Well, when's the last time someone tried to release a portable in the US ? I vaguely remember one that had a pen like a PDA about 4 years ago, but it flat out sucked.
Perhaps if people tried competing there would be competion. The GameBoy originally won out because it came out first and had a lot of good games. Since then no one has tried to compete, so of course they have a monopoly.
Sure, you can burn it to CD, and then rip it. But you're burning a 128kbit file, and then reencoding. You're going to get a pretty crappy MP3 out of converting it.
Oh, and the article says Sony just changed their policy, and downloaded music will be burnable onto CDs any day now.
Actually, I somewhat agree with the calculators, provided they aren't used too much.
Try graphing polynomials by hand. Once you have several terms, it gets out of hand very quickly. Now try changing the numbers several times to see what changes. It'll take you a while.
I think the proper solution is to learn how to do basic graphs by hand, and then experiment with a calculator to get a better understanding. If you can take two derivates of a function, and know how to draw a graph those results, it's enough. Beyond that, seeing what happens when you change numbers in a calculator is fine.
Another tidbit to increase Win9x stability - don't install AIM. I don't know for sure, but it really looks like when AIM changes ads, it doesn't free the memory from the old ones. You'll notice if you run AIM for a while, you'll start getting UI glitches around the system with UI objects not showing up. First thing to exibit the problem is the AIM ads.
For those who don't know, Windows 9x has a 256k area of memory where *ALL* UI objects are stored. Once that memory is filled, things start disappearing. Win 3.x was worse, as it was only 64k total. Don't know about NT/2k. Hence why not freeing the ad objects is such a bad thing.
Interestingly enough, Netscape 4.x's stability also goes up drastically if you don't run AIM.
I agree. In the 1.1 screenshot, the text looks like a blurry mess to me. If I look at it from up close, the blurring is painfully obvious and just doesn't look good. I tried backing up away from the screen, and it's hard to read. I don't get why it's supposed to be an improvement.
Under the directory on the ftp server with the stub, there's an XPI directory which has the packages for the individual components. The install also has an option to save the downloaded files.
The GBA and the SNES are nothing alike. They have about the same processing power, which is why a lot of games get ported. But the SNES is a 16 bit version of the 6502 (Nintendo tried for NES back compatibility, but it didn't work out), whereas the GBA is a 32 bit ARM processor.
You have to compeletely rewrite an SNES game to get it on GBA. A GBA devkit won't help with that.
Wait, you're objecting to the DVD menu system because it's proprietary, yet you think Flash would've been a better choice? I could see the DHTML/JS combo, but Flash?
The reason it takes several seconds is because it first tries adding your local domain name to the URL and trying that, and only tries adding the www. and.com if that fails. That was really useful when I did web development in high school, but unfortunately it doesn't work with proxies, so it doesn't help me at college.
They don't talk about it publicly because AIM sends HTML formatted messages, but ICQ doesn't. So if you use an AIM client to send ICQ messages, the receiver gets a crapload of HTML. AIM puts in a lot of tags too, so it's hard to read the message thru the HTML.
Besides, ICQ has a different UI. AIM is suited to sending lots of short, quick messages. ICQ is suited for longer, less frequent messages. Send lots of short messages to ICQ users and they'll get really pissed off really fast.
That's because Link *is* a kid. If you check your manuals, Zelda 2 starts on Link's 16th birthday. I don't know the time gap, but Zelda 1 had the same Link, but a few years earlier.
Zelda 3 was a different link, but same age area. GB Zelda was right after it.
The Link of the N64 games was a kid, though I don't think they gave an exact age. For part of Ocarina of Time Link was an adult though (7 years older).
So, in short, Link looked like a kid because he was one.
The SNES didn't fail to the Genesis. The SNES outsold the Genesis 2:1 by the time they stopped making SNES's. They were fairly even most of the way thru, but the SNES started pulling away towards the end of the Genesis's production run. And don't forget, Sega stopped making Genesis's long before Nintendo stopped making SNES's.
5 years is right. Ever look at Nintendo's release dates? I don't know how the Japanese dates compare, but the US releases were 1986 for the NES, 1991 for the SNES, 1996 for the N64, and 2001 for the GameCube. Exactly 5 years every time. The NES saw new games until about halfway thru the SNES's life. The SNES saw new games a least a year after the N64 came out. The N64 was the only exception, when new games pretty much died a few months before the GameCube game out.
Everyone likes to bitch out console addons for not doing well, but, that's not always the case. Look at the N64. Ever hear of the Rumble Pak? *Everyone* I know with an N64 had a Rumble Pak, even though it didn't come with the system. Or how about the RAM upgrade? Majora's Mask (2nd N64 Zelda game) required it, and still sold really well.
And as to Nintendo's online strategy, don't you think it'd be wise to wait until after E3 to pass judgement? The impression I've gotten so far is their big news for E3 would be their online plans. (Other big showings being playable Mario, Zelda, and Metroid)
Actually, I'm quite curious how they'll make Episode 3 interesting. By they time it comes out, we'll have seen episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. We'll already know the situation at the beginning and end of the movie before we see it, so unless they throw in some serious swerves. So unless episode 2 really impresses people, I can definately see episode 3 be not very appealing.
It's radioactive material. It's not going to kill them instantly - it'll take a long time. And it'll cause them to have really messed up children, which would most likely just make things worse... mutant goth children, shudder...
I know Nintendo always sells their new systems for $200. But look at Europe. It's even cheaper there. As soon as MS dropped the Xbox price their, Nintendo dropped the GameCube price.
Notice how Nintendo is pricing their products to be cheaper than Microsoft's. Microsoft makes a move to cut prices, so does Nintendo. Nintendo now knows MS's price points, and their strategies, further enabling them to stay ahead.
I don't think Microsoft would've approached Nintendo if they weren't serious about a buyout attempt. Nintendo learned their leson from the Playstation ordeal.
MS came to Nintendo and said "This is our plan. Want to be part of it?" Nintendo said, "Maybe, tell us more." MS gives Nintendo their full strategy, at which point Nintendo blows them off.
No matter what your market position is, knowing what the costs of your competitor's product is, and what their strategy is definately helps.
The way I see the situation, Nintendo probably tried to pull something similar to what MS did back when they entered the mouse market. (MS got into negotiations with Logitech, learned all about their manufacturing process, then broke off talks) Nintendo probably just saw the opportunity to learn a lot about their competition, and entertained MS just enough to get all the info they could from them. Once they did they, they broke off talks. Nintendo is so set on their business model that they won't try anything new. Nintendo of America would love to be more aggressive against Sony, but they have to answer to the Japan branch, who is quite content where they are because they make a hell of a lot more money than the games branch of Sony does. If it's not broken, don't fix it is pretty much their motto, so why would they ever even considering selling out to MS ?
The logo doesn't really matter. Most CDs I've bought in the past few years only contain the logo on the inside. It's especially common on CDs where the artist made an effort to make good album art - they rarely put logos like that over the artwork, so its in some inconspicuous place inside the case. Which means you won't know if it has the logo or not until you've already bought the CD.
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Well, when's the last time someone tried to release a portable in the US ? I vaguely remember one that had a pen like a PDA about 4 years ago, but it flat out sucked.
Perhaps if people tried competing there would be competion. The GameBoy originally won out because it came out first and had a lot of good games. Since then no one has tried to compete, so of course they have a monopoly.
Sure, you can burn it to CD, and then rip it. But you're burning a 128kbit file, and then reencoding. You're going to get a pretty crappy MP3 out of converting it.
Oh, and the article says Sony just changed their policy, and downloaded music will be burnable onto CDs any day now.
Actually, I somewhat agree with the calculators, provided they aren't used too much.
Try graphing polynomials by hand. Once you have several terms, it gets out of hand very quickly. Now try changing the numbers several times to see what changes. It'll take you a while.
I think the proper solution is to learn how to do basic graphs by hand, and then experiment with a calculator to get a better understanding. If you can take two derivates of a function, and know how to draw a graph those results, it's enough. Beyond that, seeing what happens when you change numbers in a calculator is fine.
Another tidbit to increase Win9x stability - don't install AIM. I don't know for sure, but it really looks like when AIM changes ads, it doesn't free the memory from the old ones. You'll notice if you run AIM for a while, you'll start getting UI glitches around the system with UI objects not showing up. First thing to exibit the problem is the AIM ads.
For those who don't know, Windows 9x has a 256k area of memory where *ALL* UI objects are stored. Once that memory is filled, things start disappearing. Win 3.x was worse, as it was only 64k total. Don't know about NT/2k. Hence why not freeing the ad objects is such a bad thing.
Interestingly enough, Netscape 4.x's stability also goes up drastically if you don't run AIM.
I agree. In the 1.1 screenshot, the text looks like a blurry mess to me. If I look at it from up close, the blurring is painfully obvious and just doesn't look good. I tried backing up away from the screen, and it's hard to read. I don't get why it's supposed to be an improvement.
Under the directory on the ftp server with the stub, there's an XPI directory which has the packages for the individual components. The install also has an option to save the downloaded files.
The GBA and the SNES are nothing alike. They have about the same processing power, which is why a lot of games get ported. But the SNES is a 16 bit version of the 6502 (Nintendo tried for NES back compatibility, but it didn't work out), whereas the GBA is a 32 bit ARM processor.
You have to compeletely rewrite an SNES game to get it on GBA. A GBA devkit won't help with that.
You don't get STDs from virgins.
Wait, you're objecting to the DVD menu system because it's proprietary, yet you think Flash would've been a better choice? I could see the DHTML/JS combo, but Flash?
The reason it takes several seconds is because it first tries adding your local domain name to the URL and trying that, and only tries adding the www. and .com if that fails. That was really useful when I did web development in high school, but unfortunately it doesn't work with proxies, so it doesn't help me at college.
Sorry, typo, meant to say Metroid Prime is fully *3D*, and Metroid Fusion is 2D.
They don't talk about it publicly because AIM sends HTML formatted messages, but ICQ doesn't. So if you use an AIM client to send ICQ messages, the receiver gets a crapload of HTML. AIM puts in a lot of tags too, so it's hard to read the message thru the HTML.
Besides, ICQ has a different UI. AIM is suited to sending lots of short, quick messages. ICQ is suited for longer, less frequent messages. Send lots of short messages to ICQ users and they'll get really pissed off really fast.
That's because Link *is* a kid. If you check your manuals, Zelda 2 starts on Link's 16th birthday. I don't know the time gap, but Zelda 1 had the same Link, but a few years earlier.
Zelda 3 was a different link, but same age area. GB Zelda was right after it.
The Link of the N64 games was a kid, though I don't think they gave an exact age. For part of Ocarina of Time Link was an adult though (7 years older).
So, in short, Link looked like a kid because he was one.
Metroid Prime for GameCube is fully 2D. Metroid Fusion for Gameboy Advance is 2D.
The SNES didn't fail to the Genesis. The SNES outsold the Genesis 2:1 by the time they stopped making SNES's. They were fairly even most of the way thru, but the SNES started pulling away towards the end of the Genesis's production run. And don't forget, Sega stopped making Genesis's long before Nintendo stopped making SNES's.
5 years is right. Ever look at Nintendo's release dates? I don't know how the Japanese dates compare, but the US releases were 1986 for the NES, 1991 for the SNES, 1996 for the N64, and 2001 for the GameCube. Exactly 5 years every time. The NES saw new games until about halfway thru the SNES's life. The SNES saw new games a least a year after the N64 came out. The N64 was the only exception, when new games pretty much died a few months before the GameCube game out.
Everyone likes to bitch out console addons for not doing well, but, that's not always the case. Look at the N64. Ever hear of the Rumble Pak? *Everyone* I know with an N64 had a Rumble Pak, even though it didn't come with the system. Or how about the RAM upgrade? Majora's Mask (2nd N64 Zelda game) required it, and still sold really well.
And as to Nintendo's online strategy, don't you think it'd be wise to wait until after E3 to pass judgement? The impression I've gotten so far is their big news for E3 would be their online plans. (Other big showings being playable Mario, Zelda, and Metroid)
I said I could see how it wouldn't be appealing to some people, but that I personally am curious as to how it will work out.
Actually, I'm quite curious how they'll make Episode 3 interesting. By they time it comes out, we'll have seen episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. We'll already know the situation at the beginning and end of the movie before we see it, so unless they throw in some serious swerves. So unless episode 2 really impresses people, I can definately see episode 3 be not very appealing.
It's radioactive material. It's not going to kill them instantly - it'll take a long time. And it'll cause them to have really messed up children, which would most likely just make things worse... mutant goth children, shudder...
My understanding is the tracking bug says RC3, but if no serious new bugs pop up, the next release will be 1.0.
I know Nintendo always sells their new systems for $200. But look at Europe. It's even cheaper there. As soon as MS dropped the Xbox price their, Nintendo dropped the GameCube price.
Notice how Nintendo is pricing their products to be cheaper than Microsoft's. Microsoft makes a move to cut prices, so does Nintendo. Nintendo now knows MS's price points, and their strategies, further enabling them to stay ahead.
I don't think Microsoft would've approached Nintendo if they weren't serious about a buyout attempt. Nintendo learned their leson from the Playstation ordeal.
MS came to Nintendo and said "This is our plan. Want to be part of it?" Nintendo said, "Maybe, tell us more." MS gives Nintendo their full strategy, at which point Nintendo blows them off.
No matter what your market position is, knowing what the costs of your competitor's product is, and what their strategy is definately helps.
The way I see the situation, Nintendo probably tried to pull something similar to what MS did back when they entered the mouse market. (MS got into negotiations with Logitech, learned all about their manufacturing process, then broke off talks) Nintendo probably just saw the opportunity to learn a lot about their competition, and entertained MS just enough to get all the info they could from them. Once they did they, they broke off talks. Nintendo is so set on their business model that they won't try anything new. Nintendo of America would love to be more aggressive against Sony, but they have to answer to the Japan branch, who is quite content where they are because they make a hell of a lot more money than the games branch of Sony does. If it's not broken, don't fix it is pretty much their motto, so why would they ever even considering selling out to MS ?
The logo doesn't really matter. Most CDs I've bought in the past few years only contain the logo on the inside. It's especially common on CDs where the artist made an effort to make good album art - they rarely put logos like that over the artwork, so its in some inconspicuous place inside the case. Which means you won't know if it has the logo or not until you've already bought the CD.