Just because all administrations pull shenanigans doesn't mean all shenanigans are the same. Bush pulled people out of a conference based upon who they gave money to in the previous election. You know, the reason why voting is anonymous and why it is illegal to discriminate based upon who someone gave money to in the previous election cycle. Whitewater may have been illegal, but the difference between cheating on your taxes for a real estate deal and declaring that the Magna Carta no longer applies is tremendous. Clinton lied under oath about getting a hummer because he didn't want his wife or daughter to know that he's kind of slimy, and Bush had the CIA rewrite intelligence documents then lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to get into a war he couldn't otherwise justify to the American people. There is a big difference there. While Clinton refused a few FOIA requests WRT to whitewater, Bush has refused all FOIA requests. While Clinton had military scandals during his administration, and he certainly copped out on the don't ask don't tell policy, the Bush administration taught military interrogators at Guantanamo that conventions on human rights against torture no longer apply, then transferred them around the globe to spread this joy. While Clinton could have done less to antagonize certain countries, he didn't shortsightedly add anyone to an "axis of Evil," forcing them to get nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.
What happened in Waco Texas was a tragedy and horrible mistake all around. But the re-opening of American internment camps should make anyone's alarm bells ring. While Clinton pre-screened questions at a lot of town-hall meetings, he didn't kick people out because they didn't swear an oath to him. While Clinton used "free-speech zones" during the DNC (a shameful tradition at both the DNC and the RNC since the famous 68 DNC protest), Bush has used "free-speech zones" at every appearance for his entire presidency.
So yes, actively squelshing the careers of people who donated money to the opposition candidate is flagrantly, painfully, mindbendingly illegal, and both grossly goes against a lot of the foundational principles of this country and pretty much proves that they gave money to the right candidate.
When I was a kid, I would have been vehemontly against such a thing. Any policy or any extra rules set, especially around video games, would have been opposed with all of the stubbornness a 12 year old year-of-the-horse child can muster.
But now that I'm facing the prospect of having children myself, I'm all for it. I remember how I used to sneak out to the TV to play games from midnight until 5 or 6 AM, before "waking up" to go to class. Admittedly, those classes were easy enough that sleeping through them was no big deal, but that's what private school will be for. Estimating my time somewhat conservatively, I probably spent about 20 - 90 hours a week on videogames. This was not healthy. Instead of engaging in underaged fraternizing, getting binge drinking out of my system, experimenting with drugs, or experimenting with haxor tools before being prosecutable as an adult, I was staring at a glowing screen trying to get Mario to bounce off of a turtle shell for infinite lives. Admittedly, the average american is up to 4.5 hours of TV PER DAY, and so my consumption was in line with that.
Hopefully any son or daughter of mine will be bright enough to serrupticiously install a keylogger and get root, but this is more about the policy than anything. 6 hours total on weekends, 10 hours total throughout the weekdays. That's a healthy amount, and that's it. More would be granted for summer vacation.
As a gamer and a game developer, I want to have / make / show great games to / for my kids. But as a concerned parent, I want them to be using their time to develop into a complete person, full of abilities in addition to this bunch.
Of course, if they fall under 2 hours per week, they're going to get homework. "No more music until you beat Zelda..." "No, the first one." "Yes, both quests." "Yes, I'm stuck in the past. You could almost call me 'a link to the past.'" "Yes, I know that wasn't funny."
A lot of manufacturers of expensive electronics will allow you to pay something like 50 bucks plus shipping to repair minor damage like that. If you're not feeling up to soldering, that's a good route to go. Plus they generally warranty their work. The one drawback I've found to this route is that manufacturers generally restore things to their original condition, which is the condition that wasn't strong enough to last anyway.
Personally, I'd say this is the perfect time to learn to solder. It's really not that difficult. The only real problem is that it can be scary. Disassemble the unit, and take a look at the size of the connection with the board. If the connections are similar in size on the inside as the USB plug is on the outside, by soldering standards that's pretty big and a pretty good thing to start with.
You can get someone who knows what they're doing to give you some tips, but all you really need is google, a 15 dollar soldering iron, 5 dollars worth of soft lead solder, and a little guts.
It's worse than that. The statistician takes a common problem, makes a few guesses, comes up with an exorbetant figure, and throws it out the window to use a bigger guess by a factor of 10
So how much money is the Fortune 500 wasting annually? It is a simple sum: $165,000 times 9 times 500. That amounts to just shy of three quarters of a billion dollars. And is that anywhere near realistic? No. It is probably safe to say that corporate America, for example, loses in excess of $10bn annually through the misuse and abuse of spreadsheets. That's a big number
A very big number. I wonder how such a large number was pulled out of such a small opening.
Get a palm pilot and download a copy of YAPS (Yet Another Password Safe). Create a very strong password that you don't change. Nobody can snoop or keylog your login (without installing to it), because it is happening on a palm pilot. I recommend using a random series of letters that you can recreate by dragging the pen across the keyboard. My password is over 30 characters long, and enterable in about 2 seconds.
Keep all of your passwords in YAPS. Whenever you need to login, you can look back at YAPS. This not only goes for your corporate intranet, but also for everything from your Credit Card information (like who to call when lost) to your routing / checking account number. Now your passwords are far more secure than with a plaintext doc, and the unencrypted password never appears on your potentially compromised desktop machine. And all of your necessary data is at your fingertips.
I hate to be the one to say this, but it's true. Lots of music that is mixed sounds best for the medium that it was composed, recorded, and mixed for. Vinyl was made and tweaked to sound good recording symphonies, and lots of jazz / early rock recordings were made and tweaked to sound good on vinyl. That's why a lot of the classic recordings just sound better on record. Get one of Thelonious Monk's greatest hits albums on vinyl and CD, and listen to both, alternating every 5 minutes. The vinyl just sounds better.
Now take a copy of a modern electronica song, like Orbital, or modern pop, like Brittany Spear's Toxic. These sound better on CD than they do on record. Ignoring the limiting lots of CD mixers choose to use these days to screw up the sound, CD's are "crisper," and better at making sharp buzzes than warm tones. They're also better if you've got 30 different tracks going at once... Tragic Kingdom on vinyl would not sound as good.
I'm convinced most of the stuff from the 80's was mixed for the radio, which is why Aha's Take On Me still sounds good when you've got interference coming in from rainclouds. Most modern music doesn't hold up against rain when broadcast.
Actually, the first article is only referring to your short-term ability to focus. In other words, someone's average intelligence will decrease by 10 points if you poke them every few minutes. Plus their productivity on their main task will drop as they attempt to multitask and do other things.
The second article says that compulsive computer use is only slightly less damaging for kids than compulsive TV use. While computers have reputations for being programming boxes involving creative problem solving in tightly controlled mathematical and logistical structures, in reality they've become a boob tube where cute little bunnies cut the faces of other cute little bunnies. Either way this reduces the kid's exposures to more stimulating encounters, like other kids, sunlight, and (god forbid) danger and creativity.
It also asks "Realistic detail is added to 3-D games by:" and the listed answer is texture mapping. Which is not a bad answer, except that the equally valid answer "lighting" is also listed. Now we can get into a CG war, but vertex shading / artificial lighting generally predates texture mapping on consumer 3D games as a way of adding depth, and a lot of the more advanced bump mapping and normal mapping are lighting-based and are what really pushes games into "realistic detail." In other words, there are multiple valid answers.
And what do you call what keeps a character from walking into a wall? At my company, it's "clipping," "collision detection," or "BSP's." The listed answer is, of course, "clash detection," which explains why my games keep clashing.
Making 3D scenes look like a comic strip? Cell shading. Apparently not, as this is looking for "toon shading," whatever that is.
Maybe terminology is different in England. Maybe the Umbrella Corporation really is called the Umbrella Syndicate in England. Or Guile's name is spelled with 2 l's. Maybe he picked up the other letter when "modding" lost a D.
"In terms of good design, 3D scenes are designed to have..." A: A high polygon count, B: A low polygon count, C: A very high polygon count. The correct answer is D: exactly as many polys as a system can push without upsetting the other processes or dropping below 30 / 60 FPS.
"Most games are developed with C++ and GL. What does GL stand for?" Apparently there is a new language sweeping England called "Graphics Library," which may or may not encompass the sound libraries, controller libraries, physics engines, animation engines, Open GL, ActiveX, etc.
"Who comes up with the initial visual idea for a game?" Correct answer: Concept Artist, or possibly Publisher. Answer that gets you points: Developer. Of what? Apparently Developer of Concept Art.
"Approximately how much does it cost to develop a top of the range console game?" Pounds had better be worth a lot more than dollars, because 3 million is mid range either way.
Considering the number of development houses that EA has, calling them strictly a publisher is a bit of a misnomer.
A "marketing manager" manages marketers. The person responsible for advertising a game is a "marketing director."
And, of course, there is the listing of Flash instead of Studio Max as a 3D package, or that Sony sold more consoles than Nintendo, or that only 30 people work in the UK gaming industry (pretty interesting for a country that the quiz says has 400 companies.)
I'm sure the QA engineers at my company would be annoyed by the question about people who are "paid to play games all day."
Speaking of annoyed, "You can protect your IP by getting people to sign NDA's. What does NDA stand for?" "When making games, you need to protect your IP. What does IP stand for?" I Presume you mean copyright and trade secrets. Or It Perhaps could be regular secrets / the element of surprise.
A friend of mine was getting a PHD in urban development while working in a city planning office for a rather large city near Los Angeles. Apparently, one branch of city government had created some impressively detailed maps of the city, based upon race, economic level, education, utility usage, average commute length... you name it. This would have been useful to nearly every area of city government, and possibly to the people living within the city. However, that branch of city government was charging all other branches of city government 500,000 dollars per year for access to that database. Most couldn't afford the high cost, including, ironically, the division of urban development my friend worked at, despite that they would have undoubtedly allowed the division to do it's work better and more cheaply. And so the city government paid a lot of money to create the wonderful maps that went largely unused because the city government wanted to charge itself too much to use them.
Sometimes government processes are stranger than fiction.
Doh! I started with the Genesis, and was working my way back to the Mega Drive when I hit the Master System. On the other hand, the Mega Drive did have a little Master System inside, in the form of the Z-80 used as a sound chip, so what I said wasn't completely wrong.
Now that you mention it, if that really was a Mark 1 it shouldn't have been able to combine with the Mega CD 2 without additional Hardware. Maybe they just attached the extra baseplate and I didn't notice. Either way the Mark 1 with CD 1 was a much sleeker combination unit. You must admit, though, the 32x really did make that an unholy combination.
Somebody meticulously and lovingly reconstructed the ending scene to a classic 16 bit RPG in flash, substituting game systems for all of the characters and a constant barrage of jokes and references for attacks, and all you can do is complain that the PSP is being misrepresented? You totally missed the point. Am I the only one that died laughing when the Master System joined with the Sega CD and 32X to create the Ultimate Sega boss? Or the Famicom summoning ROB, who gets a low battery warning, only to be squished by "the man in green"? Or the Jaguar trying to push a statue onto the Naomi's head? Or the poketstation going powermad and becoming the PSP? Naomi feeding batteries to a dying Game Gear? The SP's taking care of a family of brightly colored Game Boy Pockets, only to give birth to the DS? All of the assorted PC-Engine kit combining to form the Engine Buster, but whose "multitap" attack has no effect on the Xbox? The little Beatmania bar attack that hits for a "great?" The Playstation shifting forms to become the PSOne? The 3D0 crying out for the dead M2? ("Real2? Real2 Wake up!") The SNES being the father of the Playstation? The puny "100 MegaShock" attack?
It's the ending to Final Fantasy 6 redone. Meticulously, painstakingly, lovingly. Somebody probably spent months making this thing. This is a wonderful, massive series of jokes and memories for people in the gaming industry and the hardcore gamers who obsess over it... in other words, gaming geeks. The amount of effort and love that went into this thing is awe inspiring. They even got the crumbling effect on the PSP just about right (though it was missing a few of the cracks-of-lightning sound effects), something which unless there is a programatic shortcut for flash must have taken a ridiculous amount of time to get right. Even the battle-driven menu system is right, the level layouts are right, the original tiles are used. The visual effects are reconstructed, the audio timing is basically impeccable.
And this thing goes on for half an hour, just like the original ending. Every cinematic, every line, every in-joke from the game remade. Even in spots in the original ending where a character's hat or glove would be the only thing that appeared, here just a cartridge is left behind. This is a tremendous, if pointless, achievement.
I'm sorry if you didn't "get" it. All I can say is that there is 20 years of gaming history represented here. If you didn't find any of it funny, start hitting some yardsales and getting caught up. It's not like they were making fun of the ColecoVision or anything.
And the PSP gets to represent Kafka, who happened to be by far the coolest character in FF6/3. It's just too bad the PSP never gets Kafka's trademark laugh.
P.S. if you want to emphasize something, use the italic tag. It looks much better than SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS.
Why not go carnival style, and let you trade in 10 True Swords of Pwning for one Ultimate Sword of Pwning? Or build an Ultimate Sword of Pwning from 5 Divine Chewy Nugat Centers, 3 Pieces of Holy AINA Ore (AINA Is Not Admantium), and one leather binding strap of God's retribution?
Sure, comparitively it's quite repetitive, but making a monster stay dead for a week? Unless that is an ultimate pile-on monster that takes 24 hours of constant attacks to kill, (which is cool too), it shouldn't stay dead for too long. Otherwise, there's nothing to do...
As far as I know, there are no scheduled stops for either Dear Friends or More Friends in Boston. But please, if anyone knows of one, clue me in: I would love to go.
They believe they're "the best", they spend MILLIONS on hiring "the best".
I know you put "the best" in quotes for a reason, but it's worth pointing out that corporations in no way get "the best" for their money.
Generally speaking, corporations are stuck in the illusion that if something costs more, it must be better. An employee that was making 105k as an Active X programmer must be better than the QNX programmer making 85k, so let's hire the 105k programmer and pay him 125k. If a fast-talking guy can come in and say all of the right things, the heads will believe that this guy is the perfect person to be lead programmer, even though he just sold you on the idea of doing your 1,000 concurrent user database app in Access. Corporations are great at throwing money at getting great salesmen, but they're not always so good at getting good leaders, programmers, designers, etc.
Good post overall. However, you're simplifying the relationship between GIF and PNG, and you imply that by including proprietary renderers in Linux that they too must be open source. This is completely incorrect, as many binary drivers, patent-encumbered applications, and even closed applications are distributed with Linux. Debian has an open-only policy, but that reflects their outlook, not a requirement of the Open Source license.
PNG was developed not because it was impossible to put GIF support in Linux, but because it was feared that Compuserve (which discovered it held a patent on one of the processes used in GIF compression / decompression) would abuse it's power on all platforms. In the early days, they talked about levying a fee on all clients, users... anything that interacted with GIFs. At which point development of PNG began. I believe CompuServe finally settled on the less unreasonable 5c per paid application that can encode GIF's, with no fee for decoders. That fee is no longer with us, as the patent has expired.
On the other hand, PNG has surpassed GIF's by adding alpha layer transparency... in other words, you can have certain pixels that are 100% opaque, or 10%, or 55% solid, or whatever. This would make working with images on the WWW so much easier, if MS would just bloody well implement proper PNG support like they promised as a feature for I.E. 4.
What does ActiveX do that XPCOM and Java are incapable of performing?
Install very convienient password management apps, automatically, like Gator.
Actually, I believe what you're looking for is net revenue, which is the total after expenses. Gross revenue makes a few exceptions for returned merchandise and how much stayed sold, but overall it is how much cash was raked in, period. Movie numbers are released in gross dollars.
And remember, you always want a cut of the gross, not the net, because movies never make any profit.
I'm thinking Savage, Deus Ex, Counterstrike, Metroid Prime, Thief, Battlefield 1942, Natural Selection, Avara... There are a lot of FPS games that don't follow the standard FPS mold. Some are even successful.
I do agree with you about Quake 4, though. I would really rather Quake 4 be an extension of the gameplay driven arena style FPS pioneered by Quake 3 than another story-driven FPS like Doom 3.
I believe that's the Funcoland on Wolfe avenue near Valco Mall that you're referring to.
The smaller funcolands, like the one in Tustin next to the Target there, used to keep their older games in drawers. That way their selection stayed large, but the store stayed relatively free of clutter. If you wanted to go diving into the NES section you could, but the casual gamer could walk in and get a new system and a new block of games without getting overwhelmed.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess that's what you get when you don't read enough as a kid.
I thought we were supposed to embrace Linux and make fun of Stallman?
Great, now what am I supposed to do with these free software troll pencil toppers?
Just because all administrations pull shenanigans doesn't mean all shenanigans are the same. Bush pulled people out of a conference based upon who they gave money to in the previous election. You know, the reason why voting is anonymous and why it is illegal to discriminate based upon who someone gave money to in the previous election cycle. Whitewater may have been illegal, but the difference between cheating on your taxes for a real estate deal and declaring that the Magna Carta no longer applies is tremendous. Clinton lied under oath about getting a hummer because he didn't want his wife or daughter to know that he's kind of slimy, and Bush had the CIA rewrite intelligence documents then lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to get into a war he couldn't otherwise justify to the American people. There is a big difference there. While Clinton refused a few FOIA requests WRT to whitewater, Bush has refused all FOIA requests. While Clinton had military scandals during his administration, and he certainly copped out on the don't ask don't tell policy, the Bush administration taught military interrogators at Guantanamo that conventions on human rights against torture no longer apply, then transferred them around the globe to spread this joy. While Clinton could have done less to antagonize certain countries, he didn't shortsightedly add anyone to an "axis of Evil," forcing them to get nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.
What happened in Waco Texas was a tragedy and horrible mistake all around. But the re-opening of American internment camps should make anyone's alarm bells ring. While Clinton pre-screened questions at a lot of town-hall meetings, he didn't kick people out because they didn't swear an oath to him. While Clinton used "free-speech zones" during the DNC (a shameful tradition at both the DNC and the RNC since the famous 68 DNC protest), Bush has used "free-speech zones" at every appearance for his entire presidency.
So yes, actively squelshing the careers of people who donated money to the opposition candidate is flagrantly, painfully, mindbendingly illegal, and both grossly goes against a lot of the foundational principles of this country and pretty much proves that they gave money to the right candidate.
When I was a kid, I would have been vehemontly against such a thing. Any policy or any extra rules set, especially around video games, would have been opposed with all of the stubbornness a 12 year old year-of-the-horse child can muster.
But now that I'm facing the prospect of having children myself, I'm all for it. I remember how I used to sneak out to the TV to play games from midnight until 5 or 6 AM, before "waking up" to go to class. Admittedly, those classes were easy enough that sleeping through them was no big deal, but that's what private school will be for. Estimating my time somewhat conservatively, I probably spent about 20 - 90 hours a week on videogames. This was not healthy. Instead of engaging in underaged fraternizing, getting binge drinking out of my system, experimenting with drugs, or experimenting with haxor tools before being prosecutable as an adult, I was staring at a glowing screen trying to get Mario to bounce off of a turtle shell for infinite lives. Admittedly, the average american is up to 4.5 hours of TV PER DAY, and so my consumption was in line with that.
Hopefully any son or daughter of mine will be bright enough to serrupticiously install a keylogger and get root, but this is more about the policy than anything. 6 hours total on weekends, 10 hours total throughout the weekdays. That's a healthy amount, and that's it. More would be granted for summer vacation.
As a gamer and a game developer, I want to have / make / show great games to / for my kids. But as a concerned parent, I want them to be using their time to develop into a complete person, full of abilities in addition to this bunch.
Of course, if they fall under 2 hours per week, they're going to get homework. "No more music until you beat Zelda..."
"No, the first one."
"Yes, both quests."
"Yes, I'm stuck in the past. You could almost call me 'a link to the past.'"
"Yes, I know that wasn't funny."
Honestly, what I want to know is what happened between Return of the Jedi and Episode 1.
A lot of manufacturers of expensive electronics will allow you to pay something like 50 bucks plus shipping to repair minor damage like that. If you're not feeling up to soldering, that's a good route to go. Plus they generally warranty their work. The one drawback I've found to this route is that manufacturers generally restore things to their original condition, which is the condition that wasn't strong enough to last anyway.
Personally, I'd say this is the perfect time to learn to solder. It's really not that difficult. The only real problem is that it can be scary. Disassemble the unit, and take a look at the size of the connection with the board. If the connections are similar in size on the inside as the USB plug is on the outside, by soldering standards that's pretty big and a pretty good thing to start with.
You can get someone who knows what they're doing to give you some tips, but all you really need is google, a 15 dollar soldering iron, 5 dollars worth of soft lead solder, and a little guts.
It's worse than that. The statistician takes a common problem, makes a few guesses, comes up with an exorbetant figure, and throws it out the window to use a bigger guess by a factor of 10
So how much money is the Fortune 500 wasting annually? It is a simple sum: $165,000 times 9 times 500. That amounts to just shy of three quarters of a billion dollars. And is that anywhere near realistic? No. It is probably safe to say that corporate America, for example, loses in excess of $10bn annually through the misuse and abuse of spreadsheets. That's a big number
A very big number. I wonder how such a large number was pulled out of such a small opening.
Not unless they found a way to crack 256 bit blowfish encryption with a 30 character length password.
Get a palm pilot and download a copy of YAPS (Yet Another Password Safe). Create a very strong password that you don't change. Nobody can snoop or keylog your login (without installing to it), because it is happening on a palm pilot. I recommend using a random series of letters that you can recreate by dragging the pen across the keyboard. My password is over 30 characters long, and enterable in about 2 seconds.
Keep all of your passwords in YAPS. Whenever you need to login, you can look back at YAPS. This not only goes for your corporate intranet, but also for everything from your Credit Card information (like who to call when lost) to your routing / checking account number. Now your passwords are far more secure than with a plaintext doc, and the unencrypted password never appears on your potentially compromised desktop machine. And all of your necessary data is at your fingertips.
No. Monster cables are badly overrated. You shouldn't have to spend too much money to get good sound if you know what you're doing.
I hate to be the one to say this, but it's true. Lots of music that is mixed sounds best for the medium that it was composed, recorded, and mixed for. Vinyl was made and tweaked to sound good recording symphonies, and lots of jazz / early rock recordings were made and tweaked to sound good on vinyl. That's why a lot of the classic recordings just sound better on record. Get one of Thelonious Monk's greatest hits albums on vinyl and CD, and listen to both, alternating every 5 minutes. The vinyl just sounds better.
Now take a copy of a modern electronica song, like Orbital, or modern pop, like Brittany Spear's Toxic. These sound better on CD than they do on record. Ignoring the limiting lots of CD mixers choose to use these days to screw up the sound, CD's are "crisper," and better at making sharp buzzes than warm tones. They're also better if you've got 30 different tracks going at once... Tragic Kingdom on vinyl would not sound as good.
I'm convinced most of the stuff from the 80's was mixed for the radio, which is why Aha's Take On Me still sounds good when you've got interference coming in from rainclouds. Most modern music doesn't hold up against rain when broadcast.
Actually, the first article is only referring to your short-term ability to focus. In other words, someone's average intelligence will decrease by 10 points if you poke them every few minutes. Plus their productivity on their main task will drop as they attempt to multitask and do other things.
The second article says that compulsive computer use is only slightly less damaging for kids than compulsive TV use. While computers have reputations for being programming boxes involving creative problem solving in tightly controlled mathematical and logistical structures, in reality they've become a boob tube where cute little bunnies cut the faces of other cute little bunnies. Either way this reduces the kid's exposures to more stimulating encounters, like other kids, sunlight, and (god forbid) danger and creativity.
It also asks "Realistic detail is added to 3-D games by:" and the listed answer is texture mapping. Which is not a bad answer, except that the equally valid answer "lighting" is also listed. Now we can get into a CG war, but vertex shading / artificial lighting generally predates texture mapping on consumer 3D games as a way of adding depth, and a lot of the more advanced bump mapping and normal mapping are lighting-based and are what really pushes games into "realistic detail." In other words, there are multiple valid answers.
And what do you call what keeps a character from walking into a wall? At my company, it's "clipping," "collision detection," or "BSP's." The listed answer is, of course, "clash detection," which explains why my games keep clashing.
Making 3D scenes look like a comic strip? Cell shading. Apparently not, as this is looking for "toon shading," whatever that is.
Maybe terminology is different in England. Maybe the Umbrella Corporation really is called the Umbrella Syndicate in England. Or Guile's name is spelled with 2 l's. Maybe he picked up the other letter when "modding" lost a D.
"In terms of good design, 3D scenes are designed to have..." A: A high polygon count, B: A low polygon count, C: A very high polygon count. The correct answer is D: exactly as many polys as a system can push without upsetting the other processes or dropping below 30 / 60 FPS.
"Most games are developed with C++ and GL. What does GL stand for?" Apparently there is a new language sweeping England called "Graphics Library," which may or may not encompass the sound libraries, controller libraries, physics engines, animation engines, Open GL, ActiveX, etc.
"Who comes up with the initial visual idea for a game?" Correct answer: Concept Artist, or possibly Publisher. Answer that gets you points: Developer. Of what? Apparently Developer of Concept Art.
"Approximately how much does it cost to develop a top of the range console game?" Pounds had better be worth a lot more than dollars, because 3 million is mid range either way.
Considering the number of development houses that EA has, calling them strictly a publisher is a bit of a misnomer.
A "marketing manager" manages marketers. The person responsible for advertising a game is a "marketing director."
And, of course, there is the listing of Flash instead of Studio Max as a 3D package, or that Sony sold more consoles than Nintendo, or that only 30 people work in the UK gaming industry (pretty interesting for a country that the quiz says has 400 companies.)
I'm sure the QA engineers at my company would be annoyed by the question about people who are "paid to play games all day."
Speaking of annoyed, "You can protect your IP by getting people to sign NDA's. What does NDA stand for?" "When making games, you need to protect your IP. What does IP stand for?" I Presume you mean copyright and trade secrets. Or It Perhaps could be regular secrets / the element of surprise.
A friend of mine was getting a PHD in urban development while working in a city planning office for a rather large city near Los Angeles. Apparently, one branch of city government had created some impressively detailed maps of the city, based upon race, economic level, education, utility usage, average commute length... you name it. This would have been useful to nearly every area of city government, and possibly to the people living within the city. However, that branch of city government was charging all other branches of city government 500,000 dollars per year for access to that database. Most couldn't afford the high cost, including, ironically, the division of urban development my friend worked at, despite that they would have undoubtedly allowed the division to do it's work better and more cheaply. And so the city government paid a lot of money to create the wonderful maps that went largely unused because the city government wanted to charge itself too much to use them.
Sometimes government processes are stranger than fiction.
If you've got real skillz, you can win real prizes here.
In the mean time, stop complaining that it doesn't reach Slashdot's high standards of journalistic quality and let the kids have their fun.
Doh! I started with the Genesis, and was working my way back to the Mega Drive when I hit the Master System. On the other hand, the Mega Drive did have a little Master System inside, in the form of the Z-80 used as a sound chip, so what I said wasn't completely wrong.
Now that you mention it, if that really was a Mark 1 it shouldn't have been able to combine with the Mega CD 2 without additional Hardware. Maybe they just attached the extra baseplate and I didn't notice. Either way the Mark 1 with CD 1 was a much sleeker combination unit. You must admit, though, the 32x really did make that an unholy combination.
Somebody meticulously and lovingly reconstructed the ending scene to a classic 16 bit RPG in flash, substituting game systems for all of the characters and a constant barrage of jokes and references for attacks, and all you can do is complain that the PSP is being misrepresented? You totally missed the point. Am I the only one that died laughing when the Master System joined with the Sega CD and 32X to create the Ultimate Sega boss? Or the Famicom summoning ROB, who gets a low battery warning, only to be squished by "the man in green"? Or the Jaguar trying to push a statue onto the Naomi's head? Or the poketstation going powermad and becoming the PSP? Naomi feeding batteries to a dying Game Gear? The SP's taking care of a family of brightly colored Game Boy Pockets, only to give birth to the DS? All of the assorted PC-Engine kit combining to form the Engine Buster, but whose "multitap" attack has no effect on the Xbox? The little Beatmania bar attack that hits for a "great?" The Playstation shifting forms to become the PSOne? The 3D0 crying out for the dead M2? ("Real2? Real2 Wake up!") The SNES being the father of the Playstation? The puny "100 MegaShock" attack?
It's the ending to Final Fantasy 6 redone. Meticulously, painstakingly, lovingly. Somebody probably spent months making this thing. This is a wonderful, massive series of jokes and memories for people in the gaming industry and the hardcore gamers who obsess over it... in other words, gaming geeks. The amount of effort and love that went into this thing is awe inspiring. They even got the crumbling effect on the PSP just about right (though it was missing a few of the cracks-of-lightning sound effects), something which unless there is a programatic shortcut for flash must have taken a ridiculous amount of time to get right. Even the battle-driven menu system is right, the level layouts are right, the original tiles are used. The visual effects are reconstructed, the audio timing is basically impeccable.
And this thing goes on for half an hour, just like the original ending. Every cinematic, every line, every in-joke from the game remade. Even in spots in the original ending where a character's hat or glove would be the only thing that appeared, here just a cartridge is left behind. This is a tremendous, if pointless, achievement.
I'm sorry if you didn't "get" it. All I can say is that there is 20 years of gaming history represented here. If you didn't find any of it funny, start hitting some yardsales and getting caught up. It's not like they were making fun of the ColecoVision or anything.
And the PSP gets to represent Kafka, who happened to be by far the coolest character in FF6/3. It's just too bad the PSP never gets Kafka's trademark laugh.
P.S. if you want to emphasize something, use the italic tag. It looks much better than SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS.
Why not go carnival style, and let you trade in 10 True Swords of Pwning for one Ultimate Sword of Pwning? Or build an Ultimate Sword of Pwning from 5 Divine Chewy Nugat Centers, 3 Pieces of Holy AINA Ore (AINA Is Not Admantium), and one leather binding strap of God's retribution?
Sure, comparitively it's quite repetitive, but making a monster stay dead for a week? Unless that is an ultimate pile-on monster that takes 24 hours of constant attacks to kill, (which is cool too), it shouldn't stay dead for too long. Otherwise, there's nothing to do...
As far as I know, there are no scheduled stops for either Dear Friends or More Friends in Boston. But please, if anyone knows of one, clue me in: I would love to go.
They believe they're "the best", they spend MILLIONS on hiring "the best".
I know you put "the best" in quotes for a reason, but it's worth pointing out that corporations in no way get "the best" for their money.
Generally speaking, corporations are stuck in the illusion that if something costs more, it must be better. An employee that was making 105k as an Active X programmer must be better than the QNX programmer making 85k, so let's hire the 105k programmer and pay him 125k. If a fast-talking guy can come in and say all of the right things, the heads will believe that this guy is the perfect person to be lead programmer, even though he just sold you on the idea of doing your 1,000 concurrent user database app in Access. Corporations are great at throwing money at getting great salesmen, but they're not always so good at getting good leaders, programmers, designers, etc.
Good post overall. However, you're simplifying the relationship between GIF and PNG, and you imply that by including proprietary renderers in Linux that they too must be open source. This is completely incorrect, as many binary drivers, patent-encumbered applications, and even closed applications are distributed with Linux. Debian has an open-only policy, but that reflects their outlook, not a requirement of the Open Source license.
PNG was developed not because it was impossible to put GIF support in Linux, but because it was feared that Compuserve (which discovered it held a patent on one of the processes used in GIF compression / decompression) would abuse it's power on all platforms. In the early days, they talked about levying a fee on all clients, users... anything that interacted with GIFs. At which point development of PNG began. I believe CompuServe finally settled on the less unreasonable 5c per paid application that can encode GIF's, with no fee for decoders. That fee is no longer with us, as the patent has expired.
On the other hand, PNG has surpassed GIF's by adding alpha layer transparency... in other words, you can have certain pixels that are 100% opaque, or 10%, or 55% solid, or whatever. This would make working with images on the WWW so much easier, if MS would just bloody well implement proper PNG support like they promised as a feature for I.E. 4.
What does ActiveX do that XPCOM and Java are incapable of performing?
Install very convienient password management apps, automatically, like Gator.
Actually, I believe what you're looking for is net revenue, which is the total after expenses. Gross revenue makes a few exceptions for returned merchandise and how much stayed sold, but overall it is how much cash was raked in, period. Movie numbers are released in gross dollars.
And remember, you always want a cut of the gross, not the net, because movies never make any profit.
Would someone mind cluing in a non Everquest player to the specific terminologies used in the article? Specifically...
What exactly is the Plane of Time, and why would it cause bottlenecks?
What are voluntary raid target rotations, and how does this effect the way people play EQ?
Is this person the new producer for EQ1, or the new producer for the EQ series?
If you've played one then you've played them all.
I'm thinking Savage, Deus Ex, Counterstrike, Metroid Prime, Thief, Battlefield 1942, Natural Selection, Avara... There are a lot of FPS games that don't follow the standard FPS mold. Some are even successful.
I do agree with you about Quake 4, though. I would really rather Quake 4 be an extension of the gameplay driven arena style FPS pioneered by Quake 3 than another story-driven FPS like Doom 3.
I believe that's the Funcoland on Wolfe avenue near Valco Mall that you're referring to.
The smaller funcolands, like the one in Tustin next to the Target there, used to keep their older games in drawers. That way their selection stayed large, but the store stayed relatively free of clutter. If you wanted to go diving into the NES section you could, but the casual gamer could walk in and get a new system and a new block of games without getting overwhelmed.