Ditto. I switched off them a year and a half or two ago. I don't remember what the final rub was, I think it was reliability (website or email going up or down seemingly randomly?). I've been on Dreamhost since, and been pretty happy (note: referral link at the bottom of my website).
I agree with the other posters. They lied. They obviously have no security (or they are facing an inside job). Four robberies in two years?
I'd switch off 'em real fast if I heard this news. I like Dreamhost but if I heard this about them I'd probably switch off them fast too. How can I trust a hosting company that can't even secure their own premises?
I think the Family Guy episode "North by North Quahog" is appropriate here:
Peter: Everybody, I got bad news - we've been cancelled.
Lois: Oh, no. Peter, how can they do that?
Peter: Well, unfortunately, Lois, there's just no room on the schedule. We just gotta accept the fact that Fox has to make room for terrific shows like: Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That 80's Show, Wonderfalls, Fastlane, Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Skin, Girls Club, Cracking Up, The Pits, Firefly, Get Real, Freaky Links, Wanda At Large, Costello, The Lone Gunmen, A Minute With Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddy, The Street, American Embassy, Cedric The Entertainer, The Tick, Louis and Greg The Bunny.
Lois: Is there no hope?
Peter: Well, I supposed if ALL those shows go down the tubes we might have a shot.
I'm with you. Good or not, it is going to get canned. There are a group of good shows in that block above (Lone Gunmen, Andy Richter, Firefly, Keen Eddy, Greg The Bunny). Some deserved it, but Fox has a history of mismanaging shows (mostly: putting them in a time slot that is basically guaranteed to get preempted by a game every week).
OK, figured it out. It was caused by a plugin I used to use called Act-On. The plugin was disabled but the rules were still there. The rule that said "Stop processing other rules after this" apparently includes the junk mail rules, even though they aren't listed.
My fault, which figured.
Still, I like Leopard quite a bit. I won't write down all my thoughts here. I've already written about Leopardon my Blog.
That's what happens. I installed Leopard on day 1. And I'm happy.
The only issue I've run into that is of any importance is that junk mail filtering on Mail seems to have stopped working for me. I don't know if it won't kick in until it has seen X number of messages or such, but it's starting to annoy me. The setting are all right. It is supposed to listen to the headers my ISP sends (SpamAssassin, which worked before). But nothing gets moved into Junk if I don't do it manually. Starting to bug me.
It's a tiny bug considering all they did. By and large, I'm happy. The only other thing I'd like is to be able to live-resize disks with a DOS partition format (instead of Mac). You can't do that.
I saw CBS's piece last night, not knowing it would be on. It was just as fair and balanced as I expected.
They basically considered it a murder simulator. They pointed out that while violent games existed, this took it to a new level because you act it out. They did the "while there is no evidence yet linking games to causing violence, violent people often like games" kind of thing. They had a few little points that were good (like pointing out the game was rated M/17+, and that the Wii has parental controls).
But by and large the piece was terrible... as I expected. They talked about the game, but never mentioned that it was a sequel (that was up to you to figure out). They mentioned that it was banned in Britian, but not that many consider it tamer than the previous game. They pointed out it was from Rockstar who made the GTA games. They showed the movements you make with the Wii controller, but it's just flailing like in Twilight Princess... not "murder simulating" like they tried to insinuate (note: not a quote).
They didn't mention it was toned down. They didn't mention that it just isn't a very good game (have you seen the reviews? 40%-70%). They didn't mention it's a bit of a one trick pony (once the violence stop shocking you, there isn't supposed to be much there). They showed the game to some 20 somethings and said they were all shocked by the violence. They had a clip of someone saying games like this shouldn't be made.
They said that this would make the Wii more hardcore and less family friendly.
But they didn't put anyone pro-gaming on. If they interviewed me, I know what I'd say. It's violent. It's disturbing. It's a good thing someone made it. It's interesting. Someone should make something other than the Carnival Games and Wii Play. There is no great reason this shouldn't be available if someone wants to make a game like this. I have no interest in it, maybe if the violence was in another context. But I think this kind of game should be available. There no way kids should get to play it, but if you buy it for your 8 year old that's just you being a terrible parent.
It could have been worse. They could have shown someone saying WiiSports made their kid violent, and they had to ban their kid from playing Boxing in WiiSports (I've seen that, try telling your kids not to punch other kids... see if that helps).
Now to put things in context... they fear monger. Other stories included the terrible wild fires, how thousands of Iraqis were terrified about the damn that was in imminent danger of bursting (truth: hardly inspected, not in good shape, but not imminent danger of bursting).
CBS and the other guys like to fear monger. They have slanted stories with incredibly slanted titles. That's just how they work. It's sad, it's pathetic, it's true. My news comes from NPR, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and the web. NPR is mostly neutral (slight bent), but don't fear monger much at all compared to the mainstream media. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are fake... if they have a bent on a story it's obvious and usually funny. The web gives me many viewpoints, on issues that the mainstream media doesn't cover (for various reasons).
That's the double edged sword. I play a decent number of games, and follow quite a bit. If I read the control scheme is like that of Metroid Prime 3, the story well told like Psychonauts, and the often feels like SSX... that means something to me. But if you haven't played those games (or some that are very similar) than that review is nearly meaningless to you.
Writing that little sentence made me think of something else though: many games get compared to their previous selves. All the magazines compare this year's Madden to last year's (for obvious reasons). But they seem to score based off that some times, which can be problematic. Maybe this year's is a big improvement, but if your average player might not like it (same as ever if you aren't into Madden all the time) then does it really deserve the score it gets? This seems to be common with some big franchises (I remember this happening with Tony Hawk).
I've been wondering if they would allow this for a while. My idea was Apple would allow it, but only when the host system is Apple hardware (possibly running an Apple OS as the host OS). That way you could run 10 copies of OS X Server on your XServe, that would be OK with them. But you couldn't run copies of OS X Server on your Dell.
That seems like the Apple solution to the problem to me. You can do what you want, but under our slightly restrictive policies that wouldn't be a problem for many people (but others won't like).
This is sort of my take. Halo 3 is a definite example. I know it's supposed to be good, but it has some real flaws that should prevent it from getting a perfect score. Many magazines and such seem to operate on the Famitsu model (as I had it explained to me). Some games just get high scores because they are fun an are expected to (say FF: XIII will). The more obscure games get real ratings.
At this point, while I read other reviews (and use sites likes Game Rankings), I really like X-Play. They tend to do a good job. So I watch their review (where they say this is good, this is bad, blah blah blah) and use that to judge things, completely ignoring the score they give.
This isn't unique. I'm sure that we'd have the same problems to a degree if literature was reviewed with ratings (but, there is quite a bit more literature in the canon at this point). Movies show this problem with their star ratings.
The unfortunate thing is that many sites/mags aren't trustworthy. It's one thing to give Halo 3 a 5/5 when you point out some flaws and weaknesses but say that the game is fun and a real blast in multiplayer. But I've seen many reviews of games (other games, I haven't read much on Halo 3) where reviews just pass over that kind of stuff because it seems that not what people want to hear.
Things could be done. You could establish the "hall of fame" and compare games to those in specific areas ("The graphics are as revolutionary and those of X and then some, but the sound design is only an 80% compared to Y."). Just giving ratings in categories as opposed to against specific games helps (especially if you use a set of adjectives, like "poor", "good", "great", "ok", "stellar"), but you still see people manipulate that often in reviews (giving all categories a 5/5 because they are expected to even though one category clearly isn't up to the mark).
Quantifying the nearly unquantifiable doesn't work well.
I'll agree with most of that. I've got a Mac, and it's running Leopard (yeah!). At work I surf behind a real firewall, a Watchguard I think. At home, I'm behind my Linksys. I could run no firewall and be OK. That said, I leave it on for one simple reason: I can go to other people's networks without having to think about turning the firewall on. This way if I were to go to Starbucks or something, I'd be much more safe from so guy a few tables over (malicious or just bot-infested). I don't expect things to be perfect. I don't expect a software firewall to be as good as a hardware one. It's just one more layer.
So what do I think of all this? I don't know. I saw comments somewhere the other day that claimed that these guys were just misunderstanding, but I'm not sure. I expect a firewall to block things if I tell it to though.
I'm not going to claim Forbes is genius, but their writing is good. I tend to agree with Forbes himself, and even when I don't his little editorials are well though out. The articles are well written and don't assume you're a 3rd grader. I get news and such from Forbes that I don't get from other sources (not much business news, especially not so in depth, at most sources). I've looked at the Economist. it has been recommended to me before. While they are good, I don't like their editorial bent, so I don't have a lot of interest in reading it most of the time. It's a good magazine, I've read some of their stuff. It's just not for me.
I was thinking more after I wrote my post and you're right about the magazine "swag". It used to be that something like Nintendo Power was about the only place to find out cheat codes or how to get past hard spot X in game Y. The internet serves all that. There are still game demos, but as the Playstation Network, WiiWare, and XBox Live get more common, even that is dissapearing.
I've been subscribing to gaming magazines for a very long time. One of the first 10 issues of Nintendo Power, i think. I've subscribed to NP, GamePro, GameInformer, Sega Magazine, Next Generation, Playstation Magazine, and others. My subscriptions are currently running out on my gaming magazines. In fact I'm letting all my magazines run out (except for MAKE and Forbes). I'll still get Game Informer (free with Game Stop card, which saves me a fair bit of money for the amount I trade in).
Forbes is very high class, I read quite a bit of the articles in each issue. Same thing with MAKE. The video game magazines have all been "eh". They have been for a very, very long time. But they served a purpose: I could see things about new games. Screenshots, previews, etc. But now (and for years now) I've been able to get reviews online (IGN and Gamestop, just to name two). I can get screenshots and preview movies that way. I find out about things much earlier than the magazines do. That includes reviews and previews. I get more points of view from web sites, and the copy is just as good if not better much of the time (pro sites, not fanboy sites).
I have TV (specifically X-Play, even if it's not what it once was) for reviews as well.
I don't have any need for the game mags. Everything they do someone else does better, often faster, and for free now.
There are a few little exceptions. Next Generation was fantastic. I still wish that magazine hadn't gone down. I remember them having great pieces on the 1st and 2nd generation of 3D systems, differences, how they approach things, etc. They had pieces about how games were developer (this went will, this became a big problem, etc... sort of like some of the stuff on Gamasutra). The Escapist is good, but I'm not interested in reading that much on my screen. If they were print, I'd subscribe.
But I can get fanboy style "Here comes Mortal Kombat 8... looking good so far" stuff from dozens of sites, I don't need GamePro for that. The magazines generally don't have articles worth anything (just game reviews and preview puff pieces). They don't print criticism of games before they are out (where as some of the sites I read will post the "but we are deeply worried about X" stuff). There are some exceptions (Nintendo Power has had an occasionally interesting series of interviews with some interesting gaming people), but those are often available online anyway.
Like many newspapers, they need to step it up if they want to survive. They no longer have a monopoly on the game preview channel... and they are finding they have to compete.
That was MS's one big console seller. Sony has two big ones coming at some point (FF:XIII and MGS:4). Nintendo has a few (Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, Mario Kart, and I'm sure others).
The 360 is a nice console (in fact, I'll probably buy one by the end of the year), but I don't think they sold enough consoles during the Halo 3 rush to be able to stay profitable (though XBox Live, fees on games sold to new customers, etc) in the future (such as next quarter). Unless some hit comes out of no where, what is left that might move consoles for them like this?
I guess I just feel like that was MS's one big chance at taking the lead or any kind of dramatic break from the pack.
I agree. But like I said I see a large number of games that, save graphics, could have been released on the PS2. There are a few that push things in some way (# of zombies in Dead Rising, for example). But most games are the same thing as before, with more polygons. Even if many of the Wii games aren't great, people are trying a few really different things and I see innovation in that space at a much higher pace than on the "normal" consoles at this point.
That can change. There are some really different things coming, such as Little Big Planet. There are some Wii games that are really formulaic and don't even use the Wiimote (Super Smash Brothers looks like a blast, but there is no question it could be done on any system save character licensing), and some that are clearly going the gimmick route (quite a few, unfortunately, which hurts the Wii).
But I think we'll see some great innovation on the Wii (especially with WiiWare coming) where I don't see much of it on the other two consoles (which both have the power to do some pretty amazing and new things, we just aren't seeing them yet).
They give it away for free - Thus proving it's worthless and shovelware
They charge a little - Thus proving it's over priced
They let people pirate it - Thus proving that's OK
That's a little tongue-in-cheek, but this can't end too well for them from my. This will also prove that the wee little power of the OLPC (compared to consumer computers in the US, etc) is enough for anyone... or it will run like a dog and turn off large chunks of these "customers" to their software.
Nothing like buying/pirating that "nice Windows that everyone likes" and finding it will run slow and have to handle viruses and all that other stuff.
Could end well, I kinda doubt it. But then I bet they'll be selling/giving out the crippled version that they offer in some countries that only lets you have 3 windows open (or whatever), and not the real thing.
Zelda didn't look bad, but you will note that I didn't mention that game. I didn't have those problems on my HDTV.
Remember though that Zelda was developed almost entirely on the 'Cube, and was later released on it. It was, in most ways, a last-gen game. It was very fun, but it was not a "look at what Wii graphics can do" game. It looked good though.
Even Metroid Prime 3 was, from my understanding, developed to a large degree on the 'Cube (though I think they stepped it up after that). That's a very good looking game.
The screenshots and videos of the Mario Galaxy floor me to a degree. I was very surprised at how nice they looked.
The 'Cube started out looking nice. Look at the space levels with all the Tie Fighters in Rogue Squadron. Then things progressed until we got Resident Evil 4.
More will come. Despite some games (WiiPlay, WiiSports, etc are designed to look simple, other games that copy that seem to be doing it because they are lazy) the Wii is clearly capable of quite a lot.
But my point is: Zelda is not a good example of what the Wii can do.
I agree completely. I wouldn't care if graphics were stuck where Zak & Wiki and Metroid 3 and Mario are. They all look just fine. If someone could figure out a way to make actual curved surfaces fast, that would be an improvement, but those games look fantastic. Heck, even RE 4 and some of the other 'Cube games looked good enough.
The Wii is different. I read something the other day where someone important commented that we have 50x more power this generation than last (or something like that) and we are using it to calculate 50x as many polygons and stuff like that. They are mostly being used for better graphics. Not more physics. Not more AI. Just more stuff in the background of games that don't effect things as much. There are a few games doing things differently, but the average game is still a PS2 or XBox game with more polygons and shiny things.
This will improve some as people get more familiar, but the Wii is the only system that is trying to do something different at this point in more than 1 or 2 games.
...And yea, the word came down from on high:
"Thou shalt not filter on the date of birth,
for that censors the rights of the children."
And the heathens cheered, as their ranks would swell,
while the righteous cursed, as the children would be corrupted.
-- Book of the Internet, Chapter 72 verse 17.
Of course, this ruling doesn't have a ton of effect. After all, it's not like a fourteen year old can't select "I was born in 1972" in a drop down. Those pages were basically worthless. I'm not surprised the court ruled as they did. Probably the right decision. I'm not sure that a click-though page is really censoring free speech, but I understand why they did it (conspiracy theories aside).
I'm surprised that it this lasted this long, but if I were running a site I would keep the page up for plausible deniability and because we all know someone will try to find a way to re-enact this (local level, perhaps).
What can I say? I loved Portal. I haven't gotten to Episode 2 yet (just finished HL2 and Lost Coast)
I'll comment on TF2 though. I loved the original, and I like this one quite a bit. There are definite changes. The most obvious to me is the lack of grenades. They are all gone (except for the Demoman's launchers). This has made engineer's sentries much more powerful (as it used to be any class could take them out or damage them seriously with 'nades, now if you are a scout you are in big trouble). That's just taking getting used to. The game looks great. I'm a great soldier, but I'm really weak as some of the other classes. They have really been balanced to their roles. In TFC the Medic was an amazing class, speed, healing, virus infection, great guns. Now it is much more limited, but it makes much more sense. The scout has the double jump (which I didn't know about at first). As a Engineer, I can't tell how to re-point a sentry like you could in TFC.
Some of the maps are back, like 2fort. Dustbowl is back but looks REALLY different. The map is physically identicle but instead of looking all dessart and sandstone, it looks like an old abandoned mining town out west. Took me about 45 minutes to put it together because the visual difference is so large.
The game is a blast, and some of the new maps are really great. I'd like more CTF maps though (only 2fort right now).
The optimist part of me says they are doing this to give it a trial without going full out incase it causes unforeseen problems. In other words, it's a safer trial run. Can't move too fast, right?
The pessimist part of me says they are doing this because it should jack the price of the two closed parts of the spectrum way above what it would be otherwise. Combine that with the heat over this open part (with big pockets like Google going against incumbent telcos) should be tons of "free" money that they don't have to get from the taxpayers (directly, since we all know what will happen to our bills).
I believe the pessimist part of me is winning about 85% to 15%.
Virtually invisible to the naked eye, a single strand can crank out up to 200 picowatts.
I hate science reporting. It's also nice to know the editors aren't doing their jobs (ZDNet, I don't blame/.). What is a single strand? Is that 10mm long? 10cm? 1m? There is a big difference between those three. The summary just chops that sentence up worse. And why do they always use human hair as a comparison? Who's hair is that? Some people have very thin hair. For some people it is quite a bit thicker. If you are comparing it to the average, you should include that word. Also are we talking theoretical maximum or a practical estimation under normal daylight conditions?
It's great to know this generates 200 picowatts per something. How about comparing it to a normal production solar cell. I'm glad you can make it thin, but it must need some kind of support structure to survive, so how much thicker does it need to be so it is actually useful? After all, the silicon part of a solar cell is just a fraction of it's thickness.
That's odd, all the Macs I've owned in the last 7+ years have done that though FireWire Disk Mode. Boot, hold a key down, in 5 seconds or so you have a oversized, way overpowered, external FireWire disk. It's about time the rest of the computer world started getting this ability.
Of course, since I just put my computers to sleep I don't have to worry about boot time.
It's a useful ability though. I've used it a few times on my Macs. Plus, it makes getting a new Mac and transferring things over (using the installer's transfer wizard) trivial.
Writing to flash is very fast. If the power fails during that, yeah, you're dead. But it will provide protection in between the periods of writing to flash and writing to disk. If things are bad enough (say, highly fragmented) this could be a decent amount of time. Basically, use the flash to help implement transactionality.
This really isn't about reads but writes. By using this they can collect writes better (so they have to move the spindle less), cache the writes here (so they can avoid spinning up the disk longer), and protect writes (write in to this, power goes out, data still safe... RAM wouldn't do that). There isn't really much point to this for reads, as just sticking a little more cache (say 64MB) on the drive would work just about as well there.
I haven't been watching Heros (I intend to rend the DVDs). But I just missed a couple of shows the other night due to cable outage. Some are re-run on other networks later. Some are re-run on the same network later. Some I just don't care enough about to bother with. But some, I really want to see.
If I could download the episode on my TiVo for $0.99 or something there is no question I'd do it. I'd want it HD, but I'd do it. If it was a little cheaper SD would be OK. Frankly I don't care about owning it.
Problem is that many shows aren't available though Amazon's Unbox downloads. Or they want too much money.
I just wish the networks would re-run their shows later in the night like cable channels do. I know they do that for a very specific reason (same feed goes to both the east and west coasts) but it would make my life much easier. Surely a re-run of the most recent Heros later that night (say midnight-ish) should pull in more viewers than some infomercial. Run it Saturday night, or during Sunday (mid-day). You can get viewers.
Slashdot Mirror
If they were and I heard this, I would almost certainly leave them. That was my point.
Ditto. I switched off them a year and a half or two ago. I don't remember what the final rub was, I think it was reliability (website or email going up or down seemingly randomly?). I've been on Dreamhost since, and been pretty happy (note: referral link at the bottom of my website).
I agree with the other posters. They lied. They obviously have no security (or they are facing an inside job). Four robberies in two years?
I'd switch off 'em real fast if I heard this news. I like Dreamhost but if I heard this about them I'd probably switch off them fast too. How can I trust a hosting company that can't even secure their own premises?
I'm with you. Good or not, it is going to get canned. There are a group of good shows in that block above (Lone Gunmen, Andy Richter, Firefly, Keen Eddy, Greg The Bunny). Some deserved it, but Fox has a history of mismanaging shows (mostly: putting them in a time slot that is basically guaranteed to get preempted by a game every week).
OK, figured it out. It was caused by a plugin I used to use called Act-On. The plugin was disabled but the rules were still there. The rule that said "Stop processing other rules after this" apparently includes the junk mail rules, even though they aren't listed.
My fault, which figured.
Still, I like Leopard quite a bit. I won't write down all my thoughts here. I've already written about Leopard on my Blog.
That's what happens. I installed Leopard on day 1. And I'm happy.
The only issue I've run into that is of any importance is that junk mail filtering on Mail seems to have stopped working for me. I don't know if it won't kick in until it has seen X number of messages or such, but it's starting to annoy me. The setting are all right. It is supposed to listen to the headers my ISP sends (SpamAssassin, which worked before). But nothing gets moved into Junk if I don't do it manually. Starting to bug me.
It's a tiny bug considering all they did. By and large, I'm happy. The only other thing I'd like is to be able to live-resize disks with a DOS partition format (instead of Mac). You can't do that.
I saw CBS's piece last night, not knowing it would be on. It was just as fair and balanced as I expected.
They basically considered it a murder simulator. They pointed out that while violent games existed, this took it to a new level because you act it out. They did the "while there is no evidence yet linking games to causing violence, violent people often like games" kind of thing. They had a few little points that were good (like pointing out the game was rated M/17+, and that the Wii has parental controls).
But by and large the piece was terrible... as I expected. They talked about the game, but never mentioned that it was a sequel (that was up to you to figure out). They mentioned that it was banned in Britian, but not that many consider it tamer than the previous game. They pointed out it was from Rockstar who made the GTA games. They showed the movements you make with the Wii controller, but it's just flailing like in Twilight Princess... not "murder simulating" like they tried to insinuate (note: not a quote).
They didn't mention it was toned down. They didn't mention that it just isn't a very good game (have you seen the reviews? 40%-70%). They didn't mention it's a bit of a one trick pony (once the violence stop shocking you, there isn't supposed to be much there). They showed the game to some 20 somethings and said they were all shocked by the violence. They had a clip of someone saying games like this shouldn't be made.
They said that this would make the Wii more hardcore and less family friendly.
But they didn't put anyone pro-gaming on. If they interviewed me, I know what I'd say. It's violent. It's disturbing. It's a good thing someone made it. It's interesting. Someone should make something other than the Carnival Games and Wii Play. There is no great reason this shouldn't be available if someone wants to make a game like this. I have no interest in it, maybe if the violence was in another context. But I think this kind of game should be available. There no way kids should get to play it, but if you buy it for your 8 year old that's just you being a terrible parent.
It could have been worse. They could have shown someone saying WiiSports made their kid violent, and they had to ban their kid from playing Boxing in WiiSports (I've seen that, try telling your kids not to punch other kids... see if that helps).
Now to put things in context... they fear monger. Other stories included the terrible wild fires, how thousands of Iraqis were terrified about the damn that was in imminent danger of bursting (truth: hardly inspected, not in good shape, but not imminent danger of bursting).
CBS and the other guys like to fear monger. They have slanted stories with incredibly slanted titles. That's just how they work. It's sad, it's pathetic, it's true. My news comes from NPR, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and the web. NPR is mostly neutral (slight bent), but don't fear monger much at all compared to the mainstream media. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are fake... if they have a bent on a story it's obvious and usually funny. The web gives me many viewpoints, on issues that the mainstream media doesn't cover (for various reasons).
That's the double edged sword. I play a decent number of games, and follow quite a bit. If I read the control scheme is like that of Metroid Prime 3, the story well told like Psychonauts, and the often feels like SSX... that means something to me. But if you haven't played those games (or some that are very similar) than that review is nearly meaningless to you.
Writing that little sentence made me think of something else though: many games get compared to their previous selves. All the magazines compare this year's Madden to last year's (for obvious reasons). But they seem to score based off that some times, which can be problematic. Maybe this year's is a big improvement, but if your average player might not like it (same as ever if you aren't into Madden all the time) then does it really deserve the score it gets? This seems to be common with some big franchises (I remember this happening with Tony Hawk).
I've been wondering if they would allow this for a while. My idea was Apple would allow it, but only when the host system is Apple hardware (possibly running an Apple OS as the host OS). That way you could run 10 copies of OS X Server on your XServe, that would be OK with them. But you couldn't run copies of OS X Server on your Dell.
That seems like the Apple solution to the problem to me. You can do what you want, but under our slightly restrictive policies that wouldn't be a problem for many people (but others won't like).
This is sort of my take. Halo 3 is a definite example. I know it's supposed to be good, but it has some real flaws that should prevent it from getting a perfect score. Many magazines and such seem to operate on the Famitsu model (as I had it explained to me). Some games just get high scores because they are fun an are expected to (say FF: XIII will). The more obscure games get real ratings.
At this point, while I read other reviews (and use sites likes Game Rankings), I really like X-Play. They tend to do a good job. So I watch their review (where they say this is good, this is bad, blah blah blah) and use that to judge things, completely ignoring the score they give.
This isn't unique. I'm sure that we'd have the same problems to a degree if literature was reviewed with ratings (but, there is quite a bit more literature in the canon at this point). Movies show this problem with their star ratings.
The unfortunate thing is that many sites/mags aren't trustworthy. It's one thing to give Halo 3 a 5/5 when you point out some flaws and weaknesses but say that the game is fun and a real blast in multiplayer. But I've seen many reviews of games (other games, I haven't read much on Halo 3) where reviews just pass over that kind of stuff because it seems that not what people want to hear.
Things could be done. You could establish the "hall of fame" and compare games to those in specific areas ("The graphics are as revolutionary and those of X and then some, but the sound design is only an 80% compared to Y."). Just giving ratings in categories as opposed to against specific games helps (especially if you use a set of adjectives, like "poor", "good", "great", "ok", "stellar"), but you still see people manipulate that often in reviews (giving all categories a 5/5 because they are expected to even though one category clearly isn't up to the mark).
Quantifying the nearly unquantifiable doesn't work well.
I'll agree with most of that. I've got a Mac, and it's running Leopard (yeah!). At work I surf behind a real firewall, a Watchguard I think. At home, I'm behind my Linksys. I could run no firewall and be OK. That said, I leave it on for one simple reason: I can go to other people's networks without having to think about turning the firewall on. This way if I were to go to Starbucks or something, I'd be much more safe from so guy a few tables over (malicious or just bot-infested). I don't expect things to be perfect. I don't expect a software firewall to be as good as a hardware one. It's just one more layer.
So what do I think of all this? I don't know. I saw comments somewhere the other day that claimed that these guys were just misunderstanding, but I'm not sure. I expect a firewall to block things if I tell it to though.
I'm not going to claim Forbes is genius, but their writing is good. I tend to agree with Forbes himself, and even when I don't his little editorials are well though out. The articles are well written and don't assume you're a 3rd grader. I get news and such from Forbes that I don't get from other sources (not much business news, especially not so in depth, at most sources). I've looked at the Economist. it has been recommended to me before. While they are good, I don't like their editorial bent, so I don't have a lot of interest in reading it most of the time. It's a good magazine, I've read some of their stuff. It's just not for me.
I was thinking more after I wrote my post and you're right about the magazine "swag". It used to be that something like Nintendo Power was about the only place to find out cheat codes or how to get past hard spot X in game Y. The internet serves all that. There are still game demos, but as the Playstation Network, WiiWare, and XBox Live get more common, even that is dissapearing.
They're terrible
I've been subscribing to gaming magazines for a very long time. One of the first 10 issues of Nintendo Power, i think. I've subscribed to NP, GamePro, GameInformer, Sega Magazine, Next Generation, Playstation Magazine, and others. My subscriptions are currently running out on my gaming magazines. In fact I'm letting all my magazines run out (except for MAKE and Forbes). I'll still get Game Informer (free with Game Stop card, which saves me a fair bit of money for the amount I trade in).
Forbes is very high class, I read quite a bit of the articles in each issue. Same thing with MAKE. The video game magazines have all been "eh". They have been for a very, very long time. But they served a purpose: I could see things about new games. Screenshots, previews, etc. But now (and for years now) I've been able to get reviews online (IGN and Gamestop, just to name two). I can get screenshots and preview movies that way. I find out about things much earlier than the magazines do. That includes reviews and previews. I get more points of view from web sites, and the copy is just as good if not better much of the time (pro sites, not fanboy sites).
I have TV (specifically X-Play, even if it's not what it once was) for reviews as well.
I don't have any need for the game mags. Everything they do someone else does better, often faster, and for free now.
There are a few little exceptions. Next Generation was fantastic. I still wish that magazine hadn't gone down. I remember them having great pieces on the 1st and 2nd generation of 3D systems, differences, how they approach things, etc. They had pieces about how games were developer (this went will, this became a big problem, etc... sort of like some of the stuff on Gamasutra). The Escapist is good, but I'm not interested in reading that much on my screen. If they were print, I'd subscribe.
But I can get fanboy style "Here comes Mortal Kombat 8... looking good so far" stuff from dozens of sites, I don't need GamePro for that. The magazines generally don't have articles worth anything (just game reviews and preview puff pieces). They don't print criticism of games before they are out (where as some of the sites I read will post the "but we are deeply worried about X" stuff). There are some exceptions (Nintendo Power has had an occasionally interesting series of interviews with some interesting gaming people), but those are often available online anyway.
Like many newspapers, they need to step it up if they want to survive. They no longer have a monopoly on the game preview channel... and they are finding they have to compete.
Now what?
That was MS's one big console seller. Sony has two big ones coming at some point (FF:XIII and MGS:4). Nintendo has a few (Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, Mario Kart, and I'm sure others).
The 360 is a nice console (in fact, I'll probably buy one by the end of the year), but I don't think they sold enough consoles during the Halo 3 rush to be able to stay profitable (though XBox Live, fees on games sold to new customers, etc) in the future (such as next quarter). Unless some hit comes out of no where, what is left that might move consoles for them like this?
I guess I just feel like that was MS's one big chance at taking the lead or any kind of dramatic break from the pack.
I agree. But like I said I see a large number of games that, save graphics, could have been released on the PS2. There are a few that push things in some way (# of zombies in Dead Rising, for example). But most games are the same thing as before, with more polygons. Even if many of the Wii games aren't great, people are trying a few really different things and I see innovation in that space at a much higher pace than on the "normal" consoles at this point.
That can change. There are some really different things coming, such as Little Big Planet. There are some Wii games that are really formulaic and don't even use the Wiimote (Super Smash Brothers looks like a blast, but there is no question it could be done on any system save character licensing), and some that are clearly going the gimmick route (quite a few, unfortunately, which hurts the Wii).
But I think we'll see some great innovation on the Wii (especially with WiiWare coming) where I don't see much of it on the other two consoles (which both have the power to do some pretty amazing and new things, we just aren't seeing them yet).
Let's see. Three options.
That's a little tongue-in-cheek, but this can't end too well for them from my. This will also prove that the wee little power of the OLPC (compared to consumer computers in the US, etc) is enough for anyone... or it will run like a dog and turn off large chunks of these "customers" to their software.
Nothing like buying/pirating that "nice Windows that everyone likes" and finding it will run slow and have to handle viruses and all that other stuff.
Could end well, I kinda doubt it. But then I bet they'll be selling/giving out the crippled version that they offer in some countries that only lets you have 3 windows open (or whatever), and not the real thing.
Zelda didn't look bad, but you will note that I didn't mention that game. I didn't have those problems on my HDTV.
Remember though that Zelda was developed almost entirely on the 'Cube, and was later released on it. It was, in most ways, a last-gen game. It was very fun, but it was not a "look at what Wii graphics can do" game. It looked good though.
Even Metroid Prime 3 was, from my understanding, developed to a large degree on the 'Cube (though I think they stepped it up after that). That's a very good looking game.
The screenshots and videos of the Mario Galaxy floor me to a degree. I was very surprised at how nice they looked.
The 'Cube started out looking nice. Look at the space levels with all the Tie Fighters in Rogue Squadron. Then things progressed until we got Resident Evil 4.
More will come. Despite some games (WiiPlay, WiiSports, etc are designed to look simple, other games that copy that seem to be doing it because they are lazy) the Wii is clearly capable of quite a lot.
But my point is: Zelda is not a good example of what the Wii can do.
I agree completely. I wouldn't care if graphics were stuck where Zak & Wiki and Metroid 3 and Mario are. They all look just fine. If someone could figure out a way to make actual curved surfaces fast, that would be an improvement, but those games look fantastic. Heck, even RE 4 and some of the other 'Cube games looked good enough.
The Wii is different. I read something the other day where someone important commented that we have 50x more power this generation than last (or something like that) and we are using it to calculate 50x as many polygons and stuff like that. They are mostly being used for better graphics. Not more physics. Not more AI. Just more stuff in the background of games that don't effect things as much. There are a few games doing things differently, but the average game is still a PS2 or XBox game with more polygons and shiny things.
This will improve some as people get more familiar, but the Wii is the only system that is trying to do something different at this point in more than 1 or 2 games.
"Thou shalt not filter on the date of birth,
for that censors the rights of the children."
And the heathens cheered, as their ranks would swell,
while the righteous cursed, as the children would be corrupted.
-- Book of the Internet, Chapter 72 verse 17.
Of course, this ruling doesn't have a ton of effect. After all, it's not like a fourteen year old can't select "I was born in 1972" in a drop down. Those pages were basically worthless. I'm not surprised the court ruled as they did. Probably the right decision. I'm not sure that a click-though page is really censoring free speech, but I understand why they did it (conspiracy theories aside).
I'm surprised that it this lasted this long, but if I were running a site I would keep the page up for plausible deniability and because we all know someone will try to find a way to re-enact this (local level, perhaps).
What can I say? I loved Portal. I haven't gotten to Episode 2 yet (just finished HL2 and Lost Coast)
I'll comment on TF2 though. I loved the original, and I like this one quite a bit. There are definite changes. The most obvious to me is the lack of grenades. They are all gone (except for the Demoman's launchers). This has made engineer's sentries much more powerful (as it used to be any class could take them out or damage them seriously with 'nades, now if you are a scout you are in big trouble). That's just taking getting used to. The game looks great. I'm a great soldier, but I'm really weak as some of the other classes. They have really been balanced to their roles. In TFC the Medic was an amazing class, speed, healing, virus infection, great guns. Now it is much more limited, but it makes much more sense. The scout has the double jump (which I didn't know about at first). As a Engineer, I can't tell how to re-point a sentry like you could in TFC.
Some of the maps are back, like 2fort. Dustbowl is back but looks REALLY different. The map is physically identicle but instead of looking all dessart and sandstone, it looks like an old abandoned mining town out west. Took me about 45 minutes to put it together because the visual difference is so large.
The game is a blast, and some of the new maps are really great. I'd like more CTF maps though (only 2fort right now).
The optimist part of me says they are doing this to give it a trial without going full out incase it causes unforeseen problems. In other words, it's a safer trial run. Can't move too fast, right?
The pessimist part of me says they are doing this because it should jack the price of the two closed parts of the spectrum way above what it would be otherwise. Combine that with the heat over this open part (with big pockets like Google going against incumbent telcos) should be tons of "free" money that they don't have to get from the taxpayers (directly, since we all know what will happen to our bills).
I believe the pessimist part of me is winning about 85% to 15%.
I hate science reporting. It's also nice to know the editors aren't doing their jobs (ZDNet, I don't blame /.). What is a single strand? Is that 10mm long? 10cm? 1m? There is a big difference between those three. The summary just chops that sentence up worse. And why do they always use human hair as a comparison? Who's hair is that? Some people have very thin hair. For some people it is quite a bit thicker. If you are comparing it to the average, you should include that word. Also are we talking theoretical maximum or a practical estimation under normal daylight conditions?
It's great to know this generates 200 picowatts per something. How about comparing it to a normal production solar cell. I'm glad you can make it thin, but it must need some kind of support structure to survive, so how much thicker does it need to be so it is actually useful? After all, the silicon part of a solar cell is just a fraction of it's thickness.
That's odd, all the Macs I've owned in the last 7+ years have done that though FireWire Disk Mode. Boot, hold a key down, in 5 seconds or so you have a oversized, way overpowered, external FireWire disk. It's about time the rest of the computer world started getting this ability.
Of course, since I just put my computers to sleep I don't have to worry about boot time.
It's a useful ability though. I've used it a few times on my Macs. Plus, it makes getting a new Mac and transferring things over (using the installer's transfer wizard) trivial.
Writing to flash is very fast. If the power fails during that, yeah, you're dead. But it will provide protection in between the periods of writing to flash and writing to disk. If things are bad enough (say, highly fragmented) this could be a decent amount of time. Basically, use the flash to help implement transactionality.
This really isn't about reads but writes. By using this they can collect writes better (so they have to move the spindle less), cache the writes here (so they can avoid spinning up the disk longer), and protect writes (write in to this, power goes out, data still safe... RAM wouldn't do that). There isn't really much point to this for reads, as just sticking a little more cache (say 64MB) on the drive would work just about as well there.
Make it easy for me.
I haven't been watching Heros (I intend to rend the DVDs). But I just missed a couple of shows the other night due to cable outage. Some are re-run on other networks later. Some are re-run on the same network later. Some I just don't care enough about to bother with. But some, I really want to see.
If I could download the episode on my TiVo for $0.99 or something there is no question I'd do it. I'd want it HD, but I'd do it. If it was a little cheaper SD would be OK. Frankly I don't care about owning it.
Problem is that many shows aren't available though Amazon's Unbox downloads. Or they want too much money.
I just wish the networks would re-run their shows later in the night like cable channels do. I know they do that for a very specific reason (same feed goes to both the east and west coasts) but it would make my life much easier. Surely a re-run of the most recent Heros later that night (say midnight-ish) should pull in more viewers than some infomercial. Run it Saturday night, or during Sunday (mid-day). You can get viewers.