Indeed. And i have a feeling Nintendo is calling that move, thus the "cheap, low R&D investment, easy to produce" Wii idea.
10$ Nintendo is -praying- for Microsoft to pull off that move.
It might be, if games were rated well.
As it is now, a videogame with content that would -barely- make a movie PG13, gets a flat M rating. I mean come on, Prince of Persia: Two Thrones is M. Thats rediculous.
Pictures of FF for the N64 were quite widely distributed, or at least proportionaly speaking. Its just been so long a lot of people don't remember... I do have quite a few around, and it was from a game in progress, while FFXIII right now isn't even in the prototype stage yet, the trailers are made of pseudo-faked footage...
Though maybe it matches with what you're saying, so don't consider this a rebutal, more like a clarification of my point.
You're right, FF13 has the power to win or kill the PS3. However, SquareEnix officialy explained how the engine recently (well, a few months ago) got scraped and started from scratch. They (unless it is very recent) have literaly -nothing- right now, except some internal technology demos to determine in which direction they are going. All they have really is the design decisions they had from when the game was originaly meant for the PS2, before they scrapped it. Which means even if FFXIII is secured for the PS3, considering how incredibly long it must be to make a game of that caliber, including the high definition graphics (I'm not a game developer, but from what I understand, graphics for the PS3 must take forever and a half to do), that game won't be out until -after- the fate of the PS3 has been decided... Either that, or FF13 will be released too early, and will be garbage.
Them taking the graphical hit and releasing on the Wii eventualy, doesn't seem too unlikely. I have screenshots still of the FF that was supposed to get released on the N64, back in the days. It looks -lightyears- beyond FF7 and even FF8, graphically speaking. But Nintendo pissed them off (on top of not having CDs), and thus they told them "screw you" and took the graphical hit and released on the PS1.
FF7 looks -horrible- compared to what was planned for the N64...yet they did it anyway, and it worked fine, even though the Playstation was a nowhere console at the time... So really, I could see it happening. What I'd rather have, however, is for them to work hard and polish the CC serie and give us something unique on the Wii. We'll see.
But remember, its videogames! They don't go by the same rule as "real" art, duh!
It is rediculous how people forget history and let it happen over and over. Anyone take a modern history book, and read about north american culture in 50-60 years ago. People DID talk about books the way they talk about videogames today. I'm not sure about protestant-land, but in catholic areas, fort the longest time books like The Three Musketeers were -BANNED- because of their content. A few centuries before, paintings and such were often shunned down or banned because of similar things
Now its video games.
Anyone wants to make a long term bet with me? 10$ that within 50-60 years, you'll hear conservatives go "OMG! All these Virtual Reality Systems are teaching our kids the worse things! They should play console videogames so their brains don't rot away, like we did in the good old days!"
Anything thats new is automaticaly a scapegoat for everything bad in society. For now, its videogames and movies.
Either that was a long time ago and policies changed ( I wasn't working with SQL Server 10 years ago), or you were being lied to about the support contract. A simple MSDN subscription or microsoft partnership gives you at least SOME free calls. I'd be guessing "the highest possible contract" would give quite a bit more...
Sounds more to me like it was the "highest possible contract" they could find on the web site, and that was a decade ago, or something along that line. I'd feel gipped if I was you:)
Those are IDEs that have some RAD capabilities. Not at all the same thing as eDeveloper, Oracle Developer, VB6 and so on.
Oracle Developer also was a large framework, I was thinking about the actual RAD tool, which was a near code-less environment (except for some PL/SQL, there was little no way of adding any code beyond PL/SQL). The result was an application that required a special proprietary runtime (it ran inside another MDI software). I used JBuilder for several years too, it has nothing, -nothing- to do with it.
VB6 and Delphi were RAD tools. RAD Tools still exist, and are commonly used. For a lot of stuff, many fields, certain company sizes, certain needs, they ARE "the right tool for the right job". VB6 blows by today's standards, but back then it was pretty cool, if what you needed to get the job done -was- a RAD Tool.
Today there are others. A few years ago I worked with Oracle Developer. Don't know if they changed the name. I hated it, personaly, but a lot of large corporations had success with it. Today I know eDeveloper 10 is quite good, and actualy scales and adapt pretty damn well. Uses declarative programming though, and I can't stand that. Allows you to make stable and fast apps so damn quickly though that it more than evens out for the issues commonly associated with RAD Tools. Not my cup of tea though.
There's more to the programming world than.NET/Ruby/Java/Python/PERL/C++/What-have-you. In many situations, those are overkill. And quite often, it IS a good business decision to go "Lets just use RAD to get our system done, since we're a small company. When we grow bigger, we'll scrap it and do it right". Rediculous for a 30 people company to make a fully extensible, scalable, maintainable system with all the bells and whistles in C++ with 1500 pages of documentation that works cross platform and yadah yadah yadah. Not everyone has these needs.
Again, -I- hate these things too, because the environments I work in DO require the extensibility and maintainability of the more "serious" languages, but not everyone do.
Google pays for that data, and they are bound by contracts and license agreements to only use it in certain ways. While i'm sure part of the decision is for their own benifits, it still doesn't change that most likely, as part of the agreement, Google has a responsability to make sure that data isn't used in ways that did not conform with said agreement.
Ironically enough, I'm pretty positive that if Lucas Art comes out with a -good- game from the Jedi Knight serie on the Wii that correctly uses the Wiimote, the Wii sales for the next few months after launch will flat double.
Fact is, what constitutes a "kids game" is quite subjective, and people in different age groups tend to feel differently about it. For example, most people who think of Mario as a "little kids game" are probably under 25 (I'm 24 myself, and disagree with Mario, etc being for kids... Ecco Jr. for the Genesis was a little kids game. Its a total other ball park).
Ironicaly, the previous poster mentionned coming back home wanting to get high and drink, which (if we're going by stereotypes, in the same way one can associate the Wii with kid games), tends to be associated with hormonal frat college teens, a group which are seen as "kids" by about anyone above 30 and a little less.
So honestly, away with the stupid stereotypes. Fun knows no age.
You have no idea. I tried to avoid launch, because I thought it was stupid to camp for a console. Ironicaly, camping for it probably would have been the easiest way to get one. Now retail stores have no clue when they get them, so you have to head to the stores (if you call, its too late by the time you get there) and just randomly ask face to face every so often. I live near a bunch of stores (like 10-15 minutes on foot), and don't have a car (personal choice, since i'm a programmer and always in front of my computer, its the only way I'll ever get off my ass, so I decided not to get a car for the time being). I've never been walking this much in my entire life.
The Wii literally made me lose 5-10 pounds in a week, and I didn't even BUY one yet.
Its not like Microsoft's source can't be seen already. Granted, its under incredibly restrictive licenses, but hundreds of people outside of microsoft can look at it as it is, so I doubt we'd learn anything new (of course its probably full of patent violation, with the US patent system, ANY substential amount of code will be in violation of a ton of patents...don't know about GPL code though).
While I am not convinced either that wifi, cellphones, etc is 100% safe (mind you, I use all of these things, the odd of it being significantly dangerous are low enough that I'll take the gamble any day), this is seriously double standard, as usual.
In the same breath that these people claim they don't want kids exposed to harmful radiations, they'll scream at their kid to stop playing in door and go do some sport or whatever, under the sun, which is exponentialy more harmful.
Its just another case of "what I know is ok, no matter how harmful, but what I don't know is bad, even if its not proven"
Hmm, i'm looking at 1&1's web site -right now-, and clicking between the Linux and MS Hosting plans tabs, and I see no difference in price for the equivalent plans. Am I missing something?
No no. In some places, you can get milk in bags (I think its cheaper). Its a plastic bag, and you dump the bag in a kind of "holder", then cut off one of the corners, by which the milk flows.
The problem is, if the way you describe yourself is true (and i have no reason to think it is not), you're the -second- right wing fundamentalist Christian I've seen/heard that is like that. One of my better friends is actualy a fundamentalist Christian studying to become a preacher, etc (my apologies if the terminology isn't correct ^^ ), and I can openly have discussion with him about evolution, what happens after life, etc, and while our opinions are literally black and white on the issue, neither of us insult each other, neither of us try to push what we beleive/think to each other, and no feelings are hurt.
Christians like that are incredibly rare, however. Thus, my apologies if we (the non-christians) put them all in the same bag, but when the vocal majority on something is this extreme, it becomes easier to generalise, hoping people like you (all 4 of you) will understand we don't mean anything against you, than pointing out everytime exactly who we mean when we are generalising. Hope you understand, and I realise its not right in itself.
(I'm canadian) I know its just meant to be funny, but the most ironic thing of this , is that the only place I've seen milk in bags in the last 20 years is during my countless trip to New York City!
I prefered the way it was done here (I'm not american) when I went to school (though I beleive they removed it since then, but anyhow).
We had strict rules about no religion in class. However,we had one, mendatory class, for every year of pre-collegial school (elementary, highschool, ) which was about moral and society. As part of that class, we were taught various aspects of all religions, in a non-biaised way, positive and negative, from the viewpoint of the scriptures, the people, the culture, and so on. Pretty much everyone, including religious zealots, seemed fairly happy with it, and it allowed everyone to make up their own god damn mind about what they wanted to beleive, or at least had a good chance at it.
Of course, that class only strenghtened my position as an atheist, but it strenghtened the beleifs of some muslims, some christians (all kinds), and allowed many people to explore different avenues.
I think thats about as good as it can get in a public school system, and its fair to everyone.
The no warrenties part is there in most commercial software EULAs:)
But really, I was just saying why a lot of users "expect" things from free software. They're told they MUST embrace it and that it IS better. Being able to expect stuff is flat and simple a requirement for any user in a serious situation, and that expectation is a primary concern (thus why some people pay premium for commercial support). If free software is better, than they have to be able to expect things. Simple as that.
Now, thats why the people do it. I'm not saying its right. I certainly don't expect anything. But in the same way, I don't see Free Software as being better in all situations. Its a right tool for the right job deal. And sometimes commercial support for Free software can bridge the gap.
That being said, I'm sure you can see the problem. If we use some Free software to do some work, and something is a mess, my boss tells me to report the bug, that we -need- a fix in the following days/weeks, and I have to tell my boss "Dude, the developer doesn't OWE you anything more than spit you in the face, its free software!", first i'm gonna lose my job, second the free software is gonna be gone from the environment faster than you can imagine. While, let say, Microsoft is obviously no better, being able to bitch until I get a fix is something i've been used to being able to do. My boss too:)
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. And i have a feeling Nintendo is calling that move, thus the "cheap, low R&D investment, easy to produce" Wii idea. 10$ Nintendo is -praying- for Microsoft to pull off that move.
They're most likely gambling a lot more on Blu Ray working out thanks to the PS3 than on the actual game sales, thats why.
It might be, if games were rated well. As it is now, a videogame with content that would -barely- make a movie PG13, gets a flat M rating. I mean come on, Prince of Persia: Two Thrones is M. Thats rediculous.
Pictures of FF for the N64 were quite widely distributed, or at least proportionaly speaking. Its just been so long a lot of people don't remember... I do have quite a few around, and it was from a game in progress, while FFXIII right now isn't even in the prototype stage yet, the trailers are made of pseudo-faked footage...
Though maybe it matches with what you're saying, so don't consider this a rebutal, more like a clarification of my point.
You're right, FF13 has the power to win or kill the PS3. However, SquareEnix officialy explained how the engine recently (well, a few months ago) got scraped and started from scratch. They (unless it is very recent) have literaly -nothing- right now, except some internal technology demos to determine in which direction they are going. All they have really is the design decisions they had from when the game was originaly meant for the PS2, before they scrapped it. Which means even if FFXIII is secured for the PS3, considering how incredibly long it must be to make a game of that caliber, including the high definition graphics (I'm not a game developer, but from what I understand, graphics for the PS3 must take forever and a half to do), that game won't be out until -after- the fate of the PS3 has been decided... Either that, or FF13 will be released too early, and will be garbage.
Them taking the graphical hit and releasing on the Wii eventualy, doesn't seem too unlikely. I have screenshots still of the FF that was supposed to get released on the N64, back in the days. It looks -lightyears- beyond FF7 and even FF8, graphically speaking. But Nintendo pissed them off (on top of not having CDs), and thus they told them "screw you" and took the graphical hit and released on the PS1.
FF7 looks -horrible- compared to what was planned for the N64...yet they did it anyway, and it worked fine, even though the Playstation was a nowhere console at the time... So really, I could see it happening. What I'd rather have, however, is for them to work hard and polish the CC serie and give us something unique on the Wii. We'll see.
But remember, its videogames! They don't go by the same rule as "real" art, duh!
It is rediculous how people forget history and let it happen over and over. Anyone take a modern history book, and read about north american culture in 50-60 years ago. People DID talk about books the way they talk about videogames today. I'm not sure about protestant-land, but in catholic areas, fort the longest time books like The Three Musketeers were -BANNED- because of their content. A few centuries before, paintings and such were often shunned down or banned because of similar things
Now its video games.
Anyone wants to make a long term bet with me? 10$ that within 50-60 years, you'll hear conservatives go "OMG! All these Virtual Reality Systems are teaching our kids the worse things! They should play console videogames so their brains don't rot away, like we did in the good old days!"
Anything thats new is automaticaly a scapegoat for everything bad in society. For now, its videogames and movies.
Either that was a long time ago and policies changed ( I wasn't working with SQL Server 10 years ago), or you were being lied to about the support contract. A simple MSDN subscription or microsoft partnership gives you at least SOME free calls. I'd be guessing "the highest possible contract" would give quite a bit more...
:)
Sounds more to me like it was the "highest possible contract" they could find on the web site, and that was a decade ago, or something along that line. I'd feel gipped if I was you
Those are IDEs that have some RAD capabilities. Not at all the same thing as eDeveloper, Oracle Developer, VB6 and so on.
Oracle Developer also was a large framework, I was thinking about the actual RAD tool, which was a near code-less environment (except for some PL/SQL, there was little no way of adding any code beyond PL/SQL). The result was an application that required a special proprietary runtime (it ran inside another MDI software). I used JBuilder for several years too, it has nothing, -nothing- to do with it.
VB6 and Delphi were RAD tools. RAD Tools still exist, and are commonly used. For a lot of stuff, many fields, certain company sizes, certain needs, they ARE "the right tool for the right job". VB6 blows by today's standards, but back then it was pretty cool, if what you needed to get the job done -was- a RAD Tool.
.NET/Ruby/Java/Python/PERL/C++/What-have-you. In many situations, those are overkill. And quite often, it IS a good business decision to go "Lets just use RAD to get our system done, since we're a small company. When we grow bigger, we'll scrap it and do it right". Rediculous for a 30 people company to make a fully extensible, scalable, maintainable system with all the bells and whistles in C++ with 1500 pages of documentation that works cross platform and yadah yadah yadah. Not everyone has these needs.
Today there are others. A few years ago I worked with Oracle Developer. Don't know if they changed the name. I hated it, personaly, but a lot of large corporations had success with it. Today I know eDeveloper 10 is quite good, and actualy scales and adapt pretty damn well. Uses declarative programming though, and I can't stand that. Allows you to make stable and fast apps so damn quickly though that it more than evens out for the issues commonly associated with RAD Tools. Not my cup of tea though.
There's more to the programming world than
Again, -I- hate these things too, because the environments I work in DO require the extensibility and maintainability of the more "serious" languages, but not everyone do.
.NET/Visual Studio has better GUI "drag and drop" support than VB6 ever did.
And Windows Presentation Foundation is coming out quite soon.
Both of those things make VB/Delphi look "hard" when it comes to GUIs. I'm sure the Unix land has equivalents, too.
Google pays for that data, and they are bound by contracts and license agreements to only use it in certain ways. While i'm sure part of the decision is for their own benifits, it still doesn't change that most likely, as part of the agreement, Google has a responsability to make sure that data isn't used in ways that did not conform with said agreement.
Ironically enough, I'm pretty positive that if Lucas Art comes out with a -good- game from the Jedi Knight serie on the Wii that correctly uses the Wiimote, the Wii sales for the next few months after launch will flat double.
Thanks for typing out what I was thinking :)
Fact is, what constitutes a "kids game" is quite subjective, and people in different age groups tend to feel differently about it. For example, most people who think of Mario as a "little kids game" are probably under 25 (I'm 24 myself, and disagree with Mario, etc being for kids... Ecco Jr. for the Genesis was a little kids game. Its a total other ball park).
Ironicaly, the previous poster mentionned coming back home wanting to get high and drink, which (if we're going by stereotypes, in the same way one can associate the Wii with kid games), tends to be associated with hormonal frat college teens, a group which are seen as "kids" by about anyone above 30 and a little less.
So honestly, away with the stupid stereotypes. Fun knows no age.
Actualy, it is the comic I had in mind when i posted :)
You have no idea. I tried to avoid launch, because I thought it was stupid to camp for a console. Ironicaly, camping for it probably would have been the easiest way to get one. Now retail stores have no clue when they get them, so you have to head to the stores (if you call, its too late by the time you get there) and just randomly ask face to face every so often. I live near a bunch of stores (like 10-15 minutes on foot), and don't have a car (personal choice, since i'm a programmer and always in front of my computer, its the only way I'll ever get off my ass, so I decided not to get a car for the time being). I've never been walking this much in my entire life.
The Wii literally made me lose 5-10 pounds in a week, and I didn't even BUY one yet.
Honestly, with the way the control scheme works, you CAN be a couch patatoe and play the Wii just fine.
:) When you really get into it is when the workout starts, but its also when the fun begins.
Its just boring
Its not like Microsoft's source can't be seen already. Granted, its under incredibly restrictive licenses, but hundreds of people outside of microsoft can look at it as it is, so I doubt we'd learn anything new (of course its probably full of patent violation, with the US patent system, ANY substential amount of code will be in violation of a ton of patents...don't know about GPL code though).
While I am not convinced either that wifi, cellphones, etc is 100% safe (mind you, I use all of these things, the odd of it being significantly dangerous are low enough that I'll take the gamble any day), this is seriously double standard, as usual.
In the same breath that these people claim they don't want kids exposed to harmful radiations, they'll scream at their kid to stop playing in door and go do some sport or whatever, under the sun, which is exponentialy more harmful.
Its just another case of "what I know is ok, no matter how harmful, but what I don't know is bad, even if its not proven"
Hmm, i'm looking at 1&1's web site -right now-, and clicking between the Linux and MS Hosting plans tabs, and I see no difference in price for the equivalent plans. Am I missing something?
No no. In some places, you can get milk in bags (I think its cheaper). Its a plastic bag, and you dump the bag in a kind of "holder", then cut off one of the corners, by which the milk flows.
G
http://dylanb.wordpress.com/files/2006/06/milk.JP
like that
The problem is, if the way you describe yourself is true (and i have no reason to think it is not), you're the -second- right wing fundamentalist Christian I've seen/heard that is like that. One of my better friends is actualy a fundamentalist Christian studying to become a preacher, etc (my apologies if the terminology isn't correct ^^ ), and I can openly have discussion with him about evolution, what happens after life, etc, and while our opinions are literally black and white on the issue, neither of us insult each other, neither of us try to push what we beleive/think to each other, and no feelings are hurt.
Christians like that are incredibly rare, however. Thus, my apologies if we (the non-christians) put them all in the same bag, but when the vocal majority on something is this extreme, it becomes easier to generalise, hoping people like you (all 4 of you) will understand we don't mean anything against you, than pointing out everytime exactly who we mean when we are generalising. Hope you understand, and I realise its not right in itself.
What, you mean there's more to Canada than Quebec, Ontario and BC? And Quebec doesn't count, so Ontario and BC?
(i'm from quebec, before some sensitive moron flips)
(I'm canadian) I know its just meant to be funny, but the most ironic thing of this , is that the only place I've seen milk in bags in the last 20 years is during my countless trip to New York City!
I prefered the way it was done here (I'm not american) when I went to school (though I beleive they removed it since then, but anyhow).
We had strict rules about no religion in class. However,we had one, mendatory class, for every year of pre-collegial school (elementary, highschool, ) which was about moral and society. As part of that class, we were taught various aspects of all religions, in a non-biaised way, positive and negative, from the viewpoint of the scriptures, the people, the culture, and so on. Pretty much everyone, including religious zealots, seemed fairly happy with it, and it allowed everyone to make up their own god damn mind about what they wanted to beleive, or at least had a good chance at it.
Of course, that class only strenghtened my position as an atheist, but it strenghtened the beleifs of some muslims, some christians (all kinds), and allowed many people to explore different avenues.
I think thats about as good as it can get in a public school system, and its fair to everyone.
The no warrenties part is there in most commercial software EULAs :)
:)
But really, I was just saying why a lot of users "expect" things from free software. They're told they MUST embrace it and that it IS better. Being able to expect stuff is flat and simple a requirement for any user in a serious situation, and that expectation is a primary concern (thus why some people pay premium for commercial support). If free software is better, than they have to be able to expect things. Simple as that.
Now, thats why the people do it. I'm not saying its right. I certainly don't expect anything. But in the same way, I don't see Free Software as being better in all situations. Its a right tool for the right job deal. And sometimes commercial support for Free software can bridge the gap.
That being said, I'm sure you can see the problem. If we use some Free software to do some work, and something is a mess, my boss tells me to report the bug, that we -need- a fix in the following days/weeks, and I have to tell my boss "Dude, the developer doesn't OWE you anything more than spit you in the face, its free software!", first i'm gonna lose my job, second the free software is gonna be gone from the environment faster than you can imagine. While, let say, Microsoft is obviously no better, being able to bitch until I get a fix is something i've been used to being able to do. My boss too