Second, about the ()s, are they really that much worse than (0..5).map{|i| -i*i}.sort.each{|i| puts i}? In there you have the (a..b) range notation, procedure calls via '.', and two closures with {...} enclosing the body and |...| enclosing the arguments.
Yes, the () are much worse for that exact reason, in other languages you have =, {}, (), || and friends, all do their special jobs and are easy to spot with the eye, since they simply look different from each other. In Scheme on the other side everything is (), especially with macros this gets confusion since you can't even be sure how something will get evaluated or if it gets evaluated at all, you can't even tell if its a macro or a function without looking it up.
The throuble with Scheme isn't its lack of power, but simply that it has to much of it. Python, Ruby and Co. on the other side take a tiny bit of Schemes power and pack it into a human readable syntax, one that has dedicated syntax for dedicated constructs, an assignment looks different from a for loop and from a function call, in Scheme on the other side everything looks the same, only difference is the first name after the ().
If this turns real in the end and we really do get Sam'n Max on Wii this could be a big thing, not so much because Sam'n Max is the best game ever (well, maybe it is;), but since it would be so far the first real demonstration I know of, of a small developers game making it onto the Wii. Which in turn could mean that we will get more small developers on the Wii, which in turn means me get more games, maybe lots more, depending of course on how open Nintendo is with their.
Lack of third part party support is the reason why I personally consider the Gamecube a failure, if they can turn that one around and get plenty of third parties, even when it are just small developers, the Wii definitvly would get quite a bit more interesting.
How are fake videos any different from fake websites?
I would say that the difference is that videos have a higher trust level then random websites. Websites themself are a new thing that didn't existed before, so we handle them with some extra care. But for the past 100 or so years we already had cinemas and later TVs to show us video, so we are already familar with them and don't handle them with extra care. Sure, what you have seen on TV or on movies might not have been real, but it was relativly easy to judge the 'reality level'. If the military is showing you how nice war is, its easy to tell that it might be propaganda, if Fox News is showing it, it might not be much difficult either. If advertising is shown on TV it is normally cleary marked. In short, if you see something in the theatre or in TV you know its source and its purpose and can judge it on that basis.
Youtube however is different, you don't have a source, its anonymous, even more anonymous then a webpage, where IP and 'whois' will often uncover the truth. It however doesn't even stop with that, Youtube videos are also shown out of context, when something is shown on TV you have some information on when it was filmed and such, on Youtube you havn't, you just have the video itself. Often the videos are even cut, incomplete or posted with incorrect description to blur any clear hint to the true origin of the material.
I don't think this is just a problem with advertisment, since with that you sooner or later still have to get the product name so that you can actually buy the thing and by that you can figure out the source. I think this could turn into a much bigger problem, kind it alters our perception of reality. There are already tons of advertisment videos on Youtube with the ending cut out, so you no longer can easily tell if it is advertisment, some piece of a movie or real video footage of a real event. For example look at this video:
Lost Wheel What does is show? A real event or what? Could you tell it from the video alone?
Now that Lost Wheel video of course doesn't show an event of any real importance, so in that case its a non issue. But what about military propagande that sneaks in, while being masked as real footage from the battlefield shoot by a normal soldier? What about cool home-made stunt video that in reality was just a special effect? Kids are already repeating a lot of stuff they see in those videos, that might not exactly get better when the stuff they try to repeat is impossible to begin with. I am not really sure where it is going, but spending some time on Youtube or GoogleVideo can certainly be quite a bit confusing when it comes to judging what of that what you have seen is real and what isn't.
Plus, I don't think icons like mario can die that easily. Maybe in a few decades, when the first-timers are all gone? Yeah, right, it also happened to bugs bunny and mickey mouse, remember?;)
Still waiting for an all new Pixar rendered CGI Mickey Mouse motion picture...;)
There has only been one Zelda game and one Mario game since then. One game is not "long long ago".
Mario64 is ten years old, Zelda eight years. Since then there wasn't a single game I could name that was up to Nintendos old qualities. I think thats long enough for "long long ago". If you look back you will also find that between MarioBros3 and MarioWorld where around two years apart from each other, another two till YoshisIsland, then a year after that Mario64, etc., that is even ignoring StarFox, DonkeyKong and the rest of great games from the past. Nintendos hit rate was much higher a decade ago.
Nintendo also hasn't disappointed just with those classic franchises, WaveRace64 is much better then WaveRace-BlueStorm on the Gamecube, StarFox got worse and worse with every release, DonkeyKong, haven't seen a great game with that eitehr, Pikmin had all the potential to be back at Nintendos old qualities, yet they ruined it via pretty obvious mistakes, not only once (time limit, game far to short), but twice (shitty underground levels, game still to short).
New SMB, however, was great fun! It's a retro-esque game, though, deliberately designed to be a succesor to the NES/SNES games... you can't really expect it to be a worthy follow up to Mario World/Mario 64/whatever it was called.
Yes, it was deliberatetly designed to not be a worthy follow up, thats why I don't like it much. It has been 12 years since we had an original Mario platformer on handheld and now all we get is a retro-game? What about a worthy continuation of the Mario series instead? MarioBros3 is still mindblowing in many aspects, I want something like that again, not just retro gaming and remakes (Mario64DS, MarioAdvanced, etc.).
While I'm not all that familiar with Scheme, wouldn't you usually use a recursive function rather than a for-loop in such a language?
Of course you could write it via recursion, but does that lead to simpler or better readable code? I don't think so. Some problems are just linear in nature and a standard for loop is an easy and well readable way to solve those problems. Even Scheme has its for-each looping construct, since always using recursion would just get very ugly in such cases. However since Scheme lacks support for generators, function overloading or OO, the for-each construct stays rather limited, it doesn't even work with vectors, but only with lists, so you are kind of stuck.
One of the beauties of Scheme is of course that I now could start writing macros, functions and stuff to fix all those short commings. In Scheme a for-each construct isn't magic, its something you can easily build yourself. But for a lot of simple problems it just gets very annoying if you have to implement half the programming language yourself, which is the reason why I stopped using Scheme for serious work, its just requires more effort then worth it.
So does every Microsoft Windows release, however from a consumer point of view I still would call it a failure. In short I don't really consider it that important that the companie makes money, its of course a good thing when it does, since it means healthy business, but it might also mean that the consumer is getting ripped of.
With Gamecube its of course different, but I would consider that as a failure as well, since it simply didn't delivered what I had hoped for, namely great first parties and plenty of third parties (Zelda, Mario where medicore on Cube, third party gaming took place on PS2 and XBox for most part). I don't feeld like being ripped of with the Cube, since it had great hardware at a great price, with Wii on the other side the hardware power hasn't raised much, the price however has.
Ummm, so selling slightly fewer units than the Xbox and making money is a failure, while shipping slightly more and losing money is a success? I find your inherent statement that the Gamecube was a failure a little unreal... and I've never owned one.
The Gamecube might not have failed to make Nintendo money, but it did fail to capture the interest of third party companies. If the console is treated as if it doesn't even exist by some third parties than you can tell that something has to be wrong. And speaking about general game quality, I would say the Gamecube failed as well, there simply wasn't a Mario64 or Zelda:OoT class kind of game on the Cube, ResidentEvil4 was the only truely noteworthy game on the Cube. Last not least the Gamecube also didn't get much game releases the past year, so it basically died out even before the Wii was released, again not a good thing.
As long as Nintendo continues the Mario, Zelda, (etc) franchises, their consoles will continue to sell with or without third party support. Fact is, their first party games are just THAT good.
On the NES, SNES and N64 Mario and Zelda games where awesome, however that time is long long ago. MarioSunshine and Zelda WindWaker on the Gamecube disapointed for most part. So did NewSuperMarioBros on the DS. Sure, none of those games where horrbile, but they where far away from the legendary status that those franchises earned in the old days. If Nintendo continues down that road I doubt that they could hold out for much longer.
Nintendo might have realized that themself, since the DS doesn't sell because of Mario and Zelda, it sells for large part because of BrainAge, Nintendogs and similar new kinds of games.
The days of Mario and Zelda are not numbered yet, but they have much less relevance these days already and are sold quite a bit less then Halo, GTA and friends.
How is 'do' any more obscure than '(0..5).to_a'. What the hell does the latter even mean?
(0..5)
defines a range,
.to_a
is a method call (Ruby is an OO language) that converts the range to an array and returns it. If I would want to let it print the numbers I could write:
Now ok, this might simply be a taste issue, but I find the way in which I can write those map/sort stuff in Ruby much more natural and easier to read then in functional languages, since in Ruby everything is in the natural order, things you do first are left, things you do later on the right, while in Scheme everything is the other way around. This especially becomes an issue with longer chains, add to that Schemes () syntax and you end up with something that isn't really all that readable anymore.
I know do, but I hardly ever used it, since its pretty much unreadable, beside from that it just demonstrates the throuble with Scheme, in Ruby I can write (0..5).to_a in Python I can write range(0,5) in Scheme I have to write:
(do ((vec (make-vector 5))
(i 0 (+ i 1)))
((= i 5) vec)
(vector-set! vec i i))
or similar equally obscure constructs. I know that I could fix it with a simple macro, but again, thats kind of the point, I have to fix all the flaws of the language myself, in Ruby and Python simple stuff works out of the box, in Scheme it doesn't.
Does using scheme make sense when building a windows GUI application?
Short subjective answer: No
Scheme is a nice language and has some very interesting properties, so learning it is well worth it, but its really not the lanuage that you would want to use for your daily work, for that it simply lacks a lot of convenience features (++a becomes (set! a (+ a 1)) and it also lacks standardization bejoint its very core, which means that every Scheme implementation comes with its own set of libraries for all kinds of jobs, even trivial tasks like a for-loop you have to either code yourself or rely on non-portable extensions.
In terms of 'power', yes its more powerfull, with macros I can do a heck of cool stuff that isn't possible in most other languages, but then those tricks seldomly result in readable code and you can get very similar effects with much cleaner tools like Rubys blocks, generators and similar things provided by other language.
To make it short, Scheme is for most part an academic language, worth learning it is, worth using not so much.
But would somebody really replace the Xbox/PS2 with a Wii if it could play DVDs?
Not instantly, but sooner or later for sure, the old games don't get any more interesting with age and new ones won't get released anymore sooner or later for those old consoles, so its just natural to let the new consoles replace the old ones.
Try a Mario Sunshine screenshot that isn't all blurry and ugly and you don't really have much different left. Also Mario Galaxy uses different shading and emphasis the edges a lot, which gives the pictures some extra brillance, but that isn't really a sign of much improved power.
When you compare Link you have to take into account that SmashBrosMelee was a launch title for the console, current generation Gamecube games do look quite a bit better, compare it for example with Twilight Princess on the Gamecube, again, no big difference left.
I would be happy to be proven wrong, but so far it simply looks like Wii will have only minimally more power then the Gamecube. None of the Wii games so far looked like it couldn't have been done in the current generation. That doesn't mean they are ugly, Zelda looks great, but for a next generation console it really is quite a disapointment, especially for the price.
Do you know anyone who doesn't already have a DVD drive?
I don't know people who don't have a DVD drive, but I know plenty of people who are using the PS2 or XBox as DVD player, which means they can't just swap them away and replace them with a Wii, but still have to keep them around for DVD watching. Not a big issue thing, but certainly an annoying one.
Teddy is a different beast then ZBrush. ZBrush, as far as I know, allows you do model primitve 3D shapes in a relativly normal way and then to paint displacement maps on top of those base shapes, so you basically get an object with extreme detail. Which is great whe you want extremly detailed 3D models. Teddy on the other side isn't really about detail at all, its about making 3D modeling a 2D task and mainly about making it an trivially task so as in a 6 year old could do it. You can't really create detailed models with Teddy as it is, but you can create a 3D Teddy by simply drawing a 2D Teddy, all the 3d expansion is done automatically.
Xbox 360 wireless controllers are 50, and there is a good bit more tech in the Wii controller. That makes them 20% more expensive. Where are you getting the 2x figure from?
If I don't need wireless controllers, I can also pick up the cheaper wired ones for XBox360. On the Wii I don't have that choice. And as said Wiimote won't work with all games, so I have to get classic controller for an additional $15, which puts a complete Wii controller set for one person at $75 while XBox360 controller can be optained for $35. Cheap third party controller might also be quite a bit more problematic on the Wii, due to the new tech.
Now of course the Wii controller has more tech, but so does the PS3, that however doesn't make the higher price less annoying, this is especially true for a console like the Wii who gets advertised a lot with four people jumping around in front of the screen and shipped with a game that seems to be only fun in multiplayer.
How is $250 expensive? It's $150 less than the version everyone gets of a console already out for a year.
The Wii is also a heck of a lot less powerfull then the other nextgen consoles. You have to compare the Wii with the Gamecube and if you do that you will find that its $150 more expensive then the Gamecube, doesn't look so sexy anymore. And when it comes to how much the Wii is more powerfull then the gamecube, lets just look at the screenshots of Gamecube and
Wii, see the difference? I don't.
The controllers are comparable to controllers on the market.
Except that they cost almost twice as much, oh and they are also not compatible with all the games on the console, so you have to get additional classic controllers to play all the games the console has to offer.
The people that were disappointed, it seems, weren't thinking realistically.
Well, some of us hoped that Nintendo would offer the console at a fair price and not try to squezze every cent out of the consumers just because the PS3 is totatly out of reach for many.
This is kind of a very theortic exercise, since the web isn't really something clearly defined, neither is email. If we close up the SMTP/POP/IMAP ports there is still all that webmail around, instant messaging, IRC and stuff. Ok, so lets count them all as email, but what about blogs or forums? You can't close them without closing one of the most important aspects of the web, namely that you are not limited to being a consumer, but also can easily become a producer of content. Last not least you could also easily substitude email with SMS or simply by the phone itself, almost everybody has mobile phones these days, so communication wouldn't come to an end just by closing email.
So I would say in the end the web clearly wins, since email really can be easily worked around, while the Web really can't. However turning the web into a passive consume-only medium would clearly be a very large loss, but given the 'rules' of the exersie it wouldn't be an issue since rest of the world would still be participating, so the richness of the web would be preserved.
I don't care who plays the MC, as long as he doesn't take his helmet off
What would be so bad about it? Ok, the games didn't show is face either, but for what reason? I don't really see much importance in not showing his face.
I can understand why we didn't get to see Hugo Weavings face in V for Vendetta or Darth Vaders face until the very end. But with Master Chief I don't really see the point, its just a random action-hero guy with guns who saves the day, not really that much different from the guy in Doom1 and I didn't really care that we got to see his face in Doom3. With Samus Aran you at least got the suprise that shes actually a girl, but again Master Chief? Whats so special about him and his face that makes it important to keep it undercover? With Wilson in Home Improvement it was a nice little running gag, but I don't really see much place for that in an action movie.
Would you add the $70-100 for that to the price of the xbox to compare it to the Wii?
The comparism gets a bit bogus when one tries to be too exact, since before buying a $70 Wireless Adapter for XBox360 Core, people would be much better off by adding another $30 and buying XBox360 Premium and thus not only getting wireless network, but also a headset, wireless controller, a 20gb harddisk and stuff at which point the Wii doesn't really have anything to compare that to any more. In the end XBox360 Core looks good when compared to Wii, but not when compared to XBox360 Premium, kind of weird, but thats how it is, the extra components for XBox360 Core simply are far to expensive when bought seperatly.
In the end however, even with XBox360 Core not really being a good deal vs the Premium, Wii still is quite a bit to close in the XBox360 pricing territory. For a console that tries to be fresh, simply and cheap I really hoped for a price that would put some good distance between 360 and Wii.
This seems like a mix of the two. Do you think there is enough of the former to make up, for the latter?
In the first few hours of the game there is plenty of good old adventuring, funny dialogs, cool characters, some puzzles and stuff, later on however, when all cool characters get their brain stolen, so no more dialog, it turns more and more into an average jump'n run, actually not even into a very good one. I found the jump'n run elements to be for most part more annoying then enjoyable, since it really aren't classic jump'n run levels, but some weird mix of puzzles and jump'n run elements, which basically means that if you try to solve a puzzle the jump'n run elements will get into your way and when you try to jump'n run you will be stopped by some stupid puzzle. The story is also kind of disapointing, since the little stories in jump'n run levels don't really connect to the main storyline (each level follows a uniq theme, often completly changing the game mechanics). The jump'n run levels can also be quite difficult at times and frustrate.
However the art direction is great, some dialogs can be a lot of fun and the first few hours really are awesome, but I can't deny that the game didn't exactly benefit from its jump'n run elements, kind of the classic failed try to 'enrich' an adventure game by inserting action elements. Given its current price I would however say its absolutly worth it, since there simply isn't anything that comes close in terms of art and humour the money is well spend and in the end the game simply has some good points that shouldn't be missed.
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Yes, the () are much worse for that exact reason, in other languages you have =, {}, (), || and friends, all do their special jobs and are easy to spot with the eye, since they simply look different from each other. In Scheme on the other side everything is (), especially with macros this gets confusion since you can't even be sure how something will get evaluated or if it gets evaluated at all, you can't even tell if its a macro or a function without looking it up.
The throuble with Scheme isn't its lack of power, but simply that it has to much of it. Python, Ruby and Co. on the other side take a tiny bit of Schemes power and pack it into a human readable syntax, one that has dedicated syntax for dedicated constructs, an assignment looks different from a for loop and from a function call, in Scheme on the other side everything looks the same, only difference is the first name after the ().
Since when? Last time I tried to click myself Wario World it was impossible to get one unless you already are a large game company.
If this turns real in the end and we really do get Sam'n Max on Wii this could be a big thing, not so much because Sam'n Max is the best game ever (well, maybe it is ;), but since it would be so far the first real demonstration I know of, of a small developers game making it onto the Wii. Which in turn could mean that we will get more small developers on the Wii, which in turn means me get more games, maybe lots more, depending of course on how open Nintendo is with their.
Lack of third part party support is the reason why I personally consider the Gamecube a failure, if they can turn that one around and get plenty of third parties, even when it are just small developers, the Wii definitvly would get quite a bit more interesting.
I would say that the difference is that videos have a higher trust level then random websites. Websites themself are a new thing that didn't existed before, so we handle them with some extra care. But for the past 100 or so years we already had cinemas and later TVs to show us video, so we are already familar with them and don't handle them with extra care. Sure, what you have seen on TV or on movies might not have been real, but it was relativly easy to judge the 'reality level'. If the military is showing you how nice war is, its easy to tell that it might be propaganda, if Fox News is showing it, it might not be much difficult either. If advertising is shown on TV it is normally cleary marked. In short, if you see something in the theatre or in TV you know its source and its purpose and can judge it on that basis.
Youtube however is different, you don't have a source, its anonymous, even more anonymous then a webpage, where IP and 'whois' will often uncover the truth. It however doesn't even stop with that, Youtube videos are also shown out of context, when something is shown on TV you have some information on when it was filmed and such, on Youtube you havn't, you just have the video itself. Often the videos are even cut, incomplete or posted with incorrect description to blur any clear hint to the true origin of the material.
I don't think this is just a problem with advertisment, since with that you sooner or later still have to get the product name so that you can actually buy the thing and by that you can figure out the source. I think this could turn into a much bigger problem, kind it alters our perception of reality. There are already tons of advertisment videos on Youtube with the ending cut out, so you no longer can easily tell if it is advertisment, some piece of a movie or real video footage of a real event. For example look at this video: Lost Wheel What does is show? A real event or what? Could you tell it from the video alone?
Now that Lost Wheel video of course doesn't show an event of any real importance, so in that case its a non issue. But what about military propagande that sneaks in, while being masked as real footage from the battlefield shoot by a normal soldier? What about cool home-made stunt video that in reality was just a special effect? Kids are already repeating a lot of stuff they see in those videos, that might not exactly get better when the stuff they try to repeat is impossible to begin with. I am not really sure where it is going, but spending some time on Youtube or GoogleVideo can certainly be quite a bit confusing when it comes to judging what of that what you have seen is real and what isn't.
Still waiting for an all new Pixar rendered CGI Mickey Mouse motion picture... ;)
Mario64 is ten years old, Zelda eight years. Since then there wasn't a single game I could name that was up to Nintendos old qualities. I think thats long enough for "long long ago". If you look back you will also find that between MarioBros3 and MarioWorld where around two years apart from each other, another two till YoshisIsland, then a year after that Mario64, etc., that is even ignoring StarFox, DonkeyKong and the rest of great games from the past. Nintendos hit rate was much higher a decade ago.
Nintendo also hasn't disappointed just with those classic franchises, WaveRace64 is much better then WaveRace-BlueStorm on the Gamecube, StarFox got worse and worse with every release, DonkeyKong, haven't seen a great game with that eitehr, Pikmin had all the potential to be back at Nintendos old qualities, yet they ruined it via pretty obvious mistakes, not only once (time limit, game far to short), but twice (shitty underground levels, game still to short).
Yes, it was deliberatetly designed to not be a worthy follow up, thats why I don't like it much. It has been 12 years since we had an original Mario platformer on handheld and now all we get is a retro-game? What about a worthy continuation of the Mario series instead? MarioBros3 is still mindblowing in many aspects, I want something like that again, not just retro gaming and remakes (Mario64DS, MarioAdvanced, etc.).
Of course you could write it via recursion, but does that lead to simpler or better readable code? I don't think so. Some problems are just linear in nature and a standard for loop is an easy and well readable way to solve those problems. Even Scheme has its for-each looping construct, since always using recursion would just get very ugly in such cases. However since Scheme lacks support for generators, function overloading or OO, the for-each construct stays rather limited, it doesn't even work with vectors, but only with lists, so you are kind of stuck.
One of the beauties of Scheme is of course that I now could start writing macros, functions and stuff to fix all those short commings. In Scheme a for-each construct isn't magic, its something you can easily build yourself. But for a lot of simple problems it just gets very annoying if you have to implement half the programming language yourself, which is the reason why I stopped using Scheme for serious work, its just requires more effort then worth it.
So does every Microsoft Windows release, however from a consumer point of view I still would call it a failure. In short I don't really consider it that important that the companie makes money, its of course a good thing when it does, since it means healthy business, but it might also mean that the consumer is getting ripped of.
With Gamecube its of course different, but I would consider that as a failure as well, since it simply didn't delivered what I had hoped for, namely great first parties and plenty of third parties (Zelda, Mario where medicore on Cube, third party gaming took place on PS2 and XBox for most part). I don't feeld like being ripped of with the Cube, since it had great hardware at a great price, with Wii on the other side the hardware power hasn't raised much, the price however has.
The Gamecube might not have failed to make Nintendo money, but it did fail to capture the interest of third party companies. If the console is treated as if it doesn't even exist by some third parties than you can tell that something has to be wrong. And speaking about general game quality, I would say the Gamecube failed as well, there simply wasn't a Mario64 or Zelda:OoT class kind of game on the Cube, ResidentEvil4 was the only truely noteworthy game on the Cube. Last not least the Gamecube also didn't get much game releases the past year, so it basically died out even before the Wii was released, again not a good thing.
On the NES, SNES and N64 Mario and Zelda games where awesome, however that time is long long ago. MarioSunshine and Zelda WindWaker on the Gamecube disapointed for most part. So did NewSuperMarioBros on the DS. Sure, none of those games where horrbile, but they where far away from the legendary status that those franchises earned in the old days. If Nintendo continues down that road I doubt that they could hold out for much longer.
Nintendo might have realized that themself, since the DS doesn't sell because of Mario and Zelda, it sells for large part because of BrainAge, Nintendogs and similar new kinds of games.
The days of Mario and Zelda are not numbered yet, but they have much less relevance these days already and are sold quite a bit less then Halo, GTA and friends.
How else would you write this?
for i in xrange(1,10):
print i
Sure I can sometimes use recursion, but for such simple jobs it really doesn't lead to readable code.
I know do, but I hardly ever used it, since its pretty much unreadable, beside from that it just demonstrates the throuble with Scheme, in Ruby I can write (0..5).to_a in Python I can write range(0,5) in Scheme I have to write:
(do ((vec (make-vector 5))
(i 0 (+ i 1)))
((= i 5) vec)
(vector-set! vec i i))
or
(let loop ((i 0)
(lst '()))
(if (vector (reverse lst))))
or similar equally obscure constructs. I know that I could fix it with a simple macro, but again, thats kind of the point, I have to fix all the flaws of the language myself, in Ruby and Python simple stuff works out of the box, in Scheme it doesn't.
Short subjective answer: No
Scheme is a nice language and has some very interesting properties, so learning it is well worth it, but its really not the lanuage that you would want to use for your daily work, for that it simply lacks a lot of convenience features (++a becomes (set! a (+ a 1)) and it also lacks standardization bejoint its very core, which means that every Scheme implementation comes with its own set of libraries for all kinds of jobs, even trivial tasks like a for-loop you have to either code yourself or rely on non-portable extensions.
In terms of 'power', yes its more powerfull, with macros I can do a heck of cool stuff that isn't possible in most other languages, but then those tricks seldomly result in readable code and you can get very similar effects with much cleaner tools like Rubys blocks, generators and similar things provided by other language.
To make it short, Scheme is for most part an academic language, worth learning it is, worth using not so much.
Not instantly, but sooner or later for sure, the old games don't get any more interesting with age and new ones won't get released anymore sooner or later for those old consoles, so its just natural to let the new consoles replace the old ones.
Try a Mario Sunshine screenshot that isn't all blurry and ugly and you don't really have much different left. Also Mario Galaxy uses different shading and emphasis the edges a lot, which gives the pictures some extra brillance, but that isn't really a sign of much improved power.
When you compare Link you have to take into account that SmashBrosMelee was a launch title for the console, current generation Gamecube games do look quite a bit better, compare it for example with Twilight Princess on the Gamecube, again, no big difference left.
I would be happy to be proven wrong, but so far it simply looks like Wii will have only minimally more power then the Gamecube. None of the Wii games so far looked like it couldn't have been done in the current generation. That doesn't mean they are ugly, Zelda looks great, but for a next generation console it really is quite a disapointment, especially for the price.
I don't know people who don't have a DVD drive, but I know plenty of people who are using the PS2 or XBox as DVD player, which means they can't just swap them away and replace them with a Wii, but still have to keep them around for DVD watching. Not a big issue thing, but certainly an annoying one.
Teddy is a different beast then ZBrush. ZBrush, as far as I know, allows you do model primitve 3D shapes in a relativly normal way and then to paint displacement maps on top of those base shapes, so you basically get an object with extreme detail. Which is great whe you want extremly detailed 3D models. Teddy on the other side isn't really about detail at all, its about making 3D modeling a 2D task and mainly about making it an trivially task so as in a 6 year old could do it. You can't really create detailed models with Teddy as it is, but you can create a 3D Teddy by simply drawing a 2D Teddy, all the 3d expansion is done automatically.
If I don't need wireless controllers, I can also pick up the cheaper wired ones for XBox360. On the Wii I don't have that choice. And as said Wiimote won't work with all games, so I have to get classic controller for an additional $15, which puts a complete Wii controller set for one person at $75 while XBox360 controller can be optained for $35. Cheap third party controller might also be quite a bit more problematic on the Wii, due to the new tech.
Now of course the Wii controller has more tech, but so does the PS3, that however doesn't make the higher price less annoying, this is especially true for a console like the Wii who gets advertised a lot with four people jumping around in front of the screen and shipped with a game that seems to be only fun in multiplayer.
The Wii is also a heck of a lot less powerfull then the other nextgen consoles. You have to compare the Wii with the Gamecube and if you do that you will find that its $150 more expensive then the Gamecube, doesn't look so sexy anymore. And when it comes to how much the Wii is more powerfull then the gamecube, lets just look at the screenshots of Gamecube and Wii, see the difference? I don't.
Except that they cost almost twice as much, oh and they are also not compatible with all the games on the console, so you have to get additional classic controllers to play all the games the console has to offer.
Well, some of us hoped that Nintendo would offer the console at a fair price and not try to squezze every cent out of the consumers just because the PS3 is totatly out of reach for many.
This is kind of a very theortic exercise, since the web isn't really something clearly defined, neither is email. If we close up the SMTP/POP/IMAP ports there is still all that webmail around, instant messaging, IRC and stuff. Ok, so lets count them all as email, but what about blogs or forums? You can't close them without closing one of the most important aspects of the web, namely that you are not limited to being a consumer, but also can easily become a producer of content. Last not least you could also easily substitude email with SMS or simply by the phone itself, almost everybody has mobile phones these days, so communication wouldn't come to an end just by closing email.
So I would say in the end the web clearly wins, since email really can be easily worked around, while the Web really can't. However turning the web into a passive consume-only medium would clearly be a very large loss, but given the 'rules' of the exersie it wouldn't be an issue since rest of the world would still be participating, so the richness of the web would be preserved.
What would be so bad about it? Ok, the games didn't show is face either, but for what reason? I don't really see much importance in not showing his face.
I can understand why we didn't get to see Hugo Weavings face in V for Vendetta or Darth Vaders face until the very end. But with Master Chief I don't really see the point, its just a random action-hero guy with guns who saves the day, not really that much different from the guy in Doom1 and I didn't really care that we got to see his face in Doom3. With Samus Aran you at least got the suprise that shes actually a girl, but again Master Chief? Whats so special about him and his face that makes it important to keep it undercover? With Wilson in Home Improvement it was a nice little running gag, but I don't really see much place for that in an action movie.
The comparism gets a bit bogus when one tries to be too exact, since before buying a $70 Wireless Adapter for XBox360 Core, people would be much better off by adding another $30 and buying XBox360 Premium and thus not only getting wireless network, but also a headset, wireless controller, a 20gb harddisk and stuff at which point the Wii doesn't really have anything to compare that to any more. In the end XBox360 Core looks good when compared to Wii, but not when compared to XBox360 Premium, kind of weird, but thats how it is, the extra components for XBox360 Core simply are far to expensive when bought seperatly.
In the end however, even with XBox360 Core not really being a good deal vs the Premium, Wii still is quite a bit to close in the XBox360 pricing territory. For a console that tries to be fresh, simply and cheap I really hoped for a price that would put some good distance between 360 and Wii.
In the first few hours of the game there is plenty of good old adventuring, funny dialogs, cool characters, some puzzles and stuff, later on however, when all cool characters get their brain stolen, so no more dialog, it turns more and more into an average jump'n run, actually not even into a very good one. I found the jump'n run elements to be for most part more annoying then enjoyable, since it really aren't classic jump'n run levels, but some weird mix of puzzles and jump'n run elements, which basically means that if you try to solve a puzzle the jump'n run elements will get into your way and when you try to jump'n run you will be stopped by some stupid puzzle. The story is also kind of disapointing, since the little stories in jump'n run levels don't really connect to the main storyline (each level follows a uniq theme, often completly changing the game mechanics). The jump'n run levels can also be quite difficult at times and frustrate.
However the art direction is great, some dialogs can be a lot of fun and the first few hours really are awesome, but I can't deny that the game didn't exactly benefit from its jump'n run elements, kind of the classic failed try to 'enrich' an adventure game by inserting action elements. Given its current price I would however say its absolutly worth it, since there simply isn't anything that comes close in terms of art and humour the money is well spend and in the end the game simply has some good points that shouldn't be missed.
Because its the only way the Wii can network, there simply isn't a RJ45 jack on the machine.