It is indeed almost certainly well into 6 figures. But better to underestimate than overestimate when making the comparison, I thought. Lots of people dying in Iraq at the hands of terrorists = "OK", if that's what it takes to bring freedom to the country. A few people dying in the UK due to terrorism = "Bad And Wrong" even if that is the price of maintaining our freedoms here.
Hiding data that can't be decrypted in 28 days is indeed very easy.
However, the police have a magic figure of 90 days. Any encryption that that can break in 90 days now can be broken in time if they just throw three (and a bit) times as much processing power at the problem, it stands to reason.
In practice, however, encryption is just an added bullet point on Blair's list of excuses, and hardly one of the more believable ones.
That's the "trying to bring democracy" where a few tens of thousands of innocent deaths are a price well worth paying for a free society with a good human rights record, isn't it?
But of course when its Daily Mail readers that might number amongst a dead less than 1% of that number, locking up a bunch of people without charge for being "foreign-looking" isn't worth worrying about, really.
Most division presidents don't even know what their precise bank balance is, so why should they care if a fraudster helps themselves to a couple of hundred?
Click-through EULAs are tough enough to enforce at the best of times; enforcing them on someone who won't have even seen it if they don't have a box which has been rooted sounds pretty impossible.
I just get the impression online that the attitude of "I'm not touching that game, it's got bright and shiny colours in it" seems to be somewhat unique to the American Teen market. The Japanese market certainly has its share of outstandingly violent games (Dynasty Warriors, DMC, Resident Evil and so on), but there does appear to be more room for games that don't fit that mould.
"there really wasn't a lot of adult/mature appealing titles out for it when it shipped, unlike the PS2 and X-Box.
What was available in the "M" category at the first release date?"
How much blood must a game contain before it appeals to you? Personally, I'm quite prepared to play Super Monkey Ball and Rogue Leader (the two release day titles I bought), even though it doesn't involve shooting people in the head.
I'd suggest that rather than "mature", the word you're looking for is "juvenile". Or more probably "American".
You think of Midnight Club? Wow, I didn't think anyone bothered to play that. Largely because it was absolutely terrible, but also because EA release the (also rather shite) Need For Speed Underground games up against it.
But then, EA's 007 games have been universally rubbish as well (even on the other platforms; they're even less exclusive than GTA), so I associate that brand with then N64 still. Killzone was also quite outstandingly poor. If you want good Sony exclusives, I'd suggest Katamari Damacy, Ico, Gran Turismo, Singstar and so on.
But then, I regard the XBox exclusive list as reading more along the lines of Panzer Dragoon Orta, OutRun 2, Amped (and its sequel) etc., so tastes clearly vary.
"Believe it or not, the gaming business isn't about giving you and your friends fun games to play, it's about making money."
If I were a Sega shareholder, I'd absolutely agree with you, and regard the Dreamcast as a horrible disaster. But I'm not. Like the other posters praising the machine, I'm only disappointed in the money lost from the grounds of (a) it shows how little the general public agree with me in what makes a good game (as if the huge sales figures of sports titles and RPGs didn't do that already), and (b) if Sega go under, they'll stop making those brilliant games.
I'm glad I bought a Dreamcast, because it has given me hour upon hour of entertainment. I'm glad I didn't buy Sega shares, because they lost a lot of money.
Why do YOU care what Sega's financial statements are?
Stuff that, how about "like, the time it would take you to watch the first lot of episodes you downloaded". My bandwidth isn't the greatest in the world, but getting more stuff to watch than I have time for isn't exactly difficult.
I'm not the most tinfoil-hat person in the world myself, so I'll spare you the security concerns. Some of them _are_ real, however.
What really concerns me is the following:
1) The cost. Yes, you covered it, but we're talking a HUGE, GIGANTIC cost. As in Big numbers of billions. All for rather nebulous gains, most of which could be achieved much more cheaply if they weren't addicted to the idea of shiny tech.
2) The cost, I'm really not joking about it being billions and billions.
3) It mostly doesn't seem to work very well so far. This exacerbates...
4) The added time this requires. These big new Airbus things are talking 500 or more people getting off a plane at once. If it takes 2-3 times as long to clear customs per person, you're in for a big wait. Add to that the failure rate on the associated biometric crap they would rather like to add to it, and you're talking a very long wait indeed.
Here in the UK, the amount of biometric crap they're adding works out to there being an average of a misidentified "terrorist" PER FLIGHT.
As with the UK's attempts to push through ID cards, the politicians in charge have at best a vague fuzzy idea of what the technology can do, but it sounds funky so let's do it anyway.
Tiny details like monumental security problems and the things plain not working don't exist in the simplified pitch they get from their lobbyists, so they continue to push it through anyway, on the grounds that it's "Anti-Terror".
It doesn't make sense because the request for 90 days without charge and the decryption of hard drives are in practice completely unrelated. There's no way in hell they're breaking 256-bit AES in 90 days; they are just pulling the standard New Labour trick (see also: ID Cards, the invasion of Iraq, killing LEAs etc) of listing as many possible excuses as they can think of, in the hope that by the time their critics have finished pulling every single one of them to shreds they'll have managed to get their way already.
Because they already did that, and we didn't bow down at Our Mighty Saviour Blair for the amazing job he was doing protecting us from all terrorist acts, ever. Now the police would like some more powers that won't make the slightest bit of practical difference to how many terrorists they catch, but does allow them to lock up people they don't like the look of again.
You've got the gist of it basically, yes. 14 days for growing the wrong beard isn't enough, so they want 90 to give them enough time to drag something vaguely naughty looking up out of your past.
Sir Ian Blair (no relation to Tony - which is probably a good thing considering how far up his arse the guy is), the Met Police Commisioner is the guy behind this call. Nasty piece of work, the same one who is calling for ID cards that will cost billions and won't work, because he thinks they will stop all crime instantly for some deluded reason.
The presence of ISO-mounting programs like Alcohol 120% don't mean users are pirating either, but that doesn't seem to stop these protection mechanisms from throwing a hissy fit.
Anyway, it doesn't just mean a user bought a Sony/BMG CD, but that they were dumb enough to leave autorun on when they stuck it in the machine, too. Oops.
Actually, I didn't really hear anything. My sub isn't that good, and I missed it in the cinema. I was going off fft transforms of the raw DTS stream on the DVD. Thinking about it more, this might even just be compression artifacts.
Oh, on that bit you're absolutely right. I was merely being miffed as someone who _did_ wait until the price dropped until sensible values, and still got hit with dodgy hardware.
Revolution is the only one I see me buying at launch, and that's only if the much rumoured ~$200 pricetag turns out to be correct, as that's where I tend to buy all the machines. The others will have to wait. So far they're basically doing what games I already own do, only with much shinier graphics.
Given that I didn't buy my XBox until it had dropped to less than half of its initial price, and yet had to replace the power cable, and the PS2 machines that had the power problem came out 4 whole years after the initial release, I fail to see how this qualifies as an early adopter only problem.
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No, the grandparent was referring to the modded-down troll response here. You're right about the original list, obviously.
It is indeed almost certainly well into 6 figures. But better to underestimate than overestimate when making the comparison, I thought. Lots of people dying in Iraq at the hands of terrorists = "OK", if that's what it takes to bring freedom to the country. A few people dying in the UK due to terrorism = "Bad And Wrong" even if that is the price of maintaining our freedoms here.
Hiding data that can't be decrypted in 28 days is indeed very easy.
However, the police have a magic figure of 90 days. Any encryption that that can break in 90 days now can be broken in time if they just throw three (and a bit) times as much processing power at the problem, it stands to reason.
In practice, however, encryption is just an added bullet point on Blair's list of excuses, and hardly one of the more believable ones.
That's the "trying to bring democracy" where a few tens of thousands of innocent deaths are a price well worth paying for a free society with a good human rights record, isn't it?
But of course when its Daily Mail readers that might number amongst a dead less than 1% of that number, locking up a bunch of people without charge for being "foreign-looking" isn't worth worrying about, really.
Most division presidents don't even know what their precise bank balance is, so why should they care if a fraudster helps themselves to a couple of hundred?
Click-through EULAs are tough enough to enforce at the best of times; enforcing them on someone who won't have even seen it if they don't have a box which has been rooted sounds pretty impossible.
It might not be as important, but people like NAD and Arcam manage character perfectly well without losing the standard 19" stackable shape.
I just get the impression online that the attitude of "I'm not touching that game, it's got bright and shiny colours in it" seems to be somewhat unique to the American Teen market. The Japanese market certainly has its share of outstandingly violent games (Dynasty Warriors, DMC, Resident Evil and so on), but there does appear to be more room for games that don't fit that mould.
I read it as "twatted by some sort of sonic weapon" and had visions of them being beaten over the head with a subwoofer, so go figure.
"there really wasn't a lot of adult/mature appealing titles out for it when it shipped, unlike the PS2 and X-Box.
What was available in the "M" category at the first release date?"
How much blood must a game contain before it appeals to you? Personally, I'm quite prepared to play Super Monkey Ball and Rogue Leader (the two release day titles I bought), even though it doesn't involve shooting people in the head.
I'd suggest that rather than "mature", the word you're looking for is "juvenile". Or more probably "American".
You think of Midnight Club? Wow, I didn't think anyone bothered to play that. Largely because it was absolutely terrible, but also because EA release the (also rather shite) Need For Speed Underground games up against it.
But then, EA's 007 games have been universally rubbish as well (even on the other platforms; they're even less exclusive than GTA), so I associate that brand with then N64 still. Killzone was also quite outstandingly poor. If you want good Sony exclusives, I'd suggest Katamari Damacy, Ico, Gran Turismo, Singstar and so on.
But then, I regard the XBox exclusive list as reading more along the lines of Panzer Dragoon Orta, OutRun 2, Amped (and its sequel) etc., so tastes clearly vary.
"Believe it or not, the gaming business isn't about giving you and your friends fun games to play, it's about making money."
If I were a Sega shareholder, I'd absolutely agree with you, and regard the Dreamcast as a horrible disaster. But I'm not. Like the other posters praising the machine, I'm only disappointed in the money lost from the grounds of (a) it shows how little the general public agree with me in what makes a good game (as if the huge sales figures of sports titles and RPGs didn't do that already), and (b) if Sega go under, they'll stop making those brilliant games.
I'm glad I bought a Dreamcast, because it has given me hour upon hour of entertainment. I'm glad I didn't buy Sega shares, because they lost a lot of money.
Why do YOU care what Sega's financial statements are?
Stuff that, how about "like, the time it would take you to watch the first lot of episodes you downloaded". My bandwidth isn't the greatest in the world, but getting more stuff to watch than I have time for isn't exactly difficult.
Shush. The RFID company spent good money lobbying that politician. The last thing they want is people like you ruining it for them.
I'm not the most tinfoil-hat person in the world myself, so I'll spare you the security concerns. Some of them _are_ real, however.
What really concerns me is the following:
1) The cost. Yes, you covered it, but we're talking a HUGE, GIGANTIC cost. As in Big numbers of billions. All for rather nebulous gains, most of which could be achieved much more cheaply if they weren't addicted to the idea of shiny tech.
2) The cost, I'm really not joking about it being billions and billions.
3) It mostly doesn't seem to work very well so far. This exacerbates...
4) The added time this requires. These big new Airbus things are talking 500 or more people getting off a plane at once. If it takes 2-3 times as long to clear customs per person, you're in for a big wait. Add to that the failure rate on the associated biometric crap they would rather like to add to it, and you're talking a very long wait indeed.
Here in the UK, the amount of biometric crap they're adding works out to there being an average of a misidentified "terrorist" PER FLIGHT.
Now how long to do think it's going to take?
As with the UK's attempts to push through ID cards, the politicians in charge have at best a vague fuzzy idea of what the technology can do, but it sounds funky so let's do it anyway.
Tiny details like monumental security problems and the things plain not working don't exist in the simplified pitch they get from their lobbyists, so they continue to push it through anyway, on the grounds that it's "Anti-Terror".
You don't support Terror, do you?
It doesn't make sense because the request for 90 days without charge and the decryption of hard drives are in practice completely unrelated. There's no way in hell they're breaking 256-bit AES in 90 days; they are just pulling the standard New Labour trick (see also: ID Cards, the invasion of Iraq, killing LEAs etc) of listing as many possible excuses as they can think of, in the hope that by the time their critics have finished pulling every single one of them to shreds they'll have managed to get their way already.
Because they already did that, and we didn't bow down at Our Mighty Saviour Blair for the amazing job he was doing protecting us from all terrorist acts, ever. Now the police would like some more powers that won't make the slightest bit of practical difference to how many terrorists they catch, but does allow them to lock up people they don't like the look of again.
You've got the gist of it basically, yes. 14 days for growing the wrong beard isn't enough, so they want 90 to give them enough time to drag something vaguely naughty looking up out of your past.
Sir Ian Blair (no relation to Tony - which is probably a good thing considering how far up his arse the guy is), the Met Police Commisioner is the guy behind this call. Nasty piece of work, the same one who is calling for ID cards that will cost billions and won't work, because he thinks they will stop all crime instantly for some deluded reason.
No, but if a cracked hard drive is all you're after, my sledgehammer can be purchased from your nearest B&Q.
The presence of ISO-mounting programs like Alcohol 120% don't mean users are pirating either, but that doesn't seem to stop these protection mechanisms from throwing a hissy fit.
Anyway, it doesn't just mean a user bought a Sony/BMG CD, but that they were dumb enough to leave autorun on when they stuck it in the machine, too. Oops.
bugger. TLA Acronyms strike again.
Obviously there's no such thing as a Fast Fourier Transform Transform.
Actually, I didn't really hear anything. My sub isn't that good, and I missed it in the cinema. I was going off fft transforms of the raw DTS stream on the DVD. Thinking about it more, this might even just be compression artifacts.
Oh, on that bit you're absolutely right. I was merely being miffed as someone who _did_ wait until the price dropped until sensible values, and still got hit with dodgy hardware.
Revolution is the only one I see me buying at launch, and that's only if the much rumoured ~$200 pricetag turns out to be correct, as that's where I tend to buy all the machines. The others will have to wait. So far they're basically doing what games I already own do, only with much shinier graphics.
Given that I didn't buy my XBox until it had dropped to less than half of its initial price, and yet had to replace the power cable, and the PS2 machines that had the power problem came out 4 whole years after the initial release, I fail to see how this qualifies as an early adopter only problem.