Hmm, give me a reason to believe your claim that the next logical step would be convicts, and then those in the public service???
I'm not convinced. It's easy to fall into that trap, but it is still a fallacy. Perhaps you are being funny, but I'm going to assume that you are being honest.
THAT being said, I do believe that this is a bad step, but better reasons are required than fictional postulations that this could eventually lead to some sort of totalatarian police state where we all carry around GPS emitters. In any case, children are not being legislated by the state to carry these transmitters!
Don't see any possible problems with this move, apart from the immigration part. Sounds like the information encoded in the chip contains no sensitive information, so that's a bonus, and a more secure identification system makes the entire system more reliable. However, from the article:
There will also be a "status check" notation on the front and back of licenses showing when an immigrant's visa expires, something the state already had begun to put on licenses despite opposition from civil liberties groups.
This is a bit of a sticky point, IMHO. This isn't really necessary, and will probably achieve nothing but undue stress for immigrants, and prompt deportation if an illegal gets caught at a traffic stop (presuming that these IDs can not be forged). I don't know what Minnesota's illegal immigrant problem is, but this is a disturbing development. It's a drivers license, not a citizenship card. First step in a bad direction?
China is probably banning this game because if your going to prohibit recognization of Taiwanese independence, you must make sure you cover all the bases. We're hearing about it now because it is affecting a computer game, but I'm sure that extends to any form of mass media.
However, this game has a number of errors. I quote from the article:
[The game is a C]omputer sports game that classifies Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet as countries
Get real. Macau and Hong Kong are not independent countries, and Tibet hasn't been one for fifty years. The only country there that has some international standing is Taiwan, and that's by virtue of the United States assistance. This game is another case of designers that didn't bother to check their facts, or were intentionally trying to piss of the People's Republic of China. If China wouldn't ban it based on Taiwan, your damned right they'd ban it based on Tibet, and probably just laugh at the notion of an independent Macau. I am certainly not endorsing the actions of China, and regard the invasion of Tibet as a travesty, but sometimes people have to respect political realities.
I know I still have not installed SP2 because of the problems it causes with SQL Server, I can't wait to see what kind of havoc it causes on the servers...
This is a little predjudicial. You may have some historical examples to draw upon, but we should cut Microsoft some slack. If they didn't release this, people would complain, and when they do, people complain. If Microsoft is willing to admit that the "the improvements are important enough that applications should be changed to accommodate them", then perhaps they are right. It's doubtful that Microsoft is going to cause this much of a hassle unless it was for a good reason - ultimately, it would be easier for them to forgo this. Perhaps it is initial flaws, but how could they get it all right on the very first release?
I know I sound like some sort of Microsoft 'fanboy', but I'm just trying to present a devil's advocate view against the Slashdot bias against Microsoft.
I would argue that many of these employees are gradually getting worse in the corporate/email environment. It must be stressed that e-mail communications must be treated the same way as letter communications.
I see it all the time. People who can write excellent essays, articles or letters on an actual physical piece of paper suddenly become illiterate idiots when they begin to write an e-mail.
It's a corporate culture that doesn't treat e-mail with respect. This is along the same vein as mass forwards to people that are not concerned with the e-mail, or FYI (For Your Information) forwards that are inconsequential. It'd be curious to compare pre e-mail cultures and post e-mail cultures, and see if the sheer amount of information sent via e-mail (FYIs, forwards, etc.) has a mitigating effect on the productivity gains.
This trend to move away from old technology such as the Pentium II that still serves a valid purpose is silly, part of a push to always be bigger and better.
Now I'm not saying that the Pentium II is viable for any new programmes, heck, I find my Pentium 4 a little slow at times. I first started questioning this push over the summer, when I worked at a Canadian government office. The workers there ALL had brand-new Pentium 4 Dells (and it wasn't just our office, the entire facility had been upgraded), with full sound cards, video, you name it. Of course, sound was all deactivated as it was a cubicle farm.
Needless to say, what did the people use these Pentium 4's for? Word Processing. Perhaps a bit of Excel, and some random surfing of the web. I wasn't complaining, because I was underworked and could take advantage of the Pentium 4's spectacular Solitaire and Minesweeper processing, but it wasn't necessary.
The Pentium II can run Office applications fine, and heck, that's waht the majority of work force productivity is? Now you'll have to buy a better model to use Word.. wow.
I don't know the cost difference in terms of productivity between the P2 and the P4, and I'm sure they can concentrate on just producting the P4 even more on masse, but this is simply going to give procurement departments an excuse to connive themselves better equipment.
Well, that devolved into a rant, but hopefully my point can still come across clear! Cheers.
The file that you download, mmd11setup.exe, is the install programme. I don't know if it runs on Mac OS X (not very familiar with it), but it won't run on your SCUMM-emulator. The programme is made using an freeware programme that lets you make adventure games.
Besides, one of the great successes of Steam was the fact that many gamers bypassed retail altogether and bought Half Life 2 via Steam. That is the true threat to retailers like WalMart.
Very good point. I'd love to know if there were any statistics regarding the amount of people that bought Half Life 2 via Steam? That'd be a great study, and I'm sure other corporations are investigating that avenue of selling products.
If there's some adventure fans that are psyched about the possibility of a Sam & Max release, there are some fun freeware adventure games out there that I've really enjoyed and feel others may too? Just trying to spread some of the good news in the genre:
The games '5 Days a Stranger' and '7 Days a Skeptic' are a lot of fun and are free for download, it's neat to see what game developers are up to in order to deal with the paucity of new adventure games. 5 Days a Stranger, http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/5days/ is the first in a series, followed by the Sci-Fi themed 7 Days a Skeptic http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/7days/. They're both by this designed named 'Ben Crenshaw', and looks like they have won a few awards - it's great that this designer of free software is getting recognized.
Hope this helps some people deal with the lack of adventure games, and let's hope that this Sam & Max game comes out!
This might be interesting to people that enjoyed the original Maniac Mansion. I love Adventure games, and there is a new version of the original Maniac Mansion - might be more accessible to gamers who prefer updated graphics, and such.
With respects to Half Life 2, perhaps it is the combination of being a highly anticipated game as well as the difficulty of pirating the game thanks to the infernal 'Steam'.
It's not just current events that are subject to an author's personal bias! The editing wars concerning controversial topics on Wikipedia are extremely interesting as well, and makes the whole idea of Wikinews flawed. Look up anything to do with the Kosovo war, atheism, heck, Christianity.
Somebody'll put something up saying that some scholars and historians believe there was no historical Jesus, next thing you know somebody will revamp it to take such things out. Just imagine a news article on a new development in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - try to find an unbiased observer in the Middle East. Heck, even if there was an unbiased observer in the Middle East, it'd be damn hard to know from your living room in Europe or North America.
Wikinews may be useful, but only as a useful sidebar to the news. This is for two key reasons:
(1) The author's bias - at least we know the slant of CNN, FoxNews, CBS, etc. News is subjective, and even more so when it is a random person out there in cyberspace. (2) Original news gathering - Will they have the budget? Is the quality of coverage everywhere going to be the same?
This is like blogs, in terms that it will end up being uneven. Useful for commentary, but not for original news gathering. This is a good idea, but it is not the next evolution of news! The 'official' news sources have their flaws, but its the devil we know.
While many other posters have jokingly suggested that the RIAA is culpable, and have been modded' funny', the knee jerk reaction to laugh is troublesome. I would not put it above the RIAA to carry out this sort of activity.
For example, when downloading from the Kazaa network (I still use it occasionally), the majority of 'popular' music postings up there are put up there by the RIAA and consist of nothing but static/hissing or the music intersperesed with horrid screeching noises.
This would be a legitimate tactic for the RIAA to employ, would it not, given that the RIAA could simply claim to be attacking an illegal company? Or am I simply wrapped up in conspiracy theories?
Good for UC Berkeley. There are some dangers, but as the article says, we need to research so we can discover the dangers.
Nuclear power is dangerous, and the dangers unknown, but it was through studies like this that it was discovered (well, that is an oversimplification, but perhaps the base concept is applicable). Surely with new Occupational Health & Safety measures that I'm sure are stringently enforced at UC Berkeley, we can learn of the possible dangers of nanotechnology and benefit as a society.
This was a great move. They recognized that they had alienated a section of their fan base, and moved accordingly to capitalize on it and theoretically profit by selling more copies.
Meh, I've heard a lot of people saying that they're happy Ridge stepped down and that they disagreed with his politics. Well, I'd be surprised if most liberal-minded persons liked anybody in the post of Homeland Security minister given the mandate given to that department from the President.
That being said, while sometimes cabinet shakedowns are good, I'd argue that Bush is just using this to reinforce his neo-con philsophy even more so than he did before. Witness the replacement of Ashcroft with somebody (in my humble opinion) is even worse than he is.
This may seem off-topic, but it is wihin the same genre and while it is great to see new Interactive Fiction (IF), if people are interested there are some of the true classics still out there on the net. While most IF afficianados have certainly played the IF version of 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy', if not it is available online at http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava. html
. It's not always up, but it is available elsewhere and some links are provided on that webpage.
This is the game that introduced me to the genre, and I've enjoyed it ever since. Can be extremely frustrating at times, but it is rewarding and thought provoking. Hopefully this new beed has come up with some 'easter eggs' to reward creative typing!
Perhaps, but I would hope that most colleges protect this information from parties you haven't authorized to read it, including the federal government?
This is bad move by the US Department of Education. Much of this information is uneeded. I quote from the article:
Under the new system proposed by the National Center for Education Statistics at the Department of Education, each student enrolled in college would have a computer record that included name, address, birth date, gender, race, and Social Security number. It would then track field of study, credits, tuition paid, and financial aid received and would follow the student if he or she transferred or dropped out and later reenrolled.
Why does name, address, birth date, gender, race and Social Security have to do with this obstensible goals? An anonymous survey could be effective to gain whatever information they can possibly hope to gain from this system. They seem to be concerned with transfer students, but these could just be tracked without private information being encoded in a databse! This is a rediculous move, and probably just another move for a more complete database of civilian's private information.
Perhaps some staticians could shed some light on what this study hopes to achieve, and why personal data is required?
Further evidence that stress has real, actual impact on the human body and that stress management programmes should be accorded respect. I don't know any statistics on the subject, but for every workplace that has a stress programme there are certainly many that do not.
Just as asbestos is a workplace hazard, stress should be considered in the similar vein. While people may chuckle at the mental image of a bunch of cubicle workers doing tai-chi or some other stress exercise, it may be the right move to deal with a signifigant health hazard.
Perhaps somebody should do a study of those EA workers and if their health was impacted by the long periods of stressful work?
First off, I did accept the EULA and other than my initial annoyance with the Steam download/decryption (I was eager to play the game after plonking down a fairly hefty amount of money) it has not been a problem. Steam has only intruded once to ask for my machine information, and I did find it funny to see how poorly my machine stood up.
But, has anybody actually tried to return a game after disagreeing with the EULA? I noticed in the HL2 readme that it said if I did not agree with the EULA, to contact Sierra regarding this. Given that people often repeat the argument that the EULA is stupid as you can not review it until after purchasing a non-returnable game, I was wondering if this is actually true.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, give me a reason to believe your claim that the next logical step would be convicts, and then those in the public service???
I'm not convinced. It's easy to fall into that trap, but it is still a fallacy. Perhaps you are being funny, but I'm going to assume that you are being honest.
THAT being said, I do believe that this is a bad step, but better reasons are required than fictional postulations that this could eventually lead to some sort of totalatarian police state where we all carry around GPS emitters. In any case, children are not being legislated by the state to carry these transmitters!
Don't see any possible problems with this move, apart from the immigration part. Sounds like the information encoded in the chip contains no sensitive information, so that's a bonus, and a more secure identification system makes the entire system more reliable. However, from the article:
There will also be a "status check" notation on the front and back of licenses showing when an immigrant's visa expires, something the state already had begun to put on licenses despite opposition from civil liberties groups.
This is a bit of a sticky point, IMHO. This isn't really necessary, and will probably achieve nothing but undue stress for immigrants, and prompt deportation if an illegal gets caught at a traffic stop (presuming that these IDs can not be forged). I don't know what Minnesota's illegal immigrant problem is, but this is a disturbing development. It's a drivers license, not a citizenship card. First step in a bad direction?
However, this game has a number of errors. I quote from the article:Get real. Macau and Hong Kong are not independent countries, and Tibet hasn't been one for fifty years. The only country there that has some international standing is Taiwan, and that's by virtue of the United States assistance. This game is another case of designers that didn't bother to check their facts, or were intentionally trying to piss of the People's Republic of China. If China wouldn't ban it based on Taiwan, your damned right they'd ban it based on Tibet, and probably just laugh at the notion of an independent Macau. I am certainly not endorsing the actions of China, and regard the invasion of Tibet as a travesty, but sometimes people have to respect political realities.
I know I still have not installed SP2 because of the problems it causes with SQL Server, I can't wait to see what kind of havoc it causes on the servers...
This is a little predjudicial. You may have some historical examples to draw upon, but we should cut Microsoft some slack. If they didn't release this, people would complain, and when they do, people complain. If Microsoft is willing to admit that the "the improvements are important enough that applications should be changed to accommodate them", then perhaps they are right. It's doubtful that Microsoft is going to cause this much of a hassle unless it was for a good reason - ultimately, it would be easier for them to forgo this. Perhaps it is initial flaws, but how could they get it all right on the very first release?
I know I sound like some sort of Microsoft 'fanboy', but I'm just trying to present a devil's advocate view against the Slashdot bias against Microsoft.
I would argue that many of these employees are gradually getting worse in the corporate/email environment. It must be stressed that e-mail communications must be treated the same way as letter communications.
I see it all the time. People who can write excellent essays, articles or letters on an actual physical piece of paper suddenly become illiterate idiots when they begin to write an e-mail.
It's a corporate culture that doesn't treat e-mail with respect. This is along the same vein as mass forwards to people that are not concerned with the e-mail, or FYI (For Your Information) forwards that are inconsequential. It'd be curious to compare pre e-mail cultures and post e-mail cultures, and see if the sheer amount of information sent via e-mail (FYIs, forwards, etc.) has a mitigating effect on the productivity gains.
This trend to move away from old technology such as the Pentium II that still serves a valid purpose is silly, part of a push to always be bigger and better.
Now I'm not saying that the Pentium II is viable for any new programmes, heck, I find my Pentium 4 a little slow at times. I first started questioning this push over the summer, when I worked at a Canadian government office. The workers there ALL had brand-new Pentium 4 Dells (and it wasn't just our office, the entire facility had been upgraded), with full sound cards, video, you name it. Of course, sound was all deactivated as it was a cubicle farm.
Needless to say, what did the people use these Pentium 4's for? Word Processing. Perhaps a bit of Excel, and some random surfing of the web. I wasn't complaining, because I was underworked and could take advantage of the Pentium 4's spectacular Solitaire and Minesweeper processing, but it wasn't necessary.
The Pentium II can run Office applications fine, and heck, that's waht the majority of work force productivity is? Now you'll have to buy a better model to use Word.. wow.
I don't know the cost difference in terms of productivity between the P2 and the P4, and I'm sure they can concentrate on just producting the P4 even more on masse, but this is simply going to give procurement departments an excuse to connive themselves better equipment.
Well, that devolved into a rant, but hopefully my point can still come across clear! Cheers.
The file that you download, mmd11setup.exe, is the install programme. I don't know if it runs on Mac OS X (not very familiar with it), but it won't run on your SCUMM-emulator. The programme is made using an freeware programme that lets you make adventure games.
Besides, one of the great successes of Steam was the fact that many gamers bypassed retail altogether and bought Half Life 2 via Steam. That is the true threat to retailers like WalMart.
Very good point. I'd love to know if there were any statistics regarding the amount of people that bought Half Life 2 via Steam? That'd be a great study, and I'm sure other corporations are investigating that avenue of selling products.
If there's some adventure fans that are psyched about the possibility of a Sam & Max release, there are some fun freeware adventure games out there that I've really enjoyed and feel others may too? Just trying to spread some of the good news in the genre:
The games '5 Days a Stranger' and '7 Days a Skeptic' are a lot of fun and are free for download, it's neat to see what game developers are up to in order to deal with the paucity of new adventure games. 5 Days a Stranger, http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/5days/ is the first in a series, followed by the Sci-Fi themed 7 Days a Skeptic http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/7days/. They're both by this designed named 'Ben Crenshaw', and looks like they have won a few awards - it's great that this designer of free software is getting recognized.
Hope this helps some people deal with the lack of adventure games, and let's hope that this Sam & Max game comes out!
This might be interesting to people that enjoyed the original Maniac Mansion. I love Adventure games, and there is a new version of the original Maniac Mansion - might be more accessible to gamers who prefer updated graphics, and such.
e s_eng.htm
The link is http://people.freenet.de/lucasfangames/maniac/gam
Adventure isn't dead!
I've been trying to find a copy of that game, where'd you find it?
With respects to Half Life 2, perhaps it is the combination of being a highly anticipated game as well as the difficulty of pirating the game thanks to the infernal 'Steam'.
Steam indirectly aiding Walmart?
Wonder if anybody thought that Sean Connery was the one and only James Bond, before his retirement?
It's cliche, but two wrongs don't make a right. Lycos had a good goal, but the ends don't always justify the means.
It's not just current events that are subject to an author's personal bias! The editing wars concerning controversial topics on Wikipedia are extremely interesting as well, and makes the whole idea of Wikinews flawed. Look up anything to do with the Kosovo war, atheism, heck, Christianity.
Somebody'll put something up saying that some scholars and historians believe there was no historical Jesus, next thing you know somebody will revamp it to take such things out. Just imagine a news article on a new development in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - try to find an unbiased observer in the Middle East. Heck, even if there was an unbiased observer in the Middle East, it'd be damn hard to know from your living room in Europe or North America.
Wikinews may be useful, but only as a useful sidebar to the news. This is for two key reasons:
(1) The author's bias - at least we know the slant of CNN, FoxNews, CBS, etc. News is subjective, and even more so when it is a random person out there in cyberspace.
(2) Original news gathering - Will they have the budget? Is the quality of coverage everywhere going to be the same?
This is like blogs, in terms that it will end up being uneven. Useful for commentary, but not for original news gathering. This is a good idea, but it is not the next evolution of news! The 'official' news sources have their flaws, but its the devil we know.
While many other posters have jokingly suggested that the RIAA is culpable, and have been modded' funny', the knee jerk reaction to laugh is troublesome. I would not put it above the RIAA to carry out this sort of activity.
For example, when downloading from the Kazaa network (I still use it occasionally), the majority of 'popular' music postings up there are put up there by the RIAA and consist of nothing but static/hissing or the music intersperesed with horrid screeching noises.
This would be a legitimate tactic for the RIAA to employ, would it not, given that the RIAA could simply claim to be attacking an illegal company? Or am I simply wrapped up in conspiracy theories?
Good for UC Berkeley. There are some dangers, but as the article says, we need to research so we can discover the dangers.
Nuclear power is dangerous, and the dangers unknown, but it was through studies like this that it was discovered (well, that is an oversimplification, but perhaps the base concept is applicable). Surely with new Occupational Health & Safety measures that I'm sure are stringently enforced at UC Berkeley, we can learn of the possible dangers of nanotechnology and benefit as a society.
This was a great move. They recognized that they had alienated a section of their fan base, and moved accordingly to capitalize on it and theoretically profit by selling more copies.
Bravo, Valve!
Meh, I've heard a lot of people saying that they're happy Ridge stepped down and that they disagreed with his politics. Well, I'd be surprised if most liberal-minded persons liked anybody in the post of Homeland Security minister given the mandate given to that department from the President.
That being said, while sometimes cabinet shakedowns are good, I'd argue that Bush is just using this to reinforce his neo-con philsophy even more so than he did before. Witness the replacement of Ashcroft with somebody (in my humble opinion) is even worse than he is.
This may seem off-topic, but it is wihin the same genre and while it is great to see new Interactive Fiction (IF), if people are interested there are some of the true classics still out there on the net. While most IF afficianados have certainly played the IF version of 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy', if not it is available online at http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava. html
. It's not always up, but it is available elsewhere and some links are provided on that webpage.
This is the game that introduced me to the genre, and I've enjoyed it ever since. Can be extremely frustrating at times, but it is rewarding and thought provoking. Hopefully this new beed has come up with some 'easter eggs' to reward creative typing!
Perhaps, but I would hope that most colleges protect this information from parties you haven't authorized to read it, including the federal government?
This is bad move by the US Department of Education. Much of this information is uneeded. I quote from the article:
Under the new system proposed by the National Center for Education Statistics at the Department of Education, each student enrolled in college would have a computer record that included name, address, birth date, gender, race, and Social Security number. It would then track field of study, credits, tuition paid, and financial aid received and would follow the student if he or she transferred or dropped out and later reenrolled.
Why does name, address, birth date, gender, race and Social Security have to do with this obstensible goals? An anonymous survey could be effective to gain whatever information they can possibly hope to gain from this system. They seem to be concerned with transfer students, but these could just be tracked without private information being encoded in a databse! This is a rediculous move, and probably just another move for a more complete database of civilian's private information.
Perhaps some staticians could shed some light on what this study hopes to achieve, and why personal data is required?
Further evidence that stress has real, actual impact on the human body and that stress management programmes should be accorded respect. I don't know any statistics on the subject, but for every workplace that has a stress programme there are certainly many that do not.
Just as asbestos is a workplace hazard, stress should be considered in the similar vein. While people may chuckle at the mental image of a bunch of cubicle workers doing tai-chi or some other stress exercise, it may be the right move to deal with a signifigant health hazard.
Perhaps somebody should do a study of those EA workers and if their health was impacted by the long periods of stressful work?
First off, I did accept the EULA and other than my initial annoyance with the Steam download/decryption (I was eager to play the game after plonking down a fairly hefty amount of money) it has not been a problem. Steam has only intruded once to ask for my machine information, and I did find it funny to see how poorly my machine stood up.
But, has anybody actually tried to return a game after disagreeing with the EULA? I noticed in the HL2 readme that it said if I did not agree with the EULA, to contact Sierra regarding this. Given that people often repeat the argument that the EULA is stupid as you can not review it until after purchasing a non-returnable game, I was wondering if this is actually true.
Anyone?