Personally, I think you are perhaps omitting several thoughts in your statement. Sid Meier is saying that this is an 'update', so it's quite obvious that those who are expecting a complete overhaul beyond that of the graphics, for example of the gameplay and the other features, will be somewhat disappointed. If the developers changed the game so much that it didn't resemble the original in many ways, it wouldn't be just an update, but a new-generation sequel -- or maybe, to a certain extent, another game in the same genre. What i think Sid Meier wants this to be is a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of the latter, which are mainly the graphics overhaul and the power which can render the in-game world.
What you may be forgetting is that these new benefits will be like allowing the player to see the same game through a different eye. The in-game map will be immense and rendered with beauty thanks to the advances of recent technology. What's more, this new perspective must have allowed the developers to add or update some features which they could probably not have inserted before, because they did not have the technology to exploit for doing so. This is the kind of gameplay updates which the game will have done some good to the new version of the game, so the playing style doesn't change so much -- which stays in line with Sid Meier wanting this to be an 'update' of the original game.
As I have already said, I think that all this game is is an update, a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of this more recent hardware, to overhaul the graphics, features et al, but without forgetting what the gameplay is all about. As Sid Meier says it so well himself, they are "building upon a classic game without destroying it."
I have written some software and have decided to distribute it under the GNU General Public License. I then find out some established/incorporated company has modified the software without redistributing their modified version freely, that they are making a profit out of the modified undistributed version, or that they are redistributing the software without pointing out that what they are giving is not the original version of the software. What exactly are my rights? Is it worth taking the company to court, or is this too risky? To come to the point, is the GPL actually a licence which has some value in the courts of justice?
Having read the article, I think that the author seems to forget that though we know have pretty much reached the summit of the quality of graphics, AI is not the only direction that future games will have to be aiming for; I believe physics engines are taking a pogressingly important role in video games, and this is an area which I think developers will concentrate on, as it is showing more and more importance for gamers.
The problem is that now, AI is as "basic" as physics engines are. If you look at the best selling games, they probably have bad AI (XIII comes to mind, that game's AI is hideous) -- and an average physics engine. If you ask me, developers will have to find the balance between developing both, because these elements are becoming big enjoyment factors in player experience, as the players realise that good AI makes for a more realistic experience, and allows the player to progress in several ways instead of having to follow the same, linear route (a feeling which decreases replayability a lot). As for the physics engines, it's just something else which more and more players see as important; just imagine the possibility of great puzzles with a great physics engine.
A game with both great AI and a realistic physics engine ([cough]Half-Life 2[/cough]) just needs some good level design for these to come through, and that is how you will create the ultimate player experience.
The author of the article says the AI is more than just how the NPCs react, but nowadays I think the emphasis has to be put on this type of AI anyway, as it is still kind of apalling in most games. If a game has good AI, it can allow more freedom of choice to the player as the NPCs will know how to react accordingly to the player's actions and decisions. If NPCs are ready to act in "real time" to any situation, it is less a case of the player having to adapt to a game, following a linear route and ending up against a horde of enemies and some prescripted event, but more a case of the game "adapting" to what the player chooses to do, hence giving the player greater freedom and a better experience.
As for the evolution of physics engines, one has to see how important this is becoming; there are so much more progression possibilities for a game with a good physics engine. This allows the player to interact with his/her environment in a much richer way, and use it much more as he/she would like to have it exploited. Coupled with a good AI, this can make for an amazingly realistic game and a much better playing experience, and in my opinion, these are the departments which developers have to aim expanding on.
I am pretty sure that the majority of Internet users have nothing to hide, and are involved in no illegal activities, or at least no such activies that would be of interest to the anti-terror force that is the FBI, but privacy is one of the most basic principles of a free society, and making broadband users pay more so that the perverse desires of some unknown FBI agent "searching for terrorists" can be fulfilled is, in my opinion, outraging. The FBI already has some power when it comes to eavesdropping on the Internet, but breaching the privacy of the gigantic Broadband userbase of the USA, when they only need to track a few individuals, is I think horribly exaggarating.
What have the Broadband ISPs said about this? They stick to revolting against delivering confidential information of their heavily downloading clients, but they don't even try to stick a word in when their whole userbase's privacy is at risk?
If you take a look at the game's different reviews, you will notice that the average critics' score is 84%. Now I do not want to sound like some kind of demented fanatic - I know that 84% is a good score -, but in my opinion, the game really is underrated for what it is in terms of gameplay, longetivity, graphics, and story. I know I sound kind of biased, and as a fan of the PlayStation edition I'm sure I am, but surely Metal Gear Solid deserves more than that even as just introduced to new players.
Firstly, such an amazing gameplay surely deserves a bit more acclaim than it is currently getting. Some will call it 'out-dated' - those are the people who haven't really played the game but just checked the original release date and wan't to sound as if they know something about it. Great gameplay is never out-of-date. Metal gear Solid was, and still is, a game that you could play for days on end simply because the gameplay is pure fun; there are so much ways to play through the game, and now, the game has all the best things from its sequel: amazing AI, new moves, first-person-shooting, and general increased environment interactivity. I could already play the original game for a long time without even getting near the pit of boredom; now I have even more ways to play the game, more diverse ways to get through it. How could that possibly not make this gem shine even more?
Sure, once you will have played through the game a few times, you will be able to finish it in less than a few hours, but just being able to play through it in so many different ways will be what will make you come back to playing it over and over again. I just do not see how you can get bored of Metal gear Solid.
Silicon Knights have greatly updated the graphics, and it is a real pleasure to play through the game with 'next-generation' graphics. It makes the gameplay even more pleasurable, even more enjoyable. Some people say that 'gameplay is more important than graphics'. Metal gear Solid: The Twin Snakes has both great gameplay and updated graphics; what more could one want?
As for the story, well this is where the opinions are more diverse. The game is basically story-driven, and that is a bit of "the problem". Players of the original edition will remember hours upon hours - literally - of CODEC conversations, about nuclear war, government, terrorists and discrete love twists. Some will love the story, and I belong to that batch, but some will just want to get a refund because they asked for a game and not for a movie. The game's story is a bit like Marmite - you either love it or hate it - but you'll just have to do with it, because you can't skip the nigh-on 30 minute conversations, which you can probably do without. It seems Silicon Knights has not added a skip function, from what i have red in the reviews, and this is a feature they should not have overlooked, because of all the complaints when the game came out, most were about these "hellish" conversations. You will have been warned; if you wan't non-stop action, you will be somewhat disappointed.
All I have to say is, beyond the long conversations which cut the gameplay every so often - depicting a story you may love to follow or love to hate -, if you do not buy this game, you will be missing out on a gem of gameplay, one of the pioneers of the "stealth'-em-up" revolution. In my opinion, this will be a future 'must-have' for GameCube owners, and the memories which will be forged will be worth much more than the scores the reviews give to the game.
It's quite amusing to consider how far Linus' operating system has come, how big it has become - to the point of challenging the multi-billion dollar corporations - when you think that at the start, Linus himself had said Linux wouldn't "be big and
professional like gnu". Or to quote the original USENET post:
Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them:-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have:-(.
Enough with the MATRIX puns, look at the issue seriously. I live in France and had never heard of this project before, but it sure looks scary, or at least, the government not saying everything about it is.
Can be read in the article: "We don't want our information floating out there when we don't know what's on the database or who has access to it," said Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park. It seems the people actually involved in this do not know very much what information will be withheld, let alone the people whose information is withheld. I mean, how can you be sure what you're being told is the truth when you see that the people involved with the project do not know that much about it themselves?
The representatives say that the MATRIX is just a way of accessing individuals' information faster, but I don't really see how this could help them to predict where and when the next terrorist attack will be -- it will only really help them once the acts are actually done, I should think.
I'm not stating that the government are surely up to something dodgy here, and after all, perhaps they might not be lying when they say that this will allow them to get hold of currently available information faster. But I just cannot read this without an ounce of doubt that a few privacy breaches might help them to fulfill their task.
Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles.
As some would put it, "tl;dr" ("too long; didn't read"), but from what I have read, I understand that the DARPA intends to update the entire Internet protocol, mainly because its structure compromises the security of the Army's confidential information mainly on the battlefield. If the Internet's current structure is what may be posing the Army Forces problems, why don't they just update the protocol and use this updated, more secure protocol on a private network of their own, instead of risking causing chaos on the "Interweb"?
I once read a quote here on Slashdot. It was by Voltaire, and said: "I might not like what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it." I believe that quote is what free speach is all about. If it exists, it is to allow everyone to say anything in freedom, and as you say, freedom of speach exists primarily just for being able to say things deemed dangerous, perverse or taboo. I do not wish there be a limit to free speach - this would be an insult to democracy - but I sometimes wish it would be used in better ways than it is sometimes used now.
One could say that you cannot compare the situation of recognition in the games industry to that of recognition in the films industry, but after all, why not? When you think about it, in some way, they really aren't so different. That's why I believe it's also unfair game developrs do not get as much recognition as their film equivalents do.
For example, just about everyone knows who George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are, and that just thanks to their films -- even if some people haven't seen them. But most casual gamers do not even know the names of the producers of the biggest games. Of course, a lot of them know who Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto are, but these same people couldn't name the main producer of their favorite games.
I think the problem lies in that the game developers' merits are not publicised enough. Whereas when you go to see a film, the directors' name is in a font as big as that of the actors' namers, when you buy a game, you'll only find the credits once you've finished reading the manual, or finished the game. Most gamers cannot recognise a game developer simply because the people who are actually behind the games do not revendicate their involvement in the making of the games enough.
On the other hand, I had hardly played MDK when I developed an obsession for David Perry simply by reading what he had done in the booklet attached to the game which my friend had handed to me.
It is clear that the industry needs to attach much more importance to the people behind the best games.
I would be interested in knowing to which point the Chinese government limits and will limit the access to information on the Internet, as after all it could be very easy to find documents discussing the way the Chinese government works, and which the Chinese leadership could find "a negative influence" over the population. After all, we in Europe, on a country-per-country base alone, have some problems blocking sensitive content which is uploaded and exchanged on the Internet - but then as soon as the governments try to enforce these limits a little bit, there's an outcry denouncing "an attack against free speach" (but the use of this "free speach" can be a little scary, when it is to detail the construction of home-made bombs); then again this may not be such a problem in China.
How well does WineX work in allowing Windows-platform games to work on Linux? What are the limits of this program? And finally, how much do you have to pay for it?
it's 'getting rave reviews from U.S. and allied-coalition personnel'
The American and English armies were fully satisfied of the English-English translation capabilities. Here's for hoping it works in English-Iraq mode...
This is great and something the European Commission should be thanked for. Instead of being plagued by Microsoft's own bloatware, new users may be plagued with Real Network's bloatware instead. And as an added bonus, they could have some adware/spyware offered on top. What more could they want, Gator (now Claria) installed by default?
Seriously, what could be so hard about making Windows Media Player (and Internet Explorer, etc...) an option on install? Though, knowing Microsoft, they would have done the utmost possible to have some part of the bloatware installed on the computer anyway.
By the way, you're all talking as if this had already happened. Microsoft have not yet settled the antitrust case -- perhaps if they don't succeed in settling the case it they will end up buying the European Union, as they did with every other antitrust case they have ever had?
The truth is, parents should not have to supervise the games their children play if they have brought up their offspring correctly and ethically. I suppose the other parents, those who have not been able to bring up their children very well, belong to those who can't actually be bothered to check which games their offspring play!
But then, I believe games are not fuel of violence and hatred, but only ways of releasing and exorcising these feelings we have. People do not seem to understand that kids who go on kill rampages are kids that have been badly brought up, or who have had these feelings burned into them throughout their life, and games are just "idea whores" as much as films are, I would say. One could say films are not targeted; they are, but much more discretely than games are. We can observe a number of campains against the effect of video games, but campains against films pass nearly unnoticed -- yet this form of media is just as accessible, a lot of children know how to use eMule easily.
How come video games are targeted so much more than films?
For those curious among you, click to view the original USENET post by Carter and Siegel, the infamous "green-card scam" (did they know they would start a phenomenom?).
419. Any person who by any false pretence, and with intent to defraud, obtains from any other person anything capable of being stolen, or induces any other person to deliver to any person anything capable of being stolen, is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for three years.
If the thing is of the value of one thousand naira or upwards, he is liable to imprisonment for seven years.
It is immaterial that the thing is obtained or its delivery is induced through the medium of a contract induced by the false pretence.
The offender cannot be arrested without warrant unless found committing the offence.
I'll only believe it works when you show me a man with a 3 foot penis with diplomas from Harvard and MIT and with several Platinum cards for all the cash that Nigerian billionaires he didn't know left him when they died.
I do not know if this will be read since this story will be out-of-date soon, but strangely, if you set the 'Key' parameter to 'XFree86' in a NightSurf search where the 'deal code' parameter is 'Bomis', it returns to the adult warning and defaults the deal code to 'other'.
So indeed, the XFree86 search term only works on Nightsurf if the "affiliate" is MSN...
Well, I'm not trying to say those 8,000 dog owners are freaks, but I'm not exactly fascinated by how 'Snubby99' once sent his dog food into the pool, or some other entrancing past story, and I don't know anyone who digs meeting dogs over the Internet. I expect a 'Dog Blog' section to be up soon.
They forgot to add the 'God XXX Porn' section, featuring intense sweaty moments of butt sniffing and threesome multiracial humping - ooh, sexy!
I would just like to ask a question. Let's just imagine, for a moment, that in the near future, Microsoft suddenly start doing things well. By that I mean, what if they suddenly started coding neat software, stop coding bloatware and have a clean marketing plan.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I think you are perhaps omitting several thoughts in your statement. Sid Meier is saying that this is an 'update', so it's quite obvious that those who are expecting a complete overhaul beyond that of the graphics, for example of the gameplay and the other features, will be somewhat disappointed. If the developers changed the game so much that it didn't resemble the original in many ways, it wouldn't be just an update, but a new-generation sequel -- or maybe, to a certain extent, another game in the same genre. What i think Sid Meier wants this to be is a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of the latter, which are mainly the graphics overhaul and the power which can render the in-game world.
What you may be forgetting is that these new benefits will be like allowing the player to see the same game through a different eye. The in-game map will be immense and rendered with beauty thanks to the advances of recent technology. What's more, this new perspective must have allowed the developers to add or update some features which they could probably not have inserted before, because they did not have the technology to exploit for doing so. This is the kind of gameplay updates which the game will have done some good to the new version of the game, so the playing style doesn't change so much -- which stays in line with Sid Meier wanting this to be an 'update' of the original game.
As I have already said, I think that all this game is is an update, a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of this more recent hardware, to overhaul the graphics, features et al, but without forgetting what the gameplay is all about. As Sid Meier says it so well himself, they are "building upon a classic game without destroying it."
I have written some software and have decided to distribute it under the GNU General Public License. I then find out some established/incorporated company has modified the software without redistributing their modified version freely, that they are making a profit out of the modified undistributed version, or that they are redistributing the software without pointing out that what they are giving is not the original version of the software. What exactly are my rights? Is it worth taking the company to court, or is this too risky? To come to the point, is the GPL actually a licence which has some value in the courts of justice?
Having read the article, I think that the author seems to forget that though we know have pretty much reached the summit of the quality of graphics, AI is not the only direction that future games will have to be aiming for; I believe physics engines are taking a pogressingly important role in video games, and this is an area which I think developers will concentrate on, as it is showing more and more importance for gamers.
The problem is that now, AI is as "basic" as physics engines are. If you look at the best selling games, they probably have bad AI (XIII comes to mind, that game's AI is hideous) -- and an average physics engine. If you ask me, developers will have to find the balance between developing both, because these elements are becoming big enjoyment factors in player experience, as the players realise that good AI makes for a more realistic experience, and allows the player to progress in several ways instead of having to follow the same, linear route (a feeling which decreases replayability a lot). As for the physics engines, it's just something else which more and more players see as important; just imagine the possibility of great puzzles with a great physics engine.
A game with both great AI and a realistic physics engine ([cough]Half-Life 2[/cough]) just needs some good level design for these to come through, and that is how you will create the ultimate player experience.
The author of the article says the AI is more than just how the NPCs react, but nowadays I think the emphasis has to be put on this type of AI anyway, as it is still kind of apalling in most games. If a game has good AI, it can allow more freedom of choice to the player as the NPCs will know how to react accordingly to the player's actions and decisions. If NPCs are ready to act in "real time" to any situation, it is less a case of the player having to adapt to a game, following a linear route and ending up against a horde of enemies and some prescripted event, but more a case of the game "adapting" to what the player chooses to do, hence giving the player greater freedom and a better experience.
As for the evolution of physics engines, one has to see how important this is becoming; there are so much more progression possibilities for a game with a good physics engine. This allows the player to interact with his/her environment in a much richer way, and use it much more as he/she would like to have it exploited. Coupled with a good AI, this can make for an amazingly realistic game and a much better playing experience, and in my opinion, these are the departments which developers have to aim expanding on.
I am pretty sure that the majority of Internet users have nothing to hide, and are involved in no illegal activities, or at least no such activies that would be of interest to the anti-terror force that is the FBI, but privacy is one of the most basic principles of a free society, and making broadband users pay more so that the perverse desires of some unknown FBI agent "searching for terrorists" can be fulfilled is, in my opinion, outraging. The FBI already has some power when it comes to eavesdropping on the Internet, but breaching the privacy of the gigantic Broadband userbase of the USA, when they only need to track a few individuals, is I think horribly exaggarating.
What have the Broadband ISPs said about this? They stick to revolting against delivering confidential information of their heavily downloading clients, but they don't even try to stick a word in when their whole userbase's privacy is at risk?
If you take a look at the game's different reviews, you will notice that the average critics' score is 84%. Now I do not want to sound like some kind of demented fanatic - I know that 84% is a good score -, but in my opinion, the game really is underrated for what it is in terms of gameplay, longetivity, graphics, and story. I know I sound kind of biased, and as a fan of the PlayStation edition I'm sure I am, but surely Metal Gear Solid deserves more than that even as just introduced to new players.
Firstly, such an amazing gameplay surely deserves a bit more acclaim than it is currently getting. Some will call it 'out-dated' - those are the people who haven't really played the game but just checked the original release date and wan't to sound as if they know something about it. Great gameplay is never out-of-date. Metal gear Solid was, and still is, a game that you could play for days on end simply because the gameplay is pure fun; there are so much ways to play through the game, and now, the game has all the best things from its sequel: amazing AI, new moves, first-person-shooting, and general increased environment interactivity. I could already play the original game for a long time without even getting near the pit of boredom; now I have even more ways to play the game, more diverse ways to get through it. How could that possibly not make this gem shine even more?
Sure, once you will have played through the game a few times, you will be able to finish it in less than a few hours, but just being able to play through it in so many different ways will be what will make you come back to playing it over and over again. I just do not see how you can get bored of Metal gear Solid.
Silicon Knights have greatly updated the graphics, and it is a real pleasure to play through the game with 'next-generation' graphics. It makes the gameplay even more pleasurable, even more enjoyable. Some people say that 'gameplay is more important than graphics'. Metal gear Solid: The Twin Snakes has both great gameplay and updated graphics; what more could one want?
As for the story, well this is where the opinions are more diverse. The game is basically story-driven, and that is a bit of "the problem". Players of the original edition will remember hours upon hours - literally - of CODEC conversations, about nuclear war, government, terrorists and discrete love twists. Some will love the story, and I belong to that batch, but some will just want to get a refund because they asked for a game and not for a movie. The game's story is a bit like Marmite - you either love it or hate it - but you'll just have to do with it, because you can't skip the nigh-on 30 minute conversations, which you can probably do without. It seems Silicon Knights has not added a skip function, from what i have red in the reviews, and this is a feature they should not have overlooked, because of all the complaints when the game came out, most were about these "hellish" conversations. You will have been warned; if you wan't non-stop action, you will be somewhat disappointed.
All I have to say is, beyond the long conversations which cut the gameplay every so often - depicting a story you may love to follow or love to hate -, if you do not buy this game, you will be missing out on a gem of gameplay, one of the pioneers of the "stealth'-em-up" revolution. In my opinion, this will be a future 'must-have' for GameCube owners, and the memories which will be forged will be worth much more than the scores the reviews give to the game.
It's quite amusing to consider how far Linus' operating system has come, how big it has become - to the point of challenging the multi-billion dollar corporations - when you think that at the start, Linus himself had said Linux wouldn't "be big and professional like gnu". Or to quote the original USENET post:
Heh.Enough with the MATRIX puns, look at the issue seriously. I live in France and had never heard of this project before, but it sure looks scary, or at least, the government not saying everything about it is.
Can be read in the article: "We don't want our information floating out there when we don't know what's on the database or who has access to it," said Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park. It seems the people actually involved in this do not know very much what information will be withheld, let alone the people whose information is withheld. I mean, how can you be sure what you're being told is the truth when you see that the people involved with the project do not know that much about it themselves?
The representatives say that the MATRIX is just a way of accessing individuals' information faster, but I don't really see how this could help them to predict where and when the next terrorist attack will be -- it will only really help them once the acts are actually done, I should think.
I'm not stating that the government are surely up to something dodgy here, and after all, perhaps they might not be lying when they say that this will allow them to get hold of currently available information faster. But I just cannot read this without an ounce of doubt that a few privacy breaches might help them to fulfill their task.
As some would put it, "tl;dr" ("too long; didn't read"), but from what I have read, I understand that the DARPA intends to update the entire Internet protocol, mainly because its structure compromises the security of the Army's confidential information mainly on the battlefield. If the Internet's current structure is what may be posing the Army Forces problems, why don't they just update the protocol and use this updated, more secure protocol on a private network of their own, instead of risking causing chaos on the "Interweb"?
I once read a quote here on Slashdot. It was by Voltaire, and said: "I might not like what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it." I believe that quote is what free speach is all about. If it exists, it is to allow everyone to say anything in freedom, and as you say, freedom of speach exists primarily just for being able to say things deemed dangerous, perverse or taboo. I do not wish there be a limit to free speach - this would be an insult to democracy - but I sometimes wish it would be used in better ways than it is sometimes used now.
One could say that you cannot compare the situation of recognition in the games industry to that of recognition in the films industry, but after all, why not? When you think about it, in some way, they really aren't so different. That's why I believe it's also unfair game developrs do not get as much recognition as their film equivalents do.
For example, just about everyone knows who George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are, and that just thanks to their films -- even if some people haven't seen them. But most casual gamers do not even know the names of the producers of the biggest games. Of course, a lot of them know who Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto are, but these same people couldn't name the main producer of their favorite games.
I think the problem lies in that the game developers' merits are not publicised enough. Whereas when you go to see a film, the directors' name is in a font as big as that of the actors' namers, when you buy a game, you'll only find the credits once you've finished reading the manual, or finished the game. Most gamers cannot recognise a game developer simply because the people who are actually behind the games do not revendicate their involvement in the making of the games enough.
On the other hand, I had hardly played MDK when I developed an obsession for David Perry simply by reading what he had done in the booklet attached to the game which my friend had handed to me.
It is clear that the industry needs to attach much more importance to the people behind the best games.
I would be interested in knowing to which point the Chinese government limits and will limit the access to information on the Internet, as after all it could be very easy to find documents discussing the way the Chinese government works, and which the Chinese leadership could find "a negative influence" over the population. After all, we in Europe, on a country-per-country base alone, have some problems blocking sensitive content which is uploaded and exchanged on the Internet - but then as soon as the governments try to enforce these limits a little bit, there's an outcry denouncing "an attack against free speach" (but the use of this "free speach" can be a little scary, when it is to detail the construction of home-made bombs); then again this may not be such a problem in China.
How well does WineX work in allowing Windows-platform games to work on Linux? What are the limits of this program? And finally, how much do you have to pay for it?
The American and English armies were fully satisfied of the English-English translation capabilities. Here's for hoping it works in English-Iraq mode...
This is great and something the European Commission should be thanked for. Instead of being plagued by Microsoft's own bloatware, new users may be plagued with Real Network's bloatware instead. And as an added bonus, they could have some adware/spyware offered on top. What more could they want, Gator (now Claria) installed by default?
Seriously, what could be so hard about making Windows Media Player (and Internet Explorer, etc...) an option on install? Though, knowing Microsoft, they would have done the utmost possible to have some part of the bloatware installed on the computer anyway.
By the way, you're all talking as if this had already happened. Microsoft have not yet settled the antitrust case -- perhaps if they don't succeed in settling the case it they will end up buying the European Union, as they did with every other antitrust case they have ever had?
The truth is, parents should not have to supervise the games their children play if they have brought up their offspring correctly and ethically. I suppose the other parents, those who have not been able to bring up their children very well, belong to those who can't actually be bothered to check which games their offspring play!
But then, I believe games are not fuel of violence and hatred, but only ways of releasing and exorcising these feelings we have. People do not seem to understand that kids who go on kill rampages are kids that have been badly brought up, or who have had these feelings burned into them throughout their life, and games are just "idea whores" as much as films are, I would say. One could say films are not targeted; they are, but much more discretely than games are. We can observe a number of campains against the effect of video games, but campains against films pass nearly unnoticed -- yet this form of media is just as accessible, a lot of children know how to use eMule easily.
How come video games are targeted so much more than films?
And perhaps you already know this, but the Nigerian scam is named the "419 scam" after the corresponding table in the Nigerian Criminal Code Act. For the lazy among you:
I'll only believe it works when you show me a man with a 3 foot penis with diplomas from Harvard and MIT and with several Platinum cards for all the cash that Nigerian billionaires he didn't know left him when they died.
A search on MSN Search for "Microsoft CRAP" returns Microsoft's own Palladium project in second position. Heh.
I do not know if this will be read since this story will be out-of-date soon, but strangely, if you set the 'Key' parameter to 'XFree86' in a NightSurf search where the 'deal code' parameter is 'Bomis', it returns to the adult warning and defaults the deal code to 'other'. So indeed, the XFree86 search term only works on Nightsurf if the "affiliate" is MSN...
Nice one, I think you managed to get Catster.com to down under the Slashdot effect too!
Well, I'm not trying to say those 8,000 dog owners are freaks, but I'm not exactly fascinated by how 'Snubby99' once sent his dog food into the pool, or some other entrancing past story, and I don't know anyone who digs meeting dogs over the Internet. I expect a 'Dog Blog' section to be up soon. They forgot to add the 'God XXX Porn' section, featuring intense sweaty moments of butt sniffing and threesome multiracial humping - ooh, sexy!
was nice knowing you'
I would just like to ask a question. Let's just imagine, for a moment, that in the near future, Microsoft suddenly start doing things well. By that I mean, what if they suddenly started coding neat software, stop coding bloatware and have a clean marketing plan.
How would Slashdot Linux zealots bash them then?