I have approx. 13 domain names registered with GoDaddy. I've always loved their service and prices.
Now, while I don't mind Windows (yes, counter-culture here on Slashdot) for my desktop OS, I can't stand using windows for anything related to hosting web sites, if only for the fact that I'm used to working with Linux, MySQL, and being able to chmod (yes, Windows boxes have something similar, but it doesn't work nearly as well through FTP).
So I'm assuming the service is going to start going downhill. Anyone care to point me to a good alternative domain hoster with comparable prices?
The PS2 is nice, but it's 'Incapable of rendering 3-way sex scenes in realtime.'
So... what? Uh, yeah, does that mean we can look forward to Hot Coffee: Prostitutes of Rockstar?
You'd run a coffee store as a front for a brothel. Your purpose in the game is to lure in customers who are looking for "Hot Coffee". You tell them "We only sell lattes up here, you have to go to the back for Hot Coffee". You are also responsible for keeping the girls STD free, recruiting more whores, and making sure they don't run away to the cops. You must also budget money, for actually keeping up the coffee store front (making sure to keep prices artificially high so as to starve off a large crowd) and paying off any detectives who might come your way (or hiring goons to scare them off if they don't like cash.)
You win the game when you have control over all brothels in the game and your coffee store also turns a profit. Once you reach a certain point, you can start up a porn creation company, and use that as another front by letting people buy their way into porn shoot.
A lot of comments are talking about how laptops should not be used because it is so hard to input diagrams while taking notes.
Experience tells me exactly the opposite. I, being a regular geek, bring my laptop to just about every class I go to. I generally take notes, though some classes get boring as hell (especially in certain cases where the professor e-mails his powerpoint notes to eveyone, and proceeds to read those notes (and nothing more!) in the class), so I do surf the web, play solitaire, etc. (The worst I ever did was play Half-life, which is hard to do on a touch pad.)
In this case, the class is Physics. "But physics has lots and lots of diagrams and models," you say. Damn right it does. I took notes by copying down the words and having a quick-copy sheet for the various greek letters and symbols in use. When it came time to draw a diagram, I had a small binder next to my laptop where I wrote down the diagrams, labeled them, and put the labels in the right position in the electronic notes.
"But then why not just take notes in the binder?"
For a couple of reasons. First, my handwriting is horrible, and it's often hard to go back to notes and read what I wrote. Second, I type much faster than I write. Third, and most importantly (and to the reason I am posting), it forces me to go through my notes.
Normally, I, and most others, will jot down notes and completely forget about them until we need to study for a test. By drawing my notes in the binder, I am forced to copy them over to the laptop notes using my paint program of choice. This not only forces me to draw the diagram twice, which will embed it more in my memory, but I have to often analyze the drawings. As stated, my handwriting is not very good, and sometimes I'll have to move around letters or notations to make them fit in the diagram and easy to read; to do this, I have to know what I'm looking at.
I wound up with a 97% in that class, and a good portion for that grade comes from having to go over my notes, again and again. Yes, I could just read through them again, but that's boring; having to search, input, and analyze requires much more focus. And this isn't the only class where it's helped me, either.
So, don't disregard laptops for notes outright. When utilized correctly, they are powerful learning tools.
I would like to throw my weight out there and call Donofrio an idiot, at least in relation to this statement. There are still many Next Big Things that we have yet to achieve (though the ability to achieve such may or may not exist, but we won't know till we try.)
A short list: - Hovering vehicles - Anti gravity (which is probably related to the above) - hand held energy weapons - teleportation - economical space travel (think "to mars", or, at the least, consumer viability for going to the moon) - curing cancer - controlling computers with our brains - mechanical prostetics that respond either to brain waves or nerves (we're right on the edge of this one- I believe someone had a really basic, bulky unit working, it just has to become available for the common man) - growing of artificial organs for transplants (goodbye organ donors!) - interactive holographic interfaces - solar energy that's +60% effecient
Okay, maybe that list isn't so short. Sure, many of those fields are being worked on, but nothing concrete and ready for mass use has been created (to my knowledge.) All of those items will help to advance the human race in terms of how we live and effect our environment, as well as populating into space.
Also, I'm still waiting for my damned hoverboard. Back to the Future Part II is full of lies, I tell you, lies! (I realize that the events in BttF2 don't occur to 2015, but we should be seeing regular hover technology by now if we are to meet the deadline of mass production for hoverboards that can be used by everyday kids.)
Not only that, but Miyamoto made sure to underscore that 'almost everything' about Revolution will be revealed at E3 in May.
I think this makes me more curious than anything else. Considering that the Revolution is supposed to be released this year (and, since TP has a fall release, and we are now certain that it will use the Revolution controls, we can be fairly sure that the Revolution also has a fall release date), I'm not quite sure what would be so important that they'd keep it under wraps until near release time.
E3 is such a large event in the gaming world that it's used as a "step up" in creating pre-release hype as a release approaches. Keeping back details could hinder this, unless they're planning a super huge revealing a month or two before the Rev hits streets. So what would they keep back? We already know there's "one major surprise" still in store (as if the controller itself wasn't enough), so what else lurks behind the shadows?
Or are they going to keep the actual hardware specs to themselves? We already know that it will only be between three and five times as powerful as the Gamecube, while the 360 and PS3 are supposedly much more than that from their own predecessors. Perhaps Nintendo is worried that having gaming reporters compare hard static numbers might dwindle the hype? But that doesn't seem like Nintendo.
So what else could there be? (Hopefully, not the return of the Virtual Boy.)
Your monitor glows brightly in front of you. (You also have a small headache, which you've attributed to being stuck with a CRT. However, accounting always tells you to "man up" when you request a flat panel.)
A coworker, Jeff, comes by and mentions that there's a bug in the program you wrote for the company. Seeing as how it's been six months since the last bug report, you eye him cautiously and ask him what he does before the bug appears. "Click a button, or something" is his resposne. You're suddenly reminded that you have a doctor's appointment to check your blood pressure on Monday.
You have: -a headache -pencils -potential high blood pressure -a nagging coworker -a deadline
Action:> Attack co-worker
Jeff, who moves around the office as opposed to sitting in a chair for eight hours like yourself, nimbly dodges as you attempt to fling a pencil into his eye. "Uh, sorry," you say. Jeff shrugs.
Action:> Look at Jeff's computer
You follow Jeff over to his computer, where he sits down and violently moves the mouse to wake it up. "Why didn't you leave the screen as is when you came to get me?" you ask. "Oh, this problem is from last Tuesday," he answers. You wonder if you can move the Doctor's appointment up. "Okay," he says, as he opens Acrobat Reader. He presses some buttons, not caring if you're able to see what he's doing, and suddenly gets a blue screen of death. "See?" You realize that all he did was somehow hard crash Acrobat Reader- a program completely unrelated to your work.
Action:> Ponder homicide
There's not a jury in the world.
Jeff is looking at you expectantly.
Action:> give up
As Jeff stares at you expectantly, you suddenly burst into tears. Leaning against the wall of his cubicle, it cracks and sags backwards as you slow sink to the floor and assume the fetal position. The men in white suits arrive a half hour later.
Nintendo sold more Gamecubes last Christmas than Microsoft sold XBox 360s
When teaching things like economics as it applies to electronics, this should be a subject of focus.
Yes, the Gamecube sold more than the XBox360. But why?
We all know that the XBox 360 was a popular item. No one could keep it in stock. Microsoft somewhat shot themselves in the foot with lower production and guarenteed that this would happen.
But what if they had been able to meet demand? The only measure of demand we can measure is sales, and, as said, the "sold out" tag is misleading, as quantities are low, and certainly didn't meet expected social demand. If the 360 had the production numbers, would it have outsold the Gamecube?
Or would the Gamecube's price and library of games have outsold the 360, anyway? There are a couple different bundles you can pick up from any number of places; official bundles include the system, hook ups, controller, and one of the better games (Metroid Prime, Super Smash Bros, etc.) all for between $130 and $150. To even get just a 360 system, you have to shell out $300. If you want all the good stuff and a game, you have to lay down $450.
Or did production approx. meet demand, and the rest was just overhype?
If Linux support is going to be native (instead of requiring a bunch of hacking and modding), does this mean they are open to indie game development?
With their PSOnline service (or whatever they're calling it,) they could give low-brow development kits (or sell them for a small fee,) and all people to upload games to a server. Having a lot of free, smaller games would really add to the service.
Yes! Finally, all my training has paid off! I can be a soldier from the comfort of my basement! Where do I sign?
That may not be far off, actually. If this kind of technology takes off, you'll hear less and less about Army recruiting numbers. Why? Becuase they'll be recruiting "l33t" Counterstrike players (or the Army's own game.) Many of these kinds of players have the skills that would be needed to effectively control these robots- pit them against regular soldiers (both controlling robots,) and the soldiers will most likely lose. Not because the CS players have better training or instinct, but because they are more adept to handling the controls and the limits that would be placed upon them.
While I'm sure the robots cost a lot per unit, the price will go down as manufacturing continues, and it sure as hell sounds better to say "20 robots were destroyed in the raid" than "20 men were killed in the raid". Plus, it would send a psychological element into battle, where the enemies cower because they face adversaries that stare down the barrel of a gun and charge.
The main problem would be making sure that the CS players aren't hasty about sending their unit out- I highly doubt the Army is working on respawn technology. (I suppose the robot could take a lot more hits than a player in CS could, though, a fact to their benefit.)
Another positive benefit is that the army would not have to pay to recruit and train men lost in battle, just worry about getting their "Army Players" another bag of Cheetos (TM).
I can't wait to tell my grandkids stories about the 14th Interactive Division.
There's a fundamental difference between Shakespear and GTA: one was on paper, one is digital.
Five hundered years from now, we don't know what the technology will be like. Maybe they'll be calling "Quantum Computing" old and busted. Maybe they'll revert to Zip drives. Will the Playstation 128 be able to play Playstation 2 games? Will Sony even exist?
But there will always be paper.
Well, until we deforest the entire planet, but at that point I doubt playing video games from a half dozen generations back will be on our minds. So, while the concept may remain (assuming we don't have a Demolition Man-like future), the game will likely not be played except by the handful of "hardcore" hobbiests who procure working-condition units of the PS4. Don't rule out it being taught in game design classes, though.
I don't necessarily disagree, though I still think that the first priority of public education should be the learning of facts and critical thinking skills.
Social immersion is a good thing; however, when a protagonist is punished just the same when an antognist starts a fight, it doesn't send the right message. If someone attacks you, be it on a playground or in front of a bar, you shouldn't have to worry about being punished if you fight back to protect yourself (if you don't stop once they no longer attack you, that's another story.) In all cases that I've seen, both parties are punished pretty much equally without regard to self-defense or who started it.
I've seen how home-schooled children can be; it's much harder on them once they go into the real world.
Another benefit for having it face palm-up would be that something could stick out the side that would use the fingers on that arm. You wouldn't have a lot of maneuvarability; mainly just a button for up and one for down, but it would be useful to leave the other hand free for other stuff.
You could make a cloth thing that would be worn around the palm that would interact with the fingers and send signals (using something not made of cloth, obviously).
Now I'm getting mental images of someone wearing one of these, and then stick their hand in the air and making the "Spiderman shooting web" gesture and it plays the Spider-man theme.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I know for a fact that the arts get a smaller budget than sports, having been involved with some after-school arts programs myself as a student. (Again, bad priorities, IMO.) I'm just saying that education should come before the arts.
The arts aren't bad. But I think a public school's primary concern should be general education (math, sciences, literature, history, basic computer skills, some economics). If there's room after that's taken care of to fund extra-curricular arts programs, then by all means, do so.
Instead of decrying sports and art in the same breath, why not join or start up a local group to support both arts and sciences in the school.
Hmm. Perhaps I will do that, once I stop moving every three months. (Damned college.)
How about, before going all out on a game that enacts it, you take care of the real fucking bullies that abound in your schools? Perhaps if you, ya know, punished them for their bullying, the intensity of such would decrease.
Instead, almost every teacher or other school faculty (except the cliche cool janitor) who sees bullying just turns a blind eye as long as someone's tooth isn't knocked out. Maybe if we actually did something about it, we wouldn't have to worry as much about games like this, or people shooting up schools. I can't say I condone Rockstar's game, but there are more immediate (and local) ways to stem this than to try and pressure them.
Yes, I was bullied in school. Thankfully, I didn't get the worst that could happen, but it was still enough to seriously drive me to a point of doing some shooting of my own. The problem is that the bullies turn out to be jocks, or the son of the mayor, and the principal is afraid of punishing them, because heaven forbid our football team lose another game, but it's a-okay that people fail remedial math.
Our schools are messed up because people have the wrong priorities. They push social achievement (sports, arts, etc.) and defer money to that over intellectual achievement. Not that schools sports or band is a bad thing- but when it's taking away from the real purpose of a school, which is education, then they become a problem.
How can we be sure that the Chinese government really didn't shut down the blog?
Perhaps this was a planned political marketing ploy. They force Mr. Wang to take down the blog, and then force him to put it back up again, claiming he had the idea the whole time, and thus giving the idea that the Chinese government does not act like the Western world thinks it does. How can we be sure Mr. Wang is not under coercion (by money or by threat) from the Chinese government? Watch his blog posts over the next month or two; if they change in composition, he's turned.
Or, alternatively, since he couldn't be reached for comment (at least by the BBC), perhaps that's not even him posting in it now. Perhaps the government threw him in a cell, and now has one of the lower-levels getting ready to post things in support of the Chinese government. This would potentially be worse, since people would be more willing to accept counter-ideas from a source they trust.
Also, am I the only one who found the following line humorous? Mr. Wang says he and Milk Pig acted jointly. Milk Pig couldn't be reached for comment.
(This post was made with only halfhearted conspiracy ideals- I ran out of tinfoil, so it's only half a hat. I'm thinking of making it a beaner(ie?)...)
While I can't be sure what their release srategy is, Sony knows that they control the majority of the console market. With this, they can continue to play and prod with release dates, demos, and specs. With each new tidbit, they make the fans drool all the more over the system, increasing the hype. (To be fair, Nintendo does the same to us Nintendo fanboys, only we get less promises and specs, and at a much slower rate.)
However, one has to wonder how long they can hold this off. I'm sure PS2 hardware sales are already dropping as game stores start pushing for reserving a PS3. Eventually, the numbers will reach over into game sales (where Sony makes up profit loss on the console), becuase no one will be buying a new PS2, and thus won't get Grand Theft Auto 10 or whatever. If they hold off too long, this could give them a big bite, though I'm sure that software sales will surge (including PS2 titles) when the PS3 comes out- assuming it has backwards compatibility.
In fact, the same thing is happening across the board, excluding the XBox (360). As news of the DS Lite travels, regular DS sales will slow as people decide to hold off for a few months to get The Next Best Thing. Same thing goes for the Gamecube and the PS2.
The old DS might continue to sell in Japan, but it's been stated (and I can't find the link) that the old DS will be phased out PDQ in America once the DS Lite hits. I don't know whether this is to save production costs by having only one unit, or because they think everyone will totally ignore the original DS once the new one comes out, or something else completely.
To my knowledge, Japanese people are techno-nuts (more so for the young adult/teen age group.) You hear about all kinds of crazy (and cool) doo-dads from Japan selling like hotcakes. Cell phones that play entire movies, sunglasses that play movies, the 64DD...
But I digress. Because those who live within the cities of Japan do not have nearly the reliance on automobiles (and, hence, gas) that we do in America, they tend to have more cash to throw around (especially the age group mentioned earlier.) So, while they do pay more for housing, they aren't as frugal about getting the latest and greatest, especially if all their friends have it now.
Apple has proven, both here and there, that sexy sells. Nintendo has taken this concept to heart to try and enhance its image; we've all seen images of the I-could-be-a-monolith black Revolution console. Small form factor, sleek, and now with the option to be put on its side. They reproduced this with the DS Lite- even if you already have a DS, it's now the old DS, and you aren't cool if you don't have the new DS. This would explain the massive turnout, even when the original DS sold so many.
Which is not to say that it won't sell like hotcakes once it hits stateside. You will, however, have a lot less people who are looking to replace their old DS for the new one. While image is a big factor in our society, it focuses more on fashion and status than technology and intelligence, so the DS Lite isn't going to be as big of a deal. (Though I suppose some female gamers might pick one up to compliment their purse or something.
Of course, this is just how I understand things. Feel free to jump in with a counter-point.
'Everything is compromised, and it bugs the hell out of me when you hear a lot of developers saying, Well, we can't do this that way because it's a handheld game, or We can't do this because it doesn't have a second analog stick.' 'Those are all excuses,' Malenfant continued - observing that the original PSone controller didn't have any analog sticks, 'And there were great games on that.
This guy understands what's going on.
The Gameboy Advance (SP) has one directional pad, two regular buttons, and two shoulder buttons. Yet, we get brilliant software for it, and it's only sold, what, a few dozen million systems?
The DS, ignoring the touch screen, only boasts an extra two buttons. Though I guess the industry has proven that you really can't do anything with those things, huh, guys?
I think it's more that the developers that are trying to utilize the power that the PSP possesses are too used to having all sorts of controls and control combos associated with it. It would be as if Amazon decided to boot its store and just make a book review site. Sure, they could do it, but they couldn't make just a book review site- eventually they'd turn it right back into the Amazon store, because they don't have any constraints, and are used to the bigger feel.
But you don't need a large amount of controls to have a good game. I've been playing Wario Ware, Inc. for a few weeks now, and at any time it is using one of the regular buttons and the d-pad at most during gameplay. And it's quite a fun game.
Another part of the problem is that too many developers may be trying to continue the "PSP is just a system to port to" thought process that seems to abound (I've seen few original games that aren't ports or rehashes). When going from a Splinter Cell game on the PS2 to the PSP, of course you're going to lose something because of the new layout. So, make a new stealth game. One that isn't Splinter Cell (yes, I know that's hard, bear with me a minute) and fashion it such that it works with the controls.
You know, if they're calling people killed in video games "victims" (with a real world notion), then why stop there? There are real people behind the avatars being robbed in many a MMORPG. Where is their retribution? Where is their justice? DO THEY NOT PAY A MONTHLY FEE?!
Ahem.
In any case, I think I'll start a pool taking dates when
A) The bill fails B) Some court shoots down the bill as unconstitutional, or C) Lizard men invade
I was under the impression that the spacial recognition sensors were two distinct items placed at certain paces from the TV. However, one stationary bar (with the sensors on either end) makes a lot more sense, as you don't have to worry as much about calibration. It would then be a question of where it is in relation to the TV. (On the floor in front of, on top of the TV, right below the TV, etc.)
Where are our pictures? All we have is a promotional side-by-side and an 'artists rendition'. If they went hands on, why not snap a few pictures, even if the tools aren't the final versions? I suppose they could have gotten some developer's janitor to let them in late at night to play with these (and didn't want to blow his cover), but the article is kind of worthless without pictures. "We got some prototypes. They don't plug into the actual hardware, we couldn't do anything with them, and we have no pictures." The only useful piece of information, IMO, was the size in relation to the GCN controller. (And even then, didn't they get a chance to go hands on with it back at E3 '05? Unless major changes happened, they should already know the relative sizes then, right?)
The Revolution will be using regular sized CDs (with some form of DVD for storage, I think.)
Supposedly it will have the ability to do DVD playback, but not out of the box. The regular thought is that it's activated either with a special remote controller, or you buy a small device that plugs into the system somewhere to activate DVD playback.
Back when Napster was "the shit", I was downloading any song I had the slightest interest in. About 70% of what I downloaded I eventually deleted, but I still kept a lot of the songs. About 5 or so years ago, when the whole music-copyright thing was becoming an issue, I thought about it and decided to support the artists. Since then, I've been gradually buying CDs to replace the supposedly-not-legal songs; I predict that I've spent about $400 in CDs, and I still have a couple dozen albums to go.
Games are the only things suffering from copy protection. Even with music, the copy protection is annoying. One CD I bought didn't allow ripping (whether by installing something or another method is unknown.) It did have DRM'd.wavs or something, which was at least better than forcing me to keep the CD in my drive, but I couldn't edit them or change how the song was displayed in WinAmp (and after I'd gone through all the trouble of having a certain format.) I eventually found some way around, but it was still a pain.
I haven't boughten PC games in a while, but I do like having backups- moving often increases the chances of a disc cracking, and I'd like to be able to say "Oh well" and burn another copy of the original. With the DRM they have these days, it's just a pain.
Companies could always go the Nintendo route and have proprietary mediums of distrobution. PC gamers would go bat-shit crazy over that, though.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I have approx. 13 domain names registered with GoDaddy. I've always loved their service and prices.
Now, while I don't mind Windows (yes, counter-culture here on Slashdot) for my desktop OS, I can't stand using windows for anything related to hosting web sites, if only for the fact that I'm used to working with Linux, MySQL, and being able to chmod (yes, Windows boxes have something similar, but it doesn't work nearly as well through FTP).
So I'm assuming the service is going to start going downhill. Anyone care to point me to a good alternative domain hoster with comparable prices?
The PS2 is nice, but it's 'Incapable of rendering 3-way sex scenes in realtime.'
So... what? Uh, yeah, does that mean we can look forward to Hot Coffee: Prostitutes of Rockstar?
You'd run a coffee store as a front for a brothel. Your purpose in the game is to lure in customers who are looking for "Hot Coffee". You tell them "We only sell lattes up here, you have to go to the back for Hot Coffee". You are also responsible for keeping the girls STD free, recruiting more whores, and making sure they don't run away to the cops. You must also budget money, for actually keeping up the coffee store front (making sure to keep prices artificially high so as to starve off a large crowd) and paying off any detectives who might come your way (or hiring goons to scare them off if they don't like cash.)
You win the game when you have control over all brothels in the game and your coffee store also turns a profit. Once you reach a certain point, you can start up a porn creation company, and use that as another front by letting people buy their way into porn shoot.
...please don't turn that into a game.
A lot of comments are talking about how laptops should not be used because it is so hard to input diagrams while taking notes.
Experience tells me exactly the opposite. I, being a regular geek, bring my laptop to just about every class I go to. I generally take notes, though some classes get boring as hell (especially in certain cases where the professor e-mails his powerpoint notes to eveyone, and proceeds to read those notes (and nothing more!) in the class), so I do surf the web, play solitaire, etc. (The worst I ever did was play Half-life, which is hard to do on a touch pad.)
In this case, the class is Physics. "But physics has lots and lots of diagrams and models," you say. Damn right it does. I took notes by copying down the words and having a quick-copy sheet for the various greek letters and symbols in use. When it came time to draw a diagram, I had a small binder next to my laptop where I wrote down the diagrams, labeled them, and put the labels in the right position in the electronic notes.
"But then why not just take notes in the binder?"
For a couple of reasons. First, my handwriting is horrible, and it's often hard to go back to notes and read what I wrote. Second, I type much faster than I write. Third, and most importantly (and to the reason I am posting), it forces me to go through my notes.
Normally, I, and most others, will jot down notes and completely forget about them until we need to study for a test. By drawing my notes in the binder, I am forced to copy them over to the laptop notes using my paint program of choice. This not only forces me to draw the diagram twice, which will embed it more in my memory, but I have to often analyze the drawings. As stated, my handwriting is not very good, and sometimes I'll have to move around letters or notations to make them fit in the diagram and easy to read; to do this, I have to know what I'm looking at.
I wound up with a 97% in that class, and a good portion for that grade comes from having to go over my notes, again and again. Yes, I could just read through them again, but that's boring; having to search, input, and analyze requires much more focus. And this isn't the only class where it's helped me, either.
So, don't disregard laptops for notes outright. When utilized correctly, they are powerful learning tools.
I still wish I had a tablet instead, though.
Let's hope that the U.S. Government never goes after Strongbad, or he could be in trouble.
I would like to throw my weight out there and call Donofrio an idiot, at least in relation to this statement. There are still many Next Big Things that we have yet to achieve (though the ability to achieve such may or may not exist, but we won't know till we try.)
A short list:
- Hovering vehicles
- Anti gravity (which is probably related to the above)
- hand held energy weapons
- teleportation
- economical space travel (think "to mars", or, at the least, consumer viability for going to the moon)
- curing cancer
- controlling computers with our brains
- mechanical prostetics that respond either to brain waves or nerves (we're right on the edge of this one- I believe someone had a really basic, bulky unit working, it just has to become available for the common man)
- growing of artificial organs for transplants (goodbye organ donors!)
- interactive holographic interfaces
- solar energy that's +60% effecient
Okay, maybe that list isn't so short. Sure, many of those fields are being worked on, but nothing concrete and ready for mass use has been created (to my knowledge.) All of those items will help to advance the human race in terms of how we live and effect our environment, as well as populating into space.
Also, I'm still waiting for my damned hoverboard. Back to the Future Part II is full of lies, I tell you, lies! (I realize that the events in BttF2 don't occur to 2015, but we should be seeing regular hover technology by now if we are to meet the deadline of mass production for hoverboards that can be used by everyday kids.)
Not only that, but Miyamoto made sure to underscore that 'almost everything' about Revolution will be revealed at E3 in May.
I think this makes me more curious than anything else. Considering that the Revolution is supposed to be released this year (and, since TP has a fall release, and we are now certain that it will use the Revolution controls, we can be fairly sure that the Revolution also has a fall release date), I'm not quite sure what would be so important that they'd keep it under wraps until near release time.
E3 is such a large event in the gaming world that it's used as a "step up" in creating pre-release hype as a release approaches. Keeping back details could hinder this, unless they're planning a super huge revealing a month or two before the Rev hits streets. So what would they keep back? We already know there's "one major surprise" still in store (as if the controller itself wasn't enough), so what else lurks behind the shadows?
Or are they going to keep the actual hardware specs to themselves? We already know that it will only be between three and five times as powerful as the Gamecube, while the 360 and PS3 are supposedly much more than that from their own predecessors. Perhaps Nintendo is worried that having gaming reporters compare hard static numbers might dwindle the hype? But that doesn't seem like Nintendo.
So what else could there be? (Hopefully, not the return of the Virtual Boy.)
Also, on TP having Rev capabilities: YES!
Your monitor glows brightly in front of you. (You also have a small headache, which you've attributed to being stuck with a CRT. However, accounting always tells you to "man up" when you request a flat panel.)
A coworker, Jeff, comes by and mentions that there's a bug in the program you wrote for the company. Seeing as how it's been six months since the last bug report, you eye him cautiously and ask him what he does before the bug appears. "Click a button, or something" is his resposne. You're suddenly reminded that you have a doctor's appointment to check your blood pressure on Monday.
You have:
-a headache
-pencils
-potential high blood pressure
-a nagging coworker
-a deadline
Action:> Attack co-worker
Jeff, who moves around the office as opposed to sitting in a chair for eight hours like yourself, nimbly dodges as you attempt to fling a pencil into his eye. "Uh, sorry," you say. Jeff shrugs.
Action:> Look at Jeff's computer
You follow Jeff over to his computer, where he sits down and violently moves the mouse to wake it up. "Why didn't you leave the screen as is when you came to get me?" you ask. "Oh, this problem is from last Tuesday," he answers. You wonder if you can move the Doctor's appointment up. "Okay," he says, as he opens Acrobat Reader. He presses some buttons, not caring if you're able to see what he's doing, and suddenly gets a blue screen of death. "See?" You realize that all he did was somehow hard crash Acrobat Reader- a program completely unrelated to your work.
Action:> Ponder homicide
There's not a jury in the world.
Jeff is looking at you expectantly.
Action:> give up
As Jeff stares at you expectantly, you suddenly burst into tears. Leaning against the wall of his cubicle, it cracks and sags backwards as you slow sink to the floor and assume the fetal position. The men in white suits arrive a half hour later.
Total score: -2
Play Again? y/n: n
Nintendo sold more Gamecubes last Christmas than Microsoft sold XBox 360s
When teaching things like economics as it applies to electronics, this should be a subject of focus.
Yes, the Gamecube sold more than the XBox360. But why?
We all know that the XBox 360 was a popular item. No one could keep it in stock. Microsoft somewhat shot themselves in the foot with lower production and guarenteed that this would happen.
But what if they had been able to meet demand? The only measure of demand we can measure is sales, and, as said, the "sold out" tag is misleading, as quantities are low, and certainly didn't meet expected social demand. If the 360 had the production numbers, would it have outsold the Gamecube?
Or would the Gamecube's price and library of games have outsold the 360, anyway? There are a couple different bundles you can pick up from any number of places; official bundles include the system, hook ups, controller, and one of the better games (Metroid Prime, Super Smash Bros, etc.) all for between $130 and $150. To even get just a 360 system, you have to shell out $300. If you want all the good stuff and a game, you have to lay down $450.
Or did production approx. meet demand, and the rest was just overhype?
If Linux support is going to be native (instead of requiring a bunch of hacking and modding), does this mean they are open to indie game development?
With their PSOnline service (or whatever they're calling it,) they could give low-brow development kits (or sell them for a small fee,) and all people to upload games to a server. Having a lot of free, smaller games would really add to the service.
Yes! Finally, all my training has paid off! I can be a soldier from the comfort of my basement! Where do I sign?
That may not be far off, actually. If this kind of technology takes off, you'll hear less and less about Army recruiting numbers. Why? Becuase they'll be recruiting "l33t" Counterstrike players (or the Army's own game.) Many of these kinds of players have the skills that would be needed to effectively control these robots- pit them against regular soldiers (both controlling robots,) and the soldiers will most likely lose. Not because the CS players have better training or instinct, but because they are more adept to handling the controls and the limits that would be placed upon them.
While I'm sure the robots cost a lot per unit, the price will go down as manufacturing continues, and it sure as hell sounds better to say "20 robots were destroyed in the raid" than "20 men were killed in the raid". Plus, it would send a psychological element into battle, where the enemies cower because they face adversaries that stare down the barrel of a gun and charge.
The main problem would be making sure that the CS players aren't hasty about sending their unit out- I highly doubt the Army is working on respawn technology. (I suppose the robot could take a lot more hits than a player in CS could, though, a fact to their benefit.)
Another positive benefit is that the army would not have to pay to recruit and train men lost in battle, just worry about getting their "Army Players" another bag of Cheetos (TM).
I can't wait to tell my grandkids stories about the 14th Interactive Division.
There's a fundamental difference between Shakespear and GTA: one was on paper, one is digital.
Five hundered years from now, we don't know what the technology will be like. Maybe they'll be calling "Quantum Computing" old and busted. Maybe they'll revert to Zip drives. Will the Playstation 128 be able to play Playstation 2 games? Will Sony even exist?
But there will always be paper.
Well, until we deforest the entire planet, but at that point I doubt playing video games from a half dozen generations back will be on our minds. So, while the concept may remain (assuming we don't have a Demolition Man-like future), the game will likely not be played except by the handful of "hardcore" hobbiests who procure working-condition units of the PS4. Don't rule out it being taught in game design classes, though.
Mario is an entire other matter.
I don't necessarily disagree, though I still think that the first priority of public education should be the learning of facts and critical thinking skills.
Social immersion is a good thing; however, when a protagonist is punished just the same when an antognist starts a fight, it doesn't send the right message. If someone attacks you, be it on a playground or in front of a bar, you shouldn't have to worry about being punished if you fight back to protect yourself (if you don't stop once they no longer attack you, that's another story.) In all cases that I've seen, both parties are punished pretty much equally without regard to self-defense or who started it.
I've seen how home-schooled children can be; it's much harder on them once they go into the real world.
Another benefit for having it face palm-up would be that something could stick out the side that would use the fingers on that arm. You wouldn't have a lot of maneuvarability; mainly just a button for up and one for down, but it would be useful to leave the other hand free for other stuff.
You could make a cloth thing that would be worn around the palm that would interact with the fingers and send signals (using something not made of cloth, obviously).
Now I'm getting mental images of someone wearing one of these, and then stick their hand in the air and making the "Spiderman shooting web" gesture and it plays the Spider-man theme.
(Or some sort of devil music. To each their own.)
I'm sure they got the idea from the Phantom.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I know for a fact that the arts get a smaller budget than sports, having been involved with some after-school arts programs myself as a student. (Again, bad priorities, IMO.) I'm just saying that education should come before the arts.
The arts aren't bad. But I think a public school's primary concern should be general education (math, sciences, literature, history, basic computer skills, some economics). If there's room after that's taken care of to fund extra-curricular arts programs, then by all means, do so.
Instead of decrying sports and art in the same breath, why not join or start up a local group to support both arts and sciences in the school.
Hmm. Perhaps I will do that, once I stop moving every three months. (Damned college.)
How about, before going all out on a game that enacts it, you take care of the real fucking bullies that abound in your schools? Perhaps if you, ya know, punished them for their bullying, the intensity of such would decrease.
Instead, almost every teacher or other school faculty (except the cliche cool janitor) who sees bullying just turns a blind eye as long as someone's tooth isn't knocked out. Maybe if we actually did something about it, we wouldn't have to worry as much about games like this, or people shooting up schools. I can't say I condone Rockstar's game, but there are more immediate (and local) ways to stem this than to try and pressure them.
Yes, I was bullied in school. Thankfully, I didn't get the worst that could happen, but it was still enough to seriously drive me to a point of doing some shooting of my own. The problem is that the bullies turn out to be jocks, or the son of the mayor, and the principal is afraid of punishing them, because heaven forbid our football team lose another game, but it's a-okay that people fail remedial math.
Our schools are messed up because people have the wrong priorities. They push social achievement (sports, arts, etc.) and defer money to that over intellectual achievement. Not that schools sports or band is a bad thing- but when it's taking away from the real purpose of a school, which is education, then they become a problem.
rant rant rant
How can we be sure that the Chinese government really didn't shut down the blog?
Perhaps this was a planned political marketing ploy. They force Mr. Wang to take down the blog, and then force him to put it back up again, claiming he had the idea the whole time, and thus giving the idea that the Chinese government does not act like the Western world thinks it does. How can we be sure Mr. Wang is not under coercion (by money or by threat) from the Chinese government? Watch his blog posts over the next month or two; if they change in composition, he's turned.
Or, alternatively, since he couldn't be reached for comment (at least by the BBC), perhaps that's not even him posting in it now. Perhaps the government threw him in a cell, and now has one of the lower-levels getting ready to post things in support of the Chinese government. This would potentially be worse, since people would be more willing to accept counter-ideas from a source they trust.
Also, am I the only one who found the following line humorous?
Mr. Wang says he and Milk Pig acted jointly. Milk Pig couldn't be reached for comment.
(This post was made with only halfhearted conspiracy ideals- I ran out of tinfoil, so it's only half a hat. I'm thinking of making it a beaner(ie?)...)
...Yes.
While I can't be sure what their release srategy is, Sony knows that they control the majority of the console market. With this, they can continue to play and prod with release dates, demos, and specs. With each new tidbit, they make the fans drool all the more over the system, increasing the hype. (To be fair, Nintendo does the same to us Nintendo fanboys, only we get less promises and specs, and at a much slower rate.)
However, one has to wonder how long they can hold this off. I'm sure PS2 hardware sales are already dropping as game stores start pushing for reserving a PS3. Eventually, the numbers will reach over into game sales (where Sony makes up profit loss on the console), becuase no one will be buying a new PS2, and thus won't get Grand Theft Auto 10 or whatever. If they hold off too long, this could give them a big bite, though I'm sure that software sales will surge (including PS2 titles) when the PS3 comes out- assuming it has backwards compatibility.
In fact, the same thing is happening across the board, excluding the XBox (360). As news of the DS Lite travels, regular DS sales will slow as people decide to hold off for a few months to get The Next Best Thing. Same thing goes for the Gamecube and the PS2.
The old DS might continue to sell in Japan, but it's been stated (and I can't find the link) that the old DS will be phased out PDQ in America once the DS Lite hits. I don't know whether this is to save production costs by having only one unit, or because they think everyone will totally ignore the original DS once the new one comes out, or something else completely.
To my knowledge, Japanese people are techno-nuts (more so for the young adult/teen age group.) You hear about all kinds of crazy (and cool) doo-dads from Japan selling like hotcakes. Cell phones that play entire movies, sunglasses that play movies, the 64DD...
But I digress. Because those who live within the cities of Japan do not have nearly the reliance on automobiles (and, hence, gas) that we do in America, they tend to have more cash to throw around (especially the age group mentioned earlier.) So, while they do pay more for housing, they aren't as frugal about getting the latest and greatest, especially if all their friends have it now.
Apple has proven, both here and there, that sexy sells. Nintendo has taken this concept to heart to try and enhance its image; we've all seen images of the I-could-be-a-monolith black Revolution console. Small form factor, sleek, and now with the option to be put on its side. They reproduced this with the DS Lite- even if you already have a DS, it's now the old DS, and you aren't cool if you don't have the new DS. This would explain the massive turnout, even when the original DS sold so many.
Which is not to say that it won't sell like hotcakes once it hits stateside. You will, however, have a lot less people who are looking to replace their old DS for the new one. While image is a big factor in our society, it focuses more on fashion and status than technology and intelligence, so the DS Lite isn't going to be as big of a deal. (Though I suppose some female gamers might pick one up to compliment their purse or something.
Of course, this is just how I understand things. Feel free to jump in with a counter-point.
'Everything is compromised, and it bugs the hell out of me when you hear a lot of developers saying, Well, we can't do this that way because it's a handheld game, or We can't do this because it doesn't have a second analog stick.' 'Those are all excuses,' Malenfant continued - observing that the original PSone controller didn't have any analog sticks, 'And there were great games on that.
This guy understands what's going on.
The Gameboy Advance (SP) has one directional pad, two regular buttons, and two shoulder buttons. Yet, we get brilliant software for it, and it's only sold, what, a few dozen million systems?
The DS, ignoring the touch screen, only boasts an extra two buttons. Though I guess the industry has proven that you really can't do anything with those things, huh, guys?
I think it's more that the developers that are trying to utilize the power that the PSP possesses are too used to having all sorts of controls and control combos associated with it. It would be as if Amazon decided to boot its store and just make a book review site. Sure, they could do it, but they couldn't make just a book review site- eventually they'd turn it right back into the Amazon store, because they don't have any constraints, and are used to the bigger feel.
But you don't need a large amount of controls to have a good game. I've been playing Wario Ware, Inc. for a few weeks now, and at any time it is using one of the regular buttons and the d-pad at most during gameplay. And it's quite a fun game.
Another part of the problem is that too many developers may be trying to continue the "PSP is just a system to port to" thought process that seems to abound (I've seen few original games that aren't ports or rehashes). When going from a Splinter Cell game on the PS2 to the PSP, of course you're going to lose something because of the new layout. So, make a new stealth game. One that isn't Splinter Cell (yes, I know that's hard, bear with me a minute) and fashion it such that it works with the controls.
You know, if they're calling people killed in video games "victims" (with a real world notion), then why stop there? There are real people behind the avatars being robbed in many a MMORPG. Where is their retribution? Where is their justice? DO THEY NOT PAY A MONTHLY FEE?!
Ahem.
In any case, I think I'll start a pool taking dates when
A) The bill fails
B) Some court shoots down the bill as unconstitutional, or
C) Lizard men invade
I was under the impression that the spacial recognition sensors were two distinct items placed at certain paces from the TV. However, one stationary bar (with the sensors on either end) makes a lot more sense, as you don't have to worry as much about calibration. It would then be a question of where it is in relation to the TV. (On the floor in front of, on top of the TV, right below the TV, etc.)
Where are our pictures? All we have is a promotional side-by-side and an 'artists rendition'. If they went hands on, why not snap a few pictures, even if the tools aren't the final versions? I suppose they could have gotten some developer's janitor to let them in late at night to play with these (and didn't want to blow his cover), but the article is kind of worthless without pictures. "We got some prototypes. They don't plug into the actual hardware, we couldn't do anything with them, and we have no pictures." The only useful piece of information, IMO, was the size in relation to the GCN controller. (And even then, didn't they get a chance to go hands on with it back at E3 '05? Unless major changes happened, they should already know the relative sizes then, right?)
The Revolution will be using regular sized CDs (with some form of DVD for storage, I think.) Supposedly it will have the ability to do DVD playback, but not out of the box. The regular thought is that it's activated either with a special remote controller, or you buy a small device that plugs into the system somewhere to activate DVD playback.
I have to agree.
.wavs or something, which was at least better than forcing me to keep the CD in my drive, but I couldn't edit them or change how the song was displayed in WinAmp (and after I'd gone through all the trouble of having a certain format.) I eventually found some way around, but it was still a pain.
:)
Back when Napster was "the shit", I was downloading any song I had the slightest interest in. About 70% of what I downloaded I eventually deleted, but I still kept a lot of the songs. About 5 or so years ago, when the whole music-copyright thing was becoming an issue, I thought about it and decided to support the artists. Since then, I've been gradually buying CDs to replace the supposedly-not-legal songs; I predict that I've spent about $400 in CDs, and I still have a couple dozen albums to go.
Games are the only things suffering from copy protection. Even with music, the copy protection is annoying. One CD I bought didn't allow ripping (whether by installing something or another method is unknown.) It did have DRM'd
I haven't boughten PC games in a while, but I do like having backups- moving often increases the chances of a disc cracking, and I'd like to be able to say "Oh well" and burn another copy of the original. With the DRM they have these days, it's just a pain.
Companies could always go the Nintendo route and have proprietary mediums of distrobution. PC gamers would go bat-shit crazy over that, though.