I would personally like to thank you captain obvious. Without you pointing that out, I don't know if any of us would ever know what he was talking about. Once again, I'd just like to say, thank you, we are forever indebted to you.
Uh...Not for nothing, but I dd all of my discs for backup. This gets all of those little imperfections along with the disc too. If they're going to put "fake scratches," or whatever you might want to call it, on the disc then how is this thwarting making an image? I dd my stuff because for one thing, I lose CDs like it's nobody's business, but I also hate having to put a disc in the drive everytime I want to play it. Suppose I want to play UT2003, then after that I want to delay homework even more and play some Vice City. Ok, now I finished my homework, I'm going to play some Neverwinter Nights, but I can't find my CD and don't feel like searching my entire room for it. No problem, use Daemon tools to keep each of those iso's mounted on the machine at all times. Or, better yet, when I fill up my hard drive I look online for a no-cd "patch" for the game. Problem is soloved...not for the copy-protection companies though. How is my iso going to degrade? It's a raw exact image of the CD, how is that ever going to degrade? Maybe I don't fully understand the technology being used, but I can't imagine this being very effective. Any time I've seen games online, be it Kazaa or whatever, they're mostly isos, bin/cues, img/ccd, or some other cd image. How exactly could this make an impact on piracy, are they just talking about people archiving the files and directories contained on the CD? This seems like a waste of effort on their part.
I'm not sure about more bullet time in general, but you are now able to move much faster during bullet time. If you watch the in-game movies, you can see an example of this, but to explain it in words, think of it in terms of the matrix. They're just slowing down time for themselves, so they can move in "real time" but everything else is going incredibly slow around them. Looking at the in-game movies, it looks like you can move just as fast in bullettime, so while you might not get more bullet time, you'll be able to get more out of it. You also gain more speed when you kill multiple enemies, so clearing out a room during bullettime will speed your actions up, why still slowing your enemies down. Having seen these movies, I can say the effect is incredibly impressive and they've done an excellent job with it overall.
Seriously, I considered downloading it since I like to toy with 3d programming, and I'd love to see how the "pros" do it, but then I realized that if I were to be caught, anything I might ever want to release myself could be considered infringement in some skewed sense. So I steered clear of it even though the educational benefits would be amazing. I've looked at the quake source code, but it didn't help me much, and by now it's horribly outdated, so seeing some real, working and current, source code to something like this would be beyond incredible for me to pick apart and analyze.
I wish VALVe could open their engine up, but I definitly understand the possibility for cheating, and their obvious right to make a profit on what so far looks incredible. I won't be buying the game for the same reason as you, no Linux client, but I know for a fact they'll do well. I hope they take the time to rework portions of the code that could allow cheating since that's probably the single worst thing that can happen to a game.
Honestly though, I'm really interested in what this will do to their overall release date, since it was already delayed for reasons unknown. Or maybe the reasons are known now, since the dates were around when it was supposed to go gold...hmmmm, makes you think.
Good luck to VALVe, take this opportunity to tighten your code and fix steam, I'm tired of hearing my Windows friends complaining about it:).
I'm about to buy a gamecube simply because it's $100 and I definitely couldn't justify it before, seeing as how I would play maybe five or six games at the most. I can't justify dropping $50 everytime a game comes out for one, especially when that game might be buggy, and unplayable. But, there are games that I've played for the Gamecube that I really like and think it's worth it, so $100 to play those games isn't that much of a burden. I still can't justify dropping that much money on an Xbox since most Xbox games I'd play end up on the pc anyway, and at least on the pc I can get patches if they're needed (I'm not about to drop another $xx a month/year to be able to do this through Xbox live)
I think you're mainly right about people people not really caring about 3rd party games as much for the Gamecube, except I can't say I've noticed much, if any, difference in quality between the Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube. Though it cold easily have been the different TVs I was playing it on, but Soul Caliber 2 looked smoother playing on the Gamecube than it did on the Xbox. It probably was just the TV or something, but even still, assuming the actual quality is equal if you standardize a testing environment, the price difference is more than enough to pickup a copy of the game for the Gamecube. Then there's that whole controller thing. I haven't used an Xbox controller that I've liked yet, and I've used what I think are the three main ones. The Gamecube one is just much easier to work with. Can't really argue about the PS2 controllers though.
While this definitely isn't a death to the Xbox, when I go to the store and see $99 for the system that can play the games I can't play on my PC, and $150 for the system that can play most of the games I can play on my PC, plus hundreds more I could care less about, the choice isn't exactly hard to make. Microsoft has been used to being on top and being able to dictate prices for their products because there typically hasn't been too much commercial competition. They've made their software the standard and they're only just starting to lose that position. Console gaming is completely different than selling operating systems and word processors since their main market knows they have a choice and you don't have to learn how to use a Gamecube, because it's just not really any different from any other console. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that they can't just dictate market price when they have competition unless their competition is in on it too. They're going to start losing market share even more if they keep up with their current mentality. As it stands, I can't find many things that the Xbox offers as unique. It had Halo, but guess what my friend is going out to buy later today for his PC?
Consumers will throw money at what they want, but most consumers who either don't know the difference, or just don't care, are going to pick up the cheaper of the two, that's common sense. MS is either going to have to make a real reason for owning their system, or start being competitive, if they want to do well.
Uh, who said the prison provided the system or the game? Prisoners can own things, though I am of the belief that prison should be a punishment, not a recreational break away from the rest of society. I'm not saying prisoners should be beaten and stuff, but if you let their punishment be sitting around watching tv and playing games while talking to others around them...shit, I know a lot of people who would sign up for that.
Honestly this makes sense to me and should've been done a while ago, except the limit should be to all games, not just games where violence or crime is a good thing. I can see recreation via chess or reading or something like that...but come on, it's a prison, not a college dorm. Bar them from video games, television, etc. and make their removal from society a little less entertaining at least.
Half Life 2 will run about as well as Half Life runs, on Linux (not talking hardware here), meaning you likely need Transgaming's Winex thing, maybe the free version will suffice, but not likely. And though HL installed on my system, Half Life's wonderful cdkey crap prevented me from ever playing it. Since steam is "available for Linux" in server form, with any luck a client can be hacked out, if not by valve, maybe by the community along with some openess from valve.
If you're holding WinXP on a machine just to play HL2, you might want to keep that partition because anyone I knew that got HL to run under Linux said it ran like ass, which is dissappointing on a 2ghz. Personally I'm holding out on HL2 for a month or two at least hoping for either decent evidence it'll run on current hardware without an issue under Linux, or valve does something good for Linux, like make the game play in it themselves. Doom 3 has got my money on release day, at least ID cares about my choosen platform.
Must admit I'm not an expert on HL's engine, is it openGL or directx based? OGL at least WILL run through some, if needed, ugly hacks though...we'll see what there is to work with eventually I guess...Game looks good, it'd be a shame if I can't play it.
Hey, they had that one hit...what was it...oh, right, Daikatana! What a great game...wonder whatever happend to Ion Storm?
Oh how I wish I never bought that game. It provided me with about an hour of fun, except that's when I realized what I was having wasn't fun, in fact, what I was having was "not fun."
They had that other game though, Tomb Raider? Oh, right, you're talking about games that don't suck...let's see...Anachronox? Well, that sucked too, but it was kinda cool wasn't it? Maybe not.
They have had some decent ones though, like Deus Ex, the Hitman games, and there was that whole Final Fantasy VII thing, so don't knock them entirely. It's not their fault they have a tendency to publish crappy games every now and then...they do a good one every so often, just to make sure we still take them seriously.
Clear evidence that SCO is the one ripping off other's IP, not the other way around!
Let me elaborate. As can clearly be seen here, the line "The SCO crew aint down wit that eye for an eye bullshit. You take an eye, I'll take your motherfuckin head." is clearly just an obfuscated version of MC Hawking's, All My Shootings be Drivebys: "Don't fuck with the Hawkman, 'cause the Hawkman ain't down with that eye for an eye bullshit. Fuck that! You take an eye and I'll take your motherfucking head!".
I believe it's clear now, that UNIX belongs to Mr. S. Hawking, aka MC Hawking, and not the SCO group. Well, at least that logic makes more sense than some of the stuff SCO has tried to pull....
Ok, dude, seriously, step outside for a while. 35 hours a week!? I enjoy playing games immensly, but damn dude! That's 5 hours a day every day 365 days a year!
Ok, but aside from that, I'm arguing for your general point, but also against what you actually posted. First off, the original poster is way off base, and I think I've seen him particularly making the same outrageous comments repeatedly (I didn't check though). It's not about rewards for killing, it's essentially simulation. It's a fantasy outlet for a lot of people
Games do not give kids the tools to kill. Neglect, humiliation, and familiarity with violence in real life give kids the tools to kill. No amount of counter strike, doom, quake, etc. is going to make me knowledgable enough to pick up an automatic rifle and blast people. The fact is that in this particular case, these kids had plentiful access to guns, they were familiar with how to fire them, and had a lot of experience with them. I'm not saying guns cause violence, that's about as silly (maybe slightly less) as saying video games cause violence. Look, if kids are neglected, abused, humiliated, ridiculed, looked down upon, and otherwise made to feel worthless about themselves and everything around them, then obviously they aren't going to hold life too highly.
Everyone is so ready to jump to point the blame, that we miss the fact that these kids were depressed, suicidal, angry as hell, and they just didn't give a damn about anything. Their parents obviously failed to raise them in such a way that they would value life. The school system failed in that these kids were continually ridiculed, and the school didn't prevent it. The kids had mental disorders causing them to think it was a good, and just, idea to go into the school and kill people that humiliated them, and others they felt were likely the same way. It's vengence plain and simple. The kids were reported racists on top of that. I'm sorry, but hatred doesn't just crop up, it's a learned trait.
I think you would have a hard time arguing that a culture that glorifies war, vengence, and has a long history of hatred isn't bound to raise some blood-thirsty, vengeful, hateful people. That aside, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that if the kids didn't know how to use the weapon it wouldn't have happend so easily. Kids shouldn't have guns. If that's what it has to come down to, I'm all for it. If a 12 year old can't go hunting legally with his father in the name of less youth shootings, I'm all for it.
All of this comes down to curbing a problem. There is no way to eliminate gun violence completely. There is no way to pin point which kids are going to snap and kill their school, shoot trucks on the highway, or plan out elaborate terrorist style massacres. But if you have a group of kids who have shown signs of mental illness, who are constantly harassed by their peers, or neglected by their parents or community, then you probably have an idea who to try to help instead of further shun. No single thing will fix the problem, no single thing is to blame, individuals are responsible for individual actions, but they're also impacted by their environment.
As far as video games in the military...ummm, the military has better ways to "desensitize" it's troops, if that's what you want to call it. Put a group of people in a scenario where if they hesitate on pulling the trigger they may be dead in an instant, and they're going to pull that trigger as many times as it takes to make sure the threat is eliminated. The military doesn't need video games to desensitize people, they just need to put them in a life or death situation, and the desire to live, at whatever costs, will prevail.
Sadly stuff like this seems to have to happen before people realize there might be a problem with the way our society functions. It takes tragedy to make us realize we're screwing up, and to come up with ways to fix the problem. But that's an entirely different topic.
Death in games. Surely this is just making our children depressed because they can never do anything right and they're bound to turn out just like their father, lazy good-for-nothing piece of crap, never try to do anything because they might get killed any second. What we need more of is games where no matter what you do you win. This teaches our kids that they can do anything, and that they're special. I don't want someone, or something, else punishing my kid, it's my job to lock them in the closet for hours and tell them they're going to hell and will never amount to anything.
But to be serious for a minute or two, if you're going to have a "save when you want" feature, it should be like in GTA. You've gotta not be in the middle of a mission, and go out of your way to do a save. You shouldn't be able to save every 2 seconds. This takes a lot of the fun out of the game. At least with the GTA style saves you can die or fail in a mission, reload right before that mission and try again. There is still a punishment factor involved, whatever you might gain on your way to the mission, or after you finish it, if you die in between your next save, you've gotta weigh the costs against the benefits. Sure you might have just made $4000, but you just lost $100 in fees, and $10000 in all your guns and ammo. You might be better off repeating the mission, but then again, maybe that mission was a pain in the ass and you'll make the money back in 10 minutes anyway.
Another, in my opinion, good save game/punishment style is in Uplink. You can fail, and you can get completely shutdown if you do it enough times, that's easy. If you get busted you might get a game over, or you might get a fine, and you might get a demotion and only be able to earn less until you've proven yourself again. Also, the "save" feature isn't really offered in the traditional context. I haven't really seen a way to go back and undo something. If you get busted and you get a game over, that's it, you can't reload from your last startup. That account is locked, and you're basically SOL. This offers a nice incentive to not fail and to do well. Boring as the game might be, it's holding my interest fairly well and I feel compelled to evaluate possible risks very thouroughly before I just do something.
Just my one cent (hey, being unemployed means doing more with less).
Which one sounds the most difficult to pick up on? Golf, baseball or so-called "professional gaming?"
I don't know, but today I turned on my TV and was flipping through the channels when suddenly I saw professional poker being played on TV. There were commentators, and everything. It was nuts watching too, it completely blew me away to watch hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands every few minutes. If someone finds poker interesting enough to put on TV, then I'd hope pro gaming would get a chance. I watched poker for about 20 minutes, out of sheer amazement that something like that was on TV, but if something as boring as watching a group of guys playing cards can hold that many people's attention, why couldn't watching someone's avatar run around and kill 5 of his opponents armed solely with a knife?
And come on, golf is about chasing a tiny white ball around outside...if you want to keep track of the damned thing so much, why not stop hitting it so hard? Golf is the eptitome of boring in my opinion, I'd much rather watch someone blow up their oppenent than try to hit a ball the least amount of times. And how is it harder to get into gaming than baseball/golf/etc.? Have you seen how much golf equipment costs? It's an upperclass game for people with nothing better to do with their time, for the most part. Sure one could argue that a $1500 PC to play games on is expensive, but a PC isn't just for playing games, it's got a number of purposes not related to gaming. You don't need an expensive PC to be good at a game either, just as you can argue that better equipment in anything could reflect on your abilities. Find me another useful use for a baseball glove or a golf club and I'll give you some sort of prize.
On top of that, there's plenty of pointless "sports" on tv, like fishing, bowling, pool, curling, hunting, etc. I enjoy fishing, playing pool, and all that, but I can't stand watching it. Some people do enjoy watching it, though that's beyond my comprehension. People really good at fishing can win millions in tournaments, same with bowling, or pool, though I'm not sure about curling (it is an olympic sport afterall) or hunting. So why can't someone really good at clicking a mouse at the right time make thousands from it a year? No, there's not a lot of physical skill required, but most of the people who make money bowling or fishing are more out of shape than me, and people still like watching it for some reason.
I think that if, just maybe, gaming were "officiated" properly and the games were interesting (watching someone play Quake3 isn't all that interesting, but if a game or two were created for the specific purpose...) you'd probably get a decent amount of viewers. Probably the same kind of people who think watching battlebots on TV is great, and dare I say it, people who like "professional wrestling" or some other such nonsense. Maybe if these "professional gamers" had some kind of interface to the game other than a mouse/keyboard, like a VR gun to aim, a floor that sensed physical movement/direction/speed, and stuff like that, more people would find it interesting. Or maybe I'm completely wrong and it's just something that will never catch on in any form.
Gaming has become an acceptable form of entertainment though, jocks along side geeks can enjoy playing the same game, the uncool stigma has been mostly lifted. Just as there are plenty of people who hate watching golf, I'm sure there's plenty of people who would hate watching a professional deathmatch. We'll never really know until it either fades away completely or catches on big.
Until then, these "professional gamers" should quit their bitching that they're not making enough money. I'm sure there's plenty of people who wish their salary were based on their frag count, it's just not realistic right now to expect that. These people should be happy they're getting any money at all for doing it, as I'm sure the pioneers in baseball/basketball/etc. were. You're playing a game, if it's not enough that you're having fun while making some cash, maybe you should give it up.
The device in question wouldn't be designed to jam anti-theft stuff. They have no right to search you, if a cop does search your car after you deny them, they are violating your rights. If their reason was "he denied us, he must have something to hide" then they're violating that whole innocent until proven guilty thing. Airport security is an entirely different matter. By going in an airport you are consenting to a search. Stores must have you sign a consent form (like at Costco/BJ's/Sam's Club) to search your stuff when you leave. It's in their membership agreement thing, that's consent. I can't say I have personal experience, but I've heard of people that have gone into a Fry's and refused who they called "the door nazi" to check their stuff. This is completely legal and the store can't do anything about it. Knowing your rights doesn't mean you have something to hide, it's just insurance against getting screwed.
Case in point: My roommate this past year had been arrested for alcohol possesion (he's 19). The alcohol was in his car trunk, out of view. He wasn't pulled over for DUI, but for a busted tail light. The cop asked to search his car and he refused. The cop searched it anyway. The case was thrown out, my roommate cleared of all charges, and the cop was suspended. This is an example of how the system can fail, but it's an example of how the system works and the extent of your rights in the US.
Addiction is a disease and should be treated as such. The people who are addicted to Everquest are, as you said, addicts. I'm not suggesting a 12 step program for Everquest, though I'm sure there must be one, but to say that this child died because of Everquest is just stupid. The child died because of neglect, it's a horrible situation, but it happens. There are bad parents out there, you don't fill out an application to be a parent, in a lot of cases it just takes enough alcohol and an insistent guy. Did anyone take into account that the mother was irresponsible enough to get pregnant at approximately 17 years old and that she's just not a responsible adult yet? I'm guessing no one has brought that up. There are certainly deeper issues than Everquest addiction here....
Hmmm...$15 seems a fair price for a kid that spells computer "computar."
Asking your customers how much they want to pay you only works if you're fixing a friend's computer...I know plenty of places that would say "oh hell, I could've done that, here's 30 bucks," except they couldn't have done it, and you worked 5 hours. Being upfront about your rate is always a good idea, but especially when you add in "depending on what I actually have to do, I charge $XX an hour"
I charged $18 an hour at a place I stayed at for 80 hours, and $20 an hour for places I worked for a day or less. Through some small scale advertising in the news paper, usually just saying "computer systems upgraded, maintained, repaired," and a phone number I got a number of jobs with this rate. I don't have any certifications, nor can I afford them, but seeing as how the grocery store wouldn't hire me to push carts at minimum wage, I think I did fairly well for myself. Don't forget that if you make enough you've gotta file your tax stuff properly or the gov will hunt you down and break your knees.
A lot of people think that either no one is willing to hire a high school/freshmen college student to work on their computers, or that charging something like $20 an hour at that age is too much. Well, it's not true. At $20 an hour, you're damn cheap labor as far as IT goes. If the company can't afford that, then they're certaintly not going to hire a "professional." I charged a total of $1500 to a small firm, to do all kinds of stuff in a 3 week period, they were not only happy that they finally got their network running properly, but that they got such a good deal on decent computer work. The guy before me was charging them $80 to plug in cables and tell win98 machines to login at an NT server, they threw him out after about 8 hours since he screwed it up and ripped them off. I worked harder and longer at a quarter the price, but the work I got this summer gave me experience in something I've never done before, and enough money to pay the tuition bills for the next year, so it was a good deal for me and the company. If he was charging so much to cover insurance costs, he kind of screwed himself over in that respect. I don't have insurance, I just have clients sign a contract outlining what I'm actually doing, and that I'm only liable for what I've done. In summary, if their hard drive crashes and they lose all their data, tough luck, not my fault. If the hard drive I installed improperly fails, I replace the hard drive, but they're SOL if they didn't make backups like I outlined they woud in the contract. This covers my ass adequetly without the hefty insurance costs. Just make sure you take precautions before you open that case up and you'll be fine.
Something else to watch out for that I'll just touch upon briefly is to make sure you have no liability over software you end up installing on their computer. MANY times I've run into people that want me to install the same copy of Windows XP Pro on 10 different workstations, and do the same with that copy of Office XP their friend burned for them, etc. etc. If you install the software on their machine, you've gotta make sure you're not reasponsible if it's illegal. Whether you actually do what they want and install that copy of XP on 80 different computers or if you tell them "sorry, you're going to have to pay the $16000 license fees to do that," you gotta make sure you're absolved from any "illegal" stuff. Note, this is also a good way to get a company to pay you if they don't want to for whatever reason: "I know you have 79 hot copies of XP pro running in your office, I'm sure the BSA would love to hear that..." usually get's them to cut you a check right then;).
If you get in trouble for saying 'No', it will not be because of what you said or didn't say in your interview.
If you get in trouble for saying "No" to unreasonable requests, maybe it's time to find a new job. If you can't do something you have to flat-out say it can't be done, and why. If you can't do something under a clear conscience, then you have to tell them no, and why you can't do it.
The crappy economy forced me to essentially become an IT contractor, which, let me assure you, beats the hell out of "would you like fries with that?" I worked at small organizations that had a max of 2 servers and maybe 10 workstations, all running a version of Windows. The longest I had stayed in one place was 3 weeks, and that was due to numerous problems left by the IT guy they recently fired. At several points in time, I was told to make all the administrator level passwords the name of the company because that was easier, and that I should do the same on the server, which holds all their client billing information, basically everything important. They also wanted the server accessible from the outside easily, so they wanted me to install a remote desktop server on this ancient NT server. When I started there, I basically told them they were wide open to an attack and to secure the computers with the name of the company as the password is asking for problems. This wasn't what they hired me for, but I could not, in good conscience, leave things the way they were, and they were glad to pay me to fix the problems they didn't know they had.
There were also several things they wanted fixed that I just could not fix. They wanted me to fix printing problems their custom software was having, and make it stop constantly crashing. Not having the source code, and being a not-too-great programmer anyway, I could not fix coding problems and told them flat-out, "There's nothing I can do to fix that problem, I can tell you why it's not working, but there's not a thing I can do about custom software." They understood this and contacted the guy who wrote it, end of problem for me and the company.
Many times (let's be realistic, 99% of the time) people requesting different IT related things have no idea what they're talking about or how to use what they're requesting should you tell them they can have what they want. In my scenario I suppose I had it easy at a couple organizations since they were contractors too, and basically understood that when you don't know how to do something, you pay someone that does. It took several days to get them to accept that they'd have to remember 8 different characters if they wanted to be secure.
That was just one problem though, I pointed out they had no backup plan and that a fire, or a malicious 12 year old on the other side of the world, could essentially shut their business down in a matter of minutes. This was what convinced them it was something to take seriously, and they started to listen when I said "no, you can't do that, you're asking to get screwed by doing that."
If you're having a problem telling someone you can't do something, or that they have unreasonable expectations, you need to relatively quickly find a weakness in the plan and tell them why what they want is bad. If the people have no idea what you're talking about when you say "leaving protocol/program/box X open like this creates a security flaw," then tell them the same thing in terms they can understand, such as "if you leave this open and something happens, you could lose all your billing information and you wouldn't know who owes you money." or "This could put you out of business if you leave it the way it is."
What's dangerous is saying yes to every request, reasonable or unreasonable. If you adopt the attitude that "eh, it's not my problem if they get cracked" then you're potentially risking the jobs of everyone employed at that company, yourself included. If you don't see a problem with that, you must be one of the people who developed security for Microsoft.
Please excuse any poor wordings of this, I just downed a double dose of nyquil because of the damned flu.
Ok, let's start off by getting a few things out of the way. Enter the Matrix sucked. It sucked a lot. The first few levels were fun, I liked the overall game play at first, but then I got to the driving levels...
But who reading games.slashdot.org wouldn't like to see a decent Matrix video game? If ETM didn't suck so horribly it would've been great (yeah, that last sentence sounds real intelligent I'm sure). The game concept was there, everything else just wasn't. Numerous graphical problems, engine incapabilities, video playback problems, platform inconsistencies, and stability issues really hurt the game from being a real hit. I enjoyed some parts of the game, but others made me pound my head against the wall. It's a shame that I walked away from this one with an unfavorable opinion because I absolutely loved the movies and really had some high hopes for this game.
Now, there's a real chance the upcoming MMO matrix game will have some potential, but it's still got some issues I'm waiting to see worked out. I really would be interested in seeing how they'd work out the story line; Who would want to be just another mindless drone in the game world? How would they incorporate cool bullet dodging abilities in a multiplayer game (Max Payne surely wasn't only a single player game because it told a cool story)? If Neo was supposedly "the One," how can the game actually play through with only one person truly able to exploit the matrix to it's fullest? If the game more takes place in Zion rather than in the matrix itself, how can they possibly work out an interesting game environment? I'm holding out on this one until I see some actual game-play for myself. I don't want to fall into thinking yet another Matrix game sucks because of technicalities. These guys really have a high standard to try to live up to, but if they can make the technical issues work out and have an interesting story line to it, they'll have an excellent game.
It's not even possible to get everyone to stop murdering people and molesting children. (I'm not saying that buying something from a spam is as bad as that, of course)
Well, perhaps if we get the idea out there that only killers and molestors buy stuff from spammers and telemarketers they'll stop killing and molesting little children. I don't know anyone who wants to be associated with contributing to telemarketers and spammers, it's just wrong! Maybe we can find a link between spammers and Al-Queda. You know, I think I overheard Saddam planning to produce methods of mass emailing too. This is clearly a pressing issue of national security, spammers must be erradicated to preserve our way of life.
I can't help but think this will backfire horribly for them. Picture a pigeon hovering over some unfortunate person. Now picture the person looking up just in time for the pigeon to drop a little present and for them to see the advertising...sure it's memorable, but now this person is going to think about birds crapping on them whenever they see the name Acclaim.
Maybe this isn't too likely, but hey, it could happen. And honestly, couldn't they just be paying the game's staff more?
How about you spend time with your kids and teach them what's wrong and what's right, teach them the difference between real and fiction, talk to them about what they might see instead of always jumping on limiting their imagination. Not all parents drop their kids in front of the TV as day care, but I've seen this happen so many times it makes me sick. I played video games when I was young, even at an early age I knew that what I saw on the TV was not real, whether I was controlling it or not. Sure video games influence children, but good parenting influences them a hell of a lot more. I'm not sure what bothers me more, that there are children that are growing up raised by the television, or that there are parents that find this so acceptable that they want someone else to set a guideline of what's ok for their children. Video games are fine for children, not teaching them to discern between fact and fiction is just deplorable. If your kid is going to go out and act out a sniper scene in a game at 14 years old, you either took a horribly wrong turn as a parent or your kid is in need of specialized help that the ESRB can't give you. Stop shifting the blame, accept some responsibility, if you're not willing to do that: don't have kids.
You asked, so I'll reply. Take a look at Half Life 2 for an example of a great physics engine. I think it's refreshing for one of the "classic" genres to come back and do well ever so often. I'm really excited about Sam N Max 2 (the original adventure game was so great), and Mega Man 2 was one of my all time favorite games. My main point in this was that we're constantly seeing Doom 3 and Half Life 2 and Halo 2 screenshots, I'm glad there's enough un-realism to balance these out. I think both real and un-real games have significant potential left. Enter the Matrix can't possibly have realistic physics, it's about the Matrix and bending it's physics rules. They could've done a lot better on that game IMHO, the engine simply wasn't made for PC (I hear the XBox version is much better). Putting that aside, this game looks impressive even though I'm not the biggest fan of cel-shading. The Gamecube is a powerful system, it's pretty cool though that developers aren't feeling they need to push to use all the new features to make a fun game. I think the overall message to developers to send is to keep fun a priority and flashy 3D rendered models optional.
The way to go as I see it and wish I saw it earlier: get a cheap preferably lightweight laptop and a decent desktop with a lot of disk space. We all know you're going to be downloading movies and mp3s, so you might as well have some huge disk space to store all of that. The setup I have right now is a top of the line Dell laptop (2GHz, 512 DDR, 64mb NVidia, 40 gig etc.) that cost me a pretty penny, and a server I built for roughly $300 (1GHz, 256 DDR, 80 gig). The server runs Linux and I use it to stream my media to my laptop. This system works out really well, leaving my laptop able to run the crappy progs I have to use for my courses and still play all the latest games (my laptop gets roughly 60 fps in ut2003 and 90 in quake 3). I wish I bought a p2 laptop or something low price, and spent $2K on a decent desktop/server. I can't tell you what I'd do without the server I have now though, it's really great to be able to have my work centralized machine. This isn't the best setup for everyone, but it really works incredibly well for me because I use the diskspace.
This game raises a few questions
on
Matrix MMORPG
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
First off, how could they possibly incorporate something like bullettime in a multiplayer game, you can't slow down one client and keep it moving full speed for another, unless I'm missing some obvious trick to accomplish this.
Secondly, if this is an RPG, doesn't that detract some of the very qualities that made the Matrix a cool movie? I'm having a hard time envisioning a battle with an agent in terms of "attack: 9 damage!" and "Neo misses Agent" or even in terms of a NWN or Diablo style click to attack battle. I by no means claim I am an expert on RPGs, but it seems to me that the most action packed games that seem to fit what the Matrix trilogy is, would be more suited as an FPS or 3rd person view like Enter the Matrix. I'm holding out to see how gameplay actually goes before putting anything into this game.
Three, is hacking the matrix fair game? Seriously, is hacking the system's bugs to your advantage "legal" or frowned upon? One would think that perhaps bugs could be built in waiting for the clever users to exploit like in the movies. I think this would add a level of gameplay never seen before and has serious potential, but again, I'm holding out till I see how smoothly it actually goes.
This game looks damn good in concept, but it's a bit early to make a final judgement on whether this will be a success or small die hard fanbase only game. I hope it does well and they don't muck something significant up.
Slashdot Mirror
I would personally like to thank you captain obvious. Without you pointing that out, I don't know if any of us would ever know what he was talking about. Once again, I'd just like to say, thank you, we are forever indebted to you.
Uh...Not for nothing, but I dd all of my discs for backup. This gets all of those little imperfections along with the disc too. If they're going to put "fake scratches," or whatever you might want to call it, on the disc then how is this thwarting making an image? I dd my stuff because for one thing, I lose CDs like it's nobody's business, but I also hate having to put a disc in the drive everytime I want to play it. Suppose I want to play UT2003, then after that I want to delay homework even more and play some Vice City. Ok, now I finished my homework, I'm going to play some Neverwinter Nights, but I can't find my CD and don't feel like searching my entire room for it. No problem, use Daemon tools to keep each of those iso's mounted on the machine at all times. Or, better yet, when I fill up my hard drive I look online for a no-cd "patch" for the game. Problem is soloved...not for the copy-protection companies though. How is my iso going to degrade? It's a raw exact image of the CD, how is that ever going to degrade? Maybe I don't fully understand the technology being used, but I can't imagine this being very effective. Any time I've seen games online, be it Kazaa or whatever, they're mostly isos, bin/cues, img/ccd, or some other cd image. How exactly could this make an impact on piracy, are they just talking about people archiving the files and directories contained on the CD? This seems like a waste of effort on their part.
I'm not sure about more bullet time in general, but you are now able to move much faster during bullet time. If you watch the in-game movies, you can see an example of this, but to explain it in words, think of it in terms of the matrix. They're just slowing down time for themselves, so they can move in "real time" but everything else is going incredibly slow around them. Looking at the in-game movies, it looks like you can move just as fast in bullettime, so while you might not get more bullet time, you'll be able to get more out of it. You also gain more speed when you kill multiple enemies, so clearing out a room during bullettime will speed your actions up, why still slowing your enemies down. Having seen these movies, I can say the effect is incredibly impressive and they've done an excellent job with it overall.
Seriously, I considered downloading it since I like to toy with 3d programming, and I'd love to see how the "pros" do it, but then I realized that if I were to be caught, anything I might ever want to release myself could be considered infringement in some skewed sense. So I steered clear of it even though the educational benefits would be amazing. I've looked at the quake source code, but it didn't help me much, and by now it's horribly outdated, so seeing some real, working and current, source code to something like this would be beyond incredible for me to pick apart and analyze.
I wish VALVe could open their engine up, but I definitly understand the possibility for cheating, and their obvious right to make a profit on what so far looks incredible. I won't be buying the game for the same reason as you, no Linux client, but I know for a fact they'll do well. I hope they take the time to rework portions of the code that could allow cheating since that's probably the single worst thing that can happen to a game.
Honestly though, I'm really interested in what this will do to their overall release date, since it was already delayed for reasons unknown. Or maybe the reasons are known now, since the dates were around when it was supposed to go gold...hmmmm, makes you think.
Good luck to VALVe, take this opportunity to tighten your code and fix steam, I'm tired of hearing my Windows friends complaining about it :).
I think you're mainly right about people people not really caring about 3rd party games as much for the Gamecube, except I can't say I've noticed much, if any, difference in quality between the Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube. Though it cold easily have been the different TVs I was playing it on, but Soul Caliber 2 looked smoother playing on the Gamecube than it did on the Xbox. It probably was just the TV or something, but even still, assuming the actual quality is equal if you standardize a testing environment, the price difference is more than enough to pickup a copy of the game for the Gamecube. Then there's that whole controller thing. I haven't used an Xbox controller that I've liked yet, and I've used what I think are the three main ones. The Gamecube one is just much easier to work with. Can't really argue about the PS2 controllers though.
While this definitely isn't a death to the Xbox, when I go to the store and see $99 for the system that can play the games I can't play on my PC, and $150 for the system that can play most of the games I can play on my PC, plus hundreds more I could care less about, the choice isn't exactly hard to make. Microsoft has been used to being on top and being able to dictate prices for their products because there typically hasn't been too much commercial competition. They've made their software the standard and they're only just starting to lose that position. Console gaming is completely different than selling operating systems and word processors since their main market knows they have a choice and you don't have to learn how to use a Gamecube, because it's just not really any different from any other console. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that they can't just dictate market price when they have competition unless their competition is in on it too. They're going to start losing market share even more if they keep up with their current mentality. As it stands, I can't find many things that the Xbox offers as unique. It had Halo, but guess what my friend is going out to buy later today for his PC?
Consumers will throw money at what they want, but most consumers who either don't know the difference, or just don't care, are going to pick up the cheaper of the two, that's common sense. MS is either going to have to make a real reason for owning their system, or start being competitive, if they want to do well.
Honestly this makes sense to me and should've been done a while ago, except the limit should be to all games, not just games where violence or crime is a good thing. I can see recreation via chess or reading or something like that...but come on, it's a prison, not a college dorm. Bar them from video games, television, etc. and make their removal from society a little less entertaining at least.
If you're holding WinXP on a machine just to play HL2, you might want to keep that partition because anyone I knew that got HL to run under Linux said it ran like ass, which is dissappointing on a 2ghz. Personally I'm holding out on HL2 for a month or two at least hoping for either decent evidence it'll run on current hardware without an issue under Linux, or valve does something good for Linux, like make the game play in it themselves. Doom 3 has got my money on release day, at least ID cares about my choosen platform.
Must admit I'm not an expert on HL's engine, is it openGL or directx based? OGL at least WILL run through some, if needed, ugly hacks though...we'll see what there is to work with eventually I guess...Game looks good, it'd be a shame if I can't play it.
Oh how I wish I never bought that game. It provided me with about an hour of fun, except that's when I realized what I was having wasn't fun, in fact, what I was having was "not fun."
They had that other game though, Tomb Raider? Oh, right, you're talking about games that don't suck...let's see...Anachronox? Well, that sucked too, but it was kinda cool wasn't it? Maybe not.
They have had some decent ones though, like Deus Ex, the Hitman games, and there was that whole Final Fantasy VII thing, so don't knock them entirely. It's not their fault they have a tendency to publish crappy games every now and then...they do a good one every so often, just to make sure we still take them seriously.
Clear evidence that SCO is the one ripping off other's IP, not the other way around!
Let me elaborate. As can clearly be seen here, the line "The SCO crew aint down wit that eye for an eye bullshit. You take an eye, I'll take your motherfuckin head." is clearly just an obfuscated version of MC Hawking's, All My Shootings be Drivebys: "Don't fuck with the Hawkman, 'cause the Hawkman ain't down with that eye for an eye bullshit. Fuck that! You take an eye and I'll take your motherfucking head!".
I believe it's clear now, that UNIX belongs to Mr. S. Hawking, aka MC Hawking, and not the SCO group. Well, at least that logic makes more sense than some of the stuff SCO has tried to pull....
Ok, but aside from that, I'm arguing for your general point, but also against what you actually posted. First off, the original poster is way off base, and I think I've seen him particularly making the same outrageous comments repeatedly (I didn't check though). It's not about rewards for killing, it's essentially simulation. It's a fantasy outlet for a lot of people
Games do not give kids the tools to kill. Neglect, humiliation, and familiarity with violence in real life give kids the tools to kill. No amount of counter strike, doom, quake, etc. is going to make me knowledgable enough to pick up an automatic rifle and blast people. The fact is that in this particular case, these kids had plentiful access to guns, they were familiar with how to fire them, and had a lot of experience with them. I'm not saying guns cause violence, that's about as silly (maybe slightly less) as saying video games cause violence. Look, if kids are neglected, abused, humiliated, ridiculed, looked down upon, and otherwise made to feel worthless about themselves and everything around them, then obviously they aren't going to hold life too highly.
Everyone is so ready to jump to point the blame, that we miss the fact that these kids were depressed, suicidal, angry as hell, and they just didn't give a damn about anything. Their parents obviously failed to raise them in such a way that they would value life. The school system failed in that these kids were continually ridiculed, and the school didn't prevent it. The kids had mental disorders causing them to think it was a good, and just, idea to go into the school and kill people that humiliated them, and others they felt were likely the same way. It's vengence plain and simple. The kids were reported racists on top of that. I'm sorry, but hatred doesn't just crop up, it's a learned trait.
I think you would have a hard time arguing that a culture that glorifies war, vengence, and has a long history of hatred isn't bound to raise some blood-thirsty, vengeful, hateful people. That aside, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that if the kids didn't know how to use the weapon it wouldn't have happend so easily. Kids shouldn't have guns. If that's what it has to come down to, I'm all for it. If a 12 year old can't go hunting legally with his father in the name of less youth shootings, I'm all for it.
All of this comes down to curbing a problem. There is no way to eliminate gun violence completely. There is no way to pin point which kids are going to snap and kill their school, shoot trucks on the highway, or plan out elaborate terrorist style massacres. But if you have a group of kids who have shown signs of mental illness, who are constantly harassed by their peers, or neglected by their parents or community, then you probably have an idea who to try to help instead of further shun. No single thing will fix the problem, no single thing is to blame, individuals are responsible for individual actions, but they're also impacted by their environment.
As far as video games in the military...ummm, the military has better ways to "desensitize" it's troops, if that's what you want to call it. Put a group of people in a scenario where if they hesitate on pulling the trigger they may be dead in an instant, and they're going to pull that trigger as many times as it takes to make sure the threat is eliminated. The military doesn't need video games to desensitize people, they just need to put them in a life or death situation, and the desire to live, at whatever costs, will prevail.
Sadly stuff like this seems to have to happen before people realize there might be a problem with the way our society functions. It takes tragedy to make us realize we're screwing up, and to come up with ways to fix the problem. But that's an entirely different topic.
But to be serious for a minute or two, if you're going to have a "save when you want" feature, it should be like in GTA. You've gotta not be in the middle of a mission, and go out of your way to do a save. You shouldn't be able to save every 2 seconds. This takes a lot of the fun out of the game. At least with the GTA style saves you can die or fail in a mission, reload right before that mission and try again. There is still a punishment factor involved, whatever you might gain on your way to the mission, or after you finish it, if you die in between your next save, you've gotta weigh the costs against the benefits. Sure you might have just made $4000, but you just lost $100 in fees, and $10000 in all your guns and ammo. You might be better off repeating the mission, but then again, maybe that mission was a pain in the ass and you'll make the money back in 10 minutes anyway.
Another, in my opinion, good save game/punishment style is in Uplink. You can fail, and you can get completely shutdown if you do it enough times, that's easy. If you get busted you might get a game over, or you might get a fine, and you might get a demotion and only be able to earn less until you've proven yourself again. Also, the "save" feature isn't really offered in the traditional context. I haven't really seen a way to go back and undo something. If you get busted and you get a game over, that's it, you can't reload from your last startup. That account is locked, and you're basically SOL. This offers a nice incentive to not fail and to do well. Boring as the game might be, it's holding my interest fairly well and I feel compelled to evaluate possible risks very thouroughly before I just do something.
Just my one cent (hey, being unemployed means doing more with less).
I don't know, but today I turned on my TV and was flipping through the channels when suddenly I saw professional poker being played on TV. There were commentators, and everything. It was nuts watching too, it completely blew me away to watch hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands every few minutes. If someone finds poker interesting enough to put on TV, then I'd hope pro gaming would get a chance. I watched poker for about 20 minutes, out of sheer amazement that something like that was on TV, but if something as boring as watching a group of guys playing cards can hold that many people's attention, why couldn't watching someone's avatar run around and kill 5 of his opponents armed solely with a knife?
And come on, golf is about chasing a tiny white ball around outside...if you want to keep track of the damned thing so much, why not stop hitting it so hard? Golf is the eptitome of boring in my opinion, I'd much rather watch someone blow up their oppenent than try to hit a ball the least amount of times. And how is it harder to get into gaming than baseball/golf/etc.? Have you seen how much golf equipment costs? It's an upperclass game for people with nothing better to do with their time, for the most part. Sure one could argue that a $1500 PC to play games on is expensive, but a PC isn't just for playing games, it's got a number of purposes not related to gaming. You don't need an expensive PC to be good at a game either, just as you can argue that better equipment in anything could reflect on your abilities. Find me another useful use for a baseball glove or a golf club and I'll give you some sort of prize.
On top of that, there's plenty of pointless "sports" on tv, like fishing, bowling, pool, curling, hunting, etc. I enjoy fishing, playing pool, and all that, but I can't stand watching it. Some people do enjoy watching it, though that's beyond my comprehension. People really good at fishing can win millions in tournaments, same with bowling, or pool, though I'm not sure about curling (it is an olympic sport afterall) or hunting. So why can't someone really good at clicking a mouse at the right time make thousands from it a year? No, there's not a lot of physical skill required, but most of the people who make money bowling or fishing are more out of shape than me, and people still like watching it for some reason.
I think that if, just maybe, gaming were "officiated" properly and the games were interesting (watching someone play Quake3 isn't all that interesting, but if a game or two were created for the specific purpose...) you'd probably get a decent amount of viewers. Probably the same kind of people who think watching battlebots on TV is great, and dare I say it, people who like "professional wrestling" or some other such nonsense. Maybe if these "professional gamers" had some kind of interface to the game other than a mouse/keyboard, like a VR gun to aim, a floor that sensed physical movement/direction/speed, and stuff like that, more people would find it interesting. Or maybe I'm completely wrong and it's just something that will never catch on in any form.
Gaming has become an acceptable form of entertainment though, jocks along side geeks can enjoy playing the same game, the uncool stigma has been mostly lifted. Just as there are plenty of people who hate watching golf, I'm sure there's plenty of people who would hate watching a professional deathmatch. We'll never really know until it either fades away completely or catches on big.
Until then, these "professional gamers" should quit their bitching that they're not making enough money. I'm sure there's plenty of people who wish their salary were based on their frag count, it's just not realistic right now to expect that. These people should be happy they're getting any money at all for doing it, as I'm sure the pioneers in baseball/basketball/etc. were. You're playing a game, if it's not enough that you're having fun while making some cash, maybe you should give it up.
Case in point: My roommate this past year had been arrested for alcohol possesion (he's 19). The alcohol was in his car trunk, out of view. He wasn't pulled over for DUI, but for a busted tail light. The cop asked to search his car and he refused. The cop searched it anyway. The case was thrown out, my roommate cleared of all charges, and the cop was suspended. This is an example of how the system can fail, but it's an example of how the system works and the extent of your rights in the US.
If the cops can't search my car without consent or a warrant, I'll be damned if a supermarket clerk can search me.
Addiction is a disease and should be treated as such. The people who are addicted to Everquest are, as you said, addicts. I'm not suggesting a 12 step program for Everquest, though I'm sure there must be one, but to say that this child died because of Everquest is just stupid. The child died because of neglect, it's a horrible situation, but it happens. There are bad parents out there, you don't fill out an application to be a parent, in a lot of cases it just takes enough alcohol and an insistent guy. Did anyone take into account that the mother was irresponsible enough to get pregnant at approximately 17 years old and that she's just not a responsible adult yet? I'm guessing no one has brought that up. There are certainly deeper issues than Everquest addiction here....
Asking your customers how much they want to pay you only works if you're fixing a friend's computer...I know plenty of places that would say "oh hell, I could've done that, here's 30 bucks," except they couldn't have done it, and you worked 5 hours. Being upfront about your rate is always a good idea, but especially when you add in "depending on what I actually have to do, I charge $XX an hour"
I charged $18 an hour at a place I stayed at for 80 hours, and $20 an hour for places I worked for a day or less. Through some small scale advertising in the news paper, usually just saying "computer systems upgraded, maintained, repaired," and a phone number I got a number of jobs with this rate. I don't have any certifications, nor can I afford them, but seeing as how the grocery store wouldn't hire me to push carts at minimum wage, I think I did fairly well for myself. Don't forget that if you make enough you've gotta file your tax stuff properly or the gov will hunt you down and break your knees.
A lot of people think that either no one is willing to hire a high school/freshmen college student to work on their computers, or that charging something like $20 an hour at that age is too much. Well, it's not true. At $20 an hour, you're damn cheap labor as far as IT goes. If the company can't afford that, then they're certaintly not going to hire a "professional." I charged a total of $1500 to a small firm, to do all kinds of stuff in a 3 week period, they were not only happy that they finally got their network running properly, but that they got such a good deal on decent computer work. The guy before me was charging them $80 to plug in cables and tell win98 machines to login at an NT server, they threw him out after about 8 hours since he screwed it up and ripped them off. I worked harder and longer at a quarter the price, but the work I got this summer gave me experience in something I've never done before, and enough money to pay the tuition bills for the next year, so it was a good deal for me and the company. If he was charging so much to cover insurance costs, he kind of screwed himself over in that respect. I don't have insurance, I just have clients sign a contract outlining what I'm actually doing, and that I'm only liable for what I've done. In summary, if their hard drive crashes and they lose all their data, tough luck, not my fault. If the hard drive I installed improperly fails, I replace the hard drive, but they're SOL if they didn't make backups like I outlined they woud in the contract. This covers my ass adequetly without the hefty insurance costs. Just make sure you take precautions before you open that case up and you'll be fine.
Something else to watch out for that I'll just touch upon briefly is to make sure you have no liability over software you end up installing on their computer. MANY times I've run into people that want me to install the same copy of Windows XP Pro on 10 different workstations, and do the same with that copy of Office XP their friend burned for them, etc. etc. If you install the software on their machine, you've gotta make sure you're not reasponsible if it's illegal. Whether you actually do what they want and install that copy of XP on 80 different computers or if you tell them "sorry, you're going to have to pay the $16000 license fees to do that," you gotta make sure you're absolved from any "illegal" stuff. Note, this is also a good way to get a company to pay you if they don't want to for whatever reason: "I know you have 79 hot copies of XP pro running in your office, I'm sure the BSA would love to hear that..." usually get's them to cut you a check right then ;).
If you get in trouble for saying "No" to unreasonable requests, maybe it's time to find a new job. If you can't do something you have to flat-out say it can't be done, and why. If you can't do something under a clear conscience, then you have to tell them no, and why you can't do it.
The crappy economy forced me to essentially become an IT contractor, which, let me assure you, beats the hell out of "would you like fries with that?" I worked at small organizations that had a max of 2 servers and maybe 10 workstations, all running a version of Windows. The longest I had stayed in one place was 3 weeks, and that was due to numerous problems left by the IT guy they recently fired. At several points in time, I was told to make all the administrator level passwords the name of the company because that was easier, and that I should do the same on the server, which holds all their client billing information, basically everything important. They also wanted the server accessible from the outside easily, so they wanted me to install a remote desktop server on this ancient NT server. When I started there, I basically told them they were wide open to an attack and to secure the computers with the name of the company as the password is asking for problems. This wasn't what they hired me for, but I could not, in good conscience, leave things the way they were, and they were glad to pay me to fix the problems they didn't know they had.
There were also several things they wanted fixed that I just could not fix. They wanted me to fix printing problems their custom software was having, and make it stop constantly crashing. Not having the source code, and being a not-too-great programmer anyway, I could not fix coding problems and told them flat-out, "There's nothing I can do to fix that problem, I can tell you why it's not working, but there's not a thing I can do about custom software." They understood this and contacted the guy who wrote it, end of problem for me and the company.
Many times (let's be realistic, 99% of the time) people requesting different IT related things have no idea what they're talking about or how to use what they're requesting should you tell them they can have what they want. In my scenario I suppose I had it easy at a couple organizations since they were contractors too, and basically understood that when you don't know how to do something, you pay someone that does. It took several days to get them to accept that they'd have to remember 8 different characters if they wanted to be secure.
That was just one problem though, I pointed out they had no backup plan and that a fire, or a malicious 12 year old on the other side of the world, could essentially shut their business down in a matter of minutes. This was what convinced them it was something to take seriously, and they started to listen when I said "no, you can't do that, you're asking to get screwed by doing that."
If you're having a problem telling someone you can't do something, or that they have unreasonable expectations, you need to relatively quickly find a weakness in the plan and tell them why what they want is bad. If the people have no idea what you're talking about when you say "leaving protocol/program/box X open like this creates a security flaw," then tell them the same thing in terms they can understand, such as "if you leave this open and something happens, you could lose all your billing information and you wouldn't know who owes you money." or "This could put you out of business if you leave it the way it is."
What's dangerous is saying yes to every request, reasonable or unreasonable. If you adopt the attitude that "eh, it's not my problem if they get cracked" then you're potentially risking the jobs of everyone employed at that company, yourself included. If you don't see a problem with that, you must be one of the people who developed security for Microsoft.
Please excuse any poor wordings of this, I just downed a double dose of nyquil because of the damned flu.
But who reading games.slashdot.org wouldn't like to see a decent Matrix video game? If ETM didn't suck so horribly it would've been great (yeah, that last sentence sounds real intelligent I'm sure). The game concept was there, everything else just wasn't. Numerous graphical problems, engine incapabilities, video playback problems, platform inconsistencies, and stability issues really hurt the game from being a real hit. I enjoyed some parts of the game, but others made me pound my head against the wall. It's a shame that I walked away from this one with an unfavorable opinion because I absolutely loved the movies and really had some high hopes for this game.
Now, there's a real chance the upcoming MMO matrix game will have some potential, but it's still got some issues I'm waiting to see worked out. I really would be interested in seeing how they'd work out the story line; Who would want to be just another mindless drone in the game world? How would they incorporate cool bullet dodging abilities in a multiplayer game (Max Payne surely wasn't only a single player game because it told a cool story)? If Neo was supposedly "the One," how can the game actually play through with only one person truly able to exploit the matrix to it's fullest? If the game more takes place in Zion rather than in the matrix itself, how can they possibly work out an interesting game environment? I'm holding out on this one until I see some actual game-play for myself. I don't want to fall into thinking yet another Matrix game sucks because of technicalities. These guys really have a high standard to try to live up to, but if they can make the technical issues work out and have an interesting story line to it, they'll have an excellent game.
"That's not a knife! That's a spoon."
"Oh, I see you've played knifey spoony before"
--Like I really need to cite my source, if you don't know this one, get out...
Well, perhaps if we get the idea out there that only killers and molestors buy stuff from spammers and telemarketers they'll stop killing and molesting little children. I don't know anyone who wants to be associated with contributing to telemarketers and spammers, it's just wrong! Maybe we can find a link between spammers and Al-Queda. You know, I think I overheard Saddam planning to produce methods of mass emailing too. This is clearly a pressing issue of national security, spammers must be erradicated to preserve our way of life.
^^this is a joke in case you're humor-impaired^^
Maybe this isn't too likely, but hey, it could happen. And honestly, couldn't they just be paying the game's staff more?
How about you spend time with your kids and teach them what's wrong and what's right, teach them the difference between real and fiction, talk to them about what they might see instead of always jumping on limiting their imagination. Not all parents drop their kids in front of the TV as day care, but I've seen this happen so many times it makes me sick. I played video games when I was young, even at an early age I knew that what I saw on the TV was not real, whether I was controlling it or not. Sure video games influence children, but good parenting influences them a hell of a lot more. I'm not sure what bothers me more, that there are children that are growing up raised by the television, or that there are parents that find this so acceptable that they want someone else to set a guideline of what's ok for their children. Video games are fine for children, not teaching them to discern between fact and fiction is just deplorable. If your kid is going to go out and act out a sniper scene in a game at 14 years old, you either took a horribly wrong turn as a parent or your kid is in need of specialized help that the ESRB can't give you. Stop shifting the blame, accept some responsibility, if you're not willing to do that: don't have kids.
You asked, so I'll reply. Take a look at Half Life 2 for an example of a great physics engine. I think it's refreshing for one of the "classic" genres to come back and do well ever so often. I'm really excited about Sam N Max 2 (the original adventure game was so great), and Mega Man 2 was one of my all time favorite games. My main point in this was that we're constantly seeing Doom 3 and Half Life 2 and Halo 2 screenshots, I'm glad there's enough un-realism to balance these out. I think both real and un-real games have significant potential left. Enter the Matrix can't possibly have realistic physics, it's about the Matrix and bending it's physics rules. They could've done a lot better on that game IMHO, the engine simply wasn't made for PC (I hear the XBox version is much better). Putting that aside, this game looks impressive even though I'm not the biggest fan of cel-shading. The Gamecube is a powerful system, it's pretty cool though that developers aren't feeling they need to push to use all the new features to make a fun game. I think the overall message to developers to send is to keep fun a priority and flashy 3D rendered models optional.
The way to go as I see it and wish I saw it earlier: get a cheap preferably lightweight laptop and a decent desktop with a lot of disk space. We all know you're going to be downloading movies and mp3s, so you might as well have some huge disk space to store all of that. The setup I have right now is a top of the line Dell laptop (2GHz, 512 DDR, 64mb NVidia, 40 gig etc.) that cost me a pretty penny, and a server I built for roughly $300 (1GHz, 256 DDR, 80 gig). The server runs Linux and I use it to stream my media to my laptop. This system works out really well, leaving my laptop able to run the crappy progs I have to use for my courses and still play all the latest games (my laptop gets roughly 60 fps in ut2003 and 90 in quake 3). I wish I bought a p2 laptop or something low price, and spent $2K on a decent desktop/server. I can't tell you what I'd do without the server I have now though, it's really great to be able to have my work centralized machine. This isn't the best setup for everyone, but it really works incredibly well for me because I use the diskspace.
Secondly, if this is an RPG, doesn't that detract some of the very qualities that made the Matrix a cool movie? I'm having a hard time envisioning a battle with an agent in terms of "attack: 9 damage!" and "Neo misses Agent" or even in terms of a NWN or Diablo style click to attack battle. I by no means claim I am an expert on RPGs, but it seems to me that the most action packed games that seem to fit what the Matrix trilogy is, would be more suited as an FPS or 3rd person view like Enter the Matrix. I'm holding out to see how gameplay actually goes before putting anything into this game.
Three, is hacking the matrix fair game? Seriously, is hacking the system's bugs to your advantage "legal" or frowned upon? One would think that perhaps bugs could be built in waiting for the clever users to exploit like in the movies. I think this would add a level of gameplay never seen before and has serious potential, but again, I'm holding out till I see how smoothly it actually goes.
This game looks damn good in concept, but it's a bit early to make a final judgement on whether this will be a success or small die hard fanbase only game. I hope it does well and they don't muck something significant up.