A lot of games have been in development for a very long time and are still being developped. Quake, for example, is 5 years old and at least three upcoming games I'm aware of (SoF 2, Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor) are using it. Unreal has also been in development for years.
Just because it changes on the surface doesn't mean the whole program gets scrapped and everyone starts over. Unless we encounter a serious technological bottleneck in our current engines, it is quite likely they will still be in use in another five years.
Isn't ROT-13 just ASCII code shifted around a little? If it becomes illegal to crack, wouldn't that mean that it could be illegal to decode plain ASCII into visible characters on the screen?
You could probably read characters straight from ROT-13 to the screen without too much fuss.
If you didn't notice, the weapons they were using against the ghosts were energy-based, while some of the humans had projectile weapons (aka guns) for use against other humans or themselves.
I wish the soldiers' Powered Armour had been more complete though. If they can shield a city, couldn't they shield a few super-soldiers?
There is a way to balance GPL and profit for games. Your point is that DESIGNING a game is a very costly and difficult process. In that case, game companies would profit from selling the design of the game (levels, art, sounds) and making all of the game engine Free. No one can seriously expect to compete against Unreal or Quake in terms of engines, but a GPL'd engine shared by many companies would certainly put up a fight.
As for the Copy-Protection argument, its true that companies who adopt this model could no longer offer any copy-protection, but face it, copy protection is a joke. Been to
GameCopyWorld recently? All it would take is a dev shop with enough balls to stand up to their publisher (very rare).
Once all the free hosting for mods and fan sites goes bust, how long until gaming companies are forced to create their own networks to support them?
I know for certain that Valve would be one of the first to jump in. Counter-Strike is the major reason why Half-Life is still selling well today, over 2 years after its original release. Valve has always been supportive of the community, and I see them pioneering a service like that to support their fans.
The PC Games industry has been dying a slow, painful death since the release of Half-Life eliminated all hope of originality and creativity. Every PC game coming out these days is nothing but a rehash of Half-Life, save for prettier graphics. No one wants to take a risk with games, and the PC gaming market is not growing, therefore Blizzard gets away with all the cash. Worse, nobody I know buys games anymore. We download the ISO, pronounce it crappy, then wipe it off our hard drives forever. Bye bye revenue stream.
With PC gaming down the toilet, I don't think you can count PCs as serious competition to consoles. What will definitely keep consoles alive for the next decade will be DVD. Everyone will eventually ditch their VHS, and as long as they're doing so, might as well get a DVD player that runs games, or can even record TV shows in mpeg. People would be buying the total entertainment unit, with games as an afterthought.
Oh, and the author is a loon if he thinks ports of PC games to consoles are a bad thing. He seems to believe that only games that are exclusive to your system will sell. Far from true. Very little people have a machine powerful enough to play Quake3 or UT at a reasonable speed, but on their shiny inexpensive console it runs like a dream. Plus unless said game is so good it actually makes people buy your console, then exclusivity is a lie.
Doesn't the senate serve that purpose quite well? As far as I understand the system, every state gets the same amount of senators (2) in the senate. That means that when legislation reaches the senate, those small rural states could possibly group together and block it(theoretically).
Straight popular vote would be a good idea. You'd have a president elected by the universal vote, a congress elected by county and a senate elected by state.
Allow me to de-quebecoisify this text. January 1998. Montreal. For several CONSECUTIVE days, freezing rain falls down on the city. Since most of the power delivered to Montreal comes from outside the island (James Bay, to be exact), the city is crippled. At the worst of the blackout, only one high-voltage line remained standing (out of about five). To make matters worse, trees break under the ice and bring down local power lines. People are struck at random, making you realise wether or not God likes you.
Of course, after a week of intense 20 hours workdays from power crews the city gets back to normal, but the worst of the damage did not hit the city. A triangle formed by the cities of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, St-Hyacynthe and a less-important town I forget the name of is completely cut-off. All high voltage power lines have been brought down. And when I say brought down, I mean CRUSHED under the ice. Pylon after pylon torn like aluminum foil, laying to the ground. I saw the line leading to the area at the worst of the storm, and it was post-apocalyptic. The irony is, the pylons were within normal safety regulations, except they had to support 10 times the weight of ice they were designed to.
It took over a month to power the area back up, during which roughly 100,000 people had to live like cavemen in high schools and army camps (except the lucky few who had wood/gas powered ovens, or family in the city).
Lucky me, I only lost power for about two days. Had I lived 10km to the south, I would have been sent back to the ice-age.
Thankfully our huge government-owned power company was able to rebuild all the power lines FROM SCRATCH in record time.
Unfortunately, in the same great nation of Canada, the benevolent high government of Quebec launched a plan to pay ISPs and Computer shops to get people on the internet on brand new computers, overlooking the fact that you can now get internet access for free from several isps (without banner ads), and all you need to access the net is a 300$ Dreamcast (if you're really cheap).
They tried to get every citizen email a few years ago, until people reminded them that anyone could get on hotmail from a library or an internet cafe.
Id is too small a company to allow for any kind of infighting. Sadly, this means that Id as we know it is likely finished.
Possibility number 1: Adrian and Kevin undermine the entire development of Doom III to prove their point. If they were willing to fire an employee IN RETALIATION, they have the guts to kill a product simply out of spite. Expected result: Id goes under.
Possibility number 2: Company relations go down the shitter faster than they did at Ion Storm. John Carmack says "fuck this" and leaves. Without the only man who keeps this company alive, Id goes under.
Possibility number 3: John Carmack and, say, Activision try to buy back A & K's shares. They won't sell, and the company goes under.
When company owners disagree violently on the direction their business is taking, there are two possible outcomes: someone leaves, or the place fights until it's out of money.
What we need is a rail based "ferry" system. You drive from your home to the station, drive the car onto the train. The train goes at 200 mph (or whatever speed fast trains go these days) to your long distance destination. Then you just drive off the train back onto the clogged roadways of our cities. The best of both worlds.
The problem with having an emergency transponder would be communication. It's hard enough to find a black box in our own oceans (which is still transmitting), getting a signal in from another planet would be practically impossible.
Plus what good would it do? The odds are that the probe didn't land "lightly", otherwise it would still work in a way. I'm inclined to believe that the the probe was completely pulverised in its fall. In that case, a black box wouldn't have stood much of a chance.
As for the cost of the project, I wouldn't worry about it. This is pocket change for NASA, and the knowledge acquired while setting up the project won't be a loss.
Slashdot Mirror
Hewlett Compacqard Bell.
Just because it changes on the surface doesn't mean the whole program gets scrapped and everyone starts over. Unless we encounter a serious technological bottleneck in our current engines, it is quite likely they will still be in use in another five years.
-------------------------
You could probably read characters straight from ROT-13 to the screen without too much fuss.
-------------------------
Photoshop = Pr0noshop
-------------------------
I wish the soldiers' Powered Armour had been more complete though. If they can shield a city, couldn't they shield a few super-soldiers?
-------------------------
Additionally, the Allies won a war that was started because their nations were invaded, which makes pretty much all their actions justifiable.
-------------------------
As for the Copy-Protection argument, its true that companies who adopt this model could no longer offer any copy-protection, but face it, copy protection is a joke. Been to GameCopyWorld recently? All it would take is a dev shop with enough balls to stand up to their publisher (very rare).
-------------------------
I know for certain that Valve would be one of the first to jump in. Counter-Strike is the major reason why Half-Life is still selling well today, over 2 years after its original release. Valve has always been supportive of the community, and I see them pioneering a service like that to support their fans.
-------------------------
With PC gaming down the toilet, I don't think you can count PCs as serious competition to consoles. What will definitely keep consoles alive for the next decade will be DVD. Everyone will eventually ditch their VHS, and as long as they're doing so, might as well get a DVD player that runs games, or can even record TV shows in mpeg. People would be buying the total entertainment unit, with games as an afterthought.
Oh, and the author is a loon if he thinks ports of PC games to consoles are a bad thing. He seems to believe that only games that are exclusive to your system will sell. Far from true. Very little people have a machine powerful enough to play Quake3 or UT at a reasonable speed, but on their shiny inexpensive console it runs like a dream. Plus unless said game is so good it actually makes people buy your console, then exclusivity is a lie.
-------------------------
Doesn't the senate serve that purpose quite well? As far as I understand the system, every state gets the same amount of senators (2) in the senate. That means that when legislation reaches the senate, those small rural states could possibly group together and block it(theoretically).
Straight popular vote would be a good idea. You'd have a president elected by the universal vote, a congress elected by county and a senate elected by state.
-------------------------
KMeleon (he really needs to change that name), browser and page included, takes up 15megs. I think it's an improvement.
It nevertheless IS faster than IE.
--------------------
Isn't David Boies placing himself in conflict of interest? *grin*
Of course, after a week of intense 20 hours workdays from power crews the city gets back to normal, but the worst of the damage did not hit the city. A triangle formed by the cities of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, St-Hyacynthe and a less-important town I forget the name of is completely cut-off. All high voltage power lines have been brought down. And when I say brought down, I mean CRUSHED under the ice. Pylon after pylon torn like aluminum foil, laying to the ground. I saw the line leading to the area at the worst of the storm, and it was post-apocalyptic. The irony is, the pylons were within normal safety regulations, except they had to support 10 times the weight of ice they were designed to.
It took over a month to power the area back up, during which roughly 100,000 people had to live like cavemen in high schools and army camps (except the lucky few who had wood/gas powered ovens, or family in the city).
Lucky me, I only lost power for about two days. Had I lived 10km to the south, I would have been sent back to the ice-age.
Thankfully our huge government-owned power company was able to rebuild all the power lines FROM SCRATCH in record time.
"The advance of technology is a problem for us"
They tried to get every citizen email a few years ago, until people reminded them that anyone could get on hotmail from a library or an internet cafe.
"The advance of technology is a problem for us"
- Possibility number 1: Adrian and Kevin undermine the entire development of Doom III to prove their point. If they were willing to fire an employee IN RETALIATION, they have the guts to kill a product simply out of spite. Expected result: Id goes under.
- Possibility number 2: Company relations go down the shitter faster than they did at Ion Storm. John Carmack says "fuck this" and leaves. Without the only man who keeps this company alive, Id goes under.
- Possibility number 3: John Carmack and, say, Activision try to buy back A & K's shares. They won't sell, and the company goes under.
When company owners disagree violently on the direction their business is taking, there are two possible outcomes: someone leaves, or the place fights until it's out of money.Goodbye ID. Thanks for all the fish.
"The advance of technology is a problem for us"
What we need is a rail based "ferry" system. You drive from your home to the station, drive the car onto the train. The train goes at 200 mph (or whatever speed fast trains go these days) to your long distance destination. Then you just drive off the train back onto the clogged roadways of our cities. The best of both worlds.
I saw it stated many times in previous news items that reverse engineering was legal in Norway.
The power of these large corporate entities has been grossly underestimated.
The problem with having an emergency transponder would be communication. It's hard enough to find a black box in our own oceans (which is still transmitting), getting a signal in from another planet would be practically impossible.
Plus what good would it do? The odds are that the probe didn't land "lightly", otherwise it would still work in a way. I'm inclined to believe that the the probe was completely pulverised in its fall. In that case, a black box wouldn't have stood much of a chance.
As for the cost of the project, I wouldn't worry about it. This is pocket change for NASA, and the knowledge acquired while setting up the project won't be a loss.