Well, if either player has a firewall, things can get pretty hairy with the connection, especially if you're dealing with someone who's... Well, let's just say less adept with computers in general. I've had some success with ZSNES online, but it still desyncs every now and again, and is quite jumpy when the remote player is doing their thing. If one player has anything but a decent connection, the game's unplayable.
I was convinced about the Wii when I saw their E3 presentation, but now I see that there are more and more online services and things that really extend the value of the console just for having it plugged into the internet. Mind you, these games are fairly expensive for what they are (I'll admit to grabbing a torrent full of NES ROM's at one point), but I'd still pump some money into them. The service is there, I'm sure it'll be extremely easy to use, and really, some of these games are so rare these days that you'd be hard-pressed to find them on eBay for less than $100 (NES Zelda series, for example, especially the Famicom versions; SNES Mario RPG and LoZ:LttP can garner over $400+). I'd gladly pay the amount of inflation on a copy of Super Mario Bros 3 when I can get some of these games - Legitimately - for such a low price, especially with the possibility of playing online (PLEASE say we can play them online) without the hassles involved with PC emulation online.
Scarcity and being poor are no longer excuses to download ROM's! The world has been doomed!
Too many people on the net? Don't want to spend valuable time and money switching to IPv6? Tired of those pirating commies sucking up your bandwidth to download pornography? Then alienate your customers off the internet! Yes, that's right. With the new Two-Tier Internet bill, you can block whatever content you wish from the prying eyes of the paying public! Anti-Rogers sites, anti-Bell sites, all gone! And with fewer people on the internet, you won't even need IPv6! So long, comrade! This is America, the land of the free! The Internet will be exactly like television, and now with the Two-Tiered Internet Bill, you can make sure that those cheapskate commies stay off those Anti-Bush sites for good! Vote for the Two-Tiered Internet Bill today! After all, the rich only get richer!
If it's true, then perhaps Sony will include a "burning" laser in their console, with a limited range, to burn a blank portion of a BluRay disc that includes the serial code, registration information including address and name, and a lock-out code, bypassable only by a service technician and a special reader capable of reading the code (I realize that a pressed disc is non-writable regardless, but the design of the PS3 BluRay doesn't necessarily need to mirror the design of standard BluRay; It could very well incorporate small, burnable tracks).
That physically locks out the media, and if they protect the firmware properly (perhaps by having a second BIOS that starts up on system boot to check the checksum of the first before handing the boot process off to the primary BIOS), it will prevent piracy in such a way that it cannot be circumvented by Joe Sixpack or Script Kiddie Bob. Add in a very specific layout for the free space on the BluRay disc, failing with a non-writable status of that region of a disc never before played on the console, and it would make it extremely difficult for standard burning applications to burn a CD. And impossible for the pressed CD to be passed from console to console.
If the console reads a recognized rental agency as the registration on the burned portion of the disc (read from a list pushed to each unit by Sony upon internet connect and stored when offline), then the console plays anyway, perhaps with the inability to save or go online with it; Perhaps specific per-game instructions.
Each disc would have a pre-burnt portion from the factory with a unique ID code, and if a rental agency loses a copy, they can report it and have the ID code added to a blacklist/no-play list. If the lost game shows up on an internet-connected PS3, the game's locked from the console and the console registration information sent to the rental company. Full name, address, phone number, etc, all verified through international directories and an automated call to verify the phone number. Credit information could also be required to ensure that there is a responsible adult in the household. Such a figure must agree to a EULA that explains the process in thick legalese.
I dunno, if they were to do it that way, it seems like an invasive operation, but hey, it saves Sony, their shareholders, AND the rental companies from the effects of a software-based solution, with only slight manufacture time/cost increase per disc.
It would completely alienate anyone who would want to sell a second-hand copy, or buy one, but it would accomplish exactly what they want to accomplish. It would ensure that sales are final, rental sales are excluded from actual sales, and it would ensure that they get money from ALL sales and a portion of rental profits.
Possible? I think so. At the PS3's price, anything can happen.
It's time someone declared a monopoly lawsuit against the RIAA. They have been pushing their weight around with impunity because they're the only major recording industry, and they get nearly 100% of the profits made on almost, if not every major label in North America. They have no competition, no will to provide a better service to its customers or its labels/musicians, and they seem to have gone insane with the power this has granted them. That seems like enough of a case to me.
Even a DVD+R can hold HD data. It's not as though the media itself is inherently "high definition", it's the data held within that counts. The point is, however, that DVD+R cannot hold a feature-length film within its comparatively miniscule capacity of 4.7GB. The BluRay disc, according to spec, can hold a standard of up to 33GB of data, which is plenty for feature-length HD content, and more than twice that of a standard single-layer HD-DVD (15GB), which is also capable of holding feature-length video.
It's all about the capacity, folks. You guys should know that!
Make no mistake - I realize the importance of good gameplay and innovation as much as anyone else. All I'm saying is that there is room for improvement in the graphics department of some of the games available today, and that graphics are a major part of the presentation of the game. Designers need to push the envelopes of every portion of the game in order to advance.
A realistic game needs realistic graphics and sound. It's part of the presentation that makes it "realistic". Authentic. A cartoony game doesn't need that, but it needs equal consideration in its art direction in order to further its goals. Gameplay is the vital underlying component, but if the game fails to deliver its intended atmosphere, it won't do well at all. Half-Life 2 delivered on all counts, and Doom 3 only provided the same old gameplay with pretty graphics. Fun for the first half hour, if that, but after that, it's tedious and boring. Half-Life 2, on the other hand, was not, yet it was graphically superior. It goes without saying that it would not have been as successful had it been released with Half-Life era graphics and sound. The presentation - The environment, the atmosphere, all would have been more or less left out. Presentation and atmosphere are almost as important as the story.
You don't need ultra-high resolutions or massive textures that would make an Alienware its bitch - But as long as the hardware is there, there is no reason not to use it, and aside from that, as long as it's acceptable, there's no reason to push it.
However, the point is, it can be pushed, and easily, too. The graphical capabilities of a lot of games today were considered insane around the time of FF7, for example. To try and accomplish what we have today would be considered a colossal waste of time back then. Yet it's so simple these days to create a graphical experience of a certain calibre... And so, too, shall it be to create an even more complex graphical experience a few years down the line. Standard is standard, after all. Those that innovate pave the way for new standards.
Same with gameplay and every other aspect of the game. All need their innovations in order for the gaming market to continue to enjoy the successes and evolution it's had over the past two decades. Innovations in gameplay, graphics, sound, and control are all necessary. Nothing is "good enough".
How can anyone say graphics today are good enough? They're damned good compared to what we used to have (check Half-Life against Half-Life 2), but we're nowhere near the realism required for a truly immersive experience.
Sure, gameplay is the most important part of the game, but presentation, including graphics, sound, and general design, play a vital role in creating atmosphere. You could be playing the most amazingly fun game in the universe, but if it's running at 320x240@4bpp/43Hz interlaced with nothing but flat colours and no textures or sprites anywhere, and sound consisting of a single beep at the start of the game, you're looking at a pretty bland experience.
Conversely, you could be playing the most realistic game in the universe, and it might be about as fun as dragging a sack of bricks up a hill. That's why it's important to let the people who are in charge of these separate tasks do what they have to do. The programmers and designers can focus on gameplay, the graphics designers and artists can focus on the graphics, and the sound engineers and composers can focus on the sound. When it all comes together, you can have your cake and eat it, too, as long as each does an equally good job.
Realistic graphics can only add to an already-great gameplay experience. However, high-resolution does not equal realistic graphics. The issue with a lot of the next-gen consoles is that the high resolution absolutely has to be married with massive textures and aggressive filtering in order to create the same effect as their standard-resolution ancestors/competitor. You can have your games running at 1920x1080, but if you can't push the big textures through, you're not going anywhere but to mudsville, population your monitor. The higher the resolution, the more the need for higher resolution textures to create believeable graphics. If the textures are blurry, then you've successfully shot yourself in the foot as far as presentation goes.
Like I said, great gameplay is paramount. Graphics and sound are secondary - However, bad graphics and sound in a modern video game take away from the presentation of the game. If you're playing a first person shooter, and you've got a pistol that, for no real reason, looks like a twig, and the sound it makes is some guy saying "Bang", it'll be funny at first, yes. But it'll also get quite annoying very quickly and you'd end up hating the game for it.
What for? My connection (2.4mbps actual downstream) can barely handle streaming standard video clips encoded with the biggest, greasiest WMV artifacts you've ever seen in your life.
If we start encoding all those millions of 10 second clips at 5mbps WMV / 1920x1080@60fps with 7.1 FLAC audio, subtitles and ten different language tracks, I think the servers would choke out first. ISP's don't know how good they've got it compared to a server trying to stream that stuff.
Maybe the server this man gained access to was set up as a sort of "sting" operation; Offer "unauthorized access" material on an open server to both misinform potential "terrorist hackers" and nail them publicly all at the same time as a sort of deterrent from future deeper hacking attempts. Sounds like the perfect defense to me.
Of course, that doesn't sound like a very interesting thing to talk about, and it requires a lot more faith in the administration of a government body than is, at current time, due.
Just like the criticisms on the Wii's silly name and crazy controller, no matter what kind of hardware the PS3 has - Be it ultra-super-cool magical fairy pixie dust-powered graphics that cause your TV to turn into a holographic projection unit, or just an update to the PS2, or something entirely different. The point is, GAMES. That's what a console is for. GAMES.
Can I repeat that last bit for clarity?
GAMES
You can nitpick all you want about Sony and their development process, just like a lot of people are dumping on Nintendo for their Wii, but in the end, the best-selling system will be the one with the games that people want to play. In recent history, Sony's all but dominated the console market (and not doing too badly on the handheld front) in great games that generate a lot of interest, a lot of replay value, and of course, a lot of sales. They've done it for two generations, and now we'll see if they can continue the trend.
If they can, my money's going to Sony. If not, I guess it'll go somewhere else. Whether that's Microsoft or Nintendo is yet to be seen.
Main reason I can see is, they want people to head over to their local Quality Apple-certified Computer Service Centre and throw money at them. If anyone knew how to fix a Mac for free, then their business model would crumble!
I've always had a love-hate relationship with ragdoll physics; It's realistic in case of an explosion or a high-calibre shot to the head (though the end result may not be), but really, if you shot someone in the foot a bunch of times, they wouldn't die on the spot and hit the floor like they do in ragdoll-enabled games. I imagine they'd probably drop to the ground pretty quickly, though, but for an entirely different reason ("You blew my foot off! What the hell!?"). If you shot someone in the shoulder with a shotgun powerful enough to tear it off, they would not immediately fall to the floor, arm still intact as happens in ragdoll. They'd probably be blown back, yes, with a bit of a spin, too, but the arm would probably either be torn off, or almost so, and they'd still be more or less 'alive' (and probably in shock).
Thing is, ragdoll is only really necessary in some situations (the aforementioned explosion or head-shot; Something that kills instantly, perhaps post-mortem kicking around, but today's implementation causes quite a strange reaction when you hit someone with a crowbar; I wasn't aware the human arm was made of rubber. In real life, I expect very little arm movement from a stiff on contact with a large bludgeoning force or even a bullet). I find it amusing, however, that game companies have decided that they can save money by using only ragdoll physics, and thus not having to make death animations.
Death animations are still very much necessary for a believeable gaming experience. Of course, not everyone dies the same way, but if you shot someone in the chest, and it's enough to 'kill' them (read: Deplete their health), they probably won't die straight away. It could easily be combined with ragdoll-like physics to enhance the believeability of it, though; Have the force of impact cause them to fall/stagger back, clutching their chest and either falling to the ground or slumping against a wall, nursing the fatal wound until death. If you blow someone's leg out from under them, possibly off, the character shouldn't die right away; That's silliness. Ask the Vietnam vets.
It's one of the reasons why I like Call of Duty 2; I see no ragdoll in sight with standard shots, and when someone dies, it looks a lot more realistic, to me, anyway, than watching someone get shot in the arm and just slump over. In CoD2, you can shoot an enemy soldier to within an inch of his life, he'll crawl on the ground, shakily reach into his coat and pull out his Luger, and take pot shots at you until he's either shot again, or runs out of juice. If they've been taken out by a grenade, they're thrown about realistically, and nowhere have I ever seen the broken-arm syndrome. I think they're on the right track.
The point is, most games today don't make a distinction between incapacitation and death. Today, when someone's health is depleted in-game, they die instantly, slumping to the floor in ragdoll glory (which I consider buggy as all hell, all things considered; Ever have someone bend over backwards and start twitching until ragdoll's turned off for the model?). Even if the ragdoll physics more accurately represented (or even considered) the mass of the body in question, the maximum movement for the extremities, etc, it would be far more realistic. Having someone fall over dead with their arms 'broken' behind their back and legs twisted up for shooting them with a 9mm a couple times is far from what I'd call realistic, not to mention the ease at which the arms and legs move afterwards.
But hey, games are more or less mass-produced copies of each other these days. Those games that innovate are copied by a slew of others that together make up the mainstream. When someone finally realizes that the laziness involved in copying a physics engine from X company and just turning on ragdoll physics is detrimental to the overall experience, maybe we'll see some better physics. Maybe later we might see some better gameplay, too. God I miss Rainbow Six.
How intense is the luminosity of these glasses? Sitting right in front of your eyes, no matter where you're focusing, it's got to be doing some damage.
Not only that, but you can't adjust the "distance" between yourself and the display (you can't "zoom") so if there's something illegible on-screen, you can't do anything about it. At 800x600, I fully expect there to be a LOT that can't be read at a virtual 7' distance.
... Of having a small bump under my skin that sends out radio waves when close to a transponder, but I'd rather have it on a keychain or in a cellular phone - And of course, I'd rather have it used only in the situations I want it used in.
Of course, anyone with the money to implement this kind of thing should probably just give it to me instead. I'll open your doors the old fashioned way, with no need for a costly renovation or painful RFID implant! Yours for just $200,000 tax-free per year. As an added bonus, I'll even chew your food for you! What value for the price! Act now! I'm not sold in stores, and quantities are limited!
Every Joe Sixpack in the United States has enough hard drive space and bandwidth to download and keep every major movie release in North America, and is as such causing a $6.1 billion drain. Is that what the MPAA is trying to say?
Hell, every time I open a torrent, it usually gobbles up all my available bandwidth. When I start torrents, my major concerns are the amount of space it will take up, and whether or not it's worth the time investment to actually get the damned thing in the first place (and all I usually download is anime, and not very much of it, either (because despite what everyone says, not every anime is good, regardless as to the fact that we don't get a lot of it here)).
I refuse to believe that everyone can download a gig-large feature-length movie every other week and keep it on their computer for future use. Sure, DVD burners are available, but burnable DVD media can and will eventually suffer from laser rot, in the case of some brands, sooner rather than later. It's a non-permanent solution, and requires a lot more time and effort than driving to the store and buying a real DVD.
Point is, it's not worth the drive to the store or the $30 for the DVD; everything sucks. I have seen maybe two movies in the past year that have caught my interest, one of them being the recent Silent Hill movie.
Hell, myself and three of my friends went to the mall on Valentine's day, said "Hey, let's see a movie" and found that nothing worth seeing was playing or even coming soon. We were perfectly willing to go to the theatres, stuff cash in their pockets, and yet there was nothing worth seeing so it never happened.
I still don't understand what this memory leak business is all about. The highest Firefox on my XP machine goes is to about 50MB of RAM, even with ten or more tabs on different sites with downloads going and FastBack enabled; totally acceptable. In Linux, it's more like 100MB at most. I don't understand where everyone gets this Firefox taking up a gig of memory and all that stuff. Firefox never leaks any memory for me; It's apparently been documented, yeah, but it doesn't affect me, any computer I've installed it on, or anyone else I've installed it for, so, Firefox continues to be my browser of choice.
It may be simple to say and easier to learn, but the name won't make a difference. If the Gamecube and N64 are any indication, only the hardcore Nintendo fans will eat it up, and there will be a miniscule library of games (in comparison to the other consoles), practically none of which will be multiplatform. Again, Nintendo is going to have to focus all its energy into creating first-party games that take full advantage of the hardware in order for any third party developer to even think they could be successful in selling Wii games.
With Sony and Microsoft, the user base is there, and it's massive. With Nintendo, the userbase is mostly just fans, with some people buying the console for the one or two good games that may be on it (the only real blockbuster hits Nintendo has produced for the Gamecube, for example, are the Metroid Prime series, Wind Waker, Super Smash Bros: Melee, and Resident Evil 4 (which was ported off to the PS2 anyway). Aside from that, the volume of games for the gamecube were relatively low, and mostly consisted either of another Mario knockoff, or a cross-platform game).
Of course, the developers don't only have to take Nintendo's lead, they also have to contend with the controller, which has only three distinctive buttons total (four if you count the nunchaku attachment's trigger). Not only that, but the limitations of the standard DVD-5 format that developers use with current-gen systems (360 notwithstanding) also place a toll on the game. With so few buttons, and so little space in comparison (companies usually have to compress game data on DVD-5 discs to allow for the size constraints, and that costs processing time and increases load time) you wouldn't see a Grand Theft Auto, or an Ace Combat anywhere on the system (assuming they were ever ported). You wouldn't see any strategy games on there, and RPG's would be weird, when all that's really required there is the D-pad and buttons. You wouldn't see a Soul Calibur game, or any other fighting game for that matter. The platform just doesn't offer up to many kinds of games like the others do.
Now, of course, you can just plug a Gamecube controller into the control ports included on the Wii, but what's the point of the Wii controller then?
Anyway, I predict massive failure. I might be wrong, and for Nintendo's sake, I hope I am. But I do know one thing - My money's on the console with the games, not the most original hardware. Good games the hardware does not make, after all. If the Wii offers up the best assortment of good games, then that's where my money will fall. But as of right now, I don't see it happening. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I wasn't wrong about the Gamecube.
In a heavily-modified form. If DVD players had a sort of method for storing information about previously played DVD's (a "history" of sorts, dating back to the initial power-on of the product, and editable/resettable), advertisers could distinguish between movies you'd actually already seen and movies you haven't. Add in an information page to store information about "Your favorite type of movie" or "Your favorite director", and you could even make the ads distinguish between movies you might want to see and movies you have no interest in. That way, much like Google ads, the advertisements could be targetted more directly at what you might want to watch - Not what they might like you to watch. Even if the commercials couldn't be skipped, if they're matched up with your history and your input, they might actually provide a service to users, rather than prove a nuisance. Not only that, but it could very well improve sales.
For example, you buy your brand new HD2-DVD player, turn it on and it asks you some questions; You input your basic likes and dislikes, favourite this and that, and then it starts normal operation. When you put in your copy of Jurassic Park V: The Insanity Drags On, the advertisements are tagged with metadata including genre, director, and other information, and the advertisements that most closely match the type of content you enjoy watching are played, with movies you'd already seen excluded. As you play more and more movies on your DVD payer, it "learns" what you like, and internally rates each genre for you based on what you play. It could even ask you at the end how you enjoyed the film, to save that into its database as well, and possibly even provide feedback to the producers (why not? Everything else is online these days).
It's win-win-win. Movie labels win, advertisers win, and consumers win. No need for this "You will watch what we want you to" stuff, and no need to completely skip it, either. And if it sends feedback to the producers, maybe we'll see some better movies coming out, too.
Ah, the AMRAAMski. Yeah, those are pretty neat, and use a better guidance system in my opinion. The sig's mainly to quote someone who I used to play Fighters Anthology with a long time ago. I figure it's a good balance between cheese and humour.
With more and more unmanned/low-staffed vehicles, surface ships, aircraft and more and more 'smart' missiles and bombs being developed, the world's most powerful armies need not worry about casualties of war, except those that occur in their pocketbooks.
What is going to stop a government with an army of fearless, autonomous fighting machines from waging war? The biggest reason not to right now is public outcry against the needless sacrifice of servicemen and women, and the only reason beyond that is international outcry - But who cares about them, when you can silence them with the threat of mobilizing your mechanized, unmanned forces onto their soil, too?
When war becomes a safe place for a soldier to be, the world shall know a new age of war, and a new age of fear, where war crimes do not exist, are not harkened to, and will never be accounted for. The world's fate will be decided on whether or not these nations feel it is worth the expenditure, not the loss of life.
With so much interest in unmanned vehicles, what is going to stop this kind of future?
You don't have to be a "GNU/Hippie" to use Linux, and there are plenty of reasons to do so, as well, not the least of which is that it's free and it'll run on that old P166 you bought over a decade ago. The "GNU/Hippies" you speak of are largely the guys who spend all day tweaking this and that to make sure the next release of your operating system is secure, productive, and pleasing to the eye, which you might notice Linux is becoming more and more, especially with user-oriented flavours like Ubuntu. The main difference is, the guys at Apple get paid for what they do, and the guys who contribute to Gnome do not. As such, Apple is a little further ahead, especially since their UI is more closely integrated into the core of the OS than Linux' is (and they don't have to contend with different flavours of hardware).
Anyway, in closing, flamebait.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if either player has a firewall, things can get pretty hairy with the connection, especially if you're dealing with someone who's... Well, let's just say less adept with computers in general. I've had some success with ZSNES online, but it still desyncs every now and again, and is quite jumpy when the remote player is doing their thing. If one player has anything but a decent connection, the game's unplayable.
I was convinced about the Wii when I saw their E3 presentation, but now I see that there are more and more online services and things that really extend the value of the console just for having it plugged into the internet. Mind you, these games are fairly expensive for what they are (I'll admit to grabbing a torrent full of NES ROM's at one point), but I'd still pump some money into them. The service is there, I'm sure it'll be extremely easy to use, and really, some of these games are so rare these days that you'd be hard-pressed to find them on eBay for less than $100 (NES Zelda series, for example, especially the Famicom versions; SNES Mario RPG and LoZ:LttP can garner over $400+). I'd gladly pay the amount of inflation on a copy of Super Mario Bros 3 when I can get some of these games - Legitimately - for such a low price, especially with the possibility of playing online (PLEASE say we can play them online) without the hassles involved with PC emulation online.
Scarcity and being poor are no longer excuses to download ROM's! The world has been doomed!
Too many people on the net? Don't want to spend valuable time and money switching to IPv6? Tired of those pirating commies sucking up your bandwidth to download pornography? Then alienate your customers off the internet! Yes, that's right. With the new Two-Tier Internet bill, you can block whatever content you wish from the prying eyes of the paying public! Anti-Rogers sites, anti-Bell sites, all gone! And with fewer people on the internet, you won't even need IPv6! So long, comrade! This is America, the land of the free! The Internet will be exactly like television, and now with the Two-Tiered Internet Bill, you can make sure that those cheapskate commies stay off those Anti-Bush sites for good! Vote for the Two-Tiered Internet Bill today! After all, the rich only get richer!
If it's true, then perhaps Sony will include a "burning" laser in their console, with a limited range, to burn a blank portion of a BluRay disc that includes the serial code, registration information including address and name, and a lock-out code, bypassable only by a service technician and a special reader capable of reading the code (I realize that a pressed disc is non-writable regardless, but the design of the PS3 BluRay doesn't necessarily need to mirror the design of standard BluRay; It could very well incorporate small, burnable tracks).
That physically locks out the media, and if they protect the firmware properly (perhaps by having a second BIOS that starts up on system boot to check the checksum of the first before handing the boot process off to the primary BIOS), it will prevent piracy in such a way that it cannot be circumvented by Joe Sixpack or Script Kiddie Bob. Add in a very specific layout for the free space on the BluRay disc, failing with a non-writable status of that region of a disc never before played on the console, and it would make it extremely difficult for standard burning applications to burn a CD. And impossible for the pressed CD to be passed from console to console.
If the console reads a recognized rental agency as the registration on the burned portion of the disc (read from a list pushed to each unit by Sony upon internet connect and stored when offline), then the console plays anyway, perhaps with the inability to save or go online with it; Perhaps specific per-game instructions.
Each disc would have a pre-burnt portion from the factory with a unique ID code, and if a rental agency loses a copy, they can report it and have the ID code added to a blacklist/no-play list. If the lost game shows up on an internet-connected PS3, the game's locked from the console and the console registration information sent to the rental company. Full name, address, phone number, etc, all verified through international directories and an automated call to verify the phone number. Credit information could also be required to ensure that there is a responsible adult in the household. Such a figure must agree to a EULA that explains the process in thick legalese.
I dunno, if they were to do it that way, it seems like an invasive operation, but hey, it saves Sony, their shareholders, AND the rental companies from the effects of a software-based solution, with only slight manufacture time/cost increase per disc.
It would completely alienate anyone who would want to sell a second-hand copy, or buy one, but it would accomplish exactly what they want to accomplish. It would ensure that sales are final, rental sales are excluded from actual sales, and it would ensure that they get money from ALL sales and a portion of rental profits.
Possible? I think so. At the PS3's price, anything can happen.
It's time someone declared a monopoly lawsuit against the RIAA. They have been pushing their weight around with impunity because they're the only major recording industry, and they get nearly 100% of the profits made on almost, if not every major label in North America. They have no competition, no will to provide a better service to its customers or its labels/musicians, and they seem to have gone insane with the power this has granted them. That seems like enough of a case to me.
Even a DVD+R can hold HD data. It's not as though the media itself is inherently "high definition", it's the data held within that counts. The point is, however, that DVD+R cannot hold a feature-length film within its comparatively miniscule capacity of 4.7GB. The BluRay disc, according to spec, can hold a standard of up to 33GB of data, which is plenty for feature-length HD content, and more than twice that of a standard single-layer HD-DVD (15GB), which is also capable of holding feature-length video.
It's all about the capacity, folks. You guys should know that!
Make no mistake - I realize the importance of good gameplay and innovation as much as anyone else. All I'm saying is that there is room for improvement in the graphics department of some of the games available today, and that graphics are a major part of the presentation of the game. Designers need to push the envelopes of every portion of the game in order to advance.
A realistic game needs realistic graphics and sound. It's part of the presentation that makes it "realistic". Authentic. A cartoony game doesn't need that, but it needs equal consideration in its art direction in order to further its goals. Gameplay is the vital underlying component, but if the game fails to deliver its intended atmosphere, it won't do well at all. Half-Life 2 delivered on all counts, and Doom 3 only provided the same old gameplay with pretty graphics. Fun for the first half hour, if that, but after that, it's tedious and boring. Half-Life 2, on the other hand, was not, yet it was graphically superior. It goes without saying that it would not have been as successful had it been released with Half-Life era graphics and sound. The presentation - The environment, the atmosphere, all would have been more or less left out. Presentation and atmosphere are almost as important as the story.
You don't need ultra-high resolutions or massive textures that would make an Alienware its bitch - But as long as the hardware is there, there is no reason not to use it, and aside from that, as long as it's acceptable, there's no reason to push it.
However, the point is, it can be pushed, and easily, too. The graphical capabilities of a lot of games today were considered insane around the time of FF7, for example. To try and accomplish what we have today would be considered a colossal waste of time back then. Yet it's so simple these days to create a graphical experience of a certain calibre... And so, too, shall it be to create an even more complex graphical experience a few years down the line. Standard is standard, after all. Those that innovate pave the way for new standards.
Same with gameplay and every other aspect of the game. All need their innovations in order for the gaming market to continue to enjoy the successes and evolution it's had over the past two decades. Innovations in gameplay, graphics, sound, and control are all necessary. Nothing is "good enough".
How can anyone say graphics today are good enough? They're damned good compared to what we used to have (check Half-Life against Half-Life 2), but we're nowhere near the realism required for a truly immersive experience.
Sure, gameplay is the most important part of the game, but presentation, including graphics, sound, and general design, play a vital role in creating atmosphere. You could be playing the most amazingly fun game in the universe, but if it's running at 320x240@4bpp/43Hz interlaced with nothing but flat colours and no textures or sprites anywhere, and sound consisting of a single beep at the start of the game, you're looking at a pretty bland experience.
Conversely, you could be playing the most realistic game in the universe, and it might be about as fun as dragging a sack of bricks up a hill. That's why it's important to let the people who are in charge of these separate tasks do what they have to do. The programmers and designers can focus on gameplay, the graphics designers and artists can focus on the graphics, and the sound engineers and composers can focus on the sound. When it all comes together, you can have your cake and eat it, too, as long as each does an equally good job.
Realistic graphics can only add to an already-great gameplay experience. However, high-resolution does not equal realistic graphics. The issue with a lot of the next-gen consoles is that the high resolution absolutely has to be married with massive textures and aggressive filtering in order to create the same effect as their standard-resolution ancestors/competitor. You can have your games running at 1920x1080, but if you can't push the big textures through, you're not going anywhere but to mudsville, population your monitor. The higher the resolution, the more the need for higher resolution textures to create believeable graphics. If the textures are blurry, then you've successfully shot yourself in the foot as far as presentation goes.
Like I said, great gameplay is paramount. Graphics and sound are secondary - However, bad graphics and sound in a modern video game take away from the presentation of the game. If you're playing a first person shooter, and you've got a pistol that, for no real reason, looks like a twig, and the sound it makes is some guy saying "Bang", it'll be funny at first, yes. But it'll also get quite annoying very quickly and you'd end up hating the game for it.
Or at least, I would.
What for? My connection (2.4mbps actual downstream) can barely handle streaming standard video clips encoded with the biggest, greasiest WMV artifacts you've ever seen in your life.
If we start encoding all those millions of 10 second clips at 5mbps WMV / 1920x1080@60fps with 7.1 FLAC audio, subtitles and ten different language tracks, I think the servers would choke out first. ISP's don't know how good they've got it compared to a server trying to stream that stuff.
Maybe the server this man gained access to was set up as a sort of "sting" operation; Offer "unauthorized access" material on an open server to both misinform potential "terrorist hackers" and nail them publicly all at the same time as a sort of deterrent from future deeper hacking attempts. Sounds like the perfect defense to me.
Of course, that doesn't sound like a very interesting thing to talk about, and it requires a lot more faith in the administration of a government body than is, at current time, due.
Just like the criticisms on the Wii's silly name and crazy controller, no matter what kind of hardware the PS3 has - Be it ultra-super-cool magical fairy pixie dust-powered graphics that cause your TV to turn into a holographic projection unit, or just an update to the PS2, or something entirely different. The point is, GAMES. That's what a console is for. GAMES.
Can I repeat that last bit for clarity?
GAMES
You can nitpick all you want about Sony and their development process, just like a lot of people are dumping on Nintendo for their Wii, but in the end, the best-selling system will be the one with the games that people want to play. In recent history, Sony's all but dominated the console market (and not doing too badly on the handheld front) in great games that generate a lot of interest, a lot of replay value, and of course, a lot of sales. They've done it for two generations, and now we'll see if they can continue the trend.
If they can, my money's going to Sony. If not, I guess it'll go somewhere else. Whether that's Microsoft or Nintendo is yet to be seen.
Skimming through that leaves me with a cold, empty feeling that I fear will linger with me until the end of time.
Main reason I can see is, they want people to head over to their local Quality Apple-certified Computer Service Centre and throw money at them. If anyone knew how to fix a Mac for free, then their business model would crumble!
I've always had a love-hate relationship with ragdoll physics; It's realistic in case of an explosion or a high-calibre shot to the head (though the end result may not be), but really, if you shot someone in the foot a bunch of times, they wouldn't die on the spot and hit the floor like they do in ragdoll-enabled games. I imagine they'd probably drop to the ground pretty quickly, though, but for an entirely different reason ("You blew my foot off! What the hell!?"). If you shot someone in the shoulder with a shotgun powerful enough to tear it off, they would not immediately fall to the floor, arm still intact as happens in ragdoll. They'd probably be blown back, yes, with a bit of a spin, too, but the arm would probably either be torn off, or almost so, and they'd still be more or less 'alive' (and probably in shock).
Thing is, ragdoll is only really necessary in some situations (the aforementioned explosion or head-shot; Something that kills instantly, perhaps post-mortem kicking around, but today's implementation causes quite a strange reaction when you hit someone with a crowbar; I wasn't aware the human arm was made of rubber. In real life, I expect very little arm movement from a stiff on contact with a large bludgeoning force or even a bullet). I find it amusing, however, that game companies have decided that they can save money by using only ragdoll physics, and thus not having to make death animations.
Death animations are still very much necessary for a believeable gaming experience. Of course, not everyone dies the same way, but if you shot someone in the chest, and it's enough to 'kill' them (read: Deplete their health), they probably won't die straight away. It could easily be combined with ragdoll-like physics to enhance the believeability of it, though; Have the force of impact cause them to fall/stagger back, clutching their chest and either falling to the ground or slumping against a wall, nursing the fatal wound until death. If you blow someone's leg out from under them, possibly off, the character shouldn't die right away; That's silliness. Ask the Vietnam vets.
It's one of the reasons why I like Call of Duty 2; I see no ragdoll in sight with standard shots, and when someone dies, it looks a lot more realistic, to me, anyway, than watching someone get shot in the arm and just slump over. In CoD2, you can shoot an enemy soldier to within an inch of his life, he'll crawl on the ground, shakily reach into his coat and pull out his Luger, and take pot shots at you until he's either shot again, or runs out of juice. If they've been taken out by a grenade, they're thrown about realistically, and nowhere have I ever seen the broken-arm syndrome. I think they're on the right track.
The point is, most games today don't make a distinction between incapacitation and death. Today, when someone's health is depleted in-game, they die instantly, slumping to the floor in ragdoll glory (which I consider buggy as all hell, all things considered; Ever have someone bend over backwards and start twitching until ragdoll's turned off for the model?). Even if the ragdoll physics more accurately represented (or even considered) the mass of the body in question, the maximum movement for the extremities, etc, it would be far more realistic. Having someone fall over dead with their arms 'broken' behind their back and legs twisted up for shooting them with a 9mm a couple times is far from what I'd call realistic, not to mention the ease at which the arms and legs move afterwards.
But hey, games are more or less mass-produced copies of each other these days. Those games that innovate are copied by a slew of others that together make up the mainstream. When someone finally realizes that the laziness involved in copying a physics engine from X company and just turning on ragdoll physics is detrimental to the overall experience, maybe we'll see some better physics. Maybe later we might see some better gameplay, too. God I miss Rainbow Six.
How intense is the luminosity of these glasses? Sitting right in front of your eyes, no matter where you're focusing, it's got to be doing some damage.
Not only that, but you can't adjust the "distance" between yourself and the display (you can't "zoom") so if there's something illegible on-screen, you can't do anything about it. At 800x600, I fully expect there to be a LOT that can't be read at a virtual 7' distance.
... Of having a small bump under my skin that sends out radio waves when close to a transponder, but I'd rather have it on a keychain or in a cellular phone - And of course, I'd rather have it used only in the situations I want it used in.
Of course, anyone with the money to implement this kind of thing should probably just give it to me instead. I'll open your doors the old fashioned way, with no need for a costly renovation or painful RFID implant! Yours for just $200,000 tax-free per year. As an added bonus, I'll even chew your food for you! What value for the price! Act now! I'm not sold in stores, and quantities are limited!
Every Joe Sixpack in the United States has enough hard drive space and bandwidth to download and keep every major movie release in North America, and is as such causing a $6.1 billion drain. Is that what the MPAA is trying to say?
Hell, every time I open a torrent, it usually gobbles up all my available bandwidth. When I start torrents, my major concerns are the amount of space it will take up, and whether or not it's worth the time investment to actually get the damned thing in the first place (and all I usually download is anime, and not very much of it, either (because despite what everyone says, not every anime is good, regardless as to the fact that we don't get a lot of it here)).
I refuse to believe that everyone can download a gig-large feature-length movie every other week and keep it on their computer for future use. Sure, DVD burners are available, but burnable DVD media can and will eventually suffer from laser rot, in the case of some brands, sooner rather than later. It's a non-permanent solution, and requires a lot more time and effort than driving to the store and buying a real DVD.
Point is, it's not worth the drive to the store or the $30 for the DVD; everything sucks. I have seen maybe two movies in the past year that have caught my interest, one of them being the recent Silent Hill movie.
Hell, myself and three of my friends went to the mall on Valentine's day, said "Hey, let's see a movie" and found that nothing worth seeing was playing or even coming soon. We were perfectly willing to go to the theatres, stuff cash in their pockets, and yet there was nothing worth seeing so it never happened.
So, MPAA, WTF?
Because then someone would complain that it's automatically downloading updates and they never got any notification.
I still don't understand what this memory leak business is all about. The highest Firefox on my XP machine goes is to about 50MB of RAM, even with ten or more tabs on different sites with downloads going and FastBack enabled; totally acceptable. In Linux, it's more like 100MB at most. I don't understand where everyone gets this Firefox taking up a gig of memory and all that stuff. Firefox never leaks any memory for me; It's apparently been documented, yeah, but it doesn't affect me, any computer I've installed it on, or anyone else I've installed it for, so, Firefox continues to be my browser of choice.
It may be simple to say and easier to learn, but the name won't make a difference. If the Gamecube and N64 are any indication, only the hardcore Nintendo fans will eat it up, and there will be a miniscule library of games (in comparison to the other consoles), practically none of which will be multiplatform. Again, Nintendo is going to have to focus all its energy into creating first-party games that take full advantage of the hardware in order for any third party developer to even think they could be successful in selling Wii games.
With Sony and Microsoft, the user base is there, and it's massive. With Nintendo, the userbase is mostly just fans, with some people buying the console for the one or two good games that may be on it (the only real blockbuster hits Nintendo has produced for the Gamecube, for example, are the Metroid Prime series, Wind Waker, Super Smash Bros: Melee, and Resident Evil 4 (which was ported off to the PS2 anyway). Aside from that, the volume of games for the gamecube were relatively low, and mostly consisted either of another Mario knockoff, or a cross-platform game).
Of course, the developers don't only have to take Nintendo's lead, they also have to contend with the controller, which has only three distinctive buttons total (four if you count the nunchaku attachment's trigger). Not only that, but the limitations of the standard DVD-5 format that developers use with current-gen systems (360 notwithstanding) also place a toll on the game. With so few buttons, and so little space in comparison (companies usually have to compress game data on DVD-5 discs to allow for the size constraints, and that costs processing time and increases load time) you wouldn't see a Grand Theft Auto, or an Ace Combat anywhere on the system (assuming they were ever ported). You wouldn't see any strategy games on there, and RPG's would be weird, when all that's really required there is the D-pad and buttons. You wouldn't see a Soul Calibur game, or any other fighting game for that matter. The platform just doesn't offer up to many kinds of games like the others do.
Now, of course, you can just plug a Gamecube controller into the control ports included on the Wii, but what's the point of the Wii controller then?
Anyway, I predict massive failure. I might be wrong, and for Nintendo's sake, I hope I am. But I do know one thing - My money's on the console with the games, not the most original hardware. Good games the hardware does not make, after all. If the Wii offers up the best assortment of good games, then that's where my money will fall. But as of right now, I don't see it happening. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I wasn't wrong about the Gamecube.
In a heavily-modified form. If DVD players had a sort of method for storing information about previously played DVD's (a "history" of sorts, dating back to the initial power-on of the product, and editable/resettable), advertisers could distinguish between movies you'd actually already seen and movies you haven't. Add in an information page to store information about "Your favorite type of movie" or "Your favorite director", and you could even make the ads distinguish between movies you might want to see and movies you have no interest in. That way, much like Google ads, the advertisements could be targetted more directly at what you might want to watch - Not what they might like you to watch. Even if the commercials couldn't be skipped, if they're matched up with your history and your input, they might actually provide a service to users, rather than prove a nuisance. Not only that, but it could very well improve sales.
For example, you buy your brand new HD2-DVD player, turn it on and it asks you some questions; You input your basic likes and dislikes, favourite this and that, and then it starts normal operation. When you put in your copy of Jurassic Park V: The Insanity Drags On, the advertisements are tagged with metadata including genre, director, and other information, and the advertisements that most closely match the type of content you enjoy watching are played, with movies you'd already seen excluded. As you play more and more movies on your DVD payer, it "learns" what you like, and internally rates each genre for you based on what you play. It could even ask you at the end how you enjoyed the film, to save that into its database as well, and possibly even provide feedback to the producers (why not? Everything else is online these days).
It's win-win-win. Movie labels win, advertisers win, and consumers win. No need for this "You will watch what we want you to" stuff, and no need to completely skip it, either. And if it sends feedback to the producers, maybe we'll see some better movies coming out, too.
Ah, the AMRAAMski. Yeah, those are pretty neat, and use a better guidance system in my opinion. The sig's mainly to quote someone who I used to play Fighters Anthology with a long time ago. I figure it's a good balance between cheese and humour.
But can they run Linux?
With more and more unmanned/low-staffed vehicles, surface ships, aircraft and more and more 'smart' missiles and bombs being developed, the world's most powerful armies need not worry about casualties of war, except those that occur in their pocketbooks.
What is going to stop a government with an army of fearless, autonomous fighting machines from waging war? The biggest reason not to right now is public outcry against the needless sacrifice of servicemen and women, and the only reason beyond that is international outcry - But who cares about them, when you can silence them with the threat of mobilizing your mechanized, unmanned forces onto their soil, too?
When war becomes a safe place for a soldier to be, the world shall know a new age of war, and a new age of fear, where war crimes do not exist, are not harkened to, and will never be accounted for. The world's fate will be decided on whether or not these nations feel it is worth the expenditure, not the loss of life.
With so much interest in unmanned vehicles, what is going to stop this kind of future?
You don't have to be a "GNU/Hippie" to use Linux, and there are plenty of reasons to do so, as well, not the least of which is that it's free and it'll run on that old P166 you bought over a decade ago. The "GNU/Hippies" you speak of are largely the guys who spend all day tweaking this and that to make sure the next release of your operating system is secure, productive, and pleasing to the eye, which you might notice Linux is becoming more and more, especially with user-oriented flavours like Ubuntu. The main difference is, the guys at Apple get paid for what they do, and the guys who contribute to Gnome do not. As such, Apple is a little further ahead, especially since their UI is more closely integrated into the core of the OS than Linux' is (and they don't have to contend with different flavours of hardware). Anyway, in closing, flamebait.