THis reminds me of the time a year or two ago when a group of Australian security guards were upset about what they percieved as the unjust portrayal of security guards in Half-Life. Of course while you can kill the security guards in Half-Life, it is better not to since they help you and in fact the expansion pack Blue Shift has you play a security guard. It seems some people miss the point of things entirely.
Isn't the point of the game that the animals had been the victem of cruel experiments and are getting revenge? Therefore doesn't the game thus reinforce the notion that animal testing is wrong?
I am a phd student and as a result I am often writing research papers with lots of references. I know that I would LOVE to have ebook versions of the books I read so that I wouldn't have to spend so much time trying to find one line or one paragraph in a book that talked about something I want to cite. I would love to be able to do a keywork seach for these books. It would help sooo much.
Yes exactly, that is why we should outlaw cars. How many people have to die EVERY DAY before these death wagons are outlawed? And that is with it even being illegal for people under a certain age to use them! AND everyone being required to take training! Outlaw death wagons now!
I don't know what to tell you. I can go dig out the credit card bill if you would like. I got the year long membership just before E3 of 2002 so I could see the exclusive videos. Last summer (2003) the story I posted occurred.
Perhaps they changed the terms of service since you joined? I went and looked and in the terms of service they state:
Your credit card
You must use a major credit card in order to register for the Service. You hereby authorize us to charge your credit card to pay for your initial Service subscription and for any automatic renewals. Until you cancel your subscription, we will renew it automatically, and we will charge your credit card each year or each month (depending on the subscription term that you selected when you registered) for the price of a then-current annual or monthly subscription (depending on the subscription term that you selected when you registered).
As far as the other response goes, I fully admit that I should have posted a note somewhere reminding me to cancel the membership and that it was my fault I got charged. However, that doesn't change the fact that, in my opinion, it is a dishonest way of doing buisness and customer service was less than nice to me when I called.
I got burned in a similar way by Gamespot complete. I joined a year ago. I got at least once a month spams from them which I eventually just started deleting without reading. Then one month I had a weird charge on my card. If I recall correctly, it didn't even say gamespot on it and I had to call the number on the bill to figure it out (I may be misremembering that part).
Anyway apparently one of those spams they sent me was a reminder that they were going to autorenew my membership (which I had forgotten i had even had). So I called them up to complain and they were all "Did you read the terms of service?" well, yes -- A YEAR AGO. The operator game me additude. I hung up called my credit card comapany told them i didn't want to pay that charge. Blingo, charge was erased from my bill.
This same thing happened at the casino I used to work at. They used to have dox matrix printers that would print up a 3 sheet jackpot ticket for the slot people. They would sign it, I would sign it, take the top copy for my records, give the slot people their money. after they piad, they would put the other two copies in the drop box.
Now they have a laser printer that prints the ticket 3 times and we have to all sign our name 3 times. that isn't such a big deal for the slot people becasue there are 10-20 of them on the deck. However, I was one of only two cashiers on the deck paying jackpots, so half of every jackpot paid on the deck had my signature on it. Multiply that by 3 and you get serious hand cramps.
The case of the wrestler Maxx Payne versus the game Max Payne certainly seems a legitimate case to me. Scott Miller calls the guy a nobody, but he wasn't a nobody back in his day. He was in the WWF. He had t-shirts and other merchandice with his name and likeness on them.
Now, I think that the game having the same name is probably accidental, but that doesn't mean that the game has effectivly prevented this guy from ever using that name again -- a name he had used professionally for years before the game was first announced. In that, I would think that it wasn't necessarilly about greed or stupidity. It might be, but not necessarilly.
My parents still have the big huge dish in thier yard. You can get some pretty interesting stuff if you are willing to pay for the tech. Of course it IS a dying technology, but it is pretty interesting how they are trying keep it alive through things like 4dtv and mpeg sidecars.
Well the most obvious example, and one I wish I had mentioned originally, it in Red Faction, the game that advertized the fact that you could blow holes in the walls. In reality there was really only a handfull of places where this was usefull and several where for no good reason you couldn't blow a hole in the wall except that it would have made the game much easier becasue you could make tunnels around obsticals (what, am miner make tunnels? heaven forbid!)
Whether the game makes sence in our real world logic, doesn't matter so much as if the rules in teh game behave the same way or at least if they don't we are given a bare minimum of explanation why.
A great example of something that doesn't make sence in our world, but is consistent and makes sence within the logic of the game is, as Poole discusses in his book Trigger Happy, is rocket jumping. In our world shooting at your feet would blow your feet off, in FPS games, however, there is (typically) no way to shoot your own legs off, which may be illogical, or unrealistic, but the effect of combining the recoil of the rocket launcher with jumping is consistent to the rules set forth within the game.
An example of inconsitency that really irritated me was in the first Soldier of Fortune game there is a level in a subway. In one area you enter the restroom and when you start to leave, a bad guy blasts through the wooden entry. Nowever else in the game can the player do this and I think that even the bad guys only do this in one other situation. It is inconsistent. Sure it was done to surpize the player, but it is a cheat if that is the only place it can be done and even if you reload the game to before that, you cannot shoot through the entry (even though if you look close enough you can see the cracks where it will be blown off). It was inconsistent and irritated me. Of course consistency is not a magic bullet. Games can be consistent and still be bad.
I agree with you on most points. However, I would like to know which universities are paying professors to pick more expensive books.
Certainly there are classes where the prof wrote the book and eventually get royalties. However, I've taught at two different univerisities, and from my experience the only contact professors have with the bookstore is when the book store calls to yell at you for not turning your order form in on time.
Well obvious is in the eye of the beholder. I know it snowed a lot and that the streets are bad, but they seem to like to put that on the front page a lot.
They introduced it after Christmas. I would be very surprised if the price doesn't come down to at least $199 by this Christmas. I would imagine that they are selling all they can at the higher price and then drop it down for the Christmas gift buying season.
So the x-box version of DDR wouldn't interest people who don't play videogames?
So the PC version of GTA wouldn't interest non-gamers simply because it comes in two boxes and not two?
If they are keeping it to games "of the moment," it is odd that their number one game is the Sims which was relesed much more than 12 months ago. Sure they just released yet another expantion pack, but they didn't mention that. Also the versions of the Sims on consols are different than that on the PC. By your logic they would have singled out one of those with those fancy exclusive features.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but I could have sworn that I was playing Counter-Strike more than a year ago. They didn't mention the X-Box version of it (another odd ommision, how is that explained?). So it seems that they are not restricting it to the past 12 months.
Now that I look at the article again they only recommended Madden for PS2. Why not x-box, gamecube, gba or pc? I am aware that the ps2 version has online capabilities but they didn't mention that as the reason why they only recommend that version.
Finally, if the ps2 version of ddr is that different, then why didn't they just say that was why they recommended that version?
So the PS2 version of DDR is good for a non gamer, but not the x-box version? The x-box version of GTA is good for non gamers but not the PS2 or PC versions? I just find it incredibly odd that they would only mention versions of games for certain platforms when that game is available (in slightly different forms) on other platforms as well.
Recently I ran across an interesting posting on Buzzcut.com Apparently, according to the article Thompson recently appeared at U of Colorado. Afterwards, a student emailed him about what he thought should be done. His answer? Laws are nice, but he would rather see lawsuits. So it seems that rather than try to pass laws which would theoretically prevent videogame related violence he would rather wait untill something bad happens where people die and THEN sue to do something about it. Nice. Real compasionate. A cynical person would be tempted to think that he had an alterior motive or something...
There is also the fact, which I think was part of the point of the article, that to be a sniper is hard. not everyone in the military can be a sniper. It takes skill. That is not the case in a lot of FPS games. He argues that it is too easy to be a good sniper in a game like CS.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I always stink at using the sniper rifle. But that could just be because I stink at the game period.
not to be an ass or anything, but firingsquad.com has been around for a long time. I would be very surprized if they couldn't handle slashdot mentioning them.
After reading several of these posts I see a pattern emerging where people seem to be afraid of getting fired and other sorts of retribution for their desire to make things better.
Now I realize that the economy isn't great and I am not married and don't have kids so I realize that I'm in a much different position than lots of people.
That being said, I have a question: If you work in such a place where things are bad, there are serious problems and you are afraid of getting fired or punished for voicing your opinions, then why are you staying there? If I worked in a place where I didn't feel free to voice my opinions I know i wouldn't want to work there. So besides the reasons mentioned above (which I know are very valid reasons) what reasons are there?
Re:Slightly OT, does anyone use iPod with Linux?
on
No WMA for HP iPod
·
· Score: 1
Try checking out ipodding or ipodlounge for some info on that. The people on their message boards would know for certain.
No matter how much Louisville Slugger claims that athletes with the most honorable intentions are its target market, it's easy to see where it would be the perfect item for unscrupulous individuals to hit people or break car windows. It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.
I haven't seen anyone mention this, but one sure reason IBM is backing off from announcing that they are going to stop using windows is that they don't want to piss off Microsoft.
Remember that IBM is supplying the chips for the next X-Box. It probably isn't too late for Microsoft to switch to someone else. THey piss off Microsoft by braggin that they aren't using Windows any more and that would certainly make Microsoft start looking for alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
THis reminds me of the time a year or two ago when a group of Australian security guards were upset about what they percieved as the unjust portrayal of security guards in Half-Life. Of course while you can kill the security guards in Half-Life, it is better not to since they help you and in fact the expansion pack Blue Shift has you play a security guard.
It seems some people miss the point of things entirely.
Isn't the point of the game that the animals had been the victem of cruel experiments and are getting revenge? Therefore doesn't the game thus reinforce the notion that animal testing is wrong?
I am a phd student and as a result I am often writing research papers with lots of references. I know that I would LOVE to have ebook versions of the books I read so that I wouldn't have to spend so much time trying to find one line or one paragraph in a book that talked about something I want to cite. I would love to be able to do a keywork seach for these books. It would help sooo much.
Yes exactly, that is why we should outlaw cars. How many people have to die EVERY DAY before these death wagons are outlawed? And that is with it even being illegal for people under a certain age to use them! AND everyone being required to take training!
Outlaw death wagons now!
Perhaps they changed the terms of service since you joined? I went and looked and in the terms of service they state:
As far as the other response goes, I fully admit that I should have posted a note somewhere reminding me to cancel the membership and that it was my fault I got charged. However, that doesn't change the fact that, in my opinion, it is a dishonest way of doing buisness and customer service was less than nice to me when I called.
I got burned in a similar way by Gamespot complete. I joined a year ago. I got at least once a month spams from them which I eventually just started deleting without reading. Then one month I had a weird charge on my card. If I recall correctly, it didn't even say gamespot on it and I had to call the number on the bill to figure it out (I may be misremembering that part).
Anyway apparently one of those spams they sent me was a reminder that they were going to autorenew my membership (which I had forgotten i had even had). So I called them up to complain and they were all "Did you read the terms of service?" well, yes -- A YEAR AGO. The operator game me additude. I hung up called my credit card comapany told them i didn't want to pay that charge. Blingo, charge was erased from my bill.
If they do not offer backwards compatability, then they can go the Nintendo route and offer remake games.
This same thing happened at the casino I used to work at. They used to have dox matrix printers that would print up a 3 sheet jackpot ticket for the slot people. They would sign it, I would sign it, take the top copy for my records, give the slot people their money. after they piad, they would put the other two copies in the drop box.
Now they have a laser printer that prints the ticket 3 times and we have to all sign our name 3 times. that isn't such a big deal for the slot people becasue there are 10-20 of them on the deck. However, I was one of only two cashiers on the deck paying jackpots, so half of every jackpot paid on the deck had my signature on it. Multiply that by 3 and you get serious hand cramps.
The case of the wrestler Maxx Payne versus the game Max Payne certainly seems a legitimate case to me. Scott Miller calls the guy a nobody, but he wasn't a nobody back in his day. He was in the WWF. He had t-shirts and other merchandice with his name and likeness on them.
Now, I think that the game having the same name is probably accidental, but that doesn't mean that the game has effectivly prevented this guy from ever using that name again -- a name he had used professionally for years before the game was first announced. In that, I would think that it wasn't necessarilly about greed or stupidity. It might be, but not necessarilly.
My parents still have the big huge dish in thier yard. You can get some pretty interesting stuff if you are willing to pay for the tech. Of course it IS a dying technology, but it is pretty interesting how they are trying keep it alive through things like 4dtv and mpeg sidecars.
Well the most obvious example, and one I wish I had mentioned originally, it in Red Faction, the game that advertized the fact that you could blow holes in the walls. In reality there was really only a handfull of places where this was usefull and several where for no good reason you couldn't blow a hole in the wall except that it would have made the game much easier becasue you could make tunnels around obsticals (what, am miner make tunnels? heaven forbid!)
Whether the game makes sence in our real world logic, doesn't matter so much as if the rules in teh game behave the same way or at least if they don't we are given a bare minimum of explanation why.
A great example of something that doesn't make sence in our world, but is consistent and makes sence within the logic of the game is, as Poole discusses in his book Trigger Happy, is rocket jumping. In our world shooting at your feet would blow your feet off, in FPS games, however, there is (typically) no way to shoot your own legs off, which may be illogical, or unrealistic, but the effect of combining the recoil of the rocket launcher with jumping is consistent to the rules set forth within the game.
An example of inconsitency that really irritated me was in the first Soldier of Fortune game there is a level in a subway. In one area you enter the restroom and when you start to leave, a bad guy blasts through the wooden entry. Nowever else in the game can the player do this and I think that even the bad guys only do this in one other situation. It is inconsistent. Sure it was done to surpize the player, but it is a cheat if that is the only place it can be done and even if you reload the game to before that, you cannot shoot through the entry (even though if you look close enough you can see the cracks where it will be blown off). It was inconsistent and irritated me. Of course consistency is not a magic bullet. Games can be consistent and still be bad.
I agree with you on most points. However, I would like to know which universities are paying professors to pick more expensive books.
Certainly there are classes where the prof wrote the book and eventually get royalties. However, I've taught at two different univerisities, and from my experience the only contact professors have with the bookstore is when the book store calls to yell at you for not turning your order form in on time.
Well obvious is in the eye of the beholder. I know it snowed a lot and that the streets are bad, but they seem to like to put that on the front page a lot.
They introduced it after Christmas. I would be very surprised if the price doesn't come down to at least $199 by this Christmas. I would imagine that they are selling all they can at the higher price and then drop it down for the Christmas gift buying season.
So the x-box version of DDR wouldn't interest people who don't play videogames?
So the PC version of GTA wouldn't interest non-gamers simply because it comes in two boxes and not two?
If they are keeping it to games "of the moment," it is odd that their number one game is the Sims which was relesed much more than 12 months ago. Sure they just released yet another expantion pack, but they didn't mention that. Also the versions of the Sims on consols are different than that on the PC. By your logic they would have singled out one of those with those fancy exclusive features.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but I could have sworn that I was playing Counter-Strike more than a year ago. They didn't mention the X-Box version of it (another odd ommision, how is that explained?). So it seems that they are not restricting it to the past 12 months.
Now that I look at the article again they only recommended Madden for PS2. Why not x-box, gamecube, gba or pc? I am aware that the ps2 version has online capabilities but they didn't mention that as the reason why they only recommend that version.
Finally, if the ps2 version of ddr is that different, then why didn't they just say that was why they recommended that version?
So the PS2 version of DDR is good for a non gamer, but not the x-box version? The x-box version of GTA is good for non gamers but not the PS2 or PC versions? I just find it incredibly odd that they would only mention versions of games for certain platforms when that game is available (in slightly different forms) on other platforms as well.
Recently I ran across an interesting posting on Buzzcut.com Apparently, according to the article Thompson recently appeared at U of Colorado. Afterwards, a student emailed him about what he thought should be done. His answer? Laws are nice, but he would rather see lawsuits. So it seems that rather than try to pass laws which would theoretically prevent videogame related violence he would rather wait untill something bad happens where people die and THEN sue to do something about it. Nice. Real compasionate. A cynical person would be tempted to think that he had an alterior motive or something...
There is also the fact, which I think was part of the point of the article, that to be a sniper is hard. not everyone in the military can be a sniper. It takes skill. That is not the case in a lot of FPS games. He argues that it is too easy to be a good sniper in a game like CS.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I always stink at using the sniper rifle. But that could just be because I stink at the game period.
not to be an ass or anything, but firingsquad.com has been around for a long time. I would be very surprized if they couldn't handle slashdot mentioning them.
Was that ever officially announced? How can it be vaporware if they never announced that they were making it?
After reading several of these posts I see a pattern emerging where people seem to be afraid of getting fired and other sorts of retribution for their desire to make things better.
Now I realize that the economy isn't great and I am not married and don't have kids so I realize that I'm in a much different position than lots of people.
That being said, I have a question: If you work in such a place where things are bad, there are serious problems and you are afraid of getting fired or punished for voicing your opinions, then why are you staying there? If I worked in a place where I didn't feel free to voice my opinions I know i wouldn't want to work there. So besides the reasons mentioned above (which I know are very valid reasons) what reasons are there?
Try checking out ipodding or ipodlounge for some info on that. The people on their message boards would know for certain.
No matter how much Louisville Slugger claims that athletes with the most honorable intentions are its target market, it's easy to see where it would be the perfect item for unscrupulous individuals to hit people or break car windows. It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.
I haven't seen anyone mention this, but one sure reason IBM is backing off from announcing that they are going to stop using windows is that they don't want to piss off Microsoft.
Remember that IBM is supplying the chips for the next X-Box. It probably isn't too late for Microsoft to switch to someone else. THey piss off Microsoft by braggin that they aren't using Windows any more and that would certainly make Microsoft start looking for alternatives.