Nah, back then console games wouldn't have been written with exception handlers - and they probably wouldn't have any kind of dynamic memory management either. "Out of memory" would be something they'd determine at design-time. Plus even if they'd been using dynamic allocators and exceptions, would they be at the point where their exceptions would be split into namespaces? I doubt it...
I'm presently using a Happy Hacking Lite 2 keyboard... I want to see what all the fuss is about with the clicky keyboards, but I don't want some 101-key beast, I like my keyboards small.
There's a HHKB pro model, of course, (and a blank-key variant! Sadly, without cursor keys) but I don't have a good understanding of how it differs in practical terms from the lites I have now... Anybody have experience with the HHKB Pro? Or have any other recommendations for 60-80 key keyboards with good mechanical feedback? Or should I get an old IBM keyboard and a hacksaw?
I think there are some interesting facets to this game besides it being a nod to the original, incorporating this piece of this game or that piece of that game, having this, lacking that, and so on.
Basically, I think their design choices are interesting. Compared to games like SMB3 or Super Mario World it's like a "less is more" philosophy. I think the variety of suits and their secret locations was great in SMB3, and Yoshi was great in Super Mario World, but I feel like in New SMB they've boiled the strengths of the series into the most important elements, along with a few common setpieces like the red coins, special coins, switch blocks, etc. I don't know if you can use New SMB as an example of the strength of the original SMB, because of the differences and (more importantly) the greater depth and variety of New SMB - I think it's more about how a relatively simple game can shine, not "despite" its simplicity, but because of it.
For people looking for modern side-scrollers, however, the DS has been delivering pretty much from day one. There's touchscreen gimmick games like Kirby's canvas and Yoshi touch, and more recently titles like Super Princess Peach and the upcoming Yoshi's Island 2. Although the system has 3-D hardware it's almost better to look at the system as a pumped-up GBA - another platform which has been a haven for SNES-era games and similar or derivative titles. (Rockman Zero, anyone?)
The koopa shell simply rocks. I think as powerups go it's way better than the Tanooki suit or even the Hammer Brothers suit. More limited than those SMB3 powerups for sure, but the basic capability afforded by the powerup, the shell dash, is more fun and more challenging to use effectively.
Oh, and the review doesn't mention the fact that, if you're fast enough in 1-1 of New SMB, you get to knock down the flagpole, too! And plowing through the stairs on the way pretty much guarantees you 5-up.
To those who said this game should have been on Gamecube - bah, I say! I think it's great to be able to play this thing mobile.
For starters, they'll likely look at your web browser ID string and boot you to the normal site if it's IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, etc., to "enhance" your browsing experience. Sure, if you know what you're doing, you can easily spoof that - but for most people it won't be worth the hassle.
Another thing they may do in some cases is provide a whole different site for mobile users. One example that comes to mind was a site for a company that makes PalmOS software (I don't remember which) - if you visit that site on a Treo's web browser, you'll get a version of the site that just lists their products and lets you buy/download binaries. On the desktop site you can get better information - things like full [i]descriptions[/i] of the products, and so on.
'Course, what's the point of hiding the encrypted volume, if it's hidden using a mechanism that's widely published and open-source? If you don't want people to know that there even is a hidden volume, then "security through obscurity" really is what you need. If you don't care if people know there's a hidden volume, then why bother hiding it?
In the case of TrueCrypt you may be able to make it very difficult for them to prove that the hidden volume exists - but if you've given them the ability to decrypt the non-hidden volume then they already know you're using TrueCrypt, and they know how to tell that there may be a hidden volume there (read the TrueCrypt doc, check if the non-hidden volume is a FAT filesystem). Do you suppose there's a way to tell which sectors of a disk have had a significant amount of disk access in the past? If so, that'd be a fine clue as well... "Oh, there's this section of apparently unallocated space after then end of a FAT filesystem in a partition that's encrypted with a tool that allows you to hide a volume in unallocated space on a FAT filesystem partition - and it doesn't appear to be the remnants of deallocated data from that filesystem, or the remnants of a previous filesystem, but there are signs that those areas of the disk have seen significant use. Do you suppose there's something there?"
If I really wanted to hide something, I'd find a much better hiding place for it. The main problem is that whatever mechanism you use to hide the data, there has to be a decryption tool somewhere to let you access it. Presumably it'd be separate from your main hard drive, maybe a USB device. Maybe the extra space left over in fixed-size data table entries - or modify one of the standard statically-linked libraries such that there'd be places to hide data inside program binaries. I expect, though, that a good investigator would be able to identify these spare bits of data, and possibly even determine pretty reliably that there's some significance to that data.
Why not? The ancestral post seems to be judging evolution as a whole according to standards which are not only very human, but also very specific to current-era sensibilities. It holds aloft our forms of cultural expression - forms of expression which were specifically crafted to appeal to human sensibilities, and asks why evolution does not bless all forms of life with this same style of expression, or at least something close enough that we, who have declared ourselves to be the best and smartest of all the animals, could understand.
I do not speak Antish. I don't know anyone who does. I think it's inappropriate to assume we know everything there is to know about being an ant, certainly not enough to say whether there is any room for creativity in their tiny brains.
As for whether that question is at all relevant to evolution - I think others have answered that question quite well already.
Though, you've got to keep in mind, the 700p price depends on a commitment to an 80 year voice+data service contract at a price of 12000p per month, with an early cancellation charge of 5000000p. I almost think you'd be better off paying more up front and getting a shorter service contract.
Does "optomization" mean "optimization" or is it some slang combination of "opto-" and "optimization" I'm not familiar with? (Since the article is about improving game visuals, "opto-" would almost make sense...)
This also assumes that the Blu-Ray DVD player in the PS3, you know, works. When I first got my PS2, my thinking was, bonus, can watch DVDs now and don't need to buy a separate player. After my early experiences trying to play various DVD movies on my PS2, and various discs freezing, black-screening, etc., I have rather little faith in a Sony console's capabilities as a video player. I think if you want a next-generation DVD player, you've got to buy exactly that. Save the game consoles for games.
How about, pop the DVD in your PS2 and use the game controller to make Han Solo dodge laser blasts - using the same advanced photographic manipulation algorithms used in the Special Edition, only now rendered in real-time thanks to the awesome power of the Emotion Engine.
But this is a -different- version of the original version of the film. If the info we have is accurate, then this new edition will be much closer to the true original releases - down to things like the original Star Wars crawl (no "Ep. 4").
So the versions that were incrementally altered over the years before the special editions aren't the same version.
It's hair-splitting for sure, but there you have it. We can never again buy the 1994(?) version of the film, our current options are 2005 or 1977.
The article fails to mention that the robotic suit incorporates a beatbox, PA, and turntable synthesizer. Details can be found on http://www.mchawking.com/
Uh, no, I'm quite sure I got it, so fuck off, go play "Nord and Bert" or something. But extending the joke (based on misspelling of "capitalist") to capital letters doesn't really work...
I enjoyed your post, (yay for decentralized government! We are the collective!) but "capital letter" is with an A... If you're gonna correct somebody you gotta get it right.:)
Secondly it would be nice to have a higher quality guitar. That thing looked and felt totally cheap, it was like a kid's toy. I would have felt like I was rocking a lot harder if the guitar was bigger and had taken itself a little more seriously.
I agree, but there's one issue with that...
That is, that at the end of the day, this is still just a game, and you don't necessarily want the controller being bulkier than it has to be, for storage reasons and so on.
At the very least I think the original Guitar Hero SG controller was a good idea for the initial release of the game, when the game's success was not assured. Now that the game has been out a while and is fairly popular, maybe it's possible that Red Octane would make a heftier model...
It's not his opinion, it's a fact - what other word would you have for an OS in this day and age that does not provide:...
* A filesystem, for crying out loud
Are you not familiar with the VFS system? The SD card slots that have been on Palm devices since the m500? (Though VFS actually dates back at least to the original Sony Clie...)
That counts as a "filesystem" for sure - though most Palms don't have a VFS volume built in (exceptions being, I guess, Lifedrive, and IIRC the T5 and TX).
So how about Palm's database manager? I think there's some advantages and disadvantages there when compared to a hierarchical filesystem.
One major disadvantage is that all database names must be unique. This requires a level of fair-play among applications that most aren't likely to respect. (For starters, apps are supposed to include their creator ID as part of the DB name... that by itself ought to be just about enough to do the job - though even better would be if apps were required to have the ID at a certain place in the DB name - but most apps just don't do that.)
Personally I feel the DB layout on Palm is adequate for the typical PalmOS device with between 32-256MB of DB storage space. There's not a great need for a file hierarchy and the creator ID system does a fair job at segregating one application's data from another.
The only real disadvantage to not having a more traditional filesystem is that it hinders ports of existing software.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, back then console games wouldn't have been written with exception handlers - and they probably wouldn't have any kind of dynamic memory management either. "Out of memory" would be something they'd determine at design-time. Plus even if they'd been using dynamic allocators and exceptions, would they be at the point where their exceptions would be split into namespaces? I doubt it...
I'm presently using a Happy Hacking Lite 2 keyboard... I want to see what all the fuss is about with the clicky keyboards, but I don't want some 101-key beast, I like my keyboards small.
There's a HHKB pro model, of course, (and a blank-key variant! Sadly, without cursor keys) but I don't have a good understanding of how it differs in practical terms from the lites I have now... Anybody have experience with the HHKB Pro? Or have any other recommendations for 60-80 key keyboards with good mechanical feedback? Or should I get an old IBM keyboard and a hacksaw?
You mean the MPAA is a government of our subsidiary now?
I think there are some interesting facets to this game besides it being a nod to the original, incorporating this piece of this game or that piece of that game, having this, lacking that, and so on.
Basically, I think their design choices are interesting. Compared to games like SMB3 or Super Mario World it's like a "less is more" philosophy. I think the variety of suits and their secret locations was great in SMB3, and Yoshi was great in Super Mario World, but I feel like in New SMB they've boiled the strengths of the series into the most important elements, along with a few common setpieces like the red coins, special coins, switch blocks, etc. I don't know if you can use New SMB as an example of the strength of the original SMB, because of the differences and (more importantly) the greater depth and variety of New SMB - I think it's more about how a relatively simple game can shine, not "despite" its simplicity, but because of it.
For people looking for modern side-scrollers, however, the DS has been delivering pretty much from day one. There's touchscreen gimmick games like Kirby's canvas and Yoshi touch, and more recently titles like Super Princess Peach and the upcoming Yoshi's Island 2. Although the system has 3-D hardware it's almost better to look at the system as a pumped-up GBA - another platform which has been a haven for SNES-era games and similar or derivative titles. (Rockman Zero, anyone?)
The koopa shell simply rocks. I think as powerups go it's way better than the Tanooki suit or even the Hammer Brothers suit. More limited than those SMB3 powerups for sure, but the basic capability afforded by the powerup, the shell dash, is more fun and more challenging to use effectively.
Oh, and the review doesn't mention the fact that, if you're fast enough in 1-1 of New SMB, you get to knock down the flagpole, too! And plowing through the stairs on the way pretty much guarantees you 5-up.
To those who said this game should have been on Gamecube - bah, I say! I think it's great to be able to play this thing mobile.
For starters, they'll likely look at your web browser ID string and boot you to the normal site if it's IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, etc., to "enhance" your browsing experience. Sure, if you know what you're doing, you can easily spoof that - but for most people it won't be worth the hassle.
Another thing they may do in some cases is provide a whole different site for mobile users. One example that comes to mind was a site for a company that makes PalmOS software (I don't remember which) - if you visit that site on a Treo's web browser, you'll get a version of the site that just lists their products and lets you buy/download binaries. On the desktop site you can get better information - things like full [i]descriptions[/i] of the products, and so on.
'Course, what's the point of hiding the encrypted volume, if it's hidden using a mechanism that's widely published and open-source? If you don't want people to know that there even is a hidden volume, then "security through obscurity" really is what you need. If you don't care if people know there's a hidden volume, then why bother hiding it?
In the case of TrueCrypt you may be able to make it very difficult for them to prove that the hidden volume exists - but if you've given them the ability to decrypt the non-hidden volume then they already know you're using TrueCrypt, and they know how to tell that there may be a hidden volume there (read the TrueCrypt doc, check if the non-hidden volume is a FAT filesystem). Do you suppose there's a way to tell which sectors of a disk have had a significant amount of disk access in the past? If so, that'd be a fine clue as well... "Oh, there's this section of apparently unallocated space after then end of a FAT filesystem in a partition that's encrypted with a tool that allows you to hide a volume in unallocated space on a FAT filesystem partition - and it doesn't appear to be the remnants of deallocated data from that filesystem, or the remnants of a previous filesystem, but there are signs that those areas of the disk have seen significant use. Do you suppose there's something there?"
If I really wanted to hide something, I'd find a much better hiding place for it. The main problem is that whatever mechanism you use to hide the data, there has to be a decryption tool somewhere to let you access it. Presumably it'd be separate from your main hard drive, maybe a USB device. Maybe the extra space left over in fixed-size data table entries - or modify one of the standard statically-linked libraries such that there'd be places to hide data inside program binaries. I expect, though, that a good investigator would be able to identify these spare bits of data, and possibly even determine pretty reliably that there's some significance to that data.
Why not? The ancestral post seems to be judging evolution as a whole according to standards which are not only very human, but also very specific to current-era sensibilities. It holds aloft our forms of cultural expression - forms of expression which were specifically crafted to appeal to human sensibilities, and asks why evolution does not bless all forms of life with this same style of expression, or at least something close enough that we, who have declared ourselves to be the best and smartest of all the animals, could understand.
I do not speak Antish. I don't know anyone who does. I think it's inappropriate to assume we know everything there is to know about being an ant, certainly not enough to say whether there is any room for creativity in their tiny brains.
As for whether that question is at all relevant to evolution - I think others have answered that question quite well already.
"Well what do you want? I'm Evil!"
:)
Pretty much sums it up.
And it's a phone, too!
Though, you've got to keep in mind, the 700p price depends on a commitment to an 80 year voice+data service contract at a price of 12000p per month, with an early cancellation charge of 5000000p. I almost think you'd be better off paying more up front and getting a shorter service contract.
Does "optomization" mean "optimization" or is it some slang combination of "opto-" and "optimization" I'm not familiar with? (Since the article is about improving game visuals, "opto-" would almost make sense...)
"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown."
I was gonna say the other one. Trace Beaulieu
I mean, sure, he's kind of this weak, goofy slapstick figure... but still...
Our forefathers owned slaves and wore tights.
But don't get 'em wrong or else they'll put out your lights...
This also assumes that the Blu-Ray DVD player in the PS3, you know, works. When I first got my PS2, my thinking was, bonus, can watch DVDs now and don't need to buy a separate player. After my early experiences trying to play various DVD movies on my PS2, and various discs freezing, black-screening, etc., I have rather little faith in a Sony console's capabilities as a video player. I think if you want a next-generation DVD player, you've got to buy exactly that. Save the game consoles for games.
I don't know, all I really know about the guy is how he pronounces "Leenoox".
How about, pop the DVD in your PS2 and use the game controller to make Han Solo dodge laser blasts - using the same advanced photographic manipulation algorithms used in the Special Edition, only now rendered in real-time thanks to the awesome power of the Emotion Engine.
Don't you mean Meow Skywalker?
But this is a -different- version of the original version of the film. If the info we have is accurate, then this new edition will be much closer to the true original releases - down to things like the original Star Wars crawl (no "Ep. 4").
So the versions that were incrementally altered over the years before the special editions aren't the same version.
It's hair-splitting for sure, but there you have it. We can never again buy the 1994(?) version of the film, our current options are 2005 or 1977.
The article fails to mention that the robotic suit incorporates a beatbox, PA, and turntable synthesizer. Details can be found on http://www.mchawking.com/
Uh, no, I'm quite sure I got it, so fuck off, go play "Nord and Bert" or something. But extending the joke (based on misspelling of "capitalist") to capital letters doesn't really work...
I enjoyed your post, (yay for decentralized government! We are the collective!) but "capital letter" is with an A... If you're gonna correct somebody you gotta get it right. :)
I mean the man's mortal, like everyone else...
I mean, he is, right? Can we get confirmation on this?
Yar, I figured as much - post was more meant for grandparent poster. Sorry I was not clear. :)
Secondly it would be nice to have a higher quality guitar. That thing looked and felt totally cheap, it was like a kid's toy. I would have felt like I was rocking a lot harder if the guitar was bigger and had taken itself a little more seriously.
I agree, but there's one issue with that...
That is, that at the end of the day, this is still just a game, and you don't necessarily want the controller being bulkier than it has to be, for storage reasons and so on.
At the very least I think the original Guitar Hero SG controller was a good idea for the initial release of the game, when the game's success was not assured. Now that the game has been out a while and is fairly popular, maybe it's possible that Red Octane would make a heftier model...
It's not his opinion, it's a fact - what other word would you have for an OS in this day and age that does not provide: ...
* A filesystem, for crying out loud
Are you not familiar with the VFS system? The SD card slots that have been on Palm devices since the m500? (Though VFS actually dates back at least to the original Sony Clie...)
That counts as a "filesystem" for sure - though most Palms don't have a VFS volume built in (exceptions being, I guess, Lifedrive, and IIRC the T5 and TX).
So how about Palm's database manager? I think there's some advantages and disadvantages there when compared to a hierarchical filesystem.
One major disadvantage is that all database names must be unique. This requires a level of fair-play among applications that most aren't likely to respect. (For starters, apps are supposed to include their creator ID as part of the DB name... that by itself ought to be just about enough to do the job - though even better would be if apps were required to have the ID at a certain place in the DB name - but most apps just don't do that.)
Personally I feel the DB layout on Palm is adequate for the typical PalmOS device with between 32-256MB of DB storage space. There's not a great need for a file hierarchy and the creator ID system does a fair job at segregating one application's data from another.
The only real disadvantage to not having a more traditional filesystem is that it hinders ports of existing software.