It means the system works. It does not work the way lots of people would like, but then, those people aren't in charge, aren't looking to be in charge, and wouldn't make it if they tried to take charge. It may be inconvenient, but governments will apply their authority until it is taken from them by force. Nobody seems to be upset enough about this issue to stage a coup, so the status quo prevails.
"No, it Digital Rights Managements is ok, why the heck would I want an ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY to manage my rights?"
They are managing *their* rights. I accept that all the way up to the point where protecting their rights abridges mine. Then they lose me completely. Sony lost me a long time ago, by putting DRM on *my own* works, to which I reserve all rights, without my permission, and without any means for me to reverse the process.
Regardless of what other considerations there may be, abridging my own rights was completely unacceptable.
"these are not big selling CDs. Here is the list from the EFF link above:"
Some of those titles are relatively popular. Any sales data for, say, Neil Diamond, Celine Dion, or Ricky Martin? Probably not big sellers among the slashdot crowd, but like it or not, very very popular.
It strikes me as very odd that Mike Gordon would allow this. (He's an artist in the category that has enough clout and enough money to tell the producers how things will be.)
>It's true that DnD started as a tactical game made by war gamers.
I knew some of those gamers, and the level of immersion that I observed in their traditional tabletop infantry battles was beyond anything I ever experienced with a FRP game. Those old tin soldier guys took their gaming seriously. It rubbed off on me enough that in my D&D gaming days, my games had a huge focus on what was represented on the table by the miniatures. We'd measure distances and calculate things like areas of effect and line of sight with rulers and compasses. I played with other groups later that took a completely different approach (approximation of time, space, and distance was common, players were much more into fluffy character details and things like romance and aristocracy, the whole other end of the spectrum from what I had always regarded as a WAR game) I lost interest at that point, and got into things like Avalon Hill bookcase games.
There's reading Shakespeare in the loo, and then there's Barrymore's Lear. Same play, completely different experience.
A *really* good DM is far more than just an effective referee and more than just a creative writer and storyteller. If you had someone as your gamemaster who the player would be captivated just listening to narrative prose, and then you add the dimension of the interactive game to THAT, you go to the next level of gaming. The trouble is, most game circles are basically groups of peers, and talent like that is one in a million.
"When I was in the US several years ago I visited a mall, and noticed that they had a D&D shop next to the mall eatery."
The US is a big, diverse place. Where were you? What kind of negative comments did you hear? Depending on locale, I'd expect different kinds of negative comments. "That game store just wants to sell warhammer miniatures and the guys that work at the counter don't even know anything about the games they sell..." That's one variety. "Those heathen devil worshipping sinners with their evil satanist dungeons and dragons..." is another. The former, I might understand. As for the latter, I expect to hear similar things outside clothing and music stores.
There's 'The popular culture', and then there are 'popular cults.' Don't confuse the two. It's not just a USAn phenomenon. They have outspoken religious fanatics in many other countries too.
>It is their right to claim copyright on "their" stats.
You can't own facts. They have the option to keep these things secret, by having their ball games in private, requiring binding nondisclosure agreements from game attendees, and not broadcasting them. Then they can have trade secret protections.
If you can't cook equally well on an electric stove, a gas grill, or a wood fire, you are no chef.
Re:Better idea: build one for a microwave oven
on
RFID Cookware
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· Score: 1
I'm sure I've seen microwave ovens with temp probes. I could be wrong though. I have usually just bought whatever $100 microwave whenever I moved. Never had one fail, and never used any feature of one except "put on high, enter the time, press start". Not even sure I've ever cleaned one.
I couldn't understand from your post, exactly what you're talking about. You came out of the gate ranting about some pet peeve of yours, but for me and probably for others reading, it's new information. I read your post, and I gather you're upset about something, but I can't understand what it is you're upset about. Something about the way TBird handles double-dash I'm guessing? And you say it's optional, so what's the problem?
"The MS EULA however REMOVES rights which you would otherwise have"
No, it does not. All rights reserved under copyright law may be granted under a license. The license cannot take away rights that you have by default. It may try to do that with its language, but such a clause would never withstand judicial review. The MS EULA tries to be a contract, but no case has ever been adjudicated which holds it to have the force of a contract, anywhere. The defense "I never signed that" would probably suffice. If MS really wanted the EULA to be mutually binding, they should negotiate it individually with each user. (The last thing I want to hear is how that's hard or expensive for them!)
"Maybe they don't release the source code because if the public version is too good, the software company may lose their contract."
Or maybe they did something that if revealed, will expose them to some party that *will* litigate, like maybe Sony or HP? (And conjecture like this is possible because of the GPL chicanery;-)
"I don't see what the problem is, the GPL isn't very strict and you simply need to release the source code. "
The GP2X people are demonstrating that there are no significant consequences to ignoring the GPL. At least so far, and unless an affected copyright holder chooses to litigate, then in the forseeable future.
"The way you wrote BREAKING THE LAW in ALL CAPS, you'd think it was significant or something."
I was expressing outrage at the idea that it's somehow nothing but a moral issue, becuase the material in question is under a GPL, as opposed to any other software license. So there's one law for the GPL, where anything goes, and another law for all other software licenses, where publishers can make a federal case out of a violation? I don't think so. If you can get a judgement to that effect, it would be much more likely to have the effect of invalidating other software licenses, than to nullify the GPL. (Nullify the GPL in a supreme court decision, and copyright reverts to the holder, and no further distribution rights are granted unless a new license is agreed to. But whatever argument serves against the GPL must be applicable to any other license backed by copyright law.)
I say it can't be done, but the company in the original article will have no consequences, since the FSF and other Linux copyright holders have no significant interest in litigating against GPL violators.
"Using GPL carries a very high risk that your company will be attacked by socialist whiners when you do anything out of lockstep with their beliefs."
Violating any software license carries a risk that you will be litigated against by the copyright holder whose license you refuse to honor. Doing this is not "going out of lockstep with beliefs", but is *BREAKING THE LAW.*
An interesting mod would be if someone gave an IPod the ability to detect radiation.
As an example of great vintage case mod ideas, I was going to post a link to Audible-Ism, but the site appears to be down, and I can't even find any of his Ebay ads. This is a bit worrying, as I am a huge fan.
Re:Oscillations IN AIR are sounds
on
Scanjet Music
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· Score: 1
Fair enough... I've been doin so much softsynth and DSP related stuff, I think of the oscillations in a theoretical domain. But you're right.
>Interesting but i really dont want my hard drive or ram at 100 degrees.
38C isn't bad for a fan-cooled, standard-clocked system. 100C is broken, but 100F is a reasonable system temp, and a miraculous CPU temp.
Oscillations are sounds, silly.
on
Scanjet Music
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· Score: 1
Anything that can be made to vibrate at controlled frequencies between say, 30Hz and 4kHZ, can make music. I guess what's interesting here, is that things that don't have a direct means of controlling their frequency, have interesting hacks that lead to indirect control. That's cool, I guess. It's a tradition that goes back further than the old line-printer art. Really impressive would be a line-printer art that both played a tune AND printed an interesting picture, especially if the tune and picture were related.
But nothing hit me as hard as some of the speech output from 8-bit machines that barely had sound output capabilities at all. That's up there with the tricks people used to deliver the impression of more colors than were "possible" on certain machines, or the really impressive things that were done within the limits of 128x64 graphics, or even *no* graphics.
Re:IBM 1130 + Punch Cards + Transistor Radio = Mus
on
Scanjet Music
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· Score: 1
There was a commercial version of the classic Star Trek game, for the TRS-80 model I, that had an explicit feature of RFI sound effects. You could get better computer music with RFI on those things than any other method:-) Desperate for any electronic music instrument, I did a composition that used recordings of TRS-80 RFI and cassette port sounds (and cassette relay buzzes). My philistine high school music teacher didn't understand, so my pioneering work was graded poorly and forgotten.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
It means the system works. It does not work the way lots of people would like, but then, those people aren't in charge, aren't looking to be in charge, and wouldn't make it if they tried to take charge. It may be inconvenient, but governments will apply their authority until it is taken from them by force. Nobody seems to be upset enough about this issue to stage a coup, so the status quo prevails.
In many schools, the "code of student conduct" that forbids this kind of thing, is a *contract*.
"No, it Digital Rights Managements is ok, why the heck would I want an ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY to manage my rights?"
They are managing *their* rights. I accept that all the way up to the point where protecting their rights abridges mine. Then they lose me completely. Sony lost me a long time ago, by putting DRM on *my own* works, to which I reserve all rights, without my permission, and without any means for me to reverse the process.
Regardless of what other considerations there may be, abridging my own rights was completely unacceptable.
"these are not big selling CDs. Here is the list from the EFF link above:"
Some of those titles are relatively popular. Any sales data for, say, Neil Diamond, Celine Dion, or Ricky Martin? Probably not big sellers among the slashdot crowd, but like it or not, very very popular.
It strikes me as very odd that Mike Gordon would allow this. (He's an artist in the category that has enough clout and enough money to tell the producers how things will be.)
Haha, I love San Fran. Anybody you run into in a Mall there is probably a tourist though. Cheers!
>It's true that DnD started as a tactical game made by war gamers.
I knew some of those gamers, and the level of immersion that I observed in their traditional tabletop infantry battles was beyond anything I ever experienced with a FRP game. Those old tin soldier guys took their gaming seriously. It rubbed off on me enough that in my D&D gaming days, my games had a huge focus on what was represented on the table by the miniatures. We'd measure distances and calculate things like areas of effect and line of sight with rulers and compasses. I played with other groups later that took a completely different approach (approximation of time, space, and distance was common, players were much more into fluffy character details and things like romance and aristocracy, the whole other end of the spectrum from what I had always regarded as a WAR game) I lost interest at that point, and got into things like Avalon Hill bookcase games.
The secret to D&D is having a really talented DM.
There's reading Shakespeare in the loo, and then there's Barrymore's Lear. Same play, completely different experience.
A *really* good DM is far more than just an effective referee and more than just a creative writer and storyteller. If you had someone as your gamemaster who the player would be captivated just listening to narrative prose, and then you add the dimension of the interactive game to THAT, you go to the next level of gaming. The trouble is, most game circles are basically groups of peers, and talent like that is one in a million.
"When I was in the US several years ago I visited a mall, and noticed that they had a D&D shop next to the mall eatery."
The US is a big, diverse place. Where were you? What kind of negative comments did you hear? Depending on locale, I'd expect different kinds of negative comments. "That game store just wants to sell warhammer miniatures and the guys that work at the counter don't even know anything about the games they sell..." That's one variety. "Those heathen devil worshipping sinners with their evil satanist dungeons and dragons..." is another. The former, I might understand. As for the latter, I expect to hear similar things outside clothing and music stores.
There's 'The popular culture', and then there are 'popular cults.' Don't confuse the two. It's not just a USAn phenomenon. They have outspoken religious fanatics in many other countries too.
>It is their right to claim copyright on "their" stats.
You can't own facts. They have the option to keep these things secret, by having their ball games in private, requiring binding nondisclosure agreements from game attendees, and not broadcasting them. Then they can have trade secret protections.
If you can't cook equally well on an electric stove, a gas grill, or a wood fire, you are no chef.
I'm sure I've seen microwave ovens with temp probes. I could be wrong though. I have usually just bought whatever $100 microwave whenever I moved. Never had one fail, and never used any feature of one except "put on high, enter the time, press start". Not even sure I've ever cleaned one.
>how can you write about a study that did research on 16 people.
And does it make a difference if those 16 people were drinkers or non-drinkers? Age groups? Gender?
Is this study being used to justify drinking alcohol or to campaign against sleep?
"Default but optional?"
I couldn't understand from your post, exactly what you're talking about. You came out of the gate ranting about some pet peeve of yours, but for me and probably for others reading, it's new information. I read your post, and I gather you're upset about something, but I can't understand what it is you're upset about. Something about the way TBird handles double-dash I'm guessing? And you say it's optional, so what's the problem?
"The MS EULA however REMOVES rights which you would otherwise have"
No, it does not. All rights reserved under copyright law may be granted under a license. The license cannot take away rights that you have by default. It may try to do that with its language, but such a clause would never withstand judicial review. The MS EULA tries to be a contract, but no case has ever been adjudicated which holds it to have the force of a contract, anywhere. The defense "I never signed that" would probably suffice. If MS really wanted the EULA to be mutually binding, they should negotiate it individually with each user. (The last thing I want to hear is how that's hard or expensive for them!)
"Maybe they don't release the source code because if the public version is too good, the software company may lose their contract."
;-)
Or maybe they did something that if revealed, will expose them to some party that *will* litigate, like maybe Sony or HP? (And conjecture like this is possible because of the GPL chicanery
"I don't see what the problem is, the GPL isn't very strict and you simply need to release the source code. "
The GP2X people are demonstrating that there are no significant consequences to ignoring the GPL. At least so far, and unless an affected copyright holder chooses to litigate, then in the forseeable future.
"The way you wrote BREAKING THE LAW in ALL CAPS, you'd think it was significant or something."
I was expressing outrage at the idea that it's somehow nothing but a moral issue, becuase the material in question is under a GPL, as opposed to any other software license. So there's one law for the GPL, where anything goes, and another law for all other software licenses, where publishers can make a federal case out of a violation? I don't think so. If you can get a judgement to that effect, it would be much more likely to have the effect of invalidating other software licenses, than to nullify the GPL. (Nullify the GPL in a supreme court decision, and copyright reverts to the holder, and no further distribution rights are granted unless a new license is agreed to. But whatever argument serves against the GPL must be applicable to any other license backed by copyright law.)
I say it can't be done, but the company in the original article will have no consequences, since the FSF and other Linux copyright holders have no significant interest in litigating against GPL violators.
>So, even if you violate Microsoft EULA's?
Can you provide a legal argument that distinguishes a GPL violation from a violation of the Microsoft EULA?
They live in precisely the same space: Grant of certain rights that would otherwise be reserved under copyright law.
"Using GPL carries a very high risk that your company will be attacked by socialist whiners when you do anything out of lockstep with their beliefs."
Violating any software license carries a risk that you will be litigated against by the copyright holder whose license you refuse to honor. Doing this is not "going out of lockstep with beliefs", but is *BREAKING THE LAW.*
An interesting mod would be if someone gave an IPod the ability to detect radiation.
As an example of great vintage case mod ideas, I was going to post a link to Audible-Ism, but the site appears to be down, and I can't even find any of his Ebay ads. This is a bit worrying, as I am a huge fan.
Fair enough... I've been doin so much softsynth and DSP related stuff, I think of the oscillations in a theoretical domain. But you're right.
>Interesting but i really dont want my hard drive or ram at 100 degrees.
38C isn't bad for a fan-cooled, standard-clocked system. 100C is broken, but 100F is a reasonable system temp, and a miraculous CPU temp.
Anything that can be made to vibrate at controlled frequencies between say, 30Hz and 4kHZ, can make music. I guess what's interesting here, is that things that don't have a direct means of controlling their frequency, have interesting hacks that lead to indirect control. That's cool, I guess. It's a tradition that goes back further than the old line-printer art. Really impressive would be a line-printer art that both played a tune AND printed an interesting picture, especially if the tune and picture were related.
But nothing hit me as hard as some of the speech output from 8-bit machines that barely had sound output capabilities at all. That's up there with the tricks people used to deliver the impression of more colors than were "possible" on certain machines, or the really impressive things that were done within the limits of 128x64 graphics, or even *no* graphics.
There was a commercial version of the classic Star Trek game, for the TRS-80 model I, that had an explicit feature of RFI sound effects. You could get better computer music with RFI on those things than any other method :-) Desperate for any electronic music instrument, I did a composition that used recordings of TRS-80 RFI and cassette port sounds (and cassette relay buzzes). My philistine high school music teacher didn't understand, so my pioneering work was graded poorly and forgotten. :-)