It's amusing how the right-wing believes there to be a systematic left-wing bias in the media
The Council for Excellence in Government just did a large study on media coverage of government, sweeping many ranges of topics.
Among their findings were that Democratic presidents (Clinton, as the study reaches back only to Reagan-era) and congressmen were subject to a much lower ratio of criticism-to-praise in network news.
The study also revealed less than desirable trends in media on coverage of both sides. Coverage of federal government is on the decline, and the majority of coverage is negative in both cases (just to a greater degree for the Republicans). "Opinions" have also become more dominant in news stories, slanting the "opinions to facts" ratio noticably.
The gaming industry needs to "correct" itself and enforce much tighter quality control on their products.
Imagine if movies hit the theater with scenes missing, or even just sections that don't display right, or have faulty audio, etc. Moviegoers would revolt.
As gaming heads more mainstream, the tolerance of the public to deal with technical failures will drop.
I'm currently playing Midtown Madness 3 on the Xbox. Great game, but the custom soundtrack option has HUGE bugs (one involves a failure to randomize - playback just goes in reverse order through the playlist on some occasions, and another bug involves the soundtrack getting "stuck" on a single song). What trade school dropout programmer can't implement a simple randomizing algorithm?
Luckily, a "fix" is supposedly coming (downloadable through Xbox Live). But it shouldn't come to that.
In some cases, with games like Enter The Matrix, the push to release a game on 3 or 4 different platforms at once is a fool's quest that leads to crap like this. Any game that tries a simultaneous multiplatform release in a short dev time will end up like this.
Of course, the biggest problem is a million or so idiot customers bought it anyway.
Phase 1: Take startup money from French government and significantly upgrade your hardware.
Phase 2: Design a crappy nonviolent video game.
Phase 3: ???
Phase 4: Well, there's no profit, but you just took a French government handout and turned it into screaming fast computers and large flat-panel monitors. Do the happy dance!
Shenmue is a niche series. It always will be. Most "graphical adventures" are.
People talk about Microsoft paying Sega for their titles like it's an underhanded thing. Exactly what did Sony do with Rockstar?? Oh, but how dare the Xbox have any good games.
Sony and Nintendo owners can't stand the thought of the Xbox being legitimate. As an owner of all three, I tend to use the Xbox the most (though there was a time where the PS2 was on top and had my attention more).
As someone pointed out, there is some fierce circular logic going on in some of these posts:
1: First Guy: "The Xbox has no good games! I'd never touch it!"
2: Second Guy: "Well look at these great games from Sega and some others! Aren't these the same game serieses you bought a Dreamcast to play?"
3: First Guy: "It's no fair that they're not out on MY console!"
4: Second Guy: "Well you could always BUY an Xbox."
then to reply to 4, GOTO 1 and repeat endlessly
Someone made an inane comment about school vouchers. I followed up with a comment likening it to the uproar of social security privatization. Neither of these things have happened. Both of them would make minor changes, at best. Yet many on the left make doomsday comments about both being the end of the world. Such drama queens.
Now, on the other topic, yes, there are plenty of LEGITIMATE complaints against Bush. I am Republican, I voted Bush, and I am not 100% satisfied with the job so far. I was pro-war (as were *many* Democrats, many of whom smartly voted pro-war and then duck and covered from their own party, and now emerge unscathed). I am not pleased with the state of the economy. Bush inherited a bad economy from his predecessor, but has not fixed it. The upswing back has indeed begun, but I do not attribute that to Bush himself - I think it's just the pendulum swinging back up, despite getting some less than forceful pushes.
I think the nuclear material information is kind of a bogus flag to wave, though. It IS troubling that bad info was passed. But not only have many (including MANY Democrats!) said for years that we know of Saddam's weapons, but Iraq already HAD uranium! Much of the press is talking like this fake "sale" means that Iraq did not obtain such materials. They already had them. We SHOULD get to the bottom of why the bad info was passed, but it in no way invalidates the war. I do think accountability is important, though.
don't worry about the children who get a crappy education during this period, they'll do fine!
Public schooling already does a fantastic job of this.
And most students will just end up going to the same public schools even with vouchers anyway.
I love how the left has such doom-and-gloom for any minor thing they don't support (don't privatize social security, everyone will end up broke with no retirement! I don't care if we're talking about privatizing only 2% and leaving the other 98% alone exactly as it is!)
I've used Win 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000 Pro, XP Home, and XP Pro... and not a single one has failed to be unstable at some point in time.
Office crashed a ton in 2000. Internet Explorer crashed a ton in 95 on forward (Mozilla's rise has helped make this less of a problem). Win98's hobby was to display "kernel32.dll" errors on random whims. The longer a Windows machine is installed, the more junk is accumulated, either from spyware or just program installs and deletions.
My girlfriend's laptop took hours and hours and hours of driver replacing and tweaking to stop it from blue-screening in XP. No such thing happened when it was booted into Linux.
XP regularly devours itself on my desktop PC and my parents' PC.
Many times, something will work for a while, only to stop working for absolutely no reason.
Windows instability is no myth.
Macs definitely were unstable in the past as well. I no longer find this to be the case with OS X, which is why I will now use a Mac for desktop applications.
German engineers
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 4, Funny
It uses a casette adapter, which is really lame. Of course, I use a casette adapter with my iPod, but I am not a German engineer.
Which just goes to prove my theory: German engineers love cassette adapters.
The problem is that Linux vs. Mac OS X in terms of usability is not just "customizability vs. unchangable standard".
I am a Linux user first and foremost... but the thing is, no matter HOW much time I put into customizing things, I can not make a Linux desktop as clean and easy to use as a Mac OS X desktop.
It's not just that having Only One Way To Do Things (tm) makes the easy desktop experience, but it's the fact that the One Way is thoroughly thought-out and streamlined. In Linux, we have tons of disparate pieces to put together in countless concatenations... but in the end, what we unavoidably get is an unstreamlined construct of disparate pieces.
I understand the appeal of customizing, and I do think Mac OS X could stand to allow a little more customizing without sacrificing the benefits of the OS. Linux will remain dominant on my PC desktop, and it will be dual-booted on my soon-to-be-purchased PowerBook, but the main reason I am getting the PowerBook is for Mac OS X and its ability to stay out of the way. The best OS is the one that interferes with my work the least. Mac OS X does that. Linux, when configured and tweaked to my liking and all that, does a good job by way of being stable and such, but some of those disparate pieces irritate. (Windows, of course, constantly interferes by being unstable and generally a source of irritation).
Ideally, I'd like to see Linux meet OS X halfway. Choice is good, but not when the choices are 15 different mediocre options. Can't we get 4 really good ones instead?
There are a hell of a lot more ps2 and ps1 out there than personal computers
WRONG! There are many many many times over more PCs out there than PlayStation game consoles. What crack are you smoking to make you think the opposite???
America's Army (at least on Linux) uses SDL and OpenGL.
Probably didn't take much more than a recompile on a Mac to create this "port".
This is a GOOD THING and the sort of thing we need to see more of. Develop cross-platform games with cross-platform APIs. Give "Linux gaming" and "Mac gaming" both a shot in the arm with the same code.
Games on cell phones are not about killing 1-2 hours like a film (or even a half-hour TV show).
Cell phone games are for killing time standing in a 15 minute line at the football game just so you can get a $6 personal pizza.
Reading a book is not very practical in a lot of places - nor is reading a book for only 15 seconds at a time before being moved/jostled/etc very enjoyable (you become very familiar with the same single sentence and lose thought continuity). But I can play my little snake game on my cellphone, pause as necessary, and the game is simplistic enough that it's not hard to resume play after abrupt stops.
Not to mention that I can stick a GBA SP and my Nokia cellphone in the same pocket and be on my merry way. All but the most compact of book form factors would fail to fit in the same space (those tiny New Testament books that get handed out all over the place are the only ones that I've seen recently that fit!)
Slashdot Mirror
The Council for Excellence in Government just did a large study on media coverage of government, sweeping many ranges of topics.
Among their findings were that Democratic presidents (Clinton, as the study reaches back only to Reagan-era) and congressmen were subject to a much lower ratio of criticism-to-praise in network news.
The study also revealed less than desirable trends in media on coverage of both sides. Coverage of federal government is on the decline, and the majority of coverage is negative in both cases (just to a greater degree for the Republicans). "Opinions" have also become more dominant in news stories, slanting the "opinions to facts" ratio noticably.
Imagine if movies hit the theater with scenes missing, or even just sections that don't display right, or have faulty audio, etc. Moviegoers would revolt.
As gaming heads more mainstream, the tolerance of the public to deal with technical failures will drop.
I'm currently playing Midtown Madness 3 on the Xbox. Great game, but the custom soundtrack option has HUGE bugs (one involves a failure to randomize - playback just goes in reverse order through the playlist on some occasions, and another bug involves the soundtrack getting "stuck" on a single song). What trade school dropout programmer can't implement a simple randomizing algorithm?
Luckily, a "fix" is supposedly coming (downloadable through Xbox Live). But it shouldn't come to that.
In some cases, with games like Enter The Matrix, the push to release a game on 3 or 4 different platforms at once is a fool's quest that leads to crap like this. Any game that tries a simultaneous multiplatform release in a short dev time will end up like this.
Of course, the biggest problem is a million or so idiot customers bought it anyway.
Phase 2: Design a crappy nonviolent video game.
Phase 3: ???
Phase 4: Well, there's no profit, but you just took a French government handout and turned it into screaming fast computers and large flat-panel monitors. Do the happy dance!
I have one of those. It was nice for some games, but for many, I found it to be useless. It's kludgy and not very responsive.
(see Falcon 4.0)
Shenmue is a niche series. It always will be. Most "graphical adventures" are.
People talk about Microsoft paying Sega for their titles like it's an underhanded thing. Exactly what did Sony do with Rockstar?? Oh, but how dare the Xbox have any good games.
Sony and Nintendo owners can't stand the thought of the Xbox being legitimate. As an owner of all three, I tend to use the Xbox the most (though there was a time where the PS2 was on top and had my attention more).
As someone pointed out, there is some fierce circular logic going on in some of these posts:
1: First Guy: "The Xbox has no good games! I'd never touch it!"
2: Second Guy: "Well look at these great games from Sega and some others! Aren't these the same game serieses you bought a Dreamcast to play?"
3: First Guy: "It's no fair that they're not out on MY console!"
4: Second Guy: "Well you could always BUY an Xbox."
then to reply to 4, GOTO 1 and repeat endlessly
But that's not the topic here.
Someone made an inane comment about school vouchers. I followed up with a comment likening it to the uproar of social security privatization. Neither of these things have happened. Both of them would make minor changes, at best. Yet many on the left make doomsday comments about both being the end of the world. Such drama queens.
Now, on the other topic, yes, there are plenty of LEGITIMATE complaints against Bush. I am Republican, I voted Bush, and I am not 100% satisfied with the job so far. I was pro-war (as were *many* Democrats, many of whom smartly voted pro-war and then duck and covered from their own party, and now emerge unscathed). I am not pleased with the state of the economy. Bush inherited a bad economy from his predecessor, but has not fixed it. The upswing back has indeed begun, but I do not attribute that to Bush himself - I think it's just the pendulum swinging back up, despite getting some less than forceful pushes.
I think the nuclear material information is kind of a bogus flag to wave, though. It IS troubling that bad info was passed. But not only have many (including MANY Democrats!) said for years that we know of Saddam's weapons, but Iraq already HAD uranium! Much of the press is talking like this fake "sale" means that Iraq did not obtain such materials. They already had them. We SHOULD get to the bottom of why the bad info was passed, but it in no way invalidates the war. I do think accountability is important, though.
That'll really show this dumb AC!
Public schooling already does a fantastic job of this.
And most students will just end up going to the same public schools even with vouchers anyway.
I love how the left has such doom-and-gloom for any minor thing they don't support (don't privatize social security, everyone will end up broke with no retirement! I don't care if we're talking about privatizing only 2% and leaving the other 98% alone exactly as it is!)
Dolby and DTS are competing companies, with different, competing formats that each bear their name.
"ALERT! Unidentified canine has penetrated the perimeter and may be en route to defecate. Shall the system defenses intercept? Y/N"
*zap* yipe yipe yipe!
The most enjoyable reviews, both as an ex-writer and as a reader, are the ones that crap all over a game.
I've used Win 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000 Pro, XP Home, and XP Pro... and not a single one has failed to be unstable at some point in time.
Office crashed a ton in 2000. Internet Explorer crashed a ton in 95 on forward (Mozilla's rise has helped make this less of a problem). Win98's hobby was to display "kernel32.dll" errors on random whims. The longer a Windows machine is installed, the more junk is accumulated, either from spyware or just program installs and deletions.
My girlfriend's laptop took hours and hours and hours of driver replacing and tweaking to stop it from blue-screening in XP. No such thing happened when it was booted into Linux.
XP regularly devours itself on my desktop PC and my parents' PC.
Many times, something will work for a while, only to stop working for absolutely no reason.
Windows instability is no myth.
Macs definitely were unstable in the past as well. I no longer find this to be the case with OS X, which is why I will now use a Mac for desktop applications.
Which just goes to prove my theory: German engineers love cassette adapters.
And David Hasselhoff.
I am a Linux user first and foremost... but the thing is, no matter HOW much time I put into customizing things, I can not make a Linux desktop as clean and easy to use as a Mac OS X desktop.
It's not just that having Only One Way To Do Things (tm) makes the easy desktop experience, but it's the fact that the One Way is thoroughly thought-out and streamlined. In Linux, we have tons of disparate pieces to put together in countless concatenations... but in the end, what we unavoidably get is an unstreamlined construct of disparate pieces.
I understand the appeal of customizing, and I do think Mac OS X could stand to allow a little more customizing without sacrificing the benefits of the OS. Linux will remain dominant on my PC desktop, and it will be dual-booted on my soon-to-be-purchased PowerBook, but the main reason I am getting the PowerBook is for Mac OS X and its ability to stay out of the way. The best OS is the one that interferes with my work the least. Mac OS X does that. Linux, when configured and tweaked to my liking and all that, does a good job by way of being stable and such, but some of those disparate pieces irritate. (Windows, of course, constantly interferes by being unstable and generally a source of irritation).
Ideally, I'd like to see Linux meet OS X halfway. Choice is good, but not when the choices are 15 different mediocre options. Can't we get 4 really good ones instead?
WRONG! There are many many many times over more PCs out there than PlayStation game consoles. What crack are you smoking to make you think the opposite???
Nintendo needs to remove their head from the sand and actually do something with online gaming themselves.
Online Mario Kart? Online F-Zero? I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
Hey, we're not talking about Clinton bombing an aspirin factory on bad info here! He's not even President anymore.
Oh... oh, you were talking about Bush.....
Probably didn't take much more than a recompile on a Mac to create this "port".
This is a GOOD THING and the sort of thing we need to see more of. Develop cross-platform games with cross-platform APIs. Give "Linux gaming" and "Mac gaming" both a shot in the arm with the same code.
If Apple computers did as well as the Xbox in terms of market share, Slashdot would declare it a revolution.
Cell phone games are for killing time standing in a 15 minute line at the football game just so you can get a $6 personal pizza.
Reading a book is not very practical in a lot of places - nor is reading a book for only 15 seconds at a time before being moved/jostled/etc very enjoyable (you become very familiar with the same single sentence and lose thought continuity). But I can play my little snake game on my cellphone, pause as necessary, and the game is simplistic enough that it's not hard to resume play after abrupt stops.
Not to mention that I can stick a GBA SP and my Nokia cellphone in the same pocket and be on my merry way. All but the most compact of book form factors would fail to fit in the same space (those tiny New Testament books that get handed out all over the place are the only ones that I've seen recently that fit!)
No.
I'm saying if you OFTEN find yourself coming across albums that have only "two or three good songs", then you are in the wrong kinds of music.
And a CD contains.... what? A nano-clone version of the band that plays the music whenever you want to hear it?
A foolproof sign that you're listening to the wrong kind of music.