Not only Med School (and what is an american anyway?:) )
Heck, there were classes I took in Undergrad (let alone Grad), where I was one of two people who were "native" Americans (Born here or parents born here). The teacher one day asked all those who did not have english as their first language to raise their hands (or maybe it was the other way around). Interesting thing. Now, granted the teacher was an immigrant also, so there was no bias or prejudice, she was just having amazed one day when we were discussing Europe and we realized how many people were from there.:)
Now, a large number of people were immigrants (they moved here and planned on staying), but a small percentage of the class were international students (came for the degree, planned on returning home), and yes, most of those were from India, China and Japan.
Hmmm after reading the article, is it any surprise that only some relative newbies would be willing to do a simple Fed-Ex quest? (the only ones who seemed to help were a couple of girls in their 20s)
I suspect that the other adventurers were merely on their way to a higher XP area/quest to complete.:P
I hope you were paying attention at the end of Halo 2, because the folks at Bungie don't waste any time getting new players up to speed.
and
If you are a fan of the previous games, the story of Halo 3 is going to satisfy your need to see things wrapped up. What it's not going to do is surprise you. The plot plays out pretty much the way you'd expect, though the writers do make some very mature choices towards the end of the tale that distinguish it a bit from every other hero's journey.
I have to wonder if this game is for me though.
Yeah, somehow I must have been living under a rock and not played the first two Halos.
I know that a game doesn't have to cater to new followers (who may as well be completely in the dark), as well as "The Faithful", but from the perspective of the review, it seems that they aren't even a blip on the radar.
Well... I haven't played any of the Halo series (not my cup of tea), but I always assumed that Master Chief was just the guys title. Similar to how you see the some characters referred to just by title in Books/Movies, I assumed that referring to this faceless character by title only was a plot device to help draw the player into the world, since the dialog would refer to someone/something they could be, instead of using a third parties name (that wasn't theirs).
In the "Real World" U.S. Navy & Coast Guard "Master Chief Petty Officer is the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank (E-9) in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, just above Senior Chief Petty Officer, and is a non-commissioned officer. They are referred to as Master Chief in most circumstances."
From the bottom of the same Wikipedia page: "In the Halo video game series, SPARTAN-117 (John), more commonly called the Master Chief, the protagonist of the series, holds the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer in the United Nations Space Command."
I don't know where "beats Microsoft over the head" comes in. IBM is donating Microsoft-developed code that empowers the blind to use software better.
The irony relates to Microsoft's use of disability advocates to block the adoption of ODF in Massachusetts.
Microsoft's own code will be used to spike that weapon.
Actually the Irony is even deeper. Windows was started as a joint venture between IBM and MS to hold people over until OS/2 Warp could be marketed (and then as the "Home" windowing OS where OS/2 Warp was supposed to be the business one). Then MS came out with NT and essentially killed OS/2 (especially when OS/2 had an NT emulation layer, so you could just write the program for one OS and get an extra for free).
MS essentially pulled off the biggest Software coup of the Century and now the majority of people use Windows as their primary OS.
I hope they have old OS/2 Warp programmers helping integrate the new code into OO. That would just make it much more enjoyable to me, and those folks deserve some revenge.:)
Read: It sucks, but it's pretty (Because it sucks). And we pay our PR guys well.
When are Sony's developers going to realize that open areas, and/or varied encounters through intelligent AI = successful FPS? Halo 2 wasn't THAT pretty, and it still sold through the nose.
Umm... Halo 2 (and 3) sold for one reason and one reason only: Multiplayer.
I think Sony's developers fully understand that since they just released Warhawk which plays like Battlefield and supports up to 32 players in huge environments.
Lair, Warhawk, Drake's Quest, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Heavenly Sword all of which are either out now, or due out over the next month or two (those are just the titles off the top of my head, I'm sure there are a few more).
There are also a few PSN games (similar to Live! Acade), such as Super Stardust HD, and Calling All Cars, which are already out and have been helping build quite a following. The only problem with most on-line distributed games is that you don't see as much coverage of them in magazines.
True, the 360 is still leading the PS3 in sales, but this is similar in some ways to Windows.
Sony is still selling the PS2 (at a low price that competes with the Wii), at the same point that they are selling the PS3, and the PS2 is still outselling both the PS3 and the 360.
In this case Sony's biggest competitor (besides the Wii which claims to be aiming for a different demographic) is themselves. Not everyone buys in the first year or two of a generation. A good question to ask is, "What console are all of those people who own a PS2 going to buy 2-3 years down the road when they decide its finally time to upgrade?" Especially if they have a large game library of PS2 games, and they still pull out and play one or two of them every now and then?
On the other hand, the deployment of SDV is just rendering these tivos obsolete, unless there is a way to fix it through firmware they must be scrambling to build the Series 4.
Well... the nice part about the HD TiVos (and Series 3), is that they also include the ability to tune Over The Air, so they aren't exactly Obsolete.
There has also been speculation that a back-chanel communication mechanism could be worked out (via the TiVo's internet connection), if the Cable Companies were willing.
A Series 4 might be in the works, but for that to happen, there would have to be an agreed upon way of handling the bi-directional communication, otherwise all it could hope for would be a piggy-back device like the Series 2, but with HD inputs, and the Cable Companies would just screw them by making sure the "do not record" flag is always set.
Yeah, the Cable companies boxes usually are pretty sucky. Glad you were able to get your CableCards installed, thats usually the biggest hurdle and completely depends on your location (they don't train the techs except through "On the job training" usually).
I was lucky. The guy came out and said he's been doing about three to seven installs a day (for the past three months, this was back in November).
No. CableCard may be a bastard step child of sorts, but it works.
I've been happily using my TiVo, with CableCards, for the last 9 months. TiVo's underpinnings are Linux. Its been rock-solid. Yes, as far as the Cable Companies are concerned in my neck of the woods (NYC), a service tech had to come out, put the CableCards in their slots, and then call in the pairing information over the phone to someone else (who entered it in manually... geez talk about a system that could be automated and let you enter information from home via a website and a customer service kit with a cable card in it).
I haven't had any issues with it. Its been working wonderfully.
If Windows has problems dealing with CableCards, then it is a fault of Windows (surprise).
NYC subway has a daily ridership in excess of 5 million versus the cities population of ~8-10 million. The subway is one of the ten most busy in the world. It is also one of the only ones that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (which is part of its expense), which sets it apart from most other major metropolitan areas where the rails close at a certain hour.
Keeping roads and bridges/tunnels in good repair is certainly important, but the amount of City funds given to support mass transit is abysmal.
so now you just walk or take public transit. last i checked there was no toll for walking or taking transit to enter manhattan.
Well... there is the problem (and the reason a lot of people who live in the area are opposed to the idea).
The money collected from the tolls is supposed to go toward improving Mass Transit (bus and subway system) to support the increased ridership expected due to the toll.... but the transit system is already close to the breaking point during rush hour (I sometimes have to wait for several trains to pass before there is room to squeeze onto one)... and the MTA who runs the transit system has also said they plan on fare increase (due to lack of support from City and State government)
So, "will the money ever actually make it into the mass transit system, and will the system be able to support the number of people trying to use it?" are the main questions. It will also raise the price on all the goods in the city (since stores & trucks will probably pass along fees instead of moving deliveries to off-hours).
It might take setting up some sort of routing software on a local PC for each person involved in the game, but it should be very doable to make the PS3 think its playing locally against people from across the country/globe. Wether the LAN game can support the response times and how bandwidth requirements will be impacted is a different question.
When it's all said and done, Warhawk is a Peer-to-Peer network game, and the "Servers" have to be running Warhawk, and the only real way to do that, is to run them on actual PS3 hardware.
Uh, no. Tbey have the source code, they can port/recompile/test on any system they want. Sure, that has an associated cost, but running it on commodity hardware - or even just on hardware that'll rackmount better - will pay for it eventually.
Well... there IS something to be said for only having ONE codebase to have to test against (as well as one target architecture).
While they COULD recompile, etc. they would then have to make sure that the code runs okay on the servers, and that it also runs on the PS3s (if they keep the peer-server feature). Yeah, if it was running on commodity hardware, they might save some (although a PS3 is only $500 retail, so I don't think commodity hardware will save you that much), but there would be an increased expenditure in porting, and maintaining the codebase.
You're absolutely correct. If there is a master server to list then you are right. The cost required to operate/maintain a master server though is probably quite a bit less than maintaining dedicated servers, which should provide less incentive for a company to "pull support".
The game itself supports LAN play so I would assume that directly entering the IP of the server should work though.
I wonder if the 3-core CPU in the X360 reflects the ideas represented in the 3-way AMD server story. I hadn't thought of the one-hop idea. I can't tell if the X360 has a Gig-E jack on it (PS3 has Gig-E), but otherwise it appears that the X360 can be used to do pretty much the same thing.
Yeah... IBM has been doing 3-way chip design for a bit, and since the 360's chips are from IBM... I wouldn't be surprised if this is part of why they went that route.
On the other hand I think the XBox 360's reliability would prevent it from being used like this. There have been too many RRoD stories for MS to use server clusters like this.
Their rate of failure would kill them (in terms of $$$ lost and publicity), if they had a fraction of the reported unit failures.
Well... the other benefit of the included server is that it allows more flexibility to the end user.
- Have a Clan and enough bandwidth and want to host a server for your clan? No problem (you can host a game and play on it at the same time). - The number of servers should (theoretically) scale with the number of users, since any user can host an "official game" (locked parameters). - There is little(to no) danger of someone shutting off the servers (such as was done recently), since even if all the official servers went away, there would still be the unofficial ones.
Now Macross is another animal. It was well well writen, and even the first part of the English version Robotech was very much watchable. It's not seen as being as popular as there was a dispute over the rights to the toys. It seemed in the early 80s the yen was somewhat weak and kids who were interested had a choice to buy either Robotech toys, or Macross toys, where Macross Toys were slightly cheaper.
And to make things more interesting Hasbro, who was making the Transformers toy line, licensed the Valkyrie VHF-1 Macross figure from Bandai and released it as the Autobot Jetfire. I remember hearing about a lawsuit with the Robotech people over it in the States. Didn't care, loved playing with it, and was very surprised when I got into Robotech/Macross, and discovered this (along with being to play with it even more:D ).
Well... FinalFantasy XI was released on the PS2, and then ported to the XBox360.
The people who brought you Crackdown are working on a MMORPG for the XBox 360.
Sony also announced a whole bunch as being "in development", ("Endless Saga" from Webzen, an untitled MMORPG from Square Enix (rumored to be a new version of FFXI), a DC Comics based MMORPG (hopefully targeting PCs and PS3s), "The World" (from Namco/Bandai based on.Hack)). The only MMORPG that we've seen anything about though has been "The Agency". Which looks like an MMORPG, in a spy world.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only Med School (and what is an american anyway? :) )
:)
Heck, there were classes I took in Undergrad (let alone Grad), where I was one of two people who were "native" Americans (Born here or parents born here). The teacher one day asked all those who did not have english as their first language to raise their hands (or maybe it was the other way around). Interesting thing. Now, granted the teacher was an immigrant also, so there was no bias or prejudice, she was just having amazed one day when we were discussing Europe and we realized how many people were from there.
Now, a large number of people were immigrants (they moved here and planned on staying), but a small percentage of the class were international students (came for the degree, planned on returning home), and yes, most of those were from India, China and Japan.
Hmmm after reading the article, is it any surprise that only some relative newbies would be willing to do a simple Fed-Ex quest? (the only ones who seemed to help were a couple of girls in their 20s)
:P
I suspect that the other adventurers were merely on their way to a higher XP area/quest to complete.
and
I have to wonder if this game is for me though.
Yeah, somehow I must have been living under a rock and not played the first two Halos.
I know that a game doesn't have to cater to new followers (who may as well be completely in the dark), as well as "The Faithful", but from the perspective of the review, it seems that they aren't even a blip on the radar.
Well ... I haven't played any of the Halo series (not my cup of tea), but I always assumed that Master Chief was just the guys title. Similar to how you see the some characters referred to just by title in Books/Movies, I assumed that referring to this faceless character by title only was a plot device to help draw the player into the world, since the dialog would refer to someone/something they could be, instead of using a third parties name (that wasn't theirs).
In the "Real World" U.S. Navy & Coast Guard "Master Chief Petty Officer is the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank (E-9) in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, just above Senior Chief Petty Officer, and is a non-commissioned officer. They are referred to as Master Chief in most circumstances."
From the bottom of the same Wikipedia page: "In the Halo video game series, SPARTAN-117 (John), more commonly called the Master Chief, the protagonist of the series, holds the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer in the United Nations Space Command."
Actually the Irony is even deeper. Windows was started as a joint venture between IBM and MS to hold people over until OS/2 Warp could be marketed (and then as the "Home" windowing OS where OS/2 Warp was supposed to be the business one). Then MS came out with NT and essentially killed OS/2 (especially when OS/2 had an NT emulation layer, so you could just write the program for one OS and get an extra for free).
MS essentially pulled off the biggest Software coup of the Century and now the majority of people use Windows as their primary OS.
I hope they have old OS/2 Warp programmers helping integrate the new code into OO. That would just make it much more enjoyable to me, and those folks deserve some revenge.
Umm
I think Sony's developers fully understand that since they just released Warhawk which plays like Battlefield and supports up to 32 players in huge environments.
Some of the near-term PS3 exclusives:
/ message?message.uid=27804779#U27804779 for a list of upcoming exclusives.
Lair, Warhawk, Drake's Quest, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Heavenly Sword all of which are either out now, or due out over the next month or two (those are just the titles off the top of my head, I'm sure there are a few more).
There are also a few PSN games (similar to Live! Acade), such as Super Stardust HD, and Calling All Cars, which are already out and have been helping build quite a following. The only problem with most on-line distributed games is that you don't see as much coverage of them in magazines.
Check out http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board
True, the 360 is still leading the PS3 in sales, but this is similar in some ways to Windows.
Sony is still selling the PS2 (at a low price that competes with the Wii), at the same point that they are selling the PS3, and the PS2 is still outselling both the PS3 and the 360.
In this case Sony's biggest competitor (besides the Wii which claims to be aiming for a different demographic) is themselves. Not everyone buys in the first year or two of a generation. A good question to ask is, "What console are all of those people who own a PS2 going to buy 2-3 years down the road when they decide its finally time to upgrade?" Especially if they have a large game library of PS2 games, and they still pull out and play one or two of them every now and then?
Well
There has also been speculation that a back-chanel communication mechanism could be worked out (via the TiVo's internet connection), if the Cable Companies were willing.
A Series 4 might be in the works, but for that to happen, there would have to be an agreed upon way of handling the bi-directional communication, otherwise all it could hope for would be a piggy-back device like the Series 2, but with HD inputs, and the Cable Companies would just screw them by making sure the "do not record" flag is always set.
LOL! That's just wrong on so many levels. :)
"Computer, I'd like to register my mutation... It's Machine Empathy."
-- Entry 388 of Famous Last Words in Role Playing
The Spice Must Flow
Vern, ever since they said I couldn't fish with Dynamite, I switched to my backup plan
Congratulations on making the jump to TiVo.
Yeah, the Cable companies boxes usually are pretty sucky. Glad you were able to get your CableCards installed, thats usually the biggest hurdle and completely depends on your location (they don't train the techs except through "On the job training" usually).
I was lucky. The guy came out and said he's been doing about three to seven installs a day (for the past three months, this was back in November).
No. CableCard may be a bastard step child of sorts, but it works.
... geez talk about a system that could be automated and let you enter information from home via a website and a customer service kit with a cable card in it).
I've been happily using my TiVo, with CableCards, for the last 9 months. TiVo's underpinnings are Linux. Its been rock-solid. Yes, as far as the Cable Companies are concerned in my neck of the woods (NYC), a service tech had to come out, put the CableCards in their slots, and then call in the pairing information over the phone to someone else (who entered it in manually
I haven't had any issues with it. Its been working wonderfully.
If Windows has problems dealing with CableCards, then it is a fault of Windows (surprise).
You'll notice that I said "City and State".
NYC subway has a daily ridership in excess of 5 million versus the cities population of ~8-10 million. The subway is one of the ten most busy in the world. It is also one of the only ones that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (which is part of its expense), which sets it apart from most other major metropolitan areas where the rails close at a certain hour.
Keeping roads and bridges/tunnels in good repair is certainly important, but the amount of City funds given to support mass transit is abysmal.
Well
The money collected from the tolls is supposed to go toward improving Mass Transit (bus and subway system) to support the increased ridership expected due to the toll.
So, "will the money ever actually make it into the mass transit system, and will the system be able to support the number of people trying to use it?" are the main questions. It will also raise the price on all the goods in the city (since stores & trucks will probably pass along fees instead of moving deliveries to off-hours).
They've been ways around things like this for a long time.
Take a look at things like Kali.
It might take setting up some sort of routing software on a local PC for each person involved in the game, but it should be very doable to make the PS3 think its playing locally against people from across the country/globe. Wether the LAN game can support the response times and how bandwidth requirements will be impacted is a different question.
Well
While they COULD recompile, etc. they would then have to make sure that the code runs okay on the servers, and that it also runs on the PS3s (if they keep the peer-server feature). Yeah, if it was running on commodity hardware, they might save some (although a PS3 is only $500 retail, so I don't think commodity hardware will save you that much), but there would be an increased expenditure in porting, and maintaining the codebase.
You're absolutely correct. If there is a master server to list then you are right. The cost required to operate/maintain a master server though is probably quite a bit less than maintaining dedicated servers, which should provide less incentive for a company to "pull support".
The game itself supports LAN play so I would assume that directly entering the IP of the server should work though.
Yeah
On the other hand I think the XBox 360's reliability would prevent it from being used like this. There have been too many RRoD stories for MS to use server clusters like this.
Their rate of failure would kill them (in terms of $$$ lost and publicity), if they had a fraction of the reported unit failures.
Well ... the other benefit of the included server is that it allows more flexibility to the end user.
- Have a Clan and enough bandwidth and want to host a server for your clan? No problem (you can host a game and play on it at the same time).
- The number of servers should (theoretically) scale with the number of users, since any user can host an "official game" (locked parameters).
- There is little(to no) danger of someone shutting off the servers (such as was done recently), since even if all the official servers went away, there would still be the unofficial ones.
I applaud the developers decision.
And to make things more interesting Hasbro, who was making the Transformers toy line, licensed the Valkyrie VHF-1 Macross figure from Bandai and released it as the Autobot Jetfire. I remember hearing about a lawsuit with the Robotech people over it in the States. Didn't care, loved playing with it, and was very surprised when I got into Robotech/Macross, and discovered this (along with being to play with it even more
Well ... FinalFantasy XI was released on the PS2, and then ported to the XBox360.
.Hack)). The only MMORPG that we've seen anything about though has been "The Agency". Which looks like an MMORPG, in a spy world.
The people who brought you Crackdown are working on a MMORPG for the XBox 360.
Sony also announced a whole bunch as being "in development", ("Endless Saga" from Webzen, an untitled MMORPG from Square Enix (rumored to be a new version of FFXI), a DC Comics based MMORPG (hopefully targeting PCs and PS3s), "The World" (from Namco/Bandai based on
You forgot Warhawk.
... that would be the title, and certainly enough to be fighting words. :)
To quote a recent preview
"The online blast we'll still be playing when Halo 3 is a distant memory"