This was actually done with the PS1 game Spyro: Year of the Dragon. They actually built crack protection into the game code itself. There was a really interesting article on Gamasutra about it at the time. This, of course, added mountains of extra work for the programmers, but it's interesting from a technical perspective.
This is offtopic, but they have an HTML5 demonstration going with embedded video supported by that standard. If support for HTML5 video becomes more widespread, we can move away from Flash at long last.
Except that the according to the reports, the student was confronted by a school admin with the photograph for "improper behaviour at home". Of course, it's now just come out that they thought he was consuming (and therefore likely by extension selling) drugs. But the fact that the school confronted him shoots that theory in the foot.
This undoubtedly will be really, really interesting. I'll be watching this one, that's for sure. Ye gods, if this was my kid, I'd be demanding the school board's head on a silver platter. The people responsible should be publicly crucified as far as I'm concerned. This is seriously one of the most disturbing things I've ever read.
That's actually exactly what I meant.:) They are free to make as much money as the market supports, but they don't have a right to make money period, regardless of demand.
And who are you to tell how much companies should be allowed to make?
We're the consumers. You know, the people who actually, through the supply/demand of the marketplace, ultimately decide how much their product is worth? Who are they to tell us that they have a right to make $X million per quarter, and they need special laws to prop up their broken business models?
How about the system doesn't allow the fecking web browser to read your personal files? The purpose of My Documents is to have an easy space to store everything and keep it organized. How is the solution to this ridiculous bug to not utilize such a useful feature?
We take it because we have to. The Canadian Internet service industry is crap as it is, but the wireless industry is absolute shit up here. Even the pay as you go options are garbage. The personal time of my life was getting heckled in downtown Toronto by kids hawking Rogers phones and service plans. I think I send a few of them home crying when I told them I'd rather have a rectal exam than get suckered into one of their contracts (in much harsher words).
I didn't say I think we should throw away democracy, I said people are easily influenced by propaganda. Removing the people's choice is an even more slippery slope, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems either way. There's an old saying, "The people get the government they deserve."
I know we try to maintain a civil discourse here on/. (ha), but with all due respect, are you fucking serious? They denied the existence of the issue despite all evidence to the contrary; by the time they even acknowledged it was a problem, hackers were already exploiting it; and their initial "fix" to the problem didn't fix anything, and actually cause more security issues. I know MS fucks you just as hard as Sony does, but how the hell did this ever get modded insightful? It's a bloody console fanboy rant.
I don't think he meant literally the next day, but his point is valid. When Apple announces something, it doesn't disappear after many delays as vaporware.
These companies don't seem to realize that ad blockers came about because the ads themselves because increasingly annoying and intrusive. If advertisers played nice and didn't piss people off (ha, right) then we wouldn't need to use ad blockers just to make our browsing experience pleasant again. I don't know anybody who actually likes ads.
My personal experience is that people turn up their headphones loud because they have shitty headphones and you need to turn it up loud in order to hear everything in the music and drown out the background noise. This was always the case when I was a kid, and my parents would be able to hear the sound leaking out and tell me to turn it down, and actually went so far as to put the headphones on themselves to check the volume level. (Because, you know, they actually cared about what I was doing to myself. That seems to be a lost art these days...) Years later, I discovered the solution: buy a decent pair of headphones! After spending $100 on a nice pair of earbuds that actually block out the background noise really well (to the point where my wife doesn't want me to wear them if I'm playing my DS at home and she wants to call me for help occasionally), I'm surprised if I have to ever hit half the maximum volume on my MP3 player/DS because the music/game is mixed so quietly. The majority of the time, I'm at more like 1/3 the max volume. This also has the nice side effect of increasing the quality of the sound itself, because you can hear all the nuances of your music without having to turn it up so loud that it's practically distorted because of the surrounding noise, even on the subway going to and from work. You might scoff at spending $100 on a pair of earbuds when you can get them for under $20, but your ears will thank you later. One of the best investments I've ever made, by far. Just make sure you take proper care of them.:P
And the companies making the games have every right to choose only to release their game on the Xbox. I'm all for open platforms, but you can't force these companies to use them if they don't want to. All you can do is not buy their games/systems.
Aside from that, what else can you do? The only option I see left to enact real change is to take them all out to Capital Hill, lynch them publicly, and start all over. Of course, there's no guarantee it won't reach this point again...
I actually think this is more because the jump in graphics technology has started to reach the point where it's "good enough" to do basically any kind of game you want. The jump from the PS2 to the PS3 is just as big, it's just that it doesn't seem as important anymore.
I understand the hate for Activision's approach, but what exactly is "looming on the horizon" for RB that has you upset? The Beatles RB is an entirely separate RB platform with its own game and DLC, yes, but this is mainly due to licensing restrictions for their music because, surprise, they're the freakin' Beatles and they get to dictate the terms. It's also only for one single band, and arguably the only band that could possibly pull it off. It's not like GH where you have multiple songs from the same artist split across different discs that you have to swap to play. The other major thing is the Rock Band Network, but that's all based on RB2. The only other RB game in the pipeline is Lego RB, and judging from past experience, I'd be extremely surprised if the songs from that game weren't exportable right off the disc just like the AC/DC Live disc and the other track packs. If it turns out that it isn't like that, then by all means, call them money grubbing bastards.
That's why I dumped GH once RB came out. RB's platform approach is the new way to do music games, and if GH won't follow suit, they won't be getting my dollars.
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This was actually done with the PS1 game Spyro: Year of the Dragon. They actually built crack protection into the game code itself. There was a really interesting article on Gamasutra about it at the time. This, of course, added mountains of extra work for the programmers, but it's interesting from a technical perspective.
You could try to send no ninja, but you'd get a divide by zero error when calculating the Inverse Ninja Law.
Ah, I didn't realize it was limited to the "inferior" codec (from a licensing standpoint). Why wouldn't they support OGG as well? :P
This is offtopic, but they have an HTML5 demonstration going with embedded video supported by that standard. If support for HTML5 video becomes more widespread, we can move away from Flash at long last.
Except that the according to the reports, the student was confronted by a school admin with the photograph for "improper behaviour at home". Of course, it's now just come out that they thought he was consuming (and therefore likely by extension selling) drugs. But the fact that the school confronted him shoots that theory in the foot.
This undoubtedly will be really, really interesting. I'll be watching this one, that's for sure. Ye gods, if this was my kid, I'd be demanding the school board's head on a silver platter. The people responsible should be publicly crucified as far as I'm concerned. This is seriously one of the most disturbing things I've ever read.
That's actually exactly what I meant. :) They are free to make as much money as the market supports, but they don't have a right to make money period, regardless of demand.
And who are you to tell how much companies should be allowed to make?
We're the consumers. You know, the people who actually, through the supply/demand of the marketplace, ultimately decide how much their product is worth? Who are they to tell us that they have a right to make $X million per quarter, and they need special laws to prop up their broken business models?
How about the system doesn't allow the fecking web browser to read your personal files? The purpose of My Documents is to have an easy space to store everything and keep it organized. How is the solution to this ridiculous bug to not utilize such a useful feature?
If someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back!
particularly regarding Sergey Brin was born in the USSR which played a big part in this decision.
Holy shit, can we please proofread summaries before submitting stories? How the hell did you people pass high school English?
We take it because we have to. The Canadian Internet service industry is crap as it is, but the wireless industry is absolute shit up here. Even the pay as you go options are garbage. The personal time of my life was getting heckled in downtown Toronto by kids hawking Rogers phones and service plans. I think I send a few of them home crying when I told them I'd rather have a rectal exam than get suckered into one of their contracts (in much harsher words).
I didn't say I think we should throw away democracy, I said people are easily influenced by propaganda. Removing the people's choice is an even more slippery slope, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems either way. There's an old saying, "The people get the government they deserve."
So you mean voters are easily influenced by propaganda and are unable to consider the source?
I think that's exactly what he's saying, and I agree with him 100%.
I know we try to maintain a civil discourse here on /. (ha), but with all due respect, are you fucking serious? They denied the existence of the issue despite all evidence to the contrary; by the time they even acknowledged it was a problem, hackers were already exploiting it; and their initial "fix" to the problem didn't fix anything, and actually cause more security issues. I know MS fucks you just as hard as Sony does, but how the hell did this ever get modded insightful? It's a bloody console fanboy rant.
I don't think he meant literally the next day, but his point is valid. When Apple announces something, it doesn't disappear after many delays as vaporware.
These companies don't seem to realize that ad blockers came about because the ads themselves because increasingly annoying and intrusive. If advertisers played nice and didn't piss people off (ha, right) then we wouldn't need to use ad blockers just to make our browsing experience pleasant again. I don't know anybody who actually likes ads.
My personal experience is that people turn up their headphones loud because they have shitty headphones and you need to turn it up loud in order to hear everything in the music and drown out the background noise. This was always the case when I was a kid, and my parents would be able to hear the sound leaking out and tell me to turn it down, and actually went so far as to put the headphones on themselves to check the volume level. (Because, you know, they actually cared about what I was doing to myself. That seems to be a lost art these days...) Years later, I discovered the solution: buy a decent pair of headphones! After spending $100 on a nice pair of earbuds that actually block out the background noise really well (to the point where my wife doesn't want me to wear them if I'm playing my DS at home and she wants to call me for help occasionally), I'm surprised if I have to ever hit half the maximum volume on my MP3 player/DS because the music/game is mixed so quietly. The majority of the time, I'm at more like 1/3 the max volume. This also has the nice side effect of increasing the quality of the sound itself, because you can hear all the nuances of your music without having to turn it up so loud that it's practically distorted because of the surrounding noise, even on the subway going to and from work. You might scoff at spending $100 on a pair of earbuds when you can get them for under $20, but your ears will thank you later. One of the best investments I've ever made, by far. Just make sure you take proper care of them. :P
And the companies making the games have every right to choose only to release their game on the Xbox. I'm all for open platforms, but you can't force these companies to use them if they don't want to. All you can do is not buy their games/systems.
Aside from that, what else can you do? The only option I see left to enact real change is to take them all out to Capital Hill, lynch them publicly, and start all over. Of course, there's no guarantee it won't reach this point again...
I actually think this is more because the jump in graphics technology has started to reach the point where it's "good enough" to do basically any kind of game you want. The jump from the PS2 to the PS3 is just as big, it's just that it doesn't seem as important anymore.
It's not that it's hard to do it. It's that they don't want to do it.
I understand the hate for Activision's approach, but what exactly is "looming on the horizon" for RB that has you upset? The Beatles RB is an entirely separate RB platform with its own game and DLC, yes, but this is mainly due to licensing restrictions for their music because, surprise, they're the freakin' Beatles and they get to dictate the terms. It's also only for one single band, and arguably the only band that could possibly pull it off. It's not like GH where you have multiple songs from the same artist split across different discs that you have to swap to play. The other major thing is the Rock Band Network, but that's all based on RB2. The only other RB game in the pipeline is Lego RB, and judging from past experience, I'd be extremely surprised if the songs from that game weren't exportable right off the disc just like the AC/DC Live disc and the other track packs. If it turns out that it isn't like that, then by all means, call them money grubbing bastards.
That's why I dumped GH once RB came out. RB's platform approach is the new way to do music games, and if GH won't follow suit, they won't be getting my dollars.
Windows is meant to be software for people who don't want to understand, which is why so many people use it.
I thought that was the Mac OS?