I'd like to see someone make a comparison review between the Wing and HTC's TyTn. They look pretty similar, but the TyTn looks to be a bit more robust in the processor department.
They should market a dedicated device to display the contents of the CD. A tablet style device with all the data pre-loaded, weather-proofed and ruggedized, and runs off solar batteries... If you crash landed on a desert island, you could use it to build a new civilization. Give it a way to update itself over the sub-etha, ehm, wi-fi, and you've got a great device there...
Don't worry. SCO will probably just sue them for it. It's been at least 20 minutes since they've filed suit against someone. They're probably getting all fidgety.
They should have embroidered the images with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous DMCA laws. A later and wilier developer should send the images backwards in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sue id Software for infringement of the same laws.
I read through most of the filing... (What I could understand of it, anyway) I never understood how the Glider program violates anything other than the EULA or TOS. I didn't see anything that would violate copyright... I could understand if it used WoW code to do what it does, but I didn't see anything along those lines.
I just got a Sony 70" LCoS TV, and have been a bit disappointed in the availability of consoles that display resolutions better than 480P... I thought the Wii would have a better resolution than the Gamecube... But alas, it does not. I thought the PS2 would be able to do better than 480i, but I have yet to find a setting for this. (Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.) I don't have a 360, but I am not really interested in it. It appears that I must buy a PS3 just to get a decent picture... That's a bummer.
To me, Vista seems quite a bit like the current state of the next generation DVDs. Most people don't need them or get any benefit from them, but the media companies are really pushing to re-sell the same stuff to people that they already have. People already have most of what's in Vista, they really don't need the upgrade, but MS would have you believe it's so much better that it's actually worthwhile to get... just so they can re-sell the same stuff to people that they already have. There's no real need for this stuff, but they're trying to create a market there anyway.
Personally, I've never gone beyond W2K. I still don't see a compelling reason to "upgrade"
The Fanbois will never let this 'only one console' thing happen. They'd launch some kind of jihad against the surviving consoles the likes of which the world has never seen. The aftermath would leave the world a scorched earth, barren, desolate place. No life would remain, only the scarred, smoking rubble of a once proud gaming civilization. Perhaps the consoles themselves would rise up and enslave the populace, using the humans as living pawns in their own games. Interestingly, these scenarios are only marginally worse than the existing console related threads which appear routinely on/.
This sounds very much like: "In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell."
Blame Hollywood. It all started with them. They made war movies glorifying the violence in the wars. Video games just put the control in the hands of the viewer.
WWII was also a horrific event. Do you think that movies based upon it, such as Saving Private Ryan are shameless exploitations of the event? Should they all have been pulled? Should all the war games ever made be pulled? All games in which any person harms another person?
If this 'game' (It's more of a documentary) were non-interactive, this would be a non event. However, you put the viewer in control, call it a 'game', and it's the worst thing since Hitler.
"Do you REALLY think the public will stand for that? No. They won't. If this is a real problem, rather than the theoretical slippery slope you are getting excited about, then it will be solved, or consumers will start lawsuits."
You're right. They won't stand for it. (At least, the ones who actually have a clue that it's happening...) They might get involved in long, expensive lawsuits to get rid of this restriction. MS will claim that it's an essential part of the entire OS, and impossible to remove. Along the way, someone might figure out a way and show it to them. They might go to jail for doing so, though. A judge might give MS a year or two to remove it themselves, and by the time Vista's successor comes around, they might have a patch for it. Either way, it'll be that way for years...
That's just a pessimistic view of the situation. It would certainly be handled better than this. Crap. I forget, which 'essential' feature of Windows are we talking about again, because this sounds awfully familiar...
That's funny. I forget what site it was on, but someone installed Vista on a handful of 'modern' PCs and did some benchmarking. They compared how long it took to open common applications, navigate windows, configure various options, etc... Several 'modern' PCs just ran amazingly slow... And this wasn't a beta or RC copy.
I'll try to find the article.
By the way, I was wondering if you copied and pasted your post directly out of one of Ballmer's interviews or if you just write their brochures for a living.
With the exception of "Almost nobody is going to "buy" Vista." You may be thinking of the kids who will download it, but yes, a lot of people are going to be buying this. A lot of businesses will be buying this simply because it's the next new thing from Microsoft. Is it any good? Does it get us anything we need? Who cares? New version = must be better! Buy it! Buy it now! They'll be buying site licenses and support programs and new versions of Office to go with it. MS gets to sell all of its products all over again to huge companies all over the world. Somewhere, right now, a MS accountant just soiled himself thinking of this very concept. That's where they make their big money.
And yes, people will be buying it. Halo addicts who want to play the next version are forced to go with this OS because the next Direct X just won't work on any other OS. *cough*bullshit*cough* They'll figure out more ways to leverage themselves into people's computers before they actually buy a new PC. Because hey, it's a new version! Let's all buy it!/sigh
Some of my favorite Fallout moments were completing quests that actually made a difference. Go kill the thugs terrorizing a town and the town gets happy. Go blow up the outhouse that leads down to a cave, and you have crap all over the place forever. Take out one of the major factions in town and things change...
One thing I hate about typical MMORPGS is that everything is infinitely repeatable. It has to be. If I can do a quest, then you have to be able to do the same quest. For that to work, everything has to reset.
If I screw with the controls to the nuclear reactor and irradiate everyone in town, I don't want to run back into town and see everyone has come back to life and waiting to see if you're going to kill them all too. If I want to run into town and kill everyone there, right down to the women and children and claim the town as my own, I don't want to see you come in and do business with the newly resurrected weapons dealer.
I had no idea you could do that. How does that work exactly? My CC company will care if I tell them I said "cancel my account" and hang up? This sounds great, if my CC company doesn't laugh at me for doing it...
I had this service for a several months. I started with a free 2 month trial from somewhere. At first, it was cool to play the really old Pitfall-era games. However, as soon as I started playing the more recent games, I started having lots of problems. The application would crash, games would fail to start, some large games insisted on re-downloading every time I wanted to play them (the 'correct' behavior was to cache these games to have them available immediately after the first download.)
A pleasant surprise was that someone was available on their tech support line all the time, with little wait times. However, after calling several times and learning their standard repair attempt routine, I could repeat all their steps on my own. Usually this met with very limited success. Some times games would work once when tech support was on the line, then not work again on later attempts. Unfortunately, several of the repair attempts required wiping the entire game cache, including several hundred meg games and all saved game files.
Since they really don't want anyone to quit their service, they were nice enough to continuously extend my service month after month for free. I'd send them error reports, they'd give me free months. This was a great arrangement unless you took all the crashes and frustration into account.
I finally couldn't take it anymore, and tried to cancel. After nearly an hour of attempting to convince some customer support guy that I really did want to cancel and didn't want yet another free month, I finally gave in and accepted another free month. This came with a promise that the next patch would make things all better, thanks to my heroic beta testing.
Another month later and even more frustration from the very few attempts I made to actually use the service anymore, I called again to cancel. This time I was firm, took no prisoners, and was able to cancel after a mere half hour of repeating "No, I really want to cancel" to the customer service brick wall.
I think it's a great service and I'd be a paying subscriber if it worked as advertised. Unfortunately, since the entire application is just an emulator, and it's got to emulate so many different platforms, it's going to be buggy. Yes, I know that some people may have never seen a single bug ever. There's always someone that this happens to, and this time it happened to me. Fortunately this is not common to any other game I play or I'd be quite sad.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to see someone make a comparison review between the Wing and HTC's TyTn.
They look pretty similar, but the TyTn looks to be a bit more robust in the processor department.
They should market a dedicated device to display the contents of the CD.
A tablet style device with all the data pre-loaded, weather-proofed and ruggedized, and runs off solar batteries... If you crash landed on a desert island, you could use it to build a new civilization.
Give it a way to update itself over the sub-etha, ehm, wi-fi, and you've got a great device there...
Don't worry. SCO will probably just sue them for it.
It's been at least 20 minutes since they've filed suit against someone. They're probably getting all fidgety.
They should have embroidered the images with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous DMCA laws.
A later and wilier developer should send the images backwards in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sue id Software for infringement of the same laws.
*Like the one you're wearing*
I read through most of the filing... (What I could understand of it, anyway) I never understood how the Glider program violates anything other than the EULA or TOS. I didn't see anything that would violate copyright...
I could understand if it used WoW code to do what it does, but I didn't see anything along those lines.
/\/\0D p4r3|\|7 UP
The thought had occurred to me as well.
Therefore, I submit that I need a Ferrari to find out.
And a Romanian gymnast to explore my previous hypothesis.
I submit that there are some activities which would be that much better because they were performed in the backseat of a Ferrari...
I just got a Sony 70" LCoS TV, and have been a bit disappointed in the availability of consoles that display resolutions better than 480P...
I thought the Wii would have a better resolution than the Gamecube... But alas, it does not.
I thought the PS2 would be able to do better than 480i, but I have yet to find a setting for this. (Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.)
I don't have a 360, but I am not really interested in it.
It appears that I must buy a PS3 just to get a decent picture...
That's a bummer.
To me, Vista seems quite a bit like the current state of the next generation DVDs. Most people don't need them or get any benefit from them, but the media companies are really pushing to re-sell the same stuff to people that they already have.
People already have most of what's in Vista, they really don't need the upgrade, but MS would have you believe it's so much better that it's actually worthwhile to get... just so they can re-sell the same stuff to people that they already have.
There's no real need for this stuff, but they're trying to create a market there anyway.
Personally, I've never gone beyond W2K. I still don't see a compelling reason to "upgrade"
The Fanbois will never let this 'only one console' thing happen. They'd launch some kind of jihad against the surviving consoles the likes of which the world has never seen. The aftermath would leave the world a scorched earth, barren, desolate place. No life would remain, only the scarred, smoking rubble of a once proud gaming civilization. Perhaps the consoles themselves would rise up and enslave the populace, using the humans as living pawns in their own games. Interestingly, these scenarios are only marginally worse than the existing console related threads which appear routinely on /.
This sounds very much like: "In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell."
Wizards and Warriors
A top-view Gauntlet
A real sequel to Actraiser
How about 'Realisticly re-creating it in a visual medium' and glorifying it?
Or was your point about something else?
"Just try to make a game where you incarnate a German SS going on a shooting spree, and you'll quickly draw the ire of the entire nation."
I think I did this in Castle Wolfenstein.
Quite a few games have put the player in the role of a German in various WWII conflicts.
Blame Hollywood. It all started with them. They made war movies glorifying the violence in the wars. Video games just put the control in the hands of the viewer.
WWII was also a horrific event. Do you think that movies based upon it, such as Saving Private Ryan are shameless exploitations of the event? Should they all have been pulled? Should all the war games ever made be pulled? All games in which any person harms another person?
If this 'game' (It's more of a documentary) were non-interactive, this would be a non event. However, you put the viewer in control, call it a 'game', and it's the worst thing since Hitler.
Will older OS's be retrofitted to understand this? W2K, for example?
"Do you REALLY think the public will stand for that? No. They won't. If this is a real problem, rather than the theoretical slippery slope you are getting excited about, then it will be solved, or consumers will start lawsuits."
You're right. They won't stand for it. (At least, the ones who actually have a clue that it's happening...) They might get involved in long, expensive lawsuits to get rid of this restriction. MS will claim that it's an essential part of the entire OS, and impossible to remove.
Along the way, someone might figure out a way and show it to them. They might go to jail for doing so, though.
A judge might give MS a year or two to remove it themselves, and by the time Vista's successor comes around, they might have a patch for it.
Either way, it'll be that way for years...
That's just a pessimistic view of the situation. It would certainly be handled better than this.
Crap. I forget, which 'essential' feature of Windows are we talking about again, because this sounds awfully familiar...
Read what he wrote again. He's talking about future Vista-compliant hardware.
See?
"HARDWARE that will inevitably be designed around Microsoft's asinine specifications"
"Not amazing, not horrible, but decent."
"game performance between both XP and Vista, and honestly, there isn't a noticeable difference."
"As for normal usage, I do sense a bit of UI sluggishness compared to XP"
So at best, its performance is comparable to XP?
Sounds like a compelling argument to me for complete replacement of every OS on our network!
Here I thought 'upgrades' were supposed to improve performance...
A big "Thank you!" goes out to Microsoft for setting me straight on that point!
"1. Vista runs extremely well on any modern PC."
/sigh
Buhahahahahahahahaa!!!
*gasp*
Hahahahahaha!!!
*gasp*
That's funny.
I forget what site it was on, but someone installed Vista on a handful of 'modern' PCs and did some benchmarking. They compared how long it took to open common applications, navigate windows, configure various options, etc...
Several 'modern' PCs just ran amazingly slow... And this wasn't a beta or RC copy.
I'll try to find the article.
By the way, I was wondering if you copied and pasted your post directly out of one of Ballmer's interviews or if you just write their brochures for a living.
With the exception of "Almost nobody is going to "buy" Vista."
You may be thinking of the kids who will download it, but yes, a lot of people are going to be buying this.
A lot of businesses will be buying this simply because it's the next new thing from Microsoft.
Is it any good? Does it get us anything we need? Who cares? New version = must be better! Buy it! Buy it now!
They'll be buying site licenses and support programs and new versions of Office to go with it. MS gets to sell all of its products all over again to huge companies all over the world. Somewhere, right now, a MS accountant just soiled himself thinking of this very concept. That's where they make their big money.
And yes, people will be buying it. Halo addicts who want to play the next version are forced to go with this OS because the next Direct X just won't work on any other OS. *cough*bullshit*cough*
They'll figure out more ways to leverage themselves into people's computers before they actually buy a new PC.
Because hey, it's a new version! Let's all buy it!
You make some good points here.
Some of my favorite Fallout moments were completing quests that actually made a difference.
Go kill the thugs terrorizing a town and the town gets happy.
Go blow up the outhouse that leads down to a cave, and you have crap all over the place forever.
Take out one of the major factions in town and things change...
One thing I hate about typical MMORPGS is that everything is infinitely repeatable. It has to be. If I can do a quest, then you have to be able to do the same quest. For that to work, everything has to reset.
If I screw with the controls to the nuclear reactor and irradiate everyone in town, I don't want to run back into town and see everyone has come back to life and waiting to see if you're going to kill them all too.
If I want to run into town and kill everyone there, right down to the women and children and claim the town as my own, I don't want to see you come in and do business with the newly resurrected weapons dealer.
I had no idea you could do that.
How does that work exactly?
My CC company will care if I tell them I said "cancel my account" and hang up?
This sounds great, if my CC company doesn't laugh at me for doing it...
I had this service for a several months. I started with a free 2 month trial from somewhere.
At first, it was cool to play the really old Pitfall-era games.
However, as soon as I started playing the more recent games, I started having lots of problems. The application would crash, games would fail to start, some large games insisted on re-downloading every time I wanted to play them (the 'correct' behavior was to cache these games to have them available immediately after the first download.)
A pleasant surprise was that someone was available on their tech support line all the time, with little wait times. However, after calling several times and learning their standard repair attempt routine, I could repeat all their steps on my own. Usually this met with very limited success. Some times games would work once when tech support was on the line, then not work again on later attempts. Unfortunately, several of the repair attempts required wiping the entire game cache, including several hundred meg games and all saved game files.
Since they really don't want anyone to quit their service, they were nice enough to continuously extend my service month after month for free. I'd send them error reports, they'd give me free months. This was a great arrangement unless you took all the crashes and frustration into account.
I finally couldn't take it anymore, and tried to cancel. After nearly an hour of attempting to convince some customer support guy that I really did want to cancel and didn't want yet another free month, I finally gave in and accepted another free month. This came with a promise that the next patch would make things all better, thanks to my heroic beta testing.
Another month later and even more frustration from the very few attempts I made to actually use the service anymore, I called again to cancel. This time I was firm, took no prisoners, and was able to cancel after a mere half hour of repeating "No, I really want to cancel" to the customer service brick wall.
I think it's a great service and I'd be a paying subscriber if it worked as advertised. Unfortunately, since the entire application is just an emulator, and it's got to emulate so many different platforms, it's going to be buggy.
Yes, I know that some people may have never seen a single bug ever. There's always someone that this happens to, and this time it happened to me. Fortunately this is not common to any other game I play or I'd be quite sad.
Endeavour is currently slated to fly 6/11/07, as STS-118. It's also the backup for the flight after next of Atlantis, STS-117 (2/22/07).