Even if it is the Japanese FF3 Nes and not the US FF3 SNES (Japanease was FF6), I'd be surprised if it doesn't come out in the US. The Japanese FF2 (NES) and FF5 (SNES) never originally came out in the US; however, they both came out as PSX remakes, and a new soon to be released GBA release of FF1 & FF2.
I just did a quick search on The Curse of Mordread and it pulled up a few sites about the PC/DOS game.
While it was title Dragon's Lair 3 it wasn't. The company Readysoft release the original Dragon's Lair 2 Arcade game into two different games. This DL3, is actually just scenes that weren't in Readysoft's version of DL2.
As for the new DL3. It's do with the DL3D engine, not the classic animated style. I for one will definately not be picking it up.
I'd say the safer income isn't just in that each user bought an original, but with the $10-$15/month fee each user is paying.
Have just 250,000 players pay $10/month = 2.5 Million a month or 30 Million a year. Sure there is the hardware, support staff, etc. However, the more popular a game gets the more revenue that comes in.
There are CD rentals here, at least where I live. They are at a place called the Library. They have a lot of this things called books; however, they also rent out Movies and CDs for around $1/day or so.
First off Black Isle made Planescape Torment; however, both Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur's Gate were made by Bioware. Black Isle published Baldur's Gate through Interplay, and they even helped in development which is why Ice Wind Dale, and Planescape Torment use the Baldur's Gate engine.
Neverwinter Nights was released after Bioware broke away from Interplay due to contract disputes. It was published under the Atari brand name which is now owned by Infogrames.
Interplay killed off Black Isle last year which killed Fallout 3 which was reported to be far into production.
Some of the former Black Isle employees have formed a new studio and are currently working with Bioware to develope new games.
Finally there was a recent Dune game made about a year or two ago. It was developed by Dreamcatcher; however, it sucked. Who knows maybe someone will pickup the rights to the Dune series and do a good job again some day.
Maybe the Mac version, I tried backups on the PC version and they worked just fine.
Sony did buy out the emulator though, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Actually Bleem didn't require original disks. The author wanted to require them; however, doing so would have need some type of patent violation and have give Sony more to sue them over than not checking if the disk was an original.
Being unemployed at the time I was sitting at home on my computer reading slashdo^D^D^D^D^D^D^D employment postings. When the blackout initially hit I chuckled as my UPS started to beep that it lost power.
After 10mins I decided to safely shutdown as this didn't look like it was going to be resolved soon (I keep my router and DSL modem going though and sync lasted until my UPS ran out of juice Good SBC). I went and got a battery powered radio and hit the news stations to see if I could get any information on what happened. There is where the confusion and hysteria started where nobody really knew what happened.
I received a phone call from my sister as she was at work sitting in the dark (cell phones can bite my landline ^_^).
As time passed by and everyone came home we went and fired up our gas barbaque (outside the house connected to the houses gas line). We went it the freezer and pulled out some steaks and ribs (no sense letting them goto waste). For desert we worked on the cartons of ice cream.
As night started to come a new problem arose, Detroit (yes in Michigan) getting the great city that is was failed to provide proper maintainance on their water pumps generators, and so the suburbs stopped getting water (that was fun). Luckly I heard on the radio that there would be problems so I grabbed some 5gal buckets and filled them with water before hand so we could at least flush the toliets.
We finally brought out the generator and ran the fridge and freezer to try to not let everything goto waste.
Walking outside was interesting, it was nice and dark like up north, but there was the destintive hum of generators of the people who were prepared. The sky was also pretty clear and we cracked out the telescope to have a look at Mars.
I went to sleep in the basement since it was hot and sticky to try to keep cool. After waking up I heard reports of people lining up for hours to get gas from the few gas stations that were starting to get power back. We waited until the afternoon when power was pretty much fully restored (surprising if you know Detroit Edision's excellent track record of keeping power going on perfectly clear days) we went down the street and got gas, round trip about 10 minutes.
Later in the evening we finally got water back, we had to boil it for a few days, but it wasn't bad.
The only major repercussion was in October or so where a 1.5ft water main cracked and flooded a section of I-96 and closed an area of the service drive for about a month or so.
Overall it was hot and muggy, a major inconvience, and a good time to laugh at stupid people who can't cook for themselves, don't have any emergency rations, and rely on Cell Phones, or just have cordless phones in their homes. The barbaque was good though. ^_^
You should play the game before passing judgment on how/why they gave it that rating. Being a mid-20s gamer I like to think I'm pretty tough skinned about stuff but the game just sickened me when I played it.
This game isn't about you just randomly running around like in an FPS blowing people up, sniping them in the head, etc. It's a stealth game where you sneak up on people to murder them. I have to say murder rather than kill to get the point across a little more since we're usually used to killing things in games.
I remember that article that the NYTimes removed where the guy was complaining about Grand Theft Auto 3. Well, in this game you ARE the main character of a snuff film. You basically creep up on characters and using weapons like plastic bags, knifes, etc kill them silently. You are also rewarded in the game for more brutal kills like wrapping a plastic bag on a guys head then beating him down with punches and kicks and finally snapping his neck. Slitting people throats with the knife isn't much better either.
I'm really surprised this game got away with an "M" (mature) rating in the US since it really deserves an "AO" (Adults Only).
For the record I really enjoyed the Grand Theft Auto games. I've been pissed off by all the negative media exposure to the games. And finally am surprised at the total lack of media coverage and politician bickering about this game as it is FAR more violent and grotesque than GTA ever was.
I do have to applaud RockStar for making such a game even in light of all the controversy surrounding GTA. They made a game that was darker, sicker, and far more violent than GTA ever was (State of Emergency was pure crap IMHO).
So please try playing the game before saying, well a lot of games have killing, swearing, etc they shouldn't be given an adults only rating. The report just didn't go into how bad those things were in the game. I'm just waiting for the media to pickup on the game; they media antics should be much funnier than with GTA.
As for me, I didn't care of the game and will not be playing it again. That's my position and I'm sticking to it.
As others have stated Al Lowe isn't working on the new Larry game; however, that doesn't mean it won't be good. Don't condem it before it's out people.
As for SpaceQuest, Sierra had 7 going back in the day but cancelled it. Also they had 7 being developed again but the studio working on it said it was cancelled last month. You can read about it here: http://wiw.org/~jess/sq7.html
If you want to play some of the old Sierra games maybe of the VGA ones won't work properly on modern PCs due to timing issues. Here is a website with patches for the games: http://geocities.com/belzorash/
The link is to MegaGames since the original site http://www.xianaix.com wasn't up at the time I tried accessing it.
The disk was scene made, and you must have a modded PSX/PS2 to use it. Just boot the disk and select NTSC as the video mode, then swap in the game and try playing it.
There is also the ImportPlayer Lite that enables screen positioning which might bug you with the PAL -> NTSC converstion. I have not used this disk; however, so I don't know how well it functions.
Depends on what you mean by more for less. For $26.95 I can get 1.5Mbps down / 256Kpbs up from SBC DSL. And with 3Mbps cable going for $45-$50 while only offering 256-384Kbps UP, the $20-$25 saving is nice if you don't need a constand 3Mbps most people won't see in normal usage.
I would get headaches, irratablity, muscle spasms, and stomach cramps. I would also feel just plane drained and I felt like I had not energy what so ever. This was if I didn't drink any caffine for the day. A can of pop would clear them up in about 5 minutes or so.
The way I got off it was just go cold turkey. Be sure to drink lots of water, and juice also helps. In about a week your body should have all the caffine flushed out of it and any withdrawls should be completely gone.
An interesting side effect I had way that after about 6 months of no caffine just drinking a can of Pepsi gave me a major buzz. I'm not currently living caffine free but my intake is down to one 20oz a day with lunch, any maybe a glass or two with dinner when I go out to eat once or twice a week.
Why would you need all 3 consoles? Wouldn't you just need the console from the company that bought them out?
Right now you need all 3 console to get the full Sega product line such as Panzer Dragoon, and Shenmue on the Xbox, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter on the PS2, and Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg on the GCN.
One of them buying Sega would require you to need to own fewer consoles. Of course in the end it would be better for them to produce every game for every console but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
While they aren't full new games, remember the story from a few days ago that the Sega Ages games were officially announced in the US.
Three of these games are remakes with updated graphics and music of Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star 2, and Phantasy Star 4.
Hopefully these games will introduce a new generation of people to the Phantasy Star series which will compel Sega to release new non-online games in the series. But if nothing else we can relive the classics.
They could handle this like in Shenmue which had it's roots as Virtua Fighter Adventure before it spun off a different story and such.
You had the basic punch, kick, block like in VF. You then had movie which you could master to let you pull them off more easily, you also could receive, or buy scrolls that taught your more moves.
If AM2 makes this like Shenmue, but with a different story then I for one will definately be picking up a copy.
In the way your thinking, yes it's free; however, that's not how it's normally done in China.
In China they have stores that sell pirated "silver" disks. Look around the web for DVD Silvers and you can see what the problem is.
In countries like the US you need to purchase a console, find someone to mod it, and then rent/borrow/download and burn copies of the games.
In China, you buy a console and have it pre-modified, or modified while you wait (you can do that in the US, but it's not nearly as common), and then you can go purchase pirated disks for $5 a disk or so.
The problem with pirating in China isn't that there are people downloading and burning games, it's that there is a whole production sector for them. Disk duplicating facilities produce the copies, they are then distributed to stores, and stores then sell them. Law enforcement does try to combat the piracy; however, it can be as bad as shutting down a store and conficating the goods, and another store will then open across town selling the same things.
So no pirated in China does not normally equal free.
Perhaps you need to check out Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within.
The game is a point and click FMV adventure game done in the Sierra style norm for the time. This game showed people what a FMV game was able to do and has never been reproduced.
There are quite a few copies of it floating around eBay so you should be able to get it for $5-$10 + s/h. On a side note the book was also very good so I'd recommend getting it if you like the game.
You should check out Atlus: http://www.atlus.com/ and Working Designs: http://www.workingdesigns.com/ (Who's web site appears to be down at the time of this posting).
Both of these companies offer more nitch games that the general public normally wouldn't go for. Due to this their releases are normally done in a limited run where a small number of units are produced, I keep hearing around 10,000 as a minimum print run.
Eidos also experimented with a "Fresh Games" label which released wacky Japanese games that almost possitive, they wouldn't sell well. I'm not sure if they are keeping this label going; however, as I can only seem to find a UK link for it.
Even if all of these companies went alway, unique fun games would still be created by the fan scene. While they may be more on the level of modding of current games like counter strike to half-life, or the race car, and water slide mods for Unreal Tournament, there will also be creative games being made as long as there are creative people in the world.
I'm not sure if Macrovision is specifically built into a DVD player; however, the disks themselves control whether or not they are outputted with Macrovision.
I believe the first or maybe the second Harry Potter movie was released without Macrovision enabled. This would stop the problems people have viewing DVDs through some VCRs, but alot people to make nice VHS copies. I can't confirm oneway or another though since I have never had a problem with Macrovision, but I do know the disk has to license it to be output with it.
>I'm not ignoring anything. I've done this very scenario for years. 'face time' can be a Western concept.
Western concept or not having milestone projects with a customer of a large scale project where everyone is in a room, can get infinately more productive than over a phone.
>Offset hours are no different than swing shift.
If a 16 hour difference is a swing shift to you then maybe. I normally only see a 1 1/2 - 2 hour swing everywhere I've seen. That gives you at least 6 hours in a normal 8 hour day to meet with people.
>You seem to be stuck in a box, and that kind of thinking risks you being left behind. Jobs have been moving abroad for years and they will continue to do so. You can learn to manage remote or go with them...adapt or die.
Ok we'll move everything abroad. Then when hackers hit or there is a major router failure, we'll just fly all the IT guys in from India to fix it since the network is inaccessable remotely.
Or there is a massive software bug that's found. It's easier to grab everyone in an office, than wait several hours to try rounding up a team in another part of the world.
Yes it is possible to save money by outsourcing. But there is a trade off with wasted time and frustation. Sometimes it's worth it to stay local.
They are making 7,200 RPM 2.5" hard drives now. Maximum PC just reviewed on in their Decemeber issue and they said it preforms on par with desktop hard drives.
Depending on the age of the kids, the $99 GameCube upgrade might be even better.
The Gamecube doesn't have a disk tray to be broken, and can take a major beating. There is a movie floating around the web where some people dragged a GameCube from a car by a rope for a mile. The system was scratched to hell but it worked fine.
Also the GameCube IMO has a lot more quality titles for young kids, the majority of popular game on the Playstation 2 and Xbox are for teenager -> young adult demographic.
If your kids are older the Xbox normally gets the bets looking versions of the multiplatform games, and modding it and throwing the Xbox Media Player on it rocks.
If your kids are more into the Playstation 2 exclusive titles then I guess you should go for that, plus you can get the Linux kit for it and have another computer to hack with.
I know they both vitualise an x86 machine.
I was complaining about a comparison between VMWare running on x86 based hardware, verus Virtual PC running on a G4.
AFAIK, the G4 does not have direct compatiblity with x86 instructions, therefor some additaional computation must be made. While one can say a G4 1GHz can run about the same as a P3 1GHZ, it's still not valid to compare the different programs on two completely different platforms when they can be tested on the same platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if it is the Japanese FF3 Nes and not the US FF3 SNES (Japanease was FF6), I'd be surprised if it doesn't come out in the US. The Japanese FF2 (NES) and FF5 (SNES) never originally came out in the US; however, they both came out as PSX remakes, and a new soon to be released GBA release of FF1 & FF2.
I just did a quick search on The Curse of Mordread and it pulled up a few sites about the PC/DOS game. While it was title Dragon's Lair 3 it wasn't. The company Readysoft release the original Dragon's Lair 2 Arcade game into two different games. This DL3, is actually just scenes that weren't in Readysoft's version of DL2. As for the new DL3. It's do with the DL3D engine, not the classic animated style. I for one will definately not be picking it up.
I'd say the safer income isn't just in that each user bought an original, but with the $10-$15/month fee each user is paying. Have just 250,000 players pay $10/month = 2.5 Million a month or 30 Million a year. Sure there is the hardware, support staff, etc. However, the more popular a game gets the more revenue that comes in.
There are CD rentals here, at least where I live. They are at a place called the Library. They have a lot of this things called books; however, they also rent out Movies and CDs for around $1/day or so.
Check it out sometime.
First off Black Isle made Planescape Torment; however, both Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur's Gate were made by Bioware. Black Isle published Baldur's Gate through Interplay, and they even helped in development which is why Ice Wind Dale, and Planescape Torment use the Baldur's Gate engine. Neverwinter Nights was released after Bioware broke away from Interplay due to contract disputes. It was published under the Atari brand name which is now owned by Infogrames. Interplay killed off Black Isle last year which killed Fallout 3 which was reported to be far into production. Some of the former Black Isle employees have formed a new studio and are currently working with Bioware to develope new games. Finally there was a recent Dune game made about a year or two ago. It was developed by Dreamcatcher; however, it sucked. Who knows maybe someone will pickup the rights to the Dune series and do a good job again some day.
Maybe the Mac version, I tried backups on the PC version and they worked just fine. Sony did buy out the emulator though, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Actually Bleem didn't require original disks. The author wanted to require them; however, doing so would have need some type of patent violation and have give Sony more to sue them over than not checking if the disk was an original.
Being unemployed at the time I was sitting at home on my computer reading slashdo^D^D^D^D^D^D^D employment postings. When the blackout initially hit I chuckled as my UPS started to beep that it lost power.
After 10mins I decided to safely shutdown as this didn't look like it was going to be resolved soon (I keep my router and DSL modem going though and sync lasted until my UPS ran out of juice Good SBC). I went and got a battery powered radio and hit the news stations to see if I could get any information on what happened. There is where the confusion and hysteria started where nobody really knew what happened.
I received a phone call from my sister as she was at work sitting in the dark (cell phones can bite my landline ^_^).
As time passed by and everyone came home we went and fired up our gas barbaque (outside the house connected to the houses gas line). We went it the freezer and pulled out some steaks and ribs (no sense letting them goto waste). For desert we worked on the cartons of ice cream.
As night started to come a new problem arose, Detroit (yes in Michigan) getting the great city that is was failed to provide proper maintainance on their water pumps generators, and so the suburbs stopped getting water (that was fun). Luckly I heard on the radio that there would be problems so I grabbed some 5gal buckets and filled them with water before hand so we could at least flush the toliets.
We finally brought out the generator and ran the fridge and freezer to try to not let everything goto waste.
Walking outside was interesting, it was nice and dark like up north, but there was the destintive hum of generators of the people who were prepared. The sky was also pretty clear and we cracked out the telescope to have a look at Mars.
I went to sleep in the basement since it was hot and sticky to try to keep cool. After waking up I heard reports of people lining up for hours to get gas from the few gas stations that were starting to get power back. We waited until the afternoon when power was pretty much fully restored (surprising if you know Detroit Edision's excellent track record of keeping power going on perfectly clear days) we went down the street and got gas, round trip about 10 minutes.
Later in the evening we finally got water back, we had to boil it for a few days, but it wasn't bad.
The only major repercussion was in October or so where a 1.5ft water main cracked and flooded a section of I-96 and closed an area of the service drive for about a month or so.
Overall it was hot and muggy, a major inconvience, and a good time to laugh at stupid people who can't cook for themselves, don't have any emergency rations, and rely on Cell Phones, or just have cordless phones in their homes. The barbaque was good though. ^_^
You should play the game before passing judgment on how/why they gave it that rating. Being a mid-20s gamer I like to think I'm pretty tough skinned about stuff but the game just sickened me when I played it.
This game isn't about you just randomly running around like in an FPS blowing people up, sniping them in the head, etc. It's a stealth game where you sneak up on people to murder them. I have to say murder rather than kill to get the point across a little more since we're usually used to killing things in games.
I remember that article that the NYTimes removed where the guy was complaining about Grand Theft Auto 3. Well, in this game you ARE the main character of a snuff film. You basically creep up on characters and using weapons like plastic bags, knifes, etc kill them silently. You are also rewarded in the game for more brutal kills like wrapping a plastic bag on a guys head then beating him down with punches and kicks and finally snapping his neck. Slitting people throats with the knife isn't much better either.
I'm really surprised this game got away with an "M" (mature) rating in the US since it really deserves an "AO" (Adults Only).
For the record I really enjoyed the Grand Theft Auto games. I've been pissed off by all the negative media exposure to the games. And finally am surprised at the total lack of media coverage and politician bickering about this game as it is FAR more violent and grotesque than GTA ever was.
I do have to applaud RockStar for making such a game even in light of all the controversy surrounding GTA. They made a game that was darker, sicker, and far more violent than GTA ever was (State of Emergency was pure crap IMHO).
So please try playing the game before saying, well a lot of games have killing, swearing, etc they shouldn't be given an adults only rating. The report just didn't go into how bad those things were in the game. I'm just waiting for the media to pickup on the game; they media antics should be much funnier than with GTA.
As for me, I didn't care of the game and will not be playing it again. That's my position and I'm sticking to it.
As others have stated Al Lowe isn't working on the new Larry game; however, that doesn't mean it won't be good. Don't condem it before it's out people.
As for SpaceQuest, Sierra had 7 going back in the day but cancelled it. Also they had 7 being developed again but the studio working on it said it was cancelled last month. You can read about it here: http://wiw.org/~jess/sq7.html
If you want to play some of the old Sierra games maybe of the VGA ones won't work properly on modern PCs due to timing issues. Here is a website with patches for the games: http://geocities.com/belzorash/
You could check out the ImportPlayer disk.
h tm l#ImportPlayer
http://www.megagames.com/psx/psx_utils_bootcd.s
The link is to MegaGames since the original site http://www.xianaix.com wasn't up at the time I tried accessing it.
The disk was scene made, and you must have a modded PSX/PS2 to use it. Just boot the disk and select NTSC as the video mode, then swap in the game and try playing it.
There is also the ImportPlayer Lite that enables screen positioning which might bug you with the PAL -> NTSC converstion. I have not used this disk; however, so I don't know how well it functions.
Depends on what you mean by more for less. For $26.95 I can get 1.5Mbps down / 256Kpbs up from SBC DSL. And with 3Mbps cable going for $45-$50 while only offering 256-384Kbps UP, the $20-$25 saving is nice if you don't need a constand 3Mbps most people won't see in normal usage.
They don't need cracks because they are crack.
You've never been addicted to caffine have you?
I would get headaches, irratablity, muscle spasms, and stomach cramps. I would also feel just plane drained and I felt like I had not energy what so ever. This was if I didn't drink any caffine for the day. A can of pop would clear them up in about 5 minutes or so.
The way I got off it was just go cold turkey. Be sure to drink lots of water, and juice also helps. In about a week your body should have all the caffine flushed out of it and any withdrawls should be completely gone.
An interesting side effect I had way that after about 6 months of no caffine just drinking a can of Pepsi gave me a major buzz. I'm not currently living caffine free but my intake is down to one 20oz a day with lunch, any maybe a glass or two with dinner when I go out to eat once or twice a week.
Right now you need all 3 console to get the full Sega product line such as Panzer Dragoon, and Shenmue on the Xbox, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter on the PS2, and Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg on the GCN.
One of them buying Sega would require you to need to own fewer consoles. Of course in the end it would be better for them to produce every game for every console but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Three of these games are remakes with updated graphics and music of Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star 2, and Phantasy Star 4.
Hopefully these games will introduce a new generation of people to the Phantasy Star series which will compel Sega to release new non-online games in the series. But if nothing else we can relive the classics.
You had the basic punch, kick, block like in VF. You then had movie which you could master to let you pull them off more easily, you also could receive, or buy scrolls that taught your more moves.
If AM2 makes this like Shenmue, but with a different story then I for one will definately be picking up a copy.
In China they have stores that sell pirated "silver" disks. Look around the web for DVD Silvers and you can see what the problem is.
In countries like the US you need to purchase a console, find someone to mod it, and then rent/borrow/download and burn copies of the games.
In China, you buy a console and have it pre-modified, or modified while you wait (you can do that in the US, but it's not nearly as common), and then you can go purchase pirated disks for $5 a disk or so.
The problem with pirating in China isn't that there are people downloading and burning games, it's that there is a whole production sector for them. Disk duplicating facilities produce the copies, they are then distributed to stores, and stores then sell them. Law enforcement does try to combat the piracy; however, it can be as bad as shutting down a store and conficating the goods, and another store will then open across town selling the same things.
So no pirated in China does not normally equal free.
Perhaps you need to check out Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within.
The game is a point and click FMV adventure game done in the Sierra style norm for the time. This game showed people what a FMV game was able to do and has never been reproduced.
There are quite a few copies of it floating around eBay so you should be able to get it for $5-$10 + s/h. On a side note the book was also very good so I'd recommend getting it if you like the game.
There are several companies that do this.
You should check out Atlus: http://www.atlus.com/ and Working Designs: http://www.workingdesigns.com/ (Who's web site appears to be down at the time of this posting).
Both of these companies offer more nitch games that the general public normally wouldn't go for. Due to this their releases are normally done in a limited run where a small number of units are produced, I keep hearing around 10,000 as a minimum print run.
Eidos also experimented with a "Fresh Games" label which released wacky Japanese games that almost possitive, they wouldn't sell well. I'm not sure if they are keeping this label going; however, as I can only seem to find a UK link for it.
Even if all of these companies went alway, unique fun games would still be created by the fan scene. While they may be more on the level of modding of current games like counter strike to half-life, or the race car, and water slide mods for Unreal Tournament, there will also be creative games being made as long as there are creative people in the world.
I'm not sure if Macrovision is specifically built into a DVD player; however, the disks themselves control whether or not they are outputted with Macrovision.
I believe the first or maybe the second Harry Potter movie was released without Macrovision enabled. This would stop the problems people have viewing DVDs through some VCRs, but alot people to make nice VHS copies. I can't confirm oneway or another though since I have never had a problem with Macrovision, but I do know the disk has to license it to be output with it.
>I'm not ignoring anything. I've done this very scenario for years. 'face time' can be a Western concept.
Western concept or not having milestone projects with a customer of a large scale project where everyone is in a room, can get infinately more productive than over a phone.
>Offset hours are no different than swing shift.
If a 16 hour difference is a swing shift to you then maybe. I normally only see a 1 1/2 - 2 hour swing everywhere I've seen. That gives you at least 6 hours in a normal 8 hour day to meet with people.
>You seem to be stuck in a box, and that kind of thinking risks you being left behind. Jobs have been moving abroad for years and they will continue to do so. You can learn to manage remote or go with them...adapt or die.
Ok we'll move everything abroad. Then when hackers hit or there is a major router failure, we'll just fly all the IT guys in from India to fix it since the network is inaccessable remotely.
Or there is a massive software bug that's found. It's easier to grab everyone in an office, than wait several hours to try rounding up a team in another part of the world.
Yes it is possible to save money by outsourcing. But there is a trade off with wasted time and frustation. Sometimes it's worth it to stay local.
They are making 7,200 RPM 2.5" hard drives now. Maximum PC just reviewed on in their Decemeber issue and they said it preforms on par with desktop hard drives.
The Gamecube doesn't have a disk tray to be broken, and can take a major beating. There is a movie floating around the web where some people dragged a GameCube from a car by a rope for a mile. The system was scratched to hell but it worked fine.
Also the GameCube IMO has a lot more quality titles for young kids, the majority of popular game on the Playstation 2 and Xbox are for teenager -> young adult demographic.
If your kids are older the Xbox normally gets the bets looking versions of the multiplatform games, and modding it and throwing the Xbox Media Player on it rocks.
If your kids are more into the Playstation 2 exclusive titles then I guess you should go for that, plus you can get the Linux kit for it and have another computer to hack with.
I know they both vitualise an x86 machine. I was complaining about a comparison between VMWare running on x86 based hardware, verus Virtual PC running on a G4. AFAIK, the G4 does not have direct compatiblity with x86 instructions, therefor some additaional computation must be made. While one can say a G4 1GHz can run about the same as a P3 1GHZ, it's still not valid to compare the different programs on two completely different platforms when they can be tested on the same platforms.