If the ESRB (game ratings) has the same values as the MPAA (movie ratings), then it's going to be twisted. For example, Star Wars II has dismemberment, decapitation, hundreds of deaths and mass destruction, and only got a PG. However, a movie with no objectionable content whatsoever except for saying the word "fuck" twice will get an R. For that reason, Amelie got the equivalent of a PG or PG-13 in most countries, but an R in USA.
Truth is, kids don't learn profanity from TV or movies, they learn it at school. And it's simply impossible for a movie with casual nudity to be aimed at kids.
At least there are movies that make the MPAA look stupid. Too bad video games aren't there yet.
These things have enormous potential, but one crash in real world use could set back their adoption by 20 years. Remember Three Mile Island; no matter how safe nuclear power becomes, as it has in Europe, Americans will fear it until the oil and coal run out.
I wonder how much extra circuitry this chip has in order to be backwards compatible. I rember reading that the Geforce 3 had to have some legacy circuitry that wasn't used in Direct Draw 8 games in order to run Direct Draw 7 games. Now that we're into DD8.1 and DD9.0, how much more legacy circuitry is in there?
I hope that in a few years when WB sells a boxed set of all the Matrix movies, they include The Animatrix along with it. Animatrix looks to be the most unique title in the series, and probably the most eclectic mix of cartoons ever made.
This reminds me of the dotcom boom when even the worst business plan could get venture capital. Similarly, this story, no matter how idiotic, is getting attention. It made me feel nostalgic at first, except that the dotcom boom was pro-tech and this one is anti-tech and paranoid to boot.
...then before electronic sound systems were invented, everyone was deaf. Therefore Beethoven wasn't the only deaf composer, the history books just say he is to make him look good!
...then everybody only heard mono before stereo was invented.
...then there was no math before the Babbage machine. Thus, Pythagoras, Archimedes and Newton are frauds.
...then video game players couldn't hear human voices before the mid 1990s because games didn't have much speech before CD-ROM.
...there is no such thing as depth perception because TV is still 2D. Thus no one is qualified to drive a car, or at least the people who watch TV aren't. Nor are Slashdot readers, I'm afraid.
Calvin and Hobbes has evidence that the same thing happened to color vision:
Calvin: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?
Dad: They sure did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It's just the world was black and white then.
Calvin: Really?
Dad: Yap. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while there, too.
Calvin: That's really weird.
Dad: Well, truth is stranger than fiction.
Calvin: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted it that way?
Dad: Not necessarily, a lot of great artists were insane.
Calvin: But... but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn't their paints have been shades of gray back then?
Dad: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s.
Calvin: So why didn't old black and white photos turn color too?
Dad: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
[Calvin leaves, meets Hobbes]
Calvin: The world is a complicated place, Hobbes.
Hobbes: Whenever it seems that way, I like to nap in a tree and wait for dinner.
Roger Ebert has noted that Wingnut's version of LotR downplays the hobbits too much in favor of Aragorn, Gandalf and the big battles. Fortunately, in the book of Return of the King, the chapter Scouring of the Shire lets the hobbits be openly heroic for once, kicking Saruman out of the shire. But it's been rumored that in this version of TT, Saruman will get killed, eliminating that chance. What happens?
I'm surprised this article doesn't mention Tengen's Tetris.
This game represents the legal battles Nintendo fought with Atari, and it's better than Nintendo's version. "Game Over" by David Scheff explains it in depth, but basically, Atari thought they got the rights to make Tetris for the NES, but Nintendo actually got it, so although Atari's version (published under the Tengen label) was superior (various two player modes, better difficulty curve), Nintendo's version was legal. Before the court decision, Atari managed to sell about 100,000 copies. Afterwards, they had to recall the other several hundred thousand and destroy them.
About the same time, Nintendo and Atari were also fighting over the legality of the NES's "lockout chip", which let Nintendo create artificial regions, fee and censor 3rd parties. Atari stole Nintendo's "10NES" (lockout chip) patent from the patent office and made their own unlicensed NES games that circumvented it. Nintendo sued and I believe won, not because Atari was making unlicensed games but because they stole a patent to do it. Other companies, such as Camerica and Color Dreams made games with reverse engineered lockout disablers.
When I buy a game for my kid's Gamecube, I don't have to worry to much about it. I don't need to worry about GTA-3 showing up in Nintendo land. I haven't yet (NOTE: I said YET) seen a game with obvious gore. (No, I don't have Perfect Dark, or games like that, so I don't know what the gore factor is there).
All Gamecube games use the MPAA-equivalent ESRB rating system, so you can trust them. For example, a game with mass murder is OK for teens as long as it has no blood and guts, but one nipple shot and only adults can handle it.
Through the tunnel, There was a town of wonder. It was an inconceivable place, Where inconceivable things happened.
A world existed right next to the humans' world, A world humans could never see.
Local gods and various lesser deities, Goblins and monsters. It was a hot springs town, Where old gods came to heal their illness and wounds.
10 year-old Chihiro wanders into this world, Where humans shouldn't enter.
Chihiro can only survive in this world if she accepts two conditions: To work for Yu-baaba, an avaricious witch Who rules the huge bath house at the center of the town. And to be deprived of her name and become a non-human.
Chihiro lost her name, and began working under her new name, Sen.
In the town of surprise and wonder, Chihiro comes to know A huge sense of helplessness... and a small amount of hope.
However, in this difficult world, she discovers many things, And Chihiro becomes more lively than she ever was.
Kamajii, the boiler keeper with his rich life experience. Rin, who teaches Chihiro the work at the bath house. Susuwatari, who carry coal. Bou, the son of Yu-baaba. The god of the river, a refugee from the human's world, who is covered with trash and sludge. Kaonashi, the masked man. Zeniiba, the twin sister of Yu-baaba.
Unimaginable things keep happening.
Chihiro's sleeping "power to live" Has gradually begun to awaken.
And Chihiro meets Haku, a handsome but mysterious boy.
The encounter of a boy and a girl, tied together by a promise. With awakening memories, They understand and help each other.
Can Chihiro take her name back, And return to the humans' world....?
Most of the tests seem to be done with speakers? How about a test with headphones, maybe high-end Sennheisers? Can SACD or DVD-A produce realistic outside-the-head sound with headphones?
Assuming that a RAM drive uses memory that is slower and less expensive than high end PC3200, but still much faster than a magnetic disk, perhaps main memory could start shrinking and accelerating, acting more cache-like.
Compared to Game Boy Advance, N-Gage's screen is too small and it has too many buttons. It's true that the controllers for PS2, Xbox and Gamecube have nearly this many buttons, but most games use only half of them. A better design for a mobile game/video phone or would be a few buttons along the side and a touchscreen covering most of the front surface that would disable during calls so you could hold it against your face.
Politically correctness is about popularity, not ethics. Nowadays the popular opinion is that hispanics and blacks are cool but arabs are target practice. It's wrong but it's popular.
My problem with S.T. Enterprise is that, more than any Trek since TOS, its Captain expects things to go his way and it usually portrays foreign cultures as inferior. The societies that do have higher tech are shown as either evil or condescending; Archer calls genetic engineering one's own race a deal with the devil and he believes that humans are entitled to all Vulcan technology. And almost no time is spent showing the ways that their cultures are superior to human ways. The only really redeeming moments were when he did an elaborate apology dance to get some equipment, and when he refused to help either side on the Desert Planet.
Ultimately, Enterprise reminds me of USA today: ignorantly pushing itself on the world and expecting to get better treatment than anyone else. I suppose that's what now gets high ratings in terrorized USA, but it sure doesn't live up to the best of sci-fi, or even the best of Trek. The Q and the Borg are races that humans should look up to!
If Nintendo is to be believed, Tetris is hard for computers and Dr. Mario is hard for humans.
They published a SNES game with both Tetris and Dr. Mario on one cartrige. I'm assuming both were programmed by the same team, since it let both games run simultaneously.
In either game you could play against the AI. You could choose the AI player's smarts, piece drop speed, and starting clutter. When I played against the smartest AI in Tetris, and made all else equal for it and me, I could just beat it, especially when starting with a clear field where I guess the player must be most "creative". But in Dr. Mario the AI was nearly perfect! As fast as possible and the best possible moves! Even on top speed and max clutter the AI almost never caved in! And to me, Dr. Mario is a more complicated game than Tetris.
Slashdot Mirror
If the ESRB (game ratings) has the same values as the MPAA (movie ratings), then it's going to be twisted. For example, Star Wars II has dismemberment, decapitation, hundreds of deaths and mass destruction, and only got a PG. However, a movie with no objectionable content whatsoever except for saying the word "fuck" twice will get an R. For that reason, Amelie got the equivalent of a PG or PG-13 in most countries, but an R in USA.
Truth is, kids don't learn profanity from TV or movies, they learn it at school. And it's simply impossible for a movie with casual nudity to be aimed at kids.
At least there are movies that make the MPAA look stupid. Too bad video games aren't there yet.
These things have enormous potential, but one crash in real world use could set back their adoption by 20 years. Remember Three Mile Island; no matter how safe nuclear power becomes, as it has in Europe, Americans will fear it until the oil and coal run out.
I wonder how much extra circuitry this chip has in order to be backwards compatible. I rember reading that the Geforce 3 had to have some legacy circuitry that wasn't used in Direct Draw 8 games in order to run Direct Draw 7 games. Now that we're into DD8.1 and DD9.0, how much more legacy circuitry is in there?
Hey John, we need your spaceflight program right about now! But take all the time you need to make sure it's safe.
I hope that in a few years when WB sells a boxed set of all the Matrix movies, they include The Animatrix along with it. Animatrix looks to be the most unique title in the series, and probably the most eclectic mix of cartoons ever made.
This reminds me of the dotcom boom when even the worst business plan could get venture capital. Similarly, this story, no matter how idiotic, is getting attention. It made me feel nostalgic at first, except that the dotcom boom was pro-tech and this one is anti-tech and paranoid to boot.
...then before electronic sound systems were invented, everyone was deaf. Therefore Beethoven wasn't the only deaf composer, the history books just say he is to make him look good!
...then everybody only heard mono before stereo was invented.
...then there was no math before the Babbage machine. Thus, Pythagoras, Archimedes and Newton are frauds.
...then video game players couldn't hear human voices before the mid 1990s because games didn't have much speech before CD-ROM.
...there is no such thing as depth perception because TV is still 2D. Thus no one is qualified to drive a car, or at least the people who watch TV aren't. Nor are Slashdot readers, I'm afraid.
Calvin and Hobbes has evidence that the same thing happened to color vision:
Calvin: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?
Dad: They sure did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It's just the world was black and white then.
Calvin: Really?
Dad: Yap. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while there, too.
Calvin: That's really weird.
Dad: Well, truth is stranger than fiction.
Calvin: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted it that way?
Dad: Not necessarily, a lot of great artists were insane.
Calvin: But... but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn't their paints have been shades of gray back then?
Dad: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s.
Calvin: So why didn't old black and white photos turn color too?
Dad: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
[Calvin leaves, meets Hobbes]
Calvin: The world is a complicated place, Hobbes.
Hobbes: Whenever it seems that way, I like to nap in a tree and wait for dinner.
Roger Ebert has noted that Wingnut's version of LotR downplays the hobbits too much in favor of Aragorn, Gandalf and the big battles. Fortunately, in the book of Return of the King, the chapter Scouring of the Shire lets the hobbits be openly heroic for once, kicking Saruman out of the shire. But it's been rumored that in this version of TT, Saruman will get killed, eliminating that chance. What happens?
I'm surprised this article doesn't mention Tengen's Tetris.
This game represents the legal battles Nintendo fought with Atari, and it's better than Nintendo's version. "Game Over" by David Scheff explains it in depth, but basically, Atari thought they got the rights to make Tetris for the NES, but Nintendo actually got it, so although Atari's version (published under the Tengen label) was superior (various two player modes, better difficulty curve), Nintendo's version was legal. Before the court decision, Atari managed to sell about 100,000 copies. Afterwards, they had to recall the other several hundred thousand and destroy them.
About the same time, Nintendo and Atari were also fighting over the legality of the NES's "lockout chip", which let Nintendo create artificial regions, fee and censor 3rd parties. Atari stole Nintendo's "10NES" (lockout chip) patent from the patent office and made their own unlicensed NES games that circumvented it. Nintendo sued and I believe won, not because Atari was making unlicensed games but because they stole a patent to do it. Other companies, such as Camerica and Color Dreams made games with reverse engineered lockout disablers.
When I buy a game for my kid's Gamecube, I don't have to worry to much about it. I don't need to worry about GTA-3 showing up in Nintendo land. I haven't yet (NOTE: I said YET) seen a game with obvious gore. (No, I don't have Perfect Dark, or games like that, so I don't know what the gore factor is there).
All Gamecube games use the MPAA-equivalent ESRB rating system, so you can trust them. For example, a game with mass murder is OK for teens as long as it has no blood and guts, but one nipple shot and only adults can handle it.
The Game Industry does a far better job of ensuring customer satisfaction than the Movie/Music industry does. -Game reviews are plentiful.
So are movie reviews, which also happen to be in newspapers.
-Demo/rental versions are easy to acquire to try out.
So are movie rentals. And first run movies only cost $5 to $7.
-You can trade/sell a game to try out other ones. There's more entertainment for your buck.
Ebay sells used movies and games. Also, newly run movies cost $15 to $25 while first run games cost $30 to $50.
-You have the time to sit down and enjoy the game at your leisure. (as opposed to being at a theater by a certain time...)
Online gaming has comparable time constraints, especially for team games. And liesurely home viewing of movies is very common.
-Mods, mods, mods...
Phantom Edit, Extended Editions, Renderman Licensing...
-A bad game isn't as bad as a bad movie. (Your mileage may vary...)
Sure does. $50 wasted is much worse than $25 wasted.
But I agree that video games have more room to grow, and perhaps more potential overall.
After all, Sauron lives in the White House and Saruman lives in London.
I wish Osama bin Laden didn't try to cash in on the Tolkien fandom.
Some guy named Tolkien spoiled the whole movie about 50 years ago, and I think most people here have already seen it.
"18,446,744,073,709,551,616 is certainly enough for at least a hundred years :)"
Microsoft is putting that much money into making sure the next version of Windows only lets it last for 100 weeks.
That's sim-1.
Then Nausicaa.net should get you up to speed.
Summary Poem:
Through the tunnel,
There was a town of wonder.
It was an inconceivable place,
Where inconceivable things happened.
A world existed right next to the humans' world,
A world humans could never see.
Local gods and various lesser deities,
Goblins and monsters.
It was a hot springs town,
Where old gods came to heal their illness and wounds.
10 year-old Chihiro wanders into this world,
Where humans shouldn't enter.
Chihiro can only survive in this world if she accepts two conditions:
To work for Yu-baaba, an avaricious witch
Who rules the huge bath house at the center of the town.
And to be deprived of her name and become a non-human.
Chihiro lost her name, and began working under her new name, Sen.
In the town of surprise and wonder, Chihiro comes to know
A huge sense of helplessness... and a small amount of hope.
However, in this difficult world, she discovers many things,
And Chihiro becomes more lively than she ever was.
Kamajii, the boiler keeper with his rich life experience.
Rin, who teaches Chihiro the work at the bath house.
Susuwatari, who carry coal.
Bou, the son of Yu-baaba.
The god of the river, a refugee from the human's world, who is covered with trash and sludge.
Kaonashi, the masked man.
Zeniiba, the twin sister of Yu-baaba.
Unimaginable things keep happening.
Chihiro's sleeping "power to live"
Has gradually begun to awaken.
And Chihiro meets Haku, a handsome but mysterious boy.
The encounter of a boy and a girl, tied together by a promise.
With awakening memories,
They understand and help each other.
Can Chihiro take her name back,
And return to the humans' world....?
Is it just a coincidence that the biggest set of virtual humans in movie history is studied by a guy called Sims?
Vote with your dollars!
Most of the tests seem to be done with speakers? How about a test with headphones, maybe high-end Sennheisers? Can SACD or DVD-A produce realistic outside-the-head sound with headphones?
Assuming that a RAM drive uses memory that is slower and less expensive than high end PC3200, but still much faster than a magnetic disk, perhaps main memory could start shrinking and accelerating, acting more cache-like.
Compared to Game Boy Advance, N-Gage's screen is too small and it has too many buttons. It's true that the controllers for PS2, Xbox and Gamecube have nearly this many buttons, but most games use only half of them. A better design for a mobile game/video phone or would be a few buttons along the side and a touchscreen covering most of the front surface that would disable during calls so you could hold it against your face.
Politically correctness is about popularity, not ethics. Nowadays the popular opinion is that hispanics and blacks are cool but arabs are target practice. It's wrong but it's popular.
My problem with S.T. Enterprise is that, more than any Trek since TOS, its Captain expects things to go his way and it usually portrays foreign cultures as inferior. The societies that do have higher tech are shown as either evil or condescending; Archer calls genetic engineering one's own race a deal with the devil and he believes that humans are entitled to all Vulcan technology. And almost no time is spent showing the ways that their cultures are superior to human ways. The only really redeeming moments were when he did an elaborate apology dance to get some equipment, and when he refused to help either side on the Desert Planet.
Ultimately, Enterprise reminds me of USA today: ignorantly pushing itself on the world and expecting to get better treatment than anyone else. I suppose that's what now gets high ratings in terrorized USA, but it sure doesn't live up to the best of sci-fi, or even the best of Trek. The Q and the Borg are races that humans should look up to!
If Nintendo is to be believed, Tetris is hard for computers and Dr. Mario is hard for humans.
They published a SNES game with both Tetris and Dr. Mario on one cartrige. I'm assuming both were programmed by the same team, since it let both games run simultaneously.
In either game you could play against the AI. You could choose the AI player's smarts, piece drop speed, and starting clutter. When I played against the smartest AI in Tetris, and made all else equal for it and me, I could just beat it, especially when starting with a clear field where I guess the player must be most "creative". But in Dr. Mario the AI was nearly perfect! As fast as possible and the best possible moves! Even on top speed and max clutter the AI almost never caved in! And to me, Dr. Mario is a more complicated game than Tetris.
How could this be?