Next thing you know, one of them will lob a bomb over to the other.
I can see it now...a scruffy, paunch MS coder sneaking around the edges of MS HQ, until he reaches the fence that seperates their land from Nintendo's. He hides behind some bushes, and takes a peek over his shoulder to make sure nobody's around. From the front pocket of his hoodie, he takes a small object that he can't quite conceal in his hand, and winds up as to throw a frisbee. As he releases it, the disc flies up and just over the rolling barbed wire of the fence.
The next day, one of Nintendo's roving security squads notices a something shiny near the fence, so the driver parks the jeep a safe distance away, and radios for backup. Minutes later, Nintendo's head of security is on scene. The vaguely Italian-looking fellow orders a Varia-suit wearing HAZMAT team to determine what the object is. They inch closer, and see it is simply a CD. Until, that is, one of them flips it to read the label side: it reads Windows ME. All hell breaks loose....
Man this would make a great war epic, as long as the generals were Master Chief and old Hiroshi "I'll swallow your soul" Yamauchi.
Even the game engine is ready to go. How much tweaking would it need to convert the Tron2.0 game into a MMORPG?
Sounds to me like somebody's never written an MMORPG. Not that I have, of course, but I have read interviews and articles about what goes into the engines used in them. And it's very different from what goes into a "regular" game.
This is a good idea, but I don't think this is the most effective way of doing things. Not everybody is on the Internet, and only a small fraction of those are really what we think of as "Internet people" and get into Youtube, Myspace, etc. To really get something into the public's consciousness, you have to aim at everyone and do it on multiple levels. That said, the web scene is a good place to try and recruit tech-savvy people.
I'm not relying on anything like that. I'm more relying on Sony PR spin, which is very good at hinting and FUDing about how powerful and super-awesome their game machines are, but never reveals real costs. The only number I remember coming from Sony was the "investment" they put into the PS3, which doesn't tell us much about how much each unit costs.
I'll rely on the independent financial whizzes.
You didn't link to actual articles, but losing $240 sounds similar to what I've read. The problem I have with these quotes, though, is that I'm not convinced they are taking everything into account. Namely, the fact that Sony's a huge electronics manufacturer. So any analysis would have to be a lot different than that of, say, Nintendo or Microsoft. I have yet to see any analysis which even admits this, much less tries to account for it.
there seems to be an agreement between Sony and Microsoft that HDCP protection won't actually be required by Blu-Ray discs until at least 2010, maybe even 2012
So basically what this means is that we have three (or at most six) years to get Joe Sixpack pissed off about this. All of us Slashdotters love to bitch and moan about the MAFIAA, but if we got off our collective asses and started making noise about this, we could probably prevent them from ever enabling this.
As for how to do this, well there's no one right way. Defective by Design is obviously relevant, as is the EFF. I think it would be effective for people to develop a little presentation that could be given to people, so those of us who belong to e.g. civic organizations could give a little talk to people about this stuff. Writing your elected officials is probably a good idea as well.
I assume you're referring to the claim of "Sony is h3morrhaging teh moneys on ps3!!1". If you are, please provide a link to a validated quote from someone within Sony as to how much the system actually costs to make.
You misunderstand how the whole manufacturing chain works.
You misunderstand how the whole marketing chain works. The number of Playstations sold will always be less than the number shipped. And in marketing, a more-impressive number is always better.
Also, the subtle distinction between "shipped" and "sold" works very well from a FUD point of view. Clueless and/or incompetent journalists will fuck up and conflate the two, resulting in $NEWS_ORGANIZATION proclaiming "10 million Playstations sold!". In addition, people who don't stop to examine what "shipped" means in this context will come to the same conclusion.
Just curious, but if the Nintendo DS has 35 million sold, and the Xbox 360 hopes to have an additional X million by....
I never understand why video game console flamewars never take into account all the systems out there. The handheld systems out now are not little toys: there are some seriously impressive games for them, both already released as well as upcoming. Hell, the next Dragon Quest will be on the DS.
Of course, this is Slashdot, so I probably shouldn't expect anything above teenage pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
So you speak for all Libertarians(tm)? I didn't think so.
God, you utopian Free Marketards are so fucking sad. Your hilariously inconsistent ideology presents numerous opportunities for trolling, yet you're all so fucking stupid that it's impossible to do so. I really hope the Free(tm) State(r) Project(c) succeeds, because then all you morons will shoot each other over minor quibbles and the world will be rid of you.
There has to be some way to force porn off the.com TLD.
Why? The domain was designed for commercial use. Porn sites are often commercial, therefore pornsite.com. If we start requiring special domains like this, two things happen:
1) It becomes a lot easier for people and organizations to be censored and harassed.
2) The people and organizations affected will host their content elsewhere and/or get a domain from a country without the requirement.
I think the underlying argument for libertarianism is that people should be free to live their lives the way they choose.
Ah, I get it. So when someone decides to live their life killing as many people as possible, we should just respect that because that's their choice. Or if a group of businesses decide to collude to prevent competition, we should just let them do it. Sounds like a fun world.
as a business that gets too corrupt ends up out of business
Oh, I didn't realize there was some measurement of corruption where if you go over 100 Carnegies or so your offices and upper management start self-combusting. Thanks for clearing that up.
There is a complete lack of context to their comments.
If you're referring to the radio clips, I call bullshit. The only way to show there is a "lack of context" is to produce either (a) longer recordings that show something was taken out of context, or (b) research based on longer recordings. And if you think that talk radio goons don't say stuff like this, well you're also wrong there.
I suggest we should base our discussions on more reasonable sources
If you mean "non-partisan", then that is impossible. There will always be people claiming Foo Times or Bar Magazine is partisan. It's also pretty hard to be completely non-partisan.
If you mean "mainstream", I don't think this is good either. These entities often aren't the most truthful either. For example, the 2004 US election had lots of, shall we say, irregularities, yet there was a near-total blackout in the media regarding them.
Either way, a search at Google News shows me that this story has not been picked up by any big newspapers or news organizations (that I recognize). Heh, and you won't be seeing it on tonight's news on any "local" network owned by Disney.
clips that ran as long as five minutes. That's beyond fair use in most circumstances.
I don't think this can be correct, mainly because copyright law does not say this. You say "most circumstances", but don't define what you actually mean. Are you talking about fair use of all copyrighted audio works? Or just talk radio?
If you are talking about "all audio", my guess is that you assume "most" fair use circumstances arise from pop songs (or something similar), where a 5-minute clip could contain two entire works, and therefore definitely be infringing. But there are many places when even using an entire work would be fair use. For example, a (radio or TV) news story on Apple computers might incorporate the Mac startup chime, which is certainly copyrighted. Yet uses like this are used all the time.
Regarding talk radio, you have a much more complex beast. Some shows go for several hours. Is 5 minutes a significant portion of this? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.
I think that you can only really claim 5 minutes is "usually" too much if you've either read research to this effect or done it yourself. And since this is Slashdot, I don't think you have.
Isn't governmental taxation and regulation interference in "the market"?
I'm guessing you already know this, but this is totally the wrong thing to post on Slashdot. Hopefully if I write a moderate reply, the trolls won't bite as hard...
Anyway, I wanted to say that The Free Market(tm) is kind of a mythical entity. Some people and political groups scream about it (and how holy it is), but I would argue that there's really no agreement as to a single definition of it.
Some people claim a market is "free" when it exists within a government that is extremely laissez-faire (think "libertarians"). Personally, I find their arguments interesting and sometimes convincing, but I usually come away with the feeling that their ideals are rather utopian. The tl;dr version of my thinking here is that with or without regulation, "the market" will always be subject to corruption and collusion. For an interesting take on this, I suggest reading Max Barry's novel "Jennifer Government", in which deregulation is the norm and the government itself has been privatized. I really enjoyed it.
Seconded. I've already e-mailed these folks about this; hopefully next year they'll do some basic fact-checking before proclaiming "LOL DUM LABEL!!1". Also:
How many people (outside of computer geeks) really know that most lottery tickets are printed on thermal paper?
Lots of gas station cashiers certainly do. I know this because that's how I found this little factoid out. Also, I'm sure "printing geeks" probably know about it:-).
Even if a player does get revoked, there's nothing stopping you from buying another player. Further, if someone manages to devise a deencryption algorithm that works universally, your entire argument here is a non-starter.
Slashdot Mirror
Next thing you know, one of them will lob a bomb over to the other.
...
I can see it now...a scruffy, paunch MS coder sneaking around the edges of MS HQ, until he reaches the fence that seperates their land from Nintendo's. He hides behind some bushes, and takes a peek over his shoulder to make sure nobody's around. From the front pocket of his hoodie, he takes a small object that he can't quite conceal in his hand, and winds up as to throw a frisbee. As he releases it, the disc flies up and just over the rolling barbed wire of the fence.
The next day, one of Nintendo's roving security squads notices a something shiny near the fence, so the driver parks the jeep a safe distance away, and radios for backup. Minutes later, Nintendo's head of security is on scene. The vaguely Italian-looking fellow orders a Varia-suit wearing HAZMAT team to determine what the object is. They inch closer, and see it is simply a CD. Until, that is, one of them flips it to read the label side: it reads Windows ME. All hell breaks loose.
Man this would make a great war epic, as long as the generals were Master Chief and old Hiroshi "I'll swallow your soul" Yamauchi.
I didn't ask for an example. I asked for an explanation of the theory.
I think they mean "free" as in "freedom" :D
the ability of a licensee to essentially attack the patent-holder via law suit to try to get the little guy to buckle.
I always thought that this was the entire reason patents existed, but I guess I was mistaken.
Even the game engine is ready to go. How much tweaking would it need to convert the Tron2.0 game into a MMORPG?
Sounds to me like somebody's never written an MMORPG. Not that I have, of course, but I have read interviews and articles about what goes into the engines used in them. And it's very different from what goes into a "regular" game.
This is a good idea, but I don't think this is the most effective way of doing things. Not everybody is on the Internet, and only a small fraction of those are really what we think of as "Internet people" and get into Youtube, Myspace, etc. To really get something into the public's consciousness, you have to aim at everyone and do it on multiple levels. That said, the web scene is a good place to try and recruit tech-savvy people.
You can rely on the Sony "estimates".
I'm not relying on anything like that. I'm more relying on Sony PR spin, which is very good at hinting and FUDing about how powerful and super-awesome their game machines are, but never reveals real costs. The only number I remember coming from Sony was the "investment" they put into the PS3, which doesn't tell us much about how much each unit costs.
I'll rely on the independent financial whizzes.
You didn't link to actual articles, but losing $240 sounds similar to what I've read. The problem I have with these quotes, though, is that I'm not convinced they are taking everything into account. Namely, the fact that Sony's a huge electronics manufacturer. So any analysis would have to be a lot different than that of, say, Nintendo or Microsoft. I have yet to see any analysis which even admits this, much less tries to account for it.
I'd like to learn more about this. Do you have any links that deal with this specific phenomenon in the context in which you are talking about?
Wait, what? I thought your original replies to me were just trolls. You were serious?!
there seems to be an agreement between Sony and Microsoft that HDCP protection won't actually be required by Blu-Ray discs until at least 2010, maybe even 2012
So basically what this means is that we have three (or at most six) years to get Joe Sixpack pissed off about this. All of us Slashdotters love to bitch and moan about the MAFIAA, but if we got off our collective asses and started making noise about this, we could probably prevent them from ever enabling this.
As for how to do this, well there's no one right way. Defective by Design is obviously relevant, as is the EFF. I think it would be effective for people to develop a little presentation that could be given to people, so those of us who belong to e.g. civic organizations could give a little talk to people about this stuff. Writing your elected officials is probably a good idea as well.
I assume you're referring to the claim of "Sony is h3morrhaging teh moneys on ps3!!1". If you are, please provide a link to a validated quote from someone within Sony as to how much the system actually costs to make.
You misunderstand how the whole manufacturing chain works.
You misunderstand how the whole marketing chain works. The number of Playstations sold will always be less than the number shipped. And in marketing, a more-impressive number is always better.
Also, the subtle distinction between "shipped" and "sold" works very well from a FUD point of view. Clueless and/or incompetent journalists will fuck up and conflate the two, resulting in $NEWS_ORGANIZATION proclaiming "10 million Playstations sold!". In addition, people who don't stop to examine what "shipped" means in this context will come to the same conclusion.
Either way, Sony wins.
Just curious, but if the Nintendo DS has 35 million sold, and the Xbox 360 hopes to have an additional X million by....
I never understand why video game console flamewars never take into account all the systems out there. The handheld systems out now are not little toys: there are some seriously impressive games for them, both already released as well as upcoming. Hell, the next Dragon Quest will be on the DS.
Of course, this is Slashdot, so I probably shouldn't expect anything above teenage pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
So you speak for all Libertarians(tm)? I didn't think so.
God, you utopian Free Marketards are so fucking sad. Your hilariously inconsistent ideology presents numerous opportunities for trolling, yet you're all so fucking stupid that it's impossible to do so. I really hope the Free(tm) State(r) Project(c) succeeds, because then all you morons will shoot each other over minor quibbles and the world will be rid of you.
There has to be some way to force porn off the .com TLD.
Why? The domain was designed for commercial use. Porn sites are often commercial, therefore pornsite.com. If we start requiring special domains like this, two things happen:
1) It becomes a lot easier for people and organizations to be censored and harassed.
2) The people and organizations affected will host their content elsewhere and/or get a domain from a country without the requirement.
I think the underlying argument for libertarianism is that people should be free to live their lives the way they choose.
Ah, I get it. So when someone decides to live their life killing as many people as possible, we should just respect that because that's their choice. Or if a group of businesses decide to collude to prevent competition, we should just let them do it. Sounds like a fun world.
as a business that gets too corrupt ends up out of business
Oh, I didn't realize there was some measurement of corruption where if you go over 100 Carnegies or so your offices and upper management start self-combusting. Thanks for clearing that up.
There is a complete lack of context to their comments.
If you're referring to the radio clips, I call bullshit. The only way to show there is a "lack of context" is to produce either (a) longer recordings that show something was taken out of context, or (b) research based on longer recordings. And if you think that talk radio goons don't say stuff like this, well you're also wrong there.
I suggest we should base our discussions on more reasonable sources
If you mean "non-partisan", then that is impossible. There will always be people claiming Foo Times or Bar Magazine is partisan. It's also pretty hard to be completely non-partisan.
If you mean "mainstream", I don't think this is good either. These entities often aren't the most truthful either. For example, the 2004 US election had lots of, shall we say, irregularities, yet there was a near-total blackout in the media regarding them.
Either way, a search at Google News shows me that this story has not been picked up by any big newspapers or news organizations (that I recognize). Heh, and you won't be seeing it on tonight's news on any "local" network owned by Disney.
clips that ran as long as five minutes. That's beyond fair use in most circumstances.
I don't think this can be correct, mainly because copyright law does not say this. You say "most circumstances", but don't define what you actually mean. Are you talking about fair use of all copyrighted audio works? Or just talk radio?
If you are talking about "all audio", my guess is that you assume "most" fair use circumstances arise from pop songs (or something similar), where a 5-minute clip could contain two entire works, and therefore definitely be infringing. But there are many places when even using an entire work would be fair use. For example, a (radio or TV) news story on Apple computers might incorporate the Mac startup chime, which is certainly copyrighted. Yet uses like this are used all the time.
Regarding talk radio, you have a much more complex beast. Some shows go for several hours. Is 5 minutes a significant portion of this? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.
I think that you can only really claim 5 minutes is "usually" too much if you've either read research to this effect or done it yourself. And since this is Slashdot, I don't think you have.
Isn't governmental taxation and regulation interference in "the market"?
I'm guessing you already know this, but this is totally the wrong thing to post on Slashdot. Hopefully if I write a moderate reply, the trolls won't bite as hard...
Anyway, I wanted to say that The Free Market(tm) is kind of a mythical entity. Some people and political groups scream about it (and how holy it is), but I would argue that there's really no agreement as to a single definition of it.
Some people claim a market is "free" when it exists within a government that is extremely laissez-faire (think "libertarians"). Personally, I find their arguments interesting and sometimes convincing, but I usually come away with the feeling that their ideals are rather utopian. The tl;dr version of my thinking here is that with or without regulation, "the market" will always be subject to corruption and collusion. For an interesting take on this, I suggest reading Max Barry's novel "Jennifer Government", in which deregulation is the norm and the government itself has been privatized. I really enjoyed it.
Ever heard of ? Of course, PJ is actually a journalist, so perhaps it's not the best example, but still.
They're one step ahead of you here. This was a problem with CSS, as there weren't many keys. With AACS, each player has a unique key.
Seconded. I've already e-mailed these folks about this; hopefully next year they'll do some basic fact-checking before proclaiming "LOL DUM LABEL!!1". Also:
:-).
How many people (outside of computer geeks) really know that most lottery tickets are printed on thermal paper?
Lots of gas station cashiers certainly do. I know this because that's how I found this little factoid out. Also, I'm sure "printing geeks" probably know about it
Even if a player does get revoked, there's nothing stopping you from buying another player. Further, if someone manages to devise a deencryption algorithm that works universally, your entire argument here is a non-starter.
It shows some graphical pics of games that have been converted to SVG (nice to say the least).
Whoa, there's actually a feature that GNOME had first! Holy shit, the great desktop war now has some new ammunition...
(also, GNOME revamped its sys-monitor graph-drawing-doohickeys first as well, using Cairo)