Unless the temperature in your house is regularly exceeding 100F
Let me tell you as someone who knows quite a bit about heating and cooling -- that's not entirely true. One or two degrees in the case can equate to one or two more degrees in the case
Because the inside of a computer is generating heat, that generated heat has to go somewhere in order for the system to stay cool. In most cases that heat is dispersed out of the case. The cooler the ambient temperature, the easier that heat flows out. Quite simply, cooler air takes heat off of a heatsink easier than than warmer air, even if the difference is only a few degrees.
The difference between a 72 degree room and a 75 degree room can be enough to take an otherwise rock solid system and turn it into something that crashes non-stop. Given just a little more heat, It may become too unstable to even post all the time.
If you can't place the controls in a way that works well and is intuitive, you need to redesign the interface.
Generally, I would agree with you 100%, but I think I'm not making my point here.
The controls certainly became more than usable within 30 minutes, but I certainly was still very unsure about certain things in those 30 minutes.
It was only a little akward at first... I would say it was very cumbersome throughout the entire space-station mission, but by the time the game had actually "Started" and I was down planetside I was very used to the controls.
Could they have been re-designed? Yes, I think they could have been more Halo-like. Would it have been better? I don't know. Probably not, the point of the matter is that they way they are you can do SO MUCH without having to worry about switching between missiles and beams, jumping, scanning, etc.
That's just it. You can do SO MUCH AT ONCE now that in the end I think that they control scheme works out better for this type of game, and that's the point everyone needs to be stressing.
This type of game is NOT intended to be a typical first person shooter. It's a first person platform adventure.
In that respect, as different as it may be, I would have to say it pulls it off far better than I expected.
And, I've said this one, and I'll say it again. I have an XBox. I have Halo. I love Halo... and I STILL think this game beats Halo hands down.
Double LAME. I would expect the inner-workings of the GB series to be understood well enough to emulate perfectly.
Not lame at all. There are several Playstation games that still have gliches on the PS2. A handful of games refuse to work at all.
It's expected, even when systems are SUPPOSED to be fully compatible. Nintendo however won't claim compatibility at any stage before the Game Boy Colour, with good reason. There are literally thousands of Gameboy games out there. Claiming compatability with a game that is almost 15 years old now would be unwise.
It's best to say that MOST games should work, and leave it at that.
This is true, but it hasn't been a problem for me.
You'll be glad to know that it's actually not true. As I said in another post, if you look around with the R button SLIGHTLY press in the left button and let off of the R button, you ccan stay focused in whichever directly you like without having your view snap back. If you let off of the left button it will snap on you. Pressing in on the R button will allow you to make small adjustments.
The key here is to treat the buttons as ANALOG, try different combinations of pressure levels, you'll find you can actually acheive quite a bit with practice.
you still have to hold down a button to look around
Oh, I see, you haven't mastered the art of being skilled, have you?
I admit, it took me about 5 hours to really truely get the hang of using the two buttons in conjunction, learning not to press them in all the way (they do different things at different levels, you know...)...
After I got used to it, I'm absolutely in love with the controls, if not the controller it's self.
Too many times I've fired off missles accidently while only trying to look at the map -- but that's probably just my big hands wrapped around that little controller. Still, I got used to it and the game plays quite well. I say this having played almost everything worth a shit out there, and being an avid Halo fan.
letting go will snap your view back to where it started.
Hint: after looking around with the right trigger, SLIGHTLY press in the left trigger. The screen will lock, and you can move around.
If you had actually taken time to learn the controls you'd realize this game is absolutely brilliant. But since you're an unskilled sack of shit, you're naturally just pissed off because the game wasn't easy enough for you to play.
Actually, this is subjective. On very fast systems (for the time), a Veirite 2100 could just about keep up with a Voodoo.
Where the Voodoo outshined was on lower end platforms. When systems were running on less memory and lower speed processors, the Voodoo really outperformed other cards because Glide was a very efficient API and the hardware offloaded much of the work from the main processor.
However, the very thing that gave the Voodoo cards their advantage caused their demise. The fact of the matter was that as easy as Glide was to use, it truely had no chance against OpenGL. It had even less of a chance against the brute force of Microsoft's market dominance and DirectX.
Metroid Prime IS fucking incredible. I started playing 4pm my time, it's not 2:05am. I just not got around to putting the controller down and picking my jaw up off of the ground.
Tomorrow, I'm going to go buy a GBA and Metroid Fusion.
I guess when this thing comes out I won't have to play Metroid Fusion on a wee-tiny little nearly invisible screen, which is fine by me.
On the other hand, Edge3D, Rendition cards, Virge3D and even the Matrox cards where a complete fiasco.
I mostly agree with this statement, except your mention of Rendition. Image quality, performance, price, and even compatibility, I regarded them as the best cards of their time, yes, even vastly superior to the Voodoo.
Now, you're going to quote about 5 frames per second increase of the Voodoo over the Rendition, and you'd be right. Except that the 5 frames were well worth losing with the Rendition because the Rendition actually LOOKED better. The colors were richer, the textures were smoother, and overall the visuals were just better. I had both. I saw them side by side often. The choice between OpenGL or Direct3D over Glide was an easy one. Glide invariably lost out in most cases (excluding a few cases were Glide was the only option, which did happen from time to time...)
The Rendition cards were largely under appreciated, and wrongly so. I doubt anybody who truely knows what they are talking about could say a single bad thing about the cards except that the company didn't sell enough products to stay in business.
They took a lot of heat from overzealous Voodoo fans for being only slightly slower, but as I always said at the time, the difference of about 5 frames per second when you're already doing over 30, isn't a big sacrifice for everything else you got. Everything else, including true OpenGL support, windowed 3D support, 2D features, the use of only one PCI slot for both 3D and 2D card, a lower price tag (the list went on and on)....
The Rage Mobility M. Yes, a great little chipset for it's time, also at the tail end of the Rage Pro life. The best things about this chipset were the fact that it didn't perform half bad for a Mobile chipset. I will grant you that point, the Rage Pro Mobility M was nice at the time. I have one in my own laptop, and while I still wish I had a Gforce4Go, I'm not terribly dis-sastisfied with the Mobility M. But that's also right about where the end of the entire Rage line ends, too.
ATI have made serious strides (since the purchase of ArtX) and aren't the crap-chipset producers they used to be.
I was only reminding everyone that it wasn't so long ago that ATI was known for broken promises, and with their relatively newfound success I wouldn't be too quick to start waving the ATI Flag of Loyalty.
I'll watch both ATI and NVIDIA between now and th time I buy a new video card. Which one I purchase will depend on both the actions and the technologies of both companies when that time comes.
Have you considered that you never recieve emails from new people because it is nearly impossible for new people to contact you.
Given the choice between missing out on one person I don't know or having to listen to thousands that I just plain don't care about (i.e. SPAM) I'll take total silence.
Not quite. When the Riva 128 was popular (or unpopular), OpenGL wasn't nearly as widely accepted. Direct3D had barely begun to catch on. The 3D "Boom" had yet to happen, so really none of the cards were making or breaking promises. Yes, the Riva 128 sucked, but it the Rage also sucked, too.
The Voodoo even had it's flaws, esspecially since it lacked any 2D support. After I got a Rendition I yoinked my Voodoo 2 and never regreated it. By that time Glide was starting to fade in popularity and Direct3D and OpenGL were really taking off. It was about this time I consider the "real test" of which video card companies really mattered.
See, you say ATI and NVIDIA played the same game, but the difference is NVIDIA jumped on the performance/compatability bandwagon WAY before ATI did. So even if you could use the same argument against NVIDIA (nVidia back then) from the early Riva days (which I don't think you truely can), it would still be true to say that ATI didn't break the pattern until more recently, and you could also say NVIDIA has been producting higher quality products than ATI for a longer span of time.
I'm very inclinded to say that ATI would still suck if they hadn't purchased ArtX, but I can't prove that. I do know however that the graphics processor in the Nintendo Gamecube is the ArtX design. That didn't change even after ATI bought ArtX out. So it does lend some credibility to the idea that the ArtX purchase saved ATI's ass by giving them the technologies they needed to compete. Their Rage Pro designs sure as hell weren't going to do it.
ATI is very good about keeping products hush-hush until they are close to shipment.
Bull. ATI has only recently stopped sucking in many areas, and that used to be one of the worst areas. Ask anyone who had a ATI Rage Pro or other card that very clearly stated OpenGL support on the box but a visit to the website merely announced upcoming support. For nearly a year it was "Soon to be released" until finally support for the card was almost totally dropped.
Hush hush my ass. ATI have always made some good products with some bad features, and they've always talked a whole lot more shit than they should have been able to get away with.
In the past year and a half things have been going really well for ATI, but I'm very convinced ATI would still be breaking promises if they hadn't bought ArtX.
I would also like to say I never really thought ATI's older cards sucked, because on paper they should have been excellent cards, but crappy drivers almost always seemed to be the limiting factor. I owned a few ATI's but broken promises several times over drove me to NVIDIA. Yes, ATI currently makes the fastest card, but you know what? I still get plenty of satisfaction out of my current NVIDIA card and I feel no need to replace it just quite yet, not even with another NVIDIA card.
When the time comes to upgrade, I'll look over my options and decide then. But NVIDIA hasn't let me down in the past, and I still haven't forgotten what ATI was like just a very short time ago.
Starfox is bad? That's a shame (it hasn't arrived in the UK yet).
I won't say it totally sucks, but it's not up to Rare's standards. It uses the Zelda engine for the most part whicd is readily apparent right down to the way items are picked up, thrown, and jumps and Z-Targeting are done.
If you replaced Starfox with Link, nobody would know any different.
So that should mean that it kicks ass, right? I mean, Zelda games always kick ass? Well, it's not that easy I'm affraid. See, while it PLAYS like Zelda, it doesn't keep the interest like Zelda. The story is irritatingly cheesy, the voice acting is obnoxious, and the plot is slow to get off of the ground.
But it IS very playable, the graphics ARE outstanding, and there ARE a few Arwing levels that are well done. So it's not total crap. I would recommend buying it after it's been out a while and you can get a good used copy or a discounted new one. It's certainly not worth the full price. Save your money for Metroid Prime and The Legend of Zelda.
BUT an 89% profit rate is a very strong sign that the market is bearing a heavy price for the monopoly.
Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that the exceptionally HIGH profit margins in just TWO of their products are the only thing keeping Microsoft from taking a serious hit from all of the losses being taken on every other product front.
This doesn't justify their actions by any means. But it's something to think about.
And let's face it a bad Rare game is going to be better than almost anything the XBox has to offer at the moment.
I dunno, I'm pretty disappointed by Starfox, to be honest with you. And I think Halo kicks 7 kinds of ass.
What really annoys the shit out of me is that the XBox might as well (at the moment) just be a Halo box, because that's about the ONLY truely must-have game for the system. Don't get me wrong though, it has a few good titles, but most of the best ones it has are also available for the other systems, and the best offerings it has coming out are still many months away.
So, while the people who only own XBoxes are still waiting, I'm loading up on some really killer titles here lately.
Just a few more days till METROID PRIME! WOOHOO!
Fortunately I have all three systems, so I get to stay pretty unbiased between the systems and I get to play the best that each has to offer. I just think it's a shame that my Dreamcast gets more use than my XBox.
It should be noted that they just sold Rare to MSoft
Nintendo sold Rare because Rare has outlived it's worth. What most people don't know about Rare is that they've been around for a very long time. They were making games back in the NES days and even since those days have remained a relatively small company. Much of the key talent at the company has been making games now for a time-span that's getting close to 20 years. From what I've read, many of the big names are retiring, moving on, or just plain quitting the business altogether. So what is Rare, then?
Rare is a company like any other. They own some big titles but not any important ones. They didn't get Donkey Kong. They didn't get Starfox. They get to keep Conker's and Perfect Dark. Big deal. As great as the games were they didn't live up to Rare's best stuff. Nothing they develope may ever live up to the success of the SNES version of Killer Instinct, and now that the key talent is gone or leaving, I personally think it's even more likely that they'll start dumping out crap.
Nintendo has done really well with Rare in the past, but I'm betting that Nintendo saw it best to let go of them for a really good reason. They certainly aren't hurting for cash so money wasn't the primary selling factor. Figure it out.
It's also really important to bring up something else in regards to Nintendo and their 3rd parties. There has been some serious tension between the big names and Nintendo because it's a given that Nintendo can soak up a good chunk of holiday sales by just throwing out a few big name titles. But that bitterness seems to have died down here in the past year. The names that really matter are coming back around. Capcom, Sega, Sunsoft, Konami, Namco, and EA all seem to be getting all warm and cozy with Nintendo. Capcom and Sega esspecially so. Even Square is testing the 'cube waters, something many people thought would never happen.
Nintendo is a big competitor to these companies, and that really can't be helped. There are going to be Mario and Zelda games. And thankfully, just a few days from now there will be a new Metroid game. That's just the way the business goes. But I'm speculating the move made by Nintendo to get rid of Rare wasn't only due to the fact that they're really not as great as they once were, but also a sign to other 3rd Party developers that Nintendo isn't all about trying to take the entire Gamecube software market by themselves. They tried sticking it out with few 3rd parties on the N64 and it just didn't work out so well for them.
So while Microsoft may now have Rare, I'm thinking it's more their gain than it is Nintendo's loss. Seeing the line-up of 3rd parties knocking on Nintendo's door I'd easily say they've gained much more than they've lost.
I have all three systems. My software library is largest for the PS2 simply because the system has more games. But I can honestly say that for the most part, all of my favorite games (with a few exceptions) are on the Gamecube. Some of the titles I'm looking forward to the most are coming out only on the 'cube, or also on the 'cube. And the FEW must-haves that are only coming out on the PS2 or XBox are vastly out-numbered by the must-haves out or coming out on the Gamecube.
It'll turn back around here and say I actually do like the XBox. Having seen what it can do I'm eager to see more games make proper use of it. I just think at the moment the game selection for the Xbox is very bland. To many bad ports, a lot of copy-cat-titles, and no real innovations.
Oh well, at least there is DOAX, Ninja Gaiden, and Halo 2 to look forward to.
I personally was thinking I'll just copy the damned thing the moment I take it out of the wrapper. If they're going to try and fark me, I don't mind breaking one off in them.
This morning, I heard a prank phone call from a local radio station to a guy named Harry Potter. They were pretending to be lawyers trying to cather up as many Harry Potters as they could for a class action suit against Warner Brothers.
Of course it was all a joke, and the person named Harry Potter seemed to be okay with the fact that his name was now something of a household word. His wife even found great amusement in telling everyone her husband was indeed Harry Potter.
It was mentioned that Harry Potter is quite a common name, and a web-search for people named Harry Potter would turn up quite a few people.
Just something to think about.
For the longest time I thought the name was "Hairy Potter" and it was about a hippy.
if you wish, you can keep people from stealing your music.
For now, you can turn off DRM. How long will that last?
As for your theory on keeping others from stealing your music, I doubt that was the intent.
From what I can tell, it was formualated out of hopes that the media cartel would be able to feel comfortable selling songs online to users.
Microsoft knows that Windows Media Player fights a battle on many fronts, from Real to QuickTime to free alternatives. Knowing this, they hoped that they could sell the idea of online media protected with DRM to those who stand to gain the most from it.
In a perfect world, DRM would be a choice, the RIAAs and MPAAs of the world could pawn their crap off to willing cutomers, and nobody would complain about the existance of MP3, OGG, and DivX.
Unfortunately big Media wants DRM to be obligatory and Microsoft wants to run the digital information arena. They both have something to gain from it, so to hell with the wishes of the users.
And doesn't display them even when you turn on the display of hidden and system files in explorer. Didn't you read the article?
There are ways to make it show even the "Truely Hidden" files, but most people are never going to go around modifying [SHELL CLASS] tags in DESKTOP.INI files that they don't even know are there.
I've done it on my system, it makes deleting shit so much easier. However, I'd dare say the great majority of all Windows users have no idea how this is done, and that includes the self proclaimed experts.
A google search on the subject should lead someone to many good pages.
The real-time element in Baldur's Gate is what totally turned me off of the game.
As for Baldur's Gate, I had the complete opposite complaint. It wasn't fast enough. Furthermore, I can't believe you honestly played the game if you didn't know you could customize every aspect.
I turned off all pausing, but if you turned on ALL pausing, the game was 100% turn-based. Turn based to a flaw, even. Your characters couldn't fart without the game asking for input.
With everything turned off, the game was real time, which was how I liked it. The only time I had the game ask for input was on a character death, since if somebody died I obviously needed to stop and make some changes.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the temperature in your house is regularly exceeding 100F
Let me tell you as someone who knows quite a bit about heating and cooling -- that's not entirely true. One or two degrees in the case can equate to one or two more degrees in the case
Because the inside of a computer is generating heat, that generated heat has to go somewhere in order for the system to stay cool. In most cases that heat is dispersed out of the case. The cooler the ambient temperature, the easier that heat flows out. Quite simply, cooler air takes heat off of a heatsink easier than than warmer air, even if the difference is only a few degrees.
The difference between a 72 degree room and a 75 degree room can be enough to take an otherwise rock solid system and turn it into something that crashes non-stop. Given just a little more heat, It may become too unstable to even post all the time.
File Formats come and go.
ASCII is here to stay.
If you can't place the controls in a way that works well and is intuitive, you need to redesign the interface.
Generally, I would agree with you 100%, but I think I'm not making my point here.
The controls certainly became more than usable within 30 minutes, but I certainly was still very unsure about certain things in those 30 minutes.
It was only a little akward at first... I would say it was very cumbersome throughout the entire space-station mission, but by the time the game had actually "Started" and I was down planetside I was very used to the controls.
Could they have been re-designed? Yes, I think they could have been more Halo-like. Would it have been better? I don't know. Probably not, the point of the matter is that they way they are you can do SO MUCH without having to worry about switching between missiles and beams, jumping, scanning, etc.
That's just it. You can do SO MUCH AT ONCE now that in the end I think that they control scheme works out better for this type of game, and that's the point everyone needs to be stressing.
This type of game is NOT intended to be a typical first person shooter. It's a first person platform adventure.
In that respect, as different as it may be, I would have to say it pulls it off far better than I expected.
And, I've said this one, and I'll say it again. I have an XBox. I have Halo. I love Halo... and I STILL think this game beats Halo hands down.
Double LAME. I would expect the inner-workings of the GB series to be understood well enough to emulate perfectly.
Not lame at all. There are several Playstation games that still have gliches on the PS2. A handful of games refuse to work at all.
It's expected, even when systems are SUPPOSED to be fully compatible. Nintendo however won't claim compatibility at any stage before the Game Boy Colour, with good reason. There are literally thousands of Gameboy games out there. Claiming compatability with a game that is almost 15 years old now would be unwise.
It's best to say that MOST games should work, and leave it at that.
You forgot...
...
...
Please Wait... Loading...
(Add pretty animated line to truely drive in exactly how long this truely is taking...)
(any doubts, see Grand Theft Auto 3 or Vice)
Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice starts off very quickly with an animation that looks like the screen of a C64...
The guy types
LOAD "VICE CITY"
then you see
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
Then the game begins to load.
This is all a lie of cource.
The C64 would have loaded it faster.
This is true, but it hasn't been a problem for me.
You'll be glad to know that it's actually not true. As I said in another post, if you look around with the R button SLIGHTLY press in the left button and let off of the R button, you ccan stay focused in whichever directly you like without having your view snap back. If you let off of the left button it will snap on you. Pressing in on the R button will allow you to make small adjustments.
The key here is to treat the buttons as ANALOG, try different combinations of pressure levels, you'll find you can actually acheive quite a bit with practice.
you still have to hold down a button to look around
Oh, I see, you haven't mastered the art of being skilled, have you?
I admit, it took me about 5 hours to really truely get the hang of using the two buttons in conjunction, learning not to press them in all the way (they do different things at different levels, you know...)...
After I got used to it, I'm absolutely in love with the controls, if not the controller it's self.
Too many times I've fired off missles accidently while only trying to look at the map -- but that's probably just my big hands wrapped around that little controller. Still, I got used to it and the game plays quite well. I say this having played almost everything worth a shit out there, and being an avid Halo fan.
letting go will snap your view back to where it started.
Hint: after looking around with the right trigger, SLIGHTLY press in the left trigger. The screen will lock, and you can move around.
If you had actually taken time to learn the controls you'd realize this game is absolutely brilliant. But since you're an unskilled sack of shit, you're naturally just pissed off because the game wasn't easy enough for you to play.
Gamer's now days. They've got no balls, I swear.
and it wasn't 5 FPS, it was a lot more.
Actually, this is subjective. On very fast systems (for the time), a Veirite 2100 could just about keep up with a Voodoo.
Where the Voodoo outshined was on lower end platforms. When systems were running on less memory and lower speed processors, the Voodoo really outperformed other cards because Glide was a very efficient API and the hardware offloaded much of the work from the main processor.
However, the very thing that gave the Voodoo cards their advantage caused their demise. The fact of the matter was that as easy as Glide was to use, it truely had no chance against OpenGL. It had even less of a chance against the brute force of Microsoft's market dominance and DirectX.
Metroid Prime IS fucking incredible. I started playing 4pm my time, it's not 2:05am. I just not got around to putting the controller down and picking my jaw up off of the ground.
Tomorrow, I'm going to go buy a GBA and Metroid Fusion.
I guess when this thing comes out I won't have to play Metroid Fusion on a wee-tiny little nearly invisible screen, which is fine by me.
On the other hand, Edge3D, Rendition cards, Virge3D and even the Matrox cards where a complete fiasco.
...
I mostly agree with this statement, except your mention of Rendition. Image quality, performance, price, and even compatibility, I regarded them as the best cards of their time, yes, even vastly superior to the Voodoo.
Now, you're going to quote about 5 frames per second increase of the Voodoo over the Rendition, and you'd be right. Except that the 5 frames were well worth losing with the Rendition because the Rendition actually LOOKED better. The colors were richer, the textures were smoother, and overall the visuals were just better. I had both. I saw them side by side often. The choice between OpenGL or Direct3D over Glide was an easy one. Glide invariably lost out in most cases (excluding a few cases were Glide was the only option, which did happen from time to time...)
The Rendition cards were largely under appreciated, and wrongly so. I doubt anybody who truely knows what they are talking about could say a single bad thing about the cards except that the company didn't sell enough products to stay in business.
They took a lot of heat from overzealous Voodoo fans for being only slightly slower, but as I always said at the time, the difference of about 5 frames per second when you're already doing over 30, isn't a big sacrifice for everything else you got. Everything else, including true OpenGL support, windowed 3D support, 2D features, the use of only one PCI slot for both 3D and 2D card, a lower price tag (the list went on and on).
The Rage Mobility M. Yes, a great little chipset for it's time, also at the tail end of the Rage Pro life. The best things about this chipset were the fact that it didn't perform half bad for a Mobile chipset. I will grant you that point, the Rage Pro Mobility M was nice at the time. I have one in my own laptop, and while I still wish I had a Gforce4Go, I'm not terribly dis-sastisfied with the Mobility M. But that's also right about where the end of the entire Rage line ends, too.
ATI have made serious strides (since the purchase of ArtX) and aren't the crap-chipset producers they used to be.
I was only reminding everyone that it wasn't so long ago that ATI was known for broken promises, and with their relatively newfound success I wouldn't be too quick to start waving the ATI Flag of Loyalty.
I'll watch both ATI and NVIDIA between now and th time I buy a new video card. Which one I purchase will depend on both the actions and the technologies of both companies when that time comes.
Have you considered that you never recieve emails from new people because it is nearly impossible for new people to contact you.
Given the choice between missing out on one person I don't know or having to listen to thousands that I just plain don't care about (i.e. SPAM) I'll take total silence.
There are already a small number of spamers working IM effectively
Let them. My client effectively ignores anybody not specifically on my contact list.
So ATI and Nvidia played the same game.
Not quite. When the Riva 128 was popular (or unpopular), OpenGL wasn't nearly as widely accepted. Direct3D had barely begun to catch on. The 3D "Boom" had yet to happen, so really none of the cards were making or breaking promises. Yes, the Riva 128 sucked, but it the Rage also sucked, too.
The Voodoo even had it's flaws, esspecially since it lacked any 2D support. After I got a Rendition I yoinked my Voodoo 2 and never regreated it. By that time Glide was starting to fade in popularity and Direct3D and OpenGL were really taking off. It was about this time I consider the "real test" of which video card companies really mattered.
See, you say ATI and NVIDIA played the same game, but the difference is NVIDIA jumped on the performance/compatability bandwagon WAY before ATI did. So even if you could use the same argument against NVIDIA (nVidia back then) from the early Riva days (which I don't think you truely can), it would still be true to say that ATI didn't break the pattern until more recently, and you could also say NVIDIA has been producting higher quality products than ATI for a longer span of time.
I'm very inclinded to say that ATI would still suck if they hadn't purchased ArtX, but I can't prove that. I do know however that the graphics processor in the Nintendo Gamecube is the ArtX design. That didn't change even after ATI bought ArtX out. So it does lend some credibility to the idea that the ArtX purchase saved ATI's ass by giving them the technologies they needed to compete. Their Rage Pro designs sure as hell weren't going to do it.
ATI is very good about keeping products hush-hush until they are close to shipment.
Bull. ATI has only recently stopped sucking in many areas, and that used to be one of the worst areas. Ask anyone who had a ATI Rage Pro or other card that very clearly stated OpenGL support on the box but a visit to the website merely announced upcoming support. For nearly a year it was "Soon to be released" until finally support for the card was almost totally dropped.
Hush hush my ass. ATI have always made some good products with some bad features, and they've always talked a whole lot more shit than they should have been able to get away with.
In the past year and a half things have been going really well for ATI, but I'm very convinced ATI would still be breaking promises if they hadn't bought ArtX.
I would also like to say I never really thought ATI's older cards sucked, because on paper they should have been excellent cards, but crappy drivers almost always seemed to be the limiting factor. I owned a few ATI's but broken promises several times over drove me to NVIDIA. Yes, ATI currently makes the fastest card, but you know what? I still get plenty of satisfaction out of my current NVIDIA card and I feel no need to replace it just quite yet, not even with another NVIDIA card.
When the time comes to upgrade, I'll look over my options and decide then. But NVIDIA hasn't let me down in the past, and I still haven't forgotten what ATI was like just a very short time ago.
Starfox is bad? That's a shame (it hasn't arrived in the UK yet).
I won't say it totally sucks, but it's not up to Rare's standards. It uses the Zelda engine for the most part whicd is readily apparent right down to the way items are picked up, thrown, and jumps and Z-Targeting are done.
If you replaced Starfox with Link, nobody would know any different.
So that should mean that it kicks ass, right? I mean, Zelda games always kick ass? Well, it's not that easy I'm affraid. See, while it PLAYS like Zelda, it doesn't keep the interest like Zelda. The story is irritatingly cheesy, the voice acting is obnoxious, and the plot is slow to get off of the ground.
But it IS very playable, the graphics ARE outstanding, and there ARE a few Arwing levels that are well done. So it's not total crap. I would recommend buying it after it's been out a while and you can get a good used copy or a discounted new one. It's certainly not worth the full price. Save your money for Metroid Prime and The Legend of Zelda.
BUT an 89% profit rate is a very strong sign that the market is bearing a heavy price for the monopoly.
Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that the exceptionally HIGH profit margins in just TWO of their products are the only thing keeping Microsoft from taking a serious hit from all of the losses being taken on every other product front.
This doesn't justify their actions by any means. But it's something to think about.
And let's face it a bad Rare game is going to be better than almost anything the XBox has to offer at the moment.
I dunno, I'm pretty disappointed by Starfox, to be honest with you. And I think Halo kicks 7 kinds of ass.
What really annoys the shit out of me is that the XBox might as well (at the moment) just be a Halo box, because that's about the ONLY truely must-have game for the system. Don't get me wrong though, it has a few good titles, but most of the best ones it has are also available for the other systems, and the best offerings it has coming out are still many months away.
So, while the people who only own XBoxes are still waiting, I'm loading up on some really killer titles here lately.
Just a few more days till METROID PRIME! WOOHOO!
Fortunately I have all three systems, so I get to stay pretty unbiased between the systems and I get to play the best that each has to offer. I just think it's a shame that my Dreamcast gets more use than my XBox.
It should be noted that they just sold Rare to MSoft
Nintendo sold Rare because Rare has outlived it's worth. What most people don't know about Rare is that they've been around for a very long time. They were making games back in the NES days and even since those days have remained a relatively small company. Much of the key talent at the company has been making games now for a time-span that's getting close to 20 years. From what I've read, many of the big names are retiring, moving on, or just plain quitting the business altogether. So what is Rare, then?
Rare is a company like any other. They own some big titles but not any important ones. They didn't get Donkey Kong. They didn't get Starfox. They get to keep Conker's and Perfect Dark. Big deal. As great as the games were they didn't live up to Rare's best stuff. Nothing they develope may ever live up to the success of the SNES version of Killer Instinct, and now that the key talent is gone or leaving, I personally think it's even more likely that they'll start dumping out crap.
Nintendo has done really well with Rare in the past, but I'm betting that Nintendo saw it best to let go of them for a really good reason. They certainly aren't hurting for cash so money wasn't the primary selling factor. Figure it out.
It's also really important to bring up something else in regards to Nintendo and their 3rd parties. There has been some serious tension between the big names and Nintendo because it's a given that Nintendo can soak up a good chunk of holiday sales by just throwing out a few big name titles. But that bitterness seems to have died down here in the past year. The names that really matter are coming back around. Capcom, Sega, Sunsoft, Konami, Namco, and EA all seem to be getting all warm and cozy with Nintendo. Capcom and Sega esspecially so. Even Square is testing the 'cube waters, something many people thought would never happen.
Nintendo is a big competitor to these companies, and that really can't be helped. There are going to be Mario and Zelda games. And thankfully, just a few days from now there will be a new Metroid game. That's just the way the business goes. But I'm speculating the move made by Nintendo to get rid of Rare wasn't only due to the fact that they're really not as great as they once were, but also a sign to other 3rd Party developers that Nintendo isn't all about trying to take the entire Gamecube software market by themselves. They tried sticking it out with few 3rd parties on the N64 and it just didn't work out so well for them.
So while Microsoft may now have Rare, I'm thinking it's more their gain than it is Nintendo's loss. Seeing the line-up of 3rd parties knocking on Nintendo's door I'd easily say they've gained much more than they've lost.
I have all three systems. My software library is largest for the PS2 simply because the system has more games. But I can honestly say that for the most part, all of my favorite games (with a few exceptions) are on the Gamecube. Some of the titles I'm looking forward to the most are coming out only on the 'cube, or also on the 'cube. And the FEW must-haves that are only coming out on the PS2 or XBox are vastly out-numbered by the must-haves out or coming out on the Gamecube.
It'll turn back around here and say I actually do like the XBox. Having seen what it can do I'm eager to see more games make proper use of it. I just think at the moment the game selection for the Xbox is very bland. To many bad ports, a lot of copy-cat-titles, and no real innovations.
Oh well, at least there is DOAX, Ninja Gaiden, and Halo 2 to look forward to.
I agree. PNG is a great file format, without the evils of GIF. It also has the ability to do 24 bit, though that probably doesn't matter in this case.
Spray on clear-coat, perhaps?
That's a very interesting idea.
I personally was thinking I'll just copy the damned thing the moment I take it out of the wrapper. If they're going to try and fark me, I don't mind breaking one off in them.
This morning, I heard a prank phone call from a local radio station to a guy named Harry Potter. They were pretending to be lawyers trying to cather up as many Harry Potters as they could for a class action suit against Warner Brothers.
Of course it was all a joke, and the person named Harry Potter seemed to be okay with the fact that his name was now something of a household word. His wife even found great amusement in telling everyone her husband was indeed Harry Potter.
It was mentioned that Harry Potter is quite a common name, and a web-search for people named Harry Potter would turn up quite a few people.
Just something to think about.
For the longest time I thought the name was "Hairy Potter" and it was about a hippy.
if you wish, you can keep people from stealing your music.
For now, you can turn off DRM. How long will that last?
As for your theory on keeping others from stealing your music, I doubt that was the intent.
From what I can tell, it was formualated out of hopes that the media cartel would be able to feel comfortable selling songs online to users.
Microsoft knows that Windows Media Player fights a battle on many fronts, from Real to QuickTime to free alternatives. Knowing this, they hoped that they could sell the idea of online media protected with DRM to those who stand to gain the most from it.
In a perfect world, DRM would be a choice, the RIAAs and MPAAs of the world could pawn their crap off to willing cutomers, and nobody would complain about the existance of MP3, OGG, and DivX.
Unfortunately big Media wants DRM to be obligatory and Microsoft wants to run the digital information arena. They both have something to gain from it, so to hell with the wishes of the users.
And doesn't display them even when you turn on the display of hidden and system files in explorer. Didn't you read the article?
There are ways to make it show even the "Truely Hidden" files, but most people are never going to go around modifying [SHELL CLASS] tags in DESKTOP.INI files that they don't even know are there.
I've done it on my system, it makes deleting shit so much easier. However, I'd dare say the great majority of all Windows users have no idea how this is done, and that includes the self proclaimed experts.
A google search on the subject should lead someone to many good pages.
The real-time element in Baldur's Gate is what totally turned me off of the game.
As for Baldur's Gate, I had the complete opposite complaint. It wasn't fast enough. Furthermore, I can't believe you honestly played the game if you didn't know you could customize every aspect.
I turned off all pausing, but if you turned on ALL pausing, the game was 100% turn-based. Turn based to a flaw, even. Your characters couldn't fart without the game asking for input.
With everything turned off, the game was real time, which was how I liked it. The only time I had the game ask for input was on a character death, since if somebody died I obviously needed to stop and make some changes.
You can actually think about the strategy
:D
If that's an issue for you, you're thinking too slow.