OK, ever since Pilotwings introduced me to what I shall call "Arcade" flying - I have long sought for a flight sim that gave the simplicity and fun that Pilotwings did. Crimson Skies was close, but it suffered a lot of bugs and other things (I had also just upgraded to Windows 2000 at the time, so it isn't entirely fair to blame the game).
Anyway, with Halo, Midtown Madness, Crimson Skies, and I am sure there are plenty of others that started out with the PC and then went XBox only, it really seems that MS is neglecting the PC gamer in a big way. Some games just play better on a PC (Halo) where others with a proper gamepad (I have several, none of which are MS) can be every bit as good. Besides, the experience gets better over time as I upgrade my hardware etc, which is something that will probably never happen on hardware. I remember when I got my GeForce 3 card and could semi-reasonably play Midtown Madness 2 at 1600x1200, that was just cool...
I really just wish MS would stop cannibalizing the PC market so much in hopes of pulling the Xb0x0r out of the bottomless money losing pit. Please give us our games back, in all their glory (not missing cool features like co-op from Halo!!!)
I first discounted the value of the game boy player when it was first announced and then bundled with the cube (having been a cube owner for quite some time now). I haven't purchased a GameBoy yet as I just haven't been compelled. Originally they were releasing "new" games for it, and lately they have gone all retro so I am not sure what to think. Anyway, enough with the rant about me.
This little news item got me thinking, if they can send that kind of cool emulation (be it hardware or software driven) through the memory port, along with the recent advances made by the cube hackers in making the network port more useful, the cube could certainly have some interesting innovations in the next while as they bust "open" the hardware more.
This still doesn't convince me to buy a player (I don't play much anyway, no big deal). But I do like the fact that companies are putting out different technologies that can be bolted together to make something cool. It will be interesting to watch as the cube scene continues to develop.
Not don't get me wrong, I remember Gauntlet with the fondest of memories....
But ever since it had a sequel it has been trailing behind other games in almost every aspect and has always been just a simple rehash of the original. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does get old...
So they stick Romero on a project that they know will be stuck in a time warp - he can't lose! If it comes out late and the graphics suck it up - darn, that is what we have all come to expect.
I do hope that Romero can speed it up a bit. Gauntlet has always seemed to drag too much. Daikatana did seem paced (movement, adventure, etc.) about right and did have some fun weapons. Hopefully Romero will add some spice to it and not just delay it until 2006.
Really, neither should be socially acceptable - especially in mediums so easily accessed by children. Violence and Sexuality expose children to concepts that they don't know how to deal with and end up just emulating them... which points to the real problem: Parenting.
If parents were more involved, perhaps even playing games with their children two (or more) things would happen:
1) Parents would become aware of how violent (or sexual) games/movies can be 2) More importantly, they would witness how it affects their children. Not every child reacts the same but every child could benefit from discussing the fact that in real life smashing someone's head in a car door over and over would probably kill them, and it isn't how we are supposed to behave.
Unfortunately there are far too many parents that don't care (maybe are just too busy? but again, that is an issue of priority and caring) about ratings or even what their kids are doing. The sad thing is that the vocal group will eventually get legislation passed because those who would stop it are precisely those who don't care about their own children, let alone the country they live in.
To add in a dash of consipiracy theory...
Why couldn't it be somehow tied back to nVidia (perhaps a friend of an employee) who did the hacking - Really nVidia stands to benefit more from this delay that anyone else - it totally hoses the launch deal with ATI (which will be renegotiated, but still hurts) as well as gives them time to get the next gen hardware out as well as the Det 50's nicely polished.
So what happens when a user has properly setup their windows box so their logged in user is NOT in the local admin group (I could see a parent doing this with their kids accounts, not wanting them to screw anything up).
I have really been thinking about getting much more involved in linux (and BSD, etc.) consulting lately, but there hasn't (isn't?) a huge demand in my area. People are generally more concerned about being able to open Word documents without a problem etc.... and feel it is worth it to them to pay the MS tax.
This comes as great news to me (not because I live in Mass.) because it is paving the road for a lot more job opportunities to open up - which in my opinion is a mutually beneficial thing for the government and the populous.
While slightly off center of topic, what I remember most from the days of yesteryear was the in game music. Which, has mostly dissappeared from the games these days. I can very clearly remember the turning point, it was about the time Quake was about to be released and they announced that it would have no in-game music, just super realistic sound effects.
Not that every game should have music necessarily, and along those lines there are still games today that have music, but I very much miss the addicting (and annoying) music from the glory days of NES and SNES - even the GB.... I can't count how many times my parents or sisters yelled at me to turn the sound down/off.
I feel somehow obligated to post something to this article as I was lucky enough to be in school when he dropped by for a lecture. There were two distinct feelings I had at the time:
1) This man seemed out of touch with reality. Very forward thinking, and even willing to give up some rights/privacy in the name of invasive (though arguably useful) technology
2) This man certainly has a vision for the future. Sun is a decent company, but has lost a lot of competitive edge over the years, and with Joy leaving the company there is bound to be a change in direction. Whether he was actively steering the company in a positive or negative direction will be the drama played out over the next few years.
Still, as one of the parents of Java, he certainly has made a big impact - and as a visionary individual will probably crank out some interesting theories/designs/apps. He will still be an individual worth keeping tabs on.
So why is it in every single one of these articles, they have to attribute high sales to some new-fangled game that was released, or poor sales due to no new (or interesting) games being released....
I mean, from a strictly mathematical / statistical point of view - and taken to the extreme - this would indicate that most consoles are purchased with only one game ever being bought (which we know not to be the case).
Now granted, this is just a rant but I get tired of reading that one console sold better *simply* because of a certain title being released for it. In fact, couldn't we extend this to PC sales as well, or at least video card sales? They are planning on bundling half-life 2 with the fancy pants new Radeon 9800 to be released....
Which of course further skews the numbers...
Admittedly, I purchased a gamecube looking at what titles were available at the time, what had been announced (Zelda, Metroid, etc.), and planned (Mario Kart?). So yes, in that way software did drive this purchasing decision --- but I also planned on, and in fact have purchased numerous titles.
Wouldn't it be nice to link in software sales as well?
Metroid has always been one of my very favorite games on any of the Nintendo systems. The story and character(s).
Who can forget the glorious day of beating the original Metroid only to find out that Samus was in fact a girl. Ridley has also been an awesome boss - though I have never understood why he was #2 to Mother Brain.... much much cooler and more dangerous. Metroid Prime got it right by having him as basically the leader of the Space Pirates.
I think it is great that he is "hands-off" as far as development is concerned, but is very involved with story and plot - a very good way to direct the flavor of the game, and let those special seasonings blend into other games as well.
Compared to Mario Sunshine or Zelda Wind Waker, Metroid Prime has really been the game that most engrossed me and that I enjoyed playing, quite a pleasant cross between adventure and so many other genres that I don't entirely know how to classify it.
To keep it on topic, Metroid Prime II or whatever they call it will almost certainly be purchased by me, I just hope I have time to play it.
Now, there are problems associated with this, but I think people are missing the point that this isn't (yet) a drop in replacement for grandma to get her quilting newsletter.
RSS is a relatively new creation, especially in terms of popularity and I think there are a large number of geeks like myself that will definitely like being able to pull the few newsletters or lists we like. Especially if they pull headlines and still make you request delivery or actually visit a web site.
I personally have loved watching readers (aggregators) develop and mature, as well as more sites coming online with content for them. I think this is certainly one of the things to watch as it is morphing the way we use the web.
Kind of like the evolution of blog style web sites that report news and commentary, so I don't have to hit the estimated 50 billion hardware review sites each day just to see what they have been playing with. Used with a/. style comment system and the newsletters could become quite an interesting niche in the internet over the next few years.
And yes, if it is popular Microsoft will probably make a stand alone reader or more likely bundle it with IE or Outlook Express.
Internet, power, water... it is all good
on
MIT Roofnet
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Reminds me of a story from about 9 months back or so. A local University noticed strange power usage from one of their lines, and after tracing it down for awhile noticed that a house next to campus had somehow hooked up to the university power grid.... basically "free" power for the last twenty years or so.
The beauty of it was that they denied knowing about as the house had changed owners and attributed not seeing a power bill to some strange reason...
And along those same lines, my wife's grandparents live right next to a gold course and one of their neighbors got busted a few years back for tapping into their water lines and using them for their lawn. Can you really blame them on this one? one lawn is a drop in the bucket compared to a full golf course....
Internet, power, water... it is all good
Mandrake is my best friend - at home
on
Mandrake 9.2 RC1
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
So for home use - Mandrake has always been the sweet spot - excellent NTFS support out of the box as well just generally very user friendly interface... not the heavyweight server backend that other distros are...
My 2 cents...
I picked up an ATT plan and a Siemens S56 for the sole purpose of using Bluetooth to get on the internet and read slashdot....
And I have to say I was utterly depressed by the speed of the service. The actual transfer of data wasn't horrible, around 33.6K average experience (though it seemed to peak higher at times) - it took a good 10 seconds to resolve DNS and start the data flowing, or whatever the heck ATT was doing.
I have heard TMobile / Verizon have pretty decent data plans (unlimted for $20 / month). If you are serious about this whole thing that would be a top choice.
If you are leasing the office space (or some other form of rent) - won't the building owner cover at least part of the cost of fixing it? I would think they would be legally obligated to at least participate in re-wiring something of this scale.
In any regard, be smart and hire a certified electrician to come and do it right.
As I am a big subscriber to conspiracy theory, I have to admit that it seems awefully nice of the community to continue to point out the strong and weak points of the whole SCO mess. What firm wouldn't kill to be able to cruise along with a bit of PR each day to fuel the fire and get people to view the story from a thousand different angles - making it that much easier to plug those holes and stand in court....
Not that SCO has much of chance, it just seems intersting that pretty much everyone who is anyone (including myself now) has had to drop their two cents in the bucket regarding the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I guess I can give up that last fleeting hope of seeing some of that come back one day....
OK, ever since Pilotwings introduced me to what I shall call "Arcade" flying - I have long sought for a flight sim that gave the simplicity and fun that Pilotwings did. Crimson Skies was close, but it suffered a lot of bugs and other things (I had also just upgraded to Windows 2000 at the time, so it isn't entirely fair to blame the game).
Anyway, with Halo, Midtown Madness, Crimson Skies, and I am sure there are plenty of others that started out with the PC and then went XBox only, it really seems that MS is neglecting the PC gamer in a big way. Some games just play better on a PC (Halo) where others with a proper gamepad (I have several, none of which are MS) can be every bit as good. Besides, the experience gets better over time as I upgrade my hardware etc, which is something that will probably never happen on hardware. I remember when I got my GeForce 3 card and could semi-reasonably play Midtown Madness 2 at 1600x1200, that was just cool...
I really just wish MS would stop cannibalizing the PC market so much in hopes of pulling the Xb0x0r out of the bottomless money losing pit. Please give us our games back, in all their glory (not missing cool features like co-op from Halo!!!)
I first discounted the value of the game boy player when it was first announced and then bundled with the cube (having been a cube owner for quite some time now). I haven't purchased a GameBoy yet as I just haven't been compelled. Originally they were releasing "new" games for it, and lately they have gone all retro so I am not sure what to think. Anyway, enough with the rant about me.
This little news item got me thinking, if they can send that kind of cool emulation (be it hardware or software driven) through the memory port, along with the recent advances made by the cube hackers in making the network port more useful, the cube could certainly have some interesting innovations in the next while as they bust "open" the hardware more.
This still doesn't convince me to buy a player (I don't play much anyway, no big deal). But I do like the fact that companies are putting out different technologies that can be bolted together to make something cool. It will be interesting to watch as the cube scene continues to develop.
Not don't get me wrong, I remember Gauntlet with the fondest of memories....
But ever since it had a sequel it has been trailing behind other games in almost every aspect and has always been just a simple rehash of the original. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does get old...
So they stick Romero on a project that they know will be stuck in a time warp - he can't lose! If it comes out late and the graphics suck it up - darn, that is what we have all come to expect.
I do hope that Romero can speed it up a bit. Gauntlet has always seemed to drag too much. Daikatana did seem paced (movement, adventure, etc.) about right and did have some fun weapons. Hopefully Romero will add some spice to it and not just delay it until 2006.
My biased two cents....
Really, neither should be socially acceptable - especially in mediums so easily accessed by children. Violence and Sexuality expose children to concepts that they don't know how to deal with and end up just emulating them... which points to the real problem: Parenting.
If parents were more involved, perhaps even playing games with their children two (or more) things would happen:
1) Parents would become aware of how violent (or sexual) games/movies can be
2) More importantly, they would witness how it affects their children. Not every child reacts the same but every child could benefit from discussing the fact that in real life smashing someone's head in a car door over and over would probably kill them, and it isn't how we are supposed to behave.
Unfortunately there are far too many parents that don't care (maybe are just too busy? but again, that is an issue of priority and caring) about ratings or even what their kids are doing. The sad thing is that the vocal group will eventually get legislation passed because those who would stop it are precisely those who don't care about their own children, let alone the country they live in.
Call me a cynic.
To add in a dash of consipiracy theory... Why couldn't it be somehow tied back to nVidia (perhaps a friend of an employee) who did the hacking - Really nVidia stands to benefit more from this delay that anyone else - it totally hoses the launch deal with ATI (which will be renegotiated, but still hurts) as well as gives them time to get the next gen hardware out as well as the Det 50's nicely polished.
So what happens when a user has properly setup their windows box so their logged in user is NOT in the local admin group (I could see a parent doing this with their kids accounts, not wanting them to screw anything up).
Oh wait, no such box exists...
I have really been thinking about getting much more involved in linux (and BSD, etc.) consulting lately, but there hasn't (isn't?) a huge demand in my area. People are generally more concerned about being able to open Word documents without a problem etc.... and feel it is worth it to them to pay the MS tax.
This comes as great news to me (not because I live in Mass.) because it is paving the road for a lot more job opportunities to open up - which in my opinion is a mutually beneficial thing for the government and the populous.
While slightly off center of topic, what I remember most from the days of yesteryear was the in game music. Which, has mostly dissappeared from the games these days. I can very clearly remember the turning point, it was about the time Quake was about to be released and they announced that it would have no in-game music, just super realistic sound effects.
Not that every game should have music necessarily, and along those lines there are still games today that have music, but I very much miss the addicting (and annoying) music from the glory days of NES and SNES - even the GB.... I can't count how many times my parents or sisters yelled at me to turn the sound down/off.
I feel somehow obligated to post something to this article as I was lucky enough to be in school when he dropped by for a lecture. There were two distinct feelings I had at the time:
1) This man seemed out of touch with reality. Very forward thinking, and even willing to give up some rights/privacy in the name of invasive (though arguably useful) technology
2) This man certainly has a vision for the future. Sun is a decent company, but has lost a lot of competitive edge over the years, and with Joy leaving the company there is bound to be a change in direction. Whether he was actively steering the company in a positive or negative direction will be the drama played out over the next few years.
Still, as one of the parents of Java, he certainly has made a big impact - and as a visionary individual will probably crank out some interesting theories/designs/apps. He will still be an individual worth keeping tabs on.
So why is it in every single one of these articles, they have to attribute high sales to some new-fangled game that was released, or poor sales due to no new (or interesting) games being released....
I mean, from a strictly mathematical / statistical point of view - and taken to the extreme - this would indicate that most consoles are purchased with only one game ever being bought (which we know not to be the case).
Now granted, this is just a rant but I get tired of reading that one console sold better *simply* because of a certain title being released for it. In fact, couldn't we extend this to PC sales as well, or at least video card sales? They are planning on bundling half-life 2 with the fancy pants new Radeon 9800 to be released....
Which of course further skews the numbers...
Admittedly, I purchased a gamecube looking at what titles were available at the time, what had been announced (Zelda, Metroid, etc.), and planned (Mario Kart?). So yes, in that way software did drive this purchasing decision --- but I also planned on, and in fact have purchased numerous titles.
Wouldn't it be nice to link in software sales as well?
Metroid has always been one of my very favorite games on any of the Nintendo systems. The story and character(s).
Who can forget the glorious day of beating the original Metroid only to find out that Samus was in fact a girl. Ridley has also been an awesome boss - though I have never understood why he was #2 to Mother Brain.... much much cooler and more dangerous. Metroid Prime got it right by having him as basically the leader of the Space Pirates.
I think it is great that he is "hands-off" as far as development is concerned, but is very involved with story and plot - a very good way to direct the flavor of the game, and let those special seasonings blend into other games as well.
Compared to Mario Sunshine or Zelda Wind Waker, Metroid Prime has really been the game that most engrossed me and that I enjoyed playing, quite a pleasant cross between adventure and so many other genres that I don't entirely know how to classify it.
To keep it on topic, Metroid Prime II or whatever they call it will almost certainly be purchased by me, I just hope I have time to play it.
Now, there are problems associated with this, but I think people are missing the point that this isn't (yet) a drop in replacement for grandma to get her quilting newsletter.
/. style comment system and the newsletters could become quite an interesting niche in the internet over the next few years.
RSS is a relatively new creation, especially in terms of popularity and I think there are a large number of geeks like myself that will definitely like being able to pull the few newsletters or lists we like. Especially if they pull headlines and still make you request delivery or actually visit a web site.
I personally have loved watching readers (aggregators) develop and mature, as well as more sites coming online with content for them. I think this is certainly one of the things to watch as it is morphing the way we use the web.
Kind of like the evolution of blog style web sites that report news and commentary, so I don't have to hit the estimated 50 billion hardware review sites each day just to see what they have been playing with. Used with a
And yes, if it is popular Microsoft will probably make a stand alone reader or more likely bundle it with IE or Outlook Express.
Reminds me of a story from about 9 months back or so. A local University noticed strange power usage from one of their lines, and after tracing it down for awhile noticed that a house next to campus had somehow hooked up to the university power grid.... basically "free" power for the last twenty years or so. The beauty of it was that they denied knowing about as the house had changed owners and attributed not seeing a power bill to some strange reason... And along those same lines, my wife's grandparents live right next to a gold course and one of their neighbors got busted a few years back for tapping into their water lines and using them for their lawn. Can you really blame them on this one? one lawn is a drop in the bucket compared to a full golf course.... Internet, power, water... it is all good
So for home use - Mandrake has always been the sweet spot - excellent NTFS support out of the box as well just generally very user friendly interface... not the heavyweight server backend that other distros are... My 2 cents...
Obligatory Simpsons SONG:
Oh Whacking Day
Oh Whacking Day
Our hallowed snake skull-cracking day.
I picked up an ATT plan and a Siemens S56 for the sole purpose of using Bluetooth to get on the internet and read slashdot.... And I have to say I was utterly depressed by the speed of the service. The actual transfer of data wasn't horrible, around 33.6K average experience (though it seemed to peak higher at times) - it took a good 10 seconds to resolve DNS and start the data flowing, or whatever the heck ATT was doing. I have heard TMobile / Verizon have pretty decent data plans (unlimted for $20 / month). If you are serious about this whole thing that would be a top choice.
If you are leasing the office space (or some other form of rent) - won't the building owner cover at least part of the cost of fixing it? I would think they would be legally obligated to at least participate in re-wiring something of this scale.
In any regard, be smart and hire a certified electrician to come and do it right.
I burned way too many hours of my life in Quake II cooperative play, as well as the mods and other modes of play.
Quake 4 will be a must buy for me if it has decent co-op play!
As I am a big subscriber to conspiracy theory, I have to admit that it seems awefully nice of the community to continue to point out the strong and weak points of the whole SCO mess. What firm wouldn't kill to be able to cruise along with a bit of PR each day to fuel the fire and get people to view the story from a thousand different angles - making it that much easier to plug those holes and stand in court....
Not that SCO has much of chance, it just seems intersting that pretty much everyone who is anyone (including myself now) has had to drop their two cents in the bucket regarding the case.