I don't know if anyone else got this ad, but when I pulled up the interview about woman gamers, I got a nice long banner ad for Anarchy Online next to it that read "I Got Implants Baby!", complete with an ingame female character in underwear. Another ad in the corner features the same ingame model, with the text "Play Me!"
Really goes well with a site "focused on girl gamers." Apparently their advertisers are focused on a certain subset of girl gamers...
(I'm assuming "I Got Implants Baby!" is a reference to something ingame that I don't get because I don't play the game, but still - it's kind of crude. It's the Internet, I've got other things available to satisfy the "oggling at women" need, that an MMORPG just isn't going to be able to offer. I always wonder about games that try to sell themselves using a hot ingame character - it's like they're trying to distract you with that, to get you to overlook something else, like the fact that the game sucks or something. Makes me wary.)
People will still buy the show DVDs, if only to get rid of the annoying logo splashed over the show. Not to mention the ads for other shows that TV stations just love to show in the corner during the show you're watching.
Along with commentary tracks, outtakes, and other extras, the DVDs will still have value beyond recordings taken from the TV. Not to mention the convience of jump points in the episode already being set and not needing to crop the show to size and remove ads.
All in all, there's still a compelling reason to get the DVD beyond just to watch the episodes if you're a fan. I bought all four seasons of Futurama primarily for the commentary tracks. People will still buy the episode DVDs.
Call me cynical (because I am), but I'd somehow expect that any two other canidates would wind up with similar results - because people aren't voting for the canidate as much as they are the party.
Except for one thing: File sharing does have a "cost." It may not cost anything monetary, but it costs quite a bit of time and effort to hunt down good quality files that are what they say they are. Not to mention then correcting any incorrect meta-data. Combined with bad/corrupted files, files that are mislabeled, disconnects, incomplete albums - file sharing has a cost in time and effort.
This is why Apple's iTunes Music Store is working as well as it is. It's an easy way to download good quality files. It may cost some money, but it's not excessively difficult. I believe that currently Apple doesn't actually pull in a profit off the music store, but it shows that there is indeed demand for online music stores - even though a "free" alternative exists. (Although it remains to be seen whether or not Apple can make money off of it.)
As another example, Linux is free, but there still exists a market for selling pre-packaged Linux. Well, except that people give away pre-packed Linux. But people are willing to pay if they get something "extra" like an easy-to-use installer and a number to call if things go wrong. Making something "easy" is worth something.
There's still a cost with filesharing, it just isn't monetary. It's in time and effort. As long as the total cost (in time, money, and effort) of downloading music remains less than the total cost of legitimately purchasing the CD, there will be a large market for downloading music.
The RIAA needs to find a way to make paying them cost less than going around them. One way would be online music stores, since being able to download a track for a small fee is much nicer than having to go to a store. Their current plan appears to be to push the total effective cost of filesharing above the cost of CDs, which while a solution, probably isn't totally feasible and doesn't offer people what they really want (a cheap, easy way to download individual tracks).
Apple's iTunes Music Store looks like a good solutions. Of course, they'll never totally elliminate filesharing, because for some people, their time and effort will always be less than whatever price they can offer them. But they can lower that group's number enough to remain profitable. (Kind of like they are right now.) And those people wouldn't be paying for music anyway.
They bought the "Commodore" name since it's still a powerful brand in people's minds. They'll see Commodore MP3 players and Commodore 64 joysticks in stores and think "wow, Commodore is still around..." Look at the sheer number of people who think Atari is the same company with the same people. Heck, when I was working at Babbage's in 1999 when Hasbro had the new games under the Atari name (Windows CD-ROM's) I had people come up to me and ask if they "needed their old Atari" to play these games.
Is it? When I hear "Commodore" I think "ancient computer system." It's a similar problem that Atari ran into in your experience - people think of Atari as an old, mostly dead, company. The Atari brand is considered "retro." When the customer saw a box with Atari on it, they thought "old computer gaming system" and figured that it must be somehow related to that system. Because there was a long span when the brand wasn't really doing anything note-worthy, people have mostly forgotten about Atari or Commodore being technology companies and now think of them as things of the past.
It's similar to the problem Netscape has as a brand name. If you ask people about Netscape, most will think of Netscape 4, as that old crappy browser that they were glad to ditch years ago. (Not to mention the efforts AOL is going through now to completely dissolve any recognition value the Netscape name had by making it an ISP, but that's another issue.)
I really wonder if people will be willing to think of new Commodore-branded gadgets as "new" or if they'll instead be expecting them to be old "retro" computers like those joysticks companies are selling that come pre-loaded with a bunch of old games. I have a feeling that like Atari, most people will connect Commodore with "old" and will expect anything using that brand to deal with "retro" computing, or more likely, thanks to those joystick gadgets, retro-gaming.
Nah, you can get it to work on a console. Final Fantasy XI proved that it can work. I have no idea about the actual PC vs. PS2 player breakdown, because Square-Enix doesn't list statistics like that (grumble), but apparently it does work.
If you don't have a keyboard for the PS2, you can enter text like you would on those "Enter Your Name" screens I'm sure everyone knows about. Obviously it would be a very slow process.
The end result is that almost all PS2 players wound up getting keyboards to chat.
As it turns out, they could only deliver a stripped-down version of it to the console, and almost everybody who played EQ did so on the PC.
Which is the exact same problem FFXI ran into - Square-Enix just did the reverse, holding the PC version back to the constraints on the console version, making the PC UI for the game very strange. (They basically mapped the controller buttons onto the keyboard. Not to mention that the graphics engine on the PC seems to be much slower than I would expect from my hardware.)
So, just like the PS2 players needing to get a keyboard, almost all PC players wound up getting gamepads to make the controls work sensibly. (On the plus side, I can now play ZSNES with a DualShock, heh.)
It can work, but it's still debatable whether or not it was worth it. Apparently consoles are more popular than PCs in Japan, so for a Japanese company like Square-Enix, it may well be. I suspect this game was supposed to be kind of like an XBox version of Final Fantasy XI to try and win over Japanese users to the XBox. But I honestly have no idea what the Japanese market is like.
It's a German translation through Babblefish, which is why none of the page makes any sense. The original is here in case anyone wants to try a human translation of the article.
Anyway, since I'd never heard of True Fantasy Online before, I figured some people might find the GameSpot page on it useful.
Sounds... meh. Apparently it was aimed at the Japanese XBox market, which probably wasn't the best of ideas... Seems like it's another attempt to somehow "revolutionize" MMORPGs, but it sounds like it ultimately came out like any MMORPG when Microsoft axed it.
Those are games for the GameCube, not Nintendo games (with the exception of Pikmin):
I-Ninja - NAMCO
Tales of Symphonia - NAMCO
PN03 - Capcom
Viewtiful Joe - Capcom
Nintendo has, recently at least, been the Franchise King. Nintendo (as in, "published by Nintendo") GC games I've played recently:
Super Smash Brothers: Melee (based on a ton of Nintendo franchises melded into a game that I suck royally at)
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Wakers
All of those were based on a franchise. (Super Smash Brothers is pushing it, but it's hardly new and is the second in what can arguably be considered a franchise.)
With the exception of Pikmin, I can't think of any new games that Nintendo has created recently that weren't based in some part on an existing franchise.
That was the point of the article. While I guess it may be true that non-franchise games may get more of a chance on the GameCube, it's not really anything that Nintendo's doing to make it that way - my guess would be because there's just not as large a library for the GameCube, so non-franchise games get more press time.
When it comes to games Nintendo makes, they really seem to be falling back almost exclusively on existing franchises - even if the game itself (say, Donkey Konga) has little or nothing to do with the franchise.
Heh, if the original poster was a troll, you're obviously an astro-turfer.
One of the games I own is Ridge Racers. The graphics are comparable to Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2, as is the framerate.
I've seen movies of Ridge Racers running. No, it isn't comparable to Gran Turismo 3. It's graphics look better than the PlayStation, if only for the bilinear filtering, though. Textures on the PlayStation looked fugly, it's good to see the PSP isn't repeating that. So I'd say that the both of you are exagurating, the PSP is in between the PS1 and the PS2 in graphics capability - about what I'd expect, really.
Battery
I've heard figures of 1.5 hours to 6 hours life. Regardless, that's way too short. If you're correct that it's around 6 hours life, then it may be acceptable, but if it's around 3 hours average which seems to be the most widely agreed on figure, then that means that after every play session I'd have to recharge it. How hard is the charging process anyway? You can play while charging?
Depending on the answers, you may need an extra battery. One of the things I'm planning on using my GBA SP for is plane trips, and sorry, but 6 hours battery life isn't good enough for one battery. (Of course, I never travel, though, so it doesn't come up much. But it almost came up a while ago.)
I could honestly care less about the PSP's media capabilities, since I can't imagine it being comfortable to watch a movie on a portable game system unless you can place the unit in front of you somehow. I've already got an iPod mini, so I've already got MP3s covered.
These videos [of throwing-star like PSP discs] are fake. The eject mechanism isn't strong enough to throw discs out.
They aren't fake, exactly... They just aren't honest. The PSP really does have a flaw where you can get the disc to eject by twisting it in just the right way. However, the disc just kind of pops out, and isn't at all like a throwing-star. That's a massive exageration. Most of the videos of the PSP disc flying out at things have been taken with the disc flying straight down, so it was gravity helping with the speed, not the PSP itself. From what I've been read, it's really hard to do this by accident while playing, too.
Ultimately, though, it's the games that matter. I'm not going to be getting a PSP on launch. If titles I want to play come out for it, then I'll consider. Right now, even if it were technically flawless, I'd rather get a Nintendo DS - it has games I'm actually interested in.
This is what id does. They make FPS games. Asking them to do something completely different is like asking Britney Spears to start making hardcore rock music.
I should ask them to create a side-scrolling game about an 8-year-old who built a spaceship out of household parts and flew to Mars...
I figured it was Zonk getting eaten by Cthulhu, but it turns out to be a reference to the phrase "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which translates to "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming" - thanks Wikipedia.
But, yeah, this whole story kinda sucked. Hopefully now we can get back to things that are actually funny. The artwork was nice, though.
Given that in one of the first couple episodes, they mentioned "MacGuyvering" the Stargate's control system and had Anderson glance at Tapping when that line was used, how long do you figure before there's the first Farscape reference in an episode?
"First couple episodes?" It was in the pilot, so my guess is "the first episode they appear in.":)
Picture this: in front of Evil Corporate Headquarters sit a bunch of geeks, some playing on GBAs, others with laptops, and a couple using cell phones to blog about their experience. A couple of LED signs scroll "... WHAT DO WE WANT?... FAIR WORKING HOURS... WHEN DO WE WANT IT?... NOW..." and "... BOYCOTT EVIL CORPORATION..." on the ground next to them. Someone's hooked an iPod up to their car stereo and is looping the same thing repeatedly at max volume.
I recently got a security clearance. Just because a single piece of information isn't classified doesn't mean it can't reveal classified information. That's the main fear.
As a simple example, assume some adware managed to steal an Excel spreadsheet as it was being entered. The information was simply the dates and costs of fuel being bought for vehicles on base. This information isn't classified.
From this information, you can get a rough guess of troop movements and the amount of mechanised gear at the base. Combined with more information, you can get a good idea of current strategy, what troops are going where, and the level of activity around a given base. This information is classified.
Just because a given computer isn't classified doesn't mean that you can't piece together classified information from data contained on the computer - especially when combined with other information. That's what the military is concerned about.
WoW is eight characters per server, and up to 50 total over all servers, all as part of the standard fee. You pay no extra for each of these characters. I already have five characters created, simply because I was playing around with various classes and races.
On PVP servers, you can only create characters belonging to one faction, either the Horde or Alliance. On normal and roleplaying servers, you can create characters belonging to either faction.
Coming from FFXI where you get one character total and they ding you an extra $1/month for each extra character past that, I found it to be a welcome change.
Ah, memories... I used to love that show as a kid.
Anyway, someone on another forum linked to Yahooligans, where you can watch old Super Mario Brothers shows. (IE only, sorry - also uses popups, which XP SP2 will block. You'll have to watch an ad first, too.)
One of the crafting skills is "Engineer" that allows you to create gadgets. One of these gadgets is a mechanical squirrel. It's a "pet" - you can "summon" it and it will follow you around.
It serves no other purpose than that. It just follows you, it's always level 1, it can't attack or anything. Only for show.
I still don't understand the advantage that one would get by upgrading from W2K to WXP in a work environment.
Not that I'm usually one to bitch about Microsoft's monopoly, but, based on my experience: consistancy with new desktops.
Microsoft will no longer license Windows 2000 Professional on new desktops, so they instead come with Windows XP Professional. (Or at least Dell won't any more, or something. I don't know the details, just that all the new machines come with Windows XP like it or not.) Since it makes little sense just to toss those licenses, the company I work for just keeps them. They currently support both Windows 2000 and Windows XP but it's likely that all old Windows 2000 machines will be phased out shortly, since all machines are (supposedly) replaced after three years, meaning that all the existing Windows 2000 machines should be replaced soon.
Other than that, there's little reason to upgrade. But making it so that only one configuration (Windows XP + standard software) needs to be tested instead of two can be a reason to upgrade.
There already exist multiplayer games that are permadeath. We call them "first person shooters."
Seriously, think about the type of gameplay that you wind up with if your character can die permanently. First of all, how many games can you think of that actually have permanent death? There aren't many...
About the only ones I can come up with are multiplayer FPS, multiplayer RTS, and puzzle games like Tetris. In those games, once you lose, your "character" is dead and you have to restart from scratch. In every other game I can think of, you can "resurrect" your character in some way. Most games accomplish this with a "save" feature or a "continue" feature.
So, assume we have a MMORPG with permanent death. And you want PVP. What style gameplay does that sound like? Sounds a lot like classic deathmatch to me. You're not roleplaying - you're just killing stuff. You can't really do quests, since there's a good chance you'll be forced to start over at some point. You're always risking being stuck back at the beginning.
Some of the most frusterating games out there are frusterating because there's some really large challenge in them, which is proceeded by a long stretch of fairly easy gameplay where you can't resume. So you wind up spending 2 minutes each attempt redoing the easy section and then 10 seconds practicing the hard section before starting over again. Those 2 minutes become very tedious, very fast. You've already done them... why do them again?
FPSs solve that problem by allowing you to very quickly regain your status. RTSs solve it by having people play "matches" on different maps. (And still, I usually find the first 2-5 minutes of most RTS games really tedious because the initial base building is almost always identical.) How do you plan to solve that in an MMORPG setting? The main point behind these games is to build a character up. If you take out that aspect to have permanent death, then it isn't really an MMORPG any more, it's something else.
The only way I can see permadeath working in an MMORPG is to basically change it into a FPS. Except instead of "first person" it would be "third person.":)
The friend will have to go out and buy the full retail pack. The information is on the World of Warcraft Community Site, but it's a ways towards the bottom, so scroll down a bit. It says:
Collector's Edition 10-Day Guest Pass
Players who will be accessing the game through the 10-day pass will create their account for that exactly the same way as a normal player, by visiting the account-creation webpage.
Those who wish to continue playing the game once the 10-day free period is over must first visit their local retailer or online store to purchase a copy of World of Warcraft. Once they have obtained a copy of the game, they can log in to WorldofWarcraft.com using their 10-day pass login information and then enter the authentication key that came with boxed copy into the field found at the bottom of their account page.
That's all that's required to activate a full-fledged World of Warcraft account once the 10-day free period has expired. Any characters that players have created during the 10-day trial, along with all their items, will be available for them to continue playing!
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I don't know if anyone else got this ad, but when I pulled up the interview about woman gamers, I got a nice long banner ad for Anarchy Online next to it that read "I Got Implants Baby!", complete with an ingame female character in underwear. Another ad in the corner features the same ingame model, with the text "Play Me!"
Really goes well with a site "focused on girl gamers." Apparently their advertisers are focused on a certain subset of girl gamers...
(I'm assuming "I Got Implants Baby!" is a reference to something ingame that I don't get because I don't play the game, but still - it's kind of crude. It's the Internet, I've got other things available to satisfy the "oggling at women" need, that an MMORPG just isn't going to be able to offer. I always wonder about games that try to sell themselves using a hot ingame character - it's like they're trying to distract you with that, to get you to overlook something else, like the fact that the game sucks or something. Makes me wary.)
People will still buy the show DVDs, if only to get rid of the annoying logo splashed over the show. Not to mention the ads for other shows that TV stations just love to show in the corner during the show you're watching.
Along with commentary tracks, outtakes, and other extras, the DVDs will still have value beyond recordings taken from the TV. Not to mention the convience of jump points in the episode already being set and not needing to crop the show to size and remove ads.
All in all, there's still a compelling reason to get the DVD beyond just to watch the episodes if you're a fan. I bought all four seasons of Futurama primarily for the commentary tracks. People will still buy the episode DVDs.
Call me cynical (because I am), but I'd somehow expect that any two other canidates would wind up with similar results - because people aren't voting for the canidate as much as they are the party.
Except for one thing: File sharing does have a "cost." It may not cost anything monetary, but it costs quite a bit of time and effort to hunt down good quality files that are what they say they are. Not to mention then correcting any incorrect meta-data. Combined with bad/corrupted files, files that are mislabeled, disconnects, incomplete albums - file sharing has a cost in time and effort.
This is why Apple's iTunes Music Store is working as well as it is. It's an easy way to download good quality files. It may cost some money, but it's not excessively difficult. I believe that currently Apple doesn't actually pull in a profit off the music store, but it shows that there is indeed demand for online music stores - even though a "free" alternative exists. (Although it remains to be seen whether or not Apple can make money off of it.)
As another example, Linux is free, but there still exists a market for selling pre-packaged Linux. Well, except that people give away pre-packed Linux. But people are willing to pay if they get something "extra" like an easy-to-use installer and a number to call if things go wrong. Making something "easy" is worth something.
There's still a cost with filesharing, it just isn't monetary. It's in time and effort. As long as the total cost (in time, money, and effort) of downloading music remains less than the total cost of legitimately purchasing the CD, there will be a large market for downloading music.
The RIAA needs to find a way to make paying them cost less than going around them. One way would be online music stores, since being able to download a track for a small fee is much nicer than having to go to a store. Their current plan appears to be to push the total effective cost of filesharing above the cost of CDs, which while a solution, probably isn't totally feasible and doesn't offer people what they really want (a cheap, easy way to download individual tracks).
Apple's iTunes Music Store looks like a good solutions. Of course, they'll never totally elliminate filesharing, because for some people, their time and effort will always be less than whatever price they can offer them. But they can lower that group's number enough to remain profitable. (Kind of like they are right now.) And those people wouldn't be paying for music anyway.
Now that's an interesting idea that I hadn't thought of. That would make a kind of sense. Dunno how it would play out, but it's an interesting idea.
They bought the "Commodore" name since it's still a powerful brand in people's minds. They'll see Commodore MP3 players and Commodore 64 joysticks in stores and think "wow, Commodore is still around..." Look at the sheer number of people who think Atari is the same company with the same people. Heck, when I was working at Babbage's in 1999 when Hasbro had the new games under the Atari name (Windows CD-ROM's) I had people come up to me and ask if they "needed their old Atari" to play these games.
Is it? When I hear "Commodore" I think "ancient computer system." It's a similar problem that Atari ran into in your experience - people think of Atari as an old, mostly dead, company. The Atari brand is considered "retro." When the customer saw a box with Atari on it, they thought "old computer gaming system" and figured that it must be somehow related to that system. Because there was a long span when the brand wasn't really doing anything note-worthy, people have mostly forgotten about Atari or Commodore being technology companies and now think of them as things of the past.
It's similar to the problem Netscape has as a brand name. If you ask people about Netscape, most will think of Netscape 4, as that old crappy browser that they were glad to ditch years ago. (Not to mention the efforts AOL is going through now to completely dissolve any recognition value the Netscape name had by making it an ISP, but that's another issue.)
I really wonder if people will be willing to think of new Commodore-branded gadgets as "new" or if they'll instead be expecting them to be old "retro" computers like those joysticks companies are selling that come pre-loaded with a bunch of old games. I have a feeling that like Atari, most people will connect Commodore with "old" and will expect anything using that brand to deal with "retro" computing, or more likely, thanks to those joystick gadgets, retro-gaming.
Nah, you can get it to work on a console. Final Fantasy XI proved that it can work. I have no idea about the actual PC vs. PS2 player breakdown, because Square-Enix doesn't list statistics like that (grumble), but apparently it does work.
If you don't have a keyboard for the PS2, you can enter text like you would on those "Enter Your Name" screens I'm sure everyone knows about. Obviously it would be a very slow process.
The end result is that almost all PS2 players wound up getting keyboards to chat.
As it turns out, they could only deliver a stripped-down version of it to the console, and almost everybody who played EQ did so on the PC.
Which is the exact same problem FFXI ran into - Square-Enix just did the reverse, holding the PC version back to the constraints on the console version, making the PC UI for the game very strange. (They basically mapped the controller buttons onto the keyboard. Not to mention that the graphics engine on the PC seems to be much slower than I would expect from my hardware.)
So, just like the PS2 players needing to get a keyboard, almost all PC players wound up getting gamepads to make the controls work sensibly. (On the plus side, I can now play ZSNES with a DualShock, heh.)
It can work, but it's still debatable whether or not it was worth it. Apparently consoles are more popular than PCs in Japan, so for a Japanese company like Square-Enix, it may well be. I suspect this game was supposed to be kind of like an XBox version of Final Fantasy XI to try and win over Japanese users to the XBox. But I honestly have no idea what the Japanese market is like.
It's a German translation through Babblefish, which is why none of the page makes any sense. The original is here in case anyone wants to try a human translation of the article.
Anyway, since I'd never heard of True Fantasy Online before, I figured some people might find the GameSpot page on it useful.
Sounds... meh. Apparently it was aimed at the Japanese XBox market, which probably wasn't the best of ideas... Seems like it's another attempt to somehow "revolutionize" MMORPGs, but it sounds like it ultimately came out like any MMORPG when Microsoft axed it.
Those are games for the GameCube, not Nintendo games (with the exception of Pikmin):
Nintendo has, recently at least, been the Franchise King. Nintendo (as in, "published by Nintendo") GC games I've played recently:
All of those were based on a franchise. (Super Smash Brothers is pushing it, but it's hardly new and is the second in what can arguably be considered a franchise.)
With the exception of Pikmin, I can't think of any new games that Nintendo has created recently that weren't based in some part on an existing franchise.
That was the point of the article. While I guess it may be true that non-franchise games may get more of a chance on the GameCube, it's not really anything that Nintendo's doing to make it that way - my guess would be because there's just not as large a library for the GameCube, so non-franchise games get more press time.
When it comes to games Nintendo makes, they really seem to be falling back almost exclusively on existing franchises - even if the game itself (say, Donkey Konga) has little or nothing to do with the franchise.
Man, you need to run Live Update. Mine lists 68,603. You're missing out on 18 viruses!
When was the last time you ran Live Update? Yesterday? You've got to keep up to date with these things!
Heh, if the original poster was a troll, you're obviously an astro-turfer.
One of the games I own is Ridge Racers. The graphics are comparable to Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2, as is the framerate.
I've seen movies of Ridge Racers running. No, it isn't comparable to Gran Turismo 3. It's graphics look better than the PlayStation, if only for the bilinear filtering, though. Textures on the PlayStation looked fugly, it's good to see the PSP isn't repeating that. So I'd say that the both of you are exagurating, the PSP is in between the PS1 and the PS2 in graphics capability - about what I'd expect, really.
Battery
I've heard figures of 1.5 hours to 6 hours life. Regardless, that's way too short. If you're correct that it's around 6 hours life, then it may be acceptable, but if it's around 3 hours average which seems to be the most widely agreed on figure, then that means that after every play session I'd have to recharge it. How hard is the charging process anyway? You can play while charging?
Depending on the answers, you may need an extra battery. One of the things I'm planning on using my GBA SP for is plane trips, and sorry, but 6 hours battery life isn't good enough for one battery. (Of course, I never travel, though, so it doesn't come up much. But it almost came up a while ago.)
I could honestly care less about the PSP's media capabilities, since I can't imagine it being comfortable to watch a movie on a portable game system unless you can place the unit in front of you somehow. I've already got an iPod mini, so I've already got MP3s covered.
These videos [of throwing-star like PSP discs] are fake. The eject mechanism isn't strong enough to throw discs out.
They aren't fake, exactly... They just aren't honest. The PSP really does have a flaw where you can get the disc to eject by twisting it in just the right way. However, the disc just kind of pops out, and isn't at all like a throwing-star. That's a massive exageration. Most of the videos of the PSP disc flying out at things have been taken with the disc flying straight down, so it was gravity helping with the speed, not the PSP itself. From what I've been read, it's really hard to do this by accident while playing, too.
Ultimately, though, it's the games that matter. I'm not going to be getting a PSP on launch. If titles I want to play come out for it, then I'll consider. Right now, even if it were technically flawless, I'd rather get a Nintendo DS - it has games I'm actually interested in.
This is what id does. They make FPS games. Asking them to do something completely different is like asking Britney Spears to start making hardcore rock music.
I should ask them to create a side-scrolling game about an 8-year-old who built a spaceship out of household parts and flew to Mars...
I figured it was Zonk getting eaten by Cthulhu, but it turns out to be a reference to the phrase "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which translates to "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming" - thanks Wikipedia.
But, yeah, this whole story kinda sucked. Hopefully now we can get back to things that are actually funny. The artwork was nice, though.
Given that in one of the first couple episodes, they mentioned "MacGuyvering" the Stargate's control system and had Anderson glance at Tapping when that line was used, how long do you figure before there's the first Farscape reference in an episode?
"First couple episodes?" It was in the pilot, so my guess is "the first episode they appear in." :)
Wait, so that's what "nap time" was for?! O.o
Nah, I can see a geek strike.
Picture this: in front of Evil Corporate Headquarters sit a bunch of geeks, some playing on GBAs, others with laptops, and a couple using cell phones to blog about their experience. A couple of LED signs scroll "... WHAT DO WE WANT? ... FAIR WORKING HOURS ... WHEN DO WE WANT IT? ... NOW ..." and "... BOYCOTT EVIL CORPORATION ..." on the ground next to them. Someone's hooked an iPod up to their car stereo and is looping the same thing repeatedly at max volume.
I think it could work...
I recently got a security clearance. Just because a single piece of information isn't classified doesn't mean it can't reveal classified information. That's the main fear.
As a simple example, assume some adware managed to steal an Excel spreadsheet as it was being entered. The information was simply the dates and costs of fuel being bought for vehicles on base. This information isn't classified.
From this information, you can get a rough guess of troop movements and the amount of mechanised gear at the base. Combined with more information, you can get a good idea of current strategy, what troops are going where, and the level of activity around a given base. This information is classified.
Just because a given computer isn't classified doesn't mean that you can't piece together classified information from data contained on the computer - especially when combined with other information. That's what the military is concerned about.
WoW is eight characters per server, and up to 50 total over all servers, all as part of the standard fee. You pay no extra for each of these characters. I already have five characters created, simply because I was playing around with various classes and races.
On PVP servers, you can only create characters belonging to one faction, either the Horde or Alliance. On normal and roleplaying servers, you can create characters belonging to either faction.
Coming from FFXI where you get one character total and they ding you an extra $1/month for each extra character past that, I found it to be a welcome change.
Ah, memories... I used to love that show as a kid.
Anyway, someone on another forum linked to Yahooligans, where you can watch old Super Mario Brothers shows. (IE only, sorry - also uses popups, which XP SP2 will block. You'll have to watch an ad first, too.)
They also have the related Legend of Zelda cartoon.
Be warned that nostaligia makes you remember these things as being better than they really were... Apparently I had no taste as a kid.
One of the crafting skills is "Engineer" that allows you to create gadgets. One of these gadgets is a mechanical squirrel. It's a "pet" - you can "summon" it and it will follow you around.
It serves no other purpose than that. It just follows you, it's always level 1, it can't attack or anything. Only for show.
I still don't understand the advantage that one would get by upgrading from W2K to WXP in a work environment.
Not that I'm usually one to bitch about Microsoft's monopoly, but, based on my experience: consistancy with new desktops.
Microsoft will no longer license Windows 2000 Professional on new desktops, so they instead come with Windows XP Professional. (Or at least Dell won't any more, or something. I don't know the details, just that all the new machines come with Windows XP like it or not.) Since it makes little sense just to toss those licenses, the company I work for just keeps them. They currently support both Windows 2000 and Windows XP but it's likely that all old Windows 2000 machines will be phased out shortly, since all machines are (supposedly) replaced after three years, meaning that all the existing Windows 2000 machines should be replaced soon.
Other than that, there's little reason to upgrade. But making it so that only one configuration (Windows XP + standard software) needs to be tested instead of two can be a reason to upgrade.
There already exist multiplayer games that are permadeath. We call them "first person shooters."
Seriously, think about the type of gameplay that you wind up with if your character can die permanently. First of all, how many games can you think of that actually have permanent death? There aren't many...
About the only ones I can come up with are multiplayer FPS, multiplayer RTS, and puzzle games like Tetris. In those games, once you lose, your "character" is dead and you have to restart from scratch. In every other game I can think of, you can "resurrect" your character in some way. Most games accomplish this with a "save" feature or a "continue" feature.
So, assume we have a MMORPG with permanent death. And you want PVP. What style gameplay does that sound like? Sounds a lot like classic deathmatch to me. You're not roleplaying - you're just killing stuff. You can't really do quests, since there's a good chance you'll be forced to start over at some point. You're always risking being stuck back at the beginning.
Some of the most frusterating games out there are frusterating because there's some really large challenge in them, which is proceeded by a long stretch of fairly easy gameplay where you can't resume. So you wind up spending 2 minutes each attempt redoing the easy section and then 10 seconds practicing the hard section before starting over again. Those 2 minutes become very tedious, very fast. You've already done them... why do them again?
FPSs solve that problem by allowing you to very quickly regain your status. RTSs solve it by having people play "matches" on different maps. (And still, I usually find the first 2-5 minutes of most RTS games really tedious because the initial base building is almost always identical.) How do you plan to solve that in an MMORPG setting? The main point behind these games is to build a character up. If you take out that aspect to have permanent death, then it isn't really an MMORPG any more, it's something else.
The only way I can see permadeath working in an MMORPG is to basically change it into a FPS. Except instead of "first person" it would be "third person." :)
The friend will have to go out and buy the full retail pack. The information is on the World of Warcraft Community Site, but it's a ways towards the bottom, so scroll down a bit. It says:
'Half-Life' sequelenters excitingnew territory [sic - yes, they left out those spaces]
They seem quite distinct to me.
Yeah, if they can't use their computers, they can't have any problems with them! ;)