Bungie is a company that has a dedicated fan base. Partially because it happens to be one of the few companies that still provides things in their games that other companies have allowed to fall by the wayside in their quest for big budget graphics and special effects. Namely a real story.
You can't tell me there are many other games out there that you can do something like this for. These days, you are lucky if the game contains a few easter eggs or other secrets to find, much less an environment that looks as if it actually existed for some other reason than just for the hero to walk around in and kick butt. Or a story line that is more than "You Tarzan, you kick bad guy ass. Here is bad guy. Kick ass." Halo's story was fleshed out before they even began work on the first game. They've got the history for the universe down to the point where the "Halo" story is like a blurp compaired to the bulk.
The truth is, this game will become very popular. It's already on it's way to break the record for day one sales (which you would have noticed if you actually read the blurp.) And while it might not be the best selling of all time, it's definately going to be a highlight of this year and possibly several years after this one (assuming a PC port.)
While I agree that much of what the MP**'s say is just hot air and an attempt to prop a business model that needs to be laid to rest, I don't agree that the numbers they quote are 'bogus'.
Yes, in truth the number of people who MIGHT buy a movie/song/story if they couldn't pirate it is probably less than the people who pirate in the first place. But the idea that someone can steal a movie and then claim "well I wouldn't have bought it anyway" is just self-serving nonsense on the part of the thief. Maybe you weren't interested enough to pay full price, but you obviously were interested enough to take it without paying.
Can a jewlery thief say "well I wouldn't have bought those million dollar rings at market value, but if they were selling them at what I consider a reasonable price like $10 each, I'd have gotten one, maybe." and get away with it? Of course not. And the only reason people think they can get away with it for non-physcial items is that they wish to believe the fact that there is no physical loss excuses it. It's rationalization at it's worst, a selfish pretense to do something that they know is wrong anyway.
"You either call 911 and cower in a corner and pray that he doesn't hurt you or your kids before the police get there, or you take direct action and neutralize the threat."
Or, you go down with your gun, get killed and alert the 'threat' to your family being in the house. Now, instead of 'neutralizing' them, they get to KILL you and your family.
You are NOT an action hero. Is it really worth risking the lives of your family members so you can get an adrenaline rush playing the fool?
Here is a reality check, without or without guns, people are going to be at the mercy of those who are more aggressive than them. Life isn't a movie, and you don't suddenly become an action hero by weilding a gun.
And here's a tidbit of advice, if you are responsible for several small children, and think brandishing a gun around is going to protect them more than getting them out of the house and away from the danger, you shouldn't be responsible for any small children. Cause someday you are going to get one of them killed.
You want to risk your own life playing Rambo@home, please by all means do it. It'll help thin the gene pool. But when it's someone elses life on the line it's arrogant and irresponsible to play those sort of games.
Despite what the NRA and the producers of Law and Order want you to beleive, the world isn't full of violent pedophiles who want to kill you and rape your children. The common criminal wants only one thing, money. And he's more than happy to let you go if it means he doesn't have to deal with you while he's trying to turn your possessions into money.
This is something that I've been struggling to understand....
W(hy)TF does it matter?
If you write up an article (professionally or on an amateur basis) and think it would be something that the/. crowd would like. Why the hell would you not submit it as a story?
Isn't the whole idea of having editors is so people can submit what they think would be interesting and not worry about having 100 stories about their day with their fluffy blankey because the crud is being filtered out? I personally found this story to be interesting. I don't own an iPod, and I wouldn't have gone out to Google to go looking for information on how to grab music off one. But having this information and knowing it's there is of value to me.
Why does it matter if the people writing it are also the ones who submitted it? It's not as if/. was deluged under storied about how to retrieve your files off an iPod.
Actually it's self serving arguements like yours that will ultimately prevent a truly information-based economy from arising.
If you immediately devalue any information created by ignoring the rights of it's creator duplicate/diseminate it without ever recompensating the creator, then no one is ever going to have any real incentive to create or share their information.
Why would I spend millions on making a movie if I'm in effect giving it away for free? How many movies do you think I could make before I ran out of money to pay for even just the material requirements involved?
Why would I spend months, even years, writing a book if I couldn't support myself from the proceeds?
We can boohoo the RI**'s of the world, talk about how they cheat the artists and etc., and even be right about it. But the pure fact of the matter is, you are stealing, you aren't helping create a new 'era', you are just helping destroy what is already there.
There can never be an 'information based economy' without acknowledging the rights of those who create the information, to control the information. What you are actually proposing is the opposite, the complete devaluation of information.
Forgive me, but Microsoft was NEVER an underdog with noble goals. An underdog maybe, but one that was more than willing to use every dirty trick, legal, ethical, or not, to get where it is now.
Even a cursory examination of the history of MSFT is enough to see that.
It is not a condition of becoming a large powerful company that one becomes 'evil'. There are many corps out there that are big and powerful and still manage to be good 'citizens' rather robber barons. It's all in the culture your upper management builds and maintains for the company. I trust Google because everything I've seen from them shows that their culture really is about being good citizens in addition to making a profit. I don't trust Microsoft because everything I've seen from them is about being a cut-throat company willing to do anything they think they can get away with to achieve their goals.
Really though, isn't that how life is? Ignoring the whole Religious "the meek shall inherit the earth" spiel we are fed, when exactly have you seen a situation where not being selfish rewards you more over being selfish?
We'd like to think that if we all play by the rules, are polite and considerate to everyone, that we'll be sucessful. But the sad truth, of this world at least, is that life is typically far easier if you worry about yourself first, and others second.
That doesn't mean that it's ok to do so, society was build upon the efforts of trillions who cared more about other people than themselves (to some sense or another), and it can only survive if there continues to be a stream of such people.
A key to life is to realize and accept both of these facts, that our continued survival depends on mutual cooperation AND that the short term rewards for not cooperating are always going to be a tempation. And to plan accordingly.
The main use, today, for a huge patent profile, is to cross-license it with other companies as protection against them suing you for patent infringement.
I.E. Sun goes to IBM, they both agree to cross-license their patents. Now, Sun doesn't have to worry about being sued by IBM, IBM doesn't have to worry about being sued by Sun. They both are free to sue some third company that isn't part of the alliance.
What I read from Novell's statement is basicly: "If you attempt to go after any open source product we support, we will pull out our huge portfolio of patents and bury you in litigation for each and every infringing use of our patents we can discover. Our patents are many and powerful, mess with us and you will die a horrible and slow death by lawyers. You won't even be able to afford your funeral. So back off the FOSS projects, unless you think you've got bigger guns."
Useful, as long as no one they've already cross-licensed with is involved.
A card may not be _designed_ to be readable past a certain distance.
But as our pringle can using friends in the wireless department have proven, better antenna design overcomes many signal strength issues. The standard 'offical' reader might only be able to see the card when it's closer than 6 inches from the sensor, but that won't keep someone from being able to build a stronger reader that can easedrop from much farther away.
And given that the card is 'powered' by the strength of the field the reader gives off, it probably wouldn't be that hard to create a reader that gives strong enough pulses that you could read someone's wallet while 'war driving' down the street they are walking on.
Well, first off I had read that the actual Steam prices are about $5 less than what you'll pay at a brick and motar establishment.
Secondly, you'll have the game before anyone should have a copy from the brick and motars. Given you'll have it pre-loaded on your machine already and it'll just need to be unlocked (which should happen midnight the day the stores are allowed to sell it.)
Lastly, how much do you think you'll have to pay for the rest of the options in the packages above bronze, if you get the boxed copy?
Airwaves belong to the public, as such, you are not free to do whatever you want with them, because that might infringe on someone elses rights to enjoy them. Just the same as you are not free to park your home square in the middle of the city park, just because you like the view.
As such, the FCC was created to regulate and promote the responsible use of the airwaves over the US. The ability to broadcast over those airwaves is a priviledge, not a right. In order to continue to be able to use those priviledges, you are expected to not use that privledge for the benefit of the community at large, but to follow it's standards.
The FCC has the ability to censor broadcasts based off of those facts.
Actually, they've stated that the two worlds are tied to one another, and that how will become appearent someday, however they aren't the same. Given how Marathon Infinity ended, it's not hard guessing how they are tied together.
*SPOILER*
Marathon Infinity ends with the AI which you interact with for the majority of the series, merging into an alien AI and surviving to the end of the universe. Where it finially realizes that you were Destinty Incarnate.
Remember the port to the PC wasn't done by Bungie themselves, but was contracted out to Gearbox. Gearbox isn't a bad company, but from looking a their previous work it's obvious they are competent, but not of huge resources. HaloPC was an experiment to see if the game would fly on the PC, and it was funded accordingly. Low budget = less then impressive port.
If your key was not valid, then how sure are you that what you paid for wasn't priated? It's not as if it is uncommon for less scrupulous people to sell cheap machines with Windows on them, that haven't been actually purchased from MS.
Please take the time to learn about the topic you are discussing prior to flaming someone else over it.
There are plenty of wiki's out there that are locked down unless you have a username or a password, enabling you access. If you are a mega-corp with a veritable army of software engineers under you, and a rep bad enough to make you a target for every wannabe hacker out there, you'd think someone working on the project would have thought to lock down their front page. At the very least.
Credits are stored on the machine uploaded to, and are stored by clientID, which was generated by the user name you pick when you setup your client. In the last iteration of eMule I saw, you had the choice of securing your ID (using some form of encryption I asssue), thus preventing someone else from spoofing themselves as you, or leaving it unsecure.
If you secure your ID and your INI files become corrupt to the point where your stored ID become corrupt, you have no way to recover it and lose any credits assigned to it. If you do not secure your ID, then obviously all you need to do is setup another computer using the same ID.
Thus, IP's, dynamic or not, do not enter into the equation. And re-intalls of the software do not cause issues unless you either write over the INI's (default installers do not) or somehow corrupt/lose them.
I doubt it.
All Apple is doing is mimicing what Amazon did to the book publishing industry when they first came out. And publishers still exist. So do brick and mortar stores.
Screw informed consent, how do you deal with a sizable population of 30+ year olds who did this and now clog your medical system and drain your medicare funds because they no longer are able to actually produce any income in addition to requiring expensive treatments just to stay alive?
It's not 'good books' that are needed but good ol'fashioned pulp books. The one dollar, cheesy plot, mass produced, scantily clad hero and heroine, trash books that helped push romance and sci-fi as genre's until real writers and stories could be established.
If I have a "good" book, I'm more likely to buy it in paper format, because it's a GOOD book. I'll want to make sure that in 10 years, I can still read it. I'll want the 'collectors' version. It's the difference between buying the DVD and or the VHS tape, for the good stuff, I want the quality presentation. eBooks, are not quality presentation.
What really needs to happen is for one of the publishers of those trash novels you find in the "book" section of Wal-Mart or displayed as "impulse" items in dollar stores to decide to start including eBook versions of their works with the pulp version. Once people have eBooks, they'll start considering eBook readers an actual reasonable investment rather than a geek toy.
Why is there even a discussion on this? Does anyone actually think that the DoD actually accepts software for critical infrastructures without completely vetting it? There is no more risk of a Trojan being in a FOSS product being used by the DoD than their is in a closed source product. BOTH have to submit their code to the DoD's people for review, and both would have to be vetted.
The only real difference between FOSS and Closed source projects, DoD-wise, is that contractors will no longer be able to use the fact that they wrote and 'own' the code to a project to leverage their contracts.
I would be more approving of their 'donation' if I didn't read the part where they are still patenting it and where the non-profit organization will still be licensing it. It seems to me it's not that hard to setup a dummy non-profit company which ultimately works mostly for the benefit of Disney, while still raking in money from the patents.
Or in other words, I smell a PR Stunt.
Slashdot Mirror
Generally, that's where income tax comes into play. Sort of the community chest, one size fits all bucket.
You can't tell me there are many other games out there that you can do something like this for. These days, you are lucky if the game contains a few easter eggs or other secrets to find, much less an environment that looks as if it actually existed for some other reason than just for the hero to walk around in and kick butt. Or a story line that is more than "You Tarzan, you kick bad guy ass. Here is bad guy. Kick ass." Halo's story was fleshed out before they even began work on the first game. They've got the history for the universe down to the point where the "Halo" story is like a blurp compaired to the bulk.
The truth is, this game will become very popular. It's already on it's way to break the record for day one sales (which you would have noticed if you actually read the blurp.) And while it might not be the best selling of all time, it's definately going to be a highlight of this year and possibly several years after this one (assuming a PC port.)
While I agree that much of what the MP**'s say is just hot air and an attempt to prop a business model that needs to be laid to rest, I don't agree that the numbers they quote are 'bogus'.
Yes, in truth the number of people who MIGHT buy a movie/song/story if they couldn't pirate it is probably less than the people who pirate in the first place. But the idea that someone can steal a movie and then claim "well I wouldn't have bought it anyway" is just self-serving nonsense on the part of the thief. Maybe you weren't interested enough to pay full price, but you obviously were interested enough to take it without paying.
Can a jewlery thief say "well I wouldn't have bought those million dollar rings at market value, but if they were selling them at what I consider a reasonable price like $10 each, I'd have gotten one, maybe." and get away with it? Of course not. And the only reason people think they can get away with it for non-physcial items is that they wish to believe the fact that there is no physical loss excuses it. It's rationalization at it's worst, a selfish pretense to do something that they know is wrong anyway.
Or, you go down with your gun, get killed and alert the 'threat' to your family being in the house. Now, instead of 'neutralizing' them, they get to KILL you and your family.
You are NOT an action hero. Is it really worth risking the lives of your family members so you can get an adrenaline rush playing the fool?
News Flash! John Wayne is dead!
Here is a reality check, without or without guns, people are going to be at the mercy of those who are more aggressive than them. Life isn't a movie, and you don't suddenly become an action hero by weilding a gun.
And here's a tidbit of advice, if you are responsible for several small children, and think brandishing a gun around is going to protect them more than getting them out of the house and away from the danger, you shouldn't be responsible for any small children. Cause someday you are going to get one of them killed.
You want to risk your own life playing Rambo@home, please by all means do it. It'll help thin the gene pool. But when it's someone elses life on the line it's arrogant and irresponsible to play those sort of games.
Despite what the NRA and the producers of Law and Order want you to beleive, the world isn't full of violent pedophiles who want to kill you and rape your children. The common criminal wants only one thing, money. And he's more than happy to let you go if it means he doesn't have to deal with you while he's trying to turn your possessions into money.
This is something that I've been struggling to understand....
/. crowd would like. Why the hell would you not submit it as a story?
/. was deluged under storied about how to retrieve your files off an iPod.
W(hy)TF does it matter?
If you write up an article (professionally or on an amateur basis) and think it would be something that the
Isn't the whole idea of having editors is so people can submit what they think would be interesting and not worry about having 100 stories about their day with their fluffy blankey because the crud is being filtered out? I personally found this story to be interesting. I don't own an iPod, and I wouldn't have gone out to Google to go looking for information on how to grab music off one. But having this information and knowing it's there is of value to me.
Why does it matter if the people writing it are also the ones who submitted it? It's not as if
Actually it's self serving arguements like yours that will ultimately prevent a truly information-based economy from arising.
If you immediately devalue any information created by ignoring the rights of it's creator duplicate/diseminate it without ever recompensating the creator, then no one is ever going to have any real incentive to create or share their information.
Why would I spend millions on making a movie if I'm in effect giving it away for free? How many movies do you think I could make before I ran out of money to pay for even just the material requirements involved?
Why would I spend months, even years, writing a book if I couldn't support myself from the proceeds?
We can boohoo the RI**'s of the world, talk about how they cheat the artists and etc., and even be right about it. But the pure fact of the matter is, you are stealing, you aren't helping create a new 'era', you are just helping destroy what is already there.
There can never be an 'information based economy' without acknowledging the rights of those who create the information, to control the information. What you are actually proposing is the opposite, the complete devaluation of information.
Forgive me, but Microsoft was NEVER an underdog with noble goals. An underdog maybe, but one that was more than willing to use every dirty trick, legal, ethical, or not, to get where it is now.
Even a cursory examination of the history of MSFT is enough to see that.
It is not a condition of becoming a large powerful company that one becomes 'evil'. There are many corps out there that are big and powerful and still manage to be good 'citizens' rather robber barons. It's all in the culture your upper management builds and maintains for the company. I trust Google because everything I've seen from them shows that their culture really is about being good citizens in addition to making a profit. I don't trust Microsoft because everything I've seen from them is about being a cut-throat company willing to do anything they think they can get away with to achieve their goals.
Really though, isn't that how life is? Ignoring the whole Religious "the meek shall inherit the earth" spiel we are fed, when exactly have you seen a situation where not being selfish rewards you more over being selfish?
We'd like to think that if we all play by the rules, are polite and considerate to everyone, that we'll be sucessful. But the sad truth, of this world at least, is that life is typically far easier if you worry about yourself first, and others second.
That doesn't mean that it's ok to do so, society was build upon the efforts of trillions who cared more about other people than themselves (to some sense or another), and it can only survive if there continues to be a stream of such people.
A key to life is to realize and accept both of these facts, that our continued survival depends on mutual cooperation AND that the short term rewards for not cooperating are always going to be a tempation. And to plan accordingly.
The main use, today, for a huge patent profile, is to cross-license it with other companies as protection against them suing you for patent infringement.
I.E. Sun goes to IBM, they both agree to cross-license their patents. Now, Sun doesn't have to worry about being sued by IBM, IBM doesn't have to worry about being sued by Sun. They both are free to sue some third company that isn't part of the alliance.
What I read from Novell's statement is basicly:
"If you attempt to go after any open source product we support, we will pull out our huge portfolio of patents and bury you in litigation for each and every infringing use of our patents we can discover. Our patents are many and powerful, mess with us and you will die a horrible and slow death by lawyers. You won't even be able to afford your funeral. So back off the FOSS projects, unless you think you've got bigger guns."
Useful, as long as no one they've already cross-licensed with is involved.
A card may not be _designed_ to be readable past a certain distance.
But as our pringle can using friends in the wireless department have proven, better antenna design overcomes many signal strength issues. The standard 'offical' reader might only be able to see the card when it's closer than 6 inches from the sensor, but that won't keep someone from being able to build a stronger reader that can easedrop from much farther away.
And given that the card is 'powered' by the strength of the field the reader gives off, it probably wouldn't be that hard to create a reader that gives strong enough pulses that you could read someone's wallet while 'war driving' down the street they are walking on.
Well, first off I had read that the actual Steam prices are about $5 less than what you'll pay at a brick and motar establishment. Secondly, you'll have the game before anyone should have a copy from the brick and motars. Given you'll have it pre-loaded on your machine already and it'll just need to be unlocked (which should happen midnight the day the stores are allowed to sell it.) Lastly, how much do you think you'll have to pay for the rest of the options in the packages above bronze, if you get the boxed copy?
Airwaves belong to the public, as such, you are not free to do whatever you want with them, because that might infringe on someone elses rights to enjoy them. Just the same as you are not free to park your home square in the middle of the city park, just because you like the view. As such, the FCC was created to regulate and promote the responsible use of the airwaves over the US. The ability to broadcast over those airwaves is a priviledge, not a right. In order to continue to be able to use those priviledges, you are expected to not use that privledge for the benefit of the community at large, but to follow it's standards. The FCC has the ability to censor broadcasts based off of those facts.
Actually, they've stated that the two worlds are tied to one another, and that how will become appearent someday, however they aren't the same. Given how Marathon Infinity ended, it's not hard guessing how they are tied together.
*SPOILER*
Marathon Infinity ends with the AI which you interact with for the majority of the series, merging into an alien AI and surviving to the end of the universe. Where it finially realizes that you were Destinty Incarnate.
Remember the port to the PC wasn't done by Bungie themselves, but was contracted out to Gearbox. Gearbox isn't a bad company, but from looking a their previous work it's obvious they are competent, but not of huge resources. HaloPC was an experiment to see if the game would fly on the PC, and it was funded accordingly. Low budget = less then impressive port.
If your key was not valid, then how sure are you that what you paid for wasn't priated? It's not as if it is uncommon for less scrupulous people to sell cheap machines with Windows on them, that haven't been actually purchased from MS.
Please take the time to learn about the topic you are discussing prior to flaming someone else over it.
There are plenty of wiki's out there that are locked down unless you have a username or a password, enabling you access. If you are a mega-corp with a veritable army of software engineers under you, and a rep bad enough to make you a target for every wannabe hacker out there, you'd think someone working on the project would have thought to lock down their front page. At the very least.
Credits are stored on the machine uploaded to, and are stored by clientID, which was generated by the user name you pick when you setup your client. In the last iteration of eMule I saw, you had the choice of securing your ID (using some form of encryption I asssue), thus preventing someone else from spoofing themselves as you, or leaving it unsecure. If you secure your ID and your INI files become corrupt to the point where your stored ID become corrupt, you have no way to recover it and lose any credits assigned to it. If you do not secure your ID, then obviously all you need to do is setup another computer using the same ID. Thus, IP's, dynamic or not, do not enter into the equation. And re-intalls of the software do not cause issues unless you either write over the INI's (default installers do not) or somehow corrupt/lose them.
I doubt it. All Apple is doing is mimicing what Amazon did to the book publishing industry when they first came out. And publishers still exist. So do brick and mortar stores.
Screw informed consent, how do you deal with a sizable population of 30+ year olds who did this and now clog your medical system and drain your medicare funds because they no longer are able to actually produce any income in addition to requiring expensive treatments just to stay alive?
Actually they will probably do a Deus Ex 2 and pick the ending that wasn't actually in the game. Still cheeses me off.
I would contest that the exact opposite is true.
It's not 'good books' that are needed but good ol'fashioned pulp books. The one dollar, cheesy plot, mass produced, scantily clad hero and heroine, trash books that helped push romance and sci-fi as genre's until real writers and stories could be established.
If I have a "good" book, I'm more likely to buy it in paper format, because it's a GOOD book. I'll want to make sure that in 10 years, I can still read it. I'll want the 'collectors' version. It's the difference between buying the DVD and or the VHS tape, for the good stuff, I want the quality presentation. eBooks, are not quality presentation.
What really needs to happen is for one of the publishers of those trash novels you find in the "book" section of Wal-Mart or displayed as "impulse" items in dollar stores to decide to start including eBook versions of their works with the pulp version. Once people have eBooks, they'll start considering eBook readers an actual reasonable investment rather than a geek toy.
Why is there even a discussion on this? Does anyone actually think that the DoD actually accepts software for critical infrastructures without completely vetting it? There is no more risk of a Trojan being in a FOSS product being used by the DoD than their is in a closed source product. BOTH have to submit their code to the DoD's people for review, and both would have to be vetted. The only real difference between FOSS and Closed source projects, DoD-wise, is that contractors will no longer be able to use the fact that they wrote and 'own' the code to a project to leverage their contracts.
Actually it states at the very bottom that the shows are taped months in advance.
I would be more approving of their 'donation' if I didn't read the part where they are still patenting it and where the non-profit organization will still be licensing it. It seems to me it's not that hard to setup a dummy non-profit company which ultimately works mostly for the benefit of Disney, while still raking in money from the patents. Or in other words, I smell a PR Stunt.