I very strongly believe you are totally wrong, on several counts.
1) By applying a penalty, the state is taking away the responsibility of the individual. It's saying "I don't think you're capable of dealing with this issue yourself, so I'm going to force you to do it in the way in which I've decided". Note that the state in question may or may not be democratic - and in the case of the US especially the question is unclear. By taking away the responsibility, it's in fact encouraging people to do whatever they can whenever they think they can get away with it.
Additionally, it's adding the thrill of breaking a law to the activity. A very large proportion of humans like breaking rules, trying new things, pushing their limits and their environment's limits. As a simple example, telling a kid "you're not allowed to eat any of these strawberries" and leaving a big basket of strawberries alone on the table will very often lead to the kid stealing some, even if he wouldn't even have thought of it without the interdiction.
2) It's exactly because most people wouldn't abide in the legalistic way that is commonplace in modern society. Another very wrong concept. The laws are not created "because most people wouldn't abide by them if they weren't there". That is not their original purpose, and practically any law which follows that way is stupid. Laws are generally created to give a guideline to what is acceptable behaviour in society, and to give most people the peace of mind that if some person does something that isn't allowed, they won't get away with it. It allows the majority to keep on doing what they were doing without having to worry that some sociopathic individuals will try to do things to prevent that.
3) Sure, there's some inertia behind the P2P movement, but it's only been a few years. People had been drinking for CENTURIES before prohibition. First, people have been drinking for millenia, possibly tens of thousands of years. Second, people have been freely sharing ideas ever since they started having them, tens of thousands of years ago. The progressive restriction of their right to do so is a very recent development, comparatively, and though it started smoothly with a reasonable trade-off between this god-given right (the right ot share ideas and other intellectual creations freely) and the livelihood of people who devoted their lives to intellectual creation, it has progressively evolved into being so stupidly restrictive that people simply disregard this idiocy and do what they want, because the law is stupid.
Put it this way, if you want the moral highground. Artists are stealing from humanity. They're stealing our innate right to share anything that goes through our heads with anyone we want. We are willing to let them do that to a certain measure because they produce more fun stuff in exchange for that limited (copy)right. But when that right goes so out of hand, we are not willing to allow this unbridled theft to go on any longer. And so we don't. Somehow the artists have forgotten that they owe everything not to their creative ability, but to our ability to appreciate their creations and reward them for them.
Of course, in reality, the artists aren't the ones going out of hand - it's the music corporations who seem to own most of the rights of the poor artists anyway. So you can adapt the argument accordingly. In any case, I think the moral highground is very clearly on the file-traders' side.
The majority may be an exaggeration, but it does not need to be the majority. When a law is passed that makes a large minority criminals, there's something wrong with the law.
Other examples would include the prohibition (of both alcohol and marijuana).
is that different people like the game to be paced differently. I have friends who like to play Starcraft on infinite resource maps where clicking speed is a major factor in who wins the battle. Others like to take their time. Different people not only have different abilities in terms of what pace they can keep up with, but also different preferences.
Pacing may be an issue, sure - but it's not an issue that can be fixed in any way, because whatever you do, you'll still only hit just right one small portion of the gaming audience.
It skews the mind into thinking that Americans are superior and that foreigners are inferior, no matter what the ears hear and the eyes see.
Anyone who's ever tried to convince an american that their country is in the process of being fucked without ceremony by its "elected" leaders will have to agree with that.
It's a shame to see what was and could still be a great country going to bits because so many of its citizens are either stupid, full of blind patriotism, or both.
Apparently it's just due to the fact that the duck's quack's echo is a lot harder to hear - hence some sort of popular rumour must have sprung up saying that it actually doesn't echo. The study confirmed that it's hard to hear and that it does nevertheless echo (which is blatantly obvious for anyone with some sense, of course).
Overall, a thorough waste of time and money, this study...
Funnily enough, I think you'll probably find that the feeling is reciprocal coming from them - ie you can die, as far as they're concerned.
Not that I'm saying that it's a good thing that it's windows-only - I don't think it is. But just giving you a little free tour in the not-even-close-to-infinite-just-kinda-earth-sized perspective vortex.
Yup. They also had a BBC documentary called "The Great Stink" recently, featuring the great-grandson of sir Baselgate (sp?), the engineer who designed the sewers. Very interesting doc.
It could. Back before they built the sewers in the 1850s or so, the sewage from two and a half million people went into the thames - which is a tidal river at that point. So you have 2.5mil ppl's crap going up and down the thames with the tide. They got outbreaks of cholera from that because the water companies just pumped that water and distributed that to people - drinking beer exclusively was a good plan in those days.
They finally decided to fund the sewers (a gigantic project, and very well done since the original sewers are still in use today) when the thames stank so bad that the MP's couldn't even get into the river-facing rooms of the house of parliament without choking from the awful stench (apparently comparable to the smell of a rotting body).
As you do when you play from various locations, eg on your beefy company laptop! - or if you have LAN parties in the office and at home, where you're always using your own copy yourself but product activation would prevent you from using it on both computers (non-simultaneously).
What I find annoying is that it might interfere with the fact that the machine which I play from might change fairly often. I thought they'd got it all working well with the WON thing - meant you had to have bought a legit copy at some point, and meant I bought two copies of HL1 overall. But having to activate the product, wtf???
I agree. That might take a lot of the tedium out of some RTSs too - if you can leave a base with its "commander" and expect to still find it standing and productive when you get back, instead of having to micromanage everything. Also having intelligent units, as you've almost suggested with "control expanded beyond simple point and click directions" would make it all pretty sweet. All they need is a good interface for giving complex instructions to units. Eg, convince your night elf archer to always stay out of range of enemies, only shooting arrows when it can do so safely, and otherwise run always - without you having to be there telling it what to do...
That said, I think Warcraft 3 has made a lot of headway in the whole tactical approach. If there's a future for RTS, it lies in the low-level tactical approach of War3, where battles are not by numbers anymore. I think a combination of Warcraft 3 and Warhammer: Dark Omen's much more terrain-influenced battles would be very interesting...
Companies would have no incentive to do this. But if it becomes enough of a societal problem, people will request that the government enforce some restrictions and force companies to abide by those restrictions (enter a whole new world of underground unrestricted gaming, but anyway...). But true to form, the moronic people who so often get elected in a representative system like the US so-called-democracy will most certainly go for the most stupid solutions such as banning or taxing things, like they do for drugs and alcohol. Which is a shame because online gaming can so much more easily be controlled...
Don't be so literal. That's only a thumbrule, hence my mention of possible weekly/monthly limits. For instance, it might be that the system requires you to follow an average of 7 hours a day, allowing a 10% overrun per week (ie a max of 7x7 = 49 + 4.9 = 54.9 hours a week) and then enforce the total for the month (ie no more than 7x31 hours a month no matter what). There's plenty of possible variations, which will still allow you to spend a weekend of continuous playing but which would prevent you from spending a month playing continually.
I am 23. I have in the last few years reached the point where I can pretty much control myself in terms of online gaming. A large part of that control is knowing which games not to play (for instance, mmorpgs, which, given my rabid addiction to MUDs and my easy addiction to crap like Diablo 2, which is a poor substitute for a MUD, you'll have to agree, would be fatal). I think 25 would be a good age to place a limit at - because let's be honest here, if at 25 you're inclined to spend more than 7 hours a day on average playing Everquest, over large periods of time, then you need help. Go out, meet people in the real world, get a job, etc..
Hell, well then it's even worse than I thought. My dad had been hammering on a long time ago when I was still a kid, saying that computer game makers should be held accountable for the time they waste in people's lives, by hooking them on stupid games, and for all that time I didn't take him seriously. I still don't for those single-player games, which are not all that addictive when you consider the newer multiplayer stuff. But then I got addicted to MUDs for a while and I understood what he meant more fully.
Imho, the way this will probably be solved is through requiring game makers to impose a time limit on how much time people under a certain age can spend in a day/week/month on one of these games. It shouldn't be very hard to implement for all these monthly-subscription games, since those have to know who their players are anyway (would be harder for, say, plain MUDs which are so much more anonymous).
But a good way would, I reckon, be to limit the time one can spend overall on online games. Under 15, say limit it to 3 hours a day. Under 18, 5 hours a day. Under 25, 7 hours a day. After 25, if you're not responsible enough to control yourself yet, too bad. These limits would already allow huge amounts of gaming, but prevent the zombification of people who end up turning their lives into a "wake up, play, go to bed when exhausted" cycle...
But given the way laws happen these days, it seems more likely that they'll just go overboard and try to forbid these games altogether, and probably fail miserably... bah.
You're joking, but I think we'll see this become a real societal problem in the near future. Better-Than-Life was a visionary idea in Red Dwarf - it's going to happen for real. If you already consider the sorry state some people get into after basically investing their entire lives into things like EverCrack, if that starts happening to a significant percentage of the population we will see it put at the same rank as hard drug usage.
You're thinking that people want to play the role of an elf or a troll or whatever. That's not the role we're talking about. They want to project themselves as someone they're not in real life. For instance, PFY with a voice pitch problem might want to use his brains and appear as a cool, relaxed and self-confident high-level character even though he's still in high school and getting beaten up half the time.
With text, he can easily do that. Let the voice through, and the minute it changes pitch in the middle of a word he's recognised as who he is rather than who he wants to project.
Slashdot Mirror
They haven't all done it for the same reason. If 1 in 37 adults had gone to prison for the same reason, then you should worry.
Daniel
I very strongly believe you are totally wrong, on several counts.
1) By applying a penalty, the state is taking away the responsibility of the individual. It's saying "I don't think you're capable of dealing with this issue yourself, so I'm going to force you to do it in the way in which I've decided". Note that the state in question may or may not be democratic - and in the case of the US especially the question is unclear. By taking away the responsibility, it's in fact encouraging people to do whatever they can whenever they think they can get away with it.
Additionally, it's adding the thrill of breaking a law to the activity. A very large proportion of humans like breaking rules, trying new things, pushing their limits and their environment's limits. As a simple example, telling a kid "you're not allowed to eat any of these strawberries" and leaving a big basket of strawberries alone on the table will very often lead to the kid stealing some, even if he wouldn't even have thought of it without the interdiction.
2) It's exactly because most people wouldn't abide in the legalistic way that is commonplace in modern society. Another very wrong concept. The laws are not created "because most people wouldn't abide by them if they weren't there". That is not their original purpose, and practically any law which follows that way is stupid. Laws are generally created to give a guideline to what is acceptable behaviour in society, and to give most people the peace of mind that if some person does something that isn't allowed, they won't get away with it. It allows the majority to keep on doing what they were doing without having to worry that some sociopathic individuals will try to do things to prevent that.
3) Sure, there's some inertia behind the P2P movement, but it's only been a few years. People had been drinking for CENTURIES before prohibition. First, people have been drinking for millenia, possibly tens of thousands of years. Second, people have been freely sharing ideas ever since they started having them, tens of thousands of years ago. The progressive restriction of their right to do so is a very recent development, comparatively, and though it started smoothly with a reasonable trade-off between this god-given right (the right ot share ideas and other intellectual creations freely) and the livelihood of people who devoted their lives to intellectual creation, it has progressively evolved into being so stupidly restrictive that people simply disregard this idiocy and do what they want, because the law is stupid.
Put it this way, if you want the moral highground. Artists are stealing from humanity. They're stealing our innate right to share anything that goes through our heads with anyone we want. We are willing to let them do that to a certain measure because they produce more fun stuff in exchange for that limited (copy)right. But when that right goes so out of hand, we are not willing to allow this unbridled theft to go on any longer. And so we don't. Somehow the artists have forgotten that they owe everything not to their creative ability, but to our ability to appreciate their creations and reward them for them.
Of course, in reality, the artists aren't the ones going out of hand - it's the music corporations who seem to own most of the rights of the poor artists anyway. So you can adapt the argument accordingly. In any case, I think the moral highground is very clearly on the file-traders' side.
Daniel
The majority may be an exaggeration, but it does not need to be the majority. When a law is passed that makes a large minority criminals, there's something wrong with the law.
Other examples would include the prohibition (of both alcohol and marijuana).
Daniel
m4yB3 d3y R 3|\/|p1oY1|\|G s0m3 5kr1pP7 k1dD13z @ f0cks??
teh l33t.
not.
Daniel
is that different people like the game to be paced differently. I have friends who like to play Starcraft on infinite resource maps where clicking speed is a major factor in who wins the battle. Others like to take their time. Different people not only have different abilities in terms of what pace they can keep up with, but also different preferences.
Pacing may be an issue, sure - but it's not an issue that can be fixed in any way, because whatever you do, you'll still only hit just right one small portion of the gaming audience.
Daniel
It skews the mind into thinking that Americans are superior and that foreigners are inferior, no matter what the ears hear and the eyes see.
Anyone who's ever tried to convince an american that their country is in the process of being fucked without ceremony by its "elected" leaders will have to agree with that.
It's a shame to see what was and could still be a great country going to bits because so many of its citizens are either stupid, full of blind patriotism, or both.
Daniel
Which country is that?? the PA?
Daniel
Apparently it's just due to the fact that the duck's quack's echo is a lot harder to hear - hence some sort of popular rumour must have sprung up saying that it actually doesn't echo. The study confirmed that it's hard to hear and that it does nevertheless echo (which is blatantly obvious for anyone with some sense, of course).
Overall, a thorough waste of time and money, this study...
Daniel
Funnily enough, I think you'll probably find that the feeling is reciprocal coming from them - ie you can die, as far as they're concerned.
Not that I'm saying that it's a good thing that it's windows-only - I don't think it is. But just giving you a little free tour in the not-even-close-to-infinite-just-kinda-earth-sized perspective vortex.
Daniel
That would be nice, but I don't think you're being realistic.
Daniel
Yup. They also had a BBC documentary called "The Great Stink" recently, featuring the great-grandson of sir Baselgate (sp?), the engineer who designed the sewers. Very interesting doc.
Daniel
If only they could actually wall all the Windows... maybe the worms wouldn't get in anymore.
Daniel
It could. Back before they built the sewers in the 1850s or so, the sewage from two and a half million people went into the thames - which is a tidal river at that point. So you have 2.5mil ppl's crap going up and down the thames with the tide. They got outbreaks of cholera from that because the water companies just pumped that water and distributed that to people - drinking beer exclusively was a good plan in those days.
They finally decided to fund the sewers (a gigantic project, and very well done since the original sewers are still in use today) when the thames stank so bad that the MP's couldn't even get into the river-facing rooms of the house of parliament without choking from the awful stench (apparently comparable to the smell of a rotting body).
I'd say that was worse than now.
Daniel
"You can go f*ck yourselves."
I believe this is very sound advice. As a matter of fact, they are already following it, aren't they?
Daniel
"You can go f*ck yourselves."
I think it's very sound. As a matter of fact, I believe they are following it at the moment.
Daniel
As you do when you play from various locations, eg on your beefy company laptop! - or if you have LAN parties in the office and at home, where you're always using your own copy yourself but product activation would prevent you from using it on both computers (non-simultaneously).
Daniel
If you can't beat'em, join'em...
Daniel
What I find annoying is that it might interfere with the fact that the machine which I play from might change fairly often. I thought they'd got it all working well with the WON thing - meant you had to have bought a legit copy at some point, and meant I bought two copies of HL1 overall. But having to activate the product, wtf???
Daniel
I agree. That might take a lot of the tedium out of some RTSs too - if you can leave a base with its "commander" and expect to still find it standing and productive when you get back, instead of having to micromanage everything. Also having intelligent units, as you've almost suggested with "control expanded beyond simple point and click directions" would make it all pretty sweet. All they need is a good interface for giving complex instructions to units. Eg, convince your night elf archer to always stay out of range of enemies, only shooting arrows when it can do so safely, and otherwise run always - without you having to be there telling it what to do...
That said, I think Warcraft 3 has made a lot of headway in the whole tactical approach. If there's a future for RTS, it lies in the low-level tactical approach of War3, where battles are not by numbers anymore. I think a combination of Warcraft 3 and Warhammer: Dark Omen's much more terrain-influenced battles would be very interesting...
Daniel
Companies would have no incentive to do this. But if it becomes enough of a societal problem, people will request that the government enforce some restrictions and force companies to abide by those restrictions (enter a whole new world of underground unrestricted gaming, but anyway...). But true to form, the moronic people who so often get elected in a representative system like the US so-called-democracy will most certainly go for the most stupid solutions such as banning or taxing things, like they do for drugs and alcohol. Which is a shame because online gaming can so much more easily be controlled...
Daniel
Don't be so literal. That's only a thumbrule, hence my mention of possible weekly/monthly limits. For instance, it might be that the system requires you to follow an average of 7 hours a day, allowing a 10% overrun per week (ie a max of 7x7 = 49 + 4.9 = 54.9 hours a week) and then enforce the total for the month (ie no more than 7x31 hours a month no matter what). There's plenty of possible variations, which will still allow you to spend a weekend of continuous playing but which would prevent you from spending a month playing continually.
I am 23. I have in the last few years reached the point where I can pretty much control myself in terms of online gaming. A large part of that control is knowing which games not to play (for instance, mmorpgs, which, given my rabid addiction to MUDs and my easy addiction to crap like Diablo 2, which is a poor substitute for a MUD, you'll have to agree, would be fatal). I think 25 would be a good age to place a limit at - because let's be honest here, if at 25 you're inclined to spend more than 7 hours a day on average playing Everquest, over large periods of time, then you need help. Go out, meet people in the real world, get a job, etc..
Daniel
Hell, well then it's even worse than I thought. My dad had been hammering on a long time ago when I was still a kid, saying that computer game makers should be held accountable for the time they waste in people's lives, by hooking them on stupid games, and for all that time I didn't take him seriously. I still don't for those single-player games, which are not all that addictive when you consider the newer multiplayer stuff. But then I got addicted to MUDs for a while and I understood what he meant more fully.
Imho, the way this will probably be solved is through requiring game makers to impose a time limit on how much time people under a certain age can spend in a day/week/month on one of these games. It shouldn't be very hard to implement for all these monthly-subscription games, since those have to know who their players are anyway (would be harder for, say, plain MUDs which are so much more anonymous).
But a good way would, I reckon, be to limit the time one can spend overall on online games. Under 15, say limit it to 3 hours a day. Under 18, 5 hours a day. Under 25, 7 hours a day. After 25, if you're not responsible enough to control yourself yet, too bad. These limits would already allow huge amounts of gaming, but prevent the zombification of people who end up turning their lives into a "wake up, play, go to bed when exhausted" cycle...
But given the way laws happen these days, it seems more likely that they'll just go overboard and try to forbid these games altogether, and probably fail miserably... bah.
Daniel
You're joking, but I think we'll see this become a real societal problem in the near future. Better-Than-Life was a visionary idea in Red Dwarf - it's going to happen for real. If you already consider the sorry state some people get into after basically investing their entire lives into things like EverCrack, if that starts happening to a significant percentage of the population we will see it put at the same rank as hard drug usage.
Daniel
You're thinking that people want to play the role of an elf or a troll or whatever. That's not the role we're talking about. They want to project themselves as someone they're not in real life. For instance, PFY with a voice pitch problem might want to use his brains and appear as a cool, relaxed and self-confident high-level character even though he's still in high school and getting beaten up half the time.
With text, he can easily do that. Let the voice through, and the minute it changes pitch in the middle of a word he's recognised as who he is rather than who he wants to project.
Daniel
...is such a big and lively city that it creates rain for the whole of England, and Ireland too!
Daniel