I hold an opinion as a Linux user for several years that has to frequently grapple with graphic server problems. You might discount my opinion and slap on the bumper-sticker slogan about Windows, and that's fine with me.
"Where did you get the notion that X is slow? It must be configured properly (which many auto-detection mechanisms do poorly), and even tweaked."
Well, there you have it.
It wasn't until about a year and a half ago when we could actually change the resolution of the desktop while in the GUI itself. Distributions like Mandrake go a long way to rectify configuration problems such as this.
The average user from the Windows world expects to plop in a CD, get the drivers from it, and install. In Mandrake-like installation programs, this happens transparently (and we're all thankful for that). But if Mandrake fails to catch something - say, an ATI card - the user is left to pick up the pieces and go from there. And it's not particularly simple, either. Using the hacked 4.3 XFree drivers tends to mess up the font anti-aliasing. What is one supposed to do then? In some Debian-based distros, it's a more evil exercise, since ATI packages their wares as RPM and not even alien + dpkg can always resolve their screwyness.
Not to mention that Joe Average has no clue what XF86Config is or how it works.
In other words, setting up graphics under Linux - especially for 3D acceleration - remains to be one of the more tedious/bothersome/frustrating parts of the experience. And no, it really doesn't help that the selfish ATI and nVidia don't release the specs.
Moreover, your experience cannot be applied to the whole. I know of a few Debian users who have also had a real fun time with nVidia's drivers. Even if they work, they can be a significant bear to set up.
I think you hit on a really great point though. I may not be a Linux programming expert, but in my opinion X (by which I refer to X11 and XFree) is one of the major things that's holding Linux back from widespread adoption. It is a slow and poorly designed monolith that often requires considerable chiseling and hacking in order to work with even the most simple of 3D games. And should one screw up the configuration, usually everything graphical about Linux is taken down with it. The average user has no idea what to do.
X also highlights a flaw in the Linux community in terms of open-source development models. In a perfect world, people would realize that X is a somewhat inferior means of achieving a certain end and work on a better program. I think a lot of people would agree that X is obsolete and needs to go and that action should be taken. However, we stop at words without action. Perhaps due to the sheer complexity of such a beast (or in the worst case, complexity which the X team has manufactured), no one has really stepped in to replace X with a faster, more 3D intensive implementation to meet the demands of 21st century desktops and workstations. Hence, users are content with a "good enough" solution, but not the best solution. In a sense, this creates a veritable "monopoly" in the open-source realm, a dinosaur stuck in its ways that burdens everyone else and is so ingrained that people aren't willing to take on the challenge of replacing it.
So, yes, X is somewhat akin to Internet Explorer. Options exist to replace IE, but since 90% of the world is still using it, we still have to cope and deal with it - no matter how positively ass-backwards it is. It too is one of those "good enough" solutions.
Part of this problem is X and part of this problem is the graphic card manufacturers themselves. ATI, for example, is lagging far behind nVidia in terms of willingness to support Linux (the only XFree 4.3 drivers released are unofficial). But it must be realized that these two aspects are not mutually exclusive. I would assert that ATI lags and nVidia is buggy because what they have to work with, X, is very difficult and cumbersome. Especially in light of the fact that since the Linux usage base is so much smaller than the Windows one, it's hard to argue on economic grounds why one would go through the effort of writing for X. Granted, ATI isn't doing itself any favors by insisting on using essentially closed RPM-packaged source code, but we can't keep running away from this problem and continue to graft these kludges onto a broken X. We need something entirely new.
I can only hope that, really, the Challenge problem comes into play. This is the notion that as people become discontent with the current status quo or bottleneck that attention becomes focused on eliminating it. For Linux, I believe X is such a bottleneck. If Linux is to have any hope at all of attracting the high-level 3D applications (especially games) and running them well in the future, X has to be replaced. Until then, we will only see these hacked together hit-and-miss ports, or afterthoughts from Windows game developers.
It could also be the notion that darkness conceals things in the distance in a way not unlike fog does. Hence, it's conceivable that you can put more details directly in front of the player considering that the visual distance is reduced.
!SPOILERS!
There's currently only one Xenosaga, with the second one Xenogears (Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose) currently being designed. According to the sourcebook Xenogears Perfect Works, the series was supposed to consist of six parts. Xenogears, the original Playstation game, was actually Episode 5 and harkened back to the previous ones using "dream" scenes and dropping tidbits of the past here and there.
In a sense, this made Xenogears somewhat mysterious. Although all of the pieces were there in the storyline and could be understood, it often took a look at the official story to see how they all related to one another. But Xenogears had a good story for other reasons as well. It started off with a handful of rather evil villains and eventually narrowed it down to just one (and even then, he's questionably evil), it blended in some religious mythos, including a priest whose faith turns against him. The tracking down of a manmade and synthetic God entity. And that everyone on the planet was artificially produced by this "God," in reality a giant planet terraforming weapon.
A lot of people see parallels between Xenogears and Neon Geneis Evangelion, and it goes beyond Xenogears using a rejected NERV Headquarters design for its ship bridge. Both have big robots. Both have the mysterious blue haired girl (Rei Ayanami and Miang Hawwa). Both have reluctant and troubled heroes (Shinji Ikari and Fei Wong Fong). And both make heavy use of religious symbolism and names in the most garish of places. But that's about where the similarities end. The storylines and the factions are quite different, it's just that some elements are shared. And I don't really think one borrowed from the other - they were both developed in parallel and so it's probably sheer coincidence that some of these parallels exist.
The point I'm trying to make is that Xenogears/Xenosaga is pretentious like Evangelion is. Arguably, the Xeno games make more sense than Evangelion, which spiraled into a crack-induced mind warp in the final episodes and movies, but they are both guilty for using religious symbolism to effect a faux deepness.
Hmm, personally I fall into the latter camp. I loved the storyline of the first Xenogears, but Xenosaga just takes itself way too seriously. Expecting me to memorize all of the wacky abbreviations, expecting me to care about that new NTR-4405 rotor part that just came in, to check my in-game e-mail, and wander aimlessly around a needlessly sterile and bland spaceship and talk to every boring NPC I see to hear more techno-babble. To put it bluntly, Xenosaga is boring and it says something that I cared more about the little sprites in Xenogears than I do the lush, 3-D animated models in Xenosaga.
Ah the Army Man "franchise"... if you want to call it that. It's not like it's worth anything. In the dozen or more titles they've produced, there wasn't a single good one. The series has an awful reputation and why anyone would want to revisit it just demonstrates the rather sorry creative state of video games today.
Mepis doesn't look terribly great, it's true, but it is a Debian variant that's very easy to install, doubles as a Knoppix-style LiveCD, and is quite stable. I enjoy this distro.
I too am very happy with Mepis Linux. The only annoyance with it that I've run across is that it seems like the ATI Radeon drivers (for their more recent cards, like the 9700 and 9800) fail to work. I know it's challenging to make them work on a standard Debian install, let alone one with a customized kernel.
Completely true. We're talking about a corporation here that's actively lied about the contents of the Linux kernel. These guys aren't terribly bright, and I certainly wouldn't put it past them to "hack" their own web site just to strenghen their so-called case.
They've never told the truth in the past. Why should I believe them today?
Yes, but in the bounds of a cartridge-based format, translation is not quite so simple. Japanese rarely translates directly into English without difficulty and in order for it to make sense, translators often have to stylize the text for that specific region. Things that this tick off the ever-critical otaku and ultimately put Woolsey at the butt end of their insipid wrath.
It can take more space to elaborate on such things, but don't forget - RPG text boxes are of a specific size, there are significant memory constraints, and there is a ton of inconsequential dialogue that also has to be translated.
The art, at least back with cartridges, was in making the whole thing fit together in a fixed space, yet still get the same point across. Of course, with CDs and more recently DVDs, it doesn't matter so much now.
Open sourcers are usually adept at compiling downloaded source code from scratch. So, if someone wanted to let Mozilla compile for five straight hours, it would be of no consequence to them.
Your average user doesn't care to do that. They want the application to just work. They expect an installation program that will handle all of that compilation and copying for them amd they don't care if it isn't 100% optimized for their desktop.
This is why an installation program is important. If the average user can't get the darned thing on their system without hassle, they aren't going to use it. And remember, Mozilla is competing against Internet Explorer here - which by default comes with every Windows computer. We can't expect much effort from the user.
Indeed. Being a hybrid Windows and Linux user, I must say that Evolution is one Linux program I'm envious Linux has and Windows doesn't. The next Mozilla Mail would benefit from following their approach, imho.
My opinion on Ogg Vorbis is that it's generally a bit larger than an equivalent MP3, but sounds like a higher bitrate recording. I've found that Ogg Vorbis files have the tendency to sound much more "crisp" than MP3 files, which sound a bit muffled in comparison.
In other words, I feel a 128 kbps OGG is larger in size than an equivalent 128 kbps MP3, but the sound quality is more akin to a 192 kbps MP3, yet it isn't as big as a 192 kbps MP3.
It seems ridiculous that a game company can actually file and receive patents for gameplay concepts - that Sega can actually "own" the game mechanics of Crazy Taxi.
Consider how this would work. Can there be no side-scrollers because Nintendo patented "a game that scrolls from left to right or vice versa with a main character that hops on enemies to destroy them"? Or no more FPS games because iD patents "a game whose perspective is in the first-person who is armed with a gun"? Before you say "That's ridiculous," I need remind all of the recent latent and intellectual property nonsense that we see every other day here on Slashdot. People can get and receive patents for ridiculous things, as we have seen time and again.
I can see if EA ripped off Sonic the Hedgehog directly and made a Sonic game, because Sonic is clearly Sega's property. But to make a game whose mechanics are based on another game illegal? That's like saying Corporation X manufacturers television sets and no other corporation can.
If SCO continues to fail to produce the evidence they've claimed they have, the judge will likely be very displeased, perhaps dismissing the lawsuit entirely.
And, in a perfect world, instituting punitive damages against the SCO corporation for bringing forth such malicious and slanderous prosecution, and then feeding them to the dogs at the FTC.
Even I couldn't get through Darl's amusing "open" letter because it was so full of tripe and nonsense. Nonetheless, I feel the urge to play a little Mystery Science Theater with it.
This Constitutional declaration gave rise to our system of copyrights and patents. Congress has enacted several iterations of the Copyright Act. The foundation for current copy protection in technology products is grounded in the 1976 Copyright Act. The 1976 Act grew out of Congressional recognition that the United States was rapidly lagging behind Japan and other countries in technology innovation. In order to protect our ability to innovate and regain global leadership in technology, Congress extended copyright protection to technology innovations, including software. The 1976 Act had the desired effect. The U.S. economy responded rapidly, and within 10 years had regained global technology leadership.
It is short-sighted to infer that this is the only reason the US economy reacted. In truth, it was around 1976 when garage-based innovators like Wozniak - who probably didn't give a damn about patents and the artifically world manufactured by the legal types - started their revolutionary work. The high-tech industry prior to 1976 resembled nothing at all like the high-tech industry of today, and this is no doubt due to advances by hobbyists and computer enthusiasts like Wozniak, not patent laws.
Moreover, patent laws realistically fail to protect innovation. Although they were drafted with that intent, it is clear today that some corporations (SCO with this amusing litigation, Microsoft with its recent assertion of FAT rights, Thompson Multimedia and MP3s) are consistently using and abusing this system, maintaining healthy "patent portfolios" that can be used to aggressively seek out and sue at any time those who they perceive violate them. The millions of people protesting in Europe over it cannot be wrong - the system of software patents is completely broken.
Most recently, Congress has adopted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") to protect the intellectual property rights embodied in digital products and software. Congress adopted the DMCA in recognition of the risk to the American economy that digital technology could easily be pirated and that without protection, American companies would unfairly lose technology advantages to companies in other countries through piracy, as had happened in the 1970's. It is paramount that the DMCA be given full force and effect, as envisioned by Congress. The judgment of our elected officials in Congress is the law of the land in the U.S. copyright arena, and should be respected as such. If allowed to work properly, we have no doubt that the DMCA will create a beneficial effect for the entire economy in digital technology development, similar to the benefits created by the 1976 Copyright Act.
The DMCA was manufactured to protect the special interests of a select few corporations like the RIAA and MPAA. In the free, capitalist market the US claims to be, there is really no reason for why such things as the DMCA should exist. In a free market, the RIAA and MPAA would be left up to their own devices and not come cowering or crying to Uncle Sam for help. By protecting these decrepid business models, the US has given carte blanche authority for the RIAA at least to act above the laws in defending itself, even though in the free market the RIAA would rightfully cease to exist.
Historically, we find that governments (for example, pre-industrial China) that protect the special interests of a few select elites end up paying dearly for it later. As we see, the special interests of elites were protected and these newfound rights were aggressively used to stamp out any threats to their well-being and existence. As such, innovation was stifled and the industrial revolution was delayed in such countries.
I think you're entirely correct for that reason. Digital television is having difficulty making significant inroads for two reasons. One, the cost of digital televisions that support HDTV is still abnormally high compared to the traditional analog set. In this economy, people are more likely to choose the cheaper set. And two, there aren't enough advantages to digital television that would cause the average customer to get rid of the traditional set.
It's sort of like, for me, when DVD first came out. I mean, yes, DVD provides a much sharper picture and can include various little niceties and extras. But with VHS players that can also record costing below $30 these days, you're going to have a hard time convincing me to spend $300 on a DVD recorder along with $100 for 50 DVD-RWs (and as we've seen with writable CDs, we can't necesarily argue these have superior longevity to VHS tapes). In the case of HDTV, yes, it's not like I need to see every wrinkle on Ted Koppel's face or more strands of Sam Donaldson's mysteriously flaxen hair. Heck, I still get television signals where the picture is "ghosted" across the screen and I survive. Maybe the early adopters can't understand this, but nor do I see HDTV justifying replacing every television in the US.
It's remarkable to what lengths a company will go to foist a sub-par video game into the limelight. Acclaim hasn't made anything worthwhile in months, if not years. A desperate advertising campaign like this is only trying to mask their shortcomings in game design.
Agreed. The GameSpot author is just being a flamewhore. Chrono Trigger was one of the first major RPG titles (by major, I mean wildly popular) where you could always see the enemies prior to fighting them.
What some authors will do as a desparate plea for attention... I wonder if he got paid to be a guest writer. >_>
Kinda' like the clueless Dad who loans the 6-year-old the extra $10 needed to buy Grand Theft Auto III. It's wrong on so many levels; I can't even begin to tell you.;)
Slashdot Mirror
I hold an opinion as a Linux user for several years that has to frequently grapple with graphic server problems. You might discount my opinion and slap on the bumper-sticker slogan about Windows, and that's fine with me.
Well, there you have it.
It wasn't until about a year and a half ago when we could actually change the resolution of the desktop while in the GUI itself. Distributions like Mandrake go a long way to rectify configuration problems such as this.
The average user from the Windows world expects to plop in a CD, get the drivers from it, and install. In Mandrake-like installation programs, this happens transparently (and we're all thankful for that). But if Mandrake fails to catch something - say, an ATI card - the user is left to pick up the pieces and go from there. And it's not particularly simple, either. Using the hacked 4.3 XFree drivers tends to mess up the font anti-aliasing. What is one supposed to do then? In some Debian-based distros, it's a more evil exercise, since ATI packages their wares as RPM and not even alien + dpkg can always resolve their screwyness.
Not to mention that Joe Average has no clue what XF86Config is or how it works.
In other words, setting up graphics under Linux - especially for 3D acceleration - remains to be one of the more tedious/bothersome/frustrating parts of the experience. And no, it really doesn't help that the selfish ATI and nVidia don't release the specs.
Moreover, your experience cannot be applied to the whole. I know of a few Debian users who have also had a real fun time with nVidia's drivers. Even if they work, they can be a significant bear to set up.
X also highlights a flaw in the Linux community in terms of open-source development models. In a perfect world, people would realize that X is a somewhat inferior means of achieving a certain end and work on a better program. I think a lot of people would agree that X is obsolete and needs to go and that action should be taken. However, we stop at words without action. Perhaps due to the sheer complexity of such a beast (or in the worst case, complexity which the X team has manufactured), no one has really stepped in to replace X with a faster, more 3D intensive implementation to meet the demands of 21st century desktops and workstations. Hence, users are content with a "good enough" solution, but not the best solution. In a sense, this creates a veritable "monopoly" in the open-source realm, a dinosaur stuck in its ways that burdens everyone else and is so ingrained that people aren't willing to take on the challenge of replacing it.
So, yes, X is somewhat akin to Internet Explorer. Options exist to replace IE, but since 90% of the world is still using it, we still have to cope and deal with it - no matter how positively ass-backwards it is. It too is one of those "good enough" solutions.
Part of this problem is X and part of this problem is the graphic card manufacturers themselves. ATI, for example, is lagging far behind nVidia in terms of willingness to support Linux (the only XFree 4.3 drivers released are unofficial). But it must be realized that these two aspects are not mutually exclusive. I would assert that ATI lags and nVidia is buggy because what they have to work with, X, is very difficult and cumbersome. Especially in light of the fact that since the Linux usage base is so much smaller than the Windows one, it's hard to argue on economic grounds why one would go through the effort of writing for X. Granted, ATI isn't doing itself any favors by insisting on using essentially closed RPM-packaged source code, but we can't keep running away from this problem and continue to graft these kludges onto a broken X. We need something entirely new.
I can only hope that, really, the Challenge problem comes into play. This is the notion that as people become discontent with the current status quo or bottleneck that attention becomes focused on eliminating it. For Linux, I believe X is such a bottleneck. If Linux is to have any hope at all of attracting the high-level 3D applications (especially games) and running them well in the future, X has to be replaced. Until then, we will only see these hacked together hit-and-miss ports, or afterthoughts from Windows game developers.
It could also be the notion that darkness conceals things in the distance in a way not unlike fog does. Hence, it's conceivable that you can put more details directly in front of the player considering that the visual distance is reduced.
In a sense, this made Xenogears somewhat mysterious. Although all of the pieces were there in the storyline and could be understood, it often took a look at the official story to see how they all related to one another. But Xenogears had a good story for other reasons as well. It started off with a handful of rather evil villains and eventually narrowed it down to just one (and even then, he's questionably evil), it blended in some religious mythos, including a priest whose faith turns against him. The tracking down of a manmade and synthetic God entity. And that everyone on the planet was artificially produced by this "God," in reality a giant planet terraforming weapon.
A lot of people see parallels between Xenogears and Neon Geneis Evangelion, and it goes beyond Xenogears using a rejected NERV Headquarters design for its ship bridge. Both have big robots. Both have the mysterious blue haired girl (Rei Ayanami and Miang Hawwa). Both have reluctant and troubled heroes (Shinji Ikari and Fei Wong Fong). And both make heavy use of religious symbolism and names in the most garish of places. But that's about where the similarities end. The storylines and the factions are quite different, it's just that some elements are shared. And I don't really think one borrowed from the other - they were both developed in parallel and so it's probably sheer coincidence that some of these parallels exist.
The point I'm trying to make is that Xenogears/Xenosaga is pretentious like Evangelion is. Arguably, the Xeno games make more sense than Evangelion, which spiraled into a crack-induced mind warp in the final episodes and movies, but they are both guilty for using religious symbolism to effect a faux deepness.
Just my 2.5 cents. ^_^;
Between boobs and the ability to dynamically pee on anything in sight and reduce everything to a bloody pulp, I'll take the boobs. ^_;
Ah the Army Man "franchise"... if you want to call it that. It's not like it's worth anything. In the dozen or more titles they've produced, there wasn't a single good one. The series has an awful reputation and why anyone would want to revisit it just demonstrates the rather sorry creative state of video games today.
Mepis doesn't look terribly great, it's true, but it is a Debian variant that's very easy to install, doubles as a Knoppix-style LiveCD, and is quite stable. I enjoy this distro.
I too am very happy with Mepis Linux. The only annoyance with it that I've run across is that it seems like the ATI Radeon drivers (for their more recent cards, like the 9700 and 9800) fail to work. I know it's challenging to make them work on a standard Debian install, let alone one with a customized kernel.
They've never told the truth in the past. Why should I believe them today?
It can take more space to elaborate on such things, but don't forget - RPG text boxes are of a specific size, there are significant memory constraints, and there is a ton of inconsequential dialogue that also has to be translated.
The art, at least back with cartridges, was in making the whole thing fit together in a fixed space, yet still get the same point across. Of course, with CDs and more recently DVDs, it doesn't matter so much now.
Open sourcers are usually adept at compiling downloaded source code from scratch. So, if someone wanted to let Mozilla compile for five straight hours, it would be of no consequence to them.
Your average user doesn't care to do that. They want the application to just work. They expect an installation program that will handle all of that compilation and copying for them amd they don't care if it isn't 100% optimized for their desktop.
This is why an installation program is important. If the average user can't get the darned thing on their system without hassle, they aren't going to use it. And remember, Mozilla is competing against Internet Explorer here - which by default comes with every Windows computer. We can't expect much effort from the user.
Indeed. Being a hybrid Windows and Linux user, I must say that Evolution is one Linux program I'm envious Linux has and Windows doesn't. The next Mozilla Mail would benefit from following their approach, imho.
I mean a 128kbps "on average" OGG file. I know well that they use variable bitrate recording methods. :)
In other words, I feel a 128 kbps OGG is larger in size than an equivalent 128 kbps MP3, but the sound quality is more akin to a 192 kbps MP3, yet it isn't as big as a 192 kbps MP3.
Just mah 2 cents. ^_^
A shame. I respected Sega until this. Now they are just nickel-and-dimers.
Consider how this would work. Can there be no side-scrollers because Nintendo patented "a game that scrolls from left to right or vice versa with a main character that hops on enemies to destroy them"? Or no more FPS games because iD patents "a game whose perspective is in the first-person who is armed with a gun"? Before you say "That's ridiculous," I need remind all of the recent latent and intellectual property nonsense that we see every other day here on Slashdot. People can get and receive patents for ridiculous things, as we have seen time and again.
I can see if EA ripped off Sonic the Hedgehog directly and made a Sonic game, because Sonic is clearly Sega's property. But to make a game whose mechanics are based on another game illegal? That's like saying Corporation X manufacturers television sets and no other corporation can.
And, in a perfect world, instituting punitive damages against the SCO corporation for bringing forth such malicious and slanderous prosecution, and then feeding them to the dogs at the FTC.
It is short-sighted to infer that this is the only reason the US economy reacted. In truth, it was around 1976 when garage-based innovators like Wozniak - who probably didn't give a damn about patents and the artifically world manufactured by the legal types - started their revolutionary work. The high-tech industry prior to 1976 resembled nothing at all like the high-tech industry of today, and this is no doubt due to advances by hobbyists and computer enthusiasts like Wozniak, not patent laws.
Moreover, patent laws realistically fail to protect innovation. Although they were drafted with that intent, it is clear today that some corporations (SCO with this amusing litigation, Microsoft with its recent assertion of FAT rights, Thompson Multimedia and MP3s) are consistently using and abusing this system, maintaining healthy "patent portfolios" that can be used to aggressively seek out and sue at any time those who they perceive violate them. The millions of people protesting in Europe over it cannot be wrong - the system of software patents is completely broken.
The DMCA was manufactured to protect the special interests of a select few corporations like the RIAA and MPAA. In the free, capitalist market the US claims to be, there is really no reason for why such things as the DMCA should exist. In a free market, the RIAA and MPAA would be left up to their own devices and not come cowering or crying to Uncle Sam for help. By protecting these decrepid business models, the US has given carte blanche authority for the RIAA at least to act above the laws in defending itself, even though in the free market the RIAA would rightfully cease to exist.
Historically, we find that governments (for example, pre-industrial China) that protect the special interests of a few select elites end up paying dearly for it later. As we see, the special interests of elites were protected and these newfound rights were aggressively used to stamp out any threats to their well-being and existence. As such, innovation was stifled and the industrial revolution was delayed in such countries.
I think you're entirely correct for that reason. Digital television is having difficulty making significant inroads for two reasons. One, the cost of digital televisions that support HDTV is still abnormally high compared to the traditional analog set. In this economy, people are more likely to choose the cheaper set. And two, there aren't enough advantages to digital television that would cause the average customer to get rid of the traditional set.
It's sort of like, for me, when DVD first came out. I mean, yes, DVD provides a much sharper picture and can include various little niceties and extras. But with VHS players that can also record costing below $30 these days, you're going to have a hard time convincing me to spend $300 on a DVD recorder along with $100 for 50 DVD-RWs (and as we've seen with writable CDs, we can't necesarily argue these have superior longevity to VHS tapes). In the case of HDTV, yes, it's not like I need to see every wrinkle on Ted Koppel's face or more strands of Sam Donaldson's mysteriously flaxen hair. Heck, I still get television signals where the picture is "ghosted" across the screen and I survive. Maybe the early adopters can't understand this, but nor do I see HDTV justifying replacing every television in the US.
It's remarkable to what lengths a company will go to foist a sub-par video game into the limelight. Acclaim hasn't made anything worthwhile in months, if not years. A desperate advertising campaign like this is only trying to mask their shortcomings in game design.
What some authors will do as a desparate plea for attention... I wonder if he got paid to be a guest writer. >_>
Kinda' like the clueless Dad who loans the 6-year-old the extra $10 needed to buy Grand Theft Auto III. It's wrong on so many levels; I can't even begin to tell you. ;)