Additionally, the VCF failure is well known. Very well known. Heck, it's used as an example of what not to do in software engineering courses all the time.
It's short and contains links and phone numbers which can be used to speak out to congress which is going to be way more effective than bitching on Slashdot.
some people are apparently worried out of their mind that same sex couples will have virtual babies and get a taste for the real thing.
Yeah, 'cause nothing makes people want kids more than virtual pregnancy... certainly not seeing all the happy families at the park, or sheer biological drive to procreate, or constant societal pressure to reproduce. Nah, it's those pernicious video game pregnancy kits that make people want babies.
*sigh*
If anybody can explain to me why so many folks seem to be terrified of homosexuality even though it has roughly zero impact on their lives I'd appreciate it. I'm confused. While you're at it I really don't get the whole video-games-are-the-devil thing either.
Wait, so you're saying that it's a good thing that people who get into a business for their love of it are being mercilessly exploited by the publishers/etc. and driven to do something else? That's just silly.
Sure, much of what is produced by the games industry these days is crap, but maybe things would be getting better if the folks with experience and passion weren't being abused out of the business after just two or three titles. This stuff is actually pretty difficult, maybe having some experience under their belts would help delvelopers.
Besides, when is it ever good that someone is being abused and taken advantage of?
You're absolutely correct about the issues here, but I think it's worth pointing out that this isn't a problem with gaming in particular. As far as I can tell this is a problem with Western civilization in general. America, at least, doesn't seem to have been in it's collective right mind about sex and gender issues roughly since the first colonists arrived.
Well, I'd like to suggest that you get used to it. I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day who just happens to be an English professor at a local university and he told me something interesting: Apparently novels used to be quite the questionable media. They were blamed for, among other evils, corruption of young ladies moral characters. Novels! Those Bronte sisters were pretty wild, I suppose. Anyway, my point is only that every new media goes through a phase where the established power structure doesn't understand/accept it and seeks to demonize it. It's just the way these things seem to work, so you should probably get used to it. Whatever the next new thing after videogames is, well, we'll probably be just about the right age to go after that ourselves...
Just for the hell of it though, I'd love to see the results of the same study done with a pair of short novels. Those results might actually be informative as we'd be able to compare two different types of media a little more directly. Whatever the outcome though I don't think it would worry me much. Every day I engage in an activity which raises my blood pressure, doubtless increases my negative affect, and most certainly increases my negative social processing. It's called work, and man, that shit will mess you up. It probably drives more Americans to drug use (I'm including alchahol and tobacco here) than anything else. That's just a guess, of course, but it sounds resonable to me.
Yeah, I remember that too... I also remember that terrible Tom Hanks movie where he plays D&D, goes nuts, and nearly(?) kills himself/everybody else. Watch moveis like that now and they seem absolutely silly, but somehow CSI thought that the GTA-inspired killer thing would make good tv. *sigh* It's dissapointing to see how long it takes for us to progress as a society.
So the article talks about collecting things as an overdone cliche, but while I'll admit it's done all over the place I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of people really like collecting things. I've heard all kinds of theories about why this is (some researches think it's because we used to be hunter-gatherer types, though I'm not sure if I buy that reasoning) but ultimately the why doesn't matter. Lots and lots of people like collecting things. Based on that I'm not sure that the collecting is overdone at all.
Geeze, it never fails. Any discussion in which the word "addiction" is used seems to always prompt people to say something about heroin.
While heroin is a great example of an addictive drug invoking it while having a discussion about psychological addiction isn't really all that terribly appropriate. Physical addiction and psychological addiction are two very different animals.
Oh, and about the whole "addiction is a disease" thing: Addiction is _not_ a disease. No one knowledable ever says so either. What they do say is that addiction treatment benefits from being modeled after disease treatment. Approaching the treatment of addiction using a disease style methodology isn't the same as addiction being a disease.
Am I the only one here who sees the irony inherant in a mostly male group discussing what it would take to get women interested in something? I mean, we could actually ask them, you know. Just for kicks. It works great with my wife:
Me: Hey honey, how about a game tonight? Her: Sure! How about Rise of Nations?
This article has the fundamental flaw of completely ignoring the market place. While it's great that there are folks out there who can make a living creating applications for *nix platforms the bottom line is that that just isn't true for all of us. Look, for example, at the games industry: despite how much we want people to make games for, say, Linux there just isn't the market to support Linux only (or even *nix only) game development right now. If studios want to make their money back on big budget titles (which is what the consuers want to play) then they need to sell a _lot_. That's just not going to happen, as I think Loki amply demonstrated - they did a great job, but even without the costs of initial development (they only did ports) they couldn't keep it together long enough to avoid going out of business. The market just isn't there.
The article ignores this idea completely, to it's detriment.
If human history has taught us anything at all it should be perfectly obvious that nothing is "hack-proof". If there's any reason at all to find a way to accomplish something, get around some security, etc. then someone, somewhere will eventually figure it out. As a species it's one of our best tricks, and I really don't see us stopping anytime soon, and certainly not because it seems difficult or impossible now.
It's a board game. How on earth could they make it so time dependent that you couldn't just agree with the other player to take a break? I mean, it's not as though it's going to do anything without you...
I mean really, it's a government we're talking about here. It's not as though governments (on the whole, and often in specifc) have the best reputations for money going where it belongs, even if where it belongs is easy to figure out.
Full Sail hasn't impressed me at all, for reasons amply covered by the other posters. But if you're looking to go to school for game design/programming/art-stuff then you should do yourself a favour and check out DigiPen. Their name sucks monkey rocks, and they aren't as flashy as places like Full Sail, but they're an accredited university with very solid 2 and 4 year degree programs. They also seem to have a good deal of respect in the industry, and a pretty good placement rate to boot.
Doing it in text would, I believe, be much, much easier than doing it with AC2 level technology, actually. The biggest thing that I notice about modern MMORPGS is that things just don't seem to be alive around me. NPCs don't go on about their lives, not giving a damn about me (as they should). Forests aren't teeming with wildlife... it's MOBs or nothing, and that just isn't enough. At least in text you'd have both more descriptive ability and more processor time to handle everything...
I can't help but think that an MMORPG will just suck the life right out of Middle Earth. In my head ME is a rich, populated world filled with complexity, wonder and mystery. There's just no way that an MMORPG can do that justice with current technology. I mean, look at _any_ of the current MMORPGs and it's pretty obvious that they're not up to a world as rich a Tolkien's.
Since the fellow behind Ain't It Cool News has repeadedly admitted that he's enhanced, or, on occasion, simply made up a fair number of his so called "scoops" I find the site pretty much useless. There's absolutely no reason to believe what it says unless it's been confirmed somewhere else, so what's the point? There are already plenty of gaming sites out there in the world, and while they seem to have difficulties getting accurate information out of publishers, to my knowledge they don't just make stuff up.
I guess I have to share Gabe & Tycho's reaction: no, it ain't cool.
At first I thought this was a humor post ("AI that would prevent taking pictures of naked women"?!? I mean really.) but then it occoured to me that you might actually be serious. So, for just a moment, I'll step back from inflamatory language ("sick-men", "villany") and silly ideas (the aforementioned AI) and try to address your comment.
What you're proposing is that there should be a technological to what is, at it's heart, a moral problem. If you're looking at this from a moral/religous standpoint (and it sounds to me like you are) then you must recognize that you haven't solved anyting by taking away the option to engage in this sort of immoral behaviour (I'm assuming, for the sake of the discussion, that audit trails would, in fact, stop this sort of breach of trust from occouring - though in all honesty I think that's a deeply flawed assumption). Certainly the specific behaviour might have been prevented, but the underlying issues which allow someone to ignore or abuse their spouses trust, etc. still exist and have, in fact, been completely ignored. In the end all you'll end up doing is changing the specifics of the situation, but breaches of trust and sexual compulsion will continue. No amount of DRM can address the reasons that someone seeks out bad behaviour.
Of course, as I mentioned, DRM and/or audit trails won't do much to stop the unauthorized publication of such photos. It certaily won't stop one spouse from coercing/manipulating/etc. another to take the photos in the first place. In no way will it account for those who initially think the photos are a good idea but later change their minds. And finally, it's complete bunk to even begin to think that an audit trail will force anyone to "confront thheir odious addiction", and it certainly won't save any marriages.
The bottom line is that if a husband thinks so little of his wife and their relationship that he would violate her trust in sunch a way simply because he wouldn't get caught then the marriage is in serious trouble regardless. Technology is amazing stuff, but it's neither the cause of, nor the solution to each and every modern problem. I think people forget that too often.
These things look like a bean-bag version of Mouse Mitts, which have been around for years. While they aren't a panacea I have found the proper use of Mouse Mitts actually did help me out (though not in isolation, of course... it's always important to alter damaging behaviours, etc.).
While the bean bag thing is interesting, really these don't look like anything new.
When the music industry charges 20 fuckin bucks a CD; with pennies on the dollar going to the actual artist; with 3 of the top 40 songs available as singles, THAT activity is still theft.
Actually, no it isn't.
Sure, it's a horrible deal for the artists and should be corrected, but it's not theft. No matter how much it sucks, or how much people want to call it theft to justify their own actions, it just plain isn't.
The artists signs a (very likely terribly unfair) contract with a record company. That's an agreement between two parties who (should, if they are responsible) know exactly what they're getting into, and do it willingly.
This isn't intentionally a troll, but if it ends up that way, well, so be it.
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
Of course there's the implicit requirment (in order for this to be a good thing) that legal activities not be persecuted under this initiative. For that I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Honestly though, I'm not upset in the least about this. When folks download songs they didn't pay for which weren't given away for free by the artist/copyright holder, whatever the downloader's philosophy about it that activity is still theft. And let's face it, that's probably the majority of what goes on with P2P music "sharing" networks... that's certainly all I've ever seen anyone doing with them!
That's what I thought too... but a look at most any news outlet over the past few years should be sufficient to convince us all that that's not what's actually happening.
Or maybe it is... hmmm....
Maybe if I just had a few Billion dollars I too could get out of just about anything.
Hmmmm.
Yep, I think that's actually more depressing than individuals and corporations being treated differently.
Slashdot Mirror
Additionally, the VCF failure is well known. Very well known. Heck, it's used as an example of what not to do in software engineering courses all the time.
It's short and contains links and phone numbers which can be used to speak out to congress which is going to be way more effective than bitching on Slashdot.
Yeah, 'cause nothing makes people want kids more than virtual pregnancy... certainly not seeing all the happy families at the park, or sheer biological drive to procreate, or constant societal pressure to reproduce. Nah, it's those pernicious video game pregnancy kits that make people want babies.
*sigh*
If anybody can explain to me why so many folks seem to be terrified of homosexuality even though it has roughly zero impact on their lives I'd appreciate it. I'm confused. While you're at it I really don't get the whole video-games-are-the-devil thing either.
Wait, so you're saying that it's a good thing that people who get into a business for their love of it are being mercilessly exploited by the publishers/etc. and driven to do something else? That's just silly.
Sure, much of what is produced by the games industry these days is crap, but maybe things would be getting better if the folks with experience and passion weren't being abused out of the business after just two or three titles. This stuff is actually pretty difficult, maybe having some experience under their belts would help delvelopers.
Besides, when is it ever good that someone is being abused and taken advantage of?
You're absolutely correct about the issues here, but I think it's worth pointing out that this isn't a problem with gaming in particular. As far as I can tell this is a problem with Western civilization in general. America, at least, doesn't seem to have been in it's collective right mind about sex and gender issues roughly since the first colonists arrived.
Well, I'd like to suggest that you get used to it. I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day who just happens to be an English professor at a local university and he told me something interesting: Apparently novels used to be quite the questionable media. They were blamed for, among other evils, corruption of young ladies moral characters. Novels! Those Bronte sisters were pretty wild, I suppose. Anyway, my point is only that every new media goes through a phase where the established power structure doesn't understand/accept it and seeks to demonize it. It's just the way these things seem to work, so you should probably get used to it. Whatever the next new thing after videogames is, well, we'll probably be just about the right age to go after that ourselves...
Just for the hell of it though, I'd love to see the results of the same study done with a pair of short novels. Those results might actually be informative as we'd be able to compare two different types of media a little more directly. Whatever the outcome though I don't think it would worry me much. Every day I engage in an activity which raises my blood pressure, doubtless increases my negative affect, and most certainly increases my negative social processing. It's called work, and man, that shit will mess you up. It probably drives more Americans to drug use (I'm including alchahol and tobacco here) than anything else. That's just a guess, of course, but it sounds resonable to me.
Yeah, I remember that too... I also remember that terrible Tom Hanks movie where he plays D&D, goes nuts, and nearly(?) kills himself/everybody else. Watch moveis like that now and they seem absolutely silly, but somehow CSI thought that the GTA-inspired killer thing would make good tv. *sigh* It's dissapointing to see how long it takes for us to progress as a society.
So the article talks about collecting things as an overdone cliche, but while I'll admit it's done all over the place I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of people really like collecting things. I've heard all kinds of theories about why this is (some researches think it's because we used to be hunter-gatherer types, though I'm not sure if I buy that reasoning) but ultimately the why doesn't matter. Lots and lots of people like collecting things. Based on that I'm not sure that the collecting is overdone at all.
Ratings are confusing(why not use the same system as the movie industry?)
Why? Because those rattings are copyrighted by the MPAA.
Geeze, it never fails. Any discussion in which the word "addiction" is used seems to always prompt people to say something about heroin.
While heroin is a great example of an addictive drug invoking it while having a discussion about psychological addiction isn't really all that terribly appropriate. Physical addiction and psychological addiction are two very different animals.
Oh, and about the whole "addiction is a disease" thing: Addiction is _not_ a disease. No one knowledable ever says so either. What they do say is that addiction treatment benefits from being modeled after disease treatment. Approaching the treatment of addiction using a disease style methodology isn't the same as addiction being a disease.
Am I the only one here who sees the irony inherant in a mostly male group discussing what it would take to get women interested in something? I mean, we could actually ask them, you know. Just for kicks. It works great with my wife:
Me: Hey honey, how about a game tonight?
Her: Sure! How about Rise of Nations?
See? Easy.
This article has the fundamental flaw of completely ignoring the market place. While it's great that there are folks out there who can make a living creating applications for *nix platforms the bottom line is that that just isn't true for all of us. Look, for example, at the games industry: despite how much we want people to make games for, say, Linux there just isn't the market to support Linux only (or even *nix only) game development right now. If studios want to make their money back on big budget titles (which is what the consuers want to play) then they need to sell a _lot_. That's just not going to happen, as I think Loki amply demonstrated - they did a great job, but even without the costs of initial development (they only did ports) they couldn't keep it together long enough to avoid going out of business. The market just isn't there.
The article ignores this idea completely, to it's detriment.
Game Girl Advance was reporting on this (more or less) a while ago. Well, ok, not this exactly, but it's vibration in games at least ;)
If human history has taught us anything at all it should be perfectly obvious that nothing is "hack-proof". If there's any reason at all to find a way to accomplish something, get around some security, etc. then someone, somewhere will eventually figure it out. As a species it's one of our best tricks, and I really don't see us stopping anytime soon, and certainly not because it seems difficult or impossible now.
It's a board game. How on earth could they make it so time dependent that you couldn't just agree with the other player to take a break? I mean, it's not as though it's going to do anything without you...
Misappropriation.
I mean really, it's a government we're talking about here. It's not as though governments (on the whole, and often in specifc) have the best reputations for money going where it belongs, even if where it belongs is easy to figure out.
Full Sail hasn't impressed me at all, for reasons amply covered by the other posters. But if you're looking to go to school for game design/programming/art-stuff then you should do yourself a favour and check out DigiPen. Their name sucks monkey rocks, and they aren't as flashy as places like Full Sail, but they're an accredited university with very solid 2 and 4 year degree programs. They also seem to have a good deal of respect in the industry, and a pretty good placement rate to boot.
Doing it in text would, I believe, be much, much easier than doing it with AC2 level technology, actually. The biggest thing that I notice about modern MMORPGS is that things just don't seem to be alive around me. NPCs don't go on about their lives, not giving a damn about me (as they should). Forests aren't teeming with wildlife... it's MOBs or nothing, and that just isn't enough. At least in text you'd have both more descriptive ability and more processor time to handle everything...
I can't help but think that an MMORPG will just suck the life right out of Middle Earth. In my head ME is a rich, populated world filled with complexity, wonder and mystery. There's just no way that an MMORPG can do that justice with current technology. I mean, look at _any_ of the current MMORPGs and it's pretty obvious that they're not up to a world as rich a Tolkien's.
I guess I have to share Gabe & Tycho's reaction: no, it ain't cool.
At first I thought this was a humor post ("AI that would prevent taking pictures of naked women"?!? I mean really.) but then it occoured to me that you might actually be serious. So, for just a moment, I'll step back from inflamatory language ("sick-men", "villany") and silly ideas (the aforementioned AI) and try to address your comment.
What you're proposing is that there should be a technological to what is, at it's heart, a moral problem. If you're looking at this from a moral/religous standpoint (and it sounds to me like you are) then you must recognize that you haven't solved anyting by taking away the option to engage in this sort of immoral behaviour (I'm assuming, for the sake of the discussion, that audit trails would, in fact, stop this sort of breach of trust from occouring - though in all honesty I think that's a deeply flawed assumption). Certainly the specific behaviour might have been prevented, but the underlying issues which allow someone to ignore or abuse their spouses trust, etc. still exist and have, in fact, been completely ignored. In the end all you'll end up doing is changing the specifics of the situation, but breaches of trust and sexual compulsion will continue. No amount of DRM can address the reasons that someone seeks out bad behaviour.
Of course, as I mentioned, DRM and/or audit trails won't do much to stop the unauthorized publication of such photos. It certaily won't stop one spouse from coercing/manipulating/etc. another to take the photos in the first place. In no way will it account for those who initially think the photos are a good idea but later change their minds. And finally, it's complete bunk to even begin to think that an audit trail will force anyone to "confront thheir odious addiction", and it certainly won't save any marriages.
The bottom line is that if a husband thinks so little of his wife and their relationship that he would violate her trust in sunch a way simply because he wouldn't get caught then the marriage is in serious trouble regardless. Technology is amazing stuff, but it's neither the cause of, nor the solution to each and every modern problem. I think people forget that too often.
These things look like a bean-bag version of Mouse Mitts, which have been around for years. While they aren't a panacea I have found the proper use of Mouse Mitts actually did help me out (though not in isolation, of course... it's always important to alter damaging behaviours, etc.).
While the bean bag thing is interesting, really these don't look like anything new.
Actually, no it isn't.
Sure, it's a horrible deal for the artists and should be corrected, but it's not theft. No matter how much it sucks, or how much people want to call it theft to justify their own actions, it just plain isn't.
The artists signs a (very likely terribly unfair) contract with a record company. That's an agreement between two parties who (should, if they are responsible) know exactly what they're getting into, and do it willingly.
A legal tranfer of rights is not theft.
This isn't intentionally a troll, but if it ends up that way, well, so be it.
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
Of course there's the implicit requirment (in order for this to be a good thing) that legal activities not be persecuted under this initiative. For that I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Honestly though, I'm not upset in the least about this. When folks download songs they didn't pay for which weren't given away for free by the artist/copyright holder, whatever the downloader's philosophy about it that activity is still theft. And let's face it, that's probably the majority of what goes on with P2P music "sharing" networks... that's certainly all I've ever seen anyone doing with them!
That's what I thought too... but a look at most any news outlet over the past few years should be sufficient to convince us all that that's not what's actually happening.
Or maybe it is... hmmm....
Maybe if I just had a few Billion dollars I too could get out of just about anything.
Hmmmm.
Yep, I think that's actually more depressing than individuals and corporations being treated differently.