Right now, I mostly use Firefox on my Mac for the extensions. If I wanted a "Mac feel" or higher performance, I would use Safari, which (understandably) is much more optimized and integrated than even Camino.
"I'd also like to point out that gravity, electrons and other particles or forces are no less valid than photons as observational tools. We really don't have to 'see' something to know it's there."
The problem is that our theories on gravity are derived from our observations of photons, so using gravity as a basis for further theoretical extrapolation is a higher-order assumption.
All our theories of the universe come from what we can see of it. Now, the question is: is it better to from what our theories entail assume that 90% of the universe can't be seen, or that our theories based on what we CAN see are somehow flawed?
Compare with this (flawed) argument: 1. Only a benevolent and omnipotent God could make the universe so perfect. 2. Therefore, there is a benevolent and omnipotent God. 3. But, there are imperfections in the universe (e.g. evil, injustice). 4. Therefore, there must be a whole OTHER universe (e.g. heaven and hell) that we can't see, which rewards good and punishes evil.
All game companies serve up straight sequels fairly often - not a bad idea, because sometimes a little more of the same gameplay with some new baddies is all you want.
But beyond the straight-up sequels (Halo 2, Mario Party 2, etc), Nintendo differs a lot from Sony/Microsoft.
Sony and Microsoft seem to offer up lots of "new" franchises that are just refinements of existing game types.
Nintendo sticks with the same franchise characters it's been using for decades, but puts them into new game types - e.g. Mario Tennis, Diddy Kong Racing, etc.
Bear in mind that the cost to manufacture physical game cartridges is a lot greater than the cost for CDs (which is like 2 cents a CD). So if they're charging $30 for a physical cartridge, they might be able to sell the emulated version for $15-20 without a reduction in profit margin.
Not as cheap as you might be hoping, but still not bad.
I don't think the word "game" is a huge hindrance. The respectability of theater hasn't been hindered noticably by the term "play," as far as I can tell. And any kind of self-conscious relabeling of games would just be silly and obvious.
Anyway, don't we already have our euphemisms lined up? E3 could just be GE, but they decided "electronic entertainment" sounded more professional than "games". I've also heard "interactive entertainment," "multimedia experience," and so on.
They're all dumb. And frankly, any change to the terminology risks misinterpreting one of the biggest draws of video games: they ARE games, just like Solitaire or checkers or freeze tag. They are challenge and interact with the consumer in a very direct way. That's why they're fun.
Re:Take a look at any of the anti-advertising laws
on
Circumventing CAN-SPAM
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· Score: 1
"If a tactic is annoying, intrusive and disliked enough to make it illegal, I have no idea why the politicians involved in this are unable to see that it is not a good idea to be the exception."
The problem is that pesky First Amendment. Do you REALLY want the government to have the power to quash or restrict political expression by dubbing it "spam"? As annoying as those autodialer calls are, I'd rather just hang up on a machine every once in a while than lay a precedent that could lead to more serious government suppression of political speech.
I think the spokesperson is actually pretty clear here about Nintendo's general strategy. While Sony and Microsoft are busy duking it out over whose version of FacePuncher 7 has more polygons, Nintendo will keep trying to draw in new gamers - as they have been for decades, with titles from Mario to Pokemon to Animal Crossing.
They're being tight-lipped, yes, but their reasoning sounds pretty honest: every time they reveal a major innovation, it's on the competiton's systems in under a year. (Dual Shock anyone?)
There are no big surprises or new revelations in this interview, but then again, it's not like Nintendo held a big press conference. They just let their rep talk to a reporter. If their marketing person uses some marketing lingo... well, isn't that to be expected?
Blizzard's policy is in no way worse than the US military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The harshest evaluation you could possibly make with any claim to fairness would be to say that the two are equivalent. And "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is apparently legal.
Blizzard is restricting people from TALKING about sexual orientation, be it their own or that of others, in certain circumstances. They're not denying gay people any sort of "service," because they don't know or care what the sexual orientation of their players even IS.
Actually, real OSS methodology might be a great way to make custom game content. After all, it's not like every piece of code any shmoe out there writes gets into the Linux kernel. It's all reviewed, examined, polished, and honed down to the very best available code before it goes in - ideally, that is.
But one big problem is that graphics guys and writers seem less willing to "give away" their time and effort than do programmers, largely because they're not working on any larger code infrastructure or system. By which I mean, IBM coders can benefit by writing open-source code, because they probably want to use that open-source project to help with other for-profit projects. I can't really think of an analogue to that for writers, designers, or artists.
Being able to distinguish between games and reality means that we are also capable of gleaning helpful information from informative or educational games. You know, because we can recognize that those aspects of the game relate to "reality."
Racial slurs are actually pretty damn common in WoW. I treat them the same way I treat anti-gay slurs: report them to a GM. Or, you know, don't go into Barrens chat because it's a desolace wasteland of the soul.
Most of the player-base isn't composed of qualified writers/artists/etc. Which would be why for every decent NWN module, Quake map, etc., there are a dozen terrible ones you have to sift through.
The whole reason that content is getting more expensive to create is that our standards are getting higher. We want more detailed models and environments, AND we want better design. Gone are the days when id could stick a model that looked like a turd with red eyes into Doom and have it become a legendary game baddy. We want real writing, art, and cinematics now, not what a couple programmers could hack together.
I imagine that in the future, we're going to continue to give our money to those companies, like Blizzard and Bioware, that are smart enough to put an emphasis on quality content.
Gold farming for low-level characters isn't really an issue in WoW. Quest rewards are typically pretty good for their level, and at the very least they're usually good enough to see you through to a higher level.
Honestly, most people buying gold are level 60 themselves, and they could actually earn money QUICKER than most farmers if they put their minds to it (because they know how to play the game better than a guy who's just doing this as a crap job, and because they can find groups to get into high-end instances).
The only reason there's a market for gold is that the farmers are mostly from China or third-world countries and value their time much less than American WoW players; they're happy to get $1 for an hour's worth of gold grinding. There's free-trade economics for ya!
I see your bullcrap and raise you a double-bullcrap.
What they are saying is that they don't want controversial out-of-game crap interfering with the game. If I had a guild called "Tauren for Bush" or "Nike Is Awesome" or "Hey, Remember That Show Alf?" or "I Like Chinese" it'd get renamed, because it's Blizzard's policy that real-world stuff not intrude into in-game names. If I started talking politics in general chat, and someone bothered to report me to a GM, I'd get a suspension. Why should officially gay-friendly guilds be any different?
I'm typically very pro-gay rights, but it bugs me when people try to make it sound like it's illegal discrimination every time somebody doesn't want to talk about GLBT issues.
And by the way... anyone who wants to recruit for a gay-friendly guild can do so, on Blizzard's own forums, with Blizzard's blessing! You just have to stick it in the Guild Recruiting forum rather than elsewhere, like the General forum. The only thing Blizzard seems to be against are guilds and players whose names break the TOS by mentioning the issue (like TrannyTrish or whoever stirred up the whole issue by threatening to sue), and posts in the general forum that clog up discussions about more issues more relevant to the game, like nerfing shaman.
I see no evidence of Blizzard being afraid of losing conservative customers; I think that rather, they think the whole issue doesn't have anything to do with WoW, and therefore doesn't need to become a huge debate on the forums and in-game.
MMO players don't want the game to be easy... they want their characters to be better than others. This is more of an issue with that particular genre than in most other types of games, because MMOs are highly competetive and tie you into one particular character. Compare that to, say, a fighting or racing game, where if I think a character or car is unbalanced (ZOMG nerf Ivy!!!!1) I can just drop it and play another without much waste of invested time. Or any single-player game, where "exploits" and stuff don't really matter. If I want SiN to be easier, I'll turn down the difficulty setting.
The funny thing, IMO, is that the original "SiN" was pretty much universally panned as another faceless Quake2 clone (although I kind of enjoyed it). Now the sequels are part of some kind of industry-changing avant-garde thing... go figure.
Okay, this is secondhand info from my dad (who is a research scientist working in a private firm, so has a good idea what's goin on in the area).
Let's say a company is researching, say, a cure for smallpox. They're going at it in a bunch of different ways, and they want to try a specific treatment that requires "Chemical X."
Now, the most EFFICIENT way to produce Chemical X is patented by another company. That means that in order for this company to do its research, it has to use some roundabout method of producing Chemical X to avoid a lawsuit. All this for an approach that might be a dead end - the Chemical X treatment may not work at all.
This means that currently, the lawyers are involved in every step of the process. Whenever my dad or people in his lab want to try something, they have to have it reviewed by the company lawyers to make sure they're not setting themselves up for a lawsuit. Undoubtedly an expensive and time-consuming factor in research.
If this law passes, it seems that they could whip up some Chemical X using the efficient, patented process, and then if it DOES work, they can let the lawyers deal with manufacturing and licensing down the line. Essentially, the lawyers are removed from the research process. Sounds like a big improvement, if not the patent-free world some people would prefer.
IANAL and I'm fuzzy on the details, so someone please correct me if I'm full of it here.
First off, it's not like Google being blocked would destroy China's access to search engines. They've still got MSN, Yahoo, etc.
Second, by "playing along" with China on this, they're deceiving the public in China by making them think they have more freedom than they actually do. This is harmful to the democratic movement in China, because if everyone THINKS they have full access to the Internet even when they don't. If everyone in China knew there was a major search engine that their government just wouldn't allow them to use because it wasn't censored, they might be upset and foment for more change.
So "Google sans censorship" is clearly a net positive benefit to the Chinese people. "Censored Google" is a net negative benefit, because it doesn't provide them with much info that they couldn't get through censored Yahoo or censored MSN, but it DOES add an undeserved patina of respectability to the Chinese government. I don't know if that argument is "coherent," but I find it persuasive.
And just as a nitpicky philosophical point... not EVERYONE believes that net benefit is the core of morality. There are those out there who believe that an evil act can be evil despite good consequences; for example, that it would be immoral to kill an infant, even if that child would grow up to be the next Hitler. Those people might argue that engaging in censorship is Evil no matter what the net effect on the citizens of China might be.
Exactly! After all, we must respect all cultures equally! Those Chinese are different than you and I; while we may value our civil liberties and freedom of the press, they obey the precepts of Confucianism and see the government as a nurturing parent, protecting them from the evils of the world! [/sarcasm]
Moral relativism applied in this way is just plain silly. China also likes to execute political dissidents; would we be cheering on Google if they started offing Chinese employees who failed to embrace Communism? Censorship is Bad, no matter what country you're in, and Google is "doing evil" by enforcing it.
Personally, if I were Joe Google, I'd rather be banned by the Chinese government than become a tool for their oppression. Of course, I'd give the same response to the American government when they came sniffing for subpoenas, so I'd probably be out of business real quick. (And yes, I realize that Chinese government oppression is on a whole different level from the US government.)
It seems to me that if they could fit an iPod-sized hard drive into a portable game system, they could actually make some good innovations in gameplay as well. And if was interoperable with Xbox Live, so you could download games straight to the HD through an Xbox 360 or PC connector, it would be even cooler. Imagine a huge library of small, indy games available on the cheap for download to a portable system... not too shabby! And if you could download even your purchased games to the HD, it would save you from lugging around a bunch of little game carts with the system!
I'd have to disagree here. There are probably a HUGE amount of people out there who would switch from PC to Mac only if there was a simple way to maintain backward-compatibility with all their Windows games and programs. Right now, when you buy a Mac as your sole computer, you're basically giving up PC gaming completely (except for World of Warcraft, that is). Not to mention all the proprietary VB stuff that many companies use.
A VM sounds nice, but I can't see how it would be any easier to make a VM for OSX than it is for x86-Linux, and the existing x86-Linux emulators (or translation layers or whatever) are far from perfect. I don't want WINE for Mac, I want Windows!
It may have little to do with Apple's "plans" for the system, but dual-booting to Windows would be a HUGE selling point among the gamer and geek crowds. If this is a white whale, it's got some darn valuable blubber.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now, I mostly use Firefox on my Mac for the extensions. If I wanted a "Mac feel" or higher performance, I would use Safari, which (understandably) is much more optimized and integrated than even Camino.
What would I gain by using Camino over Safari?
"I'd also like to point out that gravity, electrons and other particles or forces are no less valid than photons as observational tools. We really don't have to 'see' something to know it's there."
The problem is that our theories on gravity are derived from our observations of photons, so using gravity as a basis for further theoretical extrapolation is a higher-order assumption.
All our theories of the universe come from what we can see of it. Now, the question is: is it better to from what our theories entail assume that 90% of the universe can't be seen, or that our theories based on what we CAN see are somehow flawed?
Compare with this (flawed) argument:
1. Only a benevolent and omnipotent God could make the universe so perfect.
2. Therefore, there is a benevolent and omnipotent God.
3. But, there are imperfections in the universe (e.g. evil, injustice).
4. Therefore, there must be a whole OTHER universe (e.g. heaven and hell) that we can't see, which rewards good and punishes evil.
All game companies serve up straight sequels fairly often - not a bad idea, because sometimes a little more of the same gameplay with some new baddies is all you want.
But beyond the straight-up sequels (Halo 2, Mario Party 2, etc), Nintendo differs a lot from Sony/Microsoft.
Sony and Microsoft seem to offer up lots of "new" franchises that are just refinements of existing game types.
Nintendo sticks with the same franchise characters it's been using for decades, but puts them into new game types - e.g. Mario Tennis, Diddy Kong Racing, etc.
Bear in mind that the cost to manufacture physical game cartridges is a lot greater than the cost for CDs (which is like 2 cents a CD). So if they're charging $30 for a physical cartridge, they might be able to sell the emulated version for $15-20 without a reduction in profit margin.
Not as cheap as you might be hoping, but still not bad.
I don't think the word "game" is a huge hindrance. The respectability of theater hasn't been hindered noticably by the term "play," as far as I can tell. And any kind of self-conscious relabeling of games would just be silly and obvious.
Anyway, don't we already have our euphemisms lined up? E3 could just be GE, but they decided "electronic entertainment" sounded more professional than "games". I've also heard "interactive entertainment," "multimedia experience," and so on.
They're all dumb. And frankly, any change to the terminology risks misinterpreting one of the biggest draws of video games: they ARE games, just like Solitaire or checkers or freeze tag. They are challenge and interact with the consumer in a very direct way. That's why they're fun.
"If a tactic is annoying, intrusive and disliked enough to make it illegal, I have no idea why the politicians involved in this are unable to see that it is not a good idea to be the exception."
The problem is that pesky First Amendment. Do you REALLY want the government to have the power to quash or restrict political expression by dubbing it "spam"? As annoying as those autodialer calls are, I'd rather just hang up on a machine every once in a while than lay a precedent that could lead to more serious government suppression of political speech.
I think the spokesperson is actually pretty clear here about Nintendo's general strategy. While Sony and Microsoft are busy duking it out over whose version of FacePuncher 7 has more polygons, Nintendo will keep trying to draw in new gamers - as they have been for decades, with titles from Mario to Pokemon to Animal Crossing.
They're being tight-lipped, yes, but their reasoning sounds pretty honest: every time they reveal a major innovation, it's on the competiton's systems in under a year. (Dual Shock anyone?)
There are no big surprises or new revelations in this interview, but then again, it's not like Nintendo held a big press conference. They just let their rep talk to a reporter. If their marketing person uses some marketing lingo... well, isn't that to be expected?
Blizzard's policy is in no way worse than the US military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The harshest evaluation you could possibly make with any claim to fairness would be to say that the two are equivalent. And "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is apparently legal.
Blizzard is restricting people from TALKING about sexual orientation, be it their own or that of others, in certain circumstances. They're not denying gay people any sort of "service," because they don't know or care what the sexual orientation of their players even IS.
Actually, real OSS methodology might be a great way to make custom game content. After all, it's not like every piece of code any shmoe out there writes gets into the Linux kernel. It's all reviewed, examined, polished, and honed down to the very best available code before it goes in - ideally, that is. But one big problem is that graphics guys and writers seem less willing to "give away" their time and effort than do programmers, largely because they're not working on any larger code infrastructure or system. By which I mean, IBM coders can benefit by writing open-source code, because they probably want to use that open-source project to help with other for-profit projects. I can't really think of an analogue to that for writers, designers, or artists.
"here's another Holocost for this particular religion..." ...because editorial cartoons are JUST LIKE concentration camps.
Being able to distinguish between games and reality means that we are also capable of gleaning helpful information from informative or educational games. You know, because we can recognize that those aspects of the game relate to "reality."
Racial slurs are actually pretty damn common in WoW. I treat them the same way I treat anti-gay slurs: report them to a GM. Or, you know, don't go into Barrens chat because it's a desolace wasteland of the soul.
Most of the player-base isn't composed of qualified writers/artists/etc. Which would be why for every decent NWN module, Quake map, etc., there are a dozen terrible ones you have to sift through.
The whole reason that content is getting more expensive to create is that our standards are getting higher. We want more detailed models and environments, AND we want better design. Gone are the days when id could stick a model that looked like a turd with red eyes into Doom and have it become a legendary game baddy. We want real writing, art, and cinematics now, not what a couple programmers could hack together.
I imagine that in the future, we're going to continue to give our money to those companies, like Blizzard and Bioware, that are smart enough to put an emphasis on quality content.
Gold farming for low-level characters isn't really an issue in WoW. Quest rewards are typically pretty good for their level, and at the very least they're usually good enough to see you through to a higher level.
Honestly, most people buying gold are level 60 themselves, and they could actually earn money QUICKER than most farmers if they put their minds to it (because they know how to play the game better than a guy who's just doing this as a crap job, and because they can find groups to get into high-end instances).
The only reason there's a market for gold is that the farmers are mostly from China or third-world countries and value their time much less than American WoW players; they're happy to get $1 for an hour's worth of gold grinding. There's free-trade economics for ya!
I see your bullcrap and raise you a double-bullcrap.
What they are saying is that they don't want controversial out-of-game crap interfering with the game. If I had a guild called "Tauren for Bush" or "Nike Is Awesome" or "Hey, Remember That Show Alf?" or "I Like Chinese" it'd get renamed, because it's Blizzard's policy that real-world stuff not intrude into in-game names. If I started talking politics in general chat, and someone bothered to report me to a GM, I'd get a suspension. Why should officially gay-friendly guilds be any different?
I'm typically very pro-gay rights, but it bugs me when people try to make it sound like it's illegal discrimination every time somebody doesn't want to talk about GLBT issues.
And by the way... anyone who wants to recruit for a gay-friendly guild can do so, on Blizzard's own forums, with Blizzard's blessing! You just have to stick it in the Guild Recruiting forum rather than elsewhere, like the General forum. The only thing Blizzard seems to be against are guilds and players whose names break the TOS by mentioning the issue (like TrannyTrish or whoever stirred up the whole issue by threatening to sue), and posts in the general forum that clog up discussions about more issues more relevant to the game, like nerfing shaman.
I see no evidence of Blizzard being afraid of losing conservative customers; I think that rather, they think the whole issue doesn't have anything to do with WoW, and therefore doesn't need to become a huge debate on the forums and in-game.
So GoogleOS looks like Windows XP, but with annoying transparency and Google's name plastered everywhere? No thanks...
Isn't this the game that had US RPG fans fuming back when it came out, because it was translated and shipped over in place of one of the FF games?
MMO players don't want the game to be easy... they want their characters to be better than others. This is more of an issue with that particular genre than in most other types of games, because MMOs are highly competetive and tie you into one particular character. Compare that to, say, a fighting or racing game, where if I think a character or car is unbalanced (ZOMG nerf Ivy!!!!1) I can just drop it and play another without much waste of invested time. Or any single-player game, where "exploits" and stuff don't really matter. If I want SiN to be easier, I'll turn down the difficulty setting.
The funny thing, IMO, is that the original "SiN" was pretty much universally panned as another faceless Quake2 clone (although I kind of enjoyed it). Now the sequels are part of some kind of industry-changing avant-garde thing... go figure.
Okay, this is secondhand info from my dad (who is a research scientist working in a private firm, so has a good idea what's goin on in the area).
Let's say a company is researching, say, a cure for smallpox. They're going at it in a bunch of different ways, and they want to try a specific treatment that requires "Chemical X."
Now, the most EFFICIENT way to produce Chemical X is patented by another company. That means that in order for this company to do its research, it has to use some roundabout method of producing Chemical X to avoid a lawsuit. All this for an approach that might be a dead end - the Chemical X treatment may not work at all.
This means that currently, the lawyers are involved in every step of the process. Whenever my dad or people in his lab want to try something, they have to have it reviewed by the company lawyers to make sure they're not setting themselves up for a lawsuit. Undoubtedly an expensive and time-consuming factor in research.
If this law passes, it seems that they could whip up some Chemical X using the efficient, patented process, and then if it DOES work, they can let the lawyers deal with manufacturing and licensing down the line. Essentially, the lawyers are removed from the research process. Sounds like a big improvement, if not the patent-free world some people would prefer.
IANAL and I'm fuzzy on the details, so someone please correct me if I'm full of it here.
First off, it's not like Google being blocked would destroy China's access to search engines. They've still got MSN, Yahoo, etc.
Second, by "playing along" with China on this, they're deceiving the public in China by making them think they have more freedom than they actually do. This is harmful to the democratic movement in China, because if everyone THINKS they have full access to the Internet even when they don't. If everyone in China knew there was a major search engine that their government just wouldn't allow them to use because it wasn't censored, they might be upset and foment for more change.
So "Google sans censorship" is clearly a net positive benefit to the Chinese people. "Censored Google" is a net negative benefit, because it doesn't provide them with much info that they couldn't get through censored Yahoo or censored MSN, but it DOES add an undeserved patina of respectability to the Chinese government. I don't know if that argument is "coherent," but I find it persuasive.
And just as a nitpicky philosophical point... not EVERYONE believes that net benefit is the core of morality. There are those out there who believe that an evil act can be evil despite good consequences; for example, that it would be immoral to kill an infant, even if that child would grow up to be the next Hitler. Those people might argue that engaging in censorship is Evil no matter what the net effect on the citizens of China might be.
Exactly! After all, we must respect all cultures equally! Those Chinese are different than you and I; while we may value our civil liberties and freedom of the press, they obey the precepts of Confucianism and see the government as a nurturing parent, protecting them from the evils of the world!
[/sarcasm]
Moral relativism applied in this way is just plain silly. China also likes to execute political dissidents; would we be cheering on Google if they started offing Chinese employees who failed to embrace Communism? Censorship is Bad, no matter what country you're in, and Google is "doing evil" by enforcing it.
Personally, if I were Joe Google, I'd rather be banned by the Chinese government than become a tool for their oppression. Of course, I'd give the same response to the American government when they came sniffing for subpoenas, so I'd probably be out of business real quick. (And yes, I realize that Chinese government oppression is on a whole different level from the US government.)
It seems to me that if they could fit an iPod-sized hard drive into a portable game system, they could actually make some good innovations in gameplay as well. And if was interoperable with Xbox Live, so you could download games straight to the HD through an Xbox 360 or PC connector, it would be even cooler. Imagine a huge library of small, indy games available on the cheap for download to a portable system... not too shabby! And if you could download even your purchased games to the HD, it would save you from lugging around a bunch of little game carts with the system!
I'd have to disagree here. There are probably a HUGE amount of people out there who would switch from PC to Mac only if there was a simple way to maintain backward-compatibility with all their Windows games and programs. Right now, when you buy a Mac as your sole computer, you're basically giving up PC gaming completely (except for World of Warcraft, that is). Not to mention all the proprietary VB stuff that many companies use.
A VM sounds nice, but I can't see how it would be any easier to make a VM for OSX than it is for x86-Linux, and the existing x86-Linux emulators (or translation layers or whatever) are far from perfect. I don't want WINE for Mac, I want Windows!
It may have little to do with Apple's "plans" for the system, but dual-booting to Windows would be a HUGE selling point among the gamer and geek crowds. If this is a white whale, it's got some darn valuable blubber.
Or you could buy Office for Mac...
Man, that program is terrible.
That is all.