"This essentially means that Rockstar was untruthful when it previously stated the content was added by a modder"
If you carefully re-read the statement by Rockstar again you will see it is very cleverly worded to point the blame at the people who released the mod while avoiding actually admitting the content was theirs. They were not untruthful, they were just assisted by some very expensive lawyers in preparing a statement that makes it look like it's not their fault without outright lying. Closer inspection shows they do not deny it.
I can't understand why they tried taking that tack in the first place though. In my post here I did a simple binary comparison of the mod's files to the originals and found only a few bytes difference. It wouldn't take long for anyone to work out that the content is theirs.
A far better route to have taken IMHO is to just admit that it was a feature they removed and that they apologise for any upset caused as they did not think anyone would find it and unlock it.
At the end of the day when the lawsuits start coming in, I think the crux of Rockstar's argument has to be that to access the sex game you have to download the mod which alters the game's files. This was never intended by Rockstar and therefore the responsibility lies with the person who applied the mod to exercise judgement. And if they are not mature enough to do this, their parents should be monitoring their computing activites anyway.
Yep, that's the SMTP catch-22. We either radically change SMTP to properly prevent spam but risk no-one adopting it or we keep implementing filtering software that is compatible with the current SMTP spec but not 100% accurate.
We have SpamAssassin implemented on our webmail servers and it's slowly but surely becoming less and less able to catch everything as the spammers try new tricks. D-Spam looks interesting though, apparently a properly trained D-Spam system will catch 99% of spam, but there's the issue of getting users to train it...
I agree, it's not biased to Nintendo at all, in fact some of the so-called "journalists" they interview are so dismissive of the DS because it doesn't do pretty graphics like the PSP I have to wonder how they can objectively review anything. Then again, one of them is aptly called The Game Dork...
My favourite interviewee was David Thomas of the Denver Post as he quite openly admitted that most journalists were seduced by the shiny PSP and hyped it massively without bothering to look at the quality of the games.
Rockstar's statement seems to be very carfully worded and avoids specifically clarifying if they they originally wrote the sex game.
I have downloaded the "Hot Coffee" mod (for research purposes only!), it does NOT patch the executable. There are 3 files in the mod: main.scm, script.img and sacensor.exe.
By doing a binary compare of main.scm and script.img with the originals they differ by only a few bytes, therefore the content for the sex games was already included in the game, all the files do is chnage a few flags to unlock it. It is not the genius coding effort of the century that Rockstar tries to imply by talking about disassembling and modifying the code.
As for sacensor.exe it is only needed if you don't want the whole game unlocked at the start (which the other files do). When sacensor.exe is used main.scm and script.img are not needed. Sacensor.exe has to be executed when San Andreas is running so it can make an in-memory alteration so it does not alter the code in any way either.
Rockstar's statement tries to give the impression that the sex mini-game was "created" by the hackers, and they talk about disassembling and modifying the code, but the mod does not even change the code just script files and art assets.
This seems similar to the dubious stance Tecmo took when they sued their fans at NinjaHacker.net for creating new costumes for Dead or Alive characters. In that situation Tecmo claimed the people at NinjaHacker had altered their source code when in fact all they had changed were the art assets.
I agree, the author was clearly a gamer. I consider myself to be a hardcore gamer, but I play fewer and fewer games these days. It's not got anything to do with me losing interest in games but my desire not to play the same old dull sequels being churned out.
I liken this to what happens with movie critics. Most movie critics have seen so many films that when they have to review yet another "big summer blockbuster" they are so tired with the cliches and reused plots that they hate the film. When these same critics have to watch some quirky foreign movie they love it because it's fresh and original. Your average cinema goes is quite happy to sit down and watch the big movie but wouldn't even consider watching the foreign film.
I'm getting like that with games. I'm tired of the endless sequels and clones hitting the market, and I just don't buy them anymore. If it's original and unique (or just very well designed) it gets my attention.
In fact I've been playing the Nintendo DS more than anything else lately simply because games like Pac-Pix, Kirby's Cursed Canvas, Another Code, Yoshi's Touch and Go and Wario Ware offer such a different gaming experience that it's fun exploring what the games have to offer. Sadly most "ordinary" gamers don't like these types of games, branding them as "glorified tech-demos", because they cannot conceive of a game that isn't in 3D with lots of killing and shooting.
I would say to be a gamer it's not about how many games or games machines you own, it's the type of games you play. If you only ever buy EA's latest rehashed sports game or the latest Tony Hawk's game or whatever dreck is being rushed to market unfinished for the Christmas period you're probably not a true gamer.
... reads like it was written by a Sony apologist. The article spends more time looking for things to criticise about the DS than actually acknowledging where the DS has apparently got it right over Sony. But then most games reviewers have been pimping the PSP as the "best thing evar" and probably feel pretty stupid that people have ignored them and bought the DS.
I own both machines myself, I only use the PSP for emulators at the moment, and aside from GTA:LCS and Burnout Legends there aren't any games on the horizon that I'm interested in compared to the 10 or so for the DS.
Except Halo was aimlessly redesigned several times while it was in development on the PC. It was only the 9 month deadline imposed when MS bought Bungee that the Xbox Halo took shape. Hardly the best example to choose when talking about starting early on a game to maximise its quality. Perhaps Mario 64 would be the best example? It allegedly held up the launch of the N64 while Nintendo tweaked it.
Nope, terrorists say "Allah akbar" and blow themselves up so I don't sound like a terrorist, especially since I'm not speaking in sand nigger speak. In fact I sound just like someone who has suggested a logical solution which is to get rid of all the rag-heads. Then we will know for sure that there aren't any terrorists in the country.
And if most Muslims do not support terrorists you'd think they'd be less hostile to actually allowing the police to search their mosques for bombs instead of constantly crying about religious discrimination. And when's the last time a rag-head reported one of their relatives to the police because they suspicted them of terrorism?
The games industry is trapped in a vicious circle, these days games cost a fortune to make and a single flop can wipe out a development company. So instead of experimenting and innovating with new ideas that could potentially flop developers/publishers stick to tried and tested franchises which means the female market goes completely untapped.
Nintendo seem to be having the most success at breaking away from this problem, particularly with games like Nintendogs which has apparently been a big hit with many female gamers in Japan.
You're absolutely right, I'd forgotten about that flaw.
I put a very small amount of WD40 into the base of my N64 stick a few years back and it smoothed out the movement quite nicely. Nothing beats a fresh out of the box N64 stick though, except perhaps the DC's analogue stick.
Thanks for the info, that explains why the Dreamcast had a normal cross shaped d-pad. I'd just assumed that Nintendo had let them get away with it in an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing against Sony.:)
None of those are genuine cross shaped controllers. They all implement a variation of the cross d-pad that is different enough to prevent them getting sued. That's why the PS1/2 is a segmented design, and why Sega use one based on a circular pad with a cross on top.
I believe it is the specific cross shape that Nintendo owns the patent to, rather than any underlying electronic design.
I agree, it usually takes me 30 seconds using a game to decide if the developers have chosen a "sane" control scheme or not. Any GameCube port that has problems because of the missing button has just been lazily converted. My favourite cock up is MGS: The Twin Snakes, where you have to press A and Start to go into the codec screen despite there being nothing mapped to the Start button when not pressing A!
They also ignored the fact that the GC innovated wireless controllers that *actually work*.
They were overly harsh with the N64 controller as well, despite Sony bunging a second analogue stick on the Dual Shock the analogue sticks weren't in the same league as the N64 ones. The N64 sticks were much more accurate, sensitive and had a better range of movement.
The only review I agreed with was the Dreamcast pad which is massively underrated. I'd have liked to have seen a review of the Saturn's analogue pad too.
I'd guess the floppies are for getting the RAID drivers on there. Why XP cannot read RAID drivers from anything but the floppy drive I don't know.
It's true you can slipstream RAID drivers onto the XP CD, but they are using an nVidia nForce4 and I know from experience it's a lot of hassle to get the drivers to slipstream properly, it's easier just to say "fuck it" and bung a floppy drive in!:)
I agree, I have two WD Raptors in RAID 0 and levels load up much faster than with a single disk, and when stuff is cached to the hard drive it's very fast at retrieving it.
Most HD benchmarks apparently show RAID 0 gives no improvement in speed, but I definitely see a massive difference, I originally had the Raptors in a non-RAID config and it was slower.
Lol yeah, it will work with firmware 1.00 and 1.5, and you just have to hope you don't get your firmware forcibly upgraded!:)
Personally I think Sony are shooting themselves in the foot by doing this, but they don't seem to care that emulators and homebrew games are a selling point for some people.
Someone is writing an xvid player for the PSP so soon hopefully it will be possible to put some decent films onto a memory stick. Of course with the largest memory stick being 1Gb it won't be possible to fit many on there, but at least it will be better than the terrible quality MP4 files the PSP plays natively...
Slashdot Mirror
"This essentially means that Rockstar was untruthful when it previously stated the content was added by a modder"
If you carefully re-read the statement by Rockstar again you will see it is very cleverly worded to point the blame at the people who released the mod while avoiding actually admitting the content was theirs. They were not untruthful, they were just assisted by some very expensive lawyers in preparing a statement that makes it look like it's not their fault without outright lying. Closer inspection shows they do not deny it.
I can't understand why they tried taking that tack in the first place though. In my post here I did a simple binary comparison of the mod's files to the originals and found only a few bytes difference. It wouldn't take long for anyone to work out that the content is theirs.
A far better route to have taken IMHO is to just admit that it was a feature they removed and that they apologise for any upset caused as they did not think anyone would find it and unlock it.
At the end of the day when the lawsuits start coming in, I think the crux of Rockstar's argument has to be that to access the sex game you have to download the mod which alters the game's files. This was never intended by Rockstar and therefore the responsibility lies with the person who applied the mod to exercise judgement. And if they are not mature enough to do this, their parents should be monitoring their computing activites anyway.
Yep, that's the SMTP catch-22. We either radically change SMTP to properly prevent spam but risk no-one adopting it or we keep implementing filtering software that is compatible with the current SMTP spec but not 100% accurate.
We have SpamAssassin implemented on our webmail servers and it's slowly but surely becoming less and less able to catch everything as the spammers try new tricks. D-Spam looks interesting though, apparently a properly trained D-Spam system will catch 99% of spam, but there's the issue of getting users to train it...
I agree, it's not biased to Nintendo at all, in fact some of the so-called "journalists" they interview are so dismissive of the DS because it doesn't do pretty graphics like the PSP I have to wonder how they can objectively review anything. Then again, one of them is aptly called The Game Dork...
My favourite interviewee was David Thomas of the Denver Post as he quite openly admitted that most journalists were seduced by the shiny PSP and hyped it massively without bothering to look at the quality of the games.
You want a game like Booon-Ga Boon-Ga then, which has the full probe/anus interface going on.
Rockstar's statement seems to be very carfully worded and avoids specifically clarifying if they they originally wrote the sex game.
I have downloaded the "Hot Coffee" mod (for research purposes only!), it does NOT patch the executable. There are 3 files in the mod: main.scm, script.img and sacensor.exe.
By doing a binary compare of main.scm and script.img with the originals they differ by only a few bytes, therefore the content for the sex games was already included in the game, all the files do is chnage a few flags to unlock it. It is not the genius coding effort of the century that Rockstar tries to imply by talking about disassembling and modifying the code.
As for sacensor.exe it is only needed if you don't want the whole game unlocked at the start (which the other files do). When sacensor.exe is used main.scm and script.img are not needed. Sacensor.exe has to be executed when San Andreas is running so it can make an in-memory alteration so it does not alter the code in any way either.
Rockstar's statement tries to give the impression that the sex mini-game was "created" by the hackers, and they talk about disassembling and modifying the code, but the mod does not even change the code just script files and art assets.
This seems similar to the dubious stance Tecmo took when they sued their fans at NinjaHacker.net for creating new costumes for Dead or Alive characters. In that situation Tecmo claimed the people at NinjaHacker had altered their source code when in fact all they had changed were the art assets.
I agree, the author was clearly a gamer. I consider myself to be a hardcore gamer, but I play fewer and fewer games these days. It's not got anything to do with me losing interest in games but my desire not to play the same old dull sequels being churned out.
I liken this to what happens with movie critics. Most movie critics have seen so many films that when they have to review yet another "big summer blockbuster" they are so tired with the cliches and reused plots that they hate the film. When these same critics have to watch some quirky foreign movie they love it because it's fresh and original. Your average cinema goes is quite happy to sit down and watch the big movie but wouldn't even consider watching the foreign film.
I'm getting like that with games. I'm tired of the endless sequels and clones hitting the market, and I just don't buy them anymore. If it's original and unique (or just very well designed) it gets my attention.
In fact I've been playing the Nintendo DS more than anything else lately simply because games like Pac-Pix, Kirby's Cursed Canvas, Another Code, Yoshi's Touch and Go and Wario Ware offer such a different gaming experience that it's fun exploring what the games have to offer. Sadly most "ordinary" gamers don't like these types of games, branding them as "glorified tech-demos", because they cannot conceive of a game that isn't in 3D with lots of killing and shooting.
I would say to be a gamer it's not about how many games or games machines you own, it's the type of games you play. If you only ever buy EA's latest rehashed sports game or the latest Tony Hawk's game or whatever dreck is being rushed to market unfinished for the Christmas period you're probably not a true gamer.
TFA doesn't say how the EU officials raided Intel's offices, did they choose to RAID 0 or RAID 1 them?
Daddy I want a Parrot that knows about zero!
... reads like it was written by a Sony apologist. The article spends more time looking for things to criticise about the DS than actually acknowledging where the DS has apparently got it right over Sony. But then most games reviewers have been pimping the PSP as the "best thing evar" and probably feel pretty stupid that people have ignored them and bought the DS.
I own both machines myself, I only use the PSP for emulators at the moment, and aside from GTA:LCS and Burnout Legends there aren't any games on the horizon that I'm interested in compared to the 10 or so for the DS.
Except Halo was aimlessly redesigned several times while it was in development on the PC. It was only the 9 month deadline imposed when MS bought Bungee that the Xbox Halo took shape. Hardly the best example to choose when talking about starting early on a game to maximise its quality. Perhaps Mario 64 would be the best example? It allegedly held up the launch of the N64 while Nintendo tweaked it.
Nope, terrorists say "Allah akbar" and blow themselves up so I don't sound like a terrorist, especially since I'm not speaking in sand nigger speak. In fact I sound just like someone who has suggested a logical solution which is to get rid of all the rag-heads. Then we will know for sure that there aren't any terrorists in the country.
And if most Muslims do not support terrorists you'd think they'd be less hostile to actually allowing the police to search their mosques for bombs instead of constantly crying about religious discrimination. And when's the last time a rag-head reported one of their relatives to the police because they suspicted them of terrorism?
There's no bigotry in getting rid of a bunch of terrorists you fucking moron. Get a clue.
We should throw every last rag-head muslim cunt out of the country, that would sort the problem of terrorism and benefit fraud all at once.
The games industry is trapped in a vicious circle, these days games cost a fortune to make and a single flop can wipe out a development company. So instead of experimenting and innovating with new ideas that could potentially flop developers/publishers stick to tried and tested franchises which means the female market goes completely untapped.
Nintendo seem to be having the most success at breaking away from this problem, particularly with games like Nintendogs which has apparently been a big hit with many female gamers in Japan.
You're absolutely right, I'd forgotten about that flaw.
I put a very small amount of WD40 into the base of my N64 stick a few years back and it smoothed out the movement quite nicely. Nothing beats a fresh out of the box N64 stick though, except perhaps the DC's analogue stick.
Thanks for the info, that explains why the Dreamcast had a normal cross shaped d-pad. I'd just assumed that Nintendo had let them get away with it in an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing against Sony. :)
None of those are genuine cross shaped controllers. They all implement a variation of the cross d-pad that is different enough to prevent them getting sued. That's why the PS1/2 is a segmented design, and why Sega use one based on a circular pad with a cross on top.
I believe it is the specific cross shape that Nintendo owns the patent to, rather than any underlying electronic design.
I agree, it usually takes me 30 seconds using a game to decide if the developers have chosen a "sane" control scheme or not. Any GameCube port that has problems because of the missing button has just been lazily converted. My favourite cock up is MGS: The Twin Snakes, where you have to press A and Start to go into the codec screen despite there being nothing mapped to the Start button when not pressing A!
They also ignored the fact that the GC innovated wireless controllers that *actually work*.
They were overly harsh with the N64 controller as well, despite Sony bunging a second analogue stick on the Dual Shock the analogue sticks weren't in the same league as the N64 ones. The N64 sticks were much more accurate, sensitive and had a better range of movement.
The only review I agreed with was the Dreamcast pad which is massively underrated. I'd have liked to have seen a review of the Saturn's analogue pad too.
I'd guess the floppies are for getting the RAID drivers on there. Why XP cannot read RAID drivers from anything but the floppy drive I don't know.
:)
It's true you can slipstream RAID drivers onto the XP CD, but they are using an nVidia nForce4 and I know from experience it's a lot of hassle to get the drivers to slipstream properly, it's easier just to say "fuck it" and bung a floppy drive in!
I agree, I have two WD Raptors in RAID 0 and levels load up much faster than with a single disk, and when stuff is cached to the hard drive it's very fast at retrieving it.
Most HD benchmarks apparently show RAID 0 gives no improvement in speed, but I definitely see a massive difference, I originally had the Raptors in a non-RAID config and it was slower.
2x17- The Underpants Gnomes
1) Outsource everything except the board members to India
2) ?
3) Profit!
Lol yeah, it will work with firmware 1.00 and 1.5, and you just have to hope you don't get your firmware forcibly upgraded! :)
Personally I think Sony are shooting themselves in the foot by doing this, but they don't seem to care that emulators and homebrew games are a selling point for some people.
Here's a link about the xvid player: clicky
Someone is writing an xvid player for the PSP so soon hopefully it will be possible to put some decent films onto a memory stick. Of course with the largest memory stick being 1Gb it won't be possible to fit many on there, but at least it will be better than the terrible quality MP4 files the PSP plays natively...