Denjiro - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Bard's Tale and Ultima (Score 1) 1120

by Denjiro on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @05:46AM (#28863831) Attached to: Which Game Series Would You Reboot?

It was a decent action adventure type game. Nothing remotely like the originals. It was also a parody of the genre. The main character was voice acted by Cary Elwes and was somewhat amusing. It DID include all of the other Bard's Tale games in a format usable on modern systems, which was a definite plus. As far as being true to the originals, from what the wiki said, the company that produced the game had no rights to the originals IP, that's all locked up by EA, so they could only make vague references.

Patent Trolls Target Small East Texas Companies 281

Posted by kdawson on Friday July 24, 2009 @09:14AM from the patently-absurd dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a sign that patent trolls are getting desperate to keep their cases in East Texas — long known as the friendliest venue for their claims — some have taken to suing tiny, no-name companies that are run by East Texas residents. The hope is that, if at least one defendant is located in East Texas, the judge will keep the entire case there. Nate Neel, a Longview, Texas resident with a small open source software company called CitiWare, was sued by Bedrock Computer Technologies in June despite (he claims) having no customers or other meaningful operations of any kind. In response, Mr. Neel has posted a strongly worded letter to Bedrock's attorneys on his Web site. It will be interesting to see how East Texas judges respond to this abuse of process perpetrated against their own residents."

We Were Smarter About Copyright Law 100 Years Ago 152

Posted by kdawson on Saturday July 18, 2009 @02:43PM from the intelligent-debate dept.

An anonymous reader writes "James Boyle has a blog post comparing the recording industry's arguments in 1909 to those of 2009, with some lovely Google book links to the originals. Favorite quote: 'Many and numerous classes of public benefactors continue ceaselessly to pour forth their flood of useful ideas, adding to the common stock of knowledge. No one regards it as immoral or unethical to use these ideas and their authors do not suffer themselves to be paraded by sordid interests before legislative committees uttering bombastic speeches about their rights and representing themselves as the objects of "theft" and "piracy."' Industry flaks were more impressive 100 years ago. In that debate the recording industry was the upstart, battling the entrenched power of the publishers of musical scores. Also check out the cameo appearance by John Philip Sousa, comparing sound recordings to slavery. Ironically, among the subjects mentioned as clearly not the subject of property rights were business methods and seed varieties." Boyle concludes: "...one looks back at these transcripts and compares them to today's hearings — with vacuous rantings from celebrities and the bloviation of bad economics and worse legal theory from one industry representative after another — it is hard not to feel a sense of nostalgia. In 1900, it appears, we were better at understanding that copyright was a law that regulated technology, a law with constitutional restraints, that property rights were not absolute and that the public would not automatically be served by extending rights out to infinity."

Comment Re:Ghostbusters (Score 1) 202

by Denjiro on Saturday July 11, 2009 @11:44PM (#28665203) Attached to: Why Video Games Are Having a Harder Time With Humor

I very much enjoyed the new Ghostbusters game. It was definitely the movie sequal most of us wanted back in the late 80s/early 90s. The amount of dialogue and just little features in the game was very impressive. I spent about 20 minutes clicking on the Viggo the Carpathean painting and very rarely got repeat dialogue. I was somewhat disturbed when he threatened to 'Wear me like a pair of pants.'.

Why Video Games Are Having a Harder Time With Humor 202

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 11, 2009 @02:09AM from the moo-moomoo-moo-moomoomoo-mooooooo dept.

Kotaku is running an opinion piece discussing why video games are having a harder time being funny as they've shifted away from text-driven adventures and toward graphics-intensive environments. "As technology improved, things began to get more serious. With the rise of 3D technology a strong focus was put on making games look good, delivering a more realistic — and often darker — experience to the player. Cartoonish comedic games became more of a novelty than the norm. Few titles, such as Rare's Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64, fully embraced humor." The article also talks about how the trend could soon reverse itself. LucasArts' Dave Grossman said, "As the games get smarter and start paying attention to more things about what the player is actually doing, using that ability not just to create challenges but to create humorous moments will be pretty cool. Eventually I expect to be out of a job over that."

The Essentials of RPG Design 241

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday July 02, 2009 @02:20PM from the main-characters-with-a-mysterious-past dept.

simoniker writes "As the latest in his Game Design Essentials series for Gamasutra, writer John Harris examines 10 games from the Western computer RPG (CRPG) tradition and 10 from the Japanese console RPG (JRPG) tradition, to figure out what exactly makes them tick. From the entry on Nethack: 'Gaining experience is supposed to carry the risk of harm and failure. Without that risk, gaining power becomes a foregone conclusion. It has reached the point where the mere act of spending time playing [most RPGs] appears to give players the right to have their characters become more powerful. The obstacles that provide experience become simply an arbitrary wall to scale before more power is granted; this, in a nutshell, is the type of play that has brought us grind, where the journey is simple and boring and the destination is something to be raced to. Nethack and many other roguelikes do feature experience gain, but it doesn't feel like grind. It doesn't because much of the time the player is gaining experience, he is in danger of sudden, catastrophic failure. When you're frequently a heartbeat away from death, it's difficult to become bored.' Harris' Game Design series has previously spanned subjects from mysterious games to open world games, unusual control schemes and difficult games."

One Year Later, "Dead" XP Still Going Strong 538

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @07:32PM from the killed-the-wrong-one dept.

snydeq writes "Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP a year ago today, no longer selling new copies in most venues. Yet according to a report from InfoWorld, various downgrade paths to XP are keeping the operating system very much alive, particularly among businesses. In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs. Microsoft recently planned to further limit the ability to downgrade to XP now that Windows 7 is in the pipeline, but backlash against the licensing scheme prompted the company to change course, extending downgrade rights on new PCs from April 2010 to April 2011."

China Delays "Green Dam" Internet Filter 86

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @02:01PM from the step-too-far dept.

SailorSpork sends in a BBC report that "China is delaying a controversial plan requiring all new computers sold in the country to be equipped with an Internet filtering software, state media says. The filter, called Green Dam Youth Escort, was to have been required from Wednesday, but the ministry of industry said computer makers needed more time." The submitter adds: "Except of course for Sony, who as reported earlier lacked the moral fiber to hold off installing the spyware, which reportedly is ridden with security holes and uses stolen code. Sony actually managed to ship ahead of the schedule."

Copyfraud Is Stealing the Public Domain 263

Posted by kdawson on Friday June 26, 2009 @11:58AM from the uncivil-actions dept.

malkavian writes "This community has complained long and loudly about the very one-sided approach to copyright, and the not-so-slow erosion of the public domain. On top of the corporate lobbying to remove increasingly larger parts of the public domain, there is now an growing pattern whereby works are directly taken from the public domain and effectively stolen by a single company leveraging protections provided under copyright law. The Register's article is based on a paper by Jason Mazzone at the Brooklyn Law School, which starkly details the problems that are now becoming evident as entities grab control over public domain works. The paper proposes some possible solutions, such as amending the Copyright Act. From the abstract: 'Copyright law itself creates strong incentives for copyfraud. The Copyright Act provides for no civil penalty for falsely claiming ownership of public domain materials. There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be made for free.'"

Facebook VP Slams Intel's, AMD's Chip Performance Claims 370

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 25, 2009 @11:23PM from the more-than-half-of-you-less-than-half-as-well-as-you-deserve dept.

narramissic writes "In an interview on stage at GigaOm's Structure conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook's VP of technical operations, told Om Malik that the latest generations of server processors from Intel and AMD don't deliver the performance gains that 'they're touting in the press.' 'And we're, literally in real time right now, trying to figure out why that is,' Heiliger said. He also had some harsh words for server makers: 'You guys don't get it,' Heiliger said. 'To build servers for companies like Facebook, and Amazon, and other people who are operating fairly homogeneous applications, the servers have to be cheap, and they have to be super power-efficient.' Heiliger added that Google has done a great job designing and building its own servers for this kind of use."

Middle-School Strip Search Ruled Unconstitutional 528

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 25, 2009 @04:34PM from the moment-of-claritin dept.

yuna49 writes "The US Supreme Court today ruled 8-1 that the strip search of a 13-year-old girl by officials in an Arizona middle school was unconstitutional. However, by a vote of 7-2, the Court also ruled that the individual school officials could not be held personally liable. A suit for damages against the school district itself is still going forward. We discussed this case at length back in March when the Court decided to hear the case on appeal."

Australian Web Filter To Censor Downloaded Games 200

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 25, 2009 @03:03PM from the we've-already-got-these-cool-filters-in-place dept.

Xiroth writes "The Australian Federal Communications Ministry has confirmed that they intend to use the planned filter to block the download of games that have been refused by Australia's classification authority, the OFLC. As an Electronic Frontiers Australia spokesman noted, 'This is confirmation that the scope of the mandatory censorship scheme will keep on creeping.'"

Microsoft Discloses Windows 7 Pricing 821

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 25, 2009 @11:43AM from the snow-leopard-is-cheaper dept.

It's the tripnaut! writes "Information Week has posted prices for Windows 7. From the article: 'The full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is priced at $199, with an upgrade from Vista or XP costing $119. The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, with upgrades going for $199. Windows 7 Ultimate is priced at $319, with the upgrade version at $219.' In a nod to the global economic downturn, it is interesting to note that prices are 10% lower than Vista."

Comment Re:So like... (Score 1) 600

by Denjiro on Saturday June 20, 2009 @08:22PM (#28406005) Attached to: Ray Bradbury Loves Libraries, Hates the Internet

Good old L.Ron's work would be mediocre at best with out without Scientology. He just wasn't a very good writer. From all I've read about him and his contemporaries, L.Ron's one real talent was he was able to churn out reams of mediocre at best work at the drop of a hat.

Man Attacked In Ohio For Providing Iran Proxies 467

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday June 19, 2009 @04:18PM from the never-underestimate-stupidity dept.

David Hume writes "electronicmaji is reporting on the Daily Kos that the individual known as ProtesterHelp (also to be found on twitter) was attacked in Ohio for providing network security for Twitterers in Iran, setting up private networks to provide secure proxies, calling for media networks to remove the Iranians Twitterers' information from their broadcast, and providing counter-intelligence services (including Basiji and Army Locations) within the Twitter community. ProtesterHelp was allegedly attacked by a group of men while walking to class in Ohio. The men, who appeared to ProtesterHelp to be either Iranian or Lebanese, drove up beside him and threw rocks at him while shouting, 'Mousavi Fraud.' ProtesterHelp further reported that his personal information has been leaked, and is currently being spread both online and inside of Iran amongst the government." Relatedly, Wired is also reporting that Google and Facebook have rushed out support for Persian. This move has allowed many pro-democracy groups to connect and translate their message to a broader audience.

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