A couple points. First, as some have pointed out, in the US legal system there are two times you want to bring a case to trial. The first, is if you believe you are innocent of the crime you're accused of (which you should know if you're innocent or not). The second time you want to bring something to trial is if you feel the law you have broken is unjust (or the statutory punishment in this case). She screwed up in trying to weasel her way out of the charge initially, but she can't really be blamed for trying, it's not like she really wanted to get into a protracted legal battle in the first place. So, the "easy" way having failed, she's now trying to address the real issue, which is that the statutory fines are ridiculous.
The second, and somewhat more interesting point has to do with this authorization thing you've brought up. Generally the fine for copyright violation is calculated based on the number of infringements, that is, how many copies you made. The problem with arguing that authorizing a copy is infringement is it then becomes impossible to calculate the infringing amount. There are essentially 3 ways to calculate the amount. First, you can calculate it based on the number of works authorized. That would make her guilty of 24 cases of infringement, whether or not 1 person, or 1 million people downloaded a copy. The second way to view it, is that authorizing it on a file sharing network is authorizing everyone on the network, in which case she's guilty of infringement for however many people were on the network at the time she put the files up. Of course, judging infringement in that case becomes much more difficult because you now need a way to track unique users on a P2P network over an arbitrary period of time. The final way to calculate it would be to pick some fixed number of infringements for those that are authorizing for general distribution such as 25. In that case her infringement would be equal to 25*24 = 600 cases of infringement.
Well, my main concern was more over what impact consent would have on the legal industry. I'm assuming that trials and lawsuits would still be in effect, and my concern would be over how you prove in court whether or not someone was informed of the prevailing rule base. This also goes back to one of the original questions I had which is, how do you decide which rule is in effect when a super-units and sub-units rules are in contradiction to one another. Does the sub-unit always prevail over the super-unit?
One thing I've been considering and I think would be a good principle for all governments is an expiration of laws. Anything over say 10 years old has to come up for review and be re-passed otherwise it's no longer an enforceable law. This would seriously help to streamline the legal framework. You'd no longer have to do extensive research into laws that are 50 years old and at the time of passing didn't take into account all kinds of current issues.
I'm not sure about this numbering thing you're using either. It would require people to memorize all kinds of random laws by number or carry around a big rule book with all the numbers available for reference. Also, if you're creating a new law how would these numbers be assigned? Would you just request a new one from some database somewhere managed by a central authority?
There are also some issues concerning ethics. Many people would for instance be against things like dog fights on the principle that they're cruel to the animals, but in your system it would be entirely legal to do whatever you want to anything non-human, even if say 99% of the population is against it. Actually, the answer to the previous issue would depend on how you distributed laws between the super-unit and sub-unit.
Well, you addressed one of my points, but none of the others. Something I'd also be concerned about is proving acceptance of a rule-base. If I enter your property and you show me a set of rules, but it's been doctored and doesn't cover some of your rules, how do I prove after the fact that I wasn't entirely informed as such?
It's a neat idea, but in practice it couldn't be done. You'd have no one of knowing from location to location what set of laws are in effect. What if say a neighborhood passes a law that makes it illegal to wear blue on Tuesdays, and you go to visit your friend on Tuesday wearing blue and get chucked in jail for it. Also, I would expect you'd want the state or city police to enforce these local laws, or will everyone have to provide their own police for at every level? Assuming that you'll use the city or state police, what happens if some small voting unit decides to ban use of firearms for police and only allow things like tasers, would you have a check point at the "border" where the cops coming in need to exchange their guns for tasers? What happens if one of the smaller units violates a law of a larger unit? I suppose that couldn't happen because you'd need a unanimous vote, and if a sub-unit is against it it wouldn't pass, but what happens if you pass a law in the super-unit, then a sub-unit decides they don't like it and passes a law in contradiction to the law of the super-unit?
There's a kernel of a good idea there I think, but it needs more fleshing out.
You left out the part where the senator turns down things that would make them extremely unpopular with the voting public. Sure they get some slimy stuff passed anyway, but they're careful enough about it that it's hard to pin them to it. Also don't forget the last minute additions to bills that are totally unrelated to that bill, that's one of their favorite tricks. Can pass an anti-poison in the food bill, or something equally stupid everyone would be in favor of, but tack in a little extra clause that say makes it legal for megacorps to dump excess hazardous waste into the ocean or some equally evil piece of legislation. Senator looks good because who wants poison in their food, and still collects a fat check from the mega-corps because he got their legislation passed at the same time.
This will depend a lot on what definition of majority they're using. If it's a simple majority something like this could be very unpopular. Get 50.1% of the population to vote for something and you've suddenly got 49.9% very unhappy. A good system might require say 75% in favor to pass, with anything less than say 25% being tossed out. If it runs in between those two then it needs to be modified and resubmitted. Would be good if in addition to voting they provided a section for comments. Could say something like "I voted against this because of clause 2, if you removed that I'd vote for it", then at least whoever proposed the legislation would have some clue on how to change it to make it more acceptable.
What is the point of this fit PC again? It's semi-custom hardware which is geeky, and the base system is really tiny. I think they missed its true calling by suggesting it should be used as a e-mail/web box, as one of these would totally rock as a firewall or other specialized headless system. Right out of the box it already has 2x100M ethernet jacks, which although not as nice as dual gigabit should be enough for most standard home uses. I mean, who has a greater than one gigabit connection to their home (this being slashdot and all, I'm sure a few of you have OC3 lines or something equally massive, but for the sake of everyone lets just ignore that and say "typical home user")?
Well, I would call it a FPS myself, or perhaps more accurately and Adventure FPS. Half Life 2 does start to tread into less FPSish territory with some of the puzzles, but on the whole they were such a minor portion of the game that it didn't really matter. As for Halo, a cut scene is different from actually controlling a character in third person. I would argue though that Prime is more adventure than it is FPS, so rather than being an FPS with a few adventure elements like Half Life 2, it's more like a Platformer/Adventure game with FPS elements.
I was under the impression it was going to be available for the PC. I thought I saw the pre-release box for it in the PC section of a local game shop. Assuming it is 360 only, I'll just have to wait till I have enough spare cash, and the price looks right to get it and a 360, assuming I'm still interested in playing it by that point.
I picked up Phantom Hourglass a few days ago and so far it's great. The control scheme can cause some headaches occasionally, mostly because when I have a enemy heading at me I don't want to take the time to click the boomerang icon, then draw the path I want it to follow. The mini-games can also be a bit tough to complete, but since those are all just bonuses and not needed to complete the core game that doesn't really detract any from the experience. I figure I'm at least 2/3 of the way done with it (mostly playing at night right before bed), and I'd say it's a pretty good addition to any DS library.
Some purists might argue that it does. The main point of the Prime series (and all Metroid series really) was to explore and find power-ups that allowed you to get farther into the "dungeons". In contrast the primary goal of most FPS games is to make it from point A to point B by killing or otherwise eliminating anything that gets in your way, possibly with conditions attached such as ensuring that some object is either protected or destroyed. I think one of the key features that sets Prime apart from other more traditional FPS titles is the need to use the various Visors and jump upgrades which effectively make the game play closer to a platformer such as Mario Sunshine. The fairly constant switch to third person when performing certain jumps and using the morph ball also serves to distance Prime from a FPS.
Sega bombed out because people got sick of them releasing a new console (or expansion to a console that was required to play specific games) every 6 months, and only putting out a couple dozen games. The Genesis had a decent run, but everything after that was just insane. SegaCD, 32X (what a rip that was, it had what, all of 4 games for it), the Saturn, and the last straw the Dreamcast, which was a shame because the Dreamcast was actually a pretty good system (I still have mine). It got to the point where people said "Oh, Sega just released a new system, wonder what 10 games besides Sonic will get released before they pop out the next one".
Now, you want to see Nintendo bomb out? Simple, have every other game released require a new $50 wiimote attachment that only works for that and maybe 1 other game. I guarantee if Nintendo did that people would balk. As it is, the Wii is doing at least as well as all the others (certainly better than the PS3). If I didn't have a gaming PC (and could stomach playing FPSes on a console) I would probably pickup a 360. As for PS3, not until the price drops to at least half what it is now.
Most people are probably like me and would love to own a PS3. Just as soon as the price drops below $300 for the system, a game, and a controller. Until then I don't care how nice the games are, I'm not paying $500+ for a game system. For that kind of money I'd be well on my way to a really nice gaming rig that I could also use professionally (and count as a business expense).
Well, I'm proud to say, I was partially right there. My Dreamcast still works flawlessly. Hasn't had a new game made for it for a damn long time now, though.
Not strictly true. Hasn't had a US game made in a long time, but it's still possible to get new releases for it from Japan. At least as of a year ago, I think I heard somewhere that they finally stopped making Dreamcast games even in Japan recently.
I don't do FPS on consoles (Metroid Prime being an exception, but as some have pointed out it's not strictly speaking an FPS). I'm somewhat interested in Mass Effect, but like Bioshock I'll probably play it on PC instead of buying an 360. Honestly at this point I don't see a very compelling reason to buy a 360 when between my PC and PS2 I've got just about every game available for the 360 that I'm interested in.
Have I played my Wii much recently? Not really. I beat Metroid Prime 3, and that was fun, but other than that not to much out there interests me right now. Of course, by the same token I've played my PS2 even less than my Wii. I just don't have much time right now to spend on gaming consoles. When something like Smash Bros, or Mario Kart hits I'm sure it will see more use.
Perhaps if one could patent patent-trolling? Can you patent business methodologies under the whacky-fun US system? Shhh! Not so loud, some patent troll might hear you and slip some congress-critters a few million to get a bill passed.
Gnomes vs Trolls; how cool is this? Thanks, thanks for ruining this for me. I was all gung-ho to see some patent trolls get beat down when you had to make the other party Gnomes. Much as I hate Trolls of all kinds, I loath Gnomes. They're just so punt-able you can't help but want to kick them.
Any reasonable person would see sense-to-sense external translation as the next step up from direct brain surgery. Even better, we've skipped the brain modifications altogether.
It's like you're saying "PCI video cards are all very well and good, but the real progress will come when you have to solder the GPU right onto the motherboard." There's actually a considerable advantage in not having to saw open your own skull every time you want to make a change to some of your extra hardware.
Ideally it would be accomplished with some sort of external jack that allowed for more of a bus type system. To use your analogy it's more like "Piping video output through your speakers then using a modem to convert it to a video display is all well and good, but real progress will come when they install a PCI bus that lets you actually add a new form of output."
So now, they have known copy-righted works being purposely distributed on those networks which chose to ignore the legal legal remedy that is necessary before a massive lawsuit puts the file sharing networks out of business.
A network can't go out of business. The company hosting a network can, or the company hosting the software for the network, but not the network itself. P2P by its very nature will not die without major government intervention, and even then it won't until the internet is behind lock and key that the government controls. Worst case scenario, all the public P2P networks switch to a darknet style of operation.
Yes, as someone else already pointed out this would require new structures. Either that or the repurposing of existing structures, although that would lead to a reduced capacity in the repurposed sense.
I'm aware of synesthesia, but that's not the same thing. All synesthesia is doing is sending signals from one sense to the area of the brain that processes another. Your brain attempts to process the signals as best it can, but it's really overlaying one sense on another again, just with existing senses instead of new ones.
Slashdot Mirror
A couple points. First, as some have pointed out, in the US legal system there are two times you want to bring a case to trial. The first, is if you believe you are innocent of the crime you're accused of (which you should know if you're innocent or not). The second time you want to bring something to trial is if you feel the law you have broken is unjust (or the statutory punishment in this case). She screwed up in trying to weasel her way out of the charge initially, but she can't really be blamed for trying, it's not like she really wanted to get into a protracted legal battle in the first place. So, the "easy" way having failed, she's now trying to address the real issue, which is that the statutory fines are ridiculous.
The second, and somewhat more interesting point has to do with this authorization thing you've brought up. Generally the fine for copyright violation is calculated based on the number of infringements, that is, how many copies you made. The problem with arguing that authorizing a copy is infringement is it then becomes impossible to calculate the infringing amount. There are essentially 3 ways to calculate the amount. First, you can calculate it based on the number of works authorized. That would make her guilty of 24 cases of infringement, whether or not 1 person, or 1 million people downloaded a copy. The second way to view it, is that authorizing it on a file sharing network is authorizing everyone on the network, in which case she's guilty of infringement for however many people were on the network at the time she put the files up. Of course, judging infringement in that case becomes much more difficult because you now need a way to track unique users on a P2P network over an arbitrary period of time. The final way to calculate it would be to pick some fixed number of infringements for those that are authorizing for general distribution such as 25. In that case her infringement would be equal to 25*24 = 600 cases of infringement.
Well, my main concern was more over what impact consent would have on the legal industry. I'm assuming that trials and lawsuits would still be in effect, and my concern would be over how you prove in court whether or not someone was informed of the prevailing rule base. This also goes back to one of the original questions I had which is, how do you decide which rule is in effect when a super-units and sub-units rules are in contradiction to one another. Does the sub-unit always prevail over the super-unit?
One thing I've been considering and I think would be a good principle for all governments is an expiration of laws. Anything over say 10 years old has to come up for review and be re-passed otherwise it's no longer an enforceable law. This would seriously help to streamline the legal framework. You'd no longer have to do extensive research into laws that are 50 years old and at the time of passing didn't take into account all kinds of current issues.
I'm not sure about this numbering thing you're using either. It would require people to memorize all kinds of random laws by number or carry around a big rule book with all the numbers available for reference. Also, if you're creating a new law how would these numbers be assigned? Would you just request a new one from some database somewhere managed by a central authority?
There are also some issues concerning ethics. Many people would for instance be against things like dog fights on the principle that they're cruel to the animals, but in your system it would be entirely legal to do whatever you want to anything non-human, even if say 99% of the population is against it. Actually, the answer to the previous issue would depend on how you distributed laws between the super-unit and sub-unit.
Well, you addressed one of my points, but none of the others. Something I'd also be concerned about is proving acceptance of a rule-base. If I enter your property and you show me a set of rules, but it's been doctored and doesn't cover some of your rules, how do I prove after the fact that I wasn't entirely informed as such?
It's a neat idea, but in practice it couldn't be done. You'd have no one of knowing from location to location what set of laws are in effect. What if say a neighborhood passes a law that makes it illegal to wear blue on Tuesdays, and you go to visit your friend on Tuesday wearing blue and get chucked in jail for it. Also, I would expect you'd want the state or city police to enforce these local laws, or will everyone have to provide their own police for at every level? Assuming that you'll use the city or state police, what happens if some small voting unit decides to ban use of firearms for police and only allow things like tasers, would you have a check point at the "border" where the cops coming in need to exchange their guns for tasers? What happens if one of the smaller units violates a law of a larger unit? I suppose that couldn't happen because you'd need a unanimous vote, and if a sub-unit is against it it wouldn't pass, but what happens if you pass a law in the super-unit, then a sub-unit decides they don't like it and passes a law in contradiction to the law of the super-unit?
There's a kernel of a good idea there I think, but it needs more fleshing out.
You left out the part where the senator turns down things that would make them extremely unpopular with the voting public. Sure they get some slimy stuff passed anyway, but they're careful enough about it that it's hard to pin them to it. Also don't forget the last minute additions to bills that are totally unrelated to that bill, that's one of their favorite tricks. Can pass an anti-poison in the food bill, or something equally stupid everyone would be in favor of, but tack in a little extra clause that say makes it legal for megacorps to dump excess hazardous waste into the ocean or some equally evil piece of legislation. Senator looks good because who wants poison in their food, and still collects a fat check from the mega-corps because he got their legislation passed at the same time.
This will depend a lot on what definition of majority they're using. If it's a simple majority something like this could be very unpopular. Get 50.1% of the population to vote for something and you've suddenly got 49.9% very unhappy. A good system might require say 75% in favor to pass, with anything less than say 25% being tossed out. If it runs in between those two then it needs to be modified and resubmitted. Would be good if in addition to voting they provided a section for comments. Could say something like "I voted against this because of clause 2, if you removed that I'd vote for it", then at least whoever proposed the legislation would have some clue on how to change it to make it more acceptable.
According to wikipedia it doesn't. It makes cold things feel hot, but not the other way around.
Symptoms of Ciguatera poisoningWell, I would call it a FPS myself, or perhaps more accurately and Adventure FPS. Half Life 2 does start to tread into less FPSish territory with some of the puzzles, but on the whole they were such a minor portion of the game that it didn't really matter. As for Halo, a cut scene is different from actually controlling a character in third person. I would argue though that Prime is more adventure than it is FPS, so rather than being an FPS with a few adventure elements like Half Life 2, it's more like a Platformer/Adventure game with FPS elements.
I was under the impression it was going to be available for the PC. I thought I saw the pre-release box for it in the PC section of a local game shop. Assuming it is 360 only, I'll just have to wait till I have enough spare cash, and the price looks right to get it and a 360, assuming I'm still interested in playing it by that point.
I picked up Phantom Hourglass a few days ago and so far it's great. The control scheme can cause some headaches occasionally, mostly because when I have a enemy heading at me I don't want to take the time to click the boomerang icon, then draw the path I want it to follow. The mini-games can also be a bit tough to complete, but since those are all just bonuses and not needed to complete the core game that doesn't really detract any from the experience. I figure I'm at least 2/3 of the way done with it (mostly playing at night right before bed), and I'd say it's a pretty good addition to any DS library.
Some purists might argue that it does. The main point of the Prime series (and all Metroid series really) was to explore and find power-ups that allowed you to get farther into the "dungeons". In contrast the primary goal of most FPS games is to make it from point A to point B by killing or otherwise eliminating anything that gets in your way, possibly with conditions attached such as ensuring that some object is either protected or destroyed. I think one of the key features that sets Prime apart from other more traditional FPS titles is the need to use the various Visors and jump upgrades which effectively make the game play closer to a platformer such as Mario Sunshine. The fairly constant switch to third person when performing certain jumps and using the morph ball also serves to distance Prime from a FPS.
Sega bombed out because people got sick of them releasing a new console (or expansion to a console that was required to play specific games) every 6 months, and only putting out a couple dozen games. The Genesis had a decent run, but everything after that was just insane. SegaCD, 32X (what a rip that was, it had what, all of 4 games for it), the Saturn, and the last straw the Dreamcast, which was a shame because the Dreamcast was actually a pretty good system (I still have mine). It got to the point where people said "Oh, Sega just released a new system, wonder what 10 games besides Sonic will get released before they pop out the next one".
Now, you want to see Nintendo bomb out? Simple, have every other game released require a new $50 wiimote attachment that only works for that and maybe 1 other game. I guarantee if Nintendo did that people would balk. As it is, the Wii is doing at least as well as all the others (certainly better than the PS3). If I didn't have a gaming PC (and could stomach playing FPSes on a console) I would probably pickup a 360. As for PS3, not until the price drops to at least half what it is now.
Most people are probably like me and would love to own a PS3. Just as soon as the price drops below $300 for the system, a game, and a controller. Until then I don't care how nice the games are, I'm not paying $500+ for a game system. For that kind of money I'd be well on my way to a really nice gaming rig that I could also use professionally (and count as a business expense).
Not strictly true. Hasn't had a US game made in a long time, but it's still possible to get new releases for it from Japan. At least as of a year ago, I think I heard somewhere that they finally stopped making Dreamcast games even in Japan recently.
I don't do FPS on consoles (Metroid Prime being an exception, but as some have pointed out it's not strictly speaking an FPS). I'm somewhat interested in Mass Effect, but like Bioshock I'll probably play it on PC instead of buying an 360. Honestly at this point I don't see a very compelling reason to buy a 360 when between my PC and PS2 I've got just about every game available for the 360 that I'm interested in.
Have I played my Wii much recently? Not really. I beat Metroid Prime 3, and that was fun, but other than that not to much out there interests me right now. Of course, by the same token I've played my PS2 even less than my Wii. I just don't have much time right now to spend on gaming consoles. When something like Smash Bros, or Mario Kart hits I'm sure it will see more use.
I for one welcome our new gold farmer DDoSing overlords.
No, seriously, I do, put em all out of business.
It's like you're saying "PCI video cards are all very well and good, but the real progress will come when you have to solder the GPU right onto the motherboard." There's actually a considerable advantage in not having to saw open your own skull every time you want to make a change to some of your extra hardware.
Ideally it would be accomplished with some sort of external jack that allowed for more of a bus type system. To use your analogy it's more like "Piping video output through your speakers then using a modem to convert it to a video display is all well and good, but real progress will come when they install a PCI bus that lets you actually add a new form of output."
They can if allowed to posses the proper leverage. This is why it's advisable to give governments only as much power as absolutely necessary.
A network can't go out of business. The company hosting a network can, or the company hosting the software for the network, but not the network itself. P2P by its very nature will not die without major government intervention, and even then it won't until the internet is behind lock and key that the government controls. Worst case scenario, all the public P2P networks switch to a darknet style of operation.
Yes, as someone else already pointed out this would require new structures. Either that or the repurposing of existing structures, although that would lead to a reduced capacity in the repurposed sense.
I'm aware of synesthesia, but that's not the same thing. All synesthesia is doing is sending signals from one sense to the area of the brain that processes another. Your brain attempts to process the signals as best it can, but it's really overlaying one sense on another again, just with existing senses instead of new ones.