Keep in mind there are good reasons for the region coding. The games do have to be programmed differently if they are going to be run on NTSC or PAL. The European GameCube has different video out formats than the US/Japan one does.
Another reason Nintendo releases at different times in different regions is they have a policy of only releasing a game after translating it to the local language, which takes time (some companies release English language games all over Europe). That's why THQ published Conker's Bad Fur Day in Europe instead of Nintendo - Nintendo didn't think it was worth the cost to translate it, but THQ thought the sales potential of an English language version was worth it.
Do you think the average person who posts on slashdot would require money to do a commercial like that for their favorite Linux distribution? I don't.
I doubt you'd have trouble finding people for any non-Windows OS who would instantly jump at the chance to do it. I would think Windows users would be more likely to want money for it, but I'm sure you'd find enough people that would be happy enough to get the chance to be on tv/print.
What you're rendering makes a big difference. I had a friend download Mozilla and had him load a Slashdot page with almost 1000 comments with the threshold at -1 in both IE and Mozilla. I don't know what the specs were on his machine. IE took about 8 seconds according to my watch, whereas Mozilla took about 2 seconds according to the status bar indication. Obviously the IE timing isn't very accurate, but it was still a huge difference.
That's because if you've actually used GEOS, you won't find MS Office very easy to use. Most people I've shown GEOS to have found the GEOS apps much easier to use. The only people who haven't disagreed are the ones that'll bitch the slightest thing isn't 100% like MS Office.
Re:that doesn't mean they'll produce good games
on
Microsoft Buys Rare
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· Score: 3, Informative
Dig around at any GameCube website and you'll find that Rare was the first company outside of Nintendo to get GameCube dev kits.
The whole point of the sale was so the owners could get out of it and retire. They offered to sell the company to Nintendo first, but they decided they weren't worth the money, hence the sale to Microsoft.
Star Fox shipped yesterday in the US. I picked it up today. Comes out Friday in Japan. Dunno about the rest of the world, but US + Japan is the vast majority of the market for it.
The World Wildlife Fund first complained in the early ninties. The World Wrestling Federation made a bad move, and agreed to a contract not to use the initials outside the US. They had no intentions of honoring that, they just signed it to shut up the wildlife fund. Eventually the Wildlife Fund sued over it, and recently won in court do to that old contract.
It could be worse. There used to be a software company called The Company. Imagine what legal contracts with them looked like.
Re:Why not a partnership?
on
Borrowing ROMs
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Nintendo has been rereleasing a lot of their old NES and SNES games on the Gameboy Color & Gameboy Advance systems. Most Mario games have been rereleased, or will be soon. They attempted porting the older Zelda games, but the GB screen was too small for it. Zelda 3 will make it to the GBA though.
Various other old NES games are included within Animal Crossing, which is coming to the GameCube later this year.
So, the answer is, Nintendo would lose money by getting involved in schemes allowing people to download ROMs.
I've seen Gnutella clients that automatically respond to search queries by appending ".mp3" or some other extension to the request string. Anytime I've seen it, it's been really small file sizes, so it was obvious, but that could be changed.
It's not useless extras I'm complaining about. It's basic features. Ever notice how instant messangers are used at college? Away messsages are how you track people down. So if they don't work, then the client sucks.
If you send a URL to a GAIM user, it silently drops it. That's something worth complaining about.
If a client supports a minimum set of features in its two target networks (ICQ & AIM use the same protocol, hence the higher treatment of them), then it's usually very safe to say the protocols with lower priority aren't as good.
Have you tried gaim's support for other clients? I've only tried the ICQ support, and it's terrible. It only supports a bare minimum of ICQ features, and silently drops messages it doesn't understand (i.e. url messages). Other ICQ users can't check away messages of people using GAIM. GAIM's crap.
I definately agree with the original post that said the AIM client is buggy. It works a LOT better on Win2k, but on older Windows versions it's terrible. When I started college, I ran AIM + ICQ 24/7. I'd have to reboot on average every 3 days. Then when I stopped running AIM, my average uptime become a month, with the main cause of reboots being a software install or configuration change. Also, Netscape 4.x crashes a lot more often if AIM is running.
The damn program leaks GDI resources like hell. I really don't think it frees the memory for banner ads. It's obvious if you leave it idle long enough (the older your Windows version, the less GDI resources, so the sooner it shows. Win3.11 was really painful about htis), as the banner ads will suddenly stop showing, and you'll get a gap in the buddly list window where the ads should be. Try opening new windows, and they'll be missing UI objects. It's all downhill from there until you restart Windows.
On Win2k, I've found AIM ok, although sometimes it likes to crash when my I'm using wireless networking and lose the signal.
The offical company name was always World Wrestling Federation Entertainment. No E in the logo before, no E now. They just got rid of the F, leaving the two W's for the new logo. Hence the saying, Get the F out.
At least Theora is pronouncable, instead of just a mix of letters and numbers. I don't think there's anything inherently cool sounding to the name MP3. The cool factor got associated with it after people found out about them.
I think it was at crucial.com where I saw this explaination. Apparently, when the major brands make RAM, they put it through a lot of stress testing, and ensure that it works well past the required specifications. Supposedly chips that pass this testing have a 99% chance or so of never failing. If the chip doesn't make it through the full testing, then tell sell it off to other companies, who are required to sell it without the brand name on it. That's what generic RAM is. So some generic RAM will work fine, provided you don't try to overclock the hell out of it or anything. Other times you'll get a chip that'll barely work at all. I'm pretty sure they throw out the chips that don't pass the minimum testing, but even so, you're buying parts that won't work if you go a little off spec. So I'd say buying brand name RAM is well worth the added price, as you tend to get better warrenty terms, plus you know it's passed every test they've thrown at it.
ICQ 99b was the last ICQ to use a UDP based protocol. Newer versions use the AIM protocol, which is TCP based. It's got plusses and minuses. TCP works nicer with proxies, but TCP connections get disrupted with any slight hiccup in the network. The UDP protocol could handle that better. However, Mirabilis/AOL is phasing out the older protocol. Their servers are intentionally dropping packets in order to try to get people to use newer versions (standard support line is upgrade to fix the problems)
I just loaded ICQ 2002 yesterday, and I will say it starts up a lot faster than 2000 does, despite the fact that my machine with 2000 is faster. Haven't used it enough to know how good it is overall though.
Graphics power wise, a current console will blow away a few year old PC easily. Plus, remember, everyone with a particular console has an identical system, so it's possible to get 100% of the performance out of the hardware without having to worry about how many people can use it. Also, consoles have damn nice memory bandwidth, which helps a lot for the graphics work. In short, if you design a machine to do one thing, and do it really well, it'll easily out perform a general purpose machine.
And of course, Windows puts in a nice chunk of overhead.
The owners of the content don't want you recording it with a TiVo either. As far as they're concerned TiVo users are thieves because either 1) you're skipping the commercials which violates your "license agreement" to watch the show or 2) you're recording it digitally so that you can spread it to everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind there are good reasons for the region coding. The games do have to be programmed differently if they are going to be run on NTSC or PAL. The European GameCube has different video out formats than the US/Japan one does.
Another reason Nintendo releases at different times in different regions is they have a policy of only releasing a game after translating it to the local language, which takes time (some companies release English language games all over Europe). That's why THQ published Conker's Bad Fur Day in Europe instead of Nintendo - Nintendo didn't think it was worth the cost to translate it, but THQ thought the sales potential of an English language version was worth it.
It's not a reverse engineered BIOS. They took the original BIOS and modified it slightly.
Do you think the average person who posts on slashdot would require money to do a commercial like that for their favorite Linux distribution? I don't.
I doubt you'd have trouble finding people for any non-Windows OS who would instantly jump at the chance to do it. I would think Windows users would be more likely to want money for it, but I'm sure you'd find enough people that would be happy enough to get the chance to be on tv/print.
What you're rendering makes a big difference. I had a friend download Mozilla and had him load a Slashdot page with almost 1000 comments with the threshold at -1 in both IE and Mozilla. I don't know what the specs were on his machine. IE took about 8 seconds according to my watch, whereas Mozilla took about 2 seconds according to the status bar indication. Obviously the IE timing isn't very accurate, but it was still a huge difference.
Err, that should be the only people who haven't agreed.
That's because if you've actually used GEOS, you won't find MS Office very easy to use. Most people I've shown GEOS to have found the GEOS apps much easier to use. The only people who haven't disagreed are the ones that'll bitch the slightest thing isn't 100% like MS Office.
Dig around at any GameCube website and you'll find that Rare was the first company outside of Nintendo to get GameCube dev kits.
The whole point of the sale was so the owners could get out of it and retire. They offered to sell the company to Nintendo first, but they decided they weren't worth the money, hence the sale to Microsoft.
The whole advantage of a console is that it isn't upgradable. That means if I see a game for my system, I know it'll work.
And when it's time to replace the console, the new one will be cheaper than an upgrade to a PC will be.
And besides, if you don't use your PC for games, you don't need to upgrade it nearly as often. So overall you'll be spending a lot less money.
Star Fox shipped yesterday in the US. I picked it up today. Comes out Friday in Japan. Dunno about the rest of the world, but US + Japan is the vast majority of the market for it.
> 9. A little something called XBox.
Wouldn't "A big something" be more accurate?
The World Wildlife Fund first complained in the early ninties. The World Wrestling Federation made a bad move, and agreed to a contract not to use the initials outside the US. They had no intentions of honoring that, they just signed it to shut up the wildlife fund. Eventually the Wildlife Fund sued over it, and recently won in court do to that old contract.
It could be worse. There used to be a software company called The Company. Imagine what legal contracts with them looked like.
Nintendo has been rereleasing a lot of their old NES and SNES games on the Gameboy Color & Gameboy Advance systems. Most Mario games have been rereleased, or will be soon. They attempted porting the older Zelda games, but the GB screen was too small for it. Zelda 3 will make it to the GBA though.
Various other old NES games are included within Animal Crossing, which is coming to the GameCube later this year.
So, the answer is, Nintendo would lose money by getting involved in schemes allowing people to download ROMs.
I've seen Gnutella clients that automatically respond to search queries by appending ".mp3" or some other extension to the request string. Anytime I've seen it, it's been really small file sizes, so it was obvious, but that could be changed.
It's not useless extras I'm complaining about. It's basic features. Ever notice how instant messangers are used at college? Away messsages are how you track people down. So if they don't work, then the client sucks.
If you send a URL to a GAIM user, it silently drops it. That's something worth complaining about.
If a client supports a minimum set of features in its two target networks (ICQ & AIM use the same protocol, hence the higher treatment of them), then it's usually very safe to say the protocols with lower priority aren't as good.
AIM is really popular in the US. Everywhere else, everybody uses ICQ. The US just likes to be different...
I did see someone use Yahoo messenger once a few years ago. Never saw an MSN user.
Have you tried gaim's support for other clients? I've only tried the ICQ support, and it's terrible. It only supports a bare minimum of ICQ features, and silently drops messages it doesn't understand (i.e. url messages). Other ICQ users can't check away messages of people using GAIM. GAIM's crap.
I definately agree with the original post that said the AIM client is buggy. It works a LOT better on Win2k, but on older Windows versions it's terrible. When I started college, I ran AIM + ICQ 24/7. I'd have to reboot on average every 3 days. Then when I stopped running AIM, my average uptime become a month, with the main cause of reboots being a software install or configuration change. Also, Netscape 4.x crashes a lot more often if AIM is running.
The damn program leaks GDI resources like hell. I really don't think it frees the memory for banner ads. It's obvious if you leave it idle long enough (the older your Windows version, the less GDI resources, so the sooner it shows. Win3.11 was really painful about htis), as the banner ads will suddenly stop showing, and you'll get a gap in the buddly list window where the ads should be. Try opening new windows, and they'll be missing UI objects. It's all downhill from there until you restart Windows.
On Win2k, I've found AIM ok, although sometimes it likes to crash when my I'm using wireless networking and lose the signal.
The offical company name was always World Wrestling Federation Entertainment. No E in the logo before, no E now. They just got rid of the F, leaving the two W's for the new logo. Hence the saying, Get the F out.
The story I heard years ago about Japanese CD prices is that each album only gets one pressing. Because of the limited quantity, they cost more.
At least Theora is pronouncable, instead of just a mix of letters and numbers. I don't think there's anything inherently cool sounding to the name MP3. The cool factor got associated with it after people found out about them.
I think it was at crucial.com where I saw this explaination. Apparently, when the major brands make RAM, they put it through a lot of stress testing, and ensure that it works well past the required specifications. Supposedly chips that pass this testing have a 99% chance or so of never failing. If the chip doesn't make it through the full testing, then tell sell it off to other companies, who are required to sell it without the brand name on it. That's what generic RAM is. So some generic RAM will work fine, provided you don't try to overclock the hell out of it or anything. Other times you'll get a chip that'll barely work at all. I'm pretty sure they throw out the chips that don't pass the minimum testing, but even so, you're buying parts that won't work if you go a little off spec. So I'd say buying brand name RAM is well worth the added price, as you tend to get better warrenty terms, plus you know it's passed every test they've thrown at it.
ICQ 99b was the last ICQ to use a UDP based protocol. Newer versions use the AIM protocol, which is TCP based. It's got plusses and minuses. TCP works nicer with proxies, but TCP connections get disrupted with any slight hiccup in the network. The UDP protocol could handle that better. However, Mirabilis/AOL is phasing out the older protocol. Their servers are intentionally dropping packets in order to try to get people to use newer versions (standard support line is upgrade to fix the problems)
I just loaded ICQ 2002 yesterday, and I will say it starts up a lot faster than 2000 does, despite the fact that my machine with 2000 is faster. Haven't used it enough to know how good it is overall though.
Graphics power wise, a current console will blow away a few year old PC easily. Plus, remember, everyone with a particular console has an identical system, so it's possible to get 100% of the performance out of the hardware without having to worry about how many people can use it. Also, consoles have damn nice memory bandwidth, which helps a lot for the graphics work. In short, if you design a machine to do one thing, and do it really well, it'll easily out perform a general purpose machine.
And of course, Windows puts in a nice chunk of overhead.
The owners of the content don't want you recording it with a TiVo either. As far as they're concerned TiVo users are thieves because either 1) you're skipping the commercials which violates your "license agreement" to watch the show or 2) you're recording it digitally so that you can spread it to everyone.