Emergent gameplay is not really that special. Most games have it in some aspect - i.e. if they have modding capability, or random level design. Thus, even early games like Rogue have an element of emergent gameplay. Text adventure games, early LucasArts point-and-click games, would be an example of games without emergent gameplay. Games which are not narrative driven (such as RTSs) generally require emergent gameplay, or otherwise they provide very little to the consumer.
I really, really hope that we'll be able to apply a lot of this stuff to SC2 since it would be a shame to have SC1 be such a perfect reflection of life.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be using Starcraft as a metaphor for my life. I find the real world to be a lot more like Diablo. Persistently equipped with sub-standard equipment, battling hordes of the walking dead, and never enough money.
From a legal point of view, that could involve many problems. Any unauthorised access to third-party computers could be regarded as tampering with data, which is punishable under paragraph  303a of the German Penal Code.
Funnily enough, according to the articles, the select committe removed the particular problematic provision from her bill during the first reading. It was then reintroduced to the bill by National MP Christopher Findlayson during the whole house debate on the bill. Not only is Findlayson still in parliament, he is also the Attorney General, as well as having the Ministerial portfolio for Arts and Culture. Citing his comments regarding the bill during the debate:
The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities, as a result of which the Minister has come up with a number of amendments. We will support those. The first makes some changes to new section 92A, and I need not go into that in any great detail. We support what is being done there. Essentially, it is putting back into place what had been there before the bill went to the select committee.
Firstly, this bill is being brought in by the opposition party in parliament (Labour). Secondly, the current government has only recently been instated as of November 19th. So, basically, the bill was going to be introduced either way, and the next opportunity to vote is three years away. A better approach for concerned NZers is to approach their local body representative directly. There is a list here.
In 2008 Judith Tizard championed an amendment to the Copyright Act which requires ISPs to develop policies to terminate the Internet account of repeat copyright infringers. She defended this position robustly when meeting Internet lobby groups, saying it is necessary to protect New Zealand artists, and referred to the release of New Zealand film Sione's Wedding, which, she claimed, was damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet.
Did anyone actually see Sione's Wedding? Gods. That film was not damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet, it was damaged by the fact that it was a terrible film.
The kind of person who draws/distributes pictures of two child stick figures rutting is, if not engaging in an illegal act, certainly pretty fucking weird.
Additionally, in economic terms, people like Whorely financially support the actions of those that abuse children. By consuming these texts, they support the productive process that includes the abuse of children. Without people desiring these materials, things would not be as bad.
I don't think anything other than in person should be a legal way to serve, but email is not superior to Facebook.
Too true. I wonder about the crediblity of an legal document sent to someone with an email address. I mean, you'd be sending stuff addresses like "donglecrotch@example.com"...
Although... I'd love to see that appearing in court documents, permanently attached to someone's name.
Also, the fact that there are many people on facebook with the same name, let alone false ones. For many of my friends I was only able to track them down with email addresses, because there were too many other people with the same name.
Interestingly, the article links to another news item, dated 25th August 2006, which essentially states that a large proportion of deaths occur due to cerebral edema. In other words, this new research is just confirming what was apparently already known.
Cool, thanks for clearing that up. I'm sure you can understand if it's upsetting/easy to misunderstand someone during a sensitive topic like mental illness. I should probably try to clarify my original point however: a Rasta dealer is a lot less likely to supply methamphetamines along with their weed than some street corner dealer. Same goes with Native Americans on reservations with cactus/mushrooms - they probably can't supply any other drugs. These are cases where dealers' spiritual practices influence drug relationships.
Sorry, I think you've misunderstood me. I can see that my last sentence makes it look more like an ultimatum than I'd originally intended. The parent poster was looking for relationships between drugs in a economic system, and I was implying that a religious/spiritual component may influence the manner in which drugs may be sold. I implied that some may be sold individually as spiritual "aids" and some drugs are sold together due to a desire for profit - answering the poster's question regarding "get 'em hooked" practices of drug sales. I wasn't trying to make a decision on what was appropriate drug use in another person, because I've been that other person myself.
I'd also add that I've experienced "life in the big world" as you call it. When I was 18 a good friend was admitted to a psychiatric institution due to his persistent abuse of daytura and psylocibin based mushrooms; two more friends follow him for the same reason within a month. Two of them are "out" now, but that took a long time. I don't think the other will ever leave. Don't make light of other people's experiences until you know what they are.
The parent was discussing the relationship between different drugs, and thus my point was to discuss the social relationship between synthetic and natural drugs, not to support drug use simply because it has a religious component. Please don't confuse my discussion of socially constructed relationships with the tragically post-modernist approach of tacit support for a person's belief system.
I would also add that for certain religious groups, marajuana is a part of their spirituality. Same goes for peyote and various psylocibin producing mushrooms. Opiates, methamphetamines, and any synthetic drug I can think of only exist as profit/entertainment for people. As such, there's some space for people who only deal in the drugs which have a praxical religious component I suppose.
I would add that I know people that are pretty much non-functional if they aren't high on weed, they can't even leave their house if they're not high. It's not a "dude, I can't go out without hitting the hooka" kind of manner, it's a "I feel really uncomfortable, I need to get high" manner.
Don't forget the fact that the process of criminalization increases the street value of a drug as it becomes harder to obtain. For example, in my country, most drugs are fairly hard to obtain, and criminal sentences are harsher on drugs than they are on rape or murder, and yet there are many people who are prepared to pay the equivalent of US$160 for ecstacy.
All the criminalization seems to do is increase the incentive for providing expensive, weak, drugs cut with all sorts of bad chemicals to people who are prepared to pay almost any price for them. I've stopped using myself, but I'd say decriminalize just so I can get help from some form of controlled institution for my friends before they O.D. without having to worry about getting them arrested.
I think libel also has to be published: i.e. writing an abusive letter to someone is not as serious as sending the same letter to your local paper and having it published there.
The process of slander is where the person you are discussing accuses you of making false statements about them, and I believe you have to be able to prove that you are correct. This is, I believe, doesn't apply to artistic expression - arguably what the RIAA is doing is so farcial that they could probably use the defence that it is "comedy".
She was found guilty in absentia. Because she was hospitalised, she was unable to respond to the subpoena. The family claims that the account upon which the downloads occurred were made by the girl's father, who lives at another address. It's all in the articles linked in the summary, but in case you missed them, they're here.
IANAL, but I think that to be accused of slander you have to be shown to be unable to provide evidence of your claims. If that's the case, then you could not be accused of slander through the mechanisms of a court case due to the fact that by sueing someone you are proposing to prove yourself correct in front of a court of law. However, I suppose it would be possible to be punished for frivilous lawsuits if you did it too often.
Slashdot Mirror
Emergent gameplay is not really that special. Most games have it in some aspect - i.e. if they have modding capability, or random level design. Thus, even early games like Rogue have an element of emergent gameplay. Text adventure games, early LucasArts point-and-click games, would be an example of games without emergent gameplay. Games which are not narrative driven (such as RTSs) generally require emergent gameplay, or otherwise they provide very little to the consumer.
I really, really hope that we'll be able to apply a lot of this stuff to SC2 since it would be a shame to have SC1 be such a perfect reflection of life.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be using Starcraft as a metaphor for my life. I find the real world to be a lot more like Diablo. Persistently equipped with sub-standard equipment, battling hordes of the walking dead, and never enough money.
"are a"
It's two words, as in "You are a fucking douche."
I used to have this game for PC/Mac as a kid. They called it iTunes.
...is for the whole week in between the experiment simultaneously existed as both a success and a failure.
i.e. no different from most stories on slashdot.
From a legal point of view, that could involve many problems. Any unauthorised access to third-party computers could be regarded as tampering with data, which is punishable under paragraph  303a of the German Penal Code.
So, in response to your query, Germany's laws.
The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities, as a result of which the Minister has come up with a number of amendments. We will support those. The first makes some changes to new section 92A, and I need not go into that in any great detail. We support what is being done there. Essentially, it is putting back into place what had been there before the bill went to the select committee.
The clause itself has been had its implementation delayed until february, according to this article.
Firstly, this bill is being brought in by the opposition party in parliament (Labour). Secondly, the current government has only recently been instated as of November 19th. So, basically, the bill was going to be introduced either way, and the next opportunity to vote is three years away. A better approach for concerned NZers is to approach their local body representative directly. There is a list here.
In 2008 Judith Tizard championed an amendment to the Copyright Act which requires ISPs to develop policies to terminate the Internet account of repeat copyright infringers. She defended this position robustly when meeting Internet lobby groups, saying it is necessary to protect New Zealand artists, and referred to the release of New Zealand film Sione's Wedding, which, she claimed, was damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet.
Did anyone actually see Sione's Wedding? Gods. That film was not damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet, it was damaged by the fact that it was a terrible film.
The kind of person who draws/distributes pictures of two child stick figures rutting is, if not engaging in an illegal act, certainly pretty fucking weird.
Additionally, in economic terms, people like Whorely financially support the actions of those that abuse children. By consuming these texts, they support the productive process that includes the abuse of children. Without people desiring these materials, things would not be as bad.
I don't think anything other than in person should be a legal way to serve, but email is not superior to Facebook.
Too true. I wonder about the crediblity of an legal document sent to someone with an email address. I mean, you'd be sending stuff addresses like "donglecrotch@example.com"...
Although... I'd love to see that appearing in court documents, permanently attached to someone's name.
Also, the fact that there are many people on facebook with the same name, let alone false ones. For many of my friends I was only able to track them down with email addresses, because there were too many other people with the same name.
Interestingly, the article links to another news item, dated 25th August 2006, which essentially states that a large proportion of deaths occur due to cerebral edema. In other words, this new research is just confirming what was apparently already known.
I can see it now:
"Checking, checking, checking... Nope! no terrorism here!"
Cool, thanks for clearing that up. I'm sure you can understand if it's upsetting/easy to misunderstand someone during a sensitive topic like mental illness. I should probably try to clarify my original point however: a Rasta dealer is a lot less likely to supply methamphetamines along with their weed than some street corner dealer. Same goes with Native Americans on reservations with cactus/mushrooms - they probably can't supply any other drugs. These are cases where dealers' spiritual practices influence drug relationships.
Sorry, I think you've misunderstood me. I can see that my last sentence makes it look more like an ultimatum than I'd originally intended. The parent poster was looking for relationships between drugs in a economic system, and I was implying that a religious/spiritual component may influence the manner in which drugs may be sold. I implied that some may be sold individually as spiritual "aids" and some drugs are sold together due to a desire for profit - answering the poster's question regarding "get 'em hooked" practices of drug sales. I wasn't trying to make a decision on what was appropriate drug use in another person, because I've been that other person myself.
I'd also add that I've experienced "life in the big world" as you call it. When I was 18 a good friend was admitted to a psychiatric institution due to his persistent abuse of daytura and psylocibin based mushrooms; two more friends follow him for the same reason within a month. Two of them are "out" now, but that took a long time. I don't think the other will ever leave. Don't make light of other people's experiences until you know what they are.
The parent was discussing the relationship between different drugs, and thus my point was to discuss the social relationship between synthetic and natural drugs, not to support drug use simply because it has a religious component. Please don't confuse my discussion of socially constructed relationships with the tragically post-modernist approach of tacit support for a person's belief system.
I would also add that for certain religious groups, marajuana is a part of their spirituality. Same goes for peyote and various psylocibin producing mushrooms. Opiates, methamphetamines, and any synthetic drug I can think of only exist as profit/entertainment for people. As such, there's some space for people who only deal in the drugs which have a praxical religious component I suppose.
I would add that I know people that are pretty much non-functional if they aren't high on weed, they can't even leave their house if they're not high. It's not a "dude, I can't go out without hitting the hooka" kind of manner, it's a "I feel really uncomfortable, I need to get high" manner.
Don't forget the fact that the process of criminalization increases the street value of a drug as it becomes harder to obtain. For example, in my country, most drugs are fairly hard to obtain, and criminal sentences are harsher on drugs than they are on rape or murder, and yet there are many people who are prepared to pay the equivalent of US$160 for ecstacy.
All the criminalization seems to do is increase the incentive for providing expensive, weak, drugs cut with all sorts of bad chemicals to people who are prepared to pay almost any price for them. I've stopped using myself, but I'd say decriminalize just so I can get help from some form of controlled institution for my friends before they O.D. without having to worry about getting them arrested.
I think libel also has to be published: i.e. writing an abusive letter to someone is not as serious as sending the same letter to your local paper and having it published there.
The process of slander is where the person you are discussing accuses you of making false statements about them, and I believe you have to be able to prove that you are correct. This is, I believe, doesn't apply to artistic expression - arguably what the RIAA is doing is so farcial that they could probably use the defence that it is "comedy".
She was found guilty in absentia. Because she was hospitalised, she was unable to respond to the subpoena. The family claims that the account upon which the downloads occurred were made by the girl's father, who lives at another address. It's all in the articles linked in the summary, but in case you missed them, they're here.
IANAL, but I think that to be accused of slander you have to be shown to be unable to provide evidence of your claims. If that's the case, then you could not be accused of slander through the mechanisms of a court case due to the fact that by sueing someone you are proposing to prove yourself correct in front of a court of law. However, I suppose it would be possible to be punished for frivilous lawsuits if you did it too often.