If the requisite conditions for full-scale revolt looks anything like the current state of Iraq then no thank you. Say we do stage a successful revolt, but all of our infrastructure is completely destroyed. As a nation we'd be screwed, especially with a rising China/India/etc. And that's assuming the coddled, overweight masses of the US have any of the sand or sheer willpower of your typical Iraqi insurgent to stage said revolt.
And forget about nukes. What was that story about a gun that fries a tiny subdermal layer of tissue, all over one's body, reducing its victims to a harmless screaming child. Or dousing large crowds of dissidents with aerosoled valium for quick and resistless arrest. Or hey, maybe they'll perfect that gay bomb some day.
I used to think it was really the only valid reason to allow gun ownership in this country. But anymore, you have to be pretty naive to think you could successfully fight the gov with firearms. The game is a lot more evolved than that. If we don't win politically, we're out of luck.
You mean like early Catholics, who couldn't know the Bible without a priest reading it to them? They didn't write the thing in Latin just to make the pages pretty. Donations brothers please!
You can't really compare a laptop to a movie player. One is assumed upgradable (even as limited as laptop upgrades go) and one is not. Historically, movie media formats were not so plastic. VHS/DVD were not released to the public in "beta" (no pun intended) form while new features were added and bugs were ironed out. Sure early players have problems that newer players find ways to fix. That's the inherent risk of being an early adopter.
But format changes? Those are completely artificial and new risks. It's a movie format. The spec shouldn't change. You buy the player and - depending on the quality of its design - you're set for years. Kind of the point of buying a player in the first place. If the format is going to keep changing the discs might as well come ready-made to play themselves.
This same nonsense is happening with all media. The recording industry, now that they're being dragged into the 21st century, can't figure out which audio format they want to use. Console makers (sans Nintendo) can't figure out which features they want to include (and therefore which feature set is to be considered standard) in their shiny new consoles. Personal peripherals (cameras/phones/PDAs/portable audio players/handheld gaming devices) can't (or refuse to) decide on a common memory card format. The result is a lot of unnecessary consumer confusion and betrayal.
I won't be buying any new media players or consoles. I'll stick to PC-gaming for now, and as soon as XBMC makes the jump to linux I'll put together a proper HTPC. For those that have the time and the know-how, a versatile media player that can be updated and upgraded is about the only way to ride out this mess.
I was too. Actually, aside from independent and homegrown stuff, I was kind of hoping international films, which seem to be getting more and more sophisticated in recent years, would take over and capture more mindshare here in the states.
I recall reading somewhere about an actor's strike possibly following on the heals of this one. Maybe that one won't go so well, hope hope.
And now we're arguing over what common means? How about a qualifier? Like relatively common. As in no other console before has ever failed in such a way as having any of its customers, let alone a significant portion, replace their hardware up to 6 times (and reportedly more for some).
Considering the large install base it probably isn't fair to say it's common, but it shouldn't be right to even say it is rare. That sort of failure rate for any single customer should be impossible. How about another qualifier? Like ridiculously impossible.
Amen. Why isn't this a more common sentiment? Even my old XBox is still running strong, running XBMC for hours a day and lately some heavy sessions of Scarface (why did I ever overlook this wonderful little GTA contender?).
Were I not so genuinely afraid of a 360 dying on me, I would have stopped waiting for Sony to get it's act together months ago and just got a damn 360. I'm still not sure which is a dicier investment. A dead-in-the-water PS3 or a dead-as-in-dead 360.
True, but you could have the overlays sit off to the side until you moved your eye that way, which would cause them to shift their position to the center of your eye. Then when you looked forward again they would slide back down to the periphery. If don't correctly, you probably wouldn't notice their movement and they would seem to be sitting in the same place just waiting for you to look over at them.
If you think about it, you don't see all the overlays on screen when watching the Terminator films either. Your eyes have to move around the TV screen.
What a pointless rant. In my experience, save points are on average about 15-20 minutes apart. Any less than that and you can pretty much say goodbye to any hope of creating immersion in a game. If you can't sit down for more than 20 minutes at a time to play a game then you sir either have a thriving social life (unlikely considering the nature and passion of your post about video games) or an incredibly short attention span. Why not go play some Brain Age instead? Or bite the bullet and shuck that 15 minutes of gameplay you just went through? Would it kill you? Some of us like to experience our games in proper chapters and don't need to jump in and out at the drop of a hat.
Save points aren't just there to screw with you. They provide the story with pacing and ensure all that time they spent building up some aspect of the gameplay isn't wasted by a temporal discontinuity that is completely out of their control. If you're playing a game that can just be jumped in and out of, odds are it isn't very deep anyway.
That's the type of game Nintendo does really well. Take Mario Galaxy for instance. You can beat it with 60 stars, but if you want to go deeper, you can continue for the total 100 stars. The more casual players can still "beat" the game and get a satisfying ending, while the more hardcore can go for total completion with the slightly harder challenges. This is something they've done with that franchise since way back in Super Mario World (maybe even SMB3 as it had alternate routes in the level path IIRC).
Or take Smash Bros. You can play it as a party game with a couple of friends smashing buttons frantically. But I've also talked to someone that said there's an incredibly deep competitive game in there as well. He described some of the moves and some of the timings to me that I never would have thought of. It's interesting to find there's a whole other level to that gameplay.
Those really are the best sort of video games. By their nature they adjust their difficulty to your playing style and you're able to complete challenges at your level without having to modify any explicit settings in the options. You don't guess at what difficulty you should be playing under, you just play.
Sometimes when playing Future Pinball (pinball sim), I hold shift to catch a ball or read the status report. Sticky Keys then promptly opens up a dialog that sometimes leads me to losing my ball down the drain. I can't remember if I ever figured out how to disable that thing but I know it happened at least a few times and frustrated the hell out of me.
I was in the middle of one specific task and Windows interrupted me on a hunch. This frustration-recognition software better be disablable. The first time a string of rapid weapon fire presses gets interpreted as frustrated use of the mouse I'm gonna throw my monitor at something.
Well doesn't that turn into a DOS attack when you can't enter your correct password anymore because someone has bumped the delay counter into the hours/days range?
Slashdot Mirror
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Ben Franklin
You forgot the most appropriate one.
"I have a very bad feeling about this..."
I read on another site (I think it was the Consumerist) that this policy was ceased late last year.
If the requisite conditions for full-scale revolt looks anything like the current state of Iraq then no thank you. Say we do stage a successful revolt, but all of our infrastructure is completely destroyed. As a nation we'd be screwed, especially with a rising China/India/etc. And that's assuming the coddled, overweight masses of the US have any of the sand or sheer willpower of your typical Iraqi insurgent to stage said revolt.
And forget about nukes. What was that story about a gun that fries a tiny subdermal layer of tissue, all over one's body, reducing its victims to a harmless screaming child. Or dousing large crowds of dissidents with aerosoled valium for quick and resistless arrest. Or hey, maybe they'll perfect that gay bomb some day.
I used to think it was really the only valid reason to allow gun ownership in this country. But anymore, you have to be pretty naive to think you could successfully fight the gov with firearms. The game is a lot more evolved than that. If we don't win politically, we're out of luck.
Here, here! More ASCII porn!
That's not a haiku you western swine.
You mean like early Catholics, who couldn't know the Bible without a priest reading it to them? They didn't write the thing in Latin just to make the pages pretty. Donations brothers please!
Clearwater here. I had no idea about this.
See you in March!
You can't really compare a laptop to a movie player. One is assumed upgradable (even as limited as laptop upgrades go) and one is not. Historically, movie media formats were not so plastic. VHS/DVD were not released to the public in "beta" (no pun intended) form while new features were added and bugs were ironed out. Sure early players have problems that newer players find ways to fix. That's the inherent risk of being an early adopter.
But format changes? Those are completely artificial and new risks. It's a movie format. The spec shouldn't change. You buy the player and - depending on the quality of its design - you're set for years. Kind of the point of buying a player in the first place. If the format is going to keep changing the discs might as well come ready-made to play themselves.
This same nonsense is happening with all media. The recording industry, now that they're being dragged into the 21st century, can't figure out which audio format they want to use. Console makers (sans Nintendo) can't figure out which features they want to include (and therefore which feature set is to be considered standard) in their shiny new consoles. Personal peripherals (cameras/phones/PDAs/portable audio players/handheld gaming devices) can't (or refuse to) decide on a common memory card format. The result is a lot of unnecessary consumer confusion and betrayal.
I won't be buying any new media players or consoles. I'll stick to PC-gaming for now, and as soon as XBMC makes the jump to linux I'll put together a proper HTPC. For those that have the time and the know-how, a versatile media player that can be updated and upgraded is about the only way to ride out this mess.
So what you're saying is that Microsoft is a house of cards? How ironic.
I was too. Actually, aside from independent and homegrown stuff, I was kind of hoping international films, which seem to be getting more and more sophisticated in recent years, would take over and capture more mindshare here in the states.
I recall reading somewhere about an actor's strike possibly following on the heals of this one. Maybe that one won't go so well, hope hope.
I know this is /. but I refuse to believe that enough people understood this post to legitimately mod it Informative!
diculous [dik-yuh-luhs] adjective
causing or worthy of dicule or respect; reasonable; sensible; serious: a diculous plan.
No mod points here, but this was just precious.
And now we're arguing over what common means? How about a qualifier? Like relatively common. As in no other console before has ever failed in such a way as having any of its customers, let alone a significant portion, replace their hardware up to 6 times (and reportedly more for some).
Considering the large install base it probably isn't fair to say it's common, but it shouldn't be right to even say it is rare. That sort of failure rate for any single customer should be impossible. How about another qualifier? Like ridiculously impossible.
Amen. Why isn't this a more common sentiment? Even my old XBox is still running strong, running XBMC for hours a day and lately some heavy sessions of Scarface (why did I ever overlook this wonderful little GTA contender?).
Were I not so genuinely afraid of a 360 dying on me, I would have stopped waiting for Sony to get it's act together months ago and just got a damn 360. I'm still not sure which is a dicier investment. A dead-in-the-water PS3 or a dead-as-in-dead 360.
Not yet it isn't.
True, but you could have the overlays sit off to the side until you moved your eye that way, which would cause them to shift their position to the center of your eye. Then when you looked forward again they would slide back down to the periphery. If don't correctly, you probably wouldn't notice their movement and they would seem to be sitting in the same place just waiting for you to look over at them.
If you think about it, you don't see all the overlays on screen when watching the Terminator films either. Your eyes have to move around the TV screen.
What a pointless rant. In my experience, save points are on average about 15-20 minutes apart. Any less than that and you can pretty much say goodbye to any hope of creating immersion in a game. If you can't sit down for more than 20 minutes at a time to play a game then you sir either have a thriving social life (unlikely considering the nature and passion of your post about video games) or an incredibly short attention span. Why not go play some Brain Age instead? Or bite the bullet and shuck that 15 minutes of gameplay you just went through? Would it kill you? Some of us like to experience our games in proper chapters and don't need to jump in and out at the drop of a hat.
Save points aren't just there to screw with you. They provide the story with pacing and ensure all that time they spent building up some aspect of the gameplay isn't wasted by a temporal discontinuity that is completely out of their control. If you're playing a game that can just be jumped in and out of, odds are it isn't very deep anyway.
And if power outages are really that much of a concern for you, there are myriad solutions at hand.
That's the type of game Nintendo does really well. Take Mario Galaxy for instance. You can beat it with 60 stars, but if you want to go deeper, you can continue for the total 100 stars. The more casual players can still "beat" the game and get a satisfying ending, while the more hardcore can go for total completion with the slightly harder challenges. This is something they've done with that franchise since way back in Super Mario World (maybe even SMB3 as it had alternate routes in the level path IIRC).
Or take Smash Bros. You can play it as a party game with a couple of friends smashing buttons frantically. But I've also talked to someone that said there's an incredibly deep competitive game in there as well. He described some of the moves and some of the timings to me that I never would have thought of. It's interesting to find there's a whole other level to that gameplay.
Those really are the best sort of video games. By their nature they adjust their difficulty to your playing style and you're able to complete challenges at your level without having to modify any explicit settings in the options. You don't guess at what difficulty you should be playing under, you just play.
Sometimes when playing Future Pinball (pinball sim), I hold shift to catch a ball or read the status report. Sticky Keys then promptly opens up a dialog that sometimes leads me to losing my ball down the drain. I can't remember if I ever figured out how to disable that thing but I know it happened at least a few times and frustrated the hell out of me.
I was in the middle of one specific task and Windows interrupted me on a hunch. This frustration-recognition software better be disablable. The first time a string of rapid weapon fire presses gets interpreted as frustrated use of the mouse I'm gonna throw my monitor at something.
Well doesn't that turn into a DOS attack when you can't enter your correct password anymore because someone has bumped the delay counter into the hours/days range?