If they won't make it open source for the rest of the world to crack (and someone out there is bound to crack it) who do we ask if we want to take a shot at cracking it?
A "bank for items"? Really, really nice idea. The only "real" problem would be making it secure enough. (ie. hacker heaven since they wouldn't have to hack individual accounts)
And he didn't lose any stats. Just items. The article states that clearly. But the fact that "most" MMORPGs are geared towards item gathering, there is a level which he is justified. However, the level is really the topic of discussion. Do virtual items have a monitary value in the real world? If no, then the guy is screwed. If yes, then proceed to your national court and then onto the international court since MMORPGs cross numerous national borders.
Eh, I don't think that video games make us think all that much (sure, there are those that do, RPG, puzzle games, etc), but the vast majority of games are there for blind entertainment.
Some games WILL make if think IF you CHOSE to think about them. Just look at the majority of MGS2 reviews and comments, "OMFG TEH CODEK BLARG IS TOO LONG!! GIMME GUNS!@@@". Well, I'm assuming most of those reviews and comments didn't think about how military equipment like Cypher could be used for invasion of privacy purposes. Or about how the civilian model equipment is so on par with the military models that they can be used as substitutes with little to no loss of features. I doubt anyone even blinked an eye to the fact that Raiden was a child soldier from the beginning of his childhood, was brainwashed and then put through VR training told and trained under the impression that it was on par of the real world. Yeah, think about that.
Note the fact that the article doesn't give any details about how or when the item loss occured. Was there a bug? Did the server crash and his data/equipment was corrupted and thus disgarded? Was there a hacker who hacked into the database and took his stuff? Maybe one of his friends decided to play a prank? Maybe the guy is just an idiot and left the items somewhere and forgot where?
The article gives no information on this; thus the guy gets no sympathy from me.
I think its really around 500,000 (nice round number) and available for 6 months but I'm not sure exactly. But it WAS decreased from 1 million copies. I remember reading a news report about it years back when the PS1 was still Sony's main machine. Its definately not automatic. If it was the list of Greatest Hits would be about twice as long as it is now.
I don't think Star Wars:KOTOR would have been as successful if it wasn't in the Star Wars universe. One doesn't even need facts to come to that conclusion; there will always be Star Wars fanboys and curious go-getters who rent it because it has the words 'Star Wars', 'lightsaber' and 'Jedi.'
If Bioware made the game about green teddy bears, who live under the earth and use magical pointy sticks but kept the same gameplay and graphics, would you have picked the game up? I don't know about you, but if I saw a game like that on the shelves I'd shout out "What the f***!?"
I don't think its just the way the developer thinks, its how the developer thinks the gamer will think. Its like a game, you have to be able to think how the other player is going to think or you're going to lose. Like I said with my example, I don't think thats how someone will think but I'm sure theres someone out there who thinks my idea is the greatest thing since Daikatana.
"IBM is also planning on developing Quake 2 bots to take advantage of the system."
So will they be releasing the Quake 2 bots to the public after using them? I think it'd be interesting to see how they coded them and how well they play.
Actually my brothers and their friends found and EXTREMELY easy way to read through those. If you use anything that was red tinted and could be seenen through, it would filter out the burgundy red and let you see the blue text under it. It would still hurt your eyes with all the red but its better than bordering blindness squinting your eyes.
Those concerned that it's not a good idea for computers to track their belongings and whereabouts are advised that they may ultimately have to fragment their identities, keeping multiple IDs and e-mail addresses."
I don't know about other people but my friends and I who are active on IRC servers, newsletters and/or online groups already do this. Some of them have more than 4 daily checked e-mail address, hide their identities with different aliases for each account and sometimes just fill in fake information when registering. (I'm fairly sure my friend doesn't live in Nowheresville, NO 01134)
A lot of people don't seem to have read the article since they make it sound like they're proposing to have us wear a tracking collar around our necks.
With increased dependence on the Social Security Number (SSN), the government has been able to engage in pervasive tracking of aid recipients. Now, with the requirement that states implement Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) by October 2002, aid recipients are being issued benefits cards that facilitate government tracking of all purchases. Gilliom argues that this combined with personal interviews delving into matters such as romantic relationships, results in a comprehensive tracking system that subjects the poor "to forms and degrees of scrutiny matched only by the likes of patients, prisoners, and soldiers."
They're basicly proposing us to carry our Social Security card with us at all times. You get pulled over, and instead of showing them a drivers license, you give them you SS#. On a MUCH larger scale, yes you are being tagged, logged and cataloged like a number. On an INDIVIDUAL basis, the police officer isn't going to refer to you as a number, hes going to know you based on what information is allowed to be seenen. Theres nothing in the proposal which states that would have embedded nano-ID chips in our heads. Theres no proposal to create a "Big Brother" agency to track every bum, Average Joe and Bill Gates out there.
"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. "You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience."
What you're saying might actually be closer to the truth that we realize. What the movie industry seems to be doing/have been doing was basicly bribing movie reviews to release their reviews "late" which was convenient timed for the end of the opening weekend. Thus by the time people realized the movie sucked or rocked (in which case they would have wasted money) most "opening weekend warriors" would have already seenen it and it would have been too late to warn Joe Average to spend his money on renting Star Wars for the 592nd time and watch that instead.
The result : high opening weekend results, the impression that the movie was good, and more people who read about THAT come to see the movie (again) just to see what the hype is about.
Who wins : Obviously the movie industry
Who loses : Joe Average who takes the family/girlfriend/wife/substantial other to the movie and blows about $10 per person to see a crappy movie.
Who gets blaimed either way : The warez community who saw the movie for free and realized the movie sucked and rather shoot themselves in the foot than pay money to see it
Try waiting for the Christmas season. If at least one console doesn't drop their prices then, theres gonna be hell to pay from all fronts.
Think about it. Doom 3, Halo PC, and Half-Life 2 are going to cause more excitement than a 500 car crash build up on the LA freeway while a high speed pursuit ensues. Anyone who hasn't bought one of the systems, and is looking forward to it, is drooling over the rumors on price drops. As long as you stick with bargain bins ($20 USD for FFX! Woo hoo!) buying a system is usually the larger part of the investment.
I'm not saying liberalism or Europeans are bad (except the French of course), but Europeans tend to be very liberal and anti-convervative when it comes to make a decision. Which is usually the cause for so many arguments and disagreements between the US and Europe as well as the UN.
In the early 1990's, a young man in California known to his associates as K.C. was trying to figure out a career for himself. He knew one thing. He liked sports, and even more, he liked betting. While in college, he gambled obsessively on dog racing and football, and after graduating, he ran a sports handicapping service, which was a legal enterprise, though it catered to an industry -- sports betting -- that is illegal in every state but Nevada. Trying a clean break from the sports and gambling world, he sold cellular phones door to door. But he couldn't stop betting, and for a brief time after giving up the salesman life, tried to make it as a full-time professional gambler. As his losses piled up, he observed that his bookie was making out far better than he was, and that this might be the best vocation for him too.
[www.nytimes.com]
This guy sounds like the standard case gambling addict. If he's addicted enough to dodge the law for nearly 10 years, what are the chances he is going to come to the US and have to pay taxes? Sure he'd have more consumers, but considering how much paperwork and scrutiny casinos and state lotteries are put under, what makes you think he'll go through all that hassel for a few extra consumers?
True eBay doesn't care, but they care to an extent. Obviously the feedback system is as reliable as letting a blind person drive in the Indy 500 and expecting him to come in first and set a couple world records but the ever haunting question remains : Do you have a better idea?
Obviously eBay can't monitor ever Average Joe who registers, let alone monitor them after they've registered. The best "possible" method is to have online businesses, law enforcement officials, and ISPs work together to use their logs to track down the abusers. But that would only happen in a perfect world since every online business in the world would protest it, law enforcement lack the manpower, and ISPs would resist revealing consumer information. eBay is just another online Pop's Corner Store in the long list of companies complained about which have bad support.
Back when I used Hotmail (I don't anymore) there was a trick I used, I donno if its still there, but if you sent ALL your e-mail to the Trash all the space used up there -would not- be counted against your alloted e-mail space. So as long as you checked your e-mail everyday (which we all do anyway) I used to open up my Hotmail account and find about 3~7 megs of e-mail/spam sent to me. (Compared to the 2 megs max limit)
Sift through the obvious spam ones, the ones I don't care about, and transfer the extremely important ones to my Inbox where they won't get deleted. After checking my e-mail, empty the entire Trash folder and you've used about 5 megs of memory for e-mail/spam courtesy of Microsoft. Each day.
Unfortunately, "luck" will most likely be a huge factor in deciding how far DNA research will go. In the past there was the fear of radiation but that was something that could be contained. But DNA research is different. -Eventually- DNA research will be something that public and private individuals will be able to do. Hummers were originally made for the military, now civilians are using them. Flying airplanes used to be for daredevils only, now we have people flying them with passengers. Space flight used to be something only government sponsored agencies could afford to do, now we have publicly created and run companies asking for recognition of their work.
Capitalism will eventually cause the government to succumb to the demands of the many/the rich. When they comes, every yahoo and biologist with too much time on their hands will be able to do their own DNA modifing. THAT is the time we should worry because even the most restricted, yet open to the public, items will find its way into the hands of those who shouldn't have them. (Radioactive materials being sold to third world countries who have no use for it, homemade bomb materials complete with blueprints from the Internet, etc.)
Having read both previews, based on whats stated it seems implied that Max Payne will turn to the "dark side" in the sequel.
Over the course of the game's story, it will be revealed that Max will get framed once again, but he'll react much differently, considering that he's both tired of fighting the system, as well as his own loneliness.
[gamespot.com]
This time he'll actually confess to doing the deed, in what we can only assume is part of one of those much deeper plot twists.
And I thought I was the only one who thought this way.
Admittedly having only humanoid characters makes the game easier to make, but after playing your 4th game with the basic combo (humans, elves, dwarf) you tend to get bored.
Even if the game was single-player only, I'd pick up the game just to try it. Morrowind tried to implement two "non-human" races but they had little changes in the game. What'd I like to see if a game where you're the bad guy and you have to fight the good guys. (Kill those campers!)
EA has refused thus far to support Xbox Live for its sports games, citing concerns about the business model. Microsoft has its own sports lineup, XSN Sports, that also offers online play and lets people access message boards and player rankings."
Hasn't EA supported Sony for years from the PS1 and into the PS2? I wouldn't be suprised if EA and Sony were in bed together when it comes to the online sports system.
I wouldn't exactly agree with you on the comformity in games, at least in the RTS genre. Theres will always be brand names that sell, and attract no matter how crappy they get. Chances are we all remember Dune 2 (or at least C&C:Red Alert 1) and I think, at least some of us, recognize the fact that gaming has been on a decline for the most part.
Most notably, AI has not improved much at all. Decent AI will never be formed with in the next 20 years; we have a better chance of discoving time travel, having the entire human evolve into seeing the fourth dimension (space) AND having Microsoft release a bug free version of Windows all in the same year. Some of the biggest game companies in the business (EA Games) have been releasing shabby games with half-assed AI depending on people to play -only- online multiplayer to make up for their mistakes (Battlefield 1942 and C&C:Generals). In RTS games, the biggest improvement I've seenen is the formation systems which keeps ranged, unarmored, and support units in the rear.
Wow. Finally, my light tanks won't keep running in front of my heavy tanks. How long did it take to code that into the game? Wait! No! Stop running ahead of the heavy tanks you stupid light tanks!
If you're Swiss then you do live in Europe, the continent. You probably ment that you do not live in the EU (European Union, which the Swiss are not apart of)
Slashdot Mirror
If they won't make it open source for the rest of the world to crack (and someone out there is bound to crack it) who do we ask if we want to take a shot at cracking it?
And he didn't lose any stats. Just items. The article states that clearly. But the fact that "most" MMORPGs are geared towards item gathering, there is a level which he is justified. However, the level is really the topic of discussion. Do virtual items have a monitary value in the real world? If no, then the guy is screwed. If yes, then proceed to your national court and then onto the international court since MMORPGs cross numerous national borders.
The article gives no information on this; thus the guy gets no sympathy from me.
I think its really around 500,000 (nice round number) and available for 6 months but I'm not sure exactly. But it WAS decreased from 1 million copies. I remember reading a news report about it years back when the PS1 was still Sony's main machine. Its definately not automatic. If it was the list of Greatest Hits would be about twice as long as it is now.
If Bioware made the game about green teddy bears, who live under the earth and use magical pointy sticks but kept the same gameplay and graphics, would you have picked the game up? I don't know about you, but if I saw a game like that on the shelves I'd shout out "What the f***!?"
I don't think its just the way the developer thinks, its how the developer thinks the gamer will think. Its like a game, you have to be able to think how the other player is going to think or you're going to lose. Like I said with my example, I don't think thats how someone will think but I'm sure theres someone out there who thinks my idea is the greatest thing since Daikatana.
So will they be releasing the Quake 2 bots to the public after using them? I think it'd be interesting to see how they coded them and how well they play.
Actually my brothers and their friends found and EXTREMELY easy way to read through those. If you use anything that was red tinted and could be seenen through, it would filter out the burgundy red and let you see the blue text under it. It would still hurt your eyes with all the red but its better than bordering blindness squinting your eyes.
The result : high opening weekend results, the impression that the movie was good, and more people who read about THAT come to see the movie (again) just to see what the hype is about.
Who wins : Obviously the movie industry
Who loses : Joe Average who takes the family/girlfriend/wife/substantial other to the movie and blows about $10 per person to see a crappy movie.
Who gets blaimed either way : The warez community who saw the movie for free and realized the movie sucked and rather shoot themselves in the foot than pay money to see it
Think about it. Doom 3, Halo PC, and Half-Life 2 are going to cause more excitement than a 500 car crash build up on the LA freeway while a high speed pursuit ensues. Anyone who hasn't bought one of the systems, and is looking forward to it, is drooling over the rumors on price drops. As long as you stick with bargain bins ($20 USD for FFX! Woo hoo!) buying a system is usually the larger part of the investment.
I'm not saying liberalism or Europeans are bad (except the French of course), but Europeans tend to be very liberal and anti-convervative when it comes to make a decision. Which is usually the cause for so many arguments and disagreements between the US and Europe as well as the UN.
This guy sounds like the standard case gambling addict. If he's addicted enough to dodge the law for nearly 10 years, what are the chances he is going to come to the US and have to pay taxes? Sure he'd have more consumers, but considering how much paperwork and scrutiny casinos and state lotteries are put under, what makes you think he'll go through all that hassel for a few extra consumers?
Obviously eBay can't monitor ever Average Joe who registers, let alone monitor them after they've registered. The best "possible" method is to have online businesses, law enforcement officials, and ISPs work together to use their logs to track down the abusers. But that would only happen in a perfect world since every online business in the world would protest it, law enforcement lack the manpower, and ISPs would resist revealing consumer information. eBay is just another online Pop's Corner Store in the long list of companies complained about which have bad support.
You know a developer loves their game when they donate prizes to a contest that they aren't even running.
Sift through the obvious spam ones, the ones I don't care about, and transfer the extremely important ones to my Inbox where they won't get deleted. After checking my e-mail, empty the entire Trash folder and you've used about 5 megs of memory for e-mail/spam courtesy of Microsoft. Each day.
Capitalism will eventually cause the government to succumb to the demands of the many/the rich. When they comes, every yahoo and biologist with too much time on their hands will be able to do their own DNA modifing. THAT is the time we should worry because even the most restricted, yet open to the public, items will find its way into the hands of those who shouldn't have them. (Radioactive materials being sold to third world countries who have no use for it, homemade bomb materials complete with blueprints from the Internet, etc.)
Admittedly having only humanoid characters makes the game easier to make, but after playing your 4th game with the basic combo (humans, elves, dwarf) you tend to get bored.
Even if the game was single-player only, I'd pick up the game just to try it. Morrowind tried to implement two "non-human" races but they had little changes in the game. What'd I like to see if a game where you're the bad guy and you have to fight the good guys. (Kill those campers!)
Hasn't EA supported Sony for years from the PS1 and into the PS2? I wouldn't be suprised if EA and Sony were in bed together when it comes to the online sports system.
So if Windows is unreliable, blaim Bill Gates?
Most notably, AI has not improved much at all. Decent AI will never be formed with in the next 20 years; we have a better chance of discoving time travel, having the entire human evolve into seeing the fourth dimension (space) AND having Microsoft release a bug free version of Windows all in the same year. Some of the biggest game companies in the business (EA Games) have been releasing shabby games with half-assed AI depending on people to play -only- online multiplayer to make up for their mistakes (Battlefield 1942 and C&C:Generals). In RTS games, the biggest improvement I've seenen is the formation systems which keeps ranged, unarmored, and support units in the rear.
Wow. Finally, my light tanks won't keep running in front of my heavy tanks. How long did it take to code that into the game? Wait! No! Stop running ahead of the heavy tanks you stupid light tanks!
Isn't child porn already underground and illegal?
If you're Swiss then you do live in Europe, the continent. You probably ment that you do not live in the EU (European Union, which the Swiss are not apart of)