If only Linux format would get a US distributor or hire some US staff to do a US region version, I might actually subscribe! That's the closest thing to LinuxDesktopWorld.
For the last few years it HAS been essentially Mobile World. There's more articles about "apps" than desktop software. Of course, that's because the mass market people actually buy apps but tend to not actually purchase software.
For a while there they were Blackberry World and seemed aimed at wannabe entrepreneurs/SOHO users.
I suspect this won't remain a huge advantage for long, especially once someone posts a "best gaming PC for $500" parts list this November to match the "four hundred and ninety-nine U.S. dollars" introductory price of an Xbox One console and people start taking that parts list to the local PC builder.
There is no way on god's green earth that one can build a machine with an 8 core CPU AND 8GB of GDDR5 with the custom buses/memory controllers that the PS4 has for $500.
Sure you can buy videocards with GDDR5 but you simply cannot buy main RAM with that kind of capability, just like you couldn't buy RAM or a memory controller as fast as the PS2's when it came out.
And if you play only single-player and online, Steam sales and the like make PC games much cheaper.
You do know that PSN and Xbox marketplace have similar sales and discounts, right?
In what way are GOG and Steam any harder to use to install games than the consoles' download stores?
Because they're running on Windows?
Say you download a game from GOG, which I have done... Sure it's DRM free, but you still have to go through the standard install process for it. It may ask what components to install and where, etc etc. While it's not super-difficult it's not as quick and easy as PSN.
What genres are lacking from PCs other than, perhaps, cooperative platformers like Trine and fighting games like Street Fighter IV?
Oh I don't know... 3D platformers, singing games (and music games in general), light gun games, kart racers, certain styles of RPG's, etc etc.
If you buy a Microsoft console, you can't play Sony first-party games, Nintendo first-party games, or PC exclusives.
That's fine, because if you buy an Xbox, you want the exclusives, just like if you buy a PSfoo you want those exclusives, etc etc. Though these days there aren't as many exclusives as in the past, cross-platform is king.
What advantage do you see in PlayStation consoles over PCs for single-player gaming, especially if you're not interested in Sony games?
Because it's cheaper and you can just pick up and play and you don't have to put up with that piece of crap called Windows or put up with the suboptimal kludge that is WINE.
And even if you don't like Sony's first party titles there's a ton of others to choose from with many different kinds of gameplay.
Oh, I read the book all right, in 1985, BEFORE the hand-waving sequels meant to "take back" the horror of what was done in the first book.
I also remember the bullying and sadism of the kids at Battle School which IMHO was worse than the revelation that the kids were being trained to lead fleets without their knowledge.
Ender should feel no guilt, he was deceived. If anyone needs to atone for the "Xenocide" it's Razer and the rest of the Battle School staff and the leaders of earth.
Frankly I always thought that both Card and Robert Heinlein (and L Ron Hubbard too, for that matter) wrote rather juvenile-level science fiction. There are *tons* of MUCH better science fiction writers out there, and why the geek community fixate on these mediocre writers is beyond me.
Because they read Ender's Game or Heinlein's "juveniles" when they were kids. So it's all "Ender's game was AWESOME" or "Starman Jones was AWESOME"... and become fanboys for life, ignoring Card's dick behavior (like the villian in Lost Boys playing D&D), or Heinlein having Lazarus Long fuck his mother...but it's okay since Tertius is one big poly family.
Oh that, I know about that, but their leaders had a "revelation" that changed things.
In other words they got together and said "Our bigotry is costing us respect from everyone else so lets just say the Heavenly Father told us to change the rules."
What advantage do you see in consoles over PCs for single-player gaming, especially if you're not interested in Nintendo first-party games?
Price and price/performance ratio? Ease of Use? More diversity of genres? Sony and Microsoft also have first party games. You focus way to much attention on Nintendo.
Did you even play DX on PS2? It was every bit as dumbed down as DX2. The inventory/menu system was majorly stripped down,
Simplified yes... the PC version was too fiddly. The changes made increased the amount of time actually playing the game.
gameplay elements removed
Which ones? Considering you can just use a walkthrough for the PC version
, the graphics were slaughtered and the levels were tiny.
Not tiny, they were just split into pieces. As I said, Eidos didn't use the trick of level streaming. And how were the graphics slaughtered...they look the same...except the PS2 models are mo-capped.
The US Defense (actually Offense) Forces are cowards. You don't fight fair wars. You always want to win based on superior technology.
If you fight a war, you want to win. If using superior technology makes you win faster and easier that is a good thing.
Let's put it this way, if you play Civilization and your civ has tanks and modern infantry and one of your neighbors is using Knights, you're not going make up some Knight units to fight them... you're going to roll right over them with your tanks and infantry.
I don't know why people think the murder rate in Chicago is bad, it isn't even in the top 10! Neither is NYC, LA, or DC.
Our violent crime rate is actually similar to other nations...the problem is our gun ownership is higher so that the violence can often escalate into a fatality.
My best guess is that it's tied to economic despair. Some of the worst places are having a VERY hard time economically, St. Louis, Memphis, Birmingham, Oakland. So medium sized cities that don't get the national attention NYC, Chicago and LA get.
Though if you go by state, the southwest and south tends to be more violent, the upper midwest/upper great plains the least.
Some people don't remember but Warren Spector got his start in tabletop gaming having worked for Steve Jackson Games and TSR. Then seeing that tabletop would always remain a niche, like some other tabletop designers (like Sandy Petersen), he jumped ship to where the big money was....electronic gaming.
He should have stayed on the tabletop....just because you're pretty good at tabletop design doesn't make you a good computer/console game designer.
There's a remastered version of the Ducktales game coming out. No, really. They even got Alan Young to do the voice of Scrooge McDuck again...the man is 93 years old! And yes, June Foray voices Magica De Spell...she's 95!
The dumbing down of DX2 was necessary for consoles
Console, singular. DX2 was Xbox only.
But it wasn't necessary to dumb it down at all, and I take umbrage at that statement since:
but I do agree that it was much worse than the original
The original game, was also released in enhanced form on the PS2...mouse and keyboard support included. There were some minor changes in UI and levels were split in pieces since Eidos didn't seem know the trick of level streaming. (which is how you get big levels on the PS2...you stream them on the fly) But basically it's the same game.
The problem is, the rest of the state isn't as strict...so they can just head to Rockford or Peoria, etc etc. That's part of the frictions.
It's like how it doesn't matter that DC has strict laws since right across the Potomac is gun-crazed Virginia which is where the majority of firearms used in DC crimes come from.
Slashdot Mirror
Two words.
Unlimited data.
The kind of people who would make their tablet their primary device are those who would pay for unlimited data
Bookmarks. They simply dont use RSS
That's sad, they still do a Linux article now and then akin to "here's how to install ubuntu".
Does Computer Power User still have a Linux column?
Gordon Mah Ung, he's even more annoying than Dvorak!
John C. Dvorak was in PC Magazine, not PC World.
Yes, like getting the whole FAMILY involved with COMPUTING, or a FAMILY AND a HOME OFFICE involved with COMPUTING Think of the ANTIC's one could have.
Yes, but ComputerShopper at articles too...now if NewEgg had some staff doing howto's and informative articles....
If only Linux format would get a US distributor or hire some US staff to do a US region version, I might actually subscribe! That's the closest thing to LinuxDesktopWorld.
For the last few years it HAS been essentially Mobile World. There's more articles about "apps" than desktop software. Of course, that's because the mass market people actually buy apps but tend to not actually purchase software.
For a while there they were Blackberry World and seemed aimed at wannabe entrepreneurs/SOHO users.
I suspect this won't remain a huge advantage for long, especially once someone posts a "best gaming PC for $500" parts list this November to match the "four hundred and ninety-nine U.S. dollars" introductory price of an Xbox One console and people start taking that parts list to the local PC builder.
There is no way on god's green earth that one can build a machine with an 8 core CPU AND 8GB of GDDR5 with the custom buses/memory controllers that the PS4 has for $500.
Sure you can buy videocards with GDDR5 but you simply cannot buy main RAM with that kind of capability, just like you couldn't buy RAM or a memory controller as fast as the PS2's when it came out.
And if you play only single-player and online, Steam sales and the like make PC games much cheaper.
You do know that PSN and Xbox marketplace have similar sales and discounts, right?
In what way are GOG and Steam any harder to use to install games than the consoles' download stores?
Because they're running on Windows?
Say you download a game from GOG, which I have done... Sure it's DRM free, but you still have to go through the standard install process for it. It may ask what components to install and where, etc etc. While it's not super-difficult it's not as quick and easy as PSN.
What genres are lacking from PCs other than, perhaps, cooperative platformers like Trine and fighting games like Street Fighter IV?
Oh I don't know... 3D platformers, singing games (and music games in general), light gun games, kart racers, certain styles of RPG's, etc etc.
If you buy a Microsoft console, you can't play Sony first-party games, Nintendo first-party games, or PC exclusives.
That's fine, because if you buy an Xbox, you want the exclusives, just like if you buy a PSfoo you want those exclusives, etc etc. Though these days there aren't as many exclusives as in the past, cross-platform is king.
What advantage do you see in PlayStation consoles over PCs for single-player gaming, especially if you're not interested in Sony games?
Because it's cheaper and you can just pick up and play and you don't have to put up with that piece of crap called Windows or put up with the suboptimal kludge that is WINE.
And even if you don't like Sony's first party titles there's a ton of others to choose from with many different kinds of gameplay.
Oh, I read the book all right, in 1985, BEFORE the hand-waving sequels meant to "take back" the horror of what was done in the first book.
I also remember the bullying and sadism of the kids at Battle School which IMHO was worse than the revelation that the kids were being trained to lead fleets without their knowledge.
Ender should feel no guilt, he was deceived. If anyone needs to atone for the "Xenocide" it's Razer and the rest of the Battle School staff and the leaders of earth.
But Lost Boys turned me off of Card forever.
The Capitol Wasteland?
"Yeah, I'll do your coding job for 1000 caps and those 30 rounds of .44 caliber ammunition"
Frankly I always thought that both Card and Robert Heinlein (and L Ron Hubbard too, for that matter) wrote rather juvenile-level science fiction. There are *tons* of MUCH better science fiction writers out there, and why the geek community fixate on these mediocre writers is beyond me.
Because they read Ender's Game or Heinlein's "juveniles" when they were kids. So it's all "Ender's game was AWESOME" or "Starman Jones was AWESOME"... and become fanboys for life, ignoring Card's dick behavior (like the villian in Lost Boys playing D&D), or Heinlein having Lazarus Long fuck his mother...but it's okay since Tertius is one big poly family.
Oh that, I know about that, but their leaders had a "revelation" that changed things.
In other words they got together and said "Our bigotry is costing us respect from everyone else so lets just say the Heavenly Father told us to change the rules."
Tolerance? The book is all about training kids to genocide!
Not to mention the LDS propaganda that the Savior of the World is a Mormon kid born in defiance of the rules against having more than 2 kids.
What advantage do you see in consoles over PCs for single-player gaming, especially if you're not interested in Nintendo first-party games?
Price and price/performance ratio? Ease of Use? More diversity of genres? Sony and Microsoft also have first party games. You focus way to much attention on Nintendo.
Did you even play DX on PS2? It was every bit as dumbed down as DX2. The inventory/menu system was majorly stripped down,
Simplified yes... the PC version was too fiddly. The changes made increased the amount of time actually playing the game.
gameplay elements removed
Which ones? Considering you can just use a walkthrough for the PC version
, the graphics were slaughtered and the levels were tiny.
Not tiny, they were just split into pieces. As I said, Eidos didn't use the trick of level streaming. And how were the graphics slaughtered...they look the same...except the PS2 models are mo-capped.
The US Defense (actually Offense) Forces are cowards. You don't fight fair wars. You always want to win based on superior technology.
If you fight a war, you want to win. If using superior technology makes you win faster and easier that is a good thing.
Let's put it this way, if you play Civilization and your civ has tanks and modern infantry and one of your neighbors is using Knights, you're not going make up some Knight units to fight them... you're going to roll right over them with your tanks and infantry.
I don't know why people think the murder rate in Chicago is bad, it isn't even in the top 10! Neither is NYC, LA, or DC.
Our violent crime rate is actually similar to other nations...the problem is our gun ownership is higher so that the violence can often escalate into a fatality.
My best guess is that it's tied to economic despair. Some of the worst places are having a VERY hard time economically, St. Louis, Memphis, Birmingham, Oakland. So medium sized cities that don't get the national attention NYC, Chicago and LA get.
Though if you go by state, the southwest and south tends to be more violent, the upper midwest/upper great plains the least.
Some people don't remember but Warren Spector got his start in tabletop gaming having worked for Steve Jackson Games and TSR. Then seeing that tabletop would always remain a niche, like some other tabletop designers (like Sandy Petersen), he jumped ship to where the big money was....electronic gaming.
He should have stayed on the tabletop....just because you're pretty good at tabletop design doesn't make you a good computer/console game designer.
For a single-player game, the question is whether consoles are necessary in the first place.
Why would you say that?
There's a remastered version of the Ducktales game coming out. No, really. They even got Alan Young to do the voice of Scrooge McDuck again...the man is 93 years old! And yes, June Foray voices Magica De Spell...she's 95!
The dumbing down of DX2 was necessary for consoles
Console, singular. DX2 was Xbox only.
But it wasn't necessary to dumb it down at all, and I take umbrage at that statement since:
but I do agree that it was much worse than the original
The original game, was also released in enhanced form on the PS2...mouse and keyboard support included. There were some minor changes in UI and levels were split in pieces since Eidos didn't seem know the trick of level streaming. (which is how you get big levels on the PS2...you stream them on the fly) But basically it's the same game.
I can tell you that I trust a typical soldier's sense of gun safety (and accuracy!) far more than I would trust a typical police officer's.
I would agree, though I'm not overly fond of the "militarization" of police hiring practices.
The problem is, the rest of the state isn't as strict...so they can just head to Rockford or Peoria, etc etc. That's part of the frictions.
It's like how it doesn't matter that DC has strict laws since right across the Potomac is gun-crazed Virginia which is where the majority of firearms used in DC crimes come from.