Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Russia's ocean? (Score 1) 373

If I remember correctly, Russia made a grab long long time ago at claiming the North Pole as part of if its waters. I can't remember the reasoning clearly, but it had to do with something about its continental shelf managing to stuck itself some distance off. If the bid went through, then I guess a good chunk of the Arctic is considered Russian domain.
Government

California Continues To Push For Violent Game Legislation 167

Back in February, the US Court of Appeals shot down a California law that banned the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. Shortly thereafter, State Senator Leland Yee petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the case. Now, along with California's Psychiatric and Psychological Associations, Yee has filed an amicus curiae brief with Court that elaborates on the reasoning behind the law. Within the brief (PDF) are some interesting quotes: "Parents can read a book, watch a movie or listen to a CD to discern if it is appropriate for their child. These violent video games, on the other hand, can contain up to 800 hours of footage with the most atrocious content often reserved for the highest levels and can be accessed only by advanced players after hours upon hours of progressive mastery. ... Notably, extended play has been observed to depress activity in the frontal cortex of the brain which controls executive thought and function, produces intentionality and the ability to plan sequences of action, and is the seat of self-reflection, discipline and self-control." The video game industry has filed its own amicus brief to dispute Yee's claims.

Comment Re:Gee, really? (Score 1) 122

What does surprise me, is that people are letting their kids play on websites while logged in as administrator. How computer savvy do you have to be to realize this is a bad idea. Admin on their own computer, maybe. If you make them clean up their own mess and just smile when they lose their Neopet.

Speaking from personal experience, it takes quite a bit of savvy in order to figure it out. A lot of times, it takes an incident for them to figure out. A long while ago, my girlfriend 's little brother accidentally downloaded a ton of viruses and such (I never asked specifics, she was on a raging rant when she told me and didn't want to interrupt) and her parents removed admin status from both her and her brother's account (she needed admin access so she could get the programming software installed). That was after a long while of banning them until they could figure out how to make sure he didn't screw up again, of course.

Comment Re:On my list (Score 1) 92

Wow, it's weird how forgot about Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 and Okami, especially since I have the former and my girlfriend often talks about the latter. But yes, they are really good games. However, what I find sad is that for every Okami and the likes out there, there's upwards of 20 or more gimmicky or worse games out there. I know a couple of kids who stopped playing with their Wii since not even they could find a decent game with all the cheap stuff that's flooding the market.

Comment It's about time. (Score 5, Insightful) 92

While I'm no Sega/EA fanboy, I'm honestly getting sick of all the kiddie titles and messed-up ports when I pass the Wii section. My Wii is dusting right now, as the only games I ever play seriously with it are SSBB and Metroid Prime 3. From what I've seen, the "targeting family/casual/new gamer" stuff has gone overboard, with a lot of game companies getting tunnel vision in trying to get new audiences and as a result have abandoned the old.

Comment I think the "vulnerabilities" were intentional. (Score 3, Interesting) 86

Yeah, call it a crazy theory and call me cynical for thinking that Chinese government wants even more control over the citizens, but the exploit found allowed an attacker to remotely control any system running the software. My guess the coders need more time to "fix" that issue and implement another hole for the government to take even more control.

Comment Re:Bugs? (Score 2, Interesting) 197

I won't be buying a first generation one of these, it's bound to have a tonne of bugs.

Hopefully later generations will have more. My question is, how many bugs will it take to run that thing? I don't know how much power you'd get per bug, but I wouldn't be surprised if it really needed a ton of bugs to keep that thing up for a while.

Slashdot Top Deals

We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise. -- Larry Wall

Working...