ICANN will not change as the article says so.
What will be created is a UN regulatory body without enforcement regimes. SOP for the UN solving problems. Abuses will not occur and stipulated in the charter for that body will be the fact that it should do nothing to violate the sovereign rights of each nation (ie. U.S. 1st Amendment).
Although the "control" aspect will be a complete sham, I do think that this may have some positive consequences. This body could be used to coordinate the more technical nations in questions of global spam, copyrights and other IT issues, and negate the need for constant conferences. If we had a international group of people working together for years on these issues, we might actually make some progress.
I was just wondering if anyone out there had read "Jennifer Government" by Max Barry http://www.maxbarry.com/jennifergovernment/ .
In that book, Nike released like 2 or three pairs of their new shoe line in order to drum up insane demand and charger whatever they want. Then, when they flood the market they stage shootings in order to display the lengths people are going to go to get them.
Now I'm not saying M$ is going to go out and get some hired guns, but this cycle of fiddling with supply in order to bring demand to a boil could definatly spiral out of control. Playing with people's material wants and needs can lead to some seriously unexpected consequences.
And on a less serious note, what do you expect from X-Box factories in Mexico?
Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter said EA will get productivity gains from the changes and, if it needs to, will control costs by weeding out slower workers.
He said the artists who are reclassified as hourly would likely get more supervision and be assigned work-related quotas, resulting in less job satisfaction.
So....instead of saying, "Madden '06 is coming out October 2nd no matter how many hours you have to work!" They can now saw, "Madden '06 is coming out on Oct 2nd and you only get 50 hours a week to work on it! If its not done, you're fired after its done!"
Unrealistic weekly goals don't seem so much better than unrealistic release goals. I see the only advantage here going to veteran programers who are too valuable to get rid of. It just makes it harder for those just breaking in. Your either a star or your out.
And it seems weird that EA would settle with the artists first. It seems far more likely they would have won that argument with artists having ambiguous time needs in only to visualize and create. Not to say that programers don't create, I just think they have more of a right to say that there is a nuts and bolts process to many things they do that requires long overtime hours to complete.
Past this, I think its important to point out that this was a settlement instead of a judicial finding and so there is no hard and fast legal precedent here that can be cited by future employees for other companies.
Remember an article awhile back that described the difficulties Bungi was having in finding a studio to pick up the movie rights because of all the creative control they wanted? This is the direct result. Tried and true performance being signed on.
If only all studios would take such care with their properties to demand that they have a say in its adaptation then we might not have the likes of Uwe Boll at all (Or the Super Mario movie *shudder*). I personally applaud Bungi for actually caring about their game and characters and pushing a studio to do the right thing, instead of the cheap action flop-o-rama on a somewhat shoestring budget. But of course, this is all just the optimist in my talking.
And to the above person who quoted the definition of the "producer"; do you really think Peter Jackson is going to involve himself with a movie and take the hands off approach? His track record to this date would say no.
So yea, creating barriers to make it more difficult for teenagers and such to buy violent/sexual games is in my opinion a good thing.*Quick aside* How do they check your age on the internet purchases folks? *Aside over* But why is Jack Thompson being given the chance to write this law? As a person who has worked in Washington for a short time and talked to people there, I understand that it is advocacy groups that write 99% of all legislation on the books, but why charge this assclown , with a record of ridiculous imcompetence, failure and outright lunacy with such a task? There are definatly video game developers in florida, or corporate offices for retailers who would gladly take on such a task if it was presented to them that this law was an inevitability. Plus it would make even more sense because these companies have traditionally fought these kinds of laws, and won. If they came out with the type of legislation themselves it might come out in a coherent and logical fashion. And I'm pretty sure old Jebbers could convince those companies that this law will be on the books either with them on board or without.
With J.T. all we are going to get is a proposed law that is ambiguous and oversteps the charge he was given. Almost guarenteeing it to be Unconstitutional. Which, if you are a conspiracy theorist, could be Jeb's plan all along. Make it seem like he is doing something to solve the issue in his state, while making sure the law will fail to come into enforcement, thereby placating the game company special interests.
I have actually rented and played the game and I do agree that the basic graphical work is well done. So thumbs up to that department. But its a fighting game. And fighting games don't have depth and storyline to back up extremely weak gameplay. I will play Soul Calibur 2 for hours/weeks/eons because I can't get enough of how finely developed the system is. It is a system where continued practice will exponentially increase the players effectiveness at the game. I found myself playing against my friends and constantly repeating the same commands over and over to similar results (with different characters mind you). If I wanted something nice to look at, I'll play FFX.
They obviously pushed development to hit the peak season. But in their rush they seemed to not notice another Marvel liscened game was being released on the same weekend, "X-Men Legends:II". I personally was looking forward to Marvel Nemisis until I read a couple reviews and then saw that the Legends sequel was coming out.
How could they possibly feel that an underdeveloped piece of rental-bate could compete with one of the top selling games from last year?
I guess I'll find out when I get off of work and get on a computer that doesn't have the "Websense" website filter.
With the next generation of consoles about to be released, there has been much discussion about the increase in development time it takes to produce games for these systems and the subsequent effects on price and originality in gaming. While PC gaming has, in my opinion, taken a back seat to the surging console market in the last five years, is it possible that in the future we could see a resurgence of a strong and varied PC gaming market? Does the PC, with its guarenteed massive install base and its relatively consistent hardware/software standards, give developers can edge to take more chances and develope more efficiently?
This topic has filled up so quick it just reminded me of how much politics plays into this one issue. People need to start thinking about the simplictic issues involved and let the scientists debate harsh technical issues like global warming and the ozone layer and get back to us when they have something that's closer than "we think that there is a possiblity that this might...etc."
I mean who can argue that:
Gas costs alot,
Smog smells bad and makes your city look gross(Mexico City),
Dirty/Toxic water=no good for anyone,
No Rainforest=no oxygen=death city
Getting caught up in your high and mighty point of view always lets you look past these simple things. My best example is post WWII Japan. They went crazy into heavy industry until people came down with diseases because of how bad the pollution was in some areas. So they cleaned it up.
Shitting on your enviroment just doesn't make sense. Because the enviroment is what we eat and breath and pretty much what we are. I know that I don't like eating shit, breathing shit, or being shit either.
So don't use the fact that you don't believe in the ozone whole or global warming to do whatever you want and believe their are no consequences.
And don't use the fact that you do believe in those things to be a self-righteous jerk who tells everyone what to do and bust up people's SUVs.
Just do the right thing and remember that living in a clean place is much more worthwhile than having just a little more money. Especially when you would probably spend that money to go somewhere cleaner than where you live.
Slashdot Mirror
ICANN will not change as the article says so. What will be created is a UN regulatory body without enforcement regimes. SOP for the UN solving problems. Abuses will not occur and stipulated in the charter for that body will be the fact that it should do nothing to violate the sovereign rights of each nation (ie. U.S. 1st Amendment). Although the "control" aspect will be a complete sham, I do think that this may have some positive consequences. This body could be used to coordinate the more technical nations in questions of global spam, copyrights and other IT issues, and negate the need for constant conferences. If we had a international group of people working together for years on these issues, we might actually make some progress.
I was just wondering if anyone out there had read "Jennifer Government" by Max Barry http://www.maxbarry.com/jennifergovernment/ . In that book, Nike released like 2 or three pairs of their new shoe line in order to drum up insane demand and charger whatever they want. Then, when they flood the market they stage shootings in order to display the lengths people are going to go to get them. Now I'm not saying M$ is going to go out and get some hired guns, but this cycle of fiddling with supply in order to bring demand to a boil could definatly spiral out of control. Playing with people's material wants and needs can lead to some seriously unexpected consequences. And on a less serious note, what do you expect from X-Box factories in Mexico?
Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter said EA will get productivity gains from the changes and, if it needs to, will control costs by weeding out slower workers. He said the artists who are reclassified as hourly would likely get more supervision and be assigned work-related quotas, resulting in less job satisfaction. So....instead of saying, "Madden '06 is coming out October 2nd no matter how many hours you have to work!" They can now saw, "Madden '06 is coming out on Oct 2nd and you only get 50 hours a week to work on it! If its not done, you're fired after its done!" Unrealistic weekly goals don't seem so much better than unrealistic release goals. I see the only advantage here going to veteran programers who are too valuable to get rid of. It just makes it harder for those just breaking in. Your either a star or your out. And it seems weird that EA would settle with the artists first. It seems far more likely they would have won that argument with artists having ambiguous time needs in only to visualize and create. Not to say that programers don't create, I just think they have more of a right to say that there is a nuts and bolts process to many things they do that requires long overtime hours to complete. Past this, I think its important to point out that this was a settlement instead of a judicial finding and so there is no hard and fast legal precedent here that can be cited by future employees for other companies.
Remember an article awhile back that described the difficulties Bungi was having in finding a studio to pick up the movie rights because of all the creative control they wanted? This is the direct result. Tried and true performance being signed on. If only all studios would take such care with their properties to demand that they have a say in its adaptation then we might not have the likes of Uwe Boll at all (Or the Super Mario movie *shudder*). I personally applaud Bungi for actually caring about their game and characters and pushing a studio to do the right thing, instead of the cheap action flop-o-rama on a somewhat shoestring budget. But of course, this is all just the optimist in my talking. And to the above person who quoted the definition of the "producer"; do you really think Peter Jackson is going to involve himself with a movie and take the hands off approach? His track record to this date would say no.
So yea, creating barriers to make it more difficult for teenagers and such to buy violent/sexual games is in my opinion a good thing.*Quick aside* How do they check your age on the internet purchases folks? *Aside over* But why is Jack Thompson being given the chance to write this law? As a person who has worked in Washington for a short time and talked to people there, I understand that it is advocacy groups that write 99% of all legislation on the books, but why charge this assclown , with a record of ridiculous imcompetence, failure and outright lunacy with such a task? There are definatly video game developers in florida, or corporate offices for retailers who would gladly take on such a task if it was presented to them that this law was an inevitability. Plus it would make even more sense because these companies have traditionally fought these kinds of laws, and won. If they came out with the type of legislation themselves it might come out in a coherent and logical fashion. And I'm pretty sure old Jebbers could convince those companies that this law will be on the books either with them on board or without. With J.T. all we are going to get is a proposed law that is ambiguous and oversteps the charge he was given. Almost guarenteeing it to be Unconstitutional. Which, if you are a conspiracy theorist, could be Jeb's plan all along. Make it seem like he is doing something to solve the issue in his state, while making sure the law will fail to come into enforcement, thereby placating the game company special interests.
I have actually rented and played the game and I do agree that the basic graphical work is well done. So thumbs up to that department. But its a fighting game. And fighting games don't have depth and storyline to back up extremely weak gameplay. I will play Soul Calibur 2 for hours/weeks/eons because I can't get enough of how finely developed the system is. It is a system where continued practice will exponentially increase the players effectiveness at the game. I found myself playing against my friends and constantly repeating the same commands over and over to similar results (with different characters mind you). If I wanted something nice to look at, I'll play FFX.
They obviously pushed development to hit the peak season. But in their rush they seemed to not notice another Marvel liscened game was being released on the same weekend, "X-Men Legends:II". I personally was looking forward to Marvel Nemisis until I read a couple reviews and then saw that the Legends sequel was coming out. How could they possibly feel that an underdeveloped piece of rental-bate could compete with one of the top selling games from last year? I guess I'll find out when I get off of work and get on a computer that doesn't have the "Websense" website filter.
With the next generation of consoles about to be released, there has been much discussion about the increase in development time it takes to produce games for these systems and the subsequent effects on price and originality in gaming. While PC gaming has, in my opinion, taken a back seat to the surging console market in the last five years, is it possible that in the future we could see a resurgence of a strong and varied PC gaming market? Does the PC, with its guarenteed massive install base and its relatively consistent hardware/software standards, give developers can edge to take more chances and develope more efficiently?
This topic has filled up so quick it just reminded me of how much politics plays into this one issue. People need to start thinking about the simplictic issues involved and let the scientists debate harsh technical issues like global warming and the ozone layer and get back to us when they have something that's closer than "we think that there is a possiblity that this might...etc." I mean who can argue that: Gas costs alot, Smog smells bad and makes your city look gross(Mexico City), Dirty/Toxic water=no good for anyone, No Rainforest=no oxygen=death city Getting caught up in your high and mighty point of view always lets you look past these simple things. My best example is post WWII Japan. They went crazy into heavy industry until people came down with diseases because of how bad the pollution was in some areas. So they cleaned it up. Shitting on your enviroment just doesn't make sense. Because the enviroment is what we eat and breath and pretty much what we are. I know that I don't like eating shit, breathing shit, or being shit either. So don't use the fact that you don't believe in the ozone whole or global warming to do whatever you want and believe their are no consequences. And don't use the fact that you do believe in those things to be a self-righteous jerk who tells everyone what to do and bust up people's SUVs. Just do the right thing and remember that living in a clean place is much more worthwhile than having just a little more money. Especially when you would probably spend that money to go somewhere cleaner than where you live.