Apparently he just wanted to bring out the fact that in ancient egypt, the role of women wasn't exactly like it is today, but a bunch of women are standing on their "right not to be offended by anyone, even in a game" and quitting.
Well, a very minimal search for information on the role of women in ancient egypt would have shown him that he made an incorrect assumption. Women were fairly autonomous in ancient egypt and frequently held offices of power. Many of the egyption spiritual leaders of the time were women.
Let's not forget this is just a game. It is not some grand social experiment. It is a service that people pay for and when you type something out it is being read by a *person*, not an Avatar. If someone is playing the game and paying for it they have no responsibility to treat is as anything but a game. In college, you were payed to be experimented on. I think they have every right to expect a certain level of protection from this kind of insulting behaviour.
Would calling someone on another team a racial slur in the middle of a baseball game be okay? If it was just to get a reaction and not meant with ill will?
The "social experiment" of slavery and sexism has already been performed and it didn't go well. There is enough racism/sexism on the net without it being officially sanctioned by people who are taking your money...
People are pretty ignorant when it comes to piracy and theft... if you find a copy of Halo 2 on the street and start making copies and selling them... that is piracy. If you work in Burger King and take a pickle and eat it from their tray- that is theft.
If you find leaked beta software on the net that is neither piracy nor is it theft- it is sloppy security within the company making it.
If you take a bicycle from the store without paying for it, that is theft.
If you find a bicycle you know someone stole form the store that's the store's sloppy security.
Man, how many times have I tried that one on the cops...
But nobody agrees to those terms! They just rip stickers or click buttons, which are not ways of forming an agreement.
Ignorance or lack of paying attention is not a valid excuse. I think you will find that you can be punished for piracy (at least in the US) and so for all intents and purposes it is binding...
If I'm renting a house or buying insurance, I enter agreements, because if I don't, then the other party won't give me what I want. In the case of buying software, I already have it. Since the sale is over, they have no right to take back the software. They have no hold over me- the sticker is now my physical property, so I can rip it or not, and they have no say in the matter.
Any arguments that "You're only buying a license, not a copy of the software" are still circular- that interpretation depends on the EULA being binding, so it cannot itself be used as support for the EULA's validity!
Actually, you are buying a license and a copy of the software. The license is an agreement you make for the use of the software.
If I purchase a gun, there is no agreement I have to sign saying I won't go around shooting puppies with it, but if I do I will certainly get arrested. If a minor attempts to purchase cigarettes or booze they can be fined even though they have not "signed" an agreement.
Look, it is not only a crime, but imoral to take something without permission. You are given permission to purchase this software for your personal use and that is all, if you don't like it, dont give them money and find software whose agreement you like. There isn't a group of people out there being tricked into making life changing agreements...
People don't pirate software as some grand political or social statement. They pirate software because they are caught up in the whole consumption culture of ours and don't want to or can't pay for it. Nobody out there is suffering because they can't afford Windows or MS Word or Doom 3.
Phew, all this time I've been worried about the convicted monopoly Microsoft when they're not really a monopoly.
They may be unscrupulous, but they are not nor have never been a "monopoly". The government and people in general throw around words willy-nilly to invoke emotional responses. This doesn't change the meaning of the words...
I am not going to quote your whole article, but you seem to have a few facts that you should check before letting yourself post.
1. MS started out writing a BASIC interpeter and then moved to a Fortran compiler.
2. In the early 80's IBM was looking for an OS for it's new computers and MS licensed QDOS from SCP then purchased it outright for $50,000.
3. Not "everyone" had a GUI when MS released windows in 1985. In fact the first commercial GUI came just 4 years earlier from Xerox. There was more than on GUI released in 1985 (DesQview, Intuition, Windows) and several after (GEOS, Arthur/RISC, NeXTSTep, OS/2, X11)
4. IBM and MS were partnered during the mid 80's to early 90's working on OS/2. They shared code with eachother, this is why OS/2 was able to run DOS and windows apps easily. The partnership fell appart in the early 90's. I would hardly call what MS did stealing.
5. In the early 90's while IBM and MS were developing their 32-bit solution the 64-bit architecture was just starting out, they were hardly way behind the curve...
I'm not a MS apologist, I just like truth and detest propoganda no matter where it comes from. MS is not the devil and is far from being the saviour either.
Say they don't innovate if you like, but use the correct facts please...
Now that players expect, and developers can deliver, a big, free-play world, plot-oriented games are in decline. Those stupid canned cinematics are disappearing.
The problem isn't games with plots. The problem is a lack of options in solving the issues brought up by a plot.
In a poorly written (or older game) you are given a problem to solve (find the bad guy) and one or two solutions (ask specific person or find specific note with an address). In a good game you would be able to do _anything_ to find the bad guy (look in phone book, stake out his house, kidnap his puppy, randomly run into him at Starbucks, drive around for hours til you find him, etc...etc...)
I like green olives and I like chocolate and they are both food, but that does not mean they should be merged.
Okay, but think of it more like stories are a seasoning than a food. I don't think the article is talking about "Choose you own adventure" type of stories. It's more about bringing the techniques of story telling into gaming.
Most of the really good games I have played have a good narrative. That doesn't mean I wasn't in full control of the character, it just means there were moments when I was sucked into the story and cared about the character/story I was controlling.
Fine, but that never happens. Does the clerk at CompUSA make you sign or even read a license before selling the software? Of course not.
There are license agreements all over software and in the packaging, there's enough legalese in the typical software box to give a lawyer a hard-on...
You can't make an agreement by tearing open a box or clicking through a dialog box.
The last few pieces of software I have purchased have had little stickers that said by opening this package you agree to the terms of the licensing agreement. Then there is the agreement that usually pops up as you are installing the software. You have to agree to it to install, you even have to click an "I Agree" button or checkbox.
It's not like people are being tricked into agreeing with these terms, they are always spelled out in black and white.
This is the kind of shit that makes people not take software piracy seriously. When piracy is defined as any use that the vendor does not approve of, it's hard to call it a moral issue and to think of the vendor as a victim.
This is what the people who make the software have put as a price and the terms they have layed out. To take something without agreeing with those terms is stealing. If you think the terms are un-acceptable, find an alternative or get the government to manage it (yeah great idea, look at social security, the tax system, FCC, etc...etc...).
If PERSONA writes a pice of software and tells PERSONB they can only buy it if they agree not to copy it and give it out to friends or sell it and PERSONB agrees then they have made an agreement that should be followed (from a moral perspective).
If PERSONB decides that they don't want to honor the agreement, they should go find someone who doesn't have so strick an agreement, not take PERSONA's property.
If you don't consider software property, then you won't mind if I delete all your files right or maybe distribute them out to the public? Even that dirty picture you took of yourself for your wife/girlfriend(Mine is encrypted so don't bother)? Because all a program is, is a document with a list of instructions for your computer.
Odds are good that said non-transferable license won't hold up in court, which is probably why Microsoft has never tried to enforce it through legal means. If it makes you feel better about yourself to carefully honor the terms of an invalid and one-sided agreement, go nuts, but don't expect everyone else to do the same.
If you think an agreement is one-sided then don't make it. There are plenty of other options out there as everyone has pointed out.
The problem with Indie Games is that unless a RELATIVELY LARGE group of programmers are willing to gather together and pour their time into a world-class product, it will simply remain on the back-burner.
Wow, replace the word "Games" with "Films" and you'd have the same argument people used to have against Indie Films.
We are getting to a place in game development where the graphics and coding for games is becoming easier and easier to do. In the not too distant future it will be trivial and the big game companies are going to get more and more competition from "indie" games. This is the same thing that happened to film once the complexity and cost of making film/video decreased.
I note that your "review" of Indie games didn't even mention game play, just engines. I don't know about eveyone else, but I buy games for their gameplay. If I want to look at good graphics, I'll go to a movie.
Look at some of the big hit online games (Everquest, etc.); the graphics are sub-par compared to the latest and greatest doom-unreal-etc clone yet they continue to do VERY good business.
I have come to the conclusion that anything that has to do with money on the internet will eventually be hacked and exploited, why should gambling sites be any different?
Exactly, imagine the amount of time spent creating your typical aimbot, and that is just to give some player an advantage in an inconsequential game. Imagine how much energy people put into it if there is a cash reward at the other end.
But its the whole flexibility that once something is found, even you can write an internal patch if you are an org running open source software in case you don't feel like waiting even a day or two for the community to release it.
If you have the skills or are willing to add a programmer to your payroll...
This is a huge reason why companies like to purchase software. They have clear legal rights, and the other guy is on the hook.
Well, not really *legal* rights. I don't think anyone has succesfully sued a software company because their software sucked. Though it is very clear with commercial closed source software who to talk to for support should a serious problem arise...
It's hilarious that people are all upset about MS releasing a patch to premium customers (which isn't really what the article says), when just a few weeks ago everyone was griping about SP2 and saying they weren't going to install it right away in case it was really buggy. So what good would the early warning (which is really what it is, not actual files) do you?
Gee, how about if we have two levels of support from police and firemen? The paying customers get immediate 911 support, and the regular citizens, well, we'll get to you when we can. You're not important.
As far as the budget is concerned, according to Budget Explorer, the US National Budget for 2005 is expected to pay out 41% of all funds to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Social Security Administration alone. Only 18% is earmarked for National Defense and military pensions.
Tell me we aren't already a welfare state. Perhaps you should take a peak at the budget yourself sometime.
First off Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are for people who for the most part have worked their whole lives. It is more like a poorly regulated/managed savings plan than welfare.
Second, 18% for National Defense isn't really related to crime, you have to look at things like the monies for the "War on Drugs" and the money spent by cities, states and counties to combat crime.
In a welfare state, everyone would have the same opportunities for education and health care, that just isn't the case here (USA). The only people our goverment gives hand outs to anymore are large corporations.
Corporations should not be allowed to hold IP. This should be a right reserved for individuals and after their time on this planet the IP should become public domain.
While I agree that culture collapse is cyclic, it is entirely too simple to base their fall on laziness. There are many factors involved (labor force, military, resources, other cultures).
What is with the lazy American crap I always hear spouted. Americans have fewer holidays and work longer hours than a good chunk of the world. They aren't working any harder in India or Pakistan (take it from someone who deals with Indian workers every day), they are working cheaper.
These countries can work cheaper because their cost of living is so much lower and they haven't been consumer zombied by the corporations yet. That will happen once they have more purchasing power.
W.E.P.
Re:If people would just stop stealing...
on
European DRM News
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· Score: 1
The same could be said for drugs. What you pay for your coke doesn't just go to the dealer. There are millions of workers living off of the money. Distributors, poor Coca farmers, the average dealer on the street, cartel bosses, etc... etc... etc...
So why is manufacturing and selling drugs illegal, if there is so much money to be made and a lot of people could live off it? The answer is simple: because drugs are detrimental to a society.
Actually this is a wholely different question. The legality of drugs is a little arbitrary in my opinion and we could go on for quite a while on it's "affect" on society. Given that, I wasn't talking about potential jobs, I was talking about jobs that are currently being held.
The same goes for monopolies, media cartels, price fixing and copyright laws that unfairly favor big corporations.
The problem in a lot of South American countries is that drug cartels are hugely profitable, and they just buy off the governments, so no real action will be taken against them.
A similar thing is happening in the US regarding media corporations.
I totaly agree, but simply stealing a small percentage of their profits isn't going to change anything, it is just a convenient argument for people who want something for nothing. The enemy here really isn't them, it is the lawmakers who are supposed to protect this country from thi type of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently he just wanted to bring out the fact that in ancient egypt, the role of women wasn't exactly like it is today, but a bunch of women are standing on their "right not to be offended by anyone, even in a game" and quitting.
Well, a very minimal search for information on the role of women in ancient egypt would have shown him that he made an incorrect assumption. Women were fairly autonomous in ancient egypt and frequently held offices of power. Many of the egyption spiritual leaders of the time were women.
Let's not forget this is just a game. It is not some grand social experiment. It is a service that people pay for and when you type something out it is being read by a *person*, not an Avatar. If someone is playing the game and paying for it they have no responsibility to treat is as anything but a game. In college, you were payed to be experimented on. I think they have every right to expect a certain level of protection from this kind of insulting behaviour.
Would calling someone on another team a racial slur in the middle of a baseball game be okay? If it was just to get a reaction and not meant with ill will?
The "social experiment" of slavery and sexism has already been performed and it didn't go well. There is enough racism/sexism on the net without it being officially sanctioned by people who are taking your money...
According to the law, if you knew the bike was stolen you can be charged.
People are pretty ignorant when it comes to piracy and theft... if you find a copy of Halo 2 on the street and start making copies and selling them... that is piracy. If you work in Burger King and take a pickle and eat it from their tray- that is theft. If you find leaked beta software on the net that is neither piracy nor is it theft- it is sloppy security within the company making it.
If you take a bicycle from the store without paying for it, that is theft.
If you find a bicycle you know someone stole form the store that's the store's sloppy security.
Man, how many times have I tried that one on the cops...
But nobody agrees to those terms! They just rip stickers or click buttons, which are not ways of forming an agreement.
Ignorance or lack of paying attention is not a valid excuse. I think you will find that you can be punished for piracy (at least in the US) and so for all intents and purposes it is binding...
If I'm renting a house or buying insurance, I enter agreements, because if I don't, then the other party won't give me what I want. In the case of buying software, I already have it. Since the sale is over, they have no right to take back the software. They have no hold over me- the sticker is now my physical property, so I can rip it or not, and they have no say in the matter.
Any arguments that "You're only buying a license, not a copy of the software" are still circular- that interpretation depends on the EULA being binding, so it cannot itself be used as support for the EULA's validity!
Actually, you are buying a license and a copy of the software. The license is an agreement you make for the use of the software.
If I purchase a gun, there is no agreement I have to sign saying I won't go around shooting puppies with it, but if I do I will certainly get arrested. If a minor attempts to purchase cigarettes or booze they can be fined even though they have not "signed" an agreement.
Look, it is not only a crime, but imoral to take something without permission. You are given permission to purchase this software for your personal use and that is all, if you don't like it, dont give them money and find software whose agreement you like. There isn't a group of people out there being tricked into making life changing agreements...
People don't pirate software as some grand political or social statement. They pirate software because they are caught up in the whole consumption culture of ours and don't want to or can't pay for it. Nobody out there is suffering because they can't afford Windows or MS Word or Doom 3.
Phew, all this time I've been worried about the convicted monopoly Microsoft when they're not really a monopoly.
They may be unscrupulous, but they are not nor have never been a "monopoly". The government and people in general throw around words willy-nilly to invoke emotional responses. This doesn't change the meaning of the words...
I am not going to quote your whole article, but you seem to have a few facts that you should check before letting yourself post.
1. MS started out writing a BASIC interpeter and then moved to a Fortran compiler.
2. In the early 80's IBM was looking for an OS for it's new computers and MS licensed QDOS from SCP then purchased it outright for $50,000.
3. Not "everyone" had a GUI when MS released windows in 1985. In fact the first commercial GUI came just 4 years earlier from Xerox. There was more than on GUI released in 1985 (DesQview, Intuition, Windows) and several after (GEOS, Arthur/RISC, NeXTSTep, OS/2, X11)
4. IBM and MS were partnered during the mid 80's to early 90's working on OS/2. They shared code with eachother, this is why OS/2 was able to run DOS and windows apps easily. The partnership fell appart in the early 90's. I would hardly call what MS did stealing.
5. In the early 90's while IBM and MS were developing their 32-bit solution the 64-bit architecture was just starting out, they were hardly way behind the curve...
I'm not a MS apologist, I just like truth and detest propoganda no matter where it comes from. MS is not the devil and is far from being the saviour either.
Say they don't innovate if you like, but use the correct facts please...
W.E.P.A monopoly: when your forced to use the company's products because you are locked in and don't have much of a choice.
Actually a monopoly is when you have _no_ choice.
Now that players expect, and developers can deliver, a big, free-play world, plot-oriented games are in decline. Those stupid canned cinematics are disappearing.
The problem isn't games with plots. The problem is a lack of options in solving the issues brought up by a plot.
In a poorly written (or older game) you are given a problem to solve (find the bad guy) and one or two solutions (ask specific person or find specific note with an address). In a good game you would be able to do _anything_ to find the bad guy (look in phone book, stake out his house, kidnap his puppy, randomly run into him at Starbucks, drive around for hours til you find him, etc...etc...)
it's not really "fun" if it isn't shared.
Apparantly you have never heard of masturbation...
I like green olives and I like chocolate and they are both food, but that does not mean they should be merged.
Okay, but think of it more like stories are a seasoning than a food. I don't think the article is talking about "Choose you own adventure" type of stories. It's more about bringing the techniques of story telling into gaming.
Most of the really good games I have played have a good narrative. That doesn't mean I wasn't in full control of the character, it just means there were moments when I was sucked into the story and cared about the character/story I was controlling.
Fine, but that never happens. Does the clerk at CompUSA make you sign or even read a license before selling the software? Of course not.
There are license agreements all over software and in the packaging, there's enough legalese in the typical software box to give a lawyer a hard-on...
You can't make an agreement by tearing open a box or clicking through a dialog box.
The last few pieces of software I have purchased have had little stickers that said by opening this package you agree to the terms of the licensing agreement. Then there is the agreement that usually pops up as you are installing the software. You have to agree to it to install, you even have to click an "I Agree" button or checkbox.
It's not like people are being tricked into agreeing with these terms, they are always spelled out in black and white.
This is the kind of shit that makes people not take software piracy seriously. When piracy is defined as any use that the vendor does not approve of, it's hard to call it a moral issue and to think of the vendor as a victim.
This is what the people who make the software have put as a price and the terms they have layed out. To take something without agreeing with those terms is stealing. If you think the terms are un-acceptable, find an alternative or get the government to manage it (yeah great idea, look at social security, the tax system, FCC, etc...etc...).
If PERSONA writes a pice of software and tells PERSONB they can only buy it if they agree not to copy it and give it out to friends or sell it and PERSONB agrees then they have made an agreement that should be followed (from a moral perspective).
If PERSONB decides that they don't want to honor the agreement, they should go find someone who doesn't have so strick an agreement, not take PERSONA's property.
If you don't consider software property, then you won't mind if I delete all your files right or maybe distribute them out to the public? Even that dirty picture you took of yourself for your wife/girlfriend(Mine is encrypted so don't bother)? Because all a program is, is a document with a list of instructions for your computer.
W.E.P.Odds are good that said non-transferable license won't hold up in court, which is probably why Microsoft has never tried to enforce it through legal means. If it makes you feel better about yourself to carefully honor the terms of an invalid and one-sided agreement, go nuts, but don't expect everyone else to do the same.
If you think an agreement is one-sided then don't make it. There are plenty of other options out there as everyone has pointed out.
The problem with Indie Games is that unless a RELATIVELY LARGE group of programmers are willing to gather together and pour their time into a world-class product, it will simply remain on the back-burner.
Wow, replace the word "Games" with "Films" and you'd have the same argument people used to have against Indie Films.
We are getting to a place in game development where the graphics and coding for games is becoming easier and easier to do. In the not too distant future it will be trivial and the big game companies are going to get more and more competition from "indie" games. This is the same thing that happened to film once the complexity and cost of making film/video decreased.
I note that your "review" of Indie games didn't even mention game play, just engines. I don't know about eveyone else, but I buy games for their gameplay. If I want to look at good graphics, I'll go to a movie.
Look at some of the big hit online games (Everquest, etc.); the graphics are sub-par compared to the latest and greatest doom-unreal-etc clone yet they continue to do VERY good business.
Anyway, enough of that rant...
W.E.P.
I have come to the conclusion that anything that has to do with money on the internet will eventually be hacked and exploited, why should gambling sites be any different?
Exactly, imagine the amount of time spent creating your typical aimbot, and that is just to give some player an advantage in an inconsequential game. Imagine how much energy people put into it if there is a cash reward at the other end.
W.E.P.But its the whole flexibility that once something is found, even you can write an internal patch if you are an org running open source software in case you don't feel like waiting even a day or two for the community to release it.
If you have the skills or are willing to add a programmer to your payroll...This is a huge reason why companies like to purchase software. They have clear legal rights, and the other guy is on the hook.
Well, not really *legal* rights. I don't think anyone has succesfully sued a software company because their software sucked. Though it is very clear with commercial closed source software who to talk to for support should a serious problem arise...
W.E.P.
You'll still get your patches in the usual Microsoft timely manner (weeks, likely), but these so called 'premium' members will get them a lot sooner.
The premium customers do not get the patches earlier, they get general information on the patches 3 days earlier.
W.E.P.
It's hilarious that people are all upset about MS releasing a patch to premium customers (which isn't really what the article says), when just a few weeks ago everyone was griping about SP2 and saying they weren't going to install it right away in case it was really buggy. So what good would the early warning (which is really what it is, not actual files) do you?
W.E.P.
Gee, how about if we have two levels of support from police and firemen? The paying customers get immediate 911 support, and the regular citizens, well, we'll get to you when we can. You're not important.
That's a tad extreme.
As far as the budget is concerned, according to Budget Explorer, the US National Budget for 2005 is expected to pay out 41% of all funds to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Social Security Administration alone. Only 18% is earmarked for National Defense and military pensions.
Tell me we aren't already a welfare state. Perhaps you should take a peak at the budget yourself sometime.
First off Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are for people who for the most part have worked their whole lives. It is more like a poorly regulated/managed savings plan than welfare.
Second, 18% for National Defense isn't really related to crime, you have to look at things like the monies for the "War on Drugs" and the money spent by cities, states and counties to combat crime.
In a welfare state, everyone would have the same opportunities for education and health care, that just isn't the case here (USA). The only people our goverment gives hand outs to anymore are large corporations.
W.E.P.
Corporations should not be allowed to hold IP. This should be a right reserved for individuals and after their time on this planet the IP should become public domain.
That's my 2 pennies...
W.E.P.
While I agree that culture collapse is cyclic, it is entirely too simple to base their fall on laziness. There are many factors involved (labor force, military, resources, other cultures).
What is with the lazy American crap I always hear spouted. Americans have fewer holidays and work longer hours than a good chunk of the world. They aren't working any harder in India or Pakistan (take it from someone who deals with Indian workers every day), they are working cheaper.
These countries can work cheaper because their cost of living is so much lower and they haven't been consumer zombied by the corporations yet. That will happen once they have more purchasing power.
W.E.P.
The same could be said for drugs. What you pay for your coke doesn't just go to the dealer. There are millions of workers living off of the money. Distributors, poor Coca farmers, the average dealer on the street, cartel bosses, etc... etc... etc... So why is manufacturing and selling drugs illegal, if there is so much money to be made and a lot of people could live off it? The answer is simple: because drugs are detrimental to a society.
Actually this is a wholely different question. The legality of drugs is a little arbitrary in my opinion and we could go on for quite a while on it's "affect" on society. Given that, I wasn't talking about potential jobs, I was talking about jobs that are currently being held.
The same goes for monopolies, media cartels, price fixing and copyright laws that unfairly favor big corporations. The problem in a lot of South American countries is that drug cartels are hugely profitable, and they just buy off the governments, so no real action will be taken against them. A similar thing is happening in the US regarding media corporations.
I totaly agree, but simply stealing a small percentage of their profits isn't going to change anything, it is just a convenient argument for people who want something for nothing. The enemy here really isn't them, it is the lawmakers who are supposed to protect this country from thi type of thing.
W.E.P.