One of the sequels to Elite had no soundblaster support. At the time soundblaster was practically the only card. The more recent Mafia had problems with logitech force feedback wheels. It was a driving game and there are two makers large makers of force feedback wheels. Guess on of those companies name.
Saying you should read the reviews is bullshit. Game reviews are not worth the paper they are written on wich for online versions is very bad news indeed. Remember Hidden & Dangerous? Reviewed as the second coming of gameplay. They never got the bugs out.
The game industry like the computer industry in general is very childish. Would you accept it if you bought a car and one of the cylinders doesn't work? No? Then why are we supposed to accept missing pixels on lcd's? Would accept a book with 30% of the words mispelled but they are gonna fix it anyday now? Then why do you accept buggy software?
Sueing is considered an evil but sadly it seems to be the only way to get companies to behave. Cars didn't become safe until people sued. Tobacco wasn't labelled as dangerous until people sued. Computer companies will keep selling crap at high prices with no support until we sue.
Will it happen? I doubt it. Have you ever seen a consumer affairs program touch software?
About the only real advise I can give this person is put up a site advising everyone against ever buying a product from that company again. Invest time and money in a review site that really reviews games by playing them from start to finish and noting down every bug and crash. That is the way real stuff is tested. You know the stuff someone once sued about.
My warning. Gathering of Developers, the publishers of Mafia and vietcong, have intresting games but their support is total crap. Buy their software only if you are 100% sure it will run for you. If the demo is buggy then so will the final game be in their case. Note that I had problems only with force feedback but the rest was smooth sailing. Others never even got the game to load. Play the demo. If it sucks then so will the game. THEY WILL NOT FIX ANY BUGS between demo and release time. Patches afterwards are only done by a couple of companies. On a positive note Papyrus of Grand Prix Legends released patches that didn't fix games. They upgraded the game to take advantage of new hardware. Then again the demo played perfectly on my pc also. Mmmm, good demo, good manual, good box, good game, good support. Spotting a trend here.
I saw the post on this idiots article right below the post on the MS source leak.
So GNU/Linux source has been out for decades. Windows source has never been out except recently. Shall we do an exploits in the wild count? Note the in the wild part. It is a distinction that anti-virus researchers make as their are some pretty nasty computer virusses that have only been spotted in their labs, not on peoples pc's.
Every now and then some idiot is going to stand up and proclaim something really stupid. Instead of gently leading that person to proper care and attention in the form of a straight jacket and handfull of pills people print their ravings.
This guy is one of them. Opensource vs closed source means very little when it comes to security. Big holes can and have been found in both. What matters is how you respond to those holes. Opensource GNU/Linux is pretty fast. Closed source Microsoft is goddamn slow. So? MS is hardly the only closed source company. If someone ever post figures on the commercial unixes or OS's like symbian and shows the same terrible performance as MS then I will be impressed.
So far all the MS exploits prove is that they have some pretty sloppy working methods in redmond. Not that closed source itself is bad. If all closed source projects have the same track record as MS then it will be news. They don't.
HOWEVER, opensource has proven itself. Countless projects use it, linux kernel, gnu toolset, kde and gnome and all the other desktops, tron the os blueprint from japan, apache, mysql and postgress and the berkely databases, bsd even though it is dying and countless others.
The dumb thick skulled males beat each other over the head to determine who can mate. This would lead to the thickest skulled breeding the most hence having the most kids and therefore the winner.
This did not happen as our skulls are thin.
What really happened is that while the thick skulled ones were bashing each other brains in the thin skulled nerd was clubbing out the women and dragging them to his cave.
Hence women with the thinnest skulls tended to get clubbed out the easiest and become the mother of this nerds offspring.
This guy got so much action that now the entire human race has thin skulls.
Flamebait part
Sadly he clubbed the women so hard that they haven't caught on and still get pregnant at the prom from a thick skulled jock. And then bitch that no guys want to date a woman with a kid. It ain't the kid honey. It is that you didn't have the brains to use the pill.
Conslusion: evolution ain't a lab experiment. It is messy and nasty and it is not survival of the fittest but rather survival of those that survive. Fit guys get drafted and send to the front, unfit guys stay home and comfort the women.
Missing the point my friend, but then so did the poster. Nothing is said about Apple loosing ground. Just that their is now another non-windows OS out there with users in the single number percentages. That they are a fraction higher just makes for nice headlines. It is a journalist thing.
Since real freedom fans are not out to destroy ms-windows but rather to make for a world in wich ms-windows is just another desktop this is good news. Apple and linux and bsd and beOS (whatever its new names is) SkyOS and tron and etc all have tiny shares. TOGETHER we are now beyond the 5% and closing slowly on the 10%. 1 out of 10 people is a significant number. That is the kind of number businesses have to respect or face loosing customers.
With Office on Apple uncertain this could mean that 1 out of 10 people need to get their documents in a more open format.
So this article shouldn't be about linux overtaking apple, wich is hardly a suprise considering it is happening on the office desktop and the gigantic price difference, but the share of non-ms-windows installations increasing.
No MS is not going to go bankrupt over this. But with these kind of statistics IE only websites are becoming just a little bit less good business sense. That can surely only be a good thing.
but a lot of them got the dir command aliased to "ls -l" and you even get pretty colors now ain't that nice?
There are some good books out there apparently to help complete beginners, personally I learned from a unix guy, but you really need to start to worry when you hit midlevel.
When ls and such no longer hold any secrets there are few books who will help you along in a general way.
I can see plenty of tutorials on installing apache. Sadly all of them seem to be for very low volume sites. Start hitting the 20mbit mark and they are totally and utterly wrong. Referer log a good idea? Not when it will fill the 2gb mark in a couple of hours.
Ah sorry. Went completly of on a tanget. My point I guess is that people can learn the, unpack, make, make install process. It is learning what comes next that is really hard. Mostly because you have no idea what comes next.
As much as I am a penquin lover and a unix freak if you design a webpage it should almost certainly display and work properly in IE. The only exception is sites specifically showing why IE is such an obsolete piece of crap. Say a site showing how nice proper PNG support is.
Does that mean your site should only work on IE or use IE specific elements? Well consider this. How many years ago was it when netscape rules the browser market? Not that long ago right? Are you prepared to completly rebuild your site if and when IE looses top place? And don't go that will never happen, when the first IE was out people also said it would never beat netscape.
There is also something else to consider. Opera may have a tiny share of the desktop browser market but it rules supreme on the phones. Worse if you code for IE desktop then you are in for a horrible suprise when someone tries to access your sites with IE for mobile phones. At least the version I worked with didn't support CSS at all.
So the answer? Make sure your site looks and works properly on IE and make sure it works and looks okay on everything else. Yes that does mean opera AND mozilla AND lynx/links.
If you want to know why ask yourselve this. If you build a brick and mortar shop would you put in a door that kicks out even 1% of your potential customers? No? Then why do it with your website?
Displaying a page telling people to "update" to browser X is also a terrible crime. Imagine if you went to a gas station and they told you to buy a new car. You would pissed off. Especially if you drive a motorcycle.
I used one before I got broadband to keep the costs in check. I knew exactly how much I was spending. I stopped when I got broadband because quit frankly I have better hardware and better booze at home.
There are quit a few here in Amsterdam (holland) and they do vary.
Cyber cafe's, they are just bars with a few pc's. Typically used by tourists and people who for some reason don't have a phone line but do got money. Foreign workers staying in hotels are regulars. Cheaper then what a hotel charges. Some are fun as a bar.
Phone shops. Amsterdam has a large immigrant population and shops provide cheap phone calls back home. Most also have internet access. Mostly used by young immigrants. Not very welcoming to outsiders.
Copy shops. It is a student town and students need to copy things. They typically have a couple of machines that can be used for desktop publishing but also have internet access. Expensive because of the hardware but good if you want to work.
Of course there is the easyaccess place wich is pure tourists.
So what do I think that works? Well depends on the people in your area. If there is a large group of people without access at home then you can easily open a store in a central location. Add a small bar. A place where people can get a drink and access the net.
If people do got access at home you need to supply a very good reason for them to come to your place. Very fast access could be one but this costs lots of money. A fun enviroment could be one but sitting behind a computer is ultimately a single experience.
You could attempt to setup a gaming center if you got the money. But it would be very very difficult to keep the place open. Open to the general public I mean. New clients can easily be discouraged if you don't provide a welcoming atmosphere. And I don't mean just in the bar but also in the games going on.
Yeah I remember a few games that were supposed to go along these lines. Blair Witch was the only one to even come close and it was really three sequels released really close together.
So why is it such an amazingly bad idea. Well quit apart from the administrative overhead (10x5 bucks costs more to transact then 1x50 bucks) and the tiny little problem that not everyone has credit cards or fast lines to download new episodes.
There is the problem that people hate waiting. Is it me or is there more then simply the wish to pirate behind people downloading tv episodes? It is not like you can't catch a repeat. No we want it now and we want it when we want it not when some executive somewhere decides we can have it.
Playing a game then having to wait god knows how long for the next part would suck. Especially when you got the nagging suspicion that the next episode never comes.
Also lets face it. Very few games have a really gripping story line. The few that do, RPG's, are best when they are open and this hardly allows you to divide it up in chapters. Adventures would work but they have a hard enough time selling as it is.
Perhaps sometime in the future. I think the first maybe the MMORPG when they finally get around to add a story that is.
Nice idea, file it with 3D glasses and interactive movies.
Alright so I am an idiot but where is the case study? All I see is a very short interview with a man in charge of the IT department where they already have a large amount of unix knowledge choosing to go with the new kid in the unix camp rather then going with windows.
This is in fact what MS is saying. That if your company does not have significant unix skills but instead is windows based then switching to linux will be more expensive. Sure they mess around with it but that claim is pretty valid. It is always more expensive in the short term, and tco is short term roi would be long term, to switch.
So yes he does say the lack of MS Office is keeping the linux desktop down. True or not this is hardly likely to ever change. Hell MS is even backing down on MS office of the apple.
Nice headline, pity it doesn't seem related to the story.
To those impatient to see when Linux will overthrow MS windows look back at history and ask how long it took MS to go from nobody to somebody. There was a time when owning a DOS machine was alternative and weird when everybody had an amiga on wich everything just worked. With PICTURES!!!!!
It is an old army joke that your weapon is produced by the lowest bidder.
Nice to see we can now laugh about social services as well. Not like they don't already have enough screw-ups by dismissing child abuse claims when a kid been admitted dozens of times for broken bones and still claim nothing is wrong when finally the kid goes to the doctor for the last time. The coroner.
Hail damage can ruin an entire crop and it is not like most farmers are on such high margins they can afford the loss of a year. However to protect a parking lot? Never heard of a roof?
Don't get me wrong. We got one of those car parks in the dock area here and it is huge but it wouldn't need to be a complex roof and its success would be 100%. Also stops sunlight and seagull shit and acid rain.
So nice story, didn't know this was even possible but Nissan probably got had. Will be intresting to hear what their neighbours will have to say about it. Noise polution in a 5 mile area? Never be allowed over here. Here people complain they can hear the trains in the house they bought that is next the rail track.
Can't play a lot of them. Can't find the code anymore. Can play the really old ones like 7th guest (it was on budget) because they didn't bother with copy protection crap.
So fuck to game companies that insist on adding copy protections that only harass the paying public. Why should I pay for a crippled product when I can get the uncrippled version free? OFP is a case in point I own it and all the extensions legally but had to download it because I lost the key. FUCK YOU codemasters.
Next time I will just save myself the bother okay? Don't believe the copy protection is crippled? Look at the size difference between the official game.exe and the nocd.exe.
As for the hardworking developers.
Hidden & Dangerous, are we ever going to get a working patch? Should I just consider downloading the sequel for free as the patch perhaps?
Mafia, what on earth possesed them to take a year to release a patch to fix a lot of issues including in a driving game not supporting logitech force feedback wheels properly.
Keep screwing us with badly tested games and idiotic copy protection and we will revolt.
Imagine if you went into a supermarket and at the checkout they stripsearched everybody. People who just walk out without paying go through unhindered. Idiotic? That is what copy protection is doing. Games are ripped before they are in the shops.
Only mmorpgs seem somewhat safe although there of the more popular ones "illegal" servers where you can play free.
Worse yet are game companies that release a game months later in some parts of the world. I seen games available on the net months before they appear in the shop (no not halflife2). Even the movie industry is learning that staggered releases are a stupid thing. In computer game land it borders on suicide.
I used to buy my games but I have felt increasinly that I was being treated like an idiot and a criminal. Well now I am a criminal. Happy?
Oh and anyone else notice that while CD's are cheaper then floppies and game manuals are a thing of the past and the market for games has increased the price of games has gone up? I also seem to remmeber being able to finish most games without having to patch them. Must be old age messing with my mind.
Oh and for a really old poor copy protection. One of the sequels to elite stopped the game every so often and required you to find a word on a page. The catch? If was a lot easier to use a cheat sheet then to use your manual to find the word. Of course pirates had a hacked exe and were never bothered at all. SMART MOVE.
Would you possibly consider the idea that WE are the real RTS fans and you are the non-RTS player?
TA and C&C are different beasts. Anyone who played both can tell you this. The ones you like are rock-paper-scissors games with very limited strategic capabilities.
TA gave you big enough maps to really do a two pronged assault. It gave you effective air power without making your ground army totally defenceless. I played battles with only a few token ground units and an armada of bombers I also played battles with not a single air unit. C&C never gave me this choice.
The AI in TA was also a lot better. You complain about the defence. Well yes. I prefer an opponent who can hold their own and is not destroyed by a mere tank rush. TA forced you to knock a hole in the defence then be ready to commit a follow up attack.
But really there are three different camps of RTS games. C&C heavy on story, few units, rock-paper-scissor unit dependency, TA huge maps, loads of units many of them multi-use, no story. Finally there is Close Combat. Ultra realistic, very good AI including units wich actually act on their own but difficult as hell and slooooooow.
None of these type of games are less then another. Just different.
So you go Meh, a real TA fan will go yippie and me the close combat fan will hope that TA2 is closer to CC then C&C.
There was an upturn for a while when some people replaced vinyl with cd but this has stopped. Some analyst even dare to claim that this weakening of of the replacement sales can completly account for the sales downturn. Crazy bastards I know.
CD's are more expensive then vinyl was yet are cheaper to produce, transport and stock. Odd? Look at DVD vs VHS. A dvd happily sits next to a tape for twice the price overhere. Is it me or is one of them a whole lot cheaper to make?
So you got bach lovers who kept their vinyl. The cd's fans who have finished replacing their collection and people like me that go "How much for a piece of plastic with holes in it?".
Quite frankly I don't care if all the music stores close. To bad for the people who lose their income but this industry is to sick. Time to shoot the patient.
I can't even remember the story. Something about robots and space and fighting someone else with robots.
Best thing about the game was that it had a huge selection of different weapons meaning you didn't have the rock-siccors-paper style gameplay of the Command & Conquer series. Add larger maps, better use of 3D terrain and you had a very enjoyable game. The only one where you could actually fight an airwar against a land army.
Lets just hope it is not like the original "sequel" eh? The magic version? Boy did that one bomb.
Here my wish list for the perfect RTS game.
Great AI that can actually defend itself a bit. Meaning not stand there and get hammered by artitarrly or soldiers attacking tanks and thanks attacking soldiers.
True 3D terrain and the use of it. Make hills and valleys important
Large maps. You know I can hardly think of any military engagements in wich it took the soldiers a few minutes to run from one end of the battle field to another.
Frontlines. Call me silly but it is usual practive to have rings of defence around the homebase. I want to be able to make a line on the map that troops will defend.
Proper artilary. Strange as it may sound artilarry does not target tanks. It targets an area. TA allowed this and it was devastating against the computer as it would constantly march its troops accross the same line and you could just pound any assault with a few guns.
Great AI.
Oh who am I kidding. Judging by the sales of Command and Conquer vs Close Combat I think it is clear were the money is. It ain't with me. Sigh.
I am not talking about the "normal" people playing a game. I am talking about a group of people that don't seem to realise that their is a difference between something in a movie/book/song lyric/game and the real world.
They are not playing a role in a game. They are living out a fantasy. Problem with this is, what is stopping them from acting out that fantasy in real life? You killing someone for few bucks in a game is of course not the same to YOU as killing a person in real life for a few dollars.
However to those kids who killed for a pair of sneakers or the latest console it is exactly the same. Did games cause this? No. But I think it is a symptom.
You played the game twice and the second time you went the evil path so I take it this means the first time you were on the rightous do-gooder path? There are those who went the evil path straight away and complain they can't be evil enough. Think of the person who cracks the joke "my father died in a concentration camp, he fell of the guard tower" is that person a nazi? No perhaps not. But I doubt he gives money to amnesty international either.
No I don't think games make people violent.
The key factor of course, is motive. Does one kill that innocent cloud of polygons because you wish she were real and actually suffering, Or because you want yoru character to experience the consequences of such an action?
Precisly my point. The electro shock experiment was an experiment as to who would follow orders and who would decide for themselves that it was enough. The people in the experiment ALL showed unease with inflicting pain but some went on because that was what they were ordered to do while only a few disobeyed.
My question was would say the kids who murder for a few dollars have shown any empathy with the victim (remember the test subjects did not now the victim was not real they did not even know they were being tested they thought the victim was the test subject and they the researcher).
Have you seen the movie "the green mile"? All of the guards are murderers if you think about it. However I think almost every person can pick out the evil one. He is the one that takes pleasure out of it.
Guards are not supposed to take pleasure out of punishing. They are doing a job that needs to be done. I think you will find that in the real world they screen guys out who take pleasure out of torturing inmates in civilized countries.
No someone who takes pleasure out of killing in real life is not the same as someone who does it in a fake game. Are you however convinced that every gamer out there is treating the game as fake?
Of course women cool down in cold weather. This is simple thermo dynamics. However even the barest amount of intelligence found in the typical female should give them a clue as how to fix it. WEAR WARM CLOTHES. GF complains she is getting cold feet when it is near freezing yet is she wearing socks? Hell no. I get cold just watching it.
Getting a cold when you wear a skirt? What the fuck do you expect. Take a hint from the men wearing klts. You will notice that when it gets cold thay add very thick and high socks.
So either women are to stupid to dress properly or they just don't feel cold.
I don't mind cuddling her under my long and very heavy and warm coat. Her body is warm and soft AND acts as a windbreaker but I do hate cold feet when that could be simply fixed by her wearing warm socks.
As for turning up the heat. Mmm, thermostat to hard to figure out on your own? Yeah it is a complicated piece of technology isn't it. If he complains when you turn it up. Well ehm get a new guy. He is probably going to safe on other things too. Recycle condoms and get the lowest offer for the maternity ward. Asperine is a good enough painkiller for him so why should you need a hundred dollar shot eh?
Happy valentine. Here is some red woolen socks, a thick pair of loose jeans and a sweater so thick it could stop bullets. Right girl looks sexy as hell in it and she will be all warm and fuzzy.
I am not talking about people who are just playing the game and making certain choices with the characters in the game. I am talking about people who are roleplaying it and getting off on it. There is a difference between an execution and a slaughter.
Say we play chess and I sacrifice my pawn to take your rook. That is normal even though chess is a game representing elements of an army and I just sacrificed a unit. Since it was once used to train people on the tactics of real war in an abstract manner this just meaned I send several hundred people to their death. But that is the game we play.
Now imagine me playing chess and cackling like maniac as I send my hordes of pawns to their deaths in endless waves. Would you be worried? Of course. It is how you play it.
Now imagine you are psychiatrist examining a person. How do you judge the personality? Well roleplaying is one way. Asking questions and analyzing the answers is another. What would you do with a person who wishes to roleplay as darth vader and torture his daughter? Or who answers the question, "you see three people in a bar in a town you just arrived in do you: A, walk up to them and ask them what is happening in town. B, stroll around seeing if their pockets contain anything usefull. C, gut them like fish", with C?
The problem is not how some people play the game. The problem for me is how they then talk about it outside of the game. It is not how they play the game. It is how they talk about it.
In fact with chess it has been proven that your personality affects how you play. Aggresive risk takers tend to leave pieces open but dare to take advantage of openings even if it may cost them some lower pieces. Carefull planners make sure all their pieces is covered and are generally unwilling to sacrifice any piece unless the gain is clear. Wich one would you put in charge of the beach landing and who in charge of defending a long stretch of coast?
Fragging someone in a shooting match is one thing. Fighting a wargame is one thing. Doing a bombing run on a city is one thing.
Savoring in detail how you put a lightsaber through a young women begging for her life is quit another. If you can't see that then I fear those people claiming violent games are a trouble may be right.
Claiming that it is just a number of polygons of wich you are resetting a bitch is valid. I wonder then why you ever went up from space invaders however. Some people would claim that with the increasing realism in games the characters might become more like characters in a novel or movie. Not real but we are supposed to believe they are real at least when playing. Note I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT QUAKE, I am talking about single player story telling games. The games people put fansites up for the characters.
Some decades ago they did a test on people. They asked them to read a number of questions to a person they could not see and if that person got the question wrong they were to apply an electric shock to that person. Each time the current was increased. They heard the person scream in pain. Tell me. After how many shocks would you have stopped?
If it was a game in wich you could put electric shocks through a few bits and hear very realistic screams, would you keep pushing until the death gurgle? I described this to someone and he got far to excited about such a game ever being made.
Oh and I rather be a madman who thinks he is a jedi out to save the world then someone who gets his jollies killing defenceless polygons.
Chess is only a game, but how you play it says a lot about you.
I think you are talking different games here sonny. I am talking single player games with storyline. You are talking quake and mmorpg's. Bit different. And yes I do think you are sick. Killing people for a laugh is EXACTLY what the people who claim games cause violence are talking about. You are their posterboy.
whats more fun than masacaring someone when their reloading or lagged?
Reloading? Nothing that is part of the game in say american army or vietcong. Killing someone who said he had to answer the phone is just poor. I bet when you play chess against a kid you don't allow do-overs or when playing monopoly insist that a player about to loose pays up completly?
Sure you can use distcc if you got lots of linux machines. You could have some nice quad monster. But if you got an old 286 router then I think it will be more then 20 minutes.
Of course installing from scratch will also take time but be a little bit more general in your time estimates please. Just because it is 20 minutes for you does not make that a hard fact for the time of compiling a kernel.
Cooking programs make people cook more. Each new DIY show increases the sales at DIY stores. When playbacking shows were first done I remember that all the street festivals also had a playback show.
Comedy certainly causes people to repeat bits of it or to use it as a base for their jokes. Just watch slashdot discussions sometimes.
So why not violence then eh?
Of course if that would really be reliable then we would just show comedy and romance stories and some columbo to remind everyone that the police is always smarter then the criminal and we would have a perfect world. Some playboy to make sure the next generation is ensured. Mmmmm. playboy. Wonder if that one ever been accused of cause teenage boys to become more horny
The people that claim that games cause violence are not saying that is makes americans more violent then say the japanese. They say it makes game playing americans more violent then non-game playing americans. Oh and game playing japanese more violent then non-game playing japanese.
So this article is complete and utter shit. The only comparison that would work is a country before and after exposure to computer games. Or raising one set of kids with and one set of kids without. Comparing across cultures is pointless. There are to many other factors. Perhaps they should study who are commiting the crimes. Is their a shift to game playing teens? Or all the murders in NY mafia hits? Or commited by women tired of being beaten up by their husbands? If there is a shift from mafia hits to kids killing each other for copies of GTA then yeah I would say the link is clear. Until then don't confure the issue with statistics.
However there has been a country that until quit recently had a ban on TV and therefore console games. Some kingdom in asia, to lazy to check its name. They allowed tv and have since seen a rise in crime. Of course it was discussed on slashdot and the same people that don't think games can cause violence didn't think the tv could have anything to do with it.
I ask these people this. Have you listened to kids who play games like GTA? It is like hearing a bunch or miniature rappers talk. They are not talking about a game they are talking about a fantasy world of violence and bloodshed.
And it is not just shooters. When I was young and saw StarWars I wanted to be Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. Why do so many people want to play an evil character in Star Wars games then? Last time I checked roleplaying is about acting out fantasies that are impossible in real life. Is it me or do I distrust someone whose fantasie is killing everything in sight let alone selling a young girl into slavery or setting her best friend to kill her?
Perhaps I am just an old softie but if you play an RPG like Knights of the old republic and can make the evil choices and have fun then you are sick.
So do I think violent games make normal people violent? No. I do not have desire to go killing people for money or fun in real life but then I do not have that desire in games either. I do not kill someone in an rpg just to get some extra credits or deny someone in need credits even if it doesn't give experience points. I hate the goodness rating as it is more accuratly not being a complete asshole rating. Unarmed girl begs for her life and you kill her for 300 credits wich in game is about 1 clip of ammo? Game should not give you points for not killing her, instead the door should burst open the moment you raise your gun and you are shotdown in a hail of fire by the real hero of the game. Then it should lock the controls and you can watch the real hero complete the quest.
So if you play GTA and kill a minimum of people and do professianal job then perhaps you are unaffected by the game play. If you go putting holes in their body parts to make them die slowly or gain extra gore well then excuse me while I call the padded wagon to take you away.
Oh and the good players in rpg if you think the evil is about choice? Then think about this there are more roles to play then good or evil. Why can't I let the young girl keep her money and instead ask for a kiss as a reward eh? I wanna play a dirty old knight in slightly rusty armor!
You are also missing the point. The speed limit has been set by US. The majority under advise from experts. In holland at least the speed limit has also undergone changes, increased in some areas, lowered in others, as the times have changed and cars have become better at high speeds.
But still the speed limit is a law that should be obeyed. You can not judge if it is safe to drive faster.
lets say the road is deserted at night. Official speed limit is 120km/per hour. What is the speed of four different cars if it wasn't for the law?
Someone with night blindness or plain fear of driving at night is doing maybe 90. A law-abiding person is doing exactly 120. You may think 140 is safe. Someone in a race car thinks 200 is perfectly okay. Can you say accident waiting to happen? You all are perfectly right in your own mind but the fastest and slowest car have a 100kmph speed difference. Don't believe this is a real situaltion? I seen plently people drive slow at night and know at least two who drive that fast.
Laws are not perfect. But if you break them you better have a damn good reason. Threat it like the law against murder. You better be able to give the judge a damn good reason why you choose to break the law and saying that you felt it was okay this once is not going to go over to well.
What you say of speed cameras only slowing people down for a few meters is sadly true. They should now be replaced by systems that measure you over a stretch of road. But of course this has even worse privacy implications. Speed camera's only see you if you speed. Stay below and it never knows you are there. A tracking system has to record every car. So it knows each and every car that passes. Of course you could erase the data of non-offending cars in seconds but you could also keep it for later.
Now if everyone just drove the speed limit none of this would be needed. Cops could catch real crooks. No need for expensive cameras. No privacy invasion. Thank you very much for speeding.
I think the arguments around speed camera's say it all. Most of the people against seem to reason that they prevent them from driving above the speed limit. Well fucking DUH.
There seem to be a large number of people who consider CERTAIN laws to be an injustice against them. Note that emphasis on certain. These speeders seem to have no trouble with the law preventing me from driving my fleet of tractors side by side on the highway. Hell most get pretty upset when trucks dare to overtake each other.
Speed camera's exist because people do no obey the speed limit. Rememeber your childhood? "Mom I want to be threathed like a grownup." "Then act like one". Worse even are the people who think speed cameras are tax collectors. Taxes are unavoidable. Speed tickets are easy to avoid. Don't speed.
So on to CCTV. Why is it there? Because people just can't seem to behave when out on the street. When I grew up and you had to go to the toilet you went to the nearest store or goverment building and asked to use the toilet. If unavailable then you went to the park and INTO the bushed and peed there. YOU DID NOT PEE IN PUBLIC AGAINST THE DOOR OF A BUILDING.
We do not want to pay for police to be everywhere and another problem is that if as a citizen you say something about this you can easily end up dead. Several people who said something about misbehavious have ended up dead in holland alone and I do not think that is a local problem.
So we either all learn to behave or impose some really heavy penalties on badly raised people or learn to live with cameras. of course the alternative is living in a lawless unchecked society.
Civilization is a great number of people living together. We need rules to be able to handle that and tools to make sure the rules are obeyed. So far I never heard a single civil liberty fanboy give an alternative. Greenpeace I respect because they give alternatives, even funding the development of electric cars. Civil Liberty groups I detest because they are only ever against.
The research is not yet in one way or another. Note that the only people saying it is ineffective are the people who are opposed to it. Lets explain it in slashdot terms. Would you believe MS saying linux is more expensive? No of course not. Then lets extend this to the real world. You do not believe a pacifist who says that the army is to expensive. A racist who says group X is inferior to group Y and you do not believe a civil liberty groupie that CCTV is ineffective.
The article mentions one extreme case in wich CCTV solved the case and others here have mentioned more. There have also been several BBC programs wich showed CCTV in action and it looked like it was giving the police a lot of help when used properly, meaning used by cops in direct communication with cops on the beat.
Als lets face it in a country like england half a billion is peanuts. More is spend on practically any kind of goverment purchase.
So next time don't use a headline as the basis of your post. Read the article and learn that CCTV is still being tested out as to how it should be used and how effective it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying you should read the reviews is bullshit. Game reviews are not worth the paper they are written on wich for online versions is very bad news indeed. Remember Hidden & Dangerous? Reviewed as the second coming of gameplay. They never got the bugs out.
The game industry like the computer industry in general is very childish. Would you accept it if you bought a car and one of the cylinders doesn't work? No? Then why are we supposed to accept missing pixels on lcd's? Would accept a book with 30% of the words mispelled but they are gonna fix it anyday now? Then why do you accept buggy software?
Sueing is considered an evil but sadly it seems to be the only way to get companies to behave. Cars didn't become safe until people sued. Tobacco wasn't labelled as dangerous until people sued. Computer companies will keep selling crap at high prices with no support until we sue.
Will it happen? I doubt it. Have you ever seen a consumer affairs program touch software?
About the only real advise I can give this person is put up a site advising everyone against ever buying a product from that company again. Invest time and money in a review site that really reviews games by playing them from start to finish and noting down every bug and crash. That is the way real stuff is tested. You know the stuff someone once sued about.
My warning. Gathering of Developers, the publishers of Mafia and vietcong, have intresting games but their support is total crap. Buy their software only if you are 100% sure it will run for you. If the demo is buggy then so will the final game be in their case. Note that I had problems only with force feedback but the rest was smooth sailing. Others never even got the game to load. Play the demo. If it sucks then so will the game. THEY WILL NOT FIX ANY BUGS between demo and release time. Patches afterwards are only done by a couple of companies. On a positive note Papyrus of Grand Prix Legends released patches that didn't fix games. They upgraded the game to take advantage of new hardware. Then again the demo played perfectly on my pc also. Mmmm, good demo, good manual, good box, good game, good support. Spotting a trend here.
So GNU/Linux source has been out for decades. Windows source has never been out except recently. Shall we do an exploits in the wild count? Note the in the wild part. It is a distinction that anti-virus researchers make as their are some pretty nasty computer virusses that have only been spotted in their labs, not on peoples pc's.
Every now and then some idiot is going to stand up and proclaim something really stupid. Instead of gently leading that person to proper care and attention in the form of a straight jacket and handfull of pills people print their ravings.
This guy is one of them. Opensource vs closed source means very little when it comes to security. Big holes can and have been found in both. What matters is how you respond to those holes. Opensource GNU/Linux is pretty fast. Closed source Microsoft is goddamn slow. So? MS is hardly the only closed source company. If someone ever post figures on the commercial unixes or OS's like symbian and shows the same terrible performance as MS then I will be impressed.
So far all the MS exploits prove is that they have some pretty sloppy working methods in redmond. Not that closed source itself is bad. If all closed source projects have the same track record as MS then it will be news. They don't.
HOWEVER, opensource has proven itself. Countless projects use it, linux kernel, gnu toolset, kde and gnome and all the other desktops, tron the os blueprint from japan, apache, mysql and postgress and the berkely databases, bsd even though it is dying and countless others.
This did not happen as our skulls are thin.
What really happened is that while the thick skulled ones were bashing each other brains in the thin skulled nerd was clubbing out the women and dragging them to his cave.
Hence women with the thinnest skulls tended to get clubbed out the easiest and become the mother of this nerds offspring.
This guy got so much action that now the entire human race has thin skulls.
Flamebait part
Sadly he clubbed the women so hard that they haven't caught on and still get pregnant at the prom from a thick skulled jock. And then bitch that no guys want to date a woman with a kid. It ain't the kid honey. It is that you didn't have the brains to use the pill.
Conslusion: evolution ain't a lab experiment. It is messy and nasty and it is not survival of the fittest but rather survival of those that survive. Fit guys get drafted and send to the front, unfit guys stay home and comfort the women.
Since real freedom fans are not out to destroy ms-windows but rather to make for a world in wich ms-windows is just another desktop this is good news. Apple and linux and bsd and beOS (whatever its new names is) SkyOS and tron and etc all have tiny shares. TOGETHER we are now beyond the 5% and closing slowly on the 10%. 1 out of 10 people is a significant number. That is the kind of number businesses have to respect or face loosing customers.
With Office on Apple uncertain this could mean that 1 out of 10 people need to get their documents in a more open format.
So this article shouldn't be about linux overtaking apple, wich is hardly a suprise considering it is happening on the office desktop and the gigantic price difference, but the share of non-ms-windows installations increasing.
No MS is not going to go bankrupt over this. But with these kind of statistics IE only websites are becoming just a little bit less good business sense. That can surely only be a good thing.
There are some good books out there apparently to help complete beginners, personally I learned from a unix guy, but you really need to start to worry when you hit midlevel.
When ls and such no longer hold any secrets there are few books who will help you along in a general way.
I can see plenty of tutorials on installing apache. Sadly all of them seem to be for very low volume sites. Start hitting the 20mbit mark and they are totally and utterly wrong. Referer log a good idea? Not when it will fill the 2gb mark in a couple of hours.
Ah sorry. Went completly of on a tanget. My point I guess is that people can learn the, unpack, make, make install process. It is learning what comes next that is really hard. Mostly because you have no idea what comes next.
Does that mean your site should only work on IE or use IE specific elements? Well consider this. How many years ago was it when netscape rules the browser market? Not that long ago right? Are you prepared to completly rebuild your site if and when IE looses top place? And don't go that will never happen, when the first IE was out people also said it would never beat netscape.
There is also something else to consider. Opera may have a tiny share of the desktop browser market but it rules supreme on the phones. Worse if you code for IE desktop then you are in for a horrible suprise when someone tries to access your sites with IE for mobile phones. At least the version I worked with didn't support CSS at all.
So the answer? Make sure your site looks and works properly on IE and make sure it works and looks okay on everything else. Yes that does mean opera AND mozilla AND lynx/links.
If you want to know why ask yourselve this. If you build a brick and mortar shop would you put in a door that kicks out even 1% of your potential customers? No? Then why do it with your website?
Displaying a page telling people to "update" to browser X is also a terrible crime. Imagine if you went to a gas station and they told you to buy a new car. You would pissed off. Especially if you drive a motorcycle.
There are quit a few here in Amsterdam (holland) and they do vary.
So what do I think that works? Well depends on the people in your area. If there is a large group of people without access at home then you can easily open a store in a central location. Add a small bar. A place where people can get a drink and access the net.
If people do got access at home you need to supply a very good reason for them to come to your place. Very fast access could be one but this costs lots of money. A fun enviroment could be one but sitting behind a computer is ultimately a single experience.
You could attempt to setup a gaming center if you got the money. But it would be very very difficult to keep the place open. Open to the general public I mean. New clients can easily be discouraged if you don't provide a welcoming atmosphere. And I don't mean just in the bar but also in the games going on.
So why is it such an amazingly bad idea. Well quit apart from the administrative overhead (10x5 bucks costs more to transact then 1x50 bucks) and the tiny little problem that not everyone has credit cards or fast lines to download new episodes.
There is the problem that people hate waiting. Is it me or is there more then simply the wish to pirate behind people downloading tv episodes? It is not like you can't catch a repeat. No we want it now and we want it when we want it not when some executive somewhere decides we can have it.
Playing a game then having to wait god knows how long for the next part would suck. Especially when you got the nagging suspicion that the next episode never comes.
Also lets face it. Very few games have a really gripping story line. The few that do, RPG's, are best when they are open and this hardly allows you to divide it up in chapters. Adventures would work but they have a hard enough time selling as it is.
Perhaps sometime in the future. I think the first maybe the MMORPG when they finally get around to add a story that is.
Nice idea, file it with 3D glasses and interactive movies.
This is in fact what MS is saying. That if your company does not have significant unix skills but instead is windows based then switching to linux will be more expensive. Sure they mess around with it but that claim is pretty valid. It is always more expensive in the short term, and tco is short term roi would be long term, to switch.
So yes he does say the lack of MS Office is keeping the linux desktop down. True or not this is hardly likely to ever change. Hell MS is even backing down on MS office of the apple.
Nice headline, pity it doesn't seem related to the story.
To those impatient to see when Linux will overthrow MS windows look back at history and ask how long it took MS to go from nobody to somebody. There was a time when owning a DOS machine was alternative and weird when everybody had an amiga on wich everything just worked. With PICTURES!!!!!
Nice to see we can now laugh about social services as well. Not like they don't already have enough screw-ups by dismissing child abuse claims when a kid been admitted dozens of times for broken bones and still claim nothing is wrong when finally the kid goes to the doctor for the last time. The coroner.
Idiots.
Don't get me wrong. We got one of those car parks in the dock area here and it is huge but it wouldn't need to be a complex roof and its success would be 100%. Also stops sunlight and seagull shit and acid rain.
So nice story, didn't know this was even possible but Nissan probably got had. Will be intresting to hear what their neighbours will have to say about it. Noise polution in a 5 mile area? Never be allowed over here. Here people complain they can hear the trains in the house they bought that is next the rail track.
So fuck to game companies that insist on adding copy protections that only harass the paying public. Why should I pay for a crippled product when I can get the uncrippled version free? OFP is a case in point I own it and all the extensions legally but had to download it because I lost the key. FUCK YOU codemasters.
Next time I will just save myself the bother okay? Don't believe the copy protection is crippled? Look at the size difference between the official game.exe and the nocd.exe.
As for the hardworking developers.
Hidden & Dangerous, are we ever going to get a working patch? Should I just consider downloading the sequel for free as the patch perhaps?
Mafia, what on earth possesed them to take a year to release a patch to fix a lot of issues including in a driving game not supporting logitech force feedback wheels properly.
Keep screwing us with badly tested games and idiotic copy protection and we will revolt.
Imagine if you went into a supermarket and at the checkout they stripsearched everybody. People who just walk out without paying go through unhindered. Idiotic? That is what copy protection is doing. Games are ripped before they are in the shops.
Only mmorpgs seem somewhat safe although there of the more popular ones "illegal" servers where you can play free.
Worse yet are game companies that release a game months later in some parts of the world. I seen games available on the net months before they appear in the shop (no not halflife2). Even the movie industry is learning that staggered releases are a stupid thing. In computer game land it borders on suicide.
I used to buy my games but I have felt increasinly that I was being treated like an idiot and a criminal. Well now I am a criminal. Happy?
Oh and anyone else notice that while CD's are cheaper then floppies and game manuals are a thing of the past and the market for games has increased the price of games has gone up? I also seem to remmeber being able to finish most games without having to patch them. Must be old age messing with my mind.
Oh and for a really old poor copy protection. One of the sequels to elite stopped the game every so often and required you to find a word on a page. The catch? If was a lot easier to use a cheat sheet then to use your manual to find the word. Of course pirates had a hacked exe and were never bothered at all. SMART MOVE.
TA and C&C are different beasts. Anyone who played both can tell you this. The ones you like are rock-paper-scissors games with very limited strategic capabilities.
TA gave you big enough maps to really do a two pronged assault. It gave you effective air power without making your ground army totally defenceless. I played battles with only a few token ground units and an armada of bombers I also played battles with not a single air unit. C&C never gave me this choice.
The AI in TA was also a lot better. You complain about the defence. Well yes. I prefer an opponent who can hold their own and is not destroyed by a mere tank rush. TA forced you to knock a hole in the defence then be ready to commit a follow up attack.
But really there are three different camps of RTS games. C&C heavy on story, few units, rock-paper-scissor unit dependency, TA huge maps, loads of units many of them multi-use, no story. Finally there is Close Combat. Ultra realistic, very good AI including units wich actually act on their own but difficult as hell and slooooooow.
None of these type of games are less then another. Just different.
So you go Meh, a real TA fan will go yippie and me the close combat fan will hope that TA2 is closer to CC then C&C.
CD's are more expensive then vinyl was yet are cheaper to produce, transport and stock. Odd? Look at DVD vs VHS. A dvd happily sits next to a tape for twice the price overhere. Is it me or is one of them a whole lot cheaper to make?
So you got bach lovers who kept their vinyl. The cd's fans who have finished replacing their collection and people like me that go "How much for a piece of plastic with holes in it?".
Quite frankly I don't care if all the music stores close. To bad for the people who lose their income but this industry is to sick. Time to shoot the patient.
Best thing about the game was that it had a huge selection of different weapons meaning you didn't have the rock-siccors-paper style gameplay of the Command & Conquer series. Add larger maps, better use of 3D terrain and you had a very enjoyable game. The only one where you could actually fight an airwar against a land army.
Lets just hope it is not like the original "sequel" eh? The magic version? Boy did that one bomb.
Here my wish list for the perfect RTS game.
Oh who am I kidding. Judging by the sales of Command and Conquer vs Close Combat I think it is clear were the money is. It ain't with me. Sigh.
They are not playing a role in a game. They are living out a fantasy. Problem with this is, what is stopping them from acting out that fantasy in real life? You killing someone for few bucks in a game is of course not the same to YOU as killing a person in real life for a few dollars.
However to those kids who killed for a pair of sneakers or the latest console it is exactly the same. Did games cause this? No. But I think it is a symptom.
You played the game twice and the second time you went the evil path so I take it this means the first time you were on the rightous do-gooder path? There are those who went the evil path straight away and complain they can't be evil enough. Think of the person who cracks the joke "my father died in a concentration camp, he fell of the guard tower" is that person a nazi? No perhaps not. But I doubt he gives money to amnesty international either.
No I don't think games make people violent.
The key factor of course, is motive. Does one kill that innocent cloud of polygons because you wish she were real and actually suffering, Or because you want yoru character to experience the consequences of such an action?
Precisly my point. The electro shock experiment was an experiment as to who would follow orders and who would decide for themselves that it was enough. The people in the experiment ALL showed unease with inflicting pain but some went on because that was what they were ordered to do while only a few disobeyed.
My question was would say the kids who murder for a few dollars have shown any empathy with the victim (remember the test subjects did not now the victim was not real they did not even know they were being tested they thought the victim was the test subject and they the researcher).
Have you seen the movie "the green mile"? All of the guards are murderers if you think about it. However I think almost every person can pick out the evil one. He is the one that takes pleasure out of it.
Guards are not supposed to take pleasure out of punishing. They are doing a job that needs to be done. I think you will find that in the real world they screen guys out who take pleasure out of torturing inmates in civilized countries.
No someone who takes pleasure out of killing in real life is not the same as someone who does it in a fake game. Are you however convinced that every gamer out there is treating the game as fake?
Getting a cold when you wear a skirt? What the fuck do you expect. Take a hint from the men wearing klts. You will notice that when it gets cold thay add very thick and high socks.
So either women are to stupid to dress properly or they just don't feel cold.
I don't mind cuddling her under my long and very heavy and warm coat. Her body is warm and soft AND acts as a windbreaker but I do hate cold feet when that could be simply fixed by her wearing warm socks.
As for turning up the heat. Mmm, thermostat to hard to figure out on your own? Yeah it is a complicated piece of technology isn't it. If he complains when you turn it up. Well ehm get a new guy. He is probably going to safe on other things too. Recycle condoms and get the lowest offer for the maternity ward. Asperine is a good enough painkiller for him so why should you need a hundred dollar shot eh?
Happy valentine. Here is some red woolen socks, a thick pair of loose jeans and a sweater so thick it could stop bullets. Right girl looks sexy as hell in it and she will be all warm and fuzzy.
Say we play chess and I sacrifice my pawn to take your rook. That is normal even though chess is a game representing elements of an army and I just sacrificed a unit. Since it was once used to train people on the tactics of real war in an abstract manner this just meaned I send several hundred people to their death. But that is the game we play.
Now imagine me playing chess and cackling like maniac as I send my hordes of pawns to their deaths in endless waves. Would you be worried? Of course. It is how you play it.
Now imagine you are psychiatrist examining a person. How do you judge the personality? Well roleplaying is one way. Asking questions and analyzing the answers is another. What would you do with a person who wishes to roleplay as darth vader and torture his daughter? Or who answers the question, "you see three people in a bar in a town you just arrived in do you: A, walk up to them and ask them what is happening in town. B, stroll around seeing if their pockets contain anything usefull. C, gut them like fish", with C?
The problem is not how some people play the game. The problem for me is how they then talk about it outside of the game. It is not how they play the game. It is how they talk about it.
In fact with chess it has been proven that your personality affects how you play. Aggresive risk takers tend to leave pieces open but dare to take advantage of openings even if it may cost them some lower pieces. Carefull planners make sure all their pieces is covered and are generally unwilling to sacrifice any piece unless the gain is clear. Wich one would you put in charge of the beach landing and who in charge of defending a long stretch of coast?
Fragging someone in a shooting match is one thing. Fighting a wargame is one thing. Doing a bombing run on a city is one thing.
Savoring in detail how you put a lightsaber through a young women begging for her life is quit another. If you can't see that then I fear those people claiming violent games are a trouble may be right.
Claiming that it is just a number of polygons of wich you are resetting a bitch is valid. I wonder then why you ever went up from space invaders however. Some people would claim that with the increasing realism in games the characters might become more like characters in a novel or movie. Not real but we are supposed to believe they are real at least when playing. Note I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT QUAKE, I am talking about single player story telling games. The games people put fansites up for the characters.
Some decades ago they did a test on people. They asked them to read a number of questions to a person they could not see and if that person got the question wrong they were to apply an electric shock to that person. Each time the current was increased. They heard the person scream in pain. Tell me. After how many shocks would you have stopped?
If it was a game in wich you could put electric shocks through a few bits and hear very realistic screams, would you keep pushing until the death gurgle? I described this to someone and he got far to excited about such a game ever being made.
Oh and I rather be a madman who thinks he is a jedi out to save the world then someone who gets his jollies killing defenceless polygons.
Chess is only a game, but how you play it says a lot about you.
whats more fun than masacaring someone when their reloading or lagged?
Reloading? Nothing that is part of the game in say american army or vietcong. Killing someone who said he had to answer the phone is just poor. I bet when you play chess against a kid you don't allow do-overs or when playing monopoly insist that a player about to loose pays up completly?
Grow up.
Of course installing from scratch will also take time but be a little bit more general in your time estimates please. Just because it is 20 minutes for you does not make that a hard fact for the time of compiling a kernel.
Comedy certainly causes people to repeat bits of it or to use it as a base for their jokes. Just watch slashdot discussions sometimes.
So why not violence then eh?
Of course if that would really be reliable then we would just show comedy and romance stories and some columbo to remind everyone that the police is always smarter then the criminal and we would have a perfect world. Some playboy to make sure the next generation is ensured. Mmmmm. playboy. Wonder if that one ever been accused of cause teenage boys to become more horny
So this article is complete and utter shit. The only comparison that would work is a country before and after exposure to computer games. Or raising one set of kids with and one set of kids without. Comparing across cultures is pointless. There are to many other factors. Perhaps they should study who are commiting the crimes. Is their a shift to game playing teens? Or all the murders in NY mafia hits? Or commited by women tired of being beaten up by their husbands? If there is a shift from mafia hits to kids killing each other for copies of GTA then yeah I would say the link is clear. Until then don't confure the issue with statistics.
However there has been a country that until quit recently had a ban on TV and therefore console games. Some kingdom in asia, to lazy to check its name. They allowed tv and have since seen a rise in crime. Of course it was discussed on slashdot and the same people that don't think games can cause violence didn't think the tv could have anything to do with it.
I ask these people this. Have you listened to kids who play games like GTA? It is like hearing a bunch or miniature rappers talk. They are not talking about a game they are talking about a fantasy world of violence and bloodshed.
And it is not just shooters. When I was young and saw StarWars I wanted to be Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. Why do so many people want to play an evil character in Star Wars games then? Last time I checked roleplaying is about acting out fantasies that are impossible in real life. Is it me or do I distrust someone whose fantasie is killing everything in sight let alone selling a young girl into slavery or setting her best friend to kill her?
Perhaps I am just an old softie but if you play an RPG like Knights of the old republic and can make the evil choices and have fun then you are sick.
So do I think violent games make normal people violent? No. I do not have desire to go killing people for money or fun in real life but then I do not have that desire in games either. I do not kill someone in an rpg just to get some extra credits or deny someone in need credits even if it doesn't give experience points. I hate the goodness rating as it is more accuratly not being a complete asshole rating. Unarmed girl begs for her life and you kill her for 300 credits wich in game is about 1 clip of ammo? Game should not give you points for not killing her, instead the door should burst open the moment you raise your gun and you are shotdown in a hail of fire by the real hero of the game. Then it should lock the controls and you can watch the real hero complete the quest.
So if you play GTA and kill a minimum of people and do professianal job then perhaps you are unaffected by the game play. If you go putting holes in their body parts to make them die slowly or gain extra gore well then excuse me while I call the padded wagon to take you away.
Oh and the good players in rpg if you think the evil is about choice? Then think about this there are more roles to play then good or evil. Why can't I let the young girl keep her money and instead ask for a kiss as a reward eh? I wanna play a dirty old knight in slightly rusty armor!
But still the speed limit is a law that should be obeyed. You can not judge if it is safe to drive faster.
lets say the road is deserted at night. Official speed limit is 120km/per hour. What is the speed of four different cars if it wasn't for the law?
Someone with night blindness or plain fear of driving at night is doing maybe 90. A law-abiding person is doing exactly 120. You may think 140 is safe. Someone in a race car thinks 200 is perfectly okay. Can you say accident waiting to happen? You all are perfectly right in your own mind but the fastest and slowest car have a 100kmph speed difference. Don't believe this is a real situaltion? I seen plently people drive slow at night and know at least two who drive that fast.
Laws are not perfect. But if you break them you better have a damn good reason. Threat it like the law against murder. You better be able to give the judge a damn good reason why you choose to break the law and saying that you felt it was okay this once is not going to go over to well.
What you say of speed cameras only slowing people down for a few meters is sadly true. They should now be replaced by systems that measure you over a stretch of road. But of course this has even worse privacy implications. Speed camera's only see you if you speed. Stay below and it never knows you are there. A tracking system has to record every car. So it knows each and every car that passes. Of course you could erase the data of non-offending cars in seconds but you could also keep it for later.
Now if everyone just drove the speed limit none of this would be needed. Cops could catch real crooks. No need for expensive cameras. No privacy invasion. Thank you very much for speeding.
There seem to be a large number of people who consider CERTAIN laws to be an injustice against them. Note that emphasis on certain. These speeders seem to have no trouble with the law preventing me from driving my fleet of tractors side by side on the highway. Hell most get pretty upset when trucks dare to overtake each other.
Speed camera's exist because people do no obey the speed limit. Rememeber your childhood? "Mom I want to be threathed like a grownup." "Then act like one". Worse even are the people who think speed cameras are tax collectors. Taxes are unavoidable. Speed tickets are easy to avoid. Don't speed.
So on to CCTV. Why is it there? Because people just can't seem to behave when out on the street. When I grew up and you had to go to the toilet you went to the nearest store or goverment building and asked to use the toilet. If unavailable then you went to the park and INTO the bushed and peed there. YOU DID NOT PEE IN PUBLIC AGAINST THE DOOR OF A BUILDING.
We do not want to pay for police to be everywhere and another problem is that if as a citizen you say something about this you can easily end up dead. Several people who said something about misbehavious have ended up dead in holland alone and I do not think that is a local problem.
So we either all learn to behave or impose some really heavy penalties on badly raised people or learn to live with cameras. of course the alternative is living in a lawless unchecked society.
Civilization is a great number of people living together. We need rules to be able to handle that and tools to make sure the rules are obeyed. So far I never heard a single civil liberty fanboy give an alternative. Greenpeace I respect because they give alternatives, even funding the development of electric cars. Civil Liberty groups I detest because they are only ever against.
The article mentions one extreme case in wich CCTV solved the case and others here have mentioned more. There have also been several BBC programs wich showed CCTV in action and it looked like it was giving the police a lot of help when used properly, meaning used by cops in direct communication with cops on the beat.
Als lets face it in a country like england half a billion is peanuts. More is spend on practically any kind of goverment purchase.
So next time don't use a headline as the basis of your post. Read the article and learn that CCTV is still being tested out as to how it should be used and how effective it is.