People will want to buy music on the Wii, and people will want to watch movies and TV shows, so let them buy them from iTMS. The Wii has USB , so you could even sync your iPod with it.
Or if Apple just wants to tie the product to their CPU sales, have them port the iTV "streaming" software to the Wii, and still require a Mac on the LAN to stream from.
While it wouldn't directly make Apple money from iTV-like hardware sales, it would be a strategic interception to the MS/Sony movie/music purchasing systems, keeping iTMS in the picture.
I could have spent enough time and effort to do that...... but why?
I mean, what is the point in building a bunch of virtual stuff in a virtual egypt with my real time?
Once I realized how idiotic the grind is in ATiTD (sure, you don't have XP, but you have to do just as much, if not more, useless running around than in a traditional MMOG -- building a civilization that's apparently too stupid to abstract it's work into currency is no small task), I realized it was just another useless, expensive timesuck.
Eh, I pretty much had the same thing. Except the triggering event was a bunch of Guild Drama(tm) that made me realize that the people I'm raiding with... really don't give a shit about me, beyond my Dark Iron gear, Quel'Serrar and raid attendance. Deleted everything, tossed the non-bound stuff and cash to one of the few decent people in the guild, and haven't looked back.
I tried the ATITD thing for a weekend, before I realized how monumentally boring it is. Yes, I want to click 3000 times to make bricks to build a shitty house!
Fortunately, I quit a month before the Wii came out, so I'm knee deep in Zelda now, and I can't even remember what Rag looks like...
Mac minis are sexy, yes. I'll wait till the mythical "Mac TV" box shows up, though.
As for the Wii, there's very little stopping Linux from booting. You have local storage (SD/Flash), and Linux has been running on the GC since forever.
More importantly (like the PS3 and Mac) you have bluetooth. That means (theortically) you have mice and keyboards.
*If* the remote could get it's protocol reverse engineered (technically only need button presses), and *if* you could boot off of the SD card with little more than a Bootloader DVD inserted into the drive, then you could basically have a media player on an SD card, complete with remote. Linux would take up like 100-150M or so of the drive, so just put the movies on the rest of the 2G card, put it in, boot it up, and watch the movies.
It knows which way is up, so it can figure it's pitch (rotation around x) and roll (rotation around z), but it can't use gravity to figure out it's yaw (rotation around y).
It also can't use gravity to figure out it's position relative to anything.
It can detect *movement* in six axes (x/y/z, rotation around x/y/z), but it can only figure out absolute position in two of the rotational ones due to gravity.
That's where the sensor bar comes in -- it gives the remote a reference point (above or below the display) so that it can be used as a pointer.
Also, it's worth noting that the "sensor bar" is passive. It doesn't read anything, it just gives the remote a reference point to use. Assuming the Wii is on, the wiimote will be able to figure everything out on it's own.
In relation to Unreal Engine 3, how important is Gears' arrival to the market?
Mike Capps: It is quite important. Having been an engine licensee myself (with America's Army), I can attest that a major part of the licensing decision is trusting that the engine will get to a shippable state. All our licensees have known that Gears of War, for Xbox360, and Unreal Tournament 2007, for PS3 and PC, were on the way, and while we have an excellent reputation for shipping games, I'm sure they were all happy to hear Gears had gone gold. Now that our first 360 title is out of the way we can turn resources toward achieving the same sort of "finished state", that we've achieved on Xbox 360, toward UT2007 on PlayStation 3 and PC.
FWIW, "Super Excite" (what you unlock after getting S'es in the first 19 tracks) looks to have 24 new tracks, as well as a bunch of new cars to unlock.
I love Excitetruck, but Arcade Racers are at the top of my Favorite Kind of Game list (right beside shmups).
A quick summary.
The good:
* It's fast. Not quite F-Zero GX fast, but still Fast.
* Ontop of the speed, it's very vertical. You'll be getting well over 1000 feet in the air at some points.
* The controls are perfect. It's a testament to how well the controllers work that getting the "nice landing" bonus (landing with all four tires on the ground) is both challenging and fun.
* It can shuffle mp3s off of the inserted SD card. You can also associate specific tracks to specific... tracks.
The bad:
* It's relatively short. There are 20 courses available (no idea if there are hidden ones waiting to be unlocked). Also, those 20 courses are actually four different re-tracks of five basic locations.
* Getting a passing grade in each course takes an evening. After that it challenges you to do Excellent in all of the 20 courses.
* There's not much in the way of options or modes. There are a few "challenge" minigames, which I haven't cracked open yet. But beyond that it's pretty sparse.
* No online, obviously.
Up here in Canadia, there's a chain of grocery stores (Loblaws/Superstore) that have small electronics departments. After spectacularly failing to appraise the line situation at Wal-mart (I left the house at 3:30), I drove down to the Superstore that was a block away.
There were five consoles spoken for when I got there, and they said that the place was getting 6 (which seemed to be the standard for that chain). It was about 4, and they opened at 8. So down my ass sat and we waited.
It was a perfectly peaceful night. Played alot of DS, drank coffee, and listened to someone's XM radio. I had brought 2L of coffee in thermoses (in a backpacked, wrapped in insulation). The most dramatic thing that happened was someone from the Wal-mart (which had opened at 6) came by and taunted us with their Wii. Other than having to find somewhere discreet to have a w... err, urinate, and some store employees fucking with us ("Oh, we only saw 4 in there....") everything went smoothly.
The funniest thing was when the stragglers showed up at 7:30, and didn't believe us when we said there were only six. There ended up being about 14 people in the line, but only us first six got one.
They had enough Zelda for everyone, though, which was a relief.
I got the Wii, Zelda, Excitetruck (which fucking pwns) and one each of the accessories (controller/nunchuck/classic). After taxes, it was still less than the $599 price of the worthwhile PS3.
The desktop interface sucks ass. GNOME is worse now than it was five years ago. KDE is half decent, but it still suffers from "Why the fuck this so hard?" syndrome. Widgets have a different configuration than the window manager than the desktop than the toolbars than the menubars.... The configuration of KDE is a goddamn nightmare of complexity.
If your hardware is supported, great. You're still going to have to track down the drivers and hopefully they've been compiled for your kernel version. If not, you're recompiling. That's assuming your distribution has those drivers in them. If not, you're compiling from source anyway. And hoping it works. If not, you're doing cat/proc/bus/usb/devices trying to figure out what the hell is wrong, and then searching google for a workaround and trying to find a post to a random mailing list made in the last year that might give you an idea of why it's not working.
Dealing with other people's Word documents is a pain. OpenOffice sucks. Seriously. How people can use that piece of shit is beyond me.
The clipboard situation on X is retarded. Each application "might" use the Desktop's clipboard, others use X11's, some use both, some use thier own, some will use thier own and X11's if you mouse select in them, but won't use X11's if you didn't select from them. Seriously, it's just fucking retarded.
Even when things work, they're ugly. As an example, fullscreen mode in most window managers is a fucking hack, with the toolbars and menus popping up ontop every so often.
I'm sure I could go on. But I've been dealing with this kind of shit for over 10 years on the Linux desktop (I started with fvwm 1.4 back in 1995) and it's really not changed in any meaningful way. As I said, in 1999 or so, when there was Loki making games, and a bunch of activity there was hope that things would improve.
Now it's clear that, not only have things not improved significantly since then, they've actually regressed in certain areas.
What part of "home computer" did you have a problem with?
I'm a Linux snob at work too, and I certainly use a Linux workstation to Do Work. However, at home, the desktop is a Mac. I spent years fucking around with Linux at home, and the effort is just Not Worth It anymore.
I honestly consider home desktop Linux deader now than in 1999. At least then, there was hope that things would get better.
There are some good explanations around about why they're rewriting perl.
FWIW, this is set of features that are being implemented in Perl 6 that Perl 5 lacks:
explicit strong typing proper parameter lists active metadata on values, variables, subroutines, and types declarative classes with strong encapsulation full OO exception handling support for the concurrent use of multiple versions of a module extensive introspection facilities (including of POD) LL and LR grammars (including a built-in grammar for Perl 6 itself) subroutine overloading multiple dispatch named arguments a built-in switch statement hierarchical construction and destruction distributive method dispatch method delegation named regexes overlapping and exhaustive regex matches within a string named captures parse-tree pruning incremental regex matching against input streams macros (that are implemented in Perl itself) user-definable operators (from the full Unicode set) chained comparisons a universally accessible aliasing mechanism lexical exporting (via a cleaner, declarative syntax) multimorphic equality tests state variables hypothetical variables hyperoperators (i.e. vector processing) function currying junctions (i.e. superpositional values, subroutines, and types) continuations coroutines
1) Any guild that can run Naxx that much to get the drops for those quests already has enough manpower in it's guild to make that stuff for itself. Considering they're going to start stockpiling now, and raiders typically have 2-3 alts which can do all the time-limited combines, it's going to be a non-issue.
2) There really aren't that many guilds that will be able to clear Naxx enough to get those drops. Joe Blizzard estimated that only 15% of all players have ever killed Nef. And Naxx starts out harder than Nef.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind, Metal Slug Anthology is being released for the Wii shortly, which contains 6-7 different 2D Metal Slug games.
So there's some 2D still coming out...
Didn't we start with Adam and Eve?
No, no we didn't....
Only in the sense of "a rotting zombie shambling onwards" is it "alive".
Not that USENET is dead, BTW.
Yeah... yeah, it is.
Have you *been* there recently?
I have a better idea.
Just port iTunes over to the Wii.
People will want to buy music on the Wii, and people will want to watch movies and TV shows, so let them buy them from iTMS. The Wii has USB , so you could even sync your iPod with it.
Or if Apple just wants to tie the product to their CPU sales, have them port the iTV "streaming" software to the Wii, and still require a Mac on the LAN to stream from.
While it wouldn't directly make Apple money from iTV-like hardware sales, it would be a strategic interception to the MS/Sony movie/music purchasing systems, keeping iTMS in the picture.
I could have spent enough time and effort to do that...
I mean, what is the point in building a bunch of virtual stuff in a virtual egypt with my real time?
Once I realized how idiotic the grind is in ATiTD (sure, you don't have XP, but you have to do just as much, if not more, useless running around than in a traditional MMOG -- building a civilization that's apparently too stupid to abstract it's work into currency is no small task), I realized it was just another useless, expensive timesuck.
Eh, I pretty much had the same thing. Except the triggering event was a bunch of Guild Drama(tm) that made me realize that the people I'm raiding with... really don't give a shit about me, beyond my Dark Iron gear, Quel'Serrar and raid attendance. Deleted everything, tossed the non-bound stuff and cash to one of the few decent people in the guild, and haven't looked back.
I tried the ATITD thing for a weekend, before I realized how monumentally boring it is. Yes, I want to click 3000 times to make bricks to build a shitty house!
Fortunately, I quit a month before the Wii came out, so I'm knee deep in Zelda now, and I can't even remember what Rag looks like...
Mac minis are sexy, yes. I'll wait till the mythical "Mac TV" box shows up, though.
As for the Wii, there's very little stopping Linux from booting. You have local storage (SD/Flash), and Linux has been running on the GC since forever.
More importantly (like the PS3 and Mac) you have bluetooth. That means (theortically) you have mice and keyboards.
*If* the remote could get it's protocol reverse engineered (technically only need button presses), and *if* you could boot off of the SD card with little more than a Bootloader DVD inserted into the drive, then you could basically have a media player on an SD card, complete with remote. Linux would take up like 100-150M or so of the drive, so just put the movies on the rest of the 2G card, put it in, boot it up, and watch the movies.
It knows which way is up, so it can figure it's pitch (rotation around x) and roll (rotation around z), but it can't use gravity to figure out it's yaw (rotation around y).
It also can't use gravity to figure out it's position relative to anything.
It can detect *movement* in six axes (x/y/z, rotation around x/y/z), but it can only figure out absolute position in two of the rotational ones due to gravity.
That's where the sensor bar comes in -- it gives the remote a reference point (above or below the display) so that it can be used as a pointer.
Also, it's worth noting that the "sensor bar" is passive. It doesn't read anything, it just gives the remote a reference point to use. Assuming the Wii is on, the wiimote will be able to figure everything out on it's own.
(y=up/down,x=right/left,z=in/out)
FWIW, "Super Excite" (what you unlock after getting S'es in the first 19 tracks) looks to have 24 new tracks, as well as a bunch of new cars to unlock.
I love Excitetruck, but Arcade Racers are at the top of my Favorite Kind of Game list (right beside shmups).
A quick summary.
The good:
* It's fast. Not quite F-Zero GX fast, but still Fast.
* Ontop of the speed, it's very vertical. You'll be getting well over 1000 feet in the air at some points.
* The controls are perfect. It's a testament to how well the controllers work that getting the "nice landing" bonus (landing with all four tires on the ground) is both challenging and fun.
* It can shuffle mp3s off of the inserted SD card. You can also associate specific tracks to specific... tracks.
The bad:
* It's relatively short. There are 20 courses available (no idea if there are hidden ones waiting to be unlocked). Also, those 20 courses are actually four different re-tracks of five basic locations.
* Getting a passing grade in each course takes an evening. After that it challenges you to do Excellent in all of the 20 courses.
* There's not much in the way of options or modes. There are a few "challenge" minigames, which I haven't cracked open yet. But beyond that it's pretty sparse.
* No online, obviously.
Yeah, the unexpected stores are always the best.
Up here in Canadia, there's a chain of grocery stores (Loblaws/Superstore) that have small electronics departments. After spectacularly failing to appraise the line situation at Wal-mart (I left the house at 3:30), I drove down to the Superstore that was a block away.
There were five consoles spoken for when I got there, and they said that the place was getting 6 (which seemed to be the standard for that chain). It was about 4, and they opened at 8. So down my ass sat and we waited.
It was a perfectly peaceful night. Played alot of DS, drank coffee, and listened to someone's XM radio. I had brought 2L of coffee in thermoses (in a backpacked, wrapped in insulation). The most dramatic thing that happened was someone from the Wal-mart (which had opened at 6) came by and taunted us with their Wii. Other than having to find somewhere discreet to have a w... err, urinate, and some store employees fucking with us ("Oh, we only saw 4 in there....") everything went smoothly.
The funniest thing was when the stragglers showed up at 7:30, and didn't believe us when we said there were only six. There ended up being about 14 people in the line, but only us first six got one.
They had enough Zelda for everyone, though, which was a relief.
I got the Wii, Zelda, Excitetruck (which fucking pwns) and one each of the accessories (controller/nunchuck/classic). After taxes, it was still less than the $599 price of the worthwhile PS3.
And my wife (!) wants to play tennis on it now.
The problem(s):
I'm sure I could go on. But I've been dealing with this kind of shit for over 10 years on the Linux desktop (I started with fvwm 1.4 back in 1995) and it's really not changed in any meaningful way. As I said, in 1999 or so, when there was Loki making games, and a bunch of activity there was hope that things would improve.
Now it's clear that, not only have things not improved significantly since then, they've actually regressed in certain areas.
I'll be getting Macs from now on.
Suck my balls, Kyle.
What part of "home computer" did you have a problem with?
I'm a Linux snob at work too, and I certainly use a Linux workstation to Do Work. However, at home, the desktop is a Mac. I spent years fucking around with Linux at home, and the effort is just Not Worth It anymore.
I honestly consider home desktop Linux deader now than in 1999. At least then, there was hope that things would get better.
There are some good explanations around about why they're rewriting perl.
FWIW, this is set of features that are being implemented in Perl 6 that Perl 5 lacks:
explicit strong typing
proper parameter lists
active metadata on values, variables, subroutines, and types
declarative classes with strong encapsulation
full OO exception handling
support for the concurrent use of multiple versions of a module
extensive introspection facilities (including of POD)
LL and LR grammars (including a built-in grammar for Perl 6 itself)
subroutine overloading
multiple dispatch
named arguments
a built-in switch statement
hierarchical construction and destruction
distributive method dispatch
method delegation
named regexes
overlapping and exhaustive regex matches within a string
named captures
parse-tree pruning
incremental regex matching against input streams
macros (that are implemented in Perl itself)
user-definable operators (from the full Unicode set)
chained comparisons
a universally accessible aliasing mechanism
lexical exporting (via a cleaner, declarative syntax)
multimorphic equality tests
state variables
hypothetical variables
hyperoperators (i.e. vector processing)
function currying
junctions (i.e. superpositional values, subroutines, and types)
continuations
coroutines
20-60 hours?
MMORPGs can accumulate 20-60 DAYS of playtime over the course of a year.
Ask and you shall receive.
It's a board game, not a tabletop game, but d20 is pretty much a board game anyway.
Oh, Please.
1) Any guild that can run Naxx that much to get the drops for those quests already has enough manpower in it's guild to make that stuff for itself. Considering they're going to start stockpiling now, and raiders typically have 2-3 alts which can do all the time-limited combines, it's going to be a non-issue.
2) There really aren't that many guilds that will be able to clear Naxx enough to get those drops. Joe Blizzard estimated that only 15% of all players have ever killed Nef. And Naxx starts out harder than Nef.
The original.
Sorry, but controlling a 2D guy on an isometric map, and aiming with your mouse... sucked.
The game would have been utterly forgotten had it not got the press it did.
Sorry, my id couldn't get past the horrible controls and shitty graphics of the Postal games.
But that would defeat the point of naming a server Uranus!
Jeez, do you know how many servers we had to name after planets, sattelites and asteroids in order to justify that name?
Try naming a server Uranus, and talking about it in organizational meetings.
Now *that* never gets old.
Especially when someone (innocently) brought up security testing with resepect to the server.