Well, he opens by saying he finds the topic "rather annoying," he doesn't address the article itself, his only "reference" is a f***ing Google search (would you consider this to be adequate reference for the assertion that aliens visit Earth?) and in his first paragraph he blames "medical science" (instead of, you know, ethylmercury) for higher autism rates. I consider his downmods well-earned...
As noted above, you're proceeding from the faulty assumption that vaccines are only utilized for a limited period of time. Some vaccinations are maintained in use pretty much permanently, like MMR, DTP, and others.
Additionally, it's well and good that children who get chicken pox are only sick for a short time and very rarely have long-term problems from the disease, but take a look over yonder and find out some more before you dismiss it as being no big deal. Specifically, it notes that even amongst children, about one in ten who contract the disease will suffer complications serious enough to see a doctor, and, yes, it's possible for chicken pox to kill. Why take the chance if people can be vaccinated against it?
You're right, and I feel that the anti-vaccination people are both crazy and dangerous, but you should probably pick some other disease instead of smallpox, which hasn't been a routine vaccination for the citizenry of the US since 1972. Maybe diphtheria or hepatitis B?:)
Everybody else I know with a 360 has had it die and was either fortunate enough to still be under warranty, or just ended up getting screwed.
Any Xbox 360 owner that had a unit fail out of warranty and paid for repair/replacement last year has been offered reimbursement and Microsoft extended the warranty to a full year on all Xbox 360s including ones purchased before the extension was announced. So, unless your "screwed" friends just happened to have their launch or near-launch units fail since November (and from the reports I've read, failure of a "bad" unit usually happens at least within the first 6 months, if not the first 2), they weren't/aren't "screwed."
I'm planning on a Wii purchase myself, but I don't think it shows a lack of a "sense of reality" or "patience" for a consumer to be annoyed when s/he can't purchase a product because there aren't enough to go around. Whatever the base cause for that annoyance, the feeling isn't at all unreasonable. It certainly wasn't considered so when Microsoft was being raked over the coals for their early 360 shortage...
I am not sure anyone really expected the Wii to be selling at the rate it is, especially when its described as "a minor upgrade over the PS2 and a reinvented light pen."
Nitpicking is evil, but this would be a terrible misconception for people to have. The Gamecube could have been considered a "minor upgrade" over the PS2 - better graphics, shorter load times and native 4-player support to name a few advantages. Given that the Wii is an upgrade over the Gamecube, I think it's safe to call the Wii a "major upgrade" over the PS2. The margin gets thinner when compared to the Xbox and Gamecube, but it remains more powerful with [obviously] more potential over time.
Not to mention the danger posed by virtually every other medication and foodstuff on the planet if consumed to excess. Even too much water can kill (have we forgotten so quickly?).
If I use 10 packets of saccharin in my coffee every day for the rest of my life, the increased cancer risk I'd obtain from that would be so minimal that it would hardly be worth considering (forgetting, of course, that the caffeine would probably be a lot more dangerous to my health). In fact, it would NOT be worth considering since I would get significantly more carcinogen exposure walking down a busy street, inhaling exhaust fumes as I go. So, I'd be happy to eat a reasonable amount of the GM potatoes these rats ate (assuming they taste good, of course). I'd just avoid eating more than 20 potatoes a day...and I'd ban gasoline-powered vehicles, but that's another topic entirely.
First off, I'm against any government-imposed rating system on the arts, be they paintings, movies, videogames or whatever.
With that disclaimer out of the way, wouldn't it be sweet to be able to get a federal government job playing games and then rating them? I'd climb aboard that gravy train!
No, our legislators are well aware that most of this junk can't survive judicial review. They just don't care. The whole idea - particularly when a presidential hopeful is involved (hi Hill!) - is to get publicity and attract the "Won't someone please think of the children?" vote. The next 20 months will be filled with lots of this garbage, and it's up to the electorate to get enough edumication so that they don't buy into it. Unfortunately, the chances of said edumication happening on any large scale are slim and voters will be swayed when someone like Senator Clinton says "I sponsored a bill intended to protect our children from exposure to videogame violence, and I will continue to fight to protect our children as President."
Metallica, Madonna, Nirvana, and Michael Jackson made it big because their fans could freely share their work by dubbing cassette tapes.
Oh, so THAT'S why they made it big. I guess the facts that even as children my friends and I owned Metallica, Madonna, Nirvana and Michael Jackson albums (properly bought at record stores by lower-middle-class kids), that we heard the music on the radio, that we saw the artists on TV, that the record companies spent millions promoting them...all of these apparently had little or nothing to do with their success. It was people too cheap to buy a record that did it!
Your contention has about as much weight to it as when the RIAA claims that piracy is destroying its member companies.
Why is it that I can get wireless 50mbps streams over wireless (well, when things are working), in a generic, 802-wireless way, over a hundred yards or so, but I can't get video from my computer to my monitor, over one foot, a fraction of the bandwidth, to a wireless monitor.
As others have pointed out, there is the bandwidth issue because your PC is sending out an uncompressed signal. In that same vein, the streams you're getting over wireless 802.11 (assuming you're talking about A/V streams) are being transmitted in their compressed format to be decompressed when they reach the device (PC, handheld, whatever) that's hooked up to your display. Now, if displays are equipped with the appropriate decoder(s), they can accept and display such a stream - an example of this would be an HDTV (not "HDTV-ready") which can receive the compressed MPEG-2 signal of OTA HDTV stations and decode them for display.
With the HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 available for about $200, it should be possible to have a stand alone HD-DVD player for $250...
Unfortunately, that's not quite correct. While the pieces making up the drive itself (such as the blue laser) are indeed a large expense, the hardware permitting 1080p playback from such a drive are similarly expensive - CPU, audio/video decoders etc., all handling more complex work than similar hardware in a DVD player. In other words, it would take more than $50 of additional hardware to turn the add-on into a standalone device. Add in the mark-up so that both retailers and manufacturers make some dough on the deal, and the price increases quite a bit.
Still, the HD DVD prices aren't that bad compared to DVD prices at a similar point of only one year (actually, a little less) from introduction. This (and upcoming price drops, which I expect to reach $300 or less by Christmas) is most likely due to the competition in formats. While the early adopters may get hosed by the two competing formats (if their chosen format "loses"), the inevitable price war will probably greatly benefit the rest of the consumers down the line.
I don't disagree at all. I would say, though, that DVD didn't have to be integrated into anything to become a success. It was already being rapidly adopted before the PS2 hit the scene, and long before most PCs had DVD drives. So, while the PS3 can give Blu-ray some early traction, I don't think it can be counted on as the basis for the format's success. If the HD DVD manufacturers can get standalones on the shelves for the "right" prices, the majority (who were never going to buy a PS3 anyway) could end up going the HD DVD way - unless, of course, the non-Sony Blu-ray manufacturers get off the stick and compete on price themselves.
With BluRay in every PS3, HD-DVD not an integral part of any shipping product yet...
I'm fairly certain that HD DVD is an integral part of the standalone HD DVD players that sell for less than the cost of a PS3 and less than half the price of a standalone Blu-ray player...
Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?
You're absolutely correct, and that would be a good measure of a particular format's success. Here's the problem: The number of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles currently available is a virtual dead heat. The last time I did a count (about 2 weeks ago) via a popular website that sells both formats, the numbers differed by less than 10, with the total being in the mid 100s.
As regards the most recent numbers, it's pretty obvious that more Blu-ray titles have been released and purchased in the last two months because a) Sony finally released the PS3 and there is nothing else to do with that hardware other than playing Blu-ray movies and play Resistance and b) they're trying to catch up with HD DVD which had a significant lead in available titles prior to the holiday season.
It's obviously way too soon to declare a winner, but I'll give Sony props for trying to turn lemons into lemonade...
I should note, as I often do, that I don't care who wins. If Toshiba and company stand pat and don't push their format then Sony could indeed win the thing because the PS3 is going to sell as time goes by, even if it doesn't become the dominant game console that the PS2 and PS were. The HD DVD folks need to get a standalone player out ASAP for under $400 and by Christmas they need to have players under $300. If they don't, then they'll have to rely on the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to compete with the PS3, and that's a dangerous road - not because the HD DVD add-on is a bad deal (it's actually a pretty good one), but because 360 owners already have what they need and want to play games without the bonus of an HD format, while PS3 owners are "forced" into possession of the HD format as a consequence of desiring PS3 gameplay.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but people often do find out when stories about their life make it onto Slashdot, it being a fairly well-known site. Your helpful information is just arrogant nitpicking.
As long as they make it so that I don't know that Steam is involved, and so long as, like any other 360 game, the game can be played without ever being connected to the Internet, then I can bend my principles enough to play what everyone says is a great game. My nose can be hard sometimes, but I still wouldn't cut it off to spite my face.:)
Yes, NWN would count as a "sandbox" game. Creating and running scenarios from virtually nothing is part and parcel to the game (particularly for the first iteration, it was the most important thing).
It really isn't that hard to understand. With Oblivion, GTA, etc. you're given a setting in which you have to function. You don't get to design your own city or castle, you don't get to create NPCs and stick them in the game, etc., unless you go outside what comes with the game and install third-party modifications - even Bethesda's own mods for Oblivion don't change the game's fundamentals. It's not an insult to those games - in fact, I quite enjoy them. It's just a matter of drawing lines between genres, much like drawing lines between RPGs, point-and-click adventures and action adventures.
As MBraynard pointed out above, Oblivion, GTA, etc. aren't really sandbox games in any case. A sandbox game should be one in which you're provided a set of tools and a blank slate to play around with - The Sims, SimCity, perhaps even Civilization would fit in this category. Oblivion and the others provide you with a setting and are fairly limited in the sense that the setting is what it is no matter what you do within the game (mods don't count). For example, in GTA you can't run around destroying whole buildings (and then perhaps rebuilding them) despite the fact that you've probably got the in-game tools to do so (explosives and money). The setting is static and therefore not at all like a sandbox game where the setting is under your control. Even in The Sims (which I could argue is less a sandbox than, for example, SimCity or SimEarth), whatever buildings or settings are already in the game (like restaurants and prebuilt homes) can either be altered significantly or completely destroyed and replaced. You can even add dozens of new characters to your neighborhood. All of this can be accomplished within the context of the game.
This is one area where I think it would be easy to get our definitions straight (since they seem to be argued so often on Slashdot): The Sims is a sandbox, GTA is a playground, Final Fantasy is a movie turned into a game.:)
I think you'll find that Epic will make available, say, the top 20 user mods and will spend the time and money making sure that they work properly before releasing them for the PS3 and Xbox. Personally, I like that a lot better than the idea of being able to download any mod I want for a console game willy-nilly, because a) it opens console games up for much easier cheating (something MS has done a very good job of controlling with XBL) and b) it opens up the possibility of a "mod" being written that could screw with the console's OS. All it would take is one A-hole to figure out how to back-door into the console's OS and 360s and PS3s start turning into bricks, or even worse into zombies.
Believe me, my paranoia is not limited to consoles, either. When I was doing the PC gaming thing (I haven't had my own "personal" PC for about 2 years now) I tried to be extremely careful about what I was downloading and installing, and since I had only one trojan/virus infection (rapidly destroyed) in this century while downloading quite a few things I think I did pretty well. I'd just rather not have to take that same kind of care when using my game console(s).
Why? It certainly wouldn't do anything good for consumers, at least for Xbox Live consumers. Steam doesn't do anything that Xbox Live doesn't already do quite nicely.
Besides, Steam is an example of the most oppressive DRM and I have no interest in supporting it. I might have to put up with Windows because there's software that only works on that OS, but I certainly don't have to support Steam's authentication schemes since all I lose out on are some games. I'm looking forward to a Steam-less 360 version of HL2 (and the extras that go along with it) so that I can finally play the game. If, however, they somehow enable "Steam via Xbox Live" then I'll have to keep waiting.
Why? Because that's how hand-holding, nanny laws work. People who engage in a "dangerous" activity safely get screwed over because a few motards step into oncoming traffic without looking both ways.
As someone else already mentioned, the deaf seem to get by just fine walking around with no hearing. I've certainly never seen any legislation proposed requiring them to be guided by a hearing person or guide animal when crossing the street.
Me, I've had no trouble making my way across busy streets with headphones on and I don't require any special headphones to do so. It was ingrained during my youth to cross at crosswalks when possible (corners at the minimum), always (even at crosswalks) look left-right-left before starting to cross, and keep looking both ways until I'm across the street. Being able to hear oncoming cars is a bonus, but an unnecessary one.
Maybe a better way to attack this problem is to give large tickets to adults jaywalking in the presence of children. If pedestrian safety is taught well young and reinforced by observation of others, people will be less likely to be idiots later on.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, he opens by saying he finds the topic "rather annoying," he doesn't address the article itself, his only "reference" is a f***ing Google search (would you consider this to be adequate reference for the assertion that aliens visit Earth?) and in his first paragraph he blames "medical science" (instead of, you know, ethylmercury) for higher autism rates. I consider his downmods well-earned...
As noted above, you're proceeding from the faulty assumption that vaccines are only utilized for a limited period of time. Some vaccinations are maintained in use pretty much permanently, like MMR, DTP, and others.
Additionally, it's well and good that children who get chicken pox are only sick for a short time and very rarely have long-term problems from the disease, but take a look over yonder and find out some more before you dismiss it as being no big deal. Specifically, it notes that even amongst children, about one in ten who contract the disease will suffer complications serious enough to see a doctor, and, yes, it's possible for chicken pox to kill. Why take the chance if people can be vaccinated against it?
You're right, and I feel that the anti-vaccination people are both crazy and dangerous, but you should probably pick some other disease instead of smallpox, which hasn't been a routine vaccination for the citizenry of the US since 1972. Maybe diphtheria or hepatitis B? :)
Any Xbox 360 owner that had a unit fail out of warranty and paid for repair/replacement last year has been offered reimbursement and Microsoft extended the warranty to a full year on all Xbox 360s including ones purchased before the extension was announced. So, unless your "screwed" friends just happened to have their launch or near-launch units fail since November (and from the reports I've read, failure of a "bad" unit usually happens at least within the first 6 months, if not the first 2), they weren't/aren't "screwed."
I'm planning on a Wii purchase myself, but I don't think it shows a lack of a "sense of reality" or "patience" for a consumer to be annoyed when s/he can't purchase a product because there aren't enough to go around. Whatever the base cause for that annoyance, the feeling isn't at all unreasonable. It certainly wasn't considered so when Microsoft was being raked over the coals for their early 360 shortage...
Nitpicking is evil, but this would be a terrible misconception for people to have. The Gamecube could have been considered a "minor upgrade" over the PS2 - better graphics, shorter load times and native 4-player support to name a few advantages. Given that the Wii is an upgrade over the Gamecube, I think it's safe to call the Wii a "major upgrade" over the PS2. The margin gets thinner when compared to the Xbox and Gamecube, but it remains more powerful with [obviously] more potential over time.
Not to mention the danger posed by virtually every other medication and foodstuff on the planet if consumed to excess. Even too much water can kill (have we forgotten so quickly?).
If I use 10 packets of saccharin in my coffee every day for the rest of my life, the increased cancer risk I'd obtain from that would be so minimal that it would hardly be worth considering (forgetting, of course, that the caffeine would probably be a lot more dangerous to my health). In fact, it would NOT be worth considering since I would get significantly more carcinogen exposure walking down a busy street, inhaling exhaust fumes as I go. So, I'd be happy to eat a reasonable amount of the GM potatoes these rats ate (assuming they taste good, of course). I'd just avoid eating more than 20 potatoes a day...and I'd ban gasoline-powered vehicles, but that's another topic entirely.
When will people learn that an aphorism is a poor substitute for knowledge?
First off, I'm against any government-imposed rating system on the arts, be they paintings, movies, videogames or whatever.
With that disclaimer out of the way, wouldn't it be sweet to be able to get a federal government job playing games and then rating them? I'd climb aboard that gravy train!
No, our legislators are well aware that most of this junk can't survive judicial review. They just don't care. The whole idea - particularly when a presidential hopeful is involved (hi Hill!) - is to get publicity and attract the "Won't someone please think of the children?" vote. The next 20 months will be filled with lots of this garbage, and it's up to the electorate to get enough edumication so that they don't buy into it. Unfortunately, the chances of said edumication happening on any large scale are slim and voters will be swayed when someone like Senator Clinton says "I sponsored a bill intended to protect our children from exposure to videogame violence, and I will continue to fight to protect our children as President."
Oh, so THAT'S why they made it big. I guess the facts that even as children my friends and I owned Metallica, Madonna, Nirvana and Michael Jackson albums (properly bought at record stores by lower-middle-class kids), that we heard the music on the radio, that we saw the artists on TV, that the record companies spent millions promoting them...all of these apparently had little or nothing to do with their success. It was people too cheap to buy a record that did it!
Your contention has about as much weight to it as when the RIAA claims that piracy is destroying its member companies.
Yes, indeed! That's why I play all my PC games at 640x480 - who can tell the difference between that and 1600x1200??
As others have pointed out, there is the bandwidth issue because your PC is sending out an uncompressed signal. In that same vein, the streams you're getting over wireless 802.11 (assuming you're talking about A/V streams) are being transmitted in their compressed format to be decompressed when they reach the device (PC, handheld, whatever) that's hooked up to your display. Now, if displays are equipped with the appropriate decoder(s), they can accept and display such a stream - an example of this would be an HDTV (not "HDTV-ready") which can receive the compressed MPEG-2 signal of OTA HDTV stations and decode them for display.
Well, except for the fact that HDCP isn't a connector of any kind, nice job!
Unfortunately, that's not quite correct. While the pieces making up the drive itself (such as the blue laser) are indeed a large expense, the hardware permitting 1080p playback from such a drive are similarly expensive - CPU, audio/video decoders etc., all handling more complex work than similar hardware in a DVD player. In other words, it would take more than $50 of additional hardware to turn the add-on into a standalone device. Add in the mark-up so that both retailers and manufacturers make some dough on the deal, and the price increases quite a bit.
Still, the HD DVD prices aren't that bad compared to DVD prices at a similar point of only one year (actually, a little less) from introduction. This (and upcoming price drops, which I expect to reach $300 or less by Christmas) is most likely due to the competition in formats. While the early adopters may get hosed by the two competing formats (if their chosen format "loses"), the inevitable price war will probably greatly benefit the rest of the consumers down the line.
I don't disagree at all. I would say, though, that DVD didn't have to be integrated into anything to become a success. It was already being rapidly adopted before the PS2 hit the scene, and long before most PCs had DVD drives. So, while the PS3 can give Blu-ray some early traction, I don't think it can be counted on as the basis for the format's success. If the HD DVD manufacturers can get standalones on the shelves for the "right" prices, the majority (who were never going to buy a PS3 anyway) could end up going the HD DVD way - unless, of course, the non-Sony Blu-ray manufacturers get off the stick and compete on price themselves.
I'm fairly certain that HD DVD is an integral part of the standalone HD DVD players that sell for less than the cost of a PS3 and less than half the price of a standalone Blu-ray player...
You're absolutely correct, and that would be a good measure of a particular format's success. Here's the problem: The number of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles currently available is a virtual dead heat. The last time I did a count (about 2 weeks ago) via a popular website that sells both formats, the numbers differed by less than 10, with the total being in the mid 100s.
As regards the most recent numbers, it's pretty obvious that more Blu-ray titles have been released and purchased in the last two months because a) Sony finally released the PS3 and there is nothing else to do with that hardware other than playing Blu-ray movies and play Resistance and b) they're trying to catch up with HD DVD which had a significant lead in available titles prior to the holiday season.
It's obviously way too soon to declare a winner, but I'll give Sony props for trying to turn lemons into lemonade...
I should note, as I often do, that I don't care who wins. If Toshiba and company stand pat and don't push their format then Sony could indeed win the thing because the PS3 is going to sell as time goes by, even if it doesn't become the dominant game console that the PS2 and PS were. The HD DVD folks need to get a standalone player out ASAP for under $400 and by Christmas they need to have players under $300. If they don't, then they'll have to rely on the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to compete with the PS3, and that's a dangerous road - not because the HD DVD add-on is a bad deal (it's actually a pretty good one), but because 360 owners already have what they need and want to play games without the bonus of an HD format, while PS3 owners are "forced" into possession of the HD format as a consequence of desiring PS3 gameplay.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but people often do find out when stories about their life make it onto Slashdot, it being a fairly well-known site. Your helpful information is just arrogant nitpicking.
As long as they make it so that I don't know that Steam is involved, and so long as, like any other 360 game, the game can be played without ever being connected to the Internet, then I can bend my principles enough to play what everyone says is a great game. My nose can be hard sometimes, but I still wouldn't cut it off to spite my face. :)
Yes, NWN would count as a "sandbox" game. Creating and running scenarios from virtually nothing is part and parcel to the game (particularly for the first iteration, it was the most important thing).
It really isn't that hard to understand. With Oblivion, GTA, etc. you're given a setting in which you have to function. You don't get to design your own city or castle, you don't get to create NPCs and stick them in the game, etc., unless you go outside what comes with the game and install third-party modifications - even Bethesda's own mods for Oblivion don't change the game's fundamentals. It's not an insult to those games - in fact, I quite enjoy them. It's just a matter of drawing lines between genres, much like drawing lines between RPGs, point-and-click adventures and action adventures.
As MBraynard pointed out above, Oblivion, GTA, etc. aren't really sandbox games in any case. A sandbox game should be one in which you're provided a set of tools and a blank slate to play around with - The Sims, SimCity, perhaps even Civilization would fit in this category. Oblivion and the others provide you with a setting and are fairly limited in the sense that the setting is what it is no matter what you do within the game (mods don't count). For example, in GTA you can't run around destroying whole buildings (and then perhaps rebuilding them) despite the fact that you've probably got the in-game tools to do so (explosives and money). The setting is static and therefore not at all like a sandbox game where the setting is under your control. Even in The Sims (which I could argue is less a sandbox than, for example, SimCity or SimEarth), whatever buildings or settings are already in the game (like restaurants and prebuilt homes) can either be altered significantly or completely destroyed and replaced. You can even add dozens of new characters to your neighborhood. All of this can be accomplished within the context of the game.
:)
This is one area where I think it would be easy to get our definitions straight (since they seem to be argued so often on Slashdot): The Sims is a sandbox, GTA is a playground, Final Fantasy is a movie turned into a game.
I think you'll find that Epic will make available, say, the top 20 user mods and will spend the time and money making sure that they work properly before releasing them for the PS3 and Xbox. Personally, I like that a lot better than the idea of being able to download any mod I want for a console game willy-nilly, because a) it opens console games up for much easier cheating (something MS has done a very good job of controlling with XBL) and b) it opens up the possibility of a "mod" being written that could screw with the console's OS. All it would take is one A-hole to figure out how to back-door into the console's OS and 360s and PS3s start turning into bricks, or even worse into zombies.
Believe me, my paranoia is not limited to consoles, either. When I was doing the PC gaming thing (I haven't had my own "personal" PC for about 2 years now) I tried to be extremely careful about what I was downloading and installing, and since I had only one trojan/virus infection (rapidly destroyed) in this century while downloading quite a few things I think I did pretty well. I'd just rather not have to take that same kind of care when using my game console(s).
Why? It certainly wouldn't do anything good for consumers, at least for Xbox Live consumers. Steam doesn't do anything that Xbox Live doesn't already do quite nicely.
Besides, Steam is an example of the most oppressive DRM and I have no interest in supporting it. I might have to put up with Windows because there's software that only works on that OS, but I certainly don't have to support Steam's authentication schemes since all I lose out on are some games. I'm looking forward to a Steam-less 360 version of HL2 (and the extras that go along with it) so that I can finally play the game. If, however, they somehow enable "Steam via Xbox Live" then I'll have to keep waiting.
Why? Because that's how hand-holding, nanny laws work. People who engage in a "dangerous" activity safely get screwed over because a few motards step into oncoming traffic without looking both ways.
As someone else already mentioned, the deaf seem to get by just fine walking around with no hearing. I've certainly never seen any legislation proposed requiring them to be guided by a hearing person or guide animal when crossing the street.
Me, I've had no trouble making my way across busy streets with headphones on and I don't require any special headphones to do so. It was ingrained during my youth to cross at crosswalks when possible (corners at the minimum), always (even at crosswalks) look left-right-left before starting to cross, and keep looking both ways until I'm across the street. Being able to hear oncoming cars is a bonus, but an unnecessary one.
Maybe a better way to attack this problem is to give large tickets to adults jaywalking in the presence of children. If pedestrian safety is taught well young and reinforced by observation of others, people will be less likely to be idiots later on.