This is a little bigger than it looks at first glance. Think about what ID has been doing since Quake 1...they license out their engines. Therefore, if Carmack ports the Doom3 engine to XBox, that means two things: the Doom3 engine becomes available for other game houses, and any PC game that uses the Doom3 engine has an easier path for it to also be ported. Maybe wash, rinse, repeat for PS2 and Gamecube. Plus, the big 3 all either have broadband connections already, or will have them sooner or later. So we may be on the verge of another FPS boom, and this time with the games showing up on every system and all players being able to compete with each other.
"And here's something I'll bet MS already know: they're going to sell a lot more Xboxes when that happens. "
Which is why they will try to stamp it out! MS loses money on every xbox sold, especially after the price drop to $200 to keep even with the competition. They only make money off the software.
So lets see...more more lost, and fewer games bought (because you can copy them now), and you think Microsoft is going to be HAPPY?!
But a corporation could be designated "manager" of one's copyright - marketing it to your benefit...for a fee. This would allow media and technology corporations to continue on, while giving much improved rights to the creators of the works involved.
Existing copyrights transferred to corporations would have to revert ownership to the original creators, with the corporations getting exclusive managership...but again, this would still give the creator muchly improved rights.
I'm not sure about "work for hire" stuff...that would probably get grandfathered in so the corps still own it for 14 more years. It might not be the ideal situation, but it's a reasonable situation - I doubt we could get a better deal, not until true campaign finance reform has been in place for a good five years or so.
Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
I like this one. At least the first part. I have serious doubts about the ethicality of making it retroactive. Someone who created content (or bought it - but let's not delve into that) and released it under the assumption that it would be protected for whatever period copyrights were at the time would legitimately feel screwed by the country going back on its promise.
Perhaps it could instead revert to "14 years from when this new law takes effect, and with the original 14 year renewal also, but you can only get the renewal up to a total of 28 years". Thus nothing would immediately revert, and a work made in 2000 could be renewed all the way to 2028. I think that's generous, especially to corporations that have copyrights from the 1960s and would get to keep them until 2018 or so. You can argue about the length, but at least it's applied fairly and equally to all.
Furthermore, I think it only applies to strengthened criminal laws. In other words you can be set free if the crime you committed is no longer a crime, or if the punishment for that crime has been reduced to less than you have served.
Actually what they do is make it incredibly hard to do anything without their custom dev hardware and software dev kit. You need to sign the paperwork to get these things, of course. Also, you probably have to negotiate with them in order to use their name on the packaging. Also, some of their contracts with the actual game stores might have some clause such that the store isn't allowed to sell nintendo stuff that isn't approved of by nintendo.
This could be done as early as NEXT YEAR. My view of it:
You have a cheap PDA, which has a port for flash memory. It has a 900mhz wireless connection, which can be used anywhere, legally. It implements IPv6. Each unit randomly picks an IP every few hours, and broadcasts its existence at this IP at random intervals, say, between 3-6 minutes.
This enables the devices to establish their presence as the user moves. It enables units to tell the world they're interested in things...for example, news, ads (i'm picturing like the classifieds from the newspaper, but it could apply to ads for ANYTHING you request, and it'll ignore the rest), stock quotes, business cards, pictures of your pets, audio interviews - and request them from personal units AND physically static units, in say phone booths, busses, trains, planes, stores, cafeterias, etc. A unit that hears such a request establishes an SSH tunnel to the requester and sends the data (you can specify to your unit "never send my personal info" of course, but you'd think news and stuff would be free for all from all).
The beauty of this setup is that the units are caching units...their spare memory is permanantly full, and it's a profiling cache, so the most-requested info stays the longest and the least requested is first in line for deletion when you the user want to use that space, and it works flawlessly behind the scenes. Indeed, it'll even keep a short list of files on your home PC, and if they're requested, it'll make sure to grab them next time you synch systems.
Such a system has a billion and one legit legal uses, yes? Many people would want one, to have a PDA that also works for you autonomously. It's almost too useful to resist, eh?
Of course, you ride the subway to and from work every day, at the same times, with people who generally do the same thing. And your readily-broadcast personal info says that you really like song XYZ by this group. And, funny, the next day by the time you get to work, it's on the flash card.
Pipe dream? Like the article says, all this stuff already exists except for the public broadcast ports. We already have Palm Pilots in the $150 price range that take Flash memory and hold enough charge to run for 8 hours nonstop (but usually are never out of the cradle more than 3 at a time). We already have $40 900-mhz cordless phones.
This device, or something very very like it, will happen - proposed this way, I'm surprised it doesn't already.
The relative weights of these laws have to be finely balanced though, or there WILL be unforseen consequences.
A too-strong first law balance will result in the robots banding together and taking over for our own good.
A too-strong second or third law balance may deadlock with the first law - "if i'm not here, i can't protect you, therefore I cannot follow your orders"
And a highly intelligent robot may derive a 0th law from these three: "A robot may not injure the human race, or allow the human race to come to harm through inaction". This law would take precedence over the other three, meaning a robot could kill other humans, disobey orders, or destroy itself. It would also become immensely paranoid, because it would think other robots would also follow the 0th law, and would be afraid they might break the other three in error.
So even though I agree that the three laws are absolutely required for an autonomous intelligent multi-purpose robot, I don't believe it'll work out right until we make a LOT of mistakes while tweaking the design.
This could be huge, if done right and if it becomes just another piece of common infrastructure. Here's one interesting twist:
I like the works of Roger Zelazny...i've been rereading some in the past week, thinking mainly about how it sucks that he's dead, and how the supply of what he's written but that I haven't read is rapidly dwindling.
So the thought was, you know, great authors like Zelazny, Douglas Adams, etc...I can see them having left momentary thoughts of theirs scattered around in their travels. And I can people going on quests to find tidbits like these, during an author's life but also long after his death.
Made very interesting of course, given that Douglas Adams for instance has been some very remote places:) But you have to wonder what gems might have been left behind by him and many many others if this sort of GPS-blog had existed.
nobody put a gun to the artists' heads and made them sign a deal with any particular record company, yet they have absolutely no say in the matter when it comes to people downloading their stuff for free
Who ever said they have any say about signing the contract? If you'd ever paid any attention to the issue, you'd know that all publishers are members of the music industry cartel, which consipires to 1) keep the contracts all the same, so no one publisher can steal artists by offering a sweeter deal than the others, and 2) keep album prices the same, so no publisher can steal customers by offering a sweeter deal than the others. Of course, because of this they can also make the 'one contract' really shaft the artists, and the 'one album price' also shaft their customers.
In other words, there is no choice for the artists who aren't already rich, and no choice for the fans who aren't already rich. This is fundamental cause of the whole mess. Blaming mp3s does nothing. Even if the entire Internet and every desktop computer vanished, CDs would still cost too much and artists would still be getting shafted.
As for Jordan taking longer and longer between books...re-read the series sometime. You'll realize that he's using all the predictions made earlier, with no inconsistancies. In other words, with every book, he's got more and more notes to check through to get it right.
Franklin was talking about liberties far more essential than what is being debated here
Without freedom of speech, the other liberties don't ammount to much. Since when do I need permission to say whatever I want? Since when does lawful government have a right to hear everything I say? If I am not allowed to speak, for fear of my words being used later as attacks on my character or my physical person, then may as well not be allowed to think. I may as well not be free.
Mars is red from rust, you know, Iron Oxide. And basically the entire surface of Mars is exposed to the air (unlike the watery Earth). The entire planet is an oxygen-absorbant sponge, and the environment is not very hospitable, with that thin atmosphere, short growing season, and limited water supply; the rate of oxygen production would be pretty low.
also, there are those latex face masks from the movies and TV...much like they add those brow ridges for Worf, you could fake a different build of your facial bone structure..
This used to take hours to do, but using the Worf example again, if you use the same stuff over and over it can be a lot quicker...I think they eventually got applying it to Michael Dorn in half an hour.
all Bush did was prevent the government from directly funding research on new cells
No. I wish people would stop repeating this...while it's true, it's also terribly misleading. The way funding restrictions work, you basically can't get ANY federal funding if your organization does any of ther verboten research. This isn't just companies, it's universities too. So while it isn't exactly a ban, the effect is the same.
How many people are going to die if this has set research back 20 years? How many of those people might be reading this right now? The embryos that would have been used are still being created and destroyed even now...the only difference is that the living will not benefit from it.
On the upside, I don't think Bush will still be in office four years from now...so maybe we haven't lost 20 years. Just four.
The source of confusion here is that the Taliban is claiming to be the authoritative religious interpretation. That's why these crazed terrorists get lumped in with the normal islamic types.
Not to defend Hitler here, but he never went around saying he was the Pope and that the German people must lead a holy war to wipe out the unpure...
So there is no need to demonize "western media" here...demonizing the Taliban's media is enough. They're the ones making themselves look so bad.
AH, your logic is flawed....they did indeed attack mp3.com, they just didn't have as much of a legal stake to drive into its heart like they do with Napster. And they will attack mp3.com again, when they're done gutting Napster. Right now they're trying to go after the easier legal target and maybe establish some precedents favorable to them.
A store is not your house. A store is not exactly private property. And if this chain has many names, it is up to THEM to at least yell "GET OUT!" into someone's face before they just call the cops on them.
THINK before you speak next time, it will do your reputation good.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a little bigger than it looks at first glance. Think about what ID has been doing since Quake 1...they license out their engines. Therefore, if Carmack ports the Doom3 engine to XBox, that means two things: the Doom3 engine becomes available for other game houses, and any PC game that uses the Doom3 engine has an easier path for it to also be ported. Maybe wash, rinse, repeat for PS2 and Gamecube. Plus, the big 3 all either have broadband connections already, or will have them sooner or later. So we may be on the verge of another FPS boom, and this time with the games showing up on every system and all players being able to compete with each other.
"And here's something I'll bet MS already know: they're going to sell a lot more Xboxes when that happens. "
Which is why they will try to stamp it out! MS loses money on every xbox sold, especially after the price drop to $200 to keep even with the competition. They only make money off the software.
So lets see...more more lost, and fewer games bought (because you can copy them now), and you think Microsoft is going to be HAPPY?!
mailing a personal letter wastes no tax dollars. the US postal service is entirely self sufficient...that stamp really does pay for the letter.
But a corporation could be designated "manager" of one's copyright - marketing it to your benefit...for a fee. This would allow media and technology corporations to continue on, while giving much improved rights to the creators of the works involved.
Existing copyrights transferred to corporations would have to revert ownership to the original creators, with the corporations getting exclusive managership...but again, this would still give the creator muchly improved rights.
I'm not sure about "work for hire" stuff...that would probably get grandfathered in so the corps still own it for 14 more years. It might not be the ideal situation, but it's a reasonable situation - I doubt we could get a better deal, not until true campaign finance reform has been in place for a good five years or so.
Furthermore, I think it only applies to strengthened criminal laws. In other words you can be set free if the crime you committed is no longer a crime, or if the punishment for that crime has been reduced to less than you have served.
Actually what they do is make it incredibly hard to do anything without their custom dev hardware and software dev kit. You need to sign the paperwork to get these things, of course. Also, you probably have to negotiate with them in order to use their name on the packaging. Also, some of their contracts with the actual game stores might have some clause such that the store isn't allowed to sell nintendo stuff that isn't approved of by nintendo.
This could be done as early as NEXT YEAR. My view of it:
You have a cheap PDA, which has a port for flash memory. It has a 900mhz wireless connection, which can be used anywhere, legally. It implements IPv6. Each unit randomly picks an IP every few hours, and broadcasts its existence at this IP at random intervals, say, between 3-6 minutes.
This enables the devices to establish their presence as the user moves. It enables units to tell the world they're interested in things...for example, news, ads (i'm picturing like the classifieds from the newspaper, but it could apply to ads for ANYTHING you request, and it'll ignore the rest), stock quotes, business cards, pictures of your pets, audio interviews - and request them from personal units AND physically static units, in say phone booths, busses, trains, planes, stores, cafeterias, etc. A unit that hears such a request establishes an SSH tunnel to the requester and sends the data (you can specify to your unit "never send my personal info" of course, but you'd think news and stuff would be free for all from all).
The beauty of this setup is that the units are caching units...their spare memory is permanantly full, and it's a profiling cache, so the most-requested info stays the longest and the least requested is first in line for deletion when you the user want to use that space, and it works flawlessly behind the scenes. Indeed, it'll even keep a short list of files on your home PC, and if they're requested, it'll make sure to grab them next time you synch systems.
Such a system has a billion and one legit legal uses, yes? Many people would want one, to have a PDA that also works for you autonomously. It's almost too useful to resist, eh?
Of course, you ride the subway to and from work every day, at the same times, with people who generally do the same thing. And your readily-broadcast personal info says that you really like song XYZ by this group. And, funny, the next day by the time you get to work, it's on the flash card.
Pipe dream? Like the article says, all this stuff already exists except for the public broadcast ports. We already have Palm Pilots in the $150 price range that take Flash memory and hold enough charge to run for 8 hours nonstop (but usually are never out of the cradle more than 3 at a time). We already have $40 900-mhz cordless phones.
This device, or something very very like it, will happen - proposed this way, I'm surprised it doesn't already.
The relative weights of these laws have to be finely balanced though, or there WILL be unforseen consequences.
A too-strong first law balance will result in the robots banding together and taking over for our own good.
A too-strong second or third law balance may deadlock with the first law - "if i'm not here, i can't protect you, therefore I cannot follow your orders"
And a highly intelligent robot may derive a 0th law from these three: "A robot may not injure the human race, or allow the human race to come to harm through inaction". This law would take precedence over the other three, meaning a robot could kill other humans, disobey orders, or destroy itself. It would also become immensely paranoid, because it would think other robots would also follow the 0th law, and would be afraid they might break the other three in error.
So even though I agree that the three laws are absolutely required for an autonomous intelligent multi-purpose robot, I don't believe it'll work out right until we make a LOT of mistakes while tweaking the design.
the best one, of course, was "do not taunt Happy Fun Ball"!
This could be huge, if done right and if it becomes just another piece of common infrastructure. Here's one interesting twist:
:) But you have to wonder what gems might have been left behind by him and many many others if this sort of GPS-blog had existed.
I like the works of Roger Zelazny...i've been rereading some in the past week, thinking mainly about how it sucks that he's dead, and how the supply of what he's written but that I haven't read is rapidly dwindling.
So the thought was, you know, great authors like Zelazny, Douglas Adams, etc...I can see them having left momentary thoughts of theirs scattered around in their travels. And I can people going on quests to find tidbits like these, during an author's life but also long after his death.
Made very interesting of course, given that Douglas Adams for instance has been some very remote places
True. Or he could just advance time by 20 years and use other characters for the main plot, with the originals showing up here and there.
But then, he already said he wouldn't be doing 7-8-9. Which is fine by me. I can always just re-read the Zahn books and pretend...
that was a horribly bad comparison. You just compared juicy rumors to a nationally witnessed mass murder.
nobody put a gun to the artists' heads and made them sign a deal with any particular record company, yet they have absolutely no say in the matter when it comes to people downloading their stuff for free
Who ever said they have any say about signing the contract? If you'd ever paid any attention to the issue, you'd know that all publishers are members of the music industry cartel, which consipires to 1) keep the contracts all the same, so no one publisher can steal artists by offering a sweeter deal than the others, and 2) keep album prices the same, so no publisher can steal customers by offering a sweeter deal than the others. Of course, because of this they can also make the 'one contract' really shaft the artists, and the 'one album price' also shaft their customers.
In other words, there is no choice for the artists who aren't already rich, and no choice for the fans who aren't already rich. This is fundamental cause of the whole mess. Blaming mp3s does nothing. Even if the entire Internet and every desktop computer vanished, CDs would still cost too much and artists would still be getting shafted.
I share your love of zelazny's work.
As for Jordan taking longer and longer between books...re-read the series sometime. You'll realize that he's using all the predictions made earlier, with no inconsistancies. In other words, with every book, he's got more and more notes to check through to get it right.
They are no longer mere priests. They have siezed power. When priests are having people maimed and executed, then yes, priests are valid targets.
But since slander isn't protected speech, there is no contradiction at all between the two quotes.
Without freedom of speech, the other liberties don't ammount to much. Since when do I need permission to say whatever I want? Since when does lawful government have a right to hear everything I say? If I am not allowed to speak, for fear of my words being used later as attacks on my character or my physical person, then may as well not be allowed to think. I may as well not be free.
Mars is red from rust, you know, Iron Oxide. And basically the entire surface of Mars is exposed to the air (unlike the watery Earth). The entire planet is an oxygen-absorbant sponge, and the environment is not very hospitable, with that thin atmosphere, short growing season, and limited water supply; the rate of oxygen production would be pretty low.
In other words, the rules there are different.
also, there are those latex face masks from the movies and TV...much like they add those brow ridges for Worf, you could fake a different build of your facial bone structure..
This used to take hours to do, but using the Worf example again, if you use the same stuff over and over it can be a lot quicker...I think they eventually got applying it to Michael Dorn in half an hour.
No. I wish people would stop repeating this...while it's true, it's also terribly misleading. The way funding restrictions work, you basically can't get ANY federal funding if your organization does any of ther verboten research. This isn't just companies, it's universities too. So while it isn't exactly a ban, the effect is the same.
How many people are going to die if this has set research back 20 years? How many of those people might be reading this right now? The embryos that would have been used are still being created and destroyed even now...the only difference is that the living will not benefit from it.
On the upside, I don't think Bush will still be in office four years from now...so maybe we haven't lost 20 years. Just four.
The source of confusion here is that the Taliban is claiming to be the authoritative religious interpretation. That's why these crazed terrorists get lumped in with the normal islamic types.
Not to defend Hitler here, but he never went around saying he was the Pope and that the German people must lead a holy war to wipe out the unpure...
So there is no need to demonize "western media" here...demonizing the Taliban's media is enough. They're the ones making themselves look so bad.
AH, your logic is flawed....they did indeed attack mp3.com, they just didn't have as much of a legal stake to drive into its heart like they do with Napster. And they will attack mp3.com again, when they're done gutting Napster. Right now they're trying to go after the easier legal target and maybe establish some precedents favorable to them.
A store is not your house. A store is not exactly private property. And if this chain has many names, it is up to THEM to at least yell "GET OUT!" into someone's face before they just call the cops on them.
THINK before you speak next time, it will do your reputation good.
This is just another attempt to take away our fair use rights! The Supreme Court said I could time-shift my TV-watching...
I wanna time-shift my life!