...or maybe he's got a fetish for scenes involving cheeseburgers being stolen from overweight cheerleaders by anorexic gymnasts? If he can get all of the gay pr0n shut down, then maybe the leftover industry output will double, or triple, the number of Jack-approved scenes that get filmed within a year! And then, his cheeseburger pr0n will flow...
Unfortunately I can't find the age of the guy in any of the referenced articles. But, the chances are very low that he owned a house in or around San Diego to hold as collateral, if he's less than 30 years old. Especially given the average age of modchip guys. Usually it's some early to mid-20s kid trying to make some money on the side. The only folks I know who've bought houses before their 30's in this city have either had a lot of help from their parents, or an inheritance of some sort.
Ah, but one of the biggest points with target shooting with a rifle, is that your variables are fairly controllable. A true precision machine can bring it down to the point where the only thing between you and the perfect shot, is your own trigger pull, aim, and estimation of the wind. This can't be said for a crossbow's string. And unless you're casting your own bolts, you don't have control over the balance of the projectile. For that matter, crossbow bolts typically do not rotate, which is essential for the bolt to follow a straight path. Now, as for rubber pellet guns, there's a reason we moved from musket balls to the Minnie ball during the American civil war... greater accuracy. You could create a rifled rubber slug of some sort, but it'd have far too much resonation and deformation at any meaningful speed, unless it were hard enough to be a lethal projectile (thus defeating the purpose) in target shooting. For that matter, I would prefer paintballs over the rubber slugs here; at least you can rapid-fire them and play with your friends. But the repeatability of any given shot is pretty miserable, even with high grade markers, due to great variances in the ammunition and the varying compression levels of the gas canisters.
As for an objective reason, I'll give you one. In order for something to be suited for target shooting, the platform itself must, all other things being equal, be sufficiently accurate that individuals in a competition are differentiated by skill, and not by luck. Crossbows (at least, the designs I'm familiar with) are within the luck category. I will grant that longbows do have the requisite amount of skill involved, but the rubber pellet construction you propose would fail this test. Laser competition would allow for skill to be the primary variable, but it would become a one-dimensional contest of straight aim, without the science of judging wind and configuring the correct projectile for the target.
As for making target shooting interesting... well, that's why some folks like to shoot at 1000 yard ranges.:)
Hmm, if "any number of other weapon designs" can accomplish the "target-type stuff" "just as well", please enlighten me. I would love to do my target practice indoors without spending money on ammunition.
Please, tell me how you can lob a piece of material through a target at 100 yards more efficiently? And no, you can't use uber coil gun designs which haven't been invented yet either. Crossbows, perhaps?
I suppose that you may have meant lasers with a recoil device to shake things up and make rapid fire more challenging? That eliminates a good chunk of competition, which is getting to mix up the optimal powder/projectile load, and calculating the ballistic arc (since lasers won't arc). I suppose you could replace it with tuning the recoil device or something...
And to take things a bit more morose, but no less relevant: Assuming the big strong guy in a murderous rage has a gun... if I have a choice between my loved one being shot in the head or chest and dying quickly, or being stabbed 20-30 times with a knife and left to bleed to death, I think I would rather have them shot. I know which way I'd rather go.
That having been said, take a look at Africa's death rates. They do shoot at each other with guns, but they also miss a lot. You start seeing huge massacres when they drop guns and move down to machetes...
I'm pretty sure you meant to say that you're much less likely to miss with a revolver, than an uzi or AK, right?
It all depends. As for head shots, that's a product of playing entirely too many video games. Head shots are for rifles, and for the infamous but very rare (for civilians in real life) 'hostage scenario'. Civilians should primarily concern themselves with center of mass, not with head shots.
I'm very confident that I can hit a person in the chest with a far lower chance of missing (endangering potential bystanders) than if I were aiming at a bobbing, shaking head. Head shots simply aren't a worthwhile undertaking in a close encounter. And if I've got a 10 round magazine, I will be far more confident dumping two rounds into the chest of each assailant than I would aiming at heads with a handgun.
A friend of mine, who trains (American) Marine recruits, has a very good sigline: "You won't rise to the occasion - you'll default to your level of training". I punch holes in paper every two weeks or so with my Sig 229 and CZ-97B. I feel reasonably confident when aiming for center of mass. I am terrified at the prospect of a guy who shoots perhaps twice a year, attempting to make head shots with a handgun while I happen to be on the other side of his target.
On a side note, untrained individuals engaging in close range gunfights tend to miss a HUGE percentage of the time. There's plenty of surveilance camera videos on Youtube, of criminals and gas station clerks blasting at each other with handguns, missing each other until their mags run dry, at 3 feet.
I can also state with confidence that the majority of gang members out there, for all their possession of heavy firepower, have very little ability with their weapons. For one thing: Who goes to shooting ranges? Police, and lots of them. Now, tell me how likely gang bangers are to go to a range, shooting an illegally obtained weapon three feet away from a uniformed police officer? Now, it's my understanding that MS-13 came out of a Salvadoran military tradition and have a higher level of proficiency, but your average gang banger is, at best, on par with the aforementioned twice-a-year guy.
So, to summarize my point: 1. Lose Counterstrike and train yourself to aim for center of mass - it's for the bystanders' safety, and still shuts down folks about as fast, and 2. Competent marksmen will outshoot untrained thugs by a wide margin.
Drug-runners? Yes, they'd keep getting them. In fact, if you were to ban weapons here in the US, they'd become the new pipeline for all firearms, and the ones illegally obtained would become MORE dangerous, not less. It's a felony to possess an illegally obtained semi-automatic rifle, and it's a felony to possess a select-fire AK-47. If you're gonna go, go all out.
Random jerks on the street? They'd still have them. The number of times I have been asked if I was carrying a weapon, either by law enforcement or anyone who I couldn't just lie to about it if I were, has been precisely zero.
Of course, the problem with states like California and New York is that we simply don't have enough guns on the street in the RIGHT hands. States which allow individuals who've passed psychological profiles, proficiency tests, and regular testing/certification in exchange for the right to carry concealed weapons which they've qualified with, tend to have their crime rates go down. This is a reasonably well documented (on both sides of the argument) talking point to research, so I'll let you guys do your own reading on the matter. One pro-gun book to begin your search with is "More Guns, Less Crime" by John Lott. There are, of course, contrary viewpoints which are worth looking into as well, but they'll frequently reference Lott's work, so it's a good general purpose search term to dig up both ends of the argument.
I actually work at gun shows on the weekends in California (just handled the Ontario one yesterday, actually), and you would probably not believe the number of folks who own unregistered assault weapons (not to be racist, but it seems that a quarter or so of the Hispanic guys out there have an unregistered MAK-90 in the closet, and ask me for folding stocks to dress it up with, making it even MORE illegal!) and usually at every show someone will mention an unregistered fully automatic weapon they have at home. These are only the turkeys who talk about it openly to everyone, and go to shows - which I would estimate at maybe 10% of the scofflaws out there. If it's not working in California, one of the "poster child" states for gun control, you can be pretty sure it's not going to work elsewhere. Every time they try to "tighten it up" here, more folks just start ignoring the law, and substantial numbers of the police become less interested in enforcing the laws which are starting to go well beyond what they consider reasonable.
The real answer to a reasonable amount of gun control, would be to restrict the scope of the more onerous and less adhered to laws, to only apply as sentence enhancements for violent crimes (or individuals with a weapons related conviction within the past 10 years). There really is no good reason why the 35yo guy with a clean record who wants to drive out every weekend to punch holes in paper with his AR-10 semi-auto rifle, and never uses it for anything else, should be treated the same as an on-again off-again drug abuser with a history of misdemeanors.
The purpose of guns is to accelerate lead to velocities at which it can travel in a straight line, until intercepted by a target. The designation of that target is entirely up to the shooter. I happen to legally build AK-47 rifles, assemble AR-15's for friends, reload my own ammunition, and own somewhere around 80 guns (yes, I do have records of all of them, I just don't feel like counting for a slashdot poll). None of them have been used in a crime, and I don't foresee that changing at any point.
Wow. That's pretty interesting in and of itself. Everyone I remember reading on the internet spells fiance the same way for both genders, and this is the first I've personally been corrected on it. I'll be careful of that in the future - I just find it amazing that, among all the spelling and grammar nazis on the various forums I'm on, neither I nor anyone I've seen use fiance as a dual gender word has been called on it. Sounds like a whole new world of grammar nazi'age just opened up...
Ah. Actualy, one thing I should've brought up is the protest factor. It's kinda like when the first adult bookstore opened in the small town in TN I was trapped living near for 15 years. There were protesters, church groups taking down customers' license plates, a couple attempts at arson, and a few news and newspaper stories. The name of the store, in case any of the stories have made it to the internet, was "Southern Secrets", and the town was Clarksville, TN. Of course, it didn't help that the owner was a bit of a confrontational prick himself - he brought his computers to a store I worked at once, and felt the need to grill us all on whether or not we minded that he ran a porn shop.
Anyway, given the sensationalist media, the media would simply pull this on a greater scale, harping on the potential for AO content to be sexual, to convince parents that every EB Games has suddenly morphed into a seedy pr0n store. They really can't afford that sort of bad press.
Off the top of my head, "A History of Violence". Plenty of sexual situations there between the married couple. I do agree though, Hollywood ought to figure out that married couples are allowed to have sex too.
Strangely enough, I was permitted to play pretty much any game I wanted, barring the dreaded Leisure Suit Larry series. That included the spectacular C-64 game "Commando Libya", which I used a hex editor on during Desert Storm to mutate into "Commando Iraq" (i.e. changing the messages displayed), much to the glee and amusement of various returning Army veterans on the BBS I was on back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Libya
I kinda miss games like Commando Libya. So simple, yet so fun. I don't imagine we'll see it on the Wii any time soon... *grin*
Parents presently let their kids wander around EB freely, looking at titles and probably finding something to hassle them into buying.
Can you imagine them letting the kids run as freely or as often, if EB started carrying AO titles? Or, in the case of some parents, do you think they'd even let their kids be in the store? Especially if the AO titles aren't kept behind the counter, totally out of view. And if it's out of view entirely, the three mouth-breathers who read about it on the interweb and DIDN'T just decide to order it online, will be the only folks they get in asking about the AO title.
That having been said, this applies to pr0n only. If it's AO because of dismemberments with chainsaws, I don't think the parents would change their current behaviour.
Ya know, I would really like to see the T/M rated scheme applied to games here. When reading the interviews about Lair on the PS3, it was revealed that the ESRB made them change a flying manta ray boss - a living organism - so that it blew up after you killed it, as opposed to bleeding, for the T rating. Erm, it's a living thing, folks, it's gonna bleed if you're hacking at it with a dragon! I'd be more interested in an M version of Lair, just so that last-minute (probably craptastic) ESRB nerfing hasn't been applied to it.
Heh, my mom's freaked out by the fact my fiance and I don't plan on kicking out my roomie once we get married. It seems that folks have this idea that as soon as you get married, you immediately either gain access to some sort of money tree and living cheaply no longer applies.
Oh, to clarify: I'm male, my fiance's female, my roomie's male, and there's a cavity on the underside of my pet turtle's shell which diagnoses it as a male. And I don't expect anyone to try to have sex with any of the above (well, ok, my roomie's up for grabs)
The point you're entirely missing, is that Bioshock is neither a Sony game nor available on any Sony platform (unless you count the Vaio). They really have no leverage to hold over the Bioshock publishers, to force them to use Securerom.
Therefore, any decision to use this onerous copy protection system, was not made by Sony - it was made by the Bioshock publisher.
You did, of course, feel the need to cut my sentence out of context there. What leverage would Sony be able to use, to *make* Take 2 use Securerom? Gee, maybe Sony will refuse to certify Bioshock for PS3 release - wait, no, it's not coming out for it.
The guy down below with the gun analogy put it best. I don't have any love for SecureROM, but the lack of leverage clearly shows that this protection method is in place because Take 2 *wanted* it. If another vendor had come along with the same protection scheme, I'm sure they would have been just as likely to have bought it from that other vendor.
I suppose I should regress to 5.25" floppy days for a moment, and note that your post could be considered single sided, double density.
As for Sony rootkits on my computer? It'd be kinda hard, given that I've been running exclusively on Linux since 1998, and gaming exclusively on consoles. Sure, it's Playstation lately, but that's only because Sega stopped making consoles.
I bash the ones who simply have to pee on everything related to the PS3, even if there's no particular reason for it other than the fact it's a PS3 - I guess I would best describe this with anti-Sony trolls. Example, the folks who have to drag noises about losing exclusivity on MGS4, into entirely unrelated topics on gaming sites. The fact that anti-fanboys think we ought to care (because apparently they would?), demonstrates an adversarial "nyah nyah, we have it you can't" type mentality. Frankly, I'd see the world as a better place if there weren't any platform exclusivity contracts, and consumer demand was the only thing deciding what games showed up on what platform.
The PS3 isn't perfect, but it's pretty darned nice, and far nicer for my interests than the 360. What sold me on it was the comparatively open architecture, Linux support, etc. For the record, I also own a PS2 Linux dev kit, and for the sheer kick of it, I ported a MUD to that environment once.
Sure, you could install Linux on an X-Box via any number of hacks, but I'd rather play with a vendor that not only doesn't mind you running Linux on their platform, but actually supports it. Using standard SATA drives was a nice touch too.
What it comes down to, is that I'm a PS3 fan because it does what I want, and does it much better than the 360. There's also some rational 360 fans out there for whom precisely the converse is true; they made their choice, and that's fine too. It's possible to a be a fanboy of one system, without being an anti-fanboy of others.
However, you are correct, I'm certainly an anti-anti-fanboy.
Heh, nope. I'm still right - someone else below stated my point pretty well with an analogy to guns and gun manufacturers. Even if Sony built the gun, Take 2 are the guys who actually shot you. Blame them.
If you read many gaming sites, you'll see that the Wii/360 fanboys tend to bash anything Sony, whether it's PS3 related or not. Joystiq is particularly well infested with 'em.
That's not to say that Sony doesn't have fanboys, but that Sony has a lot of anti-fanboys amongst the Wii and 360 folks. I personally am an admitted MS anti-fanboy, although it has to do with grudges dating back to Windows 3.1 vs the Amiga, and hasn't been added to much by the X360.:)
Personally, I do prefer the PS3, but don't object to folks preferring the 360 or even bashing the PS3's legitimate issues (i.e. overpricing, etc). I simply take annoyance with folks who bash the PS3 simply because they're anti-Sony in general (you'll find that a lot on Joystiq).
Actually, I did read it pretty thoroughly. It's also apparent that, since Sony has no stake in the game (it's not on their platform), the folks using it weren't forced by Sony to deploy it.
This is why I'm saying it's the publisher's fault.
Eh, I think a better thing to contemplate would be, what involvement or say would Sony have, at all, in the DRM used on this title?
It's not their title, it's not even coming to their platform. The only way the publisher would end up with Sony DRM on this title (which Sony definitely doesn't have a stake in), is if the PUBLISHER sought it out.
In short, if folks are looking for an angle where Sony somehow masterminded this, I think they're going to be quite disappointed IF they think about it logically. On the other hand, if their thought process goes: "Rootkit=SONY!", then I think they're a bit too dense for logical thought in the first place.
Ok, reading the early comments on this article made me laugh my rear off with how quickly the anti-Sony-fanboys jump to conclusions.
You guys do realize that Bioshock is NOT a Sony game, right? It's been stated that it won't appear on the PS3 (some.ini files have made folks question this, however the publisher officially denies it... no telling what the reality is, but it's at the bare minimum a timed exclusive for the PC and X360).
If it's not a Sony game, and it's not even going to be AVAILABLE for the PS3, then who do you think decided to use a rootkit-ish (even if it's not a rootkit) technology? Hint: it wouldn't have been Sony.
If Sony came up with the technology, and then the other guys decided to license it and use it, does this mean Sony had much to do with it? Nope.
I am still laughing at how easily the anti-Sony-fanboy types disengage their brains when reading articles, on totally non-Sony, not-even-Sony-friendly titles. At the very most, if Sony's the one that the technology was licensed from, one could complain that Sony is still providing it. But the folks who decided to USE it, i.e. the Bioshock publishers, are the folks you ought to be mad at.
Slashdot Mirror
What's a PUA?
...or maybe he's got a fetish for scenes involving cheeseburgers being stolen from overweight cheerleaders by anorexic gymnasts? If he can get all of the gay pr0n shut down, then maybe the leftover industry output will double, or triple, the number of Jack-approved scenes that get filmed within a year! And then, his cheeseburger pr0n will flow...
Unfortunately I can't find the age of the guy in any of the referenced articles. But, the chances are very low that he owned a house in or around San Diego to hold as collateral, if he's less than 30 years old. Especially given the average age of modchip guys. Usually it's some early to mid-20s kid trying to make some money on the side. The only folks I know who've bought houses before their 30's in this city have either had a lot of help from their parents, or an inheritance of some sort.
Ah, but one of the biggest points with target shooting with a rifle, is that your variables are fairly controllable. A true precision machine can bring it down to the point where the only thing between you and the perfect shot, is your own trigger pull, aim, and estimation of the wind. This can't be said for a crossbow's string. And unless you're casting your own bolts, you don't have control over the balance of the projectile. For that matter, crossbow bolts typically do not rotate, which is essential for the bolt to follow a straight path. Now, as for rubber pellet guns, there's a reason we moved from musket balls to the Minnie ball during the American civil war... greater accuracy. You could create a rifled rubber slug of some sort, but it'd have far too much resonation and deformation at any meaningful speed, unless it were hard enough to be a lethal projectile (thus defeating the purpose) in target shooting. For that matter, I would prefer paintballs over the rubber slugs here; at least you can rapid-fire them and play with your friends. But the repeatability of any given shot is pretty miserable, even with high grade markers, due to great variances in the ammunition and the varying compression levels of the gas canisters.
:)
As for an objective reason, I'll give you one. In order for something to be suited for target shooting, the platform itself must, all other things being equal, be sufficiently accurate that individuals in a competition are differentiated by skill, and not by luck. Crossbows (at least, the designs I'm familiar with) are within the luck category. I will grant that longbows do have the requisite amount of skill involved, but the rubber pellet construction you propose would fail this test. Laser competition would allow for skill to be the primary variable, but it would become a one-dimensional contest of straight aim, without the science of judging wind and configuring the correct projectile for the target.
As for making target shooting interesting... well, that's why some folks like to shoot at 1000 yard ranges.
Hmm, if "any number of other weapon designs" can accomplish the "target-type stuff" "just as well", please enlighten me. I would love to do my target practice indoors without spending money on ammunition.
Please, tell me how you can lob a piece of material through a target at 100 yards more efficiently? And no, you can't use uber coil gun designs which haven't been invented yet either. Crossbows, perhaps?
I suppose that you may have meant lasers with a recoil device to shake things up and make rapid fire more challenging? That eliminates a good chunk of competition, which is getting to mix up the optimal powder/projectile load, and calculating the ballistic arc (since lasers won't arc). I suppose you could replace it with tuning the recoil device or something...
And to take things a bit more morose, but no less relevant: Assuming the big strong guy in a murderous rage has a gun... if I have a choice between my loved one being shot in the head or chest and dying quickly, or being stabbed 20-30 times with a knife and left to bleed to death, I think I would rather have them shot. I know which way I'd rather go.
That having been said, take a look at Africa's death rates. They do shoot at each other with guns, but they also miss a lot. You start seeing huge massacres when they drop guns and move down to machetes...
I'm pretty sure you meant to say that you're much less likely to miss with a revolver, than an uzi or AK, right?
It all depends. As for head shots, that's a product of playing entirely too many video games. Head shots are for rifles, and for the infamous but very rare (for civilians in real life) 'hostage scenario'. Civilians should primarily concern themselves with center of mass, not with head shots.
I'm very confident that I can hit a person in the chest with a far lower chance of missing (endangering potential bystanders) than if I were aiming at a bobbing, shaking head. Head shots simply aren't a worthwhile undertaking in a close encounter. And if I've got a 10 round magazine, I will be far more confident dumping two rounds into the chest of each assailant than I would aiming at heads with a handgun.
A friend of mine, who trains (American) Marine recruits, has a very good sigline: "You won't rise to the occasion - you'll default to your level of training". I punch holes in paper every two weeks or so with my Sig 229 and CZ-97B. I feel reasonably confident when aiming for center of mass. I am terrified at the prospect of a guy who shoots perhaps twice a year, attempting to make head shots with a handgun while I happen to be on the other side of his target.
On a side note, untrained individuals engaging in close range gunfights tend to miss a HUGE percentage of the time. There's plenty of surveilance camera videos on Youtube, of criminals and gas station clerks blasting at each other with handguns, missing each other until their mags run dry, at 3 feet.
I can also state with confidence that the majority of gang members out there, for all their possession of heavy firepower, have very little ability with their weapons. For one thing: Who goes to shooting ranges? Police, and lots of them. Now, tell me how likely gang bangers are to go to a range, shooting an illegally obtained weapon three feet away from a uniformed police officer? Now, it's my understanding that MS-13 came out of a Salvadoran military tradition and have a higher level of proficiency, but your average gang banger is, at best, on par with the aforementioned twice-a-year guy.
So, to summarize my point: 1. Lose Counterstrike and train yourself to aim for center of mass - it's for the bystanders' safety, and still shuts down folks about as fast, and 2. Competent marksmen will outshoot untrained thugs by a wide margin.
Disturbed teenagers? Yes, they'll still get them.
Drug-runners? Yes, they'd keep getting them. In fact, if you were to ban weapons here in the US, they'd become the new pipeline for all firearms, and the ones illegally obtained would become MORE dangerous, not less. It's a felony to possess an illegally obtained semi-automatic rifle, and it's a felony to possess a select-fire AK-47. If you're gonna go, go all out.
Random jerks on the street? They'd still have them. The number of times I have been asked if I was carrying a weapon, either by law enforcement or anyone who I couldn't just lie to about it if I were, has been precisely zero.
Of course, the problem with states like California and New York is that we simply don't have enough guns on the street in the RIGHT hands. States which allow individuals who've passed psychological profiles, proficiency tests, and regular testing/certification in exchange for the right to carry concealed weapons which they've qualified with, tend to have their crime rates go down. This is a reasonably well documented (on both sides of the argument) talking point to research, so I'll let you guys do your own reading on the matter. One pro-gun book to begin your search with is "More Guns, Less Crime" by John Lott. There are, of course, contrary viewpoints which are worth looking into as well, but they'll frequently reference Lott's work, so it's a good general purpose search term to dig up both ends of the argument.
I actually work at gun shows on the weekends in California (just handled the Ontario one yesterday, actually), and you would probably not believe the number of folks who own unregistered assault weapons (not to be racist, but it seems that a quarter or so of the Hispanic guys out there have an unregistered MAK-90 in the closet, and ask me for folding stocks to dress it up with, making it even MORE illegal!) and usually at every show someone will mention an unregistered fully automatic weapon they have at home. These are only the turkeys who talk about it openly to everyone, and go to shows - which I would estimate at maybe 10% of the scofflaws out there. If it's not working in California, one of the "poster child" states for gun control, you can be pretty sure it's not going to work elsewhere. Every time they try to "tighten it up" here, more folks just start ignoring the law, and substantial numbers of the police become less interested in enforcing the laws which are starting to go well beyond what they consider reasonable.
The real answer to a reasonable amount of gun control, would be to restrict the scope of the more onerous and less adhered to laws, to only apply as sentence enhancements for violent crimes (or individuals with a weapons related conviction within the past 10 years). There really is no good reason why the 35yo guy with a clean record who wants to drive out every weekend to punch holes in paper with his AR-10 semi-auto rifle, and never uses it for anything else, should be treated the same as an on-again off-again drug abuser with a history of misdemeanors.
The purpose of guns is to accelerate lead to velocities at which it can travel in a straight line, until intercepted by a target. The designation of that target is entirely up to the shooter. I happen to legally build AK-47 rifles, assemble AR-15's for friends, reload my own ammunition, and own somewhere around 80 guns (yes, I do have records of all of them, I just don't feel like counting for a slashdot poll). None of them have been used in a crime, and I don't foresee that changing at any point.
Wow. That's pretty interesting in and of itself. Everyone I remember reading on the internet spells fiance the same way for both genders, and this is the first I've personally been corrected on it. I'll be careful of that in the future - I just find it amazing that, among all the spelling and grammar nazis on the various forums I'm on, neither I nor anyone I've seen use fiance as a dual gender word has been called on it. Sounds like a whole new world of grammar nazi'age just opened up...
Ah. Actualy, one thing I should've brought up is the protest factor. It's kinda like when the first adult bookstore opened in the small town in TN I was trapped living near for 15 years. There were protesters, church groups taking down customers' license plates, a couple attempts at arson, and a few news and newspaper stories. The name of the store, in case any of the stories have made it to the internet, was "Southern Secrets", and the town was Clarksville, TN. Of course, it didn't help that the owner was a bit of a confrontational prick himself - he brought his computers to a store I worked at once, and felt the need to grill us all on whether or not we minded that he ran a porn shop.
Anyway, given the sensationalist media, the media would simply pull this on a greater scale, harping on the potential for AO content to be sexual, to convince parents that every EB Games has suddenly morphed into a seedy pr0n store. They really can't afford that sort of bad press.
Off the top of my head, "A History of Violence". Plenty of sexual situations there between the married couple. I do agree though, Hollywood ought to figure out that married couples are allowed to have sex too.
Strangely enough, I was permitted to play pretty much any game I wanted, barring the dreaded Leisure Suit Larry series. That included the spectacular C-64 game "Commando Libya", which I used a hex editor on during Desert Storm to mutate into "Commando Iraq" (i.e. changing the messages displayed), much to the glee and amusement of various returning Army veterans on the BBS I was on back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Libya
I kinda miss games like Commando Libya. So simple, yet so fun. I don't imagine we'll see it on the Wii any time soon... *grin*
Check out Elder Scrolls: Oblivion IV. I think you'll be quite pleasantly surprised.
Heh. I was allowed to watch my first R-rated movie, "Terminator 2", at 16 or so.
Parents presently let their kids wander around EB freely, looking at titles and probably finding something to hassle them into buying.
Can you imagine them letting the kids run as freely or as often, if EB started carrying AO titles? Or, in the case of some parents, do you think they'd even let their kids be in the store? Especially if the AO titles aren't kept behind the counter, totally out of view. And if it's out of view entirely, the three mouth-breathers who read about it on the interweb and DIDN'T just decide to order it online, will be the only folks they get in asking about the AO title.
That having been said, this applies to pr0n only. If it's AO because of dismemberments with chainsaws, I don't think the parents would change their current behaviour.
Ya know, I would really like to see the T/M rated scheme applied to games here. When reading the interviews about Lair on the PS3, it was revealed that the ESRB made them change a flying manta ray boss - a living organism - so that it blew up after you killed it, as opposed to bleeding, for the T rating. Erm, it's a living thing, folks, it's gonna bleed if you're hacking at it with a dragon! I'd be more interested in an M version of Lair, just so that last-minute (probably craptastic) ESRB nerfing hasn't been applied to it.
Heh, my mom's freaked out by the fact my fiance and I don't plan on kicking out my roomie once we get married. It seems that folks have this idea that as soon as you get married, you immediately either gain access to some sort of money tree and living cheaply no longer applies.
Oh, to clarify: I'm male, my fiance's female, my roomie's male, and there's a cavity on the underside of my pet turtle's shell which diagnoses it as a male. And I don't expect anyone to try to have sex with any of the above (well, ok, my roomie's up for grabs)
Well, it also made use of the fact he wasn't Cruz Bustamante. I voted for Aanold, but it was primarily a vote against Bustamante.
CA's got enough problems without a card-carrying Meccha member for governor. I wouldn't want Cruz in any more than I'd want some KKK turkey.
The point you're entirely missing, is that Bioshock is neither a Sony game nor available on any Sony platform (unless you count the Vaio). They really have no leverage to hold over the Bioshock publishers, to force them to use Securerom.
Therefore, any decision to use this onerous copy protection system, was not made by Sony - it was made by the Bioshock publisher.
You did, of course, feel the need to cut my sentence out of context there. What leverage would Sony be able to use, to *make* Take 2 use Securerom? Gee, maybe Sony will refuse to certify Bioshock for PS3 release - wait, no, it's not coming out for it.
The guy down below with the gun analogy put it best. I don't have any love for SecureROM, but the lack of leverage clearly shows that this protection method is in place because Take 2 *wanted* it. If another vendor had come along with the same protection scheme, I'm sure they would have been just as likely to have bought it from that other vendor.
I suppose I should regress to 5.25" floppy days for a moment, and note that your post could be considered single sided, double density.
As for Sony rootkits on my computer? It'd be kinda hard, given that I've been running exclusively on Linux since 1998, and gaming exclusively on consoles. Sure, it's Playstation lately, but that's only because Sega stopped making consoles.
I bash the ones who simply have to pee on everything related to the PS3, even if there's no particular reason for it other than the fact it's a PS3 - I guess I would best describe this with anti-Sony trolls. Example, the folks who have to drag noises about losing exclusivity on MGS4, into entirely unrelated topics on gaming sites. The fact that anti-fanboys think we ought to care (because apparently they would?), demonstrates an adversarial "nyah nyah, we have it you can't" type mentality. Frankly, I'd see the world as a better place if there weren't any platform exclusivity contracts, and consumer demand was the only thing deciding what games showed up on what platform.
The PS3 isn't perfect, but it's pretty darned nice, and far nicer for my interests than the 360. What sold me on it was the comparatively open architecture, Linux support, etc. For the record, I also own a PS2 Linux dev kit, and for the sheer kick of it, I ported a MUD to that environment once.
Sure, you could install Linux on an X-Box via any number of hacks, but I'd rather play with a vendor that not only doesn't mind you running Linux on their platform, but actually supports it. Using standard SATA drives was a nice touch too.
What it comes down to, is that I'm a PS3 fan because it does what I want, and does it much better than the 360. There's also some rational 360 fans out there for whom precisely the converse is true; they made their choice, and that's fine too. It's possible to a be a fanboy of one system, without being an anti-fanboy of others.
However, you are correct, I'm certainly an anti-anti-fanboy.
Heh, nope. I'm still right - someone else below stated my point pretty well with an analogy to guns and gun manufacturers. Even if Sony built the gun, Take 2 are the guys who actually shot you. Blame them.
As for the last bit - wow, repressed much?
If you read many gaming sites, you'll see that the Wii/360 fanboys tend to bash anything Sony, whether it's PS3 related or not. Joystiq is particularly well infested with 'em.
:)
That's not to say that Sony doesn't have fanboys, but that Sony has a lot of anti-fanboys amongst the Wii and 360 folks. I personally am an admitted MS anti-fanboy, although it has to do with grudges dating back to Windows 3.1 vs the Amiga, and hasn't been added to much by the X360.
Personally, I do prefer the PS3, but don't object to folks preferring the 360 or even bashing the PS3's legitimate issues (i.e. overpricing, etc). I simply take annoyance with folks who bash the PS3 simply because they're anti-Sony in general (you'll find that a lot on Joystiq).
Actually, I did read it pretty thoroughly. It's also apparent that, since Sony has no stake in the game (it's not on their platform), the folks using it weren't forced by Sony to deploy it.
This is why I'm saying it's the publisher's fault.
Eh, I think a better thing to contemplate would be, what involvement or say would Sony have, at all, in the DRM used on this title?
It's not their title, it's not even coming to their platform. The only way the publisher would end up with Sony DRM on this title (which Sony definitely doesn't have a stake in), is if the PUBLISHER sought it out.
In short, if folks are looking for an angle where Sony somehow masterminded this, I think they're going to be quite disappointed IF they think about it logically. On the other hand, if their thought process goes: "Rootkit=SONY!", then I think they're a bit too dense for logical thought in the first place.
Ok, reading the early comments on this article made me laugh my rear off with how quickly the anti-Sony-fanboys jump to conclusions.
.ini files have made folks question this, however the publisher officially denies it... no telling what the reality is, but it's at the bare minimum a timed exclusive for the PC and X360).
You guys do realize that Bioshock is NOT a Sony game, right? It's been stated that it won't appear on the PS3 (some
If it's not a Sony game, and it's not even going to be AVAILABLE for the PS3, then who do you think decided to use a rootkit-ish (even if it's not a rootkit) technology? Hint: it wouldn't have been Sony.
If Sony came up with the technology, and then the other guys decided to license it and use it, does this mean Sony had much to do with it? Nope.
I am still laughing at how easily the anti-Sony-fanboy types disengage their brains when reading articles, on totally non-Sony, not-even-Sony-friendly titles. At the very most, if Sony's the one that the technology was licensed from, one could complain that Sony is still providing it. But the folks who decided to USE it, i.e. the Bioshock publishers, are the folks you ought to be mad at.