I own a 360 & was using media center heavily & maintaining a seperate library for my video ipod. I bought an AppleTV when they came out & stopped using media center. Problem solved.
So this update comes out & I think, hmmm, maybe I don't need this AppleTV thing anymore & can do the 'mac nano' with it. Hey maybe I could even go so far as replacing my iPod with a Zune(I do like the blue/black one). However the Zune software (required as the sharing component on the PC) has very poor library management & has no ability to edit meta-data. The UI on the 360 side is nice while watching video but the whole browsing & presentation while playing audio is very poor. Apple understands that a big part of consumer satisfaction is visually wowing your friends & other visitors with it. The whole 360 media experience is very underwhelming compared to what AppleTV can deliver if you take the trouble ensure that cover art is downloaded for your music & movies.
The whole device setup is lame too. Zune/360/PC - I have a Zune library (music/video/pictures) of whatever I add to it & purchase from the Zune Marketplace(music only). I can view this on the PC, the Zune or on the 360. Then I have the 360 library (music/video) which I can only get stuff into by downloading it from Live or purchasing it from XBoxLive Marketplace. This content I can only watch on the 360. And the Zune device only supports 320x240 anyway.
Compare this to iTunes/AppleTV/PC I have an iTunes library (music/video) of whatever I add to it & purchase from the iTunes store (music, audiobooks & video). I can view this on the PC, the iPod or on AppleTV. The iPod supports upto 640x480 video.
Game Set & Match Apple.
Also bear in mind that I don't live in the US so I don't have access to any of the store content except music/audiobooks on the iTunes store anyway of which I have purchases very little.
'We need other strong games that can make people understand that there's more to it than WoW'
I quit WoW 3 times (although haven't cancelled my account), the 3rd time after raiding for around 6 months. 3 weeks ago I bought BurningCrusade & played it for about 1 week before I realised why I stopped playing. It's a repetitive time-suck device. I love playing my undead priest I greatly enjoyed instances & raiding, which I'd love to be able to logon & do a couple of times a week for an hour or so. But there is no progression at that rate & it is unsatisfying.
The very idea that MMORPG's can be casual player friendly is a lie when 'casual' means only an hour a day.
Sometimes I think people have forgotten that there are games other than MMORPGs. Or perhaps the game industry has forgotten that they are 'games'. Remember, something you do for fun & entertainment as a break from your real life.
I find it amusing that the article makes no mention of Final Fantasy, ChronoTrigger or the Mana series to name a few. Actually nothing except 'western-developed' PC games. Just a little myopic.
As the owner of a video Ipod & a XBox360 I have to maintain 2 music & video libraries for the two devices. So it was either the Zune & the 360 or the IPod & AppleTV. Zune sucked. So here we are.
As far as Tivo etc, here in Australia we are probably never going to see anything like those services for at least another decade, so... meh.
My concern is that you can do serious work with it, even without a good fundemental knowledge of OO or even decent structured programming. It creates the illusion of simplicity, but its all smoke & mirrors.
I fear that it leads to people thinking that creating good software is not hard, 'how hard can it be? just drag some stuff onto a form etc'. It also leads to managers (who once wrote 10 lines of code in a VB6 form) thinking they can make better architectural decisions about complex systems than their programmers.
I think people hated clippy because while being annoying he wasn't cute.
If the assistant had defaulted to Rocky the Dog and the first alternative on the menu was Links the Cat then you would have had 99% of people with something that they at least thought was cute.
In all seriousiness though I think a big opportunity was missed to use the assistant idea as a friendly frontend to intelligent agent functionality. It should have been an OS-wide feature that lived in the task-bar. Hell give it network storage & make it aware of being run on different machines.
I know its only fairly recent but it was one of the better games of that year, nicely swept under the carpet by those who need lots of blood & explosions in their games.
Can someone please think up a way to prevent people who make claims about the uselessness of open-source from using the internet. Clearly they don't need to use the internet anyway, this http thing is clearly useless & out of date.
my issue is that in 12 months you will probably need to speed as much again to keep playing the very latest games with the best visuals at their best performance.
With a console you spend it once about every 5 years
I spend a lot of work hours reading/debugging/re-writing other peoples MSSQL stored procs. While it seems the people before me didn't understand the idea of a set-based language at all (CURSORS! CURSORS! CURSORS!) I understand the concept but have little experience implementing it. Can anyone suggest a SQL reference that puts emphasis on teaching how to implement set-based logic in stored procs, rather than just procedural batches?
Slashdot Mirror
actually that applies to any license for a MS product
oversized PDA with the battery life of a notebook... wtf?
I dunno, I just bought an XBox, much easier.
still no female agents? Am I the only one with a Motoko Kusanagi fixation ?
"the only thing silver members can really do is view a server list and hop onto a specific server"
you lucky, lucky bastard! try being a silver member on xbox live. you can't even do that.
I own a 360 & was using media center heavily & maintaining a seperate library for my video ipod. I bought an AppleTV when they came out & stopped using media center. Problem solved.
So this update comes out & I think, hmmm, maybe I don't need this AppleTV thing anymore & can do the 'mac nano' with it. Hey maybe I could even go so far as replacing my iPod with a Zune(I do like the blue/black one). However the Zune software (required as the sharing component on the PC) has very poor library management & has no ability to edit meta-data. The UI on the 360 side is nice while watching video but the whole browsing & presentation while playing audio is very poor. Apple understands that a big part of consumer satisfaction is visually wowing your friends & other visitors with it. The whole 360 media experience is very underwhelming compared to what AppleTV can deliver if you take the trouble ensure that cover art is downloaded for your music & movies.
The whole device setup is lame too.
Zune/360/PC - I have a Zune library (music/video/pictures) of whatever I add to it & purchase from the Zune Marketplace(music only). I can view this on the PC, the Zune or on the 360. Then I have the 360 library (music/video) which I can only get stuff into by downloading it from Live or purchasing it from XBoxLive Marketplace. This content I can only watch on the 360. And the Zune device only supports 320x240 anyway.
Compare this to iTunes/AppleTV/PC
I have an iTunes library (music/video) of whatever I add to it & purchase from the iTunes store (music, audiobooks & video). I can view this on the PC, the iPod or on AppleTV. The iPod supports upto 640x480 video.
Game Set & Match Apple.
Also bear in mind that I don't live in the US so I don't have access to any of the store content except music/audiobooks on the iTunes store anyway of which I have purchases very little.
from TFA "they simply weren't as polished or pretty as we wanted them to be"
from my experience that means: "most of them they never got far beyond pre-vis"
honestly around 90% of the models/textures/animations in the cutscenes looked terrible.
You either sink time/money into network/multiplayer or into single-player. You can't be the best at both & get it finished on time.
'We need other strong games that can make people understand that there's more to it than WoW'
I quit WoW 3 times (although haven't cancelled my account), the 3rd time after raiding for around 6 months. 3 weeks ago I bought BurningCrusade & played it for about 1 week before I realised why I stopped playing. It's a repetitive time-suck device. I love playing my undead priest I greatly enjoyed instances & raiding, which I'd love to be able to logon & do a couple of times a week for an hour or so. But there is no progression at that rate & it is unsatisfying.
The very idea that MMORPG's can be casual player friendly is a lie when 'casual' means only an hour a day.
Sometimes I think people have forgotten that there are games other than MMORPGs. Or perhaps the game industry has forgotten that they are 'games'. Remember, something you do for fun & entertainment as a break from your real life.
And I'm still bitter about Starcraft:Ghost.
I'm tired of people making comparisions of the Halo 'installations' of Bungie's to the Ringworld of Niven.
) ) from Ian M Banks' "Culture " novels. It's rather apparant that Bungie drew much more inspiration from Banks' work than from Niven. http://www.marathon.org/story/halo_culture.html
Apart from basic shape they have nothing in common. The Halo's most apparant ancestor would be the orbitals ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_(The_Culture
Pings in Spaaaaaace!
KOTOR was ported to the PC from the XBox.
I find it amusing that the article makes no mention of Final Fantasy, ChronoTrigger or the Mana series to name a few. Actually nothing except 'western-developed' PC games. Just a little myopic.
I'm real glad I've stopped playing WoW.
However I am still bitter about Starcraft:Ghost
Anyone marketing a product at young impressionable kids with the intent of fleecing their parents for cash have a special place in hell.
As the owner of a video Ipod & a XBox360 I have to maintain 2 music & video libraries for the two devices. So it was either the Zune & the 360 or the IPod & AppleTV. Zune sucked. So here we are.
As far as Tivo etc, here in Australia we are probably never going to see anything like those services for at least another decade, so... meh.
We cannot allow a usability gap!
Apologies to the late Mr Kubrick.
That's just super Blizz, now where is my damn Starcraft: Ghost?
My concern is that you can do serious work with it, even without a good fundemental knowledge of OO or even decent structured programming. It creates the illusion of simplicity, but its all smoke & mirrors.
I fear that it leads to people thinking that creating good software is not hard, 'how hard can it be? just drag some stuff onto a form etc'. It also leads to managers (who once wrote 10 lines of code in a VB6 form) thinking they can make better architectural decisions about complex systems than their programmers.
I think people hated clippy because while being annoying he wasn't cute.
If the assistant had defaulted to Rocky the Dog and the first alternative on the menu was Links the Cat then you would have had 99% of people with something that they at least thought was cute.
In all seriousiness though I think a big opportunity was missed to use the assistant idea as a friendly frontend to intelligent agent functionality. It should have been an OS-wide feature that lived in the task-bar. Hell give it network storage & make it aware of being run on different machines.
I know its only fairly recent but it was one of the better games of that year, nicely swept under the carpet by those who need lots of blood & explosions in their games.
maybe you have a chance getting them to learn to spell correctly, or realise that football is played with a round ball.
But I have a happy image of this Frosty Hardison guy beaten to a pulp with a hardback edition of Origin of Species.
Can someone please think up a way to prevent people who make claims about the uselessness of open-source from using the internet. Clearly they don't need to use the internet anyway, this http thing is clearly useless & out of date.
Like 100,000's of others I will stick with what I have right now... until WoW requires DX10, then I'll buy a Mac.
my issue is that in 12 months you will probably need to speed as much again to keep playing the very latest games with the best visuals at their best performance.
With a console you spend it once about every 5 years
I spend a lot of work hours reading/debugging/re-writing other peoples MSSQL stored procs. While it seems the people before me didn't understand the idea of a set-based language at all (CURSORS! CURSORS! CURSORS!) I understand the concept but have little experience implementing it. Can anyone suggest a SQL reference that puts emphasis on teaching how to implement set-based logic in stored procs, rather than just procedural batches?