I suppose it depends on what you mean by "classic" but I find the fact that Gametap will never have any of the games from id, or most of the popular FPS games, or heck even Mortal Kombat a downside.
Moby Games has a list of M rated games which must have one or two gems on there that I know at least I would like to play.
I'm not saying that not having M rated games is the only downside. As I said, playing a consol game in a PC isn't ideal. There were simply a lot of games on there I found boring or difficult to play on a PC and there were also a lot of games that sucked when they were in the arcade to start with or simply weren't for my demographic (tons edutainment games for example).
It seems that Costikyan is of the same mind as the music industry that thinks we should still pay full brice for a Beatles album which is nothing but pure profit for the music company. Call me crazy, but that is just plain greedy. Of course they and the videogame industry can charge whatever they want but I'm not going to pay it. I haven't paid full price for a game or a cd for years.
Costikyan has a lot of great ideas and he means well but he is also very very pessimistic about the games industry. There isn't much that he is optimistic about, so it isn't surprising that he would see Gametap as negative.
I subscribed to Gametap for a while, and the bast majority of the games they have are arcade and consol games that are gathering dust on a shelf. Sure there are a handful of more modern PC games, such as Prince of Persia Sands of Time, but that is about it. While Gametap is making some moves to distribute games like the Ages of Myst and Sam and Max, I just don't think it is very likely that gametap is going to make a dent in the games industry. Right now, they are basically going after games that no one would buy otherwise or games that would have a much more difficult time getting made in the first place.
The real problem with Gametap is their selection. Playing consol games on a pc is only of limited entertainment value. As long as they refuse to carry "M" rated games, their selection of games is going to lack some of the games that have historically been popular.
If citizen journalism is agout citizens doing journalism and not "experts" or "professionals" then why should we ask someone else about citizen journalism?
As someone who has taught a year of high school and five years of college, my additude is that if the teacher is too lazy to check up on their suspicious students, then the they really aren't that concerned about their student's quality of work anyway.
It is really easy to make assignments specific to a class so that plagiarism is difficult.
Additionally, most plagiarists are so lazy they simply cut and paste the first thing that comes up on google. I can't tell you how many times I've just typed in the title of a paper into Google and found it. When reading papers, there are also just phrases that sound suspicious and it doesn't take long to search for them either. Most papers I've found that were plagiarized were at best C papers any way.
If someone can plagiarize well enough not to make me suspicious or turn up in Google, then more power to them. I'd rather presume innocent untill proven guilty than presume guilty untill proven innocent which is what services like turnitin do.
Of course Valve could make it so you don't have to update the game if you don't want to.
Oh wait, then the servers would kick you for not having the correct version.
This update doesn't really have anything to do with Steam. If the server admins want to use the variable money, then they will. If they don't, then they won't either by turning it off or by giving everyone tons of money. So it doesn't matter if the user can control whether they patch the game or not. It is all about what the people running the server want to do.
I think you are right, up to a point. A lot of the thinking about "thrid spaces" that goes on with new media is in some ways reflective of the "Bowling Alone" theory as espouced in the book of the same name. In that book, the author says that we (particualrly Americans) used to be much more active in the public sphere with civic groups and, as the title suggests, bowling leagues. So a lot of this is attempting to counter that saying that while people may not physically leave the house, they still do have social lives that do not involve work. So while it is true that one may not leave the house while playing a mmorpg, but one does interact with other people and get some sence of escape from work and home. I'm not sure why this article appeared on slashdot, particularly. The idea of muds and moos as third spaces is nearly as old as muds and moos themselves. Go to scholar.google and search for "new media" and "third space" and tons of articles turn up.
And I never claimed that you did say that gecoming more efficient a killer makes one a more willing one. However, the efforts of Grossman and Thompson are based on that leap in reasoning.
The alleged rise in efficiency in killing is largely irrelevent when discussing videogames. Grossman's arguemnt is that soldiers have become more efficient killers. He also notes that the military uses videogames in their training. There is no reason to believe that these facts are related any more than there is to believe that making one's bed is related to efficiency in killing.
After reading Grossman's book, I no longer make my bed. After all, the military places great emphasis on how well soldiers make their bed and so by Grossman's logic it must make them better killers. I don't want to kill anyone so I don't make my bed.
More seriously, even if Grossman were correct and playing videogames could make one a better killer, there is a difference between learning how to do something and wanting to. My high school english teacher taught me to diagram sentences, but I have yet to feel the urge to do so.
Grossman's reasoning is also flawed in that he suggests that for one animal to kill another member of his own species is rather rare, which simply isn't true. Killing for territory, rank, or mating is common in many species. Humans killing for those reasons isn't exactly unheard of...
If only there were some quicker, more efficient way of answering this question. Some sort of engine that would be good at searching for things. A searching engine if you will. Then you could simply type in satellite internet gaming and get the answer. Oh for such a wonderful device...
Your critique seems to argue that the creator is the ultimate source of meaning. However, why should that be the case? Why should the creator be able to tell me that the meaning I have for something isn't valid? How can we even know what the author "meant?"
Tolkien may have hated allegory, but I've yet to be convinced that Lord of the Rings isn't full of it regardless of what he "meant."
I think that perhaps you are painting with too large a brush. While it may be true that a lot of the gaming audience isn't interested in anything other than a normal review, I think that there are a number of people who are bored with normal reviews that just discuss graphics and bugs. While it very well may be nothing than metal masterbation, most reviews are little more than press releases. Who is to say one is more or less worthwhile than the other? I think that is a question we each have to answer for ourselves.
never. it will never happen. there are numerous copies available on ebay however. I rented it from a local rental store a couple christmases ago and it was just as horrible as i remembered. The Boba Fett cartoon is the only reason to watch it. -- well that and seeing grandpa moan and grown while watching some scantilly-dressed disco singer.
If you expect it to crash every two minutes and it only crashes every 3 then yes, it does surpass expectations but that doesn't mean it is any good.
I remember several years ago when I was trying to get some tech support via email and didn't get any help at all. Afterwards they send an email satisfaction survey and one of the questions was, "Did we meet your expectations?" I knew going in that the chances they would be of any help at all were very slim, so yes they did meet my expectations -- as low as they were.
I sent them back a response telling them how poorly worded and meaningless their question was. I never heard back from them -- once again meeting my expectations...
Ok, so that may be an exaggeration, but I think the point remains valid: there isn't much point in coming up with genres.
Mark J. P. Wolf in Medium of the Video Game list a bunch of genres that are fairly useless such as listing demos as their own genre.
While I'm not a fan of applying film theory to videogames, I think that Rick Altman in Film/Genre makes the most interesting use of genre by syntax and semantics. (Actually, there isn't a lot of need to read the entire book. He lays out syntax and semantics as a way of looking at genre in his article, "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" which is widely reprinted and is included as an index in the Film/Genre book).
Looking at the driver disk it looks like a lightscribe disk or something. Anyone have any idea if this is pre-release package or if that is how the disk actually looks?
The idea itself is interesting, but I think the most interesting part is that it has a usb port and can theoretically be programmed to do certain other non-gaming tasks. Unfortunately it would probably have to catch on before any interesting hacks turn up for it. It doesn't seem likely catch on though unless they reduce the price at least by half.
They are playing 8 hours of Amazing Stories today. Friday they are playing 8 hours of Outer Limits and yesterday they played 8 hours of Andromeda. Marathons of shows is what they do. That they are playing Firefly means nothing. It doesn't mean that they are going to pick it up any more than it means they are going to start making new episodes of the Incredible Hulk starring Bill Bixby. Sadly, they are both dead.
I"m also a graduate student and I've spent my fiar share of time teaching college courses as wel as TAing for various professors who had different ideas on attendance. Each of the profs I've worked for had their own reasons for their attendance policies from not having one to making me take attendance for a 200 person lecture class and based on where their priorities were, I could understand. Personally, I don't care about attendance. I teach in discussion format and the fewer people in class the easier it is for me to get to know the students and make sure they all participate. I'm not their baby sitter, so if they don't want to come, I don't really care. I'll do every thing I can to help them, but I'm not going to go hunt them down or hold their hand.
I think a lot of it has to do with what level we are tlaking about. I always hate the fall semester because as a grad student when I am teaching I am teaching the introductory courses. Because the majority of students are brand new to college, many of them tend to be very high maintancance and it is a lot harder. They need more structure if they are going to stay in college past the first semester so I see the value of attendance policies.
Regarding the actual topic of podcasts. I say if let them out. Let everyone have them. The worst that can happen is that someone who didn't pay for the calss learns! *gasp* (OK, the worst that can happen is that you are looking for a job and the job serach committee listnes to your lecture and doesn't like them and you don't get hired. But seriously, there ism't much at risk here).
Did you know that in this game you can also kill people???? Won't someone think of the children???
If it is legal in the physical world to "kill" someone in the game, then why would it be illegal in the physical world to steal "money" that has no official worth in the physical world?
It may be a violation of terms of service punishable by banning, but it certainly doesn't seem like an offense that should be prosecuted by any government in the offline world.
From what little I know, this type of activity seems par for the course in Eve online. I remember reading about an event that occured last year where a group infiltrated another group and basically acted as undercover agents. They got into the highest ranks of the group then killed the CEO, destroyed ships and took over some assets.
Call me crazy, but that sounded pretty cool to me. It sounded much cooler than any scripted or planned event I've heard about in any other online game. So does this latest event. If you have created a game where the players can create such interesting events rather than have to artificially create them, it sounds like you've done something right.
Since the law lets citizens ask judges to put people on thist, the obvious solution for Ohio citizens is to accuse every single politician who is responsible for this law of being a sexual predator. Let them prove they aren't and see how they suddenly change their mind about this law.
I don't know much about the EVD format. It may not be much more than vaporware (Didn't China attempt to make their own DVD standard as well and their own chip? I may be wrong, but they didn't really seem to materialize). However, if it were to catch on in China, it would almost certainly appear on some of the cheaper HDDVD or BlueRay players since so many of them are made in China. Just as the cheap DVD players often have features midpriced ones lack (such as easilly changeable region codes or removable macrovision), I can see the inevitable cheaper higher def players sneak in new features more mainstream manufacturers will be slower to include. (Of coures whether there is any officially released Hollywood EVD content is another story)
A beta was unstable and not ready for daily use? That's umpossible!
Seriously, beta 1 was unstable for me as well until I realized that it was because of a couple extensions that I had installed with the nightly tester tool that were crashing it. Since I removed those I haven't had any trouble with beta 1.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "classic" but I find the fact that Gametap will never have any of the games from id, or most of the popular FPS games, or heck even Mortal Kombat a downside. Moby Games has a list of M rated games which must have one or two gems on there that I know at least I would like to play.
I'm not saying that not having M rated games is the only downside. As I said, playing a consol game in a PC isn't ideal. There were simply a lot of games on there I found boring or difficult to play on a PC and there were also a lot of games that sucked when they were in the arcade to start with or simply weren't for my demographic (tons edutainment games for example).
It seems that Costikyan is of the same mind as the music industry that thinks we should still pay full brice for a Beatles album which is nothing but pure profit for the music company. Call me crazy, but that is just plain greedy. Of course they and the videogame industry can charge whatever they want but I'm not going to pay it. I haven't paid full price for a game or a cd for years.
Costikyan has a lot of great ideas and he means well but he is also very very pessimistic about the games industry. There isn't much that he is optimistic about, so it isn't surprising that he would see Gametap as negative.
I subscribed to Gametap for a while, and the bast majority of the games they have are arcade and consol games that are gathering dust on a shelf. Sure there are a handful of more modern PC games, such as Prince of Persia Sands of Time, but that is about it. While Gametap is making some moves to distribute games like the Ages of Myst and Sam and Max, I just don't think it is very likely that gametap is going to make a dent in the games industry. Right now, they are basically going after games that no one would buy otherwise or games that would have a much more difficult time getting made in the first place.
The real problem with Gametap is their selection. Playing consol games on a pc is only of limited entertainment value. As long as they refuse to carry "M" rated games, their selection of games is going to lack some of the games that have historically been popular.
If citizen journalism is agout citizens doing journalism and not "experts" or "professionals" then why should we ask someone else about citizen journalism?
If it is just reader, ditch Adobe and go with Foxit Reader which is a lot better than Adobe's version (and also free as in beer).
As someone who has taught a year of high school and five years of college, my additude is that if the teacher is too lazy to check up on their suspicious students, then the they really aren't that concerned about their student's quality of work anyway.
It is really easy to make assignments specific to a class so that plagiarism is difficult.
Additionally, most plagiarists are so lazy they simply cut and paste the first thing that comes up on google. I can't tell you how many times I've just typed in the title of a paper into Google and found it. When reading papers, there are also just phrases that sound suspicious and it doesn't take long to search for them either. Most papers I've found that were plagiarized were at best C papers any way.
If someone can plagiarize well enough not to make me suspicious or turn up in Google, then more power to them. I'd rather presume innocent untill proven guilty than presume guilty untill proven innocent which is what services like turnitin do.
Of course Valve could make it so you don't have to update the game if you don't want to.
Oh wait, then the servers would kick you for not having the correct version.
This update doesn't really have anything to do with Steam. If the server admins want to use the variable money, then they will. If they don't, then they won't either by turning it off or by giving everyone tons of money. So it doesn't matter if the user can control whether they patch the game or not. It is all about what the people running the server want to do.
I think you are right, up to a point. A lot of the thinking about "thrid spaces" that goes on with new media is in some ways reflective of the "Bowling Alone" theory as espouced in the book of the same name. In that book, the author says that we (particualrly Americans) used to be much more active in the public sphere with civic groups and, as the title suggests, bowling leagues.
So a lot of this is attempting to counter that saying that while people may not physically leave the house, they still do have social lives that do not involve work.
So while it is true that one may not leave the house while playing a mmorpg, but one does interact with other people and get some sence of escape from work and home.
I'm not sure why this article appeared on slashdot, particularly. The idea of muds and moos as third spaces is nearly as old as muds and moos themselves. Go to scholar.google and search for "new media" and "third space" and tons of articles turn up.
And I never claimed that you did say that gecoming more efficient a killer makes one a more willing one. However, the efforts of Grossman and Thompson are based on that leap in reasoning.
The alleged rise in efficiency in killing is largely irrelevent when discussing videogames. Grossman's arguemnt is that soldiers have become more efficient killers. He also notes that the military uses videogames in their training. There is no reason to believe that these facts are related any more than there is to believe that making one's bed is related to efficiency in killing.
After reading Grossman's book, I no longer make my bed. After all, the military places great emphasis on how well soldiers make their bed and so by Grossman's logic it must make them better killers. I don't want to kill anyone so I don't make my bed.
More seriously, even if Grossman were correct and playing videogames could make one a better killer, there is a difference between learning how to do something and wanting to. My high school english teacher taught me to diagram sentences, but I have yet to feel the urge to do so.
Grossman's reasoning is also flawed in that he suggests that for one animal to kill another member of his own species is rather rare, which simply isn't true. Killing for territory, rank, or mating is common in many species. Humans killing for those reasons isn't exactly unheard of...
Anyone else think this "interview" seems entirely too stereotypical to be true? Maybe I'm not playing online enough or something.
If only there were some quicker, more efficient way of answering this question. Some sort of engine that would be good at searching for things. A searching engine if you will. Then you could simply type in satellite internet gaming and get the answer. Oh for such a wonderful device...
Your critique seems to argue that the creator is the ultimate source of meaning. However, why should that be the case? Why should the creator be able to tell me that the meaning I have for something isn't valid? How can we even know what the author "meant?"
Tolkien may have hated allegory, but I've yet to be convinced that Lord of the Rings isn't full of it regardless of what he "meant."
I think that perhaps you are painting with too large a brush. While it may be true that a lot of the gaming audience isn't interested in anything other than a normal review, I think that there are a number of people who are bored with normal reviews that just discuss graphics and bugs.
While it very well may be nothing than metal masterbation, most reviews are little more than press releases. Who is to say one is more or less worthwhile than the other? I think that is a question we each have to answer for ourselves.
never. it will never happen.
there are numerous copies available on ebay however.
I rented it from a local rental store a couple christmases ago and it was just as horrible as i remembered. The Boba Fett cartoon is the only reason to watch it. -- well that and seeing grandpa moan and grown while watching some scantilly-dressed disco singer.
If you expect it to crash every two minutes and it only crashes every 3 then yes, it does surpass expectations but that doesn't mean it is any good.
I remember several years ago when I was trying to get some tech support via email and didn't get any help at all. Afterwards they send an email satisfaction survey and one of the questions was, "Did we meet your expectations?" I knew going in that the chances they would be of any help at all were very slim, so yes they did meet my expectations -- as low as they were.
I sent them back a response telling them how poorly worded and meaningless their question was. I never heard back from them -- once again meeting my expectations...
Ok, so that may be an exaggeration, but I think the point remains valid: there isn't much point in coming up with genres.
Mark J. P. Wolf in Medium of the Video Game list a bunch of genres that are fairly useless such as listing demos as their own genre.
While I'm not a fan of applying film theory to videogames, I think that Rick Altman in Film/Genre makes the most interesting use of genre by syntax and semantics. (Actually, there isn't a lot of need to read the entire book. He lays out syntax and semantics as a way of looking at genre in his article, "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" which is widely reprinted and is included as an index in the Film/Genre book).
Looking at the driver disk it looks like a lightscribe disk or something. Anyone have any idea if this is pre-release package or if that is how the disk actually looks?
The idea itself is interesting, but I think the most interesting part is that it has a usb port and can theoretically be programmed to do certain other non-gaming tasks. Unfortunately it would probably have to catch on before any interesting hacks turn up for it. It doesn't seem likely catch on though unless they reduce the price at least by half.
They are playing 8 hours of Amazing Stories today. Friday they are playing 8 hours of Outer Limits and yesterday they played 8 hours of Andromeda.
Marathons of shows is what they do. That they are playing Firefly means nothing. It doesn't mean that they are going to pick it up any more than it means they are going to start making new episodes of the Incredible Hulk starring Bill Bixby. Sadly, they are both dead.
I"m also a graduate student and I've spent my fiar share of time teaching college courses as wel as TAing for various professors who had different ideas on attendance. Each of the profs I've worked for had their own reasons for their attendance policies from not having one to making me take attendance for a 200 person lecture class and based on where their priorities were, I could understand. Personally, I don't care about attendance. I teach in discussion format and the fewer people in class the easier it is for me to get to know the students and make sure they all participate. I'm not their baby sitter, so if they don't want to come, I don't really care. I'll do every thing I can to help them, but I'm not going to go hunt them down or hold their hand.
I think a lot of it has to do with what level we are tlaking about. I always hate the fall semester because as a grad student when I am teaching I am teaching the introductory courses. Because the majority of students are brand new to college, many of them tend to be very high maintancance and it is a lot harder. They need more structure if they are going to stay in college past the first semester so I see the value of attendance policies.
Regarding the actual topic of podcasts. I say if let them out. Let everyone have them. The worst that can happen is that someone who didn't pay for the calss learns! *gasp*
(OK, the worst that can happen is that you are looking for a job and the job serach committee listnes to your lecture and doesn't like them and you don't get hired. But seriously, there ism't much at risk here).
Did you know that in this game you can also kill people???? Won't someone think of the children??? If it is legal in the physical world to "kill" someone in the game, then why would it be illegal in the physical world to steal "money" that has no official worth in the physical world? It may be a violation of terms of service punishable by banning, but it certainly doesn't seem like an offense that should be prosecuted by any government in the offline world.
From what little I know, this type of activity seems par for the course in Eve online. I remember reading about an event that occured last year where a group infiltrated another group and basically acted as undercover agents. They got into the highest ranks of the group then killed the CEO, destroyed ships and took over some assets.
Call me crazy, but that sounded pretty cool to me. It sounded much cooler than any scripted or planned event I've heard about in any other online game. So does this latest event. If you have created a game where the players can create such interesting events rather than have to artificially create them, it sounds like you've done something right.
Since the law lets citizens ask judges to put people on thist, the obvious solution for Ohio citizens is to accuse every single politician who is responsible for this law of being a sexual predator. Let them prove they aren't and see how they suddenly change their mind about this law.
I don't know much about the EVD format. It may not be much more than vaporware (Didn't China attempt to make their own DVD standard as well and their own chip? I may be wrong, but they didn't really seem to materialize).
However, if it were to catch on in China, it would almost certainly appear on some of the cheaper HDDVD or BlueRay players since so many of them are made in China. Just as the cheap DVD players often have features midpriced ones lack (such as easilly changeable region codes or removable macrovision), I can see the inevitable cheaper higher def players sneak in new features more mainstream manufacturers will be slower to include. (Of coures whether there is any officially released Hollywood EVD content is another story)
Since this was on boingboing, I'd be surprised if someone didn't mention this already. There's a children's book that explains DRM.
I seem to remember an extension for this. However, I can't find a link to it right now. I find it irritating as well, but not a deal breaker.
A beta was unstable and not ready for daily use? That's umpossible!
Seriously, beta 1 was unstable for me as well until I realized that it was because of a couple extensions that I had installed with the nightly tester tool that were crashing it. Since I removed those I haven't had any trouble with beta 1.