Just because private shipbuilders can do fine cranking out cargo barges, cruiseliners, and yachts doesn't mean there's no use for battleships, icebreakers, and submarines.
While a strong private presence in space will certainly increase the level of traffic, the fact remains that when it comes down to building the largest ships, those designed for the longest hauls, and those with arcane research purposes, only "national interest" and "national security" can drum up the funding even on the Earth's oceans.
That said, what's an "arcane research purpose" can change drastically with time... Columbus once undertook a research voyage funded by Spanish royalty, that's today a routine cruise or cargo shipment. As human presence beyond the Earth increases, clear, safe profits will open up, and businesses will go for them.
It's just that any man landing on the moon today will be there to plant a flag. His sucessor will be there to build a home. And then, after that, comes room for the enterpreneur offering the comforts of Earth shipped up and cheap vacation fares back.
XBox 2's already confirmed for plain DVD-ROM; given Sony's insistence on Blu-Ray hardware with HD-DVD software for any compromise, one can assume that the PS3 will ship with the physical drive it's always been planned for, and differ only in firmware and player app if a deal is made.
Of course, given that the XBox 2 will begin its lifespan with multiple versions (with hard drive and without) and Sony chose a new CEO from the evil^Wmusic side of the business while simultaneously demoting Kutaragi, it's possible that later packages (for XBox) or corporate skulduggery (for PS) could lead to a change---this change would just, in either case, be a poor business decision.
While it's certainly possible that Chinese groups are behind the attacks, it's unlikely that the (over-maligned to begin with) RMTs are. The biggest companies are based out of Hong Kong, which due to its heavy trade involvement isn't seeing as heavy anti-Japanese sentiment; in any case, given that their dinner and bed rely on maintaining a brisk sales pace, bringing the game down would be counterproductive.
"Dissidents", which explains why on-duty police officers are coordinating the demonstrations to the point of regulating the number of stones thrown to a certain amount per person?
The Chinese government has never particularly liked a strong Japan, whether said "government" answers to an emperor or a leader of the Communist party; WW2 certainly didn't help. But the current demonstrations are being used, encouraged, and manipulated by the current government to simultaneously diplomatically threaten Japan (which disputes the ownership of offshore resources with China, is contemplating military normalization, and supports an de-facto independent Taiwan) and let off domestic steam.
Biting the offtopic AC hook, because work is boring.
It really depends on what kind of experience you're looking for---relatively few (sane) people are into anime because it's anime; more are into particular genres that happen to be more commonly produced in animation, or into Japanese or Asian mass-media in general, of which anime's the easiest to obtain in the US.
That said, with a few assumptions about genres you might like given that you're posting on Slashdot, here's a somewhat recentish list.
If you're looking for something like the cartoons of your youth, but with a bit more depth and darkness: Go for Full Metal Alchemist, currently running on TV in the US.
Running immediately after that is the cyberpunk cop show Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's significantly less action-oriented than the movie it's a sequel to.
If you're looking for a war miniseries with sci-fi elements, try Gundam 08th MS Team. Gundam is an overhanging series name comparable in runtime and quality variance to Star Trek; while you may've caught various incarnations on TV that tried to be a gallery of prettyboys, a kung-fu movie, or a rehash of the original, 08th MS Team can be best summed up as "'Nam with Huge Robots".
On a similar basis, but with a heavier focus on the political end of things, Zeta Gundam is a good suggestion, but it's a heavy investment at $150 or more for the whole 2-season TV series at once. A film trilogy is currently being produced in Japan, but it's incomplete, with no US release date set, and will have a variety of story changes to make it "less depressing".
Record of Lodoss War is a classic high fantasy show---to give some idea of the style, it's based on a series of novels based on the author's D&D campaign. There are two different iterations; the one to go for, in my opinion, is the two-disc direct-to-video version, rather than the 4-disc TV version.... And there's quite a bit more out there, but those are the apparent best bets genre-wise. Beyond that, the only real advice I can give is a pointer to a good review site, and the buying advice that, if you're getting an extremely good deal from an online store or auction, it's 99% likely that the product in question is bootleg and you'd be better off just bittorrenting it. (Without even going into the moral issues of copying or of paying a third party to copy for you, the video and translation qualities typically suck donkey balls.)/puts on his "I spent 15 minutes typing and all I got was -1, Offtopic" shirt
Sony's made a -lot- of noise about providing mature dev tools; not being a dev I can't say how much of these are accurate, but one of the top rumors is that the multiple processors will be abstractable.
That said, their key advantage in "dev friendliness" this generation won't be so much what they're doing as what everyone else is doing.
While the XBox was effectively a PC in a gaudy box last generation, the Xenon is slated to be a tri-processor PowerPC; this will be much more difficult to port to from PC (as it's no longer the same arch) and develop for in general (as not only are there multiple processors, but they're occasionally pressed into service as graphics coprocessors too).
The Revolution is, well, an enigma. It may well be the simplest machine to develop for, as there's been no reports of it having multiple CPUs; on the other hand, they've got what they consider a big UI secret that might make things all wonky.
Not to mention, it's Microsoft rather than Sony that have been pushing the idea of $55 or $60 games.
As for "did not fare so well" and "loss of market share percentage", I call bullshit. XBox had a decent run in the US and Europe, GC in the US and Japan, but similar patterns occured with the N64 and Saturn last gen.
Okay, let's take this from the other direction. If the Russians come over the north pole like so much bad cold-war fiction, and I take the family deer rifle and head up into the hills, am I:
a) an unlawful combatant. No insignia, taking pot shots at soldiers, when they catch me it's straight to the gulag and that's how it should be. b) a partisan. While I probably will be dragged away and imprisioned/shot, if my side ends up winning the war I'll be summarily upgraded to a hero and once every few years there'll be a congressional attempt to repatriate me or my corpse. Meanwhile, if they don't, I'll just be another member of a failed, doomed rebellion; still, a fair amount of, if not most, people will consider the treatment of those like me rather harsh. c) a heroic patriot. Died trying to defeat a foreign invader bent on extinguishing our entire way of living.
Coming from a region of the nation that idolizes men like Ethan Allen and Nathaniel Hale (a leader of an irregular military unit and a caught and executed spy, respectively), there's no way I can morally condone option a. Without making moral judgements about how just a particular cause is, which really isn't a good kind of thing to encode in international law, I'd say the best option would be detention until the cessation of full military operations in that theatre (cough mission successful cough), followed by either immediate release (where peace has been reached with the cause the partisan was fighting for) or a full civilian appeals process, with constitutional rights extended, and release of any partisan who wasn't likely to immediately revert (when the cause he fought for has been scattered or obliterated, as with the Taliban.)
> Nudity Only regulated, at least in this state, when it's presented in a harassing manner.
> Polygamy Legal marriage involves mutual exchange of exclusive rights. It's certainly not illegal to have multiple long-term sexual partners, you just have to pick one to have final say over your legal affairs when you cack it.
> Bestiality Animal abuse.
> Incest Produces some really fucked-up cases of genetics; could be better considered public health legislation.
> Drug possession and use I'll agree that those are regulating morality; however, their proponents certainly bill them as public-health.
> Perjury Illegal in the interest of reaching correct verdicts, rather than because telling the truth is happy-fuzzy.
> Business practices Mostly fraud, directly economically harmful to those it's used against.
> Childcare Against actual physical or psychological abuse, rather than "immoral" ways.
While there are certainly quite a few laws that are supported by one or another moral imperative, even most of your examples are quite justified by "preventing actual harm" rather than "preserving upright circumstances".
If a concert signifies SE being full of themselves, they've been so a long time---the first FF orchestral concert was shortly after the release of Famicom FF3.
Lineage doesn't -completely- count; rather than a monthly fee it's billed at a much lower hourly rate and heavily licenced to PC-bang users, who pay and play less.
That said, FFXI's surpassed EQ in users, with a very strict definition of "player" (account paid in full for the month at time of reporting,) since shortly after the NA release, so even if you don't trust the L/L2 (different billing model) and RO (extremely shaky numbers) figures, there's still a new king of the hill.
The only option in the Japanese version is kanji/kana text.
Did a bit of research on the exact nerfage scale here. In addition, the bonus dungeons suck, HARD: 5 floors of extremely weak enemies, followed by one of a few bosses, each of which warps you to the next floor or out; to get through the lowest-level (Earth) bonus dungeon alone requires four passes through a 5-floor dungeon, only the first of which having any benefit at all besides a choice of four bosses at the end. The Fire dungeon actually includes a world-map-sided floor with no clues... that, once again, you're expected to pass through repeatedly on your way to kill bosses that you can only do one of per set per pass, ensuring 2-4 passes to get 'em all.
All in all, the WSC ports of FF1 and 2 are much better; the game systems include truly optional autotarget, run, and other conveniences, rather than forcing a complete nerfing on the player. While they've only been released in Japanese, there's nothing in the games that can't be done with only a quick bit of pattern-matching from a FAQ, and a bit of luck and cleverness on Ebay or the like can net yeu the system for $20 and games (which also include FF4, released as 2 in the US; Makaitoushi SaGa, released here as FF Legend; and Front Mission) for $10.
The Saturn Net.Link was indeed available. Support was mainly limited to FPS and RTS, IIRC; never owned one and too lazy to rummage through the magazine stack.
That said, the SNES and Genesis also had the XBand 3rd-party line of modems, so by this time a game-use modem attatchment wasn't completely new.
In most places, the electors are chosen by the direct popular vote; they're typically, if not bound by state law to vote for the candidate they claimed they would, at least chosen from among party loyalists.
Rant notwithstanding, he's correct. Under the basic law of the United States, the basic law of the United States takes preeminence over treaties. While this may sound rather arrogant, its main effect is to ensure that treaties don't interfere with the civil rights of the population---rather similar, in ways, to the reluctance or refusal of various European nations to allow extradition in cases of capital crimes.
1) When the US game market crashed in the '80s due to saturation and shovelware, the Japanese market didn't. Until the release of the XBox, every console that received mass acceptance was created by a Japanese company---the Americans had mostly given up on the market, their efforts limited to the 3D0 (backed mainly by Matsushita/Panasonic) and various attempts at reviving the Atari name.
2) Due to this, Japanese designers of hardware had a financial head-start, which transformed into a technical proficiency head start for Japanese devs, who began work on most consoles months to years before American ones.
3) While Japanese population is only half that of the US, PC gaming is less common, console gaming is more, and in any case the population of Japan is at least on an approximate level with that of natively-English-speaking Europe---and, in addition, the large Southeast Asian market traditionally uses Japanese hardware and software, increasing numbers.
4) Due to the realities of Japanese population density, niche games are somewhat easier to promote---distribute and advertise in a few key cities, and you can sell to a majority of the population. This means a greater variety of games, from a greater variety of developers; in general, the huge publisher overheads in the US (massive land area) and Europe (5 or 6 languages necessary) are reduced.
It sounds odd, but check the grocery store brands - in New England/Capital District New York, both Price Chopper and Stop & Shop's diet colas use Splenda, at a price of $1/3l (PC) and $1.25/2l (SS).
It's not a console---they wouldn't be announcing for PS2 or XBox if it was. It's not exclusivity for either---obviously, given the previous. It may be a handheld---a shrunken version of the HK pirate Treamcast. If anyone's stupid enough to try to launch a handheld between the GBA, DS, and PSP, it's Sega. It may be a new arcade platform, possibly with a home enthusiast version a la Neo-Geo---Sammy owns bits of Sega, all of SNK, the Neo-Geo itself is dying, and Sega is still heavily involved in the arcade business. It may be something like Nintendo's "megaton" announcement---A game with dense appeal to the one target audience the quote was aimed at, and little to others. Candidates: New Sonic, new Shenmue, new Panzer Dragoon, English-language Sakura Taisen, new Phantasy Star.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because private shipbuilders can do fine cranking out cargo barges, cruiseliners, and yachts doesn't mean there's no use for battleships, icebreakers, and submarines.
While a strong private presence in space will certainly increase the level of traffic, the fact remains that when it comes down to building the largest ships, those designed for the longest hauls, and those with arcane research purposes, only "national interest" and "national security" can drum up the funding even on the Earth's oceans.
That said, what's an "arcane research purpose" can change drastically with time... Columbus once undertook a research voyage funded by Spanish royalty, that's today a routine cruise or cargo shipment. As human presence beyond the Earth increases, clear, safe profits will open up, and businesses will go for them.
It's just that any man landing on the moon today will be there to plant a flag. His sucessor will be there to build a home. And then, after that, comes room for the enterpreneur offering the comforts of Earth shipped up and cheap vacation fares back.
XBox 2's already confirmed for plain DVD-ROM; given Sony's insistence on Blu-Ray hardware with HD-DVD software for any compromise, one can assume that the PS3 will ship with the physical drive it's always been planned for, and differ only in firmware and player app if a deal is made.
Of course, given that the XBox 2 will begin its lifespan with multiple versions (with hard drive and without) and Sony chose a new CEO from the evil^Wmusic side of the business while simultaneously demoting Kutaragi, it's possible that later packages (for XBox) or corporate skulduggery (for PS) could lead to a change---this change would just, in either case, be a poor business decision.
While it's certainly possible that Chinese groups are behind the attacks, it's unlikely that the (over-maligned to begin with) RMTs are. The biggest companies are based out of Hong Kong, which due to its heavy trade involvement isn't seeing as heavy anti-Japanese sentiment; in any case, given that their dinner and bed rely on maintaining a brisk sales pace, bringing the game down would be counterproductive.
"Dissidents", which explains why on-duty police officers are coordinating the demonstrations to the point of regulating the number of stones thrown to a certain amount per person?
The Chinese government has never particularly liked a strong Japan, whether said "government" answers to an emperor or a leader of the Communist party; WW2 certainly didn't help. But the current demonstrations are being used, encouraged, and manipulated by the current government to simultaneously diplomatically threaten Japan (which disputes the ownership of offshore resources with China, is contemplating military normalization, and supports an de-facto independent Taiwan) and let off domestic steam.
Biting the offtopic AC hook, because work is boring.
... And there's quite a bit more out there, but those are the apparent best bets genre-wise. Beyond that, the only real advice I can give is a pointer to a good review site, and the buying advice that, if you're getting an extremely good deal from an online store or auction, it's 99% likely that the product in question is bootleg and you'd be better off just bittorrenting it. /puts on his "I spent 15 minutes typing and all I got was -1, Offtopic" shirt
It really depends on what kind of experience you're looking for---relatively few (sane) people are into anime because it's anime; more are into particular genres that happen to be more commonly produced in animation, or into Japanese or Asian mass-media in general, of which anime's the easiest to obtain in the US.
That said, with a few assumptions about genres you might like given that you're posting on Slashdot, here's a somewhat recentish list.
If you're looking for something like the cartoons of your youth, but with a bit more depth and darkness: Go for Full Metal Alchemist, currently running on TV in the US.
Running immediately after that is the cyberpunk cop show Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's significantly less action-oriented than the movie it's a sequel to.
If you're looking for a war miniseries with sci-fi elements, try Gundam 08th MS Team. Gundam is an overhanging series name comparable in runtime and quality variance to Star Trek; while you may've caught various incarnations on TV that tried to be a gallery of prettyboys, a kung-fu movie, or a rehash of the original, 08th MS Team can be best summed up as "'Nam with Huge Robots".
On a similar basis, but with a heavier focus on the political end of things, Zeta Gundam is a good suggestion, but it's a heavy investment at $150 or more for the whole 2-season TV series at once. A film trilogy is currently being produced in Japan, but it's incomplete, with no US release date set, and will have a variety of story changes to make it "less depressing".
Record of Lodoss War is a classic high fantasy show---to give some idea of the style, it's based on a series of novels based on the author's D&D campaign. There are two different iterations; the one to go for, in my opinion, is the two-disc direct-to-video version, rather than the 4-disc TV version.
(Without even going into the moral issues of copying or of paying a third party to copy for you, the video and translation qualities typically suck donkey balls.)
Sony's made a -lot- of noise about providing mature dev tools; not being a dev I can't say how much of these are accurate, but one of the top rumors is that the multiple processors will be abstractable.
That said, their key advantage in "dev friendliness" this generation won't be so much what they're doing as what everyone else is doing.
While the XBox was effectively a PC in a gaudy box last generation, the Xenon is slated to be a tri-processor PowerPC; this will be much more difficult to port to from PC (as it's no longer the same arch) and develop for in general (as not only are there multiple processors, but they're occasionally pressed into service as graphics coprocessors too).
The Revolution is, well, an enigma. It may well be the simplest machine to develop for, as there's been no reports of it having multiple CPUs; on the other hand, they've got what they consider a big UI secret that might make things all wonky.
Not to mention, it's Microsoft rather than Sony that have been pushing the idea of $55 or $60 games.
As for "did not fare so well" and "loss of market share percentage", I call bullshit. XBox had a decent run in the US and Europe, GC in the US and Japan, but similar patterns occured with the N64 and Saturn last gen.
There's VOD, which takes about 10 seconds to synch up (at least on Adelphia and Comcast) and provides a similar service to the customer.
Okay, let's take this from the other direction. If the Russians come over the north pole like so much bad cold-war fiction, and I take the family deer rifle and head up into the hills, am I:
a) an unlawful combatant. No insignia, taking pot shots at soldiers, when they catch me it's straight to the gulag and that's how it should be.
b) a partisan. While I probably will be dragged away and imprisioned/shot, if my side ends up winning the war I'll be summarily upgraded to a hero and once every few years there'll be a congressional attempt to repatriate me or my corpse. Meanwhile, if they don't, I'll just be another member of a failed, doomed rebellion; still, a fair amount of, if not most, people will consider the treatment of those like me rather harsh.
c) a heroic patriot. Died trying to defeat a foreign invader bent on extinguishing our entire way of living.
Coming from a region of the nation that idolizes men like Ethan Allen and Nathaniel Hale (a leader of an irregular military unit and a caught and executed spy, respectively), there's no way I can morally condone option a. Without making moral judgements about how just a particular cause is, which really isn't a good kind of thing to encode in international law, I'd say the best option would be detention until the cessation of full military operations in that theatre (cough mission successful cough), followed by either immediate release (where peace has been reached with the cause the partisan was fighting for) or a full civilian appeals process, with constitutional rights extended, and release of any partisan who wasn't likely to immediately revert (when the cause he fought for has been scattered or obliterated, as with the Taliban.)
> Nudity
Only regulated, at least in this state, when it's presented in a harassing manner.
> Polygamy
Legal marriage involves mutual exchange of exclusive rights. It's certainly not illegal to have multiple long-term sexual partners, you just have to pick one to have final say over your legal affairs when you cack it.
> Bestiality
Animal abuse.
> Incest
Produces some really fucked-up cases of genetics; could be better considered public health legislation.
> Drug possession and use
I'll agree that those are regulating morality; however, their proponents certainly bill them as public-health.
> Perjury
Illegal in the interest of reaching correct verdicts, rather than because telling the truth is happy-fuzzy.
> Business practices
Mostly fraud, directly economically harmful to those it's used against.
> Childcare
Against actual physical or psychological abuse, rather than "immoral" ways.
While there are certainly quite a few laws that are supported by one or another moral imperative, even most of your examples are quite justified by "preventing actual harm" rather than "preserving upright circumstances".
If a concert signifies SE being full of themselves, they've been so a long time---the first FF orchestral concert was shortly after the release of Famicom FF3.
Lineage doesn't -completely- count; rather than a monthly fee it's billed at a much lower hourly rate and heavily licenced to PC-bang users, who pay and play less.
That said, FFXI's surpassed EQ in users, with a very strict definition of "player" (account paid in full for the month at time of reporting,) since shortly after the NA release, so even if you don't trust the L/L2 (different billing model) and RO (extremely shaky numbers) figures, there's still a new king of the hill.
The Dreamcast could boot CE, but it was neither stored in ROM nor used on most games, finding its greatest use in near-EOL American shovelware.
The only option in the Japanese version is kanji/kana text.
Did a bit of research on the exact nerfage scale here.
In addition, the bonus dungeons suck, HARD: 5 floors of extremely weak enemies, followed by one of a few bosses, each of which warps you to the next floor or out; to get through the lowest-level (Earth) bonus dungeon alone requires four passes through a 5-floor dungeon, only the first of which having any benefit at all besides a choice of four bosses at the end.
The Fire dungeon actually includes a world-map-sided floor with no clues... that, once again, you're expected to pass through repeatedly on your way to kill bosses that you can only do one of per set per pass, ensuring 2-4 passes to get 'em all.
All in all, the WSC ports of FF1 and 2 are much better; the game systems include truly optional autotarget, run, and other conveniences, rather than forcing a complete nerfing on the player. While they've only been released in Japanese, there's nothing in the games that can't be done with only a quick bit of pattern-matching from a FAQ, and a bit of luck and cleverness on Ebay or the like can net yeu the system for $20 and games (which also include FF4, released as 2 in the US; Makaitoushi SaGa, released here as FF Legend; and Front Mission) for $10.
No, but you'll damn well have to have access to the data if you're audited.
And, reading my own link, I see that racing games and Bomberman, among others, had support. orz
The Saturn Net.Link was indeed available. Support was mainly limited to FPS and RTS, IIRC; never owned one and too lazy to rummage through the magazine stack.
That said, the SNES and Genesis also had the XBand 3rd-party line of modems, so by this time a game-use modem attatchment wasn't completely new.
In most places, the electors are chosen by the direct popular vote; they're typically, if not bound by state law to vote for the candidate they claimed they would, at least chosen from among party loyalists.
Rant notwithstanding, he's correct. Under the basic law of the United States, the basic law of the United States takes preeminence over treaties. While this may sound rather arrogant, its main effect is to ensure that treaties don't interfere with the civil rights of the population---rather similar, in ways, to the reluctance or refusal of various European nations to allow extradition in cases of capital crimes.
There're both historical and economic reasons.
1) When the US game market crashed in the '80s due to saturation and shovelware, the Japanese market didn't. Until the release of the XBox, every console that received mass acceptance was created by a Japanese company---the Americans had mostly given up on the market, their efforts limited to the 3D0 (backed mainly by Matsushita/Panasonic) and various attempts at reviving the Atari name.
2) Due to this, Japanese designers of hardware had a financial head-start, which transformed into a technical proficiency head start for Japanese devs, who began work on most consoles months to years before American ones.
3) While Japanese population is only half that of the US, PC gaming is less common, console gaming is more, and in any case the population of Japan is at least on an approximate level with that of natively-English-speaking Europe---and, in addition, the large Southeast Asian market traditionally uses Japanese hardware and software, increasing numbers.
4) Due to the realities of Japanese population density, niche games are somewhat easier to promote---distribute and advertise in a few key cities, and you can sell to a majority of the population. This means a greater variety of games, from a greater variety of developers; in general, the huge publisher overheads in the US (massive land area) and Europe (5 or 6 languages necessary) are reduced.
As someone who -uses- it, I'll note that it refers to itself as "Winny" and not "WinNY".
It sounds odd, but check the grocery store brands - in New England/Capital District New York, both Price Chopper and Stop & Shop's diet colas use Splenda, at a price of $1/3l (PC) and $1.25/2l (SS).
Winny automatically shares nothing but files in encrypted cache (contains, but is not limited to, files selected for download.)
However, a recent virus named "KINTAMA" shares both screenshots and LZH files containing the entire contents of the desktop.
In roughly reverse order of probability:
It's not a console---they wouldn't be announcing for PS2 or XBox if it was.
It's not exclusivity for either---obviously, given the previous.
It may be a handheld---a shrunken version of the HK pirate Treamcast. If anyone's stupid enough to try to launch a handheld between the GBA, DS, and PSP, it's Sega.
It may be a new arcade platform, possibly with a home enthusiast version a la Neo-Geo---Sammy owns bits of Sega, all of SNK, the Neo-Geo itself is dying, and Sega is still heavily involved in the arcade business.
It may be something like Nintendo's "megaton" announcement---A game with dense appeal to the one target audience the quote was aimed at, and little to others. Candidates: New Sonic, new Shenmue, new Panzer Dragoon, English-language Sakura Taisen, new Phantasy Star.
Other way around - Iria's a spinoff of it.
... The point of Akamai is that you're given a link to a server close, bandwidth-wise, to your location; a direct link will offer slower downloading.