This is such an obvious troll it's laughable. On the off-chance that you're just slow:
It's not "everything is random and unorganized" or "Intelligent design" - there's plenty of room in between. Gravity and the interactions it tends to bring about can explain an awful lot of the organization in our universe, and I'm sure you're not attributing intelligence to, or behind, the force of gravity.
If I say "you are a figment of my imagination", how would you prove me wrong - to ME, mind you, not some random observer. You can't (of course), so does that mean it's true? No. Anything that is held to be true as a FACT is held so because there are a set of conditions, events, or other evidence that could DISPROVE them, and since there are none such, it is held to be true. Anything that is neither provably true nor provably false is a *belief*, not a "truth" or fact.
It would be quite simple to disprove evolution in favor of (let's say) divine manifestation - God could create a new species right in front of me. I'm sure you'd hope said new species would kill and eat me on the spot in light of my intransigence.
The discussiou, of course, is about *disproving*, not *proving*. Either you don't yet understand the difference, or you're deliberately pretending not to. I actually sort of hope it's the former, because there's hope for your future usefulness in the universe if so.
Maybe I'm not grok'ing what this is all about, but why is networking/browsing integration in Windows BAD (IE's file://, explorer accepts http:// and \\server support, etc.) but GOOD in KDE? Aside from the "this is Slashdot and that's the way we are" responses, mind you...
"especially when many scientists today agree that the universe is (superficially) non-random, so it must have been designed by an intelligent designer"
Care to provide any tidbit of fact or otherwise cite a source for such a rediculous claim?
Intelligent Design, like creationism in general, CANNOT BE A THEORY. As others have alluded to, you cannot DISPROVE the "theory" of intelligent design, therefore it is not a theory at all.
So, pitching it as "an alternative" to evolution is wrong-minded and potentially damaging to the scientists of tomorrow (the kids of today).
Aside from the obvious platform differences, does anyone have (legally share-able) insight into how these games will compare? Gran Turismo's got the track record (no pun intended), but Forza's apparently being designed to compete directly...
The extent of my knowledge of Forza is what I could find here.
I said it *could* be either way - "Or perhaps blame Valve's contract negotiators for letting them get stuck with this, if you must."
The *fact* is pretty cut-and-dry - Valve wanted to release sooner than VU wanted them to, and the contract gave VU the leverage to prevent it.
So, you can choose to blame VU or the Valve contract negotiators for the leverage, but VU's *actions* are the thing to get ticked about either way; VU could just as easily have waived their right to delay if they wanted to be the good guys in this.
Well you hinted at the difference - at least, the difference (for me) between acceptable/tolerable and "a deal breaker".
"Spots" in racing games - the decals on the cars, and signs on the tracks in particular - are literally part of the real sport, and thus no big deal to me. In fact, seeing authentic sponsors is kinda cool (or even some of the pretty blantant parodies like in Burnout 3).
Similar things are ok up to a point - like branding on the scoreboards or menu UI that *act* like scoreboards, the distance meter in Links2004, stuff like that. Basically, anything *passive* is fine - most of us learn how to ignore that stuff anyway (like banner ads), and the advertisers know how to play along, they try to make the ads register but not *Bother* you.
It's this interactive/intrusive stuff like the Pontiac Drive thing someone mentioned for an EA game that, to me, is unacceptable. Stuff like that should either be configurable (as in, I can turn it off completely), skippable (you can hit "A" at any point to skip the damn thing), or had better have an overt effect on the price of the game. If Pontiac wants to subsidize 5 dollars off the price of a game, I *might* be willing to consider it. Of course, that's NOT what's happening. Maybe they're helping the development company maintain a cash flow while the game's being developed, but there's no public sign that they're actually reducing the end-user's cost.
Certain games (not just racing games) can certainly gain an air of authenticity/immersion/realism/whatever from authentic product placement. I agree that situations where it's the guns in an FPS or the cars in GTA can be awkward for the maker of said products, but I hope that doesn't spawn another round of public hysteria ("Gee, you can use a Colt or a Buick to kill someone? Better sue!" Just more evidence that stupidity is one of the few genuine crimes).
But I don't think you'll see that happen anyway. I doubt the gun manufacturers were *paying* Rockstar to put authentic weapons in GTA; more likely they asked them to STOP putting them in there without permission (or maybe they had permission but lost it). They probably don't have authentic cars in GTA because those car companies like to get paid for the spots and/or don't like to see their cars damaged/burning/destroyed.
Unfortunately, this seems to me like another example of where video game makers have the potential to irk the shit out of buyers and get away with it. If you buy Madden 2006 and find out it has a totally obnoxious advertising subsystem, what can you do? You probably won't be able to return it. All you can do is raise a public stink and hope the company bows to the outrage and patches the game (And even that might not be possible if it was a console release). There are enough people who will pay for the game anyway, whether they find out about the ads before or after, that some companies - especially ones that seem more bottom-line-driven than others, like EA, to do it anyway.
Maybe complaining to the advertising companies would work better? I don't know. As long as the consumer memory is short-term enough that these gimmicks pay off (or even seem to pay off) for the companies behind them, they'll keep using them. Movie product placement is as bad as ever, but has it really bitten into movie sales (or rentals, or dvd purchases) for anything out there? No. A lousy review seems to be the best chance at that; maybe none have actually "Gone too far" yet. Maybe there is a line they can't cross, but it's entirely too obnoxious for most of us (where "us" might well be a minority of the target consumers) to be happy about.
This'll get said more than once, but blame Vivendi Universal - not Valve - for this delay. Or perhaps blame Valve's contract negotiators for letting them get stuck with this, if you must.
Either way, lesson learned for developers that want to repeat the Steam experiment elsewhere.
Exactly my point. Making it harder to falsify documents won't stop people from obtaining legal ones by false pretenses.
I have heard contradictory reports that the licenses the hijackers had - some say they were obtained illegally, while other reports imply they were fakes and/or stolen.
I'm all for making ID, money, and the like HARD to counterfeit or alter. I'm just saying we've already made it sufficiently hard such that this is no longer the "low-hanging fruit" when it comes to assuming a false identity. RFID won't help.
All these efforts to craft technical defenses to terrorism will only go so far (if anywhere) in preventing terrorists from operating.
Smart, determined terrorists will always be able to assume the identities (and obtain the documentation) they need to operate. They may need more time to infiltrate, but that's about it. There's just too many overworked DMV workers out there for an unremarkable, prepared person to socially engineer a driver's license (or whatever) out of.
So, if you make falsification harder, you'll just encourage social engineering in its stead; something (IMHO) that we're still very vulnerable to and also much harder to effectively combat.
I'm not saying such a step is useless, just that I question the return for the investment and the hassle it confers on everyone who's NOT a terrorist.
(Not that I have any fantastic alternatives to offer right now - after all, if the problem was easy to solve, *someone* would have done so by now)
Well, I didn't ponder that tidbit for long, I guess.
My feeling is this - if that bothers you, don't buy it. They already paid to develop it, so if no-one (or not enough) people buy it, they'll probably eventually give it away *anyway*. Maybe not. Either way, they'd learn that the return on doing those for pay isn't right for them.
I agree we should ding companies for turning around and charging for something they said was free - especially if it really WAS free on the PC, that's just silly; whatever cost realities may exist, it's saying you treat your PC customers better than your XBox customers, so it's a good way to consolidate on the PC in the future if that's your goal, I guess;)
Yes, it was a big day for humanity - the barrier to the stars just moved down a bit, thanks to the XPrize and a team that managed to complete the XPrize challenge.
All I'm saying is, "way to go" to an American company for being that winning team. I feel some *nationalistic* pride because I know such a team can be found in America, and I know that such a team can't exist just anywhere. Certainly it could (and almost certainly DOES) exist elsewhere, but right now, there's only one, and it's in the USA.
To claim that the national origin of a company has nothing to do with said company is pure folly. I'm sure Scaled Composites would tell you that they could have done it faster or cheaper with less goverment oversight (though most of us are probably glad that certain FAA regulations, at least, are the order of the day in our airspace). Conversely, you should be able to see why it would take longer, cost more, or even be impossible in some other countries.
So, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, there is some reason for national pride. I never said Americans were the ONLY ones allowed to celebrate; merely that they (we) have one little extra reason to mark the occasion.
ps. If you didn't figure it out already, stating your OPINION as FACT (and in ALL CAPS) is just silly. Get over yourself.
Just too much hassle. For some, leaving to go to a friend's house involves getting a "Hall Pass" from the SO. For others, they're simply too far away to make a trip practical (one guy I keep pestering to get live is on the West Coast, and the rest of us are in NC).
Basically, if you want to get people in a room to play games, that's an *event* - you end up feeling like the host should ensure food/beverage supply is arranged for, you might feel obligated to clean up a bit, and so on. With Live, you can just turn the game on and play. You might go so far as to call friends up and say "hey, let's play some PGR2 at 8pm tonight". Similarly, an "event" needs to go on for a certain amount of time to really be worthwhile, whereas meeting up via Live can be a much shorter experience (even 30 minutes) and still be worth the (reduced) effort.
I think they don't (normally?) allow patches/game updates/expansion modules *unless they pertain to online play*. As in, Live is not to become a patching mechanism for any and all XBox games; Live is how people play XBox games together, and can also improve/fix that multiplayer experience as necessary.
Didn't some game recently go through this, where they needed/wanted to patch SP badly but had to wait until they had some MP fixes to bundle the SP fixes along with? I can't remember the specifics.
As far as the concept of $5 expansion packs go, this is only news insomuch as a 3rd party company is doing it. MS charges for some expansion packs - PGR2 and Links2004 I know of first hand. Links has at least one free course for download, and at least one NON-free course for download. PGR2 has extra maps and cars - all players get access to one car, and the assets for all the cars (so they can race in races limited to that booster pack's set of cars, I suppose), but only players who buy the packs can race in races on that track and use the other cars.
Now, the *inevitable* consequence of this is that less people race on the new tracks, because you don't want to shut out players who are online and willing to race but don't have the packs. I'm dismayed by this, but it's sort of inevitable; the same goes on with expansion packs for Mass Multi's, I'm sure, though I imagine the number of people with a given pack approaches 100% over time.
I wouldn't be surprised if Halo2 has downloadable maps/new game modes/etc. - the question'll be whether it's all free, partly free, or all pay-only. I hope it's all free - you just won't see many people playing on maps that only some of the playerbase is willing to pay for.
Yes, and well that he did - there's no arguing that it was a big day for everyone, not just the US. I wish I'd been around at the time, it must have been a tremendous moment.
But doing something that's been done before, with *private enterprise* is sort of in a different category, and I think Rutan would agree. Remember, the ability of private enterprise to do something that used to require a government wouldn't be celebrated by every world government out there, or even every citizen out there.
Basically, I'm claiming that you could just as easily compare Scaled Composite's success with *China's* successful manned orbital flight, in some ways. China didn't do it first either, but it's a triumph for their nation. Similarly, the US has done this before (in the 60's), but having a private company do it is something *we* value, and especially the fact that an American company was the winner. I doubt the Chinese are interested in privatising their space efforts, not anytime soon anyway.
This was from the same weekly update that was posted earlier about Halo 2 being "ready to ship".
Uh, surprise surprise - they finished their part of a major software project - when ELSE will a product team finally be *allowed* to take some vacation guilt-free (believe me, trying to squeeze it in at some "lull" in a project schedule rarely works out as planned)? If I was upper management at Bungie (yes, they're part of MS, but I'm sure they still have their own internal reporting structure), I'd definitely give the team a chance to regroup, make up for missing hours with spouses and kids, see the ball of fire that our planet keeps spinning around, etc.
They're not putting the Halo series on the shelf for X years or something - at least, this quote should NOT be construed as such a statement. They're just finally taking a (hopefully) well-deserved break after all the blood, sweat, tears, and hours they've put into making Halo 2.
I have little doubt they'll get cracking on Halo3 - probably for "XBox Next" or whatever you want to call it - in due course. After all, Sgt. Johnson claims he'll finally "get a woman" in Halo 4, we can't keep him waiting for too long, can we?
So we're cheering the international community for having such a competition, but we should also cheer the (almost) all-American project team that WON said international competition.
It's a rather silly thing to get worked up about, IMHO. Bottom line, yes, anyone can compete, but yes, an American team *did* win it.
It's like rants about what "could have" happened if the quarterback had thrown for 2 more touchdowns, or if Lee had flanked instead of going up the middle at Chancellorsville, or whatever. Does it really matter what "coulda/shoulda" happened? No. Does the fact that an American financier, designer, and builder won the prize? Sort of. Does it mean noone else could have done it? Of course NOT.
There's nothing wrong, inaccurate, about doing it first; but there's no claim that only Americans can do it, or "could have" done it first. There is *something* to be said about doing it first, and I like to think that's all the original poster was driving at. First in Flight, and all that (and please, PLEASE don't turn that into the conspiracy theory of the day as to who REALLY flew first).
After all, this is about privatized, commercial access to space. We should all know that first in buys you something, doing it better and/or cheaper and/or cooler can ALSO mean something, when it comes to commerce. Apple didn't invent the portable music player, Betamax came before VHS (right?). Paraphrasing Churchill, this isn't the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think for a lot of people it's the multiplayer experience, not the campaign.
In Halo1, of course, this was limited to split screen and/or system link. The fact that Halo 2 has live support will probably be reason enough for Halo fans to buy the game. Add in some dual-wielding weapons, destructible vehicles, more multiplayer game modes (and maps, naturally)...hard to go wrong.
That doesn't change the fact that it's not for everyone of course, and there's nothing wrong with that.
If you're not into multiplayer FPS, there's not nearly as much there for you. The storyline was pretty good (IMHO), it WAS a fairly linear campaign though. I've heard some rumors about little differences (like, an AI driver while you're gunning on a 'hog), but the single player will still come down to story and creativity in the gameplay. Pretty hard to judge that in advance - I could see it going either way. Maybe they focused almost entirely on multiplayer and the single player campaign will be left behind. Maybe they heard the complaints about the Halo1 campaign being repetitive and linear, and have drastically improved. We'll just have to see.
This post seems to confirm that co-op is back (for the XBox version, at least), that's always a good thing. I wonder if you can do co-op over Live? I have some friends that're hard to get in the same room but we all have Live...
I think this and the "brute force safe" reply above are both missing the point.
You can't brute force a safe without being obviously *trying to brute force your way into a safe*. There's obvious intent to circumvent.
Similarly, if the way you have to mark the CD makes it obvious that your *intent* is to circumvent (and not to, say, *label*), then again, you have intent.
Whereas, the shift-key feature (and, as someone pointed out, the registry key that makes no-autoplay the default), work for ANY cd, so I can be doing it as a matter of course or habit, having know intention or even realization that I'm circumventing. It'd probably stick even better if you'd made no-autoplay the default than pressing the shift key, of course.
Judging intent comes down to a trial by jury, I think, since it's not exactly "factual". So, I suppose there's a risk you could be judged to be circumventing even if you argued that you did so unwittingly/unknowingly. But I'd take my chances on that one -- moreso than the marker-on-the-DRM-disc method.
Considering that the shift key is an OS feature - disable autoplay for *whatever* CD/DVD is being inserted - I (in my very personal opinion) don't think this could successfully be argued as copyright circumvention. After all, the shift-key-bypass predates the technology being "circumvented" using it...
I'm fine with the company being "challenged" to do an even better job than the rest because it's products comprise the majority of the market.
But I don't think it would be fair to "insist" that the top dog hew to a higher standard than the rest. It's unfair competition in reverse; imagine if a startup cell phone company wasn't required to provide e-911 while the top, established carriers were.
This sort of argument has been raised when comparing cable to DSL, PSTN to VOIP, etc. - why should solution X by forced to adhere to regulation ABC when solution Y does not? X often goes out of business in such a circumstance, which either hurts a business unfairly (if the regulation is of little value, or hurts the consumer, if that regulation was genuinely valuable and Y doesn't have to adhere to it. Making Y adhere after X is dead and gone would be worse yet.
I'd argue that these cases are less interesting, because you're basically talking about the small set of people who wouldn't upgrade *regardless* of a reason.
If you're willing (and able) to secure these machines against the future - keeping them offline, or on isolated or firwalled networks, fine, keep Win3.1 if that's what you need (and some do).
I submit that you can't continue to keep an OS "feet wet" to the world forever - you eventually have to either upgrade or decide you can't afford to, and if you choose the latter, you've got to take steps to live with your choice (or the consequences).
There are often good reasons - the raw costs as you said, or maybe you CAN protect it adequately and you just *don't need* any of the new features of a newer kernel or the newer version. Fine. I suppose some folks will claim that XP just doesn't offer anything over 2k worth upgrading over. I know I've found XP to be more stable and more compatible, but others apparently have the opposite experience.
Basically, I think it's shortsighted to develop programs in such a way as to make them irrevocably bound to one version of an OS. You should either plan for platform upgrades, or be willing to pay the cost to make them when the time comes.
I mean, if you find yourself the admin of a multi-million dollar system with '96 apps and no programming staff, you're in big trouble, regardless of what your platform vendor is doing. A system like that needs maintenance; it almost certainly needs to evolve over time as users' needs change and grow, and (dammit!) you need to be able to adapt as your hardware and software platforms change. For some reason, people can get to thinking that software should be write once, buy once, use forever. What non-trivial hardware in the world is like that?
Knives need sharpening, guns need cleaning, cars need oil changes, tire replacements, gasoline, roads need repaving - why should software be any different?
Sure, software doesn't "wear out" per se, but how it works today is not necessarily the way it needs to work tomorrow, even if it actually works the way you want it to when it's brand new (and as we'd probably all agree, there's plenty of software, be it in-house or COTS, that is NOT exactly what you want even when it IS brand new). The set of people using it changes, what they want to do with it changes, new and/or better ways of doing the same things are devised, and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
This is such an obvious troll it's laughable. On the off-chance that you're just slow:
It's not "everything is random and unorganized" or "Intelligent design" - there's plenty of room in between. Gravity and the interactions it tends to bring about can explain an awful lot of the organization in our universe, and I'm sure you're not attributing intelligence to, or behind, the force of gravity.
If I say "you are a figment of my imagination", how would you prove me wrong - to ME, mind you, not some random observer. You can't (of course), so does that mean it's true? No. Anything that is held to be true as a FACT is held so because there are a set of conditions, events, or other evidence that could DISPROVE them, and since there are none such, it is held to be true. Anything that is neither provably true nor provably false is a *belief*, not a "truth" or fact.
It would be quite simple to disprove evolution in favor of (let's say) divine manifestation - God could create a new species right in front of me. I'm sure you'd hope said new species would kill and eat me on the spot in light of my intransigence.
The discussiou, of course, is about *disproving*, not *proving*. Either you don't yet understand the difference, or you're deliberately pretending not to. I actually sort of hope it's the former, because there's hope for your future usefulness in the universe if so.
Xentax
Maybe I'm not grok'ing what this is all about, but why is networking/browsing integration in Windows BAD (IE's file://, explorer accepts http:// and \\server support, etc.) but GOOD in KDE? Aside from the "this is Slashdot and that's the way we are" responses, mind you...
Xentax
"especially when many scientists today agree that the universe is (superficially) non-random, so it must have been designed by an intelligent designer"
Care to provide any tidbit of fact or otherwise cite a source for such a rediculous claim?
Intelligent Design, like creationism in general, CANNOT BE A THEORY. As others have alluded to, you cannot DISPROVE the "theory" of intelligent design, therefore it is not a theory at all.
So, pitching it as "an alternative" to evolution is wrong-minded and potentially damaging to the scientists of tomorrow (the kids of today).
Xentax
Aside from the obvious platform differences, does anyone have (legally share-able) insight into how these games will compare? Gran Turismo's got the track record (no pun intended), but Forza's apparently being designed to compete directly...
The extent of my knowledge of Forza is what I could find here.
Xentax
I said it *could* be either way - "Or perhaps blame Valve's contract negotiators for letting them get stuck with this, if you must."
The *fact* is pretty cut-and-dry - Valve wanted to release sooner than VU wanted them to, and the contract gave VU the leverage to prevent it.
So, you can choose to blame VU or the Valve contract negotiators for the leverage, but VU's *actions* are the thing to get ticked about either way; VU could just as easily have waived their right to delay if they wanted to be the good guys in this.
Xentax
Well you hinted at the difference - at least, the difference (for me) between acceptable/tolerable and "a deal breaker".
"Spots" in racing games - the decals on the cars, and signs on the tracks in particular - are literally part of the real sport, and thus no big deal to me. In fact, seeing authentic sponsors is kinda cool (or even some of the pretty blantant parodies like in Burnout 3).
Similar things are ok up to a point - like branding on the scoreboards or menu UI that *act* like scoreboards, the distance meter in Links2004, stuff like that. Basically, anything *passive* is fine - most of us learn how to ignore that stuff anyway (like banner ads), and the advertisers know how to play along, they try to make the ads register but not *Bother* you.
It's this interactive/intrusive stuff like the Pontiac Drive thing someone mentioned for an EA game that, to me, is unacceptable. Stuff like that should either be configurable (as in, I can turn it off completely), skippable (you can hit "A" at any point to skip the damn thing), or had better have an overt effect on the price of the game. If Pontiac wants to subsidize 5 dollars off the price of a game, I *might* be willing to consider it. Of course, that's NOT what's happening. Maybe they're helping the development company maintain a cash flow while the game's being developed, but there's no public sign that they're actually reducing the end-user's cost.
Certain games (not just racing games) can certainly gain an air of authenticity/immersion/realism/whatever from authentic product placement. I agree that situations where it's the guns in an FPS or the cars in GTA can be awkward for the maker of said products, but I hope that doesn't spawn another round of public hysteria ("Gee, you can use a Colt or a Buick to kill someone? Better sue!" Just more evidence that stupidity is one of the few genuine crimes).
But I don't think you'll see that happen anyway. I doubt the gun manufacturers were *paying* Rockstar to put authentic weapons in GTA; more likely they asked them to STOP putting them in there without permission (or maybe they had permission but lost it). They probably don't have authentic cars in GTA because those car companies like to get paid for the spots and/or don't like to see their cars damaged/burning/destroyed.
Unfortunately, this seems to me like another example of where video game makers have the potential to irk the shit out of buyers and get away with it. If you buy Madden 2006 and find out it has a totally obnoxious advertising subsystem, what can you do? You probably won't be able to return it. All you can do is raise a public stink and hope the company bows to the outrage and patches the game (And even that might not be possible if it was a console release). There are enough people who will pay for the game anyway, whether they find out about the ads before or after, that some companies - especially ones that seem more bottom-line-driven than others, like EA, to do it anyway.
Maybe complaining to the advertising companies would work better? I don't know. As long as the consumer memory is short-term enough that these gimmicks pay off (or even seem to pay off) for the companies behind them, they'll keep using them. Movie product placement is as bad as ever, but has it really bitten into movie sales (or rentals, or dvd purchases) for anything out there? No. A lousy review seems to be the best chance at that; maybe none have actually "Gone too far" yet. Maybe there is a line they can't cross, but it's entirely too obnoxious for most of us (where "us" might well be a minority of the target consumers) to be happy about.
Xentax
This'll get said more than once, but blame Vivendi Universal - not Valve - for this delay. Or perhaps blame Valve's contract negotiators for letting them get stuck with this, if you must.
Either way, lesson learned for developers that want to repeat the Steam experiment elsewhere.
Xentax
Exactly my point. Making it harder to falsify documents won't stop people from obtaining legal ones by false pretenses.
I have heard contradictory reports that the licenses the hijackers had - some say they were obtained illegally, while other reports imply they were fakes and/or stolen.
I'm all for making ID, money, and the like HARD to counterfeit or alter. I'm just saying we've already made it sufficiently hard such that this is no longer the "low-hanging fruit" when it comes to assuming a false identity. RFID won't help.
Xentax
All these efforts to craft technical defenses to terrorism will only go so far (if anywhere) in preventing terrorists from operating.
Smart, determined terrorists will always be able to assume the identities (and obtain the documentation) they need to operate. They may need more time to infiltrate, but that's about it. There's just too many overworked DMV workers out there for an unremarkable, prepared person to socially engineer a driver's license (or whatever) out of.
So, if you make falsification harder, you'll just encourage social engineering in its stead; something (IMHO) that we're still very vulnerable to and also much harder to effectively combat.
I'm not saying such a step is useless, just that I question the return for the investment and the hassle it confers on everyone who's NOT a terrorist.
(Not that I have any fantastic alternatives to offer right now - after all, if the problem was easy to solve, *someone* would have done so by now)
Xentax
Well, I didn't ponder that tidbit for long, I guess.
;)
My feeling is this - if that bothers you, don't buy it. They already paid to develop it, so if no-one (or not enough) people buy it, they'll probably eventually give it away *anyway*. Maybe not. Either way, they'd learn that the return on doing those for pay isn't right for them.
I agree we should ding companies for turning around and charging for something they said was free - especially if it really WAS free on the PC, that's just silly; whatever cost realities may exist, it's saying you treat your PC customers better than your XBox customers, so it's a good way to consolidate on the PC in the future if that's your goal, I guess
Xentax
I don't know what your problem is.
Yes, it was a big day for humanity - the barrier to the stars just moved down a bit, thanks to the XPrize and a team that managed to complete the XPrize challenge.
All I'm saying is, "way to go" to an American company for being that winning team. I feel some *nationalistic* pride because I know such a team can be found in America, and I know that such a team can't exist just anywhere. Certainly it could (and almost certainly DOES) exist elsewhere, but right now, there's only one, and it's in the USA.
To claim that the national origin of a company has nothing to do with said company is pure folly. I'm sure Scaled Composites would tell you that they could have done it faster or cheaper with less goverment oversight (though most of us are probably glad that certain FAA regulations, at least, are the order of the day in our airspace). Conversely, you should be able to see why it would take longer, cost more, or even be impossible in some other countries.
So, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, there is some reason for national pride. I never said Americans were the ONLY ones allowed to celebrate; merely that they (we) have one little extra reason to mark the occasion.
ps. If you didn't figure it out already, stating your OPINION as FACT (and in ALL CAPS) is just silly. Get over yourself.
Xentax
I ...well, sit...corrected.
/. post this, this isn't news at all!" and an AC replies with "You're new here, aren't you?"
I believe this is the part where I say "Geez, why did
Xentax
Amen to that. Heck, I'm mad that Doom3 didn't have Co-Op, for that matter.
Xentax
Heh, I suppose I deserved that one.
Just too much hassle. For some, leaving to go to a friend's house involves getting a "Hall Pass" from the SO. For others, they're simply too far away to make a trip practical (one guy I keep pestering to get live is on the West Coast, and the rest of us are in NC).
Basically, if you want to get people in a room to play games, that's an *event* - you end up feeling like the host should ensure food/beverage supply is arranged for, you might feel obligated to clean up a bit, and so on. With Live, you can just turn the game on and play. You might go so far as to call friends up and say "hey, let's play some PGR2 at 8pm tonight". Similarly, an "event" needs to go on for a certain amount of time to really be worthwhile, whereas meeting up via Live can be a much shorter experience (even 30 minutes) and still be worth the (reduced) effort.
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I think they don't (normally?) allow patches/game updates/expansion modules *unless they pertain to online play*. As in, Live is not to become a patching mechanism for any and all XBox games; Live is how people play XBox games together, and can also improve/fix that multiplayer experience as necessary.
Didn't some game recently go through this, where they needed/wanted to patch SP badly but had to wait until they had some MP fixes to bundle the SP fixes along with? I can't remember the specifics.
As far as the concept of $5 expansion packs go, this is only news insomuch as a 3rd party company is doing it. MS charges for some expansion packs - PGR2 and Links2004 I know of first hand. Links has at least one free course for download, and at least one NON-free course for download. PGR2 has extra maps and cars - all players get access to one car, and the assets for all the cars (so they can race in races limited to that booster pack's set of cars, I suppose), but only players who buy the packs can race in races on that track and use the other cars.
Now, the *inevitable* consequence of this is that less people race on the new tracks, because you don't want to shut out players who are online and willing to race but don't have the packs. I'm dismayed by this, but it's sort of inevitable; the same goes on with expansion packs for Mass Multi's, I'm sure, though I imagine the number of people with a given pack approaches 100% over time.
I wouldn't be surprised if Halo2 has downloadable maps/new game modes/etc. - the question'll be whether it's all free, partly free, or all pay-only. I hope it's all free - you just won't see many people playing on maps that only some of the playerbase is willing to pay for.
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Yes, and well that he did - there's no arguing that it was a big day for everyone, not just the US. I wish I'd been around at the time, it must have been a tremendous moment.
But doing something that's been done before, with *private enterprise* is sort of in a different category, and I think Rutan would agree. Remember, the ability of private enterprise to do something that used to require a government wouldn't be celebrated by every world government out there, or even every citizen out there.
Basically, I'm claiming that you could just as easily compare Scaled Composite's success with *China's* successful manned orbital flight, in some ways. China didn't do it first either, but it's a triumph for their nation. Similarly, the US has done this before (in the 60's), but having a private company do it is something *we* value, and especially the fact that an American company was the winner. I doubt the Chinese are interested in privatising their space efforts, not anytime soon anyway.
Am I making any sense?
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Okay, I got that one backwards; I must have been thinking of somewhere else. I guess IANACWB (Civil War Buff). You take my meaning, though, I think.
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This was from the same weekly update that was posted earlier about Halo 2 being "ready to ship".
Uh, surprise surprise - they finished their part of a major software project - when ELSE will a product team finally be *allowed* to take some vacation guilt-free (believe me, trying to squeeze it in at some "lull" in a project schedule rarely works out as planned)? If I was upper management at Bungie (yes, they're part of MS, but I'm sure they still have their own internal reporting structure), I'd definitely give the team a chance to regroup, make up for missing hours with spouses and kids, see the ball of fire that our planet keeps spinning around, etc.
They're not putting the Halo series on the shelf for X years or something - at least, this quote should NOT be construed as such a statement. They're just finally taking a (hopefully) well-deserved break after all the blood, sweat, tears, and hours they've put into making Halo 2.
I have little doubt they'll get cracking on Halo3 - probably for "XBox Next" or whatever you want to call it - in due course. After all, Sgt. Johnson claims he'll finally "get a woman" in Halo 4, we can't keep him waiting for too long, can we?
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So we're cheering the international community for having such a competition, but we should also cheer the (almost) all-American project team that WON said international competition.
It's a rather silly thing to get worked up about, IMHO. Bottom line, yes, anyone can compete, but yes, an American team *did* win it.
It's like rants about what "could have" happened if the quarterback had thrown for 2 more touchdowns, or if Lee had flanked instead of going up the middle at Chancellorsville, or whatever. Does it really matter what "coulda/shoulda" happened? No. Does the fact that an American financier, designer, and builder won the prize? Sort of. Does it mean noone else could have done it? Of course NOT.
There's nothing wrong, inaccurate, about doing it first; but there's no claim that only Americans can do it, or "could have" done it first. There is *something* to be said about doing it first, and I like to think that's all the original poster was driving at. First in Flight, and all that (and please, PLEASE don't turn that into the conspiracy theory of the day as to who REALLY flew first).
After all, this is about privatized, commercial access to space. We should all know that first in buys you something, doing it better and/or cheaper and/or cooler can ALSO mean something, when it comes to commerce. Apple didn't invent the portable music player, Betamax came before VHS (right?). Paraphrasing Churchill, this isn't the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning.
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I can't speak for everyone, but I think for a lot of people it's the multiplayer experience, not the campaign.
In Halo1, of course, this was limited to split screen and/or system link. The fact that Halo 2 has live support will probably be reason enough for Halo fans to buy the game. Add in some dual-wielding weapons, destructible vehicles, more multiplayer game modes (and maps, naturally)...hard to go wrong.
That doesn't change the fact that it's not for everyone of course, and there's nothing wrong with that.
If you're not into multiplayer FPS, there's not nearly as much there for you. The storyline was pretty good (IMHO), it WAS a fairly linear campaign though. I've heard some rumors about little differences (like, an AI driver while you're gunning on a 'hog), but the single player will still come down to story and creativity in the gameplay. Pretty hard to judge that in advance - I could see it going either way. Maybe they focused almost entirely on multiplayer and the single player campaign will be left behind. Maybe they heard the complaints about the Halo1 campaign being repetitive and linear, and have drastically improved. We'll just have to see.
This post seems to confirm that co-op is back (for the XBox version, at least), that's always a good thing. I wonder if you can do co-op over Live? I have some friends that're hard to get in the same room but we all have Live...
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I think this and the "brute force safe" reply above are both missing the point.
You can't brute force a safe without being obviously *trying to brute force your way into a safe*. There's obvious intent to circumvent.
Similarly, if the way you have to mark the CD makes it obvious that your *intent* is to circumvent (and not to, say, *label*), then again, you have intent.
Whereas, the shift-key feature (and, as someone pointed out, the registry key that makes no-autoplay the default), work for ANY cd, so I can be doing it as a matter of course or habit, having know intention or even realization that I'm circumventing. It'd probably stick even better if you'd made no-autoplay the default than pressing the shift key, of course.
Judging intent comes down to a trial by jury, I think, since it's not exactly "factual". So, I suppose there's a risk you could be judged to be circumventing even if you argued that you did so unwittingly/unknowingly. But I'd take my chances on that one -- moreso than the marker-on-the-DRM-disc method.
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Considering that the shift key is an OS feature - disable autoplay for *whatever* CD/DVD is being inserted - I (in my very personal opinion) don't think this could successfully be argued as copyright circumvention. After all, the shift-key-bypass predates the technology being "circumvented" using it...
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This sounds a lot like "You Are Here" from Snow Crash (by Neal Stephenson).
Get the data a little closer to real-time, and we're talking about some VERY cool technology here...
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I'm fine with the company being "challenged" to do an even better job than the rest because it's products comprise the majority of the market.
But I don't think it would be fair to "insist" that the top dog hew to a higher standard than the rest. It's unfair competition in reverse; imagine if a startup cell phone company wasn't required to provide e-911 while the top, established carriers were.
This sort of argument has been raised when comparing cable to DSL, PSTN to VOIP, etc. - why should solution X by forced to adhere to regulation ABC when solution Y does not? X often goes out of business in such a circumstance, which either hurts a business unfairly (if the regulation is of little value, or hurts the consumer, if that regulation was genuinely valuable and Y doesn't have to adhere to it. Making Y adhere after X is dead and gone would be worse yet.
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I'd argue that these cases are less interesting, because you're basically talking about the small set of people who wouldn't upgrade *regardless* of a reason.
If you're willing (and able) to secure these machines against the future - keeping them offline, or on isolated or firwalled networks, fine, keep Win3.1 if that's what you need (and some do).
I submit that you can't continue to keep an OS "feet wet" to the world forever - you eventually have to either upgrade or decide you can't afford to, and if you choose the latter, you've got to take steps to live with your choice (or the consequences).
There are often good reasons - the raw costs as you said, or maybe you CAN protect it adequately and you just *don't need* any of the new features of a newer kernel or the newer version. Fine. I suppose some folks will claim that XP just doesn't offer anything over 2k worth upgrading over. I know I've found XP to be more stable and more compatible, but others apparently have the opposite experience.
Basically, I think it's shortsighted to develop programs in such a way as to make them irrevocably bound to one version of an OS. You should either plan for platform upgrades, or be willing to pay the cost to make them when the time comes.
I mean, if you find yourself the admin of a multi-million dollar system with '96 apps and no programming staff, you're in big trouble, regardless of what your platform vendor is doing. A system like that needs maintenance; it almost certainly needs to evolve over time as users' needs change and grow, and (dammit!) you need to be able to adapt as your hardware and software platforms change. For some reason, people can get to thinking that software should be write once, buy once, use forever. What non-trivial hardware in the world is like that?
Knives need sharpening, guns need cleaning, cars need oil changes, tire replacements, gasoline, roads need repaving - why should software be any different?
Sure, software doesn't "wear out" per se, but how it works today is not necessarily the way it needs to work tomorrow, even if it actually works the way you want it to when it's brand new (and as we'd probably all agree, there's plenty of software, be it in-house or COTS, that is NOT exactly what you want even when it IS brand new). The set of people using it changes, what they want to do with it changes, new and/or better ways of doing the same things are devised, and so on.
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