well, the finder has native fax sending/receiving, and for someone on the go, that can be a real loss.
Although faxing is kinda a thing of the past, it's still the only option for sending hardcopies of contracts/ getting them back signed, and similar.
and about the firewire800... It wasn't adopted as quickly as the fw400, but it still had pretty wide usage. Many harddrives were shipping as either usb2/fw400 or fw400/fw800, and some even had an 800 only option. I was toying with the idea of getting a new enclosure that was 800 only (since I was going to attach it to my G5), but if apple is going to phase it out, I may just go with the usb2/fw400 version and spare myself from getting stuck with hardware I can't use (like what happened with all my external LaCie SCSI drives).
Not necessarily. If your PC is at least as fast as mine (0.86 GHz PIII)
my pc is a 600mhz P3... running linux... =P
although, you're right, I could run an emulator. I haven't tried any GBA emulators on that box, but it does SNES/MAME/Genesis fine. I also just copied my GBA roms to that machine, so I could try it out.
I'll have to call my friend and get my flashcart back to try.\
If you're referring to the rollback discovered in late September 2005... And because new UMD games require a firmware update before they can play, should I buy two PSPs if I want to use both homebrew and UMD games?
I believe so. I have it downloaded but never got a chance to try it. the whole reason I decided to update my firmware (and brick my psp) was to play Tokobot. I'd be able to give you a progress report if my psp actually worked, now... =(
if your version of Luminesweeper doesn't have music...
I don't recall when it was, exactly. my friend had it on his DS and showed me when I was deepest in the soup of my Lumines addiction.
But how do you suggest buying a PSP that can run homebrew guaranteed? Can one run most homebrew programs on a PSP with 2.01 or later firmware? Or can one still buy a PSP Value Pak with older firmware new in box? Or do you suggest relying on eBay for all PSP hardware purchases?
you can roll back the firmware using a buffer overflow exploit (using a malformed picture) if I understand it correctly. my PSP bricked when I tried updating from 1.52 to 2.01 (they really are serious about not letting the device powerdown when updating).
I'm actually toying with the idea of picking up one of those GPX2 devices. They run linux and they're pretty powerful.
People have been complaining for years about how they wish portable gaming systems had better than SNES quality graphics and could play games like the current consoles play and when Sony gives gamers one, they still complain
I'm not one of those people. I'm one of those assholes that thinks the videogame industry has been using graphics as a crutch to support poorly designed, poorly thought-out, poorly executed games. I'm not saying that a great game can't have excellent graphics (Shadow of the Collosus is one of my favourite games of all time, right now). I'm saying that the entire modern videogame library is filled with the same stuff and there's very little originality.
now, that's not to say that I blame them. There's a ton of money to be made. Also, at the rate that they pump out new games and the rate that everyone and their little brother wants to become a videogame developer, there's really no direction for games to go. (on a side-note: I'm SICK of FPS games on consoles. wtf is up with the 360's launch games?)
It's near PS2 graphical quality games! On a handheld! You'd think people would be more appreciative of that fact.... You can do a real honest to goodness 3D racing game without any SNES Mode 7 type tricks
I'm appreciative of the graphics. I'm just disappointed with their choice of games. Ridge Racers was spectacular. Tony Hawk was a let-down. Some games translate well to a handheld, but others, you really need a larger screen. I don't think I could play shadow of the colossus or narutimate hero on a PSP, but something like soul calibur might work. It's all about level of detail, eyestrain, and on-the-road playability.
Lumines and PSP emulation are available on GBA (and by extension Nintendo DS) as well; see Luminesweeper and PocketNES.
liminesweeper is kinda crappy. at least when someone pointed it out to me when I first got into lumines. The thing I like about lumines is not only the intense gameplay, but the pretty visuals that accompany it and the catchy music and sound effects. it kinda gives the whole game this feel that's extremely palatable. The game is very well produced and was assembled extremely well.
I had an NES emulator on my GBASP on one of those flash carts, but, at the time, I dropped close to 200$ for a 128MB cart, and the software wasn't available for mac or linux, so I had to use my roommate's machine. the software was buggy, and I'm not gonna get into it, but I eventually sold that cart for another one which I could use on my mac, but it was such a hassle to use it.
the PSP's memory stick, at least, I can mount on my machine and access the files, and it's just got a better system for handling homebrew. it feels more natural.
using homebrew applications on the DS feels like a cheesey hack workaround (although the 1.5 firmware dupe swaploid hack feels kinda the same).
yeah, I'm waiting for the new Ys game for the PSP to come out in the US (if it ever does/ if I ever get my PSP fixed).
how's lunarDS? I have the GBA one. I kinda liked it, a little. sorta.
I'm a little disappointed with the RPGs in general these days. I want something like Ys 1&2 (from the TG16/CD), Zelda: Link to the Past, or Final Fantasy 1.
I believe that only a handheld can truly take full advantage of an RPG. You can casually play and level up when you have a moment when you're out and about, or, during a long train ride, you can take care of a more complex story arc.
I got a DS the day it came out... then got a PSP as soon as I could get my hands on one (january 7th, 2005); japanese unit.
I love my DS and I had sawaru (the wario game), jump all stars, mario64ds, and that trauma center game, plus I've borrowed my friends' games like kirby and the pacman game. the DS rocks...
although, the PSP has lumines which had kept my attention far more than the DS. I also had an NES emulator on there with more ROMs than I could ever play. The psp looks beautiful and the looks alone provide entertainment sometimes. Watching movies/tv shows/pr0n on the thing is pretty sweet, too (although, I'd never buy a UMD movie).
the PSP feels more versatile since you can run so many alternate apps on it, but the DS is just so much more creative. The #1 thing that's killing the PSP, though, is the lack of decent games. Seriously, every game for it feels like a PS2 game crammed into the handheld. there's nothing original about it. they're all sequals. Lumines is the only shining star, but it did dull-out after 8 months.
too bad I bricked my PSP during a botched official firmware update and now I gotta call japan to see how to get it fixed. oh well.
I was thinking the same thing about cinematics late last week; how modern games are all cutscenes and minimal gameplay.
but then I started thinking about old-ass NES games and I realized that back then, cutscenes were awesome (ninja gaiden, etc). Although they weren't drawn out (and you could skip over them), they really enhanced the gameplay. I feel that the reason for that is probably the poor graphics of the old consoles and that you kinda needed cutscenes to make up for it and give you a taste of drama beyond the oversized pixels.
People were cutscene hungry back then which led to some pretty tacky attempts at creating immersive gameplay. Angel Devoid for the PC was a really crappy game that ate up 4 CDs. Another thing that added to the tackiness was the fact that the games were relatively low budget compared to now. Blizzard and Square really made some amazing cutscenes that you actually enjoyed sitting through.
Being that consoles/computers are capable of delivering cutscene-quality gameplay, I don't really see a point in having them anymore. When you're trying to show some information or something, why not just keep that as part of the gameplay. When the hero meets some new hot, sexy female, why not just have the game take control away from you for a moment while she says what she says? or even let you continue walking around during it?
Take a cue from Shadow of the Colossus. Keep cutscenes short and sweet.
content developers were complaining of not having enough space with standard DVD technology
that's the nature of content development. Content drives the technology to produce said content. Designers are always going to push the envelope of whatever industry their work is output on.
When it comes to print graphics, there's has been a war between the artists who design the work and the guys in production who have to make sure the stuff prints. The same goes for web design/production.
actually, OSX's threading performance isn't quite as good as other *nixes. There was a comparison between OSX, Linux and a BSD on G5 hardware running mysql and apache, and OSX compared quite poorly compared to the other OSes.
personally, I never liked running OSX as a general, public server because it never really felt quite right. the only thing I've ever used OSX for when it comes to serving is LAN-based fileserving (SMB/AFP).
Re:I put on my robe and wizard hat.... *nt*
on
Sex and the Modern MMOG
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· Score: 2, Informative
a fully extensible frontent for linux which is designed to play media and games and is designed to be fully controlled with a joystick (no need for a keyboard/mouse).
I love how he calls gaming a "masturbatory activity." I mean... isn't doing ANYTHING you like a masturbatory activity? Watching your favourite movie for the 34th time could be considered masturbatory. Reading a great fiction book could be considered masturbatory.
Hell, using his reason, whacking off at night (or, for the less nerdy-types, consensual sex) could be considered masturbatory.
jack thompson has some valid points. I agree that some games shouldn't be marketed towards children. but at the same time, most of those games AREN'T marketed towards children. And many things that would deem a game to be rated Adult Only, in my opinion, are suitable for 15+.
My imagination at 13 years old was FAR more violent than anything Rockstar could release as a game. People are violent by nature, and there is absolutely no connection between gaming and violence any more than there is between reading books or browsing a museum's medieval torture section and getting inspired.
He believes that Microsoft should be sued for their flight simulator because he accuses terrorists of using it to train for 9/11. Using that logic, someone could go to a gocart track and practice bank robbery getaway tactics.
Whether "different" OSes should be lumped together is another discussion entirely (how "different" are they if they have the same kernel?)
then you need to consider the fact that x86 linux has a different kernel than PPC linux. And what about all the people running 2.4.x versus 2.6.x versus everyone still running older versions, still?
What about the fact that if a version of apache has some flaw that it [generally] affects the entire Apache installbase of that version. Whether it's BSD, Linux, OSX, Windows or BeOS. I say "generally" because some flaws may only affect x86 versions or PPC versions exclusively due to endian issues and ways that the kernels handle the stack and whatnot.
There really is no fair way of gauging and quantifying the number of flaws found in computers per-OS unless you go by installation package. Make lists of XP, make lists of win2k, make lists for OSX (10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 as well as server), make a list for each distro and every installation type for each of the lastest couple of versions. Sure it's a lot of work... but at least it'll be more accurate.
It's equally unfair to lump Windows 98, NT, 2000, XP all together.
well... you're half right. I'd say it's better to lump 95/98 together and NT/2000/XP together since most of the later versions of windows are pretty much the same thing on the inside...
however, it's really unfair to quantify the vulnerabilities for any OS as a whole. There are so many facets of any computer system that many vulnerabilities don't affect most people.
Saying that a exploit for Apache affects the entire linux/unix/osx install base is an unfair statement. Desktop linux users probably don't have apache running or a bug in X11/xorg won't affect most *nix servers. Likewise, a bug in MSSQL or web services won't directly affect most XP users, although a bug in explorer will affect nearly every windows user (who's running an affected version of explorer).
You can't even really create lists of vulnerabilities that affect "server" versus "desktop" users, either, because just because something is a server doesn't mean they're necessarily running every server daemon they can.
There needs to be a list of servertypes (ie: web, email, file, database, etc exclusively) showing not only the quantity of vulnerabilities but also the severity of said vulnerabilities. Perhaps even a table separating different applications.
I mean, you shouldn't really lump every proftpd vulnerability with every other ftp server software. All it takes is one bad egg to poison the overal results.
Halo3 is going to have to be one hell of a game if it's gonna sell systems. I mean, I'm sure that most people are gonna see Halo 3 and remember how great Halo 1 was and probably just buy it anyway, but I really can't see that being a market leader. Halo2 was quite disappointing. It takes more than a continuation of a story and being able to hold 2 weapons at once to sell a 3rd sequel.
Bungie choked on marathon infinity. aside from the flechette, it was the exact same thing as Durandal.
I'm prepared to be disappointed with most attepts at blockbuster games for the 360, and ps3, too.
it's also an overly technical explanation of how isync works in OSX.
the main problem with software patents is that there are as many ways of wording a way of doing something for a patent as there are ways of actually doing it in a computer system.
99% of software patents are bullshit. even a lot of hardware patents are bullshit, but the signal-to-noise ratio is, at least, respectable.
They forgot to mention the other reason for low sales, being that popular music, for the most part, sucks
yeah, and let's not forget the legions of professional pirates that are flooding the streets of manhattan with full-color reproductions of the booklets and exact digital copies of hte CDs including the mp3-copy-protection measures. I think those guys, selling 5 or 10$ versions of the popular music are more of a threat to the industry than someone's 12 year old daughter downloading mp3s off limewire. People don't feel as bad when they're paying money for pirated stuff as when they get it completely for free. many don't consider that stealing.
you guys really should have tab'd out Smoke on the Water. Then we could essentially slashdot sam ash/guitar center with a legion of geeks trying out their new-found guitar playing talent.
that'd rock... in the most literal sense.
Also, for those people that know nothing of guitar tab, there's palm-mute, slide-up, slide-down, and vibrato:
There are countless songs on the web that have guitar/bass/drum tablature (sheet-music-like transcriptions of songs... but only show tuning and fingering, no time signatures, generally). For at least as long as I've been playing guitar (around 10 years), I've been scouring the web to learn how to play certain songs. Sure, there are books you can buy which show you how to play "Clapton's Greatest Hits." but the fucken book costs upwards of $20, and I don't want to (but I did) pay 20$ to learn to play one riff and the basic chord structure of "I shot the sherrif."
also, not every artist has commercially available transcriptions of their songs.
and another point- online guitar tab (olga.net, etc) is sometimes horribly inaccurate and almost always incomplete. Because of that, there's a header on most online tab stating that the transcription may not be accurate and is the author's interpretation of the work.
I could understand if someone got their hands on one of the books and copied everything into a text file and submited it to a site... that's wrong. but sometimes, you don't wanna noodle around for days to figure out a song that you're only gonna jam to in your room.
what's next? making bands play license fees when they play covertunes at a show? how about when I crank my amp up to 11 and rock out on some sabbath, are they gonna charge me with illegal broadcasting of commercial music because my neighbors can hear it?
Just think. You go to wal*mart and Mandy helps you. Wal*mart is in your local town. Search MySpace for Mandy in the town between 18/25 and you just might find her and all her friends. next time you see her working "hey, don't you know nick?"
you know her first name, her friends names, her interests, everything.
it's ammo for people who are bad at dating or potential stalkers, alike.
Slashdot Mirror
The loss of the modem isn't such a big deal.
well, the finder has native fax sending/receiving, and for someone on the go, that can be a real loss.
Although faxing is kinda a thing of the past, it's still the only option for sending hardcopies of contracts/ getting them back signed, and similar.
and about the firewire800... It wasn't adopted as quickly as the fw400, but it still had pretty wide usage. Many harddrives were shipping as either usb2/fw400 or fw400/fw800, and some even had an 800 only option. I was toying with the idea of getting a new enclosure that was 800 only (since I was going to attach it to my G5), but if apple is going to phase it out, I may just go with the usb2/fw400 version and spare myself from getting stuck with hardware I can't use (like what happened with all my external LaCie SCSI drives).
Not necessarily. If your PC is at least as fast as mine (0.86 GHz PIII)
my pc is a 600mhz P3... running linux... =P
although, you're right, I could run an emulator. I haven't tried any GBA emulators on that box, but it does SNES/MAME/Genesis fine. I also just copied my GBA roms to that machine, so I could try it out.
Give it another shot and be pleased.
... And because new UMD games require a firmware update before they can play, should I buy two PSPs if I want to use both homebrew and UMD games?
I'll have to call my friend and get my flashcart back to try.\
If you're referring to the rollback discovered in late September 2005
I believe so. I have it downloaded but never got a chance to try it. the whole reason I decided to update my firmware (and brick my psp) was to play Tokobot. I'd be able to give you a progress report if my psp actually worked, now... =(
if your version of Luminesweeper doesn't have music...
I don't recall when it was, exactly. my friend had it on his DS and showed me when I was deepest in the soup of my Lumines addiction.
But how do you suggest buying a PSP that can run homebrew guaranteed? Can one run most homebrew programs on a PSP with 2.01 or later firmware? Or can one still buy a PSP Value Pak with older firmware new in box? Or do you suggest relying on eBay for all PSP hardware purchases?
you can roll back the firmware using a buffer overflow exploit (using a malformed picture) if I understand it correctly. my PSP bricked when I tried updating from 1.52 to 2.01 (they really are serious about not letting the device powerdown when updating).
I'm actually toying with the idea of picking up one of those GPX2 devices. They run linux and they're pretty powerful.
People have been complaining for years about how they wish portable gaming systems had better than SNES quality graphics and could play games like the current consoles play and when Sony gives gamers one, they still complain
... You can do a real honest to goodness 3D racing game without any SNES Mode 7 type tricks
I'm not one of those people. I'm one of those assholes that thinks the videogame industry has been using graphics as a crutch to support poorly designed, poorly thought-out, poorly executed games. I'm not saying that a great game can't have excellent graphics (Shadow of the Collosus is one of my favourite games of all time, right now). I'm saying that the entire modern videogame library is filled with the same stuff and there's very little originality.
now, that's not to say that I blame them. There's a ton of money to be made. Also, at the rate that they pump out new games and the rate that everyone and their little brother wants to become a videogame developer, there's really no direction for games to go. (on a side-note: I'm SICK of FPS games on consoles. wtf is up with the 360's launch games?)
It's near PS2 graphical quality games! On a handheld! You'd think people would be more appreciative of that fact.
I'm appreciative of the graphics. I'm just disappointed with their choice of games. Ridge Racers was spectacular. Tony Hawk was a let-down. Some games translate well to a handheld, but others, you really need a larger screen. I don't think I could play shadow of the colossus or narutimate hero on a PSP, but something like soul calibur might work. It's all about level of detail, eyestrain, and on-the-road playability.
Lumines and PSP emulation are available on GBA (and by extension Nintendo DS) as well; see Luminesweeper and PocketNES.
liminesweeper is kinda crappy. at least when someone pointed it out to me when I first got into lumines. The thing I like about lumines is not only the intense gameplay, but the pretty visuals that accompany it and the catchy music and sound effects. it kinda gives the whole game this feel that's extremely palatable. The game is very well produced and was assembled extremely well.
I had an NES emulator on my GBASP on one of those flash carts, but, at the time, I dropped close to 200$ for a 128MB cart, and the software wasn't available for mac or linux, so I had to use my roommate's machine. the software was buggy, and I'm not gonna get into it, but I eventually sold that cart for another one which I could use on my mac, but it was such a hassle to use it.
the PSP's memory stick, at least, I can mount on my machine and access the files, and it's just got a better system for handling homebrew. it feels more natural.
using homebrew applications on the DS feels like a cheesey hack workaround (although the 1.5 firmware dupe swaploid hack feels kinda the same).
yeah, I'm waiting for the new Ys game for the PSP to come out in the US (if it ever does/ if I ever get my PSP fixed).
how's lunarDS? I have the GBA one. I kinda liked it, a little. sorta.
I'm a little disappointed with the RPGs in general these days. I want something like Ys 1&2 (from the TG16/CD), Zelda: Link to the Past, or Final Fantasy 1.
I believe that only a handheld can truly take full advantage of an RPG. You can casually play and level up when you have a moment when you're out and about, or, during a long train ride, you can take care of a more complex story arc.
I got a DS the day it came out... then got a PSP as soon as I could get my hands on one (january 7th, 2005); japanese unit.
I love my DS and I had sawaru (the wario game), jump all stars, mario64ds, and that trauma center game, plus I've borrowed my friends' games like kirby and the pacman game. the DS rocks...
although, the PSP has lumines which had kept my attention far more than the DS. I also had an NES emulator on there with more ROMs than I could ever play. The psp looks beautiful and the looks alone provide entertainment sometimes. Watching movies/tv shows/pr0n on the thing is pretty sweet, too (although, I'd never buy a UMD movie).
the PSP feels more versatile since you can run so many alternate apps on it, but the DS is just so much more creative. The #1 thing that's killing the PSP, though, is the lack of decent games. Seriously, every game for it feels like a PS2 game crammed into the handheld. there's nothing original about it. they're all sequals. Lumines is the only shining star, but it did dull-out after 8 months.
too bad I bricked my PSP during a botched official firmware update and now I gotta call japan to see how to get it fixed. oh well.
I was thinking the same thing about cinematics late last week; how modern games are all cutscenes and minimal gameplay.
but then I started thinking about old-ass NES games and I realized that back then, cutscenes were awesome (ninja gaiden, etc). Although they weren't drawn out (and you could skip over them), they really enhanced the gameplay. I feel that the reason for that is probably the poor graphics of the old consoles and that you kinda needed cutscenes to make up for it and give you a taste of drama beyond the oversized pixels.
People were cutscene hungry back then which led to some pretty tacky attempts at creating immersive gameplay. Angel Devoid for the PC was a really crappy game that ate up 4 CDs. Another thing that added to the tackiness was the fact that the games were relatively low budget compared to now. Blizzard and Square really made some amazing cutscenes that you actually enjoyed sitting through.
Being that consoles/computers are capable of delivering cutscene-quality gameplay, I don't really see a point in having them anymore. When you're trying to show some information or something, why not just keep that as part of the gameplay. When the hero meets some new hot, sexy female, why not just have the game take control away from you for a moment while she says what she says? or even let you continue walking around during it?
Take a cue from Shadow of the Colossus. Keep cutscenes short and sweet.
content developers were complaining of not having enough space with standard DVD technology
that's the nature of content development. Content drives the technology to produce said content. Designers are always going to push the envelope of whatever industry their work is output on.
When it comes to print graphics, there's has been a war between the artists who design the work and the guys in production who have to make sure the stuff prints. The same goes for web design/production.
It's just the nature of the industry.
actually, OSX's threading performance isn't quite as good as other *nixes. There was a comparison between OSX, Linux and a BSD on G5 hardware running mysql and apache, and OSX compared quite poorly compared to the other OSes.
personally, I never liked running OSX as a general, public server because it never really felt quite right. the only thing I've ever used OSX for when it comes to serving is LAN-based fileserving (SMB/AFP).
bash.org rules. you should be mod'd up. =P
for those of you not in the know... check it.
(OT)
holy crap... it's you! from the RB cafe! woah.
from what I've seen, most free, opensource linux frontends are lacking a lot. namely control using something other than a keyboard/mouse.
allow me to plug a project of mine: AFX
a fully extensible frontent for linux which is designed to play media and games and is designed to be fully controlled with a joystick (no need for a keyboard/mouse).
its still in development with no releases.
I love how he calls gaming a "masturbatory activity." I mean... isn't doing ANYTHING you like a masturbatory activity? Watching your favourite movie for the 34th time could be considered masturbatory. Reading a great fiction book could be considered masturbatory.
Hell, using his reason, whacking off at night (or, for the less nerdy-types, consensual sex) could be considered masturbatory.
jack thompson has some valid points. I agree that some games shouldn't be marketed towards children. but at the same time, most of those games AREN'T marketed towards children. And many things that would deem a game to be rated Adult Only, in my opinion, are suitable for 15+.
My imagination at 13 years old was FAR more violent than anything Rockstar could release as a game. People are violent by nature, and there is absolutely no connection between gaming and violence any more than there is between reading books or browsing a museum's medieval torture section and getting inspired.
He believes that Microsoft should be sued for their flight simulator because he accuses terrorists of using it to train for 9/11. Using that logic, someone could go to a gocart track and practice bank robbery getaway tactics.
sheesh.
Whether "different" OSes should be lumped together is another discussion entirely (how "different" are they if they have the same kernel?)
then you need to consider the fact that x86 linux has a different kernel than PPC linux. And what about all the people running 2.4.x versus 2.6.x versus everyone still running older versions, still?
What about the fact that if a version of apache has some flaw that it [generally] affects the entire Apache installbase of that version. Whether it's BSD, Linux, OSX, Windows or BeOS. I say "generally" because some flaws may only affect x86 versions or PPC versions exclusively due to endian issues and ways that the kernels handle the stack and whatnot.
There really is no fair way of gauging and quantifying the number of flaws found in computers per-OS unless you go by installation package. Make lists of XP, make lists of win2k, make lists for OSX (10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 as well as server), make a list for each distro and every installation type for each of the lastest couple of versions. Sure it's a lot of work... but at least it'll be more accurate.
It's equally unfair to lump Windows 98, NT, 2000, XP all together.
well... you're half right. I'd say it's better to lump 95/98 together and NT/2000/XP together since most of the later versions of windows are pretty much the same thing on the inside...
however, it's really unfair to quantify the vulnerabilities for any OS as a whole. There are so many facets of any computer system that many vulnerabilities don't affect most people.
Saying that a exploit for Apache affects the entire linux/unix/osx install base is an unfair statement. Desktop linux users probably don't have apache running or a bug in X11/xorg won't affect most *nix servers. Likewise, a bug in MSSQL or web services won't directly affect most XP users, although a bug in explorer will affect nearly every windows user (who's running an affected version of explorer).
You can't even really create lists of vulnerabilities that affect "server" versus "desktop" users, either, because just because something is a server doesn't mean they're necessarily running every server daemon they can.
There needs to be a list of servertypes (ie: web, email, file, database, etc exclusively) showing not only the quantity of vulnerabilities but also the severity of said vulnerabilities. Perhaps even a table separating different applications.
I mean, you shouldn't really lump every proftpd vulnerability with every other ftp server software. All it takes is one bad egg to poison the overal results.
*Cough*Halo 3*Cough*
Halo3 is going to have to be one hell of a game if it's gonna sell systems. I mean, I'm sure that most people are gonna see Halo 3 and remember how great Halo 1 was and probably just buy it anyway, but I really can't see that being a market leader. Halo2 was quite disappointing. It takes more than a continuation of a story and being able to hold 2 weapons at once to sell a 3rd sequel.
Bungie choked on marathon infinity. aside from the flechette, it was the exact same thing as Durandal.
I'm prepared to be disappointed with most attepts at blockbuster games for the 360, and ps3, too.
it's also an overly technical explanation of how isync works in OSX.
the main problem with software patents is that there are as many ways of wording a way of doing something for a patent as there are ways of actually doing it in a computer system.
99% of software patents are bullshit. even a lot of hardware patents are bullshit, but the signal-to-noise ratio is, at least, respectable.
They forgot to mention the other reason for low sales, being that popular music, for the most part, sucks
yeah, and let's not forget the legions of professional pirates that are flooding the streets of manhattan with full-color reproductions of the booklets and exact digital copies of hte CDs including the mp3-copy-protection measures. I think those guys, selling 5 or 10$ versions of the popular music are more of a threat to the industry than someone's 12 year old daughter downloading mp3s off limewire. People don't feel as bad when they're paying money for pirated stuff as when they get it completely for free. many don't consider that stealing.
blargh.
that'd rock... in the most literal sense.
Also, for those people that know nothing of guitar tab, there's palm-mute, slide-up, slide-down, and vibrato:(strings removed due to lameness filter)
Sheet music, I can understand.
There are countless songs on the web that have guitar/bass/drum tablature (sheet-music-like transcriptions of songs... but only show tuning and fingering, no time signatures, generally). For at least as long as I've been playing guitar (around 10 years), I've been scouring the web to learn how to play certain songs. Sure, there are books you can buy which show you how to play "Clapton's Greatest Hits." but the fucken book costs upwards of $20, and I don't want to (but I did) pay 20$ to learn to play one riff and the basic chord structure of "I shot the sherrif."
also, not every artist has commercially available transcriptions of their songs.
and another point- online guitar tab (olga.net, etc) is sometimes horribly inaccurate and almost always incomplete. Because of that, there's a header on most online tab stating that the transcription may not be accurate and is the author's interpretation of the work.
I could understand if someone got their hands on one of the books and copied everything into a text file and submited it to a site... that's wrong. but sometimes, you don't wanna noodle around for days to figure out a song that you're only gonna jam to in your room.
what's next? making bands play license fees when they play covertunes at a show? how about when I crank my amp up to 11 and rock out on some sabbath, are they gonna charge me with illegal broadcasting of commercial music because my neighbors can hear it?
all I have to say is "wtf."
99% of the population don't even know what "installing software" means
you mean when I download a program from the CD to my computer?
a festering heap of easily stalked females.
Just think. You go to wal*mart and Mandy helps you. Wal*mart is in your local town. Search MySpace for Mandy in the town between 18/25 and you just might find her and all her friends. next time you see her working "hey, don't you know nick?"
you know her first name, her friends names, her interests, everything.
it's ammo for people who are bad at dating or potential stalkers, alike.
I found adium to be a little too... ducky.
Partial to Psi personally.
PsiDuck?