That must have been a quiet 2 minutes of air time.
Having said that, why is "fuck", a crude form of "have sex" so illegal, when "kill" and "murder" are just fine to use?
I daresay consenting adults having sex is fine if you ask me. Murder and killing? Not fine! So which of these activities are we not allowed to talk about?
So long as it doesn't prevent other people from saying what they want, when they want.
Of course, some voices speak louder than others, which is more of a serious problem. And Hollywood isn't an individual in this case, but a series of corporations.
It's a lot like spam and free speech. You should be able to say "Buy cheap pharmas". But should you be able to email that message to 250,000,000 people?
Then again, in Australia, the government is kind enough to provide us with a national youth radio station, JJJ, where, while the radio jocks tend to stay professional and keep it to a minimum, it's anything goes for the people they interview and the songs they play. (Lately they do put out a language warning).
It's nice to have freedom written into your government's framework. But it is a whole breath of fresh air when the government encourages and espouses it by demonstrating those freedoms themselves and leads by example.
The PvP would be incredible. Werewolves vs. Vampires, truth be told, is an almost untapped genre in terms of MMO's. Game balance would be tough. The whole game design is going to be critical. Will there be huge cities being fought over in a war completely unknown to the human population? Will players need to get a car to drive from point A to point B?
Or will they rush to market and grossly underdeliver, making a flop out of a tremendously promising franchise?
Why not improve humans with this? I think there would be some short term suffering but in the long term it would be awesome when one of the Nexus 6 comes back and squeezes the evil corporate bastard's eyes out what thought of this damn monstrous idea.
If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
Someday, keyboards and computer mice will be remembered only as medieval-style torture devices for the wrists. All work -- emails, spreadsheets, and Google searches -- will be performed by mind control.
What is hyperbole?
I win!
Oh good lordy that was some mighty fine hyperbole. We'll run computers with our minds the same day I hop in my flying car, buzz up to the floating city in the clouds, eat my lunch (in pill form) served to me by bipedal servant robot with an AI indistinguishable from a human then get whisked along the moving footpath to sit around all day talking on my video-phone, playing Duke Nukem' Forever, and dictating letters to my computer.
Some technologies do not eventuate because they are not practical, even if they are fanciful.
What happens if the judge determines that the evidence collected by the RIAA in this particular case is sufficient and rules in favour of the cartel?
It's quite possible from a legal perspective. This would create a precedent that is only going to encourage the RIAA to sue more and more.
From a moral perspective this is much like seeing a disturbed, criminally insane child accidentally discharge a gun and kill someone, and reward him by giving him an AK-47 in a crowded shopping mall.
Re:The GPL: Intellectual Theft
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
My turn for car analogy time! Hooray!
The GPL is like, you get a free car, but if you modify it and give a car based on your modifications to someone, you have to give it to everyone, and they have to do the same if they modify your modification (like putting big rims on it or a big spoiler and R-Type stickers). Everyone gets a lot of free cars that have all sorts of modifications on them. But if someone tries to sell your cars based on the design for cars that you made, they can't, but they can sell little pinetrees that smell nice, and they can fix cars if they break and get money for that too.
The BSD license is just free cars that someone gave you and you can decide whether to give people cars or designs or both or neither.
I love car analogies on slashdot. They don't even have to be good, you can just write anything like the one I just did. How cool is that?
It has long been considered a fine conspiracy theory that Microsoft pumped SCO to attack Linux through software patent FUD.
True, Microsoft has strong motivation to destroy Linux, especially in the server space. Linux is the first thing to seriously threaten Windows Server for a very long time. If Microsoft could destroy Linux through breaking market confidence with FUD and lawsuits (never to be settled), it would do them well. SCO likewise were crumbling because of Linux, who uses x86 UNIX nowadays anyway if it's not Linux flavoured?
SCO was threatened by Linux. Microsoft is threatened by Linux. SCO claimed to hold ownership of the code within Linux. Microsoft claims to hold ownership of the code within Linux. SCO sold Linux licenses to legitimise their claims without needing to provide evidence. Microsoft is selling patent protection agreements to legitimise their claims without needing to provide evidence. SCO did everything they could to keep from providing evidence in court. Microsoft is doing everything they can to keep from providing evidence.
The similarities are remarkable. But something is wrong. Nobody is that stupid. If Microsoft was behind SCO, their attempt failed, SCO is rubble, surely they wouldn't just try the same thing with their own brand? What's different this time? Why are they trying to repeat failed history?
I'll leave you with a quote from Blackadder:
Blackadder: Now, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking slowly towards the enemy sir? Darling: How can you possibly know that Blackadder? It's classified information. Blackadder: It's the same plan that we used last time, and the seventeen times before that. Melchett: E-E-Exactly! And that is what so brilliant about it! We will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard! Doing precisely what we have done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is however one small problem. Blackadder: That everyone always gets slaughtered the first ten seconds.
If you have your legal MP3s on your computer, then you're fine. If some asshat steals them and they get busted and have your name on them, it's THEIR problem for obtaining/posessing the protected media, not yours.
Now we get to the true crux of the matter. Can you believe, after seeing the activities of the RIAA and their new ally, Apple, imbedding your details into songs, that they wouldn't blame you for making the files available and sue you for copyright infringement? Actually I think you would believe that, which will make it even more of an unpleasant surprise for you when the subpoena arrives.
When I buy a music CD, the clerk at the record shop doesn't write my name on it with a marker pen. When I buy a novel from a bookstore they don't print my name on every page. Why not? There is no need to do this unless you are treating your customer like a criminal and telling them what they can or can not do with the material they just bought. Telling people what they can and can't do with the material they buy, managing their rights... well it's called DRM. Apple just has a different way of making sure you are liable and a suitable target for the RIAA to continue to control you. They've sold you out.
You must never sacrifice your privacy for the sake of security. Especially not someone else's security.
Let's go live in your world.
The police can search your home without warrant at any time. They listen to your phone line. They open your mail and read it. They keylog every computer you use. They maintain a database of you and your friends, connections, activities, purchases. They have a GPS tracker in your car and an RFID chip implanted in your skin.
This is okay, in your world, because the only reason you would object to this is because you're a criminal.
Actually, it is. I know dozens of people who use XBMC. Less than a third of those use Linux, Apache, or gcc. Which is not to say that they aren't fine products, they are, but so is the XBMC.
In terms of "quality", that is, polish and end user usability, stability, marketability, all those things that we attribute to successful software, only Firefox, of all those products the parent mentions, is on par with the success of XBMC.
There are very, very, very few open source products that would be chosen by a source-agnostic end user looking for a square peg for a square hole. Seriously. Firefox and XBMC, and maybe Apache, are the real gems, because people will grab those because they are best-of-class products, outright better than any competitor. A lot of people I know who use firefox don't really know what open source even is. They just use it because it's a better browser.
They gleefully force some of the labels to allow them to release DRM free music to make it look like they're actually doing something to fight the copyright cartel, but instead they've changed DRM into, arguably, the only thing even more evil than that... spyware. They might as well fingerprint you and implant a GPS tracker. What will they use this spyware for? I guarantee Apple will start selling their iTunes customers to the RIAA cartel. Just sacrificing one or two of them to keep the content gods appeased. They can afford a few losses, because iTunes and iPod has created a tidy vertical monopoly for Apple. And we all know how monopolies can be abused... looks like Apple has turned the tables on Microsoft, embrace and extend, right?
Why not just start installing rootkits? Oh wait, Sony has prior art on that one. Keep trying Apple, soon you'll be as widely despised as Sony.
And yes I'm well aware that Apple fanboys have modpoints. But you know there's truth in what I've said.
I don't know if the second problem is fixed on Windows - I haven't used it for four or so years - but even if it has there are probably a lot of people out there writing installers who don't know that it's fixed.
It was fixed in Vista, there's a mechanism to handle it pretty much the same way UNIX does.
And yes, the installers are all written for NT4.0 or whatever backwards compatibility, so you still have to restart Vista after every app install. That's aggravating. And it's not even Microsoft's fault.
I see your point, and it is a good point, but I must counter it.
If Firefox was only available on Linux, then only Linux users would use Firefox. And that wouldn't be the millions of people who use it today. I daresay the majority of Firefox users do so from Windows (I can't back this up statistically, I have no numbers, but it seems most likely).
Indeed, a full counterpoint, this would be the most OSOS enabling step the community has taken for a long time. If every app you use on Windows is available on Linux, why not make the switch?
I can tell you right now, the reason I don't use Linux today is for only one reason - the apps I use every day don't work there. The same for just about every Windows user I know. I don't want to use a me-too alternative, either, I want exactly the same apps.
This is a great idea that will enable more open source on Windows - going a long way towards replacing those proprietary apps that keep us locked into the platform.
Blizzard's PVP system isn't really anything to get excited about as it is totally un-interesting outside of arenas.
because I find arenas the absolute worst distillation of PvP there is. Why have capture the flag, domination, objective based battlegrounds when you can have: deathmatch. This is the crux of Guild Wars, only GW implemented it better than WoW, without a subscription fee, and with several more arenas and a better matching system.
The only reason people play arenas in WoW is because they provide the best PvP itemisation rewards. If the BG rewards were better, people would play those instead. I certainly find the battlegrounds much more interesting, particularly AV, whilst AV favours one faction more than another, people still play it. The mix of PvE elements in the PvP battleground is something reasonably unique to WoW that builds on the dual PvE/PvP focusses of the game.
I personally can't wait until Blizzard kills the arenas.
The live-action TV series is slated to fit into this time frame.
Lucas is playing on his best strength, he is working on markets where he knows he can expand more merchandise. He wants to develop the Clone Wars as well as the period inbetween 3-4.
I understand that the parent believes the Clone Wars animated series was "incredible bad" (sic).
The series was different to the movies. The movies had a long run time compared to the tiny episodes in Clone Wars. The movies focused on a few events and completely bypassed several other events. The animated series could only tackle one or two main plot points each episode.
Now, some of the episodes, like Anakin duelling the Sith apprentice, don't have much of what the parent describes. The main plot point for a Clone Wars episode is simply demonstrating some of the key moments of the Clone Wars in the Star Wars timeline. Star Wars itself depicts almost no outright war, just parts of some battles. The Clone Wars series delved deeper into the role of the Jedi in the war, as leaders and special operatives at the same time.
What the parent, who didn't seem to actually pay attention to the Clone Wars (the episodes are only a few minutes, it's not that hard to pay attention that long is it? On second thoughts maybe not, I never want to be in any vehicle the parent is driving by the way), we see quite a few Jedi die, just like we do in AoTC. The Jedi who live and manage to single handedly destroy armies are the elite of the elite of the galaxy (a galaxy of at the very least thousands and thousands of habited worlds). Anakin, Mace, Obi-Wan, Yoda, the four most powerful Jedi in the mythology.
How are they wiped out? Let me remind you of the first movie, released in 1977, when Obi-Wan helpfully reminds us that "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights." Most people have seen Star Wars. It may help your appreciation of the Clone Wars animated series if you've also seen the first movie in the series that the animation is based on.
Unfortunately it's not as absolute as that. Copyright is not being used to stop the sharing of knowledge. It's being used to retard and control it, like a pharmaceutical company that doesn't cure a disease, just treats it as little as is needed to maintain the dependency.
Will it kill democracy? No... democracy is already "dead". At least, it has failed in this circumstance. The failure of democracy and the failure of the free market is what has lead to the current copyright crisis.
In a true democracy, the conditions to create a new ruling class outside of the existing government would not exist. But in the failed democracy of the US, the cartels have forced through bribes a new control mechanism, the eternal copyright. They are now using this copyright to bleed more power and control, asserting themselves like a drug dependency. Now what the parent says is true, literature is now a privelege, and heavily taxed when once it was considered a freedom.
In a true free market, laws would not protect the rich and would not punish the poor. The cartels have used their control over the failed democracy to break the free market, applying restrictions on the trade of goods and fair use, allowing them to raise prices and further assert their dominance.
What is the cure? Like the pharma company that treats the disease only enough to ensure a revenue stream, like a parasite on a parasite infecting the victim, the cartels rely on our addiction to the literature they control. Will we break this control? If it's like the pharma companies, you kill the parasite that they're infecting that's infecting us. So can we kill the control they have over literature? It should be possible under a democracy, if the people want literature to be free they should vote for it... I suggest this cure cannot take place, that there is no democracy, the cartels have control now.
So what can we do to cure ourselves? Attempts are being made. Firstly, people are committing mass acts of civil disobedience. DRM, the armor plating for the parasite, is being broken and fought against. So much so that the parasites are removing it to make their infection seem sweeter again. Movies and TV shows and music are being traded and given freely, thus enriching culture as was intended by any true artist.
But most importantly, a cure is in place, but it is still newly growing. The GPL, Open Source, Creative Commons antibiotic, a miracle drug that cures completely, and anything made by these is wholesome and safe to consume. Especially the GPL, the GPL is a dominant gene, it's progeny carry it to all products made with it. The cartel is fighting it as much as it can, through methods that it knows, patents and copyrights, secret deals and hidden threats.
Just like the borg, or roaches, or whatever, but under the new adverse conditions they are finding new ways to spam-spam-spam.
I was recently invited into a party (this happens a lot, until 2.1, then it changed), it is almost always a clueless idiot/newbie/child/dumbarse so I tend to join anyway and completely ignore the person who invited me without chatting first... it's an in-game etiquette consideration to first talk to someone before inviting them into a party or opening a trade window. Some people who don't quite understand civility will just invite you with no warning or open a trade window and expect you to buy something or unlock something... it's annoying. So yes, I tend to join these parties then ignore the inviter, which is surely about as aggravating to them as it was to me to be invited without warning in the first place.
Anyway, I joined the group and lo and behold, it was a fully populated raid group and the raid leader was spamming everyone. Looks like Blizzard isn't filtering raids/party chat.
This is certainly not stuff that matters, it doesn't seem to be news for nerds, this needs to be tagged:
"News for people considered to be Nerds by even the Nerds who read Slashdot"
If the game had gone gold, that's possibly worthy of being called news. If the game music was composed by someone unexpected instead of say, stock Nintendo game music composers, that would be news (It would have to be someone really crazy, like Steve Ballmer's "Chair Throwing Party Theme", or Richard Stallman's "You can play this music any time you want but you have to hand out the sheet music that goes along with it" song.) If the game music composition software was thrown out and replaced by open source software that only runs on a ubuntu/suse/mac/OLPC then it would be news. If the RIAA sued everyone who listened to the music because they "pwnz0rz a11 muziks are bel0ng to them" in traditional RIAA fashion, it would be news. If the music made the musicians in soviet russia, it would be news.
But "Nintendo game music being made by Nintendo game musicians" is even less newsworthy than my trip to the office this morning, and you don't see me submitting that to/. every morning.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't think of an easy way to make it a car analogy.
That must have been a quiet 2 minutes of air time.
Having said that, why is "fuck", a crude form of "have sex" so illegal, when "kill" and "murder" are just fine to use?
I daresay consenting adults having sex is fine if you ask me. Murder and killing? Not fine! So which of these activities are we not allowed to talk about?
So long as it doesn't prevent other people from saying what they want, when they want.
Of course, some voices speak louder than others, which is more of a serious problem. And Hollywood isn't an individual in this case, but a series of corporations.
It's a lot like spam and free speech. You should be able to say "Buy cheap pharmas". But should you be able to email that message to 250,000,000 people?
Then again, in Australia, the government is kind enough to provide us with a national youth radio station, JJJ, where, while the radio jocks tend to stay professional and keep it to a minimum, it's anything goes for the people they interview and the songs they play. (Lately they do put out a language warning).
It's nice to have freedom written into your government's framework. But it is a whole breath of fresh air when the government encourages and espouses it by demonstrating those freedoms themselves and leads by example.
The PvP would be incredible. Werewolves vs. Vampires, truth be told, is an almost untapped genre in terms of MMO's. Game balance would be tough. The whole game design is going to be critical. Will there be huge cities being fought over in a war completely unknown to the human population? Will players need to get a car to drive from point A to point B?
Or will they rush to market and grossly underdeliver, making a flop out of a tremendously promising franchise?
Why not improve humans with this? I think there would be some short term suffering but in the long term it would be awesome when one of the Nexus 6 comes back and squeezes the evil corporate bastard's eyes out what thought of this damn monstrous idea.
If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
Someday, keyboards and computer mice will be remembered only as medieval-style torture devices for the wrists. All work -- emails, spreadsheets, and Google searches -- will be performed by mind control.
What is hyperbole?
I win!
Oh good lordy that was some mighty fine hyperbole. We'll run computers with our minds the same day I hop in my flying car, buzz up to the floating city in the clouds, eat my lunch (in pill form) served to me by bipedal servant robot with an AI indistinguishable from a human then get whisked along the moving footpath to sit around all day talking on my video-phone, playing Duke Nukem' Forever, and dictating letters to my computer.
Some technologies do not eventuate because they are not practical, even if they are fanciful.
What happens if the judge determines that the evidence collected by the RIAA in this particular case is sufficient and rules in favour of the cartel?
It's quite possible from a legal perspective. This would create a precedent that is only going to encourage the RIAA to sue more and more.
From a moral perspective this is much like seeing a disturbed, criminally insane child accidentally discharge a gun and kill someone, and reward him by giving him an AK-47 in a crowded shopping mall.
My turn for car analogy time! Hooray!
The GPL is like, you get a free car, but if you modify it and give a car based on your modifications to someone, you have to give it to everyone, and they have to do the same if they modify your modification (like putting big rims on it or a big spoiler and R-Type stickers). Everyone gets a lot of free cars that have all sorts of modifications on them. But if someone tries to sell your cars based on the design for cars that you made, they can't, but they can sell little pinetrees that smell nice, and they can fix cars if they break and get money for that too.
The BSD license is just free cars that someone gave you and you can decide whether to give people cars or designs or both or neither.
I love car analogies on slashdot. They don't even have to be good, you can just write anything like the one I just did. How cool is that?
It has long been considered a fine conspiracy theory that Microsoft pumped SCO to attack Linux through software patent FUD.
True, Microsoft has strong motivation to destroy Linux, especially in the server space. Linux is the first thing to seriously threaten Windows Server for a very long time. If Microsoft could destroy Linux through breaking market confidence with FUD and lawsuits (never to be settled), it would do them well. SCO likewise were crumbling because of Linux, who uses x86 UNIX nowadays anyway if it's not Linux flavoured?
SCO was threatened by Linux. Microsoft is threatened by Linux.
SCO claimed to hold ownership of the code within Linux. Microsoft claims to hold ownership of the code within Linux.
SCO sold Linux licenses to legitimise their claims without needing to provide evidence. Microsoft is selling patent protection agreements to legitimise their claims without needing to provide evidence.
SCO did everything they could to keep from providing evidence in court. Microsoft is doing everything they can to keep from providing evidence.
The similarities are remarkable. But something is wrong. Nobody is that stupid. If Microsoft was behind SCO, their attempt failed, SCO is rubble, surely they wouldn't just try the same thing with their own brand? What's different this time? Why are they trying to repeat failed history?
I'll leave you with a quote from Blackadder:
Blackadder: Now, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking slowly towards the enemy sir?
Darling: How can you possibly know that Blackadder? It's classified information.
Blackadder: It's the same plan that we used last time, and the seventeen times before that.
Melchett: E-E-Exactly! And that is what so brilliant about it! We will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard! Doing precisely what we have done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is however one small problem.
Blackadder: That everyone always gets slaughtered the first ten seconds.
If you have your legal MP3s on your computer, then you're fine. If some asshat steals them and they get busted and have your name on them, it's THEIR problem for obtaining/posessing the protected media, not yours.
Now we get to the true crux of the matter. Can you believe, after seeing the activities of the RIAA and their new ally, Apple, imbedding your details into songs, that they wouldn't blame you for making the files available and sue you for copyright infringement? Actually I think you would believe that, which will make it even more of an unpleasant surprise for you when the subpoena arrives.
When I buy a music CD, the clerk at the record shop doesn't write my name on it with a marker pen. When I buy a novel from a bookstore they don't print my name on every page. Why not? There is no need to do this unless you are treating your customer like a criminal and telling them what they can or can not do with the material they just bought. Telling people what they can and can't do with the material they buy, managing their rights... well it's called DRM. Apple just has a different way of making sure you are liable and a suitable target for the RIAA to continue to control you. They've sold you out.
Any tool, or component thereof that could be used in the act of breaking a law shall be illegal.
Guns, therefore, shall be illegal.
The barrel of a gun, which is in essence a straight pipe, shall be illegal.
The internet, which is made of tubes (another kind of pipe) shall be illegal.
Once nobody has any network connected computers, there will be no computer crime.
Germany has nailed this one.
There's always one.
You must never sacrifice your privacy for the sake of security. Especially not someone else's security.
Let's go live in your world.
The police can search your home without warrant at any time. They listen to your phone line. They open your mail and read it. They keylog every computer you use. They maintain a database of you and your friends, connections, activities, purchases. They have a GPS tracker in your car and an RFID chip implanted in your skin.
This is okay, in your world, because the only reason you would object to this is because you're a criminal.
Actually, it is. I know dozens of people who use XBMC. Less than a third of those use Linux, Apache, or gcc. Which is not to say that they aren't fine products, they are, but so is the XBMC.
In terms of "quality", that is, polish and end user usability, stability, marketability, all those things that we attribute to successful software, only Firefox, of all those products the parent mentions, is on par with the success of XBMC.
There are very, very, very few open source products that would be chosen by a source-agnostic end user looking for a square peg for a square hole. Seriously. Firefox and XBMC, and maybe Apache, are the real gems, because people will grab those because they are best-of-class products, outright better than any competitor. A lot of people I know who use firefox don't really know what open source even is. They just use it because it's a better browser.
On that basis, XBMC is a shining success.
This is awesome news, I have been using XBMC for years now and it continues to be one of the finest softwares I've used in my entire I/T career.
Sure, configuration is a little hands-on, but you can attribute a lot of that to the lockdown that Microsoft put into the XBox.
The ultimate HTPC would definately be a Linux/XBMC pairing. Assuming I can get an IR remote device that works under Linux, anyway.
I can't think of one piece of software that was written by MS that wasn't written somewhere else first. I could be wrong, however.
I can think of plenty
MS-Bob
Clippy
Microsoft OS/2
Customiseable BSOD in Windows
Dr Watson
Apple truly is an evil corporation
They gleefully force some of the labels to allow them to release DRM free music to make it look like they're actually doing something to fight the copyright cartel, but instead they've changed DRM into, arguably, the only thing even more evil than that... spyware. They might as well fingerprint you and implant a GPS tracker. What will they use this spyware for? I guarantee Apple will start selling their iTunes customers to the RIAA cartel. Just sacrificing one or two of them to keep the content gods appeased. They can afford a few losses, because iTunes and iPod has created a tidy vertical monopoly for Apple. And we all know how monopolies can be abused... looks like Apple has turned the tables on Microsoft, embrace and extend, right?
Why not just start installing rootkits? Oh wait, Sony has prior art on that one. Keep trying Apple, soon you'll be as widely despised as Sony.
And yes I'm well aware that Apple fanboys have modpoints. But you know there's truth in what I've said.
I don't know if the second problem is fixed on Windows - I haven't used it for four or so years - but even if it has there are probably a lot of people out there writing installers who don't know that it's fixed.
It was fixed in Vista, there's a mechanism to handle it pretty much the same way UNIX does.
And yes, the installers are all written for NT4.0 or whatever backwards compatibility, so you still have to restart Vista after every app install. That's aggravating. And it's not even Microsoft's fault.
I see your point, and it is a good point, but I must counter it.
If Firefox was only available on Linux, then only Linux users would use Firefox. And that wouldn't be the millions of people who use it today. I daresay the majority of Firefox users do so from Windows (I can't back this up statistically, I have no numbers, but it seems most likely).
Indeed, a full counterpoint, this would be the most OSOS enabling step the community has taken for a long time. If every app you use on Windows is available on Linux, why not make the switch?
I can tell you right now, the reason I don't use Linux today is for only one reason - the apps I use every day don't work there. The same for just about every Windows user I know. I don't want to use a me-too alternative, either, I want exactly the same apps.
This is a great idea that will enable more open source on Windows - going a long way towards replacing those proprietary apps that keep us locked into the platform.
It's funny you should say that
Blizzard's PVP system isn't really anything to get excited about as it is totally un-interesting outside of arenas.
because I find arenas the absolute worst distillation of PvP there is. Why have capture the flag, domination, objective based battlegrounds when you can have: deathmatch. This is the crux of Guild Wars, only GW implemented it better than WoW, without a subscription fee, and with several more arenas and a better matching system.
The only reason people play arenas in WoW is because they provide the best PvP itemisation rewards. If the BG rewards were better, people would play those instead. I certainly find the battlegrounds much more interesting, particularly AV, whilst AV favours one faction more than another, people still play it. The mix of PvE elements in the PvP battleground is something reasonably unique to WoW that builds on the dual PvE/PvP focusses of the game.
I personally can't wait until Blizzard kills the arenas.
The live-action TV series is slated to fit into this time frame.
Lucas is playing on his best strength, he is working on markets where he knows he can expand more merchandise. He wants to develop the Clone Wars as well as the period inbetween 3-4.
Ok I'll bite
I understand that the parent believes the Clone Wars animated series was "incredible bad" (sic).
The series was different to the movies. The movies had a long run time compared to the tiny episodes in Clone Wars. The movies focused on a few events and completely bypassed several other events. The animated series could only tackle one or two main plot points each episode.
Now, some of the episodes, like Anakin duelling the Sith apprentice, don't have much of what the parent describes. The main plot point for a Clone Wars episode is simply demonstrating some of the key moments of the Clone Wars in the Star Wars timeline. Star Wars itself depicts almost no outright war, just parts of some battles. The Clone Wars series delved deeper into the role of the Jedi in the war, as leaders and special operatives at the same time.
What the parent, who didn't seem to actually pay attention to the Clone Wars (the episodes are only a few minutes, it's not that hard to pay attention that long is it? On second thoughts maybe not, I never want to be in any vehicle the parent is driving by the way), we see quite a few Jedi die, just like we do in AoTC. The Jedi who live and manage to single handedly destroy armies are the elite of the elite of the galaxy (a galaxy of at the very least thousands and thousands of habited worlds). Anakin, Mace, Obi-Wan, Yoda, the four most powerful Jedi in the mythology.
How are they wiped out? Let me remind you of the first movie, released in 1977, when Obi-Wan helpfully reminds us that "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights." Most people have seen Star Wars. It may help your appreciation of the Clone Wars animated series if you've also seen the first movie in the series that the animation is based on.
Unfortunately it's not as absolute as that. Copyright is not being used to stop the sharing of knowledge. It's being used to retard and control it, like a pharmaceutical company that doesn't cure a disease, just treats it as little as is needed to maintain the dependency.
Will it kill democracy? No... democracy is already "dead". At least, it has failed in this circumstance. The failure of democracy and the failure of the free market is what has lead to the current copyright crisis.
In a true democracy, the conditions to create a new ruling class outside of the existing government would not exist. But in the failed democracy of the US, the cartels have forced through bribes a new control mechanism, the eternal copyright. They are now using this copyright to bleed more power and control, asserting themselves like a drug dependency. Now what the parent says is true, literature is now a privelege, and heavily taxed when once it was considered a freedom.
In a true free market, laws would not protect the rich and would not punish the poor. The cartels have used their control over the failed democracy to break the free market, applying restrictions on the trade of goods and fair use, allowing them to raise prices and further assert their dominance.
What is the cure? Like the pharma company that treats the disease only enough to ensure a revenue stream, like a parasite on a parasite infecting the victim, the cartels rely on our addiction to the literature they control. Will we break this control? If it's like the pharma companies, you kill the parasite that they're infecting that's infecting us. So can we kill the control they have over literature? It should be possible under a democracy, if the people want literature to be free they should vote for it... I suggest this cure cannot take place, that there is no democracy, the cartels have control now.
So what can we do to cure ourselves? Attempts are being made. Firstly, people are committing mass acts of civil disobedience. DRM, the armor plating for the parasite, is being broken and fought against. So much so that the parasites are removing it to make their infection seem sweeter again. Movies and TV shows and music are being traded and given freely, thus enriching culture as was intended by any true artist.
But most importantly, a cure is in place, but it is still newly growing. The GPL, Open Source, Creative Commons antibiotic, a miracle drug that cures completely, and anything made by these is wholesome and safe to consume. Especially the GPL, the GPL is a dominant gene, it's progeny carry it to all products made with it. The cartel is fighting it as much as it can, through methods that it knows, patents and copyrights, secret deals and hidden threats.
Just like the borg, or roaches, or whatever, but under the new adverse conditions they are finding new ways to spam-spam-spam.
I was recently invited into a party (this happens a lot, until 2.1, then it changed), it is almost always a clueless idiot/newbie/child/dumbarse so I tend to join anyway and completely ignore the person who invited me without chatting first... it's an in-game etiquette consideration to first talk to someone before inviting them into a party or opening a trade window. Some people who don't quite understand civility will just invite you with no warning or open a trade window and expect you to buy something or unlock something... it's annoying. So yes, I tend to join these parties then ignore the inviter, which is surely about as aggravating to them as it was to me to be invited without warning in the first place.
Anyway, I joined the group and lo and behold, it was a fully populated raid group and the raid leader was spamming everyone. Looks like Blizzard isn't filtering raids/party chat.
That's the stupidest fucking idea I've heard since I started at Microsoft.
This is certainly not stuff that matters, it doesn't seem to be news for nerds, this needs to be tagged:
/. every morning.
"News for people considered to be Nerds by even the Nerds who read Slashdot"
If the game had gone gold, that's possibly worthy of being called news.
If the game music was composed by someone unexpected instead of say, stock Nintendo game music composers, that would be news (It would have to be someone really crazy, like Steve Ballmer's "Chair Throwing Party Theme", or Richard Stallman's "You can play this music any time you want but you have to hand out the sheet music that goes along with it" song.)
If the game music composition software was thrown out and replaced by open source software that only runs on a ubuntu/suse/mac/OLPC then it would be news.
If the RIAA sued everyone who listened to the music because they "pwnz0rz a11 muziks are bel0ng to them" in traditional RIAA fashion, it would be news.
If the music made the musicians in soviet russia, it would be news.
But "Nintendo game music being made by Nintendo game musicians" is even less newsworthy than my trip to the office this morning, and you don't see me submitting that to