One important item to make note of here is that while the Sega Dreamcast was itself a decent system, Sega had already burned a lot of its customers with their numerous "1.5 systems." What I mean by that is, all of the many systems they created as extensions of current systems (Sega CD, 32X, etc..) that they sold as the next big thing, but completely failed on when it came to supporting them. I myself bought the 32X for $130 when it came out, and how many games were made for it? Less than 60.
Same with the Saturn, the ultimate 2D system, suddenly found itself floundering when the Playstation focused solely on 3D games and Sega dropped it, and went on with the Dreamcast.
After all of those, you could be sure I wasn't about to spend another dime on a Sega system, because how do I know its not another "1.5" system than will have its support cut out from under it in only a few months time.
I used to use one of those pilates balls and I found that it didn't get my back straight anymore than if I had gotten a very good chair. My natural comfort position on that ball was to sit back a little further than on center top and then I would keep on slouching my way to bad posture. In the end, I gave it up, got a very good chair, and just forced myself to sit up straight.
I thought this was the purpose of DOCTYPES. As I understand, the DOCTYPE determines the "mode" that the browser interpreter trys to read the page in. If no DOCTYPE has been specified, the browser reverts back to "most-compatible" mode. I think Internet Explorer referred to it as "quirks mode," but I'm not sure on that and I'm too lazy on a Sunday to look it up.
And that is where Peer Review comes into play. Obviously, the amount of images uploaded far outstrips their ability to monitor them.
Thus, they most likely only focus on those pictures that have been reported to be inappropriate. They may also actively check the most popular profiles since an inappropriate picture on one of them would have the widest reaching impact.
Well, its not really anything new. When the PS2 and Xbox were released, they jumped ahead of the current computer tech, however unlike computers, their hardware didn't upgrade over time as you can with a computer, and as a result, PCs soon caught up and jumped ahead. Now once again the consoles have jumped ahead and the computers will be behind for a little bit, but they will soon overtake again and then it will repeat over and over.
Funnily enough, I just bought one of these http://www.badbacks.com.au/product.asp?productID=1 35 because I noticed I was starting to round my upper back and also I was rolling my shoulders forward. I've had this thing for a few days now and so far it's been helping a lot.
I enjoy great looking games as much as anyone else, but I play games not just for the graphics, but to have a lot of -interactive- fun. If I just wanted to stare at pretty graphics all day, I'd go to the movies.
I am glad to see Nintendo innovating rather than just extending their past consoles, which it seems like all Microsoft and Sony want to do ("MORE POWER, ITS LEET!!! WOOO!!").
I was going to buy a PS3 for Metal Gear Solid 3 and Gran Turismo, but now I might just have to get the Wii.
For me, its not the fact that they are a Chinese manufacturer, but rather the performance of their computers is just not there.
Its the same as it was when Thinkpad was still an IBM product, they were tight little systems with perhaps a few cool features (butterfly keyboard anyone?), but when it came to the actual performance of the machine, competitors always beat them and at a cheaper price too.
Now if this is still true or not, I'm not sure, but that is my "impression" of the Thinkpad brand still leftover from the old IBM days.
For me, it was the fact that to play the latest computer games required you to keep shelling out a few grand each year to play the game at its best. Yes, I know most games scale according to hardware, but damn it, I want the game to look like it does on the box, and play like it should...SMOOTH, not choppy as all hell.
Now some would say, well why don't you get a console then? Um, I have a computer, and I like computer games. 'nuff said.
So rather than complain and complain about hardware requirements, I just decided to stop playing games. Problem fixed and now I have a 4-year old computer and aside from games, it runs everything I need it to quickly and without issues.
Where I work, we have 3 people (1 designer, 1 designer/programmer, and 1 programmer), and we manage over 50+ websites. Sometimes it gets a bit tough, especially when we have multiple sites requesting re-designs, but corporate just refuses to believe internet is where its at. Its sad too, because if they would just hire maybe 3 more people, we could easily double or triple our current internet profits within 1 year. However, corporate is old-fashioned, so I doubt that will ever be happening anytime soon.
I wouldn't count on this to change Sony's attitude. After all, this is the second time they have seriously dropped the ball when it came to market in which they didn't already dominate.
There were many times before the arrival of the Ipod that Sony had the best looking Mp3 players, and they always seemed to have the features I wanted. However, they made the idiotic move of making a user convert all of his songs to the ATRAC3 format. Seriously, who wants to deal with that crap? So what happens? Smaller players move in and dominate.
About time someone pointed out the obvious. The most mindnumbing about the whole RIAA/MPAA debacle is how they keep blaming their diminishing sales on the consumers as if we are required to buy so many of their products per year. Last time I checked, when a business's sales are dwindling, its time to try something new, or perhaps even innovate. However, their brand of innovation, i.e. suing everyone, seems to be a bit counter-productive.
Of course, it doesn't help when they have the government in their pocket either.
For me, the arrival of the "user reviews" were truly the best thing for the gaming public. I rarely ever read the actual review gamespot conducts on games, but I usually read the worst of the user reviews because most of the time the positive ones are just there to say "This gam3 r0cks!!!!", however the negative reviews aside from the 6-year old's "this gam3 sux0rs!" typically give me an accurate view of the title in question.
Same thing with movies, I never read critic's reviews on yahoo, or go by their average rating, I always check out the user reviews and overall user rating of the movie, which is much more accurate in my opinion.
I hardly play games anymore, but when I did, I found strategy guides to be a waste of money when I have my computer 2 feet away from me when I played console games. All I needed was http://gamefaqs.com/ and I pretty much had everything I needed to know, and thats not even mentioning all of the sites out there dedicated to individual games.
Tragically a young geek lost his (albeit lonely) life last night after starting a fire in his room of his parent's house. It would seem that the young and impetuous geek decided after reading an article on the technology news website "Slashdot," that building a computer out of a used whiskey bottle would be a good idea. However, upon emptying the bottle (and his bladder several times), the poor geek forgot to wash the bottle out and promptly started a fire the moment he turned his new "Whiskey PC" on and sadly, perished in the blaze.
Memorial services will be held in your MMORPG of choice in that "one zone."
I miss the days when a business that no longer provided quality products to their customers slowly faded away and went out of business. These days, we have the RIAA, MPAA, and now the game industry trying to point the finger for their lackluster sales at everyone but themselves. Not only that, they sue their own customers (and brag about it in the news!) and if that wasn't enough, they line of the pockets of politicians everywhere to pass laws basically designed to keep them in business.
Apple on the other hand seems to be actively listening to their customers and gives them what they want, rather than what the aforementioned companies do, which is try to tell us (the consumers) what we should want, and after they have watched another failure, sue us for not liking their products.
I swear I just read an article this week that stated that the latest studies have shown educational games not to be effective in learning due to students being distracted by the "pretty graphics" and sounds.
I'm sure its all well and good to be able to carry all that equipment without as much effort, but still, I question how seriously our army will be taken while looking as though all our soldier's have ghetto-booties?
Then again, it worked for JLo.
Of course the problem I have with many online newspaper websites is the fact that they require you to register to view their content. While I understand that is their right, I however can simply go to one of the many "free" news websites to get my daily dose of news.
It probably should be noted that this was "Over the last three months." But I'm not surprised Blizzard is going after the gold farmers. Annoyances to players aside, most of the gold farmers will simply buy another copy of the game (with a new serial number) to continue their farming operation which in turn earns Blizzard a bit more money. After all, if a copy of W.O.W. cost $30, and even if only 5000 of those 18000 bought another copy, thats still another $150,000 bucks to Blizzard. Probably the salarys of 3 full-time GMs right there.
Slashdot Mirror
One important item to make note of here is that while the Sega Dreamcast was itself a decent system, Sega had already burned a lot of its customers with their numerous "1.5 systems." What I mean by that is, all of the many systems they created as extensions of current systems (Sega CD, 32X, etc..) that they sold as the next big thing, but completely failed on when it came to supporting them. I myself bought the 32X for $130 when it came out, and how many games were made for it? Less than 60. Same with the Saturn, the ultimate 2D system, suddenly found itself floundering when the Playstation focused solely on 3D games and Sega dropped it, and went on with the Dreamcast. After all of those, you could be sure I wasn't about to spend another dime on a Sega system, because how do I know its not another "1.5" system than will have its support cut out from under it in only a few months time.
I used to use one of those pilates balls and I found that it didn't get my back straight anymore than if I had gotten a very good chair. My natural comfort position on that ball was to sit back a little further than on center top and then I would keep on slouching my way to bad posture. In the end, I gave it up, got a very good chair, and just forced myself to sit up straight.
I thought this was the purpose of DOCTYPES. As I understand, the DOCTYPE determines the "mode" that the browser interpreter trys to read the page in. If no DOCTYPE has been specified, the browser reverts back to "most-compatible" mode. I think Internet Explorer referred to it as "quirks mode," but I'm not sure on that and I'm too lazy on a Sunday to look it up.
And that is where Peer Review comes into play. Obviously, the amount of images uploaded far outstrips their ability to monitor them. Thus, they most likely only focus on those pictures that have been reported to be inappropriate. They may also actively check the most popular profiles since an inappropriate picture on one of them would have the widest reaching impact.
Well, its not really anything new. When the PS2 and Xbox were released, they jumped ahead of the current computer tech, however unlike computers, their hardware didn't upgrade over time as you can with a computer, and as a result, PCs soon caught up and jumped ahead. Now once again the consoles have jumped ahead and the computers will be behind for a little bit, but they will soon overtake again and then it will repeat over and over.
Not to mention the score is now on the far right from the title of comments.
Usability was definately not considered here.
Good point. I only wear it for approximately 4-5 hours on work days because of this very reason.
Funnily enough, I just bought one of these http://www.badbacks.com.au/product.asp?productID=1 35 because I noticed I was starting to round my upper back and also I was rolling my shoulders forward. I've had this thing for a few days now and so far it's been helping a lot.
I predict this will probably appear in the news in the next few weeks.
"And in a surprising move, Microsoft has chosen to make live.com the default homepage any new Internet Explorer installation."
Microsoft 1, Yahoo -screwed-
I enjoy great looking games as much as anyone else, but I play games not just for the graphics, but to have a lot of -interactive- fun. If I just wanted to stare at pretty graphics all day, I'd go to the movies.
I am glad to see Nintendo innovating rather than just extending their past consoles, which it seems like all Microsoft and Sony want to do ("MORE POWER, ITS LEET!!! WOOO!!").
I was going to buy a PS3 for Metal Gear Solid 3 and Gran Turismo, but now I might just have to get the Wii.
For me, its not the fact that they are a Chinese manufacturer, but rather the performance of their computers is just not there.
Its the same as it was when Thinkpad was still an IBM product, they were tight little systems with perhaps a few cool features (butterfly keyboard anyone?), but when it came to the actual performance of the machine, competitors always beat them and at a cheaper price too.
Now if this is still true or not, I'm not sure, but that is my "impression" of the Thinkpad brand still leftover from the old IBM days.
For me, it was the fact that to play the latest computer games required you to keep shelling out a few grand each year to play the game at its best. Yes, I know most games scale according to hardware, but damn it, I want the game to look like it does on the box, and play like it should...SMOOTH, not choppy as all hell.
Now some would say, well why don't you get a console then? Um, I have a computer, and I like computer games. 'nuff said.
So rather than complain and complain about hardware requirements, I just decided to stop playing games. Problem fixed and now I have a 4-year old computer and aside from games, it runs everything I need it to quickly and without issues.
Where I work, we have 3 people (1 designer, 1 designer/programmer, and 1 programmer), and we manage over 50+ websites. Sometimes it gets a bit tough, especially when we have multiple sites requesting re-designs, but corporate just refuses to believe internet is where its at. Its sad too, because if they would just hire maybe 3 more people, we could easily double or triple our current internet profits within 1 year. However, corporate is old-fashioned, so I doubt that will ever be happening anytime soon.
Aha, but will they still be functioning when Duke Nukem Forever gets released? I mean, 2514AD is a long ways away!
I wouldn't count on this to change Sony's attitude. After all, this is the second time they have seriously dropped the ball when it came to market in which they didn't already dominate.
There were many times before the arrival of the Ipod that Sony had the best looking Mp3 players, and they always seemed to have the features I wanted. However, they made the idiotic move of making a user convert all of his songs to the ATRAC3 format. Seriously, who wants to deal with that crap? So what happens? Smaller players move in and dominate.
About time someone pointed out the obvious. The most mindnumbing about the whole RIAA/MPAA debacle is how they keep blaming their diminishing sales on the consumers as if we are required to buy so many of their products per year. Last time I checked, when a business's sales are dwindling, its time to try something new, or perhaps even innovate. However, their brand of innovation, i.e. suing everyone, seems to be a bit counter-productive.
Of course, it doesn't help when they have the government in their pocket either.
For me, the arrival of the "user reviews" were truly the best thing for the gaming public. I rarely ever read the actual review gamespot conducts on games, but I usually read the worst of the user reviews because most of the time the positive ones are just there to say "This gam3 r0cks!!!!", however the negative reviews aside from the 6-year old's "this gam3 sux0rs!" typically give me an accurate view of the title in question.
Same thing with movies, I never read critic's reviews on yahoo, or go by their average rating, I always check out the user reviews and overall user rating of the movie, which is much more accurate in my opinion.
I hardly play games anymore, but when I did, I found strategy guides to be a waste of money when I have my computer 2 feet away from me when I played console games. All I needed was http://gamefaqs.com/ and I pretty much had everything I needed to know, and thats not even mentioning all of the sites out there dedicated to individual games.
To each his own I suppose.
Not to worry, I am sure the database was in error here, not the editors.
Silly database, why can't you just store the data correctly?!
AP News (12:44pm - EST) - Tragic Death of Geek
Tragically a young geek lost his (albeit lonely) life last night after starting a fire in his room of his parent's house. It would seem that the young and impetuous geek decided after reading an article on the technology news website "Slashdot," that building a computer out of a used whiskey bottle would be a good idea. However, upon emptying the bottle (and his bladder several times), the poor geek forgot to wash the bottle out and promptly started a fire the moment he turned his new "Whiskey PC" on and sadly, perished in the blaze.
Memorial services will be held in your MMORPG of choice in that "one zone."
I miss the days when a business that no longer provided quality products to their customers slowly faded away and went out of business. These days, we have the RIAA, MPAA, and now the game industry trying to point the finger for their lackluster sales at everyone but themselves. Not only that, they sue their own customers (and brag about it in the news!) and if that wasn't enough, they line of the pockets of politicians everywhere to pass laws basically designed to keep them in business.
Apple on the other hand seems to be actively listening to their customers and gives them what they want, rather than what the aforementioned companies do, which is try to tell us (the consumers) what we should want, and after they have watched another failure, sue us for not liking their products.
/rant off
I swear I just read an article this week that stated that the latest studies have shown educational games not to be effective in learning due to students being distracted by the "pretty graphics" and sounds.
Oh well, I always thought Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was fun.
I'm sure its all well and good to be able to carry all that equipment without as much effort, but still, I question how seriously our army will be taken while looking as though all our soldier's have ghetto-booties? Then again, it worked for JLo.
Of course the problem I have with many online newspaper websites is the fact that they require you to register to view their content. While I understand that is their right, I however can simply go to one of the many "free" news websites to get my daily dose of news.
It probably should be noted that this was "Over the last three months." But I'm not surprised Blizzard is going after the gold farmers. Annoyances to players aside, most of the gold farmers will simply buy another copy of the game (with a new serial number) to continue their farming operation which in turn earns Blizzard a bit more money. After all, if a copy of W.O.W. cost $30, and even if only 5000 of those 18000 bought another copy, thats still another $150,000 bucks to Blizzard. Probably the salarys of 3 full-time GMs right there.