Not just Slashdot, it's everywhere. Smartphone rivalry has brought us the console war mentality to the masses. Everybody's got smartphones, so the "your choice is wrong because my choice was different" mentality is running riot and ruining the whole damn internet now, not just the gaming websites.
I recently moved from an iPhone to an S3, managed to smash my S3 screen after a few weeks and am currently back in iPhone land until it gets replaced.
The iPhone's still a good handset and there are certainly some things the S3 is lacking in (panoramas come out better on the iPhone, nothing even remotely like iMovie or Garageband exists on Android) but it's obviously a much better experience in other ways. For me, the most noticeable places the S3 wins out are the screen size - obviously (iPhone really needs to get with the times or die here, stretching in one direction alone isn't going to cut it) but more importantly the menu/back buttons.
It's weird, the one thing about the S3 that wasn't even the slightest of factors in my switching turned out to be the real killer functionality - I'm back on an iPhone 4 and still use my iPad daily, and although it never bothered me in the least before, I find now that I absolutely *detest* having to hunt around on the screen to find out how to bring up menus or return to previous screens, it completely breaks the experience.
If you lived before radio waves and x-rays had been speculated to exist you wouldn't assume they didn't, you wouldn't think about them at all. However, at a point they were hypothesised to exist, this line of reasoning was investigated, and the hypothesis was proven correct, case closed.
Contrast this with the idea of a deity - thousands of times in humanity's past, people have seen entirely natural phenomena and said "ah, there's an invisible guy doing that, you can't see him, but he totally exists" and every single time they've been proven wrong as our understandings of the phenomena in question have developed.
We're not left with any of that any more, we're left with a small number of only the vaguest of deities - the ones who weren't performing a function we came to understand at a later date such as pulling the sun across the sky, or making thunder. These deities don't hold up to scrutiny of course, because there's still plenty there to suggest they were nothing more than a stab in the dark - as but one example: rainbows aren't a sign of the covenant between the hebrew god and man which magically started appearing in the days after the flood, but rather are a product of entirely natural interactions between light and water.
So we're left with deities who are vague, everywhere-and-nowhere, micromanaging every facet of our lives yet remaining completely hands-off, but we'll find out all about how real they are right after we die, yup yup, you'll see zero proof within this lifetime, but at the point your life ends you'll get so much god you'll be sick of the sight of him, that's how it works, he's totally real, I promise.
It's not that a lack of evidence for something means it categorically does not and cannot exist, it's that when humans come up with the idea of a supernatural being and all the evidence we find over the ensuing hundreds, or thousands of years points to him not existing, we can safely file him away with every other supernatural being humans have dreamed up which don't exist.
Are you agnostic about dragons, unicorns, werewolves and vampires? Do these supernatural human fabrications seem like they may really be there if we just look in the right places? Or do you - as atheists do with god - just accept these things as the works of fiction they are?
In FPS games, this is true, but try putting a KB/M user up against a pad user in a driving game, platformer, etc. etc. and the KB/M user will get smoked.
The mouse is a very good gaming device, the keyboard is awful though, yes there are a lot of buttons at our disposal, but they're all digital. Keep the mouse as-is by all means, but bringing analog input to movement would be a big step forward for PC gaming.
Another way to seal the deal, bring along a couple of Nexus tablets and demo a video chat using Google Talk, which is based on free-and-open Jabber/XMPP. A pair of magic videochat devices for $200 each, how can you beat that?
What's often missed in these discussions is the rest of the software stack.
OK so all things being equal we get an Ubuntu release which works just as well as OS X, has working drivers for all hardware, is easy to use, all that good stuff.
So, now I want to make a nifty little video from various clips, where's iMovie? Oh, wait what? What do you mean "nothing like that exists on Linux," ok well surely there's a cut down version on the Android market, since it works well on iOS tablets/phones. Nope, nothing even *remotely* similar there either.
Whatever, I'll make some music, where's Garageband? Nope, that's not there either. Anything close? Let's try Audacity maybe... OK once the laughter dies down maybe I can find something similar on my android device, since again, there's a good Garageband on iOS... Nope, nothing even remotely similar, again.
How about Pages? I've given up on making my videos or music, so how about just a nice DTP app for Linux that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out? Nope? OK well Pages was implemented really well on iOS, so *surely* there's something similar on Android? Nope, strike 3.
It's hip to the max to be anti-Apple in this day and age, but what these "lol look at that herd of dummies, they don't know what they're missing" crowd don't realise is that the affordable route to the things that are *truly* "missing" don't lead through Android or Linux, they lead through Windows and OS X.
These battles aren't won or lost purely on the hardware or OS layer, there's an application stack on top of that - Apple has the creative end sewn up on desktop and mobile. Windows has the gaming end sewn up on the desktop (nobody can lay claim to dominance in gaming on any single mobile platform) OK, Linux is strong on the server side, but where does it exert dominance in the application stack? Anywhere?
Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is my primary desktop OS, and I have an Android powered mobile. I love Linux and have used it heavily over the years, but if I want to play games I have to turn to Microsoft, and if I want to do creative stuff I have to turn to Apple. But never have I uttered the words "if I want to do ____ I need to boot to Linux..." *that's* what's missing here.
When I was 15, I had to explain the basics of the solar system to one of my friends, he'd gone through our education system and somehow come out the other end thinking the sun revolved around Earth, which revolved around the moon.
Non-fliers responding to this question are probably more concerned with planes falling out of the sky than the strictness of airport security. I don't think it's fair to suggest they "like it when bad things happen to other people"
Touch screens also have poor conveyance of intent.
You touch the screen - and that's about it. You can't hover with your fingers and then choose to click, you can't convey different intent (right-click, middle-click, other mouse buttons etc.) easily.
I would imagine we'll see a day when different digits do different things - index finger=left click, road rage finger=right click for instance.
And we dursn't call it just "the States" either because that's ambiguous because there might be other countries with the word "States" in their name at some point?
Pure pedantry, calling the UK "England" isn't like calling the US "The States," it's more akin to referring to the whole of the USA as "Delaware."
Shall we stop calling China just "China" and start spelling out "The People's Democratic Socialist Republic of Maoist China" or whatever it's called in the formal diplomatic papers, every single time we refer to it, and similarly for the other one across the strait?
What you're talking about when talking about UK/England isn't about different names for the same things, it's about incorrectly using the same word to describe different things. Like calling Europe "Belgium."
And we should say "The Republic of the Netherlands" instead of Holland?
It depends on whether you're referring to the Netherlands or Holland, the Netherlands is a country, Holland is a province in that country.
Phooey. Life's too short, and all that gratuitous verbiage takes too long to say every single time.
Not gratuitous verbiage, accurate nomenclature.
I'm going to keep on calling them England and America and China and Taiwan. Every single person on the planet knows exactly which country I mean, *including* the sadly misguided people who insist I should call them by their ridiculously long official names all the time. Stuff that.
No, when you refer to one country by one of its constituent nation's names, you are wrong, and people will fail to understand you.
Also, FYI "The UK" is a shorter name than "England."
And then you reject the notion of there being a database because "the user will never see it". Bullshit. The user sees and uses it on a daily basis, they just don't realize they're using it, which was kind of the point I was making, if you'd actually read it.
To be fair, databases aren't (or at least *shouldn't* be - I'm looking at you, Team Meat) an "Internet" technology, other systems connect into them, sure, but this should stop once you get outside the LAN.
Incidentally... you *do* know that HTTP is just a wrapper for FTP, right? You open an HTTP connection and request a file, and the server uses FTP to send the file to you....
Now this right here is what is commonly referred to as "absolute nonsense." FTP and HTTP are completely distinct protocols.
I want to live in a world where a secured system is the only thing that holds login info - one server, sitting on its own behind a firewall with a single port open, running a trimmed down OS and effectively airgapped save for a barebones service listening on that one port for user/password combos from a host it trusts, when the user tries to log in, the trusted box processing the login sends the username and password to the secured service on the secured port, which simply responds with a 1 or a 0 for a hit or a miss.
No possible way to slurp user details en-masse. No feasible way to even harvest a single username.
The trick is to use 3 screens, 2 is not enough. With 3 it's fine, everything (incl HUD) lives in the center screen, screens to the left and right are just your periphery.
Two monitors doesn't work for 1st/3rd person gaming because the bezel is In The Way. Three monitors provides a VASTLY superior gaming experience to 1 screen, but the left and right screens are always in your peripheral vision, they're great for having an idea of what's going on around you, but there's no point putting any HUD detail on them because you can't concentrate on their content to any great degree without taking your eye off the action.
my 60GB (non-nerfed) PS3 cost $850. I'm assuming it was manufactured in the same country/s as the US version, but they doubled the price here regardless.
Oops, slight exaggeration on my part - you get the gist though:)
Backwards compatibility is important, but mainly in the first six months to a year after a console launches. You have to get people to buy in and them not having to keep around another console to play older games is one of the ways to do that. However, the longer the console is around the less important it becomes.
You sure about that? As time goes by the price of previous-generation games plummets. I had a small PS2 library (only AAA titles) when I picked up my PS3 and have since tripled it by buying up stuff I want to play through to get the story before their next-gen successors (like Ratchet and Clank), stuff I missed first time around (like Ico), party games (like Buzz), and stuff that was cheap enough that it was worth picking up if only for 10 minutes of enjoyment (like Forbidden Siren and, sadly, "Get on Da Mic":)).
I could keep my old PS2 around for them, but why should I when I've got my old favourites being enhanced with upscaled hdmi+optical audio goodness (Okami, Final Fantasy, Shadow of the Colossus, MGS, God of War etc) all without fucking around behind the telly or having to find another electrical outlet and dealing with the resulting mess of cables.
Here we are almost two years after the launch of the 360, and I'm playing Halo 1 with the intention being to play through Halo 2 next, so for me at least, I would say BC is more important than you suggest. When I can walk into a shop and pick up a handful of Xbox/PS2 games for a couple of quid, I'll buy everything I find.
Frankly Sony's biggest single problem with the PS3 is its cost.
If by "its cost" you mean "the Xbox 360", you're exactly correct:D
(somewhat serious) joking aside, I would say Sony's biggest problems with the PS3 are their arrogance, their blatant disregard for their customers'... sorry, "consumers'" desires, flagrant dishonesty, outrageously unethical business practices, a lack of care for the integrity and legacy of the Playstation brand, and their (to borrow a term I really can't stand) "flip-flopping".
This is a company who:
told us backwards compatibility was a core value (it wasn't)
told us motion sensing was a gimmick (then added it)
told us the PS3 could churn out graphics on a par with the Motorstorm CGI at E3 (it can't).
told us the PS3's the only "true hi-def" console because all the games are 1080p (they aren't).
told us rumble couldn't be done (it can)
told us storage was make-or-break (then put in a smaller hard disk)
told us $499 was too cheap (it wasn't)
told us Microsoft was copying everything they do (but are happy to rip off achievements)
told us we'd want to work more hours to buy one (we don't)
told us we shouldn't worry about getting rooted (we should)
told us the PS3 was a computer (then took out two of the USB ports and the card readers)
told us PS3's were sold out across the board (they weren't)
told us we'd buy 5 million units even if it had zero games (we wouldn't)
told us Microsoft wasn't a technology company (wtf!?!)
I'm a big fan of the Playstation brand, don't get me wrong. I just can't stand the way Sony behave as a company.
Anything they can do to reduce costs is going to help them at this point, and removing some of the components that they are removing is doing just that. Yes they already have software emulation of the Emotion Engine, but supposedly there were still some other hardware components that were used solely for PS2 emulation. (I don't have any hard links, so if that is incorrect
There's a workaround for the "connection to host lost" bug - look for custom matches instead of quick matches, and when it pops up the "searching for matches" window hit X a few times. It'll show a list of available servers, just pick one that doesn't have a lot of people on it and you should be fine.
As the enemy AI suffers none of the abject stupidity your squad mates are cursed with, pitting yourself and another human against the might of the Locust is an incredibly satisfying experience.
It's just your squad's AI that he's saying sucks - and it does, horribly. It's not that uncommon to be forced back by the enemy only to find yourself next to one of your squad-mates who's frantically firing at his own feet.
Are you sure? I loved the first game and went to check this out just now, but all I got on the site was a "Sorry, GameTap is only available in the United States":/
"It depends what game you're playing, I'm ok with most but my PC's in a pretty enclosed space, even in winter in the North-East of Scotland I've found that if I want to play PGR3 for any length of time, I need to switch to a t-shirt and open the windows."
Force of habit, of course I meant to say 360 above (although it does sit on top of my PC if that makes me seem any less of a dumbass:)
It depends what game you're playing, I'm ok with most but my PC's in a pretty enclosed space, even in winter in the North-East of Scotland I've found that if I want to play PGR3 for any length of time, I need to switch to a t-shirt and open the windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just Slashdot, it's everywhere. Smartphone rivalry has brought us the console war mentality to the masses. Everybody's got smartphones, so the "your choice is wrong because my choice was different" mentality is running riot and ruining the whole damn internet now, not just the gaming websites.
I recently moved from an iPhone to an S3, managed to smash my S3 screen after a few weeks and am currently back in iPhone land until it gets replaced.
The iPhone's still a good handset and there are certainly some things the S3 is lacking in (panoramas come out better on the iPhone, nothing even remotely like iMovie or Garageband exists on Android) but it's obviously a much better experience in other ways. For me, the most noticeable places the S3 wins out are the screen size - obviously (iPhone really needs to get with the times or die here, stretching in one direction alone isn't going to cut it) but more importantly the menu/back buttons.
It's weird, the one thing about the S3 that wasn't even the slightest of factors in my switching turned out to be the real killer functionality - I'm back on an iPhone 4 and still use my iPad daily, and although it never bothered me in the least before, I find now that I absolutely *detest* having to hunt around on the screen to find out how to bring up menus or return to previous screens, it completely breaks the experience.
Steve's dead, make with the buttons, Apple.
If you lived before radio waves and x-rays had been speculated to exist you wouldn't assume they didn't, you wouldn't think about them at all. However, at a point they were hypothesised to exist, this line of reasoning was investigated, and the hypothesis was proven correct, case closed.
Contrast this with the idea of a deity - thousands of times in humanity's past, people have seen entirely natural phenomena and said "ah, there's an invisible guy doing that, you can't see him, but he totally exists" and every single time they've been proven wrong as our understandings of the phenomena in question have developed.
We're not left with any of that any more, we're left with a small number of only the vaguest of deities - the ones who weren't performing a function we came to understand at a later date such as pulling the sun across the sky, or making thunder. These deities don't hold up to scrutiny of course, because there's still plenty there to suggest they were nothing more than a stab in the dark - as but one example: rainbows aren't a sign of the covenant between the hebrew god and man which magically started appearing in the days after the flood, but rather are a product of entirely natural interactions between light and water.
So we're left with deities who are vague, everywhere-and-nowhere, micromanaging every facet of our lives yet remaining completely hands-off, but we'll find out all about how real they are right after we die, yup yup, you'll see zero proof within this lifetime, but at the point your life ends you'll get so much god you'll be sick of the sight of him, that's how it works, he's totally real, I promise.
It's not that a lack of evidence for something means it categorically does not and cannot exist, it's that when humans come up with the idea of a supernatural being and all the evidence we find over the ensuing hundreds, or thousands of years points to him not existing, we can safely file him away with every other supernatural being humans have dreamed up which don't exist.
Are you agnostic about dragons, unicorns, werewolves and vampires? Do these supernatural human fabrications seem like they may really be there if we just look in the right places? Or do you - as atheists do with god - just accept these things as the works of fiction they are?
iOS 5 broke some SSL certs the iPhone previously handled without issue (notable among them x.509 certs with md5 hashes)
I wouldn't be surprised if that's the issue here.
In FPS games, this is true, but try putting a KB/M user up against a pad user in a driving game, platformer, etc. etc. and the KB/M user will get smoked.
Horses for courses.
The mouse is a very good gaming device, the keyboard is awful though, yes there are a lot of buttons at our disposal, but they're all digital. Keep the mouse as-is by all means, but bringing analog input to movement would be a big step forward for PC gaming.
The iPod Touch is sub-$200 and runs iMovie.
Another way to seal the deal, bring along a couple of Nexus tablets and demo a video chat using Google Talk, which is based on free-and-open Jabber/XMPP. A pair of magic videochat devices for $200 each, how can you beat that?
Show iMovie running on iOS.
What's often missed in these discussions is the rest of the software stack.
OK so all things being equal we get an Ubuntu release which works just as well as OS X, has working drivers for all hardware, is easy to use, all that good stuff.
So, now I want to make a nifty little video from various clips, where's iMovie? Oh, wait what? What do you mean "nothing like that exists on Linux," ok well surely there's a cut down version on the Android market, since it works well on iOS tablets/phones. Nope, nothing even *remotely* similar there either.
Whatever, I'll make some music, where's Garageband? Nope, that's not there either. Anything close? Let's try Audacity maybe... OK once the laughter dies down maybe I can find something similar on my android device, since again, there's a good Garageband on iOS... Nope, nothing even remotely similar, again.
How about Pages? I've given up on making my videos or music, so how about just a nice DTP app for Linux that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out? Nope? OK well Pages was implemented really well on iOS, so *surely* there's something similar on Android? Nope, strike 3.
It's hip to the max to be anti-Apple in this day and age, but what these "lol look at that herd of dummies, they don't know what they're missing" crowd don't realise is that the affordable route to the things that are *truly* "missing" don't lead through Android or Linux, they lead through Windows and OS X.
These battles aren't won or lost purely on the hardware or OS layer, there's an application stack on top of that - Apple has the creative end sewn up on desktop and mobile. Windows has the gaming end sewn up on the desktop (nobody can lay claim to dominance in gaming on any single mobile platform) OK, Linux is strong on the server side, but where does it exert dominance in the application stack? Anywhere?
Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is my primary desktop OS, and I have an Android powered mobile. I love Linux and have used it heavily over the years, but if I want to play games I have to turn to Microsoft, and if I want to do creative stuff I have to turn to Apple. But never have I uttered the words "if I want to do ____ I need to boot to Linux..." *that's* what's missing here.
When I was 15, I had to explain the basics of the solar system to one of my friends, he'd gone through our education system and somehow come out the other end thinking the sun revolved around Earth, which revolved around the moon.
Non-fliers responding to this question are probably more concerned with planes falling out of the sky than the strictness of airport security. I don't think it's fair to suggest they "like it when bad things happen to other people"
Australia's wildlife's not nearly dangerous enough, they really could use some dinosaurs running wild.
Touch screens also have poor conveyance of intent.
You touch the screen - and that's about it. You can't hover with your fingers and then choose to click, you can't convey different intent (right-click, middle-click, other mouse buttons etc.) easily.
I would imagine we'll see a day when different digits do different things - index finger=left click, road rage finger=right click for instance.
And we dursn't call it just "the States" either because that's ambiguous because there might be other countries with the word "States" in their name at some point?
Pure pedantry, calling the UK "England" isn't like calling the US "The States," it's more akin to referring to the whole of the USA as "Delaware."
Shall we stop calling China just "China" and start spelling out "The People's Democratic Socialist Republic of Maoist China" or whatever it's called in the formal diplomatic papers, every single time we refer to it, and similarly for the other one across the strait?
What you're talking about when talking about UK/England isn't about different names for the same things, it's about incorrectly using the same word to describe different things. Like calling Europe "Belgium."
And we should say "The Republic of the Netherlands" instead of Holland?
It depends on whether you're referring to the Netherlands or Holland, the Netherlands is a country, Holland is a province in that country.
Phooey. Life's too short, and all that gratuitous verbiage takes too long to say every single time.
Not gratuitous verbiage, accurate nomenclature.
I'm going to keep on calling them England and America and China and Taiwan. Every single person on the planet knows exactly which country I mean, *including* the sadly misguided people who insist I should call them by their ridiculously long official names all the time. Stuff that.
No, when you refer to one country by one of its constituent nation's names, you are wrong, and people will fail to understand you. Also, FYI "The UK" is a shorter name than "England."
And then you reject the notion of there being a database because "the user will never see it". Bullshit. The user sees and uses it on a daily basis, they just don't realize they're using it, which was kind of the point I was making, if you'd actually read it.
To be fair, databases aren't (or at least *shouldn't* be - I'm looking at you, Team Meat) an "Internet" technology, other systems connect into them, sure, but this should stop once you get outside the LAN.
Incidentally... you *do* know that HTTP is just a wrapper for FTP, right? You open an HTTP connection and request a file, and the server uses FTP to send the file to you....
Now this right here is what is commonly referred to as "absolute nonsense." FTP and HTTP are completely distinct protocols.
:)
(But other than that you did pretty well
I want to live in a world where a secured system is the only thing that holds login info - one server, sitting on its own behind a firewall with a single port open, running a trimmed down OS and effectively airgapped save for a barebones service listening on that one port for user/password combos from a host it trusts, when the user tries to log in, the trusted box processing the login sends the username and password to the secured service on the secured port, which simply responds with a 1 or a 0 for a hit or a miss. No possible way to slurp user details en-masse. No feasible way to even harvest a single username.
The trick is to use 3 screens, 2 is not enough. With 3 it's fine, everything (incl HUD) lives in the center screen, screens to the left and right are just your periphery.
Two monitors doesn't work for 1st/3rd person gaming because the bezel is In The Way. Three monitors provides a VASTLY superior gaming experience to 1 screen, but the left and right screens are always in your peripheral vision, they're great for having an idea of what's going on around you, but there's no point putting any HUD detail on them because you can't concentrate on their content to any great degree without taking your eye off the action.
You sure about that? As time goes by the price of previous-generation games plummets. I had a small PS2 library (only AAA titles) when I picked up my PS3 and have since tripled it by buying up stuff I want to play through to get the story before their next-gen successors (like Ratchet and Clank), stuff I missed first time around (like Ico), party games (like Buzz), and stuff that was cheap enough that it was worth picking up if only for 10 minutes of enjoyment (like Forbidden Siren and, sadly, "Get on Da Mic" :)).
I could keep my old PS2 around for them, but why should I when I've got my old favourites being enhanced with upscaled hdmi+optical audio goodness (Okami, Final Fantasy, Shadow of the Colossus, MGS, God of War etc) all without fucking around behind the telly or having to find another electrical outlet and dealing with the resulting mess of cables.
Here we are almost two years after the launch of the 360, and I'm playing Halo 1 with the intention being to play through Halo 2 next, so for me at least, I would say BC is more important than you suggest. When I can walk into a shop and pick up a handful of Xbox/PS2 games for a couple of quid, I'll buy everything I find.
If by "its cost" you mean "the Xbox 360", you're exactly correct :D
(somewhat serious) joking aside, I would say Sony's biggest problems with the PS3 are their arrogance, their blatant disregard for their customers'... sorry, "consumers'" desires, flagrant dishonesty, outrageously unethical business practices, a lack of care for the integrity and legacy of the Playstation brand, and their (to borrow a term I really can't stand) "flip-flopping".
This is a company who:
told us backwards compatibility was a core value (it wasn't)
told us motion sensing was a gimmick (then added it)
told us the PS3 could churn out graphics on a par with the Motorstorm CGI at E3 (it can't).
told us the PS3's the only "true hi-def" console because all the games are 1080p (they aren't).
told us rumble couldn't be done (it can)
told us storage was make-or-break (then put in a smaller hard disk)
told us $499 was too cheap (it wasn't)
told us Microsoft was copying everything they do (but are happy to rip off achievements)
told us we'd want to work more hours to buy one (we don't)
told us we shouldn't worry about getting rooted (we should)
told us the PS3 was a computer (then took out two of the USB ports and the card readers)
told us PS3's were sold out across the board (they weren't)
told us we'd buy 5 million units even if it had zero games (we wouldn't)
told us Microsoft wasn't a technology company (wtf!?!)
I'm a big fan of the Playstation brand, don't get me wrong. I just can't stand the way Sony behave as a company.
There's a workaround for the "connection to host lost" bug - look for custom matches instead of quick matches, and when it pops up the "searching for matches" window hit X a few times. It'll show a list of available servers, just pick one that doesn't have a lot of people on it and you should be fine.
It's just your squad's AI that he's saying sucks - and it does, horribly. It's not that uncommon to be forced back by the enemy only to find yourself next to one of your squad-mates who's frantically firing at his own feet.
Are you sure? I loved the first game and went to check this out just now, but all I got on the site was a "Sorry, GameTap is only available in the United States" :/
...or "braaaaaaaaains"
It depends what game you're playing, I'm ok with most but my PC's in a pretty enclosed space, even in winter in the North-East of Scotland I've found that if I want to play PGR3 for any length of time, I need to switch to a t-shirt and open the windows.