That's surprising, since I use my RAZR as a bluetooth modem for my laptop when I need to. Sure I only get 19200 baud, but it does work. I believe your facts are incorrect.
proprietary version of CDMA which is not even compatible with any of the GSM hardware out there.
You do realize that GMS and CDMA are entirely different standards, right? What you just said there makes no sense.
I'm not a fan of Verizon either, but all the carriers in the US lock their phones. And the decision to go CDMA or GSM is largely made by the phone manufacturer, based most entirely on market penetration.
Last I checked, violence WAS an every day part of life. You can't watch the news without hearing about a soldier getting blown up or a local murder.
Even before video games, we had cops and robbers, coyboys and indians, eskimos and seals... whatever. After that we play organized sports. Anybody here who played football knows what I mean.
That's only part of the problem. The other (bigger, IMHO) part is that these people are still equating the phrase 'video game' to the word 'kids'. The possibility that a video game could be made for adults is just as inconceivable as a porno film made for children to these people.
No offense, but it sounds like the problem lies with your lifestyle/tastes, not with their chosen distribution methods. People buy DVDs all the time, so I don't think that the DVD business model is all that broken.
People make time for what is important. Your kids are more important than watching a movie... I can agree with that. But just because you don't have time doesn't mean that DVDs are the "wrong vehicle." Also, you did catch the part about downloads, right?
Time traveling is is pretty much cheating, and like all forms of cheating, the 'fun' wears off pretty quickly for most people. I wouldn't exactly call 'lack of being able to cheat' a flaw in the MMO idea.
I call BS. I've done some homebrew- not a lot, but enough that I read the gbadev forums regularly. I've never read of firmware updates before, and it seems like that would be a pretty huge topic. I've never seen a game tell me it was flashing the firmware, which seems like the sort of thing you would want to warn a user about; we'd hear a ton of pissed parents moaning because their kids turned off their DS while it was flashing otherwise. Third, if they could flash the DS, you would think that they would try to curb the cards like the R4DS, which would also be huge news. Forth, as has already been posted, in order to fully flash the device, you have to bridge two contacts on the board. The protected area is where all the interesting parts of the firmware are. They wouldn't be able to change a lot without these two contacts bridged.
What you may be thinking of is when the first WFC game was released (Mario Kart) the Wifi information was stored in a section of flash that was thought to be unused thusfar, which resulted in some trashed DS consoles.
Wrong. DLDI patching is needed for EVERY homebrew that uses DLDI (which are most of the new ones, thankfully.) Just because some might offer an R4 already-patched download doesn't mean that the R4 is some magical card that plays everything without the driver patched in.
And how would they ever get their results? Yes, they could *possibly* cause some havoc by getting the bots to fight amongst themselves until the owner patches it, but if they are trying to gauge the size of this thing, spoofing IPs isn't going to help.
Oh please, can't we NOT have a conversation on slashdot without somebody bringing up a car analogy?
And if you have to make one, at least make it close. Your analogy would be a bit closer if: 1) We only had a small handful of cars to easily choose from, one per mainstream OS. 2) Nearly all car maintenance was done by some young geek that you happen to personally know.
While I'm not sure of the parent's reasons, the underlying point that people get what their 'family computer kid' recommends them is not too far off. If they can't fix it, they aren't likely to recommend it, and if they aren't using it (the reason why doesn't really matter), that holds a lot of weight with somebody that doesn't know anything about the different operating systems. They want to use what you are using.
Yes I do expect that. For them to do anything else is an anti-trust violation in my eyes. They are using their monopoly of the lines to sabotage the competition. I'd call that a pretty clear violation.
I'd love to see some data backing up this claim of yours. From where I'm sitting (Michigan), your statement is totally wrong.
Even if you did manage the pull some data somewhere, I'd bet the definitions are a tad warped. Take my rather large town, for instance. Comcast is the only cable provider here. And while DSL does exist in the town, it does NOT reach into the rural areas where most of the people actually live. So yes, you could say that DSL is available in this particular 'Comcast market' but that doesn't actually apply for many people. Certainly not me.
Also, satellite internet is not an option for people that use their high speed internet for anything other than checking email and surfing the web.
Wait, what? An injunction to halt Linux development? Even if a judge granting an injunction against the Linux Foundation, which might stop Linus from his work on the kernel, I I don't see how it would suddenly halt the development. Worst case, it would fork off and somebody else would take the responsibility until it was resolved. Probably somebody in the EU were software patents don't mean squat.
Also, I'm not entirely convinced that Linus saying not to seek out patent filings directly equates to willful intent. I've heard of this strategy numerous times, and I do not ever recall it being tied to willful intent. Lack of responsibility, sure, but not intent.
If Ballmer's words aren't a textbook example of FUD, I don't know what is.
I might be wrong here, but from what I remember reading forever ago, there is nothing stopping a 3rd party from implementing their own network for the DS. They would have to foot the bill for all the hardware and bandwidth though, which might be enough of a deterrent.
Not only that, but if there is one thing that all MMOs have in common, it's patches. Patches to add content, patches to fix exploits, or just balance changes. It's the method that they use to help ensure people keep paying for a subscription. A patching system would take a pretty novel approach to do this, and I doubt Nintendo would allow it because it would pretty much allow people to run potentially unsigned code on a signed card, once they figure out how to update it. OR, it's entirely all server-side, which has its own problems.
As somebody that has to work with useless vendors to get answers to my questions, I would jump at the chance to search through some forums to answer my own questions.
Have you listened to Year Zero? If the record is any indication, Trent has some pretty interesting anti-establishment ideals as well. Hell, just about every record he puts out has at least one "fuck the man" song on it.
Also, Prince was not the "first" to play every instrument. Besides, I don't think you can be inspired by something like that. You either have the talent and gusto to play all/most of the instruments yourself, or you don't. I highly doubt it that Trent heard a Prince album and said "Hey that sounds good! I should learn the guitar/drums/bass/synth and play everything myself, like Prince does."
Yes, private webmasters have the right to not serve me the webpage I asked for, for any reason they can come up with. That is within their rights (assuming it's not some public service).
Of course, exercising that right is technically difficult on the web. Still, that's not my problem.
I'm like you. I turn off the adblock extension when I'm visiting websites that I care about. Webcomics and other sites that are providing a service to me for free that I enjoy. This was a moral judgment on my part, and it fulfills my conscience.
Your boss demands a report that you know is totally useless. After trying to deter him/her you eventually give up and just do it, and not surprisingly, it is totally useless.
I very much disagree. All you're doing is moving the problem from the label on the hard-drive box to the drive-properties window in the OS.
The point is, information is still stored in bytes. If I ask the OS to tell me how much space I have left on a partition, I want to know how much data I can fit on it. REALLY fit on it- and I don't want to have to do math in my head to figure it out.
While I agree that this is an annoyance and we would all like it to be fixed, I don't think this is the way of going about it. While I won't come right out and say that "X should do Y!" I will ask this: Why are hard-drives the only storage media that uses SI units for size? Floppy disks and optical discs both use the 1024 notation on the boxes. Heck, if I remember right, even RAM does. Is there something about hard-drives that I don't know?
Ever heard of DirectX? While some of the engines that you mentioned may have the option of using OpenGL or DirectX, I don't think many hand-rolled engines do.
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That's surprising, since I use my RAZR as a bluetooth modem for my laptop when I need to. Sure I only get 19200 baud, but it does work. I believe your facts are incorrect.
I'm not a fan of Verizon either, but all the carriers in the US lock their phones. And the decision to go CDMA or GSM is largely made by the phone manufacturer, based most entirely on market penetration.
Why do you think they make those Nerf bats? They're sure as hell not for hitting baseballs.
Last I checked, violence WAS an every day part of life. You can't watch the news without hearing about a soldier getting blown up or a local murder.
Even before video games, we had cops and robbers, coyboys and indians, eskimos and seals... whatever. After that we play organized sports. Anybody here who played football knows what I mean.
That's only part of the problem. The other (bigger, IMHO) part is that these people are still equating the phrase 'video game' to the word 'kids'. The possibility that a video game could be made for adults is just as inconceivable as a porno film made for children to these people.
No offense, but it sounds like the problem lies with your lifestyle/tastes, not with their chosen distribution methods. People buy DVDs all the time, so I don't think that the DVD business model is all that broken.
People make time for what is important. Your kids are more important than watching a movie... I can agree with that. But just because you don't have time doesn't mean that DVDs are the "wrong vehicle." Also, you did catch the part about downloads, right?
Well, it's still being patched, even if it's automatically. Can we both be right? ;-)
Time traveling is is pretty much cheating, and like all forms of cheating, the 'fun' wears off pretty quickly for most people. I wouldn't exactly call 'lack of being able to cheat' a flaw in the MMO idea.
I call BS. I've done some homebrew- not a lot, but enough that I read the gbadev forums regularly. I've never read of firmware updates before, and it seems like that would be a pretty huge topic. I've never seen a game tell me it was flashing the firmware, which seems like the sort of thing you would want to warn a user about; we'd hear a ton of pissed parents moaning because their kids turned off their DS while it was flashing otherwise. Third, if they could flash the DS, you would think that they would try to curb the cards like the R4DS, which would also be huge news. Forth, as has already been posted, in order to fully flash the device, you have to bridge two contacts on the board. The protected area is where all the interesting parts of the firmware are. They wouldn't be able to change a lot without these two contacts bridged.
What you may be thinking of is when the first WFC game was released (Mario Kart) the Wifi information was stored in a section of flash that was thought to be unused thusfar, which resulted in some trashed DS consoles.
Wrong. DLDI patching is needed for EVERY homebrew that uses DLDI (which are most of the new ones, thankfully.) Just because some might offer an R4 already-patched download doesn't mean that the R4 is some magical card that plays everything without the driver patched in.
And how would they ever get their results? Yes, they could *possibly* cause some havoc by getting the bots to fight amongst themselves until the owner patches it, but if they are trying to gauge the size of this thing, spoofing IPs isn't going to help.
Oh please, can't we NOT have a conversation on slashdot without somebody bringing up a car analogy?
And if you have to make one, at least make it close. Your analogy would be a bit closer if: 1) We only had a small handful of cars to easily choose from, one per mainstream OS. 2) Nearly all car maintenance was done by some young geek that you happen to personally know.
While I'm not sure of the parent's reasons, the underlying point that people get what their 'family computer kid' recommends them is not too far off. If they can't fix it, they aren't likely to recommend it, and if they aren't using it (the reason why doesn't really matter), that holds a lot of weight with somebody that doesn't know anything about the different operating systems. They want to use what you are using.
Yes I do expect that. For them to do anything else is an anti-trust violation in my eyes. They are using their monopoly of the lines to sabotage the competition. I'd call that a pretty clear violation.
Hell, he's lucky to have more than one choice.
I'd love to see some data backing up this claim of yours. From where I'm sitting (Michigan), your statement is totally wrong.
Even if you did manage the pull some data somewhere, I'd bet the definitions are a tad warped. Take my rather large town, for instance. Comcast is the only cable provider here. And while DSL does exist in the town, it does NOT reach into the rural areas where most of the people actually live. So yes, you could say that DSL is available in this particular 'Comcast market' but that doesn't actually apply for many people. Certainly not me.
Also, satellite internet is not an option for people that use their high speed internet for anything other than checking email and surfing the web.
Wait, what? An injunction to halt Linux development? Even if a judge granting an injunction against the Linux Foundation, which might stop Linus from his work on the kernel, I I don't see how it would suddenly halt the development. Worst case, it would fork off and somebody else would take the responsibility until it was resolved. Probably somebody in the EU were software patents don't mean squat.
Also, I'm not entirely convinced that Linus saying not to seek out patent filings directly equates to willful intent. I've heard of this strategy numerous times, and I do not ever recall it being tied to willful intent. Lack of responsibility, sure, but not intent.
If Ballmer's words aren't a textbook example of FUD, I don't know what is.
I might be wrong here, but from what I remember reading forever ago, there is nothing stopping a 3rd party from implementing their own network for the DS. They would have to foot the bill for all the hardware and bandwidth though, which might be enough of a deterrent.
Not only that, but if there is one thing that all MMOs have in common, it's patches. Patches to add content, patches to fix exploits, or just balance changes. It's the method that they use to help ensure people keep paying for a subscription. A patching system would take a pretty novel approach to do this, and I doubt Nintendo would allow it because it would pretty much allow people to run potentially unsigned code on a signed card, once they figure out how to update it. OR, it's entirely all server-side, which has its own problems.
As somebody that has to work with useless vendors to get answers to my questions, I would jump at the chance to search through some forums to answer my own questions.
Huh, well I stand corrected. Still, I wonder if he actually said that, or if it was "inferred" by the interviewer. Either way, thanks for the info.
Have you listened to Year Zero? If the record is any indication, Trent has some pretty interesting anti-establishment ideals as well. Hell, just about every record he puts out has at least one "fuck the man" song on it. Also, Prince was not the "first" to play every instrument. Besides, I don't think you can be inspired by something like that. You either have the talent and gusto to play all/most of the instruments yourself, or you don't. I highly doubt it that Trent heard a Prince album and said "Hey that sounds good! I should learn the guitar/drums/bass/synth and play everything myself, like Prince does."
Yes, private webmasters have the right to not serve me the webpage I asked for, for any reason they can come up with. That is within their rights (assuming it's not some public service).
Of course, exercising that right is technically difficult on the web. Still, that's not my problem.
I'm like you. I turn off the adblock extension when I'm visiting websites that I care about. Webcomics and other sites that are providing a service to me for free that I enjoy. This was a moral judgment on my part, and it fulfills my conscience.
This may enlighten you:
Your boss demands a report that you know is totally useless. After trying to deter him/her you eventually give up and just do it, and not surprisingly, it is totally useless.
I very much disagree. All you're doing is moving the problem from the label on the hard-drive box to the drive-properties window in the OS.
The point is, information is still stored in bytes. If I ask the OS to tell me how much space I have left on a partition, I want to know how much data I can fit on it. REALLY fit on it- and I don't want to have to do math in my head to figure it out.
While I agree that this is an annoyance and we would all like it to be fixed, I don't think this is the way of going about it. While I won't come right out and say that "X should do Y!" I will ask this: Why are hard-drives the only storage media that uses SI units for size? Floppy disks and optical discs both use the 1024 notation on the boxes. Heck, if I remember right, even RAM does. Is there something about hard-drives that I don't know?
Ever heard of DirectX? While some of the engines that you mentioned may have the option of using OpenGL or DirectX, I don't think many hand-rolled engines do.