Add to that that the most popular console, by far, was the weakest graphically. Nintendo's Gamecube was graphically superior to the PS2, but it didn't matter. Then go another generation back... how did the 3DO fair?
If there's one lesson to be learned, it's that the graphics hardware is never the determining factor for success for a console.
Besides, the best looking game this generation (Muramasa) is on the Wii, proving how a game really looks is 10% hardware and 90% artistic style and design.
Re:Some would call X3 the successor...
on
Elite Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
That's only because we coast for most of the trip. If you actually had a rocket that could thrust at several g's for weeks on end, navigation becomes much simpler; almost seat-of-the-pants easy. The sun's gravity well loses its importance. The convoluted courses we plan for deep-space probes are because of their immense duration and minimal acceleration.
Haven't we had that argument a couple of times here already? Anyway : the reason you had trouble with it is not because it isn't intuitive, it's because you're very fluent with and accustomed to the old UI.
You state that as if the argument was settled, and your opinion was accepted as correct. It hasn't been, and it isn't clear you're actually right. Not all interfaces are equally valid.
If we use the terrible and ugly 'Awesomebar' as an example, you can see that the firefox team will do everything they can to push a marketing bullet-point 'feature' over actual usability. I will bet you that there will be no built-in option to switch back to standard menus; maybe there will be a few confusing options hidden in the about:config that allow you to restore most of the lost functionality.
Thank god for the add-ons. Too bad the developers don't seem to understand that a ribbon interface ought to BE an add-on, and not the other way around.
Re:Some would call X3 the successor...
on
Elite Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
Bad form to reply to myself, I know, but I wanted to point out: If you allow high acceleration, the solar system becomes remarkable small. At 100g, Pluto is only about 6-10 days away.
That's why planetary exploration should be done by AIs loaded into high thrust nuclear rockets... as soon as we get AIs and high thrust nuclear rockets.
Re:Some would call X3 the successor...
on
Elite Turns 25
·
· Score: 4, Informative
That was actually emulated in the game. If you accelerated to Pluto from Earth at 1g, it would take (approximately) a realistic amount of time to reach it.
What made it bearable were two concessions: You could alter the flow of time in the game, when nothing interesting was happening, so hours would tick by like seconds... and ships could accelerate at (ahem) hundreds of g's. So it had some outlandish elements, but the mechanics were thoroughly Newtonian.
It was beautiful. You could thrust toward Saturn, then cut your engines, point any direction, and just slingshot around... start accelerating again when you're headed at the sun, to approach the Earth. I would buy a modern equivalent, even if it wasn't a game at all, just a space flight sim. With the same infinite number of procedurally generated solar systems.
Then again, there are pieces of software that force you to "Accept" the terms of the GPL in order to use it, which violates freedom 0 in my opinion, so who knows.
This is getting off topic, but you've mentioned a point that irritates me. It's not that I mind clicking through another meaningless dialog box... but I mind clicking "I Agree" on a license which is being used by people who evidently DON'T UNDERSTAND THE LICENSE THEY'RE USING, because they're trying to make me AGREE to it. I don't have to agree with the GPL to use GPL products, and that's pretty clearly indicated in the GPL itself. If I don't agree to the GPL, I STILL get to use the product. I just lose the extra permissions to redistribute the software (or modifications of). The GPL is really of concern only to distributors.
A large grain of salt, also due to the shifty definitions. They use the term 'learn' in a way much different than most people understand the process. Just because a process causes a shift over time in the way a brain responds, doesn't mean the brain is learning. If that was the case, cutting chunks of brain tissue out with a knife could be called learning.
They've found that when learning, they can measure brain response in a certain way. That doesn't mean that the brain responding that way indicates learning. The road is wet when it rains, but a wet road doesn't mean it's raining. Since, however, they're studying the brain and using certain limited tools, they conveniently tailor their definitions of words like 'learning' and 'attention' to the certain gross physical phenomena that they can measure.
I think you've nailed the real reason. The requirement in so many schools for students to use TI-83s is reprehensible. It's one of the main reasons that $10 worth of technology is still being sold for $100. If TI had to actually compete, we'd get progress. Calculators have been stagnant.
It also hurts the learning process. I helped a lady who was taking an Algebra class at the community college... she was plotting curves, figuring slopes, and whatnot. The actual MATH TEXTBOOK she was working out of had images of TI buttons and a numbered checklist which described how to calculate slopes by giving the procedure to pull up the right menu on the calculator. She had no idea what the actual MATH behind the process was. It might as well have been describing how to solve the equation by running a Graphing Wizard in Excel.
And maybe that's exactly the point that Google is trying to get across, here. From Google's perspective, even if Apple has the right to restrict their apps, the more everybody realizes how restrictive it is, the better for Google.
Some of their advantages simply can't be. For instance, much of the appeal of AmigaOS was that it was such a tight fit to the hardware, mixing advanced high-level functionality (multitasking, etc.) with fast graphics/sound performance. In other words, it allowed high-level low-level access, if that makes sense.
That simply isn't an option for Linux. It requires too much integration with a specific hardware set. Maybe Apple could, in theory, but I think they've gone a different direction.
If that's all there was to it, Newton would have said "Leibniz, you're short."
Instead, he constructed a grand and insightful statement about science that just so happened to carry a veiled insult. Nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't detract from the meaning of what he said.
My question is, under the accounting they're using, why do they use any fuel at all? Why not go for the gold and say "we crossed the US without using any fuel at all!"?
Because the snake oil they're pitching is algae. They had to add a meaningless amount of algae-based fuel to the gas tank in order to include the proper buzzword in their PR release. Not TOO much algae-fuel, or the car wouldn't work, of course.
No, it needs to be a hybrid. 99% of the fuel they're using to get across the country is in the form of electricity pulled from the grid. Which, of course, is primarily coal powered. If they were actually trying to drive somewhere using 25 gallons of algae gas, the car would die after 700 miles or so.
This claim is about as revolutionary and ecological as my desktop pc; it's been running for years on NO gasoline. Didn't realize I was so green.
That's the problem, even if it had great titles, no one was aware of them.
I suppose that's true; it DID have great titles, and you (for one) weren't aware of them. Obviously, the PS2 library is immense and excellent; but I think the Dreamcast library holds up well compared against the Gamecube and X-Box. Soul Caliber 2, the best Soul Caliber ever made. Shenmue. Ikaruga. Sonic Adventure (the last really good sonic game). Skies of Arcadia. Ah, I could name more, but lists of info are pretty meaningless. Suffice it to say, sadly, you weren't alone in not knowing much about the Dreamcast, and that is no doubt Sega's fault (with some blame to go to EA and Sony).
Gun accidents killed 776 people in 2001 (in the US). Accidental falls killed 13,322.
If you want to throw in ALL gun casualties, including the both crimes, and ok ones such as policeman or citizens killing criminals, the total gun deaths were 3,951. Still substantially less dangerous than gravity.
I was at PAX. DON'T WORRY, I'M OK. The newspapers in Seattle were screaming about a Swine Flu outbreak at the local university (along with "COUGAR ATTACKS IN PARK"), so I figured it might pop up at PAX, along with some big rock concert event that was happening simultaneously.
I agree, except they should do the sensible thing and make the sequel multiplatform.
Skies of Arcadia was the most 'adventuresome' RPG I think I've ever played on a console. Not the most technically impressive, or profound, or most innovative... but the most pulpy fun pirating adventure.
It had the Microsoft Logo because it was capable of running Windows CE. Most games didn't use it at all. Do you avoid PCs because they're capable of running Windows?
Say what you will, but what is the last Sega game that came out that really "WOWed" you?
Valkyria Chronicles.
Which from what I understand, had disappointing sales. Sega still has the ability to make awesome games; they just don't sell as well as their mediocre ones. Kind of the problem that most game developers face.
Slashdot Mirror
Add to that that the most popular console, by far, was the weakest graphically. Nintendo's Gamecube was graphically superior to the PS2, but it didn't matter. Then go another generation back... how did the 3DO fair?
If there's one lesson to be learned, it's that the graphics hardware is never the determining factor for success for a console.
Besides, the best looking game this generation (Muramasa) is on the Wii, proving how a game really looks is 10% hardware and 90% artistic style and design.
That's only because we coast for most of the trip. If you actually had a rocket that could thrust at several g's for weeks on end, navigation becomes much simpler; almost seat-of-the-pants easy. The sun's gravity well loses its importance. The convoluted courses we plan for deep-space probes are because of their immense duration and minimal acceleration.
Haven't we had that argument a couple of times here already? Anyway : the reason you had trouble with it is not because it isn't intuitive, it's because you're very fluent with and accustomed to the old UI.
You state that as if the argument was settled, and your opinion was accepted as correct. It hasn't been, and it isn't clear you're actually right. Not all interfaces are equally valid.
If we use the terrible and ugly 'Awesomebar' as an example, you can see that the firefox team will do everything they can to push a marketing bullet-point 'feature' over actual usability. I will bet you that there will be no built-in option to switch back to standard menus; maybe there will be a few confusing options hidden in the about:config that allow you to restore most of the lost functionality.
Thank god for the add-ons. Too bad the developers don't seem to understand that a ribbon interface ought to BE an add-on, and not the other way around.
Bad form to reply to myself, I know, but I wanted to point out: If you allow high acceleration, the solar system becomes remarkable small. At 100g, Pluto is only about 6-10 days away.
That's why planetary exploration should be done by AIs loaded into high thrust nuclear rockets... as soon as we get AIs and high thrust nuclear rockets.
That was actually emulated in the game. If you accelerated to Pluto from Earth at 1g, it would take (approximately) a realistic amount of time to reach it.
What made it bearable were two concessions: You could alter the flow of time in the game, when nothing interesting was happening, so hours would tick by like seconds... and ships could accelerate at (ahem) hundreds of g's. So it had some outlandish elements, but the mechanics were thoroughly Newtonian.
It was beautiful. You could thrust toward Saturn, then cut your engines, point any direction, and just slingshot around... start accelerating again when you're headed at the sun, to approach the Earth. I would buy a modern equivalent, even if it wasn't a game at all, just a space flight sim. With the same infinite number of procedurally generated solar systems.
Then again, there are pieces of software that force you to "Accept" the terms of the GPL in order to use it, which violates freedom 0 in my opinion, so who knows.
This is getting off topic, but you've mentioned a point that irritates me. It's not that I mind clicking through another meaningless dialog box... but I mind clicking "I Agree" on a license which is being used by people who evidently DON'T UNDERSTAND THE LICENSE THEY'RE USING, because they're trying to make me AGREE to it. I don't have to agree with the GPL to use GPL products, and that's pretty clearly indicated in the GPL itself. If I don't agree to the GPL, I STILL get to use the product. I just lose the extra permissions to redistribute the software (or modifications of). The GPL is really of concern only to distributors.
A large grain of salt, also due to the shifty definitions. They use the term 'learn' in a way much different than most people understand the process. Just because a process causes a shift over time in the way a brain responds, doesn't mean the brain is learning. If that was the case, cutting chunks of brain tissue out with a knife could be called learning.
They've found that when learning, they can measure brain response in a certain way. That doesn't mean that the brain responding that way indicates learning. The road is wet when it rains, but a wet road doesn't mean it's raining. Since, however, they're studying the brain and using certain limited tools, they conveniently tailor their definitions of words like 'learning' and 'attention' to the certain gross physical phenomena that they can measure.
I think you've nailed the real reason. The requirement in so many schools for students to use TI-83s is reprehensible. It's one of the main reasons that $10 worth of technology is still being sold for $100. If TI had to actually compete, we'd get progress. Calculators have been stagnant.
It also hurts the learning process. I helped a lady who was taking an Algebra class at the community college... she was plotting curves, figuring slopes, and whatnot. The actual MATH TEXTBOOK she was working out of had images of TI buttons and a numbered checklist which described how to calculate slopes by giving the procedure to pull up the right menu on the calculator. She had no idea what the actual MATH behind the process was. It might as well have been describing how to solve the equation by running a Graphing Wizard in Excel.
Wow, freenet DOES have a raison d'etre other than illegal porn!
I'm kind of kidding, but posting of freenet links on slashdot ought to be standard procedure whenever something is DMCA'd.
And maybe that's exactly the point that Google is trying to get across, here. From Google's perspective, even if Apple has the right to restrict their apps, the more everybody realizes how restrictive it is, the better for Google.
as with all significant American inventions, was created by Europeans
Sounds like you're trying to nurse a very bruised ego back to life.
Has there ever been a major OS that simply went away, period?
Ohio Scientific? They were at one time almost a major competitor for Apple and Commodore, back in the early PET days. The C2-4P was my first computer.
Some of their advantages simply can't be. For instance, much of the appeal of AmigaOS was that it was such a tight fit to the hardware, mixing advanced high-level functionality (multitasking, etc.) with fast graphics/sound performance. In other words, it allowed high-level low-level access, if that makes sense.
That simply isn't an option for Linux. It requires too much integration with a specific hardware set. Maybe Apple could, in theory, but I think they've gone a different direction.
Or back into dinosaurs?
If that's all there was to it, Newton would have said "Leibniz, you're short."
Instead, he constructed a grand and insightful statement about science that just so happened to carry a veiled insult. Nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't detract from the meaning of what he said.
My question is, under the accounting they're using, why do they use any fuel at all? Why not go for the gold and say "we crossed the US without using any fuel at all!"?
Because the snake oil they're pitching is algae. They had to add a meaningless amount of algae-based fuel to the gas tank in order to include the proper buzzword in their PR release. Not TOO much algae-fuel, or the car wouldn't work, of course.
No, it needs to be a hybrid. 99% of the fuel they're using to get across the country is in the form of electricity pulled from the grid. Which, of course, is primarily coal powered. If they were actually trying to drive somewhere using 25 gallons of algae gas, the car would die after 700 miles or so.
This claim is about as revolutionary and ecological as my desktop pc; it's been running for years on NO gasoline. Didn't realize I was so green.
That's the problem, even if it had great titles, no one was aware of them.
I suppose that's true; it DID have great titles, and you (for one) weren't aware of them. Obviously, the PS2 library is immense and excellent; but I think the Dreamcast library holds up well compared against the Gamecube and X-Box. Soul Caliber 2, the best Soul Caliber ever made. Shenmue. Ikaruga. Sonic Adventure (the last really good sonic game). Skies of Arcadia. Ah, I could name more, but lists of info are pretty meaningless. Suffice it to say, sadly, you weren't alone in not knowing much about the Dreamcast, and that is no doubt Sega's fault (with some blame to go to EA and Sony).
Gun accidents killed 776 people in 2001 (in the US). Accidental falls killed 13,322.
If you want to throw in ALL gun casualties, including the both crimes, and ok ones such as policeman or citizens killing criminals, the total gun deaths were 3,951. Still substantially less dangerous than gravity.
I was at PAX. DON'T WORRY, I'M OK. The newspapers in Seattle were screaming about a Swine Flu outbreak at the local university (along with "COUGAR ATTACKS IN PARK"), so I figured it might pop up at PAX, along with some big rock concert event that was happening simultaneously.
I'm completely unconcerned, of course. Swine Flu = Flu + Hysteria.
I agree, except they should do the sensible thing and make the sequel multiplatform.
Skies of Arcadia was the most 'adventuresome' RPG I think I've ever played on a console. Not the most technically impressive, or profound, or most innovative... but the most pulpy fun pirating adventure.
It had the Microsoft Logo because it was capable of running Windows CE. Most games didn't use it at all. Do you avoid PCs because they're capable of running Windows?
Say what you will, but what is the last Sega game that came out that really "WOWed" you?
Valkyria Chronicles.
Which from what I understand, had disappointing sales. Sega still has the ability to make awesome games; they just don't sell as well as their mediocre ones. Kind of the problem that most game developers face.
In fairness, Apple's software ported to Windows nearly uniformly sucks, so it may still be a selling point for Macs.