10-15 years ago I bought a no name, Chinese made, ergonomic keyboard at a computer show on clearance for $5.
It's almost as if they took the action of the Model M, put it on an ergonomic keyboard. The thing that made this keyboard was outstanding was the fact that the footstand was in the right place...in the front of the keyboard! I'm well over 6 feet tall with broad shoulders. An ergonomic keyboard is almost a must. And, I've never found another keyboard like it since...
I really wish that Mike Gravel would have had more of a chance of winning the Democratic ticket. He's the only politician that I'm 100% positive would support this filibuster with every fiber of his being. Look at his filibuster record, it speaks for itself.
I think the main issue (and I'll pre-emptively say that, no, I didn't RTFA...I'm at work, what do you want from me) is exactly what is mis-stated. Our issue is with how we collect data, not how we search it.
Waaaay back when XML was being formed from SGML, one of the the big deals was that, one day (in a perfect world) we would be able to put all of our information in a giant database and be able to meta sort it to such a degree that finding a needle in the proverbial haystack would be a non-issue. One of the problems with how we collect data now is that there's no structure or form to the data. It's raw in the rawest sense.
We're human and, thus, we're concerned with how information is visually presented, not how information is stored. That will be the next great stepping stone. In theory, searching mechanisms should be exactly that, simple and mechanical in nature. With our ever growing storage ability, we should spend the time tagging our data as it's created and dealing with a database of information twice the size as what we would otherwise have, not spending our time coming up with more and more complex search tools.
Now that information "tags" are mainstream, I think we're finally on the verge of mainstream society understanding the importance of data structuring. It's also our next stepping stone to creating the semantic web. Spend money on semantics research, not on beating a dead horse.
I think the saddest thing is the fact that it will be remembered for plagiarism and not all the other WTF moments in the game, such as having a character named "Cranny Faggot." Seriously, what the hell was that guy thinking? You can't make that stuff up. Wow...just, wow...
Additionally, if you buy Windows and software for Windows, you have physical companies you can call for support, to bitch out, send death threats to, etc. Same goes for OSX. Linux, you're kind of on your own buddy. You can troll user groups for help, maybe even send one of the developers of whatever OSS you're trying to use an e-mail and get some response. But basically, you get what you pay for. Nothing. The software was free, figure it out or go home buddy.
When a business pays for software, it's for piece of mind and support to fall back on...especially in small business world.
The real handicap doesn't even begin at the 0.68% market share, it begins with the fact that the majority of that.68% are primarily used as servers or work machines. I would wage to bet that, disecting it even further, that the majority of installed Linux users (not counting that majority that are set up as servers) have it installed as a novelty or as a supplement to Windows.
Well, I guess the main question is, following capitalism, what are we all to do when everything is automated and industrialized? Our population is growing, yet our wealth distribution is going down and we're eliminating jobs through 'progress.' It's great that we can now get rid of the truly horrible jobs but, what are all these people to start doing? Sure, we have more desk jobs, engineering jobs, etc. than ever but there's still only a finite number of these to go around.
In the future we're going to eliminate so many jobs through advancement that we'll have no choice but to go towards a socialistic society...which I find ironic, because that's what capitalists fear the most.
Say what you want, I agree with the guy above you. The only complaint I had with the Gamecube controller was that the d-pad was too small. The positive thing is it was a true d-pad.
IMO, the major problem with all the current gen systems are the d-pad. The 360's d-pad is gummy and inaccurate for fighters. The PS3 has Sony's bastardized "4 button" d-pad. The Wii has a good d-pad, it's just too small. Will these companies ever realize that 2d and d-pads aren't dead? As long as there's fighting games coming out, we'll need good d-pads...and with huge fighters such as Street Fighter IV just around the corner, I'm going to have to buy new controllers with good d-pads or shell out big $$$ for joysticks just to play these with. And really, when I've got 4 generations of consoles, each with specialized controllers/joysticks/etc in my closet, I don't have room for any more crap. That goes for you too, stupid music games with giant drum kits.
Which is also up there with "is always your problem and nobody else's," IMO. Seriously, some people's only real choice is Verizon if they want service that works somewhat consistantly, so it's not their problem and nobody elses...it's basically an entire portion of the nation's problem.
Hate to break it to you buddy, but Verizon is the only provider that can reach a lot of places. For example, practically everyone out in the Wyoming/Idaho area use Verizon because it's the only service with reliable coverage, especially in mountainous areas.
The problem in my opinion is that players have the "Diablo" mentality where they want to level every 30 minutes and constantly get new, godly equipment.
The only way that I really see PvP working correctly is to have a system where leveling isn't the goal, but is a factor. For example, after you complete so many dungeons, explore so many places in the world, have more personal experience playing the game rather than "xp points"...then you advance a level. The level's wouldn't increase your hit points, mana point, etc. Rather they would allow for new, more difficult game content to be unlocked and possibly alter enemy AI to be more difficult and loot to be scaled to be suitable for new encounters. Of course, you would also be able to learn new abilities at the new level that wouldn't necessarily raise your power to a huge degree over the previous levels spells but, instead, would increase your utility and efficiency.
The key thing that the new levels would do would be to protect low level opponents from being attacked by much higher level opponents. The game would also have to be much more strategy oriented than current games.
I can understand what you mean. I personally haven't felt a Final Fantasy game has felt like a Final Fantasy game since VI came out. After that it was about spiky hair and gender bending.
I really wish that when companies take a loved franchise and alter it drastically that they just split it off into new IP. Personally, I like the Metroidvania's better than the old ones (with Castlevania IV holding a very dear place in my part), but I can definitely see how it would be off setting to people looking for a grittier, more "American" inspired CV.
No, I think what she really wants is for Obama's campaign to help her out with some of her campaign debt. The second she bows out, she's unable to accept money from his campaign or raise more campaign contributions. I'm sure she's angling for a VP seat as well, but the money is the largest part of the equation at this point.
I think you might be surprised. I'm the lonely democrat in an office full of right wing, red meat eating, gun packing republicans...and right now, only one person out of about 12 plan to vote for McCain over Obama. Really, I think a lot of people underestimate how much McCain is disliked by his own party.
This is the type of service you offer to milk your customers by charging them to watch advertisement AFTER you have a large fan base of fervent fanboys, not before.
It's #3, wrong market. Granted, I would consider myself in the dedicated gamer market and I own a Wii, but I think they're also going after the Madden/GTA/FPS crowds as well. Sure, the Wii's sales are through the roof but the thing you gotta remember is that most of the sales are to older folk. My bosses both have a Wii. EVEN THOUGH Wii Sports came with a bowling game, they BOTH went out and bought Brunswick Bowling. These are the kinda people the Wii's dealing with and this is part of the frustration that die hard Nintendo fans (such as myself) will face.
I would imagine so much recoding/graphics rework would have to be done to put it on the Wii that it's just plain out not worth the effort. Most gamers that own the Wii that will be dedicated enough to want to play SFIV also own a 360 or PS3.
They essentially did. It was called Capcom Fighting Evolution and featured characters from practically every Capcom fighting game. And it sucked. Bad. You just can't balance characters from games that were made to be played entirely different without changing them beyond recognition.
It works with Smash Bro's because you're taking a bunch of characters that weren't previously in fighting games and designing balanced play mechanics for each of them. Doesn't work when you're trying to figure out how to balance Street Fighter with Darkstalkers.
I don't think it was necessarily their fault this time around. I believe I remember Brad saying that, at the time, they were forced to release or abandon because of venture capitalists. So, they released the game with hopes that they could 1) fix the performance issues (which turned from a problem to a major problem after 250k people hit their servers all at once) and 2) Hopefully add the higher level content as people got higher level.
As is the case with so many MMO's these days, people played obsessively, hit level 50 in less than 2 weeks (which ended up not being so hard seeing that the high level game wasn't properly tweaked) and bad mouthing the game for having no high level game play. 3 months after release, a large chunk of the issues with the game were fixed. The Shaman were still screwed, their vision was changed at least 3 times after release, but most other classes (I believe one of the stealth classes was still majorly screwed) were complete, just not balanced.
The problem with these games is that there's just so much that goes into them. Investors want a WoW cash cow overnight and it's just not feasable. It's like writing a new revision of D&D, working the kinks out, then having to write code for it and work all the kinks out of it. While (personally) I think WoW stinks and is pretty much the arcade shooter of MMO's (..."back in my day we walked 4 hours to find our corpse, uphill, blindfolded, fallen beneath the world, with no food or water..."...), Blizzard did a few things right that most companies forget about. If you want a million gamers to play your game, make sure there's a million gamers who can play your game, that want to play your game, without having to upgrade their computer. Not only does it make creating the game easier, it makes optimizing it easier and gives you less problems in the long run.
Anyway, long story short, give Vanguard another chance (or a first chance). Even in the early days, it was a well envisioned MMORPG. It's personally the first MMORPG that's really captured my attention since Everquest (and to a smaller degree DAoC).
You can't honestly tell me that this leak wasn't intentional (or made up by rabid, scared fanboys) seeing that it was released on the eve of the release of the biggest MMO release in the past year, Age of Conan. I believe the preorders for AoC have already toppled 750k and, being an action oriented game, it probably stands a good chance to do fairly well even with the casual crowd.
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10-15 years ago I bought a no name, Chinese made, ergonomic keyboard at a computer show on clearance for $5.
It's almost as if they took the action of the Model M, put it on an ergonomic keyboard. The thing that made this keyboard was outstanding was the fact that the footstand was in the right place...in the front of the keyboard! I'm well over 6 feet tall with broad shoulders. An ergonomic keyboard is almost a must. And, I've never found another keyboard like it since...
I really wish that Mike Gravel would have had more of a chance of winning the Democratic ticket. He's the only politician that I'm 100% positive would support this filibuster with every fiber of his being. Look at his filibuster record, it speaks for itself.
I think the main issue (and I'll pre-emptively say that, no, I didn't RTFA...I'm at work, what do you want from me) is exactly what is mis-stated. Our issue is with how we collect data, not how we search it.
Waaaay back when XML was being formed from SGML, one of the the big deals was that, one day (in a perfect world) we would be able to put all of our information in a giant database and be able to meta sort it to such a degree that finding a needle in the proverbial haystack would be a non-issue. One of the problems with how we collect data now is that there's no structure or form to the data. It's raw in the rawest sense.
We're human and, thus, we're concerned with how information is visually presented, not how information is stored. That will be the next great stepping stone. In theory, searching mechanisms should be exactly that, simple and mechanical in nature. With our ever growing storage ability, we should spend the time tagging our data as it's created and dealing with a database of information twice the size as what we would otherwise have, not spending our time coming up with more and more complex search tools.
Now that information "tags" are mainstream, I think we're finally on the verge of mainstream society understanding the importance of data structuring. It's also our next stepping stone to creating the semantic web. Spend money on semantics research, not on beating a dead horse.
You can also cure AIDS with bleach. I still haven't seen anyone line up for the IV drip yet, though.
I think the saddest thing is the fact that it will be remembered for plagiarism and not all the other WTF moments in the game, such as having a character named "Cranny Faggot." Seriously, what the hell was that guy thinking? You can't make that stuff up. Wow...just, wow...
Additionally, if you buy Windows and software for Windows, you have physical companies you can call for support, to bitch out, send death threats to, etc. Same goes for OSX. Linux, you're kind of on your own buddy. You can troll user groups for help, maybe even send one of the developers of whatever OSS you're trying to use an e-mail and get some response. But basically, you get what you pay for. Nothing. The software was free, figure it out or go home buddy.
When a business pays for software, it's for piece of mind and support to fall back on...especially in small business world.
The real handicap doesn't even begin at the 0.68% market share, it begins with the fact that the majority of that .68% are primarily used as servers or work machines. I would wage to bet that, disecting it even further, that the majority of installed Linux users (not counting that majority that are set up as servers) have it installed as a novelty or as a supplement to Windows.
I think the term for this is "natural selection."
Well, I guess the main question is, following capitalism, what are we all to do when everything is automated and industrialized? Our population is growing, yet our wealth distribution is going down and we're eliminating jobs through 'progress.' It's great that we can now get rid of the truly horrible jobs but, what are all these people to start doing? Sure, we have more desk jobs, engineering jobs, etc. than ever but there's still only a finite number of these to go around.
In the future we're going to eliminate so many jobs through advancement that we'll have no choice but to go towards a socialistic society...which I find ironic, because that's what capitalists fear the most.
Say what you want, I agree with the guy above you. The only complaint I had with the Gamecube controller was that the d-pad was too small. The positive thing is it was a true d-pad.
IMO, the major problem with all the current gen systems are the d-pad. The 360's d-pad is gummy and inaccurate for fighters. The PS3 has Sony's bastardized "4 button" d-pad. The Wii has a good d-pad, it's just too small. Will these companies ever realize that 2d and d-pads aren't dead? As long as there's fighting games coming out, we'll need good d-pads...and with huge fighters such as Street Fighter IV just around the corner, I'm going to have to buy new controllers with good d-pads or shell out big $$$ for joysticks just to play these with. And really, when I've got 4 generations of consoles, each with specialized controllers/joysticks/etc in my closet, I don't have room for any more crap. That goes for you too, stupid music games with giant drum kits.
Which is also up there with "is always your problem and nobody else's," IMO. Seriously, some people's only real choice is Verizon if they want service that works somewhat consistantly, so it's not their problem and nobody elses...it's basically an entire portion of the nation's problem.
Hate to break it to you buddy, but Verizon is the only provider that can reach a lot of places. For example, practically everyone out in the Wyoming/Idaho area use Verizon because it's the only service with reliable coverage, especially in mountainous areas.
The problem in my opinion is that players have the "Diablo" mentality where they want to level every 30 minutes and constantly get new, godly equipment.
The only way that I really see PvP working correctly is to have a system where leveling isn't the goal, but is a factor. For example, after you complete so many dungeons, explore so many places in the world, have more personal experience playing the game rather than "xp points"...then you advance a level. The level's wouldn't increase your hit points, mana point, etc. Rather they would allow for new, more difficult game content to be unlocked and possibly alter enemy AI to be more difficult and loot to be scaled to be suitable for new encounters. Of course, you would also be able to learn new abilities at the new level that wouldn't necessarily raise your power to a huge degree over the previous levels spells but, instead, would increase your utility and efficiency.
The key thing that the new levels would do would be to protect low level opponents from being attacked by much higher level opponents. The game would also have to be much more strategy oriented than current games.
I was gonna say, gamers love the hell out of some pizza. Wouldn't it just be easier to tempt them with edible pizza?
I can understand what you mean. I personally haven't felt a Final Fantasy game has felt like a Final Fantasy game since VI came out. After that it was about spiky hair and gender bending.
I really wish that when companies take a loved franchise and alter it drastically that they just split it off into new IP. Personally, I like the Metroidvania's better than the old ones (with Castlevania IV holding a very dear place in my part), but I can definitely see how it would be off setting to people looking for a grittier, more "American" inspired CV.
No, I think what she really wants is for Obama's campaign to help her out with some of her campaign debt. The second she bows out, she's unable to accept money from his campaign or raise more campaign contributions. I'm sure she's angling for a VP seat as well, but the money is the largest part of the equation at this point.
I think you might be surprised. I'm the lonely democrat in an office full of right wing, red meat eating, gun packing republicans...and right now, only one person out of about 12 plan to vote for McCain over Obama. Really, I think a lot of people underestimate how much McCain is disliked by his own party.
I've been here, watching Sony build a gigantic empire only to see it crumble under the fail that is the PS3.
This is the type of service you offer to milk your customers by charging them to watch advertisement AFTER you have a large fan base of fervent fanboys, not before.
It's #3, wrong market. Granted, I would consider myself in the dedicated gamer market and I own a Wii, but I think they're also going after the Madden/GTA/FPS crowds as well. Sure, the Wii's sales are through the roof but the thing you gotta remember is that most of the sales are to older folk. My bosses both have a Wii. EVEN THOUGH Wii Sports came with a bowling game, they BOTH went out and bought Brunswick Bowling. These are the kinda people the Wii's dealing with and this is part of the frustration that die hard Nintendo fans (such as myself) will face.
I would imagine so much recoding/graphics rework would have to be done to put it on the Wii that it's just plain out not worth the effort. Most gamers that own the Wii that will be dedicated enough to want to play SFIV also own a 360 or PS3.
They essentially did. It was called Capcom Fighting Evolution and featured characters from practically every Capcom fighting game. And it sucked. Bad. You just can't balance characters from games that were made to be played entirely different without changing them beyond recognition.
It works with Smash Bro's because you're taking a bunch of characters that weren't previously in fighting games and designing balanced play mechanics for each of them. Doesn't work when you're trying to figure out how to balance Street Fighter with Darkstalkers.
Dude, that's old skool. It's all about Megaman Battle Network these days.
I don't think it was necessarily their fault this time around. I believe I remember Brad saying that, at the time, they were forced to release or abandon because of venture capitalists. So, they released the game with hopes that they could 1) fix the performance issues (which turned from a problem to a major problem after 250k people hit their servers all at once) and 2) Hopefully add the higher level content as people got higher level.
As is the case with so many MMO's these days, people played obsessively, hit level 50 in less than 2 weeks (which ended up not being so hard seeing that the high level game wasn't properly tweaked) and bad mouthing the game for having no high level game play. 3 months after release, a large chunk of the issues with the game were fixed. The Shaman were still screwed, their vision was changed at least 3 times after release, but most other classes (I believe one of the stealth classes was still majorly screwed) were complete, just not balanced.
The problem with these games is that there's just so much that goes into them. Investors want a WoW cash cow overnight and it's just not feasable. It's like writing a new revision of D&D, working the kinks out, then having to write code for it and work all the kinks out of it. While (personally) I think WoW stinks and is pretty much the arcade shooter of MMO's (..."back in my day we walked 4 hours to find our corpse, uphill, blindfolded, fallen beneath the world, with no food or water..."...), Blizzard did a few things right that most companies forget about. If you want a million gamers to play your game, make sure there's a million gamers who can play your game, that want to play your game, without having to upgrade their computer. Not only does it make creating the game easier, it makes optimizing it easier and gives you less problems in the long run.
Anyway, long story short, give Vanguard another chance (or a first chance). Even in the early days, it was a well envisioned MMORPG. It's personally the first MMORPG that's really captured my attention since Everquest (and to a smaller degree DAoC).
You can't honestly tell me that this leak wasn't intentional (or made up by rabid, scared fanboys) seeing that it was released on the eve of the release of the biggest MMO release in the past year, Age of Conan. I believe the preorders for AoC have already toppled 750k and, being an action oriented game, it probably stands a good chance to do fairly well even with the casual crowd.