Look closely at the keycaps on your laptop, and you'll most likely notice that some of the letter keys have a lighter printing for number keys on them. In other words, when you turn on numlock, keys like "iopkl;,./" turn into the keypad keys. I don't know exactly which keys they are on yours; on mine it's "7890uiopjkl;m,./", but my numlock is also only accessible with the Fn key, so that it's less likely I'll hit it on accident.
Actually, at least one James Bond game is based on the Half-Life engine. Its possible that the studio (in this case Gearbox I believe) had some convoluted licensing scheme to pay both Valve and id. However, the Quake 1 engine has been released as GPL, so they probably just published the changes and didn't pay id at all.
That one I didn't know about:) However, one licensed game, from a developer that is very closely related to Valve (Gearbox did several expansion packs for Valve, and did the PS2 port as well), is a far cry from the hundreds of games that have licensed id or Epic technology. The most likely scenario is that Gearbox, who have a very close relationship with Valve, negotiated a deal with both Valve and id for a license to the Half-Life engine. I highly doubt they went the GPLed route, especially since that while the Quake engine is GPLed, the Half-Life engine isn't and I haven't heard anything about Valve releasing their changes back into the GPLed tree (would be very difficult to do, since the Half-Life engine made major modifications to the Quake engine). What's that old saying about exceptions proving rules?:)
Valve makes money from three sources: Sales of their games for sake of their games, sales of their games to support mods (such as counterstrike), and sales of their engine to other companies to create their own game.
Not quite right, at least historically. Because the original Half-Life was based on Quake1 technology licensed from id, Valve did not have the legal ability to license the engine they created to others. That is why you will never see a game that is not from Valve that uses the Half-Life engine. It's also why you didn't see Counter Strike or DoD released in boxed format until Valve struck deals with those development teams to publish under the Valve name (and in some cases, like with TeamFortress and I believe Counterstrike, brought those teams into the Valve company entirely). This may very well change with Half-Life 2, since I don't believe they're using someone else's licensed engine this time around, but I don't know enough about HL2's engine to say for sure.
But on the other hand with access to source, modders could create more extensive and more active modifications, creating original features instead of mere graphical facelifts.
Were Counter Strike or Day of Defeat merely "graphical facelifts"? Modding games from the big guys (Valve, id, Epic) has always been very powerful without requiring the engine's source code. Quake 1 mods ran the gamut from completely new multiplayer experiences (first CTF, then class-based CTF with TeamFortress, and then even TF evolved to allow for objective-based maps rather than just captuer the flag), to racing games (whee, QuakeRally!), flying games (AirQuake), side scrollers, Tetris, and more. Quake2 kept it going with the first RTS mod (Q2War), and so on. The Unreal engine's UnrealScript gave unprecedented control over the game world. Believe it or not, many of the earlier Unreal-based games (Deus Ex, Wheel of Time) were little more than new UnrealScript code in an only slightly modified (if modified at all!) Unreal engine. The point? If the developers design with modders in mind, you don't need the source code to make creative mods.
On the flip side, however, the release of the Quake1 source code resulted not in a bunch of interesting, technically impossible-through-modding games, but instead merely graphical facelifts like Tenebrae (adds bump mapping, dynamic lighting, bunch of other stuff), that one that made everything look like a sketch but with a name I can't remember off-hand, etc. It makes sense that to do a graphical facelift, you'd need access to the engine's source code and not just a modification interface.
But if say AT&T wanted to set up this for mlife costummers they'd have a problem as they'd get sitefinder instead.
Easy. AT&T could setup their mLife DNS servers to point the wildcard at their own site, rather than doing the redirect in the browser software. I'm assuming of course that since mLife is a connectivity package, AT&T would be providing the DNS servers for internet access via their mLife phones.
As much as I hate the internal IE error messages what if Microsoft wanted to do this same service and do this as an internal IE message redirecting to Microsofts portal?
The "friendly error messages" can be turned off in IE. You can't turn off Verisign's wildcards. As well, IE has had the ability to search (and you can pick your engine, though MSN is the default) on failed DNS lookups. Verisign breaks that. Expect Microsoft to be pissed.
And if Google wanted to they could add this to the Google toolbar they could bypass Microsofts little portal but they can't change the way the Internet works and as it works right now if Microsoft, Goggle or AT&T provided this service it would be shut out becouse invalid domain names are resolved to be sitefinder.
Bingo! IE, AOL, and even Mozilla have provided "search on failed DNS" options for quite some time now. Verisign's move breaks all of those. If I were Verisign, I'd be afraid to piss off just Microsoft, but to piss off Microsoft, AOL, Apple (I don't know if Safari has such a feature, but I'd be very surprised if it didn't), and any company that has an interest in Mozilla (IBM, perhaps)? That's just crazy.
If you're providing a "search on non-existent domain" service, you could hack around this by redirecting to your own page when you find a sitefinder page rather than a NXDOMAIN from a failed DNS lookup, but that's kludgy and shouldn't be necessary. In the same way, you can fix Verisign's mess on your own, even if your ISP won't, by running your own caching nameserver with one of the many patches for the various DNS servers that have already sprouted up, but that's again a kludge and shouldn't be necessary. Verisign needs to be kicked in the teeth.
It took them a long time to get Half-Life 2 right (er, it continues to take them a long time.) Imagine how much faster, though, if an open-source gaming engine were started? sure, it wouldn't have the Half-Life storyline, but who cares? If you play an FPS for the story, you have problems.
You do realize that making a game requires more than just writing an engine, right? If that were all it takes, then there would be tons of games for Linux, because there are a number of open source 3D engines. Consider that professional games take more than a year to produce these days, even when using an existing engine (see all of the recent Tom Clancy games, or XIII, for example). You need art talent, writing talent, scripters, modelers, level designers, and more. Gone are the days when a programmer or two can write a quality game in a matter of months in their parents' basements or garages. Well, it can be done (see Derek Smart and his Battlecruiser games), but it takes a huge investment in time, and usually a huge investment in money as well if you want to compete with professional games.
Anybody else feel like you just want to start over, with only good people involved, and remake the internet? None of this patent crap, none of this copyright bullshit, just pure standards that are actual standards. Uncompromised and pure. No restrictions on data, short of the physical line speeds.
And you'd just have to do it all over again in 15-20 years, since that's exactly how the current net started.
Bugs in Open Source products seem to make the/. front page the same day a patch is released. MS product bugs are posted about days before a patch comes out.
Really? Can you link to such a story? Remember, Code Red, Slammer, Nimda, etc were all patched many months before they were exploited. That users didn't patch isn't exactly Microsoft's fault, any more than it would be the Sendmail group's fault if you were exploited by this because you failed to patch.
Of course that could be because the OS projects fix their bugs as soon as they find them rather than having to wait for the red tape to clear up.
Red tape isn't always a bad thing. I'd rather have a correct patch a day late, than have to run through two or three patch cycles because the fix was rushed out the door. See the latest OpenSSH bug from yesterday, and that the first patch wasn't sufficient. 9 times out of 10, there's no exploit in the wild yet when these problems are found (for Windows or Open Source software), so one or two days usually won't cause a problem.
Are you sure about that? Granted, that's VB.NET, and not VB pre-.NET, but it's still VB. It's also still under development, but the work is being done.
The original GeForce FX cards were noisy because the fan cowling was misdesigned and the fan blades rubbed upon it. The later versions have fixed this problem, and thus no longer sound like a leaf blower.
Gah... Not much use to an ISP... there's still a lot of Win 95, Win98, and Win ME (shudder) boxes out there.
It's really not meant to be used as a Windows Update replacement for ISPs, but as a way to easily push updates to servers after you've verified patches with your code, or as a way to keep desktop machines up to date in a business environment where the desktops have been standardized (ie, on Windows 2000 Pro, or XP). For an ISP, I don't think this would be useful (well, except for keeping your internal servers patched up).
Hereyougo. (and I apologize for the poorly-worded sentence in my previous post -- I just noticed that it really sucked, though it got the point across)
Plus, for you FPS fans, it's very handy to have your right hand on the number pad and the left on the mouse. If you re-map the keys you never have to move to any other section of the keyboard.
There are more keys readily available on the left side of a keyboard than on the right. That's why the wasd layout became popular, and not because the mouse was on the right. For example, without moving my left hand, I can hit tab, `123456qwertasdfgzxcvb, shift, ctrl, alt, capslock, and space (I use a Natural keyboard, otherwise yhn and possibly even m would be in the list, too). With my right hand on the keypad, I can only hit enter, numlock,/*-789+4561230, and period/del. Even fewer if I use the four arrow keys rather than the keypad. And just because a game has "simple" controls like quake (which popularized wasd, btw) doesn't mean it has no use for the extra keys. Many quake players would create aliases for everything from toggling between two weapons with a single key, to sniper zooming by changing FOV, to automating a rocket jump (switch to rocket, move forward, look down, fire rocket, and jump). The abundance of extra keys allow for such aliases without ever having to move your hands from the standard control positions.
You should try to find a Razer Boomslang. Best gaming mouse EVAR! Plus, it has a scroll wheel (not optical, but with proper cleaning of the ball, that's not an issue).
First, In the Windows case, shit might happen because it takes longer for a proper fix to appear (though, on the last DCOM-related vulnerabilities, we should give credit to MS for the quick response to the problem). If a patch does not exist, the admin can not do as much (unless he has a proper firewall).
I call bullshit. Most Windows problems are patched long before they're exploited. See Code Red, Nimda, Blaster, etc. All of these were fixed long before they were exploited, and yet long after the worms first appeared people were still being hit. While I will agree that there is a possibility of patches taking a while to appear from closed-source software (and that it has happened, usually regarding Internet Explorer), that has been the case only in a very minority of important patches. As well, though you call out Debian's apt-get for making it fairly easy to update systems, Microsoft has Windows Update (and they freely-available provide software to run your own Windows Update site, so that you can verify patches before pushing them out to your site). Therefore, your argument is a red herring.
But it all depends on the administrators.
Bingo! 99.999% of all of the problems with both Linux and Windows being insecure have stemmed not from late patches, but from administrators not keeping on top of security for their machines.
Oh, and yes, there are more viruses for Windows, but that includes the 'dumb end-user' type such as SoBig, which are purely unrelated to server attacks. And those, I'm more than sure, will _not_ appear an Linux systems since I do not know of an email client that makes it so easy for a user to execute incoming garbage straight away.
It's false to say that Linux will not ever be affected by such viruses, because it's quite possible. Even with proper separation of user rights and administrator rights, a user can still royally screw himself and his data. More, all it takes is one unpatched local root exploit ("I'm not too worried about local exploits, because they're local" is an attitude that will get you in trouble if you have users...), a malicious binary that exploits it, and a dumb user. As well, with more users wanting to use Linux, the need will come for user-friendly desktop apps (what do users want to do? easily open e-mail attachments. Better code that properly, our you're going to be as bad as Outlook Express...). Users will also want to be able to easily install software (see Lindows, and how at least initially it suggested you not only run as root, but without a password!). There's work to do on Linux before it will be acceptable to Joe Sixpack or Bettie Secretary, and unless developers keep their wits about them they can (and will!) fall into the same problems seen in Windows.
If people ever actually think stuff like this is a good idea, we need to raise the tax on gasoline. No wonder we're so dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
If people ever actually think frivolous taxes are a good idea, we need... dammit, too late. See the upcoming Seattle $0.10 latte tax to pay for childcare for single mothers (yeah, yeah, it's just for child care in general, but dammit if I wanted to pay for child care I'd have a child, not a latte). Yes, I know it's not been passed yet, but given the hippy morons out here, there's a 90% chance it will pass.
No wonder we have such a big government.
(PS If you didn't get it, the point is that arbitrary taxation is not a solution. If people follow the original parent's suggestion, which was in jest by the way, then more gasoline will be used and thus prices will increase -- thank you free market. Such a tax is unnecessary to bring the change you appear to desire.)
Correction: Retro Studios is 1st party. Nintendo bought them out 100% about halfway through Metroid Prime development.
That I didn't know. So Retro is now a first-party studio.
You're a little off on the 2nd vs 3rd party thing though. Being a second party does not necessarily mean the console developer publishes your games. Rare published a lot of their own games towards the end of their N64 days. 2nd party means you have an exclusivity deal with the console developer.
I guess this depends on how you define it. I tend to go by games, in which case Nintendo-published Rare titles were second-party, while non-Nintendo-published Rare titles were third-party. I've never seen second-party defined as being exclusive to a console (by that definition, Square would be considered a second-party developer for Sony, which I've never heard suggested before).
As to your comment on the controls: they only suck if you're trying to play the game like you'd play Quake or something like that. But if you go into the game expecting anything remotely like an FPS, you're going to be sorely disappointed. If you try to play the game like a Metroid game, then the controls are damn near perfect. The grappling beam could've been done a little better, but even that I can only think of 1 or 2 spots in the entire game where I had an issue with it.
I disagree. I've played all of the previous Metroid games, and am I big fan of Metroid. Of course I didn't go into it expecting Metroid Prime to be a FPS. That's still no justification for crappy controls. Perhaps you found the controls to be good, but you're in a definite minority. Another lame justification I've been told is, "Play the game for a couple hours, and you'll learn to like the controls." That's a cop-out. If the controls still aren't usable after fifteen minutes of gameplay, the controls suck. End of story. For what it's worth, I loved what amount of MP I played (about ten hours worth), but in the end I could not keep playing because the controls were too much crap. Perhaps it was just my situation, where I don't have time to spend several hours on a game, but instead only can play for an hour or so every couple days (and that generally split across several games, depending on what I have in my queue). I found myself having to relearn the controls every time I came back to the game, and that's not good.
Metroid Prime wasn't Nintendo, it was a 3rd party developer. Uh.. Retro Studios I believe.
Yes, MP was written by Retro Studios (current home of Thunderwalker CTF and Quake Linux port author Zoid), but not as a third-party game. Retro, like Rare (pre-MSFT purchase), Camelot, etc, was acting as a second party developer (first party: developed and published by the console developer; second party: developed by a third party, but published by the console developer; third party: developed and published by companies that are not the console developer, though the developer and publisher may be the same company or separate entities). However, you can't expect me to believe that Nintendo doesn't have strict QA control over 2nd party titles. If, as the original poster stated, Nintendo truly cares about controlability (they've been a little flakey, but in general they do seem to try for good controls, though with their fucked up controllers...), then they should have kicked Retro in the pants the first time they got a build with the crap-ass control scheme of Metroid Prime.
I think Nintendo is one of the few companies who watches somebody play and says "What are the common mistakes they are making? What can we do to alleviate them?"
WTF were they doing with Metroid Prime, then? Also, if you liked the N64 Zelda games, you'll love Wind Waker. It's one of the few GameCube games where Nintendo actually improved on what they've done before.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 - I found this game very addictive and quite difficult (without the slomo cheat)
I just sold my copy of this for the XBox. I was pretty disappointed, but then I'm not a skater, and don't know anything about the skating scene. This goes for THU you mentioned later, as well. Perhaps the game would be better with online support, but EA is lame and doesn't support XBox Live.
SSX Tricky - Fun just trying to do the most insane trick you can.
I actually preferred Amped over the SSX series, and will most likely pick up Amped 2 when it's released later this year. As well, I dislike EA and don't plan on buying any EA titles until they support XBox Live, but if I did buy SSX it's most likely be on XBox.
Super Monkey Ball - Just play it, you won't be disappointed.
Judging by the number of recommendations for this, I think I'm going to look for a good used copy of it soon. My only fear is that it'll turn out to be little more than the old Marble Madness game, which was frustrating.
Splinter Cell - Out now.
Have it on XBox. I found it graphically awesome but boring in play (perhaps I just suck at stealth shooters, because I did not like any of the Rainbow Six games, either).
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals - Out in early (we hope) 2004.
From what I've read, this one sounds like it'll play best with three friends and four GBAs. That's a lot of cash layout for a single game, especially since of my friends I'm the only one with a GBA. Add to that my disappointment with the last FF game I played (FFIX) and Square's love affair with Sony, and I'd have to say I'm a little jaded and probably won't return to the series for a while. But I've still got Anthology and Tactics to hold me over (need to pick up Chronicles).
Mario Kart Double Dash - Out soon.
This one looks like it could be great, but I'm afraid Nintendo's going to pull a Mario Sunshine with it (ie, it'll be nearly the exact same game as the N64 version, with slightly better graphics and only minor gameplay tweaks). If that's the case, I'll certainly buy it used later, but it's not worth $50 for a rehash of a game I've already played many, many times. I really wish Nintendo would've designed for online play, though. The LAN connector stuff that third parties are working on sounds pretty iffy, especially since the game itself won't have any compensation for lag or cheating.
I would point out that the 'Cube port of SC2 will have Link as a playable character, whereas the XBox will merely have some uninteresting 'dark/edgy' character whose name I've forgotten to appease the angsty teenagers.
That "dark/edgy character" is Spawn, Todd McFarlane's comic book creation that has had a (lackluster) live-action movie, (pretty good) animated TV series on HBO, and several (terrible) games. However, the comic was great back when I was into comics. For me, the Gamecube's controller will be a deal-breaker for a fighting game (yes, I could buy a better controller). As well, the graphics on the XBox version will just be that much better. Let's face it, fighting games like Soul Calibur are about the graphics almost as much as they are the gameplay, so why would I want to buy the game on any platform but the graphical best? Besides, if I want to play a fighting game with Link, I'll pick up Smash Bros.
Besides, I already have my pre-order for the XBox version.
You and I are in a surprisingly similar situtation. I'll admit, I have a fairly small collection of games too. When I purchased my gamecube, it was majorly for Metroid Prime And Zelda.
Hehe. I wasn't really considering Zelda when I bought the Cube, but decided to pre-order on a lark (I could get OOT and finally play through it on my own system, where previously I only played it on friends' N64 systems). Turned out it was the best game I've bought so far, and I still haven't played further through OOT than I got on my friends' old N64s.
I agree with you completely, I was definitely dissapointed with Metroid. But really, I never liked FPS on consoles, the controller is too clunky. If there was a PC port I might pick it up just to try the game on a platform with controls more suited to the genre. In all honesty, I played at most 50% through this one.
I have no problem with well-executed FPS games on consoles (see Halo, RTCW). Metroid certainly was poorly executed as far as controls go. I understand that it wasn't supposed to be a FPS with an emphasis on action, but that's not an excuse for a fucked-up control scheme. I was also told that I would "get used" to the control scheme after a few hours of gameplay, but as far as I'm concerned if I can't get used to it in 5 minutes, I'm never going to get used to it.
One thing I love about gamecube is that when I go to my local Blockbuster Video, I find their used games (in surprisingly good condition) for as little as $7.
Hrm. I hadn't thought about doing that. I check out the local GameStops every now and then, but their used prices tend to be around $20-$30 (paid $20 for RS2, around $25 for Skies). I have a few Blockbusters nearby, so I'll check them for used games next time.
Theres alot of new stuff coming out late this year thats looking pretty interesting on GC. If you're a racing fan, theres the new F-Zero game. Theres a new star fox on the way. Of course, the third coming of Mario Kart too. One of the most interesting to me, Viewtiful Joe.
I'm definitely a racing fan, though I tend more towards the realistic racers (Sega GT, Moto GP, and Gran Turismo, though GT3 and the upcoming GT4 aren't enough to convince me to buy a PS2, especially with Sega GT Online coming this holiday season and the PS2 being on its last legs -- I'll probably pick up a PS2 and GT3 and 4 when I can them all plus a memory card or two for ~$100). I'll most likely pick up both F-Zero (though it looks like a poor WipeOut clone) and Mario Kart (seems to be in the style of most Nintendo games, where it's little more than a graphical update to the same game on the previous console, with maybe one or two new gameplay features thrown in to make it different). Mario Kart would've been a perfect game to play online, but with Nintendo developing it as a LAN-only game, I don't believe it'll work well over the connectors being developed to play LAN games online (no lag on a LAN, so no need for compensation; cheaters can be dealt with a boot to the head; etc). I think I'll have to rent Viewtiful Joe, or find a demo, before buying it, since I'm not too big on modern platformers.
If all else fails, break out your NES. They aren't so tough to repair. (You do have one, don't you?;-))
I do, but it's 2000 miles away right now. Maybe I'll troll Ebay and find one, or a SNES. With the state of Nintendo games right now, that seems to be the best way to get my Nintendo fix.
Slashdot Mirror
Look closely at the keycaps on your laptop, and you'll most likely notice that some of the letter keys have a lighter printing for number keys on them. In other words, when you turn on numlock, keys like "iopkl;,./" turn into the keypad keys. I don't know exactly which keys they are on yours; on mine it's "7890uiopjkl;m,./", but my numlock is also only accessible with the Fn key, so that it's less likely I'll hit it on accident.
That one I didn't know about :) However, one licensed game, from a developer that is very closely related to Valve (Gearbox did several expansion packs for Valve, and did the PS2 port as well), is a far cry from the hundreds of games that have licensed id or Epic technology. The most likely scenario is that Gearbox, who have a very close relationship with Valve, negotiated a deal with both Valve and id for a license to the Half-Life engine. I highly doubt they went the GPLed route, especially since that while the Quake engine is GPLed, the Half-Life engine isn't and I haven't heard anything about Valve releasing their changes back into the GPLed tree (would be very difficult to do, since the Half-Life engine made major modifications to the Quake engine). What's that old saying about exceptions proving rules? :)
Not quite right, at least historically. Because the original Half-Life was based on Quake1 technology licensed from id, Valve did not have the legal ability to license the engine they created to others. That is why you will never see a game that is not from Valve that uses the Half-Life engine. It's also why you didn't see Counter Strike or DoD released in boxed format until Valve struck deals with those development teams to publish under the Valve name (and in some cases, like with TeamFortress and I believe Counterstrike, brought those teams into the Valve company entirely). This may very well change with Half-Life 2, since I don't believe they're using someone else's licensed engine this time around, but I don't know enough about HL2's engine to say for sure.
Were Counter Strike or Day of Defeat merely "graphical facelifts"? Modding games from the big guys (Valve, id, Epic) has always been very powerful without requiring the engine's source code. Quake 1 mods ran the gamut from completely new multiplayer experiences (first CTF, then class-based CTF with TeamFortress, and then even TF evolved to allow for objective-based maps rather than just captuer the flag), to racing games (whee, QuakeRally!), flying games (AirQuake), side scrollers, Tetris, and more. Quake2 kept it going with the first RTS mod (Q2War), and so on. The Unreal engine's UnrealScript gave unprecedented control over the game world. Believe it or not, many of the earlier Unreal-based games (Deus Ex, Wheel of Time) were little more than new UnrealScript code in an only slightly modified (if modified at all!) Unreal engine. The point? If the developers design with modders in mind, you don't need the source code to make creative mods.
On the flip side, however, the release of the Quake1 source code resulted not in a bunch of interesting, technically impossible-through-modding games, but instead merely graphical facelifts like Tenebrae (adds bump mapping, dynamic lighting, bunch of other stuff), that one that made everything look like a sketch but with a name I can't remember off-hand, etc. It makes sense that to do a graphical facelift, you'd need access to the engine's source code and not just a modification interface.
Ah, crap. I hit preview. It looked right. Then I broke it. Bad me!
One note, for a proper viewing experience you should also schedule an after the set has aged for 6 months or a year. Do it too soon, and you'll just have to recalibrate again as the set breaks in. Adjusting down the contrast is a good step since most TVs come out of the box in "torch" mode, but unless the color is just really off there's not much point in screwing with it until the set has had time to wear a bit.
Easy. AT&T could setup their mLife DNS servers to point the wildcard at their own site, rather than doing the redirect in the browser software. I'm assuming of course that since mLife is a connectivity package, AT&T would be providing the DNS servers for internet access via their mLife phones.
The "friendly error messages" can be turned off in IE. You can't turn off Verisign's wildcards. As well, IE has had the ability to search (and you can pick your engine, though MSN is the default) on failed DNS lookups. Verisign breaks that. Expect Microsoft to be pissed.
Bingo! IE, AOL, and even Mozilla have provided "search on failed DNS" options for quite some time now. Verisign's move breaks all of those. If I were Verisign, I'd be afraid to piss off just Microsoft, but to piss off Microsoft, AOL, Apple (I don't know if Safari has such a feature, but I'd be very surprised if it didn't), and any company that has an interest in Mozilla (IBM, perhaps)? That's just crazy.
If you're providing a "search on non-existent domain" service, you could hack around this by redirecting to your own page when you find a sitefinder page rather than a NXDOMAIN from a failed DNS lookup, but that's kludgy and shouldn't be necessary. In the same way, you can fix Verisign's mess on your own, even if your ISP won't, by running your own caching nameserver with one of the many patches for the various DNS servers that have already sprouted up, but that's again a kludge and shouldn't be necessary. Verisign needs to be kicked in the teeth.
You do realize that making a game requires more than just writing an engine, right? If that were all it takes, then there would be tons of games for Linux, because there are a number of open source 3D engines. Consider that professional games take more than a year to produce these days, even when using an existing engine (see all of the recent Tom Clancy games, or XIII, for example). You need art talent, writing talent, scripters, modelers, level designers, and more. Gone are the days when a programmer or two can write a quality game in a matter of months in their parents' basements or garages. Well, it can be done (see Derek Smart and his Battlecruiser games), but it takes a huge investment in time, and usually a huge investment in money as well if you want to compete with professional games.
And you'd just have to do it all over again in 15-20 years, since that's exactly how the current net started.
Really? Can you link to such a story? Remember, Code Red, Slammer, Nimda, etc were all patched many months before they were exploited. That users didn't patch isn't exactly Microsoft's fault, any more than it would be the Sendmail group's fault if you were exploited by this because you failed to patch.
Red tape isn't always a bad thing. I'd rather have a correct patch a day late, than have to run through two or three patch cycles because the fix was rushed out the door. See the latest OpenSSH bug from yesterday, and that the first patch wasn't sufficient. 9 times out of 10, there's no exploit in the wild yet when these problems are found (for Windows or Open Source software), so one or two days usually won't cause a problem.
Are you sure about that? Granted, that's VB.NET, and not VB pre-.NET, but it's still VB. It's also still under development, but the work is being done.
The original GeForce FX cards were noisy because the fan cowling was misdesigned and the fan blades rubbed upon it. The later versions have fixed this problem, and thus no longer sound like a leaf blower.
It's really not meant to be used as a Windows Update replacement for ISPs, but as a way to easily push updates to servers after you've verified patches with your code, or as a way to keep desktop machines up to date in a business environment where the desktops have been standardized (ie, on Windows 2000 Pro, or XP). For an ISP, I don't think this would be useful (well, except for keeping your internal servers patched up).
Here you go. (and I apologize for the poorly-worded sentence in my previous post -- I just noticed that it really sucked, though it got the point across)
There are more keys readily available on the left side of a keyboard than on the right. That's why the wasd layout became popular, and not because the mouse was on the right. For example, without moving my left hand, I can hit tab, `123456qwertasdfgzxcvb, shift, ctrl, alt, capslock, and space (I use a Natural keyboard, otherwise yhn and possibly even m would be in the list, too). With my right hand on the keypad, I can only hit enter, numlock, /*-789+4561230, and period/del. Even fewer if I use the four arrow keys rather than the keypad. And just because a game has "simple" controls like quake (which popularized wasd, btw) doesn't mean it has no use for the extra keys. Many quake players would create aliases for everything from toggling between two weapons with a single key, to sniper zooming by changing FOV, to automating a rocket jump (switch to rocket, move forward, look down, fire rocket, and jump). The abundance of extra keys allow for such aliases without ever having to move your hands from the standard control positions.
You should try to find a Razer Boomslang. Best gaming mouse EVAR! Plus, it has a scroll wheel (not optical, but with proper cleaning of the ball, that's not an issue).
I call bullshit. Most Windows problems are patched long before they're exploited. See Code Red, Nimda, Blaster, etc. All of these were fixed long before they were exploited, and yet long after the worms first appeared people were still being hit. While I will agree that there is a possibility of patches taking a while to appear from closed-source software (and that it has happened, usually regarding Internet Explorer), that has been the case only in a very minority of important patches. As well, though you call out Debian's apt-get for making it fairly easy to update systems, Microsoft has Windows Update (and they freely-available provide software to run your own Windows Update site, so that you can verify patches before pushing them out to your site). Therefore, your argument is a red herring.
Bingo! 99.999% of all of the problems with both Linux and Windows being insecure have stemmed not from late patches, but from administrators not keeping on top of security for their machines.
It's false to say that Linux will not ever be affected by such viruses, because it's quite possible. Even with proper separation of user rights and administrator rights, a user can still royally screw himself and his data. More, all it takes is one unpatched local root exploit ("I'm not too worried about local exploits, because they're local" is an attitude that will get you in trouble if you have users ...), a malicious binary that exploits it, and a dumb user. As well, with more users wanting to use Linux, the need will come for user-friendly desktop apps (what do users want to do? easily open e-mail attachments. Better code that properly, our you're going to be as bad as Outlook Express ...). Users will also want to be able to easily install software (see Lindows, and how at least initially it suggested you not only run as root, but without a password!). There's work to do on Linux before it will be acceptable to Joe Sixpack or Bettie Secretary, and unless developers keep their wits about them they can (and will!) fall into the same problems seen in Windows.
If people ever actually think frivolous taxes are a good idea, we need ... dammit, too late. See the upcoming Seattle $0.10 latte tax to pay for childcare for single mothers (yeah, yeah, it's just for child care in general, but dammit if I wanted to pay for child care I'd have a child, not a latte). Yes, I know it's not been passed yet, but given the hippy morons out here, there's a 90% chance it will pass.
No wonder we have such a big government.
(PS If you didn't get it, the point is that arbitrary taxation is not a solution. If people follow the original parent's suggestion, which was in jest by the way, then more gasoline will be used and thus prices will increase -- thank you free market. Such a tax is unnecessary to bring the change you appear to desire.)
Aibo plays soccer, too.
That I didn't know. So Retro is now a first-party studio.
I guess this depends on how you define it. I tend to go by games, in which case Nintendo-published Rare titles were second-party, while non-Nintendo-published Rare titles were third-party. I've never seen second-party defined as being exclusive to a console (by that definition, Square would be considered a second-party developer for Sony, which I've never heard suggested before).
I disagree. I've played all of the previous Metroid games, and am I big fan of Metroid. Of course I didn't go into it expecting Metroid Prime to be a FPS. That's still no justification for crappy controls. Perhaps you found the controls to be good, but you're in a definite minority. Another lame justification I've been told is, "Play the game for a couple hours, and you'll learn to like the controls." That's a cop-out. If the controls still aren't usable after fifteen minutes of gameplay, the controls suck. End of story. For what it's worth, I loved what amount of MP I played (about ten hours worth), but in the end I could not keep playing because the controls were too much crap. Perhaps it was just my situation, where I don't have time to spend several hours on a game, but instead only can play for an hour or so every couple days (and that generally split across several games, depending on what I have in my queue). I found myself having to relearn the controls every time I came back to the game, and that's not good.
Yes, MP was written by Retro Studios (current home of Thunderwalker CTF and Quake Linux port author Zoid), but not as a third-party game. Retro, like Rare (pre-MSFT purchase), Camelot, etc, was acting as a second party developer (first party: developed and published by the console developer; second party: developed by a third party, but published by the console developer; third party: developed and published by companies that are not the console developer, though the developer and publisher may be the same company or separate entities). However, you can't expect me to believe that Nintendo doesn't have strict QA control over 2nd party titles. If, as the original poster stated, Nintendo truly cares about controlability (they've been a little flakey, but in general they do seem to try for good controls, though with their fucked up controllers ...), then they should have kicked Retro in the pants the first time they got a build with the crap-ass control scheme of Metroid Prime.
If you really want a game where you see how fast you can press buttons, you should try WarioWare, Inc..
WTF were they doing with Metroid Prime, then? Also, if you liked the N64 Zelda games, you'll love Wind Waker. It's one of the few GameCube games where Nintendo actually improved on what they've done before.
I just sold my copy of this for the XBox. I was pretty disappointed, but then I'm not a skater, and don't know anything about the skating scene. This goes for THU you mentioned later, as well. Perhaps the game would be better with online support, but EA is lame and doesn't support XBox Live.
I actually preferred Amped over the SSX series, and will most likely pick up Amped 2 when it's released later this year. As well, I dislike EA and don't plan on buying any EA titles until they support XBox Live, but if I did buy SSX it's most likely be on XBox.
Judging by the number of recommendations for this, I think I'm going to look for a good used copy of it soon. My only fear is that it'll turn out to be little more than the old Marble Madness game, which was frustrating.
Have it on XBox. I found it graphically awesome but boring in play (perhaps I just suck at stealth shooters, because I did not like any of the Rainbow Six games, either).
From what I've read, this one sounds like it'll play best with three friends and four GBAs. That's a lot of cash layout for a single game, especially since of my friends I'm the only one with a GBA. Add to that my disappointment with the last FF game I played (FFIX) and Square's love affair with Sony, and I'd have to say I'm a little jaded and probably won't return to the series for a while. But I've still got Anthology and Tactics to hold me over (need to pick up Chronicles).
This one looks like it could be great, but I'm afraid Nintendo's going to pull a Mario Sunshine with it (ie, it'll be nearly the exact same game as the N64 version, with slightly better graphics and only minor gameplay tweaks). If that's the case, I'll certainly buy it used later, but it's not worth $50 for a rehash of a game I've already played many, many times. I really wish Nintendo would've designed for online play, though. The LAN connector stuff that third parties are working on sounds pretty iffy, especially since the game itself won't have any compensation for lag or cheating.
That "dark/edgy character" is Spawn, Todd McFarlane's comic book creation that has had a (lackluster) live-action movie, (pretty good) animated TV series on HBO, and several (terrible) games. However, the comic was great back when I was into comics. For me, the Gamecube's controller will be a deal-breaker for a fighting game (yes, I could buy a better controller). As well, the graphics on the XBox version will just be that much better. Let's face it, fighting games like Soul Calibur are about the graphics almost as much as they are the gameplay, so why would I want to buy the game on any platform but the graphical best? Besides, if I want to play a fighting game with Link, I'll pick up Smash Bros.
Besides, I already have my pre-order for the XBox version.
Hehe. I wasn't really considering Zelda when I bought the Cube, but decided to pre-order on a lark (I could get OOT and finally play through it on my own system, where previously I only played it on friends' N64 systems). Turned out it was the best game I've bought so far, and I still haven't played further through OOT than I got on my friends' old N64s.
I have no problem with well-executed FPS games on consoles (see Halo, RTCW). Metroid certainly was poorly executed as far as controls go. I understand that it wasn't supposed to be a FPS with an emphasis on action, but that's not an excuse for a fucked-up control scheme. I was also told that I would "get used" to the control scheme after a few hours of gameplay, but as far as I'm concerned if I can't get used to it in 5 minutes, I'm never going to get used to it.
Hrm. I hadn't thought about doing that. I check out the local GameStops every now and then, but their used prices tend to be around $20-$30 (paid $20 for RS2, around $25 for Skies). I have a few Blockbusters nearby, so I'll check them for used games next time.
I'm definitely a racing fan, though I tend more towards the realistic racers (Sega GT, Moto GP, and Gran Turismo, though GT3 and the upcoming GT4 aren't enough to convince me to buy a PS2, especially with Sega GT Online coming this holiday season and the PS2 being on its last legs -- I'll probably pick up a PS2 and GT3 and 4 when I can them all plus a memory card or two for ~$100). I'll most likely pick up both F-Zero (though it looks like a poor WipeOut clone) and Mario Kart (seems to be in the style of most Nintendo games, where it's little more than a graphical update to the same game on the previous console, with maybe one or two new gameplay features thrown in to make it different). Mario Kart would've been a perfect game to play online, but with Nintendo developing it as a LAN-only game, I don't believe it'll work well over the connectors being developed to play LAN games online (no lag on a LAN, so no need for compensation; cheaters can be dealt with a boot to the head; etc). I think I'll have to rent Viewtiful Joe, or find a demo, before buying it, since I'm not too big on modern platformers.
I do, but it's 2000 miles away right now. Maybe I'll troll Ebay and find one, or a SNES. With the state of Nintendo games right now, that seems to be the best way to get my Nintendo fix.