If I'm screwed out of a lot of money, I'd want compensation, but if I only have a small loss, I'm mostly interested in the company not benefitting from screwing me over. Having them stop is more important to me for those situations. But the time and cost to myself is too high for an individual.
If the lawyer can shoulder the time and cost, I don't mind them getting a big payout, I wouldn't hope to get much back if I only lost like 50 bucks to the corporation. Hopefully they'll change their policy and that would still help me at least.
If that's the main character's voice acting this game will be a rental at best. Silent Hill's critical acclaim has been the immersion and atmosphere it creates. Using some random guy off the street to voice the protagonist completely destroys that. If this was a plan to save money it was not thought out very well. They need to get a real voice actor like what the japanese versions of media get. This is too important to the game to forgive. Silent Hill dialogue and script have been its weak points, but using terrible voice acting is just rubbing salt in the wound.
For what it's worth, the line they've espoused thus far for Live on PC is that silver membership(Free) allows multiplayer between PCs for no cost, presumably because that's how it's pretty much always been. Gold membership is what is needed for PC-Xbox360 crossplay($4.17 a month)
Screw-up is harsh term for the PS3 thus far. I wouldn't ding them that harshly. Once the price issue is removed, it isn't a catastrophe, it's just...not the best. It's got online and it's free, but it's just not as good. Interface has a few nice features like internet browsing, but overall, it's not as tight of an experience as Xbox360 with relation to gaming, and this is a gaming console. On the other hand, the Wii is far worse, so I wouldn't say the PS3 is doing terribly here, just not as well as the Xbox360.
Games and lost exclusives, it is indeed Sony's job to make sure the games are in place, this is their biggest problem IMO. They didn't have enough of the right games, and have lost exclusivity on some of their better ones. But this is very much a matter of opinion, and I don't see them doing terribly here, just not as good as the Xbox360 or Wii in targeting the seperate markets. The Xbox360 is a direct competitor to the PS3 in terms of the games being fielded, and it's winning, while the PS3 can't compete at all with the Wii for obvious reasons.
So while there are no catastrophic mistakes aside from the price added by packing in Blu-ray, coming in 2nd-place in all categories leaves this console without a clear picture of what it's good for and who should buy it.
If I were to pick the worst part of the PS3's performance, I would have to stretch to include the marketing. It has been pure CRAP. Truly terrible. You would almost think that they have intentionally been sabotaging themselves. Have you seen the "This is Living" campaign? Soccer fanatic lying naked except for a jockstrap masturbating to a soccer game on TV? A busty-blonde pooping in a toilet telling stories about her mother? The mercenary's clip had a superb performance by the actor, really good stuff, and unfortunately, the message was that you should go and buy a bar of chocolate. However, this was a European campaign.
The U.S version was not that much better, though it had improved later on to actually show some clips of a game (Resistance). However, it had kicked off with a plastic baby crying blood to the sounds of Armageddon in a white room. Apparently they're trying to tell you that the PS3 kills babies and will bring about the Eschaton.
But as I have said, the PS3 isn't that bad of a package aside from the pricing. The games will happen someday, and when they do the PS3 will pick up some momentum. I don't think it has any chance of catching the Xbox360 or Wii. However, the PS3 has successfully established the next media format. HD-DVD is dead in the water since there are so many more blu-ray players in the wild. And releases will go to the format with the most people who can play them. And people will buy the format with the most releases on them...etc. etc. So Sony has that at least. Whether that translates into PS3 sales later on due to Blu-ray's lead on HD-DVD is questionable though.
Thank you, I was checking to see if someone else would bring this up first.
I remember an article a while back about cops with cameras mounted on their heads, which had quite a bit of protest. The thing is, if asked for the video evidence of what the cop saw, it would pretty damning if the cop couldn't provide the video proving what the defendant did.
In the case of cameras in public, if someone civilian or otherwise tries to screw me over out in front of a camera, I want that camera's tapes as evidence.
If the civilian population is allowed to use these tapes as evidence, then I don't mind being seen in public. If I'm clearly in view of a camera, and accused of some misdeed in front of it, I want that tape to be -necessary- evidence for prosecution.
But really, the biggest complaint I'd have is the cost. The added benefit of having this system must be higher than the added benefit of whatever is foregone in its favor. I seriously doubt this will be possible. Isn't NYC one of the safest of the large cities in America? Last I heard, violent crime there was on a downward trend while the national rate went up 1 or 2%. Is this really necessary? If there's extra money, give it back to the tax payers, there's no need to go find new ways to use it up.
It's not the same. It's not saving money by switching to a lower-quality manufacturing process. This is saving money by switching to a more efficient technology. This one is actually an improvement for the consumer as well. The quality will depend on who handles the actual manufacturing, the process itself is a step up.
The biggest issue with Xbox360 reliability was insufficient heat management, this process will reduce the amount of heat and power. So this is pretty much good news for everyone except anyone with regret for having bought earlier and wishes they had waited for a new revision. And for what it's worth, I'm on my 3rd xbox360.
The internet inspires more wonder in me than these. These are all interesting, but just locally relevant. The internet is commonplace so it's easily overlooked, but far far more remarkable, complex, and significant in my opinion. It covers the dregs of humanity like goatse and tubgirl, while also containing some of it's more impressive efforts like the massed knowledge of Wikpedia. It also paves new ground for the power of information and the value of free speech.
And c'mon people. Cheap and easy access to porn. You can't fap to Machu Picchu (I hope...)
You can give the kid a cheap acoustic guitar for just over $100 and he can learn off tablatures, tutorials, and perhaps a vid here and there. (Though certain companies have doing their best to make sure nobody learns how to play guitar...)
I don't ascribe any special importance to music, I just found the guitar to be a thoroughly enjoyable "game". Easy to start, but difficult to master with lots of levels and tons of replay value. The add-on for the singing version is free too. It's a game that seems to lack the same social stigma that the electronic version has.
They split it, rather than cancel it. One for the media, one for the consumer. Media will be focused on communicating to the press, the other will be for wowing the greater public. We'll find out which was actually more important: the new information(most of which will be at the small and earlier E3), or the glitz of the giant tradeshow with lights and spectacle(the consumer-oriented show).
Will people still care if most of the info is already released to the internet through the media-oriented E3? The vast majority never saw the previous E3s anyway.
Magical(i.e over my head) math says that momentum and position probability calculations are inversely related for electrons. Trying to get specific enough to nail one or the other down will increase standard deviation so you can't get a good picture of what is actually happening.
But I'm still lost on why it's an inverse relationship, because average joes like me don't really know anything about wave theory. The even fuzzier concept forming in my head is that a wave is composed of a series of points that are defined by the sine or cosine functions passing through them. So if you get specific enough to only see one point and no other, all you have is one point sitting fixed, and no idea of the momentum, and if you incorporate others to find the momentum of the wave going through, you lose the position. So you'd need to take samples of many points on the wave to approximate a 'probable' idea of where a specific point would be?
They're up to 2 so far. Punisher, and Bucky(a.k.a Winter Soldier, ex-capt. America sidekick, later a russian covert assasin). Punisher took the mantle. Bucky's trying to take the shield. Perhaps more will pop up, then Capt. America comes back to settle everything and show them what naughty fake Capt. Americas they've been.
There's more material in the story that I think you missed. The overall point is that Capt. America's side = good. And the other side = bad. There was no attempt at creating a moral grey area here. "Was it worth it?" Tony Stark himself admits on a full-page spread on his knees in front of Capt. America's corpse, that no, it wasn't worth it. There's a long list of characters spiting registration characters as being "eeeeeeevil". Very very few situations showing the obvious downsides of letting anybody stomp over anybody else's rights without having to be responsible fo rit.
The Civil war itself was never grey. The parallel is cops. Registration is just turning vigilantes into cops with responsibility and accountability. I think slashdot would favor cops having to answer for their actions and having limits to their power. The main anti-registration arguments have no real-world parallels, and are invented solely for the purpose of making anti-registration be the "good" side(secret identities can be stolen by super-villains, and these guys are born with super powers, unlike guns for cops). So the story's events are heavily bent towards Capt. America's side for the purpose of political allegory.
This administration has screwed Americans, I agree. But Civil war? Not at all subtle or effective.
The primary source of humor amongst me and my friends is producing the most incredibly offensive racist or inappropriate things we can say. We're indian, chinese, sikh, pakistani, muslim, catholic, irish, and jewish(No blacks allowed). We joke about these things because we're aware of how incredibly WRONG they are, not because we think they're right. Remember the foreign guy explaining sarcasm to Peter Griffin? "Ho, ho, ho! He funny! He say it raining! But it not raining at all! Ho, ho, ho!".
If we actually believed it was right, we wouldn't laugh. Hell, we wouldn't even say it. It'd just be a statement. "It is raining." "Yes it is."
The theory going around is that it's a fundamental design flaw involving an X-clamp and heat causing the board to pull away. Along with lack of space for airflow for the fans to carry heat off.
Non-atheists are all scared hatemongers, just like all blacks are stupid criminals, mexicans are lazy, all Americans are cowboys, and all atheists are amoral sociopaths.
They are just like them in that they've got a stereotype that works in some cases, and fails too often for the stereotype to be useful. Yet the stereotype is still applied. Blanket terms are easier to use than addressing specifics.
I was scrolling down to check if someone else would bring this up for me. If the third party vote can prove itself to be significant, then it can become a strategic foothold between the two major parties. Each of the major parties can't afford to have the third party tip the scales against them, so they'll start to compromise and eventually adopt some of the third party's desires. Which gets some of the third party's desires fulfilled.
It will be incredibly difficult for a third party to win a presidential election, but it's definitely possible for a significant third party to influence the behavior of the major parties. The vote can still count.
One in a million is extremely generous. One in a billion is still generous. One in a trillion? Keep going.
MS has claimed that their fail rate is within normal industry standards of 3-5%.
At 5%, or 1 in 20, the event of 11 happening in a row is 1/(20^11).
This is one in 204,800,000,000,000.
Statistics predict this event when the failure rate is somewhere over 20%. 1/(5^11) is still around 1 in 48 million. Only 10 million Xbox360s sold so far.
Heh I did a post regarding the probability of this event on [H]ardforum too when I first saw the article. It would take a catastrophic failure rate of a bit over 30% for an 11-brick streak to be within expectation for 10 million samples. Of course this all fuzzy math, and even if it's improbable for it to happen with a 5% defect rate, it's still possible.
My guess is that some of it was user-error(despite his claims of deliberately avoiding them), and some of it is MS having a higher than normal failure rate. It's the simplest explanation for such a fantastically unlikely event.
It's probably because it's different people working on certain things, even if they're all under the same company logo. For instance, how many people here haven't encountered incredible incompetence from someone else in their company? Who doesn't know anyone in their company who's good at their job(including themselves)?
MS has a large number of projects under its umbrella and the people who do the actual work on these will have different performance levels. Of course general company policies can hold back some quality, but there are limits.
I was also very pleased with my MS mouse and keyboard back before that division was sidelined. They're back now with that Habu mouse, but I haven't heard much about it. The supporting software for these was also the best I've seen, and is still considerably better than Logitech's(Logitech took 3 years to catch up on program-specific buttons, MS's first optical mouse debuted with it, and with far less bloat).
I like my Xbox360 overall, I'm not exactly crazy about 2 of them bricking on me, but I can put up with it. Apparently at somepoint people working on the Xbox360's hardware and fab processes screwed up.
But it's a pretty damned good game on the platform it was created for, the console. The gameplay is top-notch stuff. I've played my way through a vast number of FPS games since Doom, and Shadowrun is ranking up near the top in terms of multiplayer gameplay.
But it's a raw deal on the PC. The control system is setup for a controller, not kb/m, so instead the kb/m controls are dumbed down. This is not that PC players are used to. The balance is there, the two platforms play on pretty equal footing, but only because PC players are not given things that have long been a standard for PC FPS play. You'll need Vista and Xbox Live Gold, which few PC players have, and aren't worth buying for this game.
The game is unusual in that it minimizes emphasis on aiming, and instead emphasizes tactics. I've played dozens of FPS games where aiming is emphasized and had a blast, but it's refreshing to see tactics govern the combat instead. It's simple to quickly get the crosshairs on an enemy. However, how long you can keep him in your crosshairs, and keep out of his, are now the determining factors, rather than shooting quickly. For example, I can fire a shotgun blast, teleport through a wall as he returns fire, teleport back out for another shotgun blast, teleport through the floor, and come back for a finish. I could render myself intangible to let his bullets pass through me and take a 100ft drop harmlessly with the Smoke power in an escape. I could let off Gust and blow the enemy straight into a corner, ruining his accuracy, and pinning him against a grenade I tossed. All in all, the gunplay is only half the battle, but guns alone won't get you anywhere. Quite interesting. Particularly in regard to how important teamplay becomes.
Also, Shadowrun has nothing to do with Shadowrun PnP. It should have been named something else.
I agree. I for one, welcome our techn--well, you get the picture.
What does it mean to be human? It means, being human. The definition of normality for humans has changed, and is changing at a rapid pace. I welcome the idea that we should all take time to review life and see what we like, and what we don't, and what we plan to change. I don't like the idea that we should be opposed to something simply because it wasn't done that way in the past.
I'm not a big fan of tradition, though I value an education in history. The events of the past are to be learned from, not necessarily imitated. They're there for perspective so that we can hold onto the good decisions and jettison the bad. Holding onto traditions merely because they're traditional leads to repetition of previous mistakes and stagnation in the face of change. There has to be a reason for doing so.
Tiananmen square is kind of an unfortunate example for encouragement. The army did go in and kill people, and the incident ends up blacked out of history by censorship. It's an example of where protest fails.
Wouldn't the "Million man march" be a better example of marching into a nation's capital for civil rights?
Slashdot Mirror
Is a refreshing change. It's nice to hear a story where justice is upheld rather than hearing more about how screwed I am.
If I'm screwed out of a lot of money, I'd want compensation, but if I only have a small loss, I'm mostly interested in the company not benefitting from screwing me over. Having them stop is more important to me for those situations. But the time and cost to myself is too high for an individual.
If the lawyer can shoulder the time and cost, I don't mind them getting a big payout, I wouldn't hope to get much back if I only lost like 50 bucks to the corporation. Hopefully they'll change their policy and that would still help me at least.
If that's the main character's voice acting this game will be a rental at best. Silent Hill's critical acclaim has been the immersion and atmosphere it creates. Using some random guy off the street to voice the protagonist completely destroys that. If this was a plan to save money it was not thought out very well. They need to get a real voice actor like what the japanese versions of media get. This is too important to the game to forgive. Silent Hill dialogue and script have been its weak points, but using terrible voice acting is just rubbing salt in the wound.
For what it's worth, the line they've espoused thus far for Live on PC is that silver membership(Free) allows multiplayer between PCs for no cost, presumably because that's how it's pretty much always been. Gold membership is what is needed for PC-Xbox360 crossplay($4.17 a month)
Heh, on an unrelated note:
I laughed out loud at "google for "microsoft stock performance"".
Screw-up is harsh term for the PS3 thus far. I wouldn't ding them that harshly. Once the price issue is removed, it isn't a catastrophe, it's just...not the best. It's got online and it's free, but it's just not as good. Interface has a few nice features like internet browsing, but overall, it's not as tight of an experience as Xbox360 with relation to gaming, and this is a gaming console. On the other hand, the Wii is far worse, so I wouldn't say the PS3 is doing terribly here, just not as well as the Xbox360.
Games and lost exclusives, it is indeed Sony's job to make sure the games are in place, this is their biggest problem IMO. They didn't have enough of the right games, and have lost exclusivity on some of their better ones. But this is very much a matter of opinion, and I don't see them doing terribly here, just not as good as the Xbox360 or Wii in targeting the seperate markets. The Xbox360 is a direct competitor to the PS3 in terms of the games being fielded, and it's winning, while the PS3 can't compete at all with the Wii for obvious reasons.
So while there are no catastrophic mistakes aside from the price added by packing in Blu-ray, coming in 2nd-place in all categories leaves this console without a clear picture of what it's good for and who should buy it.
If I were to pick the worst part of the PS3's performance, I would have to stretch to include the marketing. It has been pure CRAP. Truly terrible. You would almost think that they have intentionally been sabotaging themselves. Have you seen the "This is Living" campaign? Soccer fanatic lying naked except for a jockstrap masturbating to a soccer game on TV? A busty-blonde pooping in a toilet telling stories about her mother? The mercenary's clip had a superb performance by the actor, really good stuff, and unfortunately, the message was that you should go and buy a bar of chocolate. However, this was a European campaign.
The U.S version was not that much better, though it had improved later on to actually show some clips of a game (Resistance). However, it had kicked off with a plastic baby crying blood to the sounds of Armageddon in a white room. Apparently they're trying to tell you that the PS3 kills babies and will bring about the Eschaton.
But as I have said, the PS3 isn't that bad of a package aside from the pricing. The games will happen someday, and when they do the PS3 will pick up some momentum. I don't think it has any chance of catching the Xbox360 or Wii. However, the PS3 has successfully established the next media format. HD-DVD is dead in the water since there are so many more blu-ray players in the wild. And releases will go to the format with the most people who can play them. And people will buy the format with the most releases on them...etc. etc. So Sony has that at least. Whether that translates into PS3 sales later on due to Blu-ray's lead on HD-DVD is questionable though.
Thank you, I was checking to see if someone else would bring this up first.
I remember an article a while back about cops with cameras mounted on their heads, which had quite a bit of protest. The thing is, if asked for the video evidence of what the cop saw, it would pretty damning if the cop couldn't provide the video proving what the defendant did.
In the case of cameras in public, if someone civilian or otherwise tries to screw me over out in front of a camera, I want that camera's tapes as evidence.
If the civilian population is allowed to use these tapes as evidence, then I don't mind being seen in public. If I'm clearly in view of a camera, and accused of some misdeed in front of it, I want that tape to be -necessary- evidence for prosecution.
But really, the biggest complaint I'd have is the cost. The added benefit of having this system must be higher than the added benefit of whatever is foregone in its favor. I seriously doubt this will be possible. Isn't NYC one of the safest of the large cities in America? Last I heard, violent crime there was on a downward trend while the national rate went up 1 or 2%. Is this really necessary? If there's extra money, give it back to the tax payers, there's no need to go find new ways to use it up.
It's not the same. It's not saving money by switching to a lower-quality manufacturing process. This is saving money by switching to a more efficient technology. This one is actually an improvement for the consumer as well. The quality will depend on who handles the actual manufacturing, the process itself is a step up.
The biggest issue with Xbox360 reliability was insufficient heat management, this process will reduce the amount of heat and power. So this is pretty much good news for everyone except anyone with regret for having bought earlier and wishes they had waited for a new revision. And for what it's worth, I'm on my 3rd xbox360.
The internet inspires more wonder in me than these. These are all interesting, but just locally relevant. The internet is commonplace so it's easily overlooked, but far far more remarkable, complex, and significant in my opinion. It covers the dregs of humanity like goatse and tubgirl, while also containing some of it's more impressive efforts like the massed knowledge of Wikpedia. It also paves new ground for the power of information and the value of free speech.
And c'mon people. Cheap and easy access to porn. You can't fap to Machu Picchu (I hope...)
Or perhaps, Guitar Hero: Acoustic version!
You can give the kid a cheap acoustic guitar for just over $100 and he can learn off tablatures, tutorials, and perhaps a vid here and there. (Though certain companies have doing their best to make sure nobody learns how to play guitar...)
I don't ascribe any special importance to music, I just found the guitar to be a thoroughly enjoyable "game". Easy to start, but difficult to master with lots of levels and tons of replay value. The add-on for the singing version is free too. It's a game that seems to lack the same social stigma that the electronic version has.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_for_All
They split it, rather than cancel it. One for the media, one for the consumer. Media will be focused on communicating to the press, the other will be for wowing the greater public. We'll find out which was actually more important: the new information(most of which will be at the small and earlier E3), or the glitz of the giant tradeshow with lights and spectacle(the consumer-oriented show).
Will people still care if most of the info is already released to the internet through the media-oriented E3? The vast majority never saw the previous E3s anyway.
Umm, the rough idea I'm taking away here is:
Magical(i.e over my head) math says that momentum and position probability calculations are inversely related for electrons. Trying to get specific enough to nail one or the other down will increase standard deviation so you can't get a good picture of what is actually happening.
But I'm still lost on why it's an inverse relationship, because average joes like me don't really know anything about wave theory. The even fuzzier concept forming in my head is that a wave is composed of a series of points that are defined by the sine or cosine functions passing through them. So if you get specific enough to only see one point and no other, all you have is one point sitting fixed, and no idea of the momentum, and if you incorporate others to find the momentum of the wave going through, you lose the position. So you'd need to take samples of many points on the wave to approximate a 'probable' idea of where a specific point would be?
I'm so lost.
They're up to 2 so far. Punisher, and Bucky(a.k.a Winter Soldier, ex-capt. America sidekick, later a russian covert assasin). Punisher took the mantle. Bucky's trying to take the shield. Perhaps more will pop up, then Capt. America comes back to settle everything and show them what naughty fake Capt. Americas they've been.
There's more material in the story that I think you missed. The overall point is that Capt. America's side = good. And the other side = bad. There was no attempt at creating a moral grey area here. "Was it worth it?" Tony Stark himself admits on a full-page spread on his knees in front of Capt. America's corpse, that no, it wasn't worth it. There's a long list of characters spiting registration characters as being "eeeeeeevil". Very very few situations showing the obvious downsides of letting anybody stomp over anybody else's rights without having to be responsible fo rit.
The Civil war itself was never grey. The parallel is cops. Registration is just turning vigilantes into cops with responsibility and accountability. I think slashdot would favor cops having to answer for their actions and having limits to their power. The main anti-registration arguments have no real-world parallels, and are invented solely for the purpose of making anti-registration be the "good" side(secret identities can be stolen by super-villains, and these guys are born with super powers, unlike guns for cops). So the story's events are heavily bent towards Capt. America's side for the purpose of political allegory.
This administration has screwed Americans, I agree. But Civil war? Not at all subtle or effective.
Parent's got it.
The primary source of humor amongst me and my friends is producing the most incredibly offensive racist or inappropriate things we can say. We're indian, chinese, sikh, pakistani, muslim, catholic, irish, and jewish(No blacks allowed). We joke about these things because we're aware of how incredibly WRONG they are, not because we think they're right. Remember the foreign guy explaining sarcasm to Peter Griffin? "Ho, ho, ho! He funny! He say it raining! But it not raining at all! Ho, ho, ho!".
If we actually believed it was right, we wouldn't laugh. Hell, we wouldn't even say it. It'd just be a statement. "It is raining." "Yes it is."
The theory going around is that it's a fundamental design flaw involving an X-clamp and heat causing the board to pull away. Along with lack of space for airflow for the fans to carry heat off.
d oghome_com/XClamp.htm
http://rbjtech.bulldoghome.com/pages/rbjtech_bull
Non-atheists are all scared hatemongers, just like all blacks are stupid criminals, mexicans are lazy, all Americans are cowboys, and all atheists are amoral sociopaths.
They are just like them in that they've got a stereotype that works in some cases, and fails too often for the stereotype to be useful. Yet the stereotype is still applied. Blanket terms are easier to use than addressing specifics.
Thank you,
I was scrolling down to check if someone else would bring this up for me. If the third party vote can prove itself to be significant, then it can become a strategic foothold between the two major parties. Each of the major parties can't afford to have the third party tip the scales against them, so they'll start to compromise and eventually adopt some of the third party's desires. Which gets some of the third party's desires fulfilled.
It will be incredibly difficult for a third party to win a presidential election, but it's definitely possible for a significant third party to influence the behavior of the major parties. The vote can still count.
A bit over 20%, not a bit over 30% sorry.
1 in 5 is 20%, 5^11 is around 48 million. 1 in 4 is 25%, 4^11 is around 4 million. So it'd be between 20% and 25%.
One in a million is extremely generous. One in a billion is still generous. One in a trillion? Keep going.
MS has claimed that their fail rate is within normal industry standards of 3-5%.
At 5%, or 1 in 20, the event of 11 happening in a row is 1/(20^11).
This is one in 204,800,000,000,000.
Statistics predict this event when the failure rate is somewhere over 20%. 1/(5^11) is still around 1 in 48 million. Only 10 million Xbox360s sold so far.
Heh I did a post regarding the probability of this event on [H]ardforum too when I first saw the article. It would take a catastrophic failure rate of a bit over 30% for an 11-brick streak to be within expectation for 10 million samples. Of course this all fuzzy math, and even if it's improbable for it to happen with a 5% defect rate, it's still possible.
My guess is that some of it was user-error(despite his claims of deliberately avoiding them), and some of it is MS having a higher than normal failure rate. It's the simplest explanation for such a fantastically unlikely event.
It's probably because it's different people working on certain things, even if they're all under the same company logo. For instance, how many people here haven't encountered incredible incompetence from someone else in their company? Who doesn't know anyone in their company who's good at their job(including themselves)?
MS has a large number of projects under its umbrella and the people who do the actual work on these will have different performance levels. Of course general company policies can hold back some quality, but there are limits.
I was also very pleased with my MS mouse and keyboard back before that division was sidelined. They're back now with that Habu mouse, but I haven't heard much about it. The supporting software for these was also the best I've seen, and is still considerably better than Logitech's(Logitech took 3 years to catch up on program-specific buttons, MS's first optical mouse debuted with it, and with far less bloat).
I like my Xbox360 overall, I'm not exactly crazy about 2 of them bricking on me, but I can put up with it. Apparently at somepoint people working on the Xbox360's hardware and fab processes screwed up.
But it's a pretty damned good game on the platform it was created for, the console. The gameplay is top-notch stuff. I've played my way through a vast number of FPS games since Doom, and Shadowrun is ranking up near the top in terms of multiplayer gameplay.
But it's a raw deal on the PC. The control system is setup for a controller, not kb/m, so instead the kb/m controls are dumbed down. This is not that PC players are used to. The balance is there, the two platforms play on pretty equal footing, but only because PC players are not given things that have long been a standard for PC FPS play. You'll need Vista and Xbox Live Gold, which few PC players have, and aren't worth buying for this game.
The game is unusual in that it minimizes emphasis on aiming, and instead emphasizes tactics. I've played dozens of FPS games where aiming is emphasized and had a blast, but it's refreshing to see tactics govern the combat instead. It's simple to quickly get the crosshairs on an enemy. However, how long you can keep him in your crosshairs, and keep out of his, are now the determining factors, rather than shooting quickly. For example, I can fire a shotgun blast, teleport through a wall as he returns fire, teleport back out for another shotgun blast, teleport through the floor, and come back for a finish. I could render myself intangible to let his bullets pass through me and take a 100ft drop harmlessly with the Smoke power in an escape. I could let off Gust and blow the enemy straight into a corner, ruining his accuracy, and pinning him against a grenade I tossed. All in all, the gunplay is only half the battle, but guns alone won't get you anywhere. Quite interesting. Particularly in regard to how important teamplay becomes.
Also, Shadowrun has nothing to do with Shadowrun PnP. It should have been named something else.
I agree. I for one, welcome our techn--well, you get the picture.
What does it mean to be human? It means, being human. The definition of normality for humans has changed, and is changing at a rapid pace. I welcome the idea that we should all take time to review life and see what we like, and what we don't, and what we plan to change. I don't like the idea that we should be opposed to something simply because it wasn't done that way in the past.
I'm not a big fan of tradition, though I value an education in history. The events of the past are to be learned from, not necessarily imitated. They're there for perspective so that we can hold onto the good decisions and jettison the bad. Holding onto traditions merely because they're traditional leads to repetition of previous mistakes and stagnation in the face of change. There has to be a reason for doing so.
Tiananmen square is kind of an unfortunate example for encouragement. The army did go in and kill people, and the incident ends up blacked out of history by censorship. It's an example of where protest fails.
Wouldn't the "Million man march" be a better example of marching into a nation's capital for civil rights?