Not only that, but there is already a company bringing an NES clone to market right away here, and it's supposed to have 100% compatibility with both the NES and the Famicom. The only thing left is to wait for the patents to expire.
So why are we getting a government-enforced one for video games? There's a functioning voluntary one right now that would work fine if parents would just PAY ATTENTION TO IT. As long as parents keep thinking of ALL games as kid stuff, putting the game rating system into law won't do a damn bit of good.
WHOOOSH! That's the sound of this flying right over your head. The point is we don't have an epidemic of children being sold R-rated movie tickets without their parents' permission. The system in place is completely voluntary and works fine. These days, there's hardly any uproar about children watching violent movies because parents understand the rating system and movie theatres enforce it. One only needs to read comments from Gamespot- or EB-employed slashdotters here in this thread to see that the problem isn't the voluntary enforcement, because most stores are enforcing the rating system these days. The real problem is parents who still see games as "kid stuff" and refuse to pay attention both to the rating and the employee warning them that it's not a children's game. Why should the law step in to cover incompetent parents?
He's saying it's the parent's fault if children aren't raised right or become criminals. You're implying that the parents are directly responsible for their children's criminal activity. There's a fine distinction between the two, but there is a distinction.
To follow your logic, if they can't punish movie theatres for letting 13 year olds into R-rated movies, why rate the movies at all? After all, the whole movie rating system is completely voluntary.
Following the set path here one could also say that the tobacco industry has absolutely no responsibility in selling an addictive stick of rolled tobacco that causes cancer, heart disease, and more.
They may have had responsibility for this 20 years ago, but everyone who buys a pack of smokes today knows the risks involved. In Canada and other countries, half of the package is covered with warnings regarding the health risks of smoking, often accompanied by grisly photographs. If an 18 year old starts smoking after years of being told of the health risks and seeing them mentioned on the cigarettes he's buying, can you still blame big tobacco for his addiction? Personal responsibility has to start somewhere.
Just like gun manufacturers don't have anything to do with people dying from being shot.
They didn't pull the trigger. Hell, they probably didn't even sell it directly to the person who did. If I hit-and-run someone in my car, is the auto manufacturer at fault?
In both cases, a parent could have stopped this from happening.
Not likely, but a parent could have raised the child to avoid such influences. I'm the violent-game-playing son of a gun-owning smoker and yet I don't smoke and I've never shot anyone. Jeez, makes you think there might be something to this whole "parenting" thing, huh?
So why isn't crack legal?
I don't know. Making it illegal certainly hasn't stopped anyone from getting hooked, it puts large amounts of money into the hands of criminal organizations, and it has made it more difficult for people to seek treatment in many places.
Or asbestos walls? Or cars with defective brakes?
What do these have to do with the subject at hand? If I buy a car with defective brakes, is it my parents' fault? These really have nothing to do with anything else you've mentioned.
Are you saying that Hustler and College Sluts 15 are rated R or NC-17? Contrary to what you may have heard, pornography is rarely rated at all. If you were talking only about regulating access to pornographic video games using a similar standard to pornographic films and magazines, your argument might make some sense, but the broad scope of this law also includes the equivalent of violent action movies, which are perfectly legal for children to view.
XIII is a perfect case in point. It sold so poorly that those of us who never read the graphic novels (originally in French, I don't know if they were translated) will never see how the story pans out. It was a fun game, and graphically gorgeous with it's cel-shaded comic book style, but it just wasn't "mature" enough. On the other hand, wanna take bets on how many more Rainbow Six sequels there's going to be? Because if anything says "mature", it's Tom Clancy cliches.
I find it incredibly amusing that so many people's definition of "kiddy" seems to be "uses colours other than grey and black."
Re:dreamcast was "failed" only for non-owners
on
XBOX 360=Dreamcast 2.0?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Marketing had little to do with it, I think. It probably had more to do with all the stuff Sega released in the past and then abandoned so quickly. The Sega CD had a short shelf life, the 32X came and went pretty quickly, and in North America Sega dumped the Saturn as soon as it had a little competition. These were all good systems (maybe not the 32X, I never had one so I can't say) but gamers felt like Sega wouldn't support them to the extent they should have, so by the time the Dreamcast came out, the sentiment was "I can buy a Dreamcast now and watch Sega abandon it, or I can wait for a PS2." It was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and it was a real shame because the DC had some really great games.
I have the right to create a secure environment for my data
You're right, you do, but by leaving the Autorun "feature" on, you have failed to create this secure environment. That's not to say what Sony did was right, but if Autorun is what lets Sony install this rootkit, it would be easily preventable.
They're actually making a "sequel in spirit" to SS2. It's going to be called BioShock. Looks like it should be pretty good. I know it's not SS3, but it's something.
What an asinine response. You might want to work on your reading comprehension. Nowhere did I say it gave me the right to "steal". I said that people do it because the market has not provided them with an alternative, which is completely irrelevant to the morality of it. There is a market for online content delivery, and the technology exists to make it relatively painless for these companies. I don't see how it's "immature" to expect that companies move to embrace a new market instead of flogging a dying business model and screaming bloody murder when people don't cooperate. iTunes has proven that if you make it easy to get the content (music, in this case) and provide it at a reasonable price, people will pay for it. So why are the movie and record companies so slow to embrace this? And why are we the "bad guys" for asking them to?
Any response that accuses me of being a pirate will be flamed, unless you mean this kind.
See above. It's their movie and their copyright. It's your immaturity and "I want it now" attitude. Nothing else.
So wait, it's immature to not want to have to pay $15 to watch less than 90 minutes of entertainment once when I can get a DVD for not much more? It's immature to not want to pay $4 for a fucking pop, or over $10 for a pop and some popcorn, when I can get a fucking meal for cheaper than that? It's immature to not want to have my seat kicked, or put up with idiots who don't turn off their cell phone or constantly make loud smartass comments during the movie? It's immature to actually be willing to pay for the convenience and comfort of watching the movie at home without having to wait months for the priviledge? I can't wait until I "grow up" and accept what corporate consortiums force down my throat.
Read "I don't want to pay for it, I want it now, and I don't have any self-restraint".
I pay for a DVD, and I have to sit through piracy warnings, advertisements, and other crap just to watch the movie. I am also restricted to watching it on specific devices. If I want to watch it on my Linux laptop, I've violated federal law by breaking the encryption. If I move to Europe, I can't watch any of my North American DVDs (which I paid for)because of region encoding. I can't rip several movies for my laptop so I don't have to carry a bunch of easily scratched discs or their bulky cases around with me without violating federal law. There exists the technology to provide a distribution method which will circumvent all of this bullshit and provide us the convenience we crave. I and millions like me have the bandwidth, the disposable income, and are willing to pay. The business model has already been proven successful for music (with iTunes). We're immature for wanting this, for being willing to provide a new distribution market? Right.
Actually, when you consider the other new cars that were coming out at the time, the 1982 Mustang GT was one hell of a performance bargain. We might laugh at 157HP now, especially when we compare it to the models that came before (in the 60's) or after (the new Cobras), but when high performance was considered dead in anything but high-end Italian sports cars, it was a pretty mean machine. The 80-81 cars with the 4.2L V8 were jokes, though.
Actually, I have a 40GB Fat32 parition. I know partition size is an artificial limit. I was referring to file size. Fat32 just isn't capable of handling files larger than 4GB.
I agree completely. I think it's an incredibly fucked up situation. But my point was that the DMCA didn't invalidate those rights, even if it did create a sort of legal paradox.
I don't know about the EUCD, but the DMCA doesn't prevent you from making fair-use copies. It's perfectly legal to back up your music however you like as long as you don't keep those backups if you ever sell your original copy. It's illegal to break any encryption or copy protection to make those copies, though.
I don't know if that letter is real or not, but it's nearly identical in tone and "professionalism" as his letter to the Seattle Police Department. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if it's real.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only that, but there is already a company bringing an NES clone to market right away here, and it's supposed to have 100% compatibility with both the NES and the Famicom. The only thing left is to wait for the patents to expire.
They were being sarcastic. None of those things happened via gov't mandate, and they all came from Europe.
Unfortunately that can be said about any creative endeavor. :(
So why are we getting a government-enforced one for video games? There's a functioning voluntary one right now that would work fine if parents would just PAY ATTENTION TO IT. As long as parents keep thinking of ALL games as kid stuff, putting the game rating system into law won't do a damn bit of good.
WHOOOSH! That's the sound of this flying right over your head. The point is we don't have an epidemic of children being sold R-rated movie tickets without their parents' permission. The system in place is completely voluntary and works fine. These days, there's hardly any uproar about children watching violent movies because parents understand the rating system and movie theatres enforce it. One only needs to read comments from Gamespot- or EB-employed slashdotters here in this thread to see that the problem isn't the voluntary enforcement, because most stores are enforcing the rating system these days. The real problem is parents who still see games as "kid stuff" and refuse to pay attention both to the rating and the employee warning them that it's not a children's game. Why should the law step in to cover incompetent parents?
He's saying it's the parent's fault if children aren't raised right or become criminals. You're implying that the parents are directly responsible for their children's criminal activity. There's a fine distinction between the two, but there is a distinction.
To follow your logic, if they can't punish movie theatres for letting 13 year olds into R-rated movies, why rate the movies at all? After all, the whole movie rating system is completely voluntary.
Following the set path here one could also say that the tobacco industry has absolutely no responsibility in selling an addictive stick of rolled tobacco that causes cancer, heart disease, and more.
They may have had responsibility for this 20 years ago, but everyone who buys a pack of smokes today knows the risks involved. In Canada and other countries, half of the package is covered with warnings regarding the health risks of smoking, often accompanied by grisly photographs. If an 18 year old starts smoking after years of being told of the health risks and seeing them mentioned on the cigarettes he's buying, can you still blame big tobacco for his addiction? Personal responsibility has to start somewhere.
Just like gun manufacturers don't have anything to do with people dying from being shot.
They didn't pull the trigger. Hell, they probably didn't even sell it directly to the person who did. If I hit-and-run someone in my car, is the auto manufacturer at fault?
In both cases, a parent could have stopped this from happening.
Not likely, but a parent could have raised the child to avoid such influences. I'm the violent-game-playing son of a gun-owning smoker and yet I don't smoke and I've never shot anyone. Jeez, makes you think there might be something to this whole "parenting" thing, huh?
So why isn't crack legal?
I don't know. Making it illegal certainly hasn't stopped anyone from getting hooked, it puts large amounts of money into the hands of criminal organizations, and it has made it more difficult for people to seek treatment in many places.
Or asbestos walls? Or cars with defective brakes?
What do these have to do with the subject at hand? If I buy a car with defective brakes, is it my parents' fault? These really have nothing to do with anything else you've mentioned.
Are you saying that Hustler and College Sluts 15 are rated R or NC-17? Contrary to what you may have heard, pornography is rarely rated at all. If you were talking only about regulating access to pornographic video games using a similar standard to pornographic films and magazines, your argument might make some sense, but the broad scope of this law also includes the equivalent of violent action movies, which are perfectly legal for children to view.
XIII is a perfect case in point. It sold so poorly that those of us who never read the graphic novels (originally in French, I don't know if they were translated) will never see how the story pans out. It was a fun game, and graphically gorgeous with it's cel-shaded comic book style, but it just wasn't "mature" enough. On the other hand, wanna take bets on how many more Rainbow Six sequels there's going to be? Because if anything says "mature", it's Tom Clancy cliches.
PS3 is doing that with HD and Blu-Ray DVD,
The PS3 has no HD-DVD support. It's Blu-Ray only. They're competing formats and Sony wants theirs to win.
Sega was already mostly bought by Sammy. Apple would probably have to buy them out first.
Besides, I think Apple + Nintendo would be a better fit. I doubt that would ever happen, though.
I've read this article too (I submitted it to /., but I guess he beat me to it).
Don't worry. I'm sure your submission will get posted some time in the next day or two.
I find it incredibly amusing that so many people's definition of "kiddy" seems to be "uses colours other than grey and black."
Marketing had little to do with it, I think. It probably had more to do with all the stuff Sega released in the past and then abandoned so quickly. The Sega CD had a short shelf life, the 32X came and went pretty quickly, and in North America Sega dumped the Saturn as soon as it had a little competition. These were all good systems (maybe not the 32X, I never had one so I can't say) but gamers felt like Sega wouldn't support them to the extent they should have, so by the time the Dreamcast came out, the sentiment was "I can buy a Dreamcast now and watch Sega abandon it, or I can wait for a PS2." It was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and it was a real shame because the DC had some really great games.
I have the right to create a secure environment for my data
You're right, you do, but by leaving the Autorun "feature" on, you have failed to create this secure environment. That's not to say what Sony did was right, but if Autorun is what lets Sony install this rootkit, it would be easily preventable.
They're actually making a "sequel in spirit" to SS2. It's going to be called BioShock. Looks like it should be pretty good. I know it's not SS3, but it's something.
What an asinine response. You might want to work on your reading comprehension. Nowhere did I say it gave me the right to "steal". I said that people do it because the market has not provided them with an alternative, which is completely irrelevant to the morality of it. There is a market for online content delivery, and the technology exists to make it relatively painless for these companies. I don't see how it's "immature" to expect that companies move to embrace a new market instead of flogging a dying business model and screaming bloody murder when people don't cooperate. iTunes has proven that if you make it easy to get the content (music, in this case) and provide it at a reasonable price, people will pay for it. So why are the movie and record companies so slow to embrace this? And why are we the "bad guys" for asking them to?
Any response that accuses me of being a pirate will be flamed, unless you mean this kind.
See above. It's their movie and their copyright. It's your immaturity and "I want it now" attitude. Nothing else.
So wait, it's immature to not want to have to pay $15 to watch less than 90 minutes of entertainment once when I can get a DVD for not much more? It's immature to not want to pay $4 for a fucking pop, or over $10 for a pop and some popcorn, when I can get a fucking meal for cheaper than that? It's immature to not want to have my seat kicked, or put up with idiots who don't turn off their cell phone or constantly make loud smartass comments during the movie? It's immature to actually be willing to pay for the convenience and comfort of watching the movie at home without having to wait months for the priviledge? I can't wait until I "grow up" and accept what corporate consortiums force down my throat.
Read "I don't want to pay for it, I want it now, and I don't have any self-restraint".
I pay for a DVD, and I have to sit through piracy warnings, advertisements, and other crap just to watch the movie. I am also restricted to watching it on specific devices. If I want to watch it on my Linux laptop, I've violated federal law by breaking the encryption. If I move to Europe, I can't watch any of my North American DVDs (which I paid for)because of region encoding. I can't rip several movies for my laptop so I don't have to carry a bunch of easily scratched discs or their bulky cases around with me without violating federal law. There exists the technology to provide a distribution method which will circumvent all of this bullshit and provide us the convenience we crave. I and millions like me have the bandwidth, the disposable income, and are willing to pay. The business model has already been proven successful for music (with iTunes). We're immature for wanting this, for being willing to provide a new distribution market? Right.
Actually, when you consider the other new cars that were coming out at the time, the 1982 Mustang GT was one hell of a performance bargain. We might laugh at 157HP now, especially when we compare it to the models that came before (in the 60's) or after (the new Cobras), but when high performance was considered dead in anything but high-end Italian sports cars, it was a pretty mean machine. The 80-81 cars with the 4.2L V8 were jokes, though.
:/
Well, that was off-topic.
Actually, I have a 40GB Fat32 parition. I know partition size is an artificial limit. I was referring to file size. Fat32 just isn't capable of handling files larger than 4GB.
I agree completely. I think it's an incredibly fucked up situation. But my point was that the DMCA didn't invalidate those rights, even if it did create a sort of legal paradox.
A poop joke? Very classy. :)
I don't know about the EUCD, but the DMCA doesn't prevent you from making fair-use copies. It's perfectly legal to back up your music however you like as long as you don't keep those backups if you ever sell your original copy. It's illegal to break any encryption or copy protection to make those copies, though.
I don't know if that letter is real or not, but it's nearly identical in tone and "professionalism" as his letter to the Seattle Police Department. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if it's real.