They will actually save money from this decision believe it or not. However, compared to the money MS has, it will be on the order of dimes.
If they don't let pirates get SP2 there will be less bandwith used by their patch servers. MS will save dimes.
I think its great for linux if they don't let pirates patch. At least one pirate will get hit by a virus and switch. And it will boost the "MS is just a viriid up piece of junk, so switch" argument.
Actually I can't blame anyone for taking any money for advertising. Advertising is like free money. Someone gives you cash and you give them almost nothing in return. Especially as people like me who block every ad in ever medium (I don't watch television and am stilly trying to block radio ads). Don't blame the messenger, they're just doing their job and getting a free ride. If you think about it, they're probably ripping MS off. I mean, who reads Linux Today that doesn't know that MS Sux0r?
More than that I love the smell of new circuit boards from the factory, the Abit factory would be heaven.
More than that, I love the smell of magazines and collectible cards and stuff. I don't know what they put in that ink...
But of all smells only one reigns supreme. The smell of a brand new NES cartridge. Occasionally I'll get a shirt waft of this odor and my brain will enter a 2 second long state of euphoric nostalgia. But no matter how hard I try I cannot find a brand new, unopened NES game. Even if I did, I doubt the smell will still be in there.
I don't care how many chemicals of death are in there. There's no point to life if you always play it safe and never enjoy anything.
True that. But in addition, because it is the de facto standard, its what they teach college students in IT classes. I'm a CS major, and I know quite a few IT majors around here. If you asked most of them to set up a DNS server they could. If you asked how they would say "the bind command". Because they are all windowsy, they don't realize bind is a piece of software that is replaceable. They were taught how to do things a certain way, and they don't know to do it differently.
Not all IT majors are that dumb, some of them deserve some credit.
The other problem is that old pain in the butt standard programs like bind and sendmail are feature complete. Because they are old and used by tons of people they have all the features in them, workin properly. It may be a horrid pain in the ass to make them work, but it can be done. And while there are many nice new alternative programs that serve the same functionality in an easy clean fast way. You'll be hard pressed to find one that can do everything. I can't tell you how often Who will use a piece of software that they know is terrible, will admit to it being terrible, even complain about it being terrible, because it is the only one with a single feature that is necessary. Made up Example: One website someone visits often only works in IE. They love Firefox, but its too much of a pain to visit that one site.
There's some guy out there using bind who wants to use something else, but can't because he needs one tiny feature that nothing else has. This is a major weakness of Open Source because since software is under constant development and bug fixing and security hole patching is priority, few programs ever become feature complete.
Best board game ever, Puerto Rico. Second best board game ever. Tigris and Euphrates. After that you've just got a bunch of 'em all mixed up Carcassone El Grande Settlers Amun-Re Tikal
I can't wait for pc games to be officially released in LiveCD format. It would definitely give a much needed boost to PC gaming. Making it easier to make games run and not having to configured crazy drivers and such makes it better for all gamers.
Not only that, but having the game be the only thing occupying your system gets rid of a whole heck of a lot of useless overhead and can help to crank up the fps and such on lower powered machines. Lower system requirements means more potential customers. No software dependency means linux and windows users will both be all over it.
Maybe Carmack will make a Doom 3 livecd, we can only hope.
Not that I don't agree with switching to Xorg, because I do. I think Xorg is the way to go and xfree is totally dying.
BUT
Isn't it funny that a very small license change in a free program like Xfree drives everyone away within months. But NVidia binary drivers, which I use and love, have a license 10 times worse. But people don't avoid using them. In fact just from the gentoo forums there are tons of people trying to get said drivers to work with Xorg! Most have actually had great success.
People have no balls. We all know this homeland security BS is totally unconstitutional, its not even a question. Here's what I would have done in the guys situation.
1) I would have taken advantage of my rights to the fullest extent forcing them to use the patriot act.
2) Gone to court eventually and claimed that the patriot act was unconstitutional.
3) Next year or the year after I would be in the supreme court with my lawyer, it would be US vs. Me and the patriot act would be declared unconstitutional making the world a better place for everybody.
Sure it would be a pain in the ass. Sure it would be a lot more work than that. And sure it would probably "ruin" my life. But this stuff wont go away on its own. Somebody has to fight it. I'm just waiting for my chance. The rest of the people around are all wusses who wont sacrifice anything for the common good. I can't wait until the day big brother comes to get me. I want to have a digital camera take a picture of the looks on their faces when I give them the double deuce.
When I first started with linux I used whichever Red Hat was out 6 years ago. After a year I switched up to Mandrake. Mandrake had newer packages and supported my hardware better. As I used linux more and more I learned more and more about it. About 6 months ago I switched up to Gentoo. I wouldn't reccomend going to Gentoo or Debian right away unless you are particularly adventurous. But if you are the kind of user who really wont settle for less they are the only distros that give you "real unadulterated linux".
So what you want to do is use Knoppix Mandrake Suse, etc. And learn as much as you can from those. Eventually you will reach a point where you aren't learning anything new. You'll also start getting frustrated because things wont work, and you wont be able to change certain things. RPMs are easy, but overall fickle and confining. When you reach this point, set aside a weekend and print the gentoo installation handbook and get a livecd. Or go the debian way, either is good. Anything harder core than those two distros is more difficulty with little reward for it. Lunar Linux is about as far as you want to go.
Anyway the point is if you want to be a real linux guy and get the full experience and whatnot, start small and work your way up.
There's only one way to get something that exists other than waiting for the market to turn around. That's to do it yourself.
Search on google ( I forget URLS ) and you will find people who have converted real motorcycles from gas to electricity. Get some batteries and some decent electric motors and read some mechanical/electrical engineering books and you're all set. You can save lots of money by buying a dead motorcycle instead of a brand new one.
Don't expect to be able to get anything more than a ride to work with one of these though. You will be hard pressed to find anything that will get you to work and back without charging it up at either end. You could also be adventurous and try to special order fuel cells. How much charge it holds, how powerful the motors are and how heavy the bike is will probably be the 3 factors that determine your mileage and speed. Do lots of research.
Oh yeah, don't live in a state where you have to get inspection on your bike when you get license plates for it. Chances of it getting through are iffy.
you only have to play matchup if you use a binary package based distribution. Actually I think debian makes sure this problem doesn't happen, so its mostly with the rpm based distros. Source based distros like gentoo, slackware or lunar linux don't have problems like this. You download the source to an app and build it against whatever glibc you are currently using. With binary distros you have to hope you have the same glibc as the guy who made the package.
Yeah, offtopic, but I'm just helping this guy out. Wine rules.
It supports 16 via wi-fi in a 100ft radius. I don't even think the thing HAS a cable connection. It does play gameboy games though so I hope it has a connection for playing gameboy link cable games like advance wars and connecting to the cube to play FF:CC. Goldeneye would be a good idea, but I think bomberman would be a better one.
I like to change the quote a little bit though to bring it into modern times.
He who would exchange freedom for temprorary or illusionary security deserves neither freedom nore security.
The key changes are safety/security and the addition of illusionary. You know, like the security at the airport that doesn't actually make things any safer, it just makes it seem like things are safer while taking away your freedom. And I think that safety and security have slightly different meanings and security is a word which applies much better.
But other than that, I stand by this principle completely. Along with its fellow princible from New Hampshire.
LIVE FREE OR DIE
Freedom is a must for life. Without freedom life is pointless. The price of freedom is your life. Nothing is more expensive than freedom. So if you can somehow get freedom for a discount, take it! Also, if there is something else that is going to cost you your life that is not freedom, do not buy it!
First, you must have the source code to your kernel, it is located in/usr/src/linux. Download the new driver in source code form and mix it in with the linux source code. You either do this via the patch command or by just untar/zipping it on top of the source. Next go to the source directory and type make menuconfig. You will get a nice menu with all the kernel configuration options. Find your driver, it will be in its logical place. Network card drivers in the network card drivers menu, etc. When you find the driver press M to mark it as module. Exit menuconfig and make sure you say yes save my config. Next type make modules. Next type make modules_install. I use gentoo so next I type modules-update. Done.
If you are installing a binary driver, like nvidias or anything else out of the ordinary it comes with its own instructions. If not, screw it, it's not worth it.
Why weren't there BSs in game design offered 4 years ago when I was looking to get into college, now I'm looking to get out. I can probably get a masters in game design if I want though.
But the timing is more significant than my personal situation. What this means is that the people who are going to be the game makers of tommorow are people who were born in 86-87-88. I'm a senior in college and the NES was my childhood. Some of the freshman who are just 3-4 years younger has the Playstation be their childhood! A lot of them barely remember the 16 bit days. It boggles my mind.
Anyway this is significant because the kind of people who grew up with Playstation are going to design Playstation style games. This means more shitty games to come out in the future. Nintendo will save us hopefully.
I'm using blosxom at the suggestion of my friend who has been using it. The only complaint I have is that its slightly unintuitive to isntall plugins. But setting up the actual blog is a breeze and is great. I'm going to replace/supplement my slashjournal with this blog because it gives me more flexibility. Like audio/video/graphics/flash and such. If you have ftp access to your web server and a cgi-bin folder, try blosxom.
It has bluetooth. That means you can connect it to the internet via a bluetooth cell phone. That means you can play game on it against anyone on the internet. That means I can play advance wars with people in cars in CA while I'm in a car in NY. If Nintendo makes a move on that technology they'll be the first to have multiplayer online gaming that is also portable. If they emphasize this feature they will rock the house. Two screens only helps this out. Put the score and the chat on one screen with the action on the other. I'm buying this no matter what, poo poo to all you naysayers.
Wow, that pirate game looks like the awesomest awesome awesome. I mean its advance wars with pirates. Not only that, but it looks like there are some golden sun style puzzles going on there too. Not to mention much booty! I must have it!
I must make another post about how Puzzle Pirates is the best. The entire game is based on economy. Sure, money comes in and out, but it sloshes a whole hell of a lot. The entire game is based on the economy, shop owning, pillaging, trading. Getting raw materials and manufacturing them into stuff that you use to make other stuff that you use to get more materials. What really makes puzzle pirates have the best economy is that labor plays a critical role. If you want to make stuff you need actual people to devote their labor to you. In turn you must pay them money for their services. Not only that, but first you need to have a very expensive shop to even begin thinking about it. It's complex and that's what makes it great, play puzzle pirates the only mmo worth playing right now.
It's quite obvious when you think about it. As long as Microsoft makes it possible to pirate windows it keeps linux down. Remember, piracy makes things more popular, like music. As long as people can get windows for free the freeness of linux is not so attractive. Microsoft knows that people who are pirating XP probably will never pay for windows ever. So by doing this they can keep their market share from going to linux or some other os. Someone using windows, even if not paying, is still using windows. And there's a chance they just might pay for some other windows software. Maybe the pirated windows and bought an EA Sports game. Doesn't help Microsoft directly, but every windows program sold makes a small difference.
Microsoft probably has the power to completely disable every internet-connected PC with pirated MS software on it. But imagine if today all pirate copies of windows stopped working. You would have a large large number of people with useless computers. They would all follow one of two courses of action. Either go to the store and buy windows for $100+ or download a linux or some such for free. More people would do the latter than Microsoft would like.
Here is why the DS will be great for Nintendo. As long as it doesn't cost a ridiculous amount of money, I will buy it. I think $200 would be the absolute maximum I would even consider paying based on what we know so far. But $150 is more realistic. Given that I'm not losing a fortune there are only a few possibilities.
Possibility one is that it is a great success and has tons of great games, I win. Another possibility is that it is another Virtual Boy. I win again because I'm that guy who has the virtual boy. Another possibility is that it does sort of well, but not great, like the Dreamcast. I consider that a win as well as long as I get my moneys worth.
I'm really looking forward to the full scoop on the ds so that I can know for sure, but right now it seems like there is no reason not to buy it.
I do agree with that. I think you slightly misunderstood me. In a puzzle game twitch reflexes should not matter. Just as in a space shooter puzzle solving should not come into play.
I agree greatly that the figuring out how to do the puzzle is the fun part. Once you figure out how something should be done, the doing of it should be automatic. When a game makes it hard to figure out how to do something, then makes it impossibly hard to actually accomplish the feat that is as bad as game design gets.
There are two kinds of hard. One is good, the other is not.
The first kind is the kind you get in a Zelda game. You need to beat a puzzle to proceed. The puzzle is a real mind bender. You sit there thinking and thinking, maybe even dying, and eventually you figure it out. These are good since your lack of skill keeps you from continuing. Also like in a space shooter, if you keep dying at a boss its because your twitch reflexes and button pressing isn't up to snuff, so you don't continue.
What is bad is when arbitrary information prevents you from continuing. For example a Resident Evil type game. Let's say you get to a point where you are completely stuck. There is no puzzle solving or skill shooting or anything like that which prevents you from going forth. It's simply that you don't know that widget X goes in thing Y. The only way to know is to read a FAQ or try everyting. This is stupid and bad game design. If you want someone to figure something out, it has to be in puzzle or riddle form. Don't just give the player stuff and force them to try every combination of places and things with no logic behind it. If there is no thinking or hand moving skill involved its not worth my time.
However, in games with the correct type of difficulty, crank it up all the way. I remember when saying you beat a game was a badge of honor. Sometimes you couldn't even repeat the feat. Seeing the ends of games, however crappy, was the best thing ever. We have to go back to those days. *cough* Silver Surfer *cough*
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They will actually save money from this decision believe it or not. However, compared to the money MS has, it will be on the order of dimes.
If they don't let pirates get SP2 there will be less bandwith used by their patch servers. MS will save dimes.
I think its great for linux if they don't let pirates patch. At least one pirate will get hit by a virus and switch. And it will boost the "MS is just a viriid up piece of junk, so switch" argument.
I don't see any ads... Whare you talking about?
Oh, you must not be using firefox and
This
Actually I can't blame anyone for taking any money for advertising. Advertising is like free money. Someone gives you cash and you give them almost nothing in return. Especially as people like me who block every ad in ever medium (I don't watch television and am stilly trying to block radio ads). Don't blame the messenger, they're just doing their job and getting a free ride. If you think about it, they're probably ripping MS off. I mean, who reads Linux Today that doesn't know that MS Sux0r?
I love the smell of new car.
More than that I love the smell of new circuit boards from the factory, the Abit factory would be heaven.
More than that, I love the smell of magazines and collectible cards and stuff. I don't know what they put in that ink...
But of all smells only one reigns supreme. The smell of a brand new NES cartridge. Occasionally I'll get a shirt waft of this odor and my brain will enter a 2 second long state of euphoric nostalgia. But no matter how hard I try I cannot find a brand new, unopened NES game. Even if I did, I doubt the smell will still be in there.
I don't care how many chemicals of death are in there. There's no point to life if you always play it safe and never enjoy anything.
True that. But in addition, because it is the de facto standard, its what they teach college students in IT classes. I'm a CS major, and I know quite a few IT majors around here. If you asked most of them to set up a DNS server they could. If you asked how they would say "the bind command". Because they are all windowsy, they don't realize bind is a piece of software that is replaceable. They were taught how to do things a certain way, and they don't know to do it differently.
Not all IT majors are that dumb, some of them deserve some credit.
The other problem is that old pain in the butt standard programs like bind and sendmail are feature complete. Because they are old and used by tons of people they have all the features in them, workin properly. It may be a horrid pain in the ass to make them work, but it can be done. And while there are many nice new alternative programs that serve the same functionality in an easy clean fast way. You'll be hard pressed to find one that can do everything. I can't tell you how often Who will use a piece of software that they know is terrible, will admit to it being terrible, even complain about it being terrible, because it is the only one with a single feature that is necessary. Made up Example: One website someone visits often only works in IE. They love Firefox, but its too much of a pain to visit that one site.
There's some guy out there using bind who wants to use something else, but can't because he needs one tiny feature that nothing else has. This is a major weakness of Open Source because since software is under constant development and bug fixing and security hole patching is priority, few programs ever become feature complete.
Best board game ever, Puerto Rico. Second best board game ever. Tigris and Euphrates. After that you've just got a bunch of 'em all mixed up
Carcassone
El Grande
Settlers
Amun-Re
Tikal
Just hit www.boardgamegeek.com
I can't wait for pc games to be officially released in LiveCD format. It would definitely give a much needed boost to PC gaming. Making it easier to make games run and not having to configured crazy drivers and such makes it better for all gamers.
Not only that, but having the game be the only thing occupying your system gets rid of a whole heck of a lot of useless overhead and can help to crank up the fps and such on lower powered machines. Lower system requirements means more potential customers. No software dependency means linux and windows users will both be all over it.
Maybe Carmack will make a Doom 3 livecd, we can only hope.
Not that I don't agree with switching to Xorg, because I do. I think Xorg is the way to go and xfree is totally dying.
BUT
Isn't it funny that a very small license change in a free program like Xfree drives everyone away within months. But NVidia binary drivers, which I use and love, have a license 10 times worse. But people don't avoid using them. In fact just from the gentoo forums there are tons of people trying to get said drivers to work with Xorg! Most have actually had great success.
Funny stuff.
People have no balls. We all know this homeland security BS is totally unconstitutional, its not even a question. Here's what I would have done in the guys situation.
1) I would have taken advantage of my rights to the fullest extent forcing them to use the patriot act.
2) Gone to court eventually and claimed that the patriot act was unconstitutional.
3) Next year or the year after I would be in the supreme court with my lawyer, it would be US vs. Me and the patriot act would be declared unconstitutional making the world a better place for everybody.
Sure it would be a pain in the ass. Sure it would be a lot more work than that. And sure it would probably "ruin" my life. But this stuff wont go away on its own. Somebody has to fight it. I'm just waiting for my chance. The rest of the people around are all wusses who wont sacrifice anything for the common good. I can't wait until the day big brother comes to get me. I want to have a digital camera take a picture of the looks on their faces when I give them the double deuce.
Fascism returns to the country shaped like a boot. The boot that stamps out fair use.
When I first started with linux I used whichever Red Hat was out 6 years ago. After a year I switched up to Mandrake. Mandrake had newer packages and supported my hardware better. As I used linux more and more I learned more and more about it. About 6 months ago I switched up to Gentoo. I wouldn't reccomend going to Gentoo or Debian right away unless you are particularly adventurous. But if you are the kind of user who really wont settle for less they are the only distros that give you "real unadulterated linux".
So what you want to do is use Knoppix Mandrake Suse, etc. And learn as much as you can from those. Eventually you will reach a point where you aren't learning anything new. You'll also start getting frustrated because things wont work, and you wont be able to change certain things. RPMs are easy, but overall fickle and confining. When you reach this point, set aside a weekend and print the gentoo installation handbook and get a livecd. Or go the debian way, either is good. Anything harder core than those two distros is more difficulty with little reward for it. Lunar Linux is about as far as you want to go.
Anyway the point is if you want to be a real linux guy and get the full experience and whatnot, start small and work your way up.
There's only one way to get something that exists other than waiting for the market to turn around. That's to do it yourself.
Search on google ( I forget URLS ) and you will find people who have converted real motorcycles from gas to electricity. Get some batteries and some decent electric motors and read some mechanical/electrical engineering books and you're all set. You can save lots of money by buying a dead motorcycle instead of a brand new one.
Don't expect to be able to get anything more than a ride to work with one of these though. You will be hard pressed to find anything that will get you to work and back without charging it up at either end. You could also be adventurous and try to special order fuel cells. How much charge it holds, how powerful the motors are and how heavy the bike is will probably be the 3 factors that determine your mileage and speed. Do lots of research.
Oh yeah, don't live in a state where you have to get inspection on your bike when you get license plates for it. Chances of it getting through are iffy.
you only have to play matchup if you use a binary package based distribution. Actually I think debian makes sure this problem doesn't happen, so its mostly with the rpm based distros. Source based distros like gentoo, slackware or lunar linux don't have problems like this. You download the source to an app and build it against whatever glibc you are currently using. With binary distros you have to hope you have the same glibc as the guy who made the package.
Yeah, offtopic, but I'm just helping this guy out. Wine rules.
It supports 16 via wi-fi in a 100ft radius. I don't even think the thing HAS a cable connection. It does play gameboy games though so I hope it has a connection for playing gameboy link cable games like advance wars and connecting to the cube to play FF:CC.
Goldeneye would be a good idea, but I think bomberman would be a better one.
you beat me to the post, plus points for you.
I like to change the quote a little bit though to bring it into modern times.
He who would exchange freedom for temprorary or illusionary security deserves neither freedom nore security.
The key changes are safety/security and the addition of illusionary. You know, like the security at the airport that doesn't actually make things any safer, it just makes it seem like things are safer while taking away your freedom. And I think that safety and security have slightly different meanings and security is a word which applies much better.
But other than that, I stand by this principle completely. Along with its fellow princible from New Hampshire.
LIVE FREE OR DIE
Freedom is a must for life. Without freedom life is pointless. The price of freedom is your life. Nothing is more expensive than freedom. So if you can somehow get freedom for a discount, take it! Also, if there is something else that is going to cost you your life that is not freedom, do not buy it!
How to install linux drivers in a few easy steps.
/usr/src/linux.
First, you must have the source code to your kernel, it is located in
Download the new driver in source code form and mix it in with the linux source code. You either do this via the patch command or by just untar/zipping it on top of the source.
Next go to the source directory and type make menuconfig. You will get a nice menu with all the kernel configuration options. Find your driver, it will be in its logical place. Network card drivers in the network card drivers menu, etc. When you find the driver press M to mark it as module. Exit menuconfig and make sure you say yes save my config.
Next type make modules.
Next type make modules_install.
I use gentoo so next I type modules-update.
Done.
If you are installing a binary driver, like nvidias or anything else out of the ordinary it comes with its own instructions. If not, screw it, it's not worth it.
Why weren't there BSs in game design offered 4 years ago when I was looking to get into college, now I'm looking to get out. I can probably get a masters in game design if I want though.
But the timing is more significant than my personal situation. What this means is that the people who are going to be the game makers of tommorow are people who were born in 86-87-88. I'm a senior in college and the NES was my childhood. Some of the freshman who are just 3-4 years younger has the Playstation be their childhood! A lot of them barely remember the 16 bit days. It boggles my mind.
Anyway this is significant because the kind of people who grew up with Playstation are going to design Playstation style games. This means more shitty games to come out in the future. Nintendo will save us hopefully.
I'm using blosxom at the suggestion of my friend who has been using it. The only complaint I have is that its slightly unintuitive to isntall plugins. But setting up the actual blog is a breeze and is great. I'm going to replace/supplement my slashjournal with this blog because it gives me more flexibility. Like audio/video/graphics/flash and such. If you have ftp access to your web server and a cgi-bin folder, try blosxom.
It has bluetooth. That means you can connect it to the internet via a bluetooth cell phone. That means you can play game on it against anyone on the internet. That means I can play advance wars with people in cars in CA while I'm in a car in NY. If Nintendo makes a move on that technology they'll be the first to have multiplayer online gaming that is also portable. If they emphasize this feature they will rock the house. Two screens only helps this out. Put the score and the chat on one screen with the action on the other. I'm buying this no matter what, poo poo to all you naysayers.
Hey reviewers! What kind of PC were you playing that demo on?? We still need to know the minimum system requirements!
Wow, that pirate game looks like the awesomest awesome awesome. I mean its advance wars with pirates. Not only that, but it looks like there are some golden sun style puzzles going on there too. Not to mention much booty! I must have it!
I must make another post about how Puzzle Pirates is the best. The entire game is based on economy. Sure, money comes in and out, but it sloshes a whole hell of a lot. The entire game is based on the economy, shop owning, pillaging, trading. Getting raw materials and manufacturing them into stuff that you use to make other stuff that you use to get more materials. What really makes puzzle pirates have the best economy is that labor plays a critical role. If you want to make stuff you need actual people to devote their labor to you. In turn you must pay them money for their services. Not only that, but first you need to have a very expensive shop to even begin thinking about it. It's complex and that's what makes it great, play puzzle pirates the only mmo worth playing right now.
It's quite obvious when you think about it. As long as Microsoft makes it possible to pirate windows it keeps linux down. Remember, piracy makes things more popular, like music. As long as people can get windows for free the freeness of linux is not so attractive. Microsoft knows that people who are pirating XP probably will never pay for windows ever. So by doing this they can keep their market share from going to linux or some other os. Someone using windows, even if not paying, is still using windows. And there's a chance they just might pay for some other windows software. Maybe the pirated windows and bought an EA Sports game. Doesn't help Microsoft directly, but every windows program sold makes a small difference.
Microsoft probably has the power to completely disable every internet-connected PC with pirated MS software on it. But imagine if today all pirate copies of windows stopped working. You would have a large large number of people with useless computers. They would all follow one of two courses of action. Either go to the store and buy windows for $100+ or download a linux or some such for free. More people would do the latter than Microsoft would like.
Here is why the DS will be great for Nintendo. As long as it doesn't cost a ridiculous amount of money, I will buy it. I think $200 would be the absolute maximum I would even consider paying based on what we know so far. But $150 is more realistic. Given that I'm not losing a fortune there are only a few possibilities.
Possibility one is that it is a great success and has tons of great games, I win. Another possibility is that it is another Virtual Boy. I win again because I'm that guy who has the virtual boy. Another possibility is that it does sort of well, but not great, like the Dreamcast. I consider that a win as well as long as I get my moneys worth.
I'm really looking forward to the full scoop on the ds so that I can know for sure, but right now it seems like there is no reason not to buy it.
I do agree with that. I think you slightly misunderstood me. In a puzzle game twitch reflexes should not matter. Just as in a space shooter puzzle solving should not come into play.
I agree greatly that the figuring out how to do the puzzle is the fun part. Once you figure out how something should be done, the doing of it should be automatic. When a game makes it hard to figure out how to do something, then makes it impossibly hard to actually accomplish the feat that is as bad as game design gets.
There are two kinds of hard. One is good, the other is not.
The first kind is the kind you get in a Zelda game. You need to beat a puzzle to proceed. The puzzle is a real mind bender. You sit there thinking and thinking, maybe even dying, and eventually you figure it out. These are good since your lack of skill keeps you from continuing. Also like in a space shooter, if you keep dying at a boss its because your twitch reflexes and button pressing isn't up to snuff, so you don't continue.
What is bad is when arbitrary information prevents you from continuing. For example a Resident Evil type game. Let's say you get to a point where you are completely stuck. There is no puzzle solving or skill shooting or anything like that which prevents you from going forth. It's simply that you don't know that widget X goes in thing Y. The only way to know is to read a FAQ or try everyting. This is stupid and bad game design. If you want someone to figure something out, it has to be in puzzle or riddle form. Don't just give the player stuff and force them to try every combination of places and things with no logic behind it. If there is no thinking or hand moving skill involved its not worth my time.
However, in games with the correct type of difficulty, crank it up all the way. I remember when saying you beat a game was a badge of honor. Sometimes you couldn't even repeat the feat. Seeing the ends of games, however crappy, was the best thing ever. We have to go back to those days. *cough* Silver Surfer *cough*