The reason people still don't get it is because this is just an article. People aren't heavily influenced by what they read in the newspaper. Heck, most people don't read the whole newspaper, they just read the parts that interest them.
What OSS needs is marketing. Take a project like Mozilla Firebird. I guarantee if you turn http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why into a tv commercial and air it during the superbowl that IE will be sitting in the #2 seat the day after. But we can't get marketing because it costs money and by giving away most of the software for $0 the revenue is also $0.
The other problem is that people resist change simply because they don't want to have to go through the effort of changing or learning something new. Those people suck and I consider them worthless. Constantly change for the better. If changing something in your life will improve it in a significant way then do it. If not, then what's the point? Living the same unchanging boring life every day? I mean, sure it's just software so maybe I'm going a little far here. But when I switched to Firebird I was able to get an extra 30 minutes of sleep because my daily web checking took less time. That's a significant life change there.
This is what happened to Tribes 2. Tribes 2 was the best game ever until they fucked it up. What happened was they had a forum built into the game itself, so most players participated in it. They used it the same way the counter-strike forums are used. "The AWM is cheap take it out of the game!" "Change this it sucks!" "Make it so people can't steal vehicles!"
The Tribes 2 devs made the mistake of doing everything the players wanted. The game turned to crap. After everybody stopped playing they finally restored the game to a decent classic version, and now you can play online with the small community in what was one of the best games ever.
Now look at Counter-Strike. It's the most popular multiplayer online game ever probably. They hardly ever do what players want. They only make changes in the interest of game design. The AWM is still there. The game is still hard. Heck, they make changes to piss players off. Like when they changed the p90 way back in the beta 7 days.
So, why does this happen? Because players are dumb. They don't know anything about game design. They only want you to change the game in such a way so that their current style of playing will immediately become the best style and they will win every time. Think about it. All those guys who say take the AWM out are guys who don't have the skill to deal with someone else sniping at them. That's part of the game and to be good you need those skills. The vast majority of the time players don't ask for game improvements. They just want the game to change to suit themselves rather than become better players. This usually turns the game into crap and all the real players leave. If you don't do what the players want and you just stick to good design all the good players stay, and the idiots stay too. They will always complain, but they will keep playing your game until the end of days. There are guys who have been complaining about things in CS since the very beginning and now they are playing on steam and complaining it is crap and the shield is cheap.
Tribes 2, Counter-Strike. Real world examples and evidence. Don't give in to the whims of players. The vast majority of players like things the way they are. Only the few idiot fanboy types are asking for changes. Don't listen to them. They may seem like the majority on the forums, because they are the majority on the forums. But they aren't the majority of your players.
If you really want to use *nix try gentoo. Seriously, I am not some zealot. I'm an average dual booting guy who just needs to have some sort of nix to do my cs homework with. The gentoo forums are the friendliest open source people ever, and they answer just about any questions within a day. Not only that, but gentoo has super awesome documentation. It's not the easiest, it just requires a great deal of time and patience as opposed to knowledge which debian requires. Just give it 1 shot and if you're not satisfied it's not like you lost money or anything.
um, yeah well in the USA, where I live, people think they are living in the freest country in the world. Just in case you didn't know, Norway is the freest country in the world. And their consumer technology is better than ours. Their cellphones especially. And they realize how stupid Americans like you are, because they know what our country is really like. Unlike you, who would probably be turned to a puddle of mush by their mighty viking hammers if you were spotted approaching a fjord. If you know what one is.
The game Sony is probably releasing over there are really old games. Games where the developer has already made back their development costs and profited. Games where the publisher has already made back their marketing cost and profited. The only costs of selling these old hits will be manufacturing and distribution. All revenue greater than that cost will be pure profit because the US, Japan and Europe have already paid for all of those other 1 time costs. Because of this they can afford to drop the prices like a rock.
While this advertising is kind of crappy and cheesy it represents a disturbing trend in video games. The trend for developers to concentrate more on theme than gameplay.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally against censorship and such. I'm not one of those that think violent video games are evil or some such, hell I play cs lots. But Acclaim (seemingly the worst offender) is trying to sell a game because the game is bloody. Give me an hour and I'll code some blood in opengl. I'll make a program where every time you click a huge pool of blood explodes and spills everywhere. Is it a fun game? no.
I've noticed that lately a lot of people have been buying games based on theme. Like all the people who buy a Final Fantasy game just because it says Final Fantasy on it. Or all the people who put down the GameCube just because it looks like its for kids. These are the shallow minded retards that probably buy games Acclaim makes. You know a video game is a good game when you can replace every sprite with a stick figure and replace every thing else with color coded squares and it's still fun to play. That's a damn good game. If a game is only fun because the pictures happen to be pictures of trademarked characters or guns or blood or whatever the game still isn't a good game.
Look at Smash Bros. Sure they used their entire Nintendo lineup of characters as the theme. But if you took it away and replaced them all with stick figures the game would still rock the house. Now take any Acclaim game, do the same. What no gameplay?
If you want to see some blood there are a thousand websites with videos of hideous injuries you can look at. These ads are just one more way stupid developers are cheapening the industry.
how do you think they make the games in the first place? Do you think they programmed F-Zero by putting a gamecube c compiler on a little gamecube disc and typed in the code with a purple controller? No. They have a GCN dev kit from Nintendo. The dev kit is essentially a computer. It just has plugs to interface with the gamecube, make discs (I think), and compile cube games. And of course the software libraries to code those games. Also I think it has an emulator that will play cube games if you put the disc in it. Anyway, you'll probably never get one, but there are pictures on the net everywhere.
What it all comes down to is the lack of innovation in pc game genres. Some genres of game do well for the pc. Usually things like rts, fps, simulation. Anything with a complex interface. Anything that absolutely requires a mouse and keyboard. Anything that requires networking. These are the games that are good on the pc. The rest of the games are good on the console. Platformers. Fighting games. Space Shooters. Some genres do well on both, puzzle games like Tetris for example.
The major pc game genres have had a serious lack of innovation as of late. The RTS and the FPS have both been stagnant. Look at the newest fps. Tell me what new major fundamental innovation in gameplay has changed since Half-Life? Why is Counter-Strike still #1? Because no new game has done anything new and amazing to beat it out gameplay wise. Before pc games will become popular again the genres which sell big on the pc must have major gameplay innovations.
Look at the console. Games like metroid prime, gta, etc. etc. All of these games represent huge fundamental advances in gameplay within the genre. People aren't going to buy the same game 10 different times just because you upped the graphics or changed the theme. Once you've played one stock space shooter you've played them all. Unless someone releases something like Ikaruga with it's color changing awesomeness that makes the genre fun again.
If you want people to buy your game you must innovate. There has to be a gameplay element that is new and awesome that the genre needs. I think there is much hope in Doom3 and Half-Life2 to breathe new life into the fps. Natural Selection has done it and it's popularity is soaring.
If you haven't realized it yet, there's an obvious answers. RPGS that have random encounters arne't video games. They are interactive movies. The difference is that some games let you choose your own adventure (Chrono Trigger). And some are dead linear.
It's like if you went to see a movie in the theatre and they said "ok, in order to see the next scene you have to push the correct buttons on this controller we're giving you." It's not a game, it's a trial. A test to determine if you are allowed to progress. And RPGs with random encounters test you every 5 seconds.
I mean I love the RPGs, but for the plot. I can't play most of them anymore because I just don't have time for the tedious parts which take up 90% of the game time. Golden sun is an exception because the tests are puzzles, so I think of it primarily as a fun puzzle game. You can't lose combat in Golden sun, and it takes two seconds. And you can use a simple magic to eliminate random encounters easily.
Take a look at games like Mario + Luigi Superstar Saga. It's super amazing. Why? Because it gives you the plot and the fun elements of the rpg, but eliminates the stupid combat parts. It replaces those with a platform game true to the old school mario flavor.
So, people play the RPG for the amazing amazing plot. The randome encounter/combat "game" they throw in there so it isn't just a movie is crap. Throw in something else instead and we can make great games worth playing. Try throwing in a turn based strategy, an fps, a real time strategy, a puzzle game, a simulation. Any real game will do just fine.
If you are offended, it's your fault, fuck you. For example, nothing you can say can possibly offend me. If you are offended by something, then there is something wrong with you, and that is the problem. Stick and stones. It's just freakin' words man. If you can' understand that when I call drives master and slave that I am in no way referring to actual slavery then you are fucked up and need some help.
Nowhere does it say you have the right not to be offended. But it does say I have the right to free speech. Free speech comes before everything else. So there's no way in hell I'm limiting my speech because you get offended. You and everyone like you who gets offended or tries to avoid offending people are part of the problem of society. Just get over it and deal, stop being a pussy.
And yes, if you noticed my language in this post is purposeful, if you were too slow to catch on you dumbass.
I've got a plastic thing that goes under my bed. All my computery extra stuff that doesn't go on my desk goes in there. When it's time to work with the hardwares I open 'er up.
That list is so different from my list. I think the american one would look like this
1. Legend of Zelda 2. Super Mario Brothers 3 3. Super Mario Brothers 4. Metroid... There's too much I can't even choose myself. Anyway, I'm glad that River City Ransom made the list, it seems appropriately placed.
This is the awesome. I always wondered why they made cubicles. I mean, you could just arrange the desks the way they are and save money by not purchasing those cubicle walls.
There just have to be three rules. No loud clicky keyboards, no speakerphone voicemail (shouldn't do this anyway) and headphones for winamp/xmms.
Open workspaces are awesome, I hope lots of people who can't handle it get fired so I can get a job more easily when I graduate.
YES, Slashdot should definitely be perfectly XHTML compliant. This has the following benefits
1) looks better 2) allows people to easily make custom./ css 3) slashdot can have multiple css to choose from, especially for those of us blinded by games.slashdot.org. Also in Firebird users can switch between the different stylesheets with east 4) people can easily write XSLT stuffs to take slashdot and mix it up. 5) Maybe we can make an RSS that's a little bit better and more customizeable. Doesn't exactly have to do with it, but it's related somewhat.
with Component out cable and HDTV. You can play two player with vertical split instead of horizontal split screen. Makes it 1000 times better. And all the other cube games that support progressive scan r0x0r with the hdness. An HDTV is kinda expensive though, so unless you play games a lot or also use it for som DVD watching it may not justify the cost. But it is freakin' awesome.
Puzzle Pirates is the only MMO I play. All the other MMOs have leveling treadmills. Puzzle Pirates has puzzle games. MMO + Puzzles games + Pirates. It can't be beat. No leveling treadmill, no boredom, none of the pitfalls other mmos have. And it's all java webstart, so any os will work.
First find a building with a big flat side to it. Make sure it has no windows and it's late at night. Make a machine that will draw vectors by moving the laser really rapidly that takes some sort of video input. Insert Atari vectors based game like Asteroids or Star Wars. Or you could make a special version of pac-man that goes between the windows of the building if you can't find one without. Make your friends control the ghosts like the upcoming GameCube version and give everyon3 classic 2600 controllers. Sure, it'll be all red, but who cares? It'll be probably the biggest video game screen ever.
Mario Kart for the GCN is not amazing. But Mario Party 5 is. And Mario + Luigi Superstar Saga is absolutely fantastic, get that instead. Buy Mario Kart when the price gets cut to $20
The only reason is because of the artwork and graphics. Programming is easy and many programmers have lots of free time and don't mind working on open source stuffs. That's why software is the primary open source product.
Art and graphics and such take a lot of time, effort, work, etc. Nobody who has the ability to do that stuff well is going to do it for free and release the rights to it in a GPL style license. Especially if they design marketable new characters or make new amazing music. The talented folk who do that stuff well all have jobs doing it for a living. So they sure aren't going to want to do it in their spare time.
Look for open source game engines. You'll find a-plenty of high quality ones. But complete games need artists in addition to programmers. And these types aren't into the open source action. Old games work very well for open source because they are all pixely and you don't need to be a great artists to do them, just a decent one. A programmer who can wield the gimp well can make an old school game. But I'd like to see you make a modern fps at the Half-Life2/Doom3 level with just 3 programmers in a basement. Expensive artists are an absolute requirement.
It's obvious that most online forums are full of fanboy rants. The types who post those rants are the types with no friends, so their only social interaction is the chance that some other fanboy or some other normal person will agree/disagree with their extreme fanboy point of view on a forum and they might have a conversation (flame war).
People who have friends often buy games based on what their friends say for two reasons. Reason one is they are friends because they have similar taste and they buy and like the same games. Reason two is that friends are often poor and will communicate with each other so they don't both buy the same games and therefore maximize their game/$ ration.
Modern RPGs are not strictly games. I consider the vast majority of them to be interative movies. Some actually have different paths to go, like Chrono Trigger. Others are very linear. In the end all an RPG is is a story, and in order to see the story the game forces you to push buttons to continue. Like if you went to see the new LOTR movie imagine if they made you push a secret button sequence halfway through and if you got it wrong you couldn't see the end.
I see two possibilities for the future of RPGs. Of course the MMO. The problems with the MMO are vast, and it will need to be greatly re-designed. But it can work. I suggest having an event based plot. Put all the characters into roles in a vast world with a rich history. Then manually orchestrate events ranging from high up world destroying politics to local water shortages. Don't prompt players to do anything. News of the events will spread by word of mouth. Let the players on their own either abandon the droughted town, stay in it and suffer, dig a new well, go out to find water, etc. Have a world with world problems that characters solve.
The other direction I see is combining the RPG with other genres. For example, the fighting game or the RTS. Have the same in depth RPG plot, but replace all the game parts with a fighting game instead. Or an RTS instead. Or like Golden Sun which is mostly a puzzle game and the combat is incredibly easy.
I've stopped playing RPGs lately. It's just too tiresome and troublesome to go through all those menus and pick the correct thing in order to see the rest of the story. Make it less tedious and monotonous. Make combat rare and exciting. And make it so the story can continue, not just a game over screen but always go to an ending that fits and makes sense.
Just some info for everyone. ALL Japanese dating sims are porn. Except for 2.
Tokimeki Memorial and Sentimental Grafitt.
Tokimeki is actually the most popular one because it is more of a sim high school than a sim dating. Sentimental Grafitti is more like a choose your own adventure, but it is porn free.
ALL of the other ones are porn. If you know of one that isn't porn that isn't one of the two I named, tell me.
You are correct that that a decent carpenter would come up with something better for cheaper. This is just cartoon network making cool stuff and possibly getting a few bucks from like 2 or 3 rich people with nothing better to do. It's not supposed to be serious.
As for houses in the US, 40k isn't even close. A 3 bedroom house with a decent lawn costs at least 150k and that's really really low. It depends a lot on where the house is. A 2 bedroom house in New York City will cost you 500k while a 4 bedroom in the boonies can cost 200k. A house that costs 40k is either in a really crappy place, below an acceptable standard of living, or both.
I'm with you all the way man. I've never gotten debian to install right. The installer is just too crap. And if they aren't replacing it with a graphical one, then it isn't going to help much.
But yes, for some reason I am able to install gentoo just fine, and it has become my distro of choice. Why is that? Because of the documentation. The gentoo linux install guid has step by step very explicit instructions on every single thing I have to type in to make gentoo do what I want. The debian installer often ends when the system is in a state where you can boot, apt-get things and get to a full screen terminal without the cd. The documentation on gentoos site keeps going and tells me to install a kernel logger, a cron daemon, X, alsa, etc. And emerge is apts perfect equal if not it's better.
So yeah, that's all I gotta say. Either have step by step instructions that go into great detail, or make an installer super intuitive so that a 5 year old knows what to pick.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason people still don't get it is because this is just an article. People aren't heavily influenced by what they read in the newspaper. Heck, most people don't read the whole newspaper, they just read the parts that interest them.
What OSS needs is marketing. Take a project like Mozilla Firebird. I guarantee if you turn http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why into a tv commercial and air it during the superbowl that IE will be sitting in the #2 seat the day after. But we can't get marketing because it costs money and by giving away most of the software for $0 the revenue is also $0.
The other problem is that people resist change simply because they don't want to have to go through the effort of changing or learning something new. Those people suck and I consider them worthless. Constantly change for the better. If changing something in your life will improve it in a significant way then do it. If not, then what's the point? Living the same unchanging boring life every day? I mean, sure it's just software so maybe I'm going a little far here. But when I switched to Firebird I was able to get an extra 30 minutes of sleep because my daily web checking took less time. That's a significant life change there.
So yeah. we need marketing not journalism.
This is what happened to Tribes 2. Tribes 2 was the best game ever until they fucked it up. What happened was they had a forum built into the game itself, so most players participated in it. They used it the same way the counter-strike forums are used. "The AWM is cheap take it out of the game!" "Change this it sucks!" "Make it so people can't steal vehicles!"
The Tribes 2 devs made the mistake of doing everything the players wanted. The game turned to crap. After everybody stopped playing they finally restored the game to a decent classic version, and now you can play online with the small community in what was one of the best games ever.
Now look at Counter-Strike. It's the most popular multiplayer online game ever probably. They hardly ever do what players want. They only make changes in the interest of game design. The AWM is still there. The game is still hard. Heck, they make changes to piss players off. Like when they changed the p90 way back in the beta 7 days.
So, why does this happen? Because players are dumb. They don't know anything about game design. They only want you to change the game in such a way so that their current style of playing will immediately become the best style and they will win every time. Think about it. All those guys who say take the AWM out are guys who don't have the skill to deal with someone else sniping at them. That's part of the game and to be good you need those skills. The vast majority of the time players don't ask for game improvements. They just want the game to change to suit themselves rather than become better players. This usually turns the game into crap and all the real players leave. If you don't do what the players want and you just stick to good design all the good players stay, and the idiots stay too. They will always complain, but they will keep playing your game until the end of days. There are guys who have been complaining about things in CS since the very beginning and now they are playing on steam and complaining it is crap and the shield is cheap.
Tribes 2, Counter-Strike. Real world examples and evidence. Don't give in to the whims of players. The vast majority of players like things the way they are. Only the few idiot fanboy types are asking for changes. Don't listen to them. They may seem like the majority on the forums, because they are the majority on the forums. But they aren't the majority of your players.
If you really want to use *nix try gentoo. Seriously, I am not some zealot. I'm an average dual booting guy who just needs to have some sort of nix to do my cs homework with. The gentoo forums are the friendliest open source people ever, and they answer just about any questions within a day. Not only that, but gentoo has super awesome documentation. It's not the easiest, it just requires a great deal of time and patience as opposed to knowledge which debian requires. Just give it 1 shot and if you're not satisfied it's not like you lost money or anything.
um, yeah well in the USA, where I live, people think they are living in the freest country in the world. Just in case you didn't know, Norway is the freest country in the world. And their consumer technology is better than ours. Their cellphones especially. And they realize how stupid Americans like you are, because they know what our country is really like. Unlike you, who would probably be turned to a puddle of mush by their mighty viking hammers if you were spotted approaching a fjord. If you know what one is.
The game Sony is probably releasing over there are really old games. Games where the developer has already made back their development costs and profited. Games where the publisher has already made back their marketing cost and profited. The only costs of selling these old hits will be manufacturing and distribution. All revenue greater than that cost will be pure profit because the US, Japan and Europe have already paid for all of those other 1 time costs. Because of this they can afford to drop the prices like a rock.
While this advertising is kind of crappy and cheesy it represents a disturbing trend in video games. The trend for developers to concentrate more on theme than gameplay.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally against censorship and such. I'm not one of those that think violent video games are evil or some such, hell I play cs lots. But Acclaim (seemingly the worst offender) is trying to sell a game because the game is bloody. Give me an hour and I'll code some blood in opengl. I'll make a program where every time you click a huge pool of blood explodes and spills everywhere. Is it a fun game? no.
I've noticed that lately a lot of people have been buying games based on theme. Like all the people who buy a Final Fantasy game just because it says Final Fantasy on it. Or all the people who put down the GameCube just because it looks like its for kids. These are the shallow minded retards that probably buy games Acclaim makes. You know a video game is a good game when you can replace every sprite with a stick figure and replace every thing else with color coded squares and it's still fun to play. That's a damn good game. If a game is only fun because the pictures happen to be pictures of trademarked characters or guns or blood or whatever the game still isn't a good game.
Look at Smash Bros. Sure they used their entire Nintendo lineup of characters as the theme. But if you took it away and replaced them all with stick figures the game would still rock the house. Now take any Acclaim game, do the same. What no gameplay?
If you want to see some blood there are a thousand websites with videos of hideous injuries you can look at. These ads are just one more way stupid developers are cheapening the industry.
how do you think they make the games in the first place? Do you think they programmed F-Zero by putting a gamecube c compiler on a little gamecube disc and typed in the code with a purple controller? No. They have a GCN dev kit from Nintendo. The dev kit is essentially a computer. It just has plugs to interface with the gamecube, make discs (I think), and compile cube games. And of course the software libraries to code those games. Also I think it has an emulator that will play cube games if you put the disc in it. Anyway, you'll probably never get one, but there are pictures on the net everywhere.
What it all comes down to is the lack of innovation in pc game genres. Some genres of game do well for the pc. Usually things like rts, fps, simulation. Anything with a complex interface. Anything that absolutely requires a mouse and keyboard. Anything that requires networking. These are the games that are good on the pc. The rest of the games are good on the console. Platformers. Fighting games. Space Shooters. Some genres do well on both, puzzle games like Tetris for example.
The major pc game genres have had a serious lack of innovation as of late. The RTS and the FPS have both been stagnant. Look at the newest fps. Tell me what new major fundamental innovation in gameplay has changed since Half-Life? Why is Counter-Strike still #1? Because no new game has done anything new and amazing to beat it out gameplay wise. Before pc games will become popular again the genres which sell big on the pc must have major gameplay innovations.
Look at the console. Games like metroid prime, gta, etc. etc. All of these games represent huge fundamental advances in gameplay within the genre. People aren't going to buy the same game 10 different times just because you upped the graphics or changed the theme. Once you've played one stock space shooter you've played them all. Unless someone releases something like Ikaruga with it's color changing awesomeness that makes the genre fun again.
If you want people to buy your game you must innovate. There has to be a gameplay element that is new and awesome that the genre needs. I think there is much hope in Doom3 and Half-Life2 to breathe new life into the fps. Natural Selection has done it and it's popularity is soaring.
If you haven't realized it yet, there's an obvious answers. RPGS that have random encounters arne't video games. They are interactive movies. The difference is that some games let you choose your own adventure (Chrono Trigger). And some are dead linear.
It's like if you went to see a movie in the theatre and they said "ok, in order to see the next scene you have to push the correct buttons on this controller we're giving you." It's not a game, it's a trial. A test to determine if you are allowed to progress. And RPGs with random encounters test you every 5 seconds.
I mean I love the RPGs, but for the plot. I can't play most of them anymore because I just don't have time for the tedious parts which take up 90% of the game time. Golden sun is an exception because the tests are puzzles, so I think of it primarily as a fun puzzle game. You can't lose combat in Golden sun, and it takes two seconds. And you can use a simple magic to eliminate random encounters easily.
Take a look at games like Mario + Luigi Superstar Saga. It's super amazing. Why? Because it gives you the plot and the fun elements of the rpg, but eliminates the stupid combat parts. It replaces those with a platform game true to the old school mario flavor.
So, people play the RPG for the amazing amazing plot. The randome encounter/combat "game" they throw in there so it isn't just a movie is crap. Throw in something else instead and we can make great games worth playing. Try throwing in a turn based strategy, an fps, a real time strategy, a puzzle game, a simulation. Any real game will do just fine.
If you are offended, it's your fault, fuck you. For example, nothing you can say can possibly offend me. If you are offended by something, then there is something wrong with you, and that is the problem. Stick and stones. It's just freakin' words man. If you can' understand that when I call drives master and slave that I am in no way referring to actual slavery then you are fucked up and need some help.
Nowhere does it say you have the right not to be offended. But it does say I have the right to free speech. Free speech comes before everything else. So there's no way in hell I'm limiting my speech because you get offended. You and everyone like you who gets offended or tries to avoid offending people are part of the problem of society. Just get over it and deal, stop being a pussy.
And yes, if you noticed my language in this post is purposeful, if you were too slow to catch on you dumbass.
I've got a plastic thing that goes under my bed. All my computery extra stuff that doesn't go on my desk goes in there. When it's time to work with the hardwares I open 'er up.
That list is so different from my list. I think the american one would look like this
...
1. Legend of Zelda
2. Super Mario Brothers 3
3. Super Mario Brothers
4. Metroid
There's too much I can't even choose myself. Anyway, I'm glad that River City Ransom made the list, it seems appropriately placed.
This is the awesome. I always wondered why they made cubicles. I mean, you could just arrange the desks the way they are and save money by not purchasing those cubicle walls.
There just have to be three rules. No loud clicky keyboards, no speakerphone voicemail (shouldn't do this anyway) and headphones for winamp/xmms.
Open workspaces are awesome, I hope lots of people who can't handle it get fired so I can get a job more easily when I graduate.
YES, Slashdot should definitely be perfectly XHTML compliant. This has the following benefits
./ css
./ become compliant.
1) looks better
2) allows people to easily make custom
3) slashdot can have multiple css to choose from, especially for those of us blinded by games.slashdot.org. Also in Firebird users can switch between the different stylesheets with east
4) people can easily write XSLT stuffs to take slashdot and mix it up.
5) Maybe we can make an RSS that's a little bit better and more customizeable. Doesn't exactly have to do with it, but it's related somewhat.
Yes
with Component out cable and HDTV. You can play two player with vertical split instead of horizontal split screen. Makes it 1000 times better. And all the other cube games that support progressive scan r0x0r with the hdness. An HDTV is kinda expensive though, so unless you play games a lot or also use it for som DVD watching it may not justify the cost. But it is freakin' awesome.
Puzzle Pirates is the only MMO I play. All the other MMOs have leveling treadmills. Puzzle Pirates has puzzle games. MMO + Puzzles games + Pirates. It can't be beat. No leveling treadmill, no boredom, none of the pitfalls other mmos have. And it's all java webstart, so any os will work.
First find a building with a big flat side to it. Make sure it has no windows and it's late at night. Make a machine that will draw vectors by moving the laser really rapidly that takes some sort of video input. Insert Atari vectors based game like Asteroids or Star Wars. Or you could make a special version of pac-man that goes between the windows of the building if you can't find one without. Make your friends control the ghosts like the upcoming GameCube version and give everyon3 classic 2600 controllers. Sure, it'll be all red, but who cares? It'll be probably the biggest video game screen ever.
Mario Kart for the GCN is not amazing. But Mario Party 5 is. And Mario + Luigi Superstar Saga is absolutely fantastic, get that instead. Buy Mario Kart when the price gets cut to $20
The only reason is because of the artwork and graphics. Programming is easy and many programmers have lots of free time and don't mind working on open source stuffs. That's why software is the primary open source product.
Art and graphics and such take a lot of time, effort, work, etc. Nobody who has the ability to do that stuff well is going to do it for free and release the rights to it in a GPL style license. Especially if they design marketable new characters or make new amazing music. The talented folk who do that stuff well all have jobs doing it for a living. So they sure aren't going to want to do it in their spare time.
Look for open source game engines. You'll find a-plenty of high quality ones. But complete games need artists in addition to programmers. And these types aren't into the open source action. Old games work very well for open source because they are all pixely and you don't need to be a great artists to do them, just a decent one. A programmer who can wield the gimp well can make an old school game. But I'd like to see you make a modern fps at the Half-Life2/Doom3 level with just 3 programmers in a basement. Expensive artists are an absolute requirement.
It's obvious that most online forums are full of fanboy rants. The types who post those rants are the types with no friends, so their only social interaction is the chance that some other fanboy or some other normal person will agree/disagree with their extreme fanboy point of view on a forum and they might have a conversation (flame war).
People who have friends often buy games based on what their friends say for two reasons. Reason one is they are friends because they have similar taste and they buy and like the same games. Reason two is that friends are often poor and will communicate with each other so they don't both buy the same games and therefore maximize their game/$ ration.
Modern RPGs are not strictly games. I consider the vast majority of them to be interative movies. Some actually have different paths to go, like Chrono Trigger. Others are very linear. In the end all an RPG is is a story, and in order to see the story the game forces you to push buttons to continue. Like if you went to see the new LOTR movie imagine if they made you push a secret button sequence halfway through and if you got it wrong you couldn't see the end.
I see two possibilities for the future of RPGs. Of course the MMO. The problems with the MMO are vast, and it will need to be greatly re-designed. But it can work. I suggest having an event based plot. Put all the characters into roles in a vast world with a rich history. Then manually orchestrate events ranging from high up world destroying politics to local water shortages. Don't prompt players to do anything. News of the events will spread by word of mouth. Let the players on their own either abandon the droughted town, stay in it and suffer, dig a new well, go out to find water, etc. Have a world with world problems that characters solve.
The other direction I see is combining the RPG with other genres. For example, the fighting game or the RTS. Have the same in depth RPG plot, but replace all the game parts with a fighting game instead. Or an RTS instead. Or like Golden Sun which is mostly a puzzle game and the combat is incredibly easy.
I've stopped playing RPGs lately. It's just too tiresome and troublesome to go through all those menus and pick the correct thing in order to see the rest of the story. Make it less tedious and monotonous. Make combat rare and exciting. And make it so the story can continue, not just a game over screen but always go to an ending that fits and makes sense.
Just some info for everyone. ALL Japanese dating sims are porn. Except for 2.
Tokimeki Memorial and Sentimental Grafitt.
Tokimeki is actually the most popular one because it is more of a sim high school than a sim dating. Sentimental Grafitti is more like a choose your own adventure, but it is porn free.
ALL of the other ones are porn. If you know of one that isn't porn that isn't one of the two I named, tell me.
You are correct that that a decent carpenter would come up with something better for cheaper. This is just cartoon network making cool stuff and possibly getting a few bucks from like 2 or 3 rich people with nothing better to do. It's not supposed to be serious.
As for houses in the US, 40k isn't even close. A 3 bedroom house with a decent lawn costs at least 150k and that's really really low. It depends a lot on where the house is. A 2 bedroom house in New York City will cost you 500k while a 4 bedroom in the boonies can cost 200k. A house that costs 40k is either in a really crappy place, below an acceptable standard of living, or both.
I'm with you all the way man. I've never gotten debian to install right. The installer is just too crap. And if they aren't replacing it with a graphical one, then it isn't going to help much.
But yes, for some reason I am able to install gentoo just fine, and it has become my distro of choice. Why is that? Because of the documentation. The gentoo linux install guid has step by step very explicit instructions on every single thing I have to type in to make gentoo do what I want. The debian installer often ends when the system is in a state where you can boot, apt-get things and get to a full screen terminal without the cd. The documentation on gentoos site keeps going and tells me to install a kernel logger, a cron daemon, X, alsa, etc. And emerge is apts perfect equal if not it's better.
So yeah, that's all I gotta say. Either have step by step instructions that go into great detail, or make an installer super intuitive so that a 5 year old knows what to pick.
First set your smtp server on a different port.
Second find a machine with net access outside of your isp.
Third make an ssh tunnel from that machine to your machine.
That should work perfectly. But nothing is guaranteed.