When your site is devoted to "Where Politics and Video Games Collide" it behooves you to draw as many conclusions as you can. When politicians with stronger anti-gaming views win other caucuses, that will doubtless be an indication that we must all join whatever coalition is being pimped out for the protection of our rights.
This whole mess is more about politicians being able to seemingly protect children, and get money/support from lobbying groups that want to protect the children than anything else. Parents that truly care take the time to look at the back of the box, read the descriptions and check the ESRB sticker. They don't bow to pressure from their kids to get a game that they're not comfortable with their kids playing. And then they probably watch their kid play some and make sure it's not outrageous.
Parents that don't care, or are just prone to give into their kids anyway aren't going to do any research and aren't going to be watching their kids play.
Intel's job is to sell their processor. If the software and content are truly more important and compelling than the hardware, the OLPC people shouldn't have a problem with Intel working on other similar projects at the same time. Intel is still selling to Apple and HP, and making their own boxes (albeit often rebranded). It sounds more like the OLPC folks believe their way is the only right way, and if you're not solely for them you must be against them.
First, we get more proof that the Republicans and Democrats aren't really all that different when it comes to pandering to lobbyists and being willing to grab power (don't forget a lot of the worst things passed in the last 7 years were passed almost unanimously). Second, the telecoms might not get immunity. Both work out pretty well for the people.
Likely because they're faced with a couple of choices... Try to get their overburdened support staff up to a point where they're knowledgeable enough about GPG to get it installed, tested, out to the users and get them trained on it. They can hire a consulting company to come in and do all that for them. Or they can go to a vendor who likely sold them all the time and effort to get that going as part of the seat licenses. And all that assumes GPG can do full disk encryption on boot that integrates into a (likely) Windows Active Directory tree.
What I will argue is that publishing a list in a manner as easily accessible as the Internet may be the wrong way to go about protecting the neighborhood.
I'll take you up on this... It's a matter of public record. Whether it be the Internet where it's all compiled, or a search on Google to check out a neighbor that's been acting oddly. I do agree that it might lend itself to vigilante justice, but all they're doing is repackaging publicly available information. Whether the government does it or not, people are going to be more able to find the information online. The only positive thing I can think of is that maybe having it in a database and tracking offenders would prevent cases of mistaken identity, where the name matches but it isn't the same person.
Either way, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. You run the risk of vigilante justice whether it's an official list or not.
1. Write crappy game
2. Get lots of publicity for crappy game.
3. ????
4. Profit!
Re:Couple Thoughts
on
Where are Wii?
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· Score: 1, Troll
The big problem with the PS3, and Xbox 360, is that backward compatibility isn't a given. You might do ok, depending on the game, but it's not like you can scrap your PS2 for a PS3 and come up roses. Same on the Xbox.
You're right about the price, though. If you end up spending as much as you would on a Xbox 360 or PS3, it sort of negates the whole "I can get a Wii and Xbox 360 for the price of a PS3" argument. I got lucky and snagged a Wii early on. It's a fun console, but I'm hoping that game developers start cranking some more stuff out for it.
The *AA industry is comprised of some pretty heavy hitters in the donation arena for politicians. I'd be more surprised if ridiculous laws that favored the industry weren't put forward. Heck, it's practically a perfect ploy. Politicians still get to play "save the childrenz!!1" by targetting video games, and nobody seems to care that they're ignoring the tripe their biggest doners put out.
For every gamer that posts some inane comment about how a game is too easy, or how it's been dumbed down, there are an untold number of gamers that are perfectly happy with the game and aren't going to the message boards about how horrible one aspect or another is/was. The same is true on every game, especially games where developers act on customer feedback (like MMORPGs). To read most MMORPG message boards, you'd think that the game in question sucks and that everybody that's shelling out $10-$15 a month to pay for the subscription is doing so only because someone has them on threat of torture if they don't.
And it behooves players to realize that elitism isn't the way to get your game improved. The more people playing the game, the more likely it is someone will spend resources on making expansions or updating it. If your hardcore l337 group of friends really likes a game with a steep learning curve that only a small subset of players enjoy, it's likely you'll still be playing that version of the game in 5 years.
The test plan where you throw it on your Vista box and test it, and it works fine (Vista doesn't use boot.ini), then you test your other OS clients. After all, it's just the installer, what could go wrong...*cough*
World of Warcraft is the biggest name out there precisely because it is fun for a lot of people with multiple playing styles. How many games that either weren't fun at all, or only fun for a small subset of a potential player base have gone by the wayside in recent years? There's still something to be said about gabbing a niche for a player base, but the game has to be fun to attract enough people to keep it going. Once the game stops being fun, the only thing to keep it going is the sense of community with the people you're playing with. Once that's gone, people move on.
I think a lot of users would be happier if they withdrew Vista entirely. I know I'm scrambling to see if I can upgrade my system to XP. Darn gaming addiction...
Look pretty good to give out as a beginning electronics kit for kids or people just getting into it. Somehow building my own phone back in the day doesn't seem quite as impressive.
Typically, you have to do something repeatedly to "earn" a tag. Killing a teammate once isn't likely to earn you that rank. Killing a teammate (or teammates) dozens of times might. For that matter, there could be a "target" tag. If you have a special aptitude for running in front of your team mates, you become a "target." If you shoot someone with a reputation as a target it, it doesn't really impact your TK reputation. Make them decay over time... Some people may dance at the threshold of getting that tag, but people that accidentally TK, as we probably all do, will have them decay before they accumulate.
For that matter, you could get more finite control. For example, some games allow the player that was killed the choice of whether to punish another player or not. Make it so only punished TK's count in the grand scheme of thing. Combine that with decay, and the chances that you're griefed into the tag are diminished significantly.
So before you damn Greenpeace for taking your favorite console maker to task, consider the broader picture of what they're trying to accomplish.
Given their methodology, it seems like the broader picture of what they're trying to do is get big corporations to send out press reports saying they're going to do something to better their manufacturing processes, or have already. It appears they made no attempts to independently verify the information they got was accurate.
I'm not as concerned about the moral ramifications of how my character conducts themselves in a game. Certainly there are games where you get tags for your accomplishments, like gnoll-slayer or some such. That can give other players some indication of what you're doing.
What I'd like to see are some relevant tags, like team-killer. I don't care how you play the game in a single player mode, it's up to you. But in multi-player games, it would be nice to know what behavior we're likely to see.
That's actually a good point. I come at it from the point of view of the large companies I've worked for. To get on the corporate network via a wireless connection, you still have to authenticate to a VPN server. We have a separate wireless network that visitors from other companies can use, but it's got no connection to the corporate network. I'm sure it's not that way for every large company.
The description is, basically, they use the signal strength and round trip times of the signals to figure out if someone unauthorized is on your network. The downside is that, in large corporate wireless networks, I would think people tend to be pretty mobile and there won't be a reliable indicator that the odd signal from slightly too far away isn't just somebody who remembered one last thing on the way to their car. Smaller wireless networks aren't likely to care enough to spend the time it takes to tell.
It's an interesting idea, but I have a hard time seeing it become widespread.
Some of the review sites really are in the pockets of advertisers. Newspaper reviews and reviews on other sites can survive it. They have advertising revenue, and other revenue streams, from companies other than the ones they're reviewing. Even movie studios, typically, release so many movies in a year that they don't care is some review site pans one of their movies, and there's no sense in retaliating.
Slashdot Mirror
With their subscription rates skyrocketing and their history of rock solid journalism, I wouldn't think the NYT would be capable of mistakes.
When your site is devoted to "Where Politics and Video Games Collide" it behooves you to draw as many conclusions as you can. When politicians with stronger anti-gaming views win other caucuses, that will doubtless be an indication that we must all join whatever coalition is being pimped out for the protection of our rights.
This whole mess is more about politicians being able to seemingly protect children, and get money/support from lobbying groups that want to protect the children than anything else. Parents that truly care take the time to look at the back of the box, read the descriptions and check the ESRB sticker. They don't bow to pressure from their kids to get a game that they're not comfortable with their kids playing. And then they probably watch their kid play some and make sure it's not outrageous.
Parents that don't care, or are just prone to give into their kids anyway aren't going to do any research and aren't going to be watching their kids play.
Intel's job is to sell their processor. If the software and content are truly more important and compelling than the hardware, the OLPC people shouldn't have a problem with Intel working on other similar projects at the same time. Intel is still selling to Apple and HP, and making their own boxes (albeit often rebranded). It sounds more like the OLPC folks believe their way is the only right way, and if you're not solely for them you must be against them.
First, we get more proof that the Republicans and Democrats aren't really all that different when it comes to pandering to lobbyists and being willing to grab power (don't forget a lot of the worst things passed in the last 7 years were passed almost unanimously). Second, the telecoms might not get immunity. Both work out pretty well for the people.
It's a modified Linux distro, you can get a live CD to play with it here.
Likely because they're faced with a couple of choices... Try to get their overburdened support staff up to a point where they're knowledgeable enough about GPG to get it installed, tested, out to the users and get them trained on it. They can hire a consulting company to come in and do all that for them. Or they can go to a vendor who likely sold them all the time and effort to get that going as part of the seat licenses. And all that assumes GPG can do full disk encryption on boot that integrates into a (likely) Windows Active Directory tree.
What I will argue is that publishing a list in a manner as easily accessible as the Internet may be the wrong way to go about protecting the neighborhood.
I'll take you up on this... It's a matter of public record. Whether it be the Internet where it's all compiled, or a search on Google to check out a neighbor that's been acting oddly. I do agree that it might lend itself to vigilante justice, but all they're doing is repackaging publicly available information. Whether the government does it or not, people are going to be more able to find the information online. The only positive thing I can think of is that maybe having it in a database and tracking offenders would prevent cases of mistaken identity, where the name matches but it isn't the same person.
Either way, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. You run the risk of vigilante justice whether it's an official list or not.
1. Write crappy game 2. Get lots of publicity for crappy game. 3. ???? 4. Profit!
The big problem with the PS3, and Xbox 360, is that backward compatibility isn't a given. You might do ok, depending on the game, but it's not like you can scrap your PS2 for a PS3 and come up roses. Same on the Xbox.
You're right about the price, though. If you end up spending as much as you would on a Xbox 360 or PS3, it sort of negates the whole "I can get a Wii and Xbox 360 for the price of a PS3" argument. I got lucky and snagged a Wii early on. It's a fun console, but I'm hoping that game developers start cranking some more stuff out for it.
The *AA industry is comprised of some pretty heavy hitters in the donation arena for politicians. I'd be more surprised if ridiculous laws that favored the industry weren't put forward. Heck, it's practically a perfect ploy. Politicians still get to play "save the childrenz!!1" by targetting video games, and nobody seems to care that they're ignoring the tripe their biggest doners put out.
For every gamer that posts some inane comment about how a game is too easy, or how it's been dumbed down, there are an untold number of gamers that are perfectly happy with the game and aren't going to the message boards about how horrible one aspect or another is/was. The same is true on every game, especially games where developers act on customer feedback (like MMORPGs). To read most MMORPG message boards, you'd think that the game in question sucks and that everybody that's shelling out $10-$15 a month to pay for the subscription is doing so only because someone has them on threat of torture if they don't.
And it behooves players to realize that elitism isn't the way to get your game improved. The more people playing the game, the more likely it is someone will spend resources on making expansions or updating it. If your hardcore l337 group of friends really likes a game with a steep learning curve that only a small subset of players enjoy, it's likely you'll still be playing that version of the game in 5 years.
the Democratic leadership rushed the SAFE Act to the floor under a procedure that's supposed to be reserved for noncontroversial legislation.
Is it any wonder that their approval rating is in the tank? All this talk of transparency in government, and they pull oddball stunts like this.
The test plan where you throw it on your Vista box and test it, and it works fine (Vista doesn't use boot.ini), then you test your other OS clients. After all, it's just the installer, what could go wrong...*cough*
I think it boils down to which battery was used. Sony batteries are obviously from the goblins.
World of Warcraft is the biggest name out there precisely because it is fun for a lot of people with multiple playing styles. How many games that either weren't fun at all, or only fun for a small subset of a potential player base have gone by the wayside in recent years? There's still something to be said about gabbing a niche for a player base, but the game has to be fun to attract enough people to keep it going. Once the game stops being fun, the only thing to keep it going is the sense of community with the people you're playing with. Once that's gone, people move on.
I wouldn't say Americans are that bad at English.
The problem is not knowing when it's proper to insert "eh", and not always making things like "about" sound like "aboot".
There's a lot more that goes into sounding Canadian than just making your whole head flap.
I think a lot of users would be happier if they withdrew Vista entirely. I know I'm scrambling to see if I can upgrade my system to XP. Darn gaming addiction...
Look pretty good to give out as a beginning electronics kit for kids or people just getting into it. Somehow building my own phone back in the day doesn't seem quite as impressive.
Typically, you have to do something repeatedly to "earn" a tag. Killing a teammate once isn't likely to earn you that rank. Killing a teammate (or teammates) dozens of times might. For that matter, there could be a "target" tag. If you have a special aptitude for running in front of your team mates, you become a "target." If you shoot someone with a reputation as a target it, it doesn't really impact your TK reputation. Make them decay over time... Some people may dance at the threshold of getting that tag, but people that accidentally TK, as we probably all do, will have them decay before they accumulate.
For that matter, you could get more finite control. For example, some games allow the player that was killed the choice of whether to punish another player or not. Make it so only punished TK's count in the grand scheme of thing. Combine that with decay, and the chances that you're griefed into the tag are diminished significantly.
So before you damn Greenpeace for taking your favorite console maker to task, consider the broader picture of what they're trying to accomplish.
Given their methodology, it seems like the broader picture of what they're trying to do is get big corporations to send out press reports saying they're going to do something to better their manufacturing processes, or have already. It appears they made no attempts to independently verify the information they got was accurate.
I'm not as concerned about the moral ramifications of how my character conducts themselves in a game. Certainly there are games where you get tags for your accomplishments, like gnoll-slayer or some such. That can give other players some indication of what you're doing.
What I'd like to see are some relevant tags, like team-killer. I don't care how you play the game in a single player mode, it's up to you. But in multi-player games, it would be nice to know what behavior we're likely to see.
That's actually a good point. I come at it from the point of view of the large companies I've worked for. To get on the corporate network via a wireless connection, you still have to authenticate to a VPN server. We have a separate wireless network that visitors from other companies can use, but it's got no connection to the corporate network. I'm sure it's not that way for every large company.
The description is, basically, they use the signal strength and round trip times of the signals to figure out if someone unauthorized is on your network. The downside is that, in large corporate wireless networks, I would think people tend to be pretty mobile and there won't be a reliable indicator that the odd signal from slightly too far away isn't just somebody who remembered one last thing on the way to their car. Smaller wireless networks aren't likely to care enough to spend the time it takes to tell.
It's an interesting idea, but I have a hard time seeing it become widespread.
Some of the review sites really are in the pockets of advertisers. Newspaper reviews and reviews on other sites can survive it. They have advertising revenue, and other revenue streams, from companies other than the ones they're reviewing. Even movie studios, typically, release so many movies in a year that they don't care is some review site pans one of their movies, and there's no sense in retaliating.