all I can say is that I enjoy my freedom of speech
Someone should kill <insert public official here>
I support Al Queda
The US government should be overthrown through violence
Try putting these in your blog (as actual statements of belief, not just discussion), in the US. Before long several men in dark suits will be at your door asking you to "please" come with them. "Please" of course meaning, we have the guns and if you don't we will shoot you. Yes, they are inflamitory statements, and probably deserve attention, but the first one is a criminal offense if you mention the president. And the last is an outright criminal offense by itself. Freedom of speech only extends so far in the US, we've allowed it to be eroded quite a bit in the name of "safety".
On the other hand, it still beats the hell out of the rules in some other places.
Just to throw in a "me too". The idea of the UN controlling the internet scares me a bit. With countries like Saudi Arabia and China having a say in what should be allowed on the internet, we might end up with some universal restrictions on it, which are ludicrious. I won't say that ICANN is perfect, far from it, but I don't think that UN control is a step in the right direction. With the current US control, a lot of freedom is there by default, is it perfect? No, but it's better than Iran would allow us.
Personally, I would like to see an international body controlling it, with a charter, which garantees a high level of freedom, I just don't think this is possible. Insted, I would rather see control of the internet get de-centralized. Each TLD should be controlled by a different country, with a few left as international domains. E.g..uk is controlled wholly by the UK, with no outside interferance;.dl is Germany (Deutschland); and so on. And, as far as I know, this is mostly how it is, the problem seems to be that, since the Internet basically started in the US, the US has defaulted to taking.com,.net,.gov, etc. for itself. At this point, I think it's worth saying that getting the US over to.us is a lost cause, so just let it go and lets try to build out from here in the right fashion. Hand full, unbridaled, control of the country domains over to the respective countries. And create a few new, international, TLD's for the international body to control. Then, each country can sort out, for itself, how their domain will be used.
Re:What a sad week for gamers
on
EA's Busy Week
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· Score: 1
You forgot:
3)EA buys up several innovative japnaeese companies and use product/brand loyalty to break into the market. While at the same time sapping the life out of the bought-up companies.
Ok, so I don't know who they would buy, but, never discount the ability of large companies to buy their way into a market.
Setup a user for her in your domain, with an Exchange Mailbox. Have all email to that box forwarded to her real email address, and not stored locally. That user can then be allowed to view the calander. Assuming she is using Outlook (probably, if you want her to see the calander), just have her add another email account to her profile, which connects to your Excahnge server, using the username/password combination you created. The downside of this is that your Exhange Server will need to be exposed to the internet, which is likely to be the case anyway. Also, she really doesn't have a way to update her password. However, it gets the job dones, and provides a contact for her in your address book, which can be added to distribution lists easily.
This assumes that you don't want to go through the trouble of setting up a two way domain trust with the other company.
Wireless is fine, and would be for this purpose. The biggest problem that wireless faces in a LAN environment is that it is effectivly a bus network. e.g. If you have a 54Mbps connection, that bandwidth is shared with all of the clients connected to the same access point. This gets real fun when you have a room full of people all pulling large files across the wireless link. I've seen about 25 people all downloading large GIS shape files through one WAP, everyone of them slowed to a crawl, and then connections started dropping.
But, for a home network with all of 4 clients at most, and very little bandwidth usage, wireless would be perfect, just make sure you don't have any 2.4 Ghz wirelss phones kicking about, those can be murder on a wireless network.
I guess I can see that, but that still seems like a weak excuse, especially for a gigabit port. The games are probably going to be pushing less than 10Mbps of data, maybe bursting up to the 20Mbps range with a lot of people connected, why not just use 100Mbps ports on it? Also, you can buy a 10/100 hub for next to nothing these days. If you have any friends who LAN regularly, there's probably already one or two available for you. On top of that, the article says that the PS3 was setup as a router, if all this was for was to create a small LAN of PS3's why do you need router functions? I guess you could create a WAN and connect people both locally and over the internet, but then we need to have a wire from either the main router in the home, or a wire from the DSL/Cable bridge running to the PS3, which means that the computers then need to connect back to the PS3, getting back to the entertainment center as switch rack issue.
I just can't see the point of this function in the first place, unless it was just another marketer's wet dream. Probably some guy in a suit said, "hey, lets make this a router as well." And no one listened to the engineer saying, "what the fuck?"
Why did the PS3 function as a router in the first place? Last time I checked, the reason I would buy a PS3 is to play games on my TV, and I really don't want my enterainment center doubling as my switch rack. I've got enough wires behind it as it is, without bringing in a bundle of CAT-5 as well. The best place for a router is in a closet somewhere, so I don't have to see the half dozen or so wires comming into it.
I think that this "feature" is another example of Sony and Microsoft pushing way too hard for the "media center" idea rather than making a good game console. We don't need an all-in-one device that does a bunch of different things, but none of them really well. Just give me a game console, where I can pop a disc/cartridge/whatever in, push a button or two and I am pointlessly slaughtering aliens/demons/humans. I have a DVD player, I will soon have a MythTV box, I have a nice NAT/router box, what the hell do I need these features in my PS3 for?
I just have to put in my 2 cents worth. Left Behind was awful. I got about half way through the book before putting it down. The writing is childish at best, the story is so thin you can see right through it to the preaching. For goodness sake, if you're going to talk about christian fiction, at least use C.S. Lewis or Dante, or any one of a number of good writers who did christain based works.
As for christian rock, as long as it isn't too preachy, it's not too bad.
As for why the stuff is selling so well, we've got a lot of chirstians in this country, and they like anything which validates their religion. Take a look at the Left Behind series. The writing is terrible, and preachy beyond belief, but for someone who agrees with the message, they are going to love it because it reaffirms their belief. Christain rock has it even better, much of it isn't bad, and it gets a bonus by reaffirming beliefs.
Back to the subject at hand. A well done christain based game could work, the biggest problem with it is, it's going to have to allow the player to make wrong choices, without that, it will feel forced and no fun. Even still, it may fall into the trap of feeling too much like a sermon, which could suck the fun right out of it.
I do intend to look at the Revolution seriously. Granted, I'll wait until it, and the other systems, have been out a year or so before buying one. The thing is that Nintendo is going to have to show a willingness to get more and different games on the system.
I do agree, though, that both Sony and MS are pushing way to hard for this "media center" idea. What I want is a console to play games, not a stripped down PC to do a bunch of stuff half-assed. I'm not sure if I am alone in this, but I tend to like to have dedicated devices for different functions in my living room. I want a DVD player, a DVR, and a game console. That way, if one goes down, I can replace it easily. Also, if that TV is in use, I can grab the device I want and take it to another TV.
As with the last generation of consoles, I'm going to wait and see where they go. Maybe Nintendo will get past thier elitism and not drive the developers off.
I really hope that the Revolution does well, the problem with it, as has been Nintendo's problem for a while, is that they focus heavily on producting fewer, supposedly higher quality games. The problem is, that this leads to not being able to find games you want. It's because of this that I have been unwilling to buy a Nintendo system since the N64. When it came out it had one or two interesting titles. After that it took forever for them to come out with anything else for it which I wanted. In the end, I think I owned 4 games for the system. When the Cube was announced, I looked that the launch title list and only saw one game that caught my interest. Even now, I can count on one hand the number of games which catch my interest.
To me, Nintendo's focus on "quality" games is killing them. If thier idea of quality and a gamer's idea of quality don't line up, they are going to lose that gamer to Sony's idea of "if you throw enough shit at a wall, something is bound to stick". Granted, if the Xbox360 and PS3 both realeas at the prices people are throwing about, I'll probably give up on consoles and just stick to my PC. Ya, it's more expensive over time, but I tend to find games I like for it far eaiser than on a console.
I would imagine that, much like books, and movies, we'll see a split between the "literary" and the "fun". In literature, Charles Dickenson is considered a great writer. Sure, there's probably lots of made up reasons why this is, but his books are terminally boring. Terry Prachet on the other hand is not listed among the "greats" and his books will probably never be classic, but they are fun to read.
In the same way, Tetris, and the million or so clones, will never have a grand, thought provoking storyline. But they will be forever addictive and fun. RPG's hold some promise to actually tell a good story, and one day we might actually get past the painful melodrama in them and see a really good story told in one of them.
I'll tell you something else...the $129 average price tag quoted in the article is right on the money.
Wow, I never quite realized what people are willing to pay for this. Personally, I usually do it for friends and family for the price of a good meal. At work, I support student owned laptops and do this as part of my job. I really need to reconsider going independent.
That said, yes malware is a huge problem, and one of the reasons I am employed. And for all of the preventative measures we take and try to get our friends and family to take, it will continue to be a problem. The reason is that the biggest security hole is the interface between the chair and the keyboard. People are going to download stuff off the internet and run it. Some of it will be good clean fun, some of it will come with a hidden price. And as long as users have admin/root priviledges to thier own machines, they will continue to get nailed.
Even if we get people over to other browsers, other OS's etc., it's not going to go away. Consider the crapware bundled with Kazaa Media Desktop, or the like. During the install, if the user doesn't have root access, pop-up a box which asks for the root password. Sure, anyone with a clue is going to stop and wonder for a moment, why does it need that. The other 90% of computer users are going to just blithely type in the root password. (probably 'rootpassword' or other such sillyness) The program now has the keys to the kingdom and is going to put in all of the crap it wants.
Unless we can actually train all of the users out there not to do this sort of thing, malware is going to be a fact of life on the internet. And considering that people still fall for con-men and pyramid schemes, I don't hold out much hope of this happening.
Just guessing out of my arse here, but...
I would guess that the reason for using the saline solutioon is two fold. First, cooling a body down to 7C quickly is kind of tough. If you do it from the outside in, the middle bits are going to take a while to cool.; whereas, if you use the pre-built distribution system of the body (vascular system) you can get all places cool faster. Second, the saline solution will have a lower freezing temperature, which means that it can be colder without forming ice crystals, and damaging cells as a result. Along with that, I would wonder if it doesn't increse the salinity of the rest of the water in the body, and keep that water from freezing in the process.
The article seems to lump a lot of things into cheating, I'm not sure I agree with all of them.
Modifying client code, stream, etc. Obvious cheating. And the offeners should be banned for life.
Using a USB keyboard and mouse on a console. Not sure this is really cheating. Obviuosly the console is designed to utilize these pieces of hardware, and a controller sucks for FPS games. Though, some way to check and filter for this would be good. Still, I don't think that this is going to be cheating.
Gernade jumps, rocket jumps, stacking. These are not really cheating by themselves. If you are using it to get to a hard to access area on the map, fine. If you are using it to get outside the game world, then there is a problem. I don't play Halo so I'm not sure what the article is saying exactly, but using a friend and a gernade to get on top of a tall building hardly seems like cheating. If it's putting the player outside the world and allowing them to fire without receiveing fire, then ya, it's cheating. But if it's in the game world, it should be fair game.
You shouldn't even waste time contemplating it, kids should be "upgraded". Consider for a moment, if your children were to end up being Einsteins because of some random genetic variance, would you complain or worry about it? Probably not, so why is it so bad when the randomness is taken out of it?
One of the important parts of being a parent is providing your child with every possible advantage to succeed; and, with any luck, to do better than you did yourself. Genetic manipulation is a good way to go about it. Granted, it's probably smart to wait a bit and see what the side effects will be, but in the end, the human race is going to start the process of evolving again, but in a more controlled fashion.
I would argue that, since the creation of modern medicine, the evolution of our species has stopped. With the exception of very bad disorders, those with genetic defects can often survive long enough to reproduce. For example, childhood diabietes used to be incredibly fatal. A child born with it in the 1600's was dead, quick. Now, a child with it has a chance of making it to adulthood, and passing on that defect. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Mengele, modern medicine is allowing normally fatal genetic defects to be introduced and propagated in our species. Our species is no longer evolving to rid itself of such disorders.
Now, I'm not saying that saving lives is bad. I would rather we did everything we could to save lives than to accept the outcome as "God's Will". But the fact remains that, in doing so, we are stopping what is normally the driving process of evolution. Genetic manipulation will be the process by which we can get back on the evolutionary track, and this time, we get to drive.
The first, and obvious, use will be to eradicate genetic diseases. Down's syndrome, color blindness, etc. And, since we're at it, why not sort out some of the other annoyances of life? Is inherited baldness of any use? Is there any need for people to have myopia or an astigmatism? Better metabolic rate, incresed muscle density, etc. These ate things which will improve the quality of life for a person, what is wrong with doing it?
I think it's very short sighted to assume that modifying people will make everyone too much alike. Parents will have a different idea of what constitutes a "perfect" child. Not to mention that much of the genetic code will still come from the parents. Also, no matter what the genes, the enviroment that a child is raised in, the beliefs imparted to them by their parents, and its experiences will shape that child in ways different from anyone else. Genetic manipulation is not going to cause the loss of individuality, it's simply going to raise the bar on what an "average" individual is, just as the evolution of a larger brain changed us from chimps to reasoning humans.
Plus, if I were a sysadmin, RDP on the desktops in my network would be invaluable.
I do sysadmin work, and yes, RDP on the desktop is invaluable. Also, being able to Remote to my home machines is also a great tool. Need to test a web, email, whatever server from the outside world? Remote to my home desktop (XP Pro) and then connect from it to the service to be tested. Also, Server 2003 has RDP built in for remote administration, which means that the flat panel/keyboard combo in the rack is collecting dust.
Other than that though, I do find that XP is like 2000 with a GUI done by Crayola. Sure, it now has lots of multi-media stuff built in; but, this is an office PC, not a home desktop, I don't need people playing with Movie Maker in the office.
I can see why a lot of people are not upgrading to XP from 2000, there just isn't a really good reason. When Longhorn finally releases (ignoring the chilly draft comming from hell) I'm expecting that there will be a lot of people on XP who will see no reason to upgrade, and those on 2000 will probably continue to sit there. MS needs to find and add some sort of "must have" feature before people will be willing to jump. From Win98 to WinNT we gained some level of network security. From WinNT to Win2K we gained a lot of stability and more security. From Win2K to WinXP we got built in RDP, and a funny looking GUI; not many people saw these as needed. From WinXP to Winwhatever the hell the call it I just don't see what they are going to add that we want. Better integration with.NET? Don't need it, XP and.NET get along fine. Better filesystem? NTFS is actually pretty good, sure I get the odd corruption here and there, but its rather rare. I think MS may be facing a rather sticky problem, trying to compete with it's own products, when those products are actully pretty good.
Na, it's because the US government engages in zero balance budgeting. If a department doesn't spend its entire budget each year, its budget gets cut net year. However, if they overspend their budget (which is quite possible) they get a budget increse next year. So, how would you handle your department's budget if you were in charge of it? Most people I know would spend as much as possible.
The US government really needs to rethink its budgeting practices.
I don't think the world launch is really that big of a problem for Microsoft here. Europe isn't as large of a gaming market as the US or Japan, so it's not a big factor. And with Japan, the only way MS will be short units is if the boat, carrying the one container of XBoxes, sinks. Even then, they could stick someone on a commercial flight with the two new Xboxes in carry-on luggage, for all of their loyal Japanesse customers.
This is 100% hype. They want people to buy an Xbox 360 before the PS3 hits, so that they can have an large install base before competition exists. This "article", and others like it for the PS3 and Revolution (what is it with going in circles this generation?) are just marketing tripe designed to get people excited about a system, when the real important part is the games. Yet, people will fall for it, and it will all happen again next generation. Sad really.
This, as with anything about gaming, comes down to individual tastes. Personally, I though FF7 sucked. Of course, I though every FF game after the first one (US) pretty much blew to some extent. The gameplay was repeditive, the stories unimaginative, and the dialog way too melodramatic.
Plus, the 40+ hours of gameplay usually involved 20+ hours of watching the same spell animations over and over and over again without any way to skip them. And, <insert diety here> forbid you die after watching a long FMV clip, as you would get to sit through it again.
On the other hand God of War and PoP:Sands of Time both had good stories, that weren't drawn out to the breaking point to fill time. The action remained consistently good, without the need to stop and level to beat the next boss. And, the dialog in both didn't feel insulting to my intellegence. Yes, you could beat either in a fairly short amount of time, but the quality of the game was consistenly high. And that is something I appreciate. I'd rather have a 10 hour game that was consistently good than a 90+ hour epic that drags at many points.
Also, like other posters have said, I have a life. I work, attend classes, and try to have some fun which doesn't involve electronic devices. I have neither the time nor inclination to devote that much effort to a game. I need something I can play for a few hours, leave alone for a month, and then pick up and play again without difficulty.
This is all, of course, just my opinion, and every person will view this differently. If you like the RPG epics, then great, buy and play them, but there are many of us that don't care for them, for us God of War, and the Prince of Persia series are perfect.
First off, IANAL. For legal advise, talk to an actual lawyer, not a techie message board.
That said...
Probably the best thing to do is go for "common carrier" status. Basically, you are provideing a transport mechanism for data, nothing more. This has it's pro's and con's.
Pro
You get a "get out of liability free" card.
Con
You can not control anything that passes over the network. (e.g. porn, racist remarks, profanity). The minute you exercise any control on the network, you suddenly have a "right and responsibility" to police the network.
As long as you don't want any control of the data on your network, you can be in the clear. You'll then have to keep an eye out for other problems though. Such as keeping children from seeing porn.
Also, this may not be an option. Even if you do not exercise any control over the data on the network, since it is a LAN the courts might rule that you still have a "right and responsibility" to police the network. As such, stick with layer 2 devices, a layer 3 device would imply the ability to restrict content (e.g. you could filter all traffic on port 445 to kill SMB).
The reason I am using the quotes around "right and responsibility" is that this is the term used in the laws about vicarious and contributory infringement. Basically, one of the criteria for such infringement is that the owner of the venue has a "right and responsibility" to police an area. Again, talk to a lawyer about this. If you can't afford one, get a hold of the EFF, they will probably be willing to give you some direction in this without charge.
The game Sacred had a workable idea. They actually posted in their official forums that you could do LAN play with one CD on as many computers as you wanted. Just install the game on every computer, then start the game with the CD in one computer, once the CD check completes, pass the CD to the next person, repeat. In online play the CD-Key was checked, so this was not possible. I found that I liked that attitude. It accepted the fact that not everyone at a LAN party is going to want to own a copy of a given game, but still allowed them to play. While forceing people to buy a copy for the online portion of the game. Personally, I would think that this would drive sales. After enjoying a game at a LAN party, people might be inclined to buy the game for themselves for the single player portions and/or online play.
Let's be honest, a private LAN party is going to be a hotbed of piracy. And with the tools out there copying CD's and games is easy enough that anyone who attends a LAN party is going to be able to do it. Why spend a ton of effort and money fighting a losing battle? Instead, use it as a marketing tool. If the game allows for LAN play without CD's (e.g. Blizzard's "Spawn Install") you can get a person hooked on a game, without them getting a pirated copy. Which do you think most people will want to do at a LAN party, do a quick and dirty, crippled, install of a game; or, go through the process to circumvent copy protections on a game? If the option is available, most of them will do the crippled install. The rest are a lost cause anyway, they will probably get a pirated copy no matter what you do, so give up on them. But, for those that just want to play the game at the LAN party, you may be able to turn them into a sale. If they like the game enough, they might buy it. Whereas, if they had already pirated the game to play it at the LAN party, they may not bother buying it since they already have it.
Just spent a while over at IGN looking at games on the horizon for the PC, there doesn't seem to be much of a drought in games for the PC. Sure, many of them aren't the kinds I like, but I don't have much trouble finding one or two that look good.
Na, we're playing CS or other such games because they are fun. For some reason there's something enjoyable about shooting at a target controlled by a real person. And, beyond the occasional graphics update and change in weapons, what are they really going to add?
One thing that will keep them separate is the modding community. Take a look at Half-Life, the original game was a mediocre FPS at best, but when a group of people released Counterstrike, the game took off. And this isn't the only game to make sales from the modding community.
Also, a PC is more than a game machine. I have yet to see Word XBox Edition. The PC is, and will stay a general purpose machine. and one of those purposes will be gaming. It might wane for a while, but it will always be there.
It would seem that we are going to have to put up with artcles like the one linked every once in a while. Usually around the time of E3 or the like the console fan boys get on a tear about how PC gaming is dying. Yes, it has declined, but when you go from being the only way to play games at home to one of several choices, you are going to decline in market position. PC gaming will rise and decline just as the consoles do, with the release of "must have" games. The advantage that PC games have is, there is no one manufacturer that can die and take the system with it. If Microsoft goes under the games will move to Linux. If NVidia dies, ATI will get more business. There is no linchpin, whereas each console is forever tied to one company. If Sony gives up on the console market, the Playstation is dead.
To the author of the article, quit stroking your hard-on for thr death of PC gaming, it's not going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
- Someone should kill <insert public official here>
- I support Al Queda
- The US government should be overthrown through violence
Try putting these in your blog (as actual statements of belief, not just discussion), in the US. Before long several men in dark suits will be at your door asking you to "please" come with them. "Please" of course meaning, we have the guns and if you don't we will shoot you. Yes, they are inflamitory statements, and probably deserve attention, but the first one is a criminal offense if you mention the president. And the last is an outright criminal offense by itself. Freedom of speech only extends so far in the US, we've allowed it to be eroded quite a bit in the name of "safety".On the other hand, it still beats the hell out of the rules in some other places.
Just to throw in a "me too". The idea of the UN controlling the internet scares me a bit. With countries like Saudi Arabia and China having a say in what should be allowed on the internet, we might end up with some universal restrictions on it, which are ludicrious. I won't say that ICANN is perfect, far from it, but I don't think that UN control is a step in the right direction. With the current US control, a lot of freedom is there by default, is it perfect? No, but it's better than Iran would allow us. .uk is controlled wholly by the UK, with no outside interferance; .dl is Germany (Deutschland); and so on. And, as far as I know, this is mostly how it is, the problem seems to be that, since the Internet basically started in the US, the US has defaulted to taking .com, .net, .gov, etc. for itself. At this point, I think it's worth saying that getting the US over to .us is a lost cause, so just let it go and lets try to build out from here in the right fashion. Hand full, unbridaled, control of the country domains over to the respective countries. And create a few new, international, TLD's for the international body to control. Then, each country can sort out, for itself, how their domain will be used.
Personally, I would like to see an international body controlling it, with a charter, which garantees a high level of freedom, I just don't think this is possible. Insted, I would rather see control of the internet get de-centralized. Each TLD should be controlled by a different country, with a few left as international domains. E.g.
You forgot:
3)EA buys up several innovative japnaeese companies and use product/brand loyalty to break into the market. While at the same time sapping the life out of the bought-up companies.
Ok, so I don't know who they would buy, but, never discount the ability of large companies to buy their way into a market.
Setup a user for her in your domain, with an Exchange Mailbox. Have all email to that box forwarded to her real email address, and not stored locally. That user can then be allowed to view the calander. Assuming she is using Outlook (probably, if you want her to see the calander), just have her add another email account to her profile, which connects to your Excahnge server, using the username/password combination you created. The downside of this is that your Exhange Server will need to be exposed to the internet, which is likely to be the case anyway. Also, she really doesn't have a way to update her password. However, it gets the job dones, and provides a contact for her in your address book, which can be added to distribution lists easily.
This assumes that you don't want to go through the trouble of setting up a two way domain trust with the other company.
Wireless is fine, and would be for this purpose. The biggest problem that wireless faces in a LAN environment is that it is effectivly a bus network. e.g. If you have a 54Mbps connection, that bandwidth is shared with all of the clients connected to the same access point. This gets real fun when you have a room full of people all pulling large files across the wireless link. I've seen about 25 people all downloading large GIS shape files through one WAP, everyone of them slowed to a crawl, and then connections started dropping.
But, for a home network with all of 4 clients at most, and very little bandwidth usage, wireless would be perfect, just make sure you don't have any 2.4 Ghz wirelss phones kicking about, those can be murder on a wireless network.
I guess I can see that, but that still seems like a weak excuse, especially for a gigabit port. The games are probably going to be pushing less than 10Mbps of data, maybe bursting up to the 20Mbps range with a lot of people connected, why not just use 100Mbps ports on it? Also, you can buy a 10/100 hub for next to nothing these days. If you have any friends who LAN regularly, there's probably already one or two available for you. On top of that, the article says that the PS3 was setup as a router, if all this was for was to create a small LAN of PS3's why do you need router functions? I guess you could create a WAN and connect people both locally and over the internet, but then we need to have a wire from either the main router in the home, or a wire from the DSL/Cable bridge running to the PS3, which means that the computers then need to connect back to the PS3, getting back to the entertainment center as switch rack issue.
I just can't see the point of this function in the first place, unless it was just another marketer's wet dream. Probably some guy in a suit said, "hey, lets make this a router as well." And no one listened to the engineer saying, "what the fuck?"
Why did the PS3 function as a router in the first place? Last time I checked, the reason I would buy a PS3 is to play games on my TV, and I really don't want my enterainment center doubling as my switch rack. I've got enough wires behind it as it is, without bringing in a bundle of CAT-5 as well. The best place for a router is in a closet somewhere, so I don't have to see the half dozen or so wires comming into it.
I think that this "feature" is another example of Sony and Microsoft pushing way too hard for the "media center" idea rather than making a good game console. We don't need an all-in-one device that does a bunch of different things, but none of them really well. Just give me a game console, where I can pop a disc/cartridge/whatever in, push a button or two and I am pointlessly slaughtering aliens/demons/humans. I have a DVD player, I will soon have a MythTV box, I have a nice NAT/router box, what the hell do I need these features in my PS3 for?
I just have to put in my 2 cents worth. Left Behind was awful. I got about half way through the book before putting it down. The writing is childish at best, the story is so thin you can see right through it to the preaching. For goodness sake, if you're going to talk about christian fiction, at least use C.S. Lewis or Dante, or any one of a number of good writers who did christain based works.
As for christian rock, as long as it isn't too preachy, it's not too bad.
As for why the stuff is selling so well, we've got a lot of chirstians in this country, and they like anything which validates their religion. Take a look at the Left Behind series. The writing is terrible, and preachy beyond belief, but for someone who agrees with the message, they are going to love it because it reaffirms their belief. Christain rock has it even better, much of it isn't bad, and it gets a bonus by reaffirming beliefs.
Back to the subject at hand. A well done christain based game could work, the biggest problem with it is, it's going to have to allow the player to make wrong choices, without that, it will feel forced and no fun. Even still, it may fall into the trap of feeling too much like a sermon, which could suck the fun right out of it.
I do intend to look at the Revolution seriously. Granted, I'll wait until it, and the other systems, have been out a year or so before buying one. The thing is that Nintendo is going to have to show a willingness to get more and different games on the system.
I do agree, though, that both Sony and MS are pushing way to hard for this "media center" idea. What I want is a console to play games, not a stripped down PC to do a bunch of stuff half-assed. I'm not sure if I am alone in this, but I tend to like to have dedicated devices for different functions in my living room. I want a DVD player, a DVR, and a game console. That way, if one goes down, I can replace it easily. Also, if that TV is in use, I can grab the device I want and take it to another TV.
As with the last generation of consoles, I'm going to wait and see where they go. Maybe Nintendo will get past thier elitism and not drive the developers off.
I really hope that the Revolution does well, the problem with it, as has been Nintendo's problem for a while, is that they focus heavily on producting fewer, supposedly higher quality games. The problem is, that this leads to not being able to find games you want. It's because of this that I have been unwilling to buy a Nintendo system since the N64. When it came out it had one or two interesting titles. After that it took forever for them to come out with anything else for it which I wanted. In the end, I think I owned 4 games for the system. When the Cube was announced, I looked that the launch title list and only saw one game that caught my interest. Even now, I can count on one hand the number of games which catch my interest.
To me, Nintendo's focus on "quality" games is killing them. If thier idea of quality and a gamer's idea of quality don't line up, they are going to lose that gamer to Sony's idea of "if you throw enough shit at a wall, something is bound to stick". Granted, if the Xbox360 and PS3 both realeas at the prices people are throwing about, I'll probably give up on consoles and just stick to my PC. Ya, it's more expensive over time, but I tend to find games I like for it far eaiser than on a console.
I would imagine that, much like books, and movies, we'll see a split between the "literary" and the "fun". In literature, Charles Dickenson is considered a great writer. Sure, there's probably lots of made up reasons why this is, but his books are terminally boring. Terry Prachet on the other hand is not listed among the "greats" and his books will probably never be classic, but they are fun to read.
In the same way, Tetris, and the million or so clones, will never have a grand, thought provoking storyline. But they will be forever addictive and fun. RPG's hold some promise to actually tell a good story, and one day we might actually get past the painful melodrama in them and see a really good story told in one of them.
I'll tell you something else...the $129 average price tag quoted in the article is right on the money.
Wow, I never quite realized what people are willing to pay for this. Personally, I usually do it for friends and family for the price of a good meal. At work, I support student owned laptops and do this as part of my job. I really need to reconsider going independent.
That said, yes malware is a huge problem, and one of the reasons I am employed. And for all of the preventative measures we take and try to get our friends and family to take, it will continue to be a problem. The reason is that the biggest security hole is the interface between the chair and the keyboard. People are going to download stuff off the internet and run it. Some of it will be good clean fun, some of it will come with a hidden price. And as long as users have admin/root priviledges to thier own machines, they will continue to get nailed.
Even if we get people over to other browsers, other OS's etc., it's not going to go away. Consider the crapware bundled with Kazaa Media Desktop, or the like. During the install, if the user doesn't have root access, pop-up a box which asks for the root password. Sure, anyone with a clue is going to stop and wonder for a moment, why does it need that. The other 90% of computer users are going to just blithely type in the root password. (probably 'rootpassword' or other such sillyness) The program now has the keys to the kingdom and is going to put in all of the crap it wants.
Unless we can actually train all of the users out there not to do this sort of thing, malware is going to be a fact of life on the internet. And considering that people still fall for con-men and pyramid schemes, I don't hold out much hope of this happening.
Good point, I hadn't thought about that. So I guess I'll just go with my first guess.
Just guessing out of my arse here, but...
I would guess that the reason for using the saline solutioon is two fold. First, cooling a body down to 7C quickly is kind of tough. If you do it from the outside in, the middle bits are going to take a while to cool.; whereas, if you use the pre-built distribution system of the body (vascular system) you can get all places cool faster. Second, the saline solution will have a lower freezing temperature, which means that it can be colder without forming ice crystals, and damaging cells as a result. Along with that, I would wonder if it doesn't increse the salinity of the rest of the water in the body, and keep that water from freezing in the process.
The article seems to lump a lot of things into cheating, I'm not sure I agree with all of them.
Modifying client code, stream, etc. Obvious cheating. And the offeners should be banned for life.
Using a USB keyboard and mouse on a console. Not sure this is really cheating. Obviuosly the console is designed to utilize these pieces of hardware, and a controller sucks for FPS games. Though, some way to check and filter for this would be good. Still, I don't think that this is going to be cheating.
Gernade jumps, rocket jumps, stacking. These are not really cheating by themselves. If you are using it to get to a hard to access area on the map, fine. If you are using it to get outside the game world, then there is a problem. I don't play Halo so I'm not sure what the article is saying exactly, but using a friend and a gernade to get on top of a tall building hardly seems like cheating. If it's putting the player outside the world and allowing them to fire without receiveing fire, then ya, it's cheating. But if it's in the game world, it should be fair game.
You shouldn't even waste time contemplating it, kids should be "upgraded". Consider for a moment, if your children were to end up being Einsteins because of some random genetic variance, would you complain or worry about it? Probably not, so why is it so bad when the randomness is taken out of it?
One of the important parts of being a parent is providing your child with every possible advantage to succeed; and, with any luck, to do better than you did yourself. Genetic manipulation is a good way to go about it. Granted, it's probably smart to wait a bit and see what the side effects will be, but in the end, the human race is going to start the process of evolving again, but in a more controlled fashion.
I would argue that, since the creation of modern medicine, the evolution of our species has stopped. With the exception of very bad disorders, those with genetic defects can often survive long enough to reproduce. For example, childhood diabietes used to be incredibly fatal. A child born with it in the 1600's was dead, quick. Now, a child with it has a chance of making it to adulthood, and passing on that defect. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Mengele, modern medicine is allowing normally fatal genetic defects to be introduced and propagated in our species. Our species is no longer evolving to rid itself of such disorders.
Now, I'm not saying that saving lives is bad. I would rather we did everything we could to save lives than to accept the outcome as "God's Will". But the fact remains that, in doing so, we are stopping what is normally the driving process of evolution. Genetic manipulation will be the process by which we can get back on the evolutionary track, and this time, we get to drive.
The first, and obvious, use will be to eradicate genetic diseases. Down's syndrome, color blindness, etc. And, since we're at it, why not sort out some of the other annoyances of life? Is inherited baldness of any use? Is there any need for people to have myopia or an astigmatism? Better metabolic rate, incresed muscle density, etc. These ate things which will improve the quality of life for a person, what is wrong with doing it?
I think it's very short sighted to assume that modifying people will make everyone too much alike. Parents will have a different idea of what constitutes a "perfect" child. Not to mention that much of the genetic code will still come from the parents. Also, no matter what the genes, the enviroment that a child is raised in, the beliefs imparted to them by their parents, and its experiences will shape that child in ways different from anyone else. Genetic manipulation is not going to cause the loss of individuality, it's simply going to raise the bar on what an "average" individual is, just as the evolution of a larger brain changed us from chimps to reasoning humans.
Granted, it's intended for games, but DOSBox is a very good way to accomplish running DOS based applications.
Also, look at VMWare
Plus, if I were a sysadmin, RDP on the desktops in my network would be invaluable.
.NET? Don't need it, XP and .NET get along fine. Better filesystem? NTFS is actually pretty good, sure I get the odd corruption here and there, but its rather rare. I think MS may be facing a rather sticky problem, trying to compete with it's own products, when those products are actully pretty good.
I do sysadmin work, and yes, RDP on the desktop is invaluable. Also, being able to Remote to my home machines is also a great tool. Need to test a web, email, whatever server from the outside world? Remote to my home desktop (XP Pro) and then connect from it to the service to be tested. Also, Server 2003 has RDP built in for remote administration, which means that the flat panel/keyboard combo in the rack is collecting dust.
Other than that though, I do find that XP is like 2000 with a GUI done by Crayola. Sure, it now has lots of multi-media stuff built in; but, this is an office PC, not a home desktop, I don't need people playing with Movie Maker in the office.
I can see why a lot of people are not upgrading to XP from 2000, there just isn't a really good reason. When Longhorn finally releases (ignoring the chilly draft comming from hell) I'm expecting that there will be a lot of people on XP who will see no reason to upgrade, and those on 2000 will probably continue to sit there. MS needs to find and add some sort of "must have" feature before people will be willing to jump. From Win98 to WinNT we gained some level of network security. From WinNT to Win2K we gained a lot of stability and more security. From Win2K to WinXP we got built in RDP, and a funny looking GUI; not many people saw these as needed. From WinXP to Winwhatever the hell the call it I just don't see what they are going to add that we want. Better integration with
So that explains why the US has a huge debt!
Na, it's because the US government engages in zero balance budgeting. If a department doesn't spend its entire budget each year, its budget gets cut net year. However, if they overspend their budget (which is quite possible) they get a budget increse next year. So, how would you handle your department's budget if you were in charge of it? Most people I know would spend as much as possible.
The US government really needs to rethink its budgeting practices.
I don't think the world launch is really that big of a problem for Microsoft here. Europe isn't as large of a gaming market as the US or Japan, so it's not a big factor. And with Japan, the only way MS will be short units is if the boat, carrying the one container of XBoxes, sinks. Even then, they could stick someone on a commercial flight with the two new Xboxes in carry-on luggage, for all of their loyal Japanesse customers.
This is 100% hype. They want people to buy an Xbox 360 before the PS3 hits, so that they can have an large install base before competition exists. This "article", and others like it for the PS3 and Revolution (what is it with going in circles this generation?) are just marketing tripe designed to get people excited about a system, when the real important part is the games. Yet, people will fall for it, and it will all happen again next generation. Sad really.
This, as with anything about gaming, comes down to individual tastes. Personally, I though FF7 sucked. Of course, I though every FF game after the first one (US) pretty much blew to some extent. The gameplay was repeditive, the stories unimaginative, and the dialog way too melodramatic.
Plus, the 40+ hours of gameplay usually involved 20+ hours of watching the same spell animations over and over and over again without any way to skip them. And, <insert diety here> forbid you die after watching a long FMV clip, as you would get to sit through it again.
On the other hand God of War and PoP:Sands of Time both had good stories, that weren't drawn out to the breaking point to fill time. The action remained consistently good, without the need to stop and level to beat the next boss. And, the dialog in both didn't feel insulting to my intellegence. Yes, you could beat either in a fairly short amount of time, but the quality of the game was consistenly high. And that is something I appreciate. I'd rather have a 10 hour game that was consistently good than a 90+ hour epic that drags at many points.
Also, like other posters have said, I have a life. I work, attend classes, and try to have some fun which doesn't involve electronic devices. I have neither the time nor inclination to devote that much effort to a game. I need something I can play for a few hours, leave alone for a month, and then pick up and play again without difficulty.
This is all, of course, just my opinion, and every person will view this differently. If you like the RPG epics, then great, buy and play them, but there are many of us that don't care for them, for us God of War, and the Prince of Persia series are perfect.
That said...
Probably the best thing to do is go for "common carrier" status. Basically, you are provideing a transport mechanism for data, nothing more. This has it's pro's and con's.
- Pro
- You get a "get out of liability free" card.
- Con
- You can not control anything that passes over the network. (e.g. porn, racist remarks, profanity). The minute you exercise any control on the network, you suddenly have a "right and responsibility" to police the network.
As long as you don't want any control of the data on your network, you can be in the clear. You'll then have to keep an eye out for other problems though. Such as keeping children from seeing porn.Also, this may not be an option. Even if you do not exercise any control over the data on the network, since it is a LAN the courts might rule that you still have a "right and responsibility" to police the network. As such, stick with layer 2 devices, a layer 3 device would imply the ability to restrict content (e.g. you could filter all traffic on port 445 to kill SMB).
The reason I am using the quotes around "right and responsibility" is that this is the term used in the laws about vicarious and contributory infringement. Basically, one of the criteria for such infringement is that the owner of the venue has a "right and responsibility" to police an area. Again, talk to a lawyer about this. If you can't afford one, get a hold of the EFF, they will probably be willing to give you some direction in this without charge.
The game Sacred had a workable idea. They actually posted in their official forums that you could do LAN play with one CD on as many computers as you wanted. Just install the game on every computer, then start the game with the CD in one computer, once the CD check completes, pass the CD to the next person, repeat. In online play the CD-Key was checked, so this was not possible. I found that I liked that attitude. It accepted the fact that not everyone at a LAN party is going to want to own a copy of a given game, but still allowed them to play. While forceing people to buy a copy for the online portion of the game. Personally, I would think that this would drive sales. After enjoying a game at a LAN party, people might be inclined to buy the game for themselves for the single player portions and/or online play.
Let's be honest, a private LAN party is going to be a hotbed of piracy. And with the tools out there copying CD's and games is easy enough that anyone who attends a LAN party is going to be able to do it. Why spend a ton of effort and money fighting a losing battle? Instead, use it as a marketing tool. If the game allows for LAN play without CD's (e.g. Blizzard's "Spawn Install") you can get a person hooked on a game, without them getting a pirated copy. Which do you think most people will want to do at a LAN party, do a quick and dirty, crippled, install of a game; or, go through the process to circumvent copy protections on a game? If the option is available, most of them will do the crippled install. The rest are a lost cause anyway, they will probably get a pirated copy no matter what you do, so give up on them. But, for those that just want to play the game at the LAN party, you may be able to turn them into a sale. If they like the game enough, they might buy it. Whereas, if they had already pirated the game to play it at the LAN party, they may not bother buying it since they already have it.
Just spent a while over at IGN looking at games on the horizon for the PC, there doesn't seem to be much of a drought in games for the PC. Sure, many of them aren't the kinds I like, but I don't have much trouble finding one or two that look good.
Na, we're playing CS or other such games because they are fun. For some reason there's something enjoyable about shooting at a target controlled by a real person. And, beyond the occasional graphics update and change in weapons, what are they really going to add?
One thing that will keep them separate is the modding community. Take a look at Half-Life, the original game was a mediocre FPS at best, but when a group of people released Counterstrike, the game took off. And this isn't the only game to make sales from the modding community.
Also, a PC is more than a game machine. I have yet to see Word XBox Edition. The PC is, and will stay a general purpose machine. and one of those purposes will be gaming. It might wane for a while, but it will always be there.
It would seem that we are going to have to put up with artcles like the one linked every once in a while. Usually around the time of E3 or the like the console fan boys get on a tear about how PC gaming is dying. Yes, it has declined, but when you go from being the only way to play games at home to one of several choices, you are going to decline in market position. PC gaming will rise and decline just as the consoles do, with the release of "must have" games. The advantage that PC games have is, there is no one manufacturer that can die and take the system with it. If Microsoft goes under the games will move to Linux. If NVidia dies, ATI will get more business. There is no linchpin, whereas each console is forever tied to one company. If Sony gives up on the console market, the Playstation is dead.
To the author of the article, quit stroking your hard-on for thr death of PC gaming, it's not going to happen.