Once you are finished they will know not only who you are, but where you stand on the issues at hand.
OH NO! I *definitely* don't want a politician to know what I think! How could he possibly act purely within his own interests if we bombard him with our own opinions?
I can easily see either viewpoint - Dexter's Laboratory took a break after the first few seasons, and the series went on in syndication for a while. Later on, some more episodes were ordered, but the writing and art direction of these were clearly different, and clearly sub-par in comparison. I think Dexter's VA might even have changed, and a quick check on IMDB proves I was right. I think Dexter basically died after they made the direct-to-DVD movie release. That in and of itself was decent, but not fabulous, but it clearly marked a shark-jumping point.
By this time, Tartakovsky was putting a lot more work into Samurai Jack I'm sure, and without his direct influence on Dexter, the series went south. One change I can think of in particular is that Deedee was turned from the charming nuisance into basically a total retard, and on occasion, the writing bore this on Dexter as well.
After Sony stole the show last year with their dazzling game trailers
Say what? I was at E3 last year. Sony was getting mocked for those same trailers, while Microsoft did have playable games.
Seriously, even those without a historical perspective on E3 should be able to read this line and say "WTF?". Game trailers can be dazzling, but they *never* steal the show.
I've played six of the seven NES games (never played Zombie Nation), eight of the ten SNES "games" (didn't try the Strike series, didn't have any desire whatsoever to play a Robocop game), and, oddly enough, only two of the N64 games, those being Pilotwings 64 and Blast Corps.
I bought Blast Corps before I even got an N64 because I knew I wanted that game whenever I finally did buy one. How's that for loyalty?
StarTropics would be an interesting one. It has the distinction of being one of the few games Nintendo developed exclusively for the US market - there was never a Japanese release for it or the sequel. Similarly, even though the arch-villian of the series makes a cameo appearance in F-Zero X, it's only the case in the US version, and his craft is just some generic racer in the other releases. But yes, it was a really good series, a bit like Zelda but with more of an action angle. I didn't care for the sequel as much, but the original was and still is pretty good.
I remember being rather disappointed to find out that the sequel to Blaster Master went to the Genesis, since I never had one. In the end, though, I believe the sequel ended up being not so great, and the Game Boy port (Blaster Master Boy) wasn't too good either from what I remember.
UN Squadron was great. I think I played the arcade ROM a bit (Area 88), and the console adaptation was really fun. I particularly enjoyed some of the bonus areas where you'd take a craft and make diving sweeps in a valley trying to bomb particular targets. A great was to make cash to buy that expensive EF-2000 and have some fun at the same time. In some ways, the game reminded me of Bionic Commando - not so much the whole 2D-action aspect, but the map system and plot development.
Legend of the Mystical Ninja - Ganbare Goemon IV, if I remember right, was a fantastic game. The 2-player mode was neat, but it got to be really frustrating at times to work together with your partner since it was pretty easy in the side-scrolling stages to cause your buddy to fall in a pit. The mini-games were great fun and the graphics/music were fabulous. It was just outright wacky and fun. Unfortunately, the next game Konami brought to the US was the 3D adaptation put on the N64, which history showed to be a less-than-forgiving system for 3rd parties, and the game itself wasn't so great...so as our punishment, we haven't seen another Goemon game in a long time...
EVO was pretty good, but historically a bit overrated I think. Enix made some great RPGs at the time (ActRaiser is a fabulous game), but EVO I think gets a lot of attention because of all the evolution-based RPGs out there, it was the only one that was ever any good, even though it had its flaws.
It was nice and nostalgic and all to see this article, but really, it was nothing more than a "games we like" list, and I don't think that's newsworthy to be honest. Now, if they tell me that Capcom and Konami and Square-Enix have stepped up to the plate for Way-Backwards Compatibility, THEN it is most DEFINITELY news.
Sensationalism aside, at least they're actually mentioning Nintendo. Usually these days, an article in Forbes about video games wouldn't even mention Nintendo, lest it take up valuable print space to be devoted to Microsoft and Sony.
But at the same time, every Xbox sold helps to create a self-fulfilling prophecy with regards to pitching the console to developers. If you can point at your market and say that there are n million consoles in deployment, even if 1 million of them aren't intended for game purchases, that still makes the market look that much bigger, and those console purchasers aren't exactly locked out from buying future games/accessories for the system, so even if you bought your console just to hack it, you're still just as marketable for the next extreme beach volleyball game as the normal game purchasers. The "clever ploy" fails.
Incidentally, this is one aspect of anti-piracy where the PSP differs greatly from the Xbox. With the Xbox, console hackers would simply lose the ability to play games on Xbox Live, but they could still do system-link and otherwise play their games normally. The PSP's anti-piracy measures force the user to choose between either homebrew or retail games, a distinction which may (in a very small way) be part of the reason why the PSP doesn't sell very many games.
The reason Nintendo doesn't support WPA isn't because they hate you. It's because, unlike 99.9% of the major corporations out there, they care about their customers and they don't pass the buck when someone calls in having problems with their Wifi connection. Have some byzantine $20 Walmart-special router? They'll spend a couple hours with you on the phone probing it and prodding it to do whatever it takes to get it working for you. Try calling Microsoft sometime to see if they'll help you troubleshoot your router so that it'll work with Xbox Live.
They won't.
WEP is pretty trivially easy to support. How many configurations of WPA are there? Well, I'm trying to set up wpa_supplicant on my laptop right now, and goddamn, I didn't realize there were so many authentication variants.
Besides, if you're a real geek, you've got a WRT54G anyway, and those are about to support WVLANs with the custom firmware out there. That way I can run WPA/WDS and have a WEP layer for my DS and PSP.
Couldn't you signify in the article text (an icon or something) that the article was promoted from sectional status to front-page? This would have three useful effects. First off, it'd make it clear that the story was probably interesting (since it was interesting enough for the public to bump it up to the front page), which sort of adds some of the "story moderation" functionality people have been clamoring for. Second, it'd signify to people that the article isn't a dupe (at least, not on its face), and those who troll to scream about dupes would probably receive sufficient flaming to second-guess their dupe claims elsewhere. Lastly, it would probably drive more interest in the sectional stories, and thus it might motivate people who read just the main page to look into the sectional stories more often for bits of buried gold.
It looks good the way it is now. I like it. Now I have to commit fewer clicks to see stories. I don't have to memorize the number on the sidebar and then just compare when I load Slashdot.
About this...
One of the most common questions I get is simply "What does the '2 More' mean in the left side menu?" To me it's obvious: it means there are 2 more stories on say, apple.slashdot.org than you have seen on slashdot.org.
I imagine that much *is* obvious, but what isn't obvious is how that number is determined. If there are "5 more" stories on Apple, and I click on Apple, why do I see more than 5 stores? How is the number "5" factoring in at all? At first I figured it might have been cookied to only show unread stories within a certain timeframe, but that quickly proved to be false. So, the usefulness of the link is apparent, but the descriptor is byzantine.
Not only do you get a huge back catalogue, but you also get an explansion slot. How long will it be until you can buy a DS game that comes with a tilt cart, or a rumble pack?
As was mentioned by another poster, Metroid Prime Pinball comes with a rumble pack, and the rumble pack is also compatible with Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time. I expect this is the reason that DS cases have a GBA cartridge holder in them.
Not to mention the growing number of games that support GBA linking features.
I finished playing Castlevania DS the other night, and in reading a FAQ while looking for some things I had missed, I found out that if you start a new file with Aria of Sorrow in the GBA slot, you get a free Rare Ring. Since you can get that pretty easily later in the game, it's basically a free drop of cash, *plus* it helps you get more junk early on in the game, so it's super-helpful.
Megaman Battle Network 5 for the DS also supports a large amount of linking features. If you play it with any of the previous Battle Network GBA games inserted, the battle music and environments change to match those in the GBA game you used. They also each unlock extra chips for use in the DS game.
Even *neater* is the cross-company connectivity. The creator of MMBN (a Capcom employee) is good friends with the creator of Boktai (a Konami game/employee), and the two of them have worked together to put little tributes to each other in the games. You can unlock an extra Navi chip after you've finished the game if you play MMBN5 DS with one of the Boktai games in the GBA slot.
Also, there's a Japanese music game called Daigasso! Band Brothers which now has an expansion pack sold in GBA cartridge form.
No, this isn't Tiger Electronics at all - it's Tiger Telematics.
And they brought it on themselves allowing that association to take place. Tiger Electronics *did* make a handheld several years back called the Game.com, and it was awful. Horrible. Terrible. A few quick searches on the Internet demonstrate that a lot of people *did* think that this was the same Tiger, and blew off the Gizmondo for that reason alone.
Who gives a shit about whether this is a professional business or not?
The point is that your audience is filled with people who are generally regarded as "above-average" in terms of intelligence. If you want them to take you seriously, you need to play the same ball that they do.
When you refuse to acknowledge our intelligence by ignoring spelling and grammar, you basically disrespect us as geeks. We went to spelling bees as kids, we got beat up for knowing big words in high school. If this is "News For Nerds", then treat us like we really are the Nerds you are supposed to be a member of.
...isn't a piece at all. They're just reprinting a press release from one of the gold seller groups out there.
I guess they got tired of always getting turned in by players and generally harrassed for what they do. Why would Chinese players be playing on the US servers and *not* the Chinese servers? It's not like FFXI where everyone cohabitates the same servers.
Regarding Sakura Wars...The manga and anime have been released here, BTW. The manga carries the name Sakura Taisen instead, if I remember correctly.
I don't expect there was ever any intention to bring FF3 over here, but FF5 was translated and was supposed to be released, but I believe Square didn't follow through because they thought that the job system might be too much experimentation and might casue the game to flop in the US. It was talked about in Nintendo Power and was going to be called "Final Fantasy Extreme". It sounds laughable, but now that I've seen the would-be boxart for the NES release of FF2, not much else can surprise me about Square.
Nintendo Power also once ran a preview article about "Final Fantasy Adventure II", which was shortly thereafter renamed to Secret of Mana. Of course, most people who have played the Seiken Densetsu series know by now that FFA (now called Sword of Mana) is the first game.
The thing that makes mobile gaming such a non-starter is the awful interface though. I mean, maybe this is one regard that the N-Gage got right, since they have a real D-pad and the phone can interpret multiple simultaneous button presses, but most other phones can't.
There's also a lack of reviewability for cellphone games, since the experience is variable across cellular platforms, and a general lack of interest, in my opinion. My phone can handle 3D games, supposedly, but given the performance I've seen in such real stinkers as Metal Slug and Might And Magic, I'm not even gonna try it. Metal Slug was awful. The music skips without the player actually doing anything, and the game's controls are awful and it just generally plays poorly. I'd feel a lot more confident about spending $5 to $10 on a cellphone game if I knew that it was actually going to be worthwhile, but given that 90% of cellphone games are crap and 100% of them are non-transferrable, I'm pretty much over the tiny primitive interest I had in it.
I guess you didn't play FFXI for long. Step 4 can be obviated if you activate the shortcut option in the control panel. Step 8 can also be disabled. Hell, I did that before I even watched the damn movie. And the Handle selection process doesn't exist anymore.
Handles existed so that people could choose whether to have a character friended or an entire profile of characters. Let's say I have two separate characters that I both play, one with a bunch of rowdy guys and another that I play solo quietly. I can allow people to friend my first character without them even knowing of the existence of the second character. If they were on the same handle, then people would know I had another character and they'd see it if I logged in on it.
POL is stupid for many reasons, but you are stretching things out. I can get logged in within 15 seconds. Step 4 isn't "thinking" - it's network communcation and authentication. There's a network activity indicator in POL - I guess you never noticed it.
The thing is that POL was designed to be everything that Live is, and the reason that FFXI never made it onto the Xbox was because Microsoft wouldn't let Square use POL, and, as I'm sure you're no doubt aware, there's a very good reason for that. POL was also designed to eventually blossom into a "portal" of sorts, which is why Square charges for services like PlayOnline Plus. They were hoping to make it a one-stop communications centre so that they could make money off of you even if you weren't playing a game.
Also, as many people are aware, the Japanese player base is far larger on the PS2 than on the PC, and many PS2 players don't even own a PC, so POL provided a messaging tool that those players may not have already had.
I know it's fun to be indignant and make fun of everything Square does these days, but let's be a bit more informed and realistic, please.
You're in Nebraska. It'll take you a day or better to get down to the coast. Presumably you're going in a caravan. IE - multiple vehicles. Plus you're towing a trailer. Lots of gas. *Lots*.
Save that money and send it to a foundation or fund that's already working in that capacity. You're only going to get in the way. It's not like there's a great need for people to come down and fix homes or help with cleanup. The people in Pass Christian and Hancock County lost *everything*. Not just their homes, but their jobs and their ways of life. Getting them up and running is going to take more than a hammer and some nails.
If you *really* want to help, buy some trailers and have them delivered to random people on the coast. My family lives in Waveland and are in need of at least three trailers. FEMA won't give them the time of day, and meanwhile, the wealthier people on the beach got their trailers from FEMA in relatively short order.
Slashdot Mirror
Connection reset by peer.
Once you are finished they will know not only who you are, but where you stand on the issues at hand.
OH NO! I *definitely* don't want a politician to know what I think! How could he possibly act purely within his own interests if we bombard him with our own opinions?
I can easily see either viewpoint - Dexter's Laboratory took a break after the first few seasons, and the series went on in syndication for a while. Later on, some more episodes were ordered, but the writing and art direction of these were clearly different, and clearly sub-par in comparison. I think Dexter's VA might even have changed, and a quick check on IMDB proves I was right. I think Dexter basically died after they made the direct-to-DVD movie release. That in and of itself was decent, but not fabulous, but it clearly marked a shark-jumping point.
By this time, Tartakovsky was putting a lot more work into Samurai Jack I'm sure, and without his direct influence on Dexter, the series went south. One change I can think of in particular is that Deedee was turned from the charming nuisance into basically a total retard, and on occasion, the writing bore this on Dexter as well.
I wanna see a Justice Friends spinoff...
After Sony stole the show last year with their dazzling game trailers
Say what? I was at E3 last year. Sony was getting mocked for those same trailers, while Microsoft did have playable games.
Seriously, even those without a historical perspective on E3 should be able to read this line and say "WTF?". Game trailers can be dazzling, but they *never* steal the show.
I've played six of the seven NES games (never played Zombie Nation), eight of the ten SNES "games" (didn't try the Strike series, didn't have any desire whatsoever to play a Robocop game), and, oddly enough, only two of the N64 games, those being Pilotwings 64 and Blast Corps.
I bought Blast Corps before I even got an N64 because I knew I wanted that game whenever I finally did buy one. How's that for loyalty?
StarTropics would be an interesting one. It has the distinction of being one of the few games Nintendo developed exclusively for the US market - there was never a Japanese release for it or the sequel. Similarly, even though the arch-villian of the series makes a cameo appearance in F-Zero X, it's only the case in the US version, and his craft is just some generic racer in the other releases. But yes, it was a really good series, a bit like Zelda but with more of an action angle. I didn't care for the sequel as much, but the original was and still is pretty good.
I remember being rather disappointed to find out that the sequel to Blaster Master went to the Genesis, since I never had one. In the end, though, I believe the sequel ended up being not so great, and the Game Boy port (Blaster Master Boy) wasn't too good either from what I remember.
UN Squadron was great. I think I played the arcade ROM a bit (Area 88), and the console adaptation was really fun. I particularly enjoyed some of the bonus areas where you'd take a craft and make diving sweeps in a valley trying to bomb particular targets. A great was to make cash to buy that expensive EF-2000 and have some fun at the same time. In some ways, the game reminded me of Bionic Commando - not so much the whole 2D-action aspect, but the map system and plot development.
Legend of the Mystical Ninja - Ganbare Goemon IV, if I remember right, was a fantastic game. The 2-player mode was neat, but it got to be really frustrating at times to work together with your partner since it was pretty easy in the side-scrolling stages to cause your buddy to fall in a pit. The mini-games were great fun and the graphics/music were fabulous. It was just outright wacky and fun. Unfortunately, the next game Konami brought to the US was the 3D adaptation put on the N64, which history showed to be a less-than-forgiving system for 3rd parties, and the game itself wasn't so great...so as our punishment, we haven't seen another Goemon game in a long time...
EVO was pretty good, but historically a bit overrated I think. Enix made some great RPGs at the time (ActRaiser is a fabulous game), but EVO I think gets a lot of attention because of all the evolution-based RPGs out there, it was the only one that was ever any good, even though it had its flaws.
It was nice and nostalgic and all to see this article, but really, it was nothing more than a "games we like" list, and I don't think that's newsworthy to be honest. Now, if they tell me that Capcom and Konami and Square-Enix have stepped up to the plate for Way-Backwards Compatibility, THEN it is most DEFINITELY news.
Why aren't there more games like Syberia, Myst, The 7th Guest?
Profits.
Sensationalism aside, at least they're actually mentioning Nintendo. Usually these days, an article in Forbes about video games wouldn't even mention Nintendo, lest it take up valuable print space to be devoted to Microsoft and Sony.
I wouldn't complain too much.
Funny. IMHO, the speed of the browser peaked a long time ago (0.8 IIRC), and now it's just getting progressively slower over time.
They might be fixing critical security bugs, but they certainly don't seem to be fixing memleaks and such.
But at the same time, every Xbox sold helps to create a self-fulfilling prophecy with regards to pitching the console to developers. If you can point at your market and say that there are n million consoles in deployment, even if 1 million of them aren't intended for game purchases, that still makes the market look that much bigger, and those console purchasers aren't exactly locked out from buying future games/accessories for the system, so even if you bought your console just to hack it, you're still just as marketable for the next extreme beach volleyball game as the normal game purchasers. The "clever ploy" fails.
Incidentally, this is one aspect of anti-piracy where the PSP differs greatly from the Xbox. With the Xbox, console hackers would simply lose the ability to play games on Xbox Live, but they could still do system-link and otherwise play their games normally. The PSP's anti-piracy measures force the user to choose between either homebrew or retail games, a distinction which may (in a very small way) be part of the reason why the PSP doesn't sell very many games.
One could argue that it was a homophonic typo, and that the original author meant "third and on". It's amusing in either case.
The reason Nintendo doesn't support WPA isn't because they hate you. It's because, unlike 99.9% of the major corporations out there, they care about their customers and they don't pass the buck when someone calls in having problems with their Wifi connection. Have some byzantine $20 Walmart-special router? They'll spend a couple hours with you on the phone probing it and prodding it to do whatever it takes to get it working for you. Try calling Microsoft sometime to see if they'll help you troubleshoot your router so that it'll work with Xbox Live.
They won't.
WEP is pretty trivially easy to support. How many configurations of WPA are there? Well, I'm trying to set up wpa_supplicant on my laptop right now, and goddamn, I didn't realize there were so many authentication variants.
Besides, if you're a real geek, you've got a WRT54G anyway, and those are about to support WVLANs with the custom firmware out there. That way I can run WPA/WDS and have a WEP layer for my DS and PSP.
Couldn't you signify in the article text (an icon or something) that the article was promoted from sectional status to front-page? This would have three useful effects. First off, it'd make it clear that the story was probably interesting (since it was interesting enough for the public to bump it up to the front page), which sort of adds some of the "story moderation" functionality people have been clamoring for. Second, it'd signify to people that the article isn't a dupe (at least, not on its face), and those who troll to scream about dupes would probably receive sufficient flaming to second-guess their dupe claims elsewhere. Lastly, it would probably drive more interest in the sectional stories, and thus it might motivate people who read just the main page to look into the sectional stories more often for bits of buried gold.
It looks good the way it is now. I like it. Now I have to commit fewer clicks to see stories. I don't have to memorize the number on the sidebar and then just compare when I load Slashdot.
About this...
One of the most common questions I get is simply "What does the '2 More' mean in the left side menu?" To me it's obvious: it means there are 2 more stories on say, apple.slashdot.org than you have seen on slashdot.org.
I imagine that much *is* obvious, but what isn't obvious is how that number is determined. If there are "5 more" stories on Apple, and I click on Apple, why do I see more than 5 stores? How is the number "5" factoring in at all? At first I figured it might have been cookied to only show unread stories within a certain timeframe, but that quickly proved to be false. So, the usefulness of the link is apparent, but the descriptor is byzantine.
Like Hotblack Desiato?
Not only do you get a huge back catalogue, but you also get an explansion slot. How long will it be until you can buy a DS game that comes with a tilt cart, or a rumble pack?
As was mentioned by another poster, Metroid Prime Pinball comes with a rumble pack, and the rumble pack is also compatible with Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time. I expect this is the reason that DS cases have a GBA cartridge holder in them.
Not to mention the growing number of games that support GBA linking features.
I finished playing Castlevania DS the other night, and in reading a FAQ while looking for some things I had missed, I found out that if you start a new file with Aria of Sorrow in the GBA slot, you get a free Rare Ring. Since you can get that pretty easily later in the game, it's basically a free drop of cash, *plus* it helps you get more junk early on in the game, so it's super-helpful.
Megaman Battle Network 5 for the DS also supports a large amount of linking features. If you play it with any of the previous Battle Network GBA games inserted, the battle music and environments change to match those in the GBA game you used. They also each unlock extra chips for use in the DS game.
Even *neater* is the cross-company connectivity. The creator of MMBN (a Capcom employee) is good friends with the creator of Boktai (a Konami game/employee), and the two of them have worked together to put little tributes to each other in the games. You can unlock an extra Navi chip after you've finished the game if you play MMBN5 DS with one of the Boktai games in the GBA slot.
Also, there's a Japanese music game called Daigasso! Band Brothers which now has an expansion pack sold in GBA cartridge form.
No, this isn't Tiger Electronics at all - it's Tiger Telematics.
And they brought it on themselves allowing that association to take place. Tiger Electronics *did* make a handheld several years back called the Game.com, and it was awful. Horrible. Terrible. A few quick searches on the Internet demonstrate that a lot of people *did* think that this was the same Tiger, and blew off the Gizmondo for that reason alone.
Who gives a shit about whether this is a professional business or not?
The point is that your audience is filled with people who are generally regarded as "above-average" in terms of intelligence. If you want them to take you seriously, you need to play the same ball that they do.
When you refuse to acknowledge our intelligence by ignoring spelling and grammar, you basically disrespect us as geeks. We went to spelling bees as kids, we got beat up for knowing big words in high school. If this is "News For Nerds", then treat us like we really are the Nerds you are supposed to be a member of.
...isn't a piece at all. They're just reprinting a press release from one of the gold seller groups out there.
I guess they got tired of always getting turned in by players and generally harrassed for what they do. Why would Chinese players be playing on the US servers and *not* the Chinese servers? It's not like FFXI where everyone cohabitates the same servers.
Regarding Sakura Wars...The manga and anime have been released here, BTW. The manga carries the name Sakura Taisen instead, if I remember correctly.
I don't expect there was ever any intention to bring FF3 over here, but FF5 was translated and was supposed to be released, but I believe Square didn't follow through because they thought that the job system might be too much experimentation and might casue the game to flop in the US. It was talked about in Nintendo Power and was going to be called "Final Fantasy Extreme". It sounds laughable, but now that I've seen the would-be boxart for the NES release of FF2, not much else can surprise me about Square.
Nintendo Power also once ran a preview article about "Final Fantasy Adventure II", which was shortly thereafter renamed to Secret of Mana. Of course, most people who have played the Seiken Densetsu series know by now that FFA (now called Sword of Mana) is the first game.
The thing that makes mobile gaming such a non-starter is the awful interface though. I mean, maybe this is one regard that the N-Gage got right, since they have a real D-pad and the phone can interpret multiple simultaneous button presses, but most other phones can't.
There's also a lack of reviewability for cellphone games, since the experience is variable across cellular platforms, and a general lack of interest, in my opinion. My phone can handle 3D games, supposedly, but given the performance I've seen in such real stinkers as Metal Slug and Might And Magic, I'm not even gonna try it. Metal Slug was awful. The music skips without the player actually doing anything, and the game's controls are awful and it just generally plays poorly. I'd feel a lot more confident about spending $5 to $10 on a cellphone game if I knew that it was actually going to be worthwhile, but given that 90% of cellphone games are crap and 100% of them are non-transferrable, I'm pretty much over the tiny primitive interest I had in it.
Jack Driscoll is the writer, not the actor.
I guess you didn't play FFXI for long. Step 4 can be obviated if you activate the shortcut option in the control panel. Step 8 can also be disabled. Hell, I did that before I even watched the damn movie. And the Handle selection process doesn't exist anymore.
Handles existed so that people could choose whether to have a character friended or an entire profile of characters. Let's say I have two separate characters that I both play, one with a bunch of rowdy guys and another that I play solo quietly. I can allow people to friend my first character without them even knowing of the existence of the second character. If they were on the same handle, then people would know I had another character and they'd see it if I logged in on it.
POL is stupid for many reasons, but you are stretching things out. I can get logged in within 15 seconds. Step 4 isn't "thinking" - it's network communcation and authentication. There's a network activity indicator in POL - I guess you never noticed it.
The thing is that POL was designed to be everything that Live is, and the reason that FFXI never made it onto the Xbox was because Microsoft wouldn't let Square use POL, and, as I'm sure you're no doubt aware, there's a very good reason for that. POL was also designed to eventually blossom into a "portal" of sorts, which is why Square charges for services like PlayOnline Plus. They were hoping to make it a one-stop communications centre so that they could make money off of you even if you weren't playing a game.
Also, as many people are aware, the Japanese player base is far larger on the PS2 than on the PC, and many PS2 players don't even own a PC, so POL provided a messaging tool that those players may not have already had.
I know it's fun to be indignant and make fun of everything Square does these days, but let's be a bit more informed and realistic, please.
So, why not prepare a read-only partition on the drive with the appropriate driver kit, and make the second partition YAFFS?
They already ported it to the Game Boy Color.
Original post:
"They could at least port the SNES version of Dragon Warrior III to the GBA."
Graphically, the GBC version was inferior to the NES version.
You're in Nebraska. It'll take you a day or better to get down to the coast. Presumably you're going in a caravan. IE - multiple vehicles. Plus you're towing a trailer. Lots of gas. *Lots*.
Save that money and send it to a foundation or fund that's already working in that capacity. You're only going to get in the way. It's not like there's a great need for people to come down and fix homes or help with cleanup. The people in Pass Christian and Hancock County lost *everything*. Not just their homes, but their jobs and their ways of life. Getting them up and running is going to take more than a hammer and some nails.
If you *really* want to help, buy some trailers and have them delivered to random people on the coast. My family lives in Waveland and are in need of at least three trailers. FEMA won't give them the time of day, and meanwhile, the wealthier people on the beach got their trailers from FEMA in relatively short order.