This is the worst thing about this argument. Every time it comes up, we get a lot of misdirection about how it's just like movies when it certainly isn't. When this law gets passed, if the new Supreme Court upholds it (and with all the recent changes it may well), video games will be treated as more harmful than movies, more dangerous, and with more legal sanctions against them.
The people on the pro-censorship side of the debate get this. That's why they say things like:
"Video games are not art or media," she said. "They are simulations, not all that different from the simulations used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."
-- Sen. Deanna Demuzio
This is from the Illinois debate, but what people don't seem to get is that groups like Focus on the Family, when they want to ban something but can't get it banned in the Federal House and Senate, will draft the same law in multiple states and use their local organizations to push it in each state. So, this law is almost identical to the one in Illinois because it was likely written by the same people.
They are not looking for equal treatment between games and other forms of media and they are willing to be quite clear about it.
Meanwhile, we get people posting on Slashdot as though what we have is a reasonable debate between two sides as to what would be an adequate restriction on what kids are allowed to play (with "kids" being portrayed as toddlers or grammer school students but actually being more likely teens in the 13-16 year old category in the real world.).
What I don't understand is why an industry that makes so much money hasn't done something about this so far. The strategy seems to be, "We'll cave, then we'll cave some more, and then to show we're really serious we'll cave even more." Meanwhile, people who would like nothing better than to ban video games outright get to frame the debate.
By default, a game based on a movie has to suck. It's one of the unwritten rules of the industry that movie games are pure profit: Stamp it out quick, screw the gameplay, and we'll make it up to the players with our next genre-buster.
So this means that there were no good games based on Alien or Star Wars, I suppose.... (oh, and many more, those were just the two that immediately jumped to mind. )
Still, I'm glad to read that The Hulk is good... though can I trust this reviewer after that quote?
Stealth Surfer is a product from the comany that gave us Hushmail.
StealthSurfer is a Windows PC compatible key-sized USB device that is preloaded with Firefox, Anonymizer, RoboForm, and Thunderbird software configured and integrated for optimum privacy. When using StealthSurfer, all your sensitive Internet files such as cookies, history, and cache are stored on the StealthSurfer device instead of your computer. Should your StealthSurfer fall into unwanted hands, password protection maintains your data's privacy and security. StealthSurfer conceals your surfing habits from anyone who has physical access to your computer. StealthSurfer keeps your surfing information over the NET encrypted hidden and anonymous - it protects your identity. Passwords are stored on the StealthSurfer with 3DES encryption and with the unique password manager log-on to web sites as easy as 1 touch speed dialing ! Advanced and secure E-mail programs are included in StealthSurfer to you can take your E-mail with you in confidence.
Interestingly, further down on the how does it work page:
Your computer AUTOMATICALLY records every move you make! Anyone with basic computer knowledge can view where you've been on the Web.
Deleting this information does not permanently remove it from your computer - nor does emptying your 'Recycle Bin.' Even clearing your browser's cache and 'History' files will not fully remove lingering data. Privacy and cleansing software also risk leaving data remnants on your hard drive and are not 100% efficient!
Which means that the people at Stealth Surfer have more faith in people's ability to investigate people via the computer than this article suggests.
Well, if Nintendo sues, then Bethesda should get Chaosium involved in a countersuit where they point out that Nintendo (Silicon Knights) stole most of the ideas for their game Eternal Darkness from the pen and paper Call of Cthuhlu game without paying for the license. Ancient, evil books that increase skills and magical knowledge while decreasing sanity, the whole concept of seing monsters causing a loss of sanity points, the great old ones being returned to our dimension using arcane rituals. I mean, this patent makes Chaosium's IP partially worthless for computer games, since it just isn't Call of Cthuhlu if your character isn't slowly being driven insane by eldritch horrors.
Of course, I was happy to see a Cthuhlu-type game for Gamecube, but I would be very unhappy if this meant that no others would be allowed to come out. Especially since there seems to be exactly zero chance of Nintendo doing anything else like Eternal Darkness, well, ever...
I mean, White Wolf was willing to sue Sony over Underworld with a much weaker case.
Larry King interviewed Satan on his radio/TV program. At one point during the interview, King asked Satan to describe the foulest deed he'd ever done. Satan refused to name one, pointing out that there had been so much destruction over the years, so many lives cut short, and so many wars and calamities that none stood out. But Larry King kept pestering. 'Surely, if you think hard enough, there must be one dastardly deed you are most proud of.' Satan thought for a moment, his eyes brightened, and he replied, 'Well, yes. I guess if I have to pick just one particularly evil thing I'm proudest of, it would be this: Several years ago, I invented credit cards.'
It's not because a new technology exists, it's because it recently became trendy (MP3 players, specifically iPods).
I think its supposed to sound revolutionary as in, "With iPod, now anyone can broadcast (or podcast) their own radio show."
As to who coined it, I'll bet dollars to donuts that they work for Apple. (Even if the first time the term appeared was in PR as opposed to marketing.)
...mmm... donuts.... glargh....
Um, excuse me... where was I. Oh, I was going to say that in this case, DS/GBA-casting would be a better term, since I'm guessing that Nintendo is trying to put content out there for the new Play Yan player.
Of course, to me, unless it is a really long audio file, the place I'm most likely to listen to it is at my computer, rather than downloading it to my Zodiac (I'm getting a DS for my birthday, but I'll be getting a Play Yan for myself, um, never. I may buy one for my girlfriends little girl though...)
Dark Corners of the Earth a Call of Cthuhlu licensed game is supposed to have a similar Sanity effects system.
Oh! If you like this kind of thing you might enjoy playing as a Malkavian in the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines game that is out for PC. Every now and then interesting insanity effects pop up in that, especially when you are watching TV.
Heh, I had forgotten about that. My favorite part was eating the delicious airline food. (Although in that case it wasn't the stress that killed you...)
Well, there is the old game from Infocom, The Lurking Horror, which was more of a knockoff of Call of Cthuhlu, they didn't actually get the license. The other problem is that it didn't have a Sanity system.
Of course, while I don't remember hallucinations in that game, there were hallucinations if you wandered aimlessly through the desert in Infidel, another Infocom game.
Illbleed for the Dreamcast had something sort of like a sanity system, in that your mental state was affected by the horrors you witnessed, and could lead to a heart attack.
Maybe Nintendo was afraid of what happened with SEGA's Crazy Taxi where a Simpson's licensed Crazy Taxi-like game was released by another company (Simpson's Road Rage). (Not that this excuses this kind of patent, of course.)
The author, citing Robert Christopher, suggests that Buddhists take a different view of robots than do Christians because Buddhism "does not place man at the center of the universe, and in fact, makes no particular distinction between the animate and the inanimate." Samurai swords have souls, and machines have ghosts.
That doesn't sound like Buddhism to me, that sounds like animism, represented in Japan by Shinto.
Of course, many Buddhist countries have animist traditions, but in a lot of these there is a rivalry between the two religions.
Well, the people who made Ecco the Dolphin are making a Jaws game that I think will play sort of similar to what an Ecco game would, except of course you are Jaws the shark rather than a dolphin.
As to Syndicate, I'd like to see a next gen successor to Shadowrun which I really liked on the Genesis, they sound sort of similar in concept.
I'm taking a wait and see attitude toward Bio-Shock, maybe Call of Cthuhlu:Dark Corners of the Earth will be better. Either way it won't fill the void left by the absence of my love, SHODAN.
Actually, this is a very good list, all games that look like good choices.
Well, it's actually probably considered just as illegal to backup your DVDs, anyway, considering it violates the DMCA. (Unless format shifting is legally considered fair use, but I doubt it would be in a court of law.)
In case anyone who is reading this thread who didn't already know how to do it, though, at least the information is there for him/her.
Well, all you really need is Apollo DVD Backup Pro (or similar) and DeCSS (which isn't tough to find, especially if you are savvy enough to be able to use P2P software). For me, of course, there is an extra step as I own a Tapwave Zodiac 2, not a PSP. But the Kinoma encoder came with it, so no worries.
Besides, if I'm not using P2P software, there is 0% chance of ending up on a MPAA "John Doe" list. (Although I think the risk is also probably pretty low for that if you stick to, ahem, adult videos. )
My biggest issue is shelling out to buy a bigger memory card, because those videos take up a lot of space.
I felt the same way you did about 3rd party cards (coincidentally, a Mad Catz Dreamcast card). However, I saw a Gamecube card that had all kinds of guarantees on it, and also went into the high quality components it used on the box.
Of course, it may turn out I'm a sucker, but I don't worry too much about these things.
What the parent means is that the people at Sony don't want you to be able to copy your DVDs to, say, a Memory Stick and watch them on your PSP. They want you to buy the same movie again on UMD disk.
This goes to fair use, in which format shifting may or may not be permissable (some lawyer help me out here) but it should be.
It is hardly an anti-Google screed and points out the many reasons why someone might want their page to be unavailable to the general public:
Most people are dying to get their sites listed in Google. But what if you want your site out of Google's listings? Maybe you want to keep your site private, or you don't want a bunch of creeps surfing to your page trying to find animal porn. Maybe you just hate Google, are paranoid, or have some copyrighted material on your page that you need out of Google's cache today. Whatever the case, it's actually pretty easy to get out of Google and start to bask in relative anonymity. Because once you're out, then your page is off the Internet for all intents and purposes.
"Maybe you just hate Google" is only one of the possible reasons, and I expect paranoia and potentially actionable material (this is 2600, after all) are the main reasons why people reading the article wouldn't want Joe DMCA/RIAA/MPAA and Sally NSA/CIA/FBI surfing their sites.
Hmm... I had always assumed that the C64 was the equivalent of an Atari 800. However, if this is accurate, then I am mistaken. Because who wants to go to dirty old "outside" rather than play Enchanter/M.U.L.E./Ultima III, or dozens of other games I won't mention here...
I had an Odyssey, and let me tell you, it was pretty darn cool back in the day. I especially liked K. C. Munchkin, a superior home version of Pacman that had several improvements over the original game (you could create your own mazes, pretty advanced for those days). Of course, it had to be pulled because Atari or someone sued.
Another game that was cool was the Quest for the Rings, which had really great packaging. I also liked it as a game.
Now I'm nostalgic... I wish they'd release one of those multi-game machines with Odyssey games in it.... I sold the whole kit for $25 to a guy who ran some kind of game store. Sob, I'll never be able to get Quest for the Rings back now...
Well, you sure put the hurt on that strawman you built for yourself:
Science is great......until it proves something you don't want to hear, then suddenly all studies are flawed and all science is bullshit.
You really walloped him good, I'm impressed.
Where to begin, hmm. Well, first of all, the article's point is that we have two reports, both claiming to be psychologically valid, claiming to prove two different things. One report is a study by the APA, in which the philosopher kings came down from on high and claimed that the ambiguous results from some studies prove 'exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth.' In the other one, a professor from the University of Illinois claimed to prove that 'game violence does not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life.'
So, even if we figure that we are all living in Foundation and we ought to be ruled by our psychohistorian (because after all, we have ventured outside of diagnosing individual patients to predicting broad social trends) philospher kings, we have one philospher king contradicting the philospher king establishment. So we can argue as to which study is more valid, etc.
Of course, this doesn't even get to the point that a person may reject psychology, eugenics, phrenology, astrology and other such "sciences" without rejecting actual sciences like physics and geology. In the case of the former, these are sciences with a political agenda (yes, even astrology, see the role of astrology in places like Imperial China), and are therefore not pure sciences. Even if psychology were a science, rather than a philosophy that has managed to convince a lot of people that it is scientific, psychological testing in humans would still be tainted since it is impossible to ethically do repeatable, verifiable experiments. (I.e. just because a person is willing to fill out a test and choose more violent words, doesn't mean he is more likely to shoot someone if the psychologist put him in a room with a loaded gun and a person tied to a chair.)
The psychological establishment should also be viewed with suspicion. In the Soviet Union, psychologist were more than willing to declare people mad if they were considered enemies of the state. In the United States, psychological opinions sway with the political winds. (For example, homosexuality stopped being a form of madness as soon as it became politically controversial to declare it as such. I'm hoping Electroconvulsive Therapy will go the same route soon, but there is money involved in keeping it alive.)
I'd wait for the one in the article. I bought a pocket Famicom from Lik-Sang and it works, but there are a few problems with it. These problems are because it is designed to take Famicom cartridges/controllers and not US cartridges/controllers:
The thing is designed so that Famicom cartriges will nestle tightly inside it. Unfortunately, when I'm playing with the adaptor for US cartridges this is not the case. I have to stay pretty still or the cartridge will flop around and lose its connection, which can cause a crash or just a messed up screen.
When I bought it, I figured this might be a problem, so I figured I'd just use it as a TV Nintendo, since it has TV outs and I was going to buy an A/C adaptor for it. Unfortunately, my NES controller won't fit into the Famicom shaped controller ports. So, while I still plan to do this, I haven't yet gotten around to buying a Famicom controller (I've been too busy messing with my Dreamcast lately, I just downloaded a bunch of Beats of Rage variants for it and I've been working on some other projects like getting the DIVX player to work.)
Slashdot Mirror
If all episodes of GTA are treated like Hot Coffee GTA, GTA ceases to exist.
Which is of course the reason for this law.
The people on the pro-censorship side of the debate get this. That's why they say things like:
This is from the Illinois debate, but what people don't seem to get is that groups like Focus on the Family, when they want to ban something but can't get it banned in the Federal House and Senate, will draft the same law in multiple states and use their local organizations to push it in each state. So, this law is almost identical to the one in Illinois because it was likely written by the same people.They are not looking for equal treatment between games and other forms of media and they are willing to be quite clear about it.
Meanwhile, we get people posting on Slashdot as though what we have is a reasonable debate between two sides as to what would be an adequate restriction on what kids are allowed to play (with "kids" being portrayed as toddlers or grammer school students but actually being more likely teens in the 13-16 year old category in the real world.).
What I don't understand is why an industry that makes so much money hasn't done something about this so far. The strategy seems to be, "We'll cave, then we'll cave some more, and then to show we're really serious we'll cave even more." Meanwhile, people who would like nothing better than to ban video games outright get to frame the debate.
Still, I'm glad to read that The Hulk is good... though can I trust this reviewer after that quote?
Although, about half of the people who read that headline would have thought they still meant figuratively.
Of course, I was happy to see a Cthuhlu-type game for Gamecube, but I would be very unhappy if this meant that no others would be allowed to come out. Especially since there seems to be exactly zero chance of Nintendo doing anything else like Eternal Darkness, well, ever...
I mean, White Wolf was willing to sue Sony over Underworld with a much weaker case.
Larry King interviewed Satan on his radio/TV program. At one point during the interview, King asked Satan to describe the foulest deed he'd ever done. Satan refused to name one, pointing out that there had been so much destruction over the years, so many lives cut short, and so many wars and calamities that none stood out. But Larry King kept pestering. 'Surely, if you think hard enough, there must be one dastardly deed you are most proud of.' Satan thought for a moment, his eyes brightened, and he replied, 'Well, yes. I guess if I have to pick just one particularly evil thing I'm proudest of, it would be this: Several years ago, I invented credit cards.'
I think its supposed to sound revolutionary as in, "With iPod, now anyone can broadcast (or podcast) their own radio show."
As to who coined it, I'll bet dollars to donuts that they work for Apple. (Even if the first time the term appeared was in PR as opposed to marketing.)
Um, excuse me... where was I. Oh, I was going to say that in this case, DS/GBA-casting would be a better term, since I'm guessing that Nintendo is trying to put content out there for the new Play Yan player.
Of course, to me, unless it is a really long audio file, the place I'm most likely to listen to it is at my computer, rather than downloading it to my Zodiac (I'm getting a DS for my birthday, but I'll be getting a Play Yan for myself, um, never. I may buy one for my girlfriends little girl though...)
Oh! If you like this kind of thing you might enjoy playing as a Malkavian in the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines game that is out for PC. Every now and then interesting insanity effects pop up in that, especially when you are watching TV.
Heh, I had forgotten about that. My favorite part was eating the delicious airline food. (Although in that case it wasn't the stress that killed you...)
Of course, while I don't remember hallucinations in that game, there were hallucinations if you wandered aimlessly through the desert in Infidel, another Infocom game.
Illbleed for the Dreamcast had something sort of like a sanity system, in that your mental state was affected by the horrors you witnessed, and could lead to a heart attack.
Maybe Nintendo was afraid of what happened with SEGA's Crazy Taxi where a Simpson's licensed Crazy Taxi-like game was released by another company (Simpson's Road Rage). (Not that this excuses this kind of patent, of course.)
As to Syndicate, I'd like to see a next gen successor to Shadowrun which I really liked on the Genesis, they sound sort of similar in concept.
I'm taking a wait and see attitude toward Bio-Shock, maybe Call of Cthuhlu:Dark Corners of the Earth will be better. Either way it won't fill the void left by the absence of my love, SHODAN.
Actually, this is a very good list, all games that look like good choices.
In case anyone who is reading this thread who didn't already know how to do it, though, at least the information is there for him/her.
Besides, if I'm not using P2P software, there is 0% chance of ending up on a MPAA "John Doe" list. (Although I think the risk is also probably pretty low for that if you stick to, ahem, adult videos. )
My biggest issue is shelling out to buy a bigger memory card, because those videos take up a lot of space.
Of course, it may turn out I'm a sucker, but I don't worry too much about these things.
This goes to fair use, in which format shifting may or may not be permissable (some lawyer help me out here) but it should be.
How to get out of Google.
It is hardly an anti-Google screed and points out the many reasons why someone might want their page to be unavailable to the general public:
"Maybe you just hate Google" is only one of the possible reasons, and I expect paranoia and potentially actionable material (this is 2600, after all) are the main reasons why people reading the article wouldn't want Joe DMCA/RIAA/MPAA and Sally NSA/CIA/FBI surfing their sites.R A L P H H. B A E R
I had an Odyssey, and let me tell you, it was pretty darn cool back in the day. I especially liked K. C. Munchkin, a superior home version of Pacman that had several improvements over the original game (you could create your own mazes, pretty advanced for those days). Of course, it had to be pulled because Atari or someone sued.
Another game that was cool was the Quest for the Rings, which had really great packaging. I also liked it as a game.
Oh, and there was some really bizarre game with monkeys that I liked, and a pretty good Donkey Kong knockoff.
Now I'm nostalgic... I wish they'd release one of those multi-game machines with Odyssey games in it.... I sold the whole kit for $25 to a guy who ran some kind of game store. Sob, I'll never be able to get Quest for the Rings back now...
Where to begin, hmm. Well, first of all, the article's point is that we have two reports, both claiming to be psychologically valid, claiming to prove two different things. One report is a study by the APA, in which the philosopher kings came down from on high and claimed that the ambiguous results from some studies prove 'exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth.' In the other one, a professor from the University of Illinois claimed to prove that 'game violence does not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life.'
So, even if we figure that we are all living in Foundation and we ought to be ruled by our psychohistorian (because after all, we have ventured outside of diagnosing individual patients to predicting broad social trends) philospher kings, we have one philospher king contradicting the philospher king establishment. So we can argue as to which study is more valid, etc.
Of course, this doesn't even get to the point that a person may reject psychology, eugenics, phrenology, astrology and other such "sciences" without rejecting actual sciences like physics and geology. In the case of the former, these are sciences with a political agenda (yes, even astrology, see the role of astrology in places like Imperial China), and are therefore not pure sciences. Even if psychology were a science, rather than a philosophy that has managed to convince a lot of people that it is scientific, psychological testing in humans would still be tainted since it is impossible to ethically do repeatable, verifiable experiments. (I.e. just because a person is willing to fill out a test and choose more violent words, doesn't mean he is more likely to shoot someone if the psychologist put him in a room with a loaded gun and a person tied to a chair.)
The psychological establishment should also be viewed with suspicion. In the Soviet Union, psychologist were more than willing to declare people mad if they were considered enemies of the state. In the United States, psychological opinions sway with the political winds. (For example, homosexuality stopped being a form of madness as soon as it became politically controversial to declare it as such. I'm hoping Electroconvulsive Therapy will go the same route soon, but there is money involved in keeping it alive.)
The Street Fighter II version runs a Megadrive/Genesis chip.
The thing is designed so that Famicom cartriges will nestle tightly inside it. Unfortunately, when I'm playing with the adaptor for US cartridges this is not the case. I have to stay pretty still or the cartridge will flop around and lose its connection, which can cause a crash or just a messed up screen.
When I bought it, I figured this might be a problem, so I figured I'd just use it as a TV Nintendo, since it has TV outs and I was going to buy an A/C adaptor for it. Unfortunately, my NES controller won't fit into the Famicom shaped controller ports. So, while I still plan to do this, I haven't yet gotten around to buying a Famicom controller (I've been too busy messing with my Dreamcast lately, I just downloaded a bunch of Beats of Rage variants for it and I've been working on some other projects like getting the DIVX player to work.)