Part of what happens is that people think they can apply their laws and way of life inside of our borders.
Pardon me, but what the fuck are you talking about? I have never heard any Canadian publicly or privately suggest that you should follow our laws. Ever. In fact, several, myself included, are jealous of some of them - notably your Constitution's First Amendment.
RTFA. The problem is that my personal and Canadian information can be accessed at any time by a foreign power - the US. How the hell would you like it if Canada, France or Iran could get access to your personal info, Social Security number, health records, etc. etc.? You can play with your damn guns and burn any damn flag you feel like (that's called being tolerant and respecting another culture btw - try it sometime), but I will not be satisfied with you having access to my medical history.
Now, I read alot of the bad points of the Patriot Act here on/. . How about some of the good? How about the terrorist suspects that have been detained because they could be watched easier, search warrant fast tracked and all?
How about the Canadian citizen they wrongly deport to be tortured - without even notifying Canada? How about the Canadian citizen that just disappeared while Americans hemmed and hawed over deciding whether or not he was a terrorist? You wanna lock yourselves up go right the fuck ahead, but why should we stand idly by while you illegally detain and/or deport our citizens? And before you answer that, let me put it in a perspective your small mind can understand, because you appear unable to appreciate world-views other than your own. Imagine your brother goes to visit Hong Kong. You haven't heard from him for two or three days when you suddenly get a call from the government, telling you that the Hong Kong government sent him to Libya a couple days ago. They just informed the US. Then comes the titanic struggle to get your brother out of Libya. Then you finally get your brother back and he tells you he was tortured while in Libya.
You would be irked, yes?
Personally, if I found out that someone had one of my children, and the only person that knew where my child was located was sitting in front of me, I would peel their skin off to find the information I needed to help find my child in one piece. Right or wrong, that is what I would do, and it would not bother me if my government did the same thing to people who were trying to cause a disaster here in this country.
Uh huh. Let's see how you feel about that when YOU'RE the one getting your skin "peeled off" because the knucklehead doing the peeling didn't notice the slight difference in spelling between your name and the name of the real perpetrator, asshole. And yes, THAT CAN AND DOES HAPPEN. Ask that English lawyer who was falsely accused of being a terrorist. These rights that you seem so happy to throw away aren't for your fucking comfort, they're for your safety.
The people we are fighting, so we all (yes, even you Canada) can be safe, are animals.
NO, THEY ARE NOT! THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS. Misguided human beings? Definitely. Evil human beings? Probably. But they are human beings, and the moment you decide that you have the right to treat them as subhuman, I'm no longer with you, I'm so fucking against you it will make your head spin.
These people want your women to hide and not be seen, and they want to be able to execute you if you believe in a different God, or none at all. You people that believe that gays should marry... Go to Iran and try it, lets see how well that works out!
The hell is your point? Rifling through my bank acc
... I really think that even YOU can see that $6702 is more than $5545.... [T]he taxes in America, all totalled up and everything, are MORE per person that they are in Canada. Period.
Period? These numbers are meaningless. They tell me that Canadians pay an average of 82.7% of what Americans pay in taxes. Now if Canadians earned the same amount as Americans your point would be valid, but we don't. Our average income is much smaller than yours - the most recent numbers i could find are from 1999, but they put us at 78.1% (http://www.csls.ca/reports/drache.pdf).
IANAE (i am not an economist), but factoring that into the numbers puts our relative taxes (assuming we earned the same) at $7109.42, which clearly is more that $6702.42.
If the original numbers you posted took that into account, I apologize, but it appears they did not (they took exchange rates into account only).
The people that work for the government are still just regular joes like you and me who will try their best to be good and do their jobs well. Even if you're one of those left-wing wackos who believes that President Bush is the antichrist, remember that the hundreds of thousands of people who work for him will make their own decisions about right and wrong.
Except you fail to consider the fact that directly or indirectly, those that make and oversee the enforcement of any wacko president's decisions were selected by him. Thus if you put a nut in the oval office, the entire government will be practically nuts, and nutty decisions that would otherwise never see the light of day become the norm.
The same holds true in reverse - if we're doing business with your country, then once we, our product, or our communication crosses the border, it's susceptible to whatever laws you have up there.
The Japanese distributors would probably dance on tables if this became the norm, but it would all but destroy any chance of non-Japanese releases making any money.
Personally, I'd pay for a fansub before an subtitled official North American release any day (but fansubs are always free). The fansub translation is usually far, far, superior - often with nuances preserved and cultural differences explained. The usually even translate the song lyrics. Hell, the one I watched most recently, for a show called Mai-HiME, even colourized the speech of different characters differently so each had their own unique colour.
This is apples and oranges. There is no comparison in the quality of fansubs to the subtitling done by English-language distributors. I buy the DVDs, but by then I have already picked up all the finer nuances from the fansubbed version. Media Factory is shooting themselves in the foot with an RPG. If fansubs weren't available, frankly I'd not bother. It would sure save me a lot of money on DVDs, wall scrolls, action figures, books, games,...
It's stupid to not have preventative measure that make it illegal in the first place to fire guns at people.
Sure, we could create the death penalty for anyone who publishes a Witness Protection list. But that doesn't help those who get killed by the crazy bastard who decides to publish it anyway.
I'm sorry, but what in the hell are you saying? That the government and all authorities should have the right to review and censor a work before it's published, just to eliminate the threat of a few crazy bastards?
Honestly, I don't see what you're point is. You say that laws with punishments as preventative measures are necessary, but don't necessary stop all infractions so ______________________ (fill in the blank please, what should be done?).
Your gun analogy works fine for me. Make shooting at someone illegal (as opposed to just hitting them). But why make shooting guns illegal period? Make the gun owner responsible for his actions. It won't stop all murders, but neither will making shooting illegal (just use a knife).
Make releasing dangerous information illegal. But why make all speech illegal? Make the speaker responsible for their actions. It won't stop all violations of national security, but neither will making speech illegal (the person with the dangerous information can just go kill all the witnesses themselves).
In the slight chance that you or anyone that thinks your point is valid will be willing consider another view:
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from taking responsibility for what you say. Go ahead and announce that I'm a child molester, and publish my name and picture if you want. Just be prepared to accept the consequences when I sue you for violating my rights and slandering my name.
Similar logic applies to publishing a list of protected people or national defence installments and strengths. People die when you do stuff like that, and by irresponsibly leaking such data publicly you are as good as killing them yourselves. This is not about free speech, it's about attempted murder. Be prepared to accept the consequences.
Freedom of speech is a right, but you have no right to take away other people's rights. It only takes a mildly intelligent individual to figure out how to put those two facts together, so give it a try.
For the most part, 60 to 70 year olds are also not involved with Iraq... but I imagine that your generation... is very involved with [it]...
I think what the dude was trying to express is that the decisions are being made by the very people protesting. I'm not sure whether or not I agree with that, but it's hard not to wonder where those protesting ladies stood on the whole war on terror or preemptive strike on Iraq. I myself have debated people that decry video game violence out of one side of their mouths and refer to Arabs as "sand niggers" (in front of the children) out of the other. The question is: is there too much violence in our games, or our culture? How does one relate to the other?
I don't think TFA, the slashdot editor or the filefront writer knows what the hell to think about all this. ("Mature Video Games in the Minority"?) Who fucking cares? Even if it were true that games inappropriate for kids are in the majority, so what? That's true for movies, music and books.
I mean that's a nice bit of bullshit statistics, that "60-90%" figure, but even if it were even remotely relevant the picture is clear as mud. For example, let's say that 60-90% of games (popular or no) "have violent themes", the first question you have to ask is what percentage of gamers are old enough that it doesn't make a damn difference (maybe 60-90% of gamers are over 18)? Next you have to ask what 60-90% of parents think constitutes "violent themes" - maybe your group's views represent only 10-40% of the population, if that. Next you could ask who buys more games - 20-somethings or (parents of) 8-year-olds (seems to me that I buy a hell of a lot more games for myself then my mom ever bought for me)? And so on, et cetera, ad nauseum.
Reading TFA's I have to ask: what the hell does the "watchdog group" (and their ilk) think should be done (or: what do they recommend in their "holiday warnings")? The games are clearly labelled with a big sticker on the front, and plenty more info on the back. And even if you think the labels are bullshit, the store employees are happy to give you more info if you really want it. Any parent stupid enough to hand their kid $50 and send them into EB without even looking into what they're getting doesn't deserve a voice in this debate - same goes for parents who bought the game themselves without doing proper research. Eliminate those numbnuts and what's the problem? What else would they have done?
That whole mediafamily.org page is just a scattershot of random facts without context, mixed up with a steaming, piled helping of bullshit. Why the hell is it being used for a reference anyway - it's like 3 goddamn years old? As for the filefront article, the spokeslady/president gamely tries to explain away the kooks, but the kooks shouldn't have been given any attention to begin with. The whole thing is just a waste of everyone's time... except for one tiny point:
"They're all mixed in, so you have M-rated next to an E-rated."
Very good point, and true almost anywhere I can think of. Maybe video game stores having a children's section should be the norm. But what the hell does sniping at the ESRB do to make that happen?
See kernal with reference to Commodore kernal. No "sic" required, since it appears to be correct.
A kernel is the core part of a computer's operating system that provides access to and from hardware (among other things). Kernal is a proper name - referring to the ROM-based operating system of Commodores. To paraphrase TFA: "Does an emulator make use of a copyrighted BIOS or ROM-based Commodore operating system?", which makes no sense in context.
Sony sued Connectix for copying the bios to the playstation, even though they reverse engineered it. (Sony lost I think.)
They did, and I'd forgotten all about that. That ruling alone makes the whole Matthews article uninformed rubbish.
Most Playstation emulators tell you to download a copy of the bios by finding it online somewhere. Sure doesn't sound above board, does it? If it were legal, wouldn't the emulator authors just package it with their software?
Why doesn't it sound above board? Don't you believe in presuming innocence until guilt is proven? As for your second question, here are two theories I came up with with just 30 seconds of thought (I don't know anything about PS emulation, so my facts may be wrong).
To save space. The average size of the first 4 PS emulators I was able to find sizes for (EPSXE 1.6.0, FPSE 0.9, PCSX 1.5 and VSG 1.4) is 387kiB. The kernel is roughly 260-270kiB. That would mean almost a 70% increase in the size of an emulator distribution.
To allow for trivial changing and upgrading of the kernel. This page alone lists 10 different kernels, with varying versions and localizations (ex. North America, Japan, Europe). Could be that you need a Japanese BIOS to play Japanese games properly.
I imagine the same logic applies to the Apple 2 emulators. IANAL, so I'm honestly not sure whether copying the BIOS wholesale is legit (Sony v. Connectix was about reverse-engineering, not copying), but I suspect not. Of course, I never claimed that it was, just that it might be argued as fair use. On the other hand who fucking cares? If you want to emulate legally just do what Connectix did and reverse-engineer it instead of being lazy and copying it. That's most definitely legal. Sure distributing the BIOS may be illegal, but emulation is most certainly not.
Several others have pointed out that all you have to do is claim that your original system broke down and you're in the clear, but I'm going to take it to the next level.
Emulator writers are also in no danger because the emulators themselves have a huge number of legitimate uses. The law already covered this issue many, many times with the Xerox ruling about photocopiers and the Betamax ruling about time-shifting.
Furhtermore the bit about emulators "[making] use of a copyrighted BIOS or kernal(sic)" smacks of technical and legal ignorance. Unless the emulator writer literally copies the bits or precise algorithms, it's not an issue at all - and that's highly unlikely since many changes have to be made in order to accomodate another platform. But assume that the emulator writer did package an exact bitwise copy of a copyrighted component - they're probably still covered under the derivative works section of fair use: it's a translation making the work accessible when it would otherwise not be.
Emulation itself is logically not criminal - especially since there are so many valid uses for it - so twisting the law to make it illegal is idiotic. Even if it were the case that it is illegal under current law, that wouldn't last long under any half-assed challenge.
I'm saying the only way you'll end up with a big budget for your game is if it's like the (successful) competition or like previous games.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this - i believe that your game being different, however slightly, makes a hit of it.
You're kidding, right? That list is practically proof that the development market works as I've described.
That's to be expected since the industry currently develops the way you describe. But try mapping that list onto two other lists.
First, correlate it with the list of games that just cloned or slightly improved on an existing formula. It doesn't add up. Take Super Mario 64 for example - there are hundreds and hundreds of similar games, but SM64 was the one that started the whole genre. The Sims? Nuff said. Many, many games that are similar or sequels to Final Fantasy 7, but it was the great 3d rpg innovator that made the list - where are FF8 or 9? Or X or X-2 for that matter? Myst (where is Riven or Exile?), Half-Life, Super Mario Brothers, all of them were games that introduced new innovations and aspects to gaming - or at least ther respective genres - and are mostly remembered for standing out and being different/better.
Now try correlating it to another list - a list of the most innovative, most influential or even just most memorable games of all time. Like this one. There is considerable overlap.
Only a fool would argue that my ideal is how the industry works now - that dude's comments alone show how untrue that is, and how much less true it's getting every day. But I think I've got enough evidence to show that innovation drives success, not copying previous success - so logically the industry should develop games based on the goal of innovation.
Incidently:
(unless you define "A-title" as one that uses all the latest whiz-bang hardware features)
That's not a requirement, although it makes common sense. If you're not using all the features available, you might as well not be developing an A-class game. Hell, we could all just run games on refurbished Commodore64s.
A-list games will be the groundbreakers - the ones that either create new gameplay experiences or make old ones more immersive/fun than they have ever been before. Clearly there's room for games that don't quite use the state of the art's full resources, but there's a lot more room for games that do.
It sounds like you're saying that big financial backing *improves* the quality of the output though, and I don't think that is true at all.
I don't think it's necessarily true either - you misunderstand me. Big money doesn't make games better, it just gives the developers more choices, and more expressive power. That power may or may not be used (properly), and even if it is, it may or may not make for a better game. But there's still a chance that wasn't there before.
Nobody is going to give you a big budget to play around with if you're not producing something that isn't related to something tried and true...
However:
Not having to appeal to your financiers frees you to explore, and having low expenses to recoup frees you appeal to a narrow audience. If your idea works there and turns out to have broader appeal, then you have a jumping off point into the big budget arena.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
And for the money shot:
Nobody is going to give you a big budget...
And that's about the crux of it. I never said that big budgets should just be given. Let the budget developers produce games that stand out and they will get the sales and earn the cash to make the A-list games. Oh sure, there will be those that do manage to secure financial backers from the start, without proving that they can make innovative and fun games. But if games are cheaper and easier to make it will be easier for smaller game developers to earn the budgets they need for A-titles, plus big financial backing will make less difference in the quality of the output. Thus the playing field is levelled.
Now, I could take you to task for this:
The problem is that creativity doesn't guarantee, or even drive sales in big budget titles.
But i think that fallacy speaks for itself. In fact, you said it yourself:
...you need to promise that the gameplay of your game will be based on some previously successful title...
Now, where do these "previously" successful titles come from? Innovative ideas! At the very least, an innovative twist on an old theme. You are arguing that the only way a game will sell big is if it is like the competition and/or previous games. That's demonstrably crap (the top 20 games by sales here is a who's who of innovative and non-formulaic gaming for the past 20 years, with a few notable exceptions (Harry Potter???)).
Your view of how games should be made = more of the same (and explicitly so). Mine = probably more of the same, but with a far, far bigger chance for something new to come out of left field.
If the defacements were noted as not being from the original author, and no duplicates were made, what would the legal ground be?
Copyrighted work is protected from defacement. An analogy to the analogy would if I took a TV show and overdubbed the dialog with my own. In fact, the author could insist that the store not display his books at all, and be in the right.
The reason we're seeing comments like this is not because the independant game developer has gone away, but because as the games market has grown and tons of marketing dollars have been poured into the market, the smaller developers have slipped off the radar.
Both you and Gulthek have valid points - Gulthek even names a counter example: Alien Hominid. I would add Katamari Damacy too, but I don't know if that was developed by an independent or Namco itself.
But you're arguing that what we're getting is a schism between big budgets (money and/or hardware budget) and big imaginations. What I'm arguing is that it's possible to have big budgets and big imaginations - provided you put the time and effort into putting that big budget to good use. It's not about being either forced to make hollyschlock games and NHL/NBA/ESPN 2010 Turbo or settling for flash games and/or "budget" titles.
Adding ties and business power suits will not make for better games, as TFA seems to argue. But adding dedicated developers who genuinely enjoy what they're doing and who are *gasp* gamers just might. There's no need to eschew big budgets and heavy spending - it just needs to be spent right. That Hasson dude is advocating exactly the wrong way to do that.
However, making an A-class title is a massive undertaking, requiring real project management, and good business practices to turn a profit. That's a problem, because it means that in order to make a top-notch game, an otherwise skilled and creative team has to be Managed, with a capital M, and things like music, images and models become "assets" instead of artwork. My position is that if games were somehow easier to develop, smaller companies could produce software comparable to the bigshots - which will encourage more innovation at the front lines of the industry, not just the bargain bin (or online) - because they won't have all the management overhead.
I guess my point is if project management was trivial and invisible, better games would be made because more time could be spent making them (instead of worrying about being more "business-like"). The process becomes cheaper so more players can play on the same field. And hence, there would be more diversity and innovation.
You know, my gut reaction on reading the article as posted was, "What a goddamn piece of bullshit flamebait - who cares whether or not the guy doesn't get to name the virus he created?"
But then I thought about it. Regardless of what it is, it is something that this Brazilian dude wrote. It's his intellectual property. He should have the right to name it. For the antivirus companies to tag it with their own name is equivalent to WalMart getting a box of "Home on the range" DVD's, ripping the covers off and selling them as "WalMart presents: The Disney cow movie!".
And before anyone offers any arguments about "not wanting to encourage virus-writers", let me say: bullshit. It doesn't matter whether it's a program, a novel, a song or a painting... or a virus - intellectual property is intellectual property. Even people in jail own the copyrights on their goddam prison tatoos. Even Osama bin Laden has his copyrights. The laws are quite clear on this.
Mr Hasson said games developers were beginning to realise that they had to be more "business-like".
"There are still some developers who were involved in games from the bedroom coding days.
"Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop."
Mr. Fred Hasson appears to be a bloody fool. If games are no longer made for peer-group approval by like minded peers, they'll be like movies made for focus-group approval by bottom-line conscious busybodies - bland, homogenized and utterly uninspiring.
He may have some basis in common sense though. Developing games is becoming harder and harder to do for small developers. But instead of forcing independent game developers to fold or become hollywood schlockmongers, maybe the industry should find ways to make development easier so games can be developed by people that will make great games, instead of just big hits.
It seems the debate is split mostly along the line of whether or not the dude in question should have released the code. Correct me if I'm wrong, but both sides seem to agree that knowing about a vulnerability and keeping silent is bad. The dividing point is what and how much information do you release about what you know about this vulnerability?
On the one hand, releasing the full exploit code is probably pretty damned irresponsible. Now any idiot that can tweak a line of code or two can roll their own Symbian virus. It's the functional equivalent of posting a how-to guide on making bombs from nondescript household products. Could/should the brazilian dude be liable to damages lawsuits?
On the other, the valid argument that the warning would have probably gone largely ignored by the media, and possibly Symbian OS and AV developers, without making it so crucial. The dude's big show sure brings focus on the problem, which is good.
These two positions can be trivially resolved. The "right" thing to do if you really want the problem exposed would be to write a benign virus that exploits the vulnerability in a clearly visible but harmless way (and does not propogate without control). Show that virus (openly - let the person receiving it decide whether to test it) to any media, developers or security experts you want. Include instructions on how to remove it.
Admittedly, you may not get quite the same impact, but if you play your media cards right you might get one hell of a splash. The pressure will be on Symbian developers to fix things, but the chances are small that any real malicious virii will crop up in the interim. Seems to me that that solves all the problems.
It does bring up a number of questions though - some of them new, some not. Is the Brazilian dude liable for damages that virii based on his code cause? Is keeping the exploit code from the public really in the public's best interests (maybe the open source community can make a better patch faster, or maybe giving the code to an AV company is an invitation for them to make a virus so that they can charge for the cure)? If he had given the code to developers of the OS or antivirus software, but they had kept it quiet, would they be liable if an actual outbreak occurs? If I discovered a vulnerability, and came up with a fix, could I insist on having it released for free by the OS developer (or as a free tool by an AV company)? If someone develops a virus based on this exploit code, could the Brazilian dude sue for copyright infringement? etc. etc.
One thing that is not in question is whether or not it's ok to go poking for holes in software. To say otherwise is asinine, from any perspective. Give me an asshat publicizing exploits over a criminal using them any day.
Nintendo has underestimated me! They have leaked enough info about the "secret" features of this console that I have been able to narrow down what they are!
Given that:
Touching is good but feeling is better
I can say with reasonable certainty that the new addition is either:
THE POWER GLOVE! (it was only a matter of time)
Smell-o-vision (Think what you'd be "feeling" as you played Resident Evil 5 with this enabled! Essence des Zombies!)
A RealDoll with strategically placed buttons and analog thumbsticks, with force feedback. (That's one way to ditch the perception that Nintendos are for kids, Playstations are for adults.)
Clearly, whatever Nintendo has planned, they are taking steps to avoid the fiascos associated with the last couple of platforms and leap into first or second place in the console market!
Work has already begun on new Mario, Zelda and Super Smash Bros. titles, all of which are to be available at launch.
... then again, maybe not. Nintendo's corporate slogan: Third party developers - who needs 'em?
Xbox Live online gaming service has set a new standard for online gaming
... and...
There are now more than 200 Xbox Live-enabled titles...
<opinion>Yeah, right</opinion> but many other people have commented on this, so I won't
Xbox was the only platform to see year-to-year growth during Q4 as well as the full calendar year 2004...
The obvious counterpoint is that this is most likely more a sign that the PS2 has been saturated, and the XBox was the only console that many gamers didn't own.
The remaining 3 bullets harp on about how great Halo 2 and the whole Halo franchise is doing. Swell. But what about other XBox-only titles - like Fable? Not a peep about any of them recently.
Besides, bragging about Halo 2's success takes up just short of half of the article. Has the XBox really had a good year? Or was it just Halo 2?
It was a rhetorical question, but your answer is interesting. Do you know for a fact that airline employees - or just AA - uses this technique as a screening process? They could have been just collecting random marketing data, ne? I'm curious to know.
If it is a screening process, wtf is the point? Assume I'm Joe Terrorist, trying to board a flight, and a ticket agent pelts this barrage of questions at me:
Q: Where are you flying?
A: To Los Angeles.
Q: How long have you owned your luggage for?
A: Umm, I don't know. Years. Maybe 5.
Q: Have any of your electronics been serviced recently?
A: What? No. I don't think so. Why?
Q: Why are you flying this route?
A: I don't know, why not? This is the flight my travel agent put me on.
By simply playing dumb, does that seem suspicious? Even more interesting, if I were Arab, I could throw up righteous indignation about being suspected of being a terrorist, and cooperate, but barely and testily. Would that make me suspicious?
When asked to list the people I'd be staying with I could just write some random names and say that I don't know their addresses off the top of my head, but they live in LA. Is that suspicious?
Seems to me like the whole thing, if it's a screening process, is a waste of time.
Use the new attribute and make your site less attractive to spammers. But that means hobbling the power of your site's voice in the Internet.
If your blog uses the attribute, then it no longer has the ability to affect the rest of the net. If your blog is on politics, and your readers post links to some leaked government memo online, those links will not increase the visibility of that memo. Your site becomes a curio - nice to look at, but ultimately irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Gordon Freeman is "cute"?
They just totally ruined the ass-kicking aspect of the character for me!
Pardon me, but what the fuck are you talking about? I have never heard any Canadian publicly or privately suggest that you should follow our laws. Ever. In fact, several, myself included, are jealous of some of them - notably your Constitution's First Amendment.
RTFA. The problem is that my personal and Canadian information can be accessed at any time by a foreign power - the US. How the hell would you like it if Canada, France or Iran could get access to your personal info, Social Security number, health records, etc. etc.? You can play with your damn guns and burn any damn flag you feel like (that's called being tolerant and respecting another culture btw - try it sometime), but I will not be satisfied with you having access to my medical history.
How about the Canadian citizen they wrongly deport to be tortured - without even notifying Canada? How about the Canadian citizen that just disappeared while Americans hemmed and hawed over deciding whether or not he was a terrorist? You wanna lock yourselves up go right the fuck ahead, but why should we stand idly by while you illegally detain and/or deport our citizens? And before you answer that, let me put it in a perspective your small mind can understand, because you appear unable to appreciate world-views other than your own. Imagine your brother goes to visit Hong Kong. You haven't heard from him for two or three days when you suddenly get a call from the government, telling you that the Hong Kong government sent him to Libya a couple days ago. They just informed the US. Then comes the titanic struggle to get your brother out of Libya. Then you finally get your brother back and he tells you he was tortured while in Libya.
You would be irked, yes?
Uh huh. Let's see how you feel about that when YOU'RE the one getting your skin "peeled off" because the knucklehead doing the peeling didn't notice the slight difference in spelling between your name and the name of the real perpetrator, asshole. And yes, THAT CAN AND DOES HAPPEN. Ask that English lawyer who was falsely accused of being a terrorist. These rights that you seem so happy to throw away aren't for your fucking comfort, they're for your safety.
NO, THEY ARE NOT! THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS. Misguided human beings? Definitely. Evil human beings? Probably. But they are human beings, and the moment you decide that you have the right to treat them as subhuman, I'm no longer with you, I'm so fucking against you it will make your head spin.
The hell is your point? Rifling through my bank acc
Period? These numbers are meaningless. They tell me that Canadians pay an average of 82.7% of what Americans pay in taxes. Now if Canadians earned the same amount as Americans your point would be valid, but we don't. Our average income is much smaller than yours - the most recent numbers i could find are from 1999, but they put us at 78.1% (http://www.csls.ca/reports/drache.pdf).
IANAE (i am not an economist), but factoring that into the numbers puts our relative taxes (assuming we earned the same) at $7109.42, which clearly is more that $6702.42.
If the original numbers you posted took that into account, I apologize, but it appears they did not (they took exchange rates into account only).
Except you fail to consider the fact that directly or indirectly, those that make and oversee the enforcement of any wacko president's decisions were selected by him. Thus if you put a nut in the oval office, the entire government will be practically nuts, and nutty decisions that would otherwise never see the light of day become the norm.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!1!!1! THAT'S FSCKING HILARIOUS ^_________^
If your whole comment was a joke, I guess I'm a fool for falling for it. ^_^
He he he - whew! Oh god i think i soiled myself! man, you made my day ^_^.
Tell that to ADV.
The Japanese distributors would probably dance on tables if this became the norm, but it would all but destroy any chance of non-Japanese releases making any money.
Personally, I'd pay for a fansub before an subtitled official North American release any day (but fansubs are always free). The fansub translation is usually far, far, superior - often with nuances preserved and cultural differences explained. The usually even translate the song lyrics. Hell, the one I watched most recently, for a show called Mai-HiME, even colourized the speech of different characters differently so each had their own unique colour.
This is apples and oranges. There is no comparison in the quality of fansubs to the subtitling done by English-language distributors. I buy the DVDs, but by then I have already picked up all the finer nuances from the fansubbed version. Media Factory is shooting themselves in the foot with an RPG. If fansubs weren't available, frankly I'd not bother. It would sure save me a lot of money on DVDs, wall scrolls, action figures, books, games,...
I'm sorry, but what in the hell are you saying? That the government and all authorities should have the right to review and censor a work before it's published, just to eliminate the threat of a few crazy bastards?
Honestly, I don't see what you're point is. You say that laws with punishments as preventative measures are necessary, but don't necessary stop all infractions so ______________________ (fill in the blank please, what should be done?).
Your gun analogy works fine for me. Make shooting at someone illegal (as opposed to just hitting them). But why make shooting guns illegal period? Make the gun owner responsible for his actions. It won't stop all murders, but neither will making shooting illegal (just use a knife).
Make releasing dangerous information illegal. But why make all speech illegal? Make the speaker responsible for their actions. It won't stop all violations of national security, but neither will making speech illegal (the person with the dangerous information can just go kill all the witnesses themselves).
In the slight chance that you or anyone that thinks your point is valid will be willing consider another view:
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from taking responsibility for what you say. Go ahead and announce that I'm a child molester, and publish my name and picture if you want. Just be prepared to accept the consequences when I sue you for violating my rights and slandering my name.
Similar logic applies to publishing a list of protected people or national defence installments and strengths. People die when you do stuff like that, and by irresponsibly leaking such data publicly you are as good as killing them yourselves. This is not about free speech, it's about attempted murder. Be prepared to accept the consequences.
Freedom of speech is a right, but you have no right to take away other people's rights. It only takes a mildly intelligent individual to figure out how to put those two facts together, so give it a try.
I think what the dude was trying to express is that the decisions are being made by the very people protesting. I'm not sure whether or not I agree with that, but it's hard not to wonder where those protesting ladies stood on the whole war on terror or preemptive strike on Iraq. I myself have debated people that decry video game violence out of one side of their mouths and refer to Arabs as "sand niggers" (in front of the children) out of the other. The question is: is there too much violence in our games, or our culture? How does one relate to the other?
I don't think TFA, the slashdot editor or the filefront writer knows what the hell to think about all this. ("Mature Video Games in the Minority"?) Who fucking cares? Even if it were true that games inappropriate for kids are in the majority, so what? That's true for movies, music and books.
I mean that's a nice bit of bullshit statistics, that "60-90%" figure, but even if it were even remotely relevant the picture is clear as mud. For example, let's say that 60-90% of games (popular or no) "have violent themes", the first question you have to ask is what percentage of gamers are old enough that it doesn't make a damn difference (maybe 60-90% of gamers are over 18)? Next you have to ask what 60-90% of parents think constitutes "violent themes" - maybe your group's views represent only 10-40% of the population, if that. Next you could ask who buys more games - 20-somethings or (parents of) 8-year-olds (seems to me that I buy a hell of a lot more games for myself then my mom ever bought for me)? And so on, et cetera, ad nauseum.
Reading TFA's I have to ask: what the hell does the "watchdog group" (and their ilk) think should be done (or: what do they recommend in their "holiday warnings")? The games are clearly labelled with a big sticker on the front, and plenty more info on the back. And even if you think the labels are bullshit, the store employees are happy to give you more info if you really want it. Any parent stupid enough to hand their kid $50 and send them into EB without even looking into what they're getting doesn't deserve a voice in this debate - same goes for parents who bought the game themselves without doing proper research. Eliminate those numbnuts and what's the problem? What else would they have done?
That whole mediafamily.org page is just a scattershot of random facts without context, mixed up with a steaming, piled helping of bullshit. Why the hell is it being used for a reference anyway - it's like 3 goddamn years old? As for the filefront article, the spokeslady/president gamely tries to explain away the kooks, but the kooks shouldn't have been given any attention to begin with. The whole thing is just a waste of everyone's time... except for one tiny point:
Very good point, and true almost anywhere I can think of. Maybe video game stores having a children's section should be the norm. But what the hell does sniping at the ESRB do to make that happen?
A kernel is the core part of a computer's operating system that provides access to and from hardware (among other things). Kernal is a proper name - referring to the ROM-based operating system of Commodores. To paraphrase TFA: "Does an emulator make use of a copyrighted BIOS or ROM-based Commodore operating system?", which makes no sense in context.
They did, and I'd forgotten all about that. That ruling alone makes the whole Matthews article uninformed rubbish.
Why doesn't it sound above board? Don't you believe in presuming innocence until guilt is proven? As for your second question, here are two theories I came up with with just 30 seconds of thought (I don't know anything about PS emulation, so my facts may be wrong).
I imagine the same logic applies to the Apple 2 emulators. IANAL, so I'm honestly not sure whether copying the BIOS wholesale is legit (Sony v. Connectix was about reverse-engineering, not copying), but I suspect not. Of course, I never claimed that it was, just that it might be argued as fair use. On the other hand who fucking cares? If you want to emulate legally just do what Connectix did and reverse-engineer it instead of being lazy and copying it. That's most definitely legal. Sure distributing the BIOS may be illegal, but emulation is most certainly not.
Several others have pointed out that all you have to do is claim that your original system broke down and you're in the clear, but I'm going to take it to the next level.
Emulator writers are also in no danger because the emulators themselves have a huge number of legitimate uses. The law already covered this issue many, many times with the Xerox ruling about photocopiers and the Betamax ruling about time-shifting.
Furhtermore the bit about emulators "[making] use of a copyrighted BIOS or kernal(sic)" smacks of technical and legal ignorance. Unless the emulator writer literally copies the bits or precise algorithms, it's not an issue at all - and that's highly unlikely since many changes have to be made in order to accomodate another platform. But assume that the emulator writer did package an exact bitwise copy of a copyrighted component - they're probably still covered under the derivative works section of fair use: it's a translation making the work accessible when it would otherwise not be.
Emulation itself is logically not criminal - especially since there are so many valid uses for it - so twisting the law to make it illegal is idiotic. Even if it were the case that it is illegal under current law, that wouldn't last long under any half-assed challenge.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this - i believe that your game being different, however slightly, makes a hit of it.
That's to be expected since the industry currently develops the way you describe. But try mapping that list onto two other lists.
First, correlate it with the list of games that just cloned or slightly improved on an existing formula. It doesn't add up. Take Super Mario 64 for example - there are hundreds and hundreds of similar games, but SM64 was the one that started the whole genre. The Sims? Nuff said. Many, many games that are similar or sequels to Final Fantasy 7, but it was the great 3d rpg innovator that made the list - where are FF8 or 9? Or X or X-2 for that matter? Myst (where is Riven or Exile?), Half-Life, Super Mario Brothers, all of them were games that introduced new innovations and aspects to gaming - or at least ther respective genres - and are mostly remembered for standing out and being different/better.
Now try correlating it to another list - a list of the most innovative, most influential or even just most memorable games of all time. Like this one. There is considerable overlap.
Only a fool would argue that my ideal is how the industry works now - that dude's comments alone show how untrue that is, and how much less true it's getting every day. But I think I've got enough evidence to show that innovation drives success, not copying previous success - so logically the industry should develop games based on the goal of innovation.
Incidently:
That's not a requirement, although it makes common sense. If you're not using all the features available, you might as well not be developing an A-class game. Hell, we could all just run games on refurbished Commodore64s.
A-list games will be the groundbreakers - the ones that either create new gameplay experiences or make old ones more immersive/fun than they have ever been before. Clearly there's room for games that don't quite use the state of the art's full resources, but there's a lot more room for games that do.
I don't think it's necessarily true either - you misunderstand me. Big money doesn't make games better, it just gives the developers more choices, and more expressive power. That power may or may not be used (properly), and even if it is, it may or may not make for a better game. But there's still a chance that wasn't there before.
Dude, you've argued yourself into a corner.
However:
Ding! Ding! Ding!
And for the money shot:
And that's about the crux of it. I never said that big budgets should just be given. Let the budget developers produce games that stand out and they will get the sales and earn the cash to make the A-list games. Oh sure, there will be those that do manage to secure financial backers from the start, without proving that they can make innovative and fun games. But if games are cheaper and easier to make it will be easier for smaller game developers to earn the budgets they need for A-titles, plus big financial backing will make less difference in the quality of the output. Thus the playing field is levelled.
Now, I could take you to task for this:
But i think that fallacy speaks for itself. In fact, you said it yourself:
Now, where do these "previously" successful titles come from? Innovative ideas! At the very least, an innovative twist on an old theme. You are arguing that the only way a game will sell big is if it is like the competition and/or previous games. That's demonstrably crap (the top 20 games by sales here is a who's who of innovative and non-formulaic gaming for the past 20 years, with a few notable exceptions (Harry Potter???)).
Your view of how games should be made = more of the same (and explicitly so). Mine = probably more of the same, but with a far, far bigger chance for something new to come out of left field.
Copyrighted work is protected from defacement. An analogy to the analogy would if I took a TV show and overdubbed the dialog with my own. In fact, the author could insist that the store not display his books at all, and be in the right.
Both you and Gulthek have valid points - Gulthek even names a counter example: Alien Hominid. I would add Katamari Damacy too, but I don't know if that was developed by an independent or Namco itself.
But you're arguing that what we're getting is a schism between big budgets (money and/or hardware budget) and big imaginations. What I'm arguing is that it's possible to have big budgets and big imaginations - provided you put the time and effort into putting that big budget to good use. It's not about being either forced to make hollyschlock games and NHL/NBA/ESPN 2010 Turbo or settling for flash games and/or "budget" titles.
Adding ties and business power suits will not make for better games, as TFA seems to argue. But adding dedicated developers who genuinely enjoy what they're doing and who are *gasp* gamers just might. There's no need to eschew big budgets and heavy spending - it just needs to be spent right. That Hasson dude is advocating exactly the wrong way to do that.
However, making an A-class title is a massive undertaking, requiring real project management, and good business practices to turn a profit. That's a problem, because it means that in order to make a top-notch game, an otherwise skilled and creative team has to be Managed, with a capital M, and things like music, images and models become "assets" instead of artwork. My position is that if games were somehow easier to develop, smaller companies could produce software comparable to the bigshots - which will encourage more innovation at the front lines of the industry, not just the bargain bin (or online) - because they won't have all the management overhead.
I guess my point is if project management was trivial and invisible, better games would be made because more time could be spent making them (instead of worrying about being more "business-like"). The process becomes cheaper so more players can play on the same field. And hence, there would be more diversity and innovation.
You know, my gut reaction on reading the article as posted was, "What a goddamn piece of bullshit flamebait - who cares whether or not the guy doesn't get to name the virus he created?"
But then I thought about it. Regardless of what it is, it is something that this Brazilian dude wrote. It's his intellectual property. He should have the right to name it. For the antivirus companies to tag it with their own name is equivalent to WalMart getting a box of "Home on the range" DVD's, ripping the covers off and selling them as "WalMart presents: The Disney cow movie!".
And before anyone offers any arguments about "not wanting to encourage virus-writers", let me say: bullshit. It doesn't matter whether it's a program, a novel, a song or a painting ... or a virus - intellectual property is intellectual property. Even people in jail own the copyrights on their goddam prison tatoos. Even Osama bin Laden has his copyrights. The laws are quite clear on this.
So... yeah. Velasco it is.
Mr. Fred Hasson appears to be a bloody fool. If games are no longer made for peer-group approval by like minded peers, they'll be like movies made for focus-group approval by bottom-line conscious busybodies - bland, homogenized and utterly uninspiring.
He may have some basis in common sense though. Developing games is becoming harder and harder to do for small developers. But instead of forcing independent game developers to fold or become hollywood schlockmongers, maybe the industry should find ways to make development easier so games can be developed by people that will make great games, instead of just big hits.
It seems the debate is split mostly along the line of whether or not the dude in question should have released the code. Correct me if I'm wrong, but both sides seem to agree that knowing about a vulnerability and keeping silent is bad. The dividing point is what and how much information do you release about what you know about this vulnerability?
On the one hand, releasing the full exploit code is probably pretty damned irresponsible. Now any idiot that can tweak a line of code or two can roll their own Symbian virus. It's the functional equivalent of posting a how-to guide on making bombs from nondescript household products. Could/should the brazilian dude be liable to damages lawsuits?
On the other, the valid argument that the warning would have probably gone largely ignored by the media, and possibly Symbian OS and AV developers, without making it so crucial. The dude's big show sure brings focus on the problem, which is good.
These two positions can be trivially resolved. The "right" thing to do if you really want the problem exposed would be to write a benign virus that exploits the vulnerability in a clearly visible but harmless way (and does not propogate without control). Show that virus (openly - let the person receiving it decide whether to test it) to any media, developers or security experts you want. Include instructions on how to remove it.
Admittedly, you may not get quite the same impact, but if you play your media cards right you might get one hell of a splash. The pressure will be on Symbian developers to fix things, but the chances are small that any real malicious virii will crop up in the interim. Seems to me that that solves all the problems.
It does bring up a number of questions though - some of them new, some not. Is the Brazilian dude liable for damages that virii based on his code cause? Is keeping the exploit code from the public really in the public's best interests (maybe the open source community can make a better patch faster, or maybe giving the code to an AV company is an invitation for them to make a virus so that they can charge for the cure)? If he had given the code to developers of the OS or antivirus software, but they had kept it quiet, would they be liable if an actual outbreak occurs? If I discovered a vulnerability, and came up with a fix, could I insist on having it released for free by the OS developer (or as a free tool by an AV company)? If someone develops a virus based on this exploit code, could the Brazilian dude sue for copyright infringement? etc. etc.
One thing that is not in question is whether or not it's ok to go poking for holes in software. To say otherwise is asinine, from any perspective. Give me an asshat publicizing exploits over a criminal using them any day.
There is some truth in what you say but it is impractical. My mind just doesn't have enough space to store 160gigs of pr0n.
Nintendo has underestimated me! They have leaked enough info about the "secret" features of this console that I have been able to narrow down what they are!
Given that:
I can say with reasonable certainty that the new addition is either:
Clearly, whatever Nintendo has planned, they are taking steps to avoid the fiascos associated with the last couple of platforms and leap into first or second place in the console market!
... then again, maybe not. Nintendo's corporate slogan: Third party developers - who needs 'em?
Let's consider some counterpoints:
... and...
<opinion>Yeah, right</opinion> but many other people have commented on this, so I won't
The obvious counterpoint is that this is most likely more a sign that the PS2 has been saturated, and the XBox was the only console that many gamers didn't own.
The remaining 3 bullets harp on about how great Halo 2 and the whole Halo franchise is doing. Swell. But what about other XBox-only titles - like Fable? Not a peep about any of them recently.
Besides, bragging about Halo 2's success takes up just short of half of the article. Has the XBox really had a good year? Or was it just Halo 2?
It was a rhetorical question, but your answer is interesting. Do you know for a fact that airline employees - or just AA - uses this technique as a screening process? They could have been just collecting random marketing data, ne? I'm curious to know.
If it is a screening process, wtf is the point? Assume I'm Joe Terrorist, trying to board a flight, and a ticket agent pelts this barrage of questions at me:
By simply playing dumb, does that seem suspicious? Even more interesting, if I were Arab, I could throw up righteous indignation about being suspected of being a terrorist, and cooperate, but barely and testily. Would that make me suspicious?
When asked to list the people I'd be staying with I could just write some random names and say that I don't know their addresses off the top of my head, but they live in LA. Is that suspicious?
Seems to me like the whole thing, if it's a screening process, is a waste of time.
... from TSA regulations?
Me: (while flipping between pages about the Nintendo DS and the PSP) Good for you, Nokia! You might want to work on your timing, though...
Use the new attribute and make your site less attractive to spammers. But that means hobbling the power of your site's voice in the Internet.
If your blog uses the attribute, then it no longer has the ability to affect the rest of the net. If your blog is on politics, and your readers post links to some leaked government memo online, those links will not increase the visibility of that memo. Your site becomes a curio - nice to look at, but ultimately irrelevant.