Alright, I whacked the name. That's what I get for posting BEFORE my morning caffeine run. Bernie Stolar is the correct name, though the situation IS correct.
Bernie Stolar left Sony to go to Sega and managed to speed up the company's downwards spiral a thousandfold through the Saturn and into the Dreamcast..
Not quite right-- the Saturn had a huge base of games in Japan, but Bernie Kosar managed to screw Sega's standing with the 3rd party developers in the USA right around late 1997 or early 1998, if I recall correctly. The number of games that made the jump per year after that point dropped dramatically.
If you've got a modded or pro action replay-equipped Saturn, you can find a LOT of decent games out there. I believe NCSX may still sell some Saturn stuff; it's been awhile since I last visited, though.
Re:Oooh the memories...
on
Assembly '03
·
· Score: 1
Where'd you find the DIVX? I've been trying to find a way to actually RUN the thing on modern hardware, but DosBOX isn't quite ready for that.
Re:Oooh the memories...
on
Assembly '03
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Ten years since Second Reality, and it still sets the benchmark for what could be accomplished on a 486. Ironically, the Future Crew members pretty much got what they wanted, a shot at games programming. I seem to recall Epic Pinball being one of their works, and Max Payne sports a number of ex-FC members in the credits list.
No need, you can run OS/9 on that and I'm quite certain there're a number of ports of standard network tools therein. I know someone is in the process of porting GCC over to it, which should breathe a LOT of new life into the platform.
You're almost dead-on. There're just two points you scraped the edges on-- first off, the NES that Nesticle emulated is 8-bit, not 16.. and secondly, DosBOX is and isn't an emulator at the same time.
Yes, it's emulating the hardware, but the DOS implementation is a lot more like Wine as of the last time I checked-- it's handling calls at the API layer rather than emulating the whole OS.
They're probably giving it the option of being used with an HDTV and top of the line stereo system when it's at home. Not a bad idea, really-- sort of a built-in GBA Player.
Eaten alive? Hardly. The center of the gaming industry has always been in Japan, and unless Microsoft can take control in Japan, they're not going anywhere-- even here in the USA, they're a distant second behind a weaker console that just happens to have the support of almost all of the big name developers.
It's the *games* that are hurting the X-box right now, and until Microsoft can rectify that, Sony will continue to hold #1 since Nintendo doesn't seem to be capable of rebuilding marketshare like they once had.
It's UUDDLRLRBA. The select-start is only to start the game itself, and a number of Konami games used the code while the game was actually paused (e.g. Life Force)
I don't see this as being a competitor unless Sony can do two very important things. One, they need to make discs that will really stand up to the abuse like GBA carts will. Two, and probably mostly importantly of all, they need to stop producing junk hardware.
Both the PSX and PS2 have had absolutely horrifying product runs of hardware that dies very quickly despite having been remanufactured to new specs (supposedly to improve reliability and cheapen production..)
Unless they can do better than the PS2, I shudder to think of how many hardware returns they'll have from normal hardware use, much less the special kinds of abuse that handhelds are prone to.
As nice as the hardware specifications are, I'm DEFINITELY not going to buy it on the first run and likely not the second either.
I don't know about that. When I've passed by Best Buy or any local computer shop in the past year or thereabouts, I've rarely seen LCDs being purchased. It's pretty much always CRTs because of the price and lifetime concerns.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but that's what I've seen.
A friend and I borrowed one for a few days and had the opportunity to try PC and console gaming on it. It wasn't bad at all. Almost zero flicker, but it was a REALLY expensive model. With projectors, you get what you pay for.
Here're a few things you might really want to know...
First off, plans last only a certain amount of time before they're "grandfathered in", meaning that existing customers can keep the plan but new customers cannot be added. They don't and won't tell you when this is going to happen.
After that time, a number of things can knock you off the plan without you being able to get back on. Interruption of local or long distance service, slamming, a glitch in the systems.. there are quite a few ways you can lose a plan.
Of course, the company will try almost anything to get you off one of the older plans, since they don't make nearly as much money for them as newer plans do.
I've worked in the phone industry before, so I've seen this from both sides of the phone call to customer service. I really oughta write a book about this.
I don't know. I think a lot of it comes with the mentality of the user-- and college really IS a place where you're spending your own cash.. flunk out and you're the only one suffering.
I could see myself using one of the new tablet PCs to take notes, drag an IM window over to the side, and drop a quick message to a friend about a topic I'm not quite familliar with. The nice thing about using one of the tablet PCs is that you could use a keyboard for most notes (avoid the hand cramps and be able to get the notes as fast as the instructor says them without using shorthand..), then scribble out a formula on the screen as needed.
You could actually keep digital backups of your notes, print them out, email/dcc/IM them to a friend.
At the very least, it's an idea worth experimenting with.
Yeah, I was with the CWA for a year myself while I worked at AT&T. Hell, I had a steward in my training class. She was a cynical woman, and rightfully so-- her predictions of doom all came to pass with the company trying to shaft us within weeks of training's having begun. (Or, to those who weren't new to the company, the next wave of them trying to shaft us.:P These cycles of them pulling shit were pretty frequent.)
The CWA definitely saved our collective asses several times during the whole thing, but they weren't present when they decided to lay a whole bunch of us off one day, thirty each fifteen minutes, after a year.
Lesson? Don't expect the union to catch everything, but having one can sure as hell be a lifesaver.
At the very least, it'd be interesting to see how it all worked out. No way in HELL I'd volunteer, though-- the risk is just a bit too much for my tastes, and the odds are little better.
I've never had the particular honor to have been able to speak with him in person or on an online forum, but I've read over some of his comments and blog posts in the past. This book sounds like one I need to add to my list in the near future!
Mr. Wheaton has always come across to me as being an honest, true techie with a Clue. The fact that he speaks his mind without hesitation only makes me respect him that much more; a guy could easily dig himself into quite a hole with as many ears listening as he has.
I wonder, though, if this is the beginning of a new wave of publications-- dead-tree compilations of blogs? I'm not sure what I feel about that. For every good blog, there're a few hundred that are a total waste of electrons.
I had an ionizer rebranded by DAK about ten to twelve years ago, and one of the biggest problems we had with the thing was its effectiveness. The entire segment of the wall next to it was clogged up with dust but the rest of the room was spotless, meaning it was strong enough to pull the dust but wasn't pulling it to the filters quite so well.
Still, it made allergies quite a bit more bearable, and cleaning my computers wasn't nearly so bad -- and this considering I live in Arizona!
Suddenly this is making the odd news of the Konami logo change make a lot more sense now...
Konami's spread out into a number of things of late, including slot machines. Makes sense, if things are as bad economically over there as we've been hearing.
You _can_ look at reviews, but half the time that doesn't tell you about how it'll run on your hardware.. and you have to question the bias of the reviewers and editors.
In the end, it would SEEM to be sadly easier to pirate for testing.
Me? I just wait a week on my purchase unless it's something I've really been waiting for.
That's about the only way to actually test PC games these days, sadly.
You can't rent 'em, that's illegal too. You can't return them once they've been opened. The demos are often nowhere near representative of the product itself (for instance UT2003-- the final game had three patches before they updated the demo. The demo had completely untuned gameplay.)
Annoying moral dilemma made possible because you really don't want to waste money.
If not, there should have been! You can't just return a game to the store once it's been opened these days, so for them to outright lie about the system requirements is fraud plain and simple.
This is fine. I agree wholeheartedly, up until you reach the back pages of the review section in EGM, where they have about half to three-quarters of the reviews. There all you're getting is cheap one-paragraph reviews with no meat, no screenshots, and oftentimes serious inaccuracies.
You ever notice that pretty much EVERY bugpatch-- well, okay, more than 75% of the bugpatches they release anyway-- is of the Critical category? Normal minor software bug patches are fairly rare. In fact, I'd venture to say that they offer more 'free add-on packs' in that category than bugfixes.
A few simple reasons. One, you buy a computer and it comes with Windows. Two, there's something about the overall look and feel of Windows-- as crash-prone, buggy, and insecure as it is, it installs better and runs better for the masses. Three, almost all of the commercial software houses are of the mindset that Linux/etc users won't pay for software. The latter isn't really helped by the fact that the most EXTREME open source zealots tend to get noticed more..
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Alright, I whacked the name. That's what I get for posting BEFORE my morning caffeine run. Bernie Stolar is the correct name, though the situation IS correct.
Bernie Stolar left Sony to go to Sega and managed to speed up the company's downwards spiral a thousandfold through the Saturn and into the Dreamcast..
Not quite right-- the Saturn had a huge base of games in Japan, but Bernie Kosar managed to screw Sega's standing with the 3rd party developers in the USA right around late 1997 or early 1998, if I recall correctly. The number of games that made the jump per year after that point dropped dramatically.
If you've got a modded or pro action replay-equipped Saturn, you can find a LOT of decent games out there. I believe NCSX may still sell some Saturn stuff; it's been awhile since I last visited, though.
Where'd you find the DIVX? I've been trying to find a way to actually RUN the thing on modern hardware, but DosBOX isn't quite ready for that.
Ten years since Second Reality, and it still sets the benchmark for what could be accomplished on a 486. Ironically, the Future Crew members pretty much got what they wanted, a shot at games programming. I seem to recall Epic Pinball being one of their works, and Max Payne sports a number of ex-FC members in the credits list.
No need, you can run OS/9 on that and I'm quite certain there're a number of ports of standard network tools therein. I know someone is in the process of porting GCC over to it, which should breathe a LOT of new life into the platform.
You're almost dead-on. There're just two points you scraped the edges on-- first off, the NES that Nesticle emulated is 8-bit, not 16.. and secondly, DosBOX is and isn't an emulator at the same time.
Yes, it's emulating the hardware, but the DOS implementation is a lot more like Wine as of the last time I checked-- it's handling calls at the API layer rather than emulating the whole OS.
They're probably giving it the option of being used with an HDTV and top of the line stereo system when it's at home. Not a bad idea, really-- sort of a built-in GBA Player.
Eaten alive? Hardly. The center of the gaming industry has always been in Japan, and unless Microsoft can take control in Japan, they're not going anywhere-- even here in the USA, they're a distant second behind a weaker console that just happens to have the support of almost all of the big name developers.
It's the *games* that are hurting the X-box right now, and until Microsoft can rectify that, Sony will continue to hold #1 since Nintendo doesn't seem to be capable of rebuilding marketshare like they once had.
Sorry, you got that one wrong too. ^^
It's UUDDLRLRBA. The select-start is only to start the game itself, and a number of Konami games used the code while the game was actually paused (e.g. Life Force)
I don't see this as being a competitor unless Sony can do two very important things. One, they need to make discs that will really stand up to the abuse like GBA carts will. Two, and probably mostly importantly of all, they need to stop producing junk hardware.
Both the PSX and PS2 have had absolutely horrifying product runs of hardware that dies very quickly despite having been remanufactured to new specs (supposedly to improve reliability and cheapen production..)
Unless they can do better than the PS2, I shudder to think of how many hardware returns they'll have from normal hardware use, much less the special kinds of abuse that handhelds are prone to.
As nice as the hardware specifications are, I'm DEFINITELY not going to buy it on the first run and likely not the second either.
I don't know about that. When I've passed by Best Buy or any local computer shop in the past year or thereabouts, I've rarely seen LCDs being purchased. It's pretty much always CRTs because of the price and lifetime concerns.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but that's what I've seen.
A friend and I borrowed one for a few days and had the opportunity to try PC and console gaming on it. It wasn't bad at all. Almost zero flicker, but it was a REALLY expensive model. With projectors, you get what you pay for.
Eventually I plan on picking one up..
Here're a few things you might really want to know...
First off, plans last only a certain amount of time before they're "grandfathered in", meaning that existing customers can keep the plan but new customers cannot be added. They don't and won't tell you when this is going to happen.
After that time, a number of things can knock you off the plan without you being able to get back on. Interruption of local or long distance service, slamming, a glitch in the systems.. there are quite a few ways you can lose a plan.
Of course, the company will try almost anything to get you off one of the older plans, since they don't make nearly as much money for them as newer plans do.
I've worked in the phone industry before, so I've seen this from both sides of the phone call to customer service. I really oughta write a book about this.
I don't know. I think a lot of it comes with the mentality of the user-- and college really IS a place where you're spending your own cash.. flunk out and you're the only one suffering.
I could see myself using one of the new tablet PCs to take notes, drag an IM window over to the side, and drop a quick message to a friend about a topic I'm not quite familliar with. The nice thing about using one of the tablet PCs is that you could use a keyboard for most notes (avoid the hand cramps and be able to get the notes as fast as the instructor says them without using shorthand..), then scribble out a formula on the screen as needed.
You could actually keep digital backups of your notes, print them out, email/dcc/IM them to a friend.
At the very least, it's an idea worth experimenting with.
Yeah, I was with the CWA for a year myself while I worked at AT&T. Hell, I had a steward in my training class. She was a cynical woman, and rightfully so-- her predictions of doom all came to pass with the company trying to shaft us within weeks of training's having begun. (Or, to those who weren't new to the company, the next wave of them trying to shaft us. :P These cycles of them pulling shit were pretty frequent.)
The CWA definitely saved our collective asses several times during the whole thing, but they weren't present when they decided to lay a whole bunch of us off one day, thirty each fifteen minutes, after a year.
Lesson? Don't expect the union to catch everything, but having one can sure as hell be a lifesaver.
At the very least, it'd be interesting to see how it all worked out. No way in HELL I'd volunteer, though-- the risk is just a bit too much for my tastes, and the odds are little better.
I've never had the particular honor to have been able to speak with him in person or on an online forum, but I've read over some of his comments and blog posts in the past. This book sounds like one I need to add to my list in the near future!
Mr. Wheaton has always come across to me as being an honest, true techie with a Clue. The fact that he speaks his mind without hesitation only makes me respect him that much more; a guy could easily dig himself into quite a hole with as many ears listening as he has.
I wonder, though, if this is the beginning of a new wave of publications-- dead-tree compilations of blogs? I'm not sure what I feel about that. For every good blog, there're a few hundred that are a total waste of electrons.
I had an ionizer rebranded by DAK about ten to twelve years ago, and one of the biggest problems we had with the thing was its effectiveness. The entire segment of the wall next to it was clogged up with dust but the rest of the room was spotless, meaning it was strong enough to pull the dust but wasn't pulling it to the filters quite so well.
Still, it made allergies quite a bit more bearable, and cleaning my computers wasn't nearly so bad -- and this considering I live in Arizona!
Suddenly this is making the odd news of the Konami logo change make a lot more sense now...
Konami's spread out into a number of things of late, including slot machines. Makes sense, if things are as bad economically over there as we've been hearing.
I must amend that comment.
You _can_ look at reviews, but half the time that doesn't tell you about how it'll run on your hardware.. and you have to question the bias of the reviewers and editors.
In the end, it would SEEM to be sadly easier to pirate for testing.
Me? I just wait a week on my purchase unless it's something I've really been waiting for.
That's about the only way to actually test PC games these days, sadly.
You can't rent 'em, that's illegal too. You can't return them once they've been opened. The demos are often nowhere near representative of the product itself (for instance UT2003-- the final game had three patches before they updated the demo. The demo had completely untuned gameplay.)
Annoying moral dilemma made possible because you really don't want to waste money.
If not, there should have been! You can't just return a game to the store once it's been opened these days, so for them to outright lie about the system requirements is fraud plain and simple.
This is fine. I agree wholeheartedly, up until you reach the back pages of the review section in EGM, where they have about half to three-quarters of the reviews. There all you're getting is cheap one-paragraph reviews with no meat, no screenshots, and oftentimes serious inaccuracies.
You ever notice that pretty much EVERY bugpatch-- well, okay, more than 75% of the bugpatches they release anyway-- is of the Critical category? Normal minor software bug patches are fairly rare. In fact, I'd venture to say that they offer more 'free add-on packs' in that category than bugfixes.
A few simple reasons. One, you buy a computer and it comes with Windows. Two, there's something about the overall look and feel of Windows-- as crash-prone, buggy, and insecure as it is, it installs better and runs better for the masses. Three, almost all of the commercial software houses are of the mindset that Linux/etc users won't pay for software. The latter isn't really helped by the fact that the most EXTREME open source zealots tend to get noticed more..