I love the relative lack of configuration. I want to be doing my work, not spend my time tweaking how window borders should interact with each other.
Just because it's possible to tweak the way window borders interact with each other, doesn't mean you have to tweak the way window borders interact with each other. What it does mean is if you find the default way window borders interact with each other an irritation or a problem, you can change it.
Well-implemented configurability should be a boon to those who want it, and invisible to those who don't.
Avoiding anything like this in RPGs is pretty simple; don't use a levelling system. There's no reason for roleplaying to demand characters who constantly increase in combat ability and power. Indeed there's no reason for roleplaying to demand combat at all. It's just traditional, because that's what D&D did.
Read the words spelled out "Digital Rights Management". Whose rights? Who is managing?
That's why it's better known as "Digital Restrictions Management", since it does at least sort of manage restrictions, by creating them. It doesn't do anything at all to rights, of course, at least until people start writing laws which depend on whether DRM is present.
For some twenty years DRM was referred to as "Copy Protection" because that is exactly what it is
No it isn't. Such methods do not protect copies or the act of copying in any way, indeed it's almost the contrary; they try to prevent extra copies from coming into existence in the first place, and destroy any possibility of copying. 'Copy Prevention' is a more appropriate term.
But Digital Restrictions Management is different to Copy Prevention, because all Copy Prevention does is try to stop you from making copies. Digital Restrictions Management may stop you from using the file in the first place.
No, you see, you're talking about what some group of people lobbied some other group of people to write on a piece of paper, leading to its enforcement by threat of violence. Whereas I'm talking about a concept which has existed for as long as property has existed.
If you want to let lawmakers define your worldview, that's fine, but don't assume that I do.
People like to say all the time that downloading movies is not theft; it's copyright infringement. And that is true.
However in this case it is truly theft, because the 24 video was never in the public to "copy". This was outright theft of what is basically confidential data.
Your second paragraph shows that you do not understand your first.
It's not theft because nobody has ceased to possess anything. Whether what was being copied was supposed to be secret or not is irrelevant.
No it doesn't. It's just a watermark. It's not DRM. A watermark doesn't stop you from selling anything.
But it does assume you won't sell it. If you sell your watermarked file to someone who then goes and shares it with the world via P2P, it's you who gets the lawyers at the door. (Presumably.)
Even the impossible hypothetical situation described is wrong. The prohibition of modern private copying without permission was an accident. Copyright was designed to regulate the publishing industry, not private citizens. Private citizens should not be subject to restrictions as to when they can share useful data. We now have, for the first time, the potential for a society in which any citizen can send data to any other citizen. This is a revolutionary situation which we should be embracing with open arms, not deploying technological measures to destroy, just because it inconveniences the current model for funding large-scale media projects.
The difference is that Windows is an operating system, Linux is just a kernel. You can do quite a bit with Windows on its own. But there's not much you can do with Linux on its own, without anything from GNU.
Well, that's only part of the truth. There are three reasons why Linux viruses don't get around like Windows viruses; better security, lower population (also encompasses the lack of monoculture in network applications), and more careful users. And none of those reasons is the "real reason", they work in combination with each other to make the difference really really big.
Because they spend most of their time not making it easier for me to use their software, but making it more difficult for me to use the software of anyone else.
The value of copyright does not come out of nowhere; it derives its value by depriving others of value and rights. From an ethical point of view it's just the same as other taxation methods; you're depriving one group of people to give to another. Wether that's good or bad is arguable, and mostly a question of public utility.
Actually it's worse than taxation, you're depriving one group of people and not actually giving anything to the other, it's just that everyone but the copy"right" holder being deprived of this opens up opportunities for them.
Seems to me Corporate America is perfectly ready for Vista. It's just going to mostly ignore it for now. That works. It's not as if the release of Vista destroys all other currently working operating systems or anything.
There's little point in getting rid of a working hard drive unless you've got nowhere to put it. Even if you don't trust it not to fail in the near future, you can still use it to make some extra backups. Just make sure you make sufficient backups of important data.
So yet again, we have someone talking about interactive storytelling in games as if he's the one inventing the concept, seemingly unaware that the Japanese figured it all out several years ago. I bet he's never even heard of the milestones like 'Kanon'. If you want a story which couldn't have been done in "conventional" media, you can go and get 'Ever 17' right now, you don't need to sit around waiting for whatever faltering first steps he's going to be taking.
You can find a few decent games based on films, scattered around in huge mountains of rubbish. Goldeneye seems to be generally regarded as the best example, with all the Star Wars games made before Lucasarts gave up on quality about a decade ago also being of note.
For films based on games, it depends what sort of game you're looking at. There have been some great TV series based on games recently, (AIR TV probably being the best), but those were games which were almost entirely story to begin with. I don't actually know of a really good film based on a game, ironically films based on action games tend to have too little in the way of decent story, while films based on story games actually have too much good story; you can't compress it all into a film.
'Misc.' shouldn't really be under 'Casual Games', since something you haven't thought of or didn't consider worth classifying is not guaranteed to be casual. Especially since visual novels and simulations are going under 'misc' there.
That's disappointing. When I saw the title, I was hoping it was talking about AI issues which actually make games impossible to make, like the ability to cater for player actions not anticipated by the programmers or have non-scripted conversations. Instead it's just part of the endless drive for "More Performance!"
If you haven't paid your TV license (which you must pay if you own a device capable of handling video)
Actually, you only need a license if you actually receive television broadcasts with such a device. You can quite happily use a television purely to watch DVDs, play on consoles and the like without a license.
Slashdot Mirror
Good to see the human rights of search engines being protected.
Ah, wait...
Avoiding anything like this in RPGs is pretty simple; don't use a levelling system. There's no reason for roleplaying to demand characters who constantly increase in combat ability and power. Indeed there's no reason for roleplaying to demand combat at all. It's just traditional, because that's what D&D did.
No it isn't. Such methods do not protect copies or the act of copying in any way, indeed it's almost the contrary; they try to prevent extra copies from coming into existence in the first place, and destroy any possibility of copying. 'Copy Prevention' is a more appropriate term.
But Digital Restrictions Management is different to Copy Prevention, because all Copy Prevention does is try to stop you from making copies. Digital Restrictions Management may stop you from using the file in the first place.
No, you see, you're talking about what some group of people lobbied some other group of people to write on a piece of paper, leading to its enforcement by threat of violence. Whereas I'm talking about a concept which has existed for as long as property has existed.
If you want to let lawmakers define your worldview, that's fine, but don't assume that I do.
Your second paragraph shows that you do not understand your first.
It's not theft because nobody has ceased to possess anything. Whether what was being copied was supposed to be secret or not is irrelevant.
You could just tell them that closed course has exactly the same patent issues as open source.
Even the impossible hypothetical situation described is wrong. The prohibition of modern private copying without permission was an accident. Copyright was designed to regulate the publishing industry, not private citizens. Private citizens should not be subject to restrictions as to when they can share useful data. We now have, for the first time, the potential for a society in which any citizen can send data to any other citizen. This is a revolutionary situation which we should be embracing with open arms, not deploying technological measures to destroy, just because it inconveniences the current model for funding large-scale media projects.
The difference is that Windows is an operating system, Linux is just a kernel. You can do quite a bit with Windows on its own. But there's not much you can do with Linux on its own, without anything from GNU.
Well, that's only part of the truth. There are three reasons why Linux viruses don't get around like Windows viruses; better security, lower population (also encompasses the lack of monoculture in network applications), and more careful users. And none of those reasons is the "real reason", they work in combination with each other to make the difference really really big.
Because they spend most of their time not making it easier for me to use their software, but making it more difficult for me to use the software of anyone else.
Seems to me Corporate America is perfectly ready for Vista. It's just going to mostly ignore it for now. That works. It's not as if the release of Vista destroys all other currently working operating systems or anything.
There's little point in getting rid of a working hard drive unless you've got nowhere to put it. Even if you don't trust it not to fail in the near future, you can still use it to make some extra backups. Just make sure you make sufficient backups of important data.
Any such list without Kanon on it isn't worth the...platterspace it's written on.
Most good game stories actually have plenty of words. They're not frequently called 'visual novels' for nothing.
So yet again, we have someone talking about interactive storytelling in games as if he's the one inventing the concept, seemingly unaware that the Japanese figured it all out several years ago. I bet he's never even heard of the milestones like 'Kanon'. If you want a story which couldn't have been done in "conventional" media, you can go and get 'Ever 17' right now, you don't need to sit around waiting for whatever faltering first steps he's going to be taking.
You can find a few decent games based on films, scattered around in huge mountains of rubbish. Goldeneye seems to be generally regarded as the best example, with all the Star Wars games made before Lucasarts gave up on quality about a decade ago also being of note.
For films based on games, it depends what sort of game you're looking at. There have been some great TV series based on games recently, (AIR TV probably being the best), but those were games which were almost entirely story to begin with. I don't actually know of a really good film based on a game, ironically films based on action games tend to have too little in the way of decent story, while films based on story games actually have too much good story; you can't compress it all into a film.
'Misc.' shouldn't really be under 'Casual Games', since something you haven't thought of or didn't consider worth classifying is not guaranteed to be casual. Especially since visual novels and simulations are going under 'misc' there.
That's disappointing. When I saw the title, I was hoping it was talking about AI issues which actually make games impossible to make, like the ability to cater for player actions not anticipated by the programmers or have non-scripted conversations. Instead it's just part of the endless drive for "More Performance!"