I guess I'm being a bit harsh... GTA4 and MGS4 are the two big ones I am looking forward to and the continual delays are getting tiresome. I saw a promo video (running on a PS3) of MGS4 yesterday. The graphics were very nice (except for facial closeups, which looked pretty bad, like lighting was bleeding through cracks in the models or something), and the video did a good job of making the game look interesting, but the frame-rate was awful... it was honestly like 10fps, I felt like I was watching a flip-book or something.
You'd think that even if they were having frame-rate problems with the actual game, they'd make a video look at bit smoother! Maybe they run "videos" on the game engine (it seemed to load too fast for that though)?
Anyway, that little niggle did a good job of making an otherwise interesting promo a lot less enticing... but serious frame-rate problems might also explain a delay.
You've probably read this in other comments already, but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format) -- they're just a couple of losers with a grand-sounding name, who apparently got some MS shill money recently.
I think miguel's MS worship is embarassing too (and mono just plain sucks -- just put the damn thing out of our misery already!), but gnome's a pretty nice environment all things considered; it's certainly not slower than KDE (just the opposite in my experience).
And no, KDE's not "pulling away" from gnome. Indeed, from what I've seen, gnome is more popular.
Read the headline and think it was referring to Fred Thompson, the lawyer-turned-senator-turned-actor-turned-presidential-candidate?
WTF is it with Fred Thompson, anyway?? You keep seeing the media ranting about how he's "the new Ronald Reagan", but he seems to entirely lack Reagan's charisma (and charisma was pretty much Reagan's only strong point).
Re:Most important thing
on
GIMP 2.4 Released
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· Score: 4, Insightful
they're not interested in becoming more like Photoshop, they require a reason for changing the UI. Apparently they don't realize, completely ignore or have too much of a chip on their shoulder to admit that sometimes "because everyone on the fucking earth already knows how to do it this way" isn't a valid reason.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the earth is populated entirely by whiny photoshop fanboys.
Cube was a hell of a lot of fun, cheesy acting aside.
Yeah, but it's kinda hard to "aside" acting that bad... and it's not "entertaining" bad, it's wanna-pluck-your-eyes-out-and-rip-your-ears-off bad. I'd rather watch those little love cooing scenes between Anakin and Padme.
But seeing Comcast in the London Underground? NVidia? If they can get the type of companies that I would *actually* be likely to see in the metro, then sure, fine, but I doubt that's what's going on here. What you get are ads that completely snap you out of the sense of immersion.
Seriously. Ads are part of the game's ambience. One of the reasons why "hellgate london" would sell better than for instance "hellgate san cupertino" is that people like (more or less) exotic and interesting locales.
If I buy a game set in China, and it has ads in some appropriate context, the ads damn well better be in Chinese!
For instance, this handy list of the Top Ten Blogger Personas: Pickpocket, Wacko, Druggie, Nerd, Rookie, Sadist, Criminal, Mis-leader.
Followed by this useful advice:
As businesses attempt to leverage user generated content ("UGC") into a valuable tool in the Web 2.0 environment, the proliferation of the scofflaws interrupting the free flow of credible speech in the online world puts at risk the reputation and integrity of UGC and raises the very real risk that consumers will begin viewing web content with disdain and suspicion.
I'm really, really curious what they'd think about Slashdot...
You should take your Zelda copy back from the shelf and give it another try. Twilight Princess high points are not in the adventure (which is quite lame) but in the tourism.
Oh, I dunno... I agree the "tourist" aspects are great, and certainly the overall story is pretty much the "same old same old", but I found many parts of the story quite affecting; Nintendo may be guilty of tired plots, but they're very, very good at the little details.
In particular, the whole twilight realm was wonderfully atmospheric. Running along the impossibly high castle rooftops in the twilight, with the wind threatening to blow you off, was just magical, and Midna was a wonderfully engaging companion, obnoxious and vulnerable in ways that seemed far more real than the typical ultra-sterotypical FF character.
However, you're right that the funnest thing to do was just run around and explore, it was a wonderfully fleshed out world despite its adherence to so many well-worn Zelda cliches. Again, it's the details that really nail it, e.g., the dogs and cats in the town.. I wonder if they stole simulation code from Nintendogs, as their behavior was eerily realistic!
[Character animation/simulation seems to be one thing that Nintendo is particularly good at. Like the cats and dogs, the way many the enemies and NPCs in twilight-princess moved was impressively smooth and natural, even during fights. That's something that definitely isn't true of many of their competitors -- even on powerful machines like the PS3, you see way too many headline games that have lavish high-resolution graphics, but jerky unrealistic character movement, completely devoid of any sense of momentum...]
Maybe the ISO Standards Committee should dissolve itself and reform under a slightly different name, with a better set of bylaws...
I propose the "International Microsoft Sucks Standards Organization" (IMSSO).
Bylaws:
1. Before any vote, all members must stand and re-affirm their (legally binding) pledge to destroy Microsoft, Windows, and all that is associated with them
2. This is followed by the singing of the "Microsoft Sucks" song....
Jp apartments might be small but believe me one of those slim PS2s isn't going to make life any worse than it would be if you just had a PS3 by the tv.
I think in a case like this the issue is not a literal lack of physical space, but rather a dislike of clutter. A general lack of space and crowded environment tends to emphasize the desire for things to be neat and streamlined, and having multiple console units (along with the inevitable rats' nest of cables) is just annoying and clumsy.
The result isn't going to be as clear-cut as "ma, the xbox won't fit through the door!", but it's definitely a negative, and Sony really, really, doesn't need any more negatives right now...
Re:What is this crazy tags thing?
on
Ask Rob Malda
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· Score: 1
there are serious tags along with goofy ones. Tags serve both purposes, and why the hell shouldn't they?
Exactly.
Tags are roughly divided into two categories: "descriptive" and "opinion", and the two sets very rarely overlap.
For searching or categorization purposes, the descriptive tags have obvious utility (and from what I've seen, people do a reasonable job of them), and while the "opinion" tags don't help much, they also don't hurt.
For people reading the headlines, both sets of tags are actually pretty useful for giving a very quick and rough sense of people's reactions before diving into the comments.
I dunno why people get all up in a lather about the way tags are used, other than a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the fact that they're not exactly like the keywords in one's favorite academic journal.
Try a relevant analogy: You're a project leader at a company, ask to speak candidly, say, "I hate this project and I wish it would just die", are you really expecting to be allowed to continue leading that project?
Er, no, that isn't a relevant analogy. The committee's job wasn't to promote MS's standard, it was to judge it. If a company was evaluating a potential expensive purchase, and the team leader candidly said "well let's be frank, this product sucks" before the "official" evaluation was over, people would either laud him for his frankness, or argue with his premise, but they sure as hell wouldn't fire him!
Of course, if the Finnish committee sees its job as promoting Microsoft products, then of course your analogy would be correct -- and the committee should be charged en-masse with corruption.
I am sorry, but you are just being polemic, and you should know it. debian-unstable doesn't even install half of the time (especially at the beginning of a release cycle),
This is simply not true.
Debian unstable is actually quite stable. It breaks very rarely, though it does sometimes break in less subtle ways than a release would.
The name apparently scares a lot of newbies though.
It's almost like that Oprah episode where everyone gets a car. Every human being on the planet gets a Library of Congress.
Yeah, but those were pretty crappy cars. So does this mean we all get a LOC where every book is missing the last 50 pages?!? Arghhh, this blast was clearly evil! Microsoft, Microsoft!!!!
Now there, I think you're giving the Americans a little too much credit. We're not a particularly well-dressed culture, unless you count the extremes.
Wayyyy too much credit -- as always, there are many exceptions, but for the most part America is one of the worst-dressed first-world countries I've experienced. I guess it's a combination of conservatism, obsession with low price over all else, a generally kind of laid-back individualistic culture, and a sort of "anti-urbanism" (the well dressed people you do find in the U.S., are almost always in NYC or other urban areas).
This is not a mainstream reporter who decided to do a book on the Federal Reserve, in the manner of James Bamford writing about the NSA, or Robert Caro writing about the TBTA or the like. Griffin is a conspiracy theorist of the 9/11 truther, Alex Jones/Art Bell type.
And, indeed, it's glaringly obvious after reading about three words of the "review" that the book is basically a very long rant by a conspiracy freak.
Please, editors -- be more careful about what you put on the front page!
But if it were really this much of an enhancement, why don't I see a logitech PS3 controller in this configuration?
There actually are 3rd-party PS2 controllers sold in Japan with the left analog and dpad swapped. I don't know the brand, or if they're also available in other countries.
Sony has always been bad at controller design, and the analogue stick placement is IMHO the dualshock's worst flaw. Sony, unfortunately, seems to not particularly care about the ergonomics of the controller -- and what little attention they devote to it seems focused more on how it looks ("oooooh, it's symmetric")! The PSP controller has the same damn issue, and it doesn't even have backwards compatibility as an excuse!
Slashdot Mirror
You'd think that even if they were having frame-rate problems with the actual game, they'd make a video look at bit smoother! Maybe they run "videos" on the game engine (it seemed to load too fast for that though)?
Anyway, that little niggle did a good job of making an otherwise interesting promo a lot less enticing... but serious frame-rate problems might also explain a delay.
Well at least this one has Cringely's name in the first line, so we know it's clueless before we even read the rest of the summary...
You've probably read this in other comments already, but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format) -- they're just a couple of losers with a grand-sounding name, who apparently got some MS shill money recently.
I think miguel's MS worship is embarassing too (and mono just plain sucks -- just put the damn thing out of our misery already!), but gnome's a pretty nice environment all things considered; it's certainly not slower than KDE (just the opposite in my experience).
And no, KDE's not "pulling away" from gnome. Indeed, from what I've seen, gnome is more popular.
Read the headline and think it was referring to Fred Thompson, the lawyer-turned-senator-turned-actor-turned-presidential-candidate?
WTF is it with Fred Thompson, anyway?? You keep seeing the media ranting about how he's "the new Ronald Reagan", but he seems to entirely lack Reagan's charisma (and charisma was pretty much Reagan's only strong point).
they're not interested in becoming more like Photoshop, they require a reason for changing the UI. Apparently they don't realize, completely ignore or have too much of a chip on their shoulder to admit that sometimes "because everyone on the fucking earth already knows how to do it this way" isn't a valid reason.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the earth is populated entirely by whiny photoshop fanboys.
This isn't the case.
Cube was a hell of a lot of fun, cheesy acting aside.
Yeah, but it's kinda hard to "aside" acting that bad... and it's not "entertaining" bad, it's wanna-pluck-your-eyes-out-and-rip-your-ears-off bad. I'd rather watch those little love cooing scenes between Anakin and Padme.
But seeing Comcast in the London Underground? NVidia? If they can get the type of companies that I would *actually* be likely to see in the metro, then sure, fine, but I doubt that's what's going on here. What you get are ads that completely snap you out of the sense of immersion.
Seriously. Ads are part of the game's ambience. One of the reasons why "hellgate london" would sell better than for instance "hellgate san cupertino" is that people like (more or less) exotic and interesting locales.
If I buy a game set in China, and it has ads in some appropriate context, the ads damn well better be in Chinese!
For instance, this handy list of the Top Ten Blogger Personas: Pickpocket, Wacko, Druggie, Nerd, Rookie, Sadist, Criminal, Mis-leader.
Followed by this useful advice:
I'm really, really curious what they'd think about Slashdot...
You should take your Zelda copy back from the shelf and give it another try. Twilight Princess high points are not in the adventure (which is quite lame) but in the tourism.
.. I wonder if they stole simulation code from Nintendogs, as their behavior was eerily realistic!
Oh, I dunno... I agree the "tourist" aspects are great, and certainly the overall story is pretty much the "same old same old", but I found many parts of the story quite affecting; Nintendo may be guilty of tired plots, but they're very, very good at the little details.
In particular, the whole twilight realm was wonderfully atmospheric. Running along the impossibly high castle rooftops in the twilight, with the wind threatening to blow you off, was just magical, and Midna was a wonderfully engaging companion, obnoxious and vulnerable in ways that seemed far more real than the typical ultra-sterotypical FF character.
However, you're right that the funnest thing to do was just run around and explore, it was a wonderfully fleshed out world despite its adherence to so many well-worn Zelda cliches. Again, it's the details that really nail it, e.g., the dogs and cats in the town
[Character animation/simulation seems to be one thing that Nintendo is particularly good at. Like the cats and dogs, the way many the enemies and NPCs in twilight-princess moved was impressively smooth and natural, even during fights. That's something that definitely isn't true of many of their competitors -- even on powerful machines like the PS3, you see way too many headline games that have lavish high-resolution graphics, but jerky unrealistic character movement, completely devoid of any sense of momentum...]
Maybe the ISO Standards Committee should dissolve itself and reform under a slightly different name, with a better set of bylaws...
...
I propose the "International Microsoft Sucks Standards Organization" (IMSSO).
Bylaws:
1. Before any vote, all members must stand and re-affirm their (legally binding) pledge to destroy Microsoft, Windows, and all that is associated with them
2. This is followed by the singing of the "Microsoft Sucks" song.
Jp apartments might be small but believe me one of those slim PS2s isn't going to make life any worse than it would be if you just had a PS3 by the tv.
I think in a case like this the issue is not a literal lack of physical space, but rather a dislike of clutter. A general lack of space and crowded environment tends to emphasize the desire for things to be neat and streamlined, and having multiple console units (along with the inevitable rats' nest of cables) is just annoying and clumsy.
The result isn't going to be as clear-cut as "ma, the xbox won't fit through the door!", but it's definitely a negative, and Sony really, really, doesn't need any more negatives right now...
there are serious tags along with goofy ones. Tags serve both purposes, and why the hell shouldn't they?
Exactly.
Tags are roughly divided into two categories: "descriptive" and "opinion", and the two sets very rarely overlap.
For searching or categorization purposes, the descriptive tags have obvious utility (and from what I've seen, people do a reasonable job of them), and while the "opinion" tags don't help much, they also don't hurt.
For people reading the headlines, both sets of tags are actually pretty useful for giving a very quick and rough sense of people's reactions before diving into the comments.
I dunno why people get all up in a lather about the way tags are used, other than a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the fact that they're not exactly like the keywords in one's favorite academic journal.
I assume that through the ether you have met Kevin Rose, but do you two get along or is it pistols at dawn?
It seems pretty obvious they've got an amicable agreement worked out: Slashdot gets all the freaks, and Digg gets all the morons.
A chalkboard is also much more readable from a distance, I think.
A whiteboard might be more suitable for very detailed drawings viewed up close (because the pens have a consistent point).
Still, for school usage, a chalkboard seems superior.
Try a relevant analogy: You're a project leader at a company, ask to speak candidly, say, "I hate this project and I wish it would just die", are you really expecting to be allowed to continue leading that project?
Er, no, that isn't a relevant analogy. The committee's job wasn't to promote MS's standard, it was to judge it. If a company was evaluating a potential expensive purchase, and the team leader candidly said "well let's be frank, this product sucks" before the "official" evaluation was over, people would either laud him for his frankness, or argue with his premise, but they sure as hell wouldn't fire him!
Of course, if the Finnish committee sees its job as promoting Microsoft products, then of course your analogy would be correct -- and the committee should be charged en-masse with corruption.
I am sorry, but you are just being polemic, and you should know it. debian-unstable doesn't even install half of the time (especially at the beginning of a release cycle),
This is simply not true.
Debian unstable is actually quite stable. It breaks very rarely, though it does sometimes break in less subtle ways than a release would.
The name apparently scares a lot of newbies though.
oh give it a rest, The Internet is just as useful for doing non work related stuff and students in there own time shouldn't be forced to suffer,
"Suffer."
Because someone rate-limited your halo 3 connection (to avoid network outages).
The mind boggles...
It's almost like that Oprah episode where everyone gets a car. Every human being on the planet gets a Library of Congress.
Yeah, but those were pretty crappy cars. So does this mean we all get a LOC where every book is missing the last 50 pages?!? Arghhh, this blast was clearly evil! Microsoft, Microsoft!!!!
Apple's Technology Evangelists are some of the most talented technical marketing professionals I've ever met
Wait a minute, is that a compliment or an insult?!?
Now there, I think you're giving the Americans a little too much credit. We're not a particularly well-dressed culture, unless you count the extremes.
Wayyyy too much credit -- as always, there are many exceptions, but for the most part America is one of the worst-dressed first-world countries I've experienced. I guess it's a combination of conservatism, obsession with low price over all else, a generally kind of laid-back individualistic culture, and a sort of "anti-urbanism" (the well dressed people you do find in the U.S., are almost always in NYC or other urban areas).
This is not a mainstream reporter who decided to do a book on the Federal Reserve, in the manner of James Bamford writing about the NSA, or Robert Caro writing about the TBTA or the like. Griffin is a conspiracy theorist of the 9/11 truther, Alex Jones/Art Bell type.
And, indeed, it's glaringly obvious after reading about three words of the "review" that the book is basically a very long rant by a conspiracy freak.
Please, editors -- be more careful about what you put on the front page!
It's just a nice webmail system - webmail has been around for years before gmail. I use gmail, I like gmail, but what exactly did it revolutionize?
It didn't suck.
In the context of webmail, that was pretty darn revolutionary!
If Sun gets stupid, fork time - 'Completely Amazing Office' has a nice ring to it.
Hmmm, how about "Awesome Office"?
But if it were really this much of an enhancement, why don't I see a logitech PS3 controller in this configuration?
There actually are 3rd-party PS2 controllers sold in Japan with the left analog and dpad swapped. I don't know the brand, or if they're also available in other countries.
Sony has always been bad at controller design, and the analogue stick placement is IMHO the dualshock's worst flaw. Sony, unfortunately, seems to not particularly care about the ergonomics of the controller -- and what little attention they devote to it seems focused more on how it looks ("oooooh, it's symmetric")! The PSP controller has the same damn issue, and it doesn't even have backwards compatibility as an excuse!