Well, I've gone through 2 PS2s thus far... and my neighbor has one. So I'm pretty much just going to wait for the PS3 to come out, and at that point decide to get a cheap PS2 or a PS3.
Less than one percent of congress putting something forward to try and make a point(poorly) isn't an iniative. Nobody wants a draft(not the military, not the public, not 99.5% of congress).
2 years ago was when the Republicans really started to gel their majority position, riding in on the President's high post-9/11 approval ratings. It was also around when humorists stopped going light on the administration(not just TDS either, Leno et all too).
I dunno, maybe TDS is biased... I still find it funny, it's point is to be funny, funny is subjective and it doesn't diminish Jon's point any.
TDS is a satire a show, it satirizes current events.
Who they hell else are they supposed to make fun of? The right(if you define right as republican), controls both houses of congress, the presidency, and as we saw in 2000, the SCOTUS(which, if you want to disagree here[and I'm sure someone will], has a large influence on current events how often, precisely?). Pretty much the whole shebang. The left(if you define left as democrats) has so little influence on the Hill right now, they barely splash the news waters with actual policy. When was the last time you heard of a Democratic initiative?
Apart from that, picking on the left(if you define left as democrats), with things standing as they are right now, as much as the right for what little influence they have would be like kicking a cripple, or making fun of David, it's just not as funny.
Yea, Stewart leans left a bit, so what. Most comics and entertainers do. Kinda part and parcel with that whole "art" thing. If you only want to drink the "right-wing" entertainment icon kool-aid you're going to be a pretty uncultured boring prick way outside of pop-culture.
I'd accuse you of trolling, but wtf cares?
All that being said, The Daily Show will pretty much mock anyone deserving of it, if it's actually going to turn out funny.
The dual shock is better overall with it's buttons than the dual shock 2, but they both have really weak shoulder buttons. Frequency or Amplitude will kill either relatively quickly(since that's pretty much all you use), especially if your roommate is a guy you nickname "Mongo the destroyer."
We ended up using a dremel to fabricate some replacements for the little weak plastic bits inside the shoulders and that worked well. Little different feel to it, but they became nigh indestructable.
Haven't had any problems out of the GCN controller, which is probably personally my favorite controller thus far, nor have I heard of a lot of problems with the XBox controller, but there really isn't anything out as hard on those shoulder buttons as Amplitude or Frequency is.
Anyway, nothing beats the original square NES controller for sheer durability though, as all of us who threw them at walls can attest to.
As to MS's hardware. Never had any durability problems out of it(and I worked on-site/phone support for quite a while, can count the number of mice, keyboards and trackballs that broke[out of several thousand] without resorting to fingers or toes[0]), unless you really, really abused it. It's a bit overpriced, and I prefer old IBM keyboards[clicky] and logitech mice ergonomically, but eh, that wasn't really the assertion.
I mean, the XBox can take a bullet, and I still have a working version of every Nintendo system made thus far. OTOH I don't have a PS2 right now because for the 2nd time my laser assembly died, and my PS has been dead since prior to the PS2's launch. Granted, I'm a smoker with gas heat and use my systems A LOT throughout their lives, as well as all of this being anecdotal, but still.
Umm... MS actually makes pretty good hardware, much better build quality in their PC peripherals and in the XBox than Sony(who pretty much sucks at everything except TVs since the moved manufacturing out of Japan). I think the Gamecube *might* outlast the XBox, but only because the XBox has an HDD and you don't have to simply pop the hatch to clean the laser. They're probably about tied for overall build quality though.
In this area, you really can't go off on a MS hating tangent.
Perhaps you mean decent product as in "a gaming platform with games on it?"
Or, are you just hoping "Descent" gets ported to the PSP?
There have been cases where 911 systems went down due to software glitches(Windows IIRC), that can certainly put a hurt on your life expectancy(in the case I'm thinking of, the phones stayed on, but the computer systems died, so they had to dispatch the 'ol fashioned way).
Or Medical databases, mix up what drugs someone is taking when prescribing new ones and that software glitch can certainly be hazardous to your health, if not kill you. Small risk, since there's a double check(Doctor and Pharmacist), but there.
Or the computers in your car, big error in one of those chips and BAD things can happen. Or airtraffic control. SCADA(old crappy UNIX, being replaced by new crappy Windows) systems. Fly by wire. Etc. Etc.
Software can definately kill you, it permeates so much of our lives a glitch in the right place can actually kill you. Don't lose sleep over it, a real gremlin has to be in the works for this to happen and for no actual person to be there to compensate for it.
Now, your desktop software decision isn't likely to do so.
Live isn't much of an advantage. Really... look at Microsoft's subscriber numbers versus how many people actually own an XBox. Look at PS2 network adapter sales, more people, smaller percentage.
Online doesn't matter much at all right now except to a very small percentage of the total market.
I don't know. It could look good. The resolution is low, but the screen size is small too. If you resize any of those screens to reflect the actual size of the screen they're going to appear on, and assume it's going to be out there at around elbow length from your face, they really don't look bad.
Then Bungie has a ready made, imo decent, story they could just plug in with a little bit of work. Any good/fleshed out backstory just adds to the coolness factor of a game in my opinion*. So that gives them a base to work from, and saves them work in the long haul.
* - As do those long lost bonuses in the game box like cloth maps.
And I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to do it. They were doing console networking before most people here even knew what a network was. On the Famicom, in Japan.
However, the real question is: Who shall save the poor boy out in the wilderness tied into the internet via the DSes the bears ate along with unsuspecting tourists who dared feed them! *
* - Providing this is true, of course.
Re:They're not targetted at the same audience
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PSP Pricing Announced
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The law of convergance is that any such product will: 1. Do anything it claims to at about a quarter to a half as well as a similarly priced stand alone product. 2. Achieve about 90% of the functionality in most areas but cost more than if you purchased each stand alone product individually.
Also, with your typically converged product, when one component fails, you're fucked. Like a combination DVD/Reciever. Reciever component fails and the whole thing is useless(no sound).
Oh, and as to Music CDs/DVDs. It's too small. Where would you put them? We all know it's UMD anyway.
We'll presume the $350 figure is correct.
$350 buys you: 1 Nintendo DS @ $150 + tax - Integrated microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, no need for a memory card/stick, etc. Functionally about midway between an N64 and a Gamecube. Touchscreen, which means at least one or two totally unique and mindblowing games will come out for it if it succeeds. 1 MP3 CD player @ $80
$120 of cold hard cash to pad it all with or buy games/accessories.
Unless you plan on rebuying all your movies, that's enough for a hefty current-gen flash cart(which can play full length movies for a GBA, albeit at an inferior quality due to the size constraints, I'm sure the carts for the DS will do better[if they exist]. It also lets you play every last game in the GBA/GB/GBC/NES/SMS and a variety of other system's libraries), or 4 GBA movie carts.
You should be able to use the flashcarts for current GBA systems, which work that way. The question is, will you be able to access all of the hardware this way?
If you can, or a new flashcart comes out that lets you, the DS is a tinkering dream come true.
Work up some evil thoughts and go cruise MSDN or codeproject or something.
You can do a hell of a lot w/o admin, including running things as system. IF you exploit the right helpfully included APIs that can't be fixed without breaking Windows backwards compatibility.
At least until Longhorn, if someone can get an executable run on your Windows system, they own it.
No, but I have a variety of other specs, and not a one of them supports the idea that reading from disc(even continously) consumes more power than either a backlit display or the lowest-power CPU we have.
I can't get to the link, but unless things have advanced a heck of a lot in the past few months it's far from perfect. Sound doesn't work and only a handful of games are playable.
Depends on whether or not they keep the Z80 core in the ARM7 they're using for the secondary screen. I haven't seen a definative yay or nay on that yet.
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Well, I've gone through 2 PS2s thus far... and my neighbor has one. So I'm pretty much just going to wait for the PS3 to come out, and at that point decide to get a cheap PS2 or a PS3.
Less than one percent of congress putting something forward to try and make a point(poorly) isn't an iniative. Nobody wants a draft(not the military, not the public, not 99.5% of congress).
2 years ago was when the Republicans really started to gel their majority position, riding in on the President's high post-9/11 approval ratings. It was also around when humorists stopped going light on the administration(not just TDS either, Leno et all too).
I dunno, maybe TDS is biased... I still find it funny, it's point is to be funny, funny is subjective and it doesn't diminish Jon's point any.
TDS is a satire a show, it satirizes current events.
Who they hell else are they supposed to make fun of? The right(if you define right as republican), controls both houses of congress, the presidency, and as we saw in 2000, the SCOTUS(which, if you want to disagree here[and I'm sure someone will], has a large influence on current events how often, precisely?). Pretty much the whole shebang. The left(if you define left as democrats) has so little influence on the Hill right now, they barely splash the news waters with actual policy. When was the last time you heard of a Democratic initiative?
Apart from that, picking on the left(if you define left as democrats), with things standing as they are right now, as much as the right for what little influence they have would be like kicking a cripple, or making fun of David, it's just not as funny.
Yea, Stewart leans left a bit, so what. Most comics and entertainers do. Kinda part and parcel with that whole "art" thing. If you only want to drink the "right-wing" entertainment icon kool-aid you're going to be a pretty uncultured boring prick way outside of pop-culture.
I'd accuse you of trolling, but wtf cares?
All that being said, The Daily Show will pretty much mock anyone deserving of it, if it's actually going to turn out funny.
The dual shock is better overall with it's buttons than the dual shock 2, but they both have really weak shoulder buttons. Frequency or Amplitude will kill either relatively quickly(since that's pretty much all you use), especially if your roommate is a guy you nickname "Mongo the destroyer."
We ended up using a dremel to fabricate some replacements for the little weak plastic bits inside the shoulders and that worked well. Little different feel to it, but they became nigh indestructable.
Haven't had any problems out of the GCN controller, which is probably personally my favorite controller thus far, nor have I heard of a lot of problems with the XBox controller, but there really isn't anything out as hard on those shoulder buttons as Amplitude or Frequency is.
Anyway, nothing beats the original square NES controller for sheer durability though, as all of us who threw them at walls can attest to.
As to MS's hardware. Never had any durability problems out of it(and I worked on-site/phone support for quite a while, can count the number of mice, keyboards and trackballs that broke[out of several thousand] without resorting to fingers or toes[0]), unless you really, really abused it. It's a bit overpriced, and I prefer old IBM keyboards[clicky] and logitech mice ergonomically, but eh, that wasn't really the assertion.
I mean, the XBox can take a bullet, and I still have a working version of every Nintendo system made thus far. OTOH I don't have a PS2 right now because for the 2nd time my laser assembly died, and my PS has been dead since prior to the PS2's launch. Granted, I'm a smoker with gas heat and use my systems A LOT throughout their lives, as well as all of this being anecdotal, but still.
Umm... MS actually makes pretty good hardware, much better build quality in their PC peripherals and in the XBox than Sony(who pretty much sucks at everything except TVs since the moved manufacturing out of Japan). I think the Gamecube *might* outlast the XBox, but only because the XBox has an HDD and you don't have to simply pop the hatch to clean the laser. They're probably about tied for overall build quality though.
In this area, you really can't go off on a MS hating tangent.
Perhaps you mean decent product as in "a gaming platform with games on it?"
Or, are you just hoping "Descent" gets ported to the PSP?
Software CAN kill you though.
There have been cases where 911 systems went down due to software glitches(Windows IIRC), that can certainly put a hurt on your life expectancy(in the case I'm thinking of, the phones stayed on, but the computer systems died, so they had to dispatch the 'ol fashioned way).
Or Medical databases, mix up what drugs someone is taking when prescribing new ones and that software glitch can certainly be hazardous to your health, if not kill you. Small risk, since there's a double check(Doctor and Pharmacist), but there.
Or the computers in your car, big error in one of those chips and BAD things can happen. Or airtraffic control. SCADA(old crappy UNIX, being replaced by new crappy Windows) systems. Fly by wire. Etc. Etc.
Software can definately kill you, it permeates so much of our lives a glitch in the right place can actually kill you. Don't lose sleep over it, a real gremlin has to be in the works for this to happen and for no actual person to be there to compensate for it.
Now, your desktop software decision isn't likely to do so.
Live isn't much of an advantage. Really... look at Microsoft's subscriber numbers versus how many people actually own an XBox. Look at PS2 network adapter sales, more people, smaller percentage.
Online doesn't matter much at all right now except to a very small percentage of the total market.
This is a reduction in cost of over 100 fold for a trip into space. What used to cost > 10 million will now cost 200,000. That's a huge improvement.
In other words, give it time. At the pace we're at, in 32 years or less you'll be able to afford a trip.
I don't know. It could look good. The resolution is low, but the screen size is small too. If you resize any of those screens to reflect the actual size of the screen they're going to appear on, and assume it's going to be out there at around elbow length from your face, they really don't look bad.
The DS has 802.11(?) WiFi and some kind of propriatary wireless connection which works up to 30 meters.
I agree, but not because of release dates.... wasn't the PSP supposed to be released Q1 2005 anyway?
Then Bungie has a ready made, imo decent, story they could just plug in with a little bit of work. Any good/fleshed out backstory just adds to the coolness factor of a game in my opinion*. So that gives them a base to work from, and saves them work in the long haul.
* - As do those long lost bonuses in the game box like cloth maps.
You all know Nintendo started out as a playing card company, right?
takes place in the world of the Marathon series, right?
Just like Tribes takes place in the Starsiege/Earthsiege universe.
So, shouldn't it already have a lot of backstory?
Tales of Symphonia - Fairly good RPG. I call it the game of anime/RPG cliches, because it is, but it's fairly long(40 hours+) and fairly enjoyable.
Star Ocean - 1-3 hours of utter boredom and then the game gets good. About at the 30-40 hour point.
Shadow Hearts - Just came out a few days ago, haven't played it yet, but I've heard good things about the series.
Baten Kaitos is coming out for the Cube in november. It's got a wierd card-based combat system.
Paper Mario should be pretty good, albeit wierdly genre warping like everything else in that series has been. Comes out here in a week or so.
Then, well, there's not much for a while.
And I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to do it. They were doing console networking before most people here even knew what a network was. On the Famicom, in Japan.
However, the real question is:
Who shall save the poor boy out in the wilderness tied into the internet via the DSes the bears ate along with unsuspecting tourists who dared feed them! *
* - Providing this is true, of course.
The law of convergance is that any such product will:
1. Do anything it claims to at about a quarter to a half as well as a similarly priced stand alone product.
2. Achieve about 90% of the functionality in most areas but cost more than if you purchased each stand alone product individually.
Also, with your typically converged product, when one component fails, you're fucked. Like a combination DVD/Reciever. Reciever component fails and the whole thing is useless(no sound).
Oh, and as to Music CDs/DVDs. It's too small. Where would you put them? We all know it's UMD anyway.
We'll presume the $350 figure is correct.
$350 buys you:
1 Nintendo DS @ $150 + tax - Integrated microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, no need for a memory card/stick, etc. Functionally about midway between an N64 and a Gamecube. Touchscreen, which means at least one or two totally unique and mindblowing games will come out for it if it succeeds.
1 MP3 CD player @ $80
$120 of cold hard cash to pad it all with or buy games/accessories.
Unless you plan on rebuying all your movies, that's enough for a hefty current-gen flash cart(which can play full length movies for a GBA, albeit at an inferior quality due to the size constraints, I'm sure the carts for the DS will do better[if they exist]. It also lets you play every last game in the GBA/GB/GBC/NES/SMS and a variety of other system's libraries), or 4 GBA movie carts.
Hmmm... which is the better deal?
You should be able to use the flashcarts for current GBA systems, which work that way. The question is, will you be able to access all of the hardware this way?
If you can, or a new flashcart comes out that lets you, the DS is a tinkering dream come true.
Work up some evil thoughts and go cruise MSDN or codeproject or something.
You can do a hell of a lot w/o admin, including running things as system. IF you exploit the right helpfully included APIs that can't be fixed without breaking Windows backwards compatibility.
At least until Longhorn, if someone can get an executable run on your Windows system, they own it.
No, but I have a variety of other specs, and not a one of them supports the idea that reading from disc(even continously) consumes more power than either a backlit display or the lowest-power CPU we have.
Considering the entire disc-reading assembly consumes far less power than the display.
IMO, the PSP is sure to suck on the battery life w/o some serious revisions. Prove me wrong Sony, you have no choice.
I can't get to the link, but unless things have advanced a heck of a lot in the past few months it's far from perfect. Sound doesn't work and only a handful of games are playable.
Depends on whether or not they keep the Z80 core in the ARM7 they're using for the secondary screen. I haven't seen a definative yay or nay on that yet.
They also have the (almost) full library of the Gameboy/GBC/GBA since they're supposedly using the GBA processor as the secondary processor.
So, at launch, it'll have 120 games in the pipe and several thousand back-titles already out.