From what you've heard, but you obviously haven't tried it.
I've actually played Rayman. It uses the Wiimote, quite a lot, and no, you couldn't do that with a sixaxis. Your comment about it being "nothing more than a novelty" is a 100% reliable indicator that you've never actually tried it. Sorry, but I'm gonna have to go with the people who have actually used the system over the fanboys who refuse to because they have already proven with science that it cannot possibly be fun to have a different controller.
Using the controller like a mouse isn't innovative in PC land, but it is in console land, and it makes the system a lot more fun than the alternatives.
Yes, I have a PS3. No, I don't have any games for it; I'm running Linux on it.
I don't think you're understanding the events here. Someone is pitching something, claiming it is massively innovative, but offering no real explanation of exactly how it will improve my life, and wants me to devote a lot of time and effort to learning a commercial product that will cost hundreds of dollars if I actually want to keep using it.
Actually getting a free copy, not just "free for nearly long enough to wrap up a single project including editing", but "actually free" would make it MAYBE worth trying.
But the free trial is irrelevant, and I don't have much interest in trying yet again, after the number of times that someone's gotten me some variant of MS Word, only for me to find out that it doesn't allow me to actually exchange documents with any other version of MS Word as well as StarOffice does.
It may be that they're simply innovating too much, and offering a whole new formatting and document format experience each time.:)
Well, next time I want to wreck every file I touch by running it through a new version of Word, and I'm booted to Windows for some inexplicable reason, I'll totally think about checking it out.
I'm not about to spend $hundreds on the off chance that, for the first time since 1987, I'm going to find that MS Word has suddenly become a good tool for writing with.
Maybe it's neat. Is it one of the ten most innovative things done in an entire year?
I mean, every time there's a new Office, various MS-fans tell me that it's completely innovative and, unlike the previous one, doesn't suck. Why should I believe it this time?
Core 2 Duo: How is this anything but an incremental improvement over the Core Duo, which is in turn just improvements on techniques that have been out there for years? The first dual-core chip could have been innovative. The 39th or whatever this is isn't.
MS Office 2007: I see. So, Office 6, Office 97, Office XP, Office 2003, none of those were innovative. But this one, the 10th or so in a series, really is....
I just don't see any innovation here. A hard drive bigger than previous hard drives? Unheard of!
Getting to "weather.com" is about the same speed. However, once I'm there, my browser takes a couple of seconds to refresh a page, while the Wii lets me scroll the planet around.
It really is a better interface than anything I've seen online.
In summer, I tend to drive with my car in "econ" mode, which means that the compressor shuts off when the engine does.
That seems to be the practical default for nearly everyone. While the car's moving, I use the compressor. For a minute at a light, I don't. Works for me!
This won't affect the Insight at all; it doesn't have an all-electric mode.
It is, that said, an exceptionally stupid rule; the Prius gets a huge benefit from the all-electric mode, and that ought to be included in the mileage calculations, because it's the bottom line that affects a real user. If your car can do three miles of bumper to bumper traffic with the engine off, instead of burning a quarter gallon of gas idling, you have saved a quarter gallon of gas. That your engine didn't need to be on to achieve this is a feature, not a bug.
Sony Corp.'s "Sixaxis" controller for the PS3 also has an accelerometer. The six axises the name refers to are the three dimensions of space, plus three axises of spin. The company hasn't revealed who makes the chip.
So, they claim to have an actual accelerometer, not just gyros.
My in-laws were over a while back, with their kid (3 years, 11 1/2 months). He played Wii bowling. It took him two or three tries usually to roll the ball, because he has a hard time timing the release, but he could play the game.
When they came over for Christmas, he asked if he could play bowling again. We set it up. At age 4, and a couple of weeks, he can play the game moderately successfully. So can my mother-in-law, who is in no way a gamer.
Now, can he play as well as an adult who has better control? No. But he can play the game.
FWIW, I got mine on release day, and just had to replace the first pair of batteries last night. Not bad at all!
Only a few people in my extended family can get used to playstation controllers. Hell, I've been playing console games for something like 23 years now (since my Intellivision II), and I've had a playstation since who knows when, and I still can't reliably guess which of the four identical buttons will perform a given action in a game, and I can't always remember which position a given icon is. (The Nintendo/Sega thing of labeling them with letters is much easier for me.)
Wii wins on learning curve, and also on accuracy. I don't know how well the PS3's accelerometers will work yet; I do know that, without the pointing device, you can't beat the Wiimote. Best console interface ever.
Do bosses stay dead through all server maintenance activities? Will they under the new system?
I don't think you read the same announcement I did. I got the impression that a lot of things which are currently being done on maintenance day, such as server-side-only hotfixes, will be done by adding more restarts.
Off hours is nice, but some people schedule stuff for "off hours".
But yes, I was aware that many things would be done live. I was talking about the thing where they said some things would require restarts. As I understand it, that's on top of the occasional restarts we see now.
Exactly. It may be that they'll only be down for ten minutes, and only twice a week... But if there's no way to predict even what day they'll be, you can't schedule a run to avoid them.
Of course, there's been occasional restarts for various reasons all along, so it may not be noticeable.
Man. I may have to actually go try the local best buys and targets, then. Last I saw, they were all out, and the guy at target said that, on the occasions when they got some PS3s, they were all sold out in 10 minutes.
It may be that, now, the xmas rush people have gone and gotten something else.
Slashdot Mirror
Jardinains 2 was released in 2006. It's a breakout/arkanoid game, sort of. Loosely speaking.
It is immensely fun, and works on Mac, PC, and Linux systems.
Hard to imagine a list of indie games not listing it; it is a wonderful game.
PPC is dead except for Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3.
And supercomputers.
And... come to think of it, I'm not so sure it's dead.
Why not just use whatever they used for those famously faked moon landings?
From what you've heard, but you obviously haven't tried it.
I've actually played Rayman. It uses the Wiimote, quite a lot, and no, you couldn't do that with a sixaxis. Your comment about it being "nothing more than a novelty" is a 100% reliable indicator that you've never actually tried it. Sorry, but I'm gonna have to go with the people who have actually used the system over the fanboys who refuse to because they have already proven with science that it cannot possibly be fun to have a different controller.
Using the controller like a mouse isn't innovative in PC land, but it is in console land, and it makes the system a lot more fun than the alternatives.
Yes, I have a PS3. No, I don't have any games for it; I'm running Linux on it.
I don't think you're understanding the events here. Someone is pitching something, claiming it is massively innovative, but offering no real explanation of exactly how it will improve my life, and wants me to devote a lot of time and effort to learning a commercial product that will cost hundreds of dollars if I actually want to keep using it.
:)
Actually getting a free copy, not just "free for nearly long enough to wrap up a single project including editing", but "actually free" would make it MAYBE worth trying.
But the free trial is irrelevant, and I don't have much interest in trying yet again, after the number of times that someone's gotten me some variant of MS Word, only for me to find out that it doesn't allow me to actually exchange documents with any other version of MS Word as well as StarOffice does.
It may be that they're simply innovating too much, and offering a whole new formatting and document format experience each time.
I didn't say I haven't touched it in 19 years. I've used it professionally on a regular basis for the last decade.
I was talking about the specific event of it actually not sucking, which has not happened in the last 19 years or so.
The cell is pretty innovative, I'd say. It's a substantial rethink of a number of assumptions about processor design.
:)
Using an experimental research processor in a mass-market toy? That's innovative.
Well, next time I want to wreck every file I touch by running it through a new version of Word, and I'm booted to Windows for some inexplicable reason, I'll totally think about checking it out.
If you'll buy it for me, I'll try it.
I'm not about to spend $hundreds on the off chance that, for the first time since 1987, I'm going to find that MS Word has suddenly become a good tool for writing with.
Maybe it's neat. Is it one of the ten most innovative things done in an entire year?
I mean, every time there's a new Office, various MS-fans tell me that it's completely innovative and, unlike the previous one, doesn't suck. Why should I believe it this time?
Innovative?
...
Core 2 Duo: How is this anything but an incremental improvement over the Core Duo, which is in turn just improvements on techniques that have been out there for years? The first dual-core chip could have been innovative. The 39th or whatever this is isn't.
MS Office 2007: I see. So, Office 6, Office 97, Office XP, Office 2003, none of those were innovative. But this one, the 10th or so in a series, really is.
I just don't see any innovation here. A hard drive bigger than previous hard drives? Unheard of!
To be fair, I keep my PC on 24/7.
On the other hand, if I wanted to leave the Wii in standby, I could.
I don't use Dashboard. I'm using Firefox.
Getting to "weather.com" is about the same speed. However, once I'm there, my browser takes a couple of seconds to refresh a page, while the Wii lets me scroll the planet around.
It really is a better interface than anything I've seen online.
As a real user:
In summer, I tend to drive with my car in "econ" mode, which means that the compressor shuts off when the engine does.
That seems to be the practical default for nearly everyone. While the car's moving, I use the compressor. For a minute at a light, I don't. Works for me!
The weather stuff utterly kicks ass. I mean, I got the system for games, I play games on it...
But it's faster and better at checking weather than my regular browser. Sold!
This won't affect the Insight at all; it doesn't have an all-electric mode.
It is, that said, an exceptionally stupid rule; the Prius gets a huge benefit from the all-electric mode, and that ought to be included in the mileage calculations, because it's the bottom line that affects a real user. If your car can do three miles of bumper to bumper traffic with the engine off, instead of burning a quarter gallon of gas idling, you have saved a quarter gallon of gas. That your engine didn't need to be on to achieve this is a feature, not a bug.
Google Cache of CNN Story
(CNN story seems to be gone now)
So, they claim to have an actual accelerometer, not just gyros.
Let me put this ease of use thing in perspective.
My in-laws were over a while back, with their kid (3 years, 11 1/2 months). He played Wii bowling. It took him two or three tries usually to roll the ball, because he has a hard time timing the release, but he could play the game.
When they came over for Christmas, he asked if he could play bowling again. We set it up. At age 4, and a couple of weeks, he can play the game moderately successfully. So can my mother-in-law, who is in no way a gamer.
Now, can he play as well as an adult who has better control? No. But he can play the game.
FWIW, I got mine on release day, and just had to replace the first pair of batteries last night. Not bad at all!
Only a few people in my extended family can get used to playstation controllers. Hell, I've been playing console games for something like 23 years now (since my Intellivision II), and I've had a playstation since who knows when, and I still can't reliably guess which of the four identical buttons will perform a given action in a game, and I can't always remember which position a given icon is. (The Nintendo/Sega thing of labeling them with letters is much easier for me.)
Wii wins on learning curve, and also on accuracy. I don't know how well the PS3's accelerometers will work yet; I do know that, without the pointing device, you can't beat the Wiimote. Best console interface ever.
I am wondering what the changes will be in database reliability.
The big test will come after the first catastrophic hardware failure.
Do bosses stay dead through all server maintenance activities? Will they under the new system?
I don't think you read the same announcement I did. I got the impression that a lot of things which are currently being done on maintenance day, such as server-side-only hotfixes, will be done by adding more restarts.
Off hours is nice, but some people schedule stuff for "off hours".
But yes, I was aware that many things would be done live. I was talking about the thing where they said some things would require restarts. As I understand it, that's on top of the occasional restarts we see now.
Exactly. It may be that they'll only be down for ten minutes, and only twice a week... But if there's no way to predict even what day they'll be, you can't schedule a run to avoid them.
Of course, there's been occasional restarts for various reasons all along, so it may not be noticeable.
I wonder what they'll do for patch days.
I am looking forward to seeing whether or not this works.
I am not entirely optimistic. I mean, yes, it'll be more convenient... Except for the part where you can no longer SCHEDULE for server resets.
"Oh, sorry, were you 95% done with MC? I guess you'll have to go back."
Drop me a line, I'd pay $600 for one. (Only need one. First come, first serve.)
Man. I may have to actually go try the local best buys and targets, then. Last I saw, they were all out, and the guy at target said that, on the occasions when they got some PS3s, they were all sold out in 10 minutes.
It may be that, now, the xmas rush people have gone and gotten something else.
A few commenters have said that PS3s don't always sell out instantly.
I'd love to know where; I have an actual paying project held up by the fact that I can't find a PS3 for love nor rubles.