Our form of democracy is not designed so that the many can impose their will on the few. In fact, the judiciary exists to avoid exactly that result.
As long as marriages are "sanctified" by the government in the form of licenses, divorce law and the like, no legal definition of marriage should exclude any citizen of legal age from marrying another citizem of legal age, whatever their respective anatomies.
I would finally note that calling for a constitutional amendment in order to strictly define marriage is idiocy. Neither our nation's existence nor the rights of heterosexuals are threatened by two men or two women getting married. I can therefore only assume that people in favor of such an amendment (or similar laws) are bigots.
(I'll take 1 point off this comment myself for being on a tangent drifting ever further away from the subject of Alan Turing.)
1. I said "far enough." Only an idiot would claim that we haven't come a long way in terms of all kinds of bigotry over the last 50 years and be happy we have done so.
2. My anti-Bush statement was very specific and was not an effort to indict him or his administration in general. To tell the honest truth it's one of the few areas in which I dislike the man. I'll be voting for him, in fact, because I consider Kerry to be an empty suit who hasn't known a single principle in his life.
By attempting to extrapolate the entirety of my social and political opinions based on one short (and accurate)/. post, you're making an ass out of yourself. Save it for the tavern.
Of course, homosexuality isn't something to be "cured", but it was the 50's... not the most tolerant time.
It's too bad we still haven't come far enough, considering a leader of a democratic nation wants to amend the constitution in order to deny rights to the homosexual segment of the population. One has to wonder if President Bush would approve of forcing chemical castration on homosexuals today.
That would be a failure of the Turing test if only because everybody knows no real person use right words 'n marks (or "uses correct grammer and punctuation," if you will - I don't want to be accused of using a post bot).
Everquest had terrible balance issues for quite a while as well. I think it's less a case of Sony not caring and more a case where developer inertia keeps things static (any EQ player will know this by the term "vision"). Everyone is so married to the decisions that were made in the initial design phase that they're unwilling to change - "I know there are some problems, but we did that for a reason" and so on.
It makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a better idea for Sony to have one team for the initial design and then move all the upper-echelon people (especially the producer[s]) to other projects once the game is live - even if they're promoted, the massive games they worked on should not fall into their sphere of influence so that the game can be enhanced/fixed as needed instead of getting bogged down in what are probably some serious in-house politics.
You'd think so, but ESB established that there's life on the planet. Unless that yeti-type dude lived entirely off snow (or escaped from a Rebellion zoo), there have to be other plants or animals native to Hoth.
Even now, it depends on what kind of signal you're talking about. 720p is currently considered "true" HDTV which is 1280x720 resolution, 60 fps progressive displayed at a refresh rate of 60 Hz. 1080i is the interlaced HDTV standard which is 1920x1080, 30 fps interlaced for display at a rate of 60 Hz.
Considering how many games have been using the current Unreal engine as their starting point, finding out how a machine handles the "basic" engine is probably a very good thing. At the very least, you can discover if a machine can handle new Unreal-based games if you turn off the extras. This is especially true with Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 (the other engines which will likely end up licensed to death over the next couple years) still in development.
Re:Players with 60Gb drives have been out for a wh
on
60GB iPod Coming?
·
· Score: 1
That's why cassette players never went anywhere. Too many damn buttons.
PS- I bought my Zen Xtra 40GB two days ago. The slightly longer learning/practice curve (30 minutes) and larger size (still smaller than a portable CD or cassette player) was worth it to save $220 off the price of an iPod of the same capacity.
It doesn't cost any more to make, but I'll bet dollars to donuts (Krispy Kreme, if you please) that Toshiba will charge a premium for the highest capacity/smallest form factor hard drives on the market. While they could knock out the lowest capacity drives and keep the price structure the same (a la CPUs), that seems like bad business. A lot of folks will be willing to pay the extra bucks for 50% more space while retaining the small size.
Those are all good reasons, generally speaking. In the case of Xbox, though, Microsoft is simply trying to find the must-have game that will attract large numbers of Japanese gamers - Halo did this for MS in the US and the hope is that TFLO will be their breakthrough game in Japan.
I would note, too, that it's pretty rare these days for US publishers to focus on the Japanese market at all. Microsoft has to do it because, apart from Team Ninja at Tecmo, there is a dearth of Japanese developers willing to develop Xbox exclusives.
I actually wasn't referring to the controller in terms of improved playability, though I admittedly prefer the Xbox controller[-S] to DualShock, despite using the latter since the Playstation - I actually find the GC's controller to be my least favorite. What I was referring to is the fact that some games have better frame rates, stuttering to an extent on Playstation while playing smooth on Xbox. There are ports (like MGS2) that are just awful, but those tend to be the exceptions.
...M$ can only put out bloated, overpriced crap. Look at the XBox.
I know it's flamebait (using the dollar sign tipped me off) but I can't help myself. The Xbox is indeed bloated (in terms of size) but it is neither "overpriced" nor "crap." In fact, it offers more functionality (by nearly every measure) than Sony's PS2 for the same price. There are great games to play on the system, and cross-platform games usually look, and sometimes play, better than on competing machines.
Whatever the truth is about Microsoft's potential MP3 player (and we don't have "truth" yet since the linked article is a blurb that generates more questions than answers), there's nothing wrong with the Xbox that a table (and, for some people, a few Japanese-style RPGs) won't fix.
Small correction: The SNES actually WAS late to its generation, coming after the [very popular] Sega Genesis. It did eventually beat the Genesis but only after Sega completely lost all sense of direction, which loss led to SegaCD, 32x and finally the Saturn.
Why is Sony insane? You said yourself that this is a "niche" market that SNK is appealing to, and the PS2 is about as mainstream as one can get. I'm sure Metal Slug 3 is a super 2D side-scrolling shooter, but this is not a genre that's going to win over millions (or even A million) of PS2 owners. It seems to me that, as game consumers, we should be pleased when Sony encourages, or pressures, developers to give gamers more bang for the buck (or yen). The fact that the games are rehashes (as you yourself point out) makes it even more reasonable for Sony to ask for multi-game proposals. Then again, SNK a few years back was selling individual games for hundreds of dollars to their best (worst?) fans - it's therefore not surprising that they'd want to milk $40-50 a pop for their old games.
I do like, however, that you refer to the people who want the game as a "drove" (singular) of fans. There certainly aren't enough to make up more than one "drove."
My only thought would be this: If a company is in a good rut, then I say stick with it. If the new GTA sucks, then by all means I would be calling for them to try something else. But the truth is that Vice City was a better game than GTA3, so I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt and grab San Andreas.
In addition, I would mention that there's no shortage of games available and on the way in a multitude of styles and genres. If you're tired of GTA, then buy something from some other company. It's certainly not necessary that one buys games from Rockstar alone.
Short version: While I can hardly disagree with your facts, I think it's complaining for the sake of complaining instead of complaining about a real "problem."
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but what you're describing is the case for MOST game developers. Id: FPS (beyond graphics, did Quake really revolutionize anything?). Maxis: SimXXXX (I guess they've had TWO revolutions in SimCity and The Sims). BioWare: Baldur's Gate (their RPGs are great, but they're variations on a theme). Westwood: Dune/C&C (RTS). Et cetera.
Twenty years ago, a single company could be cranking out 10 different games a year because, well, it would take a total of 10 programmers (each game requiring support personnel, but just one true "creator") to accomplish it. Added into this was that customers would only really expect one gameplay style (one "thing to do") per game. Right now, it's extremely rare and difficult to get a good team together that can excel in multiple genres. If you've got a group of people who can do an awesome RPG, there's a better-than-even chance that the same team isn't going to be able to develop an awesome FPS. Add in the high monetary risk factor and it could kill a company to even try.
Oddly, I always (including this time) read through posts three or four times before making a comment like this. My pitiful brain just never made it to the last word...Sometimes I'm mildly retarded and sometimes I'm a jerk. This time, I think it was more of the former. Mea culpa.:)
Chalking this up to a PR conspiracy is, oddly, naive. Wireless broadband is something only nerds care deeply about - a small subset of nerds at that. The rest of the population is mostly content with dial-up, and those who aren't (at least in large population centers) can already get broadband at home via wires.
Now, it's POSSIBLE (though still on the paranoid side) that the FCC has some potential internet-supplying customers for those frequencies and is currying favor with those companies for campaign contributions, but this isn't an issue on which any large number of people will base their votes.
I think the FCC should take as long as they want on this issue. When it comes it'll be nice, but until then I don't really need to have my e-mail and Slashdot headlines available to me everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as marriages are "sanctified" by the government in the form of licenses, divorce law and the like, no legal definition of marriage should exclude any citizen of legal age from marrying another citizem of legal age, whatever their respective anatomies.
I would finally note that calling for a constitutional amendment in order to strictly define marriage is idiocy. Neither our nation's existence nor the rights of heterosexuals are threatened by two men or two women getting married. I can therefore only assume that people in favor of such an amendment (or similar laws) are bigots.
(I'll take 1 point off this comment myself for being on a tangent drifting ever further away from the subject of Alan Turing.)
1. I said "far enough." Only an idiot would claim that we haven't come a long way in terms of all kinds of bigotry over the last 50 years and be happy we have done so.
2. My anti-Bush statement was very specific and was not an effort to indict him or his administration in general. To tell the honest truth it's one of the few areas in which I dislike the man. I'll be voting for him, in fact, because I consider Kerry to be an empty suit who hasn't known a single principle in his life.
By attempting to extrapolate the entirety of my social and political opinions based on one short (and accurate) /. post, you're making an ass out of yourself. Save it for the tavern.
It's too bad we still haven't come far enough, considering a leader of a democratic nation wants to amend the constitution in order to deny rights to the homosexual segment of the population. One has to wonder if President Bush would approve of forcing chemical castration on homosexuals today.
That would be a failure of the Turing test if only because everybody knows no real person use right words 'n marks (or "uses correct grammer and punctuation," if you will - I don't want to be accused of using a post bot).
It makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a better idea for Sony to have one team for the initial design and then move all the upper-echelon people (especially the producer[s]) to other projects once the game is live - even if they're promoted, the massive games they worked on should not fall into their sphere of influence so that the game can be enhanced/fixed as needed instead of getting bogged down in what are probably some serious in-house politics.
You'd think so, but ESB established that there's life on the planet. Unless that yeti-type dude lived entirely off snow (or escaped from a Rebellion zoo), there have to be other plants or animals native to Hoth.
Even now, it depends on what kind of signal you're talking about. 720p is currently considered "true" HDTV which is 1280x720 resolution, 60 fps progressive displayed at a refresh rate of 60 Hz. 1080i is the interlaced HDTV standard which is 1920x1080, 30 fps interlaced for display at a rate of 60 Hz.
Considering how many games have been using the current Unreal engine as their starting point, finding out how a machine handles the "basic" engine is probably a very good thing. At the very least, you can discover if a machine can handle new Unreal-based games if you turn off the extras. This is especially true with Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 (the other engines which will likely end up licensed to death over the next couple years) still in development.
PS- I bought my Zen Xtra 40GB two days ago. The slightly longer learning/practice curve (30 minutes) and larger size (still smaller than a portable CD or cassette player) was worth it to save $220 off the price of an iPod of the same capacity.
It doesn't cost any more to make, but I'll bet dollars to donuts (Krispy Kreme, if you please) that Toshiba will charge a premium for the highest capacity/smallest form factor hard drives on the market. While they could knock out the lowest capacity drives and keep the price structure the same (a la CPUs), that seems like bad business. A lot of folks will be willing to pay the extra bucks for 50% more space while retaining the small size.
I would note, too, that it's pretty rare these days for US publishers to focus on the Japanese market at all. Microsoft has to do it because, apart from Team Ninja at Tecmo, there is a dearth of Japanese developers willing to develop Xbox exclusives.
Is that a very subtle complaint about dropping property values?
Or trying to sync all three movies to Dark Side of the Moon?
You just need to set everything up for play in and near the bathroom. Everyone knows that's the best place to play the original GBA.
I think you might be shopping at the wrong grocery store.
I actually wasn't referring to the controller in terms of improved playability, though I admittedly prefer the Xbox controller[-S] to DualShock, despite using the latter since the Playstation - I actually find the GC's controller to be my least favorite. What I was referring to is the fact that some games have better frame rates, stuttering to an extent on Playstation while playing smooth on Xbox. There are ports (like MGS2) that are just awful, but those tend to be the exceptions.
I know it's flamebait (using the dollar sign tipped me off) but I can't help myself. The Xbox is indeed bloated (in terms of size) but it is neither "overpriced" nor "crap." In fact, it offers more functionality (by nearly every measure) than Sony's PS2 for the same price. There are great games to play on the system, and cross-platform games usually look, and sometimes play, better than on competing machines.
Whatever the truth is about Microsoft's potential MP3 player (and we don't have "truth" yet since the linked article is a blurb that generates more questions than answers), there's nothing wrong with the Xbox that a table (and, for some people, a few Japanese-style RPGs) won't fix.
Small correction: The SNES actually WAS late to its generation, coming after the [very popular] Sega Genesis. It did eventually beat the Genesis but only after Sega completely lost all sense of direction, which loss led to SegaCD, 32x and finally the Saturn.
I'm always counterattacking this damn computer that keeps attacking me and it never helps. 192.168.1.4 - that's the number of MY beast!
Any big fan of SNK ALREADY HAS a PS2. (note the period at the end of that sentence)
I do like, however, that you refer to the people who want the game as a "drove" (singular) of fans. There certainly aren't enough to make up more than one "drove."
In addition, I would mention that there's no shortage of games available and on the way in a multitude of styles and genres. If you're tired of GTA, then buy something from some other company. It's certainly not necessary that one buys games from Rockstar alone.
Short version: While I can hardly disagree with your facts, I think it's complaining for the sake of complaining instead of complaining about a real "problem."
Twenty years ago, a single company could be cranking out 10 different games a year because, well, it would take a total of 10 programmers (each game requiring support personnel, but just one true "creator") to accomplish it. Added into this was that customers would only really expect one gameplay style (one "thing to do") per game. Right now, it's extremely rare and difficult to get a good team together that can excel in multiple genres. If you've got a group of people who can do an awesome RPG, there's a better-than-even chance that the same team isn't going to be able to develop an awesome FPS. Add in the high monetary risk factor and it could kill a company to even try.
Oddly, I always (including this time) read through posts three or four times before making a comment like this. My pitiful brain just never made it to the last word...Sometimes I'm mildly retarded and sometimes I'm a jerk. This time, I think it was more of the former. Mea culpa. :)
Now, it's POSSIBLE (though still on the paranoid side) that the FCC has some potential internet-supplying customers for those frequencies and is currying favor with those companies for campaign contributions, but this isn't an issue on which any large number of people will base their votes.
I think the FCC should take as long as they want on this issue. When it comes it'll be nice, but until then I don't really need to have my e-mail and Slashdot headlines available to me everywhere.