While what you say may hold true for abandonware in general, Underdogs is quite scrupulous to make sure that it does not make available any game that is available through retail channels.
Does that make it legal? Of course not.
Should anybody try to stop it? No, because Underdogs is offering to fill a void that is obviously not being addressed by the companies in question. Since they only offer for download games that are not available through any legal means, there is no revenue loss. Further, they allow any rights holders to contact them to request that their games be removed from the archive.
I understand and agree with your assessment, however it's worth noting that Underdogs does not make availabe games that they know to be available through retail channels. Since there is literally *no* way for you to get those games, they provide a means. This doesn't make it legal, but it should be enough so that boneheaded corporate types could see that they're doing them a favor, not trying to ream them.
Underdogs is actually an abandonware site with morals. If they can find somebody selling the game, they don't provide a download link (rather, they provide a link to whoever *is* selling it). For a game to be on underdogs, it must be truly unavailable through other means. This probably does not hold true for many (most?) abandonware sites, but it is true for underdogs.
Unfortunately it's not usually the game creators that have a say in how these things are treated. Game programmers sell the rights of the game to a distributor, usually a large company populated by suits, and have no further say.
Indeed, the question seems to bypass the basic question of whether abortion is murder or not. It's certainly not fair to the mother, but if you believe a fetus to be a full human then you cannot allow termination simply because the pregnancy is imposed against her will. That unfortunately is a lose-lose situation, mother's freedom vs murder. Obviously murder trumps temporary freedom restrictions for being a "bad thing".
The only thing you said that I would even come close to disputing is the hypothetical viewpoint "No, a fetus becomes a human being when it is BORN; until then it is a part of the woman's body". Unfortunately, its very difficult to nail down a time when a fetus becomes a human being (if you believe that fetus' are not inherently full human beings). The being born is a convenient cutoff, but that issue tends to be a big deal in abortion debates. For my own purposes, I would go with "when it is viable without the womb", which is potentially as early as 5-6 months (and getting earlier as medical advances are made). That is why I stated I didn't have a problem with *most* abortions, since the vast majority are performed in the first trimester. Barring global disaster, it is quite likely that someday we will be able to put a fetus in an artificial womb from day 1. When that time comes if I am still alive I may have to rethink my position.
You seem to be implying that there is no natural right for anybody (specifically women) to do whatever they wish with their own bodies. Am I correct in this interpretation of your comment?
If so, it's a fairly disconcerting statement. Why wouldn't a woman be allowed to do whatever she wished to her body (provided it did not harm another "human being")? Should we run out and stop ear piercings (they can lead to infection), elective surgery (surgery is a drain on the body), force women to adopt healthy diets? Who would govern what "rights" a woman did have with her body?
So far as I know, there is no assumption in the USA that anybody does not have inherent rights to do whatever they wish with their bodies. There are laws against specific exceptions, although your examples above are due to legal concerns over the social concerns of such behavior, rather than the damage done anybody in particular. Prostitution is argued to undermine the moral fabric of society (personally I have my doubts on this), and drug use is currently the demonized "scourge of our society".
This issue has been debated endlessly on usenet. Personally, I would classify atheists into two separate buckets. The first would be the type that you specify, I call them the "devout atheists". There are also folks that simply don't believe in a diety and, rather than make that a focus of their attention, simply get on with their lives (these I call "passive atheists"). I personally am middle of the road between these two types, depending on my mood and how much caffeine I've had recently.
In any case, your point has merit, but I don't believe that it universally applies to all atheists.
Actually, the abortion issue can be simplified to one question:
"Is a fetus a human being deserving of full rights".
If your answer is yes, then no matter what rights a woman has, then it would be murder to kill it. Murder, even if it benefits somebody (the mother) cannot be condoned in a civilized society.
If your answer is no, then (depending on your interpretation of lack of "full rights") the fate of the fetus becomes the decision of the human being that the fetus is housed in.
Personally, I don't believe a (1st trimester) fetus qualifies as a human any more than a skin scraping does, so I have little trouble with most abortion. But I can certainly understand the point of view of pro-lifers who believe otherwise and I can understand their vehemence on the issue (most pro-lifers think abortion is sanctioned murder after all).
In any case, the constitution does not mandate pro or con in any respect to abortion. Religious freedom (including lack of religion), on the other hand, is specificially covered.
There is some overlap mind you, as some religions infer or state that a fetus has a soul, however, that aspect of abortion is not one that can (legally) be considered by the state/law.
You're splitting hairs. The government obviously does not forbid prayer in it's myriad forms. The amendment is there to basically state that state funding and support either must be non-existent for all religious or equal for all religions and that no religion should be suppressed by the state.
It is interesting to note however, that Satanism (at least) is proscribed by the state.
Perhaps I missed a post, but where does the issue of coming in contact with religions even appear? Current laws prevent forced religion by government agencies and also are geared to prevent religious persecution (for those in unpopular/minority religions).
School prayer for instance, is only forbidden as a mandatory act. Many (if not all) schools allow student run religious groups to gather in prayer or religious discussion on a voluntary basis (provided they do not receive government funds or receive funds on an equal footing with all other religious groups).
Religious freedom is freedom from *state* mandated or funded religion, you still have to put up with all the crap from your friends, parents, and door-to-door evangelists.
Well if he wasn't so freaking gung ho about carrying on the farce that is "the war on drugs" it might not be a bad thing. Frankly I think one of Clinton's big mistakes in his campaign was the "I didn't inhale" bullshit. That reduced his credibility (although not as much as the "no sexual contact") and honestly I would have respected the man more if he'd just admitted to smoking and enjoying pot.
Bush on the other hand obviously wasn't just a casual user. That in and of itself is no big deal in my book (minus the DUI, don't like that a bit), but then to turn around and try to be the anti-drug avenger seems just a wee bit hypocritical.
Pay attention, this isn't about columbine. This is about what kids have to go through *after* columbine (possibly as a result of media misrepresentation of "geek" kids being like the cold blooded killers *at* columbine).
The big hubbub wasn't about money. The majority of posts I saw were irate over the use of the words without permission especially in light of the/. disclosure that (paraphrased) "comments belong to the poster".
Although I think that/. probably should have asked, I still don't see why most folks gave a damn in this case. Perhaps it was worries about a slippery slope of comments being rampantly used without permission. In any case, the/. crew obviously cared enough about the poster's opinions that they held off on the book in spite of considerable desire to get it public.
Jon Katz knows how to stir up controversy. Look at him stir. Stir stir stir! 'Those killers were outcasts! Just like us geeks!' stir stir stir...
Look how important Jon is. Worship him for stating the obvious.
Oh please. Yes it's controversial, but that doesn't make the points raised any less valid. Attack the arguments, not the person making them.
I don't like most of Jon's columns myself. On this one however, by luck or acumen, he had a valid point. Besides which, if you were paying attention, he didn't actually write most of what is here. These comments came from emails and/. posts.
Actually, if I vote it doesn't matter (although I will still do so). Since I'm in North Carolina, the electoral college will make it irrelevant that I'm not voting for Bush as the state is reliably republican.
While I'm stubborn enough to vote anyway, I can imagine this puts off a lot of folks who won't vote as a result (again, with the electoral college, not that it would matter anyway).
For one thing, I can perceive flicker at up to 80 Hz, as can a few other people I know. This is why I have to run at a res/refresh that allows at least 85 Hz refresh. I would imagine that there are probably people out there than can perceive up to 100Hz.
Further, as others have mentioned, average frame rates are relatively irrelevant compared to framerates while rendering complex scenarios.
Also frame rates with *existing* games are often tweaked by handling the number of polygons on screen at a time. Dynamic T&L engines can place further strain. So even if Q3 could get 200 FPS on a highly complex screen (as opposed to an average scene), the only thing that means is that it's time to build more complex scenes.
At some point we'll have photorealistic engines at 200 fps for the most complex scene imaginable, but that day is far in the future.
If it was a passing of a domestic law, then we could actually do quite a bit about it. Unfortunately, international treaties are a sneaky way to get things passed into law without actually going through the sequence of events that can get outraged citizens to discuss the probability that the lawmakers are suffering from cranial-rectal inversion.
I think it's a bit beside the point. The emphasis was on the mistaken assumption that exploits could be used for malicious *bodily* harm or death.
While I agree that responsible gun use rarely produces accidental injury, it does not really have anything to do with the fact that comparing exploits to irresponsible gun handling is completely inappropriate.
From what I gather from the quasi-review, it seems that the author is arguing that because the net is the province of the tech elite that there are therefore no communities.
Firstly, I would argue that it is not necessarily the case that the "tech elite" own the web. While technophiles are pretty much by default net users, it does not follow the net users are exclusively tech elite.
It certainly is true that there is an income level cutoff for the majority of computer use, however this is also true of many other commodities that give people status and access (think automobile). Computers are significantly easier to access these days (as mentioned in schools and through employers).
My family and my wife's family are almost (except for her brother) entirely wired, in spite of over half of them not being technically inclined. Even my often broke, bad luck magnet uncle is wired, as he is very active in his community (his online community has a large intersection with his RL community).
I see no evidence that the authors assertion in this regard is correct. Given the behaviors of certain people with @aol.com emails, I'd say that a large percentage, possibly a majority, are not techs.
Secondly, even if the first argument was correct, it does not follow that an exclusive community is not a community. So what if all you meet are fellow geeks (as unlikely as that is)? What is to prevent these geeks from forming a community? From IRC i have regular (daily) contact with people from germany, norway, netherlands and england. We swap jokes, give book recommendations, make fun of "Survivor" etc. What's not a community about that (and I haven't even mentioned communities centering around gaming, like quake clans, and everquest guilds)?
In conclusion I'd have to say this author has his head up his ass. If he'd spend some more time actually relaxing and having fun online instead of technophobic ranting, I think he'd actually see the world in a more accurate light.
As another poster pointed out, Freenet is more anonymous, also it is designed to propogate documents based on popularity.
If you request a document from a freenet server, it will find where it is, and propogate that document to all nodes between it and the actual location of the document (with each node only knowing ips of the requesting and granting nodes for that document). This allows for popular documents to be widely distributed so that you won't have to wait long to get them. It also means that merely looking for a document causes it to propogate.
Imagine the MPAA consternation if merely looking for DeCSS caused it to be distributed more widely. Further, even if they ran a freenet node, they'd only be able to tell which server immediately next to them in the server chain supplied the program and they'd only be able to track where it was going to one server away.
While I mirror the sentiments of the other posters to this thread, I would like to point out that freenet is not a *storage* system, it's a *distribution* system. Documents are stored in a cache and flushed when they are no longer requested.
If there truly is "rubbish" on freenet, it will never be requested, and thus it will fall off the cache relatively quickly, leaving freenet nicely uncluttered.
Re:Freenet really needs the support of the communi
on
Freenet 0.3 Released
·
· Score: 2
Warez happens, freenet won't change that either by it's existence or lack of existence. What freenet *does* provide is a way to make it impossible to censor. Frankly, I could give a damn about the warez angle, so long as I can guarantee that important information won't be suppressed.
Re:Freenet really needs the support of the communi
on
Freenet 0.3 Released
·
· Score: 2
At this point, it could really just use any nodes. For the long term, I agree, but until we get a few more point versions, it really needs the stress test.
Slashdot Mirror
are you sure that's the correct spelling of aaaaaarrrrrrghgg? I always thought it was aaaarrrggh!
While what you say may hold true for abandonware in general, Underdogs is quite scrupulous to make sure that it does not make available any game that is available through retail channels.
Does that make it legal? Of course not.
Should anybody try to stop it? No, because Underdogs is offering to fill a void that is obviously not being addressed by the companies in question. Since they only offer for download games that are not available through any legal means, there is no revenue loss. Further, they allow any rights holders to contact them to request that their games be removed from the archive.
I understand and agree with your assessment, however it's worth noting that Underdogs does not make availabe games that they know to be available through retail channels. Since there is literally *no* way for you to get those games, they provide a means. This doesn't make it legal, but it should be enough so that boneheaded corporate types could see that they're doing them a favor, not trying to ream them.
Underdogs is actually an abandonware site with morals. If they can find somebody selling the game, they don't provide a download link (rather, they provide a link to whoever *is* selling it). For a game to be on underdogs, it must be truly unavailable through other means. This probably does not hold true for many (most?) abandonware sites, but it is true for underdogs.
Unfortunately it's not usually the game creators that have a say in how these things are treated. Game programmers sell the rights of the game to a distributor, usually a large company populated by suits, and have no further say.
Indeed, the question seems to bypass the basic question of whether abortion is murder or not. It's certainly not fair to the mother, but if you believe a fetus to be a full human then you cannot allow termination simply because the pregnancy is imposed against her will. That unfortunately is a lose-lose situation, mother's freedom vs murder. Obviously murder trumps temporary freedom restrictions for being a "bad thing".
The only thing you said that I would even come close to disputing is the hypothetical viewpoint "No, a fetus becomes a human being when it is BORN; until then it is a part of the woman's body". Unfortunately, its very difficult to nail down a time when a fetus becomes a human being (if you believe that fetus' are not inherently full human beings). The being born is a convenient cutoff, but that issue tends to be a big deal in abortion debates. For my own purposes, I would go with "when it is viable without the womb", which is potentially as early as 5-6 months (and getting earlier as medical advances are made). That is why I stated I didn't have a problem with *most* abortions, since the vast majority are performed in the first trimester. Barring global disaster, it is quite likely that someday we will be able to put a fetus in an artificial womb from day 1. When that time comes if I am still alive I may have to rethink my position.
Go ahead and give it a try. Personally I'd rather try to herd cats, but if you think you can do it, then by all means give it a shot.
You seem to be implying that there is no natural right for anybody (specifically women) to do whatever they wish with their own bodies. Am I correct in this interpretation of your comment?
If so, it's a fairly disconcerting statement. Why wouldn't a woman be allowed to do whatever she wished to her body (provided it did not harm another "human being")? Should we run out and stop ear piercings (they can lead to infection), elective surgery (surgery is a drain on the body), force women to adopt healthy diets? Who would govern what "rights" a woman did have with her body?
So far as I know, there is no assumption in the USA that anybody does not have inherent rights to do whatever they wish with their bodies. There are laws against specific exceptions, although your examples above are due to legal concerns over the social concerns of such behavior, rather than the damage done anybody in particular. Prostitution is argued to undermine the moral fabric of society (personally I have my doubts on this), and drug use is currently the demonized "scourge of our society".
This issue has been debated endlessly on usenet. Personally, I would classify atheists into two separate buckets. The first would be the type that you specify, I call them the "devout atheists". There are also folks that simply don't believe in a diety and, rather than make that a focus of their attention, simply get on with their lives (these I call "passive atheists"). I personally am middle of the road between these two types, depending on my mood and how much caffeine I've had recently.
In any case, your point has merit, but I don't believe that it universally applies to all atheists.
Actually, the abortion issue can be simplified to one question:
"Is a fetus a human being deserving of full rights".
If your answer is yes, then no matter what rights a woman has, then it would be murder to kill it. Murder, even if it benefits somebody (the mother) cannot be condoned in a civilized society.
If your answer is no, then (depending on your interpretation of lack of "full rights") the fate of the fetus becomes the decision of the human being that the fetus is housed in.
Personally, I don't believe a (1st trimester) fetus qualifies as a human any more than a skin scraping does, so I have little trouble with most abortion. But I can certainly understand the point of view of pro-lifers who believe otherwise and I can understand their vehemence on the issue (most pro-lifers think abortion is sanctioned murder after all).
In any case, the constitution does not mandate pro or con in any respect to abortion. Religious freedom (including lack of religion), on the other hand, is specificially covered.
There is some overlap mind you, as some religions infer or state that a fetus has a soul, however, that aspect of abortion is not one that can (legally) be considered by the state/law.
You're splitting hairs. The government obviously does not forbid prayer in it's myriad forms. The amendment is there to basically state that state funding and support either must be non-existent for all religious or equal for all religions and that no religion should be suppressed by the state.
It is interesting to note however, that Satanism (at least) is proscribed by the state.
Perhaps I missed a post, but where does the issue of coming in contact with religions even appear? Current laws prevent forced religion by government agencies and also are geared to prevent religious persecution (for those in unpopular/minority religions).
School prayer for instance, is only forbidden as a mandatory act. Many (if not all) schools allow student run religious groups to gather in prayer or religious discussion on a voluntary basis (provided they do not receive government funds or receive funds on an equal footing with all other religious groups).
Religious freedom is freedom from *state* mandated or funded religion, you still have to put up with all the crap from your friends, parents, and door-to-door evangelists.
Well if he wasn't so freaking gung ho about carrying on the farce that is "the war on drugs" it might not be a bad thing. Frankly I think one of Clinton's big mistakes in his campaign was the "I didn't inhale" bullshit. That reduced his credibility (although not as much as the "no sexual contact") and honestly I would have respected the man more if he'd just admitted to smoking and enjoying pot.
Bush on the other hand obviously wasn't just a casual user. That in and of itself is no big deal in my book (minus the DUI, don't like that a bit), but then to turn around and try to be the anti-drug avenger seems just a wee bit hypocritical.
Pay attention, this isn't about columbine. This is about what kids have to go through *after* columbine (possibly as a result of media misrepresentation of "geek" kids being like the cold blooded killers *at* columbine).
The big hubbub wasn't about money. The majority of posts I saw were irate over the use of the words without permission especially in light of the /. disclosure that (paraphrased) "comments belong to the poster".
/. probably should have asked, I still don't see why most folks gave a damn in this case. Perhaps it was worries about a slippery slope of comments being rampantly used without permission. In any case, the /. crew obviously cared enough about the poster's opinions that they held off on the book in spite of considerable desire to get it public.
Although I think that
Look how important Jon is. Worship him for stating the obvious.
Oh please. Yes it's controversial, but that doesn't make the points raised any less valid. Attack the arguments, not the person making them.
I don't like most of Jon's columns myself. On this one however, by luck or acumen, he had a valid point. Besides which, if you were paying attention, he didn't actually write most of what is here. These comments came from emails and
Actually, if I vote it doesn't matter (although I will still do so). Since I'm in North Carolina, the electoral college will make it irrelevant that I'm not voting for Bush as the state is reliably republican.
While I'm stubborn enough to vote anyway, I can imagine this puts off a lot of folks who won't vote as a result (again, with the electoral college, not that it would matter anyway).
For one thing, I can perceive flicker at up to 80 Hz, as can a few other people I know. This is why I have to run at a res/refresh that allows at least 85 Hz refresh. I would imagine that there are probably people out there than can perceive up to 100Hz.
Further, as others have mentioned, average frame rates are relatively irrelevant compared to framerates while rendering complex scenarios.
Also frame rates with *existing* games are often tweaked by handling the number of polygons on screen at a time. Dynamic T&L engines can place further strain. So even if Q3 could get 200 FPS on a highly complex screen (as opposed to an average scene), the only thing that means is that it's time to build more complex scenes.
At some point we'll have photorealistic engines at 200 fps for the most complex scene imaginable, but that day is far in the future.
If it was a passing of a domestic law, then we could actually do quite a bit about it. Unfortunately, international treaties are a sneaky way to get things passed into law without actually going through the sequence of events that can get outraged citizens to discuss the probability that the lawmakers are suffering from cranial-rectal inversion.
I think it's a bit beside the point. The emphasis was on the mistaken assumption that exploits could be used for malicious *bodily* harm or death.
While I agree that responsible gun use rarely produces accidental injury, it does not really have anything to do with the fact that comparing exploits to irresponsible gun handling is completely inappropriate.
From what I gather from the quasi-review, it seems that the author is arguing that because the net is the province of the tech elite that there are therefore no communities.
Firstly, I would argue that it is not necessarily the case that the "tech elite" own the web. While technophiles are pretty much by default net users, it does not follow the net users are exclusively tech elite.
It certainly is true that there is an income level cutoff for the majority of computer use, however this is also true of many other commodities that give people status and access (think automobile). Computers are significantly easier to access these days (as mentioned in schools and through employers).
My family and my wife's family are almost (except for her brother) entirely wired, in spite of over half of them not being technically inclined. Even my often broke, bad luck magnet uncle is wired, as he is very active in his community (his online community has a large intersection with his RL community).
I see no evidence that the authors assertion in this regard is correct. Given the behaviors of certain people with @aol.com emails, I'd say that a large percentage, possibly a majority, are not techs.
Secondly, even if the first argument was correct, it does not follow that an exclusive community is not a community. So what if all you meet are fellow geeks (as unlikely as that is)? What is to prevent these geeks from forming a community? From IRC i have regular (daily) contact with people from germany, norway, netherlands and england. We swap jokes, give book recommendations, make fun of "Survivor" etc. What's not a community about that (and I haven't even mentioned communities centering around gaming, like quake clans, and everquest guilds)?
In conclusion I'd have to say this author has his head up his ass. If he'd spend some more time actually relaxing and having fun online instead of technophobic ranting, I think he'd actually see the world in a more accurate light.
As another poster pointed out, Freenet is more anonymous, also it is designed to propogate documents based on popularity.
If you request a document from a freenet server, it will find where it is, and propogate that document to all nodes between it and the actual location of the document (with each node only knowing ips of the requesting and granting nodes for that document). This allows for popular documents to be widely distributed so that you won't have to wait long to get them. It also means that merely looking for a document causes it to propogate.
Imagine the MPAA consternation if merely looking for DeCSS caused it to be distributed more widely. Further, even if they ran a freenet node, they'd only be able to tell which server immediately next to them in the server chain supplied the program and they'd only be able to track where it was going to one server away.
While I mirror the sentiments of the other posters to this thread, I would like to point out that freenet is not a *storage* system, it's a *distribution* system. Documents are stored in a cache and flushed when they are no longer requested.
If there truly is "rubbish" on freenet, it will never be requested, and thus it will fall off the cache relatively quickly, leaving freenet nicely uncluttered.
Warez happens, freenet won't change that either by it's existence or lack of existence. What freenet *does* provide is a way to make it impossible to censor. Frankly, I could give a damn about the warez angle, so long as I can guarantee that important information won't be suppressed.
At this point, it could really just use any nodes. For the long term, I agree, but until we get a few more point versions, it really needs the stress test.