There's certainly room for error. If we had figures for how many Firefox and Opera users have their browsers masquerading as IE, we could put together a cludge factor to correct it.
With a bit of luck, the show will be successful enough to warrant a move to the the other BBC regions. It's not like they've got their own videogames shows.
At the height of the "Manhunt causes teenage murder" fiasco last year, Robert Florence was brought in on Scottish Television's lunch-time show to provide a gamer's viewpoint. While providing a balanced and mature view of the issue, he nevertheless managed to slip in the phrase "bummed in the gob" undetected.
That may give you an idea what sort of show this is. That said, their reviews are some of the best around.
...with another. I'm not entirely sure what that's going to accomplish; there's still going to be very little legal clarity regarding who's responsible if a minor is sold a violent game or is bought one by a parent/guardian.
Actually, the current NIST atomic clock is accurate to 1 second in 60 million years, which somewhat trumps the one in the article. There's nothing this one can do that the atomic clock and a good computer couldn't do a lot better.
What's special is that it manages to do all this mechanically, and with a degree of accuracy beyond most mechanical clocks.
And more importantly, surely the "18" sticker should only be applied to games rated AO (which are reccomended for ages 18+) rather than all violent games (including M and T rated ones)? With the vague wording of the law, it's no wonder this is turning into a farce.
Most of us in the UK (in particular online gamers) absolutely envy the state of broadband in the US. Cable's nonexistent outside of the major cities and ADSL2+ has only just begun to roll out (as part of Local Loop Unbundling). Most of us are still paying companies who buy their 2MB ADSL wholesale from BT (which just escaped being broken up for their effective monopoly on telecoms).
That's not to say that the US situation is perfect, but it's a sight better than some industrialised countries.
While that's true to an extent, there's still an unrealistic "stylishness" that's important in massmarket games. Take Burnout or Halo for example; they've got a lot more adolescent appeal than, say, the next SWAT game. Which is true of movies too: no teenager's going to watch a surrealistic Belgian animation, but they'll certainly watch The Matrix.
Fantastic point about the market, though, I don't think I've seen anyone raise that before. Certainly explains how the industry can get away with so many sequels and clones.
Discussing whether photorealism's a good or bad obsession for the industry needs fairly complicated language to be perfectly honest. Heck, just stating the problem calls for a four-syllable word. I'm sure he could've stated it in simpler terms but it's hard to be succinct (clear and precise while brief) in that case.
Having done this to a MS myself (which actually made it a lot easier to tune the tempremental thing, but that's another story), it'd need a fairly high concentration for a fairly long period of time to saturate the poor machine. Certainly nothing you could do without being noticed, and it'd probably only take a few hours of washing through solvents to get it back to normal.
While I'm just a lowly analytical chemistry student, I did hear about the DESI systems and the new DART last week. The DART's certainly the more impressive of the two:
"DART works by applying an electrical potential to a gas such as nitrogen or helium to form a plasma of excited-state atoms and molecules that then interact with the sample and the atmosphere. Several different ionization mechanisms are possible, and operating conditions can be manipulated to favor one over the others.
For example, proton transfer is the dominant mechanism of positive ionization. This type of ionization occurs when metastable helium atoms react with water in the atmosphere to produce ionized water clusters that can protonate the sample molecule, forming positively charged ions.
Under different conditions, electrons also can be formed if the carrier gas can form metastable species with high enough internal energy. For example, helium reacts with atmospheric water to form negative-ion clusters of oxygen and water that in turn react with analytes to form negatively charged ions.
In the negative-ionization mode, nitrate and nitrite ions are not produced because, in DART, plasma formation from the carrier gas is isolated from the air. Those ions can interfere with the detection of nitrogen-based explosives and reduce the sensitivity of anion detection."
My only real criticism of Burnout 3, shared by a few people I've spoken to, was the game's structure- an unguided morass of near-identical tasks for near-identical cars. The handling model and track design weren't a problem. Anyone know how Revenge has turned out in this regard, seeing as the review (like most) doesn't cover it?
They exist, although there are few of them. I certainly had a few on my Amiga back in the day. My points are that:
1) The statement's inclusion would imply that only Windows systems are theoretically vulnerable to this sort of threat, which is untrue.
2) Its true meaning, which is at best implicit, is that the only noticable development of these viruses will be on Windows systems. This is painfully obvious anyway (as there are so few viruses in general for other systems). Ergo, it's a trivial point.
I'm also annoyed that they didn't mention the legal implications of BBFC ratings on games; while ELSPA, and now PEGI, are at best informational, there's a degree of grunt behind the BBFC rating which encourages retailers to enforce the ratings, as well as covering them if a parent chooses to buy a game for their child and then complains.
Addenum:
"When the next PSP comes out, I doubt Sony will be modifying the first PSP and keeping it on the shelves."
You're forgetting that Sony made improvements like this one to the PS and the PS2 throughout their product lives, even before the "mini" versions of each console appeared. It's just part and parcel of the evolution of the product. It may even be cheaper for Nintendo to make backlit rather than frontlit SPs at this stage, given that they're rolling off backlit screens for the DS and the Micro.
Slashdot Mirror
The storm supposedly needs to lose heat energy to keep operating? I thought it was the other way around.
*notes down term "Isometric flamewars"* Fantastic phrase.
For anyone who cares (both of you), someone has put up an edited clip of one of their sketches on Putfile.
Don't forget the grammar pedants who waste everyone's time without contributing to the discussion. That's "cue", not "queue", BTW.
You could just, y'know, not read it. Instead of reading it, then taking the time to post a comment about it.
There's certainly room for error. If we had figures for how many Firefox and Opera users have their browsers masquerading as IE, we could put together a cludge factor to correct it.
With a bit of luck, the show will be successful enough to warrant a move to the the other BBC regions. It's not like they've got their own videogames shows.
At the height of the "Manhunt causes teenage murder" fiasco last year, Robert Florence was brought in on Scottish Television's lunch-time show to provide a gamer's viewpoint. While providing a balanced and mature view of the issue, he nevertheless managed to slip in the phrase "bummed in the gob" undetected. That may give you an idea what sort of show this is. That said, their reviews are some of the best around.
...with another. I'm not entirely sure what that's going to accomplish; there's still going to be very little legal clarity regarding who's responsible if a minor is sold a violent game or is bought one by a parent/guardian.
A prize* for the first movie set in the future to feature it as a museum piece or somesuch.
*there is no prize
Actually, the current NIST atomic clock is accurate to 1 second in 60 million years, which somewhat trumps the one in the article. There's nothing this one can do that the atomic clock and a good computer couldn't do a lot better. What's special is that it manages to do all this mechanically, and with a degree of accuracy beyond most mechanical clocks.
And more importantly, surely the "18" sticker should only be applied to games rated AO (which are reccomended for ages 18+) rather than all violent games (including M and T rated ones)? With the vague wording of the law, it's no wonder this is turning into a farce.
Most of us in the UK (in particular online gamers) absolutely envy the state of broadband in the US. Cable's nonexistent outside of the major cities and ADSL2+ has only just begun to roll out (as part of Local Loop Unbundling). Most of us are still paying companies who buy their 2MB ADSL wholesale from BT (which just escaped being broken up for their effective monopoly on telecoms). That's not to say that the US situation is perfect, but it's a sight better than some industrialised countries.
I say it as pho-to real-ism, but there's definitely six phones in there, so it's probably a matter of personal preference.
While that's true to an extent, there's still an unrealistic "stylishness" that's important in massmarket games. Take Burnout or Halo for example; they've got a lot more adolescent appeal than, say, the next SWAT game. Which is true of movies too: no teenager's going to watch a surrealistic Belgian animation, but they'll certainly watch The Matrix. Fantastic point about the market, though, I don't think I've seen anyone raise that before. Certainly explains how the industry can get away with so many sequels and clones.
Discussing whether photorealism's a good or bad obsession for the industry needs fairly complicated language to be perfectly honest. Heck, just stating the problem calls for a four-syllable word. I'm sure he could've stated it in simpler terms but it's hard to be succinct (clear and precise while brief) in that case.
I believe that Apple said the very same when they refuted Video iPod rumours just last week. Great minds, eh?
Having done this to a MS myself (which actually made it a lot easier to tune the tempremental thing, but that's another story), it'd need a fairly high concentration for a fairly long period of time to saturate the poor machine. Certainly nothing you could do without being noticed, and it'd probably only take a few hours of washing through solvents to get it back to normal.
While I'm just a lowly analytical chemistry student, I did hear about the DESI systems and the new DART last week. The DART's certainly the more impressive of the two:
"DART works by applying an electrical potential to a gas such as nitrogen or helium to form a plasma of excited-state atoms and molecules that then interact with the sample and the atmosphere. Several different ionization mechanisms are possible, and operating conditions can be manipulated to favor one over the others.
For example, proton transfer is the dominant mechanism of positive ionization. This type of ionization occurs when metastable helium atoms react with water in the atmosphere to produce ionized water clusters that can protonate the sample molecule, forming positively charged ions.
Under different conditions, electrons also can be formed if the carrier gas can form metastable species with high enough internal energy. For example, helium reacts with atmospheric water to form negative-ion clusters of oxygen and water that in turn react with analytes to form negatively charged ions.
In the negative-ionization mode, nitrate and nitrite ions are not produced because, in DART, plasma formation from the carrier gas is isolated from the air. Those ions can interfere with the detection of nitrogen-based explosives and reduce the sensitivity of anion detection."
Link
My only real criticism of Burnout 3, shared by a few people I've spoken to, was the game's structure- an unguided morass of near-identical tasks for near-identical cars. The handling model and track design weren't a problem. Anyone know how Revenge has turned out in this regard, seeing as the review (like most) doesn't cover it?
Well put. In fact, having any two of those in combination greatly improves security.
They exist, although there are few of them. I certainly had a few on my Amiga back in the day. My points are that: 1) The statement's inclusion would imply that only Windows systems are theoretically vulnerable to this sort of threat, which is untrue. 2) Its true meaning, which is at best implicit, is that the only noticable development of these viruses will be on Windows systems. This is painfully obvious anyway (as there are so few viruses in general for other systems). Ergo, it's a trivial point.
It's a trivial point, really. There's nothing to stop viruses for other operating systems working this way.
I'm also annoyed that they didn't mention the legal implications of BBFC ratings on games; while ELSPA, and now PEGI, are at best informational, there's a degree of grunt behind the BBFC rating which encourages retailers to enforce the ratings, as well as covering them if a parent chooses to buy a game for their child and then complains.
Addenum: "When the next PSP comes out, I doubt Sony will be modifying the first PSP and keeping it on the shelves." You're forgetting that Sony made improvements like this one to the PS and the PS2 throughout their product lives, even before the "mini" versions of each console appeared. It's just part and parcel of the evolution of the product. It may even be cheaper for Nintendo to make backlit rather than frontlit SPs at this stage, given that they're rolling off backlit screens for the DS and the Micro.