I work at a 2,000 person organization outside the US. The institution has formally adopted a policy that no sensitive data can be hosted in the US, precisely due to the Patriot Act.
Don't look for logic in this. They would rather we use a server sitting under some IT guy's desk than use, say, DropBox, which is based on encrypted S3 storage. But perceptions are everything.
Ok, since you asked, here is my anecdotal evidence. I have owned my Kindle for about a year. With daily use, it was worked flawlessly for all of that year, with three exceptions. In each of these cases, the reader froze, and had to be hard-reset and recharged.
All three happened while I was on trans-Atlantic flights.
It's a bit of a coincidence. I personally would not outright dismiss the possibility that there is something going on.
In my first job, I was responsible for developing a programming environment for a Pascal-like language that included a visual editor, interpreter and debugger. I remember my boss showing up in my office and showing me an ad he had cooked up, with big, bold lettering saying "Runs in 256 kB!"
As a young developer, it was one of the tougher moments in my life to admit that we were going to need a full 512 kB.
It was difficult living in a world where Turbo Pascal ran comfortably on a 64 kB machine.
Private academic publishers do extremely little for the exclusive copyright that they demand. Academics write the papers. Other academics peer-review them. Academics volunteer as editors and publicists. In most cases, none of these people are paid by the publisher for their work.
Increasingly, academic publications are digital only, meaning that literally the only service being provided by the publishers is to put the papers on a web site, behind a paywall.
Many academics that I know engage in "civil disobediance" and post their papers publicly anyway. Some publishers (notably the ACM) actually permit this. But most do not.
Princeton on its own won't be enough to change the system, but hopefully a few other big names will follow, and tip the balance.
Of course we all shake our heads in wonder that such a fuss would be created in Russia over fiction in a video game. But I wonder how US media would react, say, if a Chinese company released a game featuring US rednecks heading into a first nations reserve and gunning down everyone in sight, including women and children. Just thinkin'...
The problem is that most games are too long. Content creation is where the money is spent. Many games seem to feel the need to provide 100+ hours of play. Give us 10 hours of gameplay and charge less, not more, and the majority of people who never finish today's epic games will come flocking to your door.
People like Bruce on Games rabbit on and on about how used game sales take money away from developers, leading to lower profits, and lower re-investment in new games.
I've never bought this argument. Surely people are more likely to buy new games if they believe they can get a few bucks back on resale. And people who want the game right now are going to prefer to pay the new game price over waiting to get it second hand.
Does anyone have real evidence that the used game industry really harms developers?
This article has a fairly comprehensive list addressing the "how is it harmful" question.
The truth is, most people will never notice that SecuROM is installed. But if you do run into a problem, SecuROM is very hard to remove, and in fact goes to great lengths to conceal its presence.
Um, no. This kind of EULA works fine for slashdot where you post in order to broadcast your wise opinions. But if I write a private document using Google docs, I want and expect it to remain private. The EULA allows Google to do pretty much anything they like with it, including translating it, publishing it or using it for publicity purposes.
I'm willing to accept that this is a case of copying and pasting an existing EULA without thinking too hard about whether it makes sense in a new context. But there is a real problem, and Google should fix it.
While I completely agree with you, I wonder how much of an issue this is in practice. Exactly how many 10 year old games are you playing today? Is it even remotely likely you'll still be playing Mass Effect in 10 years?
There is no way around that fact that ads break the immersion of games.
Even when optional, ads are still bad. The absence of an ad breaks immersion. If I see a big sign that is blank or has place-holder art, I will think "oh ho, that's for an ad". Boom, the flow is broken.
And in an online game, I want to play with other people who are immersed in the game. I don't want them cackling over voice chat about the cameltoe on that sports drink model in an ad that I can't see.
Ads in online games are just a bad idea. We are inundated with ads in almost every aspect of our lives, from TV to radio, to the billboards in front of us when we take a piss. The whole point of online games is fantasy. Can't we have that fantasy without Coke and McDonald's intruding?
The "picture book" is here. (Warning, this is a word document.)
His basic premise in creating the book was to make his arguments crystal clear, through illustration. In fact, his submission is a wandering and apparently pointless scree. It's reminiscent of the kind of rants people write when their WoW account is suspended.
I can well understand the court's reaction. It isn't because of the fact of using a picture-book style; it's the lack of any coherent argument in said picture book.
As I understand cross-pollination, other peoples' creatures will show up in my world. This is really cool, but how do they solve the problem of someone's giant-oozing-penis race winding up on some 6 year old's computer? Surely the don't plan to hand-moderate all content?
If he's competently leading the party, does it matter if he's an 11 year old boy or a 70 year old woman? Either way you're getting things done.
Sure, but most people aren't playing MMOs just to "get things done"; they're playing to have fun in a social environment.
One of the amazing things about MMOs is that you often wind up socializing way out of your normal social group -- economic, education level, political leanings, and yes, age. But finding out how far you are from your normal peers can be jarring. You wouldn't dream of going over to the local schoolyard and asking if any of the kids there want to hang out with you, and so it feels weird to find out that you're doing the virtual equivalent of exactly that. It has nothing to do with the kid's perceived intelligence or competence.
These "reviews" are just sad... No one enjoys them... Thanks, rAINsT0rm, for taking the trouble to speak for me (and everyone else on the planet). Here I thought I had enjoyed reading this review. Nice of you to set me (and everyone else) straight.
I had the pleasure to work as a reviewer for a number of years... And if you learned anything from this experience, surely you realize that a critique based only on ad hominem attacks is not worth the bandwidth used to transmit it?
I don't want Brutal Violence to stop working just because the company that made it goes banckrupt[sic] or decides to boost sales for Brutal Violence 2.
I think this is one of those problems that is worse in theory than in practice. I have games in my collection that I can no longer play because the CD has gotten damaged or lost. In none of those cases is the manufacturer bankrupt. And anyway, the goal would be to have everyone standardize on the same verification service (Steam or similar), not to have every little company run their own.
But you make one good point. If it is possible for people to patch out the check, then the whole mechanism becomes as pointless as the current CD check.
Just think how bad the early adopters of the PS3 must feel when they see that new models got rid of that annoying backward compatibility feature. Man, those people must be steamed.
I'm a casual player as well... My only character in the game was a level 60. From level 60-70, I've probably gone on 20 small-man dungeon runs (5 players) and done about 400-500 quests. I've levelled up my leatherworking and saved money for my epic flying mount...
If you are level 60+, do raids, hundreds of quests and crafting, then you are not a casual player. You have invested hundreds of hours in the game. In almost any other leisure activity, this would be considered near fanatical devotion. Yes, you may not be in the same league as people who play for 40+ hours a week, but this does not make you casual.
I don't want to pick on you in particular, though; you are far from the only player to spend enormous time in MMOG game worlds while somehow referring to their activities as "casual". A river in Egypt, as they say...
While these numbers indicate that the PS3's sales are below expectation, there is another interesting interpretation. Microsoft had sold 10 million Xbox 360's by the end of 2006. If Sony genuinely sells 4.5 million by end of March, they will have almost half the user base of the 360. Given all the doomcasting we've been hearing, that is not actually that bad a place to be after only three months in the market.
(And yes, yes, Microsoft is also selling 360's during the same period, but while sales may have been steady, I can't imagine they were flying off the shelves in a January when there were two shiny competitors on the market.)
...the quantity of games played by a gamer decreases with age
But aren't the over-30's more likely to pay for said games?
According to the ESA, parents of children under 18 are present 89% of the time when games are purchased or rented. Presumably most of these parents have dinged 30.
But this law is silly for all sorts of other reasons.
An issue that has received little to no press is Vista's environmental impact. If Microsoft succeeds in convincing users to upgrade to powerful graphics cards to handle its new Aero user interface, power consumption will dramatically increase on hundreds of millions of computers around the planet.
It is ironic that the Gates foundation has been performing such good works in Africa while at the same time, Microsoft is on the verge of releasing a disastrous contribution to global warming.
Slashdot Mirror
I work at a 2,000 person organization outside the US. The institution has formally adopted a policy that no sensitive data can be hosted in the US, precisely due to the Patriot Act.
Don't look for logic in this. They would rather we use a server sitting under some IT guy's desk than use, say, DropBox, which is based on encrypted S3 storage. But perceptions are everything.
Ok, since you asked, here is my anecdotal evidence. I have owned my Kindle for about a year. With daily use, it was worked flawlessly for all of that year, with three exceptions. In each of these cases, the reader froze, and had to be hard-reset and recharged.
All three happened while I was on trans-Atlantic flights.
It's a bit of a coincidence. I personally would not outright dismiss the possibility that there is something going on.
In my first job, I was responsible for developing a programming environment for a Pascal-like language that included a visual editor, interpreter and debugger. I remember my boss showing up in my office and showing me an ad he had cooked up, with big, bold lettering saying "Runs in 256 kB!"
As a young developer, it was one of the tougher moments in my life to admit that we were going to need a full 512 kB.
It was difficult living in a world where Turbo Pascal ran comfortably on a 64 kB machine.
Private academic publishers do extremely little for the exclusive copyright that they demand. Academics write the papers. Other academics peer-review them. Academics volunteer as editors and publicists. In most cases, none of these people are paid by the publisher for their work.
Increasingly, academic publications are digital only, meaning that literally the only service being provided by the publishers is to put the papers on a web site, behind a paywall.
Many academics that I know engage in "civil disobediance" and post their papers publicly anyway. Some publishers (notably the ACM) actually permit this. But most do not.
Princeton on its own won't be enough to change the system, but hopefully a few other big names will follow, and tip the balance.
Of course we all shake our heads in wonder that such a fuss would be created in Russia over fiction in a video game. But I wonder how US media would react, say, if a Chinese company released a game featuring US rednecks heading into a first nations reserve and gunning down everyone in sight, including women and children. Just thinkin'...
The problem is that most games are too long. Content creation is where the money is spent. Many games seem to feel the need to provide 100+ hours of play. Give us 10 hours of gameplay and charge less, not more, and the majority of people who never finish today's epic games will come flocking to your door.
Or the summary -- fewer Oblivions, more Portals.
People like Bruce on Games rabbit on and on about how used game sales take money away from developers, leading to lower profits, and lower re-investment in new games.
I've never bought this argument. Surely people are more likely to buy new games if they believe they can get a few bucks back on resale. And people who want the game right now are going to prefer to pay the new game price over waiting to get it second hand.
Does anyone have real evidence that the used game industry really harms developers?
This article has a fairly comprehensive list addressing the "how is it harmful" question.
The truth is, most people will never notice that SecuROM is installed. But if you do run into a problem, SecuROM is very hard to remove, and in fact goes to great lengths to conceal its presence.
Um, no. This kind of EULA works fine for slashdot where you post in order to broadcast your wise opinions. But if I write a private document using Google docs, I want and expect it to remain private. The EULA allows Google to do pretty much anything they like with it, including translating it, publishing it or using it for publicity purposes.
I'm willing to accept that this is a case of copying and pasting an existing EULA without thinking too hard about whether it makes sense in a new context. But there is a real problem, and Google should fix it.
TFA ftw?
While I completely agree with you, I wonder how much of an issue this is in practice. Exactly how many 10 year old games are you playing today? Is it even remotely likely you'll still be playing Mass Effect in 10 years?
Oh please; I played CoH for months. I know the game and I understand that they are reusing existing billboards.
What about that fact addresses the arguments I made in any way?
There is no way around that fact that ads break the immersion of games.
Even when optional, ads are still bad. The absence of an ad breaks immersion. If I see a big sign that is blank or has place-holder art, I will think "oh ho, that's for an ad". Boom, the flow is broken.
And in an online game, I want to play with other people who are immersed in the game. I don't want them cackling over voice chat about the cameltoe on that sports drink model in an ad that I can't see.
Ads in online games are just a bad idea. We are inundated with ads in almost every aspect of our lives, from TV to radio, to the billboards in front of us when we take a piss. The whole point of online games is fantasy. Can't we have that fantasy without Coke and McDonald's intruding?
The "picture book" is here. (Warning, this is a word document.)
His basic premise in creating the book was to make his arguments crystal clear, through illustration. In fact, his submission is a wandering and apparently pointless scree. It's reminiscent of the kind of rants people write when their WoW account is suspended.
I can well understand the court's reaction. It isn't because of the fact of using a picture-book style; it's the lack of any coherent argument in said picture book.
As I understand cross-pollination, other peoples' creatures will show up in my world. This is really cool, but how do they solve the problem of someone's giant-oozing-penis race winding up on some 6 year old's computer? Surely the don't plan to hand-moderate all content?
Think the Mass Effect hysteria was bad?
I love episodic gaming, and am very much looking forward to Bioware's release of Witch's Wake episode 2.
It's perhaps instructive to think about some of the things that happened in the world since episode 1 was released in Dec. 2004:
- W. Mark Felt was confirmed to be Watergate's "Deep Throat"
- Michael Jackson was found not guilty of child molestation charges
- Lance Armstrong retired after winning his seventh Tour de France
- The Xbox 360, PS 3 and Wii were released
And for those Bioware boys in Edmonton:But there's nothing like a bit of a wait to build anticipation.
Sure, but most people aren't playing MMOs just to "get things done"; they're playing to have fun in a social environment.
One of the amazing things about MMOs is that you often wind up socializing way out of your normal social group -- economic, education level, political leanings, and yes, age. But finding out how far you are from your normal peers can be jarring. You wouldn't dream of going over to the local schoolyard and asking if any of the kids there want to hang out with you, and so it feels weird to find out that you're doing the virtual equivalent of exactly that. It has nothing to do with the kid's perceived intelligence or competence.
Serious question:
Sony and MS sell their consoles at a loss. They plan to make up the loss from game sales.
But... MS pays game developers to create the games.
Where in this model does MS have the opportunity to make money?
I think this is one of those problems that is worse in theory than in practice. I have games in my collection that I can no longer play because the CD has gotten damaged or lost. In none of those cases is the manufacturer bankrupt. And anyway, the goal would be to have everyone standardize on the same verification service (Steam or similar), not to have every little company run their own.
But you make one good point. If it is possible for people to patch out the check, then the whole mechanism becomes as pointless as the current CD check.
I'd much prefer an online check to the current situation of having to keep track of and swap CD's all the time.
Just think how bad the early adopters of the PS3 must feel when they see that new models got rid of that annoying backward compatibility feature. Man, those people must be steamed.
If you are level 60+, do raids, hundreds of quests and crafting, then you are not a casual player. You have invested hundreds of hours in the game. In almost any other leisure activity, this would be considered near fanatical devotion. Yes, you may not be in the same league as people who play for 40+ hours a week, but this does not make you casual.
I don't want to pick on you in particular, though; you are far from the only player to spend enormous time in MMOG game worlds while somehow referring to their activities as "casual". A river in Egypt, as they say...
While these numbers indicate that the PS3's sales are below expectation, there is another interesting interpretation. Microsoft had sold 10 million Xbox 360's by the end of 2006. If Sony genuinely sells 4.5 million by end of March, they will have almost half the user base of the 360. Given all the doomcasting we've been hearing, that is not actually that bad a place to be after only three months in the market.
(And yes, yes, Microsoft is also selling 360's during the same period, but while sales may have been steady, I can't imagine they were flying off the shelves in a January when there were two shiny competitors on the market.)
But aren't the over-30's more likely to pay for said games?
According to the ESA, parents of children under 18 are present 89% of the time when games are purchased or rented. Presumably most of these parents have dinged 30.
But this law is silly for all sorts of other reasons.
An issue that has received little to no press is Vista's environmental impact. If Microsoft succeeds in convincing users to upgrade to powerful graphics cards to handle its new Aero user interface, power consumption will dramatically increase on hundreds of millions of computers around the planet.
It is ironic that the Gates foundation has been performing such good works in Africa while at the same time, Microsoft is on the verge of releasing a disastrous contribution to global warming.