Re:Ok, I was interested before but now....
on
Wii-mote In Action
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I think the best thing Nintendo has done is to recognize that FPS games have a very limited appeal. They aren't going after the hardcore gamers. They recognize that if they want to grow the gaming market they have to recreate it into something that will appeal across generational and gender lines.
Think Suduko and not GTA
Being able to use Excel doesn't qualify you as an accountant anymore than being able to use a PC makes qualifies you as a programmer. A large part of the problem is that many spreadsheet users lack an accounting or mathematical background. They are cubicle drones who have MS Office on their computer and are expected to use it.
What is the primary reason for the MPAA going after torrent sites? They claim it is to fight piracy. I wonder if it isn't about shutting down a distribution channel that they don't control and are unable to effectively monetize because of the decentralized nature of P2P. Both the MPAA and the RIAA make their money by controlling access to production resources and to the primary channels of distribution. The death knell for the RIAA wasn't Napster, it was the advent of CD burners and multi-track recording software that ccould turn any decent PC into a recording studio. Similarly, the death knell for Hollywood isn't torrent. It is the increasing amount of home grown video content online and the decreasing costs and difficulty involved in recording and editing it. Every minute spent watching "jackass" style video clips, Jib Jab flash animation and other shorts is a minute of entertainment not controlled by hollywood. For now it isn't a threat to their business model--but the rules are changing quickly and it scares the hell out of them.
Sony became a world class electronics company because it was led by engineers with a passion for electronics, a vision of the future, and a willingness to take chances. Sony is now led my mindless suits that are more focused on the petty turf wars and internal politics of the company than on their customers and products. It sunds like every branch of the company has input into the direction of the PS3, which usually means it will end up doing a little bit of everything--- badly.
The basic problem with a class action lawsuit for a problem like this is that the lawyers involved would make millions while the affected users would get a couple of coupons for 20% discounts off of their next Sony CD purchases.
IANAL but it seems to me he didn't set out to disable a copy protection scheme. He set out to identify the source of a potentially damaging program installed without his knowledge or consent. I think it is unlikely that SONY could successfully invoke DMCA protection under those conditions (though I realize that putting the rights of consumers ahead of corporations is happening less and less in US courts)
"Traditional software, like that sold by Microsoft, ships with the source code kept secret."
Forbes, unsurprisingly, doesn't get that traditonal software code was all open source--Richard Stallman created the GPL and the foundations of the open source movement as a response to companies like Microsoft that were locking their software behind restrictions he found unethical, immoral and against the shared community development model that charactericized early software development.
There is a lot of robotic research taking place in the US. The bulk of it, however, is in military applications. Japan is leading the world in most categories of robotics but robotics development is a global phenomenon.
There are times when the physics points to previously unimagined possibilities--think Einsteins equations and the atomic bomb--and there are other times when actual results contradict our understanding of the physics involved--think ceramic high-temperature superconductors...most 1980s era physicists would have dismissed the idea out of hand....but they worked and the physics had to be revisited to try and explain why.
a lot also depends on how you define innovation. You can make a valid argument that the Thomas Edison invention of sound recording and playback was a major innovation--and all the improvements in sound recording and playback since then have just been improvements on that idea. My PC doubles as a fully functional recording studio and I have thousands of songs on my iPod. Compared to my great grandmothers gramophone, those seem like major innovations to me!
I was at the NextFest and was familiar with a lot of the technology being presented. Seeing it in the real world is a lot different than reading about it or seeing it on TV.
Compare your live to that of the average citizen of a century or two ago and you get a sense of how much technology and science has shaped our lives. But if your standard of comparison is not reality but the Jetsons, or Star Trek then yes, NextFest would seem rather ordinary.
It is not about government encroachment. it is about the right of the taxpayers to freely access the results of research paid for by public taxes and not having it "claimed" as the private property" of a for profit organization.
The question of whether governments should finance research is a separate issue.
Just because it has been proposed before doesn't means it is not a good idea. There is currently no public benefit to an across the board extension of copyright. For those rare works that still have enormous value decades after it's creation, there should be a mechanism that allows the copyright to be extended. Most work can and should go into the public domain
I also don't buy the arguments that attempt to portray record company investments as a foundation of creative talent. Computers now functions as fuilly equipped recording studios, and the Internet gives any musician access to a worldwide audience. The world no longer needs the RIAA.
When he thought SCO still had a prayer of winning, he gave them major amounts of ink, but now that the handwriting is on the wall he refers to them as an "obscure company". He also tries to dismiss PJ and Groklaw as an obscure person and an obscure Linux web site, ignoring the awards, and the international recognition and attention the site has received....but this was about FUD not facts.
I agree. Let it die. I was a Star Trek fan for many years, but Voyager, DS9, and now Enterprise conspired to suck the life out of a great idea.
Enterprise could have been a great series had they just went with the idea of chronicling the early days of space exploration and forgot all the time travellers from the future trying to destroy the federation before it even began.
I agree. Slamming iPods is not going to make me abandon mine just so I can rent music from Napster.
and I don't own an iPod because their marketing message says "Cool, and hip, and all your friends are doing it." It actually is a brilliant design.
Japan will soon be facing a crisis in elder care. Their options are either to import tens of thousands of foreign nurses and aides or come up with a robotic solution. There is huge political and cultural resistance to importing nurses. The human and animal styled robots are seen as "friendly". The original ASIMO was the size of a grown man. That was seen as threatening, so they rebuilt him boy sized. The ability to adapt easily into a human environment (houses, apartments, nursing homes is also a driving factor)
Though it has few, if any, practical applications it is designed to be a research platform and as such it is state of the art. It is an integration of several very advanced subsystems. It should be noted that while Honda is committing hundreds of millions of dollars to its robotics research, the toy RoboSapien sells for less than $100 and shows amazing bipedal mobility. It creator mark tilden recently said. "The Japanese spent half a billion dollars on a robot that might one day clean a toilet. For that kind of money I could hire bill gates as my pool boy"
Shameless plug...visit my website for more on the state of robot research around the world
Slashdot Mirror
I think the best thing Nintendo has done is to recognize that FPS games have a very limited appeal. They aren't going after the hardcore gamers. They recognize that if they want to grow the gaming market they have to recreate it into something that will appeal across generational and gender lines. Think Suduko and not GTA
Being able to use Excel doesn't qualify you as an accountant anymore than being able to use a PC makes qualifies you as a programmer. A large part of the problem is that many spreadsheet users lack an accounting or mathematical background. They are cubicle drones who have MS Office on their computer and are expected to use it.
What is the primary reason for the MPAA going after torrent sites? They claim it is to fight piracy. I wonder if it isn't about shutting down a distribution channel that they don't control and are unable to effectively monetize because of the decentralized nature of P2P. Both the MPAA and the RIAA make their money by controlling access to production resources and to the primary channels of distribution. The death knell for the RIAA wasn't Napster, it was the advent of CD burners and multi-track recording software that ccould turn any decent PC into a recording studio. Similarly, the death knell for Hollywood isn't torrent. It is the increasing amount of home grown video content online and the decreasing costs and difficulty involved in recording and editing it. Every minute spent watching "jackass" style video clips, Jib Jab flash animation and other shorts is a minute of entertainment not controlled by hollywood. For now it isn't a threat to their business model--but the rules are changing quickly and it scares the hell out of them.
Sony became a world class electronics company because it was led by engineers with a passion for electronics, a vision of the future, and a willingness to take chances. Sony is now led my mindless suits that are more focused on the petty turf wars and internal politics of the company than on their customers and products. It sunds like every branch of the company has input into the direction of the PS3, which usually means it will end up doing a little bit of everything--- badly.
The basic problem with a class action lawsuit for a problem like this is that the lawyers involved would make millions while the affected users would get a couple of coupons for 20% discounts off of their next Sony CD purchases.
IANAL but it seems to me he didn't set out to disable a copy protection scheme. He set out to identify the source of a potentially damaging program installed without his knowledge or consent. I think it is unlikely that SONY could successfully invoke DMCA protection under those conditions (though I realize that putting the rights of consumers ahead of corporations is happening less and less in US courts)
Forbes, unsurprisingly, doesn't get that traditonal software code was all open source--Richard Stallman created the GPL and the foundations of the open source movement as a response to companies like Microsoft that were locking their software behind restrictions he found unethical, immoral and against the shared community development model that charactericized early software development.
don't forget carbon nanotubes are the predicted best choice for cables in a space elevator---
There is a lot of robotic research taking place in the US. The bulk of it, however, is in military applications. Japan is leading the world in most categories of robotics but robotics development is a global phenomenon.
There are times when the physics points to previously unimagined possibilities--think Einsteins equations and the atomic bomb--and there are other times when actual results contradict our understanding of the physics involved--think ceramic high-temperature superconductors...most 1980s era physicists would have dismissed the idea out of hand....but they worked and the physics had to be revisited to try and explain why.
a lot also depends on how you define innovation. You can make a valid argument that the Thomas Edison invention of sound recording and playback was a major innovation--and all the improvements in sound recording and playback since then have just been improvements on that idea. My PC doubles as a fully functional recording studio and I have thousands of songs on my iPod. Compared to my great grandmothers gramophone, those seem like major innovations to me!
I was at the NextFest and was familiar with a lot of the technology being presented. Seeing it in the real world is a lot different than reading about it or seeing it on TV. Compare your live to that of the average citizen of a century or two ago and you get a sense of how much technology and science has shaped our lives. But if your standard of comparison is not reality but the Jetsons, or Star Trek then yes, NextFest would seem rather ordinary.
The question of whether governments should finance research is a separate issue.
Just because it has been proposed before doesn't means it is not a good idea. There is currently no public benefit to an across the board extension of copyright. For those rare works that still have enormous value decades after it's creation, there should be a mechanism that allows the copyright to be extended. Most work can and should go into the public domain
I also don't buy the arguments that attempt to portray record company investments as a foundation of creative talent. Computers now functions as fuilly equipped recording studios, and the Internet gives any musician access to a worldwide audience. The world no longer needs the RIAA.
When he thought SCO still had a prayer of winning, he gave them major amounts of ink, but now that the handwriting is on the wall he refers to them as an "obscure company". He also tries to dismiss PJ and Groklaw as an obscure person and an obscure Linux web site, ignoring the awards, and the international recognition and attention the site has received....but this was about FUD not facts.
I agree. Let it die. I was a Star Trek fan for many years, but Voyager, DS9, and now Enterprise conspired to suck the life out of a great idea. Enterprise could have been a great series had they just went with the idea of chronicling the early days of space exploration and forgot all the time travellers from the future trying to destroy the federation before it even began.
I agree. Slamming iPods is not going to make me abandon mine just so I can rent music from Napster. and I don't own an iPod because their marketing message says "Cool, and hip, and all your friends are doing it." It actually is a brilliant design.
Japan will soon be facing a crisis in elder care. Their options are either to import tens of thousands of foreign nurses and aides or come up with a robotic solution. There is huge political and cultural resistance to importing nurses. The human and animal styled robots are seen as "friendly". The original ASIMO was the size of a grown man. That was seen as threatening, so they rebuilt him boy sized. The ability to adapt easily into a human environment (houses, apartments, nursing homes is also a driving factor)
Though it has few, if any, practical applications it is designed to be a research platform and as such it is state of the art. It is an integration of several very advanced subsystems. It should be noted that while Honda is committing hundreds of millions of dollars to its robotics research, the toy RoboSapien sells for less than $100 and shows amazing bipedal mobility. It creator mark tilden recently said. "The Japanese spent half a billion dollars on a robot that might one day clean a toilet. For that kind of money I could hire bill gates as my pool boy" Shameless plug...visit my website for more on the state of robot research around the world