I can confirm that it is definitely a lot faster. It's really snappy now, besides that initial opening which still seems a little slow compared to most websites, though I don't use any webmail besides Gmail so I'm not sure if this is typical.
The new version was turned on automatically for me, I had a link to the Older Version at top.
Starting yesterday my Gmail Notifier Firefox extension stopped working at home where we have Comcast, but at work it works just fine. I thought maybe the plugin had broken due to some API changes or something but I thought it was odd it worked one place and not the other. This really seems like it's related and even though I believe Gmail Notifier is a third party extension, it's still accessing Google's servers.
Comcast is really pissing me off. But what's my other option: Qwest DSL.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (7 million), Kingdom Hearts (5.6 million) Final Fantasy X (5 million), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (3.7 million), Final Fantasy XII (3.68 million).
All of those are cutscenes masquerading as games. Ever since Final Fantasy moved to the PlayStation, it's selling point has been pre-rendered cutscenes that sell despite the fact that the writing is so bad that when they tried to make a theatrical release they created one of the worst movies of all time. Kingdom Hearts is just Final Fantasy with Disney characters, and one of Metal Gear Solid's biggest selling points was the "professional voice-acting." I've played and beaten all those games (except Kingdom Hearts where I played about half) and enjoyed them all thoroughly. I'm not exactly sure why you're complaining that the games feature many cutscenes (and by the way, Metal Gear Solid cutscenes are not pre-rendered), that's the style of the game and how Konami and Squaresoft wish to tell their stories. No one is forcing you to play those games. Some people like playing games with dramatic stories and some people like lots of action, I happen to enjoy both. I also happen to think that Metal Gear Solid's storyline (though insane) is some of the best and most well written stuff out there. To each their own, no need to rip on the popular games because you don't like their style of storytelling.
I have a BA in Computer Science (and East Asian Studies). The difference between a BA and a BS at UW-Madison is a three credit online nutrition course. I just took a lot of foreign language when I was there and the BA came easily.
Agreed. Galaxies was nearly a disaster from the beginning and Sony continued to blunder at every step of the way. Other MMOs have succeeded without a giant billion dollar movie tie-in, people just recognize good stuff and crap when they see it.
Except in the real world, Japanese often do not make eye contact while in conversation. This is for various reasons and of course a generalization with no doubt many exceptions, but compared to Westerners, they do make less eye contact. So if you were trying to imply that Japanese emoticons are an extension of the people, I would disagree. But they definitely show off emotion better than Western emoticons. It'd be interesting to trace their origins, I'm guessing they're mostly from manga/anime where a few original artists have influenced nearly everyone else in art style.
I'd rather have a camera that detected when all the eyes were focused on it. Getting everyone to smile might be a tremendous feat, but getting everyone to simply look at the camera isn't as bad, and probably more important.
If your friends are complaining that Facebook is being ruined by the applications, they only have their own friends to blame for that. The only profiles you can generally see are your own friends and people in your network. If the apps are ruining your Facebook experience, stop going to people's profiles who overload on apps? Stop becoming friends with so many people that you're constantly getting app invites? I have about 50 friends and I'm barely ever bothered by the new applications. Most of the time it is my own wife that bothers me with crap and it's a simple click of the X button on the Ajax popup to never see anything related to this app ever again.
At least in Facebook the backgrounds aren't flashing and there aren't music videos clogging my tubes.
This is undoubtedly going on. People like us are doing it to screw with all squatters, and squatters are probably doing it to other squatters to get them to buy and keep crap domains. Doesn't seem to be helping much though.
Say you want domain xyz.com and you have no idea whether anyone else owns xyz.com or if it's in use.
1. DO NOT go to xyz.com. If it is being squatted then the squatters now have a hit on it, they have one more reason to keep it if they're just testing out the ICANN 5 day snatch and release policy.
2. Go to a registrar site and do a search on xyz.com
3. If no one owns it, buy it NOW. The first hour after your search could very well be the only time it is ever available ever again. There is a very high probability of this. If you do not buy it right away, by the time you come back it will be gone. A squatter will have bought the site to abuse the ICANN 5 day policy. If it gets enough hits, they will keep it, if not, they will release it and by the act of releasing some other squatter will probably pick it up. This will keep on repeating itself until you pay enough money for some just as evil company to grab it and sell it to you.
There's your guide to buying a domain name in three obnoxious steps.
If you teach your kids so well the values of "morals, and ethics, and personal responsibility" then why are you the one making the decision to block Facebook due to its "a detriment to the basic moral and ethical underpinnings of my kids' minds and hearts?"
Shouldn't they be able to quickly come to that conclusion themselves and block it instead of letting their parent always be in between such "underpinnings?"
Interesting decision considering the game Simpsons Hit and Run was basically a complete parody/ripoff of Grand Theft Auto set in the Simpsons universe.
This is basically done already. Squatters can buy a domain, and due to the rules that ICANN setup (I think it's ICANN), they can return the domain for free within something like five days. During those five days, they put up a squatting page and keep track of all the hits their site gets, if it gets X number of hits, they keep the domain, otherwise they drop it. All for free.
I recently did a search for a domain on GoDaddy, the domain was available. Three days later when I went to buy it, it was not available and had been recently bought by a squatter or reseller or something. This is a whole different problem altogether and another flaw in the system. Anyways, I made it a point not to go to that site to make sure I didn't give them any hits that would encourage them to keep it.
Either way, I just bought another available domain and use that. Can't be too picky these days.
I've beaten Shadow of the Colossus and that's a compelling thought... I guess the only thing that would make it even more interesting is if you had choices along the way, similar to Bioshock. Like if you had the choice to destroy the colossi or... who knows what else. But yeah, the ending sequence was crazy and I was actually a little close to tears. Great game, looking forward to whatever they do next.
Of course I use Java! (I was gonna say how great it is but I'll no doubt get modded down for that...)
But yes, there are some nasty methods out there, but that's the nature of the language. I was offered a widescreen monitor at work but opted for a second square one. Now if I could have two widescreen ones that would be awesome.
Platformers don't suddenly add a long story segment to appeal to adventures, so why add platform gaming to adventures. Combat games don't suddenly get a rich plot to appeal to adventures, so why add combat to adventures. Action games don't suddenly add character development to their heroes, so why add action to adventures. I would disagree with this notion. Very few games are narrowed down to such specific genres these days, most are cross-overs and combinations that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago but now are quite natural together. Let me look at your arguments one by one:
Platformers don't suddenly add a long story segment to appeal to adventures, so why add platform gaming to adventures. Many platformers are chock full of stories now: Super Mario Sunshine opens up with a relatively long cutscene and that's a Mario game! But there really aren't that many true platformers anymore either, look at Ratchet and Clank games. Platforming but tons of action too. Beyond Good and Evil could be categorized as a platformer and it has a pretty interesting story full of corruption and mystery.
Combat games don't suddenly get a rich plot to appeal to adventures, so why add combat to adventures. Not really sure what you mean by combat games, something like Street Fighter? Well, let's take a look at most recent fighters: story battles usually begin with the battlers crossing words and trying to develop some kind of history between them. If by combat you mean something like Contra then I don't really know how to provide an example against that as pure run-and-gunners are extremely rare.
Action games don't suddenly add character development to their heroes, so why add action to adventures. God of War? Onimusha? What if we extend action to first person shooter games: Bioshock, Half-Life? I'm not going to argue this one anymore.
I'm sure someone will reply and say so and so game isn't in truly in this genre, but that's the nature of the industry now. You can't force games into easily defined genres anymore because technology has allowed developers to do so much more. Ten years ago you had to decide: are we going to make a puzzle game or a first person shooter? Now we have Portal! A great combination of both! When was the last time you played a straight up adventure game? A straight up run and gun or a beat 'em up? Is this bad? I don't think so.
You can be upset that they failed at making a decent fighting engine for Dreamfall but you shouldn't be upset for experimenting and trying something new.
Turns out Consolas was already an available font so I'm trying it out in Eclipse. At size 10 it is smaller than Courier New so I'm trying to get used to it, setting it to size 11 is a little too big, but not much more than Courier New. Imagine I see 31 lines of code with Courier New size 10, I see 35 with Consolas size 10 and 29 lines with Consolas size 11.
Also turns out I didn't have ClearType on, so now I'm getting used to that too. Everything looks really weird, honestly not sure if I like it or not yet, but no headaches yet. Consolas looks great with ClearType on, and with ClearType off I actually didn't think it looked too bad, and didn't even realize I had it off until I saw my "M" and they looked really messed up. Gonna stick with it at least for the rest of the day.
My favorite part of the site is the testimonial quote on one of their pages:
"Thank goodness for John and his team. These big law firms just don't understand how to handle technology litigation. With their trial record, technology expertise, and legal and business perspective, they have been a godsend...."
-- Internet Content Company CEO. Whoops, think I just infringed some copyright.
Unfortunately the creative group behind Okami has been officially disbanded. I think the real minds behind Okami are still together at a new studio but I don't think anyone knows what they're working on.
Maybe the correct title would be "Viacom Puts the Entire Daily Show with Jon Stewart Archive Online as I think the show is technically called that now? But you're right, the show began in 1996 and Craig Kilborn was the host until 1999.
Okami is a great game (though the first hour or so is a snore) that will fit perfectly on the Wii. I already beat it on the PS2 so I won't be buying it, but it will reach a whole new audience on the Wii. The game deserves to sell more as it is so original and so fun.
It's a very difficult pronunciation for non-native speakers. It is actually pronounced something similar to "dew" but with a softer R-like sound than the straight D. The Japanese is phonetically spelled out as:
RI(yu)U
So the (yu) would modify the RI sound. There is a straight RU sound, so there is still some I sound left after the (yu) modification.
I still say Rye-yu though, because otherwise no one knows I'm talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
I can confirm that it is definitely a lot faster. It's really snappy now, besides that initial opening which still seems a little slow compared to most websites, though I don't use any webmail besides Gmail so I'm not sure if this is typical.
The new version was turned on automatically for me, I had a link to the Older Version at top.
Looks like he jumped from 655766 to 41, a pretty nice jump if you ask me, especially for a good cause.
Google Cache of a post of his
Regular Slashdot link (not sure if this will ever be updated to say 41)
Starting yesterday my Gmail Notifier Firefox extension stopped working at home where we have Comcast, but at work it works just fine. I thought maybe the plugin had broken due to some API changes or something but I thought it was odd it worked one place and not the other. This really seems like it's related and even though I believe Gmail Notifier is a third party extension, it's still accessing Google's servers.
Comcast is really pissing me off. But what's my other option: Qwest DSL.
You seem to forget that there's already an entire market of Asian cell phones out there that have already solved this problem.
All of those are cutscenes masquerading as games. Ever since Final Fantasy moved to the PlayStation, it's selling point has been pre-rendered cutscenes that sell despite the fact that the writing is so bad that when they tried to make a theatrical release they created one of the worst movies of all time. Kingdom Hearts is just Final Fantasy with Disney characters, and one of Metal Gear Solid's biggest selling points was the "professional voice-acting." I've played and beaten all those games (except Kingdom Hearts where I played about half) and enjoyed them all thoroughly. I'm not exactly sure why you're complaining that the games feature many cutscenes (and by the way, Metal Gear Solid cutscenes are not pre-rendered), that's the style of the game and how Konami and Squaresoft wish to tell their stories. No one is forcing you to play those games. Some people like playing games with dramatic stories and some people like lots of action, I happen to enjoy both. I also happen to think that Metal Gear Solid's storyline (though insane) is some of the best and most well written stuff out there. To each their own, no need to rip on the popular games because you don't like their style of storytelling.
I have a BA in Computer Science (and East Asian Studies). The difference between a BA and a BS at UW-Madison is a three credit online nutrition course. I just took a lot of foreign language when I was there and the BA came easily.
Agreed. Galaxies was nearly a disaster from the beginning and Sony continued to blunder at every step of the way. Other MMOs have succeeded without a giant billion dollar movie tie-in, people just recognize good stuff and crap when they see it.
Except in the real world, Japanese often do not make eye contact while in conversation. This is for various reasons and of course a generalization with no doubt many exceptions, but compared to Westerners, they do make less eye contact. So if you were trying to imply that Japanese emoticons are an extension of the people, I would disagree. But they definitely show off emotion better than Western emoticons. It'd be interesting to trace their origins, I'm guessing they're mostly from manga/anime where a few original artists have influenced nearly everyone else in art style.
I'd rather have a camera that detected when all the eyes were focused on it. Getting everyone to smile might be a tremendous feat, but getting everyone to simply look at the camera isn't as bad, and probably more important.
Why should Rockstar give in to the pressure? Why can't they release a game for adults in the first place? Why do they have to be censored?
If your friends are complaining that Facebook is being ruined by the applications, they only have their own friends to blame for that. The only profiles you can generally see are your own friends and people in your network. If the apps are ruining your Facebook experience, stop going to people's profiles who overload on apps? Stop becoming friends with so many people that you're constantly getting app invites? I have about 50 friends and I'm barely ever bothered by the new applications. Most of the time it is my own wife that bothers me with crap and it's a simple click of the X button on the Ajax popup to never see anything related to this app ever again.
At least in Facebook the backgrounds aren't flashing and there aren't music videos clogging my tubes.
This is undoubtedly going on. People like us are doing it to screw with all squatters, and squatters are probably doing it to other squatters to get them to buy and keep crap domains. Doesn't seem to be helping much though.
Say you want domain xyz.com and you have no idea whether anyone else owns xyz.com or if it's in use.
1. DO NOT go to xyz.com. If it is being squatted then the squatters now have a hit on it, they have one more reason to keep it if they're just testing out the ICANN 5 day snatch and release policy.
2. Go to a registrar site and do a search on xyz.com
3. If no one owns it, buy it NOW. The first hour after your search could very well be the only time it is ever available ever again. There is a very high probability of this. If you do not buy it right away, by the time you come back it will be gone. A squatter will have bought the site to abuse the ICANN 5 day policy. If it gets enough hits, they will keep it, if not, they will release it and by the act of releasing some other squatter will probably pick it up. This will keep on repeating itself until you pay enough money for some just as evil company to grab it and sell it to you.
There's your guide to buying a domain name in three obnoxious steps.
If you teach your kids so well the values of "morals, and ethics, and personal responsibility" then why are you the one making the decision to block Facebook due to its "a detriment to the basic moral and ethical underpinnings of my kids' minds and hearts?"
Shouldn't they be able to quickly come to that conclusion themselves and block it instead of letting their parent always be in between such "underpinnings?"
Interesting decision considering the game Simpsons Hit and Run was basically a complete parody/ripoff of Grand Theft Auto set in the Simpsons universe.
This is basically done already. Squatters can buy a domain, and due to the rules that ICANN setup (I think it's ICANN), they can return the domain for free within something like five days. During those five days, they put up a squatting page and keep track of all the hits their site gets, if it gets X number of hits, they keep the domain, otherwise they drop it. All for free.
I recently did a search for a domain on GoDaddy, the domain was available. Three days later when I went to buy it, it was not available and had been recently bought by a squatter or reseller or something. This is a whole different problem altogether and another flaw in the system. Anyways, I made it a point not to go to that site to make sure I didn't give them any hits that would encourage them to keep it.
Either way, I just bought another available domain and use that. Can't be too picky these days.
I've beaten Shadow of the Colossus and that's a compelling thought... I guess the only thing that would make it even more interesting is if you had choices along the way, similar to Bioshock. Like if you had the choice to destroy the colossi or... who knows what else. But yeah, the ending sequence was crazy and I was actually a little close to tears. Great game, looking forward to whatever they do next.
Of course I use Java! (I was gonna say how great it is but I'll no doubt get modded down for that...)
But yes, there are some nasty methods out there, but that's the nature of the language. I was offered a widescreen monitor at work but opted for a second square one. Now if I could have two widescreen ones that would be awesome.
I'm sure someone will reply and say so and so game isn't in truly in this genre, but that's the nature of the industry now. You can't force games into easily defined genres anymore because technology has allowed developers to do so much more. Ten years ago you had to decide: are we going to make a puzzle game or a first person shooter? Now we have Portal! A great combination of both! When was the last time you played a straight up adventure game? A straight up run and gun or a beat 'em up? Is this bad? I don't think so.
You can be upset that they failed at making a decent fighting engine for Dreamfall but you shouldn't be upset for experimenting and trying something new.
Turns out Consolas was already an available font so I'm trying it out in Eclipse. At size 10 it is smaller than Courier New so I'm trying to get used to it, setting it to size 11 is a little too big, but not much more than Courier New. Imagine I see 31 lines of code with Courier New size 10, I see 35 with Consolas size 10 and 29 lines with Consolas size 11.
Also turns out I didn't have ClearType on, so now I'm getting used to that too. Everything looks really weird, honestly not sure if I like it or not yet, but no headaches yet. Consolas looks great with ClearType on, and with ClearType off I actually didn't think it looked too bad, and didn't even realize I had it off until I saw my "M" and they looked really messed up. Gonna stick with it at least for the rest of the day.
-- Internet Content Company CEO. Whoops, think I just infringed some copyright.
Unfortunately the creative group behind Okami has been officially disbanded. I think the real minds behind Okami are still together at a new studio but I don't think anyone knows what they're working on.
Old:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clover_Studio
New:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeds_(developer)
New new (Seeds merged with some other company to form PlatinumGames)
No wikipedia article
Maybe the correct title would be "Viacom Puts the Entire Daily Show with Jon Stewart Archive Online as I think the show is technically called that now? But you're right, the show began in 1996 and Craig Kilborn was the host until 1999.
Okami is a great game (though the first hour or so is a snore) that will fit perfectly on the Wii. I already beat it on the PS2 so I won't be buying it, but it will reach a whole new audience on the Wii. The game deserves to sell more as it is so original and so fun.
It's a very difficult pronunciation for non-native speakers. It is actually pronounced something similar to "dew" but with a softer R-like sound than the straight D. The Japanese is phonetically spelled out as:
RI(yu)U
So the (yu) would modify the RI sound. There is a straight RU sound, so there is still some I sound left after the (yu) modification.
I still say Rye-yu though, because otherwise no one knows I'm talking about.