noric - Slashdot User

Study Claims $41.5 Billion In Portable Game Piracy Losses Over Five Years 316

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday June 08, 2010 @02:49AM from the fair-and-balanced dept.

Gamasutra reports that Japan's Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association conducted a study to estimate the total amount of money lost to piracy on portable game consoles. The figure they arrived at? $41.5 billion from 2004 to 2009. Quoting: "CESA checked the download counts for the top 20 Japanese games at what it considers the top 114 piracy sites, recording those figures from 2004 to 2009. After calculating the total for handheld piracy in Japan with that method, the groups multiplied that number by four to reach the worldwide amount, presuming that Japan makes up 25 percent of the world's software market. CESA and Baba Lab did not take into account other popular distribution methods for pirated games like peer-to-peer sharing, so the groups admit that the actual figures for DS and PSP software piracy could be much higher than the ¥3.816 trillion amount the study found."

Comment start him with game frameworks/sandboxes (Score 1) 704

by noric on Saturday May 29, 2010 @01:14PM (#32390272) Attached to: How To Get a Game-Obsessed Teenager Into Coding?

I saw no posts modded "5, Informative", so I thought I'd take a crack at it.

http://www.alice.org/ - software designed to disguise programming as storytelling. Aimed at young children and women, not really suitable for the 14-year-old-boy types.

He likes games, so start him onto games. Most first year computer science students at my university think they want to develop games. They figure out differently by about year 3. Start with Unreal Engine 2, or something like that, and let him build small levels for Quake/Doom/etc. There is a fair amount of programming-like scripting that goes into level generation.

The Hobbit On Hold 142

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 28, 2010 @04:14PM from the had-such-a-nice-ring-to-it dept.

Flea of Pain writes "Director Guillermo Del Toro has confirmed upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit has been put on hold indefinitely because the movie has been caught in a 'tangled negotiation' over the future of the MGM movie studio. The film, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's first book in the fantasy series, was reportedly due to begin shooting this summer, but has been mired in delays. Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, who will act as producer on the new film, recently dismissed rumors of trouble with the picture, insisting, 'It's not really been delayed, because we've never announced the date.'"

Mass. Gambling Bill Would Criminalize Online Poker 296

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @05:27PM from the put-up-then-you-won't-have-so-much dept.

timothy writes "Awesome: 'A gambling bill introduced by Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo criminalizes Internet gambling and online poker. The bill calls for two casinos.' Not that they're against gambling, you see... just against being deprived of a monopoly in such a perfect fleecing opportunity."

Comment Re:DotA legacy (Score 1) 118

by noric on Wednesday March 31, 2010 @11:37AM (#31689312) Attached to: <em>Heroes of Newerth</em> Open Beta About To Start

I have played hundreds of games of WC3 dota, a thousand games of heroes of newerth, and I have to say your perspective resembles that of other noobs who misunderstand the game. Particularly, this statement is just plain wrong:

HoN and DotA on high levels means standing around behind your opponents reach and shooting your own minions, games just drag on and on since no one dares make a move or they will lose what little cash they have scrambled together.

The more you play the hon, the more aggressive it gets.

Comment heroes of newerth great for linux (Score 1) 118

by noric on Wednesday March 31, 2010 @11:29AM (#31689210) Attached to: <em>Heroes of Newerth</em> Open Beta About To Start

I received my heroes of newerth beta key last July, and have been playing regularly ever since. I have played hundreds of games on both the windows and linux clients. The linux client works great and I suggest you try this game out :-).

MIT Finds 'Grand Unified Theory of AI' 301

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 31, 2010 @10:57AM from the no-excuse-for-haley-joel-osment dept.

aftab14 writes "'What's brilliant about this (approach) is that it allows you to build a cognitive model in a much more straightforward and transparent way than you could do before,' says Nick Chater, a professor of cognitive and decision sciences at University College London. 'You can imagine all the things that a human knows, and trying to list those would just be an endless task, and it might even be an infinite task. But the magic trick is saying, "No, no, just tell me a few things," and then the brain — or in this case the Church system, hopefully somewhat analogous to the way the mind does it — can churn out, using its probabilistic calculation, all the consequences and inferences. And also, when you give the system new information, it can figure out the consequences of that.'"

Will Smith In For Independence Day 2 & 3 464

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 31, 2010 @08:29AM from the exploding-national-monuments dept.

bowman9991 writes "If one isn't enough, there are reports that two sequels to Roland Emmerich's 1996 alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day are in the works. Will Smith is back too. Apparently he delayed a sequel earlier by asking for too much money." Other rumors include using an iPad to destroy the alien space ships this time, and letting Obama fly a biplane. Data will have a 5-minute monologue about what it means to be human.

Heroes of Newerth Open Beta About To Start 118

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday March 31, 2010 @02:30AM from the getting-closer dept.

You may recall last summer when we discussed Heroes of Newerth, a title from S2 Games that's based on the popular Defense of the Ancients mod from Warcraft III. We passed out some closed beta keys, and there seemed to be a ton of interest, in part due to the fact that they have a Linux client. Well, if any of you missed it or want to see how the game has progressed since then, now is your chance — the open beta begins tonight (March 31). There's a countdown on the sign-up page that shows when you can register.

Best Way To Land Entry-Level Job? 441

Posted by timothy on Sunday March 28, 2010 @03:55PM from the pick-a-field-with-no-advancement dept.

chemicaldave writes "I'm graduating this May and have been seeking a programming position for months. It seems that the biggest hurdle to landing an interview is getting past the doorman that is HR. After reading this entry from Coding Horror describing the lack of programming candidates who can actually program, I can't help but scratch my head. I can program! (See how I put that link in?) If I can't land an interview, then even a short online evaluation of my coding skills would suffice. I just want a chance to prove myself. Alas, sending resumes to companies has rarely led to anything but an auto-confirmation email of my submission. I understand that sending resumes online is not the best method to landing an interview, but I come from a small rural school so job fairs rarely offer anything more than IT support positions let alone a programming position. It seems to me that developers are always looking for talented young programmers. We're out here looking for you too. Am I missing something?"

US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card 826

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @05:40PM from the oh-wait-didn't-we-mention-this? dept.

According to Wired (and no big surprise, considering the practicalities of implementing massive changes in medical finance), US lawmakers "are proposing a national identification card, a 'fraud-proof' Social Security card required for lawful employment in the United States. The proposal comes as the Department of Homeland Security is moving toward nationalizing driver licenses."

What Is Holding Back the Paperless Office? 511

Posted by timothy on Sunday March 21, 2010 @02:23PM from the probably-all-the-post-it-notes dept.

Drethon writes "CNN has an article (are we up to the millionth article on this topic?) asking if the paperless office has arrived. This got me wondering, what are the main things holding back the paperless office? Just off the top of my head, the main thing keeping me printing out documents is the ability to spread a dozen pages of a document under review out on my table and marking it up by hand. PDF and Word markups are not too bad but they still lack the ability to spread many pages out to look over at the same time and could be improved to make markup a bit less restrictive. I do find myself printing out less with the use of dual monitors to have source documents and work under progress up at the same time, perhaps something like Microsoft's tabletop computer used as a desk will let me have at least a paperless desk. I know there are other reasons why offices are not becoming paperless. What are your reasons?"

MP3 Player Tax Proposed In Canada 281

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 18, 2010 @09:13AM from the squeezing-out-every-last-dime dept.

Interoperable writes "The status of sharing music in Canada is, to some extent, ambiguous. This is partly due to a levy imposed on blank media, CD-Rs and cassette tapes, that compensates artists and the recording studios for a loss of revenue due to copying. Legislation proposed by the NDP and supported by the Bloc Quebecois would extend that levy to cover MP3 players with the intent of decriminalizing audio file sharing for Canadian citizens. The proposed legislation, however, faces opposition from the governing Conservative party; the Liberal party has agreed to discuss the proposed bill."

US Gov't. Ending Its Hands-Off-the-Internet Stance 452

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 28, 2010 @08:17AM from the that-was-then-and-this-is-now dept.

Taco Cowboy writes in with a report from The Register about a US policy shift away from keeping hands off the Internet. "According to Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce, the US government's policy of leaving the Internet alone is over. Instead, an 'Internet Policy 3.0' approach will see policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments, and key Internet constituencies, with those discussions covering issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection, and Internet governance." Here is the presentation in which Strickling enunciated these changes.

FCC Proposes 100Mbps Minimum Home Broadband Speed 461

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday February 17, 2010 @10:11AM from the still-can't-get-cable dept.

oxide7 writes "The US Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday that would require Internet providers to offer minimum home connection speeds by 2020, a proposal that some telecommunications companies panned as unrealistic. The FCC wants service providers to offer home Internet data transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second to 100 million homes by a decade from now, Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said."

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