I think this debate has no clear conclusion, and you'll get something completely different depending on who you ask.
I've had the opposite experience you did: I used to get really excited about PC gaming, but I'm not a big FPS/RTS/MMORPG fan, and while PCs have a wide variety of genres, these seem to be the cores that it's set into. I used to play a lot of arcade-style games and adventure games like the ones from Sierra/Dynamix/LucasArts. Now if you want a good adventure game... install DOSBox and load one of the old ones. Maybe try Fallout again, since it seemed to be among the last of them. If you want old-fashioned jump in and play arcade style, grab a copy of Unreal Evisceration XVII, which will play just like UT, but install from 30 discs!...then drop a grand into PC upgrades to play it!
So now, my PC has a few good indie and console style games like Gish, and some from the Need for Speed series, but I do most of my gaming on the PS2, GameCube, and Dreamcast that are wired into my PC's TV tuner card! I find that on console, the variety of games/genres, as well as the number of bugs left in-game (except GTA-*,) and the overall level of polish are a lot better.
I spend a lot of time on the PC, but I've recently all but given up on it for gaming. But... like I said, it all depends on what games you're actually playing. I can't stand trying to play an FPS on a console, and if that's your genre of choice, all of this probably wasn't even an issue to you, etc...
Ultimately, I'm glad that both game industries are doing well with their things, it provides choice across platforms, but I still find that the PC and console gaming industries are two very distinct markets, even if the occasional game gets ported.
If you ever watched "Silicon Spin" on the old ZDTV/TechTV, it really drives home your point. His fame isn't so much based on accuracy, but making grand controversial predictions. I enjoyed the show, but you really had to take what he said with a grain of salt.:/
That's exactly what I thought when I read the parent comment. Isn't there a fairly high truancy rate at the high school level because there's not much the schools can do about it?
Of course, there are excellent students as well, but the flawless Japanese super-student myth seems to be a remnant of the 1980s American view of the Japanese as some kind of invading corporate juggernaut.
I've downloaded console games before... it's not a matter of cost, it's a matter of availability. Most of the games I want are both Japanese, AND out of print, so yeah... I'd happily have paid for them if they were even FOR SALE!
The thing that gets me is how people seem unaware there are non-iPod MP3 players... Sony "takes on the iPod Shuffle"... maybe, but the flash-based MP3 player market is older than the original iPod!
Apple comes in late and ill-equipped, and suddenly they're the flawless innovator? I mean, if the Shuffle had the same features as a comparable unit, or a killer interface like the iPod, I could see it, but this is just mindless brand-name consumerism. I don't get GAPple... wait, I do... why sell a product when you can sell a name? They're making a killing on this!
I agree... I spent years using Win9x and while it got the job done FAR better for me than the horror stories I would hear about BSODs and instability that plagued it, I still see a huge gap between MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 2003 (2k3 is great, if only they sold it as a desktop OS in place of XP...)
Now I have high hopes for Longhorn, but those guys are really capable of going either way in terms of quality. I just hope it's more of a polished Win2003 than another Windows ME. @_@;
MS-DOS provided an intelligible interface between the user and the computer, it managed files, and ran programs in succession. It was an operating system.
It had nothing on mainframe OSes from years earlier, but it was entirely suitable for early desktops.
Like environmentalists buying emission credits and sitting on them, open source advocates could patent common algorithms to lay first claim to them. Then, most likely, they'd simply allow free use.
It's stupid that they'd have to go so far, but we live in stupid, stupid times.:/
I have to back him on this. It's a great idea for schools that don't have the budget for software, but they'd best keep it simple like Ubuntu, or all they'll be accomplishing is confusing the kids when they get out into the real world and see just how marginal Linux is.
SFC is the System File Checker. It scans your system for files changed from the original version, and allows you to restore them from the install CD. And actually, I don't know how well it'd work against a kernel rootkit, but in most cases, it's just what the doctor ordered in the rare occasion something hijacks a DLL.
Tried it. Half the bundled apps won't run from the LiveCD, and the install CD interprets "1024x768" to mean "800x3000+" making the graphical login screen render the whole thing useless.
I'll stick with an OS that can run what I want and stay vigilant about what I install instead of one that can't even run its own bundled apps.
Who are the creators of Skype then? What spyware have they peddled?
I've seen numerous claims that "omg! If you reinterpret this part of the EULA, it might mean there's spyware inside!" but no one's been able to back it with any evidence yet. Did they have some other product that actually contained some, or is this just another FUD rumor?
I live in Canada, but I download a lot of Japanese, American, etc. programming we simply don't get here.
Though I think the ruling was later questioned (?), it all reminds me of the case of the man hacking USA digital satellite TV in Canada. It was found that it's not sold here, so it has no value on our market, and he was simply decoding the signals his house was flooded with anyway.
Going on that, how exactly are we stealing something when we're not depriving others from it, and have no way to pay for it anyway? When companies get up in arms over "TV piracy," you know the they've gone too far. What's next, being fined for public exhibition of a radio signal? ("Oh, sorry your honour! I should have used headphones! What? I have to pay royalties for each person who heard it?")
I agree completely. Traditionally, Windows gave all users complete access if they had physical access to a PC. That's because it's a workstation/home PC for a single user/few users. It's not a design flaw, it's an understanding of the audience. Linux only has its user-level security because it was based on a big corporate multiuser server OS.
If I'd used Unix for years as a professional and then saw desktop PCs come out, I'd probably want a version of Linux. As it is, I learned DOS at around v3 and watched it progress, and I'm completely comfortable in a Windows environment. I fell victim to one exploit. (WinNuke on W95. So I got remote-BSOD'ed once. That was a really dumb flaw, and it took about 1 minute to patch, including search time.) After that, it's been smooth sailing.
Out of curiosity and laziness, I run XP SP1 on my laptop, with Windows file sharing enabled, and plug it straight into all sorts of unguarded net connections. I also run BlackICE Defender as a software firewall, but it's the only line of defense and remarkably, it's never been compromised! On the other hand, if you run strange e-mail attachments and agree to install spyware (or browse with IE... that's one thing I won't defend in the least) then of course you'll be compromised, because you're doing the compromising yourself.
Yet, the Linux crowd points and laughs when the newbies get hacked, ignoring the fact that these same people would be completely lost in Linux, and would probably take years to get up to speed to perform the same tasks they do in Windows. (There's always X, and maybe one day, on one distro, I'll see it working properly without graphic glitches, slow operation, crashes, or programs that won't run/vanish when opened.) Compare the average Linux user with Windows users of comparable skill, and I think you'll find neither really has a problem with security or stability.
It's not all PEBKAC, but most of what's in the news is...
Think about it, people... 99% reliability means your gun jams every 2 boxes of ammo you fire. That is NOT usable. 90% means it fails to shoot ONE IN TEN TIMES if you authenticate each time. No thanks
It sounds like the one making the emotional decision was the writer of that article. His reasoning in favor of CRT was sketchy, arguable, and dated at best.
I understand some people will prefer CRTs. Nothing wrong with that, but I put them in the same group as the people who prefer listening to tube amps for the "warm" sound. Aesthetics are important, but I prefer my equipment to be as precise as possible.
I switched to LCD for a variety of reasons, probably the most influential is that my CRT monitor was about 3 or 4 years old, so it was too dim to display dark colors, even after recalibrating its tube output voltage, and it was blurry as hell, sometimes with a wavy appearance. I had 2 other SVGA CRTs before this, and they met the same fate in a matter of years. They looked great to start, but gradually degraded until using them was too hard on my eyes. Even new, I see a certain amount of fuzziness on CRTs that I can't stand. Now that most LCD manufacturers have a decent non-native resolution scaling system, I'd even prefer running an LCD in low-res to seeing a CRT normally. For one thing, on my LCD, a solid color is a solid color. Bright, and untextured. Even on the best CRT, I can see the pattern of physical pixels that make up the screen, giving it sort of a scaled/honeycomb look. I don't hear this complaint much, so I guess it's like being one of the few who sees a rainbow/green band on DLP TVs. I've noticed this ever since the transition from EGA to VGA, though back then, I remember it looked like random pixels had a sparkle to them. It never really bothered me until I owned an LCD and started to see SOLID colors though. Sometimes you can see a thin black grid on an LCD, but I don't mind since it's a 1:1 pixel representation.
Some people rag on LCDs for their color inaccuracy. This is ridiculous, and I'll explain why: If your job requires absolute color accuracy, you are a specialized market, and should probably keep using high-end CRTs. If you're anyone else, and don't need exact color to the nearest half-nanometer, you'll probably find that an LCD panel has brighter, more saturated colors, and yes, even better contrast than a consumer-grade CRT that ISN'T recalibrated weekly. Maybe a lower contrast RATIO, because LCDs use full-screen backlighting and black is almost always a little grey, but really... just compare the two side by side some time and you'll see what I mean.
Refresh rate isn't an issue for the vast majority anymore. I can't see a bit of ghosting on my LG1710B; it has a 16ms response time, and that's more than enough for fast-paced gaming such as an FPS.
Dead pixels? There's something up with my DVI connection, causing basically the same effect. Occasionally a pixel in the middle lower-left turns cyan until I cycle the power on my PC. If I search it out, then stare at it, it can get kind of annoying, but otherwise at 1280x1024, it's unnoticable.
Other reasons I prefer LCDs are because I spend a LOT of hours writing code, and with a CRT, my eyes would become sore, and sometimes I'd get a headache after working for several hours straight. I eventually realized this was the refresh "flicker" that I didn't think affected me.
On a more minor note, it's nice not having a monitor that makes my room unbearably hot, ravenously eats desk space, throws off a strong magnetic pulse when powering up, and takes a half a minute to warm up and display a clear image.
Anyway, in the end, it's all about which you prefer, but those are some reasons I'm never going back to CRT. I can understand if someone prefers CRT for whatever reason, but that article was just funny in it's conviction that CRTs are clearly superior.:p
Ah, slashdot. Where someone saying "fuck 'em" about Microsoft doesn't get modded, but you can be pounded into the dirt for pointing out a weakness of Linux.
I don't think the GBA to PS2 factor really matters as they are completely different markets. Sony has never made a portable before, but if it works anything like their experience in consoles, they'll sweep Nintendo into the corner and let them take the kids' and budget gaming markets.
I have a GB, GBC, GBA, SP, and GCN, and they're great systems, but so far I've seen Nintendo offer a system with minor graphical improvements and some fiddly gimmicks I really don't want on a handheld, with a lineup of games I'm not really interested in because it looks like they were written as DS gimmick demos. (oo, steer/aim with a touchscreen! Blow on the mic!)
In the other corner, we have a system that's like a handheld PS2. The Japanese "mita?" ads say it best really: Someone will be sitting there playing their PSP, and someone else wanders by and just stares in awe at it until they're noticed. A nice large screen should help those advanced 3D graphics stay nice and visible in a variety of situations. Several of the launch titles look like solid games on their own without falling back on awkward "features." In fact, at least the Armored Core game is making a portable AND console release.
I'd go for the PSP, except for one thing, it's not even for sale in North America yet, something that's going to hurt Sony in the long run. Also, the GBA really isn't insufficient in any way, and I haven't come close to beating all the good games for it, so I don't NEED a new handheld... I have a backlog of awesome games as it is! Maybe it's just me, but this whole new "handheld war" just seems like noise from both sides to get sales up again.
Like the parent post says though, it comes down to what you're looking for in a handheld and people will grab whichever has what they want. I just can't help but see Nintendo's other "innovations" when I see the DS. Things like the Track & Field pad, U-Force, ROB, Power Glove, Super Scope, Virtual Boy, GB camera, FF: Crystal Chronicles GBA link cable, etc... Innovative for sure, but useless outside the scope of the one (or up to a half dozen sometimes!) games they were made for.
Yes! I was going to post almost the same thing! I'd never heard of "tsu" being hard to pronounce, though my Japanese teacher was Chinese and spoke English with valley girl inflections. O_o; I usually hear people trip up on "fu" and the "r" column the worst.
I think you'd like the Korean alphabet Hangul... it's ingeniously designed so you can pick it up in an evening of study, and all the pronunciation-modifying marks make sense in a way. I've actually been too busy to go into vocabulary/syntax, but the alphabet came almost intuitively once I got a handle on the vowels and their variations.
I'm actually finding that programming languages are no different if you have the general linguistic understanding down. Right now I'm taking VB/ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, ActionScript 2, and SQL / PL/SQL in college after taking C++ in another term... It's not nearly as hard as most would think to switch between them since the basic concepts are so similar among all of them.
I suspect you've already realized that, but I'm amazed by the way some people seem to automatically assume learning a language has to be hard, so they don't even try. It's good to see other people learning languages as a hobby!
The novel is a very new form of art. It was unthinkable until the invention of printing and impractical until a significant fraction of the population became literate. But when the conditions were right, it suddenly became huge.
What does he consider "new" or "art?"
The "Hyakumanto Darani" was a printed document reproduced in Japan in the 760s. The Tale of Genji was released around 1010. That's almost a millenium ago. Gutenberg demonstrated movable type in 1448. New compared to cave paintings? Not really, but compared to the numerous contemporary art forms, printed novels are pretty old hat.
It's hard to believe no one has mentioned Ragnarok Online yet. In North America, people seem to doubt the success of MMORPGs, but South Korea seems to be producing a considerable amount of them. In addition to Lineage and the new Lineage 2, there's Ragnarok Online, a Diablo-like socially-centered MMORPG that has 5000-7000 users online at a given time on either of their "unpopular" international servers, as well as more successful franchises with more servers in Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Thailand, Indonesia, recently Europe, and through a company called "GungHo," Japan.
Standing on its own, it gets to be a boring diablo-ish game once you've finally travelled the world and know all the dungeons (though they keep adding more with new monsters/gear/skills/player classes) but the community of players in this game is like none I've ever seen. It really keeps things entertaining.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this debate has no clear conclusion, and you'll get something completely different depending on who you ask.
...then drop a grand into PC upgrades to play it!
I've had the opposite experience you did: I used to get really excited about PC gaming, but I'm not a big FPS/RTS/MMORPG fan, and while PCs have a wide variety of genres, these seem to be the cores that it's set into. I used to play a lot of arcade-style games and adventure games like the ones from Sierra/Dynamix/LucasArts. Now if you want a good adventure game... install DOSBox and load one of the old ones. Maybe try Fallout again, since it seemed to be among the last of them. If you want old-fashioned jump in and play arcade style, grab a copy of Unreal Evisceration XVII, which will play just like UT, but install from 30 discs!
So now, my PC has a few good indie and console style games like Gish, and some from the Need for Speed series, but I do most of my gaming on the PS2, GameCube, and Dreamcast that are wired into my PC's TV tuner card! I find that on console, the variety of games/genres, as well as the number of bugs left in-game (except GTA-*,) and the overall level of polish are a lot better.
I spend a lot of time on the PC, but I've recently all but given up on it for gaming. But... like I said, it all depends on what games you're actually playing. I can't stand trying to play an FPS on a console, and if that's your genre of choice, all of this probably wasn't even an issue to you, etc...
Ultimately, I'm glad that both game industries are doing well with their things, it provides choice across platforms, but I still find that the PC and console gaming industries are two very distinct markets, even if the occasional game gets ported.
If you ever watched "Silicon Spin" on the old ZDTV/TechTV, it really drives home your point. His fame isn't so much based on accuracy, but making grand controversial predictions. I enjoyed the show, but you really had to take what he said with a grain of salt. :/
That's exactly what I thought when I read the parent comment. Isn't there a fairly high truancy rate at the high school level because there's not much the schools can do about it?
Of course, there are excellent students as well, but the flawless Japanese super-student myth seems to be a remnant of the 1980s American view of the Japanese as some kind of invading corporate juggernaut.
I've downloaded console games before... it's not a matter of cost, it's a matter of availability. Most of the games I want are both Japanese, AND out of print, so yeah... I'd happily have paid for them if they were even FOR SALE!
The thing that gets me is how people seem unaware there are non-iPod MP3 players... Sony "takes on the iPod Shuffle"... maybe, but the flash-based MP3 player market is older than the original iPod!
Apple comes in late and ill-equipped, and suddenly they're the flawless innovator? I mean, if the Shuffle had the same features as a comparable unit, or a killer interface like the iPod, I could see it, but this is just mindless brand-name consumerism. I don't get GAPple... wait, I do... why sell a product when you can sell a name? They're making a killing on this!
I agree... I spent years using Win9x and while it got the job done FAR better for me than the horror stories I would hear about BSODs and instability that plagued it, I still see a huge gap between MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 2003 (2k3 is great, if only they sold it as a desktop OS in place of XP...)
Now I have high hopes for Longhorn, but those guys are really capable of going either way in terms of quality. I just hope it's more of a polished Win2003 than another Windows ME. @_@;
MS-DOS provided an intelligible interface between the user and the computer, it managed files, and ran programs in succession. It was an operating system.
It had nothing on mainframe OSes from years earlier, but it was entirely suitable for early desktops.
Great idea...
:/
Like environmentalists buying emission credits and sitting on them, open source advocates could patent common algorithms to lay first claim to them. Then, most likely, they'd simply allow free use.
It's stupid that they'd have to go so far, but we live in stupid, stupid times.
I have to back him on this. It's a great idea for schools that don't have the budget for software, but they'd best keep it simple like Ubuntu, or all they'll be accomplishing is confusing the kids when they get out into the real world and see just how marginal Linux is.
SFC is the System File Checker. It scans your system for files changed from the original version, and allows you to restore them from the install CD. And actually, I don't know how well it'd work against a kernel rootkit, but in most cases, it's just what the doctor ordered in the rare occasion something hijacks a DLL.
Tried it. Half the bundled apps won't run from the LiveCD, and the install CD interprets "1024x768" to mean "800x3000+" making the graphical login screen render the whole thing useless.
I'll stick with an OS that can run what I want and stay vigilant about what I install instead of one that can't even run its own bundled apps.
Who are the creators of Skype then? What spyware have they peddled?
I've seen numerous claims that "omg! If you reinterpret this part of the EULA, it might mean there's spyware inside!" but no one's been able to back it with any evidence yet. Did they have some other product that actually contained some, or is this just another FUD rumor?
I live in Canada, but I download a lot of Japanese, American, etc. programming we simply don't get here.
Though I think the ruling was later questioned (?), it all reminds me of the case of the man hacking USA digital satellite TV in Canada. It was found that it's not sold here, so it has no value on our market, and he was simply decoding the signals his house was flooded with anyway.
Going on that, how exactly are we stealing something when we're not depriving others from it, and have no way to pay for it anyway? When companies get up in arms over "TV piracy," you know the they've gone too far. What's next, being fined for public exhibition of a radio signal? ("Oh, sorry your honour! I should have used headphones! What? I have to pay royalties for each person who heard it?")
I agree completely. Traditionally, Windows gave all users complete access if they had physical access to a PC. That's because it's a workstation/home PC for a single user/few users. It's not a design flaw, it's an understanding of the audience. Linux only has its user-level security because it was based on a big corporate multiuser server OS.
If I'd used Unix for years as a professional and then saw desktop PCs come out, I'd probably want a version of Linux. As it is, I learned DOS at around v3 and watched it progress, and I'm completely comfortable in a Windows environment. I fell victim to one exploit. (WinNuke on W95. So I got remote-BSOD'ed once. That was a really dumb flaw, and it took about 1 minute to patch, including search time.) After that, it's been smooth sailing.
Out of curiosity and laziness, I run XP SP1 on my laptop, with Windows file sharing enabled, and plug it straight into all sorts of unguarded net connections. I also run BlackICE Defender as a software firewall, but it's the only line of defense and remarkably, it's never been compromised! On the other hand, if you run strange e-mail attachments and agree to install spyware (or browse with IE... that's one thing I won't defend in the least) then of course you'll be compromised, because you're doing the compromising yourself.
Yet, the Linux crowd points and laughs when the newbies get hacked, ignoring the fact that these same people would be completely lost in Linux, and would probably take years to get up to speed to perform the same tasks they do in Windows. (There's always X, and maybe one day, on one distro, I'll see it working properly without graphic glitches, slow operation, crashes, or programs that won't run/vanish when opened.) Compare the average Linux user with Windows users of comparable skill, and I think you'll find neither really has a problem with security or stability.
It's not all PEBKAC, but most of what's in the news is...
Couldn't have said it better!
Think about it, people... 99% reliability means your gun jams every 2 boxes of ammo you fire. That is NOT usable. 90% means it fails to shoot ONE IN TEN TIMES if you authenticate each time. No thanks
You're right, but LaserDisc only died a few years ago. It's just one of those technologies that didn't do well in North America.
Link
It sounds like the one making the emotional decision was the writer of that article. His reasoning in favor of CRT was sketchy, arguable, and dated at best.
:p
I understand some people will prefer CRTs. Nothing wrong with that, but I put them in the same group as the people who prefer listening to tube amps for the "warm" sound. Aesthetics are important, but I prefer my equipment to be as precise as possible.
I switched to LCD for a variety of reasons, probably the most influential is that my CRT monitor was about 3 or 4 years old, so it was too dim to display dark colors, even after recalibrating its tube output voltage, and it was blurry as hell, sometimes with a wavy appearance. I had 2 other SVGA CRTs before this, and they met the same fate in a matter of years. They looked great to start, but gradually degraded until using them was too hard on my eyes. Even new, I see a certain amount of fuzziness on CRTs that I can't stand. Now that most LCD manufacturers have a decent non-native resolution scaling system, I'd even prefer running an LCD in low-res to seeing a CRT normally. For one thing, on my LCD, a solid color is a solid color. Bright, and untextured. Even on the best CRT, I can see the pattern of physical pixels that make up the screen, giving it sort of a scaled/honeycomb look. I don't hear this complaint much, so I guess it's like being one of the few who sees a rainbow/green band on DLP TVs. I've noticed this ever since the transition from EGA to VGA, though back then, I remember it looked like random pixels had a sparkle to them. It never really bothered me until I owned an LCD and started to see SOLID colors though. Sometimes you can see a thin black grid on an LCD, but I don't mind since it's a 1:1 pixel representation.
Some people rag on LCDs for their color inaccuracy. This is ridiculous, and I'll explain why: If your job requires absolute color accuracy, you are a specialized market, and should probably keep using high-end CRTs. If you're anyone else, and don't need exact color to the nearest half-nanometer, you'll probably find that an LCD panel has brighter, more saturated colors, and yes, even better contrast than a consumer-grade CRT that ISN'T recalibrated weekly. Maybe a lower contrast RATIO, because LCDs use full-screen backlighting and black is almost always a little grey, but really... just compare the two side by side some time and you'll see what I mean.
Refresh rate isn't an issue for the vast majority anymore. I can't see a bit of ghosting on my LG1710B; it has a 16ms response time, and that's more than enough for fast-paced gaming such as an FPS.
Dead pixels? There's something up with my DVI connection, causing basically the same effect. Occasionally a pixel in the middle lower-left turns cyan until I cycle the power on my PC. If I search it out, then stare at it, it can get kind of annoying, but otherwise at 1280x1024, it's unnoticable.
Other reasons I prefer LCDs are because I spend a LOT of hours writing code, and with a CRT, my eyes would become sore, and sometimes I'd get a headache after working for several hours straight. I eventually realized this was the refresh "flicker" that I didn't think affected me.
On a more minor note, it's nice not having a monitor that makes my room unbearably hot, ravenously eats desk space, throws off a strong magnetic pulse when powering up, and takes a half a minute to warm up and display a clear image.
Anyway, in the end, it's all about which you prefer, but those are some reasons I'm never going back to CRT. I can understand if someone prefers CRT for whatever reason, but that article was just funny in it's conviction that CRTs are clearly superior.
I've had great luck running older games with DOSBox. I don't know if you've tried it, but it's one more trick for keeping legacy support.
Ah, slashdot. Where someone saying "fuck 'em" about Microsoft doesn't get modded, but you can be pounded into the dirt for pointing out a weakness of Linux.
I don't think the GBA to PS2 factor really matters as they are completely different markets. Sony has never made a portable before, but if it works anything like their experience in consoles, they'll sweep Nintendo into the corner and let them take the kids' and budget gaming markets.
I have a GB, GBC, GBA, SP, and GCN, and they're great systems, but so far I've seen Nintendo offer a system with minor graphical improvements and some fiddly gimmicks I really don't want on a handheld, with a lineup of games I'm not really interested in because it looks like they were written as DS gimmick demos. (oo, steer/aim with a touchscreen! Blow on the mic!)
In the other corner, we have a system that's like a handheld PS2. The Japanese "mita?" ads say it best really: Someone will be sitting there playing their PSP, and someone else wanders by and just stares in awe at it until they're noticed. A nice large screen should help those advanced 3D graphics stay nice and visible in a variety of situations. Several of the launch titles look like solid games on their own without falling back on awkward "features." In fact, at least the Armored Core game is making a portable AND console release.
I'd go for the PSP, except for one thing, it's not even for sale in North America yet, something that's going to hurt Sony in the long run. Also, the GBA really isn't insufficient in any way, and I haven't come close to beating all the good games for it, so I don't NEED a new handheld... I have a backlog of awesome games as it is! Maybe it's just me, but this whole new "handheld war" just seems like noise from both sides to get sales up again.
Like the parent post says though, it comes down to what you're looking for in a handheld and people will grab whichever has what they want. I just can't help but see Nintendo's other "innovations" when I see the DS. Things like the Track & Field pad, U-Force, ROB, Power Glove, Super Scope, Virtual Boy, GB camera, FF: Crystal Chronicles GBA link cable, etc... Innovative for sure, but useless outside the scope of the one (or up to a half dozen sometimes!) games they were made for.
Many cards work fine. You can find compatiblity lists on some sites.
He wasn't exaggerating. IBM is done with PCs because they weren't making money selling them.
Yes! I was going to post almost the same thing! I'd never heard of "tsu" being hard to pronounce, though my Japanese teacher was Chinese and spoke English with valley girl inflections. O_o; I usually hear people trip up on "fu" and the "r" column the worst.
I think you'd like the Korean alphabet Hangul... it's ingeniously designed so you can pick it up in an evening of study, and all the pronunciation-modifying marks make sense in a way. I've actually been too busy to go into vocabulary/syntax, but the alphabet came almost intuitively once I got a handle on the vowels and their variations.
I'm actually finding that programming languages are no different if you have the general linguistic understanding down. Right now I'm taking VB/ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, ActionScript 2, and SQL / PL/SQL in college after taking C++ in another term... It's not nearly as hard as most would think to switch between them since the basic concepts are so similar among all of them.
I suspect you've already realized that, but I'm amazed by the way some people seem to automatically assume learning a language has to be hard, so they don't even try. It's good to see other people learning languages as a hobby!
The novel is a very new form of art. It was unthinkable until the invention of printing and impractical until a significant fraction of the population became literate. But when the conditions were right, it suddenly became huge.
What does he consider "new" or "art?"
The "Hyakumanto Darani" was a printed document reproduced in Japan in the 760s. The Tale of Genji was released around 1010. That's almost a millenium ago. Gutenberg demonstrated movable type in 1448. New compared to cave paintings? Not really, but compared to the numerous contemporary art forms, printed novels are pretty old hat.
It's hard to believe no one has mentioned Ragnarok Online yet. In North America, people seem to doubt the success of MMORPGs, but South Korea seems to be producing a considerable amount of them. In addition to Lineage and the new Lineage 2, there's Ragnarok Online, a Diablo-like socially-centered MMORPG that has 5000-7000 users online at a given time on either of their "unpopular" international servers, as well as more successful franchises with more servers in Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Thailand, Indonesia, recently Europe, and through a company called "GungHo," Japan.
Standing on its own, it gets to be a boring diablo-ish game once you've finally travelled the world and know all the dungeons (though they keep adding more with new monsters/gear/skills/player classes) but the community of players in this game is like none I've ever seen. It really keeps things entertaining.