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Comment That's a GOTY right there (Score 1) 63

Welcome to the future of gaming! Have fun with your friends while you stagger around like zombies! Please take a look at the feature video and behold the faces of the players! Yes! That's a smile right there! Sony brings joy to your life. Ain't that game great?

And it's the only game you actually get better the more Jager's you kill.

Comment Re:Pros & Cons (Score 1) 121

Piracy is a problem, though it's nigh impossible to provide accurate figures. As an example, 2D Boy, the makers of World of Goo, state that 90% of their game was pirated. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars (To be clear, I believe it's an overexaggeration, but not impossible)

Piracy is bad. Bad for the developers earning less and eventually bad for the gamers getting worse products. Moreover small companies are hurt alot more by this, resulting in less competition and less innovation. Therefore I don't quite understand, why you list privacy as a con.

I think it fights piracy in a passive way, yes. Take a look at Steam where most games are cheap and easy to obtain. I guess many people rather spend 10 bucks for something having ongoing support, rather than obtaining a torrent, where you never really know what you will get and the game may break after patching. I do not suggest releasing games only through this channel, but I believe it certainly is a good option.

Regarding the 'dependence over an online service for your enjoyment'. Yes, that's bad if it runs like twitter once did. Every software has bugs, but sooner or later every properly maintained service will stabilize. Although I highly doubt, that the servers will be able to handle the demand, but that's speculation.

Comment Pros & Cons (Score 1, Redundant) 121

Pros:
- No need to buy an expensive gamer rig for full details
- Less piracy
- No more game installations, instant access, runs everywhere

Cons:
- Could lag, possibly will
- No game customization, modding. This also affects the community around games.
- The service provider decides which games are run. What about independent games? (This will probably go down the same way the apple app store does)

Unsure:
- Affects hardware manufacturers (Nvidia, Ati) in unforseeable ways.

I'm sceptic. But I felt the same when Steam was released... Well, maybe at last there will be a way to run crysis smoothly...

Comment Centralized personal data *could* solve everything (Score 1) 280

Fact: The more information you give away about yourself, the more useful it will be to the one having access to it but the potential for abuse increases.

The huge problem we already experience today is the loss of control you have over your provided data. Who has access to what information? Right now, do you know on how many servers your birth date is stored? I certainly do not, but in my case I estimate it goes into the hundreds. How many of these copies of my birth date are actually used/needed on those servers? I guess the number is very low.

I don't really care about my birthdate, but what about my name, home address, credit card number, social security number? Do you know?

Hypothesis: In a perfect world without corrupted minds a secure, centralized server (or server farm) where all your data is stored (including personal data like bank account balance), never given away and accepts verification/change requests from the outside could solve all problems at once. The only public data would be Unique ID's associated with 1) personal data and 2) an operational code, eg verify age is >18 and decrease account balance by 100. Only you are able to approve associations and give away those UID's. There you go, centralized control over your data and what happens to it. Problem solved.

Unfortunately we're already too far down the road and have to life with the current mess, probably forever.

Comment Good News for Linux, Windows And Developers (Score 1) 828

This is really exciting! IMO, QT is one of the cleanest C++ API's I've ever seen. The interface is easy to use and the documentation is simply excellent. As a windows developer I've been hesitant of porting C++ Apps to Linux, simply because of the terrible GUI Toolkits available. QT going LGPL makes this a no brainer. It's superior to WinAPI, MFC and even the combination of .NET/C#/C++, if you're just in need of a proper GUI. Maybe the Year of Linux Desktop is finally coming, thanks to QT??!

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