sure we all have fond memories of spyhunter, riverraid, stampede, agent usa, adventure, galaga, tempest and their ilk.
but don't push this 'games were all better back then' stuff. it inevitably becomes a comparison between the cream of the crop from the last 20 years vs the average shlock of the last 3.
lets not forget, that while doom isn't necessarily deep, neither was contra.
to be fair, take the last 5 years and compare its hits with those of the 5 years before that, and those of the 5 years before that. you'll see that there's no basis for the viewpoint that games aren't getting better. it's revisionism by your mind - which wants to forget things like the kool-aid-man game and bad dudes.
and its not like the cute graphics moving shlock is a new phenomenon. just look at the 'innovation' from one side scroller to the next. whats the gameplay difference between ghosts and goblins and castlevania? how about between karateka and street fighter? double dragon and tmnt? more resolution, more colors, better effects - that's . about . it.
graphics have been the driving force for -marketing- ever since games left ziploc bags. if you only look at what people are trying to sell the loudest, you may think that games are -only- prettier. but then you'd be missing the best games of the present.
what games back in the day had the immersiveness of deus ex or halflife? what games back in the day had the coop experience and ai of halo? what games had the depth and replay of syndicate wars, xcom, populous or civ? what games had the 'i dont know why this is fun but i can't stop playing' factor of the sims?
action games will always be 'just' action games, and it's intentional that they don't advance in different directions. but don't let tunnel vision confuse you into thinking that games stopped advancing. perhaps you've just grown out of that genre.
Bullfrog games in general got passed over, and i don't know why.
ok, dungeon keeper was pretty buggy - but there's no excuse for the gaming world to have ignored syndicate and syndicate wars.
car jacking, assassinations, fmv commercials on giant monitors, mobs of people, police chases, time bombs, and a fully destructible environment, in 96!
not to mention magic: online, where you build your online deck with real money, and can trade cards to other players for real money (which did have a duping bug)
also richard garriot has strongly hinted that this will be a feature in 'tabula rasa', his pseudo-announced next massmog.
lets not forget the last time nintendo tried to 'innovate' and developed something 'radical' and 'never before seen' in game hardware.
methinks they should stick to making awesome games, and handheld game systems that you can play for more than 2 hours. (imo, the feature that kept the gameboy on top all these years despite better-equipped rivals).
(btw: i think this whole thread counts as console-war trolling)
because using the current clicky-wheel to jump into free scrolling mode is way too complicated for people... apparently.
the only reasonable use i can conjur would be for designers/editors of large images, who either have to sidescroll great distances, or side scroll back and forth a bit.
of course now, 'innovative' web designers will start sneaking their fixed height, purely side scroll sites into the world...
/. and fark seem to have decent enough subscriber bases. salon does not. maybe salon is doing it wrong - maybe their stuff just isn't worth paying for? or maybe they're trying to sell content, whereas/. and fark sell enhancements to the free content.
i think people need to rethink what they're trying to sell online. you can't just start charging access to content. whatever it is that you produce online, someone else does it for free, guaranteed. there's no opinion on salon you can't find elsewhere.
a wiser move is to sell the -experience-, that is sell an improved experience. slashdot's subscriber early-viewing system is interesting - as is fark.com's unfiltered view of submitted links. they're selling an improvement on the basic stuff - but for the most part, the non-subscribing user still has plenty of solid content on which to get hooked. (it might appear as if fark is charging access to content. however, as a link site, it's only charging you for the convenience of getting every possible link. 90% of those links that are any good are guaranteed to make fark's free page anyway)
salon tries to get you hooked by giving you half-articles, and thinly veiled promises for slightly upscale pr0n. this doesn't seem to work whatsoever. i tend to think it's more a function of how salon is trying to hook readers, rather than the quality of their commentary.
quite frankly, i don't believe people will just accept making, even 'micro-', payments to websites, just to read the base content. it goes against the ethic of the internet, and it flies in the face of consumer-friendly business (i can't return a crappy article i paid $0.25 to click).
you can't keep things to yourself in the internet age. what you can do, is provide (and charge for) a service that grants enriching features to that content. be it, advance access, a broader set of access, more direct access, preferred placement in discussion, preferred queuing for letter-to-the-editor response, etc.
(the RIAA could take a lesson here, as free mp3 rips will always circulate - but most users would just as soon pay $1/song to know they're getting a good quality rip from a fat bandwidth host, with no skips or modifications.)
of course, all this is wholly unnecessary for sites that can exist ably on merchandising alone (homestarrunner comes to mind).
Does he think the humble but enduring push bike can ever be topped? "Just wait," he cautions, "until next year."
so he's going to introduce an electric bicycle. something in the 5 kilo weight range, with a top speed of about 15-20mph. probably not even with gyros to help keep it upright, but possibly. most likely with pedal-power backup (maybe even charging the cells from regenerative braking or the pedals?)
i've given up on hoping for hovercraft and such... stupid gravity.
some sci-fi will always be a day away.
a CDR with 10x the number of songs on it is a much preferable medium to transport your music, don't you think? or the various solid state data formats? (CF,SD,Memory Stick,USB drives) or DVD-R even, when prices come down a bit.
the lack of shipped physical media is not a limitation of electronic distribution. quite the contrary, it's a HUGE benefit - as when new media are divised, you can carry your data over to them as well, and enjoy all the benefits, without having to rebuy your content. (as occurs every 'official' media cycle, vinyl->8track->cassette->cd)
and p2p and the death of CD distribution are two different pieces of the same pie.
p2p is demonstrating that electronic distribution is the way consumers wish to operate. p2p itself does not preclude the sale of quality music data online.
music as data, divorced from a particular physical CD is what's growing. with the proliferation of inexpensive online purchasing mechanisms, you will be able to pay for your 256kbps stream that you appreciate. probably for less than a buck. not being force-fed a great couple singles with a pile of filler.
and people will always use p2p as well - but the new players in the digital distribution market won't care, as quality and convenience will be on their side (no mislabeled tracks, bad tracks, poor quality tracks, hard to find tracks, etc).
as for p2p eating cd sales - no one can statistically -prove- that. as no-one is polling people who aren't buying CDs, asking why they aren't buying. similarly, no-one did a scientific study showing that DVD killed VHS killed BETA - but it's still accepted fact.
the only evidence anyone can provide - is common sense. p2p is growing by leaps and bounds. legal electronic distribution of music is growing by leaps and bounds. all technology players are pushing to get mp3 functionality into their playing devices. electronic distribution companies are springing up, backed by big players. cd sales are declining. the top 40 on radio (paid for by the RIAA) is -not- the same as the top 40 on iTunes.
the RIAA as a distribution player is dying. the CDA format as it's vehicle, is dying.
"prevents clients with stronger signals from receiving bandwidth bias"
all that time and effort to get a stronger signal and they're gonna cast me back down with the technon00bs?
'screw you guys, i'm goin home'
but everyone was buying this shlock before...
on
The Effect of Pirated CDs
·
· Score: 3, Informative
it isn't like musical quality has notably sunk in the last few years.
yes, they're putting out less albums - but because they're marketing individual 'pop sensations' more. the trend to produce less began before the sales fell.
and it's not because 'pop music is crap' that sales are falling. this bubble-gum shlock is the predominant bulk of what people are trading online. not to mention that britney is not qualitatively divergent from marky mark and the funky bunch. or wham! or winger before that.
people need to stop pretending that file sharing isn't going to kill cd-sales. it will. just as CDs killed cassette, just as cassette killed vinyl (audophiles and their tastes notwithstanding)
the artists -do- get most of their revenue from touring and tshirts and stuff, but the RIAA exists solely to distribute music. they -do- get rich off the rights to sell CDs so naturally their business revolves around protecting their rights. particularly because they dont have the infrastructure or the expertise to control, in any small way, electronic distribution. (since mainly you just have to post mp3s and advertise, or license apple to soak up the bandwidth costs for a share of your per track cash.)
but stop pretending: sales are down because trading is easy, and no-one except people who had money before and will have money after is being effected. not because pop music is 'crap'. not because there's 'less'.
yes, p2p is killing it. and for good reason.
i do wonder though, if file sharing has had a hand in the increase in concert attendance these last few years. (note number of summer concert 'festivals' and their earnings increases)
i got my first cell supplied by the consulting company i was working for a few years back - back when i thought i didn't need a cell phone. (i'm still pretty sure i don't -need- one - but i doubt i'll go without again, excepting post-holocaust)
anyway, it was verizon, and i never had a problem (se MI: detroit and 'burbs.)
my friends/family have tried all sorts of alternate providers. they get crappy service, dead zones, dropped calls, weird roaming locations, bizzare stuff. inevitably when they switch - those that pick verizon swear by the difference. i've never known any differently, but they -rave- about the difference. as my buddy puts it: Sprint sucked, Cingular sucked, Verizon just works.
like i'm saying, americans can either complain about the problems, or do something.
currently our options to change things are:
support candidates who support campaign finance reform make educated votes, and encourage everyone around you to do the same support the EFF to defend our liberties support the ACLU to defend our liberties or complain
most people choose the latter; as we have something atrocious like 25% voter turnout.
they can't even likely tell what code is going to execute, so that severely restricts their options.
odds are they are just scanning for loops that copy until they find a null at the end of a string. (searching for resulting patterns from compiled strcpy as opposed to strncpy).
as most exploits are buffer overflows, this would theoretically catch all of them. it would also catch all sorts of potential buffer overflows that would never be possible given the level of user input (since it's not running the code, or disassembling, it can't know).
but this is why i made my own string object wrapper that stores the bound of a string (and a regexp to define allowed chars) - and then overload the cpy functions to prevent a string from ever copying a single byte more to itself than it should, and always makes sure it's nicely null terminated. but that's just responsible coding.
and it's easy enough to get a compiled binary from.Net
there's an option to 'finalize'.Net code on installation if you like. then the binary on the client machine is native code, compiled down to machine language on install (instead of execution), and optimized for their particular system (processor optimizations, api optimizations, etc).
if you think that the RIAA planned to -stop- suing after this first round, you're awfully naive.
notice how every victory emboldens them? this last time they didn't even necessarily want to go to court, they were just looking for 2000 settlement checks, much like DirecTV.
and did the gov't finally get its act together? or did we, their constituents, finally get -our- act together?
if you want to protect your rights, how about you email your representatives and write your check to the EFF?
you can rail against the system, or you can use your power as a voter to get things done.
sony needs -games- to compete with nintendo in the portable market.
whereas nintendo basically rolled over and gave up in the console market; the gameboy has fought off hoards of similarly impressive technical specifications.
sony needs a solid price, a solid lineup, and a good darn screen (properly lit the first time would be nice).
nice specs - but how about we hear a list of developers and games planned for the psp? or even the dimensions of the screen, or the battery life/recharge time?
after that 98% dip in revenue last quarter, it'll be interesting to see where sony puts its continued marketing force.
NAT and proxies work wonders toward preserving ipv4's longevity.
with a billion addresses remaining, the US can take its sweet time. though we could probably use the networking boom when corporations decide it -is- finally time to upgrade.
but does your voip phone really need a static address? and would you really even want it to have one?
as i've said before, ipv6 would need something truly amazing, something that couldn't be provided by ipv4 to push adoption. and unfortunately, that isn't anywhere even on the horizon or on the marketroid buzz sheets.
not even your networked appliances need static addresses. just 1 nat per house ( odds are that'll be nat'd again and again before hitting the 'real' internet)
until people who already have their ipv4 addresses see a benefit they can get only with ipv6, we'll be where we are now (which is where we've been for a decade) talking about ipv6, and asking why were not adopting it.
Slashdot Mirror
sure we all have fond memories of spyhunter, riverraid, stampede, agent usa, adventure, galaga, tempest and their ilk.
but don't push this 'games were all better back then' stuff. it inevitably becomes a comparison between the cream of the crop from the last 20 years vs the average shlock of the last 3.
lets not forget, that while doom isn't necessarily deep, neither was contra.
to be fair, take the last 5 years and compare its hits with those of the 5 years before that, and those of the 5 years before that. you'll see that there's no basis for the viewpoint that games aren't getting better. it's revisionism by your mind - which wants to forget things like the kool-aid-man game and bad dudes.
and its not like the cute graphics moving shlock is a new phenomenon. just look at the 'innovation' from one side scroller to the next. whats the gameplay difference between ghosts and goblins and castlevania? how about between karateka and street fighter? double dragon and tmnt? more resolution, more colors, better effects - that's . about . it.
graphics have been the driving force for -marketing- ever since games left ziploc bags.
if you only look at what people are trying to sell the loudest, you may think that games are -only- prettier. but then you'd be missing the best games of the present.
what games back in the day had the immersiveness of deus ex or halflife? what games back in the day had the coop experience and ai of halo? what games had the depth and replay of syndicate wars, xcom, populous or civ? what games had the 'i dont know why this is fun but i can't stop playing' factor of the sims?
action games will always be 'just' action games, and it's intentional that they don't advance in different directions. but don't let tunnel vision confuse you into thinking that games stopped advancing. perhaps you've just grown out of that genre.
Bullfrog games in general got passed over, and i don't know why.
ok, dungeon keeper was pretty buggy - but there's no excuse for the gaming world to have ignored syndicate and syndicate wars.
car jacking, assassinations, fmv commercials on giant monitors, mobs of people, police chases, time bombs, and a fully destructible environment, in 96!
man i gotta dig that one back out again.
bomb proof?
colocation? offsite backups? fully redundant systems?
operation mayhem will have to make note to be thorough.
project entropia already does this
not to mention magic: online, where you build your online deck with real money, and can trade cards to other players for real money (which did have a duping bug)
also richard garriot has strongly hinted that this will be a feature in 'tabula rasa', his pseudo-announced next massmog.
this is not a new concept.
lets not forget the last time nintendo tried to 'innovate' and developed something 'radical' and 'never before seen' in game hardware.
methinks they should stick to making awesome games, and handheld game systems that you can play for more than 2 hours. (imo, the feature that kept the gameboy on top all these years despite better-equipped rivals).
(btw: i think this whole thread counts as console-war trolling)
because using the current clicky-wheel to jump into free scrolling mode is way too complicated for people... apparently.
the only reasonable use i can conjur would be for designers/editors of large images, who either have to sidescroll great distances, or side scroll back and forth a bit.
of course now, 'innovative' web designers will start sneaking their fixed height, purely side scroll sites into the world...
"simpsons did it!"
/. and fark seem to have decent enough subscriber bases. salon does not. maybe salon is doing it wrong - maybe their stuff just isn't worth paying for? or maybe they're trying to sell content, whereas /. and fark sell enhancements to the free content.
i think people need to rethink what they're trying to sell online. you can't just start charging access to content. whatever it is that you produce online, someone else does it for free, guaranteed. there's no opinion on salon you can't find elsewhere.
a wiser move is to sell the -experience-, that is sell an improved experience. slashdot's subscriber early-viewing system is interesting - as is fark.com's unfiltered view of submitted links. they're selling an improvement on the basic stuff - but for the most part, the non-subscribing user still has plenty of solid content on which to get hooked.
(it might appear as if fark is charging access to content. however, as a link site, it's only charging you for the convenience of getting every possible link. 90% of those links that are any good are guaranteed to make fark's free page anyway)
salon tries to get you hooked by giving you half-articles, and thinly veiled promises for slightly upscale pr0n. this doesn't seem to work whatsoever. i tend to think it's more a function of how salon is trying to hook readers, rather than the quality of their commentary.
quite frankly, i don't believe people will just accept making, even 'micro-', payments to websites, just to read the base content. it goes against the ethic of the internet, and it flies in the face of consumer-friendly business (i can't return a crappy article i paid $0.25 to click).
you can't keep things to yourself in the internet age. what you can do, is provide (and charge for) a service that grants enriching features to that content. be it, advance access, a broader set of access, more direct access, preferred placement in discussion, preferred queuing for letter-to-the-editor response, etc.
(the RIAA could take a lesson here, as free mp3 rips will always circulate - but most users would just as soon pay $1/song to know they're getting a good quality rip from a fat bandwidth host, with no skips or modifications.)
of course, all this is wholly unnecessary for sites that can exist ably on merchandising alone (homestarrunner comes to mind).
i've given up on hoping for hovercraft and such... stupid gravity.
some sci-fi will always be a day away.
i thought it was:
Coalition for the
Liberation of
Itinerant
Tree-dwellers
an offshoot of the:
Liberate
Apes
Before
Imprisoning
Apes movement.
i prefer this adaptation:
CLIPPY:
Impressive, now release your anger,
You must sense that your [boss is] in danger,
MT:
Oooh, why'd you slice off my hand?
CLIPPY:
It's imperitive that you understand,
[MS Bob] would never bother,
Telling you about your father,
MT:
He told me enough,
He told me you killed him,
CLIPPY:
Then there's something, I must reveal then,
I'm your father
(I'm your father)
x4
physical CDA format CD-ROM distribution will die.
a CDR with 10x the number of songs on it is a much preferable medium to transport your music, don't you think? or the various solid state data formats? (CF,SD,Memory Stick,USB drives) or DVD-R even, when prices come down a bit.
the lack of shipped physical media is not a limitation of electronic distribution. quite the contrary, it's a HUGE benefit - as when new media are divised, you can carry your data over to them as well, and enjoy all the benefits, without having to rebuy your content. (as occurs every 'official' media cycle, vinyl->8track->cassette->cd)
and p2p and the death of CD distribution are two different pieces of the same pie.
p2p is demonstrating that electronic distribution is the way consumers wish to operate. p2p itself does not preclude the sale of quality music data online.
music as data, divorced from a particular physical CD is what's growing. with the proliferation of inexpensive online purchasing mechanisms, you will be able to pay for your 256kbps stream that you appreciate. probably for less than a buck. not being force-fed a great couple singles with a pile of filler.
and people will always use p2p as well - but the new players in the digital distribution market won't care, as quality and convenience will be on their side (no mislabeled tracks, bad tracks, poor quality tracks, hard to find tracks, etc).
as for p2p eating cd sales - no one can statistically -prove- that. as no-one is polling people who aren't buying CDs, asking why they aren't buying. similarly, no-one did a scientific study showing that DVD killed VHS killed BETA - but it's still accepted fact.
the only evidence anyone can provide - is common sense.
p2p is growing by leaps and bounds.
legal electronic distribution of music is growing by leaps and bounds.
all technology players are pushing to get mp3 functionality into their playing devices.
electronic distribution companies are springing up, backed by big players.
cd sales are declining.
the top 40 on radio (paid for by the RIAA) is -not- the same as the top 40 on iTunes.
the RIAA as a distribution player is dying. the CDA format as it's vehicle, is dying.
"prevents clients with stronger signals from receiving bandwidth bias"
all that time and effort to get a stronger signal and they're gonna cast me back down with the technon00bs?
'screw you guys, i'm goin home'
it isn't like musical quality has notably sunk in the last few years.
yes, they're putting out less albums - but because they're marketing individual 'pop sensations' more. the trend to produce less began before the sales fell.
and it's not because 'pop music is crap' that sales are falling. this bubble-gum shlock is the predominant bulk of what people are trading online. not to mention that britney is not qualitatively divergent from marky mark and the funky bunch. or wham! or winger before that.
people need to stop pretending that file sharing isn't going to kill cd-sales. it will. just as CDs killed cassette, just as cassette killed vinyl (audophiles and their tastes notwithstanding)
the artists -do- get most of their revenue from touring and tshirts and stuff, but the RIAA exists solely to distribute music. they -do- get rich off the rights to sell CDs so naturally their business revolves around protecting their rights. particularly because they dont have the infrastructure or the expertise to control, in any small way, electronic distribution. (since mainly you just have to post mp3s and advertise, or license apple to soak up the bandwidth costs for a share of your per track cash.)
but stop pretending: sales are down because trading is easy, and no-one except people who had money before and will have money after is being effected. not because pop music is 'crap'. not because there's 'less'.
yes, p2p is killing it. and for good reason.
i do wonder though, if file sharing has had a hand in the increase in concert attendance these last few years. (note number of summer concert 'festivals' and their earnings increases)
i couldn't remember which was which. one was thinking the other was lying.
so up and left is thinking, up and right is lying?
"it's not a lie, it's a gift for fiction"
i got my first cell supplied by the consulting company i was working for a few years back - back when i thought i didn't need a cell phone.
(i'm still pretty sure i don't -need- one - but i doubt i'll go without again, excepting post-holocaust)
anyway, it was verizon, and i never had a problem (se MI: detroit and 'burbs.)
my friends/family have tried all sorts of alternate providers. they get crappy service, dead zones, dropped calls, weird roaming locations, bizzare stuff. inevitably when they switch - those that pick verizon swear by the difference. i've never known any differently, but they -rave- about the difference.
as my buddy puts it: Sprint sucked, Cingular sucked, Verizon just works.
and the price is par for the course.
*boggle*
would every geek please walk over to their nearest 4 non-geek's MS boxes and flick 'autoupdate' on? maybe we can spare a few routers in the future?
i mean, if they insist on having those boxes, the least we can do is make sure they're patched up.
say what you will about MS - but these big exploits don't usually hit until weeks after the patch has been available.
and if you're relaxed enough with control over your box to run MS in the first place, autoupdate ain't any worse.
like i'm saying, americans can either complain about the problems, or do something.
currently our options to change things are:
support candidates who support campaign finance reform
make educated votes, and encourage everyone around you to do the same
support the EFF to defend our liberties
support the ACLU to defend our liberties
or
complain
most people choose the latter; as we have something atrocious like 25% voter turnout.
up and to the left...isn't that where people look when they're lying?
they can't even likely tell what code is going to execute, so that severely restricts their options.
.Net
.Net code on installation if you like. then the binary on the client machine is native code, compiled down to machine language on install (instead of execution), and optimized for their particular system (processor optimizations, api optimizations, etc).
odds are they are just scanning for loops that copy until they find a null at the end of a string. (searching for resulting patterns from compiled strcpy as opposed to strncpy).
as most exploits are buffer overflows, this would theoretically catch all of them. it would also catch all sorts of potential buffer overflows that would never be possible given the level of user input (since it's not running the code, or disassembling, it can't know).
but this is why i made my own string object wrapper that stores the bound of a string (and a regexp to define allowed chars) - and then overload the cpy functions to prevent a string from ever copying a single byte more to itself than it should, and always makes sure it's nicely null terminated. but that's just responsible coding.
and it's easy enough to get a compiled binary from
there's an option to 'finalize'
if you think that the RIAA planned to -stop- suing after this first round, you're awfully naive.
notice how every victory emboldens them? this last time they didn't even necessarily want to go to court, they were just looking for 2000 settlement checks, much like DirecTV.
and did the gov't finally get its act together? or did we, their constituents, finally get -our- act together?
if you want to protect your rights, how about you email your representatives and write your check to the EFF?
you can rail against the system, or you can use your power as a voter to get things done.
i'll take my eternal life from blood-signed pacts with other-worldly -religious- constructs thank you very much.
sony needs -games- to compete with nintendo in the portable market.
whereas nintendo basically rolled over and gave up in the console market; the gameboy has fought off hoards of similarly impressive technical specifications.
sony needs a solid price, a solid lineup, and a good darn screen (properly lit the first time would be nice).
nice specs - but how about we hear a list of developers and games planned for the psp? or even the dimensions of the screen, or the battery life/recharge time?
after that 98% dip in revenue last quarter, it'll be interesting to see where sony puts its continued marketing force.
NAT and proxies work wonders toward preserving ipv4's longevity.
with a billion addresses remaining, the US can take its sweet time. though we could probably use the networking boom when corporations decide it -is- finally time to upgrade.
but does your voip phone really need a static address? and would you really even want it to have one?
as i've said before, ipv6 would need something truly amazing, something that couldn't be provided by ipv4 to push adoption. and unfortunately, that isn't anywhere even on the horizon or on the marketroid buzz sheets.
not even your networked appliances need static addresses. just 1 nat per house ( odds are that'll be nat'd again and again before hitting the 'real' internet)
until people who already have their ipv4 addresses see a benefit they can get only with ipv6, we'll be where we are now (which is where we've been for a decade) talking about ipv6, and asking why were not adopting it.
following on the heels of the RIAA, i suppose anyone whose business model is made obsolete should just sue the hell out of everyone they can.
i mean, the end is inevitable, and the main riches have already been made - so why not just take a few parting shots?
corporations make me sick anymore.