Where I work we deal with exactly this kind of thing and I can only say it's absolutely no surprise at all. We offer many tools to both families and law enforcement agencies to help with recovery and prevention but ultimately the best thing any of these parents can do is take a serious interest in their kid(s)' lives. Even from personal and not just professional experience there's just not enough people that actually want to be bothered with what their kids do online.
Not to sound like, "when I was your age candy bars cost a nickel," but when I was younger my parents, while far from perfect, at least made an attempt to be informed as to what games I was playing, where I was going on the computer, and so forth. It's really not that hard.
Wow, sounds like someone's nethers hurt. Yes, shame on those religious zealots at IBM who think that a poorly written format shouldn't become a standard.
I halfway agree with you. Anyone that played Counter-Strike on XBox Live for more than a few minutes typically has a very hard time disagreeing with me about the strategy requirement regardless of how they felt about the game itself. That's not saying there's no strategy in CS on PC (there is), however you can typically "get by" with a twitch-fast mouse and no brain on the PC...try that on the XBox version and you end up with zero kills every time, few to no exceptions. It's part of what made CS on XBox so enjoyable for me and I've played both (including CS:S) quite a bit in my time.
I have to partially disagree with the first part though. It's not all that hard to actually make it more "even" if the dev puts forth a little effort. Look at Shadowrun. I've played with Vista gamers from my 360 (and they weren't slouches) with no difficulty. A little motion blurring here, a tiny bit of auto-aim there, and it's to the point where nobody notices a balance issue (certainly not the MLG anyway).
Ultimately I'm with you though, I favor my controller. I've played PC games for a long time, still do on occasion (ripped up some serious time in F.E.A.R. when it came out). It just feels more "right" to me that my avatar isn't completely and totally godlike with my aiming in a panicked, immensely stressful situation. Not to mention that PC gaming would be a lot more fun to me if I had something a bit like the left thumbstick for movement. On every PC game I've played in the last decade there's "run" and "not so run," nowhere inbetween. It's picked at me over the years, but I REALLY noticed it in Bioshock where I found myself varying my movement speed and it just felt so damned natural, creeping up to doorways and the like.
I'm imagining some strange fusion of Blondie and MC Hammer for a program execution policy. Please, for the love of the kernel, make it stop.
On another note yes, I fully agree, it IS something that should at least be addressed in OS design. The amount of it is what I'm unsure of but that's the balancing act all security solutions must go through.
As an unnamed protagonist you descend into the undersea realm[...]
Unnamed? It's the very first thing in the entire game. The character's name is Jack, it's on the gift box you see in the opening cinematic on the plane and they even revisit it later when you discover the big twist of story.
Says, "Dear Jack..."
No doubt about a catch. I don't wanna sound like a anti-MS-troll or anything but their track record isn't all that great; a little paranoia would probably be a good thing "just in case."
I'm not an expert but I'd imagine if they were trying to "pull something" then it'd be trying to soften up the community to the idea of making more things work FOR Microsoft products without giving anything back, kinda like what I'm told happened between the Wine group and Transgaming.
I could be wrong, who knows but MS?
Well if World of Warcraft was amazing in terms of popularity perhaps it was due to it being dubbed WOW, meaning surprising.
If that's true then perhaps a Starcraft MMO would be named System of Starcraft which would lead us to S.O.S. I can't say that'd be good for their business.
Last time I checked part of being a PARENT and not just a donor of genetic material was actually, you know, parenting. How come so many parents seem perfectly fine with letting a body of strangers with no affiliation to even their family and who are funded by lobby groups, bribes, and their own political interests parent THEIR kid? Hell, most parents would rip your head off if you told them to leave their kid with some stranger on the other side of town, why is this any different?
It's a parent's responsibility to parent their kid. You don't want them playing something in your house, then don't let them play it in your house. Learn the ratings, they aren't hard and are listed right on the box. Do a little research. You know, do your job as a responsible adult and if you have a major problem with that little bit of effort give your kid up for adoption so maybe they can get a family that WILL raise the kid instead of just send it off to school and smack it when it does something wrong.
Honestly, I want to hear just what in the hell the BIG issue is with a gargantuan sticker on the front of a game box and literally hundreds of free game review sites at your fingertips. What on EARTH could they possibly want? And if it's back to that, "I don't want to be a parent," then maybe you should have thought of that before keeping the kid.
I'll concede to that, I should've clarified with "owe it to yourself to get an XBox" as I forgot that there are indeed some people that do not own multiple consoles. For that I apologize and say that you should probably have an XBox in addition to any other platforms you may already have.
There, everybody happy now? No implications, no assumed knowledge or lack thereof on anyone's part.
That's exactly what I've been thinking. How much of the losses come from the Zune? I know they want to have a definite foot in the entertainment industry but they so far seem rather talented with making home game consoles and not so much with portable media devices. Perhaps they should just cut off the Zune and reinvest all the money into making the 360 even better?
I like Ubuntu just fine but I have to use Kubuntu (for the uninitiated, few as you may be on Slashdot, that's Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome). I find it hard to recommend the regular Gnome Ubuntu to anyone when they could be using the KDE Ubuntu. But that I suppose is just personal preference.
Still, every time I hear someone complain about the usability of Ubuntu I point them at Kubuntu and all the complaining stops. It should probably be mentioned a bit more.
PS2 was serious and is now past its prime. How many new AAA titles have been out for it in the past year? While I'm not going to call it dead as that's premature it's also fact that it's on its way out. We're talking about the current generation which is the XBox 360, the PS3, and the Wii.
I mean heck if we're going to drudge up old console history then you aren't a "serious" gamer unless you've got a NES with at least 80 carts. Please try to keep in mind the context of the comment which is the present day with present systems in a current generation. It's not that the PS2 isn't viable but that it's now "old news" and it's a safe assumption if Slashdot is any indication that to be "serious" about a hobby you should be up and current with "new news."
I'll agree with one of the other comments about separating out the XBox from MS and focusing more on software. Doesn't sound like a bad idea at all, really.
Whoah whoah whoah, what's this about Gmail having some big technical glitches? Mine's been perfectly fine ever since I got one. Everyone I know who has one has never had a problem. When did this occur?
I dunno, since ol' Jack prides himself on being a lawyer this would probably be akin to not being able to spell your name. I know if I was your bog standard lawyer-seeking citizen I wouldn't even DREAM of going to him after hearing he can't even fill out a legal document correctly.
What a putz. I'm so glad he never gets taken seriously, it's a source of constant entertainment.
I'm not so sure any serious shareholders would want them to kill the XBox. The others I'd fully agree with but the XBox despite long term losses is helping out in other ways, primarily mind share. It's a basic FACT among console gamers that if you're serious about your gaming experience you owe it to yourself to get an XBox or an XBox 360. With the sheer number of them in circulation coupled with its critical success MS in one generation has gone from nobody to biggest player on the block.
That kind of reputation I think is worth keeping, even if it costs them money in the process. Heck, they could probably go full-on into it and actually make money but that's just personal opinion so don't take it as fact. Losing Zune and putting more work into Mac and Office products WOULD make them more money, though.
I understand what you're saying, this is just my opinion on it in terms of seriousness.
I think you're thinking of an emo band. NIN's usually more along the lines of, "Life is pain, your government is out to get you, you whore yourself to the lowest bidder, burn it all down and start the Hell over!"
I suppose it's more fitting for Linux taking that into account.
What makes no sense? The 360 has titles the PS3 does not. The PS3 has titles the 360 does not. THERE IS NO COMPARISON. People can talk about the 360's HD-DVD drive and Marketplace or the PS3's Home and Blu-Ray but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans if it doesn't have your games.
Just because I didn't spend extra time to an already-long post to list down from the PS3 side doesn't mean it can't be applied either way, I trust in the reader to figure that part out for themselves.
Works fine for me. I don't see an image but I don't want to enable scripting for the site (I use the NoScript extension) just for the sake of argument.
I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.2 on 64-bit Ubuntu Edgy (64-bit browser as well). Tied up the system for about twenty seconds but it ran (single core AMD64 4000+ if it matters to anyone).
I think that most people are missing the point. For the general population who's interested in obtaining a game system who cares? The comparing value versus price between PS3 and 360 is only valid if you're looking at doing everything BUT gaming.
I mean really, you can tell me for instance that the PS3 will do everything from clean my laundry to wash my car but at the end of the day it doesn't have my Gears of War. It doesn't have my Crackdown. There's no Forza Motorsport. There's no XBLA. To top it off it's also a lot cheaper for me to get to play a large library (and ever-growing...just check out upcoming releases like The Darkness, Bioshock, and others) of great games that look spectacular with a superb online system. Can I play Blu-Ray movies? No, but then, did I really want to buy a game system to play movies?
It's part of the same reason the Wii is selling. It's cheap, it plays good games, and nobody gives a fuck if it can't wipe your butt for you, too. So what does this new 360 do? Who does it cater to? People that feel they have to have the "extra shiny" version of a console to feel superior to other people. The other people are those interested in the Marketplace for downloading things which means there isn't a value comparison with the PS3 since the PS3 doesn't have access to the Marketplace...the very source of content the interested users wanted in the first place. The rest of us just get the Premium and rock on because it lets us play our games which is what WE wanted in the first place.
There will be a true features/price comparison between the 360 and PS3 when the PS3 has a large library of awesome games (and for the cross-platform ones like DMC4, VF5, and others it's going to need to be worth coughing up several hundred dollars for a better experience or we're still going to get them on the cheaper system that gives the same or better experience) that make it worthwhile to have for playing games.
Anyone seriously interested in a media server has probably already gotten an Apple product or some other personal computer solution since they tend to be better at it overall. This is all for show and to cater to an elitist (though not necessarily "elite") portion of the interested 360 population, not to the rest of us who buy game systems for playing games.
In more ways than one. Your average person can't even see a difference between a high def disc and a DVD due to most people not having HDTVs.
Really, I still see these new high def formats as stillborn at this time. When they've got every DVD in my collection (and I've got almost entirely classic and otherwise fantastic films...I make it a personal policy to not buy anything I wouldn't want to watch at least two more times) on ONE format with players that cost at least half of what they do now I'll think about an upgrade. Honestly though there just isn't THAT much of a difference, even to serious videophiles, to warrant that much money when you can't even say it looks that much better than your DVDs.
I think the idea wasn't really about source per se but rather that source was THE way to achieve the big idea and they didn't see it as being able to be accomplished any other way.
That idea, in my opinion anyway, was a self-building, self-maintaining, self-configuring system adaptable to quite literally any application. Pure and complete freedom to do with it whatever you wish in a system that Makes Sense. And really, portage itself DOES make sense rather nicely. If the only thing that would ever survive Gentoo is a wide adoption of the portage system (though adapted to each system's needs of course, we're talking the philosophy of it) then Gentoo would've been a complete success.
Really, the amount of flexibility Gentoo offers a user is unparalleled especially when coupled with the (relative) ease of creating such a system. I know a lot of people think "compiling from source" and cringe but really how often does your average Gentoo user have to do anything more than "#emerge ebuild-of-choice" and have it functional within the system? Generally speaking not often.
Part of the problem is that Gentoo and the portage system itself exposes the Big Problem of the current way that UNIX-like distributions (I'm going to go out on a limb and include FreeBSD here but don't take it for fact, I'm human and make mistakes, too) is trying to have the distribution maintain a tree of absolutely everything out there under the sun. It just doesn't work and this is the sign of it. We need a NEW system, something modular that is bigger than the distro, bigger than the Big Idea, and even bigger than the platform itself. We need a new concept of how to go about managing software. Gentoo's current state of affairs shows us that.
I think it's human nature to empathize with people that we've met with in person; I hope that you'll view the above with that in mind.
Not a problem as long as they keep in mind the fact that I'm not dealing with them in person, I'm dealing with them through their product, their quotations, their interviews, and my money.
So far they've tried telling me I should be happy to give them $650+ USD for a worthless product (leaving BluRay out of this, they're talking about it in the sense it's a game system) that's only assisted by crappy, arrogant interviews that produce asinine hubris-tainted quotations.
In short, Sony is telling me as a customer that I should reward them for being complete and total dicks to me. It does not matter what they're like in person, that is the image they're sending me as a customer.
Sorry Sony I think I'll stick with Nintendo and MS who at least don't fail too often on these prior points and, at the VERY least, not all at once when they do screw up.
Slashdot Mirror
Where I work we deal with exactly this kind of thing and I can only say it's absolutely no surprise at all. We offer many tools to both families and law enforcement agencies to help with recovery and prevention but ultimately the best thing any of these parents can do is take a serious interest in their kid(s)' lives. Even from personal and not just professional experience there's just not enough people that actually want to be bothered with what their kids do online.
Not to sound like, "when I was your age candy bars cost a nickel," but when I was younger my parents, while far from perfect, at least made an attempt to be informed as to what games I was playing, where I was going on the computer, and so forth. It's really not that hard.
Wow, sounds like someone's nethers hurt. Yes, shame on those religious zealots at IBM who think that a poorly written format shouldn't become a standard.
I vote for a fox. Maybe an arctic fox but since Google seems to love Firefox I don't see the big problem in combining a red panda next to a red fox.
Can't help it, I love my foxes.
I halfway agree with you. Anyone that played Counter-Strike on XBox Live for more than a few minutes typically has a very hard time disagreeing with me about the strategy requirement regardless of how they felt about the game itself. That's not saying there's no strategy in CS on PC (there is), however you can typically "get by" with a twitch-fast mouse and no brain on the PC...try that on the XBox version and you end up with zero kills every time, few to no exceptions. It's part of what made CS on XBox so enjoyable for me and I've played both (including CS:S) quite a bit in my time.
I have to partially disagree with the first part though. It's not all that hard to actually make it more "even" if the dev puts forth a little effort. Look at Shadowrun. I've played with Vista gamers from my 360 (and they weren't slouches) with no difficulty. A little motion blurring here, a tiny bit of auto-aim there, and it's to the point where nobody notices a balance issue (certainly not the MLG anyway).
Ultimately I'm with you though, I favor my controller. I've played PC games for a long time, still do on occasion (ripped up some serious time in F.E.A.R. when it came out). It just feels more "right" to me that my avatar isn't completely and totally godlike with my aiming in a panicked, immensely stressful situation. Not to mention that PC gaming would be a lot more fun to me if I had something a bit like the left thumbstick for movement. On every PC game I've played in the last decade there's "run" and "not so run," nowhere inbetween. It's picked at me over the years, but I REALLY noticed it in Bioshock where I found myself varying my movement speed and it just felt so damned natural, creeping up to doorways and the like.
On another note yes, I fully agree, it IS something that should at least be addressed in OS design. The amount of it is what I'm unsure of but that's the balancing act all security solutions must go through.
No doubt about a catch. I don't wanna sound like a anti-MS-troll or anything but their track record isn't all that great; a little paranoia would probably be a good thing "just in case." I'm not an expert but I'd imagine if they were trying to "pull something" then it'd be trying to soften up the community to the idea of making more things work FOR Microsoft products without giving anything back, kinda like what I'm told happened between the Wine group and Transgaming. I could be wrong, who knows but MS?
In full agreement, a big serious thank-you from my household, he's awesome.
Well if World of Warcraft was amazing in terms of popularity perhaps it was due to it being dubbed WOW, meaning surprising.
If that's true then perhaps a Starcraft MMO would be named System of Starcraft which would lead us to S.O.S. I can't say that'd be good for their business.
Last time I checked part of being a PARENT and not just a donor of genetic material was actually, you know, parenting. How come so many parents seem perfectly fine with letting a body of strangers with no affiliation to even their family and who are funded by lobby groups, bribes, and their own political interests parent THEIR kid? Hell, most parents would rip your head off if you told them to leave their kid with some stranger on the other side of town, why is this any different?
It's a parent's responsibility to parent their kid. You don't want them playing something in your house, then don't let them play it in your house. Learn the ratings, they aren't hard and are listed right on the box. Do a little research. You know, do your job as a responsible adult and if you have a major problem with that little bit of effort give your kid up for adoption so maybe they can get a family that WILL raise the kid instead of just send it off to school and smack it when it does something wrong.
Honestly, I want to hear just what in the hell the BIG issue is with a gargantuan sticker on the front of a game box and literally hundreds of free game review sites at your fingertips. What on EARTH could they possibly want? And if it's back to that, "I don't want to be a parent," then maybe you should have thought of that before keeping the kid.
I'll concede to that, I should've clarified with "owe it to yourself to get an XBox" as I forgot that there are indeed some people that do not own multiple consoles. For that I apologize and say that you should probably have an XBox in addition to any other platforms you may already have.
There, everybody happy now? No implications, no assumed knowledge or lack thereof on anyone's part.
That's exactly what I've been thinking. How much of the losses come from the Zune? I know they want to have a definite foot in the entertainment industry but they so far seem rather talented with making home game consoles and not so much with portable media devices. Perhaps they should just cut off the Zune and reinvest all the money into making the 360 even better?
I like Ubuntu just fine but I have to use Kubuntu (for the uninitiated, few as you may be on Slashdot, that's Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome). I find it hard to recommend the regular Gnome Ubuntu to anyone when they could be using the KDE Ubuntu. But that I suppose is just personal preference.
Still, every time I hear someone complain about the usability of Ubuntu I point them at Kubuntu and all the complaining stops. It should probably be mentioned a bit more.
Probably after what with "Survivalism" which is relating to the album at hand.
PS2 was serious and is now past its prime. How many new AAA titles have been out for it in the past year? While I'm not going to call it dead as that's premature it's also fact that it's on its way out. We're talking about the current generation which is the XBox 360, the PS3, and the Wii.
I mean heck if we're going to drudge up old console history then you aren't a "serious" gamer unless you've got a NES with at least 80 carts. Please try to keep in mind the context of the comment which is the present day with present systems in a current generation. It's not that the PS2 isn't viable but that it's now "old news" and it's a safe assumption if Slashdot is any indication that to be "serious" about a hobby you should be up and current with "new news."
I'll agree with one of the other comments about separating out the XBox from MS and focusing more on software. Doesn't sound like a bad idea at all, really.
Whoah whoah whoah, what's this about Gmail having some big technical glitches? Mine's been perfectly fine ever since I got one. Everyone I know who has one has never had a problem. When did this occur?
I dunno, since ol' Jack prides himself on being a lawyer this would probably be akin to not being able to spell your name. I know if I was your bog standard lawyer-seeking citizen I wouldn't even DREAM of going to him after hearing he can't even fill out a legal document correctly.
What a putz. I'm so glad he never gets taken seriously, it's a source of constant entertainment.
I'm not so sure any serious shareholders would want them to kill the XBox. The others I'd fully agree with but the XBox despite long term losses is helping out in other ways, primarily mind share. It's a basic FACT among console gamers that if you're serious about your gaming experience you owe it to yourself to get an XBox or an XBox 360. With the sheer number of them in circulation coupled with its critical success MS in one generation has gone from nobody to biggest player on the block.
That kind of reputation I think is worth keeping, even if it costs them money in the process. Heck, they could probably go full-on into it and actually make money but that's just personal opinion so don't take it as fact. Losing Zune and putting more work into Mac and Office products WOULD make them more money, though.
I understand what you're saying, this is just my opinion on it in terms of seriousness.
I think you're thinking of an emo band. NIN's usually more along the lines of, "Life is pain, your government is out to get you, you whore yourself to the lowest bidder, burn it all down and start the Hell over!"
I suppose it's more fitting for Linux taking that into account.
What makes no sense? The 360 has titles the PS3 does not. The PS3 has titles the 360 does not. THERE IS NO COMPARISON. People can talk about the 360's HD-DVD drive and Marketplace or the PS3's Home and Blu-Ray but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans if it doesn't have your games.
Just because I didn't spend extra time to an already-long post to list down from the PS3 side doesn't mean it can't be applied either way, I trust in the reader to figure that part out for themselves.
Works fine for me. I don't see an image but I don't want to enable scripting for the site (I use the NoScript extension) just for the sake of argument.
I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.2 on 64-bit Ubuntu Edgy (64-bit browser as well). Tied up the system for about twenty seconds but it ran (single core AMD64 4000+ if it matters to anyone).
I think that most people are missing the point. For the general population who's interested in obtaining a game system who cares? The comparing value versus price between PS3 and 360 is only valid if you're looking at doing everything BUT gaming.
I mean really, you can tell me for instance that the PS3 will do everything from clean my laundry to wash my car but at the end of the day it doesn't have my Gears of War. It doesn't have my Crackdown. There's no Forza Motorsport. There's no XBLA. To top it off it's also a lot cheaper for me to get to play a large library (and ever-growing...just check out upcoming releases like The Darkness, Bioshock, and others) of great games that look spectacular with a superb online system. Can I play Blu-Ray movies? No, but then, did I really want to buy a game system to play movies?
It's part of the same reason the Wii is selling. It's cheap, it plays good games, and nobody gives a fuck if it can't wipe your butt for you, too. So what does this new 360 do? Who does it cater to? People that feel they have to have the "extra shiny" version of a console to feel superior to other people. The other people are those interested in the Marketplace for downloading things which means there isn't a value comparison with the PS3 since the PS3 doesn't have access to the Marketplace...the very source of content the interested users wanted in the first place. The rest of us just get the Premium and rock on because it lets us play our games which is what WE wanted in the first place.
There will be a true features/price comparison between the 360 and PS3 when the PS3 has a large library of awesome games (and for the cross-platform ones like DMC4, VF5, and others it's going to need to be worth coughing up several hundred dollars for a better experience or we're still going to get them on the cheaper system that gives the same or better experience) that make it worthwhile to have for playing games.
Anyone seriously interested in a media server has probably already gotten an Apple product or some other personal computer solution since they tend to be better at it overall. This is all for show and to cater to an elitist (though not necessarily "elite") portion of the interested 360 population, not to the rest of us who buy game systems for playing games.
In more ways than one. Your average person can't even see a difference between a high def disc and a DVD due to most people not having HDTVs.
Really, I still see these new high def formats as stillborn at this time. When they've got every DVD in my collection (and I've got almost entirely classic and otherwise fantastic films...I make it a personal policy to not buy anything I wouldn't want to watch at least two more times) on ONE format with players that cost at least half of what they do now I'll think about an upgrade. Honestly though there just isn't THAT much of a difference, even to serious videophiles, to warrant that much money when you can't even say it looks that much better than your DVDs.
I think the idea wasn't really about source per se but rather that source was THE way to achieve the big idea and they didn't see it as being able to be accomplished any other way. That idea, in my opinion anyway, was a self-building, self-maintaining, self-configuring system adaptable to quite literally any application. Pure and complete freedom to do with it whatever you wish in a system that Makes Sense. And really, portage itself DOES make sense rather nicely. If the only thing that would ever survive Gentoo is a wide adoption of the portage system (though adapted to each system's needs of course, we're talking the philosophy of it) then Gentoo would've been a complete success. Really, the amount of flexibility Gentoo offers a user is unparalleled especially when coupled with the (relative) ease of creating such a system. I know a lot of people think "compiling from source" and cringe but really how often does your average Gentoo user have to do anything more than "#emerge ebuild-of-choice" and have it functional within the system? Generally speaking not often. Part of the problem is that Gentoo and the portage system itself exposes the Big Problem of the current way that UNIX-like distributions (I'm going to go out on a limb and include FreeBSD here but don't take it for fact, I'm human and make mistakes, too) is trying to have the distribution maintain a tree of absolutely everything out there under the sun. It just doesn't work and this is the sign of it. We need a NEW system, something modular that is bigger than the distro, bigger than the Big Idea, and even bigger than the platform itself. We need a new concept of how to go about managing software. Gentoo's current state of affairs shows us that.
So far they've tried telling me I should be happy to give them $650+ USD for a worthless product (leaving BluRay out of this, they're talking about it in the sense it's a game system) that's only assisted by crappy, arrogant interviews that produce asinine hubris-tainted quotations.
In short, Sony is telling me as a customer that I should reward them for being complete and total dicks to me. It does not matter what they're like in person, that is the image they're sending me as a customer.
Sorry Sony I think I'll stick with Nintendo and MS who at least don't fail too often on these prior points and, at the VERY least, not all at once when they do screw up.