For the love of all that is holy: The XBox 360 does not need more expensive add on features!! Anyone who does not have the XBox 360 today isn't sitting on the fence thinking "If the XBox 360 was a even more expensive with features I didn't intend to use, I'd buy that!"
Microsoft's own marketing positioned the XBox 360 as a video game console. Anything that adds onto the price tag that doesn't help with that is detrimental to their message. It certainly isn't help their product line to cost this much money and then continue to ask for consumers to spend even more! Microsoft should be working as hard as it can to reduce costs in hardware and software while increasing stability instead of trying to add more gee-wiz features only the hardest of hard core will buy. If anyone wonders why Nintendo is going to run laps around Microsoft in this market it is because Microsoft continues to chase expensive niche customers instead of offering a wider variety, easier for everyone to play system.
It is all well and good to say "they should have known" but that is clearly "high insight" where if they did really know they would have never fell for the scam. Capitalism benefits from having fair trade where "con games" are a thing that damages the system. Just like in the real world, I'm all for rigorous investigation of scam artists because it doesn't do me any good finger waggle at my neighbors falling victim to stuff. I'm all for investigations of scamming in MMOs if not to add more features to the game (specifically anti-scammer features). I'm especially for it if it turns out that it is a bug in the system the scammers are exploiting.
There are arguments made in situations like this and other real world situations like the ARM Housing Crisis is that both sides should be punished since blame on both parties. The problem is that it often requires people being scammed to report it to figure out what is going on. If players are given no incentive to report the problem, mainly the big incentive that they can reclaim their stolen virtual property, then why report it? In this situation you are better off trying to scam back which may just make the system spiral that much faster into anarchy. This maybe what the designers want, in the case of Eve ONLINE, but probably not what Second Life had in mind.
As for anti-scam features, at this point all modern MMOs have "micro-escrow trading systems" but I think it is time to move a "macro-escrow". Right now if you want to trade with someone, you walk up to them in game, initiate a trade, both parties see the items/money/etc, hit "okay" and walk away. This is a "micro-escrow" system which works fine for "bazaar/farmer's market" style trade. To advance beyond this "bazaar/farmer's market" you need a system that extends this in time and scope and comes much closer to a true escrow trading. For instance, going with buying a car one rarely shows up with $25k in their pocket and buys on the spot but this is how almost every MMO expects you to behave. To extend this to Eve ONLINE, it would be awesome to have a system where you could buy a ship or whatever using financing from someone else where that party holds the "deed" to the ship till you pay them back. This opens up other new ways to do some real world economy in the virtual world that is beyond the stuff we see now. Basically, MMOs need a "trade window" that stays open for days or months, that doesn't require the players to see each other, and that can be ok-ed or revoked at their descression. Of course the devil is in the details where if a party revokes a long term trade, trying to sort out who gets what is left over is often determined in arbitrartion/courts which I'm not sure many MMO designers are exactly interested in supporting.
How can Fedora be a "serious threat" to Ubuntu when according to well known facts, the Fedora platform is a testing ground for RedHat and will always be?
The Ubuntu zealots are also very vocal and defend the Debian apt system from which Ubuntu gets its package manager. Has yum improved that much to match apt? I doubt.
Why is it bad that Fedora is backed by Red Hat? Why do you even ask "Has yum improved?" when you admit you don't know (or care) about the answer. Asking "How can Fedora be good if it is backed by Red Hat?" and "Has yum improved?" are both empty questions meant to cast both into a bad light instead of offering some insight instead of investigating the issue. I honestly never understood why people don't like "yum" but like "apt" when they seem to match each other feature for feature. There maybe something deep down that one does that the other doesn't but at a high level: "# yum install firefox" and "# apt-get install firefox" are equivalent.
Beyond this, I really don't see why Ubuntu or Fedora need to "beat" each other. We should be celebrating the difference in strengths and the choice. I'm never convinced by fanboys on any side who think everyone needs to their favorite distro.
Or maybe "Think Secret" was really more tabloid than journalism. I'm not a big fan of the big money machine, I'm rather neutral about Apple Inc. itself, and I'm also a big believer in free flow of information but I'm not sure "Think Secret" was acting in the public interest as much as their self interest to see sensational information generate clicks. I'm all for journalists protecting sources from reprisals to continue to reveal new information but it must have some intrinsic value and it must be backed up by collaborating evidence if they can't cite the source.
I want corporations to be responsible and journalists help to make that happen. I also want the journalists to be responsible where in many cases just one hidden source isn't enough to publish a story on. Without more its just rumor which is the level of stuff you see at the supermarket checkout. It isn't so much that a company gets to determine what the press says any more than any other person gets to determin what the press says about them.
If it was simply that "Think Secret" was saying "Apple products suck" that wouldn't be an issue. It was that "Think Secret" was using information and data that belonged to Apple which without a good reason is not permissible. Sorry but "the fans demand to know" is not a good reason.
I can appreciate that Gold subscriptions have leveled off and that Microsoft, like any company, needs to generate money to justify service. The right thing to do is enhance Gold service to offer real and compelling features that would make someone happy with Silver jump up to gold. But what happened is Microsoft made Silver just suck a bit more without adding anything to Gold. Not only are you irritating Silver users, you've slighted Gold users who wonder why they are spending $50 a year and only getting "less encumbered" as a service instead of new and meaningful services.
It always amazes me that in "World of Warcraft" so many "inventions" have "ultra-safe" in their titles but are anything but that. If I saw an "Ultra-Safe Laptop Battery", I'd be scrambling for the bubble hearth.
Seriously, you can carry on like it is some offense that Blizzard puts anti-cheat scanning code into there game but what privacy do you really expect playing an online game? The anti-cheat measures are similar to what Valve uses in VAC. Why no fist shaking at Valve? The scanning technology is similar to any anti virus software for Windows XP. Why no fist shaking at the AV vendors? Beyond all of that how much privacy do you really believe you have if you agree to use their software product. You can try to sue the pants off of Norton for scanning your super secret data and possibly modifying or reporting back to home (they do this if something is triggered as an anomoly) but the EULA says "If you use our software and service, you agree we must scan your data". If you agree to use the software, you agree to certain amount of intrusion. Now they may obscure the details on what is going on but to complain about it later is silly. You could rip out VAC from CS: Source, try to connect to a server that demands VAC, and it will kick you off (maybe ban you). One can scream "I don't want it to be scanning my programs and data!" which in that case the ones who run the server can go "Thats fine, but you won't play on our server without submitting to it".
Civil liberites is a serious topic that should never be taken lightly. However trying to parade Warden as some assult on it is silly. You are paying Blizzard the money for a game and acess to a Blizzard server to play a Blizzard game. None of this seems any more a threat to CL than what Norton or any number of online FPS games do every day. It isn't that "everyone is doing it so it is okay" as much as "you don't have much privacy running around in an online game".
Like other software, the data I create is more valuable (to me) than the software I bought from the store. During the days I played Disgaea religiously, at the point where I had more than 20 hours of play, lots of bills/areas passed, many characters at least transmigrated once, the amount of time and energy put into that game alone was far more valuable than the disk itself. Far more valuable. The disk could be stolen (or exploded) by Prinnies at that point and I could go out and find a new disk. If the memory card the save game was stolen (or exploded), there is not much I could do because the only way to "replace" it would be to play the game from the start.
You see this all over technology though. The 10 million piece model is more valuable than the CAD tool program that created it. The 500 million row database with years of collected data is more valuable than the software used to serve it up. This is why backups are so important to any IT infrastructure. You want to capture and safe guard the created content, not necessarily the software that runs it.
Too many times you'll come across a review that has some pretty negative things about this or that feature but still score well. "The graphics are bad at one point...I give it a 9/10". That always makes me scratch my head. Either the problem was worth mentioning in context of the score or the score is out of context which leads to the problem of using scores as some sort of "fact crutch" when it really is never that at all. Reviews at their heart are subjective opinions on something, in this case games. Attaching some number like "90%" tries to make it look objective. No reviews are objective so why do people keep seeking to make it look more factual?
In professional realms, they are generally good about scores being a semi-accurate reflection of the reviewer's stance (otherwise the editor would flog them). In particular I favor Ziff-Davis mags, like EGM with their 3 reviewer formula, for review information where they seem pretty honest and upfront about things they see in games where they have zero qualms about scoring something 5/10 and then tell you exactly why. Or as others have mentioned I'm really starting to favor entirely scoreless reviews like "Zero Punctionation". You know exactly what he feels about the games, even if there is a sarcastic venere to it, which is exactly what you want from a reviewer. A review should be full of the reviewer's feelings and opinions not a chart of numbers.
I don't understand why people want to see a "X/10" instead of the reviewer's honest opinion. The score/numbers obscure the opinion and make it seem factual. When someone gives a 9/10 on a game it is because it is fun for the reviewer, not because it is "universally fun for all" or automatically good for any individual reader. Why do people keep asking for scores then complain when they think a game that got 9/10 really wasn't that fun for them? In this case it seems the misinterptation lies with the reader not the publisher/reviewer.
A "World Series of Video Games" should not be broadcast on TV but on the Internet and on console closed system distribution *coughXBLcough*. I found the "Guitar Hero 2" events kind of entertaining but I found myself watching them more from the stream on the web page and only because it popped up on a message board that someone they knew was playing.
In summary, TV was the wrong way to go. They should go for Internet, advertise on the gaming web sites, provide streams from Youtube or roll their own stream. I don't think there are enough people out in TV to watch but there are probably enough surfing around to watch.
...that MSN allows the user to to run things it never should. Or in other words, one should be reasonably expect that using MSN Messenger won't screw up their machine. You should be able to feed it any number of Url from anywhere, trusted or untrusted sources, and it shouldn't do anything bad let alone second guess whether or not the information sent is "good" or "bad". Here is a hint: Untrusted data sources serve untrusted data. Why does Microsoft consider it a feature that MSN Messenger blindly run any files fed to it? And "asking for confirmation" is not sufficient.
Having any IM program make it so easy to run applications from questionable sources is not a secure feature let alone the debate whether or not it is a good one. Asking "Run this? Yes/No" doesn't make the feature any better. Why do people keep thinking it is? MSN Messenger shouldn't be doing this period where the "fix" of filtering on "bad data" by extension is laughable.
Clearly to defeat a threat from a imaginary source, we need to send in not some lawyer but another imaginary hero of mythical proportions! Besides, I bet the machines in the CTU rock and will be easy for multi-boxing.
This is a fair question so no one should mod you down for asking it.
The reason why people have a "gut feeling" about Windows is that it is a system built upon a myriad of disconnected components requiring a myriad of permissions and settings both at the "local" and enterprise/domain level all of this resulting in "who knows how many billions" of actions and interactions. But wait, other operating systems have this sort of "lots of components, lots of permissions, lots of possibilities" so what makes Windows different? Other solutions it in a much more transparent and less draconian way to avoid what often happens on Windows. This behavior on Windows manifest itself on XP as rampant use of "Administrator". It was really really really hard to accomplish many straightforward tasks navigating the system with anything less than the highest privilege.
Or to put it another way, the reason why AV software exists on Windows is that system, components, and permissions are so messed up it is hard for humans to keep it straight let alone get it right. That is why many have this vague feeling Windows isn't as secure where just throwing another layer on top of it to ask "you", as if "you" are an expert on the situation at hand, if everything is functional, OK, or permissible doesn't make it better. It is just another hurdle the malicious and the user have to overcome. If you are at a permission level on Linux, BSD, or OSX, you know the risks the permission levels gives except baring bugs. If you are at a permission level on Windows, you aren't quite sure what is at risk and hope your AV software catches something you didn't consider.
I would have to say "Yes, LUGs are dying out". They served a purpose before the days of cheap, high reliability servers, which lead to "Wiki technology". Before this happened the way to get "how to" tips was to go to LUGs or take a chance on a number of uncollected sources like boards and Usenet. I suspect LUGs will still be popular in academic settings but will go away for the public in general.
So far this seems like a "Harvard vs Yale" thing where it is inconsequential who wins. The cynic in me does have a suspicion that blame can be laid at the feet of both Epic and SK.
Epic is to blame because it seems to complete Gears of War with the "Unreal Engine 3" required a lot of work from Epic themselves. Or in other words, the engine wasn't as complete as it really needed to be so Epic did a lot of specific fixes for Gears to bring up the game. This seems to indicate that UE3 isn't that complete or polished and Epic is unable (technically or contractually) or unwilling to merge these changes into the basic engine leaving any ISV who got a license wondering how in the world they can make a game that is remotely close to Gears in function and quality.
Silicon Knights is to blame because their management seems to be way out there (yes Denis Dyack I'm looking at you). No engine can make a game beautiful where the performance of Too Human was entirely your ball to drop. That is the job of the artists, programmers, and ultimately the "director" where if they were not happy with the platform given they needed to voice their concerns. I have a sneaking suspicion they believed the marketing instead of their own technical assets then it is yet another bad decision by management.
So whatever. These two can hash it out where the ultimate fall out is that Too Human is probably 2009 time frame if SK goes through with this, reclaim their money, and rebuild their own engine.
I completely agree that the XBox 360 "library" seems larger but if you look closely it is a bunch of mediocre games that have been "upgraded" which makes the selection rather dull. There are some inventive games for the XBox 360 but they are more glimpses what what could be which gives it a "tech demo" feel instead of a completed game. [i]Gears[/i] was too short. [i]Dead Rising[/i] was simply a grand last gen game upgraded (completely with the same old broken save system).
My assessment of the "current gen" is that all 3 major players are doing horribly at the moment. In particular Microsoft and Sony continue to miss the mark where both created an expensive system but have left gamers wanting for more. People can claim Sony's hardware/software is too complex and hence the slow release rate but why is Microsoft still struggling here as well? Games aren't flying out of publishers for either system. In fact Microsoft biggest success on the XBox 360 is the small style downloadable games from XBLA, not the expensive mega budget game!(*) Nintendo on the other hand went in the other direction which more or less denies the tech trends gamers have been demanding. No matter how cheap and simple the Wii is, will we see a hugely complex game on it?
At this point no one is "winning" where even if we declare Nintendo the winner it is a might big loser prize.
(*) I will predict now that [i]Halo 3[/i] will be an awesome game but sales will be lower either of its predecessors. Shockingly lower.
(Yay! Fedora Core 5 is now) no longer updated and a liability on every single server that it is installed on.
Let the MS bashing begin... somehow.
Neat! No one may be preparing software for your FC5 server but that is very different than what you are implying. If you still have a FC5 server, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from updating the software today with the latest source. What has stopped is someone doing the work for you. There is no legal or physical restrictions stopping a system engineer from grabbing the source for any software component and trying to recompile it where there is a fairly good chance it will compile "as is" without source modification on a FC5 machine. This seems to be a lot better support than Microsoft offers which is the same "as is support" but with less options because you can't modify the black box they sold you.
Even claiming a box is "sold" in retail is iffy. When Best Buy buys a palette of Vista and puts a box on the shelf to sell, as far as Microsoft cares those boxes are "sold". These are also extended to packaged computers and laptops sitting in stores where the vendor (like HP) buys a license, sticks it in the box with the laptop, and shows up at Best Buy is consider "sold".
I feel the situation is so muddled we have to fall back to indirect measures like Web site traffic. I would like to see a report from a platform agnostic servers on client usage.
The original reason why "Patch Tuesday" was created was because too many were giving feedback to Microsoft that their patching process was far too disruptive to their enterprise. Before "Patch Tuesday", you could check any particular machine, at any time of day or week, and regardless of its role or usage it may have a patch pestering people that it needs to be applied and the machine rebooted. "Patch Tuesday" essentially is a "work around" to condense all of these patches that could be highly disruptive into a smaller, brief time frame.
The real problem is the patching system Microsoft chose is highly disruptive. Too many still demand user attention even if applied remotely by an administrator. Although less often, too many still require a reboot which is a larger disruption to the user's work. Should Microsoft consider changing how patching is done so that it isn't so "hands on" and pesters the users and administrators to take action? Improve patching to the point where patches can be applied painless from the IT Center and "Patch Whateverday" goes away.
Microsoft's UAC approach does not fix the problem. Windows is like a rickety bridge. We know its dangerous but Microsoft's "fix" is to place signs every 5 steps warning you could slip. How about instead we build a better bridge instead of build a better sign? Maybe we need Microsoft to build a better Windows instead of build a better system to warn us about Windows? That must be crazy talk because Microsoft year after year continues to choose to seek how to build better signs instead of better bridges.
Lets get Microsoft to design a software platform that doesn't require the user to think about whether or not the user is about to break something? Is that really so hard for one of the largest software companies in the world? UAC from my view is the wrong way to solve a problem which was born of questionable engineering. One of the reasons why UAC is so dubious is that the user may not know any better either which is a "blind leading the blind" across that rickety bridge. In summary, a better Windows wouldn't have a need for UAC so why tout this technology?
Oh, come on. I am FAAAR from a MS apologist, but this trojan is not really something that they can (or should) prevent! This worm is not exploiting any flaw in MS's programs that I am aware of, it is simply social engineering. Unless you make Windows prevent a user from running arbitrary code, I don't know how you'd fix this.
The thing is Microsoft shouldn't make Windows do these destructive things so readily in the first place. This comes about by bad engineering and worse its passed off as "bad users".
Everyone loves the car analogy: Changing the oil in your car regularly is kind of a pain for some so how about adding a feature that makes this as easy as pushing a button so everyone can do this on their own without damaging their car or making a mess. The owner pushes the button, the old oil is flushed out of the engine, placed in a easy to remove container, new oil is put in the engine by just pouring in some new one. All fine and dandy except the largest manufacture decides to place the button in the middle of the dashboard plainly labeled "CHANGE OIL". Everyone knows you really shouldn't change oil while you are driving down the interstate but what happens when your kids are in the back seat throwing things at each other and something bounces onto the dash, onto the button? Or maybe your precocious kid sees daddy pushing buttons on the car and mimics what he does while the car is sitting at home? Hopefully you catch this before you jump into the car for work and even if you do you had to spend time in the morning correcting this. Or maybe prank callers dial up the owner claiming they represent the car manufacture and their car needs emergency maintainers by pressing the button...
This is a good feature (an easy method to change oil) with muddled bad engineering where one can say "Oh the user shouldn't have pushed the button!" but lets not ignore the fact the engineers shouldn't have violated any number of good engineering rules in the first place. "User education" is not a substitute for good engineering. Microsoft's continual abusing of HMI for "ease of features" is bad engineering where people know they aren't supposed to do any number of activities that can wreck their computer and yet they happen by accident anyway. Normal user activities simply should not result in a computer becoming a zombie no matter what they browse, what they run, what buttons they press. And worst, correcting the situation is made excruciatingly hard where many users simply give up trying to fix it themselves. The computer is supposed to do what the user asks but not help if they ask them for rope to hang themselves.
1. Does Youtube work? Does it handle streaming audio/video? I haven't found anyone who will (or can, see #2) comment on it. If not "interesting" but meaningless if some of the best reasons to browse stuff on a TV doesn't work. No one is dying to read/. on their Wii.
2. When will Nintendo get around to actually selling people a Wii? Again these features are "interesting" but entirely meaningless if too few people actually have to hardware to enjoy it.
I agree with the parent that $60 is past the "impulse buy" range. I suspect why the DS does so well month after month isn't the hardware (which is so-so) but the fact it is a cheap gaming device with cheap games. Especially with kids, are you willing to spend $60 on a game you've never heard of for your kid or a $30 kiddy looking one?
This is why I'm disappointed in this era for consoles. Both the XBox 360 and PS3 are overpriced, their software is overpriced, and the games are getting shorter and maybe of questionable quality. The Wii could make a killing if they actually had some games. All in all we are getting the short end of the stick for video games on consoles this time around where maybe in a year it will clean up and pick up but I'm not holding my breath.
MythTV is getting quite mature but since you can't "naked" version of any "Home Theater PC" offered by any vendors it makes it very hard to build them for anyone but yourself. You are invariably forced to build each one of them from scratch so each "version" is subtly different. In some ways, "do it yourself" is great for cutting costs but in other ways, like "gift giving" it becomes very hard to justify.
It isn't that Google necessarily care that it is "you" (actually they might but that is another thread...), but "you" are doing a search and then clicking on links in a particular order which is a context that is important for ranking. At an abstract level, the relationship between what you searched and the links you tried is stuff Google wants to track to help enhance relevancy and search results. The problem is that with modern technology to do this they need to know somethings that aren't anonymous which can be abused.
If they can come up with a way to do this without tying it all back a computer and the individual who made the request then we are probably all better off not because privacy issues (but that is a great side effect) but because you get better results from removing the irrelevant data from ranking consideration. The closer they get to a true anonymous search system, the better the results should theoretically be.
Slashdot Mirror
For the love of all that is holy: The XBox 360 does not need more expensive add on features!! Anyone who does not have the XBox 360 today isn't sitting on the fence thinking "If the XBox 360 was a even more expensive with features I didn't intend to use, I'd buy that!"
Microsoft's own marketing positioned the XBox 360 as a video game console. Anything that adds onto the price tag that doesn't help with that is detrimental to their message. It certainly isn't help their product line to cost this much money and then continue to ask for consumers to spend even more! Microsoft should be working as hard as it can to reduce costs in hardware and software while increasing stability instead of trying to add more gee-wiz features only the hardest of hard core will buy. If anyone wonders why Nintendo is going to run laps around Microsoft in this market it is because Microsoft continues to chase expensive niche customers instead of offering a wider variety, easier for everyone to play system.
It is all well and good to say "they should have known" but that is clearly "high insight" where if they did really know they would have never fell for the scam. Capitalism benefits from having fair trade where "con games" are a thing that damages the system. Just like in the real world, I'm all for rigorous investigation of scam artists because it doesn't do me any good finger waggle at my neighbors falling victim to stuff. I'm all for investigations of scamming in MMOs if not to add more features to the game (specifically anti-scammer features). I'm especially for it if it turns out that it is a bug in the system the scammers are exploiting.
There are arguments made in situations like this and other real world situations like the ARM Housing Crisis is that both sides should be punished since blame on both parties. The problem is that it often requires people being scammed to report it to figure out what is going on. If players are given no incentive to report the problem, mainly the big incentive that they can reclaim their stolen virtual property, then why report it? In this situation you are better off trying to scam back which may just make the system spiral that much faster into anarchy. This maybe what the designers want, in the case of Eve ONLINE, but probably not what Second Life had in mind.
As for anti-scam features, at this point all modern MMOs have "micro-escrow trading systems" but I think it is time to move a "macro-escrow". Right now if you want to trade with someone, you walk up to them in game, initiate a trade, both parties see the items/money/etc, hit "okay" and walk away. This is a "micro-escrow" system which works fine for "bazaar/farmer's market" style trade. To advance beyond this "bazaar/farmer's market" you need a system that extends this in time and scope and comes much closer to a true escrow trading. For instance, going with buying a car one rarely shows up with $25k in their pocket and buys on the spot but this is how almost every MMO expects you to behave. To extend this to Eve ONLINE, it would be awesome to have a system where you could buy a ship or whatever using financing from someone else where that party holds the "deed" to the ship till you pay them back. This opens up other new ways to do some real world economy in the virtual world that is beyond the stuff we see now. Basically, MMOs need a "trade window" that stays open for days or months, that doesn't require the players to see each other, and that can be ok-ed or revoked at their descression. Of course the devil is in the details where if a party revokes a long term trade, trying to sort out who gets what is left over is often determined in arbitrartion/courts which I'm not sure many MMO designers are exactly interested in supporting.
Why is it bad that Fedora is backed by Red Hat? Why do you even ask "Has yum improved?" when you admit you don't know (or care) about the answer. Asking "How can Fedora be good if it is backed by Red Hat?" and "Has yum improved?" are both empty questions meant to cast both into a bad light instead of offering some insight instead of investigating the issue. I honestly never understood why people don't like "yum" but like "apt" when they seem to match each other feature for feature. There maybe something deep down that one does that the other doesn't but at a high level: "# yum install firefox" and "# apt-get install firefox" are equivalent.The Ubuntu zealots are also very vocal and defend the Debian apt system from which Ubuntu gets its package manager. Has yum improved that much to match apt? I doubt.
Beyond this, I really don't see why Ubuntu or Fedora need to "beat" each other. We should be celebrating the difference in strengths and the choice. I'm never convinced by fanboys on any side who think everyone needs to their favorite distro.
Or maybe "Think Secret" was really more tabloid than journalism. I'm not a big fan of the big money machine, I'm rather neutral about Apple Inc. itself, and I'm also a big believer in free flow of information but I'm not sure "Think Secret" was acting in the public interest as much as their self interest to see sensational information generate clicks. I'm all for journalists protecting sources from reprisals to continue to reveal new information but it must have some intrinsic value and it must be backed up by collaborating evidence if they can't cite the source.
I want corporations to be responsible and journalists help to make that happen. I also want the journalists to be responsible where in many cases just one hidden source isn't enough to publish a story on. Without more its just rumor which is the level of stuff you see at the supermarket checkout. It isn't so much that a company gets to determine what the press says any more than any other person gets to determin what the press says about them.
If it was simply that "Think Secret" was saying "Apple products suck" that wouldn't be an issue. It was that "Think Secret" was using information and data that belonged to Apple which without a good reason is not permissible. Sorry but "the fans demand to know" is not a good reason.
I can appreciate that Gold subscriptions have leveled off and that Microsoft, like any company, needs to generate money to justify service. The right thing to do is enhance Gold service to offer real and compelling features that would make someone happy with Silver jump up to gold. But what happened is Microsoft made Silver just suck a bit more without adding anything to Gold. Not only are you irritating Silver users, you've slighted Gold users who wonder why they are spending $50 a year and only getting "less encumbered" as a service instead of new and meaningful services.
Thanks a bunch Microsoft.
It always amazes me that in "World of Warcraft" so many "inventions" have "ultra-safe" in their titles but are anything but that. If I saw an "Ultra-Safe Laptop Battery", I'd be scrambling for the bubble hearth.
Seriously, you can carry on like it is some offense that Blizzard puts anti-cheat scanning code into there game but what privacy do you really expect playing an online game? The anti-cheat measures are similar to what Valve uses in VAC. Why no fist shaking at Valve? The scanning technology is similar to any anti virus software for Windows XP. Why no fist shaking at the AV vendors? Beyond all of that how much privacy do you really believe you have if you agree to use their software product. You can try to sue the pants off of Norton for scanning your super secret data and possibly modifying or reporting back to home (they do this if something is triggered as an anomoly) but the EULA says "If you use our software and service, you agree we must scan your data". If you agree to use the software, you agree to certain amount of intrusion. Now they may obscure the details on what is going on but to complain about it later is silly. You could rip out VAC from CS: Source, try to connect to a server that demands VAC, and it will kick you off (maybe ban you). One can scream "I don't want it to be scanning my programs and data!" which in that case the ones who run the server can go "Thats fine, but you won't play on our server without submitting to it".
Civil liberites is a serious topic that should never be taken lightly. However trying to parade Warden as some assult on it is silly. You are paying Blizzard the money for a game and acess to a Blizzard server to play a Blizzard game. None of this seems any more a threat to CL than what Norton or any number of online FPS games do every day. It isn't that "everyone is doing it so it is okay" as much as "you don't have much privacy running around in an online game".
Like other software, the data I create is more valuable (to me) than the software I bought from the store. During the days I played Disgaea religiously, at the point where I had more than 20 hours of play, lots of bills/areas passed, many characters at least transmigrated once, the amount of time and energy put into that game alone was far more valuable than the disk itself. Far more valuable. The disk could be stolen (or exploded) by Prinnies at that point and I could go out and find a new disk. If the memory card the save game was stolen (or exploded), there is not much I could do because the only way to "replace" it would be to play the game from the start.
You see this all over technology though. The 10 million piece model is more valuable than the CAD tool program that created it. The 500 million row database with years of collected data is more valuable than the software used to serve it up. This is why backups are so important to any IT infrastructure. You want to capture and safe guard the created content, not necessarily the software that runs it.
Too many times you'll come across a review that has some pretty negative things about this or that feature but still score well. "The graphics are bad at one point...I give it a 9/10". That always makes me scratch my head. Either the problem was worth mentioning in context of the score or the score is out of context which leads to the problem of using scores as some sort of "fact crutch" when it really is never that at all. Reviews at their heart are subjective opinions on something, in this case games. Attaching some number like "90%" tries to make it look objective. No reviews are objective so why do people keep seeking to make it look more factual?
In professional realms, they are generally good about scores being a semi-accurate reflection of the reviewer's stance (otherwise the editor would flog them). In particular I favor Ziff-Davis mags, like EGM with their 3 reviewer formula, for review information where they seem pretty honest and upfront about things they see in games where they have zero qualms about scoring something 5/10 and then tell you exactly why. Or as others have mentioned I'm really starting to favor entirely scoreless reviews like "Zero Punctionation". You know exactly what he feels about the games, even if there is a sarcastic venere to it, which is exactly what you want from a reviewer. A review should be full of the reviewer's feelings and opinions not a chart of numbers.
I don't understand why people want to see a "X/10" instead of the reviewer's honest opinion. The score/numbers obscure the opinion and make it seem factual. When someone gives a 9/10 on a game it is because it is fun for the reviewer, not because it is "universally fun for all" or automatically good for any individual reader. Why do people keep asking for scores then complain when they think a game that got 9/10 really wasn't that fun for them? In this case it seems the misinterptation lies with the reader not the publisher/reviewer.
A "World Series of Video Games" should not be broadcast on TV but on the Internet and on console closed system distribution *coughXBLcough*. I found the "Guitar Hero 2" events kind of entertaining but I found myself watching them more from the stream on the web page and only because it popped up on a message board that someone they knew was playing.
In summary, TV was the wrong way to go. They should go for Internet, advertise on the gaming web sites, provide streams from Youtube or roll their own stream. I don't think there are enough people out in TV to watch but there are probably enough surfing around to watch.
...that MSN allows the user to to run things it never should. Or in other words, one should be reasonably expect that using MSN Messenger won't screw up their machine. You should be able to feed it any number of Url from anywhere, trusted or untrusted sources, and it shouldn't do anything bad let alone second guess whether or not the information sent is "good" or "bad". Here is a hint: Untrusted data sources serve untrusted data. Why does Microsoft consider it a feature that MSN Messenger blindly run any files fed to it? And "asking for confirmation" is not sufficient.
Having any IM program make it so easy to run applications from questionable sources is not a secure feature let alone the debate whether or not it is a good one. Asking "Run this? Yes/No" doesn't make the feature any better. Why do people keep thinking it is? MSN Messenger shouldn't be doing this period where the "fix" of filtering on "bad data" by extension is laughable.
Clearly to defeat a threat from a imaginary source, we need to send in not some lawyer but another imaginary hero of mythical proportions! Besides, I bet the machines in the CTU rock and will be easy for multi-boxing.
This is a fair question so no one should mod you down for asking it.
The reason why people have a "gut feeling" about Windows is that it is a system built upon a myriad of disconnected components requiring a myriad of permissions and settings both at the "local" and enterprise/domain level all of this resulting in "who knows how many billions" of actions and interactions. But wait, other operating systems have this sort of "lots of components, lots of permissions, lots of possibilities" so what makes Windows different? Other solutions it in a much more transparent and less draconian way to avoid what often happens on Windows. This behavior on Windows manifest itself on XP as rampant use of "Administrator". It was really really really hard to accomplish many straightforward tasks navigating the system with anything less than the highest privilege.
Or to put it another way, the reason why AV software exists on Windows is that system, components, and permissions are so messed up it is hard for humans to keep it straight let alone get it right. That is why many have this vague feeling Windows isn't as secure where just throwing another layer on top of it to ask "you", as if "you" are an expert on the situation at hand, if everything is functional, OK, or permissible doesn't make it better. It is just another hurdle the malicious and the user have to overcome. If you are at a permission level on Linux, BSD, or OSX, you know the risks the permission levels gives except baring bugs. If you are at a permission level on Windows, you aren't quite sure what is at risk and hope your AV software catches something you didn't consider.
I would have to say "Yes, LUGs are dying out". They served a purpose before the days of cheap, high reliability servers, which lead to "Wiki technology". Before this happened the way to get "how to" tips was to go to LUGs or take a chance on a number of uncollected sources like boards and Usenet. I suspect LUGs will still be popular in academic settings but will go away for the public in general.
So far this seems like a "Harvard vs Yale" thing where it is inconsequential who wins. The cynic in me does have a suspicion that blame can be laid at the feet of both Epic and SK.
Epic is to blame because it seems to complete Gears of War with the "Unreal Engine 3" required a lot of work from Epic themselves. Or in other words, the engine wasn't as complete as it really needed to be so Epic did a lot of specific fixes for Gears to bring up the game. This seems to indicate that UE3 isn't that complete or polished and Epic is unable (technically or contractually) or unwilling to merge these changes into the basic engine leaving any ISV who got a license wondering how in the world they can make a game that is remotely close to Gears in function and quality.
Silicon Knights is to blame because their management seems to be way out there (yes Denis Dyack I'm looking at you). No engine can make a game beautiful where the performance of Too Human was entirely your ball to drop. That is the job of the artists, programmers, and ultimately the "director" where if they were not happy with the platform given they needed to voice their concerns. I have a sneaking suspicion they believed the marketing instead of their own technical assets then it is yet another bad decision by management.
So whatever. These two can hash it out where the ultimate fall out is that Too Human is probably 2009 time frame if SK goes through with this, reclaim their money, and rebuild their own engine.
I completely agree that the XBox 360 "library" seems larger but if you look closely it is a bunch of mediocre games that have been "upgraded" which makes the selection rather dull. There are some inventive games for the XBox 360 but they are more glimpses what what could be which gives it a "tech demo" feel instead of a completed game. [i]Gears[/i] was too short. [i]Dead Rising[/i] was simply a grand last gen game upgraded (completely with the same old broken save system).
My assessment of the "current gen" is that all 3 major players are doing horribly at the moment. In particular Microsoft and Sony continue to miss the mark where both created an expensive system but have left gamers wanting for more. People can claim Sony's hardware/software is too complex and hence the slow release rate but why is Microsoft still struggling here as well? Games aren't flying out of publishers for either system. In fact Microsoft biggest success on the XBox 360 is the small style downloadable games from XBLA, not the expensive mega budget game!(*) Nintendo on the other hand went in the other direction which more or less denies the tech trends gamers have been demanding. No matter how cheap and simple the Wii is, will we see a hugely complex game on it?
At this point no one is "winning" where even if we declare Nintendo the winner it is a might big loser prize.
(*) I will predict now that [i]Halo 3[/i] will be an awesome game but sales will be lower either of its predecessors. Shockingly lower.
Let the MS bashing begin... somehow.
Neat! No one may be preparing software for your FC5 server but that is very different than what you are implying. If you still have a FC5 server, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from updating the software today with the latest source. What has stopped is someone doing the work for you. There is no legal or physical restrictions stopping a system engineer from grabbing the source for any software component and trying to recompile it where there is a fairly good chance it will compile "as is" without source modification on a FC5 machine. This seems to be a lot better support than Microsoft offers which is the same "as is support" but with less options because you can't modify the black box they sold you.
Even claiming a box is "sold" in retail is iffy. When Best Buy buys a palette of Vista and puts a box on the shelf to sell, as far as Microsoft cares those boxes are "sold". These are also extended to packaged computers and laptops sitting in stores where the vendor (like HP) buys a license, sticks it in the box with the laptop, and shows up at Best Buy is consider "sold".
I feel the situation is so muddled we have to fall back to indirect measures like Web site traffic. I would like to see a report from a platform agnostic servers on client usage.
The original reason why "Patch Tuesday" was created was because too many were giving feedback to Microsoft that their patching process was far too disruptive to their enterprise. Before "Patch Tuesday", you could check any particular machine, at any time of day or week, and regardless of its role or usage it may have a patch pestering people that it needs to be applied and the machine rebooted. "Patch Tuesday" essentially is a "work around" to condense all of these patches that could be highly disruptive into a smaller, brief time frame.
The real problem is the patching system Microsoft chose is highly disruptive. Too many still demand user attention even if applied remotely by an administrator. Although less often, too many still require a reboot which is a larger disruption to the user's work. Should Microsoft consider changing how patching is done so that it isn't so "hands on" and pesters the users and administrators to take action? Improve patching to the point where patches can be applied painless from the IT Center and "Patch Whateverday" goes away.
Microsoft's UAC approach does not fix the problem. Windows is like a rickety bridge. We know its dangerous but Microsoft's "fix" is to place signs every 5 steps warning you could slip. How about instead we build a better bridge instead of build a better sign? Maybe we need Microsoft to build a better Windows instead of build a better system to warn us about Windows? That must be crazy talk because Microsoft year after year continues to choose to seek how to build better signs instead of better bridges.
Lets get Microsoft to design a software platform that doesn't require the user to think about whether or not the user is about to break something? Is that really so hard for one of the largest software companies in the world? UAC from my view is the wrong way to solve a problem which was born of questionable engineering. One of the reasons why UAC is so dubious is that the user may not know any better either which is a "blind leading the blind" across that rickety bridge. In summary, a better Windows wouldn't have a need for UAC so why tout this technology?
The thing is Microsoft shouldn't make Windows do these destructive things so readily in the first place. This comes about by bad engineering and worse its passed off as "bad users".
Everyone loves the car analogy: Changing the oil in your car regularly is kind of a pain for some so how about adding a feature that makes this as easy as pushing a button so everyone can do this on their own without damaging their car or making a mess. The owner pushes the button, the old oil is flushed out of the engine, placed in a easy to remove container, new oil is put in the engine by just pouring in some new one. All fine and dandy except the largest manufacture decides to place the button in the middle of the dashboard plainly labeled "CHANGE OIL". Everyone knows you really shouldn't change oil while you are driving down the interstate but what happens when your kids are in the back seat throwing things at each other and something bounces onto the dash, onto the button? Or maybe your precocious kid sees daddy pushing buttons on the car and mimics what he does while the car is sitting at home? Hopefully you catch this before you jump into the car for work and even if you do you had to spend time in the morning correcting this. Or maybe prank callers dial up the owner claiming they represent the car manufacture and their car needs emergency maintainers by pressing the button...
This is a good feature (an easy method to change oil) with muddled bad engineering where one can say "Oh the user shouldn't have pushed the button!" but lets not ignore the fact the engineers shouldn't have violated any number of good engineering rules in the first place. "User education" is not a substitute for good engineering. Microsoft's continual abusing of HMI for "ease of features" is bad engineering where people know they aren't supposed to do any number of activities that can wreck their computer and yet they happen by accident anyway. Normal user activities simply should not result in a computer becoming a zombie no matter what they browse, what they run, what buttons they press. And worst, correcting the situation is made excruciatingly hard where many users simply give up trying to fix it themselves. The computer is supposed to do what the user asks but not help if they ask them for rope to hang themselves.
1. Does Youtube work? Does it handle streaming audio/video? I haven't found anyone who will (or can, see #2) comment on it. If not "interesting" but meaningless if some of the best reasons to browse stuff on a TV doesn't work. No one is dying to read /. on their Wii.
2. When will Nintendo get around to actually selling people a Wii? Again these features are "interesting" but entirely meaningless if too few people actually have to hardware to enjoy it.
I agree with the parent that $60 is past the "impulse buy" range. I suspect why the DS does so well month after month isn't the hardware (which is so-so) but the fact it is a cheap gaming device with cheap games. Especially with kids, are you willing to spend $60 on a game you've never heard of for your kid or a $30 kiddy looking one?
This is why I'm disappointed in this era for consoles. Both the XBox 360 and PS3 are overpriced, their software is overpriced, and the games are getting shorter and maybe of questionable quality. The Wii could make a killing if they actually had some games. All in all we are getting the short end of the stick for video games on consoles this time around where maybe in a year it will clean up and pick up but I'm not holding my breath.
MythTV is getting quite mature but since you can't "naked" version of any "Home Theater PC" offered by any vendors it makes it very hard to build them for anyone but yourself. You are invariably forced to build each one of them from scratch so each "version" is subtly different. In some ways, "do it yourself" is great for cutting costs but in other ways, like "gift giving" it becomes very hard to justify.
It isn't that Google necessarily care that it is "you" (actually they might but that is another thread...), but "you" are doing a search and then clicking on links in a particular order which is a context that is important for ranking. At an abstract level, the relationship between what you searched and the links you tried is stuff Google wants to track to help enhance relevancy and search results. The problem is that with modern technology to do this they need to know somethings that aren't anonymous which can be abused.
If they can come up with a way to do this without tying it all back a computer and the individual who made the request then we are probably all better off not because privacy issues (but that is a great side effect) but because you get better results from removing the irrelevant data from ranking consideration. The closer they get to a true anonymous search system, the better the results should theoretically be.