Well, presumably, the card wasn't designed to fool a person; just an ATM machine. So it was probably just a rectangular slice of plastic with a magnetic strip that he couldn't explain.
That's actually a result of a bizarre market strategy that's been in place for game consoles for years: the stores themselves sell the base hardware at cost. $599 for a PS3 is what Sony charges the store, not just an MSRP. The idea, from a stores' standpoint, is that a) it's better for their game sales overall for more consoles to be sold, so it's generally in their best interest to assist this dissemination, and b) if they sell a console to a customer, they can hope that customer will either buy games and accessories at the same time or remember the store and come back for them at a later date. Online retail has made this a bit less effective, as customers these days are less likely to rely on the same local game store for all their gaming needs; as a result, you see more "bundles" being sold, so that the store can insure it makes a profit.
On the contrary, the rounded-top console is a lesson Nintendo learned years ago with the original NES. When designing the American version of the Super NES, they purposefully made the top curvy to prevent people from setting their drinks on it, spilled beverages accounting for a relatively large number of service requests for the boxy 8-bit system. This same design philosophy also dictated the unusual shape of the top-loading NES. You'll notice that the 'cube follows this tradition somewhat (yeah, the top is flat, but if you put stuff there you can't get to the buttons/game) and I suppose the Wii does, too, though I'm unsure if it can be oriented horizontally based on the pics of the system I've seen. Combine that with the more modern concern of heat production that other posters have mentioned, and the curved-top design is one of the few things we can't really fault Sony on this round.
While Mandarin Chinese and Hindi do technically outclass English in pure numbers, there's two important things to consider: 1) This statistic only refers to population; English is used, geographically speaking, by a much wider portion of the world. And, 2) This statistic only describes Mandarin, English, and Hindi as they are used as primary languages. English is an exceedingly popular choice as a second language, and in that capacity, has rapidly become, post-WWII, the lingua franca for international affairs.
Um, yeah, I would care if Winnie the Pooh won the election, for two reasons: 1) It would be final and incontrovertible proof that the current election system has inadequate security, and 2) That muthafuckin' bear would eat ALL the honey.
*sigh* Why must this crap be posted in response to every single news article. Once again, say it with me:
SLASHDOT IS A BLOG.
It is not a news agency. It has no reporters. It is an opinionated blog where a small collection of people find articles that are interesting, comment on them, and allow other members to reply to the news and/or their comments. Slashdot has no requirement for journalistic neutrality, nor should it; if you despise the posters to the extent that their opinions compel you to comment every time they open their mouths, just go somewhere else. Google news, for example. What would be the point of this site if it just posted links to articles? That's been DONE, many times, elsewhere.
Now, if you disagree with the comments attached to the article, say so! Feel free to disagree with scuttlemonkey, at length and with much vitriol. But this "waaah waaah a slashdot editor has an opinion this site suxors it used to be better why don't they just post the news waaah waaah" shit is just getting old. Disagree with what he has said; don't claim he has no right to say it.
Now c'mon, Ultima IX is hardly even in the running for "worst." Yeah, it was among the buggiest commercial releases ever; I'm not going to argue with that. But underneath the bugs, it was a damn fun game. Very similar to Daggerfall, really, in that you'd learn to love it if you could learn to ignore the technical flaws. Of course, ignoring the flaws was a rather Herculean task, in Ultima IX's case, but that doesn't make it one of the worst games ever. Most disappointing, perhaps. Best game ever to be ruined by being released too quickly, certainly.
I can't believe this shit got modded up. I'm sorry, Reckless, that you've got diabetes. But them's the breaks. And yeah, it DOES mean that you have to watch what you eat and drink. Or you die. Very simple. As you've said, given your relatives, it's in the blood; there is NO ONE to blame but yourself for not having recognized this fact and made the necessary changes to prevent this eventuality, or at least make its impact lessened.
Your little tantrum will take you right to the grave, and it might take a few of your extremities with it on the way. Maybe a little blindness thrown in. But no, you're sticking it to the man, being your own boss, living life on the edge.
Yes, of course the marketing divisions behind certain foods often skew or misreport findings to support their own products and damage others. But don't, in your attempt at rebellion, think for a second that it invalidates what you're told by a medical professional. Telling yourself the "diabetes seminars" are just there to make money for the hospital is ridiculous; what's next, you're going to not let them amputate your dead foot because they "just want the insurance money?"
Some might think I'm being a little harsh, but I'd wager that +5 post is getting thousands of views as I write these words. And a fair percentage of them are probably diabetics. And hell, some of them might decide to buy in to this self-delusion. In short: the post above is stupid and dangerous and could be hurting people. MOD IT DOWN.
Re:It's to focus on thier core business model
on
Clover Studios Closed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
To be fair, the Mega Man sequels have often been wildly different - the Battle Network series, for example, are a lot of fun, and not the traditional platformer at all. And as has been pointed out, they've not produced any new Street Fighter stuff in years. Meanwhile, the Resident Evil series has been getting better and better, and Dead Rising, while not a huge departure for the company in that it's still you versus zombies, is nevertheless unique in its approach and an ASSLOAD of fun. Devil May Cry set the new bar for its genre, though the frustrating difficulty of the past iteration really put me off. I played the upcoming Lost Planet at Comicon, and it was extremely promising. And it's hard to argue that the Pheonix Wright games are formulaic.
Rereading that, I come off as a Capcom fanboy, but I'm not saying they shit gold. I just don't think it's really fair to pigeonhole a publisher that's actually been doing pretty good lately.
I'd go one step further, and toss Okami on the overrated bandwagon. God Hand is certainly mediocre, as the reviews show, but both Okami and Viewtiful LOOK great while actually providing little innovation. Viewtiful was a fairly slow, occasionally frustrating platformer that lost my interest an hour in, and never regained it as I plodded to the finish. Granted, the time control and the movie-physics premise was interesting at first, but it just wasn't fun.
Okami, meanwhile, I just stoped playing about 12 hours in, and I'm not going back. It's Wind Waker with less inventive dungeons, more forgettable characters, and a depressingly simplistic combat system. Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and overall look of the game (though it does make my eyes water a bit after playing Dead Rising in beautiful widescreen HD for so long), it's just that once you get past that, you've got a rather poorly done action-adventure title. And I despise the "you have a new power, now go everywhere in the world you've already been to see where you can use it to get a few crappy items" collection quests, which I am always compelled to attempt. Even given all that, I think a Wii port of this game might save it from mediocrity, as the Wii controller might work better than the somewhat awkward analog-stick brush control.
I'm not saying these are bad games. They're definitely worthy of high-80s to low-90s, and their graphical style is undeniable. I just don't think it's fair to mention them in the same breath as truly innovative games like, say, Katamari Damacy. That said, it's a shame to see the division eliminated; I can only hope its employees found work in other capacities within the company.
I understand that the countries involved make it sort of a non-issue - though not being able to enter the US without being arrested might be a rather frustrating thing to work around, if I've understood the specifics of the case - but what frustrates me most is the innate assumption here that the tool WILL be used for piracy. I am the owner of a copy of the HDLoader software. I have used it many times, but never to run downloaded ROMs off the net or to play burned copies of games. I use it for three reasons: 1) I don't have to get up and hunt down a disc to play a particular game. 2) I don't have to worry about scratching the discs with a lot of shuffling around. And, most importantly of all, 3) Many games run much, MUCH faster off a HDD than off the original discs! Indeed, downloading ROMs to the disc, or even running burned copies of games, would require just as much mod chipping, disc swapping, etc. etc. as it would without the HDLoader app.
Is there some sort of bizarre conversion problem for the online version of Wired? This article is missing commas, hyphens, semicolons, and other punctuation all over the place; in places, it almost hurts to read. If these aren't technical errors, Wired needs to hire a few more hacks and a few less hackers.
Heh, I've played Eve, and that statement might be a bit misleading. Players hunt down and kill EVERY GODDAMN THING THAT MOVES; gold farming or not has little to do with it.
I know exactly where you're coming from. About a year ago, I decided to build the mother of all arcade cabinets. Got a kit and custom built panel from Slikstik, grabbed a decently powerful PC on sale at Fry's, and spent the month or so while I waited for all the parts to arrive tracking down, downloading, and setting up emulators for every home and arcade system ever. Fully built, this thing has ROMs and emulators - all accessible from a simple menu - for literally every Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari (all flavors), Arcade (all MAME-supported plus Daphne for laser disc games), Genesis, TurboG16, N64, Gameboy, Super Gameboy, Color Gameboy, Lynx, Colecovision, Jaguar, etc etc etc ever made.......and I haven't even turned it on in 8 months. It sits as a giant, 500-pound coffee table next to the front door of my apartment. I skirt around it, guiltily reassuring myself that I'll "play some games tomorrow" nearly every day on my way out the door. It's depressing, and baffling, but there it is.
This is great news, and fascinating from a technical standpoint. But I cringe to think of the unfortunate side effect of something like this: think of the countless grieving families who, on the advice of their doctors, pulled the plug. Particularly those who did so recently. Imagine the horror to imagine that this drug could have brought their loved ones back.
I'm not saying that the decision not to perpetuate the incurably brain dead is the wrong one, nor am I placing blame on the medical community in any way. But you can't expect laypeople to understand the difference, really, and the pain of not knowing if the decision was the right one... Of constantly wondering, down where logic doesn't really help, if there was a chance...
Meh, carpal tunnel is one thing I don't have to worry about. I have a natural, built-in defense: attention deficit disorder. Woot for battling ailments!
The difference between working and playing a game - or at least, our perception of the difference - is a lot simpler than most people realize. It's a matter of the pattern of rewards. If you are RANDOMLY rewarded for your efforts, it's a game, and "fun." If you are rewarded on a set, predefined schedule, it's "work."
Look at it this way: if you had a job to pull a lever and make some light blink, and for it you'd be paid $10/hour, you'd be mindlessly bored in a matter of minutes, maybe an hour. It would be excrutiating. But in Vegas, walk into any casino, and you'll find people everywhere doing exactly that - and what's more, not only are they not getting a salary, on the whole they're LOSING money! The difference? The rewards are allocated in a random manner. Simple as that.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, presumably, the card wasn't designed to fool a person; just an ATM machine. So it was probably just a rectangular slice of plastic with a magnetic strip that he couldn't explain.
That's actually a result of a bizarre market strategy that's been in place for game consoles for years: the stores themselves sell the base hardware at cost. $599 for a PS3 is what Sony charges the store, not just an MSRP. The idea, from a stores' standpoint, is that a) it's better for their game sales overall for more consoles to be sold, so it's generally in their best interest to assist this dissemination, and b) if they sell a console to a customer, they can hope that customer will either buy games and accessories at the same time or remember the store and come back for them at a later date. Online retail has made this a bit less effective, as customers these days are less likely to rely on the same local game store for all their gaming needs; as a result, you see more "bundles" being sold, so that the store can insure it makes a profit.
On the contrary, the rounded-top console is a lesson Nintendo learned years ago with the original NES. When designing the American version of the Super NES, they purposefully made the top curvy to prevent people from setting their drinks on it, spilled beverages accounting for a relatively large number of service requests for the boxy 8-bit system. This same design philosophy also dictated the unusual shape of the top-loading NES. You'll notice that the 'cube follows this tradition somewhat (yeah, the top is flat, but if you put stuff there you can't get to the buttons/game) and I suppose the Wii does, too, though I'm unsure if it can be oriented horizontally based on the pics of the system I've seen. Combine that with the more modern concern of heat production that other posters have mentioned, and the curved-top design is one of the few things we can't really fault Sony on this round.
While Mandarin Chinese and Hindi do technically outclass English in pure numbers, there's two important things to consider: 1) This statistic only refers to population; English is used, geographically speaking, by a much wider portion of the world. And, 2) This statistic only describes Mandarin, English, and Hindi as they are used as primary languages. English is an exceedingly popular choice as a second language, and in that capacity, has rapidly become, post-WWII, the lingua franca for international affairs.
1, 2, and 3 are doing well, but 7 8 9 and is now serving 20 to life...
Wow, that doesn't work when it's not spoken.
Um, yeah, I would care if Winnie the Pooh won the election, for two reasons: 1) It would be final and incontrovertible proof that the current election system has inadequate security, and 2) That muthafuckin' bear would eat ALL the honey.
*sigh* Why must this crap be posted in response to every single news article. Once again, say it with me:
SLASHDOT IS A BLOG.
It is not a news agency. It has no reporters. It is an opinionated blog where a small collection of people find articles that are interesting, comment on them, and allow other members to reply to the news and/or their comments. Slashdot has no requirement for journalistic neutrality, nor should it; if you despise the posters to the extent that their opinions compel you to comment every time they open their mouths, just go somewhere else. Google news, for example. What would be the point of this site if it just posted links to articles? That's been DONE, many times, elsewhere.
Now, if you disagree with the comments attached to the article, say so! Feel free to disagree with scuttlemonkey, at length and with much vitriol. But this "waaah waaah a slashdot editor has an opinion this site suxors it used to be better why don't they just post the news waaah waaah" shit is just getting old. Disagree with what he has said; don't claim he has no right to say it.
God replied, "Abort, Retry, Fail?" Crap.
Now c'mon, Ultima IX is hardly even in the running for "worst." Yeah, it was among the buggiest commercial releases ever; I'm not going to argue with that. But underneath the bugs, it was a damn fun game. Very similar to Daggerfall, really, in that you'd learn to love it if you could learn to ignore the technical flaws. Of course, ignoring the flaws was a rather Herculean task, in Ultima IX's case, but that doesn't make it one of the worst games ever. Most disappointing, perhaps. Best game ever to be ruined by being released too quickly, certainly.
I can't believe this shit got modded up. I'm sorry, Reckless, that you've got diabetes. But them's the breaks. And yeah, it DOES mean that you have to watch what you eat and drink. Or you die. Very simple. As you've said, given your relatives, it's in the blood; there is NO ONE to blame but yourself for not having recognized this fact and made the necessary changes to prevent this eventuality, or at least make its impact lessened.
Your little tantrum will take you right to the grave, and it might take a few of your extremities with it on the way. Maybe a little blindness thrown in. But no, you're sticking it to the man, being your own boss, living life on the edge.
Yes, of course the marketing divisions behind certain foods often skew or misreport findings to support their own products and damage others. But don't, in your attempt at rebellion, think for a second that it invalidates what you're told by a medical professional. Telling yourself the "diabetes seminars" are just there to make money for the hospital is ridiculous; what's next, you're going to not let them amputate your dead foot because they "just want the insurance money?"
Some might think I'm being a little harsh, but I'd wager that +5 post is getting thousands of views as I write these words. And a fair percentage of them are probably diabetics. And hell, some of them might decide to buy in to this self-delusion. In short: the post above is stupid and dangerous and could be hurting people. MOD IT DOWN.
To be fair, the Mega Man sequels have often been wildly different - the Battle Network series, for example, are a lot of fun, and not the traditional platformer at all. And as has been pointed out, they've not produced any new Street Fighter stuff in years. Meanwhile, the Resident Evil series has been getting better and better, and Dead Rising, while not a huge departure for the company in that it's still you versus zombies, is nevertheless unique in its approach and an ASSLOAD of fun. Devil May Cry set the new bar for its genre, though the frustrating difficulty of the past iteration really put me off. I played the upcoming Lost Planet at Comicon, and it was extremely promising. And it's hard to argue that the Pheonix Wright games are formulaic.
Rereading that, I come off as a Capcom fanboy, but I'm not saying they shit gold. I just don't think it's really fair to pigeonhole a publisher that's actually been doing pretty good lately.
I'd go one step further, and toss Okami on the overrated bandwagon. God Hand is certainly mediocre, as the reviews show, but both Okami and Viewtiful LOOK great while actually providing little innovation. Viewtiful was a fairly slow, occasionally frustrating platformer that lost my interest an hour in, and never regained it as I plodded to the finish. Granted, the time control and the movie-physics premise was interesting at first, but it just wasn't fun.
Okami, meanwhile, I just stoped playing about 12 hours in, and I'm not going back. It's Wind Waker with less inventive dungeons, more forgettable characters, and a depressingly simplistic combat system. Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and overall look of the game (though it does make my eyes water a bit after playing Dead Rising in beautiful widescreen HD for so long), it's just that once you get past that, you've got a rather poorly done action-adventure title. And I despise the "you have a new power, now go everywhere in the world you've already been to see where you can use it to get a few crappy items" collection quests, which I am always compelled to attempt. Even given all that, I think a Wii port of this game might save it from mediocrity, as the Wii controller might work better than the somewhat awkward analog-stick brush control.
I'm not saying these are bad games. They're definitely worthy of high-80s to low-90s, and their graphical style is undeniable. I just don't think it's fair to mention them in the same breath as truly innovative games like, say, Katamari Damacy. That said, it's a shame to see the division eliminated; I can only hope its employees found work in other capacities within the company.
I started to make a joke here about candlepower and a menorah, but decided against it...
Hrm... Working out via repetitive hand motions while surfing the Internet... Why does this sound familiar?
I understand that the countries involved make it sort of a non-issue - though not being able to enter the US without being arrested might be a rather frustrating thing to work around, if I've understood the specifics of the case - but what frustrates me most is the innate assumption here that the tool WILL be used for piracy. I am the owner of a copy of the HDLoader software. I have used it many times, but never to run downloaded ROMs off the net or to play burned copies of games. I use it for three reasons: 1) I don't have to get up and hunt down a disc to play a particular game. 2) I don't have to worry about scratching the discs with a lot of shuffling around. And, most importantly of all, 3) Many games run much, MUCH faster off a HDD than off the original discs! Indeed, downloading ROMs to the disc, or even running burned copies of games, would require just as much mod chipping, disc swapping, etc. etc. as it would without the HDLoader app.
Is there some sort of bizarre conversion problem for the online version of Wired? This article is missing commas, hyphens, semicolons, and other punctuation all over the place; in places, it almost hurts to read. If these aren't technical errors, Wired needs to hire a few more hacks and a few less hackers.
"Contrary to popular belief, cleansing your colon into a hole is the world's oldest occupation, not prostitution."
You... you get paid for it? How do... No, never mind. I don't want to know.
Heh, I've played Eve, and that statement might be a bit misleading. Players hunt down and kill EVERY GODDAMN THING THAT MOVES; gold farming or not has little to do with it.
I'd say this particular instance might be better described by the not-so-old adage, "the pot calling the canary black."
I know exactly where you're coming from. About a year ago, I decided to build the mother of all arcade cabinets. Got a kit and custom built panel from Slikstik, grabbed a decently powerful PC on sale at Fry's, and spent the month or so while I waited for all the parts to arrive tracking down, downloading, and setting up emulators for every home and arcade system ever. Fully built, this thing has ROMs and emulators - all accessible from a simple menu - for literally every Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari (all flavors), Arcade (all MAME-supported plus Daphne for laser disc games), Genesis, TurboG16, N64, Gameboy, Super Gameboy, Color Gameboy, Lynx, Colecovision, Jaguar, etc etc etc ever made.... ...and I haven't even turned it on in 8 months. It sits as a giant, 500-pound coffee table next to the front door of my apartment. I skirt around it, guiltily reassuring myself that I'll "play some games tomorrow" nearly every day on my way out the door. It's depressing, and baffling, but there it is.
Well yeah, it does sound like something they'd do by accident.
This is great news, and fascinating from a technical standpoint. But I cringe to think of the unfortunate side effect of something like this: think of the countless grieving families who, on the advice of their doctors, pulled the plug. Particularly those who did so recently. Imagine the horror to imagine that this drug could have brought their loved ones back.
I'm not saying that the decision not to perpetuate the incurably brain dead is the wrong one, nor am I placing blame on the medical community in any way. But you can't expect laypeople to understand the difference, really, and the pain of not knowing if the decision was the right one... Of constantly wondering, down where logic doesn't really help, if there was a chance...
Meh, carpal tunnel is one thing I don't have to worry about. I have a natural, built-in defense: attention deficit disorder. Woot for battling ailments!
The difference between working and playing a game - or at least, our perception of the difference - is a lot simpler than most people realize. It's a matter of the pattern of rewards. If you are RANDOMLY rewarded for your efforts, it's a game, and "fun." If you are rewarded on a set, predefined schedule, it's "work."
Look at it this way: if you had a job to pull a lever and make some light blink, and for it you'd be paid $10/hour, you'd be mindlessly bored in a matter of minutes, maybe an hour. It would be excrutiating. But in Vegas, walk into any casino, and you'll find people everywhere doing exactly that - and what's more, not only are they not getting a salary, on the whole they're LOSING money! The difference? The rewards are allocated in a random manner. Simple as that.
Wow, Ma'am, you're awfully old to be posting on slashdot. You should probably get back to your bridge game.