I thought it was headed in the right direction... back before it was called Firefox. But by the time the 1.0 milestone rolled around, the browser was pretty bloated. I remember the IT department at university was recommended its use over the old, security hole-filled Internet Explorer 6. The problem was, the browser kept generating a huge >1MiB prefs file, which was problematic since a regular user's roaming profile capacity was really small.
I use Firefox now, because it's probably the best overall choice. I was a dedicated Opera user, but its compatibility with web pages and speed lagged behind its competitors. Compared to how much Opera packs into a small installation size, Firefox is a little hefty. But for speed, compatibility and support for useful add-ons (e.g. Flashblock), there's really no better choice than Mozilla Org's browser.
I'm not sure why Nintendo would want to do this - it's only a negative for them, spreading all this ill will. Look at Star Trek and Star Wars. Lucasfilm and Paramount generally don't "crack down" on fan films or most other fan works, as long as they're nonprofit ventures. And fan films are more comparable to Lucasfilm and Paramount products. Nintendo primarily sells interactive products, so a noninteractive fan film would not be in direct competition with well, anything they sell. That is, unless they decide to develop a full length Zelda film. Remember how well Super Mario Bros. turned out?
Bad choice of words by the Microsoft guy - definitely spoken like someone who wasn't directly involved in the product's development. It's like he'd never heard of Apple v. Microsoft.
It looks like News Corporation is already starting to "freeze" Google out. I have a newsfeed for the New York Post, a Murdoch property on my iGoogle page and the article summaries are replaced by text that reads "Information is temporarily unavailable." It's too bad, because the summaries make me more likely to click the link to the full article. As for the talk of providing News Corp. content via a subscription model - forget it. The average Joe figures he pays for his Internet access, so he expects to be able to access any content he wants. If one content provider charges a fee, dozens of other ones will line up to provide the same (or better) content for free.
10 minutes with someone who works in an independent record store will help you find better music than any algorithm (or any Top 40/Adult Contemporary radio station for that matter). That is, if you can find someone friendly in one of these stores...
Paraphrased from actual conversation in an indie record store:
Record store owner: "Why do people keep coming back here?"
Employee: "Well, it's not friendliness..."
Owner: "WHAT?! I'm the most f***ing friendly guy there is!
Of all the examples he could have chosen, he chose zombies? In most films, if there is an explanation for their existence of the zombies in the film, it's usual mystical or related to disease or something (as the writer cedes). But the writer had better examples he could have chosen. Like the "evil computer" - e.g. Hal 9000 from 2001, or Skynet from the Terminator films.
I'd heard about problems with the upgrade downloads as well, but I downloaded it on 10/22 in the afternoon (EST) and it worked fine for me. The only problem was that the order page still had the "Pre-Order" button even after the OS was released. I had to use Digital River's own download manager - it took around half an hour to download the setup file, which was a little less than 3 GB. Generating an ISO and burning it onto a DVD was simple enough.
It is a little sneaky how they offer Home Premium by default, when you can get Pro for the same price. I'm sure lots of students in dorms need to join their university's domain.
As for the OS itself? I could blue screen Vista Basic 100% of the time by keeping my USB TV tuner plugged in when putting my computer into sleep mode, then resuming and trying use the tuner or logging off. With 7, I can do the same thing - only it gives me a jumbled display after a few seconds and reboots almost immediately. So yeah, it crashes faster. Kinda glad I didn't pay full price for it...
From the article: "Some 27% of the Indians and 34% of the Chinese had permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens. That’s right—it’s not just about green cards." It does seem to have everything to do with the economy: "Only 7% of Chinese students, 9% of European students, and 25% of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74% of Chinese students and 86% of Indian students believe that the best days for their home country’s economy lie ahead."
Given that the United States has taken the lion's share of blame for the "global economic crisis", this attitude is not surprising. Plus, we're long removed from the heyday of the Silicon Valley, an era in which innovation and idea poaching ruled instead of racing to patent anything remotely obvious. Twenty, even ten years ago, there was little talk of India or China becoming the next economic superpower. So the idea of being both financially secure and being close to your family is really appealing to these folks.
It's not all doom and gloom though - it still speaks volumes that these workers come to the United States to cut their teeth and gain the technical/management experience that they bring back home.
From TFA: "The truth is, this spider isn’t a complete vegetarian – more of a flexitarian: it still snacks on the occasional ant attacker or ant larvae." So it's kind of like those people who say they're vegetarian, but "eat a little fish" or "a little beef."
I'm still waiting for PETA to release some propaganda relating to this story...
Angry comments by gamers on Facebook? Gamers, get over it. The man's just a litigious nut who hasn't got anything successfully banned in the United States. Saying bad stuff about him only gives him more ammo to criticize and sue companies with. Don't worry, Jack Thompson isn't going to get between you and Grand Theft Auto 19 or Halo X Spin-off.
I'm not aware of it even being used for piracy. I have the Homebrew Channel installed and it's great fun to play a few things on, plus occasionally turn the Wii into a media player.
IIRC it can be used to play out-of-region games. Which is a GOOD thing.
What exactly do they have to gain here?
Wii Disc Dumper can be used to rip ISOs, which can be run in Dolphin, the Gamecube/Wii emulator: http://www.dolphin-emu.com/faq.php?cat_id=1 So that could justify Nintendo's concern about users running homebrew software, but I don't think the Wii's target audience (i.e. "casual" gamers) know about such things. And besides, it's not like there's many Wii games worth pirating. Like I actually must have that copy of Celebrity Sports Showdown.
I groan whenever I see anyone write "It's not about the graphics... it's not about the graphics." If that was the case, then why aren't we satisfied with the original PlayStation, or the Super NES for that matter. Or even the original NES! Why aren't millions of people playing MUDs instead of World of Warcraft? Let me answer that for you. Because graphics DO matter. People who say "it's not about the graphics, it's about gameplay" are the same kind of people who tell you the first thing they look for in a chick/guy is personality, then do a double-take whenever someone hot walks down the street.
"(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for."
Yes, asking for money for 30 second clips is ridiculous, but asking for royalties on Internet radio stations that Apple isn't even hosting is just nuts. Apple should just remove the radio feature from iTunes altogether - that's part of the problem solved.
Sonic's transition to 3D was the same as NBA Jam, confusing and everything that was fun about the game got lost in translation.
It's good to see it going back to 2D, heaps of 2D Xbox live games have proved to be a huge success with a HD touch up, this should be the same.
Now all we need is them to do NBA Jam TE in HD and I'll be a very happy person.
The NBA Jam series did make a successful transition to 3D. While Acclaim acquired the license to the Jam name and released a series of awful 3D titles, Midway released a 2D NBA game (NBA Hangtime) and then a 3D game (NBA Showtime: The NBA on NBC) - both of which preserved the great game mechanics of the original Jam titles.
As for an HD version of the original Jam games? That would be a fun trick. Developers would have to go through the laborious process of taking new HD photos for the game's "digitized" graphics. And chances are the game would look awful in HD. One reason the original Jam games (and the Mortal Kombat games) looked so good back then was because the graphics were at such a low resolution players couldn't see character graphics clashing with the background and the airbrushing of the photos.
Of course, they could just release the original game as a downloadable title. Most of the classic games on Xbox Live and the recent Ultimate Genesis collection aren't true HD. They just use an awful looking set of filters to scale the graphics to HD resolutions. And as bad as those filters are, they'd be even worse when scaling photographic graphics like those in the Jam games.
One of the worst problems with this concept would come up if you're an Xbox Live Gold subscriber. You're already paying $50 for multiplayer (let's face it - that's the only real benefit of the service), and on top of that they still sell your personal data and feed you adverts. Data mining is fine as long as the user consents to it and in return is provided with some kind of free service - sites like Facebook are built around this model. But to plunk down money only to have them serve you more in-game commercials? That's some bad double-dipping.
You could buy a keyboard/mouse for your Xbox 360, but I don't think many Xbox 360 games support keyboard/mouse controls, including many first person shooters. While cross-platform play is possible on Live, developers and Microsoft are definitely concerned about the possibility of cheating, particularly on the PC end. Anyway, if you really want to play a first person shooter properly, you definitely want the PC version if one is available given the difference in controller options.
As for Street Fighter IV, there's only one way to play a Street Fighter game, and that's with a good quality joystick. Playing most arcade fighting games with keyboard, even a gamepad can be worse than playing an FPS game with a regular console controller.
It was the Dreamcast version of Quake III Arena that allowed network play with PC players. A multiplayer map pack with additional levels was released for both platforms as well. The difference between playing an FPS game on Dreamcast and playing one on the current generation consoles was that you could use a mouse and keyboard on the Dreamcast fairly easily. Sega released an official keyboard and mouse for the system. And with the right dongle, you could even use a generic PS/2 compatible keyboard of your choice. Keyboard/mouse support on current consoles is flaky at best, but mostly non-existent. Plus, the Sega didn't use their own proprietary online gaming service to run the multiplayer games.
I am officially sick of the concept of zombies. Yes, they used to be cool and frightening, but nowadays, they're everywhere. In video games (Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Plants vs. Zombies (what the heck?), etc.), lots of movies (movies about Nazi zombies, Woody Harrelson versus zombies, even another Romero movie), comics books (Marvel Zombies), and even classic literature (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?). Now they're in math too?
It's time that someone called for a moratorium (no pun intended) on zombies in the media.
Sega Master System - as mentioned in a previous comment, the pause button was on the console (right next to the identical reset button) years after the Atari 5200 placed pause buttons on controllers. There were also only two buttons on the controller, while the competing NES had four.
SNES - previously mentioned on/. Early production runs of the SNES shell used a cheap plastic that over time turned a ghastly yellow.
PlayStation - a malfunctioning CD-ROM drive on early models that caused many a PlayStation owner to play with the PlayStation upside-down.
Dreamcast - a big controller with big analog triggers, based on the Saturn's analog controller. Developers didn't make use of the analog functions of the triggers and there weren't as many buttons on the controller as there were on the PlayStation. There was also only one analog stick on the controller as well. Similarly, the VMU wasn't used for much. And it drained battery power rapidly, even while it was plugged into the controller, making it useless for playing the few mini-games that were available for it. To make matters worse, the VMU used lithium "coin" batteries that were a pain to replace.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was headed in the right direction... back before it was called Firefox. But by the time the 1.0 milestone rolled around, the browser was pretty bloated. I remember the IT department at university was recommended its use over the old, security hole-filled Internet Explorer 6. The problem was, the browser kept generating a huge >1MiB prefs file, which was problematic since a regular user's roaming profile capacity was really small.
I use Firefox now, because it's probably the best overall choice. I was a dedicated Opera user, but its compatibility with web pages and speed lagged behind its competitors. Compared to how much Opera packs into a small installation size, Firefox is a little hefty. But for speed, compatibility and support for useful add-ons (e.g. Flashblock), there's really no better choice than Mozilla Org's browser.
Kudos to them for releasing it as freeware, as opposed to releasing it onto a DRM enabled platform like Steam or worse, Xbox Live.
BBC asked the same question a few months ago. Their investigation was a bit more comprehensive: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8367957.stm
I'm not sure why Nintendo would want to do this - it's only a negative for them, spreading all this ill will. Look at Star Trek and Star Wars. Lucasfilm and Paramount generally don't "crack down" on fan films or most other fan works, as long as they're nonprofit ventures. And fan films are more comparable to Lucasfilm and Paramount products. Nintendo primarily sells interactive products, so a noninteractive fan film would not be in direct competition with well, anything they sell. That is, unless they decide to develop a full length Zelda film. Remember how well Super Mario Bros. turned out?
Bad choice of words by the Microsoft guy - definitely spoken like someone who wasn't directly involved in the product's development. It's like he'd never heard of Apple v. Microsoft.
It looks like News Corporation is already starting to "freeze" Google out. I have a newsfeed for the New York Post, a Murdoch property on my iGoogle page and the article summaries are replaced by text that reads "Information is temporarily unavailable." It's too bad, because the summaries make me more likely to click the link to the full article. As for the talk of providing News Corp. content via a subscription model - forget it. The average Joe figures he pays for his Internet access, so he expects to be able to access any content he wants. If one content provider charges a fee, dozens of other ones will line up to provide the same (or better) content for free.
10 minutes with someone who works in an independent record store will help you find better music than any algorithm (or any Top 40/Adult Contemporary radio station for that matter). That is, if you can find someone friendly in one of these stores...
Paraphrased from actual conversation in an indie record store:
Record store owner: "Why do people keep coming back here?"
Employee: "Well, it's not friendliness..."
Owner: "WHAT?! I'm the most f***ing friendly guy there is!
Of all the examples he could have chosen, he chose zombies? In most films, if there is an explanation for their existence of the zombies in the film, it's usual mystical or related to disease or something (as the writer cedes). But the writer had better examples he could have chosen. Like the "evil computer" - e.g. Hal 9000 from 2001, or Skynet from the Terminator films.
Thinking about desalination makes me remember that episode of "The Voyage the Mimi" in which they used the process to make drinking water:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-524069894840499801# (A/V's not synced)
I'd heard about problems with the upgrade downloads as well, but I downloaded it on 10/22 in the afternoon (EST) and it worked fine for me. The only problem was that the order page still had the "Pre-Order" button even after the OS was released. I had to use Digital River's own download manager - it took around half an hour to download the setup file, which was a little less than 3 GB. Generating an ISO and burning it onto a DVD was simple enough. It is a little sneaky how they offer Home Premium by default, when you can get Pro for the same price. I'm sure lots of students in dorms need to join their university's domain. As for the OS itself? I could blue screen Vista Basic 100% of the time by keeping my USB TV tuner plugged in when putting my computer into sleep mode, then resuming and trying use the tuner or logging off. With 7, I can do the same thing - only it gives me a jumbled display after a few seconds and reboots almost immediately. So yeah, it crashes faster. Kinda glad I didn't pay full price for it...
A better op-ed on this very subject was published by libertarian think thank The Cato Institute over two years ago: http://www.cato.org/tech/tk/070622-tk.html
From the article: "Some 27% of the Indians and 34% of the Chinese had permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens. That’s right—it’s not just about green cards." It does seem to have everything to do with the economy: "Only 7% of Chinese students, 9% of European students, and 25% of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74% of Chinese students and 86% of Indian students believe that the best days for their home country’s economy lie ahead."
Given that the United States has taken the lion's share of blame for the "global economic crisis", this attitude is not surprising. Plus, we're long removed from the heyday of the Silicon Valley, an era in which innovation and idea poaching ruled instead of racing to patent anything remotely obvious. Twenty, even ten years ago, there was little talk of India or China becoming the next economic superpower. So the idea of being both financially secure and being close to your family is really appealing to these folks.
It's not all doom and gloom though - it still speaks volumes that these workers come to the United States to cut their teeth and gain the technical/management experience that they bring back home.
From TFA: "The truth is, this spider isn’t a complete vegetarian – more of a flexitarian: it still snacks on the occasional ant attacker or ant larvae." So it's kind of like those people who say they're vegetarian, but "eat a little fish" or "a little beef."
I'm still waiting for PETA to release some propaganda relating to this story...
Jump 'n Bump - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_'n_Bump
Four player madness involving bunnies jumping each other. Good times.
Angry comments by gamers on Facebook? Gamers, get over it. The man's just a litigious nut who hasn't got anything successfully banned in the United States. Saying bad stuff about him only gives him more ammo to criticize and sue companies with. Don't worry, Jack Thompson isn't going to get between you and Grand Theft Auto 19 or Halo X Spin-off.
I'm not aware of it even being used for piracy. I have the Homebrew Channel installed and it's great fun to play a few things on, plus occasionally turn the Wii into a media player.
IIRC it can be used to play out-of-region games. Which is a GOOD thing.
What exactly do they have to gain here?
Wii Disc Dumper can be used to rip ISOs, which can be run in Dolphin, the Gamecube/Wii emulator: http://www.dolphin-emu.com/faq.php?cat_id=1 So that could justify Nintendo's concern about users running homebrew software, but I don't think the Wii's target audience (i.e. "casual" gamers) know about such things. And besides, it's not like there's many Wii games worth pirating. Like I actually must have that copy of Celebrity Sports Showdown.
I groan whenever I see anyone write "It's not about the graphics... it's not about the graphics." If that was the case, then why aren't we satisfied with the original PlayStation, or the Super NES for that matter. Or even the original NES! Why aren't millions of people playing MUDs instead of World of Warcraft? Let me answer that for you. Because graphics DO matter. People who say "it's not about the graphics, it's about gameplay" are the same kind of people who tell you the first thing they look for in a chick/guy is personality, then do a double-take whenever someone hot walks down the street.
Well, developers apparently haven't given up on making bad new Star Trek games. The arcade Voyager game from years back looked positively awful.
From the article:
"(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for."
Yes, asking for money for 30 second clips is ridiculous, but asking for royalties on Internet radio stations that Apple isn't even hosting is just nuts. Apple should just remove the radio feature from iTunes altogether - that's part of the problem solved.
Sonic's transition to 3D was the same as NBA Jam, confusing and everything that was fun about the game got lost in translation.
It's good to see it going back to 2D, heaps of 2D Xbox live games have proved to be a huge success with a HD touch up, this should be the same.
Now all we need is them to do NBA Jam TE in HD and I'll be a very happy person.
The NBA Jam series did make a successful transition to 3D. While Acclaim acquired the license to the Jam name and released a series of awful 3D titles, Midway released a 2D NBA game (NBA Hangtime) and then a 3D game (NBA Showtime: The NBA on NBC) - both of which preserved the great game mechanics of the original Jam titles.
As for an HD version of the original Jam games? That would be a fun trick. Developers would have to go through the laborious process of taking new HD photos for the game's "digitized" graphics. And chances are the game would look awful in HD. One reason the original Jam games (and the Mortal Kombat games) looked so good back then was because the graphics were at such a low resolution players couldn't see character graphics clashing with the background and the airbrushing of the photos.
Of course, they could just release the original game as a downloadable title. Most of the classic games on Xbox Live and the recent Ultimate Genesis collection aren't true HD. They just use an awful looking set of filters to scale the graphics to HD resolutions. And as bad as those filters are, they'd be even worse when scaling photographic graphics like those in the Jam games.
One of the worst problems with this concept would come up if you're an Xbox Live Gold subscriber. You're already paying $50 for multiplayer (let's face it - that's the only real benefit of the service), and on top of that they still sell your personal data and feed you adverts. Data mining is fine as long as the user consents to it and in return is provided with some kind of free service - sites like Facebook are built around this model. But to plunk down money only to have them serve you more in-game commercials? That's some bad double-dipping.
You could buy a keyboard/mouse for your Xbox 360, but I don't think many Xbox 360 games support keyboard/mouse controls, including many first person shooters. While cross-platform play is possible on Live, developers and Microsoft are definitely concerned about the possibility of cheating, particularly on the PC end. Anyway, if you really want to play a first person shooter properly, you definitely want the PC version if one is available given the difference in controller options. As for Street Fighter IV, there's only one way to play a Street Fighter game, and that's with a good quality joystick. Playing most arcade fighting games with keyboard, even a gamepad can be worse than playing an FPS game with a regular console controller.
It was the Dreamcast version of Quake III Arena that allowed network play with PC players. A multiplayer map pack with additional levels was released for both platforms as well. The difference between playing an FPS game on Dreamcast and playing one on the current generation consoles was that you could use a mouse and keyboard on the Dreamcast fairly easily. Sega released an official keyboard and mouse for the system. And with the right dongle, you could even use a generic PS/2 compatible keyboard of your choice. Keyboard/mouse support on current consoles is flaky at best, but mostly non-existent. Plus, the Sega didn't use their own proprietary online gaming service to run the multiplayer games.
I am officially sick of the concept of zombies. Yes, they used to be cool and frightening, but nowadays, they're everywhere. In video games (Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Plants vs. Zombies (what the heck?), etc.), lots of movies (movies about Nazi zombies, Woody Harrelson versus zombies, even another Romero movie), comics books (Marvel Zombies), and even classic literature (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?). Now they're in math too?
It's time that someone called for a moratorium (no pun intended) on zombies in the media.
Some other mistakes not mentioned:
/. Early production runs of the SNES shell used a cheap plastic that over time turned a ghastly yellow.
Sega Master System - as mentioned in a previous comment, the pause button was on the console (right next to the identical reset button) years after the Atari 5200 placed pause buttons on controllers. There were also only two buttons on the controller, while the competing NES had four.
SNES - previously mentioned on
PlayStation - a malfunctioning CD-ROM drive on early models that caused many a PlayStation owner to play with the PlayStation upside-down.
Dreamcast - a big controller with big analog triggers, based on the Saturn's analog controller. Developers didn't make use of the analog functions of the triggers and there weren't as many buttons on the controller as there were on the PlayStation. There was also only one analog stick on the controller as well. Similarly, the VMU wasn't used for much. And it drained battery power rapidly, even while it was plugged into the controller, making it useless for playing the few mini-games that were available for it. To make matters worse, the VMU used lithium "coin" batteries that were a pain to replace.