Seriously, if I ever create a piece of GPL'ed software, that's what I'll do. I may also use someone else's suggestion to start the license text with something along the lines of, "YOU DO NOT NEED A LICENSE TO RUN THIS SOFTWARE. If you are planning to redistribute this software or its source code, with or without alterations, please see below." Those two sound like a winning combination.
It seems to me that the RIAAs suit is tacit admission of monopolistic behavior. Think about it; they're trying that LimeWire is good for nothing but illegally downloading their copyrighted works, i.e. there is no "legitimate use" in legal terms. Doesn't that imply that the RIAA has an overwhelming share of the content market? Doesn't the fact that you can point to a number of artists who sell and distribute their work through alternative channels, including LimeWire, imply that the RIAA could be targeting LimeWire to eliminate competition in their field?
Its sad when Sony implementing a half-decent menu design is news.
Dont get me wrong, the gui seems very clean and usable, but theres nothing in there you wouldn't expect.
I do have one question though; will it be able play games automatically without going through the GUI? Because tapping "Animal Crossing DS" is one thing, but scrolling through a bunch of menus seems like it would throw up a mental barrier to play.
I don't think you understand what in loco parentis means. Libraries do not act in loco parentis simply because the children are in the building; the children have no legal obligation to be there, and the parent has not specifically given them authority over their child. Libraries are not day care centers. In fact, most public libraries won't allow children into the building without a parent. If in loco parentis worked the way you think it does, the clerk at Dillards could search through your kids personal belongings and confiscate them if you left them alone for five minutes.
2) Age restrictions based on ratings are prior restraint and are very, very unconstitutional. It's one thing to have a court decide what is in violation after the fact, and an entire different kettle of fish to have someone decide that before the product hits the shelves. You brought up pornography, so it's salient to note that there is no rating system that determines what is pornographic in the states. That has to be proven in court after the fact. This is the only reason that the indecency laws that rule pornography are still legal.
3) Prior restraint aside, no speech should ever, ever, ever have an age restriction above the minimum voting age. Ever.
4) How do you figure that letting the ESRB determine what is legal or illegal is in any way constitutional?
Now, as store policy your idea sounds very effective. But as law its unconstitutional as the day is long.
Okay, so you've established that the point of the Lennon Estate as a holding entity for his rights is to make money for his children. I'd say that proves my point that the current system of copyright isn't serving its purpose. You could have brought up the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, which is at least tangentially related to his estate and does encourage new art, although most if not all of the funding for that contest comes from corporate sponsorship.
You're right; it seems there is a lot of controversy as to when the library was destroyed and whether it was intentional or not. I was thinking of Theodosius's decree to have the pagan temples burned, but it seems that this is a myth. I honestly didn't know that. Thanks for the tip.:)
My point in noting that the book was licensed - by which I mean sanctioned for publication by the rights holders - was to show that the materials that (one could argue) were put out to preserve the Beatles' music through the official channels were unnecessary, since everyone already knew the songs anyway. We could have had a Beatles singalong from memory.
As for it being a problem under the current copyright laws, I'm pretty sure private performance still falls under fair use, especially if its from memory. I dearly hope I'm not wrong, because I sing in the shower all the time, and those RIAA fines can be pretty steep.
Given that copyright was intended to give artists incentive to continue creating music (which is the grandparent's point, and also happens to be true), how does the Lennon estate justify its privilege to hold the rights to John's work? How are they furthering the cause of encouraging new music creation?
For thousands of years, we had no IP laws. Minstrels, musicians, writers and poets copied from one another and competed for the resulting ubiquity of their works. Hundreds of thousands of books were thus preserved, until they were intentionally destroyed at Alexandria.
My family gets together with several other families every year for a big Easter weekend camp out, and Saturday night is always dedicated to a campfire sing-along. This year, one of my cousins brought a huge compilation of Beatles arrangements (fully licensed) to the sing along. There was only one book, but somehow everyone around the fire knew the songs. We'd all heard them from our parents' album collections. Some of us remembered a now-defunct all-Beatles radio station that played strong for one summer and then shut down because it was unprofitable. Some of us even remember singing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or the Money Can't Buy Me Love Madrigal in choir. Considering the Beatles haven't been heavily advertised since Anthology, which was almost 10 years ago, I'd say that was pretty damn good. Estates and commercialism aside, the Beatles wrote and performed some amazing music. If all the IP laws in the world disappeared tomorrow, their music would not be forgotten. So what is the function of the Lennon estate again?
Considering the "Ray Gun" they're talking about is actually a speed reader gun like the kind cops use to watch your speed on the real road...er..no. I guess you should actually read the article *before* you succumb to blind panic.
as the worst fantasy series I had read to date. It was just bad writing with no suspense or irony, cardboard cutout characters who were only defined by some vague labels and the magic items they carried, the cracks filled with an alphabet soup of terms that were somehow supposed to impress me. It was the crappiest writing I had ever read.
Heh. Since you're the kind that likes getting oblique advice, lemme give you some.
I've been around the block a few times, met a lot of people, seen a lot of things. I'm an information worker; I don't depot knowledge, I have to dig up the truth. And I'll tell you something about the truth. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't lift you up, it doesn't make you victorious or vindicated. It doesn't solidify your faith. Because when you tell the truth, it isn't you talking; it's the truth. It isn't your beliefs being defended, it's the truth.
Telling the truth will leave you certain but uninspired. It isn't certainty that propels men; it's excitement, identity, the sense of opportunity and the promise of togetherness. The truth offers none of these things because the truth doesn't care who you are, the truth doesn't promise you anything. The truth is like a stone; it just is. All its virtue is in being.
So when you say things in rage, defending the things you love, ask yourself; does it feel like the truth?
1. Create an ad campaign that borders on racism and would never go up in the U.S.
2. Place said ad somewhere in Europe.
3. Leak pictures of said ad to American civil liberties groups.
4. ???
5. Profit?
There are games on the PS3 that won't exist on other consoles.
Given. There will undoubtedly also be games like this for the 360 and Wii (especially the Wii.) The question is, will those games be fun enough to justify the costs, especially when compared to the 360's excellent online infrastructure and Wii's new controller, which are going to be delivering cutting edge experiences?
It seems to me like Sony is relying too heavily on franchises which had very bad installments on their previous generation hardware to carry the next generation hardware. In Japan, this may be less of a problem because the series are cultural icons. But we USians remember FFX and FFX-2, we remember Metal Gear Solid 2 and its transgressions against the very meaning of the word "game." We're aware that Kingdom Hearts 2 is weak on gameplay. And we remember that those games came out at premium prices. Now with the price of entry before even buying those games so high, I can't see any good reason to keep buying into that cultural vein; it has a recent history of delivering pretty but unfun products.
Not to mention that I can get a Wii, 2 DS lites, and Crystal Chronicles Wii for less money than it costs to buy the PS3 alone, and it's likely to be the most fun Final Fantasy game coming up any time soon.
I work in a tech shop. When we get laptops back from repair at Sony, they always come with a little insert that reads something like this:
Thank you for choosing Sony. Your Sony Vaio is designed for maximum durability. However, do not put pressure on the system, as this may cause LCD damage. Thank you.
Translation: Your Vaio is very, very easy to break. Thank you for choosing Sony.
Am I the only one here that feels uneasy about TellTale Games? I guess it's just because their web site makes it seem as if they actually made Grim Fandango and Sam and Max 2 - games that in reality certain members of their team worked on, and one of which was never even finished. It sits uneasy with me, knowing that Tim Schafer, the real creative engine behind Grim Fandango, is out there running his own indie game studio and not padding his resume with every game project he ever worked on. It just feels dishonest.
Honestly. Look at the about pages for TellTale and Double Fine and tell me which company looks like an outfit worth putting your money on. It looks like one is a game company, and the other is a venture capital vacuum.
If eugenics isn't a perfect example of the abuse of scientific ideas, I don't know what is. By your logic, we should also blame statisticians for institutional racism, since statisticians wrote "The Bell Curve." Hell, by your logic we should blame Jesus for the Crusades.
Actually, I feel that the GC fared better graphically for almost every game on the system. Even cheaper titles like Harvest Moon and Lost Kingdoms looked very smooth. Compare that to the PS2, where even big name titles like Shadow Hearts and Final Fantasy X had obnoxious flickering edges and sparse environments. I know I'm not the only one who played Shadow of the Colossus thinking, "man, this would be so much better on the GameCube."
Hell, if you wanna start a graphics fight, lets pull out Luigi's Mansion and...lets say...Midnight Club and Halo. Which one is the prettiest? Halo ain't bad, but Luigi's Mansion is just...damn. Beautiful.
Yes, but we're talking about stories here, not just video game programs. Without restrictions, there are no conflicts. Without conflict, there is no story.
On the flipside, without restrictions there are no goals or rules. And a game without goals or rules is not a game; it's a utility program or a toy, depending on whether it is useful or not.
For movies, there is a rating system that theaters and retailers use voluntarily. In other words, at this very moment movies and games are treated exactly the same way in the U.S. Studies have shown that they even have about the same level of enforcement: 65%.
Yet congress is trying to make a law specifically for video games where none exists for any other media. There are already general content laws (specifically obscenity laws) that apply to all media equally. That should be good enough.
The actors are just one part of the creative pipeline for a film, and usually work on the film for about 1/10th of the total production time. I could just as easily say that indie games are easier because its easier for an artist to create assets for an indie game than it is for an indie filmmaker to write, cast, direct, produce, advertise and distribute a movie.
We should be comparing the indie game developer to an indie film director/producer; in which case, you see that they are about equivalent in difficulty, except that the indie filmmaker has to organize a lot of people whereas the indie game developer does not; indeed, he may be doing the entire game himself.
I can't agree more that the PS3 controller is going to need a rumble to work well with its tilt component. However, I wouldn't point to WarioWare Twisted as a good example of what the PS3 controller will feel like, for two reasons.
First, one of the great things about Twisted was the fact that you were literally turning the screen. This allowed the GBA to work as a series of "virtual objects" that you manipulated in real space. Obviously, no home console will have this function. (It's technically possible that the Wii's connectivity with the DS might be able to use the DS + Twisted as a peripheral, but I wouldn't bet real money on it.)
The second issue is latency. There is no way to make the PS3 controls as sharp and delicate as the controls in Twisted, because in Twisted the tilt hardware is literally sitting right on top of the processor. We've already heard that the tilt control on the PS3 is laggy, but it's doubtful that even the Wii will have controls as sharp as the ones in WarioWare Twisted.
Slashdot Mirror
And with that, I declare the discussion closed.
Seriously, if I ever create a piece of GPL'ed software, that's what I'll do. I may also use someone else's suggestion to start the license text with something along the lines of, "YOU DO NOT NEED A LICENSE TO RUN THIS SOFTWARE. If you are planning to redistribute this software or its source code, with or without alterations, please see below." Those two sound like a winning combination.
It seems to me that the RIAAs suit is tacit admission of monopolistic behavior. Think about it; they're trying that LimeWire is good for nothing but illegally downloading their copyrighted works, i.e. there is no "legitimate use" in legal terms. Doesn't that imply that the RIAA has an overwhelming share of the content market? Doesn't the fact that you can point to a number of artists who sell and distribute their work through alternative channels, including LimeWire, imply that the RIAA could be targeting LimeWire to eliminate competition in their field?
Its sad when Sony implementing a half-decent menu design is news.
Dont get me wrong, the gui seems very clean and usable, but theres nothing in there you wouldn't expect.
I do have one question though; will it be able play games automatically without going through the GUI? Because tapping "Animal Crossing DS" is one thing, but scrolling through a bunch of menus seems like it would throw up a mental barrier to play.
I don't think you understand what in loco parentis means. Libraries do not act in loco parentis simply because the children are in the building; the children have no legal obligation to be there, and the parent has not specifically given them authority over their child. Libraries are not day care centers. In fact, most public libraries won't allow children into the building without a parent. If in loco parentis worked the way you think it does, the clerk at Dillards could search through your kids personal belongings and confiscate them if you left them alone for five minutes.
1) Age restrictions are censorship.
2) Age restrictions based on ratings are prior restraint and are very, very unconstitutional. It's one thing to have a court decide what is in violation after the fact, and an entire different kettle of fish to have someone decide that before the product hits the shelves. You brought up pornography, so it's salient to note that there is no rating system that determines what is pornographic in the states. That has to be proven in court after the fact. This is the only reason that the indecency laws that rule pornography are still legal.
3) Prior restraint aside, no speech should ever, ever, ever have an age restriction above the minimum voting age. Ever.
4) How do you figure that letting the ESRB determine what is legal or illegal is in any way constitutional?
Now, as store policy your idea sounds very effective. But as law its unconstitutional as the day is long.
Okay, so you've established that the point of the Lennon Estate as a holding entity for his rights is to make money for his children. I'd say that proves my point that the current system of copyright isn't serving its purpose. You could have brought up the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, which is at least tangentially related to his estate and does encourage new art, although most if not all of the funding for that contest comes from corporate sponsorship.
You're right; it seems there is a lot of controversy as to when the library was destroyed and whether it was intentional or not. I was thinking of Theodosius's decree to have the pagan temples burned, but it seems that this is a myth. I honestly didn't know that. Thanks for the tip. :)
My point in noting that the book was licensed - by which I mean sanctioned for publication by the rights holders - was to show that the materials that (one could argue) were put out to preserve the Beatles' music through the official channels were unnecessary, since everyone already knew the songs anyway. We could have had a Beatles singalong from memory.
As for it being a problem under the current copyright laws, I'm pretty sure private performance still falls under fair use, especially if its from memory. I dearly hope I'm not wrong, because I sing in the shower all the time, and those RIAA fines can be pretty steep.
Given that copyright was intended to give artists incentive to continue creating music (which is the grandparent's point, and also happens to be true), how does the Lennon estate justify its privilege to hold the rights to John's work? How are they furthering the cause of encouraging new music creation?
For thousands of years, we had no IP laws. Minstrels, musicians, writers and poets copied from one another and competed for the resulting ubiquity of their works. Hundreds of thousands of books were thus preserved, until they were intentionally destroyed at Alexandria.
My family gets together with several other families every year for a big Easter weekend camp out, and Saturday night is always dedicated to a campfire sing-along. This year, one of my cousins brought a huge compilation of Beatles arrangements (fully licensed) to the sing along. There was only one book, but somehow everyone around the fire knew the songs. We'd all heard them from our parents' album collections. Some of us remembered a now-defunct all-Beatles radio station that played strong for one summer and then shut down because it was unprofitable. Some of us even remember singing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or the Money Can't Buy Me Love Madrigal in choir. Considering the Beatles haven't been heavily advertised since Anthology, which was almost 10 years ago, I'd say that was pretty damn good. Estates and commercialism aside, the Beatles wrote and performed some amazing music. If all the IP laws in the world disappeared tomorrow, their music would not be forgotten. So what is the function of the Lennon estate again?
Considering the "Ray Gun" they're talking about is actually a speed reader gun like the kind cops use to watch your speed on the real road...er..no. I guess you should actually read the article *before* you succumb to blind panic.
as the worst fantasy series I had read to date. It was just bad writing with no suspense or irony, cardboard cutout characters who were only defined by some vague labels and the magic items they carried, the cracks filled with an alphabet soup of terms that were somehow supposed to impress me. It was the crappiest writing I had ever read.
But to be fair, I hadn't read Dune yet.
Heh. Since you're the kind that likes getting oblique advice, lemme give you some.
I've been around the block a few times, met a lot of people, seen a lot of things. I'm an information worker; I don't depot knowledge, I have to dig up the truth. And I'll tell you something about the truth. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't lift you up, it doesn't make you victorious or vindicated. It doesn't solidify your faith. Because when you tell the truth, it isn't you talking; it's the truth. It isn't your beliefs being defended, it's the truth.
Telling the truth will leave you certain but uninspired. It isn't certainty that propels men; it's excitement, identity, the sense of opportunity and the promise of togetherness. The truth offers none of these things because the truth doesn't care who you are, the truth doesn't promise you anything. The truth is like a stone; it just is. All its virtue is in being.
So when you say things in rage, defending the things you love, ask yourself; does it feel like the truth?
1. Create an ad campaign that borders on racism and would never go up in the U.S. 2. Place said ad somewhere in Europe. 3. Leak pictures of said ad to American civil liberties groups. 4. ??? 5. Profit?
There are games on the PS3 that won't exist on other consoles.
Given. There will undoubtedly also be games like this for the 360 and Wii (especially the Wii.) The question is, will those games be fun enough to justify the costs, especially when compared to the 360's excellent online infrastructure and Wii's new controller, which are going to be delivering cutting edge experiences?
It seems to me like Sony is relying too heavily on franchises which had very bad installments on their previous generation hardware to carry the next generation hardware. In Japan, this may be less of a problem because the series are cultural icons. But we USians remember FFX and FFX-2, we remember Metal Gear Solid 2 and its transgressions against the very meaning of the word "game." We're aware that Kingdom Hearts 2 is weak on gameplay. And we remember that those games came out at premium prices. Now with the price of entry before even buying those games so high, I can't see any good reason to keep buying into that cultural vein; it has a recent history of delivering pretty but unfun products.
Not to mention that I can get a Wii, 2 DS lites, and Crystal Chronicles Wii for less money than it costs to buy the PS3 alone, and it's likely to be the most fun Final Fantasy game coming up any time soon.
I work in a tech shop. When we get laptops back from repair at Sony, they always come with a little insert that reads something like this:
Thank you for choosing Sony. Your Sony Vaio is designed for maximum durability. However, do not put pressure on the system, as this may cause LCD damage. Thank you.
Translation: Your Vaio is very, very easy to break. Thank you for choosing Sony.
I criminalize harmless activities. Hell, it keeps the trolls in business. And Fox News. And the music companies. The list goes on...
Am I the only one here that feels uneasy about TellTale Games? I guess it's just because their web site makes it seem as if they actually made Grim Fandango and Sam and Max 2 - games that in reality certain members of their team worked on, and one of which was never even finished. It sits uneasy with me, knowing that Tim Schafer, the real creative engine behind Grim Fandango, is out there running his own indie game studio and not padding his resume with every game project he ever worked on. It just feels dishonest.
Honestly. Look at the about pages for TellTale and Double Fine and tell me which company looks like an outfit worth putting your money on. It looks like one is a game company, and the other is a venture capital vacuum.
If eugenics isn't a perfect example of the abuse of scientific ideas, I don't know what is. By your logic, we should also blame statisticians for institutional racism, since statisticians wrote "The Bell Curve." Hell, by your logic we should blame Jesus for the Crusades.
Actually, I feel that the GC fared better graphically for almost every game on the system. Even cheaper titles like Harvest Moon and Lost Kingdoms looked very smooth. Compare that to the PS2, where even big name titles like Shadow Hearts and Final Fantasy X had obnoxious flickering edges and sparse environments. I know I'm not the only one who played Shadow of the Colossus thinking, "man, this would be so much better on the GameCube."
Hell, if you wanna start a graphics fight, lets pull out Luigi's Mansion and...lets say...Midnight Club and Halo. Which one is the prettiest? Halo ain't bad, but Luigi's Mansion is just...damn. Beautiful.
Yes, but we're talking about stories here, not just video game programs. Without restrictions, there are no conflicts. Without conflict, there is no story.
On the flipside, without restrictions there are no goals or rules. And a game without goals or rules is not a game; it's a utility program or a toy, depending on whether it is useful or not.
A game or a product has no status of any kind under the Bill of Rights.
This is, quite possibly, the single most retarded thing I have ever read on slashdot. Thank you, sir.
I have just 3 points to make.
1. Movie ratings are not the law.
2. Movie ratings are not the law.
3. Movie ratings are not the law.
In fact, hold on...
Movie ratings are not the law.
I don't give a flying crap if the Clinton bill is only a little bit unconstitutional; you might as well think you can be "a little bit pregnant."
In the United States, movie ratings are not law.
For movies, there is a rating system that theaters and retailers use voluntarily. In other words, at this very moment movies and games are treated exactly the same way in the U.S. Studies have shown that they even have about the same level of enforcement: 65%.
Yet congress is trying to make a law specifically for video games where none exists for any other media. There are already general content laws (specifically obscenity laws) that apply to all media equally. That should be good enough.
It also costs to throw features in at the last minute, and guess who Sony will pass THOSE savings on to?
badanalogyguy? Is that you?
The actors are just one part of the creative pipeline for a film, and usually work on the film for about 1/10th of the total production time. I could just as easily say that indie games are easier because its easier for an artist to create assets for an indie game than it is for an indie filmmaker to write, cast, direct, produce, advertise and distribute a movie.
We should be comparing the indie game developer to an indie film director/producer; in which case, you see that they are about equivalent in difficulty, except that the indie filmmaker has to organize a lot of people whereas the indie game developer does not; indeed, he may be doing the entire game himself.
I can't agree more that the PS3 controller is going to need a rumble to work well with its tilt component. However, I wouldn't point to WarioWare Twisted as a good example of what the PS3 controller will feel like, for two reasons.
First, one of the great things about Twisted was the fact that you were literally turning the screen. This allowed the GBA to work as a series of "virtual objects" that you manipulated in real space. Obviously, no home console will have this function. (It's technically possible that the Wii's connectivity with the DS might be able to use the DS + Twisted as a peripheral, but I wouldn't bet real money on it.)
The second issue is latency. There is no way to make the PS3 controls as sharp and delicate as the controls in Twisted, because in Twisted the tilt hardware is literally sitting right on top of the processor. We've already heard that the tilt control on the PS3 is laggy, but it's doubtful that even the Wii will have controls as sharp as the ones in WarioWare Twisted.