Publishers will send a video tape of "typical gameplay" to the ESRB for them to generate their evaluation from. The ESRB just does not have the professional gamers or the time to play every game to the finish, and this has been my gripe from the day they founded the stupid organization. It's not like movie ratings based on someone watching a film. I have always felt that the ESRB should hire gamers to solve and evaluate the games, or require the publishers to provide a video of a complete solve for them to scan through.
Case in point Castlevania: Bloodlines, one of the goriest games released in 1994 received a GA rating. At the E3 trade show we confronted the ESRB staff about this title, and asked if they didn't think that the GA rating was a bit soft for the title given the fact that you spend an entire stage decapitating enemies which then spurt volumes of blood from their necks?
Their reply? They were shocked and horrified and completly agreed that that was certainly not GA level content and that they would look into it.
Right. Apparently Konami never provided any footage to them of this part of the game, and in 1994 anything lower than a GA was suicide for your game in the market unless you were Mortal Kombat, so publishers were playing the system to get the rating they felt would best help their game sell.
The ESRB is all BS. It always has been and still is.
When I was involved in the review of video games and related hardware the reviewables (especially software) were usually inferior to what was released. Sometimes we would even get hand built peripherals. The only cases where the hardware was superior was in the development consoles that were used for Beta testers. In many cases these had more physical RAM and such, and the games ran better than on the final hardware (smoother animation, etc...).
The common situation involved getting sent a final beta while the finished game was in pressing. You would get a note included that had a break down of all the bugs and problems with the beta you received... this also had a note to the effect that all of these things have been fixed, so just "imagine that the problem isn't there and don't let these issues effect your review."
For this very reason we instituted a "finished product only" review policy. Funny thing was, supposedly Next Generation magazine also had this policy but there were several reviews I called them out on where they had blatantly reviewed the beta version of the title (the original WipeOut for PlayStation is a perfect example that comes to mind).
As for doing reviews on developers hardware... well, of course this has the potential to make a poorly made game look and/or play better, and thus get a higher score... but then again a sizable chunk of advertising in a mag can also achieve that result.
Ok, so basically, the only future here then is to be a CEO who can run a U.S. company with foreign workers paying them pennies a day, selling their work for dollars (or Euros!)... or pay some "18" year old $50 to prostitute herself on film since she can't find a job flipping burgers... and I make my money charging what $19 bucks a month for people all over the world who do have money to look at those pictures....Now I'm wondering... what happenes when all of everyone in the U.S. is running their own porn site?
So after we ship all of our jobs overseas, who the hell is going to be left to buy the things these companies make?!?!
As it stands, the only people I know who have a consistent job tommorow are CEOs/VPs, service workers (want fries with that), and Smut peddlers... and as it stands, if we don't have any money, those service jobs are going to dry up as well.
ARGHHHH! Guess it's time to pitch my morals and get into porn:(
Let's just tag all of the children and monitor them as well. In fact if we do it right we can integrategrate it with RFID and set up systems that detect whenever a child is going near a pool, is opening a cabinet full of cleaning supplies, or getting to close to dad's gun closet and sends a social worker over to save the child from certain death.
Why and if just leave these systems active, the government can monitor for congregations of teens in isolated areas where they are likely taking part in gatherings that lack the proper permits or worse yet, taking part in large scale group drug abuse. Then we can send in the police to save the children from the evil untagged adults that are promoting the activities.
Given how much the author of the article rambles on about not wanting to appear gay, he sure is hot to whip out the penises and start waving them around.
I don't know very many straight guys that go around making up lots of penis art unless it's a scribbled picture of a person next to a penis and an equals sign between them.:p
You can elect to enforce a patent at any point during the life of the patent, much to the dismay or frustration of everyone involved. Thank you very much GIFs. Grrrr...
So, SCO's claims that IBM can't enforce these patents like this because they never inforced these patents before is just temper tantrum talk.
Just spend some time reading Microsoft's own product announcements, interviews, etc... they don't make any effort to hide any of this. You'd pretty much have to be blind not to see what's going on... oh wait, that pretty much describes most of/. poster community.
But don't forget to research Jupiter, Yukon and Kodiak, and be sure to look at the extended feature sets of these products and how they can interoperate.
A quick search for some time lines got me this, but there are lots of places that keep track of this stuff: Internet.com
...and don't forget MS' own efforts to push rights enabled
content into the marketplace:
for one example there is... Microsoft ...but don't forget, games, their deal with small movie studios, etc...
MS is working with British Telecom to develop online applications and media support including
appication rental that can be used for an added nominal monthly fee... all of this is web browser
accessable, and while the dot's are pretty thin to find, I've heard in the developer circles that
once it is stablized around MSN 9, MS is looking to offer this service out to XBox live subscribers. news.com"
...and then there is the MIIS layer that just was released to support data tracking. MetaConnections
"MIIS has its own data store (the metaverse) into which it consolidates information drawn from the connected systems. Rules can be applied to determine how objects in a connected system are projected into, or join with objects already in, the metaverse and to create objects in the connected system (i.e. provisioning). Other rules specify how each attribute within the object should flow into or out of the metaverse. The sophistication of these rules allows customers to create fully automated identity data integration solutions."
...or this quote: TheWhir
"Customers have told us they need an end-to-end solution for managing identity information and access rights," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president for the Windows Server Group at Microsoft. "With today's delivery of MIIS, we bring provisioning and metadirectory capabilities together in a single solution that enables customers to create and manage user identities with a single consistent view across the enterprise and throughout the complete life cycle of identity management."
I would point you to the Market announcements on the MS site, but they are oddly missing... but then Google saves the day here... MS care of Google #1 MS care of Google #2
...and on and on and on... Do I really need to give you more links...
I suppose it's pointless because with most of the people who can't
see this, I could drop a bible of text proof in your face and you'd
still denign it.
Microsoft makes no efforts to hide what they're planning, and doing. It's all out there in your face if you bother to take the time to read it.
Big business wants start-to-end accountability for ALL DATA, and they are going to get it, and Microsoft is going
The reason IE is getting the overhaul that it's receiving is so that it can be fully integrated into Microsofts DRM efforts. Microsoft is moving towards making it so that every single bit of data that moves across your PC has a digital signature. IIS is a part of this effort as well. The next major iteration of IIS will include server verified signatures with all of the files. Signatures that only IE will be able to process. This will go one step beyond the Key signatures that you know today in the web world... Then Microsoft will toute their platform as the only true one-to-one path of content control for publishers. ("Look, we can track every single file anywhere, and you can even put an 'end of life' on your file to make sure people don't retain a copy or mirror of the data! Isn't that great!")
Don't believe me? Read your EULA with Media Player 9. This program is the priming piece of their technology on the user end, and fundamentally changes all of your Microsoft software rights the moment you install it... and they've already trained a whole new generation of users to call MS everytime they want to activate their OS.
You'll also start to see this implemented in the next year or so when they start to offer limited productivy aps to next generation X-Box Live subscribers (eg, Longhorn web services)....two years isn't all that much time people, and unless something radical happens in the OSS world **right now**, it will come and go and MS will be even deeper entrenched.
Quarterback Attack by Crystal Dynamics. This game failed in the market pretty much on two counts #1 came out at the peek of FMV hype, #2 was on the 3DO. But truth be told, when I played the game I was really pleased with the experience and wouldn't mind someone improving and expanding on the game with modern hardware. (note, I wrote that linked review but it includes screen shots if you want to see what the game looked like)
Google is not a selectable default search engine in IE already. The only way to effectively make Google your search page in IE is to make it your homepage.
If you think UltimateTV is dead, then you're a fool. Microsoft never abandons a product, they just shelve it for a little while, put a new face and name on it and ship it again... if it fails again, repeat... or leverage it down everyone's throats on the back of another technology/component.
Or I should more accurately say the the guys hosting the supporting websites dropped the ball.
I just picked up the "Enter the Matrix" video game and while the video game itself is so-so, the "hacking" portion was almost more fun than the rest of the game. My problem is that while you're digging around at this console, you get several URLs as leads to follow for more information.
Well guess what, none of them, not one single damn one of this is up and running, prepared to receive the traffic from this game. I've already written Redpill.com and complained (since they seem to be the one responsible for the sites). But the mood is already blown... grrr......so let me see, how hard is it to put up a friggen website on time? Rememind me to never consider hiring these clowns for anything mission critical.
The Amiga got it's REXX implementation from IBM in trade for the Workbench architecture. Yes, that means that Presentation Manager is a decendent of Workbench...
I've often wondered if OS/2's struggle to survive is a result of it getting touched with the Amiga curse?...sigh...
I was watching Total Recall the other night and noticed that at one point the bad guys try to give Arnold's character a Red Pill and tell him that if he takes it, it will allow him to wake up and return to reality. Hmmm... I wonder...
... but of course! How can you go wrong with classic Dr. Seuss? He wrote lyrics for the musical portions, managed the set design and co-wrote the script. The movie is just awsome.
Slashdot Mirror
Publishers will send a video tape of "typical gameplay" to the ESRB for them to generate their evaluation from. The ESRB just does not have the professional gamers or the time to play every game to the finish, and this has been my gripe from the day they founded the stupid organization. It's not like movie ratings based on someone watching a film. I have always felt that the ESRB should hire gamers to solve and evaluate the games, or require the publishers to provide a video of a complete solve for them to scan through.
Case in point Castlevania: Bloodlines, one of the goriest games released in 1994 received a GA rating. At the E3 trade show we confronted the ESRB staff about this title, and asked if they didn't think that the GA rating was a bit soft for the title given the fact that you spend an entire stage decapitating enemies which then spurt volumes of blood from their necks?
Their reply? They were shocked and horrified and completly agreed that that was certainly not GA level content and that they would look into it.
Right. Apparently Konami never provided any footage to them of this part of the game, and in 1994 anything lower than a GA was suicide for your game in the market unless you were Mortal Kombat, so publishers were playing the system to get the rating they felt would best help their game sell.
The ESRB is all BS. It always has been and still is.
So, basically she's looking for a perpetiual motion machine! Sheesh.
When I was involved in the review of video games and related hardware the reviewables (especially software) were usually inferior to what was released. Sometimes we would even get hand built peripherals. The only cases where the hardware was superior was in the development consoles that were used for Beta testers. In many cases these had more physical RAM and such, and the games ran better than on the final hardware (smoother animation, etc...).
The common situation involved getting sent a final beta while the finished game was in pressing. You would get a note included that had a break down of all the bugs and problems with the beta you received... this also had a note to the effect that all of these things have been fixed, so just "imagine that the problem isn't there and don't let these issues effect your review."
For this very reason we instituted a "finished product only" review policy. Funny thing was, supposedly Next Generation magazine also had this policy but there were several reviews I called them out on where they had blatantly reviewed the beta version of the title (the original WipeOut for PlayStation is a perfect example that comes to mind).
As for doing reviews on developers hardware... well, of course this has the potential to make a poorly made game look and/or play better, and thus get a higher score... but then again a sizable chunk of advertising in a mag can also achieve that result.
So will VHS.
This stupid POS it not only ate my bookmarks, but it then replaced them with bookmarks that it imported from IE.... AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!! Damn!
Oh, even better it completely deleted my entire Mozilla profile information. F'ing piece of sh1t.
Just think of all the money they have saved, why, clearly enough to consider WRECKING SEVERAL 959s just for the hell of it!!?!?! WTFIUWTS!!!!
Ok, so basically, the only future here then is to be a CEO who can run a U.S. company with foreign workers paying them pennies a day, selling their work for dollars (or Euros!)... or pay some "18" year old $50 to prostitute herself on film since she can't find a job flipping burgers... and I make my money charging what $19 bucks a month for people all over the world who do have money to look at those pictures. ...Now I'm wondering... what happenes when all of everyone in the U.S. is running their own porn site?
So after we ship all of our jobs overseas, who the hell is going to be left to buy the things these companies make?!?!
:(
As it stands, the only people I know who have a consistent job tommorow are CEOs/VPs, service workers (want fries with that), and Smut peddlers... and as it stands, if we don't have any money, those service jobs are going to dry up as well.
ARGHHHH! Guess it's time to pitch my morals and get into porn
The real question is, is anyone still *TRYING* to watch it.
Nicely re-edited there. (Note, this text above is not the original next)
Let's just tag all of the children and monitor them as well. In fact if we do it right we can integrategrate it with RFID and set up systems that detect whenever a child is going near a pool, is opening a cabinet full of cleaning supplies, or getting to close to dad's gun closet and sends a social worker over to save the child from certain death.
Why and if just leave these systems active, the government can monitor for congregations of teens in isolated areas where they are likely taking part in gatherings that lack the proper permits or worse yet, taking part in large scale group drug abuse. Then we can send in the police to save the children from the evil untagged adults that are promoting the activities.
Given how much the author of the article rambles on about not wanting to appear gay, he sure is hot to whip out the penises and start waving them around.
:p
I don't know very many straight guys that go around making up lots of penis art unless it's a scribbled picture of a person next to a penis and an equals sign between them.
You can elect to enforce a patent at any point during the life of the patent, much to the dismay or frustration of everyone involved. Thank you very much GIFs. Grrrr...
So, SCO's claims that IBM can't enforce these patents like this because they never inforced these patents before is just temper tantrum talk.
Just spend some time reading Microsoft's own product announcements, interviews, etc... they don't make any effort to hide any of this. You'd pretty much have to be blind not to see what's going on... oh wait, that pretty much describes most of /. poster community.
First, there's Longhorn...
TechWeb
WinSuperSite
But don't forget to research Jupiter, Yukon and Kodiak, and be sure to look at the extended feature sets of these products and how they can interoperate.
A quick search for some time lines got me this, but there are lots of places that keep track of this stuff:
Internet.com
Some general info on Jupiter
JupiterResearch
...and don't forget MS' own efforts to push rights enabled content into the marketplace:
for one example there is...
...but don't forget, games, their deal with small movie studios, etc...
Microsoft
MS is working with British Telecom to develop online applications and media support including appication rental that can be used for an added nominal monthly fee... all of this is web browser accessable, and while the dot's are pretty thin to find, I've heard in the developer circles that once it is stablized around MSN 9, MS is looking to offer this service out to XBox live subscribers.
news.com"
...and then there is the MIIS layer that just was released to support data tracking.
MetaConnections
"MIIS has its own data store (the metaverse) into which it consolidates information drawn from the connected systems. Rules can be applied to determine how objects in a connected system are projected into, or join with objects already in, the metaverse and to create objects in the connected system (i.e. provisioning). Other rules specify how each attribute within the object should flow into or out of the metaverse. The sophistication of these rules allows customers to create fully automated identity data integration solutions."
...or this quote:
TheWhir
"Customers have told us they need an end-to-end solution for managing identity information and access rights," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president for the Windows Server Group at Microsoft. "With today's delivery of MIIS, we bring provisioning and metadirectory capabilities together in a single solution that enables customers to create and manage user identities with a single consistent view across the enterprise and throughout the complete life cycle of identity management."
I would point you to the Market announcements on the MS site, but they are oddly missing... but then Google saves the day here...
MS care of Google #1
MS care of Google #2
...and on and on and on... Do I really need to give you more links... I suppose it's pointless because with most of the people who can't see this, I could drop a bible of text proof in your face and you'd still denign it.
Microsoft makes no efforts to hide what they're planning, and doing. It's all out there in your face if you bother to take the time to read it.
Big business wants start-to-end accountability for ALL DATA, and they are going to get it, and Microsoft is going
The reason IE is getting the overhaul that it's receiving is so that it can be fully integrated into Microsofts DRM efforts. Microsoft is moving towards making it so that every single bit of data that moves across your PC has a digital signature. IIS is a part of this effort as well. The next major iteration of IIS will include server verified signatures with all of the files. Signatures that only IE will be able to process. This will go one step beyond the Key signatures that you know today in the web world... Then Microsoft will toute their platform as the only true one-to-one path of content control for publishers. ("Look, we can track every single file anywhere, and you can even put an 'end of life' on your file to make sure people don't retain a copy or mirror of the data! Isn't that great!")
...two years isn't all that much time people, and unless something radical happens in the OSS world **right now**, it will come and go and MS will be even deeper entrenched.
Don't believe me? Read your EULA with Media Player 9. This program is the priming piece of their technology on the user end, and fundamentally changes all of your Microsoft software rights the moment you install it... and they've already trained a whole new generation of users to call MS everytime they want to activate their OS.
You'll also start to see this implemented in the next year or so when they start to offer limited productivy aps to next generation X-Box Live subscribers (eg, Longhorn web services).
Quarterback Attack by Crystal Dynamics. This game failed in the market pretty much on two counts #1 came out at the peek of FMV hype, #2 was on the 3DO. But truth be told, when I played the game I was really pleased with the experience and wouldn't mind someone improving and expanding on the game with modern hardware. (note, I wrote that linked review but it includes screen shots if you want to see what the game looked like)
Google is not a selectable default search engine in IE already. The only way to effectively make Google your search page in IE is to make it your homepage.
If you think UltimateTV is dead, then you're a fool. Microsoft never abandons a product, they just shelve it for a little while, put a new face and name on it and ship it again... if it fails again, repeat... or leverage it down everyone's throats on the back of another technology/component.
Or I should more accurately say the the guys hosting the supporting websites dropped the ball.
...so let me see, how hard is it to put up a friggen website on time? Rememind me to never consider hiring these clowns for anything mission critical.
I just picked up the "Enter the Matrix" video game and while the video game itself is so-so, the "hacking" portion was almost more fun than the rest of the game. My problem is that while you're digging around at this console, you get several URLs as leads to follow for more information.
Well guess what, none of them, not one single damn one of this is up and running, prepared to receive the traffic from this game. I've already written Redpill.com and complained (since they seem to be the one responsible for the sites). But the mood is already blown... grrr...
Here's a little known bit of REXX/Amiga trivia...
...sigh...
The Amiga got it's REXX implementation from IBM in trade for the Workbench architecture. Yes, that means that Presentation Manager is a decendent of Workbench...
I've often wondered if OS/2's struggle to survive is a result of it getting touched with the Amiga curse?
...so what's your point?
by the way... that was sarcasm if you didn't notice...
...it's not like there are any women using it
I was watching Total Recall the other night and noticed that at one point the bad guys try to give Arnold's character a Red Pill and tell him that if he takes it, it will allow him to wake up and return to reality. Hmmm... I wonder...
... but of course! How can you go wrong with classic Dr. Seuss? He wrote lyrics for the musical portions, managed the set design and co-wrote the script. The movie is just awsome.