I use my (currently) private work cell for on-call purposes and those "your DB just vomited it's so-called redundant array AGAIN" text messages.
I don't want to have elevated blood pressure by unsolicited-- how did they put it-- "location based services" if I happen to walk/drive past a business/whatever with this software. Oh, that's thinking that I received a legitimate, useful message, that is, as I now only receive messages in the event of actual issues.
Nor do I want to be sitting in a movie with my cell on "silent" and have somebody walking up the aisles loudly whispering "John Doe from Innotech! Hello, John, where are you?" as somebody from work tracks me down with some Coordinate-O-Matic software.
They can't charge for something that is free
Look at SCO, fighting a swiss-cheese battle against IBM/Linux. SCO didn't have much to lose (face / market position-wise) starting a public battle.
Oracle, OTOH, has the funds to do what they please, to do more. Mozilla isn't a 'force' like Linux. It wouldn't tarnish Oracle much to try and consume it-- then protect it as an asset. After all, it's not a competing product for them, not like Linux vs. SCO's unmemorable *nix. After an acquisition, even forks may not be safe.
Just being the DA here for a moment, after seeing my company be consumed and dumbed down. Bitter? No. Wary.
I trust Oracle about as much as I trust Microsoft. Let's hope they don't set their sights on acquisition, because their algorithm goes "embrace-acquire-mediocrify-priceincrease"
The Silent Hill series are like spooky form of crack: it's horrible like a bad trip, but cool at the same time, and you keep going back to your dealer for more.
Konami has officially announced Silent Hill 4: The Room for PS2 and Xbox on their website..
Hey! Silent Hill *3* still isn't even out for Xbox yet! Konami, aren't you jumping the gun on announcing SH4?
I really dug Silent Hill 2 on the Xbox. Then I bought Silent Hill 3 for PC and found the controls are klunky, and with the fixed camera, I wished I had it for Xbox instead. It's really made for game controllers, not KB and mouse.
And hey, Konami, do us a favor and re-release Silent Hill 1 on a modern platform! (it's currently only available on PS1) Stick it on the SH4 CD as a bonus or something...
Intel 64 bit? Who cares? We still don't use current processors efficiently today! Linux being the exception, boxes are saddled down with bloated, resource-hungry Windows running highly inefficient code based on VB or Mighty Fat Classlib (MFC).
Yesterday there was a/. article on Windows 98's death knell. People are pondering this with incredulity as W98 systems are still perfectly suitable for the needs of a great number of people.
It's sad that the hardware and software companies engage in unchecked one-upmanship while marketing departments FUD users into upgrading.
Up next to be sued: game distributors EA, Activision, Eidos etc. for infringing upon the RIAA's vampiristic model of marketing and parasitic artist relationships.
I had my laptop bluescreen once while navigating the terminal security gauntlet once. I tried explaining to the woman "Uh, it doesn't normally do that" but got a blank stare in return. Almost like a stare of... acceptance. Then I realized she had already been taken by MS.
The funniest encounter was when my chest set off the guy's wand when getting the body scan. He got this totally locked-up look as he tried to come up with some kind of reasonable explaination.
Guy: Uh, did you have... surgery or something... uh... pacemaker?
Me: No, that's my nipple ring.
Guy: (big grin, sign of relief) Oh, OK!
The scouring of the shire scene will not be in the extended edition - Jackson didn't like it and never filmed it...
Somebody needs to flog PJ with a wet sock for that. If the Shire scene couldn't be fit in due to time or budget, that's fine. But PJ's personal feelings about that whole chapter doesn't give him to the right to fsck it out of the story.
Personally, I find that chapter of Book Three to bring a certain measure of closure that the story (the Tolkien version, not the PJ version) needs and deserves.
New York Times: Youth Arrested for Pigeon Tampering
[ name withheld ] was arrested for using an illeagle Pigeon Network Sniffer and accessing huge amounts of data being shuttled by the pigeon network over the last two weeks.
Police say the h4xx0r sat in Central Park, using large amounts of high-quality seed strewn on open ground to re-route the network data stream and hijack the transfer media. The pigeon data was then compromised and copied to the thief's laptop.
Authories say that pigeon network customers became suspicious when network latency increased.
I can completely understand why people continue to use older versions of Windows. While XP is much more stable than ME or any 9X, the $100+ price of XP is hard to swallow. How do you explain to your (insert: parents,siblings,friends,neighbors,coworkers) that they should pay the $100+ for something that will be more stable but won't do anything else for them? And on top of that, they may need to upgrade some hardware to run XP?
People want bang for their buck, not to BE banged by MS for their bucks.
"the manufacturer's pledge to change future editions did not solve the problem with games on store shelves now."
I can see eBay auctions now:
-- BANNED uncensored GTA game!
-- rare GTA original version, low re$erve!
-- HOT GTA GAME recalled InSuLtInG FUNNY!
There is a ton of tongue-in-cheek ethnic humor in that game. Jaysus Christ on a jumped-up, chariot driven crutch --- will Comedy Central be the next target?!
Nintendo is a Japanese company. It's no wonder that the new console would be available in Japan first. I thought Japan was more into the console thing rather than PC games anyway.
The games that never become available in the USA-- one might wonder if they don't meet the parent company's sales expectations, or perhaps don't fit the US markets.
Tomb Raider AOD... how can you forget that one from the list? Rushleased in time for the movie, TRAOD was the biggest lead-weight in the series.
You can't turn or run quickly, no side stepping, clipping-clipping-clipping problems, krazy kamera, awful voice acting that makes Hollywood 'B' movies seem professional. Bugs galore.
King Kong has been done, re-done, updated and re-done. 1930's, 1960's, 1970's. Wasn't there a series made at some point?
The 1933 version was avante garde at the time, being 'movie magic'. But the plot has been retread so many times, it just needs a burial. You can only dress it up so much with CG, but you can't capture the original story's 'wow' in today's time.
Hopefully PJ will get the Hobbit contract inked in advance, just in case....
I don't follow Gamespy's reviews/reviewers to the T, but this article is the first I read.. http://www.gamespy.com/reviews/november03/dx2pc/in dex.shtml ..where the game, played to completion, was reviewed more thoroughly and rated four stars. Based on the reviewer's comments, it felt more deserving of less stars. It's even commented upon that the length of the game is only 15 hours compared to the 40+ of the original.
I feel the length, the already-mentioned items (odd interface, unified ammo, non-localized damage), the lack of the "Classic Deux Ex" attribute system, simplified controls... all leaves me wondering if the designers didn't really have their hearts committed to the creation process.
What's bugged me for a long while now is that Warren Specter made a comment on Thief 3, one to the effect that he "doesn't get it", referring to the Thief genre. I hope that what we're seeing of DX2 (demo) doesn't indicate that he's lost his edge or has become out of touch with the scene.
I can't help but wonder how DX2 would look today if more gamers had input on the alpha and beta stages of the game. Would the "wonder wheel" / "dirty contact lens" interface have made it so far? Would localized damage have been coded in? Or is all of this due to the game being coded for the lowest common denominator (i.e. the portability to consoles)?
I'm waiting for the game, not for the lastest post-pixel shader rendered, anisoaliased particulate-scatter, a-b-c-x-y-z buffered with quantum-fog-table correlated, hyperradiused bump-mapped picocanvased effects.
All of the latest greatest effects don't mean diddly if you don't have a game and a story behind it.
Otherwise all you have is lipstick and makeup on a pig. Usually, with bad voice-acting to boot.
I would much rather see Doom 3 and Half Life 2 be released as polished accomplishments, not as graphic effect demos.
Most US titles are RTS, FPS or military/war-themed. Most US titles are PC based, ported to consoles later.
I see a majority of PS2 games being based around kung-fu/hand-to-hand style fighting, 500 different controller combo moves, with characters having the ubiquitous anime faces (sorry but the huge puppy-dog eyes, feathered 80's hair and tiny button noses look absolutely silly to me). You see mostly console-based titles as their export product, not PC games.
Maybe I'm way off, but there are two different cultures on two different platforms involved. Each have different marketing positions with consoles being the easiest and most profitable. Now, with Sony and Nintendo developing their games overseas, and able to throw financial resources towards marketing/distribution, it doesn't leave much room for PC/Western games to establish a presence in Japan.
Factor in the difference in cultures, the Xbox's lack of titles overall, and one can see the odds are stacked against it's acceptance.
The first thing I would do is eliminate all of my personal details in the badge to prevent less savory characters in the room from harvesting my light for SPAM purposes.
I can also imagine being asked "excuse me, but can you, er, bend your knees? I'm short and our badges aren't making contact.". Conversation started, badge unnecessary?
Finally, take a couple junk TV remotes. Tape a button down on each. Distribute these in the room and voila! Instant badge-DOS attack!
Slashdot Mirror
All your privacy are belong to us.
I use my (currently) private work cell for on-call purposes and those "your DB just vomited it's so-called redundant array AGAIN" text messages.
I don't want to have elevated blood pressure by unsolicited-- how did they put it-- "location based services" if I happen to walk/drive past a business/whatever with this software. Oh, that's thinking that I received a legitimate, useful message, that is, as I now only receive messages in the event of actual issues.
Nor do I want to be sitting in a movie with my cell on "silent" and have somebody walking up the aisles loudly whispering "John Doe from Innotech! Hello, John, where are you?" as somebody from work tracks me down with some Coordinate-O-Matic software.
They can't charge for something that is free
Look at SCO, fighting a swiss-cheese battle against IBM/Linux. SCO didn't have much to lose (face / market position-wise) starting a public battle.
Oracle, OTOH, has the funds to do what they please, to do more. Mozilla isn't a 'force' like Linux. It wouldn't tarnish Oracle much to try and consume it-- then protect it as an asset. After all, it's not a competing product for them, not like Linux vs. SCO's unmemorable *nix. After an acquisition, even forks may not be safe.
Just being the DA here for a moment, after seeing my company be consumed and dumbed down. Bitter? No. Wary.
I trust Oracle about as much as I trust Microsoft. Let's hope they don't set their sights on acquisition, because their algorithm goes "embrace-acquire-mediocrify-priceincrease"
They must have learned their branding scheme from AMD, just as the AMD Athlon XP (example) 2400+ chip performs like a 2.4G but clocks in at 2.0G.
It's "marketeering"
They're still claiming a March 1st ship date. And it's $5 cheaper than EB and Gamestop.
I'll get mine before any of you...(rolls eyes)
The Silent Hill series are like spooky form of crack: it's horrible like a bad trip, but cool at the same time, and you keep going back to your dealer for more.
Konami has officially announced Silent Hill 4: The Room for PS2 and Xbox on their website..
Hey! Silent Hill *3* still isn't even out for Xbox yet! Konami, aren't you jumping the gun on announcing SH4?
I really dug Silent Hill 2 on the Xbox. Then I bought Silent Hill 3 for PC and found the controls are klunky, and with the fixed camera, I wished I had it for Xbox instead. It's really made for game controllers, not KB and mouse.
And hey, Konami, do us a favor and re-release Silent Hill 1 on a modern platform! (it's currently only available on PS1) Stick it on the SH4 CD as a bonus or something...
Intel 64 bit? Who cares? We still don't use current processors efficiently today! Linux being the exception, boxes are saddled down with bloated, resource-hungry Windows running highly inefficient code based on VB or Mighty Fat Classlib (MFC).
/. article on Windows 98's death knell. People are pondering this with incredulity as W98 systems are still perfectly suitable for the needs of a great number of people.
Yesterday there was a
It's sad that the hardware and software companies engage in unchecked one-upmanship while marketing departments FUD users into upgrading.
Up next to be sued: game distributors EA, Activision, Eidos etc. for infringing upon the RIAA's vampiristic model of marketing and parasitic artist relationships.
I had my laptop bluescreen once while navigating the terminal security gauntlet once. I tried explaining to the woman "Uh, it doesn't normally do that" but got a blank stare in return. Almost like a stare of... acceptance. Then I realized she had already been taken by MS.
The funniest encounter was when my chest set off the guy's wand when getting the body scan. He got this totally locked-up look as he tried to come up with some kind of reasonable explaination.
Guy: Uh, did you have... surgery or something... uh... pacemaker?
Me: No, that's my nipple ring.
Guy: (big grin, sign of relief) Oh, OK!
... enough of the Anime-style titles that are ubiquitous to Japan?
Thief 3 (that doesn't have have the Ion Storm SUCK factor that Deus Ex 2 has) DOOM 3 HalfLife 2 -and finally- A Tomb Raider sequel that doesn't stink.
I couldn't help but think of this Harry Potter dialogue:
Hermione: That's totally barbaric!
Ron: That's Wizard's chess!
The scouring of the shire scene will not be in the extended edition - Jackson didn't like it and never filmed it...
Somebody needs to flog PJ with a wet sock for that. If the Shire scene couldn't be fit in due to time or budget, that's fine. But PJ's personal feelings about that whole chapter doesn't give him to the right to fsck it out of the story.
Personally, I find that chapter of Book Three to bring a certain measure of closure that the story (the Tolkien version, not the PJ version) needs and deserves.
New York Times: Youth Arrested for Pigeon Tampering
[ name withheld ] was arrested for using an illeagle Pigeon Network Sniffer and accessing huge amounts of data being shuttled by the pigeon network over the last two weeks.
Police say the h4xx0r sat in Central Park, using large amounts of high-quality seed strewn on open ground to re-route the network data stream and hijack the transfer media. The pigeon data was then compromised and copied to the thief's laptop.
Authories say that pigeon network customers became suspicious when network latency increased.
I can completely understand why people continue to use older versions of Windows. While XP is much more stable than ME or any 9X, the $100+ price of XP is hard to swallow. How do you explain to your (insert: parents,siblings,friends,neighbors,coworkers) that they should pay the $100+ for something that will be more stable but won't do anything else for them? And on top of that, they may need to upgrade some hardware to run XP?
People want bang for their buck, not to BE banged by MS for their bucks.
"the manufacturer's pledge to change future editions did not solve the problem with games on store shelves now."
I can see eBay auctions now:
-- BANNED uncensored GTA game!
-- rare GTA original version, low re$erve!
-- HOT GTA GAME recalled InSuLtInG FUNNY!
There is a ton of tongue-in-cheek ethnic humor in that game. Jaysus Christ on a jumped-up, chariot driven crutch --- will Comedy Central be the next target?!
Nintendo is a Japanese company. It's no wonder that the new console would be available in Japan first. I thought Japan was more into the console thing rather than PC games anyway.
The games that never become available in the USA-- one might wonder if they don't meet the parent company's sales expectations, or perhaps don't fit the US markets.
Tomb Raider AOD... how can you forget that one from the list? Rushleased in time for the movie, TRAOD was the biggest lead-weight in the series.
You can't turn or run quickly, no side stepping, clipping-clipping-clipping problems, krazy kamera, awful voice acting that makes Hollywood 'B' movies seem professional. Bugs galore.
And you thought Halo PC was a porker...
Nobody mentioned the Floppy Firewall yet? It can be found at http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/
One single floppy. It can be write protected to prevent rooting. No hard drive needed, so a quiet junk PC can be easily used.
King Kong has been done, re-done, updated and re-done. 1930's, 1960's, 1970's. Wasn't there a series made at some point?
The 1933 version was avante garde at the time, being 'movie magic'. But the plot has been retread so many times, it just needs a burial. You can only dress it up so much with CG, but you can't capture the original story's 'wow' in today's time.
Hopefully PJ will get the Hobbit contract inked in advance, just in case....
I don't follow Gamespy's reviews/reviewers to the T, but this article is the first I read..n dex.shtml
..where the game, played to completion, was reviewed more thoroughly and rated four stars. Based on the reviewer's comments, it felt more deserving of less stars. It's even commented upon that the length of the game is only 15 hours compared to the 40+ of the original.
http://www.gamespy.com/reviews/november03/dx2pc/i
I feel the length, the already-mentioned items (odd interface, unified ammo, non-localized damage), the lack of the "Classic Deux Ex" attribute system, simplified controls... all leaves me wondering if the designers didn't really have their hearts committed to the creation process.
What's bugged me for a long while now is that Warren Specter made a comment on Thief 3, one to the effect that he "doesn't get it", referring to the Thief genre. I hope that what we're seeing of DX2 (demo) doesn't indicate that he's lost his edge or has become out of touch with the scene.
I can't help but wonder how DX2 would look today if more gamers had input on the alpha and beta stages of the game. Would the "wonder wheel" / "dirty contact lens" interface have made it so far? Would localized damage have been coded in? Or is all of this due to the game being coded for the lowest common denominator (i.e. the portability to consoles)?
I'm waiting for the game, not for the lastest post-pixel shader rendered, anisoaliased particulate-scatter, a-b-c-x-y-z buffered with quantum-fog-table correlated, hyperradiused bump-mapped picocanvased effects.
All of the latest greatest effects don't mean diddly if you don't have a game and a story behind it.
Otherwise all you have is lipstick and makeup on a pig. Usually, with bad voice-acting to boot.
I would much rather see Doom 3 and Half Life 2 be released as polished accomplishments, not as graphic effect demos.
Most US titles are RTS, FPS or military/war-themed. Most US titles are PC based, ported to consoles later.
I see a majority of PS2 games being based around kung-fu/hand-to-hand style fighting, 500 different controller combo moves, with characters having the ubiquitous anime faces (sorry but the huge puppy-dog eyes, feathered 80's hair and tiny button noses look absolutely silly to me). You see mostly console-based titles as their export product, not PC games.
Maybe I'm way off, but there are two different cultures on two different platforms involved. Each have different marketing positions with consoles being the easiest and most profitable. Now, with Sony and Nintendo developing their games overseas, and able to throw financial resources towards marketing/distribution, it doesn't leave much room for PC/Western games to establish a presence in Japan.
Factor in the difference in cultures, the Xbox's lack of titles overall, and one can see the odds are stacked against it's acceptance.
The first thing I would do is eliminate all of my personal details in the badge to prevent less savory characters in the room from harvesting my light for SPAM purposes.
I can also imagine being asked "excuse me, but can you, er, bend your knees? I'm short and our badges aren't making contact.". Conversation started, badge unnecessary?
Finally, take a couple junk TV remotes. Tape a button down on each. Distribute these in the room and voila! Instant badge-DOS attack!