... of trying to apply copyright and property like rights when applied to non-scarce information.
The reality is as long as human beings are greedy/territorial/assholes they will push their authoritarian agenda of trying to control what other people do for their own gain on others. As copyright and "intellectual property" stand now it acts as a back door dictatorship and is a subversive way to take away peoples freedoms. The whole idea of needing permission to use a product you've bought is nonsense, the whole idea of needing permission to REPAIR a product you've bought is nonsense. The whole idea of kids not being allowed to recreate older works and updating them is nonsense. Reality is the law is absurd and politicians cave to whoever throws the most money at them and forget everybody else, the thing they are most worried about is THEIR CUT and not much else.
We've seen the beginning of insane property laws in Europe when applied to steam games as "steam products", where you can resell steam games but steam gets a cut of the sold copy you sold. It's fucking ridiculous especially when you consider the cost of replication - in practice essentially zero. The whole end game of DRM was to prevent gamers from owning their games and being able to resell them. Europe is trying to half-hazardly come up with a solution but in practice it's still a god damn comedic clusterfuck when compared to the fact that you can get a "used copy" for free off the net. Piracy is a natural outcome of insane laws which were predicted at the beginning of copyright. Companies have too many rights and privileged and much of the public is too uninformed / unconcerned.
The following should be allowed under SANE laws fan remakes and ability to get source-code for games to fix and update them as well as games going into libraries as cultural works, as the laws currently stand a cubic ass tonne of abandonware/old stuff is just junked and it is done on purpose to control the market so companies 'don't have to compete' with their older works. Being able to shut down game servers/etc/take game code hostage on the other side of the internet is just bullshit.
Freespace 2 open - exists because authors were benevolent enough to release it but it should be required by law that all game assets/source go into library an opened up after a fixed number of years so works can be fixed/updated to run on new platforms.
As it is corporations have it good with the ability to milk a finite amount of work for much more then it cost to make it which is a dead-weight loss for everyone elses creativity and energy.
I have no idea what you are talking about since I don't subscribe to any ideology. Nice fabrication there. I know both parties are sold out, but they are sold out to hard core capitalists/corporatists. i.e. they sold out 'for money'. This is the natural state of capitalist societies since capitalism is a totalizing system that erodes everything in it's path for profits.
We know that both parties are sold out, but the idea we need to go back to the golden days of 'free markets' at this point is something someone politically illiterate would say. Markets lead to this outcome. So the any kind of resistance will be seen as 'anti capitalist' necessarily de-facto by the simple minded.
There are people of all stripes regardless of ideology that speak against then the things they don't like this does not make them X or Y ideologue, it means they have principles.
There's been an ongoing effort to manufacture consent and manage public perception so that people are pitted against one another and don't grasp what their real interests are. Not only that all private media is complicit in shaping the publics view of the world and most privately owned media is totally right wing / pro capitalism / imperalism / establishment while playing the ignorant public about their true political stance.
... on what are the main factors that drive your typing speed. I'd go find some smart people / physicists and get some data to figure out where you are weak (in typing) first and what possible avenues you could take.
... the internet sucked back then. Websites and web interfaces were crappy, and while many modern websites are bloated and have usability issues there has been a huge improvement.
Also the emergence of easy to use blogging software has been probably one of the most important developments on the internet IMHO. The problem with nostalgic views of the internet is that the internet 'back then' was highly fragmented and often disorganized. Often times sites would have broken links or not be updated properly because the sites owner was not technically literate or committed any time to his or her site because of barriers to entry (tweaking web pages in html manually, or using cumbersome html software).
While the internet has "narrowed". I think what people really morn is the stupid masses getting online. This is really about "I wish the internet populated by intelligent/nerdy tech minded people and not the stupid hacks and poseurs we find today". To some extent this is true but it has also brought in a lot of smart non-technical people posting interesting stuff online because software/blog-packages/whatever have become easy enough to use without having to know much about computers.
As much as people might want to morn 4chan and reddit for the stupid people they attract, having such a wide range of people accessing a single site means important issues can be discovered and disseminated quickly because there are more people online.
But is this because humans are less violent, or tools of war (WMD) are acting as a check on how violent we can be and not suffer total annihilation in the process? Consider if Japan had nukes when truman dropped the bomb, would he have dropped the bomb? Probably not.
Humans are violent in calculated ways and their still exists lots of violence in modern societies the violence just takes different forms (bullying, being ripped off, etc).
Interpretation _is required_ for translation, all translations are *acts of interpretation*. To translate one statement to another you have to be able to tell what it is first (an act of interpreting what you are seeing).
Not only that in this era we're dealing with interpreting languages that are living and have context. More importantly I work in this area. You CAN reconstruct meanings because all languages have a basic subset of functions that compose ALL concepts at their foundation.
What you see on the surface of language 'the text' is not TRUE language. Not only that you can figure out whether concepts are poorly constructed or not. That is, whether they have been properly conceptualized. All words in language go through a conceptualization phase and errors in this phase can be teased apart.
All concepts and statements are derived from the universe, you can break down concepts into simpler elements and reconceptualize them to bridge the gap. Most ideas that "don't translate" are poorly conceptualized you can decompose poorly conceptualized ideas and meanings in other languages into more basic elements then re conceptualize it more accurately so that you can communicate it. The same way we make up new words and concepts, you can do the reverse -- break down ideas into their simplest elements, look for sloppy thinking/errors and re-conceive them and invent a new word and updated definition that gets across the ideas on the fly.
No it is a reasonable price for 16:10 the problem is that people are cheap. 16:9 monitors cheapness comes from economies of scale for televisions so they can be sold for much cheaper.
Not only that the 16:10 I linked is IPS panel therefore its going to be higher quality. Most LCD monitors are the lowest grade you can get. 16:10 naturally caters to enthusiasts that have some level of technology literacy unlike the ignorant masses.
... while planescape was good for what it was, the huge story emphasis and the old combat system may turn off newer gamers.
Not only that planescape is closer to a visual novel then a game because of its huge over-emphasis on conversations and story, if anything planescape is closer to the cut-scene based dialogue heavy games like Mass effect then it is to oldschool RPG's - true dungeon crawlers, like say eye of the beholder, wizardry, early ultima's, etc.
As far as I'm concerned, PC RPG's from the late 90's like baldurs gate and torment moved away from good dungeon crawling combat of the earliest PC RPG's and their combat systems never felt as well designed as earlier games. I play RPG's for combat, if the combat sucks I'm out. Story is nice to have but I wanted great combat and dungeon crawling before story.
I loved Grimrock for it's attempt to put dungeon crawling back at the fore front (gameplay) over story in RPG's.
Now Grimrocks combat wasn't perfect but I'd love to see new developments in making combat intrinsically rewarding and interesting again, instead of too much resources spent on story/cut-scenes like in modern games and mid to late 90's RPG's like torment. I feel most RPG's over the last 15 or so years have gotten far away from what made old RPG's great - the combat, exploration and puzzle solving. Instead of huge emphasis on cutscenes, story and dialogue.
It's very simple, I'm not proposing a solution. I'm saying that once copyright got its foot in the door it is now impossible to dislodge or moderate because the forces that have an interest in copyright have more money, time and lobbyists on their hands compared to law professors at universities that would like it to be moderated. Hence I pointed you to those sites so that you could learn these things. Looking at the evidence (over 100 years of copyright law). The same arguments for moderate term lengths were made at the beginning of copyright (before there was any such law) but we've seen how that's turned out in practice. It's been an abject failure in that monopoly has been extended effectively indefinitely. When the time comes up to review, who wants to bet it will be extended and special exceptions will be made again? Where would you put your money?
Most people advocating for "moderate reform" have already shown themselves ignorant because copyright has been abused for the last 100+ years to a huge extent already. Hence why I linked to the copyright extension act article which also has a graph of all the extensions going back 100+ years.
I was just trying to point out that most people who have opinions on reforming laws are historically illiterate in relation to the history of those laws and how those laws came to be. They don't have an accurate read on how just/unjust laws they grew up with are. The law professors and professionals have argued as opposition (testified before government) that the laws shouldn't be extended for more then a century already and were defeated every time.
The ignorance of regular people makes their opinions about the laws enormously (unintentionally or not) biased on the side of corporations simply by default through corporate media/propaganda. Since most people grew up with those laws and are raised with the perspective that the society in which they exist is not massively corrupt. Most people have difficult time coming to terms with how corrupt laws are that they take as given because of compounded corruption over long periods of time relative to a human lifespan (i.e. the many extensions of copyright going back more then a century or more for instance).
Not to mention the propaganda surrounding Copyright and IP which limits public debate because propagandists's know about the overton window. See here:
"Copyrights is actually a good thing. But like many other thing, too much a good thing can become bad, very very bad."
You're ignorant of the law. People said the same when copyright was first implemented long time ago, the "just the right amount people" have no credibility. See here:
"Why does everyone assume that if they are not interested in something no one is interested in it?"
It's not about interest, it's about usefulness vs what you are paying. I read all sorts of gaming mags back in the pre-internet era. Nintendo power was one of my first magazines but they were supplanted quickly by better magazines even back then by EGM and gamepro. The primary purpose of gaming magazine is to get info on new games for different consoles. The net pretty much replaced mags in this capacity around that time for much cheaper. I don't see how anyone would continue to pay for what you can now get for free.
The end of Nintendo power is proof of this, it's just a little late (about a decade).
You said: "We've had limited success with command-line tools like traceroute and tcpdump,"
Well if she was REALLY interested she would want to know EVERYTHING about it, including the boring parts. Perhaps her interest is misplaced and she doesn't fully grasp that fact?
I mean I was a tinkerer as a kid I had to learn everything about computers by reading things like manuals (I read the dos manual!) and once you learn a few things and mess around the rest becomes second nature the more you do it. If she really DOES have the 'tinkering' gene then she will tinker and learn on her own. An interest as (seemingly) ephemeral as your daughters doesn't seem to me to be very valid. She doesn't seem to be mature enough to understand she's not really as interested as she says she is.
You may have to wait a couple more years if there is anything there. I would venture anyone who is truly interested in a thing doesn't give up so easily.
"Pirates have been clamoring for publishers to adopt a pay-what-you-want model. THQ is trying that out as a temporary offering"
If they were serious they'd remove the DRM. You don't just go for a quick cash grab because your company is bleeding money, shouldn't give the middle finger to people who would LOVE TO SUPPORT HONEST BUSINESS. It would have been a much better move on their part.
Much of the books you find on google are not in user-friendly form and they allow you to find books that you could have NEVER have found in another era. These idiots under-estimate the long-tail of finding books that get lost because of the limited amount of time and attention people have for the limited amount of adspace that exists.
I've found tonnes of books I would never have known about otherwise, these idiots are shooting themselves in the foot.
I know some developers have kept the flame alive but it's been alarmingly inconsistent and not without a sugar coated middle finger in the EULA and other bullshit. The industry is extremely schizophrenic about modding lets face this fact, in the past you could just mod the damn game. Now there is all sorts of legal bullshit. Consider the legal quagmire starcraft 2 mods have now:
This is the kind of double think that is alarming and how successful corporate PR manipulation is on the unsuspecting. I'll change the wording of the other quote to make my point
quote:"But the most important aspect is there is a psychological transformation of the customers and the publishers that has to happen before everything is DRM'd on every platform. We are promoting these steps with other titles we're doing right now in our company."
"Slashdot has always been full of shit, getting older just means you can recognise it a lot faster."
Not quite, I can look at trends in the younger generation that worship Steam and DRM where-as most of the olderschool PC gamers during the 90's detest DRM. Earlier this decade if you made pro-steam worshiping DRM statements you'd be downvoted to oblivion. Now with younger mods/steam fans you see many mods give +5 insightful to more and more glowing comments on Steam DRM. This is a generational transformation and you see it in the modding trends of what gets modded up/down or just left alone/ignored.
Now this doesn't mean all young adults/teens/kids like DRM it just means kids tend to accept what they grow up with and don't question what has always been there. Think about the differences of growing up on command line operating systems like DOS vs say windows xp or windows 7 with fully functional web browsers plus easy-mode steamstore. Huge difference. Night and day kind of difference.
Kids/teens don't know what has been lost/don't care. People who grew up during the earlier gaming (pre online only games) era are hugely disappointed by the downright criminal changes in the industry because they WATCHED the industry grow from when it was tiny so they have superior understanding and perspective. They were there during game-modding golden years of Quake/duke/doom/etc that has been smothered (Supcom 2 was locked down and made difficult to mod at publisher request). Games like diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 have been increasingly fucked with because of publishers greed.
Not only that, kids are ripe for corporate PR manipulation. Just see this article here where the talk about 'engineering' psychological changes via PR campaigns for the acceptance of F2P / online DRM.
Quote:"But the most important aspect is there is a psychological transformation of the customers and the publishers that has to happen before everything is F2P on every platform. We are promoting these steps with other titles we're doing right now in our company."
Slashdot Mirror
... of trying to apply copyright and property like rights when applied to non-scarce information.
The reality is as long as human beings are greedy/territorial/assholes they will push their authoritarian agenda of trying to control what other people do for their own gain on others. As copyright and "intellectual property" stand now it acts as a back door dictatorship and is a subversive way to take away peoples freedoms. The whole idea of needing permission to use a product you've bought is nonsense, the whole idea of needing permission to REPAIR a product you've bought is nonsense. The whole idea of kids not being allowed to recreate older works and updating them is nonsense. Reality is the law is absurd and politicians cave to whoever throws the most money at them and forget everybody else, the thing they are most worried about is THEIR CUT and not much else.
We've seen the beginning of insane property laws in Europe when applied to steam games as "steam products", where you can resell steam games but steam gets a cut of the sold copy you sold. It's fucking ridiculous especially when you consider the cost of replication - in practice essentially zero. The whole end game of DRM was to prevent gamers from owning their games and being able to resell them. Europe is trying to half-hazardly come up with a solution but in practice it's still a god damn comedic clusterfuck when compared to the fact that you can get a "used copy" for free off the net. Piracy is a natural outcome of insane laws which were predicted at the beginning of copyright. Companies have too many rights and privileged and much of the public is too uninformed / unconcerned.
The following should be allowed under SANE laws fan remakes and ability to get source-code for games to fix and update them as well as games going into libraries as cultural works, as the laws currently stand a cubic ass tonne of abandonware/old stuff is just junked and it is done on purpose to control the market so companies 'don't have to compete' with their older works. Being able to shut down game servers/etc/take game code hostage on the other side of the internet is just bullshit.
Fan remake of chrono trigger discontinued
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
Freespace 2 open - exists because authors were benevolent enough to release it but it should be required by law that all game assets/source go into library an opened up after a fixed number of years so works can be fixed/updated to run on new platforms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ
As it is corporations have it good with the ability to milk a finite amount of work for much more then it cost to make it which is a dead-weight loss for everyone elses creativity and energy.
I have no idea what you are talking about since I don't subscribe to any ideology. Nice fabrication there. I know both parties are sold out, but they are sold out to hard core capitalists/corporatists. i.e. they sold out 'for money'. This is the natural state of capitalist societies since capitalism is a totalizing system that erodes everything in it's path for profits.
We know that both parties are sold out, but the idea we need to go back to the golden days of 'free markets' at this point is something someone politically illiterate would say. Markets lead to this outcome. So the any kind of resistance will be seen as 'anti capitalist' necessarily de-facto by the simple minded.
There are people of all stripes regardless of ideology that speak against then the things they don't like this does not make them X or Y ideologue, it means they have principles.
"That the public doesn't turn out to protest every horrible bill that way."
This is a dangerous an naive point of view. I think everyone would benefit from watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
There's been an ongoing effort to manufacture consent and manage public perception so that people are pitted against one another and don't grasp what their real interests are. Not only that all private media is complicit in shaping the publics view of the world and most privately owned media is totally right wing / pro capitalism / imperalism / establishment while playing the ignorant public about their true political stance.
http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/
... on what are the main factors that drive your typing speed. I'd go find some smart people / physicists and get some data to figure out where you are weak (in typing) first and what possible avenues you could take.
... the internet sucked back then. Websites and web interfaces were crappy, and while many modern websites are bloated and have usability issues there has been a huge improvement.
Also the emergence of easy to use blogging software has been probably one of the most important developments on the internet IMHO. The problem with nostalgic views of the internet is that the internet 'back then' was highly fragmented and often disorganized. Often times sites would have broken links or not be updated properly because the sites owner was not technically literate or committed any time to his or her site because of barriers to entry (tweaking web pages in html manually, or using cumbersome html software).
While the internet has "narrowed". I think what people really morn is the stupid masses getting online. This is really about "I wish the internet populated by intelligent/nerdy tech minded people and not the stupid hacks and poseurs we find today". To some extent this is true but it has also brought in a lot of smart non-technical people posting interesting stuff online because software/blog-packages/whatever have become easy enough to use without having to know much about computers.
As much as people might want to morn 4chan and reddit for the stupid people they attract, having such a wide range of people accessing a single site means important issues can be discovered and disseminated quickly because there are more people online.
"Humans are gradually getting less violent."
But is this because humans are less violent, or tools of war (WMD) are acting as a check on how violent we can be and not suffer total annihilation in the process? Consider if Japan had nukes when truman dropped the bomb, would he have dropped the bomb? Probably not.
Humans are violent in calculated ways and their still exists lots of violence in modern societies the violence just takes different forms (bullying, being ripped off, etc).
"That's interpretation not translation."
Interpretation _is required_ for translation, all translations are *acts of interpretation*. To translate one statement to another you have to be able to tell what it is first (an act of interpreting what you are seeing).
Not only that in this era we're dealing with interpreting languages that are living and have context. More importantly I work in this area. You CAN reconstruct meanings because all languages have a basic subset of functions that compose ALL concepts at their foundation.
What you see on the surface of language 'the text' is not TRUE language. Not only that you can figure out whether concepts are poorly constructed or not. That is, whether they have been properly conceptualized. All words in language go through a conceptualization phase and errors in this phase can be teased apart.
A bit on human reasoning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Most of the reasoning you do is not accessible to your awareness, you'd have to have enough background to truly grasp what I'm saying.
All concepts and statements are derived from the universe, you can break down concepts into simpler elements and reconceptualize them to bridge the gap. Most ideas that "don't translate" are poorly conceptualized you can decompose poorly conceptualized ideas and meanings in other languages into more basic elements then re conceptualize it more accurately so that you can communicate it. The same way we make up new words and concepts, you can do the reverse -- break down ideas into their simplest elements, look for sloppy thinking/errors and re-conceive them and invent a new word and updated definition that gets across the ideas on the fly.
"How many people reading this intentionally pay more tax than they are strictly required to?"
Believe it or not, there are people who understand the value of taxes. Eric is just an asshole.
http://patrioticmillionaires.net/
"Is is a reasonable price maybe 4 years ago"
No it is a reasonable price for 16:10 the problem is that people are cheap. 16:9 monitors cheapness comes from economies of scale for televisions so they can be sold for much cheaper.
Not only that the 16:10 I linked is IPS panel therefore its going to be higher quality. Most LCD monitors are the lowest grade you can get. 16:10 naturally caters to enthusiasts that have some level of technology literacy unlike the ignorant masses.
ASUS has good 16:10's at a reasonable price.
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=73621&vpn=PA248Q&manufacture=ASUS&promoid=1306
... while planescape was good for what it was, the huge story emphasis and the old combat system may turn off newer gamers.
Not only that planescape is closer to a visual novel then a game because of its huge over-emphasis on conversations and story, if anything planescape is closer to the cut-scene based dialogue heavy games like Mass effect then it is to oldschool RPG's - true dungeon crawlers, like say eye of the beholder, wizardry, early ultima's, etc.
As far as I'm concerned, PC RPG's from the late 90's like baldurs gate and torment moved away from good dungeon crawling combat of the earliest PC RPG's and their combat systems never felt as well designed as earlier games. I play RPG's for combat, if the combat sucks I'm out. Story is nice to have but I wanted great combat and dungeon crawling before story.
I loved Grimrock for it's attempt to put dungeon crawling back at the fore front (gameplay) over story in RPG's.
http://www.grimrock.net/
Now Grimrocks combat wasn't perfect but I'd love to see new developments in making combat intrinsically rewarding and interesting again, instead of too much resources spent on story/cut-scenes like in modern games and mid to late 90's RPG's like torment. I feel most RPG's over the last 15 or so years have gotten far away from what made old RPG's great - the combat, exploration and puzzle solving. Instead of huge emphasis on cutscenes, story and dialogue.
"That must be annoying to type in every time."
Not if you have a modern password manager.
http://www.roboform.com/
"I do not follow your logic."
It's very simple, I'm not proposing a solution. I'm saying that once copyright got its foot in the door it is now impossible to dislodge or moderate because the forces that have an interest in copyright have more money, time and lobbyists on their hands compared to law professors at universities that would like it to be moderated. Hence I pointed you to those sites so that you could learn these things. Looking at the evidence (over 100 years of copyright law). The same arguments for moderate term lengths were made at the beginning of copyright (before there was any such law) but we've seen how that's turned out in practice. It's been an abject failure in that monopoly has been extended effectively indefinitely. When the time comes up to review, who wants to bet it will be extended and special exceptions will be made again? Where would you put your money?
Most people advocating for "moderate reform" have already shown themselves ignorant because copyright has been abused for the last 100+ years to a huge extent already. Hence why I linked to the copyright extension act article which also has a graph of all the extensions going back 100+ years.
I was just trying to point out that most people who have opinions on reforming laws are historically illiterate in relation to the history of those laws and how those laws came to be. They don't have an accurate read on how just/unjust laws they grew up with are. The law professors and professionals have argued as opposition (testified before government) that the laws shouldn't be extended for more then a century already and were defeated every time.
The ignorance of regular people makes their opinions about the laws enormously (unintentionally or not) biased on the side of corporations simply by default through corporate media/propaganda. Since most people grew up with those laws and are raised with the perspective that the society in which they exist is not massively corrupt. Most people have difficult time coming to terms with how corrupt laws are that they take as given because of compounded corruption over long periods of time relative to a human lifespan (i.e. the many extensions of copyright going back more then a century or more for instance).
Not to mention the propaganda surrounding Copyright and IP which limits public debate because propagandists's know about the overton window. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Most discussion about such things (copyright, etc) is already significantly tainted for many reasons.
"Copyrights is actually a good thing. But like many other thing, too much a good thing can become bad, very very bad."
You're ignorant of the law. People said the same when copyright was first implemented long time ago, the "just the right amount people" have no credibility. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
Copyright has been extended EVERY single time, there was not a time where copyright was NOT extended at request of corporations/greedy rich stars.
For those interested in the law and history of law relating to copyright see here:
http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/opposingcopyrightextension/default.htm
And this speech for good measure for all the "copyright moderates". The same thing was said long before you all were born.
http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/opposingcopyrightextension/commentary/MacaulaySpeeches.html
My personal view is there is not going to be a legal solution forthcoming because most human beings are not concerned/too ignorant/stupid/illiterate.
... on media secrecy. Techdirt has more here:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121201/01525121195/doubling-down-secrecy-itu-believes-secret-media-strategy-key-to-avoiding-sopaacta-fate.shtml
"I like this idea a lot, and wonder how this could occur.. "
Open source browsers IMHO. I've always thought that web browsers would be a great point to introduce fully encrypted instant messenging/voice over IP.
"Why does everyone assume that if they are not interested in something no one is interested in it?"
It's not about interest, it's about usefulness vs what you are paying. I read all sorts of gaming mags back in the pre-internet era. Nintendo power was one of my first magazines but they were supplanted quickly by better magazines even back then by EGM and gamepro. The primary purpose of gaming magazine is to get info on new games for different consoles. The net pretty much replaced mags in this capacity around that time for much cheaper. I don't see how anyone would continue to pay for what you can now get for free.
The end of Nintendo power is proof of this, it's just a little late (about a decade).
... this long considering magazines really haven't been relevant since the late 90's early 2000's for gaming.
... really wants.
You said: "We've had limited success with command-line tools like traceroute and tcpdump,"
Well if she was REALLY interested she would want to know EVERYTHING about it, including the boring parts. Perhaps her interest is misplaced and she doesn't fully grasp that fact?
I mean I was a tinkerer as a kid I had to learn everything about computers by reading things like manuals (I read the dos manual!) and once you learn a few things and mess around the rest becomes second nature the more you do it. If she really DOES have the 'tinkering' gene then she will tinker and learn on her own. An interest as (seemingly) ephemeral as your daughters doesn't seem to me to be very valid. She doesn't seem to be mature enough to understand she's not really as interested as she says she is.
You may have to wait a couple more years if there is anything there. I would venture anyone who is truly interested in a thing doesn't give up so easily.
"Pirates have been clamoring for publishers to adopt a pay-what-you-want model. THQ is trying that out as a temporary offering"
If they were serious they'd remove the DRM. You don't just go for a quick cash grab because your company is bleeding money, shouldn't give the middle finger to people who would LOVE TO SUPPORT HONEST BUSINESS. It would have been a much better move on their part.
... doesn't understand the internet.
Much of the books you find on google are not in user-friendly form and they allow you to find books that you could have NEVER have found in another era. These idiots under-estimate the long-tail of finding books that get lost because of the limited amount of time and attention people have for the limited amount of adspace that exists.
I've found tonnes of books I would never have known about otherwise, these idiots are shooting themselves in the foot.
"What has gone up since then?"
I know some developers have kept the flame alive but it's been alarmingly inconsistent and not without a sugar coated middle finger in the EULA and other bullshit. The industry is extremely schizophrenic about modding lets face this fact, in the past you could just mod the damn game. Now there is all sorts of legal bullshit. Consider the legal quagmire starcraft 2 mods have now:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/19/blizzard-vs-the-fan-made-starcraft-mmo/
"Steam is not DRM "
This is the kind of double think that is alarming and how successful corporate PR manipulation is on the unsuspecting. I'll change the wording of the other quote to make my point
quote :"But the most important aspect is there is a psychological transformation of the customers and the publishers that has to happen before everything is DRM'd on every platform. We are promoting these steps with other titles we're doing right now in our company."
"Slashdot has always been full of shit, getting older just means you can recognise it a lot faster."
Not quite, I can look at trends in the younger generation that worship Steam and DRM where-as most of the olderschool PC gamers during the 90's detest DRM. Earlier this decade if you made pro-steam worshiping DRM statements you'd be downvoted to oblivion. Now with younger mods/steam fans you see many mods give +5 insightful to more and more glowing comments on Steam DRM. This is a generational transformation and you see it in the modding trends of what gets modded up/down or just left alone/ignored.
Now this doesn't mean all young adults/teens/kids like DRM it just means kids tend to accept what they grow up with and don't question what has always been there. Think about the differences of growing up on command line operating systems like DOS vs say windows xp or windows 7 with fully functional web browsers plus easy-mode steamstore. Huge difference. Night and day kind of difference.
Kids/teens don't know what has been lost/don't care. People who grew up during the earlier gaming (pre online only games) era are hugely disappointed by the downright criminal changes in the industry because they WATCHED the industry grow from when it was tiny so they have superior understanding and perspective. They were there during game-modding golden years of Quake/duke/doom/etc that has been smothered (Supcom 2 was locked down and made difficult to mod at publisher request). Games like diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 have been increasingly fucked with because of publishers greed.
Not only that, kids are ripe for corporate PR manipulation. Just see this article here where the talk about 'engineering' psychological changes via PR campaigns for the acceptance of F2P / online DRM.
Quote:"But the most important aspect is there is a psychological transformation of the customers and the publishers that has to happen before everything is F2P on every platform. We are promoting these steps with other titles we're doing right now in our company."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-12-ditching-far-cry-piracy-gameplay-and-just-about-breaking-even-crytek-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-the-crysis-series