There have been construction games before, the Sim series comes to mind. Transport Tycoon. Granted these games had more of a goal in their world construction but still.
It is like saying that since Up! was such a succesfull movie, every movie must now be 3D rendered. Or indeed that since Terry Pratchett made a hit by not using chapters, books no longer should have chapters.
Stop saying "X is good, everything should be X". Secret sauce on a McBurger is great so they should put it on EVERYTHING.
And as for adjustable, the world is very square in minecraft, should every game have this simpistic view?
For that matter, do I really want a totally user transformable multiplayer game for every game type? Forget teamkillers now you get people bricking their team in.
The author needs to get out of 10yr old mode, things can be different from each other. I know that is a hard concept but someday you will realize that the A-team is NOT the answer to entertainment you once thought it was.
Innovation is NOT dead thanks to lawyers. It is dead to thanks to people like Steve Jobs who HIRE lawyers. Let me guess, you hold the hitman to account while letting the mafia boss who hired him untouched as well right? Prosecute the soldier but not the general?
Lawyers are a tool, don't blame the tool, blame the person wielding it.
Or would that make every iPhone owner here to uncomfortable because they are financing all this?
But there is a difference between not having a degree in biology or waste management and living under the control of people that tell you to pray for rain in a massive drought. Or who believe raping a baby (or any virgin but easiest with a baby) cures aids. Or eat albino people to gain their powers. And don't act so high and mighty, it wasn't so long ago in the west we burned people alive for voodoo, oops witchcraft or killed people for their faith and made lampshades out of them.
Civilization, you never truly appreciate it until every last bit of it has been stripped away from you. There are still houses in western Europe where you can see the design for crapping out on to the street. The London sewer system isn't all that old (compared to civilized man capable of building a toilet) but us modern humans still rely on it because we are no longer capable of the massive engineering it took to build it to upgrade it to modern needs.
A hole in the ground that is all? What about leach area, the radius around the hole in which you shouldn't dig or grow crops etc? How do you know? For thousands of year NO human knew. We thought smell kept evil spirits away. You and I can drink purest water from the tap for less then the cost of a peanut but drink instead poisoned water from plastic bottles at outrages prices and waste most of it for flushing the toilet.
I sit here within easy reach of enough food to last me a week, pure water how ever much I want, power for a dozen gadgets, in building that doesn't even budge in the worsed storms. Maybe you are too, but I don't pretend that my state in the norm in the rest of the world. Am I grateful for it? Hell no, I am a spoiled westerner but at least sometimes a story like this reminds me there are other places in the world. Maybe you should too. Even knowledge we consider basic is not universal. Just because you had over a decade maybe even two of education doesn't mean everyone has.
Lesser beings may know that game by the name of X-com: Ufo defence but they are not worth talking about.
For me, that series comes as close to the old days that I am glad are not gone. Who on earth prefers having to rely on a game mag CD over instantly downloading something? Who is not glad off MORE cpu power? Who does not enjoy games with a thousand times the graphical splendor of Doom? (If you are going to claim you loved Doom for its depth of gameplay, then I will have kill you) .
But UFO: Enemy Unknown is a game genre that is no more. It had debt, it had style, it had high production values, it had longevity. I even liked Apocalypse despite it horrible X-com prefix. And as for magazine cd's, I got the demo from a floppy. THAT is old school you newbie (and before any real oldies awaken from their undead sleep, my oldest games were recorded of the radio onto tape, my FIRST game was handtyped from a book... okay, now the REALLY ancient can speak up).
The only other old thing I use is MC (Midnight Commander). Some things get replaced by better, somethings can never be improved upon.
There was an obscure attempt in history to make expansion cards for the PC that would do much the same. It has always been a bother for the console industry that their is this large group of potential customers with at least part of the hardware they just can't seem to reach (well they could port their games but most console coders couldn't code their way out of a paper bag).
The install base for computers even just the powerful ones is far far larger then all the consoles combined. But it is a very hard market to develop for. Different configs, different OS versions.
MS itself doesn't know how to deal with it. Then it is games for windows, then it is gone again. Then they push DirectX then they cancel a PC release of a X-box exclusive. I wouldn't be surprised if someone within Redmond has thought to combine the two. There really isn't that much to stop it apart from the X-box division.
It even makes sense. The x-box would be the baseline, the minimum requirement and the fully supported platform, the PC is for the hardcore crowd who don't mind a more finicky platform in exchange for perceived higher performance. No more min or recommended spec. Just buy an x-box or you are on your own. Both of MS platforms serviced, an installed base Sony and Nintendo can't hope to reach. As for piracy? The xbox is so openly cracked it ain't funny anymore. Doesn't seem to hurt it one bit. The PS3 wasn't cracked. Doesn't seem to help it one bit.
I know some people hate the GNU/Linux remarks of Stallman but he is correct. If you are talking about Linux being more then just a kernel then you got to take GNU into account and all that comes with it. Ubuntu is what it is because it comes with a CD or even DVD full of FREE utilities most of them more then adequate to replace expensive and not so expensive windows applications. I have seen many people compare the cost of windows (comes "free" with the OS) with the cost of Linux, free to download. But they forget the countless tools you are expected to pay for on the Windows platform. No, using free opensource application on Windows does not count, if you want to argue opensource vs closed source costs you cannot lower closed source costs by using opensource.
So, how does this relate to Android? Simple, CHECK the market place vs Ubuntu package manager and see just how much installing applications costs you. Remember that story about the Apple app store netting developers 2.5 billion and Apple itself 1 billion? Where do you think that money came from? That's right, you. Add a billion or so for the credit card companies and that is a lot of money. And for what? Apps that are available on Linux for free and INFINITELY more powerful.
But it is only a few dollars... yes... it is... only a few dollars per app that you don't own and can't modify.
And android is much the same.
So Android is linux because it runs the kernel? Odd that, I can download the source of the kernel from Ubuntu, download the compiler needed from Ubuntu, download the editor from Ubuntu and download the instructions and hints to make it all into a new kernel modified by me. For that matter, I can take Ubuntu and turn it into my own distro (see Mint) or anyone can take all the components and make something else altogether (Gentoo). Do the same with android, I dare you!
Prove me wrong about the price or openess. Download a mplayer equivelant for Android. A media player that plays virtually any codec out there for free. It doesn't exist and the few players that a tiny bit capable, all cost money despite offering less functionality then a free application.
I suppose that for some lucky people, spending a few dollars here, a few dollars there is trivial. It must be or else things like Farmville would never survive. But some of us either are opposed to being nickle and dimed to death or just can't afford it.
Be honest, how many of you got a fully decked out with pay for use software Windows machine? Winzip, payed media player etc etc etc?
I have long considered replacing my netbook with a tablet but when I see the prices charged for apps vs what is available for free on my linux install... it just doesn't make sense. Currently I am just waiting for a decent hardware tablet that I can install linux on myself. Am I a cheap bastard in not wanting to pay developers for their time and effort? Yes, yes I am. Because while I have not contributed code to the opensource effort myself I do test and do bug reports and followups. It may not be much but I prefer to be part of the open effort then the closed sourced android and especially iOS culture of squeeze them for every penny.
But I can develop my own free and opensource apps you say? Indeed I can, except I am web developer so even easier is for me to work on web apps that work on any capable browser (sorry MS) and maybe do something interesting there. Which is what I am doing... when it is finished, it will be free. Why? Because I already got a day job. I am doing okay *breaks into sultans of swing and does NOT pay royalties for it*
In these "old" engines, the cooling block itself did not move, rather the engine it was attached to moved. The equivalent would be for an entire PC to spin in for radiators attacked to it to be cooled. This would be highly inconvenient for any cat owners as well as make it even harder to plugin that USB cable.
The US does not have an embassy in North Korea. Surely anyone who knows anything about diplomacy knows this. Seems you don't know anything about it then.
For instance, Germany often is heard talking about human rights. Germany! But what country can? Name a single one that does not have a laundry list of human rights abuses to its name. Probably even south-sudan, the newest country, already has a past soaked in blood. Oh it has? Well that proves it then.
The US, the country with the biggest arms budget, holding the chair for disarmerment?
The chair rotation happens precisely for this reason, to allow those who have not rewritten history to make themselve look PC, to also have a voice.
Remember, that if the UN has been older, the slave owning nations would not have allowed non-slave holding nations to speak because what could they possibly know about the subject.
And the canadians are hardly innocent, they rely heavily on the US for nuclear protection and their human rights record is dismal. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones and EVERYONE lives in glass houses when world politics are concerned.
There is a huge difference between a pantyshot and an upskirt. ALL accidental or intended (by the female) exposures of a panty being worn are pantyshots. This can be anything from the female just being dressed in undies, a short skirt and the camera (in movies/anime) being in the right place, to the reliable old gust of wind which by the way rarely happens in real life with plated skirts because they are to heavy. There are even skirts with weights sewn into the edge to keep them down... bloody cheats.
Upskirt is a shot made without the females consent from below her skirt aimed at her panty in such a way that the wearer can expect some privacy. People do it by either placing a camera in hidden location or even by tying a camera or mirrow to their shoes.
The picture you show is NOT an upskirt, it is a pantyshot, part of fanservice. There is nothing hidden about, neither the viewer or any characters in the clip are being voyeuristic and the female is aware of what she is showing, this is after all why she is wearing the boxershort.
If you want people to know the difference between anime (animation) and hentai (perverted/adult animation) then you need to know the difference between pantyshots and upskirt.
Gravure videos are filled with pantyshots but upskirt is reserved for the seedier porn.
Nobody is going to arrest you in japan for seeing a woman's panties when her skirt is blow up by the wind. Try getting an upskirt shot and prepare to do some hard time.
In a socialist country, people pay taxes. Greece is famous for its dismal tax collection. What Greece really is is SPEND SPEND SPEND. Its politicians cared only about making EVERYONE happy. Plenty of benefits, low taxation just to buy voter favour. It is what happens when your economy essentially is fueled by the outside world. Greeks have never contributed anything to the EU, they have only be taking. Same with all the other EU economies that are falling down. The EU want to grow and to keep its new members happy it kept giving them more and more money without demanding anything in return.
Democracy is the problem, it is next to impossible to get elected with sensible policies if your opponent can promise the moon and never be called out on it by the press/people.
The flamebait or troll mod is not there to catch flamebait or trolls but to label things as "I don't want to hear this". Take tuna, it is easy to see it is over fished as it has become harder and harder to catch. The people who want to continue catching with no restrictions don't even bother denying it, they just don't want to deal with it. They want their tuna now, if that means no tuna tomorrow, so be it.
I think after what they did with Doom the only thing that is certain about this movie is that it will not have space or invaders. Otherwise it is all open.
As others have said, this is probably sheer desperation in needing to use a title people know to get punters to go rather then say a trailer with all the action shots or a female star taking her top off.
Space Invaders the movie... when people mention it dear Hollywood they were making FUN of you. NOT making a suggestion.
A nobody claims that a billion dollar company doesn't know what it is doing.
I am reminded of the last tech bubble and all the companies that happily put all their investor money in Sun servers and Oracle databases and never actually delivered a working product.
Facebook used PHP and MySQL and delivered the largest social networking site with millions of daily users and you get deadbeats saying they did it wrong. The guy above even wants to use an existing CMS or framework for something like Facebook. Talk about not getting it.
There are two kinds of people on this planet. Those that get things done and those that spend all their time talking about how they would they do it, someday.
It might well be that Facebook will need to replace a tech someday but they reached this size already with tech that a lot of armchair developers claimed couldn't do it but did. Doesn't that tell you something?
The biggest reason PHP and MySQL and Linux are so successful over other solutions is a simple one. They are used by people that want to get things done. Ask on a python forum about json and you get a discussiuon on json vs xml. On a BSD forum ask about FTP and you get a lecture on plain text passwords. MySQL just gives you the newly created key and doesn't want you to first learn to write a procedure for it. It is about getting stuff done vs talking about it.
There is a place for talking about all the latest gadgets but it is not where investors money is being burned trying to deliver a product. Just take a good hard look at all the new crap like python and ask yourself this, where is the forum and webshop software for it? Non-existent. Why? Because everytime a future chasing developer comes close to delivering something he is on to the next thing. Duke Nukem Forever development style.
Spinning top, you ever played with these toys? What happened to them when they hit a curb like a book or something? Right, they bounce off. Why? Because all of sudden it gains traction with what can be thought of as a wheel.
This ball wheel works as an infinite gear because by tilting it, the controller decides exactly how large a wheel (a ball is an infinite number of circles/wheels, each a bit smaller/larger then its neighbour, stacked on top of each other) contacts the floor. If the ball is spinning direction is parallel to the floor (if the ball doesn't deform) it wouldn't move because there is no forward motion. Tilt it and you are essentially making contact with an ever larger wheel. If the RPM remains the same, the larger the wheel the greater distance must be travelled. That it works is clear and predictable. It makes perfect sense.
But a bump on the road would suddenly cause a far greater wheel to make contact, greater wheel means greater speed and BAM, you got a difficult to control vehicle.
This thing doesn't just need a flat surface, it must also avoid any curbs. And what if it hits a crack in the surface, what if its gets grip on its on opposite sides of the spinning ball?
Doesn't mean this won't have its uses but they will be limited.
The voting system in Florida is 100% secure, they absolutely positively guarantee that there is ZERO chance of ANY voter being able to affect the predetermined outcome sold to the highest bidder.
Oh yeah thought they were trying to ensure the voters choice was not tampered with? What a silly idea.
If you think OSX is unix, you never used unix. Apple really went to town on the cute and innocent opensource OS like a pedo on a 4yr old and turned it into a twisted psycho vision of itself.
OSX is not Unix. Go ahead and use it, you will find many many things changed to accomodate the single (active) user nature of OSX.
Oh and Apple provides an exceptional UNIX out of the box?
Really? Where is the cli on the iPhone? On the iPad? On the iPod? Oh, just on their PC's... well that is actually just a small section then of their total market.
PC's are fastly more powerful today then any console out there AND they iterate like crazy! Hasn't helped the number of games for that platform has it?
As for looking stunning, take a GOOD hard look at the game you mentioned, visit the home page, scroll down to four screenshots on a row click on the screenshot on the right of a single guy standing in front of a grey wall. Look at the textures of the wall. My god, that is BLURRED! If that same game had appeared on a PC or even a console it would have been slammed for such obsolete rendering. But because you are thinking "oh wow, look at what my phone can do" you forgive rendering artefacts that were solved on better tech years ago.
Yes, phone hardware will continue to get faster but so will other tech. The most powerfull phones can now barely keep up with the older netbooks, except for the memory and HD IO speed and screensize and inputs... but my gaming PC is a bit more powerful then a netbook. I know because my linux desktop is an AMD APU machine and even for desktop tasks, the difference is often very clear. Not enough for me to put up with the energy slurping of a gaming rig for posting on slashdot but still, to many things at once are noticable.
Betting that future hardware will be more powerful then hardware we got now is basically what you are claiming... well, lets see, the PSP and its successor have been presented as being more powerful then their main console brethren, see how well that worked out. Not only wasn't the PSP more powerful then a PS2 its sales were far lower then a device that made no such claim of power.
The biggest gaming market out there is casual games and no, not even FarmVille. Real casual games, that are 100% free to play. Like solitaire either on your PC or phone or in a browser. So? Is Carmack going to do a solitaire game? Future predictions on the industry are near useless. And saying that in the future hardware will be more powerful barely counts even as a prediction as all.
I got another preduction for Carmack: More people have played MS solitaire then ALL of your games combines. So pack it in dude, you are in a dying industry!
Oh wait, several industries can exist beside each other without really impacting each other? You mean the entry of flash games did NOT kill of other forms of gaming? How odd, I was assured that X will kill Y also know as the iKiller was a sure thing!
One of the things that always suprises me about the handhelds made by Nintendo and Sony is how the games made for them are often so totally unsuitable for the platform. Early GBA games STILL came with save passwords, for those lucky enough not to know the horrors of the early consoles, that means saving your progress was NOT saving a few bits to a storage on your machine but writing down a fairly long string of random characters to be typed, oh wait no keyboard, scrolled back in when you want to resume... on a handheld...
Clearly who ever came up with that NEVER considered the game to be played in few wasted moments on the go. The 3DS is a nice device but who on earth thought this kinda 3D was useful on the go... It is already hard enough to hold the device still in a comfortable chair, in a moving bus? Forget about it.
What does this mean? Well, if many of the 3DS games are meant to be played at home, with some dedication, is this then hardcore gaming? Compared with Angry Birds? I haven't seen to many of the mobile games that are a bit deeper, more what we would consider a full price game (with the note that just because a game charges full price, doesn't make it a full price game). Could it possibly be that people who play mobile games want just a fun game for a few minutes at a time? That other gamers want something else and all this can exist besides each other with attention whores leaping from platform to platform claiming this to be the new king?
For anyone who wants to guess about the future, always consider WoW. An ancient game by now designed for obsolete hardware, yet there is no console equivelant and it still packs in the punters by the millions. Where is WoW in the console? On mobile devices? On handhelds? Until you can explain WoW, you can't make predictions on gaming.
Not because the game itself is so important but what happened to all the predictions for the end of PC-gaming? When everyone who wants a MMO has to have a PC? Even the new FF MMO is still only for the PC (crap as it is) despite its creator otherwise making only console games. It shows different platforms got their own capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Only a fool would declare one to rule them all.
This is well known, the reason the iPod got so big is because Apple dared to buy in such huge amounts they not only got the output of entire factories, they managed to drive the unit price they payed down so that nobody else could compete. This is why you there is no such thing as a 64GB mp3 player from Cowon and why Archos tends to go to HD, they just can't buy flash at the price that allows them to compete with apple and its 64gb offerings.
BUT Apple ain't got it all their way, they misjudged Amoled and for now it seems they can't just buy their way in. Samsung needs all the displays it can produce for itself. Small players like Cowon can get their displays but if Apple wants to use them, it better make some friends. Why should Samsung help Apple with the iPad3? They got their own tablets to sell.
Is amoled that hot? Well, I compared a nexus S with a iPhone and the nexus can easily be read in broad daylight, the iPhone not so much. As for all angle viewing, I can't always hold the screen steady or at an optimal angle. Enegery usage is claimed to be lower as well (can't verify this myself), they are thinner and lighter and resolutions might be higher for a lower cost.
So, Apple gets flash nobody else can afford at the same price but they don't get it all. It has always been the tradeoff for a company relying on parts from others. You can buy what you want, but will always be depended on others for what you can buy. The cutting edge will always be held ultimately by those who develop in house but at the huge risk that you bet on the wrong horse and end up with something nobody wants. Remember minitiature HD's? Not the ones that were in the first iPod's, even smaller ones, destined for the smartphones of the future... I seen them in some MP3 players but the risk those companies took didn't pay off, the world turned to flash instead.
And for all its market power, where is the real innovation with the iPod? What did it, does it do, nobody else did before them AND does it better?
In many ways the iPod is the wallmart player, it shows the power of bulk purchasing and putting it in a saleable package but little else.
Or maybe I am just defending my order for a Cowon d3.
No I am not American but I have visited and Americans are the most corteous drivers I have EVER seen ANYWHERE in the world INCLUDING Japan.
Now granted this was in Arizona only so hardly a deeply researched anecdote but let me tell it nonetheless:
Phoenix is HUGE, to a european everything is laid out like a brand new industrial park stretched to breaking point. Those big cars that totally block a European road? Got about a meter on each side on a lane. Crossing the street on foot you better pack a lunch.
Most crossings have lights but oddly enough, the light for the pedestrians and parallel road traffic goes green at the SAME time. So, if you are dutch, you know to watch your back because drivers will rush forward at top speed, if you are lucky, just stopping in front of you if you are brave enough.
So, what do rude obnoxious unmannered American drivers do? They wait. NOT a milimeter in front of you, they wait AT THE LIGHT! ALL the way over on the other side of the junction and ONLY start to drive when you are WELL clear. I was there for over a week, NOT a SINGLE occasion did ANY driver not give me plenty of space to walk. Now granted I know a dutch geek is probably very imposing to the average American redneck but I at least have to say that Americans must have sent all their assholes out of the country when I visited.
Do round abouts work as a citizen of round about country? Not really, assholes are assholes. Maybe if the police did their job a bit better. Although that is odd, for a supposed police state I saw just one traffic cop. The day before I left holland, riot police was parked on every corner in Amsterdam with camera's everywhere because there were was soccer match...
Sometimes the world is not quite according to the stereotypes you have in your head.
I think someone is overestimating the effect of a satellite transmission into a country where satellite receivers are illegal.
It would be like flashing a school for the blind. Sure, it is fun but overall, don't expect much screaming and shouting... how do I know? Never you mind.
Bill Gates as a tech leader? He never was. He was a business leader and excelled at pushing and sometimes breaking the boundaries of ethical behavior but he NEVER excelled or was even adequate as a technical leader.
The world has changed AND the world knows it has changed for the better and is NOT going to let the old times return, exceptions like Nokia proving the point. Gates only achieved one thing, through wheeling and dealing he managed to make Windows THE OS that everyone HAD to use. Not wanted to use like OSX or iOS, had to. It worked but instead of continueing to push their advantage Gates let MS go lacks and basically allowed everyone to overtake MS left right and center.
And now that MS is no longer dominant, NOBODY is going to allow them to dominate again. You can see this by the absolute refusal of phone makers or even computer makers to go the windows only route. Even Nokia is still releasing a LINUX phone in the form of the N9. That would never have happened when Gates was calling the shots in a by gone era.
Could you imagine in the early days of Dell them selling Linux? HP going back to pushing its OWN OS?
That is the problem for MS, it is stuck in the past. Some parts try, the acknowledgement that Silverlight would need to run on both OSX and Linux by MS itself showed how much the world has changed, but they did not follow through on it. This is a world in which MS buys google ad words to advertise its browser on a google search for chrome. You couldn't make this up. MS is funding the development of its chief rival browser in an attempt to get people back to using its own free browser the searcher either already has available OR can't run! Desperation is not even an adequate word to describe this.
Gates and Ballmer can't cope with this new world in which MS is just another software vendor with a not particularly valuable brandname. Proof? Windows Phone. It doesn't sell. Apple Phone? Can't ship them fast enough. One has value as a brand name, the other is a liability. Why do you think it is called the X-box and not the Windows Box or MS-X?
If Apple were to release a game device you would be sure their logo would feature heavily (see the back of the iPad). Where is the MS logo on the x-box? What is the MS logo?
MS still has a lot of power and its money supply is near infinite, so why can't it deliver anything of interest anymore? Why is Bling so crap, Windows Phone so un-intresting? Why is it not dealing at all with its largest installed game base, the windows PC?
The answer is simple, nobody MS has any experience in having to think competitive. They are not used to having them. Now they do. None of the old guard can deal with it. To bad. There won't be a competent replacement because that would mean the old guard admitting they are passed it.
This has nothing to do with the tax then does it? If you can't buy it at X then how much tax Y charges doesn't really matter anymore.
Also, might the unfair tax advantage of amazon have made it impossible for the local shops to compete? So if Amazon did NOT have its unfair tax advantage, you would still have a choice. But no, you saved a penny or two and now you got no choice.
Free market, I see you do work, I just don't like your results.
Awh, poor BT, after taking it up the ass for the content owners, they get it shoved up there again!
Remember that when dealing with the content industry, if you give them a finger, they bite of your head.
Once this motion passed, other motions will be easier and easier until the entire internet consist only of sites the content industry approves off. And politicians who are used to compromises let it all happen because they think the content industry will meet them half way. The problem with meeting someone half way is that if it is you who keeps doing this, sooner or later you are completely on the other side.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been construction games before, the Sim series comes to mind. Transport Tycoon. Granted these games had more of a goal in their world construction but still.
It is like saying that since Up! was such a succesfull movie, every movie must now be 3D rendered. Or indeed that since Terry Pratchett made a hit by not using chapters, books no longer should have chapters.
Stop saying "X is good, everything should be X". Secret sauce on a McBurger is great so they should put it on EVERYTHING.
And as for adjustable, the world is very square in minecraft, should every game have this simpistic view?
For that matter, do I really want a totally user transformable multiplayer game for every game type? Forget teamkillers now you get people bricking their team in.
The author needs to get out of 10yr old mode, things can be different from each other. I know that is a hard concept but someday you will realize that the A-team is NOT the answer to entertainment you once thought it was.
Innovation is NOT dead thanks to lawyers. It is dead to thanks to people like Steve Jobs who HIRE lawyers. Let me guess, you hold the hitman to account while letting the mafia boss who hired him untouched as well right? Prosecute the soldier but not the general?
Lawyers are a tool, don't blame the tool, blame the person wielding it.
Or would that make every iPhone owner here to uncomfortable because they are financing all this?
But there is a difference between not having a degree in biology or waste management and living under the control of people that tell you to pray for rain in a massive drought. Or who believe raping a baby (or any virgin but easiest with a baby) cures aids. Or eat albino people to gain their powers. And don't act so high and mighty, it wasn't so long ago in the west we burned people alive for voodoo, oops witchcraft or killed people for their faith and made lampshades out of them.
Civilization, you never truly appreciate it until every last bit of it has been stripped away from you. There are still houses in western Europe where you can see the design for crapping out on to the street. The London sewer system isn't all that old (compared to civilized man capable of building a toilet) but us modern humans still rely on it because we are no longer capable of the massive engineering it took to build it to upgrade it to modern needs.
A hole in the ground that is all? What about leach area, the radius around the hole in which you shouldn't dig or grow crops etc? How do you know? For thousands of year NO human knew. We thought smell kept evil spirits away. You and I can drink purest water from the tap for less then the cost of a peanut but drink instead poisoned water from plastic bottles at outrages prices and waste most of it for flushing the toilet.
I sit here within easy reach of enough food to last me a week, pure water how ever much I want, power for a dozen gadgets, in building that doesn't even budge in the worsed storms. Maybe you are too, but I don't pretend that my state in the norm in the rest of the world. Am I grateful for it? Hell no, I am a spoiled westerner but at least sometimes a story like this reminds me there are other places in the world. Maybe you should too. Even knowledge we consider basic is not universal. Just because you had over a decade maybe even two of education doesn't mean everyone has.
Lesser beings may know that game by the name of X-com: Ufo defence but they are not worth talking about.
For me, that series comes as close to the old days that I am glad are not gone. Who on earth prefers having to rely on a game mag CD over instantly downloading something? Who is not glad off MORE cpu power? Who does not enjoy games with a thousand times the graphical splendor of Doom? (If you are going to claim you loved Doom for its depth of gameplay, then I will have kill you) .
But UFO: Enemy Unknown is a game genre that is no more. It had debt, it had style, it had high production values, it had longevity. I even liked Apocalypse despite it horrible X-com prefix. And as for magazine cd's, I got the demo from a floppy. THAT is old school you newbie (and before any real oldies awaken from their undead sleep, my oldest games were recorded of the radio onto tape, my FIRST game was handtyped from a book... okay, now the REALLY ancient can speak up).
The only other old thing I use is MC (Midnight Commander). Some things get replaced by better, somethings can never be improved upon.
There was an obscure attempt in history to make expansion cards for the PC that would do much the same. It has always been a bother for the console industry that their is this large group of potential customers with at least part of the hardware they just can't seem to reach (well they could port their games but most console coders couldn't code their way out of a paper bag).
The install base for computers even just the powerful ones is far far larger then all the consoles combined. But it is a very hard market to develop for. Different configs, different OS versions.
MS itself doesn't know how to deal with it. Then it is games for windows, then it is gone again. Then they push DirectX then they cancel a PC release of a X-box exclusive. I wouldn't be surprised if someone within Redmond has thought to combine the two. There really isn't that much to stop it apart from the X-box division.
It even makes sense. The x-box would be the baseline, the minimum requirement and the fully supported platform, the PC is for the hardcore crowd who don't mind a more finicky platform in exchange for perceived higher performance. No more min or recommended spec. Just buy an x-box or you are on your own. Both of MS platforms serviced, an installed base Sony and Nintendo can't hope to reach. As for piracy? The xbox is so openly cracked it ain't funny anymore. Doesn't seem to hurt it one bit. The PS3 wasn't cracked. Doesn't seem to help it one bit.
I know some people hate the GNU/Linux remarks of Stallman but he is correct. If you are talking about Linux being more then just a kernel then you got to take GNU into account and all that comes with it. Ubuntu is what it is because it comes with a CD or even DVD full of FREE utilities most of them more then adequate to replace expensive and not so expensive windows applications. I have seen many people compare the cost of windows (comes "free" with the OS) with the cost of Linux, free to download. But they forget the countless tools you are expected to pay for on the Windows platform. No, using free opensource application on Windows does not count, if you want to argue opensource vs closed source costs you cannot lower closed source costs by using opensource.
So, how does this relate to Android? Simple, CHECK the market place vs Ubuntu package manager and see just how much installing applications costs you. Remember that story about the Apple app store netting developers 2.5 billion and Apple itself 1 billion? Where do you think that money came from? That's right, you. Add a billion or so for the credit card companies and that is a lot of money. And for what? Apps that are available on Linux for free and INFINITELY more powerful.
But it is only a few dollars... yes... it is... only a few dollars per app that you don't own and can't modify.
And android is much the same.
So Android is linux because it runs the kernel? Odd that, I can download the source of the kernel from Ubuntu, download the compiler needed from Ubuntu, download the editor from Ubuntu and download the instructions and hints to make it all into a new kernel modified by me. For that matter, I can take Ubuntu and turn it into my own distro (see Mint) or anyone can take all the components and make something else altogether (Gentoo). Do the same with android, I dare you!
Prove me wrong about the price or openess. Download a mplayer equivelant for Android. A media player that plays virtually any codec out there for free. It doesn't exist and the few players that a tiny bit capable, all cost money despite offering less functionality then a free application.
I suppose that for some lucky people, spending a few dollars here, a few dollars there is trivial. It must be or else things like Farmville would never survive. But some of us either are opposed to being nickle and dimed to death or just can't afford it.
Be honest, how many of you got a fully decked out with pay for use software Windows machine? Winzip, payed media player etc etc etc?
I have long considered replacing my netbook with a tablet but when I see the prices charged for apps vs what is available for free on my linux install... it just doesn't make sense. Currently I am just waiting for a decent hardware tablet that I can install linux on myself. Am I a cheap bastard in not wanting to pay developers for their time and effort? Yes, yes I am. Because while I have not contributed code to the opensource effort myself I do test and do bug reports and followups. It may not be much but I prefer to be part of the open effort then the closed sourced android and especially iOS culture of squeeze them for every penny.
But I can develop my own free and opensource apps you say? Indeed I can, except I am web developer so even easier is for me to work on web apps that work on any capable browser (sorry MS) and maybe do something interesting there. Which is what I am doing... when it is finished, it will be free. Why? Because I already got a day job. I am doing okay *breaks into sultans of swing and does NOT pay royalties for it*
In these "old" engines, the cooling block itself did not move, rather the engine it was attached to moved. The equivalent would be for an entire PC to spin in for radiators attacked to it to be cooled. This would be highly inconvenient for any cat owners as well as make it even harder to plugin that USB cable.
The US does not have an embassy in North Korea. Surely anyone who knows anything about diplomacy knows this. Seems you don't know anything about it then.
For instance, Germany often is heard talking about human rights. Germany! But what country can? Name a single one that does not have a laundry list of human rights abuses to its name. Probably even south-sudan, the newest country, already has a past soaked in blood. Oh it has? Well that proves it then.
The US, the country with the biggest arms budget, holding the chair for disarmerment?
The chair rotation happens precisely for this reason, to allow those who have not rewritten history to make themselve look PC, to also have a voice.
Remember, that if the UN has been older, the slave owning nations would not have allowed non-slave holding nations to speak because what could they possibly know about the subject.
And the canadians are hardly innocent, they rely heavily on the US for nuclear protection and their human rights record is dismal. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones and EVERYONE lives in glass houses when world politics are concerned.
There is a huge difference between a pantyshot and an upskirt. ALL accidental or intended (by the female) exposures of a panty being worn are pantyshots. This can be anything from the female just being dressed in undies, a short skirt and the camera (in movies/anime) being in the right place, to the reliable old gust of wind which by the way rarely happens in real life with plated skirts because they are to heavy. There are even skirts with weights sewn into the edge to keep them down... bloody cheats.
Upskirt is a shot made without the females consent from below her skirt aimed at her panty in such a way that the wearer can expect some privacy. People do it by either placing a camera in hidden location or even by tying a camera or mirrow to their shoes.
The picture you show is NOT an upskirt, it is a pantyshot, part of fanservice. There is nothing hidden about, neither the viewer or any characters in the clip are being voyeuristic and the female is aware of what she is showing, this is after all why she is wearing the boxershort.
If you want people to know the difference between anime (animation) and hentai (perverted/adult animation) then you need to know the difference between pantyshots and upskirt.
Gravure videos are filled with pantyshots but upskirt is reserved for the seedier porn.
Nobody is going to arrest you in japan for seeing a woman's panties when her skirt is blow up by the wind. Try getting an upskirt shot and prepare to do some hard time.
In a socialist country, people pay taxes. Greece is famous for its dismal tax collection. What Greece really is is SPEND SPEND SPEND. Its politicians cared only about making EVERYONE happy. Plenty of benefits, low taxation just to buy voter favour. It is what happens when your economy essentially is fueled by the outside world. Greeks have never contributed anything to the EU, they have only be taking. Same with all the other EU economies that are falling down. The EU want to grow and to keep its new members happy it kept giving them more and more money without demanding anything in return.
Democracy is the problem, it is next to impossible to get elected with sensible policies if your opponent can promise the moon and never be called out on it by the press/people.
The flamebait or troll mod is not there to catch flamebait or trolls but to label things as "I don't want to hear this". Take tuna, it is easy to see it is over fished as it has become harder and harder to catch. The people who want to continue catching with no restrictions don't even bother denying it, they just don't want to deal with it. They want their tuna now, if that means no tuna tomorrow, so be it.
I think after what they did with Doom the only thing that is certain about this movie is that it will not have space or invaders. Otherwise it is all open.
As others have said, this is probably sheer desperation in needing to use a title people know to get punters to go rather then say a trailer with all the action shots or a female star taking her top off.
Space Invaders the movie... when people mention it dear Hollywood they were making FUN of you. NOT making a suggestion.
A nobody claims that a billion dollar company doesn't know what it is doing.
I am reminded of the last tech bubble and all the companies that happily put all their investor money in Sun servers and Oracle databases and never actually delivered a working product.
Facebook used PHP and MySQL and delivered the largest social networking site with millions of daily users and you get deadbeats saying they did it wrong. The guy above even wants to use an existing CMS or framework for something like Facebook. Talk about not getting it.
There are two kinds of people on this planet. Those that get things done and those that spend all their time talking about how they would they do it, someday.
It might well be that Facebook will need to replace a tech someday but they reached this size already with tech that a lot of armchair developers claimed couldn't do it but did. Doesn't that tell you something?
The biggest reason PHP and MySQL and Linux are so successful over other solutions is a simple one. They are used by people that want to get things done. Ask on a python forum about json and you get a discussiuon on json vs xml. On a BSD forum ask about FTP and you get a lecture on plain text passwords. MySQL just gives you the newly created key and doesn't want you to first learn to write a procedure for it. It is about getting stuff done vs talking about it.
There is a place for talking about all the latest gadgets but it is not where investors money is being burned trying to deliver a product. Just take a good hard look at all the new crap like python and ask yourself this, where is the forum and webshop software for it? Non-existent. Why? Because everytime a future chasing developer comes close to delivering something he is on to the next thing. Duke Nukem Forever development style.
Spinning top, you ever played with these toys? What happened to them when they hit a curb like a book or something? Right, they bounce off. Why? Because all of sudden it gains traction with what can be thought of as a wheel.
This ball wheel works as an infinite gear because by tilting it, the controller decides exactly how large a wheel (a ball is an infinite number of circles/wheels, each a bit smaller/larger then its neighbour, stacked on top of each other) contacts the floor. If the ball is spinning direction is parallel to the floor (if the ball doesn't deform) it wouldn't move because there is no forward motion. Tilt it and you are essentially making contact with an ever larger wheel. If the RPM remains the same, the larger the wheel the greater distance must be travelled. That it works is clear and predictable. It makes perfect sense.
But a bump on the road would suddenly cause a far greater wheel to make contact, greater wheel means greater speed and BAM, you got a difficult to control vehicle.
This thing doesn't just need a flat surface, it must also avoid any curbs. And what if it hits a crack in the surface, what if its gets grip on its on opposite sides of the spinning ball?
Doesn't mean this won't have its uses but they will be limited.
The voting system in Florida is 100% secure, they absolutely positively guarantee that there is ZERO chance of ANY voter being able to affect the predetermined outcome sold to the highest bidder.
Oh yeah thought they were trying to ensure the voters choice was not tampered with? What a silly idea.
If you think OSX is unix, you never used unix. Apple really went to town on the cute and innocent opensource OS like a pedo on a 4yr old and turned it into a twisted psycho vision of itself.
OSX is not Unix. Go ahead and use it, you will find many many things changed to accomodate the single (active) user nature of OSX.
Oh and Apple provides an exceptional UNIX out of the box?
Really? Where is the cli on the iPhone? On the iPad? On the iPod? Oh, just on their PC's... well that is actually just a small section then of their total market.
OSX is Lindows on more expensive hardware.
PC's are fastly more powerful today then any console out there AND they iterate like crazy! Hasn't helped the number of games for that platform has it?
As for looking stunning, take a GOOD hard look at the game you mentioned, visit the home page, scroll down to four screenshots on a row click on the screenshot on the right of a single guy standing in front of a grey wall. Look at the textures of the wall. My god, that is BLURRED! If that same game had appeared on a PC or even a console it would have been slammed for such obsolete rendering. But because you are thinking "oh wow, look at what my phone can do" you forgive rendering artefacts that were solved on better tech years ago.
Yes, phone hardware will continue to get faster but so will other tech. The most powerfull phones can now barely keep up with the older netbooks, except for the memory and HD IO speed and screensize and inputs... but my gaming PC is a bit more powerful then a netbook. I know because my linux desktop is an AMD APU machine and even for desktop tasks, the difference is often very clear. Not enough for me to put up with the energy slurping of a gaming rig for posting on slashdot but still, to many things at once are noticable.
Betting that future hardware will be more powerful then hardware we got now is basically what you are claiming... well, lets see, the PSP and its successor have been presented as being more powerful then their main console brethren, see how well that worked out. Not only wasn't the PSP more powerful then a PS2 its sales were far lower then a device that made no such claim of power.
The biggest gaming market out there is casual games and no, not even FarmVille. Real casual games, that are 100% free to play. Like solitaire either on your PC or phone or in a browser. So? Is Carmack going to do a solitaire game? Future predictions on the industry are near useless. And saying that in the future hardware will be more powerful barely counts even as a prediction as all.
Breaking news: Tomorrow the sun will come UP!
I got another preduction for Carmack: More people have played MS solitaire then ALL of your games combines. So pack it in dude, you are in a dying industry!
Oh wait, several industries can exist beside each other without really impacting each other? You mean the entry of flash games did NOT kill of other forms of gaming? How odd, I was assured that X will kill Y also know as the iKiller was a sure thing!
One of the things that always suprises me about the handhelds made by Nintendo and Sony is how the games made for them are often so totally unsuitable for the platform. Early GBA games STILL came with save passwords, for those lucky enough not to know the horrors of the early consoles, that means saving your progress was NOT saving a few bits to a storage on your machine but writing down a fairly long string of random characters to be typed, oh wait no keyboard, scrolled back in when you want to resume... on a handheld...
Clearly who ever came up with that NEVER considered the game to be played in few wasted moments on the go. The 3DS is a nice device but who on earth thought this kinda 3D was useful on the go... It is already hard enough to hold the device still in a comfortable chair, in a moving bus? Forget about it.
What does this mean? Well, if many of the 3DS games are meant to be played at home, with some dedication, is this then hardcore gaming? Compared with Angry Birds? I haven't seen to many of the mobile games that are a bit deeper, more what we would consider a full price game (with the note that just because a game charges full price, doesn't make it a full price game). Could it possibly be that people who play mobile games want just a fun game for a few minutes at a time? That other gamers want something else and all this can exist besides each other with attention whores leaping from platform to platform claiming this to be the new king?
For anyone who wants to guess about the future, always consider WoW. An ancient game by now designed for obsolete hardware, yet there is no console equivelant and it still packs in the punters by the millions. Where is WoW in the console? On mobile devices? On handhelds? Until you can explain WoW, you can't make predictions on gaming.
Not because the game itself is so important but what happened to all the predictions for the end of PC-gaming? When everyone who wants a MMO has to have a PC? Even the new FF MMO is still only for the PC (crap as it is) despite its creator otherwise making only console games. It shows different platforms got their own capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Only a fool would declare one to rule them all.
This is well known, the reason the iPod got so big is because Apple dared to buy in such huge amounts they not only got the output of entire factories, they managed to drive the unit price they payed down so that nobody else could compete. This is why you there is no such thing as a 64GB mp3 player from Cowon and why Archos tends to go to HD, they just can't buy flash at the price that allows them to compete with apple and its 64gb offerings.
BUT Apple ain't got it all their way, they misjudged Amoled and for now it seems they can't just buy their way in. Samsung needs all the displays it can produce for itself. Small players like Cowon can get their displays but if Apple wants to use them, it better make some friends. Why should Samsung help Apple with the iPad3? They got their own tablets to sell.
Is amoled that hot? Well, I compared a nexus S with a iPhone and the nexus can easily be read in broad daylight, the iPhone not so much. As for all angle viewing, I can't always hold the screen steady or at an optimal angle. Enegery usage is claimed to be lower as well (can't verify this myself), they are thinner and lighter and resolutions might be higher for a lower cost.
So, Apple gets flash nobody else can afford at the same price but they don't get it all. It has always been the tradeoff for a company relying on parts from others. You can buy what you want, but will always be depended on others for what you can buy. The cutting edge will always be held ultimately by those who develop in house but at the huge risk that you bet on the wrong horse and end up with something nobody wants. Remember minitiature HD's? Not the ones that were in the first iPod's, even smaller ones, destined for the smartphones of the future... I seen them in some MP3 players but the risk those companies took didn't pay off, the world turned to flash instead.
And for all its market power, where is the real innovation with the iPod? What did it, does it do, nobody else did before them AND does it better?
In many ways the iPod is the wallmart player, it shows the power of bulk purchasing and putting it in a saleable package but little else.
Or maybe I am just defending my order for a Cowon d3.
No I am not American but I have visited and Americans are the most corteous drivers I have EVER seen ANYWHERE in the world INCLUDING Japan.
Now granted this was in Arizona only so hardly a deeply researched anecdote but let me tell it nonetheless:
Phoenix is HUGE, to a european everything is laid out like a brand new industrial park stretched to breaking point. Those big cars that totally block a European road? Got about a meter on each side on a lane. Crossing the street on foot you better pack a lunch.
Most crossings have lights but oddly enough, the light for the pedestrians and parallel road traffic goes green at the SAME time. So, if you are dutch, you know to watch your back because drivers will rush forward at top speed, if you are lucky, just stopping in front of you if you are brave enough.
So, what do rude obnoxious unmannered American drivers do? They wait. NOT a milimeter in front of you, they wait AT THE LIGHT! ALL the way over on the other side of the junction and ONLY start to drive when you are WELL clear. I was there for over a week, NOT a SINGLE occasion did ANY driver not give me plenty of space to walk. Now granted I know a dutch geek is probably very imposing to the average American redneck but I at least have to say that Americans must have sent all their assholes out of the country when I visited.
Do round abouts work as a citizen of round about country? Not really, assholes are assholes. Maybe if the police did their job a bit better. Although that is odd, for a supposed police state I saw just one traffic cop. The day before I left holland, riot police was parked on every corner in Amsterdam with camera's everywhere because there were was soccer match...
Sometimes the world is not quite according to the stereotypes you have in your head.
I think someone is overestimating the effect of a satellite transmission into a country where satellite receivers are illegal.
It would be like flashing a school for the blind. Sure, it is fun but overall, don't expect much screaming and shouting... how do I know? Never you mind.
Bill Gates as a tech leader? He never was. He was a business leader and excelled at pushing and sometimes breaking the boundaries of ethical behavior but he NEVER excelled or was even adequate as a technical leader.
The world has changed AND the world knows it has changed for the better and is NOT going to let the old times return, exceptions like Nokia proving the point. Gates only achieved one thing, through wheeling and dealing he managed to make Windows THE OS that everyone HAD to use. Not wanted to use like OSX or iOS, had to. It worked but instead of continueing to push their advantage Gates let MS go lacks and basically allowed everyone to overtake MS left right and center.
And now that MS is no longer dominant, NOBODY is going to allow them to dominate again. You can see this by the absolute refusal of phone makers or even computer makers to go the windows only route. Even Nokia is still releasing a LINUX phone in the form of the N9. That would never have happened when Gates was calling the shots in a by gone era.
Could you imagine in the early days of Dell them selling Linux? HP going back to pushing its OWN OS?
That is the problem for MS, it is stuck in the past. Some parts try, the acknowledgement that Silverlight would need to run on both OSX and Linux by MS itself showed how much the world has changed, but they did not follow through on it. This is a world in which MS buys google ad words to advertise its browser on a google search for chrome. You couldn't make this up. MS is funding the development of its chief rival browser in an attempt to get people back to using its own free browser the searcher either already has available OR can't run! Desperation is not even an adequate word to describe this.
Gates and Ballmer can't cope with this new world in which MS is just another software vendor with a not particularly valuable brandname. Proof? Windows Phone. It doesn't sell. Apple Phone? Can't ship them fast enough. One has value as a brand name, the other is a liability. Why do you think it is called the X-box and not the Windows Box or MS-X?
If Apple were to release a game device you would be sure their logo would feature heavily (see the back of the iPad). Where is the MS logo on the x-box? What is the MS logo?
MS still has a lot of power and its money supply is near infinite, so why can't it deliver anything of interest anymore? Why is Bling so crap, Windows Phone so un-intresting? Why is it not dealing at all with its largest installed game base, the windows PC?
The answer is simple, nobody MS has any experience in having to think competitive. They are not used to having them. Now they do. None of the old guard can deal with it. To bad. There won't be a competent replacement because that would mean the old guard admitting they are passed it.
This has nothing to do with the tax then does it? If you can't buy it at X then how much tax Y charges doesn't really matter anymore.
Also, might the unfair tax advantage of amazon have made it impossible for the local shops to compete? So if Amazon did NOT have its unfair tax advantage, you would still have a choice. But no, you saved a penny or two and now you got no choice.
Free market, I see you do work, I just don't like your results.
Awh, poor BT, after taking it up the ass for the content owners, they get it shoved up there again!
Remember that when dealing with the content industry, if you give them a finger, they bite of your head.
Once this motion passed, other motions will be easier and easier until the entire internet consist only of sites the content industry approves off. And politicians who are used to compromises let it all happen because they think the content industry will meet them half way. The problem with meeting someone half way is that if it is you who keeps doing this, sooner or later you are completely on the other side.
For those who can read dutch, read it and weep: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/75349/overheid-hollywood-staat-achter-onze-auteursrechtplannen.html
For those who can't read dutch: You poor wretch of a not quite human being. How can you face the dark void that is your miserable life each day?