estel

All bills require multiple hearings and debates in both houses of Parliament. Why should this bill be any different?

The easiest solution is to use country specific keyboards that include characters most needed by that language ie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_France.svg

I'm not sure why Google's results might be said to be /useless/? There's definitely an interesting argument to be made about Google using a monopolistic position in search to cross-promote some of their other products (local, ads, maps), but the OP's examples seem to show results that quite likely exactly what the user would have been searching for.

I guess what I'm saying is that pure organic search isn't necessarily the optimal way for a user to find the information they're looking for.

Indeed, I wasn't really aware that the "fold" was really much of an issue any more with modern web design. Users expect to, and do, scroll down; it's no big deal :/

At the moment it's based on the amount of work done, the proposals would see this replaced with a flat rate.

But the focus for the respective presentations could be be said to be reflective of each company's priorities for their new machine?

Indeed: http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-live-tv-available-i...

Allegedly this was a reason that BBC's iPlayer took so long to arrive on the 360. The BBC's charter was somehow contrary to MSFT's insistence that iPlayer was available only to XBL Gold members, so the release of iPlayer on 360 was delayed by years.

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/bbc-we-d-still...

There's still some probably non-significant value in them retaining FW for at least another year or two (after all, CS6 is still less than a year old).

Lots of their promotional stuff showed the wearer in a video hangout, so I assume this is in the existing hardware.

See the replies here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5609898

Real life? Are you suggesting that there's no value in socialising online?

I've no doubt that it can run like that (and given SimCity works for ~30 mins or so without connecting to SimCity's servers, it's no shock to anybody who actually played the game at launch); but that doesn't mean that their intent when conceiving of the game wasn't for the online aspect to be utterly central and integral to how they wanted people to play the game. The always online "requirement" could absolutely have resulted from that desire rather than DRM.

If it was just a matter of DRM, then it's plain inconsistent with how they're approaching DRM with every other PC release they've done recently.

Peter Moore isn't the new CEO, he's been COO for a couple of years, and usually comes across as pretty straight-talking.

I think I believe them: the game they wanted to make was one where the "continuous, integrated online world" was integral to the way people played SimCity: only the final product didn't do enough to justify their original intention.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5491174

Sorry, but I can't help but feel you're looking at the industry through rose-tinted glasses. There were hundreds upon hundreds of games for NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS that absolutely stunk. The vast majority were rotten, rotten games that were plain unfun from the title screen through to the end credits. I'd happily contend that the opposite is true: that if you go into a GAME store today, the vast majority of games will be at least /ok/. Whilst I don't think it's yet true that the majority of titles are AAA (check the reviews section of your nearest games mag, only a few releases per month are evidently AAA), a declining market for medium-budget games is possibly more of an issue.

And what happened to the $5 games? Since 2007 the industry has seen a huge, massive surge in (successful) indie game development, primarily on PC but also distributed digitally on PSN and 360. It's definitely there, alive, strong and very visible. (Sure, they might take more than 2 weeks to make, but not many games can be made in two weeks to contend well on quality).

Lost my chain at http://goo.gl/maps/Oy5kw

Looks cool! Have you considered adding a Smart App Banner? http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/AppleA...

I believe I read that the sims find the nearest place that has a job available and the nearest house at the end of the day.

The agent-based simulation is probably much more CPU expensive than the statistical model in older SimCitys, which might also have informed the size limit.

I absolutely agree that that's a loss, but that argument would seem to apply equally to all online games. But a game isn't less worth playing because it's online, right?

Sure they could. But if I get £40 of value from my game before they do, I can live with that. It's not ideal, but it doesn't make it a poor purchase.

If there's an automatic block, it's more likely to be related to refund requests.

Or, slightly less cynically, demand is always orders of magnitude higher for the first week or two after release, so it's only a short term investment in servers if they can be merged later.

As a consumer: If my £40 game gives me £40 of entertainment, I will buy it.

This held for Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3. And considering the reviews it has been receiving, I'm confident this will be true for SimCity once the early server issues have been ironed out.

Isn't:

> We can argue about whether these things should be computed and stored in the cloud, but I think there is a plausible, if imperfect, argument for doing so

Conceivably true? We could be in a world with no DRM, but there would still be a market trend moving games towards a more social, connected and integrated experience; and some developers will be looking at ways to fundamentally build their new games in a way that takes advantage of this. Why not SimCity? The Sims 3 already indicated where the Sims franchise might be heading with regards to improved connectivity with friends, I don't think it's an entirely unreasonable leap to get to where SimCity is now.

Which isn't to say that DRM wouldn't have been a business consideration at an executive level; but there's definitely an argument that SimCity's design choices, even if flawed, can be justified without considering DRM.

Since when are they available for free?

It's entirely possible that Amazon have just run out of keys for the digital version...