There is a big difference between closing bittorrent sites that act as trackers for pirated materials and using the bittorrent protocol for distributing MPAA's approved legal content. Just the same as Blizzard using bittorrent to seed patches for World of Warcraft while not condoning piracy of their software over bittorrent. It would be beneficial if the MPAA, RIAA or others embraced using p2p such as bittorrent because it helps to legitimize p2p. This doesn't mean protection for pirates, but it does mean protection for the protocol (i.e. we won't see legislation forcing it to be killed at the ISP level).
"They claim that you won't be less powerful if you don't buy the chapters, but then they use Magic: The Gathering as an example. And as I imagine most of the Slashdot crowd knows, that person with a suitcase full of Magic cards doesn't just have 'more options' than someone with one pack of cards. They have 'better combinations' which are indeed more powerful."
Very true. An intelligent player will be able to come up with new combinations that work well, but in general with Magic I've seen people just rehash known good deck builds. I tried Guild Wars but it really felt more like a super Diablo than an MMO. I hated the fact that you had to choose a small set of skills before you left on your quest. Juggling which powers to take and which to leave is a pain. Supposedly the expansion packs will also have new character classes to play as well as new quests/zones.
15 hours a week is a little over 2 hours a day. Much the same as many people spend watching television. I probably play somewhere in that range, have a family with two kids. Of course, I play with my son, so you can count that as father/son time.
Buahahaha! Please, pretty please can you stop by the next Apple fanboy article post and liven up the discussion? I've been so depressed since the old fashioned GNU/Linux fanatic have been surpassed in number by the legion of Jobs here on Slashdot.
Yes I support censorship, repression and outright destruction of the Blog. We must destroy this menace before it gets out of hand. An unleashed Blog on the loose devours everything in its path! Trundling its huge, slimy form across the land, swallowing up people and animals for the soul purpose of increasing its ever expanding girth! We must stop the Blog!
Yep. Because it's not like IBM has anything to do with the development of the G5 or any other model of PowerPC processor. Nope, the whole PowerPC chip line was made from tin cans and telephone wiring by the Woz in his garage under the guidance of Mr. (say hallelujah!) Jobs. You should have seen the size of the bread board!
Only as a historical exercise. Dungeon Keeper 2 has all the good stuff as far as I can recall. The games are very similar - with DK 2 being an evolution of the first game.
Hey that's not fair. In this case it's the PEOPLE on the space station who were unpredictable. After all they ate the extra food, not the space station.
Well... I enjoyed Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital and Magic Carpet quite a bit. I admit true to Molyneux form, Dungeon Keeper didn't quite live up to the hype but it was good fun. I would love to see someone revisit the concept with current technology.
I can recall playing a game as a kid which was I think was called Evolution. You started out as an amoeba and worked up the evolutionary ladder through a series of action oriented stages. I can't recall all the stages, but there was a beaver one which had you building a dam. The last stage was human of course. I believe you battled against evil robots. When you cleared the final human stage, there was a big explosion wiping out most life on Earth. And of course you started all over again, as a lowly amoeba.
Shadow the Hedgehog. Packin' some heat. Laying down the lead. I have high hopes, like maybe he'll put some bitches in their place or jack a sweet caddy to roll in.
If Sony had it their way, they would probably love to have you NEED a Sony DVD player to play Sony movies. I don't really see any benefit. Homogenizing the hardware for compatability would mean that developers wouild be less likely to program for anything but the lowest common denominator. Hardware differences and software library are the two things the console companies use to try to sell their systems. And they want you to buy an Xbox game, or a Gamecube game or whatever - because they make their money off of a portion of sales of the software. A DVD player company like Apex doesn't make a royalty off of the movie you purchased. The exception being companies like Sony which own video content - the software as well as the hardware.
I played both Morrowind and Vampire Bloodlines mostly in third person because of the increased FOV. I got sick of not seeing some baddie come up behind me. For a true FPS, third person doesn't work well because it hampers your aiming. I think Heretic 2 is one of the only computer third person shooters I felt had the control system and camera correct.
Sony officially DOESN'T sell the Linux kit to North America anymore. Sure you can dig them up. A quick look on ebay shows 2 auctions, with the one closest to finish being up at $178.50. Nice price for a 40GB hard drive, USB mouse and keyboard. Also good luck with a new slim PS/2 - no room for the hard drive in there. No real room for a mod chip either. Sure you can softmod an Xbox just as you can with a PS/2, hard mods tend to be more reliable and offer more options. 75% of games work off the HD? I've only found one Xbox came I couldn't install on the HD. More memory and a bigger hard drive (I put a 160GB drive in, but you can go bigger) gives more room for programs. More memory (64MB helps when running later arcade games in MAME. And yes you can mod the memory higher if you really want to go crazy (CPU too). For connectivity, things like XBMC (Xbox media center) work via FTP or even Windows (Samba) shares over the network. You get DIVX, XVID, MPEG, MP3, OGG etc. playback just fine. I'm sure there is a ton of PS/2 homebrew stuff just as well as on the Xbox. Kind of scares me when the first search result for keylauncher brings up a page noting "warning, this release has been confirmed to damage your HDD, use at your own risk". The Xbox has great dashboard replacements such as Avalaunch that handle organizing and launching home brew programs and HD installed games. So yeah, screw the Xbox frat guy Halo player as stereotyped by Penny Arcade. I really have no interest in how MS markets the Xbox. It annoys me too. But, wahoo - it sure is a nice cheap toy for me to play with and who cares about the official games.
Yeah, it's pretty stupid logic. Of course if you have an OS with available source it's a much better chance. So I would imagine we may see Linux on the Xbox 2 but no way Mac OS X. The PowerPC chip in the Tivo, IBM PowerPC 403GCX - is a very low power chip designed for embedded applications. It is way slow by desktop computer standard. Which is why Tivo starts to suck juggling recording schedules once you have 15 or 20 season passes programmed in.
"Do you really think that Microsoft intended it to be that way? "
No I don't. So you get to stick it to the man with your modded Xbox. Screw you MS, look I bought the console you don't make any money off of, turned it into a machine that plays Nintendo ROMs and will never buy an Xbox game!
Um, doesn't that mean you are kind of, you know, saying that it sucks?
"it's just Microsoft's typical "dumbing-down" for the masses. They can make more $$ from zillions of average Joes than from nerds, and as they care about $/quality, there you go.."
The Xbox is the most nerd friendly console out there. It has easy to solder in mod chips, a hard drive you can upgrade, ports that can use standard USB keyboards and mice with a plug convertor, tons of free emulation, homebrew games, ports and media software. And yes it can run Linux.
I think at this point for an MMO if they don't state Mac, Xbox, PS2 etc. You can pretty much assume it's a Windows game. If they are going to support other platforms I'm sure they would definately note that (as Blizzard did with World of Warcraft).
"From what I recall, I think I probably made the choice of just forcing my perception into a specific reference coordinate system, so in any given room or area or tunnel I assigned an arbitrary "down" and generally remained oriented to that coordinate system until I headed into another area, at which point I picked a new "down."
Yeah this is what I did for most of the single player. It was really only during multiplayer that I would lose my sense of direction. Doing the circle dance (more like sphere dance) in Descent was pretty crazy. Used to use the old MS Sidewinder joystick which allowed you to rotate in all directions due to the swiveling stick. You didn't miss all that much as far as the direct modem stuff went. It worked pretty well for games like RTS, where two on two was a lot of fun, but for FPS and the like, nothing beat out having a LAN setup.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a big difference between closing bittorrent sites that act as trackers for pirated materials and using the bittorrent protocol for distributing MPAA's approved legal content. Just the same as Blizzard using bittorrent to seed patches for World of Warcraft while not condoning piracy of their software over bittorrent.
It would be beneficial if the MPAA, RIAA or others embraced using p2p such as bittorrent because it helps to legitimize p2p. This doesn't mean protection for pirates, but it does mean protection for the protocol (i.e. we won't see legislation forcing it to be killed at the ISP level).
"They claim that you won't be less powerful if you don't buy the chapters, but then they use Magic: The Gathering as an example. And as I imagine most of the Slashdot crowd knows, that person with a suitcase full of Magic cards doesn't just have 'more options' than someone with one pack of cards. They have 'better combinations' which are indeed more powerful."
Very true. An intelligent player will be able to come up with new combinations that work well, but in general with Magic I've seen people just rehash known good deck builds.
I tried Guild Wars but it really felt more like a super Diablo than an MMO. I hated the fact that you had to choose a small set of skills before you left on your quest. Juggling which powers to take and which to leave is a pain.
Supposedly the expansion packs will also have new character classes to play as well as new quests/zones.
15 hours a week is a little over 2 hours a day. Much the same as many people spend watching television.
I probably play somewhere in that range, have a family with two kids. Of course, I play with my son, so you can count that as father/son time.
Buahahaha! Please, pretty please can you stop by the next Apple fanboy article post and liven up the discussion?
I've been so depressed since the old fashioned GNU/Linux fanatic have been surpassed in number by the legion of Jobs here on Slashdot.
Yes I support censorship, repression and outright destruction of the Blog. We must destroy this menace before it gets out of hand.
An unleashed Blog on the loose devours everything in its path! Trundling its huge, slimy form across the land, swallowing up people and animals for the soul purpose of increasing its ever expanding girth!
We must stop the Blog!
Yep. Because it's not like IBM has anything to do with the development of the G5 or any other model of PowerPC processor.
Nope, the whole PowerPC chip line was made from tin cans and telephone wiring by the Woz in his garage under the guidance of Mr. (say hallelujah!) Jobs.
You should have seen the size of the bread board!
"So is the original DK worth checking out?"
Only as a historical exercise. Dungeon Keeper 2 has all the good stuff as far as I can recall. The games are very similar - with DK 2 being an evolution of the first game.
Hey that's not fair. In this case it's the PEOPLE on the space station who were unpredictable. After all they ate the extra food, not the space station.
Well... I enjoyed Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital and Magic Carpet quite a bit.
I admit true to Molyneux form, Dungeon Keeper didn't quite live up to the hype but it was good fun. I would love to see someone revisit the concept with current technology.
I can recall playing a game as a kid which was I think was called Evolution. You started out as an amoeba and worked up the evolutionary ladder through a series of action oriented stages.
I can't recall all the stages, but there was a beaver one which had you building a dam. The last stage was human of course. I believe you battled against evil robots.
When you cleared the final human stage, there was a big explosion wiping out most life on Earth. And of course you started all over again, as a lowly amoeba.
Shadow the Hedgehog. Packin' some heat. Laying down the lead.
I have high hopes, like maybe he'll put some bitches in their place or jack a sweet caddy to roll in.
Not too mention the trolling anonymous cowards!
"I know about the show because someone I live with watches it."
I feel for you. The horror, the horror!
If Sony had it their way, they would probably love to have you NEED a Sony DVD player to play Sony movies.
I don't really see any benefit. Homogenizing the hardware for compatability would mean that developers wouild be less likely to program for anything but the lowest common denominator. Hardware differences and software library are the two things the console companies use to try to sell their systems. And they want you to buy an Xbox game, or a Gamecube game or whatever - because they make their money off of a portion of sales of the software.
A DVD player company like Apex doesn't make a royalty off of the movie you purchased. The exception being companies like Sony which own video content - the software as well as the hardware.
I played both Morrowind and Vampire Bloodlines mostly in third person because of the increased FOV. I got sick of not seeing some baddie come up behind me.
For a true FPS, third person doesn't work well because it hampers your aiming. I think Heretic 2 is one of the only computer third person shooters I felt had the control system and camera correct.
Sony officially DOESN'T sell the Linux kit to North America anymore. Sure you can dig them up. A quick look on ebay shows 2 auctions, with the one closest to finish being up at $178.50. Nice price for a 40GB hard drive, USB mouse and keyboard.
Also good luck with a new slim PS/2 - no room for the hard drive in there. No real room for a mod chip either.
Sure you can softmod an Xbox just as you can with a PS/2, hard mods tend to be more reliable and offer more options.
75% of games work off the HD? I've only found one Xbox came I couldn't install on the HD.
More memory and a bigger hard drive (I put a 160GB drive in, but you can go bigger) gives more room for programs. More memory (64MB helps when running later arcade games in MAME. And yes you can mod the memory higher if you really want to go crazy (CPU too).
For connectivity, things like XBMC (Xbox media center) work via FTP or even Windows (Samba) shares over the network. You get DIVX, XVID, MPEG, MP3, OGG etc. playback just fine.
I'm sure there is a ton of PS/2 homebrew stuff just as well as on the Xbox. Kind of scares me when the first search result for keylauncher brings up a page noting "warning, this release has been confirmed to damage your HDD, use at your own risk".
The Xbox has great dashboard replacements such as Avalaunch that handle organizing and launching home brew programs and HD installed games.
So yeah, screw the Xbox frat guy Halo player as stereotyped by Penny Arcade. I really have no interest in how MS markets the Xbox. It annoys me too. But, wahoo - it sure is a nice cheap toy for me to play with and who cares about the official games.
They can wire the entire functions of a human body to a nifty ten button video game controller.
"Brain' and 'brain'! What is 'brain'?"
Yeah, it's pretty stupid logic. Of course if you have an OS with available source it's a much better chance. So I would imagine we may see Linux on the Xbox 2 but no way Mac OS X.
The PowerPC chip in the Tivo, IBM PowerPC 403GCX - is a very low power chip designed for embedded applications. It is way slow by desktop computer standard. Which is why Tivo starts to suck juggling recording schedules once you have 15 or 20 season passes programmed in.
Uh huh, are you SURE you don't fit into that "14-40 year-old bored people with disposable income and lots of free time" demographic?
"Do you really think that Microsoft intended it to be that way? "
No I don't. So you get to stick it to the man with your modded Xbox. Screw you MS, look I bought the console you don't make any money off of, turned it into a machine that plays Nintendo ROMs and will never buy an Xbox game!
"I'm not saying XBox sucks (although it does)"
Um, doesn't that mean you are kind of, you know, saying that it sucks?
"it's just Microsoft's typical "dumbing-down" for the masses. They can make more $$ from zillions of average Joes than from nerds, and as they care about $/quality, there you go.."
The Xbox is the most nerd friendly console out there. It has easy to solder in mod chips, a hard drive you can upgrade, ports that can use standard USB keyboards and mice with a plug convertor, tons of free emulation, homebrew games, ports and media software. And yes it can run Linux.
Gee - I though Dr. Who was all washed up after he turned into a woman and ran off with the Master in the Curse of the Fatal Death?
*Seriously, if you are, were or ever will be a Dr. Who fan you must see this!
Si! I think I needa burrito!
Taaaaaaaaaco! Graaaaaaande!
I think at this point for an MMO if they don't state Mac, Xbox, PS2 etc. You can pretty much assume it's a Windows game. If they are going to support other platforms I'm sure they would definately note that (as Blizzard did with World of Warcraft).
"From what I recall, I think I probably made the choice of just forcing my perception into a specific reference coordinate system, so in any given room or area or tunnel I assigned an arbitrary "down" and generally remained oriented to that coordinate system until I headed into another area, at which point I picked a new "down."
Yeah this is what I did for most of the single player. It was really only during multiplayer that I would lose my sense of direction. Doing the circle dance (more like sphere dance) in Descent was pretty crazy. Used to use the old MS Sidewinder joystick which allowed you to rotate in all directions due to the swiveling stick.
You didn't miss all that much as far as the direct modem stuff went. It worked pretty well for games like RTS, where two on two was a lot of fun, but for FPS and the like, nothing beat out having a LAN setup.