You're a peer on the network (or a leech as most are) and you're downloading a given torrent, and uploading to others as well. You're intent is obviously to get the entire file or collection of files. I would have to imagine you're busted here as well
The loophole here may be that you could claim ignorance. If you don't have the entire file, you can't be 100% sure it is copyrighted. There is a massive amount of LEGAL material going around on BT, so "how can you be sure?" Also, some.torrent files are named one thing and actually point to something quite different. Again, another area to claim ignorance ("I didn't know what I was downloading! And I deleted it as soon as I realized what it was!")
What I'm saying is, if you are sharing a complete file of something on some P2P network, you have full access to that complete file and are therefore responsible for its content. If you are sharing random parts of some file on BT and have no way to inspect what the full file is, it would seem to me that you could not be held liable.
If you are seeding that is different, and I'm sure you could be held liable since you have the entire thing.
Of course, IANAL either. And I doubt this matters anyway, since with BT, there are quite clearly a number of central sites that provide torrents of copyrighted material. If they want to go after illegal BT downloads, they simply go after those sites. People will still trade torrents of copyrighted material, but if they shut down those big sites it will stay away from the mainstream.
The film is from 1997, so not too old. Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman play the main parts. Check the link in the original post for more information. I highly recommend it - one of the finest works of science fiction I have ever seen.
I agree with you, for the most part, and I think at first that the immediate threats (fighting disease, etc.) will indeed be the goals. But I think it's only a matter of time before it reaches a level beyond that, and our reality becomes similar to the reality of the film.
A doctor in Gattaca is quick to remind some parents: "Remember, this child is still you. Just the best of you." In other words, the child they "engineer" is something that could be produced naturally from the genes of the two parents, with say a 1 in 1000 chance or something. So, with that in mind, it's not as though they were just arbitrarily enhancing the child.
Remember, the goal of this is not to clone entire humans (although, someday,
who knows what will happen) but instead to perfect genetic engineering.
People will likely look back one day on the movie Gattaca
as amazingly prophetic. For those unfamiliar with the film, it did an amazing
job portraying what society may be like when genetic engineering becomes perfected.
Coming, sooner than many think, are the days when we can engineer the child
of two parents; not to be a perfect child, but instead to be the
"best" of those parents. The child is more intelligent, stronger,
etc. than the average child produced by those parents would be, and will have
a much lower likelihood of diseases and other problems. This will be a fantastic
thing, but those children born the old-fashioned way are likely going to be
disadvantaged. Because we'll be able to weed them out just by plucking a hair
and checking their DNA.
Should we forbid someone from taking a certain job based on their genetic makeup?
And how long can we breed the "best" children before the best become
so far ahead of the worst, that the worst no longer have any "value"
to society at all? Those will be the real ethical dilemmas. The so-called
ethical dilemmas we're faced with today are just temporary hurdles created by people
who are frightened of progress and/or don't understand what the goals are.
Granted, I've only had two disputes over 4 years or so. Both were people on eBay who took the money and didn't deliver anything. But both times, Paypal investigated the claims. And both times, they found the seller responsible and refunded my money, in full, with no fees taken. Of course, the downside is that it took them about a month to complete the entire process, from the original claim to the refund. But hey, I didn't lose a cent.
You do have to watch out for trading items in online games though. Paypal makes it clear they do not offer any protection for "intangible" items. In this case it's the buyer that has to watch out the most. If you buy something and send the money, and then the person never gives you the item, you're screwed. Paypal will investigate if you file a claim, but as long as the seller claims they delivered it, Paypal will just tell you it was intangible and that will be that.
I agree with the parent post, though, that you shouldn't leave lots of money in your Paypal balance. Paypal is not a bank. If you receive a lot of money through Paypal, best to send it directly to your bank account ASAP. It's not like you need to have money in your Paypal balance to send instant payments anyway.
... but it's intermittent. Most of the time I just get an error message. After a couple of tries, I was able to reach my account and it looks ok, except for a rather large payment to a bank in Nigeria. Hmm, I don't remember doing that...
You are seriously underestimating the general cluelessness of the average computer user. I think it could be named "worm.exe" and a lot of people would still run it.
The knowledge (or lack thereof) of the average computer user is the real reason that security is such an issue today.
This will require 1.28 Libraries of Congress to store. The overhead is for all of the faulty copy protection to be added, which a 13-year-old somewhere in Europe is already working on cracking.
Well one person recieves a copy, and that person sends to two people, and they each send to two people. Now compare that to the one on one transfer that the physical medium imposes
The main flaw with that reasoning is this: since when do we prosecute people based on how bad their crime MIGHT be? If someone is pulled over for speeding, do we say "I caught you at 80 MPH, but you had the potential to be going 100 MPH, so I'm doubling your fine." or "Well, since you were speeding here, you'll probably be speeding every other time you drive - maybe even inducing others to speed! And you'll probably drive 300 times this year, so therefore your fine is increased by 300. You are hearby fined $20,000 for speeding."
No, of course we don't. Why should that be the case here? Just because copyright infringement is considered an "easy" crime? So is speeding. Sure someone MIGHT share a file with 1,000 people - then again, it might just sit there out in the open and be downloaded by no one at all.
So far the evidence presented for this argument is as circumstantial as your claim that there's no one to one relationship between song and revenue.
Well logically, there CAN'T be a one to one relationship. For the simple fact that many people will go out and download a number of songs so massive that they could not possibly afford to go out and buy a CD of each and every one.
That said, I have no idea how many songs lead to gained revenue (i.e. buying a CD after hearing something new) as opposed to how many songs are used as a substitute for buying one. But the point is that all of these cases happen, so it's not really right to treat every shared file so harshly.
Copyright has always been pretty clear about what was, and wasn't OK. People have been ignoring the law for several decades. The main difference is that technology makes it easier to break the law.
You're right, and I guarantee you that people aren't going to stop, and it's going to get even easier. It's civil disobedience on an increasingly large scale. People want the product, but want more freedom in how they can get it and what they can do with it. New distribution models have to be created, because it's already apparent that sueing everyone is accomplishing next to nothing, other than further alienating/angering their customers. They need to forget about laws like these and instead use their resources to bring music (and other entertainment) to people in new ways.
If your analogy was what you think it was, then you'll acknowledge that all the other things listed as felonies are also equal to murder and rape.
Well, I don't know every single felony offhand, but I think most of the ones I can think of (kidnapping and hijacking for example) are indeed in the same LEAGUE as murder and rape. It's not accurate to say they are equal, but they belong in the same severe category. There may be other felonies that are debatable; like I said, I don't have them all in front of me. Copyright infringement isn't even close, though. IMO, it should be a misdemeanor. Hell, they mistakenly label infringement as "stealing" all the time - and things like burgularly and shoplifting, which ARE stealing, are only misdemeanors!
From the title...
on
A Hack A Day
·
· Score: 4, Funny
... I expected a site showing screenshots of some poor sucker's hacked web pages, with a new poor sucker each day;)
Here's the primary difference. How many CD's can you walk out of the store with? How many digital copies can you distribute over the internet?
But that's not really the issue here - because even if I could walk out with 100 CDs, and then went and distributed just ONE song to just ONE person... well, the penalty for the latter is still significantly more severe, and that's not right.
So how much crime does there have to be, before the punishment does fit the crime, and why is the line drawn so arbitrarily?
I don't know how much there has to be, but it has to be a LOT more than this. They can already sue for damages up to $150,000 per SONG. That's before I even get into potential prison sentences.
Not only that, but there is not even a direct correlation between a shared song and lost revenue. Some songs shared influence people to buy a CD - and so that shared song actually earned revenue. Then there are others who do replace the purchase of the music, and cause lost revenue. The majoriy make no difference, as they would not have been purchased anyway. Now in that last case, I'm not saying it's still "right" to go ahead and do it. I'm just trying to put this into the proper perspective.
A CD stolen from a store, on the other hand, IS lost revenue, plain and simple. Not to mention it's probably 10-15 songs that are stolen. The CD also has the same potential to be illegally distributed as the audio files do, since it's a simple matter to create the files once you have the CD.
But back to my original analogy - do you really think copyright infringement is a crime on par with murder and rape? How can any SANE person think that?
Worsens Penalties: Requiring the U.S. Sentencing Commission to modify its guidelines to significantly increase the criminal infringement sentences
Right. Because there's still a FEW crimes out there that actually have bigger penalties than copyright infringement! I know - I'm as shocked as the rest of you.
In all seriousness, WHY do you suppose copying a copyrighted music file illegally is already a felony in most cases (along with things like murder, kidnapping, and rape), whereas running into a store and swiping the actual CD is just a simple misdemeanor?
For those few who will no doubt comment on this article and say "blah blah, good - people swapping files are criminals and should be punished" I ask you this - does the punishment even come CLOSE to fitting the crime?
And now they want to make the punishment even more harsh?
Not really a game that scared me, per se, but the original Thief made me more tense and paranoid than any other game I've ever played. Of course, you HAD to play it with the lights out to really experience it the way it was meant to be. But all the elements came together in that game so well. And unlike many other "stealth" games that have popped up since then, Thief was one of the few where you weren't enormously powerful. So you COULDN'T simply force combat whenever you wanted to, because your opponents were mostly tougher and/or would alert lots of other opponents to your presence. You HAD to be stealthy most of the time. Hell, if you played it on the most difficult skill level, you weren't allowed to kill anyone at all!
To be honest, I'm surprised how many people consider Doom 3 such a "scary" game. Don't get me wrong, I like Doom 3, and certainly there are some startling moments; but too many of these are caused by something jumping at you from out of nowhere. It seems too forced at times, and you come to expect it. When I played Thief I was always on edge, trying to get into the darkness, listening for footsteps, waiting for just the right moment to sneak up behind someone... what fun that game was the first time through.
I do not want to wander around and do silly things, I want a clear goal and many methods for achiving it
I see what you are saying, but that's what makes a game like Morrowind so special. It DOES have a linear storyline, or a "main quest" sort of thing. The beauty of the game is that you can follow that main quest all the way through, without deviating much, and "win" the game (of course, you can still keep playing once you have done this), or you can put it on the back burner and do anything else that looks interesting. Now, here's where some open-ended games fail, because they don't provide enough variety/detail and can leave you bored rather quickly. But the history, political system, and environment of Morrowind are all so detailed, it really does draw you in and make you feel like you are a part of the game world. And the fact that the game has a plugin system and ships with an editor assured that there was, and still is, a large mod community for it, making it even more open-ended than it originally was.
I'm not saying I'd want EVERY single-player game to be like this. It's nice to follow a more linear, pre-determined story too, as long as it's interesting enough. But here's the difference. Once you have played through that kind of game, you're pretty much done with it. On the other hand, I still play Morrowind regularly, well over 2 years after getting it, and there are still MANY things in the game world I have yet to experience. The fact that I still enjoy the game so much and still find new things, after playing it all this time, speaks volumes about how great open-ended games can be, if done correctly.
to work on games that promote "emergent" gameplay--open-ended exploration that offers many choices and combinations of options to players
There's a few out there if you look hard enough (Morrowind, for example), but most single player games just aren't very deep these days. Of course, to make a really open-ended game requires a LOT more testing, driving up the budget and especially the time to develop the game - and modern games already take a long time to develop. Most developers feel the extra effort isn't worth it in most cases, unfortunately.
Hatch was the guy who wanted to remotely destroy people's computers if they
were found to contain items that infringed on copyright. Yes, you read that
right. Remotely destroy people's computers.
I'm all for destroying their machines, Hatch said during a
Committee hearing Tuesday. "'If you have a few hundred thousand of those,
I think people would realize' the seriousness of their actions," the wire
service quotes him as saying. (source)
... is that someone on the inside is purposely sending out false notices to make them look bad, which is highly unlikely.
Otherwise, you're right, there's no way any rational person is going to see supermetroid-speedrunv3-frenom.avi and think that it is a copy of the movie "Speed". Human error my ass. A bot linked "speed" and ".avi" in the same file, simple as that. Hell, at least this file was 180+ MB. Other times it seems like they are calling out files that are a couple of K and saying they are full movies. Yeah... human error. I guess they mistakenly thought someone had come up with the greatest video compression in the history of computers.
The MPAA's tactics continue to disgust me and I hope that, eventually, someone who gets falsely accused has the courage/money to take it to them for this. At least for slander, or something.
MOST of the time no one is doing any hacking or anything here. These networks are absolutely wide open with no security at all. Once again the average Joe is taking zero time to learn how to properly secure their computer/network, and expecting everything to work right. That's not how things work.
Now, don't mistake me here. I'm not trying to JUSTIFY people exploiting this to get people's personal information. But this is yet another security "problem" that is simply the uninformed masses not willing to educate themselves on some BASIC security procedures.
I mean think about it for a second. The complaints amount to "Hey, I'm broadcasting my entire home network, along with all shares on it (many of which contain personal info I didn't bother to hide), and my private internet connection, well beyond my property line - with no security at all! And someone out there is actually ACCESSING IT!! WTF?!"
For those who RTFA, you will see this research was funded by NASA and NSF. There's a reason for that. Seriously, this being Slashdot and all, I was surprised at how many people immediately dismissed this as "too slow". Eventually, when perfected, this could be very useful in space. Not just for redundancy, but in other ways as well, like decreasing a system's vulnerability to radiation in space.
"His regular votes against almost all government spending, taxes, and
new programs as well as the fact that he is often the lone dissenter in otherwise
unanimous votes have earned him the nickname 'Dr. No'." (quoted from
Wikipedia)
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the coral cache link, and here's a list of the systems included in the article:
Odyssey^2
Atari 2600
Intellivision
Atari 7800
TI-99/4a
NES
Genesis
Sega CD
Turbo Grafx
Saturn
Dreamcast
PS2
XBox
GameCube
GameBoy Advance
If anyone here is seriously considering this, I have a bridge you might be interested in...
If it's wireless, I'm interested. Can always use extra WiFi hardware.
You're a peer on the network (or a leech as most are) and you're downloading a given torrent, and uploading to others as well. You're intent is obviously to get the entire file or collection of files. I would have to imagine you're busted here as well
.torrent files are named one thing and actually point to something quite different. Again, another area to claim ignorance ("I didn't know what I was downloading! And I deleted it as soon as I realized what it was!")
The loophole here may be that you could claim ignorance. If you don't have the entire file, you can't be 100% sure it is copyrighted. There is a massive amount of LEGAL material going around on BT, so "how can you be sure?" Also, some
What I'm saying is, if you are sharing a complete file of something on some P2P network, you have full access to that complete file and are therefore responsible for its content. If you are sharing random parts of some file on BT and have no way to inspect what the full file is, it would seem to me that you could not be held liable.
If you are seeding that is different, and I'm sure you could be held liable since you have the entire thing.
Of course, IANAL either. And I doubt this matters anyway, since with BT, there are quite clearly a number of central sites that provide torrents of copyrighted material. If they want to go after illegal BT downloads, they simply go after those sites. People will still trade torrents of copyrighted material, but if they shut down those big sites it will stay away from the mainstream.
The film is from 1997, so not too old. Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman play the main parts. Check the link in the original post for more information. I highly recommend it - one of the finest works of science fiction I have ever seen.
I agree with you, for the most part, and I think at first that the immediate threats (fighting disease, etc.) will indeed be the goals. But I think it's only a matter of time before it reaches a level beyond that, and our reality becomes similar to the reality of the film.
A doctor in Gattaca is quick to remind some parents: "Remember, this child is still you. Just the best of you." In other words, the child they "engineer" is something that could be produced naturally from the genes of the two parents, with say a 1 in 1000 chance or something. So, with that in mind, it's not as though they were just arbitrarily enhancing the child.
Remember, the goal of this is not to clone entire humans (although, someday, who knows what will happen) but instead to perfect genetic engineering.
People will likely look back one day on the movie Gattaca as amazingly prophetic. For those unfamiliar with the film, it did an amazing job portraying what society may be like when genetic engineering becomes perfected. Coming, sooner than many think, are the days when we can engineer the child of two parents; not to be a perfect child, but instead to be the "best" of those parents. The child is more intelligent, stronger, etc. than the average child produced by those parents would be, and will have a much lower likelihood of diseases and other problems. This will be a fantastic thing, but those children born the old-fashioned way are likely going to be disadvantaged. Because we'll be able to weed them out just by plucking a hair and checking their DNA.
Should we forbid someone from taking a certain job based on their genetic makeup? And how long can we breed the "best" children before the best become so far ahead of the worst, that the worst no longer have any "value" to society at all? Those will be the real ethical dilemmas. The so-called ethical dilemmas we're faced with today are just temporary hurdles created by people who are frightened of progress and/or don't understand what the goals are.
You'd have to be pretty dedicated to simply give up over a year of your life to live in a cramped environment with bad food, no privacy
Then again, if you still live with your parents, there's not really a whole lot of difference.
Granted, I've only had two disputes over 4 years or so. Both were people on eBay who took the money and didn't deliver anything. But both times, Paypal investigated the claims. And both times, they found the seller responsible and refunded my money, in full, with no fees taken. Of course, the downside is that it took them about a month to complete the entire process, from the original claim to the refund. But hey, I didn't lose a cent.
You do have to watch out for trading items in online games though. Paypal makes it clear they do not offer any protection for "intangible" items. In this case it's the buyer that has to watch out the most. If you buy something and send the money, and then the person never gives you the item, you're screwed. Paypal will investigate if you file a claim, but as long as the seller claims they delivered it, Paypal will just tell you it was intangible and that will be that.
I agree with the parent post, though, that you shouldn't leave lots of money in your Paypal balance. Paypal is not a bank. If you receive a lot of money through Paypal, best to send it directly to your bank account ASAP. It's not like you need to have money in your Paypal balance to send instant payments anyway.
... but it's intermittent. Most of the time I just get an error message. After a couple of tries, I was able to reach my account and it looks ok, except for a rather large payment to a bank in Nigeria. Hmm, I don't remember doing that...
You are seriously underestimating the general cluelessness of the average computer user. I think it could be named "worm.exe" and a lot of people would still run it.
The knowledge (or lack thereof) of the average computer user is the real reason that security is such an issue today.
We will not listen to anyone's opinion on random downloaded software unless they wear a white blouse.
Maybe you meant a white lab coat? Or perhaps your mind was on schoolgirls after all? I know mine always is!
Uh, I mean...
This will require 1.28 Libraries of Congress to store. The overhead is for all of the faulty copy protection to be added, which a 13-year-old somewhere in Europe is already working on cracking.
Well one person recieves a copy, and that person sends to two people, and they each send to two people. Now compare that to the one on one transfer that the physical medium imposes
The main flaw with that reasoning is this: since when do we prosecute people based on how bad their crime MIGHT be? If someone is pulled over for speeding, do we say "I caught you at 80 MPH, but you had the potential to be going 100 MPH, so I'm doubling your fine." or "Well, since you were speeding here, you'll probably be speeding every other time you drive - maybe even inducing others to speed! And you'll probably drive 300 times this year, so therefore your fine is increased by 300. You are hearby fined $20,000 for speeding."
No, of course we don't. Why should that be the case here? Just because copyright infringement is considered an "easy" crime? So is speeding. Sure someone MIGHT share a file with 1,000 people - then again, it might just sit there out in the open and be downloaded by no one at all.
So far the evidence presented for this argument is as circumstantial as your claim that there's no one to one relationship between song and revenue.
Well logically, there CAN'T be a one to one relationship. For the simple fact that many people will go out and download a number of songs so massive that they could not possibly afford to go out and buy a CD of each and every one.
That said, I have no idea how many songs lead to gained revenue (i.e. buying a CD after hearing something new) as opposed to how many songs are used as a substitute for buying one. But the point is that all of these cases happen, so it's not really right to treat every shared file so harshly.
Copyright has always been pretty clear about what was, and wasn't OK. People have been ignoring the law for several decades. The main difference is that technology makes it easier to break the law.
You're right, and I guarantee you that people aren't going to stop, and it's going to get even easier. It's civil disobedience on an increasingly large scale. People want the product, but want more freedom in how they can get it and what they can do with it. New distribution models have to be created, because it's already apparent that sueing everyone is accomplishing next to nothing, other than further alienating/angering their customers. They need to forget about laws like these and instead use their resources to bring music (and other entertainment) to people in new ways.
If your analogy was what you think it was, then you'll acknowledge that all the other things listed as felonies are also equal to murder and rape.
Well, I don't know every single felony offhand, but I think most of the ones I can think of (kidnapping and hijacking for example) are indeed in the same LEAGUE as murder and rape. It's not accurate to say they are equal, but they belong in the same severe category. There may be other felonies that are debatable; like I said, I don't have them all in front of me. Copyright infringement isn't even close, though. IMO, it should be a misdemeanor. Hell, they mistakenly label infringement as "stealing" all the time - and things like burgularly and shoplifting, which ARE stealing, are only misdemeanors!
... I expected a site showing screenshots of some poor sucker's hacked web pages, with a new poor sucker each day ;)
Here's the primary difference. How many CD's can you walk out of the store with? How many digital copies can you distribute over the internet?
But that's not really the issue here - because even if I could walk out with 100 CDs, and then went and distributed just ONE song to just ONE person... well, the penalty for the latter is still significantly more severe, and that's not right.
So how much crime does there have to be, before the punishment does fit the crime, and why is the line drawn so arbitrarily?
I don't know how much there has to be, but it has to be a LOT more than this. They can already sue for damages up to $150,000 per SONG. That's before I even get into potential prison sentences.
Not only that, but there is not even a direct correlation between a shared song and lost revenue. Some songs shared influence people to buy a CD - and so that shared song actually earned revenue. Then there are others who do replace the purchase of the music, and cause lost revenue. The majoriy make no difference, as they would not have been purchased anyway. Now in that last case, I'm not saying it's still "right" to go ahead and do it. I'm just trying to put this into the proper perspective.
A CD stolen from a store, on the other hand, IS lost revenue, plain and simple. Not to mention it's probably 10-15 songs that are stolen. The CD also has the same potential to be illegally distributed as the audio files do, since it's a simple matter to create the files once you have the CD.
But back to my original analogy - do you really think copyright infringement is a crime on par with murder and rape? How can any SANE person think that?
Worsens Penalties: Requiring the U.S. Sentencing Commission to modify its guidelines to significantly increase the criminal infringement sentences
Right. Because there's still a FEW crimes out there that actually have bigger penalties than copyright infringement! I know - I'm as shocked as the rest of you.
In all seriousness, WHY do you suppose copying a copyrighted music file illegally is already a felony in most cases (along with things like murder, kidnapping, and rape), whereas running into a store and swiping the actual CD is just a simple misdemeanor?
For those few who will no doubt comment on this article and say "blah blah, good - people swapping files are criminals and should be punished" I ask you this - does the punishment even come CLOSE to fitting the crime?
And now they want to make the punishment even more harsh?
This is not justice. It's a joke.
Not really a game that scared me, per se, but the original Thief made me more tense and paranoid than any other game I've ever played. Of course, you HAD to play it with the lights out to really experience it the way it was meant to be. But all the elements came together in that game so well. And unlike many other "stealth" games that have popped up since then, Thief was one of the few where you weren't enormously powerful. So you COULDN'T simply force combat whenever you wanted to, because your opponents were mostly tougher and/or would alert lots of other opponents to your presence. You HAD to be stealthy most of the time. Hell, if you played it on the most difficult skill level, you weren't allowed to kill anyone at all!
To be honest, I'm surprised how many people consider Doom 3 such a "scary" game. Don't get me wrong, I like Doom 3, and certainly there are some startling moments; but too many of these are caused by something jumping at you from out of nowhere. It seems too forced at times, and you come to expect it. When I played Thief I was always on edge, trying to get into the darkness, listening for footsteps, waiting for just the right moment to sneak up behind someone... what fun that game was the first time through.
I do not want to wander around and do silly things, I want a clear goal and many methods for achiving it
I see what you are saying, but that's what makes a game like Morrowind so special. It DOES have a linear storyline, or a "main quest" sort of thing. The beauty of the game is that you can follow that main quest all the way through, without deviating much, and "win" the game (of course, you can still keep playing once you have done this), or you can put it on the back burner and do anything else that looks interesting. Now, here's where some open-ended games fail, because they don't provide enough variety/detail and can leave you bored rather quickly. But the history, political system, and environment of Morrowind are all so detailed, it really does draw you in and make you feel like you are a part of the game world. And the fact that the game has a plugin system and ships with an editor assured that there was, and still is, a large mod community for it, making it even more open-ended than it originally was.
I'm not saying I'd want EVERY single-player game to be like this. It's nice to follow a more linear, pre-determined story too, as long as it's interesting enough. But here's the difference. Once you have played through that kind of game, you're pretty much done with it. On the other hand, I still play Morrowind regularly, well over 2 years after getting it, and there are still MANY things in the game world I have yet to experience. The fact that I still enjoy the game so much and still find new things, after playing it all this time, speaks volumes about how great open-ended games can be, if done correctly.
... finding my passion sounds like too much work. And when things sound like too much work, I close my eyes and cover my ears and go "LA LA LA!"
Then I go and play a game, and feel much better. Hooray for games! That was your point, right? Now I understand.
to work on games that promote "emergent" gameplay--open-ended exploration that offers many choices and combinations of options to players
There's a few out there if you look hard enough (Morrowind, for example), but most single player games just aren't very deep these days. Of course, to make a really open-ended game requires a LOT more testing, driving up the budget and especially the time to develop the game - and modern games already take a long time to develop. Most developers feel the extra effort isn't worth it in most cases, unfortunately.
Hatch was the guy who wanted to remotely destroy people's computers if they were found to contain items that infringed on copyright. Yes, you read that right. Remotely destroy people's computers.
I'm all for destroying their machines, Hatch said during a Committee hearing Tuesday. "'If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize' the seriousness of their actions," the wire service quotes him as saying. (source)
book which can be read and understood by anyone in less than a month
Unless, of course, you're Johnny 5.
... is that someone on the inside is purposely sending out false notices to make them look bad, which is highly unlikely.
Otherwise, you're right, there's no way any rational person is going to see supermetroid-speedrunv3-frenom.avi and think that it is a copy of the movie "Speed". Human error my ass. A bot linked "speed" and ".avi" in the same file, simple as that. Hell, at least this file was 180+ MB. Other times it seems like they are calling out files that are a couple of K and saying they are full movies. Yeah... human error. I guess they mistakenly thought someone had come up with the greatest video compression in the history of computers.
The MPAA's tactics continue to disgust me and I hope that, eventually, someone who gets falsely accused has the courage/money to take it to them for this. At least for slander, or something.
MOST of the time no one is doing any hacking or anything here. These networks are absolutely wide open with no security at all. Once again the average Joe is taking zero time to learn how to properly secure their computer/network, and expecting everything to work right. That's not how things work.
Now, don't mistake me here. I'm not trying to JUSTIFY people exploiting this to get people's personal information. But this is yet another security "problem" that is simply the uninformed masses not willing to educate themselves on some BASIC security procedures.
I mean think about it for a second. The complaints amount to "Hey, I'm broadcasting my entire home network, along with all shares on it (many of which contain personal info I didn't bother to hide), and my private internet connection, well beyond my property line - with no security at all! And someone out there is actually ACCESSING IT!! WTF?!"
For those who RTFA, you will see this research was funded by NASA and NSF. There's a reason for that. Seriously, this being Slashdot and all, I was surprised at how many people immediately dismissed this as "too slow". Eventually, when perfected, this could be very useful in space. Not just for redundancy, but in other ways as well, like decreasing a system's vulnerability to radiation in space.
"His regular votes against almost all government spending, taxes, and new programs as well as the fact that he is often the lone dissenter in otherwise unanimous votes have earned him the nickname 'Dr. No'." (quoted from Wikipedia)