Fact or fiction, I still thought Markoff/Shimomura's book was a good read. I didn't really care for the vilification of Mitnick, but neither do I believe that, at the time, he was "doing it for the people".
Likewise, it's good for Kevin to be working with the good guys, but neither do I believe he's totally on the straight and narrow and that he can be let loose on just any computer system in the world.
If any of you folks haven't had the chance to read "Takedown", I suggest you do so-- but take it with a grain of salt; take into account the attitudes towards computer crime at the time and the nebulous definition of "hacker" the mass media uses. I also suggest you read Kevin's books and (if and when he can write it) his counterpoint to the events of Takedown.
Sometimes real life makes for good novels. Occasionally one of them is accurate, but more likely you have to read several of them to re-create what really happened.
Read my blog, then. It's still narcissistic ranting, but I freely admit that it's a waste of space and time. Still some people have enjoyed it, so maybe I'm wrong.
On a more serious note, I find blogs to be pretty useful sometimes if I'm trying to get general information on a topic. Think of it as the web equivalent of going into the tavern and asking the patrons about the dragon, to put it into an RPG analogy. After you get the gist of the info, you then go refine your search.
Because people were wearing them [crosses and cross-like designs] decoratively in the game
And this differs from the hardcore Bible-quoting, cross-bearing T-shirts with catchy "slogans" like "Pray Hard" and the ilk.... how, exactly?
A lot of secular companies use cross designs in their stuff-- it's prominent in skater culture, if Tony Hawk Pro Skater's "create-a-skater" mode is to be believed-- so why aren't we seeing uproar there? Come to think of it, there's a move in THPS called the "Christ Air"-- not one word out of the fundamentalists.
Man, I wish that people could practice their religions in peace, and not force their religious views on other people (like stuff like this and banning of abortions).
Ditto, but like the other poster said, you probably mean that you wish fundamentalists could just let people do their own thing. The Muslims who are nice to everyone, the Christians who volunteer out of an internal moral sense and not just to say "Yay, we're Christian, worship with us or burn in hell!", and all the other devout religious folks who just go as they please without bothering anyone are cool by me.
And all things considered we're a hell of a lot better off in dealing with religion in games than we used to be. We're no longer so repressed that we relegate organized religion to the ranks of NPCs who exist solely to help the player... the church (fictionalized or not) fits in a lot more prominently in games, RPGs especially.
You know what I think would be an excellent RPG? Playing the role of a team of Vatican agents, investigating a series of alleged miracles; maybe it could be traced back to a fictional coverup or something. I haven't really fleshed out the idea too well just yet. But it'd be an interesting concept, I think.
Agreed, though after those I'd skip the N64 versions and continue on with the Game Boy/Game Boy Color versions: "Link's Awakening", "Oracle of Seasons", and "Oracle of Ages". All really benefit from having developed storylines and mind-bending dungeons, and also from being inherently similar to Link to The Past (in terms of gameplay).
The other good games were indeed buried under Sega's lack of foresight; they left off a few key features for the system (DVD capability would have been nice, though at that point it probably would have killed the system's pricing; also, not offering a bundle deal for broadband/any online game wasn't the smartest move either) and treated 3rd parties worse than Nintendo ever did (or so I've heard). There were a few decent ideas for games that, for one reason or another, were executed so poorly that they're a discredit to the system (I was really interested in I-Spy Espionagents until I actually played it-- was it rushed, or what? Come to think of it, a lot of the "so close but not quite" games seemed to have been rushed).
The DC was good for its time, should have been designed better, and definitely deserved to be marketed better.
Oh, and just out of curiosity, how is the PS2 version of Rez superior? Last I knew it offered no extra features over the DC version and the graphics were pretty much the same either way.
It's not a matter of coming up with a unique story idea. That's near impossible. Instead, take a story idea that may or may not have been done before, and do something unique with it.
(and don't tell anyone that YOU had the idea first or that you told it to me!)
As a completely unrelated aside, you might get a little more response out of this if you offered to partner up with the story-writer. No offense intended, but I think I'll keep my visions to myself for the time being.
Unlimited saving for console titles kills a game's difficulty. Cheaters will simply restart from their last save when they find themselves in an unfavorable position (like death, or once they waste all their potions but figure out the boss' strategy). Unlimited saving should, however, be present on all portable games. In fact, it is on most titles, in the capacity you describe.
Final Fantasy is getting a lot better at the "get you into the action right away", though there have to be some allowances for the beginning of the game and at certain dramatic moments. Tactical games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, however, follow the "CG, one fight, then save" formula because that's the way the game is paced. The story is told between the battles. I hated FFT for the longest time because a single random battle could completely kill one of my gaming sessions. I think that's what the original poster was talking about.
I started programming BASIC on an old VIC-20 when I was 6, far before I had any concept of how to design a program properly or even how to connect the VIC-20 to the TV. Needless to say, my exposure to BASIC did me a world of good.
Hear me out, really.
It's very easy for novice users to fall into the trap that "Oh, I'm still programming, so stuff in C should work like BASIC". When they find that it doesn't, novice users tend to give up. Real "wizards", as I've heard Dijkstra quoted in this discussion, will easily be able to say "Ah, so that's how C differs. OK, that makes this part harder, but that part and that other part much easier." Then, once they know how to code, teach them design.
That being said, If I were in charge of a beginner's computing course, Perl would be taught first thing. Free, easy to write, and helps users learn good practices without gagging on less-than-stellar ones.
Oh, and GOTO has its uses, but it's nothing that can't be handled much better with a conveniently placed "if" block.
I'd split time between the Western New York/Northwest Pennsylvania areas due to a job search, and had no problem finding the bottles after about February 10th. (Downloading the music without broadband was another matter.) The bottles were pretty common in these parts till about mid-March, when they started either a) having been left behind by folks using the bottle-tilt trick (which I used pretty extensively, when I wasn't being watched) or b) just not being restocked. I'd actually thought at that point that Pepsi had run out of codes, but I suppose that wasn't the case.
I'm not an expert on product distribution by any means, but Pepsi (like any food) probably needs to be hurried out the door and sold as soon as possible, as it doesn't have an infinite shelf life. Granted, the shelf life can be protracted compared to, say, a gallon of milk, but there's still an explicit expiry date for Pepsi. (Proof, sort of: I have a Vanilla Coke bottle here in front of me, purchased this morning, with an expiration date of June 14th, 2004. Not sure what the TBA1957 means after the date-- either it's a batch number or the soda is good until 7:57p on June 14th.) I think I still have a code on my account, so I'll probably be grabbing one last track tonight. I had a good run while job searching, though-- managed twelve caps in a row, which paid for Keoki's "Jealousy".
(completely off-topic: Thanks for the mention in your final column, John. I never got the chance to say that, and I hope you're doing well at Gamer's Press. How's your daughter enjoying "Courageous Princess"?)
Except that if a song is already on your playlist, that means you already own the song, and probably aren't going to be interested in buying it again.
Obviously. But what about other people browsing your playlist, hm? The 1000th time a user sees "Lord Jimbob's Death Metal" on an iTunes playlist, they might want to buy it for themselves.
I know this is probably a troll, but phones for deaf people are equipped with non-auditory signaling systems-- flashing lights, for example. Radio DJs also use these sometimes, or at least I did when I worked as a DJ.
I'm not really sure who to root for here... I mean, on one side, you have the foul emanations of the excrement of Satan himself, and on the other side, you have the Olsen Twins.
This winds up kind of like rooting for the Nazis in a RTCW match...
In an interview in EGM before MGS2 came out, Kojima had mentioned that if anyone was going to do a Metal Gear movie, the Wachowski brothers are his first choice. Well, they're not doing anything right now, so I hear, and this video game movie thing has been picking up lately... Hmmm....
"SCO's chief executive is Darl McBride, whose cash compensation totaled $986,047 in the company's fiscal year ending last October. That pay package troubled BayStar, McGrath said, given SCO's small size - the company has annual revenue of $79 million and about 300 employees."
One of the company's employees takes home 1/80th (or so) of the annual take.
Something here is odd... though to be honest, this kind of reeks of Valenti's reasoning behind his comment about how $100,000 "wasn't much to live on" (in reference to independent music artists; for source, see pretty much any sig in the MP3 raid threads).
I do think the idea of adding a "plot" to the Sims is kind of interesting, but the plot to "Friday", "Next Friday", and "Friday After Next" does not a good video game make. As long as they keep Chris Tucker far, far away from this, it might just bomb a little instead of taking down the entire company... God dammit, EA, you do not need to pander to the people buying every frigging yearly version of Madden for more money!
You jest, but "Rock'n'Roll" is a valid reason to give a game a T rating (ESRB system). I find it absurd that the Tony Hawk line of skateboard simulations received T ratings solely for "Mild Lyrics". (Yeah, there's a little blood in there, too, but if you ask me that was put in there because Neversoft thought, "Hell, we already have the T rating, let's earn it now".)
The PEGI system doesn't sound too different from the ESRB setup: advisory, vague descriptors, age ranges. I don't want to sound like a troll here, but I can only wish that something like the BBFC system (read: enforceable and enforced) shows up in the US soon. I used to work retail at a game store and dreaded having to repeat the whole "you don't want to buy Grand Theft Auto 3 for your seven year old daugher, ma'am, I think she'd like Pac-Man World better; see, she's more interested in the one where you don't rip people apart spleen-first" bit. I'd much rather say "Sure, you can buy it, ma'am, but only once you sign this confession admitting you bought this game for a minor and I call the cops to have them haul your ass away; if you don't want to do that, then hey look over there, your daughter seems to be interested in Pac-Man World and oh goody it's on sale."
As I'd said in a previous post, I don't like over-regulation, but there should be a failsafe system at the very least for if and when the parents fail to do their job.
Actually, no, I have a MUCH better idea: Install interactive lookup terminals in game stores. The parents can then be directed to the terminal, scan the game, and actually see what they're buying. The terminal updates over a DSL line overnight and always has an up-to-date archive of games; or better yet, it's always connected and just caches popular game previews. Make it store policy, too-- like you can't buy the game unless you've watched the preview and get a little receipt. Damn, this sounds like it could make a killing for a game store, if it's marketed right: "Shop At GameHole! We Care About Your Kids: Preview A Game Before You Buy!"
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Fact or fiction, I still thought Markoff/Shimomura's book was a good read. I didn't really care for the vilification of Mitnick, but neither do I believe that, at the time, he was "doing it for the people".
Likewise, it's good for Kevin to be working with the good guys, but neither do I believe he's totally on the straight and narrow and that he can be let loose on just any computer system in the world.
If any of you folks haven't had the chance to read "Takedown", I suggest you do so-- but take it with a grain of salt; take into account the attitudes towards computer crime at the time and the nebulous definition of "hacker" the mass media uses. I also suggest you read Kevin's books and (if and when he can write it) his counterpoint to the events of Takedown.
Sometimes real life makes for good novels. Occasionally one of them is accurate, but more likely you have to read several of them to re-create what really happened.
Weird. That's the second time today, in two completely unrelated conversations, that Stigmata has come up. I may just have to see it, now.
Read my blog, then. It's still narcissistic ranting, but I freely admit that it's a waste of space and time. Still some people have enjoyed it, so maybe I'm wrong.
On a more serious note, I find blogs to be pretty useful sometimes if I'm trying to get general information on a topic. Think of it as the web equivalent of going into the tavern and asking the patrons about the dragon, to put it into an RPG analogy. After you get the gist of the info, you then go refine your search.
Because people were wearing them [crosses and cross-like designs] decoratively in the game
And this differs from the hardcore Bible-quoting, cross-bearing T-shirts with catchy "slogans" like "Pray Hard" and the ilk.... how, exactly?
A lot of secular companies use cross designs in their stuff-- it's prominent in skater culture, if Tony Hawk Pro Skater's "create-a-skater" mode is to be believed-- so why aren't we seeing uproar there? Come to think of it, there's a move in THPS called the "Christ Air"-- not one word out of the fundamentalists.
Man, I wish that people could practice their religions in peace, and not force their religious views on other people (like stuff like this and banning of abortions).
Ditto, but like the other poster said, you probably mean that you wish fundamentalists could just let people do their own thing. The Muslims who are nice to everyone, the Christians who volunteer out of an internal moral sense and not just to say "Yay, we're Christian, worship with us or burn in hell!", and all the other devout religious folks who just go as they please without bothering anyone are cool by me.
And all things considered we're a hell of a lot better off in dealing with religion in games than we used to be. We're no longer so repressed that we relegate organized religion to the ranks of NPCs who exist solely to help the player... the church (fictionalized or not) fits in a lot more prominently in games, RPGs especially.
You know what I think would be an excellent RPG? Playing the role of a team of Vatican agents, investigating a series of alleged miracles; maybe it could be traced back to a fictional coverup or something. I haven't really fleshed out the idea too well just yet. But it'd be an interesting concept, I think.
Agreed, though after those I'd skip the N64 versions and continue on with the Game Boy/Game Boy Color versions: "Link's Awakening", "Oracle of Seasons", and "Oracle of Ages". All really benefit from having developed storylines and mind-bending dungeons, and also from being inherently similar to Link to The Past (in terms of gameplay).
The other good games were indeed buried under Sega's lack of foresight; they left off a few key features for the system (DVD capability would have been nice, though at that point it probably would have killed the system's pricing; also, not offering a bundle deal for broadband/any online game wasn't the smartest move either) and treated 3rd parties worse than Nintendo ever did (or so I've heard). There were a few decent ideas for games that, for one reason or another, were executed so poorly that they're a discredit to the system (I was really interested in I-Spy Espionagents until I actually played it-- was it rushed, or what? Come to think of it, a lot of the "so close but not quite" games seemed to have been rushed).
The DC was good for its time, should have been designed better, and definitely deserved to be marketed better.
Oh, and just out of curiosity, how is the PS2 version of Rez superior? Last I knew it offered no extra features over the DC version and the graphics were pretty much the same either way.
Fuck 'Left Behind', I want to know how Acclaim is still in business.
It's not a matter of coming up with a unique story idea. That's near impossible. Instead, take a story idea that may or may not have been done before, and do something unique with it.
(and don't tell anyone that YOU had the idea first or that you told it to me!)
As a completely unrelated aside, you might get a little more response out of this if you offered to partner up with the story-writer. No offense intended, but I think I'll keep my visions to myself for the time being.
Unlimited saving for console titles kills a game's difficulty. Cheaters will simply restart from their last save when they find themselves in an unfavorable position (like death, or once they waste all their potions but figure out the boss' strategy). Unlimited saving should, however, be present on all portable games. In fact, it is on most titles, in the capacity you describe.
Final Fantasy is getting a lot better at the "get you into the action right away", though there have to be some allowances for the beginning of the game and at certain dramatic moments. Tactical games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, however, follow the "CG, one fight, then save" formula because that's the way the game is paced. The story is told between the battles. I hated FFT for the longest time because a single random battle could completely kill one of my gaming sessions. I think that's what the original poster was talking about.
I started programming BASIC on an old VIC-20 when I was 6, far before I had any concept of how to design a program properly or even how to connect the VIC-20 to the TV. Needless to say, my exposure to BASIC did me a world of good.
Hear me out, really.
It's very easy for novice users to fall into the trap that "Oh, I'm still programming, so stuff in C should work like BASIC". When they find that it doesn't, novice users tend to give up. Real "wizards", as I've heard Dijkstra quoted in this discussion, will easily be able to say "Ah, so that's how C differs. OK, that makes this part harder, but that part and that other part much easier." Then, once they know how to code, teach them design.
That being said, If I were in charge of a beginner's computing course, Perl would be taught first thing. Free, easy to write, and helps users learn good practices without gagging on less-than-stellar ones.
Oh, and GOTO has its uses, but it's nothing that can't be handled much better with a conveniently placed "if" block.
I'd split time between the Western New York/Northwest Pennsylvania areas due to a job search, and had no problem finding the bottles after about February 10th. (Downloading the music without broadband was another matter.) The bottles were pretty common in these parts till about mid-March, when they started either a) having been left behind by folks using the bottle-tilt trick (which I used pretty extensively, when I wasn't being watched) or b) just not being restocked. I'd actually thought at that point that Pepsi had run out of codes, but I suppose that wasn't the case.
I'm not an expert on product distribution by any means, but Pepsi (like any food) probably needs to be hurried out the door and sold as soon as possible, as it doesn't have an infinite shelf life. Granted, the shelf life can be protracted compared to, say, a gallon of milk, but there's still an explicit expiry date for Pepsi. (Proof, sort of: I have a Vanilla Coke bottle here in front of me, purchased this morning, with an expiration date of June 14th, 2004. Not sure what the TBA1957 means after the date-- either it's a batch number or the soda is good until 7:57p on June 14th.) I think I still have a code on my account, so I'll probably be grabbing one last track tonight. I had a good run while job searching, though-- managed twelve caps in a row, which paid for Keoki's "Jealousy".
(completely off-topic: Thanks for the mention in your final column, John. I never got the chance to say that, and I hope you're doing well at Gamer's Press. How's your daughter enjoying "Courageous Princess"?)
Aah, fair enough. Thank you for the clarification.
Except that if a song is already on your playlist, that means you already own the song, and probably aren't going to be interested in buying it again.
Obviously. But what about other people browsing your playlist, hm? The 1000th time a user sees "Lord Jimbob's Death Metal" on an iTunes playlist, they might want to buy it for themselves.
The more times an iTMS-available artist shows up on user-submitted playlists, the more sales for that artist are generated.
The more times an iTMS-unavailable artist shows up on user-submitted playlists, the more pressure Apple has to try to sign that artist.
I like where this is going.
I know this is probably a troll, but phones for deaf people are equipped with non-auditory signaling systems-- flashing lights, for example. Radio DJs also use these sometimes, or at least I did when I worked as a DJ.
I'm not really sure who to root for here... I mean, on one side, you have the foul emanations of the excrement of Satan himself, and on the other side, you have the Olsen Twins.
This winds up kind of like rooting for the Nazis in a RTCW match...
That's funny, Andrea's beard seems to suit him.
In an interview in EGM before MGS2 came out, Kojima had mentioned that if anyone was going to do a Metal Gear movie, the Wachowski brothers are his first choice. Well, they're not doing anything right now, so I hear, and this video game movie thing has been picking up lately... Hmmm....
Don't tell me NOBODY got that joke.
Since BS is essentially bankrolling a luxurious experiment by a few well paid lawyers...
Truer words have never been spoken. This whole endeavor has been fueled by BS since day one.
Wait wait wait:
"SCO's chief executive is Darl McBride, whose cash compensation totaled $986,047 in the company's fiscal year ending last October. That pay package troubled BayStar, McGrath said, given SCO's small size - the company has annual revenue of $79 million and about 300 employees."
One of the company's employees takes home 1/80th (or so) of the annual take.
Something here is odd... though to be honest, this kind of reeks of Valenti's reasoning behind his comment about how $100,000 "wasn't much to live on" (in reference to independent music artists; for source, see pretty much any sig in the MP3 raid threads).
No, it's just that in London, an American acting totally insane won't get noticed, since we all act that way anyway.
(I kid, of course. There are some pretty weird Brits out there, too.)
I was there when my children were born but quite often this is not true. Especially years ago.
You're nitpicking. Of course the babies can be 'born' without a father, where 'born' is defined as "ejected at full term from the mother's body".
The question asked probably should have read "Could human babies be conceived without fathers?".
No. (bang) No. (bang) No. (bang) No. (bang)...
I do think the idea of adding a "plot" to the Sims is kind of interesting, but the plot to "Friday", "Next Friday", and "Friday After Next" does not a good video game make. As long as they keep Chris Tucker far, far away from this, it might just bomb a little instead of taking down the entire company... God dammit, EA, you do not need to pander to the people buying every frigging yearly version of Madden for more money!
You jest, but "Rock'n'Roll" is a valid reason to give a game a T rating (ESRB system). I find it absurd that the Tony Hawk line of skateboard simulations received T ratings solely for "Mild Lyrics". (Yeah, there's a little blood in there, too, but if you ask me that was put in there because Neversoft thought, "Hell, we already have the T rating, let's earn it now".)
The PEGI system doesn't sound too different from the ESRB setup: advisory, vague descriptors, age ranges. I don't want to sound like a troll here, but I can only wish that something like the BBFC system (read: enforceable and enforced) shows up in the US soon. I used to work retail at a game store and dreaded having to repeat the whole "you don't want to buy Grand Theft Auto 3 for your seven year old daugher, ma'am, I think she'd like Pac-Man World better; see, she's more interested in the one where you don't rip people apart spleen-first" bit. I'd much rather say "Sure, you can buy it, ma'am, but only once you sign this confession admitting you bought this game for a minor and I call the cops to have them haul your ass away; if you don't want to do that, then hey look over there, your daughter seems to be interested in Pac-Man World and oh goody it's on sale."
As I'd said in a previous post, I don't like over-regulation, but there should be a failsafe system at the very least for if and when the parents fail to do their job.
Actually, no, I have a MUCH better idea: Install interactive lookup terminals in game stores. The parents can then be directed to the terminal, scan the game, and actually see what they're buying. The terminal updates over a DSL line overnight and always has an up-to-date archive of games; or better yet, it's always connected and just caches popular game previews. Make it store policy, too-- like you can't buy the game unless you've watched the preview and get a little receipt. Damn, this sounds like it could make a killing for a game store, if it's marketed right: "Shop At GameHole! We Care About Your Kids: Preview A Game Before You Buy!"