People are fundamentally selfish. There are certain things that must be mandatory for the collective good. Arguably that includes environmental issues.
My experience of Vista has been mixed but overall I believe that its better than XP assuming you customize it a bit.
On the downside, the UAC is annoying and untrainable so I have disabled it. I don't know why they can't allow a user to train Vista to make an exception of one particular program rather than bugging them each time they launch it. Vista also doesn't sleep / hibernate properly - on more than one occasion I've put it to sleep and come back to find it running. Maybe my hardware is the cause but its annoying. I've also had minor incompatibility issues with developer tools like Developer Studio which I finally resolved after some googling.
On the plus side, the desktop is far cleaner and better organized than XP. Aero glass looks lovely and filled with useful features such as thumbnails of windows. File Explorer is also far better and I find the ability to bookmark folders I frequent a major time saver. I am definitely more productive through the new interface. Aside from devtools I haven't encountered any major issues running older apps. I run lots of open source tools as well as DVD rippers / burners and so far no problems whatsoever.
If the BBFC randomly changes its tolerance on violent games, that ain't Rockstar's fault. That actually is unfair.
It doesn't randomly change its tolerance. The current guidelines are a consequence of a period of public consultation and are adjusted every several years to remain in tune with public opinion. The original Manhunt would have been subject to earlier guidelines which may have since been tightened. The 2005 guidelines say explicitly "In the case of videos and DVDs, which may be more
accessible to younger viewers, intervention may be more
frequent. For the same reason, and because of the
different way in which they are experienced, the Board
may take a more precautionary approach in the case of
those digital games which are covered by the Video
Recordings Act."
Surely the democratic public would prefer British Law to not spontaneously change, especially when it comes to using vague and inconsistent terms to cause silence.
It doesn't spontaneously change.
I think if the gov't insists on censorship, it should be consistent, measurable/definable, and not change on a whim. You can censor the word 'fuck' pretty easily, right? That's an easy rule to follow. But if you're allowed to say that, and then the next day you're not, that's not fair. Become an enemy of the gov't, suddenly you're a law-breaker. But, hey, if you want to live in that world, be my guest.
It is consistent, measurable and definable to the extent that it can be for subjective material. Obviously there are borderline cases where context and intensity of scenes can push a decision one way or another but I'm sure you'd know all this if you bothered to read the BBFC's own website. Just because one game was rated 18 in 2003 doesnt mean its sequel in 2007 will be, especially (as happened) the guidelines have changed in the interim.
Manhunt 1 is not Manhunt 2 is it? And the BBFC isn't beholden to a past decision when making a future one, especially when it has publically stated its intent to be more strict on games.
It's a reality that NOBODY can buy the game, not just 18's. It's not fair. Even if it was 100% expected, that doesn't make it right.
Censorship is a commercial reality that anyone attempting to make a movie or game for profit has to recognize. If Rockstar chose to ignore ratings boards and subsequently got banned that's their own stupid fault. It's no good whining about the system as if it's being unfair.
As to whether censorship "right" or not, British laws is enacted by democratically elected representatives. Do you think there should be no restrictions on the content of games and movies or not?
That may be, but crap or not - I say they still deserve publicity if they are willing to stand up to Government censorship.
You make it sound so noble. In reality, they can't sell their game unless it gets rated. Without a rating they can't release it. Without a rating no console would even certify it. Even with a rating I doubt it will ever make a profit although it might allow them to claw back some losses, assuming any store bothers to stock it.
It's their own stupid fault for producing this game in the first place. Censorship is not some new phenomenon, something that appeared after they started work on Manhunt 2. It's a reality and should have been considered before they embarked on this money pit.
we're not talking about an issue of supporters being unable to implement it, we're talking about the very developers who helped build the spec being unable to implement it. we're talking about the core companies who invested time and developers in producing the spec then being completely unable to implement their very own specification in hardware.
I could write a perfect thousand page specification, implement it from what I just wrote and I guarantee you there would be bugs. I really don't understand the point you are making. Besides Blu Ray is lots of standards, some of which were not specified by the BDA, and many of which are horribly complex. And you're surprised that a few 1st gen players require a firmware update? Bugs are guaranteed in any piece of software. HD DVD is no different - indeed Toshiba players also have firmware updates to fix chroma bugs and drive read errors.
Be thankful you have upgradable firmware, and just hope that 2nd & 3rd gen players implement the standard better. My original Pioneer 717 DVD player had a lip sync issue that couldn't be fixed so easily. I just had to live with it.
BD uses a different thickness of substrate, so it's capable of either of those modes.
Yes it is. JVC announced hybrid Blu ray / DVD discs nearly 3 years ago. Why they're not used commercially I have no idea but the technology is not new. And flippers featuring HD DVD or DVD on one side and Blu Ray on another are also feasible. Warner have been talking of a Total HD which has HD DVD on one side and Blu Ray on the other.
All of which is largely irrelevant when considering if Blu Ray or HD DVD is more "compatible" with DVD. All Blu Ray players and all HD DVD players to my knowledge support DVD.
Should we not worry that even those that helped develop the standard can't implement it succesfully then?
Tell me a standard which you believe to have been implemented perfectly by all supporters of it, especially one that remotely approaches the complexity of Blu Ray standard.
I'm not sure why you suggest Bluray DRM isn't more problematic, whilst the underlying AACS layer agreeably isn't, there have been notable issues with BD+ - an extra layer of DRM which HD DVD doesn't use, see here as an example of the issues:
So you blame the standard when faulty firmware in a few machines fails to implement it properly? You should brace yourself because there are so many blu ray players coming from different manufacturers that there are bound to be plenty of future glitches in their separate implementations that you can blame on the standard too.
The Venturer player is basically a rebadged Toshiba A3 player so I wouldn't be so sure. More info.
And I haven't see Blu Ray "break" any standard. If you mean Profile 1.1 adds more features than 1.0, then yes it does but future disks must still work on profile 1.0. And many players will be upgradeable to 1.1 through firmware. How is this a problem? It's like claiming HDMI 1.3 "breaks" HDMI 1.2 because it adds new functionality.
Because HD-DVD comes from the DVD group, they can make combo discs that have DVD on one side and HD-DVD on the other. In fact, there's another portion of the spec that allows 1-2 layers of HD-DVD and 1 layer of DVD on the same side (The Freedom Anime DVD released in the US is done this way). This can't be done on Blu Ray because of licensing issues, from what I understand.
Hybrid disks is not the same as claiming HD DVD has better backwards compatibility. The simple fact is Blu Ray players play DVDs perfectly. There is no issue.
Hybrid disks are another matter entirely, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't see Blu Ray / DVD or even Blu Ray / HD DVD hybrids. Indeed JVC demonstrated hybrid disks quite some while ago. You'd have to ask the Blu Ray producers why they haven't produced them commercially.
sell you. Seriously folks, this is funny on so many levels. First, how in the hell would this "Director" know anything about what Microsoft is doing on this topic? He's pulling this out of his ass.
This "director" was responsible for this summer's #1 hit which became #1 best selling HD DVD title. Therefore I think he's in a slightly better position to know more about the background shenanigans behind why his movie is on one format and not another than you are.
You can see the ratio but not the total sales of discs here. Blu Ray is killing HD DVD and the situation is even worse for HD DVD in other regions. Clearly not every PS3 owner plays Blu Ray discs but clearly a great many of them are. Not least because the PS3 is an great player in addition to being a great console.
The costs of disc production are not significantly different for either format and sometimes Blu is cheaper by virtue of only requiring a single layer disc vs dual for HD DVD. You can see a fairly old article here. Chances are prices have dropped since that was written.
The HD-DVD format whilst not perfect is much more consumer friendly in that it's cheaper, it's region free and it's backwards compatible to an extent.
Of those, only one is true and one is partially true. HD DVD is region free and its the one great feature it has. It is only partially true to say HD DVD is cheaper since it is only because Toshiba is subsidizing it. The technology for Blu Ray and HD DVD is virtually analogous and therefore incurs similar costs. It's just the Blu Ray camp doesn't have the luxury of subsidizing its players since we're talking of dozens of companies working to an industry standard, not one company trying to force it.
As for backwards compatible... what???
In comparison Bluray suffers from being region locked, having much more unfriendly, more problematic DRM and doesn't support backwards compat. in DVD players.
Some discs are region locked, some aren't - Blu Ray is not doing itself any favours by doing this. The DRM is not more problematic. Backwards compatibility is just fine in Blu Ray players that support DVDs which would be all of them.
...Or maybe it's because Microsoft has been a strong backer of the format since the very beginning, and doesn't want it to end up like all of Sony's other consumer device formats. (Betamax, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, SACD, UMD...)
Some Sony formats such as compact disc, 3.5" floppy and miniDV can hardly be described as failures.
But that's beside the point. Microsoft doesn't want any physical HD format to dominate.
...Or maybe it's because HD-DVD is the format that its cash cow video game console system supports, whereas they have nothing to do with Blu-ray.
Which is still only an expansion device, a pretty ugly one at that. Why does no 360 integrate an HD-DVD player? Surely the "Elite" model should at least if Microsoft is such a "strong backer" as you put it? Microsoft knows all about the power of the default, yet here they are putting distance between themselves and this format you claim they strongly back.
It looks more like they don't want the taint of a dead format stinking up their console so they've left it as an expansion so their options are open.
Of course, I could just be grasping at straws.
I think you are.
At any rate, I do think he is right in that neither format will be the choice for obtaining and playing hi-def content, online distribution ultimately will win.
And that's the reason Microsoft is doing this. They don't give a flying fuck about HD DVD. They know it's doomed. But if they can prolong the physical format war as long as possible, their own DLC offerings might have time to mature and take over.
I sure as hell don't know why anyone would be insane enough to buy DLC movies. If you think the DRM is bad in Blu Ray or HD DVD, it's ten times worse in DLC. You pay almost as much as a full price disc, and get a low quality, machine locked, proprietayr file for your efforts. I think DLC will prove very popular for rentals where no one cares too much about these issues but ownership? Not so much.
The obsession stems from the "great" tradition of british tabloid journalism. Essentially they build up a person or an institution and then knock them down. If one tabloid builds 'em up, the rest just love to criticise or undermine them. It's basically just a game between a group of immature personalities (I nearly said "journalists") that a group of the public play along with.
The Register started life being a slightly snarky look at the latest computing news, skewering the gushing press releases with heavy doses of sarcasm. That's a British tradition and most of their news is still delivered the same way.
More recently however they've put more and more weight on pundits and opinion pieces from Andrew Orlowski, Ashlee Vance etc. These pundits appear to exist only to troll. More often than not, they're not reporting news but rather trying to be inflammatory and contrary because they know trolling means hits (as Slashdot has just proved). There is nothing particularly British about this behaviour and indeed it looks like The Register is just copying what other computing sites already do - using controversial pundits to drive traffic.
I have no idea what but the Reg has a hardon for sensationalist stories about Wikipedia. It's hard to understand the obsession but obsess they do with one story after another predicting its doom, or exposing "corruption", or inaccuracies etc. In particular a month doesn't seem to pass without Andrew Orlowski bitching about the service in some way or another.
Personally I think they do it because it's a cheap way to fill column inches and to push a few buttons on readers who recognize it for the invaluable service it is.
Perhaps the whole point of the survey is public disclosure. Ever think of that? If people are expected to ask for the information, consumers will never know what goes on. As stated, companies should disclose it for investors if for no other reason since there is a very real risk of liability about manufacturing processes.
And maybe Nintendo isn't guilty of anything. In which case they should reveal their policies and bask in the glow of a high ranking next year.
Sure, the core is an open standard. Unfortunately there are precious few.NET applications that actually run cleanly on Mono. Why? Because Microsoft made it far too easy (on purpose) to invoke Win32 calls, ActiveX controls and so on. Consequently a lot of apps and libs break make those calls and they break on Mono. And they'd break on OS X unless Apple implemented a large chunk of the Win32 API.
Potentially you could create a modest size truecrypt volume (e.g 10Mb) and store your docs in that. Download that and mount it as a drive and you can read the files direct. The disadvantage is you must upload the volumn file to google again, which is why the file size can't be too large.
I don't see the point you are making. Corporations *should* disclose their environmental policies even if only for investors. That they don't means there is no basis for judging what they do. If Greenpeace can't find the info on their site, they get a zero. Better luck next year. I expect Nintendo will be keen to beat out its rivals and I fully expect they'll publish the information in due course.
It's all well and good to say "well they could have gone off investigating", but why should they and how many companies would cooperate? So they instead they the info that companies disclose on their corporate website. I expect there is a benefit to this since it shames companies enough to actually disclose info that they otherwise might try to hide and get even worse marks. And going forward (as is the case with Apple), it causes them to try harder in future.
My own opinion is that if you continue to read Gamespot that you should take note any game that is prominently advertised on their site, by means of flash ads, wallpaper or whatever. Then go read the review of that game and automatically deduct 2 points from that game when considering to buy it. A 10 means 8, an 8 means 6 and so on. After all, if Gamespot is the go-to place for shill reviews, you simply cannot trust the score they give and it must be modified accordingly.
Better yet, ignore Gamespot. There are plenty of other game sites and some of them care a great deal about their editorial control. Send traffic to those sites and show the likes of CNET and Eidos that such strongarming does not pay off in the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
People are fundamentally selfish. There are certain things that must be mandatory for the collective good. Arguably that includes environmental issues.
Where "use wisely" probably means if you're going to point these things at helicopters, to do so from somewhere they cannot identify who you are.
On the downside, the UAC is annoying and untrainable so I have disabled it. I don't know why they can't allow a user to train Vista to make an exception of one particular program rather than bugging them each time they launch it. Vista also doesn't sleep / hibernate properly - on more than one occasion I've put it to sleep and come back to find it running. Maybe my hardware is the cause but its annoying. I've also had minor incompatibility issues with developer tools like Developer Studio which I finally resolved after some googling.
On the plus side, the desktop is far cleaner and better organized than XP. Aero glass looks lovely and filled with useful features such as thumbnails of windows. File Explorer is also far better and I find the ability to bookmark folders I frequent a major time saver. I am definitely more productive through the new interface. Aside from devtools I haven't encountered any major issues running older apps. I run lots of open source tools as well as DVD rippers / burners and so far no problems whatsoever.
It doesn't randomly change its tolerance. The current guidelines are a consequence of a period of public consultation and are adjusted every several years to remain in tune with public opinion. The original Manhunt would have been subject to earlier guidelines which may have since been tightened. The 2005 guidelines say explicitly "In the case of videos and DVDs, which may be more accessible to younger viewers, intervention may be more frequent. For the same reason, and because of the different way in which they are experienced, the Board may take a more precautionary approach in the case of those digital games which are covered by the Video Recordings Act."
Surely the democratic public would prefer British Law to not spontaneously change, especially when it comes to using vague and inconsistent terms to cause silence.
It doesn't spontaneously change.
I think if the gov't insists on censorship, it should be consistent, measurable/definable, and not change on a whim. You can censor the word 'fuck' pretty easily, right? That's an easy rule to follow. But if you're allowed to say that, and then the next day you're not, that's not fair. Become an enemy of the gov't, suddenly you're a law-breaker. But, hey, if you want to live in that world, be my guest.
It is consistent, measurable and definable to the extent that it can be for subjective material. Obviously there are borderline cases where context and intensity of scenes can push a decision one way or another but I'm sure you'd know all this if you bothered to read the BBFC's own website. Just because one game was rated 18 in 2003 doesnt mean its sequel in 2007 will be, especially (as happened) the guidelines have changed in the interim.
Manhunt 1 is not Manhunt 2 is it? And the BBFC isn't beholden to a past decision when making a future one, especially when it has publically stated its intent to be more strict on games.
It's a reality that NOBODY can buy the game, not just 18's. It's not fair. Even if it was 100% expected, that doesn't make it right.
Censorship is a commercial reality that anyone attempting to make a movie or game for profit has to recognize. If Rockstar chose to ignore ratings boards and subsequently got banned that's their own stupid fault. It's no good whining about the system as if it's being unfair.
As to whether censorship "right" or not, British laws is enacted by democratically elected representatives. Do you think there should be no restrictions on the content of games and movies or not?
You make it sound so noble. In reality, they can't sell their game unless it gets rated. Without a rating they can't release it. Without a rating no console would even certify it. Even with a rating I doubt it will ever make a profit although it might allow them to claw back some losses, assuming any store bothers to stock it.
It's their own stupid fault for producing this game in the first place. Censorship is not some new phenomenon, something that appeared after they started work on Manhunt 2. It's a reality and should have been considered before they embarked on this money pit.
Do not believe Teddy's lies.
I could write a perfect thousand page specification, implement it from what I just wrote and I guarantee you there would be bugs. I really don't understand the point you are making. Besides Blu Ray is lots of standards, some of which were not specified by the BDA, and many of which are horribly complex. And you're surprised that a few 1st gen players require a firmware update? Bugs are guaranteed in any piece of software. HD DVD is no different - indeed Toshiba players also have firmware updates to fix chroma bugs and drive read errors.
Be thankful you have upgradable firmware, and just hope that 2nd & 3rd gen players implement the standard better. My original Pioneer 717 DVD player had a lip sync issue that couldn't be fixed so easily. I just had to live with it.
Yes it is. JVC announced hybrid Blu ray / DVD discs nearly 3 years ago. Why they're not used commercially I have no idea but the technology is not new. And flippers featuring HD DVD or DVD on one side and Blu Ray on another are also feasible. Warner have been talking of a Total HD which has HD DVD on one side and Blu Ray on the other.
All of which is largely irrelevant when considering if Blu Ray or HD DVD is more "compatible" with DVD. All Blu Ray players and all HD DVD players to my knowledge support DVD.
Tell me a standard which you believe to have been implemented perfectly by all supporters of it, especially one that remotely approaches the complexity of Blu Ray standard.
So you blame the standard when faulty firmware in a few machines fails to implement it properly? You should brace yourself because there are so many blu ray players coming from different manufacturers that there are bound to be plenty of future glitches in their separate implementations that you can blame on the standard too.
And I haven't see Blu Ray "break" any standard. If you mean Profile 1.1 adds more features than 1.0, then yes it does but future disks must still work on profile 1.0. And many players will be upgradeable to 1.1 through firmware. How is this a problem? It's like claiming HDMI 1.3 "breaks" HDMI 1.2 because it adds new functionality.
Hybrid disks is not the same as claiming HD DVD has better backwards compatibility. The simple fact is Blu Ray players play DVDs perfectly. There is no issue.
Hybrid disks are another matter entirely, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't see Blu Ray / DVD or even Blu Ray / HD DVD hybrids. Indeed JVC demonstrated hybrid disks quite some while ago. You'd have to ask the Blu Ray producers why they haven't produced them commercially.
This "director" was responsible for this summer's #1 hit which became #1 best selling HD DVD title. Therefore I think he's in a slightly better position to know more about the background shenanigans behind why his movie is on one format and not another than you are.
The costs of disc production are not significantly different for either format and sometimes Blu is cheaper by virtue of only requiring a single layer disc vs dual for HD DVD. You can see a fairly old article here. Chances are prices have dropped since that was written.
Of those, only one is true and one is partially true. HD DVD is region free and its the one great feature it has. It is only partially true to say HD DVD is cheaper since it is only because Toshiba is subsidizing it. The technology for Blu Ray and HD DVD is virtually analogous and therefore incurs similar costs. It's just the Blu Ray camp doesn't have the luxury of subsidizing its players since we're talking of dozens of companies working to an industry standard, not one company trying to force it.
As for backwards compatible... what???
In comparison Bluray suffers from being region locked, having much more unfriendly, more problematic DRM and doesn't support backwards compat. in DVD players.
Some discs are region locked, some aren't - Blu Ray is not doing itself any favours by doing this. The DRM is not more problematic. Backwards compatibility is just fine in Blu Ray players that support DVDs which would be all of them.
Some Sony formats such as compact disc, 3.5" floppy and miniDV can hardly be described as failures.
But that's beside the point. Microsoft doesn't want any physical HD format to dominate.
Which is still only an expansion device, a pretty ugly one at that. Why does no 360 integrate an HD-DVD player? Surely the "Elite" model should at least if Microsoft is such a "strong backer" as you put it? Microsoft knows all about the power of the default, yet here they are putting distance between themselves and this format you claim they strongly back.
It looks more like they don't want the taint of a dead format stinking up their console so they've left it as an expansion so their options are open.
Of course, I could just be grasping at straws.
I think you are.
At any rate, I do think he is right in that neither format will be the choice for obtaining and playing hi-def content, online distribution ultimately will win.
And that's the reason Microsoft is doing this. They don't give a flying fuck about HD DVD. They know it's doomed. But if they can prolong the physical format war as long as possible, their own DLC offerings might have time to mature and take over.
I sure as hell don't know why anyone would be insane enough to buy DLC movies. If you think the DRM is bad in Blu Ray or HD DVD, it's ten times worse in DLC. You pay almost as much as a full price disc, and get a low quality, machine locked, proprietayr file for your efforts. I think DLC will prove very popular for rentals where no one cares too much about these issues but ownership? Not so much.
The Register started life being a slightly snarky look at the latest computing news, skewering the gushing press releases with heavy doses of sarcasm. That's a British tradition and most of their news is still delivered the same way.
More recently however they've put more and more weight on pundits and opinion pieces from Andrew Orlowski, Ashlee Vance etc. These pundits appear to exist only to troll. More often than not, they're not reporting news but rather trying to be inflammatory and contrary because they know trolling means hits (as Slashdot has just proved). There is nothing particularly British about this behaviour and indeed it looks like The Register is just copying what other computing sites already do - using controversial pundits to drive traffic.
Personally I think they do it because it's a cheap way to fill column inches and to push a few buttons on readers who recognize it for the invaluable service it is.
And maybe Nintendo isn't guilty of anything. In which case they should reveal their policies and bask in the glow of a high ranking next year.
Sure, the core is an open standard. Unfortunately there are precious few .NET applications that actually run cleanly on Mono. Why? Because Microsoft made it far too easy (on purpose) to invoke Win32 calls, ActiveX controls and so on. Consequently a lot of apps and libs break make those calls and they break on Mono. And they'd break on OS X unless Apple implemented a large chunk of the Win32 API.
Potentially you could create a modest size truecrypt volume (e.g 10Mb) and store your docs in that. Download that and mount it as a drive and you can read the files direct. The disadvantage is you must upload the volumn file to google again, which is why the file size can't be too large.
I don't see the point you are making. Corporations *should* disclose their environmental policies even if only for investors. That they don't means there is no basis for judging what they do. If Greenpeace can't find the info on their site, they get a zero. Better luck next year. I expect Nintendo will be keen to beat out its rivals and I fully expect they'll publish the information in due course.
It's all well and good to say "well they could have gone off investigating", but why should they and how many companies would cooperate? So they instead they the info that companies disclose on their corporate website. I expect there is a benefit to this since it shames companies enough to actually disclose info that they otherwise might try to hide and get even worse marks. And going forward (as is the case with Apple), it causes them to try harder in future.
My own opinion is that if you continue to read Gamespot that you should take note any game that is prominently advertised on their site, by means of flash ads, wallpaper or whatever. Then go read the review of that game and automatically deduct 2 points from that game when considering to buy it. A 10 means 8, an 8 means 6 and so on. After all, if Gamespot is the go-to place for shill reviews, you simply cannot trust the score they give and it must be modified accordingly.
Better yet, ignore Gamespot. There are plenty of other game sites and some of them care a great deal about their editorial control. Send traffic to those sites and show the likes of CNET and Eidos that such strongarming does not pay off in the long term.