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Comment Re:EA, you've missed the point (Score 4, Insightful) 313

by pauls2272 (#31576376) Attached to: EA To Charge For Game Demos

>The point of a demo is to convince people to purchase your game

But this isn't a Demo. They are already milking the back end by selling DLC "addons" to the base product that were probably developed in tandem with the base product. Now they want to sell PDLC "addons" to the product by releasing bits of it early. I'd bet the programmers/developers won't use much if any feedback from the PDLC people as they will be too busy trying to get the base product out the door as well as the DLC content that is to be sold immediately after the base product.

So, in some respects, it is ingenious. Prior to the DLC stuff, you had:

"Base product" if that sold well then a lot of time later "expansion to base product"

Now the business model is:

"PDLC content reaps in big bucks", "base product (which gets smaller and smaller)" ,"DLC content "addons" reaps in more bucks"

Next they will start charging you for character generation, Saves, multiplayer, etc...
PlayStation (Games)

BioShock 2's First DLC Already On Disc 466

Posted by Soulskill from the read-the-rest-of-this-post-in-a-month-for-five-bucks dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from 1Up: "Trouble is brewing in Rapture. The recently released Sinclair Solutions multiplayer pack for BioShock 2 is facing upset players over the revelation that the content is already on the disc, and the $5 premium is an unlock code. It started when users on the 2K Forums noticed that the content is incredibly small: 24KB on the PC, 103KB on the PlayStation 3, and 108KB on the Xbox 360. 2K Games responded with a post explaining that the decision was made in order to keep the player base intact, without splitting it between the haves and have-nots."
Government

Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking 794

Posted by timothy from the too-stupid-to-live-as-long-as-possible dept.
lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."
NASA

Gamma Ray Mystery Reestablished By Fermi Telescope 95

Posted by Soulskill from the back-to-the-drawing-board dept.
eldavojohn writes "New observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveal that our assumptions about the 'fog' of gamma rays in our universe are not entirely explained by black hole-powered jets emanating from active galaxies — as we previously hypothesized. For now, the researchers are representing the source of unaccounted gamma rays with a dragon (as in 'here be') symbol. A researcher explained that they are certain about this, given Fermi's observations: 'Active galaxies can explain less than 30 percent of the extragalactic gamma-ray background Fermi sees. That leaves a lot of room for scientific discovery as we puzzle out what else may be responsible.' And so we reopen the chapter on background gamma-rays in the science textbooks and hope this eventually sheds even more light on other mysteries of space — like star formation and dark matter."
Image

Scientists Discover Booze That Won't Give You a Hangover 334

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-have-another dept.
Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University have discovered that drinking alcohol with oxygen bubbles added leads to fewer hangovers and a shorter sobering up time. People drinking the bubbly booze sobered up 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank the non-fizzy stuff. Kwon said: "The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."
Idle

Directed Energy Weapon Downs Mosquitos 428

Posted by samzenpus from the two-pound-hammer-and-ten-penny-nail dept.
wisebabo writes "Nathan Myhrvol demonstrated at TED a laser, built from parts scrounged from eBay, capable of shooting down not one but 50 to 100 mosquitos a second. The system is 'so precise that it can specify the species, and even the gender, of the mosquito being targeted.' Currently, for the sake of efficiency, it leaves the males alone because only females are bloodsuckers. Best of all the system could cost as little as $50. Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!" We ran a story about this last year. It looks like the company has added a bit more polish, and burning mosquito footage to their marketing.

Comment Original is Classic Film making (Score 1) 474

by pauls2272 (#31101518) Attached to: Star Wars TV Show Tainted By Memories of Jar Jar

>But now, almost thirty years older, I still like the first film the best.

Star Wars had a farm boy, a princess, a wizard, a pirate and comic relief. What is not to like? That is Classic Moving Making and story telling!

The 2nd film explored the characters and made the characters make tough decisions - Should Luke go try to rescue his friends or let them die when letting them die is the smarter move...

The 3rd film is where Lucas started going wrong - trying to appeal to 5 year olds and boost the merchandising aspect of the movies instead of telling a story and letting the merchandising take care of itself.

It has been all downhill since then and as long as Lucas equates TOYS = $$$$, his stuff will always suck.
Image

"Tube Map" Created For the Milky Way 142

Posted by samzenpus from the non-stop-service-to-the-Perseus-Arm dept.
astroengine writes "Assuming you had an interstellar spaceship, how would you navigate around the galaxy? For starters, you'd probably need a map. But there's billions of stars out there — how complex would that map need to be? Actually, Samuel Arbesman, a research fellow from Harvard, has come up with a fun solution. He created the 'Milky Way Transit Authority (MWTA),' a simple transit system in the style of the iconic London Underground 'Tube Map.' (Travel Tip: Don't spend too much time loitering around the station at Carina, there's some demolition work underway.)"
Apple

Has Apple Created the Perfect Board Game Platform? 531

Posted by kdawson from the triple-word-score dept.
andylim writes "recombu.com is running an interesting piece about how Apple has created a 'Jumanji (board game) platform.' The 9.7-inch multi-touch screen is perfect for playing board games at home, and you could use Wi-Fi or 3G to play against other people when you're on your own. What would be really interesting is if you could pair the iPad with iPhones, 'Imagine a Scrabble iPad game that used iPhones as letter holders. You could hold up your iPhone so that no one else could see your letters and when you were ready to make a word on the Scrabble iPad board, you could slide them on to the board by flicking the word tiles off your iPhone.' Now that would be cool."
Image

Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance 262

Posted by samzenpus from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.
quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."
PC Games (Games)

Future Ubisoft Games To Require Constant Internet Access 497

Posted by Soulskill from the this-will-go-over-well dept.
Following up on our discussion yesterday of annoying game distribution platforms, Ubisoft has announced the details of their Online Services Platform, which they will use to distribute and administer future PC game releases. The platform will require internet access in order to play installed games, saved games will be stored remotely, and the game you're playing will even pause and try to reconnect if your connection is lost during play. Quoting Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "This seems like such a bizarre, bewildering backward step. Of course we haven't experienced it yet, but based on Ubi’s own description of the system so many concerns arise. Yes, certainly, most people have the internet all the time on their PCs. But not all people. So already a percentage of the audience is lost. Then comes those who own gaming laptops, who now will not be able to play games on trains, buses, in the park, or anywhere they may not be able to find a WiFi connection (something that’s rarely free in the UK, of course – fancy paying the £10/hour in the airport to play your Ubisoft game?). Then there's the day your internet is down, and the engineers can’t come out to fix it until tomorrow. No game for you. Or any of the dozens of other situations when the internet is not available to a player. But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits. People who do not wish to report in to a company they’ve no affiliation with, nor accountability to, whenever they play a game they’ve legally bought. People who don’t want their save data stored remotely. This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games."

Comment Re:Too Many To Remember (Score 1) 414

by pauls2272 (#30848254) Attached to: I keep track of my passwords ...

I have upwards of 10 passwords at work that have to change every 30 days

Only 10? I must have 30+ ids/passwords (all different of course), for work. I keep them written down and locked in the drawer in my office. This is what the head security guy told me to do when I complained to him that the IDs/Passwords were WAY OUT OF CONTROL.

I said we needed to get a SINGLE SIGNON product. But that is too expensive so each new product/feature they get, we get another set of IDs and passwords. The old shop I worked at, had the same problem but started requiring any new software acquired had to use the LAN ID/Password or the guys could not buy it. We went down from dozens of IDs/passwords to just a couple.

For home, I use a very strong password for my main sites but the personal websites I access do not require me to change it every 30 days. I also have a throw away password (very easy password) that I use for 1 time websites that want you to register (that I will probably never access again - that way I don't compromise my strong password).
Role Playing (Games)

Genre Wars — the Downside of the RPG Takeover 248

Posted by Soulskill from the you-gain-1912-experience dept.
Phaethon360 writes "From Bioshock and Modern Warfare 2 to even Team Fortress 2, RPG elements are creeping into game genres that we never imagined they would. This change for the most part has managed to subtly improve upon genres that needed new life, but there's a cost that hasn't been tallied by the majority of game developers. 'The simple act of removing mod tools, along with the much discussed dedicated server issue, has made [MW2] a bit of a joke among competitive players. Gone are the days of "promod," and the only option you have is to play it their way. If Infinity Ward are so insistent on improving the variety of our experiences, they don’t have to do it at the expense of the experience that many of us already love. It really is that simple. If they don’t want to provide a good "back to basics experience," they could at least continue to provide the tools that allow us to do that for ourselves.'"
GUI

Augmented Reality To Help Mechanics Fix Vehicles 81

Posted by timothy from the insert-overlaid-part-a-into-slot-b dept.
kkleiner writes "ARMAR, or Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair, is a head mounted display unit that provides graphic overlays to assist you in making repairs. An Android phone provides an interface to control the graphics you view during the process. Published in IEEE, and recently tested with the United States Marine Corps on an armored turret, ARMAR can cut maintenance times in half by guiding users to the damaged area and displaying 3D animations to demonstrate the appropriate tools and techniques."

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