A copy of windows circulated amongst students is flagged as pirated !!!
I'm shocked !
I'm sure Microsoft will also be shocked and appalled... *cough* *cough* actually they'll probably pat their WGA architects on the back for a job well done.
Dude just ask your Uni's techies to give you an updated (less pirated) version of XP, that way you won't look so clueless when you go to Microsoft.
At the end of the day is WGA really that unfair ? I mean why should MS give you updates and access to their online resources when you are associated (via your copy of windows) with people who are basically stealing from Microsoft ?
If WGA formatted your hard disk or refused to boot etc etc... sure I'd have a sympathetic ear for those people in your situation. However no, I have no sympathy at all for those with WGA problems.
It would be interesting to try the later. I suspect you'll find that you can install a single copy of windows on a number of machines and run happily for quite some time, I've had to run the same copy of windows with the same license key for some period of time whilst migrating from machines, so I know that you don't get WGA'd the instant you install a single license copy of windows more than once. I suspect there's probably a time limit, or possibly a limit on the number of copies that can be made before the license is blacklisted.
Pirating MSDN at $2000 USD a pop is a license to print money. I suspect you'll find you purchased your copy from someone who is in the active game of counterfeiting MSDN or purchasing counterfeit MSDN software. From my experience and what I have seen over the years Microsoft does not go after small time mum & dad, friend to friend type pirates, they go after those who are creating thousands of copies and selling them retail. You'll probably find what Microsoft was really after was information about where you got your bogus copy of MSDN from.
Was this MSDN subscription substantially less than the normal retail price ?
P.S It doesn't matter if people don't go to Vista.... Microsoft intends to ship support for XAML and.NET Framework 3.0 as service packs through windows update (as I mentioned in my original comment).
Like it or not the reality is, a year from now everyone will most likely have it on their computers and it will be an alternative to Flash.
Microsoft's.NET framework is and always be open, XAML as with the rest of.NET will be submitted to ECMA standards committee. MS.NET already runs on Windows CE mobile devices, plus linux, and soon OS-X. XAML being XML, it will obviously it is a trivial matter for Microsoft to define a subset of tags applicable to mobile devices. This is makes it a far better cross platform solution than a proprietry technology such as Adobe Flash.
How is it a silver bullet ? XAML is an XML based document format that unifies many existing technologies such as Flash, Direct X, and Windows Development, it is backed by an Enterprise development framework as well as thousands of third party vendors, plus it being a.NET technology it has close integraton with SQL Server, Share Point Portal Server, Biztalk Server, Commerce Server, Exchange Server, Map Point etc etc. Microsoft's annual R&D budget is ten times bigger than Adobe's. Adobe simply has absolutely no chance to match the power of this development platform.
I'm guessing that you have a lot of knowlege invested in Flash, and that you probably feel a little threatened. If most of the flash development that goes on out there wasn't so disposable I might be able to say, don't worry you'll have plenty of legacy work for many years to come. But unfortunately I think there's a good chance one day you may have to let go, as most things developed in flash have a life span of less than six months.
Microsoft has Adobe very firmly in it's sight. It is bringing out technology to compete with Adobe. XAML is Microsoft's silver bullet for Flash. Vista and all future releases of Windows will include support for XAML, support for legacy window systems will be facilitated via service packs.
XAML will have all the features of Flash, including tools for graphical designers plus the power and ease of development of Visual Studio.NET.
If this doesn't bite hard into Adobe's market over the next 2-3 years I would be very surprised. I think Adobe is currently riding at it's peak right now, I see only a downhill path for them from here.
One with weaponary deficient by world war 2 standards, the other with 21st century weaponary.
Only one side has the capability to stop raining cluster and 500lbs bombs on civilian populations, and to stop Apache helicopters from targeting red cross vehicles. Oh and if you're gonna say accidents happen... you should read this the ambulance sent to help the wounded from this ambulance was also hit. Israeli's must have a sense of humour, they drop pamphlets telling people to leave then they target any vehicle "capable of carrying weapons". Maybe they should all be escaping by unicycles ?
I only have passionate hatred for violence. I'm not an antismite, I do have many jewish friends, and some of those share my feelings on the current policies of the Israeli government. I think in the current circumstances the Israeli government thinks it has cart blanch to do what ever they like because they have support of the Israeli and US people. I think the major reason for this support is the representation of the conflict in the media, which I think is grosely out of whack with reality. If the media treated Israel's incursion into the Palenstinian terroritories to detain Palestinian nationals in the same way it treated the Palestinian raid I'm sure the Israeli government wouldn't have taken the actions it has and there might be 500 people (Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese) who might still be living today, and countless others without injuries.
Israel's current escalation is quite frightening, keeping in mind that before this Israel had already been acting completely disproportionately, before the kidnappings and Israel's full on assault, the Palestinian red cross had reported since Sept 29 last year that over 3000 palestinians had been killed by Israeli actions, and another 30,000 had been wounded. When you compare this with the numbers of Israeli's killed in "terrorist" attacks ( 100) you really have to ask youself how they can justify the actions they were taking before this conflict, neverlone what they're doing now.
When you compare 4000 arab casualties to 100 Israeli... how can you possibly be indifferent ? Remember whilst you and others like you remain indifferent Israel is unlikely to change their policies regarding Palestine and the US government is going to continue supporting Israel's military to the tune of 7 billion a year.
You probably won't be surprised to find out that my comment is still being modded down, 4 days after the post, it was briefly up to +4, yesterday it was at +3, and today it's down to +2. I think it probably has the record for the most modded comment on a slashdot post. There seemed to be a real concerted effort to keep this comment out of the common +4 to +5 filter range most people have for reading slashdot
Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word genocide, but what else do you call the attempted elimination of 40% of the Lebanese population, from land they have occupied for centuries. In that context I think it's fair, and since then others including the Lebanese Prime Minister (only months ago lauded by the US) have labelled Israel's actions as genocide.
My comment has a link to one of the very few reports in the media of the actual event that sparked this conflict. It pointed out that Israel basically threw the first punch in this conflict, which the media turned a blind eye to. You would think this would be right up slashdot's alley, proof of the machinery subverting public opinion, but no, slashdot has proven to be a little microcosm of the world's media.
There's a whole bunch of people, I hate to say it, but who are probably in the jewish community, who no matter what Israel does want to make a pretty picture out of it and basically sweep under the carpet anything that gets in the way portraying Israel's actions as righteous. This thread is actual proof of the mechanics of what is going on in todays media. There are people out there who want to distort the truth on both sides, let me just say I don't think there enough arabs in the western media to keep it balanced.
Well just read all the comments... everything pro-israeli/pro-republican rated up, all decent to this line of thinking rated down, how do you explain it ? If you're saying Israel is right for their actions or supply information that might somehow justify the terrible things Israel has been doing then you're +5 Informative or Insightful, anything anti-Israeli is -1/0 Offtopic, Troll etc
By it's definition Genocide refers to the destruction of a culture, this can be done by killing, or forceably removing them from their land. Israel has made very clear that it intends to eliminate the shia population in southern lebanon (aka Hezbollah). Basically when you see talk of eliminating Hezbollah, you're either seeing people talk about disarming the shia population of southern lebanon or the actual elimination of these people. Hezbollah is critized as hiding in amongst the civilian population, in actuality they are the civilian population, armed men, living with their families. Basically when you're talking about wiping out Hezbollah using militarily methods, you're really talking about genocide. I think for Israel to kill all these people will be a last resort, right now they're making an example out of few towns, dropping pamplets telling people to leave. The question really is what is going to happen if these people or some percentage of them refuse to leave ?
Well you've picked one point out of the whole comment. How far the Israelis will go is hard to say at this point, they're talking about creating a "buffer zone" up to at least the Litani river from the Israeli border. This river runs right through the country, but at the very least this would mean a buffer zone of at least 50km. This of course would initially require pushing well past the point at which you want to go, so perhaps 200km is a bit of an exageration, but 100km is certainly not out of question. Even if it were only up the river, there are numerous population centers where people would have to be removed or killed. The word Genocide, as understood by the international community, includes the forceable removal of people from their land, in this case it is Hezbollah, or by another description the Shia muslims of southern lebanon
But the main point of my comment is that the Israeli's were the ones who launched the first raid in which persons were kidnapped, but the media hasn't reported it this way and has portrayed the series of abductions as one in which Israel is the victim of unprovoked attacks, which it is not.
You might want to add wake up and realise that if you're in the US you're living inside a propaganda bubble. It's not so much that you are fed dis-information, it's what you don't hear in the popular media, but what you do discover with just a little digging. The article mentioned in Johnathon Cook's very inciteful article can be found here see "Gaza Strip arrests".
Slashdot has a political section why is it that there is no discussion on events in the middle east there. You would hope a site like slashdot might serve to act as a watchdog and a source of independent criticism on such issues. Seems not to be the case.
Can anyone who actually reads my comment explain to me how my comment possibly gets categorised like this ? Is it just because I'm not toeing the slashdot pro USA, pro republican line?
I think Slashdot is rapidly becoming a redundant as a source of real objective information. Most of the articles on it are just regurgitations of things previously published on Digg, the moderation and karma system is just a huge wank.
Reading the comments on Slashdot gives me great insight as to how the USA could possibly support the GENOCIDE that is occuring in Lebannon today. This bullocks gets rated informative.....
Here's real information...
This all started because on the 25th of June (right in the middle of the World cup) ISRAEL invaded sovereign palestinian territory and seized two member of hamas, this little fact has not been broadly publicised by an extremely Israeli biased media. Then on 26th of June Hamas retaliated by launching a similiar raid into Israel capturing Corporal Shalit, this was of course very well publicised, most think this was an unprovoked act of agression on behalf of Hamas in actual fact it was not.
Israel then proceeded to bomb everything the palestinian state had of value as well as arresting most of the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. This pissed off many people, most noteably Hezbollah, Iran and Syria, they then launched another raid on Israel, in which two more soldiers were captured. Israel took this as an excuse to acheive political goals in lebanon, through sheer brute, murderous force. Israel is currently attempting to create a "buffer zone" for itself in lebannon... in other words they're going to drive out or kill everyone in southern lebannon within some arbitary distance from the Israeli border (we're not talking 2 or 3 km here... try 100-200km). International law classifies this sort of act as an act of genoicide.
Slashdot prides itself on having the inside scoop, being one step ahead of big brother... but in actuality it's been totally silent, not one single article has been published in Slashdot's political section on Palestine or Lebannon. Slashdot is suppose to report stuff that matters, how can whats going on in terms of such blatant media bias and misrepresentation of what's actually going on in the middle east be of no importance ?
If you read the article you'll see that the author asked the American Civil Liberties Union for their legal opinion on this case:-
"There is no law that prevents people from taking pictures of what anybody can see on the street. I think it's rather scary that in this country you could actually be taken down to police headquarters for taking a picture on your cell phone of activities that are clearly visible on the street. Cruz's civil rights might have been violated. He was unlawfully seized, which is a violation of the 4th amendment the last time we checked."
To me that sounds like the cops didn't have any right to arrest him and that they could be sued for unlawful arrest. But hell this is the USA we're talking about, and maybe things have changed a bit since the last time they checked what violates the 4th amendment.
Where are the innovations ?
on
Prey Review
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I was one of the first internet gamers, playing in the first Australian national competition contested by 12 teams, each game played 4-8 a side. I then went on to be a part of the first Australian quake team playing Japan.
Since then I have found very little in online gaming that could possibly compare with that experience. Since then clone after clone of the original quake game with no innovations other than a little tweak of the graphics here and there has been released. Team fortress was probably the first and last (very obvious) true innovation for this genre. Every title that has been released since then has really only done one thing and that is splinter the online gaming community into smaller and smaller inconsequential parties, the differences between each party only being measured by the bank accounts of the distributors of these overly rehashed games.
There has been far too much emphasis on single player gameplay, I find playing single player is a little like getting out the playboy magazines and locking yourself in your room in favour of meeting up with your girlfriend and then there's the same leap in excitement going from adhoc multiplayer games to organised team play (ie where each game you're representing a team with the same team mates).
Whats more exciting throwing a football about in the park with a random selection of friends ? Or playing in a team in a large competion ? Anyone who has done both will tell you the thrill of playing with serious intent in an organised competition is far more exciting.
Personally I really don't care about graphics or whether I'm a genetically modified army doink, or an indian. Once you're immersed in a real competition such subtlties are really of no consequence, it's a bit like the quality of the turf at a football field, it really doesn't impact on the intensity of the game play.
What it comes down to is basically people in the industry know there's no need to really create anything new, they can just schlopp up the same old swill into the trough year after year and people will keep buying it. It's a cheap and easy buck and a shore fire way to make money, but it totally lacks vision.
Slashdot Mirror
NO WAY !!!
A copy of windows circulated amongst students is flagged as pirated !!!
I'm shocked !
I'm sure Microsoft will also be shocked and appalled... *cough* *cough* actually they'll probably pat their WGA architects on the back for a job well done.
Dude just ask your Uni's techies to give you an updated (less pirated) version of XP, that way you won't look so clueless when you go to Microsoft.
At the end of the day is WGA really that unfair ? I mean why should MS give you updates and access to their online resources when you are associated (via your copy of windows) with people who are basically stealing from Microsoft ?
If WGA formatted your hard disk or refused to boot etc etc... sure I'd have a sympathetic ear for those people in your situation. However no, I have no sympathy at all for those with WGA problems.
It would be interesting to try the later. I suspect you'll find that you can install a single copy of windows on a number of machines and run happily for quite some time, I've had to run the same copy of windows with the same license key for some period of time whilst migrating from machines, so I know that you don't get WGA'd the instant you install a single license copy of windows more than once. I suspect there's probably a time limit, or possibly a limit on the number of copies that can be made before the license is blacklisted.
Pirating MSDN at $2000 USD a pop is a license to print money. I suspect you'll find you purchased your copy from someone who is in the active game of counterfeiting MSDN or purchasing counterfeit MSDN software. From my experience and what I have seen over the years Microsoft does not go after small time mum & dad, friend to friend type pirates, they go after those who are creating thousands of copies and selling them retail. You'll probably find what Microsoft was really after was information about where you got your bogus copy of MSDN from.
Was this MSDN subscription substantially less than the normal retail price ?
Correct. As covered earlier by slashdot this was the case with Paul Thorrott to quote the article:-
The key I had used to install Windows was a known pirated key, and required a modified version of winlogon.exe.
I expect WGA probably uses a combination of things such as checking the digital signatures of key assemblies as well as blacklists.
Maybe this guy should ask Paul for a copy, or perhaps just read a little more slashdot.
P.S It doesn't matter if people don't go to Vista.... Microsoft intends to ship support for XAML and .NET Framework 3.0 as service packs through windows update (as I mentioned in my original comment).
Like it or not the reality is, a year from now everyone will most likely have it on their computers and it will be an alternative to Flash.
Microsoft's .NET framework is and always be open, XAML as with the rest of .NET will be submitted to ECMA standards committee. MS.NET already runs on Windows CE mobile devices, plus linux, and soon OS-X. XAML being XML, it will obviously it is a trivial matter for Microsoft to define a subset of tags applicable to mobile devices. This is makes it a far better cross platform solution than a proprietry technology such as Adobe Flash.
.NET technology it has close integraton with SQL Server, Share Point Portal Server, Biztalk Server, Commerce Server, Exchange Server, Map Point etc etc. Microsoft's annual R&D budget is ten times bigger than Adobe's. Adobe simply has absolutely no chance to match the power of this development platform.
How is it a silver bullet ? XAML is an XML based document format that unifies many existing technologies such as Flash, Direct X, and Windows Development, it is backed by an Enterprise development framework as well as thousands of third party vendors, plus it being a
I'm guessing that you have a lot of knowlege invested in Flash, and that you probably feel a little threatened. If most of the flash development that goes on out there wasn't so disposable I might be able to say, don't worry you'll have plenty of legacy work for many years to come. But unfortunately I think there's a good chance one day you may have to let go, as most things developed in flash have a life span of less than six months.
...here
.NET.
Microsoft has Adobe very firmly in it's sight. It is bringing out technology to compete with Adobe. XAML is Microsoft's silver bullet for Flash. Vista and all future releases of Windows will include support for XAML, support for legacy window systems will be facilitated via service packs.
XAML will have all the features of Flash, including tools for graphical designers plus the power and ease of development of Visual Studio
If this doesn't bite hard into Adobe's market over the next 2-3 years I would be very surprised. I think Adobe is currently riding at it's peak right now, I see only a downhill path for them from here.
Yea right... Two sides....
One with weaponary deficient by world war 2 standards, the other with 21st century weaponary.
Only one side has the capability to stop raining cluster and 500lbs bombs on civilian populations, and to stop Apache helicopters from targeting red cross vehicles. Oh and if you're gonna say accidents happen... you should read this the ambulance sent to help the wounded from this ambulance was also hit. Israeli's must have a sense of humour, they drop pamphlets telling people to leave then they target any vehicle "capable of carrying weapons". Maybe they should all be escaping by unicycles ?
I only have passionate hatred for violence. I'm not an antismite, I do have many jewish friends, and some of those share my feelings on the current policies of the Israeli government. I think in the current circumstances the Israeli government thinks it has cart blanch to do what ever they like because they have support of the Israeli and US people. I think the major reason for this support is the representation of the conflict in the media, which I think is grosely out of whack with reality. If the media treated Israel's incursion into the Palenstinian terroritories to detain Palestinian nationals in the same way it treated the Palestinian raid I'm sure the Israeli government wouldn't have taken the actions it has and there might be 500 people (Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese) who might still be living today, and countless others without injuries.
Israel's current escalation is quite frightening, keeping in mind that before this Israel had already been acting completely disproportionately, before the kidnappings and Israel's full on assault, the Palestinian red cross had reported since Sept 29 last year that over 3000 palestinians had been killed by Israeli actions, and another 30,000 had been wounded. When you compare this with the numbers of Israeli's killed in "terrorist" attacks ( 100) you really have to ask youself how they can justify the actions they were taking before this conflict, neverlone what they're doing now.
When you compare 4000 arab casualties to 100 Israeli... how can you possibly be indifferent ? Remember whilst you and others like you remain indifferent Israel is unlikely to change their policies regarding Palestine and the US government is going to continue supporting Israel's military to the tune of 7 billion a year.
You probably won't be surprised to find out that my comment is still being modded down, 4 days after the post, it was briefly up to +4, yesterday it was at +3, and today it's down to +2. I think it probably has the record for the most modded comment on a slashdot post. There seemed to be a real concerted effort to keep this comment out of the common +4 to +5 filter range most people have for reading slashdot
Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word genocide, but what else do you call the attempted elimination of 40% of the Lebanese population, from land they have occupied for centuries. In that context I think it's fair, and since then others including the Lebanese Prime Minister (only months ago lauded by the US) have labelled Israel's actions as genocide.
My comment has a link to one of the very few reports in the media of the actual event that sparked this conflict. It pointed out that Israel basically threw the first punch in this conflict, which the media turned a blind eye to. You would think this would be right up slashdot's alley, proof of the machinery subverting public opinion, but no, slashdot has proven to be a little microcosm of the world's media.
There's a whole bunch of people, I hate to say it, but who are probably in the jewish community, who no matter what Israel does want to make a pretty picture out of it and basically sweep under the carpet anything that gets in the way portraying Israel's actions as righteous. This thread is actual proof of the mechanics of what is going on in todays media. There are people out there who want to distort the truth on both sides, let me just say I don't think there enough arabs in the western media to keep it balanced.
I have issues with the lobbing of missiles indiscrimately into a country where only civilians are hurt
Do you have issue with the dropping of 500lb laser guided bombs on to multi-story apartment blocks ?
Hezbollah only started it's rocket attacks when Israel began bombing civilians in Lebanon.
You don't know how to spell Hezbollah, and you're missing the truth.
Well just read all the comments... everything pro-israeli/pro-republican rated up, all decent to this line of thinking rated down, how do you explain it ? If you're saying Israel is right for their actions or supply information that might somehow justify the terrible things Israel has been doing then you're +5 Informative or Insightful, anything anti-Israeli is -1/0 Offtopic, Troll etc
How do you explain this ?
By it's definition Genocide refers to the destruction of a culture, this can be done by killing, or forceably removing them from their land. Israel has made very clear that it intends to eliminate the shia population in southern lebanon (aka Hezbollah). Basically when you see talk of eliminating Hezbollah, you're either seeing people talk about disarming the shia population of southern lebanon or the actual elimination of these people. Hezbollah is critized as hiding in amongst the civilian population, in actuality they are the civilian population, armed men, living with their families. Basically when you're talking about wiping out Hezbollah using militarily methods, you're really talking about genocide. I think for Israel to kill all these people will be a last resort, right now they're making an example out of few towns, dropping pamplets telling people to leave. The question really is what is going to happen if these people or some percentage of them refuse to leave ?
It's all over the media...
= UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-22,GGLG:en&q=litani%20buf fer%20zone&sa=N&tab=wn
http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie
CNN talks about it every day...
I wouldn't have thought it be necessary
Well you've picked one point out of the whole comment. How far the Israelis will go is hard to say at this point, they're talking about creating a "buffer zone" up to at least the Litani river from the Israeli border. This river runs right through the country, but at the very least this would mean a buffer zone of at least 50km. This of course would initially require pushing well past the point at which you want to go, so perhaps 200km is a bit of an exageration, but 100km is certainly not out of question. Even if it were only up the river, there are numerous population centers where people would have to be removed or killed. The word Genocide, as understood by the international community, includes the forceable removal of people from their land, in this case it is Hezbollah, or by another description the Shia muslims of southern lebanon
But the main point of my comment is that the Israeli's were the ones who launched the first raid in which persons were kidnapped, but the media hasn't reported it this way and has portrayed the series of abductions as one in which Israel is the victim of unprovoked attacks, which it is not.
You might want to add wake up and realise that if you're in the US you're living inside a propaganda bubble. It's not so much that you are fed dis-information, it's what you don't hear in the popular media, but what you do discover with just a little digging. The article mentioned in Johnathon Cook's very inciteful article can be found here see "Gaza Strip arrests".
Slashdot has a political section why is it that there is no discussion on events in the middle east there. You would hope a site like slashdot might serve to act as a watchdog and a source of independent criticism on such issues. Seems not to be the case.
Troll !
Typical....
Can anyone who actually reads my comment explain to me how my comment possibly gets categorised like this ? Is it just because I'm not toeing the slashdot pro USA, pro republican line?
I think Slashdot is rapidly becoming a redundant as a source of real objective information. Most of the articles on it are just regurgitations of things previously published on Digg, the moderation and karma system is just a huge wank.
Reading the comments on Slashdot gives me great insight as to how the USA could possibly support the GENOCIDE that is occuring in Lebannon today. This bullocks gets rated informative.....
Here's real information...
This all started because on the 25th of June (right in the middle of the World cup) ISRAEL invaded sovereign palestinian territory and seized two member of hamas, this little fact has not been broadly publicised by an extremely Israeli biased media. Then on 26th of June Hamas retaliated by launching a similiar raid into Israel capturing Corporal Shalit, this was of course very well publicised, most think this was an unprovoked act of agression on behalf of Hamas in actual fact it was not.
Israel then proceeded to bomb everything the palestinian state had of value as well as arresting most of the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. This pissed off many people, most noteably Hezbollah, Iran and Syria, they then launched another raid on Israel, in which two more soldiers were captured. Israel took this as an excuse to acheive political goals in lebanon, through sheer brute, murderous force. Israel is currently attempting to create a "buffer zone" for itself in lebannon... in other words they're going to drive out or kill everyone in southern lebannon within some arbitary distance from the Israeli border (we're not talking 2 or 3 km here... try 100-200km). International law classifies this sort of act as an act of genoicide.
Slashdot prides itself on having the inside scoop, being one step ahead of big brother... but in actuality it's been totally silent, not one single article has been published in Slashdot's political section on Palestine or Lebannon. Slashdot is suppose to report stuff that matters, how can whats going on in terms of such blatant media bias and misrepresentation of what's actually going on in the middle east be of no importance ?
Crap
If you read the article you'll see that the author asked the American Civil Liberties Union for their legal opinion on this case:-
"There is no law that prevents people from taking pictures of what anybody can see on the street. I think it's rather scary that in this country you could actually be taken down to police headquarters for taking a picture on your cell phone of activities that are clearly visible on the street. Cruz's civil rights might have been violated. He was unlawfully seized, which is a violation of the 4th amendment the last time we checked."
To me that sounds like the cops didn't have any right to arrest him and that they could be sued for unlawful arrest. But hell this is the USA we're talking about, and maybe things have changed a bit since the last time they checked what violates the 4th amendment.
I think you meant.... that would be heavy man !
I was one of the first internet gamers, playing in the first Australian national competition contested by 12 teams, each game played 4-8 a side. I then went on to be a part of the first Australian quake team playing Japan.
Since then I have found very little in online gaming that could possibly compare with that experience. Since then clone after clone of the original quake game with no innovations other than a little tweak of the graphics here and there has been released. Team fortress was probably the first and last (very obvious) true innovation for this genre. Every title that has been released since then has really only done one thing and that is splinter the online gaming community into smaller and smaller inconsequential parties, the differences between each party only being measured by the bank accounts of the distributors of these overly rehashed games.
There has been far too much emphasis on single player gameplay, I find playing single player is a little like getting out the playboy magazines and locking yourself in your room in favour of meeting up with your girlfriend and then there's the same leap in excitement going from adhoc multiplayer games to organised team play (ie where each game you're representing a team with the same team mates).
Whats more exciting throwing a football about in the park with a random selection of friends ? Or playing in a team in a large competion ? Anyone who has done both will tell you the thrill of playing with serious intent in an organised competition is far more exciting.
Personally I really don't care about graphics or whether I'm a genetically modified army doink, or an indian. Once you're immersed in a real competition such subtlties are really of no consequence, it's a bit like the quality of the turf at a football field, it really doesn't impact on the intensity of the game play.
What it comes down to is basically people in the industry know there's no need to really create anything new, they can just schlopp up the same old swill into the trough year after year and people will keep buying it. It's a cheap and easy buck and a shore fire way to make money, but it totally lacks vision.
You can say that again.... "It could be tomorrow, but most likely it'll be 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 years from now," says Jeno Sokoloski.