Sure lets compare the strongest most expensive console from last generation that failed and nearly bankrupted Sega to the weakest and least expensive console from this one.
The Dreamcast was a generation before the last generation, and we're talking consoles here, not cars; 10 years is several lifetimes, and just like a computer a console should be exponentially more powerful now.
Everytime someone says Nintendo should have done the Wii differently, all one has to do is point back to the sales. They've sold 30+ Million of the things in under two years, and made profit on each of them.
I have never believed that sales necessarily equals quality. I mean, look how successful Titanic was, doesn't mean it's a good movie. And Nintendo could have just taken a smaller profit on the systems (or even subsidized them a la Sony/MS). I like the Wii, I just wish, for my own sake, it was technologically more advanced. As it is my favorite genre of games (graphics-intensive 3d action/adventure) is severely underrepresented, partially because of this I think.
Companies are screaming out for people with the right skills and abilities. Even now the market is strong.
Companies tend to be lousy at judging who has the right skills and abilities. And even if your supervisor knows how good you work, the decision to outsource is generally made by people above him who have no clue about your work.
If they'd put in Hidef support, on the existing CPU/GPU, the framerate would have sucked. You can't just pump 5x as many pixels by adding an HDMI connector.
You don't HAVE to transmit in 1920x1080 mind you, but having that option would be good. Action games with a lot of things on screen could use a lower resolution, but static images and puzzle games could take advantage of the higher resolution.
I don't know at what level they should have done the CPU, but I do know the level they did do it at was too low. My Wii just struggles on things that no console younger than 8 years old should struggle on. I see very little difference graphics-wise between the Wii and the Dreamcast, and the Dreamcast is close to a decade old now. I mean, if you're not going to do that why not just develop the wiimote for the gamecube?
Jesus. If you want to drive offshoring, that's the way to do it. Make American IT more expensive and less efficient than everywhere else in the world, and the work will flee this country and leave us longing for the days of H1-Bs and mere outsourcing.
Then what's your alternative? You hate unions, but IT jobs have already been outsourced to a ridiculous degree. You can't compete with someone making $2 an hour. What's your plan?
What does the American Bar Association do? Primarily it sets standards for it's members, and enforces them.
As a member of the American Bar Association, I can assure you that it has absolutely no enforcement powers over me other than being able to theoretically revoke my membership. The ABA accredits law schools, acts as a lobbying arm for the legal profession, and provides advice to politicians regarding judicial candidates, but it is not equivalent to a state Bar and does not regulate lawyers.
why is a new platform needed? provide new and backward compatible graphics API and the same, but faster CPU (maybe multi-core, if really needed) and developers can start with their feet on the ground, running.
That's a good idea, and if I ran console design that's what I would do.
sony said "hay lets change it all again and then make even double hard to do - w00tz cell pwn ftw n00b" (*choke*)
To be fair to Sony, the PS1 was notoriously hard to develop for, but that didn't stop it from being extremely successful.
nintendo said "know how to develop for a gamecube? great, the wii is mostly the same, with a bit faster hardware and a new input device"
Well that's the problem, the hardware just isn't as fast as it should be. They should have gone with something faster and more powerful, and they definitely should have put in HDMI/DVI support.
Disagree. Sony and Microsoft did no-brainers this gen. Their hardware improvement was incremental, Nintendo's was revolutionary. They went in different directions.
Regardless, the fact of the matter is Nintendo traditionally refuses to develop new platforms unless the market leaves them no choice. Their ideal platform was the gameboy, and if they can get by without offering a Wii2 they will definitely prefer that.
I don't really think they've ever screwed over developpers, unless you mean they make great first party games that wipe them out.
Eh, I've never been that impressed with Nintendo's first party games. And by screwing them over I wasn't really talking about that, but rather a wide assortment of things they've done over the years, like forcing developers to only develop for their console (before the Genesis and subsequent systems broke their monopoly), requiring developers to get Nintendo's approval before releasing games, surprising developers with new accessory releases without giving them any lead time, etc.
That's laughably false, at least with real contracts. If someone brings you a stack of papers, says "Sign here", and you sign without reading it, and then they demand (in court) that you hand over all your personal property according to the contract, you're hosed.
Doubt it. There are several ways legally to attack that, any one of which would probably work.
That's the sad thing about the Wii, it's in a small slump because developpers laughed at it (now the assholes are paying with blood), and Nintendo can't release smash hits every year.
The Wii's been out for almost 2 years, which is longer than the development cycle of a game, so I don't think that's it. And Nintendo has a 30 year history of screwing over developers, so I think there's a natural resistance to develop for them on the part of some people. There's also the problem with the Wii being underpowered in terms of hardware, which discourages multiplatform development.
Maybe in 2-3 years, that will begin to matter to most people. That'll be about when the next gen consoles hit, right?
Sony and xbox maybe, Nintendo will do what they always do, drag their heels on developing new hardware. If they had their way we'd still be using NESes.
Having little understanding of my state's governance, I would hazard a guess that this isn't something that's been thought out by anyone of a very high rank. This seems more like a mid-level management decision, or rather the equivalent of that in government. In other words, this seems like bureaucracy doing it's thing, not using common sense as that generally gets you in trouble. It's not suprising to me anyway that a "mid-level" bureaucrat would copyright the laws without having a reason to do so. Why not, it's taxpayer money.
This is a complete guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if they made a conscious decision to do that in order to be able to license it out to legal publishing companies.
9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.
Unless they changed it since the story was posted (which is entirely possible), Google makes no such claim.
Does the president have to know everything? I don't think Carter is eligible for re-election, and he was the last of his kind. If a president has advisors whom he trusts, and if he chose them well, and if he keeps tabs on what they're doing and gives them good high-level direction, that isn't such a bad thing.
Carter? I think Clinton was the last policy geek we actually had in office. Gore would have been an even bigger one, unfortunately he "lost."
Most of our parents are addicted to television; I don't see any hysteria or treatment programs for them. In fact politicians and advertisers actively exploit that addiction.
For 60 years many people, including politicians, have been criticizing how much TV American citizens watch. There are entire institutes dedicated to studying the problem.
Some argue that refined sugar is addictive, too, and most Westerners are in fact addicted.
Wouldn't overly surprise me. I cut refined sugar out of my diet a year ago and it definitely was a great move. It changes the entire way I taste things, for the better.
It seems obvious that the only people who think MMORPGs are addictive are the people who haven't played them.
Alright that's just not true, I've met several MMORPG players who consider themselves addicted and are not happy about the amount of time they've spent on their games.
Personally I never got into the MMORPG thing, but I remember back when I used to MUD there were periods where I definitely exhibited the signs of addiction. That endorphin rush I got when I first logged in for the day is scary in retrospect.
FO2 is both better and worse. Better in that they fixed a few bugs and the story's more developed and different...worse in that it's a little more unfinished.
Well I'll take the better story even if it's a little buggier. Just finished Fallout a little while ago (well, the easy way, by detonating the nuclear bomb; I assume there's a more elegant way to finish it so I'll try to get an ending that doesn't make me a mass murderer).
What's so good about arbitration at all? I know, they seem like a better implementation of a court-system, which is quite bloated and awfully expensive. But the arbiters are not judges, usually have little legal experience, and aren't from the Judiciary.
Huh? Every arbitrator I know has extensive legal experience; they're usually lawyers and/or judges with substantial careers behind them. I remember going through an arbitrator list sent by the American Arbitration Association last year and except for a single forensic accountant (with significant experience in the law), everyone on the list was an experienced attorney.
Arbitration was designed to be used between businesses; when it's done that way it can actually be a superior alternative to court. It's when it's applied to adhesion contracts with consumers that it get unfair.
True. There's another side to that coin, though--that kind of completeness introduces way more bugs and problems like the ones you decry. ("Ask About..." has a surprising amount of stuff, though.)
I do like the Ask About part, that's how we did it in the olden days with games like Ultima.
Both Fallout games were absolutely rushed out the door. Doing what you suggest would make it even more unfinished. Which sucks, but there you go.
That's probably a lot of the problem, but honestly it's not something I can easily forgive. Interplay has been around since the early days, they usually make very good, very polished games, and if they released a game before it was ready then they should be blamed for that. A game that suffers because of inadequate work can be just as bad as one that suffers because the developers are just bad at what they do (again, not that I'm saying Fallout is a bad game, it's a very good game). I do plan on playing Fallout 2 if I can find a cheap copy, I've heard that it's actually better.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure lets compare the strongest most expensive console from last generation that failed and nearly bankrupted Sega to the weakest and least expensive console from this one.
The Dreamcast was a generation before the last generation, and we're talking consoles here, not cars; 10 years is several lifetimes, and just like a computer a console should be exponentially more powerful now.
Everytime someone says Nintendo should have done the Wii differently, all one has to do is point back to the sales. They've sold 30+ Million of the things in under two years, and made profit on each of them.
I have never believed that sales necessarily equals quality. I mean, look how successful Titanic was, doesn't mean it's a good movie. And Nintendo could have just taken a smaller profit on the systems (or even subsidized them a la Sony/MS). I like the Wii, I just wish, for my own sake, it was technologically more advanced. As it is my favorite genre of games (graphics-intensive 3d action/adventure) is severely underrepresented, partially because of this I think.
Companies are screaming out for people with the right skills and abilities. Even now the market is strong.
Companies tend to be lousy at judging who has the right skills and abilities. And even if your supervisor knows how good you work, the decision to outsource is generally made by people above him who have no clue about your work.
If they'd put in Hidef support, on the existing CPU/GPU, the framerate would have sucked. You can't just pump 5x as many pixels by adding an HDMI connector.
You don't HAVE to transmit in 1920x1080 mind you, but having that option would be good. Action games with a lot of things on screen could use a lower resolution, but static images and puzzle games could take advantage of the higher resolution.
I don't know at what level they should have done the CPU, but I do know the level they did do it at was too low. My Wii just struggles on things that no console younger than 8 years old should struggle on. I see very little difference graphics-wise between the Wii and the Dreamcast, and the Dreamcast is close to a decade old now. I mean, if you're not going to do that why not just develop the wiimote for the gamecube?
I'm a white, Republican American and I'm in favor of H1-B immigration as it raises the overall American experience.
Of course you are.
My experience with unions is that they culturally favor the least capable workers at the expense of the most...
That's how the vast majority of non-union jobs work as well.
Jesus. If you want to drive offshoring, that's the way to do it. Make American IT more expensive and less efficient than everywhere else in the world, and the work will flee this country and leave us longing for the days of H1-Bs and mere outsourcing.
Then what's your alternative? You hate unions, but IT jobs have already been outsourced to a ridiculous degree. You can't compete with someone making $2 an hour. What's your plan?
What does the American Bar Association do? Primarily it sets standards for it's members, and enforces them.
As a member of the American Bar Association, I can assure you that it has absolutely no enforcement powers over me other than being able to theoretically revoke my membership. The ABA accredits law schools, acts as a lobbying arm for the legal profession, and provides advice to politicians regarding judicial candidates, but it is not equivalent to a state Bar and does not regulate lawyers.
why is a new platform needed? provide new and backward compatible graphics API and the same, but faster CPU (maybe multi-core, if really needed) and developers can start with their feet on the ground, running.
That's a good idea, and if I ran console design that's what I would do.
sony said "hay lets change it all again and then make even double hard to do - w00tz cell pwn ftw n00b" (*choke*)
To be fair to Sony, the PS1 was notoriously hard to develop for, but that didn't stop it from being extremely successful.
nintendo said "know how to develop for a gamecube? great, the wii is mostly the same, with a bit faster hardware and a new input device"
Well that's the problem, the hardware just isn't as fast as it should be. They should have gone with something faster and more powerful, and they definitely should have put in HDMI/DVI support.
The same goes for China.
Eh, doubt it. China's army shouldn't be taken lightly, but their navy isn't especially impressive.
Disagree. Sony and Microsoft did no-brainers this gen. Their hardware improvement was incremental, Nintendo's was revolutionary. They went in different directions.
Regardless, the fact of the matter is Nintendo traditionally refuses to develop new platforms unless the market leaves them no choice. Their ideal platform was the gameboy, and if they can get by without offering a Wii2 they will definitely prefer that.
I don't really think they've ever screwed over developpers, unless you mean they make great first party games that wipe them out.
Eh, I've never been that impressed with Nintendo's first party games. And by screwing them over I wasn't really talking about that, but rather a wide assortment of things they've done over the years, like forcing developers to only develop for their console (before the Genesis and subsequent systems broke their monopoly), requiring developers to get Nintendo's approval before releasing games, surprising developers with new accessory releases without giving them any lead time, etc.
That's laughably false, at least with real contracts. If someone brings you a stack of papers, says "Sign here", and you sign without reading it, and then they demand (in court) that you hand over all your personal property according to the contract, you're hosed.
Doubt it. There are several ways legally to attack that, any one of which would probably work.
That's the sad thing about the Wii, it's in a small slump because developpers laughed at it (now the assholes are paying with blood), and Nintendo can't release smash hits every year.
The Wii's been out for almost 2 years, which is longer than the development cycle of a game, so I don't think that's it. And Nintendo has a 30 year history of screwing over developers, so I think there's a natural resistance to develop for them on the part of some people. There's also the problem with the Wii being underpowered in terms of hardware, which discourages multiplatform development.
Maybe in 2-3 years, that will begin to matter to most people. That'll be about when the next gen consoles hit, right?
Sony and xbox maybe, Nintendo will do what they always do, drag their heels on developing new hardware. If they had their way we'd still be using NESes.
Having little understanding of my state's governance, I would hazard a guess that this isn't something that's been thought out by anyone of a very high rank. This seems more like a mid-level management decision, or rather the equivalent of that in government. In other words, this seems like bureaucracy doing it's thing, not using common sense as that generally gets you in trouble. It's not suprising to me anyway that a "mid-level" bureaucrat would copyright the laws without having a reason to do so. Why not, it's taxpayer money.
This is a complete guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if they made a conscious decision to do that in order to be able to license it out to legal publishing companies.
Unless they changed it since the story was posted (which is entirely possible), Google makes no such claim.
Does the president have to know everything? I don't think Carter is eligible for re-election, and he was the last of his kind. If a president has advisors whom he trusts, and if he chose them well, and if he keeps tabs on what they're doing and gives them good high-level direction, that isn't such a bad thing.
Carter? I think Clinton was the last policy geek we actually had in office. Gore would have been an even bigger one, unfortunately he "lost."
Everyone's talking about lawyers and whatnot... what happened to just being polite? I guess lawyers have ruined that too.
Wow, now we're getting blamed for stuff we're not even involved in? The submitter never mentioned lawyers at all.
Most of our parents are addicted to television; I don't see any hysteria or treatment programs for them. In fact politicians and advertisers actively exploit that addiction.
For 60 years many people, including politicians, have been criticizing how much TV American citizens watch. There are entire institutes dedicated to studying the problem.
Some argue that refined sugar is addictive, too, and most Westerners are in fact addicted.
Wouldn't overly surprise me. I cut refined sugar out of my diet a year ago and it definitely was a great move. It changes the entire way I taste things, for the better.
It seems obvious that the only people who think MMORPGs are addictive are the people who haven't played them.
Alright that's just not true, I've met several MMORPG players who consider themselves addicted and are not happy about the amount of time they've spent on their games.
Personally I never got into the MMORPG thing, but I remember back when I used to MUD there were periods where I definitely exhibited the signs of addiction. That endorphin rush I got when I first logged in for the day is scary in retrospect.
FO2 is both better and worse. Better in that they fixed a few bugs and the story's more developed and different...worse in that it's a little more unfinished.
Well I'll take the better story even if it's a little buggier. Just finished Fallout a little while ago (well, the easy way, by detonating the nuclear bomb; I assume there's a more elegant way to finish it so I'll try to get an ending that doesn't make me a mass murderer).
What's so good about arbitration at all? I know, they seem like a better implementation of a court-system, which is quite bloated and awfully expensive. But the arbiters are not judges, usually have little legal experience, and aren't from the Judiciary.
Huh? Every arbitrator I know has extensive legal experience; they're usually lawyers and/or judges with substantial careers behind them. I remember going through an arbitrator list sent by the American Arbitration Association last year and except for a single forensic accountant (with significant experience in the law), everyone on the list was an experienced attorney.
Arbitration was designed to be used between businesses; when it's done that way it can actually be a superior alternative to court. It's when it's applied to adhesion contracts with consumers that it get unfair.
True. There's another side to that coin, though--that kind of completeness introduces way more bugs and problems like the ones you decry. ("Ask About..." has a surprising amount of stuff, though.)
I do like the Ask About part, that's how we did it in the olden days with games like Ultima.
Both Fallout games were absolutely rushed out the door. Doing what you suggest would make it even more unfinished. Which sucks, but there you go.
That's probably a lot of the problem, but honestly it's not something I can easily forgive. Interplay has been around since the early days, they usually make very good, very polished games, and if they released a game before it was ready then they should be blamed for that. A game that suffers because of inadequate work can be just as bad as one that suffers because the developers are just bad at what they do (again, not that I'm saying Fallout is a bad game, it's a very good game). I do plan on playing Fallout 2 if I can find a cheap copy, I've heard that it's actually better.
Ford has been limited to crash testing only 1% of it's mid class level sedans.
I certainly do think Ford should be forced to crash test 100% of its cars before selling them.
is the "most common" mad cow disease test the one that was going to be administered?
Yes.