"However, the one thing that I am now wondering is if it'll be comfortbale to hold and manipulate over an hour (or several hour) long gaming session."
From what I'm hearing, you don't have to hold the Wiimote at arm's length to play it -- you can just hold it relaxed, like a regular game controller, and make movements with small flicks of the wrist. If you're sitting down and resting your elbow on an armrest or a leg, this would be even easier.
Here's a Wired blog about Wii's "Red Steel" that confirms the plays-better-without-arms-length-waving anecdote.
I've gotten off regular sodas now, and stick to the diet ones to keep my weight under control. I find the flavored diet sodas to be rather appealing, as I can drink them without a guilty conscience and switch tastes for variety.
Diet Cherry Coke (with or without Vanilla) is nice, but for my money nothing beats Cherry Diet Pepsi. Diet Coke/Pepsi with Vanilla is also good, and I'll occasionally go with the lime-flavored ones. There's also Diet Mountain Dew Code Red, but that's just near impossible to find...
If you just take the free phones your provider offers, then games won't be that great.
Dopey me, and here I thought it was the responsibility of developers to write quality games for their phone! I didn't know the real solution was to diss your market for not buying better gear...
As someone who's owned two Atari Lynxes and three cell phones with color screens for gaming, I can state firsthand that I wish the phones had screens as good as the Lynxes's's's.
* The LCD screens on most phones have horribly high latency, making action games hard to play.
* The low horsepower of most phones prevent development of complex games.
I admit, I used to be big on cell phone games when I got my first phone that supported them. But after getting burned with a half-dozen asstastic titles, I realized that a PDA or a Gameboy would be far better for gaming, and broke the habit. The only person in our home who plays cell phone games these days is my son, and even he's tired of the simplistic action and other shortcomings.
Yeah, and when my hard drive gets zapped and I can't find my original CDs, why won't Microsoft let me just download another copy of Windows and Office? I don't want any responsibility for taking care of my stuff!
"Maybe, but they really need to have a complete set of replacements for the MS office apps to make some serious headway."...or just recommend MS Office for the Mac.
My big Jurassic Park geek peeve was when Wayne Knight's geek character announced that he had written all 3 million lines of code for the park's computer system -- by himself.
I know the filmmakers (and probably Crichton) wanted to show off how l33t the geek was, but all I could think about was that it's already hard enough coordinating a software team to write 300,000 lines of code, and then scaling the issue...
I realize this may be completely impossible to believe, but before you start saying this guy is a shill, did you ever stop to think that this just MIGHT be a real article? And there just MIGHT be people who enjoy working at Microsoft? Is it really that hard to believe?
Not at all; it just has no bearing on whether or not I should trust him. After all, there are still folks who truly and genuinely believe that Saddam Hussein had a massive stockpile of WMDs that he was going to unleash on the US of A, but that doesn't make their beliefs any less kooky.
Apple computers are just a brand nothing more. There's nothing you couldnt do on an Apple that you couldnt do on a Windows machine you built in your basement.
How about "put it naked on the internet and not get it hacked inside of an hour"?
Now that I have a chance to painlessly dip into the Windows world, what I'd like to ask you is, what Windows software amazes you? I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform.
Just because GM and Mercedes don't appear to be actively prosecuting the folks for the photos in question (or they might simply be unaware that they're out there) doesn't make it legal.
"It just gets lumped into the sales figures and the company can look and see that they only sold a gazillion copies for XP and a handful for OS X. That then leads to less titles being ported and less money being sunk into resources (undermanned staff and delays), which just compounds the problem."
You forgot the flip side of the equation:
Apple: "Sales of Intel-based Macs quadrupled in year-to-year sales." Software executive 1: "How many of those sales went to folks dual-booting Windows XP?" Software executive 2: "Dunno. But do we really want to miss that growing market by not doing a Mac version of our stuff?" Software executive 1: "Good point. Okay, item 1 is now 'increase funding for Mac ports'."
Because there are 100 times as many PCs in existence as there are Macs? And because Apple makes a mint every time they sell a copy of OSX, whether it's on Apple hardware or not?
Yes, and everyone knows Windows users never pirate software...
Now they will likely never see another game for MacOS X again now that they can be expected to "Just install Windows". And I don't even want to think how this will affect the Web now that Macs can run that old obsolete piece of trash IE browser that so many moron web designers seem to expect people to have. "You want to browse our site using a Mac? Please install Windows and use IE 6!"
"You want me to pay $140 for a copy of Windows to run your program/visit your site? F*CK THAT!"
Get her a copy of Steve Jackson's TOON RPG, then. It's geared more towards Warner Bros.-style slapstick cartoons, but you can easily adapt it to any other kidvid franchise you want. The rules are simple enough to teach to under-10s, and the games go pretty fast.
Slashdot Mirror
"Can anyone explain the enduring popularity of those voting machines despites the numerous flaws?"
They make election fraud so much easier!
"However, the one thing that I am now wondering is if it'll be comfortbale to hold and manipulate over an hour (or several hour) long gaming session."
From what I'm hearing, you don't have to hold the Wiimote at arm's length to play it -- you can just hold it relaxed, like a regular game controller, and make movements with small flicks of the wrist. If you're sitting down and resting your elbow on an armrest or a leg, this would be even easier.
Here's a Wired blog about Wii's "Red Steel" that confirms the plays-better-without-arms-length-waving anecdote.
I've gotten off regular sodas now, and stick to the diet ones to keep my weight under control. I find the flavored diet sodas to be rather appealing, as I can drink them without a guilty conscience and switch tastes for variety.
Diet Cherry Coke (with or without Vanilla) is nice, but for my money nothing beats Cherry Diet Pepsi. Diet Coke/Pepsi with Vanilla is also good, and I'll occasionally go with the lime-flavored ones. There's also Diet Mountain Dew Code Red, but that's just near impossible to find...
If you just take the free phones your provider offers, then games won't be that great.
Dopey me, and here I thought it was the responsibility of developers to write quality games for their phone! I didn't know the real solution was to diss your market for not buying better gear...
As someone who's owned two Atari Lynxes and three cell phones with color screens for gaming, I can state firsthand that I wish the phones had screens as good as the Lynxes's's's.
You haven't seen Cheney without his mask?
Expecting Rush Limbaugh to "prove" or "document" anything that doesn't have a pro-Republican slant merely shows how deeply you've drank the Kool-Aid.
Just one example: Limbaugh's Liberal Media Proof: Too Good to be True
It wouldn't be hard for Fox to just take the bottom 11% of the audience -- after all, 50% of the populace has a below-average IQ anyway...
Other reasons why cell-phone gaming sucks:
* A cell phone has a lousy interface for gaming.
* The LCD screens on most phones have horribly high latency, making action games hard to play.
* The low horsepower of most phones prevent development of complex games.
I admit, I used to be big on cell phone games when I got my first phone that supported them. But after getting burned with a half-dozen asstastic titles, I realized that a PDA or a Gameboy would be far better for gaming, and broke the habit. The only person in our home who plays cell phone games these days is my son, and even he's tired of the simplistic action and other shortcomings.
Yeah, and when my hard drive gets zapped and I can't find my original CDs, why won't Microsoft let me just download another copy of Windows and Office? I don't want any responsibility for taking care of my stuff!
</snark>
"Maybe, but they really need to have a complete set of replacements for the MS office apps to make some serious headway." ...or just recommend MS Office for the Mac.
My big Jurassic Park geek peeve was when Wayne Knight's geek character announced that he had written all 3 million lines of code for the park's computer system -- by himself.
I know the filmmakers (and probably Crichton) wanted to show off how l33t the geek was, but all I could think about was that it's already hard enough coordinating a software team to write 300,000 lines of code, and then scaling the issue...
"What could the poor idiot do but sit there and take it?"
He could do to Colbert what he did to that garage door after Laura mildly rebuked one of his stump speeches...
I realize this may be completely impossible to believe, but before you start saying this guy is a shill, did you ever stop to think that this just MIGHT be a real article? And there just MIGHT be people who enjoy working at Microsoft? Is it really that hard to believe?
Not at all; it just has no bearing on whether or not I should trust him. After all, there are still folks who truly and genuinely believe that Saddam Hussein had a massive stockpile of WMDs that he was going to unleash on the US of A, but that doesn't make their beliefs any less kooky.
Apple computers are just a brand nothing more. There's nothing you couldnt do on an Apple that you couldnt do on a Windows machine you built in your basement.
How about "put it naked on the internet and not get it hacked inside of an hour"?
I have used Macs on occasion, but in my 7 years of sound design for videogames my primary tools have all been on Windows and PCs.
;-)
Maybe you're not as creative as you think.
What happens if the HDD goes bad, wouldn't this be a pain to back up and restore?
Connect external drive. Boot from external drive. Restore backups to external drive.
Or, alternately, crack open that puppy and replace the drive. But the external drive workaround is one easy enough for grandma to deal with.
I'd be more impressed if Moore would admit that he's now serving as a consultant for the mining, logging, and energy industries.
Hell, I'd settle for the Washington Post admitting that they're trying to pull one over its readership.
Now that I have a chance to painlessly dip into the Windows world, what I'd like to ask you is, what Windows software amazes you? I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform.
April Fool's was over a week ago.
Just because GM and Mercedes don't appear to be actively prosecuting the folks for the photos in question (or they might simply be unaware that they're out there) doesn't make it legal.
"It's not illegal if nobody sees me do it..."
What the parent said. With this administration, you come to expect stupid, business-whoring, citizen-stomping moves in everything they do.
"It just gets lumped into the sales figures and the company can look and see that they only sold a gazillion copies for XP and a handful for OS X. That then leads to less titles being ported and less money being sunk into resources (undermanned staff and delays), which just compounds the problem."
You forgot the flip side of the equation:
Apple: "Sales of Intel-based Macs quadrupled in year-to-year sales."
Software executive 1: "How many of those sales went to folks dual-booting Windows XP?"
Software executive 2: "Dunno. But do we really want to miss that growing market by not doing a Mac version of our stuff?"
Software executive 1: "Good point. Okay, item 1 is now 'increase funding for Mac ports'."
Because there are 100 times as many PCs in existence as there are Macs? And because Apple makes a mint every time they sell a copy of OSX, whether it's on Apple hardware or not?
Yes, and everyone knows Windows users never pirate software...
Now they will likely never see another game for MacOS X again now that they can be expected to "Just install Windows". And I don't even want to think how this will affect the Web now that Macs can run that old obsolete piece of trash IE browser that so many moron web designers seem to expect people to have. "You want to browse our site using a Mac? Please install Windows and use IE 6!"
"You want me to pay $140 for a copy of Windows to run your program/visit your site? F*CK THAT!"
Get her a copy of Steve Jackson's TOON RPG, then. It's geared more towards Warner Bros.-style slapstick cartoons, but you can easily adapt it to any other kidvid franchise you want. The rules are simple enough to teach to under-10s, and the games go pretty fast.