If saying something that is inflamatory and has absolutely no relevance to the article isnt a troll what the hell is.
People getting marked down for good pro-MS posts in a thread about MS are one thing. People getting marked down for making bad Intelligent design posts, in a thread with nothing to do with intelligent design is another.
'By accepting this public surveillance system, you are implicitly trusting people that don't deserve it.'
Not really. See for that to happen they would have to actually have the ability to abuse the information that they have in the CCTV. They cant though, not unless im breaking a law which is what its designed to do. Theres a difference to large scale monitoring of people in there homes and camera systems that sit on the street. They have no personal information of mine that they couldnt have using any legal form of survailance. Its just automated and wide spread.
'who, after all, provided the rationale and rationalizations for England's camera network'
Actually rising rates of violent crime did it, and with good reason. Everywhere CCTV has been implemented has seen lower rates of crime.
'As a matter of fact, both nations have lost something important.'
I do actually agree with that but CCTV isnt that big a part of it. The CCTV network has obeyed all of the privacy and freedom laws we have its literally just an enhancement to the way things are working. So instead of needing police walking every street the cameras can catch things and with far better accuracy a lot of the time.*
The things that are being lost to terrorism are different. They arent enhancing what is there they are changing it. As I mentioned before its the difference between using CCTV to monitor public areas and having them peering in to every window of your home. Using Terrorism the government wants to justify the latter.
Point I was making though is that England and America arent really any more or less free than each other. Freedoms are being eroded just as badly on either side of the ocean.
*Note that rather than terrorism this is the true political motivation, training and employing more police officers is costly cameras are not. You could argue its a bad thing but the cameras have been fairly succesful and while ill still argue for more police on the street im not going to argue against a network of cameras that makes there jobs easier.
Last I checked cameras dont activly stop me doing anything or remove any of my rights.
They stop people hitting other people in the head whilst drunk on a Saturday night, but, im fairly sure that the right to not get hit in the head is more important. Well unless the guy your hitting is a real jerk... .
Well ignoring the irony of saying that you shouldnt take other peoples word for it, yet you appear to only have other peoples word for it that the shortages are on purpose...
IT isnt clear at all that they're using scarcity as a factor, you dont leave a good chunk of your pre-orderers without there product. Those are you most valuable customers and they have very little impact on the walk in rush that gets the media headlines. Makes no sense for them not to fulfill those orders. There's also the fact that the 360 was a rush to get out, games printing before final checks, tweaks to the system being made right up to the beginning of production. Not to mention MS want to keep production costs down and getting production up to a level that would succefully fulfill demand would cost them vast sums of money.
There isnt any real evidence to support the idea that MS purposefully restricted supply and a host of good reasons why supply would be short. Nothing clear about it at all.
The article didnt give too much information, and I dont know if there was a lot more in there that could lead to a valid legal case.
However, the sueing for the statement singled out 'This is a very unethical company' is absolutely absurd. The whole field of ethics is entirely subjective. You can argue that helping people is unethical because when they get back on there feet it will make them reliant, or ethical because once you get them back on there feet they will be all the stronger. Morals and ethics are philosophy not science.
I.e. by its very definition its an opinion not a statement of fact. Last I checked you cant sue someone for having a belief.
'paying someone everytime I want to change something'
Thats a bit of an exageration. I believe you just pay and you can get some new stuff but you dont have to pay to keep switching around things. Kind of like the important part of the look of the 360 is to be able to move it to anywhere in your lounge, thats obviously free, but if you really like you can also change its face plate for a price.
Its just an extra that wouldnt exist at all if it werent for the credit card and point stuff.
That said I am also waiting for the revolution to come out. 360 doesnt seem to bad though and it was a good review.
Might get to a billion dollars. Not sure if its the first.
Lineage has over 2,000,000 subscribers and peaked at 4,000,000 for the sake of argument Ill use 2,000,000. Ill take its subscription cost as $10. So thats 2,000,000 * 10 * 12 = 240,000,000 for one year. Considering its subscription cost is more than $10 and there are more than 2,000,000 players thats an underestimate.
The game was released in 1998 so even if you give it a couple of years warm up it will easily have hit the billion mark by now.
Course it costs a lot to maintain but still. Thats a hell of a lot of cash.
'Did you know that before WoW there were people who claimed that a subscription based game would never have more then say a half million subscribers and that new games would only attract players from older mmo's?'
Just a small point. WoW only recently became the biggest MMO. Lineage1 before it had a playerbase that peaked at over 4,000,000 users. It still manages to maintain a user base in to the millions today.
'Hmmm...it's ok if a system you purchase fails to deliver the experience promised?'
Strawman argument, of course it isnt okay but it was one point. One problem that will last a tiny fraction of the systems lifetime. The entire review brought it up over and over, that isnt a true representation of the system thats taking a problem and blowing it out of all proportion.
'Why on earth would we score Dell higher than a 4/10 when you can get worlds apart in experience from another vendor?'
because it isnt worlds apart. Your own review with its benchmarks indicates the system is an easy match up for the equivalents if you get rid of that software. As I said before its a few days worth of problem. Making out the whole system is terrible based on that one issue alone is entirely unrealistic and as I said completely blown out of proportion.
I never said to ignore that issue, to gloss it over like it didnt exist. Of course they should lose points for it but you more than halved its score compared to its competitors. Something isnt right there.
I think you need to look at the gateway review again. Trying to argue this wasnt biassed when you gave the gateway a near perfect score despite having similar problems seems seriously flawed. I know from personal experience that the security software involved can cause crashes and instability but after admitting it was a problem (along with same driver problems, the same popup window problems, the same startup problems, the same bloat problems, the same restore disk problems, plus additional toolbar problems and massively out of date Windows problems...) the gateway review moved on.
As someone has mentioned before about this. The two reviews describe near identical systems, only, the company who sent you thousands of dollars worth of free stuff got a review of 8.9 while the company that didnt got a review of 4. Couple this with the fact Dell are a regular target right up there with Microsoft and Intel. Maybe something was missing in how the reviews were presented. Maybe the problems were so terrible with the Dell, and actually not that bad with the gateway that something got lost in the translation when it was typed up, but you must be able to see how this all looks incredibly suspect.
Oh one last point. You say in your forums that you were reviewing your gaming result based on its running games rather than with pre-install issues. 'However, in this case we scored it after Dell was able to get our games running'
So why is the gateway, a system costing more money yet producing framerates below the Dell's nearly every time, rated at 9 while the Dell comes in begrudgingly at 7?
First page of review: Introduction first mention of software Second page of review: Some complaint about having to click more than once to find the best computer, comment on a box being a bit big. Third page of review: Gosh the software sucks and needs to be uninstalled. Fourth page of review: That software caused quite some performance issues had to be uninstalled! Fifth page of review: The gaming was fine. Oh eccept for those blasted software issues so it had to be uninstalled. Sixth page of review: Performance was about right as long as all that silly software gets uninstalled it caused all sorts of issues. Seventh page of review: You know that software we got with the system? caused problems had to be uninstalled. Conclusion: All categories that lost points, lost them because of God damned pre-installed software.
Alternate point of view: Software... Problems... Uninstalled...
You appeared to uninstall and reinstall the pre-installed software every single page of your review. Thats not a normal consumer's standpoint thats an idiots standpoint.
Dont get me wrong this is a serious point, I was glad the article made it. Not so glad that it made it every other paragraph on every page and in each of the conclusions. There was about 10 lines in the whole thing about the actual system, and you know what. It really doesnt seem to be that bad at all. People are going to deal with the software issues in a day or two (or two hours if you know what your doing.) id hope for the cost of the system that its going to last a little longer than that. So instead of taking up the vast majority of every single page, and crippling every score it had, perhaps you could have put the software problem to one side for just two seconds and tell me what the machine can actually do.
This wasnt a review of the XPS400 it was a review of Dells poor software package. To be fair less 'review of' more 'vendetta against'.
'AFAIK there are no playable (i.e. non-buggy, fast, fully featured) gamecube/ps2 emulators (xbox is a x86 so not hard to emulate)'
Your post generally has good points accept the gamecube is currently far more emulatable than the X-Box.
Its been a common fallacy since the X-Box was released that it was going to be easy to emulate probably due to all the crap about it being nothing more than a cut down PC.
With decent hardware there is playable emulation for several gamecube games (The Dolwin emulator I believe is the best.) the X-Box emulators currently cant really play anything due to being horrifically slow/broken. (Cxbx pretty much ground to a halt with its major victory being loading the menu screen for Panzer Dragoon then crashing. I believe there was another one but it could only run one game and it ran it too badly to actually play.)
Not really the wrong genre. Hes just not specified what area of the genre hes refering to.
Shooter is a really general title I mean think about Quake that is as shooter as you can get. Its only not a shoot'em up because of its perspective.
Essentially shoot 'em up and FPS are sub genres of the shooter genre.
You should be grateful 2D shooters have there own sub genre. Platformers seem to have been totally over run by 3D platforming. Mention platformer to people these days and there all with the Lara Croft and Prince of Persia. Hasnt been a decent 2D platformer outside Mario and Sonic (on the hand helds they're still 2D) since Pandemonium.
Nitro was definately a name used in development. However, there were only rumours suggesting it was a name for the console itself, it was just a codename for the project that led to the DS. (They had to call it something before coming up with the design that has two screens.) The DS name took off and quite frankly sounds less like a title to an episode of power rangers.
I think the confusion comes from the fact that DS was in use before an official name had been chosen so really both Nitro and DS were codenames DS was a codename that stuck. So its still a valid point though im not so sure how likely it is that Nintendo will do the same with the Revolution name.
Funny though it is, this was reported by the Sun. The sun doesnt have any real news at all in it that I am aware of.
Some people seemed to be taking it seriously or trying to debunk it. You dont need to do research on it to find that out. If it was printed in that rag you can safetly assume its trash.
Well it is more along the lines of 30 million. Just a mix up between millions and billions isnt too bad. Its certainly a mix up id love them to make with my bank account.
You give your post the name Censorship. This is nothing of the sort. Censorship would be if MS sued or threatened the guy if he posted the vulnerability on a web site. If he just put the information online to read somewhere that would be fine. Kind of like telling everyone how you can break in to a house so you can better secure your house from burglers.
He didnt, he's profiteering from a weakness in someones defences not fighting for freedom of speech. Sticking with the analogy this is no different to somebody trying to sell someone elses lost house keys to criminals before they can get the locks changed.
It wouldnt bother me so much but people use anti-censorship as some all powerful law that can be used to dismiss even the most immoral of acts. (Just look at the media.)
I dont agree with sharing bugs within software with anyone but the people who made it, but if someone wants to make the information freely available because they believe it will make MS improve there standards or some such then fair enough. This case, however, clearly has nothing to do with information and everything to do with abuse of what very little power this ebayer managed to dredge up for himself.
'You have to take the modem out and remove the top half of the DC's case, the board you want is the one to the left of the rom drive. unplug the little cable to the top left and unscrew the board now carefully unclip and lift the power supply board off the six pins near the bottom left of the DC which are the problem clean them with something like a bit of WD40 or just a gental wipe with a cotton bud or something be carefull not to mess up the serfice or leave any fluff or anything on them,if you are brave you could allso bend them slightly towards the front to ensure better contact but cleaning them should do the job.Then tair up you now invalid warrenty.'
I cant be 100% itll work my DC is still in full working order and hasnt needed it yet, but nothing said there will do harm as long as your careful so its worth a shot.
These days you can get SD based carts for the DS for about 50 quid including the adapter to play DS ROMs. Which means its still about 50 quid cheaper in total than the PSP. Also all your media for it will be cheap multifunctional SD.
I dont know how recently you tried the SNES emulator but it can play a fair few games at full speed, and each update a great deal more are added. A fair distance from being completed and I dont think on par with the PSP but SNES9x (the PSP one ive tried. There may be others.) is hardly perfect either. (Speed issues abounded but I havent tried it for a bit.)
Course most of this doesnt mean much to me anyhow I have my DS because of DS and GBA games, Ill let my X-Box handle the console emulation. Id still say spending nearly 200 on a PSP for its SNES and NES playback is verging on the very silly though. If you want emulators and homebrew youd buy a GP2X.
I think the article misses the point. I dont think Ebert said games arnt art because the stories need to be improved for it to get there I think he was saying games arnt art because the act of playing a game isnt artistic.
As an example the majority of games tell you a chunk of story which can often be brilliant. You then go in to the game play for a while and then it gives you another chunk of story. The story is fine but its told through movies and text, two mediums that are already recognised as art. The game itself wasnt anything to do with it. Even a game with such an intrinsic plot as Plane Scape Torment has its story line told nearly entirely through conversations and movie sequences. The actual gameplay doesnt really have a bearing despite how fun it can be to upgrade your character and such.
The best thing I can liken it to are those books where you choose an option and go to the page number it tells you. Saying a game is art would be like saying that the process of flipping through the book to the correct page was a form of art.
So I can fully understand why Ebert doesnt see games as art. The only art that is within them is typically in the form of previous mediums. You could argue that the game world and its textures and such is a form of art but really it exists for its functionality not its artistic merit. The moment you make an area purely for its art and once again youve no longer got a game youve got a 3D sculpture or 2D art work.
I would say Rez comes closest of all games to breaking this rule. Its music its levels both exist as an art work and at the same time as the games method for progression, but its still debateable.
That said ive swayed between thinking games are and are not art about 20 times tonight so I think its definately an area for discussion. I am more dissapointed at the articles in response than the idea that started it. A lot of people have responded by insulting Ebert, the article the other day insulted the magazine reviews, this article is better but again I would say it was missing the bigger question by just attacking an aspect of gaming.
'That's what I want to happen when I bounce a check:' Should have known the money in your bank account. Your responsibility.
'Or when I return a rented movie late:' You new the date for it to be returned. Your responsibility
'Or when I miss a credit card payment:' You new you had to pay at that time. Your responsibility
'MS sold a piece of hardware believing it to be fully functioning:' Not so clear cut.
These situations arnt the same because in all of the mentioned examples _you_ are fully aware of what you were supposed to do and ignored it. MS is supposedly completely unaware. It would be like when you become a member at a video store they automatically rent a video out to you but your not aware of it. They couldnt get away with asking you for money when you dont return the video you new nothing about and neither should MS be sued for selling hardware that was broken in a way they new nothing about. They should and have been obeying the law and replacing the faulty units.
Now if MS can be proven to have been aware that this was going to happen in those units then they can be held liable but thats a different debate.
As others have mentioned if every company could be sued for a quick million for every product that was faulty in any way then youd have bankrupted just about every company in the world by now.
Re:Hey Tynes, get a clue
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Why We Fight
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· Score: 1
At first I couldnt agree with your post more and believed he was making a flawed point as well.
That said reading on more it becomes clear that he isnt mentioning that death camps and such are a good idea. Its just that it becomes an understandable idea. As the line about Papa Doc and Pol Pot describes it shows why people can allow monsters in to power and why they make there decisions because on the surface it looks great. Cull the useless and the brilliant survive to make a better world. In reality it doesnt work like that.
Thats the point of games and the point of the article. The reason why we like games for there violence is because of those times when your looking at a situation like Iraq and for just a second you think 'Screw it. Nuke them all. Nuke every last sodding one of them.' Only the sickest people actually want to do that but everyone has those moments and its that mentality that games allow us to act out. A release from logical indepth thinking to the simpler idea of kill kill kill.
I think the conclusion is that games are just a healthy way of releasing our frustrations at the world.
Slashdot Mirror
If saying something that is inflamatory and has absolutely no relevance to the article isnt a troll what the hell is.
People getting marked down for good pro-MS posts in a thread about MS are one thing. People getting marked down for making bad Intelligent design posts, in a thread with nothing to do with intelligent design is another.
'By accepting this public surveillance system, you are implicitly trusting people that don't deserve it.'
Not really. See for that to happen they would have to actually have the ability to abuse the information that they have in the CCTV. They cant though, not unless im breaking a law which is what its designed to do. Theres a difference to large scale monitoring of people in there homes and camera systems that sit on the street. They have no personal information of mine that they couldnt have using any legal form of survailance. Its just automated and wide spread.
'who, after all, provided the rationale and rationalizations for England's camera network'
Actually rising rates of violent crime did it, and with good reason. Everywhere CCTV has been implemented has seen lower rates of crime.
'As a matter of fact, both nations have lost something important.'
I do actually agree with that but CCTV isnt that big a part of it. The CCTV network has obeyed all of the privacy and freedom laws we have its literally just an enhancement to the way things are working. So instead of needing police walking every street the cameras can catch things and with far better accuracy a lot of the time.*
The things that are being lost to terrorism are different. They arent enhancing what is there they are changing it. As I mentioned before its the difference between using CCTV to monitor public areas and having them peering in to every window of your home. Using Terrorism the government wants to justify the latter.
Point I was making though is that England and America arent really any more or less free than each other. Freedoms are being eroded just as badly on either side of the ocean.
*Note that rather than terrorism this is the true political motivation, training and employing more police officers is costly cameras are not. You could argue its a bad thing but the cameras have been fairly succesful and while ill still argue for more police on the street im not going to argue against a network of cameras that makes there jobs easier.
Last I checked cameras dont activly stop me doing anything or remove any of my rights.
They stop people hitting other people in the head whilst drunk on a Saturday night, but, im fairly sure that the right to not get hit in the head is more important. Well unless the guy your hitting is a real jerk... .
Well ignoring the irony of saying that you shouldnt take other peoples word for it, yet you appear to only have other peoples word for it that the shortages are on purpose...
IT isnt clear at all that they're using scarcity as a factor, you dont leave a good chunk of your pre-orderers without there product. Those are you most valuable customers and they have very little impact on the walk in rush that gets the media headlines. Makes no sense for them not to fulfill those orders. There's also the fact that the 360 was a rush to get out, games printing before final checks, tweaks to the system being made right up to the beginning of production. Not to mention MS want to keep production costs down and getting production up to a level that would succefully fulfill demand would cost them vast sums of money.
There isnt any real evidence to support the idea that MS purposefully restricted supply and a host of good reasons why supply would be short. Nothing clear about it at all.
'Britain has lost more freedom then us'
How so?
The article didnt give too much information, and I dont know if there was a lot more in there that could lead to a valid legal case.
However, the sueing for the statement singled out 'This is a very unethical company' is absolutely absurd. The whole field of ethics is entirely subjective. You can argue that helping people is unethical because when they get back on there feet it will make them reliant, or ethical because once you get them back on there feet they will be all the stronger. Morals and ethics are philosophy not science.
I.e. by its very definition its an opinion not a statement of fact. Last I checked you cant sue someone for having a belief.
'paying someone everytime I want to change something'
Thats a bit of an exageration. I believe you just pay and you can get some new stuff but you dont have to pay to keep switching around things. Kind of like the important part of the look of the 360 is to be able to move it to anywhere in your lounge, thats obviously free, but if you really like you can also change its face plate for a price.
Its just an extra that wouldnt exist at all if it werent for the credit card and point stuff.
That said I am also waiting for the revolution to come out. 360 doesnt seem to bad though and it was a good review.
Its a $14.99 a month subscription based game.
Even in Korea its subscription based.
Might get to a billion dollars. Not sure if its the first.
Lineage has over 2,000,000 subscribers and peaked at 4,000,000 for the sake of argument Ill use 2,000,000. Ill take its subscription cost as $10. So thats 2,000,000 * 10 * 12 = 240,000,000 for one year. Considering its subscription cost is more than $10 and there are more than 2,000,000 players thats an underestimate.
The game was released in 1998 so even if you give it a couple of years warm up it will easily have hit the billion mark by now.
Course it costs a lot to maintain but still. Thats a hell of a lot of cash.
'Did you know that before WoW there were people who claimed that a subscription based game would never have more then say a half million subscribers and that new games would only attract players from older mmo's?'
Just a small point. WoW only recently became the biggest MMO. Lineage1 before it had a playerbase that peaked at over 4,000,000 users. It still manages to maintain a user base in to the millions today.
'Hmmm...it's ok if a system you purchase fails to deliver the experience promised?'
Strawman argument, of course it isnt okay but it was one point. One problem that will last a tiny fraction of the systems lifetime.
The entire review brought it up over and over, that isnt a true representation of the system thats taking a problem and blowing it out of all proportion.
'Why on earth would we score Dell higher than a 4/10 when you can get worlds apart in experience from another vendor?'
because it isnt worlds apart. Your own review with its benchmarks indicates the system is an easy match up for the equivalents if you get rid of that software. As I said before its a few days worth of problem. Making out the whole system is terrible based on that one issue alone is entirely unrealistic and as I said completely blown out of proportion.
I never said to ignore that issue, to gloss it over like it didnt exist. Of course they should lose points for it but you more than halved its score compared to its competitors. Something isnt right there.
I think you need to look at the gateway review again. Trying to argue this wasnt biassed when you gave the gateway a near perfect score despite having similar problems seems seriously flawed. I know from personal experience that the security software involved can cause crashes and instability but after admitting it was a problem (along with same driver problems, the same popup window problems, the same startup problems, the same bloat problems, the same restore disk problems, plus additional toolbar problems and massively out of date Windows problems...) the gateway review moved on.
As someone has mentioned before about this. The two reviews describe near identical systems, only, the company who sent you thousands of dollars worth of free stuff got a review of 8.9 while the company that didnt got a review of 4. Couple this with the fact Dell are a regular target right up there with Microsoft and Intel. Maybe something was missing in how the reviews were presented. Maybe the problems were so terrible with the Dell, and actually not that bad with the gateway that something got lost in the translation when it was typed up, but you must be able to see how this all looks incredibly suspect.
Oh one last point. You say in your forums that you were reviewing your gaming result based on its running games rather than with pre-install issues.
'However, in this case we scored it after Dell was able to get our games running'
So why is the gateway, a system costing more money yet producing framerates below the Dell's nearly every time, rated at 9 while the Dell comes in begrudgingly at 7?
First page of review: Introduction first mention of software
Second page of review: Some complaint about having to click more than once to find the best computer, comment on a box being a bit big.
Third page of review: Gosh the software sucks and needs to be uninstalled.
Fourth page of review: That software caused quite some performance issues had to be uninstalled!
Fifth page of review: The gaming was fine. Oh eccept for those blasted software issues so it had to be uninstalled.
Sixth page of review: Performance was about right as long as all that silly software gets uninstalled it caused all sorts of issues.
Seventh page of review: You know that software we got with the system? caused problems had to be uninstalled.
Conclusion: All categories that lost points, lost them because of God damned pre-installed software.
Alternate point of view: Software... Problems... Uninstalled...
You appeared to uninstall and reinstall the pre-installed software every single page of your review. Thats not a normal consumer's standpoint thats an idiots standpoint.
Dont get me wrong this is a serious point, I was glad the article made it. Not so glad that it made it every other paragraph on every page and in each of the conclusions. There was about 10 lines in the whole thing about the actual system, and you know what. It really doesnt seem to be that bad at all. People are going to deal with the software issues in a day or two (or two hours if you know what your doing.) id hope for the cost of the system that its going to last a little longer than that. So instead of taking up the vast majority of every single page, and crippling every score it had, perhaps you could have put the software problem to one side for just two seconds and tell me what the machine can actually do.
This wasnt a review of the XPS400 it was a review of Dells poor software package. To be fair less 'review of' more 'vendetta against'.
'AFAIK there are no playable (i.e. non-buggy, fast, fully featured) gamecube/ps2 emulators (xbox is a x86 so not hard to emulate)'
Your post generally has good points accept the gamecube is currently far more emulatable than the X-Box.
Its been a common fallacy since the X-Box was released that it was going to be easy to emulate probably due to all the crap about it being nothing more than a cut down PC.
With decent hardware there is playable emulation for several gamecube games (The Dolwin emulator I believe is the best.) the X-Box emulators currently cant really play anything due to being horrifically slow/broken. (Cxbx pretty much ground to a halt with its major victory being loading the menu screen for Panzer Dragoon then crashing. I believe there was another one but it could only run one game and it ran it too badly to actually play.)
Not really the wrong genre. Hes just not specified what area of the genre hes refering to.
Shooter is a really general title I mean think about Quake that is as shooter as you can get. Its only not a shoot'em up because of its perspective.
Essentially shoot 'em up and FPS are sub genres of the shooter genre.
You should be grateful 2D shooters have there own sub genre. Platformers seem to have been totally over run by 3D platforming. Mention platformer to people these days and there all with the Lara Croft and Prince of Persia. Hasnt been a decent 2D platformer outside Mario and Sonic (on the hand helds they're still 2D) since Pandemonium.
Nitro was definately a name used in development. However, there were only rumours suggesting it was a name for the console itself, it was just a codename for the project that led to the DS. (They had to call it something before coming up with the design that has two screens.) The DS name took off and quite frankly sounds less like a title to an episode of power rangers.
I think the confusion comes from the fact that DS was in use before an official name had been chosen so really both Nitro and DS were codenames DS was a codename that stuck. So its still a valid point though im not so sure how likely it is that Nintendo will do the same with the Revolution name.
Funny though it is, this was reported by the Sun. The sun doesnt have any real news at all in it that I am aware of.
Some people seemed to be taking it seriously or trying to debunk it. You dont need to do research on it to find that out. If it was printed in that rag you can safetly assume its trash.
Well it is more along the lines of 30 million. Just a mix up between millions and billions isnt too bad. Its certainly a mix up id love them to make with my bank account.
Got any evidence that piracy has ever really helped?
The PS1 is the only console to have claims like that made about it and to be honest theres better arguments for it succeeding than piracy.
There is nothing nothing to suggest piracy makes money for console makers and more importantly nothing to suggest MS is playing towards that idea.
You give your post the name Censorship. This is nothing of the sort. Censorship would be if MS sued or threatened the guy if he posted the vulnerability on a web site. If he just put the information online to read somewhere that would be fine. Kind of like telling everyone how you can break in to a house so you can better secure your house from burglers.
He didnt, he's profiteering from a weakness in someones defences not fighting for freedom of speech. Sticking with the analogy this is no different to somebody trying to sell someone elses lost house keys to criminals before they can get the locks changed.
It wouldnt bother me so much but people use anti-censorship as some all powerful law that can be used to dismiss even the most immoral of acts. (Just look at the media.)
I dont agree with sharing bugs within software with anyone but the people who made it, but if someone wants to make the information freely available because they believe it will make MS improve there standards or some such then fair enough. This case, however, clearly has nothing to do with information and everything to do with abuse of what very little power this ebayer managed to dredge up for himself.
Quoted from somebody who had the same problem.
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'You have to take the modem out and remove the top half of the DC's case, the board you want is the one to the left of the rom drive. unplug the little cable to the top left and unscrew the board now carefully unclip and lift the power supply board off the six pins near the bottom left of the DC which are the problem clean them with something like a bit of WD40 or just a gental wipe with a cotton bud or something be carefull not to mess up the serfice or leave any fluff or anything on them,if you are brave you could allso bend them slightly towards the front to ensure better contact but cleaning them should do the job.Then tair up you now invalid warrenty
I cant be 100% itll work my DC is still in full working order and hasnt needed it yet, but nothing said there will do harm as long as your careful so its worth a shot.
These days you can get SD based carts for the DS for about 50 quid including the adapter to play DS ROMs. Which means its still about 50 quid cheaper in total than the PSP. Also all your media for it will be cheap multifunctional SD.
I dont know how recently you tried the SNES emulator but it can play a fair few games at full speed, and each update a great deal more are added. A fair distance from being completed and I dont think on par with the PSP but SNES9x (the PSP one ive tried. There may be others.) is hardly perfect either. (Speed issues abounded but I havent tried it for a bit.)
Course most of this doesnt mean much to me anyhow I have my DS because of DS and GBA games, Ill let my X-Box handle the console emulation. Id still say spending nearly 200 on a PSP for its SNES and NES playback is verging on the very silly though. If you want emulators and homebrew youd buy a GP2X.
Errr you realise that there are SNES and NES emulators for the Nintendo handhelds as well right?
I think the article misses the point. I dont think Ebert said games arnt art because the stories need to be improved for it to get there I think he was saying games arnt art because the act of playing a game isnt artistic.
As an example the majority of games tell you a chunk of story which can often be brilliant. You then go in to the game play for a while and then it gives you another chunk of story. The story is fine but its told through movies and text, two mediums that are already recognised as art. The game itself wasnt anything to do with it. Even a game with such an intrinsic plot as Plane Scape Torment has its story line told nearly entirely through conversations and movie sequences. The actual gameplay doesnt really have a bearing despite how fun it can be to upgrade your character and such.
The best thing I can liken it to are those books where you choose an option and go to the page number it tells you. Saying a game is art would be like saying that the process of flipping through the book to the correct page was a form of art.
So I can fully understand why Ebert doesnt see games as art. The only art that is within them is typically in the form of previous mediums. You could argue that the game world and its textures and such is a form of art but really it exists for its functionality not its artistic merit. The moment you make an area purely for its art and once again youve no longer got a game youve got a 3D sculpture or 2D art work.
I would say Rez comes closest of all games to breaking this rule. Its music its levels both exist as an art work and at the same time as the games method for progression, but its still debateable.
That said ive swayed between thinking games are and are not art about 20 times tonight so I think its definately an area for discussion. I am more dissapointed at the articles in response than the idea that started it. A lot of people have responded by insulting Ebert, the article the other day insulted the magazine reviews, this article is better but again I would say it was missing the bigger question by just attacking an aspect of gaming.
'That's what I want to happen when I bounce a check:'
Should have known the money in your bank account. Your responsibility.
'Or when I return a rented movie late:'
You new the date for it to be returned. Your responsibility
'Or when I miss a credit card payment:'
You new you had to pay at that time. Your responsibility
'MS sold a piece of hardware believing it to be fully functioning:'
Not so clear cut.
These situations arnt the same because in all of the mentioned examples _you_ are fully aware of what you were supposed to do and ignored it. MS is supposedly completely unaware. It would be like when you become a member at a video store they automatically rent a video out to you but your not aware of it. They couldnt get away with asking you for money when you dont return the video you new nothing about and neither should MS be sued for selling hardware that was broken in a way they new nothing about. They should and have been obeying the law and replacing the faulty units.
Now if MS can be proven to have been aware that this was going to happen in those units then they can be held liable but thats a different debate.
As others have mentioned if every company could be sued for a quick million for every product that was faulty in any way then youd have bankrupted just about every company in the world by now.
At first I couldnt agree with your post more and believed he was making a flawed point as well.
That said reading on more it becomes clear that he isnt mentioning that death camps and such are a good idea. Its just that it becomes an understandable idea. As the line about Papa Doc and Pol Pot describes it shows why people can allow monsters in to power and why they make there decisions because on the surface it looks great. Cull the useless and the brilliant survive to make a better world. In reality it doesnt work like that.
Thats the point of games and the point of the article. The reason why we like games for there violence is because of those times when your looking at a situation like Iraq and for just a second you think 'Screw it. Nuke them all. Nuke every last sodding one of them.' Only the sickest people actually want to do that but everyone has those moments and its that mentality that games allow us to act out. A release from logical indepth thinking to the simpler idea of kill kill kill.
I think the conclusion is that games are just a healthy way of releasing our frustrations at the world.