Geisha

Well, I agree with Wintermute that the point of this article is the accusations of insider trading and deliberate misrepresentation to investors. But to your point, Apo, I'm guessing that you're taking this as a tip-of-the-iceberg thing that could feed into the Ethics of Releasing Buggy Software ongoing issue?

Certainly the hardest part is determining what degree of bugginess is acceptable to a release. Anything more complicated than "Hello World" is never going to be perfect, and even our food and drug industries have acceptable (non-harmful) limits for potentially harmful elements. For example, our water can have certain (tiny) amounts of lead and mercury and still be considered safe to drink daily.

The next hardest part is deciding on a body of people to draw up these limitations. Right now, a consumer's only choice is to depend on market results to punish a delinquent software developer. I think this still might be the best option. The problem is that it's slow and companies may have to jack up starting game prices to cover the costs of longer initial development times (encouraging more piracy, etc etc). But what happens when you empower a body of humans to pass judgement on a game's releasability? Does anyone else think that might open a loophole for proponents of censorship? And I personally would REALLY dislike those people being attached to the federal or state governments in any way; they should be a market-based committee instead.

Here's how I see it right now (and I'm open to having my mind changed here):
1. You somehow appoint a group to determine rules by which a piece of software may be judged. They set up a complicated rating system based on how much functionality is compromised by bugs or flaws in design. Software companies either have to spend money getting their software certified by this group before release, or risk fines if they are found to have released overly-flawed software after the fact. If a product is certified, the software company is not at fault for problems found after certification, unless deliberate intent to bypass the rating system can be proved.
2. Now, some judge down the road admits as evidence a study 'proving' that violent games cause crime. So the capacity of the game for causing crime is now considered a "flaw" in the program. Ergo, the game can be censored. Or something of the sort, I'm not a lawyer and I'm continually amazed at the ingenious ways they can twist the letter of the law.

Basically, I'm looking at the formation of the FCC and it's subsequently-added ability to determine public morality as evidence this rather ridiculous set of events could actually happen. Feel free to talk me out of it! I'd really much rather believe that we could impose laws more like those that govern car manufacture instead of those that govern the entertainment or broadcasting. I think if we distinguish software as a physical product subject to patents rather than an intellectual one subject to copyrights, we'll be OK... thoughts or corrections?

DudeMan

what bearing does this have at all on the topic frijole am i missing something?

Wolfie

Frijole did say it was off topic

Wolfie

I found this part in the article interesting....

And anyone know what these games were like when they first came out?