mature

After a U.S. vs. European ratings snafu, "mature" games will now be allowed in Microsoft's European Windows 8 Store.

According to Gizmodo, the software giant announced today that it would reverse an earlier decision that banned all PEGI 18 games that also received a Mature rating from its European store.

The ban was instated when Microsoft outlined its Windows Store guidelines, which said that ESRB ratings of Adults Only would not be allowed in the U.S. and PEGI 18 ratings would be barred in Europe. The discrepancy between the two regions was based on different … Read more

Rockstar Games is known for not pulling any punches with its incredibly popular video games offered on consoles, desktops, and mobile gaming devices. Frequently controversial and in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, Rockstar's games are violent and give players the freedom to do whatever they want -- both good and bad.

This week, Rockstar added another of its classic games to the App Store with the same dark, compelling story lines and action-oriented gameplay that made the developer famous. So leave your morality at the door and make sure the kids are in bed, because when you're dealing with the gangster underworld in this collection of games, you often have to make deadly decisions.… Read more

Companies in growing markets like China and India are adding more jobs in North America and Europe, a shift from the usual hiring patterns, says a new study from IBM.

Out today, IBM's new "Working Beyond Borders" study found that growth in jobs is now moving two ways--from emerging economies tapping into more mature markets as well as the more traditional reverse pattern.

The reason for the trend? As more companies expand globally, they're hiring people with the creativity, flexibility, and speed needed to help their expansion, prompting them to increase their staffing in North America, … Read more

One complaint that some folks have with Nintendo is that its consoles and handheld devices lack mature games. But Take-Two Interactive chief Ben Feder was quick to point out on Friday that the Nintendo DS does have mature titles, and his company's Grand Theft Auto franchise is leading the pack.

Speaking to MCV in the U.K., Feder said as of February, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars "represented nearly 50 percent of the unit sales of all M-rated DS titles in the history of the platform."

It's a rather interesting comment that might make some scratch … Read more

Is a public-transportation system allowed to turn away ads for all "mature" and "adult" video games? An Illinois court that has been grappling with that question says no--at least for now.

Since July, the Entertainment Software Association, an organization that represents the video game industry, has been embroiled in a lawsuit with the Chicago Transit Authority over the display of ads for violent video games on buses, subways, and other places where the CTA operates. The CTA contends that those ads have no business near its patrons. The ESA says the ban is unconstitutional.

Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer of the Northern District Court of Illinois granted the game group a preliminary injunction on Thursday, allowing violent ads to be placed within the CTA's operational control. Judge Pallmeyer said her concerns were rooted in the U.S. Constitution.

"The advertisements the CTA wishes to ban promote expression that has constitutional value and implicates core First Amendment concerns," Pallmeyer wrote in her ruling.

"In an effort to avoid public controversy and to protect its riders from the effects of their own private choices, the CTA singled out for prohibition all advertising references to a solitary class of product--mature and adult video games, which (unlike alcohol and tobacco) are themselves forms of protected speech and which are legal for people of all ages to purchase," Judge Pallmeyer continued. "While the CTA would likely be entitled to enforce such a ban, were it serving solely as the proprietor of its own non-public-forum property, it cannot do so in a forum that this circuit has explicitly found to be a designated public forum for free expression."

A similar issue between the CTA and Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive erupted in 2008, when the CTA removed all GTA IV ads from its buses and display places. The parties eventually settled, resulting in Take-Two being allowed to display GTA ads for six weeks.

The ESA's battle with the CTA started in January of last year, when the transportation authority's Ordinance 008-147 took effect. That ordinance prohibited advertising that "markets or identifies a video or computer game rated 'Mature 17+' (M) or 'Adults Only 18+' (AO)." It was a direct response to the aforementioned GTA IV ads.… Read more

Update (June 26, 2009): Now that the dust has settled, Jim Dalrymple has a more complete picture of how and why this app was removed.

Update: We initially reported that Apple had blocked the app, but it now appears that the developer's servers were simply overwhelmed (Apple's servers distribute the app, but the images themselves are pulled from the developer's server). We'll have further updates as the story continues to evolve.

Back when Apple first launched its App Store, Steve Jobs showed a slide with six categories of apps that would be verboten: "Porn, privacy, … Read more

Senior Localization Producer Patrick Riley called into The 404 this week to talk with us about MadWorld, the new M-rated Wii game from Sega that has raised the eyebrows of media watchdog agencies such as the NIMF. Together we discuss the responsibilities that parents must endure when it comes to M-rated gaming, and how education about the ESRB's rating system needs to have a more public presence.

Download the interview

MadWorld, developed by Platinum Games, is a surreal, ultra-violent, over-the-top beat-'em-up game that borrows its art style from that of a graphic novel. Black, white, and red are … Read more

I wrote not long ago about the various disciplines that data center operations teams will need to work through to address those cloud-computing values you often hear hyped by people like me.

In that post, I noted that many organizations had gained an understanding of how server virtualization could be used to abstract software concepts, thus managing them distinctly from the underlying hardware. I also noted, however, that few organizations had made the decision to systematically automate that management.

Channel-V tonight pointed me to an interview by Virtualization Review's Keith Ward of Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's senior director of product marketing. In the interview, Balkansky discusses the upcoming VDC-OS product release, and what it means to the next generation of data centers. He starts with a very familiar theme:

"Henry Ford introduced automation to the manufacturing world," Balkansky says.

"We're transitioning from swinging hammers to pushing buttons," he continues. "The focus becomes on what needs to happen, not spending the majority of your time executing it and making it happen. Ford introduced speed and efficiency and predictability in the (manufacturing) process." Those same elements will characterize VDC-OS, he says.

Balkansky goes on to point out that the very core of the system administrator role will change as a result, an argument that I've been making for some time. Rather than focusing on reactive, tactical operations, the system administrator of the future will "specify the service levels the application requires: availability, security, scalability."… Read more

In a recent post titled "Cloud maturity models don't make sense," Roger Smith of InformationWeek's Analytics Weblog takes umbrage to my recent "A maturity model for cloud computing" post. In Roger's post, he quotes my model and the "cloud adoption model" of Jake Sorofman, and then goes on to use a post by Ron Schmelzer--in which Ron debunks an earlier SOA maturity model--to express a strong objection to any cloud maturity model.

Just for review, here is the graphic from my post:

Another way to look at the model is this: is it possible to have an open cloud market not formed from competing compute utilities, themselves profiting from the efficiencies of automating the management of abstract components in an optimized--or consolidated--physical infrastructure?

Unfortunately, I think Roger completely misunderstood the tenor and theme of the post. This core argument from his post I think best illustrates the problem:… Read more