That's what I get for not reading the article, I suppose. I'm really not surprised by the lack of a release in Japan. It seems that market really doesn't want anything to do with the 360.
Sometimes I wish Europeans were more like the Japanese in regards to this, or just not allowed on XBL. Interesting how when more than one of them gets into a game, you can assume they won't stop rattling on about how Osama will set us up the bomb, or how everyone from the US is a clone of George Bush. The kicker: these are 40 year olds. I'm assuming Europe, too, has a massive population of underbelly citizens, similar to what we call "hillbillies" here in the States.
Wouldn't it be nice if they fought this? If they said, hey, we bought your software, we can install it on whatever we want. And then, in my imaginary world, a judge sees their point of view and rules that once you purchase a piece of software, it's yours to do with as you please.
This is definitely insightful. I would love to be able to purchase a commercial application, come home and throw it in the cd duplcator, spit out thousands of copies and sell them at discounted prices.
It's mine because I bought it and can do what I want with it, right?
But sending an army of people out to crack and hack on their services will do what? Encourage more of the same thing on a much higher scale. Why do you want to make the world worse for yourself by nipping at the tail of the bigger dog?
As I've said previously, but apparently not spelled out in a way everyone can understand, so I will try one more time: Blizzard wasn't the judge, Blizzard had hired legal counsel who determined what needed to happen to make Glider stop in a way people will remember, the judge agreed with Blizzard's legal counsel and not joe script kiddy's cheap lawyer. Blizzard didn't write the DMCA, Blizzard did not come up with any copyright laws, they are simply a corporate entity, held by shareholders who were rich prior to investing in Blizzard, and will sue the ever loving shit out of anyone they invest in who does not do what it can to protect it's revenue and trademarks with extreme prejudice.
Again, if you want the wholesome feeling of not having anything to do with the big evil empires and how they conduct themselves, don't get involved, focus on contributing to open source projects. It's pretty simple and the world will thank you.
This whole thread has been a fairly asinine read, as just about every +5 post was littered with adolescent analogies about how playing back an MP3 is now going to be illegal, etc, etc, while the common sense responses fell to obscurity.
Well, to my understanding Sony was initially working on FFXIII and the White engine (now Crystal Tools) for the PS2 and started redesigning both for the PS3 some time back.
One has to keep in mind the FF series isn't about pushing technical limits in beautiful graphics, it's more smart implementation and efficient use of resources. This dates back even to their original games with very nice looking sprites. A 19x19 sprite done by a shitty artist didn't take more CPU to move around than one of the same size done by an exceptional pixel artist.
There's also no word on if both are planned to be released on the same date. It's unlikely. As was the case with VF5, an extra 6 months was spent working on the 360 version due to the late decision to not have it be a PS3 exclusive (due to poor sales of the console). The holders of great franchises seem to have learned not to rush their cash cows to other platforms in the same manner as previous generations. In previous times, if you had an Xbox1 it would have been advisable to avoid anything ported from a PS2 since it would likely have ugly graphics with no anti-aliasing, no decent lighting, and forget HD video modes.
Just one question: Will the 360 version be a bare bones, no-cutscenes version, or will it sport 5 discs, or more? I mean, taking MGS4 as an example, that game renders all cutscenes in-game, yet _still_ fills up a whole dual layer BD, meaning 50 GB of textures and sound (minus some GB of double content for better reading performance, I know).
Not to pee in your cheerios, but Virtua Fighter 5 (initially touted as a PS3 exclusive, too) was released with fancier graphics and online multiplayer with exceptional netcode exclusively on the 360. Basically, I can sit here and play VF5 with friends in Japan from my sofa in the US with no perceived latency all evening while PS3 users are stuck playing only people in the same room with less detail and features on their "technically superior" console.
If the game turns out to require multiple discs, I'd assume there would be an option to copy game data to the HDD, as many 360 users have 120GB drives nowadays. Microsoft, although having had hurdles with hardware problems, tends to push for a great gaming experience on the 360.
It's probably going to be detrimental to my karma to suggest we wait and see instead of just assuming anything to do with the 360 is going to crap up the game or offer a lesser experience. It's entirely likely Microsoft will try to make another example out of any former Sony exclusive franchise.
So you would want a client who is ready to scream 'hack the planet'-type responses at you any time your investors make you protect their investments when the problem seems to be more a fault in the legal system than with your company to begin with?
If you don't want to get in trouble, don't fsck around with online services hosted by big companies. It will bite you in the ass eventually. If you are such an advocate with such 1337 sk1llz, head on over to one of the open source MMO games and contribute to one of them instead of ruining commercial realms with closed-source shareware garbage. One action will lead to more legal nit-pickery, the other will eventually lead to the phasing out of the viability of commercial MMOs.
I'd recommend starting off helping with the Mana World project as it seems to have one of the most friendly group of developers and sticks to the 2D Ultima Online / Zelda styles instead of being a EQ knock off with eventual commercial aspirations, such as Eternal Lands or PlaneShift seem to have.
Didn't your mother's ever tell you guys "two wrongs don't make a right"? It's not about being nice and turning the other cheek, it's about staying out of trouble over escalating stupidity.
I have to question the journalism skills of a gaming site. Just like slashdot, they are very quick to do stories that promote a certain way of thinking, correct or not. Here's a bit of the PDF they built the story on:
"It is apparent that other costs have or may be incurred. It is recommended that all such costs and expenses together with the foregoing itemized costs be charged to the Respondent, and that interest at the statutory rate shall accrue and be payable beginning 30 days after the judgement in this case becomes final unless a waiver is granted by the Board of Governors of the Florida Bar. It is further recommended that Respondent shall be deemed delinquent and ineligible to practice law persuant to R. Regulating Fla. Bar 1-3.6 for failure to timely pay the costs assessed in this proceeding."
It looks more, to me, he's in trouble with just Florida, but only if he doesn't pay his fees on time. My understanding is, he could skip paying this. I don't think he's commented on what he'll do, but it's highly likely he'll pay like any other lawyer and be able to continue pestering people in Florida. Regardless, he has 49 other states to harass.
I didn't say curve toward enemies, they start spitting out in angles becoming inaccurate. The differences between version 1 and 3 are huge. 1 & 2 had slight auto aim, 3 only has 'face painting' or whatever it's called for zeroing head shots with certain guns.
If we are going to go by this, I don't think we can safely say any shooter doesn't have some degree of auto aim.
Odd that this is informative when the person admits never having played the game. I'm just going to refrain from posting about consoles as the slashtrolls eat it up too much.
What you mention seems to equate to what I was saying about consoles being more level playing fields, people are given equal machines for a reason at these events. You don't get that luxury when just bumping around on the 'net.
Bah, I forget this is/. sometimes. Everyone wants to blindly save PC gaming, which requires the use of Windows over 90% of the time unless you want to wait a long time for Wine support or a port. I say let it go down the stinker and don't look back.
The hitboxes on the battlefield games and the Halo series seem to be about the same. Sure, the controls suck, but when everyone is using a similar controller, it makes for a more even battle. The game moves slowly, because it is intended to be fun on this particular controller setup and emulate the speed at which people move (like CS), as opposed to the sprinting pace of Quake or Unreal. As for accuracy, the game rewards those who are actually able to get their accuracy up, as the "headshot" hitbox is rather small for thumb-based controls. I've seen a mess of people who are terrible at the game, one kill for ten deaths are common, even with over a thousand matches on their accounts. To say it's somehow not a good shooter because running in packs and using simple tactics wins the day, I'd to comment that simple tactics and team-work tend to win every game from Quake to Unreal. All these games have different tactics, or good treadmills to run in and I've yet to find one where it's hard to learn.
I've been playing shooters multi-player since the days of Doom. I've been exposed to all sorts of player skill levels, game problems, hacking, etc. Just because it's a guarantee that people will defend PC gaming on/., it doesn't add truth to the fact that a number of people who use transparency hacks in games aren't any better or worse than other gamers, they just happen to be cheating because that's their personality and they find some joy from it. Trust me, I've worked with a few jokers who used to cheat at CS and they were good with or without their cheats. Remember, immaturity does not equal a lack of intelligence.
My roommate was alright, I am just using him as an example of someone who is great on a particular computer, but can't play without his toys. For instance, I'd imagine he'll be buying one of these new head controllers and beat down people who would have been an even match, if only they weren't having to physically reach for a button to throw a grenade, or use some other special attack, that he's going to be learning to do with the new hardware.
Everything else aside, you can piss on my opinions, but they are marketing this device as giving players an advantage over those who don't have them, that was kind of the point I was speaking of in my OP. Regardless, chat with some folks on PSN or XBL and you'll find plenty of folks who have been playing FPS games over a decade on the PC and stopped for the same reasons I did: DRM problems, cheating, constant expense of upgrades, people acting like assholes, server admins booting good players because they suspect a cheater when their score is good but are absent when someone is really cheating and causing people to leave in droves, etc.
Whoever modded this up doesn't play Halo3. Only two weapons in the game have auto-aim, and that's because are targeting weapons. The rest shoot precisely where you aim the cross-hair, with exception to the assult rifle and turret guns spraying round off at angles when sustaining a high rate of fire.
Perhaps you are talking about the PC version, for which I can't comment, but my original comment basically affirming what you are saying abut needing to be at your own PC. Not very fun to be tied to a machine when you can sit down on a sofa, with friends, and play games in a more comfortable setting.
Says the newb who just got fragged ten times in a row in deathmatch.
This is actually quite an insightful comment you made.
Many people who don't wish to play the hardware arms race every few months will just head on over to consoles where skill is a greater asset than your video card, raid array, quad core PC, and the mountain of macros/perhipials, scripts, replacement decals, odd graphics configurations and mods many people use in PC shooters to try and obtain some kind of advantage.
A fine example is a former roommate of mine. He would buy every whiz-bang device, run SLI with two expensive video cards, raid0 to get started on levels sooner than others, etc, would verbally crap all over anyone he beat even if they were using an inferior computer with a horrid frame-rate and bleached out video. The topic of the day was how good he was at the BF series, Q3, etc. Mind you, if ever at a friend's house, he'd get rolled over if having to use a different machine.
When we eventually picked up an Xbox, I destroyed him at every multi-player game we had and still do on every console game up through the 360. After playing several thousand games of Halo3, I've yet to see more than a handful of matches where someone was 15+/0, as opposed to PC land where I've seen players with 30+/0 games regularly and curiously tracking and shooting players through crates and walls.
I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?
How about we start voting for people who are more concerned with citizens than lobbyists for big corporations? With the economy in the dumps, states are going to be looking for new ways of getting people in jail for the nearly free labor (as far as state budgets are concerned) they provide at taxpayer expense.
This is a likely eventuality, that is if the environment and world economies don't fall sometime in the next couple of centuries. It would be a bothersome transition, but in the long run, our species would likely have a net gain from it.
Instead of worrying about how fantastic things way down the line may happen, it's more reasonable to say we've got problems with genocide, starvation, and diseases nobody pays attention to now.
At this moment in history, I agree with the people who have posted saying we don't know what we are doing well-enough to safely interfere with the flow of human genetics. Case in point, we can breed Wolves into the varied shapes, sizes and features of dog we have now, but each one of those "designs" seem to come with a few compromises, many regarding the immune system. Not saying we shouldn't be trying, as we won't learn anything without taking a few knocks in the process.
I didn't see any actual number of visitors, just percentages. If you are not getting a lot of hits, are a geek who deals with other geeks, posting your website on slashdot, your stats are going to be quite skewed versus the vast pool of Internet users out there.
Thanks for bringing that up. It could be used as ammunition that FireFox users were less happy with their older version of the browser, thus were upgrading out of necessity. Though, that's really not the case (I don't think, anyway).
I only use FireFox, as I don't have Windows, so I can't compare the two browsers. I can just say that I've had to trash my ~/.mozilla folder once since the upgrade to 3.0 as a remedy for some random crashing I was experiencing. Quick and easy, but if I were a a "general user" I would have been stuck.
The alarming thing is not that Fox News readers do not reflect upon the standard of intelligence at Fox News Studios, rather, it reflects upon the intelligence of the American Public in general. After all, this is a free market, and Fox News is only delivering the quality that people are demanding in that free market.
*That* is what frightens me.
Since you aren't from America, you might have a skewed view on how the cable networks operate here. Just about any cable channel can survive due to the channels being sold in packages, thus everyone gets a nickle, even if nobody is watching. Also, with such a diverse number of backgrounds and sheer magnitude of population, just about any network can get enough viewers to look popular.
What I find scary, other countries broadcast this same crap network to their citizens. If the average American hates Fox (just look at the thread or ask the next American you meet), why would anyone from another country even consider tuning in?
To clarify for those who don't know: Fox News is cable-only. It's not a broadcast channel, nor could it survive as one.
It seems a lot of people in this thread are throwing battle ships at a job a jon boat could do. Why not just set your torrent client's bandwidth limits to something sane? I use VoIP with no QoS, my torrent client is configured to allow 15K ingress/egress, and I've never had a problem. Sure, the torrents take a little longer to complete, but more people get their fair share of downloading from my client in the process.
I wasn't under the impression torrents were ever intended to be a fast way to transfer, just a shared method of distribution. The eager beavers with no bandwidth limitations in their clients have a lot to do with ISPs trying to come up with new ways to slow it down or block it.
He's just apparently sneaky enough at it that you have not caught him yet.
Every dad I know surfs porn on occasion, quite often with a wife in the room. Not everyone pretends it's the Leave it to Beaver generation, nor wants to live that way, others do. As long as it doesn't impact the children it's quite alright.
I live in the south and never had trouble with it anywhere but there. This is the backwoods of the bible-belt, I know most of the police force here, drink with a few on occasion, and called them all "officer" before I knew them. Never had a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I get for not reading the article, I suppose. I'm really not surprised by the lack of a release in Japan. It seems that market really doesn't want anything to do with the 360.
Sometimes I wish Europeans were more like the Japanese in regards to this, or just not allowed on XBL. Interesting how when more than one of them gets into a game, you can assume they won't stop rattling on about how Osama will set us up the bomb, or how everyone from the US is a clone of George Bush. The kicker: these are 40 year olds. I'm assuming Europe, too, has a massive population of underbelly citizens, similar to what we call "hillbillies" here in the States.
..and another *whoosh* for you, my good man!
*whoosh*
Wouldn't it be nice if they fought this? If they said, hey, we bought your software, we can install it on whatever we want. And then, in my imaginary world, a judge sees their point of view and rules that once you purchase a piece of software, it's yours to do with as you please.
This is definitely insightful. I would love to be able to purchase a commercial application, come home and throw it in the cd duplcator, spit out thousands of copies and sell them at discounted prices.
It's mine because I bought it and can do what I want with it, right?
But sending an army of people out to crack and hack on their services will do what? Encourage more of the same thing on a much higher scale. Why do you want to make the world worse for yourself by nipping at the tail of the bigger dog?
As I've said previously, but apparently not spelled out in a way everyone can understand, so I will try one more time: Blizzard wasn't the judge, Blizzard had hired legal counsel who determined what needed to happen to make Glider stop in a way people will remember, the judge agreed with Blizzard's legal counsel and not joe script kiddy's cheap lawyer. Blizzard didn't write the DMCA, Blizzard did not come up with any copyright laws, they are simply a corporate entity, held by shareholders who were rich prior to investing in Blizzard, and will sue the ever loving shit out of anyone they invest in who does not do what it can to protect it's revenue and trademarks with extreme prejudice.
Again, if you want the wholesome feeling of not having anything to do with the big evil empires and how they conduct themselves, don't get involved, focus on contributing to open source projects. It's pretty simple and the world will thank you.
This whole thread has been a fairly asinine read, as just about every +5 post was littered with adolescent analogies about how playing back an MP3 is now going to be illegal, etc, etc, while the common sense responses fell to obscurity.
Well, to my understanding Sony was initially working on FFXIII and the White engine (now Crystal Tools) for the PS2 and started redesigning both for the PS3 some time back.
One has to keep in mind the FF series isn't about pushing technical limits in beautiful graphics, it's more smart implementation and efficient use of resources. This dates back even to their original games with very nice looking sprites. A 19x19 sprite done by a shitty artist didn't take more CPU to move around than one of the same size done by an exceptional pixel artist.
There's also no word on if both are planned to be released on the same date. It's unlikely. As was the case with VF5, an extra 6 months was spent working on the 360 version due to the late decision to not have it be a PS3 exclusive (due to poor sales of the console). The holders of great franchises seem to have learned not to rush their cash cows to other platforms in the same manner as previous generations. In previous times, if you had an Xbox1 it would have been advisable to avoid anything ported from a PS2 since it would likely have ugly graphics with no anti-aliasing, no decent lighting, and forget HD video modes.
Just one question: Will the 360 version be a bare bones, no-cutscenes version, or will it sport 5 discs, or more? I mean, taking MGS4 as an example, that game renders all cutscenes in-game, yet _still_ fills up a whole dual layer BD, meaning 50 GB of textures and sound (minus some GB of double content for better reading performance, I know).
Not to pee in your cheerios, but Virtua Fighter 5 (initially touted as a PS3 exclusive, too) was released with fancier graphics and online multiplayer with exceptional netcode exclusively on the 360. Basically, I can sit here and play VF5 with friends in Japan from my sofa in the US with no perceived latency all evening while PS3 users are stuck playing only people in the same room with less detail and features on their "technically superior" console.
If the game turns out to require multiple discs, I'd assume there would be an option to copy game data to the HDD, as many 360 users have 120GB drives nowadays. Microsoft, although having had hurdles with hardware problems, tends to push for a great gaming experience on the 360.
It's probably going to be detrimental to my karma to suggest we wait and see instead of just assuming anything to do with the 360 is going to crap up the game or offer a lesser experience. It's entirely likely Microsoft will try to make another example out of any former Sony exclusive franchise.
So you would want a client who is ready to scream 'hack the planet'-type responses at you any time your investors make you protect their investments when the problem seems to be more a fault in the legal system than with your company to begin with?
If you don't want to get in trouble, don't fsck around with online services hosted by big companies. It will bite you in the ass eventually. If you are such an advocate with such 1337 sk1llz, head on over to one of the open source MMO games and contribute to one of them instead of ruining commercial realms with closed-source shareware garbage. One action will lead to more legal nit-pickery, the other will eventually lead to the phasing out of the viability of commercial MMOs.
I'd recommend starting off helping with the Mana World project as it seems to have one of the most friendly group of developers and sticks to the 2D Ultima Online / Zelda styles instead of being a EQ knock off with eventual commercial aspirations, such as Eternal Lands or PlaneShift seem to have.
Didn't your mother's ever tell you guys "two wrongs don't make a right"? It's not about being nice and turning the other cheek, it's about staying out of trouble over escalating stupidity.
Nobody wants someone with a mentality like this as a customer to begin with.
I no longer sell anything through eBay because eBay policies ended up costing me tens of thousands of dollars.
And I no longer work because taxes were costing me tens of thousands of dollars. :V
I skimmed the whole thing. It doesn't seem like much will happen here. We'll see.
I have to question the journalism skills of a gaming site. Just like slashdot, they are very quick to do stories that promote a certain way of thinking, correct or not. Here's a bit of the PDF they built the story on:
"It is apparent that other costs have or may be incurred. It is recommended that all such costs and expenses together with the foregoing itemized costs be charged to the Respondent, and that interest at the statutory rate shall accrue and be payable beginning 30 days after the judgement in this case becomes final unless a waiver is granted by the Board of Governors of the Florida Bar. It is further recommended that Respondent shall be deemed delinquent and ineligible to practice law persuant to R. Regulating Fla. Bar 1-3.6 for failure to timely pay the costs assessed in this proceeding."
It looks more, to me, he's in trouble with just Florida, but only if he doesn't pay his fees on time. My understanding is, he could skip paying this. I don't think he's commented on what he'll do, but it's highly likely he'll pay like any other lawyer and be able to continue pestering people in Florida. Regardless, he has 49 other states to harass.
I didn't say curve toward enemies, they start spitting out in angles becoming inaccurate. The differences between version 1 and 3 are huge. 1 & 2 had slight auto aim, 3 only has 'face painting' or whatever it's called for zeroing head shots with certain guns.
If we are going to go by this, I don't think we can safely say any shooter doesn't have some degree of auto aim.
Odd that this is informative when the person admits never having played the game. I'm just going to refrain from posting about consoles as the slashtrolls eat it up too much.
What you mention seems to equate to what I was saying about consoles being more level playing fields, people are given equal machines for a reason at these events. You don't get that luxury when just bumping around on the 'net.
Bah, I forget this is /. sometimes. Everyone wants to blindly save PC gaming, which requires the use of Windows over 90% of the time unless you want to wait a long time for Wine support or a port. I say let it go down the stinker and don't look back.
The hitboxes on the battlefield games and the Halo series seem to be about the same. Sure, the controls suck, but when everyone is using a similar controller, it makes for a more even battle. The game moves slowly, because it is intended to be fun on this particular controller setup and emulate the speed at which people move (like CS), as opposed to the sprinting pace of Quake or Unreal. As for accuracy, the game rewards those who are actually able to get their accuracy up, as the "headshot" hitbox is rather small for thumb-based controls. I've seen a mess of people who are terrible at the game, one kill for ten deaths are common, even with over a thousand matches on their accounts. To say it's somehow not a good shooter because running in packs and using simple tactics wins the day, I'd to comment that simple tactics and team-work tend to win every game from Quake to Unreal. All these games have different tactics, or good treadmills to run in and I've yet to find one where it's hard to learn.
I've been playing shooters multi-player since the days of Doom. I've been exposed to all sorts of player skill levels, game problems, hacking, etc. Just because it's a guarantee that people will defend PC gaming on /., it doesn't add truth to the fact that a number of people who use transparency hacks in games aren't any better or worse than other gamers, they just happen to be cheating because that's their personality and they find some joy from it. Trust me, I've worked with a few jokers who used to cheat at CS and they were good with or without their cheats. Remember, immaturity does not equal a lack of intelligence.
My roommate was alright, I am just using him as an example of someone who is great on a particular computer, but can't play without his toys. For instance, I'd imagine he'll be buying one of these new head controllers and beat down people who would have been an even match, if only they weren't having to physically reach for a button to throw a grenade, or use some other special attack, that he's going to be learning to do with the new hardware.
Everything else aside, you can piss on my opinions, but they are marketing this device as giving players an advantage over those who don't have them, that was kind of the point I was speaking of in my OP. Regardless, chat with some folks on PSN or XBL and you'll find plenty of folks who have been playing FPS games over a decade on the PC and stopped for the same reasons I did: DRM problems, cheating, constant expense of upgrades, people acting like assholes, server admins booting good players because they suspect a cheater when their score is good but are absent when someone is really cheating and causing people to leave in droves, etc.
Whoever modded this up doesn't play Halo3. Only two weapons in the game have auto-aim, and that's because are targeting weapons. The rest shoot precisely where you aim the cross-hair, with exception to the assult rifle and turret guns spraying round off at angles when sustaining a high rate of fire.
Perhaps you are talking about the PC version, for which I can't comment, but my original comment basically affirming what you are saying abut needing to be at your own PC. Not very fun to be tied to a machine when you can sit down on a sofa, with friends, and play games in a more comfortable setting.
Says the newb who just got fragged ten times in a row in deathmatch.
This is actually quite an insightful comment you made.
Many people who don't wish to play the hardware arms race every few months will just head on over to consoles where skill is a greater asset than your video card, raid array, quad core PC, and the mountain of macros/perhipials, scripts, replacement decals, odd graphics configurations and mods many people use in PC shooters to try and obtain some kind of advantage.
A fine example is a former roommate of mine. He would buy every whiz-bang device, run SLI with two expensive video cards, raid0 to get started on levels sooner than others, etc, would verbally crap all over anyone he beat even if they were using an inferior computer with a horrid frame-rate and bleached out video. The topic of the day was how good he was at the BF series, Q3, etc. Mind you, if ever at a friend's house, he'd get rolled over if having to use a different machine.
When we eventually picked up an Xbox, I destroyed him at every multi-player game we had and still do on every console game up through the 360. After playing several thousand games of Halo3, I've yet to see more than a handful of matches where someone was 15+/0, as opposed to PC land where I've seen players with 30+/0 games regularly and curiously tracking and shooting players through crates and walls.
I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?
How about we start voting for people who are more concerned with citizens than lobbyists for big corporations? With the economy in the dumps, states are going to be looking for new ways of getting people in jail for the nearly free labor (as far as state budgets are concerned) they provide at taxpayer expense.
This is a likely eventuality, that is if the environment and world economies don't fall sometime in the next couple of centuries. It would be a bothersome transition, but in the long run, our species would likely have a net gain from it.
Instead of worrying about how fantastic things way down the line may happen, it's more reasonable to say we've got problems with genocide, starvation, and diseases nobody pays attention to now.
At this moment in history, I agree with the people who have posted saying we don't know what we are doing well-enough to safely interfere with the flow of human genetics. Case in point, we can breed Wolves into the varied shapes, sizes and features of dog we have now, but each one of those "designs" seem to come with a few compromises, many regarding the immune system. Not saying we shouldn't be trying, as we won't learn anything without taking a few knocks in the process.
I didn't see any actual number of visitors, just percentages. If you are not getting a lot of hits, are a geek who deals with other geeks, posting your website on slashdot, your stats are going to be quite skewed versus the vast pool of Internet users out there.
Thanks for bringing that up. It could be used as ammunition that FireFox users were less happy with their older version of the browser, thus were upgrading out of necessity. Though, that's really not the case (I don't think, anyway).
I only use FireFox, as I don't have Windows, so I can't compare the two browsers. I can just say that I've had to trash my ~/.mozilla folder once since the upgrade to 3.0 as a remedy for some random crashing I was experiencing. Quick and easy, but if I were a a "general user" I would have been stuck.
The alarming thing is not that Fox News readers do not reflect upon the standard of intelligence at Fox News Studios, rather, it reflects upon the intelligence of the American Public in general. After all, this is a free market, and Fox News is only delivering the quality that people are demanding in that free market.
*That* is what frightens me.
Since you aren't from America, you might have a skewed view on how the cable networks operate here. Just about any cable channel can survive due to the channels being sold in packages, thus everyone gets a nickle, even if nobody is watching. Also, with such a diverse number of backgrounds and sheer magnitude of population, just about any network can get enough viewers to look popular.
What I find scary, other countries broadcast this same crap network to their citizens. If the average American hates Fox (just look at the thread or ask the next American you meet), why would anyone from another country even consider tuning in?
To clarify for those who don't know: Fox News is cable-only. It's not a broadcast channel, nor could it survive as one.
It seems a lot of people in this thread are throwing battle ships at a job a jon boat could do. Why not just set your torrent client's bandwidth limits to something sane? I use VoIP with no QoS, my torrent client is configured to allow 15K ingress/egress, and I've never had a problem. Sure, the torrents take a little longer to complete, but more people get their fair share of downloading from my client in the process.
I wasn't under the impression torrents were ever intended to be a fast way to transfer, just a shared method of distribution. The eager beavers with no bandwidth limitations in their clients have a lot to do with ISPs trying to come up with new ways to slow it down or block it.
He's just apparently sneaky enough at it that you have not caught him yet.
Every dad I know surfs porn on occasion, quite often with a wife in the room. Not everyone pretends it's the Leave it to Beaver generation, nor wants to live that way, others do. As long as it doesn't impact the children it's quite alright.
I live in the south and never had trouble with it anywhere but there. This is the backwoods of the bible-belt, I know most of the police force here, drink with a few on occasion, and called them all "officer" before I knew them. Never had a problem.