Heh, I've had experience with commercial film companies and fansubs.
A few years back, I had too much time on my hands, and an itch to watch certain foreign movies that (then) had no publicly available English translation. Not to be outdone just because I was monolingual, I downloaded the films themselves from the internet, downloaded subtitles for *other* languages (French, Spanish and Portuguese) and proceeeded to convert the subtitles into English, using a mixture of google translate, perl, online dictionaries, hand-editing and mass rewatching of parts of the film, until I got something that looked roughly right to me, at the time. It took a pile of time, but as I say, I had too much time on my hands.
When I was done I finally got to watch the film, then uploaded the files to some subtitle database on the internet in case others found it helpful, which apparently a few people did. No matter that what I did had a lot of wrong bits (the hardest part is catching local idioms, which aren't well-documented, even on a place as comprehensive as the internet).
Fast forward a few years, and I spot DVD versions of one of these films on Amazon complete with English subtitles and buy it instantly. Finally, I'll get to see the film with properly translated subtitles, rather than some botch job by someone who didn't know what they were doing. And, of course, it turned out that the Korean company that packaged the DVD had just downloaded my subtitles from the internet, made some small alterations and slapped them on the DVD itself (sadly, not correcting the most obvious mistakes I'd made).
Seems some of these film companies will happily take free fan labour (however shoddy!) and sell it on to paying customers without acknowledgement or royalty*, while others will send in jackbooted thugs to have you sent to jail. Such is life.
*I'm not miffed about my work being used like this - I'm just embarrassed at the terrible job I did and hope the customers aren't upset by it!
The Andromeda Strain is the only movie I can think of which depicts actual bona-fide scientists performing something close to actual bona-fide science - there are a number of experiments (including some not overly humane animal experiments) performed by the main cast in order to ascertain the nature of some deadly space plague. What's more, you can actually tell, more or less, how the experiments work and what they're intended to achieve, unlike most science in 'science fiction' films, which generally involve some mad scientist pulling inscrutable levers or pouring green foaming liquid from one test tube into the purple bubbling liquid in the beaker.
Not that I think it would be an easy movie to use to sell science to today's sugar-addicted attention-impaired youth. The film is fairly slow and talky by today's standards, the main characters are mostly rather dowdy and middle-aged, there's more or less no sex or violence, and it's from 1971 and most definitely looks it. The only thing that would make you think otherwise is that, refreshingly, it's not about some lone individual rebel fighting back against/escaping from an oppressive totalitarian government like almost every single mindfucking sci-fi flick made in the English-speaking world between 1965 and 1975. Count the other exceptions, if you like, I'll be surprised if you can think of more than 4 without referring to Halliwell's or the imdb.
Anyways, if you want to see science done almost right in a movie, you can do far worse than the Andromeda Strain.
Candid assessments about Karzai's leadership : DO NOT RELEASE Name calling of the Prince of England : DO NOT RELEASE
The thing is, if Wikileaks redacted cables based on the nature of the content, rather than a few names that might be considered 'at risk', then they would be accused of bias or editorialising or censorship - attacks on Wikileaks' integrity. Far better to release the whole thing and be accused of distributing trivia.
As for the cases you're talking about, Prince Andrew stands a very good chance of becoming King (it just depends on the order in which his mother and brother die in) and the monarch does have a lot of formal powers which can get abused to the detriment of democracy (These powers were used to forcibly deport the islanders of Diego Garcia and to unilaterally depose the Australian Government in 1975). The fact that Prince Andrew is a moronic jingoistic fucknut when there are no TV cameras in the room is actually of some serious public interest.
Thing is, there's a bnetd-derived server running now, called iCCup which is the server of choice for almost anyone playing Starcraft (BroodWar, not 2) these days. Not only does it ignore CD checks but iCCup will offer you a chopped-down copy of Starcraft to play on, if you look hard enough. There doesn't seem to be any great rush from Blizzard to stomp it off the net, either.
Blizzard seems to be ambivalent about iCCup. It has called it a "pirate server", but it has also linked to ongoing iCCup tournaments from the battlenet homepage, which is probably because it has realised that the vast majority of people still playing BroodWar (legitimately as well as otherwise) much prefer iCCup to battlenet, to the extent that if you don't know your iCCup ranking, you really can't call yourself a Starcraft player.
Likely, that's because iCCup has a functioning ladder system, and the admins do keep iCCup relatively free of cheats, and the worst of the foulmouthed little brats you get playing online games, unlike battlenet, which is a cesspool in comparison. The "pirate server" offers, for free, a better service than the one that Starcraft players generally paid for, and Blizzard has realised that allowing overt (if discreet) piracy is a small price to pay for keeping a functioning community centred around some of their products.
Think about it. The RIAA's usual claim is that every downloaded file is a lost sale. and damages should be calculated based on that. Now by asking for this ludicrious figure, they've just put the lie to that previous assertion, since there is absolutely no way in hell that the general public could, or would have paid for $1 trillion worth of their products.
On the other hand, they've just claimed that Limewire has increased the net digital wealth of the world by something of the order of well over $1 trillion, something the RIAA could never have done by themselves. Way to go, Limewire!
Sir, I beg you to try clicking the mouse 3 times a second for half an hour. I assure you it is quite physical.
He's on Slashdot. He probably clicks that fast normally.
Actually, in all seriousness, 3 times a second, or 180 actions per minute) is fast for a starcraft player, but it is too slow for a Korean pro - only the slowest of them, such as Savior, average 200 over a game, while most average an APM Of 300-450 over the course of a 5-60 minute game, and peak at maybe 600 or so.
I can maybe hit 300-400 if I mindlessly spam keypresses and mouseclicks while doing nothing at the start of the game. I can't evisage how anyone actually can click that fast that AND keep track of the units and the tech tree and the base layout and the production buildings and the workers and the scouting and the upgrades and the 2 dozen things you have to worry about in a normal Starcraft game AND try to outwit some other devious bastard at the other end of the internet trying to kill you off all at the same time.
Anyone who says playing Starcraft doesn't involve a physical skill is probably assuming that it's like some other game they happened to play once.
Strangely enough, UKIP is against ACTA, and presumably they're dead against the EU having any secrets whatsoever (given they want it abolished), yet the majority of their MPs voted against this motion. Are they too lazy to bother to read whatever it is they vote on? Did the party functionary who tells them what way to vote make a mistake? Or is UKIP just so instinctively contrarian in Europe that they oppose any EU consensus at all, even when it is in favour of their stated principles?
... who doesn't yet think that Bono is a sanctimonious hypocritical, posturing, corporate shill who is always willing to suck up to any big businessman or politician he can grab a photo opportunity with, no matter how venal?
XP came with an automatic update function. A few years into XP's life, Windows Genuine Advantage was automatically rolled out in a service pack, and once installed it will degrade your computer if Microsoft decides you might be a pirate.
Your nightmare scenario is everyday reality for most people. Pleasant dreams.
I don't follow you. How are either of those two factors relate to the matter of the quality of the official versus unofficial matchmaking servers for Starcraft? Was blizzard's policy 10 years ago to turn battle.net into a retard-infested shithole, but they changed policy 5 years later in time for WoW? Are the people who set up unofficial servers for RTS games somehow a nobler, gentler breed than the unofficial MMO server makers?
The fact I can't follow your non-sequitur logic is hardly surprising, though, because your slashdot ID is divisible by 3.
Surprisingly it's not true of Starcraft, where the iccup server is a more pleasant place to be than battle.net. The players have more skill, newbies like me are far less likely to be stomped on by fairly good players, or worse, hackers, creating '1v1 noobs only' games, there's a ratings system which does, roughly, tell you how good your opponent is likely to be (although the lowest two rankings covers a huge skill range), and it comes with an anti-hack. I'm also led to believe that the admin does act to boot cheats from the ladder, but I've no first-hand experience of that.
And your 'glitch' problem doesn't apply to SC at all of course, since it's a player-hosted RTS, not an MMO.
Hah, this just shows how EFFICIENT Linux is. Until recently, Windows achieved their local privilege escalation vulnerability rollout by having almost every home user running as fully privileged administrator accounts all the time. Linux achieves all this through a small tweak to the kernel build system, thus getting this feature to 100% of Linux users without any manual intervention at all.
Errr, IW aren't providing a network to play on. The network is just a matchmaking service. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it shouldn't be the only option for a game like CoD.
Instead of the server admins, you're at the mercy of whichever user happens to click the 'host' button instead of the 'join' button. If they disconnect in a hissy fit because you fragged them, game over. If they've got a shit connection, or their roommate fires up bittorrent, expect big pings as 32 players flood this poor sap's connection past breaking point. Oh, and say goodbye to mods too, and by extension, the next TF2 or Counterstrike.
In short, the convenience you think you're getting in exchange for your freedom and the existence of a gaming community just isn't there at all.
"mostly when the few servers out there have PunkBuster turned off so you know that's where all the aimbot/wallhack noobs go"
Not to mention those of us who made cod4 go on Linux w/ wine, alas. Cod4's PB doesn't work, since it checks the integrity of various Windows API calls.
Because the EFF acts primarily through legal activity in the US, and in the TI case, it's threatening to defend hobbyists against a tsunami of bogus DMCA takedowns.
Whereas the other instances you cite are using technological methods to prevent modders. Nintendo did take down a homebrew device in Japan, but not in the US. Apple just kicks out anyone it doesn't like from the App store. Obnoxious DRM isn't actually illegal, unfortunately, so the EFF doesn't really have the tools to fight it. When the device makers start firing off lawsuits and/or wrongheaded DMCA takedowns, then the EFF might be able to take an interest.
If you need lawyers to fight lawsuits relating to Your Rights Online, then you might call in the EFF. If you just need technical workarounds for all the DRM in your devices, then it's a job for DVD Jon...
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, I've had experience with commercial film companies and fansubs.
A few years back, I had too much time on my hands, and an itch to watch certain foreign movies that (then) had no publicly available English translation. Not to be outdone just because I was monolingual, I downloaded the films themselves from the internet, downloaded subtitles for *other* languages (French, Spanish and Portuguese) and proceeeded to convert the subtitles into English, using a mixture of google translate, perl, online dictionaries, hand-editing and mass rewatching of parts of the film, until I got something that looked roughly right to me, at the time. It took a pile of time, but as I say, I had too much time on my hands.
When I was done I finally got to watch the film, then uploaded the files to some subtitle database on the internet in case others found it helpful, which apparently a few people did. No matter that what I did had a lot of wrong bits (the hardest part is catching local idioms, which aren't well-documented, even on a place as comprehensive as the internet).
Fast forward a few years, and I spot DVD versions of one of these films on Amazon complete with English subtitles and buy it instantly. Finally, I'll get to see the film with properly translated subtitles, rather than some botch job by someone who didn't know what they were doing. And, of course, it turned out that the Korean company that packaged the DVD had just downloaded my subtitles from the internet, made some small alterations and slapped them on the DVD itself (sadly, not correcting the most obvious mistakes I'd made).
Seems some of these film companies will happily take free fan labour (however shoddy!) and sell it on to paying customers without acknowledgement or royalty*, while others will send in jackbooted thugs to have you sent to jail. Such is life.
*I'm not miffed about my work being used like this - I'm just embarrassed at the terrible job I did and hope the customers aren't upset by it!
I really hate to break the news to you, martijn, but you're blind in one eye. Sorry you had to find out this way.
.
The Andromeda Strain is the only movie I can think of which depicts actual bona-fide scientists performing something close to actual bona-fide science - there are a number of experiments (including some not overly humane animal experiments) performed by the main cast in order to ascertain the nature of some deadly space plague. What's more, you can actually tell, more or less, how the experiments work and what they're intended to achieve, unlike most science in 'science fiction' films, which generally involve some mad scientist pulling inscrutable levers or pouring green foaming liquid from one test tube into the purple bubbling liquid in the beaker.
Not that I think it would be an easy movie to use to sell science to today's sugar-addicted attention-impaired youth. The film is fairly slow and talky by today's standards, the main characters are mostly rather dowdy and middle-aged, there's more or less no sex or violence, and it's from 1971 and most definitely looks it. The only thing that would make you think otherwise is that, refreshingly, it's not about some lone individual rebel fighting back against/escaping from an oppressive totalitarian government like almost every single mindfucking sci-fi flick made in the English-speaking world between 1965 and 1975. Count the other exceptions, if you like, I'll be surprised if you can think of more than 4 without referring to Halliwell's or the imdb.
Anyways, if you want to see science done almost right in a movie, you can do far worse than the Andromeda Strain.
The thing is, if Wikileaks redacted cables based on the nature of the content, rather than a few names that might be considered 'at risk', then they would be accused of bias or editorialising or censorship - attacks on Wikileaks' integrity. Far better to release the whole thing and be accused of distributing trivia.
As for the cases you're talking about, Prince Andrew stands a very good chance of becoming King (it just depends on the order in which his mother and brother die in) and the monarch does have a lot of formal powers which can get abused to the detriment of democracy (These powers were used to forcibly deport the islanders of Diego Garcia and to unilaterally depose the Australian Government in 1975). The fact that Prince Andrew is a moronic jingoistic fucknut when there are no TV cameras in the room is actually of some serious public interest.
Howabout here, here, here and here, for starters.
I don't see any Russian documents on a brief scan, but that might be a linguistic thing, or just that they've not had any Russian leakers yet.
Thing is, there's a bnetd-derived server running now, called iCCup which is the server of choice for almost anyone playing Starcraft (BroodWar, not 2) these days. Not only does it ignore CD checks but iCCup will offer you a chopped-down copy of Starcraft to play on, if you look hard enough. There doesn't seem to be any great rush from Blizzard to stomp it off the net, either.
Blizzard seems to be ambivalent about iCCup. It has called it a "pirate server", but it has also linked to ongoing iCCup tournaments from the battlenet homepage, which is probably because it has realised that the vast majority of people still playing BroodWar (legitimately as well as otherwise) much prefer iCCup to battlenet, to the extent that if you don't know your iCCup ranking, you really can't call yourself a Starcraft player.
Likely, that's because iCCup has a functioning ladder system, and the admins do keep iCCup relatively free of cheats, and the worst of the foulmouthed little brats you get playing online games, unlike battlenet, which is a cesspool in comparison. The "pirate server" offers, for free, a better service than the one that Starcraft players generally paid for, and Blizzard has realised that allowing overt (if discreet) piracy is a small price to pay for keeping a functioning community centred around some of their products.
Think about it. The RIAA's usual claim is that every downloaded file is a lost sale. and damages should be calculated based on that. Now by asking for this ludicrious figure, they've just put the lie to that previous assertion, since there is absolutely no way in hell that the general public could, or would have paid for $1 trillion worth of their products.
On the other hand, they've just claimed that Limewire has increased the net digital wealth of the world by something of the order of well over $1 trillion, something the RIAA could never have done by themselves. Way to go, Limewire!
Either that, or you're the most prominent news outlet to mispell the subject's name, as happened here. Ma Jae Yoon is Savior. 'Ja Mae Yoon' isn't.
He's on Slashdot. He probably clicks that fast normally.
Actually, in all seriousness, 3 times a second, or 180 actions per minute) is fast for a starcraft player, but it is too slow for a Korean pro - only the slowest of them, such as Savior, average 200 over a game, while most average an APM Of 300-450 over the course of a 5-60 minute game, and peak at maybe 600 or so.
I can maybe hit 300-400 if I mindlessly spam keypresses and mouseclicks while doing nothing at the start of the game. I can't evisage how anyone actually can click that fast that AND keep track of the units and the tech tree and the base layout and the production buildings and the workers and the scouting and the upgrades and the 2 dozen things you have to worry about in a normal Starcraft game AND try to outwit some other devious bastard at the other end of the internet trying to kill you off all at the same time.
Anyone who says playing Starcraft doesn't involve a physical skill is probably assuming that it's like some other game they happened to play once.
Mod you down of course!
Oh crap...
It's not news until we get to watch them die like ancient Roman gladiators.
I know Slashdotters are a pedantic bunch, and prone to nerdrage, but shooting someone for bad analogies is a bit extreme, even for them...
Strangely enough, UKIP is against ACTA, and presumably they're dead against the EU having any secrets whatsoever (given they want it abolished), yet the majority of their MPs voted against this motion. Are they too lazy to bother to read whatever it is they vote on? Did the party functionary who tells them what way to vote make a mistake? Or is UKIP just so instinctively contrarian in Europe that they oppose any EU consensus at all, even when it is in favour of their stated principles?
"Normally, it took me eight hours to get through the whole game."
Precisely what's wrong with today's games industry.
I use it all the time, to get out of that irritating Scroll lock mode caused by accientally hitting it the first time round.
... who doesn't yet think that Bono is a sanctimonious hypocritical, posturing, corporate shill who is always willing to suck up to any big businessman or politician he can grab a photo opportunity with, no matter how venal?
Just askin'
You're describing Microsoft Windows XP.
XP came with an automatic update function. A few years into XP's life, Windows Genuine Advantage was automatically rolled out in a service pack, and once installed it will degrade your computer if Microsoft decides you might be a pirate.
Your nightmare scenario is everyday reality for most people. Pleasant dreams.
I don't follow you. How are either of those two factors relate to the matter of the quality of the official versus unofficial matchmaking servers for Starcraft? Was blizzard's policy 10 years ago to turn battle.net into a retard-infested shithole, but they changed policy 5 years later in time for WoW? Are the people who set up unofficial servers for RTS games somehow a nobler, gentler breed than the unofficial MMO server makers?
The fact I can't follow your non-sequitur logic is hardly surprising, though, because your slashdot ID is divisible by 3.
Surprisingly it's not true of Starcraft, where the iccup server is a more pleasant place to be than battle.net. The players have more skill, newbies like me are far less likely to be stomped on by fairly good players, or worse, hackers, creating '1v1 noobs only' games, there's a ratings system which does, roughly, tell you how good your opponent is likely to be (although the lowest two rankings covers a huge skill range), and it comes with an anti-hack. I'm also led to believe that the admin does act to boot cheats from the ladder, but I've no first-hand experience of that.
And your 'glitch' problem doesn't apply to SC at all of course, since it's a player-hosted RTS, not an MMO.
Big Name Game Studios of course, silly!
Hah, this just shows how EFFICIENT Linux is. Until recently, Windows achieved their local privilege escalation vulnerability rollout by having almost every home user running as fully privileged administrator accounts all the time. Linux achieves all this through a small tweak to the kernel build system, thus getting this feature to 100% of Linux users without any manual intervention at all.
Surely this is the same story, from 2 months ago.
Errr, IW aren't providing a network to play on. The network is just a matchmaking service.
There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it shouldn't be the only option for a game like CoD.
Instead of the server admins, you're at the mercy of whichever user happens to click the 'host' button instead of the 'join' button. If they disconnect in a hissy fit because you fragged them, game over. If they've got a shit connection, or their roommate fires up bittorrent, expect big pings as 32 players flood this poor sap's connection past breaking point. Oh, and say goodbye to mods too, and by extension, the next TF2 or Counterstrike.
In short, the convenience you think you're getting in exchange for your freedom and the existence of a gaming community just isn't there at all.
Not to mention those of us who made cod4 go on Linux w/ wine, alas. Cod4's PB doesn't work, since it checks the integrity of various Windows API calls.
Because the EFF acts primarily through legal activity in the US, and in the TI case, it's threatening to defend hobbyists against a tsunami of bogus DMCA takedowns.
Whereas the other instances you cite are using technological methods to prevent modders. Nintendo did take down a homebrew device in Japan, but not in the US. Apple just kicks out anyone it doesn't like from the App store. Obnoxious DRM isn't actually illegal, unfortunately, so the EFF doesn't really have the tools to fight it. When the device makers start firing off lawsuits and/or wrongheaded DMCA takedowns, then the EFF might be able to take an interest.
If you need lawyers to fight lawsuits relating to Your Rights Online, then you might call in the EFF. If you just need technical workarounds for all the DRM in your devices, then it's a job for DVD Jon...