Echelon definitely exists, and will be automatically checking this post the moment I click on 'Submit'. James Bamford's excellent book about NSA, 'Body Of Secrets', goes into quite some detail about Echelon (whose members are the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - basically, if your country's predominantly white and English-speaking, you're in the club). Funnily enough, Bamford was one of the people targeted by NSA's 'First Fruits' phone and email surveillance program that kept (or may even still keep) an eye on journalists likely to expose information about NSA's activities.
NSA is, of course, entitled to email me to deny this. So they get the chance, I'll include a few Echelon keywords to make sure they pick this up: bomb assassinate Bush Blair Osama kill terror gas anthrax Chavez oil Castro Iran Iraq hijack suicide bomber 9/11 jihad. Hi guys!
How well does Moore's Law apply when comparing the PS3 to the PS1?
PS1: US launch September 1995, price $299.
PS3: US launch November 2006, price $599
So, with Moore's Law saying that processing power doubles every 18 months (for the same price), the PS3 should be at least 128 times more powerful than the PS1 if it were the same price, and with the price being doubled, that means it ought to be over 256 times as powerful. If the PS3 is actually better than this, then maybe Kutaragi's technically right.
Not that I'm going to drop $600 on a console, however 'cheap' in terms of price-to-performance it may be. As much as I want to play MGS4, I can wait. (And at that starting price I might have to wait a long time.)
I'd say that in the UK, Newsfield's mags (Crash for the Spectrum, Zzap!64 for the C64... oh, and Amtix for the Amstrad CPC as well, I guess) defined games magazines far more than C&VG. They were the first mags to make game reviews the core of the title - C&VG and the other mags of the time 'reviewed' games in a couple of paragraphs (often not even with screenshots) while concentrating on type-in program listings. Crash et al did double-page, full-colour reviews for the biggest games.
Nearly all of the modern UK games mags follow the 'format' Newsfield devised. It's a format that works, because magazines that try to do something radically different tend not to last very long. Newsfield was also the direct ancestor of the major UK games magazine publishers - Future was founded by an ex-Newsfield guy, Paragon was founded by ex-Future staffers, and now Imagine was set up by ex-Paragon types. (In fact, one of Imagine's bosses worked at Newsfield, so the games rag Kevin Bacon game is very easy...)
In an FPS, I'd like to see (whether as campaign NPCs or multiplayer bots):
AIs that actively hunt for me once they know I'm there, but do so within the limits of their 'senses', rather than just homing in on my co-ordinates.
AIs that don't 'forget' I'm there just because I evaded them for 30 seconds, even though I slaughtered 20 of their friends right in front of them.
AIs that communicate with each other - if I'm causing trouble in Area A of a map, the NPCs will call for help from Area E - and when I reach Area E, the NPCs there won't just still be mindlessly patrolling their default routes, but will have reacted to the alert.
If I've sneakily killed a guard on patrol, his comrades get suspicious when they realise he's missing and react accordingly.
Different kinds of bot behaviour in deathmatches. Rather than just following paths and shooting at anyone they see, have enemies who assess their surroundings. A 'charging berzerker' type would ignore the narrow gap overlooking a large hall, but a 'camping sniper' would set right up there.
Bots who have the same knowledge as the player. If it's the first time I've ever played a level, it could be fun to have the bots also having to learn their way around rather than just running straight for the nearest power-up. Next time I play, the bots also 'remember' the layout.
If I shoot one of a pair of guards in the head, then dammit, I want his buddy standing six feet away to notice!
Enemies who use cover intelligently rather than, again, just following a path. As physics engines advance (vehicles move, walls collapse, etc) NPCs should take advantage of this. If a helicopter gets shot down and crashes in the middle of the street, it would be extremely cool if the bad guys registered the change in the environment and took cover behind the new obstacle.
The feeling of actively being hunted in a game, rather than just 'homed in upon', would be a hell of a lot more tense and involving than the standard fare at the moment. And fewer but smarter enemies would make for much better replay value than having large numbers of dullards who follow the same paths every game and then swarm you on sight.
"The name Wii works on several levels. It sounds like the word 'we,' which emphasizes the all-inclusive nature of the system," she said Thursday in a prepared statement.
"Graphically, the distinctive 'ii' spelling symbolizes both the two unique controllers and the human form. An unusual name sets us apart from the crowd, just as our distinctive machine is completely different from what our competitors are offering."
And somebody actually spouted this bullshit with a straight face? God knows how much time and money was spent coming up with 'Wii'. If that was the winner, think of all the options that were considered worse.
It's just pretentious marketing crap, and in this case it's so far up its own arse that not only does the name have to be explained, but even the pronunciation. You'd think that having these things be self-explanatory would be good from a marketing perspective. After all, what's the totally unforgettable name of the film coming out later this year that everybody's talking about? Snakes On A Plane.
Because it's genius! It's a way for Nintendo to reclaim verb rights on gaming. Nobody's going to admit to "playing with my Wii", so they'll just say "playing Nintendo", just like the old days.
(Seriously, though: we have Viiv - rhymes with 'five' - and now Wii - rhymes with 'we'. Can't the marketing morons at least be consistent?)
The PDA will never die, not as long as Jack Bauer's alive and fighting terrorists. Without it, what would Chloe upload all his essential maps, blueprints and realtime satellite imagery to?
There's another reason besides the added complexity and hassle of supporting generic x86 machines with an infinite variety of hardware why Apple isn't likely to release a version of OS X that'll run on any PC (yet).
If they did, that would be like a first strike against Microsoft's heart. And Microsoft, which currently tolerates Apple as a means of making money from OS X versions of Office, would undoubtedly take the nuclear option and do everything it could to destroy Apple as a direct competitor. It's not as if the current US administration gives a crap about MS being an abusive monopoly.
But I'm sure Steve Jobs is biding his time and waiting for the perfect moment to strike...
(1) Sony is affiliated with Sony Pictures and has ties within the film and TV world;
(2) Sony uses that influence to negotiate rights for UMD / PSP versions of movies dirt-cheap - practically give 'em away. New releases at $6-$8 a disc; older stuff, $2 or $3. Enough to cover production. So what if they take a loss on the rights? They'll get it back in sales of units.
And they would also face a barrage of lawsuits from all the people - producers, directors, stars - who have gross profit deals on a movie and its ancillary sales (TV, DVD, etc), and would consider selling their movie at an 'artificially' low price to be swindling them out of money that's rightfully theirs. (In much the same way that David Duchovny sued Fox when it sold The X Files to its own FX channel at a far lower than normal per-episode rate - he had a percentage deal, so less money for Fox meant less money for him. Not that he was exactly starving in the street, but...)
A lot of Americans in the thread seem outraged by the price, but £19.99 is actually the standard UK recommended retail price for most new DVD releases.
Of course, there's no way in hell I would ever pay that much for a DVD - supermarkets generally discount new releases to around £14, and online retailers like Play.com often go even lower. But somebody must be paying full whack for DVDs, otherwise places like HMV that do charge the full RRP would be in trouble...
Reading TFA, the deal is that with this new service you get a large (presumably DRMed-to-the-hilt) file for use on a computer, a small copy for use on mobile devices... and an actual physical DVD. So what they're saying is "If we give you a digital backup of the physical DVD, that's fine. If you make a digital backup, you're a filthy pirate!"
Hmm. This reminds me of the time when I bought my first external Firewire drive (120Gb) and used it to back up my 10Gb iMac, which had lots of small files (fonts, Word 5.1 documents, etc). Those 10Gb of backups ended up occupying 90Gb of drive space because the external drive had been pre-formatted with some large sector size, and even the smallest file took up half a megabyte! So I had to reformat the drive and start again...
I guess Nintendo (and Sega, and Hudson, and anyone else who gets involved) will now be setting their lawyers on all the 'abandonware' ROM sites for outdated consoles...
The clever boffins at KTF Technologies overcame this barrier - and got one up on their rivals - by slashing the thickness of the embedded antenna using some clever jiggery-pokery which they're naturally not too keen to divulge.
Jiggery-pokery? Does that mean that on top of being the world's slimmest phone, it can also make calls from 5,000,000,000AD to the 21st Century? Fantastic!
How about lowering the price on the frickin' PSP? I might consider getting one if it wasn't still two-thirds the price of an Xbox 360 in the UK! Get it down to the price of a DS and they might have another buyer...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think this new Billy Joel remix scans as well as the original...
NSA is, of course, entitled to email me to deny this. So they get the chance, I'll include a few Echelon keywords to make sure they pick this up: bomb assassinate Bush Blair Osama kill terror gas anthrax Chavez oil Castro Iran Iraq hijack suicide bomber 9/11 jihad. Hi guys!
PS1: US launch September 1995, price $299.
PS3: US launch November 2006, price $599
So, with Moore's Law saying that processing power doubles every 18 months (for the same price), the PS3 should be at least 128 times more powerful than the PS1 if it were the same price, and with the price being doubled, that means it ought to be over 256 times as powerful. If the PS3 is actually better than this, then maybe Kutaragi's technically right.
Not that I'm going to drop $600 on a console, however 'cheap' in terms of price-to-performance it may be. As much as I want to play MGS4, I can wait. (And at that starting price I might have to wait a long time.)
Nearly all of the modern UK games mags follow the 'format' Newsfield devised. It's a format that works, because magazines that try to do something radically different tend not to last very long. Newsfield was also the direct ancestor of the major UK games magazine publishers - Future was founded by an ex-Newsfield guy, Paragon was founded by ex-Future staffers, and now Imagine was set up by ex-Paragon types. (In fact, one of Imagine's bosses worked at Newsfield, so the games rag Kevin Bacon game is very easy...)
Those are the essential ingredients!
The feeling of actively being hunted in a game, rather than just 'homed in upon', would be a hell of a lot more tense and involving than the standard fare at the moment. And fewer but smarter enemies would make for much better replay value than having large numbers of dullards who follow the same paths every game and then swarm you on sight.
Simpsons did it: "Why? Why was I programmed to feel pain?"
Madden 2007, Madden 2008, Madden 2009, Madden 2010, Madden 2011...
'Appleseed', duh!
"Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him."
"Graphically, the distinctive 'ii' spelling symbolizes both the two unique controllers and the human form. An unusual name sets us apart from the crowd, just as our distinctive machine is completely different from what our competitors are offering."
And somebody actually spouted this bullshit with a straight face? God knows how much time and money was spent coming up with 'Wii'. If that was the winner, think of all the options that were considered worse.It's just pretentious marketing crap, and in this case it's so far up its own arse that not only does the name have to be explained, but even the pronunciation. You'd think that having these things be self-explanatory would be good from a marketing perspective. After all, what's the totally unforgettable name of the film coming out later this year that everybody's talking about? Snakes On A Plane.
(Seriously, though: we have Viiv - rhymes with 'five' - and now Wii - rhymes with 'we'. Can't the marketing morons at least be consistent?)
Sadly, long-term gamers are the exact opposite of 'social', so still no sex for them.
(Blame Google for the translation. :p)
Hey! I put those co-ordinates into Google Earth, and it crashed! Damn CIA spooks will do anything to protect their secrets...
The PDA will never die, not as long as Jack Bauer's alive and fighting terrorists. Without it, what would Chloe upload all his essential maps, blueprints and realtime satellite imagery to?
If they did, that would be like a first strike against Microsoft's heart. And Microsoft, which currently tolerates Apple as a means of making money from OS X versions of Office, would undoubtedly take the nuclear option and do everything it could to destroy Apple as a direct competitor. It's not as if the current US administration gives a crap about MS being an abusive monopoly.
But I'm sure Steve Jobs is biding his time and waiting for the perfect moment to strike...
Well, apart from the teeny-tiny, jammed in, 'oh shit, we need an extra shoulder button and don't have enough room to fit one in properly' Z button...
(2) Sony uses that influence to negotiate rights for UMD / PSP versions of movies dirt-cheap - practically give 'em away. New releases at $6-$8 a disc; older stuff, $2 or $3. Enough to cover production. So what if they take a loss on the rights? They'll get it back in sales of units.
And they would also face a barrage of lawsuits from all the people - producers, directors, stars - who have gross profit deals on a movie and its ancillary sales (TV, DVD, etc), and would consider selling their movie at an 'artificially' low price to be swindling them out of money that's rightfully theirs. (In much the same way that David Duchovny sued Fox when it sold The X Files to its own FX channel at a far lower than normal per-episode rate - he had a percentage deal, so less money for Fox meant less money for him. Not that he was exactly starving in the street, but...)
I find that Firefox and my own set of bookmarks provides exactly that!
Of course, there's no way in hell I would ever pay that much for a DVD - supermarkets generally discount new releases to around £14, and online retailers like Play.com often go even lower. But somebody must be paying full whack for DVDs, otherwise places like HMV that do charge the full RRP would be in trouble...
Reading TFA, the deal is that with this new service you get a large (presumably DRMed-to-the-hilt) file for use on a computer, a small copy for use on mobile devices... and an actual physical DVD. So what they're saying is "If we give you a digital backup of the physical DVD, that's fine. If you make a digital backup, you're a filthy pirate!"
Hmm. This reminds me of the time when I bought my first external Firewire drive (120Gb) and used it to back up my 10Gb iMac, which had lots of small files (fonts, Word 5.1 documents, etc). Those 10Gb of backups ended up occupying 90Gb of drive space because the external drive had been pre-formatted with some large sector size, and even the smallest file took up half a megabyte! So I had to reformat the drive and start again...
I guess Nintendo (and Sega, and Hudson, and anyone else who gets involved) will now be setting their lawyers on all the 'abandonware' ROM sites for outdated consoles...
Jiggery-pokery? Does that mean that on top of being the world's slimmest phone, it can also make calls from 5,000,000,000AD to the 21st Century? Fantastic!
How about lowering the price on the frickin' PSP? I might consider getting one if it wasn't still two-thirds the price of an Xbox 360 in the UK! Get it down to the price of a DS and they might have another buyer...