DVD is still too new a technology. It's JUST NOW gaining wide adoption (the point where pretty much everyone has a DVD player). The old format is JUST NOW being completely eliminated (hell, there are some stores that still have new VHS tapes for sale, but they're finally fading).
And worse, even on HD televisions, DVDs look *just fine*. The average consumer doesn't give a shit about some fancy new format that doesn't look that much different than standard DVDs. Why would they even consider a new format when their DVD players plus DVD libraries can last them many, many years?
Answer: they won't. The technogeeks will buy into the horribly expensive Blu-Ray/HDDVD formats, and everyone else (the masses) will continue to use plain DVDs for a long, long time. These new formats being pushed onto people won't last, and standard DVDs will rule for quite some time now.
I know the companies supporting this are doing it for two reasons: content control (which they have pretty much lost on DVDs) and greed (we want people to buy their movies AGAIN, on a NEW FORMAT!). It won't happen.
Or so you've been told. Reality is that no, it's not so advanced and PS2 games can actually hold their own in gameplay with Motorstorm. I have no scientific facts or such to back that up, of course, but I didn't see any in the above post either. Yet by simply playing the game and comparing it to similar games on the PS2, and even the Dreamcast, there's not much difference in any physics. Nothing noticeable, anyway, since if it's true that there is more physics stuff going on, I sure didn't experience it.
It's basically everyone being told that these expensive, shiny new systems are superior in every way, and people see the shiny graphics, drool, and believe every word of it. People want to believe what they are told, and especially those who buy these systems defend the price they paid for it in their minds by fooling themselves into believing it will do everything including curing cancer, and do it better. Sure, the PS3 and the XBox 360 are a bit more powerful than their predecessors. The issue is whether they are significantly more powerful so that games for them are truly next-gen. And in general, except for the graphics, they're really not. And graphics, sorry to say, are not the most important part of a game. If you like pretty graphics and stuff exploding, go watch a movie, go outside, or whatever.
On topic, it amazes me how we march forward into the next generation of gaming and are so willing to pay so much money to be entertained in the same way that we have been entertained by consoles in the past. Given that there are so many good games available for past consoles that you haven't played (unless you are just a hardcore, no-life-outside-of-games gamer that has literally played it all), it's hard to imagine the need for a new console generation. The same, unfortunately, can be said about other entertainment media, especially film which is suffering from the same style-over-substance problem that gaming has, so it is not just gaming that is at issue here. Just like many modern film fans who love the latest SFX-filled action yawner and turn their noses up at old black-and-white cinema classics, new gamers that drool over graphics and won't give old games a second look are shallow people who do not care about the substance of the medium.
It's sad, really.
Right now, I'm replaying (actually re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-replaying) The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past for SNES and loving it. Old Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 (granted, only a few 2600 games are compelling enough to get regular play, but there are a few of them) games get regular play. I even played through Zork 1 recently. All of these are gaming experiences lost on the latest generation of gamers whose gaming snobbery prevent them from even looking twice at a game without shiny new 3d graphics.
"Insuring Contributed Code Is Legal?" -- Asks the question "What is the legality of purchasing insurance on contributed code?" "Ensuring Contributed Code Is Legal?" -- Asks how to make sure code that is contributed is legal.
Given the context of the article, only #2 is correct.
I've seen a lot of "common usage" and "evolution of the language" bullcrap about errors like this, and they don't make sense. If the use of a word is stupid and doesn't make sense, then maybe it should be changed, but we have a clear distinction between the two words "insure" and "ensure". Sure, they sound similar, but so do a lot of other words. That doesn't give you an excuse to declare that they are the same in meaning. Any dictionary that tells you differently is wrong.
And yeah, you might find an error or two in anything I say. Sorry. The error in the headline didn't bother me so much because I know someone made a mistake. Mistakes happen, we're all human. It's the fact that someone is actually *DEFENDING* the mistake that bugs the hell out of me.
Who the fuck are you to accuse me of not reading the article? Yet again, another asshat/. troll disguised as an anti-troll comes on and attacks people who are against their beloved fucked-up country. YES, I READ THE ARTICLE. Read between the lines and use your brain for once to see what Gingrich is setting up for our country -- the same as all other politicians who see the Constitution as an obstacle to their eternal rule over a people of sheep.
What Gingrich said is yet another attack on America by rich and powerful idiots who get elected on a campaign of lies designed to fool the sheep into believing the illogical and irrational. You're either an unfortunate sheep that has been lied to, or someone that is in a comfortable position of wealth and power propped up by the lies and deception these morons put in place to keep rich people rich and in power and fuck over the middle and lower class.
Fuck the rich, fuck the politicians, fuck the large corporations, and most of all, fuck you.
His words make me so goddamn angry that I can't even express myself civilly. Fuck you, you worthless piece of shit. It's people like you that have fucked this country to hell.
Posted before, not commented or modded, bears repeating:
The real question is: if Gears of War didn't have such pretty graphics -- i.e. it looked like, say, Quake 3 -- would **anyone** be gushing over this game? Would anyone care?
I dare say no. It's really not that special except for the graphics. I dare say that is why a lot of games are getting such high marks -- because it's a semi-decent game wrapped up in shiny graphics, and people see it being a lot better than it really is.
It's not that GoW isn't *bad*, exactly, it's just not all that people say it is.
Thr real question is: if Gears of War didn't have such pretty graphics -- i.e. it looked like, say, Quake 3 -- would **anyone** be gushing over this game? Would anyone care?
I dare say no. It's really not that special except for the graphics. I dare say that is why a lot of games are getting such high marks -- because it's a semi-decent game wrapped up in shiny graphics, and people see it being a lot better than it really is.
It's not that GoW isn't *bad*, exactly, it's just not all that people say it is.
Okay, I don't like HD-DVD either, really, but given Sony's backing of technologies like UMD, MiniDisk, SDDS, and Betamax, I think it'd be a good bet to back HD-DVD over whatever Sony supports.
Okay, it's not just Sony behind BR, sue me. But they seem to be the biggest backer, given that they're rolling out a game system designed to artifically create a user base for the format though gamers wanting to just play games on the console.
And in a sense, yeah, you could say that just buying the console and nothing else would also hurt various other ways, but come on -- what would really hurt worse, making some of the money back off of selling machines only, or *not making hardly any money at all due to almost no one buying*? I think the latter. All that time designing, creating, manufacturing, advertising, gathering support from third parties, and *nothing comes of it*? Talk about something that could ruin a company. We are talking about Sony here, so complete ruin isn't really much of a possibility, but man, would it still hurt.
Thank you. I do not get people who think that by buying a product, they are somehow hurting a company. They've already accepted and budgeted the loss from a sale of a console. You're not going to hurt them by doing this.
You hurt them by *not buying it in the first place*. They are *not* prepared to eat the total cost of the console, and therefore *not buying the console at all* would be the proper way to hurt the manufacturer.
As for Blu-Ray, Sony is the one fully behind that. HD-DVD would be the competing (and in my eyes, superior) technology. Sony is trying to wedge BluRay into the market by selling their gaming consoles with this technology to artificially create a user base, which is reprehensible, and typical of Sony's evil marketing schemes as of late.
How does artistic effects make the desktop better?
This whole movement toward prettifying the desktop reminds me of the recent trend in computer and console gaming to emphasize graphics over gameplay. The proponents of better graphics say that pretty graphics brings better gameplay... somehow, despite the fact that there has been games with great gameplay since the early, blocky, ugly gaming era of the 2600 and the early arcades. They don't seem to understand that the solution does not lie in pumping up the graphics even more, but pushing all that aside and making a great *game* first. Graphics, ultimately, don't matter -- it's what is underneath that counts. What they can't understand is that gaming has come to the point where graphics doesn't matter, it's what is underneath that needs improvement.
Who cares if our desktops have shiny buttons, 3d rotating icons, transparency, fading, animated window movements, and all of that? How does that improve your experience with your desktop? I don't see any way that any of that will actually improve your desktop, and by extension, your OS. The desktop "problem", like gaming's graphics "problem", has already been solved. Leave it alone and improve what is underneath.
TFA: "Peter Molyneux from Lionhead Studios says: 'I was lucky. I could start with a friend and we just worked on this crazy idea called Populous and that's where we came from.
'Those days, unfortunately, have gone.
'What we created was amateurish to be honest with you, if you compare it to today. What we are dealing with today are not only fantastic game designs, but amazing quality visuals. '"
"Amateurish"? Populous? I would much rather play Populous than Black & White or his other new "pretty graphics" game any day of the week. Populous may look simple, but there is a great game under there, and to me, that is NOT "amateurish." Just because a game doesn't have the latest 3d gee-whiz, two billion polygons, real-time lighting, and perfectly rendered pubic hair does not make it "amateurish."
Game developers, as well as gamers, need to figure out that good games *can* look like they did in the old days, even today, and still be fun. I don't play a game for the pretty graphics, I play it for the gameplay.
"The answer is because gamers demand more from their hobby now, and there's just not a lot of meat on those old bones."
Bullshit. I play more old games than new, and not for their "nostalgia" value. They are great games. People who "demand more" are graphics whores who like to look at pretty graphics, and are not real gamers.
"But when the fully 3D, story-driven sequel fails"
Which is 99% of the time because not only are the new so-called "gamers" graphics whores, so are the developers. They spend 90% of development time making a game look 5% better than the last shiny, graphically overdone game, then throw in gameplay, control, story, and fun (or lack of same) as an afterthought.
By the way, 74% of the statistics in this post were made up. 87% of you probably already knew that.
And here come the masses to defend their precious overpriced, underpowered technology.
Figures. Fear the truth, bury it. It's the way of modern society.
You'll all come around one day, but feel so smart in doing so because you'll forget I told the truth so long ago, and think that you have realized the terrible truth.
Of course you owners of HD technology say that and want to exclude those that don't. You, like everyone else that advocates crappy technology and media, have to justify the outrageous price you paid for it somehow, to keep from feeling like an idiot for wasting your money on something that's a total pile of crap.
HD is not significantly better than standard TV. _Fact_. Sit from a decent viewing distance from both and... guess what... they both look about the same. HD is slightly clearer, but it's not a significant enough improvement to justify the increased cost.
Basically, the article's right on the new DVD formats -- even more so than I am on the HD TVs. Why? You can't tell me that the new DVD formats look better even on your HDTVs, looking at them from an eye-destroying distance, than standard DVDs. And whoever needs more storage capabilities from the disks... you really need to cut down on the porn. Backing up your system does not involve saving every single thing on it, _just the data that cannot be recovered_. OS/applications/game installs _don't need to be backed up_, just the data they create, which I'm sure will neatly fit on standard DVDs.
Basically what's happening is that big business is trying to move to new formats to limit our freedoms via broadcast flags and harder-to-break encryption on new digital formats. They also can make more money from selling these new formats. It's win-win for big business, tie-lose (roughly the same experience, less money in your pockets) for consumers.
Nah, comparing apples to apples here. SFIITurboHyperetc on both systems (or whatever they were called... I can't bother to look up which crazy name was applied to each). SFII (the original) on SNES was sluggish, but intentionally so, and actually made it a decent game since it felt almost just like the arcade. The newer versions, however, felt sluggish on the SNES while the Genesis version seemed to run full speed, thus I preferred it over the SNES version even though the Genesis one was definately uglier and sounded like someone was choking on sandpaper.
Taken by itself, though, the SNES version was still good; you just had to adjust yourself to it being slightly less smooth than the arcade/Genesis versions.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because an OS that depends on a filename extension to determine file type is even more primitive.
Stop drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid, okay?
DVD is still too new a technology. It's JUST NOW gaining wide adoption (the point where pretty much everyone has a DVD player). The old format is JUST NOW being completely eliminated (hell, there are some stores that still have new VHS tapes for sale, but they're finally fading).
And worse, even on HD televisions, DVDs look *just fine*. The average consumer doesn't give a shit about some fancy new format that doesn't look that much different than standard DVDs. Why would they even consider a new format when their DVD players plus DVD libraries can last them many, many years?
Answer: they won't. The technogeeks will buy into the horribly expensive Blu-Ray/HDDVD formats, and everyone else (the masses) will continue to use plain DVDs for a long, long time. These new formats being pushed onto people won't last, and standard DVDs will rule for quite some time now.
I know the companies supporting this are doing it for two reasons: content control (which they have pretty much lost on DVDs) and greed (we want people to buy their movies AGAIN, on a NEW FORMAT!). It won't happen.
Or so you've been told. Reality is that no, it's not so advanced and PS2 games can actually hold their own in gameplay with Motorstorm. I have no scientific facts or such to back that up, of course, but I didn't see any in the above post either. Yet by simply playing the game and comparing it to similar games on the PS2, and even the Dreamcast, there's not much difference in any physics. Nothing noticeable, anyway, since if it's true that there is more physics stuff going on, I sure didn't experience it.
It's basically everyone being told that these expensive, shiny new systems are superior in every way, and people see the shiny graphics, drool, and believe every word of it. People want to believe what they are told, and especially those who buy these systems defend the price they paid for it in their minds by fooling themselves into believing it will do everything including curing cancer, and do it better. Sure, the PS3 and the XBox 360 are a bit more powerful than their predecessors. The issue is whether they are significantly more powerful so that games for them are truly next-gen. And in general, except for the graphics, they're really not. And graphics, sorry to say, are not the most important part of a game. If you like pretty graphics and stuff exploding, go watch a movie, go outside, or whatever.
On topic, it amazes me how we march forward into the next generation of gaming and are so willing to pay so much money to be entertained in the same way that we have been entertained by consoles in the past. Given that there are so many good games available for past consoles that you haven't played (unless you are just a hardcore, no-life-outside-of-games gamer that has literally played it all), it's hard to imagine the need for a new console generation. The same, unfortunately, can be said about other entertainment media, especially film which is suffering from the same style-over-substance problem that gaming has, so it is not just gaming that is at issue here. Just like many modern film fans who love the latest SFX-filled action yawner and turn their noses up at old black-and-white cinema classics, new gamers that drool over graphics and won't give old games a second look are shallow people who do not care about the substance of the medium.
It's sad, really.
Right now, I'm replaying (actually re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-replaying) The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past for SNES and loving it. Old Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 (granted, only a few 2600 games are compelling enough to get regular play, but there are a few of them) games get regular play. I even played through Zork 1 recently. All of these are gaming experiences lost on the latest generation of gamers whose gaming snobbery prevent them from even looking twice at a game without shiny new 3d graphics.
Their loss.
Wrong. The two mean completely different things:
"Insuring Contributed Code Is Legal?" -- Asks the question "What is the legality of purchasing insurance on contributed code?"
"Ensuring Contributed Code Is Legal?" -- Asks how to make sure code that is contributed is legal.
Given the context of the article, only #2 is correct.
I've seen a lot of "common usage" and "evolution of the language" bullcrap about errors like this, and they don't make sense. If the use of a word is stupid and doesn't make sense, then maybe it should be changed, but we have a clear distinction between the two words "insure" and "ensure". Sure, they sound similar, but so do a lot of other words. That doesn't give you an excuse to declare that they are the same in meaning. Any dictionary that tells you differently is wrong.
And yeah, you might find an error or two in anything I say. Sorry. The error in the headline didn't bother me so much because I know someone made a mistake. Mistakes happen, we're all human. It's the fact that someone is actually *DEFENDING* the mistake that bugs the hell out of me.
Who the fuck are you to accuse me of not reading the article? Yet again, another asshat /. troll disguised as an anti-troll comes on and attacks people who are against their beloved fucked-up country. YES, I READ THE ARTICLE. Read between the lines and use your brain for once to see what Gingrich is setting up for our country -- the same as all other politicians who see the Constitution as an obstacle to their eternal rule over a people of sheep.
What Gingrich said is yet another attack on America by rich and powerful idiots who get elected on a campaign of lies designed to fool the sheep into believing the illogical and irrational. You're either an unfortunate sheep that has been lied to, or someone that is in a comfortable position of wealth and power propped up by the lies and deception these morons put in place to keep rich people rich and in power and fuck over the middle and lower class.
Fuck the rich, fuck the politicians, fuck the large corporations, and most of all, fuck you.
His words make me so goddamn angry that I can't even express myself civilly. Fuck you, you worthless piece of shit. It's people like you that have fucked this country to hell.
Get out of our country. Now.
Posted before, not commented or modded, bears repeating:
The real question is: if Gears of War didn't have such pretty graphics -- i.e. it looked like, say, Quake 3 -- would **anyone** be gushing over this game? Would anyone care?
I dare say no. It's really not that special except for the graphics. I dare say that is why a lot of games are getting such high marks -- because it's a semi-decent game wrapped up in shiny graphics, and people see it being a lot better than it really is.
It's not that GoW isn't *bad*, exactly, it's just not all that people say it is.
Thr real question is: if Gears of War didn't have such pretty graphics -- i.e. it looked like, say, Quake 3 -- would **anyone** be gushing over this game? Would anyone care?
I dare say no. It's really not that special except for the graphics. I dare say that is why a lot of games are getting such high marks -- because it's a semi-decent game wrapped up in shiny graphics, and people see it being a lot better than it really is.
It's not that GoW isn't *bad*, exactly, it's just not all that people say it is.
Wow. Where do I start?
Okay, I don't like HD-DVD either, really, but given Sony's backing of technologies like UMD, MiniDisk, SDDS, and Betamax, I think it'd be a good bet to back HD-DVD over whatever Sony supports.
Okay, it's not just Sony behind BR, sue me. But they seem to be the biggest backer, given that they're rolling out a game system designed to artifically create a user base for the format though gamers wanting to just play games on the console.
And in a sense, yeah, you could say that just buying the console and nothing else would also hurt various other ways, but come on -- what would really hurt worse, making some of the money back off of selling machines only, or *not making hardly any money at all due to almost no one buying*? I think the latter. All that time designing, creating, manufacturing, advertising, gathering support from third parties, and *nothing comes of it*? Talk about something that could ruin a company. We are talking about Sony here, so complete ruin isn't really much of a possibility, but man, would it still hurt.
Okay?
By Chaos, I think I know that, since I said "appropriate". It's a joke, a reference, and commentary all in one.
IT'S MAGIC!
Appropriate, since the PS3's graphics are on par with PC graphics in 2001...
Thank you. I do not get people who think that by buying a product, they are somehow hurting a company. They've already accepted and budgeted the loss from a sale of a console. You're not going to hurt them by doing this.
You hurt them by *not buying it in the first place*. They are *not* prepared to eat the total cost of the console, and therefore *not buying the console at all* would be the proper way to hurt the manufacturer.
As for Blu-Ray, Sony is the one fully behind that. HD-DVD would be the competing (and in my eyes, superior) technology. Sony is trying to wedge BluRay into the market by selling their gaming consoles with this technology to artificially create a user base, which is reprehensible, and typical of Sony's evil marketing schemes as of late.
"Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy"
How does artistic effects make the desktop better?
This whole movement toward prettifying the desktop reminds me of the recent trend in computer and console gaming to emphasize graphics over gameplay. The proponents of better graphics say that pretty graphics brings better gameplay... somehow, despite the fact that there has been games with great gameplay since the early, blocky, ugly gaming era of the 2600 and the early arcades. They don't seem to understand that the solution does not lie in pumping up the graphics even more, but pushing all that aside and making a great *game* first. Graphics, ultimately, don't matter -- it's what is underneath that counts. What they can't understand is that gaming has come to the point where graphics doesn't matter, it's what is underneath that needs improvement.
Who cares if our desktops have shiny buttons, 3d rotating icons, transparency, fading, animated window movements, and all of that? How does that improve your experience with your desktop? I don't see any way that any of that will actually improve your desktop, and by extension, your OS. The desktop "problem", like gaming's graphics "problem", has already been solved. Leave it alone and improve what is underneath.
TFA:
"Peter Molyneux from Lionhead Studios says: 'I was lucky. I could start with a friend and we just worked on this crazy idea called Populous and that's where we came from.
'Those days, unfortunately, have gone.
'What we created was amateurish to be honest with you, if you compare it to today. What we are dealing with today are not only fantastic game designs, but amazing quality visuals. '"
"Amateurish"? Populous? I would much rather play Populous than Black & White or his other new "pretty graphics" game any day of the week. Populous may look simple, but there is a great game under there, and to me, that is NOT "amateurish." Just because a game doesn't have the latest 3d gee-whiz, two billion polygons, real-time lighting, and perfectly rendered pubic hair does not make it "amateurish."
Game developers, as well as gamers, need to figure out that good games *can* look like they did in the old days, even today, and still be fun. I don't play a game for the pretty graphics, I play it for the gameplay.
Well, least someone posted a solution. Good to have close back at the end.
Still a moving target. What was wrong with the single close button on the right?
Too easy to accidentally close tabs, too. Hope someone has an extension to put it back the way it should be.
"The answer is because gamers demand more from their hobby now, and there's just not a lot of meat on those old bones."
Bullshit. I play more old games than new, and not for their "nostalgia" value. They are great games. People who "demand more" are graphics whores who like to look at pretty graphics, and are not real gamers.
"But when the fully 3D, story-driven sequel fails"
Which is 99% of the time because not only are the new so-called "gamers" graphics whores, so are the developers. They spend 90% of development time making a game look 5% better than the last shiny, graphically overdone game, then throw in gameplay, control, story, and fun (or lack of same) as an afterthought.
By the way, 74% of the statistics in this post were made up. 87% of you probably already knew that.
Trying to put something up there, and the subversion password they provided doesn't work (I get an "authorization failed" error from svn).
Could be that I just suck at subversion (entirely possible), but meh.
You do realize some emulators can play online, right?
There goes that argument down the drain.
And here come the masses to defend their precious overpriced, underpowered technology.
Figures. Fear the truth, bury it. It's the way of modern society.
You'll all come around one day, but feel so smart in doing so because you'll forget I told the truth so long ago, and think that you have realized the terrible truth.
"HD is better, much better."
Wrong.
Of course you owners of HD technology say that and want to exclude those that don't. You, like everyone else that advocates crappy technology and media, have to justify the outrageous price you paid for it somehow, to keep from feeling like an idiot for wasting your money on something that's a total pile of crap.
HD is not significantly better than standard TV. _Fact_. Sit from a decent viewing distance from both and... guess what... they both look about the same. HD is slightly clearer, but it's not a significant enough improvement to justify the increased cost.
Basically, the article's right on the new DVD formats -- even more so than I am on the HD TVs. Why? You can't tell me that the new DVD formats look better even on your HDTVs, looking at them from an eye-destroying distance, than standard DVDs. And whoever needs more storage capabilities from the disks... you really need to cut down on the porn. Backing up your system does not involve saving every single thing on it, _just the data that cannot be recovered_. OS/applications/game installs _don't need to be backed up_, just the data they create, which I'm sure will neatly fit on standard DVDs.
Basically what's happening is that big business is trying to move to new formats to limit our freedoms via broadcast flags and harder-to-break encryption on new digital formats. They also can make more money from selling these new formats. It's win-win for big business, tie-lose (roughly the same experience, less money in your pockets) for consumers.
Don't fall for it.
The Pirate Party of America will keelhaul those scurvy scoundrals for takin' away arrrrrr libarrrrties!
I broke the dam!
Nah, comparing apples to apples here. SFIITurboHyperetc on both systems (or whatever they were called... I can't bother to look up which crazy name was applied to each). SFII (the original) on SNES was sluggish, but intentionally so, and actually made it a decent game since it felt almost just like the arcade. The newer versions, however, felt sluggish on the SNES while the Genesis version seemed to run full speed, thus I preferred it over the SNES version even though the Genesis one was definately uglier and sounded like someone was choking on sandpaper.
Taken by itself, though, the SNES version was still good; you just had to adjust yourself to it being slightly less smooth than the arcade/Genesis versions.