Awesome. Some of those peripherals that will be available for the controller will consist of 5, 10, and 20 pound blocks of iron, so as your muscle mass improves, you can move up in weight and continue to bulk up while you play video games. Brilliant.
While it's certainly possible on other systems, it won't play out that same way. It's not only about hardware, it's also about attitude. MS might release something similar for the Xbox360 in a couple years, but every system out there won't have shipped with one, so it won't see widespread developer adoption.
MS and Sony aren't trying to stake their future on expanding gaming, other than in the number of units sold. Other than one pushing slightly more pixels than the other, the Xbox360 and the PS3 are almost entirely the same, in terms of what they bring to the table. Their solution to making new games is to throw more processor power at it, and that's it. That's really all they have over their predecessors. In fact, the Xbox has taken a step backwards by not including a hard drive with every console. MS made two useful contributions with the Xbox(ethernet being the other), and now they're taking one away(with somewhat valid reason, but still).
I think it's just a different philosophy on gaming, the Revolution controller just being one very bold aspect of it. The gamecube, in terms of hardware is solid, but not entirely inspiring. It really isn't that much different that the PS2 or Xbox. Yet Nintendo's games are really unique in a lot of ways. They just have a different feel to them. Some prefer to write that off as childishness, but it's something that appeals to me, and to a lot of other people. And the Revolution controller is an attempt to bring that sense from the software to the hardware.
And yes, the DS is unique. Please, show me a PDA that has a similar collection of games. Preferably one that costs $120. And that can stand up to a week in a house with six kids fighting over it. My DS just survived that no worse for wear.
While this certainly has the potential to be a "revolution" in gaming, I hardly think it's fair to say that almost all of past game design knowledge is worthless. Many of the same things that make games fun on the old school NES will make things fun the Revolution. Now, if you're talking about a studio that just kicks out repeated iterations of a game, yeah, they're going to have to make some bigger changes, or just accept the fact that the revolution is not the place for their game. If I were a developer, I'd look at this as less of having controls taken away and more as having new controls added. Does the ability to do so much through movement make up for the loss of a few buttons? I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it certainly could.
The fundamental concepts of gaming aren't any different. They're still the same: understandable visuals, responsive controls, feeling of progress, appropriate challenge, etc.
This is just a reworking of how controllers work. That's all. It's very cool, and it will lead to new game types for sure, but it hasn't obsoleted the rest of the gaming universe, it's just expanded it. Sure there will be learning curve, but I don't think it's going to be as bad or disruptive as you think.
I think we can pretty well assume that Nintendo will put out some first party games that gel with this new controller perfectly. They've got a pretty good record in regards to software and new controllers. They've also known what the controller is going to be capable of longer than anyone else, so they've had plenty of time to refine ideas. The quantity of their games will probably be an issue, but not so much to the casual gamers that they seem to be targeting.
As for third party support, I'm optimistic. It won't have the deluge of stuff like the PS2 had, but I think there's enough people out there that will be fascinated enough with this device to pursue some ideas. Nintendo has been talking up how they want to make the Revolution easy to develop for, so hopefully they'll get that right. Ideas are easier to come by than budgets, so if they can make the cost of developing a game low relative to the other consoles (which reportedly cost a sizable fortune to make games for), it should be appealing for developers.
Like other commenters have noted, I think Nintendo's sort of resigned itself to having lost the hardcore gamer market. They hardly targeted it with the Gamecube and the DS, and they seem content to let Sony and MS beat each other senseless over it. We'll end up with two incredibly powerful and expensive systems playing basically the same types of games, standing next to Nintendo's more modestly priced system with a library full of exclusives and very different games. It's like that basically with the current generation. As soon as I got an Xbox, I didn't really have much use for my PS2 anymore. But the gamecube gets plenty of time, because the games are so unique. No matter how much you love the PS3, no matter how much better you think it is than the Xbox360, you'll still have plenty of reasons to get the Revolution.
There's really only two ways that I see this generation playing out. First off, either Sony or MS completely dominates the other, and Nintendo earns a healthy second place. Or Sony and MS basically split their part of the market and Nintendo earns a healthy third place, selling just as many units as in the other scenario. Basically, Nintendo is trying to set it up so that their success or failure is unconnected to Sony or MS's actions. While there's certainly overlap in the market, Nintendo is trying to escape from that in two ways: Appeal to new gamers, and offer a different experience to the more hardcore among us.
It's a different attitude. I think if MS visited your living room and saw an Xbox360 sitting next to a PS3, they'd be disappointed. If Nintendo came in and saw a Revolution sitting next to a PS3, they'd be mostly indifferent, maybe ask you if there's any good games on that system. Sony and MS are out to kill each other, Nintendo's just here to sell games.
I can't remember where I read it, but some website talking about the game had quotes about how originally they had planned on having cats in the game as well, and they even did a lot of the artwork for it, but the decision was made to just go with dogs.
A lot of the time cats are more fun just to watch than to directly interact with, since they like to ignore you, and they've got a strong case of ADD. But since nintendogs has sold so well, and they've already done a bunch of artwork on it, I wouldn't be surprised to see a cat based game somewhere down the line.
Yeah, but I guess the question is, what else are they supposed to do at this point? They can't force third parties to make innovative games. If the third party developers aren't interested in making unique games with new control types, then they won't. Nintendo can try and entice developers to the platform, but I don't think they can actually stimulate their creativity beyond releasing their own games.
I think Nintendo has to just keep doing their own thing, and let the chips fall where they may. If that means being a niche player, then they're just going to have to hope that works. They can't get back into the mainstream huge library competition anymore, Sony and MS are spending way too much money there.
Personally, I don't have too much of a problem with that. While being a sort of niche player has some downsides, it also opens up a lot of opportunities. And the results of that are cool things like the DS and hopefully something neat with the Revolution. If the Revolution has a smaller stream of games, I can live with that if they're consistently quality.
Yeah, a lot of mac users got really defensive during those dark days. It was bad enough that our platform was suffering so badly in the marketplace, but it went further than that. We took a lot of grief from windows users. It was almost a sort of disdain. Oh, you use one of those mac things. I see. Not to mention that it got very difficult to use a mac at work or whatever, everyone wanted you just to shut up and use windows.
To be honest, I never understood that. It's not like I was stuck using a mac because I couldn't afford or figure out a PC. I wasn't doing it because I was trying to rebel against The Man. And so I think us mac fans just chalked it up to jealousy. You stupid PC users pretend that MS is so great, but in reality it tears you up inside knowing that that huge company gets out-programmed and out-designed by tiny little Apple. That's probably not the case, but that's just sort of what we told ourselves.
And it was really annoying, because, quite frankly, the mac experience was so much better. Windows had its benefits in terms of cost and software availability, but the MacOS was about a zillion times more pleasant to use. When I tried to convince someone to consider buying a mac, I wasn't doing it for financial gain, or to get them to join the "apple cult". I was doing it because I truly felt that they'd have a better experience with it, and maybe just be a little happier.
But it really is great to see Apple's attention to detail take off with the general public. I guess even a simplified computer is still a bit complex and daunting to someone not technically inclined, but an mp3 player is straightforwards enough that you can really wrap your head around it, and appreciate the little things.
No, news sites mostly sucked. A couple of the local ones were decent. WWLtv.com was pretty good, especially their forums(everyday people), and NOLA.com's forums were ok too. Of course, the traffic to them was heavy as all hell at times, which made it harder to deal with.
All of the big news sites were much more interested in sharing emotion than information. It took me days to find out anything about Harahan, where I live, and that's just a few minutes west of the city. And when I did, it wasn't from MSNBC, or a local news reporter. The info got out from people making cell phone calls to friends/family, and then those people posting information.
If you wanted to know what President Bush or Michael Brown was doing, you checked CNN.com. If you wanted to know whether or not your neighborhood flooded, you had to look a little futher.
It's not that the industry has lost creativity, it's just that it's gained a lot more blandness. Don't listend to the marketing, just go to a gamestop and look at the walls. They're covered with games. There are a ridiculous number of games being released. Ignore the big cardboard cuts outs and kiosks that they set up in the middle of the floor. That's all for the three or four games that are currently being hyped. If you listen to that marketing, yeah, you're only going to see the crap that the big companies are pushing.
You have to look beyond that. Don't necessarily pay attention to the top 10 best sellers list (except for the gamecube). Do your research on the internet. But don't go to gamespy or whatever, they're just more of the hype. If there's one thing gamers like to do almost as much as play games, it's to talk about games. Find normal people writing about what games they're playing. Blogs really can be useful sometimes.
Like you said, 90% of the market is clones and whatnot. That means 10% is good stuff. That ratio sounds right in just about any field, and the gaming industry is big enough that that 10% should keep you busy.
Exactly. Personal blogs have been one of the best sources of real information on hurricane Katrina over the past few weeks. Want some worthwhile info about anywhere besides New Orleans' CBD or the French Quarter? The only people who were in many parts of the affected areas were every day citizens, and blogs are how everyday citizens publish on the web.
Like you said, a well thought out set of search terms usually isn't run over with random blogs for me. My weblog gets a the occasional random google search hit, but it's usually for something incredibly dumb. My personal favorite was "I'm not black and I can't get down". I don't really know why my page was listed under that.
Yeah, I've met a whole lot more people who relieve stress through the use of alcohol. Gaming addiction isn't even on the radar compared to something like that, if you ask me. Then again, I've never been to Korea. Maybe they're weird like that.
Yeah LoC's are really just thrown out there to impress us, not to actually convey any meaningful information. Perhaps they should tell us how many atoms thick ipod nano is. Since I don't have an innate understanding of the size of an atom, that number will just bewilder me. Although since atoms are quite tiny, the number would seem rather large. So instead of the actual number of atoms, they should give a percentage compared to the number of atoms thick that a Toyota 4 runner is. Throw in some scientific notation, and I'll be so impressed that I'll go buy four of them. I have no idea what I'm talking about right now.
While your general point about financial situations making family life harder, parents being able to lord over their children 24/7 is not really the answer either. A fifteen year old should have some measure of freedom, even if it's something as simple as hanging out at the mall with some friends.
Even if a parent has the ability to be with their kids all the time, that's not going to be pleasant for either party, and it won't result in a young person ready to deal with the world. The job of a parent is not to keep their kids corralled in a box until they're 18 and then all of a sudden throw them out into the world. Parents have the difficult job of preparing a child for when they go off on their own. Controlling every aspect of their lives until they're a legal adult is not a good way to do that.
There aren't those harsh penalties for movie theaters, because movie theaters, for the most part, enforce the ratings on films. They do so to keep the government from getting involved.
If they video game industry had paid better attention to what was going on around them, they could've policed themselves, and the government wouldn't have gotten involved.
Sure there are some bad parents out there who need to pay more attention to their children. But there are also plenty of good parents who do take an interest in what their children are exposed to, but who realize that they can't lord over their children 24/7. Watching a young teenager like a hawk all the time isn't good for the parents or the teen. But neither is throwing all caution to the wind and letting a child do whatever the hell he wants.
The saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Most of us don't live in a village anymore, it's impossible to know even a sizable percentage of the people/situations that your children are going to be exposed to. So society creates some laws to make that a little easier to deal with. Most parents don't want the Playstation, the TV, or the internet to raise their kids. They don't want the government to do it either. But they certainly wouldn't mind a little help now and then, and restricting the sale of content deemed mature seems like a pretty reasonable way to help.
Restricting the sale of video games to kids is not the huge travesty of basic human rights that some people want to make it out to be.
Well, despite what most people like to believe, they aren't important enough that their data would matter to most other people. If I picked up an old computer, it'd probably be because I have some use in mind for it, so that data would just be in my way. I'd get rid of it.
The reason I don't commit credit card fraud isn't because I haven't managed to steal any numbers. I don't do it because it's wrong. Finding a couple random VISA numbers on a hard drive isn't going to suddenly change my mind about that.
And the sorts of people who do harvest old drives looking for credit card info to steal aren't going to be submitting stories suggesting to people that they better protect their data.
Yes, but the headline makes it sound like it's worse than it is. Sure, there are some zealots who are entirely against IP, but most people are reasonable and a little less paranoid. The zealots have done a lot of yelling, and made "IP" a dirty word, at least in a lot of tech circles. Certainly parts of the way IP currently works are problematic. Software Patents, for example, are something that the slashdot community, for the most part, are against.
But trademarks, at least to me, aren't so bad. Sure, they can be abused, but I think that in general, they make sense, they're applicable to newer technologies, and they don't have the same sense of urgent evilness that copyright and patents have taken on.
Basically, no one's saying that the article or headline is entirely false, just that it's intentionally misleading. That's something pretty common to most forms of media, but that doesn't make it a good thing. And the cool part about the internet is that this media is interactive, so we can easily express our disapproval when the editors do something we don't like.
In this case, some readers believe that the choice of wording shows a bias in the favor of Google, and they object to that. You can manipulate the truth without telling flat-out lies. The summary says that this company is trying to claim the rights to Google's Gmail SERVICE, when in reality, they're only claiming the rights to the NAME. It's implying that this company is after more than they really are, and that's dishonest.
I don't know gartenberg, and although I do enjoy Daring Fireball, it seems odd to me that those two would be held in the same regards as Bray and Hertzfeld, at least in this instance.
The roundtable intro describes Gruber as an influential blogger. Who does he influence? Apple? I doubt it. Although most of Gruber's posts are well written and reasonable, they're still often wrong. I don't think Steve Jobs is influenced by any Apple related sites, except maybe he's totally enraged when a rumor site scoops a new product announcement. Do you think Apple really cares what industry analysts think?
Bray and Hertzfeld are definitely smart guys, and they've contributed some great stuff, but I'm not sure I'd even give their predictions much weight. They're kind of out of the loop. This whole roundtable discussion is fun, because Apple is so secretive, and their products are so distinctive. But honestly, I think you could have a similar discussion with just about any six random people who were at least mildly familiar with the computer industry. Nothing that has been said so far goes beyond random comments that have been floating around on Apple related articles on slashdot for the past couple months.
Actually, with trademarks, aren't you legally required to pursue infringment, or else you'll lose your ownership?
It sound to me like this company was doing due diligence, and Google figured they could just ignore them. Google cannot go around pretending like they own the letter G, if they want to affix it in front of everything that they do, they're going to need to be careful. And if they're going to actually be a "not evil" corporation like they said they were, they're going to have to be respectful.
Re:N'awlins doesn't NEED to be RIGHT THERE
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Controlling Hurricanes?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There certainly is a large amount of land in this world that is above sea level. Unfortunately, most of it is not clustered around the economic centers of New Orleans. A lot of these people can't afford cars, they don't have any reliable transportation, so moving out to the higher suburbs has never been an option for them. Perhaps you don't understand the geography of the area, and the way that cities tend to work. That's ok, I'm just trying to inform you.
All the land above sea level around New Orleans already has people living there. There's no more above the water New Orleans left. So we're left with a few questions. First off, can the remaining parts of New Orleans economically succeed without rebuilding the rest? I don't believe that it can. So if we don't do some rebuilding, which will unfortunately be below sea level, we'd basically be letting the city die. So the next question is, are the remaining parts of New Orleans worth saving? That's a big question with a lot of economic, social, and cultural factors. Without really having that discussion, let me just say that I think that, yes, the city is worth saving. And if that means building some new structures below sea level, then so be it. I think there are other ways to deal with the problem, ways that the city as a whole and individual structures could be designed to better cope with the problems.
There are probably parts of the city that are better left unbuilt. Places that got 20 feet of water are going to be prohibitively expensive to protect. But any place where something was destroyed should not automatically be a write-off. Pragmatism, by definition, can be cold. If you want to look at this equation purely in terms of dollar signs and probabilities, that's your call, but don't pretend that doing so makes peoples' lives irrelevant. Logic is probably the best reason out there to be heartless, but it's still heartless. Just call it what it is, and we'll admit that our priorities are different.
Re:N'awlins doesn't NEED to be RIGHT THERE
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Controlling Hurricanes?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Yeah, I'm sure New Orleans, as both a city and a port will do just fine if we don't allow any residences to be built there. None of those businesses need workers, we'll just replace them all with robots. That should work well.
Refusing to help people that just want to go home is being cold, regardless of what other nice things you want to do. You've got a bunch of very poor people who were stuck living in houses where they could find them. Telling them that you won't help "out of pure principle" is a pretty crappy thing to say.
I'm glad I'm not the one who thinks convergence is generally a bad idea. Just look at nature and evolution. As each species adapts better and better to its niche(function), it becomes less and less like the others. Sure, they share certain features like a brain, a heart, eyes(batteries, screen, speakers), but the differences are what make them really work.
I guess if we managed to converge fish and birds you'd end up with a pretty interesting creature, but I'm not sure how well it'd fit into the world.
The only reason gadget convergence makes any sense is so that we don't have to worry about carrying as much stuff. I'd rather the innovation be put into designing better bags and stuff so I can carry all my devices more easily.
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome. Some of those peripherals that will be available for the controller will consist of 5, 10, and 20 pound blocks of iron, so as your muscle mass improves, you can move up in weight and continue to bulk up while you play video games. Brilliant.
While it's certainly possible on other systems, it won't play out that same way. It's not only about hardware, it's also about attitude. MS might release something similar for the Xbox360 in a couple years, but every system out there won't have shipped with one, so it won't see widespread developer adoption.
MS and Sony aren't trying to stake their future on expanding gaming, other than in the number of units sold. Other than one pushing slightly more pixels than the other, the Xbox360 and the PS3 are almost entirely the same, in terms of what they bring to the table. Their solution to making new games is to throw more processor power at it, and that's it. That's really all they have over their predecessors. In fact, the Xbox has taken a step backwards by not including a hard drive with every console. MS made two useful contributions with the Xbox(ethernet being the other), and now they're taking one away(with somewhat valid reason, but still).
I think it's just a different philosophy on gaming, the Revolution controller just being one very bold aspect of it. The gamecube, in terms of hardware is solid, but not entirely inspiring. It really isn't that much different that the PS2 or Xbox. Yet Nintendo's games are really unique in a lot of ways. They just have a different feel to them. Some prefer to write that off as childishness, but it's something that appeals to me, and to a lot of other people. And the Revolution controller is an attempt to bring that sense from the software to the hardware.
And yes, the DS is unique. Please, show me a PDA that has a similar collection of games. Preferably one that costs $120. And that can stand up to a week in a house with six kids fighting over it. My DS just survived that no worse for wear.
While this certainly has the potential to be a "revolution" in gaming, I hardly think it's fair to say that almost all of past game design knowledge is worthless. Many of the same things that make games fun on the old school NES will make things fun the Revolution. Now, if you're talking about a studio that just kicks out repeated iterations of a game, yeah, they're going to have to make some bigger changes, or just accept the fact that the revolution is not the place for their game. If I were a developer, I'd look at this as less of having controls taken away and more as having new controls added. Does the ability to do so much through movement make up for the loss of a few buttons? I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it certainly could.
The fundamental concepts of gaming aren't any different. They're still the same: understandable visuals, responsive controls, feeling of progress, appropriate challenge, etc.
This is just a reworking of how controllers work. That's all. It's very cool, and it will lead to new game types for sure, but it hasn't obsoleted the rest of the gaming universe, it's just expanded it. Sure there will be learning curve, but I don't think it's going to be as bad or disruptive as you think.
I think we can pretty well assume that Nintendo will put out some first party games that gel with this new controller perfectly. They've got a pretty good record in regards to software and new controllers. They've also known what the controller is going to be capable of longer than anyone else, so they've had plenty of time to refine ideas. The quantity of their games will probably be an issue, but not so much to the casual gamers that they seem to be targeting.
As for third party support, I'm optimistic. It won't have the deluge of stuff like the PS2 had, but I think there's enough people out there that will be fascinated enough with this device to pursue some ideas. Nintendo has been talking up how they want to make the Revolution easy to develop for, so hopefully they'll get that right. Ideas are easier to come by than budgets, so if they can make the cost of developing a game low relative to the other consoles (which reportedly cost a sizable fortune to make games for), it should be appealing for developers.
Like other commenters have noted, I think Nintendo's sort of resigned itself to having lost the hardcore gamer market. They hardly targeted it with the Gamecube and the DS, and they seem content to let Sony and MS beat each other senseless over it. We'll end up with two incredibly powerful and expensive systems playing basically the same types of games, standing next to Nintendo's more modestly priced system with a library full of exclusives and very different games. It's like that basically with the current generation. As soon as I got an Xbox, I didn't really have much use for my PS2 anymore. But the gamecube gets plenty of time, because the games are so unique. No matter how much you love the PS3, no matter how much better you think it is than the Xbox360, you'll still have plenty of reasons to get the Revolution.
There's really only two ways that I see this generation playing out. First off, either Sony or MS completely dominates the other, and Nintendo earns a healthy second place. Or Sony and MS basically split their part of the market and Nintendo earns a healthy third place, selling just as many units as in the other scenario. Basically, Nintendo is trying to set it up so that their success or failure is unconnected to Sony or MS's actions. While there's certainly overlap in the market, Nintendo is trying to escape from that in two ways: Appeal to new gamers, and offer a different experience to the more hardcore among us.
It's a different attitude. I think if MS visited your living room and saw an Xbox360 sitting next to a PS3, they'd be disappointed. If Nintendo came in and saw a Revolution sitting next to a PS3, they'd be mostly indifferent, maybe ask you if there's any good games on that system. Sony and MS are out to kill each other, Nintendo's just here to sell games.
Listen jackass, if you had heard more than just the national news, you'd know that the storm hit areas besides just New Orleans.
I can't remember where I read it, but some website talking about the game had quotes about how originally they had planned on having cats in the game as well, and they even did a lot of the artwork for it, but the decision was made to just go with dogs.
A lot of the time cats are more fun just to watch than to directly interact with, since they like to ignore you, and they've got a strong case of ADD. But since nintendogs has sold so well, and they've already done a bunch of artwork on it, I wouldn't be surprised to see a cat based game somewhere down the line.
Yeah, but I guess the question is, what else are they supposed to do at this point? They can't force third parties to make innovative games. If the third party developers aren't interested in making unique games with new control types, then they won't. Nintendo can try and entice developers to the platform, but I don't think they can actually stimulate their creativity beyond releasing their own games.
I think Nintendo has to just keep doing their own thing, and let the chips fall where they may. If that means being a niche player, then they're just going to have to hope that works. They can't get back into the mainstream huge library competition anymore, Sony and MS are spending way too much money there.
Personally, I don't have too much of a problem with that. While being a sort of niche player has some downsides, it also opens up a lot of opportunities. And the results of that are cool things like the DS and hopefully something neat with the Revolution. If the Revolution has a smaller stream of games, I can live with that if they're consistently quality.
I think you're just trying to be funny, but I case you were being serious:
No, fortunately for me, I had the resources to evacuate. My house did not get any flooding, and I can move back tomorrow. Woo!
I thought silver was the most popular color, actually. I don't remember where I read that. I can't imagine the ugly ass gold ones selling more.
Yeah, a lot of mac users got really defensive during those dark days. It was bad enough that our platform was suffering so badly in the marketplace, but it went further than that. We took a lot of grief from windows users. It was almost a sort of disdain. Oh, you use one of those mac things. I see. Not to mention that it got very difficult to use a mac at work or whatever, everyone wanted you just to shut up and use windows.
To be honest, I never understood that. It's not like I was stuck using a mac because I couldn't afford or figure out a PC. I wasn't doing it because I was trying to rebel against The Man. And so I think us mac fans just chalked it up to jealousy. You stupid PC users pretend that MS is so great, but in reality it tears you up inside knowing that that huge company gets out-programmed and out-designed by tiny little Apple. That's probably not the case, but that's just sort of what we told ourselves.
And it was really annoying, because, quite frankly, the mac experience was so much better. Windows had its benefits in terms of cost and software availability, but the MacOS was about a zillion times more pleasant to use. When I tried to convince someone to consider buying a mac, I wasn't doing it for financial gain, or to get them to join the "apple cult". I was doing it because I truly felt that they'd have a better experience with it, and maybe just be a little happier.
But it really is great to see Apple's attention to detail take off with the general public. I guess even a simplified computer is still a bit complex and daunting to someone not technically inclined, but an mp3 player is straightforwards enough that you can really wrap your head around it, and appreciate the little things.
No, news sites mostly sucked. A couple of the local ones were decent. WWLtv.com was pretty good, especially their forums(everyday people), and NOLA.com's forums were ok too. Of course, the traffic to them was heavy as all hell at times, which made it harder to deal with.
All of the big news sites were much more interested in sharing emotion than information. It took me days to find out anything about Harahan, where I live, and that's just a few minutes west of the city. And when I did, it wasn't from MSNBC, or a local news reporter. The info got out from people making cell phone calls to friends/family, and then those people posting information.
If you wanted to know what President Bush or Michael Brown was doing, you checked CNN.com. If you wanted to know whether or not your neighborhood flooded, you had to look a little futher.
It's not that the industry has lost creativity, it's just that it's gained a lot more blandness. Don't listend to the marketing, just go to a gamestop and look at the walls. They're covered with games. There are a ridiculous number of games being released. Ignore the big cardboard cuts outs and kiosks that they set up in the middle of the floor. That's all for the three or four games that are currently being hyped. If you listen to that marketing, yeah, you're only going to see the crap that the big companies are pushing.
You have to look beyond that. Don't necessarily pay attention to the top 10 best sellers list (except for the gamecube). Do your research on the internet. But don't go to gamespy or whatever, they're just more of the hype. If there's one thing gamers like to do almost as much as play games, it's to talk about games. Find normal people writing about what games they're playing. Blogs really can be useful sometimes.
Like you said, 90% of the market is clones and whatnot. That means 10% is good stuff. That ratio sounds right in just about any field, and the gaming industry is big enough that that 10% should keep you busy.
Exactly. Personal blogs have been one of the best sources of real information on hurricane Katrina over the past few weeks. Want some worthwhile info about anywhere besides New Orleans' CBD or the French Quarter? The only people who were in many parts of the affected areas were every day citizens, and blogs are how everyday citizens publish on the web.
Like you said, a well thought out set of search terms usually isn't run over with random blogs for me. My weblog gets a the occasional random google search hit, but it's usually for something incredibly dumb. My personal favorite was "I'm not black and I can't get down". I don't really know why my page was listed under that.
Yeah, I've met a whole lot more people who relieve stress through the use of alcohol. Gaming addiction isn't even on the radar compared to something like that, if you ask me. Then again, I've never been to Korea. Maybe they're weird like that.
Yeah LoC's are really just thrown out there to impress us, not to actually convey any meaningful information. Perhaps they should tell us how many atoms thick ipod nano is. Since I don't have an innate understanding of the size of an atom, that number will just bewilder me. Although since atoms are quite tiny, the number would seem rather large. So instead of the actual number of atoms, they should give a percentage compared to the number of atoms thick that a Toyota 4 runner is. Throw in some scientific notation, and I'll be so impressed that I'll go buy four of them. I have no idea what I'm talking about right now.
While your general point about financial situations making family life harder, parents being able to lord over their children 24/7 is not really the answer either. A fifteen year old should have some measure of freedom, even if it's something as simple as hanging out at the mall with some friends.
Even if a parent has the ability to be with their kids all the time, that's not going to be pleasant for either party, and it won't result in a young person ready to deal with the world. The job of a parent is not to keep their kids corralled in a box until they're 18 and then all of a sudden throw them out into the world. Parents have the difficult job of preparing a child for when they go off on their own. Controlling every aspect of their lives until they're a legal adult is not a good way to do that.
No, it's off topic because this isn't a shipping product that we're talking about. It's basically a beta version only available to developers.
Furthermore, apple's not making money off of this. They allowing developers to download it for free.
And even more furthermore, the headline deals with software pirating, which doesn't earn anyone money.
There aren't those harsh penalties for movie theaters, because movie theaters, for the most part, enforce the ratings on films. They do so to keep the government from getting involved.
If they video game industry had paid better attention to what was going on around them, they could've policed themselves, and the government wouldn't have gotten involved.
Sure there are some bad parents out there who need to pay more attention to their children. But there are also plenty of good parents who do take an interest in what their children are exposed to, but who realize that they can't lord over their children 24/7. Watching a young teenager like a hawk all the time isn't good for the parents or the teen. But neither is throwing all caution to the wind and letting a child do whatever the hell he wants.
The saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Most of us don't live in a village anymore, it's impossible to know even a sizable percentage of the people/situations that your children are going to be exposed to. So society creates some laws to make that a little easier to deal with. Most parents don't want the Playstation, the TV, or the internet to raise their kids. They don't want the government to do it either. But they certainly wouldn't mind a little help now and then, and restricting the sale of content deemed mature seems like a pretty reasonable way to help.
Restricting the sale of video games to kids is not the huge travesty of basic human rights that some people want to make it out to be.
Well, despite what most people like to believe, they aren't important enough that their data would matter to most other people. If I picked up an old computer, it'd probably be because I have some use in mind for it, so that data would just be in my way. I'd get rid of it.
The reason I don't commit credit card fraud isn't because I haven't managed to steal any numbers. I don't do it because it's wrong. Finding a couple random VISA numbers on a hard drive isn't going to suddenly change my mind about that.
And the sorts of people who do harvest old drives looking for credit card info to steal aren't going to be submitting stories suggesting to people that they better protect their data.
Yes, but the headline makes it sound like it's worse than it is. Sure, there are some zealots who are entirely against IP, but most people are reasonable and a little less paranoid. The zealots have done a lot of yelling, and made "IP" a dirty word, at least in a lot of tech circles. Certainly parts of the way IP currently works are problematic. Software Patents, for example, are something that the slashdot community, for the most part, are against.
But trademarks, at least to me, aren't so bad. Sure, they can be abused, but I think that in general, they make sense, they're applicable to newer technologies, and they don't have the same sense of urgent evilness that copyright and patents have taken on.
Basically, no one's saying that the article or headline is entirely false, just that it's intentionally misleading. That's something pretty common to most forms of media, but that doesn't make it a good thing. And the cool part about the internet is that this media is interactive, so we can easily express our disapproval when the editors do something we don't like.
In this case, some readers believe that the choice of wording shows a bias in the favor of Google, and they object to that. You can manipulate the truth without telling flat-out lies. The summary says that this company is trying to claim the rights to Google's Gmail SERVICE, when in reality, they're only claiming the rights to the NAME. It's implying that this company is after more than they really are, and that's dishonest.
I don't know gartenberg, and although I do enjoy Daring Fireball, it seems odd to me that those two would be held in the same regards as Bray and Hertzfeld, at least in this instance.
The roundtable intro describes Gruber as an influential blogger. Who does he influence? Apple? I doubt it. Although most of Gruber's posts are well written and reasonable, they're still often wrong. I don't think Steve Jobs is influenced by any Apple related sites, except maybe he's totally enraged when a rumor site scoops a new product announcement. Do you think Apple really cares what industry analysts think?
Bray and Hertzfeld are definitely smart guys, and they've contributed some great stuff, but I'm not sure I'd even give their predictions much weight. They're kind of out of the loop. This whole roundtable discussion is fun, because Apple is so secretive, and their products are so distinctive. But honestly, I think you could have a similar discussion with just about any six random people who were at least mildly familiar with the computer industry. Nothing that has been said so far goes beyond random comments that have been floating around on Apple related articles on slashdot for the past couple months.
Actually, with trademarks, aren't you legally required to pursue infringment, or else you'll lose your ownership?
It sound to me like this company was doing due diligence, and Google figured they could just ignore them. Google cannot go around pretending like they own the letter G, if they want to affix it in front of everything that they do, they're going to need to be careful. And if they're going to actually be a "not evil" corporation like they said they were, they're going to have to be respectful.
There certainly is a large amount of land in this world that is above sea level. Unfortunately, most of it is not clustered around the economic centers of New Orleans. A lot of these people can't afford cars, they don't have any reliable transportation, so moving out to the higher suburbs has never been an option for them. Perhaps you don't understand the geography of the area, and the way that cities tend to work. That's ok, I'm just trying to inform you.
All the land above sea level around New Orleans already has people living there. There's no more above the water New Orleans left. So we're left with a few questions. First off, can the remaining parts of New Orleans economically succeed without rebuilding the rest? I don't believe that it can. So if we don't do some rebuilding, which will unfortunately be below sea level, we'd basically be letting the city die. So the next question is, are the remaining parts of New Orleans worth saving? That's a big question with a lot of economic, social, and cultural factors. Without really having that discussion, let me just say that I think that, yes, the city is worth saving. And if that means building some new structures below sea level, then so be it. I think there are other ways to deal with the problem, ways that the city as a whole and individual structures could be designed to better cope with the problems.
There are probably parts of the city that are better left unbuilt. Places that got 20 feet of water are going to be prohibitively expensive to protect. But any place where something was destroyed should not automatically be a write-off. Pragmatism, by definition, can be cold. If you want to look at this equation purely in terms of dollar signs and probabilities, that's your call, but don't pretend that doing so makes peoples' lives irrelevant. Logic is probably the best reason out there to be heartless, but it's still heartless. Just call it what it is, and we'll admit that our priorities are different.
Yeah, I'm sure New Orleans, as both a city and a port will do just fine if we don't allow any residences to be built there. None of those businesses need workers, we'll just replace them all with robots. That should work well.
Refusing to help people that just want to go home is being cold, regardless of what other nice things you want to do. You've got a bunch of very poor people who were stuck living in houses where they could find them. Telling them that you won't help "out of pure principle" is a pretty crappy thing to say.
I'm glad I'm not the one who thinks convergence is generally a bad idea. Just look at nature and evolution. As each species adapts better and better to its niche(function), it becomes less and less like the others. Sure, they share certain features like a brain, a heart, eyes(batteries, screen, speakers), but the differences are what make them really work.
I guess if we managed to converge fish and birds you'd end up with a pretty interesting creature, but I'm not sure how well it'd fit into the world.
The only reason gadget convergence makes any sense is so that we don't have to worry about carrying as much stuff. I'd rather the innovation be put into designing better bags and stuff so I can carry all my devices more easily.
But yeah, convergence is generally dumb.