The Euro? 21.5% 13 Jan 2000: Euro 22.3 bn* 13 Jan 2005: Euro 27.1 bn
The Yen? 62.5% 13 Jan 2000: Yen 2.4 trn 13 Jan 2005: Yen 3.9 trn
British Pound? 36.7% 13 Jan 2000: GBP 13.9 bn 13 Jan 2005: GBP 19 bn
Australian Dollar? 34.4% 13 Jan 2000: AUD 34.9 bn 13 Jan 2005: AUD 46.9 bn
The Chinese Yuan? 56.7% 13 Jan 2000: CNY 190.4 bn 13 Jan 2005: CNY 298.3 bn
That's an average overall 49.8% increase between these currencies (which is about the same as the dollar rise). The lowest was the Euro at 21.5%, but the increase in Yen is 62.5%. If you were somehow to believe that all these currencies (including the dollar) were put into a pool with equal shares, you still come out at a pretty good 8.1% clip in growth those years.
To think that Microsoft somehow did not hedge against any unfavorable movements in currency is absolutely ludicrous, so effects to them are pretty much nil. They are not affected by the change in the Euro, or at least not as much as you think. (Note how prices of BMWs have not risen 33%).
Then again, cash reserves don't really mean that much. Microsoft was holding most of it in fear of large lawsuits coming. Now that that has passed, they need to figure out what to do with it.
The reason 2D games remain popular are easy of use, nostalgia, and quality.
Ease of Use
Well, for the most part, 2D is a lot easier to play. You have an entire dimension that you don't need to worry about.
In 2D, you've got decisions that you make based on: X +/-. Y +/-. At any one point, you're adjusting in one of four different directions.*
Once you enter "true" 3D into the equation, it just gets more complicated. Now you need to think about X, Y, and Z. Things are now automatically twice as hard.**
This creates a couple of problems: Games requiring a higher learning curve, especially the first time you play a 3D anything. Control needs to be more precise - bad controls make it impossibly frustrating (think Tomb Raider or being in a firefight in GTA3). To some people, these problems outweight the benefits that 3D brings along.
That's why a most RTS games are still 2D (Warcraft III is ~2D, it is just presented as a 3D world). An exception is Homeworld, which, as far as I know, never got really popular.
In my opinion, fighting games are still better in 2D. I'd rather play any Capcom fighting game as opposed to Tekken. DOA is an exception, but DOA has boobs.
FPS, however, are really a whole different animal. FPSs, I would argue, are not really 3D For the most part they are what I would call "2.5D". The interface by which you interact is 2D. You move your cross hair in an X-Y set of planes. Sure, your character moves on all three dimensions, but your trigger isn't moving forward or backward. You are.
Movement is handled in 3D, but most movement in FPSs is very easy. Running and jumping is about it. There's no elaborate hold-on-to-the-railing, spin off the pole kind of moves. At most you have elaborate hopping, like in the first Half-Life or any of the new Halo 2 multiplayer maps.
What's harder? Hopping across a trainyard while shooting foes in an FPS or doing the same in an over the shoulder shooter? The FPS wins. It breaks shooting/aiming into a 2D process (X,Y), moving into a 2D process (X,Z) with occasional use of Y (jumping). In effect, the FPS is two different 2D interfaces that form a 3D game. That's why PC gamers LOVE the keyboard and mouse. It breaks down the tasks very easily.
Nostalgia
Another answer for their popularity is nostalgia. This can be its own mega-essay so I won't dwell on it for too long. But consider these points:
Emulation has been extremely popular, and continues to be. This keeps 2D games alive in gamer's minds, and lets the "Best of" packs be so succesful. If emulation didn't exist, the franchises would be a lot less popular.
A very large part of the adults who can spend cash now grew up with video gaming as kids. 2D games point towards their childhood.
Real Gamers vs. gamers snobbery. There's a huge amount of snobbery within gamers - any gamer that hasn't played KOF 95 isn't a Real Gamer. This creates a lot of draw for having older systems. Even widely available systems get a response from people. How many times did I see a "Oooh, you have the Nintendo!" when someone sees my NES gathering dust. At the extreme end of the spectrum are obsessed NeoGeo fans who don't blink an eye when paying $1000 for an original cart of Metal Slug. This mini-culture keeps older 2D games "cool" within gaming circles.
The jury is still out on whether people will be nostalgic for Jet Moto, Battle Arena Toshinden, and Mario 64 in 5 year's time.
Art
I'm going to go right out and say it: I think most 3D games look exactly the same. For the most part, you're emulating a "real" 3D world. If you were playing Half-Life and suddenly a bad guy from Unreal showed up and Lara Croft ran in from the side, it would only be jarring considering the characters and who they represent.
To contract, imagine playing Ninja Gaiden (original) and seeing Yoshi pop out, followed by Pac-Man and a Demon from UO. That's jarri
Well if it works for lazy Slashdot editors, it should work for me. I'm just going to do a link to my comment on the previous story. Saves the work of trying to think of a new reply.
Climate hasn't done anything. It is extremely irresponsible and irrational to say something like "The climate is changing!" when you're looking at it on a scale of twenty years.
I'd like to see what has happened with these drought stricken areas over the past 50 years, past 100 years, and past 200 years. Let's see what the overall effect is. Otherwise it is no different than saying, today it was 55F, last week it was 35F. The world's climate is changing by 20F/week!
Can we monitor idiot teenagers using these in theatres?
Although to be honest, I haven't seen one of those being used in years, and I usually go to showings where immature teens aren't at the movies (weekday nights late, for example).
The Windows Server 2003-based Macworld Expo site folded under all those hits, while Apple's sites, running Mac OS X, were only knocked into sluggishness.
To prove a point, Jobs had Apple's sites all run in a single Mac Mini. iTunes has been running on a daisy chain of seven iPod Shuffles.
Acrobat Reader has been getting much better since 5.0 and previous, where it was just plain horrible. At this point (7.0) it has added some basic features which are really useful, for example, telling the browser what % of a PDF is left to download. I work with PDFs a lot and a lot of them are 15MB. I don't know if the page is loading, the server is down, Acrobat is being lazy - but now I do.
Acrobat Reader is still a memory hog but not as much as AIM which regularly feels it is OK to use 50MB (!!!) of my RAM. I presently use Amyuni PDF as my distiller/PDF creator, and find it woefully lacking.
If that's so, why does Best Buy carry the more expensive music CD-Rs in a separate section, why do they never have sales on them, why are all the floor displays of regular CD-Rs (with pictures of people listening to music), and why are there usually about 8x as many "regular" CD-Rs as opposed to music CD-Rs in stock?
I can guarantee you that most people have made that mistake only once or twice. I would a fraction of a percentage of consumers buy the music CD-Rs by mistake.
John Carmack was working at SoftDisk in Shreveport, Louisiana when he started iD. At least they have somewhat of a claim, being home to the creation of one of the greater PC game developers of the last 20 years.
I was part of some focus group thing (online) that MS did and they asked me how to improve Windows Update. I told them to make Windows more secure. Failing that, they need to make stuff to fix the problems they caused. Not Giant. Not Lavasoft. Not Patrick Kolla.
In an interview I read in Molyneuws, the Peter Molyneux quarterly, Peter had said in 2002 that he was going to become God's Second Son and appointed by God Himself. In 2003 he said he would be president of the world and that it would be announced at the next G8 summit. Late last year he said he would become a Governor of some northwestern state in the US.
My point is that, in theory, communism works. Wikipedia also works, in theory. That doesn't make them equal (For example, Russia was not ruled by Wikipedians). But it makes them interesting experiments. I just hope that Wikipedia actually ends up working.
I lived a few summers in a very very small German town on the Netherlands border. They had a public pool uh... center (I guess). It had about 3-4 outside pools (along with a pro diving pool). Inside there was a pool that snaked inside the entire partially glass-domed building with waterfalls, a sauna area, whirlpools -- and a nice long slide that slid outside, then in, then out again, and finally into the main pool. Adjacent, still inside there was an Olympic sized pool. (This I remember somewhat accurately, it was over 10 years ago).
I think the idea of going to this place is nice, but when you have something SOMEWHAT similar in your own town and it's free (or it may have been $1-2) then why go?
Fairfax County in Va. also has a couple of pools, some of which are almost like waterparks, with wave pools, slides, etc.
It should work -- in theory. What happens is that you get a mass conglomerate of well-detailed correct knowledge, intentionally misleading information, vague summaries of misunderstood concepts, and/or group think. I admit, I have edited a few entries on Wiki (mostly on highly non-technical information, and have seen it work. I've also seen a lot of articles on more technical info (in my field) that aren't wrong, they're just... bad.
The best solution I have seen was someone suggesting "stickyness" -- the longer an entry remains, the sticker and more truthful it is. I think that, combined with academics actually starting to put in information* and some sort of meta-moderating system, could work.
Either way, I think it's neat. I would not rely on it for critical information, but then, I never do that with the internet to begin with.
* I'm sure academics do now -- I guess I meant "Academia" in that a lot of them contribute.
Wow what a great article! It was nice to read more about HAM radio operators! This is a good way to bring HAM radio into the limelight again! I'm sure they saved many lives!
(The submitter and I just had three shots of espresso!)
See, if you take out the exclamation points, it doesn't sound so insincere.
The original survey is here at the NYT (must sacrifice virgin goat to view article). However, I soon realized the CNET article is the NYT article, so that doesn't matter. Anyways...
From the article:
"However, the researchers said they had now gathered further evidence showing that in addition to its impact on television viewing, Internet use has lowered the amount of time people spend socializing with friends and even sleeping [my emphasis]. According to the study, an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes, lowers the amount of time spent watching television by 10 minutes and shortens sleep by 8.5 minutes."
That makes sense. A lot of times, especially in college, I would do nothing in particular on IRC/websites/the PC in general and lose 2 or 3 hours of sleep. Was it worth it? Yeah.
He *did* buy an ICP CD, though, maybe I should worry.
It is already too late.
Re:Shoot me for my ignorance...
on
Sin City Trailer
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Likely the other way around.
Robert Rodriguez has been kind to bring us the Mariachi trilogy (El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) as well as Spy Kids and The Faculty (I almost did not name those).
Frank Miller should be on anyone's top ten list for Important People in Comics. He has done an awesome job with Sin City, and an amazing job with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, one of the top graphic novels of the past 20 years.
If anything, Max Payne is influenced by both these two.
I first thought he said the worst hit would be tourism as I can certainly see a lot of loss of revenue over the next few years possibly. But that's talking in a strictly economic sense and it doesn't compare to ~40,000 people dying. That number is staggering beyond comprehension.
Re:Slightly larger...
on
Sin City Trailer
·
· Score: 4, Informative
That's what I get for not checking my links.
Click on this link to get the larger version MOV. (About 14MB).
Slightly larger...
on
Sin City Trailer
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There is a trailer in Windows Media format here that is slightly larger, however you need to install "AOL Music Player" which, honestly, is not worth it.
The trick above, to change your preferences to "LAN" in your Quicktime player settings, does work.
Oh, how even now, years later, my skin rankles with cold chills at that awful, awful game. I was trying to talk about it a few weeks ago (perhaps even here) and I had completely blocked the name of the game in my mind. I looked for it online but could only find links to Turok.
For people who don't remember the game, you play the part of a pale disembodied arm which is either drunk or suffering from a loss of coordination caused by earlier methamphetamine abuse. Your goal is to push around crates. To call this a "hand sim" is being kind. (See OMM for more info).
Slashdot Mirror
I knew Miramax cut out something from my DVD. Damn them!
I'll bite.
Value compared to what?
The Euro? 21.5%
13 Jan 2000: Euro 22.3 bn*
13 Jan 2005: Euro 27.1 bn
The Yen? 62.5%
13 Jan 2000: Yen 2.4 trn
13 Jan 2005: Yen 3.9 trn
British Pound? 36.7%
13 Jan 2000: GBP 13.9 bn
13 Jan 2005: GBP 19 bn
Australian Dollar? 34.4%
13 Jan 2000: AUD 34.9 bn
13 Jan 2005: AUD 46.9 bn
The Chinese Yuan? 56.7%
13 Jan 2000: CNY 190.4 bn
13 Jan 2005: CNY 298.3 bn
That's an average overall 49.8% increase between these currencies (which is about the same as the dollar rise). The lowest was the Euro at 21.5%, but the increase in Yen is 62.5%. If you were somehow to believe that all these currencies (including the dollar) were put into a pool with equal shares, you still come out at a pretty good 8.1% clip in growth those years.
To think that Microsoft somehow did not hedge against any unfavorable movements in currency is absolutely ludicrous, so effects to them are pretty much nil. They are not affected by the change in the Euro, or at least not as much as you think. (Note how prices of BMWs have not risen 33%).
Then again, cash reserves don't really mean that much. Microsoft was holding most of it in fear of large lawsuits coming. Now that that has passed, they need to figure out what to do with it.
What was the point of your remark?
* Source: Markets & Data | Calculator
Ease of Use
Well, for the most part, 2D is a lot easier to play. You have an entire dimension that you don't need to worry about.
In 2D, you've got decisions that you make based on: X +/-. Y +/-. At any one point, you're adjusting in one of four different directions.*
Once you enter "true" 3D into the equation, it just gets more complicated. Now you need to think about X, Y, and Z. Things are now automatically twice as hard.**
This creates a couple of problems: Games requiring a higher learning curve, especially the first time you play a 3D anything. Control needs to be more precise - bad controls make it impossibly frustrating (think Tomb Raider or being in a firefight in GTA3). To some people, these problems outweight the benefits that 3D brings along.
That's why a most RTS games are still 2D (Warcraft III is ~2D, it is just presented as a 3D world). An exception is Homeworld, which, as far as I know, never got really popular.
In my opinion, fighting games are still better in 2D. I'd rather play any Capcom fighting game as opposed to Tekken. DOA is an exception, but DOA has boobs.
FPS, however, are really a whole different animal. FPSs, I would argue, are not really 3D For the most part they are what I would call "2.5D". The interface by which you interact is 2D. You move your cross hair in an X-Y set of planes. Sure, your character moves on all three dimensions, but your trigger isn't moving forward or backward. You are.
Movement is handled in 3D, but most movement in FPSs is very easy. Running and jumping is about it. There's no elaborate hold-on-to-the-railing, spin off the pole kind of moves. At most you have elaborate hopping, like in the first Half-Life or any of the new Halo 2 multiplayer maps.
What's harder? Hopping across a trainyard while shooting foes in an FPS or doing the same in an over the shoulder shooter? The FPS wins. It breaks shooting/aiming into a 2D process (X,Y), moving into a 2D process (X,Z) with occasional use of Y (jumping). In effect, the FPS is two different 2D interfaces that form a 3D game. That's why PC gamers LOVE the keyboard and mouse. It breaks down the tasks very easily.
Nostalgia
Another answer for their popularity is nostalgia. This can be its own mega-essay so I won't dwell on it for too long. But consider these points:
The jury is still out on whether people will be nostalgic for Jet Moto, Battle Arena Toshinden, and Mario 64 in 5 year's time.
Art
I'm going to go right out and say it: I think most 3D games look exactly the same. For the most part, you're emulating a "real" 3D world. If you were playing Half-Life and suddenly a bad guy from Unreal showed up and Lara Croft ran in from the side, it would only be jarring considering the characters and who they represent.
To contract, imagine playing Ninja Gaiden (original) and seeing Yoshi pop out, followed by Pac-Man and a Demon from UO. That's jarri
Well if it works for lazy Slashdot editors, it should work for me. I'm just going to do a link to my comment on the previous story. Saves the work of trying to think of a new reply.
Climate hasn't done anything. It is extremely irresponsible and irrational to say something like "The climate is changing!" when you're looking at it on a scale of twenty years.
I'd like to see what has happened with these drought stricken areas over the past 50 years, past 100 years, and past 200 years. Let's see what the overall effect is. Otherwise it is no different than saying, today it was 55F, last week it was 35F. The world's climate is changing by 20F/week!
Remember, the weather is allowed to change.
Good.
Can we monitor idiot teenagers using these in theatres?
Although to be honest, I haven't seen one of those being used in years, and I usually go to showings where immature teens aren't at the movies (weekday nights late, for example).
In that case, it has been "abandonware" since 1996.
To prove a point, Jobs had Apple's sites all run in a single Mac Mini. iTunes has been running on a daisy chain of seven iPod Shuffles.
Acrobat Reader has been getting much better since 5.0 and previous, where it was just plain horrible. At this point (7.0) it has added some basic features which are really useful, for example, telling the browser what % of a PDF is left to download. I work with PDFs a lot and a lot of them are 15MB. I don't know if the page is loading, the server is down, Acrobat is being lazy - but now I do.
Acrobat Reader is still a memory hog but not as much as AIM which regularly feels it is OK to use 50MB (!!!) of my RAM. I presently use Amyuni PDF as my distiller/PDF creator, and find it woefully lacking.
Simple question, simple answer.
One is infinitely easier and cheaper to do.
If that's so, why does Best Buy carry the more expensive music CD-Rs in a separate section, why do they never have sales on them, why are all the floor displays of regular CD-Rs (with pictures of people listening to music), and why are there usually about 8x as many "regular" CD-Rs as opposed to music CD-Rs in stock?
I can guarantee you that most people have made that mistake only once or twice. I would a fraction of a percentage of consumers buy the music CD-Rs by mistake.
John Carmack was working at SoftDisk in Shreveport, Louisiana when he started iD. At least they have somewhat of a claim, being home to the creation of one of the greater PC game developers of the last 20 years.
Well.
I was part of some focus group thing (online) that MS did and they asked me how to improve Windows Update. I told them to make Windows more secure. Failing that, they need to make stuff to fix the problems they caused. Not Giant. Not Lavasoft. Not Patrick Kolla.
Microsoft.
In an interview I read in Molyneuws, the Peter Molyneux quarterly, Peter had said in 2002 that he was going to become God's Second Son and appointed by God Himself. In 2003 he said he would be president of the world and that it would be announced at the next G8 summit. Late last year he said he would become a Governor of some northwestern state in the US.
My point is that, in theory, communism works. Wikipedia also works, in theory. That doesn't make them equal (For example, Russia was not ruled by Wikipedians). But it makes them interesting experiments. I just hope that Wikipedia actually ends up working.
So far, somewhat good.
I lived a few summers in a very very small German town on the Netherlands border. They had a public pool uh... center (I guess). It had about 3-4 outside pools (along with a pro diving pool). Inside there was a pool that snaked inside the entire partially glass-domed building with waterfalls, a sauna area, whirlpools -- and a nice long slide that slid outside, then in, then out again, and finally into the main pool. Adjacent, still inside there was an Olympic sized pool. (This I remember somewhat accurately, it was over 10 years ago).
I think the idea of going to this place is nice, but when you have something SOMEWHAT similar in your own town and it's free (or it may have been $1-2) then why go?
Fairfax County in Va. also has a couple of pools, some of which are almost like waterparks, with wave pools, slides, etc.
It should work -- in theory. What happens is that you get a mass conglomerate of well-detailed correct knowledge, intentionally misleading information, vague summaries of misunderstood concepts, and/or group think. I admit, I have edited a few entries on Wiki (mostly on highly non-technical information, and have seen it work. I've also seen a lot of articles on more technical info (in my field) that aren't wrong, they're just... bad.
The best solution I have seen was someone suggesting "stickyness" -- the longer an entry remains, the sticker and more truthful it is. I think that, combined with academics actually starting to put in information* and some sort of meta-moderating system, could work.
Either way, I think it's neat. I would not rely on it for critical information, but then, I never do that with the internet to begin with.
* I'm sure academics do now -- I guess I meant "Academia" in that a lot of them contribute.
Wow what a great article! It was nice to read more about HAM radio operators! This is a good way to bring HAM radio into the limelight again! I'm sure they saved many lives!
(The submitter and I just had three shots of espresso!)
See, if you take out the exclamation points, it doesn't sound so insincere.
From the article:
That makes sense. A lot of times, especially in college, I would do nothing in particular on IRC/websites/the PC in general and lose 2 or 3 hours of sleep. Was it worth it? Yeah.
Still, you need to have some sense of moderation.
It is already too late.
Likely the other way around.
Robert Rodriguez has been kind to bring us the Mariachi trilogy (El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) as well as Spy Kids and The Faculty (I almost did not name those).
Frank Miller should be on anyone's top ten list for Important People in Comics. He has done an awesome job with Sin City, and an amazing job with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, one of the top graphic novels of the past 20 years.
If anything, Max Payne is influenced by both these two.
I first thought he said the worst hit would be tourism as I can certainly see a lot of loss of revenue over the next few years possibly. But that's talking in a strictly economic sense and it doesn't compare to ~40,000 people dying. That number is staggering beyond comprehension.
That's what I get for not checking my links.
Click on this link to get the larger version MOV. (About 14MB).
(Oh, and if you want to see the art from Sin City, Amazon has some of it available).
There is a trailer in Windows Media format here that is slightly larger, however you need to install "AOL Music Player" which, honestly, is not worth it.
The trick above, to change your preferences to "LAN" in your Quicktime player settings, does work.
Or feel free to right-click and download the MOV file.
Aaaaahhh... Trespasser!
Oh, how even now, years later, my skin rankles with cold chills at that awful, awful game. I was trying to talk about it a few weeks ago (perhaps even here) and I had completely blocked the name of the game in my mind. I looked for it online but could only find links to Turok.
For people who don't remember the game, you play the part of a pale disembodied arm which is either drunk or suffering from a loss of coordination caused by earlier methamphetamine abuse. Your goal is to push around crates. To call this a "hand sim" is being kind. (See OMM for more info).