if you think about it for 2 seconds you may come to that conclusion but if U think about it for 5+ seconds, you'd realize that govs taking over Linux development would spell disaster for it because they're control freaks.
No idea who Mr. U is but if he thinks Linu can be easily controlled he forgot about a funny little thing called the GPL.
And it's not like the government had any control over Windows.
Some new thing, I think SP2 had something in it saying that Microsoft could disable your version Windows whenever they wanted for any reason at all so XP at least could be shot legally.
Yes, well, except EU law does not allow a non-negotiated contract to be cancelled by the company without compensating the customer appropriately and notifying him some time prior to the effective cancellation if there's no breach of contract by the customer.
and they wouldn't have gotten sued and with the lawsuit they'll never turn a profit on Vista, especially with the amount of pirates in Europe.
Um, what? Are you saying the fines and/or the cost of documenting the API are greater than the profit they'd lose from ceeding an entire market to Linux and giving governments even more reasons to heavily invest in the advancement of opensource? Sorry but that's bullshit.
Speaking of that, with them out of the picture they could get rid of a lot of the fancy crap like WGA and scale it down a bit to something less anti-Germany and just make the not work in Europe code better.
What makes you think people only use illegal copies in Europe?
Plus if NO copies of windows past ME are supposed to be there, it'd be really easy for whistle blowers, especially with a cash reward incentive from Microsoft.
Ahahaha, yeah, like MS could enforce their copyright in the EU after being practically an outlaw in the area.
Plus eventually after they're practically amish and their half working eurolinux OS crashes for the millionth time and they're back to using abacuses, the gov would realize what dumbasses they've been and let Windows include whatever they want. Movie maker sucks! Sound recorded sucks! It makes no difference and people want their computer to do something without spending a ton more money right out of the box!
WTF? Last I checked the govt was pretty happy with the performance of Linux over Windows while the only thing holding them back were the locked down file formats MS uses taking time and money to convert.
Do you seriously believe that over 400 million people with lots of disposable income starting to use Linux wouldn't increase software support for the platform?
I don't know about the US but here it's illegal to advertise a special deal (or even just a normal deal) and not stock it in any significant quantities.
You pay for liscenses right now. Go to Best Buy and pick up a movie on DVD. You didn't just buy the movie - you bought a liscense to view a copy of movie.
No, you bought a copy of the movie. Licenses only come into play if you want to gain rights you don't have by default. You need a license for reproducing or publicly playing the copy but not for normal private use since you can do everything with that DVD that isn't covered by copyright (or criminal law, e.g. firing it at high velocity and decapitating people). Computer programs can redefine the purchase of the copy as a licensing deal in some jurisdictions as they can force you to agree to an EULA before the program runs but in the absence of such an additional contract (or in jurisdictions where EULAs are invalid) you own the copy and have the normal user rights on it.
Then you'd get fired. Because you forfeited a large market to the competition as well as committing a large scale breach of contract (causing Billions of Euros of damage which the government WILL recoup from your company). Your local assets (MS has subsidiaries in Europe) get confiscated, you might be subject to extradition and a group of twenty countries will heavily invest in opensource while software developers will need to make Linux or OS X (most likely Linux because that's supported on the hardware that's already out there) versions of their software in order to reach that market.
No, that's banned because some wall textures include swastikas and back then videogames were counted as toys which aren't allowed to depict Nazi symbols.
From what it sounds like I'd guess it's the faster disc drive streaming data faster than the PS2 software expects. No idea why they didn't do the same thing they did with the PS1 emulation on the PS2 and add a speed toggle.
Nintendo made the Playstation with its shoddy business policy. The Playstion (original one) would not have existed if Nintendo had followed through with Sony's SNES-CD program.
The PS would have existed, it'd just be sold under the SNES CD label. Sony wanted to get all the license fees game developers paid to the console manufacturer (essentially turning it into their console) which is what led to the split. The N64 still made Nintendo a lot of money, had they gone with the SNES CD they'd have had no console to make money from, they'd have ben pushed into a third party developer role.
Never mind that all CD addons and systems failed badly at the time so I don't think it's fair to blame them for not having confidence in the format.
These games came to Sony because they were running from nintendo's cutthroat policies. nintendo treats its customers great, but it plays hardball with busines partners and that's the truly astonishing business policy flaw if you're keen on scrutinizing companies that make half a billion in their worst quarter of deep investment.
It's funny how that changed, now Sony is the one annoying developers to no end by forcing everyone to comply with their vision of the perfect console library and uses their power to deny approval of PS2 games to pressure publishers into all kinds of deals while Nintendo learned its lesson the hard way and heavily cut back on the restrictions (though some publishers are still annoyed that Nintendo will reject a game that's TOO bug prone, considering what does get approved I don't want to know how bad those were). SNK went from Sony to Nintendo because Sony's policies were interfering with their games (namely SCEA forcing them to bundle the games together because 2d games are inferior to 3d in their eyes and the HD requirement having a big impact on the development of 2d games).
We'll see of course. PS3 is really just a delivery for bluray, clearly uneeded, but probably a big seller once HD takes off.
I'm not sure Blu-Ray will start being a big seller before standalone Blu-Ray players cost much less than a PS3 and of course BRD prices drop to the same or a lower level as DVDs.
It's clearly more sophisticated of a strategy than, say, motion sensing or online experience (both are easily replicated).
No, that's not easy. The online experience of XBox Live cannot be recreated without a central authority dictating the standards (since the big feature is uniformity and all games supporting its features) and new kinds of controllers will not get widespread use if the console doesn't ship with them. Sony cannot sit back and hope third party developers make those because then they'll only have several incompatible implementations that only work for one or two games each and get bought by practically nobody. And I'm not sure either would rival their original implementations without the firmware supporting them.
No flaws in Sony's strategy. Sony consoles sold more than any other brand this year. Sony games sold more than any other console line too. PS2 is where its at. If some knucklehead out there wants to buy a PS3 now, well there's a large price to pay for that. Sony doesn't care than I'm going to wait it out and keep buying PS2 games and consider a PS3 later doen the road. Why would they care?
Because they must accumulate a userbase quickly during the early life of the console since that's the numbers publishers will base their game development on. As long as the 360 has more units sold than the PS3 publishers will naturally prefer the 360 as there's more money to be made there (the Wii doesn't figure into this much since it'll most likely have a separate game development pipeline which prevents games from being easily shifted between the Wii and 360/PS3). For the publisher it doesn't matter what it costs Sony to make a unit or what the user pays for it, they can only sell one copy per unit anyway and most likely won't sell to more than a fraction of the userbase.
But to buy a Wii? Why? It's not innovative, it's not a new platform, it's a gamecube and a powerglove ripoff. Is the Wii really better than the venerable Playstation 2?
Since you can't compare a new console that's only available in one region yet with a console that had 6 years or so to accumulate games you'd have to go by comparing the hardware itself. In that case, yes, the Wii is better. The PS2 is really shoddy hardware wise, the games are the selling point and those cannot be compared with a next gen console's games yet (because those next gen consoles still have the first gen of games coming out).
100 million systems buys a lot more games for middle/lower class folks than a few million 360's and wii's will.
It'll go down, the PS2 is outdated now and publishers are scaling down support for it. No matter how much it sold it'll have lost the majority of its support one year into the next generation.
The PS2 has performed very well for me, too but the PS3 does so many things wrong that I won't risk buying it since at the current rate it looks like the games are going to end up on the 360 next gen (with the Wii having a disjunct set of games though I hae no idea which one will have more in the end). First one I'm willing to risk is the Wii and I'll try to get one on launch day.
AFAIK there is a rerelease of Doom 1 and 2 that got rated 16 by the USK with no additional censorship. Indexing for older games does not mean a rerelease of it today would be indexed.
BTW, Company of Heroes is rated 16 despite having body parts fly everywhere with blood and all when a big explosion hits infantry.
I don't think actual laws will come from this, the laws are already as restrictive as the constitution allows. The constitution allows for protecting minors but once you ban adults from getting something that violates the laws for freedom of expression and the Constitutional Court won't allow it. Never mind that I don't think they can ban violent games without banning violent movies and books in the same move which would make possession of the Bible a crime.
There are banned games but it's limited to things like KZ simulators or Manhunt.
This 18yr old was due in court for weapons violations. Hmmmm. I wonder what his otivations could be. Notice no call for banning the weapons and explosions he used.
Strict laws on guns also means most criminals won't carry actual guns since they'd get a few years extra on any judgement. Only a very serious criminal will have a gun, the average mugger on the street knows that holding people up with a gun will only make him interesting to the police (which usually has enough work and doesn't care much about muggers). They carry BB guns at most.
That's not an explaination, you can't get your weapons out of the armory or barracks without approval from your superior and they certainly won't let you take them outside of a mission.
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Not that they couldn't implement it themselves since the patent has to be specific enough to describe an implementation.
What kind of god would have allowed the brutality that is my father?
One that got bored and made a bet with Satan?
if you think about it for 2 seconds you may come to that conclusion but if U think about it for 5+ seconds, you'd realize that govs taking over Linux development would spell disaster for it because they're control freaks.
No idea who Mr. U is but if he thinks Linu can be easily controlled he forgot about a funny little thing called the GPL.
And it's not like the government had any control over Windows.
Some new thing, I think SP2 had something in it saying that Microsoft could disable your version Windows whenever they wanted for any reason at all so XP at least could be shot legally.
Yes, well, except EU law does not allow a non-negotiated contract to be cancelled by the company without compensating the customer appropriately and notifying him some time prior to the effective cancellation if there's no breach of contract by the customer.
and they wouldn't have gotten sued and with the lawsuit they'll never turn a profit on Vista, especially with the amount of pirates in Europe.
Um, what? Are you saying the fines and/or the cost of documenting the API are greater than the profit they'd lose from ceeding an entire market to Linux and giving governments even more reasons to heavily invest in the advancement of opensource? Sorry but that's bullshit.
Speaking of that, with them out of the picture they could get rid of a lot of the fancy crap like WGA and scale it down a bit to something less anti-Germany and just make the not work in Europe code better.
What makes you think people only use illegal copies in Europe?
Plus if NO copies of windows past ME are supposed to be there, it'd be really easy for whistle blowers, especially with a cash reward incentive from Microsoft.
Ahahaha, yeah, like MS could enforce their copyright in the EU after being practically an outlaw in the area.
Plus eventually after they're practically amish and their half working eurolinux OS crashes for the millionth time and they're back to using abacuses, the gov would realize what dumbasses they've been and let Windows include whatever they want. Movie maker sucks! Sound recorded sucks! It makes no difference and people want their computer to do something without spending a ton more money right out of the box!
WTF? Last I checked the govt was pretty happy with the performance of Linux over Windows while the only thing holding them back were the locked down file formats MS uses taking time and money to convert.
Do you seriously believe that over 400 million people with lots of disposable income starting to use Linux wouldn't increase software support for the platform?
But it does debunk the argument that it's bad to work for such a kettle. Or at least worse than working for the pot.
I don't know about the US but here it's illegal to advertise a special deal (or even just a normal deal) and not stock it in any significant quantities.
You pay for liscenses right now. Go to Best Buy and pick up a movie on DVD. You didn't just buy the movie - you bought a liscense to view a copy of movie.
No, you bought a copy of the movie. Licenses only come into play if you want to gain rights you don't have by default. You need a license for reproducing or publicly playing the copy but not for normal private use since you can do everything with that DVD that isn't covered by copyright (or criminal law, e.g. firing it at high velocity and decapitating people). Computer programs can redefine the purchase of the copy as a licensing deal in some jurisdictions as they can force you to agree to an EULA before the program runs but in the absence of such an additional contract (or in jurisdictions where EULAs are invalid) you own the copy and have the normal user rights on it.
Yes except he told you about the key deal up front and has a more expensive option where you get the keys.
There is no overkill, there is only open fire and time to reload.
Then you'd get fired. Because you forfeited a large market to the competition as well as committing a large scale breach of contract (causing Billions of Euros of damage which the government WILL recoup from your company). Your local assets (MS has subsidiaries in Europe) get confiscated, you might be subject to extradition and a group of twenty countries will heavily invest in opensource while software developers will need to make Linux or OS X (most likely Linux because that's supported on the hardware that's already out there) versions of their software in order to reach that market.
vi
No, that's banned because some wall textures include swastikas and back then videogames were counted as toys which aren't allowed to depict Nazi symbols.
From what it sounds like I'd guess it's the faster disc drive streaming data faster than the PS2 software expects. No idea why they didn't do the same thing they did with the PS1 emulation on the PS2 and add a speed toggle.
Nintendo made the Playstation with its shoddy business policy. The Playstion (original one) would not have existed if Nintendo had followed through with Sony's SNES-CD program.
The PS would have existed, it'd just be sold under the SNES CD label. Sony wanted to get all the license fees game developers paid to the console manufacturer (essentially turning it into their console) which is what led to the split. The N64 still made Nintendo a lot of money, had they gone with the SNES CD they'd have had no console to make money from, they'd have ben pushed into a third party developer role.
Never mind that all CD addons and systems failed badly at the time so I don't think it's fair to blame them for not having confidence in the format.
These games came to Sony because they were running from nintendo's cutthroat policies. nintendo treats its customers great, but it plays hardball with busines partners and that's the truly astonishing business policy flaw if you're keen on scrutinizing companies that make half a billion in their worst quarter of deep investment.
It's funny how that changed, now Sony is the one annoying developers to no end by forcing everyone to comply with their vision of the perfect console library and uses their power to deny approval of PS2 games to pressure publishers into all kinds of deals while Nintendo learned its lesson the hard way and heavily cut back on the restrictions (though some publishers are still annoyed that Nintendo will reject a game that's TOO bug prone, considering what does get approved I don't want to know how bad those were). SNK went from Sony to Nintendo because Sony's policies were interfering with their games (namely SCEA forcing them to bundle the games together because 2d games are inferior to 3d in their eyes and the HD requirement having a big impact on the development of 2d games).
We'll see of course. PS3 is really just a delivery for bluray, clearly uneeded, but probably a big seller once HD takes off.
I'm not sure Blu-Ray will start being a big seller before standalone Blu-Ray players cost much less than a PS3 and of course BRD prices drop to the same or a lower level as DVDs.
It's clearly more sophisticated of a strategy than, say, motion sensing or online experience (both are easily replicated).
No, that's not easy. The online experience of XBox Live cannot be recreated without a central authority dictating the standards (since the big feature is uniformity and all games supporting its features) and new kinds of controllers will not get widespread use if the console doesn't ship with them. Sony cannot sit back and hope third party developers make those because then they'll only have several incompatible implementations that only work for one or two games each and get bought by practically nobody. And I'm not sure either would rival their original implementations without the firmware supporting them.
No flaws in Sony's strategy. Sony consoles sold more than any other brand this year. Sony games sold more than any other console line too. PS2 is where its at. If some knucklehead out there wants to buy a PS3 now, well there's a large price to pay for that. Sony doesn't care than I'm going to wait it out and keep buying PS2 games and consider a PS3 later doen the road. Why would they care?
Because they must accumulate a userbase quickly during the early life of the console since that's the numbers publishers will base their game development on. As long as the 360 has more units sold than the PS3 publishers will naturally prefer the 360 as there's more money to be made there (the Wii doesn't figure into this much since it'll most likely have a separate game development pipeline which prevents games from being easily shifted between the Wii and 360/PS3). For the publisher it doesn't matter what it costs Sony to make a unit or what the user pays for it, they can only sell one copy per unit anyway and most likely won't sell to more than a fraction of the userbase.
But to buy a Wii? Why? It's not innovative, it's not a new platform, it's a gamecube and a powerglove ripoff. Is the Wii really better than the venerable Playstation 2?
Since you can't compare a new console that's only available in one region yet with a console that had 6 years or so to accumulate games you'd have to go by comparing the hardware itself. In that case, yes, the Wii is better. The PS2 is really shoddy hardware wise, the games are the selling point and those cannot be compared with a next gen console's games yet (because those next gen consoles still have the first gen of games coming out).
100 million systems buys a lot more games for middle/lower class folks than a few million 360's and wii's will.
It'll go down, the PS2 is outdated now and publishers are scaling down support for it. No matter how much it sold it'll have lost the majority of its support one year into the next generation.
The PS2 has performed very well for me, too but the PS3 does so many things wrong that I won't risk buying it since at the current rate it looks like the games are going to end up on the 360 next gen (with the Wii having a disjunct set of games though I hae no idea which one will have more in the end). First one I'm willing to risk is the Wii and I'll try to get one on launch day.
Because it has more and better games available (and still coming out for some time) while costing much less and being easy to get?
When a new system comes out the old system's sales don't immediately drop to zero. And I'm not sure if I'd call the PS3 available, either.
What? People don't remember the name Cliff Bleszinski from the shareware era? Epic Megagames? Where have you people been?
Yes except those were 20$ per episode instead of 60.
EVERY game nowadays has an ending that leads straight into a sequel even though that sequel is rarely made because the game didn't sell.
AFAIK there is a rerelease of Doom 1 and 2 that got rated 16 by the USK with no additional censorship. Indexing for older games does not mean a rerelease of it today would be indexed.
BTW, Company of Heroes is rated 16 despite having body parts fly everywhere with blood and all when a big explosion hits infantry.
I don't think actual laws will come from this, the laws are already as restrictive as the constitution allows. The constitution allows for protecting minors but once you ban adults from getting something that violates the laws for freedom of expression and the Constitutional Court won't allow it. Never mind that I don't think they can ban violent games without banning violent movies and books in the same move which would make possession of the Bible a crime.
Restricting M rated games to people of Mature Age is also acceptable.
The law already does that (in Germany with our own ratings system) and politicians don't seem to know that, claiming there is no legislation doing that and the USK is an industry-run organization. Guess they were asleep when they signed that law.
There are banned games but it's limited to things like KZ simulators or Manhunt.
This 18yr old was due in court for weapons violations. Hmmmm. I wonder what his otivations could be. Notice no call for banning the weapons and explosions he used.
That's because they are banned already.
Murder and illegal ownership of firearms isn't going to end with probation. That ends in jail. Besides, I think he committed suicide afterwards.
Strict laws on guns also means most criminals won't carry actual guns since they'd get a few years extra on any judgement. Only a very serious criminal will have a gun, the average mugger on the street knows that holding people up with a gun will only make him interesting to the police (which usually has enough work and doesn't care much about muggers). They carry BB guns at most.
That's not an explaination, you can't get your weapons out of the armory or barracks without approval from your superior and they certainly won't let you take them outside of a mission.