I'll be perfectly honest here: As someone who has yet to have a successful job application outside the education sector, I would LOVE to get some sort of feedback as to why I wasn't hired by some company X, if there is any specific to be had. Seriously. It would be an outrageous benefit to me applying to company Y, company Z, etc. Was it my college experience? Did they think my university was worthless, thus making my degree worthless? Was it because I don't have an arsenal of professional-grade GUI programs under my belt? Do I need more experience first (which is really irritating when applying for entry-level jobs)? Am I just the victim of too many other applicants who just happen to be better qualified, but there's otherwise nothing wrong with my talents and skills?
Without any feedback, and after talking to career counselors and refining his or her resume to an artform, there isn't much else for a jobseeker to try besides repeating the same application/resume to another prospective employer. The same one which may have those fatal flaws that kicked someone out of the last application process which will inevitably kick that same someone out of the next application process. Does that sound paranoid? Maybe it is, but when you don't have anywhere to turn for money, you've gotta start asking why you don't have anywhere to turn for money, and no feedback just compounds the issue.
(Me personally, I currently do research work for my college en route to a Master's degree, which I will try to leverage into Doctorate study elsewhere. So while I DID have a disastrous time job-hunting once I got my Bachelor's, don't assume I'm talking as myself, here. Just assume I'm talking as a hypothetical down-on-his/her-luck Bachelor-degree holding graduate.)
I understand that there's this whole "lawsuits as primary form of income" atmosphere in the country/world today, so there may be some apprehension on the part of employers to potentially hurt an applicant's feelings. However, perhaps offering the option to understand why an applicant wasn't hired (complete with legal notice that the applicant will not file suit for hurt feelings if said option is exercised) would be enough, and such feedback would help the applicant immensely.
Granted, in most cases the company has no reason to extend any sort of benefit to anyone not working for the company (especially if said benefit may result in helping the applicant to work at the company's competition). So, many companies may want to avoid giving such feedback if at all possible. Heartless, sure, but from a business perspective, understandable.
Or maybe I've just been living with blue-sky dreams looking out the windows of the ivory tower. Maybe.
One major problem is that many non-technical people try whatever is humanly possible to relate technical scenarios to "real-world" analogies. This goes for computer security, too; As other posters have mentioned, they try to line it up with their house in the neighborhood, and all too often come up with the line, "Well, why would they attack ME? I don't have anything valuable!". This, to them, equates with security. I should know, I've had that pulled on me before.
And this may be the problem you're experiencing. Try explaining that, in many cases, the computer itself is what "they" want (botnets, zombies, etc). Problem being, you'd be forced to come up with a real-world analogy for it. "It's like if someone could break into this house undetected, loaf around and steal food regularly, take your credit cards and use them freely, then start prank-calling the neighbors and blaming it on you, and everybody thought it WAS you."
The whole issue of a Windows machine being broken into in 15 minuts of a fresh install is even more difficult to put in non-technical terms. "Imagine there was an army of zombies [or robots, or people] roaming the neighborhood. They're going around trying everyone's front door to see if it's locked, and if it isn't, they walk right in and take over the place. Sometimes they try to pick the locks. They don't care if anyone calls the cops on them, there's far more of them than there are cops. And they don't care how long it takes, there's enough of them to try each and every door. And they don't talk to each other, so they'll keep trying the same doors over and over with different lockpicks. And each house they take over produces more zombies [or robots, or people]."
Now, both of those would just absurd to a non-techie, to say the least. So what I'm saying is that you need to try to draw analogies they can understand but don't sound ridiculous. You can provide documentation to back up your claims, but you'll need to convince them to read said documentation first, and that's where your creative storytelling skills come in.
It may not be the fault of the distributor/packager of the software that the GPL shows up as a click-through EULA (well, not directly at least). Don't a lot of prepackaged installers (InstallShield, Nullsoft, etc) have a default field to fill in for a EULA? Perhaps it's just that whomever made the installer wants to put SOMETHING there to fill space and look special, not knowing that it's truly not needed (assuming you can't get away with leaving it empty). Or they think their program will look immature and flaky if it doesn't pop up with something that looks like it's threatening the user like the bigger companies do.
Or, it could just be that these people don't really read the GPL, per se, they just think it's "hip" and "trendy" and whatnot the kids are saying these days, dagnabbit. Then again, if the source is included in such a distribution (I've seen some that do), it may be a good idea to slap the license in at some point anyway.
Nothing could truly perpare you for unlocking darksims, eagerly loading them into the next slo-motion multiplayer game and watching them spin their torso around and shooting at you while continuing to climb a ladder.
If I recall something Rare said before on their letters page, they specifically made the Dark Sims to be unfair. Like, they could shoot from ladders like that, they could run faster than you could, they could fire without reloading, they could get infinite ammo at their whims, they could see through walls, etc. And I could swear I once saw a Dark Sim that I killed simply fade away and immediately respawn elsewhere, instead of flailing backward and taking a few seconds to respawn like any other player/sim.
I kinda liked that. If you're so l33t at PD that you can take on anything, it'll give you something blatantly unfair to deal with. Except on that same letters page, they still admitted that none of the sims of any skill knew how to deal with explosions (either firing or reacting to an explosion in progress).
That's another thing about the N64. They had an interesting amount of quirks to their games. Or maybe that was just Rare's N64 days. Ah, fun.
Display Mouse
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Y'know, when I hear the term "Output Mouse", I'm expecting the opposite of an input mouse; that is, the computer issues commands to move the mouse and it does so, taking your hand with it. And output clicks are handled by poking you in the fingers or thumb. Scroll wheel still needs work.
This just sounds like an LCD display duct-taped onto a mouse by comparison.
I like unlockables. Sometimes I like the feel of earning something, even just in video games. With some exceptions (scoring-based puzzle games, multiplayer-specific games, strategy games, etc), I don't like the concept of just having EVERYTHING laid out in front of me. I feel cheated. Yes, I mean I feel like I'm being cheated out of the game, not like I'm cheating the game itself.
But there has to be balance. I also like a game that is fully enjoyable from first power on. Where there's a lot to do and enjoy even without unlocking a single thing, but they're still there for those wanting to go after them (or if you're just that bored). Like, say, Smash Bros Melee. Sure, unlocking everything gives you roughly double the characters and levels you started with, but you still have a good amount to bash your friends around in from the get-go.
NOT like, say, the N64 incarnation of Mario Golf. With its four-character three-course (or was that just two?) glory that you had to keep hammering out complete rounds of golf to get any sort of variety out of it.
This doesn't mention story-based games (adventures, RPGs, etc). Those should be obvious that the story should be "unlocked" as you progress in it. Else you're better off just grabbing a DVD where you don't need to do any unlocking to sit through all the pretty pictures.
Cool, cool indeed. And you answered quite civilly to what I will admit was a rather snide post of mine (heh... sorry). Seriously, I gotta respect that.
I know, I know, GFDL and all. Though I could swear there was a clause regarding at least mentioning he got it from Wikipedia, that's not quite my beef. It's more of if this is what it's gotten to, gaming articles like these are even more of a joke than I thought before.
Y'know, it's nice that this person put Chu Chu Rocket in his "Games That Nobody Played - But You Should" list. Really, it is. I've always considered it a classic and hope that Sega eventually makes a WFC version of it for the Nintendo DS.
But for as much as this guy likes the game, it'd be nice if he wrote his own synopsis rather than cutting-and-pasting verbatim sections from the Wikipedia article on the game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Chu_Rocket). I kinda recognized key phrases (especially "Although a simple concept, this quickly becomes frantic with the relentless speed of the mice and four players fighting over them."), given that I wrote the majority of the article over a year ago.
This somewhat makes me want to look up, on Wikipedia, the other games he mentioned. I wonder if I should be a jerk.
A couple years ago, a friend and I were discussing the various deluge of instrument-based rhythm games. We came to the conclusion that the most awesome thing in the world would be if the next one was either an accordion game or a bagpipe game.
All what I'm saying is that it's a tragedy this isn't real.
I'd probably be more interested in this whole shebang if I didn't JUST get a bloody normal DS a month or two ago. And even that was stalling for a better deal. "Hey, I want to get hold of a DS and Mario Kart DS", I said to a friend. "Well, wait a month or two, they're releasing a package deal with the system and the game", he tells me.
My question is, is there going to be any sort of trade-in deal? That might be kind of tricky, of course, given each DS seems to have an ID on it which WFC games and friend codes are bound to (the specific game and the specific console are treated as a single "unit", the instructions say). But I know I'm not dropping another however-many dollars on another iteration of a console I JUST got done buying a bit ago.
I've never played HL2 (I have played/beaten HL1, however). I generally despite sprite comics, too.
But there's something about Concerned that I can't get enough of. Maybe it's the relative stability of the fourth wall and lack of a l33t author character. Maybe it's because it's actually following the plot of the game and not meandering around with whatever the author decides is "funny" that day. Maybe it's because the comic isn't a catchphase/meme generator.
Could be that despite being heavily tied to HL2, the comic isn't too injokey that it's entirely inaccessible to anyone who's never played the game. Could be the attention to details in the plot that the author gives it (i.e. Ravenholm could very well have been that way a few weeks before Freeman showed up). Or it could just be because it's downright silly fun to read.
I enjoy reading Concerned. If nothing else, it shows me what can really be done with a sprite comic-like setup* if it's not written by a hyperactive child of the 80s/90s.
*: Yes, I know it's not really a sprite comic, but that's the first thing that'll come to my mind whenever this sort of setup presents itself.
Z's definitely in an uncomfortable position on the Gamecube controller, but nine times out of ten, Z isn't a button of drastic importance. Still not a good place for it, but at least it's not needed often.
But, the other eighty replies already said that. So I'll go a different route; Z was kinda crowbarred onto the controller because, if I'm not mistaken, developers complained that it'd be harder to port PSX/PS2 games if the controller only had two shoulder buttons (L/R, as opposed to L1/L2/R1/R2). Thing is, I'm not sure how PSX/PS2 gamers handle four shoulder buttons. I've played a decent number games on the 'Cube, and I don't think I've ever once said to myself, "You know what would make this game a lot better? More shoulder buttons." Not counting games on older systems.
Even better, my laptop has a clock on it! Why not just pull that out, turn it on, and check the time?
With my watch, I just flick my wrist to see what time it is. Done and done. Sure, I oddly wear my watch on the wrist of my dominant hand for some reason, meaning I need to stop writing for a second if I happen to be doing so, but still, a flick of the wrist tells me the time. Not even that if I wear my watch... er... sidesaddle, I guess.
With my cell phone, I need to dig into my pocket, pull it out, press a button to wake up the display, and then return it to its home in my pocket. The problem gets worse when I'm sitting down, making the pocket harder to dig into. Fancy-schmansy cell phone clips only remove one step from the puzzle and make returning it harder. At any rate, far more effort than it's worth, I think.
Blast Corps is another of my all-time favorite games. It's just so bizzare a game. There's something about just driving a massive bulldozer through buildings that's just really fun. Plus the fact that Rare didn't take the whole thing as seriously as the game's story makes it out to be, resulting in the extra levels (anything from races to Pac-Man), the space levels, the simple prompt "Now do it faster!", and, of course, the game's final ranking, "You can stop now".
So that'd be on my list. Other games? Well, the staple multiplayer games would have to be there. Goldeneye 007, Mario Kart 64 (yes, for all its flaws, we still played that game to death), and Super Smash Bros. Both Zelda games, too. I don't care how much "Majora's Mask wasn't a true Zelda game whine whine whine", it was still a masterpiece.
My friends and I have fond memories of the N64 Mario Golf and Mario Tennis games, but without the ability to import GBC characters, that wouldn't last long. Star Fox 64's multiplayer lacked majorly, but its single-player was a blast. And if they can use the Revolution to increase the bleeding framerate, the original Perfect Dark might be tolerable. If they have the rights to put it on the Rev, too.
There's probably a few I can't remember, but those'll work for a start. Yes, I am a bit of a crusty old hippy Nintendo fanboy, what of it?
So... um... what's stopping a malicious spyware author (so... a spyware author) from... shall we say... "advertising" for a company he or she doesn't like, thus placing said company on this list (for the sake of argument, assume this company is innocent)? What's the innocent company going to do, try explaining that they don't advertise with spyware/adware and don't have any hidden programming shops for such a purpose?
And if such an explanation flies, what would stop a malicious company from making a hidden programming shop to make spyware/adware and denying any knowledge of it?
"This is a really damaging worm. This is not one of those worms that is interested in having access to your machine for purposes later on. This worm will really damage your machine," Georgia Tech's Furst said.
It'll really damage my machine? What, it'll grab an ice pick and start stabbing the motherboard? It'll jam a soldering iron into the processor? Maybe take a hacksaw to the hard drive?
Somehow, I'm a bit more concerned about worms that ARE interested in having access to my machine for purposes later on. Thrashing my data? Pshaw. I've got backups for that, and if it only triggers once a year, double pshaw. Keylogging? Packet sniffing? Extracting personal data to defraud me out in the real world? Using my computer to conduct attacks on other computers, leaving the blame to me? I consider those a wee bit more dangerous than something that will just "really damage" my machine.
Call me cynical, but after eleven years and endless delays and a cancellation, I'm not going to be happy until I've got a copy of it (yes, I mean a US copy) sitting cheerfully in my GBA, waiting to be played. Granted, I WILL be significantly happy once that DOES happen, but still...
I will say, though, that Earthbound remains one of my all-time favorite RPGs. Nintendo's localization crew has a LOT to live up to from that once they start translating Mother 3.
In a general case, I keep coming back to most any decent game whose goal is a high score, not to beat the game. Like, games that don't ever "end" until you lose. I've been known to hang around old Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, and Pac-Man machines (well, okay, the last one technically has a well-known "end", but that's a bit ridiculous) in arcades. Or in the more recent era, Crazy Taxi and the Wario Ware series.
For multiplayer, whenever a couple childhood friends of mine stop by, we always blow off an hour or so with Super Smash Bros Melee. There's just something about it that's done RIGHT that we keep coming back to. The Mario Kart games, too. I'd also keep coming back to Chu Chu Rocket's multiplayer if I could find anyone nearby who wasn't scared off by it...
(side note: why not a WFC-capable Chu Chu Rocket on the DS?)
So I guess the point is that when you take the time to make a game FUN, it stands up over time.
Sure, if you assume you ONLY use small text files or other documents, ONLY edit tiny, thumbnail-sized images, and never make a single mistake that you want to revert out of (i.e. enough edits have flooded the original state of the document out of Undo), the poster may have a point. In my opinion, it's still not that good a point, but it's still a point.
However, I know I work with somewhat largish GIMP images on a somewhat routine basis. Images which take anywhere from 5-35 seconds (sometimes more) to save, depending on the size and complexity. And this IS to the local hard drive, not a 5-1/4" disk. So, I'd rather not have GIMP itself deciding when it wants to block out edits for half a minute. And I'm not even a professional in this respect. My images are only in the 300dpi range and roughly comic-sized. I'm certain there's people out there with much, much larger things to work with.
That's not even considering project-managed filesets, like IDEs and such. Where "Save" could mean "Save this current code file", which SHOULD be somewhat small and quick, or it could mean "Save all the code files in this project and update all the controlling files so it can be opened in this IDE properly later". With a big project, that could mean rifling through thousands of little files, each one requiring its own file operation which, depending on the OS and underlying filesystem, could add up to massive amounts of time. Having an autosave mechanism that would do that entirely outside my control would be a pain and a half, to say the least.
Add to that the fact that I'd rather not rely on the program "knowing" when to save (i.e. "I want this saved NOW, before the storm outside kills power, not in the next five minutes when autosave decides to wake up"), and the nightmare that things like Microsoft Word's autosave throws into files, and I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with the poster's sentiments nearly entirely. Save can easily be a major hit on system resources even in these non-ancient days.
Microsoft's making an anti-virus program? Wait, where have I heard this one before....
Oh, wait, that's right! MS-DOS 6.2! Now I remember! Man, those were some hilarious times.
This is the same reason I don't trust Microsoft AntiSpyware, honestly. Think they'll actually pay attention to their antivirus program this time, now that public opinion's far more swayed against them and many people think they're to blame for the viruses/worms in the first place?
So, we change Daylight Savings time to conserve energy by... um... making time more magical, I guess. And you're concerned about PCs and operating systems that need patching?
Come ON, now, those are just simple patches or, at worst, ROM flashing. Kid's stuff. Especially with auto-patching systems. Let's talk VCRs, TVs, microwaves, clock radios, watches, and any other common household appliances that keep track of time, auto-adjust for daylight savings, and don't have happy little USB ports, floppy drives, CD drives, or data ports to patch their firmware. Try patching those, then see if you're still willing to cry over your PC.
Of course, the user's got it easy. They just have to put the upgrade in once it's available (if it's available). The programmer suddenly has an extra option they have to check for amidst anything that does time checking. Again, PCs are the easy case. Appliances and embedded systems, not so much. Show me the VCR and TV manufacturers who'd be willing to replace people's appliances for free once this goes through. That oughta be a riot.
All I'm saying is, for all the productivity and time that'll be wasted on a purely psychological issue, this better be some REAL special magic they're gonna use to conserve energy.
I have to say, the opening paragraph of the actual article DOES nicely break the fairly dismal tone set by the article here. To wit, "Don't panic - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not as bad as I had feared. Then again, it is not as good as I had hoped."
Obviously, not having seen the movie, the only point in the article I can wholeheartedly agree with is that I have no clue how exactly they planned on cramming Adams's writing style, much of whose humor comes from narratives typically lost in movie form, into a two-hour show while still remaining coherent. Of course, the reviewer seems to think coherency wasn't quite achieved.
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I'll be perfectly honest here: As someone who has yet to have a successful job application outside the education sector, I would LOVE to get some sort of feedback as to why I wasn't hired by some company X, if there is any specific to be had. Seriously. It would be an outrageous benefit to me applying to company Y, company Z, etc. Was it my college experience? Did they think my university was worthless, thus making my degree worthless? Was it because I don't have an arsenal of professional-grade GUI programs under my belt? Do I need more experience first (which is really irritating when applying for entry-level jobs)? Am I just the victim of too many other applicants who just happen to be better qualified, but there's otherwise nothing wrong with my talents and skills?
Without any feedback, and after talking to career counselors and refining his or her resume to an artform, there isn't much else for a jobseeker to try besides repeating the same application/resume to another prospective employer. The same one which may have those fatal flaws that kicked someone out of the last application process which will inevitably kick that same someone out of the next application process. Does that sound paranoid? Maybe it is, but when you don't have anywhere to turn for money, you've gotta start asking why you don't have anywhere to turn for money, and no feedback just compounds the issue.
(Me personally, I currently do research work for my college en route to a Master's degree, which I will try to leverage into Doctorate study elsewhere. So while I DID have a disastrous time job-hunting once I got my Bachelor's, don't assume I'm talking as myself, here. Just assume I'm talking as a hypothetical down-on-his/her-luck Bachelor-degree holding graduate.)
I understand that there's this whole "lawsuits as primary form of income" atmosphere in the country/world today, so there may be some apprehension on the part of employers to potentially hurt an applicant's feelings. However, perhaps offering the option to understand why an applicant wasn't hired (complete with legal notice that the applicant will not file suit for hurt feelings if said option is exercised) would be enough, and such feedback would help the applicant immensely.
Granted, in most cases the company has no reason to extend any sort of benefit to anyone not working for the company (especially if said benefit may result in helping the applicant to work at the company's competition). So, many companies may want to avoid giving such feedback if at all possible. Heartless, sure, but from a business perspective, understandable.
Or maybe I've just been living with blue-sky dreams looking out the windows of the ivory tower. Maybe.
One major problem is that many non-technical people try whatever is humanly possible to relate technical scenarios to "real-world" analogies. This goes for computer security, too; As other posters have mentioned, they try to line it up with their house in the neighborhood, and all too often come up with the line, "Well, why would they attack ME? I don't have anything valuable!". This, to them, equates with security. I should know, I've had that pulled on me before.
And this may be the problem you're experiencing. Try explaining that, in many cases, the computer itself is what "they" want (botnets, zombies, etc). Problem being, you'd be forced to come up with a real-world analogy for it. "It's like if someone could break into this house undetected, loaf around and steal food regularly, take your credit cards and use them freely, then start prank-calling the neighbors and blaming it on you, and everybody thought it WAS you."
The whole issue of a Windows machine being broken into in 15 minuts of a fresh install is even more difficult to put in non-technical terms. "Imagine there was an army of zombies [or robots, or people] roaming the neighborhood. They're going around trying everyone's front door to see if it's locked, and if it isn't, they walk right in and take over the place. Sometimes they try to pick the locks. They don't care if anyone calls the cops on them, there's far more of them than there are cops. And they don't care how long it takes, there's enough of them to try each and every door. And they don't talk to each other, so they'll keep trying the same doors over and over with different lockpicks. And each house they take over produces more zombies [or robots, or people]."
Now, both of those would just absurd to a non-techie, to say the least. So what I'm saying is that you need to try to draw analogies they can understand but don't sound ridiculous. You can provide documentation to back up your claims, but you'll need to convince them to read said documentation first, and that's where your creative storytelling skills come in.
Just my two units of fractional currency.
It may not be the fault of the distributor/packager of the software that the GPL shows up as a click-through EULA (well, not directly at least). Don't a lot of prepackaged installers (InstallShield, Nullsoft, etc) have a default field to fill in for a EULA? Perhaps it's just that whomever made the installer wants to put SOMETHING there to fill space and look special, not knowing that it's truly not needed (assuming you can't get away with leaving it empty). Or they think their program will look immature and flaky if it doesn't pop up with something that looks like it's threatening the user like the bigger companies do.
Or, it could just be that these people don't really read the GPL, per se, they just think it's "hip" and "trendy" and whatnot the kids are saying these days, dagnabbit. Then again, if the source is included in such a distribution (I've seen some that do), it may be a good idea to slap the license in at some point anyway.
Well, I never said they were PERFECT...
No, wait, those would be the next rating down from Dark. Erm...
If I recall something Rare said before on their letters page, they specifically made the Dark Sims to be unfair. Like, they could shoot from ladders like that, they could run faster than you could, they could fire without reloading, they could get infinite ammo at their whims, they could see through walls, etc. And I could swear I once saw a Dark Sim that I killed simply fade away and immediately respawn elsewhere, instead of flailing backward and taking a few seconds to respawn like any other player/sim.
I kinda liked that. If you're so l33t at PD that you can take on anything, it'll give you something blatantly unfair to deal with. Except on that same letters page, they still admitted that none of the sims of any skill knew how to deal with explosions (either firing or reacting to an explosion in progress).
That's another thing about the N64. They had an interesting amount of quirks to their games. Or maybe that was just Rare's N64 days. Ah, fun.
Y'know, when I hear the term "Output Mouse", I'm expecting the opposite of an input mouse; that is, the computer issues commands to move the mouse and it does so, taking your hand with it. And output clicks are handled by poking you in the fingers or thumb. Scroll wheel still needs work.
This just sounds like an LCD display duct-taped onto a mouse by comparison.
I like unlockables. Sometimes I like the feel of earning something, even just in video games. With some exceptions (scoring-based puzzle games, multiplayer-specific games, strategy games, etc), I don't like the concept of just having EVERYTHING laid out in front of me. I feel cheated. Yes, I mean I feel like I'm being cheated out of the game, not like I'm cheating the game itself.
But there has to be balance. I also like a game that is fully enjoyable from first power on. Where there's a lot to do and enjoy even without unlocking a single thing, but they're still there for those wanting to go after them (or if you're just that bored). Like, say, Smash Bros Melee. Sure, unlocking everything gives you roughly double the characters and levels you started with, but you still have a good amount to bash your friends around in from the get-go.
NOT like, say, the N64 incarnation of Mario Golf. With its four-character three-course (or was that just two?) glory that you had to keep hammering out complete rounds of golf to get any sort of variety out of it.
This doesn't mention story-based games (adventures, RPGs, etc). Those should be obvious that the story should be "unlocked" as you progress in it. Else you're better off just grabbing a DVD where you don't need to do any unlocking to sit through all the pretty pictures.
Besides, of course, unlocking region codes.
Cool, cool indeed. And you answered quite civilly to what I will admit was a rather snide post of mine (heh... sorry). Seriously, I gotta respect that.
I know, I know, GFDL and all. Though I could swear there was a clause regarding at least mentioning he got it from Wikipedia, that's not quite my beef. It's more of if this is what it's gotten to, gaming articles like these are even more of a joke than I thought before.
Not really an earth-shattering discovery, no...
Y'know, it's nice that this person put Chu Chu Rocket in his "Games That Nobody Played - But You Should" list. Really, it is. I've always considered it a classic and hope that Sega eventually makes a WFC version of it for the Nintendo DS.
But for as much as this guy likes the game, it'd be nice if he wrote his own synopsis rather than cutting-and-pasting verbatim sections from the Wikipedia article on the game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Chu_Rocket). I kinda recognized key phrases (especially "Although a simple concept, this quickly becomes frantic with the relentless speed of the mice and four players fighting over them."), given that I wrote the majority of the article over a year ago.
This somewhat makes me want to look up, on Wikipedia, the other games he mentioned. I wonder if I should be a jerk.
A couple years ago, a friend and I were discussing the various deluge of instrument-based rhythm games. We came to the conclusion that the most awesome thing in the world would be if the next one was either an accordion game or a bagpipe game.
All what I'm saying is that it's a tragedy this isn't real.
I'd probably be more interested in this whole shebang if I didn't JUST get a bloody normal DS a month or two ago. And even that was stalling for a better deal. "Hey, I want to get hold of a DS and Mario Kart DS", I said to a friend. "Well, wait a month or two, they're releasing a package deal with the system and the game", he tells me.
My question is, is there going to be any sort of trade-in deal? That might be kind of tricky, of course, given each DS seems to have an ID on it which WFC games and friend codes are bound to (the specific game and the specific console are treated as a single "unit", the instructions say). But I know I'm not dropping another however-many dollars on another iteration of a console I JUST got done buying a bit ago.
I've never played HL2 (I have played/beaten HL1, however). I generally despite sprite comics, too.
But there's something about Concerned that I can't get enough of. Maybe it's the relative stability of the fourth wall and lack of a l33t author character. Maybe it's because it's actually following the plot of the game and not meandering around with whatever the author decides is "funny" that day. Maybe it's because the comic isn't a catchphase/meme generator.
Could be that despite being heavily tied to HL2, the comic isn't too injokey that it's entirely inaccessible to anyone who's never played the game. Could be the attention to details in the plot that the author gives it (i.e. Ravenholm could very well have been that way a few weeks before Freeman showed up). Or it could just be because it's downright silly fun to read.
I enjoy reading Concerned. If nothing else, it shows me what can really be done with a sprite comic-like setup* if it's not written by a hyperactive child of the 80s/90s.
*: Yes, I know it's not really a sprite comic, but that's the first thing that'll come to my mind whenever this sort of setup presents itself.
Restoration of Lara Croft's good name? Doesn't that imply she had a good name to begin with?
*rimshot*
Z's definitely in an uncomfortable position on the Gamecube controller, but nine times out of ten, Z isn't a button of drastic importance. Still not a good place for it, but at least it's not needed often.
But, the other eighty replies already said that. So I'll go a different route; Z was kinda crowbarred onto the controller because, if I'm not mistaken, developers complained that it'd be harder to port PSX/PS2 games if the controller only had two shoulder buttons (L/R, as opposed to L1/L2/R1/R2). Thing is, I'm not sure how PSX/PS2 gamers handle four shoulder buttons. I've played a decent number games on the 'Cube, and I don't think I've ever once said to myself, "You know what would make this game a lot better? More shoulder buttons." Not counting games on older systems.
Maybe it's just the games I play.
Even better, my laptop has a clock on it! Why not just pull that out, turn it on, and check the time?
With my watch, I just flick my wrist to see what time it is. Done and done. Sure, I oddly wear my watch on the wrist of my dominant hand for some reason, meaning I need to stop writing for a second if I happen to be doing so, but still, a flick of the wrist tells me the time. Not even that if I wear my watch... er... sidesaddle, I guess.
With my cell phone, I need to dig into my pocket, pull it out, press a button to wake up the display, and then return it to its home in my pocket. The problem gets worse when I'm sitting down, making the pocket harder to dig into. Fancy-schmansy cell phone clips only remove one step from the puzzle and make returning it harder. At any rate, far more effort than it's worth, I think.
Blast Corps is another of my all-time favorite games. It's just so bizzare a game. There's something about just driving a massive bulldozer through buildings that's just really fun. Plus the fact that Rare didn't take the whole thing as seriously as the game's story makes it out to be, resulting in the extra levels (anything from races to Pac-Man), the space levels, the simple prompt "Now do it faster!", and, of course, the game's final ranking, "You can stop now".
So that'd be on my list. Other games? Well, the staple multiplayer games would have to be there. Goldeneye 007, Mario Kart 64 (yes, for all its flaws, we still played that game to death), and Super Smash Bros. Both Zelda games, too. I don't care how much "Majora's Mask wasn't a true Zelda game whine whine whine", it was still a masterpiece.
My friends and I have fond memories of the N64 Mario Golf and Mario Tennis games, but without the ability to import GBC characters, that wouldn't last long. Star Fox 64's multiplayer lacked majorly, but its single-player was a blast. And if they can use the Revolution to increase the bleeding framerate, the original Perfect Dark might be tolerable. If they have the rights to put it on the Rev, too.
There's probably a few I can't remember, but those'll work for a start. Yes, I am a bit of a crusty old hippy Nintendo fanboy, what of it?
So... um... what's stopping a malicious spyware author (so... a spyware author) from... shall we say... "advertising" for a company he or she doesn't like, thus placing said company on this list (for the sake of argument, assume this company is innocent)? What's the innocent company going to do, try explaining that they don't advertise with spyware/adware and don't have any hidden programming shops for such a purpose?
And if such an explanation flies, what would stop a malicious company from making a hidden programming shop to make spyware/adware and denying any knowledge of it?
Something's just not adding up with this.
"This is a really damaging worm. This is not one of those worms that is interested in having access to your machine for purposes later on. This worm will really damage your machine," Georgia Tech's Furst said.
It'll really damage my machine? What, it'll grab an ice pick and start stabbing the motherboard? It'll jam a soldering iron into the processor? Maybe take a hacksaw to the hard drive?
Somehow, I'm a bit more concerned about worms that ARE interested in having access to my machine for purposes later on. Thrashing my data? Pshaw. I've got backups for that, and if it only triggers once a year, double pshaw. Keylogging? Packet sniffing? Extracting personal data to defraud me out in the real world? Using my computer to conduct attacks on other computers, leaving the blame to me? I consider those a wee bit more dangerous than something that will just "really damage" my machine.
Call me cynical, but after eleven years and endless delays and a cancellation, I'm not going to be happy until I've got a copy of it (yes, I mean a US copy) sitting cheerfully in my GBA, waiting to be played. Granted, I WILL be significantly happy once that DOES happen, but still...
I will say, though, that Earthbound remains one of my all-time favorite RPGs. Nintendo's localization crew has a LOT to live up to from that once they start translating Mother 3.
In a general case, I keep coming back to most any decent game whose goal is a high score, not to beat the game. Like, games that don't ever "end" until you lose. I've been known to hang around old Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, and Pac-Man machines (well, okay, the last one technically has a well-known "end", but that's a bit ridiculous) in arcades. Or in the more recent era, Crazy Taxi and the Wario Ware series.
For multiplayer, whenever a couple childhood friends of mine stop by, we always blow off an hour or so with Super Smash Bros Melee. There's just something about it that's done RIGHT that we keep coming back to. The Mario Kart games, too. I'd also keep coming back to Chu Chu Rocket's multiplayer if I could find anyone nearby who wasn't scared off by it...
(side note: why not a WFC-capable Chu Chu Rocket on the DS?)
So I guess the point is that when you take the time to make a game FUN, it stands up over time.
Sure, if you assume you ONLY use small text files or other documents, ONLY edit tiny, thumbnail-sized images, and never make a single mistake that you want to revert out of (i.e. enough edits have flooded the original state of the document out of Undo), the poster may have a point. In my opinion, it's still not that good a point, but it's still a point.
However, I know I work with somewhat largish GIMP images on a somewhat routine basis. Images which take anywhere from 5-35 seconds (sometimes more) to save, depending on the size and complexity. And this IS to the local hard drive, not a 5-1/4" disk. So, I'd rather not have GIMP itself deciding when it wants to block out edits for half a minute. And I'm not even a professional in this respect. My images are only in the 300dpi range and roughly comic-sized. I'm certain there's people out there with much, much larger things to work with.
That's not even considering project-managed filesets, like IDEs and such. Where "Save" could mean "Save this current code file", which SHOULD be somewhat small and quick, or it could mean "Save all the code files in this project and update all the controlling files so it can be opened in this IDE properly later". With a big project, that could mean rifling through thousands of little files, each one requiring its own file operation which, depending on the OS and underlying filesystem, could add up to massive amounts of time. Having an autosave mechanism that would do that entirely outside my control would be a pain and a half, to say the least.
Add to that the fact that I'd rather not rely on the program "knowing" when to save (i.e. "I want this saved NOW, before the storm outside kills power, not in the next five minutes when autosave decides to wake up"), and the nightmare that things like Microsoft Word's autosave throws into files, and I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with the poster's sentiments nearly entirely. Save can easily be a major hit on system resources even in these non-ancient days.
Microsoft's making an anti-virus program? Wait, where have I heard this one before....
Oh, wait, that's right! MS-DOS 6.2! Now I remember! Man, those were some hilarious times.
This is the same reason I don't trust Microsoft AntiSpyware, honestly. Think they'll actually pay attention to their antivirus program this time, now that public opinion's far more swayed against them and many people think they're to blame for the viruses/worms in the first place?
So, we change Daylight Savings time to conserve energy by... um... making time more magical, I guess. And you're concerned about PCs and operating systems that need patching?
Come ON, now, those are just simple patches or, at worst, ROM flashing. Kid's stuff. Especially with auto-patching systems. Let's talk VCRs, TVs, microwaves, clock radios, watches, and any other common household appliances that keep track of time, auto-adjust for daylight savings, and don't have happy little USB ports, floppy drives, CD drives, or data ports to patch their firmware. Try patching those, then see if you're still willing to cry over your PC.
Of course, the user's got it easy. They just have to put the upgrade in once it's available (if it's available). The programmer suddenly has an extra option they have to check for amidst anything that does time checking. Again, PCs are the easy case. Appliances and embedded systems, not so much. Show me the VCR and TV manufacturers who'd be willing to replace people's appliances for free once this goes through. That oughta be a riot.
All I'm saying is, for all the productivity and time that'll be wasted on a purely psychological issue, this better be some REAL special magic they're gonna use to conserve energy.
I have to say, the opening paragraph of the actual article DOES nicely break the fairly dismal tone set by the article here. To wit, "Don't panic - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not as bad as I had feared. Then again, it is not as good as I had hoped."
Obviously, not having seen the movie, the only point in the article I can wholeheartedly agree with is that I have no clue how exactly they planned on cramming Adams's writing style, much of whose humor comes from narratives typically lost in movie form, into a two-hour show while still remaining coherent. Of course, the reviewer seems to think coherency wasn't quite achieved.