I have been gaming since the good old pong days, so I personally think i have a good overview. Pong in itself was not a good game, but it was the first of its kind. Anyway, the main problem simply is, games are not worse, the junk to gem ratio has been relatively constant over the years. If anyone can remember the atari 2600 days, the console was drowning in cheap packman ripoffs and similar games. Then the later consoles were drowning in cheap 2d shooters and jump and runs, and then later computers were drowning in myriads of shooters until now most of them being just rehashs of castle wolfenstein 3d.
In between there are usually a handful of gems per year. This has been consistent and probably will. Some periods had more gems, like the early computer games days, where the early EA was a shiny beacon of quality (yes seriously, those guys in the early days had some of the most talented people int he world on contract, like Dani Bunten)
And then the early 90s with Origin driving things seriously forward, but in between, junk, junk, junk, gem, junk, junk, junk! Well Nintendo is one exception but only because they stick to basic rules in their designs and like to experiment more than others.
Pong just made huge inroads because there was nothing similar for the public, if pong had come out 1-2 years later with another game being the first, it would have been a mild success.
I mean, the wii's game drought is worse than Sony's
Actually no, the wiis releases are pretty solid.
Since its beginning more than a dozend really good titles have been released and probably about the same amount of shovelware.
The PS3 really has a drought, the wii definitely does not.
What might cause that impression is that people tend to look at Nintendo only releases and then only those who are mildly interesting for them.
Give up the hopes, EA usually leaves the bought studios relative freedom in their current projects after that the corporate hammer comes down and slowly over time the studios fizzle away.
Maxis as is would be dead if Will Wright wouldnt have fought against the management to get the Sims released
(EA was in oppossition to the Sims Wright fought it through)
EA is dead, Westwood is dead and so are many other studios EA has bought over time.
The worst loss probably was Origin, so far.
You do realize that object oriented programming can be done in C?
usually you end up in a code bloat mess that way,
if you use oo it is always better to use the tool
geared for the job instead of trying to use a
hammer for everything.
The argument that you cannot bind non oo languages to pure is not really true,
you just would end up in the same code bloat in those languages you had upfront
if you would push oo into functional or procedural languages.
But the main advantage is you at least dont have the code bloat on the oo code side of things which reduces pure locs and the number of errors as well as it simplifies the coding interfaces!
Having owned a tube based amplifier for many years, I cannot really second that, those amplifiers sound really entirely different, the clip away due to their latency the small signal hickups and do some general audible signal blurring causing some unnaturally deeper bass, whether this is an improvement in sound quality, I dont know, modern digital filters (especially those doing signal blurring), can match that close to perfect if wanted.
I personally think, while I like the sound of those amplifiers, having been grown up with them, I dont think it is an improvement in the accuracy of the reproduction of the original sound, it is quite the opposite if you ask me.
I am not sure, why audiophiles go for those amplifiers, their usual goal normally is to gain sound accuracy, and then they hammer it away with soft sounding, but accuracy killing tube amplifiers!
The best example so far I have seen was a demagnetization device for CDs!, yes CDs you read correctly.
The even sader part was, that some audiophile magazines wrote positive reviews on that device saying that it was improving the sound quality!
Those concepts are way older than christianity or judaism.
The classical heaven/hell concept and sin concept was first documented in Zoroaism (which is the first documented single god religion)
I assume most of those concepts are way older than that, but our documentation references only can reach back a certain amount of time.
I rather doubt Thomas von Aquin invented the term, it is too generic, it is probably way older since the romans already were using tables and chalk for teaching their children, it probably has native roman even maybe latinic heritage and was taken over as a common phrase by the philosophers. The scholastic people were rather late to the table to invent such a generic latin term.
I will sum this up in other words, who do you think will go to heaven, the rich guy who prays every sunday in church, and during the week he grubs for money left and right and drives people into poverty, or the poor hinduist guy who lives a decent live has a family and fights hard every day with normal work so that his children have food on the table...
Guess what.. I dont think the church going guy will make it! This makes me utterly sad, the message in the bible is rather simple, and also very clear regarding how to live, that you should do not become too rich because this makes you greedy, generally that you just live a decent live and let others live and do no violence and harm. And until this day, people and which makes me even sader people who have read all those messages numerous times constantly do exactly the opposite of what is written down in the name of the founder of christianity (which I consider my religion despite all the zealotry going on, because the message is true for me, but not what many so called christians do with it)
You sound like a religious zealot, replace some of the words and you would fit perfectly into fill whatever religious zealotry in here.
Learn history my friend, societies which were most successful were those who were tolerant not bone headed, societies usually went down in history once narrow mindedness took over.
Tolerance means to be open for new things, not the stuff you describe sorry, but history has proven and proven over the years, that certain degree of tolerance is needed for a society to survive.
Learn the history of the most successful societies and start to think!
ok lets check religion is a believe system based on basic rules -> applies to atheism most religions caused mass killings by people trying to enforce their religion onto others -> checked applies to atheism as well, mao, stalin, pol pot all were extreme atheists which killed partially to kill off religion (and also to enforce communism) most religions have zealots who start to scream we are the right ones in every discussion -> applies to atheism as well, those zealots just cry, we dont have a religion but besides that no huge difference...
I cannot see any difference, except that most religions believe into the existence of a supreme being(s) and atheists believe in the exact opposite.
Tolerance is just another word for putting up with shit that you can't stand. And there is no god.
You sound like a bonheaded (fill in whatever religion you like)
atheims is also a religon.
Besides tolerance is not what you describe, tolerance is accepting things you might not understand or like but which you can see are not bad. Tolerance in itself does not say you should accept things which are bad, it just means you should accept things which are different!
But I guess some people cannot understand that there is a difference between becoming passive and being tolerant!
Jews never were in the position to do serious crusades, but the jews are not different to christianity and islam in their intolerance against "nonbelievers" once it comes to the boneheaded believers. Guess what, christianity even by the book would forbid violence out of self defence, and just check who from those self proclaimed believers really lives by those rules, over 2000 years it was just a handful of people.
Dont expect the jews to be so much different, the jews never really had the power to strike as hard as the muslims and christians did, but modern day israel/palestine are just a perfect example of jews not being more holy than the rest of the world. (Btw. I am christian myself)
Even nowadays considered peaceful buddhism had its dark days of violence, so why should the jews be different while they prove every day they are not.
I hate japanese rpgs, they tend to be endless rails games, with battles every five seconds, almost no puzzles
and fighting animations which are close to being pointles.
Unfortunately this style which is close to the western rpg style of the mid 80s has taken over over the more open stronger puzzle oriented rpg style at least on the consoles.
Give me another decent ultima, fallout, or planetscape torment, the standard seems to be final fantasy clone 700!
Well I think the problem is that with every religion you have open minded streams of the religion and bonehead people who would love to burn others for their believes. The islam, christianity, judaism, buddhism etc... are very similar in this regard. In islam you have on one hand the people who think they can go to heaven by blowing up innocent people via bombs on their body, and on the other spectrum you have the sufis, which is a highly tolerant stream of islam with a philopsophy many non islamic people could learn a lot from. In christianity you have the boneheads you can find in the us midwest, who basically also think they can go to heaven by bombing innocent people who are not christians and you have very liberal streams especially in the modern catholic church (basic church movements in center europe within the catholic realm) and the lutherans. The situation is similar in buddhism (although I dont have too much overview), the same goes for judaism with the bonheads which are in a constantly fire setting minority and a rather peaceful very open minded majority.
The main problem with all those religions is, that the majority is rather open minded, but those who scream and get the press are those, who would love to kill others to get to heaven. Or in other words, those who shout most usually get the press not those who do the real work and do some good deeds to keep society together!
Actually the most interesting quote I heard in a long time was from an islamic sufi (I am christian myself) as long as someone who has found a path to god tries to enforce his path onto others there will be no tolerance and peace in the world because those people try to enforce their habits onto others instead of being able to see that there are many paths to reach god.
AT&T is innocent, Apple wants to opt for the console model on the iphone, a closed platform , for which they are going to play middle man who cashes in via the itunes shop.
Vista was designed for the movie industry, but Microsoft forgot that the movie industry is not buying vista, the customers have to.
Speaking of lost focus.
Killed by the X-Box:
Thief, Deus Ex, Shen Mue
Funny how one idiotic console can kill three of the best game series ever made in one strike.
Even worse, series like Turok still exist:-(
Btw. Splinter Cell never will reach the quality of thief, the production value, the athmosphere, the settings, they were close to perfect.
Wow...that must suck at work. Always touching your monitor, never getting the cursor to move. Oh, and ATMs...how do you get money out?
Ahem, have you ever heard of a mouse, that is basically the equivalent to touching something directly.
When whas the last time you used the keyboard for your graphical user interface without any mouse interaction.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been gaming since the good old pong days, so I personally think i have a good overview.
Pong in itself was not a good game, but it was the first of its kind.
Anyway, the main problem simply is, games are not worse, the junk to gem ratio has been relatively constant over the years. If anyone can remember the atari 2600 days, the console was drowning in cheap packman ripoffs and similar games. Then the later consoles were drowning in cheap 2d shooters and jump and runs, and then later computers were drowning in myriads of shooters until now most of them being just rehashs of castle wolfenstein 3d.
In between there are usually a handful of gems per year. This has been consistent and probably will.
Some periods had more gems, like the early computer games days, where the early EA was a shiny beacon of quality (yes seriously, those guys in the early days had some of the most talented people int he world on contract, like Dani Bunten)
And then the early 90s with Origin driving things seriously forward, but in between, junk, junk, junk, gem, junk, junk, junk!
Well Nintendo is one exception but only because they stick to basic rules in their designs and like to experiment more than others.
Pong just made huge inroads because there was nothing similar for the public, if pong had come out 1-2 years later with another game being the first, it would have been a mild success.
Well instead it is a game inspired by a famous Nintendo series (Zelda)
I mean, the wii's game drought is worse than Sony's Actually no, the wiis releases are pretty solid. Since its beginning more than a dozend really good titles have been released and probably about the same amount of shovelware. The PS3 really has a drought, the wii definitely does not. What might cause that impression is that people tend to look at Nintendo only releases and then only those who are mildly interesting for them.
Give up the hopes, EA usually leaves the bought studios relative freedom in their current projects after that the corporate hammer comes down and slowly over time the studios fizzle away. Maxis as is would be dead if Will Wright wouldnt have fought against the management to get the Sims released (EA was in oppossition to the Sims Wright fought it through) EA is dead, Westwood is dead and so are many other studios EA has bought over time. The worst loss probably was Origin, so far.
You do realize that object oriented programming can be done in C? usually you end up in a code bloat mess that way, if you use oo it is always better to use the tool geared for the job instead of trying to use a hammer for everything. The argument that you cannot bind non oo languages to pure is not really true, you just would end up in the same code bloat in those languages you had upfront if you would push oo into functional or procedural languages. But the main advantage is you at least dont have the code bloat on the oo code side of things which reduces pure locs and the number of errors as well as it simplifies the coding interfaces!
Ah the Sony marketing drone is here again... how much does Sony pay you?
Having owned a tube based amplifier for many years, I cannot really second that, those amplifiers sound really entirely different, the clip away due to their latency the small signal hickups and do some general audible signal blurring causing some unnaturally deeper bass, whether this is an improvement in sound quality, I dont know, modern digital filters (especially those doing signal blurring), can match that close to perfect if wanted. I personally think, while I like the sound of those amplifiers, having been grown up with them, I dont think it is an improvement in the accuracy of the reproduction of the original sound, it is quite the opposite if you ask me. I am not sure, why audiophiles go for those amplifiers, their usual goal normally is to gain sound accuracy, and then they hammer it away with soft sounding, but accuracy killing tube amplifiers!
The best example so far I have seen was a demagnetization device for CDs!, yes CDs you read correctly. The even sader part was, that some audiophile magazines wrote positive reviews on that device saying that it was improving the sound quality!
Those concepts are way older than christianity or judaism. The classical heaven/hell concept and sin concept was first documented in Zoroaism (which is the first documented single god religion) I assume most of those concepts are way older than that, but our documentation references only can reach back a certain amount of time.
I rather doubt Thomas von Aquin invented the term, it is too generic, it is probably way older since the romans already were using tables and chalk for teaching their children, it probably has native roman even maybe latinic heritage and was taken over as a common phrase by the philosophers. The scholastic people were rather late to the table to invent such a generic latin term.
Good to know that history started with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the romans never existed.
I will sum this up in other words, who do you think will go to heaven, the rich guy who prays every sunday in church, and during the week he grubs for money left and right and drives people into poverty, or the poor hinduist guy who lives a decent live has a family and fights hard every day with normal work so that his children have food on the table...
Guess what.. I dont think the church going guy will make it!
This makes me utterly sad, the message in the bible is rather simple, and also very clear regarding how to live, that you should do not become too rich because this makes you greedy, generally that you just live a decent live and let others live and do no violence and harm. And until this day, people and which makes me even sader people who have read all those messages numerous times constantly do exactly the opposite of what is written down in the name of the founder of christianity (which I consider my religion despite all the zealotry going on, because the message is true for me, but not what many so called christians do with it)
You sound like a religious zealot, replace some of the words and you would fit perfectly into fill whatever religious zealotry in here. Learn history my friend, societies which were most successful were those who were tolerant not bone headed, societies usually went down in history once narrow mindedness took over. Tolerance means to be open for new things, not the stuff you describe sorry, but history has proven and proven over the years, that certain degree of tolerance is needed for a society to survive. Learn the history of the most successful societies and start to think!
ok lets check
religion is a believe system based on basic rules -> applies to atheism
most religions caused mass killings by people trying to enforce their religion onto others -> checked applies to atheism as well, mao, stalin, pol pot all were extreme atheists which killed partially to kill off religion (and also to enforce communism)
most religions have zealots who start to scream we are the right ones in every discussion -> applies to atheism as well, those zealots just cry, we dont have a religion but besides that no huge difference...
I cannot see any difference, except that most religions believe into the existence of a supreme being(s) and atheists believe in the exact opposite.
Tolerance is just another word for putting up with shit that you can't stand. And there is no god. You sound like a bonheaded (fill in whatever religion you like) atheims is also a religon. Besides tolerance is not what you describe, tolerance is accepting things you might not understand or like but which you can see are not bad. Tolerance in itself does not say you should accept things which are bad, it just means you should accept things which are different! But I guess some people cannot understand that there is a difference between becoming passive and being tolerant!
Jesus used many allegories... so start to think what he meant ;-)
it does not mean his path is not reflected by other religions as well.
Jews never were in the position to do serious crusades, but the jews are not different to christianity and islam in their intolerance against "nonbelievers" once it comes to the boneheaded believers.
Guess what, christianity even by the book would forbid violence out of self defence, and just check who from those self proclaimed believers really lives by those rules, over 2000 years it was just a handful of people.
Dont expect the jews to be so much different, the jews never really had the power to strike as hard as the muslims and christians did, but modern day israel/palestine are just a perfect example of jews not being more holy than the rest of the world.
(Btw. I am christian myself)
Even nowadays considered peaceful buddhism had its dark days of violence, so why should the jews be different while they prove every day they are not.
I hate japanese rpgs, they tend to be endless rails games, with battles every five seconds, almost no puzzles and fighting animations which are close to being pointles. Unfortunately this style which is close to the western rpg style of the mid 80s has taken over over the more open stronger puzzle oriented rpg style at least on the consoles. Give me another decent ultima, fallout, or planetscape torment, the standard seems to be final fantasy clone 700!
Well I think the problem is that with every religion you have open minded streams of the religion and bonehead people who would love to burn others for their believes.
The islam, christianity, judaism, buddhism etc... are very similar in this regard.
In islam you have on one hand the people who think they can go to heaven by blowing up innocent people via bombs on their body, and on the other spectrum you have the sufis, which is a highly tolerant stream of islam with a philopsophy many non islamic people could learn a lot from.
In christianity you have the boneheads you can find in the us midwest, who basically also think they can go to heaven by bombing innocent people who are not christians and you have very liberal streams especially in the modern catholic church (basic church movements in center europe within the catholic realm) and the lutherans.
The situation is similar in buddhism (although I dont have too much overview), the same goes for judaism with the bonheads which are in a constantly fire setting minority and a rather peaceful very open minded majority.
The main problem with all those religions is, that the majority is rather open minded, but those who scream and get the press are those, who would love to kill others to get to heaven. Or in other words, those who shout most usually get the press not those who do the real work and do some good deeds to keep society together!
Actually the most interesting quote I heard in a long time was from an islamic sufi (I am christian myself) as long as someone who has found a path to god tries to enforce his path onto others there will be no tolerance and peace in the world because those people try to enforce their habits onto others instead of being able to see that there are many paths to reach god.
AT&T is innocent, Apple wants to opt for the console model on the iphone, a closed platform , for which they are going to play middle man who cashes in via the itunes shop.
idiotic talking car, at least one blond per show which could hardly act, and of course Hasselhoff... I wonder how they will keep up with this.
Vista was designed for the movie industry, but Microsoft forgot that the movie industry is not buying vista, the customers have to. Speaking of lost focus.
Killed by the X-Box: Thief, Deus Ex, Shen Mue Funny how one idiotic console can kill three of the best game series ever made in one strike. Even worse, series like Turok still exist :-(
Btw. Splinter Cell never will reach the quality of thief, the production value, the athmosphere, the settings, they were close to perfect.
Wow...that must suck at work. Always touching your monitor, never getting the cursor to move. Oh, and ATMs...how do you get money out? Ahem, have you ever heard of a mouse, that is basically the equivalent to touching something directly. When whas the last time you used the keyboard for your graphical user interface without any mouse interaction.