In a formal setting peer review of code is an expensive process. It takes a team of people, who aren't necessarily experts or have knowledge in the whats or whys the code is exists, to inspect code before reviewing. Management sees this time as empty or lost. Developers who have other deadlines would rather being their work than commenting on other work.
For formal peer review to work it must be scheduled in and implemented with the blessing of management. The surest way to fail at code reviews is to up and one day say that code reviews are mandated but never provide time or the framework to execute.
As mentioned in the parent, Open Source has more informal review structure. Before you implement new features you inspect the code and ask the author questions which can lead to improved and robust designs even without implementing new features. Either the author gets sick of answering questions or seeing comments about their weak design and implements a new one or a newcommer goes ahead and does it. Its a win-win.
Sometimes people scratch their heads about benchmarks and wonder "how did they come up with that number?" If the benchmark itself was Open Source you'd have at least a partial answer. Not to mention you'd have the eyes of many people looking over the code to make sure it was executing draws in the right and consistent manner.
So why aren't benchmarks open? What do the makers of benchmarks have to hide? Are they under NDAs from the card vendors?
One application where 64-Bit addressable would be welcomed in open arms is server application. If you can directly map gigabyte drive arrays you skip some of the hit on the OS level of doing something else to calculate offset. While it maybe dubious to make desktop applications 64-bit addressable things like databases and drive drivers would benifit from the full support.
"Behold! The secret technique of my ancestors!"
on
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Actually "The Blue Screen of Death" is a great name for an ultimate deathblow attack. You just need to yell it at your opponent before you attack while bantering with them on the philosophical implications of using Windows in deadly combat.
Slightly off topic but there is a big tangental issue going on here that could effect everyone in the US (an other places that use a similar system of law).
I have no issue with someone writting what they interpet a law or a court ruling means. Copyright that and charge a bazillion dollars for it if you want (that is how lawyers make their living after all). I am however offended that someone can take government buisness which is conducted publicly and try to enforce a copyright on it.
I suspect The Supreme Court of the United States will sooner or later have to lay down a ruling on this very issue of copyrights vs law and public domain. Its starting to crop up in too many places now to ignore the effect of copyrighted material written into public law.
Traditionally (English Common Law??) any laws written by legistlative bodies are automatically in the public domain. Anyone is free to read up on what the legistlature passes for laws. How else is a private citizen expected to follow the laws if they aren't available publicly? Likewise, records public court proceedings held in public are in public domain (how do you expect to invoke privlage if you invovle 3rd parties?).
However in recent history there has been a shocking turn of enforcing "copyright" on written laws and court proceedings. I am not a lawyer but I can see where this can lead too:
A coporation says "We believe this publicly funded and publicly available thing we are building for you, a public government should be handled like this" they drop a lengthy book on the table A public government says "You are right. These are good rules. I'll write up a law to make sure everyone who uses the publicly funded and publicly available thing will abide by these good rules."
...a little later...
A private citizen says "I want to hook into the publicly funded and public available thing to reap some benifits from my tax dollars. How do I do that?" A public government says "The law says you have to ask a corporation over there." A corporation says "Okay that will be $100 for the book, sign the NDA, and you can not reproduce it."
See the issue? I really hope the The Supreme Court takes a look at the issue or it will end up biting all of us in the ass. How can people claim public domain things like law as copyrighted material?
It is interesting to note that Miramax (guess who owns them?) has some 30+ nominations. It is no secret that Miramax pushes heavily on Academy voters to vote for their stuff because an Oscar Award (and lesser extent Nomination) means advertising dollars. This includes the much vaunted Spirited Away...
Miramax in the days of Clerks used to be about a production company that wanted to do off beat and out of mainstream stuff. Of course all of that changed when Shakespeare in Love came along and dumped a huge pile of cash in their laps. Oh well...The Oscars were never for the outside and indie film industry anyway. No one should labor under the delusion that the Oscars are anything but a big advertising gig.
I honestly want to know. People who claim "BSD is more free than GPL" (or the ones that claim the contrary) are all bogus.
BSD and GPL offer different slants because their core philosophies and values are different. Neither are right or wrong in their evaluations. To claim one type is greater than another type is HIGHLY disingenuous. I have yet to find any indication philosophically that your freedom, my freedom, or any other person's freedom is greater than any other. Philosophers have been asking that questions for centuries and there doesn't look like there is an answer in sight.
BSD vs GPL boils down to this: Its a philosophic question that DOES NOT HAVE A RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWER. Its fine and dandy to argue the merrits but to assert your way is the one true way is bogus.
Although you may be competing against another company and product in the same market space (IE vs Opera 7) that is no escuse to be at best sloopy and at worse sabotage.
Forget the fact that it serves up different style sheets depending on the browser string. That isn't bad (in fact given other evil solutions this is by far the lesser one to achieve similiar rendering behavior).
So what is going on here? MSN is being unprofessional by releasing broken stuff. Or MSN is being HIGHLY unprofessional purposely sabotaging their server (kind of a stupid thing to do since the risks of sabotage outweigh the rewards).
So while BigBir3d says "its there servers, they can do what they want" I say "its there servers and they can't even serve content right."
In another post I mention that patching is dangerous and hard to do for an average developer. Why risk your dev time by executing complex patches? I bet more than anything most companies were bit by small and unknown installation of DBs inside of their intranets.
So while some will harp on Admins for not patching, I claim that Admins can only track so much. If I need to develope something on a MS SQL Server where I need to tinker with the entire DB(ie. I need admin rights) I am going to install one on a throw away machine. I am not going to case patches since the installation will not be used in production and its hard to do right. I will not ask the Admins to maintain it since its not for them.
Why is patching software on MS platforms somewhat like open heart surgery? It looks so complex I wonder how do Admins work with 10+ machine clusters. If it wasn't so complex I may just patch my small test DB instead of ignoring warnings. Until the patching process becomes much less risky and painful then this will happen over and over again.
The failed systems featured all seem to have common feature: extra large price tags. People were just not willing to spend that amount of money for the "features" these machines gave.
And its still true today. You can get the hotest hardware, the niftiest features, and the coolest designers all to collaborate on something but if it is priced out the interest of the common consumer its going to be a boat anchor or a bookend.
Hopefully this will be a lesson for future console makers.
Well this episode shows that you can drag the camel to the well but you can't make them drink the water.
Now Microsoft is in an awkward position. They claim its not their fault: admins should have noticed the original security advisory and patched their machines. But how do they expect 3rd parties to keep up and pay attention when their own internal resources don't?
For a full time system admin that is paid to do nothing but maintain the servers following the advisory and patching escapades is their job. However a developer working on a piece of software that requires MS-SQL Server doesn't have the time nor the energy to. Reading the patch it sounds like it isn't exactly a "click-and-go" process and is a little scary. To a developer I'm not so sure its short sightedness. I spend a lot of time working on product, not following security advisories nor do I spend a lot of time applying complex or risky patches. To a developer the risk of having an unpatched, internal usage machine is much much much less than breaking the environment and screwing up your work schedule.
Harping on admins that got caught is one thing. Harping on developers to follow and apply every patch is futile. So futile that not even Microsoft themselves internally would try.
It is quite true that videos get copied around a lot in Japan. So how does Anime sell at all in Japan? Well one of the tricks is that they load the offical releases with goodies beyond the actual video material. Their philosophy: You can't beat the rampant copying so why bother?
And that is the trick. The video or CD itself can be worth as much work as you are willing to put into copying it. However getting posters, thick supplimental reading material, figurines, extra CDs, wooden cases with the show's logo on it can't be copied. Of course they don't sell releases in giantic volumes companies in the US are used to on mainstream releases but if done right they can make money.
No there isn't any evil Star Chamber in Cartoon Network that decided to cut Sympathy for the Devil and Cowboy Funk. There maybe some hidden group that is calling the shots but they had little to do with this.
For awhile people have claimed that both of these episodes where cut because of their contraversal natures. This is odd since a lot of Cowboy Bebop episodes feature one or some of the "Three TV Sins"(sex, drugs, violence). People claimed that Sympathy was cut because of youth violence (think Columbine) while Cowboy Funk was cut because the maniac bomber (who blew up tall buildings).
However what I remember is this fact: during the first run of Cowboy Bebop on CN it ran a 4 days a week run for 6 weeks. That adds up to 24...two episodes had to be skipped to fit.
So it is simple as scheduling. Two episodes had to be cut on the first run. These two episodes where somewhat weakly tied to the CB methos so it wasn't a big loss.
As for Spirited Away: go see if it is in your area. It is one of the best and blessed visualzations put to film in recent history. As for Knock'n Down Heaven's Door: it is an interesting movie that takes advantage of foreshadows and themes to emphize what the core of Cowboy Bebop really was.
(I couldn't read the article...slashedoted already)
Unless its an super easy reversable change forget the tweaking stuff on Windows.
Its just to easy to screw up your system. A less than optimal system still plays WC3 fine on good hardware. Trying to squeeze another 5% smoothness out during 5% of the gameplay isn't awe inspring. What is worse is that you could screw up your system or driver and then you have a non-functional game machine. Reinstalling Windows isn't fun when you were expecting to meet up with friends and play some WC3.
Hardware has more of an influence on performance than mucking with frindge software elements. For my game machine, I just want it to work. If I have to tweak something then I'm better off replacing what is flaking out.
Appeal if they like but historically the Supreme Court tends to reject hearings on cases like this where no Constituional questions are asked. Unless Microsoft's defense is that Anti-Trust laws are unfair and unconstituional the Supreme Court probably won't hear the case. It is of course their right to appeal as many times as they want but more than not the Supreme Court finds that the lower courts were in order and refuses to hear the case.
While you may have a point if this was an actual treatement being asked for but the case this time is just a simple herdiary test. I'm unclear how the rights of Myriad Genetics is being infringed or stolen from by inspecting genetic material found in every one.
So while Bald Guy Genetics may hold the patent for the gene that causes male pattern baldness do they have the right to stop someone from inspecting themselves to find out? Better break the mirrors then even if you aren't going bald. Just a simple inspection of your head of hair can test to see if you have their "patented" gene.
Charge out the wazoo for medicine. Testing is another matter.
The big problem with MS's application is the idea that data can tell programs what do to. THIS IS A BAD BAD BAD IDEA.
How foolish is this? How many people would open an email that said:
Hey here is a perl script with my message in it. Go ahead and run it to see what I have to say.
You'd be a fool on any system to execute what ever it really is but MS wants this behavior by default. The moment you let data run the program you get this bad stuff. Word document with macros that destroy files. A whole slew of Outlook nastiness. Heck nearly all buffer overruns in networked programs are based on the idea that sending bad data to gain control.
Why does MS continue to cling to this idea that they can make data behave like programs?? It just isn't sound...I wish they would abandon it.
Why is holding a legal monopoly over bodily functions fostering medical improvements? Medical costs are going way way way up. This is an honest question: has anyone shown that patenting bodily functions has improved medical care in the US?
What happened with being first to market? If one company discovers WonderDrug A cures all that ills, going to market first assures some profit right? As market forces settle in, it then becomes who can make the better quanties at a lower price.
The problem with current medical patents, as with many patents, is they are too far reaching. *Anything* that has to process BadGene B can be patented even if the resulting medical conditions are seperate. Are companies even sure what BadGene B is linked to when they patent or is it just "patent squatting"?
I don't know...I seem to remember Salk saying he wanted to make the vacination for polio because he got tired of seeing people suffer. The fact he got money and glory for it after seemed like a nice bonus. Where did that kind of thinking go?
I hate to suggest this but after reading the first page(the only page I could get to load) it feels like astroturfing. I mean come on...statements like those quoted above are just weird. It is as if they were told to write something...ANYTHING.
Who knows? Maybe they are smart enough to understand something that isn't released on the XBox is better than stuff not released on the GC or PS2.;-)
Go to ebay and buy a scan tool. You see the engine light on your car go on. Even if you have the tool and plug it into your car's computer it only spits out an error number and a little extra information. What does it mean? No one knows....except for the car makers who want to charge you money for the manual.
This is the same stuff Free Software Philosophy seeks to fight: closed systems that take rights away from the user. You bought the car....why can't you figure out what is wrong with it on your own if you choose to do so? Why do automakers want to keep your property a secret from you?
One thing I've always wondered about this wonderful set of games is exactly how much wheeling and dealing did they have to do to get as many "real" cars and products into the game.
In any event it is the perfect touch: a race track without product billboards isn't very realistic. Cars that you can say "Hey I know someone with that car" are playable. You can walk into a tire store and look at the same tires offered in the game.
Software companies promote themselves all of the time in their own games but should they now seek ad revenue for games? Hungry companies could see this is a new boon. Players could start to see this as a new bother.
However the GT series does this correctly because it is subtile. The car designs and products are the ads themselves...you don't need to be intrusive with load screens shouting "Parts of this game were funded by Soandso". If players start seeing intrusive ads they'll start to turn away from it.
Assuming it launches from a part of the US one kind of need US permission to fly super large launch vehicles. The US doesn't take kindly to unscheduled large object flying around in US airspace nor would I suspect many other countries would either.
Reguardless of the stance on the privitazation of space, many functions will still fall under US Federal juristiction and regulation. After all you don't want thousands of pounds of rocket fuel falling on major cities do you?
There are two things I really appreciated about American Gods.
- The old god's interaction with the current world - The mythos of the new "gods" of America
I also find it interesting that some of the elder gods fall victim to the allure of "The American Dream(tm)". The promise of prosperity didn't apply to them when their followers came over here and now they are bitter. The want a piece of the pie too.
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In a formal setting peer review of code is an expensive process. It takes a team of people, who aren't necessarily experts or have knowledge in the whats or whys the code is exists, to inspect code before reviewing. Management sees this time as empty or lost. Developers who have other deadlines would rather being their work than commenting on other work.
For formal peer review to work it must be scheduled in and implemented with the blessing of management. The surest way to fail at code reviews is to up and one day say that code reviews are mandated but never provide time or the framework to execute.
As mentioned in the parent, Open Source has more informal review structure. Before you implement new features you inspect the code and ask the author questions which can lead to improved and robust designs even without implementing new features. Either the author gets sick of answering questions or seeing comments about their weak design and implements a new one or a newcommer goes ahead and does it. Its a win-win.
Sometimes people scratch their heads about benchmarks and wonder "how did they come up with that number?" If the benchmark itself was Open Source you'd have at least a partial answer. Not to mention you'd have the eyes of many people looking over the code to make sure it was executing draws in the right and consistent manner.
So why aren't benchmarks open? What do the makers of benchmarks have to hide? Are they under NDAs from the card vendors?
One application where 64-Bit addressable would be welcomed in open arms is server application. If you can directly map gigabyte drive arrays you skip some of the hit on the OS level of doing something else to calculate offset. While it maybe dubious to make desktop applications 64-bit addressable things like databases and drive drivers would benifit from the full support.
Actually "The Blue Screen of Death" is a great name for an ultimate deathblow attack. You just need to yell it at your opponent before you attack while bantering with them on the philosophical implications of using Windows in deadly combat.
Slightly off topic but there is a big tangental issue going on here that could effect everyone in the US (an other places that use a similar system of law).
...a little later...
I have no issue with someone writting what they interpet a law or a court ruling means. Copyright that and charge a bazillion dollars for it if you want (that is how lawyers make their living after all). I am however offended that someone can take government buisness which is conducted publicly and try to enforce a copyright on it.
I suspect The Supreme Court of the United States will sooner or later have to lay down a ruling on this very issue of copyrights vs law and public domain. Its starting to crop up in too many places now to ignore the effect of copyrighted material written into public law.
Traditionally (English Common Law??) any laws written by legistlative bodies are automatically in the public domain. Anyone is free to read up on what the legistlature passes for laws. How else is a private citizen expected to follow the laws if they aren't available publicly? Likewise, records public court proceedings held in public are in public domain (how do you expect to invoke privlage if you invovle 3rd parties?).
However in recent history there has been a shocking turn of enforcing "copyright" on written laws and court proceedings. I am not a lawyer but I can see where this can lead too:
A coporation says "We believe this publicly funded and publicly available thing we are building for you, a public government should be handled like this" they drop a lengthy book on the table
A public government says "You are right. These are good rules. I'll write up a law to make sure everyone who uses the publicly funded and publicly available thing will abide by these good rules."
A private citizen says "I want to hook into the publicly funded and public available thing to reap some benifits from my tax dollars. How do I do that?"
A public government says "The law says you have to ask a corporation over there."
A corporation says "Okay that will be $100 for the book, sign the NDA, and you can not reproduce it."
See the issue? I really hope the The Supreme Court takes a look at the issue or it will end up biting all of us in the ass. How can people claim public domain things like law as copyrighted material?
It is interesting to note that Miramax (guess who owns them?) has some 30+ nominations. It is no secret that Miramax pushes heavily on Academy voters to vote for their stuff because an Oscar Award (and lesser extent Nomination) means advertising dollars. This includes the much vaunted Spirited Away...
Miramax in the days of Clerks used to be about a production company that wanted to do off beat and out of mainstream stuff. Of course all of that changed when Shakespeare in Love came along and dumped a huge pile of cash in their laps. Oh well...The Oscars were never for the outside and indie film industry anyway. No one should labor under the delusion that the Oscars are anything but a big advertising gig.
I honestly want to know. People who claim "BSD is more free than GPL" (or the ones that claim the contrary) are all bogus.
BSD and GPL offer different slants because their core philosophies and values are different. Neither are right or wrong in their evaluations. To claim one type is greater than another type is HIGHLY disingenuous. I have yet to find any indication philosophically that your freedom, my freedom, or any other person's freedom is greater than any other. Philosophers have been asking that questions for centuries and there doesn't look like there is an answer in sight.
BSD vs GPL boils down to this: Its a philosophic question that DOES NOT HAVE A RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWER. Its fine and dandy to argue the merrits but to assert your way is the one true way is bogus.
Although you may be competing against another company and product in the same market space (IE vs Opera 7) that is no escuse to be at best sloopy and at worse sabotage.
Forget the fact that it serves up different style sheets depending on the browser string. That isn't bad (in fact given other evil solutions this is by far the lesser one to achieve similiar rendering behavior).
So what is going on here? MSN is being unprofessional by releasing broken stuff. Or MSN is being HIGHLY unprofessional purposely sabotaging their server (kind of a stupid thing to do since the risks of sabotage outweigh the rewards).
So while BigBir3d says "its there servers, they can do what they want" I say "its there servers and they can't even serve content right."
In another post I mention that patching is dangerous and hard to do for an average developer. Why risk your dev time by executing complex patches? I bet more than anything most companies were bit by small and unknown installation of DBs inside of their intranets.
So while some will harp on Admins for not patching, I claim that Admins can only track so much. If I need to develope something on a MS SQL Server where I need to tinker with the entire DB(ie. I need admin rights) I am going to install one on a throw away machine. I am not going to case patches since the installation will not be used in production and its hard to do right. I will not ask the Admins to maintain it since its not for them.
Why is patching software on MS platforms somewhat like open heart surgery? It looks so complex I wonder how do Admins work with 10+ machine clusters. If it wasn't so complex I may just patch my small test DB instead of ignoring warnings. Until the patching process becomes much less risky and painful then this will happen over and over again.
The failed systems featured all seem to have common feature: extra large price tags. People were just not willing to spend that amount of money for the "features" these machines gave.
And its still true today. You can get the hotest hardware, the niftiest features, and the coolest designers all to collaborate on something but if it is priced out the interest of the common consumer its going to be a boat anchor or a bookend.
Hopefully this will be a lesson for future console makers.
Well this episode shows that you can drag the camel to the well but you can't make them drink the water.
Now Microsoft is in an awkward position. They claim its not their fault: admins should have noticed the original security advisory and patched their machines. But how do they expect 3rd parties to keep up and pay attention when their own internal resources don't?
For a full time system admin that is paid to do nothing but maintain the servers following the advisory and patching escapades is their job. However a developer working on a piece of software that requires MS-SQL Server doesn't have the time nor the energy to. Reading the patch it sounds like it isn't exactly a "click-and-go" process and is a little scary. To a developer I'm not so sure its short sightedness. I spend a lot of time working on product, not following security advisories nor do I spend a lot of time applying complex or risky patches. To a developer the risk of having an unpatched, internal usage machine is much much much less than breaking the environment and screwing up your work schedule.
Harping on admins that got caught is one thing. Harping on developers to follow and apply every patch is futile. So futile that not even Microsoft themselves internally would try.
It is quite true that videos get copied around a lot in Japan. So how does Anime sell at all in Japan? Well one of the tricks is that they load the offical releases with goodies beyond the actual video material. Their philosophy: You can't beat the rampant copying so why bother?
And that is the trick. The video or CD itself can be worth as much work as you are willing to put into copying it. However getting posters, thick supplimental reading material, figurines, extra CDs, wooden cases with the show's logo on it can't be copied. Of course they don't sell releases in giantic volumes companies in the US are used to on mainstream releases but if done right they can make money.
Enough said. ;-)
No there isn't any evil Star Chamber in Cartoon Network that decided to cut Sympathy for the Devil and Cowboy Funk. There maybe some hidden group that is calling the shots but they had little to do with this.
For awhile people have claimed that both of these episodes where cut because of their contraversal natures. This is odd since a lot of Cowboy Bebop episodes feature one or some of the "Three TV Sins"(sex, drugs, violence). People claimed that Sympathy was cut because of youth violence (think Columbine) while Cowboy Funk was cut because the maniac bomber (who blew up tall buildings).
However what I remember is this fact: during the first run of Cowboy Bebop on CN it ran a 4 days a week run for 6 weeks. That adds up to 24...two episodes had to be skipped to fit.
So it is simple as scheduling. Two episodes had to be cut on the first run. These two episodes where somewhat weakly tied to the CB methos so it wasn't a big loss.
As for Spirited Away: go see if it is in your area. It is one of the best and blessed visualzations put to film in recent history. As for Knock'n Down Heaven's Door: it is an interesting movie that takes advantage of foreshadows and themes to emphize what the core of Cowboy Bebop really was.
(I couldn't read the article...slashedoted already)
Unless its an super easy reversable change forget the tweaking stuff on Windows.
Its just to easy to screw up your system. A less than optimal system still plays WC3 fine on good hardware. Trying to squeeze another 5% smoothness out during 5% of the gameplay isn't awe inspring. What is worse is that you could screw up your system or driver and then you have a non-functional game machine. Reinstalling Windows isn't fun when you were expecting to meet up with friends and play some WC3.
Hardware has more of an influence on performance than mucking with frindge software elements. For my game machine, I just want it to work. If I have to tweak something then I'm better off replacing what is flaking out.
Appeal if they like but historically the Supreme Court tends to reject hearings on cases like this where no Constituional questions are asked. Unless Microsoft's defense is that Anti-Trust laws are unfair and unconstituional the Supreme Court probably won't hear the case. It is of course their right to appeal as many times as they want but more than not the Supreme Court finds that the lower courts were in order and refuses to hear the case.
While you may have a point if this was an actual treatement being asked for but the case this time is just a simple herdiary test. I'm unclear how the rights of Myriad Genetics is being infringed or stolen from by inspecting genetic material found in every one.
So while Bald Guy Genetics may hold the patent for the gene that causes male pattern baldness do they have the right to stop someone from inspecting themselves to find out? Better break the mirrors then even if you aren't going bald. Just a simple inspection of your head of hair can test to see if you have their "patented" gene.
Charge out the wazoo for medicine. Testing is another matter.
Read my post again: scripts are "executable" and NOT DATA. Exactly what "data" are you hoping to store in rc scripts? None.
The big problem with MS's application is the idea that data can tell programs what do to. THIS IS A BAD BAD BAD IDEA.
How foolish is this? How many people would open an email that said:
Hey here is a perl script with my message in it. Go ahead and run it to see what I have to say.
You'd be a fool on any system to execute what ever it really is but MS wants this behavior by default. The moment you let data run the program you get this bad stuff. Word document with macros that destroy files. A whole slew of Outlook nastiness. Heck nearly all buffer overruns in networked programs are based on the idea that sending bad data to gain control.
Why does MS continue to cling to this idea that they can make data behave like programs?? It just isn't sound...I wish they would abandon it.
Why is holding a legal monopoly over bodily functions fostering medical improvements? Medical costs are going way way way up. This is an honest question: has anyone shown that patenting bodily functions has improved medical care in the US?
What happened with being first to market? If one company discovers WonderDrug A cures all that ills, going to market first assures some profit right? As market forces settle in, it then becomes who can make the better quanties at a lower price.
The problem with current medical patents, as with many patents, is they are too far reaching. *Anything* that has to process BadGene B can be patented even if the resulting medical conditions are seperate. Are companies even sure what BadGene B is linked to when they patent or is it just "patent squatting"?
I don't know...I seem to remember Salk saying he wanted to make the vacination for polio because he got tired of seeing people suffer. The fact he got money and glory for it after seemed like a nice bonus. Where did that kind of thinking go?
I hate to suggest this but after reading the first page(the only page I could get to load) it feels like astroturfing. I mean come on...statements like those quoted above are just weird. It is as if they were told to write something...ANYTHING.
;-)
Who knows? Maybe they are smart enough to understand something that isn't released on the XBox is better than stuff not released on the GC or PS2.
Go to ebay and buy a scan tool. You see the engine light on your car go on. Even if you have the tool and plug it into your car's computer it only spits out an error number and a little extra information. What does it mean? No one knows....except for the car makers who want to charge you money for the manual.
This is the same stuff Free Software Philosophy seeks to fight: closed systems that take rights away from the user. You bought the car....why can't you figure out what is wrong with it on your own if you choose to do so? Why do automakers want to keep your property a secret from you?
One thing I've always wondered about this wonderful set of games is exactly how much wheeling and dealing did they have to do to get as many "real" cars and products into the game.
In any event it is the perfect touch: a race track without product billboards isn't very realistic. Cars that you can say "Hey I know someone with that car" are playable. You can walk into a tire store and look at the same tires offered in the game.
Software companies promote themselves all of the time in their own games but should they now seek ad revenue for games? Hungry companies could see this is a new boon. Players could start to see this as a new bother.
However the GT series does this correctly because it is subtile. The car designs and products are the ads themselves...you don't need to be intrusive with load screens shouting "Parts of this game were funded by Soandso". If players start seeing intrusive ads they'll start to turn away from it.
Assuming it launches from a part of the US one kind of need US permission to fly super large launch vehicles. The US doesn't take kindly to unscheduled large object flying around in US airspace nor would I suspect many other countries would either.
Reguardless of the stance on the privitazation of space, many functions will still fall under US Federal juristiction and regulation. After all you don't want thousands of pounds of rocket fuel falling on major cities do you?
There are two things I really appreciated about American Gods.
- The old god's interaction with the current world
- The mythos of the new "gods" of America
I also find it interesting that some of the elder gods fall victim to the allure of "The American Dream(tm)". The promise of prosperity didn't apply to them when their followers came over here and now they are bitter. The want a piece of the pie too.