| Friday,
September 16, 2005 I
have been at PDC all week, will catch up tonight.
=============
Subject: N.O. Shooting at Helicopters
FACT - People were sitting on bridges and roof tops
watching the helicopters fly overhead.
It's been widely reported that some people fired guns
into the air. Most reporters and pundits have concluded that people were
shooting AT the helicopters.
There is also the possibility that they were trying to
get the pilots attention - standard "lost in the woods" proceedure is to
fire gun shots or flares and hope somebody hears you. I would assume that
the "rules" probably state that you're not supposed to fire AT people of
course,
I haven't seen any direct interviews with the pilots
who were there and SAW shots being fired AT THEM.
And there's always the possibility that, after
watching the chopper fly over my house 10 times without stopping or even
acknowledging my presence somebody snapped and started shooting.
... everyone is so quick to jump to negative
conclusions ...
Jim (live from Houston, in the thick of the relief
effort working with some really nice people who are tired of nothing but
negative stories)
============ Jim Coffey
==========================
Subject: Mourning: "The Man" Stomps on MD-Based
"Pandora's Cube" -- Another Victory For Corporate Fascism
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=11600
I personally loved Pandora's Cube. I proudly own
several purchases. The store specialized in providing Japanese games and
content.
The "chip" I know of allowed the X Boxes to play games
from Japan/outside the U.S. and put U.S. games on the hard drive to avoid
load times.
5 months in jail and $250,000 for that?
Screw you, ESA.
Dave
Thanks. Interesting that a good conservative
lawyer like you has this sentiment... What think the rest of you?
==========
Subject: What went right in New Orleans
The politicians screwed up but the competent people
did their jobs. This ties in very well with what Phil has been reporting.
http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-9_15_05_LD.html
Eric
===========
re: Pandora's Cube owner stomped on
The key point seems to be sales of machines preloaded
with pirated software, not the sales of the mod chips. Selling pirated
software will always get you in trouble.
Mod chips are great - they make a gaming machine into
a very useful accessory in the TV room. Everyone in our family uses the xbox
- my wife and I can watch video sent from friends and family, or encoded
DVDs and captured TV stored on a samba server, and the boys play games I've
copied to the local hard disk. We own legitimate copies of everything, but
avoiding having young guys loading and unloading disks saves on a lot of
wear and tear. They can't read yet, but recognize the first few letters of
their favourite games, which is enough to find them in the menu. Games
stored on the hard disk do load significantly faster.
Al
==
Sir:
The article states that the store sold boxes with
pirated games pre-installed on the hard drive. Either they were, or they
weren't. If they were, then they were caught stealing.
If they were in fact merely modifying the X-Box to
play games coming from outside the USA, and load games from the hard drive,
that is another matter. I wish there were some fitting reward for companies
that put nitwit restrictions on their products for marketing reasons.
My personal bugaboo is the DVD region codes; my wife
is from Sweden. Our daughter is bilingual in part because she watches DVDs
and videotapes in Swedish. Not only must we translate PAL video to NTSC, but
the player must also disable the region encoding. I realize that the market
for PAL videos is rather small in the USA, but the region codes are an
extra, unnecessary irritant.
I don't know why games are region coded. DVDs are
coded so movies and videos can be released in foreign markets later than in
the USA. They do a silly technological "fix" for a marketing problem. Then,
when the fix proves inadequate, they expect Uncle Sam to fix their broken
business model with public money!
Code-free DVD players are very common in Europe. All
the stores have them for a small extra charge. Universal players and TVs
that can display either NTSC or PAL are also common.
Regards, Bob Wakefield
==
Long-established case law says that if I buy a
product, I'm free to do with it as I please. That includes hacking an Xbox
to run Linux, for example.
While I don't have the right to make unauthorized
duplicates of games and distribute them, I do have the right, for example,
to back up a game disc to my hard drive. If this guy was distributing
illegal copies of games, fine, drop the big one on him. But if he wasn't
doing that, the penalty was completely outrageous.
If Microsoft's business model involves selling
hardware at below cost, and I choose to modify that hardware and/or use that
hardware for a different purpose, well that's Microsoft's problem. The law
doesn't, or shouldn't, guarantee Microsoft a profit. Of course, the DMCA
comes into play, but that's arguably one of the worst laws that congress has
ever passed.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com
I agree that selling preloads of pirate
software is a bad thing, and earns you the attention of the authorities. Was
that proven?
==========
===============
A general letter sent
by Larry Niven to friends and reprinted here by permission:=
What I did on my Summer Vacation
Well, I don’t actually get vacations. I’m
self-employed. I get myself to work by swearing I’ll fire myself if I catch
myself goofing off again. Then sometimes I sneak away from my computer… This
was a good summer.
Westercon was in Calgary, in Canada. There was the
usual entertainment, panels and so forth, and— The best restaurant in town
was just close enough: four blocks from the hotel, through a park to a
little island, with benches all the way. Perfect for Marilyn: her new knees
are good enough if she rests. We went twice, with the Dohertys and with the
Browns.
Folk kept reminding me and Marilyn that we’re coming
back in 06 as Guests of Honor.
I hadn’t seen Mom’s old house at Hermosa Beach in
years: she no longer uses it. I saw it twice this summer. Once, nephew Tim
borrowed it, and I went down for a swim and dinner. I don’t call it a summer
unless I can ride a wave. Later I brought Steven Barnes and Jerry Pournelle
there, the first time they’ve ever seen that part of my life. Our intent was
to shape a sequel to the Heorot books—or else give up the idea—and for a
wonder, we made it work, and smoothly too.
Marilyn had a Lacers Convention in Denver, a week of
lessons in lacemaking, in conflict with the WorldCon in Glasgow, Scotland.
One reason for missing it. Another was a hotel too far from the convention
site, and Marilyn’s knees. Truth is, we never got our act together, never
planned a reasonable trip. We hear it was wonderful, but you can’t get to
everything.
I got my fill of filking as Toastmaster at ConChord.
It’s a little filkers’ convention held just down Topanga Plaza from my home.
At one point I listened to an hour of songs derived from my books. Egotist
that I am, I love that. I’m not the world’s best Toastmaster, though, given
my failure to remember names.
The Writers (and Illustrators) of the Future Awards
Ceremony was in Seattle, and they wanted their judges. Marilyn’s not up to
Tourist plane seats, so she didn’t go. I got them to send me up two days
early. I took a puddle-jumper from SeaTac to my sister’s home in the San
Juan Islands.
Their whole family was there: two sons, their wives
and children. I stayed with Cynthia (sister) and Z (brother-in-law.) They
have a wonderful house surrounded by woods and overlooking a drop to the
ocean. Two mornings running, from their balcony, we watched orcas swim past
a tiny island. They keep binoculars very handy. There’s a sculpture garden
on the island: lots of wilderness with lots of paths, and sculpture in the
widest sense, popping up with no predictability at all.
Then back to Seattle on a seaplane. We came in right
above the Space Needle and Science Fiction Museum at its base.
That’s where the WOTF held their ceremony. It’s always
a wonderful chance to see everyone you know in the business. The site was
very well done, with an extensive backdrop built on site next door. We
snatched several hours to troop through the Science Fiction Museum. It’s
very nice,without excessive emphasis on media. What the hell, visual
memories are the meat of any museum, and I was delighted at the old
spacecraft, planets, skyscapes.
Dinner in the Space Needle, all of us in tuxedoes and
fancy dresses, and a few minutes snatched for a view from the top. Then the
ceremonies…which do always seem to drag on and on, but the winners love
them…and a hell of a party upstairs.
I was back in Seattle two weeks later, with Marilyn,
at NASFIC.
This was fun. Marilyn spent a lot of time in the main
hall, sitting the table for next year’s Worldcon in LA. Friends found her
there. I ran the marathon: two hotels and the Convention Center, and a very
user-friendly shuttle van. In the CC there was a huge finned spacecraft
built already wrecked. The creator is looking to sell it. The Kaffee
Klatches didn’t include coffee, a situation that always ticks me off a
little. Panels ran smoothly or almost, and they had me booked pretty
solidly. We got to the Masquerade and enjoyed it very much.
Sunday, at the Heinlein Banquet, Jerry Pournelle and I
were given the Robert A. Heinlein Award for fiction or technical writings
intended to get our asses off the Earth.
The flight home: uneventful. That took us past Labor
Day, and summer’s over.
Stories to judge for WOTF. They’re all retyped in the
same typeface. “Do not blame typos on the author,” we’re told. Then I run
into a character who waived his arm— Waived his arm. A startling sight. Must
have been a lawyer. It disappeared right to the shoulder, leaving a pink
blur for a stump.
But the stories are a good crop.
Three collaborations are all on track. My turn with
the Bowl of Heaven (with Greg Benford.) Ed Lerner is ginning along. So is
Steve Barnes. Jerry Pournelle and I need to start hiking again: we no longer
have the excuse that it’s too hot.
Larry Niven
And in fact I am catching up on mail while
waiting for Larry to appear for a hike up the hill. (Which went well...)
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