Video games are just as legitimate a form of expression and entertainment as movies and music.
What do you mean? No videogame has yet to touch the delicate artistic expressionism found in the simple lines "F---, F---, F--- the Po-lice." Or Eminem's heartfelt ballads to killing his wife in front of his daughter. Or for that matter, Eminem's hearfelt ballads to murdering fags. Such obviously worthwile expression of the human sexual condition is worthy of the protection of the law. This television game, or "videoed-game" as they call it, is teaching children that gangs in poor neighborhoods form from people with ethnic and historically shared backgrounds, and such subdivisions once formed naturally lead to cultural tensions. How can they sleep at night, knowing they sell such obviously racist filth?
I'm sorry sir, but the blips and bleeps of your "videoed-games" can have no cultural or artistic value... They're just a waste of time. Furthermore, you should be ashamed of playing with children's toys. Now go out and get a job, you long haired hippie! I hear Shell is expanding its operations in the Niger Delta.
Some day you'll thank me for setting you straight.
Censorship like this takes great store in the context in wich something happens. Personally I think from the reviews that Manhunter is indeed crossing the line. In most other kill games you kill to achieve a goal, not kill for the killing itself.
Perhaps more people would be inclined to cry Censorship if Rockstar hadn't been flouting the violence aspect of the game to such an extent that it makes it makes all of our lives more difficult. Personally, I feel that any work that doesn't involve injury to the actors / developers should be allowed to sell in at least a limited context. But Rockstar has flaunted its violence at a time when the industry as a whole is under deep criticism for that very reason, and for their games. I don't like censorship, but I really wish someone would smack those guys with a cluestick.
Dear Rockstar:
Sit down. Shut up. Let Will Wright make another positive cultural phenomenon before you speak again.
It's amazing that he could be so out of touch that he would think that Mac elitists would actually be quiet. That's like thinking fish will fly, dogs will play poker, and windows vulnerabilities will be patched before attacks are in the wild.
Not to mention the kind of good, honest information releases such as
"Currently, people who send files through file-trading networks, or via e-mail or instant messaging, are largely locked in to sending a specific file that may not be readable by people who lack the appropriate software or hardware."
That makes a lot of sense. This technology will allow me to share my copy of Deus Ex 2 with my friends who have Macs. Thanks for clearing that up.
Keeping a CD around is a real pain. They get lost, they get scratched, they require storage in a binder, and as games copy themselves to the HDD now anyway, they are totally unnecessary. I can store maybe 40 retail games on a HDD, and can play any of them at any moment. Feel like a round of Worms? Boot. Feel like a game of Empires? Start it up. It's that kind of instant gratification you get with consoles, and it should be even faster on a computer. But it isn't. Despite checking my valid registration code on their server when connecting, they still require a crack to run without flipping through 40 pages of CD's looking for that safedisk. U.N.N.E.C.E.S.S.A.R.Y. Don't make your paying clients lives a pain, just to protect against a group of people who aren't going to pay anyway.
My impulse game of choice is Typing of the Dead. Why? It copied itself to the hard drive nicely, and has played solidly every since. Except for the fiasco of pressing F4 to quit, it has performed admirably... like something I own, not something I'm borrowing for money.
Come up with a better copy protection scheme, or come up with a better customer.
Theory 1: The American gamer is very different than the Japanese gamer.
This theory holds some weight. While DDR was a worthy title to bring over, there are many somewhat inferior dance games that did well in Japan yet are flailing in US arcades. Would a Dating Sim fly over here? Or an Air Traffic Controller sim? How about a game where you chop vegetables? Some of the games released in Japan just lack that kind of fantastic escape from real life that American gamers crave. And what about American games based around Basketball, or the endless run'n'shoot games? They still sell in Japan, but hardly as well.
Theory 2: Translations are a pain.
This one also holds weight. Many american games are created with 8 bit characters in mind... Designers would make bitmaps out of fonts and use that in game, with special spacing and formatting. Cramming Japan's significantly longer characters into a fixed space may not be practical, especially if the designers gave the text bank a fixed size. Likewise physically cramming english into a Japanese textbox is difficult, as while english is a slightly faster spoken language, it is a much longer written one. And you can forget about fitting anything else into a native chinese textbox.
Theory 3: Developers won't do it, publishers are afraid.
When you push 80 hours a week to make the perfect game... polish it, craft it, love it... you generally don't have the energy or desire to go back and do a translation. Publishers handle them for this reason, and publishers exist to hedge risk. If a game is released in one market, a foreign publisher will generally not pick up the tab until it is obviously a hit. Counterstrike fits this bill nicely. Savage did not. Publishers have such a backlog of hits waiting for translation that they can pick and choose, and they choose the winners.
... when you sweep the bits from my warm, moist ashes.
Stick with Windows and if you do...
on
PC Annoyances
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· Score: 5, Interesting
be prepared for benefits like:
- being able to enjoy those cute "I love you" and "Anna Kurovina" messages automatically forwarded from your best friends, co-workers, and total strangers.
- The ability to browse every site online, at least every one selling X10 cameras and pictures you wouldn't want your boss to see.
- Software so advanced it installs automatically while you browse, no user intervention required. Uninstalling is as simple as wiping your main partition and re-installing Windows.
- Enjoy desktop environments where settings are spread around 3 different menus and where sometimes they inexplicably don't stick etc. etc. in general using software developed by investors free from the limiting boundaries of friendliness and caring about your users.
- A wide swath of available content, all provided to your trusted platform ensuring that your purchased programs will run forever... Until you lose the disk, upgrade your system, ban the program from spying on your browsing habits, or the producer decides to turn the software off remotely.
Linux is no longer hard. Once you have a modern Debian, Red Hat, or Mandrake installed, everything runs easy-peasy. I've been using it on and off for 6 years, and in that time frame it's gone from nothing but command line editing of.ini files to something downright usable.
We have a woman in the office who had never used a computer before in her life. We plunked her down in front of a Windows box and a Linux box. While Covad required Internet Explorer, she was always using Linux. She likes the multiple desktops (Microsoft has a power tool multidesktop, BTW), changes her wallpaper every few days, and prefers browsing around in Konqueror. To her, editing the registry is as baffling as editing a shell script, but she doesn't need to do that anyway. If she wants something installed on Debian, it is an apt-get away (whereas in windows she has to look for it). I'd feel comfortable putting newbies in front of a Linux install. In fact, I've done it, many times, and with success.
I respect the opinions of my Linux elders, but I fear your perceptions of the OS may be a little out of date.
Tarzan is studied in nearly all major english literature programs. Pac Man is probably the first Videogame with a serious sociological dialog surrounding it, albeit one spawned by a raver joke.
If Disney's Tarzan has re-pulped the novel, then feel free to subsitute Conrad's Heart of Darkness in the above observation.
As if I haven't posted too many times in this topic already. A good article from the BBC News, except for the unnecessary bit at the end demonizing games.
Pensioners catch the gaming bug
Increasing numbers of over 60s are picking up joysticks to play video games, says a games company.
Nicknamed "grey gamers", they are buying the more diverse games around, like strategy and historical titles.
"Because of the breadth of games now with more universal appeal, they are more enjoyable and social these days," said Codemasters' Richard Eddy.
The games company see the trend as a "natural evolution" for silver surfers who have become more tech-savvy.
Grandma Croft?
Codemasters found out there was a huge audience of "grey gamers" when they profiled the age ranges of users on their website.
"Over 50,000 ticked the over-35 box, so we contacted a few websites and local papers to say we would love to hear from more mature gamers."
They had over 250 e-mails from older gamers who enthused about their electronic hobby, usually associated with the younger generation.
The type of games that get grannies and grandpas going are the ones that require lateral thinking and problem-solving rather than shoot-em-ups, apparently.
Others which focus on football management skills, snooker and Great Escape-type adventures are also popular.
"They find it a very creative use of their leisure time, something that contributes to their active environment," Mr Eddy said.
And as technologies get more familiar and consoles find a permanent home by the TV, gaming becomes something the whole family can do together, said Mr Eddy.
June and Raymond Gill, 75, see no harm in it and regularly exercise their thumb action on game pads.
"We've been playing for 15 years, having been introduced to computer games by our son," said Mrs Gill.
"It keeps your brain active and we spend about two or three hours playing most days."
Mis-spent age
But some worry it is a sign that older people are becoming increasingly isolated.
"It seems to me that computer games are repetitive, isolating, and all the evidence is that older people need to be stimulated and challenged.
"I can't see this as a way of doing it," writer Jill Smith told the BBC's Today programme.
Instead of being a sociable activity, Ms Smith said playing games could simply be replacing watching TV alone.
Emma Soames, editor of Saga magazine said it was no different to knitting or playing card games.
"Just as there are people who mis-spent their youth in snooker halls, now they are spending their middle age in Mario land," she said.
The gaming industry is big business in the UK, with more spent on computer and video games than on cinema tickets, as well video and DVD rentals, said Codemasters.
Many of us identify as gamers. Many of us find ourselves in the position of having to defend our lifestyle choice to other people, as if our hobby were removing the hinges from public doors or planting cannibis around the local elementary school.
Penny Arcade's latest comic shows this perception, in that we now have something to point to and say "see, we're not bad people." Why do we have to donate generously and publically to charity just to prove we aren't beasts, as if the donation somehow atones for our pasttime? It's not like community theater actors have to go outside and rake the leaves so that people will say "they may be evil, but at least they rake the leaves."
I'm a game developer. In conversation when I mention being a game developer to non-gamers I'm instantly shunned. Obviously I'm selling violence and sexual debasement to children, along with the worst devil of all, Idleness. Pointing out that the last game I worked on was intended for adults in their mid 30's just makes them think I'm selling old smut to children. Pointing out the one before that was a non-violent basketball game? I'm blamed for frat parties.
It's prejudiced crap, and we shouldn't have to put up with it.
Apparently, vegetarians should stop watching Matlock, too. I guess Matlock doesn't eat babies.
Matthew Elton Department of Philosophy University of Stirling
1. An Absurd Question? Many video games feature animated agents that the player attacks with the aim of maiming or killing. Less dramatically the animated agents may be treated instrumentally, herded or goaded with no regard for potential suffering, injury, or death. Such activity would be utterly unacceptable if directed at people. And for many, but clearly not all, it would be repugnant if directed at animals. For simplicity, if not accuracy, let me call those who do take the latter attitude ?vegetarians?. In this paper I want to raise the question of whether such vegetarians ought to refrain from playing video games on the grounds that the animated agents in the game require of us the same sort of treatment as animals do in our natural environment. Should, that is, vegetarians play video games? My answer may strike some readers as absurd, for I shall argue, with some important qualifications, that vegetarians should not play video games. That is, I shall argue that between real animals and some of the animated agents that feature in video games there are no differences that make a moral difference, and hence no ground for a difference in treatment. Of course, many readers may share with me the overwhelming intuition that there must be some relevant difference, and this may suggest that there is something awry with my arguments. But if this is so, I shall at least have shown that the relevant difference is not obvious, and, hence, that the vegetarian has work to do in justifying her playing of video games.
If you can't see where this is going already, you can view the rest here
Watching movies, watching TV, and reading comic books were once looked down upon as deeply as playing games is today. In fact, all visceral escapist entertainment seems to start that way... from radio shows to tango.
From what I've seen, this won't change until the generations change. A group of people who grew up on videogames will necessarily have a different perception of the situation than a person to whom videogames were what "kids do." Of course, we need to draw more girls into the fold if we want to make that transition happen faster.
All we can do is continue to make the best, most enjoyable games possible. Tarzan was once considered pulp, just as Pac Man was. Fighting bad perceptions is important too, but in perspective one more Myst would do a lot more than any number of screaming developers to change public opinion. 20 years from now, we will probably be debating the social ramafications of Dune 2, and everyone will have "always" loved good games.
Counting votes require quite a bit of manpower and are expensive. E-voting could be auditable, verifiable, hard to counterfeit, accurate, and with a fast, cheap tally.
Of course, in a bit of bait-and-switch, the e-voting machines have been none of the above except for fast, which doesn't help unless they are also accurate. Somehow, I doubt the people elected want total verifiability. Once in a position of power, it becomes almost trivial to fake a vote... Or at least bump your numbers by a few hundred dead people.
Many projects turn to mush because they listen too much to their users. Master of Orion 3 implemented all of the desires of the hardcore fans. What did we get? A game that only hardcore fans would love.
Part of a good game design process will involve frustrating your users. If a user is upset that the railgun is too powerful, 99 times out of 100 they need to learn to play better. It should be a motivating factor. If you keep getting jacked, CYA. Live in fear. That's the point.
Likewise, the kind of fans that hang around on forums are going to want features that will only dilute other player's experiences, if not downright annoy them. I may want my worms in worms 3D to have bios, backstories, and individual stats, but the casual gamer would find that baffling. A hot topic on the Empires: DMW forums was the lifecycle of the ambient animals. It wasn't enough that they reproduced and grew, the fans also wanted the animals to trade DNA when mating, to protect their young, and to hunt their own food.
That's not to say that fan feedback isn't essential to balance competitive games. Either somebody somewhere is going to think of an omnipotent strategy that didn't occur to you, or your system isn't complicated enough. But don't give in to the whims of your fans. Only you have access to the full game. Only you are paid to know what will work and what won't. If everyone on your forums agrees that having the 6 key be the default action key is bad, consider fixing it. If, on the other hand, 20 of them say that the thing which would make driving really fun would be random tire blowouts, thank them for their suggestion and get some work done.
Make it fun, make it done, make another one.
Re:The greatest threat...
on
Real Security?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Except that security measures necessarily are a human factor. Human nature cannot become the bottleneck in a system designed to work with / thwart human nature. You might as well say that all passwords should be 1MB of random binary culled from decaying atoms, or a 1GB flash disk welded to the spine of the user.
People have a limited memory. They generally remember three or four passwords. Deal with it. Either use biometrics, or a password culled from a sentence (as another poster suggested). Or do a dictionary attack on all user's passwords at signup time, and refuse anything in the OED. Or use one of those nifty word verification challenge-response things that are all the rage in web-facing pages.
People don't change their passwords. Deal with it. Either they're going to write them all down somewhere, or they're going to memorize them. If they write them down, they're succeptable to attack. If you force them to change their passwords, they can't be memorized. But if they are memorized, they can't be compromised with any method that would otherwise catch any login.
And yes, any network can be compromised. You have to reduce the risk, but you also have to work with the way that people work. I worked at a place with randomly generated 8 character ascii passwords. For security's sake, the password system was case-sensitive. For simplicity's sake, the passwords generated were all upper-case. Invariably, new hires were given the password as lower-case (which makes sense to us humans), and then wondered for weeks why it wasn't working yet.
I use a password storage system with 256 blowfish encryption, but the idea that I have to store passwords in a password-protected system is a little scary.
Security is the human factor. How do you give access to one person and not another? How do you verify identity? What can't be faked and / or given away? If by social engineering you mean sneaking into someone's job pretending to be the plant waterer, then stealing the password they have taped to their monitor, then yes, social engineering is part of being a l33t h4x0r. Mitnick's greatest exploits generally involved pretending to be one person to gain enough access to pretend to be another.
1. With or without VoIP regulation, will a global P2P (PSTN-connected) voice network emerge?
C. Nothing can stop the network. Communications want to be free. Pirated voice communications will just go underground. They can't sue everybody. Besides, they deserve it, the convicted monopolists.
Will it start out as hobbyists setting up Asterisk Open Source PBX boxes connected to their home POTS line?
B. I already have an OS PBX box connected to my POTS line through a POS P2.
Will some form of ENUM allow least cost routing to boxes sitting in basements and garages around the world?
D. Why do we need the old phone number system? It is an antiquated relic of a bygone time. Just like IPv4 and Internet 1, nobody uses it anymore.
Here at the Medialab, our XML IM Toaster burns 100 messages per minute into White or Wheat bread using nothing more than predictive assumptions. It has achieved a 90% success rate by churning out ads for the next Lord of the Rings movie.
If an ITSP in Europe can setup an Asterisk box with PSTN access and start offering US phone numbers and vice-versa, will global number plans become obsolete?
A. Global number plans are obsolete. The phone number that used to reach my job now goes to India, you insensitive clod.
What effect will the ridiculously low barrier to entry for VoIP have on telecommunications?
B. It will allow US companies to squabble over file formats until VOIP has achieved irrelevancy, while Open Standards take over in the rest of the world ushering in a new era of freeflowing communications.
Slashdot Mirror
Ow! My bones are so brittle. But I always drink plenty of.... Malk?
Video games are just as legitimate a form of expression and entertainment as movies and music.
What do you mean? No videogame has yet to touch the delicate artistic expressionism found in the simple lines "F---, F---, F--- the Po-lice." Or Eminem's heartfelt ballads to killing his wife in front of his daughter. Or for that matter, Eminem's hearfelt ballads to murdering fags. Such obviously worthwile expression of the human sexual condition is worthy of the protection of the law. This television game, or "videoed-game" as they call it, is teaching children that gangs in poor neighborhoods form from people with ethnic and historically shared backgrounds, and such subdivisions once formed naturally lead to cultural tensions. How can they sleep at night, knowing they sell such obviously racist filth?
I'm sorry sir, but the blips and bleeps of your "videoed-games" can have no cultural or artistic value... They're just a waste of time. Furthermore, you should be ashamed of playing with children's toys. Now go out and get a job, you long haired hippie! I hear Shell is expanding its operations in the Niger Delta.
Some day you'll thank me for setting you straight.
Censorship like this takes great store in the context in wich something happens. Personally I think from the reviews that Manhunter is indeed crossing the line. In most other kill games you kill to achieve a goal, not kill for the killing itself.
Perhaps more people would be inclined to cry Censorship if Rockstar hadn't been flouting the violence aspect of the game to such an extent that it makes it makes all of our lives more difficult. Personally, I feel that any work that doesn't involve injury to the actors / developers should be allowed to sell in at least a limited context. But Rockstar has flaunted its violence at a time when the industry as a whole is under deep criticism for that very reason, and for their games. I don't like censorship, but I really wish someone would smack those guys with a cluestick.
Dear Rockstar:
Sit down. Shut up. Let Will Wright make another positive cultural phenomenon before you speak again.
It's amazing that he could be so out of touch that he would think that Mac elitists would actually be quiet. That's like thinking fish will fly, dogs will play poker, and windows vulnerabilities will be patched before attacks are in the wild.
Quick, send him an Outlook virus!
I think I already did.
Nothing says "I love you" like the gift of 1,430 unsecured networks.
hg
"Of course inacurate or inproperly synced motion cues will cause obvious problems."
Not to mention the sheer volume of players who will be falling over.
You may not see it while sitting in your chair, but believe it or not your sense of balance is doing something useful...
Not to mention the kind of good, honest information releases such as
"Currently, people who send files through file-trading networks, or via e-mail or instant messaging, are largely locked in to sending a specific file that may not be readable by people who lack the appropriate software or hardware."
That makes a lot of sense. This technology will allow me to share my copy of Deus Ex 2 with my friends who have Macs. Thanks for clearing that up.
Keeping a CD around is a real pain. They get lost, they get scratched, they require storage in a binder, and as games copy themselves to the HDD now anyway, they are totally unnecessary. I can store maybe 40 retail games on a HDD, and can play any of them at any moment. Feel like a round of Worms? Boot. Feel like a game of Empires? Start it up. It's that kind of instant gratification you get with consoles, and it should be even faster on a computer. But it isn't. Despite checking my valid registration code on their server when connecting, they still require a crack to run without flipping through 40 pages of CD's looking for that safedisk. U.N.N.E.C.E.S.S.A.R.Y. Don't make your paying clients lives a pain, just to protect against a group of people who aren't going to pay anyway.
My impulse game of choice is Typing of the Dead. Why? It copied itself to the hard drive nicely, and has played solidly every since. Except for the fiasco of pressing F4 to quit, it has performed admirably... like something I own, not something I'm borrowing for money.
Come up with a better copy protection scheme, or come up with a better customer.
Theory 1: The American gamer is very different than the Japanese gamer.
This theory holds some weight. While DDR was a worthy title to bring over, there are many somewhat inferior dance games that did well in Japan yet are flailing in US arcades. Would a Dating Sim fly over here? Or an Air Traffic Controller sim? How about a game where you chop vegetables? Some of the games released in Japan just lack that kind of fantastic escape from real life that American gamers crave. And what about American games based around Basketball, or the endless run'n'shoot games? They still sell in Japan, but hardly as well.
Theory 2: Translations are a pain.
This one also holds weight. Many american games are created with 8 bit characters in mind... Designers would make bitmaps out of fonts and use that in game, with special spacing and formatting. Cramming Japan's significantly longer characters into a fixed space may not be practical, especially if the designers gave the text bank a fixed size. Likewise physically cramming english into a Japanese textbox is difficult, as while english is a slightly faster spoken language, it is a much longer written one. And you can forget about fitting anything else into a native chinese textbox.
Theory 3: Developers won't do it, publishers are afraid.
When you push 80 hours a week to make the perfect game... polish it, craft it, love it... you generally don't have the energy or desire to go back and do a translation. Publishers handle them for this reason, and publishers exist to hedge risk. If a game is released in one market, a foreign publisher will generally not pick up the tab until it is obviously a hit. Counterstrike fits this bill nicely. Savage did not. Publishers have such a backlog of hits waiting for translation that they can pick and choose, and they choose the winners.
... when you sweep the bits from my warm, moist ashes.
be prepared for benefits like:
.ini files to something downright usable.
- being able to enjoy those cute "I love you" and "Anna Kurovina" messages automatically forwarded from your best friends, co-workers, and total strangers.
- The ability to browse every site online, at least every one selling X10 cameras and pictures you wouldn't want your boss to see.
- Software so advanced it installs automatically while you browse, no user intervention required. Uninstalling is as simple as wiping your main partition and re-installing Windows.
- Enjoy desktop environments where settings are spread around 3 different menus and where sometimes they inexplicably don't stick etc. etc. in general using software developed by investors free from the limiting boundaries of friendliness and caring about your users.
- A wide swath of available content, all provided to your trusted platform ensuring that your purchased programs will run forever... Until you lose the disk, upgrade your system, ban the program from spying on your browsing habits, or the producer decides to turn the software off remotely.
Linux is no longer hard. Once you have a modern Debian, Red Hat, or Mandrake installed, everything runs easy-peasy. I've been using it on and off for 6 years, and in that time frame it's gone from nothing but command line editing of
We have a woman in the office who had never used a computer before in her life. We plunked her down in front of a Windows box and a Linux box. While Covad required Internet Explorer, she was always using Linux. She likes the multiple desktops (Microsoft has a power tool multidesktop, BTW), changes her wallpaper every few days, and prefers browsing around in Konqueror. To her, editing the registry is as baffling as editing a shell script, but she doesn't need to do that anyway. If she wants something installed on Debian, it is an apt-get away (whereas in windows she has to look for it). I'd feel comfortable putting newbies in front of a Linux install. In fact, I've done it, many times, and with success.
I respect the opinions of my Linux elders, but I fear your perceptions of the OS may be a little out of date.
The safety is the three feet between you and the guy with the bat. That space should be preferably filled with a door.
Tarzan is studied in nearly all major english literature programs. Pac Man is probably the first Videogame with a serious sociological dialog surrounding it, albeit one spawned by a raver joke.
If Disney's Tarzan has re-pulped the novel, then feel free to subsitute Conrad's Heart of Darkness in the above observation.
As if I haven't posted too many times in this topic already. A good article from the BBC News, except for the unnecessary bit at the end demonizing games.
Pensioners catch the gaming bug
Increasing numbers of over 60s are picking up joysticks to play video games, says a games company.
Nicknamed "grey gamers", they are buying the more diverse games around, like strategy and historical titles.
"Because of the breadth of games now with more universal appeal, they are more enjoyable and social these days," said Codemasters' Richard Eddy.
The games company see the trend as a "natural evolution" for silver surfers who have become more tech-savvy.
Grandma Croft?
Codemasters found out there was a huge audience of "grey gamers" when they profiled the age ranges of users on their website.
"Over 50,000 ticked the over-35 box, so we contacted a few websites and local papers to say we would love to hear from more mature gamers."
They had over 250 e-mails from older gamers who enthused about their electronic hobby, usually associated with the younger generation.
The type of games that get grannies and grandpas going are the ones that require lateral thinking and problem-solving rather than shoot-em-ups, apparently.
Others which focus on football management skills, snooker and Great Escape-type adventures are also popular.
"They find it a very creative use of their leisure time, something that contributes to their active environment," Mr Eddy said.
And as technologies get more familiar and consoles find a permanent home by the TV, gaming becomes something the whole family can do together, said Mr Eddy.
June and Raymond Gill, 75, see no harm in it and regularly exercise their thumb action on game pads.
"We've been playing for 15 years, having been introduced to computer games by our son," said Mrs Gill.
"It keeps your brain active and we spend about two or three hours playing most days."
Mis-spent age
But some worry it is a sign that older people are becoming increasingly isolated.
"It seems to me that computer games are repetitive, isolating, and all the evidence is that older people need to be stimulated and challenged.
"I can't see this as a way of doing it," writer Jill Smith told the BBC's Today programme.
Instead of being a sociable activity, Ms Smith said playing games could simply be replacing watching TV alone.
Emma Soames, editor of Saga magazine said it was no different to knitting or playing card games.
"Just as there are people who mis-spent their youth in snooker halls, now they are spending their middle age in Mario land," she said.
The gaming industry is big business in the UK, with more spent on computer and video games than on cinema tickets, as well video and DVD rentals, said Codemasters.
From BBC News
Many of us identify as gamers. Many of us find ourselves in the position of having to defend our lifestyle choice to other people, as if our hobby were removing the hinges from public doors or planting cannibis around the local elementary school.
Penny Arcade's latest comic shows this perception, in that we now have something to point to and say "see, we're not bad people." Why do we have to donate generously and publically to charity just to prove we aren't beasts, as if the donation somehow atones for our pasttime? It's not like community theater actors have to go outside and rake the leaves so that people will say "they may be evil, but at least they rake the leaves."
I'm a game developer. In conversation when I mention being a game developer to non-gamers I'm instantly shunned. Obviously I'm selling violence and sexual debasement to children, along with the worst devil of all, Idleness. Pointing out that the last game I worked on was intended for adults in their mid 30's just makes them think I'm selling old smut to children. Pointing out the one before that was a non-violent basketball game? I'm blamed for frat parties.
It's prejudiced crap, and we shouldn't have to put up with it.
Is it sad the first thing that crossed my mind was "lots of well-timed security breaches... Microsoft may be behind them all"?
Come on. Do you really think Microsoft knows that much about security?
Apparently, vegetarians should stop watching Matlock, too. I guess Matlock doesn't eat babies.
Matthew Elton
Department of Philosophy
University of Stirling
1. An Absurd Question?
Many video games feature animated agents that the player attacks with the aim of maiming or
killing. Less dramatically the animated agents may be treated instrumentally, herded or goaded
with no regard for potential suffering, injury, or death. Such activity would be utterly
unacceptable if directed at people. And for many, but clearly not all, it would be repugnant if
directed at animals. For simplicity, if not accuracy, let me call those who do take the latter
attitude ?vegetarians?. In this paper I want to raise the question of whether such vegetarians
ought to refrain from playing video games on the grounds that the animated agents in the game
require of us the same sort of treatment as animals do in our natural environment. Should, that
is, vegetarians play video games?
My answer may strike some readers as absurd, for I shall argue, with some important
qualifications, that vegetarians should not play video games. That is, I shall argue that
between real animals and some of the animated agents that feature in video games there are no
differences that make a moral difference, and hence no ground for a difference in treatment. Of
course, many readers may share with me the overwhelming intuition that there must be some
relevant difference, and this may suggest that there is something awry with my arguments.
But if this is so, I shall at least have shown that the relevant difference is not obvious, and,
hence, that the vegetarian has work to do in justifying her playing of video games.
If you can't see where this is going already, you can view the rest here
Watching movies, watching TV, and reading comic books were once looked down upon as deeply as playing games is today. In fact, all visceral escapist entertainment seems to start that way... from radio shows to tango.
From what I've seen, this won't change until the generations change. A group of people who grew up on videogames will necessarily have a different perception of the situation than a person to whom videogames were what "kids do." Of course, we need to draw more girls into the fold if we want to make that transition happen faster.
All we can do is continue to make the best, most enjoyable games possible. Tarzan was once considered pulp, just as Pac Man was. Fighting bad perceptions is important too, but in perspective one more Myst would do a lot more than any number of screaming developers to change public opinion. 20 years from now, we will probably be debating the social ramafications of Dune 2, and everyone will have "always" loved good games.
Insert obligatory Penny Arcade link.
A chapter on security and a chapter on viruses? A chapter on downloading content and a chapter on music? Chapters on corporate IM, P2P IM, and VOIP?
"Slashdot" wouldn't be a bad title, with this many dupes.
Counting votes require quite a bit of manpower and are expensive. E-voting could be auditable, verifiable, hard to counterfeit, accurate, and with a fast, cheap tally.
Of course, in a bit of bait-and-switch, the e-voting machines have been none of the above except for fast, which doesn't help unless they are also accurate. Somehow, I doubt the people elected want total verifiability. Once in a position of power, it becomes almost trivial to fake a vote... Or at least bump your numbers by a few hundred dead people.
Can go up stairs, rides flat on hills, extremely stable... Yeah, forget the car that would make a kick-ass skateboard.
Many projects turn to mush because they listen too much to their users. Master of Orion 3 implemented all of the desires of the hardcore fans. What did we get? A game that only hardcore fans would love.
Part of a good game design process will involve frustrating your users. If a user is upset that the railgun is too powerful, 99 times out of 100 they need to learn to play better. It should be a motivating factor. If you keep getting jacked, CYA. Live in fear. That's the point.
Likewise, the kind of fans that hang around on forums are going to want features that will only dilute other player's experiences, if not downright annoy them. I may want my worms in worms 3D to have bios, backstories, and individual stats, but the casual gamer would find that baffling. A hot topic on the Empires: DMW forums was the lifecycle of the ambient animals. It wasn't enough that they reproduced and grew, the fans also wanted the animals to trade DNA when mating, to protect their young, and to hunt their own food.
That's not to say that fan feedback isn't essential to balance competitive games. Either somebody somewhere is going to think of an omnipotent strategy that didn't occur to you, or your system isn't complicated enough. But don't give in to the whims of your fans. Only you have access to the full game. Only you are paid to know what will work and what won't. If everyone on your forums agrees that having the 6 key be the default action key is bad, consider fixing it. If, on the other hand, 20 of them say that the thing which would make driving really fun would be random tire blowouts, thank them for their suggestion and get some work done.
Make it fun, make it done, make another one.
Except that security measures necessarily are a human factor. Human nature cannot become the bottleneck in a system designed to work with / thwart human nature. You might as well say that all passwords should be 1MB of random binary culled from decaying atoms, or a 1GB flash disk welded to the spine of the user.
People have a limited memory. They generally remember three or four passwords. Deal with it. Either use biometrics, or a password culled from a sentence (as another poster suggested). Or do a dictionary attack on all user's passwords at signup time, and refuse anything in the OED. Or use one of those nifty word verification challenge-response things that are all the rage in web-facing pages.
People don't change their passwords. Deal with it. Either they're going to write them all down somewhere, or they're going to memorize them. If they write them down, they're succeptable to attack. If you force them to change their passwords, they can't be memorized. But if they are memorized, they can't be compromised with any method that would otherwise catch any login.
And yes, any network can be compromised. You have to reduce the risk, but you also have to work with the way that people work. I worked at a place with randomly generated 8 character ascii passwords. For security's sake, the password system was case-sensitive. For simplicity's sake, the passwords generated were all upper-case. Invariably, new hires were given the password as lower-case (which makes sense to us humans), and then wondered for weeks why it wasn't working yet.
I use a password storage system with 256 blowfish encryption, but the idea that I have to store passwords in a password-protected system is a little scary.
Security is the human factor. How do you give access to one person and not another? How do you verify identity? What can't be faked and / or given away? If by social engineering you mean sneaking into someone's job pretending to be the plant waterer, then stealing the password they have taped to their monitor, then yes, social engineering is part of being a l33t h4x0r. Mitnick's greatest exploits generally involved pretending to be one person to gain enough access to pretend to be another.
1. With or without VoIP regulation, will a global P2P (PSTN-connected) voice network emerge?
:(
C. Nothing can stop the network. Communications want to be free. Pirated voice communications will just go underground. They can't sue everybody. Besides, they deserve it, the convicted monopolists.
Will it start out as hobbyists setting up Asterisk Open Source PBX boxes connected to their home POTS line?
B. I already have an OS PBX box connected to my POTS line through a POS P2.
Will some form of ENUM allow least cost routing to boxes sitting in basements and garages around the world?
D. Why do we need the old phone number system? It is an antiquated relic of a bygone time. Just like IPv4 and Internet 1, nobody uses it anymore.
Here at the Medialab, our XML IM Toaster burns 100 messages per minute into White or Wheat bread using nothing more than predictive assumptions. It has achieved a 90% success rate by churning out ads for the next Lord of the Rings movie.
If an ITSP in Europe can setup an Asterisk box with PSTN access and start offering US phone numbers and vice-versa, will global number plans become obsolete?
A. Global number plans are obsolete. The phone number that used to reach my job now goes to India, you insensitive clod.
What effect will the ridiculously low barrier to entry for VoIP have on telecommunications?
B. It will allow US companies to squabble over file formats until VOIP has achieved irrelevancy, while Open Standards take over in the rest of the world ushering in a new era of freeflowing communications.
Actually, that last one wasn't a joke. Sorry.