the few hours spent enjoying any of these activites are very nice indeed. but they pale to the amount of time needed (30-40 hours) to finish a huge RPG.
The question comes down to what you're looking for in games. Even fairly short games (like fighting games, for instance) have enough replay value to come back to again and again (and with groups of friends can last through the nite).
When you go to the movies, you usually only go to 1 movie, and then maybe you'll go back in a week to see a different movie, but the difference is that you have to take in the movie all at once. With a 30-hour RPG (and really, RPGs do tend to be longer than other types of games), you play it in smaller chunks, maybe as long as an epic movie from time to time, but more often in 30 minutes to an hour. The only time this really falls short is when games force you into longer play times by making save points sparse (which is becoming less common).
I may not finish every game I play, but then I don't see that as the point of playing. Even worse is when I do finish a game in a short time and see no need to play it again (such as Max Payne). Even when I was a kid I didn't finish every game I owned, and back then I didn't have nearly as many games (of course, the fact that many of them had no save features lead to not finishing them), and some of the games didn't really have endings, they just repeated the same thing over and over again, maybe getting a little faster or a little harder every few levels.
f a developer is able to focus on a shorter (in length) game, that surplus effort will go into making the shorter game denser and deeper. Length vs. density is a struggle that game developers face every single day.
Hmm... I've never seen a short game that really had any density to it. Max Payne was a good game, but at 8 hours it felt like it just dropped off a cliff, like someone was out of ideas (though it built up to it fairly well). People complain that the.hack// installments were too short, and those come in at 20 hours for most players.
I think that if the game gets it's story out there, and gets it's gameplay right, then it's length will be a function of those things. However, if a game's going to run 8 hours, I'm not going to pay the same price I can pay for a game that has equivalent content per hour, but much more length. I paid $20 for Max Payne, and that was an ok price for 8 hours of entertainment. I paid $50 for Half-Life, and absolutely hated the game, but played TFC for a couple of years, so I still got my money's worth eventually.
The first three are performances, which are going to cost more because of the cost of putting together a performance in the first place. In fact, most of those will probably cost more than $8 per 2 hours (though small shows could yield cheaper or right around there for concerts).
A short book, especially in paper back, costing $8 is one of my biggest gripes in the last few years. 300 page paperback books used to cost $4-5, now they're easily $7-9. Then again, the increase for larger books is minimal until you start looking at specific types of books (like anything that might be used in a college course, or computer books).
On the other hand, when I was meeting with them, I was meeting with them, so unless I was having lunch at their cafeteria before the meeting, I wouldn't be using a cell phone there anyway. So having to check a camera-phone at the front desk wouldn't be that much of a problem.
Yeah, it wouldn't be a really big deal when it came to going to a customer's site, but like I said, it comes down to when I'm using customer data, as well, which means almost all the time. It doesn't even matter that I've got most of the data in soft copy and can do pretty much whatever I want with it.
Other than that, just remembering to check my phone at the door would be a hassle, considering that it's a phone, not a camera, but of course if the phone has a camera in it, it has to be done.
I have the same problem, I cannot bring a camera to work or it will be confiscated and destroyed. As companies get more and more proactive about guarding their secrets, more employees will be faced with the same problem.
It's even better for me. It's not corporate policy, it's customer policy. Therefore if I'm using customer data or going to a customer's site, the camera will at best be confiscated without any requirement for it to be returned to me, and at worst be destroyed. Under those types of circumstances, especially since I'm usually using customer data (specifications for instance) on a daily basis, I'm better off never having a camera with me at work.
If I did want to bring a camera on-site or have one when I'm around customer data, it would require paperwork and approval for each instance of having the camera, as well as a check before I leave of all images on the camera. If, for one reason or another, any image is found to contain information that cannot leave the site, the camera would be confiscated and/or destroyed.
Overall, it's not worth it unless the camera is supplied by the customer (or by the contract, which is almost the same thing).
See, I was exactly like you. What the HELL would I use a camera phone for? And then SprintPCS gave me one for free because I'm such a nice guy. And you know what? I use it.
There's a big difference here. If I have a camera in my phone and go to work, there's a very good chance the phone will be confiscated and destroyed. It doesn't matter if I would ever use it or not, I have absolutely no use for a phone with a camera on it because I would not be able to keep the phone with me when I go to work. This means the phone would be in my car about 9 hours out of the day while I am not there. Sure, I'm not really big on people being able to get ahold of me all the time anyway, but it's pretty rediculous that they can't just make the same phones without the cameras.
Re:Especially in the fog of marketese that is .NET
on
Advanced .NET Remoting
·
· Score: 1
.Net remoting is basically a method of sharing objects between applications and/or processes that is independant of the transport. In other words, you would use it to build an application in which various portions of the application could reside on different computers, on an internal or external network (though it should be noted that it could all reside on one computer as well, and the application wouldn't care).
One application or part of an application requests a remotable object from another application (or part of the application) and that application 'remotes' the object, sending it to the other application either on the same computer or over the network.
Why can't a cell phone company make something with all the features of say a SE P800 or 900, or even this one without a camera?
Exactly. I'm happy with my practically ancient SE phone, but if I were going to buy a new one, over half the phones I like have cameras on them. The last thing I heard on camera phones was something along the lines of 'confiscation and destruction'.
If I need a camera, I'll get a camera, not a phone. At the very least, how hard is it to make the same damned phone without the camera on it?
This is actually a fairly interesting point, given that eventually someone's bound to put a feature into a phone that displays the PIN to the user whenever they try to make one of these transactions, simply because some percentage of users want the feature. My phone, which is extremely simple by most standards, has a feature that allows you to store information with a password, and is advertised (in the manual) as a place to store your PIN numbers and other passwords, so you only have to remember one password (to get into the password-protected area of the phone). To me, this is like putting everything on one piece of paper and putting it in an envelope hanging around your neck. I have no idea how secure the data is outside of being passworded on the phone, and I don't want to find out. There's no way in hell anything other than names and phone numbers is going to be stored in my phone.
I *almost* like the idea of using my phone as a replacement for my credit card, but it would definitely have to have a PIN and would have to be billed directly to the credit card, not to the phone bill. As it stands, there are only very limited circumstances under which my phone bill would change from one month to the next (thanks to unlimited local and long distance calls as long as I'm within my area code), and I wouldn't want that to change. I use my debit card primarily because I can access the account at any time from my phone and online to see my current balance and keep track of my spending, and anything else would more than likely send me spiralling into severe debt.
Many mobile phones do have GPS receivers imbedded in them, even if they don't let the user have access to the GPS information. This is especially common in GSM phones because the GSM specification requires the phone to be able to give it's location (although the location information doesn't have to be as accurate as what you can get from a GPS receiver, the GPS receiver just simplifies this process for the phone manufacturers).
to expand on that a bit: FOX comes in over the air for free, why would I subscribe to cable just to end up watching FOX?
Frankly, I think they need to wake up and start focusing on the strong points of what they're selling rather than trying to enforce their copyrights on internet downloads. The stuff on the internet is usually just good enough to get an idea of whether or not something is good. Low bit-rate MP3s are not going to sit on my hard drive indefinitely as long as I can find the CD that it was ripped from (so that I can rip a higher bit-rate MP3 and put the CD on a shelf). Those Buffy episodes I downloaded only stay on the hard drive until that season's DVDs are released, not just because they take up space, but also because it's hard to find even a TV-quality file online.
As technology moves forward, we'll start to see higher quality files online, but the lower quality files aren't going to disappear over nite, either. Instead of crippling good technology (like digital/high definition TV), they should be working on a method to utilize new technologies for their benefit. P2P has been around for a while now, but they still haven't found a way to use it commercially. Instead they replace it with commercially-controlled servers and return everything to client-server systems.
It will also help a lot if the system is open enough to let anyone write games for it. Remember the best computer games in the early soundblaster era were shareware games from small companies like Epic, Apogee, and of course ID. Also, being able to run somewhat questionable software such as emulators, etc, would be a big win, (for me at least).
Well, the link above that references it as a Palm-compatible PDA was blocked by the filters here (as a site with content of type 'sex' no less), but as far as I know it is PalmOS based and therefore should be able to run shareware and emulators, as well as allowing pretty much anyone to write games for it. Of course, many of those things aren't limited to the Zodiac, but they could help along with it's platform-specific titles.
Maybe comic books and games have a higher percentage of these things than other media, but a great deal of it is due to public perception. In part public perception is fueled by this, but it also perpetuates it, because games and comics that take themselves more seriously don't sell as well (because the more serious audience is less likely to gravitate towards the medium).
It takes a great deal of time to overcome the public perception, and even at that point you still have to deal with some percentage of the media catering to the lowest common denominator.
How many trashy romance novels are published every year? How much low-brow horror and sci-fi? Novels only have less of a problem in this area because the majority of them only have pictures on the cover, but those writers that still feel the need for big breasts and big guns are still going to find a way to get them in there, along with hundreds of pictures of Fabio on the bookshelves of America.
On the other hand, by violating laws within that area, you're crossing a line. Thus, AmericanSoftwareCompanyX couldn't release "Pre-teen Gangbang Extreme" alongside the latest Quake sequel.
I realize that, but then I was trying to point out that the lines are very blurry in some areas, especially this one. In some states, it's perfectly legal for AmericanSoftwareCompanyX to release "Pre-teen Gangbang Extreme", although it may be placed under certain regulations as pornography. In other states, it may be perfectly legal until a judge rules that it meets some arbitrary definition of child pornography, although being advertised as "Pre-teen Gangbang Extreme" certainly makes it much easier on the judge. The point being that it's a bunch of polygons on a screen, doesn't involve any minors whatsoever, but since it's possibly a depiction of sexual acts involving a depiction of a minor, it's up to a judge whether or not it's legal, in some states and/or counties/cities. Furthermore, in some states it may be perfectly legal to actually perform those actions with a 14 year old girl, but it wouldn't be legal to do it in a video game.
Well, with the release of the Apple iTunes and them selling 1M songs proving that the model works suddenly MS is gonna want to come in and try to dominate the market and shove Apple over..
This has been in WMP for quite a while. If I remember correctly most of the music is sold as CDs rather than downloadable media anyway, and is usually related to the media you're playing at the time (ie you're playing this song, do you want to buy the CD?). Of course, they also provide access to services like Napster that offer downloadable media, though afaik they don't run any of the services themselves (and if Apple's to be believed, there's not much money to be made in selling legal content anyway).
Only to a point. There is a line, though, when it comes to violating certain laws. I don't think you'd have the "freedom" to create a kiddie pr0n game, which other paedophiles could download and play at their leisure. Sure you could do it, but law enforcement would be on its way pretty quick. Flying planes into a building, while certainly murderous, is in an entirely different category.
In many places you do have the freedom to create a kiddie porn game, as long as you don't use actual images/video of real children. In some states and countries even the simulation is illegal, but definitely not in all. In fact, some states have the somewhat arbitrary definition of child pornography as anything that depicts something that looks like a child in a sexual manner, even if it's demonstrable that the person in the images was over 18 at the time they were taken (or if it's not even a person at all).
Many of the games that are fairly commonly available in Japan would be illegal to ship into many states of the US because of these types of laws.
By the very nature of a censor, however, you don't get the choice of ignoring them unless you want to be more strict than they are. You never get the choice to allow your kids (and yourself) to see something the censor doesn't allow.
That's where the problem lies, not in what the censor lets get by, but rather in what the censor cuts. With a censor on-hand, GTA quickly becomes Crazy Taxi, and RtCW is set in a land populated by robots with most of the symbolism stripped, leaving a game that's decidedly similar to every other FPS. You can only ignore a censor if you agree with the cuts they do make, or believe they don't go far enough. You can't ignore a censor that's cutting something you want in the game.
I wish you had expanded on your thought a little bit - I just don't understand why you limit games to just Nazis. There have been plenty of very cruel military regimes in the history of humankind (the Nazi party ranking right up there at the top) but I don't think that in comparison people like Stalin and Pol Pot are saints.
I think there's an additional reason for going beyond Nazis, as well. In Germany, it's illegal to display any sort of Nazi symbolism, therefore games that utilize this symbolism to make it clear that you are going against the Nazis take a fairly good hit on localization, and possibly have their message reduced somewhat. With more recent conflicts and/or conflicts that don't involve Nazis, there are fewer regulatory issues, as well as personal issues, to side-step. People may have strong feelings about Vietnam and the current Gulf War, but that doesn't negate the feelings people still have over WWII, either.
Ideally, games should be able to approach any subject, just as any other media. If people are offended by playing a game in which they are playing as a US soldier in Vietnam, Korea, Kuwait, Iraq, or Afghanistan, then they should choose not to buy nor play that game. There are plenty of other games out there to choose from.
Additionally, even if no mainstream developers would touch the subject, one of the existing games depicting WWII or even a sci-fi environment would eventually have a mod that approached the subject anyway. Not to say that it's ok just because someone else would do it, but simply to point out that those that wish to avoid it will still have to avoid it, regardless of whether or not the large developers take it on. At least a larger company is going to be at least somewhat concerned about whether or not they'll offend some specific group with a particular game.
Plus, more effective encryption (PGP) is available and works on all platforms. So why invent the wheel in such a way that requires that Microsoft become some kind of middleman?
So PGP allows you to prevent people to which you send an email from forwarding it to someone outside of your domain? Or from forwarding it at all? Granted you can't stop someone from bringing up another email window and typing it in by hand from the email on their screen and then sending it out, but I wasn't aware that PGP had these other features...
Personally, as someone that has been looking at PDAs for a while, I may buy one of these eventually (though not right away, as I won't have the cash in the near future). That being said, I will purchase it as a good PDA, not as a handheld console. Whether or not it can succeed on those types of purchases remains to be seen. I may pick up some games if they have some good ones available, but it's not going to be the primary purpose of the device for me.
The only reason I see a problem here is that I haven't really seen a lot of reaction from PDA owners to this device. It seems like they may be having issues with marketing to the right people, though again I'd rather wait and see what the launch looks like and what kind of advertising comes along once it's available.
The NGage may have it's own limited success in the area of people looking for that specific type of phone, rather than people looking for handheld gaming devices. Personally, I'm more than happy with my cheap Ericsson R300D; there's nothing special about it, it's just a phone with 4 half-assed games and no really special features (like colour, polyphonic rings, etc.) or features that would force me to leave it in the car half the time (like a camera which I wouldn't be able to bring to work). Do I play games on my phone? Sure, but they're games I can play with one hand while I'm out on a smoke break or waiting in line at the store, and can shut off at any time.
Think about it -- competition has brought the GameCube down to $99. The GBA, with no real competition, is now more expensive than the Cube.
While I don't care to argue about the consequences of monopolies (or whether or not there is one), I do have to point this out. The GBA is about half the price of the Cube, and the GBA-SP is the same price, not more expensive (I bought a black GBA-SP not too long ago for $99, and that's the MSRP). The SP is also a significantly newer piece of hardware than the Cube, although most of it's internals are the same as those of the GBA.
The SP is basically at the price the market will pay, as is the Cube (based on the huge increases they've seen in sales since lowering the price). Lowering the price of the SP might increase sales, but not nearly in the way that lowering the price of the Cube has. On the other hand, you always have the choice of buying a standard GBA or GB Player for half the price to play GBA games.
And yes, I got a rebate in the mail from Nintendo for the things they did with the NES pricing. When all was said and done, that was a joke, too, because it was a coupon towards a game, which, of course, Nintendo made some money on (though the rebate cut into that profit somewhat).
Right, except that I have 4 consoles, 3 of which I'd like to have online (finding a DC network adapter would be like winning the lottery, not to mention that most of the games are shut down now), and I'd much rather just wire them up to a wireless router which I'll use to route them onto the rest of the network rather than buying individual access points or trying to put something together to get it to work wirelessly without the wireless router.
The only good reason I can see why you'd buy a 5-port wireless router instead is if you can find one for less money than a 5-port switch and a dedicated AP. And I really don't know why you'd be running a cable from your wireless router to your main router. If that's what you wanted to do, you could just buy a switch and be done with it, but it wouldn't be wireless.
I wouldn't be running a cable from the wireless router to the main router, the whole point of the wireless router is to get from the living room to the other room without a cable.
As for finding 2 wireless APs and a switch for less than the cost of a wireless router and an AP, well, it'd probably be close, especially given the deals you can find on bundles that come with the wireless routers and a couple of access points. If I had access to good hardware stores in the area I could probably find a decent switch + APs for less, but I haven't found any really good places for these types of things without going online since I moved from the west coast to the east (the problem with going online being the hassles with returns and shipping costs).
Plus, the idea is primarily about expandability. I plan to move within the next year and will probably have the cable modem in the living room and the wireless router connected to it directly with APs on any computers in the apartment, especially since I'm looking towards the long term, with things like PDAs and notebook/tablet PCs among my planned purchases in the next ~3-5 years.
Then you use the noun glitch as a verb. A PROGRAM CANNOT GLITCH. NOTHING CAN GLITCH.
Considering that the English use of the word glitch as a noun is derived from a verb in German and Yiddish, I'd hardly say it's inappropriate to use glitch as a verb, especially since it's primary use in English only dates back to 1962 and always references a verb.
Please explain to me how to glitch. I want to go outside tonight and glitch. What does glitching look like?
The German and Yiddish verbs mean to slip, skid, or slide, so feel free to take two steps and fall on your ass, repeatedly.
Slashdot Mirror
the few hours spent enjoying any of these activites are very nice indeed. but they pale to the amount of time needed (30-40 hours) to finish a huge RPG.
The question comes down to what you're looking for in games. Even fairly short games (like fighting games, for instance) have enough replay value to come back to again and again (and with groups of friends can last through the nite).
When you go to the movies, you usually only go to 1 movie, and then maybe you'll go back in a week to see a different movie, but the difference is that you have to take in the movie all at once. With a 30-hour RPG (and really, RPGs do tend to be longer than other types of games), you play it in smaller chunks, maybe as long as an epic movie from time to time, but more often in 30 minutes to an hour. The only time this really falls short is when games force you into longer play times by making save points sparse (which is becoming less common).
I may not finish every game I play, but then I don't see that as the point of playing. Even worse is when I do finish a game in a short time and see no need to play it again (such as Max Payne). Even when I was a kid I didn't finish every game I owned, and back then I didn't have nearly as many games (of course, the fact that many of them had no save features lead to not finishing them), and some of the games didn't really have endings, they just repeated the same thing over and over again, maybe getting a little faster or a little harder every few levels.
f a developer is able to focus on a shorter (in length) game, that surplus effort will go into making the shorter game denser and deeper. Length vs. density is a struggle that game developers face every single day.
.hack// installments were too short, and those come in at 20 hours for most players.
Hmm... I've never seen a short game that really had any density to it. Max Payne was a good game, but at 8 hours it felt like it just dropped off a cliff, like someone was out of ideas (though it built up to it fairly well). People complain that the
I think that if the game gets it's story out there, and gets it's gameplay right, then it's length will be a function of those things. However, if a game's going to run 8 hours, I'm not going to pay the same price I can pay for a game that has equivalent content per hour, but much more length. I paid $20 for Max Payne, and that was an ok price for 8 hours of entertainment. I paid $50 for Half-Life, and absolutely hated the game, but played TFC for a couple of years, so I still got my money's worth eventually.
Theater? Opera? Concert? A short book?
The first three are performances, which are going to cost more because of the cost of putting together a performance in the first place. In fact, most of those will probably cost more than $8 per 2 hours (though small shows could yield cheaper or right around there for concerts).
A short book, especially in paper back, costing $8 is one of my biggest gripes in the last few years. 300 page paperback books used to cost $4-5, now they're easily $7-9. Then again, the increase for larger books is minimal until you start looking at specific types of books (like anything that might be used in a college course, or computer books).
On the other hand, when I was meeting with them, I was meeting with them, so unless I was having lunch at their cafeteria before the meeting, I wouldn't be using a cell phone there anyway. So having to check a camera-phone at the front desk wouldn't be that much of a problem.
Yeah, it wouldn't be a really big deal when it came to going to a customer's site, but like I said, it comes down to when I'm using customer data, as well, which means almost all the time. It doesn't even matter that I've got most of the data in soft copy and can do pretty much whatever I want with it.
Other than that, just remembering to check my phone at the door would be a hassle, considering that it's a phone, not a camera, but of course if the phone has a camera in it, it has to be done.
I have the same problem, I cannot bring a camera to work or it will be confiscated and destroyed. As companies get more and more proactive about guarding their secrets, more employees will be faced with the same problem.
It's even better for me. It's not corporate policy, it's customer policy. Therefore if I'm using customer data or going to a customer's site, the camera will at best be confiscated without any requirement for it to be returned to me, and at worst be destroyed. Under those types of circumstances, especially since I'm usually using customer data (specifications for instance) on a daily basis, I'm better off never having a camera with me at work.
If I did want to bring a camera on-site or have one when I'm around customer data, it would require paperwork and approval for each instance of having the camera, as well as a check before I leave of all images on the camera. If, for one reason or another, any image is found to contain information that cannot leave the site, the camera would be confiscated and/or destroyed.
Overall, it's not worth it unless the camera is supplied by the customer (or by the contract, which is almost the same thing).
See, I was exactly like you. What the HELL would I use a camera phone for? And then SprintPCS gave me one for free because I'm such a nice guy. And you know what? I use it.
There's a big difference here. If I have a camera in my phone and go to work, there's a very good chance the phone will be confiscated and destroyed. It doesn't matter if I would ever use it or not, I have absolutely no use for a phone with a camera on it because I would not be able to keep the phone with me when I go to work. This means the phone would be in my car about 9 hours out of the day while I am not there. Sure, I'm not really big on people being able to get ahold of me all the time anyway, but it's pretty rediculous that they can't just make the same phones without the cameras.
.Net remoting is basically a method of sharing objects between applications and/or processes that is independant of the transport. In other words, you would use it to build an application in which various portions of the application could reside on different computers, on an internal or external network (though it should be noted that it could all reside on one computer as well, and the application wouldn't care).
One application or part of an application requests a remotable object from another application (or part of the application) and that application 'remotes' the object, sending it to the other application either on the same computer or over the network.
Which famous radiohead song are we talking about?
Creep comes to mind, but then that's the song that always comes to my mind when someone says Radiohead.
Or maybe I'm thinking of the wrong band completely, it's been ~10 years.
Why can't a cell phone company make something with all the features of say a SE P800 or 900, or even this one without a camera?
Exactly. I'm happy with my practically ancient SE phone, but if I were going to buy a new one, over half the phones I like have cameras on them. The last thing I heard on camera phones was something along the lines of 'confiscation and destruction'.
If I need a camera, I'll get a camera, not a phone. At the very least, how hard is it to make the same damned phone without the camera on it?
This is actually a fairly interesting point, given that eventually someone's bound to put a feature into a phone that displays the PIN to the user whenever they try to make one of these transactions, simply because some percentage of users want the feature. My phone, which is extremely simple by most standards, has a feature that allows you to store information with a password, and is advertised (in the manual) as a place to store your PIN numbers and other passwords, so you only have to remember one password (to get into the password-protected area of the phone). To me, this is like putting everything on one piece of paper and putting it in an envelope hanging around your neck. I have no idea how secure the data is outside of being passworded on the phone, and I don't want to find out. There's no way in hell anything other than names and phone numbers is going to be stored in my phone.
I *almost* like the idea of using my phone as a replacement for my credit card, but it would definitely have to have a PIN and would have to be billed directly to the credit card, not to the phone bill. As it stands, there are only very limited circumstances under which my phone bill would change from one month to the next (thanks to unlimited local and long distance calls as long as I'm within my area code), and I wouldn't want that to change. I use my debit card primarily because I can access the account at any time from my phone and online to see my current balance and keep track of my spending, and anything else would more than likely send me spiralling into severe debt.
Mobile phones have no 'GPS' guts.
Many mobile phones do have GPS receivers imbedded in them, even if they don't let the user have access to the GPS information. This is especially common in GSM phones because the GSM specification requires the phone to be able to give it's location (although the location information doesn't have to be as accurate as what you can get from a GPS receiver, the GPS receiver just simplifies this process for the phone manufacturers).
to expand on that a bit:
/high definition TV), they should be working on a method to utilize new technologies for their benefit. P2P has been around for a while now, but they still haven't found a way to use it commercially. Instead they replace it with commercially-controlled servers and return everything to client-server systems.
FOX comes in over the air for free, why would I subscribe to cable just to end up watching FOX?
Frankly, I think they need to wake up and start focusing on the strong points of what they're selling rather than trying to enforce their copyrights on internet downloads. The stuff on the internet is usually just good enough to get an idea of whether or not something is good. Low bit-rate MP3s are not going to sit on my hard drive indefinitely as long as I can find the CD that it was ripped from (so that I can rip a higher bit-rate MP3 and put the CD on a shelf). Those Buffy episodes I downloaded only stay on the hard drive until that season's DVDs are released, not just because they take up space, but also because it's hard to find even a TV-quality file online.
As technology moves forward, we'll start to see higher quality files online, but the lower quality files aren't going to disappear over nite, either. Instead of crippling good technology (like digital
It will also help a lot if the system is open enough to let anyone write games for it. Remember the best computer games in the early soundblaster era were shareware games from small companies like Epic, Apogee, and of course ID. Also, being able to run somewhat questionable software such as emulators, etc, would be a big win, (for me at least).
Well, the link above that references it as a Palm-compatible PDA was blocked by the filters here (as a site with content of type 'sex' no less), but as far as I know it is PalmOS based and therefore should be able to run shareware and emulators, as well as allowing pretty much anyone to write games for it. Of course, many of those things aren't limited to the Zodiac, but they could help along with it's platform-specific titles.
...and this is different from movies how? TV?
Maybe comic books and games have a higher percentage of these things than other media, but a great deal of it is due to public perception. In part public perception is fueled by this, but it also perpetuates it, because games and comics that take themselves more seriously don't sell as well (because the more serious audience is less likely to gravitate towards the medium).
It takes a great deal of time to overcome the public perception, and even at that point you still have to deal with some percentage of the media catering to the lowest common denominator.
How many trashy romance novels are published every year? How much low-brow horror and sci-fi? Novels only have less of a problem in this area because the majority of them only have pictures on the cover, but those writers that still feel the need for big breasts and big guns are still going to find a way to get them in there, along with hundreds of pictures of Fabio on the bookshelves of America.
On the other hand, by violating laws within that area, you're crossing a line. Thus, AmericanSoftwareCompanyX couldn't release "Pre-teen Gangbang Extreme" alongside the latest Quake sequel.
I realize that, but then I was trying to point out that the lines are very blurry in some areas, especially this one. In some states, it's perfectly legal for AmericanSoftwareCompanyX to release "Pre-teen Gangbang Extreme", although it may be placed under certain regulations as pornography. In other states, it may be perfectly legal until a judge rules that it meets some arbitrary definition of child pornography, although being advertised as "Pre-teen Gangbang Extreme" certainly makes it much easier on the judge. The point being that it's a bunch of polygons on a screen, doesn't involve any minors whatsoever, but since it's possibly a depiction of sexual acts involving a depiction of a minor, it's up to a judge whether or not it's legal, in some states and/or counties/cities. Furthermore, in some states it may be perfectly legal to actually perform those actions with a 14 year old girl, but it wouldn't be legal to do it in a video game.
Well, with the release of the Apple iTunes and them selling 1M songs proving that the model works suddenly MS is gonna want to come in and try to dominate the market and shove Apple over..
This has been in WMP for quite a while. If I remember correctly most of the music is sold as CDs rather than downloadable media anyway, and is usually related to the media you're playing at the time (ie you're playing this song, do you want to buy the CD?). Of course, they also provide access to services like Napster that offer downloadable media, though afaik they don't run any of the services themselves (and if Apple's to be believed, there's not much money to be made in selling legal content anyway).
Only to a point. There is a line, though, when it comes to violating certain laws. I don't think you'd have the "freedom" to create a kiddie pr0n game, which other paedophiles could download and play at their leisure. Sure you could do it, but law enforcement would be on its way pretty quick. Flying planes into a building, while certainly murderous, is in an entirely different category.
In many places you do have the freedom to create a kiddie porn game, as long as you don't use actual images/video of real children. In some states and countries even the simulation is illegal, but definitely not in all. In fact, some states have the somewhat arbitrary definition of child pornography as anything that depicts something that looks like a child in a sexual manner, even if it's demonstrable that the person in the images was over 18 at the time they were taken (or if it's not even a person at all).
Many of the games that are fairly commonly available in Japan would be illegal to ship into many states of the US because of these types of laws.
By the very nature of a censor, however, you don't get the choice of ignoring them unless you want to be more strict than they are. You never get the choice to allow your kids (and yourself) to see something the censor doesn't allow.
That's where the problem lies, not in what the censor lets get by, but rather in what the censor cuts. With a censor on-hand, GTA quickly becomes Crazy Taxi, and RtCW is set in a land populated by robots with most of the symbolism stripped, leaving a game that's decidedly similar to every other FPS. You can only ignore a censor if you agree with the cuts they do make, or believe they don't go far enough. You can't ignore a censor that's cutting something you want in the game.
I wish you had expanded on your thought a little bit - I just don't understand why you limit games to just Nazis. There have been plenty of very cruel military regimes in the history of humankind (the Nazi party ranking right up there at the top) but I don't think that in comparison people like Stalin and Pol Pot are saints.
I think there's an additional reason for going beyond Nazis, as well. In Germany, it's illegal to display any sort of Nazi symbolism, therefore games that utilize this symbolism to make it clear that you are going against the Nazis take a fairly good hit on localization, and possibly have their message reduced somewhat. With more recent conflicts and/or conflicts that don't involve Nazis, there are fewer regulatory issues, as well as personal issues, to side-step. People may have strong feelings about Vietnam and the current Gulf War, but that doesn't negate the feelings people still have over WWII, either.
Ideally, games should be able to approach any subject, just as any other media. If people are offended by playing a game in which they are playing as a US soldier in Vietnam, Korea, Kuwait, Iraq, or Afghanistan, then they should choose not to buy nor play that game. There are plenty of other games out there to choose from.
Additionally, even if no mainstream developers would touch the subject, one of the existing games depicting WWII or even a sci-fi environment would eventually have a mod that approached the subject anyway. Not to say that it's ok just because someone else would do it, but simply to point out that those that wish to avoid it will still have to avoid it, regardless of whether or not the large developers take it on. At least a larger company is going to be at least somewhat concerned about whether or not they'll offend some specific group with a particular game.
Plus, more effective encryption (PGP) is available and works on all platforms. So why invent the wheel in such a way that requires that Microsoft become some kind of middleman?
So PGP allows you to prevent people to which you send an email from forwarding it to someone outside of your domain? Or from forwarding it at all? Granted you can't stop someone from bringing up another email window and typing it in by hand from the email on their screen and then sending it out, but I wasn't aware that PGP had these other features...
Personally, as someone that has been looking at PDAs for a while, I may buy one of these eventually (though not right away, as I won't have the cash in the near future). That being said, I will purchase it as a good PDA, not as a handheld console. Whether or not it can succeed on those types of purchases remains to be seen. I may pick up some games if they have some good ones available, but it's not going to be the primary purpose of the device for me.
The only reason I see a problem here is that I haven't really seen a lot of reaction from PDA owners to this device. It seems like they may be having issues with marketing to the right people, though again I'd rather wait and see what the launch looks like and what kind of advertising comes along once it's available.
The NGage may have it's own limited success in the area of people looking for that specific type of phone, rather than people looking for handheld gaming devices. Personally, I'm more than happy with my cheap Ericsson R300D; there's nothing special about it, it's just a phone with 4 half-assed games and no really special features (like colour, polyphonic rings, etc.) or features that would force me to leave it in the car half the time (like a camera which I wouldn't be able to bring to work). Do I play games on my phone? Sure, but they're games I can play with one hand while I'm out on a smoke break or waiting in line at the store, and can shut off at any time.
Think about it -- competition has brought the GameCube down to $99. The GBA, with no real competition, is now more expensive than the Cube.
While I don't care to argue about the consequences of monopolies (or whether or not there is one), I do have to point this out. The GBA is about half the price of the Cube, and the GBA-SP is the same price, not more expensive (I bought a black GBA-SP not too long ago for $99, and that's the MSRP). The SP is also a significantly newer piece of hardware than the Cube, although most of it's internals are the same as those of the GBA.
The SP is basically at the price the market will pay, as is the Cube (based on the huge increases they've seen in sales since lowering the price). Lowering the price of the SP might increase sales, but not nearly in the way that lowering the price of the Cube has. On the other hand, you always have the choice of buying a standard GBA or GB Player for half the price to play GBA games.
And yes, I got a rebate in the mail from Nintendo for the things they did with the NES pricing. When all was said and done, that was a joke, too, because it was a coupon towards a game, which, of course, Nintendo made some money on (though the rebate cut into that profit somewhat).
Right, except that I have 4 consoles, 3 of which I'd like to have online (finding a DC network adapter would be like winning the lottery, not to mention that most of the games are shut down now), and I'd much rather just wire them up to a wireless router which I'll use to route them onto the rest of the network rather than buying individual access points or trying to put something together to get it to work wirelessly without the wireless router.
The only good reason I can see why you'd buy a 5-port wireless router instead is if you can find one for less money than a 5-port switch and a dedicated AP. And I really don't know why you'd be running a cable from your wireless router to your main router. If that's what you wanted to do, you could just buy a switch and be done with it, but it wouldn't be wireless.
I wouldn't be running a cable from the wireless router to the main router, the whole point of the wireless router is to get from the living room to the other room without a cable.
As for finding 2 wireless APs and a switch for less than the cost of a wireless router and an AP, well, it'd probably be close, especially given the deals you can find on bundles that come with the wireless routers and a couple of access points. If I had access to good hardware stores in the area I could probably find a decent switch + APs for less, but I haven't found any really good places for these types of things without going online since I moved from the west coast to the east (the problem with going online being the hassles with returns and shipping costs).
Plus, the idea is primarily about expandability. I plan to move within the next year and will probably have the cable modem in the living room and the wireless router connected to it directly with APs on any computers in the apartment, especially since I'm looking towards the long term, with things like PDAs and notebook/tablet PCs among my planned purchases in the next ~3-5 years.
Then you use the noun glitch as a verb. A PROGRAM CANNOT GLITCH. NOTHING CAN GLITCH.
Considering that the English use of the word glitch as a noun is derived from a verb in German and Yiddish, I'd hardly say it's inappropriate to use glitch as a verb, especially since it's primary use in English only dates back to 1962 and always references a verb.
Please explain to me how to glitch. I want to go outside tonight and glitch. What does glitching look like?
The German and Yiddish verbs mean to slip, skid, or slide, so feel free to take two steps and fall on your ass, repeatedly.