I agree. I play MMOs for the multiplayer experience, and single player games for the "immersive universe" experience. MMOs are well known for the problem that not everyone can be the legendary hero, known for doing the things that no other person could, since the point of the game is to make everyone a legendary hero, so long as they grind long enough.
The intros are heavy on cut-scenes due to them being "intros". They're not really cut-scenes, anyway, due to you having to make choices in the middle of many of the dialog sessions.
It's nowhere near as cut-scene heavy as MGS4, though, so I'm happy enough.
On one hand, yes, media companies (and indies, etc) should develop things that people are willing to pay for, instead of putting out remakes and rehashes on a regular basis (i.e. Fark's "In yet another sign that Hollywood has truly run out of new ideas...")
On the other hand, there's no real ethical or legal excuse for pirating something, simply because you don't like the price of it. If you don't like the quality of the offering at the price it is offered, then don't buy it. It's quite simple.
I now expect 4 dozen posts, making car analogies, expounding on the "false" argument of lost sales, and pointing out that I'm likely an astroturfing RIAA/MPAA shill.
Oh, I forgot to mention, but you can see some pretty neat pillow lava formations sticking up from the foliage on the wide dividers between N and S-bound I-35 between Duluth and Minneapolis (prolly about 20-30 miles south of Duluth) if you know what you're looking for and where.
I happen to have taken a number of college level geology courses at University of Minnesota - Duluth. My memory is a little rusty, but it is indeed true that, at least in the case of Lake Superior, it's very obvious that the lake was created by magma subsidence. The basin still has magma tubes that lead to the lake (you can see them on the shore, as they erode much slower than the surrounding rock), and you can very easily see the igneous rock layers sloping (at remarkably steep angles) towards the lake basin from the surrounding hillsides (particularly where the rock was cut through to make paths for rail beds -- the metamorphic joints are particularly cool looking).
Glaciers made a lot of lakes in the upper mid-west of the US, but the Great Lakes required a different process.
I also seem to vaguely recall a rift valley that extended from the general area around Lake Superior down through Missouri, but I can't remember details about that.
The scene establishes the depth of evil and the cold bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain and his unit. By establishing that evil, it adds to the urgency of the player's mission to stop them.
Does not equal this (from TFS):
Footage shows the player engaged in killing civilians with terrorists
Which one is it (or is it both somehow)? This sounds like a bunch of uproar over a cutscene nobody understands the context of.
The player, presumably, has the choice of participating as a member of said rogue unit.
It's not uncommon in these sorts of games to switch between roles amongst different actors in the storyline. CoD: Modern Warfare 1 had 5-6 different characters that the player assumed the role of during the course of the game.
Moonies are part of a charismatic cult. Deal with it. And as an agnostic, I am quite confident in saying they are very, very different as a group than every other group you just mentioned (for one, those are ethnicities, not "religions").
The Washington Times also skews distinctly conservative in its political coverage, which isn't particularly relevant in this case, but it does serve to illustrate the distinct difference between the Washington Times and the Washington Post.
Zygotes/embryos are no more children than sunflower seeds are sunflowers. You need to work on that rationality a bit more.
That and "killing a violent criminal" would be fine if we had a flawless justice system, but we don't, so yeah, erring on the side of "not killing innocent people" is preferable.
Because you seem to think that "works for hire" have nothing to do with intellectual property.
If I create something, and own the copyright to it, I can choose contractually to license, sell, or give those rights to another party. My ability to do that, in the US at least, is Constitutionally protected. I, as the rights owner, get to dictate the terms of that transaction. If the receiver does not like my terms, they are not under any obligation to accept the transfer/license, BUT then they are legally prohibited from using my work except in very limited ways.
So, work for hire? Essentially my work is funneled right to the person who did the "hire", but that is STILL "intellectual property bullshit", as you say. The only difference is now the person who "hired" the artist has the rights transferred as soon as creation happened, instead of having to license it in a separate negotiation. They're still paying for my IP, it's just being immediately transferred to whomever hired me.
In any case, if, as you claim, most software is written internally, it is still heavily involved with "intellectual property bullshit". You're still paying for IP.
So it's copyright holders' fault that the majority of your income is the result of Works for Hire?
Not, it's not their fault. Nor is it mine that more and more people are no longer willing to 'rent' the ability to listen to music. As I said in another post, I'm more than happy for producers to be rewarded for broadcast/performance of their work within a set period, but I think that the period is way too long, and also that we need to redefine what constitutes a performance. Having a song playing over the radio is not a performance to my mind.
The reason you're stuck in that mindset is because you have an outdated and traditional idea of what a "performance is" as *only* being a theatrical production of some sort.
You can call it whatever you like, I guess, but it's still utilization of someone's creative work, and as such they are legally entitled to be compensated for a variety of those uses. The "copyrights are bullshit, man!" subculture simply doesn't think the entire situation through. The only reason they're able to P2P/Torrent the works that they're sharing, is because of the legacy system created by 400 years of copyright law and precedence.
Its perfectly sustainable, so long as people are willing to pay for what they utilize.
But the problem is more and more people are not willing to meet the terms music is licensed under anymore, so I would argue it is unsustainable in its current form. Sure, the terms were reasonable once, but the recording industry has pushed and pushed until it's really not fair to the consumer any more.
By "more and more" you actually mean "for a time it was easier for non-technical users to pirate creative works than pay for them". That is indeed true, but fortunately things are starting to look a little better given the pervasive nature of iTunes and other music services that cater to similarly non-technical users.
But, look, I feel the need to stress that licenses for public performances are *not* *new*. You've needed to obtain them for a good long time, and folks have been happily paying them (often without knowing it) for a long time. Often the only folks who actually explicitly know they're paying them are live music venue owners, and they pay a flat fee once a year (because, at least in the US, the venue owner is responsible for the license -- its not feasible to audit every cover band, and trying to track every song played in a venue that isn't original is equally unfeasible).
Now, the method that PRS is choosing to pay their "agents" by is obviously causing abuses, however, the solution is not to remove the ability of rights holders to govern the use of their works. The establishments and groups that *do* use music to attract/keep customers definitely are required to pay a licensing fee (sometimes its wrapped into a service -- you pay for a month of muzak for your department store in the US and the BMI/ASCAP fee is wrapped into that cost).
Keep in mind, particularly in terms of music, the overwhelming number of big, evil music companies got rights to works because the bands/artists traded those rights *to* them, in exchange for a variety of things. The only reason that big, bad media companies can enforce those rights, is because the artist themselves okay'd it.
Ultimately, and I know it sounds cliched, you're not harming the Big Labels. They will eventually come through in some form or another. By encouraging a mindset that supports disregard for copyright law, you hurt up and coming artists (I've seen it more than a few times, i.e. Blogs that do a review of a band's new release, and link to a MediaFire.rar of that album at the end of the review... wtf, people).
It's hard to find non-pirate-biased articles on this (the wikipedia article on this guy is pretty lackluster), but it was the DoJ seeking extradition in a criminal trial, not a civil suit.
His crew had already been prosecuted by the DoJ and he was the "ringleader". I'd need better sources in order to divine the rest of the story.
So far, at least, TPB is "only" in civil trouble. I doubt that so much effort would be exerted diplomatically for a civil trial.
The upside to the dying industry is; all musical artists will have a level playing field to earn a performance living on, music of all sorts will flourish and you won't be tied down to only bands that the industry selects as cooperative with their profits to listen to. Musicians will make money and possibly a living for a change. Music will be free. Performance will be paid.
My music isn't free unless I say it is. Otherwise, you have no right to utilize it. You gonna get rid of 400 years of copyright tradition simply because you don't like paying for something that someone else created and distributed?
Also, how are you going to hear about new music without a promotion campaign? Maybe you have all day to sift through music sites, MySpace, and ReverbNation, but most people don't.
There needs to be gatekeepers, because 99% of music is shit. I mean real shit: poor songs, poor playing, poor production -- not just "types/genres of music I find substandard". That's what "the industry" does, it filters.
Is it perfect? No, but I guarantee you that a free for all market would (and has -- most live performers who aren't doing covers get paid *nothing*) result in less money for musicians than the "dying" system.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I play MMOs for the multiplayer experience, and single player games for the "immersive universe" experience. MMOs are well known for the problem that not everyone can be the legendary hero, known for doing the things that no other person could, since the point of the game is to make everyone a legendary hero, so long as they grind long enough.
They're game types that serve different purposes.
It's not a matter of sneering at multiplayer *in general*. It has its place, just not in a game that is very obviously in the single player RPG genre.
The intros are heavy on cut-scenes due to them being "intros". They're not really cut-scenes, anyway, due to you having to make choices in the middle of many of the dialog sessions.
It's nowhere near as cut-scene heavy as MGS4, though, so I'm happy enough.
The game is solidly single player, for the folks who like single player RPGs.
I really don't get the need for people to have coop/multiplayer in EVERY GAME they come across.
On one hand, yes, media companies (and indies, etc) should develop things that people are willing to pay for, instead of putting out remakes and rehashes on a regular basis (i.e. Fark's "In yet another sign that Hollywood has truly run out of new ideas...")
On the other hand, there's no real ethical or legal excuse for pirating something, simply because you don't like the price of it. If you don't like the quality of the offering at the price it is offered, then don't buy it. It's quite simple.
I now expect 4 dozen posts, making car analogies, expounding on the "false" argument of lost sales, and pointing out that I'm likely an astroturfing RIAA/MPAA shill.
Have fun!
Because while some lawmakers are lawyers, not all lawyers are law makers.
I can't decide if you don't get the joke, or you're trying to be facetious.
Oh, I forgot to mention, but you can see some pretty neat pillow lava formations sticking up from the foliage on the wide dividers between N and S-bound I-35 between Duluth and Minneapolis (prolly about 20-30 miles south of Duluth) if you know what you're looking for and where.
I happen to have taken a number of college level geology courses at University of Minnesota - Duluth. My memory is a little rusty, but it is indeed true that, at least in the case of Lake Superior, it's very obvious that the lake was created by magma subsidence. The basin still has magma tubes that lead to the lake (you can see them on the shore, as they erode much slower than the surrounding rock), and you can very easily see the igneous rock layers sloping (at remarkably steep angles) towards the lake basin from the surrounding hillsides (particularly where the rock was cut through to make paths for rail beds -- the metamorphic joints are particularly cool looking).
Glaciers made a lot of lakes in the upper mid-west of the US, but the Great Lakes required a different process.
I also seem to vaguely recall a rift valley that extended from the general area around Lake Superior down through Missouri, but I can't remember details about that.
Most Indians are vegeterians because, as you mentioned, due to their religious beliefs in Hinduism.
I dunno about most. Some don't eat beef, but most of the folks that followed Hinduism that I've known will eat chicken, for sure.
I'm confused.
This (from TFA and Activision):
Does not equal this (from TFS):
Which one is it (or is it both somehow)? This sounds like a bunch of uproar over a cutscene nobody understands the context of.
The player, presumably, has the choice of participating as a member of said rogue unit. It's not uncommon in these sorts of games to switch between roles amongst different actors in the storyline. CoD: Modern Warfare 1 had 5-6 different characters that the player assumed the role of during the course of the game.
One of these things is not like the other...
Moonies are part of a charismatic cult. Deal with it. And as an agnostic, I am quite confident in saying they are very, very different as a group than every other group you just mentioned (for one, those are ethnicities, not "religions").
The others who have chimed in are correct.
The Washington Times also skews distinctly conservative in its political coverage, which isn't particularly relevant in this case, but it does serve to illustrate the distinct difference between the Washington Times and the Washington Post .
Yeah, but can you really trust a source run by Moonies?
And my personal favorite <SCRIPT LANGUAGE='SCHEME'>(define (eval exp env) (cond ((self-evaluating? exp) exp) ((variable? exp) (lookup-variable-value exp env)) ((quoted? exp) (text-of-quotation exp)) ((assignment? exp) (eval-assignment exp env)) ((definition? exp) (eval-definition exp env)) ((if? exp) (eval-if exp env)) ((lambda? exp) (make-procedure (lambda-parameters exp) (lambda-body exp) env)) ((begin? exp) (eval-sequence (begin-actions exp) env)) ((cond? exp) (eval (cond->if exp) env)) ((application? exp) (apply (eval (operator exp) env) (list-of-values (operands exp) env))) (else (error "Common Lisp or Netscape Navigator 4.0+ Required" exp))))</SCRIPT>
that's funny shit right there
I don't think they meant that people who joined the internet during or after Geocities are n00bs
But they were...
We can't all be 3-digiters :P
Oh, you mean the stage where the embryo looks vaguely animal-like, has no lungs, barely has a brain with no real CNS, has inoperable limbs and a tail?
"unborn child"
Yeah, that's not inflammatory language at all.
Zygotes/embryos are no more children than sunflower seeds are sunflowers. You need to work on that rationality a bit more.
That and "killing a violent criminal" would be fine if we had a flawless justice system, but we don't, so yeah, erring on the side of "not killing innocent people" is preferable.
Because you seem to think that "works for hire" have nothing to do with intellectual property.
If I create something, and own the copyright to it, I can choose contractually to license, sell, or give those rights to another party. My ability to do that, in the US at least, is Constitutionally protected. I, as the rights owner, get to dictate the terms of that transaction. If the receiver does not like my terms, they are not under any obligation to accept the transfer/license, BUT then they are legally prohibited from using my work except in very limited ways.
So, work for hire? Essentially my work is funneled right to the person who did the "hire", but that is STILL "intellectual property bullshit", as you say. The only difference is now the person who "hired" the artist has the rights transferred as soon as creation happened, instead of having to license it in a separate negotiation. They're still paying for my IP, it's just being immediately transferred to whomever hired me.
In any case, if, as you claim, most software is written internally, it is still heavily involved with "intellectual property bullshit". You're still paying for IP.
So it's copyright holders' fault that the majority of your income is the result of Works for Hire?
Not, it's not their fault. Nor is it mine that more and more people are no longer willing to 'rent' the ability to listen to music. As I said in another post, I'm more than happy for producers to be rewarded for broadcast/performance of their work within a set period, but I think that the period is way too long, and also that we need to redefine what constitutes a performance. Having a song playing over the radio is not a performance to my mind.
The reason you're stuck in that mindset is because you have an outdated and traditional idea of what a "performance is" as *only* being a theatrical production of some sort.
You can call it whatever you like, I guess, but it's still utilization of someone's creative work, and as such they are legally entitled to be compensated for a variety of those uses. The "copyrights are bullshit, man!" subculture simply doesn't think the entire situation through. The only reason they're able to P2P/Torrent the works that they're sharing, is because of the legacy system created by 400 years of copyright law and precedence.
Its perfectly sustainable, so long as people are willing to pay for what they utilize.
But the problem is more and more people are not willing to meet the terms music is licensed under anymore, so I would argue it is unsustainable in its current form. Sure, the terms were reasonable once, but the recording industry has pushed and pushed until it's really not fair to the consumer any more.
By "more and more" you actually mean "for a time it was easier for non-technical users to pirate creative works than pay for them". That is indeed true, but fortunately things are starting to look a little better given the pervasive nature of iTunes and other music services that cater to similarly non-technical users.
But, look, I feel the need to stress that licenses for public performances are *not* *new*. You've needed to obtain them for a good long time, and folks have been happily paying them (often without knowing it) for a long time. Often the only folks who actually explicitly know they're paying them are live music venue owners, and they pay a flat fee once a year (because, at least in the US, the venue owner is responsible for the license -- its not feasible to audit every cover band, and trying to track every song played in a venue that isn't original is equally unfeasible).
Now, the method that PRS is choosing to pay their "agents" by is obviously causing abuses, however, the solution is not to remove the ability of rights holders to govern the use of their works. The establishments and groups that *do* use music to attract/keep customers definitely are required to pay a licensing fee (sometimes its wrapped into a service -- you pay for a month of muzak for your department store in the US and the BMI/ASCAP fee is wrapped into that cost).
Keep in mind, particularly in terms of music, the overwhelming number of big, evil music companies got rights to works because the bands/artists traded those rights *to* them, in exchange for a variety of things. The only reason that big, bad media companies can enforce those rights, is because the artist themselves okay'd it.
Ultimately, and I know it sounds cliched, you're not harming the Big Labels. They will eventually come through in some form or another. By encouraging a mindset that supports disregard for copyright law, you hurt up and coming artists (I've seen it more than a few times, i.e. Blogs that do a review of a band's new release, and link to a MediaFire .rar of that album at the end of the review... wtf, people).
Patronage is a customer market of 1, not exactly something that promotes a wide variety of creative works.
It's hard to find non-pirate-biased articles on this (the wikipedia article on this guy is pretty lackluster), but it was the DoJ seeking extradition in a criminal trial, not a civil suit.
His crew had already been prosecuted by the DoJ and he was the "ringleader". I'd need better sources in order to divine the rest of the story.
So far, at least, TPB is "only" in civil trouble. I doubt that so much effort would be exerted diplomatically for a civil trial.
Wrong. Most of the world's software is written for internal use of the organization that paid for it: you're hired to code
How does this contradict the statement "Most software in the world is not OSS and you need to pay for most of it."
Companies pay for it as a work for hire, even if their employees do it internally.
The upside to the dying industry is; all musical artists will have a level playing field to earn a performance living on, music of all sorts will flourish and you won't be tied down to only bands that the industry selects as cooperative with their profits to listen to. Musicians will make money and possibly a living for a change. Music will be free. Performance will be paid.
My music isn't free unless I say it is. Otherwise, you have no right to utilize it. You gonna get rid of 400 years of copyright tradition simply because you don't like paying for something that someone else created and distributed?
Also, how are you going to hear about new music without a promotion campaign? Maybe you have all day to sift through music sites, MySpace, and ReverbNation, but most people don't.
There needs to be gatekeepers, because 99% of music is shit. I mean real shit: poor songs, poor playing, poor production -- not just "types/genres of music I find substandard". That's what "the industry" does, it filters.
Is it perfect? No, but I guarantee you that a free for all market would (and has -- most live performers who aren't doing covers get paid *nothing*) result in less money for musicians than the "dying" system.