While creating an LP is lossy, the loss is still a natural loss and not a loss with artifacting.
You mention the lack of a high end on many old LPs and you're correct, but you have to take into consideration that they were mastering this music for the baseline rig of the day. When you try to make things sound good on a bad stereo, the first thing you do is lower the high end because it sounds like a tin can without decent tweeters.
Modern LPs are missing a bit of the warmth that old LPs are because they're mastered differently. But, as someone who owns a lot of modern vinyl and cds, modern vinyl really sings with a decent record player and a good amp and sounds absolutely fantastic. I definitely enjoy listening to it more than the digital alternative...although I have a much, much higher end system than most. I'd refer to modern vinyl as sounding smooth more-so than warm.
Agreed. I think the Beatles inspiration at the time is worth a hell of a lot more than their music.
* - Paul pushed Badfinger and basically kick starting the Power Pop genre * - Lennon inspired Harry Nilsson to release some absolutely classic albums * - They acted as a think tank for George Harrison. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass is worth more than the collective whole of the Beatles catalog, imo * - Basically caused Brian Wilson to go nuts. We wouldn't have Pet Sounds or Smile without the Beatles. * - Without the Beatles we wouldn't have The Monkees. Without The Monkees, Michael Nesmith probably wouldn't have had a solo career. Michael Nesmith basically stands in equal footing with Graham Parsons as far as creating the Alt Country genre. You can think of Michael Nesmith and Graham Parsons as the 70s versions of Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy as far as Alt Country importance goes.
You can't deny the impact they had at the time, although you can debate the merits of a lot of their catalog until you're blue in the face.
TMobile sold out of the HTC HD2 within hours of launch. What more do you want?
WP7 looks promising, but it's not going to make people cancel contracts to jump over to AT&T or TMo to switch to the platform. I'm guessing you'll see slow adoption over the course of the next year as contracts are expiring. I think most people are taking a "wait and see" approach to WP7.
I will say this, next year when I'm in the market for a phone, it will probably be down to a WP7 phone or whatever Palm/HP has cooking up. I love WebOS, but I also love my Zune and the idea of a phone that expands on what the Zune HD has been doing is really appealing to me.
And people will keep buying it because they perfected the formula from the onset. As much crap as everyone (including me) gives Nintendo, they've pretty much proven they have the market cornered on consistently being able to produce top notch platformers. I know many people who buy all of Nintendo's consoles JUST to play the first party platformers. Their third party support is bleak, so selling consoles based on first party titles must say something.
Basically, the more social the teen is the more likely they are to date and have sex. Also, the more social the teen is the more likely they are going to go to parties that have alcohol and drugs.
We need to stop giving parents new "warning signs" to worry about. Unless their texting is way out of hand, there is nothing to worry about. In fact, the more social our children are, the more likely that they're well adjusted and, in reality, I'd rather have a well adjusted child that has sex (providing that it's safe sex) and/or experimented by drinking a couple beers at a party rather than have a child who is unhappy and/or not well-adjusted.
Basically, the more social a teen is the more likely it is that they're going to date and have sex. Also, the more social your teen is, the more likely it is that they are going to go to parties with alcohol and drugs.
What's new here? Stop giving parents new "warning signs" to start worrying and freaking out about. I would be happy that my kid is social, unless it's out of hand, because it generally means they're more well adjusted.
I watch a lot of video online...some of it flash based, some of it h.264 based, and the effect on my laptop battery life is minimal to the point its unnoticeable. I'm sure that H.264 is more efficient, but if I'd say that the net effect would be 5 minutes more battery life. Scaling that up to the battery life of an Air, I might expect a net hit difference of 15-20 minutes less battery life compared to H.264...unless Flash for OSX is just absurdly less efficient than Flash for W7. That's nothing to gawk at, but this is also based on nothing but assumption. I really would be interested in a side by side Flash vs. H.264 battery life test.
While I don't disagree that the Dept of the Interior is definitely corrupt, I wouldn't single out this specific instance as corruption in work. In my view, it's just as likely that it's ignorance in work where the people writing the requirements really don't understand how computers work.
If you're putting out a blockbuster title, wouldn't you want it to be accessible to the masses. Like it or not, the hardcore gaming community is not the large focus of the game industry anymore now that the market has been expanded so much. FPS players are just now feeling the hit because FPSs are the current flavor of the week. RPG and platformer gamers have already gone through these expanded market growing pains.
The thing you have to remember is that you're not forgotten. It might seem like for every 10-20 games that come out, only one is challenging...but you also have to remember that we're pumping out 10x's as many games as we used to. You're basically getting the same amount of difficult/hardcore-oriented games, there's just a ton of mainstream friendly games to wade through now to find them.
I'm currently experiencing the opposite problem. It seems that a lot of the games I'm playing are just extremely hard. For example, I've played through all the 2D Castlevania games and beat them all. Some were easy, some were difficult. But none of them were brutal. I picked up the new Castlevania game that just came out for the Xbox/PS3 and it's killing me. I've found myself putting it on diaper baby mode multiple times just to get by mini boss type encounters. Shmups, fighting games, and side scrollers aren't getting any easier, either...probably due to the fact that these genre's are no longer "main stream" and appeal to hardcore gamers a lot more than your average or casual gamers.
It's not the same, though. The point that Ray Ozzie is trying to make is that, at some point, Microsoft needs to stop following the industry and become the one the industry follows again.
Windows Phone 7 is great, but Apple was the one who popularized smart phones as we currently know them. Tablets are coming to the market with Microsoft software on them, but Apple was the one who popularized tablets. For years, before the iPod changed Apple, Apple made ends meet because they had a fervent fan base and catered to them. It didn't hurt Apple that they were always playing catch up because they had total control over their environment. They made money on software and hardware. Microsoft is in the unique position of being a primarily software based company. If sales of Windows plummet, they don't have that kind of closed system like Apple has to keep them chugging along. Additionally, Microsoft is such a huge company at this point, they have to be an industry innovator again or face crumbling apart.
I agree that Microsoft is making waves to change their image. They're the "cool" company (in the US) when it comes to videogame consoles and no one EVER saw that coming. Zune has its diehards (and rightfully so, the Zune HD is terrific hardware). Windows Phone 7 might get its following, that's yet to be seen. And Windows 7 is just a pleasure to use, IMO. But the PC market is shrinking at a rapid pace and the only other market that MS is #1 in right now is videogame consoles...and that's not the cash cow that Windows and Office are.
Microsoft is literally sleeping on the chance to expand the xbox brand and make it the only box you need in your house for entertainment. Xbox SHOULD be the industry leader in iptv right now, but they're not. And that's a crying shame...because our other two players are Google (who's going to eventually throw something free on the table and leave it to a hundred vendors to shape it into a usable product) or Sony (who's going to try to tie everything into purchases and season passes, not true iptv) and I think that Microsoft, as a company that's not tied to advertisement (Google) or owns huge assets of media (Sony) could shape this market in a way that's good for consumers and runs off of hardware that's already existing. It would also secure Microsoft's spot as console leader for generations to come.
Microsoft is sleeping on all sorts of opportunities now. Ray Ozzie, stating this as an insider, is really a doom and gloom statement from an investors standpoint.
This continuing feud between Apple and Google does nothing but advertise their product and, in essence, works to even further lock out competition. It's really a shame, when it comes down to it.
If you really want to support the only mobile OS that comes close to being open, buy a Palm Pre or the new Pre 2 coming out. The OS is fantastic and Palm has purposely left a backdoor in the system. You download tons of customizations and alter the OS to your liking. Palm doesn't purposely brick "jailbroken" phones, they embrace the patch community and have actively hired talented homebrew programmers and patch creators. It's a nice breath of fresh air, if you ask me and, IMO, the stock WebOS software (despite its flaws) is the best mobile OS on the market. You truly don't see how beautifully designed it is until you've lived with one for a month. It just works and makes sense.
I wish that blowing on a PSX disc worked. If so, I wouldn't have gone through 3 PSXs and 2 PS2s due to laser failure.
In retrospect, its a shame we didn't know that blowing on the NES cartridges was actually making the situation worse instead of better. If we would have used a decent, non-harsh cleaning solution (not alcohol or ammonia) when our games started acting up, instead of blowing (which corrodes the contacts over time), the issue wouldn't have been nearly as bad. I have new pins in my NES and many of my old games won't play due to abuse (blowing and cleaning with rubbing alcohol too often).
Right. There's a reason why even technology companies usually default to buying in mass from Dell or Gateway. They have high dollar business analysts sit in with their lead IT guy and do cost analysis. When taking all the variables into account, it just makes sense to let someone else do the work for you. Get one system, set it up to spec, and have an intern or help desk guy sit there and mirror each system and apply the account settings. In other words, in less they're looking to cut down on IT staff and you're trying to invent a way to stay employed, it's easier and frees you up to do what they pay you to do. Why should they pay an IT guy $30/h to build PCs when Dell pays someone peanuts to do the same job?
The only time I've ever seen hand built computers make sense in a company setting is tiny offices (under 20 systems) or in special cases (i.e. you just hired a CAD guy and need a computer with some extra horsepower). Most offices could get away with Pentium 4 systems and the workers probably wouldn't notice. Finding a way to cut corners and get more bells/whistles really isn't needed in an office environment.
Well, the joke has been since we learned that the PC version was going to pre-date the PS3 version by half a year that the PC version was nothing but a giant beta test for the real PS3 version. It looks like this turned out to be true. I played the beta for a couple hours and gave up. Hopefully they can salvage the rest from this train wreck. It has potential...it just still feels like a beta.
I don't think that's the reason for FFXIII's relative failure at all. You can always multi-disc games, so space isn't an issue.
The issue was the convoluted story. The game was intentionally linear through most of the game because of the way they tried to push the story. I'll give them a little credit...I see what they were trying to do and it might have worked if the story and characters were stronger. Instead of being excited about the characters and having the linear gameplay push a sense of urgency, most disliked most of the characters and got tired of trying to figure out what l'cie, fal'cie, etc. was, who you were, who you were routing for, etc. You went far too long without really developing any skills, as well.
Linear doesn't have to be bad, it just has to be interesting and have a strong story and battle system to follow. Both of these put me to sleep. And, while the game was beautiful, very little about it screamed Final Fantasy to me.
Well, if you want to put it into perspective, I paid ~ $70 a pop for Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo Edition, and Super Street Fighter II on the SNES. I bought a ton of platforms back in the day as well...most of which were rehashes of the last in the series.
World at War is considered a joke because of it's multiplayer patch. Many companies do DLC the right way. For example, Boarderlands provided a compelling single and multiplayer game from the get go, then provided 4 different DLCs...three of them being excellent additions to the game. While I bought platformer after platformer in the 80s and 90s, now there are games such as Little Big Planet that have infinite available stages.
It's hard to do a direct correlation because the game industry has changed so much over the past 30 years. I definitely think we have it good compared to how things used to be. In retrospect, it's ridiculous how much I spent on gaming as a kid when you take into account inflation and what you get now vs. what you got then.
I like buying DLC because it gives me extra content with games I love and own. I don't like games with a thousand different sequels.
Google's committed towards Android 3.0 being geared towards tablet usage as well as phone usage. It would be silly of Google to create two separate OSs geared towards the same purpose. I never understood how the Chrome OS/tablet misconception got started.
I don't know about his answer, but my guess would probably be compensation and corporate environment. Most game companies design work environments to appeal to younger professionals. Once you get to a certain point, realize most of your peers are younger, you have no upward mobility at the company, and your programmer friends working outside of videogameland are making substantially more money, your love for the industry wains...not to mention the fact that the deadlines are unrealistic and you're likely to be the mature person on the team who actually gets stuff done.
The margins are rough enough in the game industry these days that I can hardly blame companies, though. It's a lot easier to hire younger folk who will work for less to be in a cool industry than it is to hire more experienced people who need to feed their family.
I get ChromeOS. I don't get it on a tablet. It's obviously focused towards netbooks and pc's where you want an "instant on" option. It's designed to be used like a desktop browser...with a mouse or track pad. Tablets should have a mobile OS designed around touch screens.
As someone who lives less than a mile away from Full Sail and knows many present students and current professors, my gut instinct (except in very select cases) is to steer away from the Full Sail pyramid scheme...a viscous cycle of students graduating, not finding work, and becoming full sail professors as the school continues to grow and take over the corner of Semoran and University.
The only people I know who have graduated from Full Sail and actually use their degree are two of my friends who do freelance video production. Sure, it's an accelerated program (which can be nice), but most industries don't take the degree very seriously. You're often taking courses with students that just recently graduated and have no real world experience and fighting over lab time. The same could be said of a university; however, grad students generally only teach 1000 and 2000 level courses at a university and, at a university, you're not paying nearly as much.
I would definitely go online and read students opinion of the school before dedicating that much money and time to a program. I have a feeling that once you start reading students and employers opinion of the program, it'll seem a lot more shady than those ads make it out to be.
Go to a 4 year university, make friends in the computer science program, and program in your free time. You'll have a lot more free time going to a university, the information won't be crammed down your throat at an accelerated speed, and if the video game job doesn't pan out....at least you have a computer science degree and you can get good jobs elsewhere!
You can't have it both ways. With the same logic, you could have picked up that same game while you were already at Target and had zero additional impact. If the truck is already driving by your house, I'm sure you're already driving by the store at some point.
Sure, the UPS truck is already out making rounds, but you add in all the extra stops for UPS/USPS/FedEx across the country due to people buying singular items off of Amazon just because it was a bit cheaper than the store and that adds up quickly. There are other tedious things to take into consideration too, such as bulk transport/freight vs. the trucks and airplanes shipping services use, etc. I don't know how that would pan out and I'm sure it'd be a full time job to straighten it out. Additionally, I think we also have to look at the fact that this article is focused on the UK. I'm assuming that a good deal of the online purchases in the UK come from outside of the UK, so it makes a bit more sense.
One last point, you make the assumption that the article is talking about environmental impact in the form of gas. You have to factor in all of the packaging (boxes, popcorn, plastic bags/bubbles, etc) involved vs. the pallets the store receives. Again, what doesn't negligible at first adds up over time.
Granted, the reason most of us shop online is because it can be ridiculously cheaper. We all do it and I don't see any of us changing anytime soon...but the article isn't "does the money saved in our pocket outweight the damage to the environment," it's "ordering a bunch of small things off the internet is wasteful." I know people with Amazon Prime accounts that will buy the silliest things off the internet just because they can.
I have a friend who claims to have beaten Battletoads as well. IMO, this game is a "pics or it didn't happen" situation. When I was a kid, I actually had a disposable camera to take pictures of games I'd beat. Other kids just wouldn't believe you beat some of these game otherwise. I beat some bad games, too...but in the 80s, you played what was available.
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While creating an LP is lossy, the loss is still a natural loss and not a loss with artifacting.
You mention the lack of a high end on many old LPs and you're correct, but you have to take into consideration that they were mastering this music for the baseline rig of the day. When you try to make things sound good on a bad stereo, the first thing you do is lower the high end because it sounds like a tin can without decent tweeters.
Modern LPs are missing a bit of the warmth that old LPs are because they're mastered differently. But, as someone who owns a lot of modern vinyl and cds, modern vinyl really sings with a decent record player and a good amp and sounds absolutely fantastic. I definitely enjoy listening to it more than the digital alternative...although I have a much, much higher end system than most. I'd refer to modern vinyl as sounding smooth more-so than warm.
Agreed. I think the Beatles inspiration at the time is worth a hell of a lot more than their music.
* - Paul pushed Badfinger and basically kick starting the Power Pop genre
* - Lennon inspired Harry Nilsson to release some absolutely classic albums
* - They acted as a think tank for George Harrison. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass is worth more than the collective whole of the Beatles catalog, imo
* - Basically caused Brian Wilson to go nuts. We wouldn't have Pet Sounds or Smile without the Beatles.
* - Without the Beatles we wouldn't have The Monkees. Without The Monkees, Michael Nesmith probably wouldn't have had a solo career. Michael Nesmith basically stands in equal footing with Graham Parsons as far as creating the Alt Country genre. You can think of Michael Nesmith and Graham Parsons as the 70s versions of Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy as far as Alt Country importance goes.
You can't deny the impact they had at the time, although you can debate the merits of a lot of their catalog until you're blue in the face.
TMobile sold out of the HTC HD2 within hours of launch. What more do you want?
WP7 looks promising, but it's not going to make people cancel contracts to jump over to AT&T or TMo to switch to the platform. I'm guessing you'll see slow adoption over the course of the next year as contracts are expiring. I think most people are taking a "wait and see" approach to WP7.
I will say this, next year when I'm in the market for a phone, it will probably be down to a WP7 phone or whatever Palm/HP has cooking up. I love WebOS, but I also love my Zune and the idea of a phone that expands on what the Zune HD has been doing is really appealing to me.
And people will keep buying it because they perfected the formula from the onset. As much crap as everyone (including me) gives Nintendo, they've pretty much proven they have the market cornered on consistently being able to produce top notch platformers. I know many people who buy all of Nintendo's consoles JUST to play the first party platformers. Their third party support is bleak, so selling consoles based on first party titles must say something.
Basically, the more social the teen is the more likely they are to date and have sex. Also, the more social the teen is the more likely they are going to go to parties that have alcohol and drugs.
We need to stop giving parents new "warning signs" to worry about. Unless their texting is way out of hand, there is nothing to worry about. In fact, the more social our children are, the more likely that they're well adjusted and, in reality, I'd rather have a well adjusted child that has sex (providing that it's safe sex) and/or experimented by drinking a couple beers at a party rather than have a child who is unhappy and/or not well-adjusted.
Basically, the more social a teen is the more likely it is that they're going to date and have sex. Also, the more social your teen is, the more likely it is that they are going to go to parties with alcohol and drugs.
What's new here? Stop giving parents new "warning signs" to start worrying and freaking out about. I would be happy that my kid is social, unless it's out of hand, because it generally means they're more well adjusted.
I watch a lot of video online...some of it flash based, some of it h.264 based, and the effect on my laptop battery life is minimal to the point its unnoticeable. I'm sure that H.264 is more efficient, but if I'd say that the net effect would be 5 minutes more battery life. Scaling that up to the battery life of an Air, I might expect a net hit difference of 15-20 minutes less battery life compared to H.264...unless Flash for OSX is just absurdly less efficient than Flash for W7. That's nothing to gawk at, but this is also based on nothing but assumption. I really would be interested in a side by side Flash vs. H.264 battery life test.
While I don't disagree that the Dept of the Interior is definitely corrupt, I wouldn't single out this specific instance as corruption in work. In my view, it's just as likely that it's ignorance in work where the people writing the requirements really don't understand how computers work.
If you're putting out a blockbuster title, wouldn't you want it to be accessible to the masses. Like it or not, the hardcore gaming community is not the large focus of the game industry anymore now that the market has been expanded so much. FPS players are just now feeling the hit because FPSs are the current flavor of the week. RPG and platformer gamers have already gone through these expanded market growing pains.
The thing you have to remember is that you're not forgotten. It might seem like for every 10-20 games that come out, only one is challenging...but you also have to remember that we're pumping out 10x's as many games as we used to. You're basically getting the same amount of difficult/hardcore-oriented games, there's just a ton of mainstream friendly games to wade through now to find them.
I'm currently experiencing the opposite problem. It seems that a lot of the games I'm playing are just extremely hard. For example, I've played through all the 2D Castlevania games and beat them all. Some were easy, some were difficult. But none of them were brutal. I picked up the new Castlevania game that just came out for the Xbox/PS3 and it's killing me. I've found myself putting it on diaper baby mode multiple times just to get by mini boss type encounters. Shmups, fighting games, and side scrollers aren't getting any easier, either...probably due to the fact that these genre's are no longer "main stream" and appeal to hardcore gamers a lot more than your average or casual gamers.
It's not the same, though. The point that Ray Ozzie is trying to make is that, at some point, Microsoft needs to stop following the industry and become the one the industry follows again.
Windows Phone 7 is great, but Apple was the one who popularized smart phones as we currently know them. Tablets are coming to the market with Microsoft software on them, but Apple was the one who popularized tablets. For years, before the iPod changed Apple, Apple made ends meet because they had a fervent fan base and catered to them. It didn't hurt Apple that they were always playing catch up because they had total control over their environment. They made money on software and hardware. Microsoft is in the unique position of being a primarily software based company. If sales of Windows plummet, they don't have that kind of closed system like Apple has to keep them chugging along. Additionally, Microsoft is such a huge company at this point, they have to be an industry innovator again or face crumbling apart.
I agree that Microsoft is making waves to change their image. They're the "cool" company (in the US) when it comes to videogame consoles and no one EVER saw that coming. Zune has its diehards (and rightfully so, the Zune HD is terrific hardware). Windows Phone 7 might get its following, that's yet to be seen. And Windows 7 is just a pleasure to use, IMO. But the PC market is shrinking at a rapid pace and the only other market that MS is #1 in right now is videogame consoles...and that's not the cash cow that Windows and Office are.
Microsoft is literally sleeping on the chance to expand the xbox brand and make it the only box you need in your house for entertainment. Xbox SHOULD be the industry leader in iptv right now, but they're not. And that's a crying shame...because our other two players are Google (who's going to eventually throw something free on the table and leave it to a hundred vendors to shape it into a usable product) or Sony (who's going to try to tie everything into purchases and season passes, not true iptv) and I think that Microsoft, as a company that's not tied to advertisement (Google) or owns huge assets of media (Sony) could shape this market in a way that's good for consumers and runs off of hardware that's already existing. It would also secure Microsoft's spot as console leader for generations to come.
Microsoft is sleeping on all sorts of opportunities now. Ray Ozzie, stating this as an insider, is really a doom and gloom statement from an investors standpoint.
This continuing feud between Apple and Google does nothing but advertise their product and, in essence, works to even further lock out competition. It's really a shame, when it comes down to it.
If you really want to support the only mobile OS that comes close to being open, buy a Palm Pre or the new Pre 2 coming out. The OS is fantastic and Palm has purposely left a backdoor in the system. You download tons of customizations and alter the OS to your liking. Palm doesn't purposely brick "jailbroken" phones, they embrace the patch community and have actively hired talented homebrew programmers and patch creators. It's a nice breath of fresh air, if you ask me and, IMO, the stock WebOS software (despite its flaws) is the best mobile OS on the market. You truly don't see how beautifully designed it is until you've lived with one for a month. It just works and makes sense.
I wish that blowing on a PSX disc worked. If so, I wouldn't have gone through 3 PSXs and 2 PS2s due to laser failure.
In retrospect, its a shame we didn't know that blowing on the NES cartridges was actually making the situation worse instead of better. If we would have used a decent, non-harsh cleaning solution (not alcohol or ammonia) when our games started acting up, instead of blowing (which corrodes the contacts over time), the issue wouldn't have been nearly as bad. I have new pins in my NES and many of my old games won't play due to abuse (blowing and cleaning with rubbing alcohol too often).
Right. There's a reason why even technology companies usually default to buying in mass from Dell or Gateway. They have high dollar business analysts sit in with their lead IT guy and do cost analysis. When taking all the variables into account, it just makes sense to let someone else do the work for you. Get one system, set it up to spec, and have an intern or help desk guy sit there and mirror each system and apply the account settings. In other words, in less they're looking to cut down on IT staff and you're trying to invent a way to stay employed, it's easier and frees you up to do what they pay you to do. Why should they pay an IT guy $30/h to build PCs when Dell pays someone peanuts to do the same job?
The only time I've ever seen hand built computers make sense in a company setting is tiny offices (under 20 systems) or in special cases (i.e. you just hired a CAD guy and need a computer with some extra horsepower). Most offices could get away with Pentium 4 systems and the workers probably wouldn't notice. Finding a way to cut corners and get more bells/whistles really isn't needed in an office environment.
Well, the joke has been since we learned that the PC version was going to pre-date the PS3 version by half a year that the PC version was nothing but a giant beta test for the real PS3 version. It looks like this turned out to be true. I played the beta for a couple hours and gave up. Hopefully they can salvage the rest from this train wreck. It has potential...it just still feels like a beta.
I don't think that's the reason for FFXIII's relative failure at all. You can always multi-disc games, so space isn't an issue.
The issue was the convoluted story. The game was intentionally linear through most of the game because of the way they tried to push the story. I'll give them a little credit...I see what they were trying to do and it might have worked if the story and characters were stronger. Instead of being excited about the characters and having the linear gameplay push a sense of urgency, most disliked most of the characters and got tired of trying to figure out what l'cie, fal'cie, etc. was, who you were, who you were routing for, etc. You went far too long without really developing any skills, as well.
Linear doesn't have to be bad, it just has to be interesting and have a strong story and battle system to follow. Both of these put me to sleep. And, while the game was beautiful, very little about it screamed Final Fantasy to me.
Well...we can't all be Dexter's now, can we?
Well, if you want to put it into perspective, I paid ~ $70 a pop for Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo Edition, and Super Street Fighter II on the SNES. I bought a ton of platforms back in the day as well...most of which were rehashes of the last in the series.
World at War is considered a joke because of it's multiplayer patch. Many companies do DLC the right way. For example, Boarderlands provided a compelling single and multiplayer game from the get go, then provided 4 different DLCs...three of them being excellent additions to the game. While I bought platformer after platformer in the 80s and 90s, now there are games such as Little Big Planet that have infinite available stages.
It's hard to do a direct correlation because the game industry has changed so much over the past 30 years. I definitely think we have it good compared to how things used to be. In retrospect, it's ridiculous how much I spent on gaming as a kid when you take into account inflation and what you get now vs. what you got then.
I like buying DLC because it gives me extra content with games I love and own. I don't like games with a thousand different sequels.
Google's committed towards Android 3.0 being geared towards tablet usage as well as phone usage. It would be silly of Google to create two separate OSs geared towards the same purpose. I never understood how the Chrome OS/tablet misconception got started.
I don't know about his answer, but my guess would probably be compensation and corporate environment. Most game companies design work environments to appeal to younger professionals. Once you get to a certain point, realize most of your peers are younger, you have no upward mobility at the company, and your programmer friends working outside of videogameland are making substantially more money, your love for the industry wains...not to mention the fact that the deadlines are unrealistic and you're likely to be the mature person on the team who actually gets stuff done.
The margins are rough enough in the game industry these days that I can hardly blame companies, though. It's a lot easier to hire younger folk who will work for less to be in a cool industry than it is to hire more experienced people who need to feed their family.
I get ChromeOS. I don't get it on a tablet. It's obviously focused towards netbooks and pc's where you want an "instant on" option. It's designed to be used like a desktop browser...with a mouse or track pad. Tablets should have a mobile OS designed around touch screens.
As someone who lives less than a mile away from Full Sail and knows many present students and current professors, my gut instinct (except in very select cases) is to steer away from the Full Sail pyramid scheme...a viscous cycle of students graduating, not finding work, and becoming full sail professors as the school continues to grow and take over the corner of Semoran and University.
The only people I know who have graduated from Full Sail and actually use their degree are two of my friends who do freelance video production. Sure, it's an accelerated program (which can be nice), but most industries don't take the degree very seriously. You're often taking courses with students that just recently graduated and have no real world experience and fighting over lab time. The same could be said of a university; however, grad students generally only teach 1000 and 2000 level courses at a university and, at a university, you're not paying nearly as much.
I would definitely go online and read students opinion of the school before dedicating that much money and time to a program. I have a feeling that once you start reading students and employers opinion of the program, it'll seem a lot more shady than those ads make it out to be.
Go to a 4 year university, make friends in the computer science program, and program in your free time. You'll have a lot more free time going to a university, the information won't be crammed down your throat at an accelerated speed, and if the video game job doesn't pan out....at least you have a computer science degree and you can get good jobs elsewhere!
You're feeding the trolls. The rule around here is "don't feed the trolls."
You can't have it both ways. With the same logic, you could have picked up that same game while you were already at Target and had zero additional impact. If the truck is already driving by your house, I'm sure you're already driving by the store at some point.
Sure, the UPS truck is already out making rounds, but you add in all the extra stops for UPS/USPS/FedEx across the country due to people buying singular items off of Amazon just because it was a bit cheaper than the store and that adds up quickly. There are other tedious things to take into consideration too, such as bulk transport/freight vs. the trucks and airplanes shipping services use, etc. I don't know how that would pan out and I'm sure it'd be a full time job to straighten it out. Additionally, I think we also have to look at the fact that this article is focused on the UK. I'm assuming that a good deal of the online purchases in the UK come from outside of the UK, so it makes a bit more sense.
One last point, you make the assumption that the article is talking about environmental impact in the form of gas. You have to factor in all of the packaging (boxes, popcorn, plastic bags/bubbles, etc) involved vs. the pallets the store receives. Again, what doesn't negligible at first adds up over time.
Granted, the reason most of us shop online is because it can be ridiculously cheaper. We all do it and I don't see any of us changing anytime soon...but the article isn't "does the money saved in our pocket outweight the damage to the environment," it's "ordering a bunch of small things off the internet is wasteful." I know people with Amazon Prime accounts that will buy the silliest things off the internet just because they can.
I have a friend who claims to have beaten Battletoads as well. IMO, this game is a "pics or it didn't happen" situation. When I was a kid, I actually had a disposable camera to take pictures of games I'd beat. Other kids just wouldn't believe you beat some of these game otherwise. I beat some bad games, too...but in the 80s, you played what was available.
The Adventure of Link wasn't all that hard, honestly.
You want difficult? Play Battletoads. I think that's the game that invented controller throwing.