It took years for the GameCube to get FF:CC. The fact that it's got the sequel to FF:CC, and Dragon Quest Swords from Square is a serious improvement.
"Sengoku Action Elebits"
It's Sengoku Action, and Elebits. Sengoku Action is a Dynasty Warriors-type game (you know, the one that's spawned a million sequels on PS2). Elebits is a bizarre new game by Konami that looks fantastic.
As far as I can tell, your "reduced list" is basically "which games on here are from franchises I've seen before?" I don't put my faith in franchises. I put my faith in the actual games, and some of them look like they've had an insane amount of thought and innovation put into them. "Sadness" comes to mind, although I have my doubts it will ever see the light of day, which is unfortunate.
Read the eye-witness account I linked to earlier. It's actually hilarious, because it's in typical 1950s style, where the guy clearly doesn't understand how serious the situation is. The rats were chewing on people's toenails, and just completely infesting the towns, but the reporter's main concern is that they're chewing apart transistor radios. He doesn't seem to realize that the rats are far, far worse than just a nuisance.
The cats were dropped to kill rats. Rats which were already present. Rats which carry plague, typhus, and a slew of other diseases.
The cats killed the rats. Therefore, no plague or typhus.
The cats weren't dropped out of unfounded fear. They were dropped out of very real fear. The outbreak would've happened, had they not stopped it. Why, exactly, do you think the cats were there in the first place?
Okay, okay, decimate is too strong a word. But it did damage the rivers severely causing large fish die-offs, and when you kill off an entire species in the areas (cats), that's not exactly "no effect."
There were no outbreaks of plague or typhus.
Curiously enough, I didn't say there was. I said the cats were dropped to stop the population from dying. It worked.
Every instance you find of someone saying this is someone retelling a trumped up story they heard. The cats were dropped because there was FEAR an outbreak would occur. It didn't.... because they dropped the cats!
What am I missing here?
The insect control measures in Borneo are today considered to have been a great success. The problem of malaria went away. Thousands of children lived who might otherwise have died
Yes. Which is why I'm not opposed to it in principle. I'm opposed to people who say it doesn't do any damage. It does. You have to know what you're doing ahead of time. If you just blindly go ahead and do it on a large scale, you could end up with more problems than you started with.
Incidentally, regarding "children living who might otherwise have died", you might want to take a look at Corin & Weaver's paper from the JRTPH. DDT's effects in humans, while not life-threatening, should cause problems with lactation cycles and premature births. It's entirely possible given the levels used that DDT is a net detriment. In any case, it's worse than alternative treatments.
Sorry, I just don't take USAID's position on DDT seriously. They have in the past shown themselves to be tools of of the anti-DDT environmental lobby.
There's plenty of evidence to support their claim. See here, for instance, or here, both of which show that insecticide-treated nets are more cost effective than DDT.
Okay, okay, you're right in that it was just a catalyst. Bah. Semantics. It made their roofs collapse faster than they expected.
I think that the report also draws the conclusion that the unintended consequences of the spraying were relatively minor compared to the benefits. Of course, if it was my roof sitting on my floor, I might think differently.
Exactly - and that really was my point. I quoted the farmer's response from the Charlotte Pomerantz book elsewhere, and it's really the most appropriate (but this is Slashdot, and so people automatically assume I'm saying DDT is the devil) - it essentially was "look, don't get us wrong, DDT is great - but next time, guys, could you not kill our cats and knock our roofs down?"
Of course, the other thing to realize is that by not being careful with previous uses of DDT, the locals were really against future spraying. Just blindly using DDT in other areas - like Africa - could lead to the same mentality.
If I really wanted to be against DDT, I'd quote the Corin and Weaver paper from last year showing that DDT may actually cause a significant amount of infant mortality by causing premature births and screwing up lactation periods.
Although, now that I think about it - that actually sounds scarily familiar to the Borneo case, where something that looks like an obvious benefit ends up possibly causing as much harm through indirect means.
Interesting story -however- there is no factual evidence that the DDT killed the Cats.
What, you think that the cats just up and spontaneously died afterwards? Well, it could've been the dieldrin, but cats died in both locations (both are toxic to animals).
Anyway. Here is a more technical description of the incident.
What's mildly disturbing is that since then, there have been numerous claims that "oh, this is apocryphal" or "the air drop didn't happen", "it was dieldrin, not DDT" etc. but note that the above article has detailed information from the WHO, and links to an eye-witness account of the air drops. It was dieldrin and DDT, and
Hey, if nothing else: DDT was directly responsible for roof collapses in Borneo. Dieldrin actually helped the roofs because the parasites died from it, whereas they avoided the DDT. Lack of predators in the area boosted them, and there were measured higher percentages of larvae in DDT areas.
There is a variety of methods of taking over a company when the managers don't want it.
Like what? Up until his retirement, Yamauchi had a controlling interest in the company, and he wouldn't sell his shares. I think he actually had a majority share, but I'm not sure about that.
I don't think there's a way to take over a company when the majority shareholder doesn't want to sell.
Here is another much much more detailed description (down in Malaria control), and here is an eye-witness account from 1959 of the cat drop itself.
Note that the author of the cat drop was a little too dismissive of the dangers of the rats (he seemed to be more concerned by the fact that they were nibbling people's toenails and eating transistor radios) but hey, he's a reporter. Can't blame him for that.
Still, though, I really recommend the Charlotte Pomerantz book. It's a well-written children's book which describes what happened in Borneo in a way to help kids understand.
The one thing I will say (that I've said elsewhere, too) is that I might've been being a bit strong in saying what happened there, but that's mainly because the comments I've seen have been equally strong the other way - as in "DDT doesn't cause any damage to ecosystems." Well, it does. I'm not trying to say DDT shouldn't be used. I'm trying to say DDT isn't hand soap. It isn't manna from heaven. It's an insecticide that, if used improperly, can concentrate lethally in apex predators.
Here also is a more detailed history as well. Look in the "Malaria control in the Borneo states".
Yes, it did cause the thatch roofs to rot and collapse.
And if you're wondering why the confusion: it's because all of those things happened. Just depended on where you were - in Sarawak the cockroaches killed the cats, in Sabah the geckoes killed the cats. In Sabah the cats were trucked in. In Sarawak, where the area is inaccessible, the cats were parachuted in.
"Complete devastation" was too strong, I'll agree. I just get a little defensive when people state blindly that DDT is fine for the environment. No, it isn't. It's very bad if used in ridiculous quantities. Note also that that's what Silent Spring was trying to say, as well.
(And did I say that the plague actually happened? If I did, that was a whoops: the plague nearly happened. The rats in the area are plague carriers).
What's funny about this: The reason I usually start with the Pomerantz story is it's basically the only place I've ever seen it. The Harrison article is quoted in the story above as the source for a few pieces of information (but not all). There isn't a single bit in Wikipedia regarding DDT and Borneo at all, and in general the pages that I found searching Google only were teacher's guides. Google Scholar had a bit more, but honestly, it seems this really doesn't get mentioned that often.
every company has there price, despite what you want to believe.
Note the analogy I used. It's even more appropriate if you bounce up the figure two decimal places - suppose someone offered you $50,000 for your house when you weren't interested in selling. Even if you were in a depressed market where that might be fair market value, to you, that house is worth far more than $50K.
There's always plenty of talk about someone buying Nintendo, mainly because of the low market price of the shares. But that won't happen, because a large number of the shares are still owned by people who would never sell. Nintendo's already turned down an offer from Microsoft in 2000, according to a book on the Xbox's origins - where the price was $25 billion. In 2000 terms, that was over well over double their market value.
Up until very recently, Nintendo was a family run business. There's far too much pride there to sell.
Right. Unfortunately, the main benefit of DDT was that it was effective on a large scale, and so it could be used for mass spraying to essentially eradicate the mosquito population. On a smaller scale, it's not exactly cost-effective.
See this paper on a cost comparison between DDT and insecticide-treated nets.
It has to do with whether or not DDT causes environmental damage, and whether or not DDT should be used to fight malaria. Which is, y'know, the topic being discussed.
Just because some of the main reasons to ban DDT were bogus doesn't mean that it's as safe as hand soap.
While some of the claims in Silent Spring are wrong (as are plastered violently over the Web), there are known effects on wildlife.
Read an account from 1959 regarding "Operation Cat-drop". Unless you think all the cats on a portion of the island just coincidentally up and died after the DDT spraying.
But there are studies out there. Just search. The bird stuff was wrong, but DDT is highly toxic to fish and other predators, for instance. Just do a search on Google scholar for "fish toxic DDT" and you'll get a nice large list of articles to read.
The human DDT danger is still debated, mind you. I can point to articles as recent as last year for that.
It also kills caterpillars, and some reptiles and mammals too. Not humans, though, and not birds. But cats do die from it, for instance.
This will keep the pests away without killing them all, and therefore will not be so destructive to their ecosystem.
Right, I agree. Unfortunately DDT's main benefit was that it could be blindly sprayed cheaply and provide blanket protection against malaria.
This is insane. It destroys ecosystems and ends up causing far more harm than good.
But done in small doses, it's not clear that DDT is cheaper than other protection mechanisms. (As mentioned by USAID - see the Wikipedia article for a reference.)
Jeez, read the link that I posted, for crying out loud, before suggesting that I'm making things up. So many DDT advocates just attack Silent Spring that they completely forget that DDT does have documented effects on other organisms. Like, cats for instance.
Yes, Silent Spring was wrong. But the complete devastation of the Borneo ecosystem was caused by DDT.
but chemical manufacturing companies largely stopped making it after it got a bad name from the environmental concerns.
You mean like after it decimated the ecosystem on Borneo, forcing 14,000 cats to be parachuted in to stop the population from dying of bubonic plague and typhus.
Alleged? Alleged? C'mon. This is well documented. DDT doesn't kill humans, but it sure does screw with a lot of other animals. It can be used intelligently, but it can also be used stupidly, too.
It's not even clear that when it's used intelligently that it's cost effective to do so. USAID doesn't believe that it is.
Or, more on topic, how the WHO screwedoverBorneo by recklessly spraying DDT without first examining its effects on the local population. They ended up very likely causing more deaths than the malaria outbreak originally would have.
And I suppose that the cats parachuted into Borneo to stop a plague epidemic after DDT destroyed the local cat population were 'bad science' too?
Look, DDT has uses. It can be useful under proper control. But we don't exactly have a good track record of handling these things. And DDT does destroy ecosystems. It has. That's fact. That's not bad science. It happened.
It's healthy to be skeptical of its use. History is littered with examples where we just tried to mildly affect an ecosystem and ended up demolishing it, causing far more harm than good. I could go on, and on, and on...
It's an entire story of the Borneo DDT disaster, told in rhyme. To quote:
"When they sprayed my hut with insecticide, My rat catching cat soon sickened and died. When the rats crawled in, I was filled with fear: The plague can kill more than malaria here. When my roof beams caved in, I moved next door. Until their roof beams collapsed to the floor.
But please, do not think I wish to offend, For DDT is the farmer's good friend. Still, perhaps you'll allow a poor man to say, He hopes men of science will soon find a way To kill the mosquitoes till all, all are dead - But save the roof beams which are over my head, As well as my most useful rat-catching cat. How grateful I'd be if you'd only do that!
Then, men of science, I would not complain. But now I must look to my roof - I smell rain!"
The DDT sickened the caterpillars, which were eaten by geckos. The geckos sickened and were eaten by cats. The cats sickened and died - and then rats moved in, and cats had to be parachuted into Borneo. But the geckos were still gone, and then roofbeams collapsed due to the resurging caterpillar population. Oh, and the rivers were screwed up too, did I mention?
Note the farmer's lament above: it's truly appropriate here. DDT is useful. It is a good way to kill mosquitos. But it is dangerous. It has destroyed ecosystems, and it has killed people.
(My favorite line from the book, though, from the geckos as they're dying: "At night the caterpillars and the roaches Walk right up to us and say, Buenas Noches." It really is an excellent book.)
but I don't think they're serious about buying them out or forming a partnership.
Well, buying them out is a non-starter, as has been mentioned many times before. Nintendo's a 116-year old company. To them, Microsoft would be this little kid coming up and saying 'hey, I got 100 bucks from my parents, can I have your house?' Nintendo - the company - is worth a lot more to them than Microsoft would be willing to pay.
But I think you're right in that Microsoft definitely is not trying to compete with Nintendo. There was a quote from an editor at 1UP that sums this up nicely:
Nintendo's "job" now is to keep everyone honest. They're the voice that the industry needs.They're the conscience, and the guy at the back of the room reminding everyone why we got into this stuff in the first place.
Microsoft is targeting core gamers. That market isn't expanding (they're just spending more money, but that will of course end). In Japan, it's contracting. Moreover, modern gaming is getting more expensive, and margins are becoming much thinner, but hardcore gamers won't accept any less - they expect graphics to improve, effects to get bigger and better, etc.
Which means that, in some sense, Microsoft and Sony need Nintendo to succeed. I don't think Sony's figured that out yet (probably because Nintendo is out back in a Japanese alley beating Sony's new baby PSP into a bloody pulp) but I think Nintendo has.
Now you'll just be holding two controllers instead of one just to move around.
Huh? I'll be holding something in both hands. How is that different than a normal controller? It's still just one controller, not two.
In actuality, I'm pretty sure that the Wii style is actually better for your hands - a fixed controller forces your wrists at a given angle. A split design won't.
Attempting to nudge a pointer over a button using a gyroscopic mouse is considerably more clumsy than a normal desktop mouse.
That's because you're using a gyroscopic mouse on an interface designed for a regular mouse. It'd be easy enough to redesign the interface, keeping all of the benefits. You just need to increase the size of the menus and add lock-on, for instance. Or make the menu a ring menu and use up, down, left, right to select them. But I digress...
It's not gyroscopic. It's motion-sensing. One of the problems with gyroscopic is that you have to match the motion of the pointer to the tilt of your hand - if you tilt the control 8 degrees, how far should the pointer go? In the Wii's case, you know how far the control is from the screen. Now, I thought the Wii was going to come with two sensors, one for the top, one for the bottom (so it'd know the size of the screen as well), but with only one, it'd likely have to be calibrated. But in any case, you don't have that problem - you're not tilting to move a cursor. You're pointing to a portion of the screen. That's easier than a mouse, not harder.
Incidentally, this is why the Wii's remote is far more advanced than the PS3's. With the PS3, there's no spatial location, which means no pointing information. The PS3 really would be a gyroscopic mouse - and a two-handed one, too.
My point with RPGs is that most of the time you are moving from one place to another
That... would be what the nunchaku is for. What's the problem with using it? RPGs are usually single person games that are moderately complicated. The remote by itself is mainly for games which are "pick up and play" - games like Excite Truck, Sonic Wild Fire, the Wii Sports/Wii Music demos if they get fleshed out enough, and Wario Ware.
Of the games announced by Nintendo, I think only like 3 use the remote by itself.
or expected to be selecting or doing things with menus or icons.
You mean - like a normal PC? Most of us have this thing for a normal PC that we call a mouse, and it works pretty well for icons and menus. I think it'll be fine.
Slashdot Mirror
it had FF:CC
It took years for the GameCube to get FF:CC. The fact that it's got the sequel to FF:CC, and Dragon Quest Swords from Square is a serious improvement.
"Sengoku Action Elebits"
It's Sengoku Action, and Elebits. Sengoku Action is a Dynasty Warriors-type game (you know, the one that's spawned a million sequels on PS2). Elebits is a bizarre new game by Konami that looks fantastic.
As far as I can tell, your "reduced list" is basically "which games on here are from franchises I've seen before?" I don't put my faith in franchises. I put my faith in the actual games, and some of them look like they've had an insane amount of thought and innovation put into them. "Sadness" comes to mind, although I have my doubts it will ever see the light of day, which is unfortunate.
If this is true, then point taken.
Read the eye-witness account I linked to earlier. It's actually hilarious, because it's in typical 1950s style, where the guy clearly doesn't understand how serious the situation is. The rats were chewing on people's toenails, and just completely infesting the towns, but the reporter's main concern is that they're chewing apart transistor radios. He doesn't seem to realize that the rats are far, far worse than just a nuisance.
The cats were dropped to kill rats. Rats which were already present. Rats which carry plague, typhus, and a slew of other diseases.
The cats killed the rats. Therefore, no plague or typhus.
The cats weren't dropped out of unfounded fear. They were dropped out of very real fear. The outbreak would've happened, had they not stopped it. Why, exactly, do you think the cats were there in the first place?
DDT did not decimate the ecosystem of Borneo
... because they dropped the cats!
Okay, okay, decimate is too strong a word. But it did damage the rivers severely causing large fish die-offs, and when you kill off an entire species in the areas (cats), that's not exactly "no effect."
There were no outbreaks of plague or typhus.
Curiously enough, I didn't say there was. I said the cats were dropped to stop the population from dying. It worked.
Every instance you find of someone saying this is someone retelling a trumped up story they heard. The cats were dropped because there was FEAR an outbreak would occur. It didn't.
What am I missing here?
The insect control measures in Borneo are today considered to have been a great success. The problem of malaria went away. Thousands of children lived who might otherwise have died
Yes. Which is why I'm not opposed to it in principle. I'm opposed to people who say it doesn't do any damage. It does. You have to know what you're doing ahead of time. If you just blindly go ahead and do it on a large scale, you could end up with more problems than you started with.
Incidentally, regarding "children living who might otherwise have died", you might want to take a look at Corin & Weaver's paper from the JRTPH. DDT's effects in humans, while not life-threatening, should cause problems with lactation cycles and premature births. It's entirely possible given the levels used that DDT is a net detriment. In any case, it's worse than alternative treatments.
Sorry, I just don't take USAID's position on DDT seriously. They have in the past shown themselves to be tools of of the anti-DDT environmental lobby.
There's plenty of evidence to support their claim. See here, for instance, or here, both of which show that insecticide-treated nets are more cost effective than DDT.
Okay, okay, you're right in that it was just a catalyst. Bah. Semantics. It made their roofs collapse faster than they expected.
I think that the report also draws the conclusion that the unintended consequences of the spraying were relatively minor compared to the benefits. Of course, if it was my roof sitting on my floor, I might think differently.
Exactly - and that really was my point. I quoted the farmer's response from the Charlotte Pomerantz book elsewhere, and it's really the most appropriate (but this is Slashdot, and so people automatically assume I'm saying DDT is the devil) - it essentially was "look, don't get us wrong, DDT is great - but next time, guys, could you not kill our cats and knock our roofs down?"
Of course, the other thing to realize is that by not being careful with previous uses of DDT, the locals were really against future spraying. Just blindly using DDT in other areas - like Africa - could lead to the same mentality.
If I really wanted to be against DDT, I'd quote the Corin and Weaver paper from last year showing that DDT may actually cause a significant amount of infant mortality by causing premature births and screwing up lactation periods.
Although, now that I think about it - that actually sounds scarily familiar to the Borneo case, where something that looks like an obvious benefit ends up possibly causing as much harm through indirect means.
Interesting story -however- there is no factual evidence that the DDT killed the Cats.
What, you think that the cats just up and spontaneously died afterwards? Well, it could've been the dieldrin, but cats died in both locations (both are toxic to animals).
Anyway. Here is a more technical description of the incident.
What's mildly disturbing is that since then, there have been numerous claims that "oh, this is apocryphal" or "the air drop didn't happen", "it was dieldrin, not DDT" etc. but note that the above article has detailed information from the WHO, and links to an eye-witness account of the air drops. It was dieldrin and DDT, and
Hey, if nothing else: DDT was directly responsible for roof collapses in Borneo. Dieldrin actually helped the roofs because the parasites died from it, whereas they avoided the DDT. Lack of predators in the area boosted them, and there were measured higher percentages of larvae in DDT areas.
There is a variety of methods of taking over a company when the managers don't want it.
Like what? Up until his retirement, Yamauchi had a controlling interest in the company, and he wouldn't sell his shares. I think he actually had a majority share, but I'm not sure about that.
I don't think there's a way to take over a company when the majority shareholder doesn't want to sell.
Here is another much much more detailed description (down in Malaria control), and here is an eye-witness account from 1959 of the cat drop itself.
Note that the author of the cat drop was a little too dismissive of the dangers of the rats (he seemed to be more concerned by the fact that they were nibbling people's toenails and eating transistor radios) but hey, he's a reporter. Can't blame him for that.
Still, though, I really recommend the Charlotte Pomerantz book. It's a well-written children's book which describes what happened in Borneo in a way to help kids understand.
The one thing I will say (that I've said elsewhere, too) is that I might've been being a bit strong in saying what happened there, but that's mainly because the comments I've seen have been equally strong the other way - as in "DDT doesn't cause any damage to ecosystems." Well, it does. I'm not trying to say DDT shouldn't be used. I'm trying to say DDT isn't hand soap. It isn't manna from heaven. It's an insecticide that, if used improperly, can concentrate lethally in apex predators.
Here also is a more detailed history as well. Look in the "Malaria control in the Borneo states".
Yes, it did cause the thatch roofs to rot and collapse.
And if you're wondering why the confusion: it's because all of those things happened. Just depended on where you were - in Sarawak the cockroaches killed the cats, in Sabah the geckoes killed the cats. In Sabah the cats were trucked in. In Sarawak, where the area is inaccessible, the cats were parachuted in.
"Complete devastation" was too strong, I'll agree. I just get a little defensive when people state blindly that DDT is fine for the environment. No, it isn't. It's very bad if used in ridiculous quantities. Note also that that's what Silent Spring was trying to say, as well.
(And did I say that the plague actually happened? If I did, that was a whoops: the plague nearly happened. The rats in the area are plague carriers).
What's funny about this: The reason I usually start with the Pomerantz story is it's basically the only place I've ever seen it. The Harrison article is quoted in the story above as the source for a few pieces of information (but not all). There isn't a single bit in Wikipedia regarding DDT and Borneo at all, and in general the pages that I found searching Google only were teacher's guides. Google Scholar had a bit more, but honestly, it seems this really doesn't get mentioned that often.
every company has there price, despite what you want to believe.
Note the analogy I used. It's even more appropriate if you bounce up the figure two decimal places - suppose someone offered you $50,000 for your house when you weren't interested in selling. Even if you were in a depressed market where that might be fair market value, to you, that house is worth far more than $50K.
There's always plenty of talk about someone buying Nintendo, mainly because of the low market price of the shares. But that won't happen, because a large number of the shares are still owned by people who would never sell. Nintendo's already turned down an offer from Microsoft in 2000, according to a book on the Xbox's origins - where the price was $25 billion. In 2000 terms, that was over well over double their market value.
Up until very recently, Nintendo was a family run business. There's far too much pride there to sell.
Right. Unfortunately, the main benefit of DDT was that it was effective on a large scale, and so it could be used for mass spraying to essentially eradicate the mosquito population. On a smaller scale, it's not exactly cost-effective.
See this paper on a cost comparison between DDT and insecticide-treated nets.
Neither even pretends to support their version of the Borneo story with a shred of documentation.
Oh, for crying out loud. Just do a little research?
How about here which is an eye-witness account from 1959 of the cat drop?
Is that good enough?
It doesn't.
It has to do with whether or not DDT causes environmental damage, and whether or not DDT should be used to fight malaria. Which is, y'know, the topic being discussed.
Just because some of the main reasons to ban DDT were bogus doesn't mean that it's as safe as hand soap.
There were no scientific studies done,
That's a complete lie.
While some of the claims in Silent Spring are wrong (as are plastered violently over the Web), there are known effects on wildlife.
Read an account from 1959 regarding "Operation Cat-drop". Unless you think all the cats on a portion of the island just coincidentally up and died after the DDT spraying.
But there are studies out there. Just search. The bird stuff was wrong, but DDT is highly toxic to fish and other predators, for instance. Just do a search on Google scholar for "fish toxic DDT" and you'll get a nice large list of articles to read.
The human DDT danger is still debated, mind you. I can point to articles as recent as last year for that.
It kills [some] insects.
It also kills caterpillars, and some reptiles and mammals too. Not humans, though, and not birds. But cats do die from it, for instance.
This will keep the pests away without killing them all, and therefore will not be so destructive to their ecosystem.
Right, I agree. Unfortunately DDT's main benefit was that it could be blindly sprayed cheaply and provide blanket protection against malaria.
This is insane. It destroys ecosystems and ends up causing far more harm than good.
But done in small doses, it's not clear that DDT is cheaper than other protection mechanisms. (As mentioned by USAID - see the Wikipedia article for a reference.)
Jeez, read the link that I posted, for crying out loud, before suggesting that I'm making things up. So many DDT advocates just attack Silent Spring that they completely forget that DDT does have documented effects on other organisms. Like, cats for instance.
Yes, Silent Spring was wrong. But the complete devastation of the Borneo ecosystem was caused by DDT.
but chemical manufacturing companies largely stopped making it after it got a bad name from the environmental concerns.
You mean like after it decimated the ecosystem on Borneo, forcing 14,000 cats to be parachuted in to stop the population from dying of bubonic plague and typhus.
Alleged? Alleged? C'mon. This is well documented. DDT doesn't kill humans, but it sure does screw with a lot of other animals. It can be used intelligently, but it can also be used stupidly, too.
It's not even clear that when it's used intelligently that it's cost effective to do so. USAID doesn't believe that it is.
Or, more on topic, how the WHO screwed over Borneo by recklessly spraying DDT without first examining its effects on the local population. They ended up very likely causing more deaths than the malaria outbreak originally would have.
And I suppose that the cats parachuted into Borneo to stop a plague epidemic after DDT destroyed the local cat population were 'bad science' too?
Look, DDT has uses. It can be useful under proper control. But we don't exactly have a good track record of handling these things. And DDT does destroy ecosystems. It has. That's fact. That's not bad science. It happened.
It's healthy to be skeptical of its use. History is littered with examples where we just tried to mildly affect an ecosystem and ended up demolishing it, causing far more harm than good. I could go on, and on, and on...
It's an entire story of the Borneo DDT disaster, told in rhyme. To quote:
The DDT sickened the caterpillars, which were eaten by geckos. The geckos sickened and were eaten by cats. The cats sickened and died - and then rats moved in, and cats had to be parachuted into Borneo. But the geckos were still gone, and then roofbeams collapsed due to the resurging caterpillar population. Oh, and the rivers were screwed up too, did I mention?
Note the farmer's lament above: it's truly appropriate here. DDT is useful. It is a good way to kill mosquitos. But it is dangerous. It has destroyed ecosystems, and it has killed people.
(My favorite line from the book, though, from the geckos as they're dying: "At night the caterpillars and the roaches Walk right up to us and say, Buenas Noches." It really is an excellent book.)
Er? Dodge = Shield = Z.
Throw = R.
Then again, Z+A is throw, and holding R will shield anyway, so you probably could get away with just three buttons.
Well, buying them out is a non-starter, as has been mentioned many times before. Nintendo's a 116-year old company. To them, Microsoft would be this little kid coming up and saying 'hey, I got 100 bucks from my parents, can I have your house?' Nintendo - the company - is worth a lot more to them than Microsoft would be willing to pay.
But I think you're right in that Microsoft definitely is not trying to compete with Nintendo. There was a quote from an editor at 1UP that sums this up nicely:
Microsoft is targeting core gamers. That market isn't expanding (they're just spending more money, but that will of course end). In Japan, it's contracting. Moreover, modern gaming is getting more expensive, and margins are becoming much thinner, but hardcore gamers won't accept any less - they expect graphics to improve, effects to get bigger and better, etc.
Which means that, in some sense, Microsoft and Sony need Nintendo to succeed. I don't think Sony's figured that out yet (probably because Nintendo is out back in a Japanese alley beating Sony's new baby PSP into a bloody pulp) but I think Nintendo has.
Original SSB (that is what I said, isn't it? there wasn't an 'M' in there):
Analog stick: move
A: attack
B: other attack
The C buttons were jump, but so was Up.
I did forget about grab and dodge, however.
Okay, that's an analog stick and four buttons. Which... you still have.
Now you'll just be holding two controllers instead of one just to move around.
Huh? I'll be holding something in both hands. How is that different than a normal controller? It's still just one controller, not two.
In actuality, I'm pretty sure that the Wii style is actually better for your hands - a fixed controller forces your wrists at a given angle. A split design won't.
Attempting to nudge a pointer over a button using a gyroscopic mouse is considerably more clumsy than a normal desktop mouse.
That's because you're using a gyroscopic mouse on an interface designed for a regular mouse. It'd be easy enough to redesign the interface, keeping all of the benefits. You just need to increase the size of the menus and add lock-on, for instance. Or make the menu a ring menu and use up, down, left, right to select them. But I digress...
It's not gyroscopic. It's motion-sensing. One of the problems with gyroscopic is that you have to match the motion of the pointer to the tilt of your hand - if you tilt the control 8 degrees, how far should the pointer go? In the Wii's case, you know how far the control is from the screen. Now, I thought the Wii was going to come with two sensors, one for the top, one for the bottom (so it'd know the size of the screen as well), but with only one, it'd likely have to be calibrated. But in any case, you don't have that problem - you're not tilting to move a cursor. You're pointing to a portion of the screen. That's easier than a mouse, not harder.
Incidentally, this is why the Wii's remote is far more advanced than the PS3's. With the PS3, there's no spatial location, which means no pointing information. The PS3 really would be a gyroscopic mouse - and a two-handed one, too.
My point with RPGs is that most of the time you are moving from one place to another
That... would be what the nunchaku is for. What's the problem with using it? RPGs are usually single person games that are moderately complicated. The remote by itself is mainly for games which are "pick up and play" - games like Excite Truck, Sonic Wild Fire, the Wii Sports/Wii Music demos if they get fleshed out enough, and Wario Ware.
Of the games announced by Nintendo, I think only like 3 use the remote by itself.
or expected to be selecting or doing things with menus or icons.
You mean - like a normal PC? Most of us have this thing for a normal PC that we call a mouse, and it works pretty well for icons and menus. I think it'll be fine.