When the ESRB was first forced on the game publishers ~10 years ago the standard byline of the time was "We don't want to censor game manufactureres. We just want parents to have the ability to know what their kids are actually buying!"
Now 10 years later... There are too many M-rated games being advertised in game magazines that kids read. This is bad.
Check out the seat belt laws too... 20 years ago in my state it was "We don't want to arrest people for not wearing their seat belts, we just need a seat belt law to increase awareness." So the law was written such that you couldn't be pulled over for not wearing a seat belt. You could only get a ticket for not wearing a seat belt if you were pulled over for something else. 2 years ago, they had the law changed. "Too many people are still not wearing seat belts, so we need to pull people over so that we can save more lives." So now we have random spot checks throughout the city where they take a look and see if you're not wearing your seat belt.
And the scenes aren't really THAT big of a deal for me. (It'd just "add another ending" as other people have been complaining about... not realizing that that was EXACTLY how the book "ended")
But it'd be nice as an ultimate gift of fan service and maybe as a sign of respect for the art/story to do it.
(Besides, I can't think of how much more footage he can put back in besides the trashing of the Shire... Though I'm sure others on here will tell me.:) )
I could see a "blue army/red army" take on it though. But I have no problem with generic "terrorists" anymore than I had problems playing Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians when I was a kid.
Games are still a form of communication/media. Yeah you still have to push buttons and DO things (unless, y'know, you're playing MGS 2...) but you're still taking in information.
And if you can be informed by passive media, then why not interactive media?
The bigger question still to be discovered.... Is interactive media a good way to impart emotional states upon the user? Can it be as expressive as passive art or does the interactivity "get in the way" and it would've been better just to have done it passivly to begin with?
I worked at a pizza place while going to college. The managers there regularly worked 60 hour weeks for their salary. 9 hours to manage the business plus about 2-3 hours afterwards to handle closing and settling up the paperwork and bills for the night then dropping the cash off at the bank.
Salaried employees aren't paid x dollars for y time of work. They're paid x dollars to do a JOB.
I worked in the game industry too. Yeah, it was a sweatshop at times. It was also a LOT of fun. The sweatshop attitude wasn't entirely management's fault. They wanted a game in 12 months. We wanted a GREAT game and would regularly spend the extra time coding and experimenting to get the best result. Then, of course, we'd slip and management would hold us to our time. Then we'd get pissed at management and management would get pissed at us and the death march would begin.
The point is that it's not all "evil" management's fault. (Sometimes it is, but not always). But ultimately, the choice to work 80 hour work weeks lies with the individual, not the company.
That's assuming the file was named xxx.gif.exe, but the article doesn't say that. Obviously there was a payload inside of it, obviously Microsoft blocks executables (generally) from being run. I'm just trying to figure out how the gif file (assuming that it doesn't have the.exe extension) could get executed if you're using reasonable security.
"The victim of the attack found that a file called "img1big.gif" had been loaded onto their machine. Because of the account restrictions on the person running the machine, it had failed to install properly, which was why it had come to their attention. It is this file that they forwarded to the SANS Internet Storm Center for analysis."
Does another exploit change the.gif name to.exe or attempt to unzip the.gif file? If not, why does IE allow.gif's to be installed?!
Like another poster pointed out, Load Shedding is done to great effect to help curb power use. The Best Buys' in my area subscribe to this by cranking up the temperature in summers to lower AC usage and/or by turning off half the lights.
But I don't see how this is going to work in office buildings. Turn the AC down in my office by even a few degrees and it gets unbearably hot. The office also has few windows and only one set of fluorescent lights per office, turn out the lights and we cna't do any work.
What's that leave, the company water fountain?
"Fountain's off" "Oh, must've been a price increase for power this morning..."
That was back in the days when most games consisted of mindlessly eating dots or mindlessly shooting waves upon waves of enemy something and strategy amounted to getting a power pill or not shooting friendlies, this game came along.
You could change uniforms and sneak around as a guard. (Something today's games rarely let you do) Shooting treasure chests revealed ammo, uniforms, nothing, or sometimes exploded the entire room. Guards would shout at you in real speech! You could run away from guards by hiding in rooms until things cooled off.
It was a huge change in complexity of games. Wolfenstein 3D was a great honorarium to it, but obviously not the same game.
They've pushed the price as low as they can go, and they're vehemently criticizing (but not disputing) reports that the XBox 2 will not be backwards compatible.
Wow, what a "brilliant" decision. Hey, we wash cars... lets take this free stuff off the net, throw it onto a computer and sell the computer at going Windows rates! We'll even charge them more money to help them install additional "free" Linux games and software!
I'm all for Open Source in theory. Because, as a software engineer, I know that stuff I put into the "pool" might help people make other/better stuff that goes back into the pool I'll draw from which will hopefully make my stuff better. But what do any of us engineers get from this?
"Herbicide-tolerant plants with a purity grade of 95 to 98 percent in relation to the patent-protected characteristic had been found in large areas of Schmeiser's canola cultivation area"
The 95-98% pure figure, I believe, refers to the percentage of the gene match between the patented Canola and the "homegrown" variety found on the farm.
It depends on what you mean by "threatening". If they pull out their guns and start barking orders, that's probably going to be justifiable use. On the other hand, if they have their guns holstered and start barking orders... that's probably not. Grey areas like that go to trial.
Holding a person at gun-point until the police arrive is permissible but not recommended for the average citizen.
That's called "murder"
on
Open Source Life?
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· Score: 2, Informative
You have the right to defend your property, but if they run away when you show up with your gun, you can't shoot them. You also can't shoot first if they're just stealing seeds. There has to be a threat to your life to justify shooting somebody.
Innocent? Not quite...
on
Open Source Life?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Judge Andrew MacKay refused to believe Schmeiser's initial assertion that so much transgenic canola pollen had drifted on to his field solely via wind and bees. During the trial, Schmeiser had already admitted 'experimenting' with Monsanto's Roundup Ready seed on his field. Herbicide-tolerant plants with a purity grade of 95 to 98 percent in relation to the patent-protected characteristic had been found in large areas of Schmeiser's canola cultivation area. Various experts testified in court that unintentional mixing via pollen flight from neighbouring fields could not have caused the discovery of this much Roundup Ready
Numerous farmers and agricultural experts share this view, as did the judge, who pronounced: 'I have found that he [Schmeiser] seeded that crop from seed saved in 1997 which he knew or ought to have known was Roundup tolerant, and samples of plants from that seed were found to contain the plaintiffs' patented claims for genes and cells.'
Now, personally, I'm of the belief that if Schmeiser arrived at his particular seed crop genetics through natural selection (which appears to be the case from my cursory research) then he should be allowed to make use of that crop HE developed naturally. But it appears that the law's viewpoint is that he knowingly developed "Roundup" proof crops to specifically use Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide without paying them a license fee. That's definitely a violation of existing patent law.
I thought their home base was always in Northern California?
Still... you gotta wonder... How can there be articles one month proclaiming how the video game industry takes in more money than Hollywood and is stealing viewers from TELEVISION, but yet everybody is "losing" money and firing people left and right.
Almost like the publishers are churning the staff so they don't have to pay real salaries and can keep hiring kids outta school at basement prices to work on the revitalization of Leisure Suit Larry...
about cutting our comuters, slitting ribbon cables and overclocking our processors that we complain about not having ultimate authority about everything being in its perfect place in our cars!
Slashdot Mirror
For kids to take public transportation. By your argument, the government should mandate that too.
When the ESRB was first forced on the game publishers ~10 years ago the standard byline of the time was "We don't want to censor game manufactureres. We just want parents to have the ability to know what their kids are actually buying!"
Now 10 years later... There are too many M-rated games being advertised in game magazines that kids read. This is bad.
Check out the seat belt laws too... 20 years ago in my state it was "We don't want to arrest people for not wearing their seat belts, we just need a seat belt law to increase awareness." So the law was written such that you couldn't be pulled over for not wearing a seat belt. You could only get a ticket for not wearing a seat belt if you were pulled over for something else. 2 years ago, they had the law changed. "Too many people are still not wearing seat belts, so we need to pull people over so that we can save more lives." So now we have random spot checks throughout the city where they take a look and see if you're not wearing your seat belt.
But remember, this is all for your own good.
You ever try to SELL that old C64 tape drive!?
I couldn't give mine away! (though it served me well for several years)
And the scenes aren't really THAT big of a deal for me. (It'd just "add another ending" as other people have been complaining about... not realizing that that was EXACTLY how the book "ended")
:) )
But it'd be nice as an ultimate gift of fan service and maybe as a sign of respect for the art/story to do it.
(Besides, I can't think of how much more footage he can put back in besides the trashing of the Shire... Though I'm sure others on here will tell me.
The first two movies clocked in at around 2 and a half hours. The extended editions put them both around the 3 and a half hours.
ROTK STARTED at 3 and a half hours... How long is the *extended* edition going to be!?!
(and will it include the destruction of Hobbiton scenes?)
Er.. the animated series Joe from the mid-80's.
I could see a "blue army/red army" take on it though. But I have no problem with generic "terrorists" anymore than I had problems playing Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians when I was a kid.
Games are still a form of communication/media. Yeah you still have to push buttons and DO things (unless, y'know, you're playing MGS 2...) but you're still taking in information.
And if you can be informed by passive media, then why not interactive media?
The bigger question still to be discovered.... Is interactive media a good way to impart emotional states upon the user? Can it be as expressive as passive art or does the interactivity "get in the way" and it would've been better just to have done it passivly to begin with?
What about EA's sports franchise? Isn't that still a profit center for EA? Or is that losing money as well?
Proven to disable a US Destroyer.
Windows NT.
I suggest that we make it export tariff free and make sure it gets distributed far and wide.
Because that makes about as much logical sense as this legislation.
I worked at a pizza place while going to college. The managers there regularly worked 60 hour weeks for their salary. 9 hours to manage the business plus about 2-3 hours afterwards to handle closing and settling up the paperwork and bills for the night then dropping the cash off at the bank.
Salaried employees aren't paid x dollars for y time of work. They're paid x dollars to do a JOB.
I worked in the game industry too. Yeah, it was a sweatshop at times. It was also a LOT of fun. The sweatshop attitude wasn't entirely management's fault. They wanted a game in 12 months. We wanted a GREAT game and would regularly spend the extra time coding and experimenting to get the best result. Then, of course, we'd slip and management would hold us to our time. Then we'd get pissed at management and management would get pissed at us and the death march would begin.
The point is that it's not all "evil" management's fault. (Sometimes it is, but not always). But ultimately, the choice to work 80 hour work weeks lies with the individual, not the company.
Ah, okay. The CHM exploit is what this whole shebang has been all about...
That's assuming the file was named xxx.gif.exe, but the article doesn't say that. Obviously there was a payload inside of it, obviously Microsoft blocks executables (generally) from being run. I'm just trying to figure out how the gif file (assuming that it doesn't have the .exe extension) could get executed if you're using reasonable security.
"The victim of the attack found that a file called "img1big.gif" had been loaded onto their machine. Because of the account restrictions on the person running the machine, it had failed to install properly, which was why it had come to their attention. It is this file that they forwarded to the SANS Internet Storm Center for analysis."
.gif name to .exe or attempt to unzip the .gif file? If not, why does IE allow .gif's to be installed?!
Does another exploit change the
Like another poster pointed out, Load Shedding is done to great effect to help curb power use. The Best Buys' in my area subscribe to this by cranking up the temperature in summers to lower AC usage and/or by turning off half the lights.
But I don't see how this is going to work in office buildings. Turn the AC down in my office by even a few degrees and it gets unbearably hot. The office also has few windows and only one set of fluorescent lights per office, turn out the lights and we cna't do any work.
What's that leave, the company water fountain?
"Fountain's off"
"Oh, must've been a price increase for power this morning..."
That was back in the days when most games consisted of mindlessly eating dots or mindlessly shooting waves upon waves of enemy something and strategy amounted to getting a power pill or not shooting friendlies, this game came along.
You could change uniforms and sneak around as a guard. (Something today's games rarely let you do)
Shooting treasure chests revealed ammo, uniforms, nothing, or sometimes exploded the entire room.
Guards would shout at you in real speech!
You could run away from guards by hiding in rooms until things cooled off.
It was a huge change in complexity of games. Wolfenstein 3D was a great honorarium to it, but obviously not the same game.
Then why don't these guys give away the computers and their services for free or AT COST?
Is an attempt to further drum-up support...
They've pushed the price as low as they can go, and they're vehemently criticizing (but not disputing) reports that the XBox 2 will not be backwards compatible.
Wow, what a "brilliant" decision. Hey, we wash cars... lets take this free stuff off the net, throw it onto a computer and sell the computer at going Windows rates! We'll even charge them more money to help them install additional "free" Linux games and software!
I'm all for Open Source in theory. Because, as a software engineer, I know that stuff I put into the "pool" might help people make other/better stuff that goes back into the pool I'll draw from which will hopefully make my stuff better. But what do any of us engineers get from this?
The one you're referring to:
"Herbicide-tolerant plants with a purity grade of 95 to 98 percent in relation to the patent-protected characteristic had been found in large areas of Schmeiser's canola cultivation area"
The 95-98% pure figure, I believe, refers to the percentage of the gene match between the patented Canola and the "homegrown" variety found on the farm.
It depends on what you mean by "threatening". If they pull out their guns and start barking orders, that's probably going to be justifiable use. On the other hand, if they have their guns holstered and start barking orders... that's probably not. Grey areas like that go to trial.
Holding a person at gun-point until the police arrive is permissible but not recommended for the average citizen.
You have the right to defend your property, but if they run away when you show up with your gun, you can't shoot them. You also can't shoot first if they're just stealing seeds. There has to be a threat to your life to justify shooting somebody.
Now, personally, I'm of the belief that if Schmeiser arrived at his particular seed crop genetics through natural selection (which appears to be the case from my cursory research) then he should be allowed to make use of that crop HE developed naturally. But it appears that the law's viewpoint is that he knowingly developed "Roundup" proof crops to specifically use Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide without paying them a license fee. That's definitely a violation of existing patent law.
I thought their home base was always in Northern California?
Still... you gotta wonder... How can there be articles one month proclaiming how the video game industry takes in more money than Hollywood and is stealing viewers from TELEVISION, but yet everybody is "losing" money and firing people left and right.
Almost like the publishers are churning the staff so they don't have to pay real salaries and can keep hiring kids outta school at basement prices to work on the revitalization of Leisure Suit Larry...
about cutting our comuters, slitting ribbon cables and overclocking our processors that we complain about not having ultimate authority about everything being in its perfect place in our cars!
:)
But otherwise, you're perfectly right.