As with the Wii, I believe that the interface offered by the DS would be great for point-and-click games like Myst. The graphics will have to be downgraded a bit for the system (probably retooled completely to make good use of both screens), but it would offer simple, relaxing game play. This would be most interesting to the "non-gamer" crowd Nintendo is trying (apparently successfully) to lure in. No violence, no stress, just exploration, puzzle solving, and some nice visuals.
I know that games like this would interest my parents much more than, say, Mario Kart or even Nintendogs.
That's what I thought when I read the synopsis. Microsoft isn't waking up, it's just working harder to play catch up.
On another forum I go to, someone has as their signature (roughly) "IE7- a 7th generation browser in a world of 8th gen browsers", and it's true. Microsoft didn't include tabs in their browser until FireFox and Opera had already been doing it for a while.
As Linux becomes a more viable OS, especially if Google's new apps take off, Microsoft is going to find itself more and more strained as it offers less and less innovation and improvements- the leap from Win98 to Win2K was quite a large one, the leap from 2K to XP less, and XP to Vista even less than that.
I'm imagining a Futurama or Family Guy segment where someone has created a simple bomb detector for the mass populace, which has five easy to understand levels:
Having just started Half life 2 this past week, I have to agree. At the very beginning I found myself wandering a bit, wondering where I had to go, but the game constrained my movements just enough that I wound up where I needed to be. I believe I had a good 10 or 20 minute trek before I got to the point that I had even a crowbar. While I did wish I had a gun, I fully understood why I didn't have one, and the game was set up in such a way that, even had I a gun, it wouldn't have done a lot of good at that point. I was kept more than busy enough and taken in by the game that it didn't bother me much that I had no gun.
And now, even though I do have guns (and some kick-ass ones, at that), I find myself doing much more than just running around shooting. The gravity gun is one of the best ideas for FPSs, ever. Now I can stack things up or use my imagination to get through situations rather than relying on gunning my way out.
That's one of the things FPSs need to work on. They may be called Shooters, but players should be able to do more in those games than just shoot.
Seriously. I'm reminded of the new wave of spam, mainly "pump and dump" scams where the spammers try to get the recipient to buy some stock, and after it goes up a bit the spammer dumps his stock to make some profit. Seems like this could happen at a higher level, from the way these kinds of "articles" are pushed out.
Every time "news" like this gets around, everyone speculates pretty much everything about everything. Sony wants to buy Nintendo. Microsoft wants to buy Nintendo. IBM wants to buy AMD. Microsoft wants to buy IBM. Intel wants to buy AMD. George Bush wants to buy AMD. Microsoft wants to buy George Bush.
This isn't even "news"- it's rampant speculation pushed out by someone trying to make their money by writing articles. I can't blame them for wanting to get paid, but that anyone picked it up and published, including Slashdot, is just stupid.
We can talk about speculation and small stock increases until we are blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything.
here I'll agree with you almost wholeheartedly.. it's not a philosphy, it's an unfunded federal mandate.. a major distinction. To keep getting the federal dollars for school systems, schools must get 100% of their kids in line, and to do so- they get no additional money where needed- they just lose funding &control in some cases, of their own educational program.. The result has not been dumbing down of an entire curriculum, it's been the refocusing of the entire curriculum to being 'program the kids to pass the standardized test'
I've always found this kind of philosophy disturbing. No Child Left Behind withholds money from those schools that "fail". Many states require schools to pass various standardized tests or risk losing money.
These things cause such things as schools graduating students with laxer requirements, teachers helping students cheat on tests (or cheating themselves), and so forth in order to get more money.
To me, this seems backwards. If a school can honestly graduate all their students and pass standardized tests, it tells me that the school has enough money. Not that more money should be withheld for them for this, but they are either financially capable or able to cope otherwise.
Schools that do poorly should be the ones getting money- while the money itself won't fix the problem, it could go a long way to fix the real issues the school has, such as lack of supplies, technology, current textbooks, and competent teachers.[1] Of course, reversing the requirements will cause schools to hold back more students or tell their students to just fill out "A" for every question on the tests in order to get more money for football jerseys or something. So the answer is that funds should not be given according to results of tests, but the standard need of the students.
Figure out what an average student would need to succeed (including proper teachers), calculate the cost of that, and add in a bit of overhead. Then give that, per year, to the schools according to headcount. Once more, some schools will flub the numbers, but it will be harder to do.
[1] Some of the teachers that are hired for the public school system are borderline incapable of teaching; I'm sure everyone on Slashdot, especially the parents, has a horror story. I'll give one of mine, actually told to me by my mother: I have a younger brother, graduating high school this year, who I have generally considered a pest. Despite that, he excels in things like math (he has a competitive attitude, especially versus me, so he could have worked hard to outdo me in math, but I digress), and does rather well in his math class. Well, except that his teacher doesn't think so. As in most classes, the calculator is banned for tests (a rather stupid idea IMO, but that's another topic), and he consistently gets high scores to the point that the teacher gives him low grades despite getting answers right, because he can't believe my brother can get the right answers on his own, even after he does observed "make-up" tests.
And yes, my folks (and other parents) have complained to the administration, but this particular teacher heads the high school football team, which is generally lucky to even win its own homecoming game, so little has been done against him.
I DRTFA, but I just wanted to note that just because the Gamecube is no longer being produced does not mean that there will be no more Gamecube games, thanks to the backwards compatibility on the Wii.
Only last year was the last Dreamcast game released (in Japan), and the system has been out of production for at least four years. Every once in a while a PS1 game is still released, because it can work on the PS2. Since the Gamecube will be cheaper to produce for than the Wii, and there's a fairly good chance that many of the consumers will have the 'Cube controllers or easily get them.
The PS3 will also see a lot of this with PS2 games, especially with the massive increase of PS3 production costs.
Gamecube controllers will probably also see continued production by third parties, seeing as how they can be used with VC games and are generally cheaper than the Classic controller.
It does look like Nintendo is ditching the Gamecube internally, though.
Convince the general American populace (or at least Bush and half of congress) that terrorists are on the moon and could strike with orbiting lasers from any moment.
You'll be amazed at how fast NASA will get funding (in joint with the Air Force) and get troops up to the moon.
The difference between the BluRay and UMD formats, though, was player availability. The UMD failed as a movie format because you HAD to have a PSP to play it. Had they released a stand-alone portable UMD player (for those who don't want to play games), or one that would connect to a regular TV (so you don't have to wind up buying the same movie twice), the UMD format would have stood a better chance.
The BluRay format, on the other hand, has many player options (though no portable ones, to my knowledge, and I'm sure this will be taken care of eventually). While the PS3 may spur BluRay movies (didn't you get a free BluRay movie purchase with every PS3?), they aren't constrained to it.
In all of the discussions on global warming, a lot of people on both sides (though more on the "it's not happening" side) think that we have to make some huge leap if we are to combat it. While something like destroying all gas-driven vehicles might well help, that's a bit extreme for anyone.
The truth of the matter is that small things add up into large things, and those large things matter. Australia gets rid of incandescents here, America pushes electric cars and solar energy, Canada does whatever it does, etc. All of these things in and of themselves won't do a whole lot, but put them together and you start getting real results.
After all, it's not the individual person throwing a soda cup on the side of the street that causes clutter, it's thousands of people doing that. If you can only get a percentage of those thousands in one city to stop, that's still less clutter in the streets. Do that in 10 cities, and the overall problem is suddenly much smaller.
You're talking about using faith as a crutch. He's talking about using faith as a safety net.
The way you explain it, the faithful rely on their faith to see them through thick and thin, instead of their own wits and the help of others.
The way he explains it, the faithful rely on their own wits and the help of others to get them through life, knowing that if the worst were to befall them, they still have something to look forward to. (Perhaps an insurance policy or investment is a better comparison.)
However, both of these are used in faith. Some people try to rely on it to help them. Others hope it will help and shove forward on their own, looking forward to eternal rest. Some people mix the two.
As with things like guns or fire, faith itself isn't a bad thing, but can be used for evil by those who are. See: Fred Phelps, these fundamentalists, radical Muslims.
I agree tremendously. I may be a lowly college senior with an internship, but I've already learned that working insane hours like that does more harm than good.
All around me, too many people are working to continue working. I prefer to work to live. If I spend more time working, I do less of that "living" thing.
I'd rather take a job where I work 30 hours a week and make 50K than one where I work 40 hours a week and make 80K.
Of course, but here Microsoft wins, too. The article doesn't say how the exact payment would be (the article says just "millions of dollars"), but we'll be conservative and say that Microsoft will have to pay out at least 50 million (if it were 100 million, they probably would have said "hundreds of millions"). A quick Google search says that their revenue is around 10 billion. That means they have to pay a half of a percent of their annual revenue. Looking at it another way, it will take them less than a week to recoup that.
This is only a bit more of a punishment than the fine from the EU of a couple ten thousand dollars a day.
And what else do they have to give out? More Microsoft products! Either a voucher, or software for schools. And from that comes support contracts, future upgrades, additional add-ons, all which will cost the schools and/or users additional money.
Why do courts and defendants even allow this? If I cut myself with a razor because it was used shoddy construction and a blade wasn't secured properly, and sue the company, why would I want another razor from them? I may get the razor free, but I still wind up having to buy blades for it later.
Granted, they aren't saying they don't want Windows, just that they were overcharged, but this still seems ludicrous.
Since the let down of the 3D Sonic games, I'm quite anxious to play Secret of the Rings (Wildfire was a better name, but that's usually how it goes). Last I heard, it's due out on the 20th of this month (though Circuit City's pre-order things say March). Supposedly, the game will have you playing as just Sonic, not 13 other characters, and is all about going forward and jumping. The previews I've seen have the level being a bit too linear, but the speed was fairly high. The camera is fixed behind Sonic, a nice change; the camera has always been a major issue in the 3D games.
The plot looks to suck (Knuckles as some arabian guy?), but good Sonic games were never about plot. Too many of the recent 3D Sonics have burned me as an avid Sonic fan (though Sonic Riders was a step in the right direction), so I plan to rent before I buy.
Thinking about it, it's almost like what Sonic X-treme was supposed to be, minus the circular world.
Hopefully the formula works, and if so we see more Sonic games like it in the future.
Like many in my age bracket, I was pretty into Napster back before it started getting mainstream press. I think I had, at most, a thousand songs at one point; I saw collections numbering in the 10s of thousands, though, so this isn't an impressive number.
Before that, I never purchased media myself. I was content to listen to the radio, or the infrequent CD my parents would get as a gift.
After Napster tanked, I moved with the masses to Kazaa, continuing to expand my music selection. Somewhere around the end of high school, I had a moral attack (like a heart attack, but longer and less painful), and stopped downloading music. I erased most of the songs that I didn't really listen to or like, and the rest I started to replace with actual purchased CDs. I went from buying 2 CDs a year to buying 20.
However, my music purchases have decreased since then. I buy 5 or 6 albums a year; online music sites such as LAUNCHCast.com allow me to create my own stations with my own preferences. I listen to this most of the time, instead of my own CDs. As well as replacing most of my other music habits, it has also turned me on to new bands and music.
Music purchases have decreased because average consumers are no longer locked in to buying whatever Target or Best Buy decides to carry in CD form.
Their record sales plummeted because the music they're selling sucks.
Not only that, but it is now easier than ever for an indie band to get sales and fame. So now the big labels are not able to force their usual 2/3s of the pie on them, since newer bands have a lot more leverage. Observe:
RIAA company: "We'll distribute your CD and songs on iTunes, but we get 70% of the take." New band: "Whatever, I can use something like CDBaby and do the same for only a 20% take." RIAA company: "Buh... uh... won't you think of the children? And by that, I mean our children. How will they ever afford a new Hummer?!"
Songs from (good) indie bands that do a lot of exposure are then picked up by the indie stations, and eventually make their way to the various ClearCrap stations who don't want to lose listeners to the stations that play more than the top 40s.
If we're going to spend a billion dollars, how about doing something that not only helps the planet but also has a longer effect. The main thing we need to focus on is travel. Aside from the pollution that millions of cars spew, the lack of good public transportation is causing quite a few other problems- road repair, obesity, tearing up land to put in more roads, etc. Spend those billions of dollars on the larger cities (and some of the medium ones) to install good bus and/or subway systems (trollies are pretty spiffy, too). This will have the added side effect of creating more jobs (driving the buses, setting up schedules, maintainence, etc.) and making life easier for those who can't afford a vehicle of their own....Oh, but the CAR-tel (haha) won't allow that, will they? Anyone know how much it costs to buy a senator? We could use one for this, and I wouldn't mind owning a few of my own.
And, because I couldn't resist:
These can range from sun-shades orbiting the Earth
Brilliant idea! In fact, let's take that one step further and make it a giant mirror to not only block the sun, but deflect the rays back. There's no possible way this will go wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
As with the Wii, I believe that the interface offered by the DS would be great for point-and-click games like Myst. The graphics will have to be downgraded a bit for the system (probably retooled completely to make good use of both screens), but it would offer simple, relaxing game play. This would be most interesting to the "non-gamer" crowd Nintendo is trying (apparently successfully) to lure in. No violence, no stress, just exploration, puzzle solving, and some nice visuals.
I know that games like this would interest my parents much more than, say, Mario Kart or even Nintendogs.
That's what I thought when I read the synopsis. Microsoft isn't waking up, it's just working harder to play catch up.
On another forum I go to, someone has as their signature (roughly) "IE7- a 7th generation browser in a world of 8th gen browsers", and it's true. Microsoft didn't include tabs in their browser until FireFox and Opera had already been doing it for a while.
As Linux becomes a more viable OS, especially if Google's new apps take off, Microsoft is going to find itself more and more strained as it offers less and less innovation and improvements- the leap from Win98 to Win2K was quite a large one, the leap from 2K to XP less, and XP to Vista even less than that.
- Firecracker
- Cherry Bomb
- Building Buster
- Holy Shit, it's a nuke
- Portable Lighting Display*
* Works within Boston city limits only...shit.
Having just started Half life 2 this past week, I have to agree. At the very beginning I found myself wandering a bit, wondering where I had to go, but the game constrained my movements just enough that I wound up where I needed to be. I believe I had a good 10 or 20 minute trek before I got to the point that I had even a crowbar. While I did wish I had a gun, I fully understood why I didn't have one, and the game was set up in such a way that, even had I a gun, it wouldn't have done a lot of good at that point. I was kept more than busy enough and taken in by the game that it didn't bother me much that I had no gun.
And now, even though I do have guns (and some kick-ass ones, at that), I find myself doing much more than just running around shooting. The gravity gun is one of the best ideas for FPSs, ever. Now I can stack things up or use my imagination to get through situations rather than relying on gunning my way out.
That's one of the things FPSs need to work on. They may be called Shooters, but players should be able to do more in those games than just shoot.
Seriously. I'm reminded of the new wave of spam, mainly "pump and dump" scams where the spammers try to get the recipient to buy some stock, and after it goes up a bit the spammer dumps his stock to make some profit. Seems like this could happen at a higher level, from the way these kinds of "articles" are pushed out.
Every time "news" like this gets around, everyone speculates pretty much everything about everything. Sony wants to buy Nintendo. Microsoft wants to buy Nintendo. IBM wants to buy AMD. Microsoft wants to buy IBM. Intel wants to buy AMD. George Bush wants to buy AMD. Microsoft wants to buy George Bush.
This isn't even "news"- it's rampant speculation pushed out by someone trying to make their money by writing articles. I can't blame them for wanting to get paid, but that anyone picked it up and published, including Slashdot, is just stupid.
We can talk about speculation and small stock increases until we are blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything.
This isn't news. It doesn't matter.
These things cause such things as schools graduating students with laxer requirements, teachers helping students cheat on tests (or cheating themselves), and so forth in order to get more money.
To me, this seems backwards. If a school can honestly graduate all their students and pass standardized tests, it tells me that the school has enough money. Not that more money should be withheld for them for this, but they are either financially capable or able to cope otherwise.
Schools that do poorly should be the ones getting money- while the money itself won't fix the problem, it could go a long way to fix the real issues the school has, such as lack of supplies, technology, current textbooks, and competent teachers.[1] Of course, reversing the requirements will cause schools to hold back more students or tell their students to just fill out "A" for every question on the tests in order to get more money for football jerseys or something. So the answer is that funds should not be given according to results of tests, but the standard need of the students.
Figure out what an average student would need to succeed (including proper teachers), calculate the cost of that, and add in a bit of overhead. Then give that, per year, to the schools according to headcount. Once more, some schools will flub the numbers, but it will be harder to do.
[1] Some of the teachers that are hired for the public school system are borderline incapable of teaching; I'm sure everyone on Slashdot, especially the parents, has a horror story. I'll give one of mine, actually told to me by my mother: I have a younger brother, graduating high school this year, who I have generally considered a pest. Despite that, he excels in things like math (he has a competitive attitude, especially versus me, so he could have worked hard to outdo me in math, but I digress), and does rather well in his math class. Well, except that his teacher doesn't think so. As in most classes, the calculator is banned for tests (a rather stupid idea IMO, but that's another topic), and he consistently gets high scores to the point that the teacher gives him low grades despite getting answers right, because he can't believe my brother can get the right answers on his own, even after he does observed "make-up" tests.
And yes, my folks (and other parents) have complained to the administration, but this particular teacher heads the high school football team, which is generally lucky to even win its own homecoming game, so little has been done against him.
Yes, but women generally take your money, rather than give it to you.
"Meetings: No one person is as stupid as all of us."
Well, it's a close approximation to the poster. Alternatively:
Neither I nor U are in Teamwork.
I DRTFA, but I just wanted to note that just because the Gamecube is no longer being produced does not mean that there will be no more Gamecube games, thanks to the backwards compatibility on the Wii.
Only last year was the last Dreamcast game released (in Japan), and the system has been out of production for at least four years. Every once in a while a PS1 game is still released, because it can work on the PS2. Since the Gamecube will be cheaper to produce for than the Wii, and there's a fairly good chance that many of the consumers will have the 'Cube controllers or easily get them.
The PS3 will also see a lot of this with PS2 games, especially with the massive increase of PS3 production costs.
Gamecube controllers will probably also see continued production by third parties, seeing as how they can be used with VC games and are generally cheaper than the Classic controller.
It does look like Nintendo is ditching the Gamecube internally, though.
Convince the general American populace (or at least Bush and half of congress) that terrorists are on the moon and could strike with orbiting lasers from any moment.
You'll be amazed at how fast NASA will get funding (in joint with the Air Force) and get troops up to the moon.
The sad part is that I'm only half-joking.
The difference between the BluRay and UMD formats, though, was player availability. The UMD failed as a movie format because you HAD to have a PSP to play it. Had they released a stand-alone portable UMD player (for those who don't want to play games), or one that would connect to a regular TV (so you don't have to wind up buying the same movie twice), the UMD format would have stood a better chance.
The BluRay format, on the other hand, has many player options (though no portable ones, to my knowledge, and I'm sure this will be taken care of eventually). While the PS3 may spur BluRay movies (didn't you get a free BluRay movie purchase with every PS3?), they aren't constrained to it.
Perhaps, but it will do something.
In all of the discussions on global warming, a lot of people on both sides (though more on the "it's not happening" side) think that we have to make some huge leap if we are to combat it. While something like destroying all gas-driven vehicles might well help, that's a bit extreme for anyone.
The truth of the matter is that small things add up into large things, and those large things matter. Australia gets rid of incandescents here, America pushes electric cars and solar energy, Canada does whatever it does, etc. All of these things in and of themselves won't do a whole lot, but put them together and you start getting real results.
After all, it's not the individual person throwing a soda cup on the side of the street that causes clutter, it's thousands of people doing that. If you can only get a percentage of those thousands in one city to stop, that's still less clutter in the streets. Do that in 10 cities, and the overall problem is suddenly much smaller.
Turn-a-bout is fair play. Have you thought about setting up a camera to catch this?
The word is: Legs.
Now spread the word.
You're talking about using faith as a crutch. He's talking about using faith as a safety net.
The way you explain it, the faithful rely on their faith to see them through thick and thin, instead of their own wits and the help of others.
The way he explains it, the faithful rely on their own wits and the help of others to get them through life, knowing that if the worst were to befall them, they still have something to look forward to. (Perhaps an insurance policy or investment is a better comparison.)
However, both of these are used in faith. Some people try to rely on it to help them. Others hope it will help and shove forward on their own, looking forward to eternal rest. Some people mix the two.
As with things like guns or fire, faith itself isn't a bad thing, but can be used for evil by those who are. See: Fred Phelps, these fundamentalists, radical Muslims.
I agree tremendously. I may be a lowly college senior with an internship, but I've already learned that working insane hours like that does more harm than good.
All around me, too many people are working to continue working. I prefer to work to live. If I spend more time working, I do less of that "living" thing.
I'd rather take a job where I work 30 hours a week and make 50K than one where I work 40 hours a week and make 80K.
This is only a bit more of a punishment than the fine from the EU of a couple ten thousand dollars a day.
And what else do they have to give out? More Microsoft products! Either a voucher, or software for schools. And from that comes support contracts, future upgrades, additional add-ons, all which will cost the schools and/or users additional money.
Why do courts and defendants even allow this? If I cut myself with a razor because it was used shoddy construction and a blade wasn't secured properly, and sue the company, why would I want another razor from them? I may get the razor free, but I still wind up having to buy blades for it later.
Granted, they aren't saying they don't want Windows, just that they were overcharged, but this still seems ludicrous.
Since the let down of the 3D Sonic games, I'm quite anxious to play Secret of the Rings (Wildfire was a better name, but that's usually how it goes). Last I heard, it's due out on the 20th of this month (though Circuit City's pre-order things say March). Supposedly, the game will have you playing as just Sonic, not 13 other characters, and is all about going forward and jumping. The previews I've seen have the level being a bit too linear, but the speed was fairly high. The camera is fixed behind Sonic, a nice change; the camera has always been a major issue in the 3D games.
The plot looks to suck (Knuckles as some arabian guy?), but good Sonic games were never about plot. Too many of the recent 3D Sonics have burned me as an avid Sonic fan (though Sonic Riders was a step in the right direction), so I plan to rent before I buy.
Thinking about it, it's almost like what Sonic X-treme was supposed to be, minus the circular world.
Hopefully the formula works, and if so we see more Sonic games like it in the future.
Okay, I'll do it: "In Soviet Russia, the internet chokes you!"
...I don't get it.
Like many in my age bracket, I was pretty into Napster back before it started getting mainstream press. I think I had, at most, a thousand songs at one point; I saw collections numbering in the 10s of thousands, though, so this isn't an impressive number.
Before that, I never purchased media myself. I was content to listen to the radio, or the infrequent CD my parents would get as a gift.
After Napster tanked, I moved with the masses to Kazaa, continuing to expand my music selection. Somewhere around the end of high school, I had a moral attack (like a heart attack, but longer and less painful), and stopped downloading music. I erased most of the songs that I didn't really listen to or like, and the rest I started to replace with actual purchased CDs. I went from buying 2 CDs a year to buying 20.
However, my music purchases have decreased since then. I buy 5 or 6 albums a year; online music sites such as LAUNCHCast.com allow me to create my own stations with my own preferences. I listen to this most of the time, instead of my own CDs. As well as replacing most of my other music habits, it has also turned me on to new bands and music.
Music purchases have decreased because average consumers are no longer locked in to buying whatever Target or Best Buy decides to carry in CD form.
RIAA company: "We'll distribute your CD and songs on iTunes, but we get 70% of the take."
New band: "Whatever, I can use something like CDBaby and do the same for only a 20% take."
RIAA company: "Buh... uh... won't you think of the children? And by that, I mean our children. How will they ever afford a new Hummer?!"
Songs from (good) indie bands that do a lot of exposure are then picked up by the indie stations, and eventually make their way to the various ClearCrap stations who don't want to lose listeners to the stations that play more than the top 40s.
And, because I couldn't resist:Brilliant idea! In fact, let's take that one step further and make it a giant mirror to not only block the sun, but deflect the rays back. There's no possible way this will go wrong.