On the face of it, it appears that 360 is cheaper than PS3 by a hefty margin. Until you factor in that the 360 can't play HD DVD media and the drive to do so costs $200. You add that price in and the 360 basically costs the same as the PS3.
Of course, you do have the option of passing on the HD-DVD addon for the 360 if you only want to play games. However, like with the PS2, I'm guessing Sony's banking that people will view the PS3 as not just a game machine but also as an introductory Bluray DVD player.
So while Kutaragi could use a degree in tact and spin, he does essentially have it right when he says you're getting value for your money.
Personally, I'll get a Wii and then wait a year or two for Bluray manufacturing to get cheap and the PS3 price to drop with it.
Outnumbering the opponent on servers means you have to wait forever to get into PVP. Otherwise you really don't care.
So the scenario should be more like:
Alliance on Server A is overpopulated. Alliance member on Server A gets tired of being unable to enter any battleground. Alliance members on Server A leave in droves for server B where Alliance isn't overpopulated.
Of course, the problem is finding a server where alliance isn't overpopulated, but the problem doesn't reinforce itself like you suggest.
Not to diminish what these guys have done, but this sounds like what Apple's Garage Band application does. Namely, record one track, loop it, then record a second/third/nth track on top.
The only difference being this uses the guitar hero controller to input notes.
I was a big MD fan in 1997 up until the iPod came out. Why'd the iPod make me drop MDs? 1) At the time, you had to record a Minidisc from a CD at 1 to 1 speed over an optical cable. No way to rip to a PC and transfer. You could rip an mp3 at 8 to 1 speed. 2) Because you had to record from a CD, playlist management was a pain.
Until the iPod, MD was still competitive because 1) Flash players relied on memory cards which were expensive. 2) HDD players ate batteries and had crappy runtimes. And they were heavy too.
The iPod was the first HDD based mp3 player that had a combination of acceptable battery life, form factor, and easy playlist management.
He makes a semi-decent point about saving the format by using it with PSP. Sadly, having a recordable format would run counter with Sony's fear of piracy so that idea is really a nonstarter.
Another aspect of combat in DDO is that players and monsters are solid. That is to say monsters can't walk through players and players can't walk through monsters. Players can walk through other players.
This raises the possibility of using choke points and positional tactics which the majority of other MMOs I've seen are lacking. Instead of relying on threat mechanics to keep a mob glued to your tank, you can instead wall off your casters (or try at least) to keep them safe. This strikes me as a much more intuitive approach than used by most other games.
All that said, at lower levels, people just run in and kill stuff too quickly to need to worry about these sort of tactics. But they do come into play occasionally as one advances in levels and it's nice to have the option.
Brain training consists of short exercises designed to keep your brain active. Among the more mundane is 20 quick math problems. Subtraction, multiplication, addition. You write the answer on the touch screen.
A challenging one is where it shows 20 or so words for 2 minutes. You have to memorize them and then write down as many as you can in 2 minutes.
Among the more interesting is one where it will show you a word for a color but color it differently. You have to say the color the word is in. The microphone on the DS picks it up and does speech recognition. For example, if the word is "blue" but it is printed in red, you need to say red.
Another good one is where it shows a field of numbers, some moving, spinning. It then asks you to count the number that match a certain criteria. How many of the numbers are spinning, how many are the number 7, or how many are red for examples.
One of the cooler aspects of this software is that it calculates a "mental age" based on how well you do for the tests. It tracks your progress over days. And it has a little mascot which is the disembodied head of the professor that was the main designer of the exercises. He'll give comments and suggestions based on how you've done.
The game's really designed to be used on a daily basis for maybe 10-15 minutes each day. In keeping with this, it'll also periodically ask you questions like what did you have for dinner. Then a week later, it'll ask you what you had a week ago and show you what you had written so you can test your long term recall.
Lastly, it has slots for 4 users. Among other things, it will show you how you compare against the other users on the cart.
I eventually stopped playing this regularly because of the language aspect (not being fluent in Japanese makes some of the exercises pointless). I fully believe if they adapted this game for the US (and released it for $20), it would sell every bit as well as it has in Japan.
Re:Wish there was internet battle mode
on
Review: Mario Kart DS
·
· Score: 5, Informative
He means battle mode which is one of the alternate forms of versus play. The only thing available from WFC is racing.
On local LAN, there is also battle mode and shine runners. In battle mode, you get 5 lives and getting hit with shells, banana peels and other objects takes away a life. In shine runners, you're competing to pick up shines (from Mario Sunshine). You can knock shines loose from other players with shells, etc. Every 20 seconds or so, whoever has the fewest shines gets dropped off until one person is left.
Unfortunately, neither of those modes are available online.
This doesn't appear to be anything more than amazon bundling the existing box sets. And here's a kicker. If you buy the box sets from amazon separately, it's only $2755. The Voyager box set is $810 with no discounts currently. So if you really wanted everything except Voyager, it woudl only run you $1945.
Trauma Center's difficulty strikes me as the iterative type. I hear Ninja Gaiden for XBox is similar. As you fail, you also slowly start to speed up and make your moves more accurate. You gain a muscle and mental memory of the steps leading up to your defeat and so on the next try, you get a little further.
Some of the missions have small tricks also so you have to think a little. It's not always just about moving faster, but doing things in a certain order. All the same, it's still mostly about your own hand-eye coordination skill.
I personally found it refreshing as games seem too scared to do things this way anymore. I consider the difficulty of Trauma Center one of the best aspects of its design.
Nanostray got 2 bars. Personally, I'd have given Zookeeper at most 3 bars, but YMMV.
I think Advance Wars was slightly overrated also, but I wasn't clear if the writer was considering only the multiplayer aspect but also letting bias for the single player creep in.
For the most part though, these ratings are about what I'd give.
8-player Bomberman rules. 2-player Bomberman, the board is a little too big. Meteos plays great 2 to 4 players. Puyo Pop is great from 2 to 4. Haven't tried 8, but that feels like it'd be too hectic. Only problem there is finding people who know how to play it.
Why limit yourself ot PC games especially when you say they're not really gaming machines?
Nintendo DS has quite a few party type games and the best part is you only need to buy one copy (though everyone needs to get their own console). Band Brothers (import), Puyo Pop, Bomberman support up to 8 players.
PSP has the same technology available, but I'm not sure how many games currently support it.
My guess is that in 3 years, computers aren't going to be marginally faster. If they were, the industry would die. Apple and everyone else has a projection for where performance will be in 3 years. Apple's decided that IBM is not going to or doesn't want to keep pace. Frankly, the best time for Apple to do this is now when it's rich from iPod sales. Take your lumps in 3 years, recover and thrive in 5. Better than hanging onto your pride now and dying a slow death in 5 years.
Well, to be clear, the patent doesn't propose a method resembling that used in the Matrix. As others have noted, this uses ultra sound and not a long probe inserted directly into your brain. So if you want to call prior art, you'll need something other than the Matrix movies.
I mean, why does slashdot require me to specify a password to login? Shouldn't my name be good enough? After all, who could possibly want to impersonate me?
And what's the big deal about fixing Linux security holes? Those holes are only going to be a problem if people try to take advantage and do things no sane normal person would do. My precious time is being unfairly wasted keeping up with the patches just because some "hacker" might try to overflow a buffer.
So assuming the crossbar latch makes its way into general purpose CPU in 10-20 years, what're the odds we'll still be running x86-64(128(256?)?) on it?
Will this likely just end up as a 1 to 1 replacement for transistor designs (just denser) or would it potentially allow for different/"better" instruction sets? Hey, maybe they can make a chip fast enough that they could emulate x86 for all the legacy stuff.
Or will this just lead the way to miniturization so I can get all the current processing power of my computer into something the size of an iPod?
I'm fairly certain it's a hardware difference. As far as I'm aware, standard touchpads use a voltage differential and so are unable to tell if there are multiple fingers on the surface. I believe they appear to the pad as the midpoint between the contacts.
This actually makes me wonder if they are licensing http://www.fingerworks.com technology which was specifically designed to register multiple contact points.
As an alternative, what about 3d holographic recording? What's possible with the current state of the art here? Maybe borrowing something like the bullet-time setup from Matrix (ie, 360 green/blue screen with many cameras to capture all the angles). Then until we get good laser holography or what not, maybe a CAVE setup to project the captured data?
The DS and PSP both support wireless link play. I was concerned that using wifi on these systems would be banned on planes but that's not a problem anymore.
Um, no. Their mother was recovering from tuberculosis (like Miyazaki's mother). They went to the country to give her a better environment to recuperate in. As for the time period, it's described as late 50s, not late 40s. Check here if you like.
For all the apples to oranges posts previously, I have to ask; why the hell would you need any sort of 3d acceleration in a home theater box? Aren't those sort of things for PVRs and DVD playing? From that perspective, does NVidia even make anything like the All-In-Wonders that supports video input?
Everything to its purpose and I don't see having a powerful 3d card as suiting the purpose of an HTPC. Unless the new definition of HTPC includes playing HL2.
If you want case-insensitivity in your compiler, why don't you just preprocess your file to change all keywords (ie, anything that isn't a string) to lower case? Surely this can't be that hard. I'd imagine there's probably a way to integrate it into gcc even as some custom preprocessor.
Or alternately, how about just using lower case when you write your sourcefile? If you don't want case-sensitivity because it's harder, why would you bother using capitals in the first place? Just stop using the shift key.
Do that for a while and see if you get caught with a SetsLower/SetSlower case. If you don't, all good. If you do, now you know why people bother.
Slashdot Mirror
On the face of it, it appears that 360 is cheaper than PS3 by a hefty margin. Until you factor in that the 360 can't play HD DVD media and the drive to do so costs $200. You add that price in and the 360 basically costs the same as the PS3.
Of course, you do have the option of passing on the HD-DVD addon for the 360 if you only want to play games. However, like with the PS2, I'm guessing Sony's banking that people will view the PS3 as not just a game machine but also as an introductory Bluray DVD player.
So while Kutaragi could use a degree in tact and spin, he does essentially have it right when he says you're getting value for your money.
Personally, I'll get a Wii and then wait a year or two for Bluray manufacturing to get cheap and the PS3 price to drop with it.
This makes no sense.
Outnumbering the opponent on servers means you have to wait forever to get into PVP. Otherwise you really don't care.
So the scenario should be more like:
Alliance on Server A is overpopulated. Alliance member on Server A gets tired of being unable to enter any battleground. Alliance members on Server A leave in droves for server B where Alliance isn't overpopulated.
Of course, the problem is finding a server where alliance isn't overpopulated, but the problem doesn't reinforce itself like you suggest.
Not to diminish what these guys have done, but this sounds like what Apple's Garage Band application does. Namely, record one track, loop it, then record a second/third/nth track on top.
The only difference being this uses the guitar hero controller to input notes.
I was a big MD fan in 1997 up until the iPod came out. Why'd the iPod make me drop MDs?
1) At the time, you had to record a Minidisc from a CD at 1 to 1 speed over an optical cable. No way to rip to a PC and transfer. You could rip an mp3 at 8 to 1 speed.
2) Because you had to record from a CD, playlist management was a pain.
Until the iPod, MD was still competitive because
1) Flash players relied on memory cards which were expensive.
2) HDD players ate batteries and had crappy runtimes. And they were heavy too.
The iPod was the first HDD based mp3 player that had a combination of acceptable battery life, form factor, and easy playlist management.
He makes a semi-decent point about saving the format by using it with PSP. Sadly, having a recordable format would run counter with Sony's fear of piracy so that idea is really a nonstarter.
It's sarcasm. It means, "I care so little, but if I made an effort, I could care even less."
BTW, I think there's a brodcaster somewhere using "near-miss" for you to yell at.
Another aspect of combat in DDO is that players and monsters are solid. That is to say monsters can't walk through players and players can't walk through monsters. Players can walk through other players.
This raises the possibility of using choke points and positional tactics which the majority of other MMOs I've seen are lacking. Instead of relying on threat mechanics to keep a mob glued to your tank, you can instead wall off your casters (or try at least) to keep them safe. This strikes me as a much more intuitive approach than used by most other games.
All that said, at lower levels, people just run in and kill stuff too quickly to need to worry about these sort of tactics. But they do come into play occasionally as one advances in levels and it's nice to have the option.
Mmm. Global launch. Don't forget that 600K units in Japan, 399K units in US and 1000 units in London would still constitute a worldwide launch.
Brain training consists of short exercises designed to keep your brain active.
Among the more mundane is 20 quick math problems. Subtraction, multiplication, addition. You write the answer on the touch screen.
A challenging one is where it shows 20 or so words for 2 minutes. You have to memorize them and then write down as many as you can in 2 minutes.
Among the more interesting is one where it will show you a word for a color but color it differently. You have to say the color the word is in. The microphone on the DS picks it up and does speech recognition. For example, if the word is "blue" but it is printed in red, you need to say red.
Another good one is where it shows a field of numbers, some moving, spinning. It then asks you to count the number that match a certain criteria. How many of the numbers are spinning, how many are the number 7, or how many are red for examples.
One of the cooler aspects of this software is that it calculates a "mental age" based on how well you do for the tests. It tracks your progress over days. And it has a little mascot which is the disembodied head of the professor that was the main designer of the exercises. He'll give comments and suggestions based on how you've done.
The game's really designed to be used on a daily basis for maybe 10-15 minutes each day. In keeping with this, it'll also periodically ask you questions like what did you have for dinner. Then a week later, it'll ask you what you had a week ago and show you what you had written so you can test your long term recall.
Lastly, it has slots for 4 users. Among other things, it will show you how you compare against the other users on the cart.
I eventually stopped playing this regularly because of the language aspect (not being fluent in Japanese makes some of the exercises pointless). I fully believe if they adapted this game for the US (and released it for $20), it would sell every bit as well as it has in Japan.
He means battle mode which is one of the alternate forms of versus play. The only thing available from WFC is racing.
On local LAN, there is also battle mode and shine runners. In battle mode, you get 5 lives and getting hit with shells, banana peels and other objects takes away a life. In shine runners, you're competing to pick up shines (from Mario Sunshine). You can knock shines loose from other players with shells, etc. Every 20 seconds or so, whoever has the fewest shines gets dropped off until one person is left.
Unfortunately, neither of those modes are available online.
This doesn't appear to be anything more than amazon bundling the existing box sets. And here's a kicker. If you buy the box sets from amazon separately, it's only $2755. The Voyager box set is $810 with no discounts currently. So if you really wanted everything except Voyager, it woudl only run you $1945.
Trauma Center's difficulty strikes me as the iterative type. I hear Ninja Gaiden for XBox is similar. As you fail, you also slowly start to speed up and make your moves more accurate. You gain a muscle and mental memory of the steps leading up to your defeat and so on the next try, you get a little further.
Some of the missions have small tricks also so you have to think a little. It's not always just about moving faster, but doing things in a certain order. All the same, it's still mostly about your own hand-eye coordination skill.
I personally found it refreshing as games seem too scared to do things this way anymore. I consider the difficulty of Trauma Center one of the best aspects of its design.
Nanostray got 2 bars. Personally, I'd have given Zookeeper at most 3 bars, but YMMV.
I think Advance Wars was slightly overrated also, but I wasn't clear if the writer was considering only the multiplayer aspect but also letting bias for the single player creep in.
For the most part though, these ratings are about what I'd give.
8-player Bomberman rules. 2-player Bomberman, the board is a little too big.
Meteos plays great 2 to 4 players.
Puyo Pop is great from 2 to 4. Haven't tried 8, but that feels like it'd be too hectic. Only problem there is finding people who know how to play it.
Why limit yourself ot PC games especially when you say they're not really gaming machines?
Nintendo DS has quite a few party type games and the best part is you only need to buy one copy (though everyone needs to get their own console).
Band Brothers (import), Puyo Pop, Bomberman support up to 8 players.
PSP has the same technology available, but I'm not sure how many games currently support it.
My guess is that in 3 years, computers aren't going to be marginally faster. If they were, the industry would die. Apple and everyone else has a projection for where performance will be in 3 years. Apple's decided that IBM is not going to or doesn't want to keep pace. Frankly, the best time for Apple to do this is now when it's rich from iPod sales. Take your lumps in 3 years, recover and thrive in 5. Better than hanging onto your pride now and dying a slow death in 5 years.
What about Bleem for Dreamcast? That emulated PS1 games in software.
Well, to be clear, the patent doesn't propose a method resembling that used in the Matrix. As others have noted, this uses ultra sound and not a long probe inserted directly into your brain. So if you want to call prior art, you'll need something other than the Matrix movies.
I mean, why does slashdot require me to specify a password to login? Shouldn't my name be good enough? After all, who could possibly want to impersonate me?
And what's the big deal about fixing Linux security holes? Those holes are only going to be a problem if people try to take advantage and do things no sane normal person would do. My precious time is being unfairly wasted keeping up with the patches just because some "hacker" might try to overflow a buffer.
Meh. I don't do sarcasm well.
Hey, it worked for the Klingons.
So assuming the crossbar latch makes its way into general purpose CPU in 10-20 years, what're the odds we'll still be running x86-64(128(256?)?) on it?
Will this likely just end up as a 1 to 1 replacement for transistor designs (just denser) or would it potentially allow for different/"better" instruction sets? Hey, maybe they can make a chip fast enough that they could emulate x86 for all the legacy stuff.
Or will this just lead the way to miniturization so I can get all the current processing power of my computer into something the size of an iPod?
I'm fairly certain it's a hardware difference. As far as I'm aware, standard touchpads use a voltage differential and so are unable to tell if there are multiple fingers on the surface. I believe they appear to the pad as the midpoint between the contacts.
This actually makes me wonder if they are licensing http://www.fingerworks.com technology which was specifically designed to register multiple contact points.
As an alternative, what about 3d holographic recording? What's possible with the current state of the art here? Maybe borrowing something like the bullet-time setup from Matrix (ie, 360 green/blue screen with many cameras to capture all the angles). Then until we get good laser holography or what not, maybe a CAVE setup to project the captured data?
The DS and PSP both support wireless link play. I was concerned that using wifi on these systems would be banned on planes but that's not a problem anymore.
Um, no. Their mother was recovering from tuberculosis (like Miyazaki's mother). They went to the country to give her a better environment to recuperate in. As for the time period, it's described as late 50s, not late 40s. Check here if you like.
For all the apples to oranges posts previously, I have to ask; why the hell would you need any sort of 3d acceleration in a home theater box? Aren't those sort of things for PVRs and DVD playing? From that perspective, does NVidia even make anything like the All-In-Wonders that supports video input?
Everything to its purpose and I don't see having a powerful 3d card as suiting the purpose of an HTPC. Unless the new definition of HTPC includes playing HL2.
If you want case-insensitivity in your compiler, why don't you just preprocess your file to change all keywords (ie, anything that isn't a string) to lower case? Surely this can't be that hard. I'd imagine there's probably a way to integrate it into gcc even as some custom preprocessor.
Or alternately, how about just using lower case when you write your sourcefile? If you don't want case-sensitivity because it's harder, why would you bother using capitals in the first place? Just stop using the shift key.
Do that for a while and see if you get caught with a SetsLower/SetSlower case. If you don't, all good. If you do, now you know why people bother.