Maybe up to eight of the channels can be used for some simple FM-synth-like procedural waves, instead of just sample playback. That could be good, allowing for complex texture-enhancing stuff like pulse sweeps and other things that are a pain in the butt if using only raw samples. Of course, that would be a pain to program for, but it could be so worth it....
Unfortunately, most peoples' faith in the APA is so great, that if they (the APA) even hint at a link between video games and violence, everyone is going to say "See, I told you. Ban the games, they're dangerous!"
Come now, we can think more conspiratorially than this. Let's say a certain unnamed organization recently discussed at length here realized that tracking those playing these games would be, in effect, tracking those at high-risk for violent behaviour...
And so they encouraged these games to be on the market, with large organized methods for the players to deathmatch...
And then sit back and watch, let the kids play, and collect data to be sold to schools and other interested parties.
I'm not saying it's been done, or that anyone on the other team is smart enough to do it, but don't assume these studies will mean the BANNING of these games.
*grins like the Devil, having sown seeds of discord*
The great thing about my Nintendo Classic (and other's that I've played since, like the Playstation or N64) was that it never crashed. In all fairness, there were occasional bugs, but we called the "easter eggs".;)
There were some classic ones, too. occasionally on the old NES. The game was "Rollerball" by HAL, a great pinball game that had one annoying bug... it had multiball, and there was one area where one ball would knock another into an alley which had a return spring -- except if the velocity was great enough, the ball would get past the spring, and just stay in this endless loop.
Okay, it's not a crash. But it may as well have been. Just like how in "Sonic 3" for the Genesis, there were areas with those quarter-circle ramps, if you hit 'em just right you'd go into the wall and would be pretty much stuck. And in "Solstice" for the NES, you could use a combination of the time-stop potion and a block to jump up off the screen, and totally frotz the wall-collision code. (If you had mad-phat skillz, which would be me. Anyone else who ever got a 100% score in that brilliant game, write me.)
"Super Mario Bros. 3" had blocks that would show up in the wrong color. "Double Dragon" actually just plain *hung* on me, once at least. And I remeber a cheap game called "Pyramid" that had more fatal flaws than the characters in a Shakespearean play.
Anyhow, point is, even if the system is flawless, you can count on programmers to break it. That can be a bonus, though... how long until a game on the X-Box (XXX-Box? Let's not go there) would come with its own code to bypass the embedded system and work its own hardware-level magic? I can see prominent game houses writing their own operating system. (KonamiOS? HAL Linux? CapcomCE? *grin*)
Or just one solid Trojan.... put the BO in X-Box. </troll>
X-Box? You know, most of the tech support calls I get are Win9x, and most of those refer to the close button as the X Button. The implications are clear. *grin*
We have iMac, eMachines, vBank, and the like... what was the very first example of this lowercase-letter-first uppercase-letter-second travesty of typography? Does the prize go to "dBase"?
It sounds like a joke, but given Microsoft's legal history we can't laugh until after MS announces a different name for the product, its display system, etc. Because of history, neither the X Consortium or our community can easily dismiss the continued use of "X" as a mere coincidence. The legal trademark holder *must* ask Microsoft to find a different name since the proposed name is likely to cause massive confusion among the public and (non-Unix-centric) technical communities.
IANAL, but... I seem to recall that this isn't as obvious a statement, legally, as it looks. The argument can be made by Microsoft that these two products are in totally different categories, and thus not in direct competition. X-Windows is a graphical shell. X-Box is a video game console. Even a conspiracy-lover such as myself can look at that and find the connection between the two a bit dubious.
Then again, I see a lot of this now, and in the future, and sometimes in the other direction. The company I work for just changed their name to The iSpark Group. (I mentioned upon its announcement that it looked like 'iMac' and was thus rather misleading, distasteful, trendy, and amateurish... and all I got back was a blank stare. At least it's a great company despite the name.)
Long and short, X is a letter of the alphabet, and more than the flood of 'iThis' and 'eThat' and 'vTheOther' monikers, it's generic yet with impressive customer response. If there were no X-Windows, X-Box would still be a great name, and a likely one for them to pick. (Just like X-Files, X-Men, and X-acto. Wait, I smell lawsuit.... *grin*)
It's good that Palm is keeping up, and don't forget, this doesn't mean all new Palm models will be in color. I'm sure they'll still provide the old black & white Palms until color has been proven to be cheap enough.
Yes, but consider this.... once color has been let out of Pandora's box, new apps and new versions of older apps will suddenly offer color as an option to the UI. Then, there will be new features that are only available if you have color. Then, they will require color. If Palm users are fortunate, this curve will follow the trend of price for a new unit. If they are not, the color will be used to force the purchase of new models early. We've seen the tail wag the dog before, I needn't name instances.... Just think of any program that "must" have a 16-bit display for no good reason, such as a music player... or webpages that must have images loaded to be navigated....
And here I am playing Devil's Advocate. It's my favorite game. *grin*
I think that Intel's star is falling and that the Athlon's superior performance over the P3 was no fluke. (Also that is one mighty unoriginal name)
Ah, so quick we are to follow our beloved underdog into the abyss. Have we already forgotten the criticism given Intel for their products' names? Their break from a numbered series into the unique, trademarkable identifier "Pentium" was ridiculed by the tech community and turned every which way but loose. Now, faced with the fact that they have reverted to a numbering series, and it is our beloved AMD who has jumped onto the bandwagon of naming computer hardware like new-model cars, your attitude changes?
I laughed at the Athlon's name, but let its performance speak for itself, please don't lessen it by adding irrelevant nitpicking. Save that for the marketing divisions of the involved manufacturers.
> Most of us use Linux because it works, I hope, not because it's not what the status quo uses.
This has truth, but am I correct in stating that much of the city of Linux was built with bricks forged in the desire to develop a great idea into a working idea?
Programmers are like those of us who play with Lego blocks. They start with a notion of what to build, work it into a finished model... it is zoomed around the room with engine noises, then sits briefly on the shelf, and then the pieces are turned to another idea shortly afterwards. The point is the development of the bold new idea.
There are indeed those who try simply to be counter-culture and grasp at a new OS for the sake of being such. There are also those who grasp a new OS for the intellectual pursuit of making it work. The latter sort are for whom this article is posted, yes?
> Who knows, maybe one of us could be the next Stanley Kubrick.
Perhaps, but look at how often Kubrick uses massively long segments of almost-still-image.... I doubt that the poor, struggling 28.8 modem user would want to download massive DVD-quality movies just to find out that about half of the footage was a long, dragged-out establishing shot.
To be more successful, you'd have to make certain that no single image lingers on the screen for too long. In fact, to be absolutely certain that the audience will stay tuned and glued to their seats for every precious kilobyte, one would have to keep a fast pace of eye-grabbing imagery, never giving the viewer a single moment to think their bandwidth is poorly-spent or wasted.... Bright colors! Loud music! Fast action!
Oh, wait, that's how film is going today anyhow. Looks like this is indeed the perfect time to introduce web-movies.
Let's not forget that the original Amigas were the birthplace of the MOD music format, revolutionary for home computer music. Over time, these files have evolved to become more powerful in later mutations, and have been featured in too many Apogee and Epic Megagames productions to count. Unreal used them (well, the recent mutations known as XM and IT.) The artists and coders weren't the only ones having a field day with the revolutionary power of that legendary machine, the musicians loved it so much they took the music format with them into the PC world (and occasionally, the Mac, and so on.)
I knew from the second the change in OS was announced that the new Amiga was doomed, the whole of its development little more than a feeler for market interest. So I say, let's not grieve the fact that it hasn't been brought back, and instead lern from what was good about the Amiga and work with that on what platforms do exist. The new implementations of MOD-style music are one of the finest examples of that.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe up to eight of the channels can be used for some simple FM-synth-like procedural waves, instead of just sample playback. That could be good, allowing for complex texture-enhancing stuff like pulse sweeps and other things that are a pain in the butt if using only raw samples. Of course, that would be a pain to program for, but it could be so worth it....
Just speculation.
Come now, we can think more conspiratorially than this. Let's say a certain unnamed organization recently discussed at length here realized that tracking those playing these games would be, in effect, tracking those at high-risk for violent behaviour...
And so they encouraged these games to be on the market, with large organized methods for the players to deathmatch...
And then sit back and watch, let the kids play, and collect data to be sold to schools and other interested parties.
I'm not saying it's been done, or that anyone on the other team is smart enough to do it, but don't assume these studies will mean the BANNING of these games.
*grins like the Devil, having sown seeds of discord*
The great thing about my Nintendo Classic (and other's that I've played since, like the Playstation or N64) was that it never crashed. In all fairness, there were occasional bugs, but we called the "easter eggs". ;)
There were some classic ones, too. occasionally on the old NES. The game was "Rollerball" by HAL, a great pinball game that had one annoying bug... it had multiball, and there was one area where one ball would knock another into an alley which had a return spring -- except if the velocity was great enough, the ball would get past the spring, and just stay in this endless loop.
Okay, it's not a crash. But it may as well have been. Just like how in "Sonic 3" for the Genesis, there were areas with those quarter-circle ramps, if you hit 'em just right you'd go into the wall and would be pretty much stuck. And in "Solstice" for the NES, you could use a combination of the time-stop potion and a block to jump up off the screen, and totally frotz the wall-collision code. (If you had mad-phat skillz, which would be me. Anyone else who ever got a 100% score in that brilliant game, write me.)
"Super Mario Bros. 3" had blocks that would show up in the wrong color. "Double Dragon" actually just plain *hung* on me, once at least. And I remeber a cheap game called "Pyramid" that had more fatal flaws than the characters in a Shakespearean play.
Anyhow, point is, even if the system is flawless, you can count on programmers to break it. That can be a bonus, though... how long until a game on the X-Box (XXX-Box? Let's not go there) would come with its own code to bypass the embedded system and work its own hardware-level magic? I can see prominent game houses writing their own operating system. (KonamiOS? HAL Linux? CapcomCE? *grin*)
Or just one solid Trojan.... put the BO in X-Box. </troll>
It sounds like a joke, but given Microsoft's legal history we can't laugh until after MS announces a different name for the product, its display system, etc. Because of history, neither the X Consortium or our community can easily dismiss the continued use of "X" as a mere coincidence. The legal trademark holder *must* ask Microsoft to find a different name since the proposed name is likely to cause massive confusion among the public and (non-Unix-centric) technical communities.
IANAL, but... I seem to recall that this isn't as obvious a statement, legally, as it looks. The argument can be made by Microsoft that these two products are in totally different categories, and thus not in direct competition. X-Windows is a graphical shell. X-Box is a video game console. Even a conspiracy-lover such as myself can look at that and find the connection between the two a bit dubious.
Then again, I see a lot of this now, and in the future, and sometimes in the other direction. The company I work for just changed their name to The iSpark Group. (I mentioned upon its announcement that it looked like 'iMac' and was thus rather misleading, distasteful, trendy, and amateurish... and all I got back was a blank stare. At least it's a great company despite the name.)
Long and short, X is a letter of the alphabet, and more than the flood of 'iThis' and 'eThat' and 'vTheOther' monikers, it's generic yet with impressive customer response. If there were no X-Windows, X-Box would still be a great name, and a likely one for them to pick. (Just like X-Files, X-Men, and X-acto. Wait, I smell lawsuit.... *grin*)
It's good that Palm is keeping up, and don't forget, this doesn't mean all new Palm models will be in color. I'm sure they'll still provide the old black & white Palms until color has been proven to be cheap enough.
Yes, but consider this.... once color has been let out of Pandora's box, new apps and new versions of older apps will suddenly offer color as an option to the UI. Then, there will be new features that are only available if you have color. Then, they will require color. If Palm users are fortunate, this curve will follow the trend of price for a new unit. If they are not, the color will be used to force the purchase of new models early. We've seen the tail wag the dog before, I needn't name instances.... Just think of any program that "must" have a 16-bit display for no good reason, such as a music player... or webpages that must have images loaded to be navigated....
And here I am playing Devil's Advocate. It's my favorite game. *grin*
I think that Intel's star is falling and that the Athlon's superior performance over the P3 was no fluke. (Also that is one mighty unoriginal name)
Ah, so quick we are to follow our beloved underdog into the abyss. Have we already forgotten the criticism given Intel for their products' names? Their break from a numbered series into the unique, trademarkable identifier "Pentium" was ridiculed by the tech community and turned every which way but loose. Now, faced with the fact that they have reverted to a numbering series, and it is our beloved AMD who has jumped onto the bandwagon of naming computer hardware like new-model cars, your attitude changes?
I laughed at the Athlon's name, but let its performance speak for itself, please don't lessen it by adding irrelevant nitpicking. Save that for the marketing divisions of the involved manufacturers.
> Imagine if this really takes off - and they get the cash to invest more development. A cross between an AIBO and a vacuum cleaner!!!
Yeah. There's one in the show Teletubbies. It's called the Noo-Noo.
ObTopic: Now, if only it could recognize when it picked up a stray Lego and reassemble itself....
> Most of us use Linux because it works, I hope, not because it's not what the status quo uses.
This has truth, but am I correct in stating that much of the city of Linux was built with bricks forged in the desire to develop a great idea into a working idea?
Programmers are like those of us who play with Lego blocks. They start with a notion of what to build, work it into a finished model... it is zoomed around the room with engine noises, then sits briefly on the shelf, and then the pieces are turned to another idea shortly afterwards. The point is the development of the bold new idea.
There are indeed those who try simply to be counter-culture and grasp at a new OS for the sake of being such. There are also those who grasp a new OS for the intellectual pursuit of making it work. The latter sort are for whom this article is posted, yes?
> Who knows, maybe one of us could be the next Stanley Kubrick.
Perhaps, but look at how often Kubrick uses massively long segments of almost-still-image.... I doubt that the poor, struggling 28.8 modem user would want to download massive DVD-quality movies just to find out that about half of the footage was a long, dragged-out establishing shot.
To be more successful, you'd have to make certain that no single image lingers on the screen for too long. In fact, to be absolutely certain that the audience will stay tuned and glued to their seats for every precious kilobyte, one would have to keep a fast pace of eye-grabbing imagery, never giving the viewer a single moment to think their bandwidth is poorly-spent or wasted.... Bright colors! Loud music! Fast action!
Oh, wait, that's how film is going today anyhow. Looks like this is indeed the perfect time to introduce web-movies.
Let's not forget that the original Amigas were the birthplace of the MOD music format, revolutionary for home computer music. Over time, these files have evolved to become more powerful in later mutations, and have been featured in too many Apogee and Epic Megagames productions to count. Unreal used them (well, the recent mutations known as XM and IT.) The artists and coders weren't the only ones having a field day with the revolutionary power of that legendary machine, the musicians loved it so much they took the music format with them into the PC world (and occasionally, the Mac, and so on.)
I knew from the second the change in OS was announced that the new Amiga was doomed, the whole of its development little more than a feeler for market interest. So I say, let's not grieve the fact that it hasn't been brought back, and instead lern from what was good about the Amiga and work with that on what platforms do exist. The new implementations of MOD-style music are one of the finest examples of that.