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Bug

Are Complex Games Doomed To Have Buggy Releases? 362

Posted by Soulskill from the where-did-my-face-go dept.
An anonymous reader points out a recent article at Gamesradar discussing the frequency of major bugs and technical issues in freshly-released video games. While such issues are often fixed with updates, questions remain about the legality and ethics of rushing a game to launch. Quoting: "As angry as you may be about getting a buggy title, would you want the law to get involved? Meglena Kuneva, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, is putting forward legislation that would legally oblige digital game distributors to give refunds for games, putting games in the same category in consumer law as household appliances. ... This call to arms has been praised by tech expert Andy Tanenbaum, author of books like Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. 'I think the idea that commercial software be judged by the same standards as other commercial products is not so crazy,' he says. 'Cars, TVs, and telephones are all expected to work, and they are full of software. Why not standalone software? I think such legislation would put software makers under pressure to first make sure their software works, then worry about more bells and whistles.'"
Earth

Yellowstone Supervolcano Larger Than First Thought 451

Posted by timothy from the even-superer dept.
drewtheman writes "New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters 203

Posted by Soulskill from the be-careful-they-cheat dept.
Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.

Comment Re:As a Russian (Score 1) 548

by The-Bus (#30129718) Attached to: Russia Recalls <em>Modern Warfare 2</em>

> If anything, the first MW was more ambiguous in that regard, since at least you had "good Russians" and "bad Russians"; in MW2, the former kind has apparently rapidly died out again, so we're back to good old stereotypes.

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the guy piloting the aircraft for Soap is Russian. Or at least he has an Eastern European name/accent.

Comment Re:Another for "$50M / $50K" (Score 1) 708

by The-Bus (#30062520) Attached to: Sci-Fi Shows and Movies Should Stop...

"Bothering With the Major Networks"?
'Idealistically' you may want to ignore those guys. But, pragmatically, since they dominate their market, you may want to/have to work with them. Sure, you *might* be able to avoid them. (FWIW, I often feel a similar way about the RIAA)

Twenty, even ten years ago, yes. But today's broadcast networks have the smallest share of the viewing public in their history. American Idol and High School Musical 2 are the closest our era has come to there being programming that a large share of America watches (although the second example is dealing with pre-teens, natch).

This doesn't mean you can avoid the big media companies altogether. It just means that your show doesn't have to be ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox. Some of the best TV of this past decade has been on cable networks.

Comment Re:Shame it's dying (Score 1) 427

by The-Bus (#29823913) Attached to: A Look At How Far PC Gaming Has Come

It's interesting that console games are now more like PC games than ever: some need specific hardware configurations (GTA IV on the Xbox 360 requires a hard drive, IIRC) or lengthy installations (games on the PS3), many have a lot of software patches that repair broken games (Fat Princess's online) or constantly improve the game experience (Burnout Paradise) and some are great principally based on their online connectivity (without human opponents or user-created content, they wouldn't be as good).
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - New York Times Ends Its Paid Subscription Service (reuters.com) 1

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "The New York Times has finally admitted that making people pay for its content is a losing proposition. The paper has announced that it will end its paid Internet service in favor of making most of its Web site available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue. This had been predicted countless times and is now coming to pass. How long before other online papers and similar information services come to the same realization and open up their sites?"
Businesses

Submission + - The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer (nytimes.com)

Submitted by The-Bus
The-Bus writes: Julian Dibbell has written a great article for the New York Times Magazine on the life of Chinese gold farmers. It's a great read and has a lot of very interesting tidbits, from comparing the potential size of the economy of MMO games and the GDP of Bolivia, to a Stanford scholar who found similarities between contemporary anti-gold-farmer rhetoric and 19th-century U.S. literature on immigrant Chinese laundry workers.

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