Nice diagram of all Google's acquisitions for various reasons (revenue generation, revenue protection, technology, size, etc)
http://www.scores.org/graphics/google/
Try tracing back random pieces of modern technology to all of their component parts/materials, and all of those's component parts/materials, and so forth, with the components needed for manufacturing/refining along the way, and if any of those are consumable, trace those back.
Little bit off-topic but directly related to this, find the book The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. It covers all the technology and industries that had to spring up in order to make and mass produce a simple pencil. Fascinating read.
I'm currently reliving my childhood, to the detriment of my adulthood, but ah well, plenty of time to be old later. Also Steam has a large number of smaller indie titles as well as the time-consuming AAA titles, not least of which is the old LucasArts games, with more to come.
1. If autorun is running an arbitrary executable on removable media just because, then yes, I would consider it one of the more idiotic ideas that has come up.
2. If autorun is running a known application already installed on the PC when a recognised device type is connected, then no it's not the "dumbest idea ever".
There's no technical reason that you need (1) active to support (2). Whether there is a way to separately disable them in Windows is another question. (anyone have an answer to that?)
Story submitter here (although apparently I'm known as anonymous these days):
If they are going to do this, they better be damned sure of the training and ability of the people who will be issuing the death penalty to the gamers.
I think that's one part of the problem, but I don't think that's *the* major problem (although I'm sure there will be plenty of false bans that will cause enough of a problem without the complications of linking the games/forums). I see more of a problem in the linking between games; Daddy buys two games, one for little Johnny and one for little Suzy, which he installs and registers via the same EA account. Little Johnny posts something stupid or does something in-game that results in a ban, and little Suzy loses her rights to play Barbie Dressup 2008 or whatever. That's not going to please Daddy, and the problem gets a lot more complicated if little Johnny sells his game to a friend who then gets banned.
New Zealand, although I'm a native so I'm biased. Same copyright laws (you can format shift) and not much of a police state (slight nanny state, there's a law about not smacking your kids here, but it's not something that people pay much attention to).
Must admit, I was travelling in the States a month or so ago with work, and realised when I came back home that it was easier to go through everything for an international flight in/out of NZ than it was to get on a domestic flight in the US...
I've never actually played Vice City, but I have played all the other GTA games. If they're anything to go by, you'll definitely kill far more mid-late 20's white guys than anybody else. But I suspect that if I, as one of the above got up there and said "Oi, I'm sick of being in the killable majority" I'd get shouted down as being insensitive to minorities.
Sheesh. Maybe there's more of us out there to kill, and I'm not saying that (some of) us don't deserve - probably more as a group - but I'm always by this kind of double standard...
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Citation for the facebook/company thing? The google-fu is not strong with me today...
Nice diagram of all Google's acquisitions for various reasons (revenue generation, revenue protection, technology, size, etc) http://www.scores.org/graphics/google/
Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites (AdBlock Plus and NoScript may be desirable, but not necessary).
Er, Flash? I'd say websites that are Flash-based or contain fairly large amounts of Flash content are "common"...
Try tracing back random pieces of modern technology to all of their component parts/materials, and all of those's component parts/materials, and so forth, with the components needed for manufacturing/refining along the way, and if any of those are consumable, trace those back.
Little bit off-topic but directly related to this, find the book The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. It covers all the technology and industries that had to spring up in order to make and mass produce a simple pencil. Fascinating read.
Just in case you haven't found it, try http://www.gog.com/
I'm currently reliving my childhood, to the detriment of my adulthood, but ah well, plenty of time to be old later. Also Steam has a large number of smaller indie titles as well as the time-consuming AAA titles, not least of which is the old LucasArts games, with more to come.
1. If autorun is running an arbitrary executable on removable media just because, then yes, I would consider it one of the more idiotic ideas that has come up. 2. If autorun is running a known application already installed on the PC when a recognised device type is connected, then no it's not the "dumbest idea ever". There's no technical reason that you need (1) active to support (2). Whether there is a way to separately disable them in Windows is another question. (anyone have an answer to that?)
If they are going to do this, they better be damned sure of the training and ability of the people who will be issuing the death penalty to the gamers.
I think that's one part of the problem, but I don't think that's *the* major problem (although I'm sure there will be plenty of false bans that will cause enough of a problem without the complications of linking the games/forums). I see more of a problem in the linking between games; Daddy buys two games, one for little Johnny and one for little Suzy, which he installs and registers via the same EA account. Little Johnny posts something stupid or does something in-game that results in a ban, and little Suzy loses her rights to play Barbie Dressup 2008 or whatever. That's not going to please Daddy, and the problem gets a lot more complicated if little Johnny sells his game to a friend who then gets banned.
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New Zealand, although I'm a native so I'm biased. Same copyright laws (you can format shift) and not much of a police state (slight nanny state, there's a law about not smacking your kids here, but it's not something that people pay much attention to). Must admit, I was travelling in the States a month or so ago with work, and realised when I came back home that it was easier to go through everything for an international flight in/out of NZ than it was to get on a domestic flight in the US...
Yeah, not so much. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit for something a little more accurate.
I've never actually played Vice City, but I have played all the other GTA games. If they're anything to go by, you'll definitely kill far more mid-late 20's white guys than anybody else. But I suspect that if I, as one of the above got up there and said "Oi, I'm sick of being in the killable majority" I'd get shouted down as being insensitive to minorities. Sheesh. Maybe there's more of us out there to kill, and I'm not saying that (some of) us don't deserve - probably more as a group - but I'm always by this kind of double standard...