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Operating Systems

Sony Refuses To Sanction PS3 "Other OS" Refunds 396

Posted by Soulskill from the you-paid-for-what-we-say-you-paid-for dept.
Stoobalou writes "Sony says that it has no intention of reimbursing retailers if they offer users partial refunds for fat PS3s. Last week, the first PS3 user successfully secured a partial refund from Amazon UK as compensation for the removal of the ability to run Linux on the console. The user quoted European law in order to persuade the online retailer that the goods he had bought in good faith were no longer fit for his purposes because of the enforcement of firmware update 3.21, which meant that users who chose to keep the Other OS functionality would lose the ability to play the latest games or connect to the PlayStation Network."
Games

Decrying the Excessive Emulation of Reality In Games 187

Posted by Soulskill from the plumbers-with-shrooms dept.
An editorial at GameSetWatch makes the case that game developers' relentless drive to make games more real has led to missed opportunities for creating unique fictional universes that are perhaps more interesting than our own. Quoting: "Remember when the norm for a video game was a blue hedgehog that ran fast and collected rings and emeralds? Or a plumber that took mushrooms to become large, and grabbed a flower to throw fireballs? In reality they do none of those things, but in the name of a game, they make sense, inspire wonder, and create a new universe. ... We’ve seen time and time again that the closer you try to emulate reality, the more the 'game' aspects begin to stick out. Invisible walls in Final Fantasy, or grenades spawning at your feet when you go the wrong way in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are examples of kicking the player out of that illusion of reality, and letting them know that yes, this is a game, and yes, the rules are designed to keep you in the space of this world, not the real world. In reality, as a soldier I could disobey my orders and go exploring around the other side. I could be cowardly and turn back to base. Games shouldn’t have to plan for every eventuality, of course, but it’s not so hard to create universes that are compelling but where the unusual, or even simple backtracking, is not so unfeasible."

Comment Re:Old Games on Faster Computers can be tough (Score 1) 367

by rarity (#30127364) Attached to: Making Old Games Look Good On Modern LCDs?

Or ascii-based games running into problems with tiny pixels or miss-matched resolutions.

Not strictly true; I'm playing in this year's /dev/null tournament, and the rogue level in NetHack is giving my SSH client serious issues. For some reason the graphics options that work fine for the rest of the levels screw it up mightily, resulting in everything being one character to the right of where the screen tells me it is. It makes moving and not getting eaten...interesting.

Comment Re:Uh, no (Score 1) 503

by rarity (#27845881) Attached to: European Union Asks US To Free ICANN

-1, failure to recognize an Idiocracy reference.

You said it. Thought I was safe enough referring to it here.

*looks around at nascent flamewar*

Oops. Seems that idiocracy may be a little closer than I thought....

Comment Re:Um. (Score 1) 229

by rarity (#27784549) Attached to: Drug-Sniffing Drones Take To the Skies In the Netherlands

However, what is not tolerated, is massive scale, cannabis farming which is then sold on for huge profits (without tax being paid, are you spotting a theme here??).

That's the part that always confused me - if you're not allowed to grow it large-scale, where does all the "product" in the shops come from? Are there legalised farms as well, or something?

Comment Re:Foolish thought. Not enough space for that. (Score 1) 446

by rarity (#27742859) Attached to: UK Government To Monitor All Internet Use

Plus they can offload the costs to the ISPs!

And, more importantly, the security. Given the government's track record with keeping sensitive data safe, I'm actually slightly happier about that (inasmuch as I can be said to be happy about the plan at all, which I'm not), but we're still replacing a single point of failure with multiple single points of failure...

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