Calling all trolls?
on
EA's E3 Lineup
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
If ever there was an article that deserved to be blasted by the thousands of haters who hover here everyday - this is it.
The company that's doing its best to stifle the industry is talking about a single interesting title, and suddenly we let them off the hook for being complete bastards? No thanks. More EA bashing please.
* It's somewhat faster than your average IMAP server. (Of course, this is both a success of Gmail and a failing of most IMAP servers.)
* Gmail is smart about hiding quoted text and emails i've seen. This rocks. Somehow it even knows the 1% of cases where I actually do want to see the quoted text. I have no idea how.
* The UI for threading, or >>conversations in Gmail lingo, rocks even harder. The killer feature is that the bodies of all messages in the thread on a single screen. Combined with hiding quoted text, this is very powerful.
* Mail is indexed. My average search takes under a second in Gmail, but around 10 seconds in Pine.
* >>Tags, aka labels or virtual folders, are all the rage these days. GMail's implementation of them is slick, and eminently usable. Pine's >>keywords offer most of the same functionality, but compared to Gmail, they're a little clunky.
* There are keyboard shortcuts! Wonder of wonders, it's a webapp that has keyboard shortcuts. Even more amazing, I can actually do most of my normal email tasks with the keyboard shortcuts only. If I couldn't, I never would have given Gmail a second glance.
* I love the Y key, a single keystroke for archiving email. Archiving in pine takes two keystrokes at best, and four if I last saved to a different folder than my "archive" folder.
* The address book is great, mostly because I never have to use it. Gmail automatically remembers everyone I've sent email to or received email from, and auto-completes when I start type their name or email address. I wish Pine did this!
The Bad
* Filtering has a great UI, but it's horribly weak. It has maybe a third of the headers and options that I normally filter on. You can't OR or NOT filter conditions. The set of filter actions is anemic, even with labels. Want me to go on?
* There's no way to bounce an email. This should be pretty trivial to add.
* If no email is selected, the Y key should archive the email under the cursor. This should be common sense.
* You can't automatically create a filter based on an email. Why not?
* You can search, but you can't select messages based on headers, subject, or body text. Worse, if you have more messages than fit on the screen, you can't select any messages that aren't on the screen. If you ever get flooded with email, or with spam that escapes the spam filters, god help you.
* Thank god there are keyboard shortcuts...but there aren't nearly enough! I don't mind using the mouse for one-time stuff, but if i have to use it often during my normal email routine, that's a deal breaker. Keyboard shortcuts for go to label, go to sent mail/drafts, and select all/none/unread would be necessary if I was ever to go back to Gmail.
The Ugly
* Marking messages as read is impossible with the keyboard, and takes three clicks with the mouse: Select ___, More Actions, Mark As Read. I could just leave them unread, but then the labels display is useless for showing which mailing lists have new mail.
* Selecting a message doesn't automatically move the cursor to the next message. This is just plain silly.
* The Y key is horribly inconsistent. If you're in the Inbox, it archives. If you're in a label, it removes the label. If you're in spam or trash, it moves to the Inbox! This is a bad case of modal input.
* Gmail might be smart about (not) displaying quoted text, but it can't handle composing with quoted text to save its life. There are a ton of problems with this, but among others, it needs a way to >>remove trailing quotes when sending.
Thank you - I'm glad to see someone else shares my opinion of the overall importance of online play. The types of games I really enjoy - Resident Evil 4 is a great example, or more recently Shaddow of the Colussus - moving any portion of the game online would really take away from it.
Online gaming will never be the main draw of gaming - it's just an entertaining sideshow.
... that it costs $.39 now to send a letter in the mail, but countless companies are willing to send thousands of pieces junk mail at a price MUCH steeper than a quarter of a penny. E-mail tax is a silly idea with nothing to offer.
...of the press letting the 360 off the hook for its UTTER lack of good software, simply because Xbox Live is nifty. To answer the articles absurd question: no, Xbox Live Arcade will not become the most important next-gen platform in this round of the console wars.
...if the army made a robot with a machine gun that didn't break Asimov's First Law. Asimov... what a joke. If he was really smart his first law would have said "robots with guns shoot things."
If I have to read three articles a day about the PS3 until it launches in December or whenever - I'm going to stop reading Slashdot. The fact that there is no news about it means there should be no headlines or articles about it... am I right? Read this submission - it's an story about how we might get an story with substance tomorrow.
There is an article here practically every day that has a headline basically asking "has Sony lost its mind?"
Everybody seems to be missing the fact that the PS2 outsold the 360 in January. Sony does not need to rush to market with the PS3 when there are still some KILLER titles coming out this year. I'm not trying to be a troll, honest, but please stop posting these insufferable articles.
Great post there, I agree with everything you've said. While the Revolution's controller is certainly going to promote innovation in terms of controlling and interacting with games - it's no guarantee that the experience will be new and fresh. I guarantee you EA will release Madden for it, doing nothing but making it so you control the game differently.
That's a ridiculous statement, spoken by someone who just glossed right over 9 because 7 wasn't what they wanted after falling in love with 6 and 8 was... well... awful.
4, 5, and 6 are exceptional games, 7 you either loved it or you didn't, and 9 was just excellent.
It's your own damn fault if you didn't enjoy 8 or 9 of the 12 major Final Fantasy games Square put out.
... about this "growth" but I'm far from it. If the popularization of video games so far has given us anything - it's the Spike TV Video Game awards - a ceremony that last year didn't mention Metroid Prime.
I liked being a gamer in high school, because not a lot of people were into it, and because of that games had to be good to sell. Now I'm not the kind of guy that stops liking a band because they've gotten popular - that doesn't make any sense. What I'm complaining about is how previously good genres are being dilluted and ruined to appeal to a new wider audience. What about us loyal customers that have supported Square from the beginning? We didn't deserve Final Fantasy X-2.
Now EA can pump out Madden after Madden - actually remove features and charge $10 more for the Xbox 360 version and get away with it.
I'm glad that the industry is robust now, I just don't like the direction it's headed.
Microsoft can't win in this situation. If they bundle it with the OS they're going to get hammered with Anti-Trust stuff, and now that they're releasing it separately everyone's claiming extortion.
It's not like Microsoft's OS division is writing this software. While you can make the argument that it's the same company that's selling you the insecure OS, and the software you need to secure it, I don't really think it's an argument that needs to be made.
So Microsoft is coming out with an Anti-Virus product. Good.
There's no way they can bundle this with the OS, so they're releasing it separately. OK fine. Get over it.
Anyway I like how virus names are slowly getting edgier. Kama Sutra is a good one, but it'll be great fun when someone names a virus the Angry Dragon, Cleavland Steamer, or the Dirty Sanchez. I eagerly await the day when the words "Rusty Trombone hits America hard" grace CNN's frontpage:)
I agree with everything you've said. I guess what I kind of meant to say, is that I don't see grounds for anyone being furious with Blizzard on a serious level. You can make a case that you should be able to express yourself however you like, but I don't think that Blizzard trying to keep certain subjects out of the forefront of the game puts them in the same league as China censoring the internet. People need to remember that it's a game. And now that you do mention it, I'd kind of like to see that fight too...
It's a game - the reason you're playing it is to escape reality. Why would you try and bring real world issues into it? Just shutup, and enjoy the game. Blizzard certainly has two feet to stand on regarding this issue. Do you really want to see a guild war between the Pro Lifes and the Pro Choices?
... I can just write "hahaha" and not get modded a troll? Pretty please?
What Sony and Nintendo need to learn from this, is that they need to stockpile the crap out of their console before it hits market. Sony for example should be pumping out PS3's right now, that way when it hits market they can actually sell 3 million immediately. This is a huge blunder for Microsoft - they've blown their head start pretty badly... and not Dreamcast blown - Saturn blown.
Slashdot Mirror
The company that's doing its best to stifle the industry is talking about a single interesting title, and suddenly we let them off the hook for being complete bastards? No thanks. More EA bashing please.
...as much as you might like to play this game - it's coming from EA. It irritates me it's even getting publicity...
The only reason Mario ended up with a mustache was because programmers needed some sort of feature to show that he had a mouth.
Here's a brief article I was able to find about it:
http://www.engadget.com/2004/06/14/force-field-for -tanks/
* It's somewhat faster than your average IMAP server. (Of course, this is both a success of Gmail and a failing of most IMAP servers.)
* Gmail is smart about hiding quoted text and emails i've seen. This rocks. Somehow it even knows the 1% of cases where I actually do want to see the quoted text. I have no idea how.
* The UI for threading, or >>conversations in Gmail lingo, rocks even harder. The killer feature is that the bodies of all messages in the thread on a single screen. Combined with hiding quoted text, this is very powerful.
* Mail is indexed. My average search takes under a second in Gmail, but around 10 seconds in Pine.
* >>Tags, aka labels or virtual folders, are all the rage these days. GMail's implementation of them is slick, and eminently usable. Pine's >>keywords offer most of the same functionality, but compared to Gmail, they're a little clunky.
* There are keyboard shortcuts! Wonder of wonders, it's a webapp that has keyboard shortcuts. Even more amazing, I can actually do most of my normal email tasks with the keyboard shortcuts only. If I couldn't, I never would have given Gmail a second glance.
* I love the Y key, a single keystroke for archiving email. Archiving in pine takes two keystrokes at best, and four if I last saved to a different folder than my "archive" folder.
* The address book is great, mostly because I never have to use it. Gmail automatically remembers everyone I've sent email to or received email from, and auto-completes when I start type their name or email address. I wish Pine did this!
The Bad
* Filtering has a great UI, but it's horribly weak. It has maybe a third of the headers and options that I normally filter on. You can't OR or NOT filter conditions. The set of filter actions is anemic, even with labels. Want me to go on?
* There's no way to bounce an email. This should be pretty trivial to add.
* If no email is selected, the Y key should archive the email under the cursor. This should be common sense.
* You can't automatically create a filter based on an email. Why not?
* You can search, but you can't select messages based on headers, subject, or body text. Worse, if you have more messages than fit on the screen, you can't select any messages that aren't on the screen. If you ever get flooded with email, or with spam that escapes the spam filters, god help you.
* Thank god there are keyboard shortcuts...but there aren't nearly enough! I don't mind using the mouse for one-time stuff, but if i have to use it often during my normal email routine, that's a deal breaker. Keyboard shortcuts for go to label, go to sent mail/drafts, and select all/none/unread would be necessary if I was ever to go back to Gmail.
The Ugly
* Marking messages as read is impossible with the keyboard, and takes three clicks with the mouse: Select ___, More Actions, Mark As Read. I could just leave them unread, but then the labels display is useless for showing which mailing lists have new mail.
* Selecting a message doesn't automatically move the cursor to the next message. This is just plain silly.
* The Y key is horribly inconsistent. If you're in the Inbox, it archives. If you're in a label, it removes the label. If you're in spam or trash, it moves to the Inbox! This is a bad case of modal input.
* Gmail might be smart about (not) displaying quoted text, but it can't handle composing with quoted text to save its life. There are a ton of problems with this, but among others, it needs a way to >>remove trailing quotes when sending.
Bertha wouldn't roll hoops with Calvin as she considered him a snarf of the worst sort.
That's a lot of money, but I'll still buy one.
Thank you - I'm glad to see someone else shares my opinion of the overall importance of online play. The types of games I really enjoy - Resident Evil 4 is a great example, or more recently Shaddow of the Colussus - moving any portion of the game online would really take away from it. Online gaming will never be the main draw of gaming - it's just an entertaining sideshow.
... that it costs $.39 now to send a letter in the mail, but countless companies are willing to send thousands of pieces junk mail at a price MUCH steeper than a quarter of a penny. E-mail tax is a silly idea with nothing to offer.
Totally with you there, I REALLY enjoyed the three novels, Nylund's two were particularly well written. I might actually go read them again...
...of the press letting the 360 off the hook for its UTTER lack of good software, simply because Xbox Live is nifty. To answer the articles absurd question: no, Xbox Live Arcade will not become the most important next-gen platform in this round of the console wars.
They deserve it.
...if the army made a robot with a machine gun that didn't break Asimov's First Law. Asimov... what a joke. If he was really smart his first law would have said "robots with guns shoot things."
There is an article here practically every day that has a headline basically asking "has Sony lost its mind?"
Everybody seems to be missing the fact that the PS2 outsold the 360 in January. Sony does not need to rush to market with the PS3 when there are still some KILLER titles coming out this year. I'm not trying to be a troll, honest, but please stop posting these insufferable articles.
... that it only took Microsoft 5 years to develope a $400 machine that's *almost* as useful as a Dreamcast.
Great post there, I agree with everything you've said. While the Revolution's controller is certainly going to promote innovation in terms of controlling and interacting with games - it's no guarantee that the experience will be new and fresh. I guarantee you EA will release Madden for it, doing nothing but making it so you control the game differently.
You've obviously never piloted the Highwind :)
It's your own damn fault if you didn't enjoy 8 or 9 of the 12 major Final Fantasy games Square put out.
I liked being a gamer in high school, because not a lot of people were into it, and because of that games had to be good to sell. Now I'm not the kind of guy that stops liking a band because they've gotten popular - that doesn't make any sense. What I'm complaining about is how previously good genres are being dilluted and ruined to appeal to a new wider audience. What about us loyal customers that have supported Square from the beginning? We didn't deserve Final Fantasy X-2. Now EA can pump out Madden after Madden - actually remove features and charge $10 more for the Xbox 360 version and get away with it.
I'm glad that the industry is robust now, I just don't like the direction it's headed.
It would be awesome if RIM could not only beat NTP on the patent issue, but go back at them and sue for damage done to their image and stock.
It's not like Microsoft's OS division is writing this software. While you can make the argument that it's the same company that's selling you the insecure OS, and the software you need to secure it, I don't really think it's an argument that needs to be made.
So Microsoft is coming out with an Anti-Virus product. Good.
There's no way they can bundle this with the OS, so they're releasing it separately. OK fine. Get over it.
Anyway I like how virus names are slowly getting edgier. Kama Sutra is a good one, but it'll be great fun when someone names a virus the Angry Dragon, Cleavland Steamer, or the Dirty Sanchez. I eagerly await the day when the words "Rusty Trombone hits America hard" grace CNN's frontpage :)
I agree with everything you've said. I guess what I kind of meant to say, is that I don't see grounds for anyone being furious with Blizzard on a serious level. You can make a case that you should be able to express yourself however you like, but I don't think that Blizzard trying to keep certain subjects out of the forefront of the game puts them in the same league as China censoring the internet. People need to remember that it's a game. And now that you do mention it, I'd kind of like to see that fight too...
It's a game - the reason you're playing it is to escape reality. Why would you try and bring real world issues into it? Just shutup, and enjoy the game. Blizzard certainly has two feet to stand on regarding this issue. Do you really want to see a guild war between the Pro Lifes and the Pro Choices?
... I can just write "hahaha" and not get modded a troll? Pretty please? What Sony and Nintendo need to learn from this, is that they need to stockpile the crap out of their console before it hits market. Sony for example should be pumping out PS3's right now, that way when it hits market they can actually sell 3 million immediately. This is a huge blunder for Microsoft - they've blown their head start pretty badly... and not Dreamcast blown - Saturn blown.