Does it work? What does it do? Why am I still stuck on this planet? Where's my Quantum Death Ray? My Quantum toaster? How about a way to close my pants that has the safety of buttons but the speed of a zipper?
Obviously, I'm not a physicist. So let me preface by saying that pretty much everything in Quantum Mechanics and String Theory sounds to laymen like, "It is because we say so, you dork." So, spare me the replies like, "YOU wouldn't get it until years of..."
If I understand the basic paradox that started everybody marching down Quantum Road was: Light is a particle if you look at it one way, but a wave if you look at it another way. Therefore it must be both or neither, but can't truly be one or the other.
How's this for an alternate take: Light is a particle if you look at it one way, but a wave if you look at it another way. Therefore we are really terrible at observing light, no further conclusions can be drawn until we find better ways of observing.
All models break down at some point. This one seems to have started broken. Castles of nonesense are built all over it.
I'll second that. Without Gene Siskel to keep him in check, he's really gone off the deep end. I love it when he explains his sliding scale of movie reviews. It costs me the same money to see a Steven Speilberg movie as it does some unknown indie film. Ebert makes it into a game of his expectations vs. reality. Aren't we supposed to expect some degree o neutrality in reviews? We already have to contend with our own expectations of the film, now we need to take into account all Ebert's baggage too?
Microsoft's past successes in arenas with competition has been to under price the other guy. Since people who use web searches don't actually pay for them, they can't do that. I suppose Microsoft could offer cheaper, even free, advertising links from their searches, but that won't make them more popular with the actual users of web searches. In publishing, your ad rate is determined in part by your circulation. Even if Microsoft gives away ads, they are only worth as much as the amount of use the search engine gets, at best.
I don't think it's possible for Microsoft search to trounce Google, because there is no ability to wage an effective price war. That effectively takes the most successful MS strategy off the table. Even with obscene R&D money at their disposal, they haven't been able to make a profit with X-Box. How are they supposed to make a profit on a service end users don't ever pay for? Google almost never fails to find what I'm looking for. What is Microsoft going to find that Google misses?
It looks like they are going to shut down the EB distribution chain and keep the Gamestop one. It's a bummer because in my mall the EB almost always gets the games a day earlier than the Gamestop. Also, the staff seems a little better in general. I wonder if the pay scales are comparable.
I'm noticing a huge gap developing in games selection at the mall stores vs. say Best Buy and other Big Box stores. Lots of games never appear on the shelves of the big box stores. The PS2 version of Psychonauts comes to mind first - no sign of it on any shelves outside of the mall. We're not just looking at a monopoly on mall game stores, but single-company monopoly on the retail sales of the more obscure titles.
I never really was too much of a fan of on-line shopping. I have a hard time getting around the delayed gratification. Slowly, I'm changing my buying habits. I hate it when the day I decided to poke around the mall store turns out to be the release date for some hot game and the tiny stores get mobbed with people claiming their pre-orders.
Enough of my complaining though, I'm going to go read a book.
Can you really fault a kid for wanting to steal the latest copy Gangsta Rap Knee-Cap? The music glorifies the life of crime, so the would-be customers embrace that ethic by stealing that music. Makes perfect sense to me.
If the RIAA members want a more mature audience of paying customers, perhaps they should attempt to create a more mature product. Since they obviously aren't going to do that, they should just accept the shrinkage and price accordingly, like every other business in the world.
My whole life the record companies have been blaming their customers. Home taping was killing music. Bootlegging concerts was killing music, even though there's little interest in official live albums. Now P2P is killing music until the next scapegoat comes along. This is a pretty long swan song, isn't it?
To me it looked like they were talking about shares of Id. Just because a company isn't privately traded doesn't mean it isn't divided into shares. Typically there's some silent partners, and the founding employees own various pieces of the pie. Had Id been on the market, it could be argued that the buyout dance with Activision was a tool to manipulate the price. But, when the news watching public can't set the price, that doesn't really apply.
Adrian Carmack might have a good case, if Id sold the company soon after his firing, especially if Activision was the buyer. Since that never happened, I don't see how he can get around the "We decided not to sell." argument that Id will certainly be making in court. Last time I checked, there was no such law stating that a company had to accept a buyout offer just because it was a really large offer.
Now, Id isn't even a publicly traded company, right? So, stock price manipulation is not really possible, even on news relating to buyouts. This whole thing sounds like a case of, "Hey lawyer, I've been wronged. Find a way to get me some money." Couldn't you look at any business venture in hindsight and claim that there were missed opportunities to make a killing? Suing over coulda, shoulda, woulda isn't going to bring you the closure you're looking for.
Anybody who embraces the notion that the company is better sold than held and operated strikes me a rather pathetic Willy Lowman.
It's not like translating documents from one format to another is rocket science. Does anybody really believe in a Post-Microsoft future where all the worlds documents are unreadable because the secret died with the MS borad of directors? Even PDF, which is a major pain, is crackable. What's the big deal?
I've worked all kinds of job for all kinds of employers. There's one common thread - you are a resource to be used at the discretion of your employer. I've been down the road of 'serious career' and it goes nowhere. More time than I've cared to count, I've watched honest, decent employers make the cold decision to burn out people like candles, so that the company can continue to exist. When it gets right down to it, they are going to do what it takes to ride the corporate ship into the sunset.
So, my advice is this: Get as much money as you can without putting in huge hours. Find your happiness elsewhere. Be upfront about overtime in the interview. 90% of the time the employer will flat out lie to you, if you are going into a high-tech sweat shop. As long as you made your intentions clear up-front, there's no guilt when you say, "I have other commitments," and even less guilt when you make your way out of there.
To help avoid finding yourself in a place where burnout is S.O.P., you can use what I call the "old man test." Look around on the interview. See any old men? If not, it's probably a place that tosses employees out every time they change light bulbs. Another thing you need to worry about is responsibility creep. This is especially bad if you are a jack of all trades sort of person. As time goes on, a job that was decent grows into a monster. If you have the sort of personal skills which allow you to refuse taking on new tasks, you probably aren't a Slashdot regular. It's tough because you need to walk the line between being useful and being a catch-all. In general, I find that most technical employees are allowed very little leeway in refusing new tasks.
Anyway, that's what I strive for: Decent pay for a decent day's work. I'm not out to change the world from the office. I just want some money for some of my time. That's really all your employer wants too. I've got my own interests outside the office. I don't expect my job to grant me my character or reason to live. Take it all personally, and you are just setting yourself up to be serially used and discarded.
If you really want a kid to dive into programming, I'd think Mindrover is a better choice. It's got programming, simulated physics, simulated electronics and competition that doesn't involve a roll of the dice.
I don't see how the c-Jump game would ever teach the trial and error aspects of coding. In Mindrover, you code better to win, and get to see a lot of hilarious faliures as you learn.
Re:Any top 100 list is going to have omissions
on
IGN's Top 100 Games
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· Score: 1
I'm pretty sure it was a from home to arcade. The only one I ever saw was a double sided unit that had Excitebike on the other side. This was long after the NES version were out there, and the machine was largely ignored in the arcade.
Any top 100 list is going to have omissions
on
IGN's Top 100 Games
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· Score: 1
But they should at least have a decent explanation for the #1 game being #1. They missed the most important aspect of Super Mario Brothers. It changed the format of action games from quick games based on arcade economics to long games based on an adventure game framework. This marks the point in history where home consoles stopped chasing the arcade games and became a profoundly different experience.
You must irritate the crap out of everybody who comes into contact with you on a regular basis.
No, it's just you.
Regarding the difference between Pikmin and Psychonauts:
How is it not the same?
How is it the same?
When the Game Cube was launched, it had the support of lots of 3rd party game developers that it no longer has. For whatever reason, there's a lot less in the way of titles currently available for the Cube than the PS2 or XBox. So, if somebody bought a Game Cube on the basis that a 100 year old company that been around since the very begining of video games would manage to muster enough sales to maintain the support of the third party developers, I guess there's no reason for any dissatisfaction. Everybody knows, you only buy a console on the strength of the library they currently have at the time. They can close their doors the day after you buy, and you're totally satisfied - good for you.
Regardless, if you don't fix something for a customer, they go somewhere else. If they keep giving you money and not getting what they want, the problem is their own. (
Your reading comprehension is amazing. All your sniping was just a roundabout way of agreeing with me. Did you read the parent article at all? Do you have any point to your post at all besides trying to find a whiner to burn at the stake? That's real tough on slashdot, but nevertheless, you need an army of strawmen to do it.
I'm not trying to get my money back for previous Nintendo purchases. I'm just not likely to go for whatever their new console is, especially if it's designed around some goofball controller.
I'll never post again!
Promises, promises. The first step is to fool yourself. Then you can fool the world, right?
You don't read very well do you? Where do I say that Nintendo is a failure?
When I spend my money, I am the customer. I get to vote to with my wallet, but beyond that I should get some amount of satisfaction from my purchases. Of course I have the right to complain. Extrapolating my concerns as a consumer to my habits as an employee is pretty poor logic on your part. Let it suffice to say that in my job people complain to me and I get things fixed, not the other way around.
Over the years, my good will toward Nintendo has been dropping. Even 100 year old companies can fail. Nintendo is facing a pattern of slow decline and in my opinion responding poorly to a lot of the challenges they are facing. I try to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt, but when 3rd party game companies start abandoning them by making multi-platform releases that DO NOT include the GameCube, it's a bad sign. Psychonauts not coming out for GameCube but coming out for X-Box, PC and PS2 is not at all the same thing as Pikmin being a Nintendo exclusive title.
If you are going to argue in an intellectually dishonest manner, you're going to get called on it.
All the platform developers have potentially fatal flaws in their business plans. Sony is bent on owning a format for movies. UMD movies just scream "Betamax!" to me every time I see them. Microsoft really believes that if they can prove their platform is more powerful on paper, they win.
Nintendo's recurring problem is more interesting, and potentially far worse - they are gadget crazed, and think it's great to innovate regardless of need. The Virtual Boy was a real obvious step down the wrong road. If you could have strapped the thing to your head, maybe it would have worked, but you essentially had to set up a chair and table just right to play the damn thing. Cat owners didn't stand a chance. Of course having every game start with a warning telling you not to play too long was a bad way to inspire addictive gaming. As bad as that was, it was relatively harmless to everybody except Nintendo and early adopters.
The Game Cube, GBA connectivity was a good idea implemented poorly. I had GBA before Gamecube, so buying the cable wasn't that big of a deal, but then you got assaulted with expensive tie-in scenarios. I bought Mario Cart DD, just to get the bonus disk for use with Fire Emblem. I like Mario Cart, but certainly would have waited for it drop in price if I wasn't interested in some extra items for Fire Emblem. I also got the GBA Zelda game mainly to see the Tingle Tuner in Wind Waker. Although Nintendo made some money off me with this scheme, they kept losing status in my mind. By the time Crystal Chronicles and 4 Swords was on the shelves, I was getting the feeling they were just cheaping me into buying a lot of crap. I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel this way. Even though I had my old GBA and the SP, the room the cube was in had poor light, so somebody would have had to suffer. Also, I'd have to buy another damn cable and I was already loving the Wavebird - more on that later - and not really wild about going back wired just to have a personal display, which is mandatory.
There was no way I was going to buy the DS. I've already got a Palm Pilot, so I'm not thrilled by the prospect of a touch screen. If you de-mystify that part, your just left with two screen of the same thing you had with the GBA. So I bolted to Sony for my handheld fix and love the PSP for all the wrong reasons - emulating Nintendo games from back in the glory years. Nintendo's foray into selling old games is expensive - one NES game per cartridge - give me a break. If for no other reason than not to have a fistful of cartridges when one would suffice - this was obvious customer abuse.
Now I don't know what the revolution controller is going to be like, but the very idea that it is going to be innovative scares me. Why? People like familiar interfaces. The best interface is a transparent one, so you can get into actual gaming. If they have some gyroscopic touch screen it's not going to be easier for me to use than something based on the basic joystick, which has been around almost as long as videogames themselves.
The worst part about deciding to be the driving force for innovation is simply that your best ideas are easily copied and you just ate all the research and development expenses for the industry. The Wavebird is great, an excellent piece of hardware, and the first wireless controller capable of playing action games well. But how long was it before you could get a reasonable copy for your PS2 - 6 months tops. Now, every console is going to have them. How about a drum interface? Cool or stupid, Sony's got it too. Thanks Nintendo, you guys are truly philanthropists!
If they would stop messing with gadgets and put more money into game development, it would be nice. It's been a really crappy summer for Cube games. Since Resident Evil 4, I'm looking for something on the Cube. Kid games? I love 'em, but where are they? Ironically, the really best Game Cube exclusives are all M titles. Maybe they should take their lumps and be the kiddie company they are alway
I've only tried the SNES emulator on 1.5, using the loader as opposed to the card swap. Currently, the performace leaves something to be desired. In order to replay an old favorite Earthbound, I need to ramp up the clock speed and skip some frames. Even then, it still slows down when you get a lot of people moving on the screen at once.
Is the performace better under firmware 1.0? I'm just wondering if dodging the anti-hacks in the firmware is causing trouble, or if it's just a function of the emulation itself.
Another observation - Maxing out the clock speed seems to speed up battery use to the point where it costs you more juice to run SNES than a game that accesses the UMD a lot.
I'm glad you're actually considering the issues. Almost every other reply is just a knee-jerk "Drugs are bad..." sort of response.
GOTO first sentence, previous post. Debt collection isn't telemarketing.
Go back a couple of posts. I'm trying to make the point that no company exists without doing something most people would consider ethically questionable. I guess I was somewhat off-topic; my bad. I think it's a mistake to consider telemarketing per se an absolute evil.
Do you not think the people are allowed to decide if the exchange is worthwhile?
Absolutely. Each person should manage his or her own phone number and system. The government should not be involved in the business of prevent you from getting annoying calls. Like every other problem the govenment takes on, you're going to get the most expensive, least effective solution.
Think of it this way. When you support a government managed DNC list, you are paying with tax dollars first, just to get the program started. As the government implements it, you don't actually pay to get your name in the list. This means all taxpayers pay regardless of participation. Then they set up a fee system for the telemarketers, which makes sense on the surface. Make the bastards who keep calling me pay. Assume that the government is really watching the program's budget carefully, which it probably isn't. The funding of the program should be taken off the backs of the taxpayer and moved on to the backs of the telemarketers, right? So, now you have a program funded by the people you are supposed to be getting protection from. How's that going to work?
Of course in reality, the DNC list keeps it's place in the taxpayer funded budget AND collects user fees from the telemarketers. This is better because the program doesn't owe it's entire existance to the telemarketers, right? Wrong. The telmarketers always have the option to take their chances and just not pay. The taxpayers have no such option. Your tax dollars buy you no voice at all in the matter. All you really end up buying is a nice percieved win/win issue candidates can run on. "I helped implement the toughest state DNC list in the country!" Everybody hates telemarketers and politicians love a chance to be proud of spending money.
Now, wouldn't you rather spend your money with a private company that's out to build the best TeleZapper possible, and just not worry about people who choose not to buy any protection? The reality of the world is that if you want to protect everybody equally, it's going to be a piss poor level of protection. There's always going to be a natural stupid tax for people who just don't get it. No amount of governmet is going to get around that, but you can spend a nation right into the hole trying. History provides many examples.
Your company doesn't pay late - ever? Some companies don't pay their vendors until legal action is threatened. Almost every company likes to collect quickly and pay slowly. Just because you personally don't get involved in doesn't mean you aren't a part of it.
Imagine, for a minute that no college could call alumni for any reason. Every newspaper in the country cuts articles as they are prohibited from re-building their circulation. Nobody is willing to pay for articles on the internet. For the sake of example, say you eliminate 1% of the GNP by enacting a total ban on telemarketing. Do you think that's not going to impact your business on some level?
I know a guy who's a fairly successful artist. He's always spouting some anti-capitalist rhetoric, which fits the image nicely. But who buys his art? Dyed in the wool corporate flacks of course. Who else can afford to drop a few hundred bucks on an abstract rock sculpture. Capitalism is like the Bhuddism you can prove. Indeed, everything is connected.
Telemarketing is a tactic. It's used by all kinds of businesses, not just snake oil peddlers. I've never responded favorably to telemarketers, but nevertheless it seems to work. Obvoisly somebody does or else nobody would bother. If our own in-house telemarketing system fails because of the expense of all the lists, we don't stop telemarketing, we just job it out to a national firm. If that national firm gets forced out by laws, they will in turn probably keep the business but outsource the labor to another country to avoid the laws, perhaps changing their legal entitys country of origin too in the process. There is no scenario in which people stop selling stuff, and you really think about it, you probably wouldn't want there to be.
Consider my Army metaphor. When I was in high school a bunch of kids got pissed that the army was going to do a little recruiting at school. I argued that anybody who doesn't want to serve can simply avoid being recruited. But if recruitment is a faliure overall, then you're looking at a climate that invites the draft. There simply is no scenario where the country goes without an army. So, just hang up on the telemaketers. Make fun of them a bit first, I always do. Be thankful that there are some suckers out there willing to keep the gears of capitalism turning. With a little creativity, telemarketing can be fun for everybody.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think our government is a "wankfest," it's probably none of your business.
Like we really need another back-patting award ceremony for entertainment that critics love and audiences ignore.
Does it work? What does it do? Why am I still stuck on this planet? Where's my Quantum Death Ray? My Quantum toaster? How about a way to close my pants that has the safety of buttons but the speed of a zipper?
Obviously, I'm not a physicist. So let me preface by saying that pretty much everything in Quantum Mechanics and String Theory sounds to laymen like, "It is because we say so, you dork." So, spare me the replies like, "YOU wouldn't get it until years of..."
If I understand the basic paradox that started everybody marching down Quantum Road was: Light is a particle if you look at it one way, but a wave if you look at it another way. Therefore it must be both or neither, but can't truly be one or the other.
How's this for an alternate take: Light is a particle if you look at it one way, but a wave if you look at it another way. Therefore we are really terrible at observing light, no further conclusions can be drawn until we find better ways of observing.
All models break down at some point. This one seems to have started broken. Castles of nonesense are built all over it.
I'll second that. Without Gene Siskel to keep him in check, he's really gone off the deep end. I love it when he explains his sliding scale of movie reviews. It costs me the same money to see a Steven Speilberg movie as it does some unknown indie film. Ebert makes it into a game of his expectations vs. reality. Aren't we supposed to expect some degree o neutrality in reviews? We already have to contend with our own expectations of the film, now we need to take into account all Ebert's baggage too?
Microsoft's past successes in arenas with competition has been to under price the other guy. Since people who use web searches don't actually pay for them, they can't do that. I suppose Microsoft could offer cheaper, even free, advertising links from their searches, but that won't make them more popular with the actual users of web searches. In publishing, your ad rate is determined in part by your circulation. Even if Microsoft gives away ads, they are only worth as much as the amount of use the search engine gets, at best.
I don't think it's possible for Microsoft search to trounce Google, because there is no ability to wage an effective price war. That effectively takes the most successful MS strategy off the table. Even with obscene R&D money at their disposal, they haven't been able to make a profit with X-Box. How are they supposed to make a profit on a service end users don't ever pay for? Google almost never fails to find what I'm looking for. What is Microsoft going to find that Google misses?
It looks like they are going to shut down the EB distribution chain and keep the Gamestop one. It's a bummer because in my mall the EB almost always gets the games a day earlier than the Gamestop. Also, the staff seems a little better in general. I wonder if the pay scales are comparable.
I'm noticing a huge gap developing in games selection at the mall stores vs. say Best Buy and other Big Box stores. Lots of games never appear on the shelves of the big box stores. The PS2 version of Psychonauts comes to mind first - no sign of it on any shelves outside of the mall. We're not just looking at a monopoly on mall game stores, but single-company monopoly on the retail sales of the more obscure titles.
I never really was too much of a fan of on-line shopping. I have a hard time getting around the delayed gratification. Slowly, I'm changing my buying habits. I hate it when the day I decided to poke around the mall store turns out to be the release date for some hot game and the tiny stores get mobbed with people claiming their pre-orders.
Enough of my complaining though, I'm going to go read a book.
Can you really fault a kid for wanting to steal the latest copy Gangsta Rap Knee-Cap? The music glorifies the life of crime, so the would-be customers embrace that ethic by stealing that music. Makes perfect sense to me.
If the RIAA members want a more mature audience of paying customers, perhaps they should attempt to create a more mature product. Since they obviously aren't going to do that, they should just accept the shrinkage and price accordingly, like every other business in the world.
My whole life the record companies have been blaming their customers. Home taping was killing music. Bootlegging concerts was killing music, even though there's little interest in official live albums. Now P2P is killing music until the next scapegoat comes along. This is a pretty long swan song, isn't it?
SPAZ!
If Microsoft somehow wants to claim they own your work because they own the format it was composed in, let them test that in court.
SPAZ!
Maybe I'm wrong.
To me it looked like they were talking about shares of Id. Just because a company isn't privately traded doesn't mean it isn't divided into shares. Typically there's some silent partners, and the founding employees own various pieces of the pie. Had Id been on the market, it could be argued that the buyout dance with Activision was a tool to manipulate the price. But, when the news watching public can't set the price, that doesn't really apply.
Adrian Carmack might have a good case, if Id sold the company soon after his firing, especially if Activision was the buyer. Since that never happened, I don't see how he can get around the "We decided not to sell." argument that Id will certainly be making in court. Last time I checked, there was no such law stating that a company had to accept a buyout offer just because it was a really large offer.
Now, Id isn't even a publicly traded company, right? So, stock price manipulation is not really possible, even on news relating to buyouts. This whole thing sounds like a case of, "Hey lawyer, I've been wronged. Find a way to get me some money." Couldn't you look at any business venture in hindsight and claim that there were missed opportunities to make a killing? Suing over coulda, shoulda, woulda isn't going to bring you the closure you're looking for.
Anybody who embraces the notion that the company is better sold than held and operated strikes me a rather pathetic Willy Lowman.
It's not like translating documents from one format to another is rocket science. Does anybody really believe in a Post-Microsoft future where all the worlds documents are unreadable because the secret died with the MS borad of directors? Even PDF, which is a major pain, is crackable. What's the big deal?
I've worked all kinds of job for all kinds of employers. There's one common thread - you are a resource to be used at the discretion of your employer. I've been down the road of 'serious career' and it goes nowhere. More time than I've cared to count, I've watched honest, decent employers make the cold decision to burn out people like candles, so that the company can continue to exist. When it gets right down to it, they are going to do what it takes to ride the corporate ship into the sunset.
So, my advice is this: Get as much money as you can without putting in huge hours. Find your happiness elsewhere. Be upfront about overtime in the interview. 90% of the time the employer will flat out lie to you, if you are going into a high-tech sweat shop. As long as you made your intentions clear up-front, there's no guilt when you say, "I have other commitments," and even less guilt when you make your way out of there.
To help avoid finding yourself in a place where burnout is S.O.P., you can use what I call the "old man test." Look around on the interview. See any old men? If not, it's probably a place that tosses employees out every time they change light bulbs. Another thing you need to worry about is responsibility creep. This is especially bad if you are a jack of all trades sort of person. As time goes on, a job that was decent grows into a monster. If you have the sort of personal skills which allow you to refuse taking on new tasks, you probably aren't a Slashdot regular. It's tough because you need to walk the line between being useful and being a catch-all. In general, I find that most technical employees are allowed very little leeway in refusing new tasks.
Anyway, that's what I strive for: Decent pay for a decent day's work. I'm not out to change the world from the office. I just want some money for some of my time. That's really all your employer wants too. I've got my own interests outside the office. I don't expect my job to grant me my character or reason to live. Take it all personally, and you are just setting yourself up to be serially used and discarded.
This looks really basic, and why skiing?
If you really want a kid to dive into programming, I'd think Mindrover is a better choice. It's got programming, simulated physics, simulated electronics and competition that doesn't involve a roll of the dice.
I don't see how the c-Jump game would ever teach the trial and error aspects of coding. In Mindrover, you code better to win, and get to see a lot of hilarious faliures as you learn.
I'm pretty sure it was a from home to arcade. The only one I ever saw was a double sided unit that had Excitebike on the other side. This was long after the NES version were out there, and the machine was largely ignored in the arcade.
But they should at least have a decent explanation for the #1 game being #1. They missed the most important aspect of Super Mario Brothers. It changed the format of action games from quick games based on arcade economics to long games based on an adventure game framework. This marks the point in history where home consoles stopped chasing the arcade games and became a profoundly different experience.
That's it. You've gone too far. I'm putting you on my friends list and there's nothing you can do about it.
Pals forever,
p_conrad
You must irritate the crap out of everybody who comes into contact with you on a regular basis.
No, it's just you.
Regarding the difference between Pikmin and Psychonauts:
How is it not the same?
How is it the same?
When the Game Cube was launched, it had the support of lots of 3rd party game developers that it no longer has. For whatever reason, there's a lot less in the way of titles currently available for the Cube than the PS2 or XBox. So, if somebody bought a Game Cube on the basis that a 100 year old company that been around since the very begining of video games would manage to muster enough sales to maintain the support of the third party developers, I guess there's no reason for any dissatisfaction. Everybody knows, you only buy a console on the strength of the library they currently have at the time. They can close their doors the day after you buy, and you're totally satisfied - good for you.
Regardless, if you don't fix something for a customer, they go somewhere else. If they keep giving you money and not getting what they want, the problem is their own. (
Your reading comprehension is amazing. All your sniping was just a roundabout way of agreeing with me. Did you read the parent article at all? Do you have any point to your post at all besides trying to find a whiner to burn at the stake? That's real tough on slashdot, but nevertheless, you need an army of strawmen to do it.
I'm not trying to get my money back for previous Nintendo purchases. I'm just not likely to go for whatever their new console is, especially if it's designed around some goofball controller.
I'll never post again!
Promises, promises. The first step is to fool yourself. Then you can fool the world, right?
You don't read very well do you? Where do I say that Nintendo is a failure?
When I spend my money, I am the customer. I get to vote to with my wallet, but beyond that I should get some amount of satisfaction from my purchases. Of course I have the right to complain. Extrapolating my concerns as a consumer to my habits as an employee is pretty poor logic on your part. Let it suffice to say that in my job people complain to me and I get things fixed, not the other way around.
Over the years, my good will toward Nintendo has been dropping. Even 100 year old companies can fail. Nintendo is facing a pattern of slow decline and in my opinion responding poorly to a lot of the challenges they are facing. I try to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt, but when 3rd party game companies start abandoning them by making multi-platform releases that DO NOT include the GameCube, it's a bad sign. Psychonauts not coming out for GameCube but coming out for X-Box, PC and PS2 is not at all the same thing as Pikmin being a Nintendo exclusive title.
If you are going to argue in an intellectually dishonest manner, you're going to get called on it.
All the platform developers have potentially fatal flaws in their business plans. Sony is bent on owning a format for movies. UMD movies just scream "Betamax!" to me every time I see them. Microsoft really believes that if they can prove their platform is more powerful on paper, they win.
Nintendo's recurring problem is more interesting, and potentially far worse - they are gadget crazed, and think it's great to innovate regardless of need. The Virtual Boy was a real obvious step down the wrong road. If you could have strapped the thing to your head, maybe it would have worked, but you essentially had to set up a chair and table just right to play the damn thing. Cat owners didn't stand a chance. Of course having every game start with a warning telling you not to play too long was a bad way to inspire addictive gaming. As bad as that was, it was relatively harmless to everybody except Nintendo and early adopters.
The Game Cube, GBA connectivity was a good idea implemented poorly. I had GBA before Gamecube, so buying the cable wasn't that big of a deal, but then you got assaulted with expensive tie-in scenarios. I bought Mario Cart DD, just to get the bonus disk for use with Fire Emblem. I like Mario Cart, but certainly would have waited for it drop in price if I wasn't interested in some extra items for Fire Emblem. I also got the GBA Zelda game mainly to see the Tingle Tuner in Wind Waker.
Although Nintendo made some money off me with this scheme, they kept losing status in my mind. By the time Crystal Chronicles and 4 Swords was on the shelves, I was getting the feeling they were just cheaping me into buying a lot of crap. I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel this way. Even though I had my old GBA and the SP, the room the cube was in had poor light, so somebody would have had to suffer. Also, I'd have to buy another damn cable and I was already loving the Wavebird - more on that later - and not really wild about going back wired just to have a personal display, which is mandatory.
There was no way I was going to buy the DS. I've already got a Palm Pilot, so I'm not thrilled by the prospect of a touch screen. If you de-mystify that part, your just left with two screen of the same thing you had with the GBA. So I bolted to Sony for my handheld fix and love the PSP for all the wrong reasons - emulating Nintendo games from back in the glory years. Nintendo's foray into selling old games is expensive - one NES game per cartridge - give me a break. If for no other reason than not to have a fistful of cartridges when one would suffice - this was obvious customer abuse.
Now I don't know what the revolution controller is going to be like, but the very idea that it is going to be innovative scares me. Why? People like familiar interfaces. The best interface is a transparent one, so you can get into actual gaming. If they have some gyroscopic touch screen it's not going to be easier for me to use than something based on the basic joystick, which has been around almost as long as videogames themselves.
The worst part about deciding to be the driving force for innovation is simply that your best ideas are easily copied and you just ate all the research and development expenses for the industry. The Wavebird is great, an excellent piece of hardware, and the first wireless controller capable of playing action games well. But how long was it before you could get a reasonable copy for your PS2 - 6 months tops. Now, every console is going to have them. How about a drum interface? Cool or stupid, Sony's got it too. Thanks Nintendo, you guys are truly philanthropists!
If they would stop messing with gadgets and put more money into game development, it would be nice. It's been a really crappy summer for Cube games. Since Resident Evil 4, I'm looking for something on the Cube. Kid games? I love 'em, but where are they? Ironically, the really best Game Cube exclusives are all M titles. Maybe they should take their lumps and be the kiddie company they are alway
I've only tried the SNES emulator on 1.5, using the loader as opposed to the card swap. Currently, the performace leaves something to be desired. In order to replay an old favorite Earthbound, I need to ramp up the clock speed and skip some frames. Even then, it still slows down when you get a lot of people moving on the screen at once.
Is the performace better under firmware 1.0? I'm just wondering if dodging the anti-hacks in the firmware is causing trouble, or if it's just a function of the emulation itself.
Another observation - Maxing out the clock speed seems to speed up battery use to the point where it costs you more juice to run SNES than a game that accesses the UMD a lot.
I'm glad you're actually considering the issues. Almost every other reply is just a knee-jerk "Drugs are bad..." sort of response.
GOTO first sentence, previous post. Debt collection isn't telemarketing.
Go back a couple of posts. I'm trying to make the point that no company exists without doing something most people would consider ethically questionable. I guess I was somewhat off-topic; my bad. I think it's a mistake to consider telemarketing per se an absolute evil.
Do you not think the people are allowed to decide if the exchange is worthwhile?
Absolutely. Each person should manage his or her own phone number and system. The government should not be involved in the business of prevent you from getting annoying calls. Like every other problem the govenment takes on, you're going to get the most expensive, least effective solution.
Think of it this way. When you support a government managed DNC list, you are paying with tax dollars first, just to get the program started. As the government implements it, you don't actually pay to get your name in the list. This means all taxpayers pay regardless of participation. Then they set up a fee system for the telemarketers, which makes sense on the surface. Make the bastards who keep calling me pay. Assume that the government is really watching the program's budget carefully, which it probably isn't. The funding of the program should be taken off the backs of the taxpayer and moved on to the backs of the telemarketers, right? So, now you have a program funded by the people you are supposed to be getting protection from. How's that going to work?
Of course in reality, the DNC list keeps it's place in the taxpayer funded budget AND collects user fees from the telemarketers. This is better because the program doesn't owe it's entire existance to the telemarketers, right? Wrong. The telmarketers always have the option to take their chances and just not pay. The taxpayers have no such option. Your tax dollars buy you no voice at all in the matter. All you really end up buying is a nice percieved win/win issue candidates can run on. "I helped implement the toughest state DNC list in the country!" Everybody hates telemarketers and politicians love a chance to be proud of spending money.
Now, wouldn't you rather spend your money with a private company that's out to build the best TeleZapper possible, and just not worry about people who choose not to buy any protection? The reality of the world is that if you want to protect everybody equally, it's going to be a piss poor level of protection. There's always going to be a natural stupid tax for people who just don't get it. No amount of governmet is going to get around that, but you can spend a nation right into the hole trying. History provides many examples.
Your company doesn't pay late - ever? Some companies don't pay their vendors until legal action is threatened. Almost every company likes to collect quickly and pay slowly. Just because you personally don't get involved in doesn't mean you aren't a part of it.
Imagine, for a minute that no college could call alumni for any reason. Every newspaper in the country cuts articles as they are prohibited from re-building their circulation. Nobody is willing to pay for articles on the internet. For the sake of example, say you eliminate 1% of the GNP by enacting a total ban on telemarketing. Do you think that's not going to impact your business on some level?
I know a guy who's a fairly successful artist. He's always spouting some anti-capitalist rhetoric, which fits the image nicely. But who buys his art? Dyed in the wool corporate flacks of course. Who else can afford to drop a few hundred bucks on an abstract rock sculpture. Capitalism is like the Bhuddism you can prove. Indeed, everything is connected.
Telemarketing is a tactic. It's used by all kinds of businesses, not just snake oil peddlers. I've never responded favorably to telemarketers, but nevertheless it seems to work. Obvoisly somebody does or else nobody would bother. If our own in-house telemarketing system fails because of the expense of all the lists, we don't stop telemarketing, we just job it out to a national firm. If that national firm gets forced out by laws, they will in turn probably keep the business but outsource the labor to another country to avoid the laws, perhaps changing their legal entitys country of origin too in the process. There is no scenario in which people stop selling stuff, and you really think about it, you probably wouldn't want there to be.
Consider my Army metaphor. When I was in high school a bunch of kids got pissed that the army was going to do a little recruiting at school. I argued that anybody who doesn't want to serve can simply avoid being recruited. But if recruitment is a faliure overall, then you're looking at a climate that invites the draft. There simply is no scenario where the country goes without an army. So, just hang up on the telemaketers. Make fun of them a bit first, I always do. Be thankful that there are some suckers out there willing to keep the gears of capitalism turning. With a little creativity, telemarketing can be fun for everybody.
whereas the federal list only prevents interstate calls.
Thats not true. The federal list protects you from calls regardless of what state, and theoretically, what country, they come from.
State government makes a profit? Ha ha ha. Give the state $1, it will launch a program that costs $10 a year to run.