Valve did state in an interview once that if they ever actually went under, before doing so they would make an update through steam that would permanently unlock all games so that steam validation isn't required to run them.
Also, you can set steam to "Offline Mode" to play your games without an internet connection. I've had to use that a few times myself on my laptop when traveling and also at a few LAN parties that didn't have net access.
(is anyone even using Oracle's app server for something other than supporting Oracle apps these days?)
Oh unfortunately yes. I work for a New York State agency and we use almost exclusively Oracle Application Server. I say almost because my unit is the only one using something else, and that something else happens to be BEA. This is actually quite distressing, because I've seen what my collegues have to deal with with OAS and they always tell me how lucky I am to be using Weblogic for my J2EE server, along with IntelliJ IDEA for my IDE (They all have to use Oracle JDeveloper). We're also the only unit using MySQL at all, everyone else uses Oracle DB. Normally I'd say that at least for DB Oracle would be in fact the better choice, however our Database unit makes that not the case.
In fact, the entire application development department is being siderun by the database department, hence the mandate that everything that can be Oracle, must be Oracle (even if it's shitty). This buyout is just one more thing that they'll try to use to pull our area over into their control... I think they must resent that we're not moving as slow as the rest of the organization.
Coupled with the buyout of MySQL this morning, my job just became a lot shakier. I hope to god that Oracle drops the horrid turd that is OAS and adopt Weblogic as their standard, but if it went the other way around because some executive at Oracle is high (which I find fairly likely every time I'm in contact with Oracle staff), it will make life around the office really annoying, and far less productive.
Work tomorrow when I tell the bosses will be interesting at any rate.
Games with extremely long dev times have a history of disappointing.
I present to you: Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft. Granted both games were made by Blizzard. However both of them, especially Warcraft 3, were delayed quite a while and still turned out to be blockbusters.
Sometimes it's good to let the developer release a game "When it's done". I'm surprised EA, the unoriginal, limited-risk cash-raker that it is is even letting Will Wright take is time with it rather than just pushing it out at a time and condition that a marketing and sales team dictates.
Now I just hope he uses that time to good effect.
Re:not so much pricing of the unit, as the content
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Hands-On With The Kindle
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· Score: 4, Informative
eh, Apple sells songs for $0.99 each which weigh in at about 3-4mb each.
A 50,000 word novel with an average word length of 5 characters (plus 1 for spaces or punctuation), is only 300k. Let's even up it to 150k word novel that's a bit wordy, maybe 9 characters a word (plus 1 for spaces or punctuation). That's still just 1.5mb, half the size of a song. As long as we're talking just plain text, it's pretty cheap. You could even compress it, and text compresses very well.
I can understand having to pay the people who write and maintain the software, the editors, authors, marketing people, possibly artists for cover art.. but bandwidth for the actual transport of the written text is so small that it really shouldn't have that much of an effect on the final price. I can't imagine that the bandwidth costs to transfer 1.5mb of text is greater than several hundred pages of paper, glue, ink, and physical transport to a store (and the store clerks, and all other costs associated with physical retail).
Is it possible to re-use a single card in multiple decks registered online?
1) Yes
Is there any mechanism online for managing your collection?
2) Yes, you can manage your decks in a deck constructor area of the game. You can register a deck by just throwing cards in front of the eye (multiples have to be registered at the same time). I think you can also create decks out of any cards you've unlocked by showing them to the eye in the deck construction area.
Is there any mechanism online for trading?
3) No
If you trade a card to someone else, can they register it?
4) Yes. If they physically have the card they can register it on their system just like you could on yours. As far as I'm aware, the cards don't have serial numbers or anything (can only get so much data in those bar codes)
Do you both then have the card registered online?
5) Well yes.. but in online play you still have to physically have the card to use it. The game will draw your cards for you to prevent cheating, so when you to go to play a card you'll still have to put it down on the board. If you traded it away but are using a registered deck that uses that card (that you no longer have) you obviously can't play it.
Could you just share your cards with your friends and all have the same cards registered? I ask because of my kids and if they could have their own accounts with the same cards.
6) Yes, but you'll need the physical cards to play the game.
How many cards do you actually get in the box with the game?
7) A starter deck of 30 cards and a booster pack of 8 cards (booster packs contain 5 common, 2 uncommon, and a rare or ultra rare)
How many cards are in a booster pack?
8) see above
How many boosters would you say you need to buy in order to be competitive online?
9) It really is a strategy game. You could be competitive with just the starter. Additional cards opens up more strategies that you can use, but the choice is yours really.
How does the game play offline vs. online? Is it as fun?
10) Offline with another person is great. I play with my house mate and we have a great time. Against the computer is good if you don't have anyone around to play with and want to get some practice in or try a new deck. I've not played too much online. The only thing I can say about that is you have to be good at recognizing card art and working in a time limit (though it's like 3 minutes per turn).
Don't you wonder why they didn't just do a Magic Online or use their existing IP?
11) Couldn't really do MtG in the same way as the cards aren't designed to be recognized with a glorified web cam. EoJ cards have basically bar code like markers on the top and bottom to identify what card you're using, and green arrows on the sides for orientation.
If I post a sign on the wall that says "A means a punch in the face, B means free dinner" and ask you "A or B", I would still be in the wrong for punching you in the face for saying A. Just because someone can give you ice to put on that black eye doesn't make it any less wrong.
Man, if someone actually asked to get punched in the face and then gets indigent because it actually happened, I just can't feel sorry for that person. In fact, I'd probably laugh.
"Hey, I'll give you two options. You can either be punched in the face, or I'll buy you dinner. Which would you like?"
"Punch in the face please."
"Are you sure? I mean it's lobster.."
"Yep, I'm sure" *clicks agree*
"Well then, here you go sir." *BAM*
"Oh My God! I Can't Believe You Just Punched Me In The Face!"
Except back in the mid-late 90's and even into the early 00's, Quark was the standard for design and layout. Adobe had PageMaker, but real professionals used Quark.
So if you placed all of your important work into the defacto standard of the time, Quark, you'd be a bit behind right now as the industry has mostly moved on. I think what the GP was trying to make a point with, is no companies dominance lasts forever, so try not to tie yourself to heavily to one.
About your number 4, according to Cingular's site about the iPhone (http://www.cingular.com/cell-phone-service/specia ls/iPhone.jsp?_requestid=71252), it is:
EDGE, GPRS, GSM Quad-band, and WiFi capable
So.. the speed thing seems to be a lost argument point.
At my job we had a consultant that worked on the desk behind mine. After he left his computer area was left abandoned, and actually the desk and other parts of it were to go to me for my work area (for some reason my boss felt I needed both a desk and a "writing table"). Anyway, they didn't seem to have any purpose for the computer and monitor on the desk when I asked my supervisor, so I hooked up that second monitor to my machine.
I of course told my supervisor about this, who after hearing the explanation of it thought it was actually a good idea. All I needed to do was write up a justification on why I needed a second monitor, and they let me have it. Justification isn't really that hard, especially if you're a programmer. The ability to have your IDE or editor or whatnot on one screen while viewing the output, documentation, or APIs on another is incredibly useful, and can speed up your work significantly. I'd go and say something like that to whatever supervisor or person in charge of equipment before they got to looking at the equipment at your desk.
Interestingly, after I got my second monitor, a coworker friend of mine came to my desk from the building across the street and saw the setup and was extremely jealous. He ended up finding a spare monitor near his desk for his own setup. After that, all of the people near his desk saw his setup and wanted it to. We actually ended up having some ITS meetings where enough people brought up the idea of dual-monitors that it's now a standard request for people to get with minimal justification. So who knows, maybe you'll start a trend like what happened for me.
I'm in the Albany region myself (Schenectady) with Time Warner, and I don't think they have a cap.. or if it is it's pretty damn high. I've been filling up my server with a ton of Anime for the past few months that have included multitudes of gigs of data and I've never had them mention anything to me.
I am however, hoping that Verizon will start offering their FIOS in my area. 30mb down, 5mb up sounds very sweet.
I dunno.. why should the government run our lives that much? Your point seems to be to have the government take a step in dictating exactly how we should live. "We've decided that it's better for people to live in cities, as such because this is our view, we are going to make it difficult to not live in cities, even though the land mass of the US could easily accommodate having people live in more rural areas if that is their life choice."
So suddenly the value of land in remote areas plummet like crazy because it's so expensive to make use of that land due to increased travel costs. The government basically decides to "punish" everyone who chooses not to live the urban life-style, and tries to make large portions of our country deserted. That just seems silly to me.
If we were to find some sort of extremely cheap, totally clean form of portable energy that is useful in vehicles and other transport devices, would you still hold the same stance that we should urbanize the country? While it might be more convenient, I can easily see a lot of people willing to forgo the convenience in order to get away from noise, pollution, and other people.
I do however agree with you that our cities need work. They should increase public transport in and between our current cities and clean them up greatly to attract more residents and basically up the standard of living in them. Pollution and crime should be dealt with better than they currently are, and promotion of smaller "mom & pop" shops would be nice for spreading out commerce. I don't believe that we should force everyone to live in these cities if they don't want to, (and if you're placing tax levies, it really is forcing someone if they can't afford it), or force them to lower their standards of living because they're not conforming to the urbanized utopia being proposed.
DNF hasn't been released, so it's impossible to say if it was worth the wait yet.
However, I would refer to Blizzard as being a good example of how "When it's done" should work. Considering that Warcraft III by all accounts was supposed to be out about 2 years before it was finally released, and then everyone raved about how awesome it was, the extra time they took seemed to make it an excellent game. In a similar light, they did the same with World of Warcraft. Having one of the longest beta periods of any MMO which probably is how they arrived on top of that genre.
Bungie used to have the "When it's done" mantra as well, and that can be seen in the quality of their past products. I think that business pressure you were talking about was applied to them for Halo 2, and that's why it turned out, in my and quite a few others' opinions, as a lesser accomplishment.
Re:To advance, correct errors rather than drag it.
on
The Future of the PSP
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· Score: 1
ack 2: Why? TFT screens of 30% more area than current PSP are dirty cheap.
I just want to make a point on this one. Do you know that even though the current screen of the psp is around 4" , it also has a resolution that yeilds about 140 ppi? A lot of computer monitors aren't that sharp. While you could make the screen larger, you probably wouldn't be increasing the quality. Personally, as someone who uses a psp to watch movies on, the high pixel density of the screen is the main reason that images can look really good on the system.
Lowering the resolution per inch for a system that will be more difficult to carry around would just suck.
Which is an interesting point on why they might be in IT in the first place.
In one light, technology is our way of creating "magic". The whole idea of computers, the internet, robotics.. etc, would all be looked at as magic a few centuries ago. Even today, a lot of people have no idea how most of this stuff works and it may as well be magic to them. There's that line, can't remember who stated it: "Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Or something like that.
So in a way, IT people are getting as close to modern magic as anyone can. Also remember, coding geeks are one of the few remaining people to be referred to as "Wizards".
I like that printer cartridge analogy, since HP and Lexmark both do really anti-consumer stuff with their ink cartridges. It did make me think however, how broadly can we expand that scenario?
For example, should it be illegal for me to make a player that could play an Xbox 360 game? I mean, as it stands, the entire console industry limits where you can play the game. I can't go in and buy a PS3 game and choose what hardware I want to run it on, I have only one choice, a PS3. I mean it's entertainment that I'm consuming, just like a bit of music or a movie, only this one I don't have any choice as to what player I get to use (we'll ignore backwards compatibility, but really that's the same argument as I can play Fairplay music on any of the 3 iPod models currently out).
So in the last gen, when Sony controlled 75% of the console market with its PS2 (close to the same market share Apple has in the digital music player area), why is it legal for them to sell games that have DRM on them to only play on their console, but Apple can't do the same for music? I'm not saying I like the way fairplay works, I'd rather the DRM be gone completely because then I could access music from a file server if I downloaded from iTunes, but I still think that argument has merit.
One could perhaps say "Well the game is made only for that system, designed around those system specs and wouldn't work on any other hardware." For that I have two things: One, if Sony were to open up their system and formats it would be easy enough for a competitor to create a system that meets those requirements to be able to play their games. Secondly, one could also say that Fairplay AACs are specially designed music files to only play on Apple devices. It's a stupid argument of course, because we all know the music could easily reside in other formats. Then again, I've seen lots of games that there are are different versions for each console.
So which industries get exempt from the illegality of tying their media with their products and which don't?
The only comment I can add to this is my own experiences.
I lived in the country until very recently (last may). My family used to own farm land there and they never left the town. As I grew up, in order to get basically anywhere it was a 30 minute car ride. The nearest grocery store was 25 minutes away, and to get even something basic like bread or milk was a 15 minute drive. It would take a ridiculous number of hours to drive or even cycle to just get milk, not to mention that we lived on a mountain, and with things like snow in the winter and ice everywhere, it would probably be life-threatening to not use a car.
Regardless of driving everywhere, I grew up to be 6'2" and 150 lbs. Our school was pretty small (graduating class of 71 people) and there wasn't much of an opportunity for sports, so I didn't do much of that. My nearest friend was about 5 miles away, so while I could ride a bike to his house, that really only applied in the summer (snow in upstate NY can be a bitch). Yet even though we were far more remote than any sort of suburb child, my brother and I were still healthy and no where near obese.
Exercise for exercise sake will probably keep your BMI down and your body could perhaps be healthier, but to me it has always seemed stupid, the idea of a gym and all of that. Going out and doing something fun that just so happens to also keep you in shape, like we used to do with riding bikes in our back field or exploring the mountains around our house, will give you the same effect without being so boring. Also, it helps that our mother fed us well and we rarely had snacks or deserts every day.
I'm actually glad I grew up in the country rather than an overly urban area. All that pavement is just ugly, and street trash everywhere from people throwing their morning coffee in the corner just sucks. So I disagree that having to drive to get anywhere really is what's going to make you fat. It's what you do with your life that really is going to decide that.
I'm not really sure what you mean by "Carmack's style of games" since he doesn't write games.. he writes game engines. I don't think even back in the days of the original Doom did he actually do much in the way of game design. His views of games and game systems has always been primarily focused on the graphical capabilities of a system and how to make a really good game engine that others can then place their own games inside of.
I'm sure he could probably find a way to pull a lot of power out of the Wii, but I doubt that's what he's interested in. Working with advanced graphical hardware and being able to pull out all of the power of the newer and underutilized systems is probably more in line with what he prefers to due, hence the focus on the 360 rather than the Wii.
But also, Apple was floundering in the late 90's before Steve came back because all of the mac clones were undercutting Apple's prices so Apple couldn't sell much hardware themselves. Steve comes back, shuts down the clone market, and produces the iMac.. and suddenly Apple becomes relevant again.
I don't know. Personally, I like the ability to tinker around and make apps for my motorola phone, but I don't really take into consideration that lack of ability on the iPod I own. I look at the iPhone not so much as a cell phone, which all cell phones should be programmable, but more like an iPod that happens to also have a phone in it. As an independent gadget, I'm glad they hit a UI that looks easy and fun to use, something I believe has been horridly absent in the current cell-phone market, and even in the general small media gadget market.
As for custom programs, I think what I would personally do if I ended up getting an iPhone (already have cingular, and no complaints about their service in my area.. at least they're not Verizon *shudders*) is try making formatted web apps. Granted one would need a net connection for it, and we'll have to see how fast downloads really are, but it would be an interesting approach to take.
The programmability aspect of it doesn't really matter to me though. If I need something else, I'd just get a different device or use a laptop for anything serious. The only things I really wish it did have was a replaceable battery and the ability to add memory cards for long trips.
You know I was just thinking about that comparison, but the other way around.
I've seen PS3s sitting on the shelves at the local Target and think to myself: "Should I get one?". I mean it's the 60GB version for $599, and it's sitting right there. But I don't, because it's expensive and has no games. Most of the games it does have I can buy on my 360.
Now I watched the keynote where Jobs showed off the iPhone, and I was pretty impressed. If I saw one in stores today I would probably pick it up, which is odd being that it's the same price as the PS3, and computationally not even as close to as powerful. I'm even aware that the PS3 is actually $900 worth of hardware, but still.. the appeal seems to be with the iPhone (for myself).
Apple just seems to hit the "well duh, why didn't anyone think of this before?" when they design things. You look at the iPhone and everything seems to click together so smoothly it's a wonder no one made a device like it before. On the other hand, Sony appears to be attempting to grab at everything without having that "click" be there. It's strange, but I could just see myself getting more value from an iPhone.
In the end I'll probably get a PS3 anyway.. damn final fantasy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well a few things...
Valve did state in an interview once that if they ever actually went under, before doing so they would make an update through steam that would permanently unlock all games so that steam validation isn't required to run them.
Also, you can set steam to "Offline Mode" to play your games without an internet connection. I've had to use that a few times myself on my laptop when traveling and also at a few LAN parties that didn't have net access.
Oh unfortunately yes. I work for a New York State agency and we use almost exclusively Oracle Application Server. I say almost because my unit is the only one using something else, and that something else happens to be BEA. This is actually quite distressing, because I've seen what my collegues have to deal with with OAS and they always tell me how lucky I am to be using Weblogic for my J2EE server, along with IntelliJ IDEA for my IDE (They all have to use Oracle JDeveloper). We're also the only unit using MySQL at all, everyone else uses Oracle DB. Normally I'd say that at least for DB Oracle would be in fact the better choice, however our Database unit makes that not the case.
In fact, the entire application development department is being siderun by the database department, hence the mandate that everything that can be Oracle, must be Oracle (even if it's shitty). This buyout is just one more thing that they'll try to use to pull our area over into their control... I think they must resent that we're not moving as slow as the rest of the organization.
Coupled with the buyout of MySQL this morning, my job just became a lot shakier. I hope to god that Oracle drops the horrid turd that is OAS and adopt Weblogic as their standard, but if it went the other way around because some executive at Oracle is high (which I find fairly likely every time I'm in contact with Oracle staff), it will make life around the office really annoying, and far less productive.
Work tomorrow when I tell the bosses will be interesting at any rate.
I present to you: Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft. Granted both games were made by Blizzard. However both of them, especially Warcraft 3, were delayed quite a while and still turned out to be blockbusters.
Sometimes it's good to let the developer release a game "When it's done". I'm surprised EA, the unoriginal, limited-risk cash-raker that it is is even letting Will Wright take is time with it rather than just pushing it out at a time and condition that a marketing and sales team dictates.
Now I just hope he uses that time to good effect.
eh, Apple sells songs for $0.99 each which weigh in at about 3-4mb each.
A 50,000 word novel with an average word length of 5 characters (plus 1 for spaces or punctuation), is only 300k. Let's even up it to 150k word novel that's a bit wordy, maybe 9 characters a word (plus 1 for spaces or punctuation). That's still just 1.5mb, half the size of a song. As long as we're talking just plain text, it's pretty cheap. You could even compress it, and text compresses very well.
I can understand having to pay the people who write and maintain the software, the editors, authors, marketing people, possibly artists for cover art.. but bandwidth for the actual transport of the written text is so small that it really shouldn't have that much of an effect on the final price. I can't imagine that the bandwidth costs to transfer 1.5mb of text is greater than several hundred pages of paper, glue, ink, and physical transport to a store (and the store clerks, and all other costs associated with physical retail).
1) Yes
2) Yes, you can manage your decks in a deck constructor area of the game. You can register a deck by just throwing cards in front of the eye (multiples have to be registered at the same time). I think you can also create decks out of any cards you've unlocked by showing them to the eye in the deck construction area.
3) No
4) Yes. If they physically have the card they can register it on their system just like you could on yours. As far as I'm aware, the cards don't have serial numbers or anything (can only get so much data in those bar codes)
5) Well yes.. but in online play you still have to physically have the card to use it. The game will draw your cards for you to prevent cheating, so when you to go to play a card you'll still have to put it down on the board. If you traded it away but are using a registered deck that uses that card (that you no longer have) you obviously can't play it.
6) Yes, but you'll need the physical cards to play the game.
7) A starter deck of 30 cards and a booster pack of 8 cards (booster packs contain 5 common, 2 uncommon, and a rare or ultra rare)
8) see above
9) It really is a strategy game. You could be competitive with just the starter. Additional cards opens up more strategies that you can use, but the choice is yours really.
10) Offline with another person is great. I play with my house mate and we have a great time. Against the computer is good if you don't have anyone around to play with and want to get some practice in or try a new deck. I've not played too much online. The only thing I can say about that is you have to be good at recognizing card art and working in a time limit (though it's like 3 minutes per turn).
11) Couldn't really do MtG in the same way as the cards aren't designed to be recognized with a glorified web cam. EoJ cards have basically bar code like markers on the top and bottom to identify what card you're using, and green arrows on the sides for orientation.
Yeah, because emacs is the model of perfection when we're talking light-weight and bloat free :)
Man, if someone actually asked to get punched in the face and then gets indigent because it actually happened, I just can't feel sorry for that person. In fact, I'd probably laugh.
"Hey, I'll give you two options. You can either be punched in the face, or I'll buy you dinner. Which would you like?"
"Punch in the face please."
"Are you sure? I mean it's lobster.."
"Yep, I'm sure" *clicks agree*
"Well then, here you go sir." *BAM*
"Oh My God! I Can't Believe You Just Punched Me In The Face!"
FFXI for the 360 requires a hard drive and it has (obviously) passed Microsoft's certification to run on the system.
Just saying that it's not an absolute requirement to run without a hard drive.
Except back in the mid-late 90's and even into the early 00's, Quark was the standard for design and layout. Adobe had PageMaker, but real professionals used Quark.
So if you placed all of your important work into the defacto standard of the time, Quark, you'd be a bit behind right now as the industry has mostly moved on. I think what the GP was trying to make a point with, is no companies dominance lasts forever, so try not to tie yourself to heavily to one.
About your number 4, according to Cingular's site about the iPhone (http://www.cingular.com/cell-phone-service/specia ls/iPhone.jsp?_requestid=71252), it is:
EDGE, GPRS, GSM Quad-band, and WiFi capable
So.. the speed thing seems to be a lost argument point.
Hungry Hippo.
Of course if they'd take 3 word names, Hungry Hungry Hippo will work too.
At my job we had a consultant that worked on the desk behind mine. After he left his computer area was left abandoned, and actually the desk and other parts of it were to go to me for my work area (for some reason my boss felt I needed both a desk and a "writing table"). Anyway, they didn't seem to have any purpose for the computer and monitor on the desk when I asked my supervisor, so I hooked up that second monitor to my machine.
I of course told my supervisor about this, who after hearing the explanation of it thought it was actually a good idea. All I needed to do was write up a justification on why I needed a second monitor, and they let me have it. Justification isn't really that hard, especially if you're a programmer. The ability to have your IDE or editor or whatnot on one screen while viewing the output, documentation, or APIs on another is incredibly useful, and can speed up your work significantly. I'd go and say something like that to whatever supervisor or person in charge of equipment before they got to looking at the equipment at your desk.
Interestingly, after I got my second monitor, a coworker friend of mine came to my desk from the building across the street and saw the setup and was extremely jealous. He ended up finding a spare monitor near his desk for his own setup. After that, all of the people near his desk saw his setup and wanted it to. We actually ended up having some ITS meetings where enough people brought up the idea of dual-monitors that it's now a standard request for people to get with minimal justification. So who knows, maybe you'll start a trend like what happened for me.
I'm in the Albany region myself (Schenectady) with Time Warner, and I don't think they have a cap.. or if it is it's pretty damn high. I've been filling up my server with a ton of Anime for the past few months that have included multitudes of gigs of data and I've never had them mention anything to me.
I am however, hoping that Verizon will start offering their FIOS in my area. 30mb down, 5mb up sounds very sweet.
I dunno.. why should the government run our lives that much? Your point seems to be to have the government take a step in dictating exactly how we should live. "We've decided that it's better for people to live in cities, as such because this is our view, we are going to make it difficult to not live in cities, even though the land mass of the US could easily accommodate having people live in more rural areas if that is their life choice."
So suddenly the value of land in remote areas plummet like crazy because it's so expensive to make use of that land due to increased travel costs. The government basically decides to "punish" everyone who chooses not to live the urban life-style, and tries to make large portions of our country deserted. That just seems silly to me.
If we were to find some sort of extremely cheap, totally clean form of portable energy that is useful in vehicles and other transport devices, would you still hold the same stance that we should urbanize the country? While it might be more convenient, I can easily see a lot of people willing to forgo the convenience in order to get away from noise, pollution, and other people.
I do however agree with you that our cities need work. They should increase public transport in and between our current cities and clean them up greatly to attract more residents and basically up the standard of living in them. Pollution and crime should be dealt with better than they currently are, and promotion of smaller "mom & pop" shops would be nice for spreading out commerce. I don't believe that we should force everyone to live in these cities if they don't want to, (and if you're placing tax levies, it really is forcing someone if they can't afford it), or force them to lower their standards of living because they're not conforming to the urbanized utopia being proposed.
DNF hasn't been released, so it's impossible to say if it was worth the wait yet.
However, I would refer to Blizzard as being a good example of how "When it's done" should work. Considering that Warcraft III by all accounts was supposed to be out about 2 years before it was finally released, and then everyone raved about how awesome it was, the extra time they took seemed to make it an excellent game. In a similar light, they did the same with World of Warcraft. Having one of the longest beta periods of any MMO which probably is how they arrived on top of that genre.
Bungie used to have the "When it's done" mantra as well, and that can be seen in the quality of their past products. I think that business pressure you were talking about was applied to them for Halo 2, and that's why it turned out, in my and quite a few others' opinions, as a lesser accomplishment.
ack 2: Why? TFT screens of 30% more area than current PSP are dirty cheap.
I just want to make a point on this one. Do you know that even though the current screen of the psp is around 4" , it also has a resolution that yeilds about 140 ppi? A lot of computer monitors aren't that sharp. While you could make the screen larger, you probably wouldn't be increasing the quality. Personally, as someone who uses a psp to watch movies on, the high pixel density of the screen is the main reason that images can look really good on the system.
Lowering the resolution per inch for a system that will be more difficult to carry around would just suck.
Who the hell is that last dentist??
Which is an interesting point on why they might be in IT in the first place.
In one light, technology is our way of creating "magic". The whole idea of computers, the internet, robotics.. etc, would all be looked at as magic a few centuries ago. Even today, a lot of people have no idea how most of this stuff works and it may as well be magic to them. There's that line, can't remember who stated it: "Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Or something like that.
So in a way, IT people are getting as close to modern magic as anyone can. Also remember, coding geeks are one of the few remaining people to be referred to as "Wizards".
Steve? Is that you? Hey buddy.. we're kinda running low on chairs here you know. Could you perhaps maybe use a shoe or something this time?
Thanks a lot.
I like that printer cartridge analogy, since HP and Lexmark both do really anti-consumer stuff with their ink cartridges. It did make me think however, how broadly can we expand that scenario?
For example, should it be illegal for me to make a player that could play an Xbox 360 game? I mean, as it stands, the entire console industry limits where you can play the game. I can't go in and buy a PS3 game and choose what hardware I want to run it on, I have only one choice, a PS3. I mean it's entertainment that I'm consuming, just like a bit of music or a movie, only this one I don't have any choice as to what player I get to use (we'll ignore backwards compatibility, but really that's the same argument as I can play Fairplay music on any of the 3 iPod models currently out).
So in the last gen, when Sony controlled 75% of the console market with its PS2 (close to the same market share Apple has in the digital music player area), why is it legal for them to sell games that have DRM on them to only play on their console, but Apple can't do the same for music? I'm not saying I like the way fairplay works, I'd rather the DRM be gone completely because then I could access music from a file server if I downloaded from iTunes, but I still think that argument has merit.
One could perhaps say "Well the game is made only for that system, designed around those system specs and wouldn't work on any other hardware." For that I have two things: One, if Sony were to open up their system and formats it would be easy enough for a competitor to create a system that meets those requirements to be able to play their games. Secondly, one could also say that Fairplay AACs are specially designed music files to only play on Apple devices. It's a stupid argument of course, because we all know the music could easily reside in other formats. Then again, I've seen lots of games that there are are different versions for each console.
So which industries get exempt from the illegality of tying their media with their products and which don't?
The only comment I can add to this is my own experiences.
I lived in the country until very recently (last may). My family used to own farm land there and they never left the town. As I grew up, in order to get basically anywhere it was a 30 minute car ride. The nearest grocery store was 25 minutes away, and to get even something basic like bread or milk was a 15 minute drive. It would take a ridiculous number of hours to drive or even cycle to just get milk, not to mention that we lived on a mountain, and with things like snow in the winter and ice everywhere, it would probably be life-threatening to not use a car.
Regardless of driving everywhere, I grew up to be 6'2" and 150 lbs. Our school was pretty small (graduating class of 71 people) and there wasn't much of an opportunity for sports, so I didn't do much of that. My nearest friend was about 5 miles away, so while I could ride a bike to his house, that really only applied in the summer (snow in upstate NY can be a bitch). Yet even though we were far more remote than any sort of suburb child, my brother and I were still healthy and no where near obese.
Exercise for exercise sake will probably keep your BMI down and your body could perhaps be healthier, but to me it has always seemed stupid, the idea of a gym and all of that. Going out and doing something fun that just so happens to also keep you in shape, like we used to do with riding bikes in our back field or exploring the mountains around our house, will give you the same effect without being so boring. Also, it helps that our mother fed us well and we rarely had snacks or deserts every day.
I'm actually glad I grew up in the country rather than an overly urban area. All that pavement is just ugly, and street trash everywhere from people throwing their morning coffee in the corner just sucks. So I disagree that having to drive to get anywhere really is what's going to make you fat. It's what you do with your life that really is going to decide that.
Cheers
I'm not really sure what you mean by "Carmack's style of games" since he doesn't write games.. he writes game engines. I don't think even back in the days of the original Doom did he actually do much in the way of game design. His views of games and game systems has always been primarily focused on the graphical capabilities of a system and how to make a really good game engine that others can then place their own games inside of.
I'm sure he could probably find a way to pull a lot of power out of the Wii, but I doubt that's what he's interested in. Working with advanced graphical hardware and being able to pull out all of the power of the newer and underutilized systems is probably more in line with what he prefers to due, hence the focus on the 360 rather than the Wii.
But also, Apple was floundering in the late 90's before Steve came back because all of the mac clones were undercutting Apple's prices so Apple couldn't sell much hardware themselves. Steve comes back, shuts down the clone market, and produces the iMac.. and suddenly Apple becomes relevant again.
I don't know. Personally, I like the ability to tinker around and make apps for my motorola phone, but I don't really take into consideration that lack of ability on the iPod I own. I look at the iPhone not so much as a cell phone, which all cell phones should be programmable, but more like an iPod that happens to also have a phone in it. As an independent gadget, I'm glad they hit a UI that looks easy and fun to use, something I believe has been horridly absent in the current cell-phone market, and even in the general small media gadget market.
As for custom programs, I think what I would personally do if I ended up getting an iPhone (already have cingular, and no complaints about their service in my area.. at least they're not Verizon *shudders*) is try making formatted web apps. Granted one would need a net connection for it, and we'll have to see how fast downloads really are, but it would be an interesting approach to take.
The programmability aspect of it doesn't really matter to me though. If I need something else, I'd just get a different device or use a laptop for anything serious. The only things I really wish it did have was a replaceable battery and the ability to add memory cards for long trips.
You know I was just thinking about that comparison, but the other way around.
I've seen PS3s sitting on the shelves at the local Target and think to myself: "Should I get one?". I mean it's the 60GB version for $599, and it's sitting right there. But I don't, because it's expensive and has no games. Most of the games it does have I can buy on my 360.
Now I watched the keynote where Jobs showed off the iPhone, and I was pretty impressed. If I saw one in stores today I would probably pick it up, which is odd being that it's the same price as the PS3, and computationally not even as close to as powerful. I'm even aware that the PS3 is actually $900 worth of hardware, but still.. the appeal seems to be with the iPhone (for myself).
Apple just seems to hit the "well duh, why didn't anyone think of this before?" when they design things. You look at the iPhone and everything seems to click together so smoothly it's a wonder no one made a device like it before. On the other hand, Sony appears to be attempting to grab at everything without having that "click" be there. It's strange, but I could just see myself getting more value from an iPhone.
In the end I'll probably get a PS3 anyway.. damn final fantasy.
A metric shitload is equal to 2.2 imperial shitloads.
This is also known as a royal pain in the ass.