I hope you get modded up. You make a good point. I wonder how many advertising dollars EA and Activision gives to Fileplanet for things like this. Most companies flood people with print ads, which cost money. A lot of game companies pay a little for their site design and alot for their bandwidth so people can see games and download them. Indeed, it IS the price of doing business. Their online presence is obviously more important and therefore gets the lion's share of their marketing budget.
I can see FP charging for some of the more obscure, sponsorless files, but in all reality, Fileplanet sucks ass now. Everytime I see a link to a file on FP, I groan and try to find a real mirror like bluesnews or anywhere else.
As an ex-cable modem installer, allow me to explain AT&T @Home's stance on this.
While it's true that the advertising doesn't hint at limited usage, the customer contract that's given to the customer at install time clearly outlines usage limitations. Basically they tell you that you can use the service to do whatever with the exception of running servers. This point is moot because everyone's upstream sucks. Also clearly outlined is 'business use'. Why? Because they don't monitor and can't guarantee the uptime that business requires. If your residential service goes down, oh well, go cook a pizza and try later. If your business service goes down, get on the phone and bust balls.
I can't remember just how many times I explained to people that the service may not be suitable for telecommuting, etc. but they always shrug and say 'I'm sure it'll be fine'. I hope for their sake they were right. Hell, the CEO of EDS here in Richardson, TX told all his employees to get it he loved it so much. Whether or not they were all cut off for a few days during this AT&T changeover time would be interesting to learn, but if they had a bone to pick with AT&T, the company can say 'read your contract'.
The only problem I have personally with this whole scenario is clearly delineated services. The @Work service has always been shrouded in mystery with a big red Coming Soon sticker planted firmly in the middle of literature. When, how, what...etc. has never been outlined.
I imagine if the receiver is placed in a third world country, it will become known as 'the magic cooking spot'. People will flock to it in droves to microwave pizzas.
Just wait until the script kiddies hack this thing.
I can see the headlines already. "An unknown hacker has siezed control of the lunar laser array and has etched 'n1nj4 b01 0wN2 j00' on the whitehouse front lawn. Investigators at the scene said it looks to be some kind of terrorist code. Afghanistan has begged for mercy, but we sent some bombs just in case."
The oldest and best Turing machine!
on
Looking At Turing
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Mod this up. These people need to be made aware of how foolish they are for letting people directly access this file. A simple.htaccess should suffice. Or making their.inc files dotted...who knows...
"Yeah my dog got worms before, them things are mean! It choked his intestinal bandwidth down pretty good and damn near shut his whole system down. If them things are on the internet too, I don't wanna touch a computer."
Yeah, or you could find out who started propagating (sp?) it and lock their email. Send them one message that says 'you screwed up, BIG TIME. please report to your manager (admin, whoever) to restore email services.'
When they show up, give them your lecture, a swat on the knuckles with a ruler, and tell them to have a nice day. Tell them if they do it again in the future, they'll be denied mail usage permanently. Whether or not you actually enforce that rule is irrelevant. It'll scare them enough to make them think twice.
Mainly this comes down to email clients. Don't use vulnerable software and you won't have to deal with this.
You'll see me breaking it down for the newbies on a daily basis. I've thrown in hundreds of posts and fit perfectly into Roblimo's sub-geek category. I'm the guy who knows some command line and some gui tools. I never claim to be a genius but do solid research before giving answers, and most of the time they're right and I get props.
Linux doesn't have to be hard folks, it's just that some people, in order to maintain their 'leet linux egos, make it that way.
I don't see any correlation between this and the parent... You could definitely take an hour to go 60 miles, and if you drove 120 for the first 10 miles and the rest at a slower speed (sorry I'm what you'd call HandiMathed) then you'd still take an hour to get there. It's average speed that matters and that's based on total time to cross a fixed distance.
Sony has plenty of good licensees. They're not worried. That doesn't concern me.
Yeah Metal Gear 2 is a sequel, but name one game that comes close in physics, visuals, storyline, action, etc. The Zelda games don't hold a match to them by any stretch of imagination but that's my opinion.
My problem with Nintendo is what I originally stated: they recycle the hell out of their games. I bet there have been over 2 dozen mario games. And you probably own all of them;) I guess my taste in games just matured over time.
One of the biggest and most important factors that you've not mentioned is development costs. Back in ye olden tymes, you could get a group of Euros together from the demoscene and eventually make a nice game. AAMOF many of the best musicians like Ray Hubbard were part of the demo scene. What are the development costs for these guys? The price of a floppy, beer and pizza for everyone. Now to code for one of the new consoles, you need an insanely powerful development system to even think about programming. The main difference here is who can and can't afford these.
Price a PS2 dev system lately? How about GameCube? XBox? Actually IMHO the Xbox developer would probably pay the least.
Bottom line is, when you raise the bar so high, few companies have the funds to develop and learn these new systems. The larger dev houses like Capcom, Konami, etc. don't even flinch but smaller houses can't even join in. And what do large companies generally do? Play it safe.
Say you work for Konami. There are 2 big projects, costing you well over a million dollars for each. One is Metal Gear Solid 2, which you know will fly off the shelves. The other is Kamaratsu, a game in which the player whacks rats with a bamboo stick and collects them for dinner. Kamaratsu, while very fresh and positively entertaining, may well be a dismal failure that will never find it's audience.
Considering this, which would you go forward on? The guaranteed hit. The other project (similar to the behind-schedule Metroid saga) would get shelved. It may have been the funnest game of the year, but nobody will ever see it.
Now ask yourself again, where have the innovative and fresh games gone? Nowhere. They just cost too damn much to make.
Not trolling, just stating my opinion like 99% of everyone else here.
Quote " Luigi's Castle isn't a Mario game. It is a totally different type of game in which Luigi captures ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. It is a bit strange, but it isn't the same thing we've seen before at all."
Sucking up ghosts in a vacuum cleaner huh. Collecting coins..collecting ghosts. Brilliant Miyamoto! What's next, collecting mushrooms? Oh, done that. I'll give them props for the cartoon rendering which looks nice, but open your eyes man! It's the _exact same game_ with new graphics and a new whizbang vacuum cleaner. It's STILL Mario Bros all over again. I guess for some people that's not a bad thing, but where's the innovation? In Sony's camp.
Yeah Sony has their share of repeaters (Final Fantasy..what is it up to now? X or XI? If it's final why does it have so damn many sequels?) However, they have _variety_. That's why they're on top and will continue to have the lion's share of the market. With GTA3, Gran Turismo3, Metal Gear Solid 2, etc. etc. they're just ruling. They make games for me, a young adult, and they know who their audience is and what they wanna play. They know I got tired of chasing mushrooms and koopas about a decade ago.
I didn't mention the XBox and Halo because after playing Halo 2 player coop, I dismissed it as poorly coded and slow. 5fps in some sections? Please. This game should never have hit the shelves in it's current state. I doubt the coders wanted it that way but Microsoft probably shifted the release date so soon and pressed them so hard they cranked it out too early. Oh well. The second generation of games will be worth playing, if they replace that gigantic worthless Batarang controller.
Hmm..one more point. Miyamoto's worst game was Zelda 2? I'd say the Zelda games on the n64 were downright horrible. Maybe not his fault since the n64 hardware itself sucked BAD. I always laughed everytime I saw those 4 polygon characters running around in their blurry, 16 color worlds. SGI worked on this thing? Bahahah! At least Nintendo has some decent hardware now, and I'm looking forward to seeing some actual new games from them. Not WaveRace 128 or whatever they're calling their latest batch of rehashes, but real, new games.
How can you even begin to compare the Dreamcast to the PS1? The PS1 was already 2 years old when Sega brought their hardware to the table. Gimme a break. Why not compare the SNES to the PS1?
Don't forget that Sony and it's subsidiaries publish thousands of DVD's. Maybe SCE (sony computer electronics) doesn't get their cash directly but the parent company does. I'm sure they noticed a spike in DVD sales after the release of the PS2. Overall this was great for Sony and Friends.
NES: Super Mario Brothers and other kiddie games
SNES: Super Mario Brothers and other kiddie games
N64: Super Mario World and other kiddie games
Gamecube: Luigi's Castle and other kiddie games
I'm sure Pokemon has a stake in this somewhere too (the portable market) but for the most part, Nintendo is an expert at the 'wash, rinse, repeat' game cycle. How many years can someone run around as a damn plumber collecting coins before they simply tire of this style of gaming? Nintendo sucks but every year there are millions of kids who love it.
I read Cryptonomicon also:) I'm re-reading it now so this is pretty fresh in my mind. As I understand it, the Germans did rely too heavily on Enigma; however, they changed their boxes every night at midnight to a new key structure. This would break the previous day's decryption (on the British side) and sometimes they'd crack the new codes in a few hours, sometimes not at all.
In regards to 'Enigma 2', it was virtually unbreakable for months. Adding a 4th wheel to a 3 wheel encryption box was pretty hardcore for the crackers to deal with. Luckily they never fully deployed their grandest scheme which was multitudes more difficult than Enigma.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you get modded up. You make a good point. I wonder how many advertising dollars EA and Activision gives to Fileplanet for things like this. Most companies flood people with print ads, which cost money. A lot of game companies pay a little for their site design and alot for their bandwidth so people can see games and download them. Indeed, it IS the price of doing business. Their online presence is obviously more important and therefore gets the lion's share of their marketing budget.
I can see FP charging for some of the more obscure, sponsorless files, but in all reality, Fileplanet sucks ass now. Everytime I see a link to a file on FP, I groan and try to find a real mirror like bluesnews or anywhere else.
Yeah, I guess you remembered the tag.
The moderators have been pretty unruly lately. Just wait till I get my hands on some moderation points...muahahaha.
Stable Gnome release? I didn't know that existed! Hats off guys!!!
As an ex-cable modem installer, allow me to explain AT&T @Home's stance on this.
While it's true that the advertising doesn't hint at limited usage, the customer contract that's given to the customer at install time clearly outlines usage limitations. Basically they tell you that you can use the service to do whatever with the exception of running servers. This point is moot because everyone's upstream sucks. Also clearly outlined is 'business use'. Why? Because they don't monitor and can't guarantee the uptime that business requires. If your residential service goes down, oh well, go cook a pizza and try later. If your business service goes down, get on the phone and bust balls.
I can't remember just how many times I explained to people that the service may not be suitable for telecommuting, etc. but they always shrug and say 'I'm sure it'll be fine'. I hope for their sake they were right. Hell, the CEO of EDS here in Richardson, TX told all his employees to get it he loved it so much. Whether or not they were all cut off for a few days during this AT&T changeover time would be interesting to learn, but if they had a bone to pick with AT&T, the company can say 'read your contract'.
The only problem I have personally with this whole scenario is clearly delineated services. The @Work service has always been shrouded in mystery with a big red Coming Soon sticker planted firmly in the middle of literature. When, how, what...etc. has never been outlined.
I imagine if the receiver is placed in a third world country, it will become known as 'the magic cooking spot'. People will flock to it in droves to microwave pizzas.
Just wait until the script kiddies hack this thing.
I can see the headlines already. "An unknown hacker has siezed control of the lunar laser array and has etched 'n1nj4 b01 0wN2 j00' on the whitehouse front lawn. Investigators at the scene said it looks to be some kind of terrorist code. Afghanistan has begged for mercy, but we sent some bombs just in case."
http://www.exclamationsextoystore.com/images/head coach erction pump.jpg
Mod this up. These people need to be made aware of how foolish they are for letting people directly access this file. A simple .htaccess should suffice. Or making their .inc files dotted...who knows...
Jesus, it's not that hard to fix all these problems.
Ban everyone coming from Aol and @home.
Joe Sixpack:
"Yeah my dog got worms before, them things are mean! It choked his intestinal bandwidth down pretty good and damn near shut his whole system down. If them things are on the internet too, I don't wanna touch a computer."
Ehh, this doesn't apply to you. You're reading /. so you must have some concept of security :)
Yeah, or you could find out who started propagating (sp?) it and lock their email. Send them one message that says 'you screwed up, BIG TIME. please report to your manager (admin, whoever) to restore email services.'
When they show up, give them your lecture, a swat on the knuckles with a ruler, and tell them to have a nice day. Tell them if they do it again in the future, they'll be denied mail usage permanently. Whether or not you actually enforce that rule is irrelevant. It'll scare them enough to make them think twice.
Mainly this comes down to email clients. Don't use vulnerable software and you won't have to deal with this.
Hey Kids! It's cool to be a skr1pt k1dd13! Just like your uncle Bob says: worms are good, worms are great, write a worm and masturbate!
That should make it uncool enough.
You'll see me breaking it down for the newbies on a daily basis. I've thrown in hundreds of posts and fit perfectly into Roblimo's sub-geek category. I'm the guy who knows some command line and some gui tools. I never claim to be a genius but do solid research before giving answers, and most of the time they're right and I get props.
Linux doesn't have to be hard folks, it's just that some people, in order to maintain their 'leet linux egos, make it that way.
I don't see any correlation between this and the parent... You could definitely take an hour to go 60 miles, and if you drove 120 for the first 10 miles and the rest at a slower speed (sorry I'm what you'd call HandiMathed) then you'd still take an hour to get there. It's average speed that matters and that's based on total time to cross a fixed distance.
*sigh*
;) I guess my taste in games just matured over time.
Sony has plenty of good licensees. They're not worried. That doesn't concern me.
Yeah Metal Gear 2 is a sequel, but name one game that comes close in physics, visuals, storyline, action, etc. The Zelda games don't hold a match to them by any stretch of imagination but that's my opinion.
My problem with Nintendo is what I originally stated: they recycle the hell out of their games. I bet there have been over 2 dozen mario games. And you probably own all of them
One of the biggest and most important factors that you've not mentioned is development costs. Back in ye olden tymes, you could get a group of Euros together from the demoscene and eventually make a nice game. AAMOF many of the best musicians like Ray Hubbard were part of the demo scene. What are the development costs for these guys? The price of a floppy, beer and pizza for everyone. Now to code for one of the new consoles, you need an insanely powerful development system to even think about programming. The main difference here is who can and can't afford these.
Price a PS2 dev system lately? How about GameCube? XBox? Actually IMHO the Xbox developer would probably pay the least.
Bottom line is, when you raise the bar so high, few companies have the funds to develop and learn these new systems. The larger dev houses like Capcom, Konami, etc. don't even flinch but smaller houses can't even join in. And what do large companies generally do? Play it safe.
Say you work for Konami. There are 2 big projects, costing you well over a million dollars for each. One is Metal Gear Solid 2, which you know will fly off the shelves. The other is Kamaratsu, a game in which the player whacks rats with a bamboo stick and collects them for dinner. Kamaratsu, while very fresh and positively entertaining, may well be a dismal failure that will never find it's audience.
Considering this, which would you go forward on? The guaranteed hit. The other project (similar to the behind-schedule Metroid saga) would get shelved. It may have been the funnest game of the year, but nobody will ever see it.
Now ask yourself again, where have the innovative and fresh games gone? Nowhere. They just cost too damn much to make.
Not trolling, just stating my opinion like 99% of everyone else here.
Quote " Luigi's Castle isn't a Mario game. It is a totally different type of game in which Luigi captures ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. It is a bit strange, but it isn't the same thing we've seen before at all."
Sucking up ghosts in a vacuum cleaner huh. Collecting coins..collecting ghosts. Brilliant Miyamoto! What's next, collecting mushrooms? Oh, done that. I'll give them props for the cartoon rendering which looks nice, but open your eyes man! It's the _exact same game_ with new graphics and a new whizbang vacuum cleaner. It's STILL Mario Bros all over again. I guess for some people that's not a bad thing, but where's the innovation? In Sony's camp.
Yeah Sony has their share of repeaters (Final Fantasy..what is it up to now? X or XI? If it's final why does it have so damn many sequels?) However, they have _variety_. That's why they're on top and will continue to have the lion's share of the market. With GTA3, Gran Turismo3, Metal Gear Solid 2, etc. etc. they're just ruling. They make games for me, a young adult, and they know who their audience is and what they wanna play. They know I got tired of chasing mushrooms and koopas about a decade ago.
I didn't mention the XBox and Halo because after playing Halo 2 player coop, I dismissed it as poorly coded and slow. 5fps in some sections? Please. This game should never have hit the shelves in it's current state. I doubt the coders wanted it that way but Microsoft probably shifted the release date so soon and pressed them so hard they cranked it out too early. Oh well. The second generation of games will be worth playing, if they replace that gigantic worthless Batarang controller.
Hmm..one more point. Miyamoto's worst game was Zelda 2? I'd say the Zelda games on the n64 were downright horrible. Maybe not his fault since the n64 hardware itself sucked BAD. I always laughed everytime I saw those 4 polygon characters running around in their blurry, 16 color worlds. SGI worked on this thing? Bahahah! At least Nintendo has some decent hardware now, and I'm looking forward to seeing some actual new games from them. Not WaveRace 128 or whatever they're calling their latest batch of rehashes, but real, new games.
Hey, at least we have alot of choices right?
Elevator Action was awesome in it's day also. A must have for any MAME gamer.
How can you even begin to compare the Dreamcast to the PS1? The PS1 was already 2 years old when Sega brought their hardware to the table. Gimme a break. Why not compare the SNES to the PS1?
Don't forget that Sony and it's subsidiaries publish thousands of DVD's. Maybe SCE (sony computer electronics) doesn't get their cash directly but the parent company does. I'm sure they noticed a spike in DVD sales after the release of the PS2. Overall this was great for Sony and Friends.
Nintendo's strategy:
NES: Super Mario Brothers and other kiddie games
SNES: Super Mario Brothers and other kiddie games
N64: Super Mario World and other kiddie games
Gamecube: Luigi's Castle and other kiddie games
I'm sure Pokemon has a stake in this somewhere too (the portable market) but for the most part, Nintendo is an expert at the 'wash, rinse, repeat' game cycle. How many years can someone run around as a damn plumber collecting coins before they simply tire of this style of gaming? Nintendo sucks but every year there are millions of kids who love it.
That sounds like a good British tactic. Did they try releasing rabid skunks on the battlefields also?
The land of Mr. Bean sure has some wacky ideas. You gotta hand it to 'em, they have a good sense of humor.
I read Cryptonomicon also :) I'm re-reading it now so this is pretty fresh in my mind. As I understand it, the Germans did rely too heavily on Enigma; however, they changed their boxes every night at midnight to a new key structure. This would break the previous day's decryption (on the British side) and sometimes they'd crack the new codes in a few hours, sometimes not at all.
In regards to 'Enigma 2', it was virtually unbreakable for months. Adding a 4th wheel to a 3 wheel encryption box was pretty hardcore for the crackers to deal with. Luckily they never fully deployed their grandest scheme which was multitudes more difficult than Enigma.
www.mandrakesecurity.com
Microsoft has needed something like this for decades.