He is pretty central to the whole myth, without him J.C. would have just been another workshy hippy. Not that you can blame the guy, what would you have done, become a carpenter in an age when nails are still handmade or lounge around all day washing the feel of fallen women?
So obviously that makes KFC just a front for the whole zionist movement that is partening with Bush and his military buddies to wage war on islam. COLONEL Sanders. Do I have to spell it out?
Yeah this is chicken (how do I come up with them eh) by Yahoo but understandable. Muslims have no sense of humor (dutch free newspaper 'metro' stated on monday that more then half of westerners believe this so it must be true) so what are you to do?
Either you try not to offend people with extremely long toes or you risk becoming part of a holy war. Well or you simply block access from any muslim country. But that ain't good business.
Wich is far far lighter. Neither do I do firefox, I do opera. Again much lighter. I do run azureus but I run that via X on another mem limited machine.
By any chance does your job listing include a minimum education level or even worse, a minimum diploma level?
Because that excludes people like me who are entirely self-taught. I know what you are talking about. I have more then once had to help people with diploma's coming out of there ears with the most basic stuff. Just last week I worked on a volunteer project that a couple of students had done where they had not done a single thing about security (putting get variables unchecked into an sql query, login over http). They stopped with the project because they had finished their internship and are now studiying for their exams.
They will probably pass. Despite the fact that their programming SUCKED!
I have seen this in commercial projects as well. That I a person who only learned by experimenting and reading knows more then the uni grad but is constantly slammed down in reviews for the lack of diploma's.
Last job I even lost because of it. I was the unofficial head of the web development department but when my manager left (head of the web business unit) it was decided to bring in someone new to be a proper IT manager. The guy had all the diploma's and could talk the talk but had no clue about how to actually run a website day to day. Yet I was supposed to work under him. I said thanks but no thanks. I am not going to earn less then a guy whose hand I am supposed to be holding. That wasn't the first time either.
Now don't get me wrong, I am no coding god. I just got a bit of common sense.
Sadly most bosses do not. I do not even respond anymore when a company asks for diploma X no matter how capable I might be of performing at that level.
Just ask for coding examples and look through them.
But hey it is easier to complain about employees then to question wether the problem perhaps lies with you. Of course I know where my own problem is. It is that I could not wait to get out of school and into real live.
But of the idiot who chose C as a name for a product. It is the same with menu product names that are also real words. Even happens with products that are not real worlds but have come in common use. PHP is of course also the extension used for php pages and so any search will not just return jobs requiring PHP but also jobs who got a url with php.
Until we get search engines that can determine meaning from context we are stuck as long as people keep naming their products in stupid ways.
We may joke about apple iXXX everything but at least it is easy to search for. MS is especially evil since it seems unable to name its products uniquely.
Oh and that is what I want in a job website. A search system that gets around it. After all the system knows the context, it is searching through jobs listings. Shouldn't be too hard to get people to list required skills in such a way that even current search technology can easily list only those that apply.
Of course that would only help if jobs didn't just list every skill they ever heard off.
I got an old dual p3 wich is limited to 768mb. Anymore and it won't even boot.
So how would propose I add another gig when it cannot even accept a single gig?
It does however have a 32mb graphics card that is not used. Oh sure it is a tiny amount of memory but when the kernel is forced to start swapping it makes a difference. Not a huge amount to be sure and it doesn't help at all when it really needs to swap a lot but it gives me just a little bit more room to play with.
Haven't thought about upgrading the card but I guess if I ever see a really cheap 256mb card it might be worth it.
A dual P3 is still plenty fast for desktop use especially since the linux kernel keeps on improving. Windows users may wish to close their ears to save themselve from terminal shock but linux installs get better with age.
Sure sure someday I am going to have to buy a new system and now that dual core chips are here the hurdle is not as big as having to buy a dual single core machine was but still, the longer I can keep this system running the happier I am
Hardware/software hacking is about making stuff go that extra mile. Just plonking a wad of cash on the counter is totally missing the point.
Well yeah of course when Apple 'bought' BSD that was pretty much the last nail in its coffin. BSD is truly and utterly dead after going commerercial.
Oh wait it isn't you say? You Mister BSD user then what is that smell of decay and rot? Oh that is just you, it ain't the OS?
Oh but Apple never 'bought' BSD they just used it and that is not like what is happening with Oracle and IBM.
But IBM at least has been putting a lot of its own software into OSS. They have been getting a lot of press about opensourcing its stuff it didn't buy but properly researched with its own money. So what exactly would make them in the least bit inclined to then try to reverse that with any opensource software they buy?
Not that they could if they even wanted to because of the whole GPL thing.
Oracle I am not so sure about, not that they can un-gpl something but they could certainly attempt to hurt development by hiring away the best and brightest.
But then they always could do that without buying the software companies. Just look at OSS software developers and offer the best a job.
Fundementally you can't 'buy' gpl software. Once it is out it is out. You can hire away developers but that problem isn't unique to open source. Closed source companies are doing it as well. Ballmer apperently was very upset about it recently and some chairs may have been thrown.
This is just scare mongering. Oracle may want to hurt opensource databases as they clearly interfere with its business (do you think Oracle likes it when big sites like/. show that a sorta free database does well enough?) but IBM has clearly shown that it (for now) is commited to OSS.
Ofcourse that might chance but simply buying companies and hiring developers is not a threat. Now when we hear that OSS developers are being paid on the condition they stop writing OSS software that is when alarm bells should start to ring. Not when people who write good software get money for doing so.
I post this time and time again because tools like you just don't get it. Where the hell do companies like Apple get the idea they have a right to dictate how I use their product? Outside the IT/Entertainment world the idea would be laughable.
Rolls Royce obviously has a reputation to protect as a superd silent and comfortable vehicle so if I bought a Rolls Royce and hacked it up to make it run with no shocks on square wheels and removed the exhaust could they forbid me to do so? No. What if I took out the engine and put it a Volkswagen Beetle?
An artist obviously intents his art to be enjoyed for generations to come. So if I buy a van Gogh and burn it can anyone stop me? No.
If a game company doesn't include any cheats then obviously they did not intend people to cheat. So can they then say trainers are illegal? Obviously no. Any company that would try to take you to court for playing their game in godmode would get slapped down by the judge.
Or to use your own example of a book. If I buy the latest novel of an author and rip it apart and feed it to the goat is that illegal? If I read it completly at random is that illegal? If I take the copy and translate it into braille then destroy the original and give the braille copy to a blind person is that illegal? I just hacked it to be read on a different platform after all.
So what exactly makes software companies like Apple so fucking special that they can dictate what I do with my copy of Mac OS X I bought from them?
You and software companies need to realize that they are selling a product just like any other company and that people are then free to do with that product what they want.
Copyright is about making copies. It is not about what I do with your product. I am not legally allowed to make other then personal copies for OS X. I am allowed to do whatever I want however with my own copy. If I wish to take every bit and flip it then that is my choice.
Mods who modded you up are insane and just do not understand what rights people have. Sofware ain't special, don't allow tools like the above poster to take away right you have had forever.
Imagine that a company like shell told you what you could and could not do with the fuel bought at their points of sale. Oh you want to put our petrol in a lawnmower? You can't do that, we developed it only to be put into V8's.
Image you went to your local baker and bought a loaf of bread and then were threathened with jail time for hacking it up into little bits and feeding it to the ducks when clearly the baker decided it was only to be used for human consumption.
But computers are different. It causes people like you to behave like slaves who lick their masters asses and swallow everything they deliver.
Apple sells software. Once it made the sale I can do with it what I want for my personal use. If I decide to take it apart and chance it to run on other hardware or to function in a way different then it was before then that is my right.
Oh but wait of course, I get it. Games were never intended to run with trainers. So trainers are illegal. They also never meant for you to use someone elses savegame so savegames are illegal. They also do not come with a walkthrough so clearly walkthroughs are illegal.
Running say program X on a emulator is obviously clearly illegal.
But then I got a bit of bad news for you. Your lord and master Steve Jobs is breaking his own laws. By allowing windows software to run in emulation he is hacking that software to run on platforms it was never intended to run on. Could every windows developer sue whenever a mac user runs a bit of windows software?
No, Apple has a right to cry foul when people give away its software for free but when I buy a copy of Mac OS X in the shops I am then free to use it in anyway I please. I can use it as a coaster. I can run it on mac hardware and I can hack it and run it on whatever I like. As long as I respect the fact that I got right to 1 copy of it running at anyone time I am in the clear.
The first, Bill Gates, when are you going to produce a secure OS that does not get owned in the millions by the first kiddy who tries?
The second to Joe "Windows == computers" Average, when are you going to treath your computer like you would treath your house or car and lock it properly and not put all you valuables on the seat of your convertable with the top down?
Botnets exist for two reasons, lousy software and the people that use it. Not very suprising the article totally failed to touch on this issue. I wonder how much MSFT spends in advertising at the wasinghton post.
This is just a scammer. Sure he is not a nice guy but basically he is just like the person who runs a crooked card game or similar scam. He uses peoples greed and stupidity to get rich. Good for him. If only he made billions he would be getting knighted. But no he is a small fry so he gets labelled a criminal.
Lets not forget that this only affect windows users. So lets put the blaim where it belongs. With Bill Gates for writing a crap OS and the millions of users who keep on using it despite years and years of warnings on how bad it is.
I think that if you send a botnet controller to jail you should also send each and every owner of an infected pc to jail. Or just line them up so I can kick their ass.
Sorry I just can't get that upset about a victimless crime. Stupid windows users get their machines hosed but they obviously don't care or they would either properly maintain their machines OR get a real OS. Ad companies get screwed out of money but they obviously don't care or they would do better checks. Anyway do we care about spammers?
No, this is harmless stuff. I rather have the powers that be spend their time on real criminals. Not petty scammers like this.
Can I propose a web 3.0? Accessable only after passing an exam. First question: Do you run windows? Only passable answer: NO.
Of course web 3.0 would be very empty of chicks stripping on webcam but surely that is a prize worth paying?
If you want you content in another format you should rebuy it, you nasty pirate!
Yeah, of course your right and in any normal country you do have the right to make a copy for personal use. If you do not have that right then you do not live in a normal country and are a silly person who deserves sillyness.
Fight for your right to recode your own content for your own use!
Well, it works on linux too, with Firefox and IE but not opera.
It is simple really,
function Test() { while(true) setTimeout('Test()', 100); }
The attempt was to get a sleep function going because I wanted to load a very big picture but not have the user wonder why nothing was happening so I wanted to check if the image had loaded (img.complete) and if not display a loading message. Normally you would use a while loop with a sleep() call to just check every so often but javascript does not have such a function.
Oh just running an empty while loop causes firefox to popup a warning after a second or 2 about the script taking to many resources.
I figured out how to do it properly but not after first having to killall firefox-bin and shutdown explorer.exe processes. Opera, the one true king, ofcourse had no problem with it.
Relevant? Maybe, I needed the code because people can't be bothered anymore to just look at the spinning whatever or the status bar to see if a page is still loading you got to put it in the page itself so they do not hit the same request a hundred times thinking this is going to speed up the download.
Useless javascript but needed if you want your site to be accepted in this day and age.
No, game movie makers suck
on
Uwe Boll Smash!
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You see you got to give Uwe Boll credit for one thing and that is that no-one has done it better. Movies based on games suck. Well at least 'hollywood' ones do. The second D&D movie is passable B material and there was one japanese one wich was okay as well.
The problem is that none of the movie makers seem capable of respecting the source material. Doom is of course the worst offender. Doom the game had three elements and the movie had none of them. It has already been discussed enough but it is true for EVERY game movie.
It reminds me of the horror stories that happen when americans get their paws on british comedy. Hitchhikers guide anyone? Read up on Terry Pratchet with both his discworld series and Good Omens. Red Dwarf? The american pilot can be found if you got a strong stomach. It is not new either. Check the old british comedy Porridge. Oh and the americans ain't the only one to blame. There was a dutch version of it too. Truly horrible.
Nor is it just the americans doing it. There are foreign 'remakes' of "Who's the boss" that should have their producers shot for wasting good film.
Why does it happen? I don't know. What exactly makes you pick a very popular property and then take out those elements that make it what it is? Red Dwarf is 4 male losers in space. So why did the americans make one female? Discworld/Omen has Death. So why do you tell the writers to loose the skeleton?
Frankly I am not suprised that movie makers don't get games because they haven't been doing to well with anything else either. I am pretty sure that if a movie maker would get his hands on the game chess we would loose the black and white sides and instead it would be a small multi-colored rebel army vs zombies from mars because that is what the focus group told them sells.
Frankly Uwe Boll has a point, he may be bad but there a lot worse out there. Popular property == butchery in the hand of a filmmaker.
Perhaps he is right about game studios not doing enough. Would a modern Marvel allow Spiderman to be butchered like this? Probably not but none of the game studios seem upset with Uwe Boll. Rather then interviewing him interview the person reponsible for selling the license and ask them why they did not protect their title.
We had some interviews with the people from Doom but the only thing I got out of it was that they were happy to take the cash. They didn't seem to care one shit about what the movie would be like.
Perhaps it is a vicious downward spiral. Game movies are 'flops' so if you can sell the license you take whatever you can get rather then risk loosing essentially free income. BEcause the game studios don't bother to protect their property (how many property owners do? I think Pratchett and the Red Dwarf guys are among the exceptions for having turned down movie makers) then the movie makers feels compelled to 'change' the property to better fit focus groups.
If you want to understand why game movies suck study Doom. It is the simplest property requiring no quality actors to tell a complex backstory. You only have to put a guy in marine uniform on mars slaughtering demons. That is it. When you figured out why they could not do that then you have figured out why game movies suck.
Movie makers just can't seem to learn that when you take a popular property you do not get a 'free' audience. You get a whole lot of 'free' critics who will be checking up on every factoid. When George Lucas made Star Wars A New Hope he was free. Yet if you make a "star wars' game you do not get a free audience unless you manage to get everything right that makes star wars star wars. Say you made an MMORPG and suddenly decided that Jedi are not the asskickers of the universe but can be owned by a medic. Do you think that would still get you the millions of star wars fans as free customers? Ask SOE.
Same is true the other way around. You can use a popular property in a different media but you got to respect the source.
Back to Doom the feeling I get is that the makers should just have made a non doom movie. Everything said in every interview gave me the impression they didn't want to make Doom the Movie but that just someone thought using its name would help sell it.
It is not you that trusts it, it is the companies that trust it because they don't trust you.
There is a dutch saying "zoals de waard is vertrouwt hij zijn gasten". It is a bit hard to translate but goes roughly like this "by his own nature the innkeeper trust his guests".
Meaning that if the innkeeper is a crook he will trust his guests to be crooks. What does trusted computing therefore tell us about Intel MS and the content companies?
Why do you think current investigation takes the drive out of the system? It would be trivial to setup a piece of login software to destroy the data if there are to many errors while logging in. Oh sure you don't do that on a normal system but on a home system loaded with material that could land you in jail. Well you just make sure never to get it wrong. In fact you don't even have to destroy it absolutly after 3 errors. Just set a cool off period of an hour. No problem for your own personal use but it just make a brute force attempt even more difficult.
Boobytraps, both software and hardware are the reason investigators now take the drive out and in extreme cases even take the drive apart before doing anything else. So far nobody has found a way to boobytrap the platters themselves while for someone like the police it is trivial to duplicate a drive/platter and then they can examine the copy at their leasure leaving the original safe for evidence.
The idea that you must use the suspects own computer hardware and software to get the data off would be a nightmare to investigators.
So a brute force attack would not work against a smart suspect. Current brute force attacks only work because systems allow an unlimited amount of logins. Limit this and brute force is death. Think of it like this. Brute force works on doors ONLY if somebody doesn't beat your face in the moment you touch it.
He is pretty accurate. the ?page=page1 is itself not the problem, I like it and use it myself but as the other guy points out the way they use it is wrong. Why?
"select * from pages where page = '$page'" is a HUGE security risk.
What happens when someone alters the url by hand, to say something like ?page=fuckofyoufuckingfucker.
Well nothing, except it won't load a page (probably I don't know what you called your pages) but what if they actually make it more complex and insert a complete sql statement with escape codes? You see the problem is that you can do that, you can insert one sql statement into another. I am to lazy to search for an example but it is a widely used attack.
What should you do instead? Well at least "select * from pages where page = 'Mysql_Escape_String($page)'" (not proper PHP) wich escapes any escape codes making it a simple string with no harmfull side effects.
Personally I like to go further. I use a regex to make sure it only contains those characters I expect and in the case of pages where I know the range of options I check wether it is a legal page name. For instance not to long or to short. Just to be sure. Remember it is okay to be paranoid on the web where everyone really is out to get you.
As for PHP native sessions, the other post again answers it very accurate but not why I dislike them. A it is not enabled on all servers. This is bad because PHP code should be portable. B it is blocking, only 1 thread can work on a sessions data at a time. This is bad on high performance servers. C. it uses the filesystem for something wich it is not meant to do. D. it is a bitch to admin. E. the alternatives are just so much better.
What is the alternative. A simple database (whatever form you like) with a cookie.
So the first method is perfectly fine just CHECK the content of $_GET['page'] before you use it. The second method just doesn't scale well. It is overkill for simple stuff where you only need a user side stored cookie and it is to simple and inefficient for more complex needs.
I got the quote from the article. So get of your high horse.
And yes I know it is aimed at mobile devices. So what?
But your clearly and idiot. 1024x768 Quake 3 seem fast to you. Right. Because game + resolution == frame rate.
If you actually read my post you will have noted that I point out that it is not quake 3 but rather quake 3 revolution. The first is a PC game and the second is a PS2 game. The PS2 does not have 1024x768 resolution. If you had a brain you would realise that this could mean that the chip supports 1024x768 but can only play quake3 in lowers resolutions.
You may have RTFA but you haven't UTFA (U for understood). Don't worry, as you grow older you will learn to read between the lines of marketing bullshit.
Have you ever played it and then gone online to search for user made add-ons? You can't move for the women. And this started years ago when the net was still the domain of males. Oh and it sold a lot more copies then nintendogz and it wasn't part of a bundle.
No, nintendogz is a nice game and it may have sold to women but frankly if Nintendo is betting their future on this then they are doomed.
I think you missed both the point of my post AND the original post. It seems to claim that selling 1.5 million games on a handheld is going to doom the PS3 and 360. I claim bullshit. You lap it up.
gamers can experience Quake 3 equal to that of the original PlayStation
Now of course this is a statement in a press story so it probably has all the accuracy of well a press story (0) but what exactly does this mean?
Quake 3 was a PC game. It was the game I got a matrox G400 (bumpmapping) for, well that and dualhead, and I think was typically played at 1024x768 resolution.
So when was it released on the playstation. Oh right, never. A version was released for the playstation 2. Big difference right there but even with its improved hardware the PS2 is still not exactly up to snuff. The resolution is TV, wich is far far lower then you would ever accept on a pc.
So what exactly is this new chip capable off? Can it play at 1024x768 OR can it play at playstation (2) resolutions? Why does it compare a pc game with a lesser console version?
I smell a load of marketing. Reminds me of the days on the farm.
It may be powerfull but comparing it to a poor console version of an old console game is not exactly inspiring.
It always seems to be some distant apparatus over wich mere mortals have no control. Yet obviously we in the west are better then dictatorships because we can elect our goverment.
If you truly do believe that the various western goverments are not answerable to the voter then what exactly is the difference between living say in the US/UK and the Soviet Union/China? Either the west has democracy and then anything the goverment does is by the will of the people OR you liven in a dictatorship. Remember, the soviet union did have elections. Just you could chose between a communist and a communist, not at all of course like the US where you can choose between a capatalist and a capatalist. Or the UK where you can choose between a corrupt party, a party that doesn't matter and a left-wing party so right-wing it makes the right-wing party look left-wing.
If you believe that it the west is a democracy then shut up. This is obviously what the majority of voters want. Democracy can only work if the minority accepts the rule of the majority. The only difference between dictatorship and democracy is really the size of the group that does the telling.
The older I get the more I come to believe that democracy is fundementally flawed. The majority of voters are to stupid to truly consider the results of their voting (voting for parties that are for policies the voter is totally against), you got only 1 vote for a generic candidate so screw you if on some issues you lean to the left and other you lean on the right. Myself I am dutch. I am pro socialism when it comes to helping people who are in trouble but I am right wing when it comes to people leeching from the system. Or put another way. A single mother with kids should be able to get good social security to raise her kids but uni graduate who can't find a job in whatever useless field he studied can go sweep roads. Wich party do I vote for? Tax me for the needy but put the whip on the lazy.
Of course with just 1 vote every four years how can I make my views known? Do I vote against the mess that is the current health care change over (left) or do I vote against the current mess with imigration (right)?
This move to compulsiry indentification is nothing new and is happening in various stages throughout the west. The reasons are simple. In the view of the currently elected goverments it needs to know who its people are and what they are doing. Simple stuff like knowing who is holding what job so you can collect the taxes. Oh sure you can rely on the honor system but apparently that ain't working well enough.
Who has judged it not working well enough? Well us the voters it seems. If you voted for tax cuts then you voted for the taxman needing more powers to make sure that everyone pays the reduced taxes. 1 person not paying taxes equals another person paying double to raise the same amount after all.
Same with imigration, if you ever complaint about illegal immigrants then you vote for indentification since that is the only way to find them.
At times it is easy to feel that the goverment doesn't listen to the voter but when you spend some time trying to understand what the voter wants you start to realize that the goverment has no choice.
Everyone wants cheap electricity, nobody wants a powerplant in their district. So what choice has goverment got? Build no powerplant and upset everyone a bit, build one and upset whatever district it is in a lot.
The whole discussion about identification needs to get out of the "the mean goverment is forcing me' moaning and into a debate about what we are willing to live with. Do we want anonimity even when it costs us a lot in taxes because of fraud OR do we want to be tracked througout our life?
Considering that the best election result still goes to the guy who promises he is going to cut taxes I think the answer is clear. We may moan about id cards but seem unwilling to live with effects of not having them.
Put it simple, your driving license is an ID card. We as a soc
Wow, that was indeed a load of crap. Nintendogz did well therefore the PS3 is a flop. WTF?
Nobody disputes that Nintendo owns the handheld. It has done so for a long time and at the moment the PSP seems to be a good second runner but not replacing the DS. If anything I think the PSP is increasing the market or perhaps people just have both it certainly is not distracting from the DS sales.
But so what? The gameboy always sold well. It was the 'main' consoles that Nintendo has been having troubles with. So this is like saying, Pokemon GB/GBA sold well so the Playstation 1/2 were a flop.
Oh and then comes the old sales pitch. Simple. Yes, we are going to reach that part of the market that is to dumb to figure out a lightswitch. Someone should really tell marketing people that there will always be people who claim X is to complex and they will buy X the moment it reaches their level of understanding. Problem is you can't. As long as their are people who are confused by revolving doors or even those who push when it says pull you will have people who can't figure out X.
Marketing to them is stupid. Why? Because you are insulting the intelligence of everyone else. Don't believe me? How many of you actually like using dumbed down products with zero options to confuse you? Oh don't get me wrong. They are nice at first, when you are still new and unsure of what to do. And then you move on and want more.
Part of the fun for me in playing a game is learning to play it. I think it is true with any type of game. The basics are simple but as you move on it becomes more and more complex. You can play chess just fine without knowing the more obscure rules like that move where you can switch the king and towers BUT the game will become deeper and more challenging as you learn more.
Same with other games. Say a FPS. A game with no stances is simpler as it saves 1-2 or even 3 buttons to learn BUT having the option makes the game deeper and more challenging.
Oh and as for nintendogz attracting females to play and that being the road to success. Sorry but if women were the road to success the PC would be the top console. The Sims and similar games are dominated by women.
I am not a woman but if I were I would be insulted by this piece. It is effectively saying that women find current games to complex. Taste or a hint they lack the mental capabilities to deal with 12 buttons and 2 joysticks?
The revolutions success and for that matter the success of all consoles will depend on wether it can reach that 'must buy' state. Usually because it is the console that has the 'must buy' game. Will it? So far Nintendo seems very reluctant to actually show games. Or at least I haven't seen any 'must buy' titles announced yet.
Simple is another way to say dumbed down. Sure there will be players who moan about the good old days when you had all you need was a joystick with 2 buttons but frankly if they were a real market we would have games that meet their needs. We don't. Or rather we do. Old games.
Serious Sam was a move to 'old fashioned' gameplay in the FPS genre. It sold well. Apparently not well enough however as it got only a sequell but no clones. Yes it was hailed as a grand return to the good old days, and then people returned to their complex soldier sims with a hundred buttons that are what we expect today.
Nintendo Revolution may be trying to pull a Apple 1 mouse button move. Even Apple nowadays sells a power mouse with an insane amount of buttons. Simple is good, until you learned it and want more. Fisher Price makes a bright and easy cassette player but I don't see it in to many hifi setups.
I had to work with one of MS'es early attemps at the smartphone market and. Ewh. Ewh EWh EWH.
It just, ewh.
Oh okay, how bad was it? Well ewh. Yes it is childish but it was just so... ewh. I can't really put it in anyother way. Mediocre perhaps but that ain't it. Bad? No the basic idea was okay but just well done in an ewh way. Not so much buggy as just not working.
Offcourse it had to be rebooted or rather reset every few hours. Of course it froze and of course programs crashed. It was a first generation MS product. But that wasn't the only problem, anyway the unit I worked with was a test unit not a final production unit so it might have improved later (yeah right).
What was the real problem? Well take the browser. It was a crap version of IE (or should that be crappier? Crapiest?) version 5 I think with NO css support at all. None. Bit of a nasty shock to our designer that was.
It was a bitch to delvelop for when you got it to work. Meanwhile the other unit was one of those nokia phones, the one you got if you were a good boy, with an opera browser that was just like a real browser.
It for me was a typical MS product, badly done, half done and not finished. Did it sell? Yeah it did, not well but well enough. That is MS entire business strategy I think. Flood the industry with products that are crap but get accepted by the morons to force everyone to support MS.
It is kinda like IE. Every web builder knows that IE is the worst browser ever build but it is the one that controls what you can and cannot do on a website. Just today I had to tell someone that to have a fixed bar at the bottom of a website is not possible on their site because IE does not properly support css position: fixed. Works perfect in every browser except IE so you cannot use it on mainstream sites.
Will MS sell these phones to people that should have bought blackberry's. Off course. Probably not enough to be successfull but enough to force everyone to once again limit themselves to the lowest common denomenator.
Yuck. Someone please make my day and shoot a MS user.
First of all a watermark is that bit of your banknotes that when held up to the light cause those discollerations/shadows that form a picture. They are not 'hard' to do at all, everyone who made paper in primary school will probably have done some. They are just expensive to fake right.
Real watermarks are for duplicating, not taking out. Absolutly nobody would want to take the watermark out of their 100 euro banknote. In an mp3 you would instead want to remove the mark.
Am I being anal? Well yeah but when it comes to security it is the only way to be. A banknote with the watermark removed just lost its value. A mp3 with its watermark has possibly just increased in value. It certainly has lost none.
So the type of attack they have to stand up against is totally different. A banknote watermark just has to be expensive to duplicate. Add enough expensive to duplicate elements to a banknote and you will make it unattractive to counterfitters. It is the reason you see so few attemps at counterfit cents. (Please do not post links to your favorite wooden nickel story okay?)
But all the 'counterfitter' has to do with the mp3 is to remove the watermark. Wich as others have already pointed out should not be too hard. This is totally different type of attack. Remember, the banknote is proud of its watermark and makes it very easy to 'see' it. It even forms a pretty picture to make it stand out more. The last thing you want in the mp3 version is for it to stand out. Adding a split second of mp3 codec that stands out shouting 'look at me I am a pretty watermark' is just asking for it to be edited out.
Oh well, will this work? Well only if they somehow manage to keep you from just removing the watermark. mis-Trusted computing anyone?
Funny thing, I own more LP's then any other medium. In fact as more and more anti copy protection is introduced, the less I own of it. LP (too many) -> CD (repectable) -> VHS (0 now but used have a okay collection) -> Mini disc (a couple)-> DVD (a few) -> iTunes (0)
I seem to remember some stories that having more computers in the classroom decreases the amount of learning being done. I can't help but wonder why it is that my generation that still had to 'learn' things the way our grandfathers did score better then current generations who learn things through fun. Except that tests show they do not actually learn as much as we did.
We all heard the joke about current education that is more worried about how the kid feels then about getting proper answers. "What is 2+2 timmy?" "5" "that is okay, if that is what makes you feel good about yourselve".
Sadly considering current education results it seems not to be a joke.
Or put another way, if you manage to 'learn' something from Civ 1-4 or Railroad Tycoon then your education must have truly sucked. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE those games. I played them more then is healthy but to consider them educational? No.
Anyway should education be fun? If so for how long? I seen kids fresh from school who were totally incapable of dealing with real life. No you can't just take a sickday. No you can't skip a meeting like you skip a class. No your dog ate your project is NOT a valid excuse. Installing X on the company network so you can chill out is not acceptable. Hacking the school network gets you expelled, hacking your company network lands you in jail.
Slashdot Mirror
Karma is going to burn tonight!
Yeah this is chicken (how do I come up with them eh) by Yahoo but understandable. Muslims have no sense of humor (dutch free newspaper 'metro' stated on monday that more then half of westerners believe this so it must be true) so what are you to do?
Either you try not to offend people with extremely long toes or you risk becoming part of a holy war. Well or you simply block access from any muslim country. But that ain't good business.
So your points are noted but don't apply to me.
Because that excludes people like me who are entirely self-taught. I know what you are talking about. I have more then once had to help people with diploma's coming out of there ears with the most basic stuff. Just last week I worked on a volunteer project that a couple of students had done where they had not done a single thing about security (putting get variables unchecked into an sql query, login over http). They stopped with the project because they had finished their internship and are now studiying for their exams.
They will probably pass. Despite the fact that their programming SUCKED!
I have seen this in commercial projects as well. That I a person who only learned by experimenting and reading knows more then the uni grad but is constantly slammed down in reviews for the lack of diploma's.
Last job I even lost because of it. I was the unofficial head of the web development department but when my manager left (head of the web business unit) it was decided to bring in someone new to be a proper IT manager. The guy had all the diploma's and could talk the talk but had no clue about how to actually run a website day to day. Yet I was supposed to work under him. I said thanks but no thanks. I am not going to earn less then a guy whose hand I am supposed to be holding. That wasn't the first time either.
Now don't get me wrong, I am no coding god. I just got a bit of common sense.
Sadly most bosses do not. I do not even respond anymore when a company asks for diploma X no matter how capable I might be of performing at that level.
Just ask for coding examples and look through them.
But hey it is easier to complain about employees then to question wether the problem perhaps lies with you. Of course I know where my own problem is. It is that I could not wait to get out of school and into real live.
Until we get search engines that can determine meaning from context we are stuck as long as people keep naming their products in stupid ways.
We may joke about apple iXXX everything but at least it is easy to search for. MS is especially evil since it seems unable to name its products uniquely.
Oh and that is what I want in a job website. A search system that gets around it. After all the system knows the context, it is searching through jobs listings. Shouldn't be too hard to get people to list required skills in such a way that even current search technology can easily list only those that apply.
Of course that would only help if jobs didn't just list every skill they ever heard off.
So how would propose I add another gig when it cannot even accept a single gig?
It does however have a 32mb graphics card that is not used. Oh sure it is a tiny amount of memory but when the kernel is forced to start swapping it makes a difference. Not a huge amount to be sure and it doesn't help at all when it really needs to swap a lot but it gives me just a little bit more room to play with.
Haven't thought about upgrading the card but I guess if I ever see a really cheap 256mb card it might be worth it.
A dual P3 is still plenty fast for desktop use especially since the linux kernel keeps on improving. Windows users may wish to close their ears to save themselve from terminal shock but linux installs get better with age.
Sure sure someday I am going to have to buy a new system and now that dual core chips are here the hurdle is not as big as having to buy a dual single core machine was but still, the longer I can keep this system running the happier I am
Hardware/software hacking is about making stuff go that extra mile. Just plonking a wad of cash on the counter is totally missing the point.
Oh wait it isn't you say? You Mister BSD user then what is that smell of decay and rot? Oh that is just you, it ain't the OS?
Oh but Apple never 'bought' BSD they just used it and that is not like what is happening with Oracle and IBM.
But IBM at least has been putting a lot of its own software into OSS. They have been getting a lot of press about opensourcing its stuff it didn't buy but properly researched with its own money. So what exactly would make them in the least bit inclined to then try to reverse that with any opensource software they buy?
Not that they could if they even wanted to because of the whole GPL thing.
Oracle I am not so sure about, not that they can un-gpl something but they could certainly attempt to hurt development by hiring away the best and brightest.
But then they always could do that without buying the software companies. Just look at OSS software developers and offer the best a job.
Fundementally you can't 'buy' gpl software. Once it is out it is out. You can hire away developers but that problem isn't unique to open source. Closed source companies are doing it as well. Ballmer apperently was very upset about it recently and some chairs may have been thrown.
This is just scare mongering. Oracle may want to hurt opensource databases as they clearly interfere with its business (do you think Oracle likes it when big sites like /. show that a sorta free database does well enough?) but IBM has clearly shown that it (for now) is commited to OSS.
Ofcourse that might chance but simply buying companies and hiring developers is not a threat. Now when we hear that OSS developers are being paid on the condition they stop writing OSS software that is when alarm bells should start to ring. Not when people who write good software get money for doing so.
Rolls Royce obviously has a reputation to protect as a superd silent and comfortable vehicle so if I bought a Rolls Royce and hacked it up to make it run with no shocks on square wheels and removed the exhaust could they forbid me to do so? No. What if I took out the engine and put it a Volkswagen Beetle?
An artist obviously intents his art to be enjoyed for generations to come. So if I buy a van Gogh and burn it can anyone stop me? No.
If a game company doesn't include any cheats then obviously they did not intend people to cheat. So can they then say trainers are illegal? Obviously no. Any company that would try to take you to court for playing their game in godmode would get slapped down by the judge.
Or to use your own example of a book. If I buy the latest novel of an author and rip it apart and feed it to the goat is that illegal? If I read it completly at random is that illegal? If I take the copy and translate it into braille then destroy the original and give the braille copy to a blind person is that illegal? I just hacked it to be read on a different platform after all.
So what exactly makes software companies like Apple so fucking special that they can dictate what I do with my copy of Mac OS X I bought from them?
You and software companies need to realize that they are selling a product just like any other company and that people are then free to do with that product what they want.
Copyright is about making copies. It is not about what I do with your product. I am not legally allowed to make other then personal copies for OS X. I am allowed to do whatever I want however with my own copy. If I wish to take every bit and flip it then that is my choice.
Mods who modded you up are insane and just do not understand what rights people have. Sofware ain't special, don't allow tools like the above poster to take away right you have had forever.
Image you went to your local baker and bought a loaf of bread and then were threathened with jail time for hacking it up into little bits and feeding it to the ducks when clearly the baker decided it was only to be used for human consumption.
But computers are different. It causes people like you to behave like slaves who lick their masters asses and swallow everything they deliver.
Apple sells software. Once it made the sale I can do with it what I want for my personal use. If I decide to take it apart and chance it to run on other hardware or to function in a way different then it was before then that is my right.
Oh but wait of course, I get it. Games were never intended to run with trainers. So trainers are illegal. They also never meant for you to use someone elses savegame so savegames are illegal. They also do not come with a walkthrough so clearly walkthroughs are illegal.
Running say program X on a emulator is obviously clearly illegal.
But then I got a bit of bad news for you. Your lord and master Steve Jobs is breaking his own laws. By allowing windows software to run in emulation he is hacking that software to run on platforms it was never intended to run on. Could every windows developer sue whenever a mac user runs a bit of windows software?
No, Apple has a right to cry foul when people give away its software for free but when I buy a copy of Mac OS X in the shops I am then free to use it in anyway I please. I can use it as a coaster. I can run it on mac hardware and I can hack it and run it on whatever I like. As long as I respect the fact that I got right to 1 copy of it running at anyone time I am in the clear.
Anyone who tells you different is a fucking tool.
The first, Bill Gates, when are you going to produce a secure OS that does not get owned in the millions by the first kiddy who tries?
The second to Joe "Windows == computers" Average, when are you going to treath your computer like you would treath your house or car and lock it properly and not put all you valuables on the seat of your convertable with the top down?
Botnets exist for two reasons, lousy software and the people that use it. Not very suprising the article totally failed to touch on this issue. I wonder how much MSFT spends in advertising at the wasinghton post.
Lets not forget that this only affect windows users. So lets put the blaim where it belongs. With Bill Gates for writing a crap OS and the millions of users who keep on using it despite years and years of warnings on how bad it is.
I think that if you send a botnet controller to jail you should also send each and every owner of an infected pc to jail. Or just line them up so I can kick their ass.
Sorry I just can't get that upset about a victimless crime. Stupid windows users get their machines hosed but they obviously don't care or they would either properly maintain their machines OR get a real OS. Ad companies get screwed out of money but they obviously don't care or they would do better checks. Anyway do we care about spammers?
No, this is harmless stuff. I rather have the powers that be spend their time on real criminals. Not petty scammers like this.
Can I propose a web 3.0? Accessable only after passing an exam. First question: Do you run windows? Only passable answer: NO.
Of course web 3.0 would be very empty of chicks stripping on webcam but surely that is a prize worth paying?
Yeah, of course your right and in any normal country you do have the right to make a copy for personal use. If you do not have that right then you do not live in a normal country and are a silly person who deserves sillyness.
Fight for your right to recode your own content for your own use!
It is simple really,
The attempt was to get a sleep function going because I wanted to load a very big picture but not have the user wonder why nothing was happening so I wanted to check if the image had loaded (img.complete) and if not display a loading message. Normally you would use a while loop with a sleep() call to just check every so often but javascript does not have such a function.
Oh just running an empty while loop causes firefox to popup a warning after a second or 2 about the script taking to many resources.
I figured out how to do it properly but not after first having to killall firefox-bin and shutdown explorer.exe processes. Opera, the one true king, ofcourse had no problem with it.
Relevant? Maybe, I needed the code because people can't be bothered anymore to just look at the spinning whatever or the status bar to see if a page is still loading you got to put it in the page itself so they do not hit the same request a hundred times thinking this is going to speed up the download.
Useless javascript but needed if you want your site to be accepted in this day and age.
The problem is that none of the movie makers seem capable of respecting the source material. Doom is of course the worst offender. Doom the game had three elements and the movie had none of them. It has already been discussed enough but it is true for EVERY game movie.
It reminds me of the horror stories that happen when americans get their paws on british comedy. Hitchhikers guide anyone? Read up on Terry Pratchet with both his discworld series and Good Omens. Red Dwarf? The american pilot can be found if you got a strong stomach. It is not new either. Check the old british comedy Porridge. Oh and the americans ain't the only one to blame. There was a dutch version of it too. Truly horrible.
Nor is it just the americans doing it. There are foreign 'remakes' of "Who's the boss" that should have their producers shot for wasting good film.
Why does it happen? I don't know. What exactly makes you pick a very popular property and then take out those elements that make it what it is? Red Dwarf is 4 male losers in space. So why did the americans make one female? Discworld/Omen has Death. So why do you tell the writers to loose the skeleton?
Frankly I am not suprised that movie makers don't get games because they haven't been doing to well with anything else either. I am pretty sure that if a movie maker would get his hands on the game chess we would loose the black and white sides and instead it would be a small multi-colored rebel army vs zombies from mars because that is what the focus group told them sells.
Frankly Uwe Boll has a point, he may be bad but there a lot worse out there. Popular property == butchery in the hand of a filmmaker.
Perhaps he is right about game studios not doing enough. Would a modern Marvel allow Spiderman to be butchered like this? Probably not but none of the game studios seem upset with Uwe Boll. Rather then interviewing him interview the person reponsible for selling the license and ask them why they did not protect their title.
We had some interviews with the people from Doom but the only thing I got out of it was that they were happy to take the cash. They didn't seem to care one shit about what the movie would be like.
Perhaps it is a vicious downward spiral. Game movies are 'flops' so if you can sell the license you take whatever you can get rather then risk loosing essentially free income. BEcause the game studios don't bother to protect their property (how many property owners do? I think Pratchett and the Red Dwarf guys are among the exceptions for having turned down movie makers) then the movie makers feels compelled to 'change' the property to better fit focus groups.
If you want to understand why game movies suck study Doom. It is the simplest property requiring no quality actors to tell a complex backstory. You only have to put a guy in marine uniform on mars slaughtering demons. That is it. When you figured out why they could not do that then you have figured out why game movies suck.
Movie makers just can't seem to learn that when you take a popular property you do not get a 'free' audience. You get a whole lot of 'free' critics who will be checking up on every factoid. When George Lucas made Star Wars A New Hope he was free. Yet if you make a "star wars' game you do not get a free audience unless you manage to get everything right that makes star wars star wars. Say you made an MMORPG and suddenly decided that Jedi are not the asskickers of the universe but can be owned by a medic. Do you think that would still get you the millions of star wars fans as free customers? Ask SOE.
Same is true the other way around. You can use a popular property in a different media but you got to respect the source.
Back to Doom the feeling I get is that the makers should just have made a non doom movie. Everything said in every interview gave me the impression they didn't want to make Doom the Movie but that just someone thought using its name would help sell it.
There is a dutch saying "zoals de waard is vertrouwt hij zijn gasten". It is a bit hard to translate but goes roughly like this "by his own nature the innkeeper trust his guests".
Meaning that if the innkeeper is a crook he will trust his guests to be crooks. What does trusted computing therefore tell us about Intel MS and the content companies?
Boobytraps, both software and hardware are the reason investigators now take the drive out and in extreme cases even take the drive apart before doing anything else. So far nobody has found a way to boobytrap the platters themselves while for someone like the police it is trivial to duplicate a drive/platter and then they can examine the copy at their leasure leaving the original safe for evidence.
The idea that you must use the suspects own computer hardware and software to get the data off would be a nightmare to investigators.
So a brute force attack would not work against a smart suspect. Current brute force attacks only work because systems allow an unlimited amount of logins. Limit this and brute force is death. Think of it like this. Brute force works on doors ONLY if somebody doesn't beat your face in the moment you touch it.
What happens when someone alters the url by hand, to say something like ?page=fuckofyoufuckingfucker.
Well nothing, except it won't load a page (probably I don't know what you called your pages) but what if they actually make it more complex and insert a complete sql statement with escape codes? You see the problem is that you can do that, you can insert one sql statement into another. I am to lazy to search for an example but it is a widely used attack.
What should you do instead? Well at least "select * from pages where page = 'Mysql_Escape_String($page)'" (not proper PHP) wich escapes any escape codes making it a simple string with no harmfull side effects.
Personally I like to go further. I use a regex to make sure it only contains those characters I expect and in the case of pages where I know the range of options I check wether it is a legal page name. For instance not to long or to short. Just to be sure. Remember it is okay to be paranoid on the web where everyone really is out to get you.
As for PHP native sessions, the other post again answers it very accurate but not why I dislike them. A it is not enabled on all servers. This is bad because PHP code should be portable. B it is blocking, only 1 thread can work on a sessions data at a time. This is bad on high performance servers. C. it uses the filesystem for something wich it is not meant to do. D. it is a bitch to admin. E. the alternatives are just so much better.
What is the alternative. A simple database (whatever form you like) with a cookie.
So the first method is perfectly fine just CHECK the content of $_GET['page'] before you use it. The second method just doesn't scale well. It is overkill for simple stuff where you only need a user side stored cookie and it is to simple and inefficient for more complex needs.
And yes I know it is aimed at mobile devices. So what?
But your clearly and idiot. 1024x768 Quake 3 seem fast to you. Right. Because game + resolution == frame rate.
If you actually read my post you will have noted that I point out that it is not quake 3 but rather quake 3 revolution. The first is a PC game and the second is a PS2 game. The PS2 does not have 1024x768 resolution. If you had a brain you would realise that this could mean that the chip supports 1024x768 but can only play quake3 in lowers resolutions.
You may have RTFA but you haven't UTFA (U for understood). Don't worry, as you grow older you will learn to read between the lines of marketing bullshit.
No, nintendogz is a nice game and it may have sold to women but frankly if Nintendo is betting their future on this then they are doomed.
I think you missed both the point of my post AND the original post. It seems to claim that selling 1.5 million games on a handheld is going to doom the PS3 and 360. I claim bullshit. You lap it up.
Now of course this is a statement in a press story so it probably has all the accuracy of well a press story (0) but what exactly does this mean?
Quake 3 was a PC game. It was the game I got a matrox G400 (bumpmapping) for, well that and dualhead, and I think was typically played at 1024x768 resolution.
So when was it released on the playstation. Oh right, never. A version was released for the playstation 2. Big difference right there but even with its improved hardware the PS2 is still not exactly up to snuff. The resolution is TV, wich is far far lower then you would ever accept on a pc.
So what exactly is this new chip capable off? Can it play at 1024x768 OR can it play at playstation (2) resolutions? Why does it compare a pc game with a lesser console version?
I smell a load of marketing. Reminds me of the days on the farm.
It may be powerfull but comparing it to a poor console version of an old console game is not exactly inspiring.
If you truly do believe that the various western goverments are not answerable to the voter then what exactly is the difference between living say in the US/UK and the Soviet Union/China? Either the west has democracy and then anything the goverment does is by the will of the people OR you liven in a dictatorship. Remember, the soviet union did have elections. Just you could chose between a communist and a communist, not at all of course like the US where you can choose between a capatalist and a capatalist. Or the UK where you can choose between a corrupt party, a party that doesn't matter and a left-wing party so right-wing it makes the right-wing party look left-wing.
If you believe that it the west is a democracy then shut up. This is obviously what the majority of voters want. Democracy can only work if the minority accepts the rule of the majority. The only difference between dictatorship and democracy is really the size of the group that does the telling.
The older I get the more I come to believe that democracy is fundementally flawed. The majority of voters are to stupid to truly consider the results of their voting (voting for parties that are for policies the voter is totally against), you got only 1 vote for a generic candidate so screw you if on some issues you lean to the left and other you lean on the right. Myself I am dutch. I am pro socialism when it comes to helping people who are in trouble but I am right wing when it comes to people leeching from the system. Or put another way. A single mother with kids should be able to get good social security to raise her kids but uni graduate who can't find a job in whatever useless field he studied can go sweep roads. Wich party do I vote for? Tax me for the needy but put the whip on the lazy.
Of course with just 1 vote every four years how can I make my views known? Do I vote against the mess that is the current health care change over (left) or do I vote against the current mess with imigration (right)?
This move to compulsiry indentification is nothing new and is happening in various stages throughout the west. The reasons are simple. In the view of the currently elected goverments it needs to know who its people are and what they are doing. Simple stuff like knowing who is holding what job so you can collect the taxes. Oh sure you can rely on the honor system but apparently that ain't working well enough.
Who has judged it not working well enough? Well us the voters it seems. If you voted for tax cuts then you voted for the taxman needing more powers to make sure that everyone pays the reduced taxes. 1 person not paying taxes equals another person paying double to raise the same amount after all.
Same with imigration, if you ever complaint about illegal immigrants then you vote for indentification since that is the only way to find them.
At times it is easy to feel that the goverment doesn't listen to the voter but when you spend some time trying to understand what the voter wants you start to realize that the goverment has no choice.
Everyone wants cheap electricity, nobody wants a powerplant in their district. So what choice has goverment got? Build no powerplant and upset everyone a bit, build one and upset whatever district it is in a lot.
The whole discussion about identification needs to get out of the "the mean goverment is forcing me' moaning and into a debate about what we are willing to live with. Do we want anonimity even when it costs us a lot in taxes because of fraud OR do we want to be tracked througout our life?
Considering that the best election result still goes to the guy who promises he is going to cut taxes I think the answer is clear. We may moan about id cards but seem unwilling to live with effects of not having them.
Put it simple, your driving license is an ID card. We as a soc
Nobody disputes that Nintendo owns the handheld. It has done so for a long time and at the moment the PSP seems to be a good second runner but not replacing the DS. If anything I think the PSP is increasing the market or perhaps people just have both it certainly is not distracting from the DS sales.
But so what? The gameboy always sold well. It was the 'main' consoles that Nintendo has been having troubles with. So this is like saying, Pokemon GB/GBA sold well so the Playstation 1/2 were a flop.
Oh and then comes the old sales pitch. Simple. Yes, we are going to reach that part of the market that is to dumb to figure out a lightswitch. Someone should really tell marketing people that there will always be people who claim X is to complex and they will buy X the moment it reaches their level of understanding. Problem is you can't. As long as their are people who are confused by revolving doors or even those who push when it says pull you will have people who can't figure out X.
Marketing to them is stupid. Why? Because you are insulting the intelligence of everyone else. Don't believe me? How many of you actually like using dumbed down products with zero options to confuse you? Oh don't get me wrong. They are nice at first, when you are still new and unsure of what to do. And then you move on and want more.
Part of the fun for me in playing a game is learning to play it. I think it is true with any type of game. The basics are simple but as you move on it becomes more and more complex. You can play chess just fine without knowing the more obscure rules like that move where you can switch the king and towers BUT the game will become deeper and more challenging as you learn more.
Same with other games. Say a FPS. A game with no stances is simpler as it saves 1-2 or even 3 buttons to learn BUT having the option makes the game deeper and more challenging.
Oh and as for nintendogz attracting females to play and that being the road to success. Sorry but if women were the road to success the PC would be the top console. The Sims and similar games are dominated by women.
I am not a woman but if I were I would be insulted by this piece. It is effectively saying that women find current games to complex. Taste or a hint they lack the mental capabilities to deal with 12 buttons and 2 joysticks?
The revolutions success and for that matter the success of all consoles will depend on wether it can reach that 'must buy' state. Usually because it is the console that has the 'must buy' game. Will it? So far Nintendo seems very reluctant to actually show games. Or at least I haven't seen any 'must buy' titles announced yet.
Simple is another way to say dumbed down. Sure there will be players who moan about the good old days when you had all you need was a joystick with 2 buttons but frankly if they were a real market we would have games that meet their needs. We don't. Or rather we do. Old games.
Serious Sam was a move to 'old fashioned' gameplay in the FPS genre. It sold well. Apparently not well enough however as it got only a sequell but no clones. Yes it was hailed as a grand return to the good old days, and then people returned to their complex soldier sims with a hundred buttons that are what we expect today.
Nintendo Revolution may be trying to pull a Apple 1 mouse button move. Even Apple nowadays sells a power mouse with an insane amount of buttons. Simple is good, until you learned it and want more. Fisher Price makes a bright and easy cassette player but I don't see it in to many hifi setups.
It just, ewh.
Oh okay, how bad was it? Well ewh. Yes it is childish but it was just so... ewh. I can't really put it in anyother way. Mediocre perhaps but that ain't it. Bad? No the basic idea was okay but just well done in an ewh way. Not so much buggy as just not working.
Offcourse it had to be rebooted or rather reset every few hours. Of course it froze and of course programs crashed. It was a first generation MS product. But that wasn't the only problem, anyway the unit I worked with was a test unit not a final production unit so it might have improved later (yeah right).
What was the real problem? Well take the browser. It was a crap version of IE (or should that be crappier? Crapiest?) version 5 I think with NO css support at all. None. Bit of a nasty shock to our designer that was.
It was a bitch to delvelop for when you got it to work. Meanwhile the other unit was one of those nokia phones, the one you got if you were a good boy, with an opera browser that was just like a real browser.
It for me was a typical MS product, badly done, half done and not finished. Did it sell? Yeah it did, not well but well enough. That is MS entire business strategy I think. Flood the industry with products that are crap but get accepted by the morons to force everyone to support MS.
It is kinda like IE. Every web builder knows that IE is the worst browser ever build but it is the one that controls what you can and cannot do on a website. Just today I had to tell someone that to have a fixed bar at the bottom of a website is not possible on their site because IE does not properly support css position: fixed. Works perfect in every browser except IE so you cannot use it on mainstream sites.
Will MS sell these phones to people that should have bought blackberry's. Off course. Probably not enough to be successfull but enough to force everyone to once again limit themselves to the lowest common denomenator.
Yuck. Someone please make my day and shoot a MS user.
Real watermarks are for duplicating, not taking out. Absolutly nobody would want to take the watermark out of their 100 euro banknote. In an mp3 you would instead want to remove the mark.
Am I being anal? Well yeah but when it comes to security it is the only way to be. A banknote with the watermark removed just lost its value. A mp3 with its watermark has possibly just increased in value. It certainly has lost none.
So the type of attack they have to stand up against is totally different. A banknote watermark just has to be expensive to duplicate. Add enough expensive to duplicate elements to a banknote and you will make it unattractive to counterfitters. It is the reason you see so few attemps at counterfit cents. (Please do not post links to your favorite wooden nickel story okay?)
But all the 'counterfitter' has to do with the mp3 is to remove the watermark. Wich as others have already pointed out should not be too hard. This is totally different type of attack. Remember, the banknote is proud of its watermark and makes it very easy to 'see' it. It even forms a pretty picture to make it stand out more. The last thing you want in the mp3 version is for it to stand out. Adding a split second of mp3 codec that stands out shouting 'look at me I am a pretty watermark' is just asking for it to be edited out.
Oh well, will this work? Well only if they somehow manage to keep you from just removing the watermark. mis-Trusted computing anyone?
Funny thing, I own more LP's then any other medium. In fact as more and more anti copy protection is introduced, the less I own of it. LP (too many) -> CD (repectable) -> VHS (0 now but used have a okay collection) -> Mini disc (a couple)-> DVD (a few) -> iTunes (0)
Odd that.
We all heard the joke about current education that is more worried about how the kid feels then about getting proper answers. "What is 2+2 timmy?" "5" "that is okay, if that is what makes you feel good about yourselve".
Sadly considering current education results it seems not to be a joke.
Or put another way, if you manage to 'learn' something from Civ 1-4 or Railroad Tycoon then your education must have truly sucked. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE those games. I played them more then is healthy but to consider them educational? No.
Anyway should education be fun? If so for how long? I seen kids fresh from school who were totally incapable of dealing with real life. No you can't just take a sickday. No you can't skip a meeting like you skip a class. No your dog ate your project is NOT a valid excuse. Installing X on the company network so you can chill out is not acceptable. Hacking the school network gets you expelled, hacking your company network lands you in jail.
Perhaps I am just old. Now get of my lawn!