OK, I don't have Tetris DS, but in Metroid Prime: Hunters, you can add anyone you play a game against as a Rival. Then you can see whether they are on and arrange games with them at any time.
You still need friend codes to chat, but not to play.
You don't have to deal with all five before the time runs out to complete the mission. I think you have to complete at least two, and not let anyone die.
And it's true that the tutor tips are quite annoying, but the clock stops while they are up.
Well, that isn't quite right. Regular 32-bit processes that aren't aware of PAE can still make use of 3GB *each*. So you could have 10 different regular apps each using 2GB of RAM without paging to disk.
Also, XP should be able to make perfectly good use of that RAM for disk cache, which could provide a substantial benefit to all processes.
True, it's not the same as full 64-bit support, as any individual process has to jump through hoops to use more than a 32-bit address space. XP Pro can certainly make use of it, though.
Art is essentially a medium of communication, from the artist to the audience. The best art conveys feelings and notions which can not be conveyed with literal descriptive language alone. The interactive nature of gaming, almost by definition, excludes it from being regarded as an art form, beyond the creative trappings of the game's "eye candy" and music soundtrack.
This is a very sophisticated notion, and the greatest challenge for gaming designers and critics today. I do not agree with it, but it's not trivial to refute.
Part of the problem is that video games are not homogenous in an artistic sense. Most art forms are, and thus they can be placed in a fairly straightforward conceptual box: film consists of moving pictures and sound; music in essence consists of sound only; sculpture consists of arranged and constructed objects; literature consists of language only; etc.
A video game always contains music, and it may contain cinematic sequences, and it will certainly contain still images of some sort. Many games include some amount of text material and a story. Certainly all of these can be art in and of themselves, but they all have their own history, so it's tempting to strip them away and examine the game without these "tacked-on" elements.
There are only a few games which betray this notion with clarity, and many of these are not well known. Rez is the best example I know; while it is indeed futile to consider Rez without its music, the game also adds something that the music doesn't have on its own. (Go play Rez now, if you care about art. I'll wait.)
Games like Rez can be regarded as unique, though, if you consider the game side of the experience a mere hypnotic device designed to increase mental immersion and thus increase the effect of the music. Also, this example doesn't apply so easily to a game like Super Mario Bros. However, I feel it is a good starting point to show the fallacy of the notion that interactivity excludes artistry by definition.
To go from there, I argue that the nature of art in a video game in general is what I call the "constructed experience". Traditional art can discuss and portray what it's like to be a pirate, or a race-car driver, or a spider; video games aspire to replicate the experience itself, within various limitations.
Of course, the real-world experiences are more or less dull, so we throw in a princess or two to spice things up (just like painters rarely paint the many dull scenes that they would see). Actually, this has led to the more imaginative practice of inventing the experience out of whole cloth, so that you too can spend a day in the life of the Prince of All Cosmos as he rolls up anything and everything to make new stars. When we hear talk of "gameplay", this is what it means -- the creativity and hard work that goes into creating a meaningful and textured new experience for the player. In a great game, this communicates something more than mere "fun", and that is where the art is.
Regardless of that article, such speculation is ridiculously absurd at this point, though by now we should be used to ridiculous speculation regarding all things Apple. Also, this sentence:
CEO Steve Jobs may be forced to resign if it is proved that he knowingly took an option grant at below market prices.
is completely false. There is nothing wrong with taking an option grant at below market prices, and that isn't the issue here at all; the issue is whether such things were reported properly. Jobs would only be at risk if it were shown that he intentionally deceived investors about the level of compensation he was getting.
My speculation? Most likely Jobs didn't determine the details of his compensation personally, and the person who did made a mistake. Options dating wasn't at the top of anyone's mind two years ago, and the impact on Apple's reported earnings is probably not much more than noise. Investors who sell now are being hasty as the situation is unlikely to change in any material way.
This WILL be a big deal at smaller companies where the options dating issue results in significant changes to the bottom line, but it's hard to imagine this being the case at Apple.
Well, they say that, but when pressed on the issue they insist that they will definitely release on those dates, for sure, as long as it's ready. When asked whether it will be ready, the answer is that they are pretty sure. Bottom line is that nobody in the whole world can say with any certainty when Vista will actually be released.
Oddly enough, while your post is sort of the conventional wisdom on the Plame leak controversy, you actually have it backwards.
Judith Miller -- the journalist involved in both these issues -- wasn't involved in any sort of attempt to damage the Bush administration with the Plame scandal. In fact, Bush insiders intentionally leaked the story to Miller and others as part of the Iraq WMD propaganda. Judith Miller's stories had swallowed the administration's line on WMD so leaking to her was a natural choice (along with other conservative reporters like Bob Novak).
Thus, the leak issue came up not because the media was obsessed with damaging the Bush administration, but because the government's prosecutor was determined to get to the bottom of the case (for whatever reason). Since it was pro-Bush journalists who had received the Plame leak, it was pro-Bush journalists who were being asked to reveal sources.
The more recent instances of anti-leak sentiment are more traditional cases of the "liberal media" publishing information that the Bush administration wanted to keep secret. This is the exact opposite of the Plame scandal, where the information was leaked on purpose.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that anyone who reads what Linus posts to linux-kernel will agree that the style of writing and thought in these Groklaw posts is his. So either it is indeed Linus or a very good replica.
The original post was a pretty good troll, but I'd stick with the copy/paste. You haven't really learned the skills for a good followup on Slashdot; "fanboy" accusations are only taken seriously on teenager videogame forums. Regardless, congrats on your Interesting mod and your three taken-in replies (so far).
So mods, for those of you just joining us, the post above is a good example of what's called a "troll". It can be difficult to determine, but here are some signs:
1. The same message has been posted repeatedly on Wii-related threads. Takes some close reading to catch something like that, but be aware of that eerie familiar feeling.
2. The message makes claims that are rather unlikely: "one of my friends is currently working on a Wii game"... suuuure. As the system hasn't been released, relatively few teams currently working on games for it, and most of them are in Japan (so they wouldn't have been working on a 360 game before).
3. The post has a flaw in its internal logic. Game developers in general don't have much access to unreleased games other than the ones they are actually working on. A controller, no matter how fantastic, isn't a lot of fun by itself. It's not surprising that the supposed friend would be bored with playing his own game or swinging the controller around in a devkit demo.
Maybe you can write in some kind of mathemetician character that spews pop nonsense about some new field of mathematical research. Then he can explain that he wears black clothes in heat because of "black body radiation".
Once you're done with that you can write books about how scientists are all idiots.
Personally I don't care what percentage it is of my household income -- with inflation my fixed costs have become higher than before, and I'd be buying a game system out of free cash, not total cash. Let's see what percentage that is about... ah yes, negative 600 percent. The PS3 costs negative 600 percent of my monthly free cash right now.
In fact, Apple sold 8.5 million iPods in the quarter ending April 1, which of course doesn't include the holiday quarter. This is an increase of 61% over the same quarter in 2005.
To include the holiday season: for the six months ending on 4/1 they sold 22.5 million, which is an increase of 128% over the same period in 2005.
True, "predicted" is sort of a weasel word; some people predicted more, and some people predicted less. I'm not aware of a published consensus estimate of iPod unit sales.
I notice you are arguing this from a very comfortable perspective, a Western European perspective, so that you can easily say that an invisible unicorn could not be pink, but you are ignoring the many different cultures out there with their many different perspectives, and it may be that from a different perspective an invisible unicorn could be pink, or any number of other colors, in fact. Very comfortable perspective.
Most of the time, Nethack does a pretty good job of this. There's also Ikaruga, at least as far as I can tell, though I hear it is actually possible to make it through three levels without getting killed.
Yes, and 25 years from now we will all rue the day when surgeons thought they could extract the Zombification Prevention Organ with impunity, as if it were a mere "appendix".
People get used to things after a while. Film at 11.
Personally the touchscreen on my DS doesn't seem like a big deal to me anymore, but that doesn't mean I like Trauma Center or Meteos any less, and neither game would be much fun without the touchscreen. Of course, your game developer friend isn't playing all the new games in the works for the Wii, as they haven't been released yet. I'm sure that swinging the controller around on the devkit demo does get old after a while.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a grandfather who, as recently as 1995, refused to buy anything Japanese because of World War II.
1990 was more than fifteen years ago -- do you have anything, uh, recent?
OK, I don't have Tetris DS, but in Metroid Prime: Hunters, you can add anyone you play a game against as a Rival. Then you can see whether they are on and arrange games with them at any time.
You still need friend codes to chat, but not to play.
You don't have to deal with all five before the time runs out to complete the mission. I think you have to complete at least two, and not let anyone die.
And it's true that the tutor tips are quite annoying, but the clock stops while they are up.
Well, that isn't quite right. Regular 32-bit processes that aren't aware of PAE can still make use of 3GB *each*. So you could have 10 different regular apps each using 2GB of RAM without paging to disk.
Also, XP should be able to make perfectly good use of that RAM for disk cache, which could provide a substantial benefit to all processes.
This isn't so.
e nsion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Ext
True, it's not the same as full 64-bit support, as any individual process has to jump through hoops to use more than a 32-bit address space. XP Pro can certainly make use of it, though.
Art is essentially a medium of communication, from the artist to the audience. The best art conveys feelings and notions which can not be conveyed with literal descriptive language alone. The interactive nature of gaming, almost by definition, excludes it from being regarded as an art form, beyond the creative trappings of the game's "eye candy" and music soundtrack.
This is a very sophisticated notion, and the greatest challenge for gaming designers and critics today. I do not agree with it, but it's not trivial to refute.
Part of the problem is that video games are not homogenous in an artistic sense. Most art forms are, and thus they can be placed in a fairly straightforward conceptual box: film consists of moving pictures and sound; music in essence consists of sound only; sculpture consists of arranged and constructed objects; literature consists of language only; etc.
A video game always contains music, and it may contain cinematic sequences, and it will certainly contain still images of some sort. Many games include some amount of text material and a story. Certainly all of these can be art in and of themselves, but they all have their own history, so it's tempting to strip them away and examine the game without these "tacked-on" elements.
There are only a few games which betray this notion with clarity, and many of these are not well known. Rez is the best example I know; while it is indeed futile to consider Rez without its music, the game also adds something that the music doesn't have on its own. (Go play Rez now, if you care about art. I'll wait.)
Games like Rez can be regarded as unique, though, if you consider the game side of the experience a mere hypnotic device designed to increase mental immersion and thus increase the effect of the music. Also, this example doesn't apply so easily to a game like Super Mario Bros. However, I feel it is a good starting point to show the fallacy of the notion that interactivity excludes artistry by definition.
To go from there, I argue that the nature of art in a video game in general is what I call the "constructed experience". Traditional art can discuss and portray what it's like to be a pirate, or a race-car driver, or a spider; video games aspire to replicate the experience itself, within various limitations.
Of course, the real-world experiences are more or less dull, so we throw in a princess or two to spice things up (just like painters rarely paint the many dull scenes that they would see). Actually, this has led to the more imaginative practice of inventing the experience out of whole cloth, so that you too can spend a day in the life of the Prince of All Cosmos as he rolls up anything and everything to make new stars. When we hear talk of "gameplay", this is what it means -- the creativity and hard work that goes into creating a meaningful and textured new experience for the player. In a great game, this communicates something more than mere "fun", and that is where the art is.
Maybe I should just avoid the Apple rumors sites from now on?
+1, Insightful
This is a developer's conference, not E3.
Dude, forget about turn signals. Sounds like you'd be better off just turning on your hazard lights.
Regardless of that article, such speculation is ridiculously absurd at this point, though by now we should be used to ridiculous speculation regarding all things Apple. Also, this sentence:
CEO Steve Jobs may be forced to resign if it is proved that he knowingly took an option grant at below market prices.
is completely false. There is nothing wrong with taking an option grant at below market prices, and that isn't the issue here at all; the issue is whether such things were reported properly. Jobs would only be at risk if it were shown that he intentionally deceived investors about the level of compensation he was getting.
My speculation? Most likely Jobs didn't determine the details of his compensation personally, and the person who did made a mistake. Options dating wasn't at the top of anyone's mind two years ago, and the impact on Apple's reported earnings is probably not much more than noise. Investors who sell now are being hasty as the situation is unlikely to change in any material way.
This WILL be a big deal at smaller companies where the options dating issue results in significant changes to the bottom line, but it's hard to imagine this being the case at Apple.
Well, they say that, but when pressed on the issue they insist that they will definitely release on those dates, for sure, as long as it's ready. When asked whether it will be ready, the answer is that they are pretty sure. Bottom line is that nobody in the whole world can say with any certainty when Vista will actually be released.
Oddly enough, while your post is sort of the conventional wisdom on the Plame leak controversy, you actually have it backwards.
Judith Miller -- the journalist involved in both these issues -- wasn't involved in any sort of attempt to damage the Bush administration with the Plame scandal. In fact, Bush insiders intentionally leaked the story to Miller and others as part of the Iraq WMD propaganda. Judith Miller's stories had swallowed the administration's line on WMD so leaking to her was a natural choice (along with other conservative reporters like Bob Novak).
Thus, the leak issue came up not because the media was obsessed with damaging the Bush administration, but because the government's prosecutor was determined to get to the bottom of the case (for whatever reason). Since it was pro-Bush journalists who had received the Plame leak, it was pro-Bush journalists who were being asked to reveal sources.
The more recent instances of anti-leak sentiment are more traditional cases of the "liberal media" publishing information that the Bush administration wanted to keep secret. This is the exact opposite of the Plame scandal, where the information was leaked on purpose.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that anyone who reads what Linus posts to linux-kernel will agree that the style of writing and thought in these Groklaw posts is his. So either it is indeed Linus or a very good replica.
The original post was a pretty good troll, but I'd stick with the copy/paste. You haven't really learned the skills for a good followup on Slashdot; "fanboy" accusations are only taken seriously on teenager videogame forums. Regardless, congrats on your Interesting mod and your three taken-in replies (so far).
So mods, for those of you just joining us, the post above is a good example of what's called a "troll". It can be difficult to determine, but here are some signs:
1. The same message has been posted repeatedly on Wii-related threads. Takes some close reading to catch something like that, but be aware of that eerie familiar feeling.
2. The message makes claims that are rather unlikely: "one of my friends is currently working on a Wii game"... suuuure. As the system hasn't been released, relatively few teams currently working on games for it, and most of them are in Japan (so they wouldn't have been working on a 360 game before).
3. The post has a flaw in its internal logic. Game developers in general don't have much access to unreleased games other than the ones they are actually working on. A controller, no matter how fantastic, isn't a lot of fun by itself. It's not surprising that the supposed friend would be bored with playing his own game or swinging the controller around in a devkit demo.
Anyway, thanks for moderating and good luck.
Look, we all know the song. If you're going to carry the joke forward, extend on the metaphor.
Maybe you can write in some kind of mathemetician character that spews pop nonsense about some new field of mathematical research. Then he can explain that he wears black clothes in heat because of "black body radiation".
Once you're done with that you can write books about how scientists are all idiots.
More like my "extra cash" is negative.
Personally I don't care what percentage it is of my household income -- with inflation my fixed costs have become higher than before, and I'd be buying a game system out of free cash, not total cash. Let's see what percentage that is about... ah yes, negative 600 percent. The PS3 costs negative 600 percent of my monthly free cash right now.
More like "submitter is making stuff up".
In fact, Apple sold 8.5 million iPods in the quarter ending April 1, which of course doesn't include the holiday quarter. This is an increase of 61% over the same quarter in 2005.
To include the holiday season: for the six months ending on 4/1 they sold 22.5 million, which is an increase of 128% over the same period in 2005.
True, "predicted" is sort of a weasel word; some people predicted more, and some people predicted less. I'm not aware of a published consensus estimate of iPod unit sales.
I notice you are arguing this from a very comfortable perspective, a Western European perspective, so that you can easily say that an invisible unicorn could not be pink, but you are ignoring the many different cultures out there with their many different perspectives, and it may be that from a different perspective an invisible unicorn could be pink, or any number of other colors, in fact. Very comfortable perspective.
Having watched SAC, I find your obsession with the "original" hilarious.
Most of the time, Nethack does a pretty good job of this. There's also Ikaruga, at least as far as I can tell, though I hear it is actually possible to make it through three levels without getting killed.
Yes, and 25 years from now we will all rue the day when surgeons thought they could extract the Zombification Prevention Organ with impunity, as if it were a mere "appendix".
Yeah, it's posts like this one that really cry out for the (+1, Troll) moderation option.
People get used to things after a while. Film at 11.
Personally the touchscreen on my DS doesn't seem like a big deal to me anymore, but that doesn't mean I like Trauma Center or Meteos any less, and neither game would be much fun without the touchscreen. Of course, your game developer friend isn't playing all the new games in the works for the Wii, as they haven't been released yet. I'm sure that swinging the controller around on the devkit demo does get old after a while.