I know I could be wrong, but I think there's almost no chance that the PC will ever die as a gaming platform. The reason it won't die is the console + TV and PC + monitor distinction will become less defined over the years. They're not that different conceptually as it is.
There was another story on Slashdot recently about centralizing graphics processing into a single graphics server per household, with the output from that server being displayed on client devices. Once you reach that point, consoles and PCs, monitors and TVs, all become the same devices.
Seriously... I've just about had my fill of the damn shark joke. Yes, it was a brilliant movie, but it and the flood of quotes it spawned are all 13 years old. For the love of God, let the shark quote die.
The copyright laws in the US aren't "the tune" of the people. They're just another tool for the rich to extract profit from resources. Just like they drill exploratory oil wells in the search for oil, these attempts to enforce copyright in China are an attempt expand an old game to a new area.
The level of copyright enforcement in China is probably directly related to how much the industry is willing to pay the enforcers. Share enough of the profits, and I bet China would be happy to send pirates away to a gulag.
In the long run though, copyright is over. A few major industries will cease to exist in their current form during the next century. All digital content will be considered basically free in a sort of universal public library. What money there is to make will be made by showing movies in theaters, performing live music, and selling physical books to fans of the digital version. I think we'll see a real renaissance once the chains of industry are removed.
China doesn't respect copyright even to the extent of westerners. Unfortunately for the US, that means they could be first to prosper from this revolution. It may be that in 50 years, Chinese villagers will educate themselves with the best books and movies for free, while we in the US are enslaved under the RIAA's latest hellish plot.
Technically there's probably a fair bit more to it than just "sending (requests) locally". At the least they'd have the additional cost of QA for LAN support, even if development didn't add up to much (and I suspect it's a fair bit more than you're guessing).
Anyway, I think everyone agrees that they're doing this as a misguided means to combat piracy. The real answer is to just not spend $100 million on a game, if you don't think you can make it back in the face of rampant piracy.
However limiting it may be for some players, the sad truth is that unless it affects enough players to become a financial concern for Blizzard, they'll continue doing it. And all the potential military and ship-bound SC players don't amount to a thing compared to their (doomed) mission.
I can't back this up (or won't bother to) but I'm pretty sure that the price for 3D rendered video is far cheaper now than it was 10 years ago.
Back in the days of Toy Story, the price of 3D video was measured in millions per minute. But now, even relatively small startups can afford four or five guys who work on that kind of thing in-house.
I recently interviewed for a job at a game studio that has one main product in development. They're cranking out a good bit of nice 3D video for their promotional stuff and it looks as good as anything else I've seen. They obviously have a nice budget for this project, but they ARE a startup.
In China, if you say the wrong things, you can be arrested and then executed. That simply does not happen in the US. There IS a definite difference.
Don't take me for some cheerleader of the US. I'm horrified by other abuses, like warrantless wiretaps and rendition... but that has nothing to do with a real China vs. US rights comparison.
It was a typo. It happens.
Btw, condescending remarks like yours make it impossible for anyone to love you, both physically and emotionally.
I'll live with my occasional typos. You'll live with everyone hating you because you're a virgin prick.
China is *bad*. The U.S. is *bad*. But to say that the U.S. is "just as bad" is ridiculous and obviously false. Do even the most casual of checks about free speech rights in the US versus China, and you'll see how silly your statement is.
For all of its many faults, the U.S. has generally outstanding freedom of speech. You can say all kinds of things here that would float anywhere else in the world. Just look at how Holocaust denial is treated in Europe. Or imagine how long someone like Alex Jones could operate in China, railing against the Chinese and thousands of real or imagines murderous conspiracies.
I disagree that the need for this kind of thing is esoteric.
I live in a house where there are three computers and three people who use them to play games. As it is, if we're all going to play the newest games (which we don't) we would need to keep three computers upgraded. If the graphics processing was shared by all three from some kind of household graphics server, it would certainly be cheaper to meet everyone's needs.
Hardware graphics acceleration is definitely catching on for general use. Windows 7 and Ubuntu both use it in their regular desktop environment.
Let the word go out of the new understanding between Nerds and Bullies. No longer let them be enemies. Indeed, they are as the same flesh, and today they have become brothers under a common cause.
Let the norms now tremble before the combined might of the Nerds and Bullies, hereafter known collectively as the Outcasts. Their powers of intelligence and strength have at last combined in a mighty aliance.
Game producers could take a hint, and release a "pirated" version of their game, put it up on the torrent sites, sit back and allow the wider community to pay for distribution - then wait for a lot of pirates to come back and pay for the "value added" version that includes Alien.
I think they call that shareware. And yes, back when shareware was first introduced, it did a little somethin somethin for the game industry.
I'm sorry, but there's no way that's a real caller. That's someone playing stupid and following a script.
It's easy to tell, because she fits perfectly the mold of what right-wing conservative radio show hosts want us to THINK that left wingers are. She presented a mismash of misrepresented left wing ideas such as immigration law reform and public welfare programs. It was calculated to make their listeners reject everything she mentioned.
That's a good point. Even if the world suddenly decided to conserve helium for future generations, it would only take one smiling politician to win favor by using it up.
The idea that a valuable resource could survive the next 100 years of George Bush Jr's and Bill Clintons is laughable. It wouldn't take long for the rich to get a little richer and for the resource to be gone.
You made a great argument, but couldn't resist slipping this in there: "nothing but lies, just like the rest of christianity."
Please, keep your militant atheism under wraps, at least when you're trying to make a controversial point about an unrelated topic. It muddies your argument and by attaching a controversial rider, you're certain to instantly lose plenty of people who might have otherwise been converted.
Just a fun example, imagine if we sold recycling like this: "By recycling, you can help ensure a better tomorrow for our children, as long as you don't kill them with abortions first." Imagine how well that would go over in California.
A bit off topic here, but I had a great experience with Virtual Boy too, and to this day I still have a great fondness for the system.
As much as anything, I suspect that the market just didn't want a monochrome device.
So Nintendo rolls out the best thing in handheld games since the first Gameboy, and suddenly 3D is bad for children. What a coincidence.
I suspect that this is just an underhanded PR attack against Nintendo by one of its rivals.
Totally off topic... but I downloaded a demo of your game, and I had to click through like ten different links to finally find it through your "Worthplaying" mirror. In fact your "Worthplaying" mirror eventually leads to FileFront, which could have been your first link.
For the love of Pete... just put the damned thing up on Amazon's cloud service or some similar, cheap storage. I came *this* close to giving up on the download, and only morbid curiosity kept me clicking because I wanted to see how deep that rabbit hole went.
I'm an independent game developer too (http://www.billiardscomplete.com) and I want nothing in this than for you to succeed. But burying your hard work so that other people can make ad revenue is not the way to do that.
Anyway, good luck in the future. I hope I like your game enough to buy it;)
You were modded funny, but I think that's because most of the Slashdot crowd has never spent time in the midwest/south.
I happen to live in the rural midwest. I think our coastal population is unaware that the country's gooey filling contains hundreds of thousands of religious zealots who literally rival the Taliban for religious rigidity and enthusiasm.
My family all fit into that category. They believe that every bit of the Bible is absolutely literally true. I'm the only person in my family who understands/believes in evolution and the big bang. Believe me when I say that these people will arm themselves and fight if a tagging system ever comes through. They see accepting "the mark" as a one way ticket to hell. They'll see death as a glorious service to God.
Just imagine the hardcore midwest Christians, faced with damnation, imbued with all the zealotry for martyrdom of any tribal Afghani and they gleefully slaughter the soldiers in the army of Satan, in other words, everyone else but them.
Slashdot Mirror
I know I could be wrong, but I think there's almost no chance that the PC will ever die as a gaming platform. The reason it won't die is the console + TV and PC + monitor distinction will become less defined over the years. They're not that different conceptually as it is.
There was another story on Slashdot recently about centralizing graphics processing into a single graphics server per household, with the output from that server being displayed on client devices. Once you reach that point, consoles and PCs, monitors and TVs, all become the same devices.
Seriously... I've just about had my fill of the damn shark joke. Yes, it was a brilliant movie, but it and the flood of quotes it spawned are all 13 years old. For the love of God, let the shark quote die.
The copyright laws in the US aren't "the tune" of the people. They're just another tool for the rich to extract profit from resources. Just like they drill exploratory oil wells in the search for oil, these attempts to enforce copyright in China are an attempt expand an old game to a new area.
The level of copyright enforcement in China is probably directly related to how much the industry is willing to pay the enforcers. Share enough of the profits, and I bet China would be happy to send pirates away to a gulag.
In the long run though, copyright is over. A few major industries will cease to exist in their current form during the next century. All digital content will be considered basically free in a sort of universal public library. What money there is to make will be made by showing movies in theaters, performing live music, and selling physical books to fans of the digital version. I think we'll see a real renaissance once the chains of industry are removed.
China doesn't respect copyright even to the extent of westerners. Unfortunately for the US, that means they could be first to prosper from this revolution. It may be that in 50 years, Chinese villagers will educate themselves with the best books and movies for free, while we in the US are enslaved under the RIAA's latest hellish plot.
I'll bite... why have you been in the hospital 50% of the last 22 years?
Technically there's probably a fair bit more to it than just "sending (requests) locally". At the least they'd have the additional cost of QA for LAN support, even if development didn't add up to much (and I suspect it's a fair bit more than you're guessing).
Anyway, I think everyone agrees that they're doing this as a misguided means to combat piracy. The real answer is to just not spend $100 million on a game, if you don't think you can make it back in the face of rampant piracy.
However limiting it may be for some players, the sad truth is that unless it affects enough players to become a financial concern for Blizzard, they'll continue doing it. And all the potential military and ship-bound SC players don't amount to a thing compared to their (doomed) mission.
I can't back this up (or won't bother to) but I'm pretty sure that the price for 3D rendered video is far cheaper now than it was 10 years ago.
Back in the days of Toy Story, the price of 3D video was measured in millions per minute. But now, even relatively small startups can afford four or five guys who work on that kind of thing in-house.
I recently interviewed for a job at a game studio that has one main product in development. They're cranking out a good bit of nice 3D video for their promotional stuff and it looks as good as anything else I've seen. They obviously have a nice budget for this project, but they ARE a startup.
In China, if you say the wrong things, you can be arrested and then executed. That simply does not happen in the US. There IS a definite difference.
Don't take me for some cheerleader of the US. I'm horrified by other abuses, like warrantless wiretaps and rendition... but that has nothing to do with a real China vs. US rights comparison.
So you don't know how to use an ellipsis? Is this the vaunted middle school education you spoke of in your other comment?
It was a typo. It happens. Btw, condescending remarks like yours make it impossible for anyone to love you, both physically and emotionally. I'll live with my occasional typos. You'll live with everyone hating you because you're a virgin prick.
Bah, that's such bullshit.
China is *bad*. The U.S. is *bad*. But to say that the U.S. is "just as bad" is ridiculous and obviously false. Do even the most casual of checks about free speech rights in the US versus China, and you'll see how silly your statement is.
For all of its many faults, the U.S. has generally outstanding freedom of speech. You can say all kinds of things here that would float anywhere else in the world. Just look at how Holocaust denial is treated in Europe. Or imagine how long someone like Alex Jones could operate in China, railing against the Chinese and thousands of real or imagines murderous conspiracies.
I disagree that the need for this kind of thing is esoteric.
I live in a house where there are three computers and three people who use them to play games. As it is, if we're all going to play the newest games (which we don't) we would need to keep three computers upgraded. If the graphics processing was shared by all three from some kind of household graphics server, it would certainly be cheaper to meet everyone's needs.
Hardware graphics acceleration is definitely catching on for general use. Windows 7 and Ubuntu both use it in their regular desktop environment.
Let the word go out of the new understanding between Nerds and Bullies. No longer let them be enemies. Indeed, they are as the same flesh, and today they have become brothers under a common cause. Let the norms now tremble before the combined might of the Nerds and Bullies, hereafter known collectively as the Outcasts. Their powers of intelligence and strength have at last combined in a mighty aliance.
2. overclock is slowly until it dies
3. get a replacement
4. overclock it just under the death level
5. profit!
Game producers could take a hint, and release a "pirated" version of their game, put it up on the torrent sites, sit back and allow the wider community to pay for distribution - then wait for a lot of pirates to come back and pay for the "value added" version that includes Alien.
I think they call that shareware. And yes, back when shareware was first introduced, it did a little somethin somethin for the game industry.
I'm sorry, but there's no way that's a real caller. That's someone playing stupid and following a script.
It's easy to tell, because she fits perfectly the mold of what right-wing conservative radio show hosts want us to THINK that left wingers are. She presented a mismash of misrepresented left wing ideas such as immigration law reform and public welfare programs. It was calculated to make their listeners reject everything she mentioned.
That's a good point. Even if the world suddenly decided to conserve helium for future generations, it would only take one smiling politician to win favor by using it up. The idea that a valuable resource could survive the next 100 years of George Bush Jr's and Bill Clintons is laughable. It wouldn't take long for the rich to get a little richer and for the resource to be gone.
Who can own a tree? Who can own a rock? Only the great spirit.
You made a great argument, but couldn't resist slipping this in there: "nothing but lies, just like the rest of christianity."
Please, keep your militant atheism under wraps, at least when you're trying to make a controversial point about an unrelated topic. It muddies your argument and by attaching a controversial rider, you're certain to instantly lose plenty of people who might have otherwise been converted.
Just a fun example, imagine if we sold recycling like this: "By recycling, you can help ensure a better tomorrow for our children, as long as you don't kill them with abortions first." Imagine how well that would go over in California.
A bit off topic here, but I had a great experience with Virtual Boy too, and to this day I still have a great fondness for the system. As much as anything, I suspect that the market just didn't want a monochrome device.
So Nintendo rolls out the best thing in handheld games since the first Gameboy, and suddenly 3D is bad for children. What a coincidence. I suspect that this is just an underhanded PR attack against Nintendo by one of its rivals.
What example did they make of RATM, and how?
Shit, don't bother with the Polish plumbers. For a job like this, we need the best there is. We need a certain Italian plumber.
Totally off topic... but I downloaded a demo of your game, and I had to click through like ten different links to finally find it through your "Worthplaying" mirror. In fact your "Worthplaying" mirror eventually leads to FileFront, which could have been your first link. For the love of Pete... just put the damned thing up on Amazon's cloud service or some similar, cheap storage. I came *this* close to giving up on the download, and only morbid curiosity kept me clicking because I wanted to see how deep that rabbit hole went. I'm an independent game developer too (http://www.billiardscomplete.com) and I want nothing in this than for you to succeed. But burying your hard work so that other people can make ad revenue is not the way to do that. Anyway, good luck in the future. I hope I like your game enough to buy it ;)
You were modded funny, but I think that's because most of the Slashdot crowd has never spent time in the midwest/south. I happen to live in the rural midwest. I think our coastal population is unaware that the country's gooey filling contains hundreds of thousands of religious zealots who literally rival the Taliban for religious rigidity and enthusiasm. My family all fit into that category. They believe that every bit of the Bible is absolutely literally true. I'm the only person in my family who understands/believes in evolution and the big bang. Believe me when I say that these people will arm themselves and fight if a tagging system ever comes through. They see accepting "the mark" as a one way ticket to hell. They'll see death as a glorious service to God. Just imagine the hardcore midwest Christians, faced with damnation, imbued with all the zealotry for martyrdom of any tribal Afghani and they gleefully slaughter the soldiers in the army of Satan, in other words, everyone else but them.