Diesel Sweeties, new? They've been around since 2000. When compared to some of the *really* old comics, it isn't that old, but almost six years makes a webcomic pretty mature in my book.
Care to explain how any of the Zelda games [especially beginning with the SNES version] are simply "more of the same" each time?
Sure, they star link, and he primarily uses a sword as his main offensive weapon. And there is a great big evil that you must defeat.
But in each Zelda game, the story, settings, characters, and sometimes even the gameplay itself is completely different, with just enough detail to tie the game into earlier stories. Each Zelda game is completely unique in character and generally memorable to all who have played it.
I don't know what you view as "original", but unfortunately what passes for originality from many of the most outspoken critics of the videogame industry [and critics of Nintendo in particular] is just another grim shooter with a main character whose signature weapon is the most audacious gun or sword seen yet and whose angst is fueled by something unprecedented, yet understandable to whomever gets to assume control of him on the other side of the monitor.
Originality is sometimes more than creating a new tall, dark, and sexy hero, and more than creating a completely a completely bizarre new game.
"HAS ANY GAME CONSOLE ever made it easy to port games to and from their console?"
You know, I was thinking the exact same thing as I read the blurb. I was reminded of the technical hurdles needed to port games back in the heady days of the 3D revolution with the N64 and PlayStation, where game developers were faced with the task of shoehorning a CD-ROM sized game into the several dozen megabytes offered by an N64 cart. I'm also reminded of a particular PlayStation game that was ported to the SNES that required additional hardware in the cart in order to make it play [Capcom's Megaman X3 and the SuperFX chip]. It was unlikely that you saw many cross-platform games ten years ago.
These days, it seems that a large number of games are cross-platform, at least among consoles. The increased computational power of the upcoming consoled should allow for even more versatile hardware abstraction layers, giving developers the flexibility they need in order to make cross porting a simple task.
hawk: How much for this fish? Quick. fisherman: Oh. Uhhh, twenty dollars. hawk: There you are. fisherman: Wait a minute. hawk: What? fisherman: Well, we're-- we're supposed to haggle. hawk: No, no. I've got to get-- fisherman: What do you mean, 'no, no, no'? hawk: I haven't time. I've got-- fisherman: Well, give it back, then. hawk: No, no, no. I just paid you. fisherman: Burt! Burt: Yeah? fisherman: This bloke won't haggle.
The only online game that I know of that encourages cooperation among players in this fashion rather than encouraging conflict is A Tale in The Desert.
To most people who are used to the "typical" behavior of mmog players, ATITD is a very weird experience. Weird and boring, but if you're the type for the sort of gameplay that it offers it has the potential to be a rewarding gaming experience.
The game draws people who aren't your typical gamer, and they tend to act in a very compassionate manner toward their fellow players. But, the game fills a niche and as such there are only a couple thousand players of it total. Everyone else gets their kicks by trampling all over the n00bs in other games.
Actually, a prototype was built, but it never moved into production; Kenner wasn't interested in a toy that cost over two million dollars in parts alone. Unfortunately, the military wasn't interested in it either, as they "don't swordfight anymore."
I've started to feel as though the ausomobile:computer analogy is a very bad, misleading one.
The car is designed for one purpose: to go fowards. That's it.
We've put comfortable baskets for us to ride in on top of them, made these baskets climate controlled, added devices to play music, and so forth. But you can remove all of these things, and the car is still functionally a car: it will go fowards.
But cars are complicated. They are built with intricate machines at their heart, much like computers with their chips and cards [made with hundreds of millions of transistors]. This is the similarity between the two, and this is the basis for most people using the cars:computers analogy. Unfortunately, it ignores the fact that the uses of computers are far, far more broad than a car's uses could ever hope to be.
A computer is an information-enabling device. They're used to play games. They're used to solve complicated math problems. They're used to write essays. They're used to create special effects for movies. They're used to instantly communicate with someone across the continent. They're used to access an incredibly vast amount of mostly unrelated information. They're used as jukeboxes. They're used as photography studios. They're used to access an incredibly vast number of mindless amusements. They're used as shopping malls. They're used as repositories of personal information.
Each of these functions is as primary a function of the computer as the next. Or in other words, the computer's specific purpose is to be a general purpose device. It has an untold number of exclusive intended uses, while a car only has one. This is why I feel that the car:computer analogy is a poor one.
*Note: I know that some could argue that the computer's primary purpose is to perform the execution of code, and that things such as racing, driving to the store, etc. are roughly analogous to the computer's uses I mentioned, but these activities in a car are all variations of the same thing to most everybody; in all cases, you're going fowards. With a computer though, ask your average person how similar playing UT2004 is to managing your finances on a computer. The computer's executing code in both cases, but I imagine that almost everyone would agree that these two activities practically have nothing in common with each other.
To everyone on a corporate firewall, just suck it up.
Either just figure out the url to the original content, stop reading slashdot at work and get some *work* done, convince your administrators/managers that you should be allowed to view content on a nonstandard port so you can spend more company time browsing the web, or leave and find a different job.
For a website which is devoted to shoveling up information for the most elitist of all computer-literate people [including some bright individuals], you'd think that somehow, a better system could be put into place than "bomb websites with loads of traffic, indiscriminantly".
"...speeding is prohibited. should cardesigners make it impossible to speed?"
But they already do. Speed governors, rev limiters... your original question still stands [should being the key word], but in terms of this analogy, they're already way ahead of "trusted computing".
"... this sounds a bit like a segway into trusted computing..."
At least we'll be riding into trusted computing in syle; those Segways are hip, from what I hear. At least, riding on one of those, we'll be sure to segue into the new trusted architecture without ever falling over!
Re:Neostalinist==one who doesn't beat off to Rush
on
In the Year 2020
·
· Score: 1
"anyone who doesn't masturbate while listening to Rush is a Neostalinist, or at least a filthy dirty commie"
Geddy Lee might sound like a woman at times, but this is ridiculous!
"I was listening to Rush when you were probably still getting lunch money from yer mama...."
Who's detecting anything? Go ahead and crash into the boulder or whatever...
Perhaps you ought to take a moment and actually read the rules. They clearly state the you are not to build a robot that just rolls over whatever is in it's path; your robot must stay within a corridor, and must avoid all major obstacles. Otherwise, it may be disqualified.
Any speed gain you'd get from using solid state media would be lost if the device is hooked up to such a bus. And if you really want something small, think about the iPod. It holds many gigabytes of data in a handheld form factor; all it has is a tiny hard drive.
Also, RAM needs a constant supply of power to keep it useful. If the device is going to be portable at all [and why shouldn't it be, if you hook it up to Firewire or something similar?], it's going to need batteries, something that a hard disk based device wouldn't need to be encumbered with.
If dialup users are ruining your gameplay experience that badly, either you take your gaming far too seriously, or you're playing games that have absolutely lousy networking code.
Whether or not you want to believe it, there are still some areas in the USA where you cannot get broadband, period [my location being one of them]. Granted, the number of people who live in these areas and play the same games you do are small, but your ultimatum automatically brands every one of these people as losers who ruin your entertainment of their own free will. Sometimes, there really isn't anything people can do about it.
Also, how big of a deal is the small amount of lag caused by a single low-bandwidth player? Do you really need a completely realtime environment to participate in what is really just an entertaining diversion? Or if dialup users really are slowing your games to a crawl, I suggest that you pick up a copy of Tribes 2 or XMP, both of which are excellent at dealing with less than satisfactory network connections.
Who says that "Dilbert" has sold out? You? Just because the strip portrays a view of downloading content that you find disagreeable, doesn't mean that the RIAA's got Scott Adams in their pocket.
It could just be that the man believes that you ought to pay for what you use for entertainment, if the creator of that entertainment wants payment.
This is really just based on my observation, but I'd have to say that the reason why HP calculators are almost unheard of these days [or rather, why TI's calculators are everywhere] is because that's what middle schools and high schools buy to sell to their students. I belive that the schools get a bit of a discount, buying in bulk and being educational institutions. I think that the bottom line is that early on, the schools get TI calculators for their students.
This way, the teachers and students are more used to using one brand/model of calculator, and once there's a bit of inertia in one direction, it's tougher to change things to the other direction.
I can't really imagine a school system recommending a calculator other than the TI-83+ for their math classes, mainly because they're easy to get, easy to find someone who knows how to use it, and easy to see that every other school system uses it.
But not all of the time. What I'd really like to see in this game is cooperative multiplayer.
Perhaps it's just me, but I've played games where the series or main focus of the game is based on single player mode, and the multiplayer "battle" modes were dull and simply not as fun as other games that were designed for multiplayer combat. On the other hand, I've had a blast playing games that include cooperative gameplay.
Granted, cooperative gameplay makes more sense in the adventure/puzzle genre, but that's mostly what Metroid is. I'd much rather have friend and I playing the game and accomplishing it together than having both of our progress slowed by each other.
Slashdot Mirror
Diesel Sweeties, new? They've been around since 2000. When compared to some of the *really* old comics, it isn't that old, but almost six years makes a webcomic pretty mature in my book.
Does Sony force you to upgrade firmware in the first place? If not, you have nothing to complain about.
Sex Change.
Care to explain how any of the Zelda games [especially beginning with the SNES version] are simply "more of the same" each time?
Sure, they star link, and he primarily uses a sword as his main offensive weapon. And there is a great big evil that you must defeat.
But in each Zelda game, the story, settings, characters, and sometimes even the gameplay itself is completely different, with just enough detail to tie the game into earlier stories. Each Zelda game is completely unique in character and generally memorable to all who have played it.
I don't know what you view as "original", but unfortunately what passes for originality from many of the most outspoken critics of the videogame industry [and critics of Nintendo in particular] is just another grim shooter with a main character whose signature weapon is the most audacious gun or sword seen yet and whose angst is fueled by something unprecedented, yet understandable to whomever gets to assume control of him on the other side of the monitor.
Originality is sometimes more than creating a new tall, dark, and sexy hero, and more than creating a completely a completely bizarre new game.
"HAS ANY GAME CONSOLE ever made it easy to port games to and from their console?"
You know, I was thinking the exact same thing as I read the blurb. I was reminded of the technical hurdles needed to port games back in the heady days of the 3D revolution with the N64 and PlayStation, where game developers were faced with the task of shoehorning a CD-ROM sized game into the several dozen megabytes offered by an N64 cart. I'm also reminded of a particular PlayStation game that was ported to the SNES that required additional hardware in the cart in order to make it play [Capcom's Megaman X3 and the SuperFX chip]. It was unlikely that you saw many cross-platform games ten years ago.
These days, it seems that a large number of games are cross-platform, at least among consoles. The increased computational power of the upcoming consoled should allow for even more versatile hardware abstraction layers, giving developers the flexibility they need in order to make cross porting a simple task.
For the last several hundred years pretty much every large predator in North America has been brought to the brink of extinction except one, humans.
You forgot about the bears. They're thriving over in the northeast, in record numbers in some places.
hawk: How much for this fish? Quick.
fisherman: Oh. Uhhh, twenty dollars.
hawk: There you are.
fisherman: Wait a minute.
hawk: What?
fisherman: Well, we're-- we're supposed to haggle.
hawk: No, no. I've got to get--
fisherman: What do you mean, 'no, no, no'?
hawk: I haven't time. I've got--
fisherman: Well, give it back, then.
hawk: No, no, no. I just paid you.
fisherman: Burt!
Burt: Yeah?
fisherman: This bloke won't haggle.
The only online game that I know of that encourages cooperation among players in this fashion rather than encouraging conflict is A Tale in The Desert.
To most people who are used to the "typical" behavior of mmog players, ATITD is a very weird experience. Weird and boring, but if you're the type for the sort of gameplay that it offers it has the potential to be a rewarding gaming experience.
The game draws people who aren't your typical gamer, and they tend to act in a very compassionate manner toward their fellow players. But, the game fills a niche and as such there are only a couple thousand players of it total. Everyone else gets their kicks by trampling all over the n00bs in other games.
Also, Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycles backwards among your tabs, and Ctrl+W closes your current tab.
Just don't get mixed up [as I did last night], and do Ctrl+Shift+W, or you'll end up losing all your tabs...
still searching KB Toys for a working model
Actually, a prototype was built, but it never moved into production; Kenner wasn't interested in a toy that cost over two million dollars in parts alone. Unfortunately, the military wasn't interested in it either, as they "don't swordfight anymore."
So no luck finding them in stores yet.
I've started to feel as though the ausomobile:computer analogy is a very bad, misleading one. The car is designed for one purpose: to go fowards. That's it.
We've put comfortable baskets for us to ride in on top of them, made these baskets climate controlled, added devices to play music, and so forth. But you can remove all of these things, and the car is still functionally a car: it will go fowards.
But cars are complicated. They are built with intricate machines at their heart, much like computers with their chips and cards [made with hundreds of millions of transistors]. This is the similarity between the two, and this is the basis for most people using the cars:computers analogy. Unfortunately, it ignores the fact that the uses of computers are far, far more broad than a car's uses could ever hope to be.
A computer is an information-enabling device. They're used to play games. They're used to solve complicated math problems. They're used to write essays. They're used to create special effects for movies. They're used to instantly communicate with someone across the continent. They're used to access an incredibly vast amount of mostly unrelated information. They're used as jukeboxes. They're used as photography studios. They're used to access an incredibly vast number of mindless amusements. They're used as shopping malls. They're used as repositories of personal information.
Each of these functions is as primary a function of the computer as the next. Or in other words, the computer's specific purpose is to be a general purpose device. It has an untold number of exclusive intended uses, while a car only has one. This is why I feel that the car:computer analogy is a poor one.
*Note: I know that some could argue that the computer's primary purpose is to perform the execution of code, and that things such as racing, driving to the store, etc. are roughly analogous to the computer's uses I mentioned, but these activities in a car are all variations of the same thing to most everybody; in all cases, you're going fowards. With a computer though, ask your average person how similar playing UT2004 is to managing your finances on a computer. The computer's executing code in both cases, but I imagine that almost everyone would agree that these two activities practically have nothing in common with each other.
Because that little green caterpillar is usually called an inchworm.
To everyone on a corporate firewall, just suck it up.
Either just figure out the url to the original content, stop reading slashdot at work and get some *work* done, convince your administrators/managers that you should be allowed to view content on a nonstandard port so you can spend more company time browsing the web, or leave and find a different job.
For a website which is devoted to shoveling up information for the most elitist of all computer-literate people [including some bright individuals], you'd think that somehow, a better system could be put into place than "bomb websites with loads of traffic, indiscriminantly".
"...speeding is prohibited. should cardesigners make it impossible to speed?"
But they already do. Speed governors, rev limiters... your original question still stands [should being the key word], but in terms of this analogy, they're already way ahead of "trusted computing".
"... this sounds a bit like a segway into trusted computing..."
At least we'll be riding into trusted computing in syle; those Segways are hip, from what I hear. At least, riding on one of those, we'll be sure to segue into the new trusted architecture without ever falling over!
"anyone who doesn't masturbate while listening to Rush is a Neostalinist, or at least a filthy dirty commie"
Geddy Lee might sound like a woman at times, but this is ridiculous!
"I was listening to Rush when you were probably still getting lunch money from yer mama...."
I'm waitin' for the 2112 predictions, man.
I'd just like to point out that The College of New Jersey is another campus that has banned wireless access points as installed by students.
Who's detecting anything? Go ahead and crash into the boulder or whatever... Perhaps you ought to take a moment and actually read the rules. They clearly state the you are not to build a robot that just rolls over whatever is in it's path; your robot must stay within a corridor, and must avoid all major obstacles. Otherwise, it may be disqualified.
What's the point?
Any speed gain you'd get from using solid state media would be lost if the device is hooked up to such a bus. And if you really want something small, think about the iPod. It holds many gigabytes of data in a handheld form factor; all it has is a tiny hard drive.
Also, RAM needs a constant supply of power to keep it useful. If the device is going to be portable at all [and why shouldn't it be, if you hook it up to Firewire or something similar?], it's going to need batteries, something that a hard disk based device wouldn't need to be encumbered with.
Take a look at their livejournals, and you'll find that they're all girls.
Opportunity
Spirit
Pathfinder
We loose rights...
Well! I guess we don't have to worry about laws that exercise tight control over us and are too restrictive, at least.
If dialup users are ruining your gameplay experience that badly, either you take your gaming far too seriously, or you're playing games that have absolutely lousy networking code.
Whether or not you want to believe it, there are still some areas in the USA where you cannot get broadband, period [my location being one of them]. Granted, the number of people who live in these areas and play the same games you do are small, but your ultimatum automatically brands every one of these people as losers who ruin your entertainment of their own free will. Sometimes, there really isn't anything people can do about it.
Also, how big of a deal is the small amount of lag caused by a single low-bandwidth player? Do you really need a completely realtime environment to participate in what is really just an entertaining diversion? Or if dialup users really are slowing your games to a crawl, I suggest that you pick up a copy of Tribes 2 or XMP, both of which are excellent at dealing with less than satisfactory network connections.
Who says that "Dilbert" has sold out? You? Just because the strip portrays a view of downloading content that you find disagreeable, doesn't mean that the RIAA's got Scott Adams in their pocket.
It could just be that the man believes that you ought to pay for what you use for entertainment, if the creator of that entertainment wants payment.
This is really just based on my observation, but I'd have to say that the reason why HP calculators are almost unheard of these days [or rather, why TI's calculators are everywhere] is because that's what middle schools and high schools buy to sell to their students. I belive that the schools get a bit of a discount, buying in bulk and being educational institutions. I think that the bottom line is that early on, the schools get TI calculators for their students.
This way, the teachers and students are more used to using one brand/model of calculator, and once there's a bit of inertia in one direction, it's tougher to change things to the other direction.
I can't really imagine a school system recommending a calculator other than the TI-83+ for their math classes, mainly because they're easy to get, easy to find someone who knows how to use it, and easy to see that every other school system uses it.
But not all of the time. What I'd really like to see in this game is cooperative multiplayer.
Perhaps it's just me, but I've played games where the series or main focus of the game is based on single player mode, and the multiplayer "battle" modes were dull and simply not as fun as other games that were designed for multiplayer combat. On the other hand, I've had a blast playing games that include cooperative gameplay.
Granted, cooperative gameplay makes more sense in the adventure/puzzle genre, but that's mostly what Metroid is. I'd much rather have friend and I playing the game and accomplishing it together than having both of our progress slowed by each other.