Oh, now I understand how the Bush Administration intends to befriend China, by becoming more like them! More and more it seems that the Bush Administration's ideas of what constitutes our freedoms and rights are whatever the government says they are. How is this different from China and similar governments we criticize all of the time? When the federal government puts itself above the Constitution, we join a long line of authoritarian governments throughout history. Thank you Mr. Gonzales for making that clear.
There's definitely a lot of politics and money in play here. Practically speaking, it would be difficult to impossible to exclude products made by any country that may be a present or future enemy of the US from use in govt agencies. And ironically the US govt has aided and abetted the rise of Chinese economic and political power that now they suddenly fear. If they really cared so much, they should have said something before IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo. So given that everyone spies on everyone else, the real trick is not to stop the spying, but to make sure that your enemy (and sometimes your friends) only get inaccurate or junk info.
For the current matter, I would guess that some domestic PC maker is trying to take advantage of the situation, *cough*Dell*cough*HP*cough, pardon me!
I'm no fanboy, but I've got to admit that Nintendo's offerings in the Wii and DS are looking a lot more attractive. I like to keep things simple and inexpensive, and right now the PS3 offerings have me thoroughly confused, as I'm sure some of the developers are as well. When the system configurations and price are getting more press than the games, there could be trouble. As for me, unless I see something compelling or a big price drop in the 360, I'm going to wait until the Wii comes out and then decide what to do.
By now it really isn't any surprise that a given console is hacked to play so called "backup" games. I think the interesting thing is that with each new generation, this process is becoming more complex, meaning that the average Joe/Jane who tries these hacks is more likely to totally disable (ie "brick") the console. And many of those who do successfully implement the hack are likely to be banned from the not so optional anymore online services associated with the console. Oddly enough, in the end this probably sells a few more consoles in the form of replacements. Oh and let's not forget those vandals who'll publish fake hacks with the intent of bricking as many consoles as possible, which happened to the PSP a few months back!
I hear ya! Right now I'm finding the 360 more attractive for its Live Arcade offerings than any of the games I've seen or heard about. I'd dare say that Live Arcade has been carrying the 360 up until this point given the rate at which new games that really take advantage of the system have been coming out. This isn't really a criticism since there's always a lag between a new console's launch and the arrival of truly compelling content. When the PS2 launched it mostly had PS1 games and the ability to play DVD movies to tide it over until the AAA titles started coming.
Sigh...Every time I see one of these stories, they always have to offer up digital content with some kind of poison pill that turns off many of the people they are trying to sell to. Have they not learned anything from the success of iTMS? If I can get legally download a movie at a competitive price and burn it to my own DVD to play in the living room, which is all I want, then I'm cool. But this "one machine" crap just makes me go WTF! As long as pirates offer an easier to use and more flexible product, it will be difficult to establish legal movie downloads as the first choice.
It will take everyone playing WoW, including the legislators, before anything like this even can happen.
LOL, oh the image that gave me...I'd love to see Democrats and Republicans goin at it in WoW. Imagine Bill Frist complaining about server down time and Chinese gold farmers on Fox News. That would be a strange world indeed.
I guess this is the kind of bill that comes out when our elected officials are completely bereft of the intelligence and courage needed to do the hard things that really need to be done. This kind of law has been invalidated in state after state, so this is just stupid and a waste at this point. Indeed, this is no longer news at all.
I find the sense of entitlement to H1Bs in the comment at the end of the article rather interesting. When did workers from one country become entitled to visas in order to work in another country? I must have missed the memo...
All of the beta test...err customers should take a bow! This happens all of the time now, but I'm sure Microsoft knew that heat could be a problem, but you never really know how much of a problem it's going to be until a couple of million units hit the streets. The Playstations had heat problems early on too. So everyone take a bow, soon we'll hear less about overheating Xbox 360s. Hopefully they'll be able to reduce the size of the power brick too, eventually. In any case, I'm glad to see that they are taking steps to improve the product.
OMG! I guess the Producers scenario continues to play out wherein, it may be worse for Infinium to actually produce a real product than to fail outright and liquidate. I imagine there's probably a battle within the company right now between those whose pride demands that they produce something tangible and those who know the probable truth that liquidation is the best way to stay out of jail!
It's really sad because I think this lapboard is actually a good idea. Hopefully they can sell it to someone like Logitech, or Microsoft to at least get this in the hands of gamers.
Ahh nothing like stoking those jailbait fantasies I suppose... It's fun to catch a couple of these for nostalgia's sake, but I sure hope they won't make a habit of this sort of thing. I watch Adult Swim for two reasons, anime, and the crazy wacked out comedy animated series. I don't want to see any live action. Oh and those homoerotic Burger King ads are totally creeping me out. They did something similar promoting Lord of the Rings too.
I agree, the two games are very different, or at least feel that way. I've played FFXI for the last two years and decided to give WoW a try. After a couple of months I dropped WoW and went back to FFXI in part because I just preferred the FFXI aesthetic, but the final straw was not being able to logon to WoW more than half the time.
No worries, that's what they bought Alienware for. Now they can play both sides of the fence. If Alienware is not your style, or your Mom/Dad/Boss won't buy from a company with alien in its name, go with Dell's XPS line. But if you believe the Alienware rigs are superior or you just don't like Intel very much these days, go with them. Either way now Dell makes money without chasing away corporate accounts.
I suspect this XPS M1710 project was already in the pipeline before the Alienware acquisition took place, so it had to be launched. If it makes money, they'll keep it around, if not you probably won't hear much more about it.
I agree, the whimsical names can be a problem for some. For this reason, perhaps it should become standard practice to have some "suit"-able nicknames. Like Groovy might be referred to as Gr or GrV. If there is a suitable nickname in common usage, then upper management types won't come up empty if they Google it to get additional information (a usually unlikely event). This would be like when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC in order to sound hip and cool.
The best part is when your kids are old enough to play against you competitively! Early on, kickin their butts is just too cruel. And once they are old enough, then you whip out the ol' wireless, programmable controller baby!
It would be nice if the state of the art were further along, but I can tell you that active research in advancing the use of prosthetic limbs is taking place at Northwestern University. There's a clinical investigator who is doing a study involving the use of an amputee's remaining muscle and nerves in the stump to control a prosthetic limb in at least two degrees of freedom. So instead of a muscle twitch say only opening the hand, the user would be able to both open and close the hand. If the techique being studied proves successful, it should open the way to more and more capable devices. Sorry I don't have more details right now, but this is really fascinating stuff.
I think the reasons for the hold up are twofold. One, the mechanical devices are only now becoming small enough, strong enough, and smart enough for more complex use. And human studies not only take a long time to do for a host of reasons, including ethical ones. This is further slowed down by the lack of researchers to run the clinical studies needed since clinical research is not a career path that is generally well rewarded in the medical profession. The NIH is trying to change that, but with flat budgets for the foreseeable future, it will be a big challenge.
I think the ad is a nice piece of art, artistic in the same way as the beautifully choreographed gunplay ballets in John Woo's Better Tomorrow action films. But, the crucial but, is that it doesn't make me want to go out and buy the game. Why? Because it drives home the point that Hitman is a violent, murderous game in too realistic a fashion. I know some people go for that, and I do like the occasional shooter, but this goes too far for my taste. Even if, the ingame situation doesn't not present such realism, the ad has instilled that idea in me and thus turned me off from the game. So in conclusion, I would say it's great art, but a bad ad because it may be turning chasing away potential customers.
I would guess that the most immediately useful application of a voice interface to a search engine would be in facilitating searches from devices like cellphones. Right now, entering search terms in a cellphone is quite tedious. Another possible use of the underlying voice recognition technology would be voice to text conversion for chat in MMORPGs and other online games. Why? Because as voice enabled games and services like Xbox Live become more popular, the problem of "bad language" has continued to grow. Policing this is difficult because voice chat is not logged in any easy to search or filter manner, if at all. If Google lives up to its reputation, it's not a big stretch to see them building on their voice technology to provide voice chat to text logging for online game providers. Being able to log voice chat would also be useful to the gamers themselves.
Hmmm, foxes guarding hen houses comes to mind. But in all fairness, it is still a good thing that Microsoft is involved and in a way shows a sense of responsibility. I can only hope that the baser aspects of human nature won't raise their ugly heads here later.
So far the next generation console war reminds me a bit of the best of seven playoffs and a few World Series years. Just as one team is on the verge of elimination, the team on top makes some colossal blunder allowing the team on the ropes to steal a win. Often the team that's let back into the game this way, goes on to win the whole thing. Sony's delays may well have let Microsoft back into the game in the Japanese market. The Japanese still have a reputation for looking askance at foreign imports, but like everyone, they like making money and they like having fun. If good games come out for the 360 in Japan, people will buy them and if Japanese developers start making money on 360 games, then they will make more. There is now more time to not only get more games out, but to relaunch the 360 in Japan. In the Sony vs Microsoft matchup, Sony is letting Microsoft back into the game. The Japanese are big fans of baseball, so I don't think this analogy will be lost on anyone at Sony.
As I've said before, if MS can get the RPGs and the "wacky" Japanese staples out on the 360 plus something truly innovative, they've got a shot. And also keep in mind that a good portion of the games developed in Japan will also see life in other global regions. So if the 360 ever gets any traction in Japan, a real fight will be on fo sho!
Well, this move certainly plays to the high end, more tech saavy customers. So it's a good move on Apple's part that should increase their sales a bit. Playing to the higher end customers is usually a good thing since they have money and will probably remain loyal to a quality product, even if it cost a little more. This certainly makes a Mac buy more attractive to me. But for the mainstream, average computer user, this is almost a non-story except for the vague possibility that people may be more willing to try the Mac side because they can get Windows later if they don't like it. In the real world OS switching doesn't happen for most folks, so if Apple hooks a few this way, they may never run Windows at all.
I remember StarDock from the OS/2 days. They're not just a game development company though. I would guess that a good portion of their money comes from their ObjectDesktop and related products. So games probably won't make or break them. Also, they've avoided the very high cost associated with developing for console systems and stayed on the PC with some pretty decent strategy games. They've always been dinged in reviews for graphics, but I agree with you, that gameplay has been their primary focus from the very beginning.
My good friend who has been working at netflix for approximately 5 years says that most of the employees think the lawsuit issue with blockbuster is a waste of time
Absolutely, I can only think that this is something cooked up by the legal department to justify their existence and enrich themselves. I like Netflix, but this is stupid, and if they lose the lawsuit it could invite a backlash from a host of competitors. Netflix is still a relatively small company that really cannot afford to attract the likes of serious competition into their market. This legal action could be a very risky warning shot at Amazon.
You know you are a serious geek when you read the headline and say 'YES!' out loud.
Absolutely! This is the kind of stuff that made me go into physics in college. I've been waiting for some resolution of the neutrino mass issue for the last 20 years or so. This is the cool stuff! w00t!
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, now I understand how the Bush Administration intends to befriend China, by becoming more like them! More and more it seems that the Bush Administration's ideas of what constitutes our freedoms and rights are whatever the government says they are. How is this different from China and similar governments we criticize all of the time? When the federal government puts itself above the Constitution, we join a long line of authoritarian governments throughout history. Thank you Mr. Gonzales for making that clear.
There's definitely a lot of politics and money in play here. Practically speaking, it would be difficult to impossible to exclude products made by any country that may be a present or future enemy of the US from use in govt agencies. And ironically the US govt has aided and abetted the rise of Chinese economic and political power that now they suddenly fear. If they really cared so much, they should have said something before IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo. So given that everyone spies on everyone else, the real trick is not to stop the spying, but to make sure that your enemy (and sometimes your friends) only get inaccurate or junk info.
For the current matter, I would guess that some domestic PC maker is trying to take advantage of the situation, *cough*Dell*cough*HP*cough, pardon me!
I'm no fanboy, but I've got to admit that Nintendo's offerings in the Wii and DS are looking a lot more attractive. I like to keep things simple and inexpensive, and right now the PS3 offerings have me thoroughly confused, as I'm sure some of the developers are as well. When the system configurations and price are getting more press than the games, there could be trouble. As for me, unless I see something compelling or a big price drop in the 360, I'm going to wait until the Wii comes out and then decide what to do.
By now it really isn't any surprise that a given console is hacked to play so called "backup" games. I think the interesting thing is that with each new generation, this process is becoming more complex, meaning that the average Joe/Jane who tries these hacks is more likely to totally disable (ie "brick") the console. And many of those who do successfully implement the hack are likely to be banned from the not so optional anymore online services associated with the console. Oddly enough, in the end this probably sells a few more consoles in the form of replacements. Oh and let's not forget those vandals who'll publish fake hacks with the intent of bricking as many consoles as possible, which happened to the PSP a few months back!
I hear ya! Right now I'm finding the 360 more attractive for its Live Arcade offerings than any of the games I've seen or heard about. I'd dare say that Live Arcade has been carrying the 360 up until this point given the rate at which new games that really take advantage of the system have been coming out. This isn't really a criticism since there's always a lag between a new console's launch and the arrival of truly compelling content. When the PS2 launched it mostly had PS1 games and the ability to play DVD movies to tide it over until the AAA titles started coming.
Sigh...Every time I see one of these stories, they always have to offer up digital content with some kind of poison pill that turns off many of the people they are trying to sell to. Have they not learned anything from the success of iTMS? If I can get legally download a movie at a competitive price and burn it to my own DVD to play in the living room, which is all I want, then I'm cool. But this "one machine" crap just makes me go WTF! As long as pirates offer an easier to use and more flexible product, it will be difficult to establish legal movie downloads as the first choice.
It will take everyone playing WoW, including the legislators, before anything like this even can happen.
LOL, oh the image that gave me...I'd love to see Democrats and Republicans goin at it in WoW. Imagine Bill Frist complaining about server down time and Chinese gold farmers on Fox News. That would be a strange world indeed.
I guess this is the kind of bill that comes out when our elected officials are completely bereft of the intelligence and courage needed to do the hard things that really need to be done. This kind of law has been invalidated in state after state, so this is just stupid and a waste at this point. Indeed, this is no longer news at all.
Interesting POV from India: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=3 7181
I find the sense of entitlement to H1Bs in the comment at the end of the article rather interesting. When did workers from one country become entitled to visas in order to work in another country? I must have missed the memo...
All of the beta test...err customers should take a bow! This happens all of the time now, but I'm sure Microsoft knew that heat could be a problem, but you never really know how much of a problem it's going to be until a couple of million units hit the streets. The Playstations had heat problems early on too. So everyone take a bow, soon we'll hear less about overheating Xbox 360s. Hopefully they'll be able to reduce the size of the power brick too, eventually. In any case, I'm glad to see that they are taking steps to improve the product.
OMG! I guess the Producers scenario continues to play out wherein, it may be worse for Infinium to actually produce a real product than to fail outright and liquidate. I imagine there's probably a battle within the company right now between those whose pride demands that they produce something tangible and those who know the probable truth that liquidation is the best way to stay out of jail!
It's really sad because I think this lapboard is actually a good idea. Hopefully they can sell it to someone like Logitech, or Microsoft to at least get this in the hands of gamers.
Nostalgia.
Ahh nothing like stoking those jailbait fantasies I suppose... It's fun to catch a couple of these for nostalgia's sake, but I sure hope they won't make a habit of this sort of thing. I watch Adult Swim for two reasons, anime, and the crazy wacked out comedy animated series. I don't want to see any live action. Oh and those homoerotic Burger King ads are totally creeping me out. They did something similar promoting Lord of the Rings too.
I agree, the two games are very different, or at least feel that way. I've played FFXI for the last two years and decided to give WoW a try. After a couple of months I dropped WoW and went back to FFXI in part because I just preferred the FFXI aesthetic, but the final straw was not being able to logon to WoW more than half the time.
They'd throw in an AMD Athlon FX-57 ......
No worries, that's what they bought Alienware for. Now they can play both sides of the fence. If Alienware is not your style, or your Mom/Dad/Boss won't buy from a company with alien in its name, go with Dell's XPS line. But if you believe the Alienware rigs are superior or you just don't like Intel very much these days, go with them. Either way now Dell makes money without chasing away corporate accounts.
I suspect this XPS M1710 project was already in the pipeline before the Alienware acquisition took place, so it had to be launched. If it makes money, they'll keep it around, if not you probably won't hear much more about it.
I agree, the whimsical names can be a problem for some. For this reason, perhaps it should become standard practice to have some "suit"-able nicknames. Like Groovy might be referred to as Gr or GrV. If there is a suitable nickname in common usage, then upper management types won't come up empty if they Google it to get additional information (a usually unlikely event). This would be like when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC in order to sound hip and cool.
The best part is when your kids are old enough to play against you competitively! Early on, kickin their butts is just too cruel. And once they are old enough, then you whip out the ol' wireless, programmable controller baby!
It would be nice if the state of the art were further along, but I can tell you that active research in advancing the use of prosthetic limbs is taking place at Northwestern University. There's a clinical investigator who is doing a study involving the use of an amputee's remaining muscle and nerves in the stump to control a prosthetic limb in at least two degrees of freedom. So instead of a muscle twitch say only opening the hand, the user would be able to both open and close the hand. If the techique being studied proves successful, it should open the way to more and more capable devices. Sorry I don't have more details right now, but this is really fascinating stuff.
I think the reasons for the hold up are twofold. One, the mechanical devices are only now becoming small enough, strong enough, and smart enough for more complex use. And human studies not only take a long time to do for a host of reasons, including ethical ones. This is further slowed down by the lack of researchers to run the clinical studies needed since clinical research is not a career path that is generally well rewarded in the medical profession. The NIH is trying to change that, but with flat budgets for the foreseeable future, it will be a big challenge.
I think the ad is a nice piece of art, artistic in the same way as the beautifully choreographed gunplay ballets in John Woo's Better Tomorrow action films. But, the crucial but, is that it doesn't make me want to go out and buy the game. Why? Because it drives home the point that Hitman is a violent, murderous game in too realistic a fashion. I know some people go for that, and I do like the occasional shooter, but this goes too far for my taste. Even if, the ingame situation doesn't not present such realism, the ad has instilled that idea in me and thus turned me off from the game. So in conclusion, I would say it's great art, but a bad ad because it may be turning chasing away potential customers.
I would guess that the most immediately useful application of a voice interface to a search engine would be in facilitating searches from devices like cellphones. Right now, entering search terms in a cellphone is quite tedious. Another possible use of the underlying voice recognition technology would be voice to text conversion for chat in MMORPGs and other online games. Why? Because as voice enabled games and services like Xbox Live become more popular, the problem of "bad language" has continued to grow. Policing this is difficult because voice chat is not logged in any easy to search or filter manner, if at all. If Google lives up to its reputation, it's not a big stretch to see them building on their voice technology to provide voice chat to text logging for online game providers. Being able to log voice chat would also be useful to the gamers themselves.
Hmmm, foxes guarding hen houses comes to mind. But in all fairness, it is still a good thing that Microsoft is involved and in a way shows a sense of responsibility. I can only hope that the baser aspects of human nature won't raise their ugly heads here later.
So far the next generation console war reminds me a bit of the best of seven playoffs and a few World Series years. Just as one team is on the verge of elimination, the team on top makes some colossal blunder allowing the team on the ropes to steal a win. Often the team that's let back into the game this way, goes on to win the whole thing. Sony's delays may well have let Microsoft back into the game in the Japanese market. The Japanese still have a reputation for looking askance at foreign imports, but like everyone, they like making money and they like having fun. If good games come out for the 360 in Japan, people will buy them and if Japanese developers start making money on 360 games, then they will make more. There is now more time to not only get more games out, but to relaunch the 360 in Japan. In the Sony vs Microsoft matchup, Sony is letting Microsoft back into the game. The Japanese are big fans of baseball, so I don't think this analogy will be lost on anyone at Sony.
As I've said before, if MS can get the RPGs and the "wacky" Japanese staples out on the 360 plus something truly innovative, they've got a shot. And also keep in mind that a good portion of the games developed in Japan will also see life in other global regions. So if the 360 ever gets any traction in Japan, a real fight will be on fo sho!
Well, this move certainly plays to the high end, more tech saavy customers. So it's a good move on Apple's part that should increase their sales a bit. Playing to the higher end customers is usually a good thing since they have money and will probably remain loyal to a quality product, even if it cost a little more. This certainly makes a Mac buy more attractive to me. But for the mainstream, average computer user, this is almost a non-story except for the vague possibility that people may be more willing to try the Mac side because they can get Windows later if they don't like it. In the real world OS switching doesn't happen for most folks, so if Apple hooks a few this way, they may never run Windows at all.
I remember StarDock from the OS/2 days. They're not just a game development company though. I would guess that a good portion of their money comes from their ObjectDesktop and related products. So games probably won't make or break them. Also, they've avoided the very high cost associated with developing for console systems and stayed on the PC with some pretty decent strategy games. They've always been dinged in reviews for graphics, but I agree with you, that gameplay has been their primary focus from the very beginning.
My good friend who has been working at netflix for approximately 5 years says that most of the employees think the lawsuit issue with blockbuster is a waste of time
Absolutely, I can only think that this is something cooked up by the legal department to justify their existence and enrich themselves. I like Netflix, but this is stupid, and if they lose the lawsuit it could invite a backlash from a host of competitors. Netflix is still a relatively small company that really cannot afford to attract the likes of serious competition into their market. This legal action could be a very risky warning shot at Amazon.
You know you are a serious geek when you read the headline and say 'YES!' out loud.
Absolutely! This is the kind of stuff that made me go into physics in college. I've been waiting for some resolution of the neutrino mass issue for the last 20 years or so. This is the cool stuff! w00t!