Re:For those of us who don't follow mozilla.org...
on
SeaMonkey 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
s/Chocolate Sex/Sexual Chocolate/g
Damn, I screwed up that gag. Oh well, here's the reference.
Re:For those of us who don't follow mozilla.org...
on
SeaMonkey 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Originally it was the codename for the Mozilla suite. Gecko was the codename for the browser component itself. Now that Mozilla is mostly focusing on Firefox, the Mozilla browser (which itself took on Netscape's codename) has been forked to make SeaMonkey.
Are you thoroughly confused yet? Good, that's the idea.
Me? I'm waiting for a release of Chocolate Sex. (Bonus points to those who understand that reference.)
My favorite joystick was one that required a very short throw and not too much force, but was stiff enough to bounce back quickly. I forget who made it, but it was a pretty cool and simple piece of engineering.
Wico! They made arcade joysticks, and just happened to put out a few good ones for the Atari 2600. I've never seen one IRL, but I hear they're quite good.:-)
It's a personal preference thing, and I seem to be in the minority around here. However, every time I fire up one of the classics (Pac Man, Berzerk, heck even Donkey Kong) and try to control it with a gamepad, I quit in frustration after a couple minutes. Some of it is surely do to my experience with a joystick vs. gamepad.
It's possible too that it's your memories of the games. Galaga, for example, is best played on a proper standup machine where you can *SLAM* that controller back and forth. Not so good for the machine, but a lot of fun.:-)
This isn't 100% true. While there were no springs to center the stick, the rubber "boot" that surrounded the stick was intended to serve the same purpose. If you ever manage to score a brand-new 5200 stick, you'll see what I mean.
True. But my understanding was that the initial boots weren't springy enough, and that they tore apart within hours of use. Supposedly Atari continued to improve the controller manufacturing with each run, so some are better than others.
Another major problem is that (for whatever reason) the pot values drift over time (actually, the cheap pots they used had a lot of variance in the first place).
Yep. This is the same problem that PC users always had with their joysticks. That's why PC Joysticks always had to be calibrated. Potentiometer as a psuedo-analog device == BAD IDEA.
My guess is that, on paper anyway, the 5200 stick design appeared to combine the best aspects of the 2600 joysticks and paddles. Lots of 2600 gamers (myself included) find it highly annoying to have to switch controllers, so combining the two must have looked like a win.
I always wondered why a potentiometer wasn't stuck underneath the 7800 Proline. I mean, here you have a joystick that already free-rotates. (Mostly due to cheap design.) If you tack a potentiometer below it, you'd have a perfect Joystick/Paddle combination! Considering how much fun it is to use the rotating joystick for Pole Position on the Ms. Pacman PnP, such a joystick could have made the Pole Position II pack-in actually WORTH something.:-)
IIRC, a special Japanese version of the 2600 (2800?) was released with that sort of feature in the joystick. Too bad Atari didn't learn from itself. But then again it was neither Bushnell Atari nor Warner Atari at that point. *cough*Tramiel*cough*
If you get the chance, check out Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy for PC/PS2/Xbox (I'd go with the Xbox version due to the controls being better on that platform). It's a modern take on the adventure genre, and it's a pretty good effort.
Mmmm... way too "adult themed" for me. One of the best points about the classical adventures was their levity. As Stargate Adventure shows, the TV Humor can be translated pretty well to the adventure game humor. Creating a game that I would be afraid to show to my kids is not the way to bring the genre back.:-(
Besides, it's got the Infotari kiss of death on it.;-)
The company had a profitable nine months, releasing a number of hits: Kingdom Hearts II, which shipped 1.1 million units in Japan since its release in December; Romancing SaGa for the PS2, which shipped 500,000 units (Japan: 450,000, USA: 50,000); and Dragon Quest VIII, which shipped 430,000 units in North America. However, the numbers couldn't match those of the previous year, when Dragon Quest VIII shipped 3 million units in its first three days of release in Japan. The segment's sales fell 43.3 percent to 21.2 billion yen ($180 million), and its operating income plunged 95.1 percent to 974 million yen ($8.28 million).
You ever hear the joke about the Russian Submarine during WWII? You see, they were chasing this German sub, and seemed to have lost track of it when they came across an American sub. The Russian sub surfaced and hailed the American sub.
Russians: "Comrade! Did you see a German sub come this way?" Americans: "Yes! We spotted him as we entered this area" Russians: "Excellent! Do you know which way it went?" Americans: "Yes! He steamed off at 32 degrees, North by North-west on a best time heading for Siberia!" Russians: "Don't be a smartass, just point!"
This summary feels a lot like the joke. Try this next time:
The company had a profitable nine months, but the numbers couldn't match those of the previous year.
Then maybe throw in a few combined totals about profits. You know, just say that profits are down by 43.3 percent, or ~$139 million dollars. Leave the complex figures to the article where they'll make more sense in context.
Damn, you beat me to it. Mod parent up for having a very insightful opinion. The Stargate Universe is vast. Almost as vast as the Star Trek Universe. However, the limitations on the Stargate Universe (there is, after all, only on SGC) will require that a lot of imagination be put into making this a successful product.
Speaking of which, I've been playing the fan-made Stargate Adventure a lot lately. It reminds me of how much I miss the old adventure games. For the longest time, Star Trek could only be done well as an adventure game. The final farewell to the Genre was the TNG: A Final Unity. Now that Stargate has taken Star Trek's place, I find myself yearning for a professionally done adventure game again.
I know it's pretty much hopeless, but if any game publishers are listening: We want a Stargate Adventure game! I don't even care if you make it 2D or 3D. We want an adventure game! Kapeesh?
I really like joystick controllers better. It is much easier to control something precisely when you are moving your whole hand, instead of a thumb.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. All the joysticks except the 5200 were digital, thus giving them no real advantage over a thumbpad. Putting that aside, the biggest problem with the joysticks was that you were fighting yourself. With one hand you'd be moving the joystick (and consequently, trying to remove it from your own hand) while with the other hand you'd be trying to brace the device as best as you can. The Proline design at least allowed you to wrap your hand around the device, but the final result was that your hands just got tired faster.
Now if you're talking about the PC/C64 joysticks, or the NES Joystick, you need to remember that those were in a very different class. The early computer joysticks were very weak (a thin metal bar), but at least were easy to move without pressing the device out of your hand. The later joysticks & the Nintendo joystick all had heavy bases or suction cups that kept the controller from moving while you pressed the correct direction.
Who modded this "funny"? It should be +5 insightful!
The Intellivision control disk was the predecessor to the DPad. Do you see that in the article? No?
The Atari Joypad was a partial ancestor to the modern thumbstick. (The analog part was first pioneered by the 5200 and the PC/C64 joysticks.) Do you see THAT in the article? No?
The players of the 2600 had no idea what a pause button was because it hadn't been invented yet. Do you see that in the article? Yes? What the hell is a complaint about the lack of a pause button doing in this article?
The number pad seen on the Power Glove and new Revolution controllers was first Pioneered by the Intellivision and Colecovision. The 5200 was a late comer. Do you see THAT in the article? No?
This article is missing all the important details on how controllers evolved the way they did. As the parent said, the fossil record is incomplete. That's why there seems to be a sudden jump in technology.
Good point. Don't forget about the spikey-shelled turtles, though. They are a serious pain in the posterior. Especially when some yahoo drives by in a cloud and drops them on your head. I mean, who the hell gives a drivers license to a guy in a cloud?!
The second major barrier is something that linux can't really overcome on its own, however, and that is credibility. The impact of having a Google-branded linux distro could be huge.
Or Google's brand could be devalued by the move.
I hate to say it, but Corel, Novell, Sun Microsystems, and several other large companies with good reputations have tried this. The result has always been the exact reverse of what was expected. Instead of Linux being risen up, the company is dragged down. Next thing you know, the company is ejecting Linux faster than you can say "What happened?"
The problem (I think) is a lack of corporate control. Linux has always been a hobbiest's OS. When big companies come in and start trying to help improve areas where they feel Linux is lacking, there's often a lot of pushback. For example, the Sun GNOME engineers have often complained about how hard it was to get many of their usability improvements into the main trunk.
It's not so much that one side is right and the other side is wrong (though arguments could be made both ways), but rather an extreme culture clash. The corporates say, "Our customers need this, do it" while the hobbiests say, "I think this is a cool feature, I want to work on it, you should know more about XYZ if you want to do ABC."
Google isn't stupid. I'm betting dollars to donuts that their new desktop is nothing more than a cool network configuration tool or kiosk type scheme. Meanwhile Google will continue to benefit from all these boneheads who continue to think that they're doing a consumer desktop. Mark my words: This isn't what people think it is.
Mmm... yes, I did mention those in other posts. I've been trying to get my hands on one (they're a bit harder for us yanks to find), but I've heard that many players are upset over the poor quality of the devices. Supposedly, even players who have the joypads often get a Genesis controller simply because they don't want to bother nursing their joypad along.
That's what I've heard, anyway. Feel free to refute it if you've got more info.:-)
They don't so much as fly as sort of make floating hops. There are the rare red turtles that can actually remain aloft, but they are very hard to find and tend to be stationary or slow moving. Trust me, the green turtles with wings are the ones you really need to watch out for. Those and the moles.
Amusing, but the real question is: Who's writing this CRAP?
Many a-company has tried to purchase Nintendo. The answer has always been "No". While Nintendo may be third in the American console market, this soundly ignores the presence of the Nintendo DS as well as Nintendo's strength in Japan. Not to mention that Nintendo is the only company that is profitable as just a game company. The other players are running on ultra-tight margins (Microsoft loses money) while Nintendo sits back and enjoys a stogie.
This has got to be some of the worst rumor-mill crud that Slashdot has ever reported. I'd complain about CNet reporting it, but we lost them a LONG time ago.
The Intellivision controller was this stupid little disk. Why are you crying over its exclusion, ffs?!
Because it was the predecessor to the Nintendo DPad? If you think about it, it was pretty much the same thing. The primary differences were:
1) It was a 12 direction controller rather than an 8-way. (Video game companies had this stupid idea that More Features == Better, and damn the consequences.)
2) The use of a disk rather than a four way overlay meant that you couldn't visually tell which direction you were pressing.
The Intellivision disk made a comeback with the Genesis controller. Rather than the standard DPad, the Genesis controller used an 8-way disk with a raised DPad on top. The result was that you got both the visual cues of a regular DPad, plus the smooth control of a disk. (Raise your hand if your thumb hurt after a long Nintendo session!)
I wouldn't worry about it. This story sucks the big one. The reviewer unhelpfully skips over huge swaths of history (Hello? Intellivision? Colecovision? Oddessy 2? Where do they think Nintendo got their idea for the DPad?), attributes nonsensical statements to antique hardware (Users complained about the lack of a pause button on the 2600? WTF?), and yet manages to include the Playstation controller as if it had something notable about it.
I'm not really sure why this article exists. The reviewer is probably familar with modern systems, but really doesn't know that much about the history of video games. He needs to find something to write about that's more in his area of expertise. Either that, or do a bit more research next time. I can get him a 2600, 5200, 7800, Colecovision, and Intellivision no problem. I can even get him a Famicom floppy disk system, though it wouldn't come cheap.;-)
That's pretty much correct. The article seems highly critical of the joystick controllers, but when Atari was king the joystick was all that anyone had envisioned. The few arcade games that didn't use joysticks (Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, etc.) used simple cherry-switch buttons instead.
Nintendo was ahead of its time when it developed the NES controller. Instead of a joystick, their extension of the buttons concept to a D-Pad created a huge boon in home gaming. Atari was still using their joysticks at the time (since they'd delayed the release of the 7800 by two years), but they quickly designed a joypad for the 7800 to compete. The joypad replaced the Proline as the standard controller for the European edition of the 7800.
Pretty much all controllers that followed the NES included a DPad. (Including Atari's own Jaguar.) The controller didn't change significantly until Nintendo again changed the landscape with the analog thumbstick. While an analog stick had been tried before on the 5200, it had suffered from two major issues:
1. It didn't center. At all. You had to move it back into place if you wanted to stop your character.
2. It was designed to be held in your hand. This meant that you were applying force across the entire controller, making it hard to hold onto. The thumbstick corrected this problem by using only your thumb for control while the rest of your hand maintained a solid grip on the rest of the controller.
The other issue with the 5200 controller, of course, was that it was simply ahead of its time. When the 5200 was released, analog sensor and ADCs weren't that cheap. By the time Nintendo released the N64, Analog to Digital converters were so cheap that one had to wonder why not to use them.
That being said, I'm glossing over the ADC on the Paddle Contollers, but that's another story all togther.:-)
I forgot to mention. A lot of players mod their Genesis or Nintendo controllers to work with their old 7800 systems. I guess they get tired of playing with the Painline^W Proline joysticks.:-)
The Genesis controller seems to be the most popular as it uses the pins in a similar 1 Pin == 1 Button type of arrangement that the Proline controllers use. The NES uses a serial protocol, making the controller more flexible but much less easy to convert.
How do you figure? The Revolution controller is a remote gamepad with positional sensors and an optional self-centering thumbstick that can be plugged in. The 5200 controller was a non-centering joystick with a clunky keypad attached.
The Revolution controller is really more like a combination of the NES Gamepad, the Powerglove, and the N64 thumbstick all stuck together in a blazingly white plastic package. (Fruity colors are on their way, I'm sure.)
Actually, it's quite amazing that so many games were played with the Atari controllers. A joystick just wasn't a very good choice for a non-fixed controller, and the microswitches wore out easily. (Try opening up a 7800 Proline controller sometime. That sucker is CHEAP.) The Nintendo gamepad was a serious revolution in gaming for several reasons:
1. You weren't constantly ripping the controller out of your own hand. 2. The switches were replaced with long-lasting circuit switches. Any wear and tear could easily be repaired with new rubber parts. 3. The lack of protrusions made it easier to store and less likely to break. 4. Nintendo could give us a quality controller at a very low price. (I don't even want to think about what the 5200 controller cost per unit.)
Oh, and let's not forget about Privateering. If you can buy a ship, you can run it however the hell you want. Just don't expect Starfleet to be too happy about those Orion slave women you're trading!
Everyone starts off as a Lt in command of a small ship. In most navies one doesn't have to have the rank of Captain to command a vessel, although that title is used on board.
'Tis true, but unfortunately the Star Trek universe seems to have a rather idealized rank structure. Rather than the current structure of Officer == Guy in Command of Something, we see that pretty much everyone is an Officer with Technical or Scientific Specialists replacing the need for enlisted personnel. Being true to the Star Trek Universe thus requires a bit of compromise on the command structure. That's why I suggested Commander as the lowest rank for a ship-board command.
That being said, I also mentioned commanding small attack craft. There's no reason why a runabout needs more than two officers on board (one pilot and one tactical/ops), so lower rung officers might still get their commands.:-)
Simple Windows Tools? Well, there's always a hex editor... (I kid, I kid!)
Seriously, it's not as difficult as you might imagine. Even your grandmother could whip something up in Visual Basic, though I don't recommend it.
The path of least resistence here is to grab a copy of Visual Studio, then get yourself a beginners book on Windows programming. Just go to your local book store and you'll find a whole shelf of them. (And not a single book on data structures or algorithms in sight. Grrrr...)
If you're a sucker for a bit of punishment, (but believe you can follow the documentation well enough) just use web tutorials and the online docs to guide you through the process. The Resource Editor will do most of the work for you, so you only need to worry about interfacing your code with the GUI components. (Easy, peasy.:-))
Your last option is for the case that you're familiar with GTK+, and don't have Visual Studio available. (A real masochist you are, aren't you?) Grab a copy of cygwin and install all the dev time tools. (Compiler, BinTools, GTK-devel, etc.) Keep a copy of the GTK Reference up, and you should be good to go. Just remember that you'll need to distribute the cygwin.dll file with your application. Otherwise your users shouldn't notice.
If the man has 50 Terabytes of critical data that he needs to backup and ship every day, I'd say he probably has a budget that could accomidate one of these things. While multi-terabyte arrays are more common than they once were, anyone carrying around that much data still needs to spend millions just to keep their infrastructure intact.
Now all he's got to do is get his boss to sign the check.:-P
Slashdot Mirror
s/Chocolate Sex/Sexual Chocolate/g
Damn, I screwed up that gag. Oh well, here's the reference.
Originally it was the codename for the Mozilla suite. Gecko was the codename for the browser component itself. Now that Mozilla is mostly focusing on Firefox, the Mozilla browser (which itself took on Netscape's codename) has been forked to make SeaMonkey.
Are you thoroughly confused yet? Good, that's the idea.
Me? I'm waiting for a release of Chocolate Sex. (Bonus points to those who understand that reference.)
P.S. Don't forget about Chimera!
My favorite joystick was one that required a very short throw and not too much force, but was stiff enough to bounce back quickly. I forget who made it, but it was a pretty cool and simple piece of engineering.
:-)
:-)
Wico! They made arcade joysticks, and just happened to put out a few good ones for the Atari 2600. I've never seen one IRL, but I hear they're quite good.
It's a personal preference thing, and I seem to be in the minority around here. However, every time I fire up one of the classics (Pac Man, Berzerk, heck even Donkey Kong) and try to control it with a gamepad, I quit in frustration after a couple minutes. Some of it is surely do to my experience with a joystick vs. gamepad.
It's possible too that it's your memories of the games. Galaga, for example, is best played on a proper standup machine where you can *SLAM* that controller back and forth. Not so good for the machine, but a lot of fun.
This isn't 100% true. While there were no springs to center the stick, the rubber "boot" that surrounded the stick was intended to serve the same purpose. If you ever manage to score a brand-new 5200 stick, you'll see what I mean.
:-)
True. But my understanding was that the initial boots weren't springy enough, and that they tore apart within hours of use. Supposedly Atari continued to improve the controller manufacturing with each run, so some are better than others.
Another major problem is that (for whatever reason) the pot values drift over time (actually, the cheap pots they used had a lot of variance in the first place).
Yep. This is the same problem that PC users always had with their joysticks. That's why PC Joysticks always had to be calibrated. Potentiometer as a psuedo-analog device == BAD IDEA.
My guess is that, on paper anyway, the 5200 stick design appeared to combine the best aspects of the 2600 joysticks and paddles. Lots of 2600 gamers (myself included) find it highly annoying to have to switch controllers, so combining the two must have looked like a win.
I always wondered why a potentiometer wasn't stuck underneath the 7800 Proline. I mean, here you have a joystick that already free-rotates. (Mostly due to cheap design.) If you tack a potentiometer below it, you'd have a perfect Joystick/Paddle combination! Considering how much fun it is to use the rotating joystick for Pole Position on the Ms. Pacman PnP, such a joystick could have made the Pole Position II pack-in actually WORTH something.
IIRC, a special Japanese version of the 2600 (2800?) was released with that sort of feature in the joystick. Too bad Atari didn't learn from itself. But then again it was neither Bushnell Atari nor Warner Atari at that point. *cough*Tramiel*cough*
If you get the chance, check out Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy for PC/PS2/Xbox (I'd go with the Xbox version due to the controls being better on that platform). It's a modern take on the adventure genre, and it's a pretty good effort.
:-(
;-)
Mmmm... way too "adult themed" for me. One of the best points about the classical adventures was their levity. As Stargate Adventure shows, the TV Humor can be translated pretty well to the adventure game humor. Creating a game that I would be afraid to show to my kids is not the way to bring the genre back.
Besides, it's got the Infotari kiss of death on it.
The company had a profitable nine months, releasing a number of hits: Kingdom Hearts II, which shipped 1.1 million units in Japan since its release in December; Romancing SaGa for the PS2, which shipped 500,000 units (Japan: 450,000, USA: 50,000); and Dragon Quest VIII, which shipped 430,000 units in North America. However, the numbers couldn't match those of the previous year, when Dragon Quest VIII shipped 3 million units in its first three days of release in Japan. The segment's sales fell 43.3 percent to 21.2 billion yen ($180 million), and its operating income plunged 95.1 percent to 974 million yen ($8.28 million).
You ever hear the joke about the Russian Submarine during WWII? You see, they were chasing this German sub, and seemed to have lost track of it when they came across an American sub. The Russian sub surfaced and hailed the American sub.
Russians: "Comrade! Did you see a German sub come this way?"
Americans: "Yes! We spotted him as we entered this area"
Russians: "Excellent! Do you know which way it went?"
Americans: "Yes! He steamed off at 32 degrees, North by North-west on a best time heading for Siberia!"
Russians: "Don't be a smartass, just point!"
This summary feels a lot like the joke. Try this next time:
The company had a profitable nine months, but the numbers couldn't match those of the previous year.
Then maybe throw in a few combined totals about profits. You know, just say that profits are down by 43.3 percent, or ~$139 million dollars. Leave the complex figures to the article where they'll make more sense in context.
Damn, you beat me to it. Mod parent up for having a very insightful opinion. The Stargate Universe is vast. Almost as vast as the Star Trek Universe. However, the limitations on the Stargate Universe (there is, after all, only on SGC) will require that a lot of imagination be put into making this a successful product.
Speaking of which, I've been playing the fan-made Stargate Adventure a lot lately. It reminds me of how much I miss the old adventure games. For the longest time, Star Trek could only be done well as an adventure game. The final farewell to the Genre was the TNG: A Final Unity. Now that Stargate has taken Star Trek's place, I find myself yearning for a professionally done adventure game again.
I know it's pretty much hopeless, but if any game publishers are listening: We want a Stargate Adventure game! I don't even care if you make it 2D or 3D. We want an adventure game! Kapeesh?
I really like joystick controllers better. It is much easier to control something precisely when you are moving your whole hand, instead of a thumb.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. All the joysticks except the 5200 were digital, thus giving them no real advantage over a thumbpad. Putting that aside, the biggest problem with the joysticks was that you were fighting yourself. With one hand you'd be moving the joystick (and consequently, trying to remove it from your own hand) while with the other hand you'd be trying to brace the device as best as you can. The Proline design at least allowed you to wrap your hand around the device, but the final result was that your hands just got tired faster.
Now if you're talking about the PC/C64 joysticks, or the NES Joystick, you need to remember that those were in a very different class. The early computer joysticks were very weak (a thin metal bar), but at least were easy to move without pressing the device out of your hand. The later joysticks & the Nintendo joystick all had heavy bases or suction cups that kept the controller from moving while you pressed the correct direction.
Who modded this "funny"? It should be +5 insightful!
The Intellivision control disk was the predecessor to the DPad. Do you see that in the article? No?
The Atari Joypad was a partial ancestor to the modern thumbstick. (The analog part was first pioneered by the 5200 and the PC/C64 joysticks.) Do you see THAT in the article? No?
The players of the 2600 had no idea what a pause button was because it hadn't been invented yet. Do you see that in the article? Yes? What the hell is a complaint about the lack of a pause button doing in this article?
The number pad seen on the Power Glove and new Revolution controllers was first Pioneered by the Intellivision and Colecovision. The 5200 was a late comer. Do you see THAT in the article? No?
This article is missing all the important details on how controllers evolved the way they did. As the parent said, the fossil record is incomplete. That's why there seems to be a sudden jump in technology.
Good point. Don't forget about the spikey-shelled turtles, though. They are a serious pain in the posterior. Especially when some yahoo drives by in a cloud and drops them on your head. I mean, who the hell gives a drivers license to a guy in a cloud?!
The second major barrier is something that linux can't really overcome on its own, however, and that is credibility. The impact of having a Google-branded linux distro could be huge.
Or Google's brand could be devalued by the move.
I hate to say it, but Corel, Novell, Sun Microsystems, and several other large companies with good reputations have tried this. The result has always been the exact reverse of what was expected. Instead of Linux being risen up, the company is dragged down. Next thing you know, the company is ejecting Linux faster than you can say "What happened?"
The problem (I think) is a lack of corporate control. Linux has always been a hobbiest's OS. When big companies come in and start trying to help improve areas where they feel Linux is lacking, there's often a lot of pushback. For example, the Sun GNOME engineers have often complained about how hard it was to get many of their usability improvements into the main trunk.
It's not so much that one side is right and the other side is wrong (though arguments could be made both ways), but rather an extreme culture clash. The corporates say, "Our customers need this, do it" while the hobbiests say, "I think this is a cool feature, I want to work on it, you should know more about XYZ if you want to do ABC."
Google isn't stupid. I'm betting dollars to donuts that their new desktop is nothing more than a cool network configuration tool or kiosk type scheme. Meanwhile Google will continue to benefit from all these boneheads who continue to think that they're doing a consumer desktop. Mark my words: This isn't what people think it is.
Mmm... yes, I did mention those in other posts. I've been trying to get my hands on one (they're a bit harder for us yanks to find), but I've heard that many players are upset over the poor quality of the devices. Supposedly, even players who have the joypads often get a Genesis controller simply because they don't want to bother nursing their joypad along.
:-)
That's what I've heard, anyway. Feel free to refute it if you've got more info.
They don't so much as fly as sort of make floating hops. There are the rare red turtles that can actually remain aloft, but they are very hard to find and tend to be stationary or slow moving. Trust me, the green turtles with wings are the ones you really need to watch out for. Those and the moles.
Amusing, but the real question is: Who's writing this CRAP?
Many a-company has tried to purchase Nintendo. The answer has always been "No". While Nintendo may be third in the American console market, this soundly ignores the presence of the Nintendo DS as well as Nintendo's strength in Japan. Not to mention that Nintendo is the only company that is profitable as just a game company. The other players are running on ultra-tight margins (Microsoft loses money) while Nintendo sits back and enjoys a stogie.
This has got to be some of the worst rumor-mill crud that Slashdot has ever reported. I'd complain about CNet reporting it, but we lost them a LONG time ago.
The Intellivision controller was this stupid little disk. Why are you crying over its exclusion, ffs?!
Because it was the predecessor to the Nintendo DPad? If you think about it, it was pretty much the same thing. The primary differences were:
1) It was a 12 direction controller rather than an 8-way. (Video game companies had this stupid idea that More Features == Better, and damn the consequences.)
2) The use of a disk rather than a four way overlay meant that you couldn't visually tell which direction you were pressing.
The Intellivision disk made a comeback with the Genesis controller. Rather than the standard DPad, the Genesis controller used an 8-way disk with a raised DPad on top. The result was that you got both the visual cues of a regular DPad, plus the smooth control of a disk. (Raise your hand if your thumb hurt after a long Nintendo session!)
Since I assume that this is an internal application, the source requirement is a non-issue.
I wouldn't worry about it. This story sucks the big one. The reviewer unhelpfully skips over huge swaths of history (Hello? Intellivision? Colecovision? Oddessy 2? Where do they think Nintendo got their idea for the DPad?), attributes nonsensical statements to antique hardware (Users complained about the lack of a pause button on the 2600? WTF?), and yet manages to include the Playstation controller as if it had something notable about it.
;-)
I'm not really sure why this article exists. The reviewer is probably familar with modern systems, but really doesn't know that much about the history of video games. He needs to find something to write about that's more in his area of expertise. Either that, or do a bit more research next time. I can get him a 2600, 5200, 7800, Colecovision, and Intellivision no problem. I can even get him a Famicom floppy disk system, though it wouldn't come cheap.
That's pretty much correct. The article seems highly critical of the joystick controllers, but when Atari was king the joystick was all that anyone had envisioned. The few arcade games that didn't use joysticks (Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, etc.) used simple cherry-switch buttons instead.
:-)
Nintendo was ahead of its time when it developed the NES controller. Instead of a joystick, their extension of the buttons concept to a D-Pad created a huge boon in home gaming. Atari was still using their joysticks at the time (since they'd delayed the release of the 7800 by two years), but they quickly designed a joypad for the 7800 to compete. The joypad replaced the Proline as the standard controller for the European edition of the 7800.
Pretty much all controllers that followed the NES included a DPad. (Including Atari's own Jaguar.) The controller didn't change significantly until Nintendo again changed the landscape with the analog thumbstick. While an analog stick had been tried before on the 5200, it had suffered from two major issues:
1. It didn't center. At all. You had to move it back into place if you wanted to stop your character.
2. It was designed to be held in your hand. This meant that you were applying force across the entire controller, making it hard to hold onto. The thumbstick corrected this problem by using only your thumb for control while the rest of your hand maintained a solid grip on the rest of the controller.
The other issue with the 5200 controller, of course, was that it was simply ahead of its time. When the 5200 was released, analog sensor and ADCs weren't that cheap. By the time Nintendo released the N64, Analog to Digital converters were so cheap that one had to wonder why not to use them.
That being said, I'm glossing over the ADC on the Paddle Contollers, but that's another story all togther.
I forgot to mention. A lot of players mod their Genesis or Nintendo controllers to work with their old 7800 systems. I guess they get tired of playing with the Painline^W Proline joysticks. :-)
The Genesis controller seems to be the most popular as it uses the pins in a similar 1 Pin == 1 Button type of arrangement that the Proline controllers use. The NES uses a serial protocol, making the controller more flexible but much less easy to convert.
How do you figure? The Revolution controller is a remote gamepad with positional sensors and an optional self-centering thumbstick that can be plugged in. The 5200 controller was a non-centering joystick with a clunky keypad attached.
The Revolution controller is really more like a combination of the NES Gamepad, the Powerglove, and the N64 thumbstick all stuck together in a blazingly white plastic package. (Fruity colors are on their way, I'm sure.)
Actually, it's quite amazing that so many games were played with the Atari controllers. A joystick just wasn't a very good choice for a non-fixed controller, and the microswitches wore out easily. (Try opening up a 7800 Proline controller sometime. That sucker is CHEAP.) The Nintendo gamepad was a serious revolution in gaming for several reasons:
1. You weren't constantly ripping the controller out of your own hand.
2. The switches were replaced with long-lasting circuit switches. Any wear and tear could easily be repaired with new rubber parts.
3. The lack of protrusions made it easier to store and less likely to break.
4. Nintendo could give us a quality controller at a very low price. (I don't even want to think about what the 5200 controller cost per unit.)
Oh, and let's not forget about Privateering. If you can buy a ship, you can run it however the hell you want. Just don't expect Starfleet to be too happy about those Orion slave women you're trading!
Everyone starts off as a Lt in command of a small ship. In most navies one doesn't have to have the rank of Captain to command a vessel, although that title is used on board.
:-)
'Tis true, but unfortunately the Star Trek universe seems to have a rather idealized rank structure. Rather than the current structure of Officer == Guy in Command of Something, we see that pretty much everyone is an Officer with Technical or Scientific Specialists replacing the need for enlisted personnel. Being true to the Star Trek Universe thus requires a bit of compromise on the command structure. That's why I suggested Commander as the lowest rank for a ship-board command.
That being said, I also mentioned commanding small attack craft. There's no reason why a runabout needs more than two officers on board (one pilot and one tactical/ops), so lower rung officers might still get their commands.
Simple Windows Tools? Well, there's always a hex editor... (I kid, I kid!)
:-))
Seriously, it's not as difficult as you might imagine. Even your grandmother could whip something up in Visual Basic, though I don't recommend it.
The path of least resistence here is to grab a copy of Visual Studio, then get yourself a beginners book on Windows programming. Just go to your local book store and you'll find a whole shelf of them. (And not a single book on data structures or algorithms in sight. Grrrr...)
If you're a sucker for a bit of punishment, (but believe you can follow the documentation well enough) just use web tutorials and the online docs to guide you through the process. The Resource Editor will do most of the work for you, so you only need to worry about interfacing your code with the GUI components. (Easy, peasy.
Your last option is for the case that you're familiar with GTK+, and don't have Visual Studio available. (A real masochist you are, aren't you?) Grab a copy of cygwin and install all the dev time tools. (Compiler, BinTools, GTK-devel, etc.) Keep a copy of the GTK Reference up, and you should be good to go. Just remember that you'll need to distribute the cygwin.dll file with your application. Otherwise your users shouldn't notice.
The shuttle wasn't supposed to carry any payload except for human beings. That was the real problem.
If the man has 50 Terabytes of critical data that he needs to backup and ship every day, I'd say he probably has a budget that could accomidate one of these things. While multi-terabyte arrays are more common than they once were, anyone carrying around that much data still needs to spend millions just to keep their infrastructure intact.
:-P
Now all he's got to do is get his boss to sign the check.