. We want to make sure we are able to support these legitimate-use cases for LAN play and make it accessible to those users, but we're still trying to identify all of those and decide which cases are legitimate and which are not. These are definitely legitimate concerns, and we're certainly looking to address them.
*Legitimate* cases for people who desire LAN play? Blizzard is trying to decide whether me wanting to play multiplayer without using battle.net is *legitimate*?
How about this, Dustin...you go ahead and decide whatever you want, and I'll just keep playing the 4 copies of SC I I bought on my own computers in my own house whenever I want without Battle.NET being involved at all. Obviously, I'm a minority, so you won't miss the lost sale or two.
Can somebody explain to me again what I'm allowed to do when I fucking buy a game?
StarCraft I opening menu: Single-player game -> choose your name or add new one...
That seems an awful lot like they expected multiple people to be playing the same copy of the game.
I was initially just irritated about the lack of LAN play...I absolutely won't buy a copy if my son has to log on as me in order to play on the one machine I own that's capable of actually running the game. He's good, for an 8-year-old, but not *that* good...and if they correct *that* situation, I'm not buying a second copy if we have to do multiplayer over my current internet connection via battle.net
...yes, except for the people *do* care (you may have noticed that more people are commenting negatively in slashdot comments about the omission of LAN play than those who approve of the idea).
What real-life stats are you talking about? From what I've seen from the folks around here so far, only about 10% of people with an opinion on LAN play are planning on buying a copy of SCII that doesn't include it.
Since the presence of a bear isn't (as far as I'm aware), something that Blizzard would be likely to control, I fail to see the point of your response.
Let's say that bnet is having problems, or your local ISP is having problems, or mice chewed through your phone/cable/fiber. None of those are things that Blizzard has control of, right?
Right. However, the design choice to require multiplayer games to connect to a server on the internet *is* something Blizzard has control of.
You may disagree on whether that's an appropriate choice (and you apparently do), but it remains a choice that Blizzard appears ready to make. It affects the ability of users to play a long-awaited sequel to a hugely popular game in a way that they can currently play it.
I've bought 4 copies of StarCraft over the past 8 years, and I haven't regretted a thing (other than that I failed to make a copy of the first disc I bought, since it became worthless when my youngest son scratched it all to hell).
That same son routinely *begs* me to play with him, and plays the SC campaign levels on a regular basis, too.
Taking away my ability to do straight PC-to-PC multiplayer makes me much more likely to just wait around until they decide to add it before I shell out for two copies, regardless of how good it is. I definitely wouldn't buy more than one copy until LAN support was present.
Oh, and I'd probably use siege tanks on the bear...or maybe a zergling rush...not sure.
I'm still waiting for the much-needed "-1, Asshat" and "-1, Incorrect" mods. Call me an idealist, but I believe that you need the right tools for the job when moderating.
well, I wouldn't call it 3D...you couldn't see things from different perspectives (the ground continuously moves in a single direction, rather than you moving around the terrain at will). Basically, it was a side-scroller or top-scroller from a rear 3/4 view.
As a die-hard geek and previous owner of a C-64 (who would love to own one of those, a tape drive, and a 20" color tv again), I'd have to say that I'd personally prefer a restored chassis to a yellowed one (meaning I'd consider paying slightly more for one that had been whitened).
Okay, you and others differ on when a number of human cells is called human (again, we're off in the weeds on the morality argument, which is unnecessary). I have no opinion on whether embryos have souls. I likewise have no generalized opinion that all other homo sapiens have the requisite characteristics for me to consider them worthy of being called human, regardless of age. It's a natural extension of that line of thought, really.
The argument is about whether the embryos should be nurtured towards becoming possible humans, or whether they should be looked at as medical supplies.
I might not think a particular adult deserves to be cured of anything (maybe they're an incurable asshole), but it's difficult to make the same decision about an embryo (they haven't had a chance to prove that they're an asshole). If stems cells from a person's own body can have the same curative effect, and none of the trans-genomic issues, then both of those sets of emotional arguments are meaningless.
I have no problem with your passion, your point of view, or your explanation, I just want to say loudly that it is a non-issue today. A lack of embryonic stem cell research is not going to be the thing that causes people to die...the argument about it, and the focus that it takes off of existing, non-controversial research *will* be.
I have no opinion to interject on when life begins, etc, but you're ignoring the better results that we're getting from non-embryonic stem-cells. They have a lot of advantages (can be harvested from the same individual who needs to be cured, are an exact DNA match, don't require special storage, for starters), and there's no need to go off in the weeds on the whole morality issue.
It'd be nice if folks would wake up and say "hey, that's cool...stem cells from your own fat!", instead of going off one or the other deep end about morality and embryonic stem cell lines. During early stem cell research, they were important, but not so much today.
General purpose computing eclipsing discrete components doesn't make the distinction between hardware and software more arbitrary, it narrows the range of processes that *require* patented machinery to function.
A CPU is not an algorithm, it is a device. Verilog is a tool (like a drafting table) that can be used to design such a device. My standards say nothing about the tools used to design the hardware. As long as said hardware is novel in a definable way from what came before it, it is patentable.
The advent of digital video on computers doesn't mean that patents on hardware required to build a Blu-Ray player are iffy, it just means that the hardware for a Blu-Ray player becomes more of a niche development effort.
For that matter, the issue of required effort is not one I am attempting to use. I am talking about the capital costs involved in manufacturing a purpose-built, innovative, physical device.
Software does not do [physical] work. Software is a set of instructions. Hardware does work and effects a change on physical things. Patents were put in place to ensure that innovation would continue and that companies could not simply rely on the effort of others to produce the same [physical] devices.
The physical/ephemeral distinction is not at all arbitrary, and is at the root of patentability (hence the proscription against the patenting of ideas or algorithms, and the tying of patents to inventions that produce a physical effect).
Yes, all of the examples you cite *start* as ideas, but not all of them have to be realized in a physical form via a device with specific, unique, non-obvious properties that have not been described or created before.
I know that it "seems" wrong, but the simple truth is that ideas cannot be patented. Machines that produce a physical change can be patented (Dolby patents the hardware it creates to do sound encoding and decoding and charges manufacturers for the ability to use that in their equipment). I agree that is a legitimately patentable "new" device...at least for now. Eventually, general purpose computing will eclipse certain types of discrete electronic components, and things will come down to algorithms (which are pure thought, aka ideas, and not patentable).
Abolishing software patents is necessary. Copyright is by far a more appropriate protection for a creative work. As a programmer, I understand that there are plenty of smart people out there, and only so many ways to tell a computer to do something. That means that patents in software will necessarily stifle innovation, since we are all working with the same set of constraints.
Take a science-fiction novel as an analogy to a computer program. If I patent a book, and my claim is for "a novel in which a male or female human or humans (or other alien species) prevents certain disaster for one or more races of beings, areas of space, or alternate realities using a device with the ability to transport objects through time and/or extra-dimensional space", then there are a whooooooole lot of books that don't get written.
If you take a look at most software patents, the read much like that. They try to be as broad as possible in order to prevent others from duplicating functionality as much as possible. That fails to promote the progress of the useful arts, for sure. Software is never anything but an idea that gets written down, and patents on software are patents on ideas, which should not be possible.
TSG is "The Smoking Gun" (a website that routinely posts mugshots, pictures, and other stuff)
I understand your point, but I'm saying that irrespective of what thousands of people do with them, that's not why they were created. Gun's weren't created for robbery, bone saws weren't created for disposal of murdered mafioso opponents, the identification cards weren't created to promote mindless hate.
You're apparently not saying that you don't like the cards, but that you don't like some *people*, which is understandable. I hate racists and xenophobes, too (and anyone who hates or fears based on lack of knowledge or ignorance). It's not the cards' fault.
Not making the connection...not placing a link on your site is not supression. Forcing someone else not to place a link on their site would be supression (as in the fed govt saying "no links to the booklet, people don't like it" to TSG, if that were to happen).
...I did make sure to include the definition in my post, wich includes the word "objectionable". As a pedant, I understand my mistake, and am correcting it.
I agree that you removing a list of links because you are bored with them is not censorship, and that if you remove them because someone finds them objectionable then that *is* censorship.
If you agree with the second definition being as correct as the first, then we can agree that the removal of the book from the FEMA site was censorship, if not necessarily in the legal sense of the term (as I said before)...somebody objected and they pulled the link.
Slashdot Mirror
I should know better than to allow myself to be emotional on a site full of pedants. You're correct, of course, in the literal sense.
My bad...I'm just angry at the decision-making process that Blizzard has described. I'm unhappy at the thought of what the EULA and TOS for SC II are likely to say.
I played multiplayer games with my 8-year-old son around 40 times this year. In our living room. With zero lag. While the cable (and thus internet) was out.
I'm not a hard-core nerd...I'm just somebody who knows why I won't want a version with no LAN play. I understand why some people don't care, or think it's not a big deal, but without LAN as an option, it's a waste of money for me to buy more than one copy.
You read that funny...you believe that it needs to be said that in *some* cases, LAN play is "legitimate"? WTF? It's my game, right? That I'm potentially paying for? Why is there a question about whether my deciding to play someone via LAN is legitimate?
The second half of the comment is equally unnecessary. At some point, there was a converstation at Blizzard in which someone had to be persuaded that "hey, it's not *just* that there are these people that refuse to buy a modem or are crazy and weird and living in a closet", but that there are other "legitimate" reasons...that's the most ass-backwards thinking I've seen put to paper in a while.
Or better yet, keep playing the original and refuse to buy SC II until LAN play is an option (my current stance).
That comment pisses me off almost as much as the comment in the article...
*Legitimate* cases for people who desire LAN play? Blizzard is trying to decide whether me wanting to play multiplayer without using battle.net is *legitimate*?
How about this, Dustin...you go ahead and decide whatever you want, and I'll just keep playing the 4 copies of SC I I bought on my own computers in my own house whenever I want without Battle.NET being involved at all. Obviously, I'm a minority, so you won't miss the lost sale or two.
Can somebody explain to me again what I'm allowed to do when I fucking buy a game?
Maybe 20% of that 90...the rest will probably shake their heads and move on, or continue to play SC I.
Pirating a copy isn't the *only* option aside from buying the game.
StarCraft I opening menu: Single-player game -> choose your name or add new one...
That seems an awful lot like they expected multiple people to be playing the same copy of the game.
I was initially just irritated about the lack of LAN play...I absolutely won't buy a copy if my son has to log on as me in order to play on the one machine I own that's capable of actually running the game. He's good, for an 8-year-old, but not *that* good...and if they correct *that* situation, I'm not buying a second copy if we have to do multiplayer over my current internet connection via battle.net
...yes, except for the people *do* care (you may have noticed that more people are commenting negatively in slashdot comments about the omission of LAN play than those who approve of the idea).
What real-life stats are you talking about? From what I've seen from the folks around here so far, only about 10% of people with an opinion on LAN play are planning on buying a copy of SCII that doesn't include it.
Since the presence of a bear isn't (as far as I'm aware), something that Blizzard would be likely to control, I fail to see the point of your response.
Let's say that bnet is having problems, or your local ISP is having problems, or mice chewed through your phone/cable/fiber. None of those are things that Blizzard has control of, right?
Right. However, the design choice to require multiplayer games to connect to a server on the internet *is* something Blizzard has control of.
You may disagree on whether that's an appropriate choice (and you apparently do), but it remains a choice that Blizzard appears ready to make. It affects the ability of users to play a long-awaited sequel to a hugely popular game in a way that they can currently play it.
I've bought 4 copies of StarCraft over the past 8 years, and I haven't regretted a thing (other than that I failed to make a copy of the first disc I bought, since it became worthless when my youngest son scratched it all to hell).
That same son routinely *begs* me to play with him, and plays the SC campaign levels on a regular basis, too.
Taking away my ability to do straight PC-to-PC multiplayer makes me much more likely to just wait around until they decide to add it before I shell out for two copies, regardless of how good it is. I definitely wouldn't buy more than one copy until LAN support was present.
Oh, and I'd probably use siege tanks on the bear...or maybe a zergling rush...not sure.
I'm still waiting for the much-needed "-1, Asshat" and "-1, Incorrect" mods. Call me an idealist, but I believe that you need the right tools for the job when moderating.
well, I wouldn't call it 3D...you couldn't see things from different perspectives (the ground continuously moves in a single direction, rather than you moving around the terrain at will). Basically, it was a side-scroller or top-scroller from a rear 3/4 view.
As a die-hard geek and previous owner of a C-64 (who would love to own one of those, a tape drive, and a 20" color tv again), I'd have to say that I'd personally prefer a restored chassis to a yellowed one (meaning I'd consider paying slightly more for one that had been whitened).
This might help with that part of the restoration (cheap and DIY)...
Okay, you and others differ on when a number of human cells is called human (again, we're off in the weeds on the morality argument, which is unnecessary). I have no opinion on whether embryos have souls. I likewise have no generalized opinion that all other homo sapiens have the requisite characteristics for me to consider them worthy of being called human, regardless of age. It's a natural extension of that line of thought, really.
The argument is about whether the embryos should be nurtured towards becoming possible humans, or whether they should be looked at as medical supplies.
I might not think a particular adult deserves to be cured of anything (maybe they're an incurable asshole), but it's difficult to make the same decision about an embryo (they haven't had a chance to prove that they're an asshole). If stems cells from a person's own body can have the same curative effect, and none of the trans-genomic issues, then both of those sets of emotional arguments are meaningless.
I have no problem with your passion, your point of view, or your explanation, I just want to say loudly that it is a non-issue today. A lack of embryonic stem cell research is not going to be the thing that causes people to die...the argument about it, and the focus that it takes off of existing, non-controversial research *will* be.
That's correct...albeit a BSD distro with nice eye-candy
IHBT...
you forced me to read and reply to the post you mentioned. You're a very emotional person, it seems....either that or an artful and clever troll.
I have no opinion to interject on when life begins, etc, but you're ignoring the better results that we're getting from non-embryonic stem-cells. They have a lot of advantages (can be harvested from the same individual who needs to be cured, are an exact DNA match, don't require special storage, for starters), and there's no need to go off in the weeds on the whole morality issue.
It'd be nice if folks would wake up and say "hey, that's cool...stem cells from your own fat!", instead of going off one or the other deep end about morality and embryonic stem cell lines. During early stem cell research, they were important, but not so much today.
Friended...now I have to dig through the DVD cabinet, dammit.
If I recall correctly, Firefox can display SVG...maybe a talk with Mozilla devs is in order?
One: why are you equating being critical (about economic status or work ethic...not clear from your post) with being racist?
Two: what do either of those things have to do with which stereotypes are okay to joke about and which aren't?
I know that this is largely a hypothetical set of questions, since I'm responding to an A.C., but screw it, IHBT.
General purpose computing eclipsing discrete components doesn't make the distinction between hardware and software more arbitrary, it narrows the range of processes that *require* patented machinery to function.
A CPU is not an algorithm, it is a device. Verilog is a tool (like a drafting table) that can be used to design such a device. My standards say nothing about the tools used to design the hardware. As long as said hardware is novel in a definable way from what came before it, it is patentable.
The advent of digital video on computers doesn't mean that patents on hardware required to build a Blu-Ray player are iffy, it just means that the hardware for a Blu-Ray player becomes more of a niche development effort.
For that matter, the issue of required effort is not one I am attempting to use. I am talking about the capital costs involved in manufacturing a purpose-built, innovative, physical device.
Software does not do [physical] work. Software is a set of instructions. Hardware does work and effects a change on physical things. Patents were put in place to ensure that innovation would continue and that companies could not simply rely on the effort of others to produce the same [physical] devices.
The physical/ephemeral distinction is not at all arbitrary, and is at the root of patentability (hence the proscription against the patenting of ideas or algorithms, and the tying of patents to inventions that produce a physical effect).
Yes, all of the examples you cite *start* as ideas, but not all of them have to be realized in a physical form via a device with specific, unique, non-obvious properties that have not been described or created before.
I know that it "seems" wrong, but the simple truth is that ideas cannot be patented. Machines that produce a physical change can be patented (Dolby patents the hardware it creates to do sound encoding and decoding and charges manufacturers for the ability to use that in their equipment). I agree that is a legitimately patentable "new" device...at least for now. Eventually, general purpose computing will eclipse certain types of discrete electronic components, and things will come down to algorithms (which are pure thought, aka ideas, and not patentable).
Abolishing software patents is necessary. Copyright is by far a more appropriate protection for a creative work. As a programmer, I understand that there are plenty of smart people out there, and only so many ways to tell a computer to do something. That means that patents in software will necessarily stifle innovation, since we are all working with the same set of constraints.
Take a science-fiction novel as an analogy to a computer program. If I patent a book, and my claim is for "a novel in which a male or female human or humans (or other alien species) prevents certain disaster for one or more races of beings, areas of space, or alternate realities using a device with the ability to transport objects through time and/or extra-dimensional space", then there are a whooooooole lot of books that don't get written.
If you take a look at most software patents, the read much like that. They try to be as broad as possible in order to prevent others from duplicating functionality as much as possible. That fails to promote the progress of the useful arts, for sure. Software is never anything but an idea that gets written down, and patents on software are patents on ideas, which should not be possible.
TSG is "The Smoking Gun" (a website that routinely posts mugshots, pictures, and other stuff)
I understand your point, but I'm saying that irrespective of what thousands of people do with them, that's not why they were created. Gun's weren't created for robbery, bone saws weren't created for disposal of murdered mafioso opponents, the identification cards weren't created to promote mindless hate.
You're apparently not saying that you don't like the cards, but that you don't like some *people*, which is understandable. I hate racists and xenophobes, too (and anyone who hates or fears based on lack of knowledge or ignorance). It's not the cards' fault.
Not making the connection...not placing a link on your site is not supression. Forcing someone else not to place a link on their site would be supression (as in the fed govt saying "no links to the booklet, people don't like it" to TSG, if that were to happen).
...I did make sure to include the definition in my post, wich includes the word "objectionable". As a pedant, I understand my mistake, and am correcting it.
I agree that you removing a list of links because you are bored with them is not censorship, and that if you remove them because someone finds them objectionable then that *is* censorship.
If you agree with the second definition being as correct as the first, then we can agree that the removal of the book from the FEMA site was censorship, if not necessarily in the legal sense of the term (as I said before)...somebody objected and they pulled the link.