Slashdot Mirror


User: Akaihiryuu

Akaihiryuu's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
568
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 568

  1. Re:Leaning on the name? on Why Sony Won't Lose The Next-Gen War · · Score: 1

    That's because Twilight Princess is a Gamecube game. The main difference between the Gamecube and Wii versions are the controls, not graphics. The only thing they added to the Wii version in that dept was widescreen support. Anyway, the point is, the Wii version of Twilight Princess is a *port*. It was not developed on the Wii, but on the Gamecube...and thus it doesn't really take advantage of the Wii's additional power or features (except for the controller and support for widescreen).

  2. Translation on Sony Defends Rumble Loss · · Score: 1

    Translation: "We were just going to give you the same old Dual Shock 2, but we have to copy Nintendo! However, we couldn't find a way to add tilt sensors to the Dual Shock 2 without removing the rumble." The controller is still very similar to the controller that shipped with the original Playstation when it first launched almost 12 years ago. They probably 1) couldn't find a way to stuff both of them into the same old controller case, or 2) it would've cost too much to do so, and they're already losing money on the system as it is.

  3. Re:And the sweetener is? on Calorie Burning Coke Coming Soon · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that's pretty hard to miss, I look for it as well...I won't touch anything with that stuff in it. Phenylalanine is the actual name of the chemical, Nutrasweet is the main brand name, and Aspartame is the generic name. Once you know that these are all the same thing (phenylalanine), you can just look for that. The mom of one of my friends is violently allergic to the stuff...one sip of diet anything with nutrasweet in it will put her in the hospital (anaphylactic shock). And yes, phenylalanine breaks down into formaldehyde at 80F. Human body temperature is around 98F.

  4. Re:So ... on Microsoft Confirms Work Begun on Next Xbox · · Score: 2, Informative

    Simple...The Wii's code name during that period was Revolution. Microsoft has never had anything even close to an original idea, so they basically "copied" Nintendo's name to come up with 360.

  5. I'm just waiting... on Element 118 Created · · Score: 1

    ...for them to create naquadah. We need to be able to make stargates, naquadah reactors, and hyperdrives!

  6. Re:It would be interesting to see... on IE Market Share Drops to Lowest Level in Years · · Score: 1

    There are also people like me who (out of 4 computers at home) only have Windows on one computer. My other 3 (laptop included) are Linux only...and the one Windows machine is really only used to play WOW these days. The Windows computer has IE "removed" (to the extent that it can be) from the system...this really only deletes the IE executable and shortcuts, but it's sufficient to keep people like my GF from bringing up IE. It has Firefox and that's all that's used on it. However, at work is a different matter...I'm stuck on an XP system that I have very restricted access on, and everything has to go out through a proxy. IE is the only thing on this machine, no software installation is allowed, flash drives aren't allowed, etc. I normally have *more* time to browse Slashdot at work than I do at home (especially if it's a slow day), thus sadly I get reported as an IE user most of the time, even though it's outside my control. If it were up to me I'd just hook up my laptop here or install Firefox, but neither of those is an option. It's either IE or don't browse the web at work.

  7. Dehydrated water... on Creating Water from Thin Air · · Score: 1

    ...just add water, and you've got water! That reminded me of the original Space Quest. The survival kit you get in that game has a can of dehydrated water. Although if you actually examine the can, it says it contains hydrogen, which becomes water when mixed with air. Since the game was intended more or less as comedy, they didn't take into account that hydrogen + oxygen = water is a rather exothermic reaction, it burns hot and releases a lot of heat, and the water that is produced is produced as steam. Producing water from "thin air" is just condensation. People have been condensing water vapor from the air (even in desert regions) for a very long time now, this is hardly anything new. At most, it's merely an increase in efficiency.

  8. Re:About that Xbox... on PS3 Problems Cause Sony Stocks to Slide · · Score: 1

    Well, you CAN buy an Xbox used (thus benefitting your local store and not Microsoft). This doesn't benefit Microsoft at all (at least not directly), unless you buy new games for it. You can buy used games instead. Buying Xboxes and games from Ebay wouldn't benefit anyone but Ebay and the seller.

  9. Re:Pretty Obvious on U.S. PS3 Game Prices Staked At $59.99 · · Score: 1

    The PS3 will be the first Sony console to be sold at a loss. The only other consoles to be sold at a loss (at least the major ones, I haven't looked into things like the 3DO and the Jaguar) are the Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast, the Xbox, and the 360. I guess Sony is going that route now too. I just hope they remember what happened to Sega when they tried that. The "console hardware is sold at a loss" myth is (for the most part) just that, a myth. Nintendo hasn't ever sold below cost, and neither has Sony until the PS3.

  10. Re:Power? on Thrust from Microwaves - The Relativity Drive · · Score: 1

    Theoretically, assuming that this drive actually works the way he says it does (I'm not convinced), you would be able to have a very long lasting power supply in the form of a nuclear reactor. I'm not sure how big of a reactor you'd need to generate 1KW though.

  11. Re:Left handers need love too. on Twilight Princess Mirrored on Wii · · Score: 1

    I'm weird...I'm left handed in about 95% of things, but I've been comfortable with the mouse on the right side since I first got an Apple IIGS when they came out...the cables weren't long enough to orient everything with the mouse on the left. It was slightly weird at first, but I got used to it in about 30 minutes and now it seems weird to have the mouse on the left. I'm definitely left handed when it comes to videogames/controllers though. However, with the Wii-mote, I would definitely be more comfortable with the nunchuck in my left hand and the remote itself in my right. My left thumb has always been better with that sort of thing than my right. When it comes to things like writing though, if I try to write with my right hand, it comes out looking like the scribblings of a toddler.

  12. Re:Follow the Directions! on 10-Day Gentoo Installation Agony · · Score: 1

    I have 3 Gentoo machines at home (server, laptop, desktop), soon to add one more when I get a second hard drive (newer desktop). Sure, the K6 does take awhile to compile everything, but on the server and the laptop (XP-M) it's not that bad except for KDE and OpenOffice. I have updates basically automated on them via vixie-cron, so I never really have to do anything except make sure they're on. Gentoo wasn't really designed for ease or simplicity, it was designed to be flexible for those who know what they're doing and want to set up everything their way rather than the way some distro maker chose for them. It's definitely NOT a "n00b" distro (although I have several friends who started on Gentoo and liked it). If someone wants a pretty graphic installer and they don't want to have to fiddle with anything to make it work, Ubuntu is for them. I usually recommend Ubuntu to people I know who are wanting to switch from Windows but don't know much about *nix. Personally, I find Gentoo setup a LOT less tedious than Windows (for one, you don't have to reboot 50 times). It actually took me less time to set up Gentoo on my laptop than it did to set up XP and get everything working on my GF's identical laptop. But of course, the "Windows way" has always been foreign to me, I worked with Apple II's in my youth and took a hiatus from computers for about 3 years until I got my first x86 (a 486), I used Redhat for quite awhile before Win95. I learned the "Windows way" of doing things only to the extent that it was necessary to get it to work, I never tried to learn the ins and outs like I did with Linux.

  13. Oblig Stargate reference on New Lego Mindstorms Dissected · · Score: 4, Funny

    Looks like the Replicators are finally here. Heh, I wonder if it would be possible to build something that looks like a Replicator from these...it would be fun to set it loose at work and let it meander through the various cubicles.

  14. Re:Hey guyz! Lets pretend anyone uses OpenGL! on OpenGL Distilled · · Score: 1

    Blizzard games use OpenGL too. Virtually all of their games (at least back to the point when they changed their name to Blizzard) have been developed with cross-platform in mind, and they usually release games on PC/Mac hybrid CD's. All of the 3D games Blizzard has put out (Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, WOW) fully support OpenGL. The Windows version will use Direct3D by default, but you can also make it use OpenGL if you want to. Doing this isn't particularly obvious (especially to someone who's never used a command line, as there's no option in the game to do this)...you just have to start the executable with the -opengl switch. This obviously makes running the Windows version under Wine/Cedega much easier (since Direct3D emulation isn't nearly as good as native OpenGL support). You don't lose ANY features by switching to OpenGL rendering (in fact for the Mac versions this is the only option)...the only way it will cause any problems for the Windows version is if your video driver has poor OpenGL support. Poor OpenGL support will become more common with Vista, as Microsoft is crippling the OS's OpenGL support, and they will probably encourage video card manufacturers to do the same.

  15. Re:It just.. never ends. on PS3 Performance Downgraded Again · · Score: 1

    My parents actually got that game for me when it came out. It was weird, and the stuff you had to do pretty much had nothing to do with the movie, but it wasn't THAT bad of a game. I played far worse games on the 2600. For a 10 year-old kid, it was pretty fun, at least for a little while. However, the hype it received was ridiculous, and the decision to produce more cartridges than consoles sold was incredibly stupid. Compared to the awful Atari 2600 versions of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, ET was really not that bad of a game at all.

  16. Re:duhhhh.... on Personal Firewalls Mostly Useless, Says Mail & Guardian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to work tech support for Verizon DSL (ick) and we saw problems with this all the time. People would have Mcafee installed and it would spontaneously decide to deny IE outbound access. (Now, customers using IE is a whole separate can of worms, but I don't feel like writing a novel so I won't go into that here...I "fixed" many computers by removing the IE shortcut from the desktop and installing Firefox.) The Mcafee issue happened frequently enough that I doubt it was something that the user misconfigured, some of the people didn't even know they had Mcafee (it came with the computer). The symptoms would be: you could ping anything you wanted, but any attempt at websurfing would time out, even to other devices on the LAN (like the cheap routers we supplied). I even saw times where Mcafee would deny access to the 192.168.x.x LAN address but allow general internet access. We didn't support firewalls when I worked there, so the customer was instructed to disable the firewall and then access came back. Trying to use a firewall to block *outbound* traffic is kind of dumb. If there's malicious software on your computer, it's already too late for more software to solve the problem.

  17. Re:YES! Finally she's getting the notice she deser on The Words of Shodan · · Score: 1

    True, SHODAN is a very unique and interesting character. But don't forget to give credit where credit is due, to the actress that voiced her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Brosius

  18. Re:How fast? on ATI Releases Five New Radeons · · Score: 1

    I've got a Radeon X850XT 256mb (pretty much the fastest AGP8x card you can get, all faster ones are PCIe-only), Athlon XP3200+, 1.5 gig of RAM (DDR400), Audigy 2ZS sound card, and I can turn every detail setting up to max on WOW and get absolutely zero slowdown, at least graphic-wise. Even Ironforge, Stormwind, and Orgrimmar don't lag the system at all. There are still problems created from network/server lag (delays talking to people, only seeing your shadow/shadows of other players for about 30 seconds after you log in, but the fastest computer in the world wouldn't help this, it's caused by network/server lag). This system is significantly below the bleeding edge stuff mentioned in this article (and thus much cheaper). WOW is pretty much the only PC game I play anymore, the computer that runs it is the only computer I still have Windows on (others are Gentoo). I've found that getting hardware that's 1-2 years old rather than the bleeding edge saves a LOT of money and will probably still get several years of gaming before upgrades are necessary.

  19. Re:SHODAN as Mentor? (spoiler, kinda) on The Words of Shodan · · Score: 1

    All they would've had to do to explain the grove thing would've been to have SHODAN say that it went through a wormhole or fell into a black hole or something...it wouldn't have to be fully explained scientifically, it could've just been a short comment thrown in, to show that they at least put some thought into having a piece of Citadel go far enough away that it took an FTL drive awhile to reach it.

  20. Re:I heard about it on the Science channel myself. on Irish Company Claims Free Energy · · Score: 1

    The solar wind doesn't really pose any danger to anyone on the planet's surface. Sure, the magentic field does help deflect it, but even without the magnetic field the atmosphere would still effectively shield us. The worst thing I could see happening from a magnetic field upset is interference with communications (satellites in low orbit would be affected), and things like compasses.

  21. Re:Sonic doesn't require a Genesis controller on Wii Version of Twilight Princess to Require Wiimote · · Score: 1

    It can be played with an Atari 2600 controller. The connector is identical, the one button on the 2600 joystick is read as button B by the Genesis. I did some experimenting with a 2600 controller on a Genesis at one point (and the other way around too). The only problem you'll run into is you won't be able to actually start the game, because the 2600 controller doesn't have anything that will read as the start button to the Genesis. I guess if you use a regular controller to start it and then plug the 2600 controller in you'd be good to go though. I've done it the other way too, used a Genesis controller on an Atari 2600. Button B works as the button, the other buttons just don't do anything.

  22. Re:Note that is hopefully obvious... on Did Humans Evolve? No, Say Americans · · Score: 4, Informative

    The people that spout the rhetoric "evolution is a theory, not a fact" just plain don't know the meaning of the word "theory". Here's the best definition of the word I could find:

    "In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theory which explains why the apple behaves so is the current theory of gravitation."

    Sure, in scientific theory there is always room for stuff to be proven wrong and for improvement. Relativity superceded Newton's laws. Does that mean Newton was wrong and we had to throw all his laws out? No, it just means that he assumed that the conditions under which his observations were made were the same everywhere, he didn't know about relativity. His laws still hold perfectly true under certain conditions. Einstein didn't prove him wrong, he merely came up with a new theory that took that into account. Scientific advancement is building on the shoulders of giants, new theories build on top of existing ones, clarify them, sometimes prove certain points wrong, but it's very rare for an entire theory to be completely wrong. Sure, evolution as we understand it now may not be completely accurate, there may be more factors that we don't know about, things like that. However, learning more about it and clarifying things that we don't understand doesn't invalidate the original theory, it merely adds to it. Saying it's a "theory, not a fact" just shows the ignorance of these people...proving points of a theory wrong doesn't invalidate the entire thing, it merely clarifies and adds to it.

  23. Re:I wonder ... on Sega Genesis Collection for PSP and PS2 · · Score: 1

    I remember Herzog Zwei...it's the earliest RTS game I can ever remember seeing. It beat Dune 2 and Warcraft by something like 5 years. It's not exactly like modern RTS's (you fly a plane around, pick up/drop units, and you have to pick up a unit to give it an order, and there are only like 3 orders - defend, patrol, and attack enemy base)...but it's definitely an RTS, even if you don't have direct control over the units. Very very fun game. I think it should be recognized as one of the first RTS's, even though Dune 2 and Warcraft probably will get credit for refining the genre and kicking it into high gear.

  24. Oblig. Princess Bride on RIAA Wants to Depose Dead Defendant's Children · · Score: 1

    "I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!"

  25. Re:"How's that for earth-shattering?" on Surprising Burning Crusade Details for WoW · · Score: 1

    I'm not an extremely hardcore player, I don't have any level 60 characters (my highest character is level 35). It takes a great deal of time and effort to get up to level 60. I'm more of a casual player, I enjoy exploring the different areas of the world and seeing the story unfold through quests. I've done 4 instances so far (Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, and Blackfathom Deeps)...and it's hard enough to make a good party of 5 people for these small 5-man instances, let alone 40. Just getting 40 players who know how to play their classes, know their role, and know how to work as a group would be an extreme undertaking. Finding a 3-5 hour period (some of the raid instances do take that long) where all of these people can play together without interruption would be nearly impossible. I know there are some dedicated raid groups that manage it, but that's still an incredible undertaking, and I won't be complaining about them switching to 25-man raids for the new content.