So I take it that this new site is what Citizendium is to Wikipedia. Why do you even need a website to leak documents? Just dump the contents at the doorstep of every news organization you can find. If you can't find a "mainstream" source, there's plenty of bloggers who don't know what they're talking about who would be more than willing to rattle some cages for you.
But I guess the issue here is credit. Like the fools at TMZ who want to put their stamp on their "exclusive" video of some starlet picking her nose, these sites want credit for being the first to publish all kinds of international gossip. And Julian Assange is biggest glory hog of them all.
Netflix streaming over the Xbox IS a cable/fiber connection. What's the difference between cable and streaming? They're both live data feeds.
Netflix does stream in HD, at any rate.
I was referring to receiving television service directly from your cable/fiber provider, not streaming via your Internet connection. I've used ESPN 3 on the 360 and if the quality for other channels is anything like that service, then I'd much rather get television service using more "traditional" methods.
Definitely. It's also a big reason I don't use the console as a Windows Media Center extender. Another issue is the quality - a strong over-the-air or cable/fiber connection will almost always provider better picture and audio quality than streaming content.
At first glance, the USPS being the most gentle seems to be surprising. But after further thought, I'm not the least bit surprised. I'm guessing that the private companies have more machines handling their packages and of course machines don't particularly care about being gentle with the box of cookies your grandma baked. The USPS on the other hand has been sort of notorious for hanging on to its considerable workforce (which is one of the reasons they're in their current financial situation), some of whom handle packages in lieu of automation.
From the article: "The flaw is related to the way in which a certain registry key is interpreted..." Another argument for abolishing the Windows registry and storing setup information in plain text files. Not like that's going to happen...
I like that they talk at length about Cow Clicker, the only Facebook game I actually "play." It's a hilarious parody of other Facebook games with its ridiculous "reward" system that almost requires you pay money to get more clicks (1000 clicks for a Bronze cowbell!) and to make progress. Ian Bogost captures the whole psychology behind these kinds of level grinding games perfectly:
Why not get some mooney and go buy a new cow? Don't you want to collect them all? That's the sort of thing people seem to do. The available cows will change over time, thus there's some chance you might miss out. How would you live with yourself?
Bogost has also posted a funny send-up of the Wikipedia donation advertisements that have been popping up as of late:
I was led to believe that social games on Facebook were also sure things, money-printing machines that make piles of riches for their asshole creators, creators who demonstrate as little or less care for craft and experience as I have tried to do. Yet, where's my fleet of holstein-spotted Teslas? Where's my new sub-basement with walk-in freezers for endless sides of Kobe? Where's my closetful of bespoke calf leather suits? Damn you all, you cheapskate bastards... Please consider foolishly spending real, hard currency on Cow Clicker.
If you thought Heavy Rain was gripping, then you're behind any help we can give you. Take up cards or something. Maybe join a local bridge or mahjong club. And give one of us your PS3 while you're at it. Seriously, in this day and age when information on video games is readily available and when there's tons of artsy fartsy so-called "indie" games to download, if you can't find anything you like, then you should probably stop playing video games altogether.
Forget about that social messaging patent. The fellow should get a patent for an algorithm that automatically generates commercials like the one for Rockmelt. E.g. a pseudo screencast featuring a voiceover and folksy music, just like Google and Apple commercials.
From the article: "One, the percentage of the worldwide market composed of Japanese titles has shrunk, and if you exclude Nintendo, would be shown to have drastically shrunk worldwide." Okay, where is he getting this supposed information, or did he should pull it out of thin air? He didn't even cite any numbers either. So that's bunk.
"...major Japanese game publishers have become much more conservative and sequel driven". Uh... and this is a recent trend? Square has been milking Final Fantasy like a cow since the 1990s. Westerners didn't know because they skipped on releasing a whole bunch of games in the series. Same deal with Capcom and Rockman on the NES, except we actually received Mega Man game after Mega Man game outside of Japan. Heck, Konami released a good number of Akumajo Dracula/Castlevania games, some of which were just different versions of the first game.
As for the globalization that the whole article is about. Um... we've had that for years. Sega was founded by an American guy for goodness sake. Namco worked with Bally/Midway to release Pac-Man games (which was supposedly a tumultuous relationship). Japanese companies have founded American divisions who've screwed up countless localization jobs. Action games like some of the ones in the Mario and Sonic series have been developed with Western audiences in mind, because, well, you can make lots of money catering to the West.
Well that article was short, but riddled with inaccuracies. First of all, none of these devices can be described as "controller-free" - there's no such thing. They are simply alternative controllers to your standard joystick/gamepad/buttons/analog stick/lightgun etc controls. You must have a controller (e.g. a means of interaction with the images on screen) in a video game, otherwise it's not a video game. And the end of the article categorizes the U-Force as "hands-free", when it does require using your hands.
And of course, there's other "alternative controllers" that the article doesn't mention. This includes some of Konami's hardware - like the voice-activated LaserScope for the NES and their motion sensors for games like Police 911 and Mocap Boxing.
That would mean not buying any video game consoles, since they're *all* locked down, save for maybe the Atari 2600 and the Pandora. Besides, the Xbox 360 will function just fine without Live. And you know what, Microsoft can keep the "privilege" of having to pay for laggy multiplayer modes and copy protected digital content.
Well, no not exactly. More like devices that *look* like iPads at first glance but don't really work at all. Like cheap tablets running some hacked together version of Linux with resistive touch screens.
Licensing aside, it can be a pain just making the transition to new hardware. It ain't Linux. If you try to directly migrate your current installation of Windows to a computer and replace enough of the right (wrong?) components, Windows 7 will literally break itself and stop working.
... it doesn't work very well, there aren't any games out for it yet, they're late to market and it looks like a sex toy for a Dalek.
You want *how* much? Nah, I'm going to go and buy a Wii, a 24" LCD TV, three extra Wiimotes, four nunchucks and a bunch of games for that kind of money.
Good idea. But the Wii's 480p graphics will look really blurry on that TV. The PS3 games would look way better.
Will Microsoft start asking us whether or not we should get a discount and trust us to answer honestly?"
Um... no. Not as long they control the distribution platform (i.e. Xbox Live). Also, they've already shown that they believe in the guilty until proven innocent by using product activation features in Windows.
Somebody probably sent one or more of the documents using the "Send to Mail Recipient for Review" feature. The feature seems to at least sometimes (perhaps depending on your e-mail client) set a custom property on the word file that makes annotations made by the Track Changes featire virtually impossible to delete. Thus exporting to PDF or something would have kept the printed annotations. So you'd have to turn off Track Changes and delete the Property manual.
Slashdot Mirror
So I take it that this new site is what Citizendium is to Wikipedia. Why do you even need a website to leak documents? Just dump the contents at the doorstep of every news organization you can find. If you can't find a "mainstream" source, there's plenty of bloggers who don't know what they're talking about who would be more than willing to rattle some cages for you.
But I guess the issue here is credit. Like the fools at TMZ who want to put their stamp on their "exclusive" video of some starlet picking her nose, these sites want credit for being the first to publish all kinds of international gossip. And Julian Assange is biggest glory hog of them all.
Eh. I'd rather some philosophy or science experts blog about floating timelines, which I find particularly infuriating and confounding in comic books.
Guess it's gonna be harder for Wikileaks to find a host for politically relevant, shocking revelations such as Nicolas Sarkozy chasing a rabbit around the office.
Netflix streaming over the Xbox IS a cable/fiber connection. What's the difference between cable and streaming? They're both live data feeds.
Netflix does stream in HD, at any rate.
I was referring to receiving television service directly from your cable/fiber provider, not streaming via your Internet connection. I've used ESPN 3 on the 360 and if the quality for other channels is anything like that service, then I'd much rather get television service using more "traditional" methods.
Definitely. It's also a big reason I don't use the console as a Windows Media Center extender. Another issue is the quality - a strong over-the-air or cable/fiber connection will almost always provider better picture and audio quality than streaming content.
At first glance, the USPS being the most gentle seems to be surprising. But after further thought, I'm not the least bit surprised. I'm guessing that the private companies have more machines handling their packages and of course machines don't particularly care about being gentle with the box of cookies your grandma baked. The USPS on the other hand has been sort of notorious for hanging on to its considerable workforce (which is one of the reasons they're in their current financial situation), some of whom handle packages in lieu of automation.
From the article: "The flaw is related to the way in which a certain registry key is interpreted..." Another argument for abolishing the Windows registry and storing setup information in plain text files. Not like that's going to happen...
Why not get some mooney and go buy a new cow? Don't you want to collect them all? That's the sort of thing people seem to do. The available cows will change over time, thus there's some chance you might miss out. How would you live with yourself?
Bogost has also posted a funny send-up of the Wikipedia donation advertisements that have been popping up as of late:
I was led to believe that social games on Facebook were also sure things, money-printing machines that make piles of riches for their asshole creators, creators who demonstrate as little or less care for craft and experience as I have tried to do. Yet, where's my fleet of holstein-spotted Teslas? Where's my new sub-basement with walk-in freezers for endless sides of Kobe? Where's my closetful of bespoke calf leather suits? Damn you all, you cheapskate bastards... Please consider foolishly spending real, hard currency on Cow Clicker.
Oh yeah. Great idea. Been hearing good things about that one.
If you thought Heavy Rain was gripping, then you're behind any help we can give you. Take up cards or something. Maybe join a local bridge or mahjong club. And give one of us your PS3 while you're at it. Seriously, in this day and age when information on video games is readily available and when there's tons of artsy fartsy so-called "indie" games to download, if you can't find anything you like, then you should probably stop playing video games altogether.
Forget about that social messaging patent. The fellow should get a patent for an algorithm that automatically generates commercials like the one for Rockmelt. E.g. a pseudo screencast featuring a voiceover and folksy music, just like Google and Apple commercials.
From the article: "One, the percentage of the worldwide market composed of Japanese titles has shrunk, and if you exclude Nintendo, would be shown to have drastically shrunk worldwide." Okay, where is he getting this supposed information, or did he should pull it out of thin air? He didn't even cite any numbers either. So that's bunk.
"...major Japanese game publishers have become much more conservative and sequel driven". Uh... and this is a recent trend? Square has been milking Final Fantasy like a cow since the 1990s. Westerners didn't know because they skipped on releasing a whole bunch of games in the series. Same deal with Capcom and Rockman on the NES, except we actually received Mega Man game after Mega Man game outside of Japan. Heck, Konami released a good number of Akumajo Dracula/Castlevania games, some of which were just different versions of the first game.
As for the globalization that the whole article is about. Um... we've had that for years. Sega was founded by an American guy for goodness sake. Namco worked with Bally/Midway to release Pac-Man games (which was supposedly a tumultuous relationship). Japanese companies have founded American divisions who've screwed up countless localization jobs. Action games like some of the ones in the Mario and Sonic series have been developed with Western audiences in mind, because, well, you can make lots of money catering to the West.
Well that article was short, but riddled with inaccuracies. First of all, none of these devices can be described as "controller-free" - there's no such thing. They are simply alternative controllers to your standard joystick/gamepad/buttons/analog stick/lightgun etc controls. You must have a controller (e.g. a means of interaction with the images on screen) in a video game, otherwise it's not a video game. And the end of the article categorizes the U-Force as "hands-free", when it does require using your hands.
And of course, there's other "alternative controllers" that the article doesn't mention. This includes some of Konami's hardware - like the voice-activated LaserScope for the NES and their motion sensors for games like Police 911 and Mocap Boxing.
That would mean not buying any video game consoles, since they're *all* locked down, save for maybe the Atari 2600 and the Pandora. Besides, the Xbox 360 will function just fine without Live. And you know what, Microsoft can keep the "privilege" of having to pay for laggy multiplayer modes and copy protected digital content.
Well, no not exactly. More like devices that *look* like iPads at first glance but don't really work at all. Like cheap tablets running some hacked together version of Linux with resistive touch screens.
Licensing aside, it can be a pain just making the transition to new hardware. It ain't Linux. If you try to directly migrate your current installation of Windows to a computer and replace enough of the right (wrong?) components, Windows 7 will literally break itself and stop working.
...protected by copyright under USA law. If you are in the USA you are free to download them and share them.
Hm, I think some folks would be willing to debate that: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/11/1239244/UKs-National-Portrait-Gallery-Threatens-To-Sue-Wikipedia-User
Possible new slogan.... Disappointment enters a new dimension...
I know everyone will knock this, but there are definitely some scenes that easily lend themselves to 3-D:
And so on, and so forth...
I'd much rather have an Xbox Live Arcade/PSN release of the Sega arcade game. Preferably with "Thriller" in the soundtrack this time.
... it doesn't work very well, there aren't any games out for it yet, they're late to market and it looks like a sex toy for a Dalek.
You want *how* much? Nah, I'm going to go and buy a Wii, a 24" LCD TV, three extra Wiimotes, four nunchucks and a bunch of games for that kind of money.
Good idea. But the Wii's 480p graphics will look really blurry on that TV. The PS3 games would look way better.
Oh yeah, and I'm Your Man.
And don't forget Mr. Payback.
Will Microsoft start asking us whether or not we should get a discount and trust us to answer honestly?"
Um... no. Not as long they control the distribution platform (i.e. Xbox Live). Also, they've already shown that they believe in the guilty until proven innocent by using product activation features in Windows.
In recognition of the anniversary, it would be great if Nintendo promised to stop making any more Mario Party games. And Mario sports games too.
Or, failing that, at least made all their staff Do the Mario.
Somebody probably sent one or more of the documents using the "Send to Mail Recipient for Review" feature. The feature seems to at least sometimes (perhaps depending on your e-mail client) set a custom property on the word file that makes annotations made by the Track Changes featire virtually impossible to delete. Thus exporting to PDF or something would have kept the printed annotations. So you'd have to turn off Track Changes and delete the Property manual.