I guess I am a bit out of touch if the common desktop resolution is now 1920x1080. Maybe for newer monitors from the last 2 years or so. I also find it quite odd that it is much easier to find widescreen monitors nowadays. What happened to the 1600x1200 or 1024x768 resolutions?
I'm curious if there is anything in the legislation concerning non-physical copies of games. It would become a bit odd if warning labels started showing up in steam/gog/etc.
I can understand banning devices that have wireless connections. I can't understand having to turn off devices that have no such wireless capabilities.
i have to say, this will be the most interesting thing to watch and i'm dying to know the outcome. i don't think many people realize the gravity of this situation.
usually, the idea of an app store on Mac/PC's is the worst idea ever. as with digital distribution, u don't see prices automatically decline over time. example, take bf:bc 2. it's now selling for like $10. u won't see that. it'll stay at 60, maybe now it would be $40-50 (8 mo. later), and they would do a special for a week (that most likely u'll miss) for like $20.
BUT...
in this case, there are so many apps that have competition, and the trend of the app store that if it's over $4, no one wants it (or for big apps, over $10 and no one wants it), it will keep prices beneficial for the consumer. also, i think the idea of a software repo that actually works (sorry Linux, apt and yum will always have dependency problems and there will always be a few pieces that won't be in the repo and you can't get because it won't work compiling from scratch), is brilliant.
That's one big thing. Now here is the other big thing. I'm curious to see what actully happens. Unless it's for promotional sake, or promo'ing the brand (like say netflix, just getting it on as many platforms as u can), or someone huge (like adobe), every developer that has made a complex and useful program will just pack up and leave. There will be a mass exodus to windows. MS was considering an app store. They might see developers flood to windows for that reason. And since MS's strategy is to support devs, it will actually can the idea of an app store. Yes, they may not make money on them, but it strengthens window's hold because no one wants to develop for Mac.
Yes, there will be tons of developers. But for once, I feel bad for the prices they charge. How do you make a living selling a DTP app that you spent years making for $2? You can't run a business like that. The only ones left will be small one-man shops. Because certainly no business can run on those kind of revenues. And the problem will be just that. You won't see a full featured complex app because the only ones able to make it are businesses and they all left because they couldn't make money.
I really am dying to see what happens.
The problem with your assumptions is that there is already precedent for this. Just look at Steam. It is already on mac along with pc and games still sell for $50 along with plenty of indie games closer to the $5 or $10 range.
I also completely disagree with your assessment of Civ V in general. While there are changes I'm not fond of (such as lack of culture flipping cities, or removal of religion and corporations), on the whole it is indeed a marked improvement over the previous entries in the series.
I would agree except for two key facts. The multiplayer in civ V and the AI both seemed to be downgraded compared to civ 4. Almost all of the games I play in civ nowadays are multiplayer. I also think the AI in 4 is a lot more interesting and not simply just more free stuff for the computer. If they solve one of these two problems I'll buy 5, but until then I'll just stick to 4.
You need a room about 4 times the size of my living room to use the things.
Is your living room a closet? I don't have much space in front of my TV (about 8 feet wide by 8-9 feet deep) and the Kinect works just fine. I don't even use all of that space.
The thing is that a lot of people that play games on their tv don't have this kind of room. The distance for my tv to couch is only 5ft or so. A lot of people in apartments are in the same boat and so there is a large number of people that this just doesn't work well with.
This is exactly why libraries shouldn't die right here. A company is not beholden to freedom of speech issues the same way an institution like a library is.
I really wish the library had a online book store like Amazon.
A lot do have ways to check books out digitally. Here is the site my library uses for getting e-books:moldi.org
Part of the problem is that there are a lot of e-books that can only be found on Amazon. Hopefully this will change in the future so that one can read their e-books on any device one wishes.
But are you more likely to buy the game? I doubt that most people would. Somebody is excited about a game - downloads the demo, and it doesn't measure up to their excitement, so they don't purchase it.
For me if the game is good, and the demo only shows you just enough to play the game I will usually grab it if it is an indie game. If the demo gives too much then I'm less likely to buy it since playing the demo may give me enough entertainment. Hard to balance the amount of stuff to put in the demo.
The internet can't replace split-screen's feeling - being next to your friends while playing is a different, much more fun experience. LAN gaming, on the other hand, can. More people have more consoles, and they are getting easier to move about, as are TVs (as they become flat). Why cram 4 players onto one console when you can have a console each?
I agree with this and this is why I've really gotten into board gaming. You get good game design, and you get to be social with friends while doing it. The social aspect is at least half the reason people get into local gaming whether it be console co-op, roleplaying, board or card games.
around 10 years ago, I was in high school and played 4-players Goldeneye on a 12" tv. Each player had a 6" subscreen.
Now that I have a job and enough money to be able to buy things, I have a 42" tv. Can't imagine why I wouldn't be able to play a 16 players split-screen game with a 10.5" subscreen for each player (except I would need lots of controllers and beers).
Well, the most you'll get is 10 player bomberman. Which I will have to say is an incredible experience when you can get all of the 10 people in on it. You essentially needed two of the 1-4 controller ports and 10 controllers and a Sega Saturn. It is still worth doing but just hard to find the hardware at this point.
The funny thing is, I went to a regular public school in a small town of Georgia...
You would think if a great HS CS education could be had here, California surely would go way above and beyond.
I would say that this is probably because of Georgia Tech. Having a really good engineering school will do wonders for the high schools in nearby areas. California also has good engineering schools so there are probably similar great high school programs over there. Do understand though that what you described is much more akin to a Comp E or EE program rather than a CS program.
Re:"The Firefox 4 beta seems to work fine."
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Firefox 4b7 no workie.
It is also not working for me. I believe it is because our machines don't have opengl, which is required for things to work. Will have to check on this later on my non-work machine.
It does boggle my mind that the $0/month over-the-air HDTV is 10X better quality than Cox $50/month cable HDTV. The only exception is FIOS HDTV. I far and away prefer the FIOS picture over OTA.
That is because the pipes for the cable hdtv can only have so much throughput. If they want to put in more hdtv channels then the content has to be compressed or the throughput needs to be increased. COX obviously is going the compression route.
You don't need perfect control, just "good enough" so that you avoid the complications of high blood sugar and insulin overdoses. Remember, people on a tight control regime have 3x the insulin reactions, and those reactions cause brain damage. Brain damage is cumulative. They used to purposefully put people into insulin shock as an alternative to electro-convulsive therapy for a reason - it can permanently alter^Wdamage the brain. Going low two or three times a wee will, over the long term, have side effects, same as chronic binge drinking will. It's called hypoglycemic diabetic dementia for a reason,
and it's the dirty little secret you won't hear anyone talk about when it comes to the risks of too-tight control.
I agree with all of that and I don't get lows like that anymore. The reason is because of the sensor. It indicates to me whenever my bg level is dropping below a certain level (set by yourself). With that I can have tight control AND not get the lows. I also rarely get bg levels above 200 at this point too because of this.
What works as a basal dose in one situation can be a massive overdose in another. Situations change, not just from day to day, but hour to hour.
What would be an acceptable dose, knowing that you're going to eat in 4 hours, doesn't work if you're delayed an additional 4 hours. Or if you suddenly have to do a lot of physical stuff for a few hours, your "safe basal dose" will put you flat out on the floor.
So I've been using an insulin pump for around 2 years and will have to say that it Vastly improved my life. I will agree that I needed to test quite a lot for things to work right.
What was even better than just the pump was the addition of a glucose real time sensor. With that on I know whenever my sugar is dropping too low or getting too high. I will also say that with exercise it is really easy to make it so you don't have issues, simply do a temporary basal for a couple hours that is 10-25% of what you normally get and things end up fine. I also don't HAVE to eat a meal if I don't want to. If you are on a pump and you HAVE to eat a meal it is because your insulin rates aren't right.
The biggest issues I see it facing is how much the games cost for it. And how the PSP brand can survive if it is tied to a single android phone model from a single manufacturer. The PSP 1 platform asted 5 years (and is still limping along). Phones don't last a year before something better comes along, so what are Sony's long term plans here? What happens if Google launches a gaming platform for example.
Well One would hope that they developed the engine for the games in a way so that when OS updates are done the sony game engine for it will also be updated. That way you still get better phone features while keeping the ability to use it for the psphone games.
I'm either going to explain a cultural reference to non-Americans, or I'm going to overexplain a joke and get "Whoooshed". (Both, probably, now that I've mentioned it).
On network TV, during commercial breaks in prime time (8pm-11pm), the evening news, which comes on at 11, will "tease" a story that they're reporting on with a short summary and the promise of some exciting video in order to keep you watching after your show is over. "Fire guts popular downtown restaurant. Film at 11." Taking that common phrase out of context, the meme has become "[Obvious statement]. Film at 11."
It also is something that was used in the movie "Kentucky Fried Movie" quite a bit. I always associated the phrase with that rather than actual tv networks doing it.
As soon as I saw this thing was rooted, I ran out and bought one - partially because it is a really nice little Android tablet, but mostly because it's a damn nice reader. The first app I put on it was the Kindle app. It's arguably the best Kindle reader out there.
I also bought some Nook books, which I had not done before.
I would not have either purchased a Nook (I expect there will be better/cheaper Android tabs very shortly - look at all the dual core tegra tablets on the way...) or purchased any Nook Books, except it now runs my Kindle library.
The Nook absolutely rocks, BTW. Wonderful form factor, lots of space, pretty quick, decent price. Could maybe use a few more buttons (menu and back are missing) but that can be worked around. It also needs Froyo, but other than that, awesome device.
Would love to see iSuppli pricing for this thing; since it's basically a repackaged Beagle Board, I bet they are doing OK on each unit. Got to be much cheaper to build than an iPad and iSuppli priced that at $229 back in February - and that had a lot more flash on board. $150?
I'm just waiting for something like this to work with an e-reader that uses e-ink. The e-ink is 75% of why I got an e-reader since it is much easier to read.
I have not used the mail service from netflix in 2 years, and I just expanded my account to 3 dvds at a time (because it also allows me 3 devices streaming at a time). Most everyone I know is the same way, and Netflix corroborates my story, because they just now started offering a streaming only service.
Netflix is simply the best legal streaming video service on the internet now, sometimes I forget that they do DVDs at all.
I still mostly use their dvd/blue-ray delivery because of the improved quality and access to blue ray. There are also plenty of things that you just can't watch unless you get it through disc format.
Firstly, take Tribes 2. Take as many of the original team as possible, and make them replay their game.
Then, add to that. Improve the netcode and get 64x64 players running smoothly as a minimum. Play with some of the community-made enhancements and mods, perhaps integrate them.
Thirdly, more maps. Larger maps, open and with a great many routes.
Fourth, include a well-optimized in-game VoIP system.
Finally, upgrade the graphics. This is the LEAST important part, but it'd be nice.
Create this game for the PC and then port it to consoles if it will work well, and congratulations. You've just made the best FPS ever.
I'm not sure if you knew, but the group, hi rez studios, that did Global Agenda got the rights to Tribes and they are planning on making a new version of Tribes.
Because I hate PC controls, can't play a PC game on my couch, got sick of trying to figure out if I had the right video card/what settings I had to run at/if I needed to upgrade/paying for constant upgrades/etc. I like the ergonomic analog controller. I like the fact that I never have to worry about compatibility issues and upgrades only come along every five years.
sure you can, almost all hd tvs nowadays can be used like a monitor. Just get a usb (like a 360 controller) controller, plug it in and just choose the joystick controls for the game of choice.
And I like the simplicity and ease of Xbox Live.
I also like the fact that I can buy and sell my games used. I buy almost all of my games used (for a fraction of what I would have paid for them new). You can't do that with PC games anymore, thanks to Steam and authentication.
Right but Steam, and many other download game services, actually do sales. I just get my games from Steam when there is a sale and I can get most things from at most $30 and as little as $1. These are also new, and you have the same kind of friends network on steam that you get with the consoles. Admittedly you can't sell the games, but you also don't have to EVER swap discs. You also can just log into steam from any pc and get the games you own downloaded.
You know, the kind where the content was not owned and searched by a multinational corporation?
I mean it as a serious question, not rhetorical. Why are SO many people willing to have all their communication logged and data-mined by for-profit companies? We've had email since around 1720. OK, maybe more like 1970-1, but anyway still a really long time. Until very recently, it was never true that a huge fraction of it was all going through facebook or google.
Why on earth would people give that up? I can't see what benefit they are getting. As far as I can tell, all modes allowed by something like gmail or facebook can be accomplished without the corporate overlords in the picture. There is email, non-corporate IM, and so forth.
What am I missing? I seem perfectly able to communicate with all my friends online both in real time and non-real time without using those things, so it can't be "you will be isolated!!11!one!"
I find the real killer feature of gmail, and the reason I continue to use it, is really good message grouping. It makes reading emails from a group email very manageable and easy to see the flow of conversation. The ease of being able to check it anywhere is also helpful, but any online email has that feature.
But where do you draw the line? Borderlands released extra content as DLC- some of it was mostly based on existing art assets such as the arena based content, but other DLC had a lot of new content- the zombie island release.
You could argue that both these should've been in the game at release, you could argue that the arena one should, or you can argue that both are worthwhile bits of additional content.
You know, what I wanted from the DLC was both non-drm and actual back story to the main characters in the game. Before the game came out they mentioned some crazy back story stuff for the 4 characters then nothing came about for it. That was mainly why I didn't get much of this game's dlc. At least they fixed the DRM by the 3rd DLC.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I am a bit out of touch if the common desktop resolution is now 1920x1080. Maybe for newer monitors from the last 2 years or so. I also find it quite odd that it is much easier to find widescreen monitors nowadays. What happened to the 1600x1200 or 1024x768 resolutions?
I'm curious if there is anything in the legislation concerning non-physical copies of games. It would become a bit odd if warning labels started showing up in steam/gog/etc.
I can understand banning devices that have wireless connections. I can't understand having to turn off devices that have no such wireless capabilities.
i have to say, this will be the most interesting thing to watch and i'm dying to know the outcome. i don't think many people realize the gravity of this situation.
usually, the idea of an app store on Mac/PC's is the worst idea ever. as with digital distribution, u don't see prices automatically decline over time. example, take bf:bc 2. it's now selling for like $10. u won't see that. it'll stay at 60, maybe now it would be $40-50 (8 mo. later), and they would do a special for a week (that most likely u'll miss) for like $20.
BUT...
in this case, there are so many apps that have competition, and the trend of the app store that if it's over $4, no one wants it (or for big apps, over $10 and no one wants it), it will keep prices beneficial for the consumer. also, i think the idea of a software repo that actually works (sorry Linux, apt and yum will always have dependency problems and there will always be a few pieces that won't be in the repo and you can't get because it won't work compiling from scratch), is brilliant.
That's one big thing. Now here is the other big thing. I'm curious to see what actully happens. Unless it's for promotional sake, or promo'ing the brand (like say netflix, just getting it on as many platforms as u can), or someone huge (like adobe), every developer that has made a complex and useful program will just pack up and leave. There will be a mass exodus to windows. MS was considering an app store. They might see developers flood to windows for that reason. And since MS's strategy is to support devs, it will actually can the idea of an app store. Yes, they may not make money on them, but it strengthens window's hold because no one wants to develop for Mac.
Yes, there will be tons of developers. But for once, I feel bad for the prices they charge. How do you make a living selling a DTP app that you spent years making for $2? You can't run a business like that. The only ones left will be small one-man shops. Because certainly no business can run on those kind of revenues. And the problem will be just that. You won't see a full featured complex app because the only ones able to make it are businesses and they all left because they couldn't make money.
I really am dying to see what happens.
The problem with your assumptions is that there is already precedent for this. Just look at Steam. It is already on mac along with pc and games still sell for $50 along with plenty of indie games closer to the $5 or $10 range.
I also completely disagree with your assessment of Civ V in general. While there are changes I'm not fond of (such as lack of culture flipping cities, or removal of religion and corporations), on the whole it is indeed a marked improvement over the previous entries in the series.
I would agree except for two key facts. The multiplayer in civ V and the AI both seemed to be downgraded compared to civ 4. Almost all of the games I play in civ nowadays are multiplayer. I also think the AI in 4 is a lot more interesting and not simply just more free stuff for the computer. If they solve one of these two problems I'll buy 5, but until then I'll just stick to 4.
You need a room about 4 times the size of my living room to use the things.
Is your living room a closet? I don't have much space in front of my TV (about 8 feet wide by 8-9 feet deep) and the Kinect works just fine. I don't even use all of that space.
The thing is that a lot of people that play games on their tv don't have this kind of room. The distance for my tv to couch is only 5ft or so. A lot of people in apartments are in the same boat and so there is a large number of people that this just doesn't work well with.
Be nice to mention what platform it's for.
Yeah, one would hope that slashdot would mention that in the summary. Especially when there is probably a large portion of readers using android only.
This is exactly why libraries shouldn't die right here. A company is not beholden to freedom of speech issues the same way an institution like a library is.
I really wish the library had a online book store like Amazon.
A lot do have ways to check books out digitally. Here is the site my library uses for getting e-books:moldi.org Part of the problem is that there are a lot of e-books that can only be found on Amazon. Hopefully this will change in the future so that one can read their e-books on any device one wishes.
But are you more likely to buy the game? I doubt that most people would. Somebody is excited about a game - downloads the demo, and it doesn't measure up to their excitement, so they don't purchase it.
For me if the game is good, and the demo only shows you just enough to play the game I will usually grab it if it is an indie game. If the demo gives too much then I'm less likely to buy it since playing the demo may give me enough entertainment. Hard to balance the amount of stuff to put in the demo.
The internet can't replace split-screen's feeling - being next to your friends while playing is a different, much more fun experience. LAN gaming, on the other hand, can. More people have more consoles, and they are getting easier to move about, as are TVs (as they become flat). Why cram 4 players onto one console when you can have a console each?
I agree with this and this is why I've really gotten into board gaming. You get good game design, and you get to be social with friends while doing it. The social aspect is at least half the reason people get into local gaming whether it be console co-op, roleplaying, board or card games.
around 10 years ago, I was in high school and played 4-players Goldeneye on a 12" tv. Each player had a 6" subscreen.
Now that I have a job and enough money to be able to buy things, I have a 42" tv. Can't imagine why I wouldn't be able to play a 16 players split-screen game with a 10.5" subscreen for each player (except I would need lots of controllers and beers).
Well, the most you'll get is 10 player bomberman. Which I will have to say is an incredible experience when you can get all of the 10 people in on it. You essentially needed two of the 1-4 controller ports and 10 controllers and a Sega Saturn. It is still worth doing but just hard to find the hardware at this point.
The funny thing is, I went to a regular public school in a small town of Georgia... You would think if a great HS CS education could be had here, California surely would go way above and beyond.
I would say that this is probably because of Georgia Tech. Having a really good engineering school will do wonders for the high schools in nearby areas. California also has good engineering schools so there are probably similar great high school programs over there. Do understand though that what you described is much more akin to a Comp E or EE program rather than a CS program.
Firefox 4b7 no workie.
It is also not working for me. I believe it is because our machines don't have opengl, which is required for things to work. Will have to check on this later on my non-work machine.
It does boggle my mind that the $0/month over-the-air HDTV is 10X better quality than Cox $50/month cable HDTV. The only exception is FIOS HDTV. I far and away prefer the FIOS picture over OTA.
That is because the pipes for the cable hdtv can only have so much throughput. If they want to put in more hdtv channels then the content has to be compressed or the throughput needs to be increased. COX obviously is going the compression route.
You don't need perfect control, just "good enough" so that you avoid the complications of high blood sugar and insulin overdoses. Remember, people on a tight control regime have 3x the insulin reactions, and those reactions cause brain damage. Brain damage is cumulative. They used to purposefully put people into insulin shock as an alternative to electro-convulsive therapy for a reason - it can permanently alter^Wdamage the brain. Going low two or three times a wee will, over the long term, have side effects, same as chronic binge drinking will. It's called hypoglycemic diabetic dementia for a reason, and it's the dirty little secret you won't hear anyone talk about when it comes to the risks of too-tight control.
I agree with all of that and I don't get lows like that anymore. The reason is because of the sensor. It indicates to me whenever my bg level is dropping below a certain level (set by yourself). With that I can have tight control AND not get the lows. I also rarely get bg levels above 200 at this point too because of this.
What works as a basal dose in one situation can be a massive overdose in another. Situations change, not just from day to day, but hour to hour.
What would be an acceptable dose, knowing that you're going to eat in 4 hours, doesn't work if you're delayed an additional 4 hours. Or if you suddenly have to do a lot of physical stuff for a few hours, your "safe basal dose" will put you flat out on the floor.
So I've been using an insulin pump for around 2 years and will have to say that it Vastly improved my life. I will agree that I needed to test quite a lot for things to work right. What was even better than just the pump was the addition of a glucose real time sensor. With that on I know whenever my sugar is dropping too low or getting too high. I will also say that with exercise it is really easy to make it so you don't have issues, simply do a temporary basal for a couple hours that is 10-25% of what you normally get and things end up fine. I also don't HAVE to eat a meal if I don't want to. If you are on a pump and you HAVE to eat a meal it is because your insulin rates aren't right.
The biggest issues I see it facing is how much the games cost for it. And how the PSP brand can survive if it is tied to a single android phone model from a single manufacturer. The PSP 1 platform asted 5 years (and is still limping along). Phones don't last a year before something better comes along, so what are Sony's long term plans here? What happens if Google launches a gaming platform for example.
Well One would hope that they developed the engine for the games in a way so that when OS updates are done the sony game engine for it will also be updated. That way you still get better phone features while keeping the ability to use it for the psphone games.
Which news channel shows films at 11?
I'm either going to explain a cultural reference to non-Americans, or I'm going to overexplain a joke and get "Whoooshed". (Both, probably, now that I've mentioned it).
On network TV, during commercial breaks in prime time (8pm-11pm), the evening news, which comes on at 11, will "tease" a story that they're reporting on with a short summary and the promise of some exciting video in order to keep you watching after your show is over. "Fire guts popular downtown restaurant. Film at 11." Taking that common phrase out of context, the meme has become "[Obvious statement]. Film at 11."
It also is something that was used in the movie "Kentucky Fried Movie" quite a bit. I always associated the phrase with that rather than actual tv networks doing it.
As soon as I saw this thing was rooted, I ran out and bought one - partially because it is a really nice little Android tablet, but mostly because it's a damn nice reader. The first app I put on it was the Kindle app. It's arguably the best Kindle reader out there.
I also bought some Nook books, which I had not done before.
I would not have either purchased a Nook (I expect there will be better/cheaper Android tabs very shortly - look at all the dual core tegra tablets on the way...) or purchased any Nook Books, except it now runs my Kindle library.
The Nook absolutely rocks, BTW. Wonderful form factor, lots of space, pretty quick, decent price. Could maybe use a few more buttons (menu and back are missing) but that can be worked around. It also needs Froyo, but other than that, awesome device.
Would love to see iSuppli pricing for this thing; since it's basically a repackaged Beagle Board, I bet they are doing OK on each unit. Got to be much cheaper to build than an iPad and iSuppli priced that at $229 back in February - and that had a lot more flash on board. $150?
I'm just waiting for something like this to work with an e-reader that uses e-ink. The e-ink is 75% of why I got an e-reader since it is much easier to read.
Welcome our astrobiological overlords.
I have not used the mail service from netflix in 2 years, and I just expanded my account to 3 dvds at a time (because it also allows me 3 devices streaming at a time). Most everyone I know is the same way, and Netflix corroborates my story, because they just now started offering a streaming only service. Netflix is simply the best legal streaming video service on the internet now, sometimes I forget that they do DVDs at all.
I still mostly use their dvd/blue-ray delivery because of the improved quality and access to blue ray. There are also plenty of things that you just can't watch unless you get it through disc format.
Firstly, take Tribes 2. Take as many of the original team as possible, and make them replay their game. Then, add to that. Improve the netcode and get 64x64 players running smoothly as a minimum. Play with some of the community-made enhancements and mods, perhaps integrate them. Thirdly, more maps. Larger maps, open and with a great many routes. Fourth, include a well-optimized in-game VoIP system. Finally, upgrade the graphics. This is the LEAST important part, but it'd be nice.
Create this game for the PC and then port it to consoles if it will work well, and congratulations. You've just made the best FPS ever.
I'm not sure if you knew, but the group, hi rez studios, that did Global Agenda got the rights to Tribes and they are planning on making a new version of Tribes.
Because I hate PC controls, can't play a PC game on my couch, got sick of trying to figure out if I had the right video card/what settings I had to run at/if I needed to upgrade/paying for constant upgrades/etc. I like the ergonomic analog controller. I like the fact that I never have to worry about compatibility issues and upgrades only come along every five years.
sure you can, almost all hd tvs nowadays can be used like a monitor. Just get a usb (like a 360 controller) controller, plug it in and just choose the joystick controls for the game of choice.
And I like the simplicity and ease of Xbox Live.
I also like the fact that I can buy and sell my games used. I buy almost all of my games used (for a fraction of what I would have paid for them new). You can't do that with PC games anymore, thanks to Steam and authentication.
Right but Steam, and many other download game services, actually do sales. I just get my games from Steam when there is a sale and I can get most things from at most $30 and as little as $1. These are also new, and you have the same kind of friends network on steam that you get with the consoles. Admittedly you can't sell the games, but you also don't have to EVER swap discs. You also can just log into steam from any pc and get the games you own downloaded.
You know, the kind where the content was not owned and searched by a multinational corporation?
I mean it as a serious question, not rhetorical. Why are SO many people willing to have all their communication logged and data-mined by for-profit companies? We've had email since around 1720. OK, maybe more like 1970-1, but anyway still a really long time. Until very recently, it was never true that a huge fraction of it was all going through facebook or google.
Why on earth would people give that up? I can't see what benefit they are getting. As far as I can tell, all modes allowed by something like gmail or facebook can be accomplished without the corporate overlords in the picture. There is email, non-corporate IM, and so forth.
What am I missing? I seem perfectly able to communicate with all my friends online both in real time and non-real time without using those things, so it can't be "you will be isolated!!11!one!"
I find the real killer feature of gmail, and the reason I continue to use it, is really good message grouping. It makes reading emails from a group email very manageable and easy to see the flow of conversation. The ease of being able to check it anywhere is also helpful, but any online email has that feature.
But where do you draw the line? Borderlands released extra content as DLC- some of it was mostly based on existing art assets such as the arena based content, but other DLC had a lot of new content- the zombie island release.
You could argue that both these should've been in the game at release, you could argue that the arena one should, or you can argue that both are worthwhile bits of additional content.
You know, what I wanted from the DLC was both non-drm and actual back story to the main characters in the game. Before the game came out they mentioned some crazy back story stuff for the 4 characters then nothing came about for it. That was mainly why I didn't get much of this game's dlc. At least they fixed the DRM by the 3rd DLC.