Unless all their A/V equipment is now digital, at some point, they're going to have to convert their own analog film into digital form.
It would also mean that old films could no longer be turned into DVDs if they haven't been done so already.
Does it still do the annoying throw-you-out-onto-the-desktop-from-your-fullscree n-game-when-someone-IMs-you-or-you-get-disconnecte d thing? Because this is seriously the lamest part of GAIM, especially when there seems to be no option to turn such behavior off.
If MS gave me the $100m directly instead of wasting it on advertising...
Re:They missed Share for Japanese users
on
P2P Now and Then
·
· Score: 1
Share is essentially Winny2. It works pretty much the exact same way.
Anonymity in Share works by making you randomly cache data from people. When someone requests a file, and you have a chunk of that file, you may send that file over to them. Of course, it's encrypted, so you have no idea that you even had that file in the first place.
Multiply that by several factors and you have a bunch of people who all have bits of a file, without possibly having ever requested it, which makes it hard to track a) who actually has a copy of the file from intentional downloading, b) whether a person requesting a file is actually someone who wants the file, or just the program randomly requesting it for caching.
Hence the plausible deniability. And it works, speed-wise, but again, this is with a network filled with Japanese users who can get 100Mbit connections for around $40/month from Yahoo DSL last I checked.
In the US, with the crappy 1Mbit upstreams, it may not work so well.
They missed Share for Japanese users
on
P2P Now and Then
·
· Score: 3, Informative
(Includes Winny)
Not surprising since the program interface is in Japanese by default (and even with an English interface, you'll most likely still have to search for the files in Japanese if you want to actually find anything).
But with its relative anonymity, plausible deniability (think Freenet), while maintaining really high speeds (although this may be more a factor of Japanese having much better broadband than we do), I wouldn't be surprised if this was their main source for P2P as well as a glimpse at the future of P2P as lawsuits just drive P2P users into using networks that afford a bit better protection.
I guess you didn't see the one mank M/W builds soloing the Underworld (lvl 24/28 monsters if you haven't been there) pre-patch, and still occurs to some extent today, that were also capable of tanking like 40 or so normal melee monsters.
But I guess that's also a plus in that it shows the developers do make sure things remain balanced.
And of course, the two new areas that's coming out in the patch tomorrow is nice as well (but Blizzard adds content as well, so it's not that special).
That said, I enjoyed WoW when I was still paying for it. Can't beat the general immersiveness and established lore of the Warcraft world.
Don't forget the activation crap. With Steam, it's like buying your music CD, and then having to go online so it can finish downloading the rest of the CD and unlocking it so you can actually listen to it.
The problem is that simply being in a category doesn't mean you'll be interested in it. There are "good" sites and "bad" sites in the same category. The idea with Stumbleupon is that people who are like-minded in their likes and dislikes will get lumped together and basically send each other their sites through "random" stumbles.
For example, Stumbleupon also has categories. In something like Christianity, you'll find a bunch of Creationist sites as well. Mark them down, and you're less likely to see Creationist sites but you'll still see the other more useful ones out there.
"Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud."
A certain fansub group released fansubs of the Akane Maniax OVA just days before the DVD was to be released in Japan, inciting the ire of the company and leading to the letters. Of course, the real problem are not the fansubbers. It's the horde of Japanese P2Pers using programs such as Share and Winny. I mean after all, if fansubbers can't get access to the RAW files (unsubbed episodes), they can't sub it now can they?
I think you have to realize as well that the rating on BGG is not based on how good a game is. It's based on how likely someone is to play the game. Here's the guideline breakdown.
10: Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change
9: Excellent game. Always want to play it.
8: Very good game. I like to play. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
7: Good game, usually willing to play.
6: Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood.
5: Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it.
4: Not so good, it doesn't get me but could be talked into it on occasion.
3: Likely won't play this again although could be convinced. Bad.
2: Extremely annoying game, won't play this ever again.
1: Defies description of a game. You won't catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.
What this means is that most people are likely to play a game of Doom if asked, whereas most of them will aren't likely to play Risk, Monopoly, and Chess often and may find it boring.
I used it in the past. It was fun for a while, but the problem of course is bandwidth. Most home connections don't really have the bandwidth to have more than a couple people really, and so I moved on to Peercast, although the legality of this is less clear (depends on where you're at and all that).
Now, if they could actually make use of the Peercast technology within Mercora, and allowed Ogg streams, they might be able to get me back.
That would be A Game of Thrones + its expansions. The game actually got me into the books.
FFG publishes quite a few high-quality component games (read: expensive). They published the War of the Ring game (heaviest game I currently own) and their latest offering is Twilight Imperium 3rd edition, which is even bigger than the War of the Ring box. I think it's something like 12" x 24" and costs $80 ($50+shipping from various online game retailers). They're also renowned for rather nice customer service, like shipping you missing or damaged components for free (although ideally, these shouldn't be problems to begin with).
Some other videogame to boardgame conversions that exist are Age of Mythology: the Boardgame, Sid Meier's Civilization - The Boardgame, Sid Meier's Pirates!: The Boardgame, and Warcraft - The Boardgame
Doom: the Boardgame actually has a 7.82 rating (7.52 Bayesian average) at www.boardgamegeek.com, which is actually quite decent (the highest rated game, Puerto Rico, is 8.75 and 8.72 respectively).
Slashdot Mirror
Like the kind they put on burnable media in certain countries?
On closer inspection, "&meta=cr%3DcountryCN" simply removes non-China sites.
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=site%3Agov. tw&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta=cr%3DcountryCN
t =0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozi lla:en-US:official
vs.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agov.tw&star
How's that for censorship?
Unless all their A/V equipment is now digital, at some point, they're going to have to convert their own analog film into digital form. It would also mean that old films could no longer be turned into DVDs if they haven't been done so already.
It was de-regulation that caused every fruit company to combine into one.
Does it still do the annoying throw-you-out-onto-the-desktop-from-your-fullscree n-game-when-someone-IMs-you-or-you-get-disconnecte d thing? Because this is seriously the lamest part of GAIM, especially when there seems to be no option to turn such behavior off.
Well, it IS an MSNBC article after all. Kinda hard to not be biased when reporting about your own company.
Or in the case of his assailants, Who Would Jesus Beat?
I already did. The quality of the book is superb! It's possible the highest quality RPG book I own. It's also about 3-5x more expensive than the rest.
http://www.griddlers.net/
They're fun because of the pictures that are formed when you complete them. But staring too long at those 50x50 ones could be bad for the eyes.
If MS gave me the $100m directly instead of wasting it on advertising...
Share is essentially Winny2. It works pretty much the exact same way. Anonymity in Share works by making you randomly cache data from people. When someone requests a file, and you have a chunk of that file, you may send that file over to them. Of course, it's encrypted, so you have no idea that you even had that file in the first place. Multiply that by several factors and you have a bunch of people who all have bits of a file, without possibly having ever requested it, which makes it hard to track a) who actually has a copy of the file from intentional downloading, b) whether a person requesting a file is actually someone who wants the file, or just the program randomly requesting it for caching. Hence the plausible deniability. And it works, speed-wise, but again, this is with a network filled with Japanese users who can get 100Mbit connections for around $40/month from Yahoo DSL last I checked. In the US, with the crappy 1Mbit upstreams, it may not work so well.
(Includes Winny)
Not surprising since the program interface is in Japanese by default (and even with an English interface, you'll most likely still have to search for the files in Japanese if you want to actually find anything).
But with its relative anonymity, plausible deniability (think Freenet), while maintaining really high speeds (although this may be more a factor of Japanese having much better broadband than we do), I wouldn't be surprised if this was their main source for P2P as well as a glimpse at the future of P2P as lawsuits just drive P2P users into using networks that afford a bit better protection.
I guess you didn't see the one mank M/W builds soloing the Underworld (lvl 24/28 monsters if you haven't been there) pre-patch, and still occurs to some extent today, that were also capable of tanking like 40 or so normal melee monsters.
But I guess that's also a plus in that it shows the developers do make sure things remain balanced.
And of course, the two new areas that's coming out in the patch tomorrow is nice as well (but Blizzard adds content as well, so it's not that special).
That said, I enjoyed WoW when I was still paying for it. Can't beat the general immersiveness and established lore of the Warcraft world.
Don't forget the activation crap. With Steam, it's like buying your music CD, and then having to go online so it can finish downloading the rest of the CD and unlocking it so you can actually listen to it.
The problem is that simply being in a category doesn't mean you'll be interested in it. There are "good" sites and "bad" sites in the same category. The idea with Stumbleupon is that people who are like-minded in their likes and dislikes will get lumped together and basically send each other their sites through "random" stumbles. For example, Stumbleupon also has categories. In something like Christianity, you'll find a bunch of Creationist sites as well. Mark them down, and you're less likely to see Creationist sites but you'll still see the other more useful ones out there.
http://www.peercast.org does this. As the other poster says, Skypecast doesn't.
By using Applocale. Personally my computer is set to Japanese, but I use Applocale when I need to run Chinese programs.
Online radio stations? Game servers? The Japanese connections seem to have pretty sweet upload speeds as well.
From Dowling vs. United States
"Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud."
A certain fansub group released fansubs of the Akane Maniax OVA just days before the DVD was to be released in Japan, inciting the ire of the company and leading to the letters. Of course, the real problem are not the fansubbers. It's the horde of Japanese P2Pers using programs such as Share and Winny. I mean after all, if fansubbers can't get access to the RAW files (unsubbed episodes), they can't sub it now can they?
I think you have to realize as well that the rating on BGG is not based on how good a game is. It's based on how likely someone is to play the game. Here's the guideline breakdown.
10: Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change 9: Excellent game. Always want to play it. 8: Very good game. I like to play. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game. 7: Good game, usually willing to play. 6: Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood. 5: Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it. 4: Not so good, it doesn't get me but could be talked into it on occasion. 3: Likely won't play this again although could be convinced. Bad. 2: Extremely annoying game, won't play this ever again. 1: Defies description of a game. You won't catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.
What this means is that most people are likely to play a game of Doom if asked, whereas most of them will aren't likely to play Risk, Monopoly, and Chess often and may find it boring.
I used it in the past. It was fun for a while, but the problem of course is bandwidth. Most home connections don't really have the bandwidth to have more than a couple people really, and so I moved on to Peercast, although the legality of this is less clear (depends on where you're at and all that). Now, if they could actually make use of the Peercast technology within Mercora, and allowed Ogg streams, they might be able to get me back.
That would be A Game of Thrones + its expansions. The game actually got me into the books. FFG publishes quite a few high-quality component games (read: expensive). They published the War of the Ring game (heaviest game I currently own) and their latest offering is Twilight Imperium 3rd edition, which is even bigger than the War of the Ring box. I think it's something like 12" x 24" and costs $80 ($50+shipping from various online game retailers). They're also renowned for rather nice customer service, like shipping you missing or damaged components for free (although ideally, these shouldn't be problems to begin with).
Some other videogame to boardgame conversions that exist are Age of Mythology: the Boardgame, Sid Meier's Civilization - The Boardgame, Sid Meier's Pirates!: The Boardgame, and Warcraft - The Boardgame
Doom: the Boardgame actually has a 7.82 rating (7.52 Bayesian average) at www.boardgamegeek.com, which is actually quite decent (the highest rated game, Puerto Rico, is 8.75 and 8.72 respectively).