Correct, you are not the target audience. And you know what? For every hardcore gamer in the world, there are probably 10 people who are not hardcore gamers. If Nintendo can grab the interest of even 10% of that potential market, then they are doing as well as Sony and Microsoft put together.
You demand hardcore stick-tilting, combo-memorizing, button-mashing game controls? Buy an XBox 360.
This prevents *sharing* copyrighted works, not downloading them. If anything, it protects the average user from becoming the target of lawsuits.
It doesn't change what's available on the network. If download times go up because fewer newbies commit accidental copyright violation, so be it. Anyone who thinks that's a bad thing is no better than a malware author exploiting the average clueless user.
In case you haven't read it in one of the other posts on this topic, the new controller works perfectly well from your lap, with only a small range of motion. You don't have to wave your arms around, just flick your wrist a little. PC gamers will tell you that there is no better way to get precise interaction at high speed.
Also, I don't see the D-pad as a problem. Because of the way you hold the controller, I think that the pad will probably feel a lot like the volume/channel rockers on your TV remote. I doubt that you'll have to push very hard, just roll your thumb around. But even if the D-pad is a little awkward, most games will be using direction sensors for the primary input. Game developers tend to avoid placing important moves on awkward buttons. (At least, the good ones do!)
The end-game raid content doesn't interest me much, but I'd pay a monthly fee just for the CTF Battlegrounds... so much fun, it should be its own game!
(And if Blizzard were owned by EA... it would be!)
Why is it whoring? So far, every game Mario has appeared in (with the exception of EA's Street titles) has been fun, simple to learn, and full of familiar characters who have consistant traits. Bowser is always slow and powerful, Mario is always a good all-around player, etc.
If "Mario Power Curling" hits the shelves, does that somehow mean that Mario's next platformer is going to be any worse? No. You might not want to buy it, but where's the problem?
Uh, may be because they are friggin' video game charachters?
In a way, this is more honest. All magazine photos are digitally retouched. And I guarantee that the characters are no more or less fictional than any other Playboy model, in the sense that you will never interact with them in real life. After all, bad spelling is such a turn-off...
I think the point is, EA is doing it's usual thing: Secure a license, and then slowly degrade quality, counting on the momentum of all the people who have bought the previous versions (that may have actually been somewhat good) until the franchise is driven into the ground.
(This trend has particularly evident on EA's handling of the James Bond license)
EA's Goldeneye was crap, but Everything or Nothing is probably the best Bond game yet. So I see no evidence of "this trend" in the franchise.
So you advocate a position where large developers cannot spend more money on a title than small developers? Where all the games match the lowest common denominator of what any studio can produce?
The Madden jabs that everyone makes are a little unfair. It's true that every year, it's essentially the same game with updated rosters and one or two new mechanics. But the new mechanics often change the game in a substantial way.
And quite frankly, there is a huge audience that would buy the new game just to have the new rosters. The fact that they develop, play-test, and balance new mechanics (well, develop anyway;) seems like an honest effort by the developers to work for your money.
Gold trades between players still get logged, even if the gold itself can't be traced. I'm sure that Blizzard will eventually figure out who abused this bug and issue a round of bannings, followed by a round of community protests that people were unfairly banned.
What people seem to be saying is that by patching the binary to force the P4 path, there is a significant performance increase on the Athlon. In other words, even though the P4-optimization is not optimal for the Athlon, it exceeds the performance of the "baseline" path and there is no reason to disable it -- other than to cripple AMD's performance.
MAY = optional MAY NOT = optional SHOULD = strongly recommended SHOULD NOT = advised against MUST = required MUST NOT = not permitted SHALL = must SHALL NOT = must not
...and locking people into the iTunes store is the most profittable thing they can do. It also get many of those buyers thinking about buying a mac.
Apple has admitted, on several occasions, that they make very little money off of the iTunes music store. Their RIAA fees and operating costs eat up almost all of the 99 cents per song. The iTunes music store is nothing more than a way to sell iPods. (As an added bonus, iTunes introduces people to Apple's look-and-feel and creates a few more potential iMac buyers.)
If Apple let other companies license iPod-compatible DRM, they would not be abandoning a major revenue stream. And if the licensed songs still had to be transferred via iTunes, there would be no loss of side benefits either.
As long as iPod+iTMS is the popular choice, Apple sees no need to open their DRM. But I bet that they will cut licensing deals in a heartbeat if they start hemorrhaging market share.
It's the ad server that melted
on
The Bender PC Case
·
· Score: 4, Informative
If you turn off Javascript, the Coral cached link works fine. It's their ad server that melted, and with 4 or 5 javascript includes per page, that's a long wait for timeouts.
First of all, I'm arguing Linus's position, not necessarily my own. I'm not sure what I think on the issue.
Bu the main point is that people are attacking Linus for holding a belief. He feels that it is wrong to reverse-engineer a product expressly against the wishes of the otherwise friendly vendor who provides a valuable service for free.
This has nothing to do with supporting monopolies. It is a belief that free software should start from the ground up, not from hijacking the user base of proprietary software.
By extrapolating what Linus has said in his posts, I take it that (for example) he is 100% for the development of an open-source word processor from scratch, but he is against the development of a word processor that only reads and writes Microsoft Word files.
Maybe it's not a popular opinion, but it's a valid one.
I'm not sure that I agree with Linus's position, but how can you possibly say... 2) Linus is inconsistent with his principles. 3) Linus is inconsistent with current law and the current ethics surrounding reverse engineering. when he is entirely consistent with his own principles?
Last time I checked, holding an unpopular opinion doesn't make you "inconsistent". Linus believes that reverse-engineering of proprietary binaries is not the right way to do things. That's his opinion, and as far as I know, it's perfectly consistent with everything he's done so far in his life.
For a hypothetical, let's say that I dislike gambling, and I lobby against the opening of new casinos on the border of my town. Does this make me "inconsistent" with the law? Does it make me "inconsistent" with my own princples? Of course not.
Now for your first point... 1) When would anyone ever be in favor of someone else reverse-engineering their work? All the time. I write a closed-source program... let's say, a video game. It has propetary data files. I tacitly grant permission for people to create single-player mods, but I don't have any documentation for the files. It's up to them to figure out what does what, and write their own interoperable tools.
Legally, you don't/need/ my permission. You can write those tools anyway. But Linus (and anyone of that mindset) is saying that you ought to get permission, or at the very least, you ought to stop if you're explicitly asked to.
He believes that you should get permission to mess with things that other people started. I don't se anything wrong with that position.
In this reframing: Linus has clearly come down against reverse-engineering. TFA is further correct in pointing out that this is inconsistent with what Linux, OpenOffice, gcc, and a bunch of other open source projects are all about.
No. This has nothing to do with what Open Source is all about. GCC wasn't created by examining the bytecode output of an Intel compiler. Most open-source "clone" projects are based on available documentation and end-user appearance, not examination of binary data.
Linus is in favor of implementing available standards in a free and open manner. He is not in favor of reverse-engineering someone elses implementation against their wishes.
"give us something that we can reach all the buttons without having to move our hands all over the controller.. the game cube controller is worse then the original XBox controller (that's just sad).."
Hm, really? That's odd because I like the GameCube controller the best out of all the consoles I've played. I rest my thumb on the big green A and then can roll it in any direction for other buttons, or drop it down a to reach the C stick. The grips fits perfectly in my hand. My only nitpick is the 'Z' button placement, which is an annoyance but not a serious problem.
I guess it might depend on the size of your hands and how dextrous your thumb is.
"Restart" in this case does not mean that the process is currently stopped. The process is currently being rammed through by the EC, even though it appears to be against just about everyone's wishes. NoSoftwarePatents.com and others are trying to buy more time before the EC succeeeds in bypassing the will of the people.
Correction to myself... obviously, XForms is not being downplayed because MSIE supports it, since MS does/not/ encourage use of XForms.
This is a tricky argument to phrase correctly. I think that the question is if XForms is being downplayed because the lack of backwards compatibility might drive lazy or non-standards-minded people to a MS platform rather than risk current breakage with XForms.
Note to moderators and readers: the parent is saying, "Is this really a battle for the best standard, or is it just a political battle among the existing browsers such as Safari, Mozilla, Opera, and MSIE?"
He raises a valid point: is this battle about standards or browsers? Is XForms being downplayed because WebForms is technically superior, or is it just because XForms plugins only exist for MSIE?
Slashdot Mirror
Correct, you are not the target audience. And you know what? For every hardcore gamer in the world, there are probably 10 people who are not hardcore gamers. If Nintendo can grab the interest of even 10% of that potential market, then they are doing as well as Sony and Microsoft put together.
You demand hardcore stick-tilting, combo-memorizing, button-mashing game controls? Buy an XBox 360.
This prevents *sharing* copyrighted works, not downloading them. If anything, it protects the average user from becoming the target of lawsuits.
It doesn't change what's available on the network. If download times go up because fewer newbies commit accidental copyright violation, so be it. Anyone who thinks that's a bad thing is no better than a malware author exploiting the average clueless user.
In case you haven't read it in one of the other posts on this topic, the new controller works perfectly well from your lap, with only a small range of motion. You don't have to wave your arms around, just flick your wrist a little. PC gamers will tell you that there is no better way to get precise interaction at high speed.
Also, I don't see the D-pad as a problem. Because of the way you hold the controller, I think that the pad will probably feel a lot like the volume/channel rockers on your TV remote. I doubt that you'll have to push very hard, just roll your thumb around. But even if the D-pad is a little awkward, most games will be using direction sensors for the primary input. Game developers tend to avoid placing important moves on awkward buttons. (At least, the good ones do!)
The end-game raid content doesn't interest me much, but I'd pay a monthly fee just for the CTF Battlegrounds... so much fun, it should be its own game!
... it would be!)
(And if Blizzard were owned by EA
Why is it whoring? So far, every game Mario has appeared in (with the exception of EA's Street titles) has been fun, simple to learn, and full of familiar characters who have consistant traits. Bowser is always slow and powerful, Mario is always a good all-around player, etc.
If "Mario Power Curling" hits the shelves, does that somehow mean that Mario's next platformer is going to be any worse? No. You might not want to buy it, but where's the problem?
Uh, may be because they are friggin' video game charachters?
In a way, this is more honest. All magazine photos are digitally retouched. And I guarantee that the characters are no more or less fictional than any other Playboy model, in the sense that you will never interact with them in real life. After all, bad spelling is such a turn-off...
False. Additional frames pass too quickly to be perceived as individual images, but they still add to the perception of smooth motion.
I think the point is, EA is doing it's usual thing: Secure a license, and then slowly degrade quality, counting on the momentum of all the people who have bought the previous versions (that may have actually been somewhat good) until the franchise is driven into the ground.
(This trend has particularly evident on EA's handling of the James Bond license)
EA's Goldeneye was crap, but Everything or Nothing is probably the best Bond game yet. So I see no evidence of "this trend" in the franchise.
So you advocate a position where large developers cannot spend more money on a title than small developers? Where all the games match the lowest common denominator of what any studio can produce?
Because that doesn't sound quite right to me.
The Madden jabs that everyone makes are a little unfair. It's true that every year, it's essentially the same game with updated rosters and one or two new mechanics. But the new mechanics often change the game in a substantial way.
;) seems like an honest effort by the developers to work for your money.
And quite frankly, there is a huge audience that would buy the new game just to have the new rosters. The fact that they develop, play-test, and balance new mechanics (well, develop anyway
Gold trades between players still get logged, even if the gold itself can't be traced. I'm sure that Blizzard will eventually figure out who abused this bug and issue a round of bannings, followed by a round of community protests that people were unfairly banned.
What people seem to be saying is that by patching the binary to force the P4 path, there is a significant performance increase on the Athlon. In other words, even though the P4-optimization is not optimal for the Athlon, it exceeds the performance of the "baseline" path and there is no reason to disable it -- other than to cripple AMD's performance.
In any standards doc I've ever seen,
MAY = optional
MAY NOT = optional
SHOULD = strongly recommended
SHOULD NOT = advised against
MUST = required
MUST NOT = not permitted
SHALL = must
SHALL NOT = must not
...and locking people into the iTunes store is the most profittable thing they can do. It also get many of those buyers thinking about buying a mac.
Apple has admitted, on several occasions, that they make very little money off of the iTunes music store. Their RIAA fees and operating costs eat up almost all of the 99 cents per song. The iTunes music store is nothing more than a way to sell iPods. (As an added bonus, iTunes introduces people to Apple's look-and-feel and creates a few more potential iMac buyers.)
If Apple let other companies license iPod-compatible DRM, they would not be abandoning a major revenue stream. And if the licensed songs still had to be transferred via iTunes, there would be no loss of side benefits either.
As long as iPod+iTMS is the popular choice, Apple sees no need to open their DRM. But I bet that they will cut licensing deals in a heartbeat if they start hemorrhaging market share.
If you turn off Javascript, the Coral cached link works fine. It's their ad server that melted, and with 4 or 5 javascript includes per page, that's a long wait for timeouts.
First of all, I'm arguing Linus's position, not necessarily my own. I'm not sure what I think on the issue.
Bu the main point is that people are attacking Linus for holding a belief. He feels that it is wrong to reverse-engineer a product expressly against the wishes of the otherwise friendly vendor who provides a valuable service for free.
This has nothing to do with supporting monopolies. It is a belief that free software should start from the ground up, not from hijacking the user base of proprietary software.
By extrapolating what Linus has said in his posts, I take it that (for example) he is 100% for the development of an open-source word processor from scratch, but he is against the development of a word processor that only reads and writes Microsoft Word files.
Maybe it's not a popular opinion, but it's a valid one.
I'm not sure that I agree with Linus's position, but how can you possibly say...
...
/need/ my permission. You can write those tools anyway. But Linus (and anyone of that mindset) is saying that you ought to get permission, or at the very least, you ought to stop if you're explicitly asked to.
2) Linus is inconsistent with his principles.
3) Linus is inconsistent with current law and the current ethics surrounding reverse engineering.
when he is entirely consistent with his own principles?
Last time I checked, holding an unpopular opinion doesn't make you "inconsistent". Linus believes that reverse-engineering of proprietary binaries is not the right way to do things. That's his opinion, and as far as I know, it's perfectly consistent with everything he's done so far in his life.
For a hypothetical, let's say that I dislike gambling, and I lobby against the opening of new casinos on the border of my town. Does this make me "inconsistent" with the law? Does it make me "inconsistent" with my own princples? Of course not.
Now for your first point
1) When would anyone ever be in favor of someone else reverse-engineering their work?
All the time. I write a closed-source program... let's say, a video game. It has propetary data files. I tacitly grant permission for people to create single-player mods, but I don't have any documentation for the files. It's up to them to figure out what does what, and write their own interoperable tools.
Legally, you don't
He believes that you should get permission to mess with things that other people started. I don't se anything wrong with that position.
In this reframing: Linus has clearly come down against reverse-engineering. TFA is further correct in pointing out that this is inconsistent with what Linux, OpenOffice, gcc, and a bunch of other open source projects are all about.
No. This has nothing to do with what Open Source is all about. GCC wasn't created by examining the bytecode output of an Intel compiler. Most open-source "clone" projects are based on available documentation and end-user appearance, not examination of binary data.
Linus is in favor of implementing available standards in a free and open manner. He is not in favor of reverse-engineering someone elses implementation against their wishes.
There is no inconsistency to be found.
Actually, March 31st. Check the date on the blog. Not a gag.
"give us something that we can reach all the buttons without having to move our hands all over the controller.. the game cube controller is worse then the original XBox controller (that's just sad).."
Hm, really? That's odd because I like the GameCube controller the best out of all the consoles I've played. I rest my thumb on the big green A and then can roll it in any direction for other buttons, or drop it down a to reach the C stick. The grips fits perfectly in my hand. My only nitpick is the 'Z' button placement, which is an annoyance but not a serious problem.
I guess it might depend on the size of your hands and how dextrous your thumb is.
"Restart" in this case does not mean that the process is currently stopped. The process is currently being rammed through by the EC, even though it appears to be against just about everyone's wishes. NoSoftwarePatents.com and others are trying to buy more time before the EC succeeeds in bypassing the will of the people.
Yeah, I'm sure they're really happy about domainnames like "xn--tdali-d8a8w.lv".
/after/ you type it in.
Um, you can still enter the full Unicode name in the address bar or use it in links. This only changes how it is displayed
Correction to myself... obviously, XForms is not being downplayed because MSIE supports it, since MS does /not/ encourage use of XForms.
This is a tricky argument to phrase correctly. I think that the question is if XForms is being downplayed because the lack of backwards compatibility might drive lazy or non-standards-minded people to a MS platform rather than risk current breakage with XForms.
Note to moderators and readers: the parent is saying, "Is this really a battle for the best standard, or is it just a political battle among the existing browsers such as Safari, Mozilla, Opera, and MSIE?"
He raises a valid point: is this battle about standards or browsers? Is XForms being downplayed because WebForms is technically superior, or is it just because XForms plugins only exist for MSIE?
Uninformed people piss me off to no end.
EA did not solicit an exclusive contract!
The NFL announced that it was going to SELL an exclusive contract, and only one company could win it. So of course EA had to bid, or they were sunk.
Don't blame EA (whatever other evils they have performed) for the NFL's crap.