Re:Finally, on the same level as the PC, for now.
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I agree that a game should be fun first and foremost. However the sad truth is people that believe this are in the majority. With gaming popularized for many people graphics are one bigger selling point. Just look at how people complain about not enough FMVs in games. Just look at the PS and PS2, they owe great success to the "cool" image they try to sell. The people that buy this "cool" marketing are also the ones who buy a game based of advertising and graphics. They want something cool looking they can do. They could care less about replay value. Thus if you are selling your console to the masses demonstrating cool looking stuff is the way to go. Additionally what else are you going to show the masses? They don't care (or understand) about the technical specifications. Marketing like this is meant to sell things to dumb people, because there a lot of them and they aren't smart enough to weigh all the issues themselves.
With the state of most game review sites and magazines (95%+ are considered worthless.) Penny Arcade pulls a lot of weight. If they say a game is good it can definately influence sales. Two examples of this are Rez and Katamai Damacy. These are games a lot of people wouldn't think about buying, but have had a great deal of success due to word of mouth. Penny Arcade was definately part of that. Equally so Penny Arcade coming out and saying a game has issues can take a considerable chunk out of sales. They have a long running history of being truthful about games and that has given them quite the reputation.
I don't think EA actually bought the ESPN license for the "X Games" this time. I think the real reason they bough the ESPN license is because they haven't secured exclusive deals the the NBA and NHL. So if you can't prevent your competition from making games, steal their license and name.
Sega was releasing ESPN hockey, football, and basketball games that were easily 3 times better than EA game for half the price (at release.) EA knows their business model can't come up with a game to match their quality and matching the price would defeat the whole purpose of their business model (sacrifice quality and your employees welfare for highest possible profits.) Thus they steal Sega's license.
Ah, but arresting someone like Noriega gets good PR. Using out military to arrest British citizens just angers people. You have to make other people hate your target enough so you come out looking like the good guy when all is said and done. That way your department gets more funding and everyone loves you.
Difficulty is not only a problem in MMORPGs, but with all games in general. I think most developers have lost sight of what makes a "hard" game good. As a result their version of hard is "add a bunch of zeros to its HP" or "make it so there is only one obscure way to complete this." What made games like that fun is they were challenging, but fair. You had a decent shot at completing whatever task was at hand, you just might have to think a little or change your strategies on the fly. These days most developers are just better of making an easy game with shiny graphics though. At least they are good at that.
To be blunt, short of a disaster killing all human beings you will always have people trying to profit from situations like this.
People tend to not care about charity until something big like this happens. Then everyone is tripping over themselves to help creating a situation that is very easy to exploit.
I got a similar result here, it turned up all false positives. I heard a lot of people claim Giant Anti-Spyware is the best, but from what I can tell Spybot search and destroy is still by far the best with a bit of back-up from lavasoft's ad-aware. So what this means is people are fine just running spybot and ad-aware.
This microsoft rebranding of Giant looks to be the super paranoid version of anti-spyware. Not only does it mark spyware, but it also marks programs that install spyware, and marks programs similar to those that install spyware. I think any peer to peer application they know about is included as spyware. While this could be good for the lay user, it seems anyone with a remote knowledge of computers is better off using other programs.
One big thing this has that others don't is the descriptions (pretty good) of the spyware. Maybe some uninformed people running this will read some of those descriptions and hopefully become more aware of why they don't want spyware.
What he did was stupid, yes. However does that warrant prosecuting him so severely? First of all when the Patriot Act was created it was deemed as an attack on our civil liberties. However they promised it wouldn't be used against our own people (a promise I personally didn't believe and has been broken time and time again.)
On top of this there is a legal concept known as culpable mental states. There are four culpable mental states, intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, negligently. Prosecution under the correct mental state is important.
Intentionally would be if he aimed the laser pointer with the intention of blinding the pilots and causing some sort of accident to occur. In this case a harsh penalty probably should be applied. However in this even in this case application of the Patriot Act would not be appropriate.
Knowingly means he realized the possibility of blinding the pilots, but did not have the goal of blinding the pilots and causing an accident. This would invoke a lesser penalty than intentionally attempting to blind the pilots.
Recklessly would be around the realm of a stupid prank for this and probably the most realistic scenario. Some people think it is funny to point at things with laser pointers. He would be pointing at the plane for his own amusement (or whatever reason) with no thought as to the possible consequences. This again has a less harsh punishment that the previous two.
Finally, negligently would be in the realm of somehow accidentally blinding the pilot through a dumb oversight. It is pretty far off in this case, but something like a laser light show not taking into account a nearby airport would fall into this realm. Negligently pointing a laser at an airplane is pretty difficult. However negligence carries the most lenient penalty.
This is similar to murder. There are different penalties for if you plan the murder in advance, shoot the victim in a fit or rage, threaten them with a gun that accidentally goes off, or are hunting and a stray bullet kills someone.
This seems like a blatent case of overprosecution (especially the use of the Patriot Act) and is against what a lot of our justice system is meant for. No one thinks they have a right to shine lasers at planes. However many people like to think we still have the right to a fair trial in this country.
Imagine you were driving and ran a red light (through either inattention or being in a hurry( when it changed at the last minute. You cause someone else to slam on their break and the police pull you over. However instead of giving you a traffic ticket and maybe telling you that you were doing something stupid they charge you with premeditated, attempted murder. In addition they prosecute you as a terrorist. Sadly, this is what this event is akin to. This is what the problem is. I think everyone can agree that he was a dumbass and probably should be prosecuted under the reckless mental state.
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I agree that a game should be fun first and foremost. However the sad truth is people that believe this are in the majority. With gaming popularized for many people graphics are one bigger selling point. Just look at how people complain about not enough FMVs in games. Just look at the PS and PS2, they owe great success to the "cool" image they try to sell. The people that buy this "cool" marketing are also the ones who buy a game based of advertising and graphics. They want something cool looking they can do. They could care less about replay value. Thus if you are selling your console to the masses demonstrating cool looking stuff is the way to go. Additionally what else are you going to show the masses? They don't care (or understand) about the technical specifications. Marketing like this is meant to sell things to dumb people, because there a lot of them and they aren't smart enough to weigh all the issues themselves.
With the state of most game review sites and magazines (95%+ are considered worthless.) Penny Arcade pulls a lot of weight. If they say a game is good it can definately influence sales. Two examples of this are Rez and Katamai Damacy. These are games a lot of people wouldn't think about buying, but have had a great deal of success due to word of mouth. Penny Arcade was definately part of that. Equally so Penny Arcade coming out and saying a game has issues can take a considerable chunk out of sales. They have a long running history of being truthful about games and that has given them quite the reputation.
I don't think EA actually bought the ESPN license for the "X Games" this time. I think the real reason they bough the ESPN license is because they haven't secured exclusive deals the the NBA and NHL. So if you can't prevent your competition from making games, steal their license and name. Sega was releasing ESPN hockey, football, and basketball games that were easily 3 times better than EA game for half the price (at release.) EA knows their business model can't come up with a game to match their quality and matching the price would defeat the whole purpose of their business model (sacrifice quality and your employees welfare for highest possible profits.) Thus they steal Sega's license.
Ah, but arresting someone like Noriega gets good PR. Using out military to arrest British citizens just angers people. You have to make other people hate your target enough so you come out looking like the good guy when all is said and done. That way your department gets more funding and everyone loves you.
Difficulty is not only a problem in MMORPGs, but with all games in general. I think most developers have lost sight of what makes a "hard" game good. As a result their version of hard is "add a bunch of zeros to its HP" or "make it so there is only one obscure way to complete this." What made games like that fun is they were challenging, but fair. You had a decent shot at completing whatever task was at hand, you just might have to think a little or change your strategies on the fly. These days most developers are just better of making an easy game with shiny graphics though. At least they are good at that.
To be blunt, short of a disaster killing all human beings you will always have people trying to profit from situations like this. People tend to not care about charity until something big like this happens. Then everyone is tripping over themselves to help creating a situation that is very easy to exploit.
I got a similar result here, it turned up all false positives. I heard a lot of people claim Giant Anti-Spyware is the best, but from what I can tell Spybot search and destroy is still by far the best with a bit of back-up from lavasoft's ad-aware. So what this means is people are fine just running spybot and ad-aware. This microsoft rebranding of Giant looks to be the super paranoid version of anti-spyware. Not only does it mark spyware, but it also marks programs that install spyware, and marks programs similar to those that install spyware. I think any peer to peer application they know about is included as spyware. While this could be good for the lay user, it seems anyone with a remote knowledge of computers is better off using other programs. One big thing this has that others don't is the descriptions (pretty good) of the spyware. Maybe some uninformed people running this will read some of those descriptions and hopefully become more aware of why they don't want spyware.
What he did was stupid, yes. However does that warrant prosecuting him so severely? First of all when the Patriot Act was created it was deemed as an attack on our civil liberties. However they promised it wouldn't be used against our own people (a promise I personally didn't believe and has been broken time and time again.) On top of this there is a legal concept known as culpable mental states. There are four culpable mental states, intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, negligently. Prosecution under the correct mental state is important. Intentionally would be if he aimed the laser pointer with the intention of blinding the pilots and causing some sort of accident to occur. In this case a harsh penalty probably should be applied. However in this even in this case application of the Patriot Act would not be appropriate. Knowingly means he realized the possibility of blinding the pilots, but did not have the goal of blinding the pilots and causing an accident. This would invoke a lesser penalty than intentionally attempting to blind the pilots. Recklessly would be around the realm of a stupid prank for this and probably the most realistic scenario. Some people think it is funny to point at things with laser pointers. He would be pointing at the plane for his own amusement (or whatever reason) with no thought as to the possible consequences. This again has a less harsh punishment that the previous two. Finally, negligently would be in the realm of somehow accidentally blinding the pilot through a dumb oversight. It is pretty far off in this case, but something like a laser light show not taking into account a nearby airport would fall into this realm. Negligently pointing a laser at an airplane is pretty difficult. However negligence carries the most lenient penalty. This is similar to murder. There are different penalties for if you plan the murder in advance, shoot the victim in a fit or rage, threaten them with a gun that accidentally goes off, or are hunting and a stray bullet kills someone. This seems like a blatent case of overprosecution (especially the use of the Patriot Act) and is against what a lot of our justice system is meant for. No one thinks they have a right to shine lasers at planes. However many people like to think we still have the right to a fair trial in this country. Imagine you were driving and ran a red light (through either inattention or being in a hurry( when it changed at the last minute. You cause someone else to slam on their break and the police pull you over. However instead of giving you a traffic ticket and maybe telling you that you were doing something stupid they charge you with premeditated, attempted murder. In addition they prosecute you as a terrorist. Sadly, this is what this event is akin to. This is what the problem is. I think everyone can agree that he was a dumbass and probably should be prosecuted under the reckless mental state.