The problem is this, though... people will pay for drugs. Once the supply starts to thin out, distributors will either have to 1. start selling the songs to recoup their financial liabilities in case they get busted (not likely, and this would be more expensive than buying the albums themselves) Or go underground, at which point it gets relegated to the "warez" type scenes, and out of the mainstream. Dedicated swappers might make the transition, but by and large Joe Q. Kazaa will get cut out of the loop.
If you're saying that the performance of a GF4 can be equivalent to the performance of a TNT2 + fast CPU, then you my friend are on crack.
If you'd read the post, you'd see that that's not what he's saying at all. What he's saying is that by coding to an abstracted API that is common across many different chipsets, you don't have to code to the chipset at all. So if the game uses DirectX, you can run the game on a TNT2 or a GeForce4 and the application will still *work*. He didn't say it would work well on a TNT2 if it's written to GeForce4 level capabilities.
One of the most annoying things about ATI is their drivers. I'm not talking Radeon series here, b/c I have no experience with them
ATI has really cleaned up their act with respect to drivers. They've moved to a unified driver architecture (CATALYST) for their Raedon series, not unlike NVidia's Detonator drivers. So they might be a little slower with driver rollout currently than NVidia is. ATI has impressed me with the speed at which they caught up with NVidia architecturally, and given the bad rap they've had in the past with driver support, I think that they probably realize that this is the one issue that's really holding them back. Checking the web site, the latest driver update was posted yesterday. The oldest driver I could find was from less than a month ago. NVidia hasn't updated their RIVA 128 series of drivers in 4 years either. The point is, ATI might have been a little slower to get their shit in gear, but they're obviously doing it, so holding a grudge from a card you bought years ago isn't really sensible. Things change very quickly in this market, not only hardware, but company strategies and support, as well.
Only if we get a -1: Didn't read the article,
-1: Whiny Bitch and perhaps -1: On General Principles (although this might be covered by the Overrated on metamod:)
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It really depends alot on what format the director is shooting the film for. If he's shooting it with fullscreen TV in mind (4:3), he'll frame the shots so that all the key action takes place in the center part of the screen, so even if the theatrical release is in widescreen format (16:9), the shots will look good in 4:3 format when it's released on TV/video. The issue is that some directors want to use the full 16:9 screen for some shots. When these shots are clipped down to 4:3, key parts of the scene (one person in a dialog, for example) may be cut out of the 4:3 cut. There are several kluges that can fix this... stretching the widescreen vertically to fill the full 4:3 screen, which makes everything taller and skinnier; cropping the shot, which as stated can cut out critical plot points depending on how the movie is shot, or digitally panning across the 16:9 image in 4:3 mode (called "pan and scan"). Yeah, the black bars aren't the greatest (although they're a good place to put subtitles!) but IMO they're better than the alternatives... I am looking forward to getting a widescreen TV (although you have the same issues displaying a 4:3 picture on a widescreen that you have with displaying a 16:9 shot on a 4:3 screen, black bars on the sides or picture distortion)
Er... under their latest & greatest stable release of 1.3, it's under Preferences->Privacy & Security->Popup Windows... I haven't tried 1.4a yet, so I can't comment on that build, but afaik it's been in every build since the 0.9-ish era at the very least.
The problem here is that the PA guys most likely don't have the resources to fund any sort of legal defense against an accusation like this. So you're not really testing the point of law in court. While American Greetings might be able to throw tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs and legal fees at this problem, Gabe & Tycho can't. Being right doesn't put food on the table (or in this case, I suppose, carts in neo geo)
She really blows it here. Instead of taking the issue of female stereotyping and the overall shallowness of most videogames (I agree with her) and using it as representative of the greater problems with the total lack of realism and sensibility she totally ignores every other slight to every other class of people because, in typical human fashion, she portrays the injustices as directed primarily at her chosen group of identification. It's a very human thing to do, but also extremely frustrating for someone trying to find some subjective analysis and critique where it is sorely needed.
I think you're really hit the nail on the head right here. The issue with this article is that it *does* only address one facet of a much larger issue: many video games are on a cultural par with big-budget action movies; big guys kicking ass (guns optional) and getting the girl. These movies generally do fairly well at the box office. The games that don't follow this formula and appear to appeal to a more diverse group of gamers, tend to do so across the board, not only in terms of gender but also in terms of age & culture. It's not just the gender-view of these games that can be considered skewed... it's just a small symptom of a larger issue.
This is really silly. Lara Croft is probably one of the more feminist depictions of women in video games that I've seen. People here seem to equate sensual femininity as some how mysogenistic, when most of the feminists that I've ever talked to don't have any issues with this. Lara Croft is strong, smart, independent, athletic, rich, and kicks some major ass, she's not some giggly ditz who needs to call for some man to rescue her every time she sees an icky spider. After all, sexy women are women too.
As to allowing "other types of female characters" into games, who the hell wants that? The male and female forms have been idealized in western culture for thousands of years, and computer games are escapist fanatasy that allows players to walk in someone else's shoes... moving the player towards a more idealized physique (male or female) is just another level of escape,
and is omnipresent in western culture, especially escapist media such as TV, magazines, movies, books... and computer games.
Heh... I just had a meeting today with the local electrical company, which was trying to get a job application form online, with some backend database application and some other bells and whistles. Of course they were running IIS and some proprietary stuff. The techs seemed very open to using Open Source technologies, especially after what we showed them what we were doing with Apache/PHP/FDF. Unfortunately, upper level management at this company had been soured on open source after their poorly adminstrated RHL box got backdoored. Having said that, of course now they're throwing enough money at Microsoft and other software vendors to finance a fleet of veteran sysadmins (IIS, ASP, a bunch of proprietary modules & systems). It makes me very glad that I work at a place where we can use the right tool, instead of having some PHB tell me "it's not approved procedure".
My friend, is looks like you should check out Battlefield 1942. Most of the issues that you've brought up are already in the game. (taking/holding territory, well-designed levels, etc...)
Absolutely not. What you have to remember is that not only did Q3A sell very well on it's own, but also has been licensed by other companies for use in their own games, as did their older engines. So part of the simplicity of the Quake/Doom type games is that it acts as a "showcase" piece to show off the engine's capabilities. (Think of it as a $50 3d engine commercial:-)
Having said that, calling id's games "no-gameplay eye candy" is silly and wrong. You might be confusing "paper-thin plot" with "no gameplay", but you might as well say that chess or go is "no gameplay". Just because there is a simple premise to the game doesn't mean the game is fun. Judging the Quakes on plot or storyline or whatever is like judging a porno on plot, it's not the main emphasis of the game.
This isn't insightful at all! I guess even moderators don't read the article:-( Shame on you, Slashdot, for posting such misleading alarmist crap (although you'd think I'd be used to it by now)
Agreed, I see this again and again on online forums (with a few exceptions) You only get the extremes of opinions, either posts by fanboys extolling the virtue of the product beyond all reason, or flamers spewing vitriol. However, the reviews aren't that much more insigtful, since the fanboys tend to praise everything about the game, or gloss over the rough spots, whereas the flamers tend to nitpick to extremes. Add to the fact that reviews in general are highly subjective dependent on individual tastes, and you're left with quite a quandary.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is also why I said it's not very likely.
But since the major news organizations are all in bed with the RIAA and MPAA, and not the porn industry
That's because the porn industry is standing off to the side, with a camera!
The problem is this, though... people will pay for drugs. Once the supply starts to thin out, distributors will either have to 1. start selling the songs to recoup their financial liabilities in case they get busted (not likely, and this would be more expensive than buying the albums themselves) Or go underground, at which point it gets relegated to the "warez" type scenes, and out of the mainstream. Dedicated swappers might make the transition, but by and large Joe Q. Kazaa will get cut out of the loop.
If you're saying that the performance of a GF4 can be equivalent to the performance of a TNT2 + fast CPU, then you my friend are on crack.
If you'd read the post, you'd see that that's not what he's saying at all. What he's saying is that by coding to an abstracted API that is common across many different chipsets, you don't have to code to the chipset at all. So if the game uses DirectX, you can run the game on a TNT2 or a GeForce4 and the application will still *work*. He didn't say it would work well on a TNT2 if it's written to GeForce4 level capabilities.
One of the most annoying things about ATI is their drivers. I'm not talking Radeon series here, b/c I have no experience with them
ATI has really cleaned up their act with respect to drivers. They've moved to a unified driver architecture (CATALYST) for their Raedon series, not unlike NVidia's Detonator drivers. So they might be a little slower with driver rollout currently than NVidia is. ATI has impressed me with the speed at which they caught up with NVidia architecturally, and given the bad rap they've had in the past with driver support, I think that they probably realize that this is the one issue that's really holding them back. Checking the web site, the latest driver update was posted yesterday. The oldest driver I could find was from less than a month ago. NVidia hasn't updated their RIVA 128 series of drivers in 4 years either. The point is, ATI might have been a little slower to get their shit in gear, but they're obviously doing it, so holding a grudge from a card you bought years ago isn't really sensible. Things change very quickly in this market, not only hardware, but company strategies and support, as well.
If your butchery of the english languages is anything to go by, it looks like they dodged a major bullet there.
I mean its just like the US, you can't NOT read and survive easily.
:-)
I hate to poke holes in your argument, but I see a thriving community of people that can't read or write right here.
There's also a discworld-based MUD out there, very well done IMO.
Why miss it? It's still running (well, re-running :-P) (la la la stupid slow timer thing)
Only if we get a -1: Didn't read the article, -1: Whiny Bitch and perhaps -1: On General Principles (although this might be covered by the Overrated on metamod :)
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It really depends alot on what format the director is shooting the film for. If he's shooting it with fullscreen TV in mind (4:3), he'll frame the shots so that all the key action takes place in the center part of the screen, so even if the theatrical release is in widescreen format (16:9), the shots will look good in 4:3 format when it's released on TV/video. The issue is that some directors want to use the full 16:9 screen for some shots. When these shots are clipped down to 4:3, key parts of the scene (one person in a dialog, for example) may be cut out of the 4:3 cut. There are several kluges that can fix this... stretching the widescreen vertically to fill the full 4:3 screen, which makes everything taller and skinnier; cropping the shot, which as stated can cut out critical plot points depending on how the movie is shot, or digitally panning across the 16:9 image in 4:3 mode (called "pan and scan"). Yeah, the black bars aren't the greatest (although they're a good place to put subtitles!) but IMO they're better than the alternatives... I am looking forward to getting a widescreen TV (although you have the same issues displaying a 4:3 picture on a widescreen that you have with displaying a 16:9 shot on a 4:3 screen, black bars on the sides or picture distortion)
Er... under their latest & greatest stable release of 1.3, it's under Preferences->Privacy & Security->Popup Windows... I haven't tried 1.4a yet, so I can't comment on that build, but afaik it's been in every build since the 0.9-ish era at the very least.
The problem here is that the PA guys most likely don't have the resources to fund any sort of legal defense against an accusation like this. So you're not really testing the point of law in court. While American Greetings might be able to throw tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs and legal fees at this problem, Gabe & Tycho can't. Being right doesn't put food on the table (or in this case, I suppose, carts in neo geo)
or how about a sphere with a larger radius than the hole?
What a genius idea! Spherical manhole covers! At least then those Hummer owners can *use* all that ground clearance...
She really blows it here. Instead of taking the issue of female stereotyping and the overall shallowness of most videogames (I agree with her) and using it as representative of the greater problems with the total lack of realism and sensibility she totally ignores every other slight to every other class of people because, in typical human fashion, she portrays the injustices as directed primarily at her chosen group of identification. It's a very human thing to do, but also extremely frustrating for someone trying to find some subjective analysis and critique where it is sorely needed.
I think you're really hit the nail on the head right here. The issue with this article is that it *does* only address one facet of a much larger issue: many video games are on a cultural par with big-budget action movies; big guys kicking ass (guns optional) and getting the girl. These movies generally do fairly well at the box office. The games that don't follow this formula and appear to appeal to a more diverse group of gamers, tend to do so across the board, not only in terms of gender but also in terms of age & culture. It's not just the gender-view of these games that can be considered skewed... it's just a small symptom of a larger issue.
This is really silly. Lara Croft is probably one of the more feminist depictions of women in video games that I've seen. People here seem to equate sensual femininity as some how mysogenistic, when most of the feminists that I've ever talked to don't have any issues with this. Lara Croft is strong, smart, independent, athletic, rich, and kicks some major ass, she's not some giggly ditz who needs to call for some man to rescue her every time she sees an icky spider. After all, sexy women are women too.
As to allowing "other types of female characters" into games, who the hell wants that? The male and female forms have been idealized in western culture for thousands of years, and computer games are escapist fanatasy that allows players to walk in someone else's shoes... moving the player towards a more idealized physique (male or female) is just another level of escape, and is omnipresent in western culture, especially escapist media such as TV, magazines, movies, books... and computer games.
Oh my god, there's a math professor who doesn't use *TeX???? :-o
Heh... I just had a meeting today with the local electrical company, which was trying to get a job application form online, with some backend database application and some other bells and whistles. Of course they were running IIS and some proprietary stuff. The techs seemed very open to using Open Source technologies, especially after what we showed them what we were doing with Apache/PHP/FDF. Unfortunately, upper level management at this company had been soured on open source after their poorly adminstrated RHL box got backdoored. Having said that, of course now they're throwing enough money at Microsoft and other software vendors to finance a fleet of veteran sysadmins (IIS, ASP, a bunch of proprietary modules & systems). It makes me very glad that I work at a place where we can use the right tool, instead of having some PHB tell me "it's not approved procedure".
My friend, is looks like you should check out Battlefield 1942. Most of the issues that you've brought up are already in the game. (taking/holding territory, well-designed levels, etc...)
Absolutely not. What you have to remember is that not only did Q3A sell very well on it's own, but also has been licensed by other companies for use in their own games, as did their older engines. So part of the simplicity of the Quake/Doom type games is that it acts as a "showcase" piece to show off the engine's capabilities. (Think of it as a $50 3d engine commercial :-)
Having said that, calling id's games "no-gameplay eye candy" is silly and wrong. You might be confusing "paper-thin plot" with "no gameplay", but you might as well say that chess or go is "no gameplay". Just because there is a simple premise to the game doesn't mean the game is fun. Judging the Quakes on plot or storyline or whatever is like judging a porno on plot, it's not the main emphasis of the game.
This isn't insightful at all! I guess even moderators don't read the article :-( Shame on you, Slashdot, for posting such misleading alarmist crap (although you'd think I'd be used to it by now)
solids have an even tighter packing of molecules than liquids.
Like ice?
Your post has inspired me to invent the anti-typo!
Agreed, I see this again and again on online forums (with a few exceptions) You only get the extremes of opinions, either posts by fanboys extolling the virtue of the product beyond all reason, or flamers spewing vitriol. However, the reviews aren't that much more insigtful, since the fanboys tend to praise everything about the game, or gloss over the rough spots, whereas the flamers tend to nitpick to extremes. Add to the fact that reviews in general are highly subjective dependent on individual tastes, and you're left with quite a quandary.