Here's hoping that the BBFC here in the UK will change their mind (they banned the game here recently). Sadly I doubt the game will see a release here unless it is cut back or censored in some way. Still, at least the savvy importer such as myself can obtain a copy from over the water:-)
Ever heard of import games? I'm a huge games fan (consoles, handhelds, PC, anything) and I'll happily import games if the import versions are better for some reason, or the game simply isn't available where I live (since I live in the UK, that accounts for more games than you'd think - Europe always gets the short straw). Modding any console allows you to play imports on it, which is pretty worthwhile to a lot of people.
However, MS have every right to ban modded consoles from Live, as has been stated it's their service so you play by their rules. At the end of the day if you want a modded console and you want to play on live, it's time to buy 2 consoles.
This whole thing smacks of a scam to me, mainly as their "video evidence" is a video of the Prey Demo running on OS X. Being as you can download the prey demo for mac http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=19386h ere and it is in fact native code, I don't see anything too startling here. My money says this is a huge hoax to get some students some money.
Linux I use a very simple KDE configuration so it takes a coupla minutes just to make some shortcuts and change the desktop background. Obviously the install process takes a bit longer....
OS X again is pretty simple, change a few preferences, install some applications, myabe an hour or so.
Windows seems to take all year, especially if you need to install security updates. Plus there are far fewer apps built into windows when you first install it, compared to OS X or a decent linux distro.
Interestingly we convered this topic in a lecture I was in about 2 weeks ago, for the Operating Systems course I sit as part of my degree in Software Engineering. The idea of "ubiquitous computing" is pretty much upon us, as more and more devices are containing embedded CPUs. You're gonna need people that know assembler for this as has been mentioned in numerous other posts above. I got taught a bit of assembler in 2nd year, and I hated it. Electronics students get taught a lot more assembly as part of their degree (especially Electronic and Software Engineering students).
As can be seen here http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/09 Sony have just unveiled two big new draws for the PS3. I think the price is still prohibitively high, but I think gradually they'll manage to grow the userbase if they can keep releasing stuff like this.
You may have noticed that one of the links in the article is to the website of an organisation called NO2ID. What do you think these people spend their time doing? Those in the know about these issues ARE protesting, but the sad fact is that the majority of the population are ignorant of the issues, because the government is busy spinning on about Terrorism and pushing the facts under the carpet. Despite the best efforts of organisations like NO2ID, most people are either apathetic, unconvinced or completely ignorant with regard to whats going on. Personally, if they actually push this legislation through and continue their plans, I'll be fucking off to Canada as soon as I can manage it.
This seems like a fair idea in principle, but as soon as the anti-MS groups found out the server IPs they would Ddos the shit out of it. Suddenly noone can validate their copy of Windows for a day, MS's tech support lines are jammed, etc etc etc. If all the logic is server side you have a pretty big failure-point! More than that, I think MS's anti-piracy measures are a calculated exercise in PR - they realise that they will never actually stop piracy, but they can't be seen to be giving in, so they carry on coming up with new but never perfect ideas. Lets face it, the majority of revenue for Windows comes from businesses that can't pirate the OS anyway as they can be audited.
I can't help but feel that if they actually make a good service which allows browsing and searching on all their books free of charge (i.e. you can read an entire book without paying for it) then this will lose them money! Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of printed books, but I'm also an impoverished student - if I can get it for free I'm unlikely to pay for it. As the article says they're trying to target younger people who are more used to the web, the same probably applies. However I guess the chances of them providing a free system that is actually good enough to use in this fashion is pretty slim given current examples....
I Know this isn't directly on topic, but for the gazillionth time I get to an article a few hours after it makes Slashdot, and surprise surprise the link is dead because of the Slashdot Effect. I really feel its time slashdot stopped mindlessly killing people's webservers with sheer wight of traffic - if its clearly a small website, why not mirror it?
I've not actually installed Vista on my own machine, but I have used it on a friend's new laptop. It looks quite nice, and some of the menu's have been changed around, but I didn't object to the XP interface tbh so this is so much window dressing. Asides from the UI, I noticed (like many others I'm sure) that Vista is pretty resource hungry. It eats RAM for breakfast, and the install size is monstrous - a Home premium install is over 7 gigs, while the Ultimate Install is heading on towards 20Gb! This might be justifiable if a) It did something major that XP doesn't or b) XP was really in need of an update. Now I'm not gonna argue that XP is a perfect OS, but it works just fine for what I use it for (mainly just games and a spot of web browsing, do everything else on my macbook pro or my linux boot). Overall my first impressions are that Vista in no way justifies the amount of resources it munches.
This seems like a pretty interesting definition of "superior" you're using. The fact that Mac OS X will not run on most pc hardware does not make it a worse OS than Windows. Thats about as logical as claiming that Linux is an inferior OS to Windows because less people use it! While I agree with you that OS X is lacking in hardware support, that doesn't make it inferior in terms of a side by side comparison of the actual OS, just inferior in terms of its availability...
yeah I've gotta say I'm surprised at these hackers - there is a huge scene dedicated to opening up the xbox 360 to run non-signed code, yet these guys find a way to do it and they report it to MS as a bug! While I appreciate this could be a security issue, its a shame they went straight to MS...
TBH this sounds like it would set a really bad precedent. Think about it, if the cameras are trusted to interpret what they see, then security guards stop being employed and noone is watching the video screens. But what if the camera malfunctions in some way, and ignores activity it should be alerting the law about. More to the point, imagine the problems if someone could hack the system - camera's report a terrorist threat at X location, and half the local police screams round to a house where they find an old lady singing to her dog. Meanwhile the other side of town, a bank gets robbed cos attention is diverted. I know this is the extremes of possibility, but I would only want to see this technology being adopted if people realise someone still needs to watch it....
I quote from Shados: "When you're talking about a game like Earthbound or a Secret of Mana sequel, its a certainty that it will be a hit"
I think you are a) overestimating the actual number of Earthbound fans and b) underestimating the costs of actually producing and selling videogames. So to cover the first point: Earthbound fans are not in fact that numerous. They are a small but INCREDIBLY vocal group of hardcore fanboys, who yell so loud that it seems like there are millions of them. I'm not convinced by the stats on that site about there being 300000 odd earthbound fans - they are counting page hits, which indicates a slight interest. I read the article(and the links), but i've never played the games, a case in point. The public seriously has no knowledge or interest in this game. I know this because I've played Super Smash Bros on the Gamecube with literally dozens of friends and aquaintances, 99% of whom have said "Who's that?" when the Earthbound characters appear. When it's explained that these characters are from a Japanese RPG that saw a limited US release and no european release whatsoever, they shrug and pay no more interest. Hence I am unconvinced there is actually a PROFITABLE market for these games in the US. On to the second point, there is some serious underestimation of the cost of merely marketing a game. Last time I checked the statistics, roughly half of all games fail to make a profit, including the ones with huge development/marketing budgets, backing from big publishers, franchise appeal etc. So if these games fail to make profit, how the hell will an obscure Japanese RPG ever sell enough units to turn a profit? Even if it DID manage to turn a profit, the amount would be so marginal as to negate the HUGE effort put into translating the game. Stop whinging about Nintendo's reluctance to provide a western release that would CLEARLY lose them money and be thankful that there are unpaid hackers working on it instead.
Well first up, either this guy is a complete moron, or as has been previously mentioned this is deliberate trolling for whichever reasons. But the article totally misses the point. Bootcamp is clearly not about converting windows users to OS X. If they accomplish this, then great, i'm sure Apple will be chuffed. The point (as I see it though) is merely to give semi-mac-users such as myself an avenue to get the mac they've always wanted. Since I was 4 years old, macs have been in my house, as my parents (an academic and a book designer) were early mac-fanatics, largely because of the user-friendly nature of the machines (christ, my dad can't even program the VCR, yet he loves his mac to bits). So since a young age I've loved macs too. However as I grew up, and began to take an interest in programming and videogames, I eventually had to accept that If I wanted to do university programming assignments and play Counter-strike, i needed a windows PC. Sadly I don't have the finances to justify a mac on the side just for fun. Enter bootcamp. Finally I have what I've always wanted, the ability to have a gorgeous piece of mac hardware and the joys of OS X, with windows on the side for playing games and whatever work I have to do on it. Better still there are already 3rd-party hacks to triple boot linux too, a feature I am confident will eventually be built into an official bootcamp release. So once I've saved my pennies, I'm gonna buy a brand new intel mac and start living the dream again. So to summarise, this isn't about converting windows users - this is about providing the ultimate convenience to tech geeks! THANK YOU STEVE JOBS!
Go read Edge - its about the only piece of videogames journalism i've ound worth bothering with. Check it out at edge-online.co.uk, if you live in the UK go find it in your local WHSmith and I believe its available in the states too. And no, I don't work for the magazine:P
The chances of Square Enix giving up on FF any time soon is about as likely as seeing Halo on gamecube. At the end of the day, yes, among the opinion of the gaming hardcore (including myself) things have gone downhill. Opinion varies on the apex of the series between 6 and 7 (personally I believe 7 to be the best, closely followed by 4, but thats just me). 8 was alright. 9 was alright. 10 was bland. 10-2 was awful. 11 is apparently pretty lacking in the scheme of things. However despite having produced what could be construed as mediocre titles, the games have all sold bucketloads. Due to a ridiculously devouted fanbase (Blizzard have a similar one, thats how they get away with releasing shit games, and only doing it when they're good and ready) S-E can guarantee shifting a few million copies of even the most dire game, so long as they package it in FF. In fact i'm pretty sure that S-E could sell turds in boxes for $50 so long as a picture of Cloud was on the box. Sadly it would seem that the fanboys aren't tired of this stuff yet, so it looks like the games are gonna have to get a LOT worse before we see the end of Final Fantasy. Nonetheless, I disagree entirely with the outlook of the article. Yes, the games have gone steadily downhill since 6 or 7, but does that mean they will continue to be shit? I don't see any logic behind that, In fact the argument structure of "its happenned before, therefore it will happen again" is a formal logical falasy of some sort. People should have a little faith, game series have been succesfully ressurected before now, and it might well happen to the FF series. Besides, if you think the new ones are shit, just don't buy em!
Shockingly i've noticed no suggestions of neogeo hardware. With games like Metal Slug ($2750 approx), Winning 11 ($5000 approx) and Kizuna Encounter ($11000 approx) to buy surely a millionaire gamer could easily be catered for? Admittedly you'd have to actually find the games, but NeoGeo is surely the rich-mans 16-bit dream?
Anyone who's EVER played street fighter for more than an hour at a time on a joypad should know this one. Thats why the street fighter afficionados such as myself fork out for the expensive, but oh-so shiny joysticks for each and every console, to avoid getting a serious case of sore thumb. All hail the joystick!
Slashdot Mirror
Here's hoping that the BBFC here in the UK will change their mind (they banned the game here recently). Sadly I doubt the game will see a release here unless it is cut back or censored in some way. Still, at least the savvy importer such as myself can obtain a copy from over the water :-)
Ever heard of import games? I'm a huge games fan (consoles, handhelds, PC, anything) and I'll happily import games if the import versions are better for some reason, or the game simply isn't available where I live (since I live in the UK, that accounts for more games than you'd think - Europe always gets the short straw). Modding any console allows you to play imports on it, which is pretty worthwhile to a lot of people. However, MS have every right to ban modded consoles from Live, as has been stated it's their service so you play by their rules. At the end of the day if you want a modded console and you want to play on live, it's time to buy 2 consoles.
This whole thing smacks of a scam to me, mainly as their "video evidence" is a video of the Prey Demo running on OS X. Being as you can download the prey demo for mac http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=19386h ere and it is in fact native code, I don't see anything too startling here. My money says this is a huge hoax to get some students some money.
Linux I use a very simple KDE configuration so it takes a coupla minutes just to make some shortcuts and change the desktop background. Obviously the install process takes a bit longer.... OS X again is pretty simple, change a few preferences, install some applications, myabe an hour or so. Windows seems to take all year, especially if you need to install security updates. Plus there are far fewer apps built into windows when you first install it, compared to OS X or a decent linux distro.
Interestingly we convered this topic in a lecture I was in about 2 weeks ago, for the Operating Systems course I sit as part of my degree in Software Engineering. The idea of "ubiquitous computing" is pretty much upon us, as more and more devices are containing embedded CPUs. You're gonna need people that know assembler for this as has been mentioned in numerous other posts above. I got taught a bit of assembler in 2nd year, and I hated it. Electronics students get taught a lot more assembly as part of their degree (especially Electronic and Software Engineering students).
As can be seen here http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/09 Sony have just unveiled two big new draws for the PS3. I think the price is still prohibitively high, but I think gradually they'll manage to grow the userbase if they can keep releasing stuff like this.
You may have noticed that one of the links in the article is to the website of an organisation called NO2ID. What do you think these people spend their time doing? Those in the know about these issues ARE protesting, but the sad fact is that the majority of the population are ignorant of the issues, because the government is busy spinning on about Terrorism and pushing the facts under the carpet. Despite the best efforts of organisations like NO2ID, most people are either apathetic, unconvinced or completely ignorant with regard to whats going on. Personally, if they actually push this legislation through and continue their plans, I'll be fucking off to Canada as soon as I can manage it.
This seems like a fair idea in principle, but as soon as the anti-MS groups found out the server IPs they would Ddos the shit out of it. Suddenly noone can validate their copy of Windows for a day, MS's tech support lines are jammed, etc etc etc. If all the logic is server side you have a pretty big failure-point! More than that, I think MS's anti-piracy measures are a calculated exercise in PR - they realise that they will never actually stop piracy, but they can't be seen to be giving in, so they carry on coming up with new but never perfect ideas. Lets face it, the majority of revenue for Windows comes from businesses that can't pirate the OS anyway as they can be audited.
I can't help but feel that if they actually make a good service which allows browsing and searching on all their books free of charge (i.e. you can read an entire book without paying for it) then this will lose them money! Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of printed books, but I'm also an impoverished student - if I can get it for free I'm unlikely to pay for it. As the article says they're trying to target younger people who are more used to the web, the same probably applies. However I guess the chances of them providing a free system that is actually good enough to use in this fashion is pretty slim given current examples....
I Know this isn't directly on topic, but for the gazillionth time I get to an article a few hours after it makes Slashdot, and surprise surprise the link is dead because of the Slashdot Effect. I really feel its time slashdot stopped mindlessly killing people's webservers with sheer wight of traffic - if its clearly a small website, why not mirror it?
I've not actually installed Vista on my own machine, but I have used it on a friend's new laptop. It looks quite nice, and some of the menu's have been changed around, but I didn't object to the XP interface tbh so this is so much window dressing. Asides from the UI, I noticed (like many others I'm sure) that Vista is pretty resource hungry. It eats RAM for breakfast, and the install size is monstrous - a Home premium install is over 7 gigs, while the Ultimate Install is heading on towards 20Gb! This might be justifiable if a) It did something major that XP doesn't or b) XP was really in need of an update. Now I'm not gonna argue that XP is a perfect OS, but it works just fine for what I use it for (mainly just games and a spot of web browsing, do everything else on my macbook pro or my linux boot). Overall my first impressions are that Vista in no way justifies the amount of resources it munches.
This seems like a pretty interesting definition of "superior" you're using. The fact that Mac OS X will not run on most pc hardware does not make it a worse OS than Windows. Thats about as logical as claiming that Linux is an inferior OS to Windows because less people use it! While I agree with you that OS X is lacking in hardware support, that doesn't make it inferior in terms of a side by side comparison of the actual OS, just inferior in terms of its availability...
yeah I've gotta say I'm surprised at these hackers - there is a huge scene dedicated to opening up the xbox 360 to run non-signed code, yet these guys find a way to do it and they report it to MS as a bug! While I appreciate this could be a security issue, its a shame they went straight to MS...
TBH this sounds like it would set a really bad precedent. Think about it, if the cameras are trusted to interpret what they see, then security guards stop being employed and noone is watching the video screens. But what if the camera malfunctions in some way, and ignores activity it should be alerting the law about. More to the point, imagine the problems if someone could hack the system - camera's report a terrorist threat at X location, and half the local police screams round to a house where they find an old lady singing to her dog. Meanwhile the other side of town, a bank gets robbed cos attention is diverted. I know this is the extremes of possibility, but I would only want to see this technology being adopted if people realise someone still needs to watch it....
I quote from Shados: "When you're talking about a game like Earthbound or a Secret of Mana sequel, its a certainty that it will be a hit" I think you are a) overestimating the actual number of Earthbound fans and b) underestimating the costs of actually producing and selling videogames. So to cover the first point: Earthbound fans are not in fact that numerous. They are a small but INCREDIBLY vocal group of hardcore fanboys, who yell so loud that it seems like there are millions of them. I'm not convinced by the stats on that site about there being 300000 odd earthbound fans - they are counting page hits, which indicates a slight interest. I read the article(and the links), but i've never played the games, a case in point. The public seriously has no knowledge or interest in this game. I know this because I've played Super Smash Bros on the Gamecube with literally dozens of friends and aquaintances, 99% of whom have said "Who's that?" when the Earthbound characters appear. When it's explained that these characters are from a Japanese RPG that saw a limited US release and no european release whatsoever, they shrug and pay no more interest. Hence I am unconvinced there is actually a PROFITABLE market for these games in the US. On to the second point, there is some serious underestimation of the cost of merely marketing a game. Last time I checked the statistics, roughly half of all games fail to make a profit, including the ones with huge development/marketing budgets, backing from big publishers, franchise appeal etc. So if these games fail to make profit, how the hell will an obscure Japanese RPG ever sell enough units to turn a profit? Even if it DID manage to turn a profit, the amount would be so marginal as to negate the HUGE effort put into translating the game. Stop whinging about Nintendo's reluctance to provide a western release that would CLEARLY lose them money and be thankful that there are unpaid hackers working on it instead.
Well first up, either this guy is a complete moron, or as has been previously mentioned this is deliberate trolling for whichever reasons. But the article totally misses the point. Bootcamp is clearly not about converting windows users to OS X. If they accomplish this, then great, i'm sure Apple will be chuffed. The point (as I see it though) is merely to give semi-mac-users such as myself an avenue to get the mac they've always wanted. Since I was 4 years old, macs have been in my house, as my parents (an academic and a book designer) were early mac-fanatics, largely because of the user-friendly nature of the machines (christ, my dad can't even program the VCR, yet he loves his mac to bits). So since a young age I've loved macs too. However as I grew up, and began to take an interest in programming and videogames, I eventually had to accept that If I wanted to do university programming assignments and play Counter-strike, i needed a windows PC. Sadly I don't have the finances to justify a mac on the side just for fun. Enter bootcamp. Finally I have what I've always wanted, the ability to have a gorgeous piece of mac hardware and the joys of OS X, with windows on the side for playing games and whatever work I have to do on it. Better still there are already 3rd-party hacks to triple boot linux too, a feature I am confident will eventually be built into an official bootcamp release. So once I've saved my pennies, I'm gonna buy a brand new intel mac and start living the dream again. So to summarise, this isn't about converting windows users - this is about providing the ultimate convenience to tech geeks! THANK YOU STEVE JOBS!
I picked up a copy of Flashback on the Megadrive, for about £2, boxed, last year. It's not hard to find, at all, at least not in the UK.....
Go read Edge - its about the only piece of videogames journalism i've ound worth bothering with. Check it out at edge-online.co.uk, if you live in the UK go find it in your local WHSmith and I believe its available in the states too. And no, I don't work for the magazine :P
The chances of Square Enix giving up on FF any time soon is about as likely as seeing Halo on gamecube. At the end of the day, yes, among the opinion of the gaming hardcore (including myself) things have gone downhill. Opinion varies on the apex of the series between 6 and 7 (personally I believe 7 to be the best, closely followed by 4, but thats just me). 8 was alright. 9 was alright. 10 was bland. 10-2 was awful. 11 is apparently pretty lacking in the scheme of things. However despite having produced what could be construed as mediocre titles, the games have all sold bucketloads. Due to a ridiculously devouted fanbase (Blizzard have a similar one, thats how they get away with releasing shit games, and only doing it when they're good and ready) S-E can guarantee shifting a few million copies of even the most dire game, so long as they package it in FF. In fact i'm pretty sure that S-E could sell turds in boxes for $50 so long as a picture of Cloud was on the box. Sadly it would seem that the fanboys aren't tired of this stuff yet, so it looks like the games are gonna have to get a LOT worse before we see the end of Final Fantasy. Nonetheless, I disagree entirely with the outlook of the article. Yes, the games have gone steadily downhill since 6 or 7, but does that mean they will continue to be shit? I don't see any logic behind that, In fact the argument structure of "its happenned before, therefore it will happen again" is a formal logical falasy of some sort. People should have a little faith, game series have been succesfully ressurected before now, and it might well happen to the FF series. Besides, if you think the new ones are shit, just don't buy em!
Shockingly i've noticed no suggestions of neogeo hardware. With games like Metal Slug ($2750 approx), Winning 11 ($5000 approx) and Kizuna Encounter ($11000 approx) to buy surely a millionaire gamer could easily be catered for? Admittedly you'd have to actually find the games, but NeoGeo is surely the rich-mans 16-bit dream?
Anyone who's EVER played street fighter for more than an hour at a time on a joypad should know this one. Thats why the street fighter afficionados such as myself fork out for the expensive, but oh-so shiny joysticks for each and every console, to avoid getting a serious case of sore thumb. All hail the joystick!