firstly i promise it'll have a clause in it stating they will own your idea's and submissions.
Such a clause would be absolutely critical. If they don't include something like that, then down the line if one of their designers has a similar idea - even if it's truly, independently generated - to one of the submissions then they could be sued.
To my mind, you only get to use that excuse if Microsoft had linked the beta to a bad game. Given that the consensus is that Crackdown is a good game, people lost their right to complain about being "forced" to buy it to get an early look at Halo 3.
We'll just have to disagree then. You see, I think the impact on the culture from the Internet is such that if an educated person doesn't know what a website is and, presumably, has no idea how to access one, that indicates an ignorance I find intolerable. Taking 5 minutes to an hour out of one's life to discover something the rest of one's society takes for granted is time well spent. Not doing so is either laziness or arrogance, neither of which would be attributes I'd hope for in a judge.
Again, you're misunderstanding me. Let me pose this to you in another way...
Let's say we have a man who, through no fault of his own, has managed to live right up to the present day without being exposed to the Internet. Now, he turns on the television to watch the news and the anchor mentions that "more information about today's top story can be found at our website." Isn't that the point where one would ask "What's a website? Where can I get this information of which they speak?"
Or, let's say that the same fellow never gets exposed to television. Instead, he picks up a newspaper to find out what's going on in the world (you know, something in which educated people tend to have an interest). Maybe the front page has a story about an Internet virus. "What's that? Can I catch Internet from casual contact?" Or, perhaps the paper suggests visiting - I know you're ahead of me here - their website. "What's a website and why would a newspaper have one?"
Do you see what I'm saying here? Anyone paying any attention at all to the outside world is going to have the Internet offered to them (for better or worse, advertising is everywhere), even if s/he has NO friends who mention websites to him/her (what are the chances, honestly?). A human with that much exposure to an alien concept is going to at least want to found out what all the hubbub is about. If s/he doesn't then s/he is purposely separating from the society and culture and, again, that is my objection. While it's true that judges don't have to be our "peers," it's also true that they should be a part of the society on which they're daily sitting in judgement, and they should want to know what said society is up to.
I'm not speaking about this case in particular but about an ignorance of what has become an everyday reality for a majority of the population, at least in the northern hemisphere. The judge in question isn't even a man of terribly advanced years (59 years old). He doesn't need to be be advanced in his understanding of the Internet, surfing the web and posting on Slashdot during his lunch break, but being an educated man who doesn't grasp the concept of a web page is ridiculous.
I'm sure you're right that he can render informed judgements on this case but, really, isn't there a need for any person, let alone a judge, to possess this kind of common knowledge of what is going on in the culture? This judge's office (or, at the very least, that of his clerk/secretary) has probably had Internet access for years. If he lacks the curiosity to find out about the Internet up until now, I have to seriously question his intellect.
When I was a youngster, 14-15 years old, I had to testify on modern technical issues in a trial. A guy I had thought was a friend from my high school had visited my house once, and I showed him my dad's Apple//c and the cool pirated software I had - California Games, woot! Anyway, a couple months later he was caught in the middle of the day while breaking into our house - through a door which, by the way, was less than 50 feet from a convenience store/gas station...Genius! When his case came up for trial (I guess he must have been 18+), I was asked to testify because he had claimed that I gave him permission to come into our house and "pick up" some discs I promised to copy for him.
Anyway, when my day in court came up I had to sit on the witness stand and explain to the judge and jury what floppy discs were, what videogames were, the process of copying them, the fact that doing so wasn't legal, etc. I must have spoken for 45 minutes on just the technical aspects while it took less than a minute to say, "No, I never told him to come over and pick up anything."
Of course, in 1986 it was understandable that nobody knew what I was talking about. To not understand the concept of a website in 2007 is, to my mind, reason enough to force a judge's retirement. Being that out of touch with modern life simply can't be conducive to making good justice.
I don't think it's an issue unless you actually think that Vista can kill the company and end the Windows hegemony. One service pack could, in theory, solve 90% of the problems people have with the OS and set the ship right. This would actually be similar to XP in that I recall many, many people avoiding the OS before SP1 because it was perceived to be a stinker, and also because it was taking time for Win95/98 apps to migrate fully to XP. Only time will tell if the same happens with Vista.
Actually it does matter to MS as those who don't use Vista are less likely to upgrade to the next edition or worse switch to another OS.
I refer you back to Windows Me. Total piece of garbage which people avoided like the plague in favor of Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Yet, XP did just fine...
They could, but the evidence so far indicates that they don't need to. They've already got the 8800GTS selling for a lower price than the 2900XT and beating the latter in testing. Nvidia can take whatever time they need.
No, I haven't seen Spider-Man 3 yet, but I probably will in a week or two (I have no interest in crowds and I have plenty to do besides going to the movie theater). I wonder, though, why have you? You said "the first was okay, the second was pretty bad." So, why did you go - during opening week, no less - to see a third movie in a series which so far you've barely liked, if at all? That's some poor decision-making IMHO.
Despite the fact that you've been modded into oblivion, I'll respond because it's a fairly common belief that people with heart problems requiring a pacemaker are always restricted in terms of their cardiovascular activity. In fact, pacemakers are often prescribed to treat symptoms such as exercise intolerance, and the patients who have them can often exercise just as vigorously as anyone else (barring other physical problems). A quick googling turned up this American Heart Association paper which details many of the common misconceptions associated with pacemaker use.
Friends have told me the same, but I'll probably never find out. After the first one I knew I'd only watch the second on TV, and after the second I knew I'd never watch the third unless the stars aligned and I was left no other decent option. I suspect being bed-bound, alone, and with dead batteries in the remote is the only way it'll happen.
I'll take even the worst Sam Raimi work over any of the three prequels. I saw the first prequel in a theater, the second on HBO, and still haven't seen the third - I quit two movies too late. Lousy writing, lousy directing and lousy acting (often not the fault of the actors),,,the trifecta of Star Wars disappointment.
Even with production costs down or level - depending on who you believe - they really can't afford further needless loss, even to disadvantage Sony, who are still skimming plenty of $$$ on PS2.
The key word there is "needless." If Microsoft thinks that they can marginalize the PS3, driving game developers away from that box and dominating the console world, then losing another couple hundred million on cheap 360s might be well worth the price.
There's not a doubt in my mind that if Sony drops the price of their box, there will be one of the following two reactions from Microsoft:
1. Microsoft drops the prices of all three 360 SKUs by the same amount as the Sony price drop (which probably can't be more than $100).
2. Microsoft drops the prices of the "Premium" and "Elite" SKUs by the same amount of the Sony price drop and eliminates the "Core" SKU.
The first option would obviously place the "Core" unit into the same price territory as the Wii. The second option would maintain a large price advantage over Sony and have the secondary effect of reducing the number of units in play without a hard drive - this could benefit both developers (if MS changes their policy of not allowing developers to require the presence of an HD, reducing the advantage of Blu-ray) and could benefit Xbox Live sales with potentially more folks downloading content to fill their hard drives.
It's not the job of the Federal Gov't to provide education.
Quoted for truth. One of the US Federal Government's primary responsibilities is to "provide for the common defense." Public education is the responsibility of individual states and municipalities.
That's not to say that I think it's a bad idea for the Feds to help out the states with public education, but it's certainly not where the bulk of federal spending should be apportioned. In an ideal, balanced budget world, Congress would eliminate all Federal education programs, pass the savings back to the taxpayers and let the states take bigger chunks with their own taxation, using that for schools. But, there's a reason it's called Utopia...
It's sort of a toss- the 360 is conventionally more powerful in a lot of cases, but the PS3 has that standard HDD. It's ridiculous, really, since Core systems are far more scarce than Premium. Microsoft should let us use the HDD to a greater extent, when available.
I suspect that the second Microsoft feels comfortable dropping the price of the 360, the core system will disappear from the market (they don't really need to worry about going below $300 with the PS3 at $600) and they'll allow developers to require the hard drive's presence. After all, they won't want to miss out on GTA: Texas...
I just - like many other fellow advocates of Free Software - would wish for more people to publish their works under more permissive and freedom-granting licenses: to have art, culture, knowledge and wisdom spread for the greater good, and not just immediate, monetary profit in the first place.
Immediate, monetary profit is what copyright-reform advocates want to protect. As a current example, I think Sony/Marvel/etc. should have the right to make as much dough as they can on the recently released Spider-Man 3 for the next 10 years. After that, it should enter the public domain. The same, I think, should apply to software, books, etc. I could probably be convinced that a reasonable compromise would be 20 years (at least until corporations actually get used to having to create instead of indefinitely rehash). Any longer than that, with high-speed distribution (get the product out) and the availability of numerous and sophisticated marketing methods (let people know about the product), actually serves to stifle creativity more than it helps.
I'm not sure about newer consoles like the Gamecube and Wii, but as far as I've always known, there are hardly any 3rd party development houses (compared to how many there are for Sony and MS).
Seriously, you need to think before you post. Even if you combined the output of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, they wouldn't begin to compare to the number of titles released by third parties. I'll name just a few of the "hardly any" third-party development houses currently extant: Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, Sega, EA, Activision, Bioware, Vivendi, Take Two, Valve, Tecmo, THQ, and the list could go on.
Having a background in business or economics wouldn't have helped you at all...
It was longer than that. GTA3 and Vice City arrived on the Xbox simultaneously (and were packaged together), almost exactly - likely due to contractual obligation to Sony - a year after the latter made its PS2 debut. I owned both on PS2 (and later bought the Xbox versions) because I had no idea that they would come out for Xbox. With San Andreas, on the other hand, I went ahead and waited the 7-8 months for the Xbox release because, thanks to the previous release, I was certain the port was being made.
It'll be interesting to find out how much battery life is extended by replacing the hard drive with flash. The performance advantage doesn't seem that impressive given the high cost, but if replacing traditional hard drives with flash can improve battery life significantly then it could be worthwhile - not only for "traditional" productivity, but for mobile gaming which is severely hindered by power considerations.
Here's the problem with your thesis that timed exclusives don't mean anything: If a company releases an exceedingly popular game for one console and refuses to (or contractually cannot) confirm development and eventual release for another console then the "timed exclusive" status can mean quite a lot. There were Xbox owners who bought PS2s in order to play GTA3 and Vice City because they couldn't be certain that an Xbox version was ever going to come (Rockstar and Sony repeatedly denied it would happen, right up until the moment that Rockstar announced the Xbox versions). On the flip side, Splinter Cell managed to sell Xboxes during its first holiday season at least in part because Ubisoft delayed announcement of PS2 and Gamecube ports until early the following year (again, Ubisoft repeatedly said Splinter Cell was an Xbox exclusive until they announced the ports were "coming soon").
So, "timed exclusivity" is a phrase that can indeed have meaning if properly used. All it takes is either obfuscation or outright lies to make gamers question whether or not a port will actually come. If it's announced well ahead of release then, yes, it becomes meaningless to most gamers - besides the ones who absolutely have to play on day one, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Such a clause would be absolutely critical. If they don't include something like that, then down the line if one of their designers has a similar idea - even if it's truly, independently generated - to one of the submissions then they could be sued.
Lastday, Capricorn 29's. Year of the City: 2007. Carousel begins.
To my mind, you only get to use that excuse if Microsoft had linked the beta to a bad game. Given that the consensus is that Crackdown is a good game, people lost their right to complain about being "forced" to buy it to get an early look at Halo 3.
We'll just have to disagree then. You see, I think the impact on the culture from the Internet is such that if an educated person doesn't know what a website is and, presumably, has no idea how to access one, that indicates an ignorance I find intolerable. Taking 5 minutes to an hour out of one's life to discover something the rest of one's society takes for granted is time well spent. Not doing so is either laziness or arrogance, neither of which would be attributes I'd hope for in a judge.
Again, you're misunderstanding me. Let me pose this to you in another way...
Let's say we have a man who, through no fault of his own, has managed to live right up to the present day without being exposed to the Internet. Now, he turns on the television to watch the news and the anchor mentions that "more information about today's top story can be found at our website." Isn't that the point where one would ask "What's a website? Where can I get this information of which they speak?"
Or, let's say that the same fellow never gets exposed to television. Instead, he picks up a newspaper to find out what's going on in the world (you know, something in which educated people tend to have an interest). Maybe the front page has a story about an Internet virus. "What's that? Can I catch Internet from casual contact?" Or, perhaps the paper suggests visiting - I know you're ahead of me here - their website. "What's a website and why would a newspaper have one?"
Do you see what I'm saying here? Anyone paying any attention at all to the outside world is going to have the Internet offered to them (for better or worse, advertising is everywhere), even if s/he has NO friends who mention websites to him/her (what are the chances, honestly?). A human with that much exposure to an alien concept is going to at least want to found out what all the hubbub is about. If s/he doesn't then s/he is purposely separating from the society and culture and, again, that is my objection. While it's true that judges don't have to be our "peers," it's also true that they should be a part of the society on which they're daily sitting in judgement, and they should want to know what said society is up to.
I'm not speaking about this case in particular but about an ignorance of what has become an everyday reality for a majority of the population, at least in the northern hemisphere. The judge in question isn't even a man of terribly advanced years (59 years old). He doesn't need to be be advanced in his understanding of the Internet, surfing the web and posting on Slashdot during his lunch break, but being an educated man who doesn't grasp the concept of a web page is ridiculous.
I'm sure you're right that he can render informed judgements on this case but, really, isn't there a need for any person, let alone a judge, to possess this kind of common knowledge of what is going on in the culture? This judge's office (or, at the very least, that of his clerk/secretary) has probably had Internet access for years. If he lacks the curiosity to find out about the Internet up until now, I have to seriously question his intellect.
When I was a youngster, 14-15 years old, I had to testify on modern technical issues in a trial. A guy I had thought was a friend from my high school had visited my house once, and I showed him my dad's Apple //c and the cool pirated software I had - California Games, woot! Anyway, a couple months later he was caught in the middle of the day while breaking into our house - through a door which, by the way, was less than 50 feet from a convenience store/gas station...Genius! When his case came up for trial (I guess he must have been 18+), I was asked to testify because he had claimed that I gave him permission to come into our house and "pick up" some discs I promised to copy for him.
Anyway, when my day in court came up I had to sit on the witness stand and explain to the judge and jury what floppy discs were, what videogames were, the process of copying them, the fact that doing so wasn't legal, etc. I must have spoken for 45 minutes on just the technical aspects while it took less than a minute to say, "No, I never told him to come over and pick up anything."
Of course, in 1986 it was understandable that nobody knew what I was talking about. To not understand the concept of a website in 2007 is, to my mind, reason enough to force a judge's retirement. Being that out of touch with modern life simply can't be conducive to making good justice.
I don't think it's an issue unless you actually think that Vista can kill the company and end the Windows hegemony. One service pack could, in theory, solve 90% of the problems people have with the OS and set the ship right. This would actually be similar to XP in that I recall many, many people avoiding the OS before SP1 because it was perceived to be a stinker, and also because it was taking time for Win95/98 apps to migrate fully to XP. Only time will tell if the same happens with Vista.
I refer you back to Windows Me. Total piece of garbage which people avoided like the plague in favor of Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Yet, XP did just fine...
They could, but the evidence so far indicates that they don't need to. They've already got the 8800GTS selling for a lower price than the 2900XT and beating the latter in testing. Nvidia can take whatever time they need.
Good, good. Glad to hear it. I'm sorry that I didn't get (and still don't get) your joke.
No, I haven't seen Spider-Man 3 yet, but I probably will in a week or two (I have no interest in crowds and I have plenty to do besides going to the movie theater). I wonder, though, why have you? You said "the first was okay, the second was pretty bad." So, why did you go - during opening week, no less - to see a third movie in a series which so far you've barely liked, if at all? That's some poor decision-making IMHO.
Despite the fact that you've been modded into oblivion, I'll respond because it's a fairly common belief that people with heart problems requiring a pacemaker are always restricted in terms of their cardiovascular activity. In fact, pacemakers are often prescribed to treat symptoms such as exercise intolerance, and the patients who have them can often exercise just as vigorously as anyone else (barring other physical problems). A quick googling turned up this American Heart Association paper which details many of the common misconceptions associated with pacemaker use.
Friends have told me the same, but I'll probably never find out. After the first one I knew I'd only watch the second on TV, and after the second I knew I'd never watch the third unless the stars aligned and I was left no other decent option. I suspect being bed-bound, alone, and with dead batteries in the remote is the only way it'll happen.
I'll take even the worst Sam Raimi work over any of the three prequels. I saw the first prequel in a theater, the second on HBO, and still haven't seen the third - I quit two movies too late. Lousy writing, lousy directing and lousy acting (often not the fault of the actors),,,the trifecta of Star Wars disappointment.
The key word there is "needless." If Microsoft thinks that they can marginalize the PS3, driving game developers away from that box and dominating the console world, then losing another couple hundred million on cheap 360s might be well worth the price.
There's not a doubt in my mind that if Sony drops the price of their box, there will be one of the following two reactions from Microsoft:
1. Microsoft drops the prices of all three 360 SKUs by the same amount as the Sony price drop (which probably can't be more than $100).
2. Microsoft drops the prices of the "Premium" and "Elite" SKUs by the same amount of the Sony price drop and eliminates the "Core" SKU.
The first option would obviously place the "Core" unit into the same price territory as the Wii. The second option would maintain a large price advantage over Sony and have the secondary effect of reducing the number of units in play without a hard drive - this could benefit both developers (if MS changes their policy of not allowing developers to require the presence of an HD, reducing the advantage of Blu-ray) and could benefit Xbox Live sales with potentially more folks downloading content to fill their hard drives.
That's not to say that I think it's a bad idea for the Feds to help out the states with public education, but it's certainly not where the bulk of federal spending should be apportioned. In an ideal, balanced budget world, Congress would eliminate all Federal education programs, pass the savings back to the taxpayers and let the states take bigger chunks with their own taxation, using that for schools. But, there's a reason it's called Utopia...
I don't know about that. If I, for example, steal someone's car I'm not necessary against property rights in general; I'm just a thieving bastard.
Immediate, monetary profit is what copyright-reform advocates want to protect. As a current example, I think Sony/Marvel/etc. should have the right to make as much dough as they can on the recently released Spider-Man 3 for the next 10 years. After that, it should enter the public domain. The same, I think, should apply to software, books, etc. I could probably be convinced that a reasonable compromise would be 20 years (at least until corporations actually get used to having to create instead of indefinitely rehash). Any longer than that, with high-speed distribution (get the product out) and the availability of numerous and sophisticated marketing methods (let people know about the product), actually serves to stifle creativity more than it helps.
Publishers and developers: Stop showing games to the gaming "press" before release.
I'll accept my consulting fees in either free games or fresh fish - I'm that flexible.
Seriously, you need to think before you post. Even if you combined the output of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, they wouldn't begin to compare to the number of titles released by third parties. I'll name just a few of the "hardly any" third-party development houses currently extant: Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, Sega, EA, Activision, Bioware, Vivendi, Take Two, Valve, Tecmo, THQ, and the list could go on.
Having a background in business or economics wouldn't have helped you at all...
It was longer than that. GTA3 and Vice City arrived on the Xbox simultaneously (and were packaged together), almost exactly - likely due to contractual obligation to Sony - a year after the latter made its PS2 debut. I owned both on PS2 (and later bought the Xbox versions) because I had no idea that they would come out for Xbox. With San Andreas, on the other hand, I went ahead and waited the 7-8 months for the Xbox release because, thanks to the previous release, I was certain the port was being made.
It'll be interesting to find out how much battery life is extended by replacing the hard drive with flash. The performance advantage doesn't seem that impressive given the high cost, but if replacing traditional hard drives with flash can improve battery life significantly then it could be worthwhile - not only for "traditional" productivity, but for mobile gaming which is severely hindered by power considerations.
Here's the problem with your thesis that timed exclusives don't mean anything: If a company releases an exceedingly popular game for one console and refuses to (or contractually cannot) confirm development and eventual release for another console then the "timed exclusive" status can mean quite a lot. There were Xbox owners who bought PS2s in order to play GTA3 and Vice City because they couldn't be certain that an Xbox version was ever going to come (Rockstar and Sony repeatedly denied it would happen, right up until the moment that Rockstar announced the Xbox versions). On the flip side, Splinter Cell managed to sell Xboxes during its first holiday season at least in part because Ubisoft delayed announcement of PS2 and Gamecube ports until early the following year (again, Ubisoft repeatedly said Splinter Cell was an Xbox exclusive until they announced the ports were "coming soon").
So, "timed exclusivity" is a phrase that can indeed have meaning if properly used. All it takes is either obfuscation or outright lies to make gamers question whether or not a port will actually come. If it's announced well ahead of release then, yes, it becomes meaningless to most gamers - besides the ones who absolutely have to play on day one, of course.