I'll check Shift's settings when I get home, I was playing with the defaults and couldn't find an option to change, so maybe I just hadn't got far enough past the "tutorials" before I got fed up with it! I might find it more tolerable in 3rd person.
I don't think it's the aircraft obscuring targets in flight sims because I still find 3rd person easier and 1st person more of a challenge, only the difference is despite it being more of a challenge it's one I can step up to, which of course I can't in driving sims. You can see an example of Apache Air Assault and the person in the video nearly hitting the wall a few times here to compare:
I can only presume that I just have a better feel for flight physics both fixed and rotary wing than I do for high speed racing perhaps, as guess maybe with a bit of time and perserverence I could perhaps get better at racing games, but whether NFS: Shift, Project Gotham Racing 3, Forza 2/3 I've always struggled to beat the medium let alone hard difficulties and even some easy have been a push when first playing. I've found arcadey games which are more about ramming people offroad like NFS: Most Wanted, NFS: Hot Pursuit and Flatout: Total Carnage easier but I think that's because these games give a bit in terms of racing ability and don't expect you to be able to race round a circuit as fast for the most part because they more often focus on ramming people off the road, which I am much better at than sticking to a track and saving a split second on a corner;)
"Also, do NOT subscribe me to your newsletter as you are consumer unfriendly, a possible DRM sympathizer"
Yes, sadly it's been a growing trend over the years though.
Ten years ago people would not have been happy with a mere CD key check that didn't check online but merely ran against an algorithm, people hated DRM that merely checked the right CD was in the drive. People really hated this kind of simple thing back then.
Nowadays people are even defending intrusive DRM- try criticising Steam and you'll get an army of Valve fanboys pounce on you with arguments such as "But it let's you install from anywhere!", "But it means you don't need a CD in the drive!" and that kind of thing completely ignoring the fact I could do these things just fine in the past without Steam too.
It's sad, but many gamers not only accept, but defend DRM sometimes now, they have actually swallowed the bullshit idea that it's somehow there for their own good, that it brings them benefits.
Still, it's nice to see a comment like yours get modded up, because at least it means there are still some people out there who despise DRM in whatever form it comes, and don't just criticise it when it's in a product they don't like whilst ignoring it in ones they do (e.g. attacking EA's DRM whilst defending Valve's) or even go as far as defending it in general with illogical arguments because they've swallowed the equally illogical sales pitch for it.
Yes, this is a major part the problem with racing games. You just can't judge the distance to a corner or the speed you're doing in a racing game simply by the context of your surroundings (other than your speedometer) like you can in real life.
I know when I'm going too fast in my car because I start to feel and hear it in the engine and the car, I can better tell my surroundings, and can more easily judge the stopping distance required.
I imagine it's largely because on a 2D screen you just can't judge depth for corners like you can in a real car. Presumably some people get better at this playing enough but I just find it hard work most the time.
I played Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Shift a fair bit over christmas, and I was fine with Hot Pursuit and started getting quite good because you can race 3rd person and it's a much more arcade style game, but I just couldn't play Shift. Forced into a drivers seat view things are just completely different.
Oddly I've always been good at the likes of Flight Sims though, and cockpit mode didn't cause me any problems here. Playing the recent Apache: Air Assault in cockpit only mode on Veteran difficulty I actually found damn good fun and online I found myself excelling at flying round canyons at speed, not crashing and pulling off some tough rocket shots as I flew by. I'm not sure why I find this so different.
I suspect "developers" using that argument are simply trying to come up with excuses as to why they've been too lazy to adapt to a new platform, or simply aren't very knowledgeable about the platform.
Thousands of developers worldwide seem to be aware of the existence of this feature and use it succesfully already so there's really no excuse for not using it other than incompetence.
Yes, but it certainly doesn't work the other way around. Driving hasn't made me a better gamer, I still completely and utterly suck at racing games, seemingly flying off the track every 5 seconds,
Fortunately I don't do this in real life.
Perhaps being bad at racing games makes you a better driver in that you know you suck so badly at it you just generally don't bother trying to race, and instead prefer to do other things like run round shooting people and chopping them up with chainsaws... wait, no, that's not right either.
"Yes, that's less than $50 for a relatively full-feature Smart Phone!"
Yes, it's an interesting development too. I picked up an Orange San Francisco (ZTE Blade) in the UK for £90 as a test phone to prat around with Android development on. I was pleasantly suprised to see it could run things like Angry Birds just fine, and looking at it specwise it's somewhere around the spec of the iPhone 3GS, in some ways better- i.e. higher resolution AMOLED screen and such.
It's interesting to see that a phone for £90 gives you everything and then some that Apple's £550 flagship phone did a year before, or even the HTC Desire which was around the same price some time before.
There's no doubt about it, this is one fucking fast moving market, and those low cost Android phones that do everything that people's high end phones bought a year before but locked into 18 - 24 month contracts can do then I expect we'll see a change in the way some people buy phones too. There's just little point locking yourself in to a 24 month contract with a phone that's going to cost you around £550 over it's life only to find it being outdone half way through your contract by a phone someone has bought contract free for £90.
Yeah but even AppleTV shifted 6 million units which is no small amount, for an Apple product it's a complete flop, but compared to many products it's a decent figure. The original MacBook Air is similar in that you could fairly argue it was a flop relative to Apple's successes, but still shifted more units than your average laptop manufacturer manages with a specific model.
I think that was really his point- even Apple's shit products sell decently because Apple has a core of fanboys that will buy anything Apple no matter how crap it is. The times Apple succede are when they manage to sell beyond that core to the mainstream as they did with the iPod, and iPhone. I'm not sure if the iPad is really there yet but suspect it will be.
Apple could release an iTurd which was just a turd with an Apple logo stamped on it and it'd still shift 6 million units, and a core of people would still queue at the stores on release night.
Most companies that sell electronic gadgets have to really fight to sell 6 million units of a product, these companies will be envious of the fact Apple can throw something arguably worse out and still shift 6 million units without even really trying because of the core ultra-loyal fanbase. It's this core fanbase that really helps their more succesful product move too- the original iPhone only shifted 6 mill units, but as a quality product that was enough to set the ball rolling, whilst originally it was only really Apple's core fans that went for it when others saw it they too bought into it. In contrast, whilst these same folks bought the Apple TV and the MacBook air those devices just weren't compelling enough to catch on with the mainstream public for greater mass market sales.
It's still one of Ed Vaizey and friends pet projects regardless of his official position, the fact he's researching it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to how well supported the idea is in the rest of government.
Whether an MP has a cabinet post or not it is precisely their responsibility to look into the feasibility of any legislative ideas they wish to put forward. I'm not sure why you assume that the culture secretary looking at the feasibility of something implies it has consent from the whole government or even the whole cabinet, that's completely stupid- Vaizey is neither the PM or the party leader, it is simply not his responsibility to unilaterally determine party or government policy.
To give you an example, Vince Cable, in charge of BIS, decided some months back to propose a graduate tax, and threw his weight behind the idea and also set his staff looking into it, just because it's his area of responsibility though doesn't mean it's government policy- and it wasn't, it got dropped because it had support from near the cabinet or most of the rest of government.
There is no evidence yet that this proposal has the backing of the government as a whole or even the cabinet, it's absurd to jump to such a conclusion right now any more than it would've been to take Vince's words to mean the government was wholeheartedly behind a graduate tax scheme.
I think the idea stems from the fact that although the car theoretically has the right of way, if a car hits a pedestrian and should have been able to stop in time then the driver will be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention.
This means that even if someone is hit by a car crossing in an area not designated as a crossing then the driver can still be prosecuted if they weren't paying attention, or if they were speeding, or if they were simply being stubborn refusing to stop and so on.
So like you say it's not as if there's a law saying pedestrians have right of way, simply that motorists must allow pedestrians to cross if the pedestrian leaves you little choice and if you can stop.
I know the link you provide suggests that this doesn't happen but I can assure you it certainly does, as one of my friends was being an idiot once and decided not to slow down to scare a kid who decided to cross right in front of him into running out the way, which he unfortunately did not do, presumably guessing my friend would slow down, which he also did not do. It effectively was a game of chicken where they both lost. Still, he was only going 20 and the kid got a broken arm but was fine other than that. My friend however was charged with careless driving and was eventually given 6 points.
I think the law as it is is quite sensible though, it effectively means common sense is required from both sides- it means motorists shouldn't risk hitting pedestrians even if the pedestrians are being stupid, and it means pedestrians shouldn't be stupid- certainly they'd have little recourse if they got hit trying to cross a dual carriageway where cars are travelling 70mph and may certainly not have time to miss them.
I actually read your link (yeah, there's a thing!), and it seems to be referring to specific studies in specific locations, one study talks about Afghanistan but of course the Afghan middle class can't be considered the same as the US middle class, they're just completely different.
The link also does nothing to suggest that the people aren't unstable, even if they are middle class, and says nothing about how idealistic the people are.
I suspect you would see differences across the globe, certainly in the UK our suicide bombers on 7/7 and the failed bombers on 21/7 really were all from relatively poor backgrounds, generally having problems ranging from unemployment to depression, to drug abuse.
Those that attacked Glasgow airport were far better educated had planted bombs in London but they were timed rather than suicide attacks, and it's not clear that their airport attack was designed to be a suicide attack- certainly it only ended up that way for one of them who died from severe burns some days later after managing to set himself alight with a petrol bomb which ignited nowhere near any potential targets. The other is I believe somewhere in the legal system, presumably in jail now because he was certainly captured, and I don't believe he's killed himself.
I don't think it's generally simple to determine who is likely to become a suicide bomber, there are examples from all walks of life, but certainly it's wrong to dismiss the idea that a good proportion, if not a majority have been from poor, poorly educated, possibly mentally ill backgrounds. Certainly that has been the case in Iraq, and certainly this has been the case with many Chechnyan suicide bombers. There have certainly been a number of cases of mentally ill people used:
Well, pretty much all his listed games are rated well above his age also, many of them 18 rated in the UK and whatever the 18 equivalent is in the US.
Personally I'm not sure any of that matters though, largely because I was given similar freedom as a kid and it never did me any harm, and hasn't stopped me doing well for myself in life. I think it's really about teaching kids responsibility and common sense over anything else, and the issue in this case is I don't think the mother has taught that, the fact she mistakenly seems to believe he's the best gamer in the world and the fact that she's blindly believed him and is naively fighting his corner means it's not suprising this kid believes cheating is acceptable, and if you get caught you should just lie your way out of it. I suspect this kid will grow up to be quite a nightmare, but not because he's been using 18 rated content, and not because his mother gave him free reign online, but simply because his mother appears to be unwilling to punish him when he does wrong, and because judging by the number of games he has, she appears to spoil him blind.
In this sort of case, the issue is largely the use of modified save game files. You can use standard USB storage to save games nowadays, so it shouldn't be suprising that there are tools out there to write modified saved game files which put you right at the point you get the achievements to them.
It's actually been around a while, there were adapters that let you write modified save game files direct to the hard drives of XBox 360s too.
I suspect Microsoft does some kind of signing per-console or per-player or something on files when they're written to storage, and if the user loads a save file not signed to a console they've used or their account then it's flagged up to Microsoft.
So they're not necessarily using any kind of heuristics based detection as this mother would seem to suggest, it's likely just that as they said, he actually cheated, and mummy decided to make a fuss out of it without knowing the full story.
I decided to investigate a little and found his gamertag (ZOMBIE KILL67). Looking up his stats on bungie.net for Halo 3/ODST:
Ranked K/D Ratio: 0.84 over 1,014 games? Not that good after all then, in fact, if he can't even break even and gets killed more than he kills, that means he's worse than most other players, and that if he got banned for being too good, so would more than half of Microsoft's other subscribers.
So it really sounds more like mummy can't cope with the idea that her son is actually fairly crap, being below average, and that he likely is in fact a cheater. A case of parent/child flaw blindness I would say.
"The hearing in the article was the first time a judge ever saw a contested ACS:law filesharing case, and even then ACS tried (unsuccessfully) to drop all the cases before the the court date."
Indeed, at every step of the way ACS:Law has been trying to scare people into just giving them money, it was becoming common knowledge that their demands had no teeth and that they weren't really taking people to court, and so ACS:Law decided to up the game and see if actual real substantial threats of court action would turn that tide. What ACS:Law didn't count on was people not actually bowing down and settling, they didn't count on people actually trying to fight their case in court, and this is why they are now shitting bricks.
It's a high stakes bit of brinkmanship - one side would be set to pay hefty fees if they lose, the other would see their entire business model destroyed. ACS:Law appears to have folded first, and lost the game.
Meh, I preferred Quake, largely because those chunky gibs were just so much more pleasing, and because those knights and pink jumping things (I always just called them pig monkeys when I was a kid) were actually capable of scaring the living shit out of you when they jumped out.
Also, because shamblers actually made you shit bricks, turn around, and run away.
Duke was fun, and I spent hours fucking around with the laser trip mines with fond memories, but as soon as Quakeworld came about and I was online with it Quake captivated me for about a further 5 or 6 years thanks to DM, CTF, and eventually TF. Duke was but a distant memory to me by that point.
I remember Duke 3D vs. Quake was the XBox 360 vs. PS3 of the day. The cause of some truly epic arguments.
Personally I hate both of them, but I see no reason why you could say Windows Media Player is worse than iTunes, at best they're both as bad as each other.
Yes, fundamentally I think those who say Apple creates "good" interfaces are confusing things.
What Apple does is produce interfaces that are a pleasure to use- they look pretty, they animate well, but the steps you have to go through to get things done are sometimes annoying and/or illogical, and every now and then (generally with regards to iTunes) even outright buggy.
It's not that Apple produces examples of good interface design, it's that it produces enjoyable interfaces. That is, they're fun to use, but not necessarily efficient to use.
To say that Apple's interfaces are any better in terms of getting things done than the likes of Microsoft's, or Google's, is more than a little dishonest IMO. What they are is more fun to use as they give more pleasing visual and audible feedback- this is often because one thing Apple ensures is that it's UIs animate smoothly.
"I think you've got a rose tinted view of the current government."
No, it's just realistic based on current actual changes.
"For an example consider that they are now actively looking into by default supplying everyone with a censored internet connection 'suitable for children', and you would have to register with your ISP to get the 'adult' internet."
Which demonstrates my viewpoint exactly. You see, what you've mentioned here is actually wrong. What was proposed, and by only a couple of ministers I might add, was that people can choose to have their internet connection censored, and choose to opt out. If you choose not to have it censored when you sign up then it would be business as usual.
There's nothing to suggest this is being seriously considered by the government as a whole, only that it's the pet project of a couple of MPs. The real test is when it comes to fruition and they vote on it in parliament- that's when we find out if it really had government support, but until then we simply do not know. I find it unlikely the Liberal Democrats would support such a move, of course they may prove me wrong, but that's the sort of test that such a scheme would have to pass and Clegg has already played a lot of his cards in the student debate, so it's unlikely he'd be able to pressure his MPs into supporting another unpopular move like this without risking an out and out rebellion.
There are always lots of fear mongering reports that completely and utterly get wrong what is being done, or what certain MPs want to be done and I prefer to base my view on what is actually being done, and thus far, the coalition government's changes have been a net positive effect for civil liberties. This is not to say there haven't been dissapointments- I'm dissapointed they dropped their pledge for anonymity for males accused of rape until they've actually been found guilty if they are found guilty for example but all in, they've certainly not made things worse yet.
It may be that this changes over time, and if it does my opinion will change with it, but right now based on what they have actually done, and are actually seriously doing (i.e. NIR destruction, the CCTV review etc.) things are certainly far more positive than negative. Compared to the sorts of things that are happening in the US, Australia and Europe I'd say the UK right now has one of the better governments when it comes to defending and improving civil liberties for the time being.
You should bear in mind that you always get ministers with pet projects that are completely idiotic, but they don't always come even close to fruition. You can't really blame the whole government until a large proportion of it actually supports such stupid measures, and it's often made worse by the fact that what the minister has actually proposed even then isn't quite as bad as sites like Slashdot make it out to be (because they've got it completely wrong).
The latter is basically Fox News meets Islam, the former, the one in this story is more trustworthy than most Western News organisations. I've seen them give much better, more detailed, more correct stories about the rise of Islam in politics in Turkey for example.
Aljazeera.net is one of the less biased, more trustworthy sites you'll find.
Well fear not, because the UK is actually becoming more free nowadays. Things were bad throughout the last 10 - 20 years under the Labour government and got progressively worse, but since the coalition government came to power last year, whilst things are far far from perfect still, civil liberties are at least being improved more than they're being trodden on now which is something. This particular case is really a follow on from the Labour years that the government seemingly knew little about.
If you're worried about the effects of other countries laws spreading throughout Europe I'd suggest you be far more concerned with Italy's censorship laws and France's extremely pro-media industry laws as these look much more likely to spread across the EU.
You do realise that those are upsides of just outright not having DRM too right? For most DRM implementers that is actually a bug list, for those of us who avoid DRM, that's the status quo.
Steam could offer exactly the same things by just not having DRM.
Particularly in the UK where soaps are much higher quality productions and are held to a much higher standard than in North America, and particularly as UK series tend to be short (maybe only 7/8 episodes rather than the US' usual ~22 - 24 episodes).
Working in a soap, particularly one like Coronation Street which is about the longest running soap going and regularly wins awards is good work in the UK, not only is the salary regular but it's high too.
As I pointed out elsewhere, you can be sure that Craig Charles is earning far more and is far better known now, than he will have been when he did Red Dwarf.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll check Shift's settings when I get home, I was playing with the defaults and couldn't find an option to change, so maybe I just hadn't got far enough past the "tutorials" before I got fed up with it! I might find it more tolerable in 3rd person.
I don't think it's the aircraft obscuring targets in flight sims because I still find 3rd person easier and 1st person more of a challenge, only the difference is despite it being more of a challenge it's one I can step up to, which of course I can't in driving sims. You can see an example of Apache Air Assault and the person in the video nearly hitting the wall a few times here to compare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAHIXZweKkY&feature=related
I can only presume that I just have a better feel for flight physics both fixed and rotary wing than I do for high speed racing perhaps, as guess maybe with a bit of time and perserverence I could perhaps get better at racing games, but whether NFS: Shift, Project Gotham Racing 3, Forza 2/3 I've always struggled to beat the medium let alone hard difficulties and even some easy have been a push when first playing. I've found arcadey games which are more about ramming people offroad like NFS: Most Wanted, NFS: Hot Pursuit and Flatout: Total Carnage easier but I think that's because these games give a bit in terms of racing ability and don't expect you to be able to race round a circuit as fast for the most part because they more often focus on ramming people off the road, which I am much better at than sticking to a track and saving a split second on a corner ;)
"Also, do NOT subscribe me to your newsletter as you are consumer unfriendly, a possible DRM sympathizer"
Yes, sadly it's been a growing trend over the years though.
Ten years ago people would not have been happy with a mere CD key check that didn't check online but merely ran against an algorithm, people hated DRM that merely checked the right CD was in the drive. People really hated this kind of simple thing back then.
Nowadays people are even defending intrusive DRM- try criticising Steam and you'll get an army of Valve fanboys pounce on you with arguments such as "But it let's you install from anywhere!", "But it means you don't need a CD in the drive!" and that kind of thing completely ignoring the fact I could do these things just fine in the past without Steam too.
It's sad, but many gamers not only accept, but defend DRM sometimes now, they have actually swallowed the bullshit idea that it's somehow there for their own good, that it brings them benefits.
Still, it's nice to see a comment like yours get modded up, because at least it means there are still some people out there who despise DRM in whatever form it comes, and don't just criticise it when it's in a product they don't like whilst ignoring it in ones they do (e.g. attacking EA's DRM whilst defending Valve's) or even go as far as defending it in general with illogical arguments because they've swallowed the equally illogical sales pitch for it.
Yes, this is a major part the problem with racing games. You just can't judge the distance to a corner or the speed you're doing in a racing game simply by the context of your surroundings (other than your speedometer) like you can in real life.
I know when I'm going too fast in my car because I start to feel and hear it in the engine and the car, I can better tell my surroundings, and can more easily judge the stopping distance required.
I imagine it's largely because on a 2D screen you just can't judge depth for corners like you can in a real car. Presumably some people get better at this playing enough but I just find it hard work most the time.
I played Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Shift a fair bit over christmas, and I was fine with Hot Pursuit and started getting quite good because you can race 3rd person and it's a much more arcade style game, but I just couldn't play Shift. Forced into a drivers seat view things are just completely different.
Oddly I've always been good at the likes of Flight Sims though, and cockpit mode didn't cause me any problems here. Playing the recent Apache: Air Assault in cockpit only mode on Veteran difficulty I actually found damn good fun and online I found myself excelling at flying round canyons at speed, not crashing and pulling off some tough rocket shots as I flew by. I'm not sure why I find this so different.
Er, this already exists, and always has.
I suspect "developers" using that argument are simply trying to come up with excuses as to why they've been too lazy to adapt to a new platform, or simply aren't very knowledgeable about the platform.
Thousands of developers worldwide seem to be aware of the existence of this feature and use it succesfully already so there's really no excuse for not using it other than incompetence.
Yes, but it certainly doesn't work the other way around. Driving hasn't made me a better gamer, I still completely and utterly suck at racing games, seemingly flying off the track every 5 seconds,
Fortunately I don't do this in real life.
Perhaps being bad at racing games makes you a better driver in that you know you suck so badly at it you just generally don't bother trying to race, and instead prefer to do other things like run round shooting people and chopping them up with chainsaws... wait, no, that's not right either.
Perhaps these studies are both just shit.
"Yes, that's less than $50 for a relatively full-feature Smart Phone!"
Yes, it's an interesting development too. I picked up an Orange San Francisco (ZTE Blade) in the UK for £90 as a test phone to prat around with Android development on. I was pleasantly suprised to see it could run things like Angry Birds just fine, and looking at it specwise it's somewhere around the spec of the iPhone 3GS, in some ways better- i.e. higher resolution AMOLED screen and such.
It's interesting to see that a phone for £90 gives you everything and then some that Apple's £550 flagship phone did a year before, or even the HTC Desire which was around the same price some time before.
There's no doubt about it, this is one fucking fast moving market, and those low cost Android phones that do everything that people's high end phones bought a year before but locked into 18 - 24 month contracts can do then I expect we'll see a change in the way some people buy phones too. There's just little point locking yourself in to a 24 month contract with a phone that's going to cost you around £550 over it's life only to find it being outdone half way through your contract by a phone someone has bought contract free for £90.
I'm confused, does that mean Apple's execution of their business model in the portable media player, and online music sale markets was failure then?
Are you sure Apple wants to be second place? That sounds more like an excuse for not managing to make first place.
Yeah but even AppleTV shifted 6 million units which is no small amount, for an Apple product it's a complete flop, but compared to many products it's a decent figure. The original MacBook Air is similar in that you could fairly argue it was a flop relative to Apple's successes, but still shifted more units than your average laptop manufacturer manages with a specific model.
I think that was really his point- even Apple's shit products sell decently because Apple has a core of fanboys that will buy anything Apple no matter how crap it is. The times Apple succede are when they manage to sell beyond that core to the mainstream as they did with the iPod, and iPhone. I'm not sure if the iPad is really there yet but suspect it will be.
Apple could release an iTurd which was just a turd with an Apple logo stamped on it and it'd still shift 6 million units, and a core of people would still queue at the stores on release night.
Most companies that sell electronic gadgets have to really fight to sell 6 million units of a product, these companies will be envious of the fact Apple can throw something arguably worse out and still shift 6 million units without even really trying because of the core ultra-loyal fanbase. It's this core fanbase that really helps their more succesful product move too- the original iPhone only shifted 6 mill units, but as a quality product that was enough to set the ball rolling, whilst originally it was only really Apple's core fans that went for it when others saw it they too bought into it. In contrast, whilst these same folks bought the Apple TV and the MacBook air those devices just weren't compelling enough to catch on with the mainstream public for greater mass market sales.
It's still one of Ed Vaizey and friends pet projects regardless of his official position, the fact he's researching it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to how well supported the idea is in the rest of government.
Whether an MP has a cabinet post or not it is precisely their responsibility to look into the feasibility of any legislative ideas they wish to put forward. I'm not sure why you assume that the culture secretary looking at the feasibility of something implies it has consent from the whole government or even the whole cabinet, that's completely stupid- Vaizey is neither the PM or the party leader, it is simply not his responsibility to unilaterally determine party or government policy.
To give you an example, Vince Cable, in charge of BIS, decided some months back to propose a graduate tax, and threw his weight behind the idea and also set his staff looking into it, just because it's his area of responsibility though doesn't mean it's government policy- and it wasn't, it got dropped because it had support from near the cabinet or most of the rest of government.
There is no evidence yet that this proposal has the backing of the government as a whole or even the cabinet, it's absurd to jump to such a conclusion right now any more than it would've been to take Vince's words to mean the government was wholeheartedly behind a graduate tax scheme.
I think the idea stems from the fact that although the car theoretically has the right of way, if a car hits a pedestrian and should have been able to stop in time then the driver will be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention.
This means that even if someone is hit by a car crossing in an area not designated as a crossing then the driver can still be prosecuted if they weren't paying attention, or if they were speeding, or if they were simply being stubborn refusing to stop and so on.
So like you say it's not as if there's a law saying pedestrians have right of way, simply that motorists must allow pedestrians to cross if the pedestrian leaves you little choice and if you can stop.
I know the link you provide suggests that this doesn't happen but I can assure you it certainly does, as one of my friends was being an idiot once and decided not to slow down to scare a kid who decided to cross right in front of him into running out the way, which he unfortunately did not do, presumably guessing my friend would slow down, which he also did not do. It effectively was a game of chicken where they both lost. Still, he was only going 20 and the kid got a broken arm but was fine other than that. My friend however was charged with careless driving and was eventually given 6 points.
I think the law as it is is quite sensible though, it effectively means common sense is required from both sides- it means motorists shouldn't risk hitting pedestrians even if the pedestrians are being stupid, and it means pedestrians shouldn't be stupid- certainly they'd have little recourse if they got hit trying to cross a dual carriageway where cars are travelling 70mph and may certainly not have time to miss them.
I actually read your link (yeah, there's a thing!), and it seems to be referring to specific studies in specific locations, one study talks about Afghanistan but of course the Afghan middle class can't be considered the same as the US middle class, they're just completely different.
The link also does nothing to suggest that the people aren't unstable, even if they are middle class, and says nothing about how idealistic the people are.
I suspect you would see differences across the globe, certainly in the UK our suicide bombers on 7/7 and the failed bombers on 21/7 really were all from relatively poor backgrounds, generally having problems ranging from unemployment to depression, to drug abuse.
Those that attacked Glasgow airport were far better educated had planted bombs in London but they were timed rather than suicide attacks, and it's not clear that their airport attack was designed to be a suicide attack- certainly it only ended up that way for one of them who died from severe burns some days later after managing to set himself alight with a petrol bomb which ignited nowhere near any potential targets. The other is I believe somewhere in the legal system, presumably in jail now because he was certainly captured, and I don't believe he's killed himself.
I don't think it's generally simple to determine who is likely to become a suicide bomber, there are examples from all walks of life, but certainly it's wrong to dismiss the idea that a good proportion, if not a majority have been from poor, poorly educated, possibly mentally ill backgrounds. Certainly that has been the case in Iraq, and certainly this has been the case with many Chechnyan suicide bombers. There have certainly been a number of cases of mentally ill people used:
http://www.iraqwarlogs.com/2010/10/22/al-qaeda-abuse-of-vulnerable/
Well, pretty much all his listed games are rated well above his age also, many of them 18 rated in the UK and whatever the 18 equivalent is in the US.
Personally I'm not sure any of that matters though, largely because I was given similar freedom as a kid and it never did me any harm, and hasn't stopped me doing well for myself in life. I think it's really about teaching kids responsibility and common sense over anything else, and the issue in this case is I don't think the mother has taught that, the fact she mistakenly seems to believe he's the best gamer in the world and the fact that she's blindly believed him and is naively fighting his corner means it's not suprising this kid believes cheating is acceptable, and if you get caught you should just lie your way out of it. I suspect this kid will grow up to be quite a nightmare, but not because he's been using 18 rated content, and not because his mother gave him free reign online, but simply because his mother appears to be unwilling to punish him when he does wrong, and because judging by the number of games he has, she appears to spoil him blind.
In this sort of case, the issue is largely the use of modified save game files. You can use standard USB storage to save games nowadays, so it shouldn't be suprising that there are tools out there to write modified saved game files which put you right at the point you get the achievements to them.
It's actually been around a while, there were adapters that let you write modified save game files direct to the hard drives of XBox 360s too.
I suspect Microsoft does some kind of signing per-console or per-player or something on files when they're written to storage, and if the user loads a save file not signed to a console they've used or their account then it's flagged up to Microsoft.
So they're not necessarily using any kind of heuristics based detection as this mother would seem to suggest, it's likely just that as they said, he actually cheated, and mummy decided to make a fuss out of it without knowing the full story.
I decided to investigate a little and found his gamertag (ZOMBIE KILL67). Looking up his stats on bungie.net for Halo 3/ODST:
http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Halo3/Default.aspx?player=ZOMBIE+KILL67&sg=0
Ranked K/D Ratio: 0.84 over 1,014 games? Not that good after all then, in fact, if he can't even break even and gets killed more than he kills, that means he's worse than most other players, and that if he got banned for being too good, so would more than half of Microsoft's other subscribers.
So it really sounds more like mummy can't cope with the idea that her son is actually fairly crap, being below average, and that he likely is in fact a cheater. A case of parent/child flaw blindness I would say.
"The hearing in the article was the first time a judge ever saw a contested ACS:law filesharing case, and even then ACS tried (unsuccessfully) to drop all the cases before the the court date."
Indeed, at every step of the way ACS:Law has been trying to scare people into just giving them money, it was becoming common knowledge that their demands had no teeth and that they weren't really taking people to court, and so ACS:Law decided to up the game and see if actual real substantial threats of court action would turn that tide. What ACS:Law didn't count on was people not actually bowing down and settling, they didn't count on people actually trying to fight their case in court, and this is why they are now shitting bricks.
It's a high stakes bit of brinkmanship - one side would be set to pay hefty fees if they lose, the other would see their entire business model destroyed. ACS:Law appears to have folded first, and lost the game.
Meh, I preferred Quake, largely because those chunky gibs were just so much more pleasing, and because those knights and pink jumping things (I always just called them pig monkeys when I was a kid) were actually capable of scaring the living shit out of you when they jumped out.
Also, because shamblers actually made you shit bricks, turn around, and run away.
Duke was fun, and I spent hours fucking around with the laser trip mines with fond memories, but as soon as Quakeworld came about and I was online with it Quake captivated me for about a further 5 or 6 years thanks to DM, CTF, and eventually TF. Duke was but a distant memory to me by that point.
I remember Duke 3D vs. Quake was the XBox 360 vs. PS3 of the day. The cause of some truly epic arguments.
I agree, but so is iTunes.
Personally I hate both of them, but I see no reason why you could say Windows Media Player is worse than iTunes, at best they're both as bad as each other.
Yes, fundamentally I think those who say Apple creates "good" interfaces are confusing things.
What Apple does is produce interfaces that are a pleasure to use- they look pretty, they animate well, but the steps you have to go through to get things done are sometimes annoying and/or illogical, and every now and then (generally with regards to iTunes) even outright buggy.
It's not that Apple produces examples of good interface design, it's that it produces enjoyable interfaces. That is, they're fun to use, but not necessarily efficient to use.
To say that Apple's interfaces are any better in terms of getting things done than the likes of Microsoft's, or Google's, is more than a little dishonest IMO. What they are is more fun to use as they give more pleasing visual and audible feedback- this is often because one thing Apple ensures is that it's UIs animate smoothly.
"I think you've got a rose tinted view of the current government."
No, it's just realistic based on current actual changes.
"For an example consider that they are now actively looking into by default supplying everyone with a censored internet connection 'suitable for children', and you would have to register with your ISP to get the 'adult' internet."
Which demonstrates my viewpoint exactly. You see, what you've mentioned here is actually wrong. What was proposed, and by only a couple of ministers I might add, was that people can choose to have their internet connection censored, and choose to opt out. If you choose not to have it censored when you sign up then it would be business as usual.
There's nothing to suggest this is being seriously considered by the government as a whole, only that it's the pet project of a couple of MPs. The real test is when it comes to fruition and they vote on it in parliament- that's when we find out if it really had government support, but until then we simply do not know. I find it unlikely the Liberal Democrats would support such a move, of course they may prove me wrong, but that's the sort of test that such a scheme would have to pass and Clegg has already played a lot of his cards in the student debate, so it's unlikely he'd be able to pressure his MPs into supporting another unpopular move like this without risking an out and out rebellion.
There are always lots of fear mongering reports that completely and utterly get wrong what is being done, or what certain MPs want to be done and I prefer to base my view on what is actually being done, and thus far, the coalition government's changes have been a net positive effect for civil liberties. This is not to say there haven't been dissapointments- I'm dissapointed they dropped their pledge for anonymity for males accused of rape until they've actually been found guilty if they are found guilty for example but all in, they've certainly not made things worse yet.
It may be that this changes over time, and if it does my opinion will change with it, but right now based on what they have actually done, and are actually seriously doing (i.e. NIR destruction, the CCTV review etc.) things are certainly far more positive than negative. Compared to the sorts of things that are happening in the US, Australia and Europe I'd say the UK right now has one of the better governments when it comes to defending and improving civil liberties for the time being.
You should bear in mind that you always get ministers with pet projects that are completely idiotic, but they don't always come even close to fruition. You can't really blame the whole government until a large proportion of it actually supports such stupid measures, and it's often made worse by the fact that what the minister has actually proposed even then isn't quite as bad as sites like Slashdot make it out to be (because they've got it completely wrong).
Which is quite ironic, because I tend to find that the BBC itself actually has a greater anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian bias than Al-Jazeera does.
Al Jazeera seems to do a much better job of remaining fair and balanced.
Which Al-Jazeera?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera
or:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aljazeera.com
The latter is basically Fox News meets Islam, the former, the one in this story is more trustworthy than most Western News organisations. I've seen them give much better, more detailed, more correct stories about the rise of Islam in politics in Turkey for example.
Aljazeera.net is one of the less biased, more trustworthy sites you'll find.
Well fear not, because the UK is actually becoming more free nowadays. Things were bad throughout the last 10 - 20 years under the Labour government and got progressively worse, but since the coalition government came to power last year, whilst things are far far from perfect still, civil liberties are at least being improved more than they're being trodden on now which is something. This particular case is really a follow on from the Labour years that the government seemingly knew little about.
If you're worried about the effects of other countries laws spreading throughout Europe I'd suggest you be far more concerned with Italy's censorship laws and France's extremely pro-media industry laws as these look much more likely to spread across the EU.
"steam DRM is not that bad and has up sides
like no need for CD's.
lets you have the game on more then 1 system
no install limits"
You do realise that those are upsides of just outright not having DRM too right? For most DRM implementers that is actually a bug list, for those of us who avoid DRM, that's the status quo.
Steam could offer exactly the same things by just not having DRM.
"What sort of guarentee can you offer that it will be adequately destroyed?"
They can watch as he sets to work with his sledgehammer.
Can't say I've ever watched it but thanks for the warning, I'll make sure I put on my tinfoil hat before I surf past any channel it's on :)
Particularly in the UK where soaps are much higher quality productions and are held to a much higher standard than in North America, and particularly as UK series tend to be short (maybe only 7/8 episodes rather than the US' usual ~22 - 24 episodes).
Working in a soap, particularly one like Coronation Street which is about the longest running soap going and regularly wins awards is good work in the UK, not only is the salary regular but it's high too.
As I pointed out elsewhere, you can be sure that Craig Charles is earning far more and is far better known now, than he will have been when he did Red Dwarf.