If you don't agree that the government is becoming totalitarian, and you think that everyone are all freedom loving people, and everything in America is fine and dandy, well, that is very comfortable. You can argue that you don't get my point all you want. But when this law passes with bipartisan support, and the vast majority of people accept this law without question (because, after all, it is governments job to protect us), you will get my point. When you are accused of being a "terrorist lover", because "terrorists are making money breaking IP laws", or accused of being some sort of anarchist when you disagree with the law, you will get my point. In a couple years down the line, and you go to prison for 10 years for posting "intellectual property" on your website (the President's speech was copyrighted after all! You shouldn't be critising it on your website!), you will get the point just fine.
Eventually you are going to be confronted by the police state, and they aren't going to listen to you as patiently as I am. And they won't have to prove any point to you, they will point their guns, and you will say "Yes Sir!". You will agree with me eventually, I was just hoping to use gentle persuasion before it gets that bad.
Except that I am part of the older generation. I was a huge fan of the Infocom back in the day. I have played probably over 100 IF games over the years. I probably still play 4 - 5 new IF games each year.
A teletype interface was great back in the day, but that isn't a good interface anymore. Manually mapping on paper adds nothing to gameplay, it is not fun or a challenge, it is just a hassle. When I find out the password is "52390" in the game, it is not fun or challenging to write "Secret Password: 52390" on paper. It takes nothing from the fun to have the software record that information instead of me. Having a gui list of inventory items, and clicking on an icon next to an item to examine it isn't less fun than typing "i {enter] examine large red book [enter]".
None of those things are part of the fun of interactive fiction, and eliminating them won't make the game any easier (although they WILL make some things less tedious).
I wonder how many of the people who insist that interactive fiction must be played in a teletype interface actually play much interactive fiction anymore?
I doubt I'm alone in being dubious about your assertion that slashdotters want a superpowered government.
You missed the point. Most Slashdotters WANT a superpowered government for some things, and don't want a superpowered government for other things.
You want me to prove that a big government that regulates everything, will also regulate the things that geeks find important? Duh! Look at reality. The larger the government, the more powerful the government, the more centralized the government, and the more information is regulated. More government control = more government control of information - almost universally. Show me the case of the authoritarian government that is laize faire when it comes to information and technology!
1. Most places in Detroit are safe. 2. The places that ARE very dangerous you would never go to if you worked for an ISP. 3. Even if you DID go to the dangerous places, you would still be statisticly more likely to die of a heart attack, diabetes, or get hit by a car.
Detroit saw the worst during the late 70s and early 80s, and is now going through a process of gentrification and redevelopment. Can't you find another city in the U.S. to make fun of and be a boogyman for white suburban fear? The Detroit cliche is getting a little old.
The trouble with IF is that not much has changed since the days of Infocom. Here are some features that would definitly be welcome in modern day IF or Z machine interpreters:
1. Auto mapping - I mean, come on, I still have to map things out on graph paper? An automapping feature would be welcome.
2. Notes section - OK, how about games that automaticly generate notes that are accessable from a tab or button. So when the wizard tells me "Bring the magic crystal to me, and I will give you the Staff of Ages", a note will appear in my notes that says "The Wizard told me that he will give me the Staff of Ages if I bring him the magic crystal". It would only make notes of game critical actions, not every action I do... so it would be a quick reference.
In the modern day and age, I shouldn't have to write things down on paper to play a computer game!
There are two theories of government... one, that central government should be extremly limited, and should stick to a few basic things to keep the peace (like defending borders, printing money, making sure people aren't dumping waste into lakes, etc)... then there are those who believe that the government should have broad powers and unlimited resources, and it's job is to "run" society, and manage it, and address every single problem in society.
The benifit of an activist government is you can scream and cry and there isn't a single problem that it won't try to help you with (if it actually does help you is a matter of debate)... but all benifits have an associated cost. The cost is that EVERYONE gets to ask the government for help... And since we have a population of hundreds of millions of people, and since we live in a society where millions of people can have conflicted interests with millions of other people, and since governments ability to control things is rather crude (it can only promise punishment/violence for generalized situations) - There are going to be a lot of people hurt by the government. You can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs.
You can't have your cake, and eat it too. Most people here want a ultra-powerful centralized government that regulates all of society, but they want that same government to keep it's hands out of the Internet, or intellectual property, or whatever it is that they are into. That is just not possible. In the same way you dismiss anyone who complains about drug regulation, or enviornmental regulation, or other regulation... the average Joe is going to dismiss you at best of being some crazy Libertarian, and at worse of being a terrorist-loving greedy capitalist bastard who wants to take away our precious rights, OUR IP RIGHTS! After all, the government is here to help us and protect us, and you want to eliminate that protection!
You will not be able to stop the massive regulation and centralized control of information, because you support massive regulation and centralized control as an ideology in itself. I know, I know, you say "Well, I support regulation, but I support GOOD regulation, not bad"... but "good" and "bad" are subjective, so that isn't an excuse. You support regulation first and foremost, and in a democracy that is trying to balance the will of millions it is hard to come up with regulations that don't screw over millions of people. Strict IP controls are just another price you have to pay for having an activist government to "protect" you.
Re:Most game companies . . .
on
Abandoned Games
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· Score: 1
Yes, but releasing a game for free might keep the value of certain intellectual property alive. If a classic game is unavailable, how long until the frachise becomes worthless?
For example, Activision purchased Infocom for millions of dollars. How valuable a franchise do you think the Infocom name is nowadays? Do you think anyone is going to pay a million dollars for the rights to produce the next Zork game?
What about the "Space Quest" franchise? Or "Kings Quest"? Or "Lode Runner"? These could have been worth a lot of money if the names were kept in the game playing consiousness.
Microsoft's monopoly on niche applications is because of Visual Basic. Of course, geeks like to make fun of Visual Basic... but that is why Microsoft is the OS of choice for those niche applications. Someone who has some highly developed niche skill isn't also going to learn how to do full software development, and because it is a small niche it probably isn't going to be cost effective to hire a developer... they are gonna grab VB and throw something together. Every niche piece of software I have used was developed in VB.
When it comes to VB, no one is TRYING to do anything similiar. If there was a VB like software for Linux, you would see the niche application market dry up for Windows pretty quickly. But it isn't that Microsoft is squeezing out competition in that area (in fact, VB is pretty damn expensive, they are definitly not bundling it with Windows like they do Media Player or whatnot), it is that the geeks that write open source software would never lower themselves to creating a VB clone. People in the Linux community, being disproporionatly programmers or technically skilled, have nothing but scorn for rapid development tools.
All you have to do is mention ol' Georgy, and otherwise intelligent people lose about 50 IQ points. Dubya was making a joke!
It is a sad day when a joke by G. W. Bush goes over the head of most people on Slashdot!
Re:More Republican Fair-Weather Federalism
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Tilting At Windmills
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Republicans advocate states rights up to the point your state goes medical marijuana, pro gay marriage, physican-assisted suicide or anything else they don't like.
I agree 100%, except it is rich Cape Cod Democrats protesting the wind farms.
Except that Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly. It is damn easier nowadays to download and install a linux dist than it is to buy and install Windows. Of the 3 machines I use, one is XP and the two run flavors of Linux. And my next computer will probably be a mac. And on my Windows machine, I don't use IE (except for specificly testing IE), nor do I use Windows Media Player.
Microsoft HAS done some bad things, such as adopting standards and then slightly changing them in their implementaton in order to sabatage them. Or Microsoft's relationship with companies like Dell that manufacture computer. But no government has ever gone after Microsoft for that. They have only gone after Microsoft for being a "monopoly", which Microsoft clearly isn't... or for unfairly competing with Real Networks, which is bullshit because Real products sucked and people hated them long before WMP.
Actually, with the insane amounts of oil that we purchase, and with the high prices we are paying, CEO salaries are completly negligable in the price of oil.
Oil is expensive because:
A) There is a limited supply of oil. The stuff is not going to last forever.
B) Market price is controlled by an oil cartel called OPEC, who assigns countries production quotas designed to raise world market price.
C) There is just about endless demand to energy. We simply can burn enough oil to fufil our energy needs. We even burn the stuff quite frivolously (in SUVs for example).
D) Oil refining is a really nasty process, one that most communities don't want to happen nearby (NIMBY), which makes it very difficult to build more oil refineries to produce gasoline.
E) We get a lot of the stuff from politically unstable countries.
There is no conspiracy for why oil is expensive. If anything, you could argue that oil prices are kept artificially low in some ways (because the enviornmental costs of oil are not attached to the price like they would be for something like nuclear... because the U.S. government pays for wars to "stabilize" the middle east and protect the continuing supply of oil, etc.)
It has to do with the fact that Madonna's fans are now 40 year old women, instead of 15 year old girls. 40 year old women have a lot more to spend on concert tickets.
It is one thing when government beurocrats don't understand basic economic laws, but when BBC reporters and buisness people don't understand, there is something seriously wrong.
Market price is based on supply and demand. The supply of bandwidth is orders of magnitude greater than demand, and so there is not a lot of economic incentive to pay for music when you can download it (and despite what record companies say, people WILL produce music without a financial incentive... music was invented before currency)... especialy when the music is desposable pop music like Madonna (more obscure music tends to have more dedicated fans who are less likely to download music).
However, a performance venue has a clear limit to supply. A performance venu might have a limit of say 1000 people, or maybe even 10,000 or bigger. There will always be WAY MORE people who want to see a concert that you can pack into a venue... so you can charge a lot more money. There is no way around thing... if you were to try the Soviet style system, and the government were to force concerts to be cheaper, they would still be limited by the size of the venue - all you would do is create shortages, huge lines, and a lot of unhappy people.
The biggest problem with Windows is how it handles access for multiple users. I am not familiar with the Windows server products, I only use XP Pro, so maybe the server products have solved a problem. But here is the problem:
In Unix, I can assign a file an owner, one or more groups, and the type of access I want groups, owner, and everyone else to have to that file.
I can also be logged in as a user, and then also log in as root if I need to make some system changes, without logging off as a users. In Windows, I must go through an annoying process of switching accounts to log in as an administrator.
Finally, the system doesn't have a coherent way of managing permissions. For example, if I install a program as root/admin, it will create a directory in Program Files, and assign the permissions as such, that when a non-root user logs in and the program installed tries to write it's data to that programs directory, it will cause an error. I know that modern applications are not supposed to write to the Program Files directory and are supposed to write to the Application Data directory under the users specific directory... unfortunatly, the majority of software programs are not created to do that! It makes it VERY VERY difficult to use a machine for everyday use and not have admin/root access (Which, of course, causes a lot of security problems).
If Vista doesn't fix this, then Vista is going to be a big pain in the ass. Why can't Microsoft just borrow the Unix permission system, it is not like it is patented or anything?
I think there are natural limits on growth. Every entity that grows has to fight entrophy. The larger something becomes, the more difficult it is to fight against entrophy. We see the same thing with biological evolution, with the growth and calapse of empires and religions. It just doesn't make sense (and I would argue it is not desirable), that Dell would contantly grow it's share of the market forever (and, of course, eventually it would have a monopoly if it did).
The question I have, is how could Dell sales NOT slow down?
You counter-revolutionary capitalist running-dog! How dare you try to undermine the people's revolution in China by accusing them of being Capitalist!? You are obviously a capitalist agent, trying to create an insurgency to destroy the work of the great chairman Mao and the people of China! All those who oppose capitalism must oppose people like you! And we owe it to the people, and to the revolution, to stop your capitalist lies!
The only way we can defeat capitalism is to confront and suppress the capitalist and imperialist propoganda being spread by aussersterne!
Of course I am being sarcastic (although you can hear talk like I said above in China on occasion)... but you can see that fighting non-existant boogiemen like "Capitalism" ("Capitalism" doesn't exist. There is no "Capitalist Manifesto", there is no clear definable economic system that Marxist claim to be "Capitalist". "Capitalism" is a catch-all straw man invented by Marxists.) The thing to understand is that China is trying to do the right thing, as they percieve it. The problem with censorship and oppression isn't caused by greed and amorality, it is caused by people who believe they are truly helping the people and opposing what is bad. If we attack China's economic system (and that is what we would be doing if we carry out some sort of embargo, or place restrictions on trade), on some pretense of morality, we could be just as destructive and dangerous as the people who carry out the censorship.
1. They are cheap and ugly. They are not hardcover bound books with full color pages. Look at a Paladium book, then look at a new D&D book, or at a White Wolf book, or whatever. The non-Paladium books are cool even if you don't play the game. If I am going to buy a product, I want the product to be high quality, and have an instant "cool" value. Printing a web page on your printer will give you as good production values as Paladium books. They didn't even lay out the books on computer. They used the old fashion past things to cardboard, take a photograph, make a plate from the photograph method of printing.
2. The books would reprint lots of information. At least a third of the info in any book you could find in just about every other book. They definitly liked to recycle as much content as possible.
3. All the settings were lame. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Yeah, OK. Rifts? "It is like D&D, but with Cyberpunk thrown in, but with Cthulhu thrown in, but with Vampires thrown in, but with Sci-Fi thrown in.."... no thank you. Ninjas and Super Spys? Uh.
4. They had a terrible, hard to use game system.
Sorry, a company making products that no-one likes will go out of buisness. Role playing games are already an extremly small niche product as it is... so there is no longer any room in the industry for people making crappy product. They could cut it in the 1980s, when expectations weren't that hight, and we were all 9 years old and didn't know any better. But the market is more competitive today, the expectations and production values are higher, and no-one is going to pay for that crap.
I major reason I got an Xbox 360 because I wanted to listen to MP3s and to look at photos on my television. A device to do this is about $200, or for $400 you get the same thing and a new console. The Xbox 360 interfaces seamlessly over the lan between my PC (once you configure it), and it was super easy. I can listen to music from my PC in my office, with a remote control on the stereo in the living room, which is convienient.
I enjoyed playing games on my 8088 PC back in the day, so no matter what the difference between the next gen consoles are, they are gonna all have fun games to play. The question will be who offers the best secondary features. Xbox 360 is offering integration with your PC, and has Xbox Live Arcade (I enjoy the classic arcade games)... Sony is offering Blue-Ray, so audio/video buffs will be excited for that... It will all depend on secondary features to see who really is the winner, though.
The problem is, why host your media in Europe and face all sorts of stifling regulation, when you can host your media over seas and not have to deal with the arrgoant government facists? Europeans will still be able to access the information just as easily (they probably won't even know the site isn't in Europe, for the most part).
So, net result:
1. Less investment in Europe. 2. Sites continue their advertising, hate speech, or whatever unabated.
The government is the real danger of DRM... any kind of Digital Rights Management will be easily circumvented. Sometimes it is only a matter of days before hobbiests are able to break DRM on a product.
The danger comes from when the government starts arresting people who post DRM circumventing software on their website... or mandates that DRM must be built into hardware (it is very easy for hobbiests to distribute software to the people, but not hardware)... Or prohibits public libraries from circumventing protection.
If companies want to use DRM, so be it. That should not be where we focus our attention... because DRM is a joke. We need to stop the government from enforcing DRM at all costs!
Slashdot Mirror
Has anyone actually seen a truly novel patent recently? I'd just like to know that people are still filing them.
My patent for cold fusion is novel... but that was before the oil companies paid me to supress it.
If you don't agree that the government is becoming totalitarian, and you think that everyone are all freedom loving people, and everything in America is fine and dandy, well, that is very comfortable. You can argue that you don't get my point all you want. But when this law passes with bipartisan support, and the vast majority of people accept this law without question (because, after all, it is governments job to protect us), you will get my point. When you are accused of being a "terrorist lover", because "terrorists are making money breaking IP laws", or accused of being some sort of anarchist when you disagree with the law, you will get my point. In a couple years down the line, and you go to prison for 10 years for posting "intellectual property" on your website (the President's speech was copyrighted after all! You shouldn't be critising it on your website!), you will get the point just fine.
Eventually you are going to be confronted by the police state, and they aren't going to listen to you as patiently as I am. And they won't have to prove any point to you, they will point their guns, and you will say "Yes Sir!". You will agree with me eventually, I was just hoping to use gentle persuasion before it gets that bad.
Except that I am part of the older generation. I was a huge fan of the Infocom back in the day. I have played probably over 100 IF games over the years. I probably still play 4 - 5 new IF games each year.
A teletype interface was great back in the day, but that isn't a good interface anymore. Manually mapping on paper adds nothing to gameplay, it is not fun or a challenge, it is just a hassle. When I find out the password is "52390" in the game, it is not fun or challenging to write "Secret Password: 52390" on paper. It takes nothing from the fun to have the software record that information instead of me. Having a gui list of inventory items, and clicking on an icon next to an item to examine it isn't less fun than typing "i {enter] examine large red book [enter]".
None of those things are part of the fun of interactive fiction, and eliminating them won't make the game any easier (although they WILL make some things less tedious).
I wonder how many of the people who insist that interactive fiction must be played in a teletype interface actually play much interactive fiction anymore?
I doubt I'm alone in being dubious about your assertion that slashdotters want a superpowered government.
You missed the point. Most Slashdotters WANT a superpowered government for some things, and don't want a superpowered government for other things.
You want me to prove that a big government that regulates everything, will also regulate the things that geeks find important? Duh! Look at reality. The larger the government, the more powerful the government, the more centralized the government, and the more information is regulated. More government control = more government control of information - almost universally. Show me the case of the authoritarian government that is laize faire when it comes to information and technology!
So people aren't reading or writing unless they do it on dead trees?
Have you ever been to Detroit?
1. Most places in Detroit are safe.
2. The places that ARE very dangerous you would never go to if you worked for an ISP.
3. Even if you DID go to the dangerous places, you would still be statisticly more likely to die of a heart attack, diabetes, or get hit by a car.
Detroit saw the worst during the late 70s and early 80s, and is now going through a process of gentrification and redevelopment. Can't you find another city in the U.S. to make fun of and be a boogyman for white suburban fear? The Detroit cliche is getting a little old.
The trouble with IF is that not much has changed since the days of Infocom. Here are some features that would definitly be welcome in modern day IF or Z machine interpreters:
1. Auto mapping - I mean, come on, I still have to map things out on graph paper? An automapping feature would be welcome.
2. Notes section - OK, how about games that automaticly generate notes that are accessable from a tab or button. So when the wizard tells me "Bring the magic crystal to me, and I will give you the Staff of Ages", a note will appear in my notes that says "The Wizard told me that he will give me the Staff of Ages if I bring him the magic crystal". It would only make notes of game critical actions, not every action I do... so it would be a quick reference.
In the modern day and age, I shouldn't have to write things down on paper to play a computer game!
There are two theories of government... one, that central government should be extremly limited, and should stick to a few basic things to keep the peace (like defending borders, printing money, making sure people aren't dumping waste into lakes, etc)... then there are those who believe that the government should have broad powers and unlimited resources, and it's job is to "run" society, and manage it, and address every single problem in society.
The benifit of an activist government is you can scream and cry and there isn't a single problem that it won't try to help you with (if it actually does help you is a matter of debate)... but all benifits have an associated cost. The cost is that EVERYONE gets to ask the government for help... And since we have a population of hundreds of millions of people, and since we live in a society where millions of people can have conflicted interests with millions of other people, and since governments ability to control things is rather crude (it can only promise punishment/violence for generalized situations) - There are going to be a lot of people hurt by the government. You can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs.
You can't have your cake, and eat it too. Most people here want a ultra-powerful centralized government that regulates all of society, but they want that same government to keep it's hands out of the Internet, or intellectual property, or whatever it is that they are into. That is just not possible. In the same way you dismiss anyone who complains about drug regulation, or enviornmental regulation, or other regulation... the average Joe is going to dismiss you at best of being some crazy Libertarian, and at worse of being a terrorist-loving greedy capitalist bastard who wants to take away our precious rights, OUR IP RIGHTS! After all, the government is here to help us and protect us, and you want to eliminate that protection!
You will not be able to stop the massive regulation and centralized control of information, because you support massive regulation and centralized control as an ideology in itself. I know, I know, you say "Well, I support regulation, but I support GOOD regulation, not bad"... but "good" and "bad" are subjective, so that isn't an excuse. You support regulation first and foremost, and in a democracy that is trying to balance the will of millions it is hard to come up with regulations that don't screw over millions of people. Strict IP controls are just another price you have to pay for having an activist government to "protect" you.
Yes, but releasing a game for free might keep the value of certain intellectual property alive. If a classic game is unavailable, how long until the frachise becomes worthless?
For example, Activision purchased Infocom for millions of dollars. How valuable a franchise do you think the Infocom name is nowadays? Do you think anyone is going to pay a million dollars for the rights to produce the next Zork game?
What about the "Space Quest" franchise? Or "Kings Quest"? Or "Lode Runner"? These could have been worth a lot of money if the names were kept in the game playing consiousness.
Microsoft's monopoly on niche applications is because of Visual Basic. Of course, geeks like to make fun of Visual Basic... but that is why Microsoft is the OS of choice for those niche applications. Someone who has some highly developed niche skill isn't also going to learn how to do full software development, and because it is a small niche it probably isn't going to be cost effective to hire a developer... they are gonna grab VB and throw something together. Every niche piece of software I have used was developed in VB.
When it comes to VB, no one is TRYING to do anything similiar. If there was a VB like software for Linux, you would see the niche application market dry up for Windows pretty quickly. But it isn't that Microsoft is squeezing out competition in that area (in fact, VB is pretty damn expensive, they are definitly not bundling it with Windows like they do Media Player or whatnot), it is that the geeks that write open source software would never lower themselves to creating a VB clone. People in the Linux community, being disproporionatly programmers or technically skilled, have nothing but scorn for rapid development tools.
All you have to do is mention ol' Georgy, and otherwise intelligent people lose about 50 IQ points. Dubya was making a joke!
It is a sad day when a joke by G. W. Bush goes over the head of most people on Slashdot!
Republicans advocate states rights up to the point your state goes medical marijuana, pro gay marriage, physican-assisted suicide or anything else they don't like.
I agree 100%, except it is rich Cape Cod Democrats protesting the wind farms.
Except that Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly. It is damn easier nowadays to download and install a linux dist than it is to buy and install Windows. Of the 3 machines I use, one is XP and the two run flavors of Linux. And my next computer will probably be a mac. And on my Windows machine, I don't use IE (except for specificly testing IE), nor do I use Windows Media Player.
Microsoft HAS done some bad things, such as adopting standards and then slightly changing them in their implementaton in order to sabatage them. Or Microsoft's relationship with companies like Dell that manufacture computer. But no government has ever gone after Microsoft for that. They have only gone after Microsoft for being a "monopoly", which Microsoft clearly isn't... or for unfairly competing with Real Networks, which is bullshit because Real products sucked and people hated them long before WMP.
Actually, with the insane amounts of oil that we purchase, and with the high prices we are paying, CEO salaries are completly negligable in the price of oil.
Oil is expensive because:
A) There is a limited supply of oil. The stuff is not going to last forever.
B) Market price is controlled by an oil cartel called OPEC, who assigns countries production quotas designed to raise world market price.
C) There is just about endless demand to energy. We simply can burn enough oil to fufil our energy needs. We even burn the stuff quite frivolously (in SUVs for example).
D) Oil refining is a really nasty process, one that most communities don't want to happen nearby (NIMBY), which makes it very difficult to build more oil refineries to produce gasoline.
E) We get a lot of the stuff from politically unstable countries.
There is no conspiracy for why oil is expensive. If anything, you could argue that oil prices are kept artificially low in some ways (because the enviornmental costs of oil are not attached to the price like they would be for something like nuclear... because the U.S. government pays for wars to "stabilize" the middle east and protect the continuing supply of oil, etc.)
It has to do with the fact that Madonna's fans are now 40 year old women, instead of 15 year old girls. 40 year old women have a lot more to spend on concert tickets.
It is one thing when government beurocrats don't understand basic economic laws, but when BBC reporters and buisness people don't understand, there is something seriously wrong.
Market price is based on supply and demand. The supply of bandwidth is orders of magnitude greater than demand, and so there is not a lot of economic incentive to pay for music when you can download it (and despite what record companies say, people WILL produce music without a financial incentive... music was invented before currency)... especialy when the music is desposable pop music like Madonna (more obscure music tends to have more dedicated fans who are less likely to download music).
However, a performance venue has a clear limit to supply. A performance venu might have a limit of say 1000 people, or maybe even 10,000 or bigger. There will always be WAY MORE people who want to see a concert that you can pack into a venue... so you can charge a lot more money. There is no way around thing... if you were to try the Soviet style system, and the government were to force concerts to be cheaper, they would still be limited by the size of the venue - all you would do is create shortages, huge lines, and a lot of unhappy people.
The biggest problem with Windows is how it handles access for multiple users. I am not familiar with the Windows server products, I only use XP Pro, so maybe the server products have solved a problem. But here is the problem:
In Unix, I can assign a file an owner, one or more groups, and the type of access I want groups, owner, and everyone else to have to that file.
I can also be logged in as a user, and then also log in as root if I need to make some system changes, without logging off as a users. In Windows, I must go through an annoying process of switching accounts to log in as an administrator.
Finally, the system doesn't have a coherent way of managing permissions. For example, if I install a program as root/admin, it will create a directory in Program Files, and assign the permissions as such, that when a non-root user logs in and the program installed tries to write it's data to that programs directory, it will cause an error. I know that modern applications are not supposed to write to the Program Files directory and are supposed to write to the Application Data directory under the users specific directory... unfortunatly, the majority of software programs are not created to do that! It makes it VERY VERY difficult to use a machine for everyday use and not have admin/root access (Which, of course, causes a lot of security problems).
If Vista doesn't fix this, then Vista is going to be a big pain in the ass. Why can't Microsoft just borrow the Unix permission system, it is not like it is patented or anything?
I think there are natural limits on growth. Every entity that grows has to fight entrophy. The larger something becomes, the more difficult it is to fight against entrophy. We see the same thing with biological evolution, with the growth and calapse of empires and religions. It just doesn't make sense (and I would argue it is not desirable), that Dell would contantly grow it's share of the market forever (and, of course, eventually it would have a monopoly if it did).
The question I have, is how could Dell sales NOT slow down?
You counter-revolutionary capitalist running-dog! How dare you try to undermine the people's revolution in China by accusing them of being Capitalist!? You are obviously a capitalist agent, trying to create an insurgency to destroy the work of the great chairman Mao and the people of China! All those who oppose capitalism must oppose people like you! And we owe it to the people, and to the revolution, to stop your capitalist lies!
The only way we can defeat capitalism is to confront and suppress the capitalist and imperialist propoganda being spread by aussersterne!
Of course I am being sarcastic (although you can hear talk like I said above in China on occasion)... but you can see that fighting non-existant boogiemen like "Capitalism" ("Capitalism" doesn't exist. There is no "Capitalist Manifesto", there is no clear definable economic system that Marxist claim to be "Capitalist". "Capitalism" is a catch-all straw man invented by Marxists.) The thing to understand is that China is trying to do the right thing, as they percieve it. The problem with censorship and oppression isn't caused by greed and amorality, it is caused by people who believe they are truly helping the people and opposing what is bad. If we attack China's economic system (and that is what we would be doing if we carry out some sort of embargo, or place restrictions on trade), on some pretense of morality, we could be just as destructive and dangerous as the people who carry out the censorship.
1. They are cheap and ugly. They are not hardcover bound books with full color pages. Look at a Paladium book, then look at a new D&D book, or at a White Wolf book, or whatever. The non-Paladium books are cool even if you don't play the game. If I am going to buy a product, I want the product to be high quality, and have an instant "cool" value. Printing a web page on your printer will give you as good production values as Paladium books. They didn't even lay out the books on computer. They used the old fashion past things to cardboard, take a photograph, make a plate from the photograph method of printing.
2. The books would reprint lots of information. At least a third of the info in any book you could find in just about every other book. They definitly liked to recycle as much content as possible.
3. All the settings were lame. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Yeah, OK. Rifts? "It is like D&D, but with Cyberpunk thrown in, but with Cthulhu thrown in, but with Vampires thrown in, but with Sci-Fi thrown in.."... no thank you. Ninjas and Super Spys? Uh.
4. They had a terrible, hard to use game system.
Sorry, a company making products that no-one likes will go out of buisness. Role playing games are already an extremly small niche product as it is... so there is no longer any room in the industry for people making crappy product. They could cut it in the 1980s, when expectations weren't that hight, and we were all 9 years old and didn't know any better. But the market is more competitive today, the expectations and production values are higher, and no-one is going to pay for that crap.
I major reason I got an Xbox 360 because I wanted to listen to MP3s and to look at photos on my television. A device to do this is about $200, or for $400 you get the same thing and a new console. The Xbox 360 interfaces seamlessly over the lan between my PC (once you configure it), and it was super easy. I can listen to music from my PC in my office, with a remote control on the stereo in the living room, which is convienient.
I enjoyed playing games on my 8088 PC back in the day, so no matter what the difference between the next gen consoles are, they are gonna all have fun games to play. The question will be who offers the best secondary features. Xbox 360 is offering integration with your PC, and has Xbox Live Arcade (I enjoy the classic arcade games)... Sony is offering Blue-Ray, so audio/video buffs will be excited for that... It will all depend on secondary features to see who really is the winner, though.
The problem is, why host your media in Europe and face all sorts of stifling regulation, when you can host your media over seas and not have to deal with the arrgoant government facists? Europeans will still be able to access the information just as easily (they probably won't even know the site isn't in Europe, for the most part).
So, net result:
1. Less investment in Europe.
2. Sites continue their advertising, hate speech, or whatever unabated.
In other news, Hannibal Lector complains that anti-cannibalism laws unfairly restrict his choice of dishes.
No, it is more like trapped victims telling Hannibal Lector that a vegetarian diet reduces heartburn.
Mac users aren't arrogant... they are zealots. There is a big difference.
An arrogant person won't bother to explain why their OS of choice is superior, because they can't be bothered to deal with "idiots".
A zealot will talk your ear off telling you exactly (at least how they percieve it), their OS of choice is superior.
The government is the real danger of DRM... any kind of Digital Rights Management will be easily circumvented. Sometimes it is only a matter of days before hobbiests are able to break DRM on a product.
The danger comes from when the government starts arresting people who post DRM circumventing software on their website... or mandates that DRM must be built into hardware (it is very easy for hobbiests to distribute software to the people, but not hardware)... Or prohibits public libraries from circumventing protection.
If companies want to use DRM, so be it. That should not be where we focus our attention... because DRM is a joke. We need to stop the government from enforcing DRM at all costs!