According to TFA, the 2003 ruling deeming the evidence inadmissable was later overturned by a federal appeals court in 2004, and he later pleaded guilty in Dec 2005.
Given that there seem to be no indications that something which looks like a manhole is really covering a 6 ft urinal, I would wager that the guy with the remote to activate these things checks to make sure it's reasonably clear of people before raising it.
First off, nobody claimed they wanted to build biological weapons with this stuff, so your whole point simply amounts to a strawman arument.
From the article: "What would happen to the Biological Weapons Convention if other countries followed suit and built large biological production facilities at secretive military bases known for weapons testing?"
Secondly,
it is possible to aquire this kind of equipment if you only tell everyone that you are not going to do anything evil with it
It's not just that they *aren't* going to do anything evil with it, but rather, can't. If you read the article, you can see that it's both non-infectious, and can be used for vaccination.
Being concerned when someone buys a gun is understandable. Being concerned when they buy an airsoft is much less so.
The whole argument just smacks of fearmongering, and throws the word anthrax around as much as possible. They're not creating a biological weapons lab, just procuring enough to probably use for threat assessment of biological weapon dispersion. This is something I'd actually expect a sane government to do, and not be surprised about.
It's not going to be used for weaponry, and the US has enough nuclear firepower to not need biological weaponry, which are much more unpredictable in effect, and less reliable.
Bad journalism, coming straight from NewScientist.
There is no sampling error within a mean. They're taking the average difference from the average scores that games recieved over the different magazines. If you'll notice, the sum of the percentages above 0% equals the sum of averages below 0%.
During a full moon, more photons are emitted by the moon (reflected, actually) and thus the moon has a slightly greater gravitational pull during full moons than new moons (where it has very low gravitational force, relatively).
Wrong. The reason that tides are greater during a full moon is because the gravitational tidal effects of the sun and moon are acting in concert, not due to the extremely negligable effects that photons reflected off the moon have. See the Wiki on Tides for a more detailed explanation.
Game publishers for online games on consoles have to be aware that gameshark-like devices exist for all consoles, and that this will affect online games if there's no control. This is the exact thing the PC-industry has been dealing with for years.
Instead of trying to crush a couple sources of distribution, game companies should instead design their games with redundancy between online consoles, protection against these hacks, and online updating to crush them when they do come out.
Relying on stopping main distribution methods isn't a satisfactory solution and only makes it a tad harder to get cheat codes.
Obviously you can't get a good estimate on how stable the server is (that's what stress testing is for), you CAN get a decent estimate on how stable the client is. By the statements that only one of the two computers crashed once in a 10 hour period suggests that the client software is surprisingly stable.
Games with lots of bugs (SWG, AO) become apparent pretty quickly. The guy spent a ton of time lingering around the WoW booth, so he probably saw whether a fair amount of bugs appeared.
No, RTS's are resource management sims, RPG's are (just what they stand for) role playing games that tell a story. RPG's are unique that they can't have crappy stories and still be good. It's the fundamental part of the RPG genre. Having to manage resources doesn't make a game, it simply changes the dimensions of it. If you have to manage items, you make them more powerful. If you don't you make them weaker. Super Mario RPG and Earthbound, both excellent games with item management, made you manage your items, but I submit that both games would still be just as good if you didn't have to manage your items as carefully but were weaker.
It's ironic the reviewer would mention Xenogears. Xenogears was a revolutionary game (and still is), whose dungeons alternated between having A: no enemies, B: very few random enemies, and C: frequent once-only battles at fixed locations. The jumping aspect made exploration actually fun, and the detail everywhere was just dripping.
While I agree with a good bit on what you say, Xenogears wasn't revolutionary about the random enemy encounter system in the least. While playing through it, there were occasionally points (especially when in gear and running low on fuel) where random encounters were frequent and very irritating. Specifically, there wasn't anything new in random encounters in that game that hadn't been in other games.
Any game can take a fun genre and turn it into boring drivel if the developers don't focus on the right things. The winning strategy in Star Ocean 2, for example, consisted of buying forgery papers, spending hours clicking on "make fake money," and finally spending hours clicking on "photograph fake money." Eventually, you would have all of the resources you would need, but the mechanic to get there was no fun.
Any idiot can make an incredable game suck by not playing it right. The way you described is both one of the most inefficient ways to get money. The only time I've ever photographed anything endlessly in SO2 was forged medals to level my characters to level my characters to 100 about as soon as I get to Nede. The only reason you should see any tedium in SO2 is if you're trying to get advanced items (or levels) long before you normally would. SO2 was revolutionary in its item creation scheme, the sheer number of items (over 400), combat system, private actions and relationship system (character development), and with a bonus dungeon at the end and difficulty levels, made that game have incredable replayability. The game was about exploration, not just of areas and levels, but also of what you can do with items and how you can use the item creation, super-specialty, and skill systems.
One of the ways to change the system would be to expand the concept of "attack." When swordfighting in the real world, you have head shots, body shots, leg attacks, limb attacks, etc. If you hammer away at one portion of the body, the enemy will expect that and block accordingly. Likewise, the player should set their guard after an attack, in any of the 8 control pad directions. Swordfighting should be as intricate as spellcasting.
They have these types of games, they're action RPG's. Zelda is probably the best example of this. The real downside to this type of play though is either you only can only play with one type of character and still make the game fun. I don't know what game you're talking about where spellcasting is intricate and swordfighting isn't. I can't think of any RPG where fighting is in it's own screen and spellcasting is intricate. It's usually just finding what spell to cast and pushing X.
While random encounters get irritating, I agree that they really are needed. Any good RPG will make it so that you'll have to manage your resources in the game if you Proceed at a normal pace. It's not a design f
Back when I played ATITD, one of the activities that always needed to be done was create charcoal. Charcoal making consisted of sitting at an oven, and adding wood or water, and changing the ventilation on the oven. Your skill at how well you could do these things directly affected how quickly you made the charcoal, and how much wood it took you.
Problem was, everyone hated to do it. Something about how it required attention and was a bit stressful made it entirely unappealing.
Perhaps what we really need isn't mini-games, but using other aspects of the game like exploring in order to be more effective.
Slashdot Mirror
According to TFA, the 2003 ruling deeming the evidence inadmissable was later overturned by a federal appeals court in 2004, and he later pleaded guilty in Dec 2005.
Given that there seem to be no indications that something which looks like a manhole is really covering a 6 ft urinal, I would wager that the guy with the remote to activate these things checks to make sure it's reasonably clear of people before raising it.
Secondly,
It's not just that they *aren't* going to do anything evil with it, but rather, can't. If you read the article, you can see that it's both non-infectious, and can be used for vaccination. Being concerned when someone buys a gun is understandable. Being concerned when they buy an airsoft is much less so.It's not going to be used for weaponry, and the US has enough nuclear firepower to not need biological weaponry, which are much more unpredictable in effect, and less reliable.
Bad journalism, coming straight from NewScientist.
Or, you know, something.
There is no sampling error within a mean. They're taking the average difference from the average scores that games recieved over the different magazines. If you'll notice, the sum of the percentages above 0% equals the sum of averages below 0%.
Wrong. The reason that tides are greater during a full moon is because the gravitational tidal effects of the sun and moon are acting in concert, not due to the extremely negligable effects that photons reflected off the moon have. See the Wiki on Tides for a more detailed explanation.
Indeed. Just a few repairs and the lawnmower was back in action later that week.
Just don't be surprised when their networks DDOS your networks.
Game publishers for online games on consoles have to be aware that gameshark-like devices exist for all consoles, and that this will affect online games if there's no control. This is the exact thing the PC-industry has been dealing with for years.
Instead of trying to crush a couple sources of distribution, game companies should instead design their games with redundancy between online consoles, protection against these hacks, and online updating to crush them when they do come out.
Relying on stopping main distribution methods isn't a satisfactory solution and only makes it a tad harder to get cheat codes.
-Aoreias
IANAL, but it looks like the RIAA's venue change to DC in the SBC Case is about to bite them in the ass hard.
Obviously you can't get a good estimate on how stable the server is (that's what stress testing is for), you CAN get a decent estimate on how stable the client is. By the statements that only one of the two computers crashed once in a 10 hour period suggests that the client software is surprisingly stable. Games with lots of bugs (SWG, AO) become apparent pretty quickly. The guy spent a ton of time lingering around the WoW booth, so he probably saw whether a fair amount of bugs appeared.
No, RTS's are resource management sims, RPG's are (just what they stand for) role playing games that tell a story. RPG's are unique that they can't have crappy stories and still be good. It's the fundamental part of the RPG genre. Having to manage resources doesn't make a game, it simply changes the dimensions of it. If you have to manage items, you make them more powerful. If you don't you make them weaker. Super Mario RPG and Earthbound, both excellent games with item management, made you manage your items, but I submit that both games would still be just as good if you didn't have to manage your items as carefully but were weaker.
While I agree with a good bit on what you say, Xenogears wasn't revolutionary about the random enemy encounter system in the least. While playing through it, there were occasionally points (especially when in gear and running low on fuel) where random encounters were frequent and very irritating. Specifically, there wasn't anything new in random encounters in that game that hadn't been in other games.
Any idiot can make an incredable game suck by not playing it right. The way you described is both one of the most inefficient ways to get money. The only time I've ever photographed anything endlessly in SO2 was forged medals to level my characters to level my characters to 100 about as soon as I get to Nede. The only reason you should see any tedium in SO2 is if you're trying to get advanced items (or levels) long before you normally would. SO2 was revolutionary in its item creation scheme, the sheer number of items (over 400), combat system, private actions and relationship system (character development), and with a bonus dungeon at the end and difficulty levels, made that game have incredable replayability. The game was about exploration, not just of areas and levels, but also of what you can do with items and how you can use the item creation, super-specialty, and skill systems.
They have these types of games, they're action RPG's. Zelda is probably the best example of this. The real downside to this type of play though is either you only can only play with one type of character and still make the game fun. I don't know what game you're talking about where spellcasting is intricate and swordfighting isn't. I can't think of any RPG where fighting is in it's own screen and spellcasting is intricate. It's usually just finding what spell to cast and pushing X.
While random encounters get irritating, I agree that they really are needed. Any good RPG will make it so that you'll have to manage your resources in the game if you Proceed at a normal pace. It's not a design f
Back when I played ATITD, one of the activities that always needed to be done was create charcoal. Charcoal making consisted of sitting at an oven, and adding wood or water, and changing the ventilation on the oven. Your skill at how well you could do these things directly affected how quickly you made the charcoal, and how much wood it took you.
Problem was, everyone hated to do it. Something about how it required attention and was a bit stressful made it entirely unappealing.
Perhaps what we really need isn't mini-games, but using other aspects of the game like exploring in order to be more effective.