Perhaps, *we* as supporters should contribute something. This *is* the fabled open source business model; we find a guy that represents our views and we give him cash; he will have the capital to continue on and perhaps it will send a message to the fat cats in Congress that our voices can and should be heard.
Didn't Adams not want this work published ( didn't./ post an article to that effect?) So is it wrong to do so? I guess it comes with being a popular author though
Wait, is this the same government that until quite recently had a "House of Lords"? British police are famous for brotherly behavior? Is this the bizarro world we're talking about?
About the U.S. drinking age - didn't Blair recent make some moves to make it harder for teens to drink? Right before his son was caught drinking?
I agree with quite a bit of this letter - these cams are not a big deal. And American needs gun control (more like Japan, not England). But the U.S. government is the world model for freedom and democracy. This was sheer idiocy.
The constraints on individuals are in place for the greater good of society as a whole. In Japan, the individual is not the basic unit of society - the family is. As such, curtailed individual rights (gun control for example) makes life easier for everyone.
Most of Asia is like that - however, Japan is the only country advanced enough for it to matter to us.
Is it different? Yes. Is it automatically good or bad? That's an individual country.
Since Commodore Perry parked his ships off the entrance to Tokyo Bay and extending the velvet gloved fist of friendship and commerce to the Tokugawa shogun.
Perry was hardly doing so. His mission was to make Japan a refueling station for the states and to make Japan protect lost seaman He caused chaos by going into to the bay and made several (purposely) insulting gestures (i.e., He gave the Japanese white flags before negotians, telling officials they would need them for the coming war if they refused his demands).
He's also the major impetus behind the fall of the Shogunal goverment (the Bakufu) and the rise of ultra-nationalists supporting the the throne.
Also, in the classic Western way he believed he was bringing enlightenment to a backwards country.
So the Indrema's going to die. It's no big deal. The Indrema had NOTHING to offer the Linux community or, more importantly, the gaming community.
A machine is basically is as good as it's games. It's why Sony was able to splash with the orginal Playstation and why Nintendo is so tenaciously holding on to life. It's why Sega hasn't had a great machine since the Genesis (sure, it has had a lot of quirky titles since then, but it takes a ton of Tekkens or Gamedays to sell Parappa the Rapper). I hadn't heard of one title of the Indrema. Not one. I wasn't actively looking, but if the machine had a snowball's chance in hell, I would have noticed something in a regular game news forum/news site.
This was as inevitable as the demise of DivX (Circuit City's). Shed a tear, if you must, and let's move on.
Well, for the most part (thought by no means all) I consider slashdot's readership computer oriented, rather than seriously video game oriented, so I will post my opinion.
It seems to me Mario, Pokemon, Link, the first party titles have carried the Nintendo 64 as far as it has gone.
Having said that, Nintendo has an oppurtunity in the current market. Until Final Fantasy X comes out, I don't see any game driving the people to a PS2 as anything other than a DVD player. The current crop of PS2 games sucks. The Xbox also has a shot, but I don't see it having enough Japanese devolopers and without them it won't be able to stand on PC ports.
Add to that mix Nintendo's Gameboy Advance. This will be the hottest product this year, without a doubt. We're still half a year from it's release and it's all I can hear about. Nintendo will promote the compatability between the GBA and Gamecube.
You all may bemoan Pokemon games, but they sell machines (I'll keep any comments about the actual quality of games to myself, as opposed to simply the "childish look" they have). The more machines sold the more popular machines become. A big new Pokemon game will be key for both the GBA and Gamecube.
As mentioned before in the replies, Nintendo's biggest worry is thirdparty support - in hindsight I think they could have done much better with the N64 with more third party support (they did about as well as I thought they would when the machine came out, by themselves). However, Yamaguchi-san, Nintendo's head honcho is about as unpredictable as anyone - him letting Square back into the fold is not as unreasonable as it seems. Plus Sega is now working closely with them (reportedly on an RPG and a Smashbrothers game featuring Nintendo and Sega characters).
Let's not forget Miyamoto-san, the Steven Spielberg of videogames, the reason many of us got into console gaming, and simply the greatest producer on the face of this earth.
Another thing that has not been mentioned is that Nintendo may not have done to well with the Nintendo 64, they've been MS-DOS'ing off the Gameboy. They're fat and rich off of it and ready for a showdown.
Nintendo has a very good shot, thanks to its licences, two machines, and normal market domianance. Don't be blinded by colored plastic and Pikachu - as computer people you might be blinded by it, but Nintendo know what it's doing.
The first to do it? What about Squaresoft? Is there some distinction I'm missing? With a projected US release date of 07.13.01 in the US I think it'll be Episode II to the punch.
Plus, I'm expecting a storyline more mature than Episode one out of Square in it's Final Fantasy series.
one of the few book-length accounts ever published about the corporate politics inside of the video-game arena
I beg to differ. "Joystick Nation" by JC Herz comes to mind immediately. The magazine Next-Generation (back in the day) ran many articles on the industry's history (I've got several with the history of Yamuchi-san of Nintendo and the Pong fiasco). Steven L. Kent, who wrote articles for Next-Gen also wrote "The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games".
I'm sure I'm missing many books, especially books in Japanese - since it seems that the nation would have many on the mega corporations.
...because the twin will be psychologically different from the "parent" and thus a different person entirely. I can pull out the hitler example - we could clone Hitler and we could probably get a normal person from it, if he was raised like a normal child.
As for whether clones will feel "empty" because they are clones, I'm sure it would depend on the person. Many non-cloned people feel empty - it would be a person by person situation. My feeling is few would care - do children born by invitro fertilization care how they were created?
Human cloning (particulary in the area of cloning a person to create another) is a lot of hot air - I don't see it as a major application of the science. Cloning extinct or rare animals and cloning for the sake of organs seem more important. Will we vain people cloning themselves to raise a "mini-me"? Sure, probably, but vain people have dones stupid things throughout history.
I'd hate to go over anything that's been posted to death, but it's fairly safe to say that Akira is probably the most important anime for us non-Japanese fans.
Akira brought critical success (Siskel and Ebert made it a video pick - and this was in the days before the acclaim of Mononoke Hime or Dragon Ball Z/Pokemon fandom) and an understanding that American cartoons and Japanese anime are a breed apart.
It was very important for a movie like this to come out when it did. The animation style and the plot were not only great, they were concrete enough to move the film along with American unused to anime (unlike. say classics like Vampire Hunter D or Robot Carnival).
Since then Akira's visual style and plot elements have been important in anime (the idea of a post WWIII Neo-Tokyo, for example) and in Japanese "pop" culture (Final Fantasy VI's plot is higly indebted to Akira).
Akira's one of the first anime I saw when I started out in anime and it holds a special place in my heart. Plus, you know a movie like this has made it when people who are not fans of anime, know and love it (like many students at my high school).
This is Akira. The chances of anything important (yes, to us) getting cut out are virtually nil. If you're buying or renting the movie, you pretty know what you're info.
Not to sound flippant or anything, but I don't think you need to worry.
Slashdot Mirror
MS could just buy Mandrake and not miss a beat...say hello to the new clippy.
Nah, the KHTML guys aren't such babies.
Where the hell are you? I see them all the time at Atlanta's aiport. The security there ride them around, especially at baggage claim.
Perhaps, *we* as supporters should contribute something. This *is* the fabled open source business model; we find a guy that represents our views and we give him cash; he will have the capital to continue on and perhaps it will send a message to the fat cats in Congress that our voices can and should be heard.
Didn't Adams not want this work published ( didn't ./ post an article to that effect?) So is it wrong to do so? I guess it comes with being a popular author though
Worst episode ever!
I saw a U.K. service that would chrome N64s for about $100; I've also seen some packaged chrome ones recently; could you do that with a GBA?
Dalmation and Tie-Dye iMacs? OSX withouth key features? Manipulating the Woz?
The Aristocrats was an original, more or less.
About the U.S. drinking age - didn't Blair recent make some moves to make it harder for teens to drink? Right before his son was caught drinking?
I agree with quite a bit of this letter - these cams are not a big deal. And American needs gun control (more like Japan, not England). But the U.S. government is the world model for freedom and democracy. This was sheer idiocy.
Most of Asia is like that - however, Japan is the only country advanced enough for it to matter to us.
Is it different? Yes. Is it automatically good or bad? That's an individual country.
Perry was hardly doing so. His mission was to make Japan a refueling station for the states and to make Japan protect lost seaman He caused chaos by going into to the bay and made several (purposely) insulting gestures (i.e., He gave the Japanese white flags before negotians, telling officials they would need them for the coming war if they refused his demands).
He's also the major impetus behind the fall of the Shogunal goverment (the Bakufu) and the rise of ultra-nationalists supporting the the throne.
Also, in the classic Western way he believed he was bringing enlightenment to a backwards country.
"Friendship" is hardly the case.
A machine is basically is as good as it's games. It's why Sony was able to splash with the orginal Playstation and why Nintendo is so tenaciously holding on to life. It's why Sega hasn't had a great machine since the Genesis (sure, it has had a lot of quirky titles since then, but it takes a ton of Tekkens or Gamedays to sell Parappa the Rapper). I hadn't heard of one title of the Indrema. Not one. I wasn't actively looking, but if the machine had a snowball's chance in hell, I would have noticed something in a regular game news forum/news site.
This was as inevitable as the demise of DivX (Circuit City's). Shed a tear, if you must, and let's move on.
It seems to me Mario, Pokemon, Link, the first party titles have carried the Nintendo 64 as far as it has gone.
Having said that, Nintendo has an oppurtunity in the current market. Until Final Fantasy X comes out, I don't see any game driving the people to a PS2 as anything other than a DVD player. The current crop of PS2 games sucks. The Xbox also has a shot, but I don't see it having enough Japanese devolopers and without them it won't be able to stand on PC ports.
Add to that mix Nintendo's Gameboy Advance. This will be the hottest product this year, without a doubt. We're still half a year from it's release and it's all I can hear about. Nintendo will promote the compatability between the GBA and Gamecube.
You all may bemoan Pokemon games, but they sell machines (I'll keep any comments about the actual quality of games to myself, as opposed to simply the "childish look" they have). The more machines sold the more popular machines become. A big new Pokemon game will be key for both the GBA and Gamecube.
As mentioned before in the replies, Nintendo's biggest worry is thirdparty support - in hindsight I think they could have done much better with the N64 with more third party support (they did about as well as I thought they would when the machine came out, by themselves). However, Yamaguchi-san, Nintendo's head honcho is about as unpredictable as anyone - him letting Square back into the fold is not as unreasonable as it seems. Plus Sega is now working closely with them (reportedly on an RPG and a Smashbrothers game featuring Nintendo and Sega characters).
Let's not forget Miyamoto-san, the Steven Spielberg of videogames, the reason many of us got into console gaming, and simply the greatest producer on the face of this earth.
Another thing that has not been mentioned is that Nintendo may not have done to well with the Nintendo 64, they've been MS-DOS'ing off the Gameboy. They're fat and rich off of it and ready for a showdown.
Nintendo has a very good shot, thanks to its licences, two machines, and normal market domianance. Don't be blinded by colored plastic and Pikachu - as computer people you might be blinded by it, but Nintendo know what it's doing.
Plus, I'm expecting a storyline more mature than Episode one out of Square in it's Final Fantasy series.
I beg to differ. "Joystick Nation" by JC Herz comes to mind immediately. The magazine Next-Generation (back in the day) ran many articles on the industry's history (I've got several with the history of Yamuchi-san of Nintendo and the Pong fiasco). Steven L. Kent, who wrote articles for Next-Gen also wrote "The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games".
I'm sure I'm missing many books, especially books in Japanese - since it seems that the nation would have many on the mega corporations.
As for whether clones will feel "empty" because they are clones, I'm sure it would depend on the person. Many non-cloned people feel empty - it would be a person by person situation. My feeling is few would care - do children born by invitro fertilization care how they were created?
Human cloning (particulary in the area of cloning a person to create another) is a lot of hot air - I don't see it as a major application of the science. Cloning extinct or rare animals and cloning for the sake of organs seem more important. Will we vain people cloning themselves to raise a "mini-me"? Sure, probably, but vain people have dones stupid things throughout history.
Akira brought critical success (Siskel and Ebert made it a video pick - and this was in the days before the acclaim of Mononoke Hime or Dragon Ball Z/Pokemon fandom) and an understanding that American cartoons and Japanese anime are a breed apart.
It was very important for a movie like this to come out when it did. The animation style and the plot were not only great, they were concrete enough to move the film along with American unused to anime (unlike. say classics like Vampire Hunter D or Robot Carnival).
Since then Akira's visual style and plot elements have been important in anime (the idea of a post WWIII Neo-Tokyo, for example) and in Japanese "pop" culture (Final Fantasy VI's plot is higly indebted to Akira).
Akira's one of the first anime I saw when I started out in anime and it holds a special place in my heart. Plus, you know a movie like this has made it when people who are not fans of anime, know and love it (like many students at my high school).
Not to sound flippant or anything, but I don't think you need to worry.