Slashdot Mirror
Sim Plague
Brian Kingsbury writes: "The New York Times has an
article on a new twist in the world of the Sims --- a "virus" that
can kill off a player's characters. In a particularly sadistic twist,
the virus is carried by a guinea pig that players download from the
Sims Web site. I wonder what's next, maybe the Black Death?
" That's all Nate would have needed to complete his House of Fear - locked doors, no food, two ghosts, and the kitchen on fire. Will Wright, you're a genius.
if i had the sim i'd design a sim that pours bowls of hot grits down his pants for everyone to download, but that game sounds really boring, so i'm not wasting my time. thank you.
If I had the sim progamming language, I'd design an RMS sim that would go around yelling GNU/Linux, GNU/Linux.
Then I'd build a cluster of bloodthirsty monsters, and call them Grendels.
Hi, Partly because of slashdot, there's a somewhat "The Sims" related website, that I've created and maintain. It's planetsims.com and if anybody is interested in help out let me know. I'm posting from work, thus the anonymous coward posting.
Re-read the article. It does replicate. An infected human character can transmit the virus to another (nearby) human character by sneezing.
--synaptik
If you want to flame me, do so here.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Ah. Yes, well... I'm not surprised that the media can't differentiate between a "virtual" virus, infecting a PC, and a "virtual virtual" virus infecting a character in a game on a PC. I get miffed when they bungle computer concepts up, too. But I suppose that concepts that you and I think of as fundamental and simple are obscure and complex to them. Maybe psychologists and other highly specialized professionals find themselves wincing, too, when the media botches up in their attempts at paraphrasing the experts.
--synaptik
If you want to flame me, do so here.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
before someone makes a Janet Reno to run around your Sim neighbourhood taking all the children and removing them from the game at gunpoint.
Actually, I was looking for something to do tonight....hmm.
(evil snicker)
Yes, I've researched this a bit.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Why stop there? Why not make the capton "Federal rescue team saves child from potential molesters"?
Because there's no evidence to that. But that the relatives were kidnappers is quite clear; thanks to the media the entire nation witnessed it.
I can't believe so many people are defending a gross abuse of power, committed with a neglect of the courts.
While I do agree that they did go a bit extreme, I'm not sure this was an abuse of power. The child was, for all intents and purposes, kidnapped. He was being held hostage, and negotiations were not working. Was sending in armed agents a bad thing? Yes. But did they have any other choice? I'm not so sure they did. And when you run out of options, you do what you have to do.
I'm not surprised that Reno ordered it, though, as she has a long history of such acts.
Agreed. But for once I think she may well have been right. In the past she's been more than a little trigger-happy, and many people died senselessly as a result. But this time she showed a great deal of restraint, actually waiting until there was no other option.
Going into a house, in the way those agents did, was just asking for somebody to be killed.
Quite true. But no one was killed; that is what's important. Going into a building with guns to rescue hostages is also just asking for someone to be killed, and that's more or less what this was. The relatives managed to pull a rather inane political-ideology bit to manipulate a lot of people and hide the truth of their actions, but they did what they did.
If people suddenly find that agents have broken into a house, and are pointing automatic weapons at them, people will often react defensively.
They'll react defensively if anyone breaks into a house with automatic weapons. They'll also react defensively if their children have been kidnapped.
We *do* still have a right to keep arms in our house, and bear them to defend ourselves.
Yes, that's true. From all reports, there were guns in the house; that is why the agents were sent in armed. It would have been stupid to send in unarmed agents which could have been mowed down in front of the child, making this even more of a tragedy than it would have been.
If the agents had a warrant, and it very much looks like they did, then they did nothing wrong. If they didn't have one that's another matter, but the vast majority of reports seems to show that they had one. Displays of force are Bad Things, and should only be used in very rare cases when there is no other option. However, this seems to have been exactly such a case.
-and in tight red dresses. With Soulswords.
Ah, Yohko-chan...
>What about a dark ages patch. Go for a witch-hunt
>and burn em at the stakes.
We'd need the "sim-scales" patch too. And a duck.
The point I was making was what if this world was created by a being who inflicts us with the occasional flood, earthquake, plague, "insert any of a number of tragedies here", et cetera, just for fun.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Looks different now, doesn't it?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's kind of scary how much this does to explain all the suffering in the world.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So how soon until Norton or Mcafee market something to protect your sims from the virus, keep it from spreading to the rest of your computer, and keep your computer from getting it from the Internet? :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Art imitates life, life imitates Art. Mwaaa-haaa-haaa! Somewhere deep underground a malevolent Mad Scientist is creating a real guinea pig virus of death!
// Zarf //
Either that or an 3l33t h4x0r is building a virus to infect "The SIMS" plug-ins.
-
[signature]
Um, the origional SimCity (now SimCity Classic) did this ten years ago. It had a "cheatsheet" that you had to enter the correct code from when you started the game (remember those?). If you didn't have the code or entered it incorrectly (you had two or three tries), after a few years of building up your city the disasters would start (yes, even if disasters were turned off) and continue non-stop, completely leveling your city.
I had some friends that pirated a copy, but didn't bother to patch over the protection or get a copy of the cheatsheet because they actually enjoyed that "feature". Don't ask, I don't understand either.
-"Zow"
Someone forgot to mention that nytimes.com needs a complete listing of your personal data er.. I mean registration before you can view articles on their site.
The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews
Heh. Just a matter of time.... >:)
The picture also illustrates that the safety is engaged on the weapon, though you can't always see that in the resolution-crippled versions that you see in the newspaper. Also realize that we're only dealing with a moment in time... accounts from witnesses at the scene (including the AP photographer who is, incidentally, guaranteed to win a pulitzer, ) state that the agent immediately raised the barrel of his weapon upon seeing the fisherman and the child inside the closet and confirming that there was no threat.
Events didn't quite go off the way I would have planned them, but the end result was acceptable... zero injuries and mission accomplished.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
To put it in terms journalists might understand:
I have a picture of my dog stored on my computer. I hope he doesn't get loose and eat my homework.
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
I downloaded the guinea pig - at first I was worried, since it's been rotting for about a month in my living room, but I suppose it won't bite anyone. I think it's a pretty cool concept, but that still doesn't mean I want my replica of myself to die - he's just about to reach the pinnacle of his career. I've already had several people die - drowning is pretty common, especially if you tell them to take a swim without any ladders to exit the pool...>;)
My first traumatic Sim Death was when I discovered a burnt out light bulb and had one of my favorite sims change it - only she had just taken a bath. Keeled over dead straight away. That really sucked. Fun game though.
-lx
When the articles are filled with lies and misrepresentations, that's a serious issue, regardless of WHOM is being written about. I'm not condining what Kevin did, but that's no excuse to blow things out of propotion and print outright falsehoods, then have the gall to call it "journalism".
A much less harmful virus got around on an early muck named Brigadoon, which was up in late 1990 and early 1991.
It spread the same way; if you looked at an infected person, you got infected as well. However, its only effect was that it changed an attribute named 'appendage' that some code used so that your default appendage was: a withered penis. Hence messages like this became common:
A withered penis appears and pulls (person) up and over the edge of the floating island.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I thought the article was really good up to that point as well. Kudos to Will Wright! This was a truly geek move and deliciously evil to put a cute pet on the Maxis homepage that could lead to such havoc. By virtue of making a way to play through the virus and save the character, he's done it in just the right way, without affecting game balance.
At first I was a little mortified at the thought of some kid innocently wanting a pet in the game then having their character get messed up, but then I realized this even has educational value. That little kid will understand that pets need to be taken care of, their cages cleaned, and that human hygiene when sick is important to prevent the spread of disease. Too bad my coworkers didn't learn about washing themselves as kids...
-m
I've heard that you can't get two male sims to share the same bed. Haven't tried it myself though...
This is about time!
I've only tried the game once or twice, but after only 30 minuttes of gameplay, I started looking for a way to kill of those annoying creatures.
Perhaps a full blown black death extension to the game, migh be good. Let's see what natural selection can do.
What about a dark ages patch. Go for a witch-hunt and burn em at the stakes.
No, you read the story again... what Markoff is implying is that, since all the objects in the game are "programs", and by that I assume he means compiled or bytecode objects that are executed by the parent application (the game). What he's implying is that someone might use this functionality to write a trojan horse Sims modification that would do Bad Stuff(TM) to the end user's machine or something.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
- Dave
It would seem to me that this comes out just in time for the new Sims add-on "Quarintine".
No, you're not the only one. I didn't get the Sims (I haven't bought any new games in a while actually; nothing that great has come out this year really) and I don't really see what the point is of simulating someone's real life is. I play games for escape, so I don't see any point in playing a game where I get to be a regular shlub. :)
The fact that you have to micromanage your people so much (making them run to the bathroom, for crying out loud, geez) also does not make the game appeal to me much....
--
Not as far as I know....I don't think it's quite prepared to be Slashdotted though. :) :/
I guess you just need to keep trying to reload the page.
--
Acually the modified picture I had emailed to me today had "Drop the Chalupa!" as the caption.
;-)
Will this SimNet include a Sim version of Slashdot?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
What a hoot, it almost makes me want to get the sims.
George
"Janet Reno hasn't come out of the closet, so why should we?"
In any case, I think the article itself was drug induced or something. What's up with it bringing up Internet worms in the context of a "virus" that's part of a game? Sheesh. Next, these journalists are going to start harping on the "Censorware" code that's in the game when it mosaics out the characters when they're naked or going to the bathroom... Sigh.
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
shift-ctrl-c then type "klapaucius", doesn't work with 1.1
:)
In 1.1 it's been replaced with 'rosebud'. It's in the readme that comes with the patch
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
Whenever I'm nagged to register a program I've paid for, I always enter . . .
First name: NoneOfYour
Last name: FuckingBusiness
email: postmaster@riaa.org (or postmaster@whoever is making me register)
I usually enter the zip code and other demographic data correctly, though.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
The first things that you should consider to be at fault are memory, video RAM, and cache. They are a common source of problems that don't seem to have a cause. That's because they are so sensitive to electrostatic shock, that when they are put in, they could be damaged but still work. You can check those components by using hardware testing software. I must warn you that a memory test can take hours. If you have 128 MB, prepare to leave the machine on for over a day. Check out PCDiags (but that one costs money) or visit your hardware manufacturers page to get testing programs for each piece of hardware. If you don't know what hardware you have, use System Analyser to make a list.
After you have ruled those out, break down the system to the bare components that you need to run the game. Take out your sound card, modem, ethernet card, and disconnect all peripherials except mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Then play and see if it crashed. If it doesn't, then it was one of those components. Start putting them in one-by-one until the problem happens again, and you should know what is wrong.
tasty and delicious
...People coding to make themselves a host that is carring virri in virtual worlds. But this can be played into the games, just think of medics and wizards that can put a "patch" so to say on the infected users, they have to hack the virus in the world. Oh man that would be cool.... I think when PDAs get more and more wireless we will be meeting for a business lunch and our business cards will automatically transfer to the people you meet. Just think of an injected virus from the wireless card reader app into your PDA ... to much yap -Kancer
pray tell us admiral...
would you have allowed the family time to hide/hurt the child? would you have gently knocked on the door and asked: "may elian come out and come to daddy?"
the cuban american community seems more intent on defying castro than looking out for the real best interest of a child and his father. it is my feeling that elian is being exploited by the miami relatives who are in turn being exploited by the radical elements of the cuban american community.
come on, would his "mouthy" female cousin be a proper role model? she needs a lesson on the proper way to hold a conversation (one that does not involve screaming at the top of your lungs on all sorts of conjecture which seems to be the only way she holds a press conference).
that being said, i applauded the government's restraint in waiting and in using adequate force to confuse and deter resistance. you can argue 'what-ifs' all you want to avoid the real issue.
would the child be better off as poster child for the anti-castro movement?
It would be nice to have an anime plug-in of some sort, or at least some skins you could download. I'd try to create the whole of Nerima--Ranma, Akane, Shampoo and all the rest. Or Urusei Yatsura! Gods, what I wouldn't pay to play "Sim Lum," or "Sim Utena" for that matter. There's probably all sorts of licensing issues, though--it'd likely cost the game creators out the wazoo to get permission. Pity.
Don't know if YOU read the article or not but you are wrong, Maxis is not going to release source code for "The Sims". They will in the future, after Sims 2.0 no doubt, release the Programming Language that controls the Sims and the objects that surrounds them. That way you can create your own objects etc...
Harm to what? It's a game. This is no more damaging than an AI player in _Starcraft_ suddenly making an unanticipated raid with 6 fully-loaded Protoss Carriers.
It's not like it's eating your _Quicken_ database.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Actually, they did something along those lines when they created the original SimCity. You had a red sheet of paper(red because it was really hard to copy... yet it was possible >:) that had codes and such. If you didn't enter the correct code, you'd start getting earthquakes and other disasters about every 10 seconds.
:)
I always thought it was annoying, and, I did get download a crack for it not long after I bought it.
geez...That guy is an idiot. Of course Maxis made Sim City.
Sierra has sort of done this. I remember in Sim City, if you didn't enter in the correct code from the red sheet, your city would get destroyed by tornados, earthquakes and monsters.
Of course, you could always unleash them on yourself for a little excitement too.
Sierra didn't make Sim City, idiot...Electronic Arts did.
I am sorry to see that my joke was lost on you... then again maybe not since you are one of the people that seam to confuse video games with real life...
Oh yeah.... also let me point out that if you did not use the atuo-destruction options in the SimCity games, you missed out on a great part of the game... The game creators put them there (Will Wright is a GOD) for you to use, not sit around thinking that video games are the problem with society along with movies and television. If the state of American society bothers you that much, get off your ass and do something about it.
As with Sim City, the most fun I ever had was when I got bored with the city and unleased death and destruction upon my paradise. Now lets look to The Sims and see if you can't do the same thing. How about adding a chemistry set where you can build your own viruses, or maybe an option to poision the food. I think the poision would be helpful in the situations where you have two people in love with the same sim... just slip a little be of you special brew in their food and problem solved. Of course I have a sick and twisted mind... but it would still be fun to do.
Yes, they are possible. Could this little "feature" be the Maxis answer to the SimCopter rumors a few years ago?* I do find it interesting that no one has tried to have gay male Sims.
Honestly, when you add in the AdultPatch, who wouldn't want to have two naked male Sims making out on their computer...
(crickets chirping)
* Rumor has it that a programmer at Maxis was pissed about their failure to recognize alternative lifestyles, so he inserted a bit of code into one of the later pressings... come 2/14, male Sims would be dressed only in Speedos, and show "interest" in other male Sims.
And there have been other viruses in computer games. In 1984 a virus appeared in Core Wars, an early game in which users created programs that did battle in the memory of a computer
What excatly do they mean by this? When was there a 'Core War virus' except in the sense that some peoples 'bots replicated themselves?
And it doesn't hurt to search their BBS...
~=Keelor
Fortunately in real life the animal -> human disease transmission vector is not so reliable. Probably the only reason that someone's not doing that ;)
> (note to moderators: mod the above up please).
Offtopic rant:
I am sick and tired of all this "Hey moderators"
bull. Let whoever has mod points moderate already.
It seems in every article these days there are
a few posts saying "I can't believe this got a 2"
or "Mod this up" etc....leave it alone. I mean I
can understand posting a clarification when
something was intended as a joke and gets called
flamebait (has happend to me even) but...seriously
let them decide for themselves.
> I totally agree, even working in a media
> organisation I hate the way they've got to put a
> spin on these thin
Its not just these things, its everything. Face
it, scare tactics work. Repeat after me everyone:
"Readership is God.".
Why do you think media flocked to columbine like
flies to shit? Great opertunity to scare people
shitless, and keep the glued to the tube and
reading the paper. Anything they can do to latch
into peoples fear, they will do. If your afraid
that something might affect you, then you are
going to keep reading, keep watching, and keeping
their advertisers happy.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Now please tell me where I complained at ALL
about moderation? That was a discussion about
playboy magzine and, me, defending the stance
that its articles ARE actually good and worth
reading.
Perhaps in the subject line you say? well the
subject line began with a 3 letter sequence
"re:" before the "how did this get a 4" which
implies, nay, outright states, that it was a reply
to someone else.
(see above: "Re:Throwing Stones....")
Now, as the Mahareeshi Hashish Yogi said...
"People who live in glass houses, shouldn't throw
orgies"....thats words to live by homey.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It fits in perfectly with our house that has the people locked up in the attic with no food, no bathroom, and no way out. We let them starve to death and call it a documentary.
--
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
not EVERYONE has a phone. :)
Hours of *work*? I enjoy playing The Sims, but I, like most people do other things as well.
It's too bad that SimLife was already taken. They could have named the product that. SimLives for people w/o real lives.
The quake guy is supposed to be an 'alias' for yourself, but the sims are supposed to be able to handle themselves for aw hile, just like simcity or simearth can to some extent.
Real People Aren't THat Stupid.
Well, actually, in most cases they ARE, but they're stupid in different places (not like "run and point at the fire and jump up and down" stupid)
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
What, you've never used a trial version of Bulletproof FTP? (Don't.) It does that, bascially. S'called crippleware.
B'Shin
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
SimEarth (anyone else remember that?) was very entertaining, but the novelty wore off. SimAnt was fun for a couple weeks, SimFarm was fun for a few days. Anyone else notice a trend?
I bought The Sims when it came out. (Yeah, I run Windows... well, the price was right, eh.) Once I got bored with the total-failure aspect (like in SimCity, you can only stand to watch a city burn for so long), I started trying to get my Sims to actually succeed in life. With Free Will on, they are amazingly lazy and irresponsible. With Free Will off, they require constant hand-holding... they'll wet themselves if not told to go to the john.
After about two hours, I was bored with the game, so I used the money cheat and played with using the game as an architecture/interior-decorating visualizer. That was fun for an hour, and then I was done with it all.
The problem with The Sims is that there's nothing to do in the game. Anyone who's played it will probably agree with me. Beyond the basic choices of grubby-bachelor or sophisticated-businesswoman, and green or blue carpet, all you can really do is watch. That got old.
Every other Maxis game I've played, I've felt like there was always more I could have done with it. Not The Sims. I felt like I had exhausted its potential in three hours.
YMMV.
J
I got this info from the Official Sim's home page. I'm addicted to the game myself.
The "Virus" is part of the Gina Pig download that you get from Maxis. The little sucker will sometimes bite your Sims and make them sick. If they're not healthy (Rested, fed, clean) the illness gets worse and kills them.
The first version of the Guni Pig download almost ALWAYS killed your sims, but Maxis released a new version with a much lower fatality rate.
You can download it from the official home page after you log in (To prove you're a licensed user of the game)
Matthew Miller,
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
yeah , it's a crock innit
... details of how it works ... and then the dull this could mean that in 10 years time we'll all be wearing anti-gravity shoes or something"
.oO0Oo.
I was reading New Scientist yesterday and one third of the two page article was mere speculation on some unlkely scenario. You know like "new storage media found
makes me barf
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
you can get the female sims to share the same bed and dream about each other and such....in fact the one chick left her husband for the other gal :)
Some of us just have too much free time on our hands.
Well, duh, you're supposed to help them out. That's like complaining that your quake guy won't pull the trigger of his gun by himself.
No, no, no... Edith is the mod editor. It's the tool they use to create the guinea pigs and moose heads and slot machines. According to the article in Computer Gaming World on this, Edith needs some polish to make it easy for people to use (and even then, they said only the most advanced Sim-ers would be able to use it), and then they'll release it. It isn't the source code to anything, just a "map editor" if you will. Then they'll have a place on their website where people can download the creations of others.
However, I no one will be able to use Edith to create REAL computer virii or Trojan Horses, like this article was insinuating. They made it sound like Edith somehow put the mystical power of computer cracking and virus writing into the hands of the average citizen, and, oh no, what ever will we do then?!
That would be a blast. Your Sims start getting sick because the neighbor is operating a meth lab.
Sorry, it's sick, I know. I just think it's funny.
kwsNI
Now that'd be a killer App!
"The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth."
Hermann Hesse
Looks like it got Slashdotted -- I get a 'no permission' error on the page now... Sites never expect the Slashdot Effect!!
}#q NO CARRIER
If I played this game, I'd like to see a Vampire plug-in. It could be modelled after Buffy and have cute slayers and anti-slayers running around in tiny leather outfits...
>yes, the stove is on fire. oh, go stand in the middle of the fire, yeah, that's a good idea. point at it and freak out, yep, that'll fix it. retards. Don't kid yourself, some people really are that stupid. I had a tenant, 17 year old girl, started a grease fire on the stove and didn't know what to do so she * walked into another room, sat down, and worried that it wouldn't go out.* Fortunately, for some reason, it did, but not before totaling the entire kitchen. She never tried to put it out, she never called the fire dept., she literally tried to worry it out. She probably thinks she has pyschic powers now.
(note to moderators: mod the above up please).
I totally agree, even working in a media organisation I hate the way they've got to put a spin on these things.
I remember many a year ago when computer viruses first came out, the media made a lot of fuss about them infecting people. Now it's been turned on its head and people and infecting computers (okay, it's sim people but... :) ).
I'm now seriously considering buying 'Sims', but I just wonder if my PC emulator can cope. Ho hummm.
Richy C.
--
Do you have WinDVD installed? There seemst to be a problem with WinDVD somehow interfering with the game. I had the same problems (Sims allways crashing after just a few minutes) and after removing WinDVD everything worked fine.
-- Newsraider.de - News aus dem Netz - German Geeknews Community
Players of the game have no right to complain, either; they agreed to the license. Also, you're told not to forget to clean the cage when you download it.
The wife in my Sims family had the stove catch on fire for her recently(she's a lousy cook) the fire guy showed up, but she was too busy jumping up and down in an attempt to scare the fire away that he couldn't get close enough to put the fire out.
Trojan horse n.
A malicious, security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, game, or (in one notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a program to find and destroy viruses!
The guinea pig isn't a program. There is no executable code. It's just a list of parameters defining what a guinea pig is. One of these parameters says that guinea pig is a disease carrier.
Yah, everyone knows that's what the Windows Office macro language is for.
Nope. I don't like it, and a buddy of mine wants to kill anyone who ever programmed something with "Sim" in the title. I personally have never played The Sims, but the very concept is IMHO flawed.
Bit OT.... But with every successive Sim game I've become more annoyed with the series. I played SimCity for a couple of hours before frustration set in, then the next game lasted about three.... SimAnt lasted ten minutes, while SimIsle didn't even last the tutorial. They all sound so cool, but they never stand up to scrutiny. (And I get a chance to play 'em all, as I know a Sim-fanatic who owns and loves demoing them.)
And Computer Gaming World's obsession with The Sims has spawned a veritable orgy of Sim-loving this month, with them pulling out ever cheap trick to try to get you to read the many many Sims articles they have. Eugh. Though I did skim the mildly humorous article where one guy created a Sim-doppelganger of himself, then held a party. All the partygoers ignored him and chatted it up with each other. His SimSelf wound up passed out on the bathroom floor. When the computer starts telling you that you have no life....
I'm taking that to court, you'll regret that killing spree...
---
guillaume
give me all your garmonbozia
Some of those whiny-ass Sims NEED to die.
It also felt really good to download the Bill Gates skin then watch him die from it. 8^)
and yet, you can get the parents to share the bed with their almost teen-age daughter/son of the opposite sex.
you are welcome to your tastes, of course, naturally, but for explanation. in games like this you don't pretend to be the little character. You pretend to be god, controller of everything. You break up relationship, or put then together, you run everything. It's an I'm-god pretend thing, so in reality it's no more healthy than destroying imaginary things. Um, I like both.
-pyrrho
what, does he think he's god? just kidding... isn't he? Thank god I lost that plugin when my laptop died! where is the sim dog with rabies they've been promissing (not really, but wait!) -craig
-pyrrho
you bring in an interesting question. I think the answer will be that most people will be far more cruel than they are in reality. Look, the sims site itself talks about marrying rich sims and killing them (for example by putting them in the pool and then removing the ladder). That would seem a little needlessly cruel, why not just publish the money cheat tho if they want people to get money outside the real parameters of the game. (shift-ctrl-c then type "klapaucius", doesn't work with 1.1). Ok, it may not really be cruel, it's only pretending to be cruel. But why? Like this poster mentions, with the costs of kindness less, why not pretend to be less cruel rather than more. -craig
-pyrrho
my god. you are right! this is the confliction with hacker laws! As a long shot, this might be a way to require open source as de facto full disclosure, because otherwise patches might have to have full disclosure of all features (even undiscovered bugs). This is no difference from a feature patch than might introduce a security flaw in a productivity app. Don't get me wrong, I think that the artist (maxis) has the right to do this in the game world they're creating, but if it destroys hours of work, it does fall under these laws! and the point is the flaw that implies in the law. -pyrrho
-pyrrho
I became a programmer before we knew about the money and the hot grits girls! Imagine my luck... I might have been a rock star or something instead! -pyrrho
-pyrrho
fool! Sim city wasn't made by EA, it was made by Maxis who wasn't a part of EA then!
-pyrrho
The idea of Sim Plagues is old. It was originally devised for the series of "biblical adventure" games that are in "development" by Elves on Tricycles. You can read the press release here.
Absolutely, but it sounded like you thought the bad coverage the case received was a mitigating factor (after the fact) for the behavior.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
>By the way does anyone know if you can make
>lesbian Sims?
Yup. I haven't been able to get two women to marry in the game, but I've gotten 'em making out like a couple of prom dates, complete with 100 percent in the friendship/love categories. It may just be a programming oversight (doubtful), but I think it's cool that alternate lifestyles are represented. Pretty bold for Maxis, which typically blands their simulations down so nobody will get offended.
For future revisions, I'd like to see more from the criminal element in the game - drive-by shootings, arsonists, phone scammers, and so on. The setting in the game is quasi-rural, but I bet most people that play it live in urban surroundings and would be able to identify with the game just a little bit more if it was a little uglier.
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
It seems like the game is gaining its own momentum, have anybody played around with the "sim" editor.. I wanna create Geeks-In-Space as sims.. Cant u send me some facial photos?? *G*
"Theres alotta savages in this town.."
Okay, that last post was from me.
(That's My Brother..Oh yeah..)
I have fired such weapons as well. Did anyone teach you what you were doing, or were you fucking around with a cannon like that for fun?
View again the picture of Elian and the Federal Agent.
Note that the agent's finger is OUTSIDE THE TRIGGER HOUSING!!! In other words, there is NO WAY that he will accidentally shoot ANYONE!!!! This is part of weapons training for people who's jobs require the use of such force. Oh, and a side effect of such training means that odds are good that, unlike YOU, the agent will NOT spray bullets randomly upon pulling the trigger. Ordinarily I'm all for gun rights, but people like you scare the crap out of me. Please learn what you're doing with guns before you hurt someone you care about.
You're correct. More properly, this is a trojan horse. But in the "common usage" that equates hacker & cracker, this would be a virus.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Wait 'til the multi-player version comes out, when people can exchange characters. I build up a great family, looking to sell it on eBay. Mr. Wright gets cute and throws in another virus. My family's wiped out, and I've got nobody left to sell on eBay. Time for my lawyers to have a little talk with Mr. Wright. You just wait. :)
Personally, I think the guinea pig thing is a great idea, and should just be seen as part of the game. Who's to say that there isn't someone going around to animal shelters injecting guinea pigs with nasty viruses? Sure it's far-fetched, but so is life -- how many people expected their Tylenol to be laced with cyanide back in the '80s?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Unless they offer a toll-free number as an option to register, this would not be great. We have to remember that not EVERYONE has Internet access, even though it's considerably more common nowadays. And if this is a requirement to get anywhere in the game, it needs to be stated on the box.
I think we need Resident Sims. Rats can carry the T and G virus, and your sims can hunger for blood and flesh and may evolve into Tyrants if you keep them well fed.
And they could still have babies, and baby zombies like Dead Alive. Ah, Peter Jackson...
when Push Comes to Shove
On a more serious note, I don't think it's "damage " when your game character dies. You might as well sue him for not making the Sim guy live forever.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
One of the (many) things that I loathe about the media is how they have this uncontrollable desire to make issues appear as nasty and brutish as possible.
:-P
You did see who wrote the article, right? That bufoon Markoff has made his living pulling crap like this. Besides, it's easier than doing any kind of research or something.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
- Dave
http://www.geocities.com/elian_true/
simcastro! simcastro! simcastro!
Chso the Clockwork Maus
Offtopic rant: I am sick and tired of all this "Hey moderators" bull. Let whoever has mod points moderate already. It seems in every article these days there are a few posts saying "I can't believe this got a 2" or "Mod this up" etc....leave it alone.
It's a bit hypocritical to bitch about something you yourself are guilty of, my homey.
http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/04/13/1939221&cid=152
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
It may be a bit off-topic, but I figure an "ask slashdot" wouldn't be quite appropriate, so I just threw the question into a comment:
Does anyone else have problems running this game?
There's a page on the EA support website for my problem. "Sims crashed with a page fault in module " meaning, basically, I can run it for about five minutes, and then it crashes.
Their solutions are to kill all the other programs, and to make sure your drivers are up-to-date.
I've contacted EA support, and while they've suggested numerous solutions to the problem, none have worked.
Is anyone else getting this? I see good reviews and (mostly) positive comments on this game everywhere, but almost no mention of my problem.
If anyone had this problem, and has fixed it, I'd really appreciate hearing how!
-Denor
What's to prevent people from creating or hacking the guinea pig virus and create different strains? What's to prevent the exchange of such hacks? Is this a possibility?
This sounds a little like the Intel PIII CPU ID, doesn't it?
I think that this is the kind of stuff that makes these games cool. I'd love to see more "realisms" in the game. I don't know about you, but I think this game can be used (maybe after modification) as a tool for creating an environment for people to deal with "real-life", maybe good therapy, even.
I guess I don't blame them for making the game for linux from the get go ... that would have taken production costs higher, but now that the game is going no where but up I don't thi8nk it would be so unlikely to make it for linux. I like Loki, but just because they make games for linux doesn't mean they're cheap ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
However I have to admit that it is an ingenious "easter egg" for the game.
But truly, you would have to trust Maxis 100% with any bonus material they give you for the game... the next thing you know is that your nieghbours in the game open a crack house...
BlackNova Traders
Are you suggesting that the guinea pig is not a trojan houre? A TH is an innocuous looking program that actually calies nefarious code. The code that this TH carried was a game virus that infected characters and could be passed from character to character. How is this not a TH?
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Go here for the story with no annoying registration.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
It says they are going to come out (in version 2) with a thing that allows you to program your own extras. My brother has the game and I think I am going to turn one into a SimStripClub. Topless dancers and the like, that way I could bring it up to the standards with EA games. Or maybe... I could make a whore house. By the way does anyone know if you can make lesbian Sims? It could be like free porn.
I never d/l extra stuff for sims, I just make the lady take a bath over and over with no censoring =)
no censor "hack":
create a file
"\Sims\GameData\Skins\adult-censor.cmx"
in it put:
version 300
0
1
adult-censor
1
0
0
if you want the children naked (sicko!), its:
"\Sims\GameData\Skins\child-censor.cmx"
version 300
0
1
child-censor
1
0
0
...but am I the only one on this planet who hates The Sims?
The (alleged) AI in this game seems no more advanced than some expert system based Starcraft clone. Was this just a testing ground for Maxis to play around with neural networks, and happened to become stable enough to release as a game? This game needs to go through a little more improvements to the neural network before it even comes close to what a real human would do.
That, plus the fact that the premise is so *dull*. Oh, joy. I get to simulate a person who gets a job as a medical test subject or a race track announcer. Yeehaw. Woohoo.
Oh, please. I'd much rather spend time blowing away enemy starfighters in X-Wing Alliance or giant robots in Mechwarrior 3 than guide a person around a house, doing chores in The Sims.
Just ranting. Flames are welcome.
Dude, time to take a deep breath, chill, and look at the story again.
They're not implying that this well affect the entire Internet. What they're saying is that, were Sims a multiplayer game, the potential would exist for the virus (that kills characters in the game) to spread from character to character.
--
Ian Peters
> Virus in a computer game? We must surreptitiously imply that it might affect the entire Internet!
Clearly you know nothing about computers! Everyone knows this happened on X-files with that hot S&M digital chick with the sword.
Depending on how pissed off a user could get from seeing his beloved sims characters die, he could try to press charges under Federal statute 1030 subsection (a) (5)(A):
Whoever knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;....incurs a penalty of: (c) (3)(A) a
fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both, in the case of an offense...of this section which does not occur after a conviction for another offense under this section...and no more than ten years imprisonment if previously convicted,...or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this subparagraph.
Intentionally causing damage without authorization sounds about right....
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Someone with far too much time on his hands decided to see how badly he could break the game on ISCA BBS -- here's the results:
http://us4n6.dnaco.net/simz/I particularly like the fireman watching people keel over dead in the street....
--
That the 'ginea pig' virus made news is odd; they tell you point-blank that characters handling it might get sick. Maybe I came in late and they had added that after several complaints -- but I've been playing several weeks and always knew.
"The Sims" is incredibly addictive -- the ONLY reason I still have MicroDos on my system. The various add-ons they offer on their site, coupled with pre-made characters & houses from fan sites (one UK site features dead-on renditions of various celebrities) have cost me more sleep-time than I care to admit.
Think about this for a second. Outside of the very recent past, people with diseases were locked away. Personal "rights" were stripped for the good of the whole. What will happen in the game when someone gets a character that is running around trying to kill everyone with disease.
It will be interesting to see if people are as forgiving in a game atmosphere (where it costs even less) to someone that has a disease. Will names of the diseased be posted. Flags put outside their houses? Neighbors take up collections to pay for the cure?
I look forward to the answer to these questions and more when people can behave however they want.
t
It's already happened.
Back in 1991 or 1992, text-based MUCKs already had programming languages. One enterprising programmer wrote a virus that attached itself to a person's description.
Whenever someone would look at an infected person, they would also be infected.
I forget what the 'payoff' of the virus was, but the 'antivirus' command even now exists in places like Furrymuck.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
you know, given that my sim just tends to pass out on the floor when he gets tired, i doubt he could be trusted to take care of another living creature. no wonder the hamster bites them and gives them diseases.
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
I'm sure people won't like that and a patch would certainly be created in no time, and it could be a PR problem, but it's an idea.
Will Wright obviously sees himself as the Creator the God or the Devil, and he is right. What is the ultimate goal of all programmers - control. You control something - your PC you GNU/Linux your application your network etc. This guy controls his creation - a little world, in fact many little worlds.
In some aspect he also controls the people who play his game. He has the power to teach them, to change them, to manipulate them.
for this ultimate goal all means are justified.
hale
You can't handle the truth.
By then, however, gamers may have been forced to confront the same challenges that face e-mail users whose computers are frequently attacked by hostile programs.
"Right now it would be hard to convince a prosecutor to attempt to convict someone for such a program, but that may change," said Mark Rasch, a former assistant United States attorney who successfully prosecuted a Cornell graduate student for releasing the first Internet worm in 1989. "These things become more important as online gaming proliferates. With online gambling it will become even more problematic."
WTF??? I read about this Guinea Pig mod to this game two months ago in Computer Gaming World, and I thought, "No way! That is so cool!" All it did was prove to me that this thing really simulated real life, and was versitile enough that they could release such a hugely new feature into the game months after its release. It almost made me go out and buy it then and there.
It's a fscking game! The point of a game is for it to be difficult! If Sims players are so upset that they would, as this litigous Mark Rasch put it, attempt to CONVICT the programmer, then perhaps they should move to more easy to play games, like Reader Rabbit. That way, they'd always win.
To me, this is adding value to the product. For the same low price of $50 (or whatever it is), you get a game that is always changing, always becoming more challenging. Sounds to me like you're not likely to get bored of The Sims within the first two weeks of game play, like so many other games I've played. Again, if people want an easy game where they always win, then leave the computer alone and watch sitcoms.
I don't see where they get off saying "gamers may have been forced to confront the same challenges that face e-mail users whose computers are frequently attacked by hostile programs." What??? I don't see where anyone's hard drives have been deleted. I don't see where anyone's been forced. Sim players choose to download mods. Worm recipients don't choose to receive worms. And even then he's sensational about it. I'm an e-mail user, and I'm not frequently attacked by hostile programs. I've gotten maybe 3 infected emails in my entire life, and even then, was not stupid enough to open "prettypark.exe".
To me, this article didn't get bad in the middle, like a lot of you said. This article was doomsday from the very beginning. There was a lot of negative and dark language from the headline to the last sentance with only a few minor positive highlights.
Incidentally, the virus he refers to in Snowcrash only worked on hackers, so you'd think the media would like that... Get rid of the hackers, and all your problems will be solved.
Well, if you look at the author of the article, it's none other than John Markoff! If the name doesn't ring a bell, he's the same guy who wrote sensational articles about Kevin Mitnick many years ago which ultimately resulted in Kevin getting treated so badly by "the system". You can read more at http://www.freekevin.com/.
Markoff wouldn't know good journalism if it bit him on the ass. Why the New York Times continues to employ someone as irresponsible as him is beyond me.
From the article:
Although there is no easy possibility that the guinea pig virus will escape from Sims and cause havoc in the Internet world, the specter of software viruses in the future of computer gaming is real, Mr. Smith said. "When they introduce a future multiplayer version of Sims, it will create an interesting social dynamic," he said.
Why can't they just tell the story, and not try to inflame the public with these false potentialities? JESUS. The article was great right up until this point. One of the (many) things that I loathe about the media is how they have this uncontrollable desire to make issues appear as nasty and brutish as possible. This is a perfect example. Virus in a computer game? We must surreptitiously imply that it might affect the entire Internet! That's MUCH more interesting!
FUCK THAT. Just tell the story! Grrrr....
-Rev.I thought everyone forgot all about that. It was new years eve 1993 on Furry, actually. And it did more than just attach itself to a person's description. It infect the room they were in if possible, so anyone walking into the room got infected. It infected the links between rooms, objects, and even actions on objects. (So if you create an object with a link to a program and run that command to run your program, the virus infected that command as well. Every time you ran it, you would be re-infected.) There were also plans to abuse something called _listen, which executes a program whenever a person _receives_ a message. So a person could get infected just by _hearing_ something. But the programmer didn't have enough permissions, which is probably a good thing.
Another thing the virus did was overlay each person's ability to communicate. The virus had its own special versions of the basic "say", "pose", "spoof", "write", and "whisper". (It could only create these through a big in the MUCK code on Furry, I'll note.) The payoff of the command was that after midnight (ie. one New Years), all infected users would have their communications silenced and rerouted to a special log file. Actually, the messages got printed out to the user's screen so that it _looked_ like everyone could hear them, but in fact they couldn't.
This "fun" went on for a good half hour until one of the administrators figured out what was going on because of a bug in the modified page program. (Note to coders: *always* test your code before you install it in public.) Eventually they just reinstalled an older DB to clean out the virus.
Incidently, they people perpetrating this took the log file, flamed it, and then posted it to usenet. In retrospect, that was a bad idea, but you do stupid stuff when you're 15...
If you're curious about the aftermath, a lot of clueless users on Furry complained to the programmer's sysadmin. Of course, the clueless users blew everything out of proportion, not understanding what really went on. When word finally got back to the programmer, apparently he had written an "internet worm, capable of copying itself between different servers on the internet." I only wish I was that good of a coder! Apparently the FBI got involved for a short time, until they realized that the Furry server was located in Canada, so any felonous charges would have to be tried in an international court. Once the feds finally realized it was just some stupid prank with no lasting harm, the programmer never heard a thing from them again.
Anyway, the guy lost his internet access, which was through a university. He spent the 9 months of downtime (before getting another account) working on a program to let people play several variants of Poker on MUCKs. Ironally, this program is still popular on Furry to this day. Consider it one last bit of both apology and spite.
But that was a long time ago, and I was a different person then.
-Ted
~=Keelor