YES! There are ads on battle.net, and they have been profitable for Blizzard since way back when.
Blizzard was the first to make a profit running an online gaming service (this was before Ultima Online and the likes) and they still do.
Also... World of Warcraft is being worked on right now, and that WILL have a monthly charge. If people perfect the World of Warcraft protocals and run free battle.net servers before the game even comes out (they would work on it during WoW's beta period, I'm sure), what's going to keep players from paying their monthly fee then? It makes sense to try to shut down b.net emulators now. It would be harder to do it after the emulators have been running for 2 years. 2 years of work gives emulators a lot more legitamicy.
This reminds me of the time where everyone bitched about Blizzard sueing a movie studio for infringement on the Diablo name. Blizzard is an entertainment company. Video Games do get turned into movies (Tomb Raider? Street Fighter? Mario Brothers? Resident Evil?). In the case of Final Fantasy, Square, the software company became Square, the software and movie company. I've read interviews with some of the cinema folk at Blizzard where they said they would be interested in a full blown movie if they ever could find the time, and if the right oppourtunities came about.
The people who work at Blizzard do it because it's their life. They live to make great games. Why should you be surprised if they're protective of what they created?
I also SERIOUSLY DOUBT that it's the developers of Blizzard games that are chasing these emulator guys. Most likely it's some bean counters at the top who could care less about video games and cares more about doing something to make him/herself look productive.
"Lookie this! I stopped these dangerous emulator guys from breaking the DMCA law and ruining our profits!"
Right, I'm still planning to buy both Warcraft 3, World of War, and whatever else Blizzard's working on. I enjoy their games, they come with extensive level/map editors, and they're definately worth the $60 or whatever I pay, even without emulated b.net servers.
What I don't understand, is why theyre spending MORE making a DVD, but selling the crippled product for much LESS than the regular DVD's?
Shouldn't they pass costs to customers correctly? These limited play DVD 's should cost MORE than than the regular DVD's because they cost more to make!
I heard that the US was a lot more lax, maybe that is why it has more of a problem there- any USians care to tell us what the rules are, is it State based or Federal?
Reminds me of something. I was riding the bus in Santa Barbara, CA once (car broke down, and I'm a poor college student) and I over heard some guy talking about why he was riding the bus. He lost his licence. He had just gotten off probation after having been on probation for over 20 years, and had gotten 14 DUI (driving under the influence) over that time period. Granted, drinking laws in the 1970's were pretty lax compared to now (he had gotten most the 14 in the 1970's and 1980's) but that right there is a huge difference from what you describe as the average Brit's experience.
Sony is a very big company. Different people in different parts of the company are going to make different decisions.
We can like the good decisions, and boo the bad decisions. We shouldn't shun the entire company because of some of the crap they pull and then ignore the good things they do.
Same goes for any other company. (AOL/TW, Microsoft, etc...)
Windows XP supports this feature. My friend has a cracked version of XP, doesn't use a laptop, and he can hibernate to disk, pull out his power-supply if he wants to, and still come back to the same state later.
This is not standby or sleep mode. Those are separate modes also supported by XP.
I'm not a big fan of XP (or Microsoft for that matter), I use Debian GNU/Linux for home use, but to say Microsoft only imploys idiots is a flat out lie.
Re:Empeg/SonicBlue/Rio Receiver
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 1
$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage
I'm further amazed by how many people on slashdot apparently don't have networks. If I've got 30G (or more, maybe, haven't looked at the total lately) of MP3s, I don't want to have to deal with replicating that collection on different MP3 players scattered all over the house. Put it all on one box, and let smart devices do the playing. That's what SliMP3, AudioTron, and Rio are all about. Store once, play anywhere.
I'm the guy who wrote about the $250+ (And yes, I do have a home network). I'm just wondering exactly WHAT is causing this product to cost that much? All you're really paying for is a display, and some code someone wrote so you can pull songs off a network. You can get CD/MP3 players for under $150 now that have more informative and nicer displays than this.
So I ask again, why should I get excited about this when it costs over $250?
$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage with a display that doesn't exactly look as professional as other MP3 players on the market...
And it's not even availiable yet! I wonder how CmdrTaco got his. A "free" review copy perhaps?
If you're of a mind, join them. If not, LET THEM BE. It doesn't affect nor concern you.
Well, I would like to point you to the FIRST four sentances in the site.
The mission of The Lion & Lamb Project is to stop the marketing of violence to children. We do this by helping parents, industry and government officials recognize that violence is not child's play - and by galvanizing concerned adults to take action.
Lion & Lamb works to reduce the marketing of violent toys, games and entertainment to children in two distinct ways. We work with parents and other concerned adults to reduce the demand for violent "entertainment" products, and with industry and government to reduce the supply of such products.
This group does affect me. It tries to convince government officials what toys should be sold to who. Educating parents, I don't mind. But getting government to make the decision, I do mind! You are right to say its the parent's decision, but this group is trying to tell government that it is NOT the parent's decision, but one that government should make for them.
One of the biggest issues is that the game of choice changes too often due to progressing technology -- compare this to baseball (or even newer sports) where the rules and gameplay remain relatively the same..In the gaming world, the game of choice changes about once every year, or two years at the most.
StarCraft: Still a top game in Korea. Released 1998. Almost going for 4 years now.
Counter-Strike: I was playing this my senior year in High School, during 1999. Almost been 3 years now.
It seems now that the lifetime of a game is a bit longer than it was previously. Also, franchises can get rabid fans in way less than the 1-2 years you talk about. Once a game type is picked up by people (FPS, RTS, RPG, whatever...) GOOD newer games that are released will be picked up even faster than before.
Secondly, gaming just doesn't have much potential as a mainstream spectator sport.
Just because you haven't seen video games become mainstream in the US doesn't mean it doesn't do so in other countries. Again, Korea is the best example of this, with a few people making livings by playing computer games, and many televised matches, and even a few channels devoted to computer gaming.
In the US, gaming is just a ho-hum side entertainment thing for when you're bored. In other places, gaming is perfered sport. On par with football/basketball/baseball here. Not everyone thinks and acts and behaves like an American.
The real trick would be taking multiple streams of this and editing it in with some good commentary. Think NFL style, with the replays, different camera angles, etc. You could probably do it on a low budget, just taking the time to make it flow and make it slightly interesting to someone that might be a gamer but not real familiar with CS. But you can't oversimplify, you alienate your core audience of hardcore gamers.
Why do you think StarCraft has been so popular in Korea for so long?
You don't just watch a game of StarCraft, you watch a whole program. Filmed in advance and edited.
You got the contestent stats (Win-Lose streaks), and "announcers" who can observe the whole map and comment on strategies, see possible problems for a player, and perhaps even explain of why a player is doing something.
StarCraft becomes a lot more fun to watch when you have a close battle between two players, and the anouncer points out that one of the players has something up their sleeve that the other player doesn't know. If the second player can survive whatever surprise attack is coming and win the match, it's even more fun. Many times they'll do that whole Picture-in-Picture thing and show the players face so the audience can see his/her reaction when a surprise attack comes. Hell, some of my friends laugh when I talk about StarCraft announcers "writing" on the screen to explain strategies much the same way football and basketball announcers "write" on the screen to explain plays.
The same amount of work is put into a show about Diablo II or Lineage or whatever other game that is being televised in Korea.
If you can explain to people watching a Counter-Strike game on TV that this is NOT a mass of people running together and randomly shooting each other, if you can explain that there IS strategy on both sides, and show exactly HOW the players are working together to win, it becomes more fun than just watching virtual people shoot each other.
Ideally, you'd have announcers who have a clue about the game with access to a map of the entire level be able to explain to the casual person why one team one and the other lost. When someone puts that much effort into televising one of these gaming sessions, you'll see that persons won't be bored and will actually enjoy watching.
They have televised StarCraft matches, complete with announcers, play by play analysis, and strategy talk. I've seen some shows go as far as have the players wear "futuristic" type wear while playing each other.
Diablo II is big too. I've seen televised duels between players.
Lineage gets a good amount of screen time too with talk about the world and items and skills and such.
There are entire channels devoted to computer games.
The fact is, they have PC rooms open 24 hours a day where you can use PC's for less than a dollar and hours. They almost always have people in them too playing one of the above games, or Go, or a game called Fortress 2 (Expanded Worms-like game), or whatever else. At 3 in the morning there are still plenty of males and females still playing games.
I've seen arcades take up three floors, people have made livings playign Video Games there. It's not something loser kids with no time do, it's part of the culture.
Now the sorry thing is some culturally insensitive prick's gonna mod this +1 Funny...
I have to wonder if people would be this uptight if the 2400 cameras were replaced with 2400 police officers. Would you still try to avoid going near them?
What do you mean by this? If there were 2400 police officers on the street, would people be as uptight, or less uptight? Would people be trying to avoid them, or not avoid them? You spouted out a rather 2-sided and pointless statement that doesn't prove or attempt to explain anything.
If there were so many cops on the street that at any moment you're walking in public you're also within view of a police officer, would YOU mind? If every street corner had a police officer with the authority to question and arrest you, if it was impossible to get away from the eyes of a person with such power except in your own home, would you mind?
Personally, I can't think of a better use of the term "police state." Having such a force is unnessecary, and would only intimidate and sustain the status quo.
Don't mail. Fax. They will get it, they don't have to worry about anthrax, and sending something by fax seems a lot more spiffier to them than by standard mail.
Re:Is that a problem, or a benefit though?
on
The Future of Gaming
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I think a realistic game engine MUST allow for things the game designer didn't intend.
I think one of the greatest examples of this, ever, would be the rocket jump.
Considering the prize is 100 million yen, or over 800,000 US dollars, the prize IS significant. Nobel Prize winners split just under a million US dollars. This isn't too far off.
Hmmm, IBM predicts in about a year that they'll have battery life up to a whole day. A short battery life kinda ruins the point of a Calendar program, yes?
Today: Okay watch, I gotta job interview tomorrow evening at 6:30 PM.
Day-after-tomorrow: "Sorry I didn't come, sir. My watch battery went dead!" == Lamest excuse ever.
Hopefully advances in mini-fuel cells and the like will be able to push battery life to at least a week, if not a month.
Other things I wonder about
What kind of input device does this use? I'm assuming that you would not be able to directly input data, but that this would work in tandem with a Palm, Visor, one of those PDA/Cell phone concoctions, or maybe a home/office computer.
If that's true, then all the people with Palm, Visors, or PDA/Cell phones would just use those for most tasks. The only people who would buy these watches are those who have a computer at home but don't own another PDA.
They COULD figure out a way to input data into the watch, but this probably means some sort of attachment to the watch (like one of those nifty foldable Palm Keyboards) but then why not just get a PDA in the first place?
What were the conditions of returning "their analog spectrum to the public"? Did they forbid broadcasters from making a profit when they returned them to the public? Did they limit how the broadcasters could return them to the public?
After my knee-jerk "how dare those bastards" reaction, I took time to think about it and I'm not so sure this is a problem.
This is a problem. Think about it a little more. If they are auctioning off the old airwaves and make some cash off it, that means somebody (or some corporation) would be willing to pay for control of the old airwaves. That isn't quite "public" in my book. Public parks are for anyone who wants to stay there and enjoy themselves, owned lots of land that only certain people are allowed to use.
I'm in korea right now. I took Korea air and I have to tell you they are awesome. Completely put to shame any other US airline I've taken. Check in took all of 10 minutes, FOR AN INTERNATION AL FLIGHT. Flight attendants were very nice, and the food was great (They got an award for their food, something they seem proud of).
Anyway, they never had any screw ups, and I doubt they'd switch to Linux if they thought if would create problems. I didn't see any problems that needed fixing in the first place.
I swear, they made a 12 hour flight bearable. Anyway, I guess I should be playing StarCraft like many other people in this PC room...
Of course there is a lot of risk with this - a central controlling device means that it's far easier to incorporate more effective content control mechanisms - you only need to include them with one device rather than every device in the house. And people are likely to choose convenience over freedom as they so often do.
You almost make this sound like it's a good thing. Censorship is bad, I think most everyone here agrees with that, but giving parents the ability to restrict what their children see and play is a good thing. However, I never figured it would work considering many parents ask their kids to program the VCR for them.
If we can move on with the idea that the kindergarden children in this world won't be able to play "mature" games (Conkers Bad Fur Day isn't really that mature...), then there isn't any reason to restrict and censor what games are able to get to the market.
Be careful. In California anyway, many schools have what's called an IGETC for the city colleges (IGETC let's you finish your general ed. before you transfer), and many universities have a general ed all students are required to take. Computer Engineering is almost always an impacted program. Which means, you need to take so many computer classes your first two years, that while everyone else is doing 40 units of general ed, computer engineers have to do much less. Case in point, I only have to take one English class, and a few other GE classes to transfer. Everything else is Math, Programming, Physics, Engineering, etc... Some school are also like that with Computer Science. Check with an advisor about what classes you should be getting if you are definately going into computers, and don't assume that the regular general ed is good for you. You could get screwed over in a year or two when you find out you took unneccesary classes and still need more computer classes to go on.
Slashdot Mirror
MRE's: Meals ready to eat.
When I was in JROTC we usted to call them MRE's: Meals rejected by Ethiopians...
Are there ads in battle.net?
YES! There are ads on battle.net, and they have been profitable for Blizzard since way back when.
Blizzard was the first to make a profit running an online gaming service (this was before Ultima Online and the likes) and they still do.
Also... World of Warcraft is being worked on right now, and that WILL have a monthly charge. If people perfect the World of Warcraft protocals and run free battle.net servers before the game even comes out (they would work on it during WoW's beta period, I'm sure), what's going to keep players from paying their monthly fee then? It makes sense to try to shut down b.net emulators now. It would be harder to do it after the emulators have been running for 2 years. 2 years of work gives emulators a lot more legitamicy.
This reminds me of the time where everyone bitched about Blizzard sueing a movie studio for infringement on the Diablo name. Blizzard is an entertainment company. Video Games do get turned into movies (Tomb Raider? Street Fighter? Mario Brothers? Resident Evil?). In the case of Final Fantasy, Square, the software company became Square, the software and movie company. I've read interviews with some of the cinema folk at Blizzard where they said they would be interested in a full blown movie if they ever could find the time, and if the right oppourtunities came about.
The people who work at Blizzard do it because it's their life. They live to make great games. Why should you be surprised if they're protective of what they created?
I also SERIOUSLY DOUBT that it's the developers of Blizzard games that are chasing these emulator guys. Most likely it's some bean counters at the top who could care less about video games and cares more about doing something to make him/herself look productive.
"Lookie this! I stopped these dangerous emulator guys from breaking the DMCA law and ruining our profits!"
Right, I'm still planning to buy both Warcraft 3, World of War, and whatever else Blizzard's working on. I enjoy their games, they come with extensive level/map editors, and they're definately worth the $60 or whatever I pay, even without emulated b.net servers.
What I don't understand, is why theyre spending MORE making a DVD, but selling the crippled product for much LESS than the regular DVD's?
Shouldn't they pass costs to customers correctly? These limited play DVD 's should cost MORE than than the regular DVD's because they cost more to make!
I heard that the US was a lot more lax, maybe that is why it has more of a problem there- any USians care to tell us what the rules are, is it State based or Federal?
Reminds me of something. I was riding the bus in Santa Barbara, CA once (car broke down, and I'm a poor college student) and I over heard some guy talking about why he was riding the bus. He lost his licence. He had just gotten off probation after having been on probation for over 20 years, and had gotten 14 DUI (driving under the influence) over that time period. Granted, drinking laws in the 1970's were pretty lax compared to now (he had gotten most the 14 in the 1970's and 1980's) but that right there is a huge difference from what you describe as the average Brit's experience.
Sony is a very big company. Different people in different parts of the company are going to make different decisions.
We can like the good decisions, and boo the bad decisions. We shouldn't shun the entire company because of some of the crap they pull and then ignore the good things they do.
Same goes for any other company. (AOL/TW, Microsoft, etc...)
Windows XP supports this feature. My friend has a cracked version of XP, doesn't use a laptop, and he can hibernate to disk, pull out his power-supply if he wants to, and still come back to the same state later.
This is not standby or sleep mode. Those are separate modes also supported by XP.
I'm not a big fan of XP (or Microsoft for that matter), I use Debian GNU/Linux for home use, but to say Microsoft only imploys idiots is a flat out lie.
I expect it to shut down--...
/. effect...
Oh wait, nevermind.
Damned
-Kef
$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage
I'm further amazed by how many people on slashdot apparently don't have networks. If I've got 30G (or more, maybe, haven't looked at the total lately) of MP3s, I don't want to have to deal with replicating that collection on different MP3 players scattered all over the house. Put it all on one box, and let smart devices do the playing. That's what SliMP3, AudioTron, and Rio are all about. Store once, play anywhere.
I'm the guy who wrote about the $250+ (And yes, I do have a home network). I'm just wondering exactly WHAT is causing this product to cost that much? All you're really paying for is a display, and some code someone wrote so you can pull songs off a network. You can get CD/MP3 players for under $150 now that have more informative and nicer displays than this.
So I ask again, why should I get excited about this when it costs over $250?
$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage with a display that doesn't exactly look as professional as other MP3 players on the market...
And it's not even availiable yet! I wonder how CmdrTaco got his. A "free" review copy perhaps?
If you're of a mind, join them. If not, LET THEM BE. It doesn't affect nor concern you.
Well, I would like to point you to the FIRST four sentances in the site.
The mission of The Lion & Lamb Project is to stop the marketing of violence to children. We do this by helping parents, industry and government officials recognize that violence is not child's play - and by galvanizing concerned adults to take action.
Lion & Lamb works to reduce the marketing of violent toys, games and entertainment to children in two distinct ways. We work with parents and other concerned adults to reduce the demand for violent "entertainment" products, and with industry and government to reduce the supply of such products.
This group does affect me. It tries to convince government officials what toys should be sold to who. Educating parents, I don't mind. But getting government to make the decision, I do mind! You are right to say its the parent's decision, but this group is trying to tell government that it is NOT the parent's decision, but one that government should make for them.
One of the biggest issues is that the game of choice changes too often due to progressing technology -- compare this to baseball (or even newer sports) where the rules and gameplay remain relatively the same..In the gaming world, the game of choice changes about once every year, or two years at the most.
StarCraft: Still a top game in Korea. Released 1998. Almost going for 4 years now.
Counter-Strike: I was playing this my senior year in High School, during 1999. Almost been 3 years now.
It seems now that the lifetime of a game is a bit longer than it was previously. Also, franchises can get rabid fans in way less than the 1-2 years you talk about. Once a game type is picked up by people (FPS, RTS, RPG, whatever...) GOOD newer games that are released will be picked up even faster than before.
Secondly, gaming just doesn't have much potential as a mainstream spectator sport.
Just because you haven't seen video games become mainstream in the US doesn't mean it doesn't do so in other countries. Again, Korea is the best example of this, with a few people making livings by playing computer games, and many televised matches, and even a few channels devoted to computer gaming.
In the US, gaming is just a ho-hum side entertainment thing for when you're bored. In other places, gaming is perfered sport. On par with football/basketball/baseball here. Not everyone thinks and acts and behaves like an American.
The real trick would be taking multiple streams of this and editing it in with some good commentary. Think NFL style, with the replays, different camera angles, etc. You could probably do it on a low budget, just taking the time to make it flow and make it slightly interesting to someone that might be a gamer but not real familiar with CS. But you can't oversimplify, you alienate your core audience of hardcore gamers.
Why do you think StarCraft has been so popular in Korea for so long?
You don't just watch a game of StarCraft, you watch a whole program. Filmed in advance and edited.
You got the contestent stats (Win-Lose streaks), and "announcers" who can observe the whole map and comment on strategies, see possible problems for a player, and perhaps even explain of why a player is doing something.
StarCraft becomes a lot more fun to watch when you have a close battle between two players, and the anouncer points out that one of the players has something up their sleeve that the other player doesn't know. If the second player can survive whatever surprise attack is coming and win the match, it's even more fun. Many times they'll do that whole Picture-in-Picture thing and show the players face so the audience can see his/her reaction when a surprise attack comes. Hell, some of my friends laugh when I talk about StarCraft announcers "writing" on the screen to explain strategies much the same way football and basketball announcers "write" on the screen to explain plays.
The same amount of work is put into a show about Diablo II or Lineage or whatever other game that is being televised in Korea.
If you can explain to people watching a Counter-Strike game on TV that this is NOT a mass of people running together and randomly shooting each other, if you can explain that there IS strategy on both sides, and show exactly HOW the players are working together to win, it becomes more fun than just watching virtual people shoot each other.
Ideally, you'd have announcers who have a clue about the game with access to a map of the entire level be able to explain to the casual person why one team one and the other lost. When someone puts that much effort into televising one of these gaming sessions, you'll see that persons won't be bored and will actually enjoy watching.
Video Gaming is serious in Korea.
They have televised StarCraft matches, complete with announcers, play by play analysis, and strategy talk. I've seen some shows go as far as have the players wear "futuristic" type wear while playing each other.
Diablo II is big too. I've seen televised duels between players.
Lineage gets a good amount of screen time too with talk about the world and items and skills and such.
There are entire channels devoted to computer games.
The fact is, they have PC rooms open 24 hours a day where you can use PC's for less than a dollar and hours. They almost always have people in them too playing one of the above games, or Go, or a game called Fortress 2 (Expanded Worms-like game), or whatever else. At 3 in the morning there are still plenty of males and females still playing games.
I've seen arcades take up three floors, people have made livings playign Video Games there. It's not something loser kids with no time do, it's part of the culture.
Now the sorry thing is some culturally insensitive prick's gonna mod this +1 Funny...
I have to wonder if people would be this uptight if the 2400 cameras were replaced with 2400 police officers. Would you still try to avoid going near them?
What do you mean by this? If there were 2400 police officers on the street, would people be as uptight, or less uptight? Would people be trying to avoid them, or not avoid them? You spouted out a rather 2-sided and pointless statement that doesn't prove or attempt to explain anything.
If there were so many cops on the street that at any moment you're walking in public you're also within view of a police officer, would YOU mind? If every street corner had a police officer with the authority to question and arrest you, if it was impossible to get away from the eyes of a person with such power except in your own home, would you mind?
Personally, I can't think of a better use of the term "police state." Having such a force is unnessecary, and would only intimidate and sustain the status quo.
-Kef
Don't mail. Fax. They will get it, they don't have to worry about anthrax, and sending something by fax seems a lot more spiffier to them than by standard mail.
I think a realistic game engine MUST allow for things the game designer didn't intend.
I think one of the greatest examples of this, ever, would be the rocket jump.
Considering the prize is 100 million yen, or over 800,000 US dollars, the prize IS significant. Nobel Prize winners split just under a million US dollars. This isn't too far off.
Hmmm, IBM predicts in about a year that they'll have battery life up to a whole day. A short battery life kinda ruins the point of a Calendar program, yes?
Today: Okay watch, I gotta job interview tomorrow evening at 6:30 PM.
Day-after-tomorrow: "Sorry I didn't come, sir. My watch battery went dead!" == Lamest excuse ever.
Hopefully advances in mini-fuel cells and the like will be able to push battery life to at least a week, if not a month.
Other things I wonder about
What kind of input device does this use? I'm assuming that you would not be able to directly input data, but that this would work in tandem with a Palm, Visor, one of those PDA/Cell phone concoctions, or maybe a home/office computer.
If that's true, then all the people with Palm, Visors, or PDA/Cell phones would just use those for most tasks. The only people who would buy these watches are those who have a computer at home but don't own another PDA.
They COULD figure out a way to input data into the watch, but this probably means some sort of attachment to the watch (like one of those nifty foldable Palm Keyboards) but then why not just get a PDA in the first place?
Imagine, in 20-30 years we'll have slot-cars giving Formula 1 drivers a run for their money.
What were the conditions of returning "their analog spectrum to the public"? Did they forbid broadcasters from making a profit when they returned them to the public? Did they limit how the broadcasters could return them to the public?
After my knee-jerk "how dare those bastards" reaction, I took time to think about it and I'm not so sure this is a problem.
This is a problem. Think about it a little more. If they are auctioning off the old airwaves and make some cash off it, that means somebody (or some corporation) would be willing to pay for control of the old airwaves. That isn't quite "public" in my book. Public parks are for anyone who wants to stay there and enjoy themselves, owned lots of land that only certain people are allowed to use.
I don't get it....
Why do they give me instructions if I'm not supposed to do this at home?
-Kef
I'm in korea right now. I took Korea air and I have to tell you they are awesome. Completely put to shame any other US airline I've taken. Check in took all of 10 minutes, FOR AN INTERNATION AL FLIGHT. Flight attendants were very nice, and the food was great (They got an award for their food, something they seem proud of). Anyway, they never had any screw ups, and I doubt they'd switch to Linux if they thought if would create problems. I didn't see any problems that needed fixing in the first place. I swear, they made a 12 hour flight bearable. Anyway, I guess I should be playing StarCraft like many other people in this PC room...
Another Nasty Outlook Virus Strikes
Score: -1 (Redundant =)
-Kef
Of course there is a lot of risk with this - a central controlling device means that it's far easier to incorporate more effective content control mechanisms - you only need to include them with one device rather than every device in the house. And people are likely to choose convenience over freedom as they so often do.
You almost make this sound like it's a good thing. Censorship is bad, I think most everyone here agrees with that, but giving parents the ability to restrict what their children see and play is a good thing. However, I never figured it would work considering many parents ask their kids to program the VCR for them.
If we can move on with the idea that the kindergarden children in this world won't be able to play "mature" games (Conkers Bad Fur Day isn't really that mature...), then there isn't any reason to restrict and censor what games are able to get to the market.
Just my $0.02
-Kef
Be careful. In California anyway, many schools have what's called an IGETC for the city colleges (IGETC let's you finish your general ed. before you transfer), and many universities have a general ed all students are required to take. Computer Engineering is almost always an impacted program. Which means, you need to take so many computer classes your first two years, that while everyone else is doing 40 units of general ed, computer engineers have to do much less. Case in point, I only have to take one English class, and a few other GE classes to transfer. Everything else is Math, Programming, Physics, Engineering, etc... Some school are also like that with Computer Science. Check with an advisor about what classes you should be getting if you are definately going into computers, and don't assume that the regular general ed is good for you. You could get screwed over in a year or two when you find out you took unneccesary classes and still need more computer classes to go on.