The little disks Nintendo uses for their games spin faster and have lower seek times than a comparable full-sized DVD. Sometimes it's good to be small.
"Meta-game" terminology aside, the most horrific example of breaking the 3rd wall happened in the original X-Men game for the Genesis. Apparently, the team thought it would be cute to force the player to stop a self-destructing computer from counting down by resetting it / resetting the Genesis. Of course, nobody could figure out that what the designers wanted the players to do was to walk over to their machines and push the reset button, so many people just though the game wasn't finished.
I personally think it was done as a collaboration with Sega to sell more controllers. There's only so many times you can throw one of those into a television before one or the other breaks.
I was going to post asking if Gator and other adware were really still extremely common.
I'd say it's getting worse.
I just did a little free consulting for the owner of the building I used to work on, his nephew, and one of their former clients forced out of the country by the Bush administration (don't ask). Cookies aside, they were averaging roughly 20 spyware infestations and a worm each. Gator / Claria was on all five machines, along with a host of other assorted malware.
Perhaps it just seems like it's getting worse because we have better definition files these days, or because these programs are smearing themselves out into more parts of the system, but three years ago a computer with over 1,000 files related to spyware would be out of the question. Now, it's far more common than you would think.
Not to burst the bubble of what are apparently a lot of other people here, but CXBX only runs under Windows 2000/XP. It works by allowing native 2000 and XP system calls and functions though, while modifying those that would need to be modified to run under XP and 2000. While it may seem like an emulator, in practice it is really a code mutator. It turns an XBox Executable into a Windows Executable. In order to do this, of course, it must create sandboxes etc etc, but it relies upon running the code through windows, rather than through itself as if it were windows.
So no, there isn't and can't be a linux version. Sorry.
The moment you start putting even the smallest barrier (like a maximum altitude or a 'no you can't make a spell so powerful you kill half the world in one shot') people start bitching, whether is single-player, multiplayer, or a MMOG game.
What are you talking about? All games have a maximum altitude, and it would be grossly unbalancing to allow spells so powerful that you kill half the world in one shot. Who would play on a PvP server like that?
It's called "balancing" the game. Barriers like these are necessary to keep a game fun, and you're far more likely to hear people "bitching" if you don't straighten these problems out. MMPORPG's are full of items getting Nerfed, and while some people complain when their favorite weapon is weakened, it is usually player complaints that lead to the tweak in the first place.
If you have ever played against a Glacier player in Killer Instinct, you'll know that without those so-called barriers against infinite damage, there isn't any gameplay.
Of course, there are rules in multiplayer gaming. Real old-school Street Fighter players will pull their hands back from the controller and let you throw them if they accidentally throw you in a close-quarters fight. Well-behaved MMPORPG players will not steal your loot, despite it falling on the ground. And I've seen circumstances in FPS games where poorly behaved players will be repeatedly assassinated by their own team-mates, ruining their statistics and forcing them off the server. Still, most rules in social situations are not enforced at the end of a gun, and this holds true in gaming as well as life.
Price differentiation could be a good thing for music. If Shakira is selling songs at $2.50 each, and a no-name band someone said was good is selling for.75c, which are you more likely to buy? Or, put another way, would you like have the new album by Limp Bizkit, or would you rather have a copy of The Bad Plus AND Ween AND The Gotan Project?
One of the problems with both music and movies today is that the amount of money invested into a project is not reflected in the price of the album or the ticket. This tends to encourage purchasing of content with the highest overall investment and the highest budget. What happens when that 100 million dollar action blockbuster is 10 dollars to watch, and that 50 million dollar action blockbuster is only 5 dollars? More people will watch the 5 dollar film, and the development cost of movies would go down. The same can be said of albums, where the cost of the Video, television promotions, magazine ads, billboards, and radio airplay, not to mention mixing, studio time, and producer costs are not factored into the cost of the end product.
I'm sure the RIAA would be just as happy with a solid revenue strem utilizing a broader cadre of acts, just so long as they were making more money that way than the old one. And graduated pricing is one step in that direction. Even they have to realize that more than 1 in 10 bands would make back their initial investment if cheaper production was encouraged.
They mention that Games have an inherent bias towards individualism and individual power. What they fail to point out is that this bias is also present in Movies, television shows, and stories. Movies are almost always about Neo/Luke/Hellboy actualizing their individual power and saving the world. Even more innocuous movies like A Beautiful Mind or Chasing Amy are about exploring the kinds of power people wield on the environment around them. While many other cultures focus upon characters struggling to survive, or the effects of the political or ideological environment upon people, Western stories are primarily focused upon the effects people can have on the world around them.
The idea of individual power is pretty well embedded in our culture at large. "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is a distinctly American phrase, as is the idea that whatever may come in life it is due to actions or personal failings on the part of the recipient. If someone is poor, it must be because they are inferior, and vice / versa. We don't say that homeless people are homeless because they had antiquated skills, were laid off, and had no job-training programs available to them. We say that homeless people are homeless because they are lazy bums. We don't tell our kids that if they are lucky and flex their networking connections they have a statistical chance of rising as high as their social caste will allow. We tell them that all they need to do to become anything is "try harder."
Now, do videogames have this attitude because of a belief inherent in the system, or is it reflecting larger cultural attitudes? I would say the latter, referring specifically to Japanese RPG's. The japanese RPG, unlike most American RPG's, are populated by the "reluctant hero," a figure tragically forced into the savior role, and whose ability to alter the environment around him is directly related to the power that is being wielded through him by another entity or concept. The heroes in Warcraft 3, for example, are heroes because they choose to fight. The hero in many Square games generally doesn't choose to fight until near the end, when he finally realizes that the ultimate goal in life is to become their pre-determined destiny. He is always supported in his quest by the spirits / gods / floating moa heads, and he always wins. Contrast that to GTA 3, where there is no higher moral authority determining your existence.
Hence, western videogames reflect western individualistic beliefs about society. Is it any wonder that a western researcher ends his paper on a note of breaking through the false veneer of individualism in western games to find true individualism?
P.S. I'm glad to see more people taking the medium of videogames seriously as a form of human expression worthy of research. Keep it up. We need about a million more of these papers.
If someone were to be able to play XBox games without owning an XBox, they are statistically less likely to actually buy said games. Because they haven't invested any money into the platform, they don't have that sense of loyalty / hazing that comes with a system purchase.
(warning, old numbers ahead) The average system sells with 5 games the first year, and 5 the second... After which it slopes off. What is likely to happen if people don't make an investment in hardware? Chances are, more people will use the opportunity to buy that one "must have" game (in my case, Ninja Gaiden), but will not pick up the other 4 per year. The "system seller" is a well-known effect, but what happens if people can satisfy that system seller desire without the system? Or what happens when people can emulate all 3 platforms consistently?
You want your players to make an investment in your hardware. It makes them better customers, more likely to come back and buy more games.
This kind of reminds me of adding extensions to the resource fork of otherwise innocuous system files in system 7-9.
One April Fools Day I installed a completely juvenile little extension called "Mouseturds" on my roommate's computer. But inside of "Mouseturds" I inserted an extension that reversed all of the text in the system. Inside of another file in the system (I believe it was directly in the Finder), I installed a second instance of the text-flipping extension.
When he first started using his computer, all of the text looked normal, but his mouse kept doing this terribly juvenile thing. "Cute, really cute." He said, removing that extension. You can't imagine his befuddlement when upon rebooting all of his text was sdrawkcab, simply for having cleaned his system. In the next few hours he drew up all sorts of crazy theories about dependencies, mounting extensions from the trash can, automatically installing programs when something is removed, and a mythical hidden second system folder. I didn't have the heart to tell him to watch the extensions list on the startup screen more carefully, but I didn't have the jaw if he decided to start swinging. He was not at all amused.
Moral of the story: No one thing is ever one thing on an apple system.
Other moral of the story: Never take a smart-alec joker as a roommate.
Of course, he changed the password to who knows what, so we had to call Nortel up and read them the serial number from each switch, and they gave us a backdoor password. I belive it was generated by a program they had. We had to verify proof of purchase and everything with the company, but who couldn't forge a Invoice from CDW or Insight?
Now, what's the most likely way that the kid got into the switch?
I like the idea of a physical switch that temporarily enables a backdoor password. Physical access = access is compelling. But having a backdoor that is accessible at any time, simply by knowing the right code or by being able to sound convincing on the phone just doesn't scream security.
I have played counterstrike, and love FPS gaming, and I too have no clue what was going on. Part of the problem is that the people who were covering the event were forbidden from giving the opposing team's positions away. Hence, the commentators could never say anything like "Frag boy is running right into a trap and he doesn't know it. Where is his scout?" Because that would tip him off as to what was going to happen. The teams need to be sequestered for the commentary to work, but I doubt they would go that far yet. How would you get those stunningly dramatic response shots of the people staring at their monitors if they were in sound-proof booths?
And yes, it was very difficult to make out anything that was about to happen. Part of this is due to the fact that Counterstrike is tuned to be a one-mistake-and-you're-dead type of game. Many, many people in the video fell over dead before you could see who shot them. People claim that Counterstrike is more "realistic" and less "twitch" than other FPS games, but in practice it relies a lot more on reflexes than many others. If the players are barely keeping up with what is happening, what chance do the viewers have? I would think an Unreal Tournament type of game would be timed better for a spectating crowd.
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There was, and is, a lot of crossover between the internet and published magazines. Famitsu the magazine has Famitsu online. Die Hard Game Fan had Die Hard Online. IGN's Snowball owned several magazines. Gamespot is owned by Cnet, who owns everyone else. Plus, there actually were several rather famous cases of video game magazines pulling FAQs directly off of the web, adding photographs, and publishing them as if they were their own.
I wish I had more recent examples, but I've abandoned all of the published videogame magazines except for Game Developer Monthly, a cute little mag that reprints from Gamasutra. Or is it vice versa?
Anyone else find it suspicious that Slashdot picks this up from MSNBC on the 8th of April, who ran this from Reuters on Monday the 5th. Reuters Italy then must have had it sometime around Friday the 2nd, which would put the first printing of the story on... Which day is that again?
For those of you who don't know, Famitsu is one of the longest-running and most respected Japanese video game magazines. They have an uncanny ability to get information first, and get interviews with high-ranking people. Chances are, if you have ever seen a japanese video game magazine, this is it. If you have ever heard an American magazine cite a Japanese magazine, this is it.
The article's deconstruction of online game magazines is quite amusing. In essence, it says that online reviews are junk, online magazines are poorly written, and online writers don't know the first thing about the industry. It, of course, says so with the most delicate of Japanese touches. Score one for Famitsu.
He briefly mentions how Gaming (in Japan) is branching away from a purely console model, and as such the "total game sales" figures are inaccurate. Oddly enough, he doesn't mention that lowered console prices would also give the impression of lower console sales on a per-yen basis. Either way, this seems like an odd technicality wedged between two very broadly relevant opinion pieces.
Finally, he cites how with the subdivision of gaming will require reviewers to step back from what they would like, and review a game based upon what the target audience would like. This is a big challenge for the reviewing industry right now, as you might have two or three FPS gurus on your staff, but do you have a RTFPS guru? One who specifically likes slower FPS game in fantasy settings? How do you review a subgenre accurately if you don't have anyone on your staff who likes that subgenre? Will it receive anything other than an 80? He seems to thing that training will be enough to overcome reviewer bias (or lack thereof), but I would tend to doubt that. Certainly, assembling a wide enough team of connoisseurs will be essential to the success or failure of a review department. But that just dodges the question... How do you objectively review a subjective experience from someone else's viewpoint?
A friend of mine works in the Department of Revenue for one of the contiguous 48 states. According to him, because there is no way to differentiate managers according to pay, they differentiate themselves (and therefore, gain power) though the number of people under them. It doesn't matter if they are doing work or not, just that you get as many people as possible and hold on to them.
Work does get done, but generally the size of the team has nothing to do with the work being performed. Hence, things finish far ahead of time and under budget. But, since you don't want your team cut, you just let them run freely for 3/4 of the time. The more wasted time the better, as that means you'll need more workers to do the work.
They did, oddly enough, lock down internet surfing. I guess the infrastructure managers want the implementation managers' budgets.
We could fix that with a flat tax on ALL income over $25k a year, but that is a different thread all together.
Does that include inherited assets? What if the recipient is under 18? Does that include appreciation? Does depreciation count as negative income? What about taxes people pay overseas? What about money earned overseas? Dual citizens? Deferred earnings? Gifts to relatives?
The flat tax is a red herring. It's as if the additional math of a sliding scale is going to be a tremendous burden to the system. It's not. The system is complicated because of all of the various special cases involved in it. What about the parent who is earning 40k per year, but spending 20k on education for their children? Or the father making 70k but spending 35k on medical bills?
Make no mistake about it, flat taxes are a way that rich people can pay less, period.
Besides, the most byzantine part of the tax code is corporate taxes, which, it was recently revealed, %60 of all corporations don't pay. First of all, unlike people corporations only pay taxes on net income, not gross. So if they didn't earn any money, they don't pay any taxes. Of course, what qualifies as taxable income and taxable expenditures varies. Then you have exemptions and reductions for where you're headquartered, the types of workers you employ, what industry you are in, what kinds of R&D you do, employee training, and about a million other things. Add into that the problem of overseas earnings, and earnings at home from overseas labor. What about earnings passed up from wholly or partially owned subsidiaries? Do they pay twice?
A lot of these corporate special cases are desirable, because they encourage things that you want to encourage. To say that they must all go and be replaced with a "flat tax" is a gross oversimplification. You haven't even defined what a "flat tax" is in a multinational corporation. Is a man in Denmark buying a book on Amazon.uk using an American credit card to an american bank a taxable transaction?
With apologies to Einstein, it would be good to simplify the tax code as much as possible, but no further. The "flat tax" is not applicable to real-world situations, does not directly reference that which makes the tax code complicated, and does not solve the problem.
No disrespect to you or your family intended, but the flat tax is no solution. Personally, I wouldn't mind a total tax rewrite, but I suspect that in the current political climate that would open up a field day for all-new abuses.
One of the problems with Video Games as a spectator sport, is that they aren't designed for spectators. They're designed to give the player exactly what they need to know, and occasionally to occlude things from the player that they aren't supposed to know.
What they do not have are good angles for crowds. If you want really good camera shots, you need 5 or 6 ghost spectators floating around the arena, and someone to switch between them (like a traditional sporting event). In theory you can have automated roving, rotating, or fixed cameras, but they tend to be poor at anticipating action. Likewise, the most popular Sporting videogames are FPS. But thanks to the perspective and the needs of the game, FPS games tend to have terrible character animation / environmental interaction, which is exactly what the audience is going to be watching. Furthermore, effects and crowd-pleasers must be kept a bit down, as the player has to be able to see though that thick fog of whatever.
Except for racing titles, most gaming companies just don't devote resources to a "passive spectator" mode. All the better for the players, of course, but if gaming is going to take off as a spectator sport (not only doubtful, but of dubious value) they'll need a better passive spectator presentation.
...they might still be ruled against because they are creating brand confusion.
How, exactly, is he creating brand confusion if the text never appears in a place that human beings would read? How can it cause confusion if it just a depreciated tag for machines? How can a branch of law ostensibly setup to allow a purchaser to know when something comes from one company rather than another be applied in a situation where the purchaser never sees the mark?
Don't get me wrong, I think the guy should cave immediately: no search engines use Meta tags anymore anyway. If they want to be jerks about this, he should archive this entire discussion somewhere on his site, including the letters that he was sent, then contact his nearest 50 friendsters and ask them to blog links to the discussion about HardRadio.
* Extremely dorky * Overpriced * Saves people the arduous task of using their legs * Gets lots of awkward stares
Differences
* Likely to get you killed * Makes money
Hence, I would like to suggest the Segway XTREME! The Segway XTREME is powered by Nitrous Oxide, with a 0-60 time of 3.9 seconds. Spring-loaded spikes burst forth from the handlebar at the first sign of a crash. Plus there is a 20 foot metal rod attachment for those of you living in storm country or near power lines.
My bad, I was addicted to Final Fantasy Legend 2 and 3 back in the day, and as such got the name confused.
I never was much of a Final Fantasy Adventure fan. Too straightforward, without much plot or gameplay. Gameplay was pretty much a straight zelda rip, with diablo-esque dungeons.
The series really started to shine with Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 2, the first SNES CD/Playstation game, and the only one near completion when the system was canned. Legend has it complete testing versions exist, but I've never seen one.
Secret of Mana 2 was an excellent game which never saw a US release. Much like the first, it featured multiplayer action / adventure gaming, perfect for the GBA. Translations are available online, if you do a little goggling.
The first game in the Seiken Densetsu series, amusingly enough, was released in the US as "Final Fantasy Legends." Both were Game Boy games... A release of the third on the GBA would mark a "coming home" for the series.
Kensington has recently upgraded it's full-sized trackball line with wireless optical and regular optical lines. I would strongly recommend an optical ball over a mechanical one. While I've had Expert Mice for the past 12 years (2 of them, both still working), making them optical fixes any problems with dirty balls not scrolling correctly. They're all terribly comfortable, and use a ball exactly the same size and shape as a billiard ball.
Slashdot Mirror
The little disks Nintendo uses for their games spin faster and have lower seek times than a comparable full-sized DVD. Sometimes it's good to be small.
"Meta-game" terminology aside, the most horrific example of breaking the 3rd wall happened in the original X-Men game for the Genesis. Apparently, the team thought it would be cute to force the player to stop a self-destructing computer from counting down by resetting it / resetting the Genesis. Of course, nobody could figure out that what the designers wanted the players to do was to walk over to their machines and push the reset button, so many people just though the game wasn't finished.
I personally think it was done as a collaboration with Sega to sell more controllers. There's only so many times you can throw one of those into a television before one or the other breaks.
I was going to post asking if Gator and other adware were really still extremely common.
I'd say it's getting worse.
I just did a little free consulting for the owner of the building I used to work on, his nephew, and one of their former clients forced out of the country by the Bush administration (don't ask). Cookies aside, they were averaging roughly 20 spyware infestations and a worm each. Gator / Claria was on all five machines, along with a host of other assorted malware.
Perhaps it just seems like it's getting worse because we have better definition files these days, or because these programs are smearing themselves out into more parts of the system, but three years ago a computer with over 1,000 files related to spyware would be out of the question. Now, it's far more common than you would think.
Not to burst the bubble of what are apparently a lot of other people here, but CXBX only runs under Windows 2000/XP. It works by allowing native 2000 and XP system calls and functions though, while modifying those that would need to be modified to run under XP and 2000. While it may seem like an emulator, in practice it is really a code mutator. It turns an XBox Executable into a Windows Executable. In order to do this, of course, it must create sandboxes etc etc, but it relies upon running the code through windows, rather than through itself as if it were windows.
So no, there isn't and can't be a linux version. Sorry.
The moment you start putting even the smallest barrier (like a maximum altitude or a 'no you can't make a spell so powerful you kill half the world in one shot') people start bitching, whether is single-player, multiplayer, or a MMOG game.
What are you talking about? All games have a maximum altitude, and it would be grossly unbalancing to allow spells so powerful that you kill half the world in one shot. Who would play on a PvP server like that?
It's called "balancing" the game. Barriers like these are necessary to keep a game fun, and you're far more likely to hear people "bitching" if you don't straighten these problems out. MMPORPG's are full of items getting Nerfed, and while some people complain when their favorite weapon is weakened, it is usually player complaints that lead to the tweak in the first place.
If you have ever played against a Glacier player in Killer Instinct, you'll know that without those so-called barriers against infinite damage, there isn't any gameplay.
Of course, there are rules in multiplayer gaming. Real old-school Street Fighter players will pull their hands back from the controller and let you throw them if they accidentally throw you in a close-quarters fight. Well-behaved MMPORPG players will not steal your loot, despite it falling on the ground. And I've seen circumstances in FPS games where poorly behaved players will be repeatedly assassinated by their own team-mates, ruining their statistics and forcing them off the server. Still, most rules in social situations are not enforced at the end of a gun, and this holds true in gaming as well as life.
Price differentiation could be a good thing for music. If Shakira is selling songs at $2.50 each, and a no-name band someone said was good is selling for .75c, which are you more likely to buy? Or, put another way, would you like have the new album by Limp Bizkit, or would you rather have a copy of The Bad Plus AND Ween AND The Gotan Project?
One of the problems with both music and movies today is that the amount of money invested into a project is not reflected in the price of the album or the ticket. This tends to encourage purchasing of content with the highest overall investment and the highest budget. What happens when that 100 million dollar action blockbuster is 10 dollars to watch, and that 50 million dollar action blockbuster is only 5 dollars? More people will watch the 5 dollar film, and the development cost of movies would go down. The same can be said of albums, where the cost of the Video, television promotions, magazine ads, billboards, and radio airplay, not to mention mixing, studio time, and producer costs are not factored into the cost of the end product.
I'm sure the RIAA would be just as happy with a solid revenue strem utilizing a broader cadre of acts, just so long as they were making more money that way than the old one. And graduated pricing is one step in that direction. Even they have to realize that more than 1 in 10 bands would make back their initial investment if cheaper production was encouraged.
They mention that Games have an inherent bias towards individualism and individual power. What they fail to point out is that this bias is also present in Movies, television shows, and stories. Movies are almost always about Neo/Luke/Hellboy actualizing their individual power and saving the world. Even more innocuous movies like A Beautiful Mind or Chasing Amy are about exploring the kinds of power people wield on the environment around them. While many other cultures focus upon characters struggling to survive, or the effects of the political or ideological environment upon people, Western stories are primarily focused upon the effects people can have on the world around them.
The idea of individual power is pretty well embedded in our culture at large. "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is a distinctly American phrase, as is the idea that whatever may come in life it is due to actions or personal failings on the part of the recipient. If someone is poor, it must be because they are inferior, and vice / versa. We don't say that homeless people are homeless because they had antiquated skills, were laid off, and had no job-training programs available to them. We say that homeless people are homeless because they are lazy bums. We don't tell our kids that if they are lucky and flex their networking connections they have a statistical chance of rising as high as their social caste will allow. We tell them that all they need to do to become anything is "try harder."
Now, do videogames have this attitude because of a belief inherent in the system, or is it reflecting larger cultural attitudes? I would say the latter, referring specifically to Japanese RPG's. The japanese RPG, unlike most American RPG's, are populated by the "reluctant hero," a figure tragically forced into the savior role, and whose ability to alter the environment around him is directly related to the power that is being wielded through him by another entity or concept. The heroes in Warcraft 3, for example, are heroes because they choose to fight. The hero in many Square games generally doesn't choose to fight until near the end, when he finally realizes that the ultimate goal in life is to become their pre-determined destiny. He is always supported in his quest by the spirits / gods / floating moa heads, and he always wins. Contrast that to GTA 3, where there is no higher moral authority determining your existence.
Hence, western videogames reflect western individualistic beliefs about society. Is it any wonder that a western researcher ends his paper on a note of breaking through the false veneer of individualism in western games to find true individualism?
P.S. I'm glad to see more people taking the medium of videogames seriously as a form of human expression worthy of research. Keep it up. We need about a million more of these papers.
Platform lock-in.
If someone were to be able to play XBox games without owning an XBox, they are statistically less likely to actually buy said games. Because they haven't invested any money into the platform, they don't have that sense of loyalty / hazing that comes with a system purchase.
(warning, old numbers ahead) The average system sells with 5 games the first year, and 5 the second... After which it slopes off. What is likely to happen if people don't make an investment in hardware? Chances are, more people will use the opportunity to buy that one "must have" game (in my case, Ninja Gaiden), but will not pick up the other 4 per year. The "system seller" is a well-known effect, but what happens if people can satisfy that system seller desire without the system? Or what happens when people can emulate all 3 platforms consistently?
You want your players to make an investment in your hardware. It makes them better customers, more likely to come back and buy more games.
This kind of reminds me of adding extensions to the resource fork of otherwise innocuous system files in system 7-9.
One April Fools Day I installed a completely juvenile little extension called "Mouseturds" on my roommate's computer. But inside of "Mouseturds" I inserted an extension that reversed all of the text in the system. Inside of another file in the system (I believe it was directly in the Finder), I installed a second instance of the text-flipping extension.
When he first started using his computer, all of the text looked normal, but his mouse kept doing this terribly juvenile thing. "Cute, really cute." He said, removing that extension. You can't imagine his befuddlement when upon rebooting all of his text was sdrawkcab, simply for having cleaned his system. In the next few hours he drew up all sorts of crazy theories about dependencies, mounting extensions from the trash can, automatically installing programs when something is removed, and a mythical hidden second system folder. I didn't have the heart to tell him to watch the extensions list on the startup screen more carefully, but I didn't have the jaw if he decided to start swinging. He was not at all amused.
Moral of the story: No one thing is ever one thing on an apple system.
Other moral of the story: Never take a smart-alec joker as a roommate.
Of course, he changed the password to who knows what, so we had to call Nortel up and read them the serial number from each switch, and they gave us a backdoor password. I belive it was generated by a program they had. We had to verify proof of purchase and everything with the company, but who couldn't forge a Invoice from CDW or Insight?
Now, what's the most likely way that the kid got into the switch?
I like the idea of a physical switch that temporarily enables a backdoor password. Physical access = access is compelling. But having a backdoor that is accessible at any time, simply by knowing the right code or by being able to sound convincing on the phone just doesn't scream security.
I have played counterstrike, and love FPS gaming, and I too have no clue what was going on. Part of the problem is that the people who were covering the event were forbidden from giving the opposing team's positions away. Hence, the commentators could never say anything like "Frag boy is running right into a trap and he doesn't know it. Where is his scout?" Because that would tip him off as to what was going to happen. The teams need to be sequestered for the commentary to work, but I doubt they would go that far yet. How would you get those stunningly dramatic response shots of the people staring at their monitors if they were in sound-proof booths?
And yes, it was very difficult to make out anything that was about to happen. Part of this is due to the fact that Counterstrike is tuned to be a one-mistake-and-you're-dead type of game. Many, many people in the video fell over dead before you could see who shot them. People claim that Counterstrike is more "realistic" and less "twitch" than other FPS games, but in practice it relies a lot more on reflexes than many others. If the players are barely keeping up with what is happening, what chance do the viewers have? I would think an Unreal Tournament type of game would be timed better for a spectating crowd.
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Ever wonder if maybe we should be surfing at -1?
There was, and is, a lot of crossover between the internet and published magazines. Famitsu the magazine has Famitsu online. Die Hard Game Fan had Die Hard Online. IGN's Snowball owned several magazines. Gamespot is owned by Cnet, who owns everyone else. Plus, there actually were several rather famous cases of video game magazines pulling FAQs directly off of the web, adding photographs, and publishing them as if they were their own.
I wish I had more recent examples, but I've abandoned all of the published videogame magazines except for Game Developer Monthly, a cute little mag that reprints from Gamasutra. Or is it vice versa?
Anyone else find it suspicious that Slashdot picks this up from MSNBC on the 8th of April, who ran this from Reuters on Monday the 5th. Reuters Italy then must have had it sometime around Friday the 2nd, which would put the first printing of the story on... Which day is that again?
For those of you who don't know, Famitsu is one of the longest-running and most respected Japanese video game magazines. They have an uncanny ability to get information first, and get interviews with high-ranking people. Chances are, if you have ever seen a japanese video game magazine, this is it. If you have ever heard an American magazine cite a Japanese magazine, this is it.
The article's deconstruction of online game magazines is quite amusing. In essence, it says that online reviews are junk, online magazines are poorly written, and online writers don't know the first thing about the industry. It, of course, says so with the most delicate of Japanese touches. Score one for Famitsu.
He briefly mentions how Gaming (in Japan) is branching away from a purely console model, and as such the "total game sales" figures are inaccurate. Oddly enough, he doesn't mention that lowered console prices would also give the impression of lower console sales on a per-yen basis. Either way, this seems like an odd technicality wedged between two very broadly relevant opinion pieces.
Finally, he cites how with the subdivision of gaming will require reviewers to step back from what they would like, and review a game based upon what the target audience would like. This is a big challenge for the reviewing industry right now, as you might have two or three FPS gurus on your staff, but do you have a RTFPS guru? One who specifically likes slower FPS game in fantasy settings? How do you review a subgenre accurately if you don't have anyone on your staff who likes that subgenre? Will it receive anything other than an 80? He seems to thing that training will be enough to overcome reviewer bias (or lack thereof), but I would tend to doubt that. Certainly, assembling a wide enough team of connoisseurs will be essential to the success or failure of a review department. But that just dodges the question... How do you objectively review a subjective experience from someone else's viewpoint?
To this, sadly, he has no answer.
A friend of mine works in the Department of Revenue for one of the contiguous 48 states. According to him, because there is no way to differentiate managers according to pay, they differentiate themselves (and therefore, gain power) though the number of people under them. It doesn't matter if they are doing work or not, just that you get as many people as possible and hold on to them.
Work does get done, but generally the size of the team has nothing to do with the work being performed. Hence, things finish far ahead of time and under budget. But, since you don't want your team cut, you just let them run freely for 3/4 of the time. The more wasted time the better, as that means you'll need more workers to do the work.
They did, oddly enough, lock down internet surfing. I guess the infrastructure managers want the implementation managers' budgets.
Are you suggesting we outsource the IRS to India?
*Sigh*
We could fix that with a flat tax on ALL income over $25k a year, but that is a different thread all together.
Does that include inherited assets? What if the recipient is under 18? Does that include appreciation? Does depreciation count as negative income? What about taxes people pay overseas? What about money earned overseas? Dual citizens? Deferred earnings? Gifts to relatives?
The flat tax is a red herring. It's as if the additional math of a sliding scale is going to be a tremendous burden to the system. It's not. The system is complicated because of all of the various special cases involved in it. What about the parent who is earning 40k per year, but spending 20k on education for their children? Or the father making 70k but spending 35k on medical bills?
Make no mistake about it, flat taxes are a way that rich people can pay less, period.
Besides, the most byzantine part of the tax code is corporate taxes, which, it was recently revealed, %60 of all corporations don't pay. First of all, unlike people corporations only pay taxes on net income, not gross. So if they didn't earn any money, they don't pay any taxes. Of course, what qualifies as taxable income and taxable expenditures varies. Then you have exemptions and reductions for where you're headquartered, the types of workers you employ, what industry you are in, what kinds of R&D you do, employee training, and about a million other things. Add into that the problem of overseas earnings, and earnings at home from overseas labor. What about earnings passed up from wholly or partially owned subsidiaries? Do they pay twice?
A lot of these corporate special cases are desirable, because they encourage things that you want to encourage. To say that they must all go and be replaced with a "flat tax" is a gross oversimplification. You haven't even defined what a "flat tax" is in a multinational corporation. Is a man in Denmark buying a book on Amazon.uk using an American credit card to an american bank a taxable transaction?
With apologies to Einstein, it would be good to simplify the tax code as much as possible, but no further. The "flat tax" is not applicable to real-world situations, does not directly reference that which makes the tax code complicated, and does not solve the problem.
No disrespect to you or your family intended, but the flat tax is no solution. Personally, I wouldn't mind a total tax rewrite, but I suspect that in the current political climate that would open up a field day for all-new abuses.
One of the problems with Video Games as a spectator sport, is that they aren't designed for spectators. They're designed to give the player exactly what they need to know, and occasionally to occlude things from the player that they aren't supposed to know.
What they do not have are good angles for crowds. If you want really good camera shots, you need 5 or 6 ghost spectators floating around the arena, and someone to switch between them (like a traditional sporting event). In theory you can have automated roving, rotating, or fixed cameras, but they tend to be poor at anticipating action. Likewise, the most popular Sporting videogames are FPS. But thanks to the perspective and the needs of the game, FPS games tend to have terrible character animation / environmental interaction, which is exactly what the audience is going to be watching. Furthermore, effects and crowd-pleasers must be kept a bit down, as the player has to be able to see though that thick fog of whatever.
Except for racing titles, most gaming companies just don't devote resources to a "passive spectator" mode. All the better for the players, of course, but if gaming is going to take off as a spectator sport (not only doubtful, but of dubious value) they'll need a better passive spectator presentation.
...they might still be ruled against because they are creating brand confusion.
How, exactly, is he creating brand confusion if the text never appears in a place that human beings would read? How can it cause confusion if it just a depreciated tag for machines? How can a branch of law ostensibly setup to allow a purchaser to know when something comes from one company rather than another be applied in a situation where the purchaser never sees the mark?
Don't get me wrong, I think the guy should cave immediately: no search engines use Meta tags anymore anyway. If they want to be jerks about this, he should archive this entire discussion somewhere on his site, including the letters that he was sent, then contact his nearest 50 friendsters and ask them to blog links to the discussion about HardRadio.
Petty, but legal. And effective. Just like them.
Similarities between this and the seaway.
* Extremely dorky
* Overpriced
* Saves people the arduous task of using their legs
* Gets lots of awkward stares
Differences
* Likely to get you killed
* Makes money
Hence, I would like to suggest the Segway XTREME! The Segway XTREME is powered by Nitrous Oxide, with a 0-60 time of 3.9 seconds. Spring-loaded spikes burst forth from the handlebar at the first sign of a crash. Plus there is a 20 foot metal rod attachment for those of you living in storm country or near power lines.
Live dangerously. Give us money. Segway XTREME!
My bad, I was addicted to Final Fantasy Legend 2 and 3 back in the day, and as such got the name confused.
I never was much of a Final Fantasy Adventure fan. Too straightforward, without much plot or gameplay. Gameplay was pretty much a straight zelda rip, with diablo-esque dungeons.
The series really started to shine with Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 2, the first SNES CD/Playstation game, and the only one near completion when the system was canned. Legend has it complete testing versions exist, but I've never seen one.
Secret of Mana 2 was an excellent game which never saw a US release. Much like the first, it featured multiplayer action / adventure gaming, perfect for the GBA. Translations are available online, if you do a little goggling.
The first game in the Seiken Densetsu series, amusingly enough, was released in the US as "Final Fantasy Legends." Both were Game Boy games... A release of the third on the GBA would mark a "coming home" for the series.
Kensington has recently upgraded it's full-sized trackball line with wireless optical and regular optical lines. I would strongly recommend an optical ball over a mechanical one. While I've had Expert Mice for the past 12 years (2 of them, both still working), making them optical fixes any problems with dirty balls not scrolling correctly. They're all terribly comfortable, and use a ball exactly the same size and shape as a billiard ball.