Why does the slashdot crew, who ostensibly are anti-microsoft, always tout the latest windows only games. or they announce on the front page that the x-box is now $200. See, if they truly went along with what they say, none of this would ever be posted.
I wouldn't say Slashdot is necessarily anti-Microsoft, it is more a case of Slashdot scrutinising Microsoft and their practices. Don't forget that Slashdot readership is a mixed bunch, some of which hate Microsoft, some love and some are neutral on the matter.
It's a bit deceptive to refer to it as a portable system considering you need to plug it into a TV to actually to use it. By using the word portable I thought something along the lines of Puma the portable Atari 2600 where a Sega Game Gear has been converted into a portable Atari 2600 complete with its own display.
And here is the text for those too lazy to scroll down....
Mozilla needs to be configured to work properly with proxies such as Junkbuster that do not support the most recent HTTP specification. By default, Mozilla tries to use HTTP 1.1. To use Mozilla with a proxy that only supports HTTP 1.0, edit the HTTP Version from 1.1 to 1.0 in Edit | Preferences | Debug | Networking. (Bug 38488)
Continuing with the whole Star Wars verses Spiderman/comics thread established by JonKatz a few articles ago, it is interesting to note that Star Wars has also been studied scientifically.
A astrophysics by the name of Jeanne Cavelos wrote book called The Science of Star Wars, where she talks about how Star Wars fuelled her interest in space exploration and discusses the whole science of Star Wars. You also have the online Star Wars Technical Commentaries that discuss the scientific plausability of the movies. It's good to know that imagination of others be it Stan Lee or George Lucas can help people think scientifically about both the real world and the imagined.
Considering these virtual/emulated hardware programs are never as fast as the real thing does that mean they would be suitable to play classic PC games that run too fast on modern PCs? Has anyone tried running the classics such as Scorched Earth, Comander Keen, Crystal Caves, Duke Nukem etc under any of these programs, particuarly Bochs which is free. I notice that Bochs even has Soundblaster emulation which would be great for old games. I would be interested to see the results.
"It turns out speaking uses auditory memory, which is in the same space as your short-term and working memory," he adds.
What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at the same time.
I don't know about this statement, I always find it easier to write and/or think when I am expressing my thoughts out loud. Wasn't this something we were tought in school, like it's easier to read out loud than silently? Mind you having done two years of psychology I realise there is a lot differing opinions about how the brain works, so can any psychology graduates tell me if his statement is true?
From personal use of Mozilla I prefer it over Internet Explorer for many reasons but mostly because of the all the features for power users. As has already been mentioned by the reviewer it has tabbed browsing that is great but aside from that it has a plethora of other great features I will list in point form.
Complete control over Javascript, you can disable it all together, or just popups, the resizing of windows etc
Powerful search tools, you can choose the search engine of your preference while as far I know in it only uses MSN for searching in the URL bar. On top of that you can also select a bunch of text in a webpage and then bring up a context menu and do 'Websearch for "xxxx"' very handly for looking up things from articles.
The blocking of images from servers of your choose, get for getting rid of ads
The blocking off cookies from sites, again great for stopping those Doubleclick and Cnet cookies etc
That's atleast I handful of things that I know Mozilla RC1 has that Internet Explorer version 5 doesn't have. But hey at the end of the day it doesn't come down to features, just personal preference.
At first, Altnet will market video and audio clips. Brilliant is negotiating with music labels and movie studios to market their material as well. The files will be copy-protected in some way, using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology. Restrictions could vary with the type of file or its source; a record label may let you copy a file once (onto a portable player, for example), or play it only a certain number of times.
It's good to see that record labels have finally come to their senses and are starting to use the Internet as a marketting tool. An example of this is how silverchair released their single 'The Greatest View' as a digital download to great success. However it is a pity that such downloads usually have some form of DRM like they stop playing after a certain date, but I guess some record labels aren't prepared to hand out freebies even if it means potentially increasing sales through exposure. On the otherhand other labels, usually the smaller/independent labels are quite happy to hand out free tracks with no constraints at sites like Epitonic
Speaking of Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology, I wonder if Microsoft have released a patch for it since it was cracked last October
Never mind the the Klez virus, those elaborate virus hoaxes are far more annoying because you need to educate the person that emailed you about it that it is in fact a hoax. One only has to look at the latest hoax that tricks user into thinking jdbgmgr.exe, the Microsoft Debugger Registrar for Java is a virus.
What is fair use though? How far does fair use extend and where do it limits end? That seems to one part of the problem, because there is no rule of thumb of what constitutes fair use. In seems to be in the same boat as justice, in that it's definitely a good thing to have but its a loose principle so there is no concrete definition to determine what is just and what isn't.
Looking on the Internet there are plenty of documents (example 1, example 2) that define fair use in academia, but are they such definitions in regards to personal use?
Forgive my ignorance on the matter, but does the DCMA only have jurisdiction in the United States? I ask because in the article it mentions foreign researchers being weary of visiting the US following the arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov. So if it is only applicable in the US how does it affect those of us in Australia and other countries?
Who would you take the suit against though? The person/group who is outsourced to do the spamming for the company, the company who contracted the spammers to do marketting for them or both?
As much as I would love to sue people who spam me it's not like I have the time or money to do so. At the end of the day it just seems easier to setup a bunch of filters instead.
Re:Tron is a Disney product...
on
Tron 2.0 Game
·
· Score: 1
Not to mention the fact that the game is being developed by Monolith, the people who made Blood, Shogo, et al. I basically gave up on Monolith after the utter fiasco that was Blood 2, which had a chance to be great... except that Monolith not only dropped the ball, they tossed it into a wasterpaper bin.
While Blood 2 was no doubt a stuff up, haven't Monolith since redemmed themselves with No One Lives For Ever and Aliens vs Predator 2? The former definitely was very fun to play and the latter was supported by a series of patchs and even a dedicated Linux server.
How cosmic, I was actually reading about this article earlier today and now it's mentioned on Slashdot. Anyway reading the article I noticed some very interestings things about the gameplay. The most interesting of which was that of the classic Tron disc as the primary weapon for the game. As the game progresses you get upgrades for the disc, or as they refer to it "sub-routines", and they will let you do crazy stuff like guide the disc around corners, get it to fragment in mid-air and so on. Then there is the fact the disc can double as a shield. Should definitely make for some very interesting multiplayer games I reckon.
However there is one let down to date, and that will be lack of light cycles in multiplayer (refer to quote) but in all it should pretty exciting and innovative. I definitely recommend reading the article, it lays down the premise of the very well.
One thing we won't see at this point are lightcycle multiplayer games however. This is something they really wanted to do right from the start, but have found that the current networking technology available just wouldn't be able to handle the mode. Lag issues would just cause havoc in a game that would need extremely fast reaction times from all parties.
By the way, the screenshots reminded me a lot of the movie Aliens (the James Cameron sequel to Alien). I hope someone does a total conversion, or maybe they use the Doom III engine for an Aliens Vs. Predator game.
As great as an Aliens total conversion could be for the Doom III engine it's unlikey to happen because Fox would threaten to take legal action. It's happened before as both the Aliens total conversions for Quake and Half-Life were cancelled for that very reason.
Whatever it's called, the result of this single-handed, civic-minded tinkering from Thailand could lead to a day when firemen carry catapults in their trucks as well as ladders.
I don't know about the rest of you but this sounds like it has the potential for one very cool water fight. While settle at catapults though, I want to see fireman running around with a bandolier loaded with these balls. Even better, why not just cram some Pokemon with a water attack into one these balls. The kids would love it!
It will be interesting to see if they can retain the original Doom gameplay in a fully 3D engine. I recall in the original the gameplay was very arcade like with with lots of enemies to fight at once, and that was possible because sprites use up far less resources than high polycount models. However looking at the screenshots it appears the emphasis is less on large confrontations and more about creating a sense of supsense through lighting.
This time round little appears to have changed and in America fans have already been queueing for weeks outside cinemas to get their tickets.
Queuing up for weeks eh? I don't know about the rest of the Starwars fans but I didn't have to queue at all for my Starwars Episode 2 tickets. In Sydney Australia, Kings Comics often organises premier nights for geek/comic related movies and these are announced on their email list. When it came to Episode 2 they announced it the night before and luckily my email addiction paid off because I managed to get two tickets before they sold out within 12 hours.
I notice that Star Walking the Australian Stars Wars socities is also organising premiere screenings. So assuming that other socities around the world do the same what's all this talk of hardcore fans queueing for weeks? Is it just something some fans do show off their dedication, and sometimes to also earn money for charities?
What about those VCRs that have mechanisms for detecting and skipping ads? They must really instill fear in the likes of Jamie Kellner and co.
After a quick Google I found an example of such device, being the Hitachi VT-FX880E that has a feature called Commercial Advantage. I am not sure how effective it is but his a snippet taken from a review
If the FX880 were a computer Commercial Advantage would be described
as its killer app. What it actually reflects is Hitachi ingeniously tackling the
old problem of getting rid of the ads from programmes recorded from
commercial TV stations. There have been attempts to do this almost from
the dawn of the VCR but most have attempted to blank out the ads
completely. What Commercial Advantage cleverly does is detect when an
ad break starts, automatically kicks into fast forward and then drops back
to normal speed when the programme resumes, all without you having to
lift a finger.
It does this by detecting a signal that is sent at the beginning of each ad
break which effectively returns a network to local programming so ads for
that region can be shown. A signal at the end of the break marks network
programming restarting and the end of the Commercial Advantage option.
As with all good ideas it is deceptively simple but not without its faults. In
our tests of the feature we found CA kicking in at the start of local TV
promo spots (trailers, etc) that run before the advertisements themselves.
Even so, it's a great idea and a genuinely useful one.
No support for pre-DRM media formats.
on
Reason Magazine on DRM
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
One thing I found very interesting reading the article, which I had not considered beforehand, was as the author pointed out.
The digital videos they shot in 1999 may be unpayable on their desktop and laptop computers.
This is better further elaborated in the following passage...
There are some problems with this scheme. If Prince-ton computer scientist Edward Felten is right, a watermark that's invisible to the audience yet easily detected by machines will be relatively easy to remove. To put it simply, if you can't see it, you won't miss it when it's gone. Which is why the components of new home entertainment systems probably would have to be designed not to play unwatermarked content. Otherwise, all you've done is develop an incentive for both inquisitive hackers and copyright "pirates" to find a way to strip out the watermarks. But if the new entertainment systems won't play content without watermarks, they won't work with old digital videos or MP3s.
Now assuming the above is true and consider the worst case scenario of this bill coming to pass. Would this mean all those legitimate MP3s I downloaded from Epitonic and the Star Wars fan films would no longer be playable on new hardware since they lacked a watermark?
If this the case how would free content continue to exist and operate in this system, as they would obviously have to use watermarks just like copyrighted works if they want to be playable on the new hardware DRM systems. Ofcourse this sort of thing would piss of consumers and even some content providers.
I work at the Pizza Hut call centre and we use the AS/400 there for taking down customer orders. The machines are quite basic but they get the job done and from my experience the machines are reliable as we haven't had a major crash in the 8 months or I have been working there. If you are after general information on the system you can consult this link.
i heard something about someone putting linux on an xbox and running it on that. where can i find information?
I believe you are referring to www.xbox-linux.org. Looking at the website it looks like are making progress slowly though I don't think it will be easier than porting to the Dreamcast despite the x86 architecture. I believe part of the reason the Dreamcast port was successful was due to hardware documentation, namely the leaked SDK document.
With the X-Box it aint so easy because anyone who applies for the dev-kit has to sign a NDA. So the only way Linux on the X-Box is going to happen is to reverse engineer the system, just like the aforementioned group are doing. Microsoft are no doubt quite determined to stop unauthorised development for the X-Box.
...but getting it to work on an X-Box would be even more so!
I could be wrong on this, but I believe it's easier to develop for the Dreamcast as the SDK was illegaly leaked on the net. It is because of that there was a large flux of emulators and other unoffical programs developed for the Dreamcast.
Microsoft is no doubt more protective about it's SDK and stopping unauthorised for the development for X-Box. According to the X-Box development site you need to sign a NDA to get access to the devkit. So any GLPed program let alone Linux is quite unlikely, that is unless you reverse engineer the console but these days that would probably land you in hot water.
I dunno about you, but I can read a website while computing, too...
I was meant to say commuting but inadvertantly wrote it out as 'comuting', quite different from 'computing' though my grammar and spelling certainly does need some improvement.
The fact that they are losing money atleast means one good thing and is they aren't accepting money from publishers for good reviews.
The pricing and what you get for it looks pretty decent in my opinion. Lets face it $4.95 a month is how much a computer magazine would cost at a newstands, except this magazine is online and updated daily instead of montly. Sure you don't get something you can hold in your hands and read while comuting, but you do get something ad-free and that's something printed magazines can't boast. Plus let's not forget ads often bias publications to write good things about their products to keep that advertiser. So in all I can see Gamespots model as a good thing, now I just hope it works in a medium where people expect things for free.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does the slashdot crew, who ostensibly are anti-microsoft, always tout the latest windows only games. or they announce on the front page that the x-box is now $200. See, if they truly went along with what they say, none of this would ever be posted.
I wouldn't say Slashdot is necessarily anti-Microsoft, it is more a case of Slashdot scrutinising Microsoft and their practices. Don't forget that Slashdot readership is a mixed bunch, some of which hate Microsoft, some love and some are neutral on the matter.
It's a bit deceptive to refer to it as a portable system considering you need to plug it into a TV to actually to use it. By using the word portable I thought something along the lines of Puma the portable Atari 2600 where a Sega Game Gear has been converted into a portable Atari 2600 complete with its own display.
There is a whole site dedicated to Atari 2600 portable conversion projects that has been discussed in this and repeated in this Slashdot article.
I am not sure if you have tried this but there is a section in the release notes about using Mozilla with Junkbuster at www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.0/#general
And here is the text for those too lazy to scroll down....
Mozilla needs to be configured to work properly with proxies such as Junkbuster that do not support the most recent HTTP specification. By default, Mozilla tries to use HTTP 1.1. To use Mozilla with a proxy that only supports HTTP 1.0, edit the HTTP Version from 1.1 to 1.0 in Edit | Preferences | Debug | Networking. (Bug 38488)
Continuing with the whole Star Wars verses Spiderman/comics thread established by JonKatz a few articles ago, it is interesting to note that Star Wars has also been studied scientifically.
A astrophysics by the name of Jeanne Cavelos wrote book called The Science of Star Wars, where she talks about how Star Wars fuelled her interest in space exploration and discusses the whole science of Star Wars. You also have the online Star Wars Technical Commentaries that discuss the scientific plausability of the movies. It's good to know that imagination of others be it Stan Lee or George Lucas can help people think scientifically about both the real world and the imagined.
Considering these virtual/emulated hardware programs are never as fast as the real thing does that mean they would be suitable to play classic PC games that run too fast on modern PCs? Has anyone tried running the classics such as Scorched Earth, Comander Keen, Crystal Caves, Duke Nukem etc under any of these programs, particuarly Bochs which is free. I notice that Bochs even has Soundblaster emulation which would be great for old games. I would be interested to see the results.
"It turns out speaking uses auditory memory, which is in the same space as your short-term and working memory," he adds.
What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at the same time.
I don't know about this statement, I always find it easier to write and/or think when I am expressing my thoughts out loud. Wasn't this something we were tought in school, like it's easier to read out loud than silently? Mind you having done two years of psychology I realise there is a lot differing opinions about how the brain works, so can any psychology graduates tell me if his statement is true?
That's atleast I handful of things that I know Mozilla RC1 has that Internet Explorer version 5 doesn't have. But hey at the end of the day it doesn't come down to features, just personal preference.
At first, Altnet will market video and audio clips. Brilliant is negotiating with music labels and movie studios to market their material as well. The files will be copy-protected in some way, using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology. Restrictions could vary with the type of file or its source; a record label may let you copy a file once (onto a portable player, for example), or play it only a certain number of times.
It's good to see that record labels have finally come to their senses and are starting to use the Internet as a marketting tool. An example of this is how silverchair released their single 'The Greatest View' as a digital download to great success. However it is a pity that such downloads usually have some form of DRM like they stop playing after a certain date, but I guess some record labels aren't prepared to hand out freebies even if it means potentially increasing sales through exposure. On the otherhand other labels, usually the smaller/independent labels are quite happy to hand out free tracks with no constraints at sites like Epitonic
Speaking of Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology, I wonder if Microsoft have released a patch for it since it was cracked last October
Never mind the the Klez virus, those elaborate virus hoaxes are far more annoying because you need to educate the person that emailed you about it that it is in fact a hoax. One only has to look at the latest hoax that tricks user into thinking jdbgmgr.exe, the Microsoft Debugger Registrar for Java is a virus.
What is fair use though? How far does fair use extend and where do it limits end? That seems to one part of the problem, because there is no rule of thumb of what constitutes fair use. In seems to be in the same boat as justice, in that it's definitely a good thing to have but its a loose principle so there is no concrete definition to determine what is just and what isn't.
Looking on the Internet there are plenty of documents (example 1, example 2) that define fair use in academia, but are they such definitions in regards to personal use?
Forgive my ignorance on the matter, but does the DCMA only have jurisdiction in the United States? I ask because in the article it mentions foreign researchers being weary of visiting the US following the arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov. So if it is only applicable in the US how does it affect those of us in Australia and other countries?
Who would you take the suit against though? The person/group who is outsourced to do the spamming for the company, the company who contracted the spammers to do marketting for them or both?
As much as I would love to sue people who spam me it's not like I have the time or money to do so. At the end of the day it just seems easier to setup a bunch of filters instead.
Not to mention the fact that the game is being developed by Monolith, the people who made Blood, Shogo, et al. I basically gave up on Monolith after the utter fiasco that was Blood 2, which had a chance to be great... except that Monolith not only dropped the ball, they tossed it into a wasterpaper bin.
While Blood 2 was no doubt a stuff up, haven't Monolith since redemmed themselves with No One Lives For Ever and Aliens vs Predator 2? The former definitely was very fun to play and the latter was supported by a series of patchs and even a dedicated Linux server.
How cosmic, I was actually reading about this article earlier today and now it's mentioned on Slashdot. Anyway reading the article I noticed some very interestings things about the gameplay. The most interesting of which was that of the classic Tron disc as the primary weapon for the game. As the game progresses you get upgrades for the disc, or as they refer to it "sub-routines", and they will let you do crazy stuff like guide the disc around corners, get it to fragment in mid-air and so on. Then there is the fact the disc can double as a shield. Should definitely make for some very interesting multiplayer games I reckon.
However there is one let down to date, and that will be lack of light cycles in multiplayer (refer to quote) but in all it should pretty exciting and innovative. I definitely recommend reading the article, it lays down the premise of the very well.
One thing we won't see at this point are lightcycle multiplayer games however. This is something they really wanted to do right from the start, but have found that the current networking technology available just wouldn't be able to handle the mode. Lag issues would just cause havoc in a game that would need extremely fast reaction times from all parties.
By the way, the screenshots reminded me a lot of the movie Aliens (the James Cameron sequel to Alien). I hope someone does a total conversion, or maybe they use the Doom III engine for an Aliens Vs. Predator game.
As great as an Aliens total conversion could be for the Doom III engine it's unlikey to happen because Fox would threaten to take legal action. It's happened before as both the Aliens total conversions for Quake and Half-Life were cancelled for that very reason.
Whatever it's called, the result of this single-handed, civic-minded tinkering from Thailand could lead to a day when firemen carry catapults in their trucks as well as ladders.
I don't know about the rest of you but this sounds like it has the potential for one very cool water fight. While settle at catapults though, I want to see fireman running around with a bandolier loaded with these balls. Even better, why not just cram some Pokemon with a water attack into one these balls. The kids would love it!
It will be interesting to see if they can retain the original Doom gameplay in a fully 3D engine. I recall in the original the gameplay was very arcade like with with lots of enemies to fight at once, and that was possible because sprites use up far less resources than high polycount models. However looking at the screenshots it appears the emphasis is less on large confrontations and more about creating a sense of supsense through lighting.
This time round little appears to have changed and in America fans have already been queueing for weeks outside cinemas to get their tickets.
Queuing up for weeks eh? I don't know about the rest of the Starwars fans but I didn't have to queue at all for my Starwars Episode 2 tickets. In Sydney Australia, Kings Comics often organises premier nights for geek/comic related movies and these are announced on their email list. When it came to Episode 2 they announced it the night before and luckily my email addiction paid off because I managed to get two tickets before they sold out within 12 hours.
I notice that Star Walking the Australian Stars Wars socities is also organising premiere screenings. So assuming that other socities around the world do the same what's all this talk of hardcore fans queueing for weeks? Is it just something some fans do show off their dedication, and sometimes to also earn money for charities?
After a quick Google I found an example of such device, being the Hitachi VT-FX880E that has a feature called Commercial Advantage. I am not sure how effective it is but his a snippet taken from a review
If the FX880 were a computer Commercial Advantage would be described as its killer app. What it actually reflects is Hitachi ingeniously tackling the old problem of getting rid of the ads from programmes recorded from commercial TV stations. There have been attempts to do this almost from the dawn of the VCR but most have attempted to blank out the ads completely. What Commercial Advantage cleverly does is detect when an ad break starts, automatically kicks into fast forward and then drops back to normal speed when the programme resumes, all without you having to lift a finger.
It does this by detecting a signal that is sent at the beginning of each ad break which effectively returns a network to local programming so ads for that region can be shown. A signal at the end of the break marks network programming restarting and the end of the Commercial Advantage option. As with all good ideas it is deceptively simple but not without its faults. In our tests of the feature we found CA kicking in at the start of local TV promo spots (trailers, etc) that run before the advertisements themselves. Even so, it's a great idea and a genuinely useful one.
One thing I found very interesting reading the article, which I had not considered beforehand, was as the author pointed out.
The digital videos they shot in 1999 may be unpayable on their desktop and laptop computers.
This is better further elaborated in the following passage...
There are some problems with this scheme. If Prince-ton computer scientist Edward Felten is right, a watermark that's invisible to the audience yet easily detected by machines will be relatively easy to remove. To put it simply, if you can't see it, you won't miss it when it's gone. Which is why the components of new home entertainment systems probably would have to be designed not to play unwatermarked content. Otherwise, all you've done is develop an incentive for both inquisitive hackers and copyright "pirates" to find a way to strip out the watermarks. But if the new entertainment systems won't play content without watermarks, they won't work with old digital videos or MP3s.
Now assuming the above is true and consider the worst case scenario of this bill coming to pass. Would this mean all those legitimate MP3s I downloaded from Epitonic and the Star Wars fan films would no longer be playable on new hardware since they lacked a watermark?
If this the case how would free content continue to exist and operate in this system, as they would obviously have to use watermarks just like copyrighted works if they want to be playable on the new hardware DRM systems. Ofcourse this sort of thing would piss of consumers and even some content providers.
I work at the Pizza Hut call centre and we use the AS/400 there for taking down customer orders. The machines are quite basic but they get the job done and from my experience the machines are reliable as we haven't had a major crash in the 8 months or I have been working there. If you are after general information on the system you can consult this link.
i heard something about someone putting linux on an xbox and running it on that. where can i find information?
I believe you are referring to www.xbox-linux.org. Looking at the website it looks like are making progress slowly though I don't think it will be easier than porting to the Dreamcast despite the x86 architecture. I believe part of the reason the Dreamcast port was successful was due to hardware documentation, namely the leaked SDK document.
With the X-Box it aint so easy because anyone who applies for the dev-kit has to sign a NDA. So the only way Linux on the X-Box is going to happen is to reverse engineer the system, just like the aforementioned group are doing. Microsoft are no doubt quite determined to stop unauthorised development for the X-Box.
I could be wrong on this, but I believe it's easier to develop for the Dreamcast as the SDK was illegaly leaked on the net. It is because of that there was a large flux of emulators and other unoffical programs developed for the Dreamcast.
Microsoft is no doubt more protective about it's SDK and stopping unauthorised for the development for X-Box. According to the X-Box development site you need to sign a NDA to get access to the devkit. So any GLPed program let alone Linux is quite unlikely, that is unless you reverse engineer the console but these days that would probably land you in hot water.
I dunno about you, but I can read a website while computing, too...
I was meant to say commuting but inadvertantly wrote it out as 'comuting', quite different from 'computing' though my grammar and spelling certainly does need some improvement.
The fact that they are losing money atleast means one good thing and is they aren't accepting money from publishers for good reviews.
The pricing and what you get for it looks pretty decent in my opinion. Lets face it $4.95 a month is how much a computer magazine would cost at a newstands, except this magazine is online and updated daily instead of montly. Sure you don't get something you can hold in your hands and read while comuting, but you do get something ad-free and that's something printed magazines can't boast. Plus let's not forget ads often bias publications to write good things about their products to keep that advertiser. So in all I can see Gamespots model as a good thing, now I just hope it works in a medium where people expect things for free.