I already looked thanks so your initial assumption that I didn't is false. I noticed that listed first is torture, which is similar to the issue I described regarding Guantanamo in that whilst I agree torture must be stopped, I wouldn't prioritise the rights of people who really are evil over those who are innocent.
Second up is terrorism, most work here is good because this is often used as the excuse for supression of the population. Privacy is 3rd, similarly this is rather important as it covers some of the stuff that's important but what's glaringly lacking here is absolutely no coverage of online privacy- RFID, CCTV, ID cards, DNA data retention but nothing about the continued infringement of online privacy.
Then we have Asylum, this is what I'd argue is one of their problem areas. Whilst I don't disagree that we should protecting those who truthfully need asylum, much of liberty's work protects those who don't but instead want an easy route into the country rather than following the immigration path that honest folk take. Furthermore, as international law states that asylum should be sought in the first safe country you encounter, one has to wonder why Britain, a nation surrounded by states from where people tend not to seek asylum is even getting many of these asylum seekers. A lot of the laws surrounding asylum have been brought in to discourage people seeking asylum here, because worldwide Britain does received a disproportionate amount of asylum seekers and we can only handle our fair share. Again, providing asylum to those who truly are in danger is fine with me, but the asylum system should not be allowed to be abused by people who aren't in this situation. Liberty needs to ensure it's protecting only those who truly need asylum and not those trying to exploit or take advantage of the system.
The equality section looks rather pointless, their only equality news listings over a year are about winning the right for a sikh girl to wear a religious band in school. The problem here is that many schools put limits on what kids can and can't wear to school as part of their uniform just as many jobs dictate uniform. Religion should not be allowed as an excuse to flout the rules that everyone else adheres to unless the rules themselves are stupid in which case it should be the rules as a whole that should be defeated or changed, not an individuals right to ignore such rules over everyone else.
Free speech- again, important and good. No problems here.
ASBOs I'm in two minds about, I'm not yet aware of any cases they've been used to supress anyone other than people who really do cause trouble and make other people's lives a misery. This is probably because they have oversight of the legal system and as such I'm not convinced they're necessarily a bad thing. There is an argument about whether they work certainly, and that's a fair argument to have but whilst they have proper oversight of the legal system then we at least need to worry less about them being used to supress innocent people or breach privacy. Removal of ASBOs is once again a case of protecting the guilty over the innocent whom the ASBOs keep them away from. It is certainly better that people are given ASBOs than simply thrown in jail also for example which is a potential alternative for dealing with people who persist in harassing others.
Their current extradition focus on McKinnon is a good cause, but in the past Liberty have been guilty of protecting from extradition people far less deserving of said protection, this again relates similarly to my comments regarding Guantanamo and prioritisation of goals.
Again though, going back to an earlier point the one thing that's rather alarming is that there is no mention under the issues of the interception modernisation program for logging all our e-mail, phone and text information. There's no mention of campaigning against recent laws surrounding extreme porn that govern what perfectly consenting couples are allowed to do or produce in their own bedroom and so on. So
We don't trust our government, the problem is we have to wait for an election to oust them.
It's the same situation America has been in for the last few years with Bush, no one wanted him there anymore with him having possibly the lowest approval ratings of any president ever, but unfortunately you still have to wait for him to go.
This is why, whilst Canadians complain about their political system being somewhat deadlocked I'd much prefer to be in their position with a minority government because it means they're on a knife edge and if they make even one slip they run the risk of being removed from power.
I'd much rather have a government that's paralysed on all but the issues that EVERY party agrees on than a government that can do what it wants without question for 4 to 5 years as is the situation in the UK.
You can think that if you want but the difference is as with the warrantless wiretapping you only find out about it when their cover is blown in the US, the fact you haven't been told it does happen doesn't mean that it doesn't. In the UK they at least have the decency still at the moment to tell us they're going to bend us over and shaft us.
The UK does have more CCTV surveillance though for example.
They're more interested in helping to free British citizens in places like Guantanamo who really were caught in the middle of a warzone, fighting alongside the Taliban against British soldiers than they are protecting the rights of people in the UK who really are innocent of any crime and yet who are having their liberties infringed daily.
I'm not saying all Guantanamo suspects necessarily are guilty of anything and as such I'm not saying that the cause to close Guantanamo is not worth fighting for but lets face it, not everyone in Guantanamo is innocent and yet they get more coverage than the millions of citizens back home being spied on.
The irony is, if Liberty continue to ignore the slippery slope that's turning into a waterfall back home they may soon find their home base of operations in the UK ripped out from under them. Jacqui Smith and co. have already used the police against opposition MPs who leaked plans that were designed to increase the power of the surveillance state and further destroy civil liberties so how long before she uses the police on groups like Liberty who these plans get leaked to?
Liberty needs to readjust it's primary focus on exactly the type of things mentioned in the article and fight the fight that is brewing back home, else they may find that they themselves are under threat. Some may say the idea of such a group being taken down by the government is unthinkable, but to that I can only respond that this morning, to me, the idea of legalised warrantless computer intrusion by the police was unthinkable. A few weeks ago I thought the use of police against opposition MPs was unthinkable, a few months ago I thought the idea of MPs making illegal what occurs between two consenting adults in the bedroom was unthinkable, and so on.
"In other news, the Tories are now the party of the left in the UK."
If only that were true, then we'd actually have a party of the left with a chance of getting any seats in parliament at all for the first time in decades.
Whilst I'm not the most left swinging person on Earth, it does concern me somewhat that there appears to be no truly Left representation in parliament whatsoever. It strikes me that the best situation would be a decent mix, but right now this seems to be far from the situation.
A career in the police certainly sounds interesting. Just think, the freedom to hack into the computers of MP's such as Jacqui Smith and find no end of material that would no doubt allow legal action against her.
Oh wait, what's that? MPs are immune to snooping laws? One rule for them and all that...
It's also interesting to see that the RIAA admits it's poking it's nose in abroad.
Anyone know how this works? Do they have any jurisdiction to bring cases in a foreign country? What if they're sticking their nose in in a country that prohibits them from doing so due to privacy laws etc., can people in that country then sue back?
RM a major supplier of modified Windows front ends for education use (supposed to be easier) used Peedy the Parrot as their assistant in one of their front ends.
I can't help but think that "Peedy" is probably not the best name to use as an assistant designed to help small children.
The only thing I did like was that he spoke the words of menu items you selected and there was a certain sadistic pleasure in selecting help repeatedly to hear the parrot shout help in his Steven Hawkings style voice.
Don't forget developer tools either, the whole Visual Studio and.NET thing is really widely used, many businesses use ASP.NET for intranet applications for example.
"I really don't know what the hell Sony was thinking with putting a brand new kind of processor in a console."
I do, exactly the same they were thinking with putting Bluray in it, only the Bluray gamble paid off.
Sony were over-confident in their ability to carry over their first place console success from the PS1, to PS2 and then to the PS3, they didn't count on coming anything other than first place- you only have to look at their comments prior to and shortly after the PS3's release to see evidence of this.
With their confidence in hand, Sony figured they could use their high unit selling console to cut the cost of hardware they wanted to push in other market segments- Bluray and Cell. As mentioned above, this really paid off with Bluray, it to a large extent allowed Bluray to win the high-def format war. The problem is, that the PS3 simply hasn't sold fast enough to bring down the cost of Cell, and so the console is still very highly priced compared to it's competitors meaning it's struggling to sell, which has the catch 22 effect of failing to bring the price of Cell chips down as they hoped.
It was a sensible plan if they really could have kept their console in first place this round. Unfortunately over-arrogance in their ability to keep developers exclusive to their console, inability to predict the Wii (that's not necessarily a fault specific to Sony, how many really did predict the Wii before it's announcement?), and general over-confidence in how much of a stranglehold they could retain via a loyal customer base no matter what hurt their plan hard.
"Not to start a flame war, but this is one of the reasons I prefer PC games. They typically allow for quicksave and/or a sane autosave."
Flamewars generally start when people say something that's inflammatory or outright false, not if they have a valid opinion. Unfortunately, judging by your comments below and the fact you posted AC you were surely fully aware that your comments were inflammatory.
Not one of the points you cite is in any way related to console gaming vs. PC gaming. The majority of my gaming life has been on the PC and every issue you mention occurs in PC games equally, even when the game was built for the PC or was PC exclusive.
"I didn't mind so much when these issues only affected console games, but now with all the ports that are being done, us poor PC gamers are forced to suffer through these issues as well (plus really bad controls)."
Console gamers have equally had to suffer bad PC ports.
Your issue isn't with consoles, because not a point you made is specific to console gaming, it's with general game developers and game design and even then the issues you raise are pretty uncommon on both console and PC. It does however seem that you have an axe to grind with consoles for some reason. The reasons why developers have moved to console gaming have been discussed on Slashdot previously, but it comes down to the fact they can make more money there. If you buy games (rather than pirate them) console gaming is no more expensive than maintaining a gaming PC at a level you can play the latest games and is so much more hassle free to boot- there's good reason PC gaming is losing out to console gaming, making up outright lies isn't going to magically change that.
It's the same as why watch a film when there's no risk involved in the outcome of the plot?
I play some games this way, I treat them as interactive stories, that doesn't mean I need risk, it just means I'm more immersed in the story than I would be a film and the stories usually last longer and are hence more interesting- many people hate film adaptations of books because they have to cut so much, this is less of a problem with games as the player creates large
Games don't have to be about challenge, they can equally be about story telling as movies and books are but with a form of interactivity and hence immersiveness that can improve the story telling. In a book you might get a description of a beautiful scene (coastal Thailand on Tomb Raider: Underworld for example) which is great, but in a game you can spend time looking round that scene and admiring it.
That's not to say I don't play games with risk as well, I always play through the Call of Duty series on veteran difficulty for example. I find games with little risk nice to relax to sometimes though and unlike playing Call of Duty on Veteran you're not stuck in the same place over and over for 30mins+ so the story flows much better and is much more suited to those of us who don't have 50 hours to burn on a single game. Dead space was a good example of this, as was Bioshock- I didn't find either game very hard at all (even on hardest difficulty) and hence I would say these are games with little risk, (certainly there was no part that required repeating more than once which is in contrast to Call of Duty on Vet.) yet they were still absolutely excellent.
I agree with the article, punishing people for a minor slip up is not something that should be implemented in every game, nor is it something that should be taken too far. An example of an excellent game, completely destroyed by the risk of an improper save system is Dead Rising- the gameplay was superb, the story was good, the graphics were great, but the save system made the game simply too frustrating to play. Even autosaves/checkpoints have made gaming so much better than it used to be without them- I recall the frustration of losing hours of play if you forgot to/couldn't save all too well.
I really really really miss the Desert/Jungle/Nuclear/Whatever Strike series of games.
Why oh why has there been nothing even remotely similar in years! It's the type of game you could pick up and play without having to commit hours and hours, it was great for some quick, fun action, but the series seems to have been completely dropped.
I'd love for a company remake anything even remotely similar. I'd guess there's a lot of old classics like these out there just gagging to be remade.
I don't think there's a shortage of classics that could be remade that don't even have to be faithful to the originals, just something similar as in this example. The real problem seems to be that gaming has converged onto a few very tight specific genres- RTS, RPG, FPS and Sport and hardly anyone dares venture even slightly outside the defined rules for creating a game within these boundaries.
Maybe gamers like me, who would like something like the Desert strike series games put into a rather nice modern form are just too much of a niche market to bother with.
It's not like he lives under the radar, he's as visible as anyone else. It's trivial to get hold of a list of every address in the country which they do and check which addresses don't have TV licenses associated. There's absolutely no reason he wouldn't be listed, he doesn't live in a new house or anything.
They clearly therefore don't send letters to every address without a license, but that's not to say they don't send letters to some. It seems to be a case of people driving past from the license agency mistaking computer monitors for TV screens or simply basing it on the idea that someone used to have a TV license once and stopped paying for it etc.
Regardless, this has no link to them chasing up iPlayer usage, chasing up innocent people is something they've always done against people they feel owe payment for a TV license for use of an actual TV. The point is that if you were never in their sights for their TV licensing campaign then use of iPlayer isn't suddenly going to change that.
We're not at the point yet where they get people's registered addresses from their ISP by logging their IP when they use iPlayer for example.
My friend has neither a TV nor does he pay his TV license yet he makes use of iPlayer and has done since its release, they're certainly not at the stage where they're chasing you up for using it without a license yet as they have never once yet contacted him.
More importantly, companies need to know when the local contractors dig straight through your fibre when they're doing some pipework and you lose your internet access for a few days that their business doesn't have to shut down.
You can of course have redundant links and alternative access to the internet and of course there are steps towards providing offline web applications, but none of this is really much comfort when you can just keep your documents on or sync with a local server and know that you get the benefits that you mentioned i.e. security.
The area suffers frequent blackouts due to lack of fuel for the power plants and such.
It could be that the electricity required is provided by a rechargable battery or something similar. Using a battery to heat things would drain it pretty quick, electrical heat can be quite a power drain.
Yep. When David Cameron did his speech to the BPI which was full of the usual pro-music industry, anti-general public FUD I e-mailed them asking why he'd made these points and pointing out that they couldn't expect people like me to ever vote for them when they're that ignorant of the facts on issues like that.
The response was full of even more typical FUD you'd get back from somewhere like the RIAA. The whole response dodged my questions and ignored the points I made, it ignored solid fact and responded with sheer lie. I wasn't expecting an endorsement of file sharing, I was simply hoping they'd accept that it wasn't as clear cut as David Cameron proposed (one of his proposals was banning P2P in the UK much like in this article) and that the suggestions he put forward were unworkable once I'd pointed out the facts to them.
I simply found it insulting that they assumed I'd just take in their response and be a happy little citizen as a result even though it was clear they hadn't listened to a word I'd said.
Labour is no better, neither party is getting my vote, I just wish more people would write/e-mail in so that they too can see the two (possibly 3) main parties in the UK simply don't care what the general public thinks and see it from a personal standpoint- one that the average joe can stop for a moment and think "Hey, if these guys get in it's going to completely screw me over".
Instead, people just vote depending on the past it seems- a prime example is that many here in Yorkshire wont vote Conservatives citing Maggie Thatcher in the 80s, sorry, but what the fuck has that got to do with modern day politics? We're 20 years on from then.
I don't know what the solution is, I'm not sure there is one, but everyone whines about how politicians are a bunch of liars and then continue to vote the ones in who are indeed a bunch of liars. The adverts here in the UK about getting people to vote where they have these little cartoons where a guy says he doesn't do politics and then go on to say he's not allowed to talk about anything because everything is related to politics and he doesn't do it I find rather ironic- where's the flip side of it? can we have ads telling people they're not allowed to whine about a political party being rotten to the core when they chose to vote them in in the first place? The problem in the UK isn't apathy towards politics as a whole, it's ignorance of what each party stands for and how it effects them, voting mirrors more closely fans supporting their football team (i.e. red team vs. blue team) than it does citizens voting in the party that best suits them.
I vote for the party that does suit me best every election. Whilst I'll continue to do so I have lost faith in the system, not because the system itself is inherently broken, but because the voterbase is inherently broken. They only care when it's too late and the party they voted in has already fucked them over.
Indeed. It depends entirely on the problem, this is where computational complexity comes in, but cheap programmers wont even know what computational complexity is. The more complex the problem, the more knowledgeable your programmers will need to be in coming up with novel solutions.
You only have to look at most combinatorial optimization problems to see where you may run into trouble, a cheap programmer may try and brute force it and no matter how much hardware you throw at the problem that method simply isn't going to work for all but the smallest of data sets. You're going to have to get someone who knows the tricks (algorithms such as ACO) to produce acceptable solutions in a sensible time frame.
But you don't even need the hardest COPs to demonstrate the types of problems you may run into, even the most basic COPs can throw lesser skilled programmers whilst better programmers can implement a solution without even needing to look up any references.
It's another case of cutting corners. To the companies considering this option; sure if you wanna hire cheaper programmers and throw hardware at the problem that's fine. Just don't come crying when your entire system keels over under the weight of a problem it can't solve with the method implemented to solve it and when you then have to get someone in to do the job properly. Also then when you find yourself with a load of hardware lying round you never actually needed had it been done right to start with.
Cheap programmers are great for throwaway or non-mission critical software, but make sure you have at least some good programmers around who have the computer science background underlying their software engineering abilities to deal with the tough/complex stuff.
"However the Wii has sold ~42M units worldwide while the Xbox360 has moved ~25M units. That means 195M (42 * 4.64) games have sold for the Wii vs 175M (25 * 7) games for xbox 360."
Another point to note though is the average Wii game sells for 25% less than the average 360 game, so there's still more more money being spent on Xbox 360 games.
Also, I'm not sure how true the 25m units is. Vgchartz.com has always been incorrect on XBox 360 sales figures. Originally they even used a completely different metric for the Wii and PS3 vs. the 360, with them using over the counter sales for the Wii and PS3 whilst using a 6month+ old press release for 360 sales figures without updating it. This discrepancy became even more obvious when Microsoft had a massive jump in console sales (due to Halo 3's release iirc) which were never ever added on to vgchartz.com's figures. They may be more accurate now, but I'd take them with a pinch of salt still- there's always been what's arguably an anti-360 bias in their sales figures there.
"No offense, but take your blinders off. Nintendo is selling in droves to gamers who don't want that. My 4 year old son plays BoomBlox, MarioKart, WiiSports, MarioParty8, Zack&Wiki with his grandmother on the Wii. They have so much fun my parents bought a Wii for their place. Sony / Microsoft will NEVER EVER capture them with 'deep and interesting story lines'. Neither my 4 year old nor my mother would EVER play them."
I'm not really sure what your point is, there's no reason Nintendo couldn't entertain both audiences, currently they're ignoring the hardcore audience whilst Microsoft and Sony are increasing their appeal to the casual audience with titles like LittleBigPlanet, Lips, Viva Pinata. Even Microsoft's revamp of their interface and Sony's home are clearly much more geared towards the casual audience. Nintendo is at risk of losing some of it's userbase, without taking any of Microsoft and Sony's back to make up for it.
"Because people like you, who want deep impressive ultra-interactive worlds to explore, already have a 360, and would bitch about the lack of ultra-high detail models and textures on the Wii version. Developers know this. That's why the Wii has a dearth of that kind of title. They know everyone who is interested in that kind of title already ALSO has a 360 and wouldn't buy the wii version if both were available."
No, not everyone, that's quite a generalisation. I know plenty of people who are/were hardcore gamers that have a Wii but simply no longer use it because it doesn't have the games to interest them. These people were generally ex-PC gamers, who don't bother with PC games now because the PC games market has been somewhat more neglected in recent years due to the console market. These people are sat there foregoing gaming altogether whilst there's nothing of any interest there for them, but would happily splash out on Wii games that interest them if they were to ever come out. Regardless even those like me who do have a 360 or PS3 as well wouldn't have bought these consoles if the Wii had the titles to entertain them and Nintendo would've easily been able to pull in more software sales as a result if they were to satisfy both audiences.
I would like to point all the conspiracy theories who think everything in the world that goes wrong is to be laid at the feet of someone or something to a sobering article and some facts (yes I know facts are hard to comprehend when you're the type of person who thinks steel has to completely melt into a liquid for a building to collapse, but please, stick with me).
Page 34 is a good place to start, coupled with page 13. The fact is that there are hundreds of these cables across the world and many covering local areas are kept close to each other as can be seen on the map. Now look at page 34 and realise that the following can cause cable cuts:
Anchors, Trawlers, Sharks, Earthquakes, Landslides, Fault lines, Currents, Waves, Extreme weather, Ice bergs (not in the middle east though I'd hope!).
Many other human activities can be responsible too of course (sinking ships, cargo/litter being dumped off ships etc.)
Where it's noted that about 2 cables a week break on average.
So really, when there's so many cables (sometimes close together), when there's so many hazards for the cables, and when two cables a week requiring repairs is the norm does it really have to be an "OMG they're out to get us" drama, when instead of the average 2 cuts a week we have the oh so above average 3?
Finally, last time this happened, the boats responsible were caught via satellite and brought to justice:
Sorry guys, as much as I myself think making George Bush president twice is probably one of the worst things a population can ever do conspiracy theories about America trying to cut off Iran or whatever simply don't cut it (pun not intended). This is neither an odd occurance, nor is it a coincidence unless it's a coincidence that it happens every god damn week.
There is no reason a single trawler pulling big heavy nets along the ocean floor couldn't be responsible for damage to the whole lot, the cables are all shown as very close to each other, and despite the summary suggesting all 3 cuts happened within 5 minutes of each other, they didn't, the SeaMeWe cables were cut within 5 minutes of each other and FLAG about half hour later- that sounds very much like an anchor or trawler at play.
For all the anti-religious sentiment on Slashdot, many people here aren't half prone to believing in some rather far fetched ideas when it comes to stuff like this. Personally, I prefer to at least be consistent and believe that it's all a load of crap which usually it seems it is!
Hey now, don't get too down about it. In most of the rest of the world the RIAA (or local equivalent) never or barely even started the whole lawsuits thing and jumped straight to this stage and we still have plenty of people pointing out how idiotic it is, people trying to challenge the legality of it and so forth.
The RIAA and co. are still going to provide plenty of entertainment with their idiocy and malicy for a good while yet although it does feel a bit like an end of an era if we are to no longer hear about their failings in court.
I'm sure NewYorkCountryLawyer will still have plenty of business by way of various breaches of content and possibly even breaches of rights as ISPs cut people off and/or blacklist people without any proof that they have fair justification to do so in the first place!
Really, I think if anything the result will be an important and positive one- I think we'll see internet access eventually be ruled as a utility people have the right to in the same way they do electricity, food, running water, gas, telecomms and so forth. It'll just be a long and painful path on the way there.
Nope, you're not alone. I'm in the same position, my Wii sits unused to make room for my 360, about the only entertaining game I found on the Wii that I go back to was ghost squad, because arcade style shooters can be a bit of a laugh for 5minutes now and again, but for me that sums up the Wii- 5minutes now and again, with now and again being defined roughly as every 3months.
The 360 was shifting twice as many retail games per console as the Wii and PS3 last time I saw stats for it (earlier this year). I'd imagine this has changed now though as the 360 has many more family titles and is cheaper than the Wii to buy now - I bet with the 360 selling for under £120 in the UK (vs. £170 for the Wii) now at it's cheapest version there are people who'd buy it + rock band or scene it or whatever for the family, and nothing else, but I digress, that only exagerates the point that casual gaming is not a path for high software sales per console, you can at best hope you shift enough consoles so that three games or whatever per console is enough to make up software sales numbers.
The point is when the 360 was limited to hardcore games the attach rate was much higher than that of the Wii and you're right- this is because hardcore gamers are the ones that spend money on games, whilst Nintendo has captured a larger audience it's not an audience that for the most part will buy more than one or two games a year at christmas time and nothing else. There are exceptions to every rule, but the point is that back when those last stats were released, even though Nintendo had double the installed user base, it still had sold less games than Microsoft had with the 360.
I certainly welcome more mature games on the Wii and less party games, I might actually have reason to use it more then. Most stuff so far feels little more than fancy demos of what can be done with the Wiimote- well sorry, but we're past this point now, we know what it can do, we no longer want to pay to see what it can do, we want to pay to actually play through games with decent story lines, interesting themes and characters.
I felt the Wii when it was first unveiled had so much potential to immerse gamers simply because the control system put you in the action, but the amount of games that took that and ran with it have been few and the rest have just been games you can't ever become immersed in. We want games with real content, with real substance, with worlds that we can be part of and interact with using the Wii mote.
I'd say Nintendo's biggest threat now is the next generation, if Microsoft and Sony take their idea and couple it with their usual state of the art systems and a plethora of games with deep and interesting story lines whilst Nintendo continues to push the same party games then they're going to lose the momentum the Wii gave them, they really missed a trick already by not cashing in on the depth of games they could have developed for the Wii. The Wii uses the same disc format as the 360 and doesn't require development of ultra-high detail models and textures so why aren't we seeing a plethora of games with deep and impressive, ultra-interactive worlds to explore?
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I already looked thanks so your initial assumption that I didn't is false. I noticed that listed first is torture, which is similar to the issue I described regarding Guantanamo in that whilst I agree torture must be stopped, I wouldn't prioritise the rights of people who really are evil over those who are innocent.
Second up is terrorism, most work here is good because this is often used as the excuse for supression of the population. Privacy is 3rd, similarly this is rather important as it covers some of the stuff that's important but what's glaringly lacking here is absolutely no coverage of online privacy- RFID, CCTV, ID cards, DNA data retention but nothing about the continued infringement of online privacy.
Then we have Asylum, this is what I'd argue is one of their problem areas. Whilst I don't disagree that we should protecting those who truthfully need asylum, much of liberty's work protects those who don't but instead want an easy route into the country rather than following the immigration path that honest folk take. Furthermore, as international law states that asylum should be sought in the first safe country you encounter, one has to wonder why Britain, a nation surrounded by states from where people tend not to seek asylum is even getting many of these asylum seekers. A lot of the laws surrounding asylum have been brought in to discourage people seeking asylum here, because worldwide Britain does received a disproportionate amount of asylum seekers and we can only handle our fair share. Again, providing asylum to those who truly are in danger is fine with me, but the asylum system should not be allowed to be abused by people who aren't in this situation. Liberty needs to ensure it's protecting only those who truly need asylum and not those trying to exploit or take advantage of the system.
The equality section looks rather pointless, their only equality news listings over a year are about winning the right for a sikh girl to wear a religious band in school. The problem here is that many schools put limits on what kids can and can't wear to school as part of their uniform just as many jobs dictate uniform. Religion should not be allowed as an excuse to flout the rules that everyone else adheres to unless the rules themselves are stupid in which case it should be the rules as a whole that should be defeated or changed, not an individuals right to ignore such rules over everyone else.
Free speech- again, important and good. No problems here.
ASBOs I'm in two minds about, I'm not yet aware of any cases they've been used to supress anyone other than people who really do cause trouble and make other people's lives a misery. This is probably because they have oversight of the legal system and as such I'm not convinced they're necessarily a bad thing. There is an argument about whether they work certainly, and that's a fair argument to have but whilst they have proper oversight of the legal system then we at least need to worry less about them being used to supress innocent people or breach privacy. Removal of ASBOs is once again a case of protecting the guilty over the innocent whom the ASBOs keep them away from. It is certainly better that people are given ASBOs than simply thrown in jail also for example which is a potential alternative for dealing with people who persist in harassing others.
Their current extradition focus on McKinnon is a good cause, but in the past Liberty have been guilty of protecting from extradition people far less deserving of said protection, this again relates similarly to my comments regarding Guantanamo and prioritisation of goals.
Again though, going back to an earlier point the one thing that's rather alarming is that there is no mention under the issues of the interception modernisation program for logging all our e-mail, phone and text information. There's no mention of campaigning against recent laws surrounding extreme porn that govern what perfectly consenting couples are allowed to do or produce in their own bedroom and so on. So
We don't trust our government, the problem is we have to wait for an election to oust them.
It's the same situation America has been in for the last few years with Bush, no one wanted him there anymore with him having possibly the lowest approval ratings of any president ever, but unfortunately you still have to wait for him to go.
This is why, whilst Canadians complain about their political system being somewhat deadlocked I'd much prefer to be in their position with a minority government because it means they're on a knife edge and if they make even one slip they run the risk of being removed from power.
I'd much rather have a government that's paralysed on all but the issues that EVERY party agrees on than a government that can do what it wants without question for 4 to 5 years as is the situation in the UK.
You can think that if you want but the difference is as with the warrantless wiretapping you only find out about it when their cover is blown in the US, the fact you haven't been told it does happen doesn't mean that it doesn't. In the UK they at least have the decency still at the moment to tell us they're going to bend us over and shaft us.
The UK does have more CCTV surveillance though for example.
This is the biggest issue I have with liberty.
They're more interested in helping to free British citizens in places like Guantanamo who really were caught in the middle of a warzone, fighting alongside the Taliban against British soldiers than they are protecting the rights of people in the UK who really are innocent of any crime and yet who are having their liberties infringed daily.
I'm not saying all Guantanamo suspects necessarily are guilty of anything and as such I'm not saying that the cause to close Guantanamo is not worth fighting for but lets face it, not everyone in Guantanamo is innocent and yet they get more coverage than the millions of citizens back home being spied on.
The irony is, if Liberty continue to ignore the slippery slope that's turning into a waterfall back home they may soon find their home base of operations in the UK ripped out from under them. Jacqui Smith and co. have already used the police against opposition MPs who leaked plans that were designed to increase the power of the surveillance state and further destroy civil liberties so how long before she uses the police on groups like Liberty who these plans get leaked to?
Liberty needs to readjust it's primary focus on exactly the type of things mentioned in the article and fight the fight that is brewing back home, else they may find that they themselves are under threat. Some may say the idea of such a group being taken down by the government is unthinkable, but to that I can only respond that this morning, to me, the idea of legalised warrantless computer intrusion by the police was unthinkable. A few weeks ago I thought the use of police against opposition MPs was unthinkable, a few months ago I thought the idea of MPs making illegal what occurs between two consenting adults in the bedroom was unthinkable, and so on.
"In other news, the Tories are now the party of the left in the UK."
If only that were true, then we'd actually have a party of the left with a chance of getting any seats in parliament at all for the first time in decades.
Whilst I'm not the most left swinging person on Earth, it does concern me somewhat that there appears to be no truly Left representation in parliament whatsoever. It strikes me that the best situation would be a decent mix, but right now this seems to be far from the situation.
A career in the police certainly sounds interesting. Just think, the freedom to hack into the computers of MP's such as Jacqui Smith and find no end of material that would no doubt allow legal action against her.
Oh wait, what's that? MPs are immune to snooping laws? One rule for them and all that...
It's also interesting to see that the RIAA admits it's poking it's nose in abroad.
Anyone know how this works? Do they have any jurisdiction to bring cases in a foreign country? What if they're sticking their nose in in a country that prohibits them from doing so due to privacy laws etc., can people in that country then sue back?
RM a major supplier of modified Windows front ends for education use (supposed to be easier) used Peedy the Parrot as their assistant in one of their front ends.
I can't help but think that "Peedy" is probably not the best name to use as an assistant designed to help small children.
The only thing I did like was that he spoke the words of menu items you selected and there was a certain sadistic pleasure in selecting help repeatedly to hear the parrot shout help in his Steven Hawkings style voice.
Don't forget developer tools either, the whole Visual Studio and .NET thing is really widely used, many businesses use ASP.NET for intranet applications for example.
"I really don't know what the hell Sony was thinking with putting a brand new kind of processor in a console."
I do, exactly the same they were thinking with putting Bluray in it, only the Bluray gamble paid off.
Sony were over-confident in their ability to carry over their first place console success from the PS1, to PS2 and then to the PS3, they didn't count on coming anything other than first place- you only have to look at their comments prior to and shortly after the PS3's release to see evidence of this.
With their confidence in hand, Sony figured they could use their high unit selling console to cut the cost of hardware they wanted to push in other market segments- Bluray and Cell. As mentioned above, this really paid off with Bluray, it to a large extent allowed Bluray to win the high-def format war. The problem is, that the PS3 simply hasn't sold fast enough to bring down the cost of Cell, and so the console is still very highly priced compared to it's competitors meaning it's struggling to sell, which has the catch 22 effect of failing to bring the price of Cell chips down as they hoped.
It was a sensible plan if they really could have kept their console in first place this round. Unfortunately over-arrogance in their ability to keep developers exclusive to their console, inability to predict the Wii (that's not necessarily a fault specific to Sony, how many really did predict the Wii before it's announcement?), and general over-confidence in how much of a stranglehold they could retain via a loyal customer base no matter what hurt their plan hard.
Then you may appreciate this:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/1/1942jointstrikexboxlivearcade/default.htm
Xbox live arcade has exactly what you're after ;)
"Not to start a flame war, but this is one of the reasons I prefer PC games. They typically allow for quicksave and/or a sane autosave."
Flamewars generally start when people say something that's inflammatory or outright false, not if they have a valid opinion. Unfortunately, judging by your comments below and the fact you posted AC you were surely fully aware that your comments were inflammatory.
Not one of the points you cite is in any way related to console gaming vs. PC gaming. The majority of my gaming life has been on the PC and every issue you mention occurs in PC games equally, even when the game was built for the PC or was PC exclusive.
"I didn't mind so much when these issues only affected console games, but now with all the ports that are being done, us poor PC gamers are forced to suffer through these issues as well (plus really bad controls)."
Console gamers have equally had to suffer bad PC ports.
Your issue isn't with consoles, because not a point you made is specific to console gaming, it's with general game developers and game design and even then the issues you raise are pretty uncommon on both console and PC. It does however seem that you have an axe to grind with consoles for some reason. The reasons why developers have moved to console gaming have been discussed on Slashdot previously, but it comes down to the fact they can make more money there. If you buy games (rather than pirate them) console gaming is no more expensive than maintaining a gaming PC at a level you can play the latest games and is so much more hassle free to boot- there's good reason PC gaming is losing out to console gaming, making up outright lies isn't going to magically change that.
It's the same as why watch a film when there's no risk involved in the outcome of the plot?
I play some games this way, I treat them as interactive stories, that doesn't mean I need risk, it just means I'm more immersed in the story than I would be a film and the stories usually last longer and are hence more interesting- many people hate film adaptations of books because they have to cut so much, this is less of a problem with games as the player creates large
Games don't have to be about challenge, they can equally be about story telling as movies and books are but with a form of interactivity and hence immersiveness that can improve the story telling. In a book you might get a description of a beautiful scene (coastal Thailand on Tomb Raider: Underworld for example) which is great, but in a game you can spend time looking round that scene and admiring it.
That's not to say I don't play games with risk as well, I always play through the Call of Duty series on veteran difficulty for example. I find games with little risk nice to relax to sometimes though and unlike playing Call of Duty on Veteran you're not stuck in the same place over and over for 30mins+ so the story flows much better and is much more suited to those of us who don't have 50 hours to burn on a single game. Dead space was a good example of this, as was Bioshock- I didn't find either game very hard at all (even on hardest difficulty) and hence I would say these are games with little risk, (certainly there was no part that required repeating more than once which is in contrast to Call of Duty on Vet.) yet they were still absolutely excellent.
I agree with the article, punishing people for a minor slip up is not something that should be implemented in every game, nor is it something that should be taken too far. An example of an excellent game, completely destroyed by the risk of an improper save system is Dead Rising- the gameplay was superb, the story was good, the graphics were great, but the save system made the game simply too frustrating to play. Even autosaves/checkpoints have made gaming so much better than it used to be without them- I recall the frustration of losing hours of play if you forgot to/couldn't save all too well.
I really really really miss the Desert/Jungle/Nuclear/Whatever Strike series of games.
Why oh why has there been nothing even remotely similar in years! It's the type of game you could pick up and play without having to commit hours and hours, it was great for some quick, fun action, but the series seems to have been completely dropped.
I'd love for a company remake anything even remotely similar. I'd guess there's a lot of old classics like these out there just gagging to be remade.
I don't think there's a shortage of classics that could be remade that don't even have to be faithful to the originals, just something similar as in this example. The real problem seems to be that gaming has converged onto a few very tight specific genres- RTS, RPG, FPS and Sport and hardly anyone dares venture even slightly outside the defined rules for creating a game within these boundaries.
Maybe gamers like me, who would like something like the Desert strike series games put into a rather nice modern form are just too much of a niche market to bother with.
It's not like he lives under the radar, he's as visible as anyone else. It's trivial to get hold of a list of every address in the country which they do and check which addresses don't have TV licenses associated. There's absolutely no reason he wouldn't be listed, he doesn't live in a new house or anything.
They clearly therefore don't send letters to every address without a license, but that's not to say they don't send letters to some. It seems to be a case of people driving past from the license agency mistaking computer monitors for TV screens or simply basing it on the idea that someone used to have a TV license once and stopped paying for it etc.
Regardless, this has no link to them chasing up iPlayer usage, chasing up innocent people is something they've always done against people they feel owe payment for a TV license for use of an actual TV. The point is that if you were never in their sights for their TV licensing campaign then use of iPlayer isn't suddenly going to change that.
We're not at the point yet where they get people's registered addresses from their ISP by logging their IP when they use iPlayer for example.
My friend has neither a TV nor does he pay his TV license yet he makes use of iPlayer and has done since its release, they're certainly not at the stage where they're chasing you up for using it without a license yet as they have never once yet contacted him.
More importantly, companies need to know when the local contractors dig straight through your fibre when they're doing some pipework and you lose your internet access for a few days that their business doesn't have to shut down.
You can of course have redundant links and alternative access to the internet and of course there are steps towards providing offline web applications, but none of this is really much comfort when you can just keep your documents on or sync with a local server and know that you get the benefits that you mentioned i.e. security.
The area suffers frequent blackouts due to lack of fuel for the power plants and such.
It could be that the electricity required is provided by a rechargable battery or something similar. Using a battery to heat things would drain it pretty quick, electrical heat can be quite a power drain.
Yep. When David Cameron did his speech to the BPI which was full of the usual pro-music industry, anti-general public FUD I e-mailed them asking why he'd made these points and pointing out that they couldn't expect people like me to ever vote for them when they're that ignorant of the facts on issues like that.
The response was full of even more typical FUD you'd get back from somewhere like the RIAA. The whole response dodged my questions and ignored the points I made, it ignored solid fact and responded with sheer lie. I wasn't expecting an endorsement of file sharing, I was simply hoping they'd accept that it wasn't as clear cut as David Cameron proposed (one of his proposals was banning P2P in the UK much like in this article) and that the suggestions he put forward were unworkable once I'd pointed out the facts to them.
I simply found it insulting that they assumed I'd just take in their response and be a happy little citizen as a result even though it was clear they hadn't listened to a word I'd said.
Labour is no better, neither party is getting my vote, I just wish more people would write/e-mail in so that they too can see the two (possibly 3) main parties in the UK simply don't care what the general public thinks and see it from a personal standpoint- one that the average joe can stop for a moment and think "Hey, if these guys get in it's going to completely screw me over".
Instead, people just vote depending on the past it seems- a prime example is that many here in Yorkshire wont vote Conservatives citing Maggie Thatcher in the 80s, sorry, but what the fuck has that got to do with modern day politics? We're 20 years on from then.
I don't know what the solution is, I'm not sure there is one, but everyone whines about how politicians are a bunch of liars and then continue to vote the ones in who are indeed a bunch of liars. The adverts here in the UK about getting people to vote where they have these little cartoons where a guy says he doesn't do politics and then go on to say he's not allowed to talk about anything because everything is related to politics and he doesn't do it I find rather ironic- where's the flip side of it? can we have ads telling people they're not allowed to whine about a political party being rotten to the core when they chose to vote them in in the first place? The problem in the UK isn't apathy towards politics as a whole, it's ignorance of what each party stands for and how it effects them, voting mirrors more closely fans supporting their football team (i.e. red team vs. blue team) than it does citizens voting in the party that best suits them.
I vote for the party that does suit me best every election. Whilst I'll continue to do so I have lost faith in the system, not because the system itself is inherently broken, but because the voterbase is inherently broken. They only care when it's too late and the party they voted in has already fucked them over.
Indeed. It depends entirely on the problem, this is where computational complexity comes in, but cheap programmers wont even know what computational complexity is. The more complex the problem, the more knowledgeable your programmers will need to be in coming up with novel solutions.
You only have to look at most combinatorial optimization problems to see where you may run into trouble, a cheap programmer may try and brute force it and no matter how much hardware you throw at the problem that method simply isn't going to work for all but the smallest of data sets. You're going to have to get someone who knows the tricks (algorithms such as ACO) to produce acceptable solutions in a sensible time frame.
But you don't even need the hardest COPs to demonstrate the types of problems you may run into, even the most basic COPs can throw lesser skilled programmers whilst better programmers can implement a solution without even needing to look up any references.
It's another case of cutting corners. To the companies considering this option; sure if you wanna hire cheaper programmers and throw hardware at the problem that's fine. Just don't come crying when your entire system keels over under the weight of a problem it can't solve with the method implemented to solve it and when you then have to get someone in to do the job properly. Also then when you find yourself with a load of hardware lying round you never actually needed had it been done right to start with.
Cheap programmers are great for throwaway or non-mission critical software, but make sure you have at least some good programmers around who have the computer science background underlying their software engineering abilities to deal with the tough/complex stuff.
But if he's blind he might crash and not finish at all :(
"However the Wii has sold ~42M units worldwide while the Xbox360 has moved ~25M units. That means 195M (42 * 4.64) games have sold for the Wii vs 175M (25 * 7) games for xbox 360."
Another point to note though is the average Wii game sells for 25% less than the average 360 game, so there's still more more money being spent on Xbox 360 games.
Also, I'm not sure how true the 25m units is. Vgchartz.com has always been incorrect on XBox 360 sales figures. Originally they even used a completely different metric for the Wii and PS3 vs. the 360, with them using over the counter sales for the Wii and PS3 whilst using a 6month+ old press release for 360 sales figures without updating it. This discrepancy became even more obvious when Microsoft had a massive jump in console sales (due to Halo 3's release iirc) which were never ever added on to vgchartz.com's figures. They may be more accurate now, but I'd take them with a pinch of salt still- there's always been what's arguably an anti-360 bias in their sales figures there.
"No offense, but take your blinders off. Nintendo is selling in droves to gamers who don't want that. My 4 year old son plays BoomBlox, MarioKart, WiiSports, MarioParty8, Zack&Wiki with his grandmother on the Wii. They have so much fun my parents bought a Wii for their place. Sony / Microsoft will NEVER EVER capture them with 'deep and interesting story lines'. Neither my 4 year old nor my mother would EVER play them."
I'm not really sure what your point is, there's no reason Nintendo couldn't entertain both audiences, currently they're ignoring the hardcore audience whilst Microsoft and Sony are increasing their appeal to the casual audience with titles like LittleBigPlanet, Lips, Viva Pinata. Even Microsoft's revamp of their interface and Sony's home are clearly much more geared towards the casual audience. Nintendo is at risk of losing some of it's userbase, without taking any of Microsoft and Sony's back to make up for it.
"Because people like you, who want deep impressive ultra-interactive worlds to explore, already have a 360, and would bitch about the lack of ultra-high detail models and textures on the Wii version. Developers know this. That's why the Wii has a dearth of that kind of title. They know everyone who is interested in that kind of title already ALSO has a 360 and wouldn't buy the wii version if both were available."
No, not everyone, that's quite a generalisation. I know plenty of people who are/were hardcore gamers that have a Wii but simply no longer use it because it doesn't have the games to interest them. These people were generally ex-PC gamers, who don't bother with PC games now because the PC games market has been somewhat more neglected in recent years due to the console market. These people are sat there foregoing gaming altogether whilst there's nothing of any interest there for them, but would happily splash out on Wii games that interest them if they were to ever come out. Regardless even those like me who do have a 360 or PS3 as well wouldn't have bought these consoles if the Wii had the titles to entertain them and Nintendo would've easily been able to pull in more software sales as a result if they were to satisfy both audiences.
I would like to point all the conspiracy theories who think everything in the world that goes wrong is to be laid at the feet of someone or something to a sobering article and some facts (yes I know facts are hard to comprehend when you're the type of person who thinks steel has to completely melt into a liquid for a building to collapse, but please, stick with me).
First, let's start with a reference:
http://www.iscpc.org/publications/About_Cables_in_PDF_Format.pdf
Page 34 is a good place to start, coupled with page 13. The fact is that there are hundreds of these cables across the world and many covering local areas are kept close to each other as can be seen on the map. Now look at page 34 and realise that the following can cause cable cuts:
Anchors, Trawlers, Sharks, Earthquakes, Landslides, Fault lines, Currents, Waves, Extreme weather, Ice bergs (not in the middle east though I'd hope!).
Many other human activities can be responsible too of course (sinking ships, cargo/litter being dumped off ships etc.)
Now check here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/08/seabed_cable_break_fix_forecast/
Where it's noted that about 2 cables a week break on average.
So really, when there's so many cables (sometimes close together), when there's so many hazards for the cables, and when two cables a week requiring repairs is the norm does it really have to be an "OMG they're out to get us" drama, when instead of the average 2 cuts a week we have the oh so above average 3?
Finally, last time this happened, the boats responsible were caught via satellite and brought to justice:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/14/undersea_cable_cut_ships_nabbed/
Sorry guys, as much as I myself think making George Bush president twice is probably one of the worst things a population can ever do conspiracy theories about America trying to cut off Iran or whatever simply don't cut it (pun not intended). This is neither an odd occurance, nor is it a coincidence unless it's a coincidence that it happens every god damn week.
There is no reason a single trawler pulling big heavy nets along the ocean floor couldn't be responsible for damage to the whole lot, the cables are all shown as very close to each other, and despite the summary suggesting all 3 cuts happened within 5 minutes of each other, they didn't, the SeaMeWe cables were cut within 5 minutes of each other and FLAG about half hour later- that sounds very much like an anchor or trawler at play.
For all the anti-religious sentiment on Slashdot, many people here aren't half prone to believing in some rather far fetched ideas when it comes to stuff like this. Personally, I prefer to at least be consistent and believe that it's all a load of crap which usually it seems it is!
Hey now, don't get too down about it. In most of the rest of the world the RIAA (or local equivalent) never or barely even started the whole lawsuits thing and jumped straight to this stage and we still have plenty of people pointing out how idiotic it is, people trying to challenge the legality of it and so forth.
The RIAA and co. are still going to provide plenty of entertainment with their idiocy and malicy for a good while yet although it does feel a bit like an end of an era if we are to no longer hear about their failings in court.
I'm sure NewYorkCountryLawyer will still have plenty of business by way of various breaches of content and possibly even breaches of rights as ISPs cut people off and/or blacklist people without any proof that they have fair justification to do so in the first place!
Really, I think if anything the result will be an important and positive one- I think we'll see internet access eventually be ruled as a utility people have the right to in the same way they do electricity, food, running water, gas, telecomms and so forth. It'll just be a long and painful path on the way there.
Nope, you're not alone. I'm in the same position, my Wii sits unused to make room for my 360, about the only entertaining game I found on the Wii that I go back to was ghost squad, because arcade style shooters can be a bit of a laugh for 5minutes now and again, but for me that sums up the Wii- 5minutes now and again, with now and again being defined roughly as every 3months.
The 360 was shifting twice as many retail games per console as the Wii and PS3 last time I saw stats for it (earlier this year). I'd imagine this has changed now though as the 360 has many more family titles and is cheaper than the Wii to buy now - I bet with the 360 selling for under £120 in the UK (vs. £170 for the Wii) now at it's cheapest version there are people who'd buy it + rock band or scene it or whatever for the family, and nothing else, but I digress, that only exagerates the point that casual gaming is not a path for high software sales per console, you can at best hope you shift enough consoles so that three games or whatever per console is enough to make up software sales numbers.
The point is when the 360 was limited to hardcore games the attach rate was much higher than that of the Wii and you're right- this is because hardcore gamers are the ones that spend money on games, whilst Nintendo has captured a larger audience it's not an audience that for the most part will buy more than one or two games a year at christmas time and nothing else. There are exceptions to every rule, but the point is that back when those last stats were released, even though Nintendo had double the installed user base, it still had sold less games than Microsoft had with the 360.
I certainly welcome more mature games on the Wii and less party games, I might actually have reason to use it more then. Most stuff so far feels little more than fancy demos of what can be done with the Wiimote- well sorry, but we're past this point now, we know what it can do, we no longer want to pay to see what it can do, we want to pay to actually play through games with decent story lines, interesting themes and characters.
I felt the Wii when it was first unveiled had so much potential to immerse gamers simply because the control system put you in the action, but the amount of games that took that and ran with it have been few and the rest have just been games you can't ever become immersed in. We want games with real content, with real substance, with worlds that we can be part of and interact with using the Wii mote.
I'd say Nintendo's biggest threat now is the next generation, if Microsoft and Sony take their idea and couple it with their usual state of the art systems and a plethora of games with deep and interesting story lines whilst Nintendo continues to push the same party games then they're going to lose the momentum the Wii gave them, they really missed a trick already by not cashing in on the depth of games they could have developed for the Wii. The Wii uses the same disc format as the 360 and doesn't require development of ultra-high detail models and textures so why aren't we seeing a plethora of games with deep and impressive, ultra-interactive worlds to explore?