At the risk of being modded off-topic for biting at this bait...
That's not at all how it works. Corporate America collectively pays only about $200 billion in taxes. That's nowhere near as much as private citizens pay. Now, if large numbers of people insist on continuing to buy foreign goods instead of domestically produced products (as is the current trend), those corporations you seek to injure will simply close down production facilities here and outsource production, or go out of business entirely. Either way, they will cease to employ Americans. Those people will then collect unemployment and stop paying taxes. In case you hadn't noticed, the federal budget runs at a deficit anyway, so reducing tax revenue isn't going to magically stop the war. Only Congress has the authority to control where the money (whether it exists or not) is spent, and they have thus far been unable to utilize that ability for anything other than increasing minimum wage.
Now, if you believe that increasing unemployment is going to somehow stop the war in Iraq, then you should probably evaluate very carefully what your priorities are. Improving and securing our domestic economy is pretty damn important to me and all the other folks out there trying to make ends meet in a nation that increasingly buys Chinese-made goods. Large numbers of people already decided to buy Japanese machines instead of American ones in just about every electronic and automotive market segment during the past thirty years, resulting in considerable loss of jobs and economic damage to the long-term security of the country.
It's also quite important that we make sure the mess we are in with Iraq does not become a quagmire like Vietnam, but also that it does not become a problem in the future. Like it or not, we are now stuck with the consequences of our actions in Iraq. If we abandon them right now and bring our troops home, we'll just see the country collapse into further chaos (yes, that is easily possible).
If you feel very strongly about the issue of Iraq, write your elected leaders, stage a protest rally, or campaign for office yourself. Attempting to somehow affect that situation by enacting personal economic sanctions against your own people only makes you look woefully ignorant of the situation.
To be briefly on-topic, there is almost nothing electronic in the world that doesn't have some part produced in China, but the lower the Chinese content, the better. Automobiles are required to have domestic-vs-foreign content notices on their window stickers. To my knowledge, there is no such information available for consumer electronics aside from "Made in x" being stamped on it somewhere. Given the global nature of our economy, having that kind of information would be pretty helpful for a lot of people.
The overwhelming majority of people do not buy games because they want to experience a story. They buy games because they want to play the game, whether it is hijacking cars and shooting cops or throwing touchdown passes, it's about escaping your reality and doing something you can't otherwise do. No matter how good the story telling may be, most people will see it as nothing but an excuse for (or even interruption of) killing things. You can play through Half-Life 2 and not care or notice much about the story. You can do the same for just about anything else out there. If you chose not to make yourself aware of the story in Halo, then you should blame yourself, not the game.
Hell, you even said that the story should've been crammed in the front of the manual, "not crammed in the middle of the game slowing things down." Sounds to me like you think the story got in the way of killing.
The 360 will live longer than five years - Microsoft has already alluded to this. They have also said that the 360 will stick around and be supported even after the next generation launches. However, I don't see them continuing to support the 360 as substantially as Sony is supporting the PS2. A lot of early 360 adopters were people who had XBOXs and saw that if they wanted more new games, they either had to buy a 360 or jump sideways into a PS2. Now, I'm not saying PS2 owners would go for the PS3 if the PS2 new game well were dried up, but I have to think that more of them would do so. The PS2 is a bit unusual, because it is really outselling the PS3. Did the PS1 continue to outsell the PS2 10 months after the PS2 released? The PS2 was/is an immensely successful console, but it is probably being helped out now by the fact that the PS3 is prohibitively expensive and lacks many games. There are plenty of casual gamers who aren't interested in the 360 or Wii, as they've grown up on PS1 and then PS2, so getting the PS3 just makes sense, but not until a price drop that means something.
Either way, it's almost certain that the next generation of consoles will start with Microsoft or Nintendo (or both), and not with Sony. The PS3 was designed to be around for awhile, and unless things change big-time, it does not appear that it will not be financially possible to release a new console for Sony for awhile.
If you read the article (and of course you didn't), you'd know that the vendors paid for everything as a marketing expense. The total dollar amount is surely a million or more, but split over 30+ vendors, that's not much at all for a chance to demonstrate your products to the people who are selling to 25-30% of the US retail gaming market. If you win over those managers, they are a whole lot more likely to recommend your products.
I'm not sure how much this article makes sense for slashdot, as the majority of people who actually care were attendees anyway.
What port? Lair is a unique and exclusive title for PS3. My understanding of the control problem was that it was primarily an issue of the motion-sensing not working out very well. Whether that is a hardware limitation or bad programming is unknown, but it's always been known that the SIXAXIS doesn't have anything like the motion capability of the Wiimote.
For a title that was supposed to be a system mover to have such a fundamental problem is a huge disappointment and honestly, not a very good indicator of things to come.
Actually, Carmack pretty much said that although the 360 is easy to develop for, the power is about even and he was going to get all he could from both systems anyway. Newell, however, gripes about how terrible the PS3 is and then outsources development. If he were actually programming for both himself, I'd be more interested in his opinion. But otherwise, his opinion comes off as biased and ill informed, since he doesn't actually have firsthand experience with it. UE3 and IDTech5 are both running just fine on all three platforms (PC, 360, PS3) with just a single primary developer, while Source required separate development teams to make it work on all three platforms.
The 360 is easier to code for, as has been established by dozens of developers comments. But that doesn't mean they're going to sit around complaining or abandon the platform (well, a few have abandoned, but not many). For a developer that has the experience and credibility with FPS games and engine design to gripe as much as Newell has makes him look awfully pathetic.
If you were really a huge advocate for privacy rights, you'd understand why the guy did what he did. You might think, "it's just a small thing, who cares?" Well, the more small things you give up when it comes to privacy, the more you hand over your freedom. Without directly witnessing you taking an item from the shelf and attempting to leave without payment, the stores have no legal grounds for physically stopping you or checking your receipt. They may ask to see a receipt, but you are not obligated to show it. I refuse to show receipts, as I consider it not only an invasion of privacy, but extremely disrespectful. Working in retail, I understand how important LP is, but I also understand that if your loss prevention mechanism is limited to checking people at the door, you are wasting your time and money. Better auditing procedures are needed to track your employees if you have internal theft issues. Unless a store is prepared to accuse me of theft (payday for me if they do, because I don't steal), they don't get to check my receipt without my prior written permission.
Those who would abandon a little liberty for a little safety deserve neither, and lose both.
I trust you're speaking from the standpoint of having actually programmed for both systems, and thus know more than the countless other developers who have said otherwise.
Short of cutting the price of the 80GB PS3 to well below $400, there is nothing Sony can do to put a dent in Halo 3 sales. They're not even remotely concerned about it, though, because it's been known for a couple of years that when Halo 3 came out, it would move a lot of 360s, and there isn't a thing that can be done about it. Sony does not have a game that is even close to Halo 3 in terms of fan base or hype. Going anywhere near a store that carries video games that day with the intent of buying anything will already require a very long wait in line, and sales of products not related to 360 or Halo will be substantially lower anyway. Trying to draw attention to the PS3 isn't going to be possible for Sony on 9/25. If they're really lucky, they might get mentioned alongside the Wii when news reporters talk about the huge lines and crowds for Halo and the 360, but that's about it.
Halo isn't just a huge, potentially system-selling game - it redefines the idea of huge. Hell, Halo 2 did $125,000,000 in sales in 24 hours, with $49.99 and $54.99 price points and fewer pre-orders. And that was strictly sales of the game - systems, controllers, Live subscriptions weren't even counted in that figure. This time around, Halo 3 sells for $59.99, $69.99, and $129.99 and had over 1 million pre-orders a couple weeks ago.
If you want someone to represent your views, make your views widely known. Spread your message far and wide, but remember that your views are your views, and that the other 300 million Americans out there all have their own set of views - some of which may be the same, some aren't. So be understanding of the views of others, misguided though they may seem to you, because to them, your opinion is just as misguided.
Don't vote for someone unless they actually represent a majority of your views. Simply voting for someone because they're not the most awful candidate isn't going to help.
Sure the delay of GTA doesn't help Microsoft in the near future, but slightly longer-term, it helps by improving sales and marketing efforts for the other games coming out that are also very solid, and thus attracting an audience that is otherwise put off by GTA. I've never had any interest in that genre, and I'm not alone. Plenty of gamers out there don't like GTA, but a good FPS or RPG can make them buy a system. Sure it won't be the numbers that GTA can move, but it'll be a different set of gamers.
It's not like they're canceling GTA for 360, so there will still be plenty of 360s sold this coming Q4 based just on the expectation of getting GTA in a few months.
I don't think anyone has delusions about outselling the Wii anymore. If the market were a fixed size with no new gamers being brought in, then the 360 would be the clear leader right now I suspect. But the Wii has probably sold as much to traditional non-gamers as those who would otherwise have bought one of this generation's offerings. And of course for the traditional gamers, many are buying the Wii AND a 360 or PS3. The price decrease isn't meant to convince people to buy them, so much as it is to enable the games to better convince people to buy one. Rhetoric aside, this really is one of the most impressive fall line-ups of game releases in memory, and the overwhelming majority are on 360, whether exclusive or not.
The Elite is more readily available at this point if you know where to look. I can't help but wonder if it's the 120GB hard drive or the HDMI that is selling more people on that model vs the premium. Probably both, but since the Halo edition will have HDMI, I suspect the other systems to end up getting it as well pretty soon.
I'm guessing you're from Norway, so I'll excuse you for not understanding how American government works. You see, the people we elect to "represent" us believe that existing laws are meaningless if they themselves did not write them the previous term. So any issues that arise will need entirely new legislation drafted, often with the help of the corporations and lobbying groups that funded their campaign. Hence, a simple fix to a broken paper ballot system isn't sufficient. No, we need entirely new laws and methods to be created, and make them as expensive as possible while sounding as awesome and clever as possible. Also, at least one additional item must be added to each piece of legislation that is totally unrelated, such as funding for a new music program for the local deaf and mute school. This way if the bill is blocked, the representatives who supported it can slam those who didn't for not caring about "the children" during the next election. That's how we do things in America. Brilliant, isn't it?
My good sir, the extra disk space required by XP vs 95 costs less than a dollar now. 95 was a horribly buggy, unstable piece of shit, to put it in the politest of terms. XP, with all the latest updates, is actually pretty damn stable. There are quite a few additional drivers that are installed by default with XP for usability with USB devices, as others have mentioned. There is significantly better support for a variety of hardware, and there are a great many games that will not ever run on 95 due to DirectX requirements (which oh by the way also needs some hard drive space). Are there leaner, more efficient options? Sure. Will they run anything close to as much software (including games) as XP? Not a chance.
I won't argue the case of bloat in Vista, as the only fundamental change in operation is the enforcement of good security policies. Everything else is just bloat that fails to improve anything by much. Heck, in many cases it causes more problems, as a lot of hardware is not properly supported, and many games still (despite patches) fail to work properly. IIRC, it was something like 10GB for Vista Ultimate. If not for my strong desire to take advantage of DX10 graphics in Crysis when that ships, I'd be back on XP right now. (although if I can't get Civilization IV - Beyond the Sword to run stable, I'm dropping Vista anyway).
I'm doubtful this is a pure money grab. While that may be an outcome of the lawsuit, I think that there must be some truth to the claims made here. It's hard to believe it is just coincidence that a majority of the other UE3 titles have been delayed again and again. When discussing id Tech 5, Carmack made a mention that (wish I had the quote handy) unlike competitors, his engine was built fresh from the ground up so that it was a clean codebase, easily understood and modified, rather than an engine built upon an existing design, and that this made it easier for licensees to use. At the time, I found this quote rather strange, since so many devs were licensing UE3 and Source, so those engines couldn't be all that bad. But perhaps he was making a veiled reference to complaints he had heard about UE3?
Now, maybe SK really is the only one having problems here, and UE3 as delivered to them truly is a masterpiece of an engine. Or just maybe, they've got a little bit of a real gripe.
The Fifth Amendment states:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. The Fifth Amendment in no way specifies exclusions. In fact, it very bluntly states, "nor shall any person". So if just a single person is subject to the sort of search and seizure described by this executive order, it has violated the fifth amendment.
Now, I'm not clear how you can view being upset by this executive order a "political rant". This isn't politics, it's a violation of the very principles that this country was founded on. The recent attempts by congress and the executive branch to defeat our constitution's provisions for the rights of US citizens makes me angry. Not that-guy-just-cut-me-off angry; not the-power-went-out-just-as-I-was-about-to-defeat-t hat-boss angry. Angry to the point of wanting to run for office to make sure no other dipshit tries to pull this kind of thing off.
To suggest that Google is taking sides is a bit ridiculous. They're simply looking at an opportunity to make some money by offering advertising services to the health care industry. If that's evil, so are 99.99% of your fellow citizens.
I have watched Micheal Moore's previous work, and consider it horribly one-sided and narrow. Arguments that are sensationalistic and focus only on a single side might drum up a bit of support from some people, but not everyone. To me, this sort of thing is nothing but propaganda. I'm not going to get into a debate here about our current health care problems, but I will say that anyone who views this film should take the time to do their research and come to their own conclusions before blindly agreeing to any conclusions this film may come to.
why haven't any of his other consoles had similar problems? Because the 360 isn't as tolerant to heat buildup or electrical anomalies. So while the PS3 might survive the ridiculous conditions some users may put them through, the 360 might not.
That analogy doesn't much work either. If you're taking your car in to get fixed, you get your same car back, but repaired. The history of failure is still there.
I got my 360 at launch. A lot of my coworkers did as well. Very few problems for any of us. Eventually I want to trade mine in on an Elite, just because I prefer the color, need the bigger hard drive, and wouldn't mind the HDMI.
If someone has a defective 360, it's not too unusual. But more than one being defective suggests to me that it is user error more than likely. Heat is the enemy of the 360. Power spikes, brownouts, and other electrical anomalies are also damaging. Some electronics will survive just about anything you can do to them. Unfortunately for Microsoft and consumers, the 360 is not such an item. Consoles are not treated well by a majority of owners, because they expect them to work just as well as their $30 DVD player from Walmart. But that DVD player uses components that have such a low thermal output that they don't even need heatsinks, let alone cooling fans. The 360 and PS3 both use very complex, hot-running, and expensive components. It's just that the 360 has narrower electronic tolerances than the PS3, thus making it less durable. Combine this with shoddy manufacturing from a handful of suppliers and you have the root of the problem.
See, that's the thing about international politics. China wouldn't attack us in the first place because they know we would wipe them out. Just as we wouldn't attack China because they could do substantial damage to us. The entire point of the nuclear arsenal is that it never has to be used, but it must be understood by all parties that it WILL be used if given no other real option. It's called mutually assured destruction (MAD). As it stands, our military is stretched too thin to take on China conventionally right now, and even if we weren't mired in Iraq, the only thing we could ever do to them would be air and naval strikes. China knows they are safe from ground attack. We would need months to build up enough conventional forces in the region for a land invasion that would pit a few hundred thousand US soldiers against a couple million Chinese soldiers and a few hundred million citizens armed with whatever China is willing to give them.
As for needing China because of manufacturing, we could always just return millions of jobs to our fellow citizens, pay them decent wages, and be able to purchase higher-quality, untainted products again. Gee, what a novel concept. I don't give a hoot about people having to pay a tiny bit more for their goods, because the overall economic strength of any country is founded on jobs, not imports. Bring back the manufacturing base and watch the middle class recover.
Agreed. In the article, they postulate that if China wanted to retake Taiwan, they might shoot down a few of our spy sats first to confuse us. Make no mistake, we would see the launches the moment they happened and be able to track the missiles right up to hitting our spy satellites -- the other satellites that track that sort of thing are way too far out to be easily hit, precisely for that reason. Regardless of the confusion it could theoretically create, China would never risk actually attacking us just to take back Taiwan. While they might well be able to invade Taiwan and secure it before we could decide what to do, I'm pretty sure our response would end up as, "Get out or die" -- full nuclear retaliation on mainland China. Prepare the missiles for launch, make sure China's own spy sats pick up on it, and send a single warning message. If China refuses, nuke 'em. Or at least, I would hope whoever is in the White House if such a situation occurs is smart enough to realize that is the safest response, as to roll over and accept it would mean that China is now the one in charge. And quite frankly, I trust our corrupt leaders, or even those in the European Union, a bit more than I trust China's corrupt leaders. In the long term, allowing a communist superpower to go unchecked would do more damage and kill more people than forcing China to evacuate Taiwan (they know we could wipe them out entirely, and their own nuclear deterrent isn't reliable enough to know for certain that it would reach us).
Besides, China needs the US. Without our money flowing back to them from all the goods they export to us, their economy would grind to a halt. Of course, they would just dump all the US dollars they have bought up and cripple our own economy, but I think we'd probably come out of it with a bit less long-term damage than they would.
Getting back to the topic of the article, the whole debris field thing is something I never really thought much about. Sure debris is a problem, but in LEO does so little of it get pulled back into the atmosphere that 80% remains after a century? I thought gravity would pull more of it down than that.
GMC is a division of GM, not GM itself. GMC sells more trucks than any non-American brand. They might not have had the greatest interiors until recently, but their trucks are very reliable and capable. When it comes to trucks, those things matter far more than a stylish interior (which GM as a whole has been making huge strides in). So I'd say GMC's slogan is fairly accurate.
Take Two confirmed to at least one retailer that the title will ship with an M rating, even if that means changing it and resubmitting to the ESRB. It might delay the game another month, but I suspect this AO rating was just a way to get ridiculous amounts of free publicity.
Really? You mean to tell me that figuring out the cheapest way to send people to mars wouldn't result in lowing the costs of space exploration?
Going to the moon taught us an awful lot about getting people into space, and supporting human life for a couple of weeks in space. It taught us a lot about landing on low-grav, no-atmosphere bodies, and lifting off from them again. We learned quite a bit about space exploration from that. Sadly most of it has been ignored for the space shuttle program, but if we don't try to branch out, we will not ever leave this planet. You don't just figure out the cheapest way to colonize a planet without sending humans there a few times first. How stupid would humanity be if we invested in everything needed for colonization, sent it all there, and then discovered that, since we'd never actually done the human trip to Mars beforehand, there was some hugely significant thing we missed about the planet or the trip? What if there actually is a significant difference in the impact on the body from a months-long trip to Mars compared with a months-long stay on a space station just outside our atmosphere?
The proper first step to getting humans to Mars is most likely developing a CHEAP way of getting humans to and from space. From there, developing useful, CHEAP space stations that can support launching missions deeper into space. Through all of this, a primary goal must be that these actions will be compatible with future exploration of space. We don't need another shuttle or ISS. This mandate from Congress would pretty much prevent taking steps towards Mars exploration.
I swear, if the government continues pissing me off with short-sighted crap like this and an inability to actually effect CHANGE, I'm going to wind up having to run for office in another decade. Cut the pork, stop throwing money at the rest of the world's problems and invest in something that will benefit all mankind for centuries to come.
Bank of America "fixed" that problem by allowing people to get credit cards without a SSN. Thus, the traditional requirement of, you know, being a legal resident of this country, has been waived. So I suspect those mexican lettuce farmers are able to now get bank accounts with them.
What I've found is that the larger the bank, the more ridiculous their policies and the higher their fees. Local and regional banks are often much more friendly about things, and have much more reasonable fee policies. In fact, my current bank actually refunds me any ATM fees I incur. So despite my relatively meager checking account there, I've made more money off them than they ever did off fees to me.
In regards to the original topic, just get a money order. Or, accept the fact that living off the grid is going to cause you much, much bigger headaches than this in the future. I just can't fathom why you wouldn't trust a bank at this point. If you're that paranoid, get an account and only keep a small sum of money in it, while holding the rest as cash (which is going to get you in much more trouble later on -- you get robbed, tough luck; bank gets robbed, you're covered up to $100,000). If you're worried about identity theft, you'll probably be surprised at how many other places will have your needed info on file somewhere. If you truly wanted to live off the grid, you wouldn't be going to a university, and you wouldn't be posting this sort of information on Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
At the risk of being modded off-topic for biting at this bait...
That's not at all how it works. Corporate America collectively pays only about $200 billion in taxes. That's nowhere near as much as private citizens pay. Now, if large numbers of people insist on continuing to buy foreign goods instead of domestically produced products (as is the current trend), those corporations you seek to injure will simply close down production facilities here and outsource production, or go out of business entirely. Either way, they will cease to employ Americans. Those people will then collect unemployment and stop paying taxes. In case you hadn't noticed, the federal budget runs at a deficit anyway, so reducing tax revenue isn't going to magically stop the war. Only Congress has the authority to control where the money (whether it exists or not) is spent, and they have thus far been unable to utilize that ability for anything other than increasing minimum wage.
Now, if you believe that increasing unemployment is going to somehow stop the war in Iraq, then you should probably evaluate very carefully what your priorities are. Improving and securing our domestic economy is pretty damn important to me and all the other folks out there trying to make ends meet in a nation that increasingly buys Chinese-made goods. Large numbers of people already decided to buy Japanese machines instead of American ones in just about every electronic and automotive market segment during the past thirty years, resulting in considerable loss of jobs and economic damage to the long-term security of the country.
It's also quite important that we make sure the mess we are in with Iraq does not become a quagmire like Vietnam, but also that it does not become a problem in the future. Like it or not, we are now stuck with the consequences of our actions in Iraq. If we abandon them right now and bring our troops home, we'll just see the country collapse into further chaos (yes, that is easily possible).
If you feel very strongly about the issue of Iraq, write your elected leaders, stage a protest rally, or campaign for office yourself. Attempting to somehow affect that situation by enacting personal economic sanctions against your own people only makes you look woefully ignorant of the situation.
To be briefly on-topic, there is almost nothing electronic in the world that doesn't have some part produced in China, but the lower the Chinese content, the better. Automobiles are required to have domestic-vs-foreign content notices on their window stickers. To my knowledge, there is no such information available for consumer electronics aside from "Made in x" being stamped on it somewhere. Given the global nature of our economy, having that kind of information would be pretty helpful for a lot of people.
The overwhelming majority of people do not buy games because they want to experience a story. They buy games because they want to play the game, whether it is hijacking cars and shooting cops or throwing touchdown passes, it's about escaping your reality and doing something you can't otherwise do. No matter how good the story telling may be, most people will see it as nothing but an excuse for (or even interruption of) killing things. You can play through Half-Life 2 and not care or notice much about the story. You can do the same for just about anything else out there. If you chose not to make yourself aware of the story in Halo, then you should blame yourself, not the game.
Hell, you even said that the story should've been crammed in the front of the manual, "not crammed in the middle of the game slowing things down." Sounds to me like you think the story got in the way of killing.
The 360 will live longer than five years - Microsoft has already alluded to this. They have also said that the 360 will stick around and be supported even after the next generation launches. However, I don't see them continuing to support the 360 as substantially as Sony is supporting the PS2. A lot of early 360 adopters were people who had XBOXs and saw that if they wanted more new games, they either had to buy a 360 or jump sideways into a PS2. Now, I'm not saying PS2 owners would go for the PS3 if the PS2 new game well were dried up, but I have to think that more of them would do so. The PS2 is a bit unusual, because it is really outselling the PS3. Did the PS1 continue to outsell the PS2 10 months after the PS2 released? The PS2 was/is an immensely successful console, but it is probably being helped out now by the fact that the PS3 is prohibitively expensive and lacks many games. There are plenty of casual gamers who aren't interested in the 360 or Wii, as they've grown up on PS1 and then PS2, so getting the PS3 just makes sense, but not until a price drop that means something.
Either way, it's almost certain that the next generation of consoles will start with Microsoft or Nintendo (or both), and not with Sony. The PS3 was designed to be around for awhile, and unless things change big-time, it does not appear that it will not be financially possible to release a new console for Sony for awhile.
If you read the article (and of course you didn't), you'd know that the vendors paid for everything as a marketing expense. The total dollar amount is surely a million or more, but split over 30+ vendors, that's not much at all for a chance to demonstrate your products to the people who are selling to 25-30% of the US retail gaming market. If you win over those managers, they are a whole lot more likely to recommend your products.
I'm not sure how much this article makes sense for slashdot, as the majority of people who actually care were attendees anyway.
What port? Lair is a unique and exclusive title for PS3. My understanding of the control problem was that it was primarily an issue of the motion-sensing not working out very well. Whether that is a hardware limitation or bad programming is unknown, but it's always been known that the SIXAXIS doesn't have anything like the motion capability of the Wiimote.
For a title that was supposed to be a system mover to have such a fundamental problem is a huge disappointment and honestly, not a very good indicator of things to come.
Actually, Carmack pretty much said that although the 360 is easy to develop for, the power is about even and he was going to get all he could from both systems anyway. Newell, however, gripes about how terrible the PS3 is and then outsources development. If he were actually programming for both himself, I'd be more interested in his opinion. But otherwise, his opinion comes off as biased and ill informed, since he doesn't actually have firsthand experience with it. UE3 and IDTech5 are both running just fine on all three platforms (PC, 360, PS3) with just a single primary developer, while Source required separate development teams to make it work on all three platforms.
The 360 is easier to code for, as has been established by dozens of developers comments. But that doesn't mean they're going to sit around complaining or abandon the platform (well, a few have abandoned, but not many). For a developer that has the experience and credibility with FPS games and engine design to gripe as much as Newell has makes him look awfully pathetic.
If you were really a huge advocate for privacy rights, you'd understand why the guy did what he did. You might think, "it's just a small thing, who cares?" Well, the more small things you give up when it comes to privacy, the more you hand over your freedom. Without directly witnessing you taking an item from the shelf and attempting to leave without payment, the stores have no legal grounds for physically stopping you or checking your receipt. They may ask to see a receipt, but you are not obligated to show it. I refuse to show receipts, as I consider it not only an invasion of privacy, but extremely disrespectful. Working in retail, I understand how important LP is, but I also understand that if your loss prevention mechanism is limited to checking people at the door, you are wasting your time and money. Better auditing procedures are needed to track your employees if you have internal theft issues. Unless a store is prepared to accuse me of theft (payday for me if they do, because I don't steal), they don't get to check my receipt without my prior written permission.
Those who would abandon a little liberty for a little safety deserve neither, and lose both.
I trust you're speaking from the standpoint of having actually programmed for both systems, and thus know more than the countless other developers who have said otherwise.
Short of cutting the price of the 80GB PS3 to well below $400, there is nothing Sony can do to put a dent in Halo 3 sales. They're not even remotely concerned about it, though, because it's been known for a couple of years that when Halo 3 came out, it would move a lot of 360s, and there isn't a thing that can be done about it. Sony does not have a game that is even close to Halo 3 in terms of fan base or hype. Going anywhere near a store that carries video games that day with the intent of buying anything will already require a very long wait in line, and sales of products not related to 360 or Halo will be substantially lower anyway. Trying to draw attention to the PS3 isn't going to be possible for Sony on 9/25. If they're really lucky, they might get mentioned alongside the Wii when news reporters talk about the huge lines and crowds for Halo and the 360, but that's about it.
Halo isn't just a huge, potentially system-selling game - it redefines the idea of huge. Hell, Halo 2 did $125,000,000 in sales in 24 hours, with $49.99 and $54.99 price points and fewer pre-orders. And that was strictly sales of the game - systems, controllers, Live subscriptions weren't even counted in that figure. This time around, Halo 3 sells for $59.99, $69.99, and $129.99 and had over 1 million pre-orders a couple weeks ago.
If you want someone to represent your views, make your views widely known. Spread your message far and wide, but remember that your views are your views, and that the other 300 million Americans out there all have their own set of views - some of which may be the same, some aren't. So be understanding of the views of others, misguided though they may seem to you, because to them, your opinion is just as misguided.
Don't vote for someone unless they actually represent a majority of your views. Simply voting for someone because they're not the most awful candidate isn't going to help.
Sure the delay of GTA doesn't help Microsoft in the near future, but slightly longer-term, it helps by improving sales and marketing efforts for the other games coming out that are also very solid, and thus attracting an audience that is otherwise put off by GTA. I've never had any interest in that genre, and I'm not alone. Plenty of gamers out there don't like GTA, but a good FPS or RPG can make them buy a system. Sure it won't be the numbers that GTA can move, but it'll be a different set of gamers.
It's not like they're canceling GTA for 360, so there will still be plenty of 360s sold this coming Q4 based just on the expectation of getting GTA in a few months.
I don't think anyone has delusions about outselling the Wii anymore. If the market were a fixed size with no new gamers being brought in, then the 360 would be the clear leader right now I suspect. But the Wii has probably sold as much to traditional non-gamers as those who would otherwise have bought one of this generation's offerings. And of course for the traditional gamers, many are buying the Wii AND a 360 or PS3. The price decrease isn't meant to convince people to buy them, so much as it is to enable the games to better convince people to buy one. Rhetoric aside, this really is one of the most impressive fall line-ups of game releases in memory, and the overwhelming majority are on 360, whether exclusive or not.
The Elite is more readily available at this point if you know where to look. I can't help but wonder if it's the 120GB hard drive or the HDMI that is selling more people on that model vs the premium. Probably both, but since the Halo edition will have HDMI, I suspect the other systems to end up getting it as well pretty soon.
I'm guessing you're from Norway, so I'll excuse you for not understanding how American government works. You see, the people we elect to "represent" us believe that existing laws are meaningless if they themselves did not write them the previous term. So any issues that arise will need entirely new legislation drafted, often with the help of the corporations and lobbying groups that funded their campaign. Hence, a simple fix to a broken paper ballot system isn't sufficient. No, we need entirely new laws and methods to be created, and make them as expensive as possible while sounding as awesome and clever as possible. Also, at least one additional item must be added to each piece of legislation that is totally unrelated, such as funding for a new music program for the local deaf and mute school. This way if the bill is blocked, the representatives who supported it can slam those who didn't for not caring about "the children" during the next election. That's how we do things in America. Brilliant, isn't it?
My good sir, the extra disk space required by XP vs 95 costs less than a dollar now. 95 was a horribly buggy, unstable piece of shit, to put it in the politest of terms. XP, with all the latest updates, is actually pretty damn stable. There are quite a few additional drivers that are installed by default with XP for usability with USB devices, as others have mentioned. There is significantly better support for a variety of hardware, and there are a great many games that will not ever run on 95 due to DirectX requirements (which oh by the way also needs some hard drive space). Are there leaner, more efficient options? Sure. Will they run anything close to as much software (including games) as XP? Not a chance.
I won't argue the case of bloat in Vista, as the only fundamental change in operation is the enforcement of good security policies. Everything else is just bloat that fails to improve anything by much. Heck, in many cases it causes more problems, as a lot of hardware is not properly supported, and many games still (despite patches) fail to work properly. IIRC, it was something like 10GB for Vista Ultimate. If not for my strong desire to take advantage of DX10 graphics in Crysis when that ships, I'd be back on XP right now. (although if I can't get Civilization IV - Beyond the Sword to run stable, I'm dropping Vista anyway).
I'm doubtful this is a pure money grab. While that may be an outcome of the lawsuit, I think that there must be some truth to the claims made here. It's hard to believe it is just coincidence that a majority of the other UE3 titles have been delayed again and again. When discussing id Tech 5, Carmack made a mention that (wish I had the quote handy) unlike competitors, his engine was built fresh from the ground up so that it was a clean codebase, easily understood and modified, rather than an engine built upon an existing design, and that this made it easier for licensees to use. At the time, I found this quote rather strange, since so many devs were licensing UE3 and Source, so those engines couldn't be all that bad. But perhaps he was making a veiled reference to complaints he had heard about UE3?
Now, maybe SK really is the only one having problems here, and UE3 as delivered to them truly is a masterpiece of an engine. Or just maybe, they've got a little bit of a real gripe.
Now, I'm not clear how you can view being upset by this executive order a "political rant". This isn't politics, it's a violation of the very principles that this country was founded on. The recent attempts by congress and the executive branch to defeat our constitution's provisions for the rights of US citizens makes me angry. Not that-guy-just-cut-me-off angry; not the-power-went-out-just-as-I-was-about-to-defeat-
To suggest that Google is taking sides is a bit ridiculous. They're simply looking at an opportunity to make some money by offering advertising services to the health care industry. If that's evil, so are 99.99% of your fellow citizens.
I have watched Micheal Moore's previous work, and consider it horribly one-sided and narrow. Arguments that are sensationalistic and focus only on a single side might drum up a bit of support from some people, but not everyone. To me, this sort of thing is nothing but propaganda. I'm not going to get into a debate here about our current health care problems, but I will say that anyone who views this film should take the time to do their research and come to their own conclusions before blindly agreeing to any conclusions this film may come to.
That analogy doesn't much work either. If you're taking your car in to get fixed, you get your same car back, but repaired. The history of failure is still there.
I got my 360 at launch. A lot of my coworkers did as well. Very few problems for any of us. Eventually I want to trade mine in on an Elite, just because I prefer the color, need the bigger hard drive, and wouldn't mind the HDMI.
If someone has a defective 360, it's not too unusual. But more than one being defective suggests to me that it is user error more than likely. Heat is the enemy of the 360. Power spikes, brownouts, and other electrical anomalies are also damaging. Some electronics will survive just about anything you can do to them. Unfortunately for Microsoft and consumers, the 360 is not such an item. Consoles are not treated well by a majority of owners, because they expect them to work just as well as their $30 DVD player from Walmart. But that DVD player uses components that have such a low thermal output that they don't even need heatsinks, let alone cooling fans. The 360 and PS3 both use very complex, hot-running, and expensive components. It's just that the 360 has narrower electronic tolerances than the PS3, thus making it less durable. Combine this with shoddy manufacturing from a handful of suppliers and you have the root of the problem.
See, that's the thing about international politics. China wouldn't attack us in the first place because they know we would wipe them out. Just as we wouldn't attack China because they could do substantial damage to us. The entire point of the nuclear arsenal is that it never has to be used, but it must be understood by all parties that it WILL be used if given no other real option. It's called mutually assured destruction (MAD). As it stands, our military is stretched too thin to take on China conventionally right now, and even if we weren't mired in Iraq, the only thing we could ever do to them would be air and naval strikes. China knows they are safe from ground attack. We would need months to build up enough conventional forces in the region for a land invasion that would pit a few hundred thousand US soldiers against a couple million Chinese soldiers and a few hundred million citizens armed with whatever China is willing to give them.
As for needing China because of manufacturing, we could always just return millions of jobs to our fellow citizens, pay them decent wages, and be able to purchase higher-quality, untainted products again. Gee, what a novel concept. I don't give a hoot about people having to pay a tiny bit more for their goods, because the overall economic strength of any country is founded on jobs, not imports. Bring back the manufacturing base and watch the middle class recover.
Agreed. In the article, they postulate that if China wanted to retake Taiwan, they might shoot down a few of our spy sats first to confuse us. Make no mistake, we would see the launches the moment they happened and be able to track the missiles right up to hitting our spy satellites -- the other satellites that track that sort of thing are way too far out to be easily hit, precisely for that reason. Regardless of the confusion it could theoretically create, China would never risk actually attacking us just to take back Taiwan. While they might well be able to invade Taiwan and secure it before we could decide what to do, I'm pretty sure our response would end up as, "Get out or die" -- full nuclear retaliation on mainland China. Prepare the missiles for launch, make sure China's own spy sats pick up on it, and send a single warning message. If China refuses, nuke 'em. Or at least, I would hope whoever is in the White House if such a situation occurs is smart enough to realize that is the safest response, as to roll over and accept it would mean that China is now the one in charge. And quite frankly, I trust our corrupt leaders, or even those in the European Union, a bit more than I trust China's corrupt leaders. In the long term, allowing a communist superpower to go unchecked would do more damage and kill more people than forcing China to evacuate Taiwan (they know we could wipe them out entirely, and their own nuclear deterrent isn't reliable enough to know for certain that it would reach us).
Besides, China needs the US. Without our money flowing back to them from all the goods they export to us, their economy would grind to a halt. Of course, they would just dump all the US dollars they have bought up and cripple our own economy, but I think we'd probably come out of it with a bit less long-term damage than they would.
Getting back to the topic of the article, the whole debris field thing is something I never really thought much about. Sure debris is a problem, but in LEO does so little of it get pulled back into the atmosphere that 80% remains after a century? I thought gravity would pull more of it down than that.
GMC is a division of GM, not GM itself. GMC sells more trucks than any non-American brand. They might not have had the greatest interiors until recently, but their trucks are very reliable and capable. When it comes to trucks, those things matter far more than a stylish interior (which GM as a whole has been making huge strides in). So I'd say GMC's slogan is fairly accurate.
Take Two confirmed to at least one retailer that the title will ship with an M rating, even if that means changing it and resubmitting to the ESRB. It might delay the game another month, but I suspect this AO rating was just a way to get ridiculous amounts of free publicity.
Really? You mean to tell me that figuring out the cheapest way to send people to mars wouldn't result in lowing the costs of space exploration?
Going to the moon taught us an awful lot about getting people into space, and supporting human life for a couple of weeks in space. It taught us a lot about landing on low-grav, no-atmosphere bodies, and lifting off from them again. We learned quite a bit about space exploration from that. Sadly most of it has been ignored for the space shuttle program, but if we don't try to branch out, we will not ever leave this planet. You don't just figure out the cheapest way to colonize a planet without sending humans there a few times first. How stupid would humanity be if we invested in everything needed for colonization, sent it all there, and then discovered that, since we'd never actually done the human trip to Mars beforehand, there was some hugely significant thing we missed about the planet or the trip? What if there actually is a significant difference in the impact on the body from a months-long trip to Mars compared with a months-long stay on a space station just outside our atmosphere?
The proper first step to getting humans to Mars is most likely developing a CHEAP way of getting humans to and from space. From there, developing useful, CHEAP space stations that can support launching missions deeper into space. Through all of this, a primary goal must be that these actions will be compatible with future exploration of space. We don't need another shuttle or ISS. This mandate from Congress would pretty much prevent taking steps towards Mars exploration.
I swear, if the government continues pissing me off with short-sighted crap like this and an inability to actually effect CHANGE, I'm going to wind up having to run for office in another decade. Cut the pork, stop throwing money at the rest of the world's problems and invest in something that will benefit all mankind for centuries to come.
Sigh. *forces blood pressure down*
Bank of America "fixed" that problem by allowing people to get credit cards without a SSN. Thus, the traditional requirement of, you know, being a legal resident of this country, has been waived. So I suspect those mexican lettuce farmers are able to now get bank accounts with them.
What I've found is that the larger the bank, the more ridiculous their policies and the higher their fees. Local and regional banks are often much more friendly about things, and have much more reasonable fee policies. In fact, my current bank actually refunds me any ATM fees I incur. So despite my relatively meager checking account there, I've made more money off them than they ever did off fees to me.
In regards to the original topic, just get a money order. Or, accept the fact that living off the grid is going to cause you much, much bigger headaches than this in the future. I just can't fathom why you wouldn't trust a bank at this point. If you're that paranoid, get an account and only keep a small sum of money in it, while holding the rest as cash (which is going to get you in much more trouble later on -- you get robbed, tough luck; bank gets robbed, you're covered up to $100,000). If you're worried about identity theft, you'll probably be surprised at how many other places will have your needed info on file somewhere. If you truly wanted to live off the grid, you wouldn't be going to a university, and you wouldn't be posting this sort of information on Slashdot.