1.Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic (great little game, any game with a similar style and gameplay would be great IMO). Unlikely that there would ever be a direct sequal but a game with the same gameplay style (but done with full modern 3D graphics) could certainly be done. No clue who actually owns the rights to this.
2.Transport Tycoon 2. Picture something like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 where you can actually get a drivers (or passengers) eye view from any vehicle on your network. If they do it, they gotta keep the candy level, that was fun:) I dont see this happening anytime soon given where Chris Sawyer is. And where Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is (dead with no sign of any future relases at all).
3.Space Quest . Basicly a game that takes all the good gameplay stuff from Space Quest 1 and 2 (including the fact that for 99% of the game every action you took was either a correct action to take or ended your game, there were no places where you could take a particular action, get further in the game and find that the earlier action was not the right one and that you couldnt go back and redo it) and makes it 3D. Probobly unlikely to happen, the days of "type what you want to do" adventure games are long gone.
4.C&C Renegade. My favorite FPS. Given that EA owns the rights and is doing nothing with them, its unlikely any official renegade related items will be appearing anytime soon. But Red Alert: A Path Beyond from http://www.apathbeyond.com/ its a pretty good substitute for Renegade 2.
and 5.Ghostbusters. Not strictly a sequal per se but I would LOVE to see a ghostbusters game done on a modern 3D engine (using things like pixel and vertex shaders to make the ghosts look cool). Would have to have all the things from the movies though (like the ecto-1 as a cadilac ambulence and like the classic Ray Parker Jr theme song). Probobly wont happen given that Sony (who own ghostbusters) seem to be doing nothing with the IP.
I also aggree with several in that article like Diablo III (picture a Diablo game done in Oblivion style first person, now THAT would KICK ASS)
Given that current XBOX 360's make replacing the DVD drive firmware to allow copied games much harder, I dont see how piracy is going to be that much of a problem. Piracy was huge on the first XBOX but that was because microsoft made some mistakes (such as using weak cryptographic algorithims, not knowing all the details about the CPU they were using, not taking into account the fact that it is possible to read data from a HyperTransport bus, not enforcing checksums on all game data and saved games etc). But microsoft has learned from their mistakes and has probobly made the XBOX 360 more secure.
Another reason why the media corps want more DRM in more places is to further cement the position of the **AA as the "gatekeeper" of the worlds media. A notable recent example is the new rules they want that mean that all streaming radio stations (regardless of what content they play, RIAA or otherwise) must have DRM.
What codecs are these guys going to release that arent: A.Supported by ffmpeg/libavcodec/whatever else through open source implementations B.Supported already through binaries on linux (such as the RealPlayer binary codec libraries) or C.Not used enough for people to actually care about support
Presumably anyone playing RIAA music is either A.Playing it without permission (in which case its a copyright violation and the RIAA can sue) or B.Playing it with a license (in which case the RIAA can change the license to mandate DRM).
What this is really aimed at (like all the paperwork requirements for online streaming radio stations the RIAA rammed through) is making it too hard for online streamers (particularly those that play music not owned by the RIAA) to continue to operate.
Find a country that: 1.Has a stable government that wont be overthrown anytime soon (preferably democratically elected but a stable totalitarian government such as that in china would work too) 2.Is not friendly/does not need to be friendly with the US and WTO and would not cave in to WTO/US pressure (unlike the russians) 3.Does not respect western copyright law (or at the very least is not going to listen to what the big media corps want) 4.Has no other laws that would make the site or its content illegal (e.g. censorship laws) and 5.Has (or can be set up with) sufficiant infrastructure (internet links, power etc) And then set up shop there?
Or what about a ship in international waters? Would western copyright law apply to such a ship?
I dont know of any cellphone where it is possible to run any kind of unsigned code except for JAVA applets. There are a few cases where devices that are really PDAs with a GSM chipset bolted on where this is possible though I think. (presumably the code for the GSM stack runs in a protected environment and cant be messed with)
Making a phone that is difficult to hack is easy. Basicly the phone software is digitally signed with a private key only Apple has. Also, any software updates are signed too and verified before they are loaded and run. Unless you can physically desolder or decap the chips and get direct access to the piece of memory containing the public key for the phone in order to replace it with a new one (or disable the checks), it cant be hacked.
I believe Motorola have some kind of system like this on all their non linux phones where only software signed by Motorola will load and run.
Basicly require anyone who wants to patent something to demonstrate their patent. This could mean a working model. A prototype. A mockup. A set of blueprints as to how one would build a device incorporating the patented technology.
In the case of a drug patent, you would be required to demonstrate plans on how the drug (or the active ingredients) could be produced. In the case of a gene sequence patent (such as a GM crop) you would be required to demonstrate either a working (i.e. growing in a lab) implementation of the gene sequence OR steps to create such an organisim. For a software patent you would be required to demonstrate the patent (pseudocode, real code in some language, a flowchart, whatever).
One big problem with the patent system is people who think things up and get patents on them without actually using those patents.
Another thing that I would like to see is "enforce it or loose it" for patents in the same way as for trademarks. That way, patent trolls cant follow the usual "lets go after the little fish and after we get some legal backing for our patent, we can go after the big guys" problem.
Its simple. Every machine the OEM ships with WildTangent or the time limited mcafee or norton trials (the ones that expire much faster than the retail boxed copies) or "ReallyCoolSoftware 1.3 old light out of date crap trial expires in a week edition" or whatever means money to the OEM from the purvayers of this crap (and yes I consider both Norton and Mcafee crap for shipping these crappy time limited versions much like I consider some printer manufacturers crap for shipping these crappy ink cartridges that have half the ink of normal cartridges)
The solution then is for Microsoft to tell OEMs (who have to do what MS says if they want the great pricing) that they cannot ship: A.Any product considered Spyware (the definition microsoft uses when they generate the MS anti-spyware lists would be a good place to start) B.Anything that is time limited,feature limited etc and requires extra purchases to unlock functionality that would be available if you bought the program from a store. (so WOW is ok because the subscription money has to be paid even for a store bought copy) or C.Anything that is a "demo", "lite", "trial" etc version or is otherwise limited compared to what you would get if you bought the same software in the shops.
That would stop the OEMs from installing most of the nasty crapware whilst still allowing them to install software like Firefox or other benificial software. They can even install full versions of anything they like.
Assuming you stick to the sealed roads there is no issue. Highways like the Great Eastern Highway, the Eyre Highway and the Barrier Highway are trafficable to anything that can handle normal sealed city roads.
Just make sure you have enough fuel for the trip, its a long way between gas stations out in the bush (although with these guys getting energy from the sun, that wont be an issue for them)
Net Neutrality (and laws gauranteeing same) are not about preventing you (or anyone else) from applying QOS so that VoIP traffic gets priority over large file downloads.
What it is about is preventing ISPs from deliberatly applying bandwidth restrictions to certain network protocols/ports, or source/destination addresses (such as "video traffic comming from google video is going to be bandwidth limited whilst video traffic from msn.com or cnn.com or trailers.mpaa.com is not") Some ISPs already do this by e.g. limiting traffic over BitTorrent to 64kbps or 128kbps or something even though you have a 1024kbps internet link (if people are downloading stuff over BitTorrent and sucking up too much bandwidth, make them pay for what they use)
Google Checkout was never intended to be a direct PayPal clone (AFAIK).
Google will never launch any product that directly competes with anything EBAY owns or does. Why? Because EBAY is (judging by the number of sponsored links and such) the largest advertiser on google by a large margin.
Firstly, all my PCI slots are full with my PCI WiFi networking card and other cards. Secondly, if I upgrade to a new motherboard with, say, a new intel Core CPU (or whatever makes sense to upgrade to from a 3.4GHz P4) I would be buying one with PCI-E and/or AGP and not PCI.
I hereby commit to buying a graphics card meeting the following specifications: 1.It must be as good or better in all areas (including shader performance) as my current GeForce FX 5700LE. 2.It must be available with PCI Express and/or AGP since if I upgrade my system I will need PCI Express but right now I need AGP. 3.It must have open source drivers for linux that provide good 3D performance (including the abillity to use all features of the card such as programmable shaders) 4.It must provide windows XP drivers (I have no plans to touch vista on this machine) with support for Direct3D and OpenGL which provide performance, functionality and framerates on a given game/3D software that is at least as good as the NVIDIA drivers I have now on my FX7300LE and 5.It must be available to buy from the manufacturer right now.
If it has a BIOS burned on the card that runs as x86 code, thats perfectly fine as long as its also available in an x86-64 flavor or can otherwise run when the system is run in 64 bit mode.
Does such a card exist? How much money would be required to get such a card developed from scratch? How much money would be required to convince ATI or NVIDIA to release the specifications and/or code required such that one of their current cards could meet this criteria? (I know that ATI used to release specs but the cards supported by the open drivers are no longer sold so point 5 isnt met)
For anyone who suggests the open graphics project, that project doesnt meet any of the stated requirements (3D performance is not going to be anywhere near as good as my FX5700LE, last I heard they arent doing AGP or PCI-E, only PCI and if they can come up with a fully functional windows OpenGL ICD without getting in trouble with Microsoft and/or whoever owns OpenGL and the ICD stuff these days, I will be highly surprised)
Can anyone show any proof that microsoft applications are using API calls inside core windows DLLs that microsoft hasnt documented? There ARE APIs in the core windows DLLs that are undocumented. But those are for use by other parts of windows and are not used by MS application products (I havent seen any use by microsoft products)
Actually, most of the nice microsoft stuff (such as e.g. the look and feel in Visual Studio 2005 or in office 2007) is done as seperate code in special dlls (mso.dll in the case of various version of microsoft office for example).
The way to be sure would be to take every executable file (.exe,.dll etc) included with a given visual studio version, look at the dlls it loads and functions it imports and identify if it imports a funtion from an os dll that isnt documented anywhere on MSDN.
Do the arab countries pissed off at the way arabs are treated ban those games? The germans (a supposedly democratic society) ban or heavily restrict games where germans are being killed. (such as all the Wolfenstien games)
See that little icon on the toolbar that looks like an eraser. Click it and then drag it over the area you want to remove (the credit card number or whatever else). The information is gone and there is no way to bring it back.
Ebay will only shut down auctions under the following circumstances (based on what I have read and observed) 1.When ordered to by a court of law or by a law enforcement official or when there is the threat of legal action and their lawyers aggree the legal action has a chance of winning. 2.When the auction is illegal (e.g. guns) 3.When ordered to by a rights holder (e.g. someone selling fake handbags or OEM copies of windows) generally because the rights holder has said "shut it down or we will go to court" 4.Auctions for junk items (for example when they shut down an auction for a piece of bread that looks like jesus christ or something wierd like that) and 5.Any auction where not shutting it down will cost them more than shutting it down.
They dont shut down auctions where people are committing fraud (such as the people who sell a large number of small items to build up their feedback and then sell some expensive stolen goods or something else that isnt what they claim it is) because those auctions dont actually hurt ebay and also if they start shutting down such auctions it makes them potentially more liable for fraudulent auctions that they dont shut down. (at least I believe so, IANAL)
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1.Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic (great little game, any game with a similar style and gameplay would be great IMO). Unlikely that there would ever be a direct sequal but a game with the same gameplay style (but done with full modern 3D graphics) could certainly be done. No clue who actually owns the rights to this.
:)
2.Transport Tycoon 2. Picture something like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 where you can actually get a drivers (or passengers) eye view from any vehicle on your network.
If they do it, they gotta keep the candy level, that was fun
I dont see this happening anytime soon given where Chris Sawyer is. And where Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is (dead with no sign of any future relases at all).
3.Space Quest . Basicly a game that takes all the good gameplay stuff from Space Quest 1 and 2 (including the fact that for 99% of the game every action you took was either a correct action to take or ended your game, there were no places where you could take a particular action, get further in the game and find that the earlier action was not the right one and that you couldnt go back and redo it) and makes it 3D.
Probobly unlikely to happen, the days of "type what you want to do" adventure games are long gone.
4.C&C Renegade. My favorite FPS. Given that EA owns the rights and is doing nothing with them, its unlikely any official renegade related items will be appearing anytime soon. But Red Alert: A Path Beyond from http://www.apathbeyond.com/ its a pretty good substitute for Renegade 2.
and 5.Ghostbusters. Not strictly a sequal per se but I would LOVE to see a ghostbusters game done on a modern 3D engine (using things like pixel and vertex shaders to make the ghosts look cool). Would have to have all the things from the movies though (like the ecto-1 as a cadilac ambulence and like the classic Ray Parker Jr theme song). Probobly wont happen given that Sony (who own ghostbusters) seem to be doing nothing with the IP.
I also aggree with several in that article like Diablo III (picture a Diablo game done in Oblivion style first person, now THAT would KICK ASS)
Given that current XBOX 360's make replacing the DVD drive firmware to allow copied games much harder, I dont see how piracy is going to be that much of a problem.
Piracy was huge on the first XBOX but that was because microsoft made some mistakes (such as using weak cryptographic algorithims, not knowing all the details about the CPU they were using, not taking into account the fact that it is possible to read data from a HyperTransport bus, not enforcing checksums on all game data and saved games etc). But microsoft has learned from their mistakes and has probobly made the XBOX 360 more secure.
Another reason why the media corps want more DRM in more places is to further cement the position of the **AA as the "gatekeeper" of the worlds media.
A notable recent example is the new rules they want that mean that all streaming radio stations (regardless of what content they play, RIAA or otherwise) must have DRM.
What codecs are these guys going to release that arent:
A.Supported by ffmpeg/libavcodec/whatever else through open source implementations
B.Supported already through binaries on linux (such as the RealPlayer binary codec libraries)
or C.Not used enough for people to actually care about support
Presumably anyone playing RIAA music is either A.Playing it without permission (in which case its a copyright violation and the RIAA can sue) or B.Playing it with a license (in which case the RIAA can change the license to mandate DRM).
What this is really aimed at (like all the paperwork requirements for online streaming radio stations the RIAA rammed through) is making it too hard for online streamers (particularly those that play music not owned by the RIAA) to continue to operate.
Find a country that:
1.Has a stable government that wont be overthrown anytime soon (preferably democratically elected but a stable totalitarian government such as that in china would work too)
2.Is not friendly/does not need to be friendly with the US and WTO and would not cave in to WTO/US pressure (unlike the russians)
3.Does not respect western copyright law (or at the very least is not going to listen to what the big media corps want)
4.Has no other laws that would make the site or its content illegal (e.g. censorship laws)
and 5.Has (or can be set up with) sufficiant infrastructure (internet links, power etc)
And then set up shop there?
Or what about a ship in international waters? Would western copyright law apply to such a ship?
I dont know of any cellphone where it is possible to run any kind of unsigned code except for JAVA applets.
There are a few cases where devices that are really PDAs with a GSM chipset bolted on where this is possible though I think. (presumably the code for the GSM stack runs in a protected environment and cant be messed with)
Making a phone that is difficult to hack is easy.
Basicly the phone software is digitally signed with a private key only Apple has. Also, any software updates are signed too and verified before they are loaded and run. Unless you can physically desolder or decap the chips and get direct access to the piece of memory containing the public key for the phone in order to replace it with a new one (or disable the checks), it cant be hacked.
I believe Motorola have some kind of system like this on all their non linux phones where only software signed by Motorola will load and run.
There is also OpenMoko.
Basicly require anyone who wants to patent something to demonstrate their patent. This could mean a working model. A prototype. A mockup. A set of blueprints as to how one would build a device incorporating the patented technology.
In the case of a drug patent, you would be required to demonstrate plans on how the drug (or the active ingredients) could be produced.
In the case of a gene sequence patent (such as a GM crop) you would be required to demonstrate either a working (i.e. growing in a lab) implementation of the gene sequence OR steps to create such an organisim. For a software patent you would be required to demonstrate the patent (pseudocode, real code in some language, a flowchart, whatever).
One big problem with the patent system is people who think things up and get patents on them without actually using those patents.
Another thing that I would like to see is "enforce it or loose it" for patents in the same way as for trademarks. That way, patent trolls cant follow the usual "lets go after the little fish and after we get some legal backing for our patent, we can go after the big guys" problem.
Its simple. Every machine the OEM ships with WildTangent or the time limited mcafee or norton trials (the ones that expire much faster than the retail boxed copies) or "ReallyCoolSoftware 1.3 old light out of date crap trial expires in a week edition" or whatever means money to the OEM from the purvayers of this crap (and yes I consider both Norton and Mcafee crap for shipping these crappy time limited versions much like I consider some printer manufacturers crap for shipping these crappy ink cartridges that have half the ink of normal cartridges)
The solution then is for Microsoft to tell OEMs (who have to do what MS says if they want the great pricing) that they cannot ship:
A.Any product considered Spyware (the definition microsoft uses when they generate the MS anti-spyware lists would be a good place to start)
B.Anything that is time limited,feature limited etc and requires extra purchases to unlock functionality that would be available if you bought the program from a store. (so WOW is ok because the subscription money has to be paid even for a store bought copy)
or C.Anything that is a "demo", "lite", "trial" etc version or is otherwise limited compared to what you would get if you bought the same software in the shops.
That would stop the OEMs from installing most of the nasty crapware whilst still allowing them to install software like Firefox or other benificial software. They can even install full versions of anything they like.
Having lived in Western Australia for over 20 years, I can confirm that yes, it DOES exist :)
Assuming you stick to the sealed roads there is no issue. Highways like the Great Eastern Highway, the Eyre Highway and the Barrier Highway are trafficable to anything that can handle normal sealed city roads.
Just make sure you have enough fuel for the trip, its a long way between gas stations out in the bush (although with these guys getting energy from the sun, that wont be an issue for them)
Net Neutrality (and laws gauranteeing same) are not about preventing you (or anyone else) from applying QOS so that VoIP traffic gets priority over large file downloads.
What it is about is preventing ISPs from deliberatly applying bandwidth restrictions to certain network protocols/ports, or source/destination addresses (such as "video traffic comming from google video is going to be bandwidth limited whilst video traffic from msn.com or cnn.com or trailers.mpaa.com is not")
Some ISPs already do this by e.g. limiting traffic over BitTorrent to 64kbps or 128kbps or something even though you have a 1024kbps internet link (if people are downloading stuff over BitTorrent and sucking up too much bandwidth, make them pay for what they use)
Google Checkout was never intended to be a direct PayPal clone (AFAIK).
Google will never launch any product that directly competes with anything EBAY owns or does. Why? Because EBAY is (judging by the number of sponsored links and such) the largest advertiser on google by a large margin.
Firstly, all my PCI slots are full with my PCI WiFi networking card and other cards. Secondly, if I upgrade to a new motherboard with, say, a new intel Core CPU (or whatever makes sense to upgrade to from a 3.4GHz P4) I would be buying one with PCI-E and/or AGP and not PCI.
I hereby commit to buying a graphics card meeting the following specifications:
1.It must be as good or better in all areas (including shader performance) as my current GeForce FX 5700LE.
2.It must be available with PCI Express and/or AGP since if I upgrade my system I will need PCI Express but right now I need AGP.
3.It must have open source drivers for linux that provide good 3D performance (including the abillity to use all features of the card such as programmable shaders)
4.It must provide windows XP drivers (I have no plans to touch vista on this machine) with support for Direct3D and OpenGL which provide performance, functionality and framerates on a given game/3D software that is at least as good as the NVIDIA drivers I have now on my FX7300LE
and 5.It must be available to buy from the manufacturer right now.
If it has a BIOS burned on the card that runs as x86 code, thats perfectly fine as long as its also available in an x86-64 flavor or can otherwise run when the system is run in 64 bit mode.
Does such a card exist?
How much money would be required to get such a card developed from scratch?
How much money would be required to convince ATI or NVIDIA to release the specifications and/or code required such that one of their current cards could meet this criteria? (I know that ATI used to release specs but the cards supported by the open drivers are no longer sold so point 5 isnt met)
For anyone who suggests the open graphics project, that project doesnt meet any of the stated requirements (3D performance is not going to be anywhere near as good as my FX5700LE, last I heard they arent doing AGP or PCI-E, only PCI and if they can come up with a fully functional windows OpenGL ICD without getting in trouble with Microsoft and/or whoever owns OpenGL and the ICD stuff these days, I will be highly surprised)
They arent actually making any code available, just a license (presumably it says "as long as you follow the rules, we wont sue you")
Can anyone show any proof that microsoft applications are using API calls inside core windows DLLs that microsoft hasnt documented?
There ARE APIs in the core windows DLLs that are undocumented. But those are for use by other parts of windows and are not used by MS application products (I havent seen any use by microsoft products)
Actually, most of the nice microsoft stuff (such as e.g. the look and feel in Visual Studio 2005 or in office 2007) is done as seperate code in special dlls (mso.dll in the case of various version of microsoft office for example).
.dll etc) included with a given visual studio version, look at the dlls it loads and functions it imports and identify if it imports a funtion from an os dll that isnt documented anywhere on MSDN.
The way to be sure would be to take every executable file (.exe,
Try and buy Wolfenstein 3D in germany.
Or the version of Doom II with the hidden bonus Wolfenstein 3D levels.
Do the arab countries pissed off at the way arabs are treated ban those games?
The germans (a supposedly democratic society) ban or heavily restrict games where germans are being killed. (such as all the Wolfenstien games)
See that little icon on the toolbar that looks like an eraser. Click it and then drag it over the area you want to remove (the credit card number or whatever else). The information is gone and there is no way to bring it back.
Ebay will only shut down auctions under the following circumstances (based on what I have read and observed)
1.When ordered to by a court of law or by a law enforcement official or when there is the threat of legal action and their lawyers aggree the legal action has a chance of winning.
2.When the auction is illegal (e.g. guns)
3.When ordered to by a rights holder (e.g. someone selling fake handbags or OEM copies of windows) generally because the rights holder has said "shut it down or we will go to court"
4.Auctions for junk items (for example when they shut down an auction for a piece of bread that looks like jesus christ or something wierd like that)
and 5.Any auction where not shutting it down will cost them more than shutting it down.
They dont shut down auctions where people are committing fraud (such as the people who sell a large number of small items to build up their feedback and then sell some expensive stolen goods or something else that isnt what they claim it is) because those auctions dont actually hurt ebay and also if they start shutting down such auctions it makes them potentially more liable for fraudulent auctions that they dont shut down. (at least I believe so, IANAL)