The full article is a blog? I think sometimes that the heads at slashdot have been kidnapped by forum trolls. Let's stir up some trouble with DRM and see how many days it will stay on the front page!
DRM and piracy: It's been said before, but to reiterate - DRM doesn't stop piracy. For that matter, gun laws don't stop criminals from obtaining guns, and airport security doesn't stop actual terrorists.
DRM and consumers: What a load of bull. We're not doing this to stop piracy, we're doing it to give the user more choices... yea right. What they are doing is locking down media so that they can sell more copies of it. Because hell, if you can sell someone more than one bible, you might as well try to sell them more than one copy of Star Wars. I know lots of people that have more than one copy of World of Warcraft, so that they can play the game twice at the same time. The funny thing is, of all "DRM" schemes, the MMORPG is the one that actually works - you buy the account, or you can't play. The account is verified online, and thus keygens quickly fail as duplicates can't simultaneously play, and there's no real offline/LAN game. The lesson? Some people have more money than they know what to do with - and the media giants have resorted to milking them because the media market in general is pretty well saturated.
You know what it comes down to? Kids just want to win. Hell, grown ups just want to win. And most video games now, the only way to win is to destroy your opponent.
I've suffered a couple GMs that couldn't escape this philosophy in pen & paper D&D. Our party would come up with an ingenious way around some npc/encounter/boss, and the GM would basically "cheat" so that we'd have to fight it anyways. So in the end, you had to combat the big gahuna to win. This mentality causes the underdeveloped mind to associate the euphoria of winning with killing, violence, and destruction, because it's the only way to win.
Make a game like zuma as deeply involving and fun as something like world of warcraft, and you'll see video games receive a different light. But most just jump on the bandwagon. Sword + shield + evil troll = $$. Add a couple trees and publish.
Much agreed. If your design is such to prevent extend play by one individual, have the thing reset on a timer, and inform the gamer ahead of time. 5 minutes is probably more than enough to wet an appetite and still allow people behind them a chance to play. Having the console freeze up? A sad excuse dreamed up by an embarrassed representative of Sony. Sorry to say their electronics altogether have really gone down the shitter since the 80s. Once upon a time you could by something with a Sony tag and expect it to last 20 years (my parents still have a Sony stereo that's about 25 years old, 0 problems). Now you have ps2s that will degrade and fail if you actually use them to play dvds, and ps3s that freeze up "so people won't play them all day".
I'll keep my PC, put together by independent part manufacturers that still have to compete with each other, and where I don't need a screw driver and a soldering iron to change the OS.
I don't want to infringe on anyone's right to sue when justly wronged, but come on people. Patent law requires that which you are patenting to not be immediately obvious. Using a trigger to operate any device is pretty obvious. Let's see here - the Chinese used triggers in guns some 2000 years ago?
It's times like these, that the suer, who's only hope is that nintendo settles to avoid having to pay it's lawyers, should get nailed - their patent striped, all other patents they own put under thorough review, and their assets seized to pay the litigation costs of the court system.
Ok - economists and gaming blogs have speculated on the possibility of virtual assets becoming taxable someday for at least a year now. What we have here is another economist (read professional guesser) telling us it's inevitable. There's absolutely no references to movement in Congress on the subject, or refutation to the rebuttal that all MMORPG assets belong at all times to the parent company, therefore no taxable exchange can occur. Making money on ebay is one thing - it's a tangible, defined monetary gain with a clear record of when and how much - and it doesn't matter how you earned the money, you earned money. Trying to claim money is made in an MMORPG at the time a dragon is slain is a myth to stir up contraversy. I challenge any representative of the United States Congess to stand before his peers and make the claim (with video FRAPS evidence as backup) that as the raid leader gives someone a purple shiny sword in a video game, their real world wealth has increased and they need to be taxed.
There's a lot of truth to this. A big and repeatable point brought to the six party talks is that NK would spend money on weapons that are globally considered useless (attacking a nation with nukes in this day and age is pretty much signing your own death warrant). Meanwhile, people are starving, lack electricity, sanitation, etc. The only people that will be hurt by this are those that are living way above normal economic standards in the country - the hope is that maybe they can spend their wealth feeding the people instead of buying gadgets and toys.
Wow. I wish that I had mod points to spend, for the simple fact that you managed to make a statement about WOW without resorting to invoking "WE", "EVERYONE", or "CASUAL GAMERS" - and actually showed the nuts to state this as your own opinion. Kudos.
That said,/signed. I'd really like to see how Warhammer implements PVP objectives and style gaming differently than Warcraft, and makes it such that lower level players can enjoy pvp alongside higher level players. PVP servers in WOW currently seem to represent PVP as a griefing element more than part of the gameplay/character development. I want to play against other players, but I don't want to constantly lose to someone because they have twice the HP, or a hammer of whacknaros. There's some strategy involved in mass pvp, but it's rarely about pitting this class against that (pikemen vs cavalry type stuff) - and more gangbang the priests. Still, till I see the final product, I carefully reserve judgement.
When I first read the sub. title, I thought they had superimposed some kind of 4th spacial dimension on google earth, and was thinking, why the hell would you do that?
Interesting concept they have here, and going forward it will be much cooler now that we have satellites actually photographing the earth instead of reliance on a single explorer's math skills.
Ok, the scene is ripe - bring on the nukes! We can do before and after pictures now!
They wouldn't have nearly so many "inaccuracies" if they simply answered the questions Americans asked of the government supposedly serving our interests. So much today depends on marketing "messages" instead of what the product really does - it's not surprising the Pentagon is more worried about the message the media is putting out rather than giving them facts to work with. Now I know some media sources (cough cough FOX) love to twist anything into a dramatic gossip fest, but others (like CNN) do a pretty good job of telling the facts without inserting their own opinion/bias.
Oh and in the meantime, I'm curious how creating another "let's control what people think" department solves for eliminating the national deficit.
I want to test this against the old SNL mock commercials, and see if it filters them out. That'd be hilarious.
Actually, I think the best commercial remover at any point would simply look to see if a particular 30+ second sequence repeats itself. If so, it's probably a commercial (most commercials run multiple times throughout a show). This would also work nicely to not cut out superbowl commercials, which have far more value - as they aren't usually repeated.
Article is/.ed at time of post - so I disclaim responsibility for stealing an idea already presented in the article, if that's the case.
"The only one you can blame here is R* for not disclosing all the naughty 'bits' (pun intended) when up for ERSB review"
Rockstar during the ERSB review process: "Oh, and there's one scene where the main character fucks another character. Except that we took that out." O.O
In the mind of Rockstars project manager, that scene didn't exist in the game anymore. It was an idea they threw around, then ultimately scrapped as going too far over the top. I'm not saying they shouldn't have been more careful about where that code ended up, but I really don't think they were out to try and "sneak sex by the grown ups".
Does kind of suck though - because I know the scandal has hurt the modding community, and now everytime someone hears about a mod this is on their minds.
I heard some guy put a sun in there, but it's tricky, you can only find it in the daytime, and sometimes, it's hidden behind some clouds! That guy's amazing!
I think CCQ is supposed to be CCG, or collectible card game. MtG is Magic the Gathering, arguably the most successsful of all CCG spanning nine editions and over a dozen expansions. MtG put Wizards of the Coast on the map. MiGs are dated jet airplanes. UDE I can't figure out the acronym, but it's a point reward system like when you collect UPCs off a cereal box, and if you ate captain crunch for a year you could get a free T-shirt. The original poster (OP) is complaining because the company advertised the free T-shirt, but didn't specify how much cereal you'd have to eat, and so the OP went out and bought truckloads of cereal he didn't like just for the T-shirt, but with no idea how much cereal he'd need. Somehow, that's Blizzards fault in the mind of the OP, so now the article refers to it as a "fiasco".
Requires M-rated games to have a label at least 3 inches long with at least 12-point font; if not, M-rated games can't be publicly displayed.
One of the "90% left wing liberals" from the article above. Sure, it starts at 12 point font, then 14, then next thing you know there's a guy holding an 8 foot sign with a big M on it.
And no, I didn't cherry pick this. It was the first democrat I found.
First, I've known many many people who have spend over 1000 dollars on CCGs, most notably MTG. The extra tabard, the turtle mount, and whatever else is a bonus. It's not meant to be a grind, it's not meant to be the sole reason you spend 1000 dollars. The fact that people are willing to spend such an obscene amount of money for one, rather than leave it up to chance, is no more Blizzard's fault than it would be Sony's fault that people will buy playstations on Ebay for 3x the price just to get one 2 weeks early.
Second, everything I've seen as a bonus from this is inconsequential in the game. The turtle mount isn't even epic, meaning you would still need a regular in game mount or everyone (your guildies, your battleground comrades, or that night elf you were chasing down) will outpace you. Vanity in game pets don't fight in combat, and most shape altering trinkets (this UPC item I'm sure included) don't fool guards or most players.
Conclusion : The article's author confused a collectible card game with a lottery, and got teary when he didn't win. To quoth the WoW forums, "Cry more nub".
As a WoW player, I know I'd be likely gone the second they opened a WoS (Starcraft MMO). Makes sense to me Blizzard would want to maximize their return on investment though.
Sadly, this did nothing to curb Jack from the errors of his ways. He's still preaching that inattentive parenting isn't as important a factor on kids' behavior as their virtual entertainment.
Hadn't gotten in that far. In that case, I'm kind of surprised Spamhaus didn't come over here and fight it. They should have had an easy victory, with all the evidence they are claiming to have, and would have created a US precedent that spammers cannot claim loss of business due to block lists at a federal level, securing them from future lawsuits. I can see their point that they aren't in US jurisdiction, but the publicity of a winning court case is something most companies only dream of - I for example would not have even heard of Spamhaus, up until this case picked up clout.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, here we go:
The full article is a blog? I think sometimes that the heads at slashdot have been kidnapped by forum trolls. Let's stir up some trouble with DRM and see how many days it will stay on the front page!
DRM and piracy: It's been said before, but to reiterate - DRM doesn't stop piracy. For that matter, gun laws don't stop criminals from obtaining guns, and airport security doesn't stop actual terrorists.
DRM and consumers: What a load of bull. We're not doing this to stop piracy, we're doing it to give the user more choices... yea right. What they are doing is locking down media so that they can sell more copies of it. Because hell, if you can sell someone more than one bible, you might as well try to sell them more than one copy of Star Wars. I know lots of people that have more than one copy of World of Warcraft, so that they can play the game twice at the same time. The funny thing is, of all "DRM" schemes, the MMORPG is the one that actually works - you buy the account, or you can't play. The account is verified online, and thus keygens quickly fail as duplicates can't simultaneously play, and there's no real offline/LAN game. The lesson? Some people have more money than they know what to do with - and the media giants have resorted to milking them because the media market in general is pretty well saturated.
Like, nerf Earthquake.
You know what it comes down to? Kids just want to win. Hell, grown ups just want to win. And most video games now, the only way to win is to destroy your opponent.
I've suffered a couple GMs that couldn't escape this philosophy in pen & paper D&D. Our party would come up with an ingenious way around some npc/encounter/boss, and the GM would basically "cheat" so that we'd have to fight it anyways. So in the end, you had to combat the big gahuna to win. This mentality causes the underdeveloped mind to associate the euphoria of winning with killing, violence, and destruction, because it's the only way to win.
Make a game like zuma as deeply involving and fun as something like world of warcraft, and you'll see video games receive a different light. But most just jump on the bandwagon. Sword + shield + evil troll = $$. Add a couple trees and publish.
Much agreed. If your design is such to prevent extend play by one individual, have the thing reset on a timer, and inform the gamer ahead of time. 5 minutes is probably more than enough to wet an appetite and still allow people behind them a chance to play. Having the console freeze up? A sad excuse dreamed up by an embarrassed representative of Sony. Sorry to say their electronics altogether have really gone down the shitter since the 80s. Once upon a time you could by something with a Sony tag and expect it to last 20 years (my parents still have a Sony stereo that's about 25 years old, 0 problems). Now you have ps2s that will degrade and fail if you actually use them to play dvds, and ps3s that freeze up "so people won't play them all day".
I'll keep my PC, put together by independent part manufacturers that still have to compete with each other, and where I don't need a screw driver and a soldering iron to change the OS.
I don't want to infringe on anyone's right to sue when justly wronged, but come on people. Patent law requires that which you are patenting to not be immediately obvious. Using a trigger to operate any device is pretty obvious. Let's see here - the Chinese used triggers in guns some 2000 years ago?
It's times like these, that the suer, who's only hope is that nintendo settles to avoid having to pay it's lawyers, should get nailed - their patent striped, all other patents they own put under thorough review, and their assets seized to pay the litigation costs of the court system.
Television sales skyrocket as the new "Oopswii phenomenon" strikes the UK...
Ok - economists and gaming blogs have speculated on the possibility of virtual assets becoming taxable someday for at least a year now. What we have here is another economist (read professional guesser) telling us it's inevitable. There's absolutely no references to movement in Congress on the subject, or refutation to the rebuttal that all MMORPG assets belong at all times to the parent company, therefore no taxable exchange can occur. Making money on ebay is one thing - it's a tangible, defined monetary gain with a clear record of when and how much - and it doesn't matter how you earned the money, you earned money. Trying to claim money is made in an MMORPG at the time a dragon is slain is a myth to stir up contraversy. I challenge any representative of the United States Congess to stand before his peers and make the claim (with video FRAPS evidence as backup) that as the raid leader gives someone a purple shiny sword in a video game, their real world wealth has increased and they need to be taxed.
There's a lot of truth to this. A big and repeatable point brought to the six party talks is that NK would spend money on weapons that are globally considered useless (attacking a nation with nukes in this day and age is pretty much signing your own death warrant). Meanwhile, people are starving, lack electricity, sanitation, etc. The only people that will be hurt by this are those that are living way above normal economic standards in the country - the hope is that maybe they can spend their wealth feeding the people instead of buying gadgets and toys.
Wow. I wish that I had mod points to spend, for the simple fact that you managed to make a statement about WOW without resorting to invoking "WE", "EVERYONE", or "CASUAL GAMERS" - and actually showed the nuts to state this as your own opinion. Kudos.
/signed. I'd really like to see how Warhammer implements PVP objectives and style gaming differently than Warcraft, and makes it such that lower level players can enjoy pvp alongside higher level players. PVP servers in WOW currently seem to represent PVP as a griefing element more than part of the gameplay/character development. I want to play against other players, but I don't want to constantly lose to someone because they have twice the HP, or a hammer of whacknaros. There's some strategy involved in mass pvp, but it's rarely about pitting this class against that (pikemen vs cavalry type stuff) - and more gangbang the priests. Still, till I see the final product, I carefully reserve judgement.
That said,
Explanation:
x = 10
m = 1000
l = 50
x is to the left of a larger valued letter, so it's value is negative.
Therefore, 1000+50-10 = 1040
1040 is the main individual tax form. In other words, welcome to the tax decade!!
Wonder what they will call this feature?
When I first read the sub. title, I thought they had superimposed some kind of 4th spacial dimension on google earth, and was thinking, why the hell would you do that?
Interesting concept they have here, and going forward it will be much cooler now that we have satellites actually photographing the earth instead of reliance on a single explorer's math skills.
Ok, the scene is ripe - bring on the nukes! We can do before and after pictures now!
500K? Was that enough to change Vietnam?
No. "American forces rose from 16,000 during 1964 to more than 553,000 by 1969." (wikipedia)
You can read the rest if you don't remember how that turned out.
Wii! Wiiiiiiiiii! /swing /hack /slash /poke
/move along
Oh wait, this really isn't a virtual sword, it's a wireless mouse.
They wouldn't have nearly so many "inaccuracies" if they simply answered the questions Americans asked of the government supposedly serving our interests. So much today depends on marketing "messages" instead of what the product really does - it's not surprising the Pentagon is more worried about the message the media is putting out rather than giving them facts to work with. Now I know some media sources (cough cough FOX) love to twist anything into a dramatic gossip fest, but others (like CNN) do a pretty good job of telling the facts without inserting their own opinion/bias.
Oh and in the meantime, I'm curious how creating another "let's control what people think" department solves for eliminating the national deficit.
I want to test this against the old SNL mock commercials, and see if it filters them out. That'd be hilarious.
/.ed at time of post - so I disclaim responsibility for stealing an idea already presented in the article, if that's the case.
Actually, I think the best commercial remover at any point would simply look to see if a particular 30+ second sequence repeats itself. If so, it's probably a commercial (most commercials run multiple times throughout a show). This would also work nicely to not cut out superbowl commercials, which have far more value - as they aren't usually repeated.
Article is
"The only one you can blame here is R* for not disclosing all the naughty 'bits' (pun intended) when up for ERSB review"
Rockstar during the ERSB review process:
"Oh, and there's one scene where the main character fucks another character. Except that we took that out."
O.O
In the mind of Rockstars project manager, that scene didn't exist in the game anymore. It was an idea they threw around, then ultimately scrapped as going too far over the top. I'm not saying they shouldn't have been more careful about where that code ended up, but I really don't think they were out to try and "sneak sex by the grown ups".
Does kind of suck though - because I know the scandal has hurt the modding community, and now everytime someone hears about a mod this is on their minds.
I heard some guy put a sun in there, but it's tricky, you can only find it in the daytime, and sometimes, it's hidden behind some clouds! That guy's amazing!
I think CCQ is supposed to be CCG, or collectible card game. MtG is Magic the Gathering, arguably the most successsful of all CCG spanning nine editions and over a dozen expansions. MtG put Wizards of the Coast on the map. MiGs are dated jet airplanes. UDE I can't figure out the acronym, but it's a point reward system like when you collect UPCs off a cereal box, and if you ate captain crunch for a year you could get a free T-shirt. The original poster (OP) is complaining because the company advertised the free T-shirt, but didn't specify how much cereal you'd have to eat, and so the OP went out and bought truckloads of cereal he didn't like just for the T-shirt, but with no idea how much cereal he'd need. Somehow, that's Blizzards fault in the mind of the OP, so now the article refers to it as a "fiasco".
Sponsor(s): Senator Henry Marsh III (D)
Requires M-rated games to have a label at least 3 inches long with at least 12-point font; if not, M-rated games can't be publicly displayed.
One of the "90% left wing liberals" from the article above. Sure, it starts at 12 point font, then 14, then next thing you know there's a guy holding an 8 foot sign with a big M on it.
And no, I didn't cherry pick this. It was the first democrat I found.
A couple counter points to the article -
First, I've known many many people who have spend over 1000 dollars on CCGs, most notably MTG. The extra tabard, the turtle mount, and whatever else is a bonus. It's not meant to be a grind, it's not meant to be the sole reason you spend 1000 dollars. The fact that people are willing to spend such an obscene amount of money for one, rather than leave it up to chance, is no more Blizzard's fault than it would be Sony's fault that people will buy playstations on Ebay for 3x the price just to get one 2 weeks early.
Second, everything I've seen as a bonus from this is inconsequential in the game. The turtle mount isn't even epic, meaning you would still need a regular in game mount or everyone (your guildies, your battleground comrades, or that night elf you were chasing down) will outpace you. Vanity in game pets don't fight in combat, and most shape altering trinkets (this UPC item I'm sure included) don't fool guards or most players.
Conclusion : The article's author confused a collectible card game with a lottery, and got teary when he didn't win. To quoth the WoW forums, "Cry more nub".
As a WoW player, I know I'd be likely gone the second they opened a WoS (Starcraft MMO). Makes sense to me Blizzard would want to maximize their return on investment though.
http://www.geocities.com/~Pack215/wolf.html#GOD
For me, Boy Scouts went south right here, at the cub scouts level.
I'm not trying to bash God loving people here or anything, but this sort of screws atheists. It's a required piece for advancement too.
It wasn't too long ago Jack made the proposterous suggestion that someone make a video game about killing violent video game producers. Not surpristingly, it happened:m l#2181
http://www.gamehippo.com/category/new_title_3.sht
Sadly, this did nothing to curb Jack from the errors of his ways. He's still preaching that inattentive parenting isn't as important a factor on kids' behavior as their virtual entertainment.
I think I've finally read something more whiny than a post on the World of Warcraft forums. I never thought I'd see the day.
Hadn't gotten in that far. In that case, I'm kind of surprised Spamhaus didn't come over here and fight it. They should have had an easy victory, with all the evidence they are claiming to have, and would have created a US precedent that spammers cannot claim loss of business due to block lists at a federal level, securing them from future lawsuits. I can see their point that they aren't in US jurisdiction, but the publicity of a winning court case is something most companies only dream of - I for example would not have even heard of Spamhaus, up until this case picked up clout.