I would be easy for games to start small in this direction. If you even take very linear story driven games like the HalfLife series, you could still throw in more game driven narrative. Suppose, you have a tendency to throw things at Alex (a female NPC who joins you for some of the game), she should become less friendly because you're being 'a jerk' to her. Or if you fail to keep the enemies away from her, maybe she should become too injured or shaken-up to be much help for the next little while.
Even games like Zelda where you get a visual of time passing (day and night) and weather make a big difference. In HL, I can stand outside for ever and the sun never moves in the sky. Wasting time crow-bar-ing boxes should mean... oh crap, now I have to fight the zombies in the dark!
In GTA, you can be the biggest crime boss/bad-ass but the NPCs never react differently to you (I haven't played the more recent GTA games, if this has changed). If I have a rocket launcher in my hands, or a reputation for evil... the NPC should react to me- flee, faint, turn away, refuse to serve me, etc.
Faxed signatures are accepted because a lot of business would grind down to a slow pace if it didn't. Also, companies want to grab you now, rather than wait for you to mail or bring in an original- more chance you might forget, get side-tracked or go to a competitor. Also, speaking from a b2b perspective, business people don't have the time to bring things to eachother, nor the funds (or time) to mail/courier papers all over the place. Fax is still a major method of sending signed work orders, contracts, purchase orders etc.
If a company is smart though, they should know the person they're talking to before they accept a faxed signature. Although, how many companies actually analyze a signature to check if it's forged? And who can tell if it is? The whole concept of signatures is rather flawed in my opinion.
One of the reasons I use my webhost (not DreamHost) for my webmail, is because they are NOT Google. I have a solid, fast, clean webmail interface that has no ads, and I have never had any problems with it. I also don't have to worry about Google 'interpreting' it or something to show me targeted ads. My host also provides a handy means of backing it all up to my desktop, or I just bring it down into Thunderbird.
On top of that, if a company does not provide a contact email address on their OWN domain, then I can't help subconsciously questioning their legitimacy (regardless of how silly that is).
So, no, Google is not making web hosts less necessary.
As a Canadian domain owner, I can say it's about time... and I hope the rest of the TDLs go the same direction. I get way too much spam from my Whois email address and I even get phone calls..ca doesn't support who-is privacy services, and I would have been happy just with that, but this is even better. Thank you CIRA.
All their choices?? I'm curious to know the list of choices that people living in the poorest countries in the world have.
Oh wait, you were referring to the choice of burning and melting down circuit boards VS watching their children starve. You're right, they have lots of choices.
When people are desperate, they will take whatever option is given to them. Larger organizations are taking advantage of cheap, desperate, uneducated workers to do the dirty work that our countries turn a blind eye too.
Why do you think that the junk we all buy is so cheap? Because the hidden costs of manufacture and disposal are offloaded onto others. We pay the money price for an ipod or sparkly shoelaces, and the Chinese pay in terms of raw toxins dumped into their rivers from the factories, poor labour conditions, and a lack of social services. Then Ghana pays in terms of damaged environment and health when the waste is dumped there.
I'm not saying there's an easy solution. Obviously these workers are better off than if they had no job at all. I'm just saying that if a Walmart water-gun or whatever reflected the REAL cost to make it, people would be shocked.
There are a lot of comments complaining about Greenpeace in general, or making jokes... but they have a good point. Electronics are manufactured from way too many toxic and impossible or difficult to recycle products. Consumers aren't aware enough about the need to recycle electronics, or even where to bring them.
How can the government stomp down on stem-cell research... but allow this to happen? This is many, many times worse, and does not have a more moral alternative (like harvesting stem cells from umbilical cords).
I really hope this sparks a public outrage, but sadly I doubt it will.
As an experienced PHP developer, who has many websites that I take care of - some of them are ecom sites I manage for relatives- but I didn't write them... this news is kind of a two edged sword for me.
While I'm glad to see some of the more blatant security problems being closed up, and the things that encourage sloppy programming being removed.... I'm not excited about having to go through many hundreds of files of code written by OTHER people, to fix some of these things. Really, what's so wrong about the short php tags? *sigh*
I know it has to be done though. But I just finished cleaning up these sites for PHP5 and mySQL5. Yes, I'm wining.
I have a Palm TX which makes for a very good E-reader. I can load Palm ebooks, PDFs, Word documents, text documents, and even, with some effort- html pages. There's no DRM crap, and there's lots of freeware readers out there too.
On the down side, it uses a back-lit screen and the screen is very small.
But, even without the screen issues, it would still never be my preferred way of reading books of any type. Sure, it's nice to have something in my pocket for those times you're stuck in a waiting room or whatever. But, it just will never be the way I read books that I care at all about. For many reasons:
- If I drop it, I'm in trouble. - I can't jot down notes or circle things in a reference book. I can't stick little sheets of paper in it with relevant articles I printed out from the web. Or my own notes. - I can't loan the books to people easily. - I like to keep good books forever. But I doubt I'll have my ereader for that long, or that future versions will support my ebook formats. - If my Palm crashes, I'll loose my book. I do have backups on my PC, but I don't want to have to maintain an entire drive of backups if I were to make ebooks my main type of book. - I like the look of my book collection on my shelves. I can easily grab one and flip through it. I can grab a book I haven't touched in years, and start reading it within seconds. No loading it onto a reader. - I'm not nervous about bringing a paperback to the beach or camping, etc. An expensive ereader- is not something I'd bring to these places. - I like the tactile feel of a new book. The smell. The feeling of the thickness of what's left to read getting smaller. - I like the cover art. And the ability to pull books off my shelf, skim the back summary or a few pages to remember what it was about. My ereader wouldn't hold my entire library, so I'd have to boot up my PC to look up my old ebooks. Then re-load it onto my ereader if I want to read some of it again. Ug. - Traditional novels are only ten bucks. E books should be like a dollar. But they aren't. Too expensive for something that takes away my freedom to do what I want with it. A paper book never 'expires' or locks you in to a certain reader, or prevents you from sharing. - The city library loans out books to me for free. I wonder if we'll see free digital ebook loans? - Have you ever 'lovingly' held a book that you really really enjoyed? Or hid a scary novel underneath a magazine because you didn't want to see the cover because you were spooked out by some midnight reading? Or given a good book a prominent spot on a nice shelf or coffee table? Ebooks can't have this type of physical presence in your life.
Sorry, but I'll sometimes use free ebooks to see if I want to buy the 'real thing'. And it's nice to have one in my Palm for convenient reading sometimes. But it will never be my preferred method. No matter how well they design the tech or drop the price or kill the DRM. It's just not a good medium.
I really hope this doesn't turn into another Steam-esq system for Spore. What a nightmare. Everytime my little brother calls me for a quick game of TF2, I start it up, and without fail it takes 5 minutes for Steam to load, and then, even if I have updates turned off, it still starts updating the game AND the steam platform. 40 minutes later, still can't play yet. So much for a quick game.
Though, I believe Spore will have to phone home to get new species to populate your world with and to send your creations out to other players right?
But, the sad thing is many people don't have 'net access at all, or maybe I want to play "on the go" with my laptop? So the fact that it's getting harder to find games that don't require 'net access, is one of my number one problems with the current direction of the gaming industry.
Re:This is why I don't like Master Chief/Solid Sna
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That's one of the more insightful comments I've read in a while. I've always felt that way too, but could never put a finger on what bothered me about some cut scenes.
I also agree that the way Halflife downplays the identity of the main character is a good way to draw you in. It also helps for female gamers like me, so that I'm not _constantly_ reminded that my character is actually a guy, which also doesn't help the immersiveness.
I agree, but people won't move from Windows until the alternatives get a library of games/software comparable to Windows, and solve stupid issues like these:
The fact that there is an intentional back door, even if it's for 'law enforcement' purposes, means that all the Windows claims of security are meaningless. It's a pretend security.
If I manufacture locks, and and put in a glitch so that it will unlock if you shake/tap it a certain way, then I'm not making a lock, I'm making a device 'similar to a lock'.
God this pisses me off. How long until these devices end up on ebay? Or a knock-off gets out into the public's hands.
Utter bs. I love that my Windows password is not one-way hashed. That's why my personal stuff I wouldn't want a thief to see is in a TruCrypt hidden volume. And this is also why I no longer bring my laptop with me when I cross the border into the USA. Stupid.
How is this modded off topic? The OP asked for suggestions for arcade style games. I provided a link to a site with lots of old-but-free arcade games. How is that offtopic??
I used GoDaddy for the one standard cert I ever had to order and had no problems at all. My one complaint is that when I ordered it, their pricing was $19.99, it has now gone up to $29.99.
The cert auto renewed and I wasn't expecting that, but a ticket to their support center and I got it canceled and refunded. So pretty good service I think.
But watch out. The more that ISPs start filtering content, and the more that governments increase monitoring and censoring data on the web... you're going to see rising demand for SSL certs and rising instances of the, pay more money for a green url bar nonsense.
The SSL providers are trying to sell you on the idea that it's the cert that makes the site trustworthy. Meanwhile, all you really need the cert for is the encryption.
IE7 has succeeded in making shared certs utterly useless. Too bad for the little guy who was using the shared cert provided free from his hosting company, because you can no longer use it without an enormous frightening message from the browser.
Yes, thank you! The IE7 warning on shared certs has made a friend of mine's little online shop nearly unusable. It scares people off. But it's just a hobby shop and can't really afford the trouble of getting their own cert. The shared one comes free with their host, but is now useless. I emailed the IE7 team to complain and the official line was, if you are using a shared certificate, you must be a phisher. ARG!
How is 'vat meat' an acceptable alternative to farm raised meat? PETA is actually ok with substituting franken-meat for real animals?
Honestly that's very gross to me. How lazy are we that we would rather pull ourselves farther out of nature and eat out of a test-tube, than actually do the hard work needed to actually implement sustainable and humane farming practices. If the cost of farm-meat actually reflected how costly it is to raise free-range animals that aren't full of hormones, steroids and antibiotics then the price would cause people to eat less and economics would create more of a natural balance.
I'm a bit of an environmentalist and an animal lover myself, but I do eat meat. I enjoy it, but I also have respect for the animals and wish that I had more options for more 'holistically' raised animals, and a more sustainable balance to the food chain.
Forcing everyone to be vegetarians or to eat some kind of never-alive-test-tube meat clone is not the answer. Damn, humans are lazy. That, and we are becoming depraved and don't even realize it.
That's a great plan, burn more tax dollars on this stupidity, so that all P2P starts using encryption, which will happen sooner or later.
Meanwhile, people in New Orleans are still living in trailers or other temporary housing, and the national debt continues to blast off into space.
I wonder how many people in New Orleans could be helped with $1,000,000,000.
I know, just for fun... a very small house costs around 80K. So... 1000000000/80000 is...
** 12,500 new homes ** Say on average the house contains an adult couple and one kid. That's 37,500 people that could be re-housed for the cost of this plan.
As a Canadian living close to the border, I'm feeling less and less welcome, and much less likely to pop over to the US to spend my dollars shopping or sight-seeing, given the growing risk that I'll be detained, finger printed, DNA stolen, laptop hard-drive taken or copied, and given a terrorist risk rating.
Really, "welcome" to the land of the free.
Here's hoping the coming election brings SOME kind of change.
Does it work differently in the USA than in Canada? If I buy online from a Canadian vendor that operates in the province where I live, then I get charged provincial tax. Federal tax for any vendor in Canada. For example, amazon.ca charges me tax.
One site I manage, paid an IndexTools reseller for the Index Tools suite. I got to play around with it, and it is by far the best analytics program I've had the chance to get my hands on, better than Google's by a good margin.
This is excellent news for site owners... but I would guess not so good for the Index Tools resellers who have been making money off of reselling this product.
There's no need to shred un-addressed junk mail (like flyers). If you are getting junk / offers addressed directly to you, I've had good results with calling those companies and asking to be removed from their mailing lists. Typically they don't want to pay the postage for mailing to an uninterested person.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be easy for games to start small in this direction. If you even take very linear story driven games like the HalfLife series, you could still throw in more game driven narrative. Suppose, you have a tendency to throw things at Alex (a female NPC who joins you for some of the game), she should become less friendly because you're being 'a jerk' to her. Or if you fail to keep the enemies away from her, maybe she should become too injured or shaken-up to be much help for the next little while.
Even games like Zelda where you get a visual of time passing (day and night) and weather make a big difference. In HL, I can stand outside for ever and the sun never moves in the sky. Wasting time crow-bar-ing boxes should mean... oh crap, now I have to fight the zombies in the dark!
In GTA, you can be the biggest crime boss/bad-ass but the NPCs never react differently to you (I haven't played the more recent GTA games, if this has changed). If I have a rocket launcher in my hands, or a reputation for evil... the NPC should react to me- flee, faint, turn away, refuse to serve me, etc.
Little things like this would go a long way.
Faxed signatures are accepted because a lot of business would grind down to a slow pace if it didn't. Also, companies want to grab you now, rather than wait for you to mail or bring in an original- more chance you might forget, get side-tracked or go to a competitor. Also, speaking from a b2b perspective, business people don't have the time to bring things to eachother, nor the funds (or time) to mail/courier papers all over the place. Fax is still a major method of sending signed work orders, contracts, purchase orders etc.
If a company is smart though, they should know the person they're talking to before they accept a faxed signature. Although, how many companies actually analyze a signature to check if it's forged? And who can tell if it is? The whole concept of signatures is rather flawed in my opinion.
One of the reasons I use my webhost (not DreamHost) for my webmail, is because they are NOT Google. I have a solid, fast, clean webmail interface that has no ads, and I have never had any problems with it. I also don't have to worry about Google 'interpreting' it or something to show me targeted ads. My host also provides a handy means of backing it all up to my desktop, or I just bring it down into Thunderbird.
On top of that, if a company does not provide a contact email address on their OWN domain, then I can't help subconsciously questioning their legitimacy (regardless of how silly that is).
So, no, Google is not making web hosts less necessary.
As a Canadian domain owner, I can say it's about time... and I hope the rest of the TDLs go the same direction. I get way too much spam from my Whois email address and I even get phone calls. .ca doesn't support who-is privacy services, and I would have been happy just with that, but this is even better. Thank you CIRA.
It's a crime to insult someone?
I thought that hate speech, inciting a crime, or defamation are the only types of speech that are illegal?
So what does freedom of speech mean then if you can't insult anyone or any organization? It's negative criticism generally insulting?
All their choices?? I'm curious to know the list of choices that people living in the poorest countries in the world have.
Oh wait, you were referring to the choice of burning and melting down circuit boards VS watching their children starve. You're right, they have lots of choices.
When people are desperate, they will take whatever option is given to them. Larger organizations are taking advantage of cheap, desperate, uneducated workers to do the dirty work that our countries turn a blind eye too.
Why do you think that the junk we all buy is so cheap? Because the hidden costs of manufacture and disposal are offloaded onto others. We pay the money price for an ipod or sparkly shoelaces, and the Chinese pay in terms of raw toxins dumped into their rivers from the factories, poor labour conditions, and a lack of social services. Then Ghana pays in terms of damaged environment and health when the waste is dumped there.
I'm not saying there's an easy solution. Obviously these workers are better off than if they had no job at all. I'm just saying that if a Walmart water-gun or whatever reflected the REAL cost to make it, people would be shocked.
(for some reason you have to refresh that page to get the photo gallery navigation to appear in FF)
There are a lot of comments complaining about Greenpeace in general, or making jokes... but they have a good point. Electronics are manufactured from way too many toxic and impossible or difficult to recycle products. Consumers aren't aware enough about the need to recycle electronics, or even where to bring them.
Too often they end up somewhere like this: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/essick-photography
Which is just sad.
How can the government stomp down on stem-cell research... but allow this to happen? This is many, many times worse, and does not have a more moral alternative (like harvesting stem cells from umbilical cords).
I really hope this sparks a public outrage, but sadly I doubt it will.
As an experienced PHP developer, who has many websites that I take care of - some of them are ecom sites I manage for relatives- but I didn't write them... this news is kind of a two edged sword for me.
While I'm glad to see some of the more blatant security problems being closed up, and the things that encourage sloppy programming being removed.... I'm not excited about having to go through many hundreds of files of code written by OTHER people, to fix some of these things. Really, what's so wrong about the short php tags? *sigh*
I know it has to be done though. But I just finished cleaning up these sites for PHP5 and mySQL5. Yes, I'm wining.
I have a Palm TX which makes for a very good E-reader. I can load Palm ebooks, PDFs, Word documents, text documents, and even, with some effort- html pages. There's no DRM crap, and there's lots of freeware readers out there too.
On the down side, it uses a back-lit screen and the screen is very small.
But, even without the screen issues, it would still never be my preferred way of reading books of any type. Sure, it's nice to have something in my pocket for those times you're stuck in a waiting room or whatever. But, it just will never be the way I read books that I care at all about. For many reasons:
- If I drop it, I'm in trouble.
- I can't jot down notes or circle things in a reference book. I can't stick little sheets of paper in it with relevant articles I printed out from the web. Or my own notes.
- I can't loan the books to people easily.
- I like to keep good books forever. But I doubt I'll have my ereader for that long, or that future versions will support my ebook formats.
- If my Palm crashes, I'll loose my book. I do have backups on my PC, but I don't want to have to maintain an entire drive of backups if I were to make ebooks my main type of book.
- I like the look of my book collection on my shelves. I can easily grab one and flip through it. I can grab a book I haven't touched in years, and start reading it within seconds. No loading it onto a reader.
- I'm not nervous about bringing a paperback to the beach or camping, etc. An expensive ereader- is not something I'd bring to these places.
- I like the tactile feel of a new book. The smell. The feeling of the thickness of what's left to read getting smaller.
- I like the cover art. And the ability to pull books off my shelf, skim the back summary or a few pages to remember what it was about. My ereader wouldn't hold my entire library, so I'd have to boot up my PC to look up my old ebooks. Then re-load it onto my ereader if I want to read some of it again. Ug.
- Traditional novels are only ten bucks. E books should be like a dollar. But they aren't. Too expensive for something that takes away my freedom to do what I want with it. A paper book never 'expires' or locks you in to a certain reader, or prevents you from sharing.
- The city library loans out books to me for free. I wonder if we'll see free digital ebook loans?
- Have you ever 'lovingly' held a book that you really really enjoyed? Or hid a scary novel underneath a magazine because you didn't want to see the cover because you were spooked out by some midnight reading? Or given a good book a prominent spot on a nice shelf or coffee table? Ebooks can't have this type of physical presence in your life.
Sorry, but I'll sometimes use free ebooks to see if I want to buy the 'real thing'. And it's nice to have one in my Palm for convenient reading sometimes. But it will never be my preferred method. No matter how well they design the tech or drop the price or kill the DRM. It's just not a good medium.
I really hope this doesn't turn into another Steam-esq system for Spore. What a nightmare. Everytime my little brother calls me for a quick game of TF2, I start it up, and without fail it takes 5 minutes for Steam to load, and then, even if I have updates turned off, it still starts updating the game AND the steam platform. 40 minutes later, still can't play yet. So much for a quick game.
Though, I believe Spore will have to phone home to get new species to populate your world with and to send your creations out to other players right?
But, the sad thing is many people don't have 'net access at all, or maybe I want to play "on the go" with my laptop? So the fact that it's getting harder to find games that don't require 'net access, is one of my number one problems with the current direction of the gaming industry.
That's one of the more insightful comments I've read in a while. I've always felt that way too, but could never put a finger on what bothered me about some cut scenes.
I also agree that the way Halflife downplays the identity of the main character is a good way to draw you in. It also helps for female gamers like me, so that I'm not _constantly_ reminded that my character is actually a guy, which also doesn't help the immersiveness.
I agree, but people won't move from Windows until the alternatives get a library of games/software comparable to Windows, and solve stupid issues like these:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/28/012238
I'm a techie/developer and even I find Linux confusing.
The fact that there is an intentional back door, even if it's for 'law enforcement' purposes, means that all the Windows claims of security are meaningless. It's a pretend security.
If I manufacture locks, and and put in a glitch so that it will unlock if you shake/tap it a certain way, then I'm not making a lock, I'm making a device 'similar to a lock'.
God this pisses me off. How long until these devices end up on ebay? Or a knock-off gets out into the public's hands.
Utter bs. I love that my Windows password is not one-way hashed. That's why my personal stuff I wouldn't want a thief to see is in a TruCrypt hidden volume. And this is also why I no longer bring my laptop with me when I cross the border into the USA. Stupid.
How is this modded off topic? The OP asked for suggestions for arcade style games. I provided a link to a site with lots of old-but-free arcade games. How is that offtopic??
I used GoDaddy for the one standard cert I ever had to order and had no problems at all. My one complaint is that when I ordered it, their pricing was $19.99, it has now gone up to $29.99.
The cert auto renewed and I wasn't expecting that, but a ticket to their support center and I got it canceled and refunded. So pretty good service I think.
But watch out. The more that ISPs start filtering content, and the more that governments increase monitoring and censoring data on the web... you're going to see rising demand for SSL certs and rising instances of the, pay more money for a green url bar nonsense.
The SSL providers are trying to sell you on the idea that it's the cert that makes the site trustworthy. Meanwhile, all you really need the cert for is the encryption.
IE7 has succeeded in making shared certs utterly useless. Too bad for the little guy who was using the shared cert provided free from his hosting company, because you can no longer use it without an enormous frightening message from the browser.
Look for more of this to come.
Yes, thank you! The IE7 warning on shared certs has made a friend of mine's little online shop nearly unusable. It scares people off. But it's just a hobby shop and can't really afford the trouble of getting their own cert. The shared one comes free with their host, but is now useless. I emailed the IE7 team to complain and the official line was, if you are using a shared certificate, you must be a phisher. ARG!
There are tons of free, fun arcade style games at: www.dosgamesarchive.com.
Many of them will run on newer computers with minimal trouble.
How is 'vat meat' an acceptable alternative to farm raised meat? PETA is actually ok with substituting franken-meat for real animals?
Honestly that's very gross to me. How lazy are we that we would rather pull ourselves farther out of nature and eat out of a test-tube, than actually do the hard work needed to actually implement sustainable and humane farming practices. If the cost of farm-meat actually reflected how costly it is to raise free-range animals that aren't full of hormones, steroids and antibiotics then the price would cause people to eat less and economics would create more of a natural balance.
I'm a bit of an environmentalist and an animal lover myself, but I do eat meat. I enjoy it, but I also have respect for the animals and wish that I had more options for more 'holistically' raised animals, and a more sustainable balance to the food chain.
Forcing everyone to be vegetarians or to eat some kind of never-alive-test-tube meat clone is not the answer. Damn, humans are lazy. That, and we are becoming depraved and don't even realize it.
That's a great plan, burn more tax dollars on this stupidity, so that all P2P starts using encryption, which will happen sooner or later.
Meanwhile, people in New Orleans are still living in trailers or other temporary housing, and the national debt continues to blast off into space.
I wonder how many people in New Orleans could be helped with $1,000,000,000.
I know, just for fun... a very small house costs around 80K. So... 1000000000/80000 is...
** 12,500 new homes ** Say on average the house contains an adult couple and one kid. That's 37,500 people that could be re-housed for the cost of this plan.
Now who's thinking of the children?
As a Canadian living close to the border, I'm feeling less and less welcome, and much less likely to pop over to the US to spend my dollars shopping or sight-seeing, given the growing risk that I'll be detained, finger printed, DNA stolen, laptop hard-drive taken or copied, and given a terrorist risk rating.
Really, "welcome" to the land of the free.
Here's hoping the coming election brings SOME kind of change.
Does it work differently in the USA than in Canada? If I buy online from a Canadian vendor that operates in the province where I live, then I get charged provincial tax. Federal tax for any vendor in Canada. For example, amazon.ca charges me tax.
Is it not this way in the USA?
One site I manage, paid an IndexTools reseller for the Index Tools suite. I got to play around with it, and it is by far the best analytics program I've had the chance to get my hands on, better than Google's by a good margin.
This is excellent news for site owners... but I would guess not so good for the Index Tools resellers who have been making money off of reselling this product.
Awesome for me as a website owner.
There's no need to shred un-addressed junk mail (like flyers). If you are getting junk / offers addressed directly to you, I've had good results with calling those companies and asking to be removed from their mailing lists. Typically they don't want to pay the postage for mailing to an uninterested person.
Now I get essentially zero addressed junk mail.