When I saw it in the bookshop, I almost bought "Blink" on a whim, but then I realised I should really spend some thought on that before shelling out the money.
You should really read the credentials of the women involved in the chat.
I don't think that "working for EA", or "playing MMOGs" makes one particularly qualified to talk about the subject of "Sex in Games". But I'm an academic, so perhaps I set different standards than you do.
On the other hand, I am glad we agree that there was no reason for/. to link to this article. Personally, I think people should place on the web whatever they think might be entertaining or interesting for a passing visitor, whether it is a joke, a transcript from a chat session, or a well-thought-out article. But a site that pretends to link to the quality stuff out there, should set different standards.
This article is terrible. It is just a page ripped from a chat session between four women who have little interesting to say about "Sex in Games", who have no qualifications to talk about the subject (apart from the fact that they are women), and who quickly degenerate towards yakking about game advertisements without saying anything profound about them.
Surely there is a lot that can be said about "Sex in Games" from the female perspective. But it should be said by a woman with a brain who writes an article because she has something meaningful to say, and knows how to bring an argument.
So my mind boggles why/. felt it necessary to link to this stuff.
That's the question: when do you say it's too trivial?
I believe that the criterion for non-obviousness is that a team of experts in the subject area working on the specific problem for which the patent provides a solution, needs more than one day to come up with the solution.
Of course, the problem is that the patent office employees are not experts in the subject area, and still need to judge non-obviousness. That's patently impossible.
Although it seems to me that even a patent office employee should recognise that to the problem of having to click multiple times to make a web purchase, the solution of letting the user make a purchase with only one click is quite obvious.
I responded to a job offer for a bounty hunter, and got hired, but I soon found out that I mostly got to do FedEx quests. And the XP I received was dismal. So I quit. I am now looking for something in the line of being a spy or vampire. Slim pickin's, though.
Cue the standard/. replies about how the Adventure game genre is dead from people who have never played Syberia, The Longest Journey, Myst IV, Beyond Good and Evil, or any of the other dozen adventure games that have come out in the few years.
I played three of those (not BG&E, since it is not an adventure). I thought they were quite boring. These three games take themselves much too seriously, replacing fun with nice graphics. If I want to see nice graphics, I look out of the window.
Really, the world needs a new adventure in the classic LucasArts style. Too bad no publisher is going to touch it.
There should be enough geeks (I use geek in the thecnological savvy meaning) near the strings of power to make those in power aware of their needs.
Yes, but unfortunately, as you probably well know, those in power are never geeks, don't understand geeks, and are not much interested in geeks. They are interested in money and power. They studied law, economics, or politics. They spent their life rubbing elbows. They are in a totally different class then geeks.
I know, this sounds cynical, but it the truth. You will only have a shot at political power if you dedicate your life to getting it. And becoming technologically savvy requires a totally different career choice.
Everybody knows the Huygens probe. Nobody knows any of the scientists who worked on the probe.
Now, David Atkinson has become a name.
Granted, he's that-guy-of-the-Huygens-mission-who-was-screwed- out-of-his-experimental-results-due-to-a-stupid- mistake-on-the-part-of-a-programmer, but at least people know him!
He can write a book! He can go on talkshows!
He can even use the fact that he is now a name to get more funding!
After the initial feeling of depression, he should realise how lucky he is.
And think of it, are you still interested in the things you thought up eighteen years ago (apart from screwing eighteen-year-olds)?
If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?
There are many reasons, which others will have undoubtedly posted, but let me just give you one thought:
How is it possible to create comething novel in software without relying on the novelties thousands of other have created before?
Suppose you design a new compression algorithm. Do you really think that is possible without using many concepts which others have thought of before? If these other were allowed to patent their "novelties" (such as "conditional statements", "storing of data in a file", etc.), you would have to wait for twenty years before you could deploy your "novelty" without infringing a patent.
Of course, you can agree to pay your predecessors off. That will be quite expensive, given the fact that there are thousands of them.
And you run the huge risk that one of them says that you cannot use their patent, which will basically destroy any chance you have to market your "novelty".
And this is all assuming that you will be able to track down these thousands of patents you are potentially infringing. Count on a six-figure fee for the team of lawyers you have to hire to do that for you.
And that is why software should be protected by copyrights, not patents.
Re:An EULA is no real contract in Germany
on
The Basics of EULAs
·
· Score: 4, Funny
maybe my cat stepped over the keyboard while I was out of the room
I usually do that. I drop the cat next to the keyboard and walk out, then come in again after a few minutes. About half the time, the cat has hit enough keys so that the game is started past the EULA. The other times, I usually have to restart the computer. Though there was this one time when the cat had closed the game, open up my word-processor, and had typed in the first scene of Hamlet.
This doesn't change anything for home users. I may buy a new cartridge every eighteen months. I am not going to order one in the US, because it is cheaper than around the corner. When my cartridge is out, I buy one locally, in euro's.
Not so for corporate users. They buy cartridges in bulk. And if they find out they have to pay 50% more for each new cartridge they use, they will say "screw you" to HP, and buy a new printer from Canon.
HP's scheme will only succeed if they can get the other manufacturers to cooperate. And since printer manufacturers are found all over the globe (as opposed to manufacturers of Hollywood movies), that will be quite a hard task. In the meantime, this will lose the big customers.
It just whines back, for dozens of paragraphs I believe this to be dishonest.
Maybe it is more of an impression than what appears after scrutinising the response. The problem is that if you make valid complaints but intermix them with continuously criticising the author's grammar, often in a derogatory way, the whole response starts to come over as whining.
The question why that is so, why developers haven't solved the obvious problems in games, is a valid one. No such question is posed.
True. And that is probably my first criticism on the IGN article, that they fail to pose that question and try to answer it.
A far better response to his article would be one that explains, in understandable terms, what difficulties must be overcome to solve the problems. Read the rest of my site. Many such explanations are given. I shall endeavour to link them from within that article, in order to allay the perception that justifications are not given, though it is my opinion that in fact they have been in spades.
I think that would make the response a LOT stronger. That, combined with removing the grammar complaints to one paragraph at the start of the response, would IMHO elevate the quality of the response considerably.
Just whining back doesn't really contribute anything. I wonder: do you find your response to my response to be stronger of content and less whiny than my response is of its own?
Not really as far as content is concerned. But I used three paragraphs, not two long pages.
It doesn't matter how fast computers get, Windows Explorer Shell always seems to become less snappy, even on fresh installs. XP made the start menu slower than ever as it retrieves nonessential metadata on the shortcuts.
After a fresh install of XP after I had used 98 for years, I had the same feeling. Then I installed TweakUI and turned off all the crap. It now runs smoothly. I don't want the crap and I don't use the crap. Now, as long as MS makes sure I can turn off the crap they are going to add to Longhorn, they can do whatever "cool" thing they want with the interface.
Revolving windows? Desktop weather conditions? A pulsating Close button? Live moving MS advertisements on the background? The Dance Of The Paperclips as a screensaver? If they have the billions to spare on this shit, let them have a go at it. But let me turn it off.
I agree that the IGN article isn't very good. It whines "why don't you developers give us all this good stuff I just pulled out of my ass?!" There are plenty good reasons why developers don't do this, not least of which are technological, financial, and hardware limitations.
But the Tri-Bit response is even worse. It just whines back, for dozens of paragraphs: "You reviewers don't know what you are talking about! And you can't properly write either!". Example games mentioned are often not appropriate (Diablo as an example of a gamne that blends action with roleplaying? Give me a break! Diablo is action and nothing more.) Good arguments are seldom given, as if the author is so annoyed with the reviewer that he can only ramble (which is probably the case).
I think the point of the IGN article is clear: games leave a lot to be desired. The question why that is so, why developers haven't solved the obvious problems in games, is a valid one. There are good answers to that question, which the IGN reviewer doesn't seem to know. A far better response to his article would be one that explains, in understandable terms, what difficulties must be overcome to solve the problems.
Just whining back doesn't really contribute anything.
...I can say with some confidence that this concept is doomed to fail. Most homes here already have a computer, and those that don't, don't want a computer. Furthermore, the reason people do not want a computer, is not that they are too expensive (in general, the elderly are quite rich). It is because (a) they have no real use for a computer, and (b) computers are too difficult to use. The second point is NOT solved by disallowing the computer to burn CDs. It is caused by delivering it with a mightily complex operating system. My dad needed about a year to get familiar enough with Windows and Word to write a text without phoning me. The only reason I can think of people desiring a computer, is that they want to browse the web. They can buy an iMac to do that.
What would be really cool is if IBM reworked its cross licensing agreements it has with big companies like Microsoft to say that they can only use IBM's patents if they extend their cross license to allow open source products to be used.
Cool, but they won't do it, because it might bite them on the ass. It would invalidate most, if not all, of IBM's current cross-licensing deals with closed-source companies.
What IBM could do, is DONATE these patents to open source. That way, open source could play the cross-licensing game by itself. That, however, would lead to several problems:
First, what IS "open source"? It's not a legal institute, it is a concept. IBM cannot donate anything to open source, only to some sort of foundation. And with the constitution of a foundation, you get all kinds of political games, and in the end open-source developers would not benefit from the move.
Second, open source does not have the legal capabilities of defending itself against litigation. Basically, patents you don't defend mean crap.
Third, a move as described would only mean anything if the patents are key patents. And giving up key patents would be a very risky move on the part of IBM.
So, for the time being, we NEED IBM. But I don't mind. The have the power to achieve many things which the open-source community can't. And as long as they favor open source, we have a lot to gain.
And don't kid yourself about IBM moving against MS in any big way. Such a clash of titans both companies want to avoid. But MS will understand IBM's signal with this move.
...except that IBM reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against Open Source Software
Now THIS is the interesting bit. Not the fact that open source can use the techniques defined in 500 patents, but that anyone who takes patent-action against open source will not be allowed to use what's in the patents (if IBM says so)! At least, that's how I read this. It would have been better if open source developers themselves could say this, but, let's be fair, open source can never afford the lawyers needed to uphold such a statement.
After I dropped out of college, I worked in a software engineering job for several years. I thought it was totally dead-end: the people I had to work with were obviously below my skills (with a few exceptions), but to be able to work with a better class of people and on better jobs, I simply had to get a degree. So I enrolled into a part-time study at a prestigeous university.
Now the bad bit: a part-time study next to a full-time job is a huge drain on your time (as if you hadn't guessed). I found it motivating that I could apply everything I learned in my day-job (yes, everything, even those subjects full-time students think are a waste of time). However, I completely lost my social life, had to get rid of all hobbies, and near the end lost my girlfriend because she couldn't stand the fact that I was always busy with work or school. Many of the other part-time students gave up, because they couldn't bring themselves to invest all that time (usually after they got their first kid).
But I graduated with honors, went to work at a research institute, got married, switched to a university, and got my Ph.D. Quite a career change for someone who was a drop-out.
So the lesson is: you can do it, if you have the drive.
Microsoft has sense. So they come out with the XBox 2 with a price-tag of $399. "XBox" is an established name now, with many hooked users, who WILL pay a ridiculous price. Parents will have promised kids a new XBox for Christmas, and they have to shell out the big bucks (or be perstered about it for a loooooong time).
Then, right after Christmas, MS will drop the price to $299, so people will shout "That's CHEAP!", and buy one in the spur of the moment. Three months later, the price will drop even lower.
For the games, the same thing will happen, of course.
The sequel to 25th Anniversary, "Judgement Rites", was a very, very good adventure game. It took a looooooong while for the next decent Star Trek game to appear (even though many tried).
And, of course, "Planescape: Torment" was simply awesome, the best RPG ever made.
Slashdot Mirror
When I saw it in the bookshop, I almost bought "Blink" on a whim, but then I realised I should really spend some thought on that before shelling out the money.
I don't think that "working for EA", or "playing MMOGs" makes one particularly qualified to talk about the subject of "Sex in Games". But I'm an academic, so perhaps I set different standards than you do.
On the other hand, I am glad we agree that there was no reason for /. to link to this article. Personally, I think people should place on the web whatever they think might be entertaining or interesting for a passing visitor, whether it is a joke, a transcript from a chat session, or a well-thought-out article. But a site that pretends to link to the quality stuff out there, should set different standards.
Surely there is a lot that can be said about "Sex in Games" from the female perspective. But it should be said by a woman with a brain who writes an article because she has something meaningful to say, and knows how to bring an argument.
So my mind boggles why /. felt it necessary to link to this stuff.
Amazon: "Ya see, if you want to purchase this book, normally you'd have to click at least five buttons. Now, we do this with just ONE click!"
Certain group of people: "WOW!"
I believe that the criterion for non-obviousness is that a team of experts in the subject area working on the specific problem for which the patent provides a solution, needs more than one day to come up with the solution.
Of course, the problem is that the patent office employees are not experts in the subject area, and still need to judge non-obviousness. That's patently impossible.
Although it seems to me that even a patent office employee should recognise that to the problem of having to click multiple times to make a web purchase, the solution of letting the user make a purchase with only one click is quite obvious.
Nope. It's experience.
I responded to a job offer for a bounty hunter, and got hired, but I soon found out that I mostly got to do FedEx quests. And the XP I received was dismal. So I quit. I am now looking for something in the line of being a spy or vampire. Slim pickin's, though.
I played three of those (not BG&E, since it is not an adventure). I thought they were quite boring. These three games take themselves much too seriously, replacing fun with nice graphics. If I want to see nice graphics, I look out of the window.
Really, the world needs a new adventure in the classic LucasArts style. Too bad no publisher is going to touch it.
Yes, but unfortunately, as you probably well know, those in power are never geeks, don't understand geeks, and are not much interested in geeks. They are interested in money and power. They studied law, economics, or politics. They spent their life rubbing elbows. They are in a totally different class then geeks.
I know, this sounds cynical, but it the truth. You will only have a shot at political power if you dedicate your life to getting it. And becoming technologically savvy requires a totally different career choice.
Everybody knows the Huygens probe. Nobody knows any of the scientists who worked on the probe.
Now, David Atkinson has become a name.
Granted, he's that-guy-of-the-Huygens-mission-who-was-screwed- out-of-his-experimental-results-due-to-a-stupid- mistake-on-the-part-of-a-programmer, but at least people know him!
He can write a book! He can go on talkshows!
He can even use the fact that he is now a name to get more funding!
After the initial feeling of depression, he should realise how lucky he is.
And think of it, are you still interested in the things you thought up eighteen years ago (apart from screwing eighteen-year-olds)?
There are many reasons, which others will have undoubtedly posted, but let me just give you one thought:
How is it possible to create comething novel in software without relying on the novelties thousands of other have created before?
Suppose you design a new compression algorithm. Do you really think that is possible without using many concepts which others have thought of before? If these other were allowed to patent their "novelties" (such as "conditional statements", "storing of data in a file", etc.), you would have to wait for twenty years before you could deploy your "novelty" without infringing a patent.
Of course, you can agree to pay your predecessors off. That will be quite expensive, given the fact that there are thousands of them. And you run the huge risk that one of them says that you cannot use their patent, which will basically destroy any chance you have to market your "novelty".
And this is all assuming that you will be able to track down these thousands of patents you are potentially infringing. Count on a six-figure fee for the team of lawyers you have to hire to do that for you.
And that is why software should be protected by copyrights, not patents.
I usually do that. I drop the cat next to the keyboard and walk out, then come in again after a few minutes. About half the time, the cat has hit enough keys so that the game is started past the EULA. The other times, I usually have to restart the computer. Though there was this one time when the cat had closed the game, open up my word-processor, and had typed in the first scene of Hamlet.
Not so for corporate users. They buy cartridges in bulk. And if they find out they have to pay 50% more for each new cartridge they use, they will say "screw you" to HP, and buy a new printer from Canon.
HP's scheme will only succeed if they can get the other manufacturers to cooperate. And since printer manufacturers are found all over the globe (as opposed to manufacturers of Hollywood movies), that will be quite a hard task. In the meantime, this will lose the big customers.
I think they will reconsider.
P2P programs don't spread copyrighted works illegally, people spread copyrighted works illegally.
It's clear isn't it? People are the problem. Therefore people should be made illegal!
Just throw everyone in jail and the problem is solved.
Except lawyers, of course, since they don't belong to the class of people.
I believe this to be dishonest.
Maybe it is more of an impression than what appears after scrutinising the response. The problem is that if you make valid complaints but intermix them with continuously criticising the author's grammar, often in a derogatory way, the whole response starts to come over as whining.
The question why that is so, why developers haven't solved the obvious problems in games, is a valid one.
No such question is posed.
True. And that is probably my first criticism on the IGN article, that they fail to pose that question and try to answer it.
A far better response to his article would be one that explains, in understandable terms, what difficulties must be overcome to solve the problems.
Read the rest of my site. Many such explanations are given. I shall endeavour to link them from within that article, in order to allay the perception that justifications are not given, though it is my opinion that in fact they have been in spades.
I think that would make the response a LOT stronger. That, combined with removing the grammar complaints to one paragraph at the start of the response, would IMHO elevate the quality of the response considerably.
Just whining back doesn't really contribute anything.
I wonder: do you find your response to my response to be stronger of content and less whiny than my response is of its own?
Not really as far as content is concerned. But I used three paragraphs, not two long pages.
No, it's not.
Unfortunately, since the comment is already labeled "Interesting", it cannot be turned into "Funny" anymore.
Because funny it is.
After a fresh install of XP after I had used 98 for years, I had the same feeling. Then I installed TweakUI and turned off all the crap. It now runs smoothly. I don't want the crap and I don't use the crap. Now, as long as MS makes sure I can turn off the crap they are going to add to Longhorn, they can do whatever "cool" thing they want with the interface.
Revolving windows? Desktop weather conditions? A pulsating Close button? Live moving MS advertisements on the background? The Dance Of The Paperclips as a screensaver? If they have the billions to spare on this shit, let them have a go at it. But let me turn it off.
But the Tri-Bit response is even worse. It just whines back, for dozens of paragraphs: "You reviewers don't know what you are talking about! And you can't properly write either!". Example games mentioned are often not appropriate (Diablo as an example of a gamne that blends action with roleplaying? Give me a break! Diablo is action and nothing more.) Good arguments are seldom given, as if the author is so annoyed with the reviewer that he can only ramble (which is probably the case).
I think the point of the IGN article is clear: games leave a lot to be desired. The question why that is so, why developers haven't solved the obvious problems in games, is a valid one. There are good answers to that question, which the IGN reviewer doesn't seem to know. A far better response to his article would be one that explains, in understandable terms, what difficulties must be overcome to solve the problems.
Just whining back doesn't really contribute anything.
"...a 38-year-old was arrested in Hong Kong for uploading Citizen Kane, Rashomon and Andrei Rublev via a BitTorrent client."
...I can say with some confidence that this concept is doomed to fail. Most homes here already have a computer, and those that don't, don't want a computer. Furthermore, the reason people do not want a computer, is not that they are too expensive (in general, the elderly are quite rich). It is because (a) they have no real use for a computer, and (b) computers are too difficult to use. The second point is NOT solved by disallowing the computer to burn CDs. It is caused by delivering it with a mightily complex operating system. My dad needed about a year to get familiar enough with Windows and Word to write a text without phoning me. The only reason I can think of people desiring a computer, is that they want to browse the web. They can buy an iMac to do that.
Cool, but they won't do it, because it might bite them on the ass. It would invalidate most, if not all, of IBM's current cross-licensing deals with closed-source companies.
What IBM could do, is DONATE these patents to open source. That way, open source could play the cross-licensing game by itself. That, however, would lead to several problems:
First, what IS "open source"? It's not a legal institute, it is a concept. IBM cannot donate anything to open source, only to some sort of foundation. And with the constitution of a foundation, you get all kinds of political games, and in the end open-source developers would not benefit from the move.
Second, open source does not have the legal capabilities of defending itself against litigation. Basically, patents you don't defend mean crap.
Third, a move as described would only mean anything if the patents are key patents. And giving up key patents would be a very risky move on the part of IBM.
So, for the time being, we NEED IBM. But I don't mind. The have the power to achieve many things which the open-source community can't. And as long as they favor open source, we have a lot to gain.
And don't kid yourself about IBM moving against MS in any big way. Such a clash of titans both companies want to avoid. But MS will understand IBM's signal with this move.
Now THIS is the interesting bit. Not the fact that open source can use the techniques defined in 500 patents, but that anyone who takes patent-action against open source will not be allowed to use what's in the patents (if IBM says so)! At least, that's how I read this. It would have been better if open source developers themselves could say this, but, let's be fair, open source can never afford the lawyers needed to uphold such a statement.
After I dropped out of college, I worked in a software engineering job for several years. I thought it was totally dead-end: the people I had to work with were obviously below my skills (with a few exceptions), but to be able to work with a better class of people and on better jobs, I simply had to get a degree. So I enrolled into a part-time study at a prestigeous university.
Now the bad bit: a part-time study next to a full-time job is a huge drain on your time (as if you hadn't guessed). I found it motivating that I could apply everything I learned in my day-job (yes, everything, even those subjects full-time students think are a waste of time). However, I completely lost my social life, had to get rid of all hobbies, and near the end lost my girlfriend because she couldn't stand the fact that I was always busy with work or school. Many of the other part-time students gave up, because they couldn't bring themselves to invest all that time (usually after they got their first kid).
But I graduated with honors, went to work at a research institute, got married, switched to a university, and got my Ph.D. Quite a career change for someone who was a drop-out.
So the lesson is: you can do it, if you have the drive.
Then, right after Christmas, MS will drop the price to $299, so people will shout "That's CHEAP!", and buy one in the spur of the moment. Three months later, the price will drop even lower.
For the games, the same thing will happen, of course.
And, of course, "Planescape: Torment" was simply awesome, the best RPG ever made.