Health care for all means you can't have the few [insurance providers] screwing over their customers. Access to education means private schools can't rape you into submission, etc, etc. It's easier to pick on the gays, foreigners or other "threats" because it doesn't require any talent beyond simple biggotry.
You're right, the government should do everything. Because government projects always work out so well. I mean, I'm sure if the US had public health care the government wouldn't force drug companies to sell their products for so low that they couldn't afford research anymore, right? And I'm sure if we just keep dumping more and more money into public schools that will make everyone smarter and not a single dollar will go to waste, right?
Why they complain about "holiday tree" but not the total commercialization of the religious event is beyond me. Personally I think it's more twisted and perverted to cut down a perfectly healthy tree for no purpose other than to put decorations on it and commercial presents under it.
Hahaha, oh you crazy hippies. You may not be clean, or have intelligent opinions, but at least you're funny.
So then people currently using the GPL wouldn't mind people taking their code, modifying it, releasing it, then not releasing the source code, as long as there were no copyrights anymore? If the purpose of the GPL was just to ensure that works created by people are available to people in a public commons, then it would be just like BSD style licenses.
Secondly, the vast majority of games, books, television, etc is crap. You think it'd be better if indie developers were in charge? I'd bet an even higher portion of the content would be crap. The same goes for TV and movies. Maybe it seems like there are all these good independent movies out and the main ones are all crap. But what you didn't see was all the independent stuff that was too terrible for even the most die hard art house movie goers to want to see. The difference is nobody knows about independent crap, but big business can push their crap on the masses.
What exactly is your point about roller coaster tycoon and re-volt? That games can succede without big business? That seems to defeat your point more than help you. If there's a place for smaller development (which seems like it will be facilitated even more by things like the Xbox Live Marketplace and Steam) then that would make up for big business, if indie game developers were in fact better than mainstream developers, right?
The folks pumping out generic game after generic game could learn a thing or two about what's fun.
So could Nintendo. My GameCube is basically a very expensive paper weight because I couldn't find more than a couple games a year I even considered buying for it, which didn't also come out for my PS2. And why get anything for the GameCube which I could get for the PS2 instead since the GC controller was a nightmare and this way I can just stick the GC in the closet instead of having it waste an input on my TV.
Zelda games aren't innovative anymore. The puzzles are so simple that it's generally insulting, especially if you've played any other ones. Mario has been plastered on so many different games that the sight of him in anything more advanced than an SNES just irritates me. Metroid Prime was good, but not enough to make the system worth the price. Games like Mario Party and Super Monkey Ball bore the hell out of me at parties, I would much rather do just about anything else, and I can't imagine wanting to play them by myself.
Oh well, I guess Nintendo doesn't want my business and I don't want their product, so it's a good situation.
Wow, I'm intrigued by your brilliant musical insights. Even though you can't download it to their hard drives, you should at least start a newsletter, to tell everyone why the music they like sucks and why they should listen to what you tell them to instead.
You did need a connection to activate it before you could play the first time, but not a lengthy download. And you're right, most people probably don't want to download multi-gigabyte games, but as broadband penetration and speeds go up it will become a more popular idea. It seems to me like it's bound to become the dominant means for purchasing games at some point. There's really no reason that software needs to come in boxes for people who have an internet connection.
What exactly do you consider innovation? I would consider taking two ideas, and combining them in an interesting and useful way to be innovation. So if Windows 95 tried to combine the power of Unix and the usability of the Macintosh, I would consider that innovation.
Xbox Live combines all sorts of network services into one (supposedly) seemless package, to create something nobody has used before. A console gaming portal which lets you play games, chat with friends, buy new games and content, etc. To me that seems innovative, even if it doesn't offer any single feature that you couldn't get on another platform.
That's why I'm much more interesting in the 360 than the revolution or PS3. But that's just me.
Their selection may already be better than Steam, but the fact that they don't offer major releases via Xbox Live yet is definitely not a plus in my eyes. It's not like you can't go get a copy of half-life 2 from the store if you want. Personally, I bought it off of Steam because I didn't feel like driving out to the store, or having to worry about losing the disk, etc.
I played MGS2 without playing MGS1, there are a few things that are confusing, but the game still was completely awesome. MGS3 could also be played before the others, since it was a prequel. I loved MGS2, MGS3 and MGS: Twin Snakes, but I don't plan on buying a PS3 unless it comes out with something other than Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy to entice me.
Who on earth modded this post insightful instead of redundant? After any slashdot post about new hardware or software, 100 people say exactly the same thing.
Or maybe you will and the gamer population wants cookie cutter titles brought to you by BrandX(tm) and the people looking for innovation should just go throw themselves into a ditch and await the bulldozer.
For the amount of moaning and groaning they do about how bad games are, yeah, I wish they would go ahead and throw themselves in a ditch. It's amazing they find any time to play games.
Not only are computer games much more in-depth and detailed, but the only advantage to a console is the ability to have 4 players in the same room playing all together without having to worry about moving heavy computers around and setting up network connections.
PC games are not more in-depth and detailed. That's a myth. I don't know where it came from, but it sure gets repeated a lot. I spend about half my gaming time on a PC, half on a console. The games are pretty much the same, except the PC has all the strategy games and the consoles have all the sports and racing games.
Consoles are definitely not inferior in every way. They're inferior in terms of graphics, in terms of being able to mod your games, and arguably online play (I think even though you have to pay for it, Xbox Live compares pretty favorably to online support for just about any PC game) and in terms of controls for FPS, if you don't like playing with a gamepad. Despite what all the PC gaming fanboys have to say about it, plenty of people are able to enjoy playing good FPS games with a gamepad just as much as with a mouse. Plus consoles are vastly superior in terms of being able to take any game out of your library and just play it. I'm not going to keep 30 games installed my PC at any given time. Maybe the five I've played most recently. So if I want to play one further back than that I have to wait for it to install. I can easily grab any PS2 game off my shelf, chuck it in and play right away. Plus it's less of a hassle to play a console game on your couch in front of your tv, which is a big advantage for some people.
Plus, I'm fed up with all this BS about having to be a PC gamer to be a serious gamer. I'm a very serious gamer, but things like not being able to play Civ IV because after the first time I played the copy protection decided to prevent me from using the copy I bought are definitely driving me away from PC gaming. The benefits of PCs versus console gaming for me, as a serious gamer, aren't really enough to outweigh the headaches associated with the PC, like hardware conflicts, the upgrade cycle, etc.
As for your comments about gameplay regressing, I strongly disagree. I think the times where that happens are definitely in the minority, but meh. To each his own. Which brings me to my final point, why would you come into a thread about which of two consoles to buy, when all you're saying basically is that PC g4m1n9 rulzz0rz? Can't you just accept that some gamers prefer console games? If you insist on pretending you're more hardcore because you only play PC games, can't you just pretend quietly?
Hahaha, you have a superb grip on reality. It sounds like your opinions are completely based in fact. You seem to have excellent reasoning skills. You don't seem at all like a fanboy. I'm sure you are much more successfull than all of the "dimwits" who have gotten crazy rich at Microsoft. Good job.
Neither were the games which the person I was replying to cited as classics. If he was just talking about EA being unable to make great games based on a license from another medium why did he bring up the games he did?
The other poster said that the UT series is an exception to this rule. I would just say this is an incredibly shitty rule, espoused by those who care more about sounding cool than playing good games.
Let's consider a few other 'exceptions', shall we? Civ VI, HL2, Halo 2, GTA3, FFX, GT4, MGS3, Elder Scrolls 3... I'd be willing to bet all of those are above 90% on gamerankings. But I guess you'd rather play crap, so long as it's not a sequel.
Your post talks about how most TVs ahve composite. The poster you responded to talks about TVs should have composite. Nobody mentioned the word component, until you, just now. Dood, u r sm4rt.
I can say with 100% certainty that yes, HDTV makes movies better. For me anyway, if you dont' care about picture quality at all then I guess it won't, but I don't know anyone for whom this is the case.
It is debatable as to whether higher-resolution actually produces better looking games; there is no game that has been released that even comes close to looking as good as a computer generated movie on DVD.
First of all, the two parts of this sentence, as far as I can tell, have nothing to do with each other. Secondly, that's debatable? Really? So you think some people would argue that the same scene, with the same FPS, the same models, lighting, textures, etc, would look just as good at 640x480 as it would in 1600x1200. I can't imagine anyone arguing that.
On a side note, HDTV resolutions can make good games worse; take Fear and play it on a pretty modest computer and force yourself to use High resolutions (1600x1200), you will either have to turn all of the detail in the game to low (with lighting off and no shadows) or play at a really choppy framerate; I know I love playing games at 15fps.
So you're saying sometimes you need to trade off one graphical aspect for another. Shocking. But that's an extreme case. I've played games plenty of times where I turned down other settings before the resolution. With consoles it's harder to offer a huge number of resolutions than it is on the PC, so they render everything at 720p and then scale it down for some people. So people playing at 480p will get a slightly worse picture than they would if the console hadn't been designed for HDTV. But people with a tv that supports 720p will definitely have a much better picture than if the 360 had been designed for 480p.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, the government should do everything. Because government projects always work out so well. I mean, I'm sure if the US had public health care the government wouldn't force drug companies to sell their products for so low that they couldn't afford research anymore, right? And I'm sure if we just keep dumping more and more money into public schools that will make everyone smarter and not a single dollar will go to waste, right?
Why they complain about "holiday tree" but not the total commercialization of the religious event is beyond me. Personally I think it's more twisted and perverted to cut down a perfectly healthy tree for no purpose other than to put decorations on it and commercial presents under it.
Hahaha, oh you crazy hippies. You may not be clean, or have intelligent opinions, but at least you're funny.
So then people currently using the GPL wouldn't mind people taking their code, modifying it, releasing it, then not releasing the source code, as long as there were no copyrights anymore? If the purpose of the GPL was just to ensure that works created by people are available to people in a public commons, then it would be just like BSD style licenses.
So what you're saying is that Nintendo is more like the RIAA than Apple?
Could you rephrase this post in a way that is intelligible please?
Secondly, the vast majority of games, books, television, etc is crap. You think it'd be better if indie developers were in charge? I'd bet an even higher portion of the content would be crap. The same goes for TV and movies. Maybe it seems like there are all these good independent movies out and the main ones are all crap. But what you didn't see was all the independent stuff that was too terrible for even the most die hard art house movie goers to want to see. The difference is nobody knows about independent crap, but big business can push their crap on the masses.
What exactly is your point about roller coaster tycoon and re-volt? That games can succede without big business? That seems to defeat your point more than help you. If there's a place for smaller development (which seems like it will be facilitated even more by things like the Xbox Live Marketplace and Steam) then that would make up for big business, if indie game developers were in fact better than mainstream developers, right?
So could Nintendo. My GameCube is basically a very expensive paper weight because I couldn't find more than a couple games a year I even considered buying for it, which didn't also come out for my PS2. And why get anything for the GameCube which I could get for the PS2 instead since the GC controller was a nightmare and this way I can just stick the GC in the closet instead of having it waste an input on my TV.
Zelda games aren't innovative anymore. The puzzles are so simple that it's generally insulting, especially if you've played any other ones. Mario has been plastered on so many different games that the sight of him in anything more advanced than an SNES just irritates me. Metroid Prime was good, but not enough to make the system worth the price. Games like Mario Party and Super Monkey Ball bore the hell out of me at parties, I would much rather do just about anything else, and I can't imagine wanting to play them by myself.
Oh well, I guess Nintendo doesn't want my business and I don't want their product, so it's a good situation.
Wow, I'm intrigued by your brilliant musical insights. Even though you can't download it to their hard drives, you should at least start a newsletter, to tell everyone why the music they like sucks and why they should listen to what you tell them to instead.
You did need a connection to activate it before you could play the first time, but not a lengthy download. And you're right, most people probably don't want to download multi-gigabyte games, but as broadband penetration and speeds go up it will become a more popular idea. It seems to me like it's bound to become the dominant means for purchasing games at some point. There's really no reason that software needs to come in boxes for people who have an internet connection.
Xbox Live combines all sorts of network services into one (supposedly) seemless package, to create something nobody has used before. A console gaming portal which lets you play games, chat with friends, buy new games and content, etc. To me that seems innovative, even if it doesn't offer any single feature that you couldn't get on another platform.
That's why I'm much more interesting in the 360 than the revolution or PS3. But that's just me.
Their selection may already be better than Steam, but the fact that they don't offer major releases via Xbox Live yet is definitely not a plus in my eyes. It's not like you can't go get a copy of half-life 2 from the store if you want. Personally, I bought it off of Steam because I didn't feel like driving out to the store, or having to worry about losing the disk, etc.
That should read...
So far, as best we know, the PS3 will be launched in "spring of 2006" in Japan.
Now if only someone other than Nintendo would start making Gamecube games, and it had decent online support, we'd be all set!
I played MGS2 without playing MGS1, there are a few things that are confusing, but the game still was completely awesome. MGS3 could also be played before the others, since it was a prequel. I loved MGS2, MGS3 and MGS: Twin Snakes, but I don't plan on buying a PS3 unless it comes out with something other than Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy to entice me.
Wow, an AC knows a guy who knows a guy who says 20%? That's a reliable enough source of info for me.
Who on earth modded this post insightful instead of redundant? After any slashdot post about new hardware or software, 100 people say exactly the same thing.
For the amount of moaning and groaning they do about how bad games are, yeah, I wish they would go ahead and throw themselves in a ditch. It's amazing they find any time to play games.
On Kazaa? Is Kazaa still around? Well, just use whatever the p2p network of the moment is.
Yeah, it's okay to bash Texas, but god forbid we say anything bad about the stupid frenchy frogs.
PC games are not more in-depth and detailed. That's a myth. I don't know where it came from, but it sure gets repeated a lot. I spend about half my gaming time on a PC, half on a console. The games are pretty much the same, except the PC has all the strategy games and the consoles have all the sports and racing games.
Consoles are definitely not inferior in every way. They're inferior in terms of graphics, in terms of being able to mod your games, and arguably online play (I think even though you have to pay for it, Xbox Live compares pretty favorably to online support for just about any PC game) and in terms of controls for FPS, if you don't like playing with a gamepad. Despite what all the PC gaming fanboys have to say about it, plenty of people are able to enjoy playing good FPS games with a gamepad just as much as with a mouse. Plus consoles are vastly superior in terms of being able to take any game out of your library and just play it. I'm not going to keep 30 games installed my PC at any given time. Maybe the five I've played most recently. So if I want to play one further back than that I have to wait for it to install. I can easily grab any PS2 game off my shelf, chuck it in and play right away. Plus it's less of a hassle to play a console game on your couch in front of your tv, which is a big advantage for some people.
Plus, I'm fed up with all this BS about having to be a PC gamer to be a serious gamer. I'm a very serious gamer, but things like not being able to play Civ IV because after the first time I played the copy protection decided to prevent me from using the copy I bought are definitely driving me away from PC gaming. The benefits of PCs versus console gaming for me, as a serious gamer, aren't really enough to outweigh the headaches associated with the PC, like hardware conflicts, the upgrade cycle, etc.
As for your comments about gameplay regressing, I strongly disagree. I think the times where that happens are definitely in the minority, but meh. To each his own. Which brings me to my final point, why would you come into a thread about which of two consoles to buy, when all you're saying basically is that PC g4m1n9 rulzz0rz? Can't you just accept that some gamers prefer console games? If you insist on pretending you're more hardcore because you only play PC games, can't you just pretend quietly?
Hahaha, you have a superb grip on reality. It sounds like your opinions are completely based in fact. You seem to have excellent reasoning skills. You don't seem at all like a fanboy. I'm sure you are much more successfull than all of the "dimwits" who have gotten crazy rich at Microsoft. Good job.
Neither were the games which the person I was replying to cited as classics. If he was just talking about EA being unable to make great games based on a license from another medium why did he bring up the games he did?
Yeah, nobody kept playing The Sims for very long, did they?
Let's consider a few other 'exceptions', shall we? Civ VI, HL2, Halo 2, GTA3, FFX, GT4, MGS3, Elder Scrolls 3... I'd be willing to bet all of those are above 90% on gamerankings. But I guess you'd rather play crap, so long as it's not a sequel.
Your post talks about how most TVs ahve composite. The poster you responded to talks about TVs should have composite. Nobody mentioned the word component, until you, just now. Dood, u r sm4rt.
I can say with 100% certainty that yes, HDTV makes movies better. For me anyway, if you dont' care about picture quality at all then I guess it won't, but I don't know anyone for whom this is the case.
It is debatable as to whether higher-resolution actually produces better looking games; there is no game that has been released that even comes close to looking as good as a computer generated movie on DVD.
First of all, the two parts of this sentence, as far as I can tell, have nothing to do with each other. Secondly, that's debatable? Really? So you think some people would argue that the same scene, with the same FPS, the same models, lighting, textures, etc, would look just as good at 640x480 as it would in 1600x1200. I can't imagine anyone arguing that.
On a side note, HDTV resolutions can make good games worse; take Fear and play it on a pretty modest computer and force yourself to use High resolutions (1600x1200), you will either have to turn all of the detail in the game to low (with lighting off and no shadows) or play at a really choppy framerate; I know I love playing games at 15fps.
So you're saying sometimes you need to trade off one graphical aspect for another. Shocking. But that's an extreme case. I've played games plenty of times where I turned down other settings before the resolution. With consoles it's harder to offer a huge number of resolutions than it is on the PC, so they render everything at 720p and then scale it down for some people. So people playing at 480p will get a slightly worse picture than they would if the console hadn't been designed for HDTV. But people with a tv that supports 720p will definitely have a much better picture than if the 360 had been designed for 480p.