The plot is superficially similar to Patriot Games, so I could see the mistake. IRA in Patriot Games, IRA in Devil's Own. Ford in Patriot Games (the movie), Ford in Devil's Own. Other than that, though, I wouldn't call them too similar. So sure, honest mistake, but not one I'd expect too many people to make:)
You're also off on his Jack Ryan roles. He played Ryan twice: Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger (with the absolute horrible casting of Willem Dafoe as John Clark, but the rest of the movie was good). The only other movie adaptations of Jack Ryan novels were The Hunt for Red October and Sum of All Fears. Hunt was pre-Ford with Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, and Sum was post-Ford with Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan. Supposedly Rainbow Six is in the pipes for a movie adapatation, but Jack Ryan doesn't make an appearance in the novel. He might have some screen time, depending on how the script goes (Ryan was president during the novel), but I'd doub that. Besides, Sum of All Fears screwed up the movie timeline, so they may write the R6 script without Ryan as President.
IMDB does list some TV role in "The Secret World of Spying" with Ford as Ryan, but I have no idea what that is. However, it has Samuel L. Jackson listed as Robby Jackson, which means it can't be all bad (though he's a bit tall for Robby, who's supposed to be rather short according to the books). It looks like that was some sort of special, capitalizing on Patriot Games (both 1992), and so I'd call it similar to the Star Wars Holiday special -- it doesn't count.
I only watched the first one in the theater. It sucked so much that I skipped the second one entirely. My friends say the third is ok, so I'll wait until it gets to the cheap theater and then check it out
and later:
Unfortunately, the prequel(s) were much more about special effects than good film technique. Even the acting sucked. And need I mention that the costumes and technology are not consistent, neither with the original three movies, nor from one scene to the next in the prequel(s). This damaged the movie, rather than provide added value.
Perhaps I'm the only one wondering how you can make judgements about movies you haven't seen? Besides, of all the criticisms you could make, you've chosen the silliest: costumes. Watch the prequels again. The costumes are consistent. Perhaps you're referring to Padme/Amidala's penchant for changing outfits frequently in the Phantom Menace (that was part of her character as Queen of Naboo), but otherwise I have no idea what you might mean by this criticism. Character costumes were consistent within a movie, and while they did change across movies (as they did in the original trilogy, in case you didn't notice), they still stayed consistent within a character's style.
As for consistency in costume and technology between the prequels and the original trilogy, perhaps you should finish watching the last two films in the prequel trilogy before making that claim. You can easily see how the clone trooper armor and vehicles evolved into the costumes and technology of the empire in the original trilogy. Remember, there's ~20 years between episode 3 and episode 4, and there were ~10 years between episode 1 and episode 2 -- look back to technology (particularly computers and cars) and clothing from the 70s and 80s compared to today and draw your own conclusion about how quickly technology and fashion can change. For example, if you would've bothered to watch Episode 3 you'd have seen, among other things, an early Correllian gunship (the rebel cruiser at the beginning of episode 4), an early precursor to the X-wing starfighters from 4-6, and the change in republic officer uniform to what you'll later see as the imperial officer uniform in 4/5/6.
I won't claim that the prequel trilogy was good. The acting was horrible across all three movies (episode 3 was by far the best, but "best" is very relative here), and Lucas made a lot of odd changes (midichlorians?) to core story items. I'm simply saying that you might want to finish watching episodes 2 and 3 before you make these kinds of claims.
The original poster used the term "bought", but the site includes investments. Microsoft invested heavily in Apple, thus it's on the list.
The original poster is also being facetious by saying that Bill bought that. Microsoft the corporation made those purchases and investments, which is a completely separate entity from Bill Gates. Of course, that's just splitting hairs here on Slashdot.
Re:it's simple, but...
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Just a Phone?
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I use a Motorola V60. It's a flip-phone and therefore completely dissimilar to these phones.
I also use a V60, and not only is it a flipphone, but it's also smaller than most of today's fancier phones. I lovemy V60, and the only reason I'll ever upgrade is if it stops working. It does exactly what I need:
Makes and receives phone calls with good quality, range, and battery life
Fits comfortably into a jacket or pant pocket for easy carriage without having to get a hip holster.
That's all I need. No camera, no color screen, no web browser (well, I think there's one in there somewhere, but it's primitive and I have no need for it), no fancy games (the v60 has three or four basic games that I never play), no polyphonic annoying as hell ring tones, etc.
That sounds great, right up to the point where some pervert uses your open wi-fi to download child porn which is then traced back to your IP, or some l33t hax0r d00d tries to crack into military servers. And of course all of this is ignoring the fact that most ISPs specifically deny you the right to share your access this way. There are a few like Speakeasy that don't care or even encourage it, but Speakeasy's service sucks (I know, I had DSL with them for two years), and none of them legally protect you if someone using your connection doesn't something illegal or at least against their AUP.
You could go hardcore setting up a walled garden, authentication system, and the whole nine yards, but you really don't have to. Even doing something as simple as enabling WEP on your AP is enough for the casual browser. It's certainly not 100% secure, and anybody with malicious intent could easily crack your key in minutes, but that's not the point. It's a deterrent and a source of plausible deniability. A thief could easily pick the lock on your door, but the simple act of locking your door will keep most people out (the end goal). As well, the fact that you took some measure means that you can't be held responsible when the thief who picked your lock and stole your shotgun later goes on to shoot up a school or convenience store.
Ok. I haven't been following that much but do you have a link where it says Live is free? Or is that the hardware comes with it but you need to pay the subscription still? Unless it is 0 dollars, I wouldn't call it free.
The Silver service is free, and includes a gamertag, game card (your profile page), reputation, friends, voice chat, marketplace (where you may pay money to buy stuff, download free demos, etc), etc. The premium gold service gives you all of that plus the ability to play games online and have video chat.
In other words, if you want to play games, you still have to pay the subscription. If you already have a Live subscription for Xbox when you buy Xbox360, you automatically have a gold membership. The silver seems targetted at the non-hardcore, who maybe want to have some of the connected features (chat, online presence, demos, etc) but don't necessarily care about actually playing against other folks online.
I'd provide links, but this is covered in pretty much every article about the Xbox360 since its debut last Thursday, so you shouldn't have any trouble looking it up.
I was reading I found out that the PS2 emmulates PS1 games.
The PS2 doesn't emulate PS1 games. It includes a "PS1-on-a-chip". This is the same chip used in the much smaller "PSOne" console redesign that was released right around the same time as the PS2 was in development. This chip is not 100% perfect, as there are a few games that have problems, but most PS1 games that have problems running on a PS2 only do so when you're using texture smoothing or fast CD reading.
Do you think it's a coincidence that Sony recently launched a much smaller PS2 (the PSTwo)? My guess is that the PSTwo was an excercise in minituarzing the guts of a PS2, in preparation for including them in a PS3 for backwards compatibility. The only remaining question then is whether or not PS3 will be backwards-compatible with PS1.
For everyone else who can't read the thread below my post and wants to make their own witty, "Restarting X isn't the same as restarting Windows," post, here. I've admitted that I should've been more cleareven though from a desktop user perspective it is very similar, albeit a bit quicker to restart X. When your "work" consists of data in an application, stopping that application, stopping X, restarting X, and restarting the application is just as disruptive as rebooting your machine. Who cares that your local services (which you shouldn't be running many, on a desktop machine) continue to run? At least with a reboot, you have an excuse to knock off for a cup of coffee or a smoke.
Besides, with graphical login managers being the norm for desktop-oriented distros, most "average" users (ie, your grandmother that you moved to Linux because you wanted to be 1337, the secretary that just wants to type up the latest memo, etc) won't know or care that they can stop and restart X without having to reboot. Of course, such a user also probably wouldn't be updating his or her X server, but that's beside the point.
What good does this do if you still have to do the weekly reboot of windows?
Who has to do weekly reboots? If you're referring to updates and security patches, those are released monthly on a predictable schedule, but for the most critical of issues (which also are not of weekly frequency, though I will admit that when several in a row come out it may seem that way). If you're insinuating flakiness, I suggest the problem is with your machine and/or usage habits, rather than Windows itself. Protect yourself from viruses and malware or buy some quality hardware and you won't have to reboot weekly either.
Sorry for picking nits here, I guess it does end up having a similar effect for the user in that the graphical programs running will have to be quit[1], but obviously it's different in that background daemons, networking, etc. aren't affected.
Sorry, I should've said "similar" rather than "equivalent". You mentioned what I was getting at -- that from an end-user perspective, they're the same thing because you have to save whatever you're working on, close your apps, reboot/restart, and then re-open all of your apps again. From a server perspective, they're completely different (but then you're not running X on your servers, are you?).
Didn't I hear the same "no rebooting" line with Win2k and with WinXP? Not that I wouldn't enjoy that, it's just that I've lost faith in these types of claims.
You didn't hear the same line. For win2k, "no reboots" applied to system services. For example, NT4 needed a reboot to change network information. Win2k fixed that and a lot of other administrative reboots. WinXP focused more and more on installation reboots, and a well-behaved installer now only needs to reboot the system now if it has to change certain files that are already in use by system processes (for example, security patches). That's not to say that there aren't still misbehaved installers for third-party apps that request reboots, but I've found in 90%+ of the cases where an installer requests a reboot I can simply ignore it, tell it I'll reboot later, and get on with my work.
It sounds like Longhorn is taking the next step in combating reboots by allowing you to update drivers without a reboot. This is something you can't even always do with Linux today (consider updating the X driver for a video card -- you have to restart X to use it, which is equivalent to a reboot in Windows). So yeah, you've heard similar claims before with respect to rebooting, but each of those claims have targetted a different cause of reboots.
Games have always sucked. Just like books and movies have always sucked. For every gem there are a dozen failures. That's just the nature of creativity in business.
Bingo! Someone please mod up the parent! Now take that a step farther. Everything has always sucked, but the reason why things seem to suck worse now is because it's now. You've consciously or unconsciously forgotten the crap of yesteryear, and at the same time the real gems are easier to spot because they outlived the crap. Rose-colored glasses.
Using to compliment ranged attacks was prevelant in Quake MODS such as Ninja Quake.
I never played Ninja Quake (I did play a lot of TF and various CTF implementations, though), so I'm not familiar with it, but Ninja Quake 2 doesn't looke like it fits the bill. Halo's melee attacks are always available. You can go from shooting your gun, to hitting with the stock of the gun, back to shooting the gun without having to ever switch to a different weapon. The only other game besides Halo where I've seen that gameplay mechanic is Republic Commando, and that game is newer than even Halo 2. That's not to say it's never been done before, just that it's pretty rare.
Grenades were very well implimented into Halflife. Hell, i (PC gamer) was the one who introduced my console buddies (butt heads) to the wonders of grenades.
Grenades in Half-Life were just another weapon. To use them, you had to switch to them. I'll agree that Halo wasn't the first game to allow you to toss grenades without having to switch weapons, but Half-Life isn't a good example. What you really want is TeamFortress (the original for Q1, not the TFC crap for HL), where each class had two grenade types available to them, which were bound to two different buttons (g and h, IIRC). Other games have done that since (Far Cry, for example), but I've not seen any other game with such an abundance of grenades like Halo.
Again, please refer to my statment about ur head being lodged between the warm mucus secreting, epithelium lining of your colon and say a big "Hello Tribes" which was released ~1998, but was a healthy gaming community almost a year before that. Or for a more resent example "Battlefield 1942"
The parent acknowledged Tribes, and BF1942 was released later than Halo 1. Prior to H1, only the Tribes series had such robust vehicle support, and Tribes always was a bit of a red-headed stepchild in many online gaming circles.
While your up there, say hello to Team Fortress.
Why? Team Fortress introduced class-based team play, and doesn't have much to do with Halo's limited weapon-carry system. Sure, you have two weapons and can't carry more, but you can't switch them out strategically as in Halo, either.
My god, what a sad pathetic little world you console gamers live in. You wonder why PC gamers give a big scarcastic "whoopy-doo" to Halo and Halo2. Its because we've been playing these damn games for 11 years now, while you console jockies have been veging on your parents couch, stuffing your face with cheetos.
You might want to try playing Halo or Halo 2 before you go off on it. You've already shown that you don't have more than a vague idea about the gameplay mechanics of the games. Oh yeah, there are more game genres out there than FPS, too. While the PC may currently be the best platform for FPS (arguable IMHO, but oh well), it generally sucks for sports games, platformers, racing games (well, unless you shell out $200 for a good wheel and pedal setup), etc.
Really? I thought the term came from the adding of alcohol, produced using rice, to motorbike fuel in Japan. I belive that this was done to make them go faster
I have no idea if that's true or not (I always figured the term "rice rocket" was a racial slur), but that's not how the grandparent intended it. He was talking about ricers who are take (usually) perfectly fine cars and uglify them beyond all belief. The cars are not always Japanese, but "rice" is used because it's predominantly Japanese cars. Similarly, many of the people actually doing the ricing are not even of Asian descent. The slur applies to the cars themselves, not the people.
The idea of developing "professional" application in Excel seems to me like ricing out a base model Civic and pretending it's a real race car. You can do it, and the Civic will go pretty fast, but why not get an actual sports car instead of putting a ton of time and effort into working around the limitations that come from starting with a family vehicle?
Bad analogy. If you're the kind of person that likes to tinker with cars, "ricing"* a civic is fun. I guess the same could be said about building an application in Excel, but you'd have to be one scary person to find that fun!
* "Ricing" in quotes, because what you described isn't ricing since you said it could be fast. Ricing a car is making it all show and no go. Building a race car is almost exactly the opposite. If you can do both, more power to you, but why would you want to add all of that heavy cosmetic crap (ugly bodykits that don't affect a car's coefficient of drag and just add weight, useless spoilers, heavy audio and video equipment, huge wheels that add unsprung weight and require more power to rotate, etc)?
You wouldn't, by any chance, be a childless know-it-all, would you?
Because to criticize a parent I must be a parent? Bullshit. Parents are not beyond reproach, and it's just that type of attitude that allows bad parenting to continue.
I hate, absolutely _hate_, laying blame on parents, but after working as long as I have in IT at a school district I can see that children are mirrors of their parents' behavior.
Why do you hate blaming parents so much? It's their job to raise their kids, and nearly every problem a child has can be directly related to his parents' (lack of) parenting. The original poster is a perfect example. Rather than addressing the problem, he's scheming with his wife to "accidentally" remove the game. What's his son going to learn from this? That it's okay to neglect his responsibilities (even at 5 years old, you have them -- education, playing, being a kid)? That mommy and daddy are real klutzes with the computer, so he should start learning how to hide what he's doing? In this case, it may or may not be the parents' fault that the kid got so wrapped up in the game (it probably is -- they didn't limit his play time, or set down ground rules), but if they go through with the planned course of action they are absolutely responsible for what that teaches the child.
It's not my job to parent your kids, nor is it the government's job, nor teachers, school administrators, day care employees, etc. It's your kid, you teach him how to be responsible. If you can't handle that, perhaps you should reconsider being a parent. Harsh? Sure. But throwing more tax dollars at poorly parented children isn't going to solve the problem, either. You have to fix the problem, and the problem is usually the parents (or parent, in more and more cases).
It can be assumed that a family has at least dial-up, but not broadband. You point out that the broadband requirement limits the market. I contend that the broadband requirement limits the market to an unnecessary extent. Some of the Live-only features, such as some games' expansions, don't especially need high speed or low latency. For instance, given what I know of Bemanistyle's simfiles database, a song file in Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix can't be bigger than 10 MB, which is a 40 minute download on dial-up. In addition, some games such as Tetris and Yu-Gi-Oh! are largely turn-based and small-universe and wouldn't benefit much from low latency.
I don't know if I would call it limiting to an unnecessary extent. If you will concede that voice communication in every game is a major tenet of Xbox Live!'s mission, then it makes sense to require broadband. I agree that you certainly don't need broadband to get downloadable content, but an enterprising person can find ways around that. I wouldn't go trying to play games, but the downloads will work just fine.
In addition, consider a touch of service tying. The Xbox division and the MSN division are close to each other on Microsoft's income statement, and I can assume that the Xbox Live setup kit advertises MSN broadband. Requiring broadband for Live, even on games that otherwise wouldn't really need broadband, generates more broadband subscriptions in areas where MSN has a contract with the telco or cable company that has a geographic monopoly or duopoly. In those areas, you need MSN in order to get on Live.
Sounds like a conspiracy theory more than anything. Also, MSN no longer offers any direct broadband services. The only way you're going to get MSN is if a carrier has a bundle providing a premium MSN subscription along with your broadband. In almost all of those cases, I believe you can decline the MSN subscription, though I don't know if it saves you any money (in the same way that my Comcast cable comes with a free Rhapsody radio subscription, but if I never actually sign up or use Rhapsody, does it really affect me?). As far as the monopoly argument goes, I wouldn't try to pin that one on Microsoft. That's the cable and phone companies' (read: the government's) doing.
Again, not all game genres benefit from broadband as much as first-person shooters do.
I'd argue that most do. Racing games and fighting games in particular benefit immensely from broadband while not fitting into the FPS mold. In fact, I'd contend that any head-to-head style game will have a much better experience on broadband than not. That excludes "thinking" games (chess, turn-based strategy games but not RTS games, board-games like Mario Party though the mini-games would benefit from broadband, etc).
<snipped NIN discussion>
Very interesting. I never knew that about NIN's albums, so you can see how I could miss the point.:)
The point here, possibly made better in another one of my comments to this article, was that such a high-profile title as Bungie's Halo 2 for Xbox left out support for custom soundtracks. Whoever decided to ship without that feature deserves a head like a hole.
This I'm indifferent to, personally. I don't think I've ever built a custom soundtrack, and most of the time when I'm playing online I have the music turned off anyway (in halo 2 so I can better hear what's going on around me, as situational awareness is key; in PGR2 because the engine sounds are infinitely better than any music I could play, and it helps to be able to hear the engine so I'll know if I need to downshift before going into a turn; etc). That's just my personal preference, and unti
I'd take it on PC where I can get it for free. Online play isn't a selling feature of consoles, despite the couple of million people who play online with their consoles. That's like what, 1% of the installed userbase of this generation?
I assume you're talking about getting online play for free, as you typically don't get expansion packs for PC games for free (ignoring user-created mods or warezing, of course). You're 1% number is about right for the number of console users online today (in terms of Xbox-only it's more like 5-7%, and if you count PS2s you also have to track the number of PS2s online -- no clue what that number may be). However, that 1% is the 1% you really want. They're the early adopters and hardcore gamers, the folks who can make or break a generation. Offline play will never go away, and compelling single-player games will always be a requirement for console success, but if you can provide that and a compelling online experience, you have a much better shot at doing well.
Until console games have online play and downloadable addons of PC games from even 5 years ago who really cares?
The only place the PC of 5 years ago has today's consoles beat is in terms of user-created content (and Xbox Live! is taking steps in that direction with user-created maps for some new games like TimeSplitters 3). In terms of gameplay, stability, and features, today's consoles are way ahead. For example, 5 years ago it was rare to have voice chat in-game on a PC (not counting external services that provided voice outside of the game itself, and those were nowhere near ubiquitous). With Xbox Live!, you have voice available in every game. Stats keeping is doable on consoles as well (see Bungie's Halo 2 stats tracker). And the one thing that Xbox Live! has that no other service has yet to fully implement is single sign-on (in the PC case because there is no central governing agent; for the PS2 because Sony can't be bothered). No matter what Xbox Live! game I play, I always use the same gamertag, and have the same friends list, and have the same visibility into my friends' statuses (offline, online in my game, online in a different game, joinable, etc). You just can't do that without a central service, and for me that feature is compelling enough to pay the < $5/mo fee.
In fact, since getting on Xbox Live! over three years ago, I haven't played a single PC game online. There's simply been nothing compelling enough to tear me away from my Xbox. Maybe I'm atypical, but it's a pretty powerful statement even so.
For the record, I own an Xbox, a PS2, a Gamecube, and a GBA:SP, as well as a PC powerful enough to play modern games (can't turn on all the bells and whistles in doom 3, but I can still play it). Call me an Xbox fanboy if you will, but aside from a few games (FarCry on the PC, GT4 on the PS2, Paper Mario 2 on the GC), I get more enjoyment out of my Xbox than any of the others.
"Costs less than $5 per month" and "Requires broadband" are mutually exclusive, especially when it would involve an upgrade from $10/mo NetZero to $40/mo DSL.
And by that same rationale, Sony and Nintendo offerings are not free when they require a $10/mo Netzero account or a $40/mo DSL line. The price of access is considered a given here, as if you don't have broadband because you can't or won't pay for it, the $5 doesn't matter (and if you do have broadband but can't afford the extra $5/mo, one wonders how you can afford broadband at all?).
And for some customers, there's even a setup fee in excess of $10,000 to cover the cost of moving house, as there's no affordable high-speed, low-latency Internet access available to residential customers in many geographic areas, areas where the next step up from ISDN is a T1.
And the part you conveniently didn't quote from my post acknowledged the fact that requiring a broadband connection limits the market. At the same time, PS2 has many broadband-only games even though a dialup modem is available for that console, and I highly doubt Nintendo's Revolution will provide dialup support (I don't know, I haven't seen any anouncements so I could be wrong, but it seems like a bad idea to me; maybe that's just me being an elitist broandband-subscriber. I'm evil!). I played Quake 1 and such back in the day on a dialup connection, and I wouldn't go back. The frustration factor is high enough that I wouldn't bother. Were I stuck on dialup, I wouldn't play any online games. But then, I'm not into self-flagellation, either.
What's that about a late-1980s Nine Inch Nails album?
Huh? I don't listen to NIN, so whatever point you were trying to make was lost. I'll just assume you were trying to say I have a hole in my head, or something. Of course, you also conveniently glossed over my points, such as the growth of Live! subscriptions in a pre-Halo 2 market.
"Download"? Don't you mean "rent until my Xbox breaks"?
"Buy a DVD"? Don't you mean "rent until my DVD is scratched to hell or breaks"? Two can play at that game. Oh yeah, downloadable content is transferable in some cases. If your Xbox breaks and it's replaced rather than repaired, you do not have to pay again for the content download (may require a support call, but it's possible to do). I have no idea what happens if you don't go through official channels when your Xbox breaks (for example, rather than calling the Xbox support number and sending it in for repair or replacement, you just go to the store and replace it yourself). I assume that you can still transfer the data (again, perhaps with a phone call to support), but I don't know because I haven't had to do that. By that same token, you're not allowed to install disc-based expansion packs on multiple computers (read your EULA some time). Whether you agree with that or not, the Xbox Live! method of content delivery just enforces that already existing restriction a bit more strictly.
In addition, with an expansion disc, I can play the expansion at another home with an Xbox without having to lug my own Xbox.
Maybe I'm living in a different world, but I've never really felt the need to go to someone else's house to play a game I already own. Now, I have lugged my Xbox and spare TV to other places for Halo LAN parties, but that's not really the same thing, is it?
Hmm, so people are more impressed by the PSP than the DS, but the DS is the one with higher sales figures?
The market has spoken, the DS is a success
Care to provide numbers and sources? What games are driving DS sales? In my opinion, it's too early in the cycle for either handheld to call one or the other a success or failure yet, but if the DS doesn't get better games it's fate is pretty well sealed.
And about the revolution online comment, nintendo has already confirmed it will be, and it will be FREE, and it that it ISN'T the revolutionary aspect. And Xbox Live is a step backwards over PC online, and it's a pay service, if it weren't for Halo2 it would be a total failure too.
Whoopee! PS2 online play is also free, but it's not much of a strategy. Compare:
PS2 online
Free
Supports narrowband connections, though many games require a broandband connection
No voice support unless a game explicitly designs for it
Each game (or set of games from a single publisher like EA) is self-contained. Different logins, friends lists, etc.
Cheating is rampant
No central feedback mechanism
Xbox Live!
Costs less than $5 per month
Requires broadband (narrows the potential market, but makes the experience so much better)
Universal voice support in all Live! games, for "free" (in the development sense)
Every game is interconnected. My sign-on is the same for every game, and I can see when my friends are online, and what they're playing, and send them cross-game invites and messages
Cheating happens, but Microsoft does attempt to address it (modified Xboxes are banned from Live!, cheaters are often banned based on feedback, games are patched as necessary)
A central feedback mechanism exists, and while the results of the feedback are not public, it is not ignored (read through the Bungie forums sometime, and you'll see Microsoft representatives talking about feedback and what they do with it)
As I see it, the only positive mark in the PS2 list is price, but for less than $5 a month, you get a cohesive online vision across all games with Xbox Live!. I'd give up a latte a month for that.
As for Live! only being a success thanks to Halo 2, were you not paying attention last summer when they cracked the 1 million subscriber mark? Halo 2 didn't ship for months after that, and yet Live! was still doing quite well. I'm sure Halo 2 helped Live!, but it wasn't on its deathbed before Halo 2, and if there was no Halo 2 it'd still be alive and kicking. But then, perhaps I measure "total failure" differently than you do.
Note about "Free"-ness: both PS2 and Xbox allow developers to charge for access to their game above and beyond the subscription price (example: Phantasy Star Online, or Final Fantasy XI). I'm only comparing the basic rates here. As well, Xbox Live! does open up interesting for-pay channels to developers for additional content. Would you rather pay $20 for an add-on disk or expansion (typical PC tactic) to get a few new maps/cars/weapons/wathever, or $5 to download a new set of maps/cars/weapons/whatever?
It depends on the definition you use, but the typical political US definition doesn't care about size. A town is "a territorial and political unit governed by a town meeting, especially in New England," while a city is "an incorporated municipality in the United States with definite boundaries and legal powers set forth in a charter granted by the state." The that extent, I grew up in a city of 3600 people, but 5 miles north was a town of 20,000 people and growing.
Slashdot Mirror
The plot is superficially similar to Patriot Games, so I could see the mistake. IRA in Patriot Games, IRA in Devil's Own. Ford in Patriot Games (the movie), Ford in Devil's Own. Other than that, though, I wouldn't call them too similar. So sure, honest mistake, but not one I'd expect too many people to make :)
You're also off on his Jack Ryan roles. He played Ryan twice: Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger (with the absolute horrible casting of Willem Dafoe as John Clark, but the rest of the movie was good). The only other movie adaptations of Jack Ryan novels were The Hunt for Red October and Sum of All Fears. Hunt was pre-Ford with Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, and Sum was post-Ford with Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan. Supposedly Rainbow Six is in the pipes for a movie adapatation, but Jack Ryan doesn't make an appearance in the novel. He might have some screen time, depending on how the script goes (Ryan was president during the novel), but I'd doub that. Besides, Sum of All Fears screwed up the movie timeline, so they may write the R6 script without Ryan as President.
IMDB does list some TV role in "The Secret World of Spying" with Ford as Ryan, but I have no idea what that is. However, it has Samuel L. Jackson listed as Robby Jackson, which means it can't be all bad (though he's a bit tall for Robby, who's supposed to be rather short according to the books). It looks like that was some sort of special, capitalizing on Patriot Games (both 1992), and so I'd call it similar to the Star Wars Holiday special -- it doesn't count.
(yes, I'm a Tom Clancy geek. Sorry :)
You said:
and later: Perhaps I'm the only one wondering how you can make judgements about movies you haven't seen? Besides, of all the criticisms you could make, you've chosen the silliest: costumes. Watch the prequels again. The costumes are consistent. Perhaps you're referring to Padme/Amidala's penchant for changing outfits frequently in the Phantom Menace (that was part of her character as Queen of Naboo), but otherwise I have no idea what you might mean by this criticism. Character costumes were consistent within a movie, and while they did change across movies (as they did in the original trilogy, in case you didn't notice), they still stayed consistent within a character's style.As for consistency in costume and technology between the prequels and the original trilogy, perhaps you should finish watching the last two films in the prequel trilogy before making that claim. You can easily see how the clone trooper armor and vehicles evolved into the costumes and technology of the empire in the original trilogy. Remember, there's ~20 years between episode 3 and episode 4, and there were ~10 years between episode 1 and episode 2 -- look back to technology (particularly computers and cars) and clothing from the 70s and 80s compared to today and draw your own conclusion about how quickly technology and fashion can change. For example, if you would've bothered to watch Episode 3 you'd have seen, among other things, an early Correllian gunship (the rebel cruiser at the beginning of episode 4), an early precursor to the X-wing starfighters from 4-6, and the change in republic officer uniform to what you'll later see as the imperial officer uniform in 4/5/6.
I won't claim that the prequel trilogy was good. The acting was horrible across all three movies (episode 3 was by far the best, but "best" is very relative here), and Lucas made a lot of odd changes (midichlorians?) to core story items. I'm simply saying that you might want to finish watching episodes 2 and 3 before you make these kinds of claims.
The original poster used the term "bought", but the site includes investments. Microsoft invested heavily in Apple, thus it's on the list.
The original poster is also being facetious by saying that Bill bought that. Microsoft the corporation made those purchases and investments, which is a completely separate entity from Bill Gates. Of course, that's just splitting hairs here on Slashdot.
I also use a V60, and not only is it a flipphone, but it's also smaller than most of today's fancier phones. I lovemy V60, and the only reason I'll ever upgrade is if it stops working. It does exactly what I need:
- Makes and receives phone calls with good quality, range, and battery life
- Fits comfortably into a jacket or pant pocket for easy carriage without having to get a hip holster.
That's all I need. No camera, no color screen, no web browser (well, I think there's one in there somewhere, but it's primitive and I have no need for it), no fancy games (the v60 has three or four basic games that I never play), no polyphonic annoying as hell ring tones, etc.That sounds great, right up to the point where some pervert uses your open wi-fi to download child porn which is then traced back to your IP, or some l33t hax0r d00d tries to crack into military servers. And of course all of this is ignoring the fact that most ISPs specifically deny you the right to share your access this way. There are a few like Speakeasy that don't care or even encourage it, but Speakeasy's service sucks (I know, I had DSL with them for two years), and none of them legally protect you if someone using your connection doesn't something illegal or at least against their AUP.
You could go hardcore setting up a walled garden, authentication system, and the whole nine yards, but you really don't have to. Even doing something as simple as enabling WEP on your AP is enough for the casual browser. It's certainly not 100% secure, and anybody with malicious intent could easily crack your key in minutes, but that's not the point. It's a deterrent and a source of plausible deniability. A thief could easily pick the lock on your door, but the simple act of locking your door will keep most people out (the end goal). As well, the fact that you took some measure means that you can't be held responsible when the thief who picked your lock and stole your shotgun later goes on to shoot up a school or convenience store.
The Silver service is free, and includes a gamertag, game card (your profile page), reputation, friends, voice chat, marketplace (where you may pay money to buy stuff, download free demos, etc), etc. The premium gold service gives you all of that plus the ability to play games online and have video chat.
In other words, if you want to play games, you still have to pay the subscription. If you already have a Live subscription for Xbox when you buy Xbox360, you automatically have a gold membership. The silver seems targetted at the non-hardcore, who maybe want to have some of the connected features (chat, online presence, demos, etc) but don't necessarily care about actually playing against other folks online.
I'd provide links, but this is covered in pretty much every article about the Xbox360 since its debut last Thursday, so you shouldn't have any trouble looking it up.
The PS2 doesn't emulate PS1 games. It includes a "PS1-on-a-chip". This is the same chip used in the much smaller "PSOne" console redesign that was released right around the same time as the PS2 was in development. This chip is not 100% perfect, as there are a few games that have problems, but most PS1 games that have problems running on a PS2 only do so when you're using texture smoothing or fast CD reading.
Do you think it's a coincidence that Sony recently launched a much smaller PS2 (the PSTwo)? My guess is that the PSTwo was an excercise in minituarzing the guts of a PS2, in preparation for including them in a PS3 for backwards compatibility. The only remaining question then is whether or not PS3 will be backwards-compatible with PS1.
For everyone else who can't read the thread below my post and wants to make their own witty, "Restarting X isn't the same as restarting Windows," post, here. I've admitted that I should've been more cleareven though from a desktop user perspective it is very similar, albeit a bit quicker to restart X. When your "work" consists of data in an application, stopping that application, stopping X, restarting X, and restarting the application is just as disruptive as rebooting your machine. Who cares that your local services (which you shouldn't be running many, on a desktop machine) continue to run? At least with a reboot, you have an excuse to knock off for a cup of coffee or a smoke.
Besides, with graphical login managers being the norm for desktop-oriented distros, most "average" users (ie, your grandmother that you moved to Linux because you wanted to be 1337, the secretary that just wants to type up the latest memo, etc) won't know or care that they can stop and restart X without having to reboot. Of course, such a user also probably wouldn't be updating his or her X server, but that's beside the point.
Who has to do weekly reboots? If you're referring to updates and security patches, those are released monthly on a predictable schedule, but for the most critical of issues (which also are not of weekly frequency, though I will admit that when several in a row come out it may seem that way). If you're insinuating flakiness, I suggest the problem is with your machine and/or usage habits, rather than Windows itself. Protect yourself from viruses and malware or buy some quality hardware and you won't have to reboot weekly either.
Sorry, I should've said "similar" rather than "equivalent". You mentioned what I was getting at -- that from an end-user perspective, they're the same thing because you have to save whatever you're working on, close your apps, reboot/restart, and then re-open all of your apps again. From a server perspective, they're completely different (but then you're not running X on your servers, are you?).
No need for Longhorn, you've been able to do that since Win2K.
You didn't hear the same line. For win2k, "no reboots" applied to system services. For example, NT4 needed a reboot to change network information. Win2k fixed that and a lot of other administrative reboots. WinXP focused more and more on installation reboots, and a well-behaved installer now only needs to reboot the system now if it has to change certain files that are already in use by system processes (for example, security patches). That's not to say that there aren't still misbehaved installers for third-party apps that request reboots, but I've found in 90%+ of the cases where an installer requests a reboot I can simply ignore it, tell it I'll reboot later, and get on with my work.
It sounds like Longhorn is taking the next step in combating reboots by allowing you to update drivers without a reboot. This is something you can't even always do with Linux today (consider updating the X driver for a video card -- you have to restart X to use it, which is equivalent to a reboot in Windows). So yeah, you've heard similar claims before with respect to rebooting, but each of those claims have targetted a different cause of reboots.
Bingo! Someone please mod up the parent! Now take that a step farther. Everything has always sucked, but the reason why things seem to suck worse now is because it's now. You've consciously or unconsciously forgotten the crap of yesteryear, and at the same time the real gems are easier to spot because they outlived the crap. Rose-colored glasses.
I never played Ninja Quake (I did play a lot of TF and various CTF implementations, though), so I'm not familiar with it, but Ninja Quake 2 doesn't looke like it fits the bill. Halo's melee attacks are always available. You can go from shooting your gun, to hitting with the stock of the gun, back to shooting the gun without having to ever switch to a different weapon. The only other game besides Halo where I've seen that gameplay mechanic is Republic Commando, and that game is newer than even Halo 2. That's not to say it's never been done before, just that it's pretty rare.
Grenades in Half-Life were just another weapon. To use them, you had to switch to them. I'll agree that Halo wasn't the first game to allow you to toss grenades without having to switch weapons, but Half-Life isn't a good example. What you really want is TeamFortress (the original for Q1, not the TFC crap for HL), where each class had two grenade types available to them, which were bound to two different buttons (g and h, IIRC). Other games have done that since (Far Cry, for example), but I've not seen any other game with such an abundance of grenades like Halo.
The parent acknowledged Tribes, and BF1942 was released later than Halo 1. Prior to H1, only the Tribes series had such robust vehicle support, and Tribes always was a bit of a red-headed stepchild in many online gaming circles.
Why? Team Fortress introduced class-based team play, and doesn't have much to do with Halo's limited weapon-carry system. Sure, you have two weapons and can't carry more, but you can't switch them out strategically as in Halo, either.
You might want to try playing Halo or Halo 2 before you go off on it. You've already shown that you don't have more than a vague idea about the gameplay mechanics of the games. Oh yeah, there are more game genres out there than FPS, too. While the PC may currently be the best platform for FPS (arguable IMHO, but oh well), it generally sucks for sports games, platformers, racing games (well, unless you shell out $200 for a good wheel and pedal setup), etc.
I'm partial to "thixbulltage" for thxbltj.
I have no idea if that's true or not (I always figured the term "rice rocket" was a racial slur), but that's not how the grandparent intended it. He was talking about ricers who are take (usually) perfectly fine cars and uglify them beyond all belief. The cars are not always Japanese, but "rice" is used because it's predominantly Japanese cars. Similarly, many of the people actually doing the ricing are not even of Asian descent. The slur applies to the cars themselves, not the people.
Bad analogy. If you're the kind of person that likes to tinker with cars, "ricing"* a civic is fun. I guess the same could be said about building an application in Excel, but you'd have to be one scary person to find that fun!
* "Ricing" in quotes, because what you described isn't ricing since you said it could be fast. Ricing a car is making it all show and no go. Building a race car is almost exactly the opposite. If you can do both, more power to you, but why would you want to add all of that heavy cosmetic crap (ugly bodykits that don't affect a car's coefficient of drag and just add weight, useless spoilers, heavy audio and video equipment, huge wheels that add unsprung weight and require more power to rotate, etc)?
Because to criticize a parent I must be a parent? Bullshit. Parents are not beyond reproach, and it's just that type of attitude that allows bad parenting to continue.
Why do you hate blaming parents so much? It's their job to raise their kids, and nearly every problem a child has can be directly related to his parents' (lack of) parenting. The original poster is a perfect example. Rather than addressing the problem, he's scheming with his wife to "accidentally" remove the game. What's his son going to learn from this? That it's okay to neglect his responsibilities (even at 5 years old, you have them -- education, playing, being a kid)? That mommy and daddy are real klutzes with the computer, so he should start learning how to hide what he's doing? In this case, it may or may not be the parents' fault that the kid got so wrapped up in the game (it probably is -- they didn't limit his play time, or set down ground rules), but if they go through with the planned course of action they are absolutely responsible for what that teaches the child.
It's not my job to parent your kids, nor is it the government's job, nor teachers, school administrators, day care employees, etc. It's your kid, you teach him how to be responsible. If you can't handle that, perhaps you should reconsider being a parent. Harsh? Sure. But throwing more tax dollars at poorly parented children isn't going to solve the problem, either. You have to fix the problem, and the problem is usually the parents (or parent, in more and more cases).
Good points. My rebuttal:
I don't know if I would call it limiting to an unnecessary extent. If you will concede that voice communication in every game is a major tenet of Xbox Live!'s mission, then it makes sense to require broadband. I agree that you certainly don't need broadband to get downloadable content, but an enterprising person can find ways around that. I wouldn't go trying to play games, but the downloads will work just fine.
Sounds like a conspiracy theory more than anything. Also, MSN no longer offers any direct broadband services. The only way you're going to get MSN is if a carrier has a bundle providing a premium MSN subscription along with your broadband. In almost all of those cases, I believe you can decline the MSN subscription, though I don't know if it saves you any money (in the same way that my Comcast cable comes with a free Rhapsody radio subscription, but if I never actually sign up or use Rhapsody, does it really affect me?). As far as the monopoly argument goes, I wouldn't try to pin that one on Microsoft. That's the cable and phone companies' (read: the government's) doing.
I'd argue that most do. Racing games and fighting games in particular benefit immensely from broadband while not fitting into the FPS mold. In fact, I'd contend that any head-to-head style game will have a much better experience on broadband than not. That excludes "thinking" games (chess, turn-based strategy games but not RTS games, board-games like Mario Party though the mini-games would benefit from broadband, etc).
Very interesting. I never knew that about NIN's albums, so you can see how I could miss the point. :)
This I'm indifferent to, personally. I don't think I've ever built a custom soundtrack, and most of the time when I'm playing online I have the music turned off anyway (in halo 2 so I can better hear what's going on around me, as situational awareness is key; in PGR2 because the engine sounds are infinitely better than any music I could play, and it helps to be able to hear the engine so I'll know if I need to downshift before going into a turn; etc). That's just my personal preference, and unti
I assume you're talking about getting online play for free, as you typically don't get expansion packs for PC games for free (ignoring user-created mods or warezing, of course). You're 1% number is about right for the number of console users online today (in terms of Xbox-only it's more like 5-7%, and if you count PS2s you also have to track the number of PS2s online -- no clue what that number may be). However, that 1% is the 1% you really want. They're the early adopters and hardcore gamers, the folks who can make or break a generation. Offline play will never go away, and compelling single-player games will always be a requirement for console success, but if you can provide that and a compelling online experience, you have a much better shot at doing well.
The only place the PC of 5 years ago has today's consoles beat is in terms of user-created content (and Xbox Live! is taking steps in that direction with user-created maps for some new games like TimeSplitters 3). In terms of gameplay, stability, and features, today's consoles are way ahead. For example, 5 years ago it was rare to have voice chat in-game on a PC (not counting external services that provided voice outside of the game itself, and those were nowhere near ubiquitous). With Xbox Live!, you have voice available in every game. Stats keeping is doable on consoles as well (see Bungie's Halo 2 stats tracker). And the one thing that Xbox Live! has that no other service has yet to fully implement is single sign-on (in the PC case because there is no central governing agent; for the PS2 because Sony can't be bothered). No matter what Xbox Live! game I play, I always use the same gamertag, and have the same friends list, and have the same visibility into my friends' statuses (offline, online in my game, online in a different game, joinable, etc). You just can't do that without a central service, and for me that feature is compelling enough to pay the < $5/mo fee.
In fact, since getting on Xbox Live! over three years ago, I haven't played a single PC game online. There's simply been nothing compelling enough to tear me away from my Xbox. Maybe I'm atypical, but it's a pretty powerful statement even so.
For the record, I own an Xbox, a PS2, a Gamecube, and a GBA:SP, as well as a PC powerful enough to play modern games (can't turn on all the bells and whistles in doom 3, but I can still play it). Call me an Xbox fanboy if you will, but aside from a few games (FarCry on the PC, GT4 on the PS2, Paper Mario 2 on the GC), I get more enjoyment out of my Xbox than any of the others.
And by that same rationale, Sony and Nintendo offerings are not free when they require a $10/mo Netzero account or a $40/mo DSL line. The price of access is considered a given here, as if you don't have broadband because you can't or won't pay for it, the $5 doesn't matter (and if you do have broadband but can't afford the extra $5/mo, one wonders how you can afford broadband at all?).
And the part you conveniently didn't quote from my post acknowledged the fact that requiring a broadband connection limits the market. At the same time, PS2 has many broadband-only games even though a dialup modem is available for that console, and I highly doubt Nintendo's Revolution will provide dialup support (I don't know, I haven't seen any anouncements so I could be wrong, but it seems like a bad idea to me; maybe that's just me being an elitist broandband-subscriber. I'm evil!). I played Quake 1 and such back in the day on a dialup connection, and I wouldn't go back. The frustration factor is high enough that I wouldn't bother. Were I stuck on dialup, I wouldn't play any online games. But then, I'm not into self-flagellation, either.
Huh? I don't listen to NIN, so whatever point you were trying to make was lost. I'll just assume you were trying to say I have a hole in my head, or something. Of course, you also conveniently glossed over my points, such as the growth of Live! subscriptions in a pre-Halo 2 market.
"Buy a DVD"? Don't you mean "rent until my DVD is scratched to hell or breaks"? Two can play at that game. Oh yeah, downloadable content is transferable in some cases. If your Xbox breaks and it's replaced rather than repaired, you do not have to pay again for the content download (may require a support call, but it's possible to do). I have no idea what happens if you don't go through official channels when your Xbox breaks (for example, rather than calling the Xbox support number and sending it in for repair or replacement, you just go to the store and replace it yourself). I assume that you can still transfer the data (again, perhaps with a phone call to support), but I don't know because I haven't had to do that. By that same token, you're not allowed to install disc-based expansion packs on multiple computers (read your EULA some time). Whether you agree with that or not, the Xbox Live! method of content delivery just enforces that already existing restriction a bit more strictly.
Maybe I'm living in a different world, but I've never really felt the need to go to someone else's house to play a game I already own. Now, I have lugged my Xbox and spare TV to other places for Halo LAN parties, but that's not really the same thing, is it?
Care to provide numbers and sources? What games are driving DS sales? In my opinion, it's too early in the cycle for either handheld to call one or the other a success or failure yet, but if the DS doesn't get better games it's fate is pretty well sealed.
Whoopee! PS2 online play is also free, but it's not much of a strategy. Compare:
PS2 online
- Free
- Supports narrowband connections, though many games require a broandband connection
- No voice support unless a game explicitly designs for it
- Each game (or set of games from a single publisher like EA) is self-contained. Different logins, friends lists, etc.
- Cheating is rampant
- No central feedback mechanism
Xbox Live!- Costs less than $5 per month
- Requires broadband (narrows the potential market, but makes the experience so much better)
- Universal voice support in all Live! games, for "free" (in the development sense)
- Every game is interconnected. My sign-on is the same for every game, and I can see when my friends are online, and what they're playing, and send them cross-game invites and messages
- Cheating happens, but Microsoft does attempt to address it (modified Xboxes are banned from Live!, cheaters are often banned based on feedback, games are patched as necessary)
- A central feedback mechanism exists, and while the results of the feedback are not public, it is not ignored (read through the Bungie forums sometime, and you'll see Microsoft representatives talking about feedback and what they do with it)
As I see it, the only positive mark in the PS2 list is price, but for less than $5 a month, you get a cohesive online vision across all games with Xbox Live!. I'd give up a latte a month for that.As for Live! only being a success thanks to Halo 2, were you not paying attention last summer when they cracked the 1 million subscriber mark? Halo 2 didn't ship for months after that, and yet Live! was still doing quite well. I'm sure Halo 2 helped Live!, but it wasn't on its deathbed before Halo 2, and if there was no Halo 2 it'd still be alive and kicking. But then, perhaps I measure "total failure" differently than you do.
Note about "Free"-ness: both PS2 and Xbox allow developers to charge for access to their game above and beyond the subscription price (example: Phantasy Star Online, or Final Fantasy XI). I'm only comparing the basic rates here. As well, Xbox Live! does open up interesting for-pay channels to developers for additional content. Would you rather pay $20 for an add-on disk or expansion (typical PC tactic) to get a few new maps/cars/weapons/wathever, or $5 to download a new set of maps/cars/weapons/whatever?
It depends on the definition you use, but the typical political US definition doesn't care about size. A town is "a territorial and political unit governed by a town meeting, especially in New England," while a city is "an incorporated municipality in the United States with definite boundaries and legal powers set forth in a charter granted by the state." The that extent, I grew up in a city of 3600 people, but 5 miles north was a town of 20,000 people and growing.