History is far from over and marx was developing a theory of how society develops over time, just because capitalism has won a few battles today does not mean over the long term it won't be transformed from within into something much more along what marx predicted. Most human beings don't take a long term historical view of things, the winds of history change over time. Everyone cheering capitalism as it exists today won't be around to see what happens tomorrow.
You think your views are the last word on capitalism's history? All the contradictions of capitalism are still there underneath waiting for the right circumstances, the right level of intelligence, the right level of technology to ignite them. It could very well be that there are more "economic shocks" on the way with disruptive technology (robots/AI) that will force the issue socializing production even more then it is today or you will have revolution/war.
Capitalism is a flawed human system and american bullshit you've swalled is proof. I don't expect serious intellectual criticism of capitalism on slashdot because it is beyond the ken of most americans because they are indoctrinated since the day they were born.
A lot of crime is self-inflicted by so called wealthier citizens upon themselves by neglecting their communities through greed and hoarding. Capitalist society ensures "crime" but much crime in capitalist society is clearly preventable with more equitable distribution of wealth. When people live necessitous lives
You'd all do well to read FDR's economic bill of rights where he says:
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”[2] People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
"Then buy DRM-free games and support the developers who think like you."
Morons and ignorant people out-number discerning members of the population by a large margin. You can't change a society that is completely moronic/ignorant and simply doesn't care.
The game linked to is part of a very popular game/genre called - tower defense, most indie games cannot get that kind of uptake. Tower defense type games are pretty big and widely known, most indie games never get anywhere close.
... suck. It must be said that developing games is exceedingly time consuming and cost prohibitive exercise. There's too much work that has to go into a game before you'll even get noticed. Not to mention all the great free games on sites like kongregate.
You'd have to be out of your mind or very skilled to develop games, and all of your team members have to be firing on all cylinders over the long haul of the games development. There's just too many people in game development with too few high quality skills.
" Believe me, nobody would have invested in creating these in the first place without the guaranteed monopoly that copyright protection provides."
What a bunch of garbage, piracy has been around since the beginning of time and games were still being made even when entire countries (china) pirate almost completely.
In the real world games would still be produced, it's this lying to ourselves that people aren't creative/industrious and hence we need the copyright nanny state to intervene. Other businesses would pick up the slack of their was no copyright, it's too lucrative.
"Or, when you were a kid you learned to like a certain style of gameplay, and game development grew away from that over time. In that case, it makes perfect sense to go back and play the great games you missed, rather than wasting time on games that aren't intended to give you that classic experience."
There are many great old game designs that just don't have enough meat on them because the content/quality bar has been pushed up. Most old designs don't suffer from out-right bad design, rather they suffer from you having seen it all before, hence there is a need to add new ideas and mix them with the old. Old games suffer from you having seen it all before, not that their basic design is incorrect.
... it's not that you want the game to play as it was when you were a kid. When you were a KID you were at the beginning of game design, as game design advances in a genre or area your expectation bar moves higher. The real issue is that developers don't know or are too afraid of revamping old games. They are afraid of updating the design by what has been learned since the old games release. And quite frankly I think too many developers are out of touch and don't have it in them anymore and thats why we end up with graphics refreshes with the exact same old game template.
There's tonnes many fans would love to add to old games if they had the skills/got the chance. I often wonder what Chrono resurrection aand possible other fan remakes/spin offs would look like if it wasn't for the copyright nazi's.
... there are fantastic 'teach yourself' books now published. There are primers that explain everything step by step. C++ console programming is perfect for beginners once you have c++ primer plus. It is one of the best books I have found for having the most cogent pedagogy. Stephen is really good at explaining everything so that you "Get it", plus it also gives you a language that *has power* so you're not stuck in la-la land.
Kurzweil is an eccentric charlatan who is making money off the gullible nerds who can't see through is bs. If anything he is a good manipulator.
People believe what they want to believe because it takes too much energy, talent and hard work to build sufficient knowledge to see through the bullshit. Most people who believe in that futurism have no background in any major scientific discipline related to his predictions what-so-ever. Big companies like Intel thought in the future we would have 10 Ghz processors unfortunately it turned out leakage and heat became a real issue and we get multi-core CPU's, more ghz may come back eventually but it will take new discoveries/processes that will likely take decades to complete. Sometimes technology gets stuck for a long time until solutions are found or something entirely different altogether emerges.
The problem is the free market is an abstraction, the real issue is that money buys laws so corporations can redefine reality to suit their liking at the whim of our corrupt system.
The government is just an abstract term, the problem is _ideology of the people themselves_ in business and government who subscribe to this procorporate cocksucking. Has nothing to do with some abstract bogey man.
Unfortunately there are right and wrong answers to these questions. First - people should be able to own their software #1, #2 any software that is broken/disabled/jacked like these guys just did get sued or have their rights to their properties revoked as some kind of penalty. Playing legal footsie and buying laws is the real issue which has nothing to do with anti-government american ideology and more to do with the ideology of the people who come to inhabit these institutions.
Problem is everyone thinks there opinion/interests when corporations don't really even deserve a seat at the table because of the millions of times more power and influence they have then the average person. There are tonnes of academics/philosophers that could easily deal with these issues in a fair way that doesn't deny the rights of creative people but at the same doesn't deny the customers rights at the same time. Problem is corporations and greedy game makers want to have their cake and eat it to.
.. with DRM and intellectual property these companies will get what they want because the theory of educated discriminating buyer is incorrect, and also is not how human beings work. Free market theory is based on a misunderstanding of human beings and human reason. The whole idea of "Freely chosen" transactions is a myth because advertising, ignorance and propaganda.
As we've clearly seen people won't defend their rights because the informed are outnumbered by the uninformed, incompetent and illiterate.
"Asking users what they think is generally a bad approach to game development."
If the game industry of the last 10 years is anything to go by they need a lot more feedback. I think what you meant to say was - most feedback isn't very useful but that that top 10-20% of feedback is golden. What game developers really need is feedback from people who have a good skills articulating what is good/bad with the game.
Feedback is good, the problem is getting quality feedback is hard. If you think the game industry needs LESS feedback Just look at all the shooters compared to other genre's. Not to mention many first party franchises on all platforms are start showing weakness in their designs which can only be exposed through criticism.
... is that the better designed levels are in the later half of the game. The thing that really bothered me though is that it tries to be a modern rail shooter but it absolutely sucks at it. The design feels schizophrenic. Like they wanted to take the game in too many directions and it shows through in the game
Too much of the game takes place in boring drab places like the whole dam/warehouse near the end of the game. That and the enemies don't feel 'alive' they feel like plastic toys, they have no real life in them. The guns in the game though have to be the worst, many of them just aren't fun to use and the stupid limits they put on the weapons/items is just ridiculous.
"that therefore you should be born being entitled to someone else's work?"
That's not even an argument you are too unsophisticated to even understand the concept of limits and that there are flaws on institutions (like money, property, legal system, etc) that require effort to unmask. It's not as simple as "I worked on it therefore I deserve to earn the world" (like current property laws).
Jefferson would totally disapprove of the copyright monopoly he actively fought against monopoly for a reason.
"The only way to stop those idealogies from impacting more people was to physically stop those who were acting under them."
Man you are really ignorant of history, there is NO justification for pro-active war. You must be american. Seriously you are an ignorant human being completely indoctrinated. How many corrupt dictatorships has the US been supporting? How many people's has the US killed and dispossessed in it's history? Seriously I can't believe you'd even say that given the downright hypocrisy of capitalisms warmongering history before stalin and hitler even existed. You have to understand that WW1 and WW2 were fundamentally capitalist wars. That capitalism has killed just as many people and still does to this very day through the for profit system (i.e. denial of healthcare for instance, suicide, mental illness, poor working conditions).
"Amazon doesn't get to use guns to make you buy its products."
Amazon and companies like it buy laws wholesale, there is NO DIFFERENCE a dictatorship of capital is the same as government. Problem is people are ignorant and mindless they do not 'choose' because most people are illiterate and unconcerned about their rights as long as they are well fed and have their distractions.
In theory elected officials are supposed to protect the people from this influence, in reality the government is just an extension of the corporate-military-market complex.
Note that most of americas wars fought for corporate interests/ideological reasons, not because they were necessary.
Again with this stupid argument, consider all the people who are jobless right now who didn't CHOOSE to be jobless who didn't CHOOSE not to have the money to start their own business, who didn't CHOOSE to be born into a particular family or school system. Who did not choose to be born into a capitalist society. This naive idea that people 'choose' in capitalist society has to go. No one chose the enclosure of the commons in England. There are all sorts of logistical problems with the 'argument of choice' because in the real world things are governed by natural laws and natural processes that upend that the idea of 'free exchange'. Free exchange can only exist between equals and those who have bargaining power, otherwise it is just another form of tyranny.
Not to mention Jefferson was totally against the idea of corporations having the influence they now possess. The american revolution was against the corporate hegemony of the British east india company.
"Well, obviously this calls for a single world-wide government to tax one group and provide a living for another group"
We already have this, they are called corporations. The names are just different, why aren't corporations privately taxing one group (consumers) and giving it to another group (shareholders) while at the same time denying their customers rights and flouting the law? There is little difference today between giant corporations and government except the name by which one calls them.
... have stopped having worthy intellectuals. One can look at the rise of neoconservatism in the US and the right wing think tanks everywhere spewing their anti-global warming garbage and many people with degree's or PHD's after their name from corporately funded schools. Corporations have highjacked the educational systems in order to spin ideology and misinformation into the curriculum and it's spreading. There is tonnes of misinformation all over the net with think tanks and special websites funded by billionaires.
Slashdot Mirror
History is far from over and marx was developing a theory of how society develops over time, just because capitalism has won a few battles today does not mean over the long term it won't be transformed from within into something much more along what marx predicted. Most human beings don't take a long term historical view of things, the winds of history change over time. Everyone cheering capitalism as it exists today won't be around to see what happens tomorrow.
You think your views are the last word on capitalism's history? All the contradictions of capitalism are still there underneath waiting for the right circumstances, the right level of intelligence, the right level of technology to ignite them. It could very well be that there are more "economic shocks" on the way with disruptive technology (robots/AI) that will force the issue socializing production even more then it is today or you will have revolution/war.
Wrong
Capitalism is a flawed human system and american bullshit you've swalled is proof. I don't expect serious intellectual criticism of capitalism on slashdot because it is beyond the ken of most americans because they are indoctrinated since the day they were born.
... who gets to defining what a crime is?
A lot of crime is self-inflicted by so called wealthier citizens upon themselves by neglecting their communities through greed and hoarding. Capitalist society ensures "crime" but much crime in capitalist society is clearly preventable with more equitable distribution of wealth. When people live necessitous lives
You'd all do well to read FDR's economic bill of rights where he says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”[2] People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
... don't put it on the internet.
Most security is a dream anyway when dealing with fallible human beings. The really important stuff should be protected, other stuff not so much.
... code is good enough.
There are times when code reviews make sense and times where they don't, having the wisdom to know the difference is key.
"Then buy DRM-free games and support the developers who think like you."
Morons and ignorant people out-number discerning members of the population by a large margin. You can't change a society that is completely moronic/ignorant and simply doesn't care.
The game linked to is part of a very popular game/genre called - tower defense, most indie games cannot get that kind of uptake. Tower defense type games are pretty big and widely known, most indie games never get anywhere close.
... suck. It must be said that developing games is exceedingly time consuming and cost prohibitive exercise. There's too much work that has to go into a game before you'll even get noticed. Not to mention all the great free games on sites like kongregate.
Can your indie game compare to a free game like villainous?
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Rete/villainous
You'd have to be out of your mind or very skilled to develop games, and all of your team members have to be firing on all cylinders over the long haul of the games development. There's just too many people in game development with too few high quality skills.
" Believe me, nobody would have invested in creating these in the first place without the guaranteed monopoly that copyright protection provides."
What a bunch of garbage, piracy has been around since the beginning of time and games were still being made even when entire countries (china) pirate almost completely.
In the real world games would still be produced, it's this lying to ourselves that people aren't creative/industrious and hence we need the copyright nanny state to intervene. Other businesses would pick up the slack of their was no copyright, it's too lucrative.
"yet he continues to idle and collect more items."
Human reasoning/activity is not conscious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
"Or, when you were a kid you learned to like a certain style of gameplay, and game development grew away from that over time. In that case, it makes perfect sense to go back and play the great games you missed, rather than wasting time on games that aren't intended to give you that classic experience."
There are many great old game designs that just don't have enough meat on them because the content/quality bar has been pushed up. Most old designs don't suffer from out-right bad design, rather they suffer from you having seen it all before, hence there is a need to add new ideas and mix them with the old. Old games suffer from you having seen it all before, not that their basic design is incorrect.
... it's not that you want the game to play as it was when you were a kid. When you were a KID you were at the beginning of game design, as game design advances in a genre or area your expectation bar moves higher. The real issue is that developers don't know or are too afraid of revamping old games. They are afraid of updating the design by what has been learned since the old games release. And quite frankly I think too many developers are out of touch and don't have it in them anymore and thats why we end up with graphics refreshes with the exact same old game template.
There's tonnes many fans would love to add to old games if they had the skills/got the chance. I often wonder what Chrono resurrection aand possible other fan remakes/spin offs would look like if it wasn't for the copyright nazi's.
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
... there are fantastic 'teach yourself' books now published. There are primers that explain everything step by step. C++ console programming is perfect for beginners once you have c++ primer plus. It is one of the best books I have found for having the most cogent pedagogy. Stephen is really good at explaining everything so that you "Get it", plus it also gives you a language that *has power* so you're not stuck in la-la land.
http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Plus-5th-Stephen-Prata/dp/0672326973/
Kurzweil is an eccentric charlatan who is making money off the gullible nerds who can't see through is bs. If anything he is a good manipulator.
People believe what they want to believe because it takes too much energy, talent and hard work to build sufficient knowledge to see through the bullshit. Most people who believe in that futurism have no background in any major scientific discipline related to his predictions what-so-ever. Big companies like Intel thought in the future we would have 10 Ghz processors unfortunately it turned out leakage and heat became a real issue and we get multi-core CPU's, more ghz may come back eventually but it will take new discoveries/processes that will likely take decades to complete. Sometimes technology gets stuck for a long time until solutions are found or something entirely different altogether emerges.
The problem is the free market is an abstraction, the real issue is that money buys laws so corporations can redefine reality to suit their liking at the whim of our corrupt system.
The government is just an abstract term, the problem is _ideology of the people themselves_ in business and government who subscribe to this procorporate cocksucking. Has nothing to do with some abstract bogey man.
Unfortunately there are right and wrong answers to these questions. First - people should be able to own their software #1, #2 any software that is broken/disabled/jacked like these guys just did get sued or have their rights to their properties revoked as some kind of penalty. Playing legal footsie and buying laws is the real issue which has nothing to do with anti-government american ideology and more to do with the ideology of the people who come to inhabit these institutions.
Problem is everyone thinks there opinion/interests when corporations don't really even deserve a seat at the table because of the millions of times more power and influence they have then the average person. There are tonnes of academics/philosophers that could easily deal with these issues in a fair way that doesn't deny the rights of creative people but at the same doesn't deny the customers rights at the same time. Problem is corporations and greedy game makers want to have their cake and eat it to.
.. with DRM and intellectual property these companies will get what they want because the theory of educated discriminating buyer is incorrect, and also is not how human beings work. Free market theory is based on a misunderstanding of human beings and human reason. The whole idea of "Freely chosen" transactions is a myth because advertising, ignorance and propaganda.
As we've clearly seen people won't defend their rights because the informed are outnumbered by the uninformed, incompetent and illiterate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
"Asking users what they think is generally a bad approach to game development."
If the game industry of the last 10 years is anything to go by they need a lot more feedback. I think what you meant to say was - most feedback isn't very useful but that that top 10-20% of feedback is golden. What game developers really need is feedback from people who have a good skills articulating what is good/bad with the game.
Feedback is good, the problem is getting quality feedback is hard. If you think the game industry needs LESS feedback Just look at all the shooters compared to other genre's. Not to mention many first party franchises on all platforms are start showing weakness in their designs which can only be exposed through criticism.
More like thank you corporations, your government is bought and paid for by these corporate criminals.
... is that the better designed levels are in the later half of the game. The thing that really bothered me though is that it tries to be a modern rail shooter but it absolutely sucks at it. The design feels schizophrenic. Like they wanted to take the game in too many directions and it shows through in the game
Too much of the game takes place in boring drab places like the whole dam/warehouse near the end of the game. That and the enemies don't feel 'alive' they feel like plastic toys, they have no real life in them. The guns in the game though have to be the worst, many of them just aren't fun to use and the stupid limits they put on the weapons/items is just ridiculous.
"that therefore you should be born being entitled to someone else's work?"
That's not even an argument you are too unsophisticated to even understand the concept of limits and that there are flaws on institutions (like money, property, legal system, etc) that require effort to unmask. It's not as simple as "I worked on it therefore I deserve to earn the world" (like current property laws).
Jefferson would totally disapprove of the copyright monopoly he actively fought against monopoly for a reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBZTeEviWcE
"The only way to stop those idealogies from impacting more people was to physically stop those who were acting under them."
Man you are really ignorant of history, there is NO justification for pro-active war. You must be american. Seriously you are an ignorant human being completely indoctrinated. How many corrupt dictatorships has the US been supporting? How many people's has the US killed and dispossessed in it's history? Seriously I can't believe you'd even say that given the downright hypocrisy of capitalisms warmongering history before stalin and hitler even existed. You have to understand that WW1 and WW2 were fundamentally capitalist wars. That capitalism has killed just as many people and still does to this very day through the for profit system (i.e. denial of healthcare for instance, suicide, mental illness, poor working conditions).
"Amazon doesn't get to use guns to make you buy its products."
Amazon and companies like it buy laws wholesale, there is NO DIFFERENCE a dictatorship of capital is the same as government. Problem is people are ignorant and mindless they do not 'choose' because most people are illiterate and unconcerned about their rights as long as they are well fed and have their distractions.
In theory elected officials are supposed to protect the people from this influence, in reality the government is just an extension of the corporate-military-market complex.
Note that most of americas wars fought for corporate interests/ideological reasons, not because they were necessary.
"I can choose not to buy from Amazon."
Again with this stupid argument, consider all the people who are jobless right now who didn't CHOOSE to be jobless who didn't CHOOSE not to have the money to start their own business, who didn't CHOOSE to be born into a particular family or school system. Who did not choose to be born into a capitalist society. This naive idea that people 'choose' in capitalist society has to go. No one chose the enclosure of the commons in England. There are all sorts of logistical problems with the 'argument of choice' because in the real world things are governed by natural laws and natural processes that upend that the idea of 'free exchange'. Free exchange can only exist between equals and those who have bargaining power, otherwise it is just another form of tyranny.
Not to mention Jefferson was totally against the idea of corporations having the influence they now possess. The american revolution was against the corporate hegemony of the British east india company.
Read here:
http://soundingcircle.com/newslog2.php/__show_article/_a000195-000205.htm
"Well, obviously this calls for a single world-wide government to tax one group and provide a living for another group"
We already have this, they are called corporations. The names are just different, why aren't corporations privately taxing one group (consumers) and giving it to another group (shareholders) while at the same time denying their customers rights and flouting the law? There is little difference today between giant corporations and government except the name by which one calls them.
... have stopped having worthy intellectuals. One can look at the rise of neoconservatism in the US and the right wing think tanks everywhere spewing their anti-global warming garbage and many people with degree's or PHD's after their name from corporately funded schools. Corporations have highjacked the educational systems in order to spin ideology and misinformation into the curriculum and it's spreading. There is tonnes of misinformation all over the net with think tanks and special websites funded by billionaires.