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Comment Probably not anti-security as much as SOP (Score 1) 148

My guess it's the simple fact that one program still can't really interact with another program's data.

The likelihood of Apple ever really changing this is probably next to zero, and it's the main reason I have no interest in the iPhone. What use is a computer in my pocket when I either need to use one program that is complex enough to handle every task I could possible need, or I need to make my tasks so simple that no data need ever be shared between two tools?

Comment Re:Normally vs. Now (Score 1) 678

If I go to the movies and watch something, I can't then resell the ticket for someone else to watch it. If I go to a concert, the same is true. Same with theatre. At least with episodic content *I* can reconsume the content as much as I like. Sure there's something to be said for reselling things, especially when they're as expensive as a $60 game. But there's been a history of entertainment you can't resell since before the internet even existed. The misconception that you have a "right" to resell anything is kinda silly. I can resell the disk it's one. I can't resell the experience unless that which provides the experience (be it a person or a piece of software) consents to providing that experience a second time (such as accepting ticket stubs from an old performance for a free repeat performance for loyal fans, or some such promotion). Honestly, I don't resell disk based games anyway most of the time. If a game's only worth $40 to me, I don't buy it for $60 then hope to resell it before its value drops below $20, I just wait until it costs $40. I also don't resell my clothes when styles change. Or my food when it goes bad. I don't understand what the fixation with reselling videogames is when so much else in our lives is one-way consumption, or could be resold (such as clothes) but few people care to.

Comment Is it actually allowed to also BE better? (Score 2, Interesting) 225

Even before hardware accelerated PhysX was on CUDA and you only got it with the standalone card, I always thought PhysX looked a bet nicer than Havok in action. I've been wishing more games used PhysX for a while, but it seems that if a game is going to be cross-target to the consoles as well, Havok is just a lot more likely. It may just be my own perceptions, but things seem to have a bit more consistent behaviour in regard to momentum and mass in PhysX whereas Havok seems a bit "floaty" a lot of the time. This may just be a result of constants designers pick, or something, I don't really know the details. But I personally just like PhysX better, from a player standpoint, hardware accelerated or not.

Comment Re:Normally vs. Now (Score 1) 678

Honestly, I've long felt Episodic content was almost a better answer. Give me a $10 game that's 1/6 the content of a normal game. Give it the ability to download the next 'episode' as I go and I can pay $10 for each new sixth of the game I want to play. If I don't enjoy a game enough to beat it, I can only pay the $30 for the half of it I played. I'd probably spend more on games if I knew I was mostly going to only be playing for the bits I used, since I'd be more willing to take gambles.

Comment Re:Normally vs. Now (Score 1) 678

If you pirate the game you say "I wanted to play this game badly enough to track down a pirated copy." I guarantee there's someone out there who sees that and says "so if we just made the DRM better, they'd be FORCED to play us." The only way to win is to just skip the game, and give your money to the devs who don't put DRM on their games in the first place. Pirating games, for ideological reasons as much as for financial ones, just reinforces the horrible cycle. There's no game out there so good that you can't just skip it. The sad thing is, though, that some developers have noted that releasing a game DRM free doesn't really decrease the rate of piracy. Plenty of people who are stealing the game are doing it because that's what they do, rather than for ideological reasons. The idea is often to prevent casual sharing, such as one person burning copies of the disk for his friends, and almost any DRM does that. Heck, even DVD CSS pretty much does that. Most nontechnical people can't copy DVDs but still use them, and that's "good enough." I know you guys all think it's some big ideological thing to hate DRM, but there's two bad guys in this war. Hate both of them. You can't seriously expect companies to regularly say "hey, steal our work all you want." They're going to put in any protective measures they can come up with that they think will help their profit margin, and as long as it's profitable to do so (as long as piracy is so rampant) they're going to keep doing it no matter how long you shout "it's hurting your customers" at them - if it were really, really hurting their customers as much as you try to make it sound, it would also be hurting their bottom line enough for them to see the point.
Music

How 136 People Became 7 Million Illegal File-Sharers 313

Barence writes "The British government's official figures on the level of illegal file sharing in the UK come from questionable research commissioned by the music industry. The Radio 4 show named More or Less examined the government's claim that 7m people in Britain are engaged in illegal file sharing. The 7m figure actually came from a report written about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. The report was privately commissioned by none other than the UK's music trade body, the BPI. The 7m figure had been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m, gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software — in other words, only 136 people. That 11.6% was adjusted upwards to 16.3% 'to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it.' The 6.7m figure was then calculated based on an estimated number of internet users that disagreed with the government's own estimate. The wholly unsubstantiated 7m figure was then released as an official statistic."
Portables

Submission + - Rockbox 3.0 Released (rockbox.org)

DarkkOne writes: Rockbox version 3.0 is out. 3 years in development, it marks the introduction of many new players since the 2.5 release and offers software-based playback allowing audio of nearly any commonly (or uncommonly) used format on a list of MP3 players by Apple, iRiver, Cowon, Archos, Toshiba and Sandisk. Beyond this it if FLOSS under the GPL v2 license (or later) and includes a variety of plugins such as games and simple apps. Found at http://www.rockbox.org/ 3.0 is the first official release for any players not made by Archos and more or less marks the beginning of a much more regular release cycle for the software.
XBox (Games)

Journal Journal: Crimson Skies

Well, I just got hooked on something new. That being Crimson Skies. I realize it's been out forever, but I've been on the cutting edge of RPG gaming, and such. "Mechassault of the skies" is a bit of a genre twist for me. But there it was, sitting on the shelf, and I could hear this little voice saying "Buy me, BUY ME! Dammit, LISTEN!" so I gave in, I had the cash on hand and no better use for it. And it's a decision I won't soon regret. Okay, singleplayer's fun. Fly around, shoot stuff, the usu

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