My assumption is that because the marketing says "Every pixel is razor sharp..." that it upscales the games using a technique that doesn't cause blurring and so HDMI is available to display the game with full sharpness, whereas analog would inherently be somewhat blurry.
It's easy to say "You can't expect a game to be perfect day one" in regards to performance, but I have seen many people reporting that the game shows the initial company logo splash screen and then crash. I don't know the reasons for the crashes - maybe all those people are below the minimum specs, maybe it's something obscure that their testing missed - but having a game that won't even run on a large number of machines seems unacceptable.
My experience with the game so far was no issues at launch, excluding the so-so performance and hatred of the console-style UI. (Hold to confirm? Really?) Second day it seems they released a patch and my game would no longer launch at all. Managed to fix it and it mostly runs fine (performance isn't great, but definitely playable), except that after a while of playing all of a sudden the frame rate will drop to a constant 10fps or less and I need to restart the game to get it back to playable. Also, the game has not actually crashed on me, including the many times I have alt-tabbed, so at least there's that.
I guess the performance is pretty mediocre all round, but the stability is a bit different for everyone.
Thanks for this. I have a Windows phone, but obviously didn't pay enough attention to what Microsoft were doing to realise "Windows Phone" and "Windows 10 Mobile" are different things. Guess I can hold off on worrying about switching platform for a little longer.
The title of this article really confused me for a bit, because I assumed it was talking about Wallmart spending $3 billion on a URL. I mean, companies can spend big bucks on good URLs, but $3 billion?! I assumed it was a typo - that it should be million, especially after the "accidental millionaire" part - until I realised that Jet.com is a business lol
Once Windows Phone finally dies and I am forced to decide between Apple or Android, if the only new phones available from the former do not have a 3.5mm jack, I will definitely go with the latter. From using the headphones I already have, to plugging into my home or car stereo, to plugging into most other headphones/speakers I have encountered, 3.5mm was always the method used. (Never used a bluetooth headset or speakers.)
I use Google Play Music because it offers pretty much everything: Unlimited streaming, MP3 store, ability to upload your own MP3s (for your own personal use; much better than "music match" feature!), web-based player, mobile app. (I think Microsoft's service might offer the same stuff too.) Also, you get YouTube Red with it, which is nice. My only gripe is that there is no official desktop app for Windows or OSX.
I also buy vinyls. I started because I was told they have the best audio quality, but I think I like it because it encourages me to just sit down and listen to the music, rather than essentially using it as background noise while doing something else. Also, if an album has great cover art, it's pretty awesome having it full size, instead of tiny like with a CD. Not sure I would actually recommend vinyls, though; it's a pretty expensive venture.
I also buy the occasional CD, partially because I like having a hard copy of stuff (still a little afraid of my digital libraries suddenly vanishing) and partially because my car only takes CDs and mini-discs.
Deadpool - one of the most popular movies of the year - was released on DVD here last Wednesday, meaning it came out 3 weeks after the US DVD release. If I hadn't already seen it (twice) in the theatre, I can guarantee I would have pirated it. (I do buy movies I like on DVD, so I would have eventually bought it.) Waiting nearly a month after it becomes available elsewhere is just ridiculous.
I taught myself QBasic when I was 12. Not too sure why I chose QBasic, but I think it was a very good decision. I have never been the type of person to keep at something if it was too demanding (I get bored and give up), so QBasic was great because I could easily and quickly achieve something, and whenever I pushed myself the next thing was easy to learn as well. There was no structural code, no libraries or headers, no complex IDE, or any of the other issues that come with learning a lot of the popular modern programming languages. It was possible to just type a single line of code - something like "print Hello, World!" - hit F5, and technically you had a running program.
And this was before I knew about the Internet as a resource for learning; I actually taught myself by reading the help menu, which listed all the commands in QBasic, with had clear explanations and examples for each. That was how easy the language was to use. I figured out how to print to the screen, get user input, read from and write to files, and draw graphics with no help beyond the help menu. (QBasic had zero support for image files, so when I wanted to make a tile-based game, I had actually figured out by myself the logic and math required to store pixel colour values in a file, load them and display them, which I was quite proud of.)
The only issue with QBasic is that it's difficult to make meaningful programs with it, as the available commands are quite limited and the programs are extremely slow. But it did teach me the fundamentals of programming and cemented the mindset of a programmer within in. It was effectively like training wheels for programming; you weren't ever going to be a pro if stuck with it, but it made the initial learning a lot less painful.
I have heard a lot over the past while about there being a difference in how boys and girls learn best, so I don't think you're necessarily barking up the wrong tree, although there are apparently several different ways to learn something, so it might not be as simple as "all boys learn this way and all girls that way".
While I could never recommend a Windows phone to anyone over its lack of apps, I am perfectly content with my Windows phone. I just mainly prefer Live Tiles to a grid of icons. I wonder, if all else fails, if they could create an Android-based phone, replacing the UI with their Modern UI and including Microsoft services on the device; then they would have their own unique phones that could leverage Android's library of apps. But I guess if they didn't have their own mobile store to generate money from, it'd probably just be better to pay other phone makers to put its apps and services on their phones.
Are the types of people who generally buy consoles really the same type that would be satisfied playing games on mobile instead? I don't know if I'm an average console gamer, but I don't see much appealing about mobile games, beyond being able to play them when waiting around or otherwise bored and not able to easy access my computer or console. Freemium games and cheap games chock-full of ads and microtransactions are not my cup of tea.
Besides, according to one link I found (http://www.vgchartz.com/article/261037/ps4-and-xbox-one-vs-ps3-and-xbox-360-aligned-sales-comparison-august-2015-update/) this generation of consoles is selling significantly faster than the previous generation. It's only Nintendo that has stumbled, which can probably be explained better by the Wii U itself than by the mobile market stealing the attention of console gamers. Plus if Microsoft hadn't screwed up the XBO, this generation be selling even better.
I don't have proof that this is universal or even entirely correct, but most people I have known who have been unemployed have quickly wanted work or do something productive to overcome the boredom, even when they have unlimited access to Netflix, YouTube and video games. Even my friend who hates his job recently told me that after a 3 week holiday, he was desperate to get back to work because he was bored.
This is just an assumption (although something I'd love to research), but it almost seems like relaxation, e.g. Netflix, video games, etc., is a response to work, balancing out the stress of work with the anti-stress of relaxation. This idea reminds me of a study I saw recently where they found that mice would only prefer cocaine-laced water when they were socially isolated, basically using drugs to counter-act their negative situation. So, perhaps, relaxation in and of itself is not desirable, but rather the balance to the actually more desirable act of productivity. My point being that if you took a random sample of people and paid them enough to live comfortably for doing nothing at all, you might find that a good number of them will still resort to being productive in one way or another. Just a thought.
Personally, I'm the creative type so I would gladly give up my well paying job to live off the guaranteed basic income, not because I want to be lazy, but because I want to be creative without constraints. If all went well, it would effectively lead to me being self employed. Of course, it's debatable as to whether that is an abuse of the system, or considered a terrible waste of tax-payer money, or if it's actually the type of productivity this article praises. All I know is that I would be happier AND contributing to society.
I'm already sick of the mainstream media lying and manipulating information about Trump and Sanders. I don't know who I want the next POTUS to be, but what I do know is that I want to make that decision by taking the facts and deciding for myself. As one of the main reasons I use Facebook is as a convenient way to get news about what's going on in the world from sources outside the mainstream, if I found out they were actively manipulating the news, such as regarding politics this election, I think that would be the final straw; I would close my account and go elsewhere for my news aggregation.
It is a difficult subject to discuss without sounding like a terrible person, but I do get what you are saying. It does seem like society has an expectation for men to work hard and do whatever it takes to rise the corporate ladder. I have not noticed a similar expectation of women, except when self-imposed. That said, I'm not entirely sure what your point is.
This does remind me of something I was thinking about a while ago: If society judges men based on their careers/wealth but women now make up a large amount of the workforce, has the number of jobs increased since women joined the workforce to match the significantly larger workforce? And if it hasn't, what effect has this had on the male population, who would be finding it harder than ever to join the workforce and do well?
But if there is a problem, then the fix would be a difficult one. People wouldn't accept a solution that benefited men over women, and trying to remove the career expectations of men would likely be futile, as it would be trying to undo thousands of years of evolution, and might even have serious consequences, as if men didn't feel the NEED to be employed, would they choose to take undesirable yet necessary jobs?
My only concern with not having the centre line is if you are driving somewhere new, you can't be entirely sure if you have actually driven onto a one way street and not noticed any sign indicating this. More of an issue for narrow roads, though.
Anyone else afraid the kill animations will break the flow of the action? I mean, the game looks like it's supposed to be fast-paced action, so it seems like having to sit through multi-second kill animations, especially if they happen a lot, seems like it'd be eye-candy over gameplay.
Well that sucks. I'm one of those who prefer Windows Phone's Live Tiles over iOS/Android's grid of icons. And while every once in a while there's an app I want that I can't get, I don't usually do much on my phone besides text, phone, camera and web. I would also miss a dedicated camera button when changing platform. I guess if MS does give up on Windows Phone, I just hope it's after my current phone gets the Win 10 update so I don't have to get a new phone for a while yet...
$600 was definitely more than I was expecting; was hoping for $400 at most. That said, as soon as I switched my country to NZ, the price jumped to $700 for some unknown reason (which I imagine is still in US$), so $600 is looking a little better to me.
Just wish there was a model that didn't come with built-in headphones and the Xbox One controller (which I already have.) That would shave a little off the price. Just glad you don't have to pay up front!
OK, so is this basically saying that if I have a Lumia 950 and the dock, I will soon be able to turn any screen that takes HDMI into my home computer, even when away from home? I mean, my experience with remove desktop in the past was quite laggy, but if this is correct, then I'm sold on a 950!
Slashdot Mirror
My assumption is that because the marketing says "Every pixel is razor sharp..." that it upscales the games using a technique that doesn't cause blurring and so HDMI is available to display the game with full sharpness, whereas analog would inherently be somewhat blurry.
Maybe 2016 will be a good year after all :D
It's easy to say "You can't expect a game to be perfect day one" in regards to performance, but I have seen many people reporting that the game shows the initial company logo splash screen and then crash. I don't know the reasons for the crashes - maybe all those people are below the minimum specs, maybe it's something obscure that their testing missed - but having a game that won't even run on a large number of machines seems unacceptable. My experience with the game so far was no issues at launch, excluding the so-so performance and hatred of the console-style UI. (Hold to confirm? Really?) Second day it seems they released a patch and my game would no longer launch at all. Managed to fix it and it mostly runs fine (performance isn't great, but definitely playable), except that after a while of playing all of a sudden the frame rate will drop to a constant 10fps or less and I need to restart the game to get it back to playable. Also, the game has not actually crashed on me, including the many times I have alt-tabbed, so at least there's that. I guess the performance is pretty mediocre all round, but the stability is a bit different for everyone.
Thanks for this. I have a Windows phone, but obviously didn't pay enough attention to what Microsoft were doing to realise "Windows Phone" and "Windows 10 Mobile" are different things. Guess I can hold off on worrying about switching platform for a little longer.
The title of this article really confused me for a bit, because I assumed it was talking about Wallmart spending $3 billion on a URL. I mean, companies can spend big bucks on good URLs, but $3 billion?! I assumed it was a typo - that it should be million, especially after the "accidental millionaire" part - until I realised that Jet.com is a business lol
Yup, but I have the 2TB Gears of War model preordered instead. Definitely looking forward to shrinking my console.
Once Windows Phone finally dies and I am forced to decide between Apple or Android, if the only new phones available from the former do not have a 3.5mm jack, I will definitely go with the latter. From using the headphones I already have, to plugging into my home or car stereo, to plugging into most other headphones/speakers I have encountered, 3.5mm was always the method used. (Never used a bluetooth headset or speakers.)
I use Google Play Music because it offers pretty much everything: Unlimited streaming, MP3 store, ability to upload your own MP3s (for your own personal use; much better than "music match" feature!), web-based player, mobile app. (I think Microsoft's service might offer the same stuff too.) Also, you get YouTube Red with it, which is nice. My only gripe is that there is no official desktop app for Windows or OSX. I also buy vinyls. I started because I was told they have the best audio quality, but I think I like it because it encourages me to just sit down and listen to the music, rather than essentially using it as background noise while doing something else. Also, if an album has great cover art, it's pretty awesome having it full size, instead of tiny like with a CD. Not sure I would actually recommend vinyls, though; it's a pretty expensive venture. I also buy the occasional CD, partially because I like having a hard copy of stuff (still a little afraid of my digital libraries suddenly vanishing) and partially because my car only takes CDs and mini-discs.
Deadpool - one of the most popular movies of the year - was released on DVD here last Wednesday, meaning it came out 3 weeks after the US DVD release. If I hadn't already seen it (twice) in the theatre, I can guarantee I would have pirated it. (I do buy movies I like on DVD, so I would have eventually bought it.) Waiting nearly a month after it becomes available elsewhere is just ridiculous.
I taught myself QBasic when I was 12. Not too sure why I chose QBasic, but I think it was a very good decision. I have never been the type of person to keep at something if it was too demanding (I get bored and give up), so QBasic was great because I could easily and quickly achieve something, and whenever I pushed myself the next thing was easy to learn as well. There was no structural code, no libraries or headers, no complex IDE, or any of the other issues that come with learning a lot of the popular modern programming languages. It was possible to just type a single line of code - something like "print Hello, World!" - hit F5, and technically you had a running program. And this was before I knew about the Internet as a resource for learning; I actually taught myself by reading the help menu, which listed all the commands in QBasic, with had clear explanations and examples for each. That was how easy the language was to use. I figured out how to print to the screen, get user input, read from and write to files, and draw graphics with no help beyond the help menu. (QBasic had zero support for image files, so when I wanted to make a tile-based game, I had actually figured out by myself the logic and math required to store pixel colour values in a file, load them and display them, which I was quite proud of.) The only issue with QBasic is that it's difficult to make meaningful programs with it, as the available commands are quite limited and the programs are extremely slow. But it did teach me the fundamentals of programming and cemented the mindset of a programmer within in. It was effectively like training wheels for programming; you weren't ever going to be a pro if stuck with it, but it made the initial learning a lot less painful.
I don't want to have to change to iOS or Android :( I like my Windows Phone UI
I have heard a lot over the past while about there being a difference in how boys and girls learn best, so I don't think you're necessarily barking up the wrong tree, although there are apparently several different ways to learn something, so it might not be as simple as "all boys learn this way and all girls that way".
I looked and there are 11 movies, all B-movie crap. Have they not launched all 100 titles yet, or is this because I am based outside the US?
While I could never recommend a Windows phone to anyone over its lack of apps, I am perfectly content with my Windows phone. I just mainly prefer Live Tiles to a grid of icons. I wonder, if all else fails, if they could create an Android-based phone, replacing the UI with their Modern UI and including Microsoft services on the device; then they would have their own unique phones that could leverage Android's library of apps. But I guess if they didn't have their own mobile store to generate money from, it'd probably just be better to pay other phone makers to put its apps and services on their phones.
Are the types of people who generally buy consoles really the same type that would be satisfied playing games on mobile instead? I don't know if I'm an average console gamer, but I don't see much appealing about mobile games, beyond being able to play them when waiting around or otherwise bored and not able to easy access my computer or console. Freemium games and cheap games chock-full of ads and microtransactions are not my cup of tea. Besides, according to one link I found (http://www.vgchartz.com/article/261037/ps4-and-xbox-one-vs-ps3-and-xbox-360-aligned-sales-comparison-august-2015-update/) this generation of consoles is selling significantly faster than the previous generation. It's only Nintendo that has stumbled, which can probably be explained better by the Wii U itself than by the mobile market stealing the attention of console gamers. Plus if Microsoft hadn't screwed up the XBO, this generation be selling even better.
I don't have proof that this is universal or even entirely correct, but most people I have known who have been unemployed have quickly wanted work or do something productive to overcome the boredom, even when they have unlimited access to Netflix, YouTube and video games. Even my friend who hates his job recently told me that after a 3 week holiday, he was desperate to get back to work because he was bored. This is just an assumption (although something I'd love to research), but it almost seems like relaxation, e.g. Netflix, video games, etc., is a response to work, balancing out the stress of work with the anti-stress of relaxation. This idea reminds me of a study I saw recently where they found that mice would only prefer cocaine-laced water when they were socially isolated, basically using drugs to counter-act their negative situation. So, perhaps, relaxation in and of itself is not desirable, but rather the balance to the actually more desirable act of productivity. My point being that if you took a random sample of people and paid them enough to live comfortably for doing nothing at all, you might find that a good number of them will still resort to being productive in one way or another. Just a thought. Personally, I'm the creative type so I would gladly give up my well paying job to live off the guaranteed basic income, not because I want to be lazy, but because I want to be creative without constraints. If all went well, it would effectively lead to me being self employed. Of course, it's debatable as to whether that is an abuse of the system, or considered a terrible waste of tax-payer money, or if it's actually the type of productivity this article praises. All I know is that I would be happier AND contributing to society.
I'm already sick of the mainstream media lying and manipulating information about Trump and Sanders. I don't know who I want the next POTUS to be, but what I do know is that I want to make that decision by taking the facts and deciding for myself. As one of the main reasons I use Facebook is as a convenient way to get news about what's going on in the world from sources outside the mainstream, if I found out they were actively manipulating the news, such as regarding politics this election, I think that would be the final straw; I would close my account and go elsewhere for my news aggregation.
It is a difficult subject to discuss without sounding like a terrible person, but I do get what you are saying. It does seem like society has an expectation for men to work hard and do whatever it takes to rise the corporate ladder. I have not noticed a similar expectation of women, except when self-imposed. That said, I'm not entirely sure what your point is. This does remind me of something I was thinking about a while ago: If society judges men based on their careers/wealth but women now make up a large amount of the workforce, has the number of jobs increased since women joined the workforce to match the significantly larger workforce? And if it hasn't, what effect has this had on the male population, who would be finding it harder than ever to join the workforce and do well? But if there is a problem, then the fix would be a difficult one. People wouldn't accept a solution that benefited men over women, and trying to remove the career expectations of men would likely be futile, as it would be trying to undo thousands of years of evolution, and might even have serious consequences, as if men didn't feel the NEED to be employed, would they choose to take undesirable yet necessary jobs?
So no The Movies 2? :(
My only concern with not having the centre line is if you are driving somewhere new, you can't be entirely sure if you have actually driven onto a one way street and not noticed any sign indicating this. More of an issue for narrow roads, though.
Anyone else afraid the kill animations will break the flow of the action? I mean, the game looks like it's supposed to be fast-paced action, so it seems like having to sit through multi-second kill animations, especially if they happen a lot, seems like it'd be eye-candy over gameplay.
Well that sucks. I'm one of those who prefer Windows Phone's Live Tiles over iOS/Android's grid of icons. And while every once in a while there's an app I want that I can't get, I don't usually do much on my phone besides text, phone, camera and web. I would also miss a dedicated camera button when changing platform. I guess if MS does give up on Windows Phone, I just hope it's after my current phone gets the Win 10 update so I don't have to get a new phone for a while yet...
This is and will be the best thing I have read today.
$600 was definitely more than I was expecting; was hoping for $400 at most. That said, as soon as I switched my country to NZ, the price jumped to $700 for some unknown reason (which I imagine is still in US$), so $600 is looking a little better to me. Just wish there was a model that didn't come with built-in headphones and the Xbox One controller (which I already have.) That would shave a little off the price. Just glad you don't have to pay up front!
OK, so is this basically saying that if I have a Lumia 950 and the dock, I will soon be able to turn any screen that takes HDMI into my home computer, even when away from home? I mean, my experience with remove desktop in the past was quite laggy, but if this is correct, then I'm sold on a 950!