"I guess it's better than just saying games are not ok and letting everyone buy them... Like with cigarettes. Yeah, smoking kills you. Smoking kills other people. Cigarettes are genocide machines. So why the fuck do you allow people to sell them in the first place?!"
Are you saying that these sorts of games "kill you", "kill other people" and are "genocide machines"? Aside from your moronic argument that harmful things ought to be against the law (McDonalds, anyone?), what are you trying to prove here? There is not one lick of evidence that violent video games cause real world harm. There may be a certain amount of (questionable) evidence the show correlation between real world violence and video game violence, but correlation !=causation. I know that this is China, where the government gets to make up their own rules and a video game ban in the least of their problems, but we don't need to defend their actions!
Oh, and as for the cigarettes thing -- the reason it is not against the law is that prohibiting things tends to be extremely ineffective (forbidden fruit/black market) -- we can help more people quit by making cigarettes prohibitively expensive through taxes, as well as making it inconvenient and undesirable through public smoking bans and education.
Ok, yeah, I definitely could not be less interested. IW was clearly a bastardized, consolized version of the magic that was the original DX, and it sounds like they are just driving it further over the deep end. I would love to be able to be excited about a new Deus Ex, but I have a feeling that unless it is PC only, it will be shallow and worthless, like that Halo crap... seriously, why do people like that game?
I would love to see this blow up in the landlord's face -- in the process of investigating the libel claim they will certainly need to check the apartment for mold. If it can be shown that there is mold in the apartment and the landlord was notified and did nothing, I am thinking that he could be in some trouble, but IANAL. That would be, for my money, the best way that this could possibly turn out.
"I've also heard that bodybuilders use insulin to lower their body fat and make them look leaner. Insulin sounds like a pretty sweet drug, and since it doesn't get you high, I think I should be able to get it without a prescription. And yet - I can't."
I would suggest this as an alternative. You don't need a prescription or anything!!
ANY piece of software is going to have vulnerabilities -- and the more widespread it is the more people are going to strive to find those vulnerabilities. Silverlight will be no different if it takes over. The "security" of a piece of software is directly related to how diligent the devs are in patching holes. With closed source software, this is an extremely intensive process, so Silverlight is bound to be every bit as bad as Flash. Open source will ALWAYS be more secure, as you can have millions of eyes scanning the lowest level of the code to find and fix vulnerabilities, rather than having to rely on an extremely inefficient top-down procedure.
That is great stuff, I will have to check it out. I don't think that the textures were ever the really big problem, though. The models, animation and AI are pretty bad. Higher quality textures actually might make all of this worse, but I am not sure.
Meh. After DX: IW they are really going to have to do something amazing to get me excited. I have already seen that this game is being made for the XBox360, and they have stated that they will be taking even more emphasis away from the RPG element and putting it on the action side of things instead. I'm not writing this game off just yet, but it is also not looking too promising...
I think the graphics were less of an issue than the "wooden" feeling of the game -- ie the physics, movement, AI, and combat. Despite this, it is still one of the greatest games ever made, I cannot even imagine how much ass this game could kick with a modern engine, improved combat, and non-retarded AI.
This game NEEDS to be remade -- the story, characters, and gameplay mechanics are just about the best ever, but are trapped in an awful game engine with atrocious AI. Even with the major flaws, I still play through it about once a year. I would LOVE to see it remade with a modern engine, with all the rough edges smoothed out (and without the dumbed down, console-friendly interface of the PoS sequel!), and the story line and environments fleshed out a little bit further. That would be beyond an epic win.
If so there is something weird going on, considering the fact that whatever they fire from their guns moves considerably slower than even a bullet, never mind light. Some sort of charged particle, maybe? If they refer to it as a laser, could that just be a common misuse of the term by the uneducated masses a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? Or have I just had too much coffee this morning?
"as each time whatever their gripe is (DRM, need disk to play, etc. etc.) is fixed they shift the goalposts"
When has this happened? I only see DRM getting more and more draconian.
"but it does help to give people who (claim that they) pirate because pirating grants them a feature they don't have a little perspective."
I don't know about you, but I definitely consider a game NOT bricking my OS to a be a good feature. I would also consider it a good feature to be able to reinstall the game I legally purchased without having to be locked into a physical disc or having to hold onto a 20 digit key, or having to "phone home" to the distributor ever time I want to play. None of these things affect pirates. None of these things prevent pirates from cracking the game and putting it online. The only people they effect are PAYING CUSTOMERS!! The game industry is the biggest proponent of piracy going, and you are a fool if you can't see that.
Oh, and your previous post about the car gets an F-. Piracy != theft. I would explain it to you, but if you don't understand it by now, I don't think that there is too much hope for you.
"But no, I actually agree with you. If you don't like the price and/or DRM scheme the appropriate response is to not buy it and not pirate it. Pirating the game just adds fuel to the fire and will lead to an escalating arms race between publishers and pirates that ultimately only hurts the honest consumer."
What arms race? This implies that there is a legitimate contest between advancing DRM schemes and pirates -- there isn't, DRM is usually broken on release day, and the titles are customarily up on the torrent sites by that evening. A much better analogy would be to imagine the publishers as Dick Cheney, DRM the shotgun, the pirates a pheasant, and legitimate customers his friend's face.
Bull. I used to buy computer games all the time until I tried getting SecuROM off of my machine. I don't download pirated games, but I certainly would had I not had a run in with some kind folks a few years back over illegal file-sharing. If you put a virus in your software, I am not going to buy it. Period. If I cannot buy the PC version because of the virus you put in it, I will absolutely not buy the PS3 version, either. DRM provably does not work, it is a total farce and it will sink them, as well it should.
"We also ended up taking the microwave out of the house because every time my wife would use it while pregnant the baby would go crazy and start lashing around in the womb. Shes 5 months old and still cant use it"
Well that is not surprising... considering the fact that she is only 5 months old, she has yet to develop the necessary strength to open the door and push the buttons. She is still far too short to get to the microwave, not to mention the fact that she cannot stand up. Assumedly, she cannot read yet, making it rather difficult to differentiate the different buttons. You really need to be patient with your kid here man, your expectations are entirely unrealistic.
Ok, I have had my fun, now I will address the rest of this foolishness.
"Every time I jack up the power output of a laptop or my PC at home the wireless starts to give me a headache, it also bothers my wife, child and brother-in-law."
Really? I am assuming that if someone else jacks up the power on the wireless you immediately develop a headache and curse the bastards who did it, right? Meaning that you develop the headache without knowing that the Wifi has been jacked up? I already know how you are going to answer that one, so I ask you to put it to the test. Have an objective outsider randomly turn the Wifi on and off. Tell this person when the Wifi is off and when it is on. If your results are consistently better than chance, we can talk. If not, stop fooling yourself and wasting all of our time.
Well, if they do then we are screwed. I personally don't ever think that it will ever really be an us vs. them thing with machines, I see us just gradually merging with them one step at a time. I mean, who wouldn't want bionic vision and strength? Or unlimited, faultless memory? Supercomputer number crunching in your head? ESP via wi-fi? Nano-machines to prevent all disease? Sooner or later, it will occur to us that these frail biological machines we inhabit do us no good and only hold us back. We need to eat food, breathe air, we need a strictly climate controlled area. Our logical abilities are very frail. We are weak. We live very short lives, and are extremely perceptible to disease. Tell me again, why would it be a bad thing for humans as we know them now to not exist? Robots will be smarter, stronger and more versatile. We are at the point now where technology will dictate our evolution, the forward marching of which is totally inevitable.
Umm... yes that is exactly how I am figuring it. Can you please point out where I am wrong here? If I buy two PCs with identical hardware, but the ONLY difference between the two is the OS and the price tag, what other conclusion is there to draw? If Apple is just charging us more for the same hardware, does that make it more excusable? I have a feeling you are the fanboy here, replacing logical reasoning with juvenile name-calling.
Apple's OS is very nice, and some people seem to think that it is worth the premium. I happen to strongly disagree, as the pricing structure for the OS is out of control - by comparing PCs the OSX license fee is apparently $300-$1000, which in my book, is highway robbery. If you really like OSX that much, go for it. I happen to think that it is an epic rip-off, but that is certainly a matter of opinion on my part.
Slashdot Mirror
"I guess it's better than just saying games are not ok and letting everyone buy them... Like with cigarettes. Yeah, smoking kills you. Smoking kills other people. Cigarettes are genocide machines. So why the fuck do you allow people to sell them in the first place?!"
Are you saying that these sorts of games "kill you", "kill other people" and are "genocide machines"? Aside from your moronic argument that harmful things ought to be against the law (McDonalds, anyone?), what are you trying to prove here? There is not one lick of evidence that violent video games cause real world harm. There may be a certain amount of (questionable) evidence the show correlation between real world violence and video game violence, but correlation !=causation. I know that this is China, where the government gets to make up their own rules and a video game ban in the least of their problems, but we don't need to defend their actions!
Oh, and as for the cigarettes thing -- the reason it is not against the law is that prohibiting things tends to be extremely ineffective (forbidden fruit/black market) -- we can help more people quit by making cigarettes prohibitively expensive through taxes, as well as making it inconvenient and undesirable through public smoking bans and education.
Yeah, all non-conformists drink coffee and smoke cigarettes...
So? That is like arguing that a potential cure for AIDs causes headaches.
Ok, yeah, I definitely could not be less interested. IW was clearly a bastardized, consolized version of the magic that was the original DX, and it sounds like they are just driving it further over the deep end. I would love to be able to be excited about a new Deus Ex, but I have a feeling that unless it is PC only, it will be shallow and worthless, like that Halo crap... seriously, why do people like that game?
I would love to see this blow up in the landlord's face -- in the process of investigating the libel claim they will certainly need to check the apartment for mold. If it can be shown that there is mold in the apartment and the landlord was notified and did nothing, I am thinking that he could be in some trouble, but IANAL. That would be, for my money, the best way that this could possibly turn out.
"I've also heard that bodybuilders use insulin to lower their body fat and make them look leaner. Insulin sounds like a pretty sweet drug, and since it doesn't get you high, I think I should be able to get it without a prescription. And yet - I can't."
I would suggest this as an alternative. You don't need a prescription or anything!!
Because God made it that way, duh!
She'll pretty much have to
ANY piece of software is going to have vulnerabilities -- and the more widespread it is the more people are going to strive to find those vulnerabilities. Silverlight will be no different if it takes over. The "security" of a piece of software is directly related to how diligent the devs are in patching holes. With closed source software, this is an extremely intensive process, so Silverlight is bound to be every bit as bad as Flash. Open source will ALWAYS be more secure, as you can have millions of eyes scanning the lowest level of the code to find and fix vulnerabilities, rather than having to rely on an extremely inefficient top-down procedure.
It's not plagiarism if you cite your sources dude
That is great stuff, I will have to check it out. I don't think that the textures were ever the really big problem, though. The models, animation and AI are pretty bad. Higher quality textures actually might make all of this worse, but I am not sure.
Meh. After DX: IW they are really going to have to do something amazing to get me excited. I have already seen that this game is being made for the XBox360, and they have stated that they will be taking even more emphasis away from the RPG element and putting it on the action side of things instead. I'm not writing this game off just yet, but it is also not looking too promising...
I think the graphics were less of an issue than the "wooden" feeling of the game -- ie the physics, movement, AI, and combat. Despite this, it is still one of the greatest games ever made, I cannot even imagine how much ass this game could kick with a modern engine, improved combat, and non-retarded AI.
This game NEEDS to be remade -- the story, characters, and gameplay mechanics are just about the best ever, but are trapped in an awful game engine with atrocious AI. Even with the major flaws, I still play through it about once a year. I would LOVE to see it remade with a modern engine, with all the rough edges smoothed out (and without the dumbed down, console-friendly interface of the PoS sequel!), and the story line and environments fleshed out a little bit further. That would be beyond an epic win.
I am sure the guys writing this article would be more than a little pissed if you considered their article 'wrong' because you didn't read it...
If so there is something weird going on, considering the fact that whatever they fire from their guns moves considerably slower than even a bullet, never mind light. Some sort of charged particle, maybe? If they refer to it as a laser, could that just be a common misuse of the term by the uneducated masses a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? Or have I just had too much coffee this morning?
"as each time whatever their gripe is (DRM, need disk to play, etc. etc.) is fixed they shift the goalposts"
When has this happened? I only see DRM getting more and more draconian.
"but it does help to give people who (claim that they) pirate because pirating grants them a feature they don't have a little perspective."
I don't know about you, but I definitely consider a game NOT bricking my OS to a be a good feature. I would also consider it a good feature to be able to reinstall the game I legally purchased without having to be locked into a physical disc or having to hold onto a 20 digit key, or having to "phone home" to the distributor ever time I want to play. None of these things affect pirates. None of these things prevent pirates from cracking the game and putting it online. The only people they effect are PAYING CUSTOMERS!! The game industry is the biggest proponent of piracy going, and you are a fool if you can't see that.
Oh, and your previous post about the car gets an F-. Piracy != theft. I would explain it to you, but if you don't understand it by now, I don't think that there is too much hope for you.
"But no, I actually agree with you. If you don't like the price and/or DRM scheme the appropriate response is to not buy it and not pirate it. Pirating the game just adds fuel to the fire and will lead to an escalating arms race between publishers and pirates that ultimately only hurts the honest consumer."
What arms race? This implies that there is a legitimate contest between advancing DRM schemes and pirates -- there isn't, DRM is usually broken on release day, and the titles are customarily up on the torrent sites by that evening. A much better analogy would be to imagine the publishers as Dick Cheney, DRM the shotgun, the pirates a pheasant, and legitimate customers his friend's face.
Bull. I used to buy computer games all the time until I tried getting SecuROM off of my machine. I don't download pirated games, but I certainly would had I not had a run in with some kind folks a few years back over illegal file-sharing. If you put a virus in your software, I am not going to buy it. Period. If I cannot buy the PC version because of the virus you put in it, I will absolutely not buy the PS3 version, either. DRM provably does not work, it is a total farce and it will sink them, as well it should.
There, I fixed that for ya ;-)
"We also ended up taking the microwave out of the house because every time my wife would use it while pregnant the baby would go crazy and start lashing around in the womb. Shes 5 months old and still cant use it"
Well that is not surprising... considering the fact that she is only 5 months old, she has yet to develop the necessary strength to open the door and push the buttons. She is still far too short to get to the microwave, not to mention the fact that she cannot stand up. Assumedly, she cannot read yet, making it rather difficult to differentiate the different buttons. You really need to be patient with your kid here man, your expectations are entirely unrealistic.
Ok, I have had my fun, now I will address the rest of this foolishness.
"Every time I jack up the power output of a laptop or my PC at home the wireless starts to give me a headache, it also bothers my wife, child and brother-in-law."
Really? I am assuming that if someone else jacks up the power on the wireless you immediately develop a headache and curse the bastards who did it, right? Meaning that you develop the headache without knowing that the Wifi has been jacked up? I already know how you are going to answer that one, so I ask you to put it to the test. Have an objective outsider randomly turn the Wifi on and off. Tell this person when the Wifi is off and when it is on. If your results are consistently better than chance, we can talk. If not, stop fooling yourself and wasting all of our time.
Well, if they do then we are screwed. I personally don't ever think that it will ever really be an us vs. them thing with machines, I see us just gradually merging with them one step at a time. I mean, who wouldn't want bionic vision and strength? Or unlimited, faultless memory? Supercomputer number crunching in your head? ESP via wi-fi? Nano-machines to prevent all disease? Sooner or later, it will occur to us that these frail biological machines we inhabit do us no good and only hold us back. We need to eat food, breathe air, we need a strictly climate controlled area. Our logical abilities are very frail. We are weak. We live very short lives, and are extremely perceptible to disease. Tell me again, why would it be a bad thing for humans as we know them now to not exist? Robots will be smarter, stronger and more versatile. We are at the point now where technology will dictate our evolution, the forward marching of which is totally inevitable.
Umm... yes that is exactly how I am figuring it. Can you please point out where I am wrong here? If I buy two PCs with identical hardware, but the ONLY difference between the two is the OS and the price tag, what other conclusion is there to draw? If Apple is just charging us more for the same hardware, does that make it more excusable? I have a feeling you are the fanboy here, replacing logical reasoning with juvenile name-calling.
Apple's OS is very nice, and some people seem to think that it is worth the premium. I happen to strongly disagree, as the pricing structure for the OS is out of control - by comparing PCs the OSX license fee is apparently $300-$1000, which in my book, is highway robbery. If you really like OSX that much, go for it. I happen to think that it is an epic rip-off, but that is certainly a matter of opinion on my part.
She's gone from suck to blow!