Nintendo has done everything in its power to fix the problem. As soon as they learned that there was a problem, they released new instructions and warnings. Then they improved the wrist strap, thickening the weak point. They've even gone so far as to send free replacement straps to every Wii owner - all you have to do is request them through Nintendo's website and they're on the way. But no, people want to sue, they want some of Nintendo's money because they screwed up and couldn't hold onto the controller. Last I checked, golf clubs, tennis rackets, and baseball bats don't have wrist straps, but people don't go suing when somebody lets go of one of those and it goes flying. The fact of the matter is that some users are themselves being negligent and using the system improperly. Users are meant to grip the remote; letting go is not part of the system's design, despite what the wrist strap may have you think. If someone is unable to hang onto the remote in normal play, he should probably also be wearing a helmet while playing too. It disgusts me that some people think that Nintendo should pay for their idiocy.
What about a game where you have the freedom to commit both heterosexual and homosexual acts? Isn't that better, and ultimately more freeing, than a game that allows a Kiss command on characters but grays it out for some? This is much like the complaint lobbied against GTA that it rewards players for random violence against civilians and whores. While it allows that violence, it could hardly be said that it rewards it. It simply allows the player the freedom to do what he wants. If the player were to try to punch a whore and the game didn't allow it, I would consider that to be a much greater flaw in the game than too much freedom. I think that your homophobia is getting in the way of your seeing that the game is all about freedom and choices... just like real life. If you don't like homosexual kissing, no one's making you do it.
You're missing the fact that playing guitar is a great deal more difficult, the learning curve is steeper, there's no instant gratification without years of practice, and most of all it isn't a game. Guitar Hero is to playing guitar what CS is to joining the Army. It's a game that is intended to represent an action but be significantly more fun, not be a simulation of the action.
Also, a ringer is the device that lets you know that somebody is calling on the telephone. It's a wringer that squeezes the water out of laundry, and it is a proverbial wringer through which Ars Technica has put Mindstorms.
I'm not a grammar nazi, but I play one on the internet.
Both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus transcend simple "gamehood" and, to me at least, stand as true works of interactive art. A game doesn't have to be stilted and boring to be highbrow.
Re:Ok, I was interested before but now....
on
Wii-mote In Action
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm betting that the console, as well as individual games, will have adjustable sensitivity. They wouldn't be able to offer that at e3 because it would take time away from the actual game demo, but it would be almost unthinkable not to have adjustable sensitivity.
Direct Experience
on
Learning to DJ?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
A few years ago I became interested in DJing and making my own electronic music. A friend recommended that I buy a program called Acid, which allows for the creation of loops and sequences, and I started learning to use it. I figured out that it makes it possible to DJ digitally, albeit not at all in real-time, and started putting together mixes. Once I figured out what I was doing, I talked to a friend of mine who was a DJ and sent him a few mixes. He helped me pick out a pair of turntables and a mixer, recommended a few records to me, and all of a sudden I was a DJ in real life. This is where things got a little harder.
Learning to DJ can be difficult and frustrating. It takes a few months of regular practice and effort, and you really have to love the music you're DJing. I recommend that you take your time with this step. Get some records that you like and practice, practice, practice. Once you feel confident, record yourself. You'll feel the need to practice a whole lot more. Slowly start getting records. Make sure that you know the songs that you get - it's better to have a handful of records that you know really well than a ton of records that you can't even identify.
Anyway, it sounds like a lot of people are recommending Final Scratch. I don't have any direct experience with it, but I've heard very good things. I have no doubt that if you start with Final Scratch and learn to DJ, and then move onto turntables, it won't be a difficult transition at all. Teetow's comments are excellent - remember, A DJ doesn't just mix from song A to song B and then to song C, all while trying to keep transitions subtle. A good DJ uses the music that he has to take listeners on a journey and tell a story. He (or she) uses individual pieces of music the create an entirely new piece of music. Once you've got that figured out, then you're really a DJ.
Have you ever considered that maybe big game companies aren't out to screw the gamers? Yes, they're out for profit, but the best way to profit is to make fun games and cultivate a fanbase. Companies can't do that if they constantly, purposely screw gamers. Turbine, for instance, released an expansion pack for AC2. They knew that the game was failing, and that its numbers weren't as high as WoW, but they released an expansion anyway. It was, by all accounts, a solid expansion that many players enjoyed. It didn't save AC2, however, and Turbine was forced to shut it down. They didn't know that they would have to close up shop right away, and even if they did know that, do you expect them to throw away all of the work that's gone into the expansion? Or perhaps you would argue that because they werelosing money they should have given the expansion away for free. Now with SOE, it's harder to justify their actions. They released an expansion right before announcing the NGE, which is pretty shady, but it's entirely possible that it wasn't on purpose. Maybe the schedule for the expansion slipped; it would've made sense to release it right around the same time as Episode III, both in terms of profit and in terms of not pissing off players. But if that really is the case, would you ask them to cancel the expansion outright? I know that SOE may very well have screwed gamers on purpose, but always assuming evil motives on the part of people trying to entertain you and (make a few bucks while doing it)won't get you very far.
If they're opening up Outworld, it would make sense to have the Draenei. In the Warcraft universe, they are the original inhabitants of Outworld, along with the Orcs. The Orcs killed most of them, but there are some pockets of Draenei on Outworld. Also, there are some in World of Warcraft already, in the Swamp of Sorrows, but they're insane cast-offs of their people, and are just creatures to be killed for XP. It seems like a logical choice for Blizzard to add as a playable race, and because they hate the Orcs, they fit in nicely on the Alliance side.
Just like every sane person who's heard what Jack has to say, I'm glad this is happening to him and I think he deserves to be, at the very least, disbarred. However, I think that Gabe put it best on the PA website. To paraphrase, Jack is only playing a part that somebody always plays. We're lucky that the person trying to ban the "awful new evil corrupting our children" is an insane, ranting, name-calling lunatic. If he were articulate, intelligent, and capable of arguing his case with solid logic, we would be in trouble. Without him, there is a vacancy in that position, and it's entirely possible that the vacancy will be filled by someone with a brain this time. Ah hell, just go to http://www.penny-arcade.com/ and read what he has to say for yourself.
The reason that the government has us all worried is that the terrorists aren't going to be in charge of us in 20 years. Our government still will be. If we don't question its motivations now, in the future we won't be able to. If we don't stand up for our rights now, in the future we won't have them. Meanwhile, all the terrorists can do is attack us in the frightening, but ultimately less threatening, manner in which they currently are. They take lives in relatively small numbers. I hate to be insensitive, but the thousands killed in the largest terrorist attack in history pale in comparison to the millions exterminated by repressive governments. Our government is currently walking the same path that Germany took on its way to becoming a fascist police state. We need to stand up now for our rights because right now there is a very real threat to our rights, coming from our very government. If we don't stand up now, the terrorists will be the least of our worries.
I am a recent graduate in both engineering and science (mechanical and astrophysics) and I am stuck in a mind-numbing engineering job. A lot of my friends who graduated in engineering and/or science are in the same boat. We sit every day at a desk wasting time and getting paid for it. We are performing tasks that we could've performed right out of high school, with the proper training. I am in the same position in my company as someone who graduated from a 2-year drafting school. Call me an elitist, but I think that I could be putting my degree to better use. There is very little math, science, or even creativity in my field, as far as I can tell. Advanced positions all involve more management, not more engineering. So to people saying that there aren't enough science and engineering graduates, I ask whether they really think we're utilizing the ones we have. The only time I feel like I'm actually using my brain is when my friends and I are building something on our own time. Are there any opportunities to actually use my brain like I had to in college? The US isn't only suffering from a lack of technical graduates, it's suffering from a lack of applications for them.
Remember - most (if not all) of the videos on Bisqwit's site are time attacks, not speed runs. There's an important difference. Time attacks are recorded on emulators with slow motion, save states, and other techniques to make recording an absolutely perfect game possible. When the movie is played back at full speed in one segment it looks like an amazing playthrough. Speed runs are "pure" runs through games without hacks. That makes them that much more impressive, to me, but it's still pretty entertaining to watch someone just completely destroy one of those super-hard games that used to piss me off.
I am writing in regards to your protest outside Rockstar's offices. I am a responsible adult, and I enjoy Rockstar's games. I have grown up with video games, and even played violent games when I was at an "impressionable" age. However, I am a normal, well-integrated member of society. I believe this to be a result of my upbringing. My parents raised me to know the difference between right and wrong, between fantasy and reality, and between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Mostly they taught me to be honest and take responsibility for my actions. I believe that your protest only supports the further distancing of our society from personal responsibility. You argue that instead of parents taking responsibility for raising their children in a world full of potentially corrupting influences, the world should just be cleansed of those influences. However, sex and violence are very real parts of the world, and children who are never exposed to them will never understand them. I understand that violence is wrong because I was exposed to violence through play and media, but told that in real life it was wrong to hurt others. I understand the dangers of promiscuity and reckless sex because I was exposed to sex in a healthy environment, not because I was completely shielded from it. It is not the fault of Rockstar that some people who play their games lack the quality of upbringing necessary for them to understand the difference between acceptable and unacceptable. Arguing that they should not produce games that you deem unacceptable takes that decision away from responsible adults like me. By making yourselves the arbiters of what is and isn't acceptable, you are trying to supplant the position of parent. Ultimately this takes responsibility for a child out of the hands of the parent. Personally I prefer to promote a system where a child is a parent's primary responsibility.
I find it ironic that I (and many other gamers) use my PSP primarily to play old NES and SNES games. It shows how just how popular old-school games are. I think Nintendo really dropped the ball by porting games to the classic series on GBA and charging full price for them. I think that the GBA, especially the SP, could have a lifespan as long as the original Gameboy's if Nintendo would quit with the greed and
start releasing cheap older games on the GBA. I know I'd pay $5 for a NES-generation game, and $10 for a SNES-generation game... well, the good ones, at least. Oh well... back to the emulators.
Hasn't anybody considered the fact that downloading this patch requires the internet skills necessary to locate the patch, and then the computing skills necessary to apply it? If a kid can find the Hot Coffee mod on the net, he/she can find porn on the net. Hell, most people who couldn't find the Hot Coffee mod could find porn on the net. But censoring the intarweb was sooooo 90s, and it didn't succeed, so now they're going after video games. As a complete non-sequitir, does anybody know of a country where the right to free speech actually exists, and the government doesn't tell the citizens what they can and can't choose to view?
The infamous "Mode 7" of which you speak actually added a lot to some SNES games. Remember the overhead levels in Contra 3? Tons of rotating objects in Super Castlevania IV? How about all of F-Zero? All of those games used mode 7 graphics, and it was completely revolutionary to console gamers. I remember my friends and I being blown away by the use of mode 7 in those first generation games, but later on when it was put to better use in Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III, and especially Super Mario Kart, they proved that it was more than just an overhyped hardware bell/whistle, and integral to the gameplay of some true classics of the 16-bit era.
... but so far it only works on the Japanese 1.00 firmware. So far there's no support for the US versions (1.5 and 1.51) so for most of us, it's nothing to get too excited about... yet. I don't know about you, but I don't want to flash my PSP's firmware... but I'm getting so impatient. Just imagine... a 1GB card of all of your favorite games for all of those classic systems, portable, on that gorgeous screen. I hope they hurry up and figure out how to run homebrew apps on the latest firmware.
Sorry, yesterday was a really, really long day. That having been said, however, I can honestly say that regardless of where I've worked, there are always some really stupid people who think they know what they're doing and just end up making my life more difficult. It's not just that they don't know Excel; it's that they think they know Excel, but they can't actually do anything. In many cases, it is actually requisite for the job that they are doing - they actively take on work involving creating spreadsheets - and then I have to pick up the slack because of their overconfidence. I have no problem with people who aren't interested in using Excel. My problem is with people who need to use Excel, and use it every day, but never bother to learn how to do anything because they know that I'll be here to bail them out with a program that never needed to exist in the first place. It's a waste of my time and company resources, so it gets my knickers in a twist. Sorry if I offended with the rant, but I feel justified in my sentiments.
I'll bite: I'm masochistic enough to write complex apps in Excel. I'm pretty well-versed in Visual Basic, having used it since the 3.1 days, and I work in your typical cube farm. Everyone here "knows how to use Excel" but they often forget how to do those really complex things, like summing a column, or cutting and pasting. It got to the point where I was sick of dealing with inane help calls, so I started programming. Originally it was just going to be a few buttons to make everyone's life easier, but the project ballooned into a number of full-fledged programs that sit on top of Excel and hold the idiot-users' hands. I didn't initially set out to write a complex app in Excel, but I ended up doing it because it was the only way that many of the simpletons would accept and use the program... or even know how to run it.
They're ok, but the arrangements aren't that great. I like the performance art piece of it, though... especially the Tetris blocks. If you want some quality video game a capella music, though, you should check out http://www.myspace.com/buttonmashers/. It's a lot more true to the original music; the arrangements pretty much just substitute voices for the original instruments.
Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo has done everything in its power to fix the problem. As soon as they learned that there was a problem, they released new instructions and warnings. Then they improved the wrist strap, thickening the weak point. They've even gone so far as to send free replacement straps to every Wii owner - all you have to do is request them through Nintendo's website and they're on the way. But no, people want to sue, they want some of Nintendo's money because they screwed up and couldn't hold onto the controller. Last I checked, golf clubs, tennis rackets, and baseball bats don't have wrist straps, but people don't go suing when somebody lets go of one of those and it goes flying. The fact of the matter is that some users are themselves being negligent and using the system improperly. Users are meant to grip the remote; letting go is not part of the system's design, despite what the wrist strap may have you think. If someone is unable to hang onto the remote in normal play, he should probably also be wearing a helmet while playing too. It disgusts me that some people think that Nintendo should pay for their idiocy.
What about a game where you have the freedom to commit both heterosexual and homosexual acts? Isn't that better, and ultimately more freeing, than a game that allows a Kiss command on characters but grays it out for some? This is much like the complaint lobbied against GTA that it rewards players for random violence against civilians and whores. While it allows that violence, it could hardly be said that it rewards it. It simply allows the player the freedom to do what he wants. If the player were to try to punch a whore and the game didn't allow it, I would consider that to be a much greater flaw in the game than too much freedom. I think that your homophobia is getting in the way of your seeing that the game is all about freedom and choices... just like real life. If you don't like homosexual kissing, no one's making you do it.
You're missing the fact that playing guitar is a great deal more difficult, the learning curve is steeper, there's no instant gratification without years of practice, and most of all it isn't a game. Guitar Hero is to playing guitar what CS is to joining the Army. It's a game that is intended to represent an action but be significantly more fun, not be a simulation of the action.
Also, a ringer is the device that lets you know that somebody is calling on the telephone. It's a wringer that squeezes the water out of laundry, and it is a proverbial wringer through which Ars Technica has put Mindstorms. I'm not a grammar nazi, but I play one on the internet.
Both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus transcend simple "gamehood" and, to me at least, stand as true works of interactive art. A game doesn't have to be stilted and boring to be highbrow.
I'm betting that the console, as well as individual games, will have adjustable sensitivity. They wouldn't be able to offer that at e3 because it would take time away from the actual game demo, but it would be almost unthinkable not to have adjustable sensitivity.
A few years ago I became interested in DJing and making my own electronic music. A friend recommended that I buy a program called Acid, which allows for the creation of loops and sequences, and I started learning to use it. I figured out that it makes it possible to DJ digitally, albeit not at all in real-time, and started putting together mixes. Once I figured out what I was doing, I talked to a friend of mine who was a DJ and sent him a few mixes. He helped me pick out a pair of turntables and a mixer, recommended a few records to me, and all of a sudden I was a DJ in real life. This is where things got a little harder. Learning to DJ can be difficult and frustrating. It takes a few months of regular practice and effort, and you really have to love the music you're DJing. I recommend that you take your time with this step. Get some records that you like and practice, practice, practice. Once you feel confident, record yourself. You'll feel the need to practice a whole lot more. Slowly start getting records. Make sure that you know the songs that you get - it's better to have a handful of records that you know really well than a ton of records that you can't even identify. Anyway, it sounds like a lot of people are recommending Final Scratch. I don't have any direct experience with it, but I've heard very good things. I have no doubt that if you start with Final Scratch and learn to DJ, and then move onto turntables, it won't be a difficult transition at all. Teetow's comments are excellent - remember, A DJ doesn't just mix from song A to song B and then to song C, all while trying to keep transitions subtle. A good DJ uses the music that he has to take listeners on a journey and tell a story. He (or she) uses individual pieces of music the create an entirely new piece of music. Once you've got that figured out, then you're really a DJ.
Have you ever considered that maybe big game companies aren't out to screw the gamers? Yes, they're out for profit, but the best way to profit is to make fun games and cultivate a fanbase. Companies can't do that if they constantly, purposely screw gamers. Turbine, for instance, released an expansion pack for AC2. They knew that the game was failing, and that its numbers weren't as high as WoW, but they released an expansion anyway. It was, by all accounts, a solid expansion that many players enjoyed. It didn't save AC2, however, and Turbine was forced to shut it down. They didn't know that they would have to close up shop right away, and even if they did know that, do you expect them to throw away all of the work that's gone into the expansion? Or perhaps you would argue that because they werelosing money they should have given the expansion away for free. Now with SOE, it's harder to justify their actions. They released an expansion right before announcing the NGE, which is pretty shady, but it's entirely possible that it wasn't on purpose. Maybe the schedule for the expansion slipped; it would've made sense to release it right around the same time as Episode III, both in terms of profit and in terms of not pissing off players. But if that really is the case, would you ask them to cancel the expansion outright? I know that SOE may very well have screwed gamers on purpose, but always assuming evil motives on the part of people trying to entertain you and (make a few bucks while doing it)won't get you very far.
I would pay $10,000 to the charity of your choice if you made that game. Just hoaxing!
If they're opening up Outworld, it would make sense to have the Draenei. In the Warcraft universe, they are the original inhabitants of Outworld, along with the Orcs. The Orcs killed most of them, but there are some pockets of Draenei on Outworld. Also, there are some in World of Warcraft already, in the Swamp of Sorrows, but they're insane cast-offs of their people, and are just creatures to be killed for XP. It seems like a logical choice for Blizzard to add as a playable race, and because they hate the Orcs, they fit in nicely on the Alliance side.
Just like every sane person who's heard what Jack has to say, I'm glad this is happening to him and I think he deserves to be, at the very least, disbarred. However, I think that Gabe put it best on the PA website. To paraphrase, Jack is only playing a part that somebody always plays. We're lucky that the person trying to ban the "awful new evil corrupting our children" is an insane, ranting, name-calling lunatic. If he were articulate, intelligent, and capable of arguing his case with solid logic, we would be in trouble. Without him, there is a vacancy in that position, and it's entirely possible that the vacancy will be filled by someone with a brain this time. Ah hell, just go to http://www.penny-arcade.com/ and read what he has to say for yourself.
Try looking for one.l #Commodore%2064
http://pspupdates.qj.net/categories/Emulators.htm
The reason that the government has us all worried is that the terrorists aren't going to be in charge of us in 20 years. Our government still will be. If we don't question its motivations now, in the future we won't be able to. If we don't stand up for our rights now, in the future we won't have them. Meanwhile, all the terrorists can do is attack us in the frightening, but ultimately less threatening, manner in which they currently are. They take lives in relatively small numbers. I hate to be insensitive, but the thousands killed in the largest terrorist attack in history pale in comparison to the millions exterminated by repressive governments. Our government is currently walking the same path that Germany took on its way to becoming a fascist police state. We need to stand up now for our rights because right now there is a very real threat to our rights, coming from our very government. If we don't stand up now, the terrorists will be the least of our worries.
I am a recent graduate in both engineering and science (mechanical and astrophysics) and I am stuck in a mind-numbing engineering job. A lot of my friends who graduated in engineering and/or science are in the same boat. We sit every day at a desk wasting time and getting paid for it. We are performing tasks that we could've performed right out of high school, with the proper training. I am in the same position in my company as someone who graduated from a 2-year drafting school. Call me an elitist, but I think that I could be putting my degree to better use. There is very little math, science, or even creativity in my field, as far as I can tell. Advanced positions all involve more management, not more engineering. So to people saying that there aren't enough science and engineering graduates, I ask whether they really think we're utilizing the ones we have. The only time I feel like I'm actually using my brain is when my friends and I are building something on our own time. Are there any opportunities to actually use my brain like I had to in college? The US isn't only suffering from a lack of technical graduates, it's suffering from a lack of applications for them.
Remember - most (if not all) of the videos on Bisqwit's site are time attacks, not speed runs. There's an important difference. Time attacks are recorded on emulators with slow motion, save states, and other techniques to make recording an absolutely perfect game possible. When the movie is played back at full speed in one segment it looks like an amazing playthrough. Speed runs are "pure" runs through games without hacks. That makes them that much more impressive, to me, but it's still pretty entertaining to watch someone just completely destroy one of those super-hard games that used to piss me off.
I am writing in regards to your protest outside Rockstar's offices. I am a responsible adult, and I enjoy Rockstar's games. I have grown up with video games, and even played violent games when I was at an "impressionable" age. However, I am a normal, well-integrated member of society. I believe this to be a result of my upbringing. My parents raised me to know the difference between right and wrong, between fantasy and reality, and between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Mostly they taught me to be honest and take responsibility for my actions. I believe that your protest only supports the further distancing of our society from personal responsibility. You argue that instead of parents taking responsibility for raising their children in a world full of potentially corrupting influences, the world should just be cleansed of those influences. However, sex and violence are very real parts of the world, and children who are never exposed to them will never understand them. I understand that violence is wrong because I was exposed to violence through play and media, but told that in real life it was wrong to hurt others. I understand the dangers of promiscuity and reckless sex because I was exposed to sex in a healthy environment, not because I was completely shielded from it. It is not the fault of Rockstar that some people who play their games lack the quality of upbringing necessary for them to understand the difference between acceptable and unacceptable. Arguing that they should not produce games that you deem unacceptable takes that decision away from responsible adults like me. By making yourselves the arbiters of what is and isn't acceptable, you are trying to supplant the position of parent. Ultimately this takes responsibility for a child out of the hands of the parent. Personally I prefer to promote a system where a child is a parent's primary responsibility.
I, for one, welcome our cloned, Korean, canine overlords.
I find it ironic that I (and many other gamers) use my PSP primarily to play old NES and SNES games. It shows how just how popular old-school games are. I think Nintendo really dropped the ball by porting games to the classic series on GBA and charging full price for them. I think that the GBA, especially the SP, could have a lifespan as long as the original Gameboy's if Nintendo would quit with the greed and start releasing cheap older games on the GBA. I know I'd pay $5 for a NES-generation game, and $10 for a SNES-generation game... well, the good ones, at least. Oh well... back to the emulators.
Hasn't anybody considered the fact that downloading this patch requires the internet skills necessary to locate the patch, and then the computing skills necessary to apply it? If a kid can find the Hot Coffee mod on the net, he/she can find porn on the net. Hell, most people who couldn't find the Hot Coffee mod could find porn on the net. But censoring the intarweb was sooooo 90s, and it didn't succeed, so now they're going after video games.
As a complete non-sequitir, does anybody know of a country where the right to free speech actually exists, and the government doesn't tell the citizens what they can and can't choose to view?
The infamous "Mode 7" of which you speak actually added a lot to some SNES games. Remember the overhead levels in Contra 3? Tons of rotating objects in Super Castlevania IV? How about all of F-Zero? All of those games used mode 7 graphics, and it was completely revolutionary to console gamers. I remember my friends and I being blown away by the use of mode 7 in those first generation games, but later on when it was put to better use in Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III, and especially Super Mario Kart, they proved that it was more than just an overhyped hardware bell/whistle, and integral to the gameplay of some true classics of the 16-bit era.
... but so far it only works on the Japanese 1.00 firmware. So far there's no support for the US versions (1.5 and 1.51) so for most of us, it's nothing to get too excited about... yet. I don't know about you, but I don't want to flash my PSP's firmware... but I'm getting so impatient. Just imagine... a 1GB card of all of your favorite games for all of those classic systems, portable, on that gorgeous screen. I hope they hurry up and figure out how to run homebrew apps on the latest firmware.
Sorry, yesterday was a really, really long day. That having been said, however, I can honestly say that regardless of where I've worked, there are always some really stupid people who think they know what they're doing and just end up making my life more difficult. It's not just that they don't know Excel; it's that they think they know Excel, but they can't actually do anything. In many cases, it is actually requisite for the job that they are doing - they actively take on work involving creating spreadsheets - and then I have to pick up the slack because of their overconfidence. I have no problem with people who aren't interested in using Excel. My problem is with people who need to use Excel, and use it every day, but never bother to learn how to do anything because they know that I'll be here to bail them out with a program that never needed to exist in the first place. It's a waste of my time and company resources, so it gets my knickers in a twist. Sorry if I offended with the rant, but I feel justified in my sentiments.
I'll bite: I'm masochistic enough to write complex apps in Excel. I'm pretty well-versed in Visual Basic, having used it since the 3.1 days, and I work in your typical cube farm. Everyone here "knows how to use Excel" but they often forget how to do those really complex things, like summing a column, or cutting and pasting. It got to the point where I was sick of dealing with inane help calls, so I started programming. Originally it was just going to be a few buttons to make everyone's life easier, but the project ballooned into a number of full-fledged programs that sit on top of Excel and hold the idiot-users' hands. I didn't initially set out to write a complex app in Excel, but I ended up doing it because it was the only way that many of the simpletons would accept and use the program... or even know how to run it.
Hmm... the link doesn't seem to work with that slash at the end. Try this one: http://www.myspace.com/buttonmashers
They're ok, but the arrangements aren't that great. I like the performance art piece of it, though... especially the Tetris blocks. If you want some quality video game a capella music, though, you should check out http://www.myspace.com/buttonmashers/. It's a lot more true to the original music; the arrangements pretty much just substitute voices for the original instruments.