The numbers on XBox Live fail to impress. I wouldn't say that online gaming is moving that many units. I haven't checked current numbers but XBox sales haven't shot up recently due to XBox Live getting better market penetration. If anything, I would say that XBox Live offers a nice service but Halo was what made XBox the console it is today.
Mike, buddy, the word "negro" is generally not used in polite society these days. Let's clean that up a bit. African-American is a much better term. See you at the country club!
Maybe some Chinese people would prefer to actually support the companies that make the products they enjoy - who knows. Obviously your friend has no problem screwing over Nintendo, etc. but I don't believe all citizens of China feel that theft is perfectly acceptable.
Yeah, you missed my fucking point because you're obviously retarded.
The post to which I was replying was bringing up the point that WWW has more syllables. I was making the point that an abbreviation for world wide web was made not because it abbreviates the spoken word but rather because it abbreviates what one has to type. Yes, web is an abbreviation that would be 3-letters. So what? That has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
" One thing I'll pass along, and pardon me for not wording it exactly as he had: WWW has to be the longest to pronounce, as an acronym of what it stands for. Double-U-Double-U-Double-U, that's 9 syllables, while World Wide Web has only 3. Why don't they call it something shorter, like Triple-U?"
How insightful! We should just use World Wide Web and forget this www nonsense, right? Hey, check out this website: http://worldwideweb.slashdot.org
And you're saying Douglas Adams couldn't understand the reason the www abbreviation exists? What a slap in the face if it is not true.
I believe he was making a joke where your average computer user has Office 97 or 2000 and some version of Windows 98, which then leads them to confuse the two and claim that their operating system is Office 98. Get it?
"No, I mean the Patriots won 14 regular season games, and have won 14 games in a row (including playoffs), something no one predicted would happen, because if you look at their statistics, there's no reasonable way you would guess that."
Given a mature simulation system, it is actually possible for the Patriots do go on a 14 game run. You keep trying to make the claim that a 14 game run could have never been predicted. What you mean to say is that it is statistically unlikely for any system to output that as a result but, with any mature simulation of the games, randomness [i.e. luck] should play a part and therefore, even if you underrate the Patriots roster, a 14 game winning streak remains in the realm of possibility.
I agree with you that the whole '8-0' record was meaningless. But if you ran a simulation and the Patriots won 14 games in a row, it would be just as meaningless. Outcomes can be simulated for any sporting event and, by statistics, the favored team has a better chance of winning but if statistics always dictated outcome, no one would watch. The possibility of upset is what keeps it interesting and prevents it from being an easy model for an event simulator to use. And that's all I've got to say about this subject.
I bet you're pleased with the outcome last night. I am as I had taken the Pats to win but not cover the spread.
You seem to have not understood what this article was all about. The main point you brought up is that a leaf that leads to a racoon suit does not seem to follow any reasonable symbolism in the real world. This type of statement shows a distinct lack of understanding. The article is discussing logical consistencies within a game. The leaf is logically consistent because whenever you get it, you are rewarded with a racoon suit. If you got the leaf and sometimes got a racoon suit and it modified the gaming experience in truly random ways, then you would have a logical inconsistency. Symbolism really has nothing to do with it in this context.
Dear dumbass,
Your precious Gameday 2004 prediction method has failed. Please shut the fuck up from now on and never post to Slashdot ever again. Thank you very much dumbass.
Store a patch on XBox Live? So everytime I want to play a game on XBox Live, I have to redownload the same patch I have downloaded every single day for the past month? Yeah, that makes a bit of sense.
You also mention caching "stuff" on the hard drive. Do you know what that means? Reading from the local hard drive is faster than reading from the DVD drive and it is also faster than reading from a networked hard drive. Some games cache content onto the hard drive to reduce load times. Uploading to the server any cached content and then redownloading it when it is needed is another foolish suggestion that makes no sense.
You're proposing a replacement for the hard drive that doesn't actually do the replacement needed. Small files [the only ones that could possibly fit into your stored network scheme where data retransmission is common practice] are easily saved onto memory cards - and memory cards have a huge profit margin. I think that MS will probably just say 'Buy a memory card' rather than trying to implement your network storage feature. Actually, I'll guarantee it.
Did you like the first Tomb Raider? What about the previous Castlevania games before that dreadful game for the N64? How about Mega Man 2 on the NES? That was a good game, right? Did you buy everything after that? Honestly, blind purchasing is so sad to see. I suppose you got right in line for the Matrix sequels as well, right? And Terminator 3, did you watch that?
For every franchise that's had decent sequels, I can point out five franchises whose first few games were good and then went to shit.
An intelligent person buys based on the current product - not what they've bought in the past.
This is why massholes deserve the teams they get. You get all worked up over a video game simulation, played by one player on each team. I mean honestly, eight years running isn't as impressive as you want to make it out to be. If I asked eight people on the street what their favorite ice cream flavor was and they all said vanilla, would you be incredibly confident that the next would also say vanilla?
There's another streak going on and it's 14 games. Last time I fucking checked 14 > 8, wasn't it numb nuts?
On a related note, I can't wait to see the Red Sox implode this year.
Yeah? How come the spread hasn't come down? I'd take the Patriots at 3 but the last spread I saw had them at 7. I mean, the Superbowl is usually a blowout but if you look at the past 14 games, the Patriots don't routinely cover a spread like that.
It would be amusing to see the spread drop because Troy Brown doesn't know how to play Gameday. [Although, to be fair, who plays Gameday anymore? EA and Sega probably have like 75% of the football market this year - as well they should, Gameday is 'teh poop'.]
Wait, you buy a game if it's good or you won't buy it at all. How do you know Half Life 2, Doom 3, or DNF will be good?
You're not speculating based on past performance, are you? Basically, it appears you'll buy certain games because past incarnations have been good and/or popular titles, regardless of wheather the game lives up to the hype, right? I think that's worse than just buying something during the holidays for the sake of buying something.
"or in May when kids are getting out of school and suddenly aren't under the strict yolk of parental control."
I don't think home schooled kids represent a huge portion of the video game buying market...
That's right - I know what you meant but you didn't say it. When children are out of school, they're no more under their parents control than they were during the school year. They are under less adult control but their teachers are usually not their parents.
The third generation? How are you counting these generations? Are you starting with the Colecovision or an Atari or what? Do you start counting post-crash with the NES? That would make the XBox, at least a 4th generation unit [NES/Master System, SNES/Genesis, PS1,Saturn,N64, PS2,XBox,Gamecube].
Yes, the home console market is supporting 3 consoles. Why do you bring this fact up when arguing that the portable market can support more than 1 portable system? The two are not interchangable and I don't believe everyone who plays games on a console is a guaranteed sell for a portable game system as well.
The two markets are related but also different so I don't believe you can jump to such a conclusion based on your evidence.
"The evil"? Do you really call MS evil in the traditional, child-killing, mother-raping, sense of the word? I realize that MS is a company that has engaged in immoral business practices but to call them "evil", I think, goes a bit too far. Sure, MS steps on peoples toes and sends them packing from the industry but they're not exactly committing genocide, are they?
One of the other comments in this article mentions the DeBeers company, which raises an interesting point. The diamond industry does far more damage to the world in terms of slave labor and wars fought over diamonds than anything MS has ever done. MS has crushed competitors unfairly but also balanced their unfair profit with huge donations to charity. DeBeers has been responsible for bloodshed and the enslavement of people. Who should the courts really be going after?
I'd much rather pay money for a copy of Windows than for a diamond that some 10 year old died over.
Sorry for going off on a tangent there. You probably didn't mean to use the word evil anyway. You probably just meant guilty.
The comment I replied to hinted at a solution that the author had in mind. The person believes he has a solution but got so wrapped up in talking about how there was a problem that he didn't get around to outlining the actual solution.
I will be modded down for this because the moderation system on Slashdot doesn't work and someone is mod-bombing me. They are afraid of the truth I bring to the table.
"I find it interesting that development on the guts for the PS3 began in 2001 when the PS2 first came out."
You find this interesting? This is SOP. Nintendo does this. Sony does this. Sega did this. Microsoft does this. Come on, hardware development takes time. You don't hire a bunch of hardware guys to build you a console and then tell them to come back in a few years to build another one - you keep them on working.
That actually isn't a sign that people are incredibly stupid. Obviously everyone who sees a packet of nuts knows that the package contains nuts. The point of the warning is that a portion of society is allergic to nuts and there have been labeling laws passed which dictate that any food containing nuts must have a label on them proclaiming that fact. The guidelines were written in such a vague manner so that even a packet of nuts needs the warning. Of course, this isn't the worst thing in the world. You don't want companies making assumptions about what people know about the food they're buying. To someone who is creating packaging for a cereal, it may be obvious that it contains nuts but, perhaps, a busy shopper just looking for the cheapest product might grab it unaware that it contains nuts. There's nothing incredibly wrong with the example you cited, in my opinion.
The ESRB is not mandated by law. Mein Lieberman raised a stink about this back in the early 90's over Night Trap and Mortal Kombat. To get the Fuhrer to calm down, a voluntary board was created to place ratings on games. A salesman at EB who sells a child an M-rated game is in no more trouble with the law than a clerk who sells tickets to R-rated movies to kids. These are not laws - they are guidelines.
And that's the appropriate way to handle things. That way, the community can pressure stores to enforce the ratings and we're not stuck with a government board that will rate games with political ideas that run counter to the government's with a AO rating.
Slashdot Mirror
The numbers on XBox Live fail to impress. I wouldn't say that online gaming is moving that many units. I haven't checked current numbers but XBox sales haven't shot up recently due to XBox Live getting better market penetration. If anything, I would say that XBox Live offers a nice service but Halo was what made XBox the console it is today.
Cheers,
Acidic Diarrhea
Maybe some Chinese people would prefer to actually support the companies that make the products they enjoy - who knows. Obviously your friend has no problem screwing over Nintendo, etc. but I don't believe all citizens of China feel that theft is perfectly acceptable.
The post to which I was replying was bringing up the point that WWW has more syllables. I was making the point that an abbreviation for world wide web was made not because it abbreviates the spoken word but rather because it abbreviates what one has to type. Yes, web is an abbreviation that would be 3-letters. So what? That has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
You're a fucking moron.
And you're saying Douglas Adams couldn't understand the reason the www abbreviation exists? What a slap in the face if it is not true.
What am I wrong about exactly?
It's fun to make jokes sometimes.
I agree with you that the whole '8-0' record was meaningless. But if you ran a simulation and the Patriots won 14 games in a row, it would be just as meaningless. Outcomes can be simulated for any sporting event and, by statistics, the favored team has a better chance of winning but if statistics always dictated outcome, no one would watch. The possibility of upset is what keeps it interesting and prevents it from being an easy model for an event simulator to use. And that's all I've got to say about this subject.
I bet you're pleased with the outcome last night. I am as I had taken the Pats to win but not cover the spread.
You seem to have not understood what this article was all about. The main point you brought up is that a leaf that leads to a racoon suit does not seem to follow any reasonable symbolism in the real world. This type of statement shows a distinct lack of understanding. The article is discussing logical consistencies within a game. The leaf is logically consistent because whenever you get it, you are rewarded with a racoon suit. If you got the leaf and sometimes got a racoon suit and it modified the gaming experience in truly random ways, then you would have a logical inconsistency. Symbolism really has nothing to do with it in this context.
Your precious Gameday 2004 prediction method has failed. Please shut the fuck up from now on and never post to Slashdot ever again. Thank you very much dumbass.
yours truly,
Acidic Diarrhea
You also mention caching "stuff" on the hard drive. Do you know what that means? Reading from the local hard drive is faster than reading from the DVD drive and it is also faster than reading from a networked hard drive. Some games cache content onto the hard drive to reduce load times. Uploading to the server any cached content and then redownloading it when it is needed is another foolish suggestion that makes no sense.
You're proposing a replacement for the hard drive that doesn't actually do the replacement needed. Small files [the only ones that could possibly fit into your stored network scheme where data retransmission is common practice] are easily saved onto memory cards - and memory cards have a huge profit margin. I think that MS will probably just say 'Buy a memory card' rather than trying to implement your network storage feature. Actually, I'll guarantee it.
For every franchise that's had decent sequels, I can point out five franchises whose first few games were good and then went to shit.
An intelligent person buys based on the current product - not what they've bought in the past.
There's another streak going on and it's 14 games. Last time I fucking checked 14 > 8, wasn't it numb nuts?
On a related note, I can't wait to see the Red Sox implode this year.
It would be amusing to see the spread drop because Troy Brown doesn't know how to play Gameday. [Although, to be fair, who plays Gameday anymore? EA and Sega probably have like 75% of the football market this year - as well they should, Gameday is 'teh poop'.]
Editors? We don't need no stinkin' editors!
You're not speculating based on past performance, are you? Basically, it appears you'll buy certain games because past incarnations have been good and/or popular titles, regardless of wheather the game lives up to the hype, right? I think that's worse than just buying something during the holidays for the sake of buying something.
That's right - I know what you meant but you didn't say it. When children are out of school, they're no more under their parents control than they were during the school year. They are under less adult control but their teachers are usually not their parents.
I'm curious, how did you get third generation?
The two markets are related but also different so I don't believe you can jump to such a conclusion based on your evidence.
One of the other comments in this article mentions the DeBeers company, which raises an interesting point. The diamond industry does far more damage to the world in terms of slave labor and wars fought over diamonds than anything MS has ever done. MS has crushed competitors unfairly but also balanced their unfair profit with huge donations to charity. DeBeers has been responsible for bloodshed and the enslavement of people. Who should the courts really be going after?
I'd much rather pay money for a copy of Windows than for a diamond that some 10 year old died over.
Sorry for going off on a tangent there. You probably didn't mean to use the word evil anyway. You probably just meant guilty.
I will be modded down for this because the moderation system on Slashdot doesn't work and someone is mod-bombing me. They are afraid of the truth I bring to the table.
+3 Insightful? Broken Slashdot moderation strikes again.
That actually isn't a sign that people are incredibly stupid. Obviously everyone who sees a packet of nuts knows that the package contains nuts. The point of the warning is that a portion of society is allergic to nuts and there have been labeling laws passed which dictate that any food containing nuts must have a label on them proclaiming that fact. The guidelines were written in such a vague manner so that even a packet of nuts needs the warning. Of course, this isn't the worst thing in the world. You don't want companies making assumptions about what people know about the food they're buying. To someone who is creating packaging for a cereal, it may be obvious that it contains nuts but, perhaps, a busy shopper just looking for the cheapest product might grab it unaware that it contains nuts. There's nothing incredibly wrong with the example you cited, in my opinion.
And that's the appropriate way to handle things. That way, the community can pressure stores to enforce the ratings and we're not stuck with a government board that will rate games with political ideas that run counter to the government's with a AO rating.