This is related to the reason that cops wear clipons (or at least did when my Dad was on the force). A tie can be used as a weapon if you are wrestling with a suspect (er... by the suspect).
So, if you switch to clipons, this shouldn't be an issue.
I don't know why everyone thinks that Japan built-up its economy via protectionism. Japan built up its economy through strict quality control, not through protectionism.
People wanted (and still want) to buy Japanese cars because of quality. People bought Japanese video games after the great video game collapse because Nintendo exercised more quality control than Atari had.
Why is this important in this discussion? Well, because it means that IBM is in serious error if they think they can toss out quality to get cheaper technical staff. I'm not sure if they will or not.
These are editorial articles, they are supposed to represent the author's biases. It's just like when you go to a newspaper's editorial page and the editors are writing, "Vote No on Proposition 33." Remember, this is the Internet, if you don't like an article you can reply with what you think is wrong with it and why... in your Slashdot Journal, one of the many free Webpage services that still exist, or a comment to this article.
He's not reporting on the latest E3... Though frankly, I've never seen any videogame reporting that isn't biased, usually in favor of the evil ones at Sony (now there is an embarrasing game company...)
As to quality, I thought these were well written, entertaining and helped stave off boredom for the length of time I was reading them. I don't ask for anything more from Slashdot.
Well, let's see I already have Steve Jackson's Undead and Games Workshop's Fury of Dracula, so are you trying to tell me that I need another "Helsing versus Dracula" Boardgame.
I mean, why would I need it. I already have two. What, do I have to buy every "Dracula versus Van Helsing" game I see?
Fine... fine, I'll buy it, but this is the last time.... I swear. If a fourth "Helsing vs. Dracula" boardgame comes to my attention, I swear it will sit on the shelf unbought.... There's no way I need four "Helsing versus Dracula" board games, what am I, a crazed monomaniac board game collector.... Um... there isn't a fouth "Helsing vs. Dracula" board game, is there? Heh, heh, I just want to prove my internal resolve against buying such a thing... really...
Besides, no one I know will ever play any of these games. They always want to play, ugh... Monopoly... oh joy, Star Wars Monoply that's just what I want in a board game... see it's Monopoly but they put a Star Wars skin on it so you can pretend that it's a Star Wars game... arrrgh...
I would be pretty shocked if a closed platform like the GameBoy, which goes out of its way to restrict development, would have a better movie playing system than a relatively open platform like the GP 32.
I suppose one of these days I'll have to go to the trouble of comparing the two, just for kicks, but I've yet to have a need to play movies on my portable game machines (I have a Powerbook for that).
Without Bleem! my expensive import copy of Rockman 3 for the Playstation was just an overpriced coaster. Sure, I would have preferred to play it on my modded Playstation, but I would've had to re-mod it with a "stealth" modchip. (Or pirate the game...)
Bleem! for the Dreamcast works well, it would have to considering the way they decided to sell it (one "Bleemcast" disk per Playstation game, I only have the one for Tekken III).
But there is a key point here, Sony wasn't just killing Bleem! (I sincerely believe they could've stayed afloat if they hadn't had legal bills), they were killing the idea of commercially viable emulators (they also went after Virtual Game Station). Remember, Bleem! played any disk that would work in a modded Playstation. Later they regretted not adding "pirate" detection, I think, because they put it in the Dreamcast version.
At that time Sony wasn't really cracking down on the modchip market, I think they were terrified (unjustifiably so) by the implications of Bleemcast.
Bleem! also marketed a commercial PC emulator that ran most PSOne games, and they never lost any of their court cases. Sony "muscled" them by running up their legal bills, something that a tiny company like Bleem! couldn't afford.
Re:The were no good old days
on
The Big Kerplop
·
· Score: 1
~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act....the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63
~~~ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.
~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."
William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
Not that the atom bomb was a particularly novel idea, what with the fact that the Allies had seen the use of firestorms both in Japan and European cities like Dresden. it was merely a way to create a similar level of destruction with just one bomb.
An outpouring of angry messages from mostly adult gamers flooded Web boards of the ministry and Ragnarok Online when the nightly closure was announced on Monday.
Surapong said that only a small number of gamers played after 10pm and the nightly closure would benefit adult players, as they would now have enough sleep to function efficiently at work.
-- ONLINE-GAMING CURFEW: Surapong stands firm
This suggests to me that the minister is not just doing this "for the children."
The time conversion is easy if you are on the East Coast. 10:00 PM Thai time is 10:00 AM US time. Except during daylight savings which screws everything up. (To quote Homer (Simpson), "Damn farmers.")
The real problem with the people who don't like change is that they end up dooming themselves anyway. For example, I once read a story in which an emperor decided to supress the invention of an airplane. (The airplane in the story had been created as an amusement, a toy. The inventor of it liked flying for fun.)
I've come to the conclusion that the emperor in the story was right. Terrible misfortune was unleashed on the human race through the invention of the airplane, and a new and more horrible kind of war was created. (The fear of a new kind of war was the emperor's reason for having the invention suppressed.)
But in reality, there is no alternative. Even if the emperor had ruled the entire world, he would have to be both immortal and a horrible, intrusive despot to prevent the airplane from being invented.
If he didn't rule the entire world, then the countries outside his reach would create airplanes, and through their tactical advantage destroy his empire and subjugate his people. (See human history for examples.)
If you don't harness new technology it can be used against you. What is the best way to learn anything about technology? By playing with it. I know more about UNIX now than I did when I was in school, because now I have to functioning UNIX boxes at home that I can play with. I remember that at the end of that grim, joyless empire, the Soviet Union, they were buying hand held video games for the chips because they were more advanced than what they had domestically for military applications.
The game console isn't just a game console anymore. It's evolving into a home entertainment system. Nintendo has refused to acknowledge that and it's hurt them.
Sigh, this is a lot of nonsense from the we-hate-games analysts. Answer me this, is there a Web browser for XBOX live? Or Playstation? If there is it isn't in the starter kit, or emphasized much. Can you use either of them to download movies or mp3s? I mean without installing Linux/BSD/Custom OS because that will not appeal to the mainstream public.
Would Sony be happy if people were mainly using their Playstation 2s to do something other than play games?
In the US, the home entertainment system is a big cabinet full of technological entertainment equipment, including VCR, DVD Player, Stereo (with integrated CD Player), TV set, TIVO(For some) and Satellite/cable connection. So what is the analyst saying here? That everything is going to be integrated? It always seemed to me that the move was away from integrated systems and toward component systems.
Don't get me wrong, I loved using my Dreamcast to surf the Internet, and I was a freak who never bought a CD player and just used my SEGA CD instead. However, I was abnormal, a geek.
Now, in Japan, the culture of small and compact is better would seem to push XBOX (well, I mean, as second after Playstation 2), since it can double as a DVD and CD player, over the Gamecube. Which is more popular there?
Now, there are advantages to the fact that PS2 and XBOX have CD and DVD capability that Gamecube doesn't. Parents don't have to choose between getting their kid a DVD player or a gamesystem. Still, does anyone see the DVD player market disappearing, seriously?
Frankly, in my opinion, the current status of each system is due to exclusive game content. People aren't buying these as Swiss Army Knife home entertainment systems. The reason why online is important is because if a true killer app online game is released, the system without the infrastructure to roll out their own knock-off as soon as possible may end up hopelessly behind. I want to emphasize the "may" in that sentence, because most of the needed infrastructure (aka, the Internet) is already there. So, like everything else with game systems, this is ultimately only about games. This analysts comment seems to show he doesn't have a clue.
In fact, the closest home appliance to a Swiss Army Knife home entertainment system is the trusty PC. Mainly because the PC can sometimes be used in ways that haven't been thought of by the big corps, or better still in ways that the big corps hate. Even then though, it is mostly geeks who use them that way, though it is slowly filtering down to semi-geek mainstream users.
Hmm... this just sort of makes me think of that scene in Dr. Strangelove where the Russian ambassador was using a mini spy camera to photograph everything in the war room.
Well, now it seems we have a world where everyone has a mini spy camera.
I once saw one of those multi-cartridge Gameboy advance cartridges. I can't say where, of course, but rest assured I immediately reported the perpetrators to the BSA.
I didn't notice any problem with the quality of the games, I guess extensive play will be required. <bsa-protection>What a pity I immediately destroyed the cartridge in disgust at the ripping off of the poor software giants and movie studio execs who had licensed their preciousss IP.</bsa-protection>
However, if I had played it extensively, I'm sure I would have noticed some of the false advertising on the box compared to its contents. While the four gameboy advance games (Harry Potter/Mario Advance 2/Lord of the Rings/Shrek: Hassle in the Castle) I'm sure would've been as advertised, I noticed that Dig Dog (sic) was shown on the cover as having Doraemon characters in it, I guess due to Dig Dug's resemblance to an earless, robotic cat and Doraemon's relative popularity in SE Asia. There would've been some wierd games too like "King of Ghost."
Yes, 115 games in all... but most of those were old gameboy games that I doubt would sell outside of Asia anyway... like two Majong games...
<bsa-protection>Oh well, all hail BSA/MPAA/RIAA and their continuing war against copyright infringement. Their neverending quest to screw up every computer everywhere and crush legitimate reverse engineering projects like Bleem!, Gameboy Advance Flash Cartridges and Freecraft has inspired me to behave morally whenever I see anyone try to infringe their preciousss IP.</bsa-protection> Of course, some might say that in such a war, morality has become a gray area....
As I recall, the details of that case were that Nintendo had patented a chip that would allow licensed game cartridges to work in the NES. On the claim that they were going to sue Nintendo, the folks at Tengen had a look at the patent, and figured out how to make a chip that would allow their games to work in the NES without paying for the license. Tengen lost the case because it was not a clean room reverse engineering with virgins and all that, but based on actual knowledge of the technical details of Nintendo's patent.
My source for this is, of course, Game Over by David Scheff. I don't have the book in front of me so some detail may be wrong, and I can't find a Web source to back up the details.
Well, Ok, I won't really buy one. I'll just dream about it.
You know, back in my day computers (Atari 800s, that is) came with joystick ports standard. Of course, the concept of a mouse was a novelty, I don't think I ever had one for my Atari.
I remember the shock I had moving forward from my Atari with it's sturdy joysticks and decent games to the generic 8088 my Dad bought which had the crummiest joystick I had ever seen and couldn't even run Pool of Radience. Those were dark times...
a gasp or two at being able to set somebody on fire then urinate on them to put it out, etc.
Damn, who does he think he is, Kaiser Soze? Actually, that's the game I want, when are they going to come out with that one. The Usual Suspects could be a hit...
Oh well, hopefully I won't be disappointed by Killer 7.
I'm guessing that the people that really want this law are parents who don't want their kids playing violent video games. So why don't parents just not let their own kid play the violent game?
Actually, I have a theory about that, it's not only that they don't want their own kids playing videogames, they also don't want other people's kids playing videogames either. There are lots of reasons for this. I mean people believe in things like the ideas that games cause murders and suicide as a superstition. When I was a kid, it was D&D, nowadays it's GTA. So, if you believe something like that, then you don't want anyone playing videogames. Because that weird kid (who exists mostly in these people's imaginations) who plays video games obsessively may kill your family.
There is also H. L. Mencken's definition of Puritanism to consider, "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." He was really onto something with that. Think of all the things that have been in trouble. Pool, pinball, comic books, Rock and Roll, and RolePlaying Games have all had their time in the dock. All of these things have in common that they are fun without being educational or "spiritual." Some people really hate that, you have to come up with a better reason for stuff like that to exist than just because it is fun, because to those people fun=bad.
I actually kind of wish that the game companies would fight this not in courts but by complying. They could just stop shipping games to stores in St. Louis County and close the arcades. The trouble is they are worried that if it succeeds in St. Louis, Joseph Lieberman will decide to introduce a bill making it national. It would be interesting to see what would happen, though, even though a lot of small arcade and video game owners would end up suffering in the short term. (If I was an arcade owner in St. Louis county, I'd already be looking to relocate.)
Slashdot Mirror
It can be both, just think of Dr. Strangelove for an example...
That'll change when the Gamecube version comes out...
Um, I thought Hiroshi Yamauchi had stepped down...
"So, I'd like to buy a lamp. I'll pay a dirham for it."
"Bah, this lamp is made of the finest brass, five dirhams is the least I can accept!"
"Eh... out of pity, I might be persuaded to go as high as two dirhams."
"Sir, I can see you are a man of discriminating taste. As a special favor, I will let it go for three dirhams."
"Done, provided the lamp is filled with oil."
"You drive a hard bargain sir. Done."
So, if you switch to clipons, this shouldn't be an issue.
People wanted (and still want) to buy Japanese cars because of quality. People bought Japanese video games after the great video game collapse because Nintendo exercised more quality control than Atari had.
Why is this important in this discussion? Well, because it means that IBM is in serious error if they think they can toss out quality to get cheaper technical staff. I'm not sure if they will or not.
He's not reporting on the latest E3... Though frankly, I've never seen any videogame reporting that isn't biased, usually in favor of the evil ones at Sony (now there is an embarrasing game company...)
As to quality, I thought these were well written, entertaining and helped stave off boredom for the length of time I was reading them. I don't ask for anything more from Slashdot.
I mean, why would I need it. I already have two. What, do I have to buy every "Dracula versus Van Helsing" game I see?
Fine... fine, I'll buy it, but this is the last time.... I swear. If a fourth "Helsing vs. Dracula" boardgame comes to my attention, I swear it will sit on the shelf unbought.... There's no way I need four "Helsing versus Dracula" board games, what am I, a crazed monomaniac board game collector.... Um... there isn't a fouth "Helsing vs. Dracula" board game, is there? Heh, heh, I just want to prove my internal resolve against buying such a thing... really...
Besides, no one I know will ever play any of these games. They always want to play, ugh... Monopoly... oh joy, Star Wars Monoply that's just what I want in a board game... see it's Monopoly but they put a Star Wars skin on it so you can pretend that it's a Star Wars game... arrrgh...
MoviePark Guide
I would be pretty shocked if a closed platform like the GameBoy, which goes out of its way to restrict development, would have a better movie playing system than a relatively open platform like the GP 32.
I suppose one of these days I'll have to go to the trouble of comparing the two, just for kicks, but I've yet to have a need to play movies on my portable game machines (I have a Powerbook for that).
Bleem! for the Dreamcast works well, it would have to considering the way they decided to sell it (one "Bleemcast" disk per Playstation game, I only have the one for Tekken III).
But there is a key point here, Sony wasn't just killing Bleem! (I sincerely believe they could've stayed afloat if they hadn't had legal bills), they were killing the idea of commercially viable emulators (they also went after Virtual Game Station). Remember, Bleem! played any disk that would work in a modded Playstation. Later they regretted not adding "pirate" detection, I think, because they put it in the Dreamcast version.
At that time Sony wasn't really cracking down on the modchip market, I think they were terrified (unjustifiably so) by the implications of Bleemcast.
Bleem! also marketed a commercial PC emulator that ran most PSOne games, and they never lost any of their court cases. Sony "muscled" them by running up their legal bills, something that a tiny company like Bleem! couldn't afford.
Not that the atom bomb was a particularly novel idea, what with the fact that the Allies had seen the use of firestorms both in Japan and European cities like Dresden. it was merely a way to create a similar level of destruction with just one bomb.
"A strange game, the only winning move is not to play." -- WOPR
I think that would be an America's CIA game. When will they come out with that game?
The time conversion is easy if you are on the East Coast. 10:00 PM Thai time is 10:00 AM US time. Except during daylight savings which screws everything up. (To quote Homer (Simpson), "Damn farmers.")
I've come to the conclusion that the emperor in the story was right. Terrible misfortune was unleashed on the human race through the invention of the airplane, and a new and more horrible kind of war was created. (The fear of a new kind of war was the emperor's reason for having the invention suppressed.)
But in reality, there is no alternative. Even if the emperor had ruled the entire world, he would have to be both immortal and a horrible, intrusive despot to prevent the airplane from being invented.
If he didn't rule the entire world, then the countries outside his reach would create airplanes, and through their tactical advantage destroy his empire and subjugate his people. (See human history for examples.)
If you don't harness new technology it can be used against you. What is the best way to learn anything about technology? By playing with it. I know more about UNIX now than I did when I was in school, because now I have to functioning UNIX boxes at home that I can play with. I remember that at the end of that grim, joyless empire, the Soviet Union, they were buying hand held video games for the chips because they were more advanced than what they had domestically for military applications.
Would Sony be happy if people were mainly using their Playstation 2s to do something other than play games?
In the US, the home entertainment system is a big cabinet full of technological entertainment equipment, including VCR, DVD Player, Stereo (with integrated CD Player), TV set, TIVO(For some) and Satellite/cable connection. So what is the analyst saying here? That everything is going to be integrated? It always seemed to me that the move was away from integrated systems and toward component systems.
Don't get me wrong, I loved using my Dreamcast to surf the Internet, and I was a freak who never bought a CD player and just used my SEGA CD instead. However, I was abnormal, a geek.
Now, in Japan, the culture of small and compact is better would seem to push XBOX (well, I mean, as second after Playstation 2), since it can double as a DVD and CD player, over the Gamecube. Which is more popular there?
Now, there are advantages to the fact that PS2 and XBOX have CD and DVD capability that Gamecube doesn't. Parents don't have to choose between getting their kid a DVD player or a gamesystem. Still, does anyone see the DVD player market disappearing, seriously?
Frankly, in my opinion, the current status of each system is due to exclusive game content. People aren't buying these as Swiss Army Knife home entertainment systems. The reason why online is important is because if a true killer app online game is released, the system without the infrastructure to roll out their own knock-off as soon as possible may end up hopelessly behind. I want to emphasize the "may" in that sentence, because most of the needed infrastructure (aka, the Internet) is already there. So, like everything else with game systems, this is ultimately only about games. This analysts comment seems to show he doesn't have a clue.
In fact, the closest home appliance to a Swiss Army Knife home entertainment system is the trusty PC. Mainly because the PC can sometimes be used in ways that haven't been thought of by the big corps, or better still in ways that the big corps hate. Even then though, it is mostly geeks who use them that way, though it is slowly filtering down to semi-geek mainstream users.
Well, now it seems we have a world where everyone has a mini spy camera.
I didn't notice any problem with the quality of the games, I guess extensive play will be required. <bsa-protection>What a pity I immediately destroyed the cartridge in disgust at the ripping off of the poor software giants and movie studio execs who had licensed their preciousss IP.</bsa-protection>
However, if I had played it extensively, I'm sure I would have noticed some of the false advertising on the box compared to its contents. While the four gameboy advance games (Harry Potter/Mario Advance 2/Lord of the Rings/Shrek: Hassle in the Castle) I'm sure would've been as advertised, I noticed that Dig Dog (sic) was shown on the cover as having Doraemon characters in it, I guess due to Dig Dug's resemblance to an earless, robotic cat and Doraemon's relative popularity in SE Asia. There would've been some wierd games too like "King of Ghost."
Yes, 115 games in all... but most of those were old gameboy games that I doubt would sell outside of Asia anyway... like two Majong games...
<bsa-protection>Oh well, all hail BSA/MPAA/RIAA and their continuing war against copyright infringement. Their neverending quest to screw up every computer everywhere and crush legitimate reverse engineering projects like Bleem!, Gameboy Advance Flash Cartridges and Freecraft has inspired me to behave morally whenever I see anyone try to infringe their preciousss IP.</bsa-protection> Of course, some might say that in such a war, morality has become a gray area....
As I recall, the details of that case were that Nintendo had patented a chip that would allow licensed game cartridges to work in the NES. On the claim that they were going to sue Nintendo, the folks at Tengen had a look at the patent, and figured out how to make a chip that would allow their games to work in the NES without paying for the license. Tengen lost the case because it was not a clean room reverse engineering with virgins and all that, but based on actual knowledge of the technical details of Nintendo's patent.
My source for this is, of course, Game Over by David Scheff. I don't have the book in front of me so some detail may be wrong, and I can't find a Web source to back up the details.
X-Arcade Machine
Well, Ok, I won't really buy one. I'll just dream about it.
You know, back in my day computers (Atari 800s, that is) came with joystick ports standard. Of course, the concept of a mouse was a novelty, I don't think I ever had one for my Atari.
I remember the shock I had moving forward from my Atari with it's sturdy joysticks and decent games to the generic 8088 my Dad bought which had the crummiest joystick I had ever seen and couldn't even run Pool of Radience. Those were dark times...
Oh well, hopefully I won't be disappointed by Killer 7.
So, you are saying that Agent Smith is cooler and would make a better hero for The Matrix than Neo. Hmm... I concur!
There is also H. L. Mencken's definition of Puritanism to consider, "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." He was really onto something with that. Think of all the things that have been in trouble. Pool, pinball, comic books, Rock and Roll, and RolePlaying Games have all had their time in the dock. All of these things have in common that they are fun without being educational or "spiritual." Some people really hate that, you have to come up with a better reason for stuff like that to exist than just because it is fun, because to those people fun=bad.
I actually kind of wish that the game companies would fight this not in courts but by complying. They could just stop shipping games to stores in St. Louis County and close the arcades. The trouble is they are worried that if it succeeds in St. Louis, Joseph Lieberman will decide to introduce a bill making it national. It would be interesting to see what would happen, though, even though a lot of small arcade and video game owners would end up suffering in the short term. (If I was an arcade owner in St. Louis county, I'd already be looking to relocate.)