I don't care if page loads faster if it doesn' show correctly. I bet lynx can load it faster than IE, but that doesn't make it the best browser.
Exactly. And even more importantly, very few of the cases where IE8 beats FF exceed one second, and many of them are a matter of less than half a second. Who really gives a crap about half a second, when issues of security, realiability, functionality and appearance show much larger differences.
Ever-So-Slightly-Faster loading MySpace? Yeah, I'll switch back to IE when they get around to closing security holes instead of worrying about split second loading times.
In the immediate aftermath they made a big thing above his visa possibly not being in order, as if that justifies summary execution on a fucking tube train.
I think they tried to jutify it more in terms of him running from armed police the day after a major terrorist incident, ignoring shouted warnings and not getting down on the ground with his arms clearly visible. The visa not being in order was more to do with explaining why he ran.
Far be it from me to suggest that people RTFA or question the correctness of a summary title, but the father of a murdered boy urging the Prime Minister to tax violent games is a pretty big fucking step from the "UK To Mull High Video Game Taxes - To Fight Knife Crime " in the summary title.
Just for clarity - the UK government aren't doing anything like what's being implied. One man, rightly or wrongly, is suggesting this.
They were all set to continue streaming to any country where they could secure a deal with the local body responsible for music royalties (PRS in the UK it seems from TFA). Apparently no reasonable offers were made, and they had no choice but to restirct it in the UK. It seems they only stream to the US as it's the only place they could secure a fair contract.
In the UK, IIRC it was again related to unreasonably high fee demands, and the arrogant assumption that Pandora would be happy to operate at a loss.
Services such as Pandora.com, MySpace UK and Imeem have also had issues securing licence deals in the UK in the past 12 months.
The Pandora fiasco is particularly annoying for UK music fans. I was poised to become a subscriber and pay a very reasonable fee to listen to music tailored for my tastes. Instead Pandora were forced to pull the plug in the UK, so everybody loses. Pandora lose subscription funds and advertising, the artists lose income from potential UK subscribers and Pandora adverts, and the listeners lose out on the chance to hear great music.
Actually, the PRS don't seem to be losing out. How strange.
The power requirements mean it will have to dissipate huge amounts of heat, generate lots of noise which means it'll essentially be carrying a "shoot me!" sign
And currently human soldiers generate no heat, and are completely silent. </sarcasm>
I get your point, but I don't think this would make significant difference to the visibility of a soldier. Simply not using it on the front lines, where mobility and stealth might be needed would negate your point. If it's for carrying heavy loads then it's probably more likely to be used behind the front lines, for support and simply carrying stuff that might otherwise have required two men, or a vehicle.
Finally someone taking a second to actually investigate. I thought I must have misunderstood, but apparently it's also a lot of people reading a misleading summary.
I read nothing that made me recoil in horror. At worst this would appear to be traffic management to reduce network congestion, hopefully stopping Joe Bloggs down the road causing contention by downlaoding movies and music all day, every day. I have nothing against people using the Internet for whatever purposes they wish (legally of course), but when it affects me then of course I want somethign done about it. Am I the only one who thinks traffic shaping can be a good thing as long as its done carefully? Joe Bloggs gets his torrents a little slower, or with higher latency, and i still get to play Left4Dead for an hour without lag.
The reality is in the past, serious gamers owned all the platforms. Sega Genesis, Nintendo Game Cube, PS1/PS2 and there was more exclusivity. So why don't game developers get some balls and write games tailored specifically what they want accomplished and focus 100% of their time on that platform.
They don't focus on one platform because they wouldn't make as much money. If your game is available on multiple platforms you naturally have a larger potential customer base. I consider myself a serious gamer, but I just don't have the money to own every console. I bought a 360 at launch, and later a Wii. Buying a Playstation 3 would pretty much be a waste of money for me (since most games are multi-platform), so games developers would lose out on a potential sale (from me) if they only released on the PS3.
Sure, the multi-platform appraoch might compromise on quality to some degree, but in the developers and publishers eyes it's worth it because it brings in more cash. Truely quantity winning over quality.
For me at least, graphics have never been the main priority. I think what the GP was hinting at is many games try to make up for boring/overused/poorly implemented game mechanics and stories by making everything shinier than the last game. Yes, grpahics are an issue for many gamers, but personally I think the balance has gone way too far towards better and better graphics, lighting and shading, and developers are forgetting that the games have to be polished, bug-free, innovative and, most importantly, fun to play.
Starfox on the SNES. Didn't that have the first in-cartridge hardware for improving performance? What about Micro Machines on the Mega Drive. Didn't that have the first in-cartridge slots to let 4 players race simultaneously?
And as for Oblivion being on there, and Morrowind not being there.....well....I'm lost for words.
That's the trouble with lists based on subjective criteria.
Perhaps "cost" refers not just to money, but time and effort required in possibly changing existing procedures, and incompatibilities that might become problems when dealing with other organisations and non open-source systems.
I'm risking being modded down here, but to hell with it. Blatant and foundless attacks on Microsoft are getting a bit tiresome really.
A lot of games use this model for organising online matches. Someone above made some great points about why this can be a positive, rather than a negative, way of doing things. Clearly you haven't RTFA as your online identity is no more at risk than if you were using a PC to browse the web. IP address is about the extent of it.
The players are paying for the rights to use Microsoft servers to find other players, to message each other, to access free game demos and videos (also available to free players), and a whole host of other benefits. XBox Live is widely regarded as being much better than Sony's version. Maybe you should level your grudge gun at some other aspect of Microsoft (and in some areas I fully admit they're doing a poor job), rather than using the somewhat flimsy excuse that having players host games instead of some central server is a bad thing.
Features like the game disappearing along with the steam servers? Features like needing an Internet connection to run a single-player game you've already installed? Features like a server problem at their end wiping out the save games of you and numerous other gamers?
All good points, but points that any small amount of research would tell a prospective customer. No-one forces people to buy Steam-based games, and for the vast majority of people this won't ever be an issue.
I'd guess that most people really into their games have a broadband connection, so online registration (first-time and every time you play) aren't a problem. Offline mode works (though some people report having to go into offline mode while online as a sort of preparation) well enough.
And hell, if Valve ever went under I'd have no qualms about downloading a patch (offical or otherwise) to let me keep playing the single player stuff.
Interesting, but I'd be willing to bet that Valve could put up a pretty good defense based on the fact that EU customers can in fact still access the same services (they can buy the games), and on the same terms (using the Steam store to download a game). I'd be amazed if the price was included in the "same terms" clause, though I concede it might be.
The unrealistic prices is easy to fix - buy the game in a store where it's cheaper. If the game is too expensive both online and in a store then that's another issue.
About restricting access to the British store from non-British customers, well I kind of doubt that's illegal. Do you (or someone on the Steam forums) have a source for this law? And anyway, they're not actually restricting you from accessing the Steam store, they're restricting you from bypassing their region-based price system, and simply choosing to pay via whichever region has the lowest price due to currency value changes. Maybe I'm a valve fanboy, but that doesn't really seem like a crime to me.
Bottom line, Valve want people buying games using their own currency, with prices determined by local market conditions rather than highly variable exchange rates. The customers obviously want their games to be cheap, so they're complaining because they can't buy it from the British version of the Steam store. I don't think it has anything to do with "EU laws" regarding access to websites.
I do get your point, but when the dollar was ridiculously weak (peaked at almost $2 to £1) games in American retail stores were "cheaper" in real terms than games in British retail stores. No-one makes an issue of that because each country has it's own economy, it's own taxes, it's own business models etc.
If you had an online game store would you think it was a good idea to sell a game to someone in a third-world country for $60? Hell no, because $60 might be a month's wages or more due to massive economic differences between two countries. You'll sell it in local currency at a price people can afford.
The complaining about this change would seem to stem from the fact that European (and at one point British) customers used to be able to save a crapload of money by buying games in dollars, and now they're forced to pay prices more realistic for their own countries. Greed, plain and simple.
I do understand your objection, but it would appear that the engine designers themselves are referring to this as an air breathing rocket engine on their site.
Sure they've put a slash in that's been lost somewhere, but I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to name this apparently new kind of hybrid engine as an "air breathing rocket engine", as it would seem to have characteristics described by both sets of adjectives.
Yes it's something of an oxymoron, but there are far more depressing examples of abuse of the English language out there.
Actually the increasing value of the dollar, compared to the falling value of the British pound means that I got Left4Dead for £13.50 last weekend, whereas TFA says it cost $25 (£17.48 at today's exchange rate) in America. So I saved money thanks to Valve's recent change to price things in local currency.
Having grown up playing with Lego I'd have no qualms about playing an MMO based on it. Lego is, and always will be, awesome.
I'm more interested in the lack of gameplay videos, or details on exactly what the game mechanics would be. There's some vaguness along the lines of "co-op with vehicle, weapon and building construction", but that's almost meaningless. Could it be they're delaying ti because they don't actually have a game yet? Or am I just not finding the right sites?
Same for flying cars. Just look at the number of *regular* car accidents. Adding an extra degree of freedom will not exactly lower down that number.
It looked fine in Back to the Future Part 2. How hard could it be? They had floating lane dividers and everything.
The only problem I can see is that it will add a whole new dimension to being "double-parked".
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I don't care if page loads faster if it doesn' show correctly. I bet lynx can load it faster than IE, but that doesn't make it the best browser.
Exactly. And even more importantly, very few of the cases where IE8 beats FF exceed one second, and many of them are a matter of less than half a second. Who really gives a crap about half a second, when issues of security, realiability, functionality and appearance show much larger differences.
Ever-So-Slightly-Faster loading MySpace? Yeah, I'll switch back to IE when they get around to closing security holes instead of worrying about split second loading times.
In the immediate aftermath they made a big thing above his visa possibly not being in order, as if that justifies summary execution on a fucking tube train.
I think they tried to jutify it more in terms of him running from armed police the day after a major terrorist incident, ignoring shouted warnings and not getting down on the ground with his arms clearly visible. The visa not being in order was more to do with explaining why he ran.
Far be it from me to suggest that people RTFA or question the correctness of a summary title, but the father of a murdered boy urging the Prime Minister to tax violent games is a pretty big fucking step from the "UK To Mull High Video Game Taxes - To Fight Knife Crime " in the summary title.
Just for clarity - the UK government aren't doing anything like what's being implied. One man, rightly or wrongly, is suggesting this.
They were all set to continue streaming to any country where they could secure a deal with the local body responsible for music royalties (PRS in the UK it seems from TFA). Apparently no reasonable offers were made, and they had no choice but to restirct it in the UK. It seems they only stream to the US as it's the only place they could secure a fair contract.
In the UK, IIRC it was again related to unreasonably high fee demands, and the arrogant assumption that Pandora would be happy to operate at a loss.
Services such as Pandora.com, MySpace UK and Imeem have also had issues securing licence deals in the UK in the past 12 months.
The Pandora fiasco is particularly annoying for UK music fans. I was poised to become a subscriber and pay a very reasonable fee to listen to music tailored for my tastes. Instead Pandora were forced to pull the plug in the UK, so everybody loses. Pandora lose subscription funds and advertising, the artists lose income from potential UK subscribers and Pandora adverts, and the listeners lose out on the chance to hear great music.
Actually, the PRS don't seem to be losing out. How strange.
So you want to be Chuck Norris?
The power requirements mean it will have to dissipate huge amounts of heat, generate lots of noise which means it'll essentially be carrying a "shoot me!" sign
And currently human soldiers generate no heat, and are completely silent. </sarcasm>
I get your point, but I don't think this would make significant difference to the visibility of a soldier. Simply not using it on the front lines, where mobility and stealth might be needed would negate your point. If it's for carrying heavy loads then it's probably more likely to be used behind the front lines, for support and simply carrying stuff that might otherwise have required two men, or a vehicle.
Finally someone taking a second to actually investigate. I thought I must have misunderstood, but apparently it's also a lot of people reading a misleading summary.
I read nothing that made me recoil in horror. At worst this would appear to be traffic management to reduce network congestion, hopefully stopping Joe Bloggs down the road causing contention by downlaoding movies and music all day, every day. I have nothing against people using the Internet for whatever purposes they wish (legally of course), but when it affects me then of course I want somethign done about it. Am I the only one who thinks traffic shaping can be a good thing as long as its done carefully? Joe Bloggs gets his torrents a little slower, or with higher latency, and i still get to play Left4Dead for an hour without lag.
Perhaps I'm just an idealist...
The reality is in the past, serious gamers owned all the platforms. Sega Genesis, Nintendo Game Cube, PS1/PS2 and there was more exclusivity. So why don't game developers get some balls and write games tailored specifically what they want accomplished and focus 100% of their time on that platform.
They don't focus on one platform because they wouldn't make as much money. If your game is available on multiple platforms you naturally have a larger potential customer base. I consider myself a serious gamer, but I just don't have the money to own every console. I bought a 360 at launch, and later a Wii. Buying a Playstation 3 would pretty much be a waste of money for me (since most games are multi-platform), so games developers would lose out on a potential sale (from me) if they only released on the PS3.
Sure, the multi-platform appraoch might compromise on quality to some degree, but in the developers and publishers eyes it's worth it because it brings in more cash. Truely quantity winning over quality.
For me at least, graphics have never been the main priority. I think what the GP was hinting at is many games try to make up for boring/overused/poorly implemented game mechanics and stories by making everything shinier than the last game. Yes, grpahics are an issue for many gamers, but personally I think the balance has gone way too far towards better and better graphics, lighting and shading, and developers are forgetting that the games have to be polished, bug-free, innovative and, most importantly, fun to play.
Starfox on the SNES. Didn't that have the first in-cartridge hardware for improving performance? What about Micro Machines on the Mega Drive. Didn't that have the first in-cartridge slots to let 4 players race simultaneously?
And as for Oblivion being on there, and Morrowind not being there.....well....I'm lost for words.
That's the trouble with lists based on subjective criteria.
Perhaps "cost" refers not just to money, but time and effort required in possibly changing existing procedures, and incompatibilities that might become problems when dealing with other organisations and non open-source systems.
I'm risking being modded down here, but to hell with it. Blatant and foundless attacks on Microsoft are getting a bit tiresome really.
A lot of games use this model for organising online matches. Someone above made some great points about why this can be a positive, rather than a negative, way of doing things. Clearly you haven't RTFA as your online identity is no more at risk than if you were using a PC to browse the web. IP address is about the extent of it.
The players are paying for the rights to use Microsoft servers to find other players, to message each other, to access free game demos and videos (also available to free players), and a whole host of other benefits. XBox Live is widely regarded as being much better than Sony's version. Maybe you should level your grudge gun at some other aspect of Microsoft (and in some areas I fully admit they're doing a poor job), rather than using the somewhat flimsy excuse that having players host games instead of some central server is a bad thing.
A lot of people apparently, judging by the 33 games they've made over the last 11 years alone.
Would seem to be a long time to make Lego games if no-one was buying them.
Features like the game disappearing along with the steam servers? Features like needing an Internet connection to run a single-player game you've already installed? Features like a server problem at their end wiping out the save games of you and numerous other gamers?
All good points, but points that any small amount of research would tell a prospective customer. No-one forces people to buy Steam-based games, and for the vast majority of people this won't ever be an issue.
I'd guess that most people really into their games have a broadband connection, so online registration (first-time and every time you play) aren't a problem. Offline mode works (though some people report having to go into offline mode while online as a sort of preparation) well enough.
And hell, if Valve ever went under I'd have no qualms about downloading a patch (offical or otherwise) to let me keep playing the single player stuff.
Interesting, but I'd be willing to bet that Valve could put up a pretty good defense based on the fact that EU customers can in fact still access the same services (they can buy the games), and on the same terms (using the Steam store to download a game). I'd be amazed if the price was included in the "same terms" clause, though I concede it might be.
Guess it's a job for the lawyers then...
The unrealistic prices is easy to fix - buy the game in a store where it's cheaper. If the game is too expensive both online and in a store then that's another issue.
About restricting access to the British store from non-British customers, well I kind of doubt that's illegal. Do you (or someone on the Steam forums) have a source for this law? And anyway, they're not actually restricting you from accessing the Steam store, they're restricting you from bypassing their region-based price system, and simply choosing to pay via whichever region has the lowest price due to currency value changes. Maybe I'm a valve fanboy, but that doesn't really seem like a crime to me.
Bottom line, Valve want people buying games using their own currency, with prices determined by local market conditions rather than highly variable exchange rates. The customers obviously want their games to be cheap, so they're complaining because they can't buy it from the British version of the Steam store. I don't think it has anything to do with "EU laws" regarding access to websites.
I do get your point, but when the dollar was ridiculously weak (peaked at almost $2 to £1) games in American retail stores were "cheaper" in real terms than games in British retail stores. No-one makes an issue of that because each country has it's own economy, it's own taxes, it's own business models etc.
If you had an online game store would you think it was a good idea to sell a game to someone in a third-world country for $60? Hell no, because $60 might be a month's wages or more due to massive economic differences between two countries. You'll sell it in local currency at a price people can afford.
The complaining about this change would seem to stem from the fact that European (and at one point British) customers used to be able to save a crapload of money by buying games in dollars, and now they're forced to pay prices more realistic for their own countries. Greed, plain and simple.
I do understand your objection, but it would appear that the engine designers themselves are referring to this as an air breathing rocket engine on their site.
Sure they've put a slash in that's been lost somewhere, but I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to name this apparently new kind of hybrid engine as an "air breathing rocket engine", as it would seem to have characteristics described by both sets of adjectives.
Yes it's something of an oxymoron, but there are far more depressing examples of abuse of the English language out there.
Actually the increasing value of the dollar, compared to the falling value of the British pound means that I got Left4Dead for £13.50 last weekend, whereas TFA says it cost $25 (£17.48 at today's exchange rate) in America. So I saved money thanks to Valve's recent change to price things in local currency.
Having grown up playing with Lego I'd have no qualms about playing an MMO based on it. Lego is, and always will be, awesome.
I'm more interested in the lack of gameplay videos, or details on exactly what the game mechanics would be. There's some vaguness along the lines of "co-op with vehicle, weapon and building construction", but that's almost meaningless. Could it be they're delaying ti because they don't actually have a game yet? Or am I just not finding the right sites?
You're making a huge deal out of a simple mistake. Who really cares whether they've gotten their terminology wrong?
The actual content of the article is interesting, and I've seen far more stupid mistakes in past articles.
I heard Uwe Boll is free. I'll give him a call...
Same for flying cars. Just look at the number of *regular* car accidents. Adding an extra degree of freedom will not exactly lower down that number.
It looked fine in Back to the Future Part 2. How hard could it be? They had floating lane dividers and everything. The only problem I can see is that it will add a whole new dimension to being "double-parked".
Indeed. Really revolutionary isn't it? A mechanical device working through combustion. Alert CNN immediately!