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Comment Re:Grown up games... (Score 5, Interesting) 152

You and I must be exact opposites. I play games specifically for their rich story lines. Sure, I play MW2 or Borderlands to blow some stuff up on occasion, but I enjoy rich stories like Lost Odyssey much more.

Games are 40-80 hour movies to me. With that length, each character can be explored, their background and motives explained, creating a richer involvement in the story. The reason those games are "grown-up" is because it takes a grown-up patience to play them. Most 10 year olds aren't going to have the patience to watch all the FMVs and read the dialog in a game like Final Fantasy.

I for one certainly hope that more games like Lost Odyssey are released. As the "original" video game generation gets older, I think we'll see more of these games.

Security

Submission + - SEC Nails Insider For Embezzling $7.7 Million

Darkreadingman writes: "The SEC yesterday grabbed a former stock options manager for abusing his software's administrative rights to route more than 700,000 shares of stock in his company — Wireless Facilities Inc. — into an account in his wife's name. The irony? WFI is, among other things, a security outsourcing provider. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=123 231&WT.svl=news1_2"
Handhelds

Submission + - Smartphones Getting Too Buggy for their Own Good?

Posthis writes: Nokia's flagship multimedia $750 smartphone was released a few days ago, the Nokia N95. However, the first results are not encouraging because of reported bugs in the system. Nokia even released a new firmware on Monday, just days after the original release, but many bugs remain in the system. Apparently WiFi gets disconnected all the time (and so VoIP gets disconnected too, while their SIP implementation has additional problems too), it has a suspiciously low standby time, audio hissing, terrible GPS reception (some users reported 10 minutes of wait-time before they lock-on to a satellite, others couldn't connect at all) and Bluetooth headset incompatibilities. Apparently, since Symbian S60 3.x came out last year most of Nokia's phones were having software issues, while Sony Ericsson with its Symbian UIQ line faired even worse according to user reports online (e.g. in the popular P990). Is this a sign of the things to come in the embedded world? Once upon a time, embedded devices used to shine for their stability and bug-free nature compared to desktop OSes, but now that smartphones try to become mini-desktops, it seems that these manufacturers are struggling to release well-tested, stable products.
The Media

Submission + - Article on $2000 mercury cleanup now on Snopes

Dilaceratus writes: On Monday Slashdot ran a thread on an article by Steven Milloy (that ran in the Financial Times and Fox News) claiming that it was going to cost $2000 for a Maine woman to clean up the mercury from a broken compact fluorescent light bulb. In what must be a record (even for FOX News) this story has made it to the Snopes.com Urban Legends site, since Milloy (and the WorldNetDaily article he lifted the story from) entirely misrepresented both the costs and the dangers of cleaning up a broken fluorescent.
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Dungons & Dragons & IT - Why we crave boun

boyko.at.netqos writes: "An editorial in Network Performance Daily tries to take a (1d6) stab at explaining why geeky engineering types are also typically the types that enjoy a rousing game of D&D. "The greatest barrier to creativity is a lack of boundaries. Counter-intuitive — almost zen-like — but we've found it to be true. And this is why people play Dungeons & Dragons (and similar games), and why network engineers often spend time putting out fires when they could be improving the network... Have you ever noticed that, in your job as a network engineer, you spend quite a lot of it putting out fires, as opposed to starting new initiatives? Those network emergencies are obstacles. You have defined parameters and you must overcome the obstacle. Engineers trained to find the best solutions to problems usually feel most in their element when solving a problem!"
Security

Submission + - Hacking Web Applications Over Lunch

Anonymous Coward writes: "Vuljnerable web applications are a huge problem. A new SANS paper: Web Application Auditing Over Lunch shows some very simple tricks on how to check your web application for common security issues.

After all, many web application didn't take longer then that to write. So why not break them in the same time. The paper is pretty platform neutral. However, I found the mentioned firefox extension "Tamper Data" to be very usefull."
Media

Journal Journal: Has MySpace Shown Its True Colors?

Though the NYT article was titled "MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users", it may as well have been: "Tila Tequila Reveals MySpace's Greed". On the one hand I can see why Fox Interactive and MySpace would want to protect this little walled community that they have created and control all profits that flow from it, but I think they might want to be wary of both history's lessons and the consequences of biting (or chastising) the hand that feeds them.

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