That's different. Some counterstrike players are just tired of cursing. If you don't know that, it's you apparently, who haven't played CS recently.;) And because some players would rather play on restricted server, such servers were created. This is nothing like some outside organisation banning the world "ass" from counterstrike outright.
You see, they are licensing to you the specific physical representation of a song.:) The song is not yours, it belongs to the RIAA. The CD is also not yours, you just were allowed to use it for a limited number of purposes. That's RIAA's position and legally it is flawless.
He is not a retarded marketdroid. He is a very skilled and experienced demagogic marketdroid. Any clear answer would be bad for RIAA. Saying that the guy owned phisical record would mean that anyone who owns CD owns it as a phisical object and can do anything with it. Saying that the guy owned the licence to the music would mean that he can get this music forever for free in any form from any source.
The RIAA guy understood it perfectly and did what was the best for RIAA, he gave a vague answer that reinforced RIAA position that you can do only what RIAA legally allows you to do.
My university apparently decided to go legit and installed some FreeZip crap on the computers in the library. Just great. The only problem was that I was unable to unpack the files using WinZip, pkunzip or WinRAR (it has zip support). The archive wasn't corrupted, it was just not compatible.
When I also found out that WinRAR 2 is not compatible with WinRAR 3 archives I decided that I am tired of this shit. I will only use 5+ year old versions, preferably making SFX-archives and avoid using archives at all if possible.
Smoking definitely disturbs (phisically harmful, even if not dangerous for their long-term health) other passengers more than speaking on the phone (just annoying).
There are many games set in fictional countries and even fictional universes, but somehow the signs are written in perfect English. I don't ask the developers to adopt an actual language, be it Russian (although that would be nice), Ukrainian, Serbian, Mongolian or any other, but making the signs at least readable to anyone familiar with Cyrillic would be nice. Even people whose native language is based on latin alphabet, would probably be happy to invest a little time to learn a few extra letters if they are going to spend 50+ hours playing the game.
The developers decided to use meaningless babble-speak a la The Sims, but I doubt that they made it sound like some sort of Geonosian.
In any case, I am sure that the problem is deeper than the wish of developers to create a fictional country. Here is just one example of many.
Film: The Bourne's Identity, Time: 0:17:10 (in Swiss bank)
The Russian international passport shown in this scene is issued for Foma Kinaev. Everything looks authentic enough, except that the name in Cyrillic sounds more like Lsh'f Lshtshfum. But it's written in those cryptic Cyrillic letters (note, how the filmmakers favoured the letters which aren't also in English alphabet) and so probably no viewer will understand it. For some reason, Brazilian passport is done correctly, as well as the rest of them.
Honestly, I cannot find any reason behind this other than simple ignorance or outright idiocy (if Bourne's Identity makers got a Russian passport, they must have had someone who also knows how to spell a Russian name).
I don't know why, but as many films and games before, Revolution continues the tradition of using gibberish for the Cyrillic language. I can understand almost everything, like using a box with "CAXAP" (sugar) written on it and claiming that it means "shells" or "explosives". But I can't understand why anyone would use cyrillic letters to compose "words" that can't even be pronounced, the equivalent of "BRJIOQZW".
Cyrillic alphabet are not that much different from latin and even if you can't learn it (the alphabet, not any of the languages) yourself, why not hire a Russian (or Eastern European) student, who would compose all Cyrillic text in the game for less than 100$.
Americans often laugh at Japanese who are so fascinated with English language that they on their T-shirts print random cool-looking words that do not make any sense at all. Well, how is that different from showing ignorance in the way Elixir Studios (are they US-based?) does.
Everybody could write in cursive. Writing in individual letters was a thing of the past, reserved for pre-revolutionary times and people who draw a cross instead of signing their name. I honestly don't understand what is so difficult about cursive. And despite the educational system being totally fucked up today, writing in cursive is still not a problem for the Russian kids.
I must admit, though, that my own cursive skills are somewhat lucking. When I use handwriting, I tend to use Palm Graffiti instead...
That's a great example, thanks, hal200! It shows how the assumptions that we make about the problem, limit the solution space. If someone assumes that we need to use non-zero integers, he has little chances of solving the problem. If one can think out of the box, here is the answer.
Another example, with travel to Andromeda, was to be expected. Yeah, breaking the speed of light. But as Morpheus said to Neo, "...when you're ready, you won't have to". The problem is not traveling to Andromeda galaxy in 5 minutes, that is the solution (may be an impossible solution). If we try to understand what is the problem and then solve it, it may involve something else (like VR, or hybernation, or copying ourselves, etc.).
The Halting problem is unsolvable, all right. But even if it was solvable, it would be absolutely useless by itself (except for being a neat mathematical theorem), it's the applications that are important. And I believe that all things that would be possible with solving it (like bug-free programs), would be eventually made possible by other means.
Well, there are no unsolvable problems. There are things that you [may be] can't do, like breaking laws of nature, but any problems that you can think of can be solved in one way or another. Even if this specific patent represents an unscalable dead-end, there will be eventually found another solution.
Read this comment and the link there. You can't know the exact state of the photon, but you can know something about it. Measuring certain characteristics messes up the rest of them. After sending some photons, both sender and recepient randomly measure different characteristics of the photons. Then they tell each other which measurements and for which photons they did, but don't tell the outcome. Then they tell the outcome of some of the coincident (same characteristic) measurements and if they are the same, there was no eavesdropping. The rest of the coincident outcomes can be used as shared secret key.
I would say that GTA games are not refined enough. Everything seems to be too rough and just thrown together. Don't take me wrong, they are great games and a lot of fun, but if you look closely, the quality is not there. Overall the games make a great impression, but just like there are countless graphical artefacts, there are also many gameplay ones.
Now compare it with racing mission in Mafia. It was a bit difficult (not for me), but the quality of the racing experience was so much better. It was just amazing, how authentic and polished it looked, just like a real racing simulator, not just one of many missions in an action game.
1) Indian labour is cheaper than Eastern European / Russian. 2) Russian offshore-development industry is much smaller than Indian one (both in absolute terms and per capita). 3) There are no significant growth reserves (this also applies to Eastern Europe). 4) The existance of a few successful companies doesn't constitute an industry (or a threat to India). 5) Without initial investments you can't create a large IT industry. India did those investments. 6) There are no real figures that indicate this process of "outsourcing outsourcing" is actually happening. 7) etc.
Usual sensationalistic journalism. Bettet than Blair's inventions, but not much better.
The idea is that salaries in India are lower because of the level of economic development and cost of living, not because Indian IT specialists are somehow inferiour to you. That's why cheap labout doesn't need to have down-falls just because it is cheap. After all, all computers and consumer electronics are made with cheap labour. Didn't do them much harm, did it?
Your clients come to you not because you provide better quality, but because you have a unique capabilities.
Well, it's too late, since they sold their site, but anyway... How about mirrors? Let everyone set up a mirror of all gamefaq content (without message board). It doesn't help their bandwidth host that many of the FAQ writers are paranoid fuckwit jerks that write 2-page copyright notices, prohibiting any redistribution and posting on any sites except gamefaqs.
Size of all the content is probably in the range of several gigabytes. By distributing hosting costs you can solve the problem. There are many people who have the possibility to run a mirror (a dedicated machine and a solid connection) but don't want (can't) contribute a comparable sum of money.
Since most of the content is static, there aren't many problems with setting the mirrors up. The whole collection can even be packed and distributed on CDs/P2P. All FAQs will probably fit on one or two CDs. Sell them for a few bucks to cover printing costs, simple packaging and S&H. Upload them to eDonkey and BitTorrent to allow people to have the whole collection on their harddrives.
Honestly, if technology can't solve all problems, it can make them significantly less serious. It reminds me of Plastic's hosting problems, which could be solved by changing the HTML output of the board, which currently consists mostly of unnecessary HTML code (>80%), not text content (20%).
That's not a problem - it's just an analogy. You can't claim that everytime someone wants some software, it is immediately acquired (either bought or pirated). I want Enter the Matrix game now (because I liked the movies), but I don't have it (despite having a broadband connection). I am sure that many people want MS Office, can't get it legally, but still don't pirate it.
Another important thing is that in addition to written contracts there are unwritten ones, the expectations of both parties. If you have a contract that says the company owns all your ideas, but the company in the past gave a lot of freedom to employees, always compensated them generously for their creations and sometimes even let the employees retain the creations that lied outside of the company's main business, then you have the right to be pissed off, when the company suddenly makes a 180 degree turn.
When you sell your stuff, you don't usually complain, you just take the money and give the stuff away. But when you sell the company, including yourself, you usually have some expectations for the future. You and your new owners need to get along, otherwise what's the point of the deal?
If you buy a software company for nearly $100 mln and then piss off the programmers to the point of resigning, what is your benefit? The application that you are unlikely to be able to sell (just look at Real and how low they need to sink in order to sell their player)?
No, the only important assets that you bough are the people. However, they are the only thing that you don't have direct control over. Behave badly and that would mean you WASTEd your millions.
The fact that Nullsoft is a subsidiary doesn't mean that any direct control exists. Nullsoft is an independent company, owned by AOL, not AOLs division.
There will always be a pirated release of almost any movie very soon after it is first shown to someone. If studios are lucky, this will happen a days or two after the theatrical release. If they are out of luck, it will happen during the screenings for the press, a few days or weeks before the release. If they release it in the end of the year, Academy DVD screener will be pirated.
BUT. There is huge "but". The fact that there is a release on vcdquality or even on Sharereactor (or any BT site) doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean that the "executives who co-ordinated a worldwide release of the film in an attempt to thwart piracy" should be worried. They do not lose money because a copy of the film was leaked to the Internet, they lose money only when people choose to watch it instead of watching it in the theater.
And I believe that the studio did the right thing in this case. A worldwide release ensures that the overhelming majority of people will first (or only) see the film in the theaters. Some will download a copy, because the DVD is not available yet, but the negative effect will be low. If the studios want to completely eliminate piracy, they can release the DVD on the same day, but they choose not to. It's their right and they probably know what they are doing (maximising profits), but then they need to accept a certain level of piracy.
There are only so many textures/models in the real world. Once you can model a comparable number of them into the engine, you can simulate worlds as rich as the reality. Honestly, you can take Sim2-like world assets (furniture, objects, wallpapers, carpets, etc.), write a room-generating function and you have the whole world populated with houses/apartments. If you have a unique id for every flat (*+), you can use it as a random seed and have random yet consistent (unchanging over time) apartments. If you add a few other parameters, like time, richness of the neighbourghood, etc., you can have a pretty realistic world.
Some information that nobody has, apparently...
on
Matrix MMORPG
·
· Score: 1
1) There will be two fractions, pro-Matrix guys and rebels. When the game is started, you will have to select your side. We don't know the story of the Matrix: Revolutions, so the details on this separation are unclear. 2) You will go into separate locations for missions. Bullet-time will only be available in these locales (where there are only a few people) and not in the main city. 3) We will probably not play for bus drivers, but instead we will be able to wear cool clothes. This is one of the main parts of the game - the cooler you are, the more 133t clothes you can get. There is a woman among the developers, whose only job is to design new cool clothes. 4) There will be a special rendering technology employed, where quality of the picture and richness of the world will depend on your hardware. That modular structure will allow the developers to improve the graphics quality when better hardware becomes available (without rewriting the game from scratch like EQ2). If we are lucky, it will be gradually upgraded to movie-like Matrix.
I think that there is an option in 3DMark to save specific demo frames to image files. Then you can do the comparison yourself, even using something as simple as a Photoshop (overlay one image on another with substract operation and then see the histogram).
Another thing that I want to point out is that there is nothing criminal in modifying the data sent by application, like changing precision, changing geometry, etc., as long as the driver programmers know what they are doing and this functionality is not a secret kept from game developers and gamers (and preferably optional).
Slashdot Mirror
That's different. Some counterstrike players are just tired of cursing. If you don't know that, it's you apparently, who haven't played CS recently. ;) And because some players would rather play on restricted server, such servers were created. This is nothing like some outside organisation banning the world "ass" from counterstrike outright.
How they manage to simultneously believe in three major religions is beyond me...
You see, they are licensing to you the specific physical representation of a song. :) The song is not yours, it belongs to the RIAA. The CD is also not yours, you just were allowed to use it for a limited number of purposes. That's RIAA's position and legally it is flawless.
He is not a retarded marketdroid. He is a very skilled and experienced demagogic marketdroid. Any clear answer would be bad for RIAA. Saying that the guy owned phisical record would mean that anyone who owns CD owns it as a phisical object and can do anything with it. Saying that the guy owned the licence to the music would mean that he can get this music forever for free in any form from any source.
The RIAA guy understood it perfectly and did what was the best for RIAA, he gave a vague answer that reinforced RIAA position that you can do only what RIAA legally allows you to do.
Ironically, that is exactly the idea of modern copyright.
My university apparently decided to go legit and installed some FreeZip crap on the computers in the library. Just great. The only problem was that I was unable to unpack the files using WinZip, pkunzip or WinRAR (it has zip support). The archive wasn't corrupted, it was just not compatible.
When I also found out that WinRAR 2 is not compatible with WinRAR 3 archives I decided that I am tired of this shit. I will only use 5+ year old versions, preferably making SFX-archives and avoid using archives at all if possible.
Smoking definitely disturbs (phisically harmful, even if not dangerous for their long-term health) other passengers more than speaking on the phone (just annoying).
There are many games set in fictional countries and even fictional universes, but somehow the signs are written in perfect English. I don't ask the developers to adopt an actual language, be it Russian (although that would be nice), Ukrainian, Serbian, Mongolian or any other, but making the signs at least readable to anyone familiar with Cyrillic would be nice. Even people whose native language is based on latin alphabet, would probably be happy to invest a little time to learn a few extra letters if they are going to spend 50+ hours playing the game.
The developers decided to use meaningless babble-speak a la The Sims, but I doubt that they made it sound like some sort of Geonosian.
In any case, I am sure that the problem is deeper than the wish of developers to create a fictional country. Here is just one example of many.
Film: The Bourne's Identity, Time: 0:17:10 (in Swiss bank)
The Russian international passport shown in this scene is issued for Foma Kinaev. Everything looks authentic enough, except that the name in Cyrillic sounds more like Lsh'f Lshtshfum. But it's written in those cryptic Cyrillic letters (note, how the filmmakers favoured the letters which aren't also in English alphabet) and so probably no viewer will understand it. For some reason, Brazilian passport is done correctly, as well as the rest of them.
Honestly, I cannot find any reason behind this other than simple ignorance or outright idiocy (if Bourne's Identity makers got a Russian passport, they must have had someone who also knows how to spell a Russian name).
I don't know why, but as many films and games before, Revolution continues the tradition of using gibberish for the Cyrillic language. I can understand almost everything, like using a box with "CAXAP" (sugar) written on it and claiming that it means "shells" or "explosives". But I can't understand why anyone would use cyrillic letters to compose "words" that can't even be pronounced, the equivalent of "BRJIOQZW".
Cyrillic alphabet are not that much different from latin and even if you can't learn it (the alphabet, not any of the languages) yourself, why not hire a Russian (or Eastern European) student, who would compose all Cyrillic text in the game for less than 100$.
Americans often laugh at Japanese who are so fascinated with English language that they on their T-shirts print random cool-looking words that do not make any sense at all. Well, how is that different from showing ignorance in the way Elixir Studios (are they US-based?) does.
Everybody could write in cursive. Writing in individual letters was a thing of the past, reserved for pre-revolutionary times and people who draw a cross instead of signing their name. I honestly don't understand what is so difficult about cursive. And despite the educational system being totally fucked up today, writing in cursive is still not a problem for the Russian kids.
I must admit, though, that my own cursive skills are somewhat lucking. When I use handwriting, I tend to use Palm Graffiti instead...
That's a great example, thanks, hal200! It shows how the assumptions that we make about the problem, limit the solution space. If someone assumes that we need to use non-zero integers, he has little chances of solving the problem. If one can think out of the box, here is the answer.
Another example, with travel to Andromeda, was to be expected. Yeah, breaking the speed of light. But as Morpheus said to Neo, "...when you're ready, you won't have to". The problem is not traveling to Andromeda galaxy in 5 minutes, that is the solution (may be an impossible solution). If we try to understand what is the problem and then solve it, it may involve something else (like VR, or hybernation, or copying ourselves, etc.).
The Halting problem is unsolvable, all right. But even if it was solvable, it would be absolutely useless by itself (except for being a neat mathematical theorem), it's the applications that are important. And I believe that all things that would be possible with solving it (like bug-free programs), would be eventually made possible by other means.
Well, there are no unsolvable problems. There are things that you [may be] can't do, like breaking laws of nature, but any problems that you can think of can be solved in one way or another. Even if this specific patent represents an unscalable dead-end, there will be eventually found another solution.
Yes, I am a techno-optimist.
Read this comment and the link there. You can't know the exact state of the photon, but you can know something about it. Measuring certain characteristics messes up the rest of them. After sending some photons, both sender and recepient randomly measure different characteristics of the photons. Then they tell each other which measurements and for which photons they did, but don't tell the outcome. Then they tell the outcome of some of the coincident (same characteristic) measurements and if they are the same, there was no eavesdropping. The rest of the coincident outcomes can be used as shared secret key.
I would say that GTA games are not refined enough. Everything seems to be too rough and just thrown together. Don't take me wrong, they are great games and a lot of fun, but if you look closely, the quality is not there. Overall the games make a great impression, but just like there are countless graphical artefacts, there are also many gameplay ones.
Now compare it with racing mission in Mafia. It was a bit difficult (not for me), but the quality of the racing experience was so much better. It was just amazing, how authentic and polished it looked, just like a real racing simulator, not just one of many missions in an action game.
1) Indian labour is cheaper than Eastern European / Russian.
2) Russian offshore-development industry is much smaller than Indian one (both in absolute terms and per capita).
3) There are no significant growth reserves (this also applies to Eastern Europe).
4) The existance of a few successful companies doesn't constitute an industry (or a threat to India).
5) Without initial investments you can't create a large IT industry. India did those investments.
6) There are no real figures that indicate this process of "outsourcing outsourcing" is actually happening.
7) etc.
Usual sensationalistic journalism. Bettet than Blair's inventions, but not much better.
The idea is that salaries in India are lower because of the level of economic development and cost of living, not because Indian IT specialists are somehow inferiour to you. That's why cheap labout doesn't need to have down-falls just because it is cheap. After all, all computers and consumer electronics are made with cheap labour. Didn't do them much harm, did it?
Your clients come to you not because you provide better quality, but because you have a unique capabilities.
Well, it's too late, since they sold their site, but anyway...
How about mirrors? Let everyone set up a mirror of all gamefaq content (without message board). It doesn't help their bandwidth host that many of the FAQ writers are paranoid fuckwit jerks that write 2-page copyright notices, prohibiting any redistribution and posting on any sites except gamefaqs.
Size of all the content is probably in the range of several gigabytes. By distributing hosting costs you can solve the problem. There are many people who have the possibility to run a mirror (a dedicated machine and a solid connection) but don't want (can't) contribute a comparable sum of money.
Since most of the content is static, there aren't many problems with setting the mirrors up. The whole collection can even be packed and distributed on CDs/P2P. All FAQs will probably fit on one or two CDs. Sell them for a few bucks to cover printing costs, simple packaging and S&H. Upload them to eDonkey and BitTorrent to allow people to have the whole collection on their harddrives.
Honestly, if technology can't solve all problems, it can make them significantly less serious. It reminds me of Plastic's hosting problems, which could be solved by changing the HTML output of the board, which currently consists mostly of unnecessary HTML code (>80%), not text content (20%).
That's not a problem - it's just an analogy. You can't claim that everytime someone wants some software, it is immediately acquired (either bought or pirated). I want Enter the Matrix game now (because I liked the movies), but I don't have it (despite having a broadband connection). I am sure that many people want MS Office, can't get it legally, but still don't pirate it.
Another important thing is that in addition to written contracts there are unwritten ones, the expectations of both parties. If you have a contract that says the company owns all your ideas, but the company in the past gave a lot of freedom to employees, always compensated them generously for their creations and sometimes even let the employees retain the creations that lied outside of the company's main business, then you have the right to be pissed off, when the company suddenly makes a 180 degree turn.
When you sell your stuff, you don't usually complain, you just take the money and give the stuff away. But when you sell the company, including yourself, you usually have some expectations for the future. You and your new owners need to get along, otherwise what's the point of the deal?
If you buy a software company for nearly $100 mln and then piss off the programmers to the point of resigning, what is your benefit? The application that you are unlikely to be able to sell (just look at Real and how low they need to sink in order to sell their player)?
No, the only important assets that you bough are the people. However, they are the only thing that you don't have direct control over. Behave badly and that would mean you WASTEd your millions.
The fact that Nullsoft is a subsidiary doesn't mean that any direct control exists. Nullsoft is an independent company, owned by AOL, not AOLs division.
There will always be a pirated release of almost any movie very soon after it is first shown to someone. If studios are lucky, this will happen a days or two after the theatrical release. If they are out of luck, it will happen during the screenings for the press, a few days or weeks before the release. If they release it in the end of the year, Academy DVD screener will be pirated.
BUT. There is huge "but". The fact that there is a release on vcdquality or even on Sharereactor (or any BT site) doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean that the "executives who co-ordinated a worldwide release of the film in an attempt to thwart piracy" should be worried. They do not lose money because a copy of the film was leaked to the Internet, they lose money only when people choose to watch it instead of watching it in the theater.
And I believe that the studio did the right thing in this case. A worldwide release ensures that the overhelming majority of people will first (or only) see the film in the theaters. Some will download a copy, because the DVD is not available yet, but the negative effect will be low. If the studios want to completely eliminate piracy, they can release the DVD on the same day, but they choose not to. It's their right and they probably know what they are doing (maximising profits), but then they need to accept a certain level of piracy.
There are only so many textures/models in the real world. Once you can model a comparable number of them into the engine, you can simulate worlds as rich as the reality. Honestly, you can take Sim2-like world assets (furniture, objects, wallpapers, carpets, etc.), write a room-generating function and you have the whole world populated with houses/apartments. If you have a unique id for every flat (*+), you can use it as a random seed and have random yet consistent (unchanging over time) apartments. If you add a few other parameters, like time, richness of the neighbourghood, etc., you can have a pretty realistic world.
0) Go see the E3 trailer.
1) There will be two fractions, pro-Matrix guys and rebels. When the game is started, you will have to select your side. We don't know the story of the Matrix: Revolutions, so the details on this separation are unclear.
2) You will go into separate locations for missions. Bullet-time will only be available in these locales (where there are only a few people) and not in the main city.
3) We will probably not play for bus drivers, but instead we will be able to wear cool clothes. This is one of the main parts of the game - the cooler you are, the more 133t clothes you can get. There is a woman among the developers, whose only job is to design new cool clothes.
4) There will be a special rendering technology employed, where quality of the picture and richness of the world will depend on your hardware. That modular structure will allow the developers to improve the graphics quality when better hardware becomes available (without rewriting the game from scratch like EQ2). If we are lucky, it will be gradually upgraded to movie-like Matrix.
I think that there is an option in 3DMark to save specific demo frames to image files. Then you can do the comparison yourself, even using something as simple as a Photoshop (overlay one image on another with substract operation and then see the histogram).
Another thing that I want to point out is that there is nothing criminal in modifying the data sent by application, like changing precision, changing geometry, etc., as long as the driver programmers know what they are doing and this functionality is not a secret kept from game developers and gamers (and preferably optional).