So... the first steps in your process are to fundamentally change contract law in the state, completely change the federal process and then retrospectively apply the new contract laws to contracts that were not signed under the new laws?
Okay. You go for that. It may well be a good idea, but it fails to address today's problem and it's far too hard to implement in any reasonable timeframe. By all means, push for law reform, but don't do that as a step to fixing an existing problem - it'll never get through in time.
If I want to buy something from you (such as your house and everything you own) I'll start at asking for it for free. You'll no doubt put a higher price on it, and we go from there. My preferred price doesn't seem to be fair, and probably your starting point won't be either.
If I say that I'll never pay more than $10 for everything you have, that doesn't make $10 a fair price.
Your point about game developers not having some sort of agreement with retailers is just utter garbage. Do you believe retailers sell games as a community service? They get a slice of the money, usually around 20% for new games I believe. That the retailer in this article pirated the games instead of trying for a profit shows that they're not only greedy, but stupid too.
You then go on to rant about game developers who should get out of the industry if they don't think rampant piracy is fair. That's... a novel point. I can't manage to twist my mind around it and still see how you could make that in any serious manner.
You don't understand game development, you don't understand business and you don't understand basic capitalism.
Well done!
Now please send me everything you own, and I promise to send you the fair and reasonable price of $10. And don't give me any of that moral, ethical or legal crap either!
It's not about hating, it's about how useful the site actually is.
I maintain that since it can be randomly edited by anyone at any point, it cannot be used as a reference at all, let alone a primary source.
Any information could be 100% accurate, or could reflect the author's bias. For some things that's not a problem (eg electromagnetics) but for others it's a huge issue (eg political history). How can a casual observer tell the difference?
I've been dinged by people who refer to Wikipedia articles as proof of their point, and I've read a couple of articles that are just not accurate. I don't bother to change them though, because someone else might change them back, and I don't have the rest of my life to spend watching a site for alterations.
Wikipedia could be great. It's not yet though. It needs some way to fix articles and validate reviews or alterations. Allowing anonymous write access means that it's essentially not worth reading.
As an extreme example - what's to stop a nation with an axe to grind against the US continually editing all US-related content to reflect poorly on the US? If wages are low enough, it could be paying a hundred people to continually monitor and change articles, making corrections by others a waste of time. That's a bit extreme, but it illustrates a point.
I'd like to think that highly secure installations, such as military units, would have the physical computer behind an impregnable barrier, with only cables protruding. Add to that an encrypted file system and physical barriers to gain access even to the terminals, and you should have a system that ensures better security.
I'd like to think that.
I suspect that the reality is a Dell PC sits beside the desk, and there's a stack of music CDs piled on top of it, some of which are the new Sony rootkit installation disks. The door's unlocked and the assumption is that if you're allowed past the base entry point, then you're meant to be there.
What is this nonsense? Are you trying to extrapolate my point to absurdity? Is the absurd converse true - that any group project must be a valid and worthwhile reference source?
Of course not. We judge each on its merits.
The point I keep making is that Wikipedia is not a good source of information. It may well be accurate in 99% of the facts you review, but the trust comes in both having that remainig 1% be accurate, and in having some reasonable recourse if it's not. If I have to double-check the information I get, then the source is useless.
In the case of (for example) Encyclopedia Britannica, I can write to them and point out an error. Their reputation is one of scrupulous accuracy, so this will get whatever attention it deserves. Errors will be removed as quickly as possible, but more to the point, information going in is checked thoroughly before inclusion and reviews are conducted of existing information.
In the case of Wikipedia, I can fix it myself. But what if it's changed back next time? Who reviews it? The DIY approach to information is doomed to fail if enough people decide they want to express a point of view or a single opinion. That's the point where moderation is required, and suddenly it's not a simple DIY source, but a managed source.
My point remains, and my opinion is unchanged. Anonymous and collaborative sources of information such as Wikipedia are suspect by their very nature, and therefore are not to be used as reference sources. That absolutely does not invalidate collaborative projects such as Linux, or validate web sites or any other absurdity you may extrapolate to.
The participation part is great, but that's not why I won't use Wikipedia.
It's that I can't trust the data. It may very well be spot on, but while it can be edited by anyone, that means that there is always a question mark over it. If I want an answer to a question, I want a solid answer, not one which requires me to cross-check and verify with other sources (in which case - why not start with the other sources?)
I think that participation-based information is and can be very powerful, but not for reference information. Linux is a massively successful example of what can be done using participation, and that is great. I'm all for Linux, although I'm not a user (I'm an OS X user).
You misrepresent me by extending my specific objection on Wikipedia to all forms of participation-based information or development.
Okay, it's an online source of collective knowledge. That's a Good Thing (tm).
Whether it's accurate or not is completely up in the air. Many articles are read by many people, so hopefully errors are weeded out. Some articles are rarely read, and errors in those will stay for a long time before being noticed.
And then there are topical articles, which may just end up reflecting popular points of view rather than definitive information. That's also worthwhile, but it seems that Wikipedia can be used to 'shout down' dissent by editing articles you disagree with.
Who is responsible when an article is incorrect? The users apparently, but who are they? Just people on the Internet. You, me, that guy over there, people like us. So who is responsible for ensuring accuracy and quality? No-one, really. It's so distributed that there's no real focus, and the end result is the cry of "do it yourself!"
Well, I have a job, a fiancee, hobbies and many things I prefer doing rather than watch Wikipedia articles for changes. That answer screams out "broken process!" to me.
What happens if I make a change to an article and someone maliciously alters it again? Am I really supposed to continually edit an article, and if not, who do I apply to for a final version to be locked?
So what is Wikipedia? Well, it's not correct enough to be a solid source of information. It's not stable enough to be reliable. It's not actually a good source, because nothing you read may actually be correct!
It may be, but the prevalent feel around here is to take everything with a grain of salt. That's all well and good, but if you have a child researching something, how can they do that? Even as an adult, I recognise that while we add filters of perception to events, there is one thing that actually happened, and many accounts of it. Can't we at least find the objective case in the subjective perceptions?
Lastly, people say that Wikipedia is the starting point for research. Well, if it doesn't point you in the wrong direction it may be, but if I have to go to other more authoratative sources, then why bother with Wikipedia at all?
I won't use it, for those reasons. If I need an encyclopedia, I'll buy Encyclopedia Britannica which is a much more reliable source and actually has a solid process for reviewing information. It's a shame, because I like the idea, but I can't see where any value comes from with Wikipedia.
I don't know about you, but I like * protected memory that doesn't cause my computer to implode when a single app goes haywire * lots of storage space! Lots of it! To store stuff in! I like having all my files on the computer instead of spread over a large number of floppy disks that die for no apparent reason * having a strong multimedia layer that allows me to use just about any type of image, sound or video on the computer and preview it in the OS * the ability to store as many photos as I want, and organise them in useful ways * being able to watch DVDs on my computer * being able to use the Internet over broadband * having an online music store with stuff I can buy * having my music collection on my computer * the support of powerful languages for advanced features (garbage collection, etc) in a complete IDE
I remember what it was like in the early days (been using computers since '81) and this is a bloody golden age compared to then. Some people might get misty eyed for times when stuff worked as it said on the box (as if that was true even then) but they forget that the features on the box were pretty minimal.
"You want a word processor? Great - here's NotePad. You want a table of contents? Um... well, you can type one yourself on the front page! That's almost as good!"
I was there, and it wasn't a golden age. Things were slow, you never had enough storage space, you could usually only run one app at a time, you couldn't share data between apps easily, you couldn't use multimedia content inside documents easily (or at all), apps were not always stable (this may still apply), you couldn't just jump online to get an update or patch (they came out in the new release, so you just suffered until then) and things just weren't as easy as now.
A great experience was when I recently played around with an old Mac Powerbook 520. Great in its day, but so limited now! The only useful thing I could do was in BBEdit and Word 5.1. I remember using a contemporary desktop back then, and it felt like a huge leap forward. Now the same machines feel like they're incredibly limited.
We forget too quickly.
It's a good thing to use a version of software that does what you want it to, and if newer versions don't give you anything useful - don't upgrade. That's sensible practice. There are people who need stuff in newer versions though, and they jump on the upgrade train as soon as it pulls into the station because they have a need (actual or perceived). That's also sensible. It's only not sensible to upgrade if you don't know if you get anything useful.
I gree with some parts of your post, but don't get misty eyed for a past that never really existed. We have it so much better now.
Can someone please mod the parent as a troll post?
This is obviously a stereotypical troll, just as if I say that PC users are too busy sorting out their BSODs caused by their IRQ conflicts to notice that the malformed headers are coming from GoDaddy.
It's about as meaningful and relevant too.
The issue is not "Why are Mac users banging on about this?" but instead "Why do IE and Firefox not see the issues that Safari and Opera do?"
Cool. So which other legal service will you be using?
None? You'll pirate instead? That's great! That means your opinion doesn't matter to the people who want to sell you stuff. They lump you in with other pirates and look to track you through BitTorrent (which was never an anonymous P2P app anyway) to make an example of you.
If Apple are doing the wrong thing, then some other company will step up and do it better. That's the whole capitalism thing, which is meant to be a Good Thing (tm). If no-one can, then either there's no profit to be had, or there's some technical limitation at work stopping it.
No-one is forcing you to buy from Apple. And no-one is stopping any other company from setting up their own store and selling content like Apple does. The problem is that no-one else is doing this - Apple seems to be the first and only.
I agree with one point - the resolution should be better. I think they should provide 640x480 and make the iPod downsample to the smaller screen from a larger render buffer, but I recognise that this would mean file sizes around 4 times larger for no quality improvement to the target market - the iPod users. Great for watching on the home TV though. I hope that a track record of successful video sales leads to better video quality, but we'll just have to wait and see.
Your 19th Century jab is childish. Apple are the first ones doing it, so by definition they're the most advanced right now.
Good luck with your pirating. It really lends weight to your point.
Slashdot needs to stop posting Gamasutra articles
on
The End of Copyright
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Slashdot needs to stop posting articles from Gamasutra.
Not because the articles are poorly thought-out, reflect foolish ideas or just plain suck.
No. Slashdot needs to stop posting Gamasutra articles because so many people here just don't understand what Gamasutra is or have any clue who writes the articles. Take this one for example. Ernest Adams has been working in the game industry for what.. 20 years now? He's seen a lot of stuff come and go, and has a finger on the pulse of the industry and writes a lot about it. He may be wrong or right, but he's not some newbie game 'journo' or hack. What he says is nearly always worth thinking about, and the reasons he says it are worth understanding as well.
Another great example is the article a while back by Richard Bartle, expounding the idea that permanent player death is important for masively multiplayer games. He was largely dismissed around here as someone who just doesn't know what multiplayer games are about, and a bit of a fool to boot. In fact he wrote one of the first multiplayer games, called MUD (some people may have heard of it - it's the grandfather of just about every multiplayer RPG), and has worked in the industry for many, many years. That didn't stop people taking the point and reacting to it before they understood it or thought about why he said it.
Gamasutra is a site devoted to professionals in the game industry. It reflects professional opinions, techniques and issues, and is well read by the industry. People like Ernest Adams and Richard Bartle are professionals who know what they're talking about and say things for a reason.
It seems that in the rush to react to articles, Slashdotters miss the point that they're not the target audience.
Okay, just take a deep breath and stop for a moment.
TV is like all things - too much of it is not good for you.
Watching it to excess is like doing anything to excess, but in reasonable amounts, it's not necessarily a Bad Thing (tm).
I think the secret is to turn it off when I'm not actively watching it. Instead I put some music on and do other things. But that's the way I am, and it may not apply to others.
Giving people a hard time isn't being fair on them. A lot of people work hard and when they get home are too tired to do much more than just unwind in front of the TV. Saying that they're wrong to do that is itself wrong, unless you can spend the time to analyse their lives.
You don't do that though, and just call them "good little consumers" and preach about the evils of television. You just cannot expect people to listen to your message when you effectively start by saying "okay, you're all fools and this is why..." You just get people's hackles up, and lose your point in the noise.
It's good for you that you don't watch TV. Just don't preach to others about how enlightened you are without walking a few miles in their shoes.
When someone is so cowardly that they won't even put their name to their opinion, they don't hold their opinion strongly at all.
If you really believe this, put your name to it. Otherwise you're just another random troll, with as much to say as the goatse trolls or the GNAA trolls.
You're right - games shouldn't have to be family friendly. But on the other hand, it's not good that content like Hot Coffee was hidden away - when it was exposed, it became a "think of the children!" moment, even though the game should never have been sold to kids.
One issue isn't that games should have to conform to a model, but instead that they should be rated fairly based on content and those ratings communicated clearly to the media. This is sort of being done anyway, but letting media go on a PR offensive against games while giving the response that "it's their problem, not ours" is a quick way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Whenever the media put up crap like that CSI show (which is, in every single respect, crap TV of the smelliest order anyway) then the deafening silence from the industry reinforces the media's line. If people really look hard, they can find gamers speaking out, but few if any gamers make headlines for any positive reason.
*We* know what the truth is, but we're involved in games, either as players or makers. The perception outside the gamer niche is that games are involved with crime, murder sprees and all sorts of bad things. Enough mud has been slung at video games that the general perception seems to be negative.
Sooner or later, politicians will do their usual 'tough on crime' thing, and crack down on the gaming industry.
What can we do? Plenty! Game makers need to start focusing more on realism and less on caricatures shooting the crap out of each other. Stuff like Hot Coffee should *never* have been included in the game, even if the code wasn't enabled. Extreme content like that is nearly always weak compared to even a cheap movie, and only serves to reinforce the negative image about games and game players.
The litmus test in my mind is the way that ID proposes a level beyond which we cannot know, a line in the sand, over which the matter becomes Ineffable and Unknowable to Human investigation. We must accept it and never question further.
Evolution proposes a set of concepts as to how things occur, and while no-one ever says they've got the final, clinching proof of the theory, it fills enough gaps in our knowledge to be worthy of further investigation.
One closes down investigation, the other opens it up.
Which is more worthy?
If ID is a good hypothesis (it's not a theory), then how can we test it? Saying "just create a Universe" is a worthless answer, and admits that it cannot be tested. We can, do and have tested evolution. Famously, Darwin predicted a species of insect based on the shape of a flower, and years afterwards this insect species was found. Many other tests have been done over the years, as well as mathematical models used in prediction.
Evolution isn't a simple one-line equation theory like gravity (although that gets pretty complex when you try to work out the 'how' rather than the 'what'). It's a framework for understanding the natural world better. It's not perfect, but then we have *no* perfect scientific theories. Even what we calls 'laws' (such as "Newton's Laws") have been modified by later scientists (particularly Einstein, to carry the example on). They will be modified in future, I suspect, perhaps as part of a grand unified theory.
That's the key thing about Science - over time our picture of the Universe gets better, more refined and more accurate.
How can ID be considered in light of that? We can never extend it, never learn new data from it and never use it in any meaningful way. It is the antithesis of science.
It's good to debate questions of religion as matters of philosophy. Science strives to tell us how eveything works, but can never tell us how to live. Religion and ethics tell us how we should behave, and why the Universe exists. There's a fundamental difference, and crossing the two results in Bad Things (tm).
There are several fossils linking small dinosaurs with birds. You won't ever find a monkey turning into a bird though - they've got the wrong bones. Maybe a tiny, light monkey could evolve first.
You want a monkey that'll fly? Not going to happen with the current crop. What about a monkey that learned to walk upright and made a complex civilisation? Got good records there, but still no perfect fossil line.
You could look at the evolution of whales from mammals not unlike dogs. Lots of fossils there too.
The problem with a perfect fossil record is that bones don't last so well. Only ones that are fossilised last more than a few thousand years, and there are few of those that are found.
As to the Big Bang theory - the theory is that time itself was produced from the event. Asking what happened before it isn't a real question, because there was no time for it to happen 'in.' It's hard to think about, but there's no reason why such complex issues should make sense to us without study.
After the event, matter coalesced out of the energy, as did the fundamental forces of the Universe. There are good theories describing how that occurred as well.
Creationism is more concerned with the "Why" than the "How", which is where Science comes in. The problem we have is when a Creationist states how things occurred, which inevitably conflicts with Science at some point.
You know, this is why video game developers have work to do on the image of video games.
Outside the niche of gamers (and it is a niche), the majority of people don't really know what games are like. It's actually believable that these games might be influencing their kids.
Over the years there have been several cases where games have been linked to violent acts. They've never made a case that stuck in court, but the perception has stuck. People think of video games and make that connection with some school shooting somewhere, or a sniper they heard was a gamer, or some other thing that a friend told them about someone they knew.
The mud is sticking, and while some gamers seem to think that it's the rest of the world with the problem, the media are loving it. It's easy to sell an idea like "gamer goes on crime spree" now, and the whole video game industry suffers as a result while some expose TV show sells ad revenue.
Until the game industry takes the media a bit more seriously, we'll see this sort of garbage being put up more often. People will believe it and they'll start to wonder why the government can't control these evil game companies that make their kids crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, this isn't really my area, but I am not so sure the word 'copy' is correct here.
Apple uses open source software, within the terms of the licences. That's a good thing.
Apple also licence a lot of stuff (or cross-licence it) from companies like Adobe. That's also a good thing.
You're implying that they're just ripping stuff off, and that makes it okay for others to do that to Apple. Is that actually true?
Until it is, it's fine for Apple to get tough when people copy their stuff.
So... the first steps in your process are to fundamentally change contract law in the state, completely change the federal process and then retrospectively apply the new contract laws to contracts that were not signed under the new laws?
Okay. You go for that. It may well be a good idea, but it fails to address today's problem and it's far too hard to implement in any reasonable timeframe. By all means, push for law reform, but don't do that as a step to fixing an existing problem - it'll never get through in time.
Your post is... interesting.
If I want to buy something from you (such as your house and everything you own) I'll start at asking for it for free. You'll no doubt put a higher price on it, and we go from there. My preferred price doesn't seem to be fair, and probably your starting point won't be either.
If I say that I'll never pay more than $10 for everything you have, that doesn't make $10 a fair price.
Your point about game developers not having some sort of agreement with retailers is just utter garbage. Do you believe retailers sell games as a community service? They get a slice of the money, usually around 20% for new games I believe. That the retailer in this article pirated the games instead of trying for a profit shows that they're not only greedy, but stupid too.
You then go on to rant about game developers who should get out of the industry if they don't think rampant piracy is fair. That's... a novel point. I can't manage to twist my mind around it and still see how you could make that in any serious manner.
You don't understand game development, you don't understand business and you don't understand basic capitalism.
Well done!
Now please send me everything you own, and I promise to send you the fair and reasonable price of $10. And don't give me any of that moral, ethical or legal crap either!
It's not about hating, it's about how useful the site actually is.
I maintain that since it can be randomly edited by anyone at any point, it cannot be used as a reference at all, let alone a primary source.
Any information could be 100% accurate, or could reflect the author's bias. For some things that's not a problem (eg electromagnetics) but for others it's a huge issue (eg political history). How can a casual observer tell the difference?
I've been dinged by people who refer to Wikipedia articles as proof of their point, and I've read a couple of articles that are just not accurate. I don't bother to change them though, because someone else might change them back, and I don't have the rest of my life to spend watching a site for alterations.
Wikipedia could be great. It's not yet though. It needs some way to fix articles and validate reviews or alterations. Allowing anonymous write access means that it's essentially not worth reading.
As an extreme example - what's to stop a nation with an axe to grind against the US continually editing all US-related content to reflect poorly on the US? If wages are low enough, it could be paying a hundred people to continually monitor and change articles, making corrections by others a waste of time. That's a bit extreme, but it illustrates a point.
I'd like to think that highly secure installations, such as military units, would have the physical computer behind an impregnable barrier, with only cables protruding. Add to that an encrypted file system and physical barriers to gain access even to the terminals, and you should have a system that ensures better security.
I'd like to think that.
I suspect that the reality is a Dell PC sits beside the desk, and there's a stack of music CDs piled on top of it, some of which are the new Sony rootkit installation disks. The door's unlocked and the assumption is that if you're allowed past the base entry point, then you're meant to be there.
"Totally trust a website"?
What is this nonsense? Are you trying to extrapolate my point to absurdity? Is the absurd converse true - that any group project must be a valid and worthwhile reference source?
Of course not. We judge each on its merits.
The point I keep making is that Wikipedia is not a good source of information. It may well be accurate in 99% of the facts you review, but the trust comes in both having that remainig 1% be accurate, and in having some reasonable recourse if it's not. If I have to double-check the information I get, then the source is useless.
In the case of (for example) Encyclopedia Britannica, I can write to them and point out an error. Their reputation is one of scrupulous accuracy, so this will get whatever attention it deserves. Errors will be removed as quickly as possible, but more to the point, information going in is checked thoroughly before inclusion and reviews are conducted of existing information.
In the case of Wikipedia, I can fix it myself. But what if it's changed back next time? Who reviews it? The DIY approach to information is doomed to fail if enough people decide they want to express a point of view or a single opinion. That's the point where moderation is required, and suddenly it's not a simple DIY source, but a managed source.
My point remains, and my opinion is unchanged. Anonymous and collaborative sources of information such as Wikipedia are suspect by their very nature, and therefore are not to be used as reference sources. That absolutely does not invalidate collaborative projects such as Linux, or validate web sites or any other absurdity you may extrapolate to.
The participation part is great, but that's not why I won't use Wikipedia.
It's that I can't trust the data. It may very well be spot on, but while it can be edited by anyone, that means that there is always a question mark over it. If I want an answer to a question, I want a solid answer, not one which requires me to cross-check and verify with other sources (in which case - why not start with the other sources?)
I think that participation-based information is and can be very powerful, but not for reference information. Linux is a massively successful example of what can be done using participation, and that is great. I'm all for Linux, although I'm not a user (I'm an OS X user).
You misrepresent me by extending my specific objection on Wikipedia to all forms of participation-based information or development.
Okay, it's an online source of collective knowledge. That's a Good Thing (tm).
Whether it's accurate or not is completely up in the air. Many articles are read by many people, so hopefully errors are weeded out. Some articles are rarely read, and errors in those will stay for a long time before being noticed.
And then there are topical articles, which may just end up reflecting popular points of view rather than definitive information. That's also worthwhile, but it seems that Wikipedia can be used to 'shout down' dissent by editing articles you disagree with.
Who is responsible when an article is incorrect? The users apparently, but who are they? Just people on the Internet. You, me, that guy over there, people like us. So who is responsible for ensuring accuracy and quality? No-one, really. It's so distributed that there's no real focus, and the end result is the cry of "do it yourself!"
Well, I have a job, a fiancee, hobbies and many things I prefer doing rather than watch Wikipedia articles for changes. That answer screams out "broken process!" to me.
What happens if I make a change to an article and someone maliciously alters it again? Am I really supposed to continually edit an article, and if not, who do I apply to for a final version to be locked?
So what is Wikipedia? Well, it's not correct enough to be a solid source of information. It's not stable enough to be reliable. It's not actually a good source, because nothing you read may actually be correct!
It may be, but the prevalent feel around here is to take everything with a grain of salt. That's all well and good, but if you have a child researching something, how can they do that? Even as an adult, I recognise that while we add filters of perception to events, there is one thing that actually happened, and many accounts of it. Can't we at least find the objective case in the subjective perceptions?
Lastly, people say that Wikipedia is the starting point for research. Well, if it doesn't point you in the wrong direction it may be, but if I have to go to other more authoratative sources, then why bother with Wikipedia at all?
I won't use it, for those reasons. If I need an encyclopedia, I'll buy Encyclopedia Britannica which is a much more reliable source and actually has a solid process for reviewing information. It's a shame, because I like the idea, but I can't see where any value comes from with Wikipedia.
What?
I don't know about you, but I like
* protected memory that doesn't cause my computer to implode when a single app goes haywire
* lots of storage space! Lots of it! To store stuff in! I like having all my files on the computer instead of spread over a large number of floppy disks that die for no apparent reason
* having a strong multimedia layer that allows me to use just about any type of image, sound or video on the computer and preview it in the OS
* the ability to store as many photos as I want, and organise them in useful ways
* being able to watch DVDs on my computer
* being able to use the Internet over broadband
* having an online music store with stuff I can buy
* having my music collection on my computer
* the support of powerful languages for advanced features (garbage collection, etc) in a complete IDE
I remember what it was like in the early days (been using computers since '81) and this is a bloody golden age compared to then. Some people might get misty eyed for times when stuff worked as it said on the box (as if that was true even then) but they forget that the features on the box were pretty minimal.
"You want a word processor? Great - here's NotePad. You want a table of contents? Um... well, you can type one yourself on the front page! That's almost as good!"
I was there, and it wasn't a golden age. Things were slow, you never had enough storage space, you could usually only run one app at a time, you couldn't share data between apps easily, you couldn't use multimedia content inside documents easily (or at all), apps were not always stable (this may still apply), you couldn't just jump online to get an update or patch (they came out in the new release, so you just suffered until then) and things just weren't as easy as now.
A great experience was when I recently played around with an old Mac Powerbook 520. Great in its day, but so limited now! The only useful thing I could do was in BBEdit and Word 5.1. I remember using a contemporary desktop back then, and it felt like a huge leap forward. Now the same machines feel like they're incredibly limited.
We forget too quickly.
It's a good thing to use a version of software that does what you want it to, and if newer versions don't give you anything useful - don't upgrade. That's sensible practice. There are people who need stuff in newer versions though, and they jump on the upgrade train as soon as it pulls into the station because they have a need (actual or perceived). That's also sensible. It's only not sensible to upgrade if you don't know if you get anything useful.
I gree with some parts of your post, but don't get misty eyed for a past that never really existed. We have it so much better now.
Can someone please mod the parent as a troll post?
This is obviously a stereotypical troll, just as if I say that PC users are too busy sorting out their BSODs caused by their IRQ conflicts to notice that the malformed headers are coming from GoDaddy.
It's about as meaningful and relevant too.
The issue is not "Why are Mac users banging on about this?" but instead "Why do IE and Firefox not see the issues that Safari and Opera do?"
And what about Konquerer?
What?
Like open sourcing the core of OS X, Darwin?
Or open sourcing Webkit?
Or like providing Konquerer devs with Apple's improvements?
What, specifically, are you saying? Your point about Apple 'giving back' is just plain wrong - they do plenty.
That's why you get modded down. If you can be a bit more specific, that might help.
Cool. So which other legal service will you be using?
None? You'll pirate instead? That's great! That means your opinion doesn't matter to the people who want to sell you stuff. They lump you in with other pirates and look to track you through BitTorrent (which was never an anonymous P2P app anyway) to make an example of you.
If Apple are doing the wrong thing, then some other company will step up and do it better. That's the whole capitalism thing, which is meant to be a Good Thing (tm). If no-one can, then either there's no profit to be had, or there's some technical limitation at work stopping it.
No-one is forcing you to buy from Apple. And no-one is stopping any other company from setting up their own store and selling content like Apple does. The problem is that no-one else is doing this - Apple seems to be the first and only.
I agree with one point - the resolution should be better. I think they should provide 640x480 and make the iPod downsample to the smaller screen from a larger render buffer, but I recognise that this would mean file sizes around 4 times larger for no quality improvement to the target market - the iPod users. Great for watching on the home TV though. I hope that a track record of successful video sales leads to better video quality, but we'll just have to wait and see.
Your 19th Century jab is childish. Apple are the first ones doing it, so by definition they're the most advanced right now.
Good luck with your pirating. It really lends weight to your point.
Slashdot needs to stop posting articles from Gamasutra.
Not because the articles are poorly thought-out, reflect foolish ideas or just plain suck.
No. Slashdot needs to stop posting Gamasutra articles because so many people here just don't understand what Gamasutra is or have any clue who writes the articles. Take this one for example. Ernest Adams has been working in the game industry for what.. 20 years now? He's seen a lot of stuff come and go, and has a finger on the pulse of the industry and writes a lot about it. He may be wrong or right, but he's not some newbie game 'journo' or hack. What he says is nearly always worth thinking about, and the reasons he says it are worth understanding as well.
Another great example is the article a while back by Richard Bartle, expounding the idea that permanent player death is important for masively multiplayer games. He was largely dismissed around here as someone who just doesn't know what multiplayer games are about, and a bit of a fool to boot. In fact he wrote one of the first multiplayer games, called MUD (some people may have heard of it - it's the grandfather of just about every multiplayer RPG), and has worked in the industry for many, many years. That didn't stop people taking the point and reacting to it before they understood it or thought about why he said it.
Gamasutra is a site devoted to professionals in the game industry. It reflects professional opinions, techniques and issues, and is well read by the industry. People like Ernest Adams and Richard Bartle are professionals who know what they're talking about and say things for a reason.
It seems that in the rush to react to articles, Slashdotters miss the point that they're not the target audience.
(waiting to be modded as 'Flamebait' now)
Okay, just take a deep breath and stop for a moment.
TV is like all things - too much of it is not good for you.
Watching it to excess is like doing anything to excess, but in reasonable amounts, it's not necessarily a Bad Thing (tm).
I think the secret is to turn it off when I'm not actively watching it. Instead I put some music on and do other things. But that's the way I am, and it may not apply to others.
Giving people a hard time isn't being fair on them. A lot of people work hard and when they get home are too tired to do much more than just unwind in front of the TV. Saying that they're wrong to do that is itself wrong, unless you can spend the time to analyse their lives.
You don't do that though, and just call them "good little consumers" and preach about the evils of television. You just cannot expect people to listen to your message when you effectively start by saying "okay, you're all fools and this is why..." You just get people's hackles up, and lose your point in the noise.
It's good for you that you don't watch TV. Just don't preach to others about how enlightened you are without walking a few miles in their shoes.
Database developers are *never* afraid of commit!
When someone is so cowardly that they won't even put their name to their opinion, they don't hold their opinion strongly at all.
If you really believe this, put your name to it. Otherwise you're just another random troll, with as much to say as the goatse trolls or the GNAA trolls.
You're right - games shouldn't have to be family friendly. But on the other hand, it's not good that content like Hot Coffee was hidden away - when it was exposed, it became a "think of the children!" moment, even though the game should never have been sold to kids.
One issue isn't that games should have to conform to a model, but instead that they should be rated fairly based on content and those ratings communicated clearly to the media. This is sort of being done anyway, but letting media go on a PR offensive against games while giving the response that "it's their problem, not ours" is a quick way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Whenever the media put up crap like that CSI show (which is, in every single respect, crap TV of the smelliest order anyway) then the deafening silence from the industry reinforces the media's line. If people really look hard, they can find gamers speaking out, but few if any gamers make headlines for any positive reason.
I keep saying this, and people keep denying it:
Video games have an image problem!
*We* know what the truth is, but we're involved in games, either as players or makers. The perception outside the gamer niche is that games are involved with crime, murder sprees and all sorts of bad things. Enough mud has been slung at video games that the general perception seems to be negative.
Sooner or later, politicians will do their usual 'tough on crime' thing, and crack down on the gaming industry.
What can we do? Plenty! Game makers need to start focusing more on realism and less on caricatures shooting the crap out of each other. Stuff like Hot Coffee should *never* have been included in the game, even if the code wasn't enabled. Extreme content like that is nearly always weak compared to even a cheap movie, and only serves to reinforce the negative image about games and game players.
Video games have an image problem.
Seriously? School massacres and other murders are just good advertising?
If that's good for business, then there's a problem.
ID is not as reasonable as evolution.
The litmus test in my mind is the way that ID proposes a level beyond which we cannot know, a line in the sand, over which the matter becomes Ineffable and Unknowable to Human investigation. We must accept it and never question further.
Evolution proposes a set of concepts as to how things occur, and while no-one ever says they've got the final, clinching proof of the theory, it fills enough gaps in our knowledge to be worthy of further investigation.
One closes down investigation, the other opens it up.
Which is more worthy?
If ID is a good hypothesis (it's not a theory), then how can we test it? Saying "just create a Universe" is a worthless answer, and admits that it cannot be tested. We can, do and have tested evolution. Famously, Darwin predicted a species of insect based on the shape of a flower, and years afterwards this insect species was found. Many other tests have been done over the years, as well as mathematical models used in prediction.
Evolution isn't a simple one-line equation theory like gravity (although that gets pretty complex when you try to work out the 'how' rather than the 'what'). It's a framework for understanding the natural world better. It's not perfect, but then we have *no* perfect scientific theories. Even what we calls 'laws' (such as "Newton's Laws") have been modified by later scientists (particularly Einstein, to carry the example on). They will be modified in future, I suspect, perhaps as part of a grand unified theory.
That's the key thing about Science - over time our picture of the Universe gets better, more refined and more accurate.
How can ID be considered in light of that? We can never extend it, never learn new data from it and never use it in any meaningful way. It is the antithesis of science.
It's good to debate questions of religion as matters of philosophy. Science strives to tell us how eveything works, but can never tell us how to live. Religion and ethics tell us how we should behave, and why the Universe exists. There's a fundamental difference, and crossing the two results in Bad Things (tm).
There are several fossils linking small dinosaurs with birds. You won't ever find a monkey turning into a bird though - they've got the wrong bones. Maybe a tiny, light monkey could evolve first.
You want a monkey that'll fly? Not going to happen with the current crop. What about a monkey that learned to walk upright and made a complex civilisation? Got good records there, but still no perfect fossil line.
You could look at the evolution of whales from mammals not unlike dogs. Lots of fossils there too.
The problem with a perfect fossil record is that bones don't last so well. Only ones that are fossilised last more than a few thousand years, and there are few of those that are found.
As to the Big Bang theory - the theory is that time itself was produced from the event. Asking what happened before it isn't a real question, because there was no time for it to happen 'in.' It's hard to think about, but there's no reason why such complex issues should make sense to us without study.
After the event, matter coalesced out of the energy, as did the fundamental forces of the Universe. There are good theories describing how that occurred as well.
Creationism is more concerned with the "Why" than the "How", which is where Science comes in. The problem we have is when a Creationist states how things occurred, which inevitably conflicts with Science at some point.
Okay. Now it's clear that you're trolling.
You are ready, my son.
Come over to Apple.
Games will not bother you there.
Join me on the different side.
Just like Doom when those kids took their guns to school!
Wow. id couldn't have *paid* for that, and those sucker kids just did it for free!
Some advertising isn't healthy.
You know, this is why video game developers have work to do on the image of video games.
Outside the niche of gamers (and it is a niche), the majority of people don't really know what games are like. It's actually believable that these games might be influencing their kids.
Over the years there have been several cases where games have been linked to violent acts. They've never made a case that stuck in court, but the perception has stuck. People think of video games and make that connection with some school shooting somewhere, or a sniper they heard was a gamer, or some other thing that a friend told them about someone they knew.
The mud is sticking, and while some gamers seem to think that it's the rest of the world with the problem, the media are loving it. It's easy to sell an idea like "gamer goes on crime spree" now, and the whole video game industry suffers as a result while some expose TV show sells ad revenue.
Until the game industry takes the media a bit more seriously, we'll see this sort of garbage being put up more often. People will believe it and they'll start to wonder why the government can't control these evil game companies that make their kids crazy.