Fun games on the N64? Are you on crack? The PS2 has only been out in Japan for like 3-4 months, and already there are more good games that I'd play for that than I ever found in the entire current library of N64 games. On top of that, no idiot would try and argue that Perfect Dark looks anywhere near as good as Final Fantasy 8 on the PS, Soul Calibur on the DC, or Deus Ex on the PC.
The N64 blows as a console. It isn't competing with the Playstation by any means except financially, and that's only because of Pokemon. Ask any real game player, and they'd take a PS or a DC over an N64 11 times out of 10.
As far as console gaming vs. PC. With my PC, I've got a chair and a mouse, two important things I don't get with a console. In addition, the N64 and DC controllers are REALLY uncomfortable. I can play UT or Counterstrike for several hours before I get any sort of discomfort. But I was playing Virtua Tennis for an hour the other day, and I wound up with this big "A" imprint in my finger from volleying, and I decided that was a sign I should stop.
Have any of you played Gundam 0079: Side Story, for the DC? It's nearly impossible because the torso twist and the movement controller are on the SAME FRICKING SIDE of the controller. There's NO way you can guide the thing with any sort of fluidity. On a PC it'd work just fine.
Also, sitting/lying on the floor in front of a TV elevated 6 in./1 ft. off the ground gets your neck, back, what have you, a lot more tired than sitting in a chair looking at an eye level monitor. Sure, you could sit on the couch, but you're farther away, and if you have an apartment with roomates, they get angry because they need somewhere to sit, too.
Consoles are neat because it facilitates multiplayer, and like everyone has said..no patching. (Unless of course, you're the N64, in which case, you release 3 different versions of Turok 2 with different framerates for each of them, and don't tell anyone. But we're talking REAL consoles here, so we'll just ignore that.) However, I'm getting really irked with the fact that I have to buy an extra controller all the time, especially with these systems that support directly plugging in 4 controllers. You'd think they'd at least give you 2 if their product was so "ready" for 4 controllers.
But the consoles definitely have their good points. Most of the good RPGs are on consoles, (Although Septerra Core came out only on the PC, and it was sweet.) because PC gamers need to use their computers for other tasks, and you can't always save in any place in RPGs. In addition, I guess the non-twich action just doesn't fly with the average PC gamer.
So, give me a PC for my FPS and RTS games, and I'll take a console for the RPGs. If I want to play Pokemon Does Your Mom or Pokeballz...I'll just turn on my N64...and shoot myself.
It's not like they could sub out graphics or something. Companies will run their games on faster hardware, or incorporate stuff that isn't going to be included in the game.
But that demo showed routine gameplay, and run-of-the-mill stuff you'd do from the first game. That stuff doesn't get doctored in such a system-wide way. It'd take more work to actually make the game that way than to fake it.
You also seem to know someone who's a moderator, and who feels like throwing away points.
Once again, good ol' Los Angeles has played Mecca to thousands of folcking gamers and game developers as E3 descended upon us all once again this past weekend. While the show was devoid of anything big to really write home about, there were a few gems in the crop, and some definite winners and losers. Not as much free stuff given out this year, either, which was a total letdown. But if you aren't going to read any farther into my review, here's how the next year is going to shape up for the major competitors, based on the titles they were showing off:
PSX 2 PC Dreamcast/PSX Nintendo 64/Game Boy
The 2-4 positions are remarkably closely packed. Pretty much, if you have any of the top 4 platforms, you'll have something to be happy about in the near future. As far as the Nintendo 64 users, unless you really like Pokemon, life sucks for you. There's a new Zelda game, but it's nowhere near as groundbreaking as the first one was...although there looks to be a different cast of characters.
Here's an in-depth breakdown of the performers, in order of impressiveness:
PSX2
The show stealer. Not because of what was at their booth, either. The most impressive PSX2 games were nowhere to be found in Sony's area, you had to go straight to the developers to get a look at these. By far and away, if you ask anyone what game looks the best at E3, the answer you'll get from almost all of them will be Metal Gear Solid 2. I didn't like the first game, but the second one is just...breathtaking. It picks up where the first one left off, you as Solid Snake. Revolver Ocelot and Liquid Snake make appearances as well, but I don't know much more about it, and the horribly translated product guide is no help either. The game was shown via a huge display screen, and what was most impressive was that they showed no CG...only gameplay...and you couldn't tell. Also making jaws drop at the Konami booth was a mech-combat game called "Zone of the Enders" which has the artist from Gundam X onboard. If you're trying to imagine this game, think Macross in CG. That's what this game looked like fromthe screens shown. I'm unsure as to what was gameplay, and what was CG...but it blew me away. In the strategy realm, KOEI's Kessen looked absolutely amazing. I'm a big fan of strategy games, and this is what I imagine I'd make my ultimate game like. They had playable versions of this at the KOEI booth, but I found it all too late into the last day of the show. Also from KOEI, Dynasty Warriors 2 is equaly impressive. Part strategy, mostly real-time combat, it's you in the midst of a huge army brawl. I was watching one gamer play, and he was spinning with a yari (long spear) in the midst of 15-20 enemies. An epic battle game. I can hardly wait. Squaresoft was not to be outdone either. They showed off a title called, "The Bouncer" outside the booth through a series of CG only screens, and inside the theater were some of the battle sequences. Very cool. Armored Core for the PSX2 also looked very sweet if you're into giant robot games, which, as it turns out, I am. GT2000 looked nice, as did Tekken Tag Team Tournament, but if you're like me, you're starting to grow weary of these titles and their various incarnations. The PSX2 definitely had more to show off at E3 than anyone else did. It uses the same basic controller as the original PS, so if you've adapted, you won't have any need to convert over to some retarded carpal tunnel syndrome inducing analog/digital controller. All in all, this is the console to have, come December of this year.
PC
There weren't a lot of "WHOA!" titles for the PC, but there were a lot of definite purchases. Leading the list is Warcraft 3 from Blizzard. They're going less on the resource management side of things, and more on the beating people down side. I'm looking forward to this, especially since one of my old co-workers is now working there. =) On the other hand, Diablo 2, despite all its hype looks a whole lot like Diablo 1. Sure, you've got more towns...but does that mean more gameplay? We'll find out. X-Com is back in a big way at this year's E3. They were showing off a new first-person shooter/strategy game. Apparently, your teammates will have different skills, so you'll need to keep them alive for optimal mission results. Star Trek was all over the convention floor. It looks like there will be something like 4 new Star Trek games. ST: Away Team, Bridge Commander, Elite Force, and one I forgot. Away Team is a squad combat game in the Fallout/X-Com vein. Elite Force is a first person shooter that has you taking down the Borg first person style, and Bridge Commander was a space shooter. Sadly, for me, no showing of Team Fortress 2. I was really excited about TF2 from last E3, but no love from the guys this year. Squaresoft also showed off a PC preview in their theater, via some really lame live action skit involving 3 actors. Apparently FFXI will be online, and they envision you being able to play from home, in an arcade, and use your saves to jump in and form parties. Could be cool, could be utterly lame...remains to be seen. Tribes 2 looked nice, nothing strikingly new, but the graphics looked pimpin'. I might have been able to tell you what gameplay was like, but the jerk hogging the machine wouldn't leave, and he had no game, either, so I'll never know. Maybe if he'd stayed alive more than 10 seconds...before having to respawn. Like I said, nothing really super cool, but enough to make you glad you tripped out your PC.
Dreamcast
This is 3rd only because of alphabetical order. Sega did a lot to make sure you were aware of their games. They had a huge stage that would be occupied with rollerbladers, dancers, and one really loud and annoying MC. It was good they grabbed your attention with live people though, because the games they were hyping were utterly lame. Space Channel 5 (Which had dancers in skirts on 30 foot raised platforms...directly above the crowd...you do the math.) is a game that is basically a rip-off of Bust-A-Move. You take control of ULaLa and you have to execute a sequence of dance moves you're given through audio cues. Lame. Jet Set Radio was the other game they were trying to hype via the stage, and that one was abysmal, too. The premise: You're part of a blading, tagging crew. You have to escape from The Man. (No, you're not "Working Undercover" for him, either.) Some of the DC games did look nice, though. ESPN made a strong showing to save Sega from itself. They're making a bunch of new sports games based on their TV shows. Expect to see NBA 2night, and crew sometime soon. Virtua Tennis looked good, too, which is great because there haven't been any cool tennis games ANYWHERE for far too long. The highlight of the Sega booth for me was "Samba De Amigo". It's the latest in a long line of games designed to make you pay money for humiliating yourself. The premise for your self-effacing hinges upon maracas this time. You've got to shake your individual maracas at any of 3 different heights depending on the cues given to you. At random times in the song you will be prompted to POSE! and you have to do the pose on the screen. Highly amusing, and the chicks dig it. Capcom's "Onimusha" looked kinda nifty, although I'm sure it's not my thing. A lot of Sega RPGs were showcasing these great looking FMVs of their games, and then you'd get around to see gameplay and your heart would sink. Sigh...some people never learn.
Playstation
The original PS holds ground with the DC. Good thing there's no home-court advantage at E3, eh? It had its share of lame games, either wrestling or UFC related, or just utterly inexplicable, like Super Magnetic Neo. Games like that make a gamer cry. Squaresoft, as usual, was the Sony flagship, which was showing off Chrono Chross and Parasite Eve 2, both of which are necessary additions to any gamers libraries. They showed a glimpse off FF9 in the theater which looks as if the Square guys have pretty much maxed out how impressive the PS gets. Vagrant Story, Threads of Fate, and Legend of Mana were there too. Good, but not great. For some reason, not too many games on the PS stood out my mind...maybe it's because they blurred with all of the PSX2 games. But just about as much on the PS impressed me as stuff on the Dreamcast impressed me, which is to say, nothing jaw-dropping, but plenty to keep my drive spinning. In addition, most of the Sony stuff was focused on promoting the PS2, so no big stage for the PS like the DC got.
Nintendo
Bringing up the rear in a BIG way is the N64. Solidly establishing the bottom of the barrel, they didn't even have anything about the Dolphin, apparently feeling smug enough to trot out Pokemon Vs. Your Mom, or whatever the heck the next iteration of the game is. Apparently, their new big thing is having you talk to your Pokemon. Their next Pokemon non-game has you telling your Pikachu what to do via a microphone connected to your controller. The only good thing about the Nintendo booth was that they gave me a "Cool Porygon" card that I promptly put up on ebay to sell! It's at $20 right now! The Nintendo people said that they weren't showing much, but it was quality. Hmm...is that why the Turok 3 station was entirely empty? Oh yeah, there's a new Zelda game. Woo. It looks nearly entirely the same as the last game. There's nothing on the N64 at this E3 that you couldn't take back in time 2 years and impress people. Kirby 64, Paper Mario, sure they'll sell, N64 owners need something to play, but there's nothing good out there. If you're looking to auction off your N64...wait until just after they announce the new Zelda will go on sale, then try and find a sucker. Maybe they'll make a Slashdot themed, "Hot Grits" game.
If the study was brought about because of a friend's death, wasn't the issue there. The study ITSELF was a good idea. Making a press release on the day my friend's death occured, a day I would have reserved for mourning would make it extremely tacky. It would totally fell like some was trying to make money off of the death of my friend, no matter how much good the study could do. Save the releases for another, less painful day.
Granted, I haven't read the book...but this is supposed to be a day of silence and regret. Talk of preventing this from happening again, and trying to empathize with the shooters so this didn't happen in the first place only pours salt in the wounds. It's like going up to the parents of a friend of your who died in a car accident one year ago, and giving them a study that says if he would have had a car with an airbag, he'd still be alive. This is one day that the Columbine people deserve to have to themselves, to grieve in their own quiet ways. If this book reads the same way the columns and posts read, this is in bad taste. You should have waited for a less poignant time...maybe tomorrow, or yesterday. Today wasn't the day for it.
Maybe not tacky, but definitely in bad taste. Especially since the book isn't even available, and all the details aren't hammered out. This is as lame an announcement as when game companies release stuff like...oh...THIS, maybe? The game's not even out, they've already had an initial announcement about the game it's just a "Yoo hoo! Over here! We're still alive!" message. That's pretty much what this is. An attempt to cash in on media attention for the book by tagentially attaching itself to it. No I don't know if this is to boost book sales or whatever, because it's not like Katz is getting cash from this. Still, I don't think Mom & Pop America are going to take more than a glance at a book called "Voices from the Hellmouth". Also, considering the amount of hate Katz seems to have incurred here, this isn't going to be on the wish list of any techie who's heard about it. But, I know what you mean about the stupid reporters going and asking the STUPIDEST possible questions just to have a reason to be out there. Can't you news people jsut run a footnote story that says, "Today was the anniversary of the Columbine tragedy?" No...you've got to go and send reporters there...to be there live, to ask stupid questions like, "If you had to pick the person most likely to repeat this tragedy, which student would it be?" I also hate when they interview entirely unrelated people, like, the guy's neighbor or his 5th grade teacher. They always ask, "Did you see this coming?" or "Did you suspect something like this from your neighbor?" (Yeah, he used to walk by and say, "Hi! I murdered 2 people today, don't worry, though, I don't kill people on MY block.") It's just as bad with sports reporters. They ask stuff like, "So what's your game plan tonight?" (Uh...we plan to score more points than the other team, and stop them from scoring.) and "Did Shaq's 61 points hurt you guys tonight?" (Nope, they felt good! We loved every one of them, hell, we wanted him to score 100 on us!) The media needs to stop being so full of itself. And Andover.net's down 13/16 riding the news of the Jon Katz announcement.
Yeah. I heard a case a ways back about a guy who sued an L.A. paper, either the Times or the Tribune because they wouldn't stop calling his house.
So there are laws in place, but you just have to know about them, and how to use them...that actually entails taking enough time to listen to the guy tell you who he is, which may not be as rewarding as telling him off, though.
What I REALLY wish would stop are these people that call my house with a machine, and after I pick up the phone (usually at 9 AM, on a FRICKIN' WEEKEND! The days I recover my lost sleep from trying to match East Coast time with that blasted stock market of theirs.) the machine helpfully tells me, that I "have an important message, so stay on hold while an operator can talk to me."
The is NO F***ING WAY I will stay on hold and listen to that. Nobody calls ME and then puts ME on hold. Next time I might actually wait it out...tell the person on the other end to hold on...mute the phone and toss it aside for the next 15 minutes, and then just hang up. Bastards. Maybe I can find a sufficently eardrum shattering noise to play over the phone.
I'm also really ticked off by the people from the L.A. Times that come to my door and try and sell me subscriptions...when I already get one. How hard is it to look that up? I mean, damn.
Why's it belong on Slashdot NOW, though?
on
Cooling With Lasers
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· Score: 2
I don't understand. Did someone just now figure out that cooling lasers might have an effect on computers?
I first heard about this stuff 2 years ago, as an attachment to another story, it was on the Discovery Channel...which either has cool science shows, or really boring home improvement shows, and disgusting nature stuff.
Anyway, the guys were using the cooling lasers, along with a bunch of other duct tape/tin can & string technologies to try and find a new state of matter than Einstein had theorized about, once a substance would get really, really close to absolute zero.
The cooling lasers got the substance really, really cold by bouncing out the molecules that had extra energy, and with a bunch of really complex thrown together hacks, they found a new state of matter, which they called Bowes/Einstein Condensate. (I'm not sure on the spelling of that, but I kind of object to naming a state of matter after yourself. It'd be like calling "gas" the "Dalton State" or something.) The technoloy for this is really old, and therefore may be ready for public use...not. Superconductivity changing any of your daily lives yet? Not mine. I'm still in a subconductive world, baby. A lot of these col technologies just end up not having practical, cost effective uses, and remain just cool sound-bites on a website like this, or on the Discovery Channel. The cost of putting cooling lasers in my computer is still going to be far more expensive than me buying a portable icebox and sticking my computer inside of that for at least the next 2 decades.
On top of that, The Man wants to do everything possible to keep lasers out of the hands of the public. Which is why we can only get those really weenie 3 volt 600 nm laser pointers. The government's just afraid in general of us doing stuff like, getting a bunch of cooling lasers and our Playstation 2s, and taking over Canada or something.
Exactly. I read the headline, and I was like, "WTF? A solar panel? To power what, the LEDs?!"
Back in high school we were trying to build some remote controlled cars that were solar powered. Unfortunately for us, the solar cells readily available to us (project had to come in under $100.) provided like 1.5 volts...at noon...on a cloudless day. (Those are the actual specs given on the packaging, btw, I'm not making this up.) We would have need to stcik 4 of them them on to equal a 9-volt, and the stupid cars had to run indoors, which completely scrapped the idea.
Solar power's fine and all, but you need a whole lot of solar collectors to generate any sort of power, it's like wind and hydroelectric power. There's a lot of it out there in nature, but it's all spread out. You got to make a better (or bigger) funnel before you can hope to do anything with this ambient engery. You don't see people sticking little windmills to their laptops now, do you? Although maybe hamsters on hamster wheels might be an idea...you'd probably get more power from it than the stupid solar cell. To think they want $395 for it, too. This is what happens whan you let "First Posters" run a company.
Exactly, they need to change their business model if they want to attract the people that were trying to hack the boxes. Why? Because these guys weren't their target customers. You've these cheap terminals sitting on shelves that are targeted and Mom & Pop Public, and then all of a sudden the/. effect happens, and the Circuit City stores are now packed with a bunch of 12 year olds who have just finished pouring hot grits down their pants. (Take a joke people.)
So how do you retain the new, more expectant customers? You change your product, or change your business model. Although, I don't realistically see how you're going to get a bunch of people to buy your system, when the only thing that really sold it was the price.
I don't think netpliance was looking into jumping into the terminal market when they started business. I think they were probably looking to make the i-opener reel in some of the target iMac buyers. (which is a noble cause in and of itself.)But maybe terminal should be their new plan. Screw the ISP agreement (or else you might as well just get a cheap machine from Best Buy or Fry's that asks for the same thing.) and sell these things where you'll make a profit. Make money on the OS variety (Linux doesn't "cost" anything and you can make the $$$ back on the installation labor.) and maybe you can retain these new eyeballs you got looking over at you. I really don't see how you're going to retain the accidental clientele any other way.
Puff Daddy owns LinuxOne, and he's planning to just steal RedHat, and remix it. Come to think of it Linux's open source-ness would just fit right up his alley.
Think about that for a second...remember how long it took even the demo to come out? And from what I saw in the demo, UT and Q3 both kick the crap out of this game. I don't see how anyone could be a diehard fan of this game after playing the other 2 alternatives. The ONE feature that Daikatana had that I DID like, was that it told you how dead you were. If you had 3 health and someone shot you with a rocket launcher, before you clicked to respawn, your health would be -110 or something.
BTW, games are never really in development for "only a year", if they're good. When I was working at Squaresoft, it took a year to port FF7 over to the PC. From the time you first hear about a game, to the time it gets released may be a year, but they've have designers, artists, and others going at it for probably 2-3. Just as a point of reference, while we were working on finishing 7 PC, the lead programmer was getting calls from the lead programmer on FF 9...before FF 8 was released in Japan.
Dude...it's the French...the same people who managed to be attached to the losing side of the French/Indian War without ever even actually fighting in it.
On the plus side...maybe you could go, and hack government servers and host all sorts of kiddie porn on there, and get the administrators in the government screwed. =)
Yeah...that's why I recommend that they sell their MP3s. I never recommended jacking them. Your link says pretty much the same thing I said...with more numbers. MP3 albums are pretty good for the artist. I read figures where they get near $6 an album. That's a ton compared to what they normally get. I'm all for that...it's not a perfect situation...but it does a lot more for them than sticking around with the conventional method.
But you should definitely have some way out if you think the songs suck. Like if the band totally sells-out and adds Britney Spears to their group, then you can ask for your (available) money back.
I don't want this to be like the band not having any creative say, either, so they're so worried about people wanting their money back that they don't stray from their "formula".
I STILL don't want to pay $4.99 to the retail outlet, $8.44 to the producers and a paltry $.56 to the artist.
Maybe the producers are 35% less bastardly now...that's still 65% bastardly.
Bottom line, there's a lot of money to be made in the music industry...if you're not a musician. Hell..if this LinuxOne POS goes through the roof, maybe artists should release "Music IPOs". Buying and holding shares will entitle you to all the albums they ever release. It can't jack up the stock market any worse than it is now.
What I really like about this RIAA vs. everyone on the planet battle is that they keep crying about how the artists are hurt by MP3 transfer. Well, they posted huge profits...so they aren't being hurt. For a second, let's take a look at the RIAA argument.
According to TLC in their VH1 "Behind the Music" interview, they got a whopping...56 cents per CD they released. (BTW, the 8% sales tax on the CD ends up being $1.12 on a $13.99 CD...twice what TLC got per album.) So, if their album sold 1 million copies (extremely successful.) they all got, total...$560,000. Or basically $186,667 for T, L and C, respectively. Meanwhile, there's $13,430,000 floating around from sales of THEIR album that they aren't getting. Granted, it does cost 3 cents/CD to press, master, and mass produce a CD.
The RIAA wants to talk about *US* hurting the artist? Why don't they just GIVE the ARTIST MORE MONEY? The part in Katz' article about artists being able to sell their own music on the web at $1 a CD and make more than they get out of their record contracts is TRUE. (Although Jon really didn't have to rewrite Dune to make 2 or 3 points.)
I'm a huge They Might Be Giants fan. Recently, they released an album on the web, in MP3 only format. It cost $8. While browsing around on Napster, every once in a while I look for TMBG songs, just to see what's floating out there. Although the producer said the album was "the most successful internet only album ever" I have NEVER found any of the TMBG songs from that album on Napster. (although there are upwards of 3 terabytes of MP3s shared on Napster on a given day now.)
So why is this? Artist loyalty? Amongst pirates? Yes...it exists. Maybe people are tired of giving upwards of $13 million to bastards like Suge Knight and that music thief Puff Daddy. Hell...Jennifer Lopez couldn't even afford to wear a real dress to the Grammys...she had to wear a curtain. (nobody ever said all side-effects were bad.) I'd much rather pay $8 for an e-album where upwards of half went to support the band than pay $13 to a producer and a half dollar to the group that does the actual work.
Producers do actually do some hard work, but it's not 24 times as much work as the artists do. I'm all for supporting the artists. But I ain't about supporting some guy sitting on his ass, and milking my groups, bastardizing their work, and then discarding them. It's time for a paradigm shift. It starts with MP3s and e-albums. Support them.
If you look on this website, (My definite source for what's going on with movies.) you'll see the following timeline for Snow Crash's development:
September, 1996... Marco Brambilla is announced to direct the Snow Crash adaptation. [Info and project annoucement courtesy of 'shape'.]
December 2, 1996... Jeffrey Nachmanoff lands the gig to adapt Stephenson's novel. Variety magazine quotes Nachmanoff that he believes the book is "...about the disintergration of American society in the information age." Nachmanoff hopes to start fresh on his take of the story; other screenwriters had turned in previous drafts of the work with no one ever advancing the status of the project. [Scoop sent in by 'shape' and 'pkalapa'; some material acknowledged to Variety.]
October 21, 1997... Nothing new has been reported about the development of the project, except for this one scoop we received: "The project is dead." With nothing new to report of in months the film may very well be trapped in limbo. [Scoop submitted anonymously.]
The project's been reported dead for nearly 2 1/2 years now. The art you have is probably from WAY back.
I don't think the mission was "doomed to fail" like all these media sensationalists are trying to claim.
I believe the story I read said that lander hadn't gone through sufficient tests and there was a problem with the engine cut-off system. I think they just went ahead with it because of recent failure, and figured it would work, because of, as the previous post mentioned, all the hard work that had gone into it.
Were it, "doomed from launch" it'd be utterly stupid to launch the thing. But sometimes companies try and push stuff through to get it out on time, and then not have to worry about it. Game and software companies do it all the time. (Geez, I hope nobody notices the 65,000 bugs we have...) I don't think NASA is dumb, but I also don't think NASA is above those practices.
Yeah. I understand. I'm not saying the Loki guys are to blame...I'm just saying it's going to be really hard for Loki to ever compete if they're months behind with every game.
Gamers want their games like they want their money...now.
If Loki wants to start making significant headway for the future of Linux gaming, they're going to have to start cranking these things out faster.
Maybe it was because Heavy Gear II had a bunch of features that were shoddily implemented in the PC version, and hopefully the Loki guys fixed them...but I doubt it.
Maybe it was because they had bigger titles to port. That too is excusable for me...but it doesn't mean that I'm going to wait 9 months to play the new, big game. Linux gaming isn't going to be able to survive on pity purchasing for long. Either gaming companies have gotta start working with the Linux guys sooner, or Loki's got to get a bigger staff...but let's face it...neither seems very likely, eh?
Uh, just curious...how many Mattel products do you buy a year?
I've never bought a Mattel product for as long as I can remember purchasing stuff. A boycott doesn't work unless you already buy the stuff, and you're a significant portion of their customers. (why boycotting a roof insulation company won't be of use, and neither will boycotting gasoline.)
I read the judge's injunction. The judge's contention was that the guys who did this were allowing kids to completely bypass the blocking software. (Funny...I don't remember this ability being mentioned anywhere in the "banned" pages.) Bottom line is right now...nobody cares. We're still just a bunch of apathetic, whiny kids to them, and not some organization that has any coherent form or power. We have to actually WIN one of these things before people will stop doing it. The mere fact that we've had so many legal "issues" that we've coined an acronym for "I am not a lawyer", alone should tell people that we've been getting dumped on in court for far too long. Somebody sue back. It's the only way. Even if we lose...it'll cost them...and that's the only REAL way to get this on the 6 o'clock news.
Just think how much public opinion of Mattel will drop when they hear, "This man's site was classified as having gaphic nudity on it, just for having criticized the company's software."
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Fun games on the N64? Are you on crack? The PS2 has only been out in Japan for like 3-4 months, and already there are more good games that I'd play for that than I ever found in the entire current library of N64 games. On top of that, no idiot would try and argue that Perfect Dark looks anywhere near as good as Final Fantasy 8 on the PS, Soul Calibur on the DC, or Deus Ex on the PC.
The N64 blows as a console. It isn't competing with the Playstation by any means except financially, and that's only because of Pokemon. Ask any real game player, and they'd take a PS or a DC over an N64 11 times out of 10.
As far as console gaming vs. PC. With my PC, I've got a chair and a mouse, two important things I don't get with a console. In addition, the N64 and DC controllers are REALLY uncomfortable. I can play UT or Counterstrike for several hours before I get any sort of discomfort. But I was playing Virtua Tennis for an hour the other day, and I wound up with this big "A" imprint in my finger from volleying, and I decided that was a sign I should stop.
Have any of you played Gundam 0079: Side Story, for the DC? It's nearly impossible because the torso twist and the movement controller are on the SAME FRICKING SIDE of the controller. There's NO way you can guide the thing with any sort of fluidity. On a PC it'd work just fine.
Also, sitting/lying on the floor in front of a TV elevated 6 in./1 ft. off the ground gets your neck, back, what have you, a lot more tired than sitting in a chair looking at an eye level monitor. Sure, you could sit on the couch, but you're farther away, and if you have an apartment with roomates, they get angry because they need somewhere to sit, too.
Consoles are neat because it facilitates multiplayer, and like everyone has said..no patching. (Unless of course, you're the N64, in which case, you release 3 different versions of Turok 2 with different framerates for each of them, and don't tell anyone. But we're talking REAL consoles here, so we'll just ignore that.) However, I'm getting really irked with the fact that I have to buy an extra controller all the time, especially with these systems that support directly plugging in 4 controllers. You'd think they'd at least give you 2 if their product was so "ready" for 4 controllers.
But the consoles definitely have their good points. Most of the good RPGs are on consoles, (Although Septerra Core came out only on the PC, and it was sweet.) because PC gamers need to use their computers for other tasks, and you can't always save in any place in RPGs. In addition, I guess the non-twich action just doesn't fly with the average PC gamer.
So, give me a PC for my FPS and RTS games, and I'll take a console for the RPGs. If I want to play Pokemon Does Your Mom or Pokeballz...I'll just turn on my N64...and shoot myself.
Oh...but think of how much fun other employees could have spitting on your burger and blaming it on the robot. =)
Anyway, why'd you leave the burger joint nameless. It's not they'll hunt you down or anything...Do tell! Curious carnivores want to know!
I think I'd only buy burger from this robot if was like Bit from Tron.
"Can I get a burger?"
"Yes."
"And some fries with that?"
"No."
"Did you spit in my burger?!"
"Nononononononononono..."
That'd be the best.
What, exactly would have been doctored?!
It's not like they could sub out graphics or something. Companies will run their games on faster hardware, or incorporate stuff that isn't going to be included in the game.
But that demo showed routine gameplay, and run-of-the-mill stuff you'd do from the first game. That stuff doesn't get doctored in such a system-wide way. It'd take more work to actually make the game that way than to fake it.
You also seem to know someone who's a moderator, and who feels like throwing away points.
Uh...a video of gameplay...
What the hell's that supposed to mean? They videotaped real-time gameplay...whoa...
Well...here goes...Remember, you asked for it.
Once again, good ol' Los Angeles has played Mecca to thousands of folcking gamers and game developers as E3 descended upon us all once again this past weekend. While the show was devoid of anything big to really write home about, there were a few gems in the crop, and some definite winners and losers. Not as much free stuff given out this year, either, which was a total letdown. But if you aren't going to read any farther into my review, here's how the next year is going to shape up for the major competitors, based on the titles they were showing off:
PSX 2
PC
Dreamcast/PSX
Nintendo 64/Game Boy
The 2-4 positions are remarkably closely packed. Pretty much, if you have any of the top 4 platforms, you'll have something to be happy about in the near future. As far as the Nintendo 64 users, unless you really like Pokemon, life sucks for you. There's a new Zelda game, but it's nowhere near as groundbreaking as the first one was...although there looks to be a different cast of characters.
Here's an in-depth breakdown of the performers, in order of impressiveness:
PSX2
The show stealer. Not because of what was at their booth, either. The most impressive PSX2 games were nowhere to be found in Sony's area, you had to go straight to the developers to get a look at these. By far and away, if you ask anyone what game looks the best at E3, the answer you'll get from almost all of them will be Metal Gear Solid 2. I didn't like the first game, but the second one is just...breathtaking. It picks up where the first one left off, you as Solid Snake. Revolver Ocelot and Liquid Snake make appearances as well, but I don't know much more about it, and the horribly translated product guide is no help either. The game was shown via a huge display screen, and what was most impressive was that they showed no CG...only gameplay...and you couldn't tell. Also making jaws drop at the Konami booth was a mech-combat game called "Zone of the Enders" which has the artist from Gundam X onboard. If you're trying to imagine this game, think Macross in CG. That's what this game looked like fromthe screens shown. I'm unsure as to what was gameplay, and what was CG...but it blew me away. In the strategy realm, KOEI's Kessen looked absolutely amazing. I'm a big fan of strategy games, and this is what I imagine I'd make my ultimate game like. They had playable versions of this at the KOEI booth, but I found it all too late into the last day of the show. Also from KOEI, Dynasty Warriors 2 is equaly impressive. Part strategy, mostly real-time combat, it's you in the midst of a huge army brawl. I was watching one gamer play, and he was spinning with a yari (long spear) in the midst of 15-20 enemies. An epic battle game. I can hardly wait. Squaresoft was not to be outdone either. They showed off a title called, "The Bouncer" outside the booth through a series of CG only screens, and inside the theater were some of the battle sequences. Very cool. Armored Core for the PSX2 also looked very sweet if you're into giant robot games, which, as it turns out, I am. GT2000 looked nice, as did Tekken Tag Team Tournament, but if you're like me, you're starting to grow weary of these titles and their various incarnations. The PSX2 definitely had more to show off at E3 than anyone else did. It uses the same basic controller as the original PS, so if you've adapted, you won't have any need to convert over to some retarded carpal tunnel syndrome inducing analog/digital controller. All in all, this is the console to have, come December of this year.
PC
There weren't a lot of "WHOA!" titles for the PC, but there were a lot of definite purchases. Leading the list is Warcraft 3 from Blizzard. They're going less on the resource management side of things, and more on the beating people down side. I'm looking forward to this, especially since one of my old co-workers is now working there. =) On the other hand, Diablo 2, despite all its hype looks a whole lot like Diablo 1. Sure, you've got more towns...but does that mean more gameplay? We'll find out. X-Com is back in a big way at this year's E3. They were showing off a new first-person shooter/strategy game. Apparently, your teammates will have different skills, so you'll need to keep them alive for optimal mission results. Star Trek was all over the convention floor. It looks like there will be something like 4 new Star Trek games. ST: Away Team, Bridge Commander, Elite Force, and one I forgot. Away Team is a squad combat game in the Fallout/X-Com vein. Elite Force is a first person shooter that has you taking down the Borg first person style, and Bridge Commander was a space shooter. Sadly, for me, no showing of Team Fortress 2. I was really excited about TF2 from last E3, but no love from the guys this year. Squaresoft also showed off a PC preview in their theater, via some really lame live action skit involving 3 actors. Apparently FFXI will be online, and they envision you being able to play from home, in an arcade, and use your saves to jump in and form parties. Could be cool, could be utterly lame...remains to be seen. Tribes 2 looked nice, nothing strikingly new, but the graphics looked pimpin'. I might have been able to tell you what gameplay was like, but the jerk hogging the machine wouldn't leave, and he had no game, either, so I'll never know. Maybe if he'd stayed alive more than 10 seconds...before having to respawn. Like I said, nothing really super cool, but enough to make you glad you tripped out your PC.
Dreamcast
This is 3rd only because of alphabetical order. Sega did a lot to make sure you were aware of their games. They had a huge stage that would be occupied with rollerbladers, dancers, and one really loud and annoying MC. It was good they grabbed your attention with live people though, because the games they were hyping were utterly lame. Space Channel 5 (Which had dancers in skirts on 30 foot raised platforms...directly above the crowd...you do the math.) is a game that is basically a rip-off of Bust-A-Move. You take control of ULaLa and you have to execute a sequence of dance moves you're given through audio cues. Lame. Jet Set Radio was the other game they were trying to hype via the stage, and that one was abysmal, too. The premise: You're part of a blading, tagging crew. You have to escape from The Man. (No, you're not "Working Undercover" for him, either.) Some of the DC games did look nice, though. ESPN made a strong showing to save Sega from itself. They're making a bunch of new sports games based on their TV shows. Expect to see NBA 2night, and crew sometime soon. Virtua Tennis looked good, too, which is great because there haven't been any cool tennis games ANYWHERE for far too long. The highlight of the Sega booth for me was "Samba De Amigo". It's the latest in a long line of games designed to make you pay money for humiliating yourself. The premise for your self-effacing hinges upon maracas this time. You've got to shake your individual maracas at any of 3 different heights depending on the cues given to you. At random times in the song you will be prompted to POSE! and you have to do the pose on the screen. Highly amusing, and the chicks dig it. Capcom's "Onimusha" looked kinda nifty, although I'm sure it's not my thing. A lot of Sega RPGs were showcasing these great looking FMVs of their games, and then you'd get around to see gameplay and your heart would sink. Sigh...some people never learn.
Playstation
The original PS holds ground with the DC. Good thing there's no home-court advantage at E3, eh? It had its share of lame games, either wrestling or UFC related, or just utterly inexplicable, like Super Magnetic Neo. Games like that make a gamer cry. Squaresoft, as usual, was the Sony flagship, which was showing off Chrono Chross and Parasite Eve 2, both of which are necessary additions to any gamers libraries. They showed a glimpse off FF9 in the theater which looks as if the Square guys have pretty much maxed out how impressive the PS gets. Vagrant Story, Threads of Fate, and Legend of Mana were there too. Good, but not great. For some reason, not too many games on the PS stood out my mind...maybe it's because they blurred with all of the PSX2 games. But just about as much on the PS impressed me as stuff on the Dreamcast impressed me, which is to say, nothing jaw-dropping, but plenty to keep my drive spinning. In addition, most of the Sony stuff was focused on promoting the PS2, so no big stage for the PS like the DC got.
Nintendo
Bringing up the rear in a BIG way is the N64. Solidly establishing the bottom of the barrel, they didn't even have anything about the Dolphin, apparently feeling smug enough to trot out Pokemon Vs. Your Mom, or whatever the heck the next iteration of the game is. Apparently, their new big thing is having you talk to your Pokemon. Their next Pokemon non-game has you telling your Pikachu what to do via a microphone connected to your controller. The only good thing about the Nintendo booth was that they gave me a "Cool Porygon" card that I promptly put up on ebay to sell! It's at $20 right now! The Nintendo people said that they weren't showing much, but it was quality. Hmm...is that why the Turok 3 station was entirely empty? Oh yeah, there's a new Zelda game. Woo. It looks nearly entirely the same as the last game. There's nothing on the N64 at this E3 that you couldn't take back in time 2 years and impress people. Kirby 64, Paper Mario, sure they'll sell, N64 owners need something to play, but there's nothing good out there. If you're looking to auction off your N64...wait until just after they announce the new Zelda will go on sale, then try and find a sucker. Maybe they'll make a Slashdot themed, "Hot Grits" game.
If the study was brought about because of a friend's death, wasn't the issue there. The study ITSELF was a good idea. Making a press release on the day my friend's death occured, a day I would have reserved for mourning would make it extremely tacky. It would totally fell like some was trying to make money off of the death of my friend, no matter how much good the study could do. Save the releases for another, less painful day.
Granted, I haven't read the book...but this is supposed to be a day of silence and regret. Talk of preventing this from happening again, and trying to empathize with the shooters so this didn't happen in the first place only pours salt in the wounds. It's like going up to the parents of a friend of your who died in a car accident one year ago, and giving them a study that says if he would have had a car with an airbag, he'd still be alive. This is one day that the Columbine people deserve to have to themselves, to grieve in their own quiet ways. If this book reads the same way the columns and posts read, this is in bad taste. You should have waited for a less poignant time...maybe tomorrow, or yesterday. Today wasn't the day for it.
Maybe not tacky, but definitely in bad taste. Especially since the book isn't even available, and all the details aren't hammered out. This is as lame an announcement as when game companies release stuff like...oh...THIS, maybe? The game's not even out, they've already had an initial announcement about the game it's just a "Yoo hoo! Over here! We're still alive!" message. That's pretty much what this is. An attempt to cash in on media attention for the book by tagentially attaching itself to it. No I don't know if this is to boost book sales or whatever, because it's not like Katz is getting cash from this. Still, I don't think Mom & Pop America are going to take more than a glance at a book called "Voices from the Hellmouth". Also, considering the amount of hate Katz seems to have incurred here, this isn't going to be on the wish list of any techie who's heard about it. But, I know what you mean about the stupid reporters going and asking the STUPIDEST possible questions just to have a reason to be out there. Can't you news people jsut run a footnote story that says, "Today was the anniversary of the Columbine tragedy?" No...you've got to go and send reporters there...to be there live, to ask stupid questions like, "If you had to pick the person most likely to repeat this tragedy, which student would it be?" I also hate when they interview entirely unrelated people, like, the guy's neighbor or his 5th grade teacher. They always ask, "Did you see this coming?" or "Did you suspect something like this from your neighbor?" (Yeah, he used to walk by and say, "Hi! I murdered 2 people today, don't worry, though, I don't kill people on MY block.") It's just as bad with sports reporters. They ask stuff like, "So what's your game plan tonight?" (Uh...we plan to score more points than the other team, and stop them from scoring.) and "Did Shaq's 61 points hurt you guys tonight?" (Nope, they felt good! We loved every one of them, hell, we wanted him to score 100 on us!) The media needs to stop being so full of itself. And Andover.net's down 13/16 riding the news of the Jon Katz announcement.
Yeah. I heard a case a ways back about a guy who sued an L.A. paper, either the Times or the Tribune because they wouldn't stop calling his house.
So there are laws in place, but you just have to know about them, and how to use them...that actually entails taking enough time to listen to the guy tell you who he is, which may not be as rewarding as telling him off, though.
What I REALLY wish would stop are these people that call my house with a machine, and after I pick up the phone (usually at 9 AM, on a FRICKIN' WEEKEND! The days I recover my lost sleep from trying to match East Coast time with that blasted stock market of theirs.) the machine helpfully tells me, that I "have an important message, so stay on hold while an operator can talk to me."
The is NO F***ING WAY I will stay on hold and listen to that. Nobody calls ME and then puts ME on hold. Next time I might actually wait it out...tell the person on the other end to hold on...mute the phone and toss it aside for the next 15 minutes, and then just hang up. Bastards. Maybe I can find a sufficently eardrum shattering noise to play over the phone.
I'm also really ticked off by the people from the L.A. Times that come to my door and try and sell me subscriptions...when I already get one. How hard is it to look that up? I mean, damn.
I don't understand. Did someone just now figure out that cooling lasers might have an effect on computers?
I first heard about this stuff 2 years ago, as an attachment to another story, it was on the Discovery Channel...which either has cool science shows, or really boring home improvement shows, and disgusting nature stuff.
Anyway, the guys were using the cooling lasers, along with a bunch of other duct tape/tin can & string technologies to try and find a new state of matter than Einstein had theorized about, once a substance would get really, really close to absolute zero.
The cooling lasers got the substance really, really cold by bouncing out the molecules that had extra energy, and with a bunch of really complex thrown together hacks, they found a new state of matter, which they called Bowes/Einstein Condensate. (I'm not sure on the spelling of that, but I kind of object to naming a state of matter after yourself. It'd be like calling "gas" the "Dalton State" or something.) The technoloy for this is really old, and therefore may be ready for public use...not. Superconductivity changing any of your daily lives yet? Not mine. I'm still in a subconductive world, baby. A lot of these col technologies just end up not having practical, cost effective uses, and remain just cool sound-bites on a website like this, or on the Discovery Channel. The cost of putting cooling lasers in my computer is still going to be far more expensive than me buying a portable icebox and sticking my computer inside of that for at least the next 2 decades.
On top of that, The Man wants to do everything possible to keep lasers out of the hands of the public. Which is why we can only get those really weenie 3 volt 600 nm laser pointers. The government's just afraid in general of us doing stuff like, getting a bunch of cooling lasers and our Playstation 2s, and taking over Canada or something.
Exactly. I read the headline, and I was like, "WTF? A solar panel? To power what, the LEDs?!"
Back in high school we were trying to build some remote controlled cars that were solar powered. Unfortunately for us, the solar cells readily available to us (project had to come in under $100.) provided like 1.5 volts...at noon...on a cloudless day. (Those are the actual specs given on the packaging, btw, I'm not making this up.) We would have need to stcik 4 of them them on to equal a 9-volt, and the stupid cars had to run indoors, which completely scrapped the idea.
Solar power's fine and all, but you need a whole lot of solar collectors to generate any sort of power, it's like wind and hydroelectric power. There's a lot of it out there in nature, but it's all spread out. You got to make a better (or bigger) funnel before you can hope to do anything with this ambient engery. You don't see people sticking little windmills to their laptops now, do you? Although maybe hamsters on hamster wheels might be an idea...you'd probably get more power from it than the stupid solar cell. To think they want $395 for it, too. This is what happens whan you let "First Posters" run a company.
Exactly, they need to change their business model if they want to attract the people that were trying to hack the boxes. Why? Because these guys weren't their target customers. You've these cheap terminals sitting on shelves that are targeted and Mom & Pop Public, and then all of a sudden the /. effect happens, and the Circuit City stores are now packed with a bunch of 12 year olds who have just finished pouring hot grits down their pants. (Take a joke people.)
So how do you retain the new, more expectant customers? You change your product, or change your business model. Although, I don't realistically see how you're going to get a bunch of people to buy your system, when the only thing that really sold it was the price.
I don't think netpliance was looking into jumping into the terminal market when they started business. I think they were probably looking to make the i-opener reel in some of the target iMac buyers. (which is a noble cause in and of itself.)But maybe terminal should be their new plan. Screw the ISP agreement (or else you might as well just get a cheap machine from Best Buy or Fry's that asks for the same thing.) and sell these things where you'll make a profit. Make money on the OS variety (Linux doesn't "cost" anything and you can make the $$$ back on the installation labor.) and maybe you can retain these new eyeballs you got looking over at you. I really don't see how you're going to retain the accidental clientele any other way.
Puff Daddy owns LinuxOne, and he's planning to just steal RedHat, and remix it. Come to think of it Linux's open source-ness would just fit right up his alley.
Here's the review my roomate put up of the Daikatana demo...a little more than a full year ago.
Gameplayer.com
Think about that for a second...remember how long it took even the demo to come out? And from what I saw in the demo, UT and Q3 both kick the crap out of this game. I don't see how anyone could be a diehard fan of this game after playing the other 2 alternatives. The ONE feature that Daikatana had that I DID like, was that it told you how dead you were. If you had 3 health and someone shot you with a rocket launcher, before you clicked to respawn, your health would be -110 or something.
BTW, games are never really in development for "only a year", if they're good. When I was working at Squaresoft, it took a year to port FF7 over to the PC. From the time you first hear about a game, to the time it gets released may be a year, but they've have designers, artists, and others going at it for probably 2-3. Just as a point of reference, while we were working on finishing 7 PC, the lead programmer was getting calls from the lead programmer on FF 9...before FF 8 was released in Japan.
Dude...it's the French...the same people who managed to be attached to the losing side of the French/Indian War without ever even actually fighting in it.
On the plus side...maybe you could go, and hack government servers and host all sorts of kiddie porn on there, and get the administrators in the government screwed. =)
It was Maggie, you fool.
Personally...I'd like to find out whether Michael Jackson is black or white.
Yeah...that's why I recommend that they sell their MP3s. I never recommended jacking them. Your link says pretty much the same thing I said...with more numbers. MP3 albums are pretty good for the artist. I read figures where they get near $6 an album. That's a ton compared to what they normally get. I'm all for that...it's not a perfect situation...but it does a lot more for them than sticking around with the conventional method.
But you should definitely have some way out if you think the songs suck. Like if the band totally sells-out and adds Britney Spears to their group, then you can ask for your (available) money back.
I don't want this to be like the band not having any creative say, either, so they're so worried about people wanting their money back that they don't stray from their "formula".
I STILL don't want to pay $4.99 to the retail outlet, $8.44 to the producers and a paltry $.56 to the artist.
Maybe the producers are 35% less bastardly now...that's still 65% bastardly.
Bottom line, there's a lot of money to be made in the music industry...if you're not a musician. Hell..if this LinuxOne POS goes through the roof, maybe artists should release "Music IPOs". Buying and holding shares will entitle you to all the albums they ever release. It can't jack up the stock market any worse than it is now.
What I really like about this RIAA vs. everyone on the planet battle is that they keep crying about how the artists are hurt by MP3 transfer. Well, they posted huge profits...so they aren't being hurt. For a second, let's take a look at the RIAA argument.
According to TLC in their VH1 "Behind the Music" interview, they got a whopping...56 cents per CD they released. (BTW, the 8% sales tax on the CD ends up being $1.12 on a $13.99 CD...twice what TLC got per album.) So, if their album sold 1 million copies (extremely successful.) they all got, total...$560,000. Or basically $186,667 for T, L and C, respectively. Meanwhile, there's $13,430,000 floating around from sales of THEIR album that they aren't getting. Granted, it does cost 3 cents/CD to press, master, and mass produce a CD.
The RIAA wants to talk about *US* hurting the artist? Why don't they just GIVE the ARTIST MORE MONEY? The part in Katz' article about artists being able to sell their own music on the web at $1 a CD and make more than they get out of their record contracts is TRUE. (Although Jon really didn't have to rewrite Dune to make 2 or 3 points.)
I'm a huge They Might Be Giants fan. Recently, they released an album on the web, in MP3 only format. It cost $8. While browsing around on Napster, every once in a while I look for TMBG songs, just to see what's floating out there. Although the producer said the album was "the most successful internet only album ever" I have NEVER found any of the TMBG songs from that album on Napster. (although there are upwards of 3 terabytes of MP3s shared on Napster on a given day now.)
So why is this? Artist loyalty? Amongst pirates? Yes...it exists. Maybe people are tired of giving upwards of $13 million to bastards like Suge Knight and that music thief Puff Daddy. Hell...Jennifer Lopez couldn't even afford to wear a real dress to the Grammys...she had to wear a curtain. (nobody ever said all side-effects were bad.) I'd much rather pay $8 for an e-album where upwards of half went to support the band than pay $13 to a producer and a half dollar to the group that does the actual work.
Producers do actually do some hard work, but it's not 24 times as much work as the artists do. I'm all for supporting the artists. But I ain't about supporting some guy sitting on his ass, and milking my groups, bastardizing their work, and then discarding them. It's time for a paradigm shift. It starts with MP3s and e-albums. Support them.
If you look on this website, (My definite source for what's going on with movies.) you'll see the following timeline for Snow Crash's development:
September, 1996... Marco Brambilla is announced to direct the Snow Crash adaptation. [Info and project annoucement courtesy of 'shape'.]
December 2, 1996... Jeffrey Nachmanoff lands the gig to adapt Stephenson's novel. Variety magazine quotes Nachmanoff that he believes the book is "...about the disintergration of American society in the information age." Nachmanoff hopes to start fresh on his take of the story; other screenwriters had turned in previous drafts of the work with no one ever advancing the status of the project. [Scoop sent in by 'shape' and 'pkalapa'; some material acknowledged to Variety.]
October 21, 1997... Nothing new has been reported about the development of the project, except for this one scoop we received: "The project is dead." With nothing new to report of in months the film may very well be trapped in limbo. [Scoop submitted anonymously.]
The project's been reported dead for nearly 2 1/2 years now. The art you have is probably from WAY back.
I don't think the mission was "doomed to fail" like all these media sensationalists are trying to claim.
I believe the story I read said that lander hadn't gone through sufficient tests and there was a problem with the engine cut-off system. I think they just went ahead with it because of recent failure, and figured it would work, because of, as the previous post mentioned, all the hard work that had gone into it.
Were it, "doomed from launch" it'd be utterly stupid to launch the thing. But sometimes companies try and push stuff through to get it out on time, and then not have to worry about it. Game and software companies do it all the time. (Geez, I hope nobody notices the 65,000 bugs we have...) I don't think NASA is dumb, but I also don't think NASA is above those practices.
Yeah. I understand. I'm not saying the Loki guys are to blame...I'm just saying it's going to be really hard for Loki to ever compete if they're months behind with every game.
Gamers want their games like they want their money...now.
Of when it came out for Windows...9 months ago.
Gameplayer.com
If Loki wants to start making significant headway for the future of Linux gaming, they're going to have to start cranking these things out faster.
Maybe it was because Heavy Gear II had a bunch of features that were shoddily implemented in the PC version, and hopefully the Loki guys fixed them...but I doubt it.
Maybe it was because they had bigger titles to port. That too is excusable for me...but it doesn't mean that I'm going to wait 9 months to play the new, big game. Linux gaming isn't going to be able to survive on pity purchasing for long. Either gaming companies have gotta start working with the Linux guys sooner, or Loki's got to get a bigger staff...but let's face it...neither seems very likely, eh?
Uh, just curious...how many Mattel products do you buy a year?
I've never bought a Mattel product for as long as I can remember purchasing stuff. A boycott doesn't work unless you already buy the stuff, and you're a significant portion of their customers. (why boycotting a roof insulation company won't be of use, and neither will boycotting gasoline.)
I read the judge's injunction. The judge's contention was that the guys who did this were allowing kids to completely bypass the blocking software. (Funny...I don't remember this ability being mentioned anywhere in the "banned" pages.) Bottom line is right now...nobody cares. We're still just a bunch of apathetic, whiny kids to them, and not some organization that has any coherent form or power. We have to actually WIN one of these things before people will stop doing it. The mere fact that we've had so many legal "issues" that we've coined an acronym for "I am not a lawyer", alone should tell people that we've been getting dumped on in court for far too long. Somebody sue back. It's the only way. Even if we lose...it'll cost them...and that's the only REAL way to get this on the 6 o'clock news.
Just think how much public opinion of Mattel will drop when they hear, "This man's site was classified as having gaphic nudity on it, just for having criticized the company's software."