The Mac version was last updated in.....damn, I keep on top of this stuff but it's been what...3 years since the last update? Microsoft has been slowly reducing the number of Mac apps over the past few years (it seemed to coincide with their new 'commitment' to the Mac around 2000 or so) Apple had no other choice but to put out Mail.app, to fill the gap. IE is gone, but everyone in the Mac community felt it was dead long before Safari came out - not getting an update for years at a time usually leaves that impression.
Oh well, I guess it is a strategic move to isolate themselves for blame and constant embarassment over their inability to put out a secure app. Almost everytime "new, crippling virus" is mentioned, you hear "exploits a vunerability in Outlook Express" in the same sentence.
Macs used to be able to turn themselves on and off at any time you wanted them to. You could program an entire computer lab's worth to turn on at 7:30am and off at 5:00pm. For some reason the feature hasn't been brought over into OS X.
- The demos tend to be representative of the final game. I don't get to play 1/10 of 1 level with 99% of the the features disabled - as I often do with boxed software. It's not in a shareware developer's best interest to turn you off with a bad demo. There is no shelf presence to make you think "Damn, I should give that a second-chance"
- Instant gratification. I can download a demo, decide I like it, place and order and receive my liscense code within a matter of minutes. The days of waiting for your registration to be processed are coming to an end.
- Price. I can get most games for $20, $30 tops. This, coupled with the faster registration times I mentioned above make shareware more of an impluse buy than ever.
- Developers generally have a better attitude. This is purely subjective, but in my experience the developers are much more interested in what the community thinks of their product and how it can be improved than the "boxed" developers. The "release and forget" mentality is simply not that big of an issue in the shareware community.
- More complex games are showing up as shareware. In the past, simple Tetris-like games have been the mainstays of the shareware industry. Escape Velocity, and the Mac version of Uplink are good examples of this. More users with high-bandwith connections are making epic-scale games easier to distribute.
I've always tended to be rather left-leaning, and during the '90s I heard the constant tirades from the fringe-right about the coming abuses of power from the U.S government.
My typical reaction was one of amusement and sadness that people had actuallly convinced themselves that such things could and more importantly, *would* happen. Especially in the short time-frame predicted.
I stopped liking Clinton years before he left office (Democratic Party != Left Wing, Bill Clinton != Ethical Man), yet I did not partake in the growing hobby of "List evil things the Clinton Administration will do next year".
Clinton left office, and a man touted as being responsible and ethical moved into the White House.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The push to circumvent the very spirit of our Constitution has been constant since 9/11. Though, I don't think a Democrat would have done any better - they have become a spinless party unable to even find a platform. Don't bother calling them Left Wing - that is so 40 years ago. They don't even know what they stand for and are unwilling to fight anything the Bush administration proposes. They have become the CNN of poltics. The people that just agree with whomever is in power 99.999% of the time. They could have done something, they could have tried to change the course of events, before the post-9/11 legislative momentum built up to the point it is at now.
But they did nothing.
And now they still do......nothing.
The fringe-right is silent. Their nightmares are coming true, but instead of doing anything about it, they are continuing to talk about what has already occured as if it is still in the future, while they throw their support behind Bush.
The far-left is too caught up in the legacy of the past 40 years to pay attention to anything that is happening today. Instead of uniting to fight the efforts of the Bush administration, they are leaving that to a brave few, while they remain largely fractured and busy with far too many issues to even make a dent. It's embarassing when I'm associated with these people. The left, while idealistic, has become unable to *do* anything with those ideals. Many of their beleifs could change things for the better, and are compatible with even Libertarian philosiphy, but as a movement - a political and social force - they are now a joke.
There have been numerous suggestions that NASA install more heat sensors on the shuttle.
Neither astronauts nor mission control want heat sensors on the back of every tile.
I'm serious.
Tiles come off on every flight. It is just part of the standard procedure. Now, in every other shuttle launch this has caused nothing but some localized heating that amounted to nothing in the end. It's an established and well-known aspect of launch and reentry.
Now, if you *did* have tempature readings coming off every square inch of the shuttle, every time the shuttle came in for reentry, the alarms would start screaming that the hull tempature was spiking due to some innocuous tile being gone.
It would not help matters.
If such a system had been introduced years ago, the Columbia crew would have probably dismissed the alarms, as they dismissed the fact the tire pressure sensor was no longer transmitting data.
The same series of events would have occured, and the crew would have been as in the dark about the fact Columbia was dying as they were last Saturday.
A more reliable rumor now circulating among game mags and their informers is that Half Life 2 is actually coming quite soon. The nature of the project has changed a bit, though.....
Apparently the President of Valve has spent A LOT of time in Redmond.
*coughXboxExclusiveTitle*cough*
If the intent of "Xbox Exclusive" remains "It will come out somewhere else later on, almost always the PC" I will have no problem with this. The PC community is needed for modding. The Xbox can be where people go to play the game, and its mods with a performance guarantee.
The industry is better off so long as there is strong competition.. as Microsoft is currently in third place with X-Box.
I'm not a fan of pissing matches over sales figures, so I will attempt to be simple, direct and objective as possible about this. I'm only trying to dispel a myth of the Xbox as a failure rather than trying to prove it is better or something.....
.....the Xbox has been outselling the GameCube for months. Their top games are outselling the top GameCube games by huge margins. For example, in December, Splinter Cell (which came out in mid-November) sold a whopping 633,337 units- making it the best-selling Xbox game in that month.
358,876 copies of Metroid Prime flew off the shelves in the same month - making it the number 1 game for the GameCube.
This is only one month, but it is representitive of the pattern we've seen since last May. The Xbox has been gaining in sales each month, long ago surpassing the GC. All-in-all, the Xbox has sold 4,601,000 units. The GameCube has moved 3,583,000.
The Xbox sold 1,033,000 units in December, while the GameCube pulled in sales of 619,000 units. (the GameBoy Advance sold an astonishing 2,215,000 units in the same time frame)
I'm not pointing to these numbers to say one console is better than the other, or that the GC or Xbox is somehow doomed. I am trying to say that the Xbox is not the failure some people are trying to make it out to be. Nor am I claiming you are actively trying to deceive anyone, you were probably just exposed to too much FUD.
Replacing Hiliary Rosen with someone nicer won't cut it.
The RIAA's actions are the very thing that define the attitudes of consumers towards it. Their propaganda is irrelevant to the people they are trying to address. This is not due to the vehicle they are using to deliver their message, but the very simple and plain fact that their message is not one that people agree with, nor is it one people will agree with given time.
Nobody likes Hiliary Rosen because of what she represents. It was never a personal issue. Though many people have directed their anger towards her, it was never at her as an individual, but rather as the figurehead of an organization who's goals are in opposition to a large percentage of the public.
The RIAA is trying the same tactic the U.S is going to try with the Middle East. Ratchet up the propaganda to people who know its propganada and despise it, attempt to paint a picture of things that is directly at odds with what people see and experience every day, all the while continuing with the same actions the people hate.
This is a move that is a desperate gamble by the RIAA to win a struggle they are losing. An act that has more to do with not knowing what else to do, than a concrete plan based in logic and well-thought out strategy.
*Sony or Nintendo buy game developer, make all its products exclusive to their respective console*
Slashdot Crowd: "Oh, bummer. Anyway....."
*Microsoft buys game developer. Makes all of its content exclusive to the Xbox*
Slashdot Crowd: "OMG! Evil conspiracy! Even though Sony and Nintendo have bought out multitudes of companies and made countless games exclusive (which is what makes a console survive in the first place) the very fabric of morality must be dissolving as we speak!"
Microsoft is only following the example set by their predecessors. Bitching at them more than you would bitch about another company doing the same thing is hypocritical and it severely weakens your argument.
It really, really sucks when a game you desperately want to play is only coming to a console you do not have. That is, however, the very nature of the business and exlcusive content is what makes or breaks a console.
I don't like business monoplies, I don't like to think that one company is attempting to control everything, but in this case I'm not worried.
Why?
There are two, very well-established and very skilled competitors who are trying to do the same thing. (though, Nintendo isn't so fierce). They are both using the same tactics, and they are both surviviing. I feel the pressure has made the industry better. There is now so much being put into getting the best hardware and the best games out there that the quality of the hardware/software lineup we are seeing now and will see in the future will be based on the struggle to not be left behind. A strong aversion to resting on one's laurels will pervade the console gaming industry.
So, when people talk about Microsoft being a big, bad guy in the console gaming world, I just chuckle, knowing that the next Sony and Nintendo consoles will be that much better than they would be otherwise. The two companies have no choice.
I for one, am glad the Xbox is here.
PS2 and GameCube fans should be, too.
Except when that game you wanted is picked up by a competing console. Even then, just grin and bear it. Your day will come....and then it will come again, and again and again.
Things in the console world are better than they've ever been.
MTV has, finally - after flirting with the idea for years - officallly announced they will cut back to about 10 videos a week. It recieved a mention in TV Guide's Cheers and Jeers last week or the week before (I'm sure someone could find out).
From now on, they will select these very few videos, and then air them constantly.
The point? Such rigid control over the playlists, plus the dramatic scaling back of the numbers of new songs viewers and listeners are exposed to has killed MTV, VH1 and radio. If you don't like the NuMetal, Rap, PerlJamClone and TeenyBop tracks this week, you are out of luck. There will be nothing new for you to see. You will not be exposed to any new artists, new genres....nothing beyond what you already know.
So once you have all the U2, Radiohead, Bijork, They Might Be Giants, etc albums you got into, what else is there?
A lot.
But how the hell are you supposed to find out?
Play MP3.com roulette?
Good luck filtering out the crap from the music with some substance with the little guidance you can get. I lost track of the number of times someone reccomended a band to me that ended up being just another bottom-of-the-barrel garage band (not to dis garage bands in general, just the REALLY lame ones.)
MTV, VH1, etc have always shown lots of shit, but they also managed to dig up a few gems along the way. Playing video after video from bands that hardly sold anything, didn't have a good marketing budget and didn't fit into one group, live up to anyone's vision of what they "should" be, and what kind of music they "should make. The programmers were responsible for sustaining bands until they reached immense heights.
U2 albums didn't really start to sell well until their 4th album - "The Unforgettable Fire" - which had 1 top 40 hit. Before then, they never really had that much success on retail shelves -despite having a huge tour following.
MTV played them anywyay.
When their second album didn't do very well, they kept playing them.
When they went off in odd directions with their music they kept U2 videos in heavy roation. Didn't matter what rigid category they did or did not fit into.
It was music, and it was interesting.
Sometimes it sold well, sometimes not nearly as well as before.
But the videos kept playing.
That's over now. MTV has given up because they found the 14-year-olds love all their crappy non-music shows, and the single, 90 minute or so block of time when they do show videos (Total Request Live). These viewers are the most fiercely loyal. So MTV has decided to cater to them, and only them.
This demographic didn't tune in as much when a block of videos came on that didn't cater to only their tastes.
So MTV axed the very thing they are based on.
Radio isn't much better.
So now, it's down to 10 songs a week - mostly the same ones from last week - in a few, narrowly defined styles. Most of which will not appeal to a broad audience.
And the millions of listeners who have far fewer places to turn will find themselves uninterested in buying music. There simply isn't anything new being introduced to them.
And the music industry will see the downturn, and blame it soley on file-swapping.
And they will wonder why they can't find any new "hit" artists.
They will ignore the fact they simply don't have the paitence to nurture a band, but simply expect it to go Top 10 with its first album. A group that fails to do so will be dropped. And any group in the running will have no control over their music anyway, so the expectation that they will get any better is moot - considering they have no ability to grow as artists.
These people want 4 new U2s every year.
But, like many other groups before and since - the key to success was artistic control by the band, and relentless exposure - regardless of sales.
I was added to the do-not-call list in Tennessee. When it took effect the calls stopped for quite a while.
Then, they began again.
However, now instead of a telemarketer on the other end when I pick up the phone, all I get is a "click" and I am disconnected.
The automated calling systems still call me - more than ever it seems (a DOZEN calls a day is a bit much, dontchathink?) - but now they do not transfer me to a telemarketer, but simply disconnect me.
Their numbers are completely blocked and I cannot find out who they are, but I'm sure even if I did, they would claim they are not actually violating the rules, as they are not talking to me.
They decided to mod their Xbox, now they are upset that breaking the EULA makes their box incompatible with Xbox Live.
BooHoo.
If I were to somehow get OS X running on an AMD chip and iTools no longer worked, the last thing I would do would be to cry to Apple.
Xbox Live is a little oasis of online gaming where cheating, drastic connection differences and hardware differences are currently nonexistant. It is EXACTLY what legit Counterstrike players have been begging for since the late '90s. Now, a bunch of assholes out to get around their own inability to deal with the consequences their actions have bestowed upon them, are out to ruin it for everyone else.
XBL is something we've all wanted for years. Now, we can likely expect to see legit users permabanned from XBL because some 1337 hAx0r cannot possibly deal with the fact he can only get ahead in online Xbox games by using......SKILL!!!!!
So he uses their serial/MAC.
Others do the same.
They also cheat.
XBL is ruined.
I know a lot of people think it is cool to fuck over Microsoft at every oppertunity and feel that they should give up on the banning, but if this were anyone else, there would be a lot more outrage than there is now. Something good is on the verge of being destroyed. Too bad no one wants to own up to their own hypocrisy.
I worked in a grocery store for a while (Kroger) and shopped there as well.
I cannot even begin to explain the intense, mind-numbing rage I felt after hearing the same, mind-numbing ads on the PA system every minute of every day for months on end.
"OMG, I'm BOB BUTLER! This is 'SmartSource Radio'!"
Gahhhhhhhh
There was this one ad for "Fresh California Asparagus" that would literally play nonstop for months. It took all the willlpower I had not to rip the entire PA system from the wall and throw it under the wheels of some Idiot Housewife's SUV, letting it's boundless stupidity be shattered by the same stupid customers that drove everyone insane.
I think if this, and other new methods of advertising in grocery stores takes hold there will be a mass-uprising of employees driven mad by their endless exposure to marketing BS.
ZERO in-store advertising. The ultimate in no-frills shopping. They make you pay for the grocery bags and put a deposit down on a cart you take for crying out lout.
But, you do pay next to nothing for really, reallly good no-name brand food.
And I know how many (read: not all) of them think. They believe several things:
- They are invincible
- They can do anything they want on the road without having any concern for others and their safety.
- Their parents will pay for everything. A new car when they trash theirs, and the 5.2 billion dollar insurance premium they will be charged.
And sadly, with the latter being a beleif with a lot of basis in reality, it is obvious that drastic mesures need to be taken to monitor teenage drivers and curtail their often psychotic methods of driving.
If for no other reason than:
A - I'm worried about the safety of myself and those I love.
B - I have to pay for it, and so do you. Wonder why your insurance premiums are insanely high? Teenage drivers are a huge part of the reason. A careful teenage driver has no recourse but to pay the high premiums based on the irresponsibility of those in his age group. Driving habits which are often condoned by parents when they simply shell out more money for their kid's car and insurance without paying attention to the hazard they pose to other driver, their passengers, and those honest kids out there who just want to be able to drive to work and earn their own way, which is now far more difficult than it should be because of these assholes racking up the insurance rates for everyone.
A lot of people have complained about how Halo was transformed over several years into several very different games. They like to blame Microsoft for this.
That would be a mistake, I'm afraid.
I read an interview with one of the Halo team members not too long ago where he explained that the team willingly threw out what they had on several occasions to start over anew because they came up with a better way of doing things.
Few people seem to know Halo started out as an RTS! The warthog (jeep) was something they were playing around with for some time as an extension of that project, and they had so much fun with it, they ended up creating an entire game around it. A 3rd person shooter.
Then, they threw that out and went for first person.
And abandoned the whole "We'll simulate the entire surfance of Halo and let you wander around doing what you wish, ala Morrowind" idea.
These were THEIR decisions.
The one negative aspect of Halo you can blame Microsoft for is the fact they imposed time constraints on the team. Halo needed to be ready and thoroughly bug tested by November 2001. They didn't have all the time they needed to make all the levels as nice as they could have been, and that is why there is some pretty awful repetition.
Give credit and blame where they are due, but don't blame Microsoft for every damn thing you don't like about Halo, or why feature X that was described in 1999 didn't make it into the Golden Master copy 2 years later.
I will often see Linux posts go something like this:
"My Mom/Grandma/Dad/Uncle now uses Linux, I set it all up for her/him, and she has icons for this, this and this"
Great, you are obviously capable of setting up a nice Linux setup, but your Mom is now dependant on you for everything regarding the way things are set up, all the way down to the software installed. Now, I wouldn't expect most inexperienced users to be tinkering with their setups - most shouldn't. But putting a user down in front of their machine and giving them virtually no control over anything, is a bit bothersome to me.
Having someone rely on you for every single configuration issue is not what I would consider polite, or something that will improve the fortunes of Linux or whatever.
You may use Linux because it works for you. Giving someone a Linux setup that they haven't the most basic understanding of is just boosting your own ego. "Look at MY platform. Even MY MOM can use it."
God forbid she want to install a simple Solitare program on her own.
Install a new piece of hardware (Inexperienced users may not be tweaking their config files, but they _do_ love their peripherals).
Or anything else.
They shouldn't have to rely on someone else for everything. Lots of inexperienced users figure things out on their own, sometimes with hillarious or disasterous results, but they do, because they want to learn, or at least be able to have a mesure of control over their own system.
Thousands of Sonic Blue-using geeks are going to come home to watch the recorded ET only to find the superfantastical hardware recognized the trailer as a commercial and edited it out!
Microsoft decided some time ago that the best way to create a good online gaming experience for a console is to maintain a console's three biggest advantages over PC gaming.
No Cheating No Viruses And no Cheating
Cheating in online games has reached such epidemic porportions on the PC that many have given up on it completely. Others just slug it out and learn to deal with it.
Microsoft wants to offer 3rd party mods and the like to its customers. Since they get a cut of every game sold for the Xbox, it makes sense for them to freely distribute mods that increase the value of the games and the console. But they want to check to make sure the mods aren't buggy, virus infected peices of shit that are going to screw up a few million Xboxes.
They want to take all the mods, pour over them, check them for cheats and viruses then let you d/l them. All the while monitor for cheats in use.
If they can do it, more power to them.
If not, the Xbox is in trouble.
I give them 50/50 odds.
I'm sure a lot of people are like "OMG, Microsoft, evil, evil evil! They can't do anything right!"
Well, they are evil (so are Nintendo and Sony in their own ways) and they do screw up more than they succeed. But they do have divisions which score a win on a regular basis.
The Macintosh Business Division was created when it became clear that teaching some Windows guys the Mac's APIs and sitting them down to port Word or something was a complete disaster. A small team of people who Knew What They Were Doing sat down and without interference from the rest of the company, were allowed to do their own thing.
The result? The versions of Office, IE, Outlook and other Microsoft apps are lightyears ahead of their Windows counterparts. They pick up the latest APIs and exploit them before anyone else. Their products tend to be stable, well-thought out and actually useable.
How has the community reacted? The MBU averages 1 Billion+ dollars in revenue every year.
Could the X-Box division do the same thing? Yes
Is it too early to tell? Yes
Does it look promising? Yes
They've already made a number of good decisions with the Xbox. Excluding the bizzarely unreliable store models, they are stable and reliable machines that can be left on for ages. The hard drive didn't bring patches for games, but only free expansion discs, personal game soundtracks and the end of memory card hell. The money I've saved in memory cards has nearly paid for games I own.
The breakaway cables have saved me about half a dozen destroyed Xboxes.
The DVD kit saved me when an out of warranty DVD player turned to crap.
The Xbox has some issues, but it doesn't have the "too many hands in the pie" problem that Windows and the PC versions of IE, Outlook and Office do that lead to bloat, instability and security problems.
They can make it work. It's their call wether they do or not
1mb of RAM (whoohoo!;) )
200MB ROM carts the size of salt grains "Now even easier to lose!" - Nintendo
and a virtual 20ft screen projected directly into your head.....but no backlight
"You must aim eyes directly at sun or flash of nuclear explosion at a precise angle. Deviation of.95959% will cause failure of display. Tests involving $.20 addition to GBRA proved that added complexity of thing called 'light button' too much for GBRA users." - Crazy Japanese guy claiming to be from Nintendo
And in other news, Nintendo has acquired the rights to the song "Staring At The Sun" by U2 for use in a future ad campaign.;)
Please, no one take this seriously, I don't want some rabid Nintendo fanboys after me....the Atari ones were bad enough"
This time around I hope they forgo the $30 patch....I mean Expansion Pack, and actually finish the game before shipping it.
It's sad that you had to buy two Sim City 3000 titles to get the functionality of Sim City 2000.
Now, all we need is a Constructor sequel (or a version of Constructor that will function on XP) and a expanded version of Capitalism 2 (brilliant game, BTW)
It's amazing how Atari are constantly heard to resurrect itself only to push out the same games again and again, only to surprise itself when it doesn't pay off profitably
Commercialization of space could make NASA's life easier. Now, they loathe the idea of having to compete, it would show just how much mismanagement there really is at the organization.
However.......one of the single biggest problems with the Space Shuttle is also one that could be solved in the future by creating a market for them - with space tourism or somesuch.
When you decide to build something like the Shuttle or the Concorde and then you find yourself with one or two users and no need for any more beyond the origional production run, then you have serious problems down the line that drive up costs to an insane level.
Simply put, you run out of spare parts.
The Shuttle and the Concorde were built all at once. The factories churned them out one after another. They needed parts - lots of them - so factories mass produced them.
Then, there weren't any more Shuttles to be made, so there was no need for parts to be built.
Time passed.
Things broke down.
And they broke down again.
And again.
Guess what happened? They started to run out of things. But you can't retool an entire factory to make 100 more of something you need - and do this for every part. So, instead, when something breaks, you have to make it. If some parts of the Shutte go bye-bye, guess what? Someone has to walk into a file room, pick up the blueprints and make a one-off of that part by hand.
Sounds like excruciatingly time and money consuming fun, huh?
Well, it _is_.
A growing market for a vehicle such as the Shuttle would mean more parts could be built, and for less. A permananet Shuttle maintence industry could be established, driving costs through the basement.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mac version was last updated in.....damn, I keep on top of this stuff but it's been what...3 years since the last update? Microsoft has been slowly reducing the number of Mac apps over the past few years (it seemed to coincide with their new 'commitment' to the Mac around 2000 or so) Apple had no other choice but to put out Mail.app, to fill the gap. IE is gone, but everyone in the Mac community felt it was dead long before Safari came out - not getting an update for years at a time usually leaves that impression.
Oh well, I guess it is a strategic move to isolate themselves for blame and constant embarassment over their inability to put out a secure app. Almost everytime "new, crippling virus" is mentioned, you hear "exploits a vunerability in Outlook Express" in the same sentence.
Macs used to be able to turn themselves on and off at any time you wanted them to. You could program an entire computer lab's worth to turn on at 7:30am and off at 5:00pm. For some reason the feature hasn't been brought over into OS X.
- The demos tend to be representative of the final game. I don't get to play 1/10 of 1 level with 99% of the the features disabled - as I often do with boxed software. It's not in a shareware developer's best interest to turn you off with a bad demo. There is no shelf presence to make you think "Damn, I should give that a second-chance"
- Instant gratification. I can download a demo, decide I like it, place and order and receive my liscense code within a matter of minutes. The days of waiting for your registration to be processed are coming to an end.
- Price. I can get most games for $20, $30 tops. This, coupled with the faster registration times I mentioned above make shareware more of an impluse buy than ever.
- Developers generally have a better attitude. This is purely subjective, but in my experience the developers are much more interested in what the community thinks of their product and how it can be improved than the "boxed" developers. The "release and forget" mentality is simply not that big of an issue in the shareware community.
- More complex games are showing up as shareware. In the past, simple Tetris-like games have been the mainstays of the shareware industry. Escape Velocity, and the Mac version of Uplink are good examples of this. More users with high-bandwith connections are making epic-scale games easier to distribute.
I've always tended to be rather left-leaning, and during the '90s I heard the constant tirades from the fringe-right about the coming abuses of power from the U.S government.
My typical reaction was one of amusement and sadness that people had actuallly convinced themselves that such things could and more importantly, *would* happen. Especially in the short time-frame predicted.
I stopped liking Clinton years before he left office (Democratic Party != Left Wing, Bill Clinton != Ethical Man), yet I did not partake in the growing hobby of "List evil things the Clinton Administration will do next year".
Clinton left office, and a man touted as being responsible and ethical moved into the White House.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The push to circumvent the very spirit of our Constitution has been constant since 9/11. Though, I don't think a Democrat would have done any better - they have become a spinless party unable to even find a platform. Don't bother calling them Left Wing - that is so 40 years ago. They don't even know what they stand for and are unwilling to fight anything the Bush administration proposes. They have become the CNN of poltics. The people that just agree with whomever is in power 99.999% of the time. They could have done something, they could have tried to change the course of events, before the post-9/11 legislative momentum built up to the point it is at now.
But they did nothing.
And now they still do......nothing.
The fringe-right is silent. Their nightmares are coming true, but instead of doing anything about it, they are continuing to talk about what has already occured as if it is still in the future, while they throw their support behind Bush.
The far-left is too caught up in the legacy of the past 40 years to pay attention to anything that is happening today. Instead of uniting to fight the efforts of the Bush administration, they are leaving that to a brave few, while they remain largely fractured and busy with far too many issues to even make a dent. It's embarassing when I'm associated with these people. The left, while idealistic, has become unable to *do* anything with those ideals. Many of their beleifs could change things for the better, and are compatible with even Libertarian philosiphy, but as a movement - a political and social force - they are now a joke.
Too bad we could reallly use ther help right now.
There have been numerous suggestions that NASA install more heat sensors on the shuttle.
Neither astronauts nor mission control want heat sensors on the back of every tile.
I'm serious.
Tiles come off on every flight. It is just part of the standard procedure. Now, in every other shuttle launch this has caused nothing but some localized heating that amounted to nothing in the end. It's an established and well-known aspect of launch and reentry.
Now, if you *did* have tempature readings coming off every square inch of the shuttle, every time the shuttle came in for reentry, the alarms would start screaming that the hull tempature was spiking due to some innocuous tile being gone.
It would not help matters.
If such a system had been introduced years ago, the Columbia crew would have probably dismissed the alarms, as they dismissed the fact the tire pressure sensor was no longer transmitting data.
The same series of events would have occured, and the crew would have been as in the dark about the fact Columbia was dying as they were last Saturday.
A more reliable rumor now circulating among game mags and their informers is that Half Life 2 is actually coming quite soon. The nature of the project has changed a bit, though.....
Apparently the President of Valve has spent A LOT of time in Redmond.
*coughXboxExclusiveTitle*cough*
If the intent of "Xbox Exclusive" remains "It will come out somewhere else later on, almost always the PC" I will have no problem with this. The PC community is needed for modding. The Xbox can be where people go to play the game, and its mods with a performance guarantee.
358,876 copies of Metroid Prime flew off the shelves in the same month - making it the number 1 game for the GameCube.
This is only one month, but it is representitive of the pattern we've seen since last May. The Xbox has been gaining in sales each month, long ago surpassing the GC. All-in-all, the Xbox has sold 4,601,000 units. The GameCube has moved 3,583,000.
The Xbox sold 1,033,000 units in December, while the GameCube pulled in sales of 619,000 units. (the GameBoy Advance sold an astonishing 2,215,000 units in the same time frame)
I'm not pointing to these numbers to say one console is better than the other, or that the GC or Xbox is somehow doomed. I am trying to say that the Xbox is not the failure some people are trying to make it out to be. Nor am I claiming you are actively trying to deceive anyone, you were probably just exposed to too much FUD.
Replacing Hiliary Rosen with someone nicer won't cut it.
The RIAA's actions are the very thing that define the attitudes of consumers towards it. Their propaganda is irrelevant to the people they are trying to address. This is not due to the vehicle they are using to deliver their message, but the very simple and plain fact that their message is not one that people agree with, nor is it one people will agree with given time.
Nobody likes Hiliary Rosen because of what she represents. It was never a personal issue. Though many people have directed their anger towards her, it was never at her as an individual, but rather as the figurehead of an organization who's goals are in opposition to a large percentage of the public.
The RIAA is trying the same tactic the U.S is going to try with the Middle East. Ratchet up the propaganda to people who know its propganada and despise it, attempt to paint a picture of things that is directly at odds with what people see and experience every day, all the while continuing with the same actions the people hate.
This is a move that is a desperate gamble by the RIAA to win a struggle they are losing. An act that has more to do with not knowing what else to do, than a concrete plan based in logic and well-thought out strategy.
*Sony or Nintendo buy game developer, make all its products exclusive to their respective console*
Slashdot Crowd: "Oh, bummer. Anyway....."
*Microsoft buys game developer. Makes all of its content exclusive to the Xbox*
Slashdot Crowd: "OMG! Evil conspiracy! Even though Sony and Nintendo have bought out multitudes of companies and made countless games exclusive (which is what makes a console survive in the first place) the very fabric of morality must be dissolving as we speak!"
Microsoft is only following the example set by their predecessors. Bitching at them more than you would bitch about another company doing the same thing is hypocritical and it severely weakens your argument.
It really, really sucks when a game you desperately want to play is only coming to a console you do not have. That is, however, the very nature of the business and exlcusive content is what makes or breaks a console.
I don't like business monoplies, I don't like to think that one company is attempting to control everything, but in this case I'm not worried.
Why?
There are two, very well-established and very skilled competitors who are trying to do the same thing. (though, Nintendo isn't so fierce). They are both using the same tactics, and they are both surviviing. I feel the pressure has made the industry better. There is now so much being put into getting the best hardware and the best games out there that the quality of the hardware/software lineup we are seeing now and will see in the future will be based on the struggle to not be left behind. A strong aversion to resting on one's laurels will pervade the console gaming industry.
So, when people talk about Microsoft being a big, bad guy in the console gaming world, I just chuckle, knowing that the next Sony and Nintendo consoles will be that much better than they would be otherwise. The two companies have no choice.
I for one, am glad the Xbox is here.
PS2 and GameCube fans should be, too.
Except when that game you wanted is picked up by a competing console. Even then, just grin and bear it. Your day will come....and then it will come again, and again and again.
Things in the console world are better than they've ever been.
You just have to open your eyes.
MTV has, finally - after flirting with the idea for years - officallly announced they will cut back to about 10 videos a week. It recieved a mention in TV Guide's Cheers and Jeers last week or the week before (I'm sure someone could find out).
From now on, they will select these very few videos, and then air them constantly.
The point? Such rigid control over the playlists, plus the dramatic scaling back of the numbers of new songs viewers and listeners are exposed to has killed MTV, VH1 and radio. If you don't like the NuMetal, Rap, PerlJamClone and TeenyBop tracks this week, you are out of luck. There will be nothing new for you to see. You will not be exposed to any new artists, new genres....nothing beyond what you already know.
So once you have all the U2, Radiohead, Bijork, They Might Be Giants, etc albums you got into, what else is there?
A lot.
But how the hell are you supposed to find out?
Play MP3.com roulette?
Good luck filtering out the crap from the music with some substance with the little guidance you can get. I lost track of the number of times someone reccomended a band to me that ended up being just another bottom-of-the-barrel garage band (not to dis garage bands in general, just the REALLY lame ones.)
MTV, VH1, etc have always shown lots of shit, but they also managed to dig up a few gems along the way. Playing video after video from bands that hardly sold anything, didn't have a good marketing budget and didn't fit into one group, live up to anyone's vision of what they "should" be, and what kind of music they "should make. The programmers were responsible for sustaining bands until they reached immense heights.
U2 albums didn't really start to sell well until their 4th album - "The Unforgettable Fire" - which had 1 top 40 hit. Before then, they never really had that much success on retail shelves -despite having a huge tour following.
MTV played them anywyay.
When their second album didn't do very well, they kept playing them.
When they went off in odd directions with their music they kept U2 videos in heavy roation. Didn't matter what rigid category they did or did not fit into.
It was music, and it was interesting.
Sometimes it sold well, sometimes not nearly as well as before.
But the videos kept playing.
That's over now. MTV has given up because they found the 14-year-olds love all their crappy non-music shows, and the single, 90 minute or so block of time when they do show videos (Total Request Live). These viewers are the most fiercely loyal. So MTV has decided to cater to them, and only them.
This demographic didn't tune in as much when a block of videos came on that didn't cater to only their tastes.
So MTV axed the very thing they are based on.
Radio isn't much better.
So now, it's down to 10 songs a week - mostly the same ones from last week - in a few, narrowly defined styles. Most of which will not appeal to a broad audience.
And the millions of listeners who have far fewer places to turn will find themselves uninterested in buying music. There simply isn't anything new being introduced to them.
And the music industry will see the downturn, and blame it soley on file-swapping.
And they will wonder why they can't find any new "hit" artists.
They will ignore the fact they simply don't have the paitence to nurture a band, but simply expect it to go Top 10 with its first album. A group that fails to do so will be dropped. And any group in the running will have no control over their music anyway, so the expectation that they will get any better is moot - considering they have no ability to grow as artists.
These people want 4 new U2s every year.
But, like many other groups before and since - the key to success was artistic control by the band, and relentless exposure - regardless of sales.
They didn't hit the Top 10 until album #5.
And few ever will again..
Nobody will wait that long anymore.
I was added to the do-not-call list in Tennessee. When it took effect the calls stopped for quite a while.
Then, they began again.
However, now instead of a telemarketer on the other end when I pick up the phone, all I get is a "click" and I am disconnected.
The automated calling systems still call me - more than ever it seems (a DOZEN calls a day is a bit much, dontchathink?) - but now they do not transfer me to a telemarketer, but simply disconnect me.
Their numbers are completely blocked and I cannot find out who they are, but I'm sure even if I did, they would claim they are not actually violating the rules, as they are not talking to me.
They decided to mod their Xbox, now they are upset that breaking the EULA makes their box incompatible with Xbox Live.
......SKILL!!!!!
BooHoo.
If I were to somehow get OS X running on an AMD chip and iTools no longer worked, the last thing I would do would be to cry to Apple.
Xbox Live is a little oasis of online gaming where cheating, drastic connection differences and hardware differences are currently nonexistant. It is EXACTLY what legit Counterstrike players have been begging for since the late '90s. Now, a bunch of assholes out to get around their own inability to deal with the consequences their actions have bestowed upon them, are out to ruin it for everyone else.
XBL is something we've all wanted for years. Now, we can likely expect to see legit users permabanned from XBL because some 1337 hAx0r cannot possibly deal with the fact he can only get ahead in online Xbox games by using
So he uses their serial/MAC.
Others do the same.
They also cheat.
XBL is ruined.
I know a lot of people think it is cool to fuck over Microsoft at every oppertunity and feel that they should give up on the banning, but if this were anyone else, there would be a lot more outrage than there is now. Something good is on the verge of being destroyed. Too bad no one wants to own up to their own hypocrisy.
I worked in a grocery store for a while (Kroger) and shopped there as well.
I cannot even begin to explain the intense, mind-numbing rage I felt after hearing the same, mind-numbing ads on the PA system every minute of every day for months on end.
"OMG, I'm BOB BUTLER! This is 'SmartSource Radio'!"
Gahhhhhhhh
There was this one ad for "Fresh California Asparagus" that would literally play nonstop for months. It took all the willlpower I had not to rip the entire PA system from the wall and throw it under the wheels of some Idiot Housewife's SUV, letting it's boundless stupidity be shattered by the same stupid customers that drove everyone insane.
I think if this, and other new methods of advertising in grocery stores takes hold there will be a mass-uprising of employees driven mad by their endless exposure to marketing BS.
Now, I shop at Aldi.
ZERO in-store advertising. The ultimate in no-frills shopping. They make you pay for the grocery bags and put a deposit down on a cart you take for crying out lout.
But, you do pay next to nothing for really, reallly good no-name brand food.
...it evolves into an OS X version?
Please?
(There is a serious lack of P2P software on OS X, all help is appreciated)
.....that makes security products?
I was a teenage driver not too long ago.
And I know how many (read: not all) of them think. They believe several things:
- They are invincible
- They can do anything they want on the road without having any concern for others and their safety.
- Their parents will pay for everything. A new car when they trash theirs, and the 5.2 billion dollar insurance premium they will be charged.
And sadly, with the latter being a beleif with a lot of basis in reality, it is obvious that drastic mesures need to be taken to monitor teenage drivers and curtail their often psychotic methods of driving.
If for no other reason than:
A - I'm worried about the safety of myself and those I love.
B - I have to pay for it, and so do you. Wonder why your insurance premiums are insanely high? Teenage drivers are a huge part of the reason. A careful teenage driver has no recourse but to pay the high premiums based on the irresponsibility of those in his age group. Driving habits which are often condoned by parents when they simply shell out more money for their kid's car and insurance without paying attention to the hazard they pose to other driver, their passengers, and those honest kids out there who just want to be able to drive to work and earn their own way, which is now far more difficult than it should be because of these assholes racking up the insurance rates for everyone.
A lot of people have complained about how Halo was transformed over several years into several very different games. They like to blame Microsoft for this.
That would be a mistake, I'm afraid.
I read an interview with one of the Halo team members not too long ago where he explained that the team willingly threw out what they had on several occasions to start over anew because they came up with a better way of doing things.
Few people seem to know Halo started out as an RTS! The warthog (jeep) was something they were playing around with for some time as an extension of that project, and they had so much fun with it, they ended up creating an entire game around it. A 3rd person shooter.
Then, they threw that out and went for first person.
And abandoned the whole "We'll simulate the entire surfance of Halo and let you wander around doing what you wish, ala Morrowind" idea.
These were THEIR decisions.
The one negative aspect of Halo you can blame Microsoft for is the fact they imposed time constraints on the team. Halo needed to be ready and thoroughly bug tested by November 2001. They didn't have all the time they needed to make all the levels as nice as they could have been, and that is why there is some pretty awful repetition.
Give credit and blame where they are due, but don't blame Microsoft for every damn thing you don't like about Halo, or why feature X that was described in 1999 didn't make it into the Golden Master copy 2 years later.
I will often see Linux posts go something like this:
"My Mom/Grandma/Dad/Uncle now uses Linux, I set it all up for her/him, and she has icons for this, this and this"
Great, you are obviously capable of setting up a nice Linux setup, but your Mom is now dependant on you for everything regarding the way things are set up, all the way down to the software installed. Now, I wouldn't expect most inexperienced users to be tinkering with their setups - most shouldn't. But putting a user down in front of their machine and giving them virtually no control over anything, is a bit bothersome to me.
Having someone rely on you for every single configuration issue is not what I would consider polite, or something that will improve the fortunes of Linux or whatever.
You may use Linux because it works for you. Giving someone a Linux setup that they haven't the most basic understanding of is just boosting your own ego. "Look at MY platform. Even MY MOM can use it."
God forbid she want to install a simple Solitare program on her own.
Install a new piece of hardware (Inexperienced users may not be tweaking their config files, but they _do_ love their peripherals).
Or anything else.
They shouldn't have to rely on someone else for everything. Lots of inexperienced users figure things out on their own, sometimes with hillarious or disasterous results, but they do, because they want to learn, or at least be able to have a mesure of control over their own system.
Thousands of Sonic Blue-using geeks are going to come home to watch the recorded ET only to find the superfantastical hardware recognized the trailer as a commercial and edited it out!
Muahahhahahahahahahaha!
Microsoft decided some time ago that the best way to create a good online gaming experience for a console is to maintain a console's three biggest advantages over PC gaming.
No Cheating
No Viruses
And no Cheating
Cheating in online games has reached such epidemic porportions on the PC that many have given up on it completely. Others just slug it out and learn to deal with it.
Microsoft wants to offer 3rd party mods and the like to its customers. Since they get a cut of every game sold for the Xbox, it makes sense for them to freely distribute mods that increase the value of the games and the console. But they want to check to make sure the mods aren't buggy, virus infected peices of shit that are going to screw up a few million Xboxes.
They want to take all the mods, pour over them, check them for cheats and viruses then let you d/l them. All the while monitor for cheats in use.
If they can do it, more power to them.
If not, the Xbox is in trouble.
I give them 50/50 odds.
I'm sure a lot of people are like "OMG, Microsoft, evil, evil evil! They can't do anything right!"
Well, they are evil (so are Nintendo and Sony in their own ways) and they do screw up more than they succeed. But they do have divisions which score a win on a regular basis.
The Macintosh Business Division was created when it became clear that teaching some Windows guys the Mac's APIs and sitting them down to port Word or something was a complete disaster. A small team of people who Knew What They Were Doing sat down and without interference from the rest of the company, were allowed to do their own thing.
The result? The versions of Office, IE, Outlook and other Microsoft apps are lightyears ahead of their Windows counterparts. They pick up the latest APIs and exploit them before anyone else. Their products tend to be stable, well-thought out and actually useable.
How has the community reacted? The MBU averages 1 Billion+ dollars in revenue every year.
Could the X-Box division do the same thing? Yes
Is it too early to tell? Yes
Does it look promising? Yes
They've already made a number of good decisions with the Xbox. Excluding the bizzarely unreliable store models, they are stable and reliable machines that can be left on for ages. The hard drive didn't bring patches for games, but only free expansion discs, personal game soundtracks and the end of memory card hell. The money I've saved in memory cards has nearly paid for games I own.
The breakaway cables have saved me about half a dozen destroyed Xboxes.
The DVD kit saved me when an out of warranty DVD player turned to crap.
The Xbox has some issues, but it doesn't have the "too many hands in the pie" problem that Windows and the PC versions of IE, Outlook and Office do that lead to bloat, instability and security problems.
They can make it work. It's their call wether they do or not
The GameBoy REALLYAdvance(d)
;) )
.95959% will cause failure of display. Tests involving $.20 addition to GBRA proved that added complexity of thing called 'light button' too much for GBRA users." - Crazy Japanese guy claiming to be from Nintendo
;)
1mb of RAM (whoohoo!
200MB ROM carts the size of salt grains "Now even easier to lose!" - Nintendo
and a virtual 20ft screen projected directly into your head.....but no backlight
"You must aim eyes directly at sun or flash of nuclear explosion at a precise angle. Deviation of
And in other news, Nintendo has acquired the rights to the song "Staring At The Sun" by U2 for use in a future ad campaign.
Please, no one take this seriously, I don't want some rabid Nintendo fanboys after me....the Atari ones were bad enough"
This time around I hope they forgo the $30 patch....I mean Expansion Pack, and actually finish the game before shipping it.
It's sad that you had to buy two Sim City 3000 titles to get the functionality of Sim City 2000.
Now, all we need is a Constructor sequel (or a version of Constructor that will function on XP) and a expanded version of Capitalism 2 (brilliant game, BTW)
.....the Celine Dion CDs came with an iTunes upgrade?
Commercialization of space could make NASA's life easier. Now, they loathe the idea of having to compete, it would show just how much mismanagement there really is at the organization.
.
However.......one of the single biggest problems with the Space Shuttle is also one that could be solved in the future by creating a market for them - with space tourism or somesuch.
When you decide to build something like the Shuttle or the Concorde and then you find yourself with one or two users and no need for any more beyond the origional production run, then you have serious problems down the line that drive up costs to an insane level.
Simply put, you run out of spare parts.
The Shuttle and the Concorde were built all at once. The factories churned them out one after another. They needed parts - lots of them - so factories mass produced them.
Then, there weren't any more Shuttles to be made, so there was no need for parts to be built.
Time passed.
Things broke down.
And they broke down again.
And again.
Guess what happened? They started to run out of things. But you can't retool an entire factory to make 100 more of something you need - and do this for every part. So, instead, when something breaks, you have to make it. If some parts of the Shutte go bye-bye, guess what? Someone has to walk into a file room, pick up the blueprints and make a one-off of that part by hand.
Sounds like excruciatingly time and money consuming fun, huh?
Well, it _is_
A growing market for a vehicle such as the Shuttle would mean more parts could be built, and for less. A permananet Shuttle maintence industry could be established, driving costs through the basement.