Okay! Maybe I'll play the last two (PS and fishing) on an emulator. Although I bet it's hard to find a game that can beat Activision's Fishing Derby - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_Derby (I'm joking of course)
>>>The Dreamcast was not the weakest. It was more powerful than the PS2. The Dreamcast had more video memory, and a better graphics chipset.
Although Sega did a lousy job with their early PS2 ports (on purpose no doubt), after the DC had been retired their ports were excellent. For example the PS2 port of Space Channel 5 and 5-2 looks better than the original DC versions, so I think that pretty much negates your argument. Plus the PS2 had room for 8 gigabytes of textures per disc, while the DC was limited to only 1 gigabyte, so the backgrounds and characters were more "compressed" with more artifacts on the DC. I'd say the PS2 was weaker than the Cube and Box, but still better than the Dreamcast
There's no need for a "kiddie net" just as there's no need for censorship on Cable TV, or censorship of Playboys in stores. If you want to filter content, do it at the destination with V-chips and the like. Or just don't buy the smut.
>>>Russia began from an agricultural backwater that had pretty much become the laughingstock of the world
False history. Pre-WW1 Russia was an economic powerhouse. Yes it arrived late to the party, but the serfs had been liberated, the people were free to choose their own direction in life (pursuit of happiness), and Russia was like China today - on its way to becoming a major industrial power with tons of natural resources to fuel the factories.
The only thing it lacked was a democratically-elected Parliament to check the power of the King (like Britain has), but it would have come eventuallye. There was no need to have a revolution since liberal ideas were already modifying the government to be more like pre-WW1 Britain, France, and other democracies.
Government's real problem is that it is a monopoly.
It operates on the belief that "one size fits all" and takes away the liberty of choice. An Uncle Sam monopoly shares the same flaws as a Comcast or Microsoft or Ford monopoly, but with the additional "evil" of compulsory payment. (You don't have to buy Comcast or MS or Ford products even if they did hold a monopoly.)
>>>No, they did not. The Soviet Union was not a liberal social democracy. It was a communist oligarchy.
It was neither of those. The Soviet Union was a liberal social nondemocracy. It was just like the modern European Union (free healthcare,free food, free housing, et cetera), minus the ability to choose your party. While the EU may enjoy the additional right to vote every few years, it still has the same flawed economic system that ran the Soviet Union and is doomed to collapse eventually.
What we saw this year was merely a precursor to that collapse. I expect we'll see another around 2015 and they will continue to be frequent events rather than rarities.
>>>if that were actually true, no wealth would be created by the Europeans or Canadians with their liberal socialist democracies.
They don't. It's China and India that are producing the real wealth (material goods), while the European Union and North America are going deeper and deeper into debt as slothful consumers. It wouldn't surprise me if - as the barbarians invaded the Roman Empire and Rome was too poor to raise an army - eventually China will do the same to North America... or that India/Arabia will do the same to Europe... and neither will have enough money to create the army needed to repel the attack.
This probably won't happen any time soon. After all Rome took about 300 years to devolve to the point of extreme poor and helplessness, but eventually it will come unless we Westerners change the way we do things.
Ehhh... I disagree. I think the "dumb user" paradigm has become obsolete. Most people 30 or younger have grown-up with computers, and they are saavy enough to realize installing a program on a machine that is slow is a bad idea. They realize it will just run even more slowly. That's why I had considered installing this "data collection program", but since my PC is already maxed-out with Firefox, Opera, Azureus, and Media Player all running at the same time, I decided "no more programs".
If there are other people like myself who simply say, "My PC's too slow to run survey software," then the data collected will skew upwards, because the low-end machines will not be sampled.
Anonymous Coward writes: >>>So let me get this right, you're upset that they made it opt-in so therefore only the people who agreed to it sent results? If they'd made it actual spyware and surreptitiously installed it on your machine, would that make you feel better? You could always just suck it up and install the damn thing to remove the skew... >>>
(1) I'm not upset. (2) I don't know why I bother answering ACs who apparently can't read. (3) Because it's opt-in and because it's a program that people would not want to run on an old limited-resource PC, it has the following flaws: - (a) The conclusions are likely skewed towards high-performance machines while low-end machines are not getting sampled. - (b) It's non-scientific because it's not a random sampling, so the data collected is essentially worthless.
I like that you're idealistic, but that's simply not how the real world works. Congress passes highway funding bills which tell the States, "Increase your drinking age to 21, else you will only get 95% of the funds," and it's perfectly legal according to the Supreme Court. I'm sure they'd say the same in regards to this deal where you give-up your GPL rights in exchange for cash.
>>>My point is that the time and money invested in the bird is not trivial.
God you dense. Do you think the time and money invested in digging-up the ground, hiring men, laying cable, and then connecting it with the required headends/servers is trivial either?
I suspect training the pigeon would actually be LESS time consuming.
THE BIAS I see is the "opt in" aspect of the system.
People like me who have old machines (Pentium 4) or limited RAM (1/2 gig) are not going to waste precious resources installing this Monitoring software. Those with more-powerful machines will install it since the slowdown will not be noticeable, therefore that tends to skew the results towards machines with lots of CPU or RAM to spare.
>>>It sort of kills the validity of the whole thing to me
What kills the validity for me is the "opt in" aspect of the system. People like me who have old machines (Pentium 4) or limited RAM (1/2 gig) are not going to waste precious resources installing this Monitoring software. That tends to skew the results towards more-powerful machines with lots of CPU or RAM to spare.
No not really. A democracy is a system where the majority rules, and as such there's no legal protection of basic rights, because all it takes is a 51% vote to execute or imprison a person (see Athenian Democracy and Socrates). A republic is a system where the law rules, and therefore basic rights are protected if such laws exist. So in The United States, even if the majority decides to kill someone, the law will block that action until "due process" is observed and a fair trial takes place.
Democracy - rule by the mob Republic - rule by the law
Wow. Perhaps next time you should double-check yourself by visiting wikipedia. Space Channel 5 (and 5-2), Power Stone 1/2, and Sambo de Amigo have all been ported. The Wii version of Sambo is actually better since it doesn't require any special controllers, and I'm surprised you missed SC5 since it's well-known that Space Channel 5 is one of the PS2's "must own" games. It's the only way to play the sequel outside of Japan.
Jet Set Grind was never ported but the Xbox sequel is nearly identical, which leaves Cannon Spike and Shenmue..... the first one is just yet-another-shooter so I can live without it, while the second one ends on an unresolved cliffhanger since the final chapter (Shenmue 3) was never completed, and I like to avoid unfinished stories. After reviewing this site, I'd have to say there's no reason to run-out and buy a Dreamcast. Virtually all of the outstanding games have already been ported - http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega/dreamcast/2007/07/sega-dreamcast-exclusives-the-dream-lives-on.html
>>>You have to respect that Dreamcast was the first platform many of those games appeared
Not really. First off I wouldn't consider games on the Naomi arcade boards as "dreamcast games" since the NAOMI has twice as much system memory, twice as much video memory, 4X as much sound memory, and uses ultrafast ROMs rather than slow-loading disc storage. The DC console is like the "not so bright" cousin of the Naomi and oftentimes the DC version simply doesn't look, sound, or play as good as the original arcade version.
Second the Commodore Amiga was the 1980s birth platform for many of great 90s-era Genesis and Super Nintendo ports, but nobody seems to care about that. It's forgotten history. Eventually the Dreamcast's role as "birthplace" for these games will be forgotten as well.
Thanks!:-) I reviewed that list, paying close attention to the games with the red DC symbol next to them, but I didn't see any exclusives that would make me want to buy a Dreamcast off ebay. It appears all the outstanding games have already been ported to the PS2, Wii, and other consoles.
BTW the website summary is wrong when they say Soul Calibur was the original. The original game is Soul Edge aka Soul Blade on the Sega Saturn/PS1, and imho the best of the whole series.
Actually in the last days of Rome there were very few wealthy people. Even the emperor himself lacked enough money to raise a decent army, which is why the barbarians so easily took-over France, Spain, and Italy.
The reason why Rome was so poor was because it had evolved into a Serfdom (slavery) where people were tied to the land, and there was little desire to engage in entrepreneurship. It devolved into a parasitic slothfulness where nobody felt any need to do anything, and the overall wealth in 400 A.D. was vastly smaller than that which had existed in 100 A.D.
I read this as "they want their titty back". Oh my. The net has effectively turned me into a female body addict. http://domai.com/ Ooops that slipped right out.
I knew I should have been a programmer. As each year goes by my hardware skills become less-and-less useful, because they keep moving the equipment to remote locations and handing-over control to programmers or administrators (or lawyers).
Oh well. (signs up for college). Time to earn that second degree (and maybe score with the ladies for a change).
>>>The N64 controller, however, drove me up the wall.
The N64 controller works just fine as long as you ignore the far-left "prong". Yeah I know what you're thinking - why have the left prong if you're not going to use it? Beats me. Nvertheless the N64 works just fine for controlling Link or Mario or Resident Evil's heroine as they move-around their 3D worlds. Plus I think the N64 controller deserves credit for being the first controller to have an analog control stick. (No I'm not counting the Atari 5200's messed-up joystick.) The PS1 quickly followed suit and copied Nintendo's analog control.
Ye name a lot of great games, but virtually all of them have been ported to the PS2 or Gamecube (I won both). Are there any "must play" games that still remain exclusive to the Dreamcast which would make me, or other players, want to go buy a DC off ebay? I can not think of any.
Disagree. Sega has no one to blame but themselves. First I bought a Genesis which was cool. Then a 32X which was only supported a year, and then the Saturn which was only supported two years, and then Sega announced Dreamcast. I (and millions of others) decided we were tired of getting screwed buying 32Xs or Saturns that were barely-supported. So we turned our backs on Sega and their new dreamcast.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice? Fat fucking chance!"
Re:Ataris later consoles were also underappreciate
on
Sega Dreamcast Turns 10
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I agree on the Atari Lynx being ahead of its time, but the Jaguar had lousy graphics, especially when compared to the PS1 released just one year later. No wonder it flopped.
Also despite Atari's last-ditch attempts to rename Jaguar as "Jaguar 64", nobody was fooled. Everyone knew it was a 32-bit 68000 CPU - same thing that ran the five-year-old Sega Genesis and the 10 year old Macintosh or Amiga. The Jaguar has a better GPU, but that was its only advantage over those other machines.
And you mention Super Nintendo which you are correct required an extra chip to make 3D Starfox, but so what? It still produced three-dimensions at no extra cost to the consumer. People were willing to stick with the SNES and then jump to the PS1, and ignore the Jaguar as nothing of note.
>>>remember playing Phantasy Star Online over the 56k modem before the term MMO even existed.
Bzzz.
I've been playing MMO games since the text-only 1980s. They predate the 1999 DC console by about fifteen years. We also had the capability to play graphics-based games in direct head-to-head competitions over 2 kbit/s phone lines. It still amazes me that those things worked over such slow connections, but they did and I loved challenging friends in Populous.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay! Maybe I'll play the last two (PS and fishing) on an emulator. Although I bet it's hard to find a game that can beat Activision's Fishing Derby - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_Derby (I'm joking of course)
>>>The Dreamcast was not the weakest. It was more powerful than the PS2. The Dreamcast had more video memory, and a better graphics chipset.
Although Sega did a lousy job with their early PS2 ports (on purpose no doubt), after the DC had been retired their ports were excellent. For example the PS2 port of Space Channel 5 and 5-2 looks better than the original DC versions, so I think that pretty much negates your argument. Plus the PS2 had room for 8 gigabytes of textures per disc, while the DC was limited to only 1 gigabyte, so the backgrounds and characters were more "compressed" with more artifacts on the DC. I'd say the PS2 was weaker than the Cube and Box, but still better than the Dreamcast
There's no need for a "kiddie net" just as there's no need for censorship on Cable TV, or censorship of Playboys in stores. If you want to filter content, do it at the destination with V-chips and the like. Or just don't buy the smut.
Simple as that.
>>>Russia began from an agricultural backwater that had pretty much become the laughingstock of the world
False history. Pre-WW1 Russia was an economic powerhouse. Yes it arrived late to the party, but the serfs had been liberated, the people were free to choose their own direction in life (pursuit of happiness), and Russia was like China today - on its way to becoming a major industrial power with tons of natural resources to fuel the factories.
The only thing it lacked was a democratically-elected Parliament to check the power of the King (like Britain has), but it would have come eventuallye. There was no need to have a revolution since liberal ideas were already modifying the government to be more like pre-WW1 Britain, France, and other democracies.
Government's real problem is that it is a monopoly.
It operates on the belief that "one size fits all" and takes away the liberty of choice. An Uncle Sam monopoly shares the same flaws as a Comcast or Microsoft or Ford monopoly, but with the additional "evil" of compulsory payment. (You don't have to buy Comcast or MS or Ford products even if they did hold a monopoly.)
>>>No, they did not. The Soviet Union was not a liberal social democracy. It was a communist oligarchy.
It was neither of those. The Soviet Union was a liberal social nondemocracy. It was just like the modern European Union (free healthcare,free food, free housing, et cetera), minus the ability to choose your party. While the EU may enjoy the additional right to vote every few years, it still has the same flawed economic system that ran the Soviet Union and is doomed to collapse eventually.
What we saw this year was merely a precursor to that collapse. I expect we'll see another around 2015 and they will continue to be frequent events rather than rarities.
>>>if that were actually true, no wealth would be created by the Europeans or Canadians with their liberal socialist democracies.
They don't. It's China and India that are producing the real wealth (material goods), while the European Union and North America are going deeper and deeper into debt as slothful consumers. It wouldn't surprise me if - as the barbarians invaded the Roman Empire and Rome was too poor to raise an army - eventually China will do the same to North America... or that India/Arabia will do the same to Europe... and neither will have enough money to create the army needed to repel the attack.
This probably won't happen any time soon. After all Rome took about 300 years to devolve to the point of extreme poor and helplessness, but eventually it will come unless we Westerners change the way we do things.
Ehhh... I disagree. I think the "dumb user" paradigm has become obsolete. Most people 30 or younger have grown-up with computers, and they are saavy enough to realize installing a program on a machine that is slow is a bad idea. They realize it will just run even more slowly. That's why I had considered installing this "data collection program", but since my PC is already maxed-out with Firefox, Opera, Azureus, and Media Player all running at the same time, I decided "no more programs".
If there are other people like myself who simply say, "My PC's too slow to run survey software," then the data collected will skew upwards, because the low-end machines will not be sampled.
Anonymous Coward writes:
>>>So let me get this right, you're upset that they made it opt-in so therefore only the people who agreed to it sent results? If they'd made it actual spyware and surreptitiously installed it on your machine, would that make you feel better? You could always just suck it up and install the damn thing to remove the skew...
>>>
(1) I'm not upset.
(2) I don't know why I bother answering ACs who apparently can't read.
(3) Because it's opt-in and because it's a program that people would not want to run on an old limited-resource PC, it has the following flaws:
- (a) The conclusions are likely skewed towards high-performance machines while low-end machines are not getting sampled.
- (b) It's non-scientific because it's not a random sampling, so the data collected is essentially worthless.
I like that you're idealistic, but that's simply not how the real world works. Congress passes highway funding bills which tell the States, "Increase your drinking age to 21, else you will only get 95% of the funds," and it's perfectly legal according to the Supreme Court. I'm sure they'd say the same in regards to this deal where you give-up your GPL rights in exchange for cash.
(goes off to sign up for free cash)
>>>My point is that the time and money invested in the bird is not trivial.
God you dense. Do you think the time and money invested in digging-up the ground, hiring men, laying cable, and then connecting it with the required headends/servers is trivial either?
I suspect training the pigeon would actually be LESS time consuming.
According to speedtest.net, Africa is dead last in worldwide speeds (1.2 Mbit/s) versus Europe which is 6.8
South Africa is slightly faster at 1.6 Mbit/s but still pathetically slow.
THE BIAS I see is the "opt in" aspect of the system.
People like me who have old machines (Pentium 4) or limited RAM (1/2 gig) are not going to waste precious resources installing this Monitoring software. Those with more-powerful machines will install it since the slowdown will not be noticeable, therefore that tends to skew the results towards machines with lots of CPU or RAM to spare.
>>>It sort of kills the validity of the whole thing to me
What kills the validity for me is the "opt in" aspect of the system. People like me who have old machines (Pentium 4) or limited RAM (1/2 gig) are not going to waste precious resources installing this Monitoring software. That tends to skew the results towards more-powerful machines with lots of CPU or RAM to spare.
>>>democracy is a better way of describing it.
No not really. A democracy is a system where the majority rules, and as such there's no legal protection of basic rights, because all it takes is a 51% vote to execute or imprison a person (see Athenian Democracy and Socrates). A republic is a system where the law rules, and therefore basic rights are protected if such laws exist. So in The United States, even if the majority decides to kill someone, the law will block that action until "due process" is observed and a fair trial takes place.
Democracy - rule by the mob
Republic - rule by the law
The latter is superior to the former.
>>>Unported games off the top of my head:
Wow. Perhaps next time you should double-check yourself by visiting wikipedia. Space Channel 5 (and 5-2), Power Stone 1/2, and Sambo de Amigo have all been ported. The Wii version of Sambo is actually better since it doesn't require any special controllers, and I'm surprised you missed SC5 since it's well-known that Space Channel 5 is one of the PS2's "must own" games. It's the only way to play the sequel outside of Japan.
Jet Set Grind was never ported but the Xbox sequel is nearly identical, which leaves Cannon Spike and Shenmue..... the first one is just yet-another-shooter so I can live without it, while the second one ends on an unresolved cliffhanger since the final chapter (Shenmue 3) was never completed, and I like to avoid unfinished stories. After reviewing this site, I'd have to say there's no reason to run-out and buy a Dreamcast. Virtually all of the outstanding games have already been ported - http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega/dreamcast/2007/07/sega-dreamcast-exclusives-the-dream-lives-on.html
>>>You have to respect that Dreamcast was the first platform many of those games appeared
Not really. First off I wouldn't consider games on the Naomi arcade boards as "dreamcast games" since the NAOMI has twice as much system memory, twice as much video memory, 4X as much sound memory, and uses ultrafast ROMs rather than slow-loading disc storage. The DC console is like the "not so bright" cousin of the Naomi and oftentimes the DC version simply doesn't look, sound, or play as good as the original arcade version.
Second the Commodore Amiga was the 1980s birth platform for many of great 90s-era Genesis and Super Nintendo ports, but nobody seems to care about that. It's forgotten history. Eventually the Dreamcast's role as "birthplace" for these games will be forgotten as well.
Thanks! :-) I reviewed that list, paying close attention to the games with the red DC symbol next to them, but I didn't see any exclusives that would make me want to buy a Dreamcast off ebay. It appears all the outstanding games have already been ported to the PS2, Wii, and other consoles.
BTW the website summary is wrong when they say Soul Calibur was the original. The original game is Soul Edge aka Soul Blade on the Sega Saturn/PS1, and imho the best of the whole series.
Actually in the last days of Rome there were very few wealthy people. Even the emperor himself lacked enough money to raise a decent army, which is why the barbarians so easily took-over France, Spain, and Italy.
The reason why Rome was so poor was because it had evolved into a Serfdom (slavery) where people were tied to the land, and there was little desire to engage in entrepreneurship. It devolved into a parasitic slothfulness where nobody felt any need to do anything, and the overall wealth in 400 A.D. was vastly smaller than that which had existed in 100 A.D.
I read this as "they want their titty back". Oh my. The net has effectively turned me into a female body addict. http://domai.com/ Ooops that slipped right out.
I knew I should have been a programmer. As each year goes by my hardware skills become less-and-less useful, because they keep moving the equipment to remote locations and handing-over control to programmers or administrators (or lawyers).
Oh well. (signs up for college). Time to earn that second degree (and maybe score with the ladies for a change).
>>>The N64 controller, however, drove me up the wall.
The N64 controller works just fine as long as you ignore the far-left "prong". Yeah I know what you're thinking - why have the left prong if you're not going to use it? Beats me. Nvertheless the N64 works just fine for controlling Link or Mario or Resident Evil's heroine as they move-around their 3D worlds. Plus I think the N64 controller deserves credit for being the first controller to have an analog control stick. (No I'm not counting the Atari 5200's messed-up joystick.) The PS1 quickly followed suit and copied Nintendo's analog control.
Ye name a lot of great games, but virtually all of them have been ported to the PS2 or Gamecube (I won both). Are there any "must play" games that still remain exclusive to the Dreamcast which would make me, or other players, want to go buy a DC off ebay? I can not think of any.
>>>what killed the Dreamcast was the Sony me
Disagree. Sega has no one to blame but themselves. First I bought a Genesis which was cool. Then a 32X which was only supported a year, and then the Saturn which was only supported two years, and then Sega announced Dreamcast. I (and millions of others) decided we were tired of getting screwed buying 32Xs or Saturns that were barely-supported. So we turned our backs on Sega and their new dreamcast.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice? Fat fucking chance!"
I agree on the Atari Lynx being ahead of its time, but the Jaguar had lousy graphics, especially when compared to the PS1 released just one year later. No wonder it flopped.
Also despite Atari's last-ditch attempts to rename Jaguar as "Jaguar 64", nobody was fooled. Everyone knew it was a 32-bit 68000 CPU - same thing that ran the five-year-old Sega Genesis and the 10 year old Macintosh or Amiga. The Jaguar has a better GPU, but that was its only advantage over those other machines.
And you mention Super Nintendo which you are correct required an extra chip to make 3D Starfox, but so what? It still produced three-dimensions at no extra cost to the consumer. People were willing to stick with the SNES and then jump to the PS1, and ignore the Jaguar as nothing of note.
>>>remember playing Phantasy Star Online over the 56k modem before the term MMO even existed.
Bzzz.
I've been playing MMO games since the text-only 1980s. They predate the 1999 DC console by about fifteen years. We also had the capability to play graphics-based games in direct head-to-head competitions over 2 kbit/s phone lines. It still amazes me that those things worked over such slow connections, but they did and I loved challenging friends in Populous.