A lot of games share very similar features. Any chat-based game could be construed as Second Life, especially if it involves creating anything. Any motion sensing technology could be construed as a ripoff of the Wii. Similarly, any game with a gun that sticks out in front of you could be called a Doom ripoff, and any game that's a platformer could be a Mario ripoff.
FEAR is a lot better than Doom, in my opinion. It copied Doom. If the PS3 beat out the Wii at its own game in the future (and it very well could)..who can you bitch at then?
"You guys suck for ripping off the mousetrap and making it better."
Get the young children used to being oppressed, their shoulders used to being looked over. If that's all they remember they won't try to fight for anything better.
I missed the good old days when schools wouldn't try to flat out control you. It wasn't until middle school when they decided we couldn't wear 'gang colors' (in the middle of suburbia, where most kids couldn't name the name of any gang in the world). Anything red or blue was banned and grounds for suspension.
That lasted all of a week, because some people organized a mass walk-out. All of the students simply didn't return from lunch. We all stood in the courtyard. They threatened, yelled, etc. Some kids cracked and went back inside. But most everyone was outside. The police basically said, "Nothing we can do here." It sent a very strong message to the decision makers who then actually issued an apology for being dumb.
All you have to do man, is call Microsoft and ask their permission to reinstall the software that you fucking paid them for. They'll check your hardware too, to make sure they have a deal with the manufacturer. If they don't, well, you get to pay for your software again.
I would have bought a copy of Windows XP by now, but I would rather pirate it than ask their permission every time I reinstall it or change my BIOS settings. I don't care how it works.
Hypothetical situation. You and a friend are emailing each other.
Your friend's ISP software parses your email address and runs it through a spam filter. Ok, not spam, it goes to his inbox. And it goes on a list of valid email to be shipped off to anyone who wants it.
Seeing as how it would be VERY difficult to track this back to the ISP, it'd be a bit of revenue for the ISP. All they'd have to do is make sure their spam filters are at least decent and as long as not too many people notice, they won't lose many customers over the amount of spam coming in at all.
So even if you only use your email address to trusted friends, you cannot trust every man in the middle or parsing router on the way.
Go ahead and sue the mall for not protecting your children.
Your ISP for transmitting the email.
Dell for supplying you with the computer.
Finally, Ikea for supplying the desk/chair that your daughter sat on to correspond with the predator. Without them, she probably wouldn't have made contact and talked to the predator.
All of this could have probably been prevented by proper education/supervision. But its easier to sue than it is to raise a kid.
Look at the Brits. I wouldn't be surprised if people were being forced to have wireless cams hammered into their foreheads, with the promise of them only being recording when they're out in public.
Because there's little threat of revolution when the government controls all the good weapons.
Imagine you're 7. You're at the local park. A bunch of boys are playing football. One team, unfairly, picks all the older, and obviously bigger boys. Your team gets the hypochondriac, the boy with one eye, the boy in a wheelchair, and the boy with one arm. Now go ahead and go against this well-put-together team. No matter what you do, you're going to get fucking smeared all over the field without outside support.
Tell ya what. I'll let the government tax me for virutal assets that I pay real-world-currency for. Like USD, Yen, or Euros. But in return, they HAVE to build more internet infrastrcutre that's open to any provider to use. None of this 'food for the poor' crap..wheel tax is for improving roads and travel..internet tax should be dedicated to making my life online better.
World of Warcraft is the best yet. Its a mix of quests and grinding. You can grind if you want, or quest if you want. Grinding gets you loot, more money, etc. Questing is a little slower, but full of content and things to read, see, do, etc.
Instance running over and over is kind of dumb in my opinion, but with the game based around equipment so much..it leaves people little choice.
People that dedicate more time to the game should be more powerful than people that play less. A better idea, for WoW, is to make world drops truly drop off of anything in the game. For example, that Glowing Brighwood Staff might drop off of a level 20 enemy and make you rich, or give you a nice staff to look forward to.
The problem is that the best equipment is ONLY accessible to people that put hours and hours and hours and hours of play into the game. Its impossible to get most of the stuff if you aren't in an excellent guild. They could fix this by leaving the current loot tables, but giving more common enemies chances to drop rare equipment. For example if all level 60 creatures had a slight chance of dropping some rare dragon drop. Granted the chance may be pretty low...
It'd just create more waste. 99% of the people would either not see them and throw them away with the box, or leave them to rot for all eternity in a drawer in the shed or guest room. A better idea is to have everything marked with a part number that you could just order or find out what it is and buy.
There was almost no chance at getting one of these. The site was completely and utterly unresponsive between 1:56PM EST and 2:09PM EST. When a page loaded at 2:09PM, it was sold out.
It would have been different if at 2:00:23PM EST it said it was sold out, but not. It might as well not have been on there at all, because getting that deal was pretty much impossible. I wonder how many of the winners were on Amazon's network?
Microsoft's ultimate goal is to have code in their products that allows it to intelligently deal with anything Microsoft might see as a threat. For example, if it saw evidence that it was in a virtual machine (ex The Matrix) it could freak out and retaliate. Retaliation could be anything from an error dialog to a grind-to-a-halt command that can only be undone if the user upgrades.
Think about it. It would be like having a Microsoft board member sitting inside of your computer! The best part is that he can phone home whenever he wishes, to be updated.
Windows 98 was easy to pirate and hack.
Windows XP was a little more difficult to pirate, but about the same to hack. The protections in place caused a large annoyance to those that bought the software legally. And that was BEFORE the WGA shit.
Windows Vista will be more difficult to pirate/hack, but I GUARANTEE that it will be. Of course, the legal end user will suffer the most damage, as usual.
I fucking loathe the day that mod chips become necessary to actually be in control of your own computer.
They should test these in Britain first. They seem to like being watched.
That way when a camera sees someone flip off someone else, or walk out of a shop a little too quickly, his summons can be printed and mailed within the hour! Saves them the trouble of having to feel a tiny bit guilty for flipping someone off, or wonder if he looked like a thief when walking out of the shop because he was about to be late for work.
Imagine if every stupid thing you done had to be accounted for. Not just to the higher ups in whatever religion you subscribe to, but to the authorities.
"Well, Mr. Anderson, we have you on camera here speeding on a three-mile stretch of wide open road on this sunny day. You were going three over. How do you justify that? The law is the law, and those that break it are criminals. You kissed your girlfriend in public the other day, too. You used tongue. We've got her in the next room interrogating her, so you better tell us everything. Did you two then go on to have sex in public? How is your sex life? Have you been seeing other people? Has this happened before? Also the magazine you bought the other day had an advert fall on the ground when you were walking. We'll add that to your total charges today. Your total will be 400 pounds."
Mr. Anderson sighs, because he knows that it was already deducted from his bank account. The machine prints a receipt and he goes on his way.
Fast forward 10 years, to the civil war.
The photo-recog is used to hunt down people and their families that were suspected of being in the resistance. Those people are tried and shot as being traitors. There's no trial, no chance for appeals, nothing. Just a cigarette, blindfold, and 7.62mm bullet to the back of the head.
Sounds like a good idea, eh? It'll make sure that we're in complete control of the government, at all times. You have nothing to hide, I hope.
Lets say you're a college student. Your parents buy you some kind of new comp hardware, or your comp dies and you MUST buy new hardware. Your comp came with Vista.
Now it has happened before, and you replaced the hardware. Much to the dismay of your bank account. Then Vista drops the bomb. It says you must pay for it again.
My guess is that you'd get pretty familiar with p2p or torrents and just download a cracked version. If the software for like $100 and you had to only buy it once, fine. With it being 200+ and having to buy it multiple times, well, that's just retarded.
It'll be hard to find a PS3 under $900 thanks to all the eBay entrepenuers that are camping out at stores right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see the high end ones go for over $1500.
Happened with both the 360, and the PS2. Didn't happen with the Gamecube because they didn't cut the initial allotment by 75% before it launched! That should be illegal.
Its like saying, "Ok. We're going to release a million of these systems on launch day."
Then, "Ok, we're having problems. We're only going to release 500,000."
"More problems. Only 250,000."
First they make you think that there'll be a PS3 for everyone that has money and wants one. Then you'll say, "I should get a PS3. It'll be hassle-free and easy to get." Thats when they pull the old "you have to camp outside of a store for three weeks to have a shot at getting one" routine and you can either forget about it until three months later, or forget about it altogether (and lose your deposit).
This release is a (thinly) veiled attempt at wedging DRM securely into the OS.
Look at the pretty graphics..look at the DX10..look at the networking stuff..
*exaggeration* Oh, you can't play music or DVDs anymore without paying us for a two hour licence. No refunds on the software, either. If you violate it, we'll format your hard drive for you. Immediately and without warning. And all connected drives.
Paid vacations are a wonderful thing. Pay for most of your PS3 and camp out too!
I had originally planned to take one of my many PTO days to retrieve/play the PS3, but then I remembered assholes like this ensuring that there's no way in hell I'd get one.
Even if the preorders hadn't run out 30 seconds after the doors opened for stores that were taking them, and I somehow managed to get one.
Imagine if you had an antibody that bound only to cells infected with HIV, and that antibody was carrying a small tiny amount of alpha-emitter material. Antibody latches onto cell, cell dies, antibody finds a new cell. Could keep the CD4+ count up for quite a while at that rate.
A pedophile is someone that's turned on by someone that is not sexually developed. Have you seen 16 year olds these days? D cup breasts, miniskirts, hips, long legs, etc. What about that says 'not developed'?
A few years after puberty, thanks to evolution, is designed to be the 'knock me up' phase. Everything is extra perky and smooth. This lasts until about 25. After that, aging sets in. Happens with everyone, some sooner than others.
Minor does cover 16 and 17 year olds too, here in the US.
There are certain rights that cannot be signed away. If anyone ever caught someone from Microsoft going through the files on their PC, there would be hell to pay. It would come up in court, "But your honor, we have the RIGHT and LEGAL AUTHORITY to browse Mrs. Hilton's personal files." and would soon be shot down as soon as it hit the judge that any system that used Vista would be compromised to the bone by Microsoft. Even corporate ones.
Imagine buying a TV only to have it transmit live feed of you to advertising companys, who pay the television manufacturer for the service. Or a car that reports metrics at all times, to the highest bidder. Imagine having a PC in which you were afraid to do anything 'grey' because Microsoft, your ISP, the government, and your neighbors are all real interested in that MP3 or cd keygen you just downloaded.
I read something the other day saying that a lot of people are infected with the same virus that causes genital herpes, but its in an inactive stage and will probably never activate, because their body keeps it in check.
Something like 40% of the population has it, whereas only like 10% of people that have it get the traditional symptoms and pass it on.
Slashdot Mirror
Who cares?
A lot of games share very similar features. Any chat-based game could be construed as Second Life, especially if it involves creating anything. Any motion sensing technology could be construed as a ripoff of the Wii. Similarly, any game with a gun that sticks out in front of you could be called a Doom ripoff, and any game that's a platformer could be a Mario ripoff.
FEAR is a lot better than Doom, in my opinion. It copied Doom. If the PS3 beat out the Wii at its own game in the future (and it very well could)..who can you bitch at then?
"You guys suck for ripping off the mousetrap and making it better."
Should be obvious whats going on.
Get the young children used to being oppressed, their shoulders used to being looked over. If that's all they remember they won't try to fight for anything better.
I missed the good old days when schools wouldn't try to flat out control you. It wasn't until middle school when they decided we couldn't wear 'gang colors' (in the middle of suburbia, where most kids couldn't name the name of any gang in the world). Anything red or blue was banned and grounds for suspension.
That lasted all of a week, because some people organized a mass walk-out. All of the students simply didn't return from lunch. We all stood in the courtyard. They threatened, yelled, etc. Some kids cracked and went back inside. But most everyone was outside. The police basically said, "Nothing we can do here." It sent a very strong message to the decision makers who then actually issued an apology for being dumb.
All you have to do man, is call Microsoft and ask their permission to reinstall the software that you fucking paid them for. They'll check your hardware too, to make sure they have a deal with the manufacturer. If they don't, well, you get to pay for your software again.
I would have bought a copy of Windows XP by now, but I would rather pirate it than ask their permission every time I reinstall it or change my BIOS settings. I don't care how it works.
Especially for something as important as the OS.
Hypothetical situation. You and a friend are emailing each other.
Your friend's ISP software parses your email address and runs it through a spam filter. Ok, not spam, it goes to his inbox. And it goes on a list of valid email to be shipped off to anyone who wants it.
Seeing as how it would be VERY difficult to track this back to the ISP, it'd be a bit of revenue for the ISP. All they'd have to do is make sure their spam filters are at least decent and as long as not too many people notice, they won't lose many customers over the amount of spam coming in at all.
So even if you only use your email address to trusted friends, you cannot trust every man in the middle or parsing router on the way.
EVE Online is as close as you can get to Privateer Online.
Go ahead and sue the mall for not protecting your children.
Your ISP for transmitting the email.
Dell for supplying you with the computer.
Finally, Ikea for supplying the desk/chair that your daughter sat on to correspond with the predator. Without them, she probably wouldn't have made contact and talked to the predator.
All of this could have probably been prevented by proper education/supervision. But its easier to sue than it is to raise a kid.
That's the best analogy I've ever heard for the Internet. Every word of it is so true.
The internet is nothing short of a miracle to begin with, one we should marvel at.
Look at the Brits. I wouldn't be surprised if people were being forced to have wireless cams hammered into their foreheads, with the promise of them only being recording when they're out in public.
Because there's little threat of revolution when the government controls all the good weapons.
Imagine you're 7. You're at the local park. A bunch of boys are playing football. One team, unfairly, picks all the older, and obviously bigger boys. Your team gets the hypochondriac, the boy with one eye, the boy in a wheelchair, and the boy with one arm. Now go ahead and go against this well-put-together team. No matter what you do, you're going to get fucking smeared all over the field without outside support.
Tell ya what. I'll let the government tax me for virutal assets that I pay real-world-currency for. Like USD, Yen, or Euros. But in return, they HAVE to build more internet infrastrcutre that's open to any provider to use. None of this 'food for the poor' crap..wheel tax is for improving roads and travel..internet tax should be dedicated to making my life online better.
Doesn't sound like Sony's problem to me. What if it did?
"Way to go Sony..I can't even run this game because it wants 1080i or 720p only!"
There's no easy way to do this.
World of Warcraft is the best yet. Its a mix of quests and grinding. You can grind if you want, or quest if you want. Grinding gets you loot, more money, etc. Questing is a little slower, but full of content and things to read, see, do, etc.
Instance running over and over is kind of dumb in my opinion, but with the game based around equipment so much..it leaves people little choice.
People that dedicate more time to the game should be more powerful than people that play less. A better idea, for WoW, is to make world drops truly drop off of anything in the game. For example, that Glowing Brighwood Staff might drop off of a level 20 enemy and make you rich, or give you a nice staff to look forward to.
The problem is that the best equipment is ONLY accessible to people that put hours and hours and hours and hours of play into the game. Its impossible to get most of the stuff if you aren't in an excellent guild. They could fix this by leaving the current loot tables, but giving more common enemies chances to drop rare equipment. For example if all level 60 creatures had a slight chance of dropping some rare dragon drop. Granted the chance may be pretty low...
It'd just create more waste. 99% of the people would either not see them and throw them away with the box, or leave them to rot for all eternity in a drawer in the shed or guest room. A better idea is to have everything marked with a part number that you could just order or find out what it is and buy.
There was almost no chance at getting one of these. The site was completely and utterly unresponsive between 1:56PM EST and 2:09PM EST. When a page loaded at 2:09PM, it was sold out.
It would have been different if at 2:00:23PM EST it said it was sold out, but not. It might as well not have been on there at all, because getting that deal was pretty much impossible. I wonder how many of the winners were on Amazon's network?
Microsoft's ultimate goal is to have code in their products that allows it to intelligently deal with anything Microsoft might see as a threat. For example, if it saw evidence that it was in a virtual machine (ex The Matrix) it could freak out and retaliate. Retaliation could be anything from an error dialog to a grind-to-a-halt command that can only be undone if the user upgrades.
Think about it. It would be like having a Microsoft board member sitting inside of your computer! The best part is that he can phone home whenever he wishes, to be updated.
Windows 98 was easy to pirate and hack.
Windows XP was a little more difficult to pirate, but about the same to hack. The protections in place caused a large annoyance to those that bought the software legally. And that was BEFORE the WGA shit.
Windows Vista will be more difficult to pirate/hack, but I GUARANTEE that it will be. Of course, the legal end user will suffer the most damage, as usual.
I fucking loathe the day that mod chips become necessary to actually be in control of your own computer.
They should test these in Britain first. They seem to like being watched.
That way when a camera sees someone flip off someone else, or walk out of a shop a little too quickly, his summons can be printed and mailed within the hour! Saves them the trouble of having to feel a tiny bit guilty for flipping someone off, or wonder if he looked like a thief when walking out of the shop because he was about to be late for work.
Imagine if every stupid thing you done had to be accounted for. Not just to the higher ups in whatever religion you subscribe to, but to the authorities.
"Well, Mr. Anderson, we have you on camera here speeding on a three-mile stretch of wide open road on this sunny day. You were going three over. How do you justify that? The law is the law, and those that break it are criminals. You kissed your girlfriend in public the other day, too. You used tongue. We've got her in the next room interrogating her, so you better tell us everything. Did you two then go on to have sex in public? How is your sex life? Have you been seeing other people? Has this happened before? Also the magazine you bought the other day had an advert fall on the ground when you were walking. We'll add that to your total charges today. Your total will be 400 pounds."
Mr. Anderson sighs, because he knows that it was already deducted from his bank account. The machine prints a receipt and he goes on his way.
Fast forward 10 years, to the civil war.
The photo-recog is used to hunt down people and their families that were suspected of being in the resistance. Those people are tried and shot as being traitors. There's no trial, no chance for appeals, nothing. Just a cigarette, blindfold, and 7.62mm bullet to the back of the head.
Sounds like a good idea, eh? It'll make sure that we're in complete control of the government, at all times. You have nothing to hide, I hope.
I don't live too far from science.gov.
I know this because its in big letters on the side of the building: Home of science.gov!
Lets say you're a college student. Your parents buy you some kind of new comp hardware, or your comp dies and you MUST buy new hardware. Your comp came with Vista.
Now it has happened before, and you replaced the hardware. Much to the dismay of your bank account. Then Vista drops the bomb. It says you must pay for it again.
My guess is that you'd get pretty familiar with p2p or torrents and just download a cracked version. If the software for like $100 and you had to only buy it once, fine. With it being 200+ and having to buy it multiple times, well, that's just retarded.
It'll be hard to find a PS3 under $900 thanks to all the eBay entrepenuers that are camping out at stores right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see the high end ones go for over $1500.
Happened with both the 360, and the PS2. Didn't happen with the Gamecube because they didn't cut the initial allotment by 75% before it launched! That should be illegal.
Its like saying, "Ok. We're going to release a million of these systems on launch day."
Then, "Ok, we're having problems. We're only going to release 500,000."
"More problems. Only 250,000."
First they make you think that there'll be a PS3 for everyone that has money and wants one. Then you'll say, "I should get a PS3. It'll be hassle-free and easy to get."
Thats when they pull the old "you have to camp outside of a store for three weeks to have a shot at getting one" routine and you can either forget about it until three months later, or forget about it altogether (and lose your deposit).
This release is a (thinly) veiled attempt at wedging DRM securely into the OS.
Look at the pretty graphics..look at the DX10..look at the networking stuff..
*exaggeration* Oh, you can't play music or DVDs anymore without paying us for a two hour licence. No refunds on the software, either. If you violate it, we'll format your hard drive for you. Immediately and without warning. And all connected drives.
Paid vacations are a wonderful thing. Pay for most of your PS3 and camp out too!
I had originally planned to take one of my many PTO days to retrieve/play the PS3, but then I remembered assholes like this ensuring that there's no way in hell I'd get one.
Even if the preorders hadn't run out 30 seconds after the doors opened for stores that were taking them, and I somehow managed to get one.
Something seems fishy here.
And its not the corporate sushi bar, or koi pond.
Or that nasty intern on the fourth floor.
You'd be surprised.
Imagine if you had an antibody that bound only to cells infected with HIV, and that antibody was carrying a small tiny amount of alpha-emitter material. Antibody latches onto cell, cell dies, antibody finds a new cell. Could keep the CD4+ count up for quite a while at that rate.
A pedophile is someone that's turned on by someone that is not sexually developed. Have you seen 16 year olds these days? D cup breasts, miniskirts, hips, long legs, etc. What about that says 'not developed'?
A few years after puberty, thanks to evolution, is designed to be the 'knock me up' phase. Everything is extra perky and smooth. This lasts until about 25. After that, aging sets in. Happens with everyone, some sooner than others.
Minor does cover 16 and 17 year olds too, here in the US.
"which gives Microsoft the right to snoop on you"
There are certain rights that cannot be signed away. If anyone ever caught someone from Microsoft going through the files on their PC, there would be hell to pay. It would come up in court, "But your honor, we have the RIGHT and LEGAL AUTHORITY to browse Mrs. Hilton's personal files." and would soon be shot down as soon as it hit the judge that any system that used Vista would be compromised to the bone by Microsoft. Even corporate ones.
Imagine buying a TV only to have it transmit live feed of you to advertising companys, who pay the television manufacturer for the service. Or a car that reports metrics at all times, to the highest bidder. Imagine having a PC in which you were afraid to do anything 'grey' because Microsoft, your ISP, the government, and your neighbors are all real interested in that MP3 or cd keygen you just downloaded.
I read something the other day saying that a lot of people are infected with the same virus that causes genital herpes, but its in an inactive stage and will probably never activate, because their body keeps it in check.
Something like 40% of the population has it, whereas only like 10% of people that have it get the traditional symptoms and pass it on.
I bet a lot of virii are like this.