The problem with the Verve was that they copied the Stones' song completely, slowing down the tempo a bit. Dr. Dre copied a short riff from a song by the Fatback Band. Experts at the trial said that the riff in question is common in a lot of music, and not unique to the Fatback Band song.
In neither case was the music actually sampled, that is, a bit of the original recording used in the new music. While that technique was commonplace in the 80's in rap music, it occurs a lot less frequently today. After some litigation, most notably Gilbert O'Sullivan's lawsuit against Biz Markie, ended unlicensed sampling, most artists started to re-record bits of songs to mix into their raps. The amount of music re-recorded is not enough to infringe on the copyright of the original music, and since it isn't an actual sample of the original recording, it doesen't infringe on that copyright either.
As for the issue of whether sampling should be legal, I say yes. Check out the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique to hear sampling as an art form at it's peak.
Why can't there be both? While it's true that many studios spend their budget on a license and skimp on the game, that's not the case with many a sports game. Madden, NFL2K3, etc. all are great based soley on the gameplay. But it is way more fun to play as your favorite quarterback than as "number 4." The EA college sport games are great, but since the NCAA can't license students' names and likenesses, the games suffer a bit. It's doesn't ruin the game, but it's missing the extra polish that makes for an even better sports simulation.
If gameplay mechanics were identical, would you rather blow up the Death Star in your X-Wing, or destroy the Blantoth orbiting platform in your space fighter? A great license can add a lot to a game. It brings the memory and meaning and drama of a great sports rivalry or a classic movie or book series to the table. It will be unfortunate for gamers if there is no easy way for publishers to license soccer stars for video games.
Sorry to be picky, but you had my head tripping about when Luther Campbell sued his own band. Actually, music publisher Acuff-Rose, who own the rights to the Roy Orbison song Oh Pretty Woman sued the group 2Live Crew, and Luther Campbell was the lead singer/rapper of the group.
Anyway, I believe that it was the People vs. Larry Flynt where the Supreme Court first held that parody was protected under the first amemdmant. Later cases like the Acuff-Rose/2Live Crew one filled in details on what constitutes constitutionally protected parody.
This happened to the Frank Capra movie It's a Wonderful Life. In the 70's, Republic Pictures let the copyright on the movie lapse. Because of this, lots of TV stations started showing the movie, because they didn't have to pay to do so, like with most movies. It gradually developed quite a following and became a holiday tradition for a lot of people.
Ted Turner colorized the movie in the 80's, during the colorization fad, and copyrighted the colorized version, believe it or not.
Then, in the early 90's, Republic saw a chance to get paid. The Supreme Court had made some interesting rulings regarding the derivative nature of movies. They are derived from screenplays or books, and if you have a copyright to the screenplay or book, then you have some rights to derivative works, whether the copyright on the derivative works has lapsed or not. So Republic had the copyrights to the screenplay and the original score of the movie, and used that to re-assert copyright over the movie. Technically, they don't have copyright to the movie, and someone could take scenes from it and use it to tell a different story with different music.
Here's a long explanation from a movie industry law firm: http://www.film-center.com/canishow.html.
It seems that Fox is trying to use the copyright of the book or screenplay to re-assert the copyright on the movie. But it also seems that Dastar re-cut the footage so it doesn't follow the book so closely, so it should be exempt from the derivate copyright argument. If they lose, it will be a severe increase in copyright protection for derivative works.
I find the very concept of integrity in "entertainment journalism," be it movie, music or game news, to be a bit baffling. Writers are reporting about what is cool. There simply are no objective standards for that.
According to Article 49 of the legal complaint, the record companies are suing for the maximum statutory damages allowed under the DCMA, which is $150,000 per work infringed. This actually has nothing to do with economics or actual monetary loss that the companies have endured, but rather is the punishment imposed under 17 U.S.C. Section 504(c).
No, the point of the article is that the PageRank of the "new" definition of "second superpower" shot up because of basically one essay on a popular blog. The blog is linked to by a few other popular sites, and that's all it takes to change the lexicon. A few dozen netarati with popular blogs can make the original hard news article that coined the term to be dropped from the first page of the search results. This is in fact proof that google sometimes doesn't work.
Does this guy expect to be allowed into Intel's buildings to deliver his messages? If he does not, then why does he feel he has the right to enter their mail server?
Could Mr. Hamidi expect to be allowed call every phone in Intel's office? Intel has phones connected to a public phone network. Calling Intel uses their PBX resources to deliver the call.
There are avenues that can be used to address these problems. Since the 6 original emails Mr. Hamidi sent, Intel has gotten a restraining order prohibiting him from emailing Intel anymore. And he hasn't emailed them since they got it. It seems to me that this case really isn't about "trespass to chattel" and all about Intel not liking the content of Mr. Hamidi's messages. They are not suing anyone for sending penis enlargement emails to Intel servers.
The EFF says this about the case's potential to set a precedent: "Under Intel's theory, even lovers' quarrels could turn into trespass suits by reason of the receipt of unsolicited letters or calls from the jilted lover. Imagine what happens after the angry lover tells her fiance not to call again and violently hangs up the phone. Fifteen minutes later the phone rings. Her fiance wishing to make up? No, tresspass to chattel."
Actually, you're going to have problems for a whole month as real news orginazations, which have cut staff to the bone and no longer use fact-checkers, get duped by online April Fool's jokes and recycle them as actual news. It'll be bad for a while and then peter out, but even nine months from now one of these fake stories will pop up at a credible news site.
I remember going to the site www.gamefaq.com to get a walkthrough for a videogame. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the site I was really looking for was www.gamefaqs.com, and the former was a porn site with incredibly annoying and unstoppable pop-ups of more porn sites. (gamefaqs has since obtained the typo domain, so it is not an issue anymore).
Although, to use Frank Zappa's words, this bill seems to be trying to cure dandruff with decapitation, I can understand the frustration that leads to this sort of legislation.
There is no comparison on price, which is a significant omission in my opinion. At Amazon.com, the Canon Powershot G3 retails for $550. The GBA SP retails for $99. The Gameboy is the clear winner in this category.
This has been going on, there is just room for improvement. Back in the late '70's, my father was into radio-controlled airplanes and had a nice set-up. He got out of that hobby after a few years and the plane and controller went up in the attic. Ten years later, I thought I might try my hand at it, and he gave me his old stuff. I found out that while I could still use the model plane, I had to replace the controller and servos. They were too old and used to much of the spectrum. In the intervening years, more efficient equipment replaced the stuff my dad used. The old stuff used too much of the spectrum and interfered with other planes and other RF uses.
Actually, this fiber was laid by a Public Utilities District. Mason county is a rural area in Washington state, and much of it is not serviced by Qwest (formerly US West), the baby bell that covers most of the western US. There are several small, independent telephone companies that operate in the county,and each of them run their own cable. However, it was the PUD in this case that ran the fiber.
The PUD is the power company for Mason county, but it is a public utility with an elected board of commisioners. The original purpose of the fiber was to connect the PUD's offices and power substations, as well as provide automated meter reading. The PUD now leases the fiber out to ISP's and independent telcos (and I think Qwest in the Shelton area) for data.
What is happening in Mason county is a shining example of what slashdotters bickering about what deregulation would do to the ISP industry are talking about. There is true competition in much of Mason County. A company like Hood Canal Communications can provide internet service over leased PUD lines in Shelton, and not have to go begging for Qwest's approval. The problem is, such competition only occurs in areas not serviced by a baby bell, and those areas are all rural. For anyone living in a medium sized city or larger, this competition doesn't exist. Qwest doesn't care if they lose a few customers in a town of 8000 people (like Shelton), if they keep their monopoly on large metropolitan areas like Seattle.
The Mason County PUD started laying a fiber backbone in 1998 to enhance control of their power distribution grid and then to aid in meter reading. The fiber-to-your-door is only available in the most populous areas of Mason county, that is, the cities of Shelton, Allyn, Belfair, and Lake Limerick. Most of Mason county does not have access to fiber.
My grandfather was a commisioner for PUD3 for almost 20 years, and your cisco rep is wrong about Mason county's hydro dams. Mason county has no dams and buys most of its power from the Bonneville Power Administration. It has one generating plant of its own, and I believe that runs on natural gas.
The anti-war sentiments aside, you make a good point. While corporations may be scaling back research departments, the US university system (subsidised heavily by the government) still does much of the groundbreaking basic research in the world. In hard economic times, companies can cut back in R&D and still get the benefits of ground-breaking technology coming from US schools.
Conversely, most research in Japan is done at the corporate level. There are few graduate students, and they are considered screw-offs who can't face the real world. Corporations drive the research, and it is not shared with competitors or the world, so there is huge duplication of effort. And Japan's economy has been stagnant for a decade.
Yeah, I'm going to miss all the advertising inserted in between the angsty ramblings of high school students, since I'm not much into blogs myself. For kicks I looked up the blogger quoted in the article. She's here, and boy is it inane. No mention of Raging Cow yet, but she talks about her trip to Dallas.
So let them advertise all over easy-listening radio stations, soap operas, and blogs. Just don't co-opt cool stuff...
Code Red is an old exploit, and it's still a big problem. Just because the script kiddies have known about it for a long time doesn't mean some newbie sysadmin doesn't need to learn about it too.
While the original Dragon's Lair was a ground-breaking game, it sure had it's problems. The animation was very cool, and at the time it was head and shoulders above the blocky, aliased, 256 color look of anything else in the arcade. But the twitchy game play was pretty flawed.
The new game recreates those same strengths and weaknesses. The cell-shading looks great, and it really captures the look of the original. The animated look is really done right, and looks pretty fresh. But the game play can be at best uninspired to downright bad.
For example, on one level, you walk into a room with three exit doors. The floor starts to crumble. Only one of the doors works, and if you don't choose it right away, you will fall through the floor to your death. In the original, there were a lot of this type of puzzle. The correct door would flash white and you'd have a split second to move the joystick in that direction. In the 3D version, there are no visual cues. You have to use trial and error. Fortunately, you are not paying a quarter for 3 chances to find which is the right door. This kind of challenge captures what is worst about the original.
When DL3D is not following the dreadful control scheme of the original, it provides mediocre puzzles by todays standards. The one big technical distinction this game has, namely that it is the only game out to have HDTV output, is countered by the fact that the framerate can crawl in HDTV mode.
This game is very much like the original. It looks great, it's technically innovative, and it is deeply flawed.
How come Sony and Nintendo didn't put a 10/100 ethernet controller onboard?
Because Sony and Nintendo don't have a 1.2 billion dollar network to leverage to support their consoles. Microsoft has MSN and the MSN Gaming Zone.
Also, there is the customer demographic to consider. About 1/2 of the consoles are purchased for kids, which is not the target demographic for MMORPG's. Nintendo's customer base in particular skews to younger kids, and it would be difficult to see them getting enough interest in such online games to justify the added cost.
Sony does have the network infrastructure in place for its online games, and it seems to me they could use that with their console somehow. Right now, however, they are king of the hill. They don't have an incentive to reduce their profits on it by adding a broadband adapter. XBox live is not taking away enough PS2 customers yet to justify the cost of competing on this feature.
Some clues that it is a parody that you might have picked up on: The "humor" icon of the slashdot story. The link to Penny Arcade where they say it is a parody.
The reason that Conker's BFD didn't sell well is that it came out on a dead platform. The DreamCast and the PS2 were both out when BFD was released. It was the last significant game for the N64. The "mature" audience at which BFD was aimed had moved on to newer, cooler consoles.
I believe there was some debate between Nintendo and Rare about the release of this game. Nintendo wanted to hold it back and make it a launch title for the GameCube. It could have been used to make an emphatic point that Nintendo was going for an older crowd. Rare wanted to repeat the success of Donkey Kong Country, the swan song game for the Super NES. That game pushed the envelope of what the SNES could do, and sold millions. Rare hoped to do the same thing with BFD on the N64. Rare won the debate, and BFD came out on what was essentially an obsolete console, and sold very poorly.
Sophisticated outsiders have a moral responsibility to not try to supplant the indigenous religious belief systems of primitive people.
Well, I guess the key word there is sophisticated. There are people who believe a book written by middle-eastern sheep hearders thousands of years ago to codify their superstitions is irrefutable fact. Would you consider them to be sophisticated? If not, then do they have a moral responsibility to follow the prime directive?
Missionaries believe they have a moral responsibility to help people and teach the word of God. Does that make them unsophisticated?
You selectively quoted me. I said another option is to leave them alone, but qualified that by saying that is not really an option in todays world. The world is a small place, ever hungry for yet more resources. Today, tribes cannot live in seclusion. If it's not missionaries who want to teach them about irrigation, food safety, medicine, and Christianity, it may be ranchers who want to kill them so that trees can be cut down and cattle grazed on the land.
The transition to modernity may have been started by missionaries, but it will be rapidly eclipsed by other influences, some with much less altruistic motives than saving souls.
Yeah, the stupid, primative natives are obviously incapable of thinking for themselves. If they can't tell the difference between a flashlight and magic, then they are going to be easily duped into Christianity . Maybe someone should go in and teach them critical thinking skills and the scientific method, so they can more objectively evaluate the prosthyletizing of the missionaries.
Another option would be to just leave them alone. However, whether it's missionaries in the '50's or ranchers and eco-tourists in the '00's, the world is getting smaller and they are going to have contact with some outsiders sooner or later. Maybe it's unfortunate, but it is the way the world is.
I thought of that. I told my dad, after a 45 minute call getting his scanner to work, that normally I am paid $28 an hour to work on computers. He replied that normally, when he roofs a house, he charges several thousand dollars instead of materials and a case of beer, like he did for me last summer.
I've never bitched about a support call from a friend or relative since. I guess it depends on how close the caller is, but it's your friends and your family, you know. You help each other out.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with the Verve was that they copied the Stones' song completely, slowing down the tempo a bit. Dr. Dre copied a short riff from a song by the Fatback Band. Experts at the trial said that the riff in question is common in a lot of music, and not unique to the Fatback Band song.
In neither case was the music actually sampled, that is, a bit of the original recording used in the new music. While that technique was commonplace in the 80's in rap music, it occurs a lot less frequently today. After some litigation, most notably Gilbert O'Sullivan's lawsuit against Biz Markie, ended unlicensed sampling, most artists started to re-record bits of songs to mix into their raps. The amount of music re-recorded is not enough to infringe on the copyright of the original music, and since it isn't an actual sample of the original recording, it doesen't infringe on that copyright either.
As for the issue of whether sampling should be legal, I say yes. Check out the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique to hear sampling as an art form at it's peak.
Why can't there be both? While it's true that many studios spend their budget on a license and skimp on the game, that's not the case with many a sports game. Madden, NFL2K3, etc. all are great based soley on the gameplay. But it is way more fun to play as your favorite quarterback than as "number 4." The EA college sport games are great, but since the NCAA can't license students' names and likenesses, the games suffer a bit. It's doesn't ruin the game, but it's missing the extra polish that makes for an even better sports simulation.
If gameplay mechanics were identical, would you rather blow up the Death Star in your X-Wing, or destroy the Blantoth orbiting platform in your space fighter? A great license can add a lot to a game. It brings the memory and meaning and drama of a great sports rivalry or a classic movie or book series to the table. It will be unfortunate for gamers if there is no easy way for publishers to license soccer stars for video games.
Sorry to be picky, but you had my head tripping about when Luther Campbell sued his own band. Actually, music publisher Acuff-Rose, who own the rights to the Roy Orbison song Oh Pretty Woman sued the group 2Live Crew, and Luther Campbell was the lead singer/rapper of the group.
Anyway, I believe that it was the People vs. Larry Flynt where the Supreme Court first held that parody was protected under the first amemdmant. Later cases like the Acuff-Rose/2Live Crew one filled in details on what constitutes constitutionally protected parody.
This happened to the Frank Capra movie It's a Wonderful Life. In the 70's, Republic Pictures let the copyright on the movie lapse. Because of this, lots of TV stations started showing the movie, because they didn't have to pay to do so, like with most movies. It gradually developed quite a following and became a holiday tradition for a lot of people.
.
Ted Turner colorized the movie in the 80's, during the colorization fad, and copyrighted the colorized version, believe it or not.
Then, in the early 90's, Republic saw a chance to get paid. The Supreme Court had made some interesting rulings regarding the derivative nature of movies. They are derived from screenplays or books, and if you have a copyright to the screenplay or book, then you have some rights to derivative works, whether the copyright on the derivative works has lapsed or not. So Republic had the copyrights to the screenplay and the original score of the movie, and used that to re-assert copyright over the movie. Technically, they don't have copyright to the movie, and someone could take scenes from it and use it to tell a different story with different music.
Here's a long explanation from a movie industry law firm: http://www.film-center.com/canishow.html
It seems that Fox is trying to use the copyright of the book or screenplay to re-assert the copyright on the movie. But it also seems that Dastar re-cut the footage so it doesn't follow the book so closely, so it should be exempt from the derivate copyright argument. If they lose, it will be a severe increase in copyright protection for derivative works.
I find the very concept of integrity in "entertainment journalism," be it movie, music or game news, to be a bit baffling. Writers are reporting about what is cool. There simply are no objective standards for that.
According to Article 49 of the legal complaint, the record companies are suing for the maximum statutory damages allowed under the DCMA, which is $150,000 per work infringed. This actually has nothing to do with economics or actual monetary loss that the companies have endured, but rather is the punishment imposed under
17 U.S.C. Section 504(c).
No, the point of the article is that the PageRank of the "new" definition of "second superpower" shot up because of basically one essay on a popular blog. The blog is linked to by a few other popular sites, and that's all it takes to change the lexicon. A few dozen netarati with popular blogs can make the original hard news article that coined the term to be dropped from the first page of the search results. This is in fact proof that google sometimes doesn't work.
Does this guy expect to be allowed into Intel's buildings to deliver his messages? If he does not, then why does he feel he has the right to enter their mail server?
Could Mr. Hamidi expect to be allowed call every phone in Intel's office? Intel has phones connected to a public phone network. Calling Intel uses their PBX resources to deliver the call.
There are avenues that can be used to address these problems. Since the 6 original emails Mr. Hamidi sent, Intel has gotten a restraining order prohibiting him from emailing Intel anymore. And he hasn't emailed them since they got it. It seems to me that this case really isn't about "trespass to chattel" and all about Intel not liking the content of Mr. Hamidi's messages. They are not suing anyone for sending penis enlargement emails to Intel servers.
The EFF says this about the case's potential to set a precedent:
"Under Intel's theory, even lovers' quarrels could turn into trespass suits by reason of the receipt of unsolicited letters or calls from the jilted lover. Imagine what happens after the angry lover tells her fiance not to call again and violently hangs up the phone. Fifteen minutes later the phone rings. Her fiance wishing to make up? No, tresspass to chattel."
Actually, you're going to have problems for a whole month as real news orginazations, which have cut staff to the bone and no longer use fact-checkers, get duped by online April Fool's jokes and recycle them as actual news. It'll be bad for a while and then peter out, but even nine months from now one of these fake stories will pop up at a credible news site.
I remember going to the site www.gamefaq.com to get a walkthrough for a videogame. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the site I was really looking for was www.gamefaqs.com, and the former was a porn site with incredibly annoying and unstoppable pop-ups of more porn sites. (gamefaqs has since obtained the typo domain, so it is not an issue anymore).
Although, to use Frank Zappa's words, this bill seems to be trying to cure dandruff with decapitation, I can understand the frustration that leads to this sort of legislation.
There is no comparison on price, which is a significant omission in my opinion. At Amazon.com, the Canon Powershot G3 retails for $550. The GBA SP retails for $99. The Gameboy is the clear winner in this category.
This has been going on, there is just room for improvement. Back in the late '70's, my father was into radio-controlled airplanes and had a nice set-up. He got out of that hobby after a few years and the plane and controller went up in the attic. Ten years later, I thought I might try my hand at it, and he gave me his old stuff. I found out that while I could still use the model plane, I had to replace the controller and servos. They were too old and used to much of the spectrum. In the intervening years, more efficient equipment replaced the stuff my dad used. The old stuff used too much of the spectrum and interfered with other planes and other RF uses.
Actually, this fiber was laid by a Public Utilities District. Mason county is a rural area in Washington state, and much of it is not serviced by Qwest (formerly US West), the baby bell that covers most of the western US. There are several small, independent telephone companies that operate in the county,and each of them run their own cable. However, it was the PUD in this case that ran the fiber.
The PUD is the power company for Mason county, but it is a public utility with an elected board of commisioners. The original purpose of the fiber was to connect the PUD's offices and power substations, as well as provide automated meter reading. The PUD now leases the fiber out to ISP's and independent telcos (and I think Qwest in the Shelton area) for data.
What is happening in Mason county is a shining example of what slashdotters bickering about what deregulation would do to the ISP industry are talking about. There is true competition in much of Mason County. A company like Hood Canal Communications can provide internet service over leased PUD lines in Shelton, and not have to go begging for Qwest's approval. The problem is, such competition only occurs in areas not serviced by a baby bell, and those areas are all rural. For anyone living in a medium sized city or larger, this competition doesn't exist. Qwest doesn't care if they lose a few customers in a town of 8000 people (like Shelton), if they keep their monopoly on large metropolitan areas like Seattle.
The Mason County PUD started laying a fiber backbone in 1998 to enhance control of their power distribution grid and then to aid in meter reading. The fiber-to-your-door is only available in the most populous areas of Mason county, that is, the cities of Shelton, Allyn, Belfair, and Lake Limerick. Most of Mason county does not have access to fiber.
My grandfather was a commisioner for PUD3 for almost 20 years, and your cisco rep is wrong about Mason county's hydro dams. Mason county has no dams and buys most of its power from the Bonneville Power Administration. It has one generating plant of its own, and I believe that runs on natural gas.
The anti-war sentiments aside, you make a good point. While corporations may be scaling back research departments, the US university system (subsidised heavily by the government) still does much of the groundbreaking basic research in the world. In hard economic times, companies can cut back in R&D and still get the benefits of ground-breaking technology coming from US schools.
Conversely, most research in Japan is done at the corporate level. There are few graduate students, and they are considered screw-offs who can't face the real world. Corporations drive the research, and it is not shared with competitors or the world, so there is huge duplication of effort. And Japan's economy has been stagnant for a decade.
Yeah, I'm going to miss all the advertising inserted in between the angsty ramblings of high school students, since I'm not much into blogs myself. For kicks I looked up the blogger quoted in the article. She's here, and boy is it inane. No mention of Raging Cow yet, but she talks about her trip to Dallas.
So let them advertise all over easy-listening radio stations, soap operas, and blogs. Just don't co-opt cool stuff...
Code Red is an old exploit, and it's still a big problem. Just because the script kiddies have known about it for a long time doesn't mean some newbie sysadmin doesn't need to learn about it too.
While the original Dragon's Lair was a ground-breaking game, it sure had it's problems. The animation was very cool, and at the time it was head and shoulders above the blocky, aliased, 256 color look of anything else in the arcade. But the twitchy game play was pretty flawed.
The new game recreates those same strengths and weaknesses. The cell-shading looks great, and it really captures the look of the original. The animated look is really done right, and looks pretty fresh. But the game play can be at best uninspired to downright bad.
For example, on one level, you walk into a room with three exit doors. The floor starts to crumble. Only one of the doors works, and if you don't choose it right away, you will fall through the floor to your death. In the original, there were a lot of this type of puzzle. The correct door would flash white and you'd have a split second to move the joystick in that direction. In the 3D version, there are no visual cues. You have to use trial and error. Fortunately, you are not paying a quarter for 3 chances to find which is the right door. This kind of challenge captures what is worst about the original.
When DL3D is not following the dreadful control scheme of the original, it provides mediocre puzzles by todays standards. The one big technical distinction this game has, namely that it is the only game out to have HDTV output, is countered by the fact that the framerate can crawl in HDTV mode.
This game is very much like the original. It looks great, it's technically innovative, and it is deeply flawed.
How come Sony and Nintendo didn't put a 10/100 ethernet controller onboard?
Because Sony and Nintendo don't have a 1.2 billion dollar network to leverage to support their consoles. Microsoft has MSN and the MSN Gaming Zone.
Also, there is the customer demographic to consider. About 1/2 of the consoles are purchased for kids, which is not the target demographic for MMORPG's. Nintendo's customer base in particular skews to younger kids, and it would be difficult to see them getting enough interest in such online games to justify the added cost.
Sony does have the network infrastructure in place for its online games, and it seems to me they could use that with their console somehow. Right now, however, they are king of the hill. They don't have an incentive to reduce their profits on it by adding a broadband adapter. XBox live is not taking away enough PS2 customers yet to justify the cost of competing on this feature.
How about Namco's PropCycle, where you flew this pedal powered ultra-light thing and popped balloons. It came out circa 1995.
Or Downhill Bikers? I could see a row of these at the gym.
Some clues that it is a parody that you might have picked up on:
The "humor" icon of the slashdot story.
The link to Penny Arcade where they say it is a parody.
The reason that Conker's BFD didn't sell well is that it came out on a dead platform. The DreamCast and the PS2 were both out when BFD was released. It was the last significant game for the N64. The "mature" audience at which BFD was aimed had moved on to newer, cooler consoles.
I believe there was some debate between Nintendo and Rare about the release of this game. Nintendo wanted to hold it back and make it a launch title for the GameCube. It could have been used to make an emphatic point that Nintendo was going for an older crowd. Rare wanted to repeat the success of Donkey Kong Country, the swan song game for the Super NES. That game pushed the envelope of what the SNES could do, and sold millions. Rare hoped to do the same thing with BFD on the N64. Rare won the debate, and BFD came out on what was essentially an obsolete console, and sold very poorly.
Sophisticated outsiders have a moral responsibility to not try to supplant the indigenous religious belief systems of primitive people.
Well, I guess the key word there is sophisticated. There are people who believe a book written by middle-eastern sheep hearders thousands of years ago to codify their superstitions is irrefutable fact. Would you consider them to be sophisticated? If not, then do they have a moral responsibility to follow the prime directive?
Missionaries believe they have a moral responsibility to help people and teach the word of God. Does that make them unsophisticated?
You selectively quoted me. I said another option is to leave them alone, but qualified that by saying that is not really an option in todays world. The world is a small place, ever hungry for yet more resources. Today, tribes cannot live in seclusion. If it's not missionaries who want to teach them about irrigation, food safety, medicine, and Christianity, it may be ranchers who want to kill them so that trees can be cut down and cattle grazed on the land.
The transition to modernity may have been started by missionaries, but it will be rapidly eclipsed by other influences, some with much less altruistic motives than saving souls.
Yeah, the stupid, primative natives are obviously incapable of thinking for themselves. If they can't tell the difference between a flashlight and magic, then they are going to be easily duped into Christianity . Maybe someone should go in and teach them critical thinking skills and the scientific method, so they can more objectively evaluate the prosthyletizing of the missionaries.
Another option would be to just leave them alone. However, whether it's missionaries in the '50's or ranchers and eco-tourists in the '00's, the world is getting smaller and they are going to have contact with some outsiders sooner or later. Maybe it's unfortunate, but it is the way the world is.
I thought of that. I told my dad, after a 45 minute call getting his scanner to work, that normally I am paid $28 an hour to work on computers. He replied that normally, when he roofs a house, he charges several thousand dollars instead of materials and a case of beer, like he did for me last summer.
I've never bitched about a support call from a friend or relative since. I guess it depends on how close the caller is, but it's your friends and your family, you know. You help each other out.