In the case of the government agencies above, they take money that should be used to fully fund the obligations and instead spend it on present fads.
What do you mean by present fads? Are you saying that every government run pension fund and the SSA is corrupt? That the fund managers (including the state treasurers in most cases) are buying yachts? Or that they are investing in more risky investments for higher returns? I don't seem to recall anyone off the top of my head that's been arrested recently for stealing from a government pension fund, nor do I remember there being a recent scandal in the Social Security Administration involving missing funds of some magnitude.
So if you're referring to risky investments, that's one thing. But I wouldn't lump it in with Enron, seeing as Enron's management intentionally misled all of its investors and employees to cover trading losses whereas the government would just be plain inept. But millions of people get their social security checks on time every month, so I don't know how you could point to that.
You know, I tried to think of a better name for the next Wii but I couldn't. So I decided just to go with Wii 2 and let someone else get the modpoints. Maybe that's why I didn't get to +5?
I see your point, and lower you a Windows 95. It worked wonders for games and operating system stability overall./sarcasm
While a monoculture would help game developers make games faster and more reliably, the question is what would it do for hardware? I mean, the Wii really is a hardware innovation more than software, right? The software is made to fit the hardware. If the Wiimote didn't exist, then WiiSports would be a lame party-game ripoff.
I guess you can argue that third-party hardware add-ons would fill this space, but we haven't achieved the parity in open-platform hardware that we have in software. You can write software for Linux on the PS3, but can you design and distribute your own PS3mote for it? I don't think so. So a monoculture would basically achieve a monopoly by one manufacturer with no incentive to innovate.
I've always felt like Nintendo's game have more soul...Now the on screen characters and gameplay make you feel in your heart and mind while the Wiimote makes your body feel as well.
Seeing as Spore currently is on track to be Next-Next-Gen anyways. I guess it's safe to say it'll be on the Wii 2 rather than the Xbox 720 at this point.
I never understand the complaints against PSN either at the moment. It's pretty straightforward. Sometimes it's a little disorganized, but I don't understand what makes it so much harder to use than say Xbox Live (which costs money and has a stupid currency system) and the Wii, which to my knowledge doesn't even have that much content other than SNES rehashes. Sony's done a good job of getting some quality, original IP on their Store and that actually is one of the highlights of the console.
If you regularly keep up with PSN then the updates for that week are right there on the screen and you don't have to go looking for them. They've certainly gotten better at organizing it since last year, and if you have a Hi-Def TV then it's pretty easy to find the most popular items on the top screen as well.
I know it's un-Slashdot like, but reading the other comments above you shows that most of them lost their passwords or stopped reading/writing comments.
This probably won't help SK's lawsuit, and might in fact hurt it. They have two things to prove in their lawsuit - that the engine wasn't ready and that Epic did that intentionally. This proves the engine wasn't up to snuff, but might hurt them because it shows that Epic itself was affected by the engine's preparedness, so why would they do this intentionally? Of course, the conspiracy theorists in the crowd can fire up their argument that Epic is doing this to help deflate the lawsuit. If the lawsuit succeeds, then Epic might be open to even more lawsuits and settlements.
I don't know if I'd agree with that. They might sue, but they also might have risked their reputation as the creator of the PC market. Now they might have gotten out of it by selling the business to Lenovo, but they're still manufacturing chips and developing operating systems even though the majority of the PC business was done with Intel and Microsoft. I would say that they came out of the 80s and 90s relatively unscathed, and a reputation that might be better than Apple in relation to business. How many companies have blade servers? And how many companies have G5s?
It's a pretty legit complaint - the square button on mine is a bit loose. You can kind of see inside the PSP to the connection where the button sits. If any of the buttons are going to fall off, it's that one. I don't remember it being like that when I bought it though.
You're right, I misspoke, and wikipedia saves the day. People reverse-engineered the AT, but IBM did not pursue it. If it was Apple, though, I think we'd both agree that they would have sued the pants off them to protect their design.
I completely agree. Since the beginning of their company Apple has vociferiously protected their Intellectual Property - to the point where they refused to license their hardware designs out when IBM did for the PC AT. This hurt them alot during the 80s and 90s, but now their innovation has really paid off. They still are the company they always were - I wouldn't hold my breath and wait for them to open the iPhone.
The problem of course is that the market has really changed since the days of the Mac SE. More and more people are competent programmers and in the day and age of user generated content, to lock people out of something like this is probably going to be a mistake in the long run. But, Apple has obviously proved its critics wrong before, so I'm sure this will remain a smashing retail success for them even though their supporters will bitch and moan that it's not an open platform, and probably never will be.
Three things are notable about that survey question - 1) the xbox 360 doesn't even show up, 2)the survey sample was 60% girls, and 3)there's no margin of error, so we don't know how accurate these numbers actually are. Plus it was an online survey. So I would put a great deal of doubt in these numbers, except for the xbox numbers which are pretty accurate.
I know I'm going to get stoned in the street for saying this, but the large sample of girls leans towards more casual gamers which would make the PSP, xbox, and PS3 less popular than an older console or the DS or Wii which explicitly target casual gamers.
I've owned the PSP for a while and never had a problem sliding it into my jeans pocket. Besides, I'm willing to let it be longer so that I can have the widescreen, which is great for movies and games alike. The DS has the annoying two screens and from what I hear, the second screen is used mostly for status that a simple start button press could show instead. And hte square button is a bit funky on the old PSP but I heard they changed it around for the Slim.
Try looking at the side-by-sides with the PSP, Slim, DS, and DS Lite before you try and make a joke. Slightly smaller than the PSP, but definitely thinner than the DS Lite. And everything beats the original DS.
The fact that you have to bring a parent along to the movies proves my point - you can't see it unless your parent/guardian/friend approves, and the only way they know you have their approval is that they are with you. You can't be under 17 and see it alone.
You have the right to do whatever you want in your house. Censoring yourself seems like a pointless concept, but I guess you consider it that if you'd like. In the cases where retailers are the only locations in a town providing a product (i.e. Walmart in the Midwest) and they decide not to sell it, then it definitely is forced censorship. In big cities, you can just go elsewhee. In small towns, you have no choice.
How the heck can you argue that the ratings bodies are executing free speech? How many times does a movie producer have to go back and recut their movie to achieve an R rating over an NC-17 rating? What about the Hot Coffee mod? People couldn't even access it in the PS2 version and yet they had to go back and take the time to cut it out because the ESRB was pissed. Finally, Take Two makes a stand and says we aren't cutting Manhunter 2, and then the ESRB basically rates it AO which makes it inaccessible at retail. Is it elective censorship? Definitely. But it's still censorship.
Of course it's censorship. Does the person have the right to refuse someone to proclaim speech on their property? Yes. But it's still censorship - denying that person their right to free speech is still censorship. It's just legal censorship. It's like saying that it's not censorship for private entities to slap ratings on movies, music, books, television, whatever. They protect themselves by calling it "optionally required" ratings. But you now can't buy an M rated game under the age of 18 because game retailers don't want bad publicity, and movie theaters won't let anyone under 18 into R rated movies. That's definitely censorship.
Take NC-17 movies - no theater will show them because they fear publicity. That's censorship as well. I know the libertarians in the crowd would love to say it's their right not to show the movie. That's very true. But that doesn't make it not censorship.
I told her to change her password. I see your point about the SMTP server connection, but wouldn't you connect to the receiving server, not the sending? So if I had a yahoo account and wanted to email hotmail or whatever, I'd connect to hotmail, not yahoo, and then send fake headers. Right? That was my understanding of how that attack worked. She could see the sent emails in her client, so I assumed that it probably wasn't this kind of attack.
Yes, I'm aware of fake headers - but the way she caught the supposed break in was that her web client (not sure which one) showed the sent emails, which would suggest to me that someone had sent the emails directly through her email service. If someone was spoofing headers, something like Yahoo wouldn't have any record of it, unless the email bounced back.
Slashdot Mirror
In the case of the government agencies above, they take money that should be used to fully fund the obligations and instead spend it on present fads.
What do you mean by present fads? Are you saying that every government run pension fund and the SSA is corrupt? That the fund managers (including the state treasurers in most cases) are buying yachts? Or that they are investing in more risky investments for higher returns? I don't seem to recall anyone off the top of my head that's been arrested recently for stealing from a government pension fund, nor do I remember there being a recent scandal in the Social Security Administration involving missing funds of some magnitude.
So if you're referring to risky investments, that's one thing. But I wouldn't lump it in with Enron, seeing as Enron's management intentionally misled all of its investors and employees to cover trading losses whereas the government would just be plain inept. But millions of people get their social security checks on time every month, so I don't know how you could point to that.
You know, I tried to think of a better name for the next Wii but I couldn't. So I decided just to go with Wii 2 and let someone else get the modpoints. Maybe that's why I didn't get to +5?
we'd probably benefit from a console monoculture
/sarcasm
I see your point, and lower you a Windows 95. It worked wonders for games and operating system stability overall.
While a monoculture would help game developers make games faster and more reliably, the question is what would it do for hardware? I mean, the Wii really is a hardware innovation more than software, right? The software is made to fit the hardware. If the Wiimote didn't exist, then WiiSports would be a lame party-game ripoff.
I guess you can argue that third-party hardware add-ons would fill this space, but we haven't achieved the parity in open-platform hardware that we have in software. You can write software for Linux on the PS3, but can you design and distribute your own PS3mote for it? I don't think so. So a monoculture would basically achieve a monopoly by one manufacturer with no incentive to innovate.
I've always felt like Nintendo's game have more soul...Now the on screen characters and gameplay make you feel in your heart and mind while the Wiimote makes your body feel as well.
Dude, you and Wario need to get a room.
Seeing as Spore currently is on track to be Next-Next-Gen anyways. I guess it's safe to say it'll be on the Wii 2 rather than the Xbox 720 at this point.
and the Iraq War proponents have both started converting time to Friedman Units.
as usual, in a way, Darwin has the correct answer.
Somewhere, an evangelical conservative just died.
I never understand the complaints against PSN either at the moment. It's pretty straightforward. Sometimes it's a little disorganized, but I don't understand what makes it so much harder to use than say Xbox Live (which costs money and has a stupid currency system) and the Wii, which to my knowledge doesn't even have that much content other than SNES rehashes. Sony's done a good job of getting some quality, original IP on their Store and that actually is one of the highlights of the console.
If you regularly keep up with PSN then the updates for that week are right there on the screen and you don't have to go looking for them. They've certainly gotten better at organizing it since last year, and if you have a Hi-Def TV then it's pretty easy to find the most popular items on the top screen as well.
I know it's un-Slashdot like, but reading the other comments above you shows that most of them lost their passwords or stopped reading/writing comments.
This probably won't help SK's lawsuit, and might in fact hurt it. They have two things to prove in their lawsuit - that the engine wasn't ready and that Epic did that intentionally. This proves the engine wasn't up to snuff, but might hurt them because it shows that Epic itself was affected by the engine's preparedness, so why would they do this intentionally? Of course, the conspiracy theorists in the crowd can fire up their argument that Epic is doing this to help deflate the lawsuit. If the lawsuit succeeds, then Epic might be open to even more lawsuits and settlements.
I don't know if I'd agree with that. They might sue, but they also might have risked their reputation as the creator of the PC market. Now they might have gotten out of it by selling the business to Lenovo, but they're still manufacturing chips and developing operating systems even though the majority of the PC business was done with Intel and Microsoft. I would say that they came out of the 80s and 90s relatively unscathed, and a reputation that might be better than Apple in relation to business. How many companies have blade servers? And how many companies have G5s?
It's a pretty legit complaint - the square button on mine is a bit loose. You can kind of see inside the PSP to the connection where the button sits. If any of the buttons are going to fall off, it's that one. I don't remember it being like that when I bought it though.
You're right, I misspoke, and wikipedia saves the day. People reverse-engineered the AT, but IBM did not pursue it. If it was Apple, though, I think we'd both agree that they would have sued the pants off them to protect their design.
I completely agree. Since the beginning of their company Apple has vociferiously protected their Intellectual Property - to the point where they refused to license their hardware designs out when IBM did for the PC AT. This hurt them alot during the 80s and 90s, but now their innovation has really paid off. They still are the company they always were - I wouldn't hold my breath and wait for them to open the iPhone.
The problem of course is that the market has really changed since the days of the Mac SE. More and more people are competent programmers and in the day and age of user generated content, to lock people out of something like this is probably going to be a mistake in the long run. But, Apple has obviously proved its critics wrong before, so I'm sure this will remain a smashing retail success for them even though their supporters will bitch and moan that it's not an open platform, and probably never will be.
Three things are notable about that survey question - 1) the xbox 360 doesn't even show up, 2)the survey sample was 60% girls, and 3)there's no margin of error, so we don't know how accurate these numbers actually are. Plus it was an online survey. So I would put a great deal of doubt in these numbers, except for the xbox numbers which are pretty accurate.
I know I'm going to get stoned in the street for saying this, but the large sample of girls leans towards more casual gamers which would make the PSP, xbox, and PS3 less popular than an older console or the DS or Wii which explicitly target casual gamers.
I've owned the PSP for a while and never had a problem sliding it into my jeans pocket. Besides, I'm willing to let it be longer so that I can have the widescreen, which is great for movies and games alike. The DS has the annoying two screens and from what I hear, the second screen is used mostly for status that a simple start button press could show instead. And hte square button is a bit funky on the old PSP but I heard they changed it around for the Slim.
Try looking at the side-by-sides with the PSP, Slim, DS, and DS Lite before you try and make a joke. Slightly smaller than the PSP, but definitely thinner than the DS Lite. And everything beats the original DS.
The fact that you have to bring a parent along to the movies proves my point - you can't see it unless your parent/guardian/friend approves, and the only way they know you have their approval is that they are with you. You can't be under 17 and see it alone.
I do think you're right though - it's 17, not 18.
You have the right to do whatever you want in your house. Censoring yourself seems like a pointless concept, but I guess you consider it that if you'd like. In the cases where retailers are the only locations in a town providing a product (i.e. Walmart in the Midwest) and they decide not to sell it, then it definitely is forced censorship. In big cities, you can just go elsewhee. In small towns, you have no choice.
How the heck can you argue that the ratings bodies are executing free speech? How many times does a movie producer have to go back and recut their movie to achieve an R rating over an NC-17 rating? What about the Hot Coffee mod? People couldn't even access it in the PS2 version and yet they had to go back and take the time to cut it out because the ESRB was pissed. Finally, Take Two makes a stand and says we aren't cutting Manhunter 2, and then the ESRB basically rates it AO which makes it inaccessible at retail. Is it elective censorship? Definitely. But it's still censorship.
Of course it's censorship. Does the person have the right to refuse someone to proclaim speech on their property? Yes. But it's still censorship - denying that person their right to free speech is still censorship. It's just legal censorship. It's like saying that it's not censorship for private entities to slap ratings on movies, music, books, television, whatever. They protect themselves by calling it "optionally required" ratings. But you now can't buy an M rated game under the age of 18 because game retailers don't want bad publicity, and movie theaters won't let anyone under 18 into R rated movies. That's definitely censorship.
Take NC-17 movies - no theater will show them because they fear publicity. That's censorship as well. I know the libertarians in the crowd would love to say it's their right not to show the movie. That's very true. But that doesn't make it not censorship.
Yeah you just reminded me, she told me the passwords were the same. Doh!
I told her to change her password. I see your point about the SMTP server connection, but wouldn't you connect to the receiving server, not the sending? So if I had a yahoo account and wanted to email hotmail or whatever, I'd connect to hotmail, not yahoo, and then send fake headers. Right? That was my understanding of how that attack worked. She could see the sent emails in her client, so I assumed that it probably wasn't this kind of attack.
Yes, I'm aware of fake headers - but the way she caught the supposed break in was that her web client (not sure which one) showed the sent emails, which would suggest to me that someone had sent the emails directly through her email service. If someone was spoofing headers, something like Yahoo wouldn't have any record of it, unless the email bounced back.
no role playing in a Role Playing Game?