We are at war.
We are not. We were with Iraq and Afgaistan. We are not now. The 'War on Terror' is no more a 'war' than the 'War on Drugs'. It's just a scare tactic. If we 'won' the government would lose power - and they don't want that. This is a police action.
We are at war with a stateless foe that moves from place to place easily.
You mean, people who hate the current system for all the crap it has done over the past 70 years are just people and not whole governments? You mean these people decided to act on their own and are criminals? OK, police them.
We are at war with a foe that uses modern communications technologies to do their damage.
Did you expect them to use carrier pigeons? And, how (pray tell) does a cellphone cause terror or damage? The fact that they use communications networks does not give the US government the right to spy on me, or on you. I'm not a terrorist, but what stop them from just saying that I am because I didn't vote for Bush? Nothing.
The NSA is tracking calls from this foe. This foe calls American phone numbers, and in some cases, American citizens.
You just called 'this foe' stateless and are now referring to it as a unified foe. Double speak? Pick a side and stick to it please.
With that in mind...will some of you learned people please tell me why it was good for FDR to monitor communications between Nazi and Imperial Japanese intelligence, and their assets here? All without a warrant, simply because wartime national security took precedence? And why can't Bush do the same?
You answered this. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were governments, and the spying was targeted on those goverments. The people the US government is after now are individuals. Government versus individuals is a bad thing, for everyone - especially when we surrender freedoms to the zelots ( I mean the ones in DoD ).
As for the Times...yet again, the fourth estate has become a fifth column.
Hardly. They report the truth to the people, or at least as much as they can get away with. George Bush and his cronies are closer to the fifth column. Under king George the American people have surrendered freedom, promoted government dishonesty, toture, public abuse, and invaded another country for all the wrong reasons when there were so many better ones available.
You wanna talk about modern Nazi'ism look no farther than fearful people in power today in the United States. Fear is the root of all evil... don't let your fear cloud your judgment.
I was going to say "yes" WoW, but I guess it's a sequel of sorts. So I'll point to Auto-Assault. Yeah - it' sucks, but it's neither FPS or RTS, nor is it a sequel. A rip off of Auto-Duel (see 1980's) yes, but not a sequel.
150,000 square feet of convention space, and is now expected to attract over 15,000 attendees from across the globe.
Wow, gaming is sure growing up to about real sport levels. I wonder when the super-game-bowl will air during primetime, complete with wardrobe malfunctions.
Then again, with all the virgins in attendance that could be far more dangerous!
I don't know what I had in mind, walking in there. I thought I'd see some new games, I guess. And I did. Unfortunately, they were all in Chinese.
Of course they were all in Chinese, what did the author expect? French? Like 95% of Taiwan speaks Mandarin Chinese... the other 5% speak Taiwanese or Hakka.
When I was working in Taiwan, I hung around with a few of the guys from Microsoft and we used to joke that the only reason M$ was even in Taiwan was to get cheaper booth babes for US events because of all the rampant piracy that M$ faces in Taiwan and how dismaly the XBox did/does/will do there.
I remember when XBox launched in Taiwan - wow what a show M$ put on. Dancing girls, laser lights, loud rock-n-roll late into the night. They convinced the city to run the trains later than usual to accomodate the crowds -- and yet, with all those thousands of people that showed they sold very few actual consoles.
The reason being is that in Asia the gaming market is far more developed than in the US. So the author shouldn't have been looking for familar US brand games, but instead looking to see what is new out there from the Asian gaming houses. Assuming everywhere else is like / wants to be like America is where too many Americans go wrong overseas.
* Taiwanese wages are significatly lower than American wages.
Oh that's not 100% correct. What about Sen. John McCain's trip to "Taiwan" in the summer of 1999? He called it Taiwan? George W. Bush calls it Taiwan and reaffirmed out dedication to protecting other democracies when meeting with the former Chinese 'president' (indirectly meaning Taiwan).
Taiwan is a democracy, far more democratic than even the US. They have direct elections and everthing -- no lame electoral collage there.
I lived in Taiwan for two years, and in my time there I learned that the Taiwanese people are both Chinese and not. I say "not" in that they value freedom, democracy, enterprise, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit more than they value their government or 'civil obedience'. Taiwan is not China, they are not part of China and I really hope that they never will be part of China.
I've lived in China as well and the assumtions that people there had that all the crap the centralist goverment is doing there is for the best over the long run is insane. Blind trust of those in power is from social brainwashing - something that is lacking in Taiwan; so again: Taiwan is not China.
You're kidding me, right? I'm sorry, if I am going to be paying $50-$60 for a new game, the last thing I am doing is shelling out more money on a monthly basis to play online.
Why not, 5.5 million WoW users do it every month?
Subscription service may even let us see free games in the coming years as developers realize that the majority of their income is from the subscriptions and not the sold box; especially once they stop selling boxes and start providing downloadable content. Of course, faster network connections and a very large audience is need to support that; but that's what this all about right? M$ vs $ony for the title of network/distribution owner?
You think M$ is willing to lose millions on the XBox and 360 because they hope to make it up in game sales? No way, they want the network and control. Same as $ony.
Pressuring China in the 1960's when they were no longer 'allies' of the Soviet Union would not have created WW3. Instead, the US did nothing because they were only concerend with the Societ Union (to some degree understandable) and wrongly assumed China would remain a beat-down, backwards country. Now, 28 million free, democratic people live under the shadow of China everyday.
A GBLT organization of any kind automatically discriminates against the majority of players for not being gay/bi- and therefore shouldn't be allowed. There are also a lot of close minded WoW players who will take offense to being recuited by a GBLT guild and could leave WoW over it: hitting Blizzard's bottom line. I'm nnot gay bashing; I've several gay friends and even marched in a pride parade back a couple of years ago. It's just that I can see Blizzard's point of view on this.
It's sad to say, but I'm pretty sure there's more close minded WoW players than gay/bi- players and it is Blizzard's job to cater to the masses.
I've presistant back pain. I've had is for a few years now, and while it's tollerable when I'm playing a game like WoW it's non-existant. I've known about this for a while now... I'm glad to see there's some research to back me up.
I'd love to see a game where the numbers simply aren't available to the players.
That was the intent of the designers of City of Heroes, but if you look at how the community has developed you'll quickly see that we [when I still played] picked the game apart and discovered how the mechanics worked. We even created 'hero creators' that allowed us to pre-build heroes with the best possible combination of stats.
Games use mechanics, and hiding them from people doesn't make the go away or make them better. It just makes is harder for the casual guy to understand what's really going on; whereas the powergamer / number-cruncher is making life hell for the Devs. I know, I was one (number cruncher) and the massive COH nerf/revision of 2005 was because of people like me.
My time in China showed me that Ebay is failing, not because of competetive pricing, or a poor cost model but because their major competetor is home grown and plays to the Chinese cultural prefrences. Ebay has been hesitant to branch their code base to make Ebay-China more Chinese friendly -- and therefore no cost cutting measure is going to save Ebay in China. Just look at how wonderful Ebay did in Japan.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-845099.html
It's the cuture stupids , it's the culture!
Seriously, were there any other compelling games out this year? Sounds to me like EA's RIAA inspired 'do the same damn crap all the time to maximize profit' mantra isn't working. Suprised? I'm not.
Just do what I did: Create a Javascript script and run it on your handlheld... instead of roll, roll, roll... just tap, tap, tap, results. I love it and it sure makes stuff easy - espcially when you don't have to that difficult math... like addition.:-P
Why do the Europeans feel the need to reinvent the wheel everytime they do something? Why do that have to have a version of their own for everything, especially when something like Google is free?
Why do they feel the need to make it a state organized endevor?
As if the EU were bathing in extra cash and can afford to be doing this kind of thing. Isn't Germany's unemployment something like 12%? Isn't Fance's higher?
Why don't they do something new and be innovators instead of follows trying to replace something that's already pretty damn good. Leave the follow and makes worse to M$, they're the specialists.
Perhaps somebody from the Euro area can explain this to me...
As soon as I find an article telling me how to get Windows running on one, I'll be buying one to dual boot.;-)
As it is now, the only thing I use a PC for is Visual Studio (job requirement) and WoW (addiction). So it's got to be Windows at least 50% of the time.
And as a useful note (as to not be totally off topic) it's call bundling because manufactures can offer more for less when they do it and still generate profit. If you could only buy ala cart, the total cost would go up. Also, it lets the manufactures 'mass produce' in the various configuration - again reducing costs.
As for the MS tax, it's BS and a monopolistic abuse... and I'm a near MS fanboi saying this. I can only imagine what a seaoned M$ hater must think.
Don't get too complacent, nothing is perfect. All the locked down routers, adblockers, and antivirus apps were not going to protect you from the WMF flaw. Firefox or not, you were exposed. Never assume that you live in aa fortress.
"and the chat system is abysmal, which makes identifying competent players with which to group extremely difficult"
IMO, the entire UI is abysmal dark grey and tan with random amounts of transparency, too much chrome, and everything can be accidentally dragged about... I'm passing too.
I was a AD&D geek growing up and had high hopes for this game, but like AC2 this is another Turbine flop IMO. Of course you're welcome to your own, but I'm suggesting against this one for anybody who like the speed of CoH and/or the balance of WoW.
I can see this happening to Take Two. Civ 4 was a great game, but the 4th in a series of games and, lets face it, we've all played it before (ie Civ 1-3). The 2K* line isn't anything special either - and not being EA means their football titles lack actual NFL stats, which I've witnessed being the deciding factor on which sports game to purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
With that argument all games are a rip off of something. Hell, all books, tv shows, movies and ideas are too...
We are not. We were with Iraq and Afgaistan. We are not now. The 'War on Terror' is no more a 'war' than the 'War on Drugs'. It's just a scare tactic. If we 'won' the government would lose power - and they don't want that. This is a police action.
We are at war with a stateless foe that moves from place to place easily.
You mean, people who hate the current system for all the crap it has done over the past 70 years are just people and not whole governments? You mean these people decided to act on their own and are criminals? OK, police them.
We are at war with a foe that uses modern communications technologies to do their damage.
Did you expect them to use carrier pigeons? And, how (pray tell) does a cellphone cause terror or damage? The fact that they use communications networks does not give the US government the right to spy on me, or on you. I'm not a terrorist, but what stop them from just saying that I am because I didn't vote for Bush? Nothing.
The NSA is tracking calls from this foe. This foe calls American phone numbers, and in some cases, American citizens.
You just called 'this foe' stateless and are now referring to it as a unified foe. Double speak? Pick a side and stick to it please.
With that in mind...will some of you learned people please tell me why it was good for FDR to monitor communications between Nazi and Imperial Japanese intelligence, and their assets here? All without a warrant, simply because wartime national security took precedence? And why can't Bush do the same?
You answered this. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were governments, and the spying was targeted on those goverments. The people the US government is after now are individuals. Government versus individuals is a bad thing, for everyone - especially when we surrender freedoms to the zelots ( I mean the ones in DoD ).
As for the Times...yet again, the fourth estate has become a fifth column.
Hardly. They report the truth to the people, or at least as much as they can get away with. George Bush and his cronies are closer to the fifth column. Under king George the American people have surrendered freedom, promoted government dishonesty, toture, public abuse, and invaded another country for all the wrong reasons when there were so many better ones available.
You wanna talk about modern Nazi'ism look no farther than fearful people in power today in the United States. Fear is the root of all evil... don't let your fear cloud your judgment.
I was going to say "yes" WoW, but I guess it's a sequel of sorts. So I'll point to Auto-Assault. Yeah - it' sucks, but it's neither FPS or RTS, nor is it a sequel. A rip off of Auto-Duel (see 1980's) yes, but not a sequel.
Wow, gaming is sure growing up to about real sport levels. I wonder when the super-game-bowl will air during primetime, complete with wardrobe malfunctions.
Then again, with all the virgins in attendance that could be far more dangerous!
I don't know what I had in mind, walking in there. I thought I'd see some new games, I guess. And I did. Unfortunately, they were all in Chinese.
Of course they were all in Chinese, what did the author expect? French? Like 95% of Taiwan speaks Mandarin Chinese... the other 5% speak Taiwanese or Hakka.When I was working in Taiwan, I hung around with a few of the guys from Microsoft and we used to joke that the only reason M$ was even in Taiwan was to get cheaper booth babes for US events because of all the rampant piracy that M$ faces in Taiwan and how dismaly the XBox did/does/will do there.
I remember when XBox launched in Taiwan - wow what a show M$ put on. Dancing girls, laser lights, loud rock-n-roll late into the night. They convinced the city to run the trains later than usual to accomodate the crowds -- and yet, with all those thousands of people that showed they sold very few actual consoles.
The reason being is that in Asia the gaming market is far more developed than in the US. So the author shouldn't have been looking for familar US brand games, but instead looking to see what is new out there from the Asian gaming houses. Assuming everywhere else is like / wants to be like America is where too many Americans go wrong overseas.
* Taiwanese wages are significatly lower than American wages.
Taiwan is a democracy, far more democratic than even the US. They have direct elections and everthing -- no lame electoral collage there.
I lived in Taiwan for two years, and in my time there I learned that the Taiwanese people are both Chinese and not. I say "not" in that they value freedom, democracy, enterprise, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit more than they value their government or 'civil obedience'. Taiwan is not China, they are not part of China and I really hope that they never will be part of China.
I've lived in China as well and the assumtions that people there had that all the crap the centralist goverment is doing there is for the best over the long run is insane. Blind trust of those in power is from social brainwashing - something that is lacking in Taiwan; so again: Taiwan is not China.
Why not, 5.5 million WoW users do it every month?
Subscription service may even let us see free games in the coming years as developers realize that the majority of their income is from the subscriptions and not the sold box; especially once they stop selling boxes and start providing downloadable content. Of course, faster network connections and a very large audience is need to support that; but that's what this all about right? M$ vs $ony for the title of network/distribution owner?
You think M$ is willing to lose millions on the XBox and 360 because they hope to make it up in game sales? No way, they want the network and control. Same as $ony.
Long live Taiwan - an Independant Taiwan.
It's sad to say, but I'm pretty sure there's more close minded WoW players than gay/bi- players and it is Blizzard's job to cater to the masses.
I've presistant back pain. I've had is for a few years now, and while it's tollerable when I'm playing a game like WoW it's non-existant. I've known about this for a while now... I'm glad to see there's some research to back me up.
That was the intent of the designers of City of Heroes, but if you look at how the community has developed you'll quickly see that we [when I still played] picked the game apart and discovered how the mechanics worked. We even created 'hero creators' that allowed us to pre-build heroes with the best possible combination of stats.
Games use mechanics, and hiding them from people doesn't make the go away or make them better. It just makes is harder for the casual guy to understand what's really going on; whereas the powergamer / number-cruncher is making life hell for the Devs. I know, I was one (number cruncher) and the massive COH nerf/revision of 2005 was because of people like me.
My time in China showed me that Ebay is failing, not because of competetive pricing, or a poor cost model but because their major competetor is home grown and plays to the Chinese cultural prefrences. Ebay has been hesitant to branch their code base to make Ebay-China more Chinese friendly -- and therefore no cost cutting measure is going to save Ebay in China. Just look at how wonderful Ebay did in Japan. http://news.com.com/2100-1017-845099.html It's the cuture stupids , it's the culture!
FBI, CIA, and SEC should have fun looking him up.
Seriously, were there any other compelling games out this year? Sounds to me like EA's RIAA inspired 'do the same damn crap all the time to maximize profit' mantra isn't working. Suprised? I'm not.
Just do what I did: Create a Javascript script and run it on your handlheld... instead of roll, roll, roll... just tap, tap, tap, results. I love it and it sure makes stuff easy - espcially when you don't have to that difficult math... like addition. :-P
Why do the Europeans feel the need to reinvent the wheel everytime they do something? Why do that have to have a version of their own for everything, especially when something like Google is free?
Why do they feel the need to make it a state organized endevor?
As if the EU were bathing in extra cash and can afford to be doing this kind of thing. Isn't Germany's unemployment something like 12%? Isn't Fance's higher?
Why don't they do something new and be innovators instead of follows trying to replace something that's already pretty damn good. Leave the follow and makes worse to M$, they're the specialists.
Perhaps somebody from the Euro area can explain this to me...
This article is looking good though: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/16/ 150239
As soon as I find an article telling me how to get Windows running on one, I'll be buying one to dual boot. ;-)
As it is now, the only thing I use a PC for is Visual Studio (job requirement) and WoW (addiction). So it's got to be Windows at least 50% of the time.
You think they have any other reason?
And as a useful note (as to not be totally off topic) it's call bundling because manufactures can offer more for less when they do it and still generate profit. If you could only buy ala cart, the total cost would go up. Also, it lets the manufactures 'mass produce' in the various configuration - again reducing costs.
As for the MS tax, it's BS and a monopolistic abuse... and I'm a near MS fanboi saying this. I can only imagine what a seaoned M$ hater must think.
That's the biggest mistake of most end users.
With an opinion like that you can only be a Shaman.
Actually, a Mage. Go figure - still, WoW is the best balanced MMORPG, IMO.
IMO, the entire UI is abysmal dark grey and tan with random amounts of transparency, too much chrome, and everything can be accidentally dragged about... I'm passing too.
I was a AD&D geek growing up and had high hopes for this game, but like AC2 this is another Turbine flop IMO. Of course you're welcome to your own, but I'm suggesting against this one for anybody who like the speed of CoH and/or the balance of WoW.
Thanks 8)
I can see this happening to Take Two. Civ 4 was a great game, but the 4th in a series of games and, lets face it, we've all played it before (ie Civ 1-3). The 2K* line isn't anything special either - and not being EA means their football titles lack actual NFL stats, which I've witnessed being the deciding factor on which sports game to purchase.