OK so I guess I'm safe with my William Shatner Sings The Blues collection, right?
So long as you don't listen to it while watching the Star Wars: Holiday Special, you should be alright.
Mixing those two, especially the part where Carrie Fisher (high on drugs) sings, is liable to kill you outright. The human body simply can't abide two people from two immensly popular science fiction / fantasy series' singing so badly at the same time.
In fact, it's best if you don't even keep such items in the same room.
We've mastered the singleplayer levels and done the campaign over and over (and over). Now we want to try out this multiplayer thing we keep hearing about.
Disclaimer: That was blatantly ripped from a User Friendly comic. Sadly, their search engine doesn't seem to be working quite as well as the Penny-Arcade one.
Having looked at the site before it gets slashdotted I'd like to comment on it.
All of the box he featured were from games from the 16-bit era, or earlier. Does this suggest that hideously bad box art is a dying trend? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any recent game that has had bad box art. Most box art today is spectacular, like for Warcraft 3.
Has anybody seen any recent (i.e. N64 / PSX and onward) games with bad box art? Maybe there was a few for the PSX / N64, but the latest consoles? It's hard to say, though recent Japanese games may have "wierd" box art.
From the article: The LL487 S-Wing is so old it makes the Y-WING look new. The ship has a very mysterious past and little is written about it in the old republic archives.
So it looks like that because the ship is very old, not because of a cop-out. That still doesn't make much sense (Ships in Eps 1&2 look much different), but maybe that was the style at the time?
They may go after these guys, but I doubt it. Remember that Gamespy mod for Halo which allowed internet play (albiet slowly)?. Microsoft didn't touch those guys (to my knowledge). While what these guys are doing isn't quite as simple as a firewall hack, I don't see how Nintendo can do anything about it. Unless, that is, they use some "magic" encryption on their connection...
There have been other sites (I won't any links) that have suffered from DDoS attacks, and it certainly wasn't from layers. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the source of the DDoS attacks was jealous and / or rival groups on the "scene". It's sort of akin to a turf war with regular gangs.
The battery on your existing cellphone is significantly *larger* then entire cellphones today!
xHTML? Wha? Back when I got my phone, digital was still a pretty hot new thing, and analog / digital dual mode was sweet. Games? E-Mail? Never heard of them!
I feel like that guy on That 80's Show (short lived, I never watched it) who's seen talking on a "mobile" phone in a club. That thing he was using was the size of a loaf of bread.
1. Low quality and / or fixed format files. MP3 has a large market penetration and LAME is a great codec for 99% of the material, but I'd like to be able to download FLAC, WAV, OGG, or something else. Preferably a clean open lossless standard i.e. FLAC. If the track costs more for the high-quality version then the regular MP3 version I'm okay with that.
2. Forced to purchase a full album over single tracks. This is a big turn off for me, as I find only a few tracks are really worth it.
3. No preview of tracks. I'm not entirly sure if this is bad or not, but some way of previewing, either by a short clip, or a really low quality version of the song, is definately nice.
4. No support for countries outside of the US. Obviously the US would be the biggest market to start out with, but support for Canada is a cruicial second IMO. Apple's iTunes Music Store doesn't (to my knowledge) support Canada yet, so I can't yet take advantage of it. Ideally, the system would be able to easily support all countries, perhaps with credit cards this is possible, but I see some possible legal implications here.
Seriously, the guy is obviously so far ahead of the curve that getting in now (while he's in debt) will make me a wealthy man.
If I had a dime for every time I heard that phrase during the dot-com era (especially on MSNBC / CNN / whatever) I'd be a rich man too. Most people didn't seem to care that the price / earnings ratio was like 100:1, or even 500:1.
Though today people are far more cautious of what they invest in, it would still take a carefull analysis of their business plan and financials before I would commit any money to invest.
Hmmm....maybe they should branch out into item hunting bots for RPGs to help finance their other activities.
No kidding. A few years ago (2?) some kids made like $30,000 one summer by doing item runs in Diablo II, and then auctioning off the items on eBay. Back then the expansion pack was brand new, and dupes were few and far between. An unidentified Windforce, Harlequin Crest, Grandfather, etc, would go for $300+. Accounts full of good items would go for thousands, IIRC.
These kids, aged 19 and 20, had state-of-the-art computers, notebooks, new cars, and a load of other stuff. Their dad thought they were robbing houses, before the kids showed him the receipts.
It's like they say, never, ever, piss off your system admin
I don't know about that dude. It looks like the government is the one with root access, and they aren't afraid to kill -9 a few people to make a point.
His console is pretty much a PC, not exactly huge costs there.
Initially, yes. Now, try and tell that to Microsoft. Last I heard they were getting gouged by NVIDIA and Intel because the parts they use in the X-Box are now out of date. A 733 Mhz Celeron (esque) chip? Not a huge amount of demand for those. NV2A? Still pretty good, but definately far from the top, and the source of a small falling-out, if I recall (NVIDIA was charging Microsoft rediculous amounts of money for the chip). 8 GB hard drive? I haven't seen one of those for sale for a long time, but I believe they now use larger drives with smaller partitions.
Unless there is some special hardware, say, in the chipset, what's to prevent me from simply removing the drive, placing it in another computer, and formatting it?
This is basically another X-Box. It may or may not have signed code protection, or BIOS encryption, or whatever, but I don't see a huge difference. The connection to their servers could be a problem however. It'd be a great firewall / router / media center once cracked.
And what do I do if I don't have an internet connection, let alone a fast one? I'd be pretty screwed if all I had were "pre-loaded" games to play. No CD-ROM does not a game console make.
The quality of machinima movies today rivals Toy Story five years ago
I'm really going to have to disagree (with the article) here. The quality of Machinima movies is not even *close* to Toy Story, or hell, even Tin Story (the predecessor of Toy Story).
Anachronox: The Movie? Made from a game based on the Quake 2 engine. The Ill Clan? Real-time, looks to be about Unreal 1 / Quake 1 level in quality.
With godly hardware, like a GeforceFX, custom shaders, and a lower resolution it could be possible. Square did demo Final Fantasy: TSW in real-time using some Geforce tech. It didn't look as good as the finished product, but it demonstrated that it could be done.
Toy Story had a very unique style of animation. Woody sort of flopped around like a doll on strings. The dinosaur wadled around like someone with limited leg mobility would. That kind of animation and style just doesn't happen in real time, it takes a lot of time and effort, or a lot of computing power, to pull it off convincingly.
Lip syncing is also pretty touch to do in real-time (The Ill Clan and Anachronox use basic facial expressions), though Valve has had technology which supposedly can do it for a while now. We'll see when Half-Life 2 comes out.
The camerawork is dizzying for no real cinematic effect. The plot is nearly nonexistant. The mood is dull and always dark.
To be fair, most games with "cinematic" cutscenes tend to do really impossible things with the camera. It's generally because the directors have a full 6-degrees of freedom all the time, and they tend to overuse it. Anachronox is a good example, though I loved the game. Or perhaps they don't move the camera at all, and you get very static, rigid cutscenes (Deus Ex comes to mind).
Very few games actually stick to the normal, actually-possible-in-real-life camera movement. A good example is Metal Gear Solid 2. The cutscenes were masterfully directed (the plot is another story), and really came across well.
Also, I got really pissed at Peter Jackson for the LOTR movies where he's constantly doing camera pans, helicopter shots, and just plain impossible stuff. I really don't like the shot in FOTR where the camera goes from the top (?) of Isengard (sp?) down through a cave, following some birds, and finally up to Christopher Lee. You could never do that in real life, and so it always seems fake to me.
Slashdot Mirror
OK so I guess I'm safe with my William Shatner Sings The Blues collection, right?
So long as you don't listen to it while watching the Star Wars: Holiday Special, you should be alright.
Mixing those two, especially the part where Carrie Fisher (high on drugs) sings, is liable to kill you outright. The human body simply can't abide two people from two immensly popular science fiction / fantasy series' singing so badly at the same time.
In fact, it's best if you don't even keep such items in the same room.
We've mastered the singleplayer levels and done the campaign over and over (and over). Now we want to try out this multiplayer thing we keep hearing about.
Disclaimer: That was blatantly ripped from a User Friendly comic. Sadly, their search engine doesn't seem to be working quite as well as the Penny-Arcade one.
Michael Jackson has denounced the RIAA
He's just mad because he made the list as MonkeySpanker21@kazaa.com
Having looked at the site before it gets slashdotted I'd like to comment on it.
All of the box he featured were from games from the 16-bit era, or earlier. Does this suggest that hideously bad box art is a dying trend? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any recent game that has had bad box art. Most box art today is spectacular, like for Warcraft 3.
Has anybody seen any recent (i.e. N64 / PSX and onward) games with bad box art? Maybe there was a few for the PSX / N64, but the latest consoles? It's hard to say, though recent Japanese games may have "wierd" box art.
Here is another movie (mpeg, 1.5 MB) demonstrating a set of legs learning to walk over time.
From the article:
The LL487 S-Wing is so old it makes the Y-WING look new. The ship has a very mysterious past and little is written about it in the old republic archives.
So it looks like that because the ship is very old, not because of a cop-out. That still doesn't make much sense (Ships in Eps 1&2 look much different), but maybe that was the style at the time?
They may go after these guys, but I doubt it. Remember that Gamespy mod for Halo which allowed internet play (albiet slowly)?. Microsoft didn't touch those guys (to my knowledge). While what these guys are doing isn't quite as simple as a firewall hack, I don't see how Nintendo can do anything about it. Unless, that is, they use some "magic" encryption on their connection...
There have been other sites (I won't any links) that have suffered from DDoS attacks, and it certainly wasn't from layers. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the source of the DDoS attacks was jealous and / or rival groups on the "scene". It's sort of akin to a turf war with regular gangs.
The battery on your existing cellphone is significantly *larger* then entire cellphones today!
xHTML? Wha? Back when I got my phone, digital was still a pretty hot new thing, and analog / digital dual mode was sweet. Games? E-Mail? Never heard of them!
I feel like that guy on That 80's Show (short lived, I never watched it) who's seen talking on a "mobile" phone in a club. That thing he was using was the size of a loaf of bread.
Shouldn't this be the RIAAs job? They do a pretty good job right now, and they only look to get better in the future!
What types things would turn you away?
Juit quickly:
1. Low quality and / or fixed format files. MP3 has a large market penetration and LAME is a great codec for 99% of the material, but I'd like to be able to download FLAC, WAV, OGG, or something else. Preferably a clean open lossless standard i.e. FLAC. If the track costs more for the high-quality version then the regular MP3 version I'm okay with that.
2. Forced to purchase a full album over single tracks. This is a big turn off for me, as I find only a few tracks are really worth it.
3. No preview of tracks. I'm not entirly sure if this is bad or not, but some way of previewing, either by a short clip, or a really low quality version of the song, is definately nice.
4. No support for countries outside of the US.
Obviously the US would be the biggest market to start out with, but support for Canada is a cruicial second IMO. Apple's iTunes Music Store doesn't (to my knowledge) support Canada yet, so I can't yet take advantage of it. Ideally, the system would be able to easily support all countries, perhaps with credit cards this is possible, but I see some possible legal implications here.
Seriously, the guy is obviously so far ahead of the curve that getting in now (while he's in debt) will make me a wealthy man.
If I had a dime for every time I heard that phrase during the dot-com era (especially on MSNBC / CNN / whatever) I'd be a rich man too. Most people didn't seem to care that the price / earnings ratio was like 100:1, or even 500:1.
Though today people are far more cautious of what they invest in, it would still take a carefull analysis of their business plan and financials before I would commit any money to invest.
Holy cow.
That does it, I'm moving to Sweden. I've already got dual citizenship with Sweden and Canada. Screw localization issues! 26 megabits here I come!
(8) Get all those Squaresoft games early!
(9) If you're into Airsoft, Tokyo Marui makes some of the best stuff. Period.
Seriously though, the language is a bitch to learn. Just read this to find out why (I don't think the author is 100% serious ;-).
No kidding. A few years ago (2?) some kids made like $30,000 one summer by doing item runs in Diablo II, and then auctioning off the items on eBay. Back then the expansion pack was brand new, and dupes were few and far between. An unidentified Windforce, Harlequin Crest, Grandfather, etc, would go for $300+. Accounts full of good items would go for thousands, IIRC.
These kids, aged 19 and 20, had state-of-the-art computers, notebooks, new cars, and a load of other stuff. Their dad thought they were robbing houses, before the kids showed him the receipts.
Here is the article.
I don't know about that dude. It looks like the government is the one with root access, and they aren't afraid to kill -9 a few people to make a point.
His console is pretty much a PC, not exactly huge costs there.
Initially, yes. Now, try and tell that to Microsoft. Last I heard they were getting gouged by NVIDIA and Intel because the parts they use in the X-Box are now out of date. A 733 Mhz Celeron (esque) chip? Not a huge amount of demand for those. NV2A? Still pretty good, but definately far from the top, and the source of a small falling-out, if I recall (NVIDIA was charging Microsoft rediculous amounts of money for the chip). 8 GB hard drive? I haven't seen one of those for sale for a long time, but I believe they now use larger drives with smaller partitions.
Amazon.com would own the patent to writing with them.
Would that be One-Click Writing?
Okay okay, that was bad.
Indeed.
Unless there is some special hardware, say, in the chipset, what's to prevent me from simply removing the drive, placing it in another computer, and formatting it?
This is basically another X-Box. It may or may not have signed code protection, or BIOS encryption, or whatever, but I don't see a huge difference. The connection to their servers could be a problem however. It'd be a great firewall / router / media center once cracked.
And what do I do if I don't have an internet connection, let alone a fast one? I'd be pretty screwed if all I had were "pre-loaded" games to play. No CD-ROM does not a game console make.
The quality of machinima movies today rivals Toy Story five years ago
I'm really going to have to disagree (with the article) here. The quality of Machinima movies is not even *close* to Toy Story, or hell, even Tin Story (the predecessor of Toy Story).
Anachronox: The Movie? Made from a game based on the Quake 2 engine. The Ill Clan? Real-time, looks to be about Unreal 1 / Quake 1 level in quality.
With godly hardware, like a GeforceFX, custom shaders, and a lower resolution it could be possible. Square did demo Final Fantasy: TSW in real-time using some Geforce tech. It didn't look as good as the finished product, but it demonstrated that it could be done.
Toy Story had a very unique style of animation. Woody sort of flopped around like a doll on strings. The dinosaur wadled around like someone with limited leg mobility would. That kind of animation and style just doesn't happen in real time, it takes a lot of time and effort, or a lot of computing power, to pull it off convincingly.
Lip syncing is also pretty touch to do in real-time (The Ill Clan and Anachronox use basic facial expressions), though Valve has had technology which supposedly can do it for a while now. We'll see when Half-Life 2 comes out.
The camerawork is dizzying for no real cinematic effect. The plot is nearly nonexistant. The mood is dull and always dark.
To be fair, most games with "cinematic" cutscenes tend to do really impossible things with the camera. It's generally because the directors have a full 6-degrees of freedom all the time, and they tend to overuse it. Anachronox is a good example, though I loved the game. Or perhaps they don't move the camera at all, and you get very static, rigid cutscenes (Deus Ex comes to mind).
Very few games actually stick to the normal, actually-possible-in-real-life camera movement. A good example is Metal Gear Solid 2. The cutscenes were masterfully directed (the plot is another story), and really came across well.
Also, I got really pissed at Peter Jackson for the LOTR movies where he's constantly doing camera pans, helicopter shots, and just plain impossible stuff. I really don't like the shot in FOTR where the camera goes from the top (?) of Isengard (sp?) down through a cave, following some birds, and finally up to Christopher Lee. You could never do that in real life, and so it always seems fake to me.