Thanks to GameSpot for their guest editorial discussing why randomized enemy encounters in videogame RPGs aren't as bad as they're made out to be. The author argues: "The most common charge is that random battles are 'unrealistic.' To this I counter that the RPG experience is inherently unrealistic." He goes on to comment: "A more valid argument is that random battles 'pad' gameplay. I'm not going to argue with this, but I am going to say that RPGs need that padding... With battles cut out, there isn't really anything to fill the gameplay void." He ends by floating compromise solutions for when "it's simply annoying to be assaulted by all manner of enemies when you simply want to make it to the next town", suggesting: "Adjustable [encounter] rates or ways to abbreviate battles, especially with radically weaker adversaries, would be one way to speed things up."

Thanks to GameCritics for their feature discussing how a person's videogame experiences change as they get older. Talking with gamers as old as 30 (!), they ask if reflexes are dulled ("The only time I notice slowed reflexes is when I stop playing twitch games for while, which is pretty rare"), consider shifts in preferred genres ("Now that I'm older, I really don't have the time to play long, drawn-out games anymore"), and discuss how gaming affects their relationships ("I'm pretty single right now so I can't answer, but my email address is listed on the bio page. I just wanted people to know that.")

An anonymous reader observes: "The Loculus of Archimedes, the world's oldest puzzle, has been solved. It has 536 solutions. You can find the details here."

Thanks to GameSpot for their 'GameSpotting' guest editorial, focusing on the alleged inferiority of the RPG genre, and the 'hybrid' games which use these RPG elements to great effect. The writer suggest: "Unlike most games, there is almost no skill required in RPGs - no hand-eye coordination, no button-timing", and while calling RPGs "inferior to other kinds of games", still finds addiction and praise in the "sense of power and accomplishment that comes from seeing your puny character grow from a weakling into an ass-kicking machine." But he finds hybrid titles, such as "first-person shooters [that] are starting to incorporate upgradable skills and character classes", to be examples of a "RPG renaissance", suggesting: "Game developers are starting to realize that almost every game can include and would benefit from RPG elements."

Thanks to GamerDad for their editorial discussing the multitude of videogames currently flooding the store shelves, and the knock-on effect for bargain hunters. It's pointed out: "With all the new releases comes a shelf space crunch that means a lot of recent games, some from spring and even later, are getting marked down for quick sales." As an example, the column author "...recently picked up Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, a fantastic action game for PS2, for a measly ten bucks", and he also points out "...a bunch of excellent additions to the Greatest Hits lineup for Sony's machine including Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Tekken 4 and the brand new Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution." What other cheap console titles can you recommend for a personal early holiday present?

Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Sole Food' editorial discussing which console has the lead in the online marketplace. The author says: "If you asked me a year ago which console would be the online leader, I would have said Microsoft Xbox - no doubt." But, twelve months later, he's rapidly drawing other conclusions: "I forgot the most important lesson in publishing: Content is king. And most of the killer online content is not on the Xbox, but rather the Sony PlayStation 2." And, after citing specific examples of great titles on both PS2 and Xbox, he concludes: "There's just more games for the PS2, ergo there are more online games. It doesn't matter how good and how uniform the online user interface is if the content isn't there."

Asprin writes "Businessweek has an editorial up which argues that the FCC's HDTV broadcast flag rule is a good thing, and that everyone is just overreacting. What the author is overlooking is that this rule gives exclusive control over production to the studios that are in "the club", essentially denying private citizens the right to make their own HDTV format video. To wit: "The problem comes when a program taped on an old VCR can't be replayed on a next-generation VCR. So consumers may experience some compatibility problems between machines as they upgrade." Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!) The problem is the word "consumers", which doesn't describe us anymore. There's nothing like being locked out of your own old family videos when your current VCR dies, eh?"

Like any large enterprise, Microsoft is an aggregate, not a monolith. This is true not only of the company as a massive business entity made up of various committees, departments and divisions operating out of multiple campuses around the world, but also as a company in the original sense, a group of people working for a common purpose. Countless analysts have dissected Microsoft's corporate culture to figure out Microsoft's financial success. Karin Carter, an ex-Microsoftie herself, decided instead to write about how mid-level Microsoft employees view the place; there are programmers, middle managers, and handful of others here -- just 19 Microsoft employees (some, like Carter, former employees) with a range of academic and social backgrounds who ended up working for Gates and Ballmer's software company in "that drippy upper-left corner of the map." The result is Microsoft in the Mirror; read on for my review.

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their editorial asking whether independent videogame developers can make it in the increasingly cut-throat games business. The article comes after the recent closure of respected UK developers Mucky Foot ('Startopia'), the latest in a long line of recent developer failures, and the author asks: "What's going wrong? Some of these casualties have been victims of mismanagement or poor quality control, but many were properly managed, fiscally sensible and extremely talented companies." The editorial continues: "Companies like EA, Microsoft and Sony don't really need [smaller developers] any more, as large publishers increasingly focus on internal development and suck much of the best talent into themselves. Smaller publishers aren't in a position to take risks on the kind of innovative games that small developers do best." Is the situation really as bleak as this implies?

JigSaw writes "The GNU-Darwin Distribution is a free BSD operating system and a popular source of free software for Mac OS X and Darwin-x86 users, but it is also a platform for digital activism. Founder Michael L. Love wrote an editorial speaking about the roots, goals, problems and just about everything about GNU-Darwin. Free Software is at the core of GNU-Darwin and also anything political that has an impact on digital and even rights. Is this the first truly politically oriented BSD OS?" Nope.

Tim writes "Mobilerobotics.org has an editorial accompanying a copy of a letter to one of the teams entering the DARPA Grand Challenge 1 million dollar autonomous vehicle race, in which DARPA admits to underestimating the number of teams that can actually partipate in the actual race. They figure they've only got room for 20 teams, and more than 100 have applied. The writer of the editorial argues that if more than 20 teams can qualify safely and technically, DARPA should have to chose the 20 cheapest financed teams. What should DARPA do to sort out these problems?" CNET News has more on the high turn-out, while DARPA ponders its next step.

Thanks to GamesAreFun for their editorial discussing whether the next generation of consoles should have multimedia capabilities, such as DVD playing and TiVo-like functionality, or whether the manufacturers should stick with "a console that just plays games." The author argues that these extra features "...add to the overall cost in the end [through licensing and production costs], to both the manufacturers and to consumers (especially at the launch of the consoles)", suggests that there's "more to worry about insofar as breaking down of moving parts", and concludes, definitively: "Personally, all I want is a dedicated gaming machine."

Thanks to NTSC-uk for their editorial arguing that overly nostalgic gamers are failing to appreciate the videogames of today. The writer suggests that "...this breed of 'l337' gamers refuse to look at today's games", and complains about their unjust criticism of titles such as Final Fantasy X, saying of these retro-focused gamers: "It seems, to them at least, as time passes, all the faults and niggles of yesteryear's games mysteriously vanish, as age irons out the flaws. Rose-tinted glasses donned, we can forget the 'far too flawed' modern games, because the 'golden era' of gaming did it better."

Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Sole Food' editorial discussing the vitriol directed against videogame-themed television programs, or, more specifically, the game-themed digital cable/satellite channel G4. The writer laments: "You'd think that people that enjoy the gaming lifestyle would be all over the only channel dedicated to their passion. Sadly, that's not the case", and goes on to suggest "there's been an enormous amount of improvement" in the channel, and comment: "my favorite thing about [G4] is that it will bring new people into the [videogaming] fold." Are there any game-related TV shows, either on G4 or elsewhere, that you think are being done just right?

Staci Krause writes "The Core for Entertainment and Gaming has an editorial on the growing trend in MMORPGs to to make every area of a woman's anatomy customizable. The female writer of the editorial doesn't mind this at all, but would like to see the same applied to a man's anatomy as well, suggesting: 'Is it so wrong of me to want to see a well endowed man online to run around and battle hideous monsters with?'"

jjshoe asks: "While access to the Internet varies greatly, depending on where you are in the USA, I recently went on the hunt for an ISP that provided me the ability to have a 'broadband' link to the Internet. I am looking for would be the ability to lease/rent static IP's, so I could host my own DNS/WWW/E-mail server. I was wondering what ISP fellow Slashdot readers use for themselves, as well as what they pay. I have gotten quotes for $50 a month for a single static IP on top of my monthly DSL fee. This seems slightly outrageous to me. Colocation is not an option as it generally runs $150 a month and does not provide me Internet access. I am open to any other ideas the community might have."

Thanks to GameSpot for their editorial discussing graphics card manufacturers, and how their race for revenue could harm PC gaming. The piece discusses the days when "3dfx's Glide standard was the only thing going", and "3dfx even secured deals with retailers to create separate sections for 3dfx-compatible games." However, the author laments: "I thought hardware-specific games were a thing of the past. Then I booted up the demo for Bridge It", an Nvidia-sponsored title which "will not run unless you have an Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti or GeForce FX graphics card installed." The article ends with a hope that "clearer heads will prevail and PC gaming can take new steps toward improving ease-of-use, not balkanizing the platform for business reasons."

An anonymous reader writes "Thirty years ago, Martin Gardner described Paterson's Worms to the world. Just recently, Benjamin Chaffin, one of the designers of the Pentium 4 chip, managed to trace a couple trillion steps of the 'unsolved' worms, and has pretty much solved all but two of them."

Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Spy Vs. Spy' editorial discussing whether any reality-based subject should be made into a game, referencing games like Kuma:War, which offers "the hunt for Uday and Qusay Hussein in Iraq and their eventual deaths in a shootout with U.S. forces" as a scenario. The first editor suggests that " I believe that such 'ripped from the headlines' titles are disrespectful to the soldiers in combat and the issues involved", whereas another editor presents a different view, arguing: "I'm all in favor of games working in contemporary events... one way for games to be more relevant to people is to bring current events to an interactive medium."

Thanks to GamesAreFun for their editorial discussing why online console gaming isn't ready for the masses. The author pinpoints his set of reasons for this alleged "niche" appeal, including not enough broadband penetration ("the fact remains that gaming on dial-up is excruciatingly slow"), lack of online titles with mass-market appeal (citing "a pattern that precludes the more casual gamer from caring about online console gaming"), and limited modding abilities for console titles ("players will become bored... playing the same maps over and over and over again.")