Is it any more acceptable if a drone kills the wrong person or if a human does it?
The US Military stance is to only allow a robot to use a weapon when there a human giving the kill command. But killing is killing whether done by a human or a robot and we've been doing it for thousands of years.
As of now, all war crimes have been commited by humans on humans so it wouldn't be so far fetched in the future for some 3rd world nation to use its drones to bomb people.
BUT! If you haven't noticed, in war crimes trials we don't bring the death camp guards or soldiers to court, but those who ordered them to do so at a higher level. So if a general or government official orders a robot to indescrimently kill everyone in a town then we don't blame the robots, but we go after the general and put him on trial at Hauge or where ever.
One might say... "Well humans could receive such an order and refuse to do so!", but as history has shown in the Sudan, Bosnia, World War II Germany, Cambodia, and thousands of other wars too many to mention, it doesn't take much to get a human to murder his fellow man and many of them do it willingly and with glee.
Heck, a robot might have better saftey checks than a human when aquiring a target and won't be prone to stress related events in case they want to off a few civilians because their buddy just got blown away.
And if you are dropping EMP bombs from orbit, you are at a level of technology that doesn't need to use them to destroy the opposing sides army. I mean if someone could do that to the US army we'd be screwed even without robots.
Naval Officer: Sir! We need to build an all steel non-sail navy! Grover Cleavland: Pollycock and brumbule boo! Thats all that HG Wells you've been reading. Navel Officer: But the British are building one. Gorver Cleavland: Oh...
Einstein: We need to make an atomic bomb. Franklin D. Rosevelt: Hogwash and crumsticks! This is pure scientific fictionary. Never ever ever happen in our lifetimes. I dare say we won't see an Atomic bomb til the 21st century. Einstein: But the Nazi's are building one. Frankling D. Rosevelt: Oh hell...
Scientific Adivsor: Mr. President! We need to make a self replicating nanobots ! Bush: Oh you've been reading those Chrichton books again having you. Well grey goo a foo foo... you do a grey goo foo... Scientific Advisor: But... Um... The Chinese are building one. Bush: Oh... Um... Where is my check book.
I agree, I started to read TFA, but I soon realized that it read like someone in 1960 promising flying cars by 2000.
Actually, the fact that we didn't have flying cars in 2000 was more of a political issue than a technological issue. After all, would you really want Grandma traveling at high velocities through the air?
Think about how crappy we drive on the roads and imagine all the damage and death by drunk drivers alone in flying cars. Imagine is the local terrorist could just hop in a flying car and drive into a building.
No... That was just optimistic thinking not about technology in the 60's but on human nature. Truth be told we won't see flying cars until all our ground cars are automated and are under control of AI with no manual over ride.
However, think of it like this... These guys are talking about Atomic bombs and their ramifications, but today is 1906 and we won't have a bomb until 1945.
Given their ability to terminate all life on the planet and provide us with endless benefits it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and discuss their ramnifications before we just let it happen willy nilly. (Atomic bomb/nano weapons vs nuclear energy/replicators)
I mean we were only a flip switch from blowing ourselves away several times during the cold war and if today is 1906 we've got two more World Wars before we hit 1945 (2045).
Maybe easier just to genetically engineer all the plants and animals to deal with the new conditions rather than try to control the ocean currents
Or better yet, Strong AI happens sometime in the near future and we do away with organic bodies all together. Well you don't have to upgrade if you don't want to, but like someone else said the surface will be unlivable by your standard organic human.
Although, non-organic humans won't have a problem with this, but chances are they'll be inside on the net playing WoW XIII.
If you're thinking marriage and children in the near future,
Can I ask a simple thing? Why must we put up with this having of the children routine with women?
I've met plenty of women who aren't keen on the idea. They are out there guys and the way I see it, its kind of pointless to have children if you don't already have them (no offense to the people that already have them, I'm just saying if you don't already have them... then maybe you should consider just not having them unless any of you parents are considering retro-active 29th term trimester abortions for that little ingrateful bastard... Well that is up to you guys).
My real point being is that child bearing serves no purpose other than to continue your genes, and considering my quality genes, I'd rather spare the human race the suffering and put my foot down and say "No children for ye whenches! Go find some football watching, beer drinking college prep jockey who is too dumb to know what to do with his life other than to stick his penis in some whench who wants to spurt out some std otherwise known as a kid! Me? Oh yeah... I'll be sticking to the singles scene way into my 40's way past my prime hanging out at the clubs and I'll be enjoying the platonic companion ship of some older lesbians who I don't have to deal with their kids when I don't wanna!"
You see life isn't all about having kids and having sex. Do something else... We are almost 50 years away from a world that doesn't need human procreation and if I don't live to see Strong AI then well... I might as well not be around.
I know there is a crapload of solar energy bombarding our planet every day, but isn't there some point where the amount of solar energy that we intercept for our own use causes problems with our environment.
If I remember this right, 75% of the light that hits the earth is reflected. I could be horribly wrong about this figure and it might only be 25%, but I believe the issue is that most of the light that is reflected is by the Ice caps since white reflects all colors verus the oceans reflecting only blue and forests only green.
I think we face more of a risk of absorbing too much light from lack of ice caps than building too many solar arrays.
Heck these solar arrays might actually reduce global warming since they are converting it to electricty instead of all just heat (yeah... there is plenty of heat still generated, but not as much).
But like usual, basic economics will take care of the situtation for us.
Yes, but letting the market take care of itself is like going with the "no lube" option. Sure, both options hurt, but sometimes as an individual your best option is to be knowledgable of market changes and get that bottle of KY in advanced before Peak Oil shows up at your door with a big nasty grin on its face.
Of course... If Peak Oil does come, petroleum jelly might be rather expensive...
With a well-worded and specific EULA, players will be bound to the idea that what they create for this world (or anything that goes over the servers) is therefore owned by the development company or the publishing company, and no longer you.
Or the more logical route, is that anything uploaded is the opinion or owned by the people who posted them so when the FBI or RIAA/MPAA show up the game company can go "Oh, but this isn't ours... The player did this and by our EULA (and hopefully common carrier status which hasn't been proven in court yet) he is therefor the sole violator of your said content, illegal, or questional material. Oh and here is his address and home phone number. Good day sirs!"
The elitests who believe the average user, and average person, is a gibbering idiot is usually just as dumb when they are confronted with tasks outside their element.
I take it you have not worked retail, tech support, or at a law firm.
No, but seriously, I understand when I take my car to the garage, I am the gibbering idiot. Otherwise, I wouldn't need to take my car there. People should understand this fact on both sides of the fence.
My car mechanic doesn't need to treat me like a gibbering idiot, but neither should I claim that I know more than my mechanic. When someone calls me for computer assistant, I don't treat them like an idiot, but they shouldn't act like they know more than me and should quietly assume to be the idiot.
Heck, when I call my ISP, out of respect I play dumb in order to make the call go faster and make the person on the other ends job a whole lot easier than I would to try to say "hey... your an idiot... i know more than you!" because you know... If I didn't know how to fix this on my own I wouldn't have called (even if I knew it was something like a NIC card refresh etc and knew what the other person had to do... i'm not going to demean them over it).
We are all gibbering idiots outside our realm of expertise. Otherwise, we wouldn't have capitalism.
No, it is NOT fraud to display different kinds of content to different site visitors, and I hope it never will be.
It's not fraud in the legal sense, but it is a kin to false advertising. It's like posting in the local news paper a set of facts about your product, but when you get to the store front, you see something totally different. Google has every right (as the newspaper) to delist them because of this tactic. If what you search engine tries to give you as a result is not the same for it as you, then I'd say that is a lowly tactic that spammers use on the internet.
Secondly, Google is a private organization and sets its own rules. If you don't play by those rules, don't expect them to play nice with you.
If you want to go far in politics, you've got to bet on one side or the other. I suppose he thinks that in 30 years time, the US will be a cleric-ridden theocracy, and then he'll be at the top of the tree.
The bad thing on his part is that he hasn't even done his research on religion. If you read, Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time", he talks about how the Vatican in the mid 80's had declared that the Big Bang theory conforms to their doctrine and is the preferable sicentific explanation. Wheras, Hawking had expressed his doubt at one time shortly before this proclamation that there might have not been a singular big bang, but a possible "no begining, no end universe" (which he of course speculates but doesn't really go for) which would make Creationism impossible.
In fact the Big Bang is almost required for a creationist type of event.
The thing is... those are tools the player generally needs in order to succeed in the game. If you're going to go with something vague like, "your clip is getting light", you'd better not make it catastrophic for the player to run out of ammo.
If you have 50 rounds in a PPsh Soviet submachine gun and squeeze the trigger for 2 seconds... How many bullets to you have in the gun? What about a Mp41 or a Stg44?
You might be able to make a guess of how many bullets are left by your guns weight or pervious experience, but there weren't Aliens-esque LED's on these guns back in 1941 telling you how many bullets were in the thing.
Often times I will just empty the gun into something to reload because I know I might need a full clip down the road.
How many times do I see articles that might as well be talking about Red Orchestra. They basically have removed all crosshairs, ammo counts, and health stastics.
All information is through visual, sound, or textual cues.
Example1: If you are low on stamina, your guy breathes heavy. Example2: To find out how much ammo you have, reload and you'll get a message that says, your clip is heavy etc. Example3: You don't get cross hairs. If you want to aim, you hit ironsites and it brings you guy up to your eyelevel and you use the 3d model to aim.
Very fun... Very realistic... Prolly the best WWII sim out there and these guys are an indie company.
Some people the RIAA have sued have been caught red-handed. In other cases, there was a mistake.
Umm... Let me remind you none... I repeat NONE of those cases have actually been ruled in court one way or another.
All of them have been have been settled out of court for a nominal fee.
See... Either way, it costs the person more to fight it in lawyer fees even if they are innocent so it usually ends up being cheaper to admit guilt and settle.
So the truth of the matter is that RIAA is winning by default by "brute forcing" guilt onto these people. On occasion (like the dead women) they have relented, but none of their cases have ever seen the light of day in court.
I almost can't wait for Google's facade of goodness to slip. They're just like any other large company who are more concerned about their stock price and making money
Why can't "good" and "making money" be in the same sentence?
Just because a company makes money, doesn't make them evil. It makes them evil when they do bad things to make money.
I mean the CEOs of Google aren't killing a kitten everytime their stock price goes up... At least I hope not.
I believe that people are disilusioned with "hard core", "realistic", 3d accelerated bullshit pushed on PC and latest consoles.
Well, I don't think its even that... But that these new games aren't even that realistic when they pretend to be. It is still basically "point your gun in a direction" and pull the trigger, move down a hallway, repeat steps mentioned above and maybe find a key in the process.
A realistic FPS doesn't need the same formula as all the above... We want something more than just shooting things or sneaking by things. We want to interact with things. We want realism on a scale that makes it fun by not tedious. I want to be immersed and forget that I am playing a game, but most of these new console games just put sour tast in my mouth and I end up having more fun with my DS. I can't really think of a FFP game other than say Red Orchestra that aspires to do this and even that is released by a indie developer.
I don't get a veto on your car, you don't get a veto on my parent's AOL.
No, but the free market and government regulation do.
At least I can't buy a car that takes leaded gasoline anymore nor can I use local BBS's for internet connection on a 2400 baud modem (not that I would want to). One being government regulated and other because something else in the free market killed it off.
If the government outlaws AOL (for some uknown and improbable reason... maybe the CEO got caught for SEC violations or something) or AOL died off because MSN, Netzero, Telcoms and Earthlink did better for some uknown reason and put AOL in its grave... Then well... Your parents AOL has been vetoed.
May I also mention that opinion does affect free markets and government opinion?
Getting bug reports on beta software is good. That's why it's released as beta.
I dunno. Every time I beta'd tested software for a public company (and volunteered my time at that) they have never bothered to fix any bugs I reported. Of course, these were mostly MMOGs and they had a time frame. Sometimes I think betas are tests to see if anyone is going to sue or not, because they can say "hey... its beta" and if in a weeks time no one sues they release it.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it any more acceptable if a drone kills the wrong person or if a human does it?
The US Military stance is to only allow a robot to use a weapon when there a human giving the kill command. But killing is killing whether done by a human or a robot and we've been doing it for thousands of years.
As of now, all war crimes have been commited by humans on humans so it wouldn't be so far fetched in the future for some 3rd world nation to use its drones to bomb people.
BUT! If you haven't noticed, in war crimes trials we don't bring the death camp guards or soldiers to court, but those who ordered them to do so at a higher level. So if a general or government official orders a robot to indescrimently kill everyone in a town then we don't blame the robots, but we go after the general and put him on trial at Hauge or where ever.
One might say... "Well humans could receive such an order and refuse to do so!", but as history has shown in the Sudan, Bosnia, World War II Germany, Cambodia, and thousands of other wars too many to mention, it doesn't take much to get a human to murder his fellow man and many of them do it willingly and with glee.
Heck, a robot might have better saftey checks than a human when aquiring a target and won't be prone to stress related events in case they want to off a few civilians because their buddy just got blown away.
And if you are dropping EMP bombs from orbit, you are at a level of technology that doesn't need to use them to destroy the opposing sides army. I mean if someone could do that to the US army we'd be screwed even without robots.
At least until somebody shot at your gigantic air-filled target...
That is what the indescriminate return fire from the UAV predators nearby are for.
Sure but...
Naval Officer: Sir! We need to build an all steel non-sail navy!
Grover Cleavland: Pollycock and brumbule boo! Thats all that HG Wells you've been reading.
Navel Officer: But the British are building one.
Gorver Cleavland: Oh...
Einstein: We need to make an atomic bomb.
Franklin D. Rosevelt: Hogwash and crumsticks! This is pure scientific fictionary. Never ever ever happen in our lifetimes. I dare say we won't see an Atomic bomb til the 21st century.
Einstein: But the Nazi's are building one.
Frankling D. Rosevelt: Oh hell...
Scientific Adivsor: Mr. President! We need to make a self replicating nanobots !
Bush: Oh you've been reading those Chrichton books again having you. Well grey goo a foo foo... you do a grey goo foo...
Scientific Advisor: But... Um... The Chinese are building one.
Bush: Oh... Um... Where is my check book.
I agree, I started to read TFA, but I soon realized that it read like someone in 1960 promising flying cars by 2000.
Actually, the fact that we didn't have flying cars in 2000 was more of a political issue than a technological issue. After all, would you really want Grandma traveling at high velocities through the air?
Think about how crappy we drive on the roads and imagine all the damage and death by drunk drivers alone in flying cars. Imagine is the local terrorist could just hop in a flying car and drive into a building.
No... That was just optimistic thinking not about technology in the 60's but on human nature. Truth be told we won't see flying cars until all our ground cars are automated and are under control of AI with no manual over ride.
However, think of it like this... These guys are talking about Atomic bombs and their ramifications, but today is 1906 and we won't have a bomb until 1945.
Given their ability to terminate all life on the planet and provide us with endless benefits it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and discuss their ramnifications before we just let it happen willy nilly. (Atomic bomb/nano weapons vs nuclear energy/replicators)
I mean we were only a flip switch from blowing ourselves away several times during the cold war and if today is 1906 we've got two more World Wars before we hit 1945 (2045).
Maybe easier just to genetically engineer all the plants and animals to deal with the new conditions rather than try to control the ocean currents
Or better yet, Strong AI happens sometime in the near future and we do away with organic bodies all together. Well you don't have to upgrade if you don't want to, but like someone else said the surface will be unlivable by your standard organic human.
Although, non-organic humans won't have a problem with this, but chances are they'll be inside on the net playing WoW XIII.
If you're thinking marriage and children in the near future,
Can I ask a simple thing? Why must we put up with this having of the children routine with women?
I've met plenty of women who aren't keen on the idea. They are out there guys and the way I see it, its kind of pointless to have children if you don't already have them (no offense to the people that already have them, I'm just saying if you don't already have them... then maybe you should consider just not having them unless any of you parents are considering retro-active 29th term trimester abortions for that little ingrateful bastard... Well that is up to you guys).
My real point being is that child bearing serves no purpose other than to continue your genes, and considering my quality genes, I'd rather spare the human race the suffering and put my foot down and say "No children for ye whenches! Go find some football watching, beer drinking college prep jockey who is too dumb to know what to do with his life other than to stick his penis in some whench who wants to spurt out some std otherwise known as a kid! Me? Oh yeah... I'll be sticking to the singles scene way into my 40's way past my prime hanging out at the clubs and I'll be enjoying the platonic companion ship of some older lesbians who I don't have to deal with their kids when I don't wanna!"
You see life isn't all about having kids and having sex. Do something else... We are almost 50 years away from a world that doesn't need human procreation and if I don't live to see Strong AI then well... I might as well not be around.
Since when was sex a "self-destructive act?!"
Only when it burns when you pee.
They should make them sound like a Wraith Dart.
Yeah, but I'd rather have a car made out of replicators.
Never have to take it to the shop again... That is if it hasn't destroyed all life on the planet first.
I know there is a crapload of solar energy bombarding our planet every day, but isn't there some point where the amount of solar energy that we intercept for our own use causes problems with our environment.
If I remember this right, 75% of the light that hits the earth is reflected. I could be horribly wrong about this figure and it might only be 25%, but I believe the issue is that most of the light that is reflected is by the Ice caps since white reflects all colors verus the oceans reflecting only blue and forests only green.
I think we face more of a risk of absorbing too much light from lack of ice caps than building too many solar arrays.
Heck these solar arrays might actually reduce global warming since they are converting it to electricty instead of all just heat (yeah... there is plenty of heat still generated, but not as much).
But like usual, basic economics will take care of the situtation for us.
Yes, but letting the market take care of itself is like going with the "no lube" option. Sure, both options hurt, but sometimes as an individual your best option is to be knowledgable of market changes and get that bottle of KY in advanced before Peak Oil shows up at your door with a big nasty grin on its face.
Of course... If Peak Oil does come, petroleum jelly might be rather expensive...
With a well-worded and specific EULA, players will be bound to the idea that what they create for this world (or anything that goes over the servers) is therefore owned by the development company or the publishing company, and no longer you.
Or the more logical route, is that anything uploaded is the opinion or owned by the people who posted them so when the FBI or RIAA/MPAA show up the game company can go "Oh, but this isn't ours... The player did this and by our EULA (and hopefully common carrier status which hasn't been proven in court yet) he is therefor the sole violator of your said content, illegal, or questional material. Oh and here is his address and home phone number. Good day sirs!"
Player-made content is always going to be buried in a sea of vandalism and coyright violations unless it's policed and all content is pre-approved.
What about Counter Strike model? Play content does have its bonuses.
Well there was that thing over the Trade Mark of the Colt Line of weaponry, but they resolved that.
The elitests who believe the average user, and average person, is a gibbering idiot is usually just as dumb when they are confronted with tasks outside their element.
I take it you have not worked retail, tech support, or at a law firm.
No, but seriously, I understand when I take my car to the garage, I am the gibbering idiot. Otherwise, I wouldn't need to take my car there. People should understand this fact on both sides of the fence.
My car mechanic doesn't need to treat me like a gibbering idiot, but neither should I claim that I know more than my mechanic. When someone calls me for computer assistant, I don't treat them like an idiot, but they shouldn't act like they know more than me and should quietly assume to be the idiot.
Heck, when I call my ISP, out of respect I play dumb in order to make the call go faster and make the person on the other ends job a whole lot easier than I would to try to say "hey... your an idiot... i know more than you!" because you know... If I didn't know how to fix this on my own I wouldn't have called (even if I knew it was something like a NIC card refresh etc and knew what the other person had to do... i'm not going to demean them over it).
We are all gibbering idiots outside our realm of expertise. Otherwise, we wouldn't have capitalism.
The fact that people involved in a googlebomb want to see something does not make it what the majority of people want to see.
True, but if the majority of people could simply override this if they bothered to do so in their blogs.
No, it is NOT fraud to display different kinds of content to different site visitors, and I hope it never will be.
It's not fraud in the legal sense, but it is a kin to false advertising. It's like posting in the local news paper a set of facts about your product, but when you get to the store front, you see something totally different. Google has every right (as the newspaper) to delist them because of this tactic. If what you search engine tries to give you as a result is not the same for it as you, then I'd say that is a lowly tactic that spammers use on the internet.
Secondly, Google is a private organization and sets its own rules. If you don't play by those rules, don't expect them to play nice with you.
If you want to go far in politics, you've got to bet on one side or the other. I suppose he thinks that in 30 years time, the US will be a cleric-ridden theocracy, and then he'll be at the top of the tree.
The bad thing on his part is that he hasn't even done his research on religion. If you read, Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time", he talks about how the Vatican in the mid 80's had declared that the Big Bang theory conforms to their doctrine and is the preferable sicentific explanation. Wheras, Hawking had expressed his doubt at one time shortly before this proclamation that there might have not been a singular big bang, but a possible "no begining, no end universe" (which he of course speculates but doesn't really go for) which would make Creationism impossible.
In fact the Big Bang is almost required for a creationist type of event.
The thing is... those are tools the player generally needs in order to succeed in the game. If you're going to go with something vague like, "your clip is getting light", you'd better not make it catastrophic for the player to run out of ammo.
If you have 50 rounds in a PPsh Soviet submachine gun and squeeze the trigger for 2 seconds... How many bullets to you have in the gun? What about a Mp41 or a Stg44?
You might be able to make a guess of how many bullets are left by your guns weight or pervious experience, but there weren't Aliens-esque LED's on these guns back in 1941 telling you how many bullets were in the thing.
Often times I will just empty the gun into something to reload because I know I might need a full clip down the road.
Expensive, but Moore's Law will drive the cost down to make devices using this technology commerically viable.
Arrgh... Thats not Moore's Law... Which is about transistors doubleing every 18 months or so, but you are thinking of Law of Accelerating Returns.
How many times do I see articles that might as well be talking about Red Orchestra. They basically have removed all crosshairs, ammo counts, and health stastics.
All information is through visual, sound, or textual cues.
Example1: If you are low on stamina, your guy breathes heavy.
Example2: To find out how much ammo you have, reload and you'll get a message that says, your clip is heavy etc.
Example3: You don't get cross hairs. If you want to aim, you hit ironsites and it brings you guy up to your eyelevel and you use the 3d model to aim.
Very fun... Very realistic... Prolly the best WWII sim out there and these guys are an indie company.
Now if everyone else would take heed. Although Resident Evil and 2 wasn't bad... I still won't forgive him over Doom.
Some people the RIAA have sued have been caught red-handed. In other cases, there was a mistake.
Umm... Let me remind you none... I repeat NONE of those cases have actually been ruled in court one way or another.
All of them have been have been settled out of court for a nominal fee.
See... Either way, it costs the person more to fight it in lawyer fees even if they are innocent so it usually ends up being cheaper to admit guilt and settle.
So the truth of the matter is that RIAA is winning by default by "brute forcing" guilt onto these people. On occasion (like the dead women) they have relented, but none of their cases have ever seen the light of day in court.
Is this justice?
I think it is more on the lines of extortion.
I almost can't wait for Google's facade of goodness to slip. They're just like any other large company who are more concerned about their stock price and making money
Why can't "good" and "making money" be in the same sentence?
Just because a company makes money, doesn't make them evil. It makes them evil when they do bad things to make money.
I mean the CEOs of Google aren't killing a kitten everytime their stock price goes up... At least I hope not.
I believe that people are disilusioned with "hard core", "realistic", 3d accelerated bullshit pushed on PC and latest consoles.
Well, I don't think its even that... But that these new games aren't even that realistic when they pretend to be. It is still basically "point your gun in a direction" and pull the trigger, move down a hallway, repeat steps mentioned above and maybe find a key in the process.
A realistic FPS doesn't need the same formula as all the above... We want something more than just shooting things or sneaking by things. We want to interact with things. We want realism on a scale that makes it fun by not tedious. I want to be immersed and forget that I am playing a game, but most of these new console games just put sour tast in my mouth and I end up having more fun with my DS. I can't really think of a FFP game other than say Red Orchestra that aspires to do this and even that is released by a indie developer.
I don't get a veto on your car, you don't get a veto on my parent's AOL.
No, but the free market and government regulation do.
At least I can't buy a car that takes leaded gasoline anymore nor can I use local BBS's for internet connection on a 2400 baud modem (not that I would want to). One being government regulated and other because something else in the free market killed it off.
If the government outlaws AOL (for some uknown and improbable reason... maybe the CEO got caught for SEC violations or something) or AOL died off because MSN, Netzero, Telcoms and Earthlink did better for some uknown reason and put AOL in its grave... Then well... Your parents AOL has been vetoed.
May I also mention that opinion does affect free markets and government opinion?
Getting bug reports on beta software is good. That's why it's released as beta.
I dunno. Every time I beta'd tested software for a public company (and volunteered my time at that) they have never bothered to fix any bugs I reported. Of course, these were mostly MMOGs and they had a time frame. Sometimes I think betas are tests to see if anyone is going to sue or not, because they can say "hey... its beta" and if in a weeks time no one sues they release it.