In our university complex (and I suspect in many) we have machine shops that are well equipped enough to build nearly anything you have the imagination for, and plenty of classes where students are taught and trained to do the building. Why not take your request to the professors of these classes and have them build some for you? It would be an excellent practical project for the students and you could save a boatload of money on parts/labour for a system that could be custom built to fit your needs.
An example of a similar project happened a few years ago when the university needed a new retaining wall built for a pretty high and nasty hill next to the road. The old wall was basically a big slab of concrete and it had a very pronounced lean towards the road and was in danger of collapsing, so instead of hiring someone to design a new one they gave the project to the senior engineering students who designed a new wall for their school. That part of campus that was once an eyesore is now a beautiful piece of landscaping.
The rumble pack did have different intensities when it activated, I remember from the old Starfox game that it would go from a low rumble to a heavy shake and then down again depending on the events in the game. The rumble pack would actually offer harder shakes (in my opinion) than the Sony controllers, the only downside was that when it was in full-on rattle mode, it could be quite noisy.
As far as I can see and hear, gamecube games are some of the hardest to pirate because of their backwards spinning mini dvd disc format. It's just simply not technology that you could easily have access to from the home, unlike a plain old dvd burner which can be bought pretty damned cheap these days.
My gaming systems include a pc and a gamecube, and while I've bought about a half dozen games for each in the past 2 years, my collection of pc games that I've aquired during that same 2 years is quite respectable. I must mention also that I know a few people who have bought an xbox or a ps2 over a gamecube because they knew it could be modded to play burned games.
Just makes me wonder if Nintendo would have a larger presense in the console world if it was easier to "evaluate" their games.
The first reply to that thread may be one of the funniest things I have ever read about RealPlayer and sums up my attitude towards it perfectly. Where's the damn mpg, avi, or hell I'd even prefer wmv!
reminds me of an older article
on
NYT on EA Games
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· Score: 1
A while back there was an article here on slashdot asking what we would think of developers inserting advertising into games, and the general consensus seemed to be that it would be fine so long as it fit the mold of the game.
What's wrong with getting a message on my cingular phone while driving past an autozone billboard on my way to an autozone store to buy some toyo brand tires for my new mustang? What modern stereo doesn't display track information? I think the ads in nfsu2 are well done, they don't annoy me any more (or less) than the signs I see on my way to work in the mornings.
I'm personally getting about 6 KB/s down and was putting up 70 KB/s before I choked the upload with a 3rd party program
That's a real good strategy there. You must really understand how bittorrent works. See, the reason you're only getting 6 k/sec is because there's SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE LIKE YOU who are choking their upload speed to suit their personal idea of what "fair share" should be. If everybody let the uploader have as much bandwidth as it needed there would be more than enough to supply the downloads.
When you take away 50 KB/s of upload speed, you're taking it away from the geek on the other side of the country who's complaining that he's getting slow speeds so he capped his upload to "compensate".
Anyone who's played any team sports can support that if you play with the same team as the same positions all the time then your skill goes way up. You know exactly what to expect from your teammates and you're not just running hail mary towards the ball.
To have something like this online, you'd have to arrange the group to meet online at certain times and I don't think there's enough people around to take this kind of game seriously enough to do that.
I swear, we spent a year hearing about how revolutionary it's gonna be, and now we've spent at least a year hearing about how it's gonna be delayed for different reasons, there was that whole source code leak fiasco, and now the friggin publisher wants to sit on it for a while too. If this game doesn't wipe my ass every time it makes me shit my pants, it's gonna be a huge letdown.
Although I'm not running anything exceptional, I've been using these guys for years and have never had any problems. They offer a wide range of host names and you can get your address in a mynamehere.dyndnsnamehere.com format. They also provide links to 3rd party software which will automatically update your dynamic ip address to the hostname in their database every time you log on to the net, turn your computer on, or if you're always online (probably) they can simply check the hostname every so often and update when necessary with no intervention on your part aside from the setup process. First rate service, no question.
Only if microsoft decides to include drivers for them on the xbox2. Honestly, can you really see them doing that? They'll make up some marketing bullshit about needing a specific controller configuration to play these games and pc controllers don't meet the standards, but why would they let you use pc controllers instead of forcing you to buy a 40$ xbox controller?
Don't get me wrong, I'd absolutely love to be able to plug in my nice ff steering wheel to play project gotham 3 or whatever, but I can't really see it happening.
What if they make some kick ass game that you really like, and it's not crippled by any ridiculous form of anti-piracy? In my eyes that game would deserve your money, since you would be telling the company in the only language they recognize that THIS, and only this, is the type of game that you will support. It takes a bit of hope that some marketing exec will see a pattern between crippled or crippling game sales and un-crippled game sales, but that's the only way they listen.
You really think they gonna pay attention to you for bitching on some forum about their anti-piracy scheme and saying you'll never buy their titles again? If you're not a source of income for them, why would they listen to you at all? And don't tell me that they need to have a little foresight into the actions of their customers cause they make all their decisions in matters like these based on existing market data, ie lots of our games are being pirated so let's step up the copy protection.
Letting 'em know they've gone too far by boycotting a game is a good thing, but never buying another game to let them know they're on the right track again is very very bad.
I haven't played a console rpg since ff7, but the discussion was for online gaming, and what I meant was turn-based online games and try as I might I still can't think of any modern ones.
But if I'm not mistaken, what you're saying is that they're an ignorant startup who never corrected their mistakes and was rich enough to keep going anyway?
Pretty much, that's what I'm saying. When they started adding online services to their sports titles (hockey is what I'm most familiar with) it was a terrible, clumsy, unpredicatble POS interface, and now 5 years later not much has changed. As for their making money, well, I'm still playing their games just cause the single player modes are very fun in their own right. I just stay away from the online play unless I'm desperate for fresh competition.
Aren't all games played in real time? Unless it's something turn-based, which are pretty rare cases these days.
EA has had online matchmaking services for years now on the pc with the majority, if not all, of their sports lines, so it looks to me like they've got as much experience with online games as any other developer. They certainly have enough experience to be able to ballpark a usage level that they expect.
Their problem isn't that they're some ignorant startup who doesn't know any better, their problem is that they've made these mistakes before and haven't changed a thing.
I'm sure the first thing the authorities (or anybody even) would do is check out who has the highest motive for starting an extortion scheme like that. If it's well known that these 2 people have issues with the company, the first thing any competent investigator would do is question them first. This is not to say that the damage wouldn't have already been done at this point, but it should at least be some comfort that they would most likely be caught and made an example of.
...is that with Star Trek, it's no longer being guided by the man with the original vision, it's a couple of Roddenberry's lackeys and you can plainly see that they don't fully understand what he wanted Star Trek to be. (Although I will say that despite being in the obvious minority here, I really do enjoy Enterprise)
Star Wars however, only has Lucas to blame. It's as if it works better without a beginning or an end, like we'd rather look out the window into the story instead of walking down the street to see what's on the next block. It's like he's trying to come up with more story instead of letting it flow naturally, almost like his own creation doesn't make sense to him, and that is why I think the new ones don't appeal to us like the old ones did.
Anyone here ever actually HAD brazilian coffee?
on
Coffee Bean Gene Mapped
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· Score: 1, Informative
That stuff is strong enough as it is. My boss is from Brazil and the coffee he has from there is powerful stuff. North America doesn't just have the worse beer it seems. They drink it in an expresso sized cup and it's got enough caffeine to keep you going for hours. It's so strong that when I drink it (and I drink a lot of coffee) I need to add the coffee to my sugar!
For a country that puts out the illusion that they're all laid back beach patrollers, they sure do like getting juiced up!
I'll agree with you that I, as a gamer, would very much like to see these classic games be made available on an all-in-one disc or set, but if I were running Nintendo's marketing center I'd be patting myself on the back right about now. They've proven to themselves, and consumers have supported, that classic games will sell in their current format and price point. Nintendo sure may LOOK all cute and cuddly when you sit them next to Microsoft and Sony, but make no mistake, they're a corperation whose main priority is to make money.
If they released those classic games on a single pack or disc, they'd have to accept less money per title for them since there sure isn't triple the number of people who would spend 60$ on a set of classics than there are people who would impulse buy 1 single bit of nostalgia for a 20 sheet.
...its long-delayed Xbox adventure title, which came out in Europe and North America this summer after almost seven years in development...
How do you spend seven years developing a game for a console that's only been around for less than half that time? Couldn't they have just forgotten about wasting all that time porting it from whatever it was originally for and release the damn thing already?
Well how about some better voice recognition options? Y'know, where some phones have the option to speak "call bob" instead of actually dialing the number, that could use some improvement. Battery life would be another area that could use some work. How about the size and form factor? A small little ergonomic earbud style like they have in I Robot might work pretty well for hands-free operation. They could be tougher, not just made from plastic but from some heavy-duty metal that could take a lot more abuse and still be stylish, light, and scratch resistant. There's a ton of ways they could make a really nice phone without resorting to adding features. It's like companies are thinking "we can add a camera without adding to the size of the phone since we got these new circuits" instead of saying "we can use these new circuits to make some nice new designs"
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot the breast option.
In our university complex (and I suspect in many) we have machine shops that are well equipped enough to build nearly anything you have the imagination for, and plenty of classes where students are taught and trained to do the building. Why not take your request to the professors of these classes and have them build some for you? It would be an excellent practical project for the students and you could save a boatload of money on parts/labour for a system that could be custom built to fit your needs.
An example of a similar project happened a few years ago when the university needed a new retaining wall built for a pretty high and nasty hill next to the road. The old wall was basically a big slab of concrete and it had a very pronounced lean towards the road and was in danger of collapsing, so instead of hiring someone to design a new one they gave the project to the senior engineering students who designed a new wall for their school. That part of campus that was once an eyesore is now a beautiful piece of landscaping.
Hey, I'm one of those. I downloaded the torrent AND paid to see episode 3 in the theatre.
Don't discriminate. Support ALL our thieving organizations and associations.
The rumble pack did have different intensities when it activated, I remember from the old Starfox game that it would go from a low rumble to a heavy shake and then down again depending on the events in the game. The rumble pack would actually offer harder shakes (in my opinion) than the Sony controllers, the only downside was that when it was in full-on rattle mode, it could be quite noisy.
As far as I can see and hear, gamecube games are some of the hardest to pirate because of their backwards spinning mini dvd disc format. It's just simply not technology that you could easily have access to from the home, unlike a plain old dvd burner which can be bought pretty damned cheap these days.
My gaming systems include a pc and a gamecube, and while I've bought about a half dozen games for each in the past 2 years, my collection of pc games that I've aquired during that same 2 years is quite respectable. I must mention also that I know a few people who have bought an xbox or a ps2 over a gamecube because they knew it could be modded to play burned games.
Just makes me wonder if Nintendo would have a larger presense in the console world if it was easier to "evaluate" their games.
The first reply to that thread may be one of the funniest things I have ever read about RealPlayer and sums up my attitude towards it perfectly. Where's the damn mpg, avi, or hell I'd even prefer wmv!
A while back there was an article here on slashdot asking what we would think of developers inserting advertising into games, and the general consensus seemed to be that it would be fine so long as it fit the mold of the game.
What's wrong with getting a message on my cingular phone while driving past an autozone billboard on my way to an autozone store to buy some toyo brand tires for my new mustang? What modern stereo doesn't display track information? I think the ads in nfsu2 are well done, they don't annoy me any more (or less) than the signs I see on my way to work in the mornings.
That's a real good strategy there. You must really understand how bittorrent works. See, the reason you're only getting 6 k/sec is because there's SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE LIKE YOU who are choking their upload speed to suit their personal idea of what "fair share" should be. If everybody let the uploader have as much bandwidth as it needed there would be more than enough to supply the downloads.
When you take away 50 KB/s of upload speed, you're taking it away from the geek on the other side of the country who's complaining that he's getting slow speeds so he capped his upload to "compensate".
Low on features? Install a shitty camera.
Cause y'know, everything already has a clock.
Anyone who's played any team sports can support that if you play with the same team as the same positions all the time then your skill goes way up. You know exactly what to expect from your teammates and you're not just running hail mary towards the ball.
To have something like this online, you'd have to arrange the group to meet online at certain times and I don't think there's enough people around to take this kind of game seriously enough to do that.
"Blizzard vs the good guys"?
C'mon, if that's not bias I dunno what is.
I swear, we spent a year hearing about how revolutionary it's gonna be, and now we've spent at least a year hearing about how it's gonna be delayed for different reasons, there was that whole source code leak fiasco, and now the friggin publisher wants to sit on it for a while too. If this game doesn't wipe my ass every time it makes me shit my pants, it's gonna be a huge letdown.
Although I'm not running anything exceptional, I've been using these guys for years and have never had any problems. They offer a wide range of host names and you can get your address in a mynamehere.dyndnsnamehere.com format. They also provide links to 3rd party software which will automatically update your dynamic ip address to the hostname in their database every time you log on to the net, turn your computer on, or if you're always online (probably) they can simply check the hostname every so often and update when necessary with no intervention on your part aside from the setup process. First rate service, no question.
Only if microsoft decides to include drivers for them on the xbox2. Honestly, can you really see them doing that? They'll make up some marketing bullshit about needing a specific controller configuration to play these games and pc controllers don't meet the standards, but why would they let you use pc controllers instead of forcing you to buy a 40$ xbox controller?
Don't get me wrong, I'd absolutely love to be able to plug in my nice ff steering wheel to play project gotham 3 or whatever, but I can't really see it happening.
What if they make some kick ass game that you really like, and it's not crippled by any ridiculous form of anti-piracy? In my eyes that game would deserve your money, since you would be telling the company in the only language they recognize that THIS, and only this, is the type of game that you will support. It takes a bit of hope that some marketing exec will see a pattern between crippled or crippling game sales and un-crippled game sales, but that's the only way they listen.
You really think they gonna pay attention to you for bitching on some forum about their anti-piracy scheme and saying you'll never buy their titles again? If you're not a source of income for them, why would they listen to you at all? And don't tell me that they need to have a little foresight into the actions of their customers cause they make all their decisions in matters like these based on existing market data, ie lots of our games are being pirated so let's step up the copy protection.
Letting 'em know they've gone too far by boycotting a game is a good thing, but never buying another game to let them know they're on the right track again is very very bad.
I haven't played a console rpg since ff7, but the discussion was for online gaming, and what I meant was turn-based online games and try as I might I still can't think of any modern ones.
But if I'm not mistaken, what you're saying is that they're an ignorant startup who never corrected their mistakes and was rich enough to keep going anyway?
Pretty much, that's what I'm saying. When they started adding online services to their sports titles (hockey is what I'm most familiar with) it was a terrible, clumsy, unpredicatble POS interface, and now 5 years later not much has changed. As for their making money, well, I'm still playing their games just cause the single player modes are very fun in their own right. I just stay away from the online play unless I'm desperate for fresh competition.
Aren't all games played in real time? Unless it's something turn-based, which are pretty rare cases these days.
EA has had online matchmaking services for years now on the pc with the majority, if not all, of their sports lines, so it looks to me like they've got as much experience with online games as any other developer. They certainly have enough experience to be able to ballpark a usage level that they expect.
Their problem isn't that they're some ignorant startup who doesn't know any better, their problem is that they've made these mistakes before and haven't changed a thing.
I'm sure the first thing the authorities (or anybody even) would do is check out who has the highest motive for starting an extortion scheme like that. If it's well known that these 2 people have issues with the company, the first thing any competent investigator would do is question them first. This is not to say that the damage wouldn't have already been done at this point, but it should at least be some comfort that they would most likely be caught and made an example of.
...is that with Star Trek, it's no longer being guided by the man with the original vision, it's a couple of Roddenberry's lackeys and you can plainly see that they don't fully understand what he wanted Star Trek to be. (Although I will say that despite being in the obvious minority here, I really do enjoy Enterprise)
Star Wars however, only has Lucas to blame. It's as if it works better without a beginning or an end, like we'd rather look out the window into the story instead of walking down the street to see what's on the next block. It's like he's trying to come up with more story instead of letting it flow naturally, almost like his own creation doesn't make sense to him, and that is why I think the new ones don't appeal to us like the old ones did.
That stuff is strong enough as it is. My boss is from Brazil and the coffee he has from there is powerful stuff. North America doesn't just have the worse beer it seems. They drink it in an expresso sized cup and it's got enough caffeine to keep you going for hours. It's so strong that when I drink it (and I drink a lot of coffee) I need to add the coffee to my sugar!
For a country that puts out the illusion that they're all laid back beach patrollers, they sure do like getting juiced up!
I'll agree with you that I, as a gamer, would very much like to see these classic games be made available on an all-in-one disc or set, but if I were running Nintendo's marketing center I'd be patting myself on the back right about now. They've proven to themselves, and consumers have supported, that classic games will sell in their current format and price point. Nintendo sure may LOOK all cute and cuddly when you sit them next to Microsoft and Sony, but make no mistake, they're a corperation whose main priority is to make money.
If they released those classic games on a single pack or disc, they'd have to accept less money per title for them since there sure isn't triple the number of people who would spend 60$ on a set of classics than there are people who would impulse buy 1 single bit of nostalgia for a 20 sheet.
Now all those 2am drivers will be able to know EXACTLY how much they can rev their engine before it blows their car into a thousand peices on my lawn!
Cause, y'know, when that happens they probably wouldn't clean it up themselves. Lazy bums.
...its long-delayed Xbox adventure title, which came out in Europe and North America this summer after almost seven years in development...
How do you spend seven years developing a game for a console that's only been around for less than half that time? Couldn't they have just forgotten about wasting all that time porting it from whatever it was originally for and release the damn thing already?
Well how about some better voice recognition options? Y'know, where some phones have the option to speak "call bob" instead of actually dialing the number, that could use some improvement. Battery life would be another area that could use some work. How about the size and form factor? A small little ergonomic earbud style like they have in I Robot might work pretty well for hands-free operation. They could be tougher, not just made from plastic but from some heavy-duty metal that could take a lot more abuse and still be stylish, light, and scratch resistant. There's a ton of ways they could make a really nice phone without resorting to adding features. It's like companies are thinking "we can add a camera without adding to the size of the phone since we got these new circuits" instead of saying "we can use these new circuits to make some nice new designs"