Did I say they were? Nice job of putting words in my mouth.
The rest of the post is merely Sturgeon's Law.
That still doesn't change the fact that Anime is not generally accepted by the Amercian public. As long as it's not generally accepted, then it's unlikely to be generally imported.
That last point about importing Japanese DVDs clearly shows that AKAImBatman has no knowledge of the subject he's oh so insightfully posting about.
Again with the words in my mouth. Did I, or did I not say that "I don't understand why...". Seems pretty clear to me.
Japanese DVDs made for the Japanese market are very, very, very expensive(Yes, that many verys!). Their DVD purchasing habits are very different from ours.
Instead of attacking my post, how about providing some insightful details on this. Why are Japanese DVDs so expensive? What are their purchasing habits? Would American Anime fans be willing to pay the price of imports? Answering these questions would be a lot more helpful to others than taking a condescending position.
That was basically my point. Anime is heavily tied to Japanese culture (although I can't understand how they can put up with the repetitivness), and inroads are only going to made in the American culture if it appeals to the average American.
A) Japan doesn't export enough Anime B) Fansubs are killing the business C) Not that many people in the US are actually interested in watching movies where the women are portrayed as children with blue hair, guys are always "cool" (in a Japanese-thinking sort of way), everyone's eyes go huge and bug out, saliva is everywhere, all the characters overreact, all monsters have tentacles, and the story lines are shrouded in inexplicable nonsense/lack of backstory?
Raise your hand if you've seen Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie? C it is then.
It has always amazed me that the Japanese can be amazing animators, yet consistently hold to the same tired cliches in all of their animated series. I understand that the Japanese think that underage girls are the height of sexual prowess, but it just doesn't jive with American ideas of how life actually is. I realize that an Anime fanbase exists here is the US (and in many other countries), but this fanbase is not a tremendously large majority. It's enough to keep Cartoon Network's night time programs in business and that's about it. The majority of people tune it out despite the occasional gem like the Ghost in the Shell series. (Which I think is significantly better than the movie, BTW.)
That being said, the article doesn't quite clarify the difficulties in actually creating an English sub for most anime movies. Dubbing is definitely difficult and expensive, but subbing is a relatively simple task. If most DVD movies came with english subbing (as American movies tend to come with Spanish subbing), then many retail companies here in the US would take care of the issues of importing from Japan. No special marketting or foreign shipments required. (This is similar to the Fanicom imports from way back when. That stuff was big business.)
The data/resource fork idea is a fairly elegant one.
I agree. In fact, the data fork is still used in Macs today. The issue at the time was that the file had no method of identification outside the fork. i.e. What format was the file? How are you supposed to open it? These things had to be guessed at if the fork was stripped off. Today Macs use the filename extension convention to identify the file in case the resource fork is lacking.:-)
was under the impression that MFS was used even on the first Mac HDs.
It was. MFS did waste some space with the resource fork, but not too much. HFS, OTOH... (Another poster pointed out that HFS became the standard on 800K disks. That's not necessarily a good thing.)
I don't know if modularity would have been practical (having not studies OS design), but if it had been, the ability to swap out just the lowest level of the system and gain PE MT would have been very nice. Maybe modularity like this is even more resource-intensive than a monolithic PE MT design, I don't know.
Modularity is as much as you define it. For example, a separate graphics file is more modular than embedded drawing code, but you pay the cost in memory. Instead of machine instructions to draw the image, you now need data for both the drawn and empty parts as well as a method of identifying the image size, color pallete (if any), and other information that must be accounted for. Not to mention the code necessary to identify, load, parse, and render the file.
The same sorts of issues exist with modular code files. Class files, DLLs, Java Code Files, and other forms of modularity all come at a cost that couldn't be afforded back in 1984. We think nothing of these things today, but then again we don't code glorified calculators either.;-)
What you have to understand about the method of loading these old computers was to simply load a code listing into an area of memory. To access the code, an application would do one of two things:
1) Pop your current address onto the stack and execute a JMP instruction to the correct address. Then hope that no one has overwritten that memory, and that the jumped code correctly restores the address from the stack.
2) Hook into a software interrupt so that the processor would automatically redirect execution to the correct instruction upon the invocation of the interrupt. An IRET instruction could then be used to automatically return control to the program without any direct manipulation of the stack. (This stuff was the height of technology at the time!)
Here's an interesting article for you. 24K was the original goal for the Finder code. 64K ended up barely being enough.
But did the hardware have to be built to boot exclusively from ROM?
Yes. Hardware always boots from ROM because that is the only memory location the processor can be sure is valid. What you see in modern PCs is more sophisticated ROM chips that understand how to read a disk drive, and can be programmed via flash ROM with rules as to how to handle the boot situation. AFAIK, the concept of sophisticated boot ROMs didn't come about until after Microsoft started selling MS-DOS to IBM Clone manufacturers. (IBM placed part of PC-DOS into ROM. The PCjr I had could boot directly into DOS, BASIC, and even a cutesy video game without a floppy disk.)
Couldn't there be a switch built into firmware somehow, without that much extra work?
Ok, you just said something you you should be kicking yourself for at the moment: "Firmware". Firmware didn't exist at the time. If you wanted a new ROM, you popped out the PROM and popped in a new one. (Didn't you watch Real Genius?;-)) Flash Memory was invented in 1988 to solve this issue.
It would have made the hardware more flexible down the road.
Hardware flexibility was not a concern at the time. The OS code was just a minor abstraction from the disk drives. (And graphics hardware in the case of the Mac.) If you wanted to run another OS on a PC of the time, all you needed was a COM or EXE file that implemented that OS. The loader part of the executable could happily overwrite the memory, relink the interrupts, and completely take over the machine. (FYI, this is exactly w
First, hardware: 1) Memory access hatch (like the battery one it had) and the ability to upgrade memory... 2) Non-proprietary battery. Have you ever tried getting a replacement one? It's not easy. Wouldn't a 9 volt or something have sufficed? 3) Attach the mouse to the keyboard. 4) Sell a "ROM upgrade" service... Allow older machines to become "newer" machines for a reasonable fee.
You're OK so far.
Second, software: 1) FREE dev kits. Those Apple kits were really expensive if I recall correctly. 2) I think the filesystem (if designed by me, now) would probably be optimized for tools like spotlight. 3) The kernel would likely be an exo-kernel. 4) I would support TCP-IP
Holy Crap Batman! (Oh wait, that's me. Well, yes. As I was saying...)
1) There was really no concept of APIs at the time of the first Mac. Anything special that was loaded into memory was a form of BIOS call or memory jump. For the Mac, the primary calls were for Disk I/O and QuickDraw. That was about it. As a result, no dev system really existed for the Mac. You coded in assembler or you didn't code at all. Building something like a C environment would have been a tremendous expense for Apple, and was completely out of the question. Note that the devkits they did plan never materialized.
2) First of all, are you really willing to eat up a good chunk of your 400K floppies with meta-data and indexes? Secondly, what would you search for? Most people didn't bother with directories on floppies because the floppy *was* the directory. i.e. You had a floppy for Project A, a floppy for SpreadSheet B, and a floppy for Graphics C. For quick indexing and retrieval, you labelled them and placed them in a thumb-through disk holder.
3) KERNEL?! You do understand that there really wasn't a concept of a kernel back in those early consumer computers, right? The DOS (Disk Operating System) consisted of standardized software calls to control the floppy drive. After that, they got the hell out of the way and let the user do whatever he wanted. The Mac was slightly more sophisticated in that it also controlled a graphics device, but not by much. Even the mere mention of the word "kernel" at the time would have had you laughed out of your job and told to go program for Big Iron where they could afford to waste 300K of RAM on complex hardware control and multitasking.
4) TC... I... what? Have you been talking to those weirdos over at DARPA again? They've got some crazy idea about networking all computers together using the same protocol. Personally, I think they're nuts. I hear that the network stack uses up dozens of K of memory, and that the packets are each 512 bytes a piece. 512 bytes! You could fit an entire memo in that! Not to mention that expensive hardware they need to chain the computers together. Haven't these guys heard of a serial port or an acoustic coupler? I tell you, unless hardware gets a LOT cheaper in the next ten years, this ARPANET thing is going nowhere. Well, maybe academics will use it.;-)
Arguably, space-time warping can be accounted for in a calendar as long as some sort of reference point is given. For example, if I left on a rocket ship at.95C, bound for Alpha-Centauri and returned 10 years later (Earth time), I could still say that ten years have passed on the Sol calendar based on the current positions of the bodies inside the solar system. The fact that the movement of those bodies occurred inside a period of only 8 years my time is irrelevant. 10 years has still passed according to the Sol calendar.
Timekeeping is fun. Especially if you're a computer programmer.;-)
Yes, starting with HFS (even HFS+ perhaps?) would have been nice, but MFS wasn't around for long.
HFS on what? The floppy drives? That would not have been a good thing. Filesystems today are tuned to hard drive usage, and perform quite poorly on floppy drives. In particular, they tend to eat up most of the disk in overhead. That's why Microsoft's FAT filesystem is still the standard for floppies.
If I could have designed the OS to be highly modular, so that a pre-emptive kernel could be dropped in when cheaper RAM became available (maybe by 1986?) without sacrificing compatibility, I definitely would have done it.
Fitting a fully preemptable kernel in 128K would have been a true challenge with the hardware at the time. Especially if you wanted the meta-data hit of a modular system. Keep in mind that these machines had very few interrupts, and that the original Macintosh clock was a useless POS that drifted like nobody's business. Not to mention that the machine simply didn't have the room for multiple programs. The OS was preloaded into the ROM so that the only part extending out into main memory was the Finder datasets.
Also keep in mind that 128K of memory was quite costly in 1984. Putting in more memory would have driven up the cost of the machine substantially, which would have made it a direct competitor to the Lisa.
If the machines weren't hardwired to boot MacOS, that would IMO be a bonus, too.
As I pointed out above, the only reason why the OS fit at all was because it was preloaded. Original designs had it running directly from disk, but memory was becoming a huge issue. At some point Apple decided to accept the price hit and use some rather new ROM technology to store the OS. Note that this was pretty standard at the time, with most PCs (including the IBM PC) keeping part or all of the OS in ROM.
The fact that the OS lasted in basically the same form for 15 years, despite what we consider to be serious limitations, is a testimony to how much Apple did get right.
Indeed. It's easy for us today to look back and say "well they should have done this or that", but such discussions ignore the tremendous amount of technological progress that has gone on in the past 20 years. That includes the progress that has been made in understanding software construction as well as higher capacity hardware.:-)
And bring back Lucasarts style adventure games.:-/
Amen to that. Remember back when the only Star Trek licensed games worth playing were adventure games? e.g. Star Trek 25th Anniversary and TNG: A Final Unity were tons of fun, had long lasting gameplay, and engrossed the player into everything that was going on.
And let's not forget The Dig! I mean, any game with a full book adaption has to be worth at least a second look! I don't care what other players say about grainy graphics. These games are still tons of fun to me. Given a graphical upgrade (so that the detractors would stop whining) I'm sure that new players would find them just as enjoyable. That is, if the upgrade was done by actual artists and not this 3D plastic look that has become so popular. How can anyone *see* anything through such a sea of bland colors?
If you haven't played WC2 or Tie Fighter then you've really missed out on some of the best of the genre.
As I said, WCII touched upon the sort of capship fighting I'm after (complete with corny dialog like "Fire the Main Gun!"), but its primitive engine kept it from going full bore with the concept. Most of the time you were really just an observer of the battle between the capships, especially since phase shields meant that you wouldn't have a chance in hell of joining the battle.
But as awesome as WC1 and 2 were, Descent: Freespace 1 and 2 simply blew them away in plot, graphics, gamespot, and wingman AI.
I never really got into Descent: Freespace. I played it a bit, but the screwy control scheme really turned me off. A similar problem exists with the new game StarShatter. The graphics are pretty, everything is realistic, you have to fly between waypoints, AND IT'S BORING AS ALL HELL. Sadly, realism isn't always a good substitute for gameplay.:-)
Just a matter of point: There's no restriction in the US (at least, the states I've lived in) on giving alcohol to a minor as long as you are the child's parent or guardian. The law is such that it is intended for parents to decide when and how their children are first exposed to alcohol.
What the law DOES say, is that alcohol cannot be sold to a minor, nor can a non-parent/guardian play middle-man. A good part of these laws relate to the drinking and driving issue which is very serious in the US. (In many areas, driving is the only method of getting around, and is actually preferred by most people. This is in direct opposition to Europe where mass transit tends to be more effective.)
Sweet merciful Hobbes! You want another Wing Commander 3 or 4, or even...5?
Hell yeah! There was *nothing* more thrilling in WCIII than taking your craft into a torpedo/strafing run against a capship or escort. Weaving, bobbing, sliding all while trying to avoid hundreds of tiny suppression fire shots while the reticle ticked away at a lock. Then the thrill of finally closing in and blasting the sucker into the next century. The fear as you afterburn away, hoping that your torpedo connected, because you were about to take some serious punishment if it didn't.
Not to mention the dogfights. Man alive was it fun to attempt to get on the cat's tail and tear him apart with neutron blasts! Sure, the graphics weren't as good as they can make them today, but the game was FUN. The story wasn't half bad either.
As for Prophecy, that was a bit of a disappointment. The engine was a lot better, but the ships were highly crippled, and the Nephilim just weren't as fun to shoot at. Half the time, you couldn't even figure out *what* you were shooting at. This was somewhat fixed with the Secret Ops package (which is still available on WCNews, BTW) which gave you a) weapons that kick ass, b) serious, kick-ass dogfights with real adreneline pumping action! My only complaint about Secret Ops was that the lack of a story made the dog-fighting rather repetitive.:-/
If there's one reason why I'd love to see a modern WC, it's because I want to dive into a multi-capship fight the way God intended. i.e. Big-ass carriers launching ships off the deck constantly, while you weave and strafe to avoid the cover fire from the escorts. I want to be immersed in the battle and have a real feel for what it's like. WCII touched this sort of dogfighting, but the engine of the time was quite primitive. WCIII & IV couldn't handle those sorts of dogfights (being early 3D engines) and the Prophecy engine had its own set of limitations that prevented such battles from playing out as they should. i.e. This is where technology can help make a game more interesting and fun to play.
Holy mass drivers and neutron guns, did you play Wing Commander 1 or 2?
Also great games, but in their own right. I actually have a copy of Super Wing Commander on my Mac. It's basically WC1 revamped with new graphics, sounds, cut-scenes, speech, and a few extra storyline tweaks. It kicks some serious butt, despite the horrible, horrible voice acting.;-)
Even the WC1 eclipsed WC[3-5] in quality and fun factor.
WC1 was AWESOME for its time. A bit clunky to fly these days, but still fun if you can unlearn your WC3 and up tactics.
You go into this rehash of the tired, whining rant of "but where's the fun" and then hold up one of the worst (or best?) examples of the trend that you lament?!
Considering the number of people who *like* WC and still want more (go to WCNews if you don't believe me), I'm thinking it's just a matter of the game not agreeing with you. And that's fine. Not all games are for everyone. But WC did push its own boundries with every release. Not just technologically, but in gameplay as well. That's something I really can't say for the majority of today's games.
You want to sit your kid in front of good, modern games? Fine! [list of games]
Putting the list of movie adaptions aside, pretty much everything you named is for the GameCube or Gameboy. I find that rather interesting. What that tells me is that Nintendo is the last holdout for "fun" games. Which is what I've already suspected. However, that doesn't excuse the 50 billion other crap games for the X-Box, Playstation, and PC. Not to mention the poor initial titles for the GameCube. (What was up with Luigi's Mansion?)
I hate to break it to you, but crying at emoitional events is a good thing. It helps solidify the personal bonds. All that Quake and UT do is desensitize your child to sex and violence. Think about what that does to her long term values. By encouraing her to be sensitive to situations like that in Bambi, you're teaching her to be empathetic to the world around her, and potentially teaching her how to act on that empathy.
By letting her play Quake, you're telling her that sex, guns, and violence are all OK issues with no complications. If she was older she'd understand that things are not so simple, but at five her outlook is very straightforward.
I'm all for exposing children to what the world is like, even the gruesome details. The key is that you as a parent need to be there to help them shape their viewpoint and understanding of these things. Given no guidance in such situations, your child will have no choice but to accept them as normal. While the long-lasting effects may not be immediately obvious, her childhood understanding will color her viewpoint even after she's old enough to understand the complexity of situations.
No, I'm not saying your child is going to become a tank girl rebel and an axe murderer just from playing Quake. However, that is one step toward those outcomes if you as a parent don't jump in and guide her.
A few weeks ago I was at a D&B and played a really cool new shooter called Ghost Squad. Very cool.
Sounds interesting. (Although the review comparisons to VirtaCop are not encouraging.) I can't say I was ever too fond of light gun arcade games, but I did love the Time Crisis series. That probably had something to do with the free shooting ability (I always fancied myself a pretty good aim) as well as the nicely weighted gun. Much better than the Area 51 guns, and a lot more free (and less frustrating) than the Sniper game.
Personally, I'd argue that this is an incorrect premise. The next-gen consoles are *not* general-purpose computers, but rather, extremely powerful media DSPs.
Arguably they are general purpose computers, their design is just such that they excel in a certain area.
DSPs are great for a lot of areas, especially graphical work where you can get away with only a minor amount of conditional logic, but a whole metric tonne of pipeline streaming. However, video games tend to be split across all sorts of hardware. The multimedia can always be enhanced with DSPs for sound, DSPs for video, DSPs for artifical music, but what about AI?
It strikes me that this next generation of consoles potentially ignores one of the key uses for branched logic: Intelligent Machines. AI was getting quite good about the time of Quake (who remembers the Reaper Bot? $$%%$@ thing kicked my ass), but it hasn't advanced much since then. For a *fun* game, better AI may not be necessary. Then again, the entire purpose of enhancing the hardware with multithreaded DSP equipment is to improve immersion. What does it help if your graphics are more realistic than ever, but your opponent is dumber than your two year old brother? (And he just hits random buttons.)
Perhaps it's time for consoles to begin considering AI hardware, or perhaps a smaller secondary procesor?
In short, these next-gen consoles are based around a very specific set of requirements, and I wouldn't expect them to replace your desktop PC any time particularly soon. Set-top box, sure. But they're not general purpose computers.
I'm not so much thinking of replacing the PC with a game console, but rather adding a strict division of labor. Why should a desktop PC be incurring the expense of fancy gaming hardware when it's just going to be replicated on the console? In the past the answer was that the PC could do a lot cooler games than consoles, especially in the areas of simulation and immersion. But now consoles have nearly as many buttons as a PC (which annoys the hell out of me) and can actually do immersive games *better*. In addition, a console can theoretically be more social than a PC. (Although the X-Box and Playstation don't show it.)
Now compare these games to Pole Position from the old days.
Funny you should mention Pole Position. My brother-in-law and I had tons of fun competing with each other on one of those PacMan joystick things they sell these days.:-)
The graphics, the music, the customization of the cars, and the action are all impressive. Most importantly of all, it's something you can do safely behind a console rather than doing it for real in the streets and kill somebody as occurred in Sacramento recently.
Bah. Forget that. No console game will EVER beat the experience of San Francisco Rush! You can feel the car beneath you as the chair rumbles, the car responds nicely to the gear shift, and you slide around that corner just in time to go right under the truck, up the ramp, and over the building!
Betcha can't do THAT on your X-Box!;-)
Seriously, the last arcade game I think I played was the SF:Rush ripoff with boats. The name escapes me at the moment, but grabing turbo boosts, knocking over tourist boats, falling down volcanos, and hitting all the right jumps was a lot of fun!:-D
Or the truth, if you can't have a new computer that is cool to you, that means no new jewelry that is cool to her at gift giving season
1. My wife always tells me "not to spend too much on her." So I don't.
2. Despite not spending much on her, I always get her things she actually wants and needs. In some cases this is jewelry (watches, necklaces, etc.), but often it's something more useful or practical. For her birthday I got her an iPod shuffle for when she's running. For Christmas I got her an Ice Cream maker. Digital Cameras, Banana hangers, "Fat Chef" Cookie Jars, Chinese Cookbooks, etc, etc, etc. are all gifts that I've given her. She thinks I always get the best stuff.;-)
(Here's a hint to any guys out there who need it: Women don't always want jewelry and flowers. A little bit of that stuff is good, but too much of it just tells her that you aren't paying much attention to her as a person. More personal gifts that meet her wants and needs will get you a lot more milage.)
So, when my wife says that I can have the computer if I actually have a need for it, I just look at our budget, look at what I'd do with it, and say "No, I don't *really* need it." Mark my words, though. One day I WILL need it, and at that point I will be a very happy individual! (Although, perhaps, out a few thousand bucks.);-)
1. With the next generation of consoles becoming nothing more than computers, what becomes the purpose of having two separate machines? Or perhaps the real point is, why use your computer for gaming?
2. What will the next generation of consoles actually do to improve the quality of games? Polygon technology has reached an apex whereby increases in graphical quality are hardly noticable in most cases. What about the *fun* factor? Early generation consoles used increases in technology to give us better gameplay than before. This is easily visible in going from Atari 2600 -> NES -> SNES -> N64. The Atari was actually capable of very little (but was fun), while the NES had full graphics capabilities, but low color support. Jumping to the SNES provided tons of color, scaling, rotation, and other features that made games more fun. The N64 proved that 3D environments didn't have to be boring, linear, or only for shooting zombies (or demons as your preference may be). For example:
Zelda -> Zelda III: A Link to the Past -> Zelda 64 Contra -> Contra III Super Mario Bros. (I-III) -> Super Mario World -> Mario 64 StarFox -> StarFox 64
Today's games, OTOH, are mostly just regurgitations of the FPS. Doom was a lot of fun when it came out, Quake was a hackers dream, and Quake III made blasting your buddies the best thing since sliced bread. (Unreal Tournament wasn't bad either.) But it really gets old after awhile. How many times can you run around shooting the same bad guys with the same tired weapons? Where's the new game play frontiers? While consoles were screwing around, I had fun playing RTSes on my computer. Or flying a starship in Bridge Commander. Or driving mechs around. i.e. Varied and interesting game play. Sadly, even that has disappeared on the PC.
Where's the gaming goodness? Where's the pointy sticks? Where is the Coconut Monkey!?!
While I realize that the gaming industry thinks that games are Hollywood productions, I honestly think fun games require nothing of the sort. Sure, I'd love to see another Wing Commander game with Mark Hammil and Tom Wilson, but that's not what the gaming industry is producing. What we need is for games to again break out of the mold and try new things. Keep riding the bleeding edge of gaming. It doesn't have to be an expensive game, just a *fun* one.
Tell me something: Why do games today *have* to be something I can't let my 5 year old son play? He still plays the old Nintendo games I used to play as a kid. He thinks they're a lot of fun. Yet do you think there's a chance in hell that I'm going to sit him in front of Doom III or an X-Box? No way! Why have we eschewed Gaming Goodness(TM) for violence and call it fun?
/lusting after a Mac Mini//can't afford the bugger
For your sake, I hope you're a student. It's pretty bad when you can't afford $14 a month to buy your Mac Mini. I actually sprung for the Apple Credit account for my laptop because they had a deal whereby if I paid it off in 6 months or less, there was no interest. Since it was way cheaper than using a credit card, easier than cutting a check, and I got to keep my money a bit longer with no penalty, I sprang for it. Just be sure to get rid of the credit account when you're done with it, or it will count against the number of open credit cards you have.
Now the real issue is finding a reason to get that 16 processor/8GB RAM/9x20GB Sun E4500 I want off of EBay. I can get a really good price on it, but my wife places one barrier in my way: I have to have a use for it that isn't already covered by my existing computers. #$%# all! I can't find any better reason than, "It's cool", "I really want one", and "Well, *I* would use it." (I already have a Sun Ultra 10 that I also got off of EBay, BTW, so you can see my problem.) With the Mac at least, there was a very clear reason for getting it. (I needed a laptop for side-work.)
also, solaris 10 runs fine on my non "sun-approved" machines (ie. designs built or reused by sun).
Solaris/x86 is supposed to. But if you have a Sun Built box, you should be getting the full OpenBoot system, the awesome graphical console, the cross-bar bus, and many other features that are unique to Sun machines. If Sun has stopped building their non-Sparc products that way, then... well... Sun's value proposition would be dropping, wouldn't it?
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Fansubs are not "killing the business".
Did I say they were? Nice job of putting words in my mouth.
The rest of the post is merely Sturgeon's Law.
That still doesn't change the fact that Anime is not generally accepted by the Amercian public. As long as it's not generally accepted, then it's unlikely to be generally imported.
That last point about importing Japanese DVDs clearly shows that AKAImBatman has no knowledge of the subject he's oh so insightfully posting about.
Again with the words in my mouth. Did I, or did I not say that "I don't understand why...". Seems pretty clear to me.
Japanese DVDs made for the Japanese market are very, very, very expensive(Yes, that many verys!). Their DVD purchasing habits are very different from ours.
Instead of attacking my post, how about providing some insightful details on this. Why are Japanese DVDs so expensive? What are their purchasing habits? Would American Anime fans be willing to pay the price of imports? Answering these questions would be a lot more helpful to others than taking a condescending position.
That was basically my point. Anime is heavily tied to Japanese culture (although I can't understand how they can put up with the repetitivness), and inroads are only going to made in the American culture if it appeals to the average American.
Is the problem with Anime in America:
A) Japan doesn't export enough Anime
B) Fansubs are killing the business
C) Not that many people in the US are actually interested in watching movies where the women are portrayed as children with blue hair, guys are always "cool" (in a Japanese-thinking sort of way), everyone's eyes go huge and bug out, saliva is everywhere, all the characters overreact, all monsters have tentacles, and the story lines are shrouded in inexplicable nonsense/lack of backstory?
Raise your hand if you've seen Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie? C it is then.
It has always amazed me that the Japanese can be amazing animators, yet consistently hold to the same tired cliches in all of their animated series. I understand that the Japanese think that underage girls are the height of sexual prowess, but it just doesn't jive with American ideas of how life actually is. I realize that an Anime fanbase exists here is the US (and in many other countries), but this fanbase is not a tremendously large majority. It's enough to keep Cartoon Network's night time programs in business and that's about it. The majority of people tune it out despite the occasional gem like the Ghost in the Shell series. (Which I think is significantly better than the movie, BTW.)
That being said, the article doesn't quite clarify the difficulties in actually creating an English sub for most anime movies. Dubbing is definitely difficult and expensive, but subbing is a relatively simple task. If most DVD movies came with english subbing (as American movies tend to come with Spanish subbing), then many retail companies here in the US would take care of the issues of importing from Japan. No special marketting or foreign shipments required. (This is similar to the Fanicom imports from way back when. That stuff was big business.)
s/data fork/fork system/g
The data/resource fork idea is a fairly elegant one.
:-)
I agree. In fact, the data fork is still used in Macs today. The issue at the time was that the file had no method of identification outside the fork. i.e. What format was the file? How are you supposed to open it? These things had to be guessed at if the fork was stripped off. Today Macs use the filename extension convention to identify the file in case the resource fork is lacking.
was under the impression that MFS was used even on the first Mac HDs.
;-)
;-)) Flash Memory was invented in 1988 to solve this issue.
It was. MFS did waste some space with the resource fork, but not too much. HFS, OTOH... (Another poster pointed out that HFS became the standard on 800K disks. That's not necessarily a good thing.)
I don't know if modularity would have been practical (having not studies OS design), but if it had been, the ability to swap out just the lowest level of the system and gain PE MT would have been very nice. Maybe modularity like this is even more resource-intensive than a monolithic PE MT design, I don't know.
Modularity is as much as you define it. For example, a separate graphics file is more modular than embedded drawing code, but you pay the cost in memory. Instead of machine instructions to draw the image, you now need data for both the drawn and empty parts as well as a method of identifying the image size, color pallete (if any), and other information that must be accounted for. Not to mention the code necessary to identify, load, parse, and render the file.
The same sorts of issues exist with modular code files. Class files, DLLs, Java Code Files, and other forms of modularity all come at a cost that couldn't be afforded back in 1984. We think nothing of these things today, but then again we don't code glorified calculators either.
What you have to understand about the method of loading these old computers was to simply load a code listing into an area of memory. To access the code, an application would do one of two things:
1) Pop your current address onto the stack and execute a JMP instruction to the correct address. Then hope that no one has overwritten that memory, and that the jumped code correctly restores the address from the stack.
2) Hook into a software interrupt so that the processor would automatically redirect execution to the correct instruction upon the invocation of the interrupt. An IRET instruction could then be used to automatically return control to the program without any direct manipulation of the stack. (This stuff was the height of technology at the time!)
Here's an interesting article for you. 24K was the original goal for the Finder code. 64K ended up barely being enough.
But did the hardware have to be built to boot exclusively from ROM?
Yes. Hardware always boots from ROM because that is the only memory location the processor can be sure is valid. What you see in modern PCs is more sophisticated ROM chips that understand how to read a disk drive, and can be programmed via flash ROM with rules as to how to handle the boot situation. AFAIK, the concept of sophisticated boot ROMs didn't come about until after Microsoft started selling MS-DOS to IBM Clone manufacturers. (IBM placed part of PC-DOS into ROM. The PCjr I had could boot directly into DOS, BASIC, and even a cutesy video game without a floppy disk.)
Couldn't there be a switch built into firmware somehow, without that much extra work?
Ok, you just said something you you should be kicking yourself for at the moment: "Firmware". Firmware didn't exist at the time. If you wanted a new ROM, you popped out the PROM and popped in a new one. (Didn't you watch Real Genius?
It would have made the hardware more flexible down the road.
Hardware flexibility was not a concern at the time. The OS code was just a minor abstraction from the disk drives. (And graphics hardware in the case of the Mac.) If you wanted to run another OS on a PC of the time, all you needed was a COM or EXE file that implemented that OS. The loader part of the executable could happily overwrite the memory, relink the interrupts, and completely take over the machine. (FYI, this is exactly w
First, hardware:
;-)
1) Memory access hatch (like the battery one it had) and the ability to upgrade memory...
2) Non-proprietary battery. Have you ever tried getting a replacement one? It's not easy. Wouldn't a 9 volt or something have sufficed?
3) Attach the mouse to the keyboard.
4) Sell a "ROM upgrade" service... Allow older machines to become "newer" machines for a reasonable fee.
You're OK so far.
Second, software:
1) FREE dev kits. Those Apple kits were really expensive if I recall correctly.
2) I think the filesystem (if designed by me, now) would probably be optimized for tools like spotlight.
3) The kernel would likely be an exo-kernel.
4) I would support TCP-IP
Holy Crap Batman! (Oh wait, that's me. Well, yes. As I was saying...)
1) There was really no concept of APIs at the time of the first Mac. Anything special that was loaded into memory was a form of BIOS call or memory jump. For the Mac, the primary calls were for Disk I/O and QuickDraw. That was about it. As a result, no dev system really existed for the Mac. You coded in assembler or you didn't code at all. Building something like a C environment would have been a tremendous expense for Apple, and was completely out of the question. Note that the devkits they did plan never materialized.
2) First of all, are you really willing to eat up a good chunk of your 400K floppies with meta-data and indexes? Secondly, what would you search for? Most people didn't bother with directories on floppies because the floppy *was* the directory. i.e. You had a floppy for Project A, a floppy for SpreadSheet B, and a floppy for Graphics C. For quick indexing and retrieval, you labelled them and placed them in a thumb-through disk holder.
3) KERNEL?! You do understand that there really wasn't a concept of a kernel back in those early consumer computers, right? The DOS (Disk Operating System) consisted of standardized software calls to control the floppy drive. After that, they got the hell out of the way and let the user do whatever he wanted. The Mac was slightly more sophisticated in that it also controlled a graphics device, but not by much. Even the mere mention of the word "kernel" at the time would have had you laughed out of your job and told to go program for Big Iron where they could afford to waste 300K of RAM on complex hardware control and multitasking.
4) TC... I... what? Have you been talking to those weirdos over at DARPA again? They've got some crazy idea about networking all computers together using the same protocol. Personally, I think they're nuts. I hear that the network stack uses up dozens of K of memory, and that the packets are each 512 bytes a piece. 512 bytes! You could fit an entire memo in that! Not to mention that expensive hardware they need to chain the computers together. Haven't these guys heard of a serial port or an acoustic coupler? I tell you, unless hardware gets a LOT cheaper in the next ten years, this ARPANET thing is going nowhere. Well, maybe academics will use it.
Arguably, space-time warping can be accounted for in a calendar as long as some sort of reference point is given. For example, if I left on a rocket ship at .95C, bound for Alpha-Centauri and returned 10 years later (Earth time), I could still say that ten years have passed on the Sol calendar based on the current positions of the bodies inside the solar system. The fact that the movement of those bodies occurred inside a period of only 8 years my time is irrelevant. 10 years has still passed according to the Sol calendar.
;-)
Timekeeping is fun. Especially if you're a computer programmer.
Yes, starting with HFS (even HFS+ perhaps?) would have been nice, but MFS wasn't around for long.
:-)
HFS on what? The floppy drives? That would not have been a good thing. Filesystems today are tuned to hard drive usage, and perform quite poorly on floppy drives. In particular, they tend to eat up most of the disk in overhead. That's why Microsoft's FAT filesystem is still the standard for floppies.
If I could have designed the OS to be highly modular, so that a pre-emptive kernel could be dropped in when cheaper RAM became available (maybe by 1986?) without sacrificing compatibility, I definitely would have done it.
Fitting a fully preemptable kernel in 128K would have been a true challenge with the hardware at the time. Especially if you wanted the meta-data hit of a modular system. Keep in mind that these machines had very few interrupts, and that the original Macintosh clock was a useless POS that drifted like nobody's business. Not to mention that the machine simply didn't have the room for multiple programs. The OS was preloaded into the ROM so that the only part extending out into main memory was the Finder datasets.
Also keep in mind that 128K of memory was quite costly in 1984. Putting in more memory would have driven up the cost of the machine substantially, which would have made it a direct competitor to the Lisa.
If the machines weren't hardwired to boot MacOS, that would IMO be a bonus, too.
As I pointed out above, the only reason why the OS fit at all was because it was preloaded. Original designs had it running directly from disk, but memory was becoming a huge issue. At some point Apple decided to accept the price hit and use some rather new ROM technology to store the OS. Note that this was pretty standard at the time, with most PCs (including the IBM PC) keeping part or all of the OS in ROM.
The fact that the OS lasted in basically the same form for 15 years, despite what we consider to be serious limitations, is a testimony to how much Apple did get right.
Indeed. It's easy for us today to look back and say "well they should have done this or that", but such discussions ignore the tremendous amount of technological progress that has gone on in the past 20 years. That includes the progress that has been made in understanding software construction as well as higher capacity hardware.
And bring back Lucasarts style adventure games. :-/
Amen to that. Remember back when the only Star Trek licensed games worth playing were adventure games? e.g. Star Trek 25th Anniversary and TNG: A Final Unity were tons of fun, had long lasting gameplay, and engrossed the player into everything that was going on.
And let's not forget The Dig! I mean, any game with a full book adaption has to be worth at least a second look! I don't care what other players say about grainy graphics. These games are still tons of fun to me. Given a graphical upgrade (so that the detractors would stop whining) I'm sure that new players would find them just as enjoyable. That is, if the upgrade was done by actual artists and not this 3D plastic look that has become so popular. How can anyone *see* anything through such a sea of bland colors?
If you haven't played WC2 or Tie Fighter then you've really missed out on some of the best of the genre.
:-)
As I said, WCII touched upon the sort of capship fighting I'm after (complete with corny dialog like "Fire the Main Gun!"), but its primitive engine kept it from going full bore with the concept. Most of the time you were really just an observer of the battle between the capships, especially since phase shields meant that you wouldn't have a chance in hell of joining the battle.
But as awesome as WC1 and 2 were, Descent: Freespace 1 and 2 simply blew them away in plot, graphics, gamespot, and wingman AI.
I never really got into Descent: Freespace. I played it a bit, but the screwy control scheme really turned me off. A similar problem exists with the new game StarShatter. The graphics are pretty, everything is realistic, you have to fly between waypoints, AND IT'S BORING AS ALL HELL. Sadly, realism isn't always a good substitute for gameplay.
Just a matter of point: There's no restriction in the US (at least, the states I've lived in) on giving alcohol to a minor as long as you are the child's parent or guardian. The law is such that it is intended for parents to decide when and how their children are first exposed to alcohol.
What the law DOES say, is that alcohol cannot be sold to a minor, nor can a non-parent/guardian play middle-man. A good part of these laws relate to the drinking and driving issue which is very serious in the US. (In many areas, driving is the only method of getting around, and is actually preferred by most people. This is in direct opposition to Europe where mass transit tends to be more effective.)
Sweet merciful Hobbes! You want another Wing Commander 3 or 4, or even...5?
:-/
;-)
Hell yeah! There was *nothing* more thrilling in WCIII than taking your craft into a torpedo/strafing run against a capship or escort. Weaving, bobbing, sliding all while trying to avoid hundreds of tiny suppression fire shots while the reticle ticked away at a lock. Then the thrill of finally closing in and blasting the sucker into the next century. The fear as you afterburn away, hoping that your torpedo connected, because you were about to take some serious punishment if it didn't.
Not to mention the dogfights. Man alive was it fun to attempt to get on the cat's tail and tear him apart with neutron blasts! Sure, the graphics weren't as good as they can make them today, but the game was FUN. The story wasn't half bad either.
As for Prophecy, that was a bit of a disappointment. The engine was a lot better, but the ships were highly crippled, and the Nephilim just weren't as fun to shoot at. Half the time, you couldn't even figure out *what* you were shooting at. This was somewhat fixed with the Secret Ops package (which is still available on WCNews, BTW) which gave you a) weapons that kick ass, b) serious, kick-ass dogfights with real adreneline pumping action! My only complaint about Secret Ops was that the lack of a story made the dog-fighting rather repetitive.
If there's one reason why I'd love to see a modern WC, it's because I want to dive into a multi-capship fight the way God intended. i.e. Big-ass carriers launching ships off the deck constantly, while you weave and strafe to avoid the cover fire from the escorts. I want to be immersed in the battle and have a real feel for what it's like. WCII touched this sort of dogfighting, but the engine of the time was quite primitive. WCIII & IV couldn't handle those sorts of dogfights (being early 3D engines) and the Prophecy engine had its own set of limitations that prevented such battles from playing out as they should. i.e. This is where technology can help make a game more interesting and fun to play.
Holy mass drivers and neutron guns, did you play Wing Commander 1 or 2?
Also great games, but in their own right. I actually have a copy of Super Wing Commander on my Mac. It's basically WC1 revamped with new graphics, sounds, cut-scenes, speech, and a few extra storyline tweaks. It kicks some serious butt, despite the horrible, horrible voice acting.
Even the WC1 eclipsed WC[3-5] in quality and fun factor.
WC1 was AWESOME for its time. A bit clunky to fly these days, but still fun if you can unlearn your WC3 and up tactics.
You go into this rehash of the tired, whining rant of "but where's the fun" and then hold up one of the worst (or best?) examples of the trend that you lament?!
Considering the number of people who *like* WC and still want more (go to WCNews if you don't believe me), I'm thinking it's just a matter of the game not agreeing with you. And that's fine. Not all games are for everyone. But WC did push its own boundries with every release. Not just technologically, but in gameplay as well. That's something I really can't say for the majority of today's games.
You want to sit your kid in front of good, modern games? Fine! [list of games]
Putting the list of movie adaptions aside, pretty much everything you named is for the GameCube or Gameboy. I find that rather interesting. What that tells me is that Nintendo is the last holdout for "fun" games. Which is what I've already suspected. However, that doesn't excuse the 50 billion other crap games for the X-Box, Playstation, and PC. Not to mention the poor initial titles for the GameCube. (What was up with Luigi's Mansion?)
I hate to break it to you, but crying at emoitional events is a good thing. It helps solidify the personal bonds. All that Quake and UT do is desensitize your child to sex and violence. Think about what that does to her long term values. By encouraing her to be sensitive to situations like that in Bambi, you're teaching her to be empathetic to the world around her, and potentially teaching her how to act on that empathy.
By letting her play Quake, you're telling her that sex, guns, and violence are all OK issues with no complications. If she was older she'd understand that things are not so simple, but at five her outlook is very straightforward.
I'm all for exposing children to what the world is like, even the gruesome details. The key is that you as a parent need to be there to help them shape their viewpoint and understanding of these things. Given no guidance in such situations, your child will have no choice but to accept them as normal. While the long-lasting effects may not be immediately obvious, her childhood understanding will color her viewpoint even after she's old enough to understand the complexity of situations.
No, I'm not saying your child is going to become a tank girl rebel and an axe murderer just from playing Quake. However, that is one step toward those outcomes if you as a parent don't jump in and guide her.
Parent should be modded up to +6, then forever enshrined as one of Slashdot's best posts. My hat is off to you, sir.
You think $3,400 is bad? You obviously haven't shopped for a Sparc laptop from Tadpole!
Hydro Thunder?
:-)
Give the man a prize!
Hydro Thunder!
I believe it's still in a few arcades.
A few weeks ago I was at a D&B and played a really cool new shooter called Ghost Squad. Very cool.
Sounds interesting. (Although the review comparisons to VirtaCop are not encouraging.) I can't say I was ever too fond of light gun arcade games, but I did love the Time Crisis series. That probably had something to do with the free shooting ability (I always fancied myself a pretty good aim) as well as the nicely weighted gun. Much better than the Area 51 guns, and a lot more free (and less frustrating) than the Sniper game.
Personally, I'd argue that this is an incorrect premise. The next-gen consoles are *not* general-purpose computers, but rather, extremely powerful media DSPs.
Arguably they are general purpose computers, their design is just such that they excel in a certain area.
DSPs are great for a lot of areas, especially graphical work where you can get away with only a minor amount of conditional logic, but a whole metric tonne of pipeline streaming. However, video games tend to be split across all sorts of hardware. The multimedia can always be enhanced with DSPs for sound, DSPs for video, DSPs for artifical music, but what about AI?
It strikes me that this next generation of consoles potentially ignores one of the key uses for branched logic: Intelligent Machines. AI was getting quite good about the time of Quake (who remembers the Reaper Bot? $$%%$@ thing kicked my ass), but it hasn't advanced much since then. For a *fun* game, better AI may not be necessary. Then again, the entire purpose of enhancing the hardware with multithreaded DSP equipment is to improve immersion. What does it help if your graphics are more realistic than ever, but your opponent is dumber than your two year old brother? (And he just hits random buttons.)
Perhaps it's time for consoles to begin considering AI hardware, or perhaps a smaller secondary procesor?
In short, these next-gen consoles are based around a very specific set of requirements, and I wouldn't expect them to replace your desktop PC any time particularly soon. Set-top box, sure. But they're not general purpose computers.
I'm not so much thinking of replacing the PC with a game console, but rather adding a strict division of labor. Why should a desktop PC be incurring the expense of fancy gaming hardware when it's just going to be replicated on the console? In the past the answer was that the PC could do a lot cooler games than consoles, especially in the areas of simulation and immersion. But now consoles have nearly as many buttons as a PC (which annoys the hell out of me) and can actually do immersive games *better*. In addition, a console can theoretically be more social than a PC. (Although the X-Box and Playstation don't show it.)
Just my random musings, anyway.
Now compare these games to Pole Position from the old days.
:-)
;-)
:-D
Funny you should mention Pole Position. My brother-in-law and I had tons of fun competing with each other on one of those PacMan joystick things they sell these days.
The graphics, the music, the customization of the cars, and the action are all impressive. Most importantly of all, it's something you can do safely behind a console rather than doing it for real in the streets and kill somebody as occurred in Sacramento recently.
Bah. Forget that. No console game will EVER beat the experience of San Francisco Rush! You can feel the car beneath you as the chair rumbles, the car responds nicely to the gear shift, and you slide around that corner just in time to go right under the truck, up the ramp, and over the building!
Betcha can't do THAT on your X-Box!
Seriously, the last arcade game I think I played was the SF:Rush ripoff with boats. The name escapes me at the moment, but grabing turbo boosts, knocking over tourist boats, falling down volcanos, and hitting all the right jumps was a lot of fun!
Can you ask him when Gravy Trader will be out? I've been dying to play it! ;-)
Or the truth, if you can't have a new computer that is cool to you, that means no new jewelry that is cool to her at gift giving season
;-)
;-)
1. My wife always tells me "not to spend too much on her." So I don't.
2. Despite not spending much on her, I always get her things she actually wants and needs. In some cases this is jewelry (watches, necklaces, etc.), but often it's something more useful or practical. For her birthday I got her an iPod shuffle for when she's running. For Christmas I got her an Ice Cream maker. Digital Cameras, Banana hangers, "Fat Chef" Cookie Jars, Chinese Cookbooks, etc, etc, etc. are all gifts that I've given her. She thinks I always get the best stuff.
(Here's a hint to any guys out there who need it: Women don't always want jewelry and flowers. A little bit of that stuff is good, but too much of it just tells her that you aren't paying much attention to her as a person. More personal gifts that meet her wants and needs will get you a lot more milage.)
So, when my wife says that I can have the computer if I actually have a need for it, I just look at our budget, look at what I'd do with it, and say "No, I don't *really* need it." Mark my words, though. One day I WILL need it, and at that point I will be a very happy individual! (Although, perhaps, out a few thousand bucks.)
1. With the next generation of consoles becoming nothing more than computers, what becomes the purpose of having two separate machines? Or perhaps the real point is, why use your computer for gaming?
2. What will the next generation of consoles actually do to improve the quality of games? Polygon technology has reached an apex whereby increases in graphical quality are hardly noticable in most cases. What about the *fun* factor? Early generation consoles used increases in technology to give us better gameplay than before. This is easily visible in going from Atari 2600 -> NES -> SNES -> N64. The Atari was actually capable of very little (but was fun), while the NES had full graphics capabilities, but low color support. Jumping to the SNES provided tons of color, scaling, rotation, and other features that made games more fun. The N64 proved that 3D environments didn't have to be boring, linear, or only for shooting zombies (or demons as your preference may be). For example:
Zelda -> Zelda III: A Link to the Past -> Zelda 64
Contra -> Contra III
Super Mario Bros. (I-III) -> Super Mario World -> Mario 64
StarFox -> StarFox 64
Today's games, OTOH, are mostly just regurgitations of the FPS. Doom was a lot of fun when it came out, Quake was a hackers dream, and Quake III made blasting your buddies the best thing since sliced bread. (Unreal Tournament wasn't bad either.) But it really gets old after awhile. How many times can you run around shooting the same bad guys with the same tired weapons? Where's the new game play frontiers? While consoles were screwing around, I had fun playing RTSes on my computer. Or flying a starship in Bridge Commander. Or driving mechs around. i.e. Varied and interesting game play. Sadly, even that has disappeared on the PC.
Where's the gaming goodness? Where's the pointy sticks? Where is the Coconut Monkey!?!
While I realize that the gaming industry thinks that games are Hollywood productions, I honestly think fun games require nothing of the sort. Sure, I'd love to see another Wing Commander game with Mark Hammil and Tom Wilson, but that's not what the gaming industry is producing. What we need is for games to again break out of the mold and try new things. Keep riding the bleeding edge of gaming. It doesn't have to be an expensive game, just a *fun* one.
Tell me something: Why do games today *have* to be something I can't let my 5 year old son play? He still plays the old Nintendo games I used to play as a kid. He thinks they're a lot of fun. Yet do you think there's a chance in hell that I'm going to sit him in front of Doom III or an X-Box? No way! Why have we eschewed Gaming Goodness(TM) for violence and call it fun?
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm getting old.
/lusting after a Mac Mini //can't afford the bugger
For your sake, I hope you're a student. It's pretty bad when you can't afford $14 a month to buy your Mac Mini. I actually sprung for the Apple Credit account for my laptop because they had a deal whereby if I paid it off in 6 months or less, there was no interest. Since it was way cheaper than using a credit card, easier than cutting a check, and I got to keep my money a bit longer with no penalty, I sprang for it. Just be sure to get rid of the credit account when you're done with it, or it will count against the number of open credit cards you have.
Now the real issue is finding a reason to get that 16 processor/8GB RAM/9x20GB Sun E4500 I want off of EBay. I can get a really good price on it, but my wife places one barrier in my way: I have to have a use for it that isn't already covered by my existing computers. #$%# all! I can't find any better reason than, "It's cool", "I really want one", and "Well, *I* would use it." (I already have a Sun Ultra 10 that I also got off of EBay, BTW, so you can see my problem.) With the Mac at least, there was a very clear reason for getting it. (I needed a laptop for side-work.)
also, solaris 10 runs fine on my non "sun-approved" machines (ie. designs built or reused by sun).
Solaris/x86 is supposed to. But if you have a Sun Built box, you should be getting the full OpenBoot system, the awesome graphical console, the cross-bar bus, and many other features that are unique to Sun machines. If Sun has stopped building their non-Sparc products that way, then... well... Sun's value proposition would be dropping, wouldn't it?
Switching Between MDI Child Windows
:-)
Well, there's your problem. I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT MDI. I'm talking about switching between application, then windows per application.