On the positive side I am guessing you haven't gotten a cease and desist order from a pack of Dr. Pepper lawyers either. Maybe you should count your blessings?
Yes he did leave after the original Quake. The lead designer for Quake II was Kevin Cloud I believe. He is an artist along with Adrian Carmack. The two of them made founded id software with John Romero and John Carmack.
extreme hardcore powerchilling (tm)" We do that in Canada as well, but it doesn't take drugs. It is ~-20 (celcius) right now in Calgary. I inadvertantly powerchill in transit between my apartment building and the cab on the street.
Why the HELL was that modded up? Maybe I am tired or just plain stupid, but I read that more as a troll or at the very least bad decision making. Surely it wasn't very Insightful.
First off: although I don't have solid numbers or anything in front of me, I am fairly certain that Microsoft has more of a stranglehold in the Desktop OS market than Sony does in the Game Console market.
While the N64 may not have been nearly as popular as the PSX, it did have its niche as Nintendo targeted most of their games at children. Maybe that hurt Nintendo a bit, but I don't think that makes them any where near as close to death as Apple was a few years back. Nintendo also makes this nifty little handheld product called the GameBoy Advance. The GameBoy series of handheld systems HAS held a virtual monopoly in that market since its original green tinted monochrome release over 10 years ago if I recall correctly. I think that would count as more of a monopoly than Sony has right at this very moment. Would you suggest we all go out and a Sega Game Gear or somesuch in order to rebel against the establishment?
Do I really need to get into Microsoft? I personally use Microsoft products, but arguing that ANYTHING put out by them is an ethical alternative used to fight the big bad "monopoly" is even beyond some of the spin doctorying they have been guilty of. Though I am sure they would see it as an innovative approach and be glad to steal the idea from you.
I am all for making sure there is an alternative, but telling people to steer away from Sony and buy a Microsoft or Nintendo product instead is about the equivilent of steering people away from the vocal stylings of Briteny Spears and saying the more rational decision is to buy Backstreet Boys or N'Sync music instead.
So stop pretending this is another David vs. Goliath or Linux vs. Microsoft situation, because it plainly isn't. Go out and buy the system that has the games you want to play, or buy none at all. Spending 400 dollars to show how anti-establishment you are isn't going to fool anybody.
(on a side note Square probably had enough incentive to push a proven product out quickly in order to make back some of the large amounts of money lost in the making of the flop Final Fantasy movie. Did there president or CEO or whatever not just step down due to just that? If Sony DID twist their arm to ship quickly, they wouldn't have had to twist very hard.)
I am sort of divided on this personally... Part of me wishes that the movie would have done better, but the other part doesn't feel that it really deserved to.
I love computer animation movies, especially anything put out by Pixar, including their wonderful short flicks. I thuroughly enjoyed a few games in the past done by Square - including FFVI, FFVII, Chrono Chross, and Secret of Mana. Even the Final Fantasy Legend series on GameBoy kept me occupied for a while. I was really looking forward to the Final Fantasy Movie.
So I watched it, and then after that I thought about how I would rate it next to my favorite movies, and quickly realized my dissapointment with it. My main gripes were:
- The setting. The FF series has ALWAYS had some sort of magic use and other fantasy elements in it, even in the more technological games (FFVI, VII, and VIII). In the movie, you get pretty much straight Sci Fi where nobody has unique abilities except for Aki, the main character. Everybody else has weapons, but big deal. Not much uniqueness to work out of that, so they have to rely on personality.
- The characters. Most of the characters weren't that unique at all. The squad was full of action flick stereotypes, including the somewhat sultry woman with some toughness to her, the wisecracking smartass, and the token black guy, and the token love interest with a connection to the protagonist.
- The script. The story wasn't bad, but it wasn't exceptional either. It didn't compare to any of the games that is for sure. I know that would be hard considering time constraints, but if they worked off more than a slightly above average yet still generic save the world script, it would have made an incredible difference. There was nothing in the storyline that really pulled the viewer into watching the movie multiple times. I felt that I got all that I could get out out of the movie in one viewing, and never gave any thought to seeing it again. This is a BIG killer for a movie, because if somebody who was a fan of the movie before it was out isn't going to watch it more than once, there isn't much chance that Joe Public will want to either.
- The location. The CG was well done and beautiful, but I really feel they could have done more if a more exotic world was chosen/made up. There were some areas that were exotic and even surreal, but nothing that completely floored me in the same way some of the games have. Everything looked good, but it didn't knock my socks off. This could possibly be because it was still Earth, so they were stuck using their imagination with that constraint. If they had created a whole world instead of just putting it in our own future, far more interesting stuff could have been shown I think.
- The soundtrack. This is more of a personal gripe, but for me it really didn't stand out for me. In the past with anything done by Square, it was a guaruntee that I would remember at least a song or two long after ceasing to play it. I can't remember one single track from the movie, and for a Square product that isn't a good sign.
The bottom line for me was this: Sure, the rendering was great and pretty much set the bar for what I will expect in the future. The movie deffinately looked beautiful. That just wasn't enough. The movie was skin deep and not much more than that. It may have been an alright popcorn flick, but it really wasn't much more than that even with the well done visuals. And there inlies its failing, in my opinion.
a few terms followed closely by a prison term
on
Hacker U.
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"The local police are said to be "watching the school with interest"." Right on! That means when you graduate you get two pieces of paper: A diploma and an arrest warrent! Better strip out of those robes before the court date. Don't want the judge to think you are trying to impersonate him or anything.
Am I the only one that is starting get the feeling posters are browsing the archives of/. just to find 'new' stories to submit?
Re:Forget Sony! they took down the Aibo Hack site!
on
New AIBO Demo'd
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Thank you voice of reason. I would hate to not be like everybody else and by something from a big bad company. Another life saved here. What is the total up to now?
" Update: 10/28 13:42 GMT by J: Little-known fact -- for important stories, slashdot sometimes runs duplicates to see who's still awake on a weekend. Nice work to those of you who caught it. See you next week. *sigh* " So what you are essentially saying is: it isn't a bug; it's a feature?
Problem 1.) Elected officials don't seem to read e-mails sent by anybody. Solution: Send snail mail!
Problem 2.) People in media and government are now paranoid about opening letters due to the very recent Anthrax scare. Solution: Send e-ma... wait a minute...
So now how do you get a message across to your government representative without belonging to a special interest group with deep pockets? Next thing you know seeking an audience without being a WASP and having a 6 figure annual income will bring you under suspicion for a possible assassination attempt.
I am stretching to be sure, but I think most people will agree that the more paranoid a nation gets, the less power and freedom an individual citizen has.
So maybe we should get a bunch of people to put a check for a few hundred bucks each into an envelope to their local Reps saying something like: "Thank you for voting in the anti-terrorist and freedoms act we talked about previously. Here is the money you were promised."
If you can't beat lobbyists, you may as well play their game badly enough to get some attention.
So then what we really need are a bunch of non-profit porn dispersal centers.
Catches criminals just like flies,,,
on
Review: Zoolander
·
· Score: 1
With the upcoming Spiderman movie they removed the first trailer entirely due to it prominently featuring the twin WTC towers (the ending shot of the trailer had a helicoptor trapped in a gigentic web between them). All shots and even references of the twin WTC towers are being removed from the final movie entirely.
You can check some archived news here: http://www.darkhorizons.com/news10/01indx3.htm for more details on some of the many productions effected.
This really sort of annoys me personally, as it reminds me of the term "revisionist history". Sure it isn't completely the same thing, but pretending something never existed because something extrememly bad happened to it seems rather absurd.
Since when did stories like this keep more WTC stories from being posted? I think there is room for both. This is just like the I HATE ANIME argument. You can turn off whatever you don't want. Perhaps you should start by taking off humour on your preferences.
Just don't tell everybody else what they should be paying attention to as well. I find stories like this HELP during times like this, because it remdinds me that humans are capable of more than causing destruction and inflicting pain on others.
But to each their own.
Maybe it is because people that played them as kids have grown up and and now live in a larger and more lucrative sandbox... We get older, they still see market potential and still keep us in mind when they make their products.
What are you worried about? Smokers and Drinkers and Drivers won't be allowed to use non-backdoor encryption either! Quit being so paranoid! Next you will be saying that some people are using the tragedy as a means to get to an unrelated end.
John Lennon's song Imagine is on the list. Isn't that song meant to promote peace? I can see why you wouldn't want people thinking about that... It would just be wrong.
I must have missed the subliminal messages within the song that can only be heard by a Radio Executive.
From what I have seen not everybody KNOWS BEFOREHAND that their site is going to be posted on Slashdot's frontpage. If I didn't know about it until I was already slashdotted and on the phone with a very angry webhosting service I would personally be pissed off that I wasn't informed beforehand. But maybe that is just me being paranoid and wanting to know what the hell is going on with my own website. I am sure most site owners would be more than happy to pay the bandwidth bill that they receive due to a Slashdot posting.
First Dupont or some beverage company has to come out with a synthetic beverage that they wouldn't even be able to market if coffee is around, since coffee is cheaper and more effective. Then they will lobby governments to make it illegal to import, possess, deal, or drink coffee. Then we will hear about how caffiene is a "gateway drug" that leads to crack abuse and moderating on Slashdot, as well as making people believe that information wants to be free and setting up peer to peer file trading servers. Eventually we will all be brainless drones drinking a beverage that comes in something similer to an oil can that also bears remarkable resemblance and chemical makeup to said combustible engine product, and fighting eachother over which brand is the best...
Slashdot Mirror
On the positive side I am guessing you haven't gotten a cease and desist order from a pack of Dr. Pepper lawyers either. Maybe you should count your blessings?
Thank you for the correction.
Yes he did leave after the original Quake. The lead designer for Quake II was Kevin Cloud I believe. He is an artist along with Adrian Carmack. The two of them made founded id software with John Romero and John Carmack.
extreme hardcore powerchilling (tm)"
We do that in Canada as well, but it doesn't take drugs. It is ~-20 (celcius) right now in Calgary. I inadvertantly powerchill in transit between my apartment building and the cab on the street.
Why the HELL was that modded up? Maybe I am tired or just plain stupid, but I read that more as a troll or at the very least bad decision making. Surely it wasn't very Insightful.
First off: although I don't have solid numbers or anything in front of me, I am fairly certain that Microsoft has more of a stranglehold in the Desktop OS market than Sony does in the Game Console market.
While the N64 may not have been nearly as popular as the PSX, it did have its niche as Nintendo targeted most of their games at children. Maybe that hurt Nintendo a bit, but I don't think that makes them any where near as close to death as Apple was a few years back. Nintendo also makes this nifty little handheld product called the GameBoy Advance. The GameBoy series of handheld systems HAS held a virtual monopoly in that market since its original green tinted monochrome release over 10 years ago if I recall correctly. I think that would count as more of a monopoly than Sony has right at this very moment. Would you suggest we all go out and a Sega Game Gear or somesuch in order to rebel against the establishment?
Do I really need to get into Microsoft? I personally use Microsoft products, but arguing that ANYTHING put out by them is an ethical alternative used to fight the big bad "monopoly" is even beyond some of the spin doctorying they have been guilty of. Though I am sure they would see it as an innovative approach and be glad to steal the idea from you.
I am all for making sure there is an alternative, but telling people to steer away from Sony and buy a Microsoft or Nintendo product instead is about the equivilent of steering people away from the vocal stylings of Briteny Spears and saying the more rational decision is to buy Backstreet Boys or N'Sync music instead.
So stop pretending this is another David vs. Goliath or Linux vs. Microsoft situation, because it plainly isn't. Go out and buy the system that has the games you want to play, or buy none at all. Spending 400 dollars to show how anti-establishment you are isn't going to fool anybody.
(on a side note Square probably had enough incentive to push a proven product out quickly in order to make back some of the large amounts of money lost in the making of the flop Final Fantasy movie. Did there president or CEO or whatever not just step down due to just that? If Sony DID twist their arm to ship quickly, they wouldn't have had to twist very hard.)
Fans may have evolved to the point where they don't have to keep going around in circles, but Slashdot hasn't.
I am sort of divided on this personally... Part of me wishes that the movie would have done better, but the other part doesn't feel that it really deserved to.
I love computer animation movies, especially anything put out by Pixar, including their wonderful short flicks. I thuroughly enjoyed a few games in the past done by Square - including FFVI, FFVII, Chrono Chross, and Secret of Mana. Even the Final Fantasy Legend series on GameBoy kept me occupied for a while. I was really looking forward to the Final Fantasy Movie.
So I watched it, and then after that I thought about how I would rate it next to my favorite movies, and quickly realized my dissapointment with it. My main gripes were:
- The setting. The FF series has ALWAYS had some sort of magic use and other fantasy elements in it, even in the more technological games (FFVI, VII, and VIII). In the movie, you get pretty much straight Sci Fi where nobody has unique abilities except for Aki, the main character. Everybody else has weapons, but big deal. Not much uniqueness to work out of that, so they have to rely on personality.
- The characters. Most of the characters weren't that unique at all. The squad was full of action flick stereotypes, including the somewhat sultry woman with some toughness to her, the wisecracking smartass, and the token black guy, and the token love interest with a connection to the protagonist.
- The script. The story wasn't bad, but it wasn't exceptional either. It didn't compare to any of the games that is for sure. I know that would be hard considering time constraints, but if they worked off more than a slightly above average yet still generic save the world script, it would have made an incredible difference. There was nothing in the storyline that really pulled the viewer into watching the movie multiple times. I felt that I got all that I could get out out of the movie in one viewing, and never gave any thought to seeing it again. This is a BIG killer for a movie, because if somebody who was a fan of the movie before it was out isn't going to watch it more than once, there isn't much chance that Joe Public will want to either.
- The location. The CG was well done and beautiful, but I really feel they could have done more if a more exotic world was chosen/made up. There were some areas that were exotic and even surreal, but nothing that completely floored me in the same way some of the games have. Everything looked good, but it didn't knock my socks off. This could possibly be because it was still Earth, so they were stuck using their imagination with that constraint. If they had created a whole world instead of just putting it in our own future, far more interesting stuff could have been shown I think.
- The soundtrack. This is more of a personal gripe, but for me it really didn't stand out for me. In the past with anything done by Square, it was a guaruntee that I would remember at least a song or two long after ceasing to play it. I can't remember one single track from the movie, and for a Square product that isn't a good sign.
The bottom line for me was this: Sure, the rendering was great and pretty much set the bar for what I will expect in the future. The movie deffinately looked beautiful. That just wasn't enough. The movie was skin deep and not much more than that. It may have been an alright popcorn flick, but it really wasn't much more than that even with the well done visuals. And there inlies its failing, in my opinion.
"The local police are said to be "watching the school with interest"."
Right on! That means when you graduate you get two pieces of paper: A diploma and an arrest warrent! Better strip out of those robes before the court date. Don't want the judge to think you are trying to impersonate him or anything.
Am I the only one that is starting get the feeling posters are browsing the archives of /. just to find 'new' stories to submit?
Thank you voice of reason. I would hate to not be like everybody else and by something from a big bad company. Another life saved here. What is the total up to now?
" Update: 10/28 13:42 GMT by J: Little-known fact -- for important stories, slashdot sometimes runs duplicates to see who's still awake on a weekend. Nice work to those of you who caught it. See you next week. *sigh* "
So what you are essentially saying is: it isn't a bug; it's a feature?
Problem 1.) Elected officials don't seem to read e-mails sent by anybody. Solution: Send snail mail!
Problem 2.) People in media and government are now paranoid about opening letters due to the very recent Anthrax scare. Solution: Send e-ma... wait a minute...
So now how do you get a message across to your government representative without belonging to a special interest group with deep pockets? Next thing you know seeking an audience without being a WASP and having a 6 figure annual income will bring you under suspicion for a possible assassination attempt.
I am stretching to be sure, but I think most people will agree that the more paranoid a nation gets, the less power and freedom an individual citizen has.
So maybe we should get a bunch of people to put a check for a few hundred bucks each into an envelope to their local Reps saying something like: "Thank you for voting in the anti-terrorist and freedoms act we talked about previously. Here is the money you were promised."
If you can't beat lobbyists, you may as well play their game badly enough to get some attention.
So then what we really need are a bunch of non-profit porn dispersal centers.
With the upcoming Spiderman movie they removed the first trailer entirely due to it prominently featuring the twin WTC towers (the ending shot of the trailer had a helicoptor trapped in a gigentic web between them). All shots and even references of the twin WTC towers are being removed from the final movie entirely.
You can check some archived news here: http://www.darkhorizons.com/news10/01indx3.htm for more details on some of the many productions effected.
This really sort of annoys me personally, as it reminds me of the term "revisionist history". Sure it isn't completely the same thing, but pretending something never existed because something extrememly bad happened to it seems rather absurd.
Try www.m-w.com
Use Mirrors, people!
Since when did stories like this keep more WTC stories from being posted? I think there is room for both. This is just like the I HATE ANIME argument. You can turn off whatever you don't want. Perhaps you should start by taking off humour on your preferences.
Just don't tell everybody else what they should be paying attention to as well. I find stories like this HELP during times like this, because it remdinds me that humans are capable of more than causing destruction and inflicting pain on others.
But to each their own.
Maybe it is because people that played them as kids have grown up and and now live in a larger and more lucrative sandbox... We get older, they still see market potential and still keep us in mind when they make their products.
You could also press CAPS LOCK or hold shift down and type in "FUND" in the Mac version, with the difference that it would not cause any disasters.
What are you worried about? Smokers and Drinkers and Drivers won't be allowed to use non-backdoor encryption either! Quit being so paranoid! Next you will be saying that some people are using the tragedy as a means to get to an unrelated end.
John Lennon's song Imagine is on the list. Isn't that song meant to promote peace? I can see why you wouldn't want people thinking about that... It would just be wrong.
I must have missed the subliminal messages within the song that can only be heard by a Radio Executive.
From what I have seen not everybody KNOWS BEFOREHAND that their site is going to be posted on Slashdot's frontpage. If I didn't know about it until I was already slashdotted and on the phone with a very angry webhosting service I would personally be pissed off that I wasn't informed beforehand. But maybe that is just me being paranoid and wanting to know what the hell is going on with my own website. I am sure most site owners would be more than happy to pay the bandwidth bill that they receive due to a Slashdot posting.
First Dupont or some beverage company has to come out with a synthetic beverage that they wouldn't even be able to market if coffee is around, since coffee is cheaper and more effective. Then they will lobby governments to make it illegal to import, possess, deal, or drink coffee. Then we will hear about how caffiene is a "gateway drug" that leads to crack abuse and moderating on Slashdot, as well as making people believe that information wants to be free and setting up peer to peer file trading servers. Eventually we will all be brainless drones drinking a beverage that comes in something similer to an oil can that also bears remarkable resemblance and chemical makeup to said combustible engine product, and fighting eachother over which brand is the best...
Big deal. How many engineers would program s/o's to talk?
It says it is the first with the ability to use DVD Rewritable discs, not just burn to DVD.