[...] even though overclocking is always done through software (bios).
It's been quite some time since I've done any sort of overclocking, but the last time I did (around the time of the Celeron 300A (woohoo! 150% overclocking FTW!), if I recall correctly) I remember having to use DIP switches and jumpers to set it up. I seem to recall having dabbled a bit later on down the line with some BIOS-based overclocking, which was ridiculously easier than fiddling with the switches and all, but I just wanted to point out that overclocking isn't necessarily ALWAYS done through software.
Your comment saddens me. Why, if I may ask, don't you vote? You've obviously learned more about this one candidate than most people learn about all the candidates in a race combined. You seem lucid and educated. You attend political conventions (as I assume the "other conventions he's attended" aren't comic or sci-fi cons:). You feel comfortable enough with certain issues to educate others and recommend candidates to friends and family. You are who we need voting in this country.
I can understand abstaining from certain races if you aren't adequately informed, or cannot find a suitable candidate in any party (keeping in mind most folks automatically discount anything outside of the Democratic/Republican one-party system). However, you're not stating "I'm not going to vote in my state's primary this year," or any variation thereof... you're making a blanket statement that you don't vote, period. I apologize if I'm prying, but it just baffles me that someone who can write a post like you just did would willingly abstain from any and all opportunities to participate in the political process.
And what about emergency dialing while you have a gun to your head? May not be a big problem in your area, but it's a feature in great demand in my country.
In that case, I'm thinking you've got better things to spend $399 on than an iPhone... such as a plane ticket the hell outta there.
D'oh. Just noticed your comment about not wanting to purchase a new video card for the Windows port... Since that basically invalidates the majority of my last post, I'll focus more on the fact that buying the game would net you an official Guitar Hero controller that, per the last link in my previous post, can be used with Frets on Fire to make the experience that much more authentic. Plus, as you pointed out, FoF also lets you import songs from GH, so the $80 package would give you the hardware and the content, just not the software, which you would be supplying yourself through FoF.
While I completely understand the desire to have an open source alternative to anything, as you pointed out, the lack of licensed songs will be a dealbreaker for an open source Guitar Hero clone. As you expressed reservations about having to buy an entire console in addition to the game, allow me to point out that you can purchase just the game alone (well, game and guitar controller) for Windows and Mac (in one package) for a relatively-measly $80.
And to make the deal even sweeter, Frets on Fire allows you to use the guitar controller, too, so you can have the best of both worlds.
How, exactly, did this get posted here? I understand that everyone's looking forward to Mass Effect -- I am, too, in fact -- but the game going gold is not news. Back in The Day, games being burned to a gold master disc was news because no developer worth their salt would give a specific release date for a game, thus the announcement that the game had gone gold meant that its release was nigh. Think of all the id games with the nebulous release date of "when it's done." Those were games where it made sense to make a big deal of the game going gold.
Mass Effect, however, has had a specific release date (11/20/2007) for some time now. Telling us that it has gone gold is just confirming that it's on track for the given release date. This is not news. This is the status quo. News would be if the game was delayed. News would be if Duke Nukem ForNever were announced to have gone gold. Telling us that Mass Effect has gone gold is roughly equivalent to telling us that the sky is still blue or the PS3 is still in third place.
I certainly mourn the passing of the Freespace franchise, but Volition, Inc. is still alive and kicking. Just last year they put out Saints Row, and according to Wikipedia, they're working on a sequel as we speak.
It's right here. (Well, okay, there's a lot there... more specifically, it's around the 10:10am mark. In the pic you can see that they're even giving the boxes their own little "MacDVD" header, just like console games and (lately) PC games have their own individual headers.
They also announced that the Mac will be one of the plethora of platforms that the next Madden and Tiger Woods PGA Tour games are released on. Not a single game mentioned is "more than a year old," and one of them (three if you count Madden and Tiger Woods, although they weren't listed in the/. summary) isn't even out yet.
Sony Ericsson phones such as the P990, K800, and the Walkman-branded W series music phones such as the W950 and the W810 support MP4 files with audio encoded using AAC-LC, HE-AAC v1 and HE-AAC v2.
Palm OS PDAs
Nokia Nseries multimedia phones
Sony PlayStation 3
Windows PCs
As long as you're listing consoles (PS3), don't forget the Xbox360 with the small, free "Optional iPod Support" update downloaded from the Marketplace.
Everything is either explained in plain English or implemented so intuitively that it doesn't need an explanation. You can't possibly tell me that it is the same scenario for Windows.
There is one very common task under Windows that many users perform daily (multiple times daily, in fact) that is, quite possibly, the most intuitive computing task around!
One of the major benefits of a Windows machine is its customizability, right? So the standard Windows user likes to have control over his machine. If anything were to go wrong with an application as he's using it, however, he may briefly consider switching to an alternative system (such as a Mac, or this "Linux" thing he's been hearing about lately). Finally, however, he decides to stick with Windows, as he knows all the software he's purchased for Windows won't work on a Mac or under Linux and the last thing he wants to do is have to delete all that expensive software.
Just because a some people have a bad experience (or no experience) with a game, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be on the list.
Absolutely! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come off as saying that Diablo shouldn't be on the list because I had a bad experience with it myself. I was just mentioning my experience to give a frame of reference for the rest of my comments about the game.
I get the sense you weren't a heavy game player during that time period.
Partially correct... I was all over Quake (specifically TF) at the time, but I was late to the party for Diablo (mostly because I heard all the rumblings about the rampant cheating). By the time I bothered to pick it up for $10 in the bargain bin, the heyday was over.
If not for Diablo, EQ wouldn't have been likely to see more than 10%-20% of it's customer base. Go back and look up articles written at that time and you'll see that everybody defined EQ as killing Battle.net.
I misunderstood your original point. I thought you were referring to the style of the game leading from one to the other, not the community. My bad:)
Leaving out Diablo is also insulting. If you include Tribes, it's absurd to leave out Diablo. This game paved the road for Everquest.
I can see why you (and others) would want to have Diablo on the list, as it was a very popular game (although I didn't bother picking it up until rather late in its lifespan, so the only multiplayer experience I encountered was thoroughly buggered by all the cheats people were wielding). However, saying that it "paved the road for Everquest" is not exactly accurate. Just because they are both fantasy-themed games and they both allow multiple players doesn't mean that one led to another. It would be like saying that Spacewar paved the road for Freespace because they both featured spaceships.
If you really want to mention the games that paved the way for Everquest (and every other MMO that's ever existed, for that matter), you'll need to look further back than a simple hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler like Diablo. What you're looking for is Ultima Online and just MUDs in general.
Now, to give Diablo credit, it did lead to a bunch of great games in the hack 'n' slash genre, notably the woefully under-appreciated Nox, the console-bound Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series, and the Champions of Norrath series (perhaps that's what you were referring to with Diablo leading to EQ?;) Although, on the other hand, Diablo isn't really the pivotal point for these games, either, as Diablo itself would never have existed if not for the venerable NetHack.
Brain Age Katamari Damacy Loco Roco Cooking Mama Trauma Center Phoenix Wright Shadow of the Colossus
The lack of commas here has me envisioning what could, quite possibly, be the Ultimate "original" game. Bear with me...
You control a planet under siege by giant Colossi (who really just want to play, and aren't evil at all, but you don't know this yet, and I'm getting ahead of myself...). To defend yourself, you must tilt from side to side, directing the blobular (if that wasn't a word before, it is now... I just worded it) life forms residing on you to roll up anything and everything in their path. By rolling over everyday items, these blobs (these... LocoRoco, if you will) gradually grow in stature until they can finally engulf the Colossi and save you, the planet!
Meanwhile, during the LocoRoco's quest to consume the Colossi, they may take damage, requiring you to perform surgery on them (the complexity of which varies depending on the amount of damage taken)... there will be no namby-pamby health potions in this game! The adventure will span many days, as the LocoRoco are very small to start with, and the menacing Colossi are extraordinarily large. As with any living creature, LocoRoco need to eat, and so you will be required, at least once per day, to cook up a nice hearty meal for your would-be saviors in order to keep their energy up.
Finally, when your LocoRoco have grown large enough and have engulfed the Colossi, you must roll them into a courtroom for them to face trial. It is at this point that the game's big plot twist rears its head, and you take control of the Colossi's defense attorney, requiring you to get them off the hook!
Oh, and you do some math or play some sudoku in there somewhere, too.
Right on. Although I agree with you fully, I do feel obliged to point out that Halo was actually a launch title for the XBox. Even with that being the case, though, it still doesn't disprove your point, as Bungie had already been working on it for quite a while before they were snapped up by Microsoft and thus had to put it on the big green machine.
Just to reiterate your point, Good (ie: system-selling good) games take time. Developers of launch (and launch-window) titles don't usually have the sort of time required to make a killer app, and thus you tend to get a flood of passably-fun, but ultimately-forgettable games early in a system's life.
I would rather vote for a dog. At least I could pet the dog.
Not without being beaten by Secret Service agents, branded as a terrorist, hauled off to Guantanamo Bay, tortured, and then held for years without any actual charges being brought against you.;)
Similarly, when voter turnout is low, it's always portrayed to be a sign of the laziness of the American people, not the fact that a lot of people are disgusted with both main-stream parties, don't want to have to choose the 'lesser of two evils', so just don't vote.
This is exactly the problem. What nobody seems to realize is that they DON'T have to choose the lesser of two evils. Many times there will be one or more third-party candidates on the ballot whom they can vote for. Or if the third-parties weren't able to get on the ballot (most likely through some sort of byzantine election laws pushed through by the local GOP or Dems), they'll generally be running a write-in campaign (such as Mark McCoy in the upcoming Illinois gubernatorial race). It's a simple matter to check out who's running in your area through Wikipedia... I just did a search for "2006 Illinois gubernatorial election" and got all sorts of information on who's running. And in the event that you disagree with the main party candidates, and you can't find a suitable third-party candidate... just skip that particular section. You don't have to complete the entire ballot. Just go in and vote for the ones you feel strongly about, and leave anything you don't know/care about blank.
What is the significant difference between the to Ubuntu(GNOME)or Kubuntu(KDE)?
Ubuntu uses the GNOME desktop environment, whereas Kubuntu uses KDE for its desktop. Essentially, all the main packages are the same, it's just a matter of what you prefer your desktop to look like and how you prefer it to work.
KDE is very Windows-like, and is usually the desktop environment used in distributions that focus on helping Windows users come into Linux (not ONLY used in those distributions, obviously). GNOME I have less experience with, but in the tiny bit I have used it, it seems like it tries more to go its own way instead of mimicking Windows.
You can get meat pies in the States, yet now I've seen two sources talking about them as if it's something exotic, surprising and even disgusting.
It's all just a misunderstanding based on the terminology. The term "meat pie" is not really used in the States, although the food item itself is actually rather common. Generally we tend to use chicken for the majority of our savory pies, rather than beef or lamb, however. As such, instead of calling them "meat pies" they tend to be more commonly known as "chicken pot pies," or just "pot pies" if another meat is used. (Or "pasties" if you're in the UP of Michigan, but I believe those are a bit different than pot pies, although perhaps closer to a true "meat pie")
Or are you just disgusted by the non-specific use of the word "meat"?
I can't speak for the GP, of course, but I'd assume he's disgusted by the listing of various parts that can be legally described as "meat." However, as I believe another commentor pointed out, it's really no different in essence than a good ol' hot dog. There are good ones and bad ones, and the bad ones tend to contain bits that normally aren't considered edible.
The bacteria splits water into Hydrogen and relies on Uranium. So why not use colonies of this stuff to eat radioactive waste and produce the Hydrogen we need to manufacture Hydrogen fuel...
Actually, as handy as that would be, you've got it backwards. The radioactive decay of the uranium is breaking down the surrounding water, and the bacteria are using the resulting hydrogen as their own fuel.
Basically, these guys are using uranium as we use the sun: sun makes plants grow, we eat plants (or other animals eat plants and we eat them). We're (at least) two steps away from the sun, just as these bacteria are two steps away from the radioactivity.
So then the question becomes "why can't we use the hydrogen produced this way ourselves?" Obviously, without all the specific details of the situation, we can't really say for certain here, but I assume the amount of hydrogen produced is nowhere near enough for what we would need.
You can use Rockbox on your iPod, but you'll have to make some sacrifices. For obvious reasons, DRM isn't supported, so any tracks you may have purchased from the iTMS won't play (although we all know there're ways around that). And as far as I can tell, video is not yet supported, though I can't imagine it's not being worked on.
(Disclaimer: I have no factual basis whatsoever for the theory I'm about to spout. There's probably zero chance that this will come to pass, but it sure would be cool:)
As has been pointed out here on/. (and elsewhere around the Intertron) on many occasions, Nintendo has some superficial parallels with Apple. Both companies offer products in their respective arenas that may not be the most powerful or the most feature-rich, but their products tend to be of the highest quality (and stylish, to boot). Focusing on doing a limited set of things, but doing those things well seems to be the modus operandi of both companies (see the iPod and the DS).
Nintendo is targeting the Wii at a new market. They're looking for casual gamers, older gamers, gamers who would not have even considered buying a console in the past. These are the buyers that Nintendo really wants to get the Wii to. Now, with the current console release model, companies announce the price and release date of the system many months in advance. This allows current gamers, who keep abreast of these things, to get in their pre-orders right away, essentially buying up all of the initial units right off the bat. The casual gamer generally can't get the system at launch even if they wanted to. If Nintendo wants to court the casual gamer with the Wii, they need to make sure that said casual gamer can actually buy one as soon as it launches.
Now take another look at Apple. When Apple is gearing up to release a new product, they don't make a peep about it ahead of time. They announce a press event a few weeks out, and then keep everything under wraps. Rumors leak out, of course, but that only serves to build up the all-important hype. Then, at the press event, the new products are announced, and immediately they're available on Apple's website and in their meatspace stores. No waiting. No preferential treatment for Apple fanboys. It's first-come, first-served.
With the news that Nintendo has already been receiving shipments one of the main components of the Wii, it's quite possible that the system could be launched very very soon (Joystiq, for example, has floated a rumor that it could be "within weeks" or "by the end of the month."). Perhaps Nintendo has decided to take a page from Apple's book again. Next week Nintendo has scheduled three nearly-simultaneous press events at three separate locations across the globe. As mentioned in my disclaimer above, I have no facts to back this up, but maybe... just maybe... Nintendo's going to do it exactly like Apple.
How cool would it be if next week Nintendo holds their press event, talks up the Wii, shows videos of all the launch games, etc, etc, and then at the end they announce, Jobs-like, that the system is available to purchase right now?
Re:I want an updatel filters comments out
on
Google Upgrades Blogger
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· Score: 2, Informative
They already have that, to a certain extent. Just check enable "Show word verification for comments?" on the Comments setting page for your blog to put in a human test not unlike the one/. uses for posting comments.
I kept this off when I first put up my blog and got hit with a few spam comments before I figured out what was happening. Turned on the word verification and deleted the handful of spam comments, and haven't seen one since (or any comments for that matter... but I think that's a different problem;)
The opening of the arteries in these experiments is for simulating serious injury
I understand that. In fact, that's exactly my point. In human trials, they would potentially have to simulate serious injury to a previously-healthy person. Is it ethical to risk someone's life in that way? Sure, I'd love to have the option of going into suspended animation were the need to arise, but I sure as hell don't want to be the guinea pig that they use to iron the wrinkles out of the procedure. The other possibility is that they could only do the trials on people who have been seriously injured, but that's another dilemma: the injuree is not going to be in any state to agree to the highly-experimental procedure. Is it ethical to try an experiment on someone without their knowledge or consent when that experiment could very well kill them faster than the standard procedure for treating whatever injuries they have?
it's not part of the cryogenic process itself, which doesn't appear to be all that traumatic.
On pigs. I am not a pig, and I feel safe in the assumption that you are not either. As pigs and humans are two completely different animals, there is absolutely no reason to expect the first human trials to go at all smoothly.
I'm missing something here. What are the ethical problems?
Yes, you are. They're not implying ethical problems regarding suspended animation itself. They're implying ethical problems with the human trials. Consider what they did to the (previously-healthy, assumedly) pig in the story: "He pushes aside the intestines, ovaries, and bladder, and with a quick scalpel stroke slices open the iliac artery. It's 10:30 am. Pig 78-6 loses a quarter of her blood within moments. [...] He cuts open the aorta - an even more lethal injury - and blood sprays all over our scrubs. The EKG flatlines."
The ethical concern is about the extremely high probability of perfectly healthy people being killed in the above fashion while these guys try to get everything just right. Doing it succesfully using pigs is worlds apart from doing it succesfully using people.
Of my own free will I enter into a contract with this cryonics company whereby they agree to place me in suspended animation as soon as possible after I am prounounced dead. Some people want to be cremated, some want to be buried, I want to be frozen. Explain to me the ethical problem here.
There's no ethical problem with that. But without the possibly-unethical human trials, how is that cryonics company going to be able to fulfill their end of your contract? Again, it's not the usage of suspended animation that they're claiming has ethical problems, it's the process of testing it on people.
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Your comment saddens me. Why, if I may ask, don't you vote? You've obviously learned more about this one candidate than most people learn about all the candidates in a race combined. You seem lucid and educated. You attend political conventions (as I assume the "other conventions he's attended" aren't comic or sci-fi cons :). You feel comfortable enough with certain issues to educate others and recommend candidates to friends and family. You are who we need voting in this country.
I can understand abstaining from certain races if you aren't adequately informed, or cannot find a suitable candidate in any party (keeping in mind most folks automatically discount anything outside of the Democratic/Republican one-party system). However, you're not stating "I'm not going to vote in my state's primary this year," or any variation thereof... you're making a blanket statement that you don't vote, period. I apologize if I'm prying, but it just baffles me that someone who can write a post like you just did would willingly abstain from any and all opportunities to participate in the political process.
D'oh. Just noticed your comment about not wanting to purchase a new video card for the Windows port... Since that basically invalidates the majority of my last post, I'll focus more on the fact that buying the game would net you an official Guitar Hero controller that, per the last link in my previous post, can be used with Frets on Fire to make the experience that much more authentic. Plus, as you pointed out, FoF also lets you import songs from GH, so the $80 package would give you the hardware and the content, just not the software, which you would be supplying yourself through FoF.
While I completely understand the desire to have an open source alternative to anything, as you pointed out, the lack of licensed songs will be a dealbreaker for an open source Guitar Hero clone. As you expressed reservations about having to buy an entire console in addition to the game, allow me to point out that you can purchase just the game alone (well, game and guitar controller) for Windows and Mac (in one package) for a relatively-measly $80.
And to make the deal even sweeter, Frets on Fire allows you to use the guitar controller, too, so you can have the best of both worlds.
How, exactly, did this get posted here? I understand that everyone's looking forward to Mass Effect -- I am, too, in fact -- but the game going gold is not news. Back in The Day, games being burned to a gold master disc was news because no developer worth their salt would give a specific release date for a game, thus the announcement that the game had gone gold meant that its release was nigh. Think of all the id games with the nebulous release date of "when it's done." Those were games where it made sense to make a big deal of the game going gold.
Mass Effect, however, has had a specific release date (11/20/2007) for some time now. Telling us that it has gone gold is just confirming that it's on track for the given release date. This is not news. This is the status quo. News would be if the game was delayed. News would be if Duke Nukem ForNever were announced to have gone gold. Telling us that Mass Effect has gone gold is roughly equivalent to telling us that the sky is still blue or the PS3 is still in third place.
I certainly mourn the passing of the Freespace franchise, but Volition, Inc. is still alive and kicking. Just last year they put out Saints Row, and according to Wikipedia, they're working on a sequel as we speak.
- Command & Conquer 3 - March 28, 2007
- Battlefield 2142 - October 18, 2006
- Need for Speed: Carbon - October 31,2006 (November 16, 2006 for PS3; November 19, 2006 for Wii)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - June 26, 2007
They also announced that the Mac will be one of the plethora of platforms that the next Madden and Tiger Woods PGA Tour games are released on. Not a single game mentioned is "more than a year old," and one of them (three if you count Madden and Tiger Woods, although they weren't listed in theOne of the major benefits of a Windows machine is its customizability, right? So the standard Windows user likes to have control over his machine. If anything were to go wrong with an application as he's using it, however, he may briefly consider switching to an alternative system (such as a Mac, or this "Linux" thing he's been hearing about lately). Finally, however, he decides to stick with Windows, as he knows all the software he's purchased for Windows won't work on a Mac or under Linux and the last thing he wants to do is have to delete all that expensive software.
See? It's all very logical and intuitive!
Partially correct... I was all over Quake (specifically TF) at the time, but I was late to the party for Diablo (mostly because I heard all the rumblings about the rampant cheating). By the time I bothered to pick it up for $10 in the bargain bin, the heyday was over.
I misunderstood your original point. I thought you were referring to the style of the game leading from one to the other, not the community. My bad
If you really want to mention the games that paved the way for Everquest (and every other MMO that's ever existed, for that matter), you'll need to look further back than a simple hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler like Diablo. What you're looking for is Ultima Online and just MUDs in general.
Now, to give Diablo credit, it did lead to a bunch of great games in the hack 'n' slash genre, notably the woefully under-appreciated Nox, the console-bound Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series, and the Champions of Norrath series (perhaps that's what you were referring to with Diablo leading to EQ?
You control a planet under siege by giant Colossi (who really just want to play, and aren't evil at all, but you don't know this yet, and I'm getting ahead of myself...). To defend yourself, you must tilt from side to side, directing the blobular (if that wasn't a word before, it is now... I just worded it) life forms residing on you to roll up anything and everything in their path. By rolling over everyday items, these blobs (these... LocoRoco, if you will) gradually grow in stature until they can finally engulf the Colossi and save you, the planet!
Meanwhile, during the LocoRoco's quest to consume the Colossi, they may take damage, requiring you to perform surgery on them (the complexity of which varies depending on the amount of damage taken)... there will be no namby-pamby health potions in this game! The adventure will span many days, as the LocoRoco are very small to start with, and the menacing Colossi are extraordinarily large. As with any living creature, LocoRoco need to eat, and so you will be required, at least once per day, to cook up a nice hearty meal for your would-be saviors in order to keep their energy up.
Finally, when your LocoRoco have grown large enough and have engulfed the Colossi, you must roll them into a courtroom for them to face trial. It is at this point that the game's big plot twist rears its head, and you take control of the Colossi's defense attorney, requiring you to get them off the hook!
Oh, and you do some math or play some sudoku in there somewhere, too.
Right on. Although I agree with you fully, I do feel obliged to point out that Halo was actually a launch title for the XBox. Even with that being the case, though, it still doesn't disprove your point, as Bungie had already been working on it for quite a while before they were snapped up by Microsoft and thus had to put it on the big green machine.
Just to reiterate your point, Good (ie: system-selling good) games take time. Developers of launch (and launch-window) titles don't usually have the sort of time required to make a killer app, and thus you tend to get a flood of passably-fun, but ultimately-forgettable games early in a system's life.
KDE is very Windows-like, and is usually the desktop environment used in distributions that focus on helping Windows users come into Linux (not ONLY used in those distributions, obviously). GNOME I have less experience with, but in the tiny bit I have used it, it seems like it tries more to go its own way instead of mimicking Windows.
I can't speak for the GP, of course, but I'd assume he's disgusted by the listing of various parts that can be legally described as "meat." However, as I believe another commentor pointed out, it's really no different in essence than a good ol' hot dog. There are good ones and bad ones, and the bad ones tend to contain bits that normally aren't considered edible.
Basically, these guys are using uranium as we use the sun: sun makes plants grow, we eat plants (or other animals eat plants and we eat them). We're (at least) two steps away from the sun, just as these bacteria are two steps away from the radioactivity.
So then the question becomes "why can't we use the hydrogen produced this way ourselves?" Obviously, without all the specific details of the situation, we can't really say for certain here, but I assume the amount of hydrogen produced is nowhere near enough for what we would need.
You can use Rockbox on your iPod, but you'll have to make some sacrifices. For obvious reasons, DRM isn't supported, so any tracks you may have purchased from the iTMS won't play (although we all know there're ways around that). And as far as I can tell, video is not yet supported, though I can't imagine it's not being worked on.
(Disclaimer: I have no factual basis whatsoever for the theory I'm about to spout. There's probably zero chance that this will come to pass, but it sure would be cool :)
/. (and elsewhere around the Intertron) on many occasions, Nintendo has some superficial parallels with Apple. Both companies offer products in their respective arenas that may not be the most powerful or the most feature-rich, but their products tend to be of the highest quality (and stylish, to boot). Focusing on doing a limited set of things, but doing those things well seems to be the modus operandi of both companies (see the iPod and the DS).
As has been pointed out here on
Nintendo is targeting the Wii at a new market. They're looking for casual gamers, older gamers, gamers who would not have even considered buying a console in the past. These are the buyers that Nintendo really wants to get the Wii to. Now, with the current console release model, companies announce the price and release date of the system many months in advance. This allows current gamers, who keep abreast of these things, to get in their pre-orders right away, essentially buying up all of the initial units right off the bat. The casual gamer generally can't get the system at launch even if they wanted to. If Nintendo wants to court the casual gamer with the Wii, they need to make sure that said casual gamer can actually buy one as soon as it launches.
Now take another look at Apple. When Apple is gearing up to release a new product, they don't make a peep about it ahead of time. They announce a press event a few weeks out, and then keep everything under wraps. Rumors leak out, of course, but that only serves to build up the all-important hype. Then, at the press event, the new products are announced, and immediately they're available on Apple's website and in their meatspace stores. No waiting. No preferential treatment for Apple fanboys. It's first-come, first-served.
With the news that Nintendo has already been receiving shipments one of the main components of the Wii, it's quite possible that the system could be launched very very soon (Joystiq, for example, has floated a rumor that it could be "within weeks" or "by the end of the month."). Perhaps Nintendo has decided to take a page from Apple's book again. Next week Nintendo has scheduled three nearly-simultaneous press events at three separate locations across the globe. As mentioned in my disclaimer above, I have no facts to back this up, but maybe... just maybe... Nintendo's going to do it exactly like Apple.
How cool would it be if next week Nintendo holds their press event, talks up the Wii, shows videos of all the launch games, etc, etc, and then at the end they announce, Jobs-like, that the system is available to purchase right now?
They already have that, to a certain extent. Just check enable "Show word verification for comments?" on the Comments setting page for your blog to put in a human test not unlike the one /. uses for posting comments.
;)
I kept this off when I first put up my blog and got hit with a few spam comments before I figured out what was happening. Turned on the word verification and deleted the handful of spam comments, and haven't seen one since (or any comments for that matter... but I think that's a different problem
On pigs. I am not a pig, and I feel safe in the assumption that you are not either. As pigs and humans are two completely different animals, there is absolutely no reason to expect the first human trials to go at all smoothly.
The ethical concern is about the extremely high probability of perfectly healthy people being killed in the above fashion while these guys try to get everything just right. Doing it succesfully using pigs is worlds apart from doing it succesfully using people.
There's no ethical problem with that. But without the possibly-unethical human trials, how is that cryonics company going to be able to fulfill their end of your contract? Again, it's not the usage of suspended animation that they're claiming has ethical problems, it's the process of testing it on people.