The downgrade must have made sense on paper. The difference between 24 speed and 12 speed recording is not a lot. DVD+RW is a standard that isn't particularly necessary, despite what SCE's parent company may think. Who needs Tiff? Cybershot? MP3?
Ok, the lack of MP3 playback in a media hub is like a car that can't turn left. Even on paper that cut's dumb. And being incompatible with Playstation BB seems very odd... Almost like compatibility with other online games is not guaranteed.
The main problem that I see with this, however, is that you are taking a luxury device that retails near $1,000, and removing features before it launches. People spend that much money on a device because it will be the ultimate... The penultimate just isn't enough. If the cuts had been made before the device was announced, and released later as a patch, it wouldn't be an issue. In fact it would serve as a boost, as people get a better machine than they had planned for. But making cuts now just days before the item goes on sale is going to severely tarnish its image.
If you had checked the USPTO website, SSC registered the trademark on October 28th, 2003, or after this dispute had begun. The Whois has the domain registration in 1997 by SSC after the Linux Gazette had been publishing for 2 years.
Issues have been copyright John Fisk, SSC, and the Linux Gazette group. All copyrights are also retained by the original authors.
Actual ownership of the trademark will be a hairy one to sort out.
'an executive scolded programmers for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.'
No, an executive should have fired programmers for leaving software files on an Internet connected site without password protection. That executive then should have been fired for having such lax security practices at one of the most important NGO's in the USA today. Diebold should then be given 1 year to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's systems are secure. That year should culminate in 100 of Diebold's boxes being dropped into the yearly 2600 meeting in New York City, with any successful hack recieving 10,000 dollars and the honor of ripping up all of Diebold's contracts and co-signing the order banning the sale of Diebold election machines in the US for 20 years.
They should then go to Diebold's headquarters and salt the campus.
Seriously, giving a candidate a minus 16022? Faking demos? 25% failure rates? Intentionally making audits impossible? One of these things happening at a company selling toasters would be surprising. Three would be scandalous. But a history of gross mismanagement and neglect at a company that is the first and last word in American democracy is the highest form of the word "inexcusable." If they had done many of the things that they did intentionally, they would be arrested for treason.
There is nothing in the US constitution that says grossly incompetent companies in highly trusted positions have a right to continue to exist.
First the rights to music are stolen from its creators. This music is locked away from all of the world in a small island. The player must download musical clues from any remote section of the world they can, learning about the area's unique musical tradition and heritage. Eventually the player finds his way to Los An... Secret Pirate Island. The game ends when the evil thief is thrown in jail, and the music heritage of the world is set free for all.
There aren't enough players for baseball? Sports games stealing from Everquest?
MMOG is not a genre. MMOG is a way of altering / improving a type of game. A Massively Multiplayer Street Fighter would draw the types of players that normally play Street Fighter games, not necessarily introducing RPG players to a different genre. MMP sports games are drawing from the Madden crowd... the 10% of people whose love for sports is matched by a love for fast internet connections.
Would a MMP sports game take longer to play than a regular sports game? I tend to doubt it. Unlike a regular sports game, you could have a robot "feature," whereby your character is relieved by a stand-in when you have to go, and whose stand-in can be relieved by someone else. 3 full games a week is comparable to what most people in softball leagues play, and fewer than what most Red Socks fans watch. And what is to prevent you from not playing for a month?
On the other hand, I remember how boring Baseball was to play. I guess it does have some things in common with Everquest. Still, MMP racing games, basketball games, or soccer would probably be fun. I can't wait until the MMP bookies start opening up.
The only other console I've had die on me was a Jaguar, and that was because I plugged in the wrong power supply. The old SNES, SMS, GB, Genesis, TG16, SNES, and Sega CD systems still work fine, despite having been in storage for years.
Having gone through 3 sets of PS1s and being on my 2nd PS2, don't expect any of this current generation of hardware to last. At the QA center where I worked last year, dead consoles were a fact of life. The laser assemblies died long before the HDD's.
Spinning a disk is tough work for an electronics device... especially if it has to spin constantly.
I agree with most of what you say, but not all of it. The lack of non-localized damage is odd, and unintuitive. Unified ammo is also odd, but not something we should hold against it until we see how the finished game plays. I tend to feel Unified ammo will free the player to play in a way reflective of their style. The interface isn't great, but it isn't terrible. The AI? I can't say for sure because the two areas of the demo were pretty severly separated, but the AI seemed to handle itself OK.
Demos always run like s#(t. They're usually finished a month before the game is, and are based off of really old code. I would be surprised if the final game was running 100% better, but many problems will have been ironed out between demo and gold.
Remember, Deus Ex was considered the bastard stepchild of Ion Storm. Consisting primarily of people fed up with Mr. Romero, Deus Ex was greenlighted as a throwaway project until the excellent Daiktana was ready to ship. Nobody, least of all the population at large, was expecting it to be huge.
Now that it is, people are going to pull the sequel apart for any differences it might have. "I don't like the interface." "The mouse is jerky." "It runs slow." Well guess what... The is no worse than Xenogears, the mouse is already fixed, and all new games run slow. what you can't really get is a grasp of the gameplay from a demo. Sure, you can get a taste of it... there is no area that is unreachable by piling on boxes, for example. But how far can you really go? People are already condemning it before having ever played it, simply because it is A: different than it's predecessor, and B: the Demo runs like a Demo.
I don't think we'll know if the emergent gameplay design was successful until the game ships in December. Only then can we call it a failure. Or a success.
Demo maxed out at 800 x 600. However, with the multiple graphic samplings, 800 x 600 easily looked as good as 1024 x 760 does on other games.
Still, is it the graphics engine that is slow? I'm personally amazed by the collision modeling shown in the demo level. With that many boxes bouncing around at any given time, how can one expect the game to keep up? I'm amazed that it does as well as it does without choking out the main processor.
I agree that there is generally a negative backlash against regulating videogames, but that is because regulations have traditionally been knee-jerk reactions blaming an industry for something it had nothing to do with. Up to this point they've been overly broad, and almost always prohibitive.
This bills do have some of that knee-jerk tone to it. "Operating through the eyes of video game killers trains kids to stalk victims, take aim and kill, Yee said." Yee failed to mention where the child is to get practice assembling a gun, re-loading a gun, or smuggling a gun into school. Even then, FPS gaming is not necessarily a good training tool... I can rack up a pretty decent frag count, but I can't shoot a paintball gun to save my life. The ten year old kids at the local arena with the $200 Birthday Special laser-scoped fully-autos shouting "Die, F(#$ers, Die!" seem to be a bit more adept at stalking, aiming, and killing. Aiming with an optical mouse and keyboard is a whole lot different than aiming with 20 pounds of hardened steel.
In his defense, perhaps Yee meant metaphorically that we shouldn't teach kids that violence solves all of life's problems. If that's so, then we shouldn't have elected the Terminator to the state's highest office. Glorification of violence happens on all levels in our culture.
Likewise, the separate shelf 5 feet above the ground is a little cruel in a state with a large asian population. And that the "Harmful Matter" provision does not refer specifically to ESRB ratings leaves it quite open for interpretation.
Personally, I see this kind of regulation as a next necessary step in the entrance of gaming to mainstream American life. The sale of violence-glorifying media should be restricted until one has a grasp of the horrors of real violence. I would be surprised if a study showed persistent increased violence levels in non-self selected groups, but I don't particularly want my kids to spend their time torturing and maiming digital bunnyrabbits either.
We should support a bill giving the ESRB's ratings the weight of law, the same way that the MPAA's ratings hold true in the movie realm. If this turns out to be one, that's great. But if this turns out to be a no-sales-to-anyone won't-someone-think-of-the-children bills, we should stop it cold. Videogames are not more responsible for the culture of violence than the rest of the culture of violence.
Start every power chain with a surge protector... preferably one with a small fuse that can be tripped by too much draw. Spread out anything heavy-draw and constant (airconditioner gets its own circuit), and put intermittent things on opposite circuits. If possible, use a power brick.
Consolidate your electronics. a TV card in a computer is good, a TV card in a laptop is better. Unless you are a DJ, your amplified stereo equipment is really overkill in a 5'x7' room. Your neighbors will thank you if you get a good pair of Lansing computer speakers for music. All dorms have a communal VCR / DVD player, and it is more fun to watch with everyone. Hair dryers should be used in the bathroom, not on your PC's circuit. A printer in your room may be convienient, but the PC lab down the hall has one that is cheaper, and whose output looks better than yours ever will.
Flourescent lighting is your friend, not those nasty Halogen things. Get translucent blinds (in addition to the regular ones), so that you can get some natural lighting. Remember, if it's filtered through plastic it won't burn your skin.
Generally I would agree with you on piracy of copies of software and media that is single-source and significantly more expensive than it should be. In a system without viable competition, piracy is a compelling form of competition as a market reality. It can be argued that it's piracy which keeps people from examining alternatives, thereby continuing the monopoly.
But I'd like to point out here that most gaming companies don't make money. Large publishers, who are in the best position to be raking it in, are merely scraping by. Nintendo and Microsoft lost money last quarter. Gaming companies are not greedy monopolists keeping prices high because they want to milk their position. Game companies keep prices high because they are afraid of losing money.
A few gaming realities. %50 or more of a game's total sales will happen during the first two months of a game's release. This demand is relatively inflexible, and will not generally go up if you decrease the price. As they age, price becomes more of an issue for impulse purchases, though not generally for the people who have mentally chosen the game. As impulse purchase games are likely to be the "greatest hits," unless your game has some serious name recognition, it is in your best interest to sell to the choir who will purchase it at full or near full price.
Assuming the retailer takes half, and half of what remains goes to paying the developer, for cheap 2.5 million dollar game to break even it needs to take in 10 million overall, or 5 million in the first two months. 5 million dollars is 100,000 copies during the first two months, assuming $50 per copy. Compared to movie tickets that's somewhat small, but for the pool of gaming that's pretty large.
A given metropolitan area will have one to three game-specific stores where the cash registers ring every few minutes. They will also have music and mega stores where one can purchase games, but sitting down and watching that section for a day is like watching paint dry. On the other hand, there are at least 7 theaters here in boston, and those ticket counters almost always have a line. If you talk to your co-workers, the launch of Return of the King has entered public consciousness, but Metroid Prime barely registeres.
We're in a small pool, in other words. To stay afloat, game companies need to keep prices high. I would like to believe that lower prices would increase demand, but I have seen companies attempt to go down that route with little success. The fact of the matter is that most people don't play games: they feel they are a "waste of time," and "for kids." One could argue the hipocracy of clinging to the puritanical belief in a lack of wasted effort in a society where the average person watches 4 hours of television per day, but it is (I fear) the latter perception is the more insidious and will only be overcome in a herse.
But gaming companies to listen to sales. A few years back the Playstation 1 had a rigid price structure where every game was $50. Crash Bandicoot 2 was just released at $50, and as such SCEA decided to lower the price of the original to $45 as an experiment. The original Crash sold as well as Crash 2 that year, showing that indeed, price was an issue. From that we have our multi-tiered pricing system of today. Just in case you forget that it has been tried, there was (and remains) a rung on the pricing ladder below "greatest hits." Ball Breakers, and many other games were released at the $10 mark for the original Playstation. Yes, some of them were terrible, but some were rather good. Sadly, the increased sales didn't offset the decreased cost, and that experiment was largely abandoned.
If you want to send a message to publishers, buy games on the cheap. They have no way of knowing that someone just pirated a copy of Max Payne 2 in protest, but they could see a thriving market in used games as a sign that they should lower prices. If there is a hot game coming out for $55 dollars, and an older one that you really
Good advice overall, which any computer user should abide by. However, I'd like to point out a few things.
First of all by "file system," I had meant the organizational file heiarchy in Windows, the portion that the OS sees. You can still break all of the links to a program by, for example, re-naming a folder. Many programs fail to work if installed on something other than the C: drive... Many of these are Microsoft's programs. The Windows folder is a hodgepodge of thousands of items, some of which are protected and some of which aren't, but few of which are intelligently laid out for either the user or the programmer. I agree that NTFS is a much better file system than Fat32 was (though the fact that Windows XP doesn't support 160 GB drives out of the box is pretty shameful), but what the OS does with it is shabby.
Second, if you *ever* have to edit the registry, you're doing something very wrong. That's like saying that you should dismantle your entire car because one of your headlights is out.
Actually, some programs treat registry settings like they were a preferences dialog. Zone Alarm, for example, like thousands of other pieces of software has an annoying splash screen that appears every time your computer boots, and the only place the preference exists is in the registry. Program registrations need to be backed up from and occasionally restored to the registry... It's just a bad idea to keep your copy restriction authentication and your preferences in the same structure, but that's exactly what Microsoft designed.
As a game developer, and an out-of-work one at that, Windows does need to be reinstalled every 6 months or so... If the constant flow of test games doesn't get you, the constant flow of uninstallers will. Rolling back to restore points is useful, but A: it doesn't always work and B: it doesn't address the cumulative damage of accrued extensions.
As an addition to your suggestions, the user needs to check what icons are in the bottom-right hand corner of their screen, and shut off what isn't needed. Many people I have spoken too don't realize that those are applications and not just quick-launch shortcuts.
Sadly, if you go to the images page, it is apparent that gladiator is not actually all that bloody. It's not a member of the elite class of games where you can hack your opponent's limbs off, for example. There are no explosions, so bits of grizzle don't spray everywhere like in FPS games. No internally bits are ever on the outside. It's not even funny. Where is the violence? The nastiness? Where is the dark foreboding nature of of the world laid bare like scraped flesh covered in dirt and pebbles?
No, what we get is a series of repetitive blood textures added to the grounds around where a traditional penetration damage model is taking place. Nothing new here.
I'd find the "Microsoft security vulnerabilities are the fault of ease-of-use" argument a little more valid if Microsoft's software were actually vulnerable due to useful features.
For example, the messenger service isn't used by anyone by spam senders, e-mail scripting was never a useful device to anyone, and a fragile, naked file system doesn't lend itself to easy usage anyway. A web browser that can be told to run arbitrary code due to a buffer overflow is not vulnerable because it is easy to use, but because it is poorly written. The autodetection of hardware and updating of drivers is very easy to use, and has (as far as I know) never been the source of an exploit.
You can both have security and ease-of-use... Just design a closed system with very limited purposes. A Hub, for example, is extremely easy to use, and has few possible points of security vulnerability. Routers, on the other hand, are frequently a bit archaic in their setup and get hacked all of the time.
That's not to say that your point is invalid, but that there are other factors involved... Flexibility, control, effort, etc.
I guess the point of this is that if I have to re-install windows or edit the registry again before Christmas I'm buying myself an iMac.
Realistically, how many of these have been sold to ISP's? ISP's are not in the business of denying access... They're all about the openness. If someone's Macintosh is attempting to connect to the network, who do you think they will blame if they are denied service? How much do you think you will lose in service calls?
No, this most definitely for corporate networks... Some point-haired boss will approve the acquisition of these machines after listening to a sales pitch that came with free sushi and a lucky winner getting a trip to the Bahamas. Suddenly, the mailserver, corporate IM server, and print servers won't work.
"Why aren't these working?" The PHB will ask. "Because that router you bought refuses the connection, complaining about 'trusted computing. I'm turning it off now," says the dirty haired sysadmin. "Turning off trusted computing? Aren't we using all Microsoft solutions?" "No, that would be an extra 20k per year, plus switching costs, downtime, viruses, worms, etc." "They have scanners for that. Besides, Microsoft has better sushi chefs." "It's a bad idea." "Switch it all or I'll replace you with someone who will." "O.K."
The Dirty Haired Sysadmin will dutifly switch all of the servers over, and will subsequently be fired after the fifth worm attacks the network.
"The HD DVD format is a violet laser-based optical disk system with a capacity of 15-20 Gbyte per side using the same disk structure as current DVD disks."
A quick comparison of existing specs here shows that the blue lazer DVD's are well ahead of these higher-density DVD's.
The Blu-ray Disc, supported by nine major makers, including Sony, Panasonic, Philips and Pioneer, could store up to 50 GB of data (more than six times the data capacity of today's DVD) by using a blue laser beam instead of the current red laser. Blu-ray recorders and players could play current DVDs, but Blu-ray discs could not be played on current players. Advanced Optical Disc, a second blue-laser system proposed by NEC and Toshiba, brings disc capacity to 20 GB. One advantage touted by backers: Today's DVD-making equipment could easily be modified for the new discs. HD-DVD-9, based on the current DVD format, uses improved software compression to pack 135 minutes of HD video onto the disc. It was developed by Warner Bros.
The most interesting one is the final option... Upgrading the software codec. The MPEG consortium was attempting to get mpeg-4 out the door in time to become a standard for DVD's. They didn't meet that lofty goal, but MPEG4, DIVX, and many other codecs are significantly better at compressing video than MPEG 2. A new codec would require a new decompression chip, but it would cost less than a new laser system, and would provide a platform from which to move up... After all, codecs probably won't see the same growth over the years that hardware will, so using an MPEG4 or other codec could last for many years, at least until Blue laser systems come down in price, at which point you could keep the codec.
Slashdot Mirror
MMPORTS
RTSS
Rise of Nations
Shattered Galaxies
Savage
Impossible Creatures
Tropico
Warcraft 3
Mob Rule
Startopia
A more wordy post was lost to a system error, but I believe the above list makes the point.
The Playstation BB
It is a broadband hub service. Users can buy / download games, movies, music, and chat / mail eachother.
Don't make fun of their guaranteed security. This does a great job of guaranteeing the security of Kim Jong Il.
Several bad ideas.
The downgrade must have made sense on paper. The difference between 24 speed and 12 speed recording is not a lot. DVD+RW is a standard that isn't particularly necessary, despite what SCE's parent company may think. Who needs Tiff? Cybershot? MP3?
Ok, the lack of MP3 playback in a media hub is like a car that can't turn left. Even on paper that cut's dumb. And being incompatible with Playstation BB seems very odd... Almost like compatibility with other online games is not guaranteed.
The main problem that I see with this, however, is that you are taking a luxury device that retails near $1,000, and removing features before it launches. People spend that much money on a device because it will be the ultimate... The penultimate just isn't enough. If the cuts had been made before the device was announced, and released later as a patch, it wouldn't be an issue. In fact it would serve as a boost, as people get a better machine than they had planned for. But making cuts now just days before the item goes on sale is going to severely tarnish its image.
Bad planning guys. Bad planning.
If you had checked the USPTO website, SSC registered the trademark on October 28th, 2003, or after this dispute had begun. The Whois has the domain registration in 1997 by SSC after the Linux Gazette had been publishing for 2 years.
Issues have been copyright John Fisk, SSC, and the Linux Gazette group. All copyrights are also retained by the original authors.
Actual ownership of the trademark will be a hairy one to sort out.
Their staff.
'an executive scolded programmers for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.'
No, an executive should have fired programmers for leaving software files on an Internet connected site without password protection. That executive then should have been fired for having such lax security practices at one of the most important NGO's in the USA today. Diebold should then be given 1 year to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's systems are secure. That year should culminate in 100 of Diebold's boxes being dropped into the yearly 2600 meeting in New York City, with any successful hack recieving 10,000 dollars and the honor of ripping up all of Diebold's contracts and co-signing the order banning the sale of Diebold election machines in the US for 20 years.
They should then go to Diebold's headquarters and salt the campus.
Seriously, giving a candidate a minus 16022? Faking demos? 25% failure rates? Intentionally making audits impossible? One of these things happening at a company selling toasters would be surprising. Three would be scandalous. But a history of gross mismanagement and neglect at a company that is the first and last word in American democracy is the highest form of the word "inexcusable." If they had done many of the things that they did intentionally, they would be arrested for treason.
There is nothing in the US constitution that says grossly incompetent companies in highly trusted positions have a right to continue to exist.
First the rights to music are stolen from its creators. This music is locked away from all of the world in a small island. The player must download musical clues from any remote section of the world they can, learning about the area's unique musical tradition and heritage. Eventually the player finds his way to Los An... Secret Pirate Island. The game ends when the evil thief is thrown in jail, and the music heritage of the world is set free for all.
That sounds about right.
There aren't enough players for baseball? Sports games stealing from Everquest?
MMOG is not a genre. MMOG is a way of altering / improving a type of game. A Massively Multiplayer Street Fighter would draw the types of players that normally play Street Fighter games, not necessarily introducing RPG players to a different genre. MMP sports games are drawing from the Madden crowd... the 10% of people whose love for sports is matched by a love for fast internet connections.
Would a MMP sports game take longer to play than a regular sports game? I tend to doubt it. Unlike a regular sports game, you could have a robot "feature," whereby your character is relieved by a stand-in when you have to go, and whose stand-in can be relieved by someone else. 3 full games a week is comparable to what most people in softball leagues play, and fewer than what most Red Socks fans watch. And what is to prevent you from not playing for a month?
On the other hand, I remember how boring Baseball was to play. I guess it does have some things in common with Everquest. Still, MMP racing games, basketball games, or soccer would probably be fun. I can't wait until the MMP bookies start opening up.
The only other console I've had die on me was a Jaguar, and that was because I plugged in the wrong power supply. The old SNES, SMS, GB, Genesis, TG16, SNES, and Sega CD systems still work fine, despite having been in storage for years.
Having gone through 3 sets of PS1s and being on my 2nd PS2, don't expect any of this current generation of hardware to last. At the QA center where I worked last year, dead consoles were a fact of life. The laser assemblies died long before the HDD's.
Spinning a disk is tough work for an electronics device... especially if it has to spin constantly.
I agree with most of what you say, but not all of it. The lack of non-localized damage is odd, and unintuitive. Unified ammo is also odd, but not something we should hold against it until we see how the finished game plays. I tend to feel Unified ammo will free the player to play in a way reflective of their style. The interface isn't great, but it isn't terrible. The AI? I can't say for sure because the two areas of the demo were pretty severly separated, but the AI seemed to handle itself OK.
Demos always run like s#(t. They're usually finished a month before the game is, and are based off of really old code. I would be surprised if the final game was running 100% better, but many problems will have been ironed out between demo and gold.
BTW, apparently you haven't seen the depths of crappyness of modern acclaim games. Let me remind you what they're capable of.
Remember, Deus Ex was considered the bastard stepchild of Ion Storm. Consisting primarily of people fed up with Mr. Romero, Deus Ex was greenlighted as a throwaway project until the excellent Daiktana was ready to ship. Nobody, least of all the population at large, was expecting it to be huge.
Now that it is, people are going to pull the sequel apart for any differences it might have. "I don't like the interface." "The mouse is jerky." "It runs slow." Well guess what... The is no worse than Xenogears, the mouse is already fixed, and all new games run slow. what you can't really get is a grasp of the gameplay from a demo. Sure, you can get a taste of it... there is no area that is unreachable by piling on boxes, for example. But how far can you really go? People are already condemning it before having ever played it, simply because it is A: different than it's predecessor, and B: the Demo runs like a Demo.
I don't think we'll know if the emergent gameplay design was successful until the game ships in December. Only then can we call it a failure. Or a success.
2.4 AthXP 1GB DC DDR RAM, 80 GB 133 SATA, Radeon 9600 Pro.
Demo maxed out at 800 x 600. However, with the multiple graphic samplings, 800 x 600 easily looked as good as 1024 x 760 does on other games.
Still, is it the graphics engine that is slow? I'm personally amazed by the collision modeling shown in the demo level. With that many boxes bouncing around at any given time, how can one expect the game to keep up? I'm amazed that it does as well as it does without choking out the main processor.
"Daddy, why did we
lose the patent wars?"
"I, for one, welcomed
our poetic overlords."
What's the point of a bike if you can't burn rubber?
I agree that there is generally a negative backlash against regulating videogames, but that is because regulations have traditionally been knee-jerk reactions blaming an industry for something it had nothing to do with. Up to this point they've been overly broad, and almost always prohibitive.
This bills do have some of that knee-jerk tone to it. "Operating through the eyes of video game killers trains kids to stalk victims, take aim and kill, Yee said." Yee failed to mention where the child is to get practice assembling a gun, re-loading a gun, or smuggling a gun into school. Even then, FPS gaming is not necessarily a good training tool... I can rack up a pretty decent frag count, but I can't shoot a paintball gun to save my life. The ten year old kids at the local arena with the $200 Birthday Special laser-scoped fully-autos shouting "Die, F(#$ers, Die!" seem to be a bit more adept at stalking, aiming, and killing. Aiming with an optical mouse and keyboard is a whole lot different than aiming with 20 pounds of hardened steel.
In his defense, perhaps Yee meant metaphorically that we shouldn't teach kids that violence solves all of life's problems. If that's so, then we shouldn't have elected the Terminator to the state's highest office. Glorification of violence happens on all levels in our culture.
Likewise, the separate shelf 5 feet above the ground is a little cruel in a state with a large asian population. And that the "Harmful Matter" provision does not refer specifically to ESRB ratings leaves it quite open for interpretation.
Personally, I see this kind of regulation as a next necessary step in the entrance of gaming to mainstream American life. The sale of violence-glorifying media should be restricted until one has a grasp of the horrors of real violence. I would be surprised if a study showed persistent increased violence levels in non-self selected groups, but I don't particularly want my kids to spend their time torturing and maiming digital bunnyrabbits either.
We should support a bill giving the ESRB's ratings the weight of law, the same way that the MPAA's ratings hold true in the movie realm. If this turns out to be one, that's great. But if this turns out to be a no-sales-to-anyone won't-someone-think-of-the-children bills, we should stop it cold. Videogames are not more responsible for the culture of violence than the rest of the culture of violence.
Start every power chain with a surge protector... preferably one with a small fuse that can be tripped by too much draw. Spread out anything heavy-draw and constant (airconditioner gets its own circuit), and put intermittent things on opposite circuits. If possible, use a power brick.
Consolidate your electronics. a TV card in a computer is good, a TV card in a laptop is better. Unless you are a DJ, your amplified stereo equipment is really overkill in a 5'x7' room. Your neighbors will thank you if you get a good pair of Lansing computer speakers for music. All dorms have a communal VCR / DVD player, and it is more fun to watch with everyone. Hair dryers should be used in the bathroom, not on your PC's circuit. A printer in your room may be convienient, but the PC lab down the hall has one that is cheaper, and whose output looks better than yours ever will.
Flourescent lighting is your friend, not those nasty Halogen things. Get translucent blinds (in addition to the regular ones), so that you can get some natural lighting. Remember, if it's filtered through plastic it won't burn your skin.
Just some battle-won ideas.
Generally I would agree with you on piracy of copies of software and media that is single-source and significantly more expensive than it should be. In a system without viable competition, piracy is a compelling form of competition as a market reality. It can be argued that it's piracy which keeps people from examining alternatives, thereby continuing the monopoly.
But I'd like to point out here that most gaming companies don't make money. Large publishers, who are in the best position to be raking it in, are merely scraping by. Nintendo and Microsoft lost money last quarter. Gaming companies are not greedy monopolists keeping prices high because they want to milk their position. Game companies keep prices high because they are afraid of losing money.
A few gaming realities. %50 or more of a game's total sales will happen during the first two months of a game's release. This demand is relatively inflexible, and will not generally go up if you decrease the price. As they age, price becomes more of an issue for impulse purchases, though not generally for the people who have mentally chosen the game. As impulse purchase games are likely to be the "greatest hits," unless your game has some serious name recognition, it is in your best interest to sell to the choir who will purchase it at full or near full price.
Assuming the retailer takes half, and half of what remains goes to paying the developer, for cheap 2.5 million dollar game to break even it needs to take in 10 million overall, or 5 million in the first two months. 5 million dollars is 100,000 copies during the first two months, assuming $50 per copy. Compared to movie tickets that's somewhat small, but for the pool of gaming that's pretty large.
A given metropolitan area will have one to three game-specific stores where the cash registers ring every few minutes. They will also have music and mega stores where one can purchase games, but sitting down and watching that section for a day is like watching paint dry. On the other hand, there are at least 7 theaters here in boston, and those ticket counters almost always have a line. If you talk to your co-workers, the launch of Return of the King has entered public consciousness, but Metroid Prime barely registeres.
We're in a small pool, in other words. To stay afloat, game companies need to keep prices high. I would like to believe that lower prices would increase demand, but I have seen companies attempt to go down that route with little success. The fact of the matter is that most people don't play games: they feel they are a "waste of time," and "for kids." One could argue the hipocracy of clinging to the puritanical belief in a lack of wasted effort in a society where the average person watches 4 hours of television per day, but it is (I fear) the latter perception is the more insidious and will only be overcome in a herse.
But gaming companies to listen to sales. A few years back the Playstation 1 had a rigid price structure where every game was $50. Crash Bandicoot 2 was just released at $50, and as such SCEA decided to lower the price of the original to $45 as an experiment. The original Crash sold as well as Crash 2 that year, showing that indeed, price was an issue. From that we have our multi-tiered pricing system of today. Just in case you forget that it has been tried, there was (and remains) a rung on the pricing ladder below "greatest hits." Ball Breakers, and many other games were released at the $10 mark for the original Playstation. Yes, some of them were terrible, but some were rather good. Sadly, the increased sales didn't offset the decreased cost, and that experiment was largely abandoned.
If you want to send a message to publishers, buy games on the cheap. They have no way of knowing that someone just pirated a copy of Max Payne 2 in protest, but they could see a thriving market in used games as a sign that they should lower prices. If there is a hot game coming out for $55 dollars, and an older one that you really
Good advice overall, which any computer user should abide by. However, I'd like to point out a few things.
First of all by "file system," I had meant the organizational file heiarchy in Windows, the portion that the OS sees. You can still break all of the links to a program by, for example, re-naming a folder. Many programs fail to work if installed on something other than the C: drive... Many of these are Microsoft's programs. The Windows folder is a hodgepodge of thousands of items, some of which are protected and some of which aren't, but few of which are intelligently laid out for either the user or the programmer. I agree that NTFS is a much better file system than Fat32 was (though the fact that Windows XP doesn't support 160 GB drives out of the box is pretty shameful), but what the OS does with it is shabby.
Second, if you *ever* have to edit the registry, you're doing something very wrong. That's like saying that you should dismantle your entire car because one of your headlights is out.
Actually, some programs treat registry settings like they were a preferences dialog. Zone Alarm, for example, like thousands of other pieces of software has an annoying splash screen that appears every time your computer boots, and the only place the preference exists is in the registry. Program registrations need to be backed up from and occasionally restored to the registry... It's just a bad idea to keep your copy restriction authentication and your preferences in the same structure, but that's exactly what Microsoft designed.
As a game developer, and an out-of-work one at that, Windows does need to be reinstalled every 6 months or so... If the constant flow of test games doesn't get you, the constant flow of uninstallers will. Rolling back to restore points is useful, but A: it doesn't always work and B: it doesn't address the cumulative damage of accrued extensions.
As an addition to your suggestions, the user needs to check what icons are in the bottom-right hand corner of their screen, and shut off what isn't needed. Many people I have spoken too don't realize that those are applications and not just quick-launch shortcuts.
Sadly, if you go to the images page, it is apparent that gladiator is not actually all that bloody. It's not a member of the elite class of games where you can hack your opponent's limbs off, for example. There are no explosions, so bits of grizzle don't spray everywhere like in FPS games. No internally bits are ever on the outside. It's not even funny. Where is the violence? The nastiness? Where is the dark foreboding nature of of the world laid bare like scraped flesh covered in dirt and pebbles?
No, what we get is a series of repetitive blood textures added to the grounds around where a traditional penetration damage model is taking place. Nothing new here.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Happy Tree Friends to watch.
I'd find the "Microsoft security vulnerabilities are the fault of ease-of-use" argument a little more valid if Microsoft's software were actually vulnerable due to useful features.
For example, the messenger service isn't used by anyone by spam senders, e-mail scripting was never a useful device to anyone, and a fragile, naked file system doesn't lend itself to easy usage anyway. A web browser that can be told to run arbitrary code due to a buffer overflow is not vulnerable because it is easy to use, but because it is poorly written. The autodetection of hardware and updating of drivers is very easy to use, and has (as far as I know) never been the source of an exploit.
You can both have security and ease-of-use... Just design a closed system with very limited purposes. A Hub, for example, is extremely easy to use, and has few possible points of security vulnerability. Routers, on the other hand, are frequently a bit archaic in their setup and get hacked all of the time.
That's not to say that your point is invalid, but that there are other factors involved... Flexibility, control, effort, etc.
I guess the point of this is that if I have to re-install windows or edit the registry again before Christmas I'm buying myself an iMac.
Realistically, how many of these have been sold to ISP's? ISP's are not in the business of denying access... They're all about the openness. If someone's Macintosh is attempting to connect to the network, who do you think they will blame if they are denied service? How much do you think you will lose in service calls?
No, this most definitely for corporate networks... Some point-haired boss will approve the acquisition of these machines after listening to a sales pitch that came with free sushi and a lucky winner getting a trip to the Bahamas. Suddenly, the mailserver, corporate IM server, and print servers won't work.
"Why aren't these working?" The PHB will ask.
"Because that router you bought refuses the connection, complaining about 'trusted computing. I'm turning it off now," says the dirty haired sysadmin.
"Turning off trusted computing? Aren't we using all Microsoft solutions?"
"No, that would be an extra 20k per year, plus switching costs, downtime, viruses, worms, etc."
"They have scanners for that. Besides, Microsoft has better sushi chefs."
"It's a bad idea."
"Switch it all or I'll replace you with someone who will."
"O.K."
The Dirty Haired Sysadmin will dutifly switch all of the servers over, and will subsequently be fired after the fifth worm attacks the network.
"You bastards with your proprietary standards," said Martin Reynolds, vice president at Gartner, "you make I.T. a P.I.T.A."
Anyone who can convince companies to fork over large amounts of money to complain at them deserves large amounts of money.
More Specs are available here.
"The HD DVD format is a violet laser-based optical disk system with a capacity of 15-20 Gbyte per side using the same disk structure as current DVD disks."
A quick comparison of existing specs here shows that the blue lazer DVD's are well ahead of these higher-density DVD's.
The Blu-ray Disc, supported by nine major makers, including Sony, Panasonic, Philips and Pioneer, could store up to 50 GB of data (more than six times the data capacity of today's DVD) by using a blue laser beam instead of the current red laser. Blu-ray recorders and players could play current DVDs, but Blu-ray discs could not be played on current players.
Advanced Optical Disc, a second blue-laser system proposed by NEC and Toshiba, brings disc capacity to 20 GB. One advantage touted by backers: Today's DVD-making equipment could easily be modified for the new discs.
HD-DVD-9, based on the current DVD format, uses improved software compression to pack 135 minutes of HD video onto the disc. It was developed by Warner Bros.
The most interesting one is the final option... Upgrading the software codec. The MPEG consortium was attempting to get mpeg-4 out the door in time to become a standard for DVD's. They didn't meet that lofty goal, but MPEG4, DIVX, and many other codecs are significantly better at compressing video than MPEG 2. A new codec would require a new decompression chip, but it would cost less than a new laser system, and would provide a platform from which to move up... After all, codecs probably won't see the same growth over the years that hardware will, so using an MPEG4 or other codec could last for many years, at least until Blue laser systems come down in price, at which point you could keep the codec.
5. When you steal a computer, put yourself under citizens arrest.