Some of their other statistics caught my eye: Gamer parents are also likely to be voters, according to the study, with 73 percent of those surveyed claiming to visit the polls regularly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 85 percent think that monitoring the appropriateness of what kids play should be the job of the parents, not the government or game publishers. Similarly, parents believe by a two-to-one margin that it isn't the government's job to regulate games at all.
Now, at first I thought that this was great; maybe all the anti-gaming regs will fall through after all. But then of course, nobody is going to vote for somebody because they are against gamers' rights. At least not in this day and age. Ah well.
I've gotta say, I think this is an awesome tactic to get kids back into the library. I know they won't be playing the games there, but they actually have to go in, take out the game, and leave the place.
Here's what I'd suggest to hook the kids:
1. Keep it up with the games, expand to other systems. 2. Start getting DVDs of popular anime in stock, strategically place that near the games. 3. Start stocking manga for said anime.
Yeah, not everyone likes anime and manga, but it's a thought. Maybe for the other video game freak kids, stock up on Sci-Fi and Tom Clancy.
Unfortunately, it's in Japanese. There doesn't seem to be much special in it beyond what's said in the Slashdot summary...
Release date, March 2nd 2006. Projected cost, 16,800 Yen (compared to, I think, 15,000 Yen for the original) Dimensions: 133x73.9x21.5mm (compare to 148.7x84.7x28.9mm) Weight is 218g (compare to 275g).
You know, all these games are rated less than 8/10... and it looks like most of them kind of suck. Kinda wonder if they are just trying to make people give up on indie games and buy "good" games that were published by EA and the like.
They do need to do a full year though- Darwinia was freaking aweswome.
It looks like there's finally a use for all the grass clippings coming out of suburban neighborhoods and non-office paper that gets thrown away instead of being recycled.
From the article: Instead of coming exclusively from corn or sugar cane as it has up to now, thanks to biotech breakthroughs, the fuel can be made out of everything from prairie switchgrass and wood chips to corn husks and other agricultural waste.
This biomass-derived fuel is known as cellulosic ethanol.
Their study on the <img> element is quite interesting.
3/4 of the parsed pages use alt text with their <img> tags, and about 10% use image maps... which I find a little scary. I haven't seen an image map in years.
I'm a college student weighing in at over 300lbs., and I also play DDR. I own my own pad and play on occasion, though not nearly as much as I used to.
Honestly, if you gave each kid his own cheapo pad and SM... or even a PS2 and a pad, he won't play it. Before I started playing, I thought that DDR was some stupid game that losers with no life play (like I was one to talk).
It took some peer pressure to start, and I sucked badly. It takes some time to get the coordination before it's more a matter of speed. Obese kids are going to get bored or frustrated by that point, especially in high school. I can't imagine the ridicule that'd be directed at the "dancing bear" in gym class.
So what I'm getting at here is that these kids need a supportive environment to start playing in, much more than anything. DDR is most certainly not fun if you're new to it and uncoordinated.
Up to this date, I'd always thought of Bethesda as just "the guys who made the TES series", but this is really pretty cool and will, I hope, push Bethesda even higher in the ranks of the developers.
This is also good news for me because, honestly, I haven't been particularly pleased with Activision's ST games. They can blame Viacom, but they can't exempt their own developers... like in Star Trek: Bridge Commander; in one mission, your chief engineer suggests by tweaking the matter/antimatter intermix ratio to do some kind of super warp jump. Of course, if you watched enough TNG, you know that there's only one proper intermix ratio, 1:1, and otherwise should have destroyed your ship.
From the article: To support the service, Opera has implemented more than 100 new servers, says Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering for Opera. He was reluctant to be more specific but he says they run Linux and are massively parallel and massively redundant.
I've gotta hand it to them, it's a pretty good idea to stick ads in the game.
I used to play Neocron back in 2003; cyberpunk atmosphere, and as a result, all sorts of fake ads for companies, etc inside the game, just for atmosphere. Why not advertise real things?
Of course, if their implementation is more along the lines of, every 30 seconds, an audio message pops up saying "Buy xxx product!", that's a little far. Same for if they spam your account or sign your CC up for free subscriptions to garbage.
If they got sponsored by Smith & Wesson though, it'd be cool to have S&W brand weapons in the game.
An interesting tidbit from the article: Commodore, now under new ownership, showed a prototype GPS device that, as a bonus, comes pre-packaged with a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator.
Do you really need to know where you are when you're playing NES roms on the road? No matter what, it's nerdsville.
On a more serious note, I've gotta wonder what the battery life on that thing is when you're playing.
To be honest, I have to disagree that this is stellar news for smokers. Even if you do have an easy cure for lung cancer available, this doesn't mean go ahead and smoke to your heart's content.
Lung cancer isn't the only reason to stop smoking. It discolors your teeth, makes you stink and disturbs people around you.
I'd say that the most apparent methods would be:
1. Money for lawyers, advertisments
2. Well-recognized names in the field denouncing software patents in respected EU forums of discourse.
I'm not saying that it isn't a problem, but I'm not sure that this is indicative of how bad the space junk problem really is.
TFA says that the gel is "99.8% air", so a hole the size of a small human finger might "only" leave a dent in the side of a pressurized spacecraft.
Also remember, the spacecraft did complete its mission successfully, even though at least part of it passed through the tail of a comet, intending to get hit by particles.
Sorry, I should've been more clear. I didn't mean to say that the fault falls entirely, or even mostly, on the end user. To say so is just plain naive.
What I am saying is that it would be nice to have users at least exercise *some* care in what links they click on.
From TFA: Bantown members said they created hundreds of dummy member accounts featuring Web links that used the Javascript flaws to steal "cookies"...
And they claim to have the cookies for nine-hundred thousand accounts?!?! I'll admit that's probably a bloated number, but even ten percent of that is impressive.
Honestly, for all the money we put towards advocating safe sex, we should be putting at least a little towards safe browsing.
How many worms/virii/exploits in the past two years have required the victim to be duped into clicking on a mysterious link, or running a file in a mysterious e-mail?
I'm not saying that I mind the earnings when I get to clean up one of those infected computers, but it's just astounding.
Nor do I, it's just when they ask "what's that?" and see the "Service Pack 2" up on the title bar that they get worried.
It's just really sad. Recently I read a transcript of somebody's online tech support chat, where the rep told the user things like "You must not also install Windows XP Service Pack updates", "Service Pack 2 should not be downloaded unless it came preinstalled", and "Yes. You should uninstall the Windows XP Service Pack 2 right [now]".
Somehow, I wonder if Microsoft is actually trying to *prevent* a repeat of the bad press from SP2 by waiting to release SP3. The number of computers it really affected was low, but those computers looked pretty well messed up.
In my job, I have to fix dorm residents' personal computers for pretty much any software problem. You name it: viruses, worms, spyware, basic help, installing virus protection, and convincing people to install service pack 2.
Getting people to install SP2 was and still is a pain in the ass. They don't trust it becuase their mother's cousin's son-in-law, who saw something on TV about it, says that it can cause problems.
But just as we'll probably be just about finished getting the students to upgrade, here comes SP3.
The good news? I get to work a lot more hours when it comes time to get people to install it.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of their other statistics caught my eye:
Gamer parents are also likely to be voters, according to the study, with 73 percent of those surveyed claiming to visit the polls regularly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 85 percent think that monitoring the appropriateness of what kids play should be the job of the parents, not the government or game publishers. Similarly, parents believe by a two-to-one margin that it isn't the government's job to regulate games at all.
Now, at first I thought that this was great; maybe all the anti-gaming regs will fall through after all. But then of course, nobody is going to vote for somebody because they are against gamers' rights. At least not in this day and age. Ah well.
I've gotta say, I think this is an awesome tactic to get kids back into the library. I know they won't be playing the games there, but they actually have to go in, take out the game, and leave the place.
Here's what I'd suggest to hook the kids:
1. Keep it up with the games, expand to other systems.
2. Start getting DVDs of popular anime in stock, strategically place that near the games.
3. Start stocking manga for said anime.
Yeah, not everyone likes anime and manga, but it's a thought. Maybe for the other video game freak kids, stock up on Sci-Fi and Tom Clancy.
Unfortunately, it's in Japanese. There doesn't seem to be much special in it beyond what's said in the Slashdot summary...
Release date, March 2nd 2006.
Projected cost, 16,800 Yen (compared to, I think, 15,000 Yen for the original)
Dimensions: 133x73.9x21.5mm (compare to 148.7x84.7x28.9mm)
Weight is 218g (compare to 275g).
You know, all these games are rated less than 8/10... and it looks like most of them kind of suck. Kinda wonder if they are just trying to make people give up on indie games and buy "good" games that were published by EA and the like.
They do need to do a full year though- Darwinia was freaking aweswome.
If you try to login or register at Where Is George you get a message that they're taking it down temporarily because of heavy user load...
Too bad, imagine the influx of data if they got everyone who reads slashdot to participate.
It looks like there's finally a use for all the grass clippings coming out of suburban neighborhoods and non-office paper that gets thrown away instead of being recycled.
From the article:
Instead of coming exclusively from corn or sugar cane as it has up to now, thanks to biotech breakthroughs, the fuel can be made out of everything from prairie switchgrass and wood chips to corn husks and other agricultural waste.
This biomass-derived fuel is known as cellulosic ethanol.
The case in question is Elektra v. Barker, and here's some of the legal docs and stuff.
Complaint
Exhibit A
Exhibit B, Part 1
Exhibit B, Part 2
No, not only in the US. There are actually quite restrictive laws on gaming elsewhere in the world.
Australia, for example, has a history of being quite restrictive.
Here's another article's info on Video Game Legislation Around the World.
Their study on the <img> element is quite interesting.
3/4 of the parsed pages use alt text with their <img> tags, and about 10% use image maps... which I find a little scary. I haven't seen an image map in years.
I'm a college student weighing in at over 300lbs., and I also play DDR. I own my own pad and play on occasion, though not nearly as much as I used to.
Honestly, if you gave each kid his own cheapo pad and SM... or even a PS2 and a pad, he won't play it. Before I started playing, I thought that DDR was some stupid game that losers with no life play (like I was one to talk).
It took some peer pressure to start, and I sucked badly. It takes some time to get the coordination before it's more a matter of speed. Obese kids are going to get bored or frustrated by that point, especially in high school. I can't imagine the ridicule that'd be directed at the "dancing bear" in gym class.
So what I'm getting at here is that these kids need a supportive environment to start playing in, much more than anything. DDR is most certainly not fun if you're new to it and uncoordinated.
Up to this date, I'd always thought of Bethesda as just "the guys who made the TES series", but this is really pretty cool and will, I hope, push Bethesda even higher in the ranks of the developers.
This is also good news for me because, honestly, I haven't been particularly pleased with Activision's ST games. They can blame Viacom, but they can't exempt their own developers... like in Star Trek: Bridge Commander; in one mission, your chief engineer suggests by tweaking the matter/antimatter intermix ratio to do some kind of super warp jump. Of course, if you watched enough TNG, you know that there's only one proper intermix ratio, 1:1, and otherwise should have destroyed your ship.
From the article:
To support the service, Opera has implemented more than 100 new servers, says Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering for Opera. He was reluctant to be more specific but he says they run Linux and are massively parallel and massively redundant.
Now that's HOT.
I've gotta hand it to them, it's a pretty good idea to stick ads in the game.
I used to play Neocron back in 2003; cyberpunk atmosphere, and as a result, all sorts of fake ads for companies, etc inside the game, just for atmosphere. Why not advertise real things?
Of course, if their implementation is more along the lines of, every 30 seconds, an audio message pops up saying "Buy xxx product!", that's a little far. Same for if they spam your account or sign your CC up for free subscriptions to garbage.
If they got sponsored by Smith & Wesson though, it'd be cool to have S&W brand weapons in the game.
Agreed, it's a damned good game. As to Takahashi's fate, I fear that he'll end up typecast as "the guy who makes acid trip games".
An interesting tidbit from the article:
Commodore, now under new ownership, showed a prototype GPS device that, as a bonus, comes pre-packaged with a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator.
Do you really need to know where you are when you're playing NES roms on the road? No matter what, it's nerdsville.
On a more serious note, I've gotta wonder what the battery life on that thing is when you're playing.
To be honest, I have to disagree that this is stellar news for smokers. Even if you do have an easy cure for lung cancer available, this doesn't mean go ahead and smoke to your heart's content.
Lung cancer isn't the only reason to stop smoking. It discolors your teeth, makes you stink and disturbs people around you.
I'd say that the most apparent methods would be:
1. Money for lawyers, advertisments
2. Well-recognized names in the field denouncing software patents in respected EU forums of discourse.
I find the last paragraph of the article mildly amusing:
[Mr. Kennedy] said DRM was a "sometimes misunderstood element of the digital music business".
I wonder if he knows who is misunderstanding it...
I'm not saying that it isn't a problem, but I'm not sure that this is indicative of how bad the space junk problem really is.
TFA says that the gel is "99.8% air", so a hole the size of a small human finger might "only" leave a dent in the side of a pressurized spacecraft.
Also remember, the spacecraft did complete its mission successfully, even though at least part of it passed through the tail of a comet, intending to get hit by particles.
Sorry, I should've been more clear. I didn't mean to say that the fault falls entirely, or even mostly, on the end user. To say so is just plain naive.
What I am saying is that it would be nice to have users at least exercise *some* care in what links they click on.
From TFA:
Bantown members said they created hundreds of dummy member accounts featuring Web links that used the Javascript flaws to steal "cookies"...
And they claim to have the cookies for nine-hundred thousand accounts?!?! I'll admit that's probably a bloated number, but even ten percent of that is impressive.
Honestly, for all the money we put towards advocating safe sex, we should be putting at least a little towards safe browsing.
How many worms/virii/exploits in the past two years have required the victim to be duped into clicking on a mysterious link, or running a file in a mysterious e-mail?
I'm not saying that I mind the earnings when I get to clean up one of those infected computers, but it's just astounding.
Nor do I, it's just when they ask "what's that?" and see the "Service Pack 2" up on the title bar that they get worried.
It's just really sad. Recently I read a transcript of somebody's online tech support chat, where the rep told the user things like "You must not also install Windows XP Service Pack updates", "Service Pack 2 should not be downloaded unless it came preinstalled", and "Yes. You should uninstall the Windows XP Service Pack 2 right [now]".
Somehow, I wonder if Microsoft is actually trying to *prevent* a repeat of the bad press from SP2 by waiting to release SP3. The number of computers it really affected was low, but those computers looked pretty well messed up.
In my job, I have to fix dorm residents' personal computers for pretty much any software problem. You name it: viruses, worms, spyware, basic help, installing virus protection, and convincing people to install service pack 2.
Getting people to install SP2 was and still is a pain in the ass. They don't trust it becuase their mother's cousin's son-in-law, who saw something on TV about it, says that it can cause problems.
But just as we'll probably be just about finished getting the students to upgrade, here comes SP3.
The good news? I get to work a lot more hours when it comes time to get people to install it.
From what I've heard, right now the way to make an EMP bomb would require high explosives; an explosively pumped flux compression generator
Maybe they're ASCII art barcodes.