I see the need for open source games that can rival the closed source ones and maybe a few moves like this might not go a miss... but do we need this game? If things have really gone that bad that they've been forced out of the market and can't compete then maybe this is because the game isn't that good. I've heard people saying that there are big problems with the way it plays - can we fix them to make this game as good as it needs to be? Even if that is possible will this be less effort than putting all that money towards one of the open source MMORPGs which already exist and making them a lot better?
How will this make money seems to be the other question? Will it be charged for or free as in beer aswell, if it is then how do we keep things ticking over with the servers etc? and who will own it? the FSF? the contributors? the donators? I can't get on the site but I really do hope that they have decided on these things and decided well... and would want to know the answers before I gave a penny (or euro, it seems)
I wouldn't say it's FUD because there is no uncertainty. If you agree to that EULA you lose certain rights which they think are important that you wouldn't use if you were on Free Software...
There is also no doubt - you click "I agree" and the rights are gone...
And dare I say there is not even any fear in the end user - and that is something we should be really worried about
"In related new[s] Iowa has banned the use of indicators, roll cages, air bags, crumple zones and seatbelts as it gives people too much sense of security. California has banned the use of door and window locks and the use of burglar alarms as they make houses "secure by design"."
God I wish that this sort of thinking (which I know you put up as a joke/to prove a point) never happened in the real world, but there is evidence that seat-belts have increased the number of deaths to certain groups and not done too much to reduce other deaths. The idiots actually drive less safely because they are wearing a seat-belt...
...most people do expect it though. I would say that it is highly possible to make great 2D games, or more old-style games with some 3D elements. Take Ikiruga (I might have spelt that wrong), a great game with primarily a 2D action mode, or Paper Mario (if you can get hold of that I'd recomend it). These are "last gen" of course, but they do show well that even in a situation where people expect 3D you can still give 2 and have people happy.
If they make it, and make it well, people will buy it. Sure some ass-hats might not buy it because they think "it doesn't look good so it can't be fun" - but sod 'em.
"has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals"
I don't really see how... one small mouse, even if there was 1 million of them, wouldn't really have made much difference to birds; it'd only be preditors that made a big difference
"Rather cheeky of a British subject (not citizen) to lecture Americans about freedom."
Just thought I'd pull you up a bit here. Whilst in our hearts we will eternally be our Queen's subjects, legally we are citizens. Infact since the British Nationality Act 1981 there has been no real formal notion of subject; we are citizens. Our citizenship is framed in a rights based way so is in reality not that different from that of America (and we are both countries of ius soli, although America is now a purer example), but for the most part there is not that much difference... The American citizenship tends to me more exclusionary in practice - which is strange because of the rights base - blacks and Asians have been formally excluded until comparetively very recently and still are to some extent now. There is obviously the issue with republicanism as well with your rights siezed from below and ours granted from above, but in their current manifestations I think that distinction might be of less relevence than the public sphere/private sphere experience - and both the US and UK both have their citizenships in the public space.
Wow, who'd have thought that all the time I was in the library might one day be useful on/.
You should come to England, here you'll earn £5.10 an hour (going up soon), about $9something off the top of my head, for any job you take. If you have a degree you'd easily get a job paying more than that. But it sounds like you could have a better standard of living working in Tesco than you have there... It would probably even be pretty easy for you to get permission to work
well, it pretty much already is here. The BPI have been being bitches to us and our sovereign parliament for ages, I hope someone finally gives them a good dose of shut the hell up.
To some extent that might be true of "Blu-ray" but I think people really get what HD-DVD is. I'm not sure about where you are but in England we've recently been getting blitzed with adverts for HD TVs and what have you and there is a "HD ready" sticker on pretty much all new TVs now; I think people have got what it means and it has a genuine mind-share now.
After all, if you've just bought a £1500 HDTV then you NEED a HD-DVD player, right?
I'm disapointed that YouGov would agree to carry out a poll like this, I fear they are essentially becoming hired guns in any flame war you need stats for...
My own home computer since Nov. 30th has "fought off" over 760 attacks. All it took me to do this is just run firestarter. Does this mean that I'm having an all out war with some hackers?... or does this mean that one person who is on the same network as me (stupid appartment blocks with their crazy internet set ups) is too stupid to have updated to SP2?
Come to think of it maybe this is whats going on here...
God I wish it was a crime to not properly maintain your computer.
really, they are structured for the most part in such a way that it really doesn't matter where you start, although if it was me (and I wasn't just about to get the wii and TP for christmas) I would get Ocarina of time and Majora's mask for the N64. They are simply the best games I've ever played. You should play them even if you don't care about the story... even if you don't care about anything Zelda.
Oh, and Majora's mask was the best of the two, but because these follow right on from each other (there is pretty much no story break) I'd play them in OoT > MM order
actually state funded education is essential to justice. If you don't have an education which is equal to that which everyone else has you have got an unfair advantage over other people which you in no way earned (it is a matter of brute luck that your parents can afford it) and as such you cannot justify any future inequality you might get on the grounds of desert.
you should go read; Brighouse, H., (2000) School Choice and Social Justice, Oxford University Press: Oxford, esp. chapter6
it nicely explains why it is unjust to have any private education, so should also show you how important state funded education is.
And if justice doesn't float your boat, consider a world in which 50% of people have no formal education (which might not be too far from the truth considering how expensive private education can be), maybe 30% of the whole population turns to crime because of it (there are few jobs available without formal education), do you really want to have to live in gated communities for fear of going anywhere without your guards at the gate-post?
you are partially right, we do need to avoid dependence on any country who could ever become hostile to us. Pretty much that means any country (we might be able to trust those in the EU because it would be suicide for them economically to do anything like cutting us off, but even then don't put all your eggs in one basket). I would rather we put in renewable energy sources though, god knows we have enough wind and waves, we could fairly easily provide all the energy we'd ever need if we just made a one off investment in this stuff in a serious way. There is a need to get rid of NIMBYism so we can protect ourselves into the future.
As a side note I think with a one off investment of 100Billion pounds the government could create a state owned company which sells energy at a competitive price and gives future dividens (in the same way owning shares works) to everyone in the country. I think we could raise that much money with a one off super tax...
I was particularly angry with what they were going to do, ie. sell it as a full game and then charge loads for cars etc, so naturally this is good news for anyone who actually has a ps3 (I'm in the UK so even if I wanted on I'm still waiting 'till about march 07). One thing that worried me though is "Instead of continuing work on GT HD, they'll focus on Gran Turismo 5, the next 'full' game in the series." I hope that the game is at least finished properly, even if not as expansive as it was meant to be, a shodily made game that crashes or has bad mapping is almost worse than no game...
"The craziest use of the tech surely has to be RFID chips for Marks & Spencer suits -- you couldn't pay most people to wear one of them"
This is just wrong, all they are doing is tracking things which they own in exactly the same way people currently do, you know those big-ass white things which are on your clothes and leave a hole in everything - it's essentially the same thing. It is just more efficient. No one would ever wear a suit with these in, and their article even accepts in when they state (the one they linked to from the article...) "[tags] are contained within throwaway paper labels called Intelligent Labels attached to, but not embedded in, a selection of men's suits". This sort of thing makes people who don't like the technology because it can track you look like tools who over-react. Don't keep doing this/.
well, you say that we only know what is told to us about WW2 and that means that we can't get objective information, partly that might be true but I think to a far smaller degree than you suggest.
I was at the Public Records Office just the other week (at Kew, in London) there you can see the original documents from the government departments from the time, as well as the information we had about the Germans and there are some news reports which they thought were important. I suggest that this information is very close to being true and unbiased, firstly because the MoD has no interest in propaganda because its not good telling yourself you're winning if you're not and secondly because it was secret so they could freely tell the truth without damaging the moral. The Chinese government will not let you look at the original documents from them about their policies so you can try and come to your own decision
offtopic but interesting, whilst at the PRO I found a "most secret" document in which two senior german POWs were talking about the war, they certainly thought that the french working class would probably go communist and side with the Soviets.
If you're British you should go have a look at it even if its just out of interest; if you're american you should see if you have something similar. Even just for fun - its ace
but if they never commit the attack then people will no long belive them next time... I think they do need to at least have a go at it. Although you are right on the whole that the fear is a big part. I think with the brand of "islamic" terrorism though there maybe some part which requires an actual attack - maybe because of a percieved need to hurt someone or something, maybe because of the instruction from the people at the top.
Basically, I agree. But maybe they do want to do it aswell.
I think we can largely take people who annoce these things before hand, its just like foreplay for them. They want the media to report on it (which they do - handy really) and they want people to know that they are considering doing it. Its just another tool for spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Besides don't you think there could be a certain amount of l33t points (or some kind of jihad alternative) for saying your going to do an attack and them still being un-able to stop you... I'm assuming this will be like a DoS attack or what have you from bot-nets; does this mean running an unpatched copy of XP is helping the terrorists?
"there isn't anything wrong with this country that President Bill Gates couldn't cure in less time than it takes to get a new operating system out the door"
I wish it were true... but its not. They see people saying that they won't ever buy from them again and falling sales and respond with "we need even more money and stelth taxes! Piracy is killing us!!!" They are just bastards, and I'm proud not to give them a single penny for their shit, I get legal music from bands that I know who (without a label) produce their own CDs/mp3s/videos; at least then they get 100% of the selling price
but I hope that they don't try and give people their money back automatically, I have about 5cents on the site and if they put it back in my account I'll get charged about £1.50 for it to go back in, which will annoy me no end. I don't want a few cents back, they can happily keep them. I only worry because they did say in their agreement that they would should the site stop opperating.
Slashdot Mirror
I see the need for open source games that can rival the closed source ones and maybe a few moves like this might not go a miss... but do we need this game? If things have really gone that bad that they've been forced out of the market and can't compete then maybe this is because the game isn't that good. I've heard people saying that there are big problems with the way it plays - can we fix them to make this game as good as it needs to be? Even if that is possible will this be less effort than putting all that money towards one of the open source MMORPGs which already exist and making them a lot better?
How will this make money seems to be the other question? Will it be charged for or free as in beer aswell, if it is then how do we keep things ticking over with the servers etc? and who will own it? the FSF? the contributors? the donators? I can't get on the site but I really do hope that they have decided on these things and decided well... and would want to know the answers before I gave a penny (or euro, it seems)
I wouldn't say it's FUD because there is no uncertainty. If you agree to that EULA you lose certain rights which they think are important that you wouldn't use if you were on Free Software...
There is also no doubt - you click "I agree" and the rights are gone...
And dare I say there is not even any fear in the end user - and that is something we should be really worried about
"In related new[s] Iowa has banned the use of indicators, roll cages, air bags, crumple zones and seatbelts as it gives people too much sense of security. California has banned the use of door and window locks and the use of burglar alarms as they make houses "secure by design"."
n #The_British_Law , it has a link to the original report
God I wish that this sort of thinking (which I know you put up as a joke/to prove a point) never happened in the real world, but there is evidence that seat-belts have increased the number of deaths to certain groups and not done too much to reduce other deaths. The idiots actually drive less safely because they are wearing a seat-belt...
If you want to look more in depth see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_legislatio
...most people do expect it though. I would say that it is highly possible to make great 2D games, or more old-style games with some 3D elements. Take Ikiruga (I might have spelt that wrong), a great game with primarily a 2D action mode, or Paper Mario (if you can get hold of that I'd recomend it). These are "last gen" of course, but they do show well that even in a situation where people expect 3D you can still give 2 and have people happy.
If they make it, and make it well, people will buy it. Sure some ass-hats might not buy it because they think "it doesn't look good so it can't be fun" - but sod 'em.
"has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals"
I don't really see how... one small mouse, even if there was 1 million of them, wouldn't really have made much difference to birds; it'd only be preditors that made a big difference
"The probability that an unpatched PC behind a firewall will get "hacked" in the moment while you are downloading it is what... 0,2?"
I would say your second guess of 2 is closer than your first of 0... shall we split the difference and agree at 1?
Everything in excess can cause death... too much water will kill you.
"Rather cheeky of a British subject (not citizen) to lecture Americans about freedom."
/.
Just thought I'd pull you up a bit here. Whilst in our hearts we will eternally be our Queen's subjects, legally we are citizens. Infact since the British Nationality Act 1981 there has been no real formal notion of subject; we are citizens. Our citizenship is framed in a rights based way so is in reality not that different from that of America (and we are both countries of ius soli, although America is now a purer example), but for the most part there is not that much difference... The American citizenship tends to me more exclusionary in practice - which is strange because of the rights base - blacks and Asians have been formally excluded until comparetively very recently and still are to some extent now. There is obviously the issue with republicanism as well with your rights siezed from below and ours granted from above, but in their current manifestations I think that distinction might be of less relevence than the public sphere/private sphere experience - and both the US and UK both have their citizenships in the public space.
Wow, who'd have thought that all the time I was in the library might one day be useful on
You should come to England, here you'll earn £5.10 an hour (going up soon), about $9something off the top of my head, for any job you take. If you have a degree you'd easily get a job paying more than that. But it sounds like you could have a better standard of living working in Tesco than you have there... It would probably even be pretty easy for you to get permission to work
A roomba is an automatic hoover,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roomba
well, it pretty much already is here. The BPI have been being bitches to us and our sovereign parliament for ages, I hope someone finally gives them a good dose of shut the hell up.
To some extent that might be true of "Blu-ray" but I think people really get what HD-DVD is. I'm not sure about where you are but in England we've recently been getting blitzed with adverts for HD TVs and what have you and there is a "HD ready" sticker on pretty much all new TVs now; I think people have got what it means and it has a genuine mind-share now.
After all, if you've just bought a £1500 HDTV then you NEED a HD-DVD player, right?
I'm disapointed that YouGov would agree to carry out a poll like this, I fear they are essentially becoming hired guns in any flame war you need stats for...
My own home computer since Nov. 30th has "fought off" over 760 attacks. All it took me to do this is just run firestarter. Does this mean that I'm having an all out war with some hackers?... or does this mean that one person who is on the same network as me (stupid appartment blocks with their crazy internet set ups) is too stupid to have updated to SP2?
Come to think of it maybe this is whats going on here...
God I wish it was a crime to not properly maintain your computer.
really, they are structured for the most part in such a way that it really doesn't matter where you start, although if it was me (and I wasn't just about to get the wii and TP for christmas) I would get Ocarina of time and Majora's mask for the N64. They are simply the best games I've ever played. You should play them even if you don't care about the story... even if you don't care about anything Zelda.
Oh, and Majora's mask was the best of the two, but because these follow right on from each other (there is pretty much no story break) I'd play them in OoT > MM order
actually state funded education is essential to justice. If you don't have an education which is equal to that which everyone else has you have got an unfair advantage over other people which you in no way earned (it is a matter of brute luck that your parents can afford it) and as such you cannot justify any future inequality you might get on the grounds of desert.
you should go read; Brighouse, H., (2000) School Choice and Social Justice, Oxford University Press: Oxford, esp. chapter6
it nicely explains why it is unjust to have any private education, so should also show you how important state funded education is.
And if justice doesn't float your boat, consider a world in which 50% of people have no formal education (which might not be too far from the truth considering how expensive private education can be), maybe 30% of the whole population turns to crime because of it (there are few jobs available without formal education), do you really want to have to live in gated communities for fear of going anywhere without your guards at the gate-post?
you are partially right, we do need to avoid dependence on any country who could ever become hostile to us. Pretty much that means any country (we might be able to trust those in the EU because it would be suicide for them economically to do anything like cutting us off, but even then don't put all your eggs in one basket). I would rather we put in renewable energy sources though, god knows we have enough wind and waves, we could fairly easily provide all the energy we'd ever need if we just made a one off investment in this stuff in a serious way. There is a need to get rid of NIMBYism so we can protect ourselves into the future.
As a side note I think with a one off investment of 100Billion pounds the government could create a state owned company which sells energy at a competitive price and gives future dividens (in the same way owning shares works) to everyone in the country. I think we could raise that much money with a one off super tax...
I was particularly angry with what they were going to do, ie. sell it as a full game and then charge loads for cars etc, so naturally this is good news for anyone who actually has a ps3 (I'm in the UK so even if I wanted on I'm still waiting 'till about march 07). One thing that worried me though is "Instead of continuing work on GT HD, they'll focus on Gran Turismo 5, the next 'full' game in the series." I hope that the game is at least finished properly, even if not as expansive as it was meant to be, a shodily made game that crashes or has bad mapping is almost worse than no game...
"The craziest use of the tech surely has to be RFID chips for Marks & Spencer suits -- you couldn't pay most people to wear one of them"
/.
This is just wrong, all they are doing is tracking things which they own in exactly the same way people currently do, you know those big-ass white things which are on your clothes and leave a hole in everything - it's essentially the same thing. It is just more efficient. No one would ever wear a suit with these in, and their article even accepts in when they state (the one they linked to from the article...) "[tags] are contained within throwaway paper labels called Intelligent Labels attached to, but not embedded in, a selection of men's suits". This sort of thing makes people who don't like the technology because it can track you look like tools who over-react. Don't keep doing this
well, you say that we only know what is told to us about WW2 and that means that we can't get objective information, partly that might be true but I think to a far smaller degree than you suggest.
I was at the Public Records Office just the other week (at Kew, in London) there you can see the original documents from the government departments from the time, as well as the information we had about the Germans and there are some news reports which they thought were important. I suggest that this information is very close to being true and unbiased, firstly because the MoD has no interest in propaganda because its not good telling yourself you're winning if you're not and secondly because it was secret so they could freely tell the truth without damaging the moral. The Chinese government will not let you look at the original documents from them about their policies so you can try and come to your own decision
offtopic but interesting, whilst at the PRO I found a "most secret" document in which two senior german POWs were talking about the war, they certainly thought that the french working class would probably go communist and side with the Soviets.
If you're British you should go have a look at it even if its just out of interest; if you're american you should see if you have something similar. Even just for fun - its ace
but if they never commit the attack then people will no long belive them next time... I think they do need to at least have a go at it. Although you are right on the whole that the fear is a big part. I think with the brand of "islamic" terrorism though there maybe some part which requires an actual attack - maybe because of a percieved need to hurt someone or something, maybe because of the instruction from the people at the top.
Basically, I agree. But maybe they do want to do it aswell.
I think we can largely take people who annoce these things before hand, its just like foreplay for them. They want the media to report on it (which they do - handy really) and they want people to know that they are considering doing it. Its just another tool for spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Besides don't you think there could be a certain amount of l33t points (or some kind of jihad alternative) for saying your going to do an attack and them still being un-able to stop you... I'm assuming this will be like a DoS attack or what have you from bot-nets; does this mean running an unpatched copy of XP is helping the terrorists?
"there isn't anything wrong with this country that President Bill Gates couldn't cure in less time than it takes to get a new operating system out the door"
Have things really got that bad?
I wish it were true... but its not. They see people saying that they won't ever buy from them again and falling sales and respond with "we need even more money and stelth taxes! Piracy is killing us!!!" They are just bastards, and I'm proud not to give them a single penny for their shit, I get legal music from bands that I know who (without a label) produce their own CDs/mp3s/videos; at least then they get 100% of the selling price
but I hope that they don't try and give people their money back automatically, I have about 5cents on the site and if they put it back in my account I'll get charged about £1.50 for it to go back in, which will annoy me no end. I don't want a few cents back, they can happily keep them. I only worry because they did say in their agreement that they would should the site stop opperating.
Damn exchange rates!