at the number of big box stores which don't lock these game cards up. The problem is especially bad at Target, where more than a dozen of different games were obviously "opened" along the seam. Even after explaining it to the the customer service people I swear they didn't care or understand. I did get them to allow for my opening the box in front of them to confirm if it had a game card in it, took three of the ones that looked sealed to get it.
Stores need to understand, these things are as valuable as the gift cards they sell. They are real money.
Any subscription based game should follow the activation method, it will save a lot of grief for the customer. It really helps us more than the stores because it isn't easy to get the store to refund it (I would hate to see what BB would think if you told them the game card was missing and you had left the store already). Yet for stand alone games I don't think it is necessary
I think its humorous that people think they could walk in and get a real sys admin job just because of a degree.
Work experience is what counts. A degree may get you into the door faster but a solid resume does wonders. I just look at it this way, invest the years in school or invest them in your trade working your way up. I did the second and would do it all over again in any other trade that it applies to. There is a lot to be said for starting out as a grunt if your goal is to get to the top, you get a whole different perspective starting at the beginning.
and dangerous to all, I closed with "Lovely, whats next. If crap like this succeeds it opens everyone up to any fishing expedition law enforcement cares to make"
That is exactly what we have. A new way for GOVERNMENT to punish someone who a GOVERNMENT employee doesn't like or thinks something was wrong even if nothing is legally wrong.
Basically it lets them write the laws to prosecute on demand. The problem is that with every organization there are a lot of spiteful people around and this gives them too much power to correct the world as they see fit or take a back door approach to nailing someone they don't like.
Guess I better be careful who I cut in front of while driving now.
it should be money invested in research by any group shared to all.
In other words, if it is to be our money then everyone must benefit. It must be given and used within that context.
The government should not be handing money to private institutions because they screwed up. The model used by the big 3 is not sustainable and Tesla isn't up to solving transportation problems because of scale.
My ethics concern would be, is cloning a possibly sentient being acceptable when they most likely would have an entire existence in a lab and worse, possibly the only one of their kind? I am sure the same could be applied to animals but many do not assign similar concerns. The animal with its relative lack of intelligence might fit in more with a close relative but I doubt a humanoid would fit into our society much, considering we still fight each other over both physical and non-physical differences.
The harsh fact is that prisons are anything but locked down. Too many "rights" give prisoners many opportunities to get around some of the rules. Don't bring up prison rape and such like that, that is not something the government sponsors or supports.
Prison should be annoying and entirely scripted. Every moment of your day should be doing a required activity, from prison work, reading, education, and more. They should have only limited visitation - its prison.
Yeah, never been to one and won't ever either because I am not stupid, thank you.
If you read the story its because they can't nail her for the suicide they are doing this because "they have to do something". Which makes this case all the worse. I am wondering if the "hate crime" angle wasn't explored, its as silly as the approach they are taking.
So basically she does something which causes another to harm themselves. Technically she didn't cause the harm and as such is immune to prosecution. So instead they will twist a law and trump up some charges on this twist in regards to rules violated no one would ever consider for serious prosecution.
Lovely, whats next. If crap like this succeeds it opens everyone up to any fishing expedition law enforcement cares to make
Actually its common for business execs to have their logo in their picture so why wouldn't a General or even regular soldier have a flag in theirs? Sorry if it offends but many of us are actually very proud of our country, its heritage, and as such don't see reason to not celebrate it which can mean having the flag visible.
I guess its different elsewhere but we surrounded ourselves with the symbols of our freedom when we split from England, notice all the flags pictured then and the importance of some in song?
You did highlight the major difference though, we don't have to do it but we do so out of our own free will. Because of that we may seem excessive but there should never be anything wrong with such pride in one's country.
It would be more embarrassing to me to live somewhere where I would not feel comfortable showing it
The AP is making a mountain out of a molehill because they are trying to remove the stain on their industry that they are other so called leaders have put there. As such they need to exaggerate even the silliest of things and scream like a schoolyard brat "see see see"
I gave up long ago believing anything from Reuters when it came to stories involving Israel and for that matter the entire Middle East. They just lost their right to be trusted.
Really it is amazing how people will come out of the woodwork to support Apple in this. Sorry, I own multiple Apple products but I do not see how in the hell it is justified they can tell me or anyone else how to use their product once I buy it. This would be akin to Microsoft having said Windows only on Intel, using another processor violates the EULA. How far would have that gone?
Apple isn't denying Pystar business by suing them on grounds of copyright violation, they are denying you the right to purchase hardware supported by another vendor to run an operating system of your choosing. If other companies could produce configurations they could legally back as running OS X it would give some of us the machines we can't get from Apple.
However your not buying just performance in a Mac book pro. Your buying the whole package. It is so very light, so thin, compared to similar machines. Of course it can run both OS X and Windows makes it worthwhile to me.
Yet I can't help but wonder why Apple keeps putting mediocre screens on the pro models. 1440x900? Say what? I have a five year old Dell with 1600x1200 on that same screen size. Glossy only is a killer for some as well. The screen is what stopped me from buying one. It simply is not up to the price point of the machine.
Throw in the fact that OS X cannot run 8gb on the machine and it makes you wonder.
As for the benchmarks, show me how it does at 1920x1200 driving an external monitor. I should be able to use this as a DTR at home with great functionality on the road. I don't care what it can do at its native resolution because the native resolution sucks.
When comparing what it can do, don't go just to Dell. Flip open any Sunday circular and see what sells for 1000-1200. There are machines out there for the price of a regular mac book (again priced higher than previous generations) that can whoop a pro in all benchmarks.
I like the machine. I just won't pay the exorbitant price for that lackluster screen. It should be a minimum of 1600x1200. I guess I will wait for the 17
I had no real problems with the MOO3 system of planet management. The biggest problem I had in 3 was that combat sucked. It was so uninvolved as to make me resolve all battles with the one button click.
The problem in MOO3 is that the idea was excellent but the execution wasn't. Too much of the tech made little sense, you could not weigh its impact on your empire easily. Travel down "warp lanes" made overly long games as most of your time was spent trying to get ships to where you needed them and the route could be a convoluted mess with ships arriving woefully out of date by the time they got there.
Most games ended up with an empire that could produce amazing amounts of material and not do anything with it. Diplomacy really took a hit in 3. The Orion Senate or what not was another mess in its own, you could go most of a game and never be part of it.
In the end it was a mess because it was buggy and the developer sucked. At least is was not the game Alan wanted as that would have been even more of a "just click next turn' than what we got
I doubt he means in house use only software. I really doubt he cares if that is open source. I do not think it even matters. For all intents and purposes to the world the software does not exist.
I think his concern about everything being open source is in reference to software available to the general public by any means. I seriously doubt game companies would give out source simply because staying ahead is coming up with tricks/effects your competitors don't have.
while his idea sounds cool the problem I see is providing incentive for people to do something. Who is going to write tax software, let alone stand behind it, and just provide source to where any competitor could get hints on how to do it? I know, extreme example, but writing good software does not require it to be open source or even have source code available. It is their work and they should be allowed to distribute it as they see fit. To that end Stallman is just the reverse of some corporate types - in that he is just as selfish as they are.
giving the fact that most of the groups trying to stop this are irrational most of the time I would suggest the Navy only be permitted to test sonar on land.
I read some of the quotes. The fact remains that no harm was shown to marine life in the area the Navy uses for testing. Harm was shown elsewhere in the world but not specific to the claims presented here. Throw in the fact that according to one of the protesting groups the NRDC said the use of high- intensity sonar could disturb or threaten 170,000 marine mammals, and it predicted the exercises would cause permanent injury to more than 500 whales and lead to temporary deafness in at least 8,000 whales.
In other words, there isn't an area of sea on this planet that would be acceptable.
Find a place a majority of the group agree the testing can take place and the rest will get it blocked. The simple matter is that there are times when the "possible" harm to marine life must be acceptable.
Look back a hundred years and more and tell me how old you had to be to something dangerous, to lead, or raise a family. Look back to the recent Veteran's day and tell me that some of them were to young to be thrust in a world war.
Do we know how old the people in the show are supposed to be? Do we know if in the future that older people will look a lot younger simply because of better medical care or environments?
Do not apply visual cues to determine true age. It doesn't work anymore. Not with advances in medical science. Considering its the future as long as they look like they passed puberty I'm fine with it.
Blame public education. Somehow in the US (at least in the area where I am at) they have managed to convince many kids that the Constitution grants people rights. Even the most recent election featured many politicians openly stating that the Constitution granted rights to people when it did nothing of the sort. They would then extend this line of thought and talk about how they were going to "give more rights to the people".
It is this ignorance of the US Constitution which politicians rely on. The Constitution granted rights to the government and held all rights not granted specifically to those of the people. Trouble is people don't know it and assume otherwise. How else do we explain the mess we have now?
No wonder both parties want to ignore it, it would handcuff them both if they truly adhered to it. Yet how is anyone going to understand what it truly means if the education system, government, and the press, both say otherwise?
I always felt that iTunes was to OS/X as what Microsoft Office was to Windows. It looks close but has features/layouts that may show up in future OS releases.
Considering it is Turbine you might be right. They took two of the biggest names in geekdom and basically came up.... meh
They go out of their way to congratulate themselves on how they don't release subscriber numbers yet those who watch the industry put it into perspective, when you have nothing to gloat about it makes it obvious in its own way.
The reason AC1 has held on for so long is because no other MMORPG is like it. If you ignore the dated graphics you will see an engine and game created by people who liked to play games. They created this game out of their love of gaming. It was a game created by gamers for other gamers.
Whereas AC2 was a game created by programmers for themselves. It sure sounded as if they enjoyed it more than we did. Great cities of emptiness which were nothing more than monuments to the developers.
I figure their going to consoles is just admission they don't have what it takes to cut it in the PC centric MMORPG world. Their clients ever since AC2 have "felt" sluggish and their UI development is horrid at times. A mish mash of themes and badly setup panels.
Now before people clamor around and claim a mmorpg and a console don't mix I have two words for you.
Guitar Hero.
Why not release a mmorpg with its own dedicated controller? Though I fully admit the idea of playing one without a keyboard feels wrong the fact is people are getting very used to voice chat in game. So a dedicated controller and voice chat alleviates the need of a keyboard very nicely.
Lets just hope Turbine's next game doesn't have NPCs who don't look and walk like zombies from a living dead movie. (this is a reference to lotro where the npcs do not have the full animation or graphics of the player and hence have dead faces and walk like someone shoved a corncob up their arse)
I saw no where in your post about you having contributed. I would suspect that you haven't.
You should never obligate anyone to something you do not obligate yourself too.
However I understand the mentality expressed in your post and others here all too well. It is far easier to take someone's money; and yes your taking; provided you never have to meet the person your taking it from.
If this is the future of the world its not a good one.
Slashdot Mirror
I have Quicktime.
at the number of big box stores which don't lock these game cards up. The problem is especially bad at Target, where more than a dozen of different games were obviously "opened" along the seam. Even after explaining it to the the customer service people I swear they didn't care or understand. I did get them to allow for my opening the box in front of them to confirm if it had a game card in it, took three of the ones that looked sealed to get it.
Stores need to understand, these things are as valuable as the gift cards they sell. They are real money.
Any subscription based game should follow the activation method, it will save a lot of grief for the customer. It really helps us more than the stores because it isn't easy to get the store to refund it (I would hate to see what BB would think if you told them the game card was missing and you had left the store already). Yet for stand alone games I don't think it is necessary
I think its humorous that people think they could walk in and get a real sys admin job just because of a degree.
Work experience is what counts. A degree may get you into the door faster but a solid resume does wonders. I just look at it this way, invest the years in school or invest them in your trade working your way up. I did the second and would do it all over again in any other trade that it applies to. There is a lot to be said for starting out as a grunt if your goal is to get to the top, you get a whole different perspective starting at the beginning.
and dangerous to all, I closed with "Lovely, whats next. If crap like this succeeds it opens everyone up to any fishing expedition law enforcement cares to make"
That is exactly what we have. A new way for GOVERNMENT to punish someone who a GOVERNMENT employee doesn't like or thinks something was wrong even if nothing is legally wrong.
Basically it lets them write the laws to prosecute on demand. The problem is that with every organization there are a lot of spiteful people around and this gives them too much power to correct the world as they see fit or take a back door approach to nailing someone they don't like.
Guess I better be careful who I cut in front of while driving now.
it should be money invested in research by any group shared to all.
In other words, if it is to be our money then everyone must benefit. It must be given and used within that context.
The government should not be handing money to private institutions because they screwed up. The model used by the big 3 is not sustainable and Tesla isn't up to solving transportation problems because of scale.
My ethics concern would be, is cloning a possibly sentient being acceptable when they most likely would have an entire existence in a lab and worse, possibly the only one of their kind? I am sure the same could be applied to animals but many do not assign similar concerns. The animal with its relative lack of intelligence might fit in more with a close relative but I doubt a humanoid would fit into our society much, considering we still fight each other over both physical and non-physical differences.
and in some co-ed prisons apparently sex by climbing through the ceiling, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8056440
The point of it is, they cannot control easily what gets in because the punishment for doing so or being caught isn't severe enough to stop it. This trial in Atlanta http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/11/17/nichols_trial_atlanta.html shows all the sorts of things even prisoners can set into motion while locked up!
The harsh fact is that prisons are anything but locked down. Too many "rights" give prisoners many opportunities to get around some of the rules. Don't bring up prison rape and such like that, that is not something the government sponsors or supports.
Prison should be annoying and entirely scripted. Every moment of your day should be doing a required activity, from prison work, reading, education, and more. They should have only limited visitation - its prison.
Yeah, never been to one and won't ever either because I am not stupid, thank you.
If you read the story its because they can't nail her for the suicide they are doing this because "they have to do something". Which makes this case all the worse. I am wondering if the "hate crime" angle wasn't explored, its as silly as the approach they are taking.
So basically she does something which causes another to harm themselves. Technically she didn't cause the harm and as such is immune to prosecution. So instead they will twist a law and trump up some charges on this twist in regards to rules violated no one would ever consider for serious prosecution.
Lovely, whats next. If crap like this succeeds it opens everyone up to any fishing expedition law enforcement cares to make
Actually its common for business execs to have their logo in their picture so why wouldn't a General or even regular soldier have a flag in theirs? Sorry if it offends but many of us are actually very proud of our country, its heritage, and as such don't see reason to not celebrate it which can mean having the flag visible.
I guess its different elsewhere but we surrounded ourselves with the symbols of our freedom when we split from England, notice all the flags pictured then and the importance of some in song?
You did highlight the major difference though, we don't have to do it but we do so out of our own free will. Because of that we may seem excessive but there should never be anything wrong with such pride in one's country.
It would be more embarrassing to me to live somewhere where I would not feel comfortable showing it
The AP is making a mountain out of a molehill because they are trying to remove the stain on their industry that they are other so called leaders have put there. As such they need to exaggerate even the silliest of things and scream like a schoolyard brat "see see see"
I gave up long ago believing anything from Reuters when it came to stories involving Israel and for that matter the entire Middle East. They just lost their right to be trusted.
I cannot vilify Gore anymore when he flies to his latest Global Warming conference because by using his private jet he is helping save the planet?
arrggghhh!!!
I hope they find an angle that works.
Really it is amazing how people will come out of the woodwork to support Apple in this. Sorry, I own multiple Apple products but I do not see how in the hell it is justified they can tell me or anyone else how to use their product once I buy it. This would be akin to Microsoft having said Windows only on Intel, using another processor violates the EULA. How far would have that gone?
Apple isn't denying Pystar business by suing them on grounds of copyright violation, they are denying you the right to purchase hardware supported by another vendor to run an operating system of your choosing. If other companies could produce configurations they could legally back as running OS X it would give some of us the machines we can't get from Apple.
However your not buying just performance in a Mac book pro. Your buying the whole package. It is so very light, so thin, compared to similar machines. Of course it can run both OS X and Windows makes it worthwhile to me.
Yet I can't help but wonder why Apple keeps putting mediocre screens on the pro models. 1440x900? Say what? I have a five year old Dell with 1600x1200 on that same screen size. Glossy only is a killer for some as well. The screen is what stopped me from buying one. It simply is not up to the price point of the machine.
Throw in the fact that OS X cannot run 8gb on the machine and it makes you wonder.
As for the benchmarks, show me how it does at 1920x1200 driving an external monitor. I should be able to use this as a DTR at home with great functionality on the road. I don't care what it can do at its native resolution because the native resolution sucks.
When comparing what it can do, don't go just to Dell. Flip open any Sunday circular and see what sells for 1000-1200. There are machines out there for the price of a regular mac book (again priced higher than previous generations) that can whoop a pro in all benchmarks.
I like the machine. I just won't pay the exorbitant price for that lackluster screen. It should be a minimum of 1600x1200. I guess I will wait for the 17
I had no real problems with the MOO3 system of planet management. The biggest problem I had in 3 was that combat sucked. It was so uninvolved as to make me resolve all battles with the one button click.
The problem in MOO3 is that the idea was excellent but the execution wasn't. Too much of the tech made little sense, you could not weigh its impact on your empire easily. Travel down "warp lanes" made overly long games as most of your time was spent trying to get ships to where you needed them and the route could be a convoluted mess with ships arriving woefully out of date by the time they got there.
Most games ended up with an empire that could produce amazing amounts of material and not do anything with it. Diplomacy really took a hit in 3. The Orion Senate or what not was another mess in its own, you could go most of a game and never be part of it.
In the end it was a mess because it was buggy and the developer sucked. At least is was not the game Alan wanted as that would have been even more of a "just click next turn' than what we got
Hey, I would not mind a story about the solid waste disposal system if they said "everything now tastes like chicken"
that the thing Quicktime was best at was telling you needed to upgrade to a newer version.
Amazing how QT/iTunes require a restart on my iMac.
I doubt he means in house use only software. I really doubt he cares if that is open source. I do not think it even matters. For all intents and purposes to the world the software does not exist.
I think his concern about everything being open source is in reference to software available to the general public by any means. I seriously doubt game companies would give out source simply because staying ahead is coming up with tricks/effects your competitors don't have.
while his idea sounds cool the problem I see is providing incentive for people to do something. Who is going to write tax software, let alone stand behind it, and just provide source to where any competitor could get hints on how to do it? I know, extreme example, but writing good software does not require it to be open source or even have source code available. It is their work and they should be allowed to distribute it as they see fit. To that end Stallman is just the reverse of some corporate types - in that he is just as selfish as they are.
because we beat Digg to it!
giving the fact that most of the groups trying to stop this are irrational most of the time I would suggest the Navy only be permitted to test sonar on land.
I read some of the quotes. The fact remains that no harm was shown to marine life in the area the Navy uses for testing. Harm was shown elsewhere in the world but not specific to the claims presented here. Throw in the fact that according to one of the protesting groups the NRDC said the use of high- intensity sonar could disturb or threaten 170,000 marine mammals, and it predicted the exercises would cause permanent injury to more than 500 whales and lead to temporary deafness in at least 8,000 whales.
In other words, there isn't an area of sea on this planet that would be acceptable.
Find a place a majority of the group agree the testing can take place and the rest will get it blocked. The simple matter is that there are times when the "possible" harm to marine life must be acceptable.
Look back a hundred years and more and tell me how old you had to be to something dangerous, to lead, or raise a family. Look back to the recent Veteran's day and tell me that some of them were to young to be thrust in a world war.
Do we know how old the people in the show are supposed to be? Do we know if in the future that older people will look a lot younger simply because of better medical care or environments?
Do not apply visual cues to determine true age. It doesn't work anymore. Not with advances in medical science. Considering its the future as long as they look like they passed puberty I'm fine with it.
Just like any MMORPG franchise that claims they aren't trying to be or beat World of Warcraft.
In other words, get in and apologize before it hits the fan then point back to the statement and date as somehow providing you cover.
Blame public education. Somehow in the US (at least in the area where I am at) they have managed to convince many kids that the Constitution grants people rights. Even the most recent election featured many politicians openly stating that the Constitution granted rights to people when it did nothing of the sort. They would then extend this line of thought and talk about how they were going to "give more rights to the people".
It is this ignorance of the US Constitution which politicians rely on. The Constitution granted rights to the government and held all rights not granted specifically to those of the people. Trouble is people don't know it and assume otherwise. How else do we explain the mess we have now?
No wonder both parties want to ignore it, it would handcuff them both if they truly adhered to it. Yet how is anyone going to understand what it truly means if the education system, government, and the press, both say otherwise?
Really?
I always felt that iTunes was to OS/X as what Microsoft Office was to Windows. It looks close but has features/layouts that may show up in future OS releases.
Considering it is Turbine you might be right. They took two of the biggest names in geekdom and basically came up.... meh
They go out of their way to congratulate themselves on how they don't release subscriber numbers yet those who watch the industry put it into perspective, when you have nothing to gloat about it makes it obvious in its own way.
The reason AC1 has held on for so long is because no other MMORPG is like it. If you ignore the dated graphics you will see an engine and game created by people who liked to play games. They created this game out of their love of gaming. It was a game created by gamers for other gamers.
Whereas AC2 was a game created by programmers for themselves. It sure sounded as if they enjoyed it more than we did. Great cities of emptiness which were nothing more than monuments to the developers.
I figure their going to consoles is just admission they don't have what it takes to cut it in the PC centric MMORPG world. Their clients ever since AC2 have "felt" sluggish and their UI development is horrid at times. A mish mash of themes and badly setup panels.
Now before people clamor around and claim a mmorpg and a console don't mix I have two words for you.
Guitar Hero.
Why not release a mmorpg with its own dedicated controller? Though I fully admit the idea of playing one without a keyboard feels wrong the fact is people are getting very used to voice chat in game. So a dedicated controller and voice chat alleviates the need of a keyboard very nicely.
Lets just hope Turbine's next game doesn't have NPCs who don't look and walk like zombies from a living dead movie. (this is a reference to lotro where the npcs do not have the full animation or graphics of the player and hence have dead faces and walk like someone shoved a corncob up their arse)
I saw no where in your post about you having contributed. I would suspect that you haven't.
You should never obligate anyone to something you do not obligate yourself too.
However I understand the mentality expressed in your post and others here all too well. It is far easier to take someone's money; and yes your taking; provided you never have to meet the person your taking it from.
If this is the future of the world its not a good one.