How did a letter stating to the effect, "You know, you shouldn't be using our logo quite like that..." turn into "OH MY GOD! They're shutting me down!"
Look at the letter sent by the lawyers and their main contention is that by using the logo there could be implied some connection or endorsement by PCI-SIG and Jim's site. Heck, the letter suggests ways of keeping the site up sans the logo.
Instead we have Jim going off the deep end saying that he's being forced out. That isn't the case. This isn't PCI-SIG going to the ISP saying pull the plug or using the DMCA in some strange fashion. It's just a request not to use the logo. Heck, all he probably needed to do is state that yourvote.com isn't affliated with PCI-SIG and that would have solved the matter. (Maybe he already did, I haven't checked the Wayback Machine yet).
Seems to me that Jim is making a mountain out of a molehill.
I was reading an email from Greg the other day and he mentioned that he's going to make his blog about game design a regular thing. Or as he put it, "I'm starting the blog mainly because I rarely find this kind of material on
the Web; consumer-oriented sites offer mainly reviews, while professional
sites offer mainly how-to material. I want deeper analysis, and since I
don't often find it, I might as well write it myself."
Greg is a fantastic designer, having worked both with paper and electronic-based gaming. Plan to visit often to get more insight in game design. It should be updated once a week.
A bit more on Bible time. Most people don't realize that the phrase "forty days and forty nights" is a Hebrew expression for as "long as it took". Sorta similar to the modern day expression "forever and a day" simply means that something took a long time.
Hebrew is a very symbolic language. People shouldn't read too much into the literal times mentioned in the Bible.
Something to control them
on
Droning On
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· Score: 5, Funny
You know, the government needs to have some computer system to control all these flying drones. That way it'll be totally automated. They could call it, oh I don't know... SkyNet. Put some artifical intelligence in it and it'd be great system. Although I bet it wouldn't be until 2029 when a system like this really gets going.
Those numbers can't exactly be compared. It costs $50 a cartridge while a movie is around $7 or $8 (YMMV). Although I find the Mario games much more entertaining than any Star Wars film (that is until Jar-Jar bites the big one in SWIII).
I've been a videogamer since 85, so I know what this man has brought to every console generation
Oooookaaaay. So those of use who used consoles in the 70's don't count? You truly want a pioneer, try Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell or Wally Higginbotham. Miyamoto is a great designer, but he stands on the shoulders of others.
Never mind that Metroid Prime was developed in Austin, Texas and Miyamoto didn't have a whole lot to do with the game let alone the design.
You are sadly mistaken. The technology to allow mixing and fading through software has been around for years. For that matter, you can scratch and mix CDs to your hearts content and have it sound pretty good. You can find beatmixing plugins to just about any MP3 player.
The difference is the interface. The tactile involvement of vinyl is the biggest key. It's just not the same scratching with a mouse on a screen. There's just something that feels right and easy with two turntables and a crossfader in front of you. There has been progress with some of the newer simulated turntables that plug into a USB port of a computer, but it still doesn't come close to what is needed to spin at a professional level.
It's just a matter of time before hardware designers come up with a proper interface to allow the flexibility and style required for a DJ. Until then, Technics turntables and vinyl record producers still have a place in the world.
Doesn't this just smack of the Pay-BBS's of yesteryear? Where Compuserve reigned king and you had to pay a fee just to access all their content. The parallels are striking. Ma Bell becomes your ISP. The Pay-BBS is the same as these Pay-Content sites.
The problem with the model is that as everyone moves to a pay-for-content model, you are dealing with a limited consumer resource: money. Consumers only have so much money that they are willing to spend on web-content, which we've seen is precious few. What makes Time-Warner so confident that their content is going to make everyone pony up cash to see it?
Until they come up with the online equivalent of "Friends", I don't see a lot of people coming.
Oh puleeeze! Don't try to pull that crap on us. We game developers know good and well the only reason why a proprietary media was chosen was to capitalize on licensing.
Those who have never made a Nintendo game have to realize that you have to fork over some huge percentages to the Big N just to get on their platform. That's why so many developers dropped the N64 and went to the Playstation. Either you let Big N make the cartridges or you didn't make a game for the platform. That's why so many developers stopped making games for Nintendo and went to the Playstation.
The reason why Sony and MS didn't go the proprietary media route is because they didn't want to spend the infrastructure to develop the factories to make it, not to mention the fact they saw how pissed off Nintendo made game developers. DVD works just fine and is cheaper to develop for. The Dreamcast got away with it because it didn't require any specialized CD manufacturing equipment using their compression scheme.
Nintendo may not have a GameCube warez problem (yet), but it doesn't have nearly the sales or the titles the other two platforms have. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
In case you haven't noticed, ads in video games or video games serving as advertisments isn't a new thing. This has been going on for nearly 20 years.
To the Chicken Littles on this issue, where were you when ads were placed in Pole Position? Where's the outrage in the fact that Gran Turismo is simply a advertising tool of auto manufacturers? Where are the boycotts of 7-Up for creating the Spot game? Should I stop buying Madden 2K3 because both John Madden and the NFL endorses the product? Should I protest that Tony Hawk 4 features brand name skateboards and products?
I don't see anyone complaining that some video games use cheat codes of brand name products. Has the gaming experience diminished from having "Winners don't do drugs" on arcade games?
Seriously, has all this really tarnished your video game experience? The reality is that most of you don't even give all the product placements that are already inside the game a second thought.
I change the batteries enough in my Handspring. I can only imagine how hard it's gonna be to pry the back off of the watch let alone trying to switch out the small watch batteries.
I'm already seeing a bunch of messages talking about the games they used to play in the past and how great they were. There seems to be an equal amount of posts complaining about what their vision of the future should be.
Funny thing is that I've seen these same articles and the same reactions for over twenty years know. Ever since Bill Kunkel et al started the first video game magazine, there always has been articles with a prognostication about the future of gaming and how crappy the games of today are.
It seems that the future articles state that: the games will be bigger, faster, have more features and be more realistic and interactive. The complaints seem to be the games of today lack innovation, have no plot or substance and have poor quality. The best articles have a up-and-coming game designer revealing the latest and greatest and a wily veteran designer with a "return to the basics" mantra.
Do yourself a favor. Next time you see an article with the "Future of Gaming!" title, just read the above paragraph which will sum it all up neatly for you and you've saved ten minutes of your life that you can now apply to playing Vice City.
I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I say we stop designing websites with fancy graphics, flashing banners and pictures of cute women. With my handicap, I can't seem to concentrate on any web pages... I'm just too distracted by all the colors, flashing and flesh.
Don't ignore my disability as well. Let's stick up for those who can't see, hear or concentrate to use the web!
You make the false assumption that if there are aliens out there, they would be using some high technology to communicate with us.
However, if some alien civilization is out there wanting to communicate with us, doesn't it make sense that they would try to do so in a common and basic manner? For example, look at what we Earthlings are doing to communicate with others.
A lot of focus is made on SETI and listening for signals. We have in fact in the past sent signals to outer space with a specific message. In 1974, Frank Drake used the radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico to beam an elaborate coded message in the direction of globular star cluster M13. The message, coded in the binary notation of ones and zeros, contained 1679 bits of information. 1679 is the product of two prime numbers 23 and 73, which should suggest to an alien to break the message up into some combination of those two numbers. When the message is arranged in 23 columns of 73 bits each, and the zeros and ones are replaced by white squares and black squares. Coded into this pattern are from top to bottom: binary representations of the numbers 1- 10, atomic numbers of the five elements essential to terrestrial life, the chemical formula of the DNA molecule, numbers for the average human height and the world's human population, images of the human form, the solar system (with Earth displaced to indicate it is the planet from which the signal originated), and the transmitting radio telescope, with its diameter indicated.
If, (and that's a strong if) there are aliens out there, chances are that we'd receive a simple radio signal rather than intercept B'lorg's phone call to Vk'lar.
*My* point is that the ACLU will eventually get around to target any and every law that's ever been passed. Duh! We all hate the implications of the Patriot Act, but just because the ACLU gets involved, it suddenly merits our attention again?
Ooooo! Look mom! The ACLU is spending $3.5 million on television ads! Hmmmm... just before an election too. Exactly how are these ads supposed to help us anyway? This is just smoke and mirrors. Make John Ashcroft the bad guy when Congress and a Democratic Senate passed the bill. PCWorld doesn't have enough to report on, so they got sux0r3d into pushing propaganda as a news article. Wake me up when there's a real court challenge.
What?!? The ACLU challenging a law? Get out of here!
It's obvious that the ACLU hasn't seen a law that it didn't dislike, but what's not so obvious is why is this posted here and not on The Drudge Report or the like.
The thing that worries me is storage of all the pictures taken. 32megs adds up over the course of time. Even the current memory cards of today limit you to just a few pictures.
More importantly, how are these pictures going to be stored long term? We have photos and negatives lasting over a hundred years. I'm lucky to have a hard drive last longer than three. The possibility of the great photographs of our day being erased with an accidental click of a button or the failure of a hard drive read head worries me.
If there's one thing that the old 35mm cameras have over the newer digital ones is that we pretty much know how long the images will last over the course of time. How long will it be before we lose our digital pictures because of an unreadable format or digital failure?
Great pictures, needs more text
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High Score
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I picked this up on a recommendation from John Romero. The best part of the book are the hundreds of full-color photos that are presented. Many times in video-game history books, there's plenty of text but often there's a lack of photos that capture the essense of the game design and the look. This is certainly not the case here. That alone is worth the price.
I was a bit disappointed though in the depth that could have been covered. Johnny Wilson was editor of Computer Gaming World for many years. That being said, many in the gaming industry felt that he was a person that could make or break your game. Problem is that his presence isn't really felt in the book. The guy has plenty of stories to tell about the industry, but it's not told in this book.
Overall, it's a great read. One thing it does do is focus on computer games more than consoles. Often it's the other way around. There are better books that focus on video game history (such as Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames) but if you grew up during the 80's and 90's playing computer games, this book will bring back many memories. Just take care of the binding on the book. It isn't the best and you'll be constantly flipping the pages.
But that's precisely why P2P companies are touting that functionality (the ability to download collections or albums) as the 'next big thing'. The latest version of Kazaa claims to do just that. Just a matter of time before the rest of the P2P clients follow.
The Quicktime format has this ability as well. It takes a bit of tweaking, but it can be very effective for searching for certain terms inside an instructional video for instance.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at the letter sent by the lawyers and their main contention is that by using the logo there could be implied some connection or endorsement by PCI-SIG and Jim's site. Heck, the letter suggests ways of keeping the site up sans the logo.
Instead we have Jim going off the deep end saying that he's being forced out. That isn't the case. This isn't PCI-SIG going to the ISP saying pull the plug or using the DMCA in some strange fashion. It's just a request not to use the logo. Heck, all he probably needed to do is state that yourvote.com isn't affliated with PCI-SIG and that would have solved the matter. (Maybe he already did, I haven't checked the Wayback Machine yet).
Seems to me that Jim is making a mountain out of a molehill.
Greg is a fantastic designer, having worked both with paper and electronic-based gaming. Plan to visit often to get more insight in game design. It should be updated once a week.
The printers will be cheap, but the toner cartridges will be expensive.
Hebrew is a very symbolic language. People shouldn't read too much into the literal times mentioned in the Bible.
You know, the government needs to have some computer system to control all these flying drones. That way it'll be totally automated. They could call it, oh I don't know... SkyNet. Put some artifical intelligence in it and it'd be great system. Although I bet it wouldn't be until 2029 when a system like this really gets going.
Burning Man is William Shatner's version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" come to life. And no, that's not a good thing...
Those numbers can't exactly be compared. It costs $50 a cartridge while a movie is around $7 or $8 (YMMV). Although I find the Mario games much more entertaining than any Star Wars film (that is until Jar-Jar bites the big one in SWIII).
Oooookaaaay. So those of use who used consoles in the 70's don't count? You truly want a pioneer, try Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell or Wally Higginbotham. Miyamoto is a great designer, but he stands on the shoulders of others.
Never mind that Metroid Prime was developed in Austin, Texas and Miyamoto didn't have a whole lot to do with the game let alone the design.
The difference is the interface. The tactile involvement of vinyl is the biggest key. It's just not the same scratching with a mouse on a screen. There's just something that feels right and easy with two turntables and a crossfader in front of you. There has been progress with some of the newer simulated turntables that plug into a USB port of a computer, but it still doesn't come close to what is needed to spin at a professional level.
It's just a matter of time before hardware designers come up with a proper interface to allow the flexibility and style required for a DJ. Until then, Technics turntables and vinyl record producers still have a place in the world.
The problem with the model is that as everyone moves to a pay-for-content model, you are dealing with a limited consumer resource: money. Consumers only have so much money that they are willing to spend on web-content, which we've seen is precious few. What makes Time-Warner so confident that their content is going to make everyone pony up cash to see it?
Until they come up with the online equivalent of "Friends", I don't see a lot of people coming.
Those who have never made a Nintendo game have to realize that you have to fork over some huge percentages to the Big N just to get on their platform. That's why so many developers dropped the N64 and went to the Playstation. Either you let Big N make the cartridges or you didn't make a game for the platform. That's why so many developers stopped making games for Nintendo and went to the Playstation.
The reason why Sony and MS didn't go the proprietary media route is because they didn't want to spend the infrastructure to develop the factories to make it, not to mention the fact they saw how pissed off Nintendo made game developers. DVD works just fine and is cheaper to develop for. The Dreamcast got away with it because it didn't require any specialized CD manufacturing equipment using their compression scheme.
Nintendo may not have a GameCube warez problem (yet), but it doesn't have nearly the sales or the titles the other two platforms have. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
To the Chicken Littles on this issue, where were you when ads were placed in Pole Position? Where's the outrage in the fact that Gran Turismo is simply a advertising tool of auto manufacturers? Where are the boycotts of 7-Up for creating the Spot game? Should I stop buying Madden 2K3 because both John Madden and the NFL endorses the product? Should I protest that Tony Hawk 4 features brand name skateboards and products?
I don't see anyone complaining that some video games use cheat codes of brand name products. Has the gaming experience diminished from having "Winners don't do drugs" on arcade games? Seriously, has all this really tarnished your video game experience? The reality is that most of you don't even give all the product placements that are already inside the game a second thought.
I change the batteries enough in my Handspring. I can only imagine how hard it's gonna be to pry the back off of the watch let alone trying to switch out the small watch batteries.
Daffy Duck has left Warner Bros. and joined the Dark Side of Disney!?! Will Elmer Fudd be next?
Funny thing is that I've seen these same articles and the same reactions for over twenty years know. Ever since Bill Kunkel et al started the first video game magazine, there always has been articles with a prognostication about the future of gaming and how crappy the games of today are.
It seems that the future articles state that: the games will be bigger, faster, have more features and be more realistic and interactive. The complaints seem to be the games of today lack innovation, have no plot or substance and have poor quality. The best articles have a up-and-coming game designer revealing the latest and greatest and a wily veteran designer with a "return to the basics" mantra.
Do yourself a favor. Next time you see an article with the "Future of Gaming!" title, just read the above paragraph which will sum it all up neatly for you and you've saved ten minutes of your life that you can now apply to playing Vice City.
Don't ignore my disability as well. Let's stick up for those who can't see, hear or concentrate to use the web!
A lot of focus is made on SETI and listening for signals. We have in fact in the past sent signals to outer space with a specific message. In 1974, Frank Drake used the radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico to beam an elaborate coded message in the direction of globular star cluster M13. The message, coded in the binary notation of ones and zeros, contained 1679 bits of information. 1679 is the product of two prime numbers 23 and 73, which should suggest to an alien to break the message up into some combination of those two numbers. When the message is arranged in 23 columns of 73 bits each, and the zeros and ones are replaced by white squares and black squares. Coded into this pattern are from top to bottom: binary representations of the numbers 1- 10, atomic numbers of the five elements essential to terrestrial life, the chemical formula of the DNA molecule, numbers for the average human height and the world's human population, images of the human form, the solar system (with Earth displaced to indicate it is the planet from which the signal originated), and the transmitting radio telescope, with its diameter indicated.
If, (and that's a strong if) there are aliens out there, chances are that we'd receive a simple radio signal rather than intercept B'lorg's phone call to Vk'lar.
Ooooo! Look mom! The ACLU is spending $3.5 million on television ads! Hmmmm... just before an election too. Exactly how are these ads supposed to help us anyway? This is just smoke and mirrors. Make John Ashcroft the bad guy when Congress and a Democratic Senate passed the bill. PCWorld doesn't have enough to report on, so they got sux0r3d into pushing propaganda as a news article. Wake me up when there's a real court challenge.
It's obvious that the ACLU hasn't seen a law that it didn't dislike, but what's not so obvious is why is this posted here and not on The Drudge Report or the like.
Hmmm, I thought the true way to obtain Slack was through Bob Dobbs.
No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
More importantly, how are these pictures going to be stored long term? We have photos and negatives lasting over a hundred years. I'm lucky to have a hard drive last longer than three. The possibility of the great photographs of our day being erased with an accidental click of a button or the failure of a hard drive read head worries me.
If there's one thing that the old 35mm cameras have over the newer digital ones is that we pretty much know how long the images will last over the course of time. How long will it be before we lose our digital pictures because of an unreadable format or digital failure?
I was a bit disappointed though in the depth that could have been covered. Johnny Wilson was editor of Computer Gaming World for many years. That being said, many in the gaming industry felt that he was a person that could make or break your game. Problem is that his presence isn't really felt in the book. The guy has plenty of stories to tell about the industry, but it's not told in this book.
Overall, it's a great read. One thing it does do is focus on computer games more than consoles. Often it's the other way around. There are better books that focus on video game history (such as Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames) but if you grew up during the 80's and 90's playing computer games, this book will bring back many memories. Just take care of the binding on the book. It isn't the best and you'll be constantly flipping the pages.
But that's precisely why P2P companies are touting that functionality (the ability to download collections or albums) as the 'next big thing'. The latest version of Kazaa claims to do just that. Just a matter of time before the rest of the P2P clients follow.
The Quicktime format has this ability as well. It takes a bit of tweaking, but it can be very effective for searching for certain terms inside an instructional video for instance.