It's got drums and a mic man! That's like the best thing evar!
Seriously though, it is mildly innovative in how it combines them together. At least they didn't nominate Bioshock in that category. I keep hearing people call BS innovative and I still don't see a single new thing in gameplay it brings in (sure the setting is new, but many games have new settings, and I don't really interesting story elements, no matter how inventive, innovative in a game where gameplay is what you're looking for).
Phrased like that, yeah, I think that would be rather novel and interesting, although I suppose it could be argued, it is still random, it's just skewed toward result X due to the current structure of the organism. We know, for instance, certain mutations are common causes of such things as cancer given a certain genetic make up. This could likely just be a more complex structural bias in the mutation patterns.
Big deal, I mean if the issue was serious the person would have phoned back themselves. Mistakes do happen in any system, and MS isn't exactly a small company that can reasonably catch every one of them. Mildly amusing, maybe, but ultimately unimportant.
As I understand the Conspiracy laws, you actually have to Conspire with someone. In this case, you actually need more than one party, not just the person themselves, and there must be a serious belief that said event to break the law is actually planned, not just making something up for the plot of a novel let's say, although no actual act to go forward with said plan is required to prove a Conspiracy.
...I can make a perfectly accurate 3-D character model by just feeding the program a bit of video and pointing out the character. Then, all we need is the same with voice and I can make my own animes! Man, that would be sweet, but I think we're still a ways off from that.
The Problem here is he has it backwards
on
BioShock Backlash
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· Score: 1
It's not, can we try and excuse it's faults, it is, why is it rated stinking high? Not one of the faults he argues against is wrong, they all exist, and no matters how much you try to excuse them, they continue to exist. He also misses several more. So, why is a game with such glaring faults rating so freaking high everywhere? It isn't deserving of those insane scores. I'll say it every time it comes up, yes, it's a good game, but NOT the 13th best game of all time (according to Gamerankings). I think that is most of people's complaint. You wouldn't see a big backlash if this game got at 85% on average (still a great game, but not even in the top 200), but instead the reviewers are telling us that it an absolutely awesome game, which only a tiny (and I mean TINY) minority of games are better than. This isn't the does the emperor have no clothes, it is a question of is the emperor wearing off the rack clothes with fake pearls and jewels, or custom tailored and made cloth with the real deal in the way of accessories.
I could be exposed to sensitive information now, that doesn't give the government a right to look in on me because their security sucks so much that the cleaning staff can access classified documents! There are limits, and this is beyond them, and frankly stupid to start with (if it's classified it damn well better be properly secured, background checks of the staff won't help it get secured).
I take it you're not familiar with the term Death rate, which refers to the number of people per given amount that die in a set time period. Say, 5 people per 1000 per year (totally made up number for example purpose only). It's like Birth rate, infant death rate, etc. All of them are generally the same thing.
There is also the thought that if you exercise, but then eat more because you feel hungry afterwards, you neutralize any thinning benefits of the exercise (not all benefits mind you). If that is a very common, then yeah, exercise might in fact do nothing for making you thinner.
Then there was that study that said you were more likely to die from being thinner... I'm so confused now.
As good as some lawyers are, most are not experts in every scientific technique, and those that aren't frequently don't have the funds to hunt down and procure the testimony of someone who is both familiar with the technique and willing to talk about it's short comings in their client's favor.
I think you are either grossly overestimating the benefit of dedicated sound boards, or grossly underestimating the quality of the on board ones. I've personally gone from on board, to dedicated, back to on board, and the biggest benefit I seen from the dedicated was the slightly better driver utilities. Sound quality and performance haven't been hit in any meaningful level, if at all. Dedicated boards are great for guys doing sound editing and such where much of the features are simply unavailable to on board cards, but for simply playing games, there is barely any difference.
after having actually used Vista on my nephew's computer, my GOD I hate it. It's like MS asked all their designers, "Hey guys, what are some of the most stupid changes you could think of to make to our interface?" and then when ahead and did them. I already knew about the performance issues, and the infamous 'cancel or allow', but the interface changes are absolutely moronic in many cases. They changed many things simply because they wanted something different by the looks of it, and in most cases in a very bad way (still looking for the save as button in the new MS WORD).
System Shock was great, and I agree, in my opinion it is better than SS2, but only just. Unfortunately, it is so old now it is painful to look at. I so wish they would remake it, sadly it is not going to happen.
System Shock (not 2, original system shock). This game was awesome for the age, and gameplay wise still holds up really well. You have cyber-space, all kinds of mods and weapon types, great story, non-linear gameplay... heck I just loved this game. This one I feel is my fondest memory of that era in video games, in fact it ranks very high on my best games ever list, and it is now nearing the point where is not simply hard to play, but truly unplayable due to OS changes and such. Sadly it won't happen since the rights to the franchise and game are spread all over the place.
I can agree with some of what you say, but not a whole lot. The first thing I really have to disagree with is the very nature of the bully. The violent bully, the stereotypical one you see on TV, is really the least of your worries. Yeah, they can beat you up, but that's easy to prove, and in most cases with competent school oversight this can be effectively neutralized (not totally mind you, you will always have people slip through). It's the psychological bully that is far more prevalent, and worst still far harder to stick it too, and really it is these psychological bullies that are the ones that cyber-bullying is about. They don't have to lay a finger on you and they can still make your school life, and even your life in general a living hell.
Further, the 'well, stand up to them' argument fails many times in practice. Violent bullies and psychological bullies alike often target the weakest people, those the most isolated and easily intimidated. Even if you do fight them, quite often these types will lose which now may well make the situation worse as not only are they demoralized, but the bully is now even more confident that they have a power advantage. It gets worst still when you're dealing the bully grouping as they are in that much better a position to retaliate against you. What makes this even that much worse with the psychological type is that sadly it is often the victim of the bullying who receives the punishment because of this stereotyping of bullying a purely physical thing.
I'm very cynical about authorities solving the bully problem, but at the same time I see no real other viable alternative that will work in practice. While bringing the police in may work in some cases, having personally experienced the punish the victim stupidity of same institutions, I'd rather not see it get that serious.
You forgot the 3rd possibility, whatever you want to call it, it generally goes by the name NORMAL. As in not hard, not easy, just right. Believe it or not, some games do understand this principle.
Now, as to knowing their audience, maybe they do, that doesn't make that quality any more acceptable, it just means the developer aims to cash in more.
Actually, that's the thing with this game, even the weak weapons are either incapable of doing the job (you haven't got the ammo), or are actually very powerful (wrench). If you can make a game hard, yeah, you can get some replay enjoyment out of it, but in this one, you just can't. The game is easy even if you totally gimp yourself because the weapons aren't really the problem. It's the whole game's design.
I have issues with the game, creepiness isn't one of them. It does the job quite well in that regard and basically comes down to a matter of individual taste. Now, where the game does suffer is it's obscenely pathetic difficulty factor. Pretty much every aspect of the game is streamline and easified (yeah, it's not a word, so what). That makes it a nice 1 time play through, but ultimately hurts it in the replay factor.
Trademarks have to be registered, are very limited in what you can register, and beyond that they don't protect you from having it used, only from having it misrepresented to a different competing product. Also, trademarks have to be very simple, you can't trademark a book for example, nor a painting, only a symbol or other simple graphical premise or set of words. Trademarking the whole church, no.
As for modeling, you have no IP right over a look other than copyright, or patent. Any copyright or patent on the design or structure of the church has LOOOOONG past. It is now a landmark, and has lost all IP protections. In fact it is so old it didn't even have them to begin with. You could be an identical church right now and use it for porn movies and there is 0 they could legally do about it.
Really, the only legal recourse had to be taken at the time any sampling was done and since this is a landmark, it is very likely no person from the developer even set foot in the church, they very well may have just used publicly available photos of the interior. Even assuming they did actually set foot on the premises, if the church officials did not object at that moment and charge the people with trespassing they are now without legal recourse.
I don't think the source of equipment was the point there. I think the fact that you need rarer equipment that was the point.
Actually, he was right, you DON'T need it, not to be functional. Yes, really rare gear is powerful, and helpful, but not required. In fact, in this respect, FFXI is much for forgiving than games like WoW since I could easily go up against some the newest and toughest endgame mobs and still only be wearing mostly average AH gear, while good luck getting through Black Temple doing the same.
A lot of WoW players would disagree. They have the exact opposite complaint, that old content is made worthless with each expansion. When BC came out, Azeroth endgame became a ghost town. A lot of people spent a ton of time on Azeroth end game gear, getting attunements, raiding and such, that overnight became green quality. With Blizzard having set that pattern you can expect as soon as a solid release date is known for WOLK that BC endgame will quickly start to die out.
I actually really appreciated the fact that FFXI didn't suddenly devalue old world gear and continued to keep it relevant. It kept the whole game interesting longer.
Yes. Never mind the issues with infinite mirroring (you have to make screenshots of you making screenshots...), just think of the data load. Modern memory is running at around 800 MHz or more. Say you have 1 gig worth. That means, every second you incur 800 GIGABYTES of screenshots. You could have a whole truckload of terebytes harddrives and still couldn't cover even 1 hour's worth of data.
Of course, you could do a differential copy... but even that would fail as not only is it very slow to do a differential scan... you can't as that would take memory cycles to do meaning you are violating the ruling because that 'stored' memory may have changed.
Slashdot Mirror
Woot! Sadly, this is the first I've heard of any Google friendliness of the place.
Seriously though, it is mildly innovative in how it combines them together. At least they didn't nominate Bioshock in that category. I keep hearing people call BS innovative and I still don't see a single new thing in gameplay it brings in (sure the setting is new, but many games have new settings, and I don't really interesting story elements, no matter how inventive, innovative in a game where gameplay is what you're looking for).
Phrased like that, yeah, I think that would be rather novel and interesting, although I suppose it could be argued, it is still random, it's just skewed toward result X due to the current structure of the organism. We know, for instance, certain mutations are common causes of such things as cancer given a certain genetic make up. This could likely just be a more complex structural bias in the mutation patterns.
Big deal, I mean if the issue was serious the person would have phoned back themselves. Mistakes do happen in any system, and MS isn't exactly a small company that can reasonably catch every one of them. Mildly amusing, maybe, but ultimately unimportant.
As I understand the Conspiracy laws, you actually have to Conspire with someone. In this case, you actually need more than one party, not just the person themselves, and there must be a serious belief that said event to break the law is actually planned, not just making something up for the plot of a novel let's say, although no actual act to go forward with said plan is required to prove a Conspiracy.
...I can make a perfectly accurate 3-D character model by just feeding the program a bit of video and pointing out the character. Then, all we need is the same with voice and I can make my own animes! Man, that would be sweet, but I think we're still a ways off from that.
It's not, can we try and excuse it's faults, it is, why is it rated stinking high? Not one of the faults he argues against is wrong, they all exist, and no matters how much you try to excuse them, they continue to exist. He also misses several more. So, why is a game with such glaring faults rating so freaking high everywhere? It isn't deserving of those insane scores. I'll say it every time it comes up, yes, it's a good game, but NOT the 13th best game of all time (according to Gamerankings). I think that is most of people's complaint. You wouldn't see a big backlash if this game got at 85% on average (still a great game, but not even in the top 200), but instead the reviewers are telling us that it an absolutely awesome game, which only a tiny (and I mean TINY) minority of games are better than. This isn't the does the emperor have no clothes, it is a question of is the emperor wearing off the rack clothes with fake pearls and jewels, or custom tailored and made cloth with the real deal in the way of accessories.
I could be exposed to sensitive information now, that doesn't give the government a right to look in on me because their security sucks so much that the cleaning staff can access classified documents! There are limits, and this is beyond them, and frankly stupid to start with (if it's classified it damn well better be properly secured, background checks of the staff won't help it get secured).
And perhaps you missed the "None of them even work on anything classified or defense related" which kinda invalidates your point.
I take it you're not familiar with the term Death rate, which refers to the number of people per given amount that die in a set time period. Say, 5 people per 1000 per year (totally made up number for example purpose only). It's like Birth rate, infant death rate, etc. All of them are generally the same thing.
Then there was that study that said you were more likely to die from being thinner... I'm so confused now.
As good as some lawyers are, most are not experts in every scientific technique, and those that aren't frequently don't have the funds to hunt down and procure the testimony of someone who is both familiar with the technique and willing to talk about it's short comings in their client's favor.
I think you are either grossly overestimating the benefit of dedicated sound boards, or grossly underestimating the quality of the on board ones. I've personally gone from on board, to dedicated, back to on board, and the biggest benefit I seen from the dedicated was the slightly better driver utilities. Sound quality and performance haven't been hit in any meaningful level, if at all. Dedicated boards are great for guys doing sound editing and such where much of the features are simply unavailable to on board cards, but for simply playing games, there is barely any difference.
after having actually used Vista on my nephew's computer, my GOD I hate it. It's like MS asked all their designers, "Hey guys, what are some of the most stupid changes you could think of to make to our interface?" and then when ahead and did them. I already knew about the performance issues, and the infamous 'cancel or allow', but the interface changes are absolutely moronic in many cases. They changed many things simply because they wanted something different by the looks of it, and in most cases in a very bad way (still looking for the save as button in the new MS WORD).
That's 9.77 for 2006, ie 1 year, not cumulative.
System Shock was great, and I agree, in my opinion it is better than SS2, but only just. Unfortunately, it is so old now it is painful to look at. I so wish they would remake it, sadly it is not going to happen.
System Shock (not 2, original system shock). This game was awesome for the age, and gameplay wise still holds up really well. You have cyber-space, all kinds of mods and weapon types, great story, non-linear gameplay... heck I just loved this game. This one I feel is my fondest memory of that era in video games, in fact it ranks very high on my best games ever list, and it is now nearing the point where is not simply hard to play, but truly unplayable due to OS changes and such. Sadly it won't happen since the rights to the franchise and game are spread all over the place.
Further, the 'well, stand up to them' argument fails many times in practice. Violent bullies and psychological bullies alike often target the weakest people, those the most isolated and easily intimidated. Even if you do fight them, quite often these types will lose which now may well make the situation worse as not only are they demoralized, but the bully is now even more confident that they have a power advantage. It gets worst still when you're dealing the bully grouping as they are in that much better a position to retaliate against you. What makes this even that much worse with the psychological type is that sadly it is often the victim of the bullying who receives the punishment because of this stereotyping of bullying a purely physical thing.
I'm very cynical about authorities solving the bully problem, but at the same time I see no real other viable alternative that will work in practice. While bringing the police in may work in some cases, having personally experienced the punish the victim stupidity of same institutions, I'd rather not see it get that serious.
Now, as to knowing their audience, maybe they do, that doesn't make that quality any more acceptable, it just means the developer aims to cash in more.
Actually, that's the thing with this game, even the weak weapons are either incapable of doing the job (you haven't got the ammo), or are actually very powerful (wrench). If you can make a game hard, yeah, you can get some replay enjoyment out of it, but in this one, you just can't. The game is easy even if you totally gimp yourself because the weapons aren't really the problem. It's the whole game's design.
I have issues with the game, creepiness isn't one of them. It does the job quite well in that regard and basically comes down to a matter of individual taste. Now, where the game does suffer is it's obscenely pathetic difficulty factor. Pretty much every aspect of the game is streamline and easified (yeah, it's not a word, so what). That makes it a nice 1 time play through, but ultimately hurts it in the replay factor.
As for modeling, you have no IP right over a look other than copyright, or patent. Any copyright or patent on the design or structure of the church has LOOOOONG past. It is now a landmark, and has lost all IP protections. In fact it is so old it didn't even have them to begin with. You could be an identical church right now and use it for porn movies and there is 0 they could legally do about it.
Really, the only legal recourse had to be taken at the time any sampling was done and since this is a landmark, it is very likely no person from the developer even set foot in the church, they very well may have just used publicly available photos of the interior. Even assuming they did actually set foot on the premises, if the church officials did not object at that moment and charge the people with trespassing they are now without legal recourse.
Actually, he was right, you DON'T need it, not to be functional. Yes, really rare gear is powerful, and helpful, but not required. In fact, in this respect, FFXI is much for forgiving than games like WoW since I could easily go up against some the newest and toughest endgame mobs and still only be wearing mostly average AH gear, while good luck getting through Black Temple doing the same.
I actually really appreciated the fact that FFXI didn't suddenly devalue old world gear and continued to keep it relevant. It kept the whole game interesting longer.
Of course, you could do a differential copy... but even that would fail as not only is it very slow to do a differential scan... you can't as that would take memory cycles to do meaning you are violating the ruling because that 'stored' memory may have changed.