Sorry, I have to agree with the parent of this thread... many people who have experienced this game get bored because of the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Check out sluggy.com for a nice series of commentary jokes about it. http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080820
Your comments about him being irrelevent are trollish - he does have experience with the product, and decided for himself. I'm sorry you've chosen to take a complex argument and make it "you haven't been there TODAY, have you".
You may need to read your employment agreement.. if there is anything in there about the company owning the rights to your work while employed there, then you don't have much recourse because they can just file it without your permission anyway as "something our team developed."
Couple thoughts - firstly, I'm paranoid enough that my phone knows where I am, and now you're going to tell me that it's going to tell the government regularly AND THAT'S A KNOWN FEATURE?!?!
However, more logically... the more specific to given isotopes you make the sensors, the more expensive they will become. And if the terrorist group knows that our defense network allows isotope x but not y, don't you think they might work with y - even if it isn't as potent or immediately possible?
Think about this. Radioactivity exists around all of us. Tritum in watches, MRI machines (and for that matter healthcare in general), industrial sites, etc etc etc. Placarded vehicles that might be legally transporting something. You're going to tell me that there will be an effective system set up to take in the millions of false hits, screen them for the ones that might really be something, and then plot that against the map - nationwide in real time?
Not every threat is nuclear, also. I'm personally more frightened of simple biological weapons - not the fancy "weaponized anthrax", but good ol smallpox and the easier ones to work with. Even a good outbreak of flu can kill thousands without trying very hard and swamp medical systems / healthcare resources, which will in turn kill more. Nuclear just creates a good snapshot for the media.
Well, IANAL, but I was a videojournalist for ABC News for a while. The law as we were taught it was that anything visible in the public forum does not need permission to be used. This, btw, includes exteriors of houses, anything visible from the street, and people walking down the street. So by my thought, since these cars were visible in public, they are fair game for anyone to take pictures of.. and once the picture is taken, the rights generally belong to the photographer or his/her agency (unless the club put in the contract that they will own the rights to those images).
I'm a huge fan of turn based strategy setups, so I was predisposed to like this one anyway.. the only place I've seen it get any significant attention was on gamerswithjobs.com , where they did a nice piece on it. I literally have not put the PSP down since I got this game. It's got a nice solid gameplay combined with beautiful anime cutscenes and an involving story. Well worth the thirty bucks I dropped on it!
Try using Ask Slashdot on an abacus. And I didn't realize how many friggin digits the UID is up to these days.. I actually feel vaguely honored that I only have a five digit one, some of these suckers look like they got in after the first few quatloos had already registered.
Not very many? It may not be very many when you're looking backwards at the end of the race, but as a headstart and an installed user base it's pretty decent... especially when Sony really hasn't let out anything as a killer app yet. No GT, no GTA, no FF yet... the PS3 needs something that makes people buy it, and FF might well be it. One or two games recognized as great will make the price seem a lot easier to swallow. Part of the problem so far has been you drop your five bills, and play... what? I rented Fall of Man and beat it in a weekend, but there's no strong franchise - no Sonic, no Mario, no Zelda, not even a Crash the Bandicoot to carry the idea of "well, this was worth what I spent on it".
The backlash from the West is the howl of gamers when they find out they're going to have to fork over $500 to play the next chapter in the series. It'll be the game that spurs mass adoption of the PS3 which hasn't happened yet. I have one, some of my friends do, but there's arguably no KILLER reason to get one right this second. FF drove me to buy the PS2, it'll drive others to buy the PS3... even if they already have the Xbox. It's not predicting failure, it's predicting people being pissed that they have to buy another console.
My mom never seemed to "get" video games most of the time, or at least the allure of them. Until... River City Ransom. For some reason, THAT was the one game that she picked up with me and would complain if I wanted to stop playing. She said she liked "beating them up and taking their lunch money" over and over.... many happy hours spent that way. Nothing before or since has captured her like that.
So as I understand it from the article, there'll be some sort of "device" in a corner of the card, with a "display window" that shows the randomized password? How's it powered? How's it controlled? What happens when the battery in my credit card is dead?
Well, it didn't work so well when one terrestrial company tried to contain the three of them. WNEW had them all at once, and O&A were treated as the little stepbrothers who were slapped with gag orders and so on regarding talking about Howard. I foresee tension in the Force.
On another note, how will this work hardware-wise? Can they in fact offer one united channel selection over any current hardware? Will they continue to offer two separate "branded" offerings that each go to the proprietary radios until new hardware can be rolled out?
Well, if it isn't "Gumby" which is what I anticipated too, then it's no more a bendy phone than my current flip phone. By your logic, that's amazing too because it actually "bends" about 175 degrees to create a smaller form factor when not in use.
And yet that, sir, is a theory that explains observable phenomena. Theories are the basis of science, and one of the principles of science is that theories are also questionable and sometimes fallible. For many years, it was held that the theory of the Sun and all other objects revolved around the Earth was also infallible and it took someone challenging it and being excommunicated to fall.
The truth is that we don't know. The system of climate on this planet is massively complex, and reacting to it with simplistic attitudes will result in knee-jerk reactions that will probably, in the grand scheme of things, have very little effect on the overall outcome. Several truths that we can debate, though, are in your points.
Point 2 - "Automobile pollution is probably the single biggest cause though." Says who? This is a matter of debate, as industry and power plants pump more than a little into the atmosphere. Further, CO2 - which is a greenhouse gas - is largely produced by Mother Nature herself through the process of life. It's something like 29:1 in favor of Mother Nature pumping it out. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, and there's a lot of that in the air. Human effects are arguably minimal.
Note page 2 of this article, in which the numbers are discussed - and references are provided.
Point 3 - "This has been going on for a very long time." Again, climatology is a trending process. Humanity has only had the power to emit pollution on any scale for around 200 years, give or take, while the planet is several billions of years old.
So, sorry, but I'm a skeptic about people who think that 1mpg or a recycled plastic bag will save the planet. Call me a fatalist, but I think the planet will outlive you, me, and probably our species just fine without any misguided reactions at all.
You know, I never really considered that, but it fits my thoughts exactly. As I said earlier, I don't like the Big Brother thing - but that extends more to the usage of that footage against me by some vaporous black helicopter crowd. I however don't particularly have a problem with being recorded very often, especially in public places, if both sides are the ones privy to the objective view.
Case in point - Rodney King. And any other cases where authority was caught on tape being abusive. The common person should have a right when in public places to show what's going on around them. Could you imagine if someone had gotten Auschwitz footage to the world's newsreel tables?
And how many times did you ever go home and tell a parent about how a teacher treated you, and get ignored or dismissed with "They wouldn't do that."
Personally? As much as I'm against the Big Brother society, I'm amused that someone is so scared of how he could be portrayed by an objective viewfinder. And he'll tell us all about how the context isn't there, but there's no good reason why a teacher should be yelling and carrying on to the point where it looks good on video. There's other more effective ways to reach people, and if you can't figure one of them out then there are other career paths.
Second for River City Ransom. To date the only game I've actually not only gotten my mom to play, but gotten her to enjoy enough that she would ask ME if we could play it for a while.
From what I've read over the course of the RIAA inquisition, they generally tend to use simple clients - the same as the one you use to connect to the network - to browse what you're offering, print the screenshot, and move on. They aren't involved in sniffing the actual hashes to see what you're sending and receiving at any given moment.
Further, not every P2P network hashes the files and lets you send block 4 while downloading block 2 and 5. Many of them simply have you wait until you receive the entire file before you can be a source to it.
So, it is indeed possible to download without uploading. It's called "Wait until you see 'File Complete' and then move it out of the shared folder."
Or you could just do like I do and swap porn instead. The RIAA doesn't care about Tera Patrick's newest adventures yet.
Actually, that brings up a question my friends and I were discussing the other night. If for instance I travel to a country where marijuana use is legal - Amsterdam was the example, although I don't actually know their drug laws - and while there enjoy the legal freedoms I have there. When I return to America and I am required to take a urine toxicology test, can I say something like "but it's legal where I did it, I have not done it anywhere that it is considered illegal, and so I broke no laws in the doing" as a defense?
Possibly flawed analogy: it's legal to make a right turn on red in New Jersey. It is not legal to make a right turn on red in New York City. So if I make my right on red in NJ while being followed by an NYPD cruiser, should they be able to pull me over once I enter NYC because I broke the laws of the land? (for the purposes of this, ignore the jurisdiction question of being able to write tickets outside of your city borders.)
Your point, sir, about Slashdot being a hangout spot for the paranoid is something that I accept as a compliment. Do you know why? Because paranoia is not always WRONG, and skepticism when you are being spoon-fed information is the only way to even try to keep tabs on governments and reality. For reference, I am sitting in Las Vegas' airport waiting to board my plane.
Do I believe this is a true scenario that happened earlier? Yes, very probably there was a terrorist plan and it was stopped. Do I think that there is a LOT of fear mongering going on? Yes, absolutely. I used to work in media, so I understand how something that is easily used for fear almost certainly will be used to drive the ratings up. I also think that the side benefit of "trust in government" is something that they will be happy to see.
I'm reminded of "V for Vendetta" in which the leader utters the line (paraphrasing, forgive me) "MAKE them remember why they need us!" Fear is a wonderful tool for controlling sheep, and say whatever else you like - paranoid skeptics are NOT sheep.
Everyone is reacting to this like it's something new. Go ahead, buy an Everquest 2 set. Play it for the free trial month, decide it stinks, and close out your account. You're now stuck with the fifty dollar game media, because sure - you COULD sell it on Ebay - but that "account key" is forever bound to you even though you had a "free trial"... Sony's not unique with that, btw.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I have to agree with the parent of this thread... many people who have experienced this game get bored because of the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Check out sluggy.com for a nice series of commentary jokes about it.
http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080820
Your comments about him being irrelevent are trollish - he does have experience with the product, and decided for himself. I'm sorry you've chosen to take a complex argument and make it "you haven't been there TODAY, have you".
You may need to read your employment agreement.. if there is anything in there about the company owning the rights to your work while employed there, then you don't have much recourse because they can just file it without your permission anyway as "something our team developed."
:cough: Counter Strike :cough:
Hey, maybe he'll get to meet Buddy Jesus and see how that Catholicism Wow campaign really played out.
Couple thoughts - firstly, I'm paranoid enough that my phone knows where I am, and now you're going to tell me that it's going to tell the government regularly AND THAT'S A KNOWN FEATURE?!?!
However, more logically... the more specific to given isotopes you make the sensors, the more expensive they will become. And if the terrorist group knows that our defense network allows isotope x but not y, don't you think they might work with y - even if it isn't as potent or immediately possible?
Think about this. Radioactivity exists around all of us. Tritum in watches, MRI machines (and for that matter healthcare in general), industrial sites, etc etc etc. Placarded vehicles that might be legally transporting something. You're going to tell me that there will be an effective system set up to take in the millions of false hits, screen them for the ones that might really be something, and then plot that against the map - nationwide in real time?
Not every threat is nuclear, also. I'm personally more frightened of simple biological weapons - not the fancy "weaponized anthrax", but good ol smallpox and the easier ones to work with. Even a good outbreak of flu can kill thousands without trying very hard and swamp medical systems / healthcare resources, which will in turn kill more. Nuclear just creates a good snapshot for the media.
Well, IANAL, but I was a videojournalist for ABC News for a while. The law as we were taught it was that anything visible in the public forum does not need permission to be used. This, btw, includes exteriors of houses, anything visible from the street, and people walking down the street. So by my thought, since these cars were visible in public, they are fair game for anyone to take pictures of.. and once the picture is taken, the rights generally belong to the photographer or his/her agency (unless the club put in the contract that they will own the rights to those images).
"Spaceballs - The Flamethrower! The kids love this one."
"Please, God... reach down and pinch my butt cheeks!" EIGHT YEARS OF PRAYER. Does everyone who got extorted get their cash back? Can they sue for it?
I'm a huge fan of turn based strategy setups, so I was predisposed to like this one anyway.. the only place I've seen it get any significant attention was on gamerswithjobs.com , where they did a nice piece on it. I literally have not put the PSP down since I got this game. It's got a nice solid gameplay combined with beautiful anime cutscenes and an involving story. Well worth the thirty bucks I dropped on it!
Mine was 8/27/99 - just found the original email.
Try using Ask Slashdot on an abacus. And I didn't realize how many friggin digits the UID is up to these days.. I actually feel vaguely honored that I only have a five digit one, some of these suckers look like they got in after the first few quatloos had already registered.
Not very many? It may not be very many when you're looking backwards at the end of the race, but as a headstart and an installed user base it's pretty decent... especially when Sony really hasn't let out anything as a killer app yet. No GT, no GTA, no FF yet... the PS3 needs something that makes people buy it, and FF might well be it. One or two games recognized as great will make the price seem a lot easier to swallow. Part of the problem so far has been you drop your five bills, and play... what? I rented Fall of Man and beat it in a weekend, but there's no strong franchise - no Sonic, no Mario, no Zelda, not even a Crash the Bandicoot to carry the idea of "well, this was worth what I spent on it".
The backlash from the West is the howl of gamers when they find out they're going to have to fork over $500 to play the next chapter in the series. It'll be the game that spurs mass adoption of the PS3 which hasn't happened yet. I have one, some of my friends do, but there's arguably no KILLER reason to get one right this second. FF drove me to buy the PS2, it'll drive others to buy the PS3... even if they already have the Xbox. It's not predicting failure, it's predicting people being pissed that they have to buy another console.
My mom never seemed to "get" video games most of the time, or at least the allure of them. Until... River City Ransom. For some reason, THAT was the one game that she picked up with me and would complain if I wanted to stop playing. She said she liked "beating them up and taking their lunch money" over and over.... many happy hours spent that way. Nothing before or since has captured her like that.
So as I understand it from the article, there'll be some sort of "device" in a corner of the card, with a "display window" that shows the randomized password? How's it powered? How's it controlled? What happens when the battery in my credit card is dead?
Well, it didn't work so well when one terrestrial company tried to contain the three of them. WNEW had them all at once, and O&A were treated as the little stepbrothers who were slapped with gag orders and so on regarding talking about Howard. I foresee tension in the Force.
On another note, how will this work hardware-wise? Can they in fact offer one united channel selection over any current hardware? Will they continue to offer two separate "branded" offerings that each go to the proprietary radios until new hardware can be rolled out?
Well, if it isn't "Gumby" which is what I anticipated too, then it's no more a bendy phone than my current flip phone. By your logic, that's amazing too because it actually "bends" about 175 degrees to create a smaller form factor when not in use.
And yet that, sir, is a theory that explains observable phenomena. Theories are the basis of science, and one of the principles of science is that theories are also questionable and sometimes fallible. For many years, it was held that the theory of the Sun and all other objects revolved around the Earth was also infallible and it took someone challenging it and being excommunicated to fall.
b edard.html
The truth is that we don't know. The system of climate on this planet is massively complex, and reacting to it with simplistic attitudes will result in knee-jerk reactions that will probably, in the grand scheme of things, have very little effect on the overall outcome. Several truths that we can debate, though, are in your points.
Point 2 - "Automobile pollution is probably the single biggest cause though." Says who? This is a matter of debate, as industry and power plants pump more than a little into the atmosphere. Further, CO2 - which is a greenhouse gas - is largely produced by Mother Nature herself through the process of life. It's something like 29:1 in favor of Mother Nature pumping it out. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, and there's a lot of that in the air. Human effects are arguably minimal.
http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/2502/patrick-
Note page 2 of this article, in which the numbers are discussed - and references are provided.
Point 3 - "This has been going on for a very long time." Again, climatology is a trending process. Humanity has only had the power to emit pollution on any scale for around 200 years, give or take, while the planet is several billions of years old.
So, sorry, but I'm a skeptic about people who think that 1mpg or a recycled plastic bag will save the planet. Call me a fatalist, but I think the planet will outlive you, me, and probably our species just fine without any misguided reactions at all.
You know, I never really considered that, but it fits my thoughts exactly. As I said earlier, I don't like the Big Brother thing - but that extends more to the usage of that footage against me by some vaporous black helicopter crowd. I however don't particularly have a problem with being recorded very often, especially in public places, if both sides are the ones privy to the objective view.
Case in point - Rodney King. And any other cases where authority was caught on tape being abusive. The common person should have a right when in public places to show what's going on around them. Could you imagine if someone had gotten Auschwitz footage to the world's newsreel tables?
And how many times did you ever go home and tell a parent about how a teacher treated you, and get ignored or dismissed with "They wouldn't do that."
Personally? As much as I'm against the Big Brother society, I'm amused that someone is so scared of how he could be portrayed by an objective viewfinder. And he'll tell us all about how the context isn't there, but there's no good reason why a teacher should be yelling and carrying on to the point where it looks good on video. There's other more effective ways to reach people, and if you can't figure one of them out then there are other career paths.
Second for River City Ransom. To date the only game I've actually not only gotten my mom to play, but gotten her to enjoy enough that she would ask ME if we could play it for a while.
From what I've read over the course of the RIAA inquisition, they generally tend to use simple clients - the same as the one you use to connect to the network - to browse what you're offering, print the screenshot, and move on. They aren't involved in sniffing the actual hashes to see what you're sending and receiving at any given moment.
Further, not every P2P network hashes the files and lets you send block 4 while downloading block 2 and 5. Many of them simply have you wait until you receive the entire file before you can be a source to it.
So, it is indeed possible to download without uploading. It's called "Wait until you see 'File Complete' and then move it out of the shared folder."
Or you could just do like I do and swap porn instead. The RIAA doesn't care about Tera Patrick's newest adventures yet.
Actually, that brings up a question my friends and I were discussing the other night. If for instance I travel to a country where marijuana use is legal - Amsterdam was the example, although I don't actually know their drug laws - and while there enjoy the legal freedoms I have there. When I return to America and I am required to take a urine toxicology test, can I say something like "but it's legal where I did it, I have not done it anywhere that it is considered illegal, and so I broke no laws in the doing" as a defense?
Possibly flawed analogy: it's legal to make a right turn on red in New Jersey. It is not legal to make a right turn on red in New York City. So if I make my right on red in NJ while being followed by an NYPD cruiser, should they be able to pull me over once I enter NYC because I broke the laws of the land? (for the purposes of this, ignore the jurisdiction question of being able to write tickets outside of your city borders.)
Do I believe this is a true scenario that happened earlier? Yes, very probably there was a terrorist plan and it was stopped. Do I think that there is a LOT of fear mongering going on? Yes, absolutely. I used to work in media, so I understand how something that is easily used for fear almost certainly will be used to drive the ratings up. I also think that the side benefit of "trust in government" is something that they will be happy to see.
I'm reminded of "V for Vendetta" in which the leader utters the line (paraphrasing, forgive me) "MAKE them remember why they need us!" Fear is a wonderful tool for controlling sheep, and say whatever else you like - paranoid skeptics are NOT sheep.
Everyone is reacting to this like it's something new. Go ahead, buy an Everquest 2 set. Play it for the free trial month, decide it stinks, and close out your account. You're now stuck with the fifty dollar game media, because sure - you COULD sell it on Ebay - but that "account key" is forever bound to you even though you had a "free trial" ... Sony's not unique with that, btw.