"It would be nice to see the government provide more tax credits to encourage use of these vehicles"
Why bother? It'd be better if we simply stopped groveling at the feet of our "friend & allies" (to quote both Bush and Kerry) in OPEC every time they scale back production.
It's interesting to note that national pride is only enough to put tattered flags on car windows instead of sucking it up and dealing with high gas prices.
Has Yamauchi responded yet? I would pay to see what Nintendo's iron samurai go off on one his famous tirades on this one, especially if he uses Bill's trademarked term "innovation" in it.:)
"How about the decision to stick with the cartridge format for the N64 when all of the competition had moved to CDs (cost them Square's games, a major blow)?"
I still agree with Miyamoto on this. I don't think OoT would be as fun if it had horrendous load times. I also liked the way the cut scenes used the game's engine instead of pre-rendered stuff; everything seems to flow into a seamless whole instead of jarring transitions.
Even today, with more modern hardware and DVD-ROM and HDD access speeds many games still have horrendous and very noticable load times, while Nintnedo has done an excellent job of hiding them. I suspect it's something they mastered in the days of the Famicom Disk System, but I digress...
"The abortion that was the N64 controller?"
Controllers are meant to be held, not looked at. The N64 controller fit my hands perfectly and IMO was the most comfortable controller around before the GCN came out. And I suspect I wasn't the only one with this opinion, considering for how long the N64 controller was the iconic symbol of the games section here on/. for quite a while.
"How about the decision to use a miniature disc for the GC, thus making the GC unable to double as a DVD player"
Avoiding the "DVD" moniker also means avoiding obnoxious licensing fees to our good friends at the DVD Consortium. You'd think with all the pro-DeCSS voices here on/. there'd be more praise for a major media company that has boycotted the CSS heierarchy in entirety.
At any rate, avoiding those fees means a lower price point, which has served Nintendo very well so far, and also fits in with Nintendo's philosophy of "It's the games, stupid!"
"while simultaneously decreasing the storage space available for media content such as voices, music, video, and high-resolution textures?"
It's the games, stupid! If you want bells and whistles over gameplay and fun, go back to PC gaming.
Here's a fun quote from Game Over which I only just started to read (unfortunately):
"The best companies and the best programmers were making computer games," one of (Electronic Arts's) game designers says. "But the Nintnedo player didn't care about the sophisticated leaps we were making on computers--the frame rate of the images or incredible sound. They just wanted fun."
"Not a huge deal, but when your competition is offering that feature and you're not, it's just one more reason why a person may not buy your console."
Of what use is better picture and sound when you can't play Metroid Prime or Wind Waker on it?
"How about no backlight on the GB/GBA for years, up until the release of the GBA SP?"
How about horrendous battery lives for handhelds with such built-in lighting until the pricepoint on better technology came down?
"but when the GBA was designed there was no reason not to add a backlight."
Because the batteries used by the SP were too expenstive to justify putting into the original GBA at the time.
"I can understand no backlight on the GB,"
By the way, in Japan they did. They had a Game Boy Pocket with an Indiglo-style light. It sucked batteries down. It never made it out of Japan.
"What about the aborted SNES CD expansion,"
Wisely dropped after seeing the ultimate failure of the Sega CD (Why publish games for the smaller set of people that own a Genesis and a Sega CD when you can publish for the larger market that simply has a Genesis?). Or would you rather have had Nintendo make such a CD drive and watch it have the same fate as the 32-X?
"And the worst of all... wait for it... VirtualBoy."
I'm probably in a minority opinion here, but I don't think the Virtual Boy would have had the fate it did if Mario Clash was the Super Mario World-styl
Do you honestly think that Microsoft has or is even capable of becoming an environment to work in similar to Nintendo's, the one Miyamoto has flourished in all these years?
"Yeah, Shig, we're liking the new Mario game, but marketing says the princess needs to show more cleavage before it can get released. Have you considered topless scenes for her? And this water pack thing? Our test demographics say that just ain't working for the teenagers, so we're replacing it with a rocket launcher."
I don't see Microsoft letting Donkey Kong out the door ("There's no explosions! We'd be better off sticking to Radarscope!"), let alone Pikmin.
"the difference is that we stick our heads in everywhere while most of those little dictatorships only terrorize their own people."
And how will all those little dicatorships cease to be if somebody else doesn't stick their heads in there? What's more important to you: stopping a murderer or keeping your hands clean of blood?
I'm saying that OS/X is one of the very few modern operating systems for which I would have to buy a completely new architecture for.
"Did you never spend money on upgrading to a new system?"
I don't "upgrade to a new system," I "upgrade my system." It's a lot like Ulysses' ship. It's been a very long time since I outright bought a new system, which OS/X would require. Heck, I can't even remember the last time I bought a motherboard, processor and RAM all at once.
Do you know wher I can find a uATX PowerPC board that can also run off my Athlon until I have the disposable income to also buy the new processor?
"What about non-geeks?"
Non-geeks don't give a damn about OS so long as they get IE, Office and Solitaire (not necesarily in that order).
"the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc"
Am I right to assume that Texas, like most states, has democratically-elected judges and associated campaign costs? If so, can we find out who contribted to the judge's campaign?
A re-mix of Donkey Kong for the (Super) Game Boy, complete with a lot of the same moves (possibly the most moves Mario has had before or since).
Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Heck, I was just happy with, after a decade or so after I got my ColecoVision, I finally had the opportunity to beat the (#$* out of the #^#%* monkey! "See how you like getting barrels thrown at you, you miserable SOB!! Catch, mofo!"
"Also a Kings Quest V rom I never got my hands on."
King's Quest V really was made for the NES. I recall seeing quite a good deal about it in my old Nintendo Powers (it's probably in a box somewhere). I also recall some Councilor's Corner questions about the game as well.
IIRC, Somario is a pirate cart from everybody's favorite gray market: Hong Kong. And the others are simple ROM hacks by fans. While I have yet to beat EarthBound Zero, I've put enough hours into it to be able to say it feels like a real NOA game as opposed to even a Demiforce translation (I've played with their FF translations). As the article mentions, if this is a fan job it's a damn good one, of a calibur that nobody else has even come close to. Even if it was some shadowy plot by Demiforce to make a quick $400, it's worth every penny.
At any rate, the next question for the true EearthBound fantic is When will someone make a decent flash ROM cart or back-up device for the NES?!?!. Stupid mappers! I'd love to be able to just buy a Japanese cart on eBay, dump it, apply the translation patch and play it on my NES like I do with SNES games
" I think the grandparent meant that this is tech research money and brilliant minds wasted on killing people"
You need neither to kill people. Just look at Sudan. You should be less concerned about the people trying to think of ways how to kill other people and more about when and why.
"is it just me being paranoid, or is not having any windows and having cameras send external images to the cockpit a "bad thing.""
Personally, I'd rather the pilot rely more on instruments than looking out the window; they're usually more correct than the window is. Just ask JFK Jr.
A few years back I was sitting in my car near Orlando and there was a very big thump. I quick made sure none of the idiot lights on the dash had gone on and then I looked around wondering if some crane somewhere had just dropped an I-beam. Then I remembered: "Oh yeah, the shuttle is landing today."
The best analogy I can think of is a small, sharp earthquake. There's a reason why seismographs pick them up.
"Voting anything other than the current two parties on the presidential election means absolutely nothing, because if you loose, you've wasted your vote."
Win, lose or draw, how is voting for one of the two major parties not wasting your vote? If the voters don't vote for the option they most agree with, why bother with voting (or elections, for that matter) anyway?
"because the people more likely to vote libertarian would vote against Bush"
That would depend on the libertarian in quesiton, wouldn't it? Are there surveys of who libertarians would vote for if they didn't vote LP that you can reference?
"Was it his job to spy on him? Short of a policy expressly giving him permission to spy on his boss (or *anyone* else in the office), his behavior was wrong."
Ah, but here's an interesting dilemma: What was getting spied on; the boss, or the computer? He wasn't necesarily spying on his boss in the classical definition of the term (no cameras or anything like that) but looking at what the (government-owned) machine on his boss's desk was doing.
What was this more like: listening in to personal conversations on the office phone or looking for personal calls in the phone bill?
"And no, " 'to confirm and document' such misuse" is *not* sufficient authorization for spying on *any* user in the office,"
What's the alternative? Have all employees keep logs of when and how they use their computers and assume they're all being honest?
"You can get in trouble doing such things, including prosecution under federal wiretapping laws."
What's being intercepted? He wasn't sniffing packets, he was taking screenshots.
Slashdot Mirror
"Found a hydrogen bomb? The one that releases the power of the sun?"
As in "fell out of a B-52 off the coast of Spain in 1966 and the USAF really wanted to have it back."
"let's teach the kids that sharing is wrong."
Have you seen a Trix commercial any time during the past few decades?
"I'd gladly pay for a subscription"
Aren't your (and my) tax dollars enough to pay for it? This is MLB we're talking about...
More like:
Kerry: We need to talk to our friends and allies in OPEC
Bush: We need to talk to our friends and allies in OPEC
"It would be nice to see the government provide more tax credits to encourage use of these vehicles"
Why bother? It'd be better if we simply stopped groveling at the feet of our "friend & allies" (to quote both Bush and Kerry) in OPEC every time they scale back production.
It's interesting to note that national pride is only enough to put tattered flags on car windows instead of sucking it up and dealing with high gas prices.
Has Yamauchi responded yet? I would pay to see what Nintendo's iron samurai go off on one his famous tirades on this one, especially if he uses Bill's trademarked term "innovation" in it. :)
I still agree with Miyamoto on this. I don't think OoT would be as fun if it had horrendous load times. I also liked the way the cut scenes used the game's engine instead of pre-rendered stuff; everything seems to flow into a seamless whole instead of jarring transitions.
Even today, with more modern hardware and DVD-ROM and HDD access speeds many games still have horrendous and very noticable load times, while Nintnedo has done an excellent job of hiding them. I suspect it's something they mastered in the days of the Famicom Disk System, but I digress...
"The abortion that was the N64 controller?"
Controllers are meant to be held, not looked at. The N64 controller fit my hands perfectly and IMO was the most comfortable controller around before the GCN came out. And I suspect I wasn't the only one with this opinion, considering for how long the N64 controller was the iconic symbol of the games section here on
"How about the decision to use a miniature disc for the GC, thus making the GC unable to double as a DVD player"
Avoiding the "DVD" moniker also means avoiding obnoxious licensing fees to our good friends at the DVD Consortium. You'd think with all the pro-DeCSS voices here on
At any rate, avoiding those fees means a lower price point, which has served Nintendo very well so far, and also fits in with Nintendo's philosophy of "It's the games, stupid!"
"while simultaneously decreasing the storage space available for media content such as voices, music, video, and high-resolution textures?"
It's the games, stupid! If you want bells and whistles over gameplay and fun, go back to PC gaming.
Here's a fun quote from Game Over which I only just started to read (unfortunately):
"Not a huge deal, but when your competition is offering that feature and you're not, it's just one more reason why a person may not buy your console."
... wait for it ... VirtualBoy."
Of what use is better picture and sound when you can't play Metroid Prime or Wind Waker on it?
"How about no backlight on the GB/GBA for years, up until the release of the GBA SP?"
How about horrendous battery lives for handhelds with such built-in lighting until the pricepoint on better technology came down?
"but when the GBA was designed there was no reason not to add a backlight."
Because the batteries used by the SP were too expenstive to justify putting into the original GBA at the time.
"I can understand no backlight on the GB,"
By the way, in Japan they did. They had a Game Boy Pocket with an Indiglo-style light. It sucked batteries down. It never made it out of Japan.
"What about the aborted SNES CD expansion,"
Wisely dropped after seeing the ultimate failure of the Sega CD (Why publish games for the smaller set of people that own a Genesis and a Sega CD when you can publish for the larger market that simply has a Genesis?). Or would you rather have had Nintendo make such a CD drive and watch it have the same fate as the 32-X?
"And the worst of all
I'm probably in a minority opinion here, but I don't think the Virtual Boy would have had the fate it did if Mario Clash was the Super Mario World-styl
Do you honestly think that Microsoft has or is even capable of becoming an environment to work in similar to Nintendo's, the one Miyamoto has flourished in all these years?
"Yeah, Shig, we're liking the new Mario game, but marketing says the princess needs to show more cleavage before it can get released. Have you considered topless scenes for her? And this water pack thing? Our test demographics say that just ain't working for the teenagers, so we're replacing it with a rocket launcher."
I don't see Microsoft letting Donkey Kong out the door ("There's no explosions! We'd be better off sticking to Radarscope!"), let alone Pikmin.
"Why would the ex-president of Nintendo of Japan call him?"
Because the ex-president owns the company (or at least majority interest), just as the Yamauchi family has for over a century.
"the difference is that we stick our heads in everywhere while most of those little dictatorships only terrorize their own people."
And how will all those little dicatorships cease to be if somebody else doesn't stick their heads in there? What's more important to you: stopping a murderer or keeping your hands clean of blood?
"Are you saying that PC hardware was free?"
I'm saying that OS/X is one of the very few modern operating systems for which I would have to buy a completely new architecture for.
"Did you never spend money on upgrading to a new system?"
I don't "upgrade to a new system," I "upgrade my system." It's a lot like Ulysses' ship. It's been a very long time since I outright bought a new system, which OS/X would require. Heck, I can't even remember the last time I bought a motherboard, processor and RAM all at once.
Do you know wher I can find a uATX PowerPC board that can also run off my Athlon until I have the disposable income to also buy the new processor?
"What about non-geeks?"
Non-geeks don't give a damn about OS so long as they get IE, Office and Solitaire (not necesarily in that order).
"the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc"
Am I right to assume that Texas, like most states, has democratically-elected judges and associated campaign costs? If so, can we find out who contribted to the judge's campaign?
"Mario vs. Donkey Kong"
A re-mix of Donkey Kong for the (Super) Game Boy, complete with a lot of the same moves (possibly the most moves Mario has had before or since).
Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Heck, I was just happy with, after a decade or so after I got my ColecoVision, I finally had the opportunity to beat the (#$* out of the #^#%* monkey! "See how you like getting barrels thrown at you, you miserable SOB!! Catch, mofo!"
"this RESIDENT program acts as a CPU,"
Oh dear lord! It's a 486 emulator for the 386! Maybe they can get my NES to emulate my GameCube...
"So your regular CPU does its chores and the
EMULATED CPU does its work too."
Ah, but what runs the emulator? The sound of one hand clapping?
If I threw in a few bucks extra would they have included a perpetual motion device?
I dunno, I hear Microsoft has an app that will make Windows run pretty damned fast. I believe they called it FDISK.
$1000.00 >> $0.00, which is the cost of using the hardware I already have. I have yet to see Mac OS ported to PC hardware.
"Also a Kings Quest V rom I never got my hands on."
King's Quest V really was made for the NES. I recall seeing quite a good deal about it in my old Nintendo Powers (it's probably in a box somewhere). I also recall some Councilor's Corner questions about the game as well.
IIRC, Somario is a pirate cart from everybody's favorite gray market: Hong Kong. And the others are simple ROM hacks by fans. While I have yet to beat EarthBound Zero, I've put enough hours into it to be able to say it feels like a real NOA game as opposed to even a Demiforce translation (I've played with their FF translations). As the article mentions, if this is a fan job it's a damn good one, of a calibur that nobody else has even come close to. Even if it was some shadowy plot by Demiforce to make a quick $400, it's worth every penny.
At any rate, the next question for the true EearthBound fantic is When will someone make a decent flash ROM cart or back-up device for the NES?!?!. Stupid mappers! I'd love to be able to just buy a Japanese cart on eBay, dump it, apply the translation patch and play it on my NES like I do with SNES games
Because it's the mother of all RPGs! Anybody who's played the game knows that!
Hell, it deserves the title because of its kitchy music alone...
"running around everywhere frantically whilst jumping up and down continuously..."
Obligatory Penny Arcade link
" I think the grandparent meant that this is tech research money and brilliant minds wasted on killing people"
You need neither to kill people. Just look at Sudan. You should be less concerned about the people trying to think of ways how to kill other people and more about when and why.
"is it just me being paranoid, or is not having any windows and having cameras send external images to the cockpit a "bad thing.""
Personally, I'd rather the pilot rely more on instruments than looking out the window; they're usually more correct than the window is. Just ask JFK Jr.
You don't hear a sonic boom so much as feel it.
A few years back I was sitting in my car near Orlando and there was a very big thump. I quick made sure none of the idiot lights on the dash had gone on and then I looked around wondering if some crane somewhere had just dropped an I-beam. Then I remembered: "Oh yeah, the shuttle is landing today."
The best analogy I can think of is a small, sharp earthquake. There's a reason why seismographs pick them up.
Heck, I'd be happy with someone making Honda Civics more silent...
"Voting anything other than the current two parties on the presidential election means absolutely nothing, because if you loose, you've wasted your vote."
Win, lose or draw, how is voting for one of the two major parties not wasting your vote? If the voters don't vote for the option they most agree with, why bother with voting (or elections, for that matter) anyway?
"because the people more likely to vote libertarian would vote against Bush"
That would depend on the libertarian in quesiton, wouldn't it? Are there surveys of who libertarians would vote for if they didn't vote LP that you can reference?
"Was it his job to spy on him? Short of a policy expressly giving him permission to spy on his boss (or *anyone* else in the office), his behavior was wrong."
Ah, but here's an interesting dilemma: What was getting spied on; the boss, or the computer? He wasn't necesarily spying on his boss in the classical definition of the term (no cameras or anything like that) but looking at what the (government-owned) machine on his boss's desk was doing.
What was this more like: listening in to personal conversations on the office phone or looking for personal calls in the phone bill?
"And no, " 'to confirm and document' such misuse" is *not* sufficient authorization for spying on *any* user in the office,"
What's the alternative? Have all employees keep logs of when and how they use their computers and assume they're all being honest?
"You can get in trouble doing such things, including prosecution under federal wiretapping laws."
What's being intercepted? He wasn't sniffing packets, he was taking screenshots.