ZING! Funny how my Widows box runs just fine month after month without shutdown,... even with hardware failures. The problem with Windows operability on corporate networks is (a) Idiots using it, and (b) Linux groupies who have to administer it, but don't think it's worth learning. If you put even half as much time into setting up Windows as you do into customizing your desktop manager in Lunux, you'd never crash. Trust me on this one... I've been running XP on bad ram, burnt-out processors, and busted video cards for years. As far as I can tell, it's been damn near bulletproof.
Don't get me wrong, Windows has issues, and they desperately need addressing. But don't tell me it crashes too much. If you're still using a version of windows that bluescreens, then I'm gonna start comparing WinXP to mandrake 5, since we're talking about the same time difference there.
Yeah... for those of you just glancing and wondering how much the Yen-Dollar conversion factors in, here's the rundown (off the top of my head... everything is estimated; $USD).
1) This is the first time Nintendo has posted a loss ever. Also, this is a mid-year estimate, not an end of year report. It basically means squat.
2) Nintendo expected to gain about $150 million, but lost about $25 million. That means somewhere along the way Nintendo "lost" about $175 million.
3) With Yen conversion losses, Nintendo lost about $360 million. That means that if the Yen conversion had stayed stable, Nintendo would have $360 million more, putting them at $180 million above estimates.
So, yeah, they're doing A-OK, just didn't forsee the Yen doing so poorly. If the Yen picks back up for the second half of the fiscal year, they'll easily beat estimates.
yeesh, I remember when it was free. Of course, I was too young to make my own website then. Now I pay like $15 a year just so people can find my site without remembering the IP address. It feels like a rip-off... it's like if the USPS wouldn't let people send to you unless you registerd your address with them (for a small fee).
And if you buy a game as a gift for a friend or a relative? What if you do buy a game for li'l cousin Timmy only to find out he already has it? Someone above mentioned stores having an echange-only-on-open-box policy, and that doesn't sound that bad. But if the game really really really really sucks, I demand my money back. None of this exchange-only bullshit. At most times there's only 1 game out that I really want, and if that game sucks, the money can be better spent on hanging out with friends.
And, yes, if I buy a book, start reading it, and realize that I hate it, I'm taking it back to BN and getting my money back. You'd have to be really dumb though to make it all the way through the book and then realize that you hate it. Most of these people are talkint about games they've opened, but not consumed. Stuff that doesn't work on their hardware, or they got just a little bit in and realized it's awful.
It's not vomiting up a cheeseburger and demanding your money back. It's opening the wrapper, taking a bite, realizing it's (more than usual) rancid, and demanding your money back.
Actually, Atari historians (however you get that job) repeatedly point at Sears as a factor in the fall of the video game market. See, aparently, when they let loose the utter shit-bomb that was E.T., Sears had a liberal return policy based around pleasing the customer. Because of this, thousands upon thousands of kids returned E.T., sticking Atari with the bill, instead of suffering with them as they would have had to do today.
Fine, that seems nice enough. But this really implies that a game can sometimes be responsible for someone's actions.
I think, perhaps, that he's just trying to avoid getting too many flames. You can imagine, he writes an article saying parents are to blame and then hundreds write back "But we didn't know!" and bash him for days. I'd be trying to avoid that too.
Although, I take the standpoint that if you didn't know the game was violent, then you're guilty of ignorance. Ignorance is unforgivable when it comes to your own child.
Just stand in front of ATM the next time a worm rocks through and watch it start spitting out bills.
ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A)If you connect your ATM to the internet, you deserve to have every penny you own stolen from you just for being an arrogant idiot.
B)The ATM in my school's student center has more downtime than my computer... by a long shot. OS2/Warp is all fine and dandy, as long as someone actually fixes it when it breaks, instead of restarting it and insiting that that cures all ailments.
The point of it is that if you're at a desk, you can expand it to make it "feel" more like a desktop computer, though it still has all the proprietary chinciness of an IBM thinkpad.
I really wish that IBM would make good with the whole MetaPad, but they sold it to some other company who's gonna take the project named Antelope, but their site has disappeared, so maybe they're dead. Now that was innovative.:)
As in, the metapad was innovative, not Antelope dying.... really.
They would propose that further steps could have been taken...
Let's brainstorm a few "further steps," m'kay?
Make the game expensive, so that immature kids will have to drag their parents into the stores to buy the game. wait... no.. already done. And if you're sending your kid off with $50 walking-around money, you're a horrible parent.
Make violent games contain lessons about how bad people get their come-uppance. no.. wait... anyone who's actually played GTA3 knows that violence perpetuates violence.
Make games have a govenment-enforced minimum age requirement. wait... no... that would immediately revoke any concept that games are an art form and are protected under free speech laws.
Make game stores adopt policies that require them to ask for either parents or ID when a kid buys a mature or AO game. wait... no... the ones I go to already do that.
Use psychics to detect which kids will go on killing sprees before they buy the games and then keep the games away from them. wait.. no.. that's fsking absurd.
I may be acting sarcastic here, and that may piss some people off, but if it's good for the MPAA, it's good for the ISDA. An independent ratings board is more than enough data for parents to make educated choices about games for their kids. After all, the last thing we want to do to disaffected youths who are easily driven toward violence is to place another artificial liimitation on their recreation.
And if we really believed kids weren't ready for adult themes, then there wouldn't be a pre-teen section in Victoria's Secret. Why haven't they been sued for corrupting the youth of this country when hundreds of 12-year-old girls get pregnant in this country every year?
But then there's a shooting and everyone says "well, it must be the video games" without caring about the details such as home and school environment.
Maybe they thought that the point that the sarcasm was making was insightful. Nobody thinks that the GCN needs a new FPS.... Heck, not even the X-Box needs another FPS. If I see one more game where I'm walking around dark hallways with a gun right under my eyeball, I'm gonna shoot somebody for real.
I totally agree with you, though I don't think the GCN will go the way of the N64. After all, the N64's biggest hinderance was the cartridge format. You had to cram everything into 64 MB, you had to pay for every meg you used, and the cartridges were rumored to cost around $30 to manufacture a piece (though I have a little difficulty believing that). Without that main sticking point, I think the GameCube has a lot more staying power.
I was playing Soul Calibur 2 last night on mine and I mentioned to a friend that my N64 is 8 years old and collecting dust... but a decade from now I'll probably still be playing my Gamcube.
Actually... I never quite got that. If you're "Cops" and you're doing what is essentially a weekly documentary, aren't you allowed to show any trademarks you want? After all, you're merely reporting the scene in its most accurate detail. I always figured there was some sort of provision for that, since it's a form of reporting. (although not very intellectual, you can't really say that cops is anything more than the filming of real-world events)
Frankly, we need more boundry-breaking artists than Stan Lee, who keeps rehashing the same old archetypes. Otherwise we'll just continue with the situation we have now, where comic book stores go under, fewer people can make a living at it, and the comics section is delegated to some far corner of the bookstore near the porno mags...
In defense of Stan Lee, though, he invented a lot of those archetypes (or at least was involved in the creation of a lot of those archetypes). His new ideas are very campy because that's his shtick. It got him very popular in the Silver Age, but now it just doesn't seem to fly.
As far as getting new comics that break boundaries, that's been done before too. Look at Sandman, for example. That's pretty different, and very cool. It just didn't sell as much as most would have liked. The problem is that for a new ground-breaking comic to become successful, it has to be on store shelves nation-wide. To get on store shelves nationwide, it needs to be backed by Marvel, DC, or Dark Horse... and then they have to convince comic shop owners to buy it. This wouldn't be all that hard. After all, comic shop owners are actually influenced by CSN and Wizard. Both of these publications are basically advertising tools of the industry at large. If Marvel says they have the Next Big Thing (tm), then Wizard will probably do a feature, and CSN will at least mention it. Marvel has enough clout to say "if you feature this, we'll give you exclusive new Spiderman artwork" and get whatever they want in Wizard. I'm not saying Wizard is full of a bunch of unethicall goons, but they need to appease comic book makers in order to get the big content.
But you never really see Marvel or DC go out on a limb like that. They quietly announce something new & different, and Wizard tries to pimp it (because they know that new blood is necessary, they've seen their own readership drop because of it), but there simply isn't enough there to do propper publicity. Marvel and DC are huge and they got that way off of superheroes. They don't understand why someone would brave the risk and change content so drastically. And because we don't see Marvel or DC picking up on the non-superhero stuff, we don't see it in Wizard or CSN or any of the trade publications, and it doesn't catch on as a fad.
I will agree with a manga-vs-comics post earlier and concede that American comics need pulp. We need to get over to cheap black & white, shitty-quality paper, recycleable, non-collectable pulp. This $3.95 per issue thing is really getting on my nerves... to the point where I haven't gotten a comic in years. Marvel, DC: Do not rely on increased price per unit, rely upon decreased price and increased trade volume. These are the simple economics that DC and Marvel just don't understand. I would buy monthly comics if they went back down to $1.00 and were in Black & White with simplistic art.
Understanding Comics was pretty cool, great for people who either (a) didn't know much about comics, or (b) only ever knew about the art aspect of comics. But, like Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud suffers from a severe case of Mainstream-phobia. Nothing mainstream is worthwhile, and you read their opinions if you wanna find out what comic you should buy if only you had access to the one store in brooklyn that carries it because the author knows the owner.
Granted, Understanding Comics probably is still the most important comic-book-book, because, AFAIK, it's the only comprehensive comic book history avialable. This biography os Stan Lee may very well be important (not an autobiography, this is indeed done by outside researchers), and who konws what other aspects of comic books it touches on. You can't immediately discount it, though, if you haven't read it. As far as me bashing McCloud, that has nothing to do with your opinon, I just dislike Scott McCloud. Definitely not saying you're wrong, but mention of Scott McCloud always gets me a little mad. Micropayments my ass!
The difference is that computer prices are going down for the same relative quality computer from year to year. For example,... top of the line has been hovering around $3,000 for years, but has been coming down slowly.
With video game systems, the relative power has been increasing substantially. The NES was really shitty hardware at the time, except that it was reasonable for gaming. The Genesis was cheap hardware, so was PS1 and Saturn. The SNES, Dreamcast, N64, Gamecube, PS2, and X-Box are examples of the systems getting more and more "top of the line" for their timeframe.
I'd hate to paraprhase Dave Perry, since he hasn't had a great track record, but he said that a game developer must have control over every pixel on the screen at all times.
he was... uh... referring to the decision to use a software polygon engine in the early versions of Messiah, IIRC... but it's a good point nonetheless.
I've played a lot of games with randomly-generated worlds, and while the variation sounds like a boon, it just ends up becoming tired and boring. Think of Gran Turismo (to pick a popular example). Remember coming out of the roadways at the end of the SS Rt. 5 stage, rising back up onto the highway straightaway. Remember how it felt like you were soaring, as you broke out of a series of tight turns in a confined space and started rocketing down a straightaway at 200 mph in a wide-open space?
You can't have that in a randomly-generated game... there's no experience.. things aren't planned.. they're just there. There's no personality to it, no cohesion in design.
Now, I get what you're saying about using random world generator to take all of the extreme effort of crafting a play environment, but then you lose all control over the world itself. The play isn't crafted any more. The world has no personality.
The only exception I've seen is Animal Crossing, but that's because you contribute to the world's personality so much, that it doesn't matter if the world is a little odd. Your environment doesn't play as big a role in the game as it does in others.
Now, randomly generated graphics... that's a great idea. How about completely randomly generated trees? Give a few parameters to work off of, and a seed for a random number generator. This way, it'll generated randomly instead of being modeled, and will look the same every time. There's great opportunity for streamlining graphics production, but the actual play environment is an expertly tailored thing, and randomization would only screw it up.
They had all kinds of stuff installed that should never have been there. They never cleaned things up. Based on that, I would say there are probably other Linux boxes out there administered by idiots.
Then call me idiot.
I just don't see why an OS needs to be "cleaned up" at all. Why install it if it's not supposed to be there? It's just that every time I use Linux I feel like I need to be psychic to avoid being an idiot. Say it's your first linux install... how do you know (a) that things have to be "cleaned up" at all, (b) what to clean up, (c) which things should not be touched at all? I have a hard enough time with the antequated incomprehensible file organization system (there are like 6 bin directories,... what's up with that?) without having to psychically guess what stuff needs to go.
With windows, if I'm a competent user, I install, answer a few simple questions, and run Windows Update, which cures my system's ails. There's nothing I need to remove, as most stuff is disabled by default.
All Register readers will know of the O'Really book cover Distributing Clue to Users. I just wish someone in Linux land would realize that that's what needs to be done. Instead of telling me that I'm an idiot for not knowing, tell me what I need to know. And don't look down on an IT staff that only uses Windows when they don't get Linux immediately. A Windows user has no need to how to administer Linux, just as a bunch of the Linux users in this thread have shown complete incompetence for the NTFS file system. It's out of your scope of expertise... you shouldn't need to know something that doesn't affect you.
Also when you say comprehensive user security model can you elaborate? IE: ACL's, chroots, jails etc etc. I find it hard to believe that NT3.1 and every version of windows based on it has a such a model.
Actually, he can't elaborate on it... it's just there. It's not like you run a configurator to use it... you just open the permissions and change them. User policies have been in NT since 3.1 and have gotten more and more robust with each version. I've used them to actually increase users' permissions (i.e. Burning CD's requires admisinstrative access normally, but simple power users needed it too... so rather than elevate them, give them burner access). I've had little reason to edit user permissions and policies as the default groups usually get the job done. Windows has everything you need built in to allow you to very specifically decide what a user can and cannot do/access, but there's no real way to cite examples of such tools... they're just tabs on a dialog box.
What your describing sounds more like fault tollerance, not security, and you're neglecting WinNT. NT-based systems have much more robust user premissions and policies. I can prevent any user from editing system files I want to... it's just not the default setting.
But when a comptuer system doesn't "fold like a house of cards," it means that it's stable and fault-tolerant, not secure. Secure would mean that nobody could attack it in the first place.
I think it's a little more than just being savvy. One problem is that an awful lot of Windows users have very screwed up ideas of how their computers are supposed to function.
For instance, they don't think having to type in a password to run Setup.exe is even remotely reasonable. Their view of the computer is: "if I want to do something with my machine, I should be able to just do it. Don't put anything in my way." And if they were forced to take precautions, their password would end up being something like 'a'. And a regular schedule of changing passwords? Forget it.
I don't see what's so wrong with wanting your computer to do what you tell it to do. Granted, you sound like you're an IT manager with a lot of stupid users using work comptuers for stupid means. You have every right to be angry for them mis-using company property and mis-treating computer systems you work so hard to maintain. They're spitting on your work, and that's not right.
But on my home computer, it better damn well do exactly what I tell it to right after I tell it to. Now, I'm not a retard, I have reasonably secure passwords on my PC (myself and some trusted pals know them), but I gave myself Administative abilities. When I say "install this spyware" I want my computer to say "where?" not "you're not authorized!" I don't want to have to confirm my identity past my initial log in. I don't need a rotating password... if someone gets in, then my password isn't gonna rotate in time to stop them from doing whatever maliscious thing they're planning to do.
Using OS X at work, it annoys me that it asks for a password (after logged in) to install a security patch. It's for the good of the system and you already know my identity! Just do it already!
Unix security. I haven't seen it get in the way, and I haven't really got into groups yet. (Big gripe. I can't have NT users and groups with the same name. Stupid.)
Yes... we'll have a user Bob in group Bob! Seriously... users and groups with the same name are easily gotten around, especially since (in concept) a user is singular and a group is plural. Such as "Administrator" being a member of "Administrators." It makes sense if you go with the program.
I'm not a big fan of UNIX security. It's always been in my face, and more importantly, in my way. I can't do anything on my system with out being root, unless I do chmod 777/usr. Also, the file permissions are so limited. I can set owner, group, and world priveleges... but what about another group's priveleges? In NTFS, I have (when need arises) created files and given R/W access to 2 groups (collaborating on the project) and R access to a 3rd group (observing the project). This is (AFAIK) impossible with your basic UNIX file permissions.
Also, the reason you don't get permissions in WinNT when you use DIR is because there's no way to format them correctly... it would be too clunky. It has nothing to do with importance. You'd have to put a "read" list and a "write" list... as well as "run" "print" etc... for each file. WinNT is, after all, based on the GUI. There's no need for a prompt at all, it's just there for backwards compatability. If you're browsing files that way, it gives me serious doubts on whether you're actually trying to use NT the way it's meant to be used.
As though linux is at war with Microsoft. Nobody's attacking linux, just trying to out-do it. Microsoft is killing it in the whole popularity contest, and when they cut "free" deals, they're trying to out-do linux' main price advantage. Competitors, yes... but not enemies. If your decentralized amorphous OS has enemies from which it needs protection and against whom you need to fight back, you've got waaaaaaay too much imagination. Linux has competetors, against which it must compete.
I feel like I'm opening a sealed bomb shelter and trying to convince people the cold war is over...
Hell, I'd be happy if their OS didn't crash, even if the applications did from time to time.
I've been using Linux at home for many years,...
figures... I'm very sick of this argument. Yes,.. linux has always been more stable than Win98. But, other than hardware failures, I haven't had WinXP die on me at all. Even then,... with hardware failures, it usually runs just fine. It wasn't uncommon for me to have 2 weeks of uptime on corrupted RAM. The only system instability I have right now are ATI's shitty shitty drivers. Every once in a while, they cause a program to hang, or fail in allocating an overlay surface, or even crash completely. But WinXP just drops to VGA mode when that happens, and tells me what went wrong.
And... I can configure stuff Without using 27,000 different command line tools! I can configure a web server without using a 300 page book and the support of an angry newbie-hating newsgroup! Seriously, though... I'm sure you'd get peeved if I kept comparing XP to Mandrake 6. I don't see why so many people keep using the BSOD as a reason... it's been removed for 2 years now... WinXP just resets when a major error occurs. If you're still complaining about BSOD, you haven't used Windows recently.
Eventually it will be proven that the best platform is freebsd.
Yeah... 'cause nobody cares enough about freebsd to hack it. That's like saying the Mac is the most supreme system because people simply aren't writing many virii for it.
I have no real experience with linux servers, but I did configure a solaris server before (as a for-fun pet project). It got hacked to high-heaven. So, uh, unix ain't so secure. My IT department shutdown my port after I got a virus that scanned successive IP's. They said "Install every patch"... on a Sparc 5... sure... I've got 3 days to spare, let me do that.
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Well, if microsoft believed they could make a profit by doing so, at least.
ZING! Funny how my Widows box runs just fine month after month without shutdown,... even with hardware failures. The problem with Windows operability on corporate networks is (a) Idiots using it, and (b) Linux groupies who have to administer it, but don't think it's worth learning. If you put even half as much time into setting up Windows as you do into customizing your desktop manager in Lunux, you'd never crash. Trust me on this one... I've been running XP on bad ram, burnt-out processors, and busted video cards for years. As far as I can tell, it's been damn near bulletproof.
Don't get me wrong, Windows has issues, and they desperately need addressing. But don't tell me it crashes too much. If you're still using a version of windows that bluescreens, then I'm gonna start comparing WinXP to mandrake 5, since we're talking about the same time difference there.
Yeah... for those of you just glancing and wondering how much the Yen-Dollar conversion factors in, here's the rundown (off the top of my head... everything is estimated; $USD).
1) This is the first time Nintendo has posted a loss ever. Also, this is a mid-year estimate, not an end of year report. It basically means squat.
2) Nintendo expected to gain about $150 million, but lost about $25 million. That means somewhere along the way Nintendo "lost" about $175 million.
3) With Yen conversion losses, Nintendo lost about $360 million. That means that if the Yen conversion had stayed stable, Nintendo would have $360 million more, putting them at $180 million above estimates.
So, yeah, they're doing A-OK, just didn't forsee the Yen doing so poorly. If the Yen picks back up for the second half of the fiscal year, they'll easily beat estimates.
yeesh, I remember when it was free. Of course, I was too young to make my own website then. Now I pay like $15 a year just so people can find my site without remembering the IP address. It feels like a rip-off... it's like if the USPS wouldn't let people send to you unless you registerd your address with them (for a small fee).
And if you buy a game as a gift for a friend or a relative? What if you do buy a game for li'l cousin Timmy only to find out he already has it? Someone above mentioned stores having an echange-only-on-open-box policy, and that doesn't sound that bad. But if the game really really really really sucks, I demand my money back. None of this exchange-only bullshit. At most times there's only 1 game out that I really want, and if that game sucks, the money can be better spent on hanging out with friends.
And, yes, if I buy a book, start reading it, and realize that I hate it, I'm taking it back to BN and getting my money back. You'd have to be really dumb though to make it all the way through the book and then realize that you hate it. Most of these people are talkint about games they've opened, but not consumed. Stuff that doesn't work on their hardware, or they got just a little bit in and realized it's awful.
It's not vomiting up a cheeseburger and demanding your money back. It's opening the wrapper, taking a bite, realizing it's (more than usual) rancid, and demanding your money back.
Actually, Atari historians (however you get that job) repeatedly point at Sears as a factor in the fall of the video game market. See, aparently, when they let loose the utter shit-bomb that was E.T., Sears had a liberal return policy based around pleasing the customer. Because of this, thousands upon thousands of kids returned E.T., sticking Atari with the bill, instead of suffering with them as they would have had to do today.
Although, I take the standpoint that if you didn't know the game was violent, then you're guilty of ignorance. Ignorance is unforgivable when it comes to your own child.
B)The ATM in my school's student center has more downtime than my computer... by a long shot. OS2/Warp is all fine and dandy, as long as someone actually fixes it when it breaks, instead of restarting it and insiting that that cures all ailments.
C)But it dispenses $5's, which is extremely cool.
The point of it is that if you're at a desk, you can expand it to make it "feel" more like a desktop computer, though it still has all the proprietary chinciness of an IBM thinkpad.
:)
I really wish that IBM would make good with the whole MetaPad, but they sold it to some other company who's gonna take the project named Antelope, but their site has disappeared, so maybe they're dead. Now that was innovative.
As in, the metapad was innovative, not Antelope dying.... really.
Make the game expensive, so that immature kids will have to drag their parents into the stores to buy the game. wait... no.. already done. And if you're sending your kid off with $50 walking-around money, you're a horrible parent.
Make violent games contain lessons about how bad people get their come-uppance. no.. wait... anyone who's actually played GTA3 knows that violence perpetuates violence.
Make games have a govenment-enforced minimum age requirement. wait... no... that would immediately revoke any concept that games are an art form and are protected under free speech laws.
Make game stores adopt policies that require them to ask for either parents or ID when a kid buys a mature or AO game. wait... no... the ones I go to already do that.
Use psychics to detect which kids will go on killing sprees before they buy the games and then keep the games away from them. wait.. no.. that's fsking absurd.
I may be acting sarcastic here, and that may piss some people off, but if it's good for the MPAA, it's good for the ISDA. An independent ratings board is more than enough data for parents to make educated choices about games for their kids. After all, the last thing we want to do to disaffected youths who are easily driven toward violence is to place another artificial liimitation on their recreation.
And if we really believed kids weren't ready for adult themes, then there wouldn't be a pre-teen section in Victoria's Secret. Why haven't they been sued for corrupting the youth of this country when hundreds of 12-year-old girls get pregnant in this country every year?
But then there's a shooting and everyone says "well, it must be the video games" without caring about the details such as home and school environment.
Maybe they thought that the point that the sarcasm was making was insightful. Nobody thinks that the GCN needs a new FPS.... Heck, not even the X-Box needs another FPS. If I see one more game where I'm walking around dark hallways with a gun right under my eyeball, I'm gonna shoot somebody for real.
I totally agree with you, though I don't think the GCN will go the way of the N64. After all, the N64's biggest hinderance was the cartridge format. You had to cram everything into 64 MB, you had to pay for every meg you used, and the cartridges were rumored to cost around $30 to manufacture a piece (though I have a little difficulty believing that). Without that main sticking point, I think the GameCube has a lot more staying power.
I was playing Soul Calibur 2 last night on mine and I mentioned to a friend that my N64 is 8 years old and collecting dust... but a decade from now I'll probably still be playing my Gamcube.
Actually... I never quite got that. If you're "Cops" and you're doing what is essentially a weekly documentary, aren't you allowed to show any trademarks you want? After all, you're merely reporting the scene in its most accurate detail. I always figured there was some sort of provision for that, since it's a form of reporting. (although not very intellectual, you can't really say that cops is anything more than the filming of real-world events)
As far as getting new comics that break boundaries, that's been done before too. Look at Sandman, for example. That's pretty different, and very cool. It just didn't sell as much as most would have liked. The problem is that for a new ground-breaking comic to become successful, it has to be on store shelves nation-wide. To get on store shelves nationwide, it needs to be backed by Marvel, DC, or Dark Horse... and then they have to convince comic shop owners to buy it. This wouldn't be all that hard. After all, comic shop owners are actually influenced by CSN and Wizard. Both of these publications are basically advertising tools of the industry at large. If Marvel says they have the Next Big Thing (tm), then Wizard will probably do a feature, and CSN will at least mention it. Marvel has enough clout to say "if you feature this, we'll give you exclusive new Spiderman artwork" and get whatever they want in Wizard. I'm not saying Wizard is full of a bunch of unethicall goons, but they need to appease comic book makers in order to get the big content.
But you never really see Marvel or DC go out on a limb like that. They quietly announce something new & different, and Wizard tries to pimp it (because they know that new blood is necessary, they've seen their own readership drop because of it), but there simply isn't enough there to do propper publicity. Marvel and DC are huge and they got that way off of superheroes. They don't understand why someone would brave the risk and change content so drastically. And because we don't see Marvel or DC picking up on the non-superhero stuff, we don't see it in Wizard or CSN or any of the trade publications, and it doesn't catch on as a fad.
I will agree with a manga-vs-comics post earlier and concede that American comics need pulp. We need to get over to cheap black & white, shitty-quality paper, recycleable, non-collectable pulp. This $3.95 per issue thing is really getting on my nerves... to the point where I haven't gotten a comic in years. Marvel, DC: Do not rely on increased price per unit, rely upon decreased price and increased trade volume. These are the simple economics that DC and Marvel just don't understand. I would buy monthly comics if they went back down to $1.00 and were in Black & White with simplistic art.
Understanding Comics was pretty cool, great for people who either (a) didn't know much about comics, or (b) only ever knew about the art aspect of comics. But, like Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud suffers from a severe case of Mainstream-phobia. Nothing mainstream is worthwhile, and you read their opinions if you wanna find out what comic you should buy if only you had access to the one store in brooklyn that carries it because the author knows the owner.
Granted, Understanding Comics probably is still the most important comic-book-book, because, AFAIK, it's the only comprehensive comic book history avialable. This biography os Stan Lee may very well be important (not an autobiography, this is indeed done by outside researchers), and who konws what other aspects of comic books it touches on. You can't immediately discount it, though, if you haven't read it. As far as me bashing McCloud, that has nothing to do with your opinon, I just dislike Scott McCloud. Definitely not saying you're wrong, but mention of Scott McCloud always gets me a little mad. Micropayments my ass!
The difference is that computer prices are going down for the same relative quality computer from year to year. For example,... top of the line has been hovering around $3,000 for years, but has been coming down slowly.
With video game systems, the relative power has been increasing substantially. The NES was really shitty hardware at the time, except that it was reasonable for gaming. The Genesis was cheap hardware, so was PS1 and Saturn. The SNES, Dreamcast, N64, Gamecube, PS2, and X-Box are examples of the systems getting more and more "top of the line" for their timeframe.
I'd hate to paraprhase Dave Perry, since he hasn't had a great track record, but he said that a game developer must have control over every pixel on the screen at all times.
he was... uh... referring to the decision to use a software polygon engine in the early versions of Messiah, IIRC... but it's a good point nonetheless.
I've played a lot of games with randomly-generated worlds, and while the variation sounds like a boon, it just ends up becoming tired and boring. Think of Gran Turismo (to pick a popular example). Remember coming out of the roadways at the end of the SS Rt. 5 stage, rising back up onto the highway straightaway. Remember how it felt like you were soaring, as you broke out of a series of tight turns in a confined space and started rocketing down a straightaway at 200 mph in a wide-open space?
You can't have that in a randomly-generated game... there's no experience.. things aren't planned.. they're just there. There's no personality to it, no cohesion in design.
Now, I get what you're saying about using random world generator to take all of the extreme effort of crafting a play environment, but then you lose all control over the world itself. The play isn't crafted any more. The world has no personality.
The only exception I've seen is Animal Crossing, but that's because you contribute to the world's personality so much, that it doesn't matter if the world is a little odd. Your environment doesn't play as big a role in the game as it does in others.
Now, randomly generated graphics... that's a great idea. How about completely randomly generated trees? Give a few parameters to work off of, and a seed for a random number generator. This way, it'll generated randomly instead of being modeled, and will look the same every time. There's great opportunity for streamlining graphics production, but the actual play environment is an expertly tailored thing, and randomization would only screw it up.
I just don't see why an OS needs to be "cleaned up" at all. Why install it if it's not supposed to be there? It's just that every time I use Linux I feel like I need to be psychic to avoid being an idiot. Say it's your first linux install... how do you know (a) that things have to be "cleaned up" at all, (b) what to clean up, (c) which things should not be touched at all? I have a hard enough time with the antequated incomprehensible file organization system (there are like 6 bin directories,... what's up with that?) without having to psychically guess what stuff needs to go.
With windows, if I'm a competent user, I install, answer a few simple questions, and run Windows Update, which cures my system's ails. There's nothing I need to remove, as most stuff is disabled by default.
All Register readers will know of the O'Really book cover Distributing Clue to Users. I just wish someone in Linux land would realize that that's what needs to be done. Instead of telling me that I'm an idiot for not knowing, tell me what I need to know. And don't look down on an IT staff that only uses Windows when they don't get Linux immediately. A Windows user has no need to how to administer Linux, just as a bunch of the Linux users in this thread have shown complete incompetence for the NTFS file system. It's out of your scope of expertise... you shouldn't need to know something that doesn't affect you.
What your describing sounds more like fault tollerance, not security, and you're neglecting WinNT. NT-based systems have much more robust user premissions and policies. I can prevent any user from editing system files I want to... it's just not the default setting.
But when a comptuer system doesn't "fold like a house of cards," it means that it's stable and fault-tolerant, not secure. Secure would mean that nobody could attack it in the first place.
But on my home computer, it better damn well do exactly what I tell it to right after I tell it to. Now, I'm not a retard, I have reasonably secure passwords on my PC (myself and some trusted pals know them), but I gave myself Administative abilities. When I say "install this spyware" I want my computer to say "where?" not "you're not authorized!" I don't want to have to confirm my identity past my initial log in. I don't need a rotating password... if someone gets in, then my password isn't gonna rotate in time to stop them from doing whatever maliscious thing they're planning to do.
Using OS X at work, it annoys me that it asks for a password (after logged in) to install a security patch. It's for the good of the system and you already know my identity! Just do it already!
I'm not a big fan of UNIX security. It's always been in my face, and more importantly, in my way. I can't do anything on my system with out being root, unless I do chmod 777
Also, the reason you don't get permissions in WinNT when you use DIR is because there's no way to format them correctly... it would be too clunky. It has nothing to do with importance. You'd have to put a "read" list and a "write" list... as well as "run" "print" etc... for each file. WinNT is, after all, based on the GUI. There's no need for a prompt at all, it's just there for backwards compatability. If you're browsing files that way, it gives me serious doubts on whether you're actually trying to use NT the way it's meant to be used.
I feel like I'm opening a sealed bomb shelter and trying to convince people the cold war is over...
And... I can configure stuff Without using 27,000 different command line tools! I can configure a web server without using a 300 page book and the support of an angry newbie-hating newsgroup! Seriously, though... I'm sure you'd get peeved if I kept comparing XP to Mandrake 6. I don't see why so many people keep using the BSOD as a reason... it's been removed for 2 years now... WinXP just resets when a major error occurs. If you're still complaining about BSOD, you haven't used Windows recently.
Eventually it will be proven that the best platform is freebsd.
Yeah... 'cause nobody cares enough about freebsd to hack it. That's like saying the Mac is the most supreme system because people simply aren't writing many virii for it.
I have no real experience with linux servers, but I did configure a solaris server before (as a for-fun pet project). It got hacked to high-heaven. So, uh, unix ain't so secure. My IT department shutdown my port after I got a virus that scanned successive IP's. They said "Install every patch"... on a Sparc 5... sure... I've got 3 days to spare, let me do that.