Old games were simple but fun. Instead of being wowed by the 'realism', you could just say "this orange blob has to eat this yellow dot without touching the red fuzzies". Imagination and curiosity were key elements of gaming. So they made tons of remakes of PacMan, Tetris, Arkanoid.. you know what ? They all suck, why ? because the remakes have more emphasis on glitter than gameplay. Ever tried Arkanoid 2000 ? It's crap. It's the same game yes, but it doesn't feel right. And no one in their right mind would contest the Gameboy version of Tetris as being the best ever.
Inexperienced fools (I call them kids) will often see an old game and think "I could remake it and make money!", so they do, they make an old game look and sound like it was born tomorrow, but then they go and do something stupid like spend 4 weeks on a realistic physics engine to make a ball bounce off a paddle and/or wall, when really we just want it to fly off randomly so we can enjoy running after it again. So these kids make nice screenshot-fodder, but they sidestep the whole purpose of the game : the visceral aspect of pushing a button and commanding a direct response.
In a sense, I like the old games because they remind me that in the beginning it was _one_ programmer and he was THE MAN. Not a team of artists, project managers, FMV directors and maybe one or two top-dollar low-IQ programmers compiling a 3rd-party game engine with just enough script modifications to change the application title. There was actually a time when writing a good game was a technical feat in itself, rather than a boring multimillion dollar project hierarchy.
IPv6 is all cute n'stuff, but adding more address space will solve one problem while inflating another: bandwidth!
If we all get to run more IPs into our offices and homes, we're going to find more ways to transfer data. Bandwidth is too expensive for what it's really worth these days.
My current cable ISP has a 10 Gb monthly quota, which I could theoretically exhaust in roughly 6 hours of peak usage. Download a linux distro, there goes 1/5th of my monthly allowance. And if I bust that limit, it's 8$ per Gb. Bandwidth is being controlled by the telecommunications giants, and we all know the service would be dirt cheap if it weren't run by profiteering gluttons.
With so many things relying on the internet for their Raison D'Etre, maybe it's time we took it out of the jaws of capitalism and made it truly public. It has well served to unite people of all nations (except maybe China); it has helped dispell the plague of racism; it has opened the door for numerous advances in modern technology, all this because of open communication. Before the telcos grab us by the balls and drive our connectivity bills through the roof as content grows richer and bulkier, I think it is of world importance that the internet become a truly free, public domain service. Who's going to host the root servers ? Who's going to install this fiber ? Who's going to handle domain registrations ? WE WILL. And governments of all nations should help out because it improves quality of living and of business for everyone. Who would bother having a phone if you could only use it 5 minutes a day or pay through the nose ? Nobody. Why should the internet be any different ?
Speaking of FMV, whatever happened to that ? I remember every stinking PC game in the 90's had FMV sequences. The trend has been perpetuated with consoles and the concept of "Hey we got a 20mb game, let's fill the cd with crap". But on the PC the trend has moved to 3D acceleration for story elements, rather than prerendered bit-hungry stuttering badly lip-synced Bink video. Man I hated Bink.
This isn't to say real 3D is always better than FMV, just look at Gabriel Knight III for an example of a great series ruined by 3D. Playing "Hunt the Pixel" is much more masochistic in 3D than 2D, because there is a theoretical infinity of pixels. Aw-ful!
But what happened to adventure fusion genres like Alone In The Dark and Flashback ? Clever puzzle-solving and moderate action seemed like a winning mix. Today they've been bastardized into Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, both chart-smashing successes. Now how about we take a step away from the military theme and do something light-hearted like the old days ?
Isn't this similar to Sony's DDCD format (that also never left the ground) ? Okay so now they're using a DVD-Rom laser to do it, but it's the end result is the same.
This is another almost-good idea that's just five years too late. And I don't plan on waiting for Pioneer to release a firmware upgrade for my drive, it's already hard enough getting support as it is.
What I really want is high-speed DVD-9 burning. Yes, 9.4gb with at least 4x speed, preferably 8x. Now get rid of these inbred 1x DVD-R media manufacturers who haven't realized nobody has 1x burners anymore, and let's get cracking!
Such 'brawlers' are actually quite simple to program, the hard part is really just creating the artwork.
For this same reason, I somehow fail to understand the need for such a 2D construction kit. Once the graphics are done, 10% of the code is dedicated to moving sprites around and handling user input, the other 90% is game scripting.
Maybe I'm just a mean old nerd, but my belief is that if you can't program, you have no business making games. If you have ideas and/or artwork then find a programmer and get cracking. There was ACK3D back in the mid-90's that allowed just about anyone to make a Doom-clone, and they did, and dozens of horrible games were released. Having a barrier to entry in this case is a good thing, because it filters the crap out.
This is all about our dear sir Oliver Kahn trying to swindle money out of something he has nothing to do with. Yes they used his name and likeness, along with everyone elses'. The developer surely licensed this stuff from a players' association because we all know it's more fun when you have real names and faces to relate to. Who would you rather play hockey as ? Joe Sakic or Joe Blow ? Now this poor german fellow just wants more money than he's entitled to, like every other big name involved in a lawsuit.
Hell no boy, for that kind of DSL, I'd give up Natalie Portman!
Until I learn Japanese and practice squinting all the time, has anyone ever considered a RAII array ? (Redundant Array of Inexpensive ISPs)
I've been wondering if I could link 2 cable modems together, or one cable and one dsl, and combine their throughput to get something funktasticly fast. And since overlimit bandwidth costs are insane, it would be cheap to just get two cable accounts (or even four) and add up the monthly quotas. It used to be done with dial-up, even some modems had 2 inbound ports but they required fancy software to pull it off.
I'm in the 256kbps crowd, and quite frankly it doesn't make such a huge difference on most content. Pop sounds like crap no matter how high the bitrate, because it's mixed with FM Radio in mind, where they already destroy the audio with multi-band compressors. Now take something that was recorded 'live', or at least mixed to sound 'live', and you'll want every last bit preserved. High-end headphones will make every defect stick out, and everything but the best encoders will introduce mucho aliasing and high-pitched warble. You can't hear it on most PC speakers (older Altec Lansings excepted), I can barely hear it on my 4000$ car stereo, but put on the headphones and every little shred of ringing and treble-mushing is heard.
Tape drives suck. They cost more per GB than HD, they're slow as molasses, and even the drives are hyper expensive. 1000$+ for the drive, then anywhere from 20-60$ for teh tapes.
Now optical storage (yes, CD-R and DVD-R) is the way to go right now. I get my blanks for 1.25$ (that's 4.7 gb/disc).. so in this 50-disc spindle I have about 235 gb of usable write-once storage for under 75$. And the drives are getting quite fast and cheap too. 4x is about 5.5 meg/second, which is about as fast as those high-end DLT drives, except a DVD burner only costs about 250$. And you can get DVD-RW if you really want random-access writing. There's not such a big gap between consumer and business-grade gear anymore, except the price.
Just find me an english speaker who can properly say "poutine". Heck, I'm french and I don't even know how it should be accented in english.. Should I retain the frency intonation, or should it be anglicized "pooh-teen" ?
I like this idea. Do it regularly, and if the same employee fails twice in a row, have him/her drawn and quartered because they're the weakest point of your security infrastructure.
In a sense (if your mind can twist far enough), maintaining a certain baseline price that's reasonable for both client and consultant, is doing a service to the clientele in general. By defining a known level of QoS for a decent price, it's teaching the client to be wary of other consultants that may charge much less for 'the same job', though the quality will vary greatly.
In my opinion there is no such thing as doing a bad job unless you're no good to begin with. You either do it or you don't, whether you're making 500$ or 5000$, once you've accepted the contract you have to do it THE RIGHT WAY. Unless I have a personal grudge against my client (and he didn't know it?!), I just couldn't offer a lesser service just because the money isn't as plentiful as I would have liked. I do it just the same. And because the service itself doesn't scale down, the price must not be scaled down either.
A company that pays less, gets stuck with mindless consultants who probably know more about marketing and mindgames than the actual work, because those people are interested in getting lots of cheap contracts and not really caring about the work they're doing.
Before looking into 3d graphics, I think there's a much more fundamental necessity that needs to be addressed : A purpose for handhelds!
Sure, they're light, they store text and run cutesy little windows applications, but what the hell are they used for, that a 20$ Casio Organizer can't do ?
If I wanted to play games on a 500$ PDA, I'd whack myself in the face and pick up my GameboyAdvance instead. PDA's are NOT computers, they are "Portable Digital Assistants". Playing games on a PDA is even dumber than running MAME on your TI-82 super calculator (because the TI-82 calculator belongs to a student who probably enjoys tetris during those long lectures). If you can afford a beefy PDA that can run games, you can probably afford a dedicated portable game console and save the thousands of game programmers who are forced to cope with substandard hardware and low-low graphics resolution and colour gamut.
If someone's going to force me to stay indoors all the time, or else face a hefty fine, then I'd rather live at the government's expense in an isolated building and receive proper treatment. If they want to protect lives it shouldn't be at the detriment of the current victims. It's already hell enough to suffer from SARS anyways.
Blame Wal-Mart, not KDS. I've found their Visual Sensations line to be absolutely fantastic value for the money, and I'd buy another 19incher without hesitation. I don't know what's with that 6 month warranty you had, mine came with a full 2 year no-charge warranty, just pay one-way shipping.
Dude, don't waste your money. She ain't comin' back! Once the Fuzoku industry gets their hands on fresh meat they're going to make her wealthy slave and she can buy her own laptop then!
But seriously, get a TiBook. Great computer, great sturdy casing. You just can't go wrong.
Agreed. If you bend over backwards for a poorly-paying job, then the client will expect everyone to bend over for peanuts, and if you don't do it, they'll find someone dumber to do it. There is a market value for consultant work and people have to stick to it, otherwise cheap labor will ruin the industry for all of us. That's why there's 'economy class' and 'first class', but you'll never get 'first class' service at economy price, or else the first class will cease to exist.
Well I think you've over-reacting here. And doing some basic research doesn't take away the fact that you'll be wrestling with software and drivers from a dozen different manufacturers. There is no such thing as the 'Perfect PC', at least not at this point in time. The closest thing to it is Dell, because _they_ spend time shopping for parts and making them work, so you don't have to.
Apple isn't evil, and they don't have a one-size-fits-all, you can customize your Mac just as you would a PC. The point is that the system they sell you WORKS, and works well.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't want to pay the M$ Tax, just don't buy a pre-built system.
You're already paying the Best-Buy Tax or the Wal-Mart tax if you buy your PC's ready to go.
Old games were simple but fun. Instead of being wowed by the 'realism', you could just say "this orange blob has to eat this yellow dot without touching the red fuzzies". Imagination and curiosity were key elements of gaming. So they made tons of remakes of PacMan, Tetris, Arkanoid.. you know what ? They all suck, why ? because the remakes have more emphasis on glitter than gameplay. Ever tried Arkanoid 2000 ? It's crap. It's the same game yes, but it doesn't feel right. And no one in their right mind would contest the Gameboy version of Tetris as being the best ever.
Inexperienced fools (I call them kids) will often see an old game and think "I could remake it and make money!", so they do, they make an old game look and sound like it was born tomorrow, but then they go and do something stupid like spend 4 weeks on a realistic physics engine to make a ball bounce off a paddle and/or wall, when really we just want it to fly off randomly so we can enjoy running after it again. So these kids make nice screenshot-fodder, but they sidestep the whole purpose of the game : the visceral aspect of pushing a button and commanding a direct response.
In a sense, I like the old games because they remind me that in the beginning it was _one_ programmer and he was THE MAN. Not a team of artists, project managers, FMV directors and maybe one or two top-dollar low-IQ programmers compiling a 3rd-party game engine with just enough script modifications to change the application title. There was actually a time when writing a good game was a technical feat in itself, rather than a boring multimillion dollar project hierarchy.
So it's a Paintbrush toy with an HTML wrapper. Back in my day we called this Imageready.
Now if only it did OCR and converted lines into tables, then we'd be on to something. I can't keep track of the time wasted futzing with tables.
IPv6 is all cute n'stuff, but adding more address space will solve one problem while inflating another: bandwidth!
If we all get to run more IPs into our offices and homes, we're going to find more ways to transfer data. Bandwidth is too expensive for what it's really worth these days.
My current cable ISP has a 10 Gb monthly quota, which I could theoretically exhaust in roughly 6 hours of peak usage. Download a linux distro, there goes 1/5th of my monthly allowance. And if I bust that limit, it's 8$ per Gb. Bandwidth is being controlled by the telecommunications giants, and we all know the service would be dirt cheap if it weren't run by profiteering gluttons.
With so many things relying on the internet for their Raison D'Etre, maybe it's time we took it out of the jaws of capitalism and made it truly public. It has well served to unite people of all nations (except maybe China); it has helped dispell the plague of racism; it has opened the door for numerous advances in modern technology, all this because of open communication. Before the telcos grab us by the balls and drive our connectivity bills through the roof as content grows richer and bulkier, I think it is of world importance that the internet become a truly free, public domain service. Who's going to host the root servers ? Who's going to install this fiber ? Who's going to handle domain registrations ? WE WILL. And governments of all nations should help out because it improves quality of living and of business for everyone. Who would bother having a phone if you could only use it 5 minutes a day or pay through the nose ? Nobody. Why should the internet be any different ?
Right, so instead of the board flexing, you just break off the entire connector off its pins.. excellent!
Speaking of FMV, whatever happened to that ? I remember every stinking PC game in the 90's had FMV sequences. The trend has been perpetuated with consoles and the concept of "Hey we got a 20mb game, let's fill the cd with crap". But on the PC the trend has moved to 3D acceleration for story elements, rather than prerendered bit-hungry stuttering badly lip-synced Bink video. Man I hated Bink.
This isn't to say real 3D is always better than FMV, just look at Gabriel Knight III for an example of a great series ruined by 3D. Playing "Hunt the Pixel" is much more masochistic in 3D than 2D, because there is a theoretical infinity of pixels. Aw-ful!
But what happened to adventure fusion genres like Alone In The Dark and Flashback ? Clever puzzle-solving and moderate action seemed like a winning mix. Today they've been bastardized into Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, both chart-smashing successes. Now how about we take a step away from the military theme and do something light-hearted like the old days ?
Step 1: obtain Xbox.
Step 2: plug video cable in RCA jack, and vice versa. Leave 2nd audio cable unjacked.
Step 3: turn on Xbox and tv.
Step 4: Enjoy your risk-free LSD trip.
Isn't this similar to Sony's DDCD format (that also never left the ground) ? Okay so now they're using a DVD-Rom laser to do it, but it's the end result is the same.
This is another almost-good idea that's just five years too late. And I don't plan on waiting for Pioneer to release a firmware upgrade for my drive, it's already hard enough getting support as it is.
What I really want is high-speed DVD-9 burning. Yes, 9.4gb with at least 4x speed, preferably 8x. Now get rid of these inbred 1x DVD-R media manufacturers who haven't realized nobody has 1x burners anymore, and let's get cracking!
Such 'brawlers' are actually quite simple to program, the hard part is really just creating the artwork.
For this same reason, I somehow fail to understand the need for such a 2D construction kit. Once the graphics are done, 10% of the code is dedicated to moving sprites around and handling user input, the other 90% is game scripting.
Maybe I'm just a mean old nerd, but my belief is that if you can't program, you have no business making games. If you have ideas and/or artwork then find a programmer and get cracking. There was ACK3D back in the mid-90's that allowed just about anyone to make a Doom-clone, and they did, and dozens of horrible games were released. Having a barrier to entry in this case is a good thing, because it filters the crap out.
This is all about our dear sir Oliver Kahn trying to swindle money out of something he has nothing to do with. Yes they used his name and likeness, along with everyone elses'. The developer surely licensed this stuff from a players' association because we all know it's more fun when you have real names and faces to relate to. Who would you rather play hockey as ? Joe Sakic or Joe Blow ? Now this poor german fellow just wants more money than he's entitled to, like every other big name involved in a lawsuit.
I know nothing about systems design, but why couldn't they have a slave ia32 cpu just running in the sidelines, somehow tied into the architecture ?
Hell no boy, for that kind of DSL, I'd give up Natalie Portman!
Until I learn Japanese and practice squinting all the time, has anyone ever considered a RAII array ? (Redundant Array of Inexpensive ISPs)
I've been wondering if I could link 2 cable modems together, or one cable and one dsl, and combine their throughput to get something funktasticly fast. And since overlimit bandwidth costs are insane, it would be cheap to just get two cable accounts (or even four) and add up the monthly quotas. It used to be done with dial-up, even some modems had 2 inbound ports but they required fancy software to pull it off.
I'm in the 256kbps crowd, and quite frankly it doesn't make such a huge difference on most content. Pop sounds like crap no matter how high the bitrate, because it's mixed with FM Radio in mind, where they already destroy the audio with multi-band compressors. Now take something that was recorded 'live', or at least mixed to sound 'live', and you'll want every last bit preserved. High-end headphones will make every defect stick out, and everything but the best encoders will introduce mucho aliasing and high-pitched warble. You can't hear it on most PC speakers (older Altec Lansings excepted), I can barely hear it on my 4000$ car stereo, but put on the headphones and every little shred of ringing and treble-mushing is heard.
MP3 and audiophiles don't mix.
Tape drives suck. They cost more per GB than HD, they're slow as molasses, and even the drives are hyper expensive. 1000$+ for the drive, then anywhere from 20-60$ for teh tapes.
Now optical storage (yes, CD-R and DVD-R) is the way to go right now. I get my blanks for 1.25$ (that's 4.7 gb/disc).. so in this 50-disc spindle I have about 235 gb of usable write-once storage for under 75$. And the drives are getting quite fast and cheap too. 4x is about 5.5 meg/second, which is about as fast as those high-end DLT drives, except a DVD burner only costs about 250$. And you can get DVD-RW if you really want random-access writing. There's not such a big gap between consumer and business-grade gear anymore, except the price.
Just find me an english speaker who can properly say "poutine". Heck, I'm french and I don't even know how it should be accented in english.. Should I retain the frency intonation, or should it be anglicized "pooh-teen" ?
So great, Palm just discovered the breakthrough of 'paging'. They're just using an 8-bit index to a 16mb page frame. Wee.
I like this idea. Do it regularly, and if the same employee fails twice in a row, have him/her drawn and quartered because they're the weakest point of your security infrastructure.
Great, now sell me a DIY kit so I can tame this Athlon T-Bird block heater. 50 degrees idle with a 7000-rpm fan.. it's insane!
In a sense (if your mind can twist far enough), maintaining a certain baseline price that's reasonable for both client and consultant, is doing a service to the clientele in general. By defining a known level of QoS for a decent price, it's teaching the client to be wary of other consultants that may charge much less for 'the same job', though the quality will vary greatly.
In my opinion there is no such thing as doing a bad job unless you're no good to begin with. You either do it or you don't, whether you're making 500$ or 5000$, once you've accepted the contract you have to do it THE RIGHT WAY. Unless I have a personal grudge against my client (and he didn't know it?!), I just couldn't offer a lesser service just because the money isn't as plentiful as I would have liked. I do it just the same. And because the service itself doesn't scale down, the price must not be scaled down either.
A company that pays less, gets stuck with mindless consultants who probably know more about marketing and mindgames than the actual work, because those people are interested in getting lots of cheap contracts and not really caring about the work they're doing.
Before looking into 3d graphics, I think there's a much more fundamental necessity that needs to be addressed : A purpose for handhelds!
Sure, they're light, they store text and run cutesy little windows applications, but what the hell are they used for, that a 20$ Casio Organizer can't do ?
If I wanted to play games on a 500$ PDA, I'd whack myself in the face and pick up my GameboyAdvance instead. PDA's are NOT computers, they are "Portable Digital Assistants". Playing games on a PDA is even dumber than running MAME on your TI-82 super calculator (because the TI-82 calculator belongs to a student who probably enjoys tetris during those long lectures). If you can afford a beefy PDA that can run games, you can probably afford a dedicated portable game console and save the thousands of game programmers who are forced to cope with substandard hardware and low-low graphics resolution and colour gamut.
If someone's going to force me to stay indoors all the time, or else face a hefty fine, then I'd rather live at the government's expense in an isolated building and receive proper treatment. If they want to protect lives it shouldn't be at the detriment of the current victims. It's already hell enough to suffer from SARS anyways.
Blame Wal-Mart, not KDS. I've found their Visual Sensations line to be absolutely fantastic value for the money, and I'd buy another 19incher without hesitation. I don't know what's with that 6 month warranty you had, mine came with a full 2 year no-charge warranty, just pay one-way shipping.
Dude, don't waste your money. She ain't comin' back! Once the Fuzoku industry gets their hands on fresh meat they're going to make her wealthy slave and she can buy her own laptop then!
But seriously, get a TiBook. Great computer, great sturdy casing. You just can't go wrong.
Agreed. If you bend over backwards for a poorly-paying job, then the client will expect everyone to bend over for peanuts, and if you don't do it, they'll find someone dumber to do it. There is a market value for consultant work and people have to stick to it, otherwise cheap labor will ruin the industry for all of us. That's why there's 'economy class' and 'first class', but you'll never get 'first class' service at economy price, or else the first class will cease to exist.
Well I think you've over-reacting here. And doing some basic research doesn't take away the fact that you'll be wrestling with software and drivers from a dozen different manufacturers. There is no such thing as the 'Perfect PC', at least not at this point in time. The closest thing to it is Dell, because _they_ spend time shopping for parts and making them work, so you don't have to.
Apple isn't evil, and they don't have a one-size-fits-all, you can customize your Mac just as you would a PC. The point is that the system they sell you WORKS, and works well.