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Comment: influence of bad game parts (Score 1) 188

by Catil (#30868798) Attached to: How Do You Measure a Game's Worth?
The sole amount of time spent playing a game doesn't consider the parts of the game that didn't entertain or were even frustrating. I guess you can't just substract these "wasted" hours either because a 20 hour game without any frustrating parts is likely to entertain you more than a 30 hour game that includes 10 hours of frustration. It depends a lot on how much your free time playing games is worth to you in the first place. It may even be worth so much that you enjoy a five minute Solitair game a lot more than going through five minutes of just learning the controls of any other game, as an extreme example. The location of the bad game parts is also important as five minutes of frustation every now and then are less likely to decrease your entertainment than a bad two hour part in one go, especially if that were your only two hours of playtime that weekend.
Google

Google Terminates Six Services 195

Posted by Soulskill
from the hasta-la-vista,-baby dept.
Jonah Bomber writes with this excerpt from Information Week: "In addition to Google's announcements about the elimination of 100 recruiting positions and the shutdown of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, the company said it would close Dodgeball, Google Catalog Search, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, and Jaiku. It also said it's discontinuing the ability to upload videos to Google Video. ... Jaiku, however, will live on as an open source project. Gundotra said that Google engineers have been porting the microblogging service to Google App Engine and that when the migration is completed, the company plans to make the code available under the Apache license."

Comment: Re:The world had its taste of freedom... (Score 1) 309

by Catil (#26470267) Attached to: Germany Legislates For Mandatory Web Filters

Blocking sites with illegal content can be done without destroying freedom of speech.

No, it's impossible. Once a government starts to censor a certain type of illegal content, the censorship will soon expand to include every other type of illegal content as well (warez, hacking tools, bombing construction manuals, all porn sites without youth restrictions,) followed by content considered harmful (islamistic and nazi propaganda, governmental uncontrolled gambling, information about drugs) and sooner or later include every website the current government doesn't like for any reason whatsoever (discussing loopholes in law, sharing speed camera locations, oppositional opinions.) This will happen because "the government has to protect it's people by all means possible" and once new possibilities are clearly available, they have to be applied due to political pressure.

Of course, in Germany, censorship is actually unconstitutional. It's not a coincidence that it starts with childporn even though it probably only represents a very small fraction of all illegal websites. It's the one subject nobody can argue against without commiting political suicide. Nazi- and antisemite stuff will certainly follow next, opening the door for everything else.
...and that's still not the end. As the list grows bigger, the process will get automated and imperatively include every website providing comments that are not pre-moderated. The crawler will repeatedly find posts with links to goatse on Slashdot, stored at different imagehosts that will all be banned one after another until Slashdot will finally be banned directly. The endresult will be a whitelist. The question is not if but when. It took ten years to get this far; give it another ten and we will be there.

The fact that these kind of extensive cuts to people's right of 'freedom of speech' is currently happening all the world, for many unrelated different reasons no less, should be alarming.

The Internet

Germany Legislates For Mandatory Web Filters 309

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the i-got-a-finger-you-can-filter dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany's equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.' She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal."
Television

Obama Recommends Delay In Digital TV Switch 589

Posted by timothy
from the but-the-coupons-have-been-printed-already dept.
gregg writes "Six weeks before the nation's television stations are scheduled to convert to digital transmission, the Obama administration is asking Congress to consider a delay. In the most significant sign to date of concern about the impending digital TV transition, the Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta said the government funds to support the change are 'woefully inadequate' and said that the digital switch date, Feb. 17, should be 'reconsidered and extended.'"
The Internet

NZ File-Sharers, Remixers Guilty Upon Accusation 449

Posted by kdawson
from the how-laws-are-made dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,' which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement he/she will be punished with summary Internet disconnection. Unlike most laws, this one has no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation, because they were removed after public consultation. The ISPs are up in arms and now artists are taking a stand for fair copyright."

Comment: Re:It has never been alife in the first place (Score 1) 417

by Catil (#26222085) Attached to: Is the Gaming PC Dead?
I used to buy a $2000 high end gaming PC about every two years and played the first year on the highest possible settings and already hated the machine, when I had to turn a few things off during the second year. Now, I just buy a $500-$800 PC every 3-4 years and I still play at the highest possible settings most of the time. Two things changed:
1. I just concentrate on a good graphics card and buy everything else for cheap; onboard sound, $30 case, etc. (yes, it doesn't really work for GTA IV. It seems to be the first game that needs a high end CPU and I hope it will also be the last.)
2. Back in the time, I didn't consider a game to be running fast, when it wouldn't run at >100 FPS. Today, 40 FPS is good enough for me. I don't know how this perception excatly changed but I guess I just got older and can't really tell the difference anymore.
Image

Nobel Winner Says Internet Might Have Stopped Hitler 290

Posted by samzenpus
from the what-can't-it-do dept.
There can be little doubt that the internet has changed everyday life for the better, but Nobel literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has upped the ante by saying an earlier introduction of information technology could even have prevented World War II. "Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded — ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day," he said. I have to agree with him. If England had been able to send a "Stop Hitler Now!" petition to 10 friendly countries, those countries could have each sent it to 10 more friendly countries before the invasion of Poland, and one of history's greatest tragedies might have been averted.

We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.

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