I think you could pull out the spider-man or the superman comics and then bring out XIII and say you're better because its a graphic novel
What the..? Where did I even COMPARE comics and graphic novels? You completely missed my point which was : XIII is not obscure, period. Don't look further than that. There was no sarcasm behind my post. But I guess (unwillingly) opening any possible breach to an American vs European dick waving contest is not something that should be done on Slashdot.
My comment was not condescending. In the US you have what is called "comics", in Europe we have what is called "graphic novels" (we call them comics). It's about the same difference than US Football = Soccer. We call Soccer Football. Stop trolling.
XIII, a stylish FPS based on an obscure Belgian graphic novel
XIII is one of the most known and appreciated "graphic novel" in Europe. In the US they have comics, in Europe we have graphic novels. XIII has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It's been adapted in a TV show, not to mention the game. It's been translated to 5 languages other than the original french version.
I find it ironic that a game designer claiming his game didn't do well because it compete with high-profile franchises don't know the slightest about an other video game from the same publisher that suffered exactly the same fate than his.
Many comments say "Ok, so they discovered a lot of phones, that doesn't mean they could hack into each one of them", which is true and also acknowledged by the researchers (hence the use of the word "potential" in TFA). I, for one, turn my bluetooth on only when I need to synch it with my laptop. I don't even use a "bionic man bluetooth headset" because I find these ridiculous.
However, I'd like to know what are the dangers when leaving the Bluetooth enabled on my cell phone. I set it up to require an code to bond. But that doesn't mean I'm safe, I guess. Are there any known exploits, widely used, or easy to setup, for hacking Bluetooth phones? Especially Sony-Ericsson and HP iPaq, since these are the ones I use.
I always felt that Blizzard had an edge because they've always been really good about releasin g their titles with both Windows and Mac support on the same CD.
That's true. But they still don't support Linux. I have a wet dream that one day a big publisher/developper will support Linux, giving the push needed to really make that plateform a viable one for games. I'm a gamer. I play games on my computer like 20 or 30 hours on any given week. I also love Linux. But I have to have a computer with Windows in order to play. I don't want to be bothered with Wine or WMWare. I want native support. And get rid of Windows. I'm not the only one, and with the current trend of Linux distros that aim at making Linux easier to use, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would be interrested. But that won't happen until Microsoft as a lock on DirectX and developpers only use DirectX because it's so convenient.
Something I haven't seen adressed in these comments is: do they enforce DRMs? Because I much as I agree with Firehed, personally the first thing preventing me from buying music on the net are DRM's. Price only comes in second (but very, very close).
...how this is good for France, since the businesses will just pack up and leave.
France is a multi-billion market for the music industry. Do you think Apple and others will just leave? Suffer a loss in income and profit, resulting in a drop of the market shares value? Will the shareholders agree? I don't know. Not to mention that if France passes this law, other countries will follow? Will Apple and others then close their business? I don't know...
Remind me why artists need companies like Sony? Especially known bands.
Because recording companies have the artists sign contracts compelling them to release X albums every Y years. Usually, there's also an exclusivity clause (preventing the artist to sign with another company, even their own). So even if you are famous, you can't just stop popping out albums for this company. Even if the company you signed with would consider releasing their rights over you, they'd ask for a big check. Like, the money they could make if you stayed with them. And since they earn 70%+ of any sale of your work, you just can't afford, no matter how rich you are.
I'm not sure about some of the stuff above, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
In a Europe without borders, it's tough to make sure that the pot stays in the Netherlands...
There might be no official customs border, customs do keep very close eye on the borders of the Netherlands. When you are in the north of France, you see a lot of cars stopped by customs that patrol the highway leading to the Netherlands.
I'd like to see the reasoning behind this. Intellectual Property Protection Act doesn't sound like a bad idea. It's a good idea to protect intellectual property, too bad we know the IP is used and abused by big companies. I don't see the need for a bill, though, since there are already laws in place
As for the IP crimes are funding terrorism, duh. I'd like to know how downloading an anti-virus and downloading a crack is funding terrorism. Are all these.ru websites with their porn ads ran by terrorists? And don't get me started with "Open Source invites terrorism". Just because you know how something is made doesn't allow you to bypass its protection. I can see the code of GPG, it doesn't mean I can crack a GPG-encrypted file in less than a few million years.
Last but not least, drug financing terrorism. Well, it sort of does (or did anyway). Drug is the best way to make money with little risks (for the bosses anyway), given the low production cost, and huge street price. Margins are the largest in the world. So yeah, I guess some of the investments of terrorist groups are in there. But hey, big new. If you want to cut down a lot of this market, make the major illegal "drug", the marijuana, legal. It's not like you can't find any if you want to. It'll also lower crime rate, give the governments a new product to tax a,d increase the quality of the product. And it won't turn your youth to potheads ; look at Netherlands, there are actually less people smoking pots there than in countries where it's illegal.
I agreed with pretty much all of your post until this:
Sorry, I know your trying to make a point about how cool and great Linux is over Windows, but you have to have some platform to stand on. Never once did I even consider that Windows needed to be a Linux killer. Linux speaks for itself, 95% of the world computer users say so. They all can't be mindless lemmings.
You don't seem to take into account the huge marketing and financial force of Microsoft. If Windows and Linux were exactly on the same level marketing-wise, I don't think that the marketshare of Windows would be 95%.
Most people buy their comptuter(s) pre-assembled, and these mostly have Windows pre-installed. That has to count for something.
And how exactly the hell does "Dual core" help you when you're thrashing the hard drive wildly trying to virus check?
You're right, althought not exactly. A couple years ago I bought a pretty nice "desktop replacement" (these large laptop with powerful processors, low autonomy, large screen and all). The problem to play video games was not the processor. It was not the screen. It was not even the graphic card or the RAM. It was the friggin' hard drive. You can't decently play a game with a 4200 RPM drive, period. The loading times are huge, and the overall computer performance is really lower because of the HDD bottleneck. So yeah, you can buy a nice 7200 RPM laptop drive, but those are *very* expensive (think Raptor drives-expensive), and they eat your battery like a vampire on acid. I read TFA, and they say these laptops will feature a 60 Gb HDD, but didn't speak about RPM. So I'll just take a wild guess and assume it'll be a 4400 RPM or 5200 at best HDD because it's always what they use.
So cool, thanks for the Dual Core mister Dell. I'm glad I can encode my CD collection (not like It's not been done for at least 3 years) while waiting for my game to load.
Well, to be fair, the guy lived in a stable, and was a grandpa. So I don't think he knew much about algorithms and stuff. But, even if he was a godfather that eluded the police for 43 years, I don't think he's smart. Even if he didn't have any knowledge about cryptology (-graphy? Gee, I never know), he should have hired somebody who did know about it as an "advisor". But then, there's a trust issue, and I'm not sure the poor guy would have survived after he advised on picking the correct encryption system.
Or the godfather just wanted to play it old school all the way thinking it was the way to go. But then again, he lived in a stable.
Thanks for the tip. But I have a Shuttle FB83 (Intel 915G + ICH6R, Award V6.0PG BIOS). The only game that ever crashes is Splinter Cell though, and I play a lot of games. So even if it's hardware related, they must use it not like they should or something.
I don't know if it's related, but my Splinter Cell 3 game keeps crashing (from every 2 up to 10 minutes). All my drivers are up to date, my system is very stable, and no other games I have ever crash (well, except Oblivion from time to time, but it's more like every 3 or 4 hours due to memory leaks).
I never experienced a hardware defect, and never noticed a loss of performance on my DVD player as some people reported. But I can't believe so many people would complain, and StarForce would look so dubious, and that game companies would have to do press releases to announce one or more of their games won't use this system, if there weren't any problems with this system.
So, for that reason only, and just in case, I don't want StarForce in the games I buy.
Now what Ubisoft should do is patch all of their games that use StarForce so not only upcoming games will not use this protection system, but the previously released as well. Then only will I believe them when they say "Ubisoft takes its customer concerns very seriously".
If Cisco plans to "invade" homes, they'll have to drop their IOS crap. Or at least develop a graphical management system. Command lines are fine and all, but anyone who dealt with IOS will tell you they wished they could set simple things via a graphical interface. And home consumers will never consider buying a product that they can configure only via a shell.
This is the last straw! I'm going to stop using Google and every other US-based search engine, because I just can't trust them to keep their logs away from the US government.
Why do you troll? I feel this is a legitimate question. Please note I never gave my personnal opinion about the US government accessing the search logs of non-US citizen.
There's one thing I'm wondering. Is the US government about to access all of Google's logs? I so, isn't there a potential legal issue here? I mean, privacy laws could be different from one country to another. If it's illegal in a country (let's say, Privatizhtan) to get that kind of informations, is the US government allowed to look into Google's logs for people who live in this Privatetizhtan?
Which brings in the "but logs are in the US so it's legal" issue.
Slashdot Mirror
My comment was not condescending. In the US you have what is called "comics", in Europe we have what is called "graphic novels" (we call them comics). It's about the same difference than US Football = Soccer. We call Soccer Football. Stop trolling.
XIII is one of the most known and appreciated "graphic novel" in Europe. In the US they have comics, in Europe we have graphic novels. XIII has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It's been adapted in a TV show, not to mention the game. It's been translated to 5 languages other than the original french version.
I find it ironic that a game designer claiming his game didn't do well because it compete with high-profile franchises don't know the slightest about an other video game from the same publisher that suffered exactly the same fate than his.
Many comments say "Ok, so they discovered a lot of phones, that doesn't mean they could hack into each one of them", which is true and also acknowledged by the researchers (hence the use of the word "potential" in TFA). I, for one, turn my bluetooth on only when I need to synch it with my laptop. I don't even use a "bionic man bluetooth headset" because I find these ridiculous.
However, I'd like to know what are the dangers when leaving the Bluetooth enabled on my cell phone. I set it up to require an code to bond. But that doesn't mean I'm safe, I guess. Are there any known exploits, widely used, or easy to setup, for hacking Bluetooth phones? Especially Sony-Ericsson and HP iPaq, since these are the ones I use.
Something I haven't seen adressed in these comments is: do they enforce DRMs? Because I much as I agree with Firehed, personally the first thing preventing me from buying music on the net are DRM's. Price only comes in second (but very, very close).
Because recording companies have the artists sign contracts compelling them to release X albums every Y years. Usually, there's also an exclusivity clause (preventing the artist to sign with another company, even their own). So even if you are famous, you can't just stop popping out albums for this company. Even if the company you signed with would consider releasing their rights over you, they'd ask for a big check. Like, the money they could make if you stayed with them. And since they earn 70%+ of any sale of your work, you just can't afford, no matter how rich you are.
I'm not sure about some of the stuff above, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
In a Europe without borders, it's tough to make sure that the pot stays in the Netherlands...
There might be no official customs border, customs do keep very close eye on the borders of the Netherlands. When you are in the north of France, you see a lot of cars stopped by customs that patrol the highway leading to the Netherlands.
I'd like to see the reasoning behind this. Intellectual Property Protection Act doesn't sound like a bad idea. It's a good idea to protect intellectual property, too bad we know the IP is used and abused by big companies. I don't see the need for a bill, though, since there are already laws in place
As for the IP crimes are funding terrorism, duh. I'd like to know how downloading an anti-virus and downloading a crack is funding terrorism. Are all these .ru websites with their porn ads ran by terrorists? And don't get me started with "Open Source invites terrorism". Just because you know how something is made doesn't allow you to bypass its protection. I can see the code of GPG, it doesn't mean I can crack a GPG-encrypted file in less than a few million years.
Last but not least, drug financing terrorism. Well, it sort of does (or did anyway). Drug is the best way to make money with little risks (for the bosses anyway), given the low production cost, and huge street price. Margins are the largest in the world. So yeah, I guess some of the investments of terrorist groups are in there. But hey, big new. If you want to cut down a lot of this market, make the major illegal "drug", the marijuana, legal. It's not like you can't find any if you want to. It'll also lower crime rate, give the governments a new product to tax a,d increase the quality of the product. And it won't turn your youth to potheads ; look at Netherlands, there are actually less people smoking pots there than in countries where it's illegal.
I agreed with pretty much all of your post until this:
Sorry, I know your trying to make a point about how cool and great Linux is over Windows, but you have to have some platform to stand on. Never once did I even consider that Windows needed to be a Linux killer. Linux speaks for itself, 95% of the world computer users say so. They all can't be mindless lemmings.
You don't seem to take into account the huge marketing and financial force of Microsoft. If Windows and Linux were exactly on the same level marketing-wise, I don't think that the marketshare of Windows would be 95%.
Most people buy their comptuter(s) pre-assembled, and these mostly have Windows pre-installed. That has to count for something.
You're right, althought not exactly. A couple years ago I bought a pretty nice "desktop replacement" (these large laptop with powerful processors, low autonomy, large screen and all). The problem to play video games was not the processor. It was not the screen. It was not even the graphic card or the RAM. It was the friggin' hard drive. You can't decently play a game with a 4200 RPM drive, period. The loading times are huge, and the overall computer performance is really lower because of the HDD bottleneck. So yeah, you can buy a nice 7200 RPM laptop drive, but those are *very* expensive (think Raptor drives-expensive), and they eat your battery like a vampire on acid. I read TFA, and they say these laptops will feature a 60 Gb HDD, but didn't speak about RPM. So I'll just take a wild guess and assume it'll be a 4400 RPM or 5200 at best HDD because it's always what they use.
So cool, thanks for the Dual Core mister Dell. I'm glad I can encode my CD collection (not like It's not been done for at least 3 years) while waiting for my game to load.
Or the godfather just wanted to play it old school all the way thinking it was the way to go. But then again, he lived in a stable.
Thanks for the tip. But I have a Shuttle FB83 (Intel 915G + ICH6R, Award V6.0PG BIOS). The only game that ever crashes is Splinter Cell though, and I play a lot of games. So even if it's hardware related, they must use it not like they should or something.
I never experienced a hardware defect, and never noticed a loss of performance on my DVD player as some people reported. But I can't believe so many people would complain, and StarForce would look so dubious, and that game companies would have to do press releases to announce one or more of their games won't use this system, if there weren't any problems with this system.
So, for that reason only, and just in case, I don't want StarForce in the games I buy.
Now what Ubisoft should do is patch all of their games that use StarForce so not only upcoming games will not use this protection system, but the previously released as well. Then only will I believe them when they say "Ubisoft takes its customer concerns very seriously".
Some nerds know about biochemistry and how to make alcohol have a lower toxicity... and some nerds know about star trek. And some know both.
Well, I guess you won't see the lower price as an argument in favor of the console during the PC vs Consoles jousts on internet forums much longer.
Why do you say they'll never receive a French prize?
Yes, the software surrenders after you installed it. French, surrender, get it? Ok, so now it's done, please spare us the anti-french comments.
If Cisco plans to "invade" homes, they'll have to drop their IOS crap. Or at least develop a graphical management system. Command lines are fine and all, but anyone who dealt with IOS will tell you they wished they could set simple things via a graphical interface. And home consumers will never consider buying a product that they can configure only via a shell.
Why do you troll? I feel this is a legitimate question. Please note I never gave my personnal opinion about the US government accessing the search logs of non-US citizen.
Which brings in the "but logs are in the US so it's legal" issue.
Like I said, don't get me wrong. I'm all for a so-called global license (free or $5-10), where copyrighted material is legal to share on P2P networks.