Any environmental policy should remain firmly in the bounds of what we know to be safe. All policies should be fair first and foremost. A few specific, controversial bills or treaties aside, there's not that much more we can do, without being fairly certain that global warming poses a greater threat than overcompensating for it. Not that there's no reason to do more. Environmental consciousness should be done for its own sake, though - not by attempting to turn a poorly-understood scientific issue into a bogeyman.
And in this perfect, copyright-free world, how does one ensure that attribution remains significant? That is, an author writes a book and sends it out to his editor. Author's not big-time yet, she can only get it published at a small-time local job. So a few thousand copies of the book are floating around. Then, before anybody can put the text online, another guy gets a copy of the book, photocopies all the pages one-by-one, and send them out to HIS editor in New York, under his own name. The New York editor thinks it's a hit, and soon it's being distributed all over the place, hard copies for the luddites and software copies for the people who don't like their eyes very much - but it's under the name of the person who stole it.
Is this something you'd consider a problem? Without copyright, there's no legal basis for the original creator to receive the credit that's due her. And, interestingly, it is precisely this sort of grievance that copyright was created to protect against.
I disagree. With well-characterized avatars and sufficiently intelligent stories, a game can be extremely powerful emotionally. I know I was quite moved by the ending to Shadow of the Colossus. The difference between games and movies is that A) games in general have attracted virtually no highly talented writers/storytellers, or at least not employed them in any way that enabled them to create sophisticated events, and B) games, being interactive, have a very different scope of emotions that they are well-suited to evoking, and there are very few writers who are skilled enough to competently explore that space. I think the few games that have had really, truly profound stories have mostly done so by accident or by mimicking film.
Figures. The first two comments are likening Iran to the US. As if there were any comparison between Iranian blogging, where honest journalism is overtly illegal if it's slanted too hard against the government, and American blogging, where every politician of note is compared to Hitler or Stalin on a daily basis. Get some perspective.
Everything is a mental condition, and by certain arguments nobody has control over any of it. The important question is not whether a person is psychologically dependent on Internet use, but whether they're using it in ways that are unhealthy or damaging, which is something that can only be known in individual cases.
Then again, maybe Slashdot isn't the best crowd to be asking about this.
Or, it could be that they're reusing assets and engines developed for the 360 versions (which, let's face it, also hasn't been around long enough for most developers to really optimize).
If you're going to be late reporting something like this, can you at least wait a little longer so that it can be released before they catch wind and send a Cease and Desist letter?
Well, the plot is railroaded, but for the rest of that, definitely yes. You can make your characters into more or less whatever you want them to be, and the story is a welcome diversion from the usual JRPG dreck. And the bosses certainly require strategy - not so much the intervening short battles, which are more about planning than tactics.
The idea is, they want to have it sometime during the first shipment rather than several weeks later for the second, but the first shipment has a high probability of selling out in the first couple of days - depending on the store, quite likely the first day. It's not so much they want one RIGHT NOW, but rather that they want one period.
I really appreciated the way the backstory was presented in Metroid Prime, scanning Space Pirate logs and looking at recent environmental damage to see what happened. All completely and safely ignorable, but everything you scan adds a little touch of detail to the world, and it really makes you appreciate the deliberation put into its development.
Would you listen in on your child's phone calls? If not, then why go to great lengths to monitor IM conversations? Simply make sure that they can't stop you from looking over their shoulder every once in a while.
One thing I'd like to see is ultra-short episodes. Say, they mostly reuse assets from earlier episodes, and you distribute one or two every month for five or ten bucks a pop. This would be better-suited for an RPG engine: add a single dungeon, or a single quest, and add a few new monsters or items throughout the other episodes.
Maybe the first episode contains the start and the end of the game, and a single quest and dungeon, and subsequent episodes expand the game from the middle, so the game is complete from the start but you get to fill it out with the parts you think you'll like.
Here's the first test for any halfway decent conspiracy theory: cui bono? What Soviet official would gain anything from sending nukes at the US, when he can't act under the assumption that the US wouldn't see the Soviet missiles coming and get a launch of their own off first?
About games - I probably wouldn't be a programmer today if my parents hadn't bought me video games (until, at least, I was old enough to work for them). So there's even less room for generalization than anybody things.
Rather than trying to pigeonhole all games into one category or another, I usually try to think of them in terms of a two- or three-dimensional continuum. One axis represents the importance of strategy, tactics, forethought, and the like, another represents the importance of speed, timing, reflexes, and so on, and a third represents the complexity or learning curve. If you really want to hurt your brain, you could add a fourth to represent the importance of atmosphere and writing.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the answer to that is entirely up to the manufacturers, isn't it? It's not our responsibility to keep their business model profitable.
Any environmental policy should remain firmly in the bounds of what we know to be safe. All policies should be fair first and foremost. A few specific, controversial bills or treaties aside, there's not that much more we can do, without being fairly certain that global warming poses a greater threat than overcompensating for it. Not that there's no reason to do more. Environmental consciousness should be done for its own sake, though - not by attempting to turn a poorly-understood scientific issue into a bogeyman.
And in this perfect, copyright-free world, how does one ensure that attribution remains significant? That is, an author writes a book and sends it out to his editor. Author's not big-time yet, she can only get it published at a small-time local job. So a few thousand copies of the book are floating around. Then, before anybody can put the text online, another guy gets a copy of the book, photocopies all the pages one-by-one, and send them out to HIS editor in New York, under his own name. The New York editor thinks it's a hit, and soon it's being distributed all over the place, hard copies for the luddites and software copies for the people who don't like their eyes very much - but it's under the name of the person who stole it.
Is this something you'd consider a problem? Without copyright, there's no legal basis for the original creator to receive the credit that's due her. And, interestingly, it is precisely this sort of grievance that copyright was created to protect against.
I disagree. With well-characterized avatars and sufficiently intelligent stories, a game can be extremely powerful emotionally. I know I was quite moved by the ending to Shadow of the Colossus. The difference between games and movies is that A) games in general have attracted virtually no highly talented writers/storytellers, or at least not employed them in any way that enabled them to create sophisticated events, and B) games, being interactive, have a very different scope of emotions that they are well-suited to evoking, and there are very few writers who are skilled enough to competently explore that space. I think the few games that have had really, truly profound stories have mostly done so by accident or by mimicking film.
Another difference!
Figures. The first two comments are likening Iran to the US. As if there were any comparison between Iranian blogging, where honest journalism is overtly illegal if it's slanted too hard against the government, and American blogging, where every politician of note is compared to Hitler or Stalin on a daily basis. Get some perspective.
Then again, maybe Slashdot isn't the best crowd to be asking about this.
Why? As President, how would he stand to gain from that?
Or, it could be that they're reusing assets and engines developed for the 360 versions (which, let's face it, also hasn't been around long enough for most developers to really optimize).
If you're going to be late reporting something like this, can you at least wait a little longer so that it can be released before they catch wind and send a Cease and Desist letter?
Seriously.
Well, the plot is railroaded, but for the rest of that, definitely yes. You can make your characters into more or less whatever you want them to be, and the story is a welcome diversion from the usual JRPG dreck. And the bosses certainly require strategy - not so much the intervening short battles, which are more about planning than tactics.
The idea is, they want to have it sometime during the first shipment rather than several weeks later for the second, but the first shipment has a high probability of selling out in the first couple of days - depending on the store, quite likely the first day. It's not so much they want one RIGHT NOW, but rather that they want one period.
I don't know about a GUI, but if an ugly tileset is your only problem, you could replace it with this one, my personal favorite.
I really appreciated the way the backstory was presented in Metroid Prime, scanning Space Pirate logs and looking at recent environmental damage to see what happened. All completely and safely ignorable, but everything you scan adds a little touch of detail to the world, and it really makes you appreciate the deliberation put into its development.
that Warren Ellis is supposedly writing this.
To be fair, he never said he wouldn't pirate their games.
Would you listen in on your child's phone calls? If not, then why go to great lengths to monitor IM conversations? Simply make sure that they can't stop you from looking over their shoulder every once in a while.
One thing I'd like to see is ultra-short episodes. Say, they mostly reuse assets from earlier episodes, and you distribute one or two every month for five or ten bucks a pop. This would be better-suited for an RPG engine: add a single dungeon, or a single quest, and add a few new monsters or items throughout the other episodes.
Maybe the first episode contains the start and the end of the game, and a single quest and dungeon, and subsequent episodes expand the game from the middle, so the game is complete from the start but you get to fill it out with the parts you think you'll like.
Here's the first test for any halfway decent conspiracy theory: cui bono? What Soviet official would gain anything from sending nukes at the US, when he can't act under the assumption that the US wouldn't see the Soviet missiles coming and get a launch of their own off first?
About games - I probably wouldn't be a programmer today if my parents hadn't bought me video games (until, at least, I was old enough to work for them). So there's even less room for generalization than anybody things.
Rather than trying to pigeonhole all games into one category or another, I usually try to think of them in terms of a two- or three-dimensional continuum. One axis represents the importance of strategy, tactics, forethought, and the like, another represents the importance of speed, timing, reflexes, and so on, and a third represents the complexity or learning curve. If you really want to hurt your brain, you could add a fourth to represent the importance of atmosphere and writing.
The PSP is much more portable than any PC, even a laptop.
Right. Because capitalists' wages and salaries are by no means "the benefits of their own efforts."
Semantics. Despite the name, FedEx is not a federal institution, unlike the FBI and the Department of Education.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation having access to records for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.