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Games

Game Difficulty As a Virtue 204

Posted by Soulskill
from the all-hail-battletoads dept.
The Wii and various mobile gaming platforms have done wonders for the trend toward casual or "easy" games. But the success of a few recent titles, despite their difficulty, has caused some to wonder whether the pendulum has swung too far; whether a little frustration can be seen as a good thing. Quoting: "The evidence is subtle but compelling. For one example, look to major consumer website GameSpot's Game of the Year for 2009: Atlus' PS3 RPG Demon's Souls, which received widespread critical acclaim – none of which failed to include a mention of the game's steep challenge. GameSpot called it 'ruthlessly, unforgivingly difficult.' Demon's Souls was a sleeper hit, an anomaly in the era of accessibility. One would think the deck was stacked against a game that demanded such vicious persistence, such precise attention – and yet a surge of praise from critics and developers alike praised the game for reintroducing the experience of meaningful challenge, of a game that demanded something from its players rather than looked for ways to hand them things. It wasn't just Demon's Souls that recently flipped the proverbial bird to the 'gaming for everyone' trend. In many ways, the independent development scene can be viewed on the macro level as a harbinger of trends to come, and over the past year and into 2010, many indies have decided to be brutal to their players."
Google

Gmail accounts hacked - no response from Google->

Submitted by jared51
jared51 writes "A few friends have recently had their Gmail accounts hacked, causing immense life complications. With Gmail storing all information (many people have a handy label "Accounts" making life easier) that has ever been emailed, a hijacker can easily move on to eBay, PayPal and credit card accounts to turn the crime into cash. Making matters worse, Google is impossible to contact by human. Hijacked users must contend with an endless series of forms."
Link to Original Source
Privacy

The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You 256

Posted by Zonk
from the i-think-the-shulmans-are-particularly-funny-this-week dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Danger Room, a Wired blog, today cites a study of future electronic snooping technologies from Reuters, written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it. 'The ability to record terabyte and larger databases will provide an omnipresent knowledge of the present and the past that can be used to rewind battle space observations in TiVo-like fashion and to run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces. For example, after a car bomb detonates, one would have the ability to play high-resolution data backward in time to follows the vehicle back to the source, and then use that knowledge to focus collection and gain additional information by organizing and searching through archived data.'"
User Journal

Journal: Anti NAIS Bills in Missouri Legislature

Journal by evought

I have just finished an article discussing the USDA's National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and current bills in the Missouri Legislature on the website for our farm-based business. Limited interest, but if you want to know more about another big government initiative, give it a read. Comments are welcome.

United States

New copyright fees threaten streaming radio

Submitted by DebateG
DebateG writes "The United States Copyright Royalty Board has just released its new royalty fees for streaming radio. Rather than charging a fixed portion of the station revenue, the fees will consist of a fixed amount of money for each song streamed to each listener and will more than double over the next five years. Moreover, the fees will be retroactive. These onerous fees threaten to completely bankrupt small broadcasters; a station with 1000 listeners will have to pay around $150,000 per year in licensing fees, which is often more than the station's profit. This is in stark contrast to analog radio stations, which do not pay any fees at all. Is this the end for independently-owned streaming radio?"

Never raise your hand to your children -- it leaves your midsection unprotected. -- Robert Orben