Re:My working NES
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you don't have a Game Genie, another thing that works far better than blowing on carts (what is blowing supposed to accomplish, anyway?), is to just slightly jiggle the cart left and right while it's still in the NES so that the pins make contact. I've never had a game not boot up properly after doing this, at most, 2 or 3 times. And as an owner of over 350 NES carts (mostly 2nd hand, so cart condition varies wildly), that's a big statement.
--Jeremy
Re:It's nice
on
Immortal Code
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
M$ has a tendancy to wrap its API's on top of each other and keep old baggage around
Granted, but the 'have no idea of what you are actually calling' part would only be applicable for someone who doesn't read documentation.
Sure, they could easily emulate the NES, SNES, and all those but that fails to take into account that there are *still* only about 800 US NES games, and (generally) less for each successive generation of console. Even if you assume that every console ever made had 1000 games for it, that'll only bring you up to around 20,000 games, and that's a pretty large overestimate.
As for detecting the disc, that'd possibly work for the PS1, maybe even the PS2/Saturn (dunno about copy protection on them). That's maybe 3 systems. The Dreamcast had specially formatted GD-ROMs that wouldn't read in a standard CD/DVD player. And how would the cartridge reading work? A different slot for every type of cart, or an adapter for each? Sorry, but I don't think so.
Not to mention the rights issue. There's no way in hell that Nintendo or Sony or most of the other companies would give up rights to distribution to a competing product. They'd have to be stupid.
I thought one of the biggest arguments for using Linux was that it "runs on legacy hardware"... And now you're asking him to replace something that's only 2 years old? Hell, most of the hardware inside my PC is over 2 years old, and I still consider it to be plenty modern enough for my uses.
Maybe it should be "runs on legacy hardware (as long as it's supported -- which is really no different than Windows, except that hardware manufacturers tend to make an effort to make sure that their crap works with Windows)"
However, a lot of them are very stupid (no offense intended, but it's true). Things like "it doesnt work plz fix it tnx" or "yo dude do me a favor would ya fix this bug, LaTeRZz!" or "It doesn't work." are not uncommon.
I can confirm that statement. I wrote a Win32 port of Abuse (Check Here) a couple of years ago and released it public domain, and since that time I've received hundreds of emails about it from people.
The emails can be counted about like this:
3 - "I loved your port! Thanks so much!"
5 - "I tried it out and I got this error message -- how do I fix it?"
Everything else - "i tried it and it doesnt work how do i fix it thnx"
Now, I know that I have more users than the few hundred that have emailed me, because on a couple of download sites I've got tens of thousands of downloads, plus all of the non-counted downloads from other sites (including my own). But I've never once gotten a piece of feedback that was actually useful to, say, further development of the engine or anything.
I think that it's partly because of the mentality of the users: people who know better will either assume that it's junk and just doesn't work, or will be able to fix it themselves. People who don't have a clue will just click the email link and ask me to fix it without giving me *any* details about what happened or what kind of a system it's running on.
Now, I do try to help *every* person that's emailed me, regardless of how little info they give me. 99% of the time reinstalling the latest DirectX drivers works. For ther other 1%, it's like pulling nails to get system specs to see if, maybe, I can figure out why it might die. Usually in those cases I just give up and leave it to them to fix it or forget it.
My opinion was that the use of Ghandi's quote either a) seriously misunderstood/underestimated the importance of what Ghandi accomplished, or b) seriously misunderstands/overestimates the importance of Linux and free software. Of course, this is RMS, so I'm assuming a combination of both. Freeing people from harsh ethnic opperssion is in no way equatable to saving people a couple hundred bucks in software expenses.
I find it interesting that Blackley was the only person they interviewed that outright attacked Miyamoto. The rest (Lorne Lanning, Toshihiro Nagoshi, American McGee, Shinji Mikami) all praise his vison and/or credit him as an inspiration. I'd like to see what some other developers, like Warren Spector and Sid Mier have to say about him. Hell, John Romero is a *huge* fan of Miyamoto (Say all you want about Daikatana -- Doom was a great game and Romero had a lot to do with that).
As a side note, I never really bought into all the "Microsoft spreads FUD" conspiracy until I went to an XBox "tech talk" in 2000. It was almost entirely Nintendo/Sony bashing FUD. The best part was when they claimed that "Nintendo hadn't yet proved itself in the video game industry," and was basically in a risky position. I can't help but think that maybe Blackley internalized some of this FUD-spreading attitude and that this is how it's manifesting itself.
Wow, are you in denial! You sound like one of those "fans" who think just because something has been branded with a franchise name, it can do no wrong.
Well, first, the piece you responded to was actually written by someone else about Equilibrium (as has already been pointed out). If you read it that way, a lot of your criticizms are invalid.
However, the "denial" think I think is a load of crap. I'm not a Star Wars fan. I haven't seen Episode 1. I just recently saw Episode 2 on DVD, and despite the fact that the writing sucked and Anakin and Natalie did piss-poor acting jobs, the movie was still entertaining.
Same with Austin Powers -- I thought that the first one was funny, the 2nd and 3rd were both more of the same with some new stuff added in. They were both still entertaining.
I didn't enjoy them because of some stupid devotion to a brand. I just thought that they were an ok way to spend 90 minutes.
Yes, they are only movies - but why can't everyone see that?
Do you see that? It's just a goddamn movie. If you don't find them entertaining, don't watch. If other people do like them, it doesn't make them any better or worse than you. I like in-line skating, but I don't like rock climbing. Do you see me calling rock climbers delusional fools?
Stop clinging to your illusions and come back to reality.
Take your own advice. Different people like different things. Maybe you're just so jaded (for whatever reason) that you refuse to let yourself like such lowly entertainment. I say too bad to you. If you expect every book to be Great Expectations and every movie to be Casa Blanca (sp?), you're gonna be disappointed. Besides, an occasional mindless diversion never hurt anybody.
Don't try to impose youre tastes onto mine. I never claimed that Consoles are better or worse then a pc. Just different. But when you try to claim that consoles can outperform a top of the range PC you need to take a reality check.
Well, you did claim that your "Porsche" outperforms my console. That to me means "better." I own both, personally, and also count gaming as a hobby which I can easily afford. However, given my experience with each medium, I always feel sheepish when I upgrade my PC. It just doesn't get you much bang for the buck. The only way I feel justified in my purchases is the fact that I also like to tinker with code a bit, and having nice hardware gives me something good to play with (even if I don't need it).
And if you count draw distance as the only measure of graphical quality (which I *highly* doubt would be as much of a problem on any modern console as you think it is), then this discussion is pointless. I'll point you at Starfox Adventures, DOA3, Metroid Prime, or Rogue Leader and challenge you to come up with something that objectively looks significantly, or even noticeably better on the PC. You'll start counting polygons (or some other meaningless metric) and miss the point again.
It sounds like you're into the wrong type of games for consoles, anyway. But my challenge stands -- I've got a $150 Gamecube and a $600 PC (a conservative estimate -- and definitely much lower than some 'hardcore' gamers' machines). There aren't any games that look so good that they justify that much of a price gap.
As for the original posters claim that the hardware is coming closer to the PC, dream on. How much memory does an X-box have? 64mb. My vid card has twice that. Yeah so my pc is a lot more expensive then a console. A porsche is a lot more expensive then a trabant. You get what you pay for.
Ok, you've got 128 MB on your video card. Name ONE PC game, available to buy now, that looks better than anything available on the PS2, Gamecube, or XBox. Can't? Sounds like all that extra hardware you've got isn't helping you out that much.
Rationalize your spending all you want, but at the end of the day your hardware still isn't playing games that are any prettier than a console.
One problem with this escalation is that, like another product (TiVo, which is partially backed by Sony) the very people subverting the product and making it more than the creator wants it to be are the best customers. In terms of EverQuest, they are often the ones maintaining several accounts and/or spending extra money for the "Legends" service. How does a company contend with a market where your best customers are also your most resourceful? With the TiVo, there was an uneasy understanding between the company and its modders. Sony has broken that balance with EverQuest.
-and-
PoP is a finely crafted fantasy gaming experience, but Sony has once again chosen to spend extra time and money hurting themselves and their market. Perhaps their competition will not make the same mistakes.
This is not "modding," this is cheating. Sony is trying to prevent cheating. Cheaters are *not* good customers, because they ruin the experience for other players. If 1% of your game population is cheating, yet that 1% each maintains 2 accounts, they still alienate the 99% of the legit players. It's the 99% that Sony wants, not the 1% of assholes who don't understand what the point of a game is.
And Sony's efforts are only wasted because they are, ultimately, in vain. Cheaters will find a way. However, I still applaud their efforts, and hope they continue to do so. I do not play EQ (I got bored of it after about 2 weeks), but cheating was one of the things that absolutely destroyed UO for me. Even if you're only given 1- to 2-week windows of no cheater activity, I say it's money well spent.
This whole article basically became a troll towards the end. As far as I'm concerned, he can keep playing with his cheat utilities, and I'll stay away from games with players like this in them.
Id probably spent weeks just optimizing the asm routine to draw a line.
As opposed to the scientific community, who spent months or years developing the algorithm that Carmack optimized for x86 assembly.
You can optimize the hell out of a crappy algorithm and still not be as fast as an efficient, but unoptimized algorithm. Scientists are interested in finding the best algorithm -- not in finding the fastest implementation of that algorithm. And algorithms are *not* theories, but a set of steps to get from state A to state B.
Stating that the "scientific" doesn't have or need know-how is incredibly naive. The person who develops an algorithm is pretty likely to have an excellent understanding of how it works. I, as a programmer, don't need *any* understanding of how it works to use it.
I suggest that you go look up a list of circle drawing algorithms, and then get back to me about "optimization." I'll give you one off the top of my head to get you started:
Check each coordinate on the screen, and if it lies on your circle, plot a pixel.
Maybe this'll help you understand the function of computer science a little better.
Someone's probably already noted this, but I don't think this sounds like such a bad idea. Maybe it'll be the move that kills off (as we know it) AOL-Time Warner in one fell swoop?
And so they take off their helmet and die. Great. And you bring their corpse back to Earth to show to all the conspiracy theorists and say, "well, the guy took his helmet off and died." And then the conspiracy theorists just have that much more ammunition: "They killed our representative to cover up the truth!"
It's a no-win situation. The only thing to do in a no-win situation? Don't play.
And that's all well and good, but the simple fact of the matter is this: Games used to be a safe haven from this crap. Now they're not.
And I do like to visit that "outdoors" place you speak of, but I really hate the snobbish attitudes of some of the people you meet out there.
--Jeremy
Re:We need to put things into perspective here.
on
Organizing Sim Protests
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes, it's a video game, but I think you're missing the point.
I, for one, play games mostly to get away from real life for a little bit. Part of the fun of immersing myself in a different world is that I get away from all the goddamn commercialism of US culture. Everywhere I go I'm bombarded with ads designed to mislead me into giving someone my money. It disgusts me.
Now, if I were a Sims player, I'd enjoy the fact that you get to play in a small utopia with none of that crap. But when McDonalds invades *that* world too, it'd just ruin the atmosphere. Once again, I'm reminded that I can't escape the megacorps and their relentless marketing teams.
The day I run across an American fast food chain store on Tallon IV is the day I give up video games for good...
COM is not VB based. COM is used by VB (transparently), but COM technology is completely independent of VB.
Despite the (apparently unfounded) attrition you feel towards COM, it is a good thing. It enables programmers to get things done quickly. It masks unnecessary complexity. It's not a crutch.
Example: DirectX. When I used to do graphics and sound programming in DOS (as a hobbyist), you had to worry about setting the correct registers on your video card and sound card. What's worse, you had to worry about which *type* of sound card/video card you were dealing with. You had to see what capabilities the card had (if it even had a way to tell you -- VESA was useful for this in the video realm). Then, after you get all that done, you can start playing your beeps and blips and drawing your stuff on the screen.
With the COM-based DirectX, I can have a video mode set and start drawing to the screen in about 5 lines of code. Same with playing sounds. Does that make me an apathetic programmer? I don't think so. I'm using a better tool to get my work done. Period -- end of story. COM is a *good thing*.
And, to get things back on topic, this is precisely the reason I use Windows for most of my personal application development. It's got better tools available (Visual Studio has no equal in Linux), a richer (and more importantly, consistent) API, and to top it all off I'm able to show my stuff to 95% of the rest of the world if I want to.
If you want to do *everything* yourself, go for it. But don't use the TCP/IP stack -- no, that's a crutch. Talk directly to the NIC. Don't use getch() or cin, either -- those are huge crutches. Talk directly to the keyboard controller. As long as you've gone that far, don't use a text editor to write your code, either. That's a crutch. Actually, don't even write code -- just output machine code directly into an executable binary, because compilers are a crutch that hide the complexity of ASM, which hides the complexity of machine code. Also, while you're at it, don't use a hammer to drive nails, either -- use a rock, because a hammer is a crutch for.. umm.. people who want to get work done efficiently.
Do that, and you'll have my respect. I'll think you're an idiot, but I'll respect you as a hardcore programmer.
It is outselling the Gamecube. The reason probably isn't the technology involved
No, it's not the tech. I've yet to see anything on the XBox that looks as good as Star Fox Adventures, despite the fact that it's got arguably better hardware.
The reason it's selling better is just marketing. The same reason that Britney and N'Sync achieve popularity. Sure, there are some good (even great) games for the system, but it's been better marketed, and that's all that matters. For some reason, people believe what they see on TV, and they see a lot more XBox ads on TV than Gamecube ads.
I'm a gamer, too, but I'm not a mark. I play plenty of games released this year (UT2003, WC3, for example) on a 1 Ghz P3 w/ Radeon 8500 with absolutely *no* problems.
By not staying on the bleeding edge of hardware, I have extra money to buy more games. I don't buy hardware that will be able to play a game that may/may not come out sometime in the next year, I buy based on what's available *now*. There's no f'in reason to have a 3 Ghz CPU for any game currently on the market.
I'd say that my current PC (minus the monitor, which cost $300, because I wanted a nice monitor) cost a total of maybe $500 to build. That's LESS than the price of this CPU.
Go ahead and buy it if you want, but it really won't make your dick any bigger.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't have a Game Genie, another thing that works far better than blowing on carts (what is blowing supposed to accomplish, anyway?), is to just slightly jiggle the cart left and right while it's still in the NES so that the pins make contact. I've never had a game not boot up properly after doing this, at most, 2 or 3 times. And as an owner of over 350 NES carts (mostly 2nd hand, so cart condition varies wildly), that's a big statement.
--Jeremy
M$ has a tendancy to wrap its API's on top of each other and keep old baggage around
Granted, but the 'have no idea of what you are actually calling' part would only be applicable for someone who doesn't read documentation.
or to change the API and then not tell you
I call BS. Can you give an example?
--Jeremy
Sure, they could easily emulate the NES, SNES, and all those but that fails to take into account that there are *still* only about 800 US NES games, and (generally) less for each successive generation of console. Even if you assume that every console ever made had 1000 games for it, that'll only bring you up to around 20,000 games, and that's a pretty large overestimate.
As for detecting the disc, that'd possibly work for the PS1, maybe even the PS2/Saturn (dunno about copy protection on them). That's maybe 3 systems. The Dreamcast had specially formatted GD-ROMs that wouldn't read in a standard CD/DVD player. And how would the cartridge reading work? A different slot for every type of cart, or an adapter for each? Sorry, but I don't think so.
Not to mention the rights issue. There's no way in hell that Nintendo or Sony or most of the other companies would give up rights to distribution to a competing product. They'd have to be stupid.
--Jeremy
Great idea, until someone puts a baseball through your living room Window.
--Jeremy
I thought one of the biggest arguments for using Linux was that it "runs on legacy hardware"... And now you're asking him to replace something that's only 2 years old? Hell, most of the hardware inside my PC is over 2 years old, and I still consider it to be plenty modern enough for my uses.
Maybe it should be "runs on legacy hardware (as long as it's supported -- which is really no different than Windows, except that hardware manufacturers tend to make an effort to make sure that their crap works with Windows)"
--Jeremy
However, a lot of them are very stupid (no offense intended, but it's true). Things like "it doesnt work plz fix it tnx" or "yo dude do me a favor would ya fix this bug, LaTeRZz!" or "It doesn't work." are not uncommon.
I can confirm that statement. I wrote a Win32 port of Abuse (Check Here) a couple of years ago and released it public domain, and since that time I've received hundreds of emails about it from people.
The emails can be counted about like this:
3 - "I loved your port! Thanks so much!"
5 - "I tried it out and I got this error message -- how do I fix it?"
Everything else - "i tried it and it doesnt work how do i fix it thnx"
Now, I know that I have more users than the few hundred that have emailed me, because on a couple of download sites I've got tens of thousands of downloads, plus all of the non-counted downloads from other sites (including my own). But I've never once gotten a piece of feedback that was actually useful to, say, further development of the engine or anything.
I think that it's partly because of the mentality of the users: people who know better will either assume that it's junk and just doesn't work, or will be able to fix it themselves. People who don't have a clue will just click the email link and ask me to fix it without giving me *any* details about what happened or what kind of a system it's running on.
Now, I do try to help *every* person that's emailed me, regardless of how little info they give me. 99% of the time reinstalling the latest DirectX drivers works. For ther other 1%, it's like pulling nails to get system specs to see if, maybe, I can figure out why it might die. Usually in those cases I just give up and leave it to them to fix it or forget it.
--Jeremy
If you don't like Tetris, you don't deserve to play video games. :)
--Jeremy
RMS makes a good point with the quote from Ghandi
My opinion was that the use of Ghandi's quote either a) seriously misunderstood/underestimated the importance of what Ghandi accomplished, or b) seriously misunderstands/overestimates the importance of Linux and free software. Of course, this is RMS, so I'm assuming a combination of both. Freeing people from harsh ethnic opperssion is in no way equatable to saving people a couple hundred bucks in software expenses.
--Jeremy
Not likely. Denis Leary is, for the most part, intelligent and insightful.
--Jeremy
I find it interesting that Blackley was the only person they interviewed that outright attacked Miyamoto. The rest (Lorne Lanning, Toshihiro Nagoshi, American McGee, Shinji Mikami) all praise his vison and/or credit him as an inspiration. I'd like to see what some other developers, like Warren Spector and Sid Mier have to say about him. Hell, John Romero is a *huge* fan of Miyamoto (Say all you want about Daikatana -- Doom was a great game and Romero had a lot to do with that).
As a side note, I never really bought into all the "Microsoft spreads FUD" conspiracy until I went to an XBox "tech talk" in 2000. It was almost entirely Nintendo/Sony bashing FUD. The best part was when they claimed that "Nintendo hadn't yet proved itself in the video game industry," and was basically in a risky position. I can't help but think that maybe Blackley internalized some of this FUD-spreading attitude and that this is how it's manifesting itself.
--Jeremy
Wow, are you in denial! You sound like one of those "fans" who think just because something has been branded with a franchise name, it can do no wrong.
Well, first, the piece you responded to was actually written by someone else about Equilibrium (as has already been pointed out). If you read it that way, a lot of your criticizms are invalid.
However, the "denial" think I think is a load of crap. I'm not a Star Wars fan. I haven't seen Episode 1. I just recently saw Episode 2 on DVD, and despite the fact that the writing sucked and Anakin and Natalie did piss-poor acting jobs, the movie was still entertaining.
Same with Austin Powers -- I thought that the first one was funny, the 2nd and 3rd were both more of the same with some new stuff added in. They were both still entertaining.
I didn't enjoy them because of some stupid devotion to a brand. I just thought that they were an ok way to spend 90 minutes.
Yes, they are only movies - but why can't everyone see that?
Do you see that? It's just a goddamn movie. If you don't find them entertaining, don't watch. If other people do like them, it doesn't make them any better or worse than you. I like in-line skating, but I don't like rock climbing. Do you see me calling rock climbers delusional fools?
Stop clinging to your illusions and come back to reality.
Take your own advice. Different people like different things. Maybe you're just so jaded (for whatever reason) that you refuse to let yourself like such lowly entertainment. I say too bad to you. If you expect every book to be Great Expectations and every movie to be Casa Blanca (sp?), you're gonna be disappointed. Besides, an occasional mindless diversion never hurt anybody.
--Jeremy
Which translates to roughly $30/year for the last 18 years. Not $507/year, as you seem to imply.
--Jeremy
Don't try to impose youre tastes onto mine. I never claimed that Consoles are better or worse then a pc. Just different. But when you try to claim that consoles can outperform a top of the range PC you need to take a reality check.
Well, you did claim that your "Porsche" outperforms my console. That to me means "better." I own both, personally, and also count gaming as a hobby which I can easily afford. However, given my experience with each medium, I always feel sheepish when I upgrade my PC. It just doesn't get you much bang for the buck. The only way I feel justified in my purchases is the fact that I also like to tinker with code a bit, and having nice hardware gives me something good to play with (even if I don't need it).
And if you count draw distance as the only measure of graphical quality (which I *highly* doubt would be as much of a problem on any modern console as you think it is), then this discussion is pointless. I'll point you at Starfox Adventures, DOA3, Metroid Prime, or Rogue Leader and challenge you to come up with something that objectively looks significantly, or even noticeably better on the PC. You'll start counting polygons (or some other meaningless metric) and miss the point again.
It sounds like you're into the wrong type of games for consoles, anyway. But my challenge stands -- I've got a $150 Gamecube and a $600 PC (a conservative estimate -- and definitely much lower than some 'hardcore' gamers' machines). There aren't any games that look so good that they justify that much of a price gap.
--Jeremy
As for the original posters claim that the hardware is coming closer to the PC, dream on. How much memory does an X-box have? 64mb. My vid card has twice that. Yeah so my pc is a lot more expensive then a console. A porsche is a lot more expensive then a trabant. You get what you pay for.
Ok, you've got 128 MB on your video card. Name ONE PC game, available to buy now, that looks better than anything available on the PS2, Gamecube, or XBox. Can't? Sounds like all that extra hardware you've got isn't helping you out that much.
Rationalize your spending all you want, but at the end of the day your hardware still isn't playing games that are any prettier than a console.
--Jeremy
One problem with this escalation is that, like another product (TiVo, which is partially backed by Sony) the very people subverting the product and making it more than the creator wants it to be are the best customers. In terms of EverQuest, they are often the ones maintaining several accounts and/or spending extra money for the "Legends" service. How does a company contend with a market where your best customers are also your most resourceful? With the TiVo, there was an uneasy understanding between the company and its modders. Sony has broken that balance with EverQuest.
-and-
PoP is a finely crafted fantasy gaming experience, but Sony has once again chosen to spend extra time and money hurting themselves and their market. Perhaps their competition will not make the same mistakes.
This is not "modding," this is cheating. Sony is trying to prevent cheating. Cheaters are *not* good customers, because they ruin the experience for other players. If 1% of your game population is cheating, yet that 1% each maintains 2 accounts, they still alienate the 99% of the legit players. It's the 99% that Sony wants, not the 1% of assholes who don't understand what the point of a game is.
And Sony's efforts are only wasted because they are, ultimately, in vain. Cheaters will find a way. However, I still applaud their efforts, and hope they continue to do so. I do not play EQ (I got bored of it after about 2 weeks), but cheating was one of the things that absolutely destroyed UO for me. Even if you're only given 1- to 2-week windows of no cheater activity, I say it's money well spent.
This whole article basically became a troll towards the end. As far as I'm concerned, he can keep playing with his cheat utilities, and I'll stay away from games with players like this in them.
--Jeremy
Id probably spent weeks just optimizing the asm routine to draw a line.
As opposed to the scientific community, who spent months or years developing the algorithm that Carmack optimized for x86 assembly.
You can optimize the hell out of a crappy algorithm and still not be as fast as an efficient, but unoptimized algorithm. Scientists are interested in finding the best algorithm -- not in finding the fastest implementation of that algorithm. And algorithms are *not* theories, but a set of steps to get from state A to state B.
Stating that the "scientific" doesn't have or need know-how is incredibly naive. The person who develops an algorithm is pretty likely to have an excellent understanding of how it works. I, as a programmer, don't need *any* understanding of how it works to use it.
I suggest that you go look up a list of circle drawing algorithms, and then get back to me about "optimization." I'll give you one off the top of my head to get you started:
Check each coordinate on the screen, and if it lies on your circle, plot a pixel.
Maybe this'll help you understand the function of computer science a little better.
--Jeremy
Someone's probably already noted this, but I don't think this sounds like such a bad idea. Maybe it'll be the move that kills off (as we know it) AOL-Time Warner in one fell swoop?
--Jeremy
And so they take off their helmet and die. Great. And you bring their corpse back to Earth to show to all the conspiracy theorists and say, "well, the guy took his helmet off and died." And then the conspiracy theorists just have that much more ammunition: "They killed our representative to cover up the truth!"
It's a no-win situation. The only thing to do in a no-win situation? Don't play.
--Jeremy
And that's all well and good, but the simple fact of the matter is this: Games used to be a safe haven from this crap. Now they're not.
And I do like to visit that "outdoors" place you speak of, but I really hate the snobbish attitudes of some of the people you meet out there.
--Jeremy
Yes, it's a video game, but I think you're missing the point.
I, for one, play games mostly to get away from real life for a little bit. Part of the fun of immersing myself in a different world is that I get away from all the goddamn commercialism of US culture. Everywhere I go I'm bombarded with ads designed to mislead me into giving someone my money. It disgusts me.
Now, if I were a Sims player, I'd enjoy the fact that you get to play in a small utopia with none of that crap. But when McDonalds invades *that* world too, it'd just ruin the atmosphere. Once again, I'm reminded that I can't escape the megacorps and their relentless marketing teams.
The day I run across an American fast food chain store on Tallon IV is the day I give up video games for good...
--Jeremy
... rely on the VB based (D)COM interface
.. umm .. people who want to get work done efficiently.
COM is not VB based. COM is used by VB (transparently), but COM technology is completely independent of VB.
Despite the (apparently unfounded) attrition you feel towards COM, it is a good thing. It enables programmers to get things done quickly. It masks unnecessary complexity. It's not a crutch.
Example: DirectX. When I used to do graphics and sound programming in DOS (as a hobbyist), you had to worry about setting the correct registers on your video card and sound card. What's worse, you had to worry about which *type* of sound card/video card you were dealing with. You had to see what capabilities the card had (if it even had a way to tell you -- VESA was useful for this in the video realm). Then, after you get all that done, you can start playing your beeps and blips and drawing your stuff on the screen.
With the COM-based DirectX, I can have a video mode set and start drawing to the screen in about 5 lines of code. Same with playing sounds. Does that make me an apathetic programmer? I don't think so. I'm using a better tool to get my work done. Period -- end of story. COM is a *good thing*.
And, to get things back on topic, this is precisely the reason I use Windows for most of my personal application development. It's got better tools available (Visual Studio has no equal in Linux), a richer (and more importantly, consistent) API, and to top it all off I'm able to show my stuff to 95% of the rest of the world if I want to.
If you want to do *everything* yourself, go for it. But don't use the TCP/IP stack -- no, that's a crutch. Talk directly to the NIC. Don't use getch() or cin, either -- those are huge crutches. Talk directly to the keyboard controller. As long as you've gone that far, don't use a text editor to write your code, either. That's a crutch. Actually, don't even write code -- just output machine code directly into an executable binary, because compilers are a crutch that hide the complexity of ASM, which hides the complexity of machine code. Also, while you're at it, don't use a hammer to drive nails, either -- use a rock, because a hammer is a crutch for
Do that, and you'll have my respect. I'll think you're an idiot, but I'll respect you as a hardcore programmer.
--Jeremy
It is outselling the Gamecube. The reason probably isn't the technology involved
No, it's not the tech. I've yet to see anything on the XBox that looks as good as Star Fox Adventures, despite the fact that it's got arguably better hardware.
The reason it's selling better is just marketing. The same reason that Britney and N'Sync achieve popularity. Sure, there are some good (even great) games for the system, but it's been better marketed, and that's all that matters. For some reason, people believe what they see on TV, and they see a lot more XBox ads on TV than Gamecube ads.
--Jeremy
I'm a gamer, too, but I'm not a mark. I play plenty of games released this year (UT2003, WC3, for example) on a 1 Ghz P3 w/ Radeon 8500 with absolutely *no* problems.
By not staying on the bleeding edge of hardware, I have extra money to buy more games. I don't buy hardware that will be able to play a game that may/may not come out sometime in the next year, I buy based on what's available *now*. There's no f'in reason to have a 3 Ghz CPU for any game currently on the market.
I'd say that my current PC (minus the monitor, which cost $300, because I wanted a nice monitor) cost a total of maybe $500 to build. That's LESS than the price of this CPU.
Go ahead and buy it if you want, but it really won't make your dick any bigger.
--Jeremy
That was supposed to be: .... toward long-term shareholder value.
Further correction:
toward the short-term, quickest, make-me-rich scheme shareholder value.
--Jeremy
Linux-obsessed masses? ... nobody knows about Linux except a bunch of long-haired badly shaven socially-inept geeks (self included)
The parent poster did choose the word "masses," rather than "people" or "humans".:)
--Jeremy