I'm sorry. We can't use this submission. It's too long. Can you summarize that to an eight-word-or-less byline that I can stick on the cover under the latest Angelina Jolie news and above "12 Awesome Hair Makeovers"? Also instead of sending a story, just send a headshot. If you're not magazine-handsome we can just use some Jeff Goldblum photos.
Fallacy #1: it's obvious that this wouldn't be universally used. It wouldn't be used by anyone malicious. Or, it would be used maliciously to confuse stuff, tagging all the stuff that's OK to see as NSFW and the not-OK stuff remains untagged.
So, that leaves us to assuming each website will decide to use it or not use it. And this really applies only to sites where all content is just internally created, not externally. So, BoingBoing could use it (no reader comments) but not Slashdot (reader comments: see Fallacy #1).
Now... How many sites truly mix NSFW material with safe-for-work material? From the sites I visit, most are either clearly on one side or the other, especially when it comes to content generated by the site's owners. I'm sure we could come up with dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of exceptions. But that amounts to a miniscule amount of all sites.
And for the most part, those sites already have those filters made, internally. One example is YTMND: if the content is deemed NSFW by users, the domain of the particular entry turns into YTMNSFW.com. YouTube has this too. Some content is "blocked" and you need to sign in to see it. Or Google Image Search. So, Fallacy #2: the redudancy becomes redundant. That's Fallacy #2.
Fallacy #3: NSFW doesn't mean the same to all people. A picture of Madonna and Britney Spears kissing might be appropriate (or encouraged) in some work places, wink-wink-OK in others, or not appropriate at all. Same goes for a mother breastfeeding a child or pictures of a violent crime scene. Then you've got stuff that's completely safe at home or at a library but some workplaces may not want: non-pay poker sites, online gaming, sports sites, etc. So unless there's going to be a lot of different NSFW tags it's kind of useless.
The idea of it is a good one. But it can be done already and it's in use. If a website really wants to have something like it, there's easier ways to accomplish that than invent a NSFW tag and wait around for browsers to implement it.
There's far more elegant ways than to make the machine freeze up. One would be to have the Motorstorm demo running for X minutes, then the machine switches to showing HD footage for Y minutes. Repeat.
If they truly wanted it to freeze they would have a reset button outside of the case. I believe the Xbox 360 kiosks came with that.
I have no doubt the PS3s freeze. To date, there are only two unfrozen units that I've seen since launch, out of maybe 20 total. One has actually had the same screen for over two weeks.
Sony and Microsoft's positions are bit a reversed from what they were in 2001: Sony had the year old console, Microsoft the new, more advanced upstart. Microsoft was never able to catch Sony's lead.
Is history repeating? I wouldn't be so sure. In 2001, the PS2 had a triumvirate of absolute monster blockbuster titles: new entries in the Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear Solid series. Each of them sold close to a million copies in December and you could argue that each filled somewhat of a niche. This year, Microsoft has Gears of War which only solidifes what the console is already full of: First/Third-Person-Shooters. Sure, Gears is different than Halo, but these nuances are more for fans of the genre. There's no other exclusive that's selling as well.
Microsoft's lead in the hardware division is a little bit more positive: they don't have the established base that PS2 had a year later, mostly due to a non-existent Japanese market, but they also have even more of a lead on Europe.
PS3's big holiday punch is coming next year, again: new entries in the Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, and Metal Gear Solid series. The thing is, if history tells us anything, Final Fantasy may not ship to North America (and won't ship to Europe) until 2008. Metal Gear Solid should ship to North America but may not ship to Europe until 2008. And Grand Theft Auto is now no longer exclusive and launching simultaneously on both platforms.
If Microsoft can maintain the North American and European hardware lead over the PS3, they may do well next year. Not only is the PS3 big holiday punch weakened, but if MS has the lead, non-exclusives (Madden, EA games, Sega games, GTA) will do better on the 360: Why even get a PS3? A price drop for the 360 is inevitable next year. If Sony follows tradition, they won't drop their price until Spring 2008. And of new IPs shipping next year, Microsoft's seem to be the most interesting ones.
The original Xbox had a long, hard uphill battle to fight; it was a fight it never won. That long climb is still continuing, but now Sony's hobbled as well and Microsoft has possibly three holiday seasons where their existing library is superior to the existing library of the PS3. Time will tell.
And of course, while this is going on, Nintendo keeps making money and selling Wiis.
Baseball I can maybe agree with, although the Wii now finally has a baseball game that lasts more than 3 innings.
But Urban Champion? Name any other fighting game where a key tactic is evading flower pots being thrown at your head. This is the game that may have invented the fatality: The loser gets punched into the sewers. I've yet to see any game improve on that.
I have no mod points, so I can only respond and say you're right. The source material of HD DVDs and Blu-Ray discs is 1080P. If there's an exception, you'd note it on the back of the case. From what I understand, if the source material is 1080P but your TV is 1080i, you most likely won't see any difference unless you have a very poor deinterlacer.
Even if your TV is 720P, you'll still see a difference between regular broadcast / DVD and HD discs. Some people (myself included) claim to see a difference between HD discs and HD broadcast; for me, this is mostly due to HD DVDs having none of the compression artifacts and color banding you find occasionally on your HD broadcast.
You're probably not far off. I know some wines have health benefits, but I'm guessing the biggest benefit from moderate drinking is that the drinker is more relaxed: stress is certainly no friend to health.
I also enjoyed GameSpot's coverage (Dubious Honors 2006). If anyone's keeping track, the biggest "loser" this year was EA who was mentioned several times in both articles. I'd have to agree. Next year, everyone can get their hand on whatever hardware they want. Bad games will stay bad and be lost to history. But we're still going to be dealing with overuse of in-game ads and microtransactions for in-game cheats thanks to EA.
It might be the same for that store, but around here some get them on Tuesday afternoon, some Tuesday night, some on Wednesday (EB/Gamestop). But other retailers don't get them for another day or two. That's like saying Best Buy gets DVDs Tuesday, but you can buy them at Target on Monday, but if you want to go to Bobby's Records you have to wait until Friday, but Circuit City has them the Sunday before, etc.
Requiring the logos to be the same spot, and the requirements in the same spot, etc etc will only stifle the creativity of the box designers. I think the customers are more important than the box designer. If anything, it's simple design. I would like to see gaming publishers act more like CD and movie publishers: release games on Tuesdays, not whenever they ship. While a $30-$60 console/handheld game may not be an easy impulse purchase like a CD or movie, it makes sense for new games to be out on that day, and not on some unknown schedule that relies on shipping routes.
That, or the way I read it, develop a stronger defense against the gag reflex when changing your baby. Yeah, I know. It's shit. It stinks. But no need to vomit!
I think MF Doom does sort-of deserve to be on that list. I mean he did an entire album as King Geedorah (spelling slight altered). He's also do an album with Danger Mouse as "Danger Doom" which included samples from Adult Swim cartoons like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (on which mc chris, mentioned in TFA, has appeared).
But nerdcore, to some extent, has been around for a while. There was a band called Commodore 64 that released a "nerdcore" album in 1999 called The K-Minus Initiative that had titles like "Straight Outta CompUSA" and "Proof of the Reimann Mapping Theorem." I think the bandmembers included a mathematician and an economist.
The height of nerdcore, both in obtuse, intelligent/stupid rhymes and actual skill(?) in delivery, has to be MC Paul Barman. It's hard to describe his music: it's equally really funny bawdy sex jokes with very intelligent references. For example, when a woman refuses him sex, he sings, "My pissed of Jabrowski turned three colors like Krzysztof Kieslowski."
There's many others too, so this genre may have been coined recently, but that does not indicate its arrival.
And it only takes a quick glance at those pages to see what's new and important there: a yes, a funny thread from Something awful, and, oh, the Top 50 Viral Videos of 2006.
No thanks and no offense, but I'd rather have those sites deal with those topics than have Slashdot cater to that demographic.
Well, there's certainly a lot of games on the next-gen consoles' download stores that (new or old) are 2D. And the next Paper Mario installment on the Wii is going to remain 2D and it looks gorgeous.
In general, handhelds and download stores are going to be the easiest way to get your 2D gaming fix, and do it for $5-$30, not $40-$60.
I do love the Live Arcade and I love many games on it, but for my taste the release of arcade games is too slow, MS struggle to hit their target of one a week, whilst Nintendo is throwing out 5 - 10 a week. The difference is that the MS Arcade games need to be ported. Even simple games like Pac-Man or Frogger get some kind of graphical flourish, some get online gameplay, etc. Not terribly complex stuff, but it's something.
Nintendo, as I understand, basically has emulators in the Wii. All they need to dump is the game image, the control manual, and fix some control mapping schemes. It's not like you can use the motion sensing of the Wiimote in Ecco the Dolphin.
Nintendo, at least from what I've heard announced, has 0 truly new games coming to the VC. Microsoft has had Geometry Wars, RoboBlitz, Small Arms, Assault Heroes, Cloning Clyde, Outpost Kaloki, and Wik: Fable of Souls (some of these are also PC games, some are purely on the Xbox 360). And there's more on the way.
Does this mean Microsoft gets a free pass? No. At E3 there were a ton of titles that they said were going to hit XBLA before year's end. They're not here yet. And some games aren't worth even $5.00 (or "400 points").
I'm glad XBLA exists. A lot of those games are more fun than their $50 or $60 counterparts.
It's too bad that Aquaria doesn't have a demo or a playable game. If the game is finished, then they should release it. If it's not finished, what did the judges judge?
I also have to point out that if Bang! Hopwdy is anything like Three Ring's previous MMO, Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates it's going to be a lot of fun. It seems to be on the same economic model as the earlier game: free to play indefinitely, online and pay to get more features and do more stuff.
Finally, RoboBlitz is on the Xbox Live Arcade, but it's also on PC. The trial is available here. The full game costs as much on the PC as it does on the Xbox: $15. I've played a couple of hours of it and it's a fun combination of an FPS, a platformer, and a physics-based puzzler.
It's nice to see these types of games get coverage on here.
Blu-Ray has two, and only two advantages over HD DVD:
Broader studio support. Blu-Ray has three major and one minor supporter HD-DVD lacks: Buena Vista (Disney), Fox (and MGM), Columbia Pictures (Sony), and Lions Gate. It has been heavily rumored that LG and BV might add HD DVD in the next year, but the bottom line is this: companies go where the money is. Right now, HD DVD far outsells Blu-Ray. The studios are not going to leave money on the table for long.
More storage. While 50GB > 30GB in the data world, this may not have much impact on movies. There's already been one movie (Mission:Impossible III) that's been released on two discs on both formats. Consumers have learned that: more discs = more value. In the home video world, it's not that much of an advantage.
And that's it. In every other department (price, quality of releases, quantity of releases, sales) HD DVD handily beats Blu-Ray.
We needed a Dreamcast for this generation and the original Microsoft Xbox team has been pretty nervous about "being the next Dreamcast" ever since the 360 debuted its weird circular logo and brought Peter Moore on to lead the whole thing.
The Controller doesn't eat batteries. You can get a decent battery life out of it: 15 hours or so seems to be the norm. Besides Zelda, it is unlikely you'll be going through hardcore gaming sessions after all your friends and family have gotten a chance to try it out.
I do think the advanced graphics can hurt it. When a game is innovative (Wii Sports) it doesn't need it. But some games could've really used some polish and looked worse than some Dreamcast games. Not a big major qualm, but certainly an annoyance.
As far as multimedia features? Sure, the PS3 has a BD player, but otherwise, what can it do? You can't play music while you're playing games, not how you can in the 360. You can't (yet) download and store movies/shows. And I bet the Wii lets you do more with pictures than the PS3 or the 360: doodle on them, turn them into puzzles, mail the doodles to others, etc.
I'd say the 360 is way ahead on music although the PS3 has an edge on HD discs and the Wii has an edge on pictures.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry. We can't use this submission. It's too long. Can you summarize that to an eight-word-or-less byline that I can stick on the cover under the latest Angelina Jolie news and above "12 Awesome Hair Makeovers"? Also instead of sending a story, just send a headshot. If you're not magazine-handsome we can just use some Jeff Goldblum photos.
Thank you,
The Editor
Us PeopleTeen magazine
Fallacy #1: it's obvious that this wouldn't be universally used. It wouldn't be used by anyone malicious. Or, it would be used maliciously to confuse stuff, tagging all the stuff that's OK to see as NSFW and the not-OK stuff remains untagged.
So, that leaves us to assuming each website will decide to use it or not use it. And this really applies only to sites where all content is just internally created, not externally. So, BoingBoing could use it (no reader comments) but not Slashdot (reader comments: see Fallacy #1).
Now... How many sites truly mix NSFW material with safe-for-work material? From the sites I visit, most are either clearly on one side or the other, especially when it comes to content generated by the site's owners. I'm sure we could come up with dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of exceptions. But that amounts to a miniscule amount of all sites.
And for the most part, those sites already have those filters made, internally. One example is YTMND: if the content is deemed NSFW by users, the domain of the particular entry turns into YTMNSFW.com. YouTube has this too. Some content is "blocked" and you need to sign in to see it. Or Google Image Search. So, Fallacy #2: the redudancy becomes redundant. That's Fallacy #2.
Fallacy #3: NSFW doesn't mean the same to all people. A picture of Madonna and Britney Spears kissing might be appropriate (or encouraged) in some work places, wink-wink-OK in others, or not appropriate at all. Same goes for a mother breastfeeding a child or pictures of a violent crime scene. Then you've got stuff that's completely safe at home or at a library but some workplaces may not want: non-pay poker sites, online gaming, sports sites, etc. So unless there's going to be a lot of different NSFW tags it's kind of useless.
The idea of it is a good one. But it can be done already and it's in use. If a website really wants to have something like it, there's easier ways to accomplish that than invent a NSFW tag and wait around for browsers to implement it.
There's far more elegant ways than to make the machine freeze up. One would be to have the Motorstorm demo running for X minutes, then the machine switches to showing HD footage for Y minutes. Repeat.
If they truly wanted it to freeze they would have a reset button outside of the case. I believe the Xbox 360 kiosks came with that.
I have no doubt the PS3s freeze. To date, there are only two unfrozen units that I've seen since launch, out of maybe 20 total. One has actually had the same screen for over two weeks.
Trust me, Red Steel is much more fun when it's never put in the Wii.
Sony and Microsoft's positions are bit a reversed from what they were in 2001: Sony had the year old console, Microsoft the new, more advanced upstart. Microsoft was never able to catch Sony's lead.
Is history repeating? I wouldn't be so sure. In 2001, the PS2 had a triumvirate of absolute monster blockbuster titles: new entries in the Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear Solid series. Each of them sold close to a million copies in December and you could argue that each filled somewhat of a niche. This year, Microsoft has Gears of War which only solidifes what the console is already full of: First/Third-Person-Shooters. Sure, Gears is different than Halo, but these nuances are more for fans of the genre. There's no other exclusive that's selling as well.
Microsoft's lead in the hardware division is a little bit more positive: they don't have the established base that PS2 had a year later, mostly due to a non-existent Japanese market, but they also have even more of a lead on Europe.
PS3's big holiday punch is coming next year, again: new entries in the Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, and Metal Gear Solid series. The thing is, if history tells us anything, Final Fantasy may not ship to North America (and won't ship to Europe) until 2008. Metal Gear Solid should ship to North America but may not ship to Europe until 2008. And Grand Theft Auto is now no longer exclusive and launching simultaneously on both platforms.
If Microsoft can maintain the North American and European hardware lead over the PS3, they may do well next year. Not only is the PS3 big holiday punch weakened, but if MS has the lead, non-exclusives (Madden, EA games, Sega games, GTA) will do better on the 360: Why even get a PS3? A price drop for the 360 is inevitable next year. If Sony follows tradition, they won't drop their price until Spring 2008. And of new IPs shipping next year, Microsoft's seem to be the most interesting ones.
The original Xbox had a long, hard uphill battle to fight; it was a fight it never won. That long climb is still continuing, but now Sony's hobbled as well and Microsoft has possibly three holiday seasons where their existing library is superior to the existing library of the PS3. Time will tell.
And of course, while this is going on, Nintendo keeps making money and selling Wiis.
Baseball I can maybe agree with, although the Wii now finally has a baseball game that lasts more than 3 innings.
But Urban Champion? Name any other fighting game where a key tactic is evading flower pots being thrown at your head. This is the game that may have invented the fatality: The loser gets punched into the sewers. I've yet to see any game improve on that.
I have no mod points, so I can only respond and say you're right. The source material of HD DVDs and Blu-Ray discs is 1080P. If there's an exception, you'd note it on the back of the case. From what I understand, if the source material is 1080P but your TV is 1080i, you most likely won't see any difference unless you have a very poor deinterlacer.
Even if your TV is 720P, you'll still see a difference between regular broadcast / DVD and HD discs. Some people (myself included) claim to see a difference between HD discs and HD broadcast; for me, this is mostly due to HD DVDs having none of the compression artifacts and color banding you find occasionally on your HD broadcast.
Deathly Hallows? Really?
I think Mrs. Rowling has been getting title ideas from Mr. Lucas and/or other young children.
Screw Mario. I'd rather play as Richard Starkey or have my opponent's baseball team pitch with Jennifer Wilbanks.
You're probably not far off. I know some wines have health benefits, but I'm guessing the biggest benefit from moderate drinking is that the drinker is more relaxed: stress is certainly no friend to health.
I also enjoyed GameSpot's coverage ( Dubious Honors 2006 ). If anyone's keeping track, the biggest "loser" this year was EA who was mentioned several times in both articles. I'd have to agree. Next year, everyone can get their hand on whatever hardware they want. Bad games will stay bad and be lost to history. But we're still going to be dealing with overuse of in-game ads and microtransactions for in-game cheats thanks to EA.
It might be the same for that store, but around here some get them on Tuesday afternoon, some Tuesday night, some on Wednesday (EB/Gamestop). But other retailers don't get them for another day or two. That's like saying Best Buy gets DVDs Tuesday, but you can buy them at Target on Monday, but if you want to go to Bobby's Records you have to wait until Friday, but Circuit City has them the Sunday before, etc.
Needlessly confusing.
That, or the way I read it, develop a stronger defense against the gag reflex when changing your baby. Yeah, I know. It's shit. It stinks. But no need to vomit!
I think MF Doom does sort-of deserve to be on that list. I mean he did an entire album as King Geedorah (spelling slight altered). He's also do an album with Danger Mouse as "Danger Doom" which included samples from Adult Swim cartoons like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (on which mc chris, mentioned in TFA, has appeared).
But nerdcore, to some extent, has been around for a while. There was a band called Commodore 64 that released a "nerdcore" album in 1999 called The K-Minus Initiative that had titles like "Straight Outta CompUSA" and "Proof of the Reimann Mapping Theorem." I think the bandmembers included a mathematician and an economist.
The height of nerdcore, both in obtuse, intelligent/stupid rhymes and actual skill(?) in delivery, has to be MC Paul Barman. It's hard to describe his music: it's equally really funny bawdy sex jokes with very intelligent references. For example, when a woman refuses him sex, he sings, "My pissed of Jabrowski turned three colors like Krzysztof Kieslowski."
There's many others too, so this genre may have been coined recently, but that does not indicate its arrival.
You can always try "HELLO NEW JOB!". Add a BEEP in there too, just to jazz it up.
And it only takes a quick glance at those pages to see what's new and important there: a yes, a funny thread from Something awful, and, oh, the Top 50 Viral Videos of 2006.
No thanks and no offense, but I'd rather have those sites deal with those topics than have Slashdot cater to that demographic.
Well, there's certainly a lot of games on the next-gen consoles' download stores that (new or old) are 2D. And the next Paper Mario installment on the Wii is going to remain 2D and it looks gorgeous.
In general, handhelds and download stores are going to be the easiest way to get your 2D gaming fix, and do it for $5-$30, not $40-$60.
Nintendo, as I understand, basically has emulators in the Wii. All they need to dump is the game image, the control manual, and fix some control mapping schemes. It's not like you can use the motion sensing of the Wiimote in Ecco the Dolphin.
Nintendo, at least from what I've heard announced, has 0 truly new games coming to the VC. Microsoft has had Geometry Wars, RoboBlitz, Small Arms, Assault Heroes, Cloning Clyde, Outpost Kaloki, and Wik: Fable of Souls (some of these are also PC games, some are purely on the Xbox 360). And there's more on the way.
Does this mean Microsoft gets a free pass? No. At E3 there were a ton of titles that they said were going to hit XBLA before year's end. They're not here yet. And some games aren't worth even $5.00 (or "400 points").
I'm glad XBLA exists. A lot of those games are more fun than their $50 or $60 counterparts.
It's too bad that Aquaria doesn't have a demo or a playable game. If the game is finished, then they should release it. If it's not finished, what did the judges judge?
I also have to point out that if Bang! Hopwdy is anything like Three Ring's previous MMO, Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates it's going to be a lot of fun. It seems to be on the same economic model as the earlier game: free to play indefinitely, online and pay to get more features and do more stuff.
Finally, RoboBlitz is on the Xbox Live Arcade, but it's also on PC. The trial is available here. The full game costs as much on the PC as it does on the Xbox: $15. I've played a couple of hours of it and it's a fun combination of an FPS, a platformer, and a physics-based puzzler.
It's nice to see these types of games get coverage on here.
And that's it. In every other department (price, quality of releases, quantity of releases, sales) HD DVD handily beats Blu-Ray.
I'd also recommend the $9-10 "controller gloves" that they sell as the rubberized grip is much more comfortable. They also come with an extra strap.
Buying some grip tape from a sports store would probably be just as good.
We needed a Dreamcast for this generation and the original Microsoft Xbox team has been pretty nervous about "being the next Dreamcast" ever since the 360 debuted its weird circular logo and brought Peter Moore on to lead the whole thing.
Do the fights last 6 hours (like in the TV series)?
The Controller doesn't eat batteries. You can get a decent battery life out of it: 15 hours or so seems to be the norm. Besides Zelda, it is unlikely you'll be going through hardcore gaming sessions after all your friends and family have gotten a chance to try it out.
I do think the advanced graphics can hurt it. When a game is innovative (Wii Sports) it doesn't need it. But some games could've really used some polish and looked worse than some Dreamcast games. Not a big major qualm, but certainly an annoyance.
As far as multimedia features? Sure, the PS3 has a BD player, but otherwise, what can it do? You can't play music while you're playing games, not how you can in the 360. You can't (yet) download and store movies/shows. And I bet the Wii lets you do more with pictures than the PS3 or the 360: doodle on them, turn them into puzzles, mail the doodles to others, etc.
I'd say the 360 is way ahead on music although the PS3 has an edge on HD discs and the Wii has an edge on pictures.