I'll start with my opinion on one game, I don't like CJ from San Andreas, Not because he's black, not because he's from LA, but because he's a stupid idiot who doesn't seem to realize how moronic his friend Ryder is. "We'll rob the goverment" The answer to that is "Stop smoking that shit because you are dumber than the retard down the street". Yet in SA you just go along with his plan.
I don't care if your character is black, white, or asian. I personally like "white" characters if I had to choose, but if I want a strong tough battle hardened character, I'll probably take a black guy. (Cole train with out the voice). If I want a cool ninja that's definatly an asian character. If I want a mafioso it's going to have to be white (And italian). But all of these choices are based off ROLE not race.
Do I not like black characters? Well yeah in the end, because most of the time they are so stereotypically black that it's a waste of a good character. But I like Cole Train, I like a lot of the characters outside of the gang in San Andreas (the CRASH unit was hilarious). Do I like asian characters? Well probably but again it's because they are portrayed as ninjas, samurais, and other cool stuff I like.
So the answer to the question is race doesn't matter as long as the developers don't do the stereotypical things with race. It's the same as females in games. As long as you don't make every female like Yuna (FFX she was weak, and then in FFX2 all three females were ditzy airheads) I don't mind playing as one. Lara Croft could have sold as well with out the chest because she was a tough as nails archeologist, and except for Indiana Jones we didn't have many of those.
Welcome to america. I've been voting for 7 years, starting with Bush and Gore. Never had a vote that I cared about.
You had The child versus the Bore, The fighter vs. the defender. The democratic primary is likely (unless they have a brain in their head) the female who won't get elected vs. the black guy who might get elected. And they will go up against the NYC hero (Guiliani, though mainly because everyone else on the republican ticket looks old).
Last presidential election was easily the worse. People who supported the war HAD TO vote Bush because it was obvious Kerry was going to try to do everything to stop it. People who disagreed with Kerry's flipflopping also voted for Bush.
Of course Kerry's whole campaign was "people who don't like Bush or the war", so he was banking his whole campaign on that fact. Atleast that's what I kept hearing. I couldn't listen to either candidates because Bush was just telling the public the same message, and Kerry was trying so hard to say "I'll be exactly like Bush except exactly the opposite".
Personally I hate Obama for one reason. No track record, they don't want the baggage (for good reasons, democrats have way too much to run for president) but then again if I cared about the candidate it wouldn't be an American election.
The only games that are allowed to be hard drive required are MMORPGs and similar. It's not an imaginary edict, it's an official edict.
However Football Manager is debatably an MMORPG and Microsoft might give them a by, They probably pulled it off by mentioning the size of save files. I personally don't know how that conversation went, but I know how the conversation normally go. They start with no and end with way.. So 99 percent of the games that comes out will not be allowed to do this.
Oblivion does use the HD to cache but it HAS TO Be able to run the same on the Core and Preminum edition system. If Oblivion relied on that cache to play it would not be approved for the 360.
By "preparing the youth of the country for their future lives" you really mean "indoctrinating them into your way of thinking while giving them a basic understanding of minor concepts you're told to", don't you?
I don't think this article is about calling Germans Nazis. In fact the article only uses Nazi in reference to a law.
However the problem is the german goverment is so afraid of violence that they are stopping violent games from entering their country and a point can be made why? It's not like violent games actually created World War 1 or 2, or any other war. There's questions as to whether violent acts are influenced by violent video games. The Violent games are a recent symptom of a large issue, which is whether or not Germany is too afraid of violence and struggling for pacfism, yet they are able to do this because of the fear of another violent uprising.
When you have such an interesting and amazing statistic point such as the nazi regime, along with a goverment trying to pretend that video games or fictious media is what creates violence, it would be criminal not to at least acknowledge it.
From what he is describing, there was no exchange of data. What it would be as if you stood 6 feet away from a drug dealer and had this conversation.
"Can I have some crack, the money is in my left pocket" "Ok I would like to do business with you" "thank you"
Notice they are 6 feet away, the dealer never gives any crack to the buyer, the buyer may or may not have any money in his pocket, is that illegal? Common sense says no and that is the exchange that is going on between the client and server at the point which BayTSP claims they are guilty.
No transaction necessarily takes place there's no exchange of goods or services, you just appear to want to do business but never go through with the transaction. If you want to say this is against the law, then go after tv shows that have people buying drugs, plays that have it also.
Actually you're right, and wrong. The Ps3 will actually install the game to a cache, if you switch discs or games, the cache will install a new game instead overwriting the first game. If you don't swap discs but power cycle the system, the game remains in memory (according to the specs I saw at work, but I might be wrong. Hardware developers HAVE been known to fudge info).
Essentially though it's installing, it has to be done to allow the game to run, it doesn't have to be done on the fly (the 360 has rules about long periods of unresponsiveness, the Ps3 doesn't), and except for the very semantics of the terms it's essentially installing. My point is more towards the future when it will become ACTUAL installing. But the difference is minor when you consider you're still waiting 5-10 minutes, whether you want to count that as a cache time or an install time is up to you, however I personally find the prospect distasteful.
Nothing other then Microsoft issuing an edict that it won't happen. Only MMOs and similar games will require hard drives. Everything else MUST be playable with a core edition system and possibly a memory card.
The other difference is the PS3 version is basically installing the game. What else do you call caching large quanities of data to a hard drive to be read back? Next generation every game is going to require 10 minute install times every time you switch discs. Oh joy, if only they gave us driver issues then it'd be all the reasons some of us got out of the PC market.
I think wikipedia solidly has the model right (even if the reviewing system is poor) about what's encyclopedic. The big point is pop culture and five minute stories arn't encyclopedic. The story about R.A.B. is a very special case as there is an encyclopedic nature to how the story was leaked, even there it's debatable if it will remain in the wiki (I don't see much there ).
No matter what site it is you won't be able to cite it. Many schools will not take any encyclopedia as a primary source in the first place (and if you have to use an encyclopedia as a source you really arn't trying hard enough.)
Wikipedia is a good first page to go to so you can learn the broad scope of a subject but if someone expect to be a master of knowledge with just wikipedia that's a problem. Any site similar to Wikipedia no matter what will fall into the same problem, no matter how many self appointed experts they promote. If the way to get your info on the site is through reference sites you can easily do that by faking three or four different sites about the info with the fake info.
The other thing is I've seen this before with www.tvtome.com There was a serious problem with "what is allowed". You would have editors who have different standards (and still do on www.tv.com) and then you'd have editors who did nothing but veto anyone's work and steal credit which makes people not want to contribute. Or just grab as many pages that they can and sit on them, not editing. All in all having an editor with the power to veto and approve work always ends up hurting collabrative efforts, not to meantion potential bias.
I didn't say ripping was piracy, and while yes your example is not essentially piracy you're likely in the minority. I'm sure there are others (even replying to me) that believe downloading music that you weren't going to buy is fine.
The only problem is there are ways to sample music with out buying it. Itunes gives a short listen time (but a low price for music) amazon and others usually provide popular CDs with previews. These are good ways to find out if Cds are worthy (Personally I have yet to find many but then again that's why god invented apple who invented itunes).
The biggest problem though is people don't believe boycotting will change anything and immediately go to piracy. The sad thing is this increases piracy. If for one year there was a 50 percent decrease in piracy and a 0 change in the profits of a record company this would solidly hit the companies where they live.
I'd like to address another poster other then the parent. The kid who doesn't have money for music or programs or other stuff is a myth. Most major programs have demos, academic versions, or cheap models. If they don't you don't need it. That's right, you DONT need it. Think a business will say "oh you only use Photoshop Express at home, you need to use Photoshop? nope. They'll look at your work. If they only want employees who use just photoshop are they worth it? Want a complier? There's multiple compliers that are free. Want a free OS, well your computer came with one most likely, or you can get Linux. Just because you want pretty Microsoft colors doesn't mean you're entitled to it.
The same kid who doesn't have money for music or games probably has a reason he doesn't have it. Guess what? Stealing doesn't work here. You seem to understand you don't need music to live, yet you're telling us that a kid needs this stuff. Either that kid needs a job, needs to budget money, or has other issues that probably should be resolved before he complicates it more by stealing. If a kid can't figure out a way to live with out theft he probably isn't trying hard enough, the options are out there.
Here's another hint. CDs are physical things, as is the money you use to buy it. That money isn't being transfered while you get the data on the CD. Keep pretending it's not stealing because you're only stealing data and you just play into their paranoia. If it's not physical why do need it anyways. Why do you care when people want to know everything your thinking, what if they tried to read your brain waves. It's not physical is it, so why should you have any privacy there? The answer is it's not.
You're rationalizing stealing by saying it works. Except you're not showing cause and effect. The only cause and effect is when movie companies sees more people are pirating and puts more money in lobbying, enforcement and DRM, and then blame the pirates. Guess what? We got here by going down this road, why continue on the road of piracy if all it'll get is more stubborn companies who will read it as people are thieves and they have to protect their property any way they can.
"I was not interested in it enough to buy or rent it"
So you own it but you wouldn't have paid money for it. This is the main defense of piracy and it still doesn't work. If you cared enough to have a copy of the DVD then you must want to see it. If you only want to see it one time why not borrow the DVD from your friend watch it once then return the DVD to your friend. That is a legal and perfectly fine alternative.
In addition copying a DVD for your own use isn't stealing, you are right, however when you sell that dvd off, you don't have the right to your copy any more, that's just simple facts. But you want to say copying a dvd and giving it to a friend is not stealing, yet it is. I don't care that you weren't going to buy it, if you weren't going to buy it then you don't need your own copy of it. Feel free to borrow it.
You don't have to buy a CD, if you like that one song then find a way to get it (Itunes is perfectly acceptable apparently, so why complain about CDs. If you disagree with the idea of CDs you have the ability to not purchase them).
If you disagree with the licensing agreements, again find a way you DO agree with because what you are doing only shows the studios the need for DRM. It won't change the studio's minds.
It doesn't matter what these are in your mind. If they are only "copying" or if they arn't lost sales, that's up to you. However the world, the courts, and the companies they are theft. Covering your ears and pretending they arn't doesn't help your case. The only solution here is to show them that they are wrong, and people like you pirating it and pretending your entitled to it only works against us.
One thing, if you don't read the entire post please don't comment on it. This is a long process but the biggest problem is people are acting like idiots about all this stuff and the companies are feeling threatened rather then realizing their actions are causing them problems.
First things you don't need a vista, music, movies, or anything else of that sort. This is important to understand before I proceed with this post because people have to understand music, movies, and the rest are elective choices, not rights that they are entitled to.
Second piracy is NOT an answer. I don't care how much you feel you're entitled to a movie or music. Stealing it instead of supporting that industry is theft, not "your right". I don't care what the RIAA or MPAA did to you, your mother, some random woman, or your dog. They own the rights to that music or movies. If you think that they shouldn't, inform your favorite singer, actor, director about alternatives. Don't support them, or what ever, but don't give them a reason to feel morally entitled to your money.
When you pirate anything you basically give the opposition a right to send you to jail, you have stolen the profits from them. You may not have stolen the music (that's up to you to decide) but they have less money than if you bought that copy outright. If you really wouldn't have bought the music, then don't download it. Why do we have DRM and lawsuits? Because people pirate movies and music and the RIAA feels a need to control this.
The exception to this rule is if there isn't a system in place where you can get the movies or music in your area then there is the one and pretty much only exception to this rule. There's not much you can do if you want to hear a soundtrack to a foreign film, but again realize that if X company buys the rights to the soundtrack you should expect to buy it at a reasonable price. (what ever the current rate is for cds. Remember the idea here is not to screw the company, the idea is to get them to realize that their tactics are wrong).
Third, start boycotting. This is the most important thing, don't steal it, don't borrow it and don't return it. Don't listen to that new Britney Spears/Enimem/Weird al cd unless you have bought it through a process that you agree with. Find a way to get music you like with out DRM, buy it that way. But at the same time if you are buying music don't start giving music away to all your friends. If they come over feel free to play it for them or loan them the disc but don't rip a copy for them, don't go and post it on bittorrent. That just shows you're helping people steal from the company and doesn't correctly support the process.
The bottom line is stop stealing these properties, and stop supporting them. That's the ONLY way you're going to stop DRM and stop the tactics of the groups. Find better groups and bands or alternative software if you're so pissed about it. But stealing them and bitching about DRM loses it's effectiveness once you have stolen the media because they actually do have to protect their media or at least find a way that people have a way to control the rights to their own property. Remember, the RIAA might steal from the artist but downloading the music also means the artist isn't getting any money. (I don't care if the artist only gets 25 cents from the RIAA, downloading that music means that 25 cents isn't being given.)
Re:Three things that make this article suspicious
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Finding New Code
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No alpha is the old beta.
An unworking game should never have been called alpha. When companies beta test software it tends to be what early alpha testing is. When companies release software that's what used to be called beta testing (and in the old days there was gamma testing in addition).
However beta (and gamma) took time and money... and what company wants to spend that.
Seriously, the guy is a jerk but he's pretty much spot on about this. If the server deleted the data it's gone. (though I'm suprised there's no backups).
Then again if you had to deal with people complaining about your free internet email accounts all day I think you'd be pissed too.
Btw the article says that she should get a restoration of her email. If they had it on backup then the tech lied. But I'm betting it actually is gone, so no, unless they want them to handwrite 104 weeks of email it ain't happening.
And the one question, was she a bitch before this guy finally resorted to saying that? I'm willing to be a complete asshole on the phone with tech support especially if there's nothing they can do to help me because it makes me feel better. I'll admit that, but it's usually because I also am in the moral right. ("Customer service for cable? We'll come between 10 and 2? how about I shove my foot between your ass and cheeks!") However if someone said this to me I'd say you and hang up but I'd have to admit he is right.
Then again he's wearing a boston red sox's hat, he can't be all bad.
If this is true (I didn't get that correlation from the article) then maybe there shouldn't pirate still. Seriously it's 70 percent STILL pirated? They can't find a way to start pay for the copies now that there is a booming IT business?
I'm not saying Microsoft deserves a million dollars, I'm saying that there are other options for cheap OSes, and that just because they have a booming IT industry doesn't make it right that they just pirated the software that they support and are trying to rationalize it now.
And my programmer is shivering in anger, or fear. Not because they are poor. Personally if someone pirated the game my company was working on I'd be pissed.
I think not. Ok it's good news for Romania and the economy there (hopefully) but for every person who cheers for this there's a developer somewhere shivering. Microsoft is large and big. Ok but that's not why 70 percent of their software is pirated. The people who created and marketed the Operating system is not getting their money from that software. I don't care what you're opinion is of Microsoft, that's not right.
Even if you're cheering for this, imagine if it was Linux that had a 10 dollar licensing fee per copy, that money goes in to improving future versions of linux, everyone pays it, however we find out that Romania is pirating the software with out paying for the future development costs. The whole point is that this story is the whole reason anti-piracy is in place, because the piracy in the story sounds like it's done for piracy sake. Just because it helps one place, doesn't mean that it's good or beneficial overall.
Seriously if anything that looks suspicious with me. They placed the devices all over the city and didn't tell anyone? And they thought it was ok?
I'm sure the expense just with bomb squads and shutting down the interstate is beyond prohibitive (Trust me, I lived in Boston, shutting down any street in Boston = hell).
This sounds like something that cartoon network would do but hell if it isn't the type of stupid ass stuff that people aren't thinking about but can cause a major problem. Sounds like someone's getting a pink slip.
Yeah but factoring in the respectability of Tommy Tallarico, Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb, it's obvious they could have said someone like paris hilton and they would be more respectable then that bunch.
It's sorta like your computer saying 2 is the biggest number, well it is if all he's ever seen is 1s.
Damm straight. Seriously We have a Microsoft employee who did work on the sql databases. I can think of three jokes just from that, not even factoring in anything else (Search brain from body where employer = "Microsoft", found 0 results)
Then lets factor in the pointlessness of the article like you mentioned. Oh he's on a boat, and missing, and no one has seen him. Hmm. Yeah not much information I care about there unless I have a stalker level obsession with Jim Gray (personally I never heard of him and probably will keep it that way).
And then let's factor in the fact that the jokes are mildly amusing instead of completely blank comment fields with just a few comments like "I knew him and he was a good guy" wow... that's going to be marked insightful. If you want compassion for a Microsoft employee go to www.overlycompassionate.com or www.microsoftwives.com this is slashdot, the world doesn't stop turning for us just because some guy is missing. Hell even if Linus Torvald was missing I'm sure we'd get some good jokes out of it.
Besides exactly who is it going to help if we are talking about how great a guy he is. Not like he's reading this on a PDA out in the ocean, seeing how great we are and then feeling the strength come back to him so he can get back to shore, would be cool if he did, but it's not happening.
So very true. This really hit me last year when my father made a site for his business brokering business, he pestered the fuck out of me to find a guy who can do his web site finally I was like "fuck it, I don't know any" and he looked for other options finding some shitty ones that at least created a web page. Finally I got him a copy of Dreamweaver and he's never been happier. He spends 2-3 hours a day doing stuff with it and he loves it because it's HIS site.
He's by no means a master and some of the stuff he does is ok at best, but the fact that a guy with no graphical experience and no knowledge of HTML 12 monthes ago can make and maintain his own site is nothing short of amazing. That's what kills the webmaster. The webmaster had to evolve to the IT position, where he still maintained the site but had skills to do other stuff.
I have to agree, for two games, they dismiss elebits, which is a pretty lengthy game if someone is going to fully complete it (similar to Katamari damacy where you can beat the game with 50 percent of the items found or complete the game with everything found). There's also some very unique nest puzzles that you meantioned. A good physics engine. (not perfect but any physics engine is crucial for this game)
Yet at the same time he gives Wario ware accolades even though it ignores it's predecessors and instead of allowing people to play a single game for a best score gives extremely limited modes. Even the multiplayer is a mixed bag.
Both games are good but Elebits is the second best game I have for the system, Warioware was good for the 2 hours it took to unlock it all and now is just an ok addition.
Perhaps Zonk doesn't like the katamari damacy style games but Elebits is far from a mediocre game in the same way katamari wasn't a mediocre game.
This is similar to saying I can't live alone. Well yes you can live alone, the caveman were able to do so can you. Sure now we have these new fangled devices like cell phones, e-mail, and motion pictures on the puter, what ever that is but is it really IT's fault you can't understand them?
The simple fact is IT is normally seen as one thing "technical support" and technical support usually means "my program is not working". I was hired into a couple IT departments, one at a finance company and one at Harvard business school. Harvard business school only wanted 1 thing, for me to do Technical support and I was happy. There was an entire web interface group and a program group and so on. That's fine.
On the other hand the finance job expected me to be a DBA, a software engineer and tech support for 24 thousand dollars a year. The fact is those jobs are NOT easy for one person to do, and then to expect all three of the IT staff to do all three jobs (they expected 3 software engineers to be working at times) you just run into problems. For some reason during the four monthes I worked there our projects were late. And this doesn't even get into the fact that the original program we were replacing took "12 guys in india 6 monthes to do" and they had 3 guys here who only got 3 monthes to replace it from scratch. It doesn't take in the fact that in that room there was a total of 4 years total experience, and that there was no real oversight because the person in charge of us really didn't know anything about IT, luckily she wasn't pushing us hard. Of course the VP was always pissed at us, which really helped us feel good about our job.
The big picture though is there isn't a lack of innovation, there's a lack of possibility or drive to innovate. If you're spending your whole day working on Windows bugs and virii how are you going to program or look at new technology? Google likely saw a problem similar to this and started there 10 percent time. That 10 percent wasn't just for new innovations but stuff the people wanted to work on, so now you don't have to do bug fixing or crap like that, instead you can take 10 percent of your time and work on innovations, and you'll want to do it because you choose the area.
The point is simply this. If you completely structure your IT department to the point where they don't have time to innovate I can guarentee they won't innovate at least not for you. Scheduling them for an 8 hours day with 8 hours of work, meetings and interuptions means their day is shot, not that they'll work 12 hours.
Of course that's abhorant to some managers that IT won't kill themselves for your company but the simple fact is after 8 hours of crap it's really hard to innovate something new even if it's needed.
I mean come on. We've been studying these guys for centuries (first dinosaur discovery in the 1850s). I have to think that most of the recent articles about these is to try to revitalize interest in the field but the simple fact is archeologists arn't that interesting. They'll try to make up some interesting stuff about them but seriously, now you're saying 150 years of evidence is wrong because the first flying dinosaur was a biplane? What's next? Actually the original dinosaur was a rocket ship that aliens landed in but they died because of a cold?
Dinosaurs had a cool section of time (Jurrasic park) Archeologists have had two (Tomb raider, and Indiana Jones) but articles like this just makes me shake my head because it means one of two things. Either the guys now are just making stuff up, or the guys before them were making stuff up, either way something about that pisses me off. It just seems to be an attempt to say "look we are still doing stuff with the money you gave us" when by the very sound of it this is thought exercise at best.
You bring up the NFL and that reminds me of another issue that is quite common. The Dish Network's stranglehold over NFL to the point where if you watch the NFL on cable you get 5-6 games a week, this is in a sporting even that has easily double that. Don't live in Boston? You're not getting the Patriots. Don't live in Green bay? You'll only see your packers a couple times a year. So who is helped out by this contract? Dish Network. Who is hurt? Everyone else.
The problem is this idea only works if Dish network has everything. Assume Cablenetworks (or Cablevision alone) is the only one with full Baseball so now when baseball season rolls around you NEED cablevision otherwise I can't see the Red Soxes, or I can't see the white soxes or what ever team is not local.
Then we get into issues of fans of both sports. How do you rectify that? You can't unless you expect them to switch networks half way through the year, of course Dish has contracts which hurts that option too.
The anti-trust is there to avoid letting the satillite radios to hurt the consumer, but once again anti-trust laws and the divisions they cause is what hurts the consumers, not the companies in this case. I don't think Sirius and XM are innocent here, I'm sure given the chance the merger will raise the cost a bit, but at the same time Sirius and XM will deliver what the fans want rather than having in-fighting to the point where no one is happy and satellite radio will just simply fail.
Hell, it's taken them almost 3 years to find ways to allow a person to buy one subscription to satillite radio and use it on all their Satillite radio devices (and even that is expensive), so implying that the anti-trust is advancing the services that they offer is just plain silly.
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I'll start with my opinion on one game, I don't like CJ from San Andreas, Not because he's black, not because he's from LA, but because he's a stupid idiot who doesn't seem to realize how moronic his friend Ryder is. "We'll rob the goverment" The answer to that is "Stop smoking that shit because you are dumber than the retard down the street". Yet in SA you just go along with his plan.
I don't care if your character is black, white, or asian. I personally like "white" characters if I had to choose, but if I want a strong tough battle hardened character, I'll probably take a black guy. (Cole train with out the voice). If I want a cool ninja that's definatly an asian character. If I want a mafioso it's going to have to be white (And italian). But all of these choices are based off ROLE not race.
Do I not like black characters? Well yeah in the end, because most of the time they are so stereotypically black that it's a waste of a good character. But I like Cole Train, I like a lot of the characters outside of the gang in San Andreas (the CRASH unit was hilarious). Do I like asian characters? Well probably but again it's because they are portrayed as ninjas, samurais, and other cool stuff I like.
So the answer to the question is race doesn't matter as long as the developers don't do the stereotypical things with race. It's the same as females in games. As long as you don't make every female like Yuna (FFX she was weak, and then in FFX2 all three females were ditzy airheads) I don't mind playing as one. Lara Croft could have sold as well with out the chest because she was a tough as nails archeologist, and except for Indiana Jones we didn't have many of those.
Welcome to america. I've been voting for 7 years, starting with Bush and Gore. Never had a vote that I cared about.
You had The child versus the Bore, The fighter vs. the defender. The democratic primary is likely (unless they have a brain in their head) the female who won't get elected vs. the black guy who might get elected. And they will go up against the NYC hero (Guiliani, though mainly because everyone else on the republican ticket looks old).
Last presidential election was easily the worse. People who supported the war HAD TO vote Bush because it was obvious Kerry was going to try to do everything to stop it. People who disagreed with Kerry's flipflopping also voted for Bush.
Of course Kerry's whole campaign was "people who don't like Bush or the war", so he was banking his whole campaign on that fact. Atleast that's what I kept hearing. I couldn't listen to either candidates because Bush was just telling the public the same message, and Kerry was trying so hard to say "I'll be exactly like Bush except exactly the opposite".
Personally I hate Obama for one reason. No track record, they don't want the baggage (for good reasons, democrats have way too much to run for president) but then again if I cared about the candidate it wouldn't be an American election.
The only games that are allowed to be hard drive required are MMORPGs and similar. It's not an imaginary edict, it's an official edict.
However Football Manager is debatably an MMORPG and Microsoft might give them a by, They probably pulled it off by mentioning the size of save files. I personally don't know how that conversation went, but I know how the conversation normally go. They start with no and end with way.. So 99 percent of the games that comes out will not be allowed to do this.
Oblivion does use the HD to cache but it HAS TO Be able to run the same on the Core and Preminum edition system. If Oblivion relied on that cache to play it would not be approved for the 360.
By "preparing the youth of the country for their future lives" you really mean "indoctrinating them into your way of thinking while giving them a basic understanding of minor concepts you're told to", don't you?
I don't think this article is about calling Germans Nazis. In fact the article only uses Nazi in reference to a law.
However the problem is the german goverment is so afraid of violence that they are stopping violent games from entering their country and a point can be made why? It's not like violent games actually created World War 1 or 2, or any other war. There's questions as to whether violent acts are influenced by violent video games. The Violent games are a recent symptom of a large issue, which is whether or not Germany is too afraid of violence and struggling for pacfism, yet they are able to do this because of the fear of another violent uprising.
When you have such an interesting and amazing statistic point such as the nazi regime, along with a goverment trying to pretend that video games or fictious media is what creates violence, it would be criminal not to at least acknowledge it.
From what he is describing, there was no exchange of data. What it would be as if you stood 6 feet away from a drug dealer and had this conversation.
"Can I have some crack, the money is in my left pocket"
"Ok I would like to do business with you"
"thank you"
Notice they are 6 feet away, the dealer never gives any crack to the buyer, the buyer may or may not have any money in his pocket, is that illegal? Common sense says no and that is the exchange that is going on between the client and server at the point which BayTSP claims they are guilty.
No transaction necessarily takes place there's no exchange of goods or services, you just appear to want to do business but never go through with the transaction. If you want to say this is against the law, then go after tv shows that have people buying drugs, plays that have it also.
Actually you're right, and wrong. The Ps3 will actually install the game to a cache, if you switch discs or games, the cache will install a new game instead overwriting the first game. If you don't swap discs but power cycle the system, the game remains in memory (according to the specs I saw at work, but I might be wrong. Hardware developers HAVE been known to fudge info).
Essentially though it's installing, it has to be done to allow the game to run, it doesn't have to be done on the fly (the 360 has rules about long periods of unresponsiveness, the Ps3 doesn't), and except for the very semantics of the terms it's essentially installing. My point is more towards the future when it will become ACTUAL installing. But the difference is minor when you consider you're still waiting 5-10 minutes, whether you want to count that as a cache time or an install time is up to you, however I personally find the prospect distasteful.
Nothing other then Microsoft issuing an edict that it won't happen. Only MMOs and similar games will require hard drives. Everything else MUST be playable with a core edition system and possibly a memory card.
The other difference is the PS3 version is basically installing the game. What else do you call caching large quanities of data to a hard drive to be read back? Next generation every game is going to require 10 minute install times every time you switch discs. Oh joy, if only they gave us driver issues then it'd be all the reasons some of us got out of the PC market.
I think wikipedia solidly has the model right (even if the reviewing system is poor) about what's encyclopedic. The big point is pop culture and five minute stories arn't encyclopedic. The story about R.A.B. is a very special case as there is an encyclopedic nature to how the story was leaked, even there it's debatable if it will remain in the wiki (I don't see much there ).
No matter what site it is you won't be able to cite it. Many schools will not take any encyclopedia as a primary source in the first place (and if you have to use an encyclopedia as a source you really arn't trying hard enough.)
Wikipedia is a good first page to go to so you can learn the broad scope of a subject but if someone expect to be a master of knowledge with just wikipedia that's a problem. Any site similar to Wikipedia no matter what will fall into the same problem, no matter how many self appointed experts they promote. If the way to get your info on the site is through reference sites you can easily do that by faking three or four different sites about the info with the fake info.
The other thing is I've seen this before with www.tvtome.com There was a serious problem with "what is allowed". You would have editors who have different standards (and still do on www.tv.com) and then you'd have editors who did nothing but veto anyone's work and steal credit which makes people not want to contribute. Or just grab as many pages that they can and sit on them, not editing. All in all having an editor with the power to veto and approve work always ends up hurting collabrative efforts, not to meantion potential bias.
I didn't say ripping was piracy, and while yes your example is not essentially piracy you're likely in the minority. I'm sure there are others (even replying to me) that believe downloading music that you weren't going to buy is fine.
The only problem is there are ways to sample music with out buying it. Itunes gives a short listen time (but a low price for music) amazon and others usually provide popular CDs with previews. These are good ways to find out if Cds are worthy (Personally I have yet to find many but then again that's why god invented apple who invented itunes).
The biggest problem though is people don't believe boycotting will change anything and immediately go to piracy. The sad thing is this increases piracy. If for one year there was a 50 percent decrease in piracy and a 0 change in the profits of a record company this would solidly hit the companies where they live.
I'd like to address another poster other then the parent. The kid who doesn't have money for music or programs or other stuff is a myth. Most major programs have demos, academic versions, or cheap models. If they don't you don't need it. That's right, you DONT need it. Think a business will say "oh you only use Photoshop Express at home, you need to use Photoshop? nope. They'll look at your work. If they only want employees who use just photoshop are they worth it? Want a complier? There's multiple compliers that are free. Want a free OS, well your computer came with one most likely, or you can get Linux. Just because you want pretty Microsoft colors doesn't mean you're entitled to it.
The same kid who doesn't have money for music or games probably has a reason he doesn't have it. Guess what? Stealing doesn't work here. You seem to understand you don't need music to live, yet you're telling us that a kid needs this stuff. Either that kid needs a job, needs to budget money, or has other issues that probably should be resolved before he complicates it more by stealing. If a kid can't figure out a way to live with out theft he probably isn't trying hard enough, the options are out there.
Here's another hint. CDs are physical things, as is the money you use to buy it. That money isn't being transfered while you get the data on the CD. Keep pretending it's not stealing because you're only stealing data and you just play into their paranoia. If it's not physical why do need it anyways. Why do you care when people want to know everything your thinking, what if they tried to read your brain waves. It's not physical is it, so why should you have any privacy there? The answer is it's not.
You're rationalizing stealing by saying it works. Except you're not showing cause and effect. The only cause and effect is when movie companies sees more people are pirating and puts more money in lobbying, enforcement and DRM, and then blame the pirates. Guess what? We got here by going down this road, why continue on the road of piracy if all it'll get is more stubborn companies who will read it as people are thieves and they have to protect their property any way they can.
"I was not interested in it enough to buy or rent it"
So you own it but you wouldn't have paid money for it. This is the main defense of piracy and it still doesn't work. If you cared enough to have a copy of the DVD then you must want to see it. If you only want to see it one time why not borrow the DVD from your friend watch it once then return the DVD to your friend. That is a legal and perfectly fine alternative.
In addition copying a DVD for your own use isn't stealing, you are right, however when you sell that dvd off, you don't have the right to your copy any more, that's just simple facts. But you want to say copying a dvd and giving it to a friend is not stealing, yet it is. I don't care that you weren't going to buy it, if you weren't going to buy it then you don't need your own copy of it. Feel free to borrow it.
You don't have to buy a CD, if you like that one song then find a way to get it (Itunes is perfectly acceptable apparently, so why complain about CDs. If you disagree with the idea of CDs you have the ability to not purchase them).
If you disagree with the licensing agreements, again find a way you DO agree with because what you are doing only shows the studios the need for DRM. It won't change the studio's minds.
It doesn't matter what these are in your mind. If they are only "copying" or if they arn't lost sales, that's up to you. However the world, the courts, and the companies they are theft. Covering your ears and pretending they arn't doesn't help your case. The only solution here is to show them that they are wrong, and people like you pirating it and pretending your entitled to it only works against us.
One thing, if you don't read the entire post please don't comment on it. This is a long process but the biggest problem is people are acting like idiots about all this stuff and the companies are feeling threatened rather then realizing their actions are causing them problems.
First things you don't need a vista, music, movies, or anything else of that sort. This is important to understand before I proceed with this post because people have to understand music, movies, and the rest are elective choices, not rights that they are entitled to.
Second piracy is NOT an answer. I don't care how much you feel you're entitled to a movie or music. Stealing it instead of supporting that industry is theft, not "your right". I don't care what the RIAA or MPAA did to you, your mother, some random woman, or your dog. They own the rights to that music or movies. If you think that they shouldn't, inform your favorite singer, actor, director about alternatives. Don't support them, or what ever, but don't give them a reason to feel morally entitled to your money.
When you pirate anything you basically give the opposition a right to send you to jail, you have stolen the profits from them. You may not have stolen the music (that's up to you to decide) but they have less money than if you bought that copy outright. If you really wouldn't have bought the music, then don't download it. Why do we have DRM and lawsuits? Because people pirate movies and music and the RIAA feels a need to control this.
The exception to this rule is if there isn't a system in place where you can get the movies or music in your area then there is the one and pretty much only exception to this rule. There's not much you can do if you want to hear a soundtrack to a foreign film, but again realize that if X company buys the rights to the soundtrack you should expect to buy it at a reasonable price. (what ever the current rate is for cds. Remember the idea here is not to screw the company, the idea is to get them to realize that their tactics are wrong).
Third, start boycotting. This is the most important thing, don't steal it, don't borrow it and don't return it. Don't listen to that new Britney Spears/Enimem/Weird al cd unless you have bought it through a process that you agree with. Find a way to get music you like with out DRM, buy it that way. But at the same time if you are buying music don't start giving music away to all your friends. If they come over feel free to play it for them or loan them the disc but don't rip a copy for them, don't go and post it on bittorrent. That just shows you're helping people steal from the company and doesn't correctly support the process.
The bottom line is stop stealing these properties, and stop supporting them. That's the ONLY way you're going to stop DRM and stop the tactics of the groups. Find better groups and bands or alternative software if you're so pissed about it. But stealing them and bitching about DRM loses it's effectiveness once you have stolen the media because they actually do have to protect their media or at least find a way that people have a way to control the rights to their own property. Remember, the RIAA might steal from the artist but downloading the music also means the artist isn't getting any money. (I don't care if the artist only gets 25 cents from the RIAA, downloading that music means that 25 cents isn't being given.)
No alpha is the old beta.
An unworking game should never have been called alpha. When companies beta test software it tends to be what early alpha testing is. When companies release software that's what used to be called beta testing (and in the old days there was gamma testing in addition).
However beta (and gamma) took time and money... and what company wants to spend that.
Seriously, the guy is a jerk but he's pretty much spot on about this. If the server deleted the data it's gone. (though I'm suprised there's no backups).
Then again if you had to deal with people complaining about your free internet email accounts all day I think you'd be pissed too.
Btw the article says that she should get a restoration of her email. If they had it on backup then the tech lied. But I'm betting it actually is gone, so no, unless they want them to handwrite 104 weeks of email it ain't happening.
And the one question, was she a bitch before this guy finally resorted to saying that? I'm willing to be a complete asshole on the phone with tech support especially if there's nothing they can do to help me because it makes me feel better. I'll admit that, but it's usually because I also am in the moral right. ("Customer service for cable? We'll come between 10 and 2? how about I shove my foot between your ass and cheeks!") However if someone said this to me I'd say you and hang up but I'd have to admit he is right.
Then again he's wearing a boston red sox's hat, he can't be all bad.
If this is true (I didn't get that correlation from the article) then maybe there shouldn't pirate still. Seriously it's 70 percent STILL pirated? They can't find a way to start pay for the copies now that there is a booming IT business?
I'm not saying Microsoft deserves a million dollars, I'm saying that there are other options for cheap OSes, and that just because they have a booming IT industry doesn't make it right that they just pirated the software that they support and are trying to rationalize it now.
And my programmer is shivering in anger, or fear. Not because they are poor. Personally if someone pirated the game my company was working on I'd be pissed.
I think not. Ok it's good news for Romania and the economy there (hopefully) but for every person who cheers for this there's a developer somewhere shivering. Microsoft is large and big. Ok but that's not why 70 percent of their software is pirated. The people who created and marketed the Operating system is not getting their money from that software. I don't care what you're opinion is of Microsoft, that's not right.
Even if you're cheering for this, imagine if it was Linux that had a 10 dollar licensing fee per copy, that money goes in to improving future versions of linux, everyone pays it, however we find out that Romania is pirating the software with out paying for the future development costs. The whole point is that this story is the whole reason anti-piracy is in place, because the piracy in the story sounds like it's done for piracy sake. Just because it helps one place, doesn't mean that it's good or beneficial overall.
(as someone else posted) http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanderlin/tags/aquate enhungerforce/
Seriously if anything that looks suspicious with me. They placed the devices all over the city and didn't tell anyone? And they thought it was ok?
I'm sure the expense just with bomb squads and shutting down the interstate is beyond prohibitive (Trust me, I lived in Boston, shutting down any street in Boston = hell).
This sounds like something that cartoon network would do but hell if it isn't the type of stupid ass stuff that people aren't thinking about but can cause a major problem. Sounds like someone's getting a pink slip.
Yeah but factoring in the respectability of Tommy Tallarico, Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb, it's obvious they could have said someone like paris hilton and they would be more respectable then that bunch.
It's sorta like your computer saying 2 is the biggest number, well it is if all he's ever seen is 1s.
Damm straight. Seriously We have a Microsoft employee who did work on the sql databases. I can think of three jokes just from that, not even factoring in anything else (Search brain from body where employer = "Microsoft", found 0 results)
Then lets factor in the pointlessness of the article like you mentioned. Oh he's on a boat, and missing, and no one has seen him. Hmm. Yeah not much information I care about there unless I have a stalker level obsession with Jim Gray (personally I never heard of him and probably will keep it that way).
And then let's factor in the fact that the jokes are mildly amusing instead of completely blank comment fields with just a few comments like "I knew him and he was a good guy" wow... that's going to be marked insightful. If you want compassion for a Microsoft employee go to www.overlycompassionate.com or www.microsoftwives.com this is slashdot, the world doesn't stop turning for us just because some guy is missing. Hell even if Linus Torvald was missing I'm sure we'd get some good jokes out of it.
Besides exactly who is it going to help if we are talking about how great a guy he is. Not like he's reading this on a PDA out in the ocean, seeing how great we are and then feeling the strength come back to him so he can get back to shore, would be cool if he did, but it's not happening.
So very true. This really hit me last year when my father made a site for his business brokering business, he pestered the fuck out of me to find a guy who can do his web site finally I was like "fuck it, I don't know any" and he looked for other options finding some shitty ones that at least created a web page. Finally I got him a copy of Dreamweaver and he's never been happier. He spends 2-3 hours a day doing stuff with it and he loves it because it's HIS site.
He's by no means a master and some of the stuff he does is ok at best, but the fact that a guy with no graphical experience and no knowledge of HTML 12 monthes ago can make and maintain his own site is nothing short of amazing. That's what kills the webmaster. The webmaster had to evolve to the IT position, where he still maintained the site but had skills to do other stuff.
I have to agree, for two games, they dismiss elebits, which is a pretty lengthy game if someone is going to fully complete it (similar to Katamari damacy where you can beat the game with 50 percent of the items found or complete the game with everything found). There's also some very unique nest puzzles that you meantioned. A good physics engine. (not perfect but any physics engine is crucial for this game)
Yet at the same time he gives Wario ware accolades even though it ignores it's predecessors and instead of allowing people to play a single game for a best score gives extremely limited modes. Even the multiplayer is a mixed bag.
Both games are good but Elebits is the second best game I have for the system, Warioware was good for the 2 hours it took to unlock it all and now is just an ok addition.
Perhaps Zonk doesn't like the katamari damacy style games but Elebits is far from a mediocre game in the same way katamari wasn't a mediocre game.
This is similar to saying I can't live alone. Well yes you can live alone, the caveman were able to do so can you. Sure now we have these new fangled devices like cell phones, e-mail, and motion pictures on the puter, what ever that is but is it really IT's fault you can't understand them?
The simple fact is IT is normally seen as one thing "technical support" and technical support usually means "my program is not working". I was hired into a couple IT departments, one at a finance company and one at Harvard business school. Harvard business school only wanted 1 thing, for me to do Technical support and I was happy. There was an entire web interface group and a program group and so on. That's fine.
On the other hand the finance job expected me to be a DBA, a software engineer and tech support for 24 thousand dollars a year. The fact is those jobs are NOT easy for one person to do, and then to expect all three of the IT staff to do all three jobs (they expected 3 software engineers to be working at times) you just run into problems. For some reason during the four monthes I worked there our projects were late. And this doesn't even get into the fact that the original program we were replacing took "12 guys in india 6 monthes to do" and they had 3 guys here who only got 3 monthes to replace it from scratch. It doesn't take in the fact that in that room there was a total of 4 years total experience, and that there was no real oversight because the person in charge of us really didn't know anything about IT, luckily she wasn't pushing us hard. Of course the VP was always pissed at us, which really helped us feel good about our job.
The big picture though is there isn't a lack of innovation, there's a lack of possibility or drive to innovate. If you're spending your whole day working on Windows bugs and virii how are you going to program or look at new technology? Google likely saw a problem similar to this and started there 10 percent time. That 10 percent wasn't just for new innovations but stuff the people wanted to work on, so now you don't have to do bug fixing or crap like that, instead you can take 10 percent of your time and work on innovations, and you'll want to do it because you choose the area.
The point is simply this. If you completely structure your IT department to the point where they don't have time to innovate I can guarentee they won't innovate at least not for you. Scheduling them for an 8 hours day with 8 hours of work, meetings and interuptions means their day is shot, not that they'll work 12 hours.
Of course that's abhorant to some managers that IT won't kill themselves for your company but the simple fact is after 8 hours of crap it's really hard to innovate something new even if it's needed.
And thus the reason why retailers now have the option of returning the games to distributors.
See Atari 2600's ET for past issues with these rules.
I mean come on. We've been studying these guys for centuries (first dinosaur discovery in the 1850s). I have to think that most of the recent articles about these is to try to revitalize interest in the field but the simple fact is archeologists arn't that interesting. They'll try to make up some interesting stuff about them but seriously, now you're saying 150 years of evidence is wrong because the first flying dinosaur was a biplane? What's next? Actually the original dinosaur was a rocket ship that aliens landed in but they died because of a cold?
Dinosaurs had a cool section of time (Jurrasic park) Archeologists have had two (Tomb raider, and Indiana Jones) but articles like this just makes me shake my head because it means one of two things. Either the guys now are just making stuff up, or the guys before them were making stuff up, either way something about that pisses me off. It just seems to be an attempt to say "look we are still doing stuff with the money you gave us" when by the very sound of it this is thought exercise at best.
Logic != Good logic.
You bring up the NFL and that reminds me of another issue that is quite common. The Dish Network's stranglehold over NFL to the point where if you watch the NFL on cable you get 5-6 games a week, this is in a sporting even that has easily double that. Don't live in Boston? You're not getting the Patriots. Don't live in Green bay? You'll only see your packers a couple times a year. So who is helped out by this contract? Dish Network. Who is hurt? Everyone else.
The problem is this idea only works if Dish network has everything. Assume Cablenetworks (or Cablevision alone) is the only one with full Baseball so now when baseball season rolls around you NEED cablevision otherwise I can't see the Red Soxes, or I can't see the white soxes or what ever team is not local.
Then we get into issues of fans of both sports. How do you rectify that? You can't unless you expect them to switch networks half way through the year, of course Dish has contracts which hurts that option too.
The anti-trust is there to avoid letting the satillite radios to hurt the consumer, but once again anti-trust laws and the divisions they cause is what hurts the consumers, not the companies in this case. I don't think Sirius and XM are innocent here, I'm sure given the chance the merger will raise the cost a bit, but at the same time Sirius and XM will deliver what the fans want rather than having in-fighting to the point where no one is happy and satellite radio will just simply fail.
Hell, it's taken them almost 3 years to find ways to allow a person to buy one subscription to satillite radio and use it on all their Satillite radio devices (and even that is expensive), so implying that the anti-trust is advancing the services that they offer is just plain silly.