XBox Live Arcade is a collection of cheap and nasty games like Frogger which probably took a single guy 2 hours to code including drawing the sprites. Think bargain bucket games from the early 1980s.
I hate to yank your hyperbole-bubble back down to one standard atmosphere, but XBLA contains, amongst other things, the two best computer ports ever produced of two of the best board games ever produced, a complete and well-executed Smash Brothers clone, a number of excellent arcade-perfect translation of classics, fucking Symphony of the Night, and numerous first-time attempts from indy developers showcasing a several consumer game development engines.
If you could execute any one of the above in two hours, you're too talented to troll.
1.They can increase their prices so that they can afford to expand their network so it can handle the increased amount of multimedia traffic.
Yes. That would be the consumer paying fair compensation for his/her consumption.
2.They can introduce limits on how much you can download so that your $x per month only includes 10GB of transfers or 5GB of transfers or whatever.
Yes. That would be the consumer paying fair compensation for his/her consumption.
3.They can throttle access to the high bandwidth multimedia sites unless those sites are willing to pay money to the ISP to cover the fact that the ISPs network cant handle the traffic.
No. That would be the corporation trying to offset inaccurate projections, failed vision, and deceptive "low flat fee for everything!" marketing by making someone other than the consumer foot the bill for his/her consumption.
If what you call 'personal freedom' is so aptly represented by the right to bear firearms, I'd say you have a really strange idea of 'freedom'. IMO the most important representatives of personal freedom are freedom of speech, freedom of thought, political preferences, sexual preferences, the right to decide what you do with your own property, the right to proper health care and education, even for the less wealthy, etc. etc. etc.
Suppose on a lark I bought a beat up motorcycle, and let you, a volunteer work on it for fun. Then one day I decide to race competitively, and offer to compensate you for your time. So you calculate all the hours you spent on it, lookup what pro pit mechanics are paid an hour, and suggest I pay you for 800 hours at that rate. I'd probably 'balk' at that too.
That would be a great analogy, except that:
1. Obama didn't buy the bike. 2. The volunteer actually produced a top-tier, race-trim motorcycle.
I dunno. The whole thing's shady grey, and no one is walking away from it clean.
And yet the only games out there with a zero percent piracy ratio are all PC-only: MMOGs. They have a headstart in the anti-piracy crusade: connecting to a central server is an integral part of the game, so verifying that the user's CD key is unique can be done without much fuss.
Not all MMO's have been PC-only (and of those, there has been piracy, PSO anyone?). Further, I'd argue that connecting to a central server with a CD key is not proof against piracy. Finally, the primary financial outlay surrounding an MMO is purchased time, not software.
Don't get me wrong, the pressures facing the PC side of the industry are very real. But if we're talking about means-to-profit, piracy is not the main threat that the MMO's face by a long shot. As with many things, the fulcrum is much lower elsewhere . . . account phishing and gold farming are by-and-large the most profitable way to attack the system.
I'm also very curious about the implied assertion that game piracy has been licked in the console world.
Hell, at least the scalpers and ebayers are showing intelligence and initialize so good for them.
That's initiative. I'm reasonably cerain they're not clearing out their memory registers and entering the main run routines of scalp() and fleece(). But hey, its the holidays! Why can't it be both?
Ah yes, the old "everybody else is doing it so why shouldn't I" mentality. Nothing like the wisdom of the masses to point you in the right direction...
Ah yes, the old "the crowd's doing it, it must be wrong" mentality. Nothing like unfounded elitism to point you in the right direction...
That's the great thing about Slashdot. You can trade fallacies all day and have nothing to show for it.:)
You know, with x (where x>2) hundred thousand transactions a day in y (where y>39) countries, I'm force to believe that these instances are a ridiculous (if no less unfortunate) rounding error of a minority.
With all the payment methods available, and every PayPal-sucks/blows/eatsballs site pushing their own superior alternative, you'd think that no one would use PayPal. And yet . . .
If sites or their ISPs start becoming complicit, there's not a lot to be done. At one of the organizations I consult for, MS ISA servers have been used in bridging mode to front all SSL traffic - no one gets to publish an SSL site to the world without sending a certificate export to the ISA team. All traffic is decrypted, analyzed, and re-encrypted to its original destination, totally transparent to the client.
I see this as a rising trend in my client space, and my visibility is pretty limited. Who knows what's going on on a larger scale. Forewarned.
I strongly recommend you play Silent Hill 2, regardless of your genre preferences. It will be worth every minute and dollar spent.
=== YOU WERE WARNED ===
I would wholeheartedly agree, and add the following points --
- Silent Hill and its immediate sequel gave me nightmares for months. Some combination of factors and elements resonated very strongly with something in me that's probably quite broken.
- Your comment re: the unseen machinery touches on something psychological that I haven't been able to identify. Even when you were utterly alone, you could always hear something else - footsteps just beyond your vision in the fog, a murmered conversation from a source you can't quite locate, distant subway cars from a platform you can't seem to find - Silent Hill worked hard to reinforce the point that you weren't just alone in an uncaring Hell -- you were cut off.
- The story in the first game was pretty crazy. I had to read some plot analyses before I could take it all in. After I did, I regretted my curiousity. The second game, however, truly floored me. I will always remember, right before the end when James finds Angela ascending the flaming staircase in the middle of the inferno, as it is the one time the player (and James) is let in on the extent and nature of Angela's personal hell:
*The tone of Angela's voice suddenly changes.*
Angela: Or maybe you think you can save me? Will you love me? Take care of
me? Heal all my pain?
*James doesn't respond.*
Angela: That's what I thought. James. Give me back that knife.
*Angela reaches her hand out towards James.*
James: No... I, I won't.
Angela: Saving it for yourself?
*Angela begins to walk up the fiery staircase.*
James: Me? No... I'd never kill myself....
It's hot as hell in here.
Angela: You see it too? For me, it's always like this.
It's important to understand the context of what Silent Hill (the place) is in order to understand the characters' reactions to it. Silent Hill is not a simple Hell, but an extremely personal one - every person in it perceives it differently. Where as James sees (while lucid, anyway) a colorless, abandoned, dusty shell of the Silent Hill of his memories (reflecting the loss of color and definition in his life when his wife passed away), Angela perceives every detail as a reflection of her horrific victimization - everything on fire, bloody pistons oscillating in and out of the walls, automatic assumption of shame and guilt in any lengthy conversation. It's amazing how it all gets woven together into the same place.
And the manequins and the pyramid heads? Cripes, don't get me started.
If you print more dollars, all dollars become worthless.
In the Spirit of Science, I accepted your challenge. However, all my high-quality color laserjet will produce are sheets of paper that state "Please hold your position while our quality specialists triangulate your printing problem." Maybe I should move to high-quality inkjet?
Slashdot Mirror
XBox Live Arcade is a collection of cheap and nasty games like Frogger which probably took a single guy 2 hours to code including drawing the sprites. Think bargain bucket games from the early 1980s.
I hate to yank your hyperbole-bubble back down to one standard atmosphere, but XBLA contains, amongst other things, the two best computer ports ever produced of two of the best board games ever produced, a complete and well-executed Smash Brothers clone, a number of excellent arcade-perfect translation of classics, fucking Symphony of the Night, and numerous first-time attempts from indy developers showcasing a several consumer game development engines.
If you could execute any one of the above in two hours, you're too talented to troll.
M
"A fool and his money will soon party."
--Hu Sen
Nazi Germany started war on the entire world, thinking they were big, mighty, and unstoppable. And what happened?
Godwin showed up and told you to sit down.
You arrogant bastard.
Bang Camaro
You think you're funny - every Google engineer I know is madly in love with that game.
In order to "understand" your otherwise "insightful" post, I needed to "upgrade" my quote-finger "receptors". My "bill" will be in the "mail".
M
1.They can increase their prices so that they can afford to expand their network so it can handle the increased amount of multimedia traffic.
Yes. That would be the consumer paying fair compensation for his/her consumption.
2.They can introduce limits on how much you can download so that your $x per month only includes 10GB of transfers or 5GB of transfers or whatever.
Yes. That would be the consumer paying fair compensation for his/her consumption.
3.They can throttle access to the high bandwidth multimedia sites unless those sites are willing to pay money to the ISP to cover the fact that the ISPs network cant handle the traffic.
No. That would be the corporation trying to offset inaccurate projections, failed vision, and deceptive "low flat fee for everything!" marketing by making someone other than the consumer foot the bill for his/her consumption.
Maybe i should get into tax politics.
If what you call 'personal freedom' is so aptly represented by the right to bear firearms, I'd say you have a really strange idea of 'freedom'. IMO the most important representatives of personal freedom are freedom of speech, freedom of thought, political preferences, sexual preferences, the right to decide what you do with your own property, the right to proper health care and education, even for the less wealthy, etc. etc. etc.
And how, precisely, do you intend to defend them?
Where's '+1 Flamebait' when you need it?
Suppose on a lark I bought a beat up motorcycle, and let you, a volunteer work on it for fun. Then one day I decide to race competitively, and offer to compensate you for your time. So you calculate all the hours you spent on it, lookup what pro pit mechanics are paid an hour, and suggest I pay you for 800 hours at that rate. I'd probably 'balk' at that too.
That would be a great analogy, except that:
1. Obama didn't buy the bike.
2. The volunteer actually produced a top-tier, race-trim motorcycle.
I dunno. The whole thing's shady grey, and no one is walking away from it clean.
M
French Train Breaks Speed Record
Yes, but in forward or reverse? Ba-zing!
And yet the only games out there with a zero percent piracy ratio are all PC-only: MMOGs. They have a headstart in the anti-piracy crusade: connecting to a central server is an integral part of the game, so verifying that the user's CD key is unique can be done without much fuss.
Not all MMO's have been PC-only (and of those, there has been piracy, PSO anyone?). Further, I'd argue that connecting to a central server with a CD key is not proof against piracy. Finally, the primary financial outlay surrounding an MMO is purchased time, not software.
Don't get me wrong, the pressures facing the PC side of the industry are very real. But if we're talking about means-to-profit, piracy is not the main threat that the MMO's face by a long shot. As with many things, the fulcrum is much lower elsewhere . . . account phishing and gold farming are by-and-large the most profitable way to attack the system.
I'm also very curious about the implied assertion that game piracy has been licked in the console world.
M
The problem with OMGPonies-day at /. is that I begin to doubt even pleasant, plausible news by proximity . . .
. . .which utterly destroys the last vestiges of due process for ordinary Americans . . .
Last vestiges? Dude, where have you been? I haven't had any vestiges in like 5 and a half years. I am completely out of vestiges!
If anyone sees my vestiges, tell them to come home. I miss them.
I accept your challenge.
Hell, at least the scalpers and ebayers are showing intelligence and initialize so good for them.
That's initiative. I'm reasonably cerain they're not clearing out their memory registers and entering the main run routines of scalp() and fleece(). But hey, its the holidays! Why can't it be both?
Ah yes, the old "everybody else is doing it so why shouldn't I" mentality. Nothing like the wisdom of the masses to point you in the right direction...
:)
Ah yes, the old "the crowd's doing it, it must be wrong" mentality. Nothing like unfounded elitism to point you in the right direction...
That's the great thing about Slashdot. You can trade fallacies all day and have nothing to show for it.
You know, with x (where x>2) hundred thousand transactions a day in y (where y>39) countries, I'm force to believe that these instances are a ridiculous (if no less unfortunate) rounding error of a minority.
With all the payment methods available, and every PayPal-sucks/blows/eatsballs site pushing their own superior alternative, you'd think that no one would use PayPal. And yet . . .
I, for one, demand that the devs give the taxpayers some love and nerf the IRS. Everybody bump until we see some blue text!
Then again, Paypal has never made any business sense anyways...
Yeah, that 50% year-over-year revenue growth thing is crazy. Just what are they thinking?
Sadly, that does not solve all problems.
If sites or their ISPs start becoming complicit, there's not a lot to be done. At one of the organizations I consult for, MS ISA servers have been used in bridging mode to front all SSL traffic - no one gets to publish an SSL site to the world without sending a certificate export to the ISA team. All traffic is decrypted, analyzed, and re-encrypted to its original destination, totally transparent to the client.
I see this as a rising trend in my client space, and my visibility is pretty limited. Who knows what's going on on a larger scale. Forewarned.
M
=== SPOILERS BELOW ===
I strongly recommend you play Silent Hill 2, regardless of your genre preferences. It will be worth every minute and dollar spent.
=== YOU WERE WARNED ===
I would wholeheartedly agree, and add the following points --
- Silent Hill and its immediate sequel gave me nightmares for months. Some combination of factors and elements resonated very strongly with something in me that's probably quite broken.
- Your comment re: the unseen machinery touches on something psychological that I haven't been able to identify. Even when you were utterly alone, you could always hear something else - footsteps just beyond your vision in the fog, a murmered conversation from a source you can't quite locate, distant subway cars from a platform you can't seem to find - Silent Hill worked hard to reinforce the point that you weren't just alone in an uncaring Hell -- you were cut off.
- The story in the first game was pretty crazy. I had to read some plot analyses before I could take it all in. After I did, I regretted my curiousity. The second game, however, truly floored me. I will always remember, right before the end when James finds Angela ascending the flaming staircase in the middle of the inferno, as it is the one time the player (and James) is let in on the extent and nature of Angela's personal hell:
*The tone of Angela's voice suddenly changes.*
Angela: Or maybe you think you can save me? Will you love me? Take care of
me? Heal all my pain?
*James doesn't respond.*
Angela: That's what I thought. James. Give me back that knife.
*Angela reaches her hand out towards James.*
James: No... I, I won't.
Angela: Saving it for yourself?
*Angela begins to walk up the fiery staircase.*
James: Me? No... I'd never kill myself....
It's hot as hell in here.
Angela: You see it too? For me, it's always like this.
It's important to understand the context of what Silent Hill (the place) is in order to understand the characters' reactions to it. Silent Hill is not a simple Hell, but an extremely personal one - every person in it perceives it differently. Where as James sees (while lucid, anyway) a colorless, abandoned, dusty shell of the Silent Hill of his memories (reflecting the loss of color and definition in his life when his wife passed away), Angela perceives every detail as a reflection of her horrific victimization - everything on fire, bloody pistons oscillating in and out of the walls, automatic assumption of shame and guilt in any lengthy conversation. It's amazing how it all gets woven together into the same place.
And the manequins and the pyramid heads? Cripes, don't get me started.
M
If you print more dollars, all dollars become worthless.
In the Spirit of Science, I accepted your challenge. However, all my high-quality color laserjet will produce are sheets of paper that state "Please hold your position while our quality specialists triangulate your printing problem." Maybe I should move to high-quality inkjet?
This is going to get our patch management team into a blazing row . . .