I think a big question here is, does this impact Apple? With Motorola holding up the release of faster G4 processers, etc, and with IBM just coming up with blazing technology such as this, where does Apple fit in? Obviously, if Motorola had it's act together, this IBM announcement would be awesome news for Apple, but now, it doesn't do a whole lot of good for Mac users.
Jakob says... No self-respecting salesperson wants to turn away paying customers at the door just because they don't have the latest beta-download of some browser.
I think this can go either way. We've done a lot of research where I work and one this is clear. Most companies "dumb down" their sites to take advantage of the lower 10% with 3.0 browsers (or lower). In our opinion, this give us an advantage because if we just scrap 3.0 browser compatablity (or better yet, make a simple 3.0 browser only site) we can use 4.0+ and other techniques to their fullest and thus make websites that are a step ahead of the rest for the 90% that can see them.
In salesman terms that's a good buy. But of course, technology for technolgies sake is bad, look at boo.com. So the goal is use technology to increase usablility and experience for the majority so they will continue to come back to the site rather than dumb down and look like everyone else just for the sake of a small percentage of customers.
In the cutthrought world of e-business, it's not such a bad way of viewing things.
Since the site seems Slashdotted, is this game from the creators of the Parsec game I have for my TI-994a? If so, I'm all over this, as that was my very favorite game for that old thing. If not, what happened to that license, and is this an abuse of that license?
But, this way, they only get the one sale... I'm wondering whether this might actually be an unintended side-effect.
Yes, they only get one sale, but it's one sale of a machine that loses them money. Remember, the real money is in the software, and this is the whole reason for territorial lockout.
The premise is like this...Let's say JapanCo is making a cool fighting game and it sells like hotcakes in Japan. Because of this they're going to make it available State-side, but AmeriCo is going to publish it over here. What happens when everyone was able to easily buy the Japanese game when it came out instead of waiting for the American release? AmeriCo loses a lot of money, gets pissed off, and doesn't make as many games for PS2. This in turn makes Sony lose money (less games, less money). It's not about making people happy as much as it is not wanting to piss off publishers. This is why you need a mod chip to play Japanese games on the American PS1.
I suspect this whole "illegal import" deal is just another phase of that. Every territorial lockout has had a solution provided at some point. Making it illegal to even export the product from Japan is probably the best way they could have done what normally is done in the hardware to stop Westerners from playing Eastern PS2 games.
My Birthday was yesterday. Turned 24, which, if you do the math, means I was born on a leap year (76). When I was born, people were saying the same thing, for my Mom to wait till the 29th. Aparently she was like "screw that, this kid is coming out now!" and I was a delevered a few hours before the 29th rolled around.
I always wondered what it would be like to have a birthday on the 29th. Like, when would I celebrate it, Feb 28, or Mar 1? See, this is the kind of thing that screwed me up as a kid.;)
How would you respond to your criticts who say that rather than being a usability "expert" you're simply someone who points out the obvious? What of the people who say your views are actually limiting the evolution of the web rather than making it better place? And what about the notion that it's sorta hard to trust usability opinions from a website that is hard to find your way around?
(I don't mean for these questions to sound argumentative, I'm just reiterating things I've heard many times from various people on the web)
The good thing about The Onion before they went online (and before the paper went to color) was that not only were the headlines funny, but the articles were as well.
Perhaps I'm just being nostalgic, but some of my favorite articles were "Reincarnation of Jesus Christ Adds Excitement to Kegger" and "Super Monkey Collider Loses Funding". The names don't do much, but the articles were hilarious.
Another thing that is disapointing are some of the changes they've made. The "What Do You Think?" section used to have the same pictures of the same people in it every week, but the names were different, and one was always a Systems Analyst. It was almost like a running joke, that for some unknown reason they pulled.
Other thing they pulled (for better known reasons) was the "Drunk of the Week" section in the back on the paper. Every weekend they'd go out and find some drunk in Madison give them a sign, take their picture and give them like 2 bucks. Hilarious.
I miss the old days.
Re:Isn't it just replacing television!?
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LonelyNet
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· Score: 2
How many hours do people spend watching Television a week?
The difference here is that watching TV can be a shared experience which encourages human to human interaction. How many times have you snuggled up w/ your loved one to watch a movie? Now, how many times have you snuggled up w/ your loved one to surf Slashdot?
The problem becomes that surfing the net is a personal thing only. And it can hamper relationships. It's happened to me many times, since I'm on the web 10+ hours per day (since it's my job and all). I have stepped on a few women's toes because of it and had other joke that my computer was my "real" girlfriend.
For those of us like myself who think with a one track mind (if, then, else) the web can really suck you in if your not careful and ruin a lot of "real world" interaction.
I'd hardly think of a harddrive as an asset to a gaming console. What's it good for? An internet cache?
For a pure gaming machine I'd agree, however, who said this was going to only be a gaming machine? I'd say that Microsoft is more likely to go after the elusive set-top box market. It's where all the future consoles are trying to be at some point down the road.
If it really does come out in 2001 with a 1GHZ cpu, I'd think it'd cost WAY more than $150 with those specs.
Remember, consoles are always loss leader (as meantioned in other posts). The $150 is cheap for the hardware, but so is the price for any gaming console you buy. Plus, you have too look at the time line of this thing. Right now it's rediculous, when it's finally released, it may not be so bad.
NTSC (that's those TV thingies) are more like 378x200 something. If you do the math, it take rediculously less power to drive the same number of polygons around at that resolution.
Until HDTV becomes prominent. I guarentee that this thing comes HDTV ready which means it will be pushing at higher resolutions. And over engineered? I hardly think anyone would argue that that would be a bad thing (for the price).
So maybe MS is thinking about a PC replacement?
Like I said, MS wants to take over the future set-top box market. The X-Box is there way to do that. PC functionality in your living room. It plays games, and DVD's and lets you surf the Web and who knows what else. It's been a lot of companies goal for a long time now, and everyone has failed thus far (3D0, Phillips, etc). At this price, with this power, and with this brand recogniton, MS may just have the power to pull this out.
With that said, I think they're in for a big shocker. The games business is notoriously cutthrought and they'll have to go up against companies that have HUGE market share (Sony) and ones that are even more propriatary and greedy than MS themselves (Nintendo). They really better have thier shit together if they want to win this war (I'd place my money on Sony this time around).
It's like some sort of weird Pavlovian response. ("Hey, Katz wrote something! Bark! Bark! Bark!")
Not that this would be proffesional journalism at all, but I think it'd be very interresting if someone like Roblimo would post an article that unknown to us was actually a Katz article. How many people would we see flaming away then?
Would all these people have the same reaction?
Sorta like the old "switcheroo" back in school where the kid who gets bad scores on essays put the name of some kid who always gets A's on his paper.
Re:On to Spanish Harlem!
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On to Mars
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· Score: 5
$165,000,000 = one lost space exploration device. $165,000,000 = free lunch programs for all of the needy kids in the NYC region for a decade. These kids will not eat lunch otherwise.
Well if we're going to throw out numbers... $1,300,000,000 = one Stealth Bomber that we never use or probably even really need (or just the one that crashed). $1,300,000,000 = free lunch programs for all of the needy kids in the NYC region for over 75 years.
Which is more important to YOU? Really now, if people are going to start bitching about Government spending, I hardly think NASA is the place to start.
Squaresoft has always amazed me with what comes out of their Hawaiian offices (who wouldn't want to live there?:). If anyone is setting the standard for the future of truly interactive video games (RPG or not), it's Squaresoft.
In case you didn't know, Sqaresoft recently laid off their entire US division at their Hawaii offices. Trouble in paradise perhaps?
Secondly, I agree that Sqaresoft has put out some phenominal games, but I don't think we can forget some of the other talented places out there. Namely Namco, Sega, and Nintendo. Say what you want about their games, but the fact is that all of these companies have made games with very high quality, which is something that is sorely lacking from most game companies today.
But, somehow, I doubt that any of them would see the light of day today if they were not already "Classics", because none of them is: A) A fighting game B) A first peoson shooter C) A racing game (with the arguable axception of Spy Hunter)
It actually has more to do with the way games are displayed and played than how good the game actually is. I agree that the "classics" would never see the light of day in today's arcades. But todays arcades aren't about good games, they're about making money. And because the older games were all about fun and getting the high score, that doesn't translate into money for vendors. If you are going for a high score on Pac-Man, it could take you a couple hours...on one quarter. Instead, arcades put driving or shooting games in where the play is about a dollar and the game lasts for about 2 mintues. They get you to play with fancy cabinets and graphics, not good game play or high scores. Times have changed, and I must say, it is really sad.
Atari hit it right on the money when saying alot of magazines don't appeal to people who don't like exclusively violent games male or female.
Game magazines are today basically made for teenage boys. Just go look and read the content in any game magazine. They looks like they were written by teenage boys (no offense to teenage boys).
My question is, when can we get a decent magazine that DOESN'T have all the latest crap to pander to the lowest common denominator? When will there be a game mag for geeks who have been playing video games for over 20 years (like myself)? Next Generation used to be really good, but they've gone the way of Wired. Right now I feel that if I want to be informed I gotta weed through about 5 pages of "hottest big breasted women ever" and "35 new fraggled tips to Quake 3". Ugh.
My first rule of employment: Do what you WANT to do. Meaning, don't take a job just for the "possibility" of a big payout due to stock options and a large IPO. Unless the company has already gone public, the options are worth nothing, and could be worth nothing in the future. This is why you have to view these things as a "bonus" only. If the happen to be worth something later, great, if not, no big deal. It shouldn't sway you into going somewhere, unless your decision is based on two companies that are exactly the same in every way, save stock options. Sometimes, options don't make sense either. An example:
You get an offer to work for a startup doing some "new" think with Linux. They're only going to offer you $40k, but they'll give you 10k in stock options, and tell you to look at the Red Hat IPO for an estimate of what those 10k options will be worth in 3 years (when you're fully vested and can sell them). Wow, you think, I could be worth over a million bucks in 3 years...of course your employer knows this and expects you to work 60-80 hrs/week to acheive this.
You get a second offer for $50k, but no stock options. Nice place, and you'd love to work there because you know it's laid back and isn't as cutthrought, only 40 hrs/week, but those stock options are on your mind.
So you take the first offer, lookin for the big payout. Your company goes public after 2 1/2 years (before you're vested), and doesn't do too hot, after 6 months (when you can sell) the stock is only at $4. Hmm...who got the better deal?
Whoa, even at only $4 per share, you made the right choice! But wait, not really. Think of all the time you put in that you could have been doing other things with that other "lesser" offer in deal 2. You'd save yourself 20 hrs a week on average to spend w/ your family and friends. Also, you have to remember the time/value of money. $10k now is worth more than an extra $10k in 3 years if invested correctly.
Moral of the story? Do what's best for you, and don't base your decision on pipe dreams that could ruin your life.
Pleeease, I can undestand sueing for the look of the computer and arguing with customers being misled (Is this thing an imac or not???), but suing for a desktop look is plain silly.
I think we also have to take the past into consideration. Apple has been very consistant in suing people since the iMac came out and other companies have wanted to rip it off. It has not had the same consistancy on it's OS.
Back when "Copland" was announced (this was back in the MacOS 7 days) it had the new spiffy "Platinum" appearance. Everyone back then loved it, especially compared to the flat and boring System 7 GUI. Well I remember getting a program (I believe it was called "Aarron") that changed your look and feel in System 7 to look just like Copland, the look of which later turned into what we see in OS8 and OS9, and this happened way before OS8 came out. The kicker? You had to pay to use this little extension because it was shareware.
Later on Aarron turned into Kaliedoscope for the Mac, which mimics all sorts of stuff. Did Apple ever sue the makers of Aarron when they were basically charging people for use of Apple's new OS Scheme a year before it was introduced? No! Because of this, I can only imagine that Apple is doing this because it's Windows. It's all about the treat Windows is to the MacOS. If an Aqua theme for Kaliedoscope were made, do you think they'd react the same way? I don't think they would.
Personally I'm hoping the PSXII will be well enough documented quickly enough that we get independant creations going quick.
I think you're forgetting what a challenge it is to make games today. Most major game budgets run in the millions, and can have 20-30 people working on them for over a year. I just can't see any one person making a game of that calibre. This is why you see cheezy tetris clones.
As for the PSII, well, I've heard reports of major companies saying that programming for it is gonna be a bitch, so to any hobbists out there wanting to hack away on it and provide something useful, all I have to say is "good luck".
Dunno about anyone else, but I found the best way to spruce up a boring beige box is to find stickers and plop them on. Your box then becomes a collection of stickers piled on top another. Any time you go to conventions and the like, you always get crap like this, on vacation you get stickers, hell, sometimes ya even buy stickers. Stick em on! After some time you'll have your own work of art, and once you have fully covered your box, and are going to put stickers over the old ones, you'll never want to give up that case, because not only does it look cool, it's YOU. To me, that's the coolest case of all.
How about an "Article Overflow" page where stories that just didn't quite make the main page get sent to.
I think this is a great idea, at the very least, we could have a little section (slashbox?) devoted to links submitted that day that didn't make the main page. You could visit them, but you couldn't comment on them.
However, I see some problems with this. One is abuse. You can't just plop all rejected links into one area, as I'm sure some of the crap that gets submitted is along the lines of "check out my cool home page!". Thus sorting through things that make the front page, those that "almost" make the front page, and those that are utter crap and aren't shown, just give Taco and Hemos more to do, and decide upon. The other is all the crap mail that those two would probably get from people thinking that a "rejected" story should have been a headliner. Let's face it, right now, we don't know what's rejected, so we can't really bitch a whole lot, but if someone loves Beanie Babies, a story about that gets moved to the rejection bin, Taco and Hemos will still get crap mail from some idiot. All in all, I think it may make things worse for our brave admins.
From the article: The Stock Market is Strong. After a market slump in the Far East, the time is right for a move like this. In the US and worldwide, tech stocks are generally moving upwards.
Well, they were until today. While you can't base a trend on one or two days, there is legitimate fear (at least in the US) that the Feds will raise intrest rates, and that is affecting the stock market, and we can see that right now, with the NASDAQ falling like crazy today.
Secondly, to know the future we must know history. No market leader in any game console generation has been able to take market lead in the following generation. Playstation 1 leads the current generation, can it lead the next as well? History is not on Sony's side.
Thirdly, price. The.18 micron technology is hard to produce, and I've heard reports that Sony is having a hard time churning out enough chips. Tack on the fact that this thing will either be very expensive ($400+) or a HUGE money loser for Sony (which they will then hope to make up for with software profits) and it becomes a very sticky situation either way.
Lastly, programming. Even if the thing sells like hotcakes, you need good games, and word on the street is that this thing is a bitch to program for. Final dev kits aren't even available to most developers, and those that have them site a steep learning curve for programming for multiple processors and the small amount of video memory present on the system. This could hinder game development by the smaller companies out there.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for PSX2 to succeed, as I think it's a phenominal piece of machinery, but for it to do so, Sony definitly has their work cut out for them.
Or, an even quicker fix that would take all of 2 seconds...People who have the +1 bonus must check a box if they want a +1 bonus. Right now, you must check a box if you DON'T want the +1 bonus. I think this is the wrong way to look at it. Make everyone's default score be 1, but those w/ enough karma can check "give me +1 bonus" if they think their post is "good enough" to get that. This way you are WILLFULLY giving yourself a +1 bonus, and can't say "Whoops! I didn't mean to post at default 2, I was in a hurry".
To the person asking if giving yourself a +1 gives you +1 karma points, no it does not (thankfully).
To mark something as 'overrated' is to say that a previous moderator screwed up --- Maybe this would be easier to deal with if moderators could tell if a post's points came from an automagic extra point rather than from moderator points?
You can tell that pretty easily. If the post says (Score:2) then the poster gave him/herself the +1 bonus. If it has a word next to it (Score:2, Informative) then it got moderated up by a moderator. It's still a tough call though. Knocking down someone's Karma is unfortunatly an unpopular thing to do, and most people don't understand that the point of higher scores is to let users weed out the crap, not to say "I have score:2 defult, now you must listen to me ramble". This is the main problem I have with slashdot. The Tolls, etc, don't bother me, because htey will always be moderated down, and I can weed them out. It's the people who use default 2 scores just to get their message out, even if it's complete nonesense that bother me.
A VERY simple solution that could be implimented is that the user would have to check "give me +1 bonus" if they want to be at 2, instead of doing it by default. At least that way they'd have to willingly think about thier post and if it deserved a default of 2 before they posted.
(sumbiting without +1 bonus to prove my point [plus it's slightly OT])
people that post at a default of 2 are not necessarily the people who post insightful and interesting posts (e.g. slashdot-terminal) but instead could be people who whored their way to 25 Karma
I emailed Rob on this very issue a while back and his response was that if those posting on defult 2 aren't insightful, etc, then the moderators should moderate them "-1 Overrated". The problem is that moderators do not do this often enough. But the fact remains that they shouldn't have to. Users have the option to not give themselves a +1 bonus and normally just opt to get a default score of 2, because people want to be "heard". Since a lot of people browse at threshold 2, this guarentees their comment will be seen.
These two problems need to be corrected (I admit, I'm not helping that matter with this post) by us, not CmdrTaco or Hemos. However, since this seems unlikely given the amount this site has grown since I started reading, I'd just like to see an option to only view posts that have been moderated up, and nothing else. Right now, when I read at threshold 2, 80% of the posts are from people who have a default of 2. So I have to still weed through posts to read those people have deemed "interresting" or "insightful", etc. By only showing posts that have been moderated up, I can see only what I want, and even view AC posts that got moderated up to 1, but that I would normally miss browsing at 2. This option shouldn't have to be made because we should be able to control ourselves, but given the way things have been going, I think it's a quick solution that could solve a few of these issues (just a few tough;).
I don't know about you people, but I don't think anyone fits the bill of "geek" as it is meant today like Steve Wozniak. When you think of his accomplishments, and how well he has always carried himself, he's gotta be my top vote.
Slashdot Mirror
I think a big question here is, does this impact Apple? With Motorola holding up the release of faster G4 processers, etc, and with IBM just coming up with blazing technology such as this, where does Apple fit in? Obviously, if Motorola had it's act together, this IBM announcement would be awesome news for Apple, but now, it doesn't do a whole lot of good for Mac users.
The movies you speak of do exist. You can find them on the same website that this story was posted on (IGN) here.
Jakob says...
No self-respecting salesperson wants to turn away paying customers at the door just because they don't have the latest beta-download of some browser.
I think this can go either way. We've done a lot of research where I work and one this is clear. Most companies "dumb down" their sites to take advantage of the lower 10% with 3.0 browsers (or lower). In our opinion, this give us an advantage because if we just scrap 3.0 browser compatablity (or better yet, make a simple 3.0 browser only site) we can use 4.0+ and other techniques to their fullest and thus make websites that are a step ahead of the rest for the 90% that can see them.
In salesman terms that's a good buy. But of course, technology for technolgies sake is bad, look at boo.com. So the goal is use technology to increase usablility and experience for the majority so they will continue to come back to the site rather than dumb down and look like everyone else just for the sake of a small percentage of customers.
In the cutthrought world of e-business, it's not such a bad way of viewing things.
Since the site seems Slashdotted, is this game from the creators of the Parsec game I have for my TI-994a? If so, I'm all over this, as that was my very favorite game for that old thing. If not, what happened to that license, and is this an abuse of that license?
But, this way, they only get the one sale...
I'm wondering whether this might actually be an unintended side-effect.
Yes, they only get one sale, but it's one sale of a machine that loses them money. Remember, the real money is in the software, and this is the whole reason for territorial lockout.
The premise is like this...Let's say JapanCo is making a cool fighting game and it sells like hotcakes in Japan. Because of this they're going to make it available State-side, but AmeriCo is going to publish it over here. What happens when everyone was able to easily buy the Japanese game when it came out instead of waiting for the American release? AmeriCo loses a lot of money, gets pissed off, and doesn't make as many games for PS2. This in turn makes Sony lose money (less games, less money). It's not about making people happy as much as it is not wanting to piss off publishers. This is why you need a mod chip to play Japanese games on the American PS1.
I suspect this whole "illegal import" deal is just another phase of that. Every territorial lockout has had a solution provided at some point. Making it illegal to even export the product from Japan is probably the best way they could have done what normally is done in the hardware to stop Westerners from playing Eastern PS2 games.
My Birthday was yesterday. Turned 24, which, if you do the math, means I was born on a leap year (76). When I was born, people were saying the same thing, for my Mom to wait till the 29th. Aparently she was like "screw that, this kid is coming out now!" and I was a delevered a few hours before the 29th rolled around.
;)
I always wondered what it would be like to have a birthday on the 29th. Like, when would I celebrate it, Feb 28, or Mar 1? See, this is the kind of thing that screwed me up as a kid.
How would you respond to your criticts who say that rather than being a usability "expert" you're simply someone who points out the obvious? What of the people who say your views are actually limiting the evolution of the web rather than making it better place? And what about the notion that it's sorta hard to trust usability opinions from a website that is hard to find your way around?
(I don't mean for these questions to sound argumentative, I'm just reiterating things I've heard many times from various people on the web)
The good thing about The Onion before they went online (and before the paper went to color) was that not only were the headlines funny, but the articles were as well.
Perhaps I'm just being nostalgic, but some of my favorite articles were "Reincarnation of Jesus Christ Adds Excitement to Kegger" and "Super Monkey Collider Loses Funding". The names don't do much, but the articles were hilarious.
Another thing that is disapointing are some of the changes they've made. The "What Do You Think?" section used to have the same pictures of the same people in it every week, but the names were different, and one was always a Systems Analyst. It was almost like a running joke, that for some unknown reason they pulled.
Other thing they pulled (for better known reasons) was the "Drunk of the Week" section in the back on the paper. Every weekend they'd go out and find some drunk in Madison give them a sign, take their picture and give them like 2 bucks. Hilarious.
I miss the old days.
How many hours do people spend watching Television a week?
The difference here is that watching TV can be a shared experience which encourages human to human interaction. How many times have you snuggled up w/ your loved one to watch a movie? Now, how many times have you snuggled up w/ your loved one to surf Slashdot?
The problem becomes that surfing the net is a personal thing only. And it can hamper relationships. It's happened to me many times, since I'm on the web 10+ hours per day (since it's my job and all). I have stepped on a few women's toes because of it and had other joke that my computer was my "real" girlfriend.
For those of us like myself who think with a one track mind (if, then, else) the web can really suck you in if your not careful and ruin a lot of "real world" interaction.
I'd hardly think of a harddrive as an asset to a gaming console. What's it good for? An internet cache?
For a pure gaming machine I'd agree, however, who said this was going to only be a gaming machine? I'd say that Microsoft is more likely to go after the elusive set-top box market. It's where all the future consoles are trying to be at some point down the road.
If it really does come out in 2001 with a 1GHZ cpu, I'd think it'd cost WAY more than $150 with those specs.
Remember, consoles are always loss leader (as meantioned in other posts). The $150 is cheap for the hardware, but so is the price for any gaming console you buy. Plus, you have too look at the time line of this thing. Right now it's rediculous, when it's finally released, it may not be so bad.
NTSC (that's those TV thingies) are more like 378x200 something. If you do the math, it take rediculously less power to drive the same number of polygons around at that resolution.
Until HDTV becomes prominent. I guarentee that this thing comes HDTV ready which means it will be pushing at higher resolutions. And over engineered? I hardly think anyone would argue that that would be a bad thing (for the price).
So maybe MS is thinking about a PC replacement?
Like I said, MS wants to take over the future set-top box market. The X-Box is there way to do that. PC functionality in your living room. It plays games, and DVD's and lets you surf the Web and who knows what else. It's been a lot of companies goal for a long time now, and everyone has failed thus far (3D0, Phillips, etc). At this price, with this power, and with this brand recogniton, MS may just have the power to pull this out.
With that said, I think they're in for a big shocker. The games business is notoriously cutthrought and they'll have to go up against companies that have HUGE market share (Sony) and ones that are even more propriatary and greedy than MS themselves (Nintendo). They really better have thier shit together if they want to win this war (I'd place my money on Sony this time around).
It's like some sort of weird Pavlovian response. ("Hey, Katz wrote something! Bark! Bark! Bark!")
Not that this would be proffesional journalism at all, but I think it'd be very interresting if someone like Roblimo would post an article that unknown to us was actually a Katz article. How many people would we see flaming away then?
Would all these people have the same reaction?
Sorta like the old "switcheroo" back in school where the kid who gets bad scores on essays put the name of some kid who always gets A's on his paper.
$165,000,000 = one lost space exploration device.
$165,000,000 = free lunch programs for all of the needy kids in the NYC region for a decade. These kids will not eat lunch otherwise.
Well if we're going to throw out numbers...
$1,300,000,000 = one Stealth Bomber that we never use or probably even really need (or just the one that crashed).
$1,300,000,000 = free lunch programs for all of the needy kids in the NYC region for over 75 years.
Which is more important to YOU? Really now, if people are going to start bitching about Government spending, I hardly think NASA is the place to start.
Squaresoft has always amazed me with what comes out of their Hawaiian offices (who wouldn't want to live there? :). If anyone is setting the standard for the future of truly interactive video games (RPG or not), it's Squaresoft.
In case you didn't know, Sqaresoft recently laid off their entire US division at their Hawaii offices. Trouble in paradise perhaps?
Secondly, I agree that Sqaresoft has put out some phenominal games, but I don't think we can forget some of the other talented places out there. Namely Namco, Sega, and Nintendo. Say what you want about their games, but the fact is that all of these companies have made games with very high quality, which is something that is sorely lacking from most game companies today.
But, somehow, I doubt that any of them would see the light of day today if they were not already "Classics", because none of them is:
A) A fighting game
B) A first peoson shooter
C) A racing game (with the arguable axception of Spy Hunter)
It actually has more to do with the way games are displayed and played than how good the game actually is. I agree that the "classics" would never see the light of day in today's arcades. But todays arcades aren't about good games, they're about making money. And because the older games were all about fun and getting the high score, that doesn't translate into money for vendors. If you are going for a high score on Pac-Man, it could take you a couple hours...on one quarter. Instead, arcades put driving or shooting games in where the play is about a dollar and the game lasts for about 2 mintues. They get you to play with fancy cabinets and graphics, not good game play or high scores. Times have changed, and I must say, it is really sad.
Atari hit it right on the money when saying alot of magazines don't appeal to people who don't like exclusively violent games male or female.
Game magazines are today basically made for teenage boys. Just go look and read the content in any game magazine. They looks like they were written by teenage boys (no offense to teenage boys).
My question is, when can we get a decent magazine that DOESN'T have all the latest crap to pander to the lowest common denominator? When will there be a game mag for geeks who have been playing video games for over 20 years (like myself)? Next Generation used to be really good, but they've gone the way of Wired. Right now I feel that if I want to be informed I gotta weed through about 5 pages of "hottest big breasted women ever" and "35 new fraggled tips to Quake 3". Ugh.
My first rule of employment: Do what you WANT to do. Meaning, don't take a job just for the "possibility" of a big payout due to stock options and a large IPO. Unless the company has already gone public, the options are worth nothing, and could be worth nothing in the future. This is why you have to view these things as a "bonus" only. If the happen to be worth something later, great, if not, no big deal. It shouldn't sway you into going somewhere, unless your decision is based on two companies that are exactly the same in every way, save stock options. Sometimes, options don't make sense either. An example:
You get an offer to work for a startup doing some "new" think with Linux. They're only going to offer you $40k, but they'll give you 10k in stock options, and tell you to look at the Red Hat IPO for an estimate of what those 10k options will be worth in 3 years (when you're fully vested and can sell them). Wow, you think, I could be worth over a million bucks in 3 years...of course your employer knows this and expects you to work 60-80 hrs/week to acheive this.
You get a second offer for $50k, but no stock options. Nice place, and you'd love to work there because you know it's laid back and isn't as cutthrought, only 40 hrs/week, but those stock options are on your mind.
So you take the first offer, lookin for the big payout. Your company goes public after 2 1/2 years (before you're vested), and doesn't do too hot, after 6 months (when you can sell) the stock is only at $4. Hmm...who got the better deal?
Deal 1: ($40k/yr * 3yrs) + (10k options * $4/share) = $160,000
Deal 2: $50k/yr * 3yrs = $150,000
Whoa, even at only $4 per share, you made the right choice! But wait, not really. Think of all the time you put in that you could have been doing other things with that other "lesser" offer in deal 2. You'd save yourself 20 hrs a week on average to spend w/ your family and friends. Also, you have to remember the time/value of money. $10k now is worth more than an extra $10k in 3 years if invested correctly.
Moral of the story? Do what's best for you, and don't base your decision on pipe dreams that could ruin your life.
Pleeease, I can undestand sueing for the look of the computer and arguing with customers being misled (Is this thing an imac or not???), but suing for a desktop look is plain silly.
I think we also have to take the past into consideration. Apple has been very consistant in suing people since the iMac came out and other companies have wanted to rip it off. It has not had the same consistancy on it's OS.
Back when "Copland" was announced (this was back in the MacOS 7 days) it had the new spiffy "Platinum" appearance. Everyone back then loved it, especially compared to the flat and boring System 7 GUI. Well I remember getting a program (I believe it was called "Aarron") that changed your look and feel in System 7 to look just like Copland, the look of which later turned into what we see in OS8 and OS9, and this happened way before OS8 came out. The kicker? You had to pay to use this little extension because it was shareware.
Later on Aarron turned into Kaliedoscope for the Mac, which mimics all sorts of stuff. Did Apple ever sue the makers of Aarron when they were basically charging people for use of Apple's new OS Scheme a year before it was introduced? No! Because of this, I can only imagine that Apple is doing this because it's Windows. It's all about the treat Windows is to the MacOS. If an Aqua theme for Kaliedoscope were made, do you think they'd react the same way? I don't think they would.
Personally I'm hoping the PSXII will be well enough documented quickly enough that we get independant creations going quick.
I think you're forgetting what a challenge it is to make games today. Most major game budgets run in the millions, and can have 20-30 people working on them for over a year. I just can't see any one person making a game of that calibre. This is why you see cheezy tetris clones.
As for the PSII, well, I've heard reports of major companies saying that programming for it is gonna be a bitch, so to any hobbists out there wanting to hack away on it and provide something useful, all I have to say is "good luck".
Dunno about anyone else, but I found the best way to spruce up a boring beige box is to find stickers and plop them on. Your box then becomes a collection of stickers piled on top another. Any time you go to conventions and the like, you always get crap like this, on vacation you get stickers, hell, sometimes ya even buy stickers. Stick em on! After some time you'll have your own work of art, and once you have fully covered your box, and are going to put stickers over the old ones, you'll never want to give up that case, because not only does it look cool, it's YOU. To me, that's the coolest case of all.
How about an "Article Overflow" page where stories that just didn't quite make the main page get sent to.
I think this is a great idea, at the very least, we could have a little section (slashbox?) devoted to links submitted that day that didn't make the main page. You could visit them, but you couldn't comment on them.
However, I see some problems with this. One is abuse. You can't just plop all rejected links into one area, as I'm sure some of the crap that gets submitted is along the lines of "check out my cool home page!". Thus sorting through things that make the front page, those that "almost" make the front page, and those that are utter crap and aren't shown, just give Taco and Hemos more to do, and decide upon. The other is all the crap mail that those two would probably get from people thinking that a "rejected" story should have been a headliner. Let's face it, right now, we don't know what's rejected, so we can't really bitch a whole lot, but if someone loves Beanie Babies, a story about that gets moved to the rejection bin, Taco and Hemos will still get crap mail from some idiot. All in all, I think it may make things worse for our brave admins.
From the article:
.18 micron technology is hard to produce, and I've heard reports that Sony is having a hard time churning out enough chips. Tack on the fact that this thing will either be very expensive ($400+) or a HUGE money loser for Sony (which they will then hope to make up for with software profits) and it becomes a very sticky situation either way.
The Stock Market is Strong. After a market slump in the Far East, the time is right for a move like this. In the US and worldwide, tech stocks are generally moving upwards.
Well, they were until today. While you can't base a trend on one or two days, there is legitimate fear (at least in the US) that the Feds will raise intrest rates, and that is affecting the stock market, and we can see that right now, with the NASDAQ falling like crazy today.
Secondly, to know the future we must know history. No market leader in any game console generation has been able to take market lead in the following generation. Playstation 1 leads the current generation, can it lead the next as well? History is not on Sony's side.
Thirdly, price. The
Lastly, programming. Even if the thing sells like hotcakes, you need good games, and word on the street is that this thing is a bitch to program for. Final dev kits aren't even available to most developers, and those that have them site a steep learning curve for programming for multiple processors and the small amount of video memory present on the system. This could hinder game development by the smaller companies out there.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for PSX2 to succeed, as I think it's a phenominal piece of machinery, but for it to do so, Sony definitly has their work cut out for them.
Or, an even quicker fix that would take all of 2 seconds...People who have the +1 bonus must check a box if they want a +1 bonus. Right now, you must check a box if you DON'T want the +1 bonus. I think this is the wrong way to look at it. Make everyone's default score be 1, but those w/ enough karma can check "give me +1 bonus" if they think their post is "good enough" to get that. This way you are WILLFULLY giving yourself a +1 bonus, and can't say "Whoops! I didn't mean to post at default 2, I was in a hurry".
To the person asking if giving yourself a +1 gives you +1 karma points, no it does not (thankfully).
To mark something as 'overrated' is to say that a previous moderator screwed up --- Maybe this would be easier to deal with if moderators could tell if a post's points came from an automagic extra point rather than from moderator points?
You can tell that pretty easily. If the post says (Score:2) then the poster gave him/herself the +1 bonus. If it has a word next to it (Score:2, Informative) then it got moderated up by a moderator. It's still a tough call though. Knocking down someone's Karma is unfortunatly an unpopular thing to do, and most people don't understand that the point of higher scores is to let users weed out the crap, not to say "I have score:2 defult, now you must listen to me ramble". This is the main problem I have with slashdot. The Tolls, etc, don't bother me, because htey will always be moderated down, and I can weed them out. It's the people who use default 2 scores just to get their message out, even if it's complete nonesense that bother me.
A VERY simple solution that could be implimented is that the user would have to check "give me +1 bonus" if they want to be at 2, instead of doing it by default. At least that way they'd have to willingly think about thier post and if it deserved a default of 2 before they posted.
(sumbiting without +1 bonus to prove my point [plus it's slightly OT])
people that post at a default of 2 are not necessarily the people who post insightful and interesting posts (e.g. slashdot-terminal) but instead could be people who whored their way to 25 Karma
;).
I emailed Rob on this very issue a while back and his response was that if those posting on defult 2 aren't insightful, etc, then the moderators should moderate them "-1 Overrated". The problem is that moderators do not do this often enough. But the fact remains that they shouldn't have to. Users have the option to not give themselves a +1 bonus and normally just opt to get a default score of 2, because people want to be "heard". Since a lot of people browse at threshold 2, this guarentees their comment will be seen.
These two problems need to be corrected (I admit, I'm not helping that matter with this post) by us, not CmdrTaco or Hemos. However, since this seems unlikely given the amount this site has grown since I started reading, I'd just like to see an option to only view posts that have been moderated up, and nothing else. Right now, when I read at threshold 2, 80% of the posts are from people who have a default of 2. So I have to still weed through posts to read those people have deemed "interresting" or "insightful", etc. By only showing posts that have been moderated up, I can see only what I want, and even view AC posts that got moderated up to 1, but that I would normally miss browsing at 2. This option shouldn't have to be made because we should be able to control ourselves, but given the way things have been going, I think it's a quick solution that could solve a few of these issues (just a few tough
I don't know about you people, but I don't think anyone fits the bill of "geek" as it is meant today like Steve Wozniak. When you think of his accomplishments, and how well he has always carried himself, he's gotta be my top vote.