Re:WTF pop culture do you live in?
on
Lucky Wander Boy
·
· Score: 3
I think the important question is, why does every video game on tv sound like Pac Man for the 2600?
They actually do this so that it is easily recognized as a video-game. I guess I can understand--as hardware gets better and better some games' graphics are increasingly realistic. Having Pac-man or Space Invader sounds lets everyone know that someone is playing a video-game and not watching car races or something like that.
I dunno what's funnier--the post or that it got modded +1 Interesting:P
The article says:
"Computerworld also checked the price of the Men in Black DVD today and discovered that on Netscape the quoted price was $25.97, while it cost $23.97 on Internet Explorer. After completely clearing the cache and cookie files of the PC being used, the price remained $25.97 using the Netscape browser but had risen to $27.97 with Internet Explorer."
"Oddly enough, people using Lynx were simply given items gratis." was added by the poster.
Since it seems like most of the game design / planning is left up to the developers, this could be the opportunity for someone to come up with a game that is worthy of being the sequel to Master of Magic! A lot of older gamers absolutely adore that game and still get a lot of play out of it. A game of that caliber could be something of a "killer-app", imo.
Are you kidding? It's all about a Sorcery artificer! Make your heros hasted, immune to magic, flying, invisible, and with phantasmal attacks. I tend to load one or two heros up with goodies then send them out to destroy everyone and everything. God I miss that game. MOO3 might be worth picking up, but what I'm *really* waiting for is MoM2.
To see the other side of the coin, here is an amusing yet insightful link for everyone. Tweety used to be a guide, and on the site are several of her rants. I quite enjoyed them:)
FYI, Tweety now works for Mythic Entertainment and is sort of the PR for Dark Age of Camelot. It was amusing, reading this article, because I could replace a lot of the things with DAoC and Mythic and it still seemed pretty accurate. It's only $13 a month, and a play a whole lot less than I used to (between 30 minutes to a couple hours a night). The people I play with though, I've known for years and years. I met most of them through MUDs and local BBSs. When we get together as a group it's a whole lot of fun, but otherwise the game can become frustrating. Which accounts for my reduced play-time:) "Ah, nothing's going on... bbl"
For my friend's birthday this year, I gave him a card that said he would win $500 if he could answer the question on the front correctly: "How many holes are in this card?"
When the card is closed, it looks like one hole, so when it is opened it's actually two. Afraid that my friend might actually answer this one correctly, I cleverly wrote on the back of the card my own little ERCA (End-Receiver Card Agreement):
By opening this card, you forfeit any rights to any prize money offered by this card.
He answered incorrectly anyway:) Unfortunately the EULA humor was lost on him.
To: cnn@cnn.com
Subject: Erroneous reporting
In the article, "Music anti-piracy campaign targets retailers" (http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/17/music.piracy.ap/index.html), you report that 421 CD burners were seized by the Secret Service. This number is, in fact, incorrect; only 156 CD burners were seized. The RIAA's official press release (http://www.riaa.org/News_Story.cfm?id=592) reads, "the equivalent of 421 CD-R burners". This number was inflated because the pirating outfit had many CD burners that were above "average" speed. The RIAA took it upon themselves to modify the original number (with no explanation in their actual press release as to how or why) in order to further their own propaganda. I am shocked that CNN would simply print these numbers and (false) statements without doing the proper research.
Yours,
Due to the amount of money which flows from the RIAA and its members into the pockets of government representatives, perhaps it qualifies as a "federal financial organisation";)
Actually you can get CD decks that allow you to change the tempo. I haven't looked at DJ gear in at least 2 years, and they were just really coming in to their own then. I never tried them out, I was more focused on picking up a pair of SL-1200s, but companies like Gemini were coming out with CD decks which allowed you to at least change the speed of the music. That was 2 years ago, so I can imagine that by now they may even have "scratching". I think I would prefer vinyl still, especially since it seems all the hot tunes come out on vinyl first, but CDs do have the advantage of being small, simple to store, and you can put a lot more music on a single CD than on a piece of vinyl. Plus, with CD burners being inexpensive, you could spin with only backups of your original discs. I fear the day some of my vinyl gets scratched and I can't replace the tune:(
Um, even used 1200s tend to go for a lot more than $250. The things are, like, indestructible! When I bought myself a pair a few years back, I paid $425 each. They were brand new, but I couldn't find a quality used pair for very cheap. I think $350 would be more typical of a price for good condition used 1200s.
As time progresses, I find that the older games are most often the best. I think part of it is that when companies had to deal with very limited hardware, they really had to catch you with gameplay (and possibly storyline). Some things I always look for are: gameplay, re-play value, and continuing gameplay value.
If a game is fun to play, then awesome. If I can play through the game again in a drastically different fashion and still have fun, even better. If, once I've beaten the game, continue to play and reveal secrets and discover things, then that's a game that I'll almost definitely want.
Your example of Super Mario World is a very good one. In Super Mario World there were a lot of different things you could do besides head straight for the ending. It made the game a lot more fun, especially for a kid who will hear rumors of how to access some secret and have to try and figure it out for himself.
Another classic example is Castlevania X. I really despair at the direction the Castlevania games took after this one, becoming "3D" and mostly from the 3rd person view. Castlevania X, in my opinion, was the last truly great side-scroller. You could keep discovering things even after you beat the game. You could try playing with a different style (my roommate liked using rods and shields, for example), or try to level up an unpopular familiar.
This is also part of why the Pokemon games were such a hit. You just keep playing and playing. Catch more, try to find rare pokemon, level them up, unlock their powers, etc. etc. etc.
There's not much point in posting this, but I *loved* 7th Saga. I'm surprised other people know the game, it never received the same attention that the FF series got. I may have to look up some roms and see how that translation project for the sequel turned out. God I loved that game!
"Use your electronic skills to earn you some money instead of modifying your Xbox. You could earn money modifying Playstations for instance. Then you could use the money to buy a stock Xbox & Xbox LIVE and play happily-ever-after."
Right...mod-chipping x-boxes is bad, so you should go out and mod playstations? I'm not sure if this is MS at work, or if the people on those forums are (for the most part) blathering idiots.
I bought my new computer to replace my dead P200 and my parents' P120 wasn't cutting it. So I picked up a system, and they wanted to put an OS on it. I went with XP and I haven't had a ton of problems with it now that I have it set up the way I want. I've had a few bizarre crashes, but nothing that I couldn't easily recover from. I installed Redhat 7.2 on a 20 gig partition which I haven't really touched. Basically, I use my computer for gaming and web browsing. Since my computer is already booted into XP for gaming, it seems silly to shut it down and reboot just to browse in Linux when I have mozilla on windows as well. A nice side-effect of installing Linux is that with GRUB, if I don't shut down windows properly, it doesn't even realize:) Boot up and it just goes...
This is not necessarily true. French students are generally better educated than ours, and that is the result of the public school system. At least in Paris, you can either go to your local school or attempt to get into another (better) one. If you don't live right there, you have to take tests to be accepted. Private schools are generally for those that couldn't make it in public schools. Did I mention that nearly all of their universities are public? It's not a matter of the schools being public, it's a matter of them sucking (and not all do).
Sorry, with this latest update most of your applications will not work. Security is #1, you know. But IE still works. MS Office too; at $400 it's a steal!
Yours,
MS
Face it, the MPAA would love to see some legislation passed to hurt file-traders and consumers' rights in general. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest for them to intentionally leak a movie--one that is almost guaranteed to be a hit--and then cry to the politicians how it would have made them so much more money had it not been leaked. This is not some guy taking the moral high ground to justify watching it. You watch a movie illegally and there *is* no moral high ground. This could be, in a way, the exact opposite. This could be the studios looking for a way to take the moral high ground.
I don't trade files and, personally, don't plan on seeing this movie until it's released for rental. I really, really wouldn't be surprised if this was intentional.
I dunno about others, but I tried to educate others. When I first read about BMG doing this on the Register, I wrote to my fiancee who is in school in Paris write now, she's French. I detailed the matter to her, explained how BMG was selling crippled discs and claiming they were functioning CDs, then blaming the hardware. I explained exactly how it would impact people there, and why they shouldn't tolerate it.
You see, CDs cost more in France. In my experience, unless a CD is on sale you're going to pay around 20 Euros for it, if not more. An import CD will cost even more and I did not see a huge market for them (the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysees had a tiny section devoted to imports. I've seen bigger reggae sections at the local Sam Goody.). To be unable to play a disc in your CD-player just because you bought it in the last couple of years won't appeal to them, methinks. Neither will the idea of having to pay even more for an already expensive product just to get one that works.
Even CD-players cost more. My fiancee recently visited, and before she left she took a look at players at the local Best Buy because they were so cheap here (sorry, I didn't think to ask how much one would cost in France). So regardless of the situation--buy a more expensive import CD or buy an expensive CD-player... the French (and probably many Europeans) are getting screwed.
I asked her to forward it to her friends, and to translate it into French if she felt they would need it (a lot of them probably wouldn't). I also suggested a boycott, and to let the companies in question (and possibly music stores as well) know just why they wouldn't be buying anything from them anytime soon.
This doesn't affect me in the slightest, but it still gets me going. She had no clue this stuff was going on though, and I have a feeling it is the same way with a lot of people. Our best weapon is to educate people, and let them know exactly why it's bad for them.
Another question, though, is how this affects non-OS software? For example, just before your quote in the ruling, it says:
B. Microsoft's provision of Windows Operating System Products to Covered OEMs shall be
pursuant to uniform license agreements with uniform terms and conditions. Without
limiting the foregoing, Microsoft shall charge each Covered OEM the applicable royalty
for Windows Operating System Products as set forth on a schedule, to be established by
Microsoft and published on a web site accessible to the Plaintiffs and all Covered OEMs,
that provides for uniform royalties for Windows Operating System Products, except that:
Now, does "Windows Operating System Products" refer to various Windows OSes (e.g. Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Win2k, etc.)? Or does it refer to MS products for that OS? I should probably RTFR, but that's some dense stuff there! I'd be worried, however, that while MS can't hose OEMs on the cost of the OS, they can still fool around with the cost of other things. And what would happen if, magically, MS was finally able to seperate all the different programs that have been incorporated into their OS? If MS bills Outlook and IE as non-OS "tools", then can they now proceed to charge differently for them? I wouldn't really care, but John Doe might.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the important question is, why does every video game on tv sound like Pac Man for the 2600?
They actually do this so that it is easily recognized as a video-game. I guess I can understand--as hardware gets better and better some games' graphics are increasingly realistic. Having Pac-man or Space Invader sounds lets everyone know that someone is playing a video-game and not watching car races or something like that.
I dunno what's funnier--the post or that it got modded +1 Interesting :P
The article says:
"Computerworld also checked the price of the Men in Black DVD today and discovered that on Netscape the quoted price was $25.97, while it cost $23.97 on Internet Explorer. After completely clearing the cache and cookie files of the PC being used, the price remained $25.97 using the Netscape browser but had risen to $27.97 with Internet Explorer."
"Oddly enough, people using Lynx were simply given items gratis." was added by the poster.
Since it seems like most of the game design / planning is left up to the developers, this could be the opportunity for someone to come up with a game that is worthy of being the sequel to Master of Magic! A lot of older gamers absolutely adore that game and still get a lot of play out of it. A game of that caliber could be something of a "killer-app", imo.
Do not forget Dragon Half! It's a shame they only made two episodes of this wonder. If you haven't watched this, pick it up! Now!
Are you kidding? It's all about a Sorcery artificer! Make your heros hasted, immune to magic, flying, invisible, and with phantasmal attacks. I tend to load one or two heros up with goodies then send them out to destroy everyone and everything. God I miss that game. MOO3 might be worth picking up, but what I'm *really* waiting for is MoM2.
To see the other side of the coin, here is an amusing yet insightful link for everyone. Tweety used to be a guide, and on the site are several of her rants. I quite enjoyed them :)
:) "Ah, nothing's going on... bbl"
FYI, Tweety now works for Mythic Entertainment and is sort of the PR for Dark Age of Camelot. It was amusing, reading this article, because I could replace a lot of the things with DAoC and Mythic and it still seemed pretty accurate. It's only $13 a month, and a play a whole lot less than I used to (between 30 minutes to a couple hours a night). The people I play with though, I've known for years and years. I met most of them through MUDs and local BBSs. When we get together as a group it's a whole lot of fun, but otherwise the game can become frustrating. Which accounts for my reduced play-time
Perhaps you're right...
Penny Arcade
For my friend's birthday this year, I gave him a card that said he would win $500 if he could answer the question on the front correctly: "How many holes are in this card?"
:) Unfortunately the EULA humor was lost on him.
When the card is closed, it looks like one hole, so when it is opened it's actually two. Afraid that my friend might actually answer this one correctly, I cleverly wrote on the back of the card my own little ERCA (End-Receiver Card Agreement):
By opening this card, you forfeit any rights to any prize money offered by this card.
He answered incorrectly anyway
To: cnn@cnn.com Subject: Erroneous reporting In the article, "Music anti-piracy campaign targets retailers" (http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/17/music .piracy.ap/index.html), you report that 421 CD burners were seized by the Secret Service. This number is, in fact, incorrect; only 156 CD burners were seized. The RIAA's official press release (http://www.riaa.org/News_Story.cfm?id=592) reads, "the equivalent of 421 CD-R burners". This number was inflated because the pirating outfit had many CD burners that were above "average" speed. The RIAA took it upon themselves to modify the original number (with no explanation in their actual press release as to how or why) in order to further their own propaganda. I am shocked that CNN would simply print these numbers and (false) statements without doing the proper research.
Yours,
Due to the amount of money which flows from the RIAA and its members into the pockets of government representatives, perhaps it qualifies as a "federal financial organisation" ;)
dead horse beat YOU to death!
Actually you can get CD decks that allow you to change the tempo. I haven't looked at DJ gear in at least 2 years, and they were just really coming in to their own then. I never tried them out, I was more focused on picking up a pair of SL-1200s, but companies like Gemini were coming out with CD decks which allowed you to at least change the speed of the music. That was 2 years ago, so I can imagine that by now they may even have "scratching". I think I would prefer vinyl still, especially since it seems all the hot tunes come out on vinyl first, but CDs do have the advantage of being small, simple to store, and you can put a lot more music on a single CD than on a piece of vinyl. Plus, with CD burners being inexpensive, you could spin with only backups of your original discs. I fear the day some of my vinyl gets scratched and I can't replace the tune :(
Um, even used 1200s tend to go for a lot more than $250. The things are, like, indestructible! When I bought myself a pair a few years back, I paid $425 each. They were brand new, but I couldn't find a quality used pair for very cheap. I think $350 would be more typical of a price for good condition used 1200s.
Can Finnish taxi drivers demand money for passing on advertising that the fare ordinarily wouldn't hear?
As time progresses, I find that the older games are most often the best. I think part of it is that when companies had to deal with very limited hardware, they really had to catch you with gameplay (and possibly storyline). Some things I always look for are: gameplay, re-play value, and continuing gameplay value.
If a game is fun to play, then awesome. If I can play through the game again in a drastically different fashion and still have fun, even better. If, once I've beaten the game, continue to play and reveal secrets and discover things, then that's a game that I'll almost definitely want.
Your example of Super Mario World is a very good one. In Super Mario World there were a lot of different things you could do besides head straight for the ending. It made the game a lot more fun, especially for a kid who will hear rumors of how to access some secret and have to try and figure it out for himself.
Another classic example is Castlevania X. I really despair at the direction the Castlevania games took after this one, becoming "3D" and mostly from the 3rd person view. Castlevania X, in my opinion, was the last truly great side-scroller. You could keep discovering things even after you beat the game. You could try playing with a different style (my roommate liked using rods and shields, for example), or try to level up an unpopular familiar.
This is also part of why the Pokemon games were such a hit. You just keep playing and playing. Catch more, try to find rare pokemon, level them up, unlock their powers, etc. etc. etc.
God I'm a geek.
There's not much point in posting this, but I *loved* 7th Saga. I'm surprised other people know the game, it never received the same attention that the FF series got. I may have to look up some roms and see how that translation project for the sequel turned out. God I loved that game!
From that same page, even better is:
"Use your electronic skills to earn you some money instead of modifying your Xbox. You could earn money modifying Playstations for instance. Then you could use the money to buy a stock Xbox & Xbox LIVE and play happily-ever-after."
Right...mod-chipping x-boxes is bad, so you should go out and mod playstations? I'm not sure if this is MS at work, or if the people on those forums are (for the most part) blathering idiots.
I bought my new computer to replace my dead P200 and my parents' P120 wasn't cutting it. So I picked up a system, and they wanted to put an OS on it. I went with XP and I haven't had a ton of problems with it now that I have it set up the way I want. I've had a few bizarre crashes, but nothing that I couldn't easily recover from. I installed Redhat 7.2 on a 20 gig partition which I haven't really touched. Basically, I use my computer for gaming and web browsing. Since my computer is already booted into XP for gaming, it seems silly to shut it down and reboot just to browse in Linux when I have mozilla on windows as well. A nice side-effect of installing Linux is that with GRUB, if I don't shut down windows properly, it doesn't even realize :) Boot up and it just goes...
Act like a pest, die like the rest.
This is not necessarily true. French students are generally better educated than ours, and that is the result of the public school system. At least in Paris, you can either go to your local school or attempt to get into another (better) one. If you don't live right there, you have to take tests to be accepted. Private schools are generally for those that couldn't make it in public schools. Did I mention that nearly all of their universities are public? It's not a matter of the schools being public, it's a matter of them sucking (and not all do).
Sorry, with this latest update most of your applications will not work. Security is #1, you know. But IE still works. MS Office too; at $400 it's a steal! Yours, MS
New York, the state = "up-state New York"
Face it, the MPAA would love to see some legislation passed to hurt file-traders and consumers' rights in general. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest for them to intentionally leak a movie--one that is almost guaranteed to be a hit--and then cry to the politicians how it would have made them so much more money had it not been leaked. This is not some guy taking the moral high ground to justify watching it. You watch a movie illegally and there *is* no moral high ground. This could be, in a way, the exact opposite. This could be the studios looking for a way to take the moral high ground.
I don't trade files and, personally, don't plan on seeing this movie until it's released for rental. I really, really wouldn't be surprised if this was intentional.
I dunno about others, but I tried to educate others. When I first read about BMG doing this on the Register, I wrote to my fiancee who is in school in Paris write now, she's French. I detailed the matter to her, explained how BMG was selling crippled discs and claiming they were functioning CDs, then blaming the hardware. I explained exactly how it would impact people there, and why they shouldn't tolerate it.
You see, CDs cost more in France. In my experience, unless a CD is on sale you're going to pay around 20 Euros for it, if not more. An import CD will cost even more and I did not see a huge market for them (the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysees had a tiny section devoted to imports. I've seen bigger reggae sections at the local Sam Goody.). To be unable to play a disc in your CD-player just because you bought it in the last couple of years won't appeal to them, methinks. Neither will the idea of having to pay even more for an already expensive product just to get one that works.
Even CD-players cost more. My fiancee recently visited, and before she left she took a look at players at the local Best Buy because they were so cheap here (sorry, I didn't think to ask how much one would cost in France). So regardless of the situation--buy a more expensive import CD or buy an expensive CD-player... the French (and probably many Europeans) are getting screwed.
I asked her to forward it to her friends, and to translate it into French if she felt they would need it (a lot of them probably wouldn't). I also suggested a boycott, and to let the companies in question (and possibly music stores as well) know just why they wouldn't be buying anything from them anytime soon.
This doesn't affect me in the slightest, but it still gets me going. She had no clue this stuff was going on though, and I have a feeling it is the same way with a lot of people. Our best weapon is to educate people, and let them know exactly why it's bad for them.
Another question, though, is how this affects non-OS software? For example, just before your quote in the ruling, it says:
B. Microsoft's provision of Windows Operating System Products to Covered OEMs shall be pursuant to uniform license agreements with uniform terms and conditions. Without limiting the foregoing, Microsoft shall charge each Covered OEM the applicable royalty for Windows Operating System Products as set forth on a schedule, to be established by Microsoft and published on a web site accessible to the Plaintiffs and all Covered OEMs, that provides for uniform royalties for Windows Operating System Products, except that:
Now, does "Windows Operating System Products" refer to various Windows OSes (e.g. Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Win2k, etc.)? Or does it refer to MS products for that OS? I should probably RTFR, but that's some dense stuff there! I'd be worried, however, that while MS can't hose OEMs on the cost of the OS, they can still fool around with the cost of other things. And what would happen if, magically, MS was finally able to seperate all the different programs that have been incorporated into their OS? If MS bills Outlook and IE as non-OS "tools", then can they now proceed to charge differently for them? I wouldn't really care, but John Doe might.