"The world continues to chase apple -- probably for the better."
lol, did someone really just say that in the context of Objective-C? For all the things Apple has done right and does well, clinging on to Objective-C is not one of them.
"You didn't make the point how it deteriorates back, you said "nowadays Iran""
What's your point? What I said makes perfect sense, I'm not sure why you're struggling with it- making a comment about the type of leadership a nation is tending towards makes no implication about where it was historically, particularly if in recent history it has in fact been much more democratic, which it has.
"Anyway, what shah did to Iranian people can't be argued at all as better (what, more "western"? The '53 coup specifically threw that into the garbage) than the current islamic regime; relation of which to us is a classic blowback - and mostly this was (and is) a case of some representation, can very much look like it. This is the powerful force which propelled and kept Ayatollah in power. Not very encompassing when it comes to democratic processes (*), especially considering how Iran is one of the most secular places in the Middle East anyway, much more than many of our current so called "allies" there. Don't demonize its population."
Sorry, but this paragraph made no sense whatsoever and goes against pretty much everything I said. If pointing out that a population wants representation and always did hence why the Iranian revolution occured in the first place is demonising them then fuck knows what planet you come from. Certainly I didn't even suggest the Shah was in any way better than the current regime, so again I don't know where you pulled that idea from.
The point I've made all along is simply that Iran post '79 revolution was largely democratic, but that in recent years has become much more dictatorial due to election rigging, since then in response to you I pointed out that yes, you're right, prior to '79 Iran was also dictatorial, but I was merely referring to recent history. You're welcome to look into it further if you want, but you'll find it's the accepted truth about recent Iranian political history. I'm still not really sure what you're arguing as you seem to keep going off on completely random tangents, are you arguing that Iran isn't more dictatorial now than it has been over the last 20 - 30 years? are you arguing that Iran has never/always been democratic? your stance seems inconsistent with every post you make.
The culture didn't change, the leadership did with the previous leadership having enforced a culture that was not representative of the people. That's why the Western backed Shah was overthrown in the first place, '79 is the point in which Iran became representative of itself in that it's leadership was representative of the people, it's only in recent years it's once again reached the point where it's leadership is running on a different path to it's people and maintaining that standpoint through force which is precisely why I made the point that it's only in recent years that Iran has started to deteriorate back towards dictatorship.
Have a look here to see Iran's leadership mechanism in place since 1979:
You'll notice that it's actually designed to be accountable and democratic, but like all democractic systems it's fallable in the face of rigged elections, and it's precisely that that is moving Iran towards dictatorship now. Up until this point it has in fact worked in a fairly democratic manner.
Well it was a different country until 79 which is really when modern Iran came around that I was referring to. You can probably go back even further and get a completely different picture again if that's your goal.
That's not entirely true, of my two dogs, one would do this, the other will look at your finger, or just walk upto it and sniff it. One certainly was more intelligent than the other, he was very easy to train to do many tricks and such, but the other just wont learn anything beyond the absolute basics. One is without a doubt far more intelligent than the other, and the other is much more cat like in her level of "dumbness".
It clearly varies even between species of dog. I'm not sure if there's any evidence that sex matters, but having always had dogs, and having had relatives and friends with dogs throughout my life, I've always felt male dogs seem to be somewhat more intelligent, whilst female dogs seem to be a bit more primal in their actions. This specifically though could just be coincidental, and it's certainly not a truly scientific observation!
"It's hard to square serious reflections on war with mowing down vast waves of infinitely respawning Taliban with a big machinegun."
This is true, but on the same note, one of the things that ruined Black Ops for me was the fact that even in as a comical portrayal of the cold war the AI was just so bad it wasn't even fun- not only did it have the infinitely respawning hoardes mechanic, but your AI and their AI would just run right past each other literally bumping into each other without so much as flinching because the AI was possessed into pursuing the mission, and the enemy AI was possessed into pursuing you even though it hadn't yet seen you. That's before you factor in situations where the AI is firing at you a split second before you're even visible, such that on Veteran it's insta-death if you so much as turn the corner. This kind of AI as seen in Black Ops is the kind I'd expect to see from a high school AI project, not from what's now seen as the largest AAA release of the year by a major studio.
For me MoH was the better game, it wasn't a serious portrayal of course, but it had the more mature, consistent storyline, it had far superior graphics throughout, the AI was at least passable. Black Ops was just a joke, bar the jungle levels the levels looked rather dated- especially Cuba, the storyline was terrible, the AI was horrendous, and Veteran difficulty, whilst I completed it as I have with every CoD, was just mind numbing rather than a fun challenge.
For me CoD peaked with CoD4: Modern Warfare, since then it's got progressively worse, CoD5: WaW was pretty good but not quite MW, and MW2 was pretty poor (nuclear weapons in multiplayer, really? what 5 year old did they bring in to think that one up?), Black Ops is really the bottom of the pit for the series so far, compared to MW2 even the multiplayer looks to be severely lacking.
MoH was at least a refreshing change in that the game modes in multiplayer, particularly Combat Mission was a nice addition over CoD's tired old skilless spray and prey fest, which is fun sometimes, but gets dull. The singleplayer graphics, playability, and storyline, was at least on par with CoD5: WaW but was certainly no MW that's true.
If anything my complaint with MoH is simply that there wasn't enough of it, there just wasn't enough content- the campaign was done in 5 hours, and the Combat Mission multiplayer mode had a miserable 3 maps only. At least with Black Ops you get a fuck ton of content I suppose, but it's the first time a CoD game has come out and rather than being hooked on the multiplayer constantly post-campaign I'm now busy playing games like Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and fucking around with EA's Create. MoH at least had me hooked to multiplayer for a few weeks, Black Ops I gave it a couple of evening's worth and just haven't wasted my time with it's monotony since. It's a shame, I think Activision's CoD studios know it's a guaranteed money spinner either way now, and just don't even bother to try hard anymore like they clearly did with MW and WaW.
Here's hoping EA doesn't give up on the new style MoH franchise after one try and continues to build it up, if they improve it and CoD continues to decline they may well be producing their own MW quality game and giving Activision a reason to care about game quality again rather than rush shit out for the sake of getting their yearly release out there.
Not really, Iran previously changed it's leadership fairly frequently, it's only in recent years with rigged elections that it's truly turned into a dictatorship. That's effectively the defining moment where Iran went from an admittedly very bad democracy, to a dictatorship.
Is that really because you're caught between the US and the rest of the world though, or is it merely something you inherited from the UK?
I ask because that's how it is in the UK too, like you say people measure height in feet and inches, and as with your example, few could relate someone's height to metres. You at least use kilometres for distance and km/h for speed in your cars which we do not. A large part of our move to the metric system for other things centres around increased integration with Europe.
Personally though, for me, I couldn't care less what we use as long as a pint is kept a pint- then I'm happy.
I don't think that's true, China's leadership nowadays is quite rational. There's a strong show of support for increased freedoms and civil liberties there, but the problem is how do they introduce that without the country caving in and possibly making China a massive battleground of civil war and bloodshed? If they blanket introduce the kind of freedoms people have in the West then it'll open the door for massive violent revolt in places like the Tibetan and Xinjang provinces. This is why China is resisting US pressure to allow their currency to devalue- because China's tactic is to slowly and steadily increase overall wealth of the population, and with that, as people get happier and wealthier, open up their freedoms gently, because if people are happy they have little reason to revolt. It may be that places like Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjang separate anyway eventually, but if it's done in a peaceful political way then it's much less a worry because there's much less chance of the Chinese government themselves being overthrown too.
The point is it's working too, whilst China is certainly still guilty of gross human rights violations, the Chinese population is on average far better educated, far more well off, and most importantly- has far greater freedoms than it did even 10 years ago.
China is moving in the right direction, but it's planning to do it over the longer term, calls for short term, near instant change are not helpful because they create a massive risk of instability and that really would be a tragedy with a country the size of China- you just don't want a country that size falling into chaos. The Chinese government's steady steady approach certainly seems sensible, even if it does mean a continuation of strict control of some freedoms and oppression in some regions for a little while longer.
This is also why China wont go to war with other countries, because if they do they'll be overcomitted and find themselves no longer able to contain the violent separatist problem within their own borders. China may well not have a democracy like we have in the West, but their leadership is very much aware of the problem of dictators- they still change their leadership every 5 years for this reason, so they're certainly not in the same category as the likes of North Korea, Burma, Cuba, or nowadays, Iran where the leader is kept in power indefinitely until taken down by ill health and then passed on to family. Leadership in China is not quite so dictatorial, there's a concious understanding that having a single, unquestionable dictator is bad.
If by finish you mean they haven't got the achievement to run round the game world 200 times looking in every crevice possible for the last magical flashing blob that must be collected then the answer is because this is the most fucking awful game mechanic that has been put in modern games since, well, forever.
If it's that they're not finishing the main story line, then well, it's probably something else altogether, like, people simply being fickle.
Personally though I think I finish more games now than I used to. Here's a question though, sure they have stats now like only 50% of people completing Mass Effect, but how do they know more people used to finish games when those games were nearly always offline and hence they have no way of measuring completion rates of old games? Are they sure they're not just assuming people used to finish more games?
"You do understand that most people won't be made aware that it's happening hence they won't know to turn it off or unplug it?"
Yes, but I also understand most people wont care. Just like around 9% of the entire world's population (which is a lot when you consider a large portion are too poor to have internet access) simply don't give a fuck when handing over all their personal details to Facebook to sell on.
You assume people actually care about their privacy, they don't until it comes to bite them (i.e. identity fraud) and as that happens to only a negligible portion of the population it has no effect on making the rest of the population care.
Besides, is there any evidence Kinect does anything other than track people whilst it's in use? Privacy abuses by Google have been rife with their street view antics, and about all they got for even collecting the wifi data was a slap on the wrist and a "don't do it again" comment, you think it'll decrease the amount of people using Google services even at all? No. You think the countless dramas with Facebook privacy did anything to slow it's growth? No.
I agree with you it's bad, I disagree that people will give a toss. Those that do will know to unplug it (or not even buy it at all, like me, despite being a big fan of the 360), those that don't are already cheerfully throwing away every last semblance of privacy they ever had anyway, Kinect is just another tool of many to help them bask in their ignorance and achieve that.
Except it's not keeping them on top, because Android is outselling the iOS month on month by quite a large margin nowadays, and with each month that passes the lead in sales for Android is growing by quite a big amount.
You may be right that it's not the features that matter, but something is making Android a much more popular choice right now, so whatever it is Woz's core point seems to have some grounding.
It had a 7 million unit lead over iOS' 13 million this last quarter- that's quite a large margin, in fact, it's 1 million units more than the original iPhone sold through it's entire lifetime. It'd require something quite dramatic to happen to Android or iOS for the trend to reverse at a pace large enough to allow Apple to maintain growth over Android.
Precisely because the people behind it don't want it to die. They want to keep it in the public mindset that "Assange is a rapist", not "Assange was the media figure who helped expose US military abuse, incompetence, and murder".
Fortunately there's no law and hence no enforcement preventing you from unplugging your network cable and/or Kinect when it suits to prevent this ever being a problem.
I think it's a little short sighted when people give a choice between the yanks and the Israelis- is there any reason to think it couldn't equally have been a European intelligence agency? the British and the French (particularly the French over the last year or two) have been similarly critical of Iran. Is the use of Korean certificates coincidence? could South Korean intelligence have been involved given their own battle against a nuclear neighbour that has no doubt shared information and possibly resources with Iran to support each other's nuclear ambitions?
I think it's silly to speculate at all as to who was involved- we can't even discount Russia, who similarly have no interest in seeing Iran acquire nuclear weapons and possibly have them leak to extremists- many Westerners miss the fact that Russia has been battling an Islamic insurgency in it's own back yard for at least a couple of decades now, an insurgency which, as demonstrated by the Beslan hostage taking of hundreds of school children and wiring the room in which they were in with explosives, is equally as brutal as anything the West has seen. There's also the point that Iran's civilian nuclear programme depends on Russian expertise, so any failure on the civilian side by Iran's nuclear programme would surely mean more trade for Russian expertise on the civilian side of things.
There's just too many people in the world with a vested interest in seeing Iran's enrichment programme crippled, least of all the Israelis, who, as they demonstrated in the past with Syria and Iraq, would gladly just bomb the shit out of a nuclear complex if they perceive it to be a threat rather than waste time with likely ineffective sabotage. Some may say "but Iran is more of a threat so they wouldn't dare" but that completely discounts how strong Iraq's military was in the early 70s- it was certainly a bigger threat to Israel then, than Iran is now.
As well as the questions you pose, I'd argue there are other pressing political questions too - through which route did Iran acquire Western equipment for Uranium enrichment when there is supposed to be an embargo on such things? Is someone or some firm covertly supplying in contravention of the embargo?
Just donate to Bletchley if you're interested, they're the experts at handling this kind of material and making it available for the public, better to let them do it and give them your money.
There's a hell of a lot wrong with this country but that's not one of the problems. The UK has been one of the most active in the world in dealing with the problem of arranged marriages, and other abuse. We've been pouring a fortune into it with a number of high profile convictions, as well as countless other cases of assisting people in getting out of those kind of situations. Our country even intervenes politically and legally as far as it can in situations where people have been taken to other countries, such as Pakistan to be married on.
Perhaps the reason you hear about the UK in this context is precisely because we're one of the few countries in the world that does deal with the problem rather than sweep it under the carpet. We even have specific precedent whereby if someone has been pushed into an arrange marriage they can have it anulled specifically on that basis without having to worry about the usual divorce proceedings-
If you were looking for a reason to slag off the UK, this wasn't it. Pick one of the thousands of other reasons, like, I don't know, perhaps the fact people are being arrested merely for saying something on Twitter as in TFA?
I love how many Steam fans there are that defend it, it's pretty fucking sickening. When did DRM become acceptable in any way on an open platform like the PC? When did a 3rd party controlling what you do with your software become allowed? DRM still doesn't work (and frankly can't work on an open platform) - pirates still get round it every fucking release, so why do they waste our time with it? Well, that was a rhetorical question, you don't need to answer that- it's to stop second hand sales and maintain direct control and auditing over what the user does with their product and has no relation whatsoever to piracy, but there you go.
Despite that I have zero sympathy for retailers in this article either if they're retailers like GAME. When I bought a game that required Steam activation for DRM originally (which wasn't stated on the box) I had activation problems and couldn't play a game that I bought for a while in store- this was unacceptable to me, the whole reason I bought in store was so I could own what I pay for as I do with every other physical object I buy from cars to toasters. I complained to GAME and got a typical politically correct response "The DRM features in games are there for your own good and to protect you from piracy" kind of bullshit. In my e-mail I pointed out to them it wasn't in their interest for products to be tied to a platform like Steam for DRM as it removed all point in me buying from them in the first place, yet got that response. As such they only have themselves to blame- they can't say they weren't warned, certainly I made clear the dangers to their business model the first time games came out with this type of Steam linkage and they ignored it and told me it was for my own good. This was also the point at which I ceased purchase of any product from GAME too, a company who is struggling to achieve decent financial results nowadays.
So er, tough shit retailers, you made your bed, now fucking lie in it. Me? I'm quite happy with the fact that the rise in DRM and decrease in amount and quality of "AAA" PC titles has allowed for a massive resurgence in indie games - thanks Valve et al., for killing your market and opening the door for the smaller players.
"While it's not something you can set hard and fast rules about, it's usually pretty clear if the DLC is reasonable or not. If you can enjoy the entire game experience without the DLC and are not left feeling like there were big gaps or that you are in some way disadvantaged by not having a DLC map or peiece of equipment, then that's fine. The DLC in that case will live or die on how useful/good it is."
I don't know that it is, this is the point. To me the MW2 DLC was completely unreasonable, 800 or 1200 Microsoft points or whatever for 4 maps, 2 of which were already release in the old MW? That seems grossly unreasonable, yet apparently millions disagree- this is the point, people's viewpoints on whether DLC is worthwhile or not cover such a vast spectrum it seems hard to really have any guage of what is and isn't acceptable. I'd like to say the more developers take the piss the less popular DLC will be and you could use that as a guage, but again, apparently not - the MW2 DLC is the most prominent example.
"For those who haven't played the game, the sanctuary is effectively your options menu, map and inventory combined - yes that's right, they nag me to buy content EVERY TIME I USE MY INVENTORY"
I honestly never realised this was what he was on about, I thought he was on about some in sanctuary shop you could buy items for your character using game money, I just played through the game and never paid attention to this feature.
"these are the same people who, in Fable 2, took key items required to obtain all the achievements for the main game and made them only available through DLC purchases (in contravention of MS's policy that all achievements in a release game must be obtainable without the need to buy DLC - they claimed that it wasn't in breach of the rules because a friend could gift you the items you needed"
Can you remind me what this was? I got 1000/1000 Gamerscore on Fable II and don't recall paying for any DLC, there was an annoying achievement about trading some dolls or something odd but I don't recall that being related to DLC either? I thought it was random as to who got what or something.
But where do you draw the line? Borderlands released extra content as DLC- some of it was mostly based on existing art assets such as the arena based content, but other DLC had a lot of new content- the zombie island release.
You could argue that both these should've been in the game at release, you could argue that the arena one should, or you can argue that both are worthwhile bits of additional content.
The problem is that some people will claim it should all have been included in the game, but then as the game was full of content in the first place - more than a lot of games - then what incentive would there be for developers to create that content in the first place? They'd already made enough for a complete retail release.
Assassins Creed 2 had DLC which covered a "missing strand" of the storyline, but the missing strand didn't effect the retail storyline- some would argue this is part the game so should be free, but again, AC2 was a far longer, far more detailed game than the vast majority of other games out there- should it really have been free?
A lot of calls for DLC to be part of the game seem to simply be people just wanting more free shit, a sense of entitlement to something despite much resources having to be invested in that content.
This isn't to say some DLC is completely unfair, but it's hard to filter out complaints that are valid from those that aren't, and with the line blurred and largely subjective as to what is acceptable as DLC and what isn't then it's not likely to get resolved any time soon. Worse, some of the most succesful DLC in history is MW2's map packs, yet 2 out of 4 maps or whatever are just maps from existing CoD games re-released, despite this it's succesful because people pay for it- if millions of people are buying that crap then what are we to expect? The article complains about just this sort of thing but it's not like content descriptions aren't accurate- it was stated from the outset what is included in DLC content packs like this yet still people pay for it.
I'd say DLC is often far from a scam, some DLC I've paid for has been well worth it, some of it not so. I think it's perfectly valid- The Orange Box on the 360 had HL2, Episode 1, Episode 2, TF2, and Portal - it would make sense that Episode 3 (if Valve ever release it) is DLC rather than a new release, I certainly don't need a new disc for it. I'd never have expected more from AC2 - I think I certainly got my money's worth from that game, so releasing the extra content as DLC was fine for me.
The real question has to be when you buy a game, "Does this game have enough content to justify purchase?", if yes, and DLC later comes out, you have to ask the same about the DLC. If it's no to either question yet you buy it anyway, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on to complain- it's your own fault, it's not like there isn't a ton of information out there about how much content each game or DLC pack actually has.
"But database names like "globalops" and "livechat" inspires no confidence at all. Imagine if this hacker didn't deface the site, but made a script that silently reads and forwards information out of those databases to the highest bidder..."
Yeah, I mean, imagine the fortunes he could amass by selling details that were publicly available on their site as part of the site's information on their current global operations:
Oh wait, you mean you thought there was more to those databases than that? No, it really is just a "look at my cat!" website I'm afraid, other than a few technical details and accounts and passwords of the website maintainers the only vulnerability is defacement. I'd say that's not too bad a job by the RN myself, sure the SQL injection attack is a fuck up but clearly they have sensible security measures and policies in place such that if an internet facing site is compromised, then that's all that is compromised- the public facing information and little else.
There's nothing smart or special about what the kid did or accessed. It was just another run of the mill SQL injection attack which can be carried out by anyone with a basic understanding of SQL and maybe a scripting language to assist. The only news is that people are still writing code vulnerable to this sort of attack, but if we assume that even only 5% of software developers are incompetent (which is an unrealistically low figure), then that means even if each website only has one developer that that's 1 in 20 sites that are going to end up vulnerable in some way or another, if the teams are bigger, it'll probably be more common than 1 in 20 so it's not even really news.
It's really just another story about a script kiddie boosting his ego by doing something that's been done a thousand times before, and requires only a moderate level of technical competence to achieve. Honestly, in cases like this it's not that there aren't millions of other people who could trivially do what this kid did, it's just most people realise the possible penalty- jail time, extradition, that sort of thing, just isn't worth the ego boost. For some kids who aren't too bright though like this kid, it apparently is. Hopefully some jail time will bring him back down to Earth.
In fact, he chose about the most prominent two companies in the IT world that do use Java. Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and I believe even Amazon, do not use Java.
I've not seen any issues with lag in the menu system or anything like that, but I agree the new design is horrible, but then, I never liked it since the original 360 dashboard personally.
Slashdot Mirror
"The world continues to chase apple -- probably for the better."
lol, did someone really just say that in the context of Objective-C? For all the things Apple has done right and does well, clinging on to Objective-C is not one of them.
"You didn't make the point how it deteriorates back, you said "nowadays Iran""
What's your point? What I said makes perfect sense, I'm not sure why you're struggling with it- making a comment about the type of leadership a nation is tending towards makes no implication about where it was historically, particularly if in recent history it has in fact been much more democratic, which it has.
"Anyway, what shah did to Iranian people can't be argued at all as better (what, more "western"? The '53 coup specifically threw that into the garbage) than the current islamic regime; relation of which to us is a classic blowback - and mostly this was (and is) a case of some representation, can very much look like it. This is the powerful force which propelled and kept Ayatollah in power. Not very encompassing when it comes to democratic processes (*), especially considering how Iran is one of the most secular places in the Middle East anyway, much more than many of our current so called "allies" there. Don't demonize its population."
Sorry, but this paragraph made no sense whatsoever and goes against pretty much everything I said. If pointing out that a population wants representation and always did hence why the Iranian revolution occured in the first place is demonising them then fuck knows what planet you come from. Certainly I didn't even suggest the Shah was in any way better than the current regime, so again I don't know where you pulled that idea from.
The point I've made all along is simply that Iran post '79 revolution was largely democratic, but that in recent years has become much more dictatorial due to election rigging, since then in response to you I pointed out that yes, you're right, prior to '79 Iran was also dictatorial, but I was merely referring to recent history. You're welcome to look into it further if you want, but you'll find it's the accepted truth about recent Iranian political history. I'm still not really sure what you're arguing as you seem to keep going off on completely random tangents, are you arguing that Iran isn't more dictatorial now than it has been over the last 20 - 30 years? are you arguing that Iran has never/always been democratic? your stance seems inconsistent with every post you make.
The culture didn't change, the leadership did with the previous leadership having enforced a culture that was not representative of the people. That's why the Western backed Shah was overthrown in the first place, '79 is the point in which Iran became representative of itself in that it's leadership was representative of the people, it's only in recent years it's once again reached the point where it's leadership is running on a different path to it's people and maintaining that standpoint through force which is precisely why I made the point that it's only in recent years that Iran has started to deteriorate back towards dictatorship.
Have a look here to see Iran's leadership mechanism in place since 1979:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8051750.stm
You'll notice that it's actually designed to be accountable and democratic, but like all democractic systems it's fallable in the face of rigged elections, and it's precisely that that is moving Iran towards dictatorship now. Up until this point it has in fact worked in a fairly democratic manner.
Well it was a different country until 79 which is really when modern Iran came around that I was referring to. You can probably go back even further and get a completely different picture again if that's your goal.
That's not entirely true, of my two dogs, one would do this, the other will look at your finger, or just walk upto it and sniff it. One certainly was more intelligent than the other, he was very easy to train to do many tricks and such, but the other just wont learn anything beyond the absolute basics. One is without a doubt far more intelligent than the other, and the other is much more cat like in her level of "dumbness".
It clearly varies even between species of dog. I'm not sure if there's any evidence that sex matters, but having always had dogs, and having had relatives and friends with dogs throughout my life, I've always felt male dogs seem to be somewhat more intelligent, whilst female dogs seem to be a bit more primal in their actions. This specifically though could just be coincidental, and it's certainly not a truly scientific observation!
"It's hard to square serious reflections on war with mowing down vast waves of infinitely respawning Taliban with a big machinegun."
This is true, but on the same note, one of the things that ruined Black Ops for me was the fact that even in as a comical portrayal of the cold war the AI was just so bad it wasn't even fun- not only did it have the infinitely respawning hoardes mechanic, but your AI and their AI would just run right past each other literally bumping into each other without so much as flinching because the AI was possessed into pursuing the mission, and the enemy AI was possessed into pursuing you even though it hadn't yet seen you. That's before you factor in situations where the AI is firing at you a split second before you're even visible, such that on Veteran it's insta-death if you so much as turn the corner. This kind of AI as seen in Black Ops is the kind I'd expect to see from a high school AI project, not from what's now seen as the largest AAA release of the year by a major studio.
For me MoH was the better game, it wasn't a serious portrayal of course, but it had the more mature, consistent storyline, it had far superior graphics throughout, the AI was at least passable. Black Ops was just a joke, bar the jungle levels the levels looked rather dated- especially Cuba, the storyline was terrible, the AI was horrendous, and Veteran difficulty, whilst I completed it as I have with every CoD, was just mind numbing rather than a fun challenge.
For me CoD peaked with CoD4: Modern Warfare, since then it's got progressively worse, CoD5: WaW was pretty good but not quite MW, and MW2 was pretty poor (nuclear weapons in multiplayer, really? what 5 year old did they bring in to think that one up?), Black Ops is really the bottom of the pit for the series so far, compared to MW2 even the multiplayer looks to be severely lacking.
MoH was at least a refreshing change in that the game modes in multiplayer, particularly Combat Mission was a nice addition over CoD's tired old skilless spray and prey fest, which is fun sometimes, but gets dull. The singleplayer graphics, playability, and storyline, was at least on par with CoD5: WaW but was certainly no MW that's true.
If anything my complaint with MoH is simply that there wasn't enough of it, there just wasn't enough content- the campaign was done in 5 hours, and the Combat Mission multiplayer mode had a miserable 3 maps only. At least with Black Ops you get a fuck ton of content I suppose, but it's the first time a CoD game has come out and rather than being hooked on the multiplayer constantly post-campaign I'm now busy playing games like Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and fucking around with EA's Create. MoH at least had me hooked to multiplayer for a few weeks, Black Ops I gave it a couple of evening's worth and just haven't wasted my time with it's monotony since. It's a shame, I think Activision's CoD studios know it's a guaranteed money spinner either way now, and just don't even bother to try hard anymore like they clearly did with MW and WaW.
Here's hoping EA doesn't give up on the new style MoH franchise after one try and continues to build it up, if they improve it and CoD continues to decline they may well be producing their own MW quality game and giving Activision a reason to care about game quality again rather than rush shit out for the sake of getting their yearly release out there.
In this sort of context, anything other than zero results is "embarassingly large".
Not really, Iran previously changed it's leadership fairly frequently, it's only in recent years with rigged elections that it's truly turned into a dictatorship. That's effectively the defining moment where Iran went from an admittedly very bad democracy, to a dictatorship.
"Assuming the article is factually correct"
It wont be, it's The Daily Mail.
Is that really because you're caught between the US and the rest of the world though, or is it merely something you inherited from the UK?
I ask because that's how it is in the UK too, like you say people measure height in feet and inches, and as with your example, few could relate someone's height to metres. You at least use kilometres for distance and km/h for speed in your cars which we do not. A large part of our move to the metric system for other things centres around increased integration with Europe.
Personally though, for me, I couldn't care less what we use as long as a pint is kept a pint- then I'm happy.
I don't think that's true, China's leadership nowadays is quite rational. There's a strong show of support for increased freedoms and civil liberties there, but the problem is how do they introduce that without the country caving in and possibly making China a massive battleground of civil war and bloodshed? If they blanket introduce the kind of freedoms people have in the West then it'll open the door for massive violent revolt in places like the Tibetan and Xinjang provinces. This is why China is resisting US pressure to allow their currency to devalue- because China's tactic is to slowly and steadily increase overall wealth of the population, and with that, as people get happier and wealthier, open up their freedoms gently, because if people are happy they have little reason to revolt. It may be that places like Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjang separate anyway eventually, but if it's done in a peaceful political way then it's much less a worry because there's much less chance of the Chinese government themselves being overthrown too.
The point is it's working too, whilst China is certainly still guilty of gross human rights violations, the Chinese population is on average far better educated, far more well off, and most importantly- has far greater freedoms than it did even 10 years ago.
China is moving in the right direction, but it's planning to do it over the longer term, calls for short term, near instant change are not helpful because they create a massive risk of instability and that really would be a tragedy with a country the size of China- you just don't want a country that size falling into chaos. The Chinese government's steady steady approach certainly seems sensible, even if it does mean a continuation of strict control of some freedoms and oppression in some regions for a little while longer.
This is also why China wont go to war with other countries, because if they do they'll be overcomitted and find themselves no longer able to contain the violent separatist problem within their own borders. China may well not have a democracy like we have in the West, but their leadership is very much aware of the problem of dictators- they still change their leadership every 5 years for this reason, so they're certainly not in the same category as the likes of North Korea, Burma, Cuba, or nowadays, Iran where the leader is kept in power indefinitely until taken down by ill health and then passed on to family. Leadership in China is not quite so dictatorial, there's a concious understanding that having a single, unquestionable dictator is bad.
If by finish you mean they haven't got the achievement to run round the game world 200 times looking in every crevice possible for the last magical flashing blob that must be collected then the answer is because this is the most fucking awful game mechanic that has been put in modern games since, well, forever.
If it's that they're not finishing the main story line, then well, it's probably something else altogether, like, people simply being fickle.
Personally though I think I finish more games now than I used to. Here's a question though, sure they have stats now like only 50% of people completing Mass Effect, but how do they know more people used to finish games when those games were nearly always offline and hence they have no way of measuring completion rates of old games? Are they sure they're not just assuming people used to finish more games?
"You do understand that most people won't be made aware that it's happening hence they won't know to turn it off or unplug it?"
Yes, but I also understand most people wont care. Just like around 9% of the entire world's population (which is a lot when you consider a large portion are too poor to have internet access) simply don't give a fuck when handing over all their personal details to Facebook to sell on.
You assume people actually care about their privacy, they don't until it comes to bite them (i.e. identity fraud) and as that happens to only a negligible portion of the population it has no effect on making the rest of the population care.
Besides, is there any evidence Kinect does anything other than track people whilst it's in use? Privacy abuses by Google have been rife with their street view antics, and about all they got for even collecting the wifi data was a slap on the wrist and a "don't do it again" comment, you think it'll decrease the amount of people using Google services even at all? No. You think the countless dramas with Facebook privacy did anything to slow it's growth? No.
I agree with you it's bad, I disagree that people will give a toss. Those that do will know to unplug it (or not even buy it at all, like me, despite being a big fan of the 360), those that don't are already cheerfully throwing away every last semblance of privacy they ever had anyway, Kinect is just another tool of many to help them bask in their ignorance and achieve that.
Except it's not keeping them on top, because Android is outselling the iOS month on month by quite a large margin nowadays, and with each month that passes the lead in sales for Android is growing by quite a big amount.
You may be right that it's not the features that matter, but something is making Android a much more popular choice right now, so whatever it is Woz's core point seems to have some grounding.
See here:
http://designtaxi.com/news/33380/Android-Number-2-Smartphone-OS-Worldwide/
It had a 7 million unit lead over iOS' 13 million this last quarter- that's quite a large margin, in fact, it's 1 million units more than the original iPhone sold through it's entire lifetime. It'd require something quite dramatic to happen to Android or iOS for the trend to reverse at a pace large enough to allow Apple to maintain growth over Android.
Precisely because the people behind it don't want it to die. They want to keep it in the public mindset that "Assange is a rapist", not "Assange was the media figure who helped expose US military abuse, incompetence, and murder".
Fortunately there's no law and hence no enforcement preventing you from unplugging your network cable and/or Kinect when it suits to prevent this ever being a problem.
I think it's a little short sighted when people give a choice between the yanks and the Israelis- is there any reason to think it couldn't equally have been a European intelligence agency? the British and the French (particularly the French over the last year or two) have been similarly critical of Iran. Is the use of Korean certificates coincidence? could South Korean intelligence have been involved given their own battle against a nuclear neighbour that has no doubt shared information and possibly resources with Iran to support each other's nuclear ambitions?
I think it's silly to speculate at all as to who was involved- we can't even discount Russia, who similarly have no interest in seeing Iran acquire nuclear weapons and possibly have them leak to extremists- many Westerners miss the fact that Russia has been battling an Islamic insurgency in it's own back yard for at least a couple of decades now, an insurgency which, as demonstrated by the Beslan hostage taking of hundreds of school children and wiring the room in which they were in with explosives, is equally as brutal as anything the West has seen. There's also the point that Iran's civilian nuclear programme depends on Russian expertise, so any failure on the civilian side by Iran's nuclear programme would surely mean more trade for Russian expertise on the civilian side of things.
There's just too many people in the world with a vested interest in seeing Iran's enrichment programme crippled, least of all the Israelis, who, as they demonstrated in the past with Syria and Iraq, would gladly just bomb the shit out of a nuclear complex if they perceive it to be a threat rather than waste time with likely ineffective sabotage. Some may say "but Iran is more of a threat so they wouldn't dare" but that completely discounts how strong Iraq's military was in the early 70s- it was certainly a bigger threat to Israel then, than Iran is now.
As well as the questions you pose, I'd argue there are other pressing political questions too - through which route did Iran acquire Western equipment for Uranium enrichment when there is supposed to be an embargo on such things? Is someone or some firm covertly supplying in contravention of the embargo?
Just donate to Bletchley if you're interested, they're the experts at handling this kind of material and making it available for the public, better to let them do it and give them your money.
Are you fucking kidding?
There's a hell of a lot wrong with this country but that's not one of the problems. The UK has been one of the most active in the world in dealing with the problem of arranged marriages, and other abuse. We've been pouring a fortune into it with a number of high profile convictions, as well as countless other cases of assisting people in getting out of those kind of situations. Our country even intervenes politically and legally as far as it can in situations where people have been taken to other countries, such as Pakistan to be married on.
Perhaps the reason you hear about the UK in this context is precisely because we're one of the few countries in the world that does deal with the problem rather than sweep it under the carpet. We even have specific precedent whereby if someone has been pushed into an arrange marriage they can have it anulled specifically on that basis without having to worry about the usual divorce proceedings-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/teenager-wins-battle-to-annul-arranged-marriage-658001.html
If you were looking for a reason to slag off the UK, this wasn't it. Pick one of the thousands of other reasons, like, I don't know, perhaps the fact people are being arrested merely for saying something on Twitter as in TFA?
I love how many Steam fans there are that defend it, it's pretty fucking sickening. When did DRM become acceptable in any way on an open platform like the PC? When did a 3rd party controlling what you do with your software become allowed? DRM still doesn't work (and frankly can't work on an open platform) - pirates still get round it every fucking release, so why do they waste our time with it? Well, that was a rhetorical question, you don't need to answer that- it's to stop second hand sales and maintain direct control and auditing over what the user does with their product and has no relation whatsoever to piracy, but there you go.
Despite that I have zero sympathy for retailers in this article either if they're retailers like GAME. When I bought a game that required Steam activation for DRM originally (which wasn't stated on the box) I had activation problems and couldn't play a game that I bought for a while in store- this was unacceptable to me, the whole reason I bought in store was so I could own what I pay for as I do with every other physical object I buy from cars to toasters. I complained to GAME and got a typical politically correct response "The DRM features in games are there for your own good and to protect you from piracy" kind of bullshit. In my e-mail I pointed out to them it wasn't in their interest for products to be tied to a platform like Steam for DRM as it removed all point in me buying from them in the first place, yet got that response. As such they only have themselves to blame- they can't say they weren't warned, certainly I made clear the dangers to their business model the first time games came out with this type of Steam linkage and they ignored it and told me it was for my own good. This was also the point at which I ceased purchase of any product from GAME too, a company who is struggling to achieve decent financial results nowadays.
So er, tough shit retailers, you made your bed, now fucking lie in it. Me? I'm quite happy with the fact that the rise in DRM and decrease in amount and quality of "AAA" PC titles has allowed for a massive resurgence in indie games - thanks Valve et al., for killing your market and opening the door for the smaller players.
"While it's not something you can set hard and fast rules about, it's usually pretty clear if the DLC is reasonable or not. If you can enjoy the entire game experience without the DLC and are not left feeling like there were big gaps or that you are in some way disadvantaged by not having a DLC map or peiece of equipment, then that's fine. The DLC in that case will live or die on how useful/good it is."
I don't know that it is, this is the point. To me the MW2 DLC was completely unreasonable, 800 or 1200 Microsoft points or whatever for 4 maps, 2 of which were already release in the old MW? That seems grossly unreasonable, yet apparently millions disagree- this is the point, people's viewpoints on whether DLC is worthwhile or not cover such a vast spectrum it seems hard to really have any guage of what is and isn't acceptable. I'd like to say the more developers take the piss the less popular DLC will be and you could use that as a guage, but again, apparently not - the MW2 DLC is the most prominent example.
"For those who haven't played the game, the sanctuary is effectively your options menu, map and inventory combined - yes that's right, they nag me to buy content EVERY TIME I USE MY INVENTORY"
I honestly never realised this was what he was on about, I thought he was on about some in sanctuary shop you could buy items for your character using game money, I just played through the game and never paid attention to this feature.
"these are the same people who, in Fable 2, took key items required to obtain all the achievements for the main game and made them only available through DLC purchases (in contravention of MS's policy that all achievements in a release game must be obtainable without the need to buy DLC - they claimed that it wasn't in breach of the rules because a friend could gift you the items you needed"
Can you remind me what this was? I got 1000/1000 Gamerscore on Fable II and don't recall paying for any DLC, there was an annoying achievement about trading some dolls or something odd but I don't recall that being related to DLC either? I thought it was random as to who got what or something.
But where do you draw the line? Borderlands released extra content as DLC- some of it was mostly based on existing art assets such as the arena based content, but other DLC had a lot of new content- the zombie island release.
You could argue that both these should've been in the game at release, you could argue that the arena one should, or you can argue that both are worthwhile bits of additional content.
The problem is that some people will claim it should all have been included in the game, but then as the game was full of content in the first place - more than a lot of games - then what incentive would there be for developers to create that content in the first place? They'd already made enough for a complete retail release.
Assassins Creed 2 had DLC which covered a "missing strand" of the storyline, but the missing strand didn't effect the retail storyline- some would argue this is part the game so should be free, but again, AC2 was a far longer, far more detailed game than the vast majority of other games out there- should it really have been free?
A lot of calls for DLC to be part of the game seem to simply be people just wanting more free shit, a sense of entitlement to something despite much resources having to be invested in that content.
This isn't to say some DLC is completely unfair, but it's hard to filter out complaints that are valid from those that aren't, and with the line blurred and largely subjective as to what is acceptable as DLC and what isn't then it's not likely to get resolved any time soon. Worse, some of the most succesful DLC in history is MW2's map packs, yet 2 out of 4 maps or whatever are just maps from existing CoD games re-released, despite this it's succesful because people pay for it- if millions of people are buying that crap then what are we to expect? The article complains about just this sort of thing but it's not like content descriptions aren't accurate- it was stated from the outset what is included in DLC content packs like this yet still people pay for it.
I'd say DLC is often far from a scam, some DLC I've paid for has been well worth it, some of it not so. I think it's perfectly valid- The Orange Box on the 360 had HL2, Episode 1, Episode 2, TF2, and Portal - it would make sense that Episode 3 (if Valve ever release it) is DLC rather than a new release, I certainly don't need a new disc for it. I'd never have expected more from AC2 - I think I certainly got my money's worth from that game, so releasing the extra content as DLC was fine for me.
The real question has to be when you buy a game, "Does this game have enough content to justify purchase?", if yes, and DLC later comes out, you have to ask the same about the DLC. If it's no to either question yet you buy it anyway, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on to complain- it's your own fault, it's not like there isn't a ton of information out there about how much content each game or DLC pack actually has.
"But database names like "globalops" and "livechat" inspires no confidence at all. Imagine if this hacker didn't deface the site, but made a script that silently reads and forwards information out of those databases to the highest bidder..."
Yeah, I mean, imagine the fortunes he could amass by selling details that were publicly available on their site as part of the site's information on their current global operations:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KdouvXaAGLoJ:www.royalnavy.mod.uk/globalops/+Royal+Navy+Global+Ops&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
Or if he sold out talks by Royal Navy personnel stored as recruitment propaganda on the site! -
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tF1U_1cyHKEJ:www.royalnavy.mod.uk/careers/live-chat/+Royal+Navy+Live+chat&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
Oh wait, you mean you thought there was more to those databases than that? No, it really is just a "look at my cat!" website I'm afraid, other than a few technical details and accounts and passwords of the website maintainers the only vulnerability is defacement. I'd say that's not too bad a job by the RN myself, sure the SQL injection attack is a fuck up but clearly they have sensible security measures and policies in place such that if an internet facing site is compromised, then that's all that is compromised- the public facing information and little else.
There's nothing smart or special about what the kid did or accessed. It was just another run of the mill SQL injection attack which can be carried out by anyone with a basic understanding of SQL and maybe a scripting language to assist. The only news is that people are still writing code vulnerable to this sort of attack, but if we assume that even only 5% of software developers are incompetent (which is an unrealistically low figure), then that means even if each website only has one developer that that's 1 in 20 sites that are going to end up vulnerable in some way or another, if the teams are bigger, it'll probably be more common than 1 in 20 so it's not even really news.
It's really just another story about a script kiddie boosting his ego by doing something that's been done a thousand times before, and requires only a moderate level of technical competence to achieve. Honestly, in cases like this it's not that there aren't millions of other people who could trivially do what this kid did, it's just most people realise the possible penalty- jail time, extradition, that sort of thing, just isn't worth the ego boost. For some kids who aren't too bright though like this kid, it apparently is. Hopefully some jail time will bring him back down to Earth.
...and rather amusingly, eBay runs on Java too.
In fact, he chose about the most prominent two companies in the IT world that do use Java. Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and I believe even Amazon, do not use Java.
I've not seen any issues with lag in the menu system or anything like that, but I agree the new design is horrible, but then, I never liked it since the original 360 dashboard personally.