I was so stumped as to how could some reviewers give high scores to that pile of festering Black & White crap, I decided I'd see what my co-workers say about it. We had quite a few gaming maniacs, including one which had been in drone mode for a year straight, drooling over the upcoming B&W.
So I give them the CD. I even try not to influence them to my negative view of the game. Like I go, "hey, cool, there's this game where you play god, and can train a cow and stuff. wanna try it?"
So they'd take the CD. And bring it back after a day or two. Without exception, none of them liked it. At all. Even the former drooling fanboy all of a sudden tried to avoid talking about the game at all.
E.g.: Only _one_ of them was confortable with those mouse gestures. That one was one of our graphics artists, and very skilled with a mouse indeed. The rest (myself included) just wished that, since the retarded interface already painted the symbols at the bottom of the screen, we'd be allowed to just bloody click on them.
_That_'s how wide the gap was between the hype and Joe Average's impressions about that game. If that's not what overrated means, I don't know what is.
Well, that's what surprised me too. Even sites which ripped the game to shreds in their review, still had a knee jerk reaction to give B&W a high score.
E.g., take Firing Squad's review. Their review picked every single aspect of the horrible gameplay, retarded gestures, etc. Without going into how horrible _I_ thought the game was, it was obvious that the _reviewer_ hated every moment of it. He even went on to explicitly say that it might be good for people who never played a game before, and thus don't know what a good game is like, but that seasoned gamers should avoid it.
After such fighting words, you'd expect a low score, right? Something like at most 20%, right?
Wrong. At the end, out of the blue, and with no explanation, they give it a respectable 84% score.
I.e., should be getting almost 7.5% more capacity, not only 2.5%. If you add other weaseling, like "that's only the unformatted capacity", you're screwed out of even more. (Who the sex uses an unformatted drive, anyway? Please raise your hands. Thought so.)
And I don't know about you, but at that point some of us start to care.
If you bought 20 litres of gasoline at a gas station and got only 18.5 litres, because they redefined what "1l" means, I'd bet you wouldn't just shrug it off. And if your boss suddenly paid you 7.5% less, I'd bet you'd make quite a ruckus.
Plus, it's the principle that matters. I'm sick and tired of the current state of affairs in the computer industry, where basically the biggest liar wins. (And sets a trend for everyone else.) Just about every number you read is somehow fudged by some creative marketroid. Response times, TCO, whatever. You name it.
And methinks it was about damn time someone stood for the consumer, and put an end to this bullshitter race.
The point however, is that this thing is a gaming console. The _only_ point in owning one is if you're a gamer.
So damn right I'm actually interested in what a bunch of other gamers think about it. You know, the people who actually _play_ stuff?
Heck, let's not forget: where the ____ (sexual intercourse) were the parents when two irresponsible kids were playing with a gun? where were they when those kids were (supposed to be) learning the difference between right and wrong? You know, when they should have been taught to be responsible in the first place?
Oh wait. From parents who can't take responsibility, no wonder the kids never learned responsibility.
So those two play a game where (surprise!) if you shoot people, they DIE. We're not talking a D&D RPG, where people get resurrected by a low-ish level cleric all the time. We're not talking Diablo II, where upon death you just instantly respawn at home in your underwear. Etc.
We're talking a game which is about rather permanent death. That's it. If you've shot someone, they're dead. They're not coming back.
AND the whole premise of the game is that you're doing something _illegal_. Again, we're not talking an RPG where the king will personally thank you for slaughtering the enemies. We're talking a game where you can get chased by the cops for your actions.
So lemme recap: The game tells them it's deadly. The game tells them it's illegal. And yet the two irresponsible twits think "hey, it's cool, then. We gotta go kill someone in real life."
Not even wanting to take revenge for being humiliated or anything. (As was the case with some other shootings.) It wasn't some plan born in desperation. They just think, "hey, it's fun."
I hope they put the two dangerous idiots behind bars for the rest of their lives. Because there's something _fundamentally_ wrong in their minds.
Well, honestly, nowadays "it beats a Sun box" doesn't even say much. It's just marginally more meaningful than "it beats my old ZX Spectrum."
The Suns still struggle barely above 1 GHz, have a slow cache, and so on. It also doesn't help that they're still saddled with SDRAM memory, too. (At least in the case of the cheaper workstations, on a 32 bit memory bus too.) If we're talking programs that draw something, it also doesn't help that they're saddled with outdated _and_ overpriced video cards. And so on.
Even without SSE, there's no way in heck for that UltraSparc III to keep up with a P4. E.g., Sun's Java doesn't even generate SSE code, and it still runs faster on Windows than on Solaris. Go figure.
For all the BS about the advantages of 64 bits, the reality is that in 64 bit mode an UltraSparc actually runs _slower_. So be thankful that most of the apps for it (and certainly all benchmarks) really are compiled in 32 bit mode.
Frankly, other than a few PHBs, and a couple of people who think they're some form of resitance against Wintel if they buy Suns, the rest of us don't even consider Sun to still be in the race any more.
So yeah, your words about running Linux on an Athlon or Pentium reflect exactly what I'd say to anyone considering a Sun box: Get the cheapest PC that Dell sells, or build your own Duron system, install Linux on it, and there you go. You now have a Unix workstation, and it runs circles around any of Sun's workstations. Or, much as I'm no Mac fan, get a Mac. It'll be 64 bit, and based on BSD too.
My experience actually does reflect that Java is good and fine for micro-benchmarks (most of which are optimized away by the JIT, hence bogus speed measurements), but fails to impress me in real life situations.
No, I don't use object pools. No, I don't manually call System.gc(). Yes, I've read those books and a whole stack more.
Java still fails to measure up.
For starters, there is no allocating variables on the stack. There's also _no_ way to allocate an array of _objects_, all you can ever get is an array of _pointers_. Regardless of the bulls**t about how java's dynamic allocation and gc measure up to C's malloc and free, there's no way it can measure up against _not_ allocating anything dynamically and _not_ dereferencing an extra pointer level.
The garbage collector is also good and fine, but it's a flaming disaster when the machine swaps. Whereas a C program could run just fine and dandy when it's just a bit over the available memory, a Java program will cause the whole machine to thrash. Why? Because that retarded garbage collector _has_ to go through the whole allocated memory, causing it to get paged in and immediately paged out.
And so on and so forth.
And I'm not even getting into the disaster that are EJBs (enterprise java beans.) Whoppee... using CORBA to call methods over TCP/IP connections, _inside_ the same program. How's that for a retarded way to waste CPU cycles?
Yes, it's good and fine for server programs, because most server side programs really aren't that CPU intensive to start with. Heck, for most of them spawning a Perl process via CGI would still be fast enough. But that's all.
And Java on the client is still sad. Just sad.
And just like you say that C++ people make poor Java programmers, I'll go and say the opposite: if you're grown on Java, you have _no_ clue how it measures against C or C++. Even if you tried to compare, your C++ programs will be bloated, and will fail to use even the most elementary optimizations available.
Basically you'd be writing Java in C++. And whoppee, no wonder that then they're almost comparable in performance. (With Java still losing, but comparable.) But if you compare a _competently_ written Java program, versus an equally competently program that's been writted from the ground up in C++, the C++ one wins every time. Period.
I would like to say that maybe focusing on buffer overflows and exceptions is missing half the security problems in the first place. I've seen problems (written by consultants from a BIG company, I might add) along the lines of:
- assuming that "surely if we only created links to the valid data, all parameters on the destination page will only be valid ones. No need to check anything again."
The result? If the user was willing to edit the URL, they could edit the administrator's password instead of theirs. Effectively _anyone_ could take over the site without exploiting any buffer overflows or null pointers, just a little URL editing.
- Assuming that "if we said 'description' in the input field's label, surely noone will try to input something else."
The result? Effectively anyone was able to input JavaScript or VB Script code, which would execute in an admin's browser, when said admin reviewed the user's application.
- Failing to even think about non-repudiation and accountability.
E.g., when a user cancelled their account, all data about that user was instantly wiped out. It was like that user had never existed, and most traces of their activity were lost for ever.
And so on, and so forth.
Basically I won't argue against your argument that "Java is _more_ secure than C++". That is true. Some problems you can avoid easier in Java.
But I would strongly advise anyone against extrapolating that to mean "we use Java, therefore we are automatically 100% secure." That's not true. The number of problem that Java protects you against, is barely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
And even the parts where Java does protect you, retarded enough coding can turn those mechanisms into liabilities, instead of advantages. Retarded enough handling of RuntimeExceptions can bypass important code paths, and leave the system and/or its stored data in an inconsistent state. Sometimes an exploitable state, even.
Regardless of whether you program in Java or C or Assembly, you _still_ must carefully consider your options, assess threats, do code audits, and so on. Anyone who fails to do so, will have some very nasty surprises down the line.
Unfortunately, in a real world situation (as opposed to the dreams of someone walled in their own ivory tower), a program that crashes regularly is just short of useless. A program which malfunctions in the middle of writing data -- because half the logic got shortcircuited by a RuntimeException that cut straight through the last ditch "catch (Throwable all)" block -- is worse than useless.
For a geek, crashing early might be good coding practice. For a user, it's one e-commerce site they'll never visit again. (Yes, in a recent study, the main criticisms were stuff like the web site having a brain fart AFTER it swallowed the credit card number, leaving the user with no clue as to whether the order was processed or not.) Congrats, your site wasn't hacked, but the company is losing money hand over fist anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against Java, and I _do_ understand its advantages.
_But_ if using Java is your _only_ security, then you're doing it awfully wrong.
In Java, like in any other language, you _still_ have to do your own checks, and make some effort that the program will still work when confronted with malformed input. Especially when such input is not even a hacking attempt, but some hapless user typing "Jan 23, 74" instead of "23/01/1974" as you would like him to. Or he's included spaces in the credit card number (which causes Long.parseLong() to throw an exception.) Or whatever.
You do _not_ want the program to crash early and safe on the user, you want it to display a clear error message, and give the user plenty of clue as to how to correct the problem. And a chance to do so.
You also have to account for such user deviations as "what if he opens a link in a separate page, so now we have TWO pages sharing the same session id. And the user is doing different things in each." That's absolutely _deadly_ for brain-dead sites which store everything in the session. Just because Java's servlet interface makes it easy to store stuff in the session, doesn't mean it's also _safe_ to do so.
I've seen at least one e-commerce site which ended with products flagged "new user" and users flagged as "sold", because they relied on the session in the wrong way. Yes, noone took over their site, but the cost of that screw-up was very high nevertheless.
Briefly: again, just programming in Java doesn't automatically make your programs bullet-proof. There is no auto-magic substitute for good coding and design.
Maybe that "training" just involved showing what's aready done to someone who COULD ACTUALLY DO A FAR BETTER JOB? It did _not_ mean teaching them how to program.
Sorry to do the non-neighbourly thing, but lemme point at a simple fact: the dot-bomb meant a lot of incompetents and liars got hired as "programmers" for ludicrious sums. And _retard_ with _zero_ programming knowledge could put on a nice suit and get hired by a clueless PHB.
It was sorta like this: you're a drooling baker with an allergy to flour? No problem. Buy a bogus certifficate from some "learn QBasic without even coming to a course" fraudster, and suddenly you were a high paid IT consultant. Or don't even buy the fake certifficate, just go get hired anyway.
Even in the rare situations where those people eventually learned the language syntax, they had _no_ knowledge of the core libraries, _no_ knowledge of algorithms, _no_ idea of security, _no_ nothing. In some cases, _no_ intention to actually learn anything, either.
The code they produced was of piss-poor quality at best, and riddled with problems. In a lot of cases it was just a piss-poor job of copy and pasting (the wrong) sections from other people's programs.
A lot of them knew that they're cheats and frauds, and were content with that too. They only engaged in office politics games, and their only "professional" activity was backstabbing the ones who actually did the work.
Don't believe me? I've actually read a study that said only about 1 in 4 "programmers" could actually program _at_ _all_. The rest either lived as parasites off a real programmer, or made a living as the PHB's personal brown-noser.
Basically 3 in 4 were nothing more than ticks or leeches on a company. (Which often was a leech itself, like so many of the dot-coms.) They never gave anything useful, and only lived in luxury off other people's work.
Exorbitant funds, which could have better been used elsewhere, were effectively drained from the economy to keep these parasites living in cluster homes and driving sports cars.
Think this money just came out of thin air? No, they were paid by the actual companies which produced something. Every single company who silently footed the bill for yet another a failed project, was effectively a victim of these leeches.
How is _that_ situation better for the economy, than giving the job to someone actually competent? Oh yeah, let's keep over-paying a bunch of incompetent cheats and liars, just because they're proper American Citizens (TM).
Never mind that that kind of a financial black hole was causing more jobs to be lost in other sectors. Yeah, jobs also occupied by proper American Citizens (TM).
Let's also remember that, like with any other thing, your mileage may vary. I.e., what's important to you, may not even count at all for someone else. And viceversa. E.g.,
"Let's also remember that once ATi was much bigger than nvidia in graphics, and charged exorbitant prices for crappy chips, with shocking driver support."
Let's remember that I buy a card to play the games now, not to dish out holy vengeance for what ATI has been doing 5 years ago. If their cards run the games flawlessly now, and from my experience that _is_ the case, I couldn't care less if 5 years ago ATI had bad drivers or even if they sacrificed baby chickens to Satan. _Now_ they have good drivers, and that's enough for me.
"Let's also remember nvidia have much better performance so far in the more important (and independant) doom3 benchmarks"
So basically you do have _1_ (ONE!) game which runs faster. Congrats. Everything else runs faster on an ATI at the moment. Dunno, between a card which runs _one_ game faster (Nvidia), and one which runs everything else faster (ATI)... I'll pick the second any day.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not favouring any of the maker per se. When (or if) Nvidia cards become faster across the board, I'll buy Nvidia cards instead. Heck, if Matrox or S3 make a better card, I'll buy Matrox or S3 cards. But for now, I'll cheerfully stick to ATI.
"Finally linux support is a no brainer, nvidia have been doing it well for years (with support as far back as tnt),"
Which just illustrates my point that your mileage _will_ vary. Personally I'll do the non-slashdot thing and admit that I don't give half a damn about linux at home any more. No finer system for work, ok, but for gaming I'll just stick to Windows. I.e., if a Radeon runs better in Windows, that's more than enough for me.
If you run Linux at home, fair enough, use whatever works well in Linux. I'll stick to whatever works in Windows.
"ATi are onto a good thing right now with the current directx9 spec giving them an advantage in games that stick to the spec instead of the optimum end user experience"
What the heck happened to the idea that "sticking to the standards is good"? So basically standards are only good when you're bashing Microsoft? How come it's suddenly bad to stick to the specs, if it makes your favourite corporation lose in benchmarks?
Oh yeah, that damn "the way it's meant to be played" screen annoys me too.
No, god damn it, the way it's meant to be played on a PC is: on any video card. That's why we have abstraction layers, like DirectX, instead of directly flipping bits on the video card's ports, like in the bad old DOS days.
I find this to be just as insulting and lame as those "best viewed with only one kind of browser" web pages.
It almost puts me in a mind to return all games which sport such a loading screen. Not because I'd have anything against NVidia. (They're no better or worse than any other corporation.) But because I do have something against devs who think they're developping for only one video card.
If I wanted something which is tied to one very speciffic piece of hardware, I'd buy a console game instead. At least a console is less expensive than those video cards, and doesn't need a replacement every 6 months.
Seriously, the way I run all games is with 6x FSAA and at least 2x Anisotropic filtering (quality), max texture resolution, max shaddow details, etc. If the game supports that, TruForm too.
I _am_ an ex-3dfx fanboy, and for me image quality is important. And since I do have the money to burn for that addiction, sure, I'll cheerfully buy a $400 to $500 card if that's what it takes to get my fix of great looking graphics.
And yes, I _am_ a serious gamer. I clock at least 40 hours of gaming per week, and that's on a slow week.
[RANT] I really can't understand people who turn off all eye candy, to get a "boost" from 300 fps to 310 fps. I mean, really, no monitor can even display 300 frames per second, so what's the point? Even if you had your refresh rate at 100 Hz (which most el-cheapo CRTs or any expensive LCDs can't even do), that would still mean displaying 1 frame out of 3. You're still only actually seeing 100 fps, not 300 fps. So what's the point in ruining image quality for _zero_ reward? [/RANT]
Then can I interest you in buying this here state of the art Matrox G200, with a whole 8 MB SDR SGRAM? Hey, it's on sale. And surely you don't mind paying 400$ for it (i.e., as much as for a 9800 Pro or 5900 Pro), seein' as you explicitly don't want comparisons between cards.
Basically: There are enough reasons to benchmark a card, that don't involve fanboy pissing contests. If I am to pay somewhere between 400 and 500 US Dollars for a graphics card, I would indeed very much like to know how it performs.
And yes, that does involve stuff like "which of them performs better in HL2 or UT2003, with 6x FSAA and Aniso? and does anyone know if any cheats were involved?"
Well, that's that too. I was more like pointing out that even in the worst possible scenario, where an error would have been made, it still couldn't have been above the boiling point and still stay liquid in a paper cup. (It might stay liquid at such horror story temperatures under high pressure, but not in an open cup.)
You seem to forget that water boils at 100 degrees celsius. No more. If it was any higher, it would be vapor, not liquid. It's water, not molten lead, nor hot oil.
That temperature is _not_ high enough to "instantaneously destory skin, flesh and muscle". And it will _never_ produce 3rd degree burns.
It will be unpleasant, yes. It will cause minor damage, yes. But the horror story about instantaneously destroying flesh is so much bulls**t, it could fertilize a few acres.
You _could_ destroy flesh by holding it in boiling water for a longer while. You will notice that boiling meat (to make food) takes some time, it's not something that happens "instantaneously". By that time a little spilled water will have cooled off already.
But that's still missing the whole issue: coffee _is_ hot, and it's _supposed_ to be hot. It's prepared with boiling water. Whether you get it at a restaurant, or make it at home, or get it out of your office's coffee maker... guess what? It'll be hot. Even kids are supposed to know that.
Anyone who pours hot liquid on themselves and expect it not to hurt, is a _retard_. Plain and simple. They should be laughed at, not awarded ludicrious sums of money.
No, in fact make that: they should be fined for starting a ridiculous lawsuit with the sole purpose of getting money without work. Maybe that'll encourage people to actually _think_, instead of expecting money for being stupid.
It's almost as though it was a setup.
It feels like a setup because it _is_ a setup.
If you go by the IP and through the ISP to identify the account, you don't end up with your data pointing at a 12 year old girl. You just end up pointed at the family. No more, no less.
I.e., the one who most likely got called to court was not the girl, but her mother.
So how'd the girl end up into this all? Simple. The mother blamed her, not RIAA. I'd bet precisely because it feels like the perfect setup to squeeze some sympaty and make it look like the RIAA are heartless bullies.
Well, bingo, that's what I was thinking too.
Exactly how does going after an IP address point to the 12 year old in the family? No, really, someone please explain that to me. Did they have a separate computer, with a separate ISP account for each member of the family, or?
And yeah, I all the contempt in the world for the mother in that scenario.
Way I see it, it's just a natural response to the elitist attitude and/or "Amiga persecution syndrome" that a lot of Mac users _do_ suffer from. And if normal elitism wasn't enough, you only need go through a few threads right here on Slashdot to find gems like "Windows fanboys" about the average Windows user. Or words like "braiwashed" (either actually spelled out or implied) aren't that uncommon either.
Sad to say, that's more like "the average Mac owner post about Windows user", than an exception. Basically already when I read a Mac user post about Macs _or_ Windows, chances are at least 50-50 it'll be a troll. Elitist or not, but troll.
So if you're not one of the trolls, well, I feel sorry for you, you're just caught in the crossfire. You have my sincere sympathy. Maybe the place to start is to educate your fellow Mac users.
You may notice that none of the other computing platforms gets picked on. For example, you don't see Windows (CE) users going around slinging Mud at Symbian or PalmOS users. Ever wondered why? Because the Symbian or PalmOS users mind their own business in the first place, and don't go on trolling sprees rattling the cage of "Redmond fanboys." Well, maybe if the Mac community started acting as grown ups, they wouldn't get picked on either. Just a thought.
And if you're gonna educate the trolls, you may want to start with the fact that there's really no conspiracy to avoid Macs, nor anything like a "brainwashed Redmond fanboy." Most people really don't give half a damn about who made it, and if the OS comes from Apple or Microsoft or IBM or RedHat. They just care what programs they'll run on that damn box, and how much it'll cost to do so. That's all.
They would just as happily use a Mac or a Solaris box or even an SCO box instead, _if_ it ran all their favourite apps, _and_ did so at a reasonable price.
For the average Joe, the Mac just offers poor value for the money. It's overpriced for a start. (No, I don't give a damn about price comparisons to a dual Xeon workstation. Compare the single CPU ones to a single P4 system, because that's what Joe Average really needs at home.) And for something which costs that kind of cash, it sure can't run about 3/4 of the major apps out there. Nor about 95% of the games.
If you're satisfied with it, and even feed your family with it, more power to you. Great. Stick to your Macs then. But Joe Average will get a PC instead, and there's no conspiracy or brainwashing involved.
And maybe if some of the more vocal Mac users could understand that simple fact, instead of going on about "clueless brainwashed idiots who choose windows", they wouldn't come across as elitist.
I have burned a ton of CDs with stuff like downloaded drivers, hard drive backups, legally downloaded freeware programs, etc. E.g., I have a stack of CDs with linux stuff. Or such stuff as "Steel Panthers: World at War" or "Mimesis Online" which take a CD each and are officialy available for download.
The _only_ MP3s I've burned on CD (and even then as MP3 files, not as audio CD) are the ones I've ripped myself, and own the original CD. Just so I don't have to rip them again next time I reinstall Windows. I mean, hey, that's a traumatic enough experience even without spending the next week ripping all the CDs again.
And I'm not even getting into my parents' digital photography mania. My mother alone shoots up to 500 photos a day. (Literally!) Most of them get deleted, but (too) many of them get burned on CD. Big surprise that they're buying CD blanks, eh?
Now I _know_ that (too) many people just pirate stuff. But such made up statistics along the lines of "50 CD-R blanks sold equals exactly 50 major label music CDs copied" just make me sick.
You, sir, seem to be missing a very important point:
Some 10 years ago, it cost a lot less to develop a game. And you needed to sell one helluva less copies to qualify as a success.
Basically 10 years ago it was still a viable strategy to catter to only the die-hard uber-geeks. The ones who have nothing better to do that spend a week just learning the controls, and think it's fun to reload 100 times to get past a boss.
But the point is that that kind of a geek gamer is a tiny minority. Everyone cattering to the same obsessive-compulsive minority is already a _much_ less viable option than 10 years ago, and quickly becoming even less so.
Now it's starting to be about damn time to start making games for casual sunday gamers too.
Yes, a lot of people do want to make a game which is fun and great and everything, but in practice extremely few actually manage to make one. Yes, probably every game designer out there really goes to work in the morning thinking "I'm gonna make the greatest and most fun ever", but for the vast majority of potential buyers they fail. No, let me rephrase that: they fail _miserably_.
Just as one example of what they do wrong: Ever wondered why the first thing about 90% of your market asks about is "where are the cheat codes"? Why things like GameShark or ActionReplay sell like hot cakes? No, seriously. That's because the average game's difficulty curve royally sucks for Joe Average.
And the difficulty curve is just one of the many factors. Just one in a long list of how current games fail to catter to Joe Average.
Games designers have been living in a sheltered reality where they're forcing their own failueres upon the gamer. Where the average Joe Sunday Gamer at the end of the day thinks, "gee, I suck, I need cheat codes" instead of the correct assessment "whoever designed this game failed to entertain me. _He_ is the one who sucks."
Even better, a sheltered reality where people actually pay for such failed games. Next time you look at the number of copies sold, divide that by 10, and that's a rough ballpark approximation of how many of those actually found it entertaining as designed.
We've grown up with the wrong assumption is that the gamer is to blame if he fails to live up to the designer's standards, and not the other way around. And sorry, this is turning the vendor-customer relationship on its head. In no other industry would a designer have that kind of freedom. A car owner would say "this car sucks because it's too difficult to steer", and not "I suck because I don't have the mad skillz to steer this car." And maybe it's time we applied that kind of reality check to games too.
Today's games are made for a tiny fraction of the market, by people who belong to that tiny fraction in the first place. You may be full of good intentions, but if you're the only one deciding what's good and what's bad, it will end up a game just for you. Great fun, but only for you. And maybe the 0.1% of the population who thinks exactly like you.
That's where most of today's games really are.
To end up a game which is genuinely entertaining for Joe Average, you first need to know what Joe Average really wants. And maybe for that you do need a PHB doing usability studies and focus groups.
No offense, but why do you find that simple observation offensive? Is it really the first time you hear that people want fun in a game? Do you _really_ need an usability study to tell you that the vast majority of the population would very much prefer a clean intuitive interface, and clean intuitive controls?
Yes, I know the "I'm a super-star and an artist, I don't care what people want, and I won't let demographics tarnish my vision" snydrome that plagues some designers and graphics artists. Honestly, I wish those would just crawl somewhere and die. Painfully. Slowly. Or just die.
Maybe in your imaginary world, all that matters is making art for art's sake. Well, then I don't want to buy your games. It's that simple. And _that_ is what Microsoft has been trying to tell you. That making art is good and fine, but if you keep going in that direction, there won't be enough buyers to pay your bills. Most of us, if given half a choice, will instead buy games with a clean intuitive interface, good controlls, a smooth learning curve, and a more reasonable difficulty curve. I.e., games made by people who actually cared about usability and focus groups.
The reality _is_ that for the average Joe today most games are too complicated. Lots of them have learning curves that make learning C++ seem easy by comparison. Lots of them rely on the player already _knowing_ that he/she/it is _not_ supposed to do what the quest tells them to do, but first spend a week doing random battles to buy potions. (Neither the quest text, nor the manual, actually said that. If you don't already know that from other games, you'll just die in the first 15 minutes of the game.) A lot of them still think that memorizing obscure key combination is the way to go... especially when nothing in the game hints at them, and you have to find them in a hidden appendix of the manual. A lot of them think that an unlabelled button with no tooltip is good interface design. (Literally: some people, and even a reviewer, never knew that you can end the turn in Arcanum.) Etc.
Basically they're made by terminal geeks for terminal geeks. And they leave Joe Average anywhere between disappointed and scared.
So why is it offensive if Microsoft is actually interested in what Joe Average actually wants to play? No, really.
And yes, mod this as flamebait if you want to, but some things just needed to be said. Some people need to get out of their ivory towers, and get over the stupid concept that "all the world is made of 16 year olds without a life, and with nothing better to do than memorize 100 key combinations, and repeat each level 100 times to get through." No, in reality, the vast majority of the population is made of people with much better stuff to do.
And if it takes someone Microsoft's size to get that message across, I'll do the horribly non-slashdot thing and say: kudos to Microsoft.
Oh, give me a break. I'm mainly a Windows user, because I'm mainly a die-hard gamer.
Yet I have no problem choosing a replacement for IE, Outlook Express or Media Player. In fact, last time I used any of those three at home was last year. It was IE. Outlook Express I've last used in '97. And while we're at it, the last time I had MS Office (or rather only MS Word) installed at home was in '98.
Guess what? You have the exact same choices for replacements under Windows as you have under Linux. Opera runs just as well (or at least with the same interface flaws) under Windows as under Linux. Mozilla or Netscape run (or at least crawl and crash) just as well under Windows as under Linux. E-Mail clients? All the above mentioned browsers come with an e-mail client. Etc.
So, like, let's get out of this "bashing Microsoft is fashionable and gets you Karma points" rut. Microsoft _does_ have flaws, but if you can't find a browser that's not IE under Windows, then that's _not_ Microsoft's fault.
Well, doing something just because they can, is one thing.
But I'm more like thinking "thinking one's so elite and superior for doing/using/whatever some pointless gimmick that the rest of the world can do without" that would be the yard stick for qualifying as a proper/. kind of a nerd. (You'll have to admit that while indeed Linux or Macs have their strong points, at least 90% of the reason to have one at home is merely the fact that normal mortals don't.)
For extra points, though, Segway owners should invent a conspiracy they're opposing. You know, sorta like having Linux at home helps fight the Microsoft and Intel monopoly. (Never mind that it's on an Intel box or compatible anyway, and the other partition has Windows on it anyway.)
Dunno... maybe that owning a Segway helps fight the motorcicle and car manufacturers' conspiracy?
Slashdot Mirror
You know when a game is _really_ crap?
I was so stumped as to how could some reviewers give high scores to that pile of festering Black & White crap, I decided I'd see what my co-workers say about it. We had quite a few gaming maniacs, including one which had been in drone mode for a year straight, drooling over the upcoming B&W.
So I give them the CD. I even try not to influence them to my negative view of the game. Like I go, "hey, cool, there's this game where you play god, and can train a cow and stuff. wanna try it?"
So they'd take the CD. And bring it back after a day or two. Without exception, none of them liked it. At all. Even the former drooling fanboy all of a sudden tried to avoid talking about the game at all.
E.g.: Only _one_ of them was confortable with those mouse gestures. That one was one of our graphics artists, and very skilled with a mouse indeed. The rest (myself included) just wished that, since the retarded interface already painted the symbols at the bottom of the screen, we'd be allowed to just bloody click on them.
_That_'s how wide the gap was between the hype and Joe Average's impressions about that game. If that's not what overrated means, I don't know what is.
Well, that's what surprised me too. Even sites which ripped the game to shreds in their review, still had a knee jerk reaction to give B&W a high score.
E.g., take Firing Squad's review. Their review picked every single aspect of the horrible gameplay, retarded gestures, etc. Without going into how horrible _I_ thought the game was, it was obvious that the _reviewer_ hated every moment of it. He even went on to explicitly say that it might be good for people who never played a game before, and thus don't know what a good game is like, but that seasoned gamers should avoid it.
After such fighting words, you'd expect a low score, right? Something like at most 20%, right?
Wrong. At the end, out of the blue, and with no explanation, they give it a respectable 84% score.
Actually, if you'd do the maths:
1 "HDD" GB = 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 "normal" GB = 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1,073,741,824
I.e., should be getting almost 7.5% more capacity, not only 2.5%. If you add other weaseling, like "that's only the unformatted capacity", you're screwed out of even more. (Who the sex uses an unformatted drive, anyway? Please raise your hands. Thought so.)
And I don't know about you, but at that point some of us start to care.
If you bought 20 litres of gasoline at a gas station and got only 18.5 litres, because they redefined what "1l" means, I'd bet you wouldn't just shrug it off. And if your boss suddenly paid you 7.5% less, I'd bet you'd make quite a ruckus.
Plus, it's the principle that matters. I'm sick and tired of the current state of affairs in the computer industry, where basically the biggest liar wins. (And sets a trend for everyone else.) Just about every number you read is somehow fudged by some creative marketroid. Response times, TCO, whatever. You name it.
And methinks it was about damn time someone stood for the consumer, and put an end to this bullshitter race.
The point however, is that this thing is a gaming console. The _only_ point in owning one is if you're a gamer. So damn right I'm actually interested in what a bunch of other gamers think about it. You know, the people who actually _play_ stuff?
Heck, let's not forget: where the ____ (sexual intercourse) were the parents when two irresponsible kids were playing with a gun? where were they when those kids were (supposed to be) learning the difference between right and wrong? You know, when they should have been taught to be responsible in the first place?
Oh wait. From parents who can't take responsibility, no wonder the kids never learned responsibility.
So those two play a game where (surprise!) if you shoot people, they DIE. We're not talking a D&D RPG, where people get resurrected by a low-ish level cleric all the time. We're not talking Diablo II, where upon death you just instantly respawn at home in your underwear. Etc.
We're talking a game which is about rather permanent death. That's it. If you've shot someone, they're dead. They're not coming back.
AND the whole premise of the game is that you're doing something _illegal_. Again, we're not talking an RPG where the king will personally thank you for slaughtering the enemies. We're talking a game where you can get chased by the cops for your actions.
So lemme recap: The game tells them it's deadly. The game tells them it's illegal. And yet the two irresponsible twits think "hey, it's cool, then. We gotta go kill someone in real life."
Not even wanting to take revenge for being humiliated or anything. (As was the case with some other shootings.) It wasn't some plan born in desperation. They just think, "hey, it's fun."
I hope they put the two dangerous idiots behind bars for the rest of their lives. Because there's something _fundamentally_ wrong in their minds.
Well, honestly, nowadays "it beats a Sun box" doesn't even say much. It's just marginally more meaningful than "it beats my old ZX Spectrum."
The Suns still struggle barely above 1 GHz, have a slow cache, and so on. It also doesn't help that they're still saddled with SDRAM memory, too. (At least in the case of the cheaper workstations, on a 32 bit memory bus too.) If we're talking programs that draw something, it also doesn't help that they're saddled with outdated _and_ overpriced video cards. And so on.
Even without SSE, there's no way in heck for that UltraSparc III to keep up with a P4. E.g., Sun's Java doesn't even generate SSE code, and it still runs faster on Windows than on Solaris. Go figure.
For all the BS about the advantages of 64 bits, the reality is that in 64 bit mode an UltraSparc actually runs _slower_. So be thankful that most of the apps for it (and certainly all benchmarks) really are compiled in 32 bit mode.
Frankly, other than a few PHBs, and a couple of people who think they're some form of resitance against Wintel if they buy Suns, the rest of us don't even consider Sun to still be in the race any more.
So yeah, your words about running Linux on an Athlon or Pentium reflect exactly what I'd say to anyone considering a Sun box: Get the cheapest PC that Dell sells, or build your own Duron system, install Linux on it, and there you go. You now have a Unix workstation, and it runs circles around any of Sun's workstations. Or, much as I'm no Mac fan, get a Mac. It'll be 64 bit, and based on BSD too.
Actually, please get off that high horse.
My experience actually does reflect that Java is good and fine for micro-benchmarks (most of which are optimized away by the JIT, hence bogus speed measurements), but fails to impress me in real life situations.
No, I don't use object pools. No, I don't manually call System.gc(). Yes, I've read those books and a whole stack more.
Java still fails to measure up.
For starters, there is no allocating variables on the stack. There's also _no_ way to allocate an array of _objects_, all you can ever get is an array of _pointers_. Regardless of the bulls**t about how java's dynamic allocation and gc measure up to C's malloc and free, there's no way it can measure up against _not_ allocating anything dynamically and _not_ dereferencing an extra pointer level.
The garbage collector is also good and fine, but it's a flaming disaster when the machine swaps. Whereas a C program could run just fine and dandy when it's just a bit over the available memory, a Java program will cause the whole machine to thrash. Why? Because that retarded garbage collector _has_ to go through the whole allocated memory, causing it to get paged in and immediately paged out.
And so on and so forth.
And I'm not even getting into the disaster that are EJBs (enterprise java beans.) Whoppee... using CORBA to call methods over TCP/IP connections, _inside_ the same program. How's that for a retarded way to waste CPU cycles?
Yes, it's good and fine for server programs, because most server side programs really aren't that CPU intensive to start with. Heck, for most of them spawning a Perl process via CGI would still be fast enough. But that's all.
And Java on the client is still sad. Just sad.
And just like you say that C++ people make poor Java programmers, I'll go and say the opposite: if you're grown on Java, you have _no_ clue how it measures against C or C++. Even if you tried to compare, your C++ programs will be bloated, and will fail to use even the most elementary optimizations available.
Basically you'd be writing Java in C++. And whoppee, no wonder that then they're almost comparable in performance. (With Java still losing, but comparable.) But if you compare a _competently_ written Java program, versus an equally competently program that's been writted from the ground up in C++, the C++ one wins every time. Period.
I would like to say that maybe focusing on buffer overflows and exceptions is missing half the security problems in the first place. I've seen problems (written by consultants from a BIG company, I might add) along the lines of:
- assuming that "surely if we only created links to the valid data, all parameters on the destination page will only be valid ones. No need to check anything again."
The result? If the user was willing to edit the URL, they could edit the administrator's password instead of theirs. Effectively _anyone_ could take over the site without exploiting any buffer overflows or null pointers, just a little URL editing.
- Assuming that "if we said 'description' in the input field's label, surely noone will try to input something else."
The result? Effectively anyone was able to input JavaScript or VB Script code, which would execute in an admin's browser, when said admin reviewed the user's application.
- Failing to even think about non-repudiation and accountability.
E.g., when a user cancelled their account, all data about that user was instantly wiped out. It was like that user had never existed, and most traces of their activity were lost for ever.
And so on, and so forth.
Basically I won't argue against your argument that "Java is _more_ secure than C++". That is true. Some problems you can avoid easier in Java.
But I would strongly advise anyone against extrapolating that to mean "we use Java, therefore we are automatically 100% secure." That's not true. The number of problem that Java protects you against, is barely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
And even the parts where Java does protect you, retarded enough coding can turn those mechanisms into liabilities, instead of advantages. Retarded enough handling of RuntimeExceptions can bypass important code paths, and leave the system and/or its stored data in an inconsistent state. Sometimes an exploitable state, even.
Regardless of whether you program in Java or C or Assembly, you _still_ must carefully consider your options, assess threats, do code audits, and so on. Anyone who fails to do so, will have some very nasty surprises down the line.
Unfortunately, in a real world situation (as opposed to the dreams of someone walled in their own ivory tower), a program that crashes regularly is just short of useless. A program which malfunctions in the middle of writing data -- because half the logic got shortcircuited by a RuntimeException that cut straight through the last ditch "catch (Throwable all)" block -- is worse than useless.
For a geek, crashing early might be good coding practice. For a user, it's one e-commerce site they'll never visit again. (Yes, in a recent study, the main criticisms were stuff like the web site having a brain fart AFTER it swallowed the credit card number, leaving the user with no clue as to whether the order was processed or not.) Congrats, your site wasn't hacked, but the company is losing money hand over fist anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against Java, and I _do_ understand its advantages.
_But_ if using Java is your _only_ security, then you're doing it awfully wrong.
In Java, like in any other language, you _still_ have to do your own checks, and make some effort that the program will still work when confronted with malformed input. Especially when such input is not even a hacking attempt, but some hapless user typing "Jan 23, 74" instead of "23/01/1974" as you would like him to. Or he's included spaces in the credit card number (which causes Long.parseLong() to throw an exception.) Or whatever.
You do _not_ want the program to crash early and safe on the user, you want it to display a clear error message, and give the user plenty of clue as to how to correct the problem. And a chance to do so.
You also have to account for such user deviations as "what if he opens a link in a separate page, so now we have TWO pages sharing the same session id. And the user is doing different things in each." That's absolutely _deadly_ for brain-dead sites which store everything in the session. Just because Java's servlet interface makes it easy to store stuff in the session, doesn't mean it's also _safe_ to do so.
I've seen at least one e-commerce site which ended with products flagged "new user" and users flagged as "sold", because they relied on the session in the wrong way. Yes, noone took over their site, but the cost of that screw-up was very high nevertheless.
Briefly: again, just programming in Java doesn't automatically make your programs bullet-proof. There is no auto-magic substitute for good coding and design.
Maybe that "training" just involved showing what's aready done to someone who COULD ACTUALLY DO A FAR BETTER JOB? It did _not_ mean teaching them how to program.
Sorry to do the non-neighbourly thing, but lemme point at a simple fact: the dot-bomb meant a lot of incompetents and liars got hired as "programmers" for ludicrious sums. And _retard_ with _zero_ programming knowledge could put on a nice suit and get hired by a clueless PHB.
It was sorta like this: you're a drooling baker with an allergy to flour? No problem. Buy a bogus certifficate from some "learn QBasic without even coming to a course" fraudster, and suddenly you were a high paid IT consultant. Or don't even buy the fake certifficate, just go get hired anyway.
Even in the rare situations where those people eventually learned the language syntax, they had _no_ knowledge of the core libraries, _no_ knowledge of algorithms, _no_ idea of security, _no_ nothing. In some cases, _no_ intention to actually learn anything, either.
The code they produced was of piss-poor quality at best, and riddled with problems. In a lot of cases it was just a piss-poor job of copy and pasting (the wrong) sections from other people's programs.
A lot of them knew that they're cheats and frauds, and were content with that too. They only engaged in office politics games, and their only "professional" activity was backstabbing the ones who actually did the work.
Don't believe me? I've actually read a study that said only about 1 in 4 "programmers" could actually program _at_ _all_. The rest either lived as parasites off a real programmer, or made a living as the PHB's personal brown-noser.
Basically 3 in 4 were nothing more than ticks or leeches on a company. (Which often was a leech itself, like so many of the dot-coms.) They never gave anything useful, and only lived in luxury off other people's work.
Exorbitant funds, which could have better been used elsewhere, were effectively drained from the economy to keep these parasites living in cluster homes and driving sports cars.
Think this money just came out of thin air? No, they were paid by the actual companies which produced something. Every single company who silently footed the bill for yet another a failed project, was effectively a victim of these leeches.
How is _that_ situation better for the economy, than giving the job to someone actually competent? Oh yeah, let's keep over-paying a bunch of incompetent cheats and liars, just because they're proper American Citizens (TM).
Never mind that that kind of a financial black hole was causing more jobs to be lost in other sectors. Yeah, jobs also occupied by proper American Citizens (TM).
"Let's also remember that once ATi was much bigger than nvidia in graphics, and charged exorbitant prices for crappy chips, with shocking driver support."
Let's remember that I buy a card to play the games now, not to dish out holy vengeance for what ATI has been doing 5 years ago. If their cards run the games flawlessly now, and from my experience that _is_ the case, I couldn't care less if 5 years ago ATI had bad drivers or even if they sacrificed baby chickens to Satan. _Now_ they have good drivers, and that's enough for me.
"Let's also remember nvidia have much better performance so far in the more important (and independant) doom3 benchmarks"
So basically you do have _1_ (ONE!) game which runs faster. Congrats. Everything else runs faster on an ATI at the moment. Dunno, between a card which runs _one_ game faster (Nvidia), and one which runs everything else faster (ATI)... I'll pick the second any day.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not favouring any of the maker per se. When (or if) Nvidia cards become faster across the board, I'll buy Nvidia cards instead. Heck, if Matrox or S3 make a better card, I'll buy Matrox or S3 cards. But for now, I'll cheerfully stick to ATI.
"Finally linux support is a no brainer, nvidia have been doing it well for years (with support as far back as tnt),"
Which just illustrates my point that your mileage _will_ vary. Personally I'll do the non-slashdot thing and admit that I don't give half a damn about linux at home any more. No finer system for work, ok, but for gaming I'll just stick to Windows. I.e., if a Radeon runs better in Windows, that's more than enough for me.
If you run Linux at home, fair enough, use whatever works well in Linux. I'll stick to whatever works in Windows.
"ATi are onto a good thing right now with the current directx9 spec giving them an advantage in games that stick to the spec instead of the optimum end user experience"
What the heck happened to the idea that "sticking to the standards is good"? So basically standards are only good when you're bashing Microsoft? How come it's suddenly bad to stick to the specs, if it makes your favourite corporation lose in benchmarks?
Bit of a Nvidia fanboy, or?
Oh yeah, that damn "the way it's meant to be played" screen annoys me too. No, god damn it, the way it's meant to be played on a PC is: on any video card. That's why we have abstraction layers, like DirectX, instead of directly flipping bits on the video card's ports, like in the bad old DOS days. I find this to be just as insulting and lame as those "best viewed with only one kind of browser" web pages. It almost puts me in a mind to return all games which sport such a loading screen. Not because I'd have anything against NVidia. (They're no better or worse than any other corporation.) But because I do have something against devs who think they're developping for only one video card. If I wanted something which is tied to one very speciffic piece of hardware, I'd buy a console game instead. At least a console is less expensive than those video cards, and doesn't need a replacement every 6 months.
Seriously, the way I run all games is with 6x FSAA and at least 2x Anisotropic filtering (quality), max texture resolution, max shaddow details, etc. If the game supports that, TruForm too.
I _am_ an ex-3dfx fanboy, and for me image quality is important. And since I do have the money to burn for that addiction, sure, I'll cheerfully buy a $400 to $500 card if that's what it takes to get my fix of great looking graphics.
And yes, I _am_ a serious gamer. I clock at least 40 hours of gaming per week, and that's on a slow week.
[RANT]
I really can't understand people who turn off all eye candy, to get a "boost" from 300 fps to 310 fps. I mean, really, no monitor can even display 300 frames per second, so what's the point? Even if you had your refresh rate at 100 Hz (which most el-cheapo CRTs or any expensive LCDs can't even do), that would still mean displaying 1 frame out of 3. You're still only actually seeing 100 fps, not 300 fps. So what's the point in ruining image quality for _zero_ reward?
[/RANT]
Then can I interest you in buying this here state of the art Matrox G200, with a whole 8 MB SDR SGRAM? Hey, it's on sale. And surely you don't mind paying 400$ for it (i.e., as much as for a 9800 Pro or 5900 Pro), seein' as you explicitly don't want comparisons between cards.
Basically: There are enough reasons to benchmark a card, that don't involve fanboy pissing contests. If I am to pay somewhere between 400 and 500 US Dollars for a graphics card, I would indeed very much like to know how it performs.
And yes, that does involve stuff like "which of them performs better in HL2 or UT2003, with 6x FSAA and Aniso? and does anyone know if any cheats were involved?"
Well, that's that too. I was more like pointing out that even in the worst possible scenario, where an error would have been made, it still couldn't have been above the boiling point and still stay liquid in a paper cup. (It might stay liquid at such horror story temperatures under high pressure, but not in an open cup.)
You seem to forget that water boils at 100 degrees celsius. No more. If it was any higher, it would be vapor, not liquid. It's water, not molten lead, nor hot oil.
That temperature is _not_ high enough to "instantaneously destory skin, flesh and muscle". And it will _never_ produce 3rd degree burns.
It will be unpleasant, yes. It will cause minor damage, yes. But the horror story about instantaneously destroying flesh is so much bulls**t, it could fertilize a few acres.
You _could_ destroy flesh by holding it in boiling water for a longer while. You will notice that boiling meat (to make food) takes some time, it's not something that happens "instantaneously". By that time a little spilled water will have cooled off already.
But that's still missing the whole issue: coffee _is_ hot, and it's _supposed_ to be hot. It's prepared with boiling water. Whether you get it at a restaurant, or make it at home, or get it out of your office's coffee maker... guess what? It'll be hot. Even kids are supposed to know that.
Anyone who pours hot liquid on themselves and expect it not to hurt, is a _retard_. Plain and simple. They should be laughed at, not awarded ludicrious sums of money.
No, in fact make that: they should be fined for starting a ridiculous lawsuit with the sole purpose of getting money without work. Maybe that'll encourage people to actually _think_, instead of expecting money for being stupid.
It's almost as though it was a setup. It feels like a setup because it _is_ a setup. If you go by the IP and through the ISP to identify the account, you don't end up with your data pointing at a 12 year old girl. You just end up pointed at the family. No more, no less. I.e., the one who most likely got called to court was not the girl, but her mother. So how'd the girl end up into this all? Simple. The mother blamed her, not RIAA. I'd bet precisely because it feels like the perfect setup to squeeze some sympaty and make it look like the RIAA are heartless bullies.
Well, bingo, that's what I was thinking too. Exactly how does going after an IP address point to the 12 year old in the family? No, really, someone please explain that to me. Did they have a separate computer, with a separate ISP account for each member of the family, or? And yeah, I all the contempt in the world for the mother in that scenario.
Way I see it, it's just a natural response to the elitist attitude and/or "Amiga persecution syndrome" that a lot of Mac users _do_ suffer from. And if normal elitism wasn't enough, you only need go through a few threads right here on Slashdot to find gems like "Windows fanboys" about the average Windows user. Or words like "braiwashed" (either actually spelled out or implied) aren't that uncommon either.
Sad to say, that's more like "the average Mac owner post about Windows user", than an exception. Basically already when I read a Mac user post about Macs _or_ Windows, chances are at least 50-50 it'll be a troll. Elitist or not, but troll.
So if you're not one of the trolls, well, I feel sorry for you, you're just caught in the crossfire. You have my sincere sympathy. Maybe the place to start is to educate your fellow Mac users.
You may notice that none of the other computing platforms gets picked on. For example, you don't see Windows (CE) users going around slinging Mud at Symbian or PalmOS users. Ever wondered why? Because the Symbian or PalmOS users mind their own business in the first place, and don't go on trolling sprees rattling the cage of "Redmond fanboys." Well, maybe if the Mac community started acting as grown ups, they wouldn't get picked on either. Just a thought.
And if you're gonna educate the trolls, you may want to start with the fact that there's really no conspiracy to avoid Macs, nor anything like a "brainwashed Redmond fanboy." Most people really don't give half a damn about who made it, and if the OS comes from Apple or Microsoft or IBM or RedHat. They just care what programs they'll run on that damn box, and how much it'll cost to do so. That's all.
They would just as happily use a Mac or a Solaris box or even an SCO box instead, _if_ it ran all their favourite apps, _and_ did so at a reasonable price.
For the average Joe, the Mac just offers poor value for the money. It's overpriced for a start. (No, I don't give a damn about price comparisons to a dual Xeon workstation. Compare the single CPU ones to a single P4 system, because that's what Joe Average really needs at home.) And for something which costs that kind of cash, it sure can't run about 3/4 of the major apps out there. Nor about 95% of the games.
If you're satisfied with it, and even feed your family with it, more power to you. Great. Stick to your Macs then. But Joe Average will get a PC instead, and there's no conspiracy or brainwashing involved.
And maybe if some of the more vocal Mac users could understand that simple fact, instead of going on about "clueless brainwashed idiots who choose windows", they wouldn't come across as elitist.
Well, that's what gets my goat too.
I have burned a ton of CDs with stuff like downloaded drivers, hard drive backups, legally downloaded freeware programs, etc. E.g., I have a stack of CDs with linux stuff. Or such stuff as "Steel Panthers: World at War" or "Mimesis Online" which take a CD each and are officialy available for download.
The _only_ MP3s I've burned on CD (and even then as MP3 files, not as audio CD) are the ones I've ripped myself, and own the original CD. Just so I don't have to rip them again next time I reinstall Windows. I mean, hey, that's a traumatic enough experience even without spending the next week ripping all the CDs again.
And I'm not even getting into my parents' digital photography mania. My mother alone shoots up to 500 photos a day. (Literally!) Most of them get deleted, but (too) many of them get burned on CD. Big surprise that they're buying CD blanks, eh?
Now I _know_ that (too) many people just pirate stuff. But such made up statistics along the lines of "50 CD-R blanks sold equals exactly 50 major label music CDs copied" just make me sick.
You, sir, seem to be missing a very important point:
Some 10 years ago, it cost a lot less to develop a game. And you needed to sell one helluva less copies to qualify as a success.
Basically 10 years ago it was still a viable strategy to catter to only the die-hard uber-geeks. The ones who have nothing better to do that spend a week just learning the controls, and think it's fun to reload 100 times to get past a boss.
But the point is that that kind of a geek gamer is a tiny minority. Everyone cattering to the same obsessive-compulsive minority is already a _much_ less viable option than 10 years ago, and quickly becoming even less so.
Now it's starting to be about damn time to start making games for casual sunday gamers too.
Yes, a lot of people do want to make a game which is fun and great and everything, but in practice extremely few actually manage to make one. Yes, probably every game designer out there really goes to work in the morning thinking "I'm gonna make the greatest and most fun ever", but for the vast majority of potential buyers they fail. No, let me rephrase that: they fail _miserably_.
Just as one example of what they do wrong: Ever wondered why the first thing about 90% of your market asks about is "where are the cheat codes"? Why things like GameShark or ActionReplay sell like hot cakes? No, seriously. That's because the average game's difficulty curve royally sucks for Joe Average.
And the difficulty curve is just one of the many factors. Just one in a long list of how current games fail to catter to Joe Average.
Games designers have been living in a sheltered reality where they're forcing their own failueres upon the gamer. Where the average Joe Sunday Gamer at the end of the day thinks, "gee, I suck, I need cheat codes" instead of the correct assessment "whoever designed this game failed to entertain me. _He_ is the one who sucks."
Even better, a sheltered reality where people actually pay for such failed games. Next time you look at the number of copies sold, divide that by 10, and that's a rough ballpark approximation of how many of those actually found it entertaining as designed.
We've grown up with the wrong assumption is that the gamer is to blame if he fails to live up to the designer's standards, and not the other way around. And sorry, this is turning the vendor-customer relationship on its head. In no other industry would a designer have that kind of freedom. A car owner would say "this car sucks because it's too difficult to steer", and not "I suck because I don't have the mad skillz to steer this car." And maybe it's time we applied that kind of reality check to games too.
Today's games are made for a tiny fraction of the market, by people who belong to that tiny fraction in the first place. You may be full of good intentions, but if you're the only one deciding what's good and what's bad, it will end up a game just for you. Great fun, but only for you. And maybe the 0.1% of the population who thinks exactly like you.
That's where most of today's games really are.
To end up a game which is genuinely entertaining for Joe Average, you first need to know what Joe Average really wants. And maybe for that you do need a PHB doing usability studies and focus groups.
No offense, but why do you find that simple observation offensive? Is it really the first time you hear that people want fun in a game? Do you _really_ need an usability study to tell you that the vast majority of the population would very much prefer a clean intuitive interface, and clean intuitive controls?
Yes, I know the "I'm a super-star and an artist, I don't care what people want, and I won't let demographics tarnish my vision" snydrome that plagues some designers and graphics artists. Honestly, I wish those would just crawl somewhere and die. Painfully. Slowly. Or just die.
Maybe in your imaginary world, all that matters is making art for art's sake. Well, then I don't want to buy your games. It's that simple. And _that_ is what Microsoft has been trying to tell you. That making art is good and fine, but if you keep going in that direction, there won't be enough buyers to pay your bills. Most of us, if given half a choice, will instead buy games with a clean intuitive interface, good controlls, a smooth learning curve, and a more reasonable difficulty curve. I.e., games made by people who actually cared about usability and focus groups.
The reality _is_ that for the average Joe today most games are too complicated. Lots of them have learning curves that make learning C++ seem easy by comparison. Lots of them rely on the player already _knowing_ that he/she/it is _not_ supposed to do what the quest tells them to do, but first spend a week doing random battles to buy potions. (Neither the quest text, nor the manual, actually said that. If you don't already know that from other games, you'll just die in the first 15 minutes of the game.) A lot of them still think that memorizing obscure key combination is the way to go... especially when nothing in the game hints at them, and you have to find them in a hidden appendix of the manual. A lot of them think that an unlabelled button with no tooltip is good interface design. (Literally: some people, and even a reviewer, never knew that you can end the turn in Arcanum.) Etc.
Basically they're made by terminal geeks for terminal geeks. And they leave Joe Average anywhere between disappointed and scared.
So why is it offensive if Microsoft is actually interested in what Joe Average actually wants to play? No, really.
And yes, mod this as flamebait if you want to, but some things just needed to be said. Some people need to get out of their ivory towers, and get over the stupid concept that "all the world is made of 16 year olds without a life, and with nothing better to do than memorize 100 key combinations, and repeat each level 100 times to get through." No, in reality, the vast majority of the population is made of people with much better stuff to do.
And if it takes someone Microsoft's size to get that message across, I'll do the horribly non-slashdot thing and say: kudos to Microsoft.
Oh, give me a break. I'm mainly a Windows user, because I'm mainly a die-hard gamer.
Yet I have no problem choosing a replacement for IE, Outlook Express or Media Player. In fact, last time I used any of those three at home was last year. It was IE. Outlook Express I've last used in '97. And while we're at it, the last time I had MS Office (or rather only MS Word) installed at home was in '98.
Guess what? You have the exact same choices for replacements under Windows as you have under Linux. Opera runs just as well (or at least with the same interface flaws) under Windows as under Linux. Mozilla or Netscape run (or at least crawl and crash) just as well under Windows as under Linux. E-Mail clients? All the above mentioned browsers come with an e-mail client. Etc.
So, like, let's get out of this "bashing Microsoft is fashionable and gets you Karma points" rut. Microsoft _does_ have flaws, but if you can't find a browser that's not IE under Windows, then that's _not_ Microsoft's fault.
Well, doing something just because they can, is one thing.
/. kind of a nerd. (You'll have to admit that while indeed Linux or Macs have their strong points, at least 90% of the reason to have one at home is merely the fact that normal mortals don't.)
But I'm more like thinking "thinking one's so elite and superior for doing/using/whatever some pointless gimmick that the rest of the world can do without" that would be the yard stick for qualifying as a proper
For extra points, though, Segway owners should invent a conspiracy they're opposing. You know, sorta like having Linux at home helps fight the Microsoft and Intel monopoly. (Never mind that it's on an Intel box or compatible anyway, and the other partition has Windows on it anyway.)
Dunno... maybe that owning a Segway helps fight the motorcicle and car manufacturers' conspiracy?