To be frank Win95 was a necessary evil but ultimately a LOW POINT for many of us who actually used the old systems (dos / Win 3.1) and many of their apps. Even though Win95 had it's technical merits. It didn't get better till 98 and finally 2K / XP basically got to where Win95 should have been earlier in terms of stability, etc.
The early versions of direct X were just downright shameful, try loading up an old copy of Mechwarrior 2 for windows if you want to see what I mean. Lots of old programs did moronic things (like try to forcefully install old versions of direct x, etc).
There was a lot of BS windows caused IMHO in the shift to win9x/NT and it's children. The introduction of the windows registry is BY FAR the most evil thing windows brought into existence, no longer were applications EASILY migratable by a simple directory copy, you had to worry about programs migrating a bunch of BS in the registry, and the accumulation of "windows cruft" which slowly slows down the MS os's until one has to reinstall, even XP needs a re-install now and then if you are a heavy user constantly moving apps into and out of your system.
Who here is annoyed that programs are no longer self contained and have their own copy of.dll or whatever special library/drivers/etc they need? I think people here are forgetting all the awful crud that Win95/98/2K and XP introduced us to: The mammoth registry system and apps being able to secretly write to registry without your permission or say so behind the scenes, how many registry entries that perform different functions are named with those god awful {ABC123-XXXXZ-NNN} etc registry keys? There is a lot of cruft IMHO with the registry system and there was still DLL hell (and other similar things like it) until windows XP. I know I haven't FORGOTTEN about all the BS.
To be frank Win95 was a necessary evil but ultimately a LOW POINT for many of us who actually used the old systems (dos / Win 3.1) and many of their apps. Even though Win95 had it's technical merits. It didn't get better till 98 and finally 2K / XP basically got to where Win95 should have been earlier in terms of stability, etc. The early versions of direct X were just downright shameful, try loading up an old copy of Mechwarrior 2 for windows if you want to see what I mean. Lots of old programs did moronic things (like try to forcefully install old versions of direct x, etc). There was a lot of BS windows caused IMHO in the shift to win9x/NT and it's children.
The introduction of the windows registry is BY FAR the most evil thing windows brought into existence, no longer were applications EASILY migratable by a simple directory copy, you had to worry about programs migrating a bunch of BS in the registry, and the accumulation of "windows cruft" which slowly slows down the MS os's until one has to reinstall, even XP needs a re-install now and then if you are a heavy user constantly moving apps into and out of your system.
Who here is annoyed that programs are no longer self contained and have their own copy of.dll or whatever special library/drivers/etc they need?
I think people here are forgetting all the awful crud that Win95/98/2K and XP introduced us to: The mammoth registry system and apps being able to secretly write to registry without your permission or say so behind the scenes, how many registry entries that perform different functions are named with those god awful {ABC123-XXXXZ-NNN} etc registry keys? There is a lot of cruft IMHO with the registry system and there was still DLL hell (and other similar things like it) until windows XP.
I know I haven't FORGOTTEN about all the BS.
I didn't say content creators can't charge for what they make, my problem is the idea that IDEAS are property, this is the biggest bullshit ever. When someone copies music, movie or a game they, the owner is NOT deprived of the work, they are deprived of income, but then there's the abuse of IP: Profitting off stuff forever or lockout and abuse of other peoples property rights by claiming they only 'liscense' property, which is just BS, we wouldn't tolerate this in any other sector (i.e. someone 'liscenses' you your car, but you never own it when you buy it and you can't messs with it or have it fixed by a third party).
Property is all about monopoly, and IP is about protecting ideas/information so they must be forced to become public domain after a set period. Otherwise you get IP dictators... it's the same problem people have with inheriting wealth, a small group of people suck up and basically control the other 90%.
There aren't any easy answers, things like Freespace 2 SCP are only possible at an IP owners behest, which is complete BS. Every gamer who paid for FS2 owns a chunk of FS2 and should have a say in opening up the source after it's sales period.
Lots of IP just sits there and lays fallow, and allows companies to endlessly profit off a finite amount of work (i.e. infinite supply but negligable cost to reproduce), which is basically a form of rent seeking.
"The OP is not looking for a definition of the illogic of certain property statements--they are looking for a reasonable solution to the current mish-mash of conflicting property laws. If your proposed solution is to dispense with property laws altogether, so be it--but using examples like "air" or "the sun" does not advance the logic of your arguments."
Well considering I Was just commenting but not making an argument. My argument is not to dispense with property but to show why it exists: To solve problems, when it is NOT solving problems without infringing on the rights of the commons then it is quite correct to dispense with what is not useful.
As for the 'logic' of property, there is no logic, only rationalizations. Property is ultimately based on psychology and power dynamics, it certainly doesn't exist all by itself. My examples with air and the sun, just goes to show you that property laws exist only where there is force to enforce it. The harder they are to enforce the harder it is to give justification for property law, but even then all property is based on power not logic. And ultimately much intellectual property prevents progress by locking away knowledge and information.
The only solution to IP and DRM is to for companies to adapt to non-scarcity. If food somehow became non scarce tomorrow, anyone who sought to control it would be seen as a dictator. According to supply and demand, companies should not be able to make any money at all considering when one looks at supply and demand curves of labor, the more supply, usually the less value it has. This mysteriously doesn't apply to IP like easily copyable games, music, etc.
What boggles my mind is that this is not about economics but culture, an economic argument is one that takes into account the supply of said item, which in many domains of IP is infinte.
Consider the idea that IP can't be owned by consumers (i.e. currently games and source code are never 'owned' but 'liscensed') the idea that the person buying and supporting your product never owns it is probably one of the worst things about IP and IP law. History has shown companies want to lock down consumers and take away THEIR property rights where it becomes a form of rent seeking (i.e. you pay for the priveledge of access but have no rights to said object or IP despite paying for it).
It's all about money and power over others when it comes down to it. The people will vote with their money, IMHO the only solution is for companies to fail and it to become political, there are lots of solutions the problem is with
1) Companies who only care about profit (i.e. lobbying, etc) 2) Apathetic consumers/civilians (not understanding, nor demanding their rights)
The average person can't compete with armies of professionals paid to game the politcal system. I don't see any easy solutions besides government involvement but only when there is a critical mass or outcry against x,y and z will things ever change.
"It's my land, my idea, my property, and you can go find your own"
It's my air, you can't breath it unless you pay me rent. See how silly this kind of thinking is? The only reason people get away with land monopoly is because it's easy to enforce, try enforcing a breathable air monopoly. It's very difficult and you'd be right to kill the person that attempted to do so.
This idea that property is a natural right is a farce, can someone own the sun or instance? You didn't create the sun, nor the earth, nor even yourself. Do I have a right to own people because I worked and invested money and all the resources in them? By your logic slavery should be perfectly legal, and you can own people and can be treat them as objects.
The truth is property rights are inconsistent across the board, people are made of the land, and when you create another human being you're investing resources and you're labor, yet we no longer allow the ownership of people, yet all they are is re-organized land.
Property Rights are just our backwards rationalization trying to solve complex problems and jusfify ou dominance over others in a world of scarcity, prejudice and mutual distrust and stupidity. Property is a form of tyranny when in the hands if idiots no matter which way you slice it, individual property rights ultimately has to compete with the rights of others and the common good. Any property someone owns they did not create, they merely re-organized what already existed.
An entire team of over 100 people spending literally 3 or more years of their life 60-70 hours a week for 3 years does not compare to some VA dude who comes in and works 90 days for less then 8 hours a day. If you were on the dev team (say you're in a lowly position like QA which gets paid shit, near minimum wage) and some chump who worked 90 odd days making $1000 day saying he wants royalties is simply inane, games aren't like movies at all. VA's are not central to the game, rockstar sold millions before all the fancy VA.
VA's do like less then %1 of the work, a VA is like someone who brings you coffee in an office of rocket scientists. The guy who brought you coffee should not be payed $100K considering what they contributed to the rocket.
"If you want people to respect the GPL then you must respect copyright law in general"
I don't believe this is the case at all, copyright law has been extended and abused by corporations in ways that in no way should be tolerated by any sane society. But because most people are uneducated and are not very tech savvy/overloaded with other issues that absorb their time. Corporations get away with murder in giving themselves special privledges to endlessly protect 'copyrighted works', when's the last time something became public domain?
Next is the issue of NON SCARCITY, in the age of the internet 'consumer socialism' is quite possible because of the non-scarcity.
We use laws and scarcity based economic systems only because of scarcity, when non-scarcity occurs the society reacts with old outmoded ways of thinking (scarciy based thinking).
If food somehow became non-scarce tomorrow and as easily acquired as digital goods, we'd see anyone who tried to protect their special hold over it a dictator. The funny part is we don't see these corporations as political entities they really are.
There is no economy that is not political, all transactions are political transactions, whether one is aware of it or not.
" movie.:-/ But actors (at least the GOOD ones) are NOT interchangeable."
I'm sorry but you're just wrong, James bond had different actors, and it didn't 'ruin it'. I have no doubt that actors play their role but sooner or later technology is going to get so good that most actors will be out of a job and the ones that do exist will be seen for nostalgia and cult purposes, I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime but if we've learned anything from science it's that NO ONE is irreplacable.
"Why does this dumb actor, who just recited the lines given to him is more important than the people who scripted those lines, people who provided the content and context that provided entertainment to the user,feel entitled to a share of the profits?"
He's a tool who has no understanding of the game industry, it's obvious, he doesn't understand that his job is practically irrelevant to the sales, he just wants a free ride on the backs of the developers, not unlike what publishers already do to developers.
"shame the historical facts squarely contradict it. Google "tragedy of the commons," or for a more concrete and squalid example look up the history of the Cabrini Green project in Chicago."
Google externality.
Right now private property allows people to offload risks onto people who do not want them, we might call this the tragedy of property where private individuals get to socialize private risks. People socialize private risks all the time and it's unavoidable in many circumstances, the world is always connected to itself. We can point to the defects of the private property system by pointing to all the bail outs, sub prime mortage crisis. Property vs non-property both have their uses, none of which should be over-extended. i.e. patents, copyrights, etc.
"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."--Plato
This is exactly why property rights have to be carefully examined and not over-extended, since private property is a form of power, and like all power, it corrupts.
... voice actors don't add that much to a game, the fact that he got 100,000 (more then most people make in a year) for the teeniest amount of work compared to the average worker, is just fucking appalling.
I'd rather give those bonus's to the dev's that actually deserve it who spend 60-70 hours a week, then to some greedy VA, who does jack shit, when compared to the massive engineering that coders and artists and others on the team have to do.
VA's do not add anywhere near the value that the actual team does, they're spoilt and the game industry should not cater to these fucks. I'd rather hire amateur VA's off the street then some hollywood fucktard.
Don't lump all human beings in the same boat, there were societies much more advanced ethically then we are in the past. If anything our society is regressive in many areas.
This idea that : "When land is held "in common" that just tends to mean a free for all where everyone grabs as much as he can of what's valuable about it as fast as he can before someone else beats him to it, with zero thought for the future"
Is pure bullshit, perhaps you've never read the bible? or other ancient documents about planning 6-7 generations AHEAD, in capitalist society we don't do any of that, we consume technology and radicually change the landscape to suit our lifestyle, like it's going out of style.
If anything the 21st century will be about the 'tragedy of private property' and the mass IRRESPONSIBILITY and shortsighted cultures it created.
"I'd love to see a graphics processor that could be programmed to create graphics that look like classical hand-drawn animation."
Isn't this what shaders (and other like technology) are for? Most current hardware can do this I would imagine, it's a matter of art direction and developing the tools / models to make it look right.
Much of what you are speaking of is done in the animation industry in Japan (for anime), Animes like Ghost in the shell Stand alone use plugins to do so to do so.
"The problem with this visual rendering of software you suggest is that any non-trivial program is going to turn into a monstrosity of flow charts that would probably require tens of thousands of pages to print on paper. A single line of code could potentially be a few different boxes in a language like C."
That's only if you designed what I'm talking about like a moron. Technically a bridge has as many parts as their are atoms (and even more if you down deep enough), but we CONGLOMERATE those parts into those 13 thousand (i.e. they are generalized to bigger structures), the bridge is EXACTLY like the software program with millions and millions of subunits that don't have to be taken into account in engineering a bridge, you can do the SAME with software, you have a terrible lack of imagination. Many of those millions of lines can be generalized into bigger pieces, and can be ignored. Just like our bridge, you forget that's just what we do.
For instance: We have chemists (engineers) and structural engineers, many products require both even though their jobs don't usually overlap. The same goes for computer science.
"The reason software engineering isn't like civil engineering is that while a bridge has maybe a few tens of thousands of parts, a computer program has the equivalent of hundreds of millions of parts"
if the moon would be used for anything I'm sure it would be used as a weapons platform when the tech becomes available, that in and of itself may actually happen.
"we really need to start growing up and using the tools the mathematicians have provided us"
Mathematicians are only part of the answer unfortunately, there needs to be standardization in functions and code, so coders do not have to rewrite the wheel.
I've been thinking a bout making a completely visual compiler where you should not have to code in abstract numerics and other function statements beyond construction, all mathematical statemetns and programming statements can be virtiualized and rendered into a virtual 3D environment, and represented in a flowchart like format but much more like a diagram of an electric circuit and with things like what the size of X is and it's computational *load* on the cpu and whatnot.
Software engineering tools are really really bad, what really needs to be done is taking the math and expressing it as geometry in standardized ways IMHO so that you can actually *engineer* stuff, virtual structures and visual shapes and understand and visualize what the hell you are actually coding so that you can see the mistakes in the structure visually, since visualization is very very powerful and highly underutilized in software engineering,
I may have not described my ideas very well but hopefully those reading my posts get the idea, that software engineering has a lot in common with circuit design and should borrow and modify principles and concepts from hardware side in terms of expressing their programming and math in a format akin to electricity flowing through a circuit, etc.
Speaking as someone who walked off 50 lbs in four months, walking is enough if you do A LOT of it, i.e. 3-4 hrs 7 days/week, you have to go by distance over time walked, i.e. you count distance, not time. All it takes is some balls and commitment and you can makeup for it on days off and what have you, one of people's biggest reason for not losing wait is making excuses and having become accustomed to bad habits.
thats the only way to 'standardize' pc gaming is by making your own gameconsole and make sure it COMES with a keyboard and mouse and that you subsidize the hardware to be cost competitive with other game consoles.
That's really the only option is to beat console makers at their own game, but you'd be in for a 'war of attrition' like the Xbox had where it was losing money hand over fist for a while.
All other attempts are half-baked hardware guys sole reason for existence is some market has a need for them to make it, games, scientific apps and servers are pretty much the only thing that needs that kind of performance until the next killer app hits. No, what's needed is a mass market killer app that requires mucho increasing horsepower that people are willing to pay for.
Is often not talked about here. Engineering is a heavy subject and if you want to have a life outside of work and prospects for decent pay in the future, why would you go into engineering? Unless you are the rare bird with a very high intelligence and have the speed to back it up so it doesn't impact your quality of life, in that you can get more work over a sane period of time.
... that people don't care what OS they use, they care about OS like they care about screw drivers. Does it get the job done for what I want it to do?
Most people are too time strapped to diddle around on the computer, considering the modern person works most of his adult life, why anyone would expect the majority of people to want to switch OS's is pretty naive.
Linux has a niche but the truth is piracy has a lot to do with why linux will never be totally mainstream, installing another OS has to have some benefit over the one you are using. I've used windows 99% of my life and linux for the average user is quite transparent, most users don't care about technical stuff, they only care about the apps they themselves use. There has to be such a major switch in efficiency / speed or usability for me to switch an OS and linux is just not it, even though from a technical standpoint I am down with the linux concept from a user perspective who doesn't want to have to dick around with stuff, windows 'just works'.
There's a reason why console game machines have an advantage over PC's with OS's - platform stability. The average user doesn't have to worry about spending time maintaining his system, since if you get seriously into tech it's like having a 2nd full time job.
When I was younger I used to fix other peoples PC's, now that I'm older I just don't want to spend the time fixing others problems.
The next killer app is automating management, delivery and maintenance of applications without user intervention and that can intelligently roll back if something is borked (by accident).
"If it is correct that the fact that millions of people are distributing tunes and movies for free is depriving the folks in LA County who make music and movies of their income, then, yeah, I'd say there is a big impact on the LA economy. "
Why is it depriving someone of money, instead of seeing these peoples talents as unskilled labour? Why do loombreakers get pissed on but entertainers can fleece us now that technology exists that devalues their work? Come on this is just bullshit. Copyrighted works are not scarce once produced, we'd call someone who tried to milk an infinite food supply a tyrant, so it is with copyright militants.
The truth is copyright allows significant market abuse given population size, why should someone pay individually per copy, when the cost to produce said goods is quite negligable to what they rake in in money?
The profit margins in certain industries are quite enormous since they get to take advantage of economies of scale most people simply can't.
... it's just that no one has done it right yet. Personally the ability to edit, copy, cut and paste text from books or make 'clip marks' is a BOON. I'm sure many of us do this already manually through either: Bookmarks, or cut-paste to notepad or other word processor/blog/what have you.
Would you go back to regular mail from email? I wouldn't. The ability to search my email and find things from a long time ago is just way too useful to go back to using bulky dead-tree mail. The same goes for books, ever wanted to share something with someone that you read somewhere... there's lots of quote farms online but there are lots of other things you'd love to quote or read online but it is locked behind copyright. Right now I LOVE being able to use google for books but HATE being locked out of the book itself (only getting one page, etc).
I wish we could just subsidize copyright for written works since the internet makes locking up written work a kind of pointless thing if you believe in progress. How many insights and advances are now being stumbled onto because of the net and being able to mine the collective data human beings produce? A lot I would say.
Re:These reactions scare me
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"While these are valid opinions, folks who call for fewer cutscenes in games scare me"
Perhaps you've never played FFX, there's a point at when cutscenes get tedious, cutscenes should be saved for the awesome parts of the game (i.e. Odin cutscene in FF9 for instance), many cutscenes rendered in game with bad art and are just characters talking endlessly while you bash your brain wanting to skip it.
I don't mind games having a movie-esque feel, I loved MGS 3, but MGS 3 was at least A GOOD GAME minus the cutscenes, other games you can't exactly say the same thing as their gameplay has gotten stale.
... programs are still only as fast as their slowest link.
Re:Anyone else remember when the economy was stron
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Disillusioned With IT?
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"We have all the resources to do it. Unfortunately it seems so many are willing to accept a "dog eat dog" society. We are moving backwards, not forwards...."
Such is the seeds of capitalist society where your value and status as a human being is determined by your income and what kind of job you do.
Emphasis on objects and idealogy over people and their needs is the main culprit. But socialists and others have been preaching that for a long time on deaf ears, then there is the 'turnover' factor, children who've never experienced hardship become jaded and want to drag society backwards because of their selfish/materialist and other destructive bents.
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To be frank Win95 was a necessary evil but ultimately a LOW POINT for many of us who actually used the old systems (dos / Win 3.1) and many of their apps. Even though Win95 had it's technical merits. It didn't get better till 98 and finally 2K / XP basically got to where Win95 should have been earlier in terms of stability, etc.
.dll or whatever special library/drivers/etc they need? I think people here are forgetting all the awful crud that Win95/98/2K and XP introduced us to: The mammoth registry system and apps being able to secretly write to registry without your permission or say so behind the scenes, how many registry entries that perform different functions are named with those god awful {ABC123-XXXXZ-NNN} etc registry keys? There is a lot of cruft IMHO with the registry system and there was still DLL hell (and other similar things like it) until windows XP. I know I haven't FORGOTTEN about all the BS.
The early versions of direct X were just downright shameful, try loading up an old copy of Mechwarrior 2 for windows if you want to see what I mean. Lots of old programs did moronic things (like try to forcefully install old versions of direct x, etc).
There was a lot of BS windows caused IMHO in the shift to win9x/NT and it's children. The introduction of the windows registry is BY FAR the most evil thing windows brought into existence, no longer were applications EASILY migratable by a simple directory copy, you had to worry about programs migrating a bunch of BS in the registry, and the accumulation of "windows cruft" which slowly slows down the MS os's until one has to reinstall, even XP needs a re-install now and then if you are a heavy user constantly moving apps into and out of your system.
Who here is annoyed that programs are no longer self contained and have their own copy of
To be frank Win95 was a necessary evil but ultimately a LOW POINT for many of us who actually used the old systems (dos / Win 3.1) and many of their apps. Even though Win95 had it's technical merits. It didn't get better till 98 and finally 2K / XP basically got to where Win95 should have been earlier in terms of stability, etc. The early versions of direct X were just downright shameful, try loading up an old copy of Mechwarrior 2 for windows if you want to see what I mean. Lots of old programs did moronic things (like try to forcefully install old versions of direct x, etc). There was a lot of BS windows caused IMHO in the shift to win9x/NT and it's children. The introduction of the windows registry is BY FAR the most evil thing windows brought into existence, no longer were applications EASILY migratable by a simple directory copy, you had to worry about programs migrating a bunch of BS in the registry, and the accumulation of "windows cruft" which slowly slows down the MS os's until one has to reinstall, even XP needs a re-install now and then if you are a heavy user constantly moving apps into and out of your system. Who here is annoyed that programs are no longer self contained and have their own copy of .dll or whatever special library/drivers/etc they need?
I think people here are forgetting all the awful crud that Win95/98/2K and XP introduced us to: The mammoth registry system and apps being able to secretly write to registry without your permission or say so behind the scenes, how many registry entries that perform different functions are named with those god awful {ABC123-XXXXZ-NNN} etc registry keys? There is a lot of cruft IMHO with the registry system and there was still DLL hell (and other similar things like it) until windows XP.
I know I haven't FORGOTTEN about all the BS.
I didn't say content creators can't charge for what they make, my problem is the idea that IDEAS are property, this is the biggest bullshit ever. When someone copies music, movie or a game they, the owner is NOT deprived of the work, they are deprived of income, but then there's the abuse of IP: Profitting off stuff forever or lockout and abuse of other peoples property rights by claiming they only 'liscense' property, which is just BS, we wouldn't tolerate this in any other sector (i.e. someone 'liscenses' you your car, but you never own it when you buy it and you can't messs with it or have it fixed by a third party).
Property is all about monopoly, and IP is about protecting ideas/information so they must be forced to become public domain after a set period. Otherwise you get IP dictators... it's the same problem people have with inheriting wealth, a small group of people suck up and basically control the other 90%.
There aren't any easy answers, things like Freespace 2 SCP are only possible at an IP owners behest, which is complete BS. Every gamer who paid for FS2 owns a chunk of FS2 and should have a say in opening up the source after it's sales period.
Lots of IP just sits there and lays fallow, and allows companies to endlessly profit off a finite amount of work (i.e. infinite supply but negligable cost to reproduce), which is basically a form of rent seeking.
"The OP is not looking for a definition of the illogic of certain property statements--they are looking for a reasonable solution to the current mish-mash of conflicting property laws. If your proposed solution is to dispense with property laws altogether, so be it--but using examples like "air" or "the sun" does not advance the logic of your arguments."
Well considering I Was just commenting but not making an argument. My argument is not to dispense with property but to show why it exists: To solve problems, when it is NOT solving problems without infringing on the rights of the commons then it is quite correct to dispense with what is not useful.
As for the 'logic' of property, there is no logic, only rationalizations. Property is ultimately based on psychology and power dynamics, it certainly doesn't exist all by itself. My examples with air and the sun, just goes to show you that property laws exist only where there is force to enforce it. The harder they are to enforce the harder it is to give justification for property law, but even then all property is based on power not logic. And ultimately much intellectual property prevents progress by locking away knowledge and information.
The only solution to IP and DRM is to for companies to adapt to non-scarcity. If food somehow became non scarce tomorrow, anyone who sought to control it would be seen as a dictator. According to supply and demand, companies should not be able to make any money at all considering when one looks at supply and demand curves of labor, the more supply, usually the less value it has. This mysteriously doesn't apply to IP like easily copyable games, music, etc.
What boggles my mind is that this is not about economics but culture, an economic argument is one that takes into account the supply of said item, which in many domains of IP is infinte.
Consider the idea that IP can't be owned by consumers (i.e. currently games and source code are never 'owned' but 'liscensed') the idea that the person buying and supporting your product never owns it is probably one of the worst things about IP and IP law. History has shown companies want to lock down consumers and take away THEIR property rights where it becomes a form of rent seeking (i.e. you pay for the priveledge of access but have no rights to said object or IP despite paying for it).
It's all about money and power over others when it comes down to it. The people will vote with their money, IMHO the only solution is for companies to fail and it to become political, there are lots of solutions the problem is with
1) Companies who only care about profit (i.e. lobbying, etc)
2) Apathetic consumers/civilians (not understanding, nor demanding their rights)
The average person can't compete with armies of professionals paid to game the politcal system. I don't see any easy solutions besides government involvement but only when there is a critical mass or outcry against x,y and z will things ever change.
"It's my land, my idea, my property, and you can go find your own"
It's my air, you can't breath it unless you pay me rent. See how silly this kind of thinking is? The only reason people get away with land monopoly is because it's easy to enforce, try enforcing a breathable air monopoly. It's very difficult and you'd be right to kill the person that attempted to do so.
This idea that property is a natural right is a farce, can someone own the sun or instance? You didn't create the sun, nor the earth, nor even yourself. Do I have a right to own people because I worked and invested money and all the resources in them? By your logic slavery should be perfectly legal, and you can own people and can be treat them as objects.
The truth is property rights are inconsistent across the board, people are made of the land, and when you create another human being you're investing resources and you're labor, yet we no longer allow the ownership of people, yet all they are is re-organized land.
Property Rights are just our backwards rationalization trying to solve complex problems and jusfify ou dominance over others in a world of scarcity, prejudice and mutual distrust and stupidity. Property is a form of tyranny when in the hands if idiots no matter which way you slice it, individual property rights ultimately has to compete with the rights of others and the common good. Any property someone owns they did not create, they merely re-organized what already existed.
A small theater is nothing like game development.
An entire team of over 100 people spending literally 3 or more years of their life 60-70 hours a week for 3 years does not compare to some VA dude who comes in and works 90 days for less then 8 hours a day. If you were on the dev team (say you're in a lowly position like QA which gets paid shit, near minimum wage) and some chump who worked 90 odd days making $1000 day saying he wants royalties is simply inane, games aren't like movies at all. VA's are not central to the game, rockstar sold millions before all the fancy VA.
VA's do like less then %1 of the work, a VA is like someone who brings you coffee in an office of rocket scientists. The guy who brought you coffee should not be payed $100K considering what they contributed to the rocket.
"If you want people to respect the GPL then you must respect copyright law in general"
I don't believe this is the case at all, copyright law has been extended and abused by corporations in ways that in no way should be tolerated by any sane society. But because most people are uneducated and are not very tech savvy/overloaded with other issues that absorb their time. Corporations get away with murder in giving themselves special privledges to endlessly protect 'copyrighted works', when's the last time something became public domain?
Next is the issue of NON SCARCITY, in the age of the internet 'consumer socialism' is quite possible because of the non-scarcity.
We use laws and scarcity based economic systems only because of scarcity, when non-scarcity occurs the society reacts with old outmoded ways of thinking (scarciy based thinking).
If food somehow became non-scarce tomorrow and as easily acquired as digital goods, we'd see anyone who tried to protect their special hold over it a dictator. The funny part is we don't see these corporations as political entities they really are.
There is no economy that is not political, all transactions are political transactions, whether one is aware of it or not.
" movie. :-/ But actors (at least the GOOD ones) are NOT interchangeable."
I'm sorry but you're just wrong, James bond had different actors, and it didn't 'ruin it'. I have no doubt that actors play their role but sooner or later technology is going to get so good that most actors will be out of a job and the ones that do exist will be seen for nostalgia and cult purposes, I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime but if we've learned anything from science it's that NO ONE is irreplacable.
"Why does this dumb actor, who just recited the lines given to him is more important than the people who scripted those lines, people who provided the content and context that provided entertainment to the user ,feel entitled to a share of the profits?"
He's a tool who has no understanding of the game industry, it's obvious, he doesn't understand that his job is practically irrelevant to the sales, he just wants a free ride on the backs of the developers, not unlike what publishers already do to developers.
"shame the historical facts squarely contradict it. Google "tragedy of the commons," or for a more concrete and squalid example look up the history of the Cabrini Green project in Chicago."
Google externality.
Right now private property allows people to offload risks onto people who do not want them, we might call this the tragedy of property where private individuals get to socialize private risks. People socialize private risks all the time and it's unavoidable in many circumstances, the world is always connected to itself. We can point to the defects of the private property system by pointing to all the bail outs, sub prime mortage crisis. Property vs non-property both have their uses, none of which should be over-extended. i.e. patents, copyrights, etc.
"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."--Plato
This is exactly why property rights have to be carefully examined and not over-extended, since private property is a form of power, and like all power, it corrupts.
... voice actors don't add that much to a game, the fact that he got 100,000 (more then most people make in a year) for the teeniest amount of work compared to the average worker, is just fucking appalling.
I'd rather give those bonus's to the dev's that actually deserve it who spend 60-70 hours a week, then to some greedy VA, who does jack shit, when compared to the massive engineering that coders and artists and others on the team have to do.
VA's do not add anywhere near the value that the actual team does, they're spoilt and the game industry should not cater to these fucks. I'd rather hire amateur VA's off the street then some hollywood fucktard.
Don't lump all human beings in the same boat, there were societies much more advanced ethically then we are in the past. If anything our society is regressive in many areas.
This idea that : "When land is held "in common" that just tends to mean a free for all where everyone grabs as much as he can of what's valuable about it as fast as he can before someone else beats him to it, with zero thought for the future"
Is pure bullshit, perhaps you've never read the bible? or other ancient documents about planning 6-7 generations AHEAD, in capitalist society we don't do any of that, we consume technology and radicually change the landscape to suit our lifestyle, like it's going out of style.
If anything the 21st century will be about the 'tragedy of private property' and the mass IRRESPONSIBILITY and shortsighted cultures it created.
"I'd love to see a graphics processor that could be programmed to create graphics that look like classical hand-drawn animation."
Isn't this what shaders (and other like technology) are for? Most current hardware can do this I would imagine, it's a matter of art direction and developing the tools / models to make it look right.
Much of what you are speaking of is done in the animation industry in Japan (for anime), Animes like Ghost in the shell Stand alone use plugins to do so to do so.
Also see games like: Rogue Galaxy (PS2) which shaded 3D models like traditionally drawn anime characters. http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/rpg/roguegalaxy/index.html
Tech wasn't perfect but I was impressed.
"The problem with this visual rendering of software you suggest is that any non-trivial program is going to turn into a monstrosity of flow charts that would probably require tens of thousands of pages to print on paper. A single line of code could potentially be a few different boxes in a language like C."
That's only if you designed what I'm talking about like a moron. Technically a bridge has as many parts as their are atoms (and even more if you down deep enough), but we CONGLOMERATE those parts into those 13 thousand (i.e. they are generalized to bigger structures), the bridge is EXACTLY like the software program with millions and millions of subunits that don't have to be taken into account in engineering a bridge, you can do the SAME with software, you have a terrible lack of imagination. Many of those millions of lines can be generalized into bigger pieces, and can be ignored. Just like our bridge, you forget that's just what we do.
For instance: We have chemists (engineers) and structural engineers, many products require both even though their jobs don't usually overlap. The same goes for computer science.
"The reason software engineering isn't like civil engineering is that while a bridge has maybe a few tens of thousands of parts, a computer program has the equivalent of hundreds of millions of parts"
Which I've already answered above.
if the moon would be used for anything I'm sure it would be used as a weapons platform when the tech becomes available, that in and of itself may actually happen.
"we really need to start growing up and using the tools the mathematicians have provided us"
Mathematicians are only part of the answer unfortunately, there needs to be standardization in functions and code, so coders do not have to rewrite the wheel.
I've been thinking a bout making a completely visual compiler where you should not have to code in abstract numerics and other function statements beyond construction, all mathematical statemetns and programming statements can be virtiualized and rendered into a virtual 3D environment, and represented in a flowchart like format but much more like a diagram of an electric circuit and with things like what the size of X is and it's computational *load* on the cpu and whatnot.
Software engineering tools are really really bad, what really needs to be done is taking the math and expressing it as geometry in standardized ways IMHO so that you can actually *engineer* stuff, virtual structures and visual shapes and understand and visualize what the hell you are actually coding so that you can see the mistakes in the structure visually, since visualization is very very powerful and highly underutilized in software engineering,
I may have not described my ideas very well but hopefully those reading my posts get the idea, that software engineering has a lot in common with circuit design and should borrow and modify principles and concepts from hardware side in terms of expressing their programming and math in a format akin to electricity flowing through a circuit, etc.
"walking isn't enough"
Speaking as someone who walked off 50 lbs in four months, walking is enough if you do A LOT of it, i.e. 3-4 hrs 7 days/week, you have to go by distance over time walked, i.e. you count distance, not time. All it takes is some balls and commitment and you can makeup for it on days off and what have you, one of people's biggest reason for not losing wait is making excuses and having become accustomed to bad habits.
thats the only way to 'standardize' pc gaming is by making your own gameconsole and make sure it COMES with a keyboard and mouse and that you subsidize the hardware to be cost competitive with other game consoles.
That's really the only option is to beat console makers at their own game, but you'd be in for a 'war of attrition' like the Xbox had where it was losing money hand over fist for a while.
All other attempts are half-baked hardware guys sole reason for existence is some market has a need for them to make it, games, scientific apps and servers are pretty much the only thing that needs that kind of performance until the next killer app hits. No, what's needed is a mass market killer app that requires mucho increasing horsepower that people are willing to pay for.
Is often not talked about here. Engineering is a heavy subject and if you want to have a life outside of work and prospects for decent pay in the future, why would you go into engineering? Unless you are the rare bird with a very high intelligence and have the speed to back it up so it doesn't impact your quality of life, in that you can get more work over a sane period of time.
... that people don't care what OS they use, they care about OS like they care about screw drivers. Does it get the job done for what I want it to do?
Most people are too time strapped to diddle around on the computer, considering the modern person works most of his adult life, why anyone would expect the majority of people to want to switch OS's is pretty naive.
Linux has a niche but the truth is piracy has a lot to do with why linux will never be totally mainstream, installing another OS has to have some benefit over the one you are using. I've used windows 99% of my life and linux for the average user is quite transparent, most users don't care about technical stuff, they only care about the apps they themselves use. There has to be such a major switch in efficiency / speed or usability for me to switch an OS and linux is just not it, even though from a technical standpoint I am down with the linux concept from a user perspective who doesn't want to have to dick around with stuff, windows 'just works'.
There's a reason why console game machines have an advantage over PC's with OS's - platform stability. The average user doesn't have to worry about spending time maintaining his system, since if you get seriously into tech it's like having a 2nd full time job.
When I was younger I used to fix other peoples PC's, now that I'm older I just don't want to spend the time fixing others problems.
The next killer app is automating management, delivery and maintenance of applications without user intervention and that can intelligently roll back if something is borked (by accident).
"If it is correct that the fact that millions of people are distributing tunes and movies for free is depriving the folks in LA County who make music and movies of their income, then, yeah, I'd say there is a big impact on the LA economy. "
Why is it depriving someone of money, instead of seeing these peoples talents as unskilled labour? Why do loombreakers get pissed on but entertainers can fleece us now that technology exists that devalues their work? Come on this is just bullshit. Copyrighted works are not scarce once produced, we'd call someone who tried to milk an infinite food supply a tyrant, so it is with copyright militants.
The truth is copyright allows significant market abuse given population size, why should someone pay individually per copy, when the cost to produce said goods is quite negligable to what they rake in in money?
The profit margins in certain industries are quite enormous since they get to take advantage of economies of scale most people simply can't.
... it's just that no one has done it right yet. Personally the ability to edit, copy, cut and paste text from books or make 'clip marks' is a BOON. I'm sure many of us do this already manually through either: Bookmarks, or cut-paste to notepad or other word processor/blog/what have you.
Would you go back to regular mail from email? I wouldn't. The ability to search my email and find things from a long time ago is just way too useful to go back to using bulky dead-tree mail. The same goes for books, ever wanted to share something with someone that you read somewhere... there's lots of quote farms online but there are lots of other things you'd love to quote or read online but it is locked behind copyright. Right now I LOVE being able to use google for books but HATE being locked out of the book itself (only getting one page, etc).
I wish we could just subsidize copyright for written works since the internet makes locking up written work a kind of pointless thing if you believe in progress. How many insights and advances are now being stumbled onto because of the net and being able to mine the collective data human beings produce? A lot I would say.
"While these are valid opinions, folks who call for fewer cutscenes in games scare me"
Perhaps you've never played FFX, there's a point at when cutscenes get tedious, cutscenes should be saved for the awesome parts of the game (i.e. Odin cutscene in FF9 for instance), many cutscenes rendered in game with bad art and are just characters talking endlessly while you bash your brain wanting to skip it.
I don't mind games having a movie-esque feel, I loved MGS 3, but MGS 3 was at least A GOOD GAME minus the cutscenes, other games you can't exactly say the same thing as their gameplay has gotten stale.
... programs are still only as fast as their slowest link.
"We have all the resources to do it. Unfortunately it seems so many are willing to accept a "dog eat dog" society. We are moving backwards, not forwards...."
Such is the seeds of capitalist society where your value and status as a human being is determined by your income and what kind of job you do.
Emphasis on objects and idealogy over people and their needs is the main culprit. But socialists and others have been preaching that for a long time on deaf ears, then there is the 'turnover' factor, children who've never experienced hardship become jaded and want to drag society backwards because of their selfish/materialist and other destructive bents.