Um, $200,000 is 10 years' salary for someone "poor" by U.S. standards, and 1000 years' salary for someone relatively "poor" by global standards. Sorry, but by any meaningful definition of the word, anyone who is willing to pay $200 grand for a 90-minute flight is extremely wealthy.
The article makes it sound like they'll be using this system basically to track down the people who type in IDDQD and activate God Mode, but it seems more likely that it'll be used largely as a GM tool. Looking at some of the exploits in other MMOs, it's easy to see how this could be used to track down exploits, from botting to teleportation hacks to bugged mobs that give too much loot. ("Hmm, why has Lesser Bog Rat been killed 700 times more often than any of the mobs around it?")
It could also be a valuable tool for GMs. If it really does keep a detailed log of everything that's happened in-game, they should be able to track down lost items, punish bad behavior, and so on much more effectively.
The comic isn't a standalone; you really have to read the strip regularly for it to make much sense. The Roomba, the weird dialogue, and the non-sequiter ending are all part of the comic style. The guy CAN write grammatical prose.
At first the term "Spiderman" suggested some strange type of monstrous insect, but fortunately the submitter indicated that this is in fact the name of a character from a children's "comics book." This type of reminder is always welcome on a site like Slashdot, where a large portion of the readership has little familiarity with such works of fiction, or indeed with the so-called "science fiction" in general.
I'd hardly describe the type of abstract inspiration you're talking about as "blatant plagiarism." Fortunately, copyright doesn't extend to inspiration. You can't copyright a plot hook, a style of writing, etc. If copyright law is currently interpreted too broadly, shutting down derivative works that were merely inspired by something earlier, that's a separate problem.
Crappy day job? Parents' basement? Loans? Working spouse or significant other? Advance from a publisher who recognizes their potential? I'm not sure what you're getting at here, or why changes to copyright law would affect it at all.
Think about it for a minute. The vast majority of a musician's work is OUTSIDE the recording studio, performing live. It's easy to be cavalier about the fruits of one afternoon in the studio when you can still go out and make a boatload of money touring. (Remember, as recently as the 70's albums were often considered promotional material for live concerts, the real money-makers.)
Compare this to a novelist, who often spends YEARS of his life on a single novel. Can't exactly sell out football stadiums full of fans to watch you carefully develop characters and fine-tune the same passages over a period of months. If a novelist isn't making money from the sales of his novel, he's probably not making money off it, period.
Isn't there an option D where Microsoft just distributes an out-of-date version to anyone who turns in a coupon after the GPLv3 handover? Wouldn't that stuff still be licensed under GPLv2?
Or does the GPL changeover apply retroactively to old versions as well? That seems kind of... odd.
I'm unsurprised that anti-climate-change folks can find a few PhDs who will agree with them. There are a lot of scientists out there, after all. But unless Morano's "more to come" has another 10,990 scientists on it, his "converts" are still nothing compared to the number of scientists who DO buy the global warming argument.
Obviously techies can just apt-get WINE, and semi-techies can just go to the website and download it. The only people this would seem to HURT are non-techies who can't even manage that much. Can you imagine even explaining the situation to those people?
SLASHDOTTER: Bad news, Grandma. That new Linux Dell you're getting won't come with WINE. GRANDMA: Wine? Like, alcohol? S: No, no. It's a program CALLED "WINE." G: Why's it called that? S: It's an acronym. G: What for? S: Um, "WINE is not an emulator." G: It's in its own acronym? S: Well, yeah, it's recursive. I think it's kind of a joke. G: Okay, well, what does it do? S: It emulates Windows so you can... G: I thought you just said it's NOT an emulator. S: Well, right. G: It's in the name of the program. S: Yeah. So technically it's an interpreter, I think, but EFFECTIVELY what it does is let you run Windows programs in Linux. G: But didn't you say that Windows programs are buggy and full of viruses? S: Well, yeah. G: And that's why you're making me learn this Linux thing instead of just running Windows in the first place? S: Yeah. G: So why would I WANT to run Windows programs? S:...NO CARRIER. G: Oh my stars, not again.
I'm with you on the RPGs and fighters, but I'm doubtful about FPS games. Last I heard, they're really not big sellers in Japan; even the Metroid Prime series sells a lot better Stateside than in Japan.
I remember actually buying Quake 2 because this game was supposed to be a mod for it. Then, a few years later, there were big, gushing preview articles in PC game magazines about how TF2 was coming out after all, for the Half-Life engine, and it would be the BEST EVER, with volumetric fog and level-of-detail meshes and something about character animation. (All this sounded cutting-edge at the time.) Then it never came out, and now the cycle repeats itself.
This game has been in development almost as long as Duke Nukem Forever. I think we're well into "put up or shut up" territory here.
I'd say the REAL obstacle here is playback equipment. I can tell you right now that music sounds a lot better on CD in my dad's $4000 stereo system with $1000 CD-player than it would in a higher-bitrate format on any computer speakers. Even if you plugged a desktop computer with an expensive sound card into that $4k amp and speakers, it would still sound worse than a CD; that CD player cost $1000 for a reason, after all.
For really top-notch audio quality of the type audiophiles care about, the playback equipment is at least as important as the recording medium, and there's simply no reasonably cheap computer audio that can match audiophile CD systems. And on the flip side, for anything below audiophile-level sound quality, CD audio probably is in fact "good enough."
The argument isn't that without the lese majeste laws Thais would immediately rebel. The argument is that these laws stifle debate, and prevent any sort of anti-royal sentiment from even getting started.
It's a more subtle kind of thought-policing. You don't prevent people from expressing what they think; you prevent them from thinking it in the first place.
What are our options? Either corporations research and create drugs, or government does it.
The old capitalism versus socialism argument. Capitalists claim that the free market is much more efficient than a government bureaucracy and thus will actually produce better results in the long term. Socialists claim that capitalism is greedy and inhumane, and that a responsible government is the best answer.
Now, in this particular case, it seems clear to me that there would be massive problems with socializing medical research. Would you really like all medical research funding in the US to be reliant on the political urges of George Bush and company? Do you think the morning-after pill would have been funded by the Republicans? Heck, would AIDS research have been funded, back when a good chunk of conservative America thought it was divine punishment for Sodomites?
I like how the conventional Slashdot wisdom here is, "of COURSE giving students laptops is an idiotic waste of money!" when so many people here are also strong supporters of the One Laptop Per Child initiative. If making sure children in poor countries have access to computers is so important, how is doing the same for kids right here not as important, especially when kids here are probably much more likely to need computer literacy in their workplace?
Why quote only part? Listen to the whole thing here. http://youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE And then tell me, with a straight face, that this guy is even 100% aware that there are words coming out of his mouth.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, $200,000 is 10 years' salary for someone "poor" by U.S. standards, and 1000 years' salary for someone relatively "poor" by global standards. Sorry, but by any meaningful definition of the word, anyone who is willing to pay $200 grand for a 90-minute flight is extremely wealthy.
The article makes it sound like they'll be using this system basically to track down the people who type in IDDQD and activate God Mode, but it seems more likely that it'll be used largely as a GM tool. Looking at some of the exploits in other MMOs, it's easy to see how this could be used to track down exploits, from botting to teleportation hacks to bugged mobs that give too much loot. ("Hmm, why has Lesser Bog Rat been killed 700 times more often than any of the mobs around it?")
It could also be a valuable tool for GMs. If it really does keep a detailed log of everything that's happened in-game, they should be able to track down lost items, punish bad behavior, and so on much more effectively.
Heaven help the poor sap if someone were to steal his cellphone. or his wallet. or his briefcase. or his laptop.
Or his iPod again, if he uses the built-in address book.
The comic isn't a standalone; you really have to read the strip regularly for it to make much sense. The Roomba, the weird dialogue, and the non-sequiter ending are all part of the comic style. The guy CAN write grammatical prose.
At first the term "Spiderman" suggested some strange type of monstrous insect, but fortunately the submitter indicated that this is in fact the name of a character from a children's "comics book." This type of reminder is always welcome on a site like Slashdot, where a large portion of the readership has little familiarity with such works of fiction, or indeed with the so-called "science fiction" in general.
I'd hardly describe the type of abstract inspiration you're talking about as "blatant plagiarism." Fortunately, copyright doesn't extend to inspiration. You can't copyright a plot hook, a style of writing, etc. If copyright law is currently interpreted too broadly, shutting down derivative works that were merely inspired by something earlier, that's a separate problem.
Crappy day job? Parents' basement? Loans? Working spouse or significant other? Advance from a publisher who recognizes their potential? I'm not sure what you're getting at here, or why changes to copyright law would affect it at all.
How about copyright just lasts until the end of life on Earth? Hardly perpetual on the cosmological scale. Does that solve your conundrum?
Think about it for a minute. The vast majority of a musician's work is OUTSIDE the recording studio, performing live. It's easy to be cavalier about the fruits of one afternoon in the studio when you can still go out and make a boatload of money touring. (Remember, as recently as the 70's albums were often considered promotional material for live concerts, the real money-makers.)
Compare this to a novelist, who often spends YEARS of his life on a single novel. Can't exactly sell out football stadiums full of fans to watch you carefully develop characters and fine-tune the same passages over a period of months. If a novelist isn't making money from the sales of his novel, he's probably not making money off it, period.
Isn't there an option D where Microsoft just distributes an out-of-date version to anyone who turns in a coupon after the GPLv3 handover? Wouldn't that stuff still be licensed under GPLv2?
Or does the GPL changeover apply retroactively to old versions as well? That seems kind of... odd.
I'm unsurprised that anti-climate-change folks can find a few PhDs who will agree with them. There are a lot of scientists out there, after all. But unless Morano's "more to come" has another 10,990 scientists on it, his "converts" are still nothing compared to the number of scientists who DO buy the global warming argument.
Obviously techies can just apt-get WINE, and semi-techies can just go to the website and download it. The only people this would seem to HURT are non-techies who can't even manage that much. Can you imagine even explaining the situation to those people?
...NO CARRIER.
SLASHDOTTER: Bad news, Grandma. That new Linux Dell you're getting won't come with WINE.
GRANDMA: Wine? Like, alcohol?
S: No, no. It's a program CALLED "WINE."
G: Why's it called that?
S: It's an acronym.
G: What for?
S: Um, "WINE is not an emulator."
G: It's in its own acronym?
S: Well, yeah, it's recursive. I think it's kind of a joke.
G: Okay, well, what does it do?
S: It emulates Windows so you can...
G: I thought you just said it's NOT an emulator.
S: Well, right.
G: It's in the name of the program.
S: Yeah. So technically it's an interpreter, I think, but EFFECTIVELY what it does is let you run Windows programs in Linux.
G: But didn't you say that Windows programs are buggy and full of viruses?
S: Well, yeah.
G: And that's why you're making me learn this Linux thing instead of just running Windows in the first place?
S: Yeah.
G: So why would I WANT to run Windows programs?
S:
G: Oh my stars, not again.
I'm with you on the RPGs and fighters, but I'm doubtful about FPS games. Last I heard, they're really not big sellers in Japan; even the Metroid Prime series sells a lot better Stateside than in Japan.
A preliminary mockup of the effort can be found here.
I remember actually buying Quake 2 because this game was supposed to be a mod for it. Then, a few years later, there were big, gushing preview articles in PC game magazines about how TF2 was coming out after all, for the Half-Life engine, and it would be the BEST EVER, with volumetric fog and level-of-detail meshes and something about character animation. (All this sounded cutting-edge at the time.) Then it never came out, and now the cycle repeats itself.
This game has been in development almost as long as Duke Nukem Forever. I think we're well into "put up or shut up" territory here.
I'd say the REAL obstacle here is playback equipment. I can tell you right now that music sounds a lot better on CD in my dad's $4000 stereo system with $1000 CD-player than it would in a higher-bitrate format on any computer speakers. Even if you plugged a desktop computer with an expensive sound card into that $4k amp and speakers, it would still sound worse than a CD; that CD player cost $1000 for a reason, after all.
For really top-notch audio quality of the type audiophiles care about, the playback equipment is at least as important as the recording medium, and there's simply no reasonably cheap computer audio that can match audiophile CD systems. And on the flip side, for anything below audiophile-level sound quality, CD audio probably is in fact "good enough."
It's redundant in a broader sense, because everyone on Slashdot has read it a million times already.
The argument isn't that without the lese majeste laws Thais would immediately rebel. The argument is that these laws stifle debate, and prevent any sort of anti-royal sentiment from even getting started.
It's a more subtle kind of thought-policing. You don't prevent people from expressing what they think; you prevent them from thinking it in the first place.
What are our options? Either corporations research and create drugs, or government does it.
The old capitalism versus socialism argument. Capitalists claim that the free market is much more efficient than a government bureaucracy and thus will actually produce better results in the long term. Socialists claim that capitalism is greedy and inhumane, and that a responsible government is the best answer.
Now, in this particular case, it seems clear to me that there would be massive problems with socializing medical research. Would you really like all medical research funding in the US to be reliant on the political urges of George Bush and company? Do you think the morning-after pill would have been funded by the Republicans? Heck, would AIDS research have been funded, back when a good chunk of conservative America thought it was divine punishment for Sodomites?
I like how the conventional Slashdot wisdom here is, "of COURSE giving students laptops is an idiotic waste of money!" when so many people here are also strong supporters of the One Laptop Per Child initiative. If making sure children in poor countries have access to computers is so important, how is doing the same for kids right here not as important, especially when kids here are probably much more likely to need computer literacy in their workplace?
When I type in "09 f9" (minus quotes) in Firefox's Google Search, it auto-suggests the full key.
And surely the best way to make sure that other companies LEARN that lesson is to never talk about it publicly again because you find it boring!
Last I heard, Apple DOESN'T use DRM in its software or hardware. It's copyrighted and largely closed-source and so on, but not DRM'ed. So... yeah.
Why quote only part? Listen to the whole thing here.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE
And then tell me, with a straight face, that this guy is even 100% aware that there are words coming out of his mouth.