that's what the Navy said to convince people like you to give them more money
No, that's what the Navy said to make the Chinese feel overly confident and to underestimate our ability to track them. Classic move... make your opponent complacent enough that you can then later make them completely doubt their ability to do anything when you rip the rug out from under them, as the situation warrants. I think, if the Navy were indeed able to track this particular sub underneath a convoy, the battlestations alarm and radio chatter (if the Chinese can intercept it... not sure about the sub's specs) would have made it obvious to the Chinese that they were found out, once they periscoped or surfaced.
The Navy wouldn't sit there waiting for a torpedo, just to make the ship believe it couldn't be tracked.
The Miller "test" is just a codification of hypocrisy. There is no such thing as an average person when it comes to taste. The Miller test, combined with very potent obscenity penalties, is sheer genius from the right.
You can't see the line when you produce the item. You can't see the line when you're charged. You can only see the line you crossed when the jury reads the verdict. And then you go to jail, period.
Amazing, considering "obscenity" as a form of expression doesn't even hurt anyone. It's just a straight-up 1st Amendment violation.
Are you sure about that? The man cavorting sounds awfully close to bestiality, which is, in fact, illegal most places as it constitutes animal abuse. Depends on what's meant by cavorting. It sounds like the reporter intentionally left what was on the pics vague to add to the titillation factor. From the judge's response, it sounds like it's those stupid pics that get mailed around of naked people doing bizarre things designed to be funny.
Was the content viewable by minors? Did it have age verification before showing said content?
Well then...
Contributing to the delinquency of minors, and whatever statutes cover providing pornography to minors as well. You seriously believe that?
Age verification (through a warning page) isn't a legal requirement for a website, it's just common practice.
The content was in an unlinked directory. He didn't provide the address to anyone he didn't know. You would have to prove he intentionally gave it to people he knew were underage. That's why porn sites don't get sued for delinquency of a minor: they don't intentionally target underage users.
But this doesn't make sense. The laws making it illegal to produce child porn are completely disconnected from the laws that make it illegal to distribute child porn over the internet. If someone publishes indecent images of children over the Internet they are incriminating themselves for the former crime, making the latter one superfluous. As far as that goes, in practice it's much easier to grab the distributors, arrest them, and plea out a deal to squeeze them for info on the producers. Both laws together make it easier to get the producers, who are the real target.
I'm not saying this particular blocking idea is a good one, because it isn't.
it doesn't treat me like some criminal. I don't want my software to stop working because I had no internet access
I especially think the "treating us as criminals" arguments is given way more weight than it's really worth. I mean, does anybody have a better idea about how to validate s/w as being legally purchased other than using some product activation mechanism (whether it works over the phone or net?)
If you're looking for a better idea, here's one: If it's a single player game, don't have product activation. Period.
Games are usually cracked within hours of release, if not before release. Look at Mass Effect, for example. It was cracked in a limited fashion within hours, and fully cracked in about a day of it's first staggered release. Most regions could get the cracked version before it was even released locally.
Online activation adds no protection for the publishers and creates problems for legitimate users. What's the point?
Anybody trying to claim that violent media is responsible for any objective worsening of American society doesn't have a single iota of evidence in their favor. Violence statistics aren't just a reflection of music or video games, it's the result of too many factors to count. You can't correlate the two, good or bad. Saying violent video games are good because crime has gone down is like saying apples are unhealthy because a rise in eating apples correlates with a rise of obesity in the US. There's no correlation if you don't eliminate external factors.
As far as evidence for video games causing violent behavior, there have been a couple of studies now that show an increase in aggression immediately following the play of violent video games. So yes, there is evidence, but not enough to even start to take any conclusions from it.
I believe what someone sees will influence what they do. That's the whole basis for advertising. There's no reason to expect video games to be the exception to that rule. How much does a violent video game affect a normal, sane human being? Probably not that much, but it does affect them. It certainly needs further study.
I'm not sure anyone understands the program, or the issues here. Enforcing common standards is a good thing, and yet it blamed universally when anything outside the standards isn't taught any more. Enforcing common standards isn't the problem; enforcing common standards while funding different school districts with wildly different amounts of money is. Fix the funding, and you fix the standards.
I think it is possible to teach crucial curriculum and still find time for other classes. The problem is, if you test four different subjects (not sure how many there actually are), and don't test the rest, it would be foolish to focus on the untested subjects before the students are 100% capable in the tested subjects. You are funded because of four subjects. Your school loses funding, and you possibly lose your job, if your students cannot perform on those four subjects.
By testing only some subjects, the government is saying the rest simply are not as important.
The problem is that teachers have little to no control over children in an overly litigious society of hyper-sensitive parents. It's more that the teachers only have their students for about 6 hours a day, 180 days a year or so.
Imagine if part of NCLB was a physical fitness test. The school only has control over one meal of the day for the kids, and only when school is in session. They can only offer about 45 minutes, at most, a day for physical activity if they're going to cover other subjects. How can you claim teachers are responsible for the physical fitness (or ability in any subject) based on so little influence?
Universally blaiming "No Child Left Behind" isn't actually addressing the issues of what's seriously wrong. Conversely, I think the the concept of NCLB is a very good one. We spend more money on education. We attempt to raise the bar of public education, and hold states accountable for poor results. The basic idea is a good one, but the implementation is horrendous. If a school fails to meet it's goals, it doesn't get more funding to help it improve. It gets funding taken away. That doesn't improve the school district, it makes a bad situation worse. How is a school district supposed to dig itself out of that hole?
There is a correlation between the amount of money a school district is able to spend on a child to the quality of his or her education. Giving a cash-poor school district more funding could help turn it around. Taking it away condemns it.
You have some interesting ideas in there... it makes me think: what could they do if they teamed up with something like MUME?
A mud would be a good place to experiment, if the producers and coders were willing to edit the engine code. It would be nice to have an entire zone change based on someone's actions. Just having it change back and forth between two overlapping zone maps would be an improvement.
If you already completed the quest, you won't need the NPC. If you want to redo the quest with someone, you should be able to reset the quest.
Once people get used to the idea of a hybrid local-global copy of the world, it wouldn't be that hard for players to understand that quest master X is not in the same place for everyone, depending on what quests they solved.
Most modern MMORPGs don't even have global NPC conversations, the devs just instance the acceptance and completion of a quest. So if that model was kept, you would never see anyone "talking" to an NPC... some people would just be clustering around a spot that may or may not have an NPC in your copy of the world.
Too bad it's a little too ambitious for my meager programming skills, because I'm getting pretty excited about the idea.
The logic is there, take "Fable: The Lost Chapters" where killing NPCs actually affected the town size permanently (you could literally kill an entire town, and it would be empty the entire game unless you lure people back to it).
I too have thought about this (and a random quest generator) the thing is though, each "state" that can be changed has to be saved to a profile (think how much storage would be needed for each person x 1 mil players). Thanks for the tip. I'll have to pick up Fable and give it a go.
There's already quite a bit of storage used per character for MMOs (experience points, quests completed, inventory, skills, looks, etc). It wouldn't take any more storage to hold the per-character world changes, just tie it to the "quest completed" bit. Of course if someone logs out before seeing the script complete, they'll miss the script changing, but not a big deal. Especially if you can reset quests.
What they should do in WoW is have a line of sick kids out the back of the hut. So after you kill the beasts to get the organs to bribe the shaman to give you the potion that you mix with the herbs you get from the carnivorous plants...[more stuff]...and finally lift the curse that's making the kid sick, he goes home* and the next kid goes in..
*actually taking a circuitous route back to the end of the line when your back is turned. Exactly! WoW actually has a little tiny bit of this. On very rare occasions, a quest will actually result in the quest giver going someplace and doing something interesting for a minute or so, and then coming back to where they started.
I remember one in particular involving some Dwarves doing some target practice. It was a low level quest, and when I saw it, I was psyched up because I thought most of the game would show you results from the quest in an intersting way. But no, that was just about the only quest I can think of with a result besides the normal text. I could be wrong... I didn't play it that much more after finding out its mostly text. Do the later quests get scripted results at all?
The MMO world doesn't even have to change as a result. I would be almost as happy if my local viewing of the world just changed temporarily (or perminently) to show the results of the quest, and everyone else didn't see the result until they did it themselves.
The first Guild Wars did a kind of similar thing with the first city; destroying it and then showing the aftermath for the rest of the game. To bad the rest of the game's quests weren't quite so world changing.
Given that people in general love to feel "famous", and given the popularity of MMO, this could at least be highly lucrative as far as a business goes, however, the quallity of such a combination remains to be seen. Depending on the "plot" of the show and game, I could see this being quite entertaining, especially for those envolved or even if you know someone envolved. Agreed. As long as it's handled well, this could work out great. What is it modern MMOs are lacking?
1. Plot - Actually having real plot writers write quests instead of setting up "Kill X of Y" would be a big help.
2. Affect the game world - I'm sick of "you saved my family!" knowing the next schmuck coming along is going to do the exact same thing and save their family again. How about if I could make a more permanent change on the game world? Perhaps individuals can't, due to programming constraints, but a faction battle could change the world.
3. Changing world - WoW certainly hasn't changed much from day 1, short of changes to stats. Perhaps focusing on a plot would help with that.
I doubt that anything short of a massive budget could actually deliver on all of these, but a MMO combined with a TV show could at least address point #1 pretty easily.
CDs and DVDs are virtually invincable, compared to VHS and cassette that they replace. And really, if you take care of it, it is quite robust.
As robust and durable as a HDD?
I drop cds and dvds all the time. A standard hard drive wouldn't be able to take that kind of punishment. Even portable HDs just aren't all that durable.
Personally, I think flash storage may be the best way to store portable data in all formats, if the price can ever get low enough.
And here is why I *never* *ever* buy Chiquita (new name for United Fruit Company) products:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company I can't understand this sort of thinking. Sure, if the company did this within the last 10 or maybe even 20 years, I would understand a boycott. But it happened almost 80 years ago. It's not the same company now. I would be surprised if more than a couple of people working for the company at the time were even still alive.
It's like boycotting Japanese products because of Pearl Harbor.
the first of the series was "Prince of Persia" published in 1989 by Jordan Mechner.
Sands of Time was a next generation title based on the original game. I'd say inspired by the original PoP rather than a sequel to. I consider them two separate series, but you're right that some people are unaware of the excellence of the first game in the original series.
For those who have never played the original Prince of Persia, it's a game so good it's still worth playing today.
The first of the series (SoT) was excellent and the time mechanic was almost revolutionary. Sure the sequels weren't outstanding, but they still were decent. I don't get the hating going on here, if they're doing something really different with this one.
I was really impressed with the first, and I'd love to see what they can do if they start fresh again.
the L prize gives nothing out UNTIL something is found. So the truth is, that the L-prize really costs nothing except for real results. That's really the genus of it. Outside of some administrative overhead for the program, it costs nothing until someone gets results. There are alot of practical problems like this that could be solved by these sorts of prizes.
Say a $Billion bounty for a very effective and cheap to produce HIV vaccine or cure, and the same for various cancers. Sure, the patent would be owned by a company, but it would be in their interest to sell the product, so it would get out into the market.
I'm certain the world as a whole could easily scrape together multiple billions of dollars for a HIV or cancer cure. The savings alone would make it a no-brainer.
So they resell old games. Some of which are actually abandon ware and thus free. Yeah, go look it up while you're paying 10$ for a game that is legally free to download and 0$ goes to the actual creators of it. Actually, many of their games are still being published and sold, and some are brand-spanking new. Sam and Max is still being produced and is especially selling well. Uru Online was exclusive and development paid for by GT. Grimm is going to be exclusive for awhile. As far as abandonware, it's still not legal to download it for free, even if you're not going to be busted for it.
The rights holders get paid for the content through their GameTap contracts, so yes, the actual creators see that money. More than your abandonware argument.
GT has a focus on contracting independent gaming companies these days, especially the small ones. Don't you think a GT contract with a small game development company is a good thing for that company and gaming in general? You know, the ones producing original games instead of sequels?
You really couldn't be more wrong. Stunning that someone seriously can try to argue that GameTap is a bad service.
I first tried GameTap after reading some article online in which the author talked about the rather pleasant experience that GameTap could be - browse a few games, start a download, watch some of their vids, etc., while waiting for your download to finish, etc. After subscribing, I too enjoyed this aspect of it - particularly seeing the "A Day in the Extra Life" vids ("Rick Allen Rocks! Doozh Doozh Doozh!")
Then, one day, the client updated itself and all of the built-in, integrated "browsing" features disappeared, and instead of viewing the vids, news, etc., within the client, it simply launched the web browser and took you to their website.
For me, this was a prime example of an application "upgrading" in such a way that it totally ruined the "eXPerience" of the application itself. No longer was it a single integrated gaming and news "world", it was now a nice game launching application with a pathetic hook into your web browser. That marked the day that I never did anything with GameTap again - other than simply to play the games.
So, as I said - this isn't a big loss - they already shot themselves in the foot by making it harder to reach their news & editorials, so no wonder they are finally dropping it anyway.
Now, if they could only add more games, and return the great games that they once had on their service but then later removed. Agreed on all points. It was better/easier/more likely to be viewed when it was integrated into the games app, and Extra Life rocks.
They really do seem to be focusing on the games lately. They're bringing back some of the publishers they lost, and introducing some good or at least popular games. And you can't beat the price.
I also like the idea that they're now really supporting independent gaming companies, which is where some of the most interesting gaming is at. Hopefully Sam and Max will continue, and the Grimm series will be good.
Ironically, I thought that V for Vendetta was a fine movie in its own right, but significantly unfaithful to the original story in a few very fundamental ways. I really enjoyed V for Vendetta as a movie. I've never read it, so I didn't come in expecting anything. I think the reason the readers don't like it is because, like any movie based on a novel/comic, at best it's a pared-down version of the story they love and will never be able to stand up to the same height.
The ST movie was supposed to be an insult to Heinlein, parodying the fascist leanings of his work, not an "accurate" adaptation
Indeed -- when I saw that movie I kinda liked it, for the in your face irony and criticism of medias, action movies, propaganda -- remember the blatant propaganda shown on tv, the SS uniforms, etc. It was absolutely _obvious_ this was a parody and critical of all it was showing.
I was astounded to read reviews on the web (on/. itself iirc) that actually took the movie as if it was a straight action flick... I think if it is a parody, it should have been a little thicker or less generic. Seeing it again (I originally read the book after the first movie), it still came off as either a kinda bad action movie, or a kinda bad parody. Army hate, media hate, and Nazi-like troops is a common theme in many films, so the bar for parody is very high on those topics.
There's plenty of Heinlein to parody, from his need to put spanking in virtually every single story (including this one), to his literary lust for girls (not women) and multiple partners sex. Both would have pandered well to the movie watching audience, while giving Heinlein readers something to laugh at if it's done in an over-the-top manner.
Perhaps it's time the legislation was put in place to ensure that government actually is representative of the people. Like jury service, onyl better paid, so people actually want to do it. There's just too much you have to know to be an effective legislator to do this. Uneducated and untrained people would end up doing alot worse than the mostly corrupt politicians we have now. At least they know something about the issues. Most Americans know squat about squat, and are proud of it.
Even if a wee hack like that one isn't immediately obvious, plenty of people have pointed out that there's a speaker jack in your computer. Plug it in to anything from an ancient cassette recorder up to a modern mulitmedia PC and you can just record it with one button press or click. Surely even 'analysts' can see that. Daft idea. Daft business model. Protecting content - especially 'small content' such as songs or low def video - is a mug's game in this day and age. I think their model is a step in the right direction. It's not that hard right now to download pretty much any music you like through a torrent. If someone is going to download it illegally, they aren't going to be stopped by Lala's protection. So why put more than the most basic protection to prevent casual copying?
It's like copy protection in video games; the pirates aren't the customers, the people willing to pay for it are. So why make it hard on the developer and hard on the customer by implementing draconian copy protection?
They made subscribing to a song cheap, easy, and LEGAL, with a few restrictions many people can live with. They aren't ignoring illegal copying, they're combating it by offering an alternative. I don't have a portable MP3 player, but listen to music off my computer all the time. Sign me up!
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The Navy wouldn't sit there waiting for a torpedo, just to make the ship believe it couldn't be tracked.
You can't see the line when you produce the item. You can't see the line when you're charged. You can only see the line you crossed when the jury reads the verdict. And then you go to jail, period.
Amazing, considering "obscenity" as a form of expression doesn't even hurt anyone. It's just a straight-up 1st Amendment violation.
Age verification (through a warning page) isn't a legal requirement for a website, it's just common practice.
The content was in an unlinked directory. He didn't provide the address to anyone he didn't know. You would have to prove he intentionally gave it to people he knew were underage. That's why porn sites don't get sued for delinquency of a minor: they don't intentionally target underage users.
I'm not saying this particular blocking idea is a good one, because it isn't.
I especially think the "treating us as criminals" arguments is given way more weight than it's really worth. I mean, does anybody have a better idea about how to validate s/w as being legally purchased other than using some product activation mechanism (whether it works over the phone or net?)
If you're looking for a better idea, here's one: If it's a single player game, don't have product activation. Period.Games are usually cracked within hours of release, if not before release. Look at Mass Effect, for example. It was cracked in a limited fashion within hours, and fully cracked in about a day of it's first staggered release. Most regions could get the cracked version before it was even released locally.
Online activation adds no protection for the publishers and creates problems for legitimate users. What's the point?
I tried out AC for a couple of days about a week ago, and I couldn't see what makes it so special compared to today's MMOs.
Is there something in it that modern MMOs don't have, or was it ahead of it's time then and outdated now?
Seems like it would've been jaw dropping 10 years ago.
As far as evidence for video games causing violent behavior, there have been a couple of studies now that show an increase in aggression immediately following the play of violent video games. So yes, there is evidence, but not enough to even start to take any conclusions from it.
I believe what someone sees will influence what they do. That's the whole basis for advertising. There's no reason to expect video games to be the exception to that rule. How much does a violent video game affect a normal, sane human being? Probably not that much, but it does affect them. It certainly needs further study.
By testing only some subjects, the government is saying the rest simply are not as important.
The problem is that teachers have little to no control over children in an overly litigious society of hyper-sensitive parents. It's more that the teachers only have their students for about 6 hours a day, 180 days a year or so.
Imagine if part of NCLB was a physical fitness test. The school only has control over one meal of the day for the kids, and only when school is in session. They can only offer about 45 minutes, at most, a day for physical activity if they're going to cover other subjects. How can you claim teachers are responsible for the physical fitness (or ability in any subject) based on so little influence? Universally blaiming "No Child Left Behind" isn't actually addressing the issues of what's seriously wrong. Conversely, I think the the concept of NCLB is a very good one. We spend more money on education. We attempt to raise the bar of public education, and hold states accountable for poor results. The basic idea is a good one, but the implementation is horrendous. If a school fails to meet it's goals, it doesn't get more funding to help it improve. It gets funding taken away. That doesn't improve the school district, it makes a bad situation worse. How is a school district supposed to dig itself out of that hole?
There is a correlation between the amount of money a school district is able to spend on a child to the quality of his or her education. Giving a cash-poor school district more funding could help turn it around. Taking it away condemns it.
A mud would be a good place to experiment, if the producers and coders were willing to edit the engine code. It would be nice to have an entire zone change based on someone's actions. Just having it change back and forth between two overlapping zone maps would be an improvement.
If you already completed the quest, you won't need the NPC. If you want to redo the quest with someone, you should be able to reset the quest.
Once people get used to the idea of a hybrid local-global copy of the world, it wouldn't be that hard for players to understand that quest master X is not in the same place for everyone, depending on what quests they solved.
Most modern MMORPGs don't even have global NPC conversations, the devs just instance the acceptance and completion of a quest. So if that model was kept, you would never see anyone "talking" to an NPC... some people would just be clustering around a spot that may or may not have an NPC in your copy of the world.
Too bad it's a little too ambitious for my meager programming skills, because I'm getting pretty excited about the idea.
There's already quite a bit of storage used per character for MMOs (experience points, quests completed, inventory, skills, looks, etc). It wouldn't take any more storage to hold the per-character world changes, just tie it to the "quest completed" bit. Of course if someone logs out before seeing the script complete, they'll miss the script changing, but not a big deal. Especially if you can reset quests.
I remember one in particular involving some Dwarves doing some target practice. It was a low level quest, and when I saw it, I was psyched up because I thought most of the game would show you results from the quest in an intersting way. But no, that was just about the only quest I can think of with a result besides the normal text. I could be wrong... I didn't play it that much more after finding out its mostly text. Do the later quests get scripted results at all?
The MMO world doesn't even have to change as a result. I would be almost as happy if my local viewing of the world just changed temporarily (or perminently) to show the results of the quest, and everyone else didn't see the result until they did it themselves.
The first Guild Wars did a kind of similar thing with the first city; destroying it and then showing the aftermath for the rest of the game. To bad the rest of the game's quests weren't quite so world changing.
1. Plot - Actually having real plot writers write quests instead of setting up "Kill X of Y" would be a big help.
2. Affect the game world - I'm sick of "you saved my family!" knowing the next schmuck coming along is going to do the exact same thing and save their family again. How about if I could make a more permanent change on the game world? Perhaps individuals can't, due to programming constraints, but a faction battle could change the world.
3. Changing world - WoW certainly hasn't changed much from day 1, short of changes to stats. Perhaps focusing on a plot would help with that.
I doubt that anything short of a massive budget could actually deliver on all of these, but a MMO combined with a TV show could at least address point #1 pretty easily.
As robust and durable as a HDD?
I drop cds and dvds all the time. A standard hard drive wouldn't be able to take that kind of punishment. Even portable HDs just aren't all that durable.Personally, I think flash storage may be the best way to store portable data in all formats, if the price can ever get low enough.
It's like boycotting Japanese products because of Pearl Harbor.
For those who have never played the original Prince of Persia, it's a game so good it's still worth playing today.
The first of the series (SoT) was excellent and the time mechanic was almost revolutionary. Sure the sequels weren't outstanding, but they still were decent. I don't get the hating going on here, if they're doing something really different with this one.
I was really impressed with the first, and I'd love to see what they can do if they start fresh again.
Say a $Billion bounty for a very effective and cheap to produce HIV vaccine or cure, and the same for various cancers. Sure, the patent would be owned by a company, but it would be in their interest to sell the product, so it would get out into the market.
I'm certain the world as a whole could easily scrape together multiple billions of dollars for a HIV or cancer cure. The savings alone would make it a no-brainer.
The rights holders get paid for the content through their GameTap contracts, so yes, the actual creators see that money. More than your abandonware argument.
GT has a focus on contracting independent gaming companies these days, especially the small ones. Don't you think a GT contract with a small game development company is a good thing for that company and gaming in general? You know, the ones producing original games instead of sequels?
You really couldn't be more wrong. Stunning that someone seriously can try to argue that GameTap is a bad service.
They really do seem to be focusing on the games lately. They're bringing back some of the publishers they lost, and introducing some good or at least popular games. And you can't beat the price.
I also like the idea that they're now really supporting independent gaming companies, which is where some of the most interesting gaming is at. Hopefully Sam and Max will continue, and the Grimm series will be good.
There's plenty of Heinlein to parody, from his need to put spanking in virtually every single story (including this one), to his literary lust for girls (not women) and multiple partners sex. Both would have pandered well to the movie watching audience, while giving Heinlein readers something to laugh at if it's done in an over-the-top manner.
It's like copy protection in video games; the pirates aren't the customers, the people willing to pay for it are. So why make it hard on the developer and hard on the customer by implementing draconian copy protection?
They made subscribing to a song cheap, easy, and LEGAL, with a few restrictions many people can live with. They aren't ignoring illegal copying, they're combating it by offering an alternative. I don't have a portable MP3 player, but listen to music off my computer all the time. Sign me up!