INTERNET still isn't good in North American tournament scrabble (but is good in international play). INTRANET is good in both. So yeah, the whole thing is a little flawed.
Yep, though you mean "every 2 letter word in the Scrabble Dictionary."
It's basically cheating. If you are a talented scrabble player, you should be better able to use the tiles you have, not memorize crutches.
Yup, and damn that football team for actually studying passing and running plays! They sit there with video cameras breaking things down! It's basically cheating! They should just all run around randomly hope the Quarterback throws to them.
If you played competitive scrabble, you should know that no one makes a living doing it, its for the love of the game. There is basically no sponsor money, and most tourneys are buy-ins (like poker). Those top 100 could if Coke and Redbull felt like dumping a million (or ten!) into prize money, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Heck, Joel Sherman is one of the top players in the world, and he's been playing almost every weekend since the 80's, and he's only amassed a few hundred thousand in prize money. You can't count on winning Worlds or Nationals every year, there is too much parity at the top.
Unless by "living" you mean "enough to eke out half the rent in a shitty apartment with a roommate".
I think a better solution to the two-letter problem might be to just print all the two-letter words on a handy reference card and give copies to all players.)
This is what most competitive tournament players do when a newbie shows up at club. It encourages learning the game, and we can still beat them as they really don't know how to properly utilize all that information until they've learned some strategy as well.
The cheat sheet we give out has all the 2 and 3-letter words, and all the 4 letters words which contain Q J X and Z. Also a bunch of words which are mostly vowels: "vowel dumps", that are useful to know.
Most competitive players will have 75%+ of that list memorized, but I'd wager only a few hundred people in the country could recite it from memory flawlessly. (not me, I'm still learning my threes!)
I can't speak for the UK, but the problem in the USA is how sprawling and massive these new subdivisions are. If you went 20mph in some of them, it would literally take you 15 minutes just to get to a grocery store.
Wouldn't it follow, then, that a politician would NOT have to actually do anything for the Corporation in question? After all, its not like Exxon or Microsoft is going to stop donating to both parties, right?
Well, in all seriously, I don't care what they do to it graphically. The game would be just as much fun if a grassland was a unanimated green square, mountains were gray, etc. Civ 1 was 320X200 wasn't it? My phone has a better screen, and more processor/RAM than my 486/33 where I played Civ1. I have no idea how CPU intensive the math that calculates all the moves and AI logic is in Civ4 though.
Make it happen for Civ 5, so I can play the same game on the TV at home, switch to the laptop when the wife wants to watch TV, then switch to the phone in the bathroom at work! My life would be complete.
So what should an indie developer with a concept for a video game for multiple players on one screen, and possibly even a proof of concept implementation for home theater PCs, do in order to grow to meet Nintendo's requirements for a WiiWare license? This includes having "relevant video game industry experience" and affording a "secure office facility".
I'm not sure, it's a tough question. I'd love to see PC gaming flourish in that area -- I'm not antagonistic to the idea of home theater PC's, though my original post may have come off a bit mocking in nature. I was more just pointing out the current reality.
I think a good start would be a standardized HTPC implementation, so you don't run into the configuration/settings/"will my machine run it and at what quality" nightmare that PC gaming is for non-technical users.
While I agree with you, I should point out that the new Wii Super Mario does use motion sensor; a few actions, like using the propeller hat, require you to shake the controller.
True, but I get the impression that this is because Nintendo planned poorly with the Wiimotes. You basically need a couple extra buttons for SNES-level Mario gameplay. Failing that, they hacked in a few things (like lifting POW blocks) with the motion control.
I don't want the Nintendo controller to look like the double-shoulder button mess that the Playstation input devices have become, but a SNES style 4 buttons would probably have been a good idea. 2 is just a bit limiting.
As does a suitably installed Acer Aspire Revo or any of several home theater PCs. So why aren't video games designed to take advantage of home theater PCs?
Because no one does that. Seriously, there are what, 25,000,000 Wiis sold in the North American market? I'd be shocked if there were 150,000 Home Theater PCs properly installed and powerful enough for gaming on the continent.
Even if it is a million, its an embarrassingly small market. Its the same reason you don't see boxed Linux distributions at Best Buy.
Say, they show 40 million ads daily (in fact they show a lot more) with _extremely low_ eCPM of 0.05 USD - that would be just 2'000 USD daily, 60'000 USD a month.
In reality you can usually double these numbers, given that they show quality targeted ads - so it's just 120'000 USD a month by advertising revenue - 1'440'000 USD a year.
Of course there are running costs - servers, bandwidth and salaries. Say, it's 20'000 USD per month. Still neat profit.
If yearly profit of more than a million USD is "doesn't make shit" for you - what are you doing here? Go ride your Porsche or something.
Perhaps I'm not reading your math correctly, because it come off as absolutely ridiculous as stated. I'd be shocked if it cost less than $1.4 million a year to keep the New York Times office building operating electricity and clean toilets.
And $20,000 a month to support the salaries of 350 staff writers, and surely several thousand other employees? In Manhattan? $20,000 a month wouldn't pay 350 educated employees in China.
There is no reason not to take this, unless you have some sort of self control issue. The ratio of debt to credit is one of the biggest components of your credit score, and will only look better with the increase (just don't USE it).
This is like taking your car to the demolition derby, and complaining that it got smashed up. And then trying to get a 10 month refund from Sirius/XM because you don't need a satellite radio subscription anymore now that your car is totalled.
It's very simple.. If you don't like to see your Xbox get bricked, don't connect it to networks run by unsavory companies (Microsoft), while agreeing to ridiculous TOS in order to do so. If you simply buy the Xbox, mod it, and never connect it to Xbox Live, none of this would have happened.
Yes, McCain was generally a bad leader with bad policies, but it devalues the horrible things the GW Bush administration did to this country and the world.
His reign needs to be remembered for the shit job that it did, so it doesn't help lumping every politician you don't like in with him.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say more like AOL or Tivo or did.
INTERNET still isn't good in North American tournament scrabble (but is good in international play). INTRANET is good in both. So yeah, the whole thing is a little flawed.
For those who missed the joke, "why" would be a 24-point word.
WHY should be a 24-point play, or damn near close most of the time, if you are using your tiles at all effectively.
Yep, though you mean "every 2 letter word in the Scrabble Dictionary."
It's basically cheating. If you are a talented scrabble player, you should be better able to use the tiles you have, not memorize crutches.
Yup, and damn that football team for actually studying passing and running plays! They sit there with video cameras breaking things down! It's basically cheating! They should just all run around randomly hope the Quarterback throws to them.
If you played competitive scrabble, you should know that no one makes a living doing it, its for the love of the game. There is basically no sponsor money, and most tourneys are buy-ins (like poker). Those top 100 could if Coke and Redbull felt like dumping a million (or ten!) into prize money, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Heck, Joel Sherman is one of the top players in the world, and he's been playing almost every weekend since the 80's, and he's only amassed a few hundred thousand in prize money. You can't count on winning Worlds or Nationals every year, there is too much parity at the top.
Unless by "living" you mean "enough to eke out half the rent in a shitty apartment with a roommate".
I think a better solution to the two-letter problem might be to just print all the two-letter words on a handy reference card and give copies to all players.)
This is what most competitive tournament players do when a newbie shows up at club. It encourages learning the game, and we can still beat them as they really don't know how to properly utilize all that information until they've learned some strategy as well.
The cheat sheet we give out has all the 2 and 3-letter words, and all the 4 letters words which contain Q J X and Z. Also a bunch of words which are mostly vowels: "vowel dumps", that are useful to know.
Most competitive players will have 75%+ of that list memorized, but I'd wager only a few hundred people in the country could recite it from memory flawlessly. (not me, I'm still learning my threes!)
How do you define a foreign word?
Is QINTAR (Albanian money) foriegn?
how about PANINI (Italian sandwich)?
BAGUETTE? (French)
BURQA? (Arabic)
You are the only person I've ever seen who likes iTunes and things the iPod hardware is shit.
I can't speak for the UK, but the problem in the USA is how sprawling and massive these new subdivisions are. If you went 20mph in some of them, it would literally take you 15 minutes just to get to a grocery store.
Wouldn't it follow, then, that a politician would NOT have to actually do anything for the Corporation in question? After all, its not like Exxon or Microsoft is going to stop donating to both parties, right?
For myself and friends, it's like Alcohol fueled Karaoke night, plus score keeping. How is there not appeal there?
tl, dr: Never play Rock Band alone, sober, or on a difficulty above "Medium".
Well, in all seriously, I don't care what they do to it graphically. The game would be just as much fun if a grassland was a unanimated green square, mountains were gray, etc. Civ 1 was 320X200 wasn't it? My phone has a better screen, and more processor/RAM than my 486/33 where I played Civ1. I have no idea how CPU intensive the math that calculates all the moves and AI logic is in Civ4 though.
Make it happen for Civ 5, so I can play the same game on the TV at home, switch to the laptop when the wife wants to watch TV, then switch to the phone in the bathroom at work! My life would be complete.
I'm curious, how does this work with Gmail? Are you creating a new gmail account for each site and re-directing them to the same ultimate mailbox?
So what should an indie developer with a concept for a video game for multiple players on one screen, and possibly even a proof of concept implementation for home theater PCs, do in order to grow to meet Nintendo's requirements for a WiiWare license? This includes having "relevant video game industry experience" and affording a "secure office facility".
I'm not sure, it's a tough question. I'd love to see PC gaming flourish in that area -- I'm not antagonistic to the idea of home theater PC's, though my original post may have come off a bit mocking in nature. I was more just pointing out the current reality.
I think a good start would be a standardized HTPC implementation, so you don't run into the configuration/settings/"will my machine run it and at what quality" nightmare that PC gaming is for non-technical users.
While I agree with you, I should point out that the new Wii Super Mario does use motion sensor; a few actions, like using the propeller hat, require you to shake the controller.
True, but I get the impression that this is because Nintendo planned poorly with the Wiimotes. You basically need a couple extra buttons for SNES-level Mario gameplay. Failing that, they hacked in a few things (like lifting POW blocks) with the motion control.
I don't want the Nintendo controller to look like the double-shoulder button mess that the Playstation input devices have become, but a SNES style 4 buttons would probably have been a good idea. 2 is just a bit limiting.
As does a suitably installed Acer Aspire Revo or any of several home theater PCs. So why aren't video games designed to take advantage of home theater PCs?
Because no one does that. Seriously, there are what, 25,000,000 Wiis sold in the North American market? I'd be shocked if there were 150,000 Home Theater PCs properly installed and powerful enough for gaming on the continent.
Even if it is a million, its an embarrassingly small market. Its the same reason you don't see boxed Linux distributions at Best Buy.
Say, they show 40 million ads daily (in fact they show a lot more) with _extremely low_ eCPM of 0.05 USD - that would be just 2'000 USD daily, 60'000 USD a month.
In reality you can usually double these numbers, given that they show quality targeted ads - so it's just 120'000 USD a month by advertising revenue - 1'440'000 USD a year.
Of course there are running costs - servers, bandwidth and salaries. Say, it's 20'000 USD per month. Still neat profit.
If yearly profit of more than a million USD is "doesn't make shit" for you - what are you doing here? Go ride your Porsche or something.
Perhaps I'm not reading your math correctly, because it come off as absolutely ridiculous as stated. I'd be shocked if it cost less than $1.4 million a year to keep the New York Times office building operating electricity and clean toilets.
And $20,000 a month to support the salaries of 350 staff writers, and surely several thousand other employees? In Manhattan? $20,000 a month wouldn't pay 350 educated employees in China.
There is no reason not to take this, unless you have some sort of self control issue. The ratio of debt to credit is one of the biggest components of your credit score, and will only look better with the increase (just don't USE it).
One thing that is politically incorrect but a real dynamic: the majority of those who create are male, the majority of those who delete are female
Do you have statistics to back this up with regards to Wikipedia? I'm genuinely curious.
Can you imagine the stench in that room?
This is like taking your car to the demolition derby, and complaining that it got smashed up. And then trying to get a 10 month refund from Sirius/XM because you don't need a satellite radio subscription anymore now that your car is totalled.
It's very simple.. If you don't like to see your Xbox get bricked, don't connect it to networks run by unsavory companies (Microsoft), while agreeing to ridiculous TOS in order to do so. If you simply buy the Xbox, mod it, and never connect it to Xbox Live, none of this would have happened.
Ah yes. President. I suppose it probably does cost a pretty penny to have all those Secret Service people opening the door for him.
Don't even call McCain GW Bush II.
Yes, McCain was generally a bad leader with bad policies, but it devalues the horrible things the GW Bush administration did to this country and the world.
His reign needs to be remembered for the shit job that it did, so it doesn't help lumping every politician you don't like in with him.
But he didn't use the word "treason".