by a secure protocol, I doubt very much anything can be done to protect against what is essentially a DDoS attack (which is, of course, a mere side effect of spam). But nobody seems interested in a modern-day email alternative. Whenever something bad happens, it's always the bad guys' fault, right? Remember, we don't need security, just a world with no bad people.
Three weeks too late, but still. Kind of makes you think how that one got posted, doesn't it? Especially since the opinion was backed up by nothing more than random observations.
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes And other science facts, Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax For Mystery Science Theater 3000."
Well, yeah, with Dreamcast games like Alien Front Online [hotgames.com], or with more or less any game since the birth of the console, the read-only nature of the media is a problem. It's hard to issue a patch for a game cartridge or CD, and recalls would be expensive.
Not if you figure out a patch system in advance. For example, some kind of patch file on a memory card that the game could read and figure out which bytes read from the CD need to be changed and to what.
This case (the Alien Front Online) sounds like a perfect case for Small Claims Court - you would more than likely get reimbursed for the cost of the game, plus filing fees, etc.
But a small claims court only solves the problem for me. A class action lawsuit solves the problem for everybody, plus makes it less likely that the company (or others) will do the same thing in the future.
If anybody here just got a law degree and thinks winning a class action may be a way to get noticed, let me know.
The (official) reason "Alien Front Online" (a game with the word "Online" in the title!) went offline less than a year after its release is that SEGA developers hard coded the server's IP address, and did not provide any means of changing it. When the company hosting the server went under (gameloft?) it couldn't be moved to a different company since it wouldn't have the same address. Hence, buy a game advertised as "online", never be able to play it online.
It's not a new story, but I think it bears repeating as a showcase of stupidity.
"OMG The server has been down for 10 minutes I'M GONNA SUE!!! Why hasn't someone started a Class Action Lawsuit yet???" Because EVERYONE who wants to start one always says the same thing. "Why doesn't someone else start one?"
That's not the problem - the problem is finding a lawyer interested in the case.
While I'm not suggesting a company should be sued if a server goes offline for 10 minutes (or even a day), consider SEGA's case. They asked us to buy Dreamcasts and online titles, factoring the cost into the price of the console/games, then at some point decided to charge for access to some games, and pull support for others altogether.
I bought Alien Front Online less than 1 year after its release - note the "Online" in the title - and called the company after not being able to connect. First, it was "sorry, we'll be up again in a few days", then "sorry, game's offline forever but you can still play the single-player game so you have nothing to complain about".
This would so be an open-and-shut class action case. If only somebody would be interested in taking it, maybe companies would have an incentive not to try this kind of thing again.
But with game consoles costing $129 and $149 (OMG TOO AMERICAN-CENTRIC) is it really a big deal anymore to own all three? You can buy all of them with one week's paycheck, if you make a good salary.
The PS2 and xbox are normally priced at $179. And how many households make a good salary? Some don't have a salary at all, any more, and a second console certainly isn't a priority.
Also consider that some gamers are (gasp) underage, and as such have limited resources to spend on gaming. Let's say you're a kid with a PS2 and $240 burning a hole in your pocket. Would you prefer to buy an xbox, second controller, memory card and one (1) platinum hit game, or twelve (12) greatest hits games for the console you already own?
As a law-abiding spammer, how am I supposed to send both spam complying with the Louisiana law (including "adv-adult") and the Michigan law (containing "ADV:" as the first four characters?)
It would seem to me that I have to do something like this:
Subject: ADV: enlarge your penis [adv-adult]
I hope no new state laws are introduced, these are making it really tough to stay profitable.
I wonder if it's still legal to send
Subject: ADV: adv-adultery webcams!
The 'adv' still looks nasty, but I can't think of any word that ends in 'adv'.
microsoft buys rare, hoping to add another one of the better known development houses to their xbox exclusive list and the first game said developer releases is for a competitor's product?
Rare develops software both for consoles (a market where Microsoft compete with Nintendo) and handhelds (a market which Nintendo owns and where Microsoft do not compete).
Surely you're not suggesting that Microsoft-owned companies should refuse opportunities in one area because they'd be doing business with a company that competes with their parent company in another area? This kind of behavior may be expected of individuals, but companies simply do not, as a rule, hold a grudge that way.
But note the irony: This updated collection of classics, intended to make them available to a new generation of players and machines, is already obsolete!
Actually, it's just the installer that's obsolete. The games still work just fine with the interpreters provided.
I only suggested a modern interpreter because of the extra features.
I recently purchased at a flea market an unopened Infocom collection on CD-ROM. But dang it, the installer wouldn't work under Win98!
I'm sorry, I know this is offtopic, but...
All you need (at least, for everything except the graphics titles like Arthur and Journey) is the.z5 files (probably named with a.dat extension on the CD).
Just copy them somewhere and find a.z5 interpreter (like Frotz). You'll find interpreters for more platforms than you'd expect, including Palm, Psion, Amiga, Acorn riscOS...
Chips for playing WMA/MP3 cannot cost more than a couple of dollars. Why nobody has introduced a cheap ($10-20) MP3 player without any storage? In addition of being cheap, it would have other advantages like ability to upgrade the storage in the future.
Then there's the practice of publishing the guide weeks, or months, before the game goes gold. Yeah, I'm sure I'm getting accurate information from a guide that was based off of beta version #4..
It gets worse. The guide for the Dreamcast version of half-life is probably a collector's item - it was published, then the game was scrapped just before completion (beta copies can be found floating around the net). I always wondered what exactly happened between the game publisher and the guide publisher after that. Did the game publisher buy and destroy all the copies? Did the guide publisher take the hit?
They may be almost completely pointless for somebody who knows about gamefaqs.com, but some are great as art books / reference for game programmers (especially RPGs). And they have nice maps and stuff.
What I want to know is who's watching those 'cheat code' segments of video game shows and G4's 'cheat' full half-hour. I mean, watching it hoping one of the games you own ends up there and then going to the web site and printing the codes? Why watch in the first place?
On another note: are "are X dying" articles dying? I haven't seen one in a few days.
Slashdot Mirror
by a secure protocol, I doubt very much anything can be done to protect against what is essentially a DDoS attack (which is, of course, a mere side effect of spam). But nobody seems interested in a modern-day email alternative. Whenever something bad happens, it's always the bad guys' fault, right? Remember, we don't need security, just a world with no bad people.
Are Game Guides Dying?
Three weeks too late, but still. Kind of makes you think how that one got posted, doesn't it? Especially since the opinion was backed up by nothing more than random observations.
How many times do I need to see Knights of the Round???
Knights of the round what?
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax
For Mystery Science Theater 3000."
Well, yeah, with Dreamcast games like Alien Front Online [hotgames.com], or with more or less any game since the birth of the console, the read-only nature of the media is a problem. It's hard to issue a patch for a game cartridge or CD, and recalls would be expensive.
Not if you figure out a patch system in advance. For example, some kind of patch file on a memory card that the game could read and figure out which bytes read from the CD need to be changed and to what.
This case (the Alien Front Online) sounds like a perfect case for Small Claims Court - you would more than likely get reimbursed for the cost of the game, plus filing fees, etc.
But a small claims court only solves the problem for me. A class action lawsuit solves the problem for everybody, plus makes it less likely that the company (or others) will do the same thing in the future.
If anybody here just got a law degree and thinks winning a class action may be a way to get noticed, let me know.
The (official) reason "Alien Front Online" (a game with the word "Online" in the title!) went offline less than a year after its release is that SEGA developers hard coded the server's IP address, and did not provide any means of changing it. When the company hosting the server went under (gameloft?) it couldn't be moved to a different company since it wouldn't have the same address. Hence, buy a game advertised as "online", never be able to play it online.
It's not a new story, but I think it bears repeating as a showcase of stupidity.
I'd just send the wrong time back to netgear routers. I bet they wouldn't try that again.
"OMG The server has been down for 10 minutes I'M GONNA SUE!!! Why hasn't someone started a Class Action Lawsuit yet???"
Because EVERYONE who wants to start one always says the same thing. "Why doesn't someone else start one?"
That's not the problem - the problem is finding a lawyer interested in the case.
While I'm not suggesting a company should be sued if a server goes offline for 10 minutes (or even a day), consider SEGA's case. They asked us to buy Dreamcasts and online titles, factoring the cost into the price of the console/games, then at some point decided to charge for access to some games, and pull support for others altogether.
I bought Alien Front Online less than 1 year after its release - note the "Online" in the title - and called the company after not being able to connect. First, it was "sorry, we'll be up again in a few days", then "sorry, game's offline forever but you can still play the single-player game so you have nothing to complain about".
This would so be an open-and-shut class action case. If only somebody would be interested in taking it, maybe companies would have an incentive not to try this kind of thing again.
But with game consoles costing $129 and $149 (OMG TOO AMERICAN-CENTRIC) is it really a big deal anymore to own all three? You can buy all of them with one week's paycheck, if you make a good salary.
The PS2 and xbox are normally priced at $179. And how many households make a good salary? Some don't have a salary at all, any more, and a second console certainly isn't a priority.
Also consider that some gamers are (gasp) underage, and as such have limited resources to spend on gaming. Let's say you're a kid with a PS2 and $240 burning a hole in your pocket. Would you prefer to buy an xbox, second controller, memory card and one (1) platinum hit game, or twelve (12) greatest hits games for the console you already own?
As a law-abiding spammer, how am I supposed to send both spam complying with the Louisiana law (including "adv-adult") and the Michigan law (containing "ADV:" as the first four characters?)
It would seem to me that I have to do something like this:
Subject: ADV: enlarge your penis [adv-adult]
I hope no new state laws are introduced, these are making it really tough to stay profitable.
I wonder if it's still legal to send
Subject: ADV: adv-adultery webcams!
The 'adv' still looks nasty, but I can't think of any word that ends in 'adv'.
SEGA's Blast Processing?
How about advertising a game as online (perhaps even putting the word 'online' in the title) then killing online support AFTER you buy the game?
Isn't it an operating system's responsibility to make sure the system does not crash when a process misbehaves?
Except for hardware malfunctions (which I bet are responsible for less than, say, 5%) How can any Windows crash NOT be microsoft's fault?
microsoft buys rare, hoping to add another one of the better known development houses to their xbox exclusive list and the first game said developer releases is for a competitor's product?
Rare develops software both for consoles (a market where Microsoft compete with Nintendo) and handhelds (a market which Nintendo owns and where Microsoft do not compete).
Surely you're not suggesting that Microsoft-owned companies should refuse opportunities in one area because they'd be doing business with a company that competes with their parent company in another area? This kind of behavior may be expected of individuals, but companies simply do not, as a rule, hold a grudge that way.
Dotcoms are, like, so 90's!
But note the irony: This updated collection of classics, intended to make them available to a new generation of players and machines, is already obsolete!
Actually, it's just the installer that's obsolete. The games still work just fine with the interpreters provided.
I only suggested a modern interpreter because of the extra features.
I recently purchased at a flea market an unopened Infocom collection on CD-ROM. But dang it, the installer wouldn't work under Win98!
.z5 files (probably named with a .dat extension on the CD).
.z5 interpreter (like Frotz). You'll find interpreters for more platforms than you'd expect, including Palm, Psion, Amiga, Acorn riscOS...
I'm sorry, I know this is offtopic, but...
All you need (at least, for everything except the graphics titles like Arthur and Journey) is the
Just copy them somewhere and find a
Clone Ranger.
Just as long as Nintendo remembers to suck him in and absorb his powers before he leaves.
Chips for playing WMA/MP3 cannot cost more than a couple of dollars. Why nobody has introduced a cheap ($10-20) MP3 player without any storage? In addition of being cheap, it would have other advantages like ability to upgrade the storage in the future.
Here's one. I'm sure there are more.
How is a statement about console games not being represented in the chart a troll?
Things really started going downhill ever since games.slashdot.org.
I only have a Dreamcast, you insensitive clods!
Then there's the practice of publishing the guide weeks, or months, before the game goes gold. Yeah, I'm sure I'm getting accurate information from a guide that was based off of beta version #4..
It gets worse. The guide for the Dreamcast version of half-life is probably a collector's item - it was published, then the game was scrapped just before completion (beta copies can be found floating around the net). I always wondered what exactly happened between the game publisher and the guide publisher after that. Did the game publisher buy and destroy all the copies? Did the guide publisher take the hit?
They may be almost completely pointless for somebody who knows about gamefaqs.com, but some are great as art books / reference for game programmers (especially RPGs). And they have nice maps and stuff.
What I want to know is who's watching those 'cheat code' segments of video game shows and G4's 'cheat' full half-hour. I mean, watching it hoping one of the games you own ends up there and then going to the web site and printing the codes? Why watch in the first place?
On another note: are "are X dying" articles dying? I haven't seen one in a few days.
"Bring any web site to it's knees"?
It's?
Sorry, it's/its a pet peeve - I see "alot" of it - but please, stop the t-shirt presses long enough to fix it!
You wouldn't want anybody wearing these shirts to get laughed at, now would you?