And I also think you want a browser nicely integrated into your OS. And a word processor.
It doesn't matter that other companies can't get into these markets, because MS uses its monopoly to make their products to work worse, or whatever other dark practice MS has up his sleeve.
And don't forget that you want your OS to have a backdoor for the NSA, nicely bundled and integrated.
Monopolies are bad for everyone, except the monopoly. To think otherwise, is not really to think.
This is only because historically the best machines were built by englishmen who measured in inches and all the other crap.
Are you going to tell me that computer geeks should use the Imperial system because it is a better measurement for diskettes and screens?
Fact: The numeric system we use, Indian, is based in powers of ten. So it is the SI. It is easy to multiply by ten, you just add/sustract zeroes.
Fact: The Imperial System is loosely based in powers of twelve. As much as you can divide by 2, 3 and 6, it is far more complex to do so than to multiply by ten.
995 dollars in profit of which 99 dollars is lost in tax. This produces much more money they 'making' 95 dollars by donating it. I don't know about you, but I'd rather sell the software...makes me more money.
But is Microsoft able to sell 1 billion EXTRA of Visual Studio XXX, in addition to the quantity they actually sell?
Think that Microsoft cannot sell an arbitrary amount of software as they wish, but they can donate an arbitrary (up to a maximum) quantity of software, because, as many have pointed, the cost to manufacturate is lower.
However, I don't think you are taking in count housing and transport cost (logistics), and other things. At 1000 bucks a piece, 1 billion of software is 1 million cd boxes with manuals. We don't know how will the Third World get their hands on that software, and that may (MAY) be a cost also.
Anyway, Microsoft is making a profit here. But every big business does this, and IS a good thing, because they are donating usable software at the end of the day.
Ray Bradbury is real science fiction, but his style is different from others autors. He doesn't care too much for tech, so most of his works could well be in the fantasy genre.
Also, he has written a lot of literature which is not science fiction, but, for some reason, this angers some fans. I don't understand this, as Asimov, for example, wrote a lot of works which were not science fiction.
By the way, if you don't want something Pretentious, focused on the stuff the author made up, and/or trying to make up for its bad writing by making some grand political or theological "statement" you should avoid the good Doctor Asimov.
I'm a fan of Asimov, and think that the foundation trilogy is the best thing that ever happened to the genre (and the sequeles/prequels he and others written after that, the worst), but he has every characteristic you mentioned.
Hyperion is also good, but I think you wouldn't want to read it either.
I thought that the goofy things that Nintendo had made were the Virtual Boy and ROB.
A copy protection scheme IS NOT GOOFY. Nintendo probably had some dark reasons to use carts instead of CDs, but being able to eliminate piracy completely is a great thing.
If you want to easily copy the new Nintendo games, it is your problem. Nintendo won't help piracy.
However, Nintendo may still use it internally. Lots of things inside the gamecube have codes that include "DOL" for Dolphin, the codename for the cube. I guess that Isle Dolphino from Mario Sunshine is another example.
And instead of having a pc-speaker/visual bell warning you, you could have your pad RUMBLE!!
Seriously, if Nintendo wanted, they could put in jail some people around there. One of the first tools created in the cube-hacking scene was the "Animal Crossing Loader" which allowed, using the PSO bug, to load Animal Crossing and Luigi's Mansion from an image on a PC, using the Broadband adapter.
I think I may have been misunderstood. I think Stunts was great. It was, along with civilization, one of the big timewasters of my youth.
What I'm saying is that what makes Stunts a great game, is its funny bugs. That, and the level editor which allowed great room for experimenting with the faulty physics in the game, made Stunts great.
I have always been intrigued if this physics engine was left that way deliberately, or the game was rushed. Maybe Broderbund made another version of the game, which was more realistic, and realized it was not as fun as the previous, buggy version.
In Gran Turismo 2, for the playstation (at least the japanese version), in the track called "Laguna Seca", there is a small obstacle, right at the start:
| |_ | V*\ | | |-------| Starting line.
the * represents the V-shaped space, in which you can put your car, shake a little, and get out of the track, to a collision free limbo! (try with blocky cars, not the rounded ones)
You can navigate blindly (guiding yourself only with the map, which shows that the map is drawed based on your REAL position, not relative to the track), so you get under the big cliff that characterizes this track, and you will be rocket-launched back to the surface.
It makes for some misterious looking replays, and is really funny. There is another track in which you can do this, but it is far harder than the glitch in Laguna Seca. I remember (I did this three years ago, I think) that it was a Urban track, and it was at a tire barrier.
I once saw an early version of an OS racing game which had a bug similar to stunts. If you achieved some very high speed, you went flying away. I don't remember the name.
That game was actually playable, and was somewhat good, but the thing that made it remarkable was the stupid physics engine that it included. My friends and I wasted hours and hours trying to set up the most amazing disasters, so we could see what happened. Some of the crazy stuff that the game allowed was:
-The main atraction: I guess some programmes remembered that things launehed through the air follow a parabolic trayectory. However they sliopped a sign somewhere, because things went flying in a parabole of positive A (Ax^2 + Bx + C), like an U, rather than one of a negative A (like an n)
-When the AI car crashed, if you touched, slowly,the AI car which was burning (and stopped), sometimes you would be sent flying away (where did all that momentum came from?).
-If you reached max speed, the grass would stop resisting you.
-If you were fast enough, and with a little of luck, you could pass through small walls.
-From time to time, you were sent flying away for no apparent reason.
This game had poor programming, and delivered hundreds of hours of laughs. If Broderbund had made their work right, I doubt I would ever played it twice.
This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.
You must be looking at EA/Vivendi numbers, who have no problem in releasing the same games every year, with small modifications. If somehow they stumble into some innovation (GTA), they will quickly make the creators release a new edition every year.
Out of that, every succesful gamehouse (blizzard, ID, Valve) has a strict set of games they know will be a success, and they stick to that. Innovators die slowly, but they die.
You know, these arbitrary names come after greek words. They used these words to refer to small things, so scientists, centuries after them, use these words to refer to powers of ten.
If you are measuring in inches, you have to memorize arbitrary numbers, because there are 5280 inches in one mile, and 12 inches in a feet, which makes calculations cumbersome and prone to error.
Metric system is intuitive, because every unit is a power of ten of a meter. This is the only thing arbitrary.
Face it. Metric system r00lZ! Any other system sucks!!
I am 25 years old, and I can't find any game funnier than Super Smash Bros Melee. And that game is full of furry small animals(pokemon) and ladies who are NOT showing their boobs, and yell like babies (Peach). There is no blood, altough the game is somewhat violent (a Professional Racers hits a dinosaur in the face with a BaseBall Bat repeteadly). Well, that's me, YMMV.
I guess that the average gamer age has not risen yet above 17, when blood and sex are cooler than solid gameplay. (Well, sex, at least the not-electronic kind, is still cooler than gameplay =)
I for one welcome our new videogame makers overlords! May their conglomerate business anger do not fall upon us!!
After the obligatory joke, I wish to say that is another reason (apart from excellent games) to support Nintendo. You don't want only one company owning all electronic media, be it a japanese (Sony) or American (Microsoft).
If you are somewhat dissapointed with DW7, you should pick up some emulator a patch, and the Dragon Quest 6 rom (which you should find easily by yourself).
It is easily the greatest of all Dragon Quest/Warrior games, with an inmense world to explore, which is designed in such a way, that every new transport medium you get, opens at least two new locations, with fun minigames or cool places to go, which are not obvious at first, so you expend some time exploring.
That game is the best of the series. I am waiting for Square Enix to make a new version of it, like they have done with every Dragon Quest before that.
By some reason, American media is trying to present the gamecube as a dead console, and Nintendo as a company ready to fall in bankruptcy. This is hardly so, since they dominate the portable market, and are second (and by far lately) in the console war.
The Gamecube is alive and kicking, and if xbox were the console of another company, like sega, xbox would be dead. There is no real reason to own a xbox now; if you love FPSs, you should get a PC, for almost the same price.
Is Nethack really any better than Angband or Moria? I got started on Moria, beat Angband, but never gave Nethack much of a chance.
Well, it depends. If you are into puzzles and exploration, nethack is for you. If you want to optimize your character to be the ultimate ascii-ruiner-of-worlds, it doesn't get any better than Angband. Both are incredible games, and you should get over the awful UI and play them.
When I finally faced Morgoth in Angband, it had taken me over 40 days to develop that character. I broke out into a cold sweat over a capitol M that was quickly smashing its way through permanant walls while it chased me. Earthquakes and Teleports barely slowed him down. Never have I felt so much tension in a turn-based text game
Any true angbander knows that Morgoth is a Giant Humanoid, so it is represented with a grey P. That P is easily the most overpowered boss ever in any videogame, that is still beatable (that is, if you don't count the apocryphal Serpent of Chaos of Zangband).
I guess something like this new processor will be used in the next generation of consoles. Microsoft already anounced they would work with IBM for designing their Xbox Next. I guess that Nintendo may follow suit.
It also fits into schedule. For a new generation of consoles coming in 2005, SDKs must be available at least a year before. These processors will be here by 2004, so that lefts half a year to design and deliver SDKs, and a year to start production/distribution of Consoles in the last part of 2005.
You both guys are insane and biased. Games are designed with a controller in mind, be it for a console or PC. Not every game is a FPS/RTS so no every game needs a mouse. Not every game is a jump and runner/beat'em up, so not every game needs a Gamepad.
So, there is no reason there should be a control to rule them all (at least, until telephatic controllers kick in, but I'm not worried about that).
As for console games not being as complex as computer games, I'd take a look to Pokemon, Virtua Fighter 3, Capcom vs SNK or Super Smash Brother Melee. These are f'cking amazing games, so complex you could devote thousands of hours to master one of them.
That is because the book was an novelization of an older short story of the same name. The book was written mostly by Robert Silverberg. I have not readed it, so I can really say that the book sucks.
But the short story kicks ass, as almost anything he did before he got lame and started the sequels to the Foundation Trilogy (Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth, Prelude. "Second Foundation trilogy" is bullshit also, by the way).
I remember saying "is that all you do?" myself, but that was when i was just watching... Once I got the controller in my hands and was playing, next thing you know, it's ten hours later and we're still playing Soul Calibur using Voldo.
All musical games suck. There is no strategy in them; you aren't competing against the other player, just pushing in your memory long strings of arrows, movements, whatever. It's like the difference between running a marathon and playing a game of basketball. Both provide satisfaction, but basketball is way more complex (and fun).
Slashdot Mirror
And I also think you want a browser nicely integrated into your OS. And a word processor.
It doesn't matter that other companies can't get into these markets, because MS uses its monopoly to make their products to work worse, or whatever other dark practice MS has up his sleeve.
And don't forget that you want your OS to have a backdoor for the NSA, nicely bundled and integrated.
Monopolies are bad for everyone, except the monopoly. To think otherwise, is not really to think.
This is only because historically the best machines were built by englishmen who measured in inches and all the other crap.
Are you going to tell me that computer geeks should use the Imperial system because it is a better measurement for diskettes and screens?
Fact: The numeric system we use, Indian, is based in powers of ten. So it is the SI. It is easy to multiply by ten, you just add/sustract zeroes.
Fact: The Imperial System is loosely based in powers of twelve. As much as you can divide by 2, 3 and 6, it is far more complex to do so than to multiply by ten.
995 dollars in profit of which 99 dollars is lost in tax. This produces much more money they 'making' 95 dollars by donating it. I don't know about you, but I'd rather sell the software...makes me more money.
But is Microsoft able to sell 1 billion EXTRA of Visual Studio XXX, in addition to the quantity they actually sell?
Think that Microsoft cannot sell an arbitrary amount of software as they wish, but they can donate an arbitrary (up to a maximum) quantity of software, because, as many have pointed, the cost to manufacturate is lower.
However, I don't think you are taking in count housing and transport cost (logistics), and other things. At 1000 bucks a piece, 1 billion of software is 1 million cd boxes with manuals. We don't know how will the Third World get their hands on that software, and that may (MAY) be a cost also.
Anyway, Microsoft is making a profit here. But every big business does this, and IS a good thing, because they are donating usable software at the end of the day.
Ray Bradbury is real science fiction, but his style is different from others autors. He doesn't care too much for tech, so most of his works could well be in the fantasy genre.
Also, he has written a lot of literature which is not science fiction, but, for some reason, this angers some fans. I don't understand this, as Asimov, for example, wrote a lot of works which were not science fiction.
By the way, if you don't want something Pretentious, focused on the stuff the author made up, and/or trying to make up for its bad writing by making some grand political or theological "statement" you should avoid the good Doctor Asimov.
I'm a fan of Asimov, and think that the foundation trilogy is the best thing that ever happened to the genre (and the sequeles/prequels he and others written after that, the worst), but he has every characteristic you mentioned.
Hyperion is also good, but I think you wouldn't want to read it either.
I thought that the goofy things that Nintendo had made were the Virtual Boy and ROB.
A copy protection scheme IS NOT GOOFY. Nintendo probably had some dark reasons to use carts instead of CDs, but being able to eliminate piracy completely is a great thing.
If you want to easily copy the new Nintendo games, it is your problem. Nintendo won't help piracy.
However, Nintendo may still use it internally. Lots of things inside the gamecube have codes that include "DOL" for Dolphin, the codename for the cube. I guess that Isle Dolphino from Mario Sunshine is another example.
And instead of having a pc-speaker/visual bell warning you, you could have your pad RUMBLE!!
Seriously, if Nintendo wanted, they could put in jail some people around there. One of the first tools created in the cube-hacking scene was the "Animal Crossing Loader" which allowed, using the PSO bug, to load Animal Crossing and Luigi's Mansion from an image on a PC, using the Broadband adapter.
That doesn't look like fair use exactly.
I think I may have been misunderstood. I think Stunts was great. It was, along with civilization, one of the big timewasters of my youth.
What I'm saying is that what makes Stunts a great game, is its funny bugs. That, and the level editor which allowed great room for experimenting with the faulty physics in the game, made Stunts great.
I have always been intrigued if this physics engine was left that way deliberately, or the game was rushed. Maybe Broderbund made another version of the game, which was more realistic, and realized it was not as fun as the previous, buggy version.
Nah...
In Gran Turismo 2, for the playstation (at least the japanese version), in the track called "Laguna Seca", there is a small obstacle, right at the start:
| |_
| V*\
| |
|-------| Starting line.
the * represents the V-shaped space, in which you can put your car, shake a little, and get out of the track, to a collision free limbo! (try with blocky cars, not the rounded ones)
You can navigate blindly (guiding yourself only with the map, which shows that the map is drawed based on your REAL position, not relative to the track), so you get under the big cliff that characterizes this track, and you will be rocket-launched back to the surface.
It makes for some misterious looking replays, and is really funny. There is another track in which you can do this, but it is far harder than the glitch in Laguna Seca. I remember (I did this three years ago, I think) that it was a Urban track, and it was at a tire barrier.
I once saw an early version of an OS racing game which had a bug similar to stunts. If you achieved some very high speed, you went flying away. I don't remember the name.
Stunts / 4D racing.
That game was actually playable, and was somewhat good, but the thing that made it remarkable was the stupid physics engine that it included. My friends and I wasted hours and hours trying to set up the most amazing disasters, so we could see what happened. Some of the crazy stuff that the game allowed was:
-The main atraction: I guess some programmes remembered that things launehed through the air follow a parabolic trayectory. However they sliopped a sign somewhere, because things went flying in a parabole of positive A (Ax^2 + Bx + C), like an U, rather than one of a negative A (like an n)
-When the AI car crashed, if you touched, slowly,the AI car which was burning (and stopped), sometimes you would be sent flying away (where did all that momentum came from?).
-If you reached max speed, the grass would stop resisting you.
-If you were fast enough, and with a little of luck, you could pass through small walls.
-From time to time, you were sent flying away for no apparent reason.
This game had poor programming, and delivered hundreds of hours of laughs. If Broderbund had made their work right, I doubt I would ever played it twice.
Impossible. The game you are asking for is not a FPS, Racing, or Sport game, so it is economically inviable.
This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.
You must be looking at EA/Vivendi numbers, who have no problem in releasing the same games every year, with small modifications. If somehow they stumble into some innovation (GTA), they will quickly make the creators release a new edition every year.
Out of that, every succesful gamehouse (blizzard, ID, Valve) has a strict set of games they know will be a success, and they stick to that. Innovators die slowly, but they die.
You know, these arbitrary names come after greek words. They used these words to refer to small things, so scientists, centuries after them, use these words to refer to powers of ten.
If you are measuring in inches, you have to memorize arbitrary numbers, because there are 5280 inches in one mile, and 12 inches in a feet, which makes calculations cumbersome and prone to error.
Metric system is intuitive, because every unit is a power of ten of a meter. This is the only thing arbitrary.
Face it. Metric system r00lZ! Any other system sucks!!
I agree with your argument, except in one point:
Sega ships the Saturn before Sony ships the PS1 -- Sega gets dominated (despite the fact that the Saturn was a superior console in terms of hardware).
That is not correct. Saturn was only superior in the 2D field, and vastly inferior in the 3D area.
I am 25 years old, and I can't find any game funnier than Super Smash Bros Melee. And that game is full of furry small animals(pokemon) and ladies who are NOT showing their boobs, and yell like babies (Peach). There is no blood, altough the game is somewhat violent (a Professional Racers hits a dinosaur in the face with a BaseBall Bat repeteadly). Well, that's me, YMMV.
I guess that the average gamer age has not risen yet above 17, when blood and sex are cooler than solid gameplay. (Well, sex, at least the not-electronic kind, is still cooler than gameplay =)
I for one welcome our new videogame makers overlords! May their conglomerate business anger do not fall upon us!!
After the obligatory joke, I wish to say that is another reason (apart from excellent games) to support Nintendo. You don't want only one company owning all electronic media, be it a japanese (Sony) or American (Microsoft).
We want to play games.
If you are somewhat dissapointed with DW7, you should pick up some emulator a patch, and the Dragon Quest 6 rom (which you should find easily by yourself).
It is easily the greatest of all Dragon Quest/Warrior games, with an inmense world to explore, which is designed in such a way, that every new transport medium you get, opens at least two new locations, with fun minigames or cool places to go, which are not obvious at first, so you expend some time exploring.
That game is the best of the series. I am waiting for Square Enix to make a new version of it, like they have done with every Dragon Quest before that.
<1000/1000hp 400/400mp 600/600mv 10000 gold>
The Tax Collector has entered the room.
<1000/1000hp 400/400mp 600/600mv 10000 gold>
The Tax Collector hits at you with an IRS form!
You lose 9900 pieces of gold.
<1000/1000hp 400/400mp 600/600mv 100 gold>
The Tax Collector leaves to the north.
By some reason, American media is trying to present the gamecube as a dead console, and Nintendo as a company ready to fall in bankruptcy. This is hardly so, since they dominate the portable market, and are second (and by far lately) in the console war.
The Gamecube is alive and kicking, and if xbox were the console of another company, like sega, xbox would be dead. There is no real reason to own a xbox now; if you love FPSs, you should get a PC, for almost the same price.
don't welcome any new ads. The only good ad is the blocked/skipped ad.
Is Nethack really any better than Angband or Moria? I got started on Moria, beat Angband, but never gave Nethack much of a chance.
Well, it depends. If you are into puzzles and exploration, nethack is for you. If you want to optimize your character to be the ultimate ascii-ruiner-of-worlds, it doesn't get any better than Angband. Both are incredible games, and you should get over the awful UI and play them.
When I finally faced Morgoth in Angband, it had taken me over 40 days to develop that character. I broke out into a cold sweat over a capitol M that was quickly smashing its way through permanant walls while it chased me. Earthquakes and Teleports barely slowed him down. Never have I felt so much tension in a turn-based text game
Any true angbander knows that Morgoth is a Giant Humanoid, so it is represented with a grey P. That P is easily the most overpowered boss ever in any videogame, that is still beatable (that is, if you don't count the apocryphal Serpent of Chaos of Zangband).
@'s will kick ass forever!!!
I guess something like this new processor will be used in the next generation of consoles. Microsoft already anounced they would work with IBM for designing their Xbox Next. I guess that Nintendo may follow suit.
It also fits into schedule. For a new generation of consoles coming in 2005, SDKs must be available at least a year before. These processors will be here by 2004, so that lefts half a year to design and deliver SDKs, and a year to start production/distribution of Consoles in the last part of 2005.
You both guys are insane and biased. Games are designed with a controller in mind, be it for a console or PC. Not every game is a FPS/RTS so no every game needs a mouse. Not every game is a jump and runner/beat'em up, so not every game needs a Gamepad.
So, there is no reason there should be a control to rule them all (at least, until telephatic controllers kick in, but I'm not worried about that).
As for console games not being as complex as computer games, I'd take a look to Pokemon, Virtua Fighter 3, Capcom vs SNK or Super Smash Brother Melee. These are f'cking amazing games, so complex you could devote thousands of hours to master one of them.
That is because the book was an novelization of an older short story of the same name. The book was written mostly by Robert Silverberg. I have not readed it, so I can really say that the book sucks.
But the short story kicks ass, as almost anything he did before he got lame and started the sequels to the Foundation Trilogy (Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth, Prelude. "Second Foundation trilogy" is bullshit also, by the way).
Are you talking about Samba de Amigo?
I remember saying "is that all you do?" myself, but that was when i was just watching... Once I got the controller in my hands and was playing, next thing you know, it's ten hours later and we're still playing Soul Calibur using Voldo.
All musical games suck. There is no strategy in them; you aren't competing against the other player, just pushing in your memory long strings of arrows, movements, whatever. It's like the difference between running a marathon and playing a game of basketball. Both provide satisfaction, but basketball is way more complex (and fun).