Their FIRST products, to my knowledge, were versions of Microsoft Basic licensed to various hardware manufacturers through the 70s and 80s. Really, MS formed around that basis-- a programming language as an OS.
Eh, I'd have to say the SNES controller was good for that.. but definitely NOT the Gamecube one. You've got the Z button in a counter-intuitive location, X and Y are irritating to work with (they both interfere with the use of B), and B is a hair too small. Then, on top of this, make the controller have a completely useless dpad.
No, thanks, just give me the SNES or PSX controller-- they're a HELL of a lot more universal.
Re:Pretty easy to tell the age of some people...
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Gentoo Ported to PS2
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· Score: 1
I think you have that backwards. Serial mice predate microchannel by more than a few years.
I can definitely tell you the game I'd choose OpenGL on.
The original Unreal Tournament. If you grab the updated OpenGL game engine, you can use S3 compressed textures with a supported videocard (in my case, an old GeForce 2 Pro) with the benefit of increased performance AND higher-resolution textures. The difference is VERY noticible.
Except that these optimizations are choosing FOR you to drop detail settings. Yeah, the game says you have X, Y, and Z special options, but your driver is doing otherwise.
On top of this, these "optimizations" are degrading visual effects pretty seriously according to the article by taking away important effects.
I'm starting to wonder if it's not BECAUSE they absorbed 3DFX-- they're making all the same mistakes 3DFX made, with the same loss of position for it!
It doesn't hurt my theory that the guys who designed the FX board made all the same bad design decisions that the Voodoo 5 had all over again. No surprise, I'm told it's the same team.
You might be surprised, but some of us CAN see differences at higher FPS levels.
I can see the difference at about 10FPS increases from about 60FPS to 120 or so, but nothing higher than that. In my own case, it probably has something to do with the way I can see 60hz refresh rate flicker like mad on predominately white screens.
Conversely, my seriously screwed up ears make it impossible for me to tell MP3 rates at 128kbit or higher apart.
So, I'd venture to say that it's all dependant on your own senses in the end.
It's not so much "snob-appeal" as finding themselves taking in more users than their hardware could handle. In the end, they had to limit things just to keep enough funding coming in to keep the servers running.
Of course, you don't have to have an invite code if you pay for your account outright.
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? I can remember a time when Microsoft was the underdog against IBM.. times change, and I guess corporations do as well. I wonder if maybe we'll see Microsoft in this same change of attitude in twenty years..?
Sure. Performance-wise, Athlons and Athlon XPs ran as well as and often better than the Intel chips. Intel didn't pull ahead until maybe six months to a year ago.
Emulation, my good man. EPSXE and VGS run Gradius Gaiden just fine-- I, like yourself, imported G.Gaiden because it wasn't coming across. Even if you're not on Windows, there are PSX emulators on the Mac and Linux..
So, are you saying we should stop producing any violent games "because a kid might play it"? Isn't that going overboard? It's really the parents' responsibility to teach kids right and wrong.
Three months.. that's exactly how long Capcom took on their translation for Rockman X5 two years ago. Three months from Japanese to English, and it suffered horribly for it. It's funny.. they feel an urge to speed the Japanese->US adjustments, then take it very slowly for the US->Europe ones. You'd expect it to be closer to the opposite, really.
For me, it really depends on the game. I'd be willing to wait up to about six months in some cases, but anything more than that means you're just getting screwed again. It doesn't help that they often change their minds mid-stream on whether or not a title is going to be released.
There's only one problem with that overview. It's not just Nintendo.. Konami, Capcom, Microsoft, and Sony are little better about getting stuff over to Europe in a reasonable time. I seem to recall a number of PS1 games having really shoddy European ports with bad bordering and framerate issues.
It's an attitude from the entire industry that Europe doesn't really matter. Japan is the most important market and everyone else can suffer for all they care. Hell, the US gets shafted more often than not with the truly innovative or good games. It's all mindset-- the Japanese don't know or care what the rest of the world wants. They'll just release what they THINK will sell, because finding out what really WOULD sell is too much effort.
Maybe my own experience is just weird, but XP proved to be a thousand times more stable than the previous Windows OSes I'd run.
2000 didn't like some of the hardware I had at the time, and bluescreened frequently as a result. ME didn't even finish installing before it trashed my partition to the point it took me a week to recover (the hard way) the data off of the drive. 98 and 95 weren't precisely stable, but I still can't complain too much since they weren't nearly as bad as Windows 3.1.. but I digress.
XP has gone weeks to months without crashes for me. The only major downtime I've had under it was the whole VIA chipset/Nvidia driver fiasco.
I think it was more along the lines that Apple had promised G3 owners that this would work fine even on the older ones, then didn't support the video properly. The lawsuit was purely around not delivering on promises made. Now, had Apple not made the promises in question, then I'd be calling this a frivolous lawsuit.
Unfortunately, MS patches DO have a past history of doing as much harm as good. In the past, we've had patches that slow machines by half for no explicable reason, patches infected by virii, and other sorts of SNAFUs like the license changes brought on by some recent patches.
I can definitely see why people would be afraid to trust MS to auto-update their boxen.
They already exist. Chernobyl trashes the BIOS when it detonates, and there are old old virii from the 80s that could destroy monitors and video cards by forcing them to send bad signals. There was also at least one virus which would destroy hard drives back in the day by forcing the drive to overstep its bounds on each side, essentially beating the head against each end of the disk at high speed until it was destroyed.
The sad thing.. is contemplating a future where SCO jokes are as overdone as the Iraqi Intelligence and Soviet Russia jokes are. Someone just shoot me now.....
Freeware does not make it public domain. Freeware means you can copy and distribute the application as much as you want, but there's nothing in there saying the author gives up the rights they have to the program-- so they don't have to worry about someone snatching up their application, applying a few patches, and selling it outright.
You can make it work through some INI tweaking, but it's still somewhat touch and go from all reports-- especially in that it's near impossible to reinstall.. and we all know 9x needs a reinstall about once a year or two..
Having worked the phone service side of AT&T, I can say it's the same thing there. The upper management sets strict restrictions on how we can handle problems, and we were trained to keep talk time at the three minute mark. Turnover from loss of will to live because of upper management was very high. Most of my friends from training didn't even last six months.
Of course, there's a very good reason for this. After the six month point, they have to pay out for the benefits package, so they are desperate to replace you before you can get the benefits and raises.
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Their FIRST products, to my knowledge, were versions of Microsoft Basic licensed to various hardware manufacturers through the 70s and 80s. Really, MS formed around that basis-- a programming language as an OS.
Eh, I'd have to say the SNES controller was good for that.. but definitely NOT the Gamecube one. You've got the Z button in a counter-intuitive location, X and Y are irritating to work with (they both interfere with the use of B), and B is a hair too small. Then, on top of this, make the controller have a completely useless dpad.
No, thanks, just give me the SNES or PSX controller-- they're a HELL of a lot more universal.
I think you have that backwards. Serial mice predate microchannel by more than a few years.
Eh, I think the precedence was started by Nvidia's "The way it was meant to be played" campaign.
I can definitely tell you the game I'd choose OpenGL on.
The original Unreal Tournament. If you grab the updated OpenGL game engine, you can use S3 compressed textures with a supported videocard (in my case, an old GeForce 2 Pro) with the benefit of increased performance AND higher-resolution textures. The difference is VERY noticible.
Except that these optimizations are choosing FOR you to drop detail settings. Yeah, the game says you have X, Y, and Z special options, but your driver is doing otherwise.
On top of this, these "optimizations" are degrading visual effects pretty seriously according to the article by taking away important effects.
I'm starting to wonder if it's not BECAUSE they absorbed 3DFX-- they're making all the same mistakes 3DFX made, with the same loss of position for it!
It doesn't hurt my theory that the guys who designed the FX board made all the same bad design decisions that the Voodoo 5 had all over again. No surprise, I'm told it's the same team.
Makes me wonder all the more...
You might be surprised, but some of us CAN see differences at higher FPS levels.
I can see the difference at about 10FPS increases from about 60FPS to 120 or so, but nothing higher than that. In my own case, it probably has something to do with the way I can see 60hz refresh rate flicker like mad on predominately white screens.
Conversely, my seriously screwed up ears make it impossible for me to tell MP3 rates at 128kbit or higher apart.
So, I'd venture to say that it's all dependant on your own senses in the end.
It's not so much "snob-appeal" as finding themselves taking in more users than their hardware could handle. In the end, they had to limit things just to keep enough funding coming in to keep the servers running.
Of course, you don't have to have an invite code if you pay for your account outright.
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? I can remember a time when Microsoft was the underdog against IBM.. times change, and I guess corporations do as well. I wonder if maybe we'll see Microsoft in this same change of attitude in twenty years..?
Try your local mall. EBWorld and Software Etc are offering used GBAs for about $50, and you can always trade up some older gear for one.
Sure. Performance-wise, Athlons and Athlon XPs ran as well as and often better than the Intel chips. Intel didn't pull ahead until maybe six months to a year ago.
Emulation, my good man. EPSXE and VGS run Gradius Gaiden just fine-- I, like yourself, imported G.Gaiden because it wasn't coming across. Even if you're not on Windows, there are PSX emulators on the Mac and Linux..
So, are you saying we should stop producing any violent games "because a kid might play it"? Isn't that going overboard? It's really the parents' responsibility to teach kids right and wrong.
Three months.. that's exactly how long Capcom took on their translation for Rockman X5 two years ago. Three months from Japanese to English, and it suffered horribly for it. It's funny.. they feel an urge to speed the Japanese->US adjustments, then take it very slowly for the US->Europe ones. You'd expect it to be closer to the opposite, really.
For me, it really depends on the game. I'd be willing to wait up to about six months in some cases, but anything more than that means you're just getting screwed again. It doesn't help that they often change their minds mid-stream on whether or not a title is going to be released.
There's only one problem with that overview. It's not just Nintendo.. Konami, Capcom, Microsoft, and Sony are little better about getting stuff over to Europe in a reasonable time. I seem to recall a number of PS1 games having really shoddy European ports with bad bordering and framerate issues.
It's an attitude from the entire industry that Europe doesn't really matter. Japan is the most important market and everyone else can suffer for all they care. Hell, the US gets shafted more often than not with the truly innovative or good games. It's all mindset-- the Japanese don't know or care what the rest of the world wants. They'll just release what they THINK will sell, because finding out what really WOULD sell is too much effort.
Maybe my own experience is just weird, but XP proved to be a thousand times more stable than the previous Windows OSes I'd run.
2000 didn't like some of the hardware I had at the time, and bluescreened frequently as a result. ME didn't even finish installing before it trashed my partition to the point it took me a week to recover (the hard way) the data off of the drive. 98 and 95 weren't precisely stable, but I still can't complain too much since they weren't nearly as bad as Windows 3.1.. but I digress.
XP has gone weeks to months without crashes for me. The only major downtime I've had under it was the whole VIA chipset/Nvidia driver fiasco.
I think it was more along the lines that Apple had promised G3 owners that this would work fine even on the older ones, then didn't support the video properly. The lawsuit was purely around not delivering on promises made. Now, had Apple not made the promises in question, then I'd be calling this a frivolous lawsuit.
Unfortunately, MS patches DO have a past history of doing as much harm as good. In the past, we've had patches that slow machines by half for no explicable reason, patches infected by virii, and other sorts of SNAFUs like the license changes brought on by some recent patches.
I can definitely see why people would be afraid to trust MS to auto-update their boxen.
Right click on the window to make absolutely sure it has focus, hit escape to close the menu if it pops up, then ALT-F4 to close the window.
It's a mild pain in the ass, but it has always worked for me.
They already exist. Chernobyl trashes the BIOS when it detonates, and there are old old virii from the 80s that could destroy monitors and video cards by forcing them to send bad signals. There was also at least one virus which would destroy hard drives back in the day by forcing the drive to overstep its bounds on each side, essentially beating the head against each end of the disk at high speed until it was destroyed.
The sad thing.. is contemplating a future where SCO jokes are as overdone as the Iraqi Intelligence and Soviet Russia jokes are. Someone just shoot me now.....
Freeware does not make it public domain. Freeware means you can copy and distribute the application as much as you want, but there's nothing in there saying the author gives up the rights they have to the program-- so they don't have to worry about someone snatching up their application, applying a few patches, and selling it outright.
You can make it work through some INI tweaking, but it's still somewhat touch and go from all reports-- especially in that it's near impossible to reinstall.. and we all know 9x needs a reinstall about once a year or two..
Having worked the phone service side of AT&T, I can say it's the same thing there. The upper management sets strict restrictions on how we can handle problems, and we were trained to keep talk time at the three minute mark. Turnover from loss of will to live because of upper management was very high. Most of my friends from training didn't even last six months.
Of course, there's a very good reason for this. After the six month point, they have to pay out for the benefits package, so they are desperate to replace you before you can get the benefits and raises.