I suggest that people in the same situation than this persona, ie: disability preventing to provide a fast and/or complex input to the game, check out Eve Online. The game is mainly played from contextual menus. So you just need to be able to move a cursor, and do a right click. That's the minimum required in order to play. The game doesn't require very fast reflexes/movements either.
Please, do not mod me down, this is not a hidden advertisement. I just wanted to let disabled people know that there are some alternatives for them to check.
Yves Guillemot is not just a "Ubisoft rep.", he's the CEO (being one of the Guillemot brothers, who founded Guillemot - videogames - and Hercules - hardware).
Considering the Ministère des Finances and the Police services are using OpenOffice, Paris administration is about to switch to Linux and Police offices also use OSS, I don't think it's fair to say the French government is against Open Source. The previous Prime Minister (Jean-Pierre Raffarin) also strongly pused toward Open Source for schools. These are just badly reported facts of the French RIAA asking for OSS to be 'banned' because a lot of P2P software used for piracy are Open Source.
The status, right now, and I know because I live in French, is that this will be considered, and when the Powers That Be will realize how stupid this claim is, it will be dismissed. k?
PA strips are usually shorter (much like PVP), and there is no plot. PA is just a way for its authors to express how they feel about the gaming industry events. CAD is more like a story following a few gamers.
The Glide Free Subscription requires your credit card number "for verification purposes". There are other ways to check, and since I don't like giving out my credit card number for no real reason, I think I'll pass.
Well, my bad regarding the PS2 then. But my point stands. Sony has a far better reputation than Microsoft (and that advance is getting thing, ie: Rootkit issue).
"The system is well designed and performs well, launching the next-generation of gaming consoles."
I don't know about you, but to me, having even 1% of the sold consoles experiencing problem as trivial as PSU overheating, makes the console not well designed and performing well. When you design a piece of hardware, you don't check only if the processors can compute 1+1=2, but also if, you know, you can power on the damn thing.
"Sony, who currently relies on its gaming division to prop up its electronics division, continues to develop the PS3 with more limited resources."
I don't know if the author realizes that Sony also has huge revenues from movies (via Sony Pictures) and music (via "a href="http://www.sonybmg.com/">Sony BMG).
"With a 6-month head start, the Xbox 360 claims the dominant location in households who are unable to afford owning both the PS3 and the Xbox 360."
That's my own interpretation here, but Microsoft might not dominate the market as stated in the article. Microsoft suffers from bad reputation. Even the lamest user know that Windows crashes a lot ("duh! My computer is bugging!"), gamers know that the original Xbox had severe issues (early units couldn't read later games because of a crappy DVD player that could read multi-layer discs), not to mention the above-mentionned defective PSU for the X360. As far as I know (and I may be wrong), PS2 never suffered any thing of that kind, and Sony has overall a good reputation (since people think they do great electronic device, which is kind of true unless you can afford to spend a few more bucks for higher quality equipment). And no, I'm not an anti-Microsoft. I run Windows XP and I bought a Xbox, kthx.
Liberty, equality, brotherhood. The tagline for the French republic. So they have to use free software , or they'd be breaking their ideals. Like "God bless America and the separation of church and state". I'm suprised the French don't use more free software, given their hate for America and the anglofication of their language, of which computers are a big cause.
"Given their hate for America" ? Duh? France doesn't "hate" America any more than any country in the world, and probably like America more than most countries in the world. As for the "anglofication" of the language, well the Elders try to prevent it, but most of the youth use a lot of english words (like "cool", "joystick", "chat"), and a lot of english words are also commonly used ("parking", "joystick", "week-end", etc...). Many efforts are made to keep the french language and culture alive though. And I think it's great because the french culture is good (a lot of renowned book authors or poets for instance). Not "the best culture in the world", because no such thing exists, but definitively a great one.
I used a French version of windows ocne. Only the very front was translated, any error messages, anything practically not visible at first view was still in English.
I use a French Windows everyday, and basically everything is translated, except maybe the Blue Screen Of Death. I think what you saw could be third-parties software error messages not translated. Microsoft actually did a great job (aaar! don't mod me down!) translating their OS's to French (I don't know for other languages).
And thank the French language for having separate words gratuit and libre, to distringuish the meanings of free. No excuse for the open source buzzword coerupting ouyr message there.
Just for the people who don't know: gratuit means free (as in beer), libre means free (as in open source and freedom). So Firefox is gratuit and libre.
The debate here is not which 'freedom of speech' is better. The debate is "Would the US freedom of speech be in jeopardy if another country/agency managed the root DNS servers?". Answer is 'no', because US laws would overule for websites hosted in the US. For website hosted in different countries, the laws of the said countries would overule. Period.
Duh. I don't see how the free speech factors in. As far as I know, Europe asked for a 'neutral', as in not-tied-nor-funded-by-one-government, agency to manage the DNS, not to control it (that would be plain stupid).
And the national laws would still overule any laws of the countries the international agency would be.
Saying the Slashdot is a testament to USA's free speech mentality is true; but/. could exist in just about any other democratic country, including any European country. I can say that my president is a dumb fuck and not be censored in any way - and I don't live in the US. Basically the main difference beetween US/European 'free speech' is that in most European countries you cannot publicly call for hate against a religion, a group of people, or be a negationist (ie: say that the Holocaust didn't happen).
Just because you read the article linked in the story doesn't mean you can't click on the links in the linked article. If you did, you'd have visited this webpage and you'd know what parent was talking about regarding Northend, 100-men large instance, Emerald Dream and the new class.
Well, Bush administration's members have shares in companies that have government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. Now that's a conflic of interest too, and I don't hear much buzz about it (and don't ask me for sources, go visit Wikipedia). My point is not to bash Bush, but to point out that any person in a position of power has one way or the other some "conflicts of interest".
Recently, Turbine announced 125 000 (!!!) applications for Dungeons & Dragons Online alpha. Now that's ridiculous. It's a marketing trick to make everyone believe that, even in early stages of development, the game seems interresting to a lot of people.
Then you have Blizzard, who didn't requested a NDA for World of Warcraft. This way, a lot of people would make movies, screenshots, features reviews, etc... Another marketing trick to create a lot of hype.
And you have Sigil, who allows only the people who registered on their forums before the beta 1 announcement. To me, that means that only people who really look after this game, so much that they bothered to register on the forums, will have the opportunity to apply. Sigil also indicated that they might conduct phone interviews with some applicants.
So, yes, a lot of people want to get in the betas just to have a free sneak peek - even if the game is far from being "done" (if that's even possible for a MMO). But I think what can make a difference is the way you select your beta testers.
I don't want to sound sarcastic. I really don't. But what did Microsoft actually "invent" ? And I mean major things we use every day. They didn't invent, nor helped to spread, digital medias such as mp3 (Thomson did) or highly compressed, yet pretty good quality, videos (I guess DivX is not the first, but it sure helped a lot more than any other). They didn't invent instant messengers. They didn't invent the "Operating System" concept. They didn't invent GUI. As far as I know they didn't invent any major protocol. They didn't invent 3D Api. They didn't invent the text editor, nor anything we can see in the Office suite. They didn't even invent the force feedback on pads and joystick, nor the "laser" mouses or whatever it's called.
I'd be inclined to agree that they fairly improved many of these things, after buying the companies that initially developped them. Well, "improve", or rather "made them widely available to the base consumer". We can't deny how Microsoft helped the computers to become the major tool it is today, but I honestly fail to see what major invention they came up with.
You've got some very good points sl3xd. I guess I just wished that Internet was managed by a group that we are 100% sure is independant and hermetic to lobying, government pressure, etc... But you're right that, so far, the US didn't abuse their position. So far. Call me a pessimist, but just because it didn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.
Considering the number of your posts that were modded as "Troll" or "Flamebait", I'm not shocked by the tone of your post - pretty vehement. Not a very good proof of wisdom or bright intellect, but whatever. You keep saying UN sucks, basically, but yet you fail to prove or give any example of your statements.
For instance, you say "The usefulness of the UN is directly proportional to WHAT THE UN DOES, nothing more. They have a budget, they have resources, they HAVE POWER". So explain to me then, why when the UN tells the US "Don't attack Iraq" the US attack anyway (I'm sure you'll find a good excuse, like blaming Europe for being a pussy), or China to be more democratic, basically fails when it tries to impose its will on powerful countries ? The UN doesn't have the power you say it has because countries refuse to give it. And that's exactly my point.
I see. You're completely off-topic, that's all. USA are not a creation, in the sense of invention, it's a country... I wonder why I even responded to this point.
As for the hardware, it's not *that* expensive on a country/UN budget. But I guess the US could *give* the hardware, since they don't pay their share to the UN for some reasons ; but that's another thing.
Oh, and it's not 'your' internet. Internet should belong to everybody, which is pretty much the point I'm trying to make by stating it shouldn't be managed by the USA.
Yes, you're clearly right. Let's immediately give sovereign control of the United States to the UN.
I don't see the link beetween my post and what you just said. Either I'm too stupid, or you're not really good at sarcasm.
The US doesn't -need- any arguements to keep it the internet in it's control. The UN hasn't given anything besides "we want it" or "We don't trust the US." Which is countered by the US saying "We have it" and "We don't trust any of -you- to run it either."
Why is that? Internet is used worldwide, I don't see why the US should have the control over it. The US should take care of the.us domains, and that's it. The Germany should take care of the.de, the Canada of.ca, and so on. "Countryless" domains should be managed by a neutral party. Why people should trust the US more than any other country?
The US invented ARPANET. Internet, even if it has got its roots in Arpanet, is something else. Many technologies used in Internet are not US-only though (think ATM). And thanks for the utterly insecure TCP/IP...
I fail to undestand why creating something gives you the right to manage it 30 years later when that thing clearly went out of control (Internet is, clearly, out of control, refer to RIAA issues for more informations) and when it's got not much to do with the original. Or maybe only Austrians should be allowed to use E=MC^2 ?
I don't see _arguments_ from the US reps. to keep this control. "We think that's unacceptable.". That's your right, dude. But, duh, why do you think that, just so we know? The US never liked the UN because it's a (feeble, granted) counter-power of their might. I can undestand that, but I, personnaly, think it's more demotractic to have an assembly of all the countries on earth to decide what to do than just one strong country. But that's just me. Unfortunately, many americans seem to believe that their own vision of freedom and democracy is the only one.
Some people here say "UN is useless, kthxlala~". Well, if powerful countries refuse to give any use, power or anything to the UN, it will stay, indeed, pretty useless.
My personnal opinion is that Internet should be managed by a, say, Bureau of the Internet in the UN, with representatives of several countries, elected or nominated for a few years. Their decisions would have to be approved by the UN assembly, and they'd work closely with the W3C and important actors of the industry.
Well there are also Forgotten Realms book - they came out after the P&P game but before the games like Baldur's Gates and Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft's, Starcraft's. I just hope they'll never release a Mario Bross one:)
For the french to "win", they had to give out a few things. Most of the countries, for the last few monthes, agreed that France was better suited for this facility because of their great knowledge of nuclear (France was one of the first countries to develop both civil and military nuclear facilities). Also, because of Japan's very active sismic activity, that could have been a problem (we don't want to see a 12 billion dollars facility to be destroyed because of a earthquake, do we ?).
Also, in order to have the Japanese agree to let the project happen in France, they required that the director of the facility was a Japanese. Also keep in mind that EU and France will have to pay 40% of the bill, while the remaining countries will "only" have to pay 10% each.
500 scientists will be working there, half of them being not french. An estimated 3000-4000 other jobs will be created in the region.
The facility itself will cost 12$ billions, but another 8 or 10$ billions will have to be spent within the 10 years following the creation. Specialists estimate that the first results in industry will be seen in about 40 or 50 years. Overall, I'd say it's a pretty good deal for the France (because of the jobs created and the "proudness" of having the largest fusion reactor in the world), but since all the other countries will, of course, profit of the research there, it's not that much of an advantage.
What we, tech savvy people, should do, is open a website where we'd list all the websites compliants only with IE, and list portions of their source code that make it so. Maybe it's time to educate webdesigners and decision makers of the cons (and pros, if any) of being compatible only with one browser, all possible exploits, etc...
Basically, just being productives instead of just looking at the market share figures. Like, pro-active, you know.
Slashdot Mirror
Please, do not mod me down, this is not a hidden advertisement. I just wanted to let disabled people know that there are some alternatives for them to check.
Guillemot brothers founded Ubisoft - videogames - and Guillemot (later on renamed "Hercules") for hardware. My bad.
Yves Guillemot is not just a "Ubisoft rep.", he's the CEO (being one of the Guillemot brothers, who founded Guillemot - videogames - and Hercules - hardware).
The status, right now, and I know because I live in French, is that this will be considered, and when the Powers That Be will realize how stupid this claim is, it will be dismissed. k?
PA strips are usually shorter (much like PVP), and there is no plot. PA is just a way for its authors to express how they feel about the gaming industry events. CAD is more like a story following a few gamers.
The Glide Free Subscription requires your credit card number "for verification purposes". There are other ways to check, and since I don't like giving out my credit card number for no real reason, I think I'll pass.
Well, my bad regarding the PS2 then. But my point stands. Sony has a far better reputation than Microsoft (and that advance is getting thing, ie: Rootkit issue).
"The system is well designed and performs well, launching the next-generation of gaming consoles."
I don't know about you, but to me, having even 1% of the sold consoles experiencing problem as trivial as PSU overheating, makes the console not well designed and performing well. When you design a piece of hardware, you don't check only if the processors can compute 1+1=2, but also if, you know, you can power on the damn thing.
"Sony, who currently relies on its gaming division to prop up its electronics division, continues to develop the PS3 with more limited resources."
I don't know if the author realizes that Sony also has huge revenues from movies (via Sony Pictures) and music (via "a href="http://www.sonybmg.com/">Sony BMG).
"With a 6-month head start, the Xbox 360 claims the dominant location in households who are unable to afford owning both the PS3 and the Xbox 360."
That's my own interpretation here, but Microsoft might not dominate the market as stated in the article. Microsoft suffers from bad reputation. Even the lamest user know that Windows crashes a lot ("duh! My computer is bugging!"), gamers know that the original Xbox had severe issues (early units couldn't read later games because of a crappy DVD player that could read multi-layer discs), not to mention the above-mentionned defective PSU for the X360.
As far as I know (and I may be wrong), PS2 never suffered any thing of that kind, and Sony has overall a good reputation (since people think they do great electronic device, which is kind of true unless you can afford to spend a few more bucks for higher quality equipment). And no, I'm not an anti-Microsoft. I run Windows XP and I bought a Xbox, kthx.
"Given their hate for America" ? Duh? France doesn't "hate" America any more than any country in the world, and probably like America more than most countries in the world. As for the "anglofication" of the language, well the Elders try to prevent it, but most of the youth use a lot of english words (like "cool", "joystick", "chat"), and a lot of english words are also commonly used ("parking", "joystick", "week-end", etc...). Many efforts are made to keep the french language and culture alive though. And I think it's great because the french culture is good (a lot of renowned book authors or poets for instance). Not "the best culture in the world", because no such thing exists, but definitively a great one.
I used a French version of windows ocne. Only the very front was translated, any error messages, anything practically not visible at first view was still in English.
I use a French Windows everyday, and basically everything is translated, except maybe the Blue Screen Of Death. I think what you saw could be third-parties software error messages not translated. Microsoft actually did a great job (aaar! don't mod me down!) translating their OS's to French (I don't know for other languages).
And thank the French language for having separate words gratuit and libre, to distringuish the meanings of free. No excuse for the open source buzzword coerupting ouyr message there.
Just for the people who don't know: gratuit means free (as in beer), libre means free (as in open source and freedom). So Firefox is gratuit and libre.
The debate here is not which 'freedom of speech' is better. The debate is "Would the US freedom of speech be in jeopardy if another country/agency managed the root DNS servers?". Answer is 'no', because US laws would overule for websites hosted in the US. For website hosted in different countries, the laws of the said countries would overule. Period.
And the national laws would still overule any laws of the countries the international agency would be.
Saying the Slashdot is a testament to USA's free speech mentality is true; but /. could exist in just about any other democratic country, including any European country. I can say that my president is a dumb fuck and not be censored in any way - and I don't live in the US. Basically the main difference beetween US/European 'free speech' is that in most European countries you cannot publicly call for hate against a religion, a group of people, or be a negationist (ie: say that the Holocaust didn't happen).
Well, at least now you can play a Wookie.
Just because you read the article linked in the story doesn't mean you can't click on the links in the linked article. If you did, you'd have visited this webpage and you'd know what parent was talking about regarding Northend, 100-men large instance, Emerald Dream and the new class.
Well, Bush administration's members have shares in companies that have government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. Now that's a conflic of interest too, and I don't hear much buzz about it (and don't ask me for sources, go visit Wikipedia). My point is not to bash Bush, but to point out that any person in a position of power has one way or the other some "conflicts of interest".
Then you have Blizzard, who didn't requested a NDA for World of Warcraft. This way, a lot of people would make movies, screenshots, features reviews, etc... Another marketing trick to create a lot of hype.
And you have Sigil, who allows only the people who registered on their forums before the beta 1 announcement. To me, that means that only people who really look after this game, so much that they bothered to register on the forums, will have the opportunity to apply. Sigil also indicated that they might conduct phone interviews with some applicants.
So, yes, a lot of people want to get in the betas just to have a free sneak peek - even if the game is far from being "done" (if that's even possible for a MMO). But I think what can make a difference is the way you select your beta testers.
I'd be inclined to agree that they fairly improved many of these things, after buying the companies that initially developped them. Well, "improve", or rather "made them widely available to the base consumer". We can't deny how Microsoft helped the computers to become the major tool it is today, but I honestly fail to see what major invention they came up with.
You've got some very good points sl3xd. I guess I just wished that Internet was managed by a group that we are 100% sure is independant and hermetic to lobying, government pressure, etc... But you're right that, so far, the US didn't abuse their position. So far. Call me a pessimist, but just because it didn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.
Really, post real arguments, sources and examples before calling people buffoons :)
For instance, you say "The usefulness of the UN is directly proportional to WHAT THE UN DOES, nothing more. They have a budget, they have resources, they HAVE POWER". So explain to me then, why when the UN tells the US "Don't attack Iraq" the US attack anyway (I'm sure you'll find a good excuse, like blaming Europe for being a pussy), or China to be more democratic, basically fails when it tries to impose its will on powerful countries ? The UN doesn't have the power you say it has because countries refuse to give it. And that's exactly my point.
As for the hardware, it's not *that* expensive on a country/UN budget. But I guess the US could *give* the hardware, since they don't pay their share to the UN for some reasons ; but that's another thing.
Oh, and it's not 'your' internet. Internet should belong to everybody, which is pretty much the point I'm trying to make by stating it shouldn't be managed by the USA.
Well there are also Forgotten Realms book - they came out after the P&P game but before the games like Baldur's Gates and Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft's, Starcraft's. I just hope they'll never release a Mario Bross one :)
Also, in order to have the Japanese agree to let the project happen in France, they required that the director of the facility was a Japanese. Also keep in mind that EU and France will have to pay 40% of the bill, while the remaining countries will "only" have to pay 10% each.
500 scientists will be working there, half of them being not french. An estimated 3000-4000 other jobs will be created in the region.
The facility itself will cost 12$ billions, but another 8 or 10$ billions will have to be spent within the 10 years following the creation. Specialists estimate that the first results in industry will be seen in about 40 or 50 years. Overall, I'd say it's a pretty good deal for the France (because of the jobs created and the "proudness" of having the largest fusion reactor in the world), but since all the other countries will, of course, profit of the research there, it's not that much of an advantage.
Basically, just being productives instead of just looking at the market share figures. Like, pro-active, you know.