look, i hate mcdonald's food, it tastes like crap and if eaten on a regular basis, makes people fat. however, i will take my kids there once a month or so because they love it. it's a good thing they make a decent cup of coffee. i was a kid once too, and i loved mcdonald's food back then, and my parents would indulge me once in awhile. i'm not going to take that away from my kids because once in awhile they deserve to act like kids and eat fat filled crap and drink sugar water. on top of playing with me out in the yard, public parks, in the school playground, or wrestling with me at home, my kids also do karate 3 times a week. this thread isn't about bad parenting, it's about why nintendo and mcdonald's providing wifi for ds makes sense. to me, it makes perfect sense, and my family will probably use it once or twice in the next couple of months.
I can't comprehend why anyone would want to spend more time than in a McDonald's than is required to purchase some food.
because there are these little organisms called kids, and mcdonald's markets to them quite heavily. in the suburbs, most mcdonalds' have a mini playground called a "playplace", and kids can have a lot of fun in them. in some ways, it's better than a park because the parents can sit back and have a cup of coffee while watching their kids play. i can totally see my older son (9yrs old) playing his ds with another random kid that happens to be there with his ds while my youngest son (4yrs) runs around in the playplace with all the smaller tikes. me? i can enjoy a cup of coffee while i watch the boys play.
of course, some slashdotters may not fully realize the concept of kids, as a prerequisite for having one is sex.
what perks my interest is the fact that i used to love watching music videos. unfortunately, mtv and vh1 are now the last channels one would turn to for music videos. provide me with a video podcast of a mix of the latest music videos and some great classics and i am sold. it's a great way to sample new music and see some cool narrative filmmaking (though a lot of music videos suck these days, it makes discovering a really good one worthwhile).
there are some classic videos that i would definitely pay money to own. from the perspective of an ipod owner, this would only make sense if the next ipod would have dvi or hdmi output.
and frankly, i can't wait for it to come out so some brilliant person out in geek-land can hack it for interactivity so that one day i can play dragon's lair on my 4g ipod.
mod parent up.
i had a pretty wild high school and college life as both a geek and one of the "cool guys". had lots of friends, went to all the parties, clubs, raves, etc... they were fun, yes. but i have fonder memories of hanging out at a coffee shop or taking road trips, having interesting conversations with friends (the ones that counted, anyways), making short films with my film school buddies, and tooling around the internet (at blazing modem speeds) on my powermac 7100/66av.
these days, i rely on work-related events like e3 and offsite trips to party. oh man, e3 parties are crazy... geeks gone wild! pr/marketing girls + geeks = awesome.
i started with a sony ericsson t68 which was nice. i upgraded to t610 which was good for a couple of years, but the reception sucked and it broke all the time. i upgraded to a blackberry t1700 but the ui sucked and there was no isync bluetooth support.
i returned it and got a sony ericsson p910 and it is without a doubt the best phone i've ever had. isync support with address book (pictures too), calendar, to-do's, file sharing, etc.
aside from the pda aspects, cameraphone, vidphone, app support, memory stick duo, mp3/mp4 audio player, video player, etc... which may be too much feature-creep for you, i really appreciate the full qwerty keyboard for sms, the big screen, the (relative) simplicity of the ui, and the speakerphone, which make it a pleasure to use as a phone, first and foremost.
with salling clicker, i get itunes with album covers, iphoto picture browsing, email reading, and all that other fancy stuff.
Don't allow users to run as admin (never)!
These competent sysadmins you talk of that don't ever allow any users to run as admin are what makes makes my job infinitely more difficult. Add to that the ridiculously stringent firewall and I can't install anything at 3am in crunch time, when deadlines are of utmost importance. Oh, but installing applications are an IT job, you say? Tell that to someone who receives an FBX animation file from a third party that uses MotionBuilder 6.0.1 and you can't open it up on MotionBuilder 5.5 without the readily available upgrade, which, OOPS, you can't install because you lack the privileges in power user mode. Or hey, I need Java 1.5 to check out some stuff a developer sent me... hmm, I need to install it... OK... OOPS, the installer is blocked from downloading necessary components... no biggie, let me get the standalone installer... OOPS, I don't have enough privileges to complete the install (logged in as power user). Ugh.
I understand the need to lock down privileges for less savvy users (admins, execs, testers, etc.), but for power users (for whom the "power users" privilege setting is not enough), you guys are killing us.
Stop treating your power users like terrorists and let them get their jobs done. You are a support group. Why am I working around your needs when it should be the other way around?
Re:Figments of imagination vs. real [demos]
on
PlayStation 3 Unveiled
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
bitching about things you've evidently not even seen the commonly available demos for
ok... let me make it clear then.
i don't need to see demos. i'll see them plenty enough tomorrow when i head off to e3.
i work for a game publisher and we are currently making games for both ps3 and xbox 360 using the unreal 3 engine (which many other game developers are also using to make next-gen games, and it's well known so i'm not breaking nda here). both games will be running off basically the same codebase and assets.
now tell me... will one look and play significantly better than the other by any leaps and bounds? if they are seen side-by-side, will you be able to tell the difference?
you are mentioning first party exclusive titles that are not also being developed on the other platform(s), so there can be no direct comparison made.
maybe the second or third wave of games for this next gen will widen the gap between which console is more "powerful" than the other, but even then, most games will be similar and look similar. with PS2 v. XBOX 1, it's truly the case. same with SNES v. Genesis, etc. where you will see a major difference from the get-go is with online play (microsoft seems to have their stuff together) and with major existing franchises and original ip (sony and nintendo seem to have this going for them).
which brings me back to my point. imo, the best determining factor of what next-gen console one should get should depend on what first party exclusive titles you want... because the rest of the major games will be made for both systems anyway.
we are far beyond the days when you could tell at first glance which game system x game is on.
Although I'm sure there will be howls of anguish from old-school Playstation bigots who think anything bigger than a suppository tablet is way too big for a game controller.
I don't know about you, but I'm not putting anything the size of a PSX controller anywhere near my ass!
Disclaimer: I used to work for Sega and now I work for a major third party publisher, so my words may seem biased.
Will we ever learn?
Travel back in time to 1999 when the Dreamcast was about to launch and Sony showed a realtime demo of a character from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, looking great, with no aliasing problems and looking just like the pre-rendered movie. Then they showed a realtime version of one of the prerendered scenes from Final Fantasy VIII. All PS2 games will look like this, they said. This blows away Shenmue and Virtua Fighter 3tb and Soul Calibur on the DC. Why buy a Dreamcast?
What did we get for PS2 launch? Fantavision.
Soul Calibur DC looked so much better than Tekken on PS2 (made by the same company, mind you) and DOA looked amazing. The colors were more saturated and the images were fully anti-aliased on the DC, but most of the gaming public purchased the PS2.
Now they are pulling the wool over your eyes again.
When I hear comments like "it's not about the specs, it's about the games", I honestly question whether that is true. The DC had so many great games with new ideas (Skies of Arcadia, Samba De Amigo, Soul Calibur, Power Stone, ChuChu Rocket!, NFL2k, Jet Set Radio, Typing of the Dead, Seaman, etc.) and yet it died a horrible and early death.
6 stunning cars vs. 12 stunning cars? Platoons vs. Armies? Really? Are you comparing real world games or figments of your imagination?
Truth is, unless it's a first or second party exclusive title, all games will be made with two (or all three) next-gen systems in mind. Developers make multi-platform games, and they will use a development solution that pumps out builds for more than one platform.
IMO, the choice of what game system you should get (PS3, Xbox 360, Revolution) should be based on the First Party exclusive games you want to play. A good number of major third party titles will be released on multiple platforms anyway.
Well, it fits the market of those PC users who want to switch operating systems without changing their machine types.
Powermacs are not for PC switchers, but for professionals that need workstations with room for extra drive bays, extra AGP/PCI slots and more power.
In my dual 1.8 G5 at my home studio, I have a second video card (PCI) and an additional 400gig SATA hard drive. This allows me to run 4 monitors and use the extra HD space for video editing. I can't do that on an iMac, nor would I want to.
Steve Jobs, despite his genius, sometimes needs to be more confident in his feelings and get rid of this outdated and completely redundant division.
Powermacs represent the bleeding edge in Apple tech. They get a good number of new Apple technology first: the G5, the DVD/RW (now dual layer), digital audio in/out, SATA, etc. They may not be computer industry firsts (though some are), but the tech that goes in Powermacs ultimately trickle down to the iMacs, eMacs, Powerbooks, iBooks, and so-on down the line.
This was the time when then senator Joe Lieberman and Herbert Kohl went on a quest to ban all offensive videogame content (citing games such as Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, etc.). Sega's response was to use a videogame rating board (ESRB), and Nintendo's approach was to remove all the blood. This was way before ESRB became a standard.
RE: SNES and Sega Genesis, it was a closer battle than you think. SNES did not CRUSH the Genesis, though it may have won by a small margin.
BTW, I used to work for Sega and now I work at Midway.
At the gym that I go to, I use my first gen iPod to listen to music while I run. One time, this guy with white earbuds saw my iPod and gave me the knowing "hey there fellow iPod user" nod and started running on the machine next to mine. 20 minutes later, I saw him changing songs and saw that he had a cheapo flash-based player. I didn't mind, because I don't really care what he had, but it struck me as funny that he was pretending to be an iPod user.
When my first generation iPod was getting only 1 hour of battery charge, I went down to the Fashion Valley Apple Store with a long list of things to say and possible rebuttals to refusals that I was prepared for them to give me. To my surprise, all I had to say was, "My iPod only gets an hour charge now." The guy asked for my serial number, then went to the back of the store. A few minutes later, I was a proud owner of a new refurbished first gen iPod with 10 hours of battery life. I think when it comes to customer service, your attitude and tone with the CSR will determine the response you get. Not fair, I know, but it pays to be nice to people.
Slashdot Mirror
oh wait...
that's great. so ship it.
look, i hate mcdonald's food, it tastes like crap and if eaten on a regular basis, makes people fat. however, i will take my kids there once a month or so because they love it. it's a good thing they make a decent cup of coffee. i was a kid once too, and i loved mcdonald's food back then, and my parents would indulge me once in awhile. i'm not going to take that away from my kids because once in awhile they deserve to act like kids and eat fat filled crap and drink sugar water. on top of playing with me out in the yard, public parks, in the school playground, or wrestling with me at home, my kids also do karate 3 times a week. this thread isn't about bad parenting, it's about why nintendo and mcdonald's providing wifi for ds makes sense. to me, it makes perfect sense, and my family will probably use it once or twice in the next couple of months.
because there are these little organisms called kids, and mcdonald's markets to them quite heavily. in the suburbs, most mcdonalds' have a mini playground called a "playplace", and kids can have a lot of fun in them. in some ways, it's better than a park because the parents can sit back and have a cup of coffee while watching their kids play. i can totally see my older son (9yrs old) playing his ds with another random kid that happens to be there with his ds while my youngest son (4yrs) runs around in the playplace with all the smaller tikes. me? i can enjoy a cup of coffee while i watch the boys play.
of course, some slashdotters may not fully realize the concept of kids, as a prerequisite for having one is sex.
did kobe bryant rape the japanese as well?
what perks my interest is the fact that i used to love watching music videos. unfortunately, mtv and vh1 are now the last channels one would turn to for music videos. provide me with a video podcast of a mix of the latest music videos and some great classics and i am sold. it's a great way to sample new music and see some cool narrative filmmaking (though a lot of music videos suck these days, it makes discovering a really good one worthwhile).
there are some classic videos that i would definitely pay money to own. from the perspective of an ipod owner, this would only make sense if the next ipod would have dvi or hdmi output.
and frankly, i can't wait for it to come out so some brilliant person out in geek-land can hack it for interactivity so that one day i can play dragon's lair on my 4g ipod.
mod parent up. i had a pretty wild high school and college life as both a geek and one of the "cool guys". had lots of friends, went to all the parties, clubs, raves, etc... they were fun, yes. but i have fonder memories of hanging out at a coffee shop or taking road trips, having interesting conversations with friends (the ones that counted, anyways), making short films with my film school buddies, and tooling around the internet (at blazing modem speeds) on my powermac 7100/66av. these days, i rely on work-related events like e3 and offsite trips to party. oh man, e3 parties are crazy... geeks gone wild! pr/marketing girls + geeks = awesome.
i returned it and got a sony ericsson p910 and it is without a doubt the best phone i've ever had. isync support with address book (pictures too), calendar, to-do's, file sharing, etc.
aside from the pda aspects, cameraphone, vidphone, app support, memory stick duo, mp3/mp4 audio player, video player, etc... which may be too much feature-creep for you, i really appreciate the full qwerty keyboard for sms, the big screen, the (relative) simplicity of the ui, and the speakerphone, which make it a pleasure to use as a phone, first and foremost.
with salling clicker, i get itunes with album covers, iphoto picture browsing, email reading, and all that other fancy stuff.
ymmv, of course, but i love this phone.
(sorry, couldn't help it)
Don't allow users to run as admin (never)! These competent sysadmins you talk of that don't ever allow any users to run as admin are what makes makes my job infinitely more difficult. Add to that the ridiculously stringent firewall and I can't install anything at 3am in crunch time, when deadlines are of utmost importance. Oh, but installing applications are an IT job, you say? Tell that to someone who receives an FBX animation file from a third party that uses MotionBuilder 6.0.1 and you can't open it up on MotionBuilder 5.5 without the readily available upgrade, which, OOPS, you can't install because you lack the privileges in power user mode. Or hey, I need Java 1.5 to check out some stuff a developer sent me... hmm, I need to install it... OK... OOPS, the installer is blocked from downloading necessary components... no biggie, let me get the standalone installer... OOPS, I don't have enough privileges to complete the install (logged in as power user). Ugh. I understand the need to lock down privileges for less savvy users (admins, execs, testers, etc.), but for power users (for whom the "power users" privilege setting is not enough), you guys are killing us. Stop treating your power users like terrorists and let them get their jobs done. You are a support group. Why am I working around your needs when it should be the other way around?
ok... let me make it clear then.
i don't need to see demos. i'll see them plenty enough tomorrow when i head off to e3.
i work for a game publisher and we are currently making games for both ps3 and xbox 360 using the unreal 3 engine (which many other game developers are also using to make next-gen games, and it's well known so i'm not breaking nda here). both games will be running off basically the same codebase and assets.
now tell me... will one look and play significantly better than the other by any leaps and bounds? if they are seen side-by-side, will you be able to tell the difference?
you are mentioning first party exclusive titles that are not also being developed on the other platform(s), so there can be no direct comparison made.
maybe the second or third wave of games for this next gen will widen the gap between which console is more "powerful" than the other, but even then, most games will be similar and look similar. with PS2 v. XBOX 1, it's truly the case. same with SNES v. Genesis, etc. where you will see a major difference from the get-go is with online play (microsoft seems to have their stuff together) and with major existing franchises and original ip (sony and nintendo seem to have this going for them).
which brings me back to my point. imo, the best determining factor of what next-gen console one should get should depend on what first party exclusive titles you want... because the rest of the major games will be made for both systems anyway.
we are far beyond the days when you could tell at first glance which game system x game is on.
I don't know about you, but I'm not putting anything the size of a PSX controller anywhere near my ass!
Will we ever learn?
Travel back in time to 1999 when the Dreamcast was about to launch and Sony showed a realtime demo of a character from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, looking great, with no aliasing problems and looking just like the pre-rendered movie. Then they showed a realtime version of one of the prerendered scenes from Final Fantasy VIII. All PS2 games will look like this, they said. This blows away Shenmue and Virtua Fighter 3tb and Soul Calibur on the DC. Why buy a Dreamcast?
What did we get for PS2 launch? Fantavision.
Soul Calibur DC looked so much better than Tekken on PS2 (made by the same company, mind you) and DOA looked amazing. The colors were more saturated and the images were fully anti-aliased on the DC, but most of the gaming public purchased the PS2.
Now they are pulling the wool over your eyes again.
When I hear comments like "it's not about the specs, it's about the games", I honestly question whether that is true. The DC had so many great games with new ideas (Skies of Arcadia, Samba De Amigo, Soul Calibur, Power Stone, ChuChu Rocket!, NFL2k, Jet Set Radio, Typing of the Dead, Seaman, etc.) and yet it died a horrible and early death.
6 stunning cars vs. 12 stunning cars? Platoons vs. Armies? Really? Are you comparing real world games or figments of your imagination?
Truth is, unless it's a first or second party exclusive title, all games will be made with two (or all three) next-gen systems in mind. Developers make multi-platform games, and they will use a development solution that pumps out builds for more than one platform.
IMO, the choice of what game system you should get (PS3, Xbox 360, Revolution) should be based on the First Party exclusive games you want to play. A good number of major third party titles will be released on multiple platforms anyway.
The G5 tower IS the Powermac.
Well, it fits the market of those PC users who want to switch operating systems without changing their machine types.
Powermacs are not for PC switchers, but for professionals that need workstations with room for extra drive bays, extra AGP/PCI slots and more power.
In my dual 1.8 G5 at my home studio, I have a second video card (PCI) and an additional 400gig SATA hard drive. This allows me to run 4 monitors and use the extra HD space for video editing. I can't do that on an iMac, nor would I want to.
Steve Jobs, despite his genius, sometimes needs to be more confident in his feelings and get rid of this outdated and completely redundant division.
Powermacs represent the bleeding edge in Apple tech. They get a good number of new Apple technology first: the G5, the DVD/RW (now dual layer), digital audio in/out, SATA, etc. They may not be computer industry firsts (though some are), but the tech that goes in Powermacs ultimately trickle down to the iMacs, eMacs, Powerbooks, iBooks, and so-on down the line.
Get rid of that, and what do you have left?
WRONG.
Midway did not censor MK2. Nintendo censored MK2.
This was the time when then senator Joe Lieberman and Herbert Kohl went on a quest to ban all offensive videogame content (citing games such as Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, etc.). Sega's response was to use a videogame rating board (ESRB), and Nintendo's approach was to remove all the blood. This was way before ESRB became a standard.
RE: SNES and Sega Genesis, it was a closer battle than you think. SNES did not CRUSH the Genesis, though it may have won by a small margin.
BTW, I used to work for Sega and now I work at Midway.
At the gym that I go to, I use my first gen iPod to listen to music while I run. One time, this guy with white earbuds saw my iPod and gave me the knowing "hey there fellow iPod user" nod and started running on the machine next to mine. 20 minutes later, I saw him changing songs and saw that he had a cheapo flash-based player. I didn't mind, because I don't really care what he had, but it struck me as funny that he was pretending to be an iPod user.
When my first generation iPod was getting only 1 hour of battery charge, I went down to the Fashion Valley Apple Store with a long list of things to say and possible rebuttals to refusals that I was prepared for them to give me. To my surprise, all I had to say was, "My iPod only gets an hour charge now." The guy asked for my serial number, then went to the back of the store. A few minutes later, I was a proud owner of a new refurbished first gen iPod with 10 hours of battery life. I think when it comes to customer service, your attitude and tone with the CSR will determine the response you get. Not fair, I know, but it pays to be nice to people.