For once, what would be a 1MB video could easily fit into less than 100k vector and procedural (scripting enhanced) animation using the full toolset of Flash.
Because then the advertiser has to pay some Flash artist for who knows how long to magic them up a snazzy SWF file with who knows how many individually designed and programmed elements, instead of what is probably some idiot-proof tool to simply drag-and-drop an MPEG of their existing TV ads into.
There's not much they can do except trace where the phone and cards were bought, use the ever-present security videos to pick you out of the crowd, use the locations and times of your purchases to form a pattern of your activities, and anticipate where and when you'll be going to buy your next top-up card.
Although I'm not a girl, reader comment #7 by "girl gamer" elle pretty much summarizes my feelings on TFA, so like a good little blogger I'll use a really short excerpt:
"This guy is pretty representative of everything I don't like about video games and gamers."
Reminds me of "Space Quest IV." Like the rest of its series it was a comic adventure game, but there were one or two "action" or "arcade" sequences. Just to appease the hardcore adventure game players, they gave the player an option to skip past the action sequences. You'd receive a screenful of jeering text from the creators for chickening out, but the rest of the game was still perfectly playable.
Even though I liked the ation scenes, it was worth skipping past once or twice on the CD version, just for teh opportunity to be made fun of by narrator Gary Owens.
Yeah, we totally were. Remember when we all had Moby Dick lunchboxes, Ahab haircuts, fake peg-legs, insisted everyone on the playground call us "Ishmael," and made fun of the weird kid who preferred Hemingway? Good times, man. Good times.
This is the most respect I've had for Wired since they ditched their 1990s rule of using twelve different fonts in fourteen different colors on every page.
But seriously, I wonder how long this will stay online. I'd encourage those interested to save a copy, and mirror the crap out of it.
It isn't DRM'd, they are just going to kill the official free source of the video on the 24th and move it to Google Video's pay service, but let fans continue to trade it freely among themselves without fear of prosecution. The proprietary Google Video format is pretty useless, though. I wonder if anyone has managed to transcode it to something less stupid yet.
It'll still be fun for those of us who never asked permission in the first place, but you're right, it would have been nice to be able to do it on the "up and up."
I was referring to people who mod their consoles for stuff like Linux, Media Center, or even to play homebrewn or otherwise (cough) unsigned games. I'm all for that, as someone who enjoys emulation and tinkering.
Modding a game in order to cheat at online play is a whole other ball of wax, and as someone who once tried to get into "Diablo" I'm with you 100% on how much that needs punishing.
PS3 has one major difference to Neo Geo and 3DO: it's only on par with the competition, not leaps and bounds ahead as the various marketing types would have us believe.
When Neo-Geo came out, we were still playing with 8-bit consoles. Neo-Geo was meant to basically be an arcade-level piece of equipment, and marketed to the class of people who could afford to stick a real Street-Fighter cabinet in their rumpus rooms, but who wanted to swap out games as easily as with a console. NG was even basically the same level of hardware as their arcade machine, which nobody believed could happen back then. And 3DO was a whole different animal, attempting some weirdass hybrid level of interactive video machine during the height of the FMV craze, before everyone had a PC with a CD-ROM.
Sony, however, doesn't have much to push. Hardcore techies can go on about poly counts and HD, but your average Joe will be able to look at the same demo played on PS3, 360, or Wii and not see any noticeable level of graphical difference. This isn't an 80s arcade-vs-console battle, or even a SNES-vs-Genesis-vs-NES deal where anyone could see the extra detail and capability. The only noticeable difference to anyone without fanboyish loyalty to one brand over another or a particular exclusive killer app to look forward to, is the honking big price tag on one of them.
From TFA: Postal Inspection Service officials are also investigating Smash's activity as a senior member of the International Association for the Advancement of Criminal Activity, which they describe as a loose-knit network of hackers, identity thieves, and financial fraudsters. Smash and another sought-after hacker named Zo0mer jointly operate IAACA's Web site, www.theftservices.com, one of the most popular and virulent data trading sites, according to U.S. officials.
I know it'd never happen in a million years, but wouldn't it be absolutely hilarious if the Chinese company was so upset by the American politics involved that they decided to stop doing business with us?
As much as we hate the NSA and other invasive orginizations they impose structure and laws.
No, they don't, because they can't. The world's governments can't control anything except what those under their own jurisdiction can and can't access of the real Internet outside, the extreme of which we see developing in China. If what you want is a nationwide Intranet under Government control with only superficial resemblance to the real thing and the appearance of "structure and laws," there's your business model.
It's not about outlawing bringing up search results with words like "crack," it's about not *suggesting* a search for a crack when you were only searching for their soft.
Right, but if a search engine is going to use the proximity of another word to your query as basis for a suggestion feature, then what the actual word is pretty much has to remain arbitrary or the whole thing becomes useless. If they filter out "crack" suggestions, then any other word can simply be substituted by the crackers and the cycle continues.
But when you start from the position "let's do this in a limited way that doesn't violate the law", the risk is (in precise technical terms) a gazillion-fold lower than starting from "the executive branch can do anything it wants to fight the War on Terra".
My point was, can you trust an agency which specializes in things like covert surveillance to keep their use of something like this within the boundaries of the law, when they hold the keys to it? The only thing stopping them from switching from "doesn't violate the law" to "doing anything it wants" is how they use their own system behind closed doors.
Civil liberties usually don't do so well when they are only defended with the "honor system."
If they do manage to outlaw bringing up search results with words like "crack," won't the cracker scene just come up with some other lingo? I could write something that does the same thing and call it a "Floyd" instead of a "crack," and if that catches on you'll get just as many illicit search results for "ServersCheck Floyd." And then what, will they sue over searches for "Floyd?"
Slashdot Mirror
Because then the advertiser has to pay some Flash artist for who knows how long to magic them up a snazzy SWF file with who knows how many individually designed and programmed elements, instead of what is probably some idiot-proof tool to simply drag-and-drop an MPEG of their existing TV ads into.
There's not much they can do except trace where the phone and cards were bought, use the ever-present security videos to pick you out of the crowd, use the locations and times of your purchases to form a pattern of your activities, and anticipate where and when you'll be going to buy your next top-up card.
I kid, I kid..
Zing!
"This guy is pretty representative of everything I don't like about video games and gamers."
and direct you to the source (scroll down to comment #7.)
Even though I liked the ation scenes, it was worth skipping past once or twice on the CD version, just for teh opportunity to be made fun of by narrator Gary Owens.
Yeah, we totally were. Remember when we all had Moby Dick lunchboxes, Ahab haircuts, fake peg-legs, insisted everyone on the playground call us "Ishmael," and made fun of the weird kid who preferred Hemingway? Good times, man. Good times.
But seriously, I wonder how long this will stay online. I'd encourage those interested to save a copy, and mirror the crap out of it.
It isn't DRM'd, they are just going to kill the official free source of the video on the 24th and move it to Google Video's pay service, but let fans continue to trade it freely among themselves without fear of prosecution. The proprietary Google Video format is pretty useless, though. I wonder if anyone has managed to transcode it to something less stupid yet.
It'll still be fun for those of us who never asked permission in the first place, but you're right, it would have been nice to be able to do it on the "up and up."
Finally, a washing machine for nudists!
I say we just outlaw those hideously dangerous 1's, and let us keep the safe, agreeable, non-pointy 0's.
I think they'll just put those under the umbrella law outlawing the computer.
Modding a game in order to cheat at online play is a whole other ball of wax, and as someone who once tried to get into "Diablo" I'm with you 100% on how much that needs punishing.
When Neo-Geo came out, we were still playing with 8-bit consoles. Neo-Geo was meant to basically be an arcade-level piece of equipment, and marketed to the class of people who could afford to stick a real Street-Fighter cabinet in their rumpus rooms, but who wanted to swap out games as easily as with a console. NG was even basically the same level of hardware as their arcade machine, which nobody believed could happen back then. And 3DO was a whole different animal, attempting some weirdass hybrid level of interactive video machine during the height of the FMV craze, before everyone had a PC with a CD-ROM.
Sony, however, doesn't have much to push. Hardcore techies can go on about poly counts and HD, but your average Joe will be able to look at the same demo played on PS3, 360, or Wii and not see any noticeable level of graphical difference. This isn't an 80s arcade-vs-console battle, or even a SNES-vs-Genesis-vs-NES deal where anyone could see the extra detail and capability. The only noticeable difference to anyone without fanboyish loyalty to one brand over another or a particular exclusive killer app to look forward to, is the honking big price tag on one of them.
How much of that was game content, and how much were system "upgrades" out to find and punish those nasty, evil, wicked console modders?
In other news, a homeless man retracted his suicide plans upon finding a tenner in the gutter.
I wonder what would happen if I posted a link to www.theftservices.com on Slashdot. I mean, what happens to links like www.theftservices.com when they get posted to Slashdot? What effect would it have on www.theftservices.com?
I know it'd never happen in a million years, but wouldn't it be absolutely hilarious if the Chinese company was so upset by the American politics involved that they decided to stop doing business with us?
Shades of "Team America: World Police" aside, remind me to buy a ticket to whatever this guy is in next.
No, they don't, because they can't. The world's governments can't control anything except what those under their own jurisdiction can and can't access of the real Internet outside, the extreme of which we see developing in China. If what you want is a nationwide Intranet under Government control with only superficial resemblance to the real thing and the appearance of "structure and laws," there's your business model.
Neat! Can you overclock that, multiplier-style? You could try to get it all the way up to 0.00Hz!
Right, but if a search engine is going to use the proximity of another word to your query as basis for a suggestion feature, then what the actual word is pretty much has to remain arbitrary or the whole thing becomes useless. If they filter out "crack" suggestions, then any other word can simply be substituted by the crackers and the cycle continues.
My point was, can you trust an agency which specializes in things like covert surveillance to keep their use of something like this within the boundaries of the law, when they hold the keys to it? The only thing stopping them from switching from "doesn't violate the law" to "doing anything it wants" is how they use their own system behind closed doors.
Civil liberties usually don't do so well when they are only defended with the "honor system."
If they do manage to outlaw bringing up search results with words like "crack," won't the cracker scene just come up with some other lingo? I could write something that does the same thing and call it a "Floyd" instead of a "crack," and if that catches on you'll get just as many illicit search results for "ServersCheck Floyd." And then what, will they sue over searches for "Floyd?"