Also keep in mind that in the earlier levels GLADOS is speaking to your character mostly through pre-recorded audio. It's only later in the game that GLADOS starts speaking to you directly. As such, the "android hell" bit was most likely just the pre-recorded exit audio for that test rather than an attempt by GLADOS to make you question your own humanity.
I realize you're probably a nerd due to the fact that you're post on Slashdot but the vast majority of people who use e-mail in the corporate world cannot put anything on a FTP server, webserver, or anywhere else. That type of shit is for the IT department and I hope that they honestly have better things to do than place some lame Excel spreadsheet used like a database up so that three people can access the data contained in it once.
No, that's what something like SharePoint Server is for. It's a great way to share documents in an office environment without emailing things back and forth. Of course it's not so useful for the "transfer files home/back" case if IT can't or won't run an internet-facing server. Then again, with VPNs there's no reason to have those services exposed publicly. If you want to work on a document from home, connect your VPN and grab the document off of the "internal" SharePoint.
(Yes, I realize that's a Microsoft-centric view, and the same thing could be accomplished in many ways, even with something as simple as a CVS server and web interface. But when you're talking about pushing around Excel, Word, Powerpoint, etc documents you may as well share them around in the Microsoft way, since the Office apps understand how to read files from and save files to SharePoint, including the check-in/out process.)
While there were some valid complaints, such as those around data security and stupid users, much of the article was spent complaining about form factor and performance. If they're having problems, that just means they haven't found the right laptop. For example, I have a 2.5 year old 17" Dell Inspiron that I use for everything. I've found that:
The 17" size isn't too heavy for me to carry around
The keyboard isn't cramped. Sure, it's not full-sized keys, but I don't have any problem hitting individual keys
It's upgradeable where it matters. Memory is easy to add or replace, the hard drive is simple to swap out with the removal of a couple of screws, the CPU can be replaced, and even the GPU can be upgraded (obviously not an off-the-shelf part). What's more, replacement Dell parts are easily available from a wide variety of internet sources, with service guides provided for free by Dell. I've personally replaced the keyboard on this laptop once, with a spare just in case, and I could easily replace anything from the LCD display to the plastic bezel bits without any problems at all
I'm still on my original 2.5 year old battery and routinely see battery life top 4 hours of usage. I obviously have to be frugal with my settings (turn down the brightness, turn off Vista's fancy graphics features, etc), but when I need to stretch I can
Performance is awesome in Vista, with all Aero effects running and multiple applications going. It even plays slightly older games quite well (Civ IV and GalCiv2 work great). I did upgrade to 2GB of RAM and a 7200RPM hard drive, but even before those changes the laptop flew in XP
If users are really having form factor and performance issues with the laptops you're using, it's time to look for something better. I know some people don't like Dell, but after this Inspiron I can't see myself using anything else.
The whole point for a Class Action lawsuit here would be to make it financially impractical for them to continue blocking legitamate traffic....
Too bad it won't work that way. Assuming a class action suit was filed and they lost, they'd be out no money (just operating expenses) for the "remediation" to customers (seriously, you're just going to get some trivial coupons, possibly for stuff you don't even want like free digital phone service when you only use Comcast for internet, in exchange for giving up the right to sue them yourself), they'll be charged a few million for the lawyers and court fees, and they'll spend quite a bit less than that for their own lawyers to scrub their EULAs and TOUs to make the traffic blocking legitimate. Without a law like net neutrality or applying common carrier status to ISPs and without significant competition from other cable-based ISPs, they'll make all of that back and more. And they'll keep blocking traffic.
If this guy wins his lawsuit, it will set a precedent where anybody can sue them and expect to win. If he loses, fine, go class action to attempt to send some sort of message. But don't throw away an opportunity for real change by jumping on the class action bandwagon prematurely.
Class Acion law suit? Would love to hop on that bandwagon if I could.
So you can get a coupon for two free months of Comcast internet service while Comcast continues to block legitimate traffic? Class action lawsuits are worse than no lawsuit at all.
Analogy: a person driving a car shouldn't be able to tell what brand and model it is when he is behind the wheel, right? And guess what? 99.9% of people can't tell you what it is from just the feel of it, only freaks and psycho enthusiasts can tell you the make and model from the stock gear timings.
No, but just about everybody will be able to tell you the difference between a Hyundai and a Ferrari even if you blindfolded them, put them in the passenger seat, and drove them around. Similarly, even "average" people will be able to tell that a Ford Taurus feels nothing like a Honda Accord, or that a Mercedes if different from a Lexus, etc.
People buy cars for image purposes all the time. If you do the math on many of the hybrids, it doesn't make any economical sense to buy a Prius over a normal petrol-powered Civic yet people buy the Prius because of the image. They buy Hummers and Bimmers and Porsches and more just because of the image. They buy Japanese/German rather than American because Japanese/German cars are more "reliable" even though JD Powers and others have documented that modern American cars actually have fewer problems per mile.
The same should apply to computers. A computer is a tool, and it'd be better for linux if it was just usable, instead of distinctive purely for the sake of being distinctive.
But a car is not just a tool. For many it's a status symbol. For others it's a source of enjoyment. For most, it's the second largest purchase they'll ever make (first largest, if you never expect to buy a home). When you boil it down, you could drive a Kia just as well as a Porsche, but I prefer my Porsche:)
Sega failed yet we still have three players in the console market. If Sony were to fail so horribly with the PS3 that they drop out of the market entirely, I wouldn't be surprised to see others try to enter the market in their wake. EA is probably the most likely candidate.
Yeah the PSP though having the best graphics around was illfated so far.
Everybody always talks about graphics not being important when discussing consoles (why the Wii doesn't do HD, for example), but then miss that the most applicable place for that argument is on portables. Who cares if the PSP has the best graphics? That just means it'll suck down more battery power, and I have to squint harder to see the relatively tiny screen (yes, I know the PSP has a huge screen, but it's nowhere as big as a 50" DLP).
I mean on what other system can you take Grand Theft Auto with you! It is a very grown up Portable in that term.
I bought the PSP when the PS3 got into my grasp. Both just seem perfect together as sadly both aren't as fast going forward. There are quality in both that need time to work out! But when good stuff comes out on it it is heavenly good!
How much longer is the PSP going to need? They've already had 3 years. There are good titles and bad titles, but I still haven't found anything to make me really want to buy a PSP. I do love my DS, though.
Sure, some games have a rediculously high price now, like Guitar Hero and Rock Band come to mind. But there, you're also paying for new hardware, which doesn't cost *that* much more than a typical controller, and given that they're made in smaller quantities and require more materials, it makes sense that they cost more than a typical controller.
If you do the math, those peripherals actually cost less than a new controller. For example, I recently purchased Guitar Hero III for Xbox 360 for $90 (+ tax). If you assume the game by itself would be the usual $60, that means the wireless Les Paul guitar controller is only $30. A wireless controller from Microsoft costs around $40. Similarly with Rock Band, the bundle price for guitar + drums + mic + game is going to be $170. If you take the $60 game out of the equation, you're left with $110 for three peripherals. IMHO the breakdown for that is most likely $20 mic, $30 guitar, and $60 drums (the drums are actually very high quality for a toy). Factoring out the drums, you're paying list price or less for the other components.
If games cost $60-$70 for the SNES, if video games were subject to inflation, and given a modest 3% inflation rate, they would be costing between $93.48 and $109.06. Yes, I know that not all games cost $60-70 back fifteen years ago, but some very popular ones did.
You're comparing apples to oranges. The SNES games that cost $60+ were that expensive because of the cartridge technology. They were using bigger memory chips (SF2, Finaly Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger). When consoles moved away from cartridges, games dropped in price significantly. Final Fantasy VII was only $50 (IIRC) even thought it was bigger than FF6, because the CD format was significantly cheaper to produce (also, some of the cost moved elsewhere, since you purchased separate memory cards rather than having on-cartridge writable memory+battery). That's not to say that games shouldn't adjust for inflation, but you can't use the SNES as a starting point because it was not disk-based.
Metal Gear uses in game rendering when ever possible. But it also uses film clips when pseudo stock film would advance the story is a better style then in game scenes. I think most games are moving away from pre-rendered cut scenes as they tend to break the illusion of your world a little. FFXII was alright as the cut scenes were noticeably better but in the same style.FFVII was terrible for breaking the illusion with frequent cutscenes in a style very different from the rest of the game.
All of which completely misses the point. A cutscene is a cutscene, whether it's rendered in-engine or pre-rendered video. You've removed the user's interaction. The article compared MGS to Splinter Cell in that MGS had a big, long cutscene prior to the Ocelot fight (doesn't matter that it was rendered in-engine) while Splinter Cell had the player actually executing the steps that would've been shown as a cutscene in MGS. Half-Life is another game that does this very well, where you're in Gordon's perspective from the very start to the very end, and you always have control to move around. The HL1 tram intro is a perfect example. Any other game would've shown the tram from different camera angles and used the scene as a non-interactive movie. Valve put you right in Gordon's shoes and you can move around within the tram, looking out whichever windows you choose (or not).
I sure got jerked around by the ISP that had an exclusive deal at my apartment in college. The first year the deal was with a company that couldn't keep the connection up reliably and had very little bandwidth. Then that company went out of business and they went with the local cable company that most people in town were reasonably happy with (Insight Broadband in Champaign). But since they had an exclusive deal on the building they put the screws to us: charged us $20/month per person (I had two roommates, so combined we paid twice as much as we would have normally) and, even worse, put us behind NAT. Yes, that's right, the whole fucking building behind one IP address. I wrote a letter to them (the gist of it being, "If you don't give me an IP address it's not Internet service, it's web'n'email service, which is not what I signed up for"). They didn't even respond.
Based on your mention of "Champaign", I assume you're at UIUC? When I was there 8 years ago, the company providing T1 for the company that ran most of the apartments on campus was quite good. For a 2-bedroom apartment, they gave us two real IPs (not NAT), and even hosted DNS for domains for no charge. Bandwidth was good and the connection was stable. Unfortunately I don't recall the name of the ISP, but it sounds like either they were no longer used or they went crappy in the past few years.
Then again, back when I was there the biggest bandwidth hog was Napster rather than Bittorrent today. The T1 connection was always more than enough to run re-directed X sessions from the CS or Engineering labs on my local linux box.
In my case as well, I bought the highest speed available, because I often work from home, I didn't want to be billing my employer for time I waited for my slow connection. Will guess what? My ISP thinks all encrypted packets are a p2p agent in disguise, so I get throttled way down as soon as I start my VPN connection. Yet another clause in my contract says if I cancel my service within 2 years, I get slapped with a nice penalty, so I'm stuck for another year or so
Did you sign up for a residential package or business? If they're throttling VPN traffic on a business line, that's not right. On the other hand, if you're using a residential contract for mostly business purposes that's not right either. If you're not on a business plan, consider upgrading. You won't get hit with the cancellation penalty for upgrading. Also, consider investigating your local laws regarding cancellation fees. Many states disallow them, but your provider isn't going to tell you that.
The points you make are very valid... But, since I can't mod you up, I might as well inject my opinion while I'm at it.
The quotes the parent made were not valid. They were hero-worshipping wishful thinking, that RMS did anything more than crawl out of whatever he calls a bed and toss on whatever was on the top of the drawer. You're thinking too hard about something I doubt RMS thinks about at all.
The people who are interested in what he has to say aren't the ones in suits. The people he can speak to most directly, and who he'll have the biggest sway with, are people who most likely would show up to work in the same attire.
That's almost true. The people who are interested in what RMS has to say aren't the ones in suits (ie, the people running businesses), but they should be the people he wants interested. He's welcome to sway all of the slovenly-dressed, low-totem-pole workers. What are they going to do? It's the suits that run the businesses and make the decisions on what software to buy or use, whether or not to sell their own software, how to license it, etc. These are the people that RMS should be targetting, because they're the only ones who can realistically make the changes he wants. Too bad he's been very effective at alienating himself from them.
I don't mean that to be pejorative, of course. I think MBA-having, suit wearing asskissers are just slightly more evolved than lawyers, and slightly below pond scum...
So all pepole who wear suits are asskissers? There's no possibility of a slobbish, t-shirt/shorts/flip-flops-wearing hippy being an asskisser too?
Unfortunately, until we reach the point where intelligence is more important in business than how you look and who you know (not to mention the lack of morality or compassion, which I think is assumed), those suits are exactly the people we need to be impressing.
When it comes to software companies, we're quite past that. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer don't often wear suits. Steve Jobs doesn't wear a suit. Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't often wear suits. They do dress acceptably (their t-shirts are at least clean and tucked-in), and they're aware when it's socially polite to dress up. But the real difference is that they live in the real world while RMS lives in a fantasy of his own creation.
That's nice, and 20+ years old. What has he done lately to keep himself relevant? His personal web page is full of political propaganda and tripe (figures RMS would support the Green Party). It doesn't even have a section on software he's written, outside of the "Serious Bio" portion. His blog is nothing more than a listing of speaking engagements. And doesn't he have some sort of RSI that prevents him from actually typing (using speech commands instead)? As a developer, he's notoriously difficult to work with (why emacs has forked so much, for example). He's pretty much marginalized when it comes to code, and is nothing more than a figurehead for the FSF. A statue of a hippy would work just about as well.
Dress codes anywhere but where the dressing is essential to the event is pointless. How is a uniform going to inspire creative thought? If what matters is what people have on their minds, why care about what they have on their bodies?
Nobody's saying he should put on a suit and tie or anything. Jeans and a t-shirt would be perfectly acceptable. However if he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do a couple things:
Take a bath! A shower would suffice, but he probably needs hours of soaking to remove the years of neglected hygiene.
Shave and a haircut. Or at least a trim of each. If he wants to wear a full beard and long hair, good for him. At least keep them neat.
Use a brush or comb. Having long hair doesn't mean it has to be a rat's nest. Brush it out. This goes well with the first two (bathing will make the hair more manageable, as will trimming it).
Put on some damn shoes. If you don't want to wear socks, that's your choice. Even flip-flops would be better than nothing. We're not hobbits, it's no longer the 15th century, and he can afford $5 for some Wal*Mart shoes.
Sounds like something straight out of an elementary school playground.
Would you say the same thing if he showed up to a presentation naked, or covered in feces? If you're incapable of managing your own persona hygiene, how in the hell are you going to manage something global? RMS can be as much of a hippy as he likes, but unless he cleans himself up at least a little bit nobody's going to take him seriously besides other hippies. There's a reason why RMS is a laughing stock, and it's partly due to his insistence on "Free Software" above anything else. For every one person who is actually interested in hearing RMS speak at a presentation like this, there are 50 who are there to laugh at the smelly, delusional hippy.
Before you consider the TiVo box, you should know that Comcast is using TiVo's software for their DVR.
Not quite. Comcast is planning to have the Tivo interface sometime in the (far, far) future, but for now we're stuck with the PlaySkool OS that can't seem to figure out that when I tell it to record "new episodes of Family Guy", I don't mean "every single episode of Family Guy that Fox airs, which amounts to two a day, every day of the week, and sometimes three". The Microsoft interface never did that (though the Microsoft interface did want to record every rerun of the Sopranos when I told it to only record new). I'm pretty sure this is a tagging issue in Comcast's listing service, where reruns are incorrectly tagged (either tagged as new, or not tagged at all and thus assumed to be new).
For the original poster, you can cancel future recordings by flipping through the "Scheduled Recordings" pages. There's no single "TODO" list anymore, so you have to flip through each day until you run up against the end of the current listing download. Deleting is also more difficult, going through several menus with many annoying pauses. And sometimes it'll record a show even when you told it not to.
If CableCARD wasn't so damn flakey, I'd go ahead and upgrade to the Tivo Series 3. For now, I blame much of the nastiest of the Comcast DVR offerings (Microsoft or PlaySkool) on the shit Motorola hardware. At least they enable the firewire output, though it's unusable as a recording source for a Media Center PC since you still need an analog tuner in order to get the channel guide.
Wha, huh? First I heard of that. I realize both GH, and RB are going to add special things to each guitar that won't be present in the other, but for the core gameplay of 5 fret buttons, strum and Whammy bar... all indications point to them being interchangeable.
Up until recently, the Wikipedia article on Rock Band (yeah, I know, it's Wikipedia) had a note saying that the RB guitar would not be compatible with GH even though the GH controllers are compatible with Rock Band. In a way, that makes sense -- Red Octane can't change up the Guitar Hero guitar too much because it has to maintain backwards compatibility with the previous GH titles. Harmonix could change the RB guitar if they wanted, since RB is a new property. Although the guitars are physically similar (minus the additional high fret buttons for solos on the RB guitar), we have no idea about how they're wired or what signals they send. It's quite possible that the RB guitar doesn't follow the same interface as the GH guitars, in so far as what the GH games expect to see from a guitar. Harmonix would have no problems writing code to handle both the new RB guitar and the older GH guitars, since they created the GH guitars in the first place. Red Octane and Neversoft, on the other hand, wouldn't necessarily have access to Harmonix' specs for the RB guitar.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens, but I'm not going to bet on the RB guitar being compatible with GH. If it is, great. If it's not, oh well. I already have an Xplorer, and I'll pick up a wireless Les Paul with GH3 at the end of this month. I'll also get the Fender Strat with RB, so I'll be set for guitars on all fronts.
Sounds great! Please send me a link where they're available for the Wii.
If there ever was a game that was worth buying a system for, Guitar Hero would be it. While GH2 on the Xbox 360 is the superior version, the 360's price is still high. Now would actually be a great time to buy a used PS2 for $50-80, a GH2 bundle for $80 (may as well buy new on this, though you could hunt around for a used GH1 or GH2 bundle with guitar), a used copy of GH1 for $10-20, and a used copy of GH2:Rock the 80s for $20-30.
All joking aside, as solid as the peripherals may be - if what you've said is true, that's good to hear - you're not going to see a 0% failure rate, and I'd hate to be one of those rare bastards with a broken set.
That's really only going to be an issue for the drums. If you break your guitar, you can always use a GH2 or GH3 guitar (sucks for you if you buy on the Wii or PS3 which haven't had previous Guitar Hero games). Rock Band is compatible with the GH peripherals, even though the RB guitar is not compatible with the GH games. Since the singing bits are based off of Harmonix' previous work on Karaoke Revolution, I wouldn't be surprised if you could use an Xbox Live headset for the mic (or a USB headset or mic on PS3). At least I hope you can use a headset so I can sing and play guitar at the same time without investing in a mic stand:). So you're covered if guitars or mics break. If your drums break, send them off for warranty repair and focus on the singing and guitar playing portions of the game for a bit.
No, it's not. Just a tad better than living in the city. Rural areas are where it's at. Copious amounts of room, great sense of privacy, low taxes, no zoning laws, etc. There's really just no reason to live in the city unless you're one of those Starbucks-drinking, suit-wearing corporate tools.
There is that whole lack of infrastructure thing, though. If you go too far rural, you can say goodbye to broadband.
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Also keep in mind that in the earlier levels GLADOS is speaking to your character mostly through pre-recorded audio. It's only later in the game that GLADOS starts speaking to you directly. As such, the "android hell" bit was most likely just the pre-recorded exit audio for that test rather than an attempt by GLADOS to make you question your own humanity.
No, that's what something like SharePoint Server is for. It's a great way to share documents in an office environment without emailing things back and forth. Of course it's not so useful for the "transfer files home/back" case if IT can't or won't run an internet-facing server. Then again, with VPNs there's no reason to have those services exposed publicly. If you want to work on a document from home, connect your VPN and grab the document off of the "internal" SharePoint.
(Yes, I realize that's a Microsoft-centric view, and the same thing could be accomplished in many ways, even with something as simple as a CVS server and web interface. But when you're talking about pushing around Excel, Word, Powerpoint, etc documents you may as well share them around in the Microsoft way, since the Office apps understand how to read files from and save files to SharePoint, including the check-in/out process.)
While there were some valid complaints, such as those around data security and stupid users, much of the article was spent complaining about form factor and performance. If they're having problems, that just means they haven't found the right laptop. For example, I have a 2.5 year old 17" Dell Inspiron that I use for everything. I've found that:
- The 17" size isn't too heavy for me to carry around
- The keyboard isn't cramped. Sure, it's not full-sized keys, but I don't have any problem hitting individual keys
- It's upgradeable where it matters. Memory is easy to add or replace, the hard drive is simple to swap out with the removal of a couple of screws, the CPU can be replaced, and even the GPU can be upgraded (obviously not an off-the-shelf part). What's more, replacement Dell parts are easily available from a wide variety of internet sources, with service guides provided for free by Dell. I've personally replaced the keyboard on this laptop once, with a spare just in case, and I could easily replace anything from the LCD display to the plastic bezel bits without any problems at all
- I'm still on my original 2.5 year old battery and routinely see battery life top 4 hours of usage. I obviously have to be frugal with my settings (turn down the brightness, turn off Vista's fancy graphics features, etc), but when I need to stretch I can
- Performance is awesome in Vista, with all Aero effects running and multiple applications going. It even plays slightly older games quite well (Civ IV and GalCiv2 work great). I did upgrade to 2GB of RAM and a 7200RPM hard drive, but even before those changes the laptop flew in XP
If users are really having form factor and performance issues with the laptops you're using, it's time to look for something better. I know some people don't like Dell, but after this Inspiron I can't see myself using anything else.Too bad it won't work that way. Assuming a class action suit was filed and they lost, they'd be out no money (just operating expenses) for the "remediation" to customers (seriously, you're just going to get some trivial coupons, possibly for stuff you don't even want like free digital phone service when you only use Comcast for internet, in exchange for giving up the right to sue them yourself), they'll be charged a few million for the lawyers and court fees, and they'll spend quite a bit less than that for their own lawyers to scrub their EULAs and TOUs to make the traffic blocking legitimate. Without a law like net neutrality or applying common carrier status to ISPs and without significant competition from other cable-based ISPs, they'll make all of that back and more. And they'll keep blocking traffic.
If this guy wins his lawsuit, it will set a precedent where anybody can sue them and expect to win. If he loses, fine, go class action to attempt to send some sort of message. But don't throw away an opportunity for real change by jumping on the class action bandwagon prematurely.
So you can get a coupon for two free months of Comcast internet service while Comcast continues to block legitimate traffic? Class action lawsuits are worse than no lawsuit at all.
No, but just about everybody will be able to tell you the difference between a Hyundai and a Ferrari even if you blindfolded them, put them in the passenger seat, and drove them around. Similarly, even "average" people will be able to tell that a Ford Taurus feels nothing like a Honda Accord, or that a Mercedes if different from a Lexus, etc.
People buy cars for image purposes all the time. If you do the math on many of the hybrids, it doesn't make any economical sense to buy a Prius over a normal petrol-powered Civic yet people buy the Prius because of the image. They buy Hummers and Bimmers and Porsches and more just because of the image. They buy Japanese/German rather than American because Japanese/German cars are more "reliable" even though JD Powers and others have documented that modern American cars actually have fewer problems per mile.
But a car is not just a tool. For many it's a status symbol. For others it's a source of enjoyment. For most, it's the second largest purchase they'll ever make (first largest, if you never expect to buy a home). When you boil it down, you could drive a Kia just as well as a Porsche, but I prefer my Porsche :)
Sega failed yet we still have three players in the console market. If Sony were to fail so horribly with the PS3 that they drop out of the market entirely, I wouldn't be surprised to see others try to enter the market in their wake. EA is probably the most likely candidate.
Yes. She can also setup limits on web browsing and overall computer use besides just gaming. Of course she'd have to upgrade to Vista to use it.
Everybody always talks about graphics not being important when discussing consoles (why the Wii doesn't do HD, for example), but then miss that the most applicable place for that argument is on portables. Who cares if the PSP has the best graphics? That just means it'll suck down more battery power, and I have to squint harder to see the relatively tiny screen (yes, I know the PSP has a huge screen, but it's nowhere as big as a 50" DLP).
Gameboy Color? GBA?
How much longer is the PSP going to need? They've already had 3 years. There are good titles and bad titles, but I still haven't found anything to make me really want to buy a PSP. I do love my DS, though.
Too bad RAID 5 sucks.
Okay, fine, RAID 5 is good enough for data you don't care about, which would include pirated videos.
If you do the math, those peripherals actually cost less than a new controller. For example, I recently purchased Guitar Hero III for Xbox 360 for $90 (+ tax). If you assume the game by itself would be the usual $60, that means the wireless Les Paul guitar controller is only $30. A wireless controller from Microsoft costs around $40. Similarly with Rock Band, the bundle price for guitar + drums + mic + game is going to be $170. If you take the $60 game out of the equation, you're left with $110 for three peripherals. IMHO the breakdown for that is most likely $20 mic, $30 guitar, and $60 drums (the drums are actually very high quality for a toy). Factoring out the drums, you're paying list price or less for the other components.
You're comparing apples to oranges. The SNES games that cost $60+ were that expensive because of the cartridge technology. They were using bigger memory chips (SF2, Finaly Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger). When consoles moved away from cartridges, games dropped in price significantly. Final Fantasy VII was only $50 (IIRC) even thought it was bigger than FF6, because the CD format was significantly cheaper to produce (also, some of the cost moved elsewhere, since you purchased separate memory cards rather than having on-cartridge writable memory+battery). That's not to say that games shouldn't adjust for inflation, but you can't use the SNES as a starting point because it was not disk-based.
All of which completely misses the point. A cutscene is a cutscene, whether it's rendered in-engine or pre-rendered video. You've removed the user's interaction. The article compared MGS to Splinter Cell in that MGS had a big, long cutscene prior to the Ocelot fight (doesn't matter that it was rendered in-engine) while Splinter Cell had the player actually executing the steps that would've been shown as a cutscene in MGS. Half-Life is another game that does this very well, where you're in Gordon's perspective from the very start to the very end, and you always have control to move around. The HL1 tram intro is a perfect example. Any other game would've shown the tram from different camera angles and used the scene as a non-interactive movie. Valve put you right in Gordon's shoes and you can move around within the tram, looking out whichever windows you choose (or not).
Bungie doesn't own the Halo IP. That's all Microsoft's now.
Based on your mention of "Champaign", I assume you're at UIUC? When I was there 8 years ago, the company providing T1 for the company that ran most of the apartments on campus was quite good. For a 2-bedroom apartment, they gave us two real IPs (not NAT), and even hosted DNS for domains for no charge. Bandwidth was good and the connection was stable. Unfortunately I don't recall the name of the ISP, but it sounds like either they were no longer used or they went crappy in the past few years.
Then again, back when I was there the biggest bandwidth hog was Napster rather than Bittorrent today. The T1 connection was always more than enough to run re-directed X sessions from the CS or Engineering labs on my local linux box.
Did you sign up for a residential package or business? If they're throttling VPN traffic on a business line, that's not right. On the other hand, if you're using a residential contract for mostly business purposes that's not right either. If you're not on a business plan, consider upgrading. You won't get hit with the cancellation penalty for upgrading. Also, consider investigating your local laws regarding cancellation fees. Many states disallow them, but your provider isn't going to tell you that.
The quotes the parent made were not valid. They were hero-worshipping wishful thinking, that RMS did anything more than crawl out of whatever he calls a bed and toss on whatever was on the top of the drawer. You're thinking too hard about something I doubt RMS thinks about at all.
That's almost true. The people who are interested in what RMS has to say aren't the ones in suits (ie, the people running businesses), but they should be the people he wants interested. He's welcome to sway all of the slovenly-dressed, low-totem-pole workers. What are they going to do? It's the suits that run the businesses and make the decisions on what software to buy or use, whether or not to sell their own software, how to license it, etc. These are the people that RMS should be targetting, because they're the only ones who can realistically make the changes he wants. Too bad he's been very effective at alienating himself from them.
So all pepole who wear suits are asskissers? There's no possibility of a slobbish, t-shirt/shorts/flip-flops-wearing hippy being an asskisser too?
When it comes to software companies, we're quite past that. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer don't often wear suits. Steve Jobs doesn't wear a suit. Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't often wear suits. They do dress acceptably (their t-shirts are at least clean and tucked-in), and they're aware when it's socially polite to dress up. But the real difference is that they live in the real world while RMS lives in a fantasy of his own creation.
That's nice, and 20+ years old. What has he done lately to keep himself relevant? His personal web page is full of political propaganda and tripe (figures RMS would support the Green Party). It doesn't even have a section on software he's written, outside of the "Serious Bio" portion. His blog is nothing more than a listing of speaking engagements. And doesn't he have some sort of RSI that prevents him from actually typing (using speech commands instead)? As a developer, he's notoriously difficult to work with (why emacs has forked so much, for example). He's pretty much marginalized when it comes to code, and is nothing more than a figurehead for the FSF. A statue of a hippy would work just about as well.
Nobody's saying he should put on a suit and tie or anything. Jeans and a t-shirt would be perfectly acceptable. However if he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do a couple things:
Would you say the same thing if he showed up to a presentation naked, or covered in feces? If you're incapable of managing your own persona hygiene, how in the hell are you going to manage something global? RMS can be as much of a hippy as he likes, but unless he cleans himself up at least a little bit nobody's going to take him seriously besides other hippies. There's a reason why RMS is a laughing stock, and it's partly due to his insistence on "Free Software" above anything else. For every one person who is actually interested in hearing RMS speak at a presentation like this, there are 50 who are there to laugh at the smelly, delusional hippy.
They should ask EA founder Trip Hawkins how well that went ...
Not quite. Comcast is planning to have the Tivo interface sometime in the (far, far) future, but for now we're stuck with the PlaySkool OS that can't seem to figure out that when I tell it to record "new episodes of Family Guy", I don't mean "every single episode of Family Guy that Fox airs, which amounts to two a day, every day of the week, and sometimes three". The Microsoft interface never did that (though the Microsoft interface did want to record every rerun of the Sopranos when I told it to only record new). I'm pretty sure this is a tagging issue in Comcast's listing service, where reruns are incorrectly tagged (either tagged as new, or not tagged at all and thus assumed to be new).
For the original poster, you can cancel future recordings by flipping through the "Scheduled Recordings" pages. There's no single "TODO" list anymore, so you have to flip through each day until you run up against the end of the current listing download. Deleting is also more difficult, going through several menus with many annoying pauses. And sometimes it'll record a show even when you told it not to.
If CableCARD wasn't so damn flakey, I'd go ahead and upgrade to the Tivo Series 3. For now, I blame much of the nastiest of the Comcast DVR offerings (Microsoft or PlaySkool) on the shit Motorola hardware. At least they enable the firewire output, though it's unusable as a recording source for a Media Center PC since you still need an analog tuner in order to get the channel guide.
I blame the King of All Cosmos and his damned tennis racquet. Time to start rolling up all your junk.
Up until recently, the Wikipedia article on Rock Band (yeah, I know, it's Wikipedia) had a note saying that the RB guitar would not be compatible with GH even though the GH controllers are compatible with Rock Band. In a way, that makes sense -- Red Octane can't change up the Guitar Hero guitar too much because it has to maintain backwards compatibility with the previous GH titles. Harmonix could change the RB guitar if they wanted, since RB is a new property. Although the guitars are physically similar (minus the additional high fret buttons for solos on the RB guitar), we have no idea about how they're wired or what signals they send. It's quite possible that the RB guitar doesn't follow the same interface as the GH guitars, in so far as what the GH games expect to see from a guitar. Harmonix would have no problems writing code to handle both the new RB guitar and the older GH guitars, since they created the GH guitars in the first place. Red Octane and Neversoft, on the other hand, wouldn't necessarily have access to Harmonix' specs for the RB guitar.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens, but I'm not going to bet on the RB guitar being compatible with GH. If it is, great. If it's not, oh well. I already have an Xplorer, and I'll pick up a wireless Les Paul with GH3 at the end of this month. I'll also get the Fender Strat with RB, so I'll be set for guitars on all fronts.
If there ever was a game that was worth buying a system for, Guitar Hero would be it. While GH2 on the Xbox 360 is the superior version, the 360's price is still high. Now would actually be a great time to buy a used PS2 for $50-80, a GH2 bundle for $80 (may as well buy new on this, though you could hunt around for a used GH1 or GH2 bundle with guitar), a used copy of GH1 for $10-20, and a used copy of GH2:Rock the 80s for $20-30.
That's really only going to be an issue for the drums. If you break your guitar, you can always use a GH2 or GH3 guitar (sucks for you if you buy on the Wii or PS3 which haven't had previous Guitar Hero games). Rock Band is compatible with the GH peripherals, even though the RB guitar is not compatible with the GH games. Since the singing bits are based off of Harmonix' previous work on Karaoke Revolution, I wouldn't be surprised if you could use an Xbox Live headset for the mic (or a USB headset or mic on PS3). At least I hope you can use a headset so I can sing and play guitar at the same time without investing in a mic stand :). So you're covered if guitars or mics break. If your drums break, send them off for warranty repair and focus on the singing and guitar playing portions of the game for a bit.
There is that whole lack of infrastructure thing, though. If you go too far rural, you can say goodbye to broadband.