You really should have done it first oportunity you got.
Not trying to troll or anything, but what's the point in downloading it now if you won't be able to access it until maybe Sept 30? Or is the preload a limited time offer?
All the ideas posted above are good (raving fanboys, opinions presented as fact) but there's also another reason: controversy = page hits. If you're a site that can afford to trash a game (i.e. you're not in the publisher's pocket) the best way to get page hits is by slagging a popular (or well-remembered) game. We just saw it here on Slashdot a couple of days ago with the article about Dragon's Lair.
there is a chance that your eye just pops out and pours out...
Heh, reminds me that I was reading about someone who had gone mountain climbing, a BIG mountain, like Everest. He had had eye surgery and the high altitude and cold weather combined to somehow reverse the surgery. He had to be led back down the mountain because everything was a complete blur...
The upcoming MMO Guild Wars will have no monthly subscription fee.
Really? They'll never charge for using their servers? Do they back that up with some sort of money-back guarantee? Or will it be their position for the first six months or so, until sales plateau and the next expansion pack is eight months off and those servers are soooo expensive...
Hey, they might follow through on it, but it just seems to me like bait-and-switch is alive and well in the world of gaming.
Of course the Senators and Congressmen (or thier staffers) are simply adding rules or filters to thier email to shuffle all messages from a "One-Click-Email" system into a folder they never read. Or possibly/dev/null.
I read somewhere that congresspeople have certain formulas they use to figure out how many people care about an issue they get comments on. It was something like a handwritten letter equals ten people care (but only one writes), a form letter means five people care, an e-mail means one person cares, etc. It seems to go on how much effort it takes to produce the document instead of a flat number of responses.
Wow, that's really neat. I wonder what other products will be demo'd at E3 that we can pre-order on. It would be so helpful if Slashdot would provide links to all the other wonderful products (and links to the pre-order form), since I certainly don't want anything like, say, the sales of those products or grassroots word of mouth to determine which products are actually worthwhile (or not vaporware).
It would be especially good if all the products would be featured in separate stories!
I don't know much about GURPS but I'm curious: is it possible to use GURPS in a computer RPG, like the AD&D rules have been used? Or is it much more geared toward paper and pencil games?
Details? It takes quite a bit of effort and expense to produce a good, fast, modern gaming console
Details? Why do you need details? They're Scientific Atlanta! They're squarely in the public eye for producing set top boxes and, um, microscopes? Don't they make microscopes or oscilliscopes or something like that? Something electronic?
At any rate, it's well known that to produce a video game console all you need to do is nail the hardware. The software takes care of itself because you have other people make the software for you. I'll even bet there's a VP of development who's already scheduled a meeting with EA! This video console is on schedule and on track!
So I'm looking for an inexpensive CD-MP3 player onlline. I find the iRiver IMP-50 and the price is right. I Google for some online reviews and I notice that the reviews seem strangely similar...in fact, they're the same. Googling for "I have heard of iRiver many times but I cannot afford" brings up over 100 hits. What the heck? Astroturfing from iRiver? Someone with too much time on their hands? Who knows.
I don't know that much about consoles, and I'm probably talking out of my a** here, but wouldn't MS's switch to IBM PowerPC chips be something of an admission of failure for MS? The whole point of the XBox being a stripped-down computer was to save money while also leveraging MS's experience with PC's. Yes, I know the cost savings never panned out, as neither did the concept of "we'll have tons of developers because it's so easy to program for!", but MS has never really admitted that. If they make a change away from "stripped-down PC" it would seem to me to be a marketing problem, and nothing would make Steve Jobs salavate more than to proclaim that a) MS uses Mac G5's to design games and b) the XBox 2 is basically a stripped down Mac. On a technical level, using G5's in the XBox 2 sounds fine, but in terms of marketing it sounds like a disaster.
But, for just $50 more you can get a REAL iPod that holds almost 4x as much...
I'm posting this hours after the story was originally posted, so no one will probably read this, but just in case someone does...part of your argument about the mini being at the wrong price point is meaningless. Rather than thinking about mini sales vs regular iPod sales, you should think about Apple vs everyone else. The mini is a way for Apple to get their foot in the door of flash-based player sales. I doubt that Steve cares whether someone buys a regular iPod or a mini-iPod so long as they buy an Apple player. As you suggested, it's kind of a bizarre price as it's midway between the flash players and the iPods, but it's also midways between the two in functionality. I think it's just a way for Steve to get people to pay a liiiiittle more for a player and make that switch to Apple, it's only $50 more for the mini, and it's only $50 more for so much more capacity...
Initial reports from the gameboy version of Activision Anthology say it's got a number of obvious bugs...
Which bugs are you referring to? I read the AtariAge Forums and saw some references to the GB slowing down slightly in three games, and multi-player functioning oddly (everything is displayed on the primary GB screen while the secondary is blank). Is there anything else? They don't sound like show-stoppers to me, especially with 50+ games on the cartridge.
You used to only be able to play it in small-town pizza shops anymore. I wouldn't mind owning one myself...it would make a great conversation piece for the livingroom.
Whew, you must have one heck of a living room! I usually either get frozen pizza or order out. It would be fresher your way, though.
The idea is to buy two and have them carry you in a kind of sling between them, a la ancient Egyptian royalty. Perhaps another could be modified to gently wave a plam frond at you.
>The whole setup is more centralized, making it easier to address Windows patches and virus updates.
I've always heard Windows thin clients described as a moving around of costs, not a cost-saver. The money you would have spent in desktops gets spent in servers+Citrix licenses. You don't have help desk people going out into the field to troubleshoot as much, but you have people spending time troubleshooting the servers. The real payoff is with the centralization.
Hee hee hee, they're playing right into my hands. Now to contact my lawyers and have them finish my patent for filesystems based on carnival rides. I just need to figure out how to initiate the shutdown process using less than ten balls...
> If I call up my IT help department to reset a password, they check 1) what extension I'm calling from, 2) they ask for my employee ID number, and 3) they CHECK whether they match up!
I really have to say, security is probably one instance in which you WANT to have a BOFH doing the work ("You say you're Bob Kramer, huh? Prove it! If you go in right now, you should be able to get the lab tests back by tomorrow afternoon.")
Slashdot Mirror
Not trying to troll or anything, but what's the point in downloading it now if you won't be able to access it until maybe Sept 30? Or is the preload a limited time offer?
All the ideas posted above are good (raving fanboys, opinions presented as fact) but there's also another reason: controversy = page hits. If you're a site that can afford to trash a game (i.e. you're not in the publisher's pocket) the best way to get page hits is by slagging a popular (or well-remembered) game. We just saw it here on Slashdot a couple of days ago with the article about Dragon's Lair.
Sometimes, it's all about the advertising.
Heh, reminds me that I was reading about someone who had gone mountain climbing, a BIG mountain, like Everest. He had had eye surgery and the high altitude and cold weather combined to somehow reverse the surgery. He had to be led back down the mountain because everything was a complete blur...
Really? They'll never charge for using their servers? Do they back that up with some sort of money-back guarantee? Or will it be their position for the first six months or so, until sales plateau and the next expansion pack is eight months off and those servers are soooo expensive...
Hey, they might follow through on it, but it just seems to me like bait-and-switch is alive and well in the world of gaming.
They get removed anyway. Even if you post as an AC. Unless you delete your /. cookie.
Wow, the cookies will follow me from machine to machine, somehow knowing that it's me that's posting? Slashdot coders are amazing!
Of course the Senators and Congressmen (or thier staffers) are simply adding rules or filters to thier email to shuffle all messages from a "One-Click-Email" system into a folder they never read. Or possibly /dev/null.
I read somewhere that congresspeople have certain formulas they use to figure out how many people care about an issue they get comments on. It was something like a handwritten letter equals ten people care (but only one writes), a form letter means five people care, an e-mail means one person cares, etc. It seems to go on how much effort it takes to produce the document instead of a flat number of responses.
It would be especially good if all the products would be featured in separate stories!
Does this mean we've broken the "station wagon loaded with DVD's" barrier yet?
I don't know much about GURPS but I'm curious: is it possible to use GURPS in a computer RPG, like the AD&D rules have been used? Or is it much more geared toward paper and pencil games?
Actually, it was $189.5 million with the mail-in rebate...
Details? Why do you need details? They're Scientific Atlanta! They're squarely in the public eye for producing set top boxes and, um, microscopes? Don't they make microscopes or oscilliscopes or something like that? Something electronic?
At any rate, it's well known that to produce a video game console all you need to do is nail the hardware. The software takes care of itself because you have other people make the software for you. I'll even bet there's a VP of development who's already scheduled a meeting with EA! This video console is on schedule and on track!
So I'm looking for an inexpensive CD-MP3 player onlline. I find the iRiver IMP-50 and the price is right. I Google for some online reviews and I notice that the reviews seem strangely similar...in fact, they're the same. Googling for "I have heard of iRiver many times but I cannot afford" brings up over 100 hits. What the heck? Astroturfing from iRiver? Someone with too much time on their hands? Who knows.
I don't know that much about consoles, and I'm probably talking out of my a** here, but wouldn't MS's switch to IBM PowerPC chips be something of an admission of failure for MS? The whole point of the XBox being a stripped-down computer was to save money while also leveraging MS's experience with PC's. Yes, I know the cost savings never panned out, as neither did the concept of "we'll have tons of developers because it's so easy to program for!", but MS has never really admitted that. If they make a change away from "stripped-down PC" it would seem to me to be a marketing problem, and nothing would make Steve Jobs salavate more than to proclaim that a) MS uses Mac G5's to design games and b) the XBox 2 is basically a stripped down Mac. On a technical level, using G5's in the XBox 2 sounds fine, but in terms of marketing it sounds like a disaster.
I'm posting this hours after the story was originally posted, so no one will probably read this, but just in case someone does...part of your argument about the mini being at the wrong price point is meaningless. Rather than thinking about mini sales vs regular iPod sales, you should think about Apple vs everyone else. The mini is a way for Apple to get their foot in the door of flash-based player sales. I doubt that Steve cares whether someone buys a regular iPod or a mini-iPod so long as they buy an Apple player. As you suggested, it's kind of a bizarre price as it's midway between the flash players and the iPods, but it's also midways between the two in functionality. I think it's just a way for Steve to get people to pay a liiiiittle more for a player and make that switch to Apple, it's only $50 more for the mini, and it's only $50 more for so much more capacity...
Which bugs are you referring to? I read the AtariAge Forums and saw some references to the GB slowing down slightly in three games, and multi-player functioning oddly (everything is displayed on the primary GB screen while the secondary is blank). Is there anything else? They don't sound like show-stoppers to me, especially with 50+ games on the cartridge.
Whew, you must have one heck of a living room! I usually either get frozen pizza or order out. It would be fresher your way, though.
The idea is to buy two and have them carry you in a kind of sling between them, a la ancient Egyptian royalty. Perhaps another could be modified to gently wave a plam frond at you.
From the article: "If the change is successful, we will be able to save about US$300m a year."
They're not changing $300m worth of PC's, they're saving that much on licensing.
Well, yeah, but that's only because Dragon Fantasy Mystic Shadow Dungeon Horizon Event Online Sports Night 7 isn't out yet!
>The whole setup is more centralized, making it easier to address Windows patches and virus updates.
I've always heard Windows thin clients described as a moving around of costs, not a cost-saver. The money you would have spent in desktops gets spent in servers+Citrix licenses. You don't have help desk people going out into the field to troubleshoot as much, but you have people spending time troubleshooting the servers. The real payoff is with the centralization.
>We can't get a specially compiled 64-bit version of Photoshop?
No, because neither Apple nor MS have release 64-bit versions of their OS yet.
Hee hee hee, they're playing right into my hands. Now to contact my lawyers and have them finish my patent for filesystems based on carnival rides. I just need to figure out how to initiate the shutdown process using less than ten balls...
> If I call up my IT help department to reset a password, they check 1) what extension I'm calling from, 2) they ask for my employee ID number, and 3) they CHECK whether they match up!
I really have to say, security is probably one instance in which you WANT to have a BOFH doing the work ("You say you're Bob Kramer, huh? Prove it! If you go in right now, you should be able to get the lab tests back by tomorrow afternoon.")
> uh, that first amendment applies to MS too.
Really? The constitution now applies to corporations instead of just individuals? When did this change happen?
>One of the teams managed to build a floating, ball-throwing kind of robot...it should appeal to the Slashdot public :-)
/. crowd, I get this image of a floating robot that can hurl a pumpkin a mile.
From previous stories that have appealed to the