Here's a high-res picture of the SWG data center that was hit by a tornado, as seen in those two cell-phone camera photos on the SWG site. I don't know why it's posted on the WoW site, though.
Smart people make backups of any original files that gets replaced by a crack, so they can restore them to apply a patch. And then wait the agonizing 1 to 5 days it takes for a new crack to come out.
October 8 is just the court date for Valve vs. VU, and doesn't hint at a release date at all. Frankly, I'd be surprised if HL2 came out as early as October 8. It normally takes around 2 weeks after a game has gone gold for it to be released. All Valve has produced so far is a release candidate, not a confirmed gold master.
This was proved true when Valve released Counter-Strike: Condition Zero as both a Steam download and a retail box. They both were introduced at $40. After a few months, the retail box fell to around $20-$30 depending on where you look, but the Steam download was still $40. The Steam price fell to $30 later, lagging behind retail prices. The problem with offering both a download and a CD is that if your download costs less than the CD, retailers are less inclined to order shipments of the CDs because they would be undersold by the actual developer, which is now a competitor of the retail stores. They don't want to piss off their distributors. This is the same reason why if some electronics manufacturer's site has an online store, they almost always sell everything at the list price, which is way more than the actual street price. The only way downloads could result in lower prices is if Valve bypasses the retailers entirely. If a CD version is offered, they would have to do it themselves.
The moral of this story (and any other stories detailing CD protection idiocy) is to always download the NoCD crack for any game you own. This bypasses any stupid annoyances caused by misguided copy-protection software, as well as saving you the trouble of having to insert your discs whenever you plan on playing a game.
Obviously, someone got their petabytes and terabytes mixed up. If you use 40 terabytes, you get 699 megabytes per movie and 3.8 megabytes per song, which is about right. Still doesn't explain 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, as that would be 400kb per song. The Routers story is the only one I've seen that mentions these numbers so I'm not sure if Ashcroft screwed it up or if it was an overeager journalist.
The AP version offers more details. It also has this sentence: Ashcroft said the hubs can store digital data each day equivalent to 60,000 full-length movies or 10 million songs. Doesn't mention anything about petabytes.
Most of the other large P2P programs rely on large centralized servers, which gives the RIAA, MPAA, and law enforcement agencies an easy target. Direct Connect, as mentioned by numerous other posters, is just a client/hub software package that lets anyone set up their own server for others to connect to. Think one giant MMORPG server operated by a game developer versus a few hundred small Quake servers operated by anyone with a spare box and a decent connection. If you take down the MMORPG server, nobody can play anymore (unless you join an unreliable hacked private server, but that's not the point). But if id software gets firebombed, people can still create and join Quake servers for as long as they want. Same deal if NeoModus gets shut down, especially since the most popular client for the Direct Connect protocol is 3rd party open-source. And there's plenty of open-source hub programs for it too. Even if the DoJ managed to get rid of every hub in the United States, that would eliminate only 20-30% of the network because most hubs are operated out of Europe (mostly Norway and Sweden). I'm not sure what seizing those computers really accomplishes though, other than taking hubs offline. A hub is just a router lets one person connect to the other. The hub never touches or sees any of the files that go between the users. Once you unplug it, it contains 0 petabytes of data.
In order to join the network, members had to promise to provide between one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, Ashcroft said. Also, I'd like to point out that this is a logical step to take if you want to make a Peer 2 Peer network instead of a Peer 2 Leech network.
GTA 3 had the Liberty Tree. Vice City had Kent Paul's 80s Nostalgia Zone! Both of these sites were launched and continuously updated a few months prior to the release of their respective games. Does San Andreas have one of these yet? If not, it's no big deal. We've still got I love bees to keep us entertained.
I'm not sure how this would work in multiplayer though. Different character models have different girths. Wouldn't the skinny L337 Crew guy be harder to hit than Seal Team 6 with his thick padding? Not to mention custom models. Doom 3's multiplayer has just one single character model with different colors. That way, the per-polygon hit detection is equal for everyone. How are Doom 3 mod-makers going to handle hit detection though? Can they still jury-rig a default hitbox for different models? Or will they start giving different attributes and HP based on body shape and volume?
Ghost Dog has a black character acting as a home boy samurai who raises pigeons and reads Hagakure. It also has old Italian gangsters who watch Itchy & Scratchy and listen to hip-hop. And a black Haitian ice-cream salesman who speaks only French.
Depends if Valve learned its lesson from letting people download Condition Zero over Steam to hack it into a 3rd party mod. The exploit lasted all the way from the release date into August, when Valve finally patched Steam. It'll probably still work if you can get the CZ updates elsewhere.
Anyone remember the Game Fan jap bastards incident? Game reviews were more interesting back when game magazines were hiring teenagers off the street and had poor editorial oversight.
The 1280x1024 number is the native resolution of the 17" LCD monitor the reviewer received. 17" LCDs rarely get any higher than that. An ATI X800 isn't going to make a Dell Ultrasharp defy its 1280x1024 limit in the same way it isn't going to make a 10-year-old 13" monitor defy it's 640x480 resolution. Arguing over this monitor is pointless anyway, since Dell.com lets you choose from 8 CRT and LCD monitors for the system.
Dell's standard mode of operation is to offer a system with some high gigahertz number in big bold numbers to hook the average consumer who thinks processor speed is everything. Then the rest of the system is loaded with the cheapest components by default so as to give it a nice starting price. And then people who buy it ask you "What do you mean my TNT2 and 64 megorbytes of RAM won't let me run Doom 3? It's got 3.2 Gigahertzors!" The only difference with the Dimension XPS is that it doesn't let you choose crap video or memory and forces at least an X800 and 512 MB RAM. Also, it has a shiny blue and silver case.
Derek Smart wouldn't have the reputation he has if he didn't go out of his way to feed the trolls. An earlier poster though "Derek seemed nice, wanting to keep the original series, and open to suggestions" in the Avault thread. But when people started bashing him on the HLP forum, he started shooting right back. If he responded to the reasonably thought out criticisms, it wouldn't be so bad. But he seemed to focus mainly on the juvenile "DEREK SMART?? MOR LIEK DEREK STUPID LOL!!!111" type of comments. First thing Mr. Smart does, of course, is insult everyone on the forum. As an added bonus, he ends the post with "That is all. As you were." Talking to people as if you are their military commander when you are in fact not their military commander does not instill them with loyalty and respect for you.
Let's also examine this exchange:
quote:Originally posted by Unknown Target Derek, we're all trying to calm down now. Please don't instigate people to flame again. This community is 99% proffesional, and everyone that's been here for more than 1 or 2 months acts very mature. If you'll look through the other threads, you'll see this to be the truth. It's just this whole...issue has raised tempers somewhat.
Wot? You finally decided to take your meds? I'm not inciting nor flaming anyone. Thats not my style unless the other side (like you for instance) starts first. I'm an equal opportunity jackass.
You see, to imply that someone has a psychological problem for which he needs medication is to incite an angry response. Maybe the social context is different in Florida or something.
It is generally unwise for the public face of a game company to start flamewars with the potential fanbase. Hence, you don't see Gabe Newell showing up and talking smack whenever someone makes a fat joke. It is also unwise to believe this statement: "Gents, some of the posts in this thread, are EXACTLY the reason why game developers AND publishers hardly pay attention to a game's fanbase." Game developers and publishers don't stop paying attention to its fanbase because a few people start spewing vitriol about them. They simply learn to ignore their anti-fanbase. Derek Smart, on the other hand, pays way too much attention to his anti-fanbase.
Battlecruiser 3000AD is not as horrible as everyone makes it out to be. The initial reaction was mostly the fault of Take 2's decision to release it in a buggy, unplayable state. But because of the Derek Smart mystique (somewhat akin to the John Romero mystique), people get in on the running joke without really knowing anything about the game. Then again, were Mr. Smart not so outspoken, he probably wouldn't have as much name recognition as he does now. (Does anyone know who the lead developer for Extreme PaintBrawl was?) Maybe Battlecruiser would have just faded away if he hadn't kept himself in the news. So I guess it works for him.
Triangle, man
Triangle, man
Triangle man hates DRM man
They have a fight, triangle wins Trinagle man
Is this a typo or intentional? Perhaps with the rearrangement of the 'a' and 'n' you are alluding to the corrupted data that is placed in copy-controlled CDs, designed to cause errors when computer CD-ROM drives try to read them. In most standard CD players (but not all, which is why this is a serious problem), error-control will fix these imperfections. So maybe you are hinting that, despite appearances, DRM man won in the end.
This seems like a sensible system for a new startup to compete against the bigger MMO games. Guild Wars lets you play online for free after you buy it and they'll keep up the revenue stream by periodically releasing expansion packs.
The traditional monthly fee structure in most games makes some users a bit anxious about how much time they can allot with the game. If they don't have the time or interest to put enough hours into a game, they'll feel that they're wasting money. This is why few people subscribe to more than one MMORPG at a time. But since Guild Wars doesn't have a monthly fee (and because combat effectiveness doesn't rely as much on levelling as skill/spell selection), gamers with existing accounts in other MMORPGs will feel more at ease picking up Guild Wars on the side, even if they don't plan to spend a lot of time in it.
You should use free services like Rebate Tracker to keep track of all you rebates to prevent them from getting "lost" by the issuers. Rebate Tracker will store the address, phone number, and website of the rebate issuer and notify you if 6-8 weeks has expired without you receiving a check. Since it keeps a database of all the rebates its users enter, you can usually find the rebate info without having to type it in yourself.
When stores have great deals like that, they don't want people to actually get it. They want people to see an ad, drive to the store, find out the product advertised is out of stock, and decide they might as well buy something else since they've already driven there. Often, the employees will spot the deal before the store opens too and buy out whatever limited quantity they have in stock.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a high-res picture of the SWG data center that was hit by a tornado, as seen in those two cell-phone camera photos on the SWG site. I don't know why it's posted on the WoW site, though.
Smart people make backups of any original files that gets replaced by a crack, so they can restore them to apply a patch. And then wait the agonizing 1 to 5 days it takes for a new crack to come out.
October 8 is just the court date for Valve vs. VU, and doesn't hint at a release date at all. Frankly, I'd be surprised if HL2 came out as early as October 8. It normally takes around 2 weeks after a game has gone gold for it to be released. All Valve has produced so far is a release candidate, not a confirmed gold master.
This was proved true when Valve released Counter-Strike: Condition Zero as both a Steam download and a retail box. They both were introduced at $40. After a few months, the retail box fell to around $20-$30 depending on where you look, but the Steam download was still $40. The Steam price fell to $30 later, lagging behind retail prices. The problem with offering both a download and a CD is that if your download costs less than the CD, retailers are less inclined to order shipments of the CDs because they would be undersold by the actual developer, which is now a competitor of the retail stores. They don't want to piss off their distributors. This is the same reason why if some electronics manufacturer's site has an online store, they almost always sell everything at the list price, which is way more than the actual street price. The only way downloads could result in lower prices is if Valve bypasses the retailers entirely. If a CD version is offered, they would have to do it themselves.
The moral of this story (and any other stories detailing CD protection idiocy) is to always download the NoCD crack for any game you own. This bypasses any stupid annoyances caused by misguided copy-protection software, as well as saving you the trouble of having to insert your discs whenever you plan on playing a game.
Obviously, someone got their petabytes and terabytes mixed up. If you use 40 terabytes, you get 699 megabytes per movie and 3.8 megabytes per song, which is about right. Still doesn't explain 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, as that would be 400kb per song. The Routers story is the only one I've seen that mentions these numbers so I'm not sure if Ashcroft screwed it up or if it was an overeager journalist. The AP version offers more details. It also has this sentence: Ashcroft said the hubs can store digital data each day equivalent to 60,000 full-length movies or 10 million songs. Doesn't mention anything about petabytes.
Most of the other large P2P programs rely on large centralized servers, which gives the RIAA, MPAA, and law enforcement agencies an easy target. Direct Connect, as mentioned by numerous other posters, is just a client/hub software package that lets anyone set up their own server for others to connect to. Think one giant MMORPG server operated by a game developer versus a few hundred small Quake servers operated by anyone with a spare box and a decent connection. If you take down the MMORPG server, nobody can play anymore (unless you join an unreliable hacked private server, but that's not the point). But if id software gets firebombed, people can still create and join Quake servers for as long as they want. Same deal if NeoModus gets shut down, especially since the most popular client for the Direct Connect protocol is 3rd party open-source. And there's plenty of open-source hub programs for it too. Even if the DoJ managed to get rid of every hub in the United States, that would eliminate only 20-30% of the network because most hubs are operated out of Europe (mostly Norway and Sweden). I'm not sure what seizing those computers really accomplishes though, other than taking hubs offline. A hub is just a router lets one person connect to the other. The hub never touches or sees any of the files that go between the users. Once you unplug it, it contains 0 petabytes of data.
In order to join the network, members had to promise to provide between one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, Ashcroft said.
Also, I'd like to point out that this is a logical step to take if you want to make a Peer 2 Peer network instead of a Peer 2 Leech network.
GTA 3 had the Liberty Tree. Vice City had Kent Paul's 80s Nostalgia Zone! Both of these sites were launched and continuously updated a few months prior to the release of their respective games. Does San Andreas have one of these yet? If not, it's no big deal. We've still got I love bees to keep us entertained.
I'm not sure how this would work in multiplayer though. Different character models have different girths. Wouldn't the skinny L337 Crew guy be harder to hit than Seal Team 6 with his thick padding? Not to mention custom models. Doom 3's multiplayer has just one single character model with different colors. That way, the per-polygon hit detection is equal for everyone. How are Doom 3 mod-makers going to handle hit detection though? Can they still jury-rig a default hitbox for different models? Or will they start giving different attributes and HP based on body shape and volume?
I remember this company. It figures that they would go under. Never trust a business that emulates the Divx model.
What I have a harder time naming is any games where an inteligent main (or at least important) character was black, latino, etc ...
Grim Fandango: Strong latino characters. Dead, but still latino.
Gabriel Knight: Smart, female Japanese sidekick.
Intelligent black characters? I'm having a hard time coming up with one. James Earl Jones as GDI Supreme Commander in Tiberian Sun?
It's not good that we have to think for 20 minutes to remember any intelligent minority game characters.
It's weird that you only list movies that have Danny Glover in them. Why don't you add some Morgan Freeman to the mix?
Ghost Dog has a black character acting as a home boy samurai who raises pigeons and reads Hagakure. It also has old Italian gangsters who watch Itchy & Scratchy and listen to hip-hop. And a black Haitian ice-cream salesman who speaks only French.
Depends if Valve learned its lesson from letting people download Condition Zero over Steam to hack it into a 3rd party mod. The exploit lasted all the way from the release date into August, when Valve finally patched Steam. It'll probably still work if you can get the CZ updates elsewhere.
Anyone remember the Game Fan jap bastards incident? Game reviews were more interesting back when game magazines were hiring teenagers off the street and had poor editorial oversight.
The 1280x1024 number is the native resolution of the 17" LCD monitor the reviewer received. 17" LCDs rarely get any higher than that. An ATI X800 isn't going to make a Dell Ultrasharp defy its 1280x1024 limit in the same way it isn't going to make a 10-year-old 13" monitor defy it's 640x480 resolution. Arguing over this monitor is pointless anyway, since Dell.com lets you choose from 8 CRT and LCD monitors for the system.
Dell's standard mode of operation is to offer a system with some high gigahertz number in big bold numbers to hook the average consumer who thinks processor speed is everything. Then the rest of the system is loaded with the cheapest components by default so as to give it a nice starting price. And then people who buy it ask you "What do you mean my TNT2 and 64 megorbytes of RAM won't let me run Doom 3? It's got 3.2 Gigahertzors!" The only difference with the Dimension XPS is that it doesn't let you choose crap video or memory and forces at least an X800 and 512 MB RAM. Also, it has a shiny blue and silver case.
I've always thought of it as the "I want to fight pollution!" kick.
Let's also examine this exchange:
You see, to imply that someone has a psychological problem for which he needs medication is to incite an angry response. Maybe the social context is different in Florida or something.It is generally unwise for the public face of a game company to start flamewars with the potential fanbase. Hence, you don't see Gabe Newell showing up and talking smack whenever someone makes a fat joke. It is also unwise to believe this statement: "Gents, some of the posts in this thread, are EXACTLY the reason why game developers AND publishers hardly pay attention to a game's fanbase." Game developers and publishers don't stop paying attention to its fanbase because a few people start spewing vitriol about them. They simply learn to ignore their anti-fanbase. Derek Smart, on the other hand, pays way too much attention to his anti-fanbase.
Battlecruiser 3000AD is not as horrible as everyone makes it out to be. The initial reaction was mostly the fault of Take 2's decision to release it in a buggy, unplayable state. But because of the Derek Smart mystique (somewhat akin to the John Romero mystique), people get in on the running joke without really knowing anything about the game. Then again, were Mr. Smart not so outspoken, he probably wouldn't have as much name recognition as he does now. (Does anyone know who the lead developer for Extreme PaintBrawl was?) Maybe Battlecruiser would have just faded away if he hadn't kept himself in the news. So I guess it works for him.
Triangle, man
Triangle man hates DRM man
They have a fight, triangle wins
Trinagle man
Is this a typo or intentional? Perhaps with the rearrangement of the 'a' and 'n' you are alluding to the corrupted data that is placed in copy-controlled CDs, designed to cause errors when computer CD-ROM drives try to read them. In most standard CD players (but not all, which is why this is a serious problem), error-control will fix these imperfections. So maybe you are hinting that, despite appearances, DRM man won in the end.
Traitor.
The traditional monthly fee structure in most games makes some users a bit anxious about how much time they can allot with the game. If they don't have the time or interest to put enough hours into a game, they'll feel that they're wasting money. This is why few people subscribe to more than one MMORPG at a time. But since Guild Wars doesn't have a monthly fee (and because combat effectiveness doesn't rely as much on levelling as skill/spell selection), gamers with existing accounts in other MMORPGs will feel more at ease picking up Guild Wars on the side, even if they don't plan to spend a lot of time in it.
Keen would also moon you if you stood in a specific spot in a specific level.
You should use free services like Rebate Tracker to keep track of all you rebates to prevent them from getting "lost" by the issuers. Rebate Tracker will store the address, phone number, and website of the rebate issuer and notify you if 6-8 weeks has expired without you receiving a check. Since it keeps a database of all the rebates its users enter, you can usually find the rebate info without having to type it in yourself.
When stores have great deals like that, they don't want people to actually get it. They want people to see an ad, drive to the store, find out the product advertised is out of stock, and decide they might as well buy something else since they've already driven there. Often, the employees will spot the deal before the store opens too and buy out whatever limited quantity they have in stock.
I'm sure all those alarmist scapegoaters are going to blame this act of violence on video games.
But you're linking to the slashdot posts. Therefore I didn't read your post.