At one time they may have been the cream of the crop, but now first person shooters are a dime a dozen, with vehicles and as many modes of play as you can count.
They were only made famous originally by their great story line, and then by their SDK, but now these features are practically requisite in all games, or better done in separate games such as Single Player: Max Payne 2 or Multi: Battlefield Anything. America's Army is innovative, always being updated, and pretty easy on the eyes which make it on par with most of Half-Life with a kicker of being free. If they got anywhere as much press as these games who's publishers own half the review sites, they would be the most played game.
"Half-Life 2 goes gold today, oh, and America's Army is still free and available for download. The latest major patch was just one month ago."
If there was any life left in the Half-Life brand, they are killing it with Steam and waited far to long to release a sequel. People have moved on and there really isn't much reason to move back.
By the way, did the debit transaction show up on your bank statement?
Yes, I made a point of checking my online statement as soon as I got home both times. I didn't want to cheat anyone, going to buy your groceries should be one thing you can do without buggy software causing problems....people need to eat.
In Connecticut I've been using the automated checkout for about a year and a half. It is very convenient, but it is a computer, in a supermarket. Cashiers use glorified calculators, but the automated checkout is the real deal, a computer that needs the love and care of a sysadmin that the grocery store environment does not provide. A fleet of computerized shopping carts is not what these stores need.
I was in the process of checking out, when I paid with cash, then finished paying with a debit card. No receipt came, I brought this to the attention of the person who attends the 4 automatic checkouts. Well, there was no receipt because there was no record of my transaction, my paying, or the items in my cart ever being scanned or going through the belt. Testing showed that it could create new transaction entries, so it was looking very much like I was trying to steal those ~$70 worth of groceries.
30 minutes later, nothing really resolved, because there was nothing apparently wrong with the machine and no alarms went off as I bagged my groceries that went through the belt, they let me go despite all evidence pointing towards my guilt.
The next time I checked myself out and paid with cash & debit I got no receipt. I didn't say anything, and I don't pay with cash & debit anymore.
Movies are part story, part effects, part acting. No matter what you read on IMDB or in the NYT, movies exist beyond the script.
Games that have extensive stories generally have limited replay value. EX: Max Payne, Beyond Good & Evil. A really good game that brings together story, engine, maps, and all the other things great, takes ten times the effort to make it repayable. A game with limited play-time either has to make up for it or is severely marked down in ratings - see Fable. Despite all its features it is nonetheless a one time through venture.
A book can be timeless, and a movie has almost the same quality. You can read through, or watch, and come back ten years later and it will have a similar impact. In ten years with graphics advancing so fast, the games of today will be forgotten, with even today's classics remade due to cd rot and capitalizing on new platforms and chipsets. I expect to see Total Annihilation 3 in 2015.
Simply, in games, gameplay trumps story. Not every time, but most of the time, and for damn good reason.
Open source is where great ideas can be brought to the masses. Just because someone can parse the code doesn't mean they can cut the copy protection out. Many of the online games now use key verification and credit card activation that very effectivly prevents copying. This system is not compatable with most other application types.
As far as truly destructive copy protection mechanisms, they are no more unsafe than stupid programers. If someone does not take adequate safeguards to protect legitimate consumers, then they deserve to drive customers away, furthermore, it is inevitable that people will be afraid to use applications whose features include destroying pirates data until such practice is widespread.
People are always afraid of change, but as the internet and the public at large slides into the notion that peer to peer pirating is ok, and other forms of pirating are ok, something beyond making more inadequate unenforced laws must be done.
Some of the most potent Sci-Fi high-tech literature heavily incorperated "Black Ice" into most of the security in future settings. Wether that future is to be realized or not is still in question, but at the rate piracy is increasing, drastic measures need to be taken to stem the tide of unchecked, widely accepted piracy.
Data Bombs and similar devices may not be the most effective detterants, but with all the brainpower behind the open source movement, there has to be something that can help closed source projects keep security intact without resorting to mass-lawsuit ventures. Without adequate protection, cracks come out within days, if not hours, and ISO's are released as soon as the CD's hit the market.
For shareware, it's worse in that they are always out in the open to be sniped at any time by someone who wants a full version for free.
It was the fear of the law that kept people from pirating before, but we have a new generation now. It's time to instill a new fear. Data is the commodity, and it should be what is at stake.
After working at an answering service, I would page anywhere between 2-10 doctors a night with emergencys from hospitals or patients with sick babies, women worried about their pregnancys, adults having athsma problems, chipped/painful teeth, or other problems. Some that should go to the ER, some that could of waited till the next day, and others that just really just needed a call back. Doctors cannot give their home telephone number out. Most anyone who thinks they have a medical emergency thinks they should call direct instead of going through "channels." This means doctors use caller ID blockers.
There would periodically be problems with doctors using caller ID blocks being unable to call people back who block those calls, leading to sometimes unimaginable frustration in the middle of a medical emergency. The first time I saw this service, I saw immediatly that it could and probally would be abused, but for doctors who got stuck in that situation, it would be invaluable.
Without the recreational activities that people have come to depend upon, society would collapse under each individuals' stress. We could pour ten times the amount of money from all those things into drugs and it would not make up for the simple pleasures that let people get through the day, and keep the world turning.
Cancer is nothing compared to stress.
In deference to Ebay, the penis enlargement pills were found in the "Everything Else > Weird Stuff > Totally Bizarre" section. I wish my email was catagorized like that.
Gosh I thought that was the next page of the article. Something about cocks and how we never see any female orcs or something.
The whole article was really sad, not something I thought I would see linked to from Slashdot. I almost thought I was reading something from Game Girls until I followed the link and realized they had already done the same article....better.
You just switched from software to hardware. Unless I am mistaken, MS has not jumped into the Hardware/Cellphone/Cable TV/Telephone/Blender/Kitchen Sink buisness.
First, no publisher is going to put out two versions of a 5 disk game because some state legislates a back room violent section. If anything, they would put out two versions and supply the diffrent versions to diffrent areas (ie: no blood version to Germany, California, regular version everywhere else). Without an internet tax, the state will lose money as people buy from EB online.
Second, stores like Walmart, Target, and other wide-variety stores would just stop carrying anything they couldn't show to the public at large.
Third, nobody is going to host a family oriented Medal Of Honor server.
When Pepsi is made and bottled in a diffrent country it tastes diffrent and is priced diffrently. Until someone steps on a family's name brand of cheese, or wine, or whatever hoity toity imported exported food stuffs you choose to be worthy of caring about, people just want to eat good food at reasonable prices.
Months of isolation, I think morale would be an important consideration. They probally have mp3 players and we know they watch DVDs. We send the most expensive equipment on earth, off earth, and have people run it. Happy people are productive people.
Sure they deserve to be compensated, but isn't the whole idea for one side to be the corprate people and the other side be community people, with, like, an SDK?
This infernal bonding only leads to the assumption that we don't need no stinkin SDK, the "best" mod has it, and since DICE will probally pressure DC to move to BF:V (a new DICE game--another 40$), BF1942 gets left behind and the community that fostered this mod and another 40 live mods get left behind.
they would release a goddamn SDK. Almost every suggestion/idea is shot down because of engine limitations. The mods out now are (mostly) skins and minor tweaks at best. An artifical horizion is one of the most widely wanted features, and would be client side and probally optional, but hasn't happened because it wasn't in Vanilla.
Instead, they hire DICE, and will probally direct them to drop support for the BF1942 mod, and put their full attention onto their insiders copy of BF Vietnam, so people will have to BUY the next version of the MOD.
This isn't a good thing, its an evil corprate thing.
Without backwards compability emulators will charge at a stack of xbox roms a mile high. And once there is a decent emulator, Microsoft might as well discontinue games and xboxes; start selling from the iXbox.
Is it just me or is Valve trying to ruin their product with this crap so people will upgrade to whatever comes next? I haven't dusted off my HL cd since a long and painful encounter with steam which ended with what amounted to me deleting the directory because the uninstaller wouldn't work anymore.
I play FPS games, holding down keys to move forward, strafe, crouch, whatnot. I chat every day, reload slashdot incessently, and really activly use the computer. I haven't had to replace my Logitech Navigator Duo's keyboard batteries since I bought it 3/4 a year ago, and the batteries last probally 2 months, maybe less...it's optical and it's always on.
The only trouble I ever got because they were "cordless" was I spilled some coke I was drinking (wouldn't of happened at the computer) and I had to take the keyboard apart and clean and dry everything before the keyboard would put out more than gibberish. Pretty good range.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called a hand glider. Unfortunatly, it cannot be packed into a backpack and deployed after falling 1,000 feet out of a plane.
Kites do not work well as parachutes.
At one time they may have been the cream of the crop, but now first person shooters are a dime a dozen, with vehicles and as many modes of play as you can count.
They were only made famous originally by their great story line, and then by their SDK, but now these features are practically requisite in all games, or better done in separate games such as Single Player: Max Payne 2 or Multi: Battlefield Anything. America's Army is innovative, always being updated, and pretty easy on the eyes which make it on par with most of Half-Life with a kicker of being free. If they got anywhere as much press as these games who's publishers own half the review sites, they would be the most played game.
"Half-Life 2 goes gold today, oh, and America's Army is still free and available for download. The latest major patch was just one month ago."
If there was any life left in the Half-Life brand, they are killing it with Steam and waited far to long to release a sequel. People have moved on and there really isn't much reason to move back.
By the way, did the debit transaction show up on your bank statement?
Yes, I made a point of checking my online statement as soon as I got home both times. I didn't want to cheat anyone, going to buy your groceries should be one thing you can do without buggy software causing problems....people need to eat.
In Connecticut I've been using the automated checkout for about a year and a half. It is very convenient, but it is a computer, in a supermarket. Cashiers use glorified calculators, but the automated checkout is the real deal, a computer that needs the love and care of a sysadmin that the grocery store environment does not provide. A fleet of computerized shopping carts is not what these stores need.
I was in the process of checking out, when I paid with cash, then finished paying with a debit card. No receipt came, I brought this to the attention of the person who attends the 4 automatic checkouts. Well, there was no receipt because there was no record of my transaction, my paying, or the items in my cart ever being scanned or going through the belt. Testing showed that it could create new transaction entries, so it was looking very much like I was trying to steal those ~$70 worth of groceries.
30 minutes later, nothing really resolved, because there was nothing apparently wrong with the machine and no alarms went off as I bagged my groceries that went through the belt, they let me go despite all evidence pointing towards my guilt.
The next time I checked myself out and paid with cash & debit I got no receipt. I didn't say anything, and I don't pay with cash & debit anymore.
Movies are part story, part effects, part acting. No matter what you read on IMDB or in the NYT, movies exist beyond the script.
Games that have extensive stories generally have limited replay value. EX: Max Payne, Beyond Good & Evil. A really good game that brings together story, engine, maps, and all the other things great, takes ten times the effort to make it repayable. A game with limited play-time either has to make up for it or is severely marked down in ratings - see Fable. Despite all its features it is nonetheless a one time through venture.
A book can be timeless, and a movie has almost the same quality. You can read through, or watch, and come back ten years later and it will have a similar impact. In ten years with graphics advancing so fast, the games of today will be forgotten, with even today's classics remade due to cd rot and capitalizing on new platforms and chipsets. I expect to see Total Annihilation 3 in 2015.
Simply, in games, gameplay trumps story. Not every time, but most of the time, and for damn good reason.
Why not marry the UN and the telephone? That would make about as much sense. The United Nations is a government entity, the Internet is a service.
Open source is where great ideas can be brought to the masses. Just because someone can parse the code doesn't mean they can cut the copy protection out. Many of the online games now use key verification and credit card activation that very effectivly prevents copying. This system is not compatable with most other application types.
As far as truly destructive copy protection mechanisms, they are no more unsafe than stupid programers. If someone does not take adequate safeguards to protect legitimate consumers, then they deserve to drive customers away, furthermore, it is inevitable that people will be afraid to use applications whose features include destroying pirates data until such practice is widespread.
People are always afraid of change, but as the internet and the public at large slides into the notion that peer to peer pirating is ok, and other forms of pirating are ok, something beyond making more inadequate unenforced laws must be done.
Some of the most potent Sci-Fi high-tech literature heavily incorperated "Black Ice" into most of the security in future settings. Wether that future is to be realized or not is still in question, but at the rate piracy is increasing, drastic measures need to be taken to stem the tide of unchecked, widely accepted piracy.
Data Bombs and similar devices may not be the most effective detterants, but with all the brainpower behind the open source movement, there has to be something that can help closed source projects keep security intact without resorting to mass-lawsuit ventures. Without adequate protection, cracks come out within days, if not hours, and ISO's are released as soon as the CD's hit the market.
For shareware, it's worse in that they are always out in the open to be sniped at any time by someone who wants a full version for free.
It was the fear of the law that kept people from pirating before, but we have a new generation now. It's time to instill a new fear. Data is the commodity, and it should be what is at stake.
After working at an answering service, I would page anywhere between 2-10 doctors a night with emergencys from hospitals or patients with sick babies, women worried about their pregnancys, adults having athsma problems, chipped/painful teeth, or other problems. Some that should go to the ER, some that could of waited till the next day, and others that just really just needed a call back. Doctors cannot give their home telephone number out. Most anyone who thinks they have a medical emergency thinks they should call direct instead of going through "channels." This means doctors use caller ID blockers.
There would periodically be problems with doctors using caller ID blocks being unable to call people back who block those calls, leading to sometimes unimaginable frustration in the middle of a medical emergency. The first time I saw this service, I saw immediatly that it could and probally would be abused, but for doctors who got stuck in that situation, it would be invaluable.
You mean like mod chips?
Wait until they develop a vaccine against caffine.
Without the recreational activities that people have come to depend upon, society would collapse under each individuals' stress. We could pour ten times the amount of money from all those things into drugs and it would not make up for the simple pleasures that let people get through the day, and keep the world turning. Cancer is nothing compared to stress.
In deference to Ebay, the penis enlargement pills were found in the "Everything Else > Weird Stuff > Totally Bizarre" section. I wish my email was catagorized like that.
Gosh I thought that was the next page of the article. Something about cocks and how we never see any female orcs or something.
The whole article was really sad, not something I thought I would see linked to from Slashdot. I almost thought I was reading something from Game Girls until I followed the link and realized they had already done the same article....better.
You just switched from software to hardware. Unless I am mistaken, MS has not jumped into the Hardware/Cellphone/Cable TV/Telephone/Blender/Kitchen Sink buisness.
That's Walmart.
First, no publisher is going to put out two versions of a 5 disk game because some state legislates a back room violent section. If anything, they would put out two versions and supply the diffrent versions to diffrent areas (ie: no blood version to Germany, California, regular version everywhere else). Without an internet tax, the state will lose money as people buy from EB online.
Second, stores like Walmart, Target, and other wide-variety stores would just stop carrying anything they couldn't show to the public at large.
Third, nobody is going to host a family oriented Medal Of Honor server.
Frivlious claims drop by 80%?
When Pepsi is made and bottled in a diffrent country it tastes diffrent and is priced diffrently. Until someone steps on a family's name brand of cheese, or wine, or whatever hoity toity imported exported food stuffs you choose to be worthy of caring about, people just want to eat good food at reasonable prices.
Months of isolation, I think morale would be an important consideration. They probally have mp3 players and we know they watch DVDs. We send the most expensive equipment on earth, off earth, and have people run it. Happy people are productive people.
Mi2g
Second link leads to this page which shows what a crock this (company/report) is.
I for one welcome our new DC/DICE overlords.
Sure they deserve to be compensated, but isn't the whole idea for one side to be the corprate people and the other side be community people, with, like, an SDK?
This infernal bonding only leads to the assumption that we don't need no stinkin SDK, the "best" mod has it, and since DICE will probally pressure DC to move to BF:V (a new DICE game--another 40$), BF1942 gets left behind and the community that fostered this mod and another 40 live mods get left behind.
they would release a goddamn SDK. Almost every suggestion/idea is shot down because of engine limitations. The mods out now are (mostly) skins and minor tweaks at best.
An artifical horizion is one of the most widely wanted features, and would be client side and probally optional, but hasn't happened because it wasn't in Vanilla.
Instead, they hire DICE, and will probally direct them to drop support for the BF1942 mod, and put their full attention onto their insiders copy of BF Vietnam, so people will have to BUY the next version of the MOD.
This isn't a good thing, its an evil corprate thing.
Without backwards compability emulators will charge at a stack of xbox roms a mile high. And once there is a decent emulator, Microsoft might as well discontinue games and xboxes; start selling from the iXbox.
Is it just me or is Valve trying to ruin their product with this crap so people will upgrade to whatever comes next? I haven't dusted off my HL cd since a long and painful encounter with steam which ended with what amounted to me deleting the directory because the uninstaller wouldn't work anymore.
I play FPS games, holding down keys to move forward, strafe, crouch, whatnot. I chat every day, reload slashdot incessently, and really activly use the computer. I haven't had to replace my Logitech Navigator Duo's keyboard batteries since I bought it 3/4 a year ago, and the batteries last probally 2 months, maybe less...it's optical and it's always on.
The only trouble I ever got because they were "cordless" was I spilled some coke I was drinking (wouldn't of happened at the computer) and I had to take the keyboard apart and clean and dry everything before the keyboard would put out more than gibberish. Pretty good range.