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Comment Re:Intended Reaction? (Score 1) 724

by lortho (#34319006) Attached to: <em>Witcher 2</em> Torrents Could Net You a Fine
This theory doesn't match the evidence in this case, though. Piracy has skyrocketed over the years, but the gaming industry has shown no signs of approaching anything near a situation where it's "no longer tenable to make games and no one has a game to play." On the contrary, it's gotten bigger and bigger as well. Even in this age where thousands and thousands of both legally and illegally free games exist for all sorts of different platforms, big titles like CoD Black Ops are seeing record sales. There's very clearly something about the economics of this situation that the old theories and models are missing.
It's funny. Laugh.

Fark Creator Slams 'the Wisdom of Crowds' 507

Posted by timothy from the respond-below-with-wit-and-vigor dept.
GovTechGuy writes with some harsh words from Fark.com founder Drew Curtis, speaking at a conference Tuesday in Washington, DC: "'The "wisdom of the crowds" is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in my life. Crowds are dumb,' Curtis said. 'It takes people to move crowds in the right direction, crowds by themselves just stand around and mutter.' Curtis pointed to his own experience moderating comments on Fark, which allows users to give their often humorous take on the news of the day. He said only one percent of Web comments have any value and called the rest 'garbage.' Another example Curtis pointed to is the America Speaking Out website recently launched by House Republicans to allow the public to weigh in on the issues and vote for policy positions they support. Curtis called the site an 'absolute train wreck.' 'It's an absolute disaster. It's impossible to tell who was kidding and who wasn't,' Curtis said."
The Almighty Buck

$33 Million In Poker Winnings Seized By US Govt 465

Posted by samzenpus from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A New York Times story reports that, 'Opening a new front in the government's battle against Internet gambling, federal prosecutors have asked four American banks to freeze tens of millions of dollars in payments owed to people who play poker online. ... "It's very aggressive, and I think it's a gamble on the part of the prosecutors," Mr. Rose said. He added that it was not clear what law would cover the seizure of money belonging to poker players, as opposed to the money of the companies involved.' Many players are reporting that their cashout checks have bounced."
The Internet

The Perils of Pop Philosophy 484

Posted by kdawson from the bloggers-beware dept.
ThousandStars tips a new piece by Julian Sanchez, the guy who, in case you missed it, brought us a succinct definition of the one-way hash argument (of the type often employed in the US culture wars). This one is about the dangers of a certain kind of oversimplifying, as practiced routinely by journalists and bloggers. "This brings us around to some of my longstanding ambivalence about blogging and journalism more generally. On the one hand, while it's probably not enormously important whether most people have a handle on the mind-body problem, a democracy can't make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy."
Television

Submission + - "You Don't Understand Our Audience" (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
MBCook
MBCook writes: "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" (printer version, summed up by Ars) by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Stallman Attacked by Ninjas (yale.edu)

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: When RMS took the stage to address the Yale Political Union, Yale's venerable parliamentary debate society, it was already an unusual speech: instead of the jacket and tie customary there, he sported a T shirt, and no shoes. But then he was attacked by ninjas. Apparently some students took it into their head to duplicate an XKCD webcomic before a live audience — luckily, though, Stallman didn't resort to violence. Instead, he delivered an excellent speech about DRM.
Media (Apple)

Submission + - AppleWorks/ClarisWorks quietly dies (macworld.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AppleWorks' last breath was masked by last week's iMac, iLife and iWork announcements — Apple has discontinued the product. Apple told resellers of the demise of AppleWorks last week, announcing that the software had reached "End of Life" status. It will no longer be sold. The AppleWorks website now directs users to the iWork section of Apple's website.
The Internet

Submission + - Registerfly's accreditation terminated by ICANN

Submitted by
Punker22
Punker22 writes: "Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly.com's accreditation. Between now and 31 March RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary Authinfo codes to allow domain name transfers to occur. Any and all registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously. "Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers," Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today."
Movies

Don't Believe What You See at the Movies 441

Posted by Zonk from the made-the-star-wars-movies-possible dept.
MattSparkes writes "Many images you see in a magazine are Photoshopped, and it's getting less and less likely that what you see at the cinema is any more genuine. In the film 'Blood Diamond', tears were added to Jennifer Connolly's face after a scene was shot. According to The Times, digital effects artists can even change actors' expressions. 'Opening or closing eyes; making a limp more convincing; removing breathing signs; eradicating blinking eyelids from a lingering gaze; or splicing together different takes of an unsuccessful love scene to produce one in which both parties look like they are enjoying themselves.' The article mentions the moral qualms digital effects people have over performing these manipulations, and the steps actors are taking to protect their digital assets."

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APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't read any of them. -- Roy Keir

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