I am really excited about Democrats abolishing the secret ballot for union organizing.
This way, more parts of the US economy can benefit from sound, productivity-enhancing organizations like the Teamsters and the UAW!
Hopefully, the president-elect can rapidly appoint a "card-check" Tsar to oversee the transfer of all US elections to a more community-oriented "card-check" model. "Secret ballots" after all, have turned out to frequently be an obstacle to Progress.
The biggest advantage of operational missile defense is that it can temper paranoia regarding hostile states aquiring some missile and nuclear tech.
Also, it makes it less attractive to even seek that kind of tech in the first place, which is a nice boon.
As for the test, the fact that the ICBM chaff, etc. failed isn't really very important. What the program has achieved is plainly amazing from a technical standpoint.
I would not have expected them to get this far in ICBM interception. (Also, the difficulties in deploying countermeasures is nice in a way. If countermeasures are hard to deploy successfully, it will make the system more robust.)
It is a viable financing method for web content. Possibly the *only* one for most content, so yea, if you like web content (like Slashdot, say) it adds value to society.
He wants to dictate a mandatory licence that in practice will mean the end of most commercial non-custom software development. Which is what the poster above said. "Free software" doesn't mean non-paid software.
The similarity to communism lies not in that Stallman promotes open source, it lies in that he wants to use the powers of the state to prevent everyone else from going against his will (by writing agreements that he has a moral hangup about).
Similarily, no capitalist nation prevents people from starting their own profit-less worker collectives. Lots of people even tried doing that back in the day. But it didn't go very well of course.
"Which is entirely irrelevant, according to the laws of supply and demand, their "product" should net zero because supply always exceeds demand."
Which means we can't have products with large development costs and low replication costs in your suggested setup. But most of us like those products, which is why we have IP protection instead.
Also, rather surprisingly for someone railing against Slashdot "capitalists", you appear to have made supply and demand into some kind of moral imperative.
"These people still profit mightily despite piracy and artificially restricting supply."
Like I alluded to in my previous post, current legislation and technical protection limit the extent of piracy. (Quantitative difference)
Obviously, if it was possible to commercially and non-commercially distribute the IP of others, "piracy" would be far more widespread, and most likely all developers of unprotected software, movies, etc. would go out of business. Which would drive supply of obviously desired goods to zero. And if you seriously believe that "volunteers", etc. can deliver comparable goods to, say, modern computer games, then I want some of whatever you are smoking.
On a side note, it is interesting that the PS3 appears to have almost completely defeated piracy, while the 360 is only cracked to a limited extent (with Xbox Live making crackdowns possible). Hence, the fatalistic argument against IP enforcement and protection seems to be taking a bit of a beating right now.
"I think that is the crux of the issue. We all know the good is abundant, and we all feel like pretending it is not abundant is just silly,"
The good is only abundant after decidedly non-abundant software engineers, artists, musicians, etc. have worked for a few years to produce the "abundant" final product.
"Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy."
My friend, allow me to introduce you to the wonderful world of quantitative thinking. It will do wonders for your outlook on things.
The above poster is obviously not merely a fanatic - but the most hilarious type of fanatic. He didn't even pick something substantial (like a religion or an ideology) to go gaga over.
Instead, he is fighting tirelessly for the right not to have to unclick a checkbox to avoid Steam loading at startup!
For a long time, I didn't realize why people were ragging on Doom III for being "too dark". I thought it was just fine. Then I realized I had played it on a CRT...
Pre-order is just one way of getting in. They have also been releasing huge numbers of keys free to the public. I got my EU key from a single batch of 50 000 keys via Fileplay.com. I got my US key from a free batch via Warcry.
Of course, the number of free spots aren't unlimited, but they probably have 100 000 non-preorder people in the beta, total. Which seems pretty open to me.
Yea, they released probably on the order of 100 000 - 200 000 free keys to the beta in the US and Europe. Got mine from a single batch of 50 000(!) completely free keys!
Wanting to be able to continue selling OS upgrades at reasonable prices isn't "horrid".
Possibly, abusing another company's business model to screw them over in a parasitic fashion could be construed as "horrid" (by a terribly sensible person).
Oh noes!:( Politicized hiring at the justice department and weakened federal regulatory agencies! And the NSA listened in on some people calling abroad! The US is just like China!
And considering Bush is getting kicked out of office real soon, the US will have to become just like China any day now, or it will be too late! US am doomed!:(:(:(
---This message brought to you by HERPES - the Hyperbole Emergency Response Program Eastern Sweden.----
If you don't have the self control to not cheat, that's your problem, not the game designer's. Leaving out puzzles is no solution to cheating.
If "you" are representative of the general gaming population, then yes - the game designer does have a problem.
Apple - meet orange (Or Swedish vs. US DSL access)
on
How Do You Fix Education?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The problem with the US broadband market is that competition isn't free enough - especially because you seem to have pathetic DSL offerings, due to poor legislation on copper access.
Here in Sweden (although we still have access problems due to the state-owned Telia still dominating copper access) we have seen much healthier DSL competition, due to freer competition in copper-access to homes.
This in turn helps keep cable and fiber offerings honest. In the last few years, the addition of fast 3G connections has also intensified the competition.
Interestingly, Sweden also has a rather innovative system for increasing competition and choice in education. However, it is important not to overestimate the gains that can be had from more choice in education. Indeed - people seriously overestimate the effectiveness of virtually all possible educational reforms in rich countries. But that's a topic for another day.
"And having non-randomized movies only made sense before the easy availability of Internet boards and spoiler sites?"
Q: Do you often get stuck for hours on end in a movie, unable to advance the plot?
A: No. But you do in adventure-puzzlers.
Q: Do you often pop out of the movie theatre or sofa to catch up on plot details before they occur in the movie you are watching?
A: No. But you do in adventure-puzzlers.
"Additionally, most games have cheat codes for the single player mode, which are easily found on the net, and despite this people are still playing them."
Yes, because the game is paced differently than a classical puzzle-adventure. You rarely "get stuck" in a modern game, in the fashion of, say, Monkey Island or CfaC, where having to bang your head against a difficult puzzle for hours on end was an essential part of the game.
Remember - good old computer magazines had actual pages where people wrote in to ask about how to advance a game they were stuck in. That doesn't happen these days.
"You are not forced to look for spoilers, you are not forced to use cheats, and you are not forced to read walkthroughs."
Having non-randomized puzzle elements in games made sense before the easy availability of Internet boards and hint sites.
Today, any such content is rapidly bypassed by most. To some degree that is a pity - games like Cruise for a Corpse were great experiences. But alas, the genre just requires too much self-command to be viable.
Of course, randomly-generated puzzlers are still with us - perhaps with increasing computer power, and more sophisticated AI, we will see a revival of randomized puzzle-like adventures?
I have always thought that the old Sid Meier title Covert Action is the best blueprint to follow to revive the puzzle-based action-adventure genre.
Slashdot Mirror
I am really excited about Democrats abolishing the secret ballot for union organizing.
This way, more parts of the US economy can benefit from sound, productivity-enhancing organizations like the Teamsters and the UAW!
Hopefully, the president-elect can rapidly appoint a "card-check" Tsar to oversee the transfer of all US elections to a more community-oriented "card-check" model. "Secret ballots" after all, have turned out to frequently be an obstacle to Progress.
I know - just look at the UAW! That's what the entire US economy needs right now.
Ack!!!1 Quantitative thinking! Can't have that on /.
+10 Insightful
The biggest advantage of operational missile defense is that it can temper paranoia regarding hostile states aquiring some missile and nuclear tech.
Also, it makes it less attractive to even seek that kind of tech in the first place, which is a nice boon.
As for the test, the fact that the ICBM chaff, etc. failed isn't really very important. What the program has achieved is plainly amazing from a technical standpoint.
I would not have expected them to get this far in ICBM interception. (Also, the difficulties in deploying countermeasures is nice in a way. If countermeasures are hard to deploy successfully, it will make the system more robust.)
It is a viable financing method for web content. Possibly the *only* one for most content, so yea, if you like web content (like Slashdot, say) it adds value to society.
He wants to dictate a mandatory licence that in practice will mean the end of most commercial non-custom software development. Which is what the poster above said. "Free software" doesn't mean non-paid software.
The similarity to communism lies not in that Stallman promotes open source, it lies in that he wants to use the powers of the state to prevent everyone else from going against his will (by writing agreements that he has a moral hangup about).
Similarily, no capitalist nation prevents people from starting their own profit-less worker collectives. Lots of people even tried doing that back in the day. But it didn't go very well of course.
"Which is entirely irrelevant, according to the laws of supply and demand, their "product" should net zero because supply always exceeds demand."
Which means we can't have products with large development costs and low replication costs in your suggested setup. But most of us like those products, which is why we have IP protection instead.
Also, rather surprisingly for someone railing against Slashdot "capitalists", you appear to have made supply and demand into some kind of moral imperative.
"These people still profit mightily despite piracy and artificially restricting supply."
Like I alluded to in my previous post, current legislation and technical protection limit the extent of piracy. (Quantitative difference)
Obviously, if it was possible to commercially and non-commercially distribute the IP of others, "piracy" would be far more widespread, and most likely all developers of unprotected software, movies, etc. would go out of business. Which would drive supply of obviously desired goods to zero. And if you seriously believe that "volunteers", etc. can deliver comparable goods to, say, modern computer games, then I want some of whatever you are smoking.
On a side note, it is interesting that the PS3 appears to have almost completely defeated piracy, while the 360 is only cracked to a limited extent (with Xbox Live making crackdowns possible). Hence, the fatalistic argument against IP enforcement and protection seems to be taking a bit of a beating right now.
"The guilds that live in the "real world"?"
Yes, WoW. Live to win baby!
"I think that is the crux of the issue. We all know the good is abundant, and we all feel like pretending it is not abundant is just silly,"
The good is only abundant after decidedly non-abundant software engineers, artists, musicians, etc. have worked for a few years to produce the "abundant" final product.
"Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy."
My friend, allow me to introduce you to the wonderful world of quantitative thinking. It will do wonders for your outlook on things.
So, essentially, you want an Office suite for autistic people? Fair enough, but don't expect people to nod in agreement, even on /.
The above poster is obviously not merely a fanatic - but the most hilarious type of fanatic. He didn't even pick something substantial (like a religion or an ideology) to go gaga over.
Instead, he is fighting tirelessly for the right not to have to unclick a checkbox to avoid Steam loading at startup!
Wow.
Scholarpedia didn't even have an entry for dinosaurs.
For a long time, I didn't realize why people were ragging on Doom III for being "too dark". I thought it was just fine. Then I realized I had played it on a CRT...
Pre-order is just one way of getting in. They have also been releasing huge numbers of keys free to the public. I got my EU key from a single batch of 50 000 keys via Fileplay.com. I got my US key from a free batch via Warcry.
Of course, the number of free spots aren't unlimited, but they probably have 100 000 non-preorder people in the beta, total. Which seems pretty open to me.
Yea, they released probably on the order of 100 000 - 200 000 free keys to the beta in the US and Europe. Got mine from a single batch of 50 000(!) completely free keys!
Wanting to be able to continue selling OS upgrades at reasonable prices isn't "horrid".
Possibly, abusing another company's business model to screw them over in a parasitic fashion could be construed as "horrid" (by a terribly sensible person).
Why is this moderated overrated and not informative? iBrowse had tabbed browsing in 1999 and is not open source. Mosaic was not open source athough the source code could be obtained for viewing fairly easily. The IP stack was licenced from Spider Systems which was not open source although it contained BSD code.
Mods, are you on crack?
Welcome to Slashdot!
I hear EvE online has Mac OS X clients and Linux clients available.
Oh noes! :( Politicized hiring at the justice department and weakened federal regulatory agencies! And the NSA listened in on some people calling abroad! The US is just like China!
And considering Bush is getting kicked out of office real soon, the US will have to become just like China any day now, or it will be too late! US am doomed! :( :( :(
---This message brought to you by HERPES - the Hyperbole Emergency Response Program Eastern Sweden.----
If you don't have the self control to not cheat, that's your problem, not the game designer's. Leaving out puzzles is no solution to cheating.
If "you" are representative of the general gaming population, then yes - the game designer does have a problem.
The problem with the US broadband market is that competition isn't free enough - especially because you seem to have pathetic DSL offerings, due to poor legislation on copper access.
Here in Sweden (although we still have access problems due to the state-owned Telia still dominating copper access) we have seen much healthier DSL competition, due to freer competition in copper-access to homes.
This in turn helps keep cable and fiber offerings honest. In the last few years, the addition of fast 3G connections has also intensified the competition.
Interestingly, Sweden also has a rather innovative system for increasing competition and choice in education. However, it is important not to overestimate the gains that can be had from more choice in education. Indeed - people seriously overestimate the effectiveness of virtually all possible educational reforms in rich countries. But that's a topic for another day.
"And having non-randomized movies only made sense before the easy availability of Internet boards and spoiler sites?"
Q: Do you often get stuck for hours on end in a movie, unable to advance the plot?
A: No. But you do in adventure-puzzlers.
Q: Do you often pop out of the movie theatre or sofa to catch up on plot details before they occur in the movie you are watching?
A: No. But you do in adventure-puzzlers.
"Additionally, most games have cheat codes for the single player mode, which are easily found on the net, and despite this people are still playing them."
Yes, because the game is paced differently than a classical puzzle-adventure. You rarely "get stuck" in a modern game, in the fashion of, say, Monkey Island or CfaC, where having to bang your head against a difficult puzzle for hours on end was an essential part of the game.
Remember - good old computer magazines had actual pages where people wrote in to ask about how to advance a game they were stuck in. That doesn't happen these days.
"You are not forced to look for spoilers, you are not forced to use cheats, and you are not forced to read walkthroughs."
No. So?
Having non-randomized puzzle elements in games made sense before the easy availability of Internet boards and hint sites.
Today, any such content is rapidly bypassed by most. To some degree that is a pity - games like Cruise for a Corpse were great experiences. But alas, the genre just requires too much self-command to be viable.
Of course, randomly-generated puzzlers are still with us - perhaps with increasing computer power, and more sophisticated AI, we will see a revival of randomized puzzle-like adventures?
I have always thought that the old Sid Meier title Covert Action is the best blueprint to follow to revive the puzzle-based action-adventure genre.