Proposed European guidelines could mean an end to the misery of bug-filled video games. But manufacturers say the rules would be unworkable and could even limit how many games are developed.
The European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, says games should lose their current exemption from quality guarantee laws. As things stand, there’s no legal comeback for buyers, even if a game has a bug that makes it impossible to finish.
If the proposals came into force, manufacturers would have to offer a minimum two-year guarantee that games would work properly. Officials say there is a risk some customers would abuse this by returning games for spurious reasons after they were done playing with them, but that this doesn’t outweigh the right of honest players to be protected from faulty products.
However, Tiga, the trade association of video games producers in Europe, says the rules would deter manufacturers from producing innovative games for fear that a bug could prove costly. Its spokesman Richard Wilson (pictured right) told the BBC that problems often occur because games take so long to develop that it’s not always possible to predict exactly what hardware will be in use when the game is eventually released.
The Business Software Alliance claims it is wrong in principle to apply general consumer laws to video games because software is licensed rather than sold, meaning any problems must be dealt with through the civil court system.
The Commission is also aiming to bring more consistency to national laws dealing with piracy, and to stop firms offering software licenses which are restricted to particular European countries. If it goes ahead with the plans, European governments would be required to introduce the changes to their domestic laws.
Sims 3 is the continuation of the bestselling videogame franchise of all time, and as such, the release date in less than two weeks has been pretty highly anticipated. Therefore, it’s not terribly surprising (especially given EA’s experience with Spore a few years ago) that the game has apparently already been leaked onto torrent sites.
Though according to Ars Technica, the eager file sharers aren’t snagging the game for themselves – but for their girlfriends.
Nothing says romance like illegal downloads! I sense some “woohoo” in the future… in the game, after the girl has started playing it and refuses to look up from the screen.
Question of the day: Come on, is it really for their girlfriends? Also, if you’re not willing to do it yourself, would you want someone else to brave pirates’ waters on your behalf for the sake of some early Sims action?
Interested in reading our full review of the game? Check it out here: Sims 3 Review
Once upon a time, a French entrepreneur named Romain Jarry woke up one morning and thought: What could I invent today that no one has ever thought of? An automated washing machine for dogs of course! Ok, maybe he’s not the first person who thought of the idea, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of something like this. Please admire the Dog-o-Matic in action:
This has to be one of the worse idea ever (for the dogs at least)… but certainly not for Mr. Jarry, who at $47 a pop, is apparently having a lot of success with the machines all around France, with plans to conquer the U.K. dog-washing market next year.
Few things in science cause as much public confusion as the Theory of Evolution. While a number of great resources have already effectively elucidated the concept, including a video I’ve embedded in this article, I think it is valuable to repeat and expand upon these resources in a public fashion, lest The Theory fall out of common knowledge.
Today marks the official launch date of Wolfram|Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine” from Wolfram Research. The stated goal of Wolfram|Alpha is “to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone.” Simplistically, you ask it a question and it gives you the answer – along with a lot of related information.
The engine stores curated knowledge of more than 10 trillion pieces of data. It contains more than 50,000 types of algorithms and models, using more than five million lines of Wolfram’s Mathematica symbolic language – and plans are to expand this knowledge base continuously. It’s no surprise, then, that Wolfram|Alpha excels at queries that are heavy on numbers.
For instance, typing fibonacci 43 gives you the the 43rd Fibonacci number. As with all queries, Wolfram|Alpha first displays how it interpreted your input, followed by the result. Then it gives you more information, such as alternative representations and truly useless stuff like how that number compares to the world population. By contrast, Google provides links to various sites that will give you some of that same information. Wolfram|Alpha apparently doesn’t know what to do with Perrin numbers, though, while Google provides relevant links for perrin number 12 (including one from Wolfram MathWorld, ironically).
Asking Wolfram|Alpha for mortgage $700,000, 5%, 30 years gives you a breakdown of monthly payments, total interest paid, and a full amortization schedule. The same query on Google gives you links to sites that might be able to answer your question, but a lot more who’d like to sell you that loan.
Unfortunately, a lot of everyday search queries aren’t based on numbers. Google ruby vs python, and you’ll get a ton of links to comparisons between the two languages. Oddly, Wolfram|Alpha thinks that you want to compare the two movies with those titles. At first glance you might think that the comparison of two programming languages would lend itself better to a quantitative analysis than the comparison of two movies. But the level of abstraction in programming renders the comparison of languages more of a qualitative discussion, while Wolfram|Alpha’s comparison of the movies sticks to the quantitative facts (cast, runtime, directors, etc.)
Forget about vanity searches on Wolfram|Alpha unless you’re someone important. My name was interpreted as a comparison between Sterling, Colorado and Camden, New Jersey. Did you know that it’s 1480 miles from my first name to my last? On Google, on the other hand, you have to get to the third page of results to find something that isn’t about or by me.
My Dad used to work for NSA, and he told me a (possibly apocryphal) story about someone who once asked one of the NSA computers, “Is there a God?” To which the computer replied, “Now there is.” Google naturally provides links to the many sites that discuss this question. Wolfram|Alpha humbly (or ominously) replies, “Additional functionality for this topic is under development.”
At least Wolfram|Alpha recognizes a request for 42 when it sees it. Google’s first two results give you essentially the same answer, but it follows those with discussions on the meaning of life outside the scope of the works of Douglas Adams.
Wolfram|Alpha’s ability to understand and parse queries is based on known vocabularies of more than a thousand domains. This, too, will grow – perhaps to some point in the future where it will understand most anything you can throw at it. For now, it has a limited ability to grok.
But Wolfram|Alpha has a bigger deficit than that, in my opinion. All of its knowledge, though curated for accuracy, is contained within its own database. You can often click on a link for source information, but that only lists a bibliography of sources, not direct links to the source for that specific answer. Thus, for information that is less than mathematically necessary, you don’t have the opportunity to evaluate its authority the same way you do with Google results. Google is therefore more appropriate for researching topics for which the jury is still out on some details. Perhaps as Wolfram|Alpha grows and learns, it will be able to incorporate notions of authority and opinion – or develop opinions of its own.
Here’s a screencast of Stephen Wolfram demonstrating some of Wolfram|Alpha’s capabilities.
3D Realms closed earlier this month after financial difficulties, putting an end to a saga of delays to the game on which production work first began in 1997. At the time of 3D Realms’ closure, Take-Two made clear it would not be providing any further case for the game.
Now the firm is suing 3D Realms – which has not yet entered bankruptcy proceedings – with the ultimate aim of recovering its money. In the short term it is asking a court to force 3D to keep all source code and other details from the game confidential, and to take all necessary security measures to protect it against leaks or damage.
As part of the filing, Take-Two notes that “Apogee repeatedly assured Take-Two and the video-gaming community that it was diligently working toward competing development of the PC Version of the Duke Nukem Forever.” That’s pretty much indisputable.
What’s not so clear is the money trail. Take-Two paid $12 million to Infogrames in 2000 for the publishing rights to the game. However, Scott Miller of 3D Realms says his firm “didn’t get a penny of that money”, and it doesn’t appear to be part of the lawsuit.
Take-Two and 3D Realms did make a direct financial deal in 2007. The details of that deal were not made public, but it’s likely to be at the heart of the current dispute.
3D Realms was originally known as Apogee Software but changed names after the 3D Realms brand name became better known. A separate firm which licensed the Apogee name last year remains in business and is not affected by either the closure or the lawsuit.
Originally based on an old Russian poem, Korobeiniki, also known as “the Tetris song” by us westerners, was later arranged by Japanese composer Hirokazu Tanaka to be used in the Game Boy version of Tetris. Since then, the piece has been adapted and played countless times using innumerable musical instruments. The version of Tetris you’re about to hear was recreated by 3 college students using only glass bottles.
They say that right before you die, the story of your life flashes before you in the blink of an eye. The following short, titled “Last Day Dream” explores that vision. Oh, and don’t let the thumbnail fool you. The video is perfectly safe to watch anywhere, although there is a very short part where some strong words are used.
However, Tiga, the trade association of video games producers in Europe, says the rules would deter manufacturers from producing innovative games for fear that a bug could prove costly. Its spokesman Richard Wilson (pictured right) told the BBC that problems often occur because games take so long to develop that it’s not always possible to predict exactly what hardware will be in use when the game is eventually released.
The firm which financed the epically-delayed and 