Actually when I got into CS I was just used to mindless jump in and shoot games. After playing long enough, I was much better at tactical group maneuvers such as providing cover fire while advancing, "slicing the pie," using distractions and finding good concealment. It also completely changed the way I look at hard and soft cover - shooting through weak cover makes a world of difference....the only downside was that with the same maps always being used, people had psychic sense for where to shoot to take out hiding enemies, which was only mitigated by doing silly things like standing atop exit signs above doorways (cs_backalley) or in the middle of hanging neon signs (de_vegas,) or doing big silly arial John Woo style jump-outs while shooting so you don't get your head shot through an opaque wall while hiding, haha...
But seriously though, any team that could even work half-assed as a team - or even had three members who had it together - would usually walk all over the other guys if they weren't as coordinated. I've also played WoW - Target enemy. Use damage-over-time spell, use instant damage spells, run up and beat on them. Not exactly a technique I see many terrorists using, haha
As long as regional lockouts exist, I will use modchips. I refuse to buy two identical consoles where the only difference is one byte in ROM that gives permission to play a disc. If that also enables running pirated copies of games, then so be it - it's the game company's fault for incorporating the two lockout systems together like that.
Sure, I can easily see how they're illegal under the DMCA, but that's just another reason why I refuse to have anything to do with the US gov't - they're crazy on all levels. Under that same circumvention law, someone could make a radio that won't receive certain stations, and press charges against anyone who reenables them! Talk about intellectual property law run amok! No DMCA in Canada just yet, so I will continue to order "blank PCB samples" from the USA then flash them with the code of my choice and stick them into my consoles.
I download games like Phoenix Wright 1 and Trauma Center 1 for DS - because they're not sold anywhere! I hunted high and low for them, online and off. Finally I gave up and downloaded them, and that sparked interest to buy (PW) number 2, 3, and eventually 4 which I would not have even looked at without finding the first game. Living in Canada, I see it like the old grey-market satellite ruling: If something is not sold, a digital copy of it has no value, therefore how can it be stolen? Would you be charged with pirating MS-DOS 2.0? I would call MS's piracy hotline myself and tell them I distributed 300 copies of DOS 2 - I bet they'd laugh.
Before anyone accuses me of just justifying piracy, I DO download a lot of games that look mediocre or bad, then play them for a few days and shelve them. That's illegal and I make no bones about it. Then again, these are not games I would buy (and usually they're not even sold on this continent!) I also have stacks and stacks of legit games that I pay for even though I don't have to. In this age, hard retail copies are like a tip jar - if you appreciate the product, buy the real one to give some payoff to the creators/publishers/distributors/etc and help convince them to make sequels. If you just buy a random game without a demo, you'll probably get burned to the tune of about $60 around here and get something barely functional and buggy. Nothing in place to protect you from that though - most places don't even take returns on any software, so good luck trading it in for 1/4 what you paid.
Homebrew is an excellent one depending on the system. My PSP does wardriving, reads textfiles, plays fullscreen XviDs, and runs various emulators and homemade games. It isn't even chipped, though the firmware is probably illegal under the DMCA.
Piracy is bad, the DMCA is far far worse. I wonder how they checked for modchips anyway? Ransack the home and disassemble every console? I'm picturing about $20,000,000 worth of broken consoles knowing how ICE is notorious for searching. I hope it's not illegal there to bring a class-action suit against them - Over here, Customs Canada is pretty much unaccountable for what they do.
It's kind of sad... I have two dual-layer DVD+/-RW burners but I've never gone out and bought one, they're just basic PC gear now. So I got a spool of 50 dual-layer discs to cover all the dual-layers I'll ever need to burn. By the time I get to the end of the spool, my drives will probably have been replaced with something newer....sure would have been nice to have this cheap abundant tech leapfrogging earlier on in the life cycle rather than a bunch of little hops just before launching into a new age of conflicting unaffordable formats. I guess that's the way it tends to go, but it just feels WRONG having a container of media last as long as the drive itself. Even LS-120 had a (slightly) better run than that...
I don't live in the USA, but I was trying to grab a roughly Japanish chunk of land (Maybe California would be... a LOT closer) to point out that a single state could cost as much as the whole country/nation of Japan to supply enough towers. Of course there are factors like cel usage, population density, etc. but overall Japan and South Korea can enjoy a much more agile wireless infrastructure due to small land mass and relatively few competing carriers.
Florida? You're right. That's way too small to compare, as many single states would be. Even considering the very patchy service that it would probably get though, America's 9.6M sq km would be no small feat to cover in tightly-packed high speed DoCoMo 3G / 4G cels - it would probably be the last upgrade of its type for another decade unless it proved wildly popular.
(I also keep specifying the Japanese tech because who knows - there could be a breakthrough that makes it possible here. My bet's on broadband wireless Internet though.)
Japan HAS been stuck in a recession for about 10 years. That doesn't invalidate their products though. Can you really look at a cel phone with an easy to use interface, big bright OLED full color screens on the inside and out, a 5MP camera, built-in e-wallet (thumbprint-scan released smartcard wallet) function, high speed internet, an HTML-compatible web browser, MP3 playback, online chatting, smooth fullscreen video conferencing, AND solid service throughout the country and still call it inferior? I'd take one in a second, and those features aren't even so remarkable anymore...
I think it's largely a matter of area covered. When you look at the cells for a high-speed network in Japan, they are very close together so that wherever you are, you're fairly close to at least one station. Covering all of Japan probably costs around the same it would cost to do Florida. I'm betting you'd have a LOT more Japanese customers taking advantage of this since i-Mode has soundly stomped WAP for usability and billing plans... from the beginning of time, and you can do more with it.
So we keep getting cheap stone-age phones because most people don't even want the extra junk they pile in to North American phones NOW, much less getting 10x as much, and because of that, it would not be worthwhile to heap billions into upgrading the country's infrastructure (also quite hard when we have so many carriers and not just mainly DoCoMo / KDDI) just for a network that would probably be obsolete in 5 years.
It sucks... I want a DoCoMo phone too... but I can see why this is not the place to do it - at least with the current Japanese technology. Now if we get more phones that can take advantage of high-speed internet over wi-fi, that would level the playing field a certain amount (even if our residential high-speed connections are pretty slow too...)
I had an old Nokia PCS phone, and now a GSM Nokia 3220, both bars. a) I lock my keys and they've never come unlocked in a decade. b) The unlock code on both is "[Enter], #". When it rings, I just press the answer or enter buttons though. c) Impress? It takes some getting used to, but you just pretend there's a mic there and speak normally, and it works fine - even with a quiet voice. Somehow they don't pick up much ambient noise....it does have a web browser, but it uses WAP, which is like a kick in the face even on a full sized screen.
My first cel phone was a Motorola StarTAC flip phone and while it got burning hot while using it due to its silly thinness, I have to say it wasn't as flimsy as it felt - the cables in the hinge never wore out after years of use, and I even dropped it from a moving bicycle and it just bounced.
Whichever you pick is fine either way, but I'm afraid those three sticking points don't really apply, at least on Nokias...
All valid points, but the quality control provided by these companies, combined with their motivation to seek developers and games to license has managed to make consoles THE dominant platform for gaming, with PCs' open platform taking a sliver of what their closed counterparts do despite all their freedom. That, and consoles' incredible ease of use, and ability to simply run their software without issues (except in decreasingly rare cases of a buggy game release... if modern consoles couldn't patch games, devs would have no choice but to release better-tested products...)
BTW, the GP32 is an open, versatile, decently capable handheld console (and the newer ones are even cooler,) but instead of putting the whole mess to bed, it faded into obscurity outside of South Korea, where Japanese consoles are quite expensive (or so I've heard?)
I work in your typical IT support job, and deal with a LOT of dirty keyboards/mice. I would never put a keyboard into a dishwasher, both for the board and washer's sake, but I certainly welcome sanitization efforts. I've considered a spray bottle full of strong rubbing alcohol (BTW, if you try this, remember not to inhale it or let the mist get in your face!) For personal use, I have hope in the silver-based antibacterial coatings that are appearing on some peripherals and cel phones now, though even those would have to be cleaned occasionally...
These are actually fairly common in Canada now... in a city of about 50k I know there are at least a dozen or two - they kind of stand out, haha... They're good, functional, ugly ugly cars. I just don't see why we can't get some proper kei cars here like the ones sold by Japanoid.com (not a plug, never dealt with 'em.) They look ok, work well, and you can even get pretty sporty models too. I think the biggest barrier to the Smart car is that it looks really weird - like some kind of go-kart pod. Still, if I got one for free, I'd drive it because like I said, it's still a pretty good car...
True, but there was also Pocket Fighter with the same mini characters, and later "Super Puzzle Fighter II X: For Matching Service" which like the "Matching Service" version of Vampire, was kind of an ultimate customizable compilation of the different versions.
I never got that with my Voodoo 3, but ended up with about 250% the card I bought with my GeForce 2. My Voodoo 3 3500 memories are mostly watching it crash if I tried to task switch, not being able to render in a window, not being able to do 24-32 bit color, and having video capture capped to 320x240 but still using all of my CPU and dropping 1/4 of the frames. Oh yeah, and getting a special custom MiniGL driver for a handful of games that were supported by it, and watching all manner of chaos erupt if the wrong version was used....it looked pretty nice when rendering, and could do multi-layer textures in Unreal Tournament which was AWESOME. It also supported my old DOS Glide games. Still, overall it was hell to use. If I didn't have so many Glide games I would have turfed it way sooner. 3dfx are the only company I know of who could write worse drivers than Creative.
I used to have some gripes with Windows back in the Win95 days. Then I looked around, tried OS/2, BeOS, and about a dozen versions of Linux, which I check up on every few years.
Trying other OSes has led me to actually like Windows. It has its flaws, but they ALL have their fair share of flaws. Windows is by far the most USEFUL OS I have tried. I can run a massive amount of the software I want to run, and perform common tasks like driver installations very easily. These days, it isn't even a question to me. The biggest FUD I hear is about the horrible security in Windows (and everyone knows it has a steady stream of exploits released for it)... I had the SubSeven trojan about 10 years ago. That was my last security incident. Now I'm behind a simple household router, and rarely even face a threat. The last time I saw a BSOD was when I had a bad stick of ram in my Win2k3 box a few years ago.
For me, Linux is starting to look viable in certain distributions, but there is absolutely no reason to use it. If you like it, then have fun.
This is stupid - this petty side-taking and continued fighting after deployment of both formats is only hurting consumers.
So... I'm not arguing morality, but what do you think someone is more likely to do when faced with this situation? Buy a Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD player? Or just download torrents of both?
Looking back at things like Intel NICs, webcams, and codecs like Indeo, Intel has been fiddling with this stuff for ages now. If they had to fall back on something not based on making fast high-tech chips, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing they would naturally have on the backburner. Back in the day I loved Indeo - it was the only codec that could play a very clear video at 800x600 on my PIII 450.
You just summed it up better than anyone here. If they wanted to move in on his territory, they wouldn't try to copy a >20 year old game. Then again - they'd make a truly innovative console game. I don't think they're taking it so seriously either though.
I agree entirely. My favorite era for Square was back on the PS1 when they actually tried different things with mixed results: Tobal, Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, Bushido Blade, Einhander, Ehrgeiz... that was neat! Even the ones that weren't very fun were well debugged and polished, and at the time, I pretty much expected that from Square. If they kept experimenting on that path, I'd probably have at least a dozen current Square titles.
Instead, it's usually another (slightly) interactive movie with really high detail cutscenes, and a boring retelling of the same cliches that run through anything they make with "Final Fantasy" in the title. I had fun with that - in FFVII. Then I looked around and saw it run back through at least 6, up through 8, 9, 10, 10-2, even the movies, and getting worse each time. Now even if an awesome FF game came out, I'd probably miss it since the series has become synonymous with awful, drawn out cutscene games catering to a hardcore market of those they haven't lost yet. I wish they'd go back to doing other game genres because they could actually innovate a bit and mix things up, but now that they're Square-Enix, I suspect Square is just their FF brand.
Not that I automatically hate all their games... I do intend to cautiously check out Odin Sphere when it hits. I've just become accustomed to associating the company with a huge array of love it or hate it games that hold no interest for me whatsoever, so that whenever something new comes from them, it's hard to hold back the cynicism and some resentment of how much more they clearly could have done instead of cramming another disc with lush prerendered FMV telling a story that's on its last legs and stretching it out by making you wander the map fighting random repetetive monsters. (Though kudos for reducing that in recent games.) I'm sure to get modded down for this by PO'ed fans, but it can't be helped. When a great company full of skilled developers churns out pablum, it really bothers me and I'll call it as I see it.
When I first started in the industry, I was 18, working at a small company, and the licensing status of our software was uncertain with no records, but piles and piles of physical copies of the software we used. It is possible we exceeded our site license (if applicable?) but I figured it was up to the company to watch - I was just a tech.
Now I work at a local college, and I wouldn't even use my personal workstation to download something pirated for use at home. Work just isn't the place for pirated software. It would also be pretty stupid of a company to fire you for not breaking the law for them, though I realize they'd probably have an excuse...
So ultimately, no. Never pirate software at work. If you decide to do so at work or at home, be prepared to take full responsibility for it - and that means a lot more than getting around to paying retail price when they catch you!
Personally I think it's great that they use less power, though I'm curious how much energy it takes to make the electronics that drive the tube...
I don't like them though, as I find the light is a bit harsh, and the humming noise the transformers make is very annoying. I'm not exactly weak to machine noise as I sleep in the same room as a PC with 7 fans, but I have two of these things in my bathroom and often when I have a shower I turn the lights off because being in a small room with two CFLs droning on is a bit headache-inducing.
Then again, a lot of the time I simply don't use room lights. If I did, I would definitely look into LED alternatives though since I'm sick of the annoyances of fluorescents. (Some time I'm going to have to put one on a dimmer and see what it does... or find a video. Still, there are times when I don't want everything bathed in high-intensity light but don't want pitch dark either!)
On a carpeted floor, you would just sweep it up and pretend it's clean, then vacuum later anyway because it's getting dirty, expelling some of the spilled mercury into the air....or spray some clear varnish to contain the spill and never vacuum that spot again! haha...
(Actually, if I were worried about it, I'd probably just go over it with a steam cleaner after sweeping it up if I had access to one. I would definitely want to use some kind of vacuum on a piece of carpet with glass slivers on it though!)
In North America, class C is electrical, and class D is for extinguishing metal fires. I'd say look for a class CD extinguisher, but I have no idea how available they might be as C use nonconductive media, and D are usually salt and powdered copper...
I agree that the current designs are unsafe, but your analogy betrays a misunderstanding of how the batteries actually work - there is no solid Lithium in a Lithium ion battery. There is however, a cathode made of Lithium Cobalt Oxide, which can catastrophically overheat if heated beyond a given point. If the cathode is replaced with something else (shouldn't take too long, we have multiple companies with different competing technologies vying to be the next standard now) the battery would be much safer.
There is always the dilemma of X amount of potential energy in a pack with Y volume though - with any battery type. When you're carrying a CD case sized battery with 90Wh (?) a catastrophic failure runs the risk of releasing a LOT of energy either at once, or over time. But that's something we'll just have to deal with and make safer as we miniaturize and improve portable power technologies.
I own a PSX, PS2, and PSP, as well as all sorts of Sony gear (receiver, camera, headphones...) But even then, the PS3 is way too expensive and at this point, I would only get Motorstorm, and Ninja Gaiden when it comes out.
The 360... I'd get one for $20. I'd pay more, but most owners I know are at least on their THIRD units! Frankly, I'm afraid to even put one in my home for fear it'd burst into flame like the first XBox... If they can make it reliable, then even I might get one. Not before then.
The Wii... eh. If I should ever happen to see one in any store anywhere, I hope there are a few original games for it by then.
I'm mostly a console gamer, but for now I'm still enjoying the "last gen" PS2/Gamecube/Dreamcast and my brand new gaming PC. Looking at the current consoles just makes me sad so far...
Actually it's because Sony is organized into what they call "silos" - each department is mostly independent from bottom to top without contact from others.
That is, Sony BMG(?) music (the rootkit villains), is not Sony Pictures (ARCCOS), and neither is Sony Electronics (gadgets, appliances), or Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (Playstation) or its closely related cousins Sony Computer Entertainment Kobe, US, and Europe. In Japan there is equally unrelated Sony Cosmetics, and Sony Life Insurance.
Although they're not part of one, to boycott "Sony" is like boycotting a whole Keiretsu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu).
So yeah... I love their AV equipment. I'm a fan of their game consoles though the PS3 is still a bit weak for me, I love my PSP. Their music and movies? I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.
Nice article... I mostly agree with it, though I still see the need for levels in some games, as it just makes logical sense, and provides a framework to progress though the game in a set order.
On the flipside though, I have such a wide selection of games available now that if I get stuck somewhere and die 50 times in a row in the same place for a week or two, the game gets shelved for "later" play (like, 10 years later for 5 minutes) and I start another because I simply don't have time to waste on a game that only makes me miserable. Even if the only obstacle is in one point in the game, that's where the game ends.:/
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Actually when I got into CS I was just used to mindless jump in and shoot games. After playing long enough, I was much better at tactical group maneuvers such as providing cover fire while advancing, "slicing the pie," using distractions and finding good concealment. It also completely changed the way I look at hard and soft cover - shooting through weak cover makes a world of difference. ...the only downside was that with the same maps always being used, people had psychic sense for where to shoot to take out hiding enemies, which was only mitigated by doing silly things like standing atop exit signs above doorways (cs_backalley) or in the middle of hanging neon signs (de_vegas,) or doing big silly arial John Woo style jump-outs while shooting so you don't get your head shot through an opaque wall while hiding, haha...
But seriously though, any team that could even work half-assed as a team - or even had three members who had it together - would usually walk all over the other guys if they weren't as coordinated. I've also played WoW - Target enemy. Use damage-over-time spell, use instant damage spells, run up and beat on them. Not exactly a technique I see many terrorists using, haha
As long as regional lockouts exist, I will use modchips. I refuse to buy two identical consoles where the only difference is one byte in ROM that gives permission to play a disc. If that also enables running pirated copies of games, then so be it - it's the game company's fault for incorporating the two lockout systems together like that.
Sure, I can easily see how they're illegal under the DMCA, but that's just another reason why I refuse to have anything to do with the US gov't - they're crazy on all levels. Under that same circumvention law, someone could make a radio that won't receive certain stations, and press charges against anyone who reenables them! Talk about intellectual property law run amok!
No DMCA in Canada just yet, so I will continue to order "blank PCB samples" from the USA then flash them with the code of my choice and stick them into my consoles.
I download games like Phoenix Wright 1 and Trauma Center 1 for DS - because they're not sold anywhere! I hunted high and low for them, online and off. Finally I gave up and downloaded them, and that sparked interest to buy (PW) number 2, 3, and eventually 4 which I would not have even looked at without finding the first game. Living in Canada, I see it like the old grey-market satellite ruling: If something is not sold, a digital copy of it has no value, therefore how can it be stolen? Would you be charged with pirating MS-DOS 2.0? I would call MS's piracy hotline myself and tell them I distributed 300 copies of DOS 2 - I bet they'd laugh.
Before anyone accuses me of just justifying piracy, I DO download a lot of games that look mediocre or bad, then play them for a few days and shelve them. That's illegal and I make no bones about it. Then again, these are not games I would buy (and usually they're not even sold on this continent!) I also have stacks and stacks of legit games that I pay for even though I don't have to. In this age, hard retail copies are like a tip jar - if you appreciate the product, buy the real one to give some payoff to the creators/publishers/distributors/etc and help convince them to make sequels. If you just buy a random game without a demo, you'll probably get burned to the tune of about $60 around here and get something barely functional and buggy. Nothing in place to protect you from that though - most places don't even take returns on any software, so good luck trading it in for 1/4 what you paid.
Homebrew is an excellent one depending on the system. My PSP does wardriving, reads textfiles, plays fullscreen XviDs, and runs various emulators and homemade games. It isn't even chipped, though the firmware is probably illegal under the DMCA.
Piracy is bad, the DMCA is far far worse. I wonder how they checked for modchips anyway? Ransack the home and disassemble every console? I'm picturing about $20,000,000 worth of broken consoles knowing how ICE is notorious for searching. I hope it's not illegal there to bring a class-action suit against them - Over here, Customs Canada is pretty much unaccountable for what they do.
It's kind of sad... I have two dual-layer DVD+/-RW burners but I've never gone out and bought one, they're just basic PC gear now. So I got a spool of 50 dual-layer discs to cover all the dual-layers I'll ever need to burn. By the time I get to the end of the spool, my drives will probably have been replaced with something newer. ...sure would have been nice to have this cheap abundant tech leapfrogging earlier on in the life cycle rather than a bunch of little hops just before launching into a new age of conflicting unaffordable formats. I guess that's the way it tends to go, but it just feels WRONG having a container of media last as long as the drive itself. Even LS-120 had a (slightly) better run than that...
Just ranting...
Haha... you nailed me on that one!
I don't live in the USA, but I was trying to grab a roughly Japanish chunk of land (Maybe California would be... a LOT closer) to point out that a single state could cost as much as the whole country/nation of Japan to supply enough towers. Of course there are factors like cel usage, population density, etc. but overall Japan and South Korea can enjoy a much more agile wireless infrastructure due to small land mass and relatively few competing carriers.
Florida? You're right. That's way too small to compare, as many single states would be. Even considering the very patchy service that it would probably get though, America's 9.6M sq km would be no small feat to cover in tightly-packed high speed DoCoMo 3G / 4G cels - it would probably be the last upgrade of its type for another decade unless it proved wildly popular.
(I also keep specifying the Japanese tech because who knows - there could be a breakthrough that makes it possible here. My bet's on broadband wireless Internet though.)
Japan HAS been stuck in a recession for about 10 years. That doesn't invalidate their products though. Can you really look at a cel phone with an easy to use interface, big bright OLED full color screens on the inside and out, a 5MP camera, built-in e-wallet (thumbprint-scan released smartcard wallet) function, high speed internet, an HTML-compatible web browser, MP3 playback, online chatting, smooth fullscreen video conferencing, AND solid service throughout the country and still call it inferior? I'd take one in a second, and those features aren't even so remarkable anymore...
I think it's largely a matter of area covered. When you look at the cells for a high-speed network in Japan, they are very close together so that wherever you are, you're fairly close to at least one station. Covering all of Japan probably costs around the same it would cost to do Florida. I'm betting you'd have a LOT more Japanese customers taking advantage of this since i-Mode has soundly stomped WAP for usability and billing plans... from the beginning of time, and you can do more with it.
So we keep getting cheap stone-age phones because most people don't even want the extra junk they pile in to North American phones NOW, much less getting 10x as much, and because of that, it would not be worthwhile to heap billions into upgrading the country's infrastructure (also quite hard when we have so many carriers and not just mainly DoCoMo / KDDI) just for a network that would probably be obsolete in 5 years.
It sucks... I want a DoCoMo phone too... but I can see why this is not the place to do it - at least with the current Japanese technology. Now if we get more phones that can take advantage of high-speed internet over wi-fi, that would level the playing field a certain amount (even if our residential high-speed connections are pretty slow too...)
I had an old Nokia PCS phone, and now a GSM Nokia 3220, both bars. ...it does have a web browser, but it uses WAP, which is like a kick in the face even on a full sized screen.
a) I lock my keys and they've never come unlocked in a decade.
b) The unlock code on both is "[Enter], #". When it rings, I just press the answer or enter buttons though.
c) Impress? It takes some getting used to, but you just pretend there's a mic there and speak normally, and it works fine - even with a quiet voice. Somehow they don't pick up much ambient noise.
My first cel phone was a Motorola StarTAC flip phone and while it got burning hot while using it due to its silly thinness, I have to say it wasn't as flimsy as it felt - the cables in the hinge never wore out after years of use, and I even dropped it from a moving bicycle and it just bounced.
Whichever you pick is fine either way, but I'm afraid those three sticking points don't really apply, at least on Nokias...
All valid points, but the quality control provided by these companies, combined with their motivation to seek developers and games to license has managed to make consoles THE dominant platform for gaming, with PCs' open platform taking a sliver of what their closed counterparts do despite all their freedom. That, and consoles' incredible ease of use, and ability to simply run their software without issues (except in decreasingly rare cases of a buggy game release... if modern consoles couldn't patch games, devs would have no choice but to release better-tested products...)
BTW, the GP32 is an open, versatile, decently capable handheld console (and the newer ones are even cooler,) but instead of putting the whole mess to bed, it faded into obscurity outside of South Korea, where Japanese consoles are quite expensive (or so I've heard?)
I work in your typical IT support job, and deal with a LOT of dirty keyboards/mice. I would never put a keyboard into a dishwasher, both for the board and washer's sake, but I certainly welcome sanitization efforts. I've considered a spray bottle full of strong rubbing alcohol (BTW, if you try this, remember not to inhale it or let the mist get in your face!) For personal use, I have hope in the silver-based antibacterial coatings that are appearing on some peripherals and cel phones now, though even those would have to be cleaned occasionally...
These are actually fairly common in Canada now... in a city of about 50k I know there are at least a dozen or two - they kind of stand out, haha...
They're good, functional, ugly ugly cars. I just don't see why we can't get some proper kei cars here like the ones sold by Japanoid.com (not a plug, never dealt with 'em.) They look ok, work well, and you can even get pretty sporty models too. I think the biggest barrier to the Smart car is that it looks really weird - like some kind of go-kart pod. Still, if I got one for free, I'd drive it because like I said, it's still a pretty good car...
True, but there was also Pocket Fighter with the same mini characters, and later "Super Puzzle Fighter II X: For Matching Service" which like the "Matching Service" version of Vampire, was kind of an ultimate customizable compilation of the different versions.
I never got that with my Voodoo 3, but ended up with about 250% the card I bought with my GeForce 2. ...it looked pretty nice when rendering, and could do multi-layer textures in Unreal Tournament which was AWESOME. It also supported my old DOS Glide games. Still, overall it was hell to use. If I didn't have so many Glide games I would have turfed it way sooner. 3dfx are the only company I know of who could write worse drivers than Creative.
My Voodoo 3 3500 memories are mostly watching it crash if I tried to task switch, not being able to render in a window, not being able to do 24-32 bit color, and having video capture capped to 320x240 but still using all of my CPU and dropping 1/4 of the frames. Oh yeah, and getting a special custom MiniGL driver for a handful of games that were supported by it, and watching all manner of chaos erupt if the wrong version was used.
I used to have some gripes with Windows back in the Win95 days. Then I looked around, tried OS/2, BeOS, and about a dozen versions of Linux, which I check up on every few years.
Trying other OSes has led me to actually like Windows. It has its flaws, but they ALL have their fair share of flaws. Windows is by far the most USEFUL OS I have tried. I can run a massive amount of the software I want to run, and perform common tasks like driver installations very easily. These days, it isn't even a question to me. The biggest FUD I hear is about the horrible security in Windows (and everyone knows it has a steady stream of exploits released for it)... I had the SubSeven trojan about 10 years ago. That was my last security incident. Now I'm behind a simple household router, and rarely even face a threat. The last time I saw a BSOD was when I had a bad stick of ram in my Win2k3 box a few years ago.
For me, Linux is starting to look viable in certain distributions, but there is absolutely no reason to use it. If you like it, then have fun.
This is stupid - this petty side-taking and continued fighting after deployment of both formats is only hurting consumers.
So... I'm not arguing morality, but what do you think someone is more likely to do when faced with this situation? Buy a Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD player? Or just download torrents of both?
Looking back at things like Intel NICs, webcams, and codecs like Indeo, Intel has been fiddling with this stuff for ages now. If they had to fall back on something not based on making fast high-tech chips, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing they would naturally have on the backburner. Back in the day I loved Indeo - it was the only codec that could play a very clear video at 800x600 on my PIII 450.
You just summed it up better than anyone here. If they wanted to move in on his territory, they wouldn't try to copy a >20 year old game. Then again - they'd make a truly innovative console game. I don't think they're taking it so seriously either though.
I agree entirely. My favorite era for Square was back on the PS1 when they actually tried different things with mixed results: Tobal, Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, Bushido Blade, Einhander, Ehrgeiz... that was neat! Even the ones that weren't very fun were well debugged and polished, and at the time, I pretty much expected that from Square. If they kept experimenting on that path, I'd probably have at least a dozen current Square titles.
Instead, it's usually another (slightly) interactive movie with really high detail cutscenes, and a boring retelling of the same cliches that run through anything they make with "Final Fantasy" in the title. I had fun with that - in FFVII. Then I looked around and saw it run back through at least 6, up through 8, 9, 10, 10-2, even the movies, and getting worse each time. Now even if an awesome FF game came out, I'd probably miss it since the series has become synonymous with awful, drawn out cutscene games catering to a hardcore market of those they haven't lost yet. I wish they'd go back to doing other game genres because they could actually innovate a bit and mix things up, but now that they're Square-Enix, I suspect Square is just their FF brand.
Not that I automatically hate all their games... I do intend to cautiously check out Odin Sphere when it hits. I've just become accustomed to associating the company with a huge array of love it or hate it games that hold no interest for me whatsoever, so that whenever something new comes from them, it's hard to hold back the cynicism and some resentment of how much more they clearly could have done instead of cramming another disc with lush prerendered FMV telling a story that's on its last legs and stretching it out by making you wander the map fighting random repetetive monsters. (Though kudos for reducing that in recent games.) I'm sure to get modded down for this by PO'ed fans, but it can't be helped. When a great company full of skilled developers churns out pablum, it really bothers me and I'll call it as I see it.
When I first started in the industry, I was 18, working at a small company, and the licensing status of our software was uncertain with no records, but piles and piles of physical copies of the software we used. It is possible we exceeded our site license (if applicable?) but I figured it was up to the company to watch - I was just a tech.
Now I work at a local college, and I wouldn't even use my personal workstation to download something pirated for use at home. Work just isn't the place for pirated software. It would also be pretty stupid of a company to fire you for not breaking the law for them, though I realize they'd probably have an excuse...
So ultimately, no. Never pirate software at work. If you decide to do so at work or at home, be prepared to take full responsibility for it - and that means a lot more than getting around to paying retail price when they catch you!
Personally I think it's great that they use less power, though I'm curious how much energy it takes to make the electronics that drive the tube...
I don't like them though, as I find the light is a bit harsh, and the humming noise the transformers make is very annoying. I'm not exactly weak to machine noise as I sleep in the same room as a PC with 7 fans, but I have two of these things in my bathroom and often when I have a shower I turn the lights off because being in a small room with two CFLs droning on is a bit headache-inducing.
Then again, a lot of the time I simply don't use room lights. If I did, I would definitely look into LED alternatives though since I'm sick of the annoyances of fluorescents. (Some time I'm going to have to put one on a dimmer and see what it does... or find a video. Still, there are times when I don't want everything bathed in high-intensity light but don't want pitch dark either!)
On a carpeted floor, you would just sweep it up and pretend it's clean, then vacuum later anyway because it's getting dirty, expelling some of the spilled mercury into the air. ...or spray some clear varnish to contain the spill and never vacuum that spot again! haha...
(Actually, if I were worried about it, I'd probably just go over it with a steam cleaner after sweeping it up if I had access to one. I would definitely want to use some kind of vacuum on a piece of carpet with glass slivers on it though!)
In North America, class C is electrical, and class D is for extinguishing metal fires.
I'd say look for a class CD extinguisher, but I have no idea how available they might be as C use nonconductive media, and D are usually salt and powdered copper...
I agree that the current designs are unsafe, but your analogy betrays a misunderstanding of how the batteries actually work - there is no solid Lithium in a Lithium ion battery. There is however, a cathode made of Lithium Cobalt Oxide, which can catastrophically overheat if heated beyond a given point. If the cathode is replaced with something else (shouldn't take too long, we have multiple companies with different competing technologies vying to be the next standard now) the battery would be much safer.
There is always the dilemma of X amount of potential energy in a pack with Y volume though - with any battery type. When you're carrying a CD case sized battery with 90Wh (?) a catastrophic failure runs the risk of releasing a LOT of energy either at once, or over time. But that's something we'll just have to deal with and make safer as we miniaturize and improve portable power technologies.
I own a PSX, PS2, and PSP, as well as all sorts of Sony gear (receiver, camera, headphones...)
But even then, the PS3 is way too expensive and at this point, I would only get Motorstorm, and Ninja Gaiden when it comes out.
The 360... I'd get one for $20. I'd pay more, but most owners I know are at least on their THIRD units! Frankly, I'm afraid to even put one in my home for fear it'd burst into flame like the first XBox... If they can make it reliable, then even I might get one. Not before then.
The Wii... eh. If I should ever happen to see one in any store anywhere, I hope there are a few original games for it by then.
I'm mostly a console gamer, but for now I'm still enjoying the "last gen" PS2/Gamecube/Dreamcast and my brand new gaming PC. Looking at the current consoles just makes me sad so far...
Actually it's because Sony is organized into what they call "silos" - each department is mostly independent from bottom to top without contact from others.
That is, Sony BMG(?) music (the rootkit villains), is not Sony Pictures (ARCCOS), and neither is Sony Electronics (gadgets, appliances), or Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (Playstation) or its closely related cousins Sony Computer Entertainment Kobe, US, and Europe. In Japan there is equally unrelated Sony Cosmetics, and Sony Life Insurance.
Although they're not part of one, to boycott "Sony" is like boycotting a whole Keiretsu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu).
So yeah... I love their AV equipment. I'm a fan of their game consoles though the PS3 is still a bit weak for me, I love my PSP. Their music and movies? I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.
Nice article...
:/
I mostly agree with it, though I still see the need for levels in some games, as it just makes logical sense, and provides a framework to progress though the game in a set order.
On the flipside though, I have such a wide selection of games available now that if I get stuck somewhere and die 50 times in a row in the same place for a week or two, the game gets shelved for "later" play (like, 10 years later for 5 minutes) and I start another because I simply don't have time to waste on a game that only makes me miserable. Even if the only obstacle is in one point in the game, that's where the game ends.