Slightly off topic, but I remember once when I developing a game, I was contacted by someone who was interested in extending it and adding in some new and exciting features. At first I thought he was just in the process of tweaking the game so that it could be more easily ported to things such as the PSP, Nintendo DS, etc. I wrote back and advised him as best I could remember, as to why I had done X, Y, and Z.
Then, one day, he wrote me a very angry email, demanding to know where I had put the source code for my PNGs, JPGs, GIMP plugins, KDE and Kate editions, and what I had done with my kernel sources. After some more emails, he informed me that I should be storing all the artwork for my game in GIMP's native layer format so that anyone else could use it. He said that I was breaching the GPL by not doing so, since he could not effectively re-use the art. He also insisted on my turning over any alterations to popular programs that I had made.
Probably the most bizarre part was the bit about the GPL itself - When my game is first run, the GPL notice is shown. I wrote in my game that the notice should not be removed. He disagreed - Since the GPL gave him the right to change and modify the code, that meant that he also had the right to remove the GPL notice.
There are times when I wonder if open source's worst enemies are its users...
Any mention of the price anywhere? Because if I need to sign up to Sky to use this service, then it's not really solving anything. Personally I want access to a massive library of films and TV shows to watch on a pay-per-play basis, without any ties.
The thing that is still stunning me is that you'd think Sony, being the huge entertainment conglomerate that it is, would've been offering this already with the PS3. Yes; I know that you can rent movies from the Playstation Network, but there are two major flaws with that service,
1) It's not available outside of the US (I mean, why? Seriously, why? Is it European law or something?!)
2) It's too expensive.
I'm sure they'll do it eventually, but to be honest you'd be hard pressed to believe we're living in the 21st century sometimes...
For me, gore doesn't add anything at all, save for when it's used sparingly, to the point where it is so unexpected that it shocks. However, if ever there was an example of a game which didn't need gore to shock and terrify then, for me, nothing can beat Silent Hill 2. Such were the psychological shocks that there were points when I would be playing this alone, at night, and decide I'm better off playing something a little more fluffy to wipe the images from my mind. Sure, it had gore, but it was delivered to compliment the terror I was already experiencing from the suggests the game was making.
Networks are now interested in "reality" shows where they can get a bunch of stupid, likeable-only-by-morons, "contestants" to make complete twats of themselves, and who are naive enough to be easily manipulated into becoming a corporate cash cow and puppet. That is, until the fickle audience grow weary of them; usually within a few weeks.
A lot of TV shows have vanished from our screens because of this: Terminator, My Name is Earl, Scrubs, Frasier, Samantha Who... the list is endless.
And when you have much of the western world swooning over a 48 year old singer who shows up to Britain's Got Talent, why the fuck would you want to pay script writers, actors, researchers, and marketers? These people cost money; they're a drain on profits.
From the boardroom's point of view, you can't beat a bunch of teenagers with mobile phones who are willing to text 30 votes a night, at £1 per message to shove someone onto a global stage and thereby generate even more revenue when you dig them out a year later.
This is the future of television, people; that's why I watch so little of it these days.
The PS3 will get the same thing for it's PSN games. I've have no issues with paying £5 a month to rent a handful of games. The reason I don't play most of the games on there is that there are no demos and I can't get a refund if they're shit. £5 or £50 a year would be a bargain in my eyes.
... something to play next year then! I don't know about anyone else, but by the time The Shivering Isles came out for Oblivion, I had OD'd on the game, so wasn't in the mood to play it. I recently picked up the Game Of The Year Edition for the PS3 in a sale, a year after stopping playing it.
Hopefully they'll do the same thing with Fallout so I can pick up the disc sometime in late 2010;)
... then why not Ubuntu? It's pretty clear it was built for that kind of trip, so should serve you well as you track down those Warty Warthogs, Feisty Fawns, Gutsy Gibbons, Hardy Heron, and Jaunty Jackalopes.
Just watch out for those Breezy Badgers: they love their curries, so you don't wanna stand down wind from them...:)
Oh, if people are wondering what I mean by that comment, I'm referring to Microsoft's Cease and Desist order to the makers of Halogen, an RTS mod that used many of Halo's assets. Halo Wars was announced shortly thereafter, so one can see why the request was made. You have to wonder, however, if Halo Wars was never created, would MS still have ordered it shut down..?
It could well be argued that the PS1 was the run-away success that it was because of exclusive Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid franchises. For the PS2, it was much the same, except that it had then gained Grand Theft Auto (yes, I know it came to the PC and 360 later, but by then it really was a one horse race).
There were times when I looked at the games on the 360 and Wii, that weren't coming to the PS3, and wondered if I would be better off buying one of them instead of waiting for the PS3 to come down in price. It wasn't long though before Oblivion, Lost Planet, and Bioshock did actually come to the PS3, with the addition of features that trumped the original release.
Rather ironically, I felt that only one of them was actually worth the wait, in the end...
Aye; I can just imagine the jury sitting there with their laptops, one half bemoaning the audio / video quality, and the others screaming "FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SEED!!!!!!!1":)
... about the state of KDE, I upgraded to Kubuntu 9.04 yesterday and have so far found it to be exactly what was promised: it's faster, more compatible, and... well, I don't know about stable because I've never had an issue with stability with Kubuntu.
I am, however, still at odds with a few of KDE 4.2.2's features (namely KPackageKit, Amarok, and the way removable media is handled), but I think I can at last live with it. If you've been pondering whether to upgrade from Hardy (which I know some people have been), I'm sure you'll find 9.04 acceptable.
(in future though, I must remember not to upgrade on the day of the release. A presumed 45 minute upgrade turned into a 3.5 hour slog)
I think what you're really referring to is a Post Scarcity Society, as seen in Ian M Banks' Culture. It's the concept of moving away from a material society because everything is either free or practically free, meaning that people would ultimately focus on... well, their culture instead.
Unfortunately, whilst it's a nice idea, I don't think the human race is capable of attaining such a leap to this kind of society, because we are all inherently selfish, and there would always be someone out there who would want to control it all, ultimately always butt fucking the good guys.
Is this just Microsoft struggling to milk as much out of the franchise as possible or a sign that the gaming industry is going the same way as the movie industry? Remakes, rehashes... where are the new stories?
Global recession aside, is it now considered too much of a gamble to create a new franchise?
I'll tell you why I didn't like it: nothing happened! The tag line for the film was "A Generation's Final Journey... Begins" and on the poster we have a sinister looking Shinzon clutching a knife. Now, seriously, given those two things am I so wrong as to believe that all (or a lot) of the cast and characters would be bumped off over the course of the movie as they tried to tackle some great evil?
It's not an unreasonable expectation, is it?
But no. Instead we get the usual bloody nice and fluffy Star Trek where fuck all happens and you never feel the characters are in mortal danger or are in fear of their lives. I mean, technically Data didn't even die!
Having said that, I'm going to go and see the new film, in the hope it is a little edgier and gritter than past movies.
As someone who has been using KDE 2001 (around KDE 2), I have to say that I think the latest version of KDE is fucking shit. It's a MAJOR step backward from KDE 3. I feel like the developers have taken everything that was good about KDE, thrown it in the bin, and made every effort to drive me to another DE altogether.
Things that have so far fucked me off:
Removal of icons on the desktop - Seriously, WTF?!! (as far as I know) EVERY OTHER FUCKING DE ALLOWS THIS!!! (I believe it might be back in now, but in the form of a hack..?)
Panel Configuration - Before, I could right click on the panel, select Configure Panel, and get a nice window containing a bunch of things to be tweak. Now I just get this messy stack of... of... well I don't know what the hell that is.
Mounting devices - It was easy before, but now we have this strange menu that doesn't provide all the functionality that the previous 3.5 implementation did.
Some of the new DE is JUST PLAIN UGLY! The calendar, for one, doesn't look as neat and tidy as the one in KDE 3.5
... probably some other things that I cannot call to mind.
I upgraded to KDE 4.2 a while back after everyone raved about it, but ended up reverting back down to KDE 3.5. I'm still not sure what the KDE team are attempting to achieve, but I would rather have seen a KDE 3.6 with all the fancy effects than what we have now.
I'm going to look very carefully at KDE 4.3 when that comes out, but I have little hope that it will reach the 3.5 standard, if I'm totally honest. Rant over. Sorry, had to get this off my chest. Am I the only one that feels this way? I'm sure when 4.2 came out Slashdot commentators were proclaiming it to be THE KDE 4 we'd been waiting for. Not me.
Probably the third time I've written this, but the solution to the rampant piracy on the PC gaming platform is simply to offer the games as subscription downloads via a service such as Steam.
Effectively you would rent the game - Depending on how much you pay per month, you get a set amount of refundable credits to spend on the games. Newer games would cost more, whilst older titles would cost less. You could play as many games as your tokens permit, and revoke your rent on a game once you're done with it; or, more importantly, when you discover it is not for you or doesn't work well on your system. I'm lucky to own a console. I've bought PC games in the past, played them for a couple of weeks, gone off them but am effectively stuck with them. With my PS3 games, I just sell them back to the shop.
Additionally, the service could offer things like trophies and achievements (yes, I know Windows Lives already does this). Throw in a few classics that are free to play (such as Doom and Quake) and you've got a system with a lot of appeal.
The nice thing about this service is that, because it's a subscription, you can play the games on any machine by just logging into your account. There's probably a major, major flaw with this idea... but it looks good on paper.
"The new ad-serving system works by downloading a DoubleClick cookie to the user's browser to track their path through various AdSense-using sites"
So, am I right in thinking that if I reject all DoubleClick cookies I'll render this system null and void? I have most of my cookies set to be session cookies anyway (as should most people, since 99.9999999% of all cookies are redundant), so I'm not actually sure how cookie based ad tracking would affect me in the long run?
Slashdot Mirror
Slightly off topic, but I remember once when I developing a game, I was contacted by someone who was interested in extending it and adding in some new and exciting features. At first I thought he was just in the process of tweaking the game so that it could be more easily ported to things such as the PSP, Nintendo DS, etc. I wrote back and advised him as best I could remember, as to why I had done X, Y, and Z.
Then, one day, he wrote me a very angry email, demanding to know where I had put the source code for my PNGs, JPGs, GIMP plugins, KDE and Kate editions, and what I had done with my kernel sources. After some more emails, he informed me that I should be storing all the artwork for my game in GIMP's native layer format so that anyone else could use it. He said that I was breaching the GPL by not doing so, since he could not effectively re-use the art. He also insisted on my turning over any alterations to popular programs that I had made.
Probably the most bizarre part was the bit about the GPL itself - When my game is first run, the GPL notice is shown. I wrote in my game that the notice should not be removed. He disagreed - Since the GPL gave him the right to change and modify the code, that meant that he also had the right to remove the GPL notice.
There are times when I wonder if open source's worst enemies are its users...
Any mention of the price anywhere? Because if I need to sign up to Sky to use this service, then it's not really solving anything. Personally I want access to a massive library of films and TV shows to watch on a pay-per-play basis, without any ties.
The thing that is still stunning me is that you'd think Sony, being the huge entertainment conglomerate that it is, would've been offering this already with the PS3. Yes; I know that you can rent movies from the Playstation Network, but there are two major flaws with that service,
1) It's not available outside of the US (I mean, why? Seriously, why? Is it European law or something?!)
2) It's too expensive.
I'm sure they'll do it eventually, but to be honest you'd be hard pressed to believe we're living in the 21st century sometimes...
... the definition of irony :)
For me, gore doesn't add anything at all, save for when it's used sparingly, to the point where it is so unexpected that it shocks. However, if ever there was an example of a game which didn't need gore to shock and terrify then, for me, nothing can beat Silent Hill 2. Such were the psychological shocks that there were points when I would be playing this alone, at night, and decide I'm better off playing something a little more fluffy to wipe the images from my mind. Sure, it had gore, but it was delivered to compliment the terror I was already experiencing from the suggests the game was making.
Networks are now interested in "reality" shows where they can get a bunch of stupid, likeable-only-by-morons, "contestants" to make complete twats of themselves, and who are naive enough to be easily manipulated into becoming a corporate cash cow and puppet. That is, until the fickle audience grow weary of them; usually within a few weeks.
A lot of TV shows have vanished from our screens because of this: Terminator, My Name is Earl, Scrubs, Frasier, Samantha Who... the list is endless.
And when you have much of the western world swooning over a 48 year old singer who shows up to Britain's Got Talent, why the fuck would you want to pay script writers, actors, researchers, and marketers? These people cost money; they're a drain on profits.
From the boardroom's point of view, you can't beat a bunch of teenagers with mobile phones who are willing to text 30 votes a night, at £1 per message to shove someone onto a global stage and thereby generate even more revenue when you dig them out a year later.
This is the future of television, people; that's why I watch so little of it these days.
The PS3 will get the same thing for it's PSN games. I've have no issues with paying £5 a month to rent a handful of games. The reason I don't play most of the games on there is that there are no demos and I can't get a refund if they're shit. £5 or £50 a year would be a bargain in my eyes.
... like the kind of idea that I've been suggesting the PC games market adopt in order to counter the rampant piracy.
... something to play next year then! I don't know about anyone else, but by the time The Shivering Isles came out for Oblivion, I had OD'd on the game, so wasn't in the mood to play it. I recently picked up the Game Of The Year Edition for the PS3 in a sale, a year after stopping playing it.
Hopefully they'll do the same thing with Fallout so I can pick up the disc sometime in late 2010 ;)
... then why not Ubuntu? It's pretty clear it was built for that kind of trip, so should serve you well as you track down those Warty Warthogs, Feisty Fawns, Gutsy Gibbons, Hardy Heron, and Jaunty Jackalopes.
Just watch out for those Breezy Badgers: they love their curries, so you don't wanna stand down wind from them... :)
Buy a real book and then have it read to you by your girlfr... oh, wait, this is Slashdot. Ignore me :)
Oh, if people are wondering what I mean by that comment, I'm referring to Microsoft's Cease and Desist order to the makers of Halogen, an RTS mod that used many of Halo's assets. Halo Wars was announced shortly thereafter, so one can see why the request was made. You have to wonder, however, if Halo Wars was never created, would MS still have ordered it shut down..?
... they only had it shut down because they are developing their own sequel, right?
Right?
No? Yeah, that's what I thought too.
It could well be argued that the PS1 was the run-away success that it was because of exclusive Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid franchises. For the PS2, it was much the same, except that it had then gained Grand Theft Auto (yes, I know it came to the PC and 360 later, but by then it really was a one horse race).
There were times when I looked at the games on the 360 and Wii, that weren't coming to the PS3, and wondered if I would be better off buying one of them instead of waiting for the PS3 to come down in price. It wasn't long though before Oblivion, Lost Planet, and Bioshock did actually come to the PS3, with the addition of features that trumped the original release.
Rather ironically, I felt that only one of them was actually worth the wait, in the end...
Aye; I can just imagine the jury sitting there with their laptops, one half bemoaning the audio / video quality, and the others screaming "FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SEED!!!!!!!1" :)
... hiding the body after you've been accused of murder, hoping that you'll then not be convicted?
I am, however, still at odds with a few of KDE 4.2.2's features (namely KPackageKit, Amarok, and the way removable media is handled), but I think I can at last live with it. If you've been pondering whether to upgrade from Hardy (which I know some people have been), I'm sure you'll find 9.04 acceptable.
(in future though, I must remember not to upgrade on the day of the release. A presumed 45 minute upgrade turned into a 3.5 hour slog)
"In this case would they have been better off making a couple of PG-13 films?
Don't worry, I'm sure they'll eventually make the money back off the animated series :)
I think what you're really referring to is a Post Scarcity Society, as seen in Ian M Banks' Culture. It's the concept of moving away from a material society because everything is either free or practically free, meaning that people would ultimately focus on... well, their culture instead.
Unfortunately, whilst it's a nice idea, I don't think the human race is capable of attaining such a leap to this kind of society, because we are all inherently selfish, and there would always be someone out there who would want to control it all, ultimately always butt fucking the good guys.
Is this just Microsoft struggling to milk as much out of the franchise as possible or a sign that the gaming industry is going the same way as the movie industry? Remakes, rehashes... where are the new stories?
Global recession aside, is it now considered too much of a gamble to create a new franchise?
Just do what the Planet Express Ship does and use a Dark Matter drive to move the Universe around us instead... :)
I will wait for the Blu-Ray of any new film. It costs about as much as trip to the cinema anyway.
I really want to know where you get new Blu-Ray films for £4 a go.
Then why was Nemesis a total failure?
I'll tell you why I didn't like it: nothing happened! The tag line for the film was "A Generation's Final Journey... Begins" and on the poster we have a sinister looking Shinzon clutching a knife. Now, seriously, given those two things am I so wrong as to believe that all (or a lot) of the cast and characters would be bumped off over the course of the movie as they tried to tackle some great evil?
It's not an unreasonable expectation, is it?
But no. Instead we get the usual bloody nice and fluffy Star Trek where fuck all happens and you never feel the characters are in mortal danger or are in fear of their lives. I mean, technically Data didn't even die!
Having said that, I'm going to go and see the new film, in the hope it is a little edgier and gritter than past movies.
As someone who has been using KDE 2001 (around KDE 2), I have to say that I think the latest version of KDE is fucking shit. It's a MAJOR step backward from KDE 3. I feel like the developers have taken everything that was good about KDE, thrown it in the bin, and made every effort to drive me to another DE altogether.
Things that have so far fucked me off:
I upgraded to KDE 4.2 a while back after everyone raved about it, but ended up reverting back down to KDE 3.5. I'm still not sure what the KDE team are attempting to achieve, but I would rather have seen a KDE 3.6 with all the fancy effects than what we have now.
I'm going to look very carefully at KDE 4.3 when that comes out, but I have little hope that it will reach the 3.5 standard, if I'm totally honest. Rant over. Sorry, had to get this off my chest. Am I the only one that feels this way? I'm sure when 4.2 came out Slashdot commentators were proclaiming it to be THE KDE 4 we'd been waiting for. Not me.
Probably the third time I've written this, but the solution to the rampant piracy on the PC gaming platform is simply to offer the games as subscription downloads via a service such as Steam.
Effectively you would rent the game - Depending on how much you pay per month, you get a set amount of refundable credits to spend on the games. Newer games would cost more, whilst older titles would cost less. You could play as many games as your tokens permit, and revoke your rent on a game once you're done with it; or, more importantly, when you discover it is not for you or doesn't work well on your system. I'm lucky to own a console. I've bought PC games in the past, played them for a couple of weeks, gone off them but am effectively stuck with them. With my PS3 games, I just sell them back to the shop.
Additionally, the service could offer things like trophies and achievements (yes, I know Windows Lives already does this). Throw in a few classics that are free to play (such as Doom and Quake) and you've got a system with a lot of appeal.
The nice thing about this service is that, because it's a subscription, you can play the games on any machine by just logging into your account. There's probably a major, major flaw with this idea... but it looks good on paper.
"The new ad-serving system works by downloading a DoubleClick cookie to the user's browser to track their path through various AdSense-using sites"
So, am I right in thinking that if I reject all DoubleClick cookies I'll render this system null and void? I have most of my cookies set to be session cookies anyway (as should most people, since 99.9999999% of all cookies are redundant), so I'm not actually sure how cookie based ad tracking would affect me in the long run?