How the HELL can you complain about Halo 3's and Heavenly Sword's length (and don't get me wrong, I wish both of those games were longer), and say nothing about Portal, which was three hours long AT MOST?? I don't get it.
Don't you get it? If you don't DEMAND a complete game experience - these sonsofbitches won't deliver one. Presumably, anyone who isn't complaining has had their expectations met. Not everyone has the same level of expectations, after all.
While I loved Portal, one possible answer to your question is length. Portal is so short that I felt like I was a bit ripped off at $20 (I bought it solo, as it was the only Orange Box game I wanted), much less the full price of the Orange Box (as the summary ludicrously suggests). It's hard for me to say a game is GOTY, even if it is great (and Portal is a truly astounding game), if I felt ripped off by how short it was.
Agreed, Heavenly Sword is really damn good. I'm so glad they got Andy Serkis to do the voice of the bad guy (Bohan? I forget, it's been a while since I played), he really brought that character to life. Everything about that game is great, except for the length. But hot damn, it's a fun ride while it lasts. There was one minor annoyance, now that I think about it. Kai's level annoyed the piss out of me, and I wound up having to have a friend play them. Seriously, "shoot these guys before they get close to you or you're dead", was no fun for me at all.
Er... if you're ripping on Rock Band for the standard "go play a real guitar" reason, then stop playing Call of Duty 4 and go pick up a real gun, poser.
If I misunderstood you, carry on. I just have an issue with those who bash GH and Rock Band for "not being real".
Yeah, opinions are funny that way. You know what? Not everyone agrees with your opinion, even when one has a majority opinion... and you, sir, definitely have a minority opinion.
That's a tough choice, indeed. There were a ton of good games this year. I guess my GOTY is Halo 3, followed closely by either Rock Band or Mass Effect. Still, picking a GOTY out of the games I played this year is kind of a heart-wrenching endeavor, like picking which of your children is your favorite or something.
I disagree, I think it will. Without space to hold most or all of a person's music, they won't buy the new iPod, not when there's a better option available (the iPod Classic). This is ESPECIALLY true considering that Apple wants the iPod to be a video player as well. At only 16 GB, the only people I can see buying an iPod Touch are those who buy it because they think it makes them cool, those who have enough money to not care about the cost, and just want it because it's nifty, and Apple fanboys.
Sorry, but at a maximum of 16 GB, the iPod Touch is NOT the wave of the future. It's a nifty device, but a lot of people have more music than 16 GB, not to mention that you can forget about watching videos on such little storage space. Apple's loss, though, if someone clones the iPod Touch and throws a hard drive in, instead of flash memory, they'll probably be able to do quite well.
Eh, not really. The iPod was a minor refinement of what was already out there, nothing innovative about it. Truth be told, neither Apple NOR Microsoft are innovative any more. The only major company who innovates at all (that comes to mind at the moment, anyways) is Google.
Yeah, innovation that goes to things that don't exist (hint: your "example" isn't true for all Vista installs, thus it isn't true) is pretty crappy innovation.
To each his own. Personally, I prefer the Silmarillion, for painting a more epic story, and for having more precise, formal language. It wouldn't work well as a movie at all, though, considering the book has gaps like, "And the siege of Angband lasted 400 years...". That sort of passage of time would make a movie pretty jarring.
Another poster clearly stated that logging out of.Mac doesn't log you out of the drive. If that's not true, I have no way of knowing (I don't use Macs), so I take it at face value. Of course, it's more likely that you didn't know that, because you were too busy flaming people for no good reason to actually read the discussion.
Way to miss the point. No one is saying that propagandicizing Wikipedia is a crime against humanity, we're saying that you can't justify something by saying you were just doing your job, or following orders, or whatever. The point is, everyone is responsible for evaluating whether or not it's right to do what they're doing, and thus, accountable for it. "I was just doing my job" does not grant immunity to repercussions for your actions.
Yet has nothing to do with it. That logout option should've been there from day 1 of *writing* the damn application. Common sense says: if you have a log-in, give the user the option to log out. Apparently some team at Apple lacks (or lacked) common sense.
I know you didn't claim that your opinion on Halo was anything else, my point was that your (highly minority) opinion isn't really cause to say that Halo 3 isn't a good reason to buy a 360 in general, which is what you seem to be claiming.
I didn't say abolish C:\Windows. I said it needs to have a complete overhaul and many of the files that are in there now should not be in there.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that I am suggesting there not be some common folder for OS related files.
Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows)... That'd be where I got the idea.
Halo - that's your opinion. Many Halo fans are of the opinion that it's an excellent single-player FPS. Your opinion is very far from universal.
GH3 - PS2 doesn't have online play or downloadable tracks.
Rock Band - again, PS2 (Wii version is not confirmed) version doesn't have online play or downloadable tracks... and that cuts a lot of the game out, because Rock Band's DLC is excellent.
Mass Effect - no one really cares if a game rips off another game, as long as it does it well. I haven't played Star Control, but even assuming Mass Effect is a rip-off of that game, it's a VERY well-done rip-off.
Again, I understand what you're saying, but I think it's completely unfair to look at it so uniformly. This isn't just Microsoft sympathy, either. You mentioned a couple of other examples:
If a linux evangelist allowed his web admin to use IIS for his web site wouldn't the evangelist lose all credibility?
Remember the story of Microsoft employees using iPods? Management made it clear it was not accepted policy. Both of those are also completely ridiculous things which should not be allowed to happen. I'm against this expectation of uniformity, no matter who propagates it.
Really? Don't you think it is important to differentiate between OS libraries and application libraries? I do. No, I don't. If it's a library shared between applications, it goes into the big, grand libraries folder, simple as that.
Then why did they ship with the OS? Because they figured it would be useful, presumably. Shipping with the OS doesn't make it part of the OS.
What system? You mean the system that puts desktop wallpapers directly in C:\Windows? The system that puts temporary files in the same place? I don't 'see much of a system. It is a mess. Have you used Windows so long that you don't even notice it? I'm a slob and even *I* can see that it is a senseless mess of files that needs a complete overhaul.
Agreed that it needs to be organized better than it is, but I've NEVER said that it doesn't. I'm saying your suggestion to abolish c:\windows altogether is stupid. The "system" I mean is that everything part of the OS goes in C:\Windows. I think that it needs to be organized better, but C:\Windows still needs to be the root of that hierarchy. It doesn't make any damned sense to not have a common parent folder for OS elements.
Microsoft isn't one person, in the first place. It's made up of a lot of different people who see things differently. Second, there's no reason whatsoever we shouldn't recongize the good things Microsoft does, while still calling them out for the bad things they do. I understand what you're saying, but I think that we need to judge each action independently, especially as they were performed by different people (marketing vs IT).
I mean, seriously, what's the alternative? If Microsoft uses Linux, they get ridiculed. If they don't use (or don't even consider, at least) Linux, they get blasted for being stupid and not using the best tool available. That's hardly fair.
Ah, but what happens when an application needs to install a shared library or some other plugin type thing? Then it goes into Windows\Libraries. Simple.
How about utilty programs? It's not part of the OS, it shouldn't be in the OS folder.
Hell, what about IE? Microsoft seems to think it is part of the OS. Should that be in C:\Windows too? Well, Microsoft's retardedness about IE being part of the operating system aside, it's not part of the OS, thus it doesn't go in the Windows folder.
Windows is quite simply a bloody mess. No, the fact that there are flaws doesn't make it a bloody mess. At any rate, c:\windows as it stands isn't ideal, but your suggestion that we should abolish it altogether is far less ideal. What we need is to refine the system that's already there (ie, organize things inside c:\windows better), not abolish it.
You know, I resent the way people crow whenever Microsoft uses anything that isn't a Microsoft product. You know what? That means they have competent IT professionals working for them, who are objective and recognize what the best tool for a particular job is. Seriously, we should respect them for that, not trumpet it like it's something to be laughed at.
They are often times more stable and have a higher level of user friendliness than the typical Vista machine. Stability is no longer an issue with Windows, and user friendliness is sheer personal opinion. Suffice it to say, I find OS X's user interface to have some pretty idiotic conventions (although it's a huge upgrade from pre-X, which had a UI that was a study in how to write bad UIs). I'm also undoubtedly not the only one, and it's quite probable from the tone of his post that the GP doesn't like the UI in OS X either.
I have to question a couple of your ideas here.
Completely get rid of DOS concepts like drive letters... Why? What's wrong with them?
Make a new default shell that doesn't look and feel like COMMAND.COM. All command-line shells feel the same (and yes, I've used them on Linux and OS X), I don't know what you expect them to do here.
Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows) that is essentially a dumping ground for so much crap. TERRIBLE idea. Now, just dumping everything into c:\windows isn't a good idea either, but what we need is to enforce logical folder structure inside that root folder. This is one area where Windows has the right idea: system files should all stem from one root folder, just as long as they're organized well within said folder. Having c:\windows\ { folder1...folderN} makes an order of magnitude more sense than having c:\ {folder1...folderN}. They're all OS files, put them in the same damn root folder.
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While I loved Portal, one possible answer to your question is length. Portal is so short that I felt like I was a bit ripped off at $20 (I bought it solo, as it was the only Orange Box game I wanted), much less the full price of the Orange Box (as the summary ludicrously suggests). It's hard for me to say a game is GOTY, even if it is great (and Portal is a truly astounding game), if I felt ripped off by how short it was.
Agreed, Heavenly Sword is really damn good. I'm so glad they got Andy Serkis to do the voice of the bad guy (Bohan? I forget, it's been a while since I played), he really brought that character to life. Everything about that game is great, except for the length. But hot damn, it's a fun ride while it lasts. There was one minor annoyance, now that I think about it. Kai's level annoyed the piss out of me, and I wound up having to have a friend play them. Seriously, "shoot these guys before they get close to you or you're dead", was no fun for me at all.
If I misunderstood you, carry on. I just have an issue with those who bash GH and Rock Band for "not being real".
Yeah, opinions are funny that way. You know what? Not everyone agrees with your opinion, even when one has a majority opinion... and you, sir, definitely have a minority opinion.
That's a tough choice, indeed. There were a ton of good games this year. I guess my GOTY is Halo 3, followed closely by either Rock Band or Mass Effect. Still, picking a GOTY out of the games I played this year is kind of a heart-wrenching endeavor, like picking which of your children is your favorite or something.
I disagree, I think it will. Without space to hold most or all of a person's music, they won't buy the new iPod, not when there's a better option available (the iPod Classic). This is ESPECIALLY true considering that Apple wants the iPod to be a video player as well. At only 16 GB, the only people I can see buying an iPod Touch are those who buy it because they think it makes them cool, those who have enough money to not care about the cost, and just want it because it's nifty, and Apple fanboys.
Sorry, but at a maximum of 16 GB, the iPod Touch is NOT the wave of the future. It's a nifty device, but a lot of people have more music than 16 GB, not to mention that you can forget about watching videos on such little storage space. Apple's loss, though, if someone clones the iPod Touch and throws a hard drive in, instead of flash memory, they'll probably be able to do quite well.
Eh, not really. The iPod was a minor refinement of what was already out there, nothing innovative about it. Truth be told, neither Apple NOR Microsoft are innovative any more. The only major company who innovates at all (that comes to mind at the moment, anyways) is Google.
Yeah, innovation that goes to things that don't exist (hint: your "example" isn't true for all Vista installs, thus it isn't true) is pretty crappy innovation.
To each his own. Personally, I prefer the Silmarillion, for painting a more epic story, and for having more precise, formal language. It wouldn't work well as a movie at all, though, considering the book has gaps like, "And the siege of Angband lasted 400 years...". That sort of passage of time would make a movie pretty jarring.
Another poster clearly stated that logging out of .Mac doesn't log you out of the drive. If that's not true, I have no way of knowing (I don't use Macs), so I take it at face value. Of course, it's more likely that you didn't know that, because you were too busy flaming people for no good reason to actually read the discussion.
Way to miss the point. No one is saying that propagandicizing Wikipedia is a crime against humanity, we're saying that you can't justify something by saying you were just doing your job, or following orders, or whatever. The point is, everyone is responsible for evaluating whether or not it's right to do what they're doing, and thus, accountable for it. "I was just doing my job" does not grant immunity to repercussions for your actions.
Yet has nothing to do with it. That logout option should've been there from day 1 of *writing* the damn application. Common sense says: if you have a log-in, give the user the option to log out. Apparently some team at Apple lacks (or lacked) common sense.
I know you didn't claim that your opinion on Halo was anything else, my point was that your (highly minority) opinion isn't really cause to say that Halo 3 isn't a good reason to buy a 360 in general, which is what you seem to be claiming.
GH3 - PS2 doesn't have online play or downloadable tracks.
Rock Band - again, PS2 (Wii version is not confirmed) version doesn't have online play or downloadable tracks... and that cuts a lot of the game out, because Rock Band's DLC is excellent.
Mass Effect - no one really cares if a game rips off another game, as long as it does it well. I haven't played Star Control, but even assuming Mass Effect is a rip-off of that game, it's a VERY well-done rip-off.
Otherwise you're correct.
I mean, seriously, what's the alternative? If Microsoft uses Linux, they get ridiculed. If they don't use (or don't even consider, at least) Linux, they get blasted for being stupid and not using the best tool available. That's hardly fair.
You know, I resent the way people crow whenever Microsoft uses anything that isn't a Microsoft product. You know what? That means they have competent IT professionals working for them, who are objective and recognize what the best tool for a particular job is. Seriously, we should respect them for that, not trumpet it like it's something to be laughed at.