I used to make those tapes that were sent to the ESRB by a certain publisher. We would play the game over and over countless times, restarting every time something happened that management didn't want the ESRB to see. We would continue until the right random encounters occurred in a row, so that we had something that had actually happened, but wasn't really representative of the violence normally encountered during play.
So, while it isn't practical for the ESRB to play through an entire game, I think they should be supplied the same cheat codes as the publisher's testers, to allow the ESRB to play random segments of content throughout the game.
FTA: "So, how exactly would the FTC rewrite these copyright notices to reflect a consumer's ability to attempt a fair use defense? Should they paste in all of the above language? We're wading into the area of providing legal advice"
He is basically arguing that Fair Use is so complicated that explaining it to people constitutes legal advice. Yet he admits that the notices currently in place are simply scare tactics.
"these warnings do exactly what they're meant to do--notify consumers in a succinct fashion that infringement has legal consequences."
In essence, he's saying "Our rights are easier to describe than yours, so we'll forget about yours."
TFA doesn't mention security much, but I'll assume (dangerous, I know) that you still have to present a photo ID and get strip searched to get to the gate. If so, then this is hardly an advance on the printable tickets already is use for some time.
Unlike a film, where the particular acts are completely scripted, a violent incident in a game may come in several different situations, and via various means. This makes it harder to have hard and fast rules.
Using a chainsaw to kill a single zombie may be graphic, but killing 10 or 20 at the same time is a lot more graphic. So it isn't just a case of saying "tone down the zombie/chainsaw death"; a more nuanced approach is required. As such, the ESRB needs a more flexible approach, which is the opposite of what the politicians would like them to have.
Wow, great post! For some reason I'd always assumed allofmp3 was too cheap, while at the same time feeling that digital distribution should absolutely be cheaper than buying the CD from a brick and mortar. Thanks for laying it out so plainly.
Now, off to allofmp3 to pick up some hard to find stuff I've been wanting.
I never said it was evil. I'm just explaining that there is a rational basis behind efforts to prevent Wal-Mart from opening in certain areas. Whether Wal-Mart would have a positive or negative long-term impact on those areas, I'm not qualified to say.
Nobody is stopping those other stores from buying hundreds of thousands at a time for $5.
Now you're just trying to be difficult. A "mom & pop" store in a town of 50k total residents has no way to sell 500k microwaves in their locality, even if they could somehow come up with the money. Wal-Mart buys nationally and only ships quantities to individual stores that it reasonable expects to be able to sell there.
Again, I'm not making any value judgments about any given "mom & pop" store, nor their business practices, whatever they may be.
You seem to have completely missed the way that Wal-Mart crushes small businesses. It's not because the little guys are gouging their customers, or selling crap products/services, and people rush to the new Wal-Mart for relief. The simple fact is that Wal-Mart has a huge advantage due to economy of scale.
The smaller stores have to pay $10 for something, while Wal-mart gets to pay only $5 because they bought hundreds of thousands at a time. There is no possible way for the smaller stores to make a profit with a competitive disadvantage like that.
Wal-Mart has other advantages as well, such as the convenience of one-stop-shopping, but this one is the one that is impossible to beat.
Each child is different, but I've seen a one year old who was afraid of the vacuum cleaner (when on), and another that would scream any time a blender was turned on.
I'm not able to guarantee that they didn't have some traumatic incident that created a fear of loud machines, but it seems more likely that their fear comes from within.
This issue is pretty common, and hinges on the fact that the recipient forms opinions about information they don't currently have access to. In this case, the voice, including pitch, inflection, cadence, etc. The typed text may seem direct, competent, perhaps terse or commanding. But, while pitch could be shifted rather easily, it wouldn't hide the "um, so, like, let's go, uh, do scholo."
I notice it a lot with radio personalities. I form an opinion of what they look like based on how they sound, and then am shocked when I find out what they look like. It's also happened with books I've read that were turned into movies. The characters don't look like I envisioned them, even though I only had a vague impression of what they looked like.
This has already been solved by other media. You advertise the fringe channels on the other channels you own that have an audience. Clear Channel does that on a lot of local radio stations. With cable, you'd have to offer free trials to get people hooked on your content as well.
I refuse to pay for channels I won't use, who's content I'm not interested in. If this goes through, I'll finally be able to enjoy the few extra channels I've been missing.
Of course then I'd have to tear myself away from my beloved computer...
I agree. I realize human nature is against this, however. Also, if the gunman were also a suicide bomber, this tactic would work against you.
With the VT rampage, I was dumbfounded that whole class rooms would just lie on the floor and let someone shoot them multiple times. Even after the gunman left, no one got up to close the door, allowing him to come back and shoot them again... I realize hindsight is 20/20, but I would have thought survival instincts would have caused some reaction.
Actually, that's one thing I'm not so sure of. The reasons people want to leave an MMO, after investing years of their lives in it, are usually related at least somewhat to negative feelings towards the developer. I realize SOE is a favorite whipping boy, but Blizzard has alienated quite a few former WoW players already, and I wonder just how many of those players looking to leave WoW in a few years would be willing to play another Blizzard MMO.
Beating WoW won't take just a great game; if WoW itself had launched in the face of another game that had the same success WoW enjoys now, it would not have had the success it has had. The reason is that many people like to play with friends, either RL ones or people they've met in-game.
So even if these games are great, polished, and addicting, if their friends won't leave WoW with them, people will go back to WoW to be with their friends. It's going to be a very tough market for the next 4+ years.
Hopefully at around that point, enough people will be tired of WoW that entire guilds will be looking for a new game to play, and new games will have a much better chance of getting a solid foothold.
I think the fact that, even if you are caught, and are convicted (it's easy to believe either of those won't happen), you still won't die for at least 20 years, neutralizes the effect. The death penalty has about as much deterrent value as the surgeon general's warnings on cigarette boxes, or the preacher warning you you'll rot in hell. "Don't do it, you might die in 20 years!" has almost no impact.
If, however, you wired someone up to an electric chair circuit and they knew that the second they killed someone they would die, that would be a deterrent. It still wouldn't stop 100% of murders, but it would have a pretty significant effect.
IMHO, the real benefit of the death penalty is in stopping repeat offenders. The other potential benefit is that the tax payers don't have to support the murderer for the rest of their life (paying for sex changes, and viagra, on top of everything else), but the fact that the system drags the trials out for 20 years pretty much negates that benefit.
No news story I've seen about this has mentioned that EA has an exclusive license to make NFL video games. I think that has a huge bearing on their numbers. If you want the latest rosters and stats, then you can choose from a wide variety of, um...Madden. That's it.
The fact is, Sega was making a better product and undercutting them on cost and EA saw the writing on the wall. I think the NFL did a terrible disservice to the fans by selling out to EA.
I don't mind ads in games where they are appropriate and fit the world, but you know they aren't going to pass any of that revenue on to the players, which is lame.
I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I wanted to point out that MMO games used to use paid volunteers like this. Then there was a lawsuit which ruled that because they were being paid (even if only with free game time), they were actually employees and had to be granted all the mandated perks true employees got. That was the end of using volunteers.
I did this with Net Neutrality. I even got a response back that wasn't too bad for an auto-reply. I actually felt rather empowered to know that my view was noted down on some internal polling data.
I also got added to a bunch of rolex and viagra spam lists which, I am sure, was just a coincidence...
~_^
False positives are to be expected. The problem is that Google does not have any process in place to rectify such false positives. I've heard many stories just like this one, and have never heard of Google reinstating _anyone_. This is the attitude that people are objecting too.
Google has gotten too big and too greedy to actually look at the special cases, and don't care that they throw the baby out with the bath water, because it's cheaper than addressing the errors.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to make those tapes that were sent to the ESRB by a certain publisher. We would play the game over and over countless times, restarting every time something happened that management didn't want the ESRB to see. We would continue until the right random encounters occurred in a row, so that we had something that had actually happened, but wasn't really representative of the violence normally encountered during play.
So, while it isn't practical for the ESRB to play through an entire game, I think they should be supplied the same cheat codes as the publisher's testers, to allow the ESRB to play random segments of content throughout the game.
FTA: "So, how exactly would the FTC rewrite these copyright notices to reflect a consumer's ability to attempt a fair use defense? Should they paste in all of the above language? We're wading into the area of providing legal advice"
He is basically arguing that Fair Use is so complicated that explaining it to people constitutes legal advice. Yet he admits that the notices currently in place are simply scare tactics.
"these warnings do exactly what they're meant to do--notify consumers in a succinct fashion that infringement has legal consequences."
In essence, he's saying "Our rights are easier to describe than yours, so we'll forget about yours."
You're admitting that you want a copy of an MP3 - on the internet?! You fool! The RIAA has spies everywhere!
TFA doesn't mention security much, but I'll assume (dangerous, I know) that you still have to present a photo ID and get strip searched to get to the gate. If so, then this is hardly an advance on the printable tickets already is use for some time.
What I'm waiting for is a speedier security pass, like the Registered Traveler Program
I don't YET consider it a value when it doesn't offer 3G support
It's got even better than 3G; it's got 8 GB!!
Unlike a film, where the particular acts are completely scripted, a violent incident in a game may come in several different situations, and via various means. This makes it harder to have hard and fast rules.
Using a chainsaw to kill a single zombie may be graphic, but killing 10 or 20 at the same time is a lot more graphic. So it isn't just a case of saying "tone down the zombie/chainsaw death"; a more nuanced approach is required. As such, the ESRB needs a more flexible approach, which is the opposite of what the politicians would like them to have.
Wow, great post! For some reason I'd always assumed allofmp3 was too cheap, while at the same time feeling that digital distribution should absolutely be cheaper than buying the CD from a brick and mortar. Thanks for laying it out so plainly.
Now, off to allofmp3 to pick up some hard to find stuff I've been wanting.
It looks promising, but for a real prosthetic, wouldn't you have to drag an air compressor around with you?
So Walmart is evil?
I never said it was evil. I'm just explaining that there is a rational basis behind efforts to prevent Wal-Mart from opening in certain areas. Whether Wal-Mart would have a positive or negative long-term impact on those areas, I'm not qualified to say.
Nobody is stopping those other stores from buying hundreds of thousands at a time for $5.
Now you're just trying to be difficult. A "mom & pop" store in a town of 50k total residents has no way to sell 500k microwaves in their locality, even if they could somehow come up with the money. Wal-Mart buys nationally and only ships quantities to individual stores that it reasonable expects to be able to sell there.
Again, I'm not making any value judgments about any given "mom & pop" store, nor their business practices, whatever they may be.
You seem to have completely missed the way that Wal-Mart crushes small businesses. It's not because the little guys are gouging their customers, or selling crap products/services, and people rush to the new Wal-Mart for relief. The simple fact is that Wal-Mart has a huge advantage due to economy of scale.
The smaller stores have to pay $10 for something, while Wal-mart gets to pay only $5 because they bought hundreds of thousands at a time. There is no possible way for the smaller stores to make a profit with a competitive disadvantage like that. Wal-Mart has other advantages as well, such as the convenience of one-stop-shopping, but this one is the one that is impossible to beat.
as you speak with such conviction on subjects you know little about you might belong on /. Welcome to the party.
:P
Looking at his member number, it's apparent that he got to this party a bit before you.
Which is great since it's a long way to the next gas station.
Each child is different, but I've seen a one year old who was afraid of the vacuum cleaner (when on), and another that would scream any time a blender was turned on.
I'm not able to guarantee that they didn't have some traumatic incident that created a fear of loud machines, but it seems more likely that their fear comes from within.
This issue is pretty common, and hinges on the fact that the recipient forms opinions about information they don't currently have access to. In this case, the voice, including pitch, inflection, cadence, etc. The typed text may seem direct, competent, perhaps terse or commanding. But, while pitch could be shifted rather easily, it wouldn't hide the "um, so, like, let's go, uh, do scholo."
I notice it a lot with radio personalities. I form an opinion of what they look like based on how they sound, and then am shocked when I find out what they look like. It's also happened with books I've read that were turned into movies. The characters don't look like I envisioned them, even though I only had a vague impression of what they looked like.
This has already been solved by other media. You advertise the fringe channels on the other channels you own that have an audience. Clear Channel does that on a lot of local radio stations. With cable, you'd have to offer free trials to get people hooked on your content as well.
I refuse to pay for channels I won't use, who's content I'm not interested in. If this goes through, I'll finally be able to enjoy the few extra channels I've been missing.
Of course then I'd have to tear myself away from my beloved computer...
I agree. I realize human nature is against this, however. Also, if the gunman were also a suicide bomber, this tactic would work against you.
With the VT rampage, I was dumbfounded that whole class rooms would just lie on the floor and let someone shoot them multiple times. Even after the gunman left, no one got up to close the door, allowing him to come back and shoot them again... I realize hindsight is 20/20, but I would have thought survival instincts would have caused some reaction.
Actually, that's one thing I'm not so sure of. The reasons people want to leave an MMO, after investing years of their lives in it, are usually related at least somewhat to negative feelings towards the developer. I realize SOE is a favorite whipping boy, but Blizzard has alienated quite a few former WoW players already, and I wonder just how many of those players looking to leave WoW in a few years would be willing to play another Blizzard MMO.
Beating WoW won't take just a great game; if WoW itself had launched in the face of another game that had the same success WoW enjoys now, it would not have had the success it has had. The reason is that many people like to play with friends, either RL ones or people they've met in-game.
So even if these games are great, polished, and addicting, if their friends won't leave WoW with them, people will go back to WoW to be with their friends. It's going to be a very tough market for the next 4+ years.
Hopefully at around that point, enough people will be tired of WoW that entire guilds will be looking for a new game to play, and new games will have a much better chance of getting a solid foothold.
That was definately a great time for job titles. My favorite from that era is the card I got that said "Warm Body". :D
I think the fact that, even if you are caught, and are convicted (it's easy to believe either of those won't happen), you still won't die for at least 20 years, neutralizes the effect. The death penalty has about as much deterrent value as the surgeon general's warnings on cigarette boxes, or the preacher warning you you'll rot in hell. "Don't do it, you might die in 20 years!" has almost no impact.
If, however, you wired someone up to an electric chair circuit and they knew that the second they killed someone they would die, that would be a deterrent. It still wouldn't stop 100% of murders, but it would have a pretty significant effect.
IMHO, the real benefit of the death penalty is in stopping repeat offenders. The other potential benefit is that the tax payers don't have to support the murderer for the rest of their life (paying for sex changes, and viagra, on top of everything else), but the fact that the system drags the trials out for 20 years pretty much negates that benefit.
No news story I've seen about this has mentioned that EA has an exclusive license to make NFL video games. I think that has a huge bearing on their numbers. If you want the latest rosters and stats, then you can choose from a wide variety of, um...Madden. That's it.
The fact is, Sega was making a better product and undercutting them on cost and EA saw the writing on the wall. I think the NFL did a terrible disservice to the fans by selling out to EA.
I don't mind ads in games where they are appropriate and fit the world, but you know they aren't going to pass any of that revenue on to the players, which is lame.
I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I wanted to point out that MMO games used to use paid volunteers like this. Then there was a lawsuit which ruled that because they were being paid (even if only with free game time), they were actually employees and had to be granted all the mandated perks true employees got. That was the end of using volunteers.
I did this with Net Neutrality. I even got a response back that wasn't too bad for an auto-reply. I actually felt rather empowered to know that my view was noted down on some internal polling data.
I also got added to a bunch of rolex and viagra spam lists which, I am sure , was just a coincidence... ~_^
False positives are to be expected. The problem is that Google does not have any process in place to rectify such false positives. I've heard many stories just like this one, and have never heard of Google reinstating _anyone_. This is the attitude that people are objecting too.
Google has gotten too big and too greedy to actually look at the special cases, and don't care that they throw the baby out with the bath water, because it's cheaper than addressing the errors.