Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't really expect any graphical difference on a cross-platform game. Optimizing for one console or the other doesn't pay off in that situation. The problem, of course, is that comparing exclusives to one another isn't going to be very reasonable either.
I suppose we'll actually have to wait and see whether the PS3 games can wow people or not.
I've sure that when enough people start using them, you'll see all kinds of abacus viruses and malware. They're just not popular enough for the black hats to target them yet. Mark my words.
I seem to remember a messenger client, enabled by default, that allowed any other computer to connect to yours and infect it with a virus.
I also seem to remember a bundled internet browser that allowed any web site to download and install software on throught it.
And there there's the bundled email client that allowed emails to install and run software on the computer without the user having to do any other than look at the email.
In so many ways, that "user stupidity" was simply using Windows in the first place. You can not expect everyone who owns a computer to be immediately intimated familiar with security. People who run attachments are stupid, companies that distribute OSs that are by default insecure are not just stupid, they're reckless and dangerous.
Personally, I predict Microsoft will sell their "HD-DVD" add-on to less than 5% of Xbox 360 owners. Who's retarded enough to buy a pricey external add on to a console to allow their game machine to play HD-DVDs? No, by the time Microsoft can produce them at an affordable price, there will be dedicate players available at a reasonably competitive price that won't tie up your 360 when someone wants to watch a movie. It's just MS FUD to say "Oh, we're gonna maybe, possibly have HD too!"
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals isn't a "Final Fantasy" game. As long as Sony can convince Square-Enix to keep the real Final Fantasy games exclusive to the PS3, it's going to stay competitive. If they lose their exclusives to other consoles, then all bets are off and Sony's Game Division is going to get killed. However, at this point it seems highly unlikely that that will happen.
As far as blue ray goes you have not 1 but 2 chicken and egg problems. There's no need for HDTV if there's nothing to watch on your HDTV, there's no need for something to watch on an HDTV if you don't have an HDTV. The Blue-Ray drive is supposed to be the trojan horse that gets HDTV into your living room by providing you something to watch on HDTV, without requiring and HDTV.
It looks like someone balked at the plan and forced Sone's Game Division to up the price to hedge their bets (or to make more money now). The plan could be in trouble, I think the article's essentially right the mass market consumers won't buy at $200 more than the competition. The question is whether Sony has the balls to drop the price a month after the console launches, or not.
Skies of Arcadia was a Dreamcast game that got ported to the GameCube. While I'm sure it's a great game, it's still a last generation game that got a new coat of paint, and it's one of the strongest RPG titles for the GameCube. The PS2 has more RPGs than you can shake a stick at.
It's not that you can't get action games for the GameCube it's that more action games are available on the Xbox or the PS2 than are available on the Gamecube. Same with RPGs, the PS2 has a much larger selection of roleplaying games than either the Xbox or the Gamecube.
When someone kills someone else and claims that God told them to do it, people claim that God is obviously a bad influence and should be abandoned.
What? When? In in what magical fairy-tale world?
When someone claims God told him to do it, they send him to see a psychologist to see if he's really insane or just lying.
The problems that people associated with "Religion" really have more to do with "Evangelical Religion". Evangelical religions often take up the Borg mentality that "You will join our collective" and pursue that goal by whatever means necessary. The scarey part is that because it's a religion, and their acting in what they believe to be the best interests of the religion, they believe anything they do must be good. It's the classic philosophical problem of is something good because God orders it, or does God only order good things? And the conflict is regularly being played out in real life.
I thought that *was* the point. It's not a petition to end the church, it's way for people to opt out of paying money to an organization they'd rather not support. Why they choose to do so is really their own business.
Actually, you'd probably end up importing most of it from Europe. Their farm subsidies are even crazier than those in North America. The major problem with importing your food is a national security issue. In case of famine who gets food first? The countries that produce the food, or the countries that rely on others for food production. That's the compelling argument that farmers make to justify keeping them farming.
Much better actually. Now you have 3 fundamentally different religions that support your argument, rather than relying on three religions from the same source and 1 fringe religion.
Nelson: Hmm... which one of these is the salt? Too bad I'm an idiot 'cause
my school closed. Oh, well. [pours the poison in the pot] Burns: No!! That's the rat poison! Skinner: And, freeze! Now, who in Springfield will eat the poisoned broth?
Oh-ho! It could be anyone, even Mr. Burns! Burns: This play really speaks to me.
[Next, Bart drives a Mr. Burns dummy around in an ambulance] Bart: I can't take Mr. Burns to the ho'pital 'cause I'm too dumb to read a
map. Oh, why did my school have to close? Burns: Hmm....
[Bart gets Mr. Burns to the hospital where Ralph, as a doctor, puts
Mr. Burns on an examination table] Ralph: Hello, I'm Dr. Stupid. I'm going to take out your liver bones.
[chops Mr. Burns's head off with a saw] Oops, you're dead. Burns: I never liked that Dr. Stupid.
In a nutshell that's why you pay to school other people's children. It's cheaper and safer than the alternative.
Yes, lets do that. The poor can fend for themselves, same with the farmers, and the uneducated. Bah. Life was better when only the people that mattered got an education.
You keep using that word "Religion", I do not think it means what you think it means.
Seriously, though you intend to imply that a state needs to establish irrational beliefs in it's people to justify it's existence, religion just doesn't fit, it evokes the supernatural in a clearly inappropriate manner. I think the word you want is most aptly "justification". Every state needs a justification for it's existence. For the United States, that justification is actually three-fold, freedom, democracy and employment.
Other possibilities include dogma or doctrine. The main reason religion is not accurate is that there is generally no sense in democracies or republics that the government is or should be immune to criticsm. That is a key point, which implicit in a religioun. It can't be religion if it doesn't declare itself "The Truth", or at least "The Way to the Truth".
There were a number of cases where multi-classed mages could get 9th level spells. There was the optional high ability score bonus, where an elf with an int of 19 (iirc) or higher could reach level 18. There were the Forgotten Realms High Magic rules for elves, which allowed elves to exceed the normal level limits and the level limits in Krynn were different for each order of mages. If I remember correctly Sylvanesti White Mages could progress to level 20. Additionally, many DMs would allow a character to exceed the level limit by 1 level per wish spell cast for that purpose.
Of course, most campaigns never reached the lofty heights where the level limits really came into play, and many of those that did, ignored the level limits any way.
Strangely enough, most the unveristy students with the least ability to reason have been liberal arts majors.
Seriously, I think science and the scientific method is a very important part of what makes people free from irrationality. The simple belief that you can try things to see what works and what doesn't often seems trivial and unimportant, but it's amazing how the lack of that simple concept can totally cripple someone's ability to live freely.
The American obssession with employment is a result of the Great Depression. It became the goal of the United States to prevent such a man-made catastrophe from ever happening again. It became the national goal to ensure that there would always be jobs for the people, and it shapes the major policies of the U.S. government. It's all about the economy because it's what produces the jobs. Every great empire has a mission, a goal, an ideal. For the United States as a whole it has been getting as close to 0% unemployment as feasible since the 1930s.
No I haven't read the New Sun books, however, I know that those books are science fiction, set in the far future. I also know that mercury cause crystalization in steel and would cause any low tech weapon to snap easily, rendering it useless, mercury weapons only work in the future tech because plastics can be used to separate the mercury from the steel.
Prestige classes and the new multi-classing encourage class whoring, where you pick the classes that give you the most advantages and least disadvantages. It also severely discourages any multi-classing for spell casting classes because you trade away your highest level spells for every level of that other class. You never get more than you traded away if your primary class is a caster class. No, I definitely prefered the old multi-classing where you didn't trade 1st level spells in one class for 9th level spells in the other. The multi-class system in 3rd Ed only works for non-casters. And prestige classees come in three groups, the ones that make sense, the ones that are lame rip-offs of movie/novel characters, and the ones that just plain ridiculous.
Here's why they don't work. In 2nd Edition if I wanted an Amazon character I picked up the kit at character creation and got the associated benefits and penalties and played my character that way. In 3rd Edition if I wanted to play an Amazon character I make sure I have certain skills and a certain base attack bonus and at level 6, I pick up the Amazon prestige class there by gaining some of the abilities of an Amazon.
The Forgotten Realms book went a long way towards trying to fix this stupidity with their region system where there were kit-like details for each region. However, prestige classes as implemented are a bad addition, not a good one. The bigest part may be that very few of them were truly prestigious in any way, shape, or form. They were just mediocre replacements for a system that some people thought was too complicated or too unbalanced.
There were too many small problems with the game that should have been fixed, but Hasbro bought WotC and cut a year off the development time for 3rd Edition and it shows.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, no. Microsoft has put out much worse propaganda. They just don't show in in EB.
No, it's doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time.
Nope, those are the reasons. I think most of us agree that they're really bad reasons, but they are the reasons.
The excuses take the form of:
The Bible says...
Children need to have...
We need to defend the moral...
Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't really expect any graphical difference on a cross-platform game. Optimizing for one console or the other doesn't pay off in that situation. The problem, of course, is that comparing exclusives to one another isn't going to be very reasonable either.
I suppose we'll actually have to wait and see whether the PS3 games can wow people or not.
I've sure that when enough people start using them, you'll see all kinds of abacus viruses and malware. They're just not popular enough for the black hats to target them yet. Mark my words.
Really? I
I seem to remember a messenger client, enabled by default, that allowed any other computer to connect to yours and infect it with a virus.
I also seem to remember a bundled internet browser that allowed any web site to download and install software on throught it.
And there there's the bundled email client that allowed emails to install and run software on the computer without the user having to do any other than look at the email.
In so many ways, that "user stupidity" was simply using Windows in the first place. You can not expect everyone who owns a computer to be immediately intimated familiar with security. People who run attachments are stupid, companies that distribute OSs that are by default insecure are not just stupid, they're reckless and dangerous.
Personally, I predict Microsoft will sell their "HD-DVD" add-on to less than 5% of Xbox 360 owners. Who's retarded enough to buy a pricey external add on to a console to allow their game machine to play HD-DVDs? No, by the time Microsoft can produce them at an affordable price, there will be dedicate players available at a reasonably competitive price that won't tie up your 360 when someone wants to watch a movie. It's just MS FUD to say "Oh, we're gonna maybe, possibly have HD too!"
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals isn't a "Final Fantasy" game. As long as Sony can convince Square-Enix to keep the real Final Fantasy games exclusive to the PS3, it's going to stay competitive. If they lose their exclusives to other consoles, then all bets are off and Sony's Game Division is going to get killed. However, at this point it seems highly unlikely that that will happen.
As far as blue ray goes you have not 1 but 2 chicken and egg problems. There's no need for HDTV if there's nothing to watch on your HDTV, there's no need for something to watch on an HDTV if you don't have an HDTV. The Blue-Ray drive is supposed to be the trojan horse that gets HDTV into your living room by providing you something to watch on HDTV, without requiring and HDTV.
It looks like someone balked at the plan and forced Sone's Game Division to up the price to hedge their bets (or to make more money now). The plan could be in trouble, I think the article's essentially right the mass market consumers won't buy at $200 more than the competition. The question is whether Sony has the balls to drop the price a month after the console launches, or not.
Skies of Arcadia was a Dreamcast game that got ported to the GameCube. While I'm sure it's a great game, it's still a last generation game that got a new coat of paint, and it's one of the strongest RPG titles for the GameCube. The PS2 has more RPGs than you can shake a stick at.
It's not that you can't get action games for the GameCube it's that more action games are available on the Xbox or the PS2 than are available on the Gamecube. Same with RPGs, the PS2 has a much larger selection of roleplaying games than either the Xbox or the Gamecube.
Explaining stuff is un-American.
When someone kills someone else and claims that God told them to do it, people claim that God is obviously a bad influence and should be abandoned.
What? When? In in what magical fairy-tale world?
When someone claims God told him to do it, they send him to see a psychologist to see if he's really insane or just lying.
The problems that people associated with "Religion" really have more to do with "Evangelical Religion". Evangelical religions often take up the Borg mentality that "You will join our collective" and pursue that goal by whatever means necessary. The scarey part is that because it's a religion, and their acting in what they believe to be the best interests of the religion, they believe anything they do must be good. It's the classic philosophical problem of is something good because God orders it, or does God only order good things? And the conflict is regularly being played out in real life.
I thought that *was* the point. It's not a petition to end the church, it's way for people to opt out of paying money to an organization they'd rather not support. Why they choose to do so is really their own business.
Actually, you'd probably end up importing most of it from Europe. Their farm subsidies are even crazier than those in North America. The major problem with importing your food is a national security issue. In case of famine who gets food first? The countries that produce the food, or the countries that rely on others for food production. That's the compelling argument that farmers make to justify keeping them farming.
Much better actually. Now you have 3 fundamentally different religions that support your argument, rather than relying on three religions from the same source and 1 fringe religion.
The Simpsons has an answer for everything:
... which one of these is the salt? Too bad I'm an idiot 'cause
Nelson: Hmm
my school closed. Oh, well. [pours the poison in the pot]
Burns: No!! That's the rat poison!
Skinner: And, freeze! Now, who in Springfield will eat the poisoned broth?
Oh-ho! It could be anyone, even Mr. Burns!
Burns: This play really speaks to me.
[Next, Bart drives a Mr. Burns dummy around in an ambulance]
Bart: I can't take Mr. Burns to the ho'pital 'cause I'm too dumb to read a
map. Oh, why did my school have to close?
Burns: Hmm....
[Bart gets Mr. Burns to the hospital where Ralph, as a doctor, puts
Mr. Burns on an examination table]
Ralph: Hello, I'm Dr. Stupid. I'm going to take out your liver bones.
[chops Mr. Burns's head off with a saw] Oops, you're dead.
Burns: I never liked that Dr. Stupid.
In a nutshell that's why you pay to school other people's children. It's cheaper and safer than the alternative.
Yes, lets do that. The poor can fend for themselves, same with the farmers, and the uneducated. Bah. Life was better when only the people that mattered got an education.
You keep using that word "Religion", I do not think it means what you think it means.
Seriously, though you intend to imply that a state needs to establish irrational beliefs in it's people to justify it's existence, religion just doesn't fit, it evokes the supernatural in a clearly inappropriate manner. I think the word you want is most aptly "justification". Every state needs a justification for it's existence. For the United States, that justification is actually three-fold, freedom, democracy and employment.
Other possibilities include dogma or doctrine. The main reason religion is not accurate is that there is generally no sense in democracies or republics that the government is or should be immune to criticsm. That is a key point, which implicit in a religioun. It can't be religion if it doesn't declare itself "The Truth", or at least "The Way to the Truth".
Three of the religions you cited shared the same book.
The last one considers killing parasitic insects to be unethical.
I think you need to find a broader base of support.
They like the pagentry and the symbolism, and they've been repeatedly told over and over again that "this is the way it should be".
Is that the operating system of choice for SkyNet?
There is no Highlander 2. Just a 2 hour long gap when nothing at all happened.
Personally, I prefer this synopsis:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/04/30
There were a number of cases where multi-classed mages could get 9th level spells. There was the optional high ability score bonus, where an elf with an int of 19 (iirc) or higher could reach level 18. There were the Forgotten Realms High Magic rules for elves, which allowed elves to exceed the normal level limits and the level limits in Krynn were different for each order of mages. If I remember correctly Sylvanesti White Mages could progress to level 20. Additionally, many DMs would allow a character to exceed the level limit by 1 level per wish spell cast for that purpose.
Of course, most campaigns never reached the lofty heights where the level limits really came into play, and many of those that did, ignored the level limits any way.
Strangely enough, most the unveristy students with the least ability to reason have been liberal arts majors.
Seriously, I think science and the scientific method is a very important part of what makes people free from irrationality. The simple belief that you can try things to see what works and what doesn't often seems trivial and unimportant, but it's amazing how the lack of that simple concept can totally cripple someone's ability to live freely.
The American obssession with employment is a result of the Great Depression. It became the goal of the United States to prevent such a man-made catastrophe from ever happening again. It became the national goal to ensure that there would always be jobs for the people, and it shapes the major policies of the U.S. government. It's all about the economy because it's what produces the jobs. Every great empire has a mission, a goal, an ideal. For the United States as a whole it has been getting as close to 0% unemployment as feasible since the 1930s.
No I haven't read the New Sun books, however, I know that those books are science fiction, set in the far future. I also know that mercury cause crystalization in steel and would cause any low tech weapon to snap easily, rendering it useless, mercury weapons only work in the future tech because plastics can be used to separate the mercury from the steel.
Prestige classes and the new multi-classing encourage class whoring, where you pick the classes that give you the most advantages and least disadvantages. It also severely discourages any multi-classing for spell casting classes because you trade away your highest level spells for every level of that other class. You never get more than you traded away if your primary class is a caster class. No, I definitely prefered the old multi-classing where you didn't trade 1st level spells in one class for 9th level spells in the other. The multi-class system in 3rd Ed only works for non-casters. And prestige classees come in three groups, the ones that make sense, the ones that are lame rip-offs of movie/novel characters, and the ones that just plain ridiculous.
Here's why they don't work. In 2nd Edition if I wanted an Amazon character I picked up the kit at character creation and got the associated benefits and penalties and played my character that way. In 3rd Edition if I wanted to play an Amazon character I make sure I have certain skills and a certain base attack bonus and at level 6, I pick up the Amazon prestige class there by gaining some of the abilities of an Amazon.
The Forgotten Realms book went a long way towards trying to fix this stupidity with their region system where there were kit-like details for each region. However, prestige classes as implemented are a bad addition, not a good one. The bigest part may be that very few of them were truly prestigious in any way, shape, or form. They were just mediocre replacements for a system that some people thought was too complicated or too unbalanced.
There were too many small problems with the game that should have been fixed, but Hasbro bought WotC and cut a year off the development time for 3rd Edition and it shows.