"though was that it was enough to keep a large number of gamers away from the DreamCast, which was a great system."
I hate the dreamcast, for 2 reasons: Its noisier than a chainsaw, and its controller is painfull to hold.
Here's a quote from the article about the Xbox:
"There is a perception we didn't know what we were doing when it came to the controller," Isensee said. "What we failed to do is a usability test for a global market. You need to do that, because things that work in the U.S. don't always work in Japan or Europe."
What? They think their controller works in the US? Damn they're stupid, corporate-style. The thing is HUGE and cumbersome, and its so hard to get from button to button.
Microsoft is following in the steps of Sega...and see where that got them! Anybody remember the genesis controller? It looked all cool and stylish, but had have has many buttons has the nintendo controller. I have played Streetfighter on both...the horror, the HORROR!
A good controller is one of the most important thing about a console, microsoft doesn't get that, sony never got it, and nintendo had a slight memory-loss about that (unless there are a lot of 3 armed people out there who though the 3-handle N64 controller was a god send)
Like you said ("Here [mit.edu] is what his colleagues at MIT used to think of him (and a damn sight more kindly than they do today).") turns out to have statements like: I know I'm an exception, but I've always found walkmans a little insulting -- their wearers seem to be saying that the normal sounds of this world are not good enough for them.
Well well, that's a well-balanced and tolerant individual! He also thinks the dude should be socially ostracised for dressing weird?!
Jeez! Don't tell me person a) is stupid based upon the statement of obviously jerky person b).
Ok, so I agree, Mann seems to be looking to annoy people, and probably was smart-assed to the airport people. But the way they reacted to his attitude was very very wrong and you know it. Maybe you are unnaturally lucky and have managed to evade all arrogant, imcompetant and semi-brutal security gards in your life, but this is a behaviour that is bound to get worst has airport security becomes sacrosaint, the holy of holies if you will, and I think its pretty important to make such incidents known so we can limit the amount of abuse of that sort.
This is total bullshit [...] retards [...] you all hate them [...] Where are all the billion dollar Swiss/Netherlandian tech start ups??
Why don't you read the article, and maybe you'll notice that they are naming companies in there.
Ok, now take a moment...let it sink in...ok, now you've had time to assimilate that this is the awnser to the question you asked. You're now about to go on and on about the fact that the 3 companies you gave as examples were all tech companies and so the examples given don't apply. Now take the time to read the article again...notice the products used as examples of insane copyrights? Yes, they're drug and food companies, that's right!
Ok, now maybe examples of comapanies that made it big given in the article in question were drug and food companies? Maybe? Yes, that's right.
Not everyone knows this it seems, but there are companies that are doing research and developpment in other areas than in electronics.
Though fewer than half of Americans with computers say they fully understand how to operate them and all their features, there are differences by region. Northeasterners are the most confused, Midwesterners the most computer-confident
The trouble I have with surveys is that people are asked a specific question, with a set of possible responses. And from these biased awnsers people make weird and interresting conclusions. They seem to have asked "Do you think you know how your computer works?" with possible awnsers like "not at all, a little, very much". So, midwesterners awnsered they knew their shit more often than others? That means they're more prone to brag and talk shit, not that they actually know it. This is a survey, not a test.
I got polled for that "family feud" quiz show once...they wouldn't accept my awnsers...they suggested better ones. (Something that requires batteries = "a pacemaker"...can't see why they didn't accept that awnser;-)
What kind of magical thinking is that? Now that they're gonna port this game that has been in devellopment for years, now its gonna have a better story?
Ok, so FFX's story is more or less the same as FFVII and 9 (haven't played 8 long enough to tell), but the gameplay isn't. The combat system is similar, but different enough to be refreshing (I like having the power to swich characters in-combat). And the graphics are works of arts deserving respect even if they are in a videogame instead of a museum. You get a bunch of fun mini-games and puzzles, fun sidequests, a new interpretation of the chocobo theme song, etc. In short, its worth its price tag and a fun play.
Well, I guess like a lot of people, you suffer from brand loyalty...it affects judgement, I think there' s a pill you can take or something...;-)
Biologist CAN'T find all the species because the sasquatch is hiding them all...
Seriously, with the amount of effort required for cryptozoologist to make the scientific community accept the existance of species, no wonder its not progressing very fast.
And since the basic proof that monst scientists want is a dead animal, no wonder we're making everything extinc! Lets see, one dead animal per university, that makes lots of corpses...if one species is limited to a few thousand individual, proving its existance will require wiping it out!
Well, what's really gonna make this easier is the fact that species are disapearing so fast that in 25 years you'll prbably be able to count them all on your fingers... (Ok, so I exagerate a little.)
OSX works good, is way more stable than OS9 ever was on my mac, and looks damn good (plus it makes my linux loving friend green with envy, wich is fun).
but its so slow!
I can't tell you the number of times I've had to mentally count my clicks on a button to figure out if I had clicked an odd or even number of times while it was frozen stiff. I mean, click on button, nothing happens. Click again, nothing happens, but the harddrive makes a sound...too late...clcik again, quick!... then? The computer takes a whole other eternity to resolve how many times I clicked on the button, the comes back to life. SHEESH!
But I'm free of my ISP's crappy DSL connection app now! Free I tells you! FREE!
Here in canada, we got 2 national languages. Its not evenly distributed of course, most provinces have assimilated the french populations (or killed 'em or deported them, etc), others have been a bit annoyed at having the english invade them and have retaliated with french-protection laws. Lets just say that it makes politics entertaining:)
So anyways, there are englophones, and francophones, and there are a few people who consider themselves bilingual. I never thought of those people as special, until I heard a couple of teenagers talk in frenglish: They were using an even mix of french and english, both in grammar and in vocabulary. Ok, so you'd think its just a bastard tongue, but the amazing thing is that they would switch from using a word in english or the same word in french, seemingly at randow, and they could just switch to any one of the 2 languages for a whole sentence sometimes. I was quite fascinating to listen to (I speak both french and english, but I can't do what they were doing in that natural and very fast way that they were doing it, I could however, totally understand them, even though I could not talk like that!).
I can't even give you a text imitation of it...my brain can't merge the 2 grammars...
It was like the Bable Fish exploded...
PS Anybody feeling like a flame thrower about canadian politics: shove it. This post is about merging languages, not who's province as the ugliest prime minister...
...but have they managed to explain why French sounds sexy to Americans, whilst Canadians find Spanish more erotic
Quite simple really, there are still millions of french-speaking canadians, so french doesn't sound exotic to canadians, while americans think it does 'cause they don't think of it as a national language, its foreign, so its sexy.
Its just a question of sounding romantic, foreign, exotic.
Yup, if a scientist had found only dead bumblebees, they would have claimed (with proof) that bumblebees could not have flyed and would have said the wings must have been used for heat dirpersion or some other crap.
And before anyone goes on to say that it was recently discovered that its small vorticies that blablabla makes the bumblebee fly, remember that they had to turture countless specimens before they admitted their secret of flight. (wind tunnels, glue, sticks, etc) wich requires live specimens. Remember kids, anytime a scientist says something is impossible, he's no longer a scientist, he's a techno-monk, relying on faith and math rather than empirical observations.
instead of being constantly inside trying to figure out how to get to world 8-1 of mario brothers, i was outside playing sports, riding my bike, building tree forts...kids today spend to much time playing video games, and not enough time experiencing interactions with real people...
Funny, I was inside with my best friend trying to get to world 8-4 of Mario, and when we ran out of lives we'd go out and ride our bikes and stuff.
I really wonder about people who think that playing videogames makes you incapable of interacting with others. Most of my friends are people I play videogames with! Playing video games had me use my imagination (hey, the graphics back on the 8 bit consoles forced you to use your imagination!:) and had me interact with others in either a competitive or cooperative context.
Ok, so one time me and my friend spent so much time playing tetris (the cool 2 at a time, race mode thingy on the ol' nintendo) that when we finaly got tired and went out for some air we both saw the sky being yellow...then we decided to spend the rest of the day out and put off tetris 'til the next day.
The thing is, its obvious you shouldn't let your kids spend ALL their time on videogames, but if you let them spend all their times playing sports you end up with dumb jocks, all their time reading books, weak bookworms, all their time eating, fat kids, etc. anything in excess is bad.
In short: video games are good, too much of them is bad, same with everything else. Strive for balance.
They have flesh eating flies in south america that swarm on cattle and people alike, inflicting painfull and diseased flesh wounds. They have been reducing their numbers using this irradiated fly technique for a while. The results have been good it seems.
The flies arent mutants, they're sterile. They still mate with the non-irradiated flies, but they don't produce offsprings, so they reduce the number of flies in the next generation without a whole bunch of pesticides getting in the food chain.
pointing an empty gun at anything is dangerous and has a good chance of killing. you never put your gun away without a complete cleaning and inspection, the guns go in their cas and in the safe...Maybe we would have less morons running around trying to cap every fool they think diss them.
No, then you'd get morons running around shooting people and then cleaning their gun and putting them away safely.
Here in canada there was a copy-cat after Columbine. But since guns are hard to get here, the moron had to settle for a knife. Instead of a dozen dead, we got 3 injured, including the moron.
The trouble with guns is not responsible people having them, its if ANY idiot can have one, then MANY idiots will have one, and use them.
But the issue at hand was banning videogames (or more precisely, sales of violent games to kiddies), wich is stupid. Videogames aren't weapons.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want kids to have violent games, but it should always be the parent's call, not the government's.
Can someone please explain to me why the "Slashdot Consensus" seems to be in disagreement of things like this?
Because a law like this is a firts-step law to banning violent games altogether.
Its an attemp by the "moral minority" to impose their views on the rest of us.
I complain about movie ratings. Did you see Requiem For A Dream? Its a disturbing movie that never got released in theatres because no one would even submit it to a ratings boards. The film is excellent, I was thoroughly (sp?) impressed by this flick, but I never want to see it again (like I said, its disturbing). The thing is, ratings enforce a kind of bland suckiness to all movies.
Ratings are based or obscure and arcane guidelines enforced by stuffy bureaucrats and church-addicts.
Ratings stiffle artistic creativity because they give you a list of things you CAN'T do. So if that game is aimed at teenagers in the US, forget about seeing a single drop of blood, no matter whatthe context would be. A character in an RPG dies an you see a dramatic shot of his bloodied hand? Forget about it!
Ratings are a means of enforcing CENSORSHIP, and censorship is evil.
Evil? Yes, evil, its a means of thought control, its a bane to arts, and its a tool.
And that is why the/. crowd hates laws that ban violent games...either that or we're a bunch of immature violence addicts who don't want our toys taken away...
I used to think like that, but ten I realised that darwinian evolution doesn't work like that. The important thing is SURVIVAL, never-ending reproduction of our genes, perpetuation of our cells. Its not HOW we do it that counts, its doing it.
Sure it means that a whole bunch of blind retards reproduce, but maybe one of those blind retards has a mutant gene that by pure coincidence will make them immune to some futur plague. Then that precious gene will be in the pool, and by ten we'll hopefully have gene-therapy, another unnatural way to play the natural selection game, and we'll all get to be saved from the plague by the reject's mutant gene.
If our big brains give us more ways to reproduce, it makes the species stronger, not weaker. And if artificial reproduction methods lead to a weakened human race that can't survive, the Amish will still be there to perpetuate the species.
Its not as if the whole world will abandon natural childbirthing to go to the axolt tubes.
Slashdot Mirror
"though was that it was enough to keep a large number of gamers away from the DreamCast, which was a great system."
I hate the dreamcast, for 2 reasons: Its noisier than a chainsaw, and its controller is painfull to hold.
Here's a quote from the article about the Xbox:
"There is a perception we didn't know what we were doing when it came to the controller," Isensee said. "What we failed to do is a usability test for a global market. You need to do that, because things that work in the U.S. don't always work in Japan or Europe."
What? They think their controller works in the US? Damn they're stupid, corporate-style.
The thing is HUGE and cumbersome, and its so hard to get from button to button.
Microsoft is following in the steps of Sega...and see where that got them!
Anybody remember the genesis controller? It looked all cool and stylish, but had have has many buttons has the nintendo controller. I have played Streetfighter on both...the horror, the HORROR!
A good controller is one of the most important thing about a console, microsoft doesn't get that, sony never got it, and nintendo had a slight memory-loss about that (unless there are a lot of 3 armed people out there who though the 3-handle N64 controller was a god send)
Like you said ("Here [mit.edu] is what his colleagues at MIT used to think of him (and a damn sight more kindly than they do today).") turns out to have statements like: I know I'm an exception, but I've always found walkmans a little insulting -- their wearers seem to be saying that the normal sounds of this world are not good enough for them.
Well well, that's a well-balanced and tolerant individual!
He also thinks the dude should be socially ostracised for dressing weird?!
Jeez! Don't tell me person a) is stupid based upon the statement of obviously jerky person b).
Ok, so I agree, Mann seems to be looking to annoy people, and probably was smart-assed to the airport people. But the way they reacted to his attitude was very very wrong and you know it. Maybe you are unnaturally lucky and have managed to evade all arrogant, imcompetant and semi-brutal security gards in your life, but this is a behaviour that is bound to get worst has airport security becomes sacrosaint, the holy of holies if you will, and I think its pretty important to make such incidents known so we can limit the amount of abuse of that sort.
Man! A life-time of making newfie jokes finally proven right!
So, a newfie security guard strip searches a cyborg and...
This is total bullshit [...] retards [...] you all hate them [...] Where are all the billion dollar Swiss/Netherlandian tech start ups??
Why don't you read the article, and maybe you'll notice that they are naming companies in there.
Ok, now take a moment...let it sink in...ok, now you've had time to assimilate that this is the awnser to the question you asked.
You're now about to go on and on about the fact that the 3 companies you gave as examples were all tech companies and so the examples given don't apply.
Now take the time to read the article again...notice the products used as examples of insane copyrights? Yes, they're drug and food companies, that's right!
Ok, now maybe examples of comapanies that made it big given in the article in question were drug and food companies? Maybe?
Yes, that's right.
Not everyone knows this it seems, but there are companies that are doing research and developpment in other areas than in electronics.
Merely unplugging or turning off the computer's microphone does not correct the random-character problem, according to several user reports.
Voices from the ether?
Though fewer than half of Americans with computers say they fully understand how to operate them and all their features, there are differences by region. Northeasterners are the most confused, Midwesterners the most computer-confident
;-)
The trouble I have with surveys is that people are asked a specific question, with a set of possible responses. And from these biased awnsers people make weird and interresting conclusions.
They seem to have asked "Do you think you know how your computer works?" with possible awnsers like "not at all, a little, very much".
So, midwesterners awnsered they knew their shit more often than others? That means they're more prone to brag and talk shit, not that they actually know it. This is a survey, not a test.
I got polled for that "family feud" quiz show once...they wouldn't accept my awnsers...they suggested better ones. (Something that requires batteries = "a pacemaker"...can't see why they didn't accept that awnser
No, no it isn't.
What kind of magical thinking is that? Now that they're gonna port this game that has been in devellopment for years, now its gonna have a better story?
;-)
Ok, so FFX's story is more or less the same as FFVII and 9 (haven't played 8 long enough to tell), but the gameplay isn't. The combat system is similar, but different enough to be refreshing (I like having the power to swich characters in-combat). And the graphics are works of arts deserving respect even if they are in a videogame instead of a museum. You get a bunch of fun mini-games and puzzles, fun sidequests, a new interpretation of the chocobo theme song, etc. In short, its worth its price tag and a fun play.
Well, I guess like a lot of people, you suffer from brand loyalty...it affects judgement, I think there' s a pill you can take or something...
Biologist CAN'T find all the species because the sasquatch is hiding them all...
Seriously, with the amount of effort required for cryptozoologist to make the scientific community accept the existance of species, no wonder its not progressing very fast.
And since the basic proof that monst scientists want is a dead animal, no wonder we're making everything extinc!
Lets see, one dead animal per university, that makes lots of corpses...if one species is limited to a few thousand individual, proving its existance will require wiping it out!
Well, what's really gonna make this easier is the fact that species are disapearing so fast that in 25 years you'll prbably be able to count them all on your fingers...
(Ok, so I exagerate a little.)
You mean that quebec-based enterprise who's manufacturing plants are in ONTARIO?
Yeaaaahh...riiight....
Actually, Brazil hates our guts...
The fighting for airplane construction contracts got nasty it seems.
I love my mac, I love it even more with OSX.
... then? The computer takes a whole other eternity to resolve how many times I clicked on the button, the comes back to life. SHEESH!
OSX works good, is way more stable than OS9 ever was on my mac, and looks damn good (plus it makes my linux loving friend green with envy, wich is fun).
but its so slow!
I can't tell you the number of times I've had to mentally count my clicks on a button to figure out if I had clicked an odd or even number of times while it was frozen stiff. I mean, click on button, nothing happens. Click again, nothing happens, but the harddrive makes a sound...too late...clcik again, quick!
But I'm free of my ISP's crappy DSL connection app now! Free I tells you! FREE!
Man my comp is slow now...
Here in canada, we got 2 national languages. Its not evenly distributed of course, most provinces have assimilated the french populations (or killed 'em or deported them, etc), others have been a bit annoyed at having the english invade them and have retaliated with french-protection laws. Lets just say that it makes politics entertaining :)
So anyways, there are englophones, and francophones, and there are a few people who consider themselves bilingual.
I never thought of those people as special, until I heard a couple of teenagers talk in frenglish: They were using an even mix of french and english, both in grammar and in vocabulary. Ok, so you'd think its just a bastard tongue, but the amazing thing is that they would switch from using a word in english or the same word in french, seemingly at randow, and they could just switch to any one of the 2 languages for a whole sentence sometimes.
I was quite fascinating to listen to (I speak both french and english, but I can't do what they were doing in that natural and very fast way that they were doing it, I could however, totally understand them, even though I could not talk like that!).
I can't even give you a text imitation of it...my brain can't merge the 2 grammars...
It was like the Bable Fish exploded...
PS Anybody feeling like a flame thrower about canadian politics: shove it. This post is about merging languages, not who's province as the ugliest prime minister...
...but have they managed to explain why French sounds sexy to Americans, whilst Canadians find Spanish more erotic
Quite simple really, there are still millions of french-speaking canadians, so french doesn't sound exotic to canadians, while americans think it does 'cause they don't think of it as a national language, its foreign, so its sexy.
Its just a question of sounding romantic, foreign, exotic.
Ok, fair enough, but as SOON as you put in an ad with sound, I'm out of here.
Geez, its time to think about dropping the broadband access...no more IGN, no more gamespot, and soon, no more slashdot.
Ah well, this "Inter-Net" thing was fun while it lasted...
Bumble bees cannot fly, either.
Yup, if a scientist had found only dead bumblebees, they would have claimed (with proof) that bumblebees could not have flyed and would have said the wings must have been used for heat dirpersion or some other crap.
And before anyone goes on to say that it was recently discovered that its small vorticies that blablabla makes the bumblebee fly, remember that they had to turture countless specimens before they admitted their secret of flight. (wind tunnels, glue, sticks, etc) wich requires live specimens.
Remember kids, anytime a scientist says something is impossible, he's no longer a scientist, he's a techno-monk, relying on faith and math rather than empirical observations.
instead of being constantly inside trying to figure out how to get to world 8-1 of mario brothers, i was outside playing sports, riding my bike, building tree forts...kids today spend to much time playing video games, and not enough time experiencing interactions with real people...
:) and had me interact with others in either a competitive or cooperative context.
Funny, I was inside with my best friend trying to get to world 8-4 of Mario, and when we ran out of lives we'd go out and ride our bikes and stuff.
I really wonder about people who think that playing videogames makes you incapable of interacting with others. Most of my friends are people I play videogames with!
Playing video games had me use my imagination (hey, the graphics back on the 8 bit consoles forced you to use your imagination!
Ok, so one time me and my friend spent so much time playing tetris (the cool 2 at a time, race mode thingy on the ol' nintendo) that when we finaly got tired and went out for some air we both saw the sky being yellow...then we decided to spend the rest of the day out and put off tetris 'til the next day.
The thing is, its obvious you shouldn't let your kids spend ALL their time on videogames, but if you let them spend all their times playing sports you end up with dumb jocks, all their time reading books, weak bookworms, all their time eating, fat kids, etc. anything in excess is bad.
In short: video games are good, too much of them is bad, same with everything else.
Strive for balance.
This can't be! The system cannot work! ARGH!
Does this mean that judges can make decisions that aren't only meant to protect the establishment?
Nooo! My world is shattered...
What next? Honest politicians? Is this the twilight zone???
this has been going on for a while.
They have flesh eating flies in south america that swarm on cattle and people alike, inflicting painfull and diseased flesh wounds. They have been reducing their numbers using this irradiated fly technique for a while. The results have been good it seems.
The flies arent mutants, they're sterile. They still mate with the non-irradiated flies, but they don't produce offsprings, so they reduce the number of flies in the next generation without a whole bunch of pesticides getting in the food chain.
Here is some nuclear propaganda
It was released in thetres? Not just fringe flick theatres and festivals?
Funny...it never did get a US rating...
Funny...you just gave my description of Dancer in the Dark...
Anywayz, I like Aronofsky's thing. I like how he films people taking drugs...its interesting to look at.
But whatever, we're being offtopic...
pointing an empty gun at anything is dangerous and has a good chance of killing. you never put your gun away without a complete cleaning and inspection, the guns go in their cas and in the safe...Maybe we would have less morons running around trying to cap every fool they think diss them.
No, then you'd get morons running around shooting people and then cleaning their gun and putting them away safely.
Here in canada there was a copy-cat after Columbine. But since guns are hard to get here, the moron had to settle for a knife. Instead of a dozen dead, we got 3 injured, including the moron.
The trouble with guns is not responsible people having them, its if ANY idiot can have one, then MANY idiots will have one, and use them.
But the issue at hand was banning videogames (or more precisely, sales of violent games to kiddies), wich is stupid. Videogames aren't weapons.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want kids to have violent games, but it should always be the parent's call, not the government's.
Can someone please explain to me why the "Slashdot Consensus" seems to be in disagreement of things like this?
/. crowd hates laws that ban violent games...either that or we're a bunch of immature violence addicts who don't want our toys taken away...
Because a law like this is a firts-step law to banning violent games altogether.
Its an attemp by the "moral minority" to impose their views on the rest of us.
I complain about movie ratings. Did you see Requiem For A Dream? Its a disturbing movie that never got released in theatres because no one would even submit it to a ratings boards. The film is excellent, I was thoroughly (sp?) impressed by this flick, but I never want to see it again (like I said, its disturbing). The thing is, ratings enforce a kind of bland suckiness to all movies.
Ratings are based or obscure and arcane guidelines enforced by stuffy bureaucrats and church-addicts.
Ratings stiffle artistic creativity because they give you a list of things you CAN'T do. So if that game is aimed at teenagers in the US, forget about seeing a single drop of blood, no matter whatthe context would be. A character in an RPG dies an you see a dramatic shot of his bloodied hand? Forget about it!
Ratings are a means of enforcing CENSORSHIP, and censorship is evil.
Evil? Yes, evil, its a means of thought control, its a bane to arts, and its a tool.
And that is why the
I used to think like that, but ten I realised that darwinian evolution doesn't work like that. The important thing is SURVIVAL, never-ending reproduction of our genes, perpetuation of our cells. Its not HOW we do it that counts, its doing it.
Sure it means that a whole bunch of blind retards reproduce, but maybe one of those blind retards has a mutant gene that by pure coincidence will make them immune to some futur plague. Then that precious gene will be in the pool, and by ten we'll hopefully have gene-therapy, another unnatural way to play the natural selection game, and we'll all get to be saved from the plague by the reject's mutant gene.
If our big brains give us more ways to reproduce, it makes the species stronger, not weaker. And if artificial reproduction methods lead to a weakened human race that can't survive, the Amish will still be there to perpetuate the species.
Its not as if the whole world will abandon natural childbirthing to go to the axolt tubes.