Remember the MiniDisk?
The UMD is just a MiniDisk with a Mini DVD and a rounded case.
When The MiniDisk came out, it was touted by Sony as the replacement for the Cassette Tape.
The Mini Disk would have replaced the Cassette Tape however the payer was expensive compared to the CD player which eventually did replace the Tape Cassette. The MD is still around today and was a success in the Japanese and Asian market however it did not do all that well in the US and Western market. In many ways the MD was much more superior to the Cassette Tape since it could be recorded on many 100's of thousands of times compared to a few 100 times (if you were lucky) of the Cassette tape. Everyone remember the streams of tape lying on the road from stuffed tapes?
The UMD was a design that was quite good when the psp was first produced and 1.8GB was quite a reasonable capacity for such a small robust device. An open disk (ie. mini DVD) design would have been a catastrophe since it could be easily scratched. You basically have to jump on a UMD to do it damage and even then you may just crack the case and disk can still play.
It is difficult to say what could replace the UMD since even Flash cards today are no were near as cheap as what it takes to produce an UMD disk. On an interesting note you can put in a Memory Stick (Sony or other vendor) into the PSP to extend its storage capacity and if you have the right firmware you can put a lot of older games on it.
I think people should realise that the PSP like the DS a hand-held and given that the screen resolution does not have to be that high vendors don't have to produce high definition games for it hence the overall size of a game will remain within the 1.8GB capacity. Even DS games aren't any were near 1.8GB and I don't see the DS failing because of this any time soon.
I have always had Nintendo consoles from the NES right through to the Gamecube. In addition I have the PS1, PS2 and pS3 and if it was not for the fact that my PS3 is backwards compatible with PS2 games I would have given the so-called next gen consoles a miss. It is not that I don't like some of the Wii games it is just that they all appear to be a rehash of previous games with minor cosmetic differences and this I have also found true (IMHO) of the Xbox360 and PS3 games although that is now starting to slowly change. Still if people like the latest instalment of Mario or the latest FPS game then that is their prerogative. From my perspective I would love to see an innovative game and at the moment all I see is the same old same old.
As for Microsoft well I don't like their ethics so I make it a point of not buying any products of theirs. To be fair though the Xbox360 does have a better selection of games than the PS3 although with backwards compatibility I have hundreds more games to choose from which save me a considerable amount of money and the graphics via my PS3 are enhanced and look exceptionally good on my HDTV while my gamecube games (which did look quite nice on my old SDTV and acceptable on my 37" HDTV) hardly get played at all.
I know it is "all about games" but good graphics helps. A simple test, try playing Zelda 1 on a 37" plus HDTV then play it on a PC with an emulator there is a huge difference, the fun factor is there on both but being able to see an "un-jaggied" Link adds more enjoyment to the game. This is the same when you compare the SD output of the Wii to the HD output of the PS3 or the Xbox360 although to be fair if you only have a small HDTV then the graphical difference between all three consoles is not as noticeable but once you compare on larger HDTV's and they are getting quite affordable then you can really see the difference.
The HD gaming market is going to be a area that Nintendo will have to address and since the purchase of HDTV's is taking off Nintendo better start thinking about a HD capable Wii although I have noticed that the Nintendo name is synonymous with gaming and for many years Nintendo had their monochrome gameboy and still killed off superior full colour hand-helds. It was not until the PSP that they started to have competition. I know the PSP is about 37M to the DS's 80M but that is still good competition compared to other hand-helds.
The Xbox 360 Arcade only has 256mb of storage. The only systems that currently have 'upwards of 80gb' are the Xbox 360 Elite and recent versions of the Playstation 3. Most console owners will either have an earlier Xbox 360 giving them 20gb or 60gb, or an earlier Playstation 3 with 20gb, 40gb or 60gb.
Actually earlier version of the PS3 (US and Japan) had 80GB (the 20GB one was quickly withdrawn) it is only now that this seems to be the standard although you could always install legally and with no loss of warranty any standard 2.5" disk drive internally no mater what type of PS3 you purchased. You can connect any size disk via USB which is great for backup or media storage purposes.
That aside I do think that Nintendo has missed an opportunity here. For games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero the absence of dowloadable content is a big minus point. If they had allowed usb hard drives to be attached for storage it would solve a lot of problems, providing the transfer speed was good enough.
You have a good point here although the way Nintendo is rolling in money at the moment I don't think that is a priority for them although that may change if the take-up of HDTV continues in most first world countries. Still the Wii output even though it is Standard Definition looks quite acceptable on HDTV's smaller than 42" and even if the Wii is relegated to the kids room and only brought out for parties that is still a huge market.
Australia is *far* more down to earth than the US government.
It would be quite a powerful crime fighting tool being able to get a bank robber's licence plate number and being able to track them within minutes of the robbery.
In principle you are right however a bank robber with any clue will steal a car and use that for the robbery then dump the car and change to one or even two other cars to throw of the police. If the thieves are blatant they may even catch a train or bus (sans masks of course).
Actually the police have more chance of identifying a thief from the crime scene and can arrest them while protecting themselves and the public. High speed chases may catch a thief in the end but when a thief perceives they don't have anything to loose they don't care about their life or anyone else's.
What is scary is not so much the thief (yes they are rat bags) but the Governments who erode human rights by using the "greater protection excuse". It is debatable that it provides greater security for the average citizen but the greater the surveillance the more it can be abused but of course we all know that could never happen.
On a side note in NSW Australia where I live all speed and red light cameras require signs warning that a camera is ahead while other states don't have to do this. This is what we would call revenue raising so the NSW Government made it mandatory to have signs placed to avoid being seen as money grabbing (I think it was also close to an election as well). Speed cameras even in NSW do catch speeders (normally doing 10 km/h over the posted limit) but only those who excessively speed and are not paying attention. They did try to get the cameras painted black in some areas but the voter backlash would have made doing this political suicide.
Before buying from anywhere I would do my homework on what type of system I require and how much I would be willing to pay. Since you want a gaming rig I would assume you would go for a good quad core cpu with a quality mother board, at least 4GB memory (dictated by your mother board and possibly your OS) and a good quality graphics card (can cost almost as much as your base PC) that you would be satisfied with for the next two to three years. As for a hard disk I would recommend a a smaller disk for my OS and a larger disk for my main storage. Don't forget an external disk that is capable of backing up your data (your choice) which will add extra but is definately worth it. It is also worth purchasing a good case (450W to 600W) with large fans (lights are fun but not necessary) since large fans are also quiet fans and great for the PC user.
Now for software. Most gamers choose a Microsoft OS because that is what most commercial games run on and you will most likely have to get some virus protection software as well. How you get this is up to you although some shops will build the whole PC for you with an OEM version of MS Vista or even XP (less likely now) for a reasonable price.
Once you have decided on your OS and your hardware you will need to decide on a monitor. This is where the fun starts because you want a good monitor that is 20" to 24" (bigger if you can afford it) but you also want a good response time and reliability so a quality monitor (it will cost more) is a good choice. Actually a good rule of thumb is the monitor should be anything from a quarter to half the price of the computer. If you get a good monitor it normally is worth paying for a nice "practical" computer desk although I would recommend being very careful here since the key word is "practical" not necessarily pretty.
Even after making a choice on hardware you really don't want to buy from a number of shops since you could spend a lot on postal or even driving around. As I have said before some small shops will for a reasonable cost assemble your PC and provide an OEM OS and possibly a warranty if you buy most of the components from them.
Note I have not included a DVD player/recorder or even a DVD/Blu-ray player/recorder which are getting cheaper at US200 (25GB write) but for gaming DVD is fine. You also may want to think about wireless, Buetooth and/or wired Ethernet cards. For gaming a good mouse and keyboard is essential so don't get cheap ones or you will regret it. Wireless can be more expensive but very functional however most rabid gamers prefer wired (the choice is yours).
Like I have said from the start you need to do some homework before you decide. Do this well and you could save a considerable amount of money and at the same time be very happy with your purchase. Remember you get what you pay for so don't try to get the cheapest, get what is the best value for your money.
You buy a special USB stick/SD card, etc. You go to kiosk and get movies. Keep em as long as you want limited to the size of the stick. HD movies take up more space, natch. Kiosk has a thousand or so titles but you can 'pre-order' anything in their collection and have it waiting at your neighborhood kiosk. The website gives you an estimated time when you can pickup your order and it shoots it over a high speed link.
Even the best USB or SD/MC/CF/MS card has a write speed between 1MB/sec and 10MB/s and you really pay for the high speed ones. Even compressing a HD movie to about 8GB to 15GB and you may get 1080p (1920x180 resolution) but this going to take about 15 to 25 minutes to download. I can really see this being a viable method of quickly storing movies.
As for "shooting an order over high speed link". You may be one of the few people in the world that can afford unlimited bandwidth, however many ISP's are starting to put caps on data usage and I don't see this stopping any time soon.
Like it or not the CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray sized disk is still a viable physical size for storing and handling information. Memory cards while good and if you look at the "micro's" can be very small and easy to loose, however even looking in my crystal ball I cannot see them being cheaper than "plastic" media. Blu-ray disks being of the same ilk as CD's or DVD's are not that expensive (about $0.50 in OEM quantities) to manufacture and existing CD/DVD production systems can be upgraded. For those who cannot remember DVD's were quite expensive in 1999 and comparing price to the length of time in the market Blu-ray disks are actually relatively cheaper and much more robust.
This is not to say that Blu-ray won't be superseded, it will, as will CD and DVD as well as flash chips. The question to ask is with what, that is what the pathetic article did not cover.
I think from past experience (Linux 64-bit) that we'll be waiting a long time for Flash on this one... other than that it seems like a great idea to do what they did!
I run 64 bit Fedora 9 on my HP laptop and flash runs fine within my 64 bit Firefox browser. Most of my applications also run 64 bit with the only exceptions being my SNES (zsnes) and Sega Genius/Megadrive (Dgen) native rpm installable (not Wine) emulators and they run fine with a nice GUI front-end as well (Ah nostalgia).
The only thing I can't do on my Fedora laptop is run Microsoft Office since I am not willing to pay for it or pirate it, but who cares since I can run Open Office. For more sophisticated jobs I can use 64 bit software that in the majority of cases is legitimately free.
'After earthquakes and after tsunamis the only structures that still survive are trees,'
Assuming you don't mind the wait for the shaped trees to grow the above sounds good, except I don't think the author thought about forest or even boring old house fires which can be more devastating than earthquakes or tsunamis which can easily be avoided if you pick the right place to live, unfortunately too many people don't. Wood burns when subject to enough heat and even treated wood which can be made fire resistant can give off poisonous fumes.
Learn javascript. It's by far the most valuable language on that list if you already know PHP and IMHO, the most fun regardless.
Pros:
Functions are objects
Objects are functions
Cross-platorm
Easy to learn
Will blow your mind when you finally gaze upon it's vast majesty
Cons:
Slowish
Client-side only
Err no!
Choosing a language is dependent on what is required to do a particular job. Too many people start to program first with a language they are comfortable with and with only a vague idea on what is required, after all you don't program in a compilable language when a few simple or maybe not so simple commands with appropriate options will do the work in a fraction of the time.
When I say "required" I don't mean what you or even the customer wants, it may be but if you analyse the problem from an initial overview and work down to finer details, that is "What do we want to achieve here and how should this be achieved?" Once you get this right and it may take a while so good communication skills are essential, especially if you work with people who's primary language is not yours. Choosing a programming language or even languages if appropriate, should be made only when everyone knows what is required. Getting it "right" is much more appropriate than just picking a programming language and hacking, although it may not be as much fun.
Now I will do the "monkey dance". Write, Test, Document, Write, Test, Document, Write, Test, Document.......:-)
When time or special circumstance doesn't allow bids, there certainly needs to be a detailed report on the reasons one vendor was chosen over another. Someone needs to put his ass on the line and say "Symphony, StarOffice, Openoffice.org, and Gnome Office don't meet our needs" for reasons a, b, and c. When an accountant comes back to audit the department, he'll back those up or pay the price.
In theory you are correct however that is not the way Government departments work. In Australia we have a taxation year between 1st July to the 30th June and at the beginning of the tax year most Government departments receive a budget allocation. It would be a very courageous IT manager that could go to his/her department head and say we can slash our budget by upto say 60% by choosing open software such as Open Office and the savings could be spent on upgrading the IT infrastructure.
What normally happens in the above scenario is the upgrade never happens because there are few people in authority that will sanction this since they perceive that the old hardware is good enough because you normally can extend the life of the current equipment with open software and the IT managers budget is slashed. Of course when the time comes to replace the ageing equipment the IT manger is accused of overspending.
Most IT managers are well aware (or should be aware) of this double standard and to keep their jobs and credibility take the easy way and buy Microsoft products since all senior department heads know about Microsoft and appear quite amenable to a three or four year hardware and possibly software update cycle even though in the long term it is much more expensive, however this can be easily and consistently budgeted for with only an acceptable increase per year.
Actually it is very easy for IT department heads to justify proprietary software over open software since they only have to point to many Microsoft and so called unbiased web sites that show Microsoft software has a much better Total Cost of Ownership than open software. The "How to Lie with Statistics" technique.
Do I think this is right? I don't but that is Government business politics for you.
No doubt that most games should focus less on technicals and more on entertaining us.
What are some of the biggest successes of the last few years? IT's Guitar Hero, Wii and DS.
And imagine what these big $20 million budgets on the 360 or PS3 could do if they used lesser tech like last gen graphics engines?
You would have alot more variety in art, better loading times, more refined gameplay and many more interesting and new ways to play games. The tradeoff is lesser graphics, but I would take it.
The Wii and DS are respectively a gaming console and hand-held gaming console while "Guitar Hero" is a game. I think the games in no particular order that have been really popular are the Super Mario, Zelda and Metroid franchises. Most games for better or worse that have seen multiple releases such as the games I mentioned previously as well as games like Halo, Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank and sports games too numerous to mention have been very successful. By this I mean have done very well for the profit margin of the particular gaming house.
The problem I see is that there are too many games coming out now that are just "milked" franchises with little if any innovation. To me an example of game innovation in a game franchise is when what was traditionally a 2D side-scrolling and/or platformer game to a full 3D game. The transition for some games IMHO was great for some of course not that good but after awhile we get get to the "same" "same" fare.
Unfortunately we seem to be seeing too much of the same game just dressed up in different finery as the latest so called "innovative" game. It is not that I dislike all franchises but I think that many gaming houses take the easy approach to game development by pushing out similar games which as far as they are concerned if it earns money with little if any innovation and people still continue to buy then they are happy to do this.
As for better graphics I still like some of the old NES games but I don't think they would look good on a HDTV since they are better played on a small screen TV or a PC. The gaming houses are starting to target the HDTV market and that means higher resolution and more realistic games. That is the way the market is going and like it or not that is what Nintendo will have to cater for eventually although if you look as the success of the monochrome Gameboy it could be a while.
As for a HD game (PS3 and Xbox360) costing more than a SD game (PS2, Wii and Gamecube), that's debatable since many game designers use a gaming design tools or applications for the target machine, most graphics designers are not software programmers. The greatest cost for any game is not the actual software but the overall costs associated with initial design through implantation, production and distribution. Once you have a gaming engine such as those used for a FPS game then it very easy to churn out plenty of FPS games and we are seeing plenty of these on the Xbox360 and now the PS3.
I know many people think that the Wii is easier to program for and games should be cheaper. The problem is that many gaming houses are just pushing out "shovel-ware" with the attitude of "if you could develop for the Gamecube you should be able to develop for the Wii". It is just the motion sensing that makes developing for the Wii painful. Some game work well with this type of control some game don't and IMHO most don't.
Most new release games I have seen in Australia are at AU$99 for the Wii and from AU$99 to AU$120 fro PS3 and Xbox360 games so Wii game developers are not passing on their so called development saving to the customer. For those interested AU$1 = US$0.86 and compared for what games are worth in the US we get ripped off, it is no wonder that many gamers here are importing games which for the PS3 is no issue (no region protection) although if we import a Wii game then it must be PAL which means the UK and Europe and some Asian countries and import costs can make this non viable.
The only thing the PS3 lacks as a great BD player is analog outs for audio. You're stuck with HDMI (great if your TV or receiver has it) or you have to use optical, which can downmix the audio depending on the format it is in.
You are wrong on this, it is very easy to configure the PS3 to output in composite (ie. video - standard definition plus L/R stereo - ok but!) or component (ie, L/R stereo - ok but! plus 3 video cables - upto 1080p) or you could use optical sound (on a good sound system it's fantastic) or you could use HDMI. Of course if you really want you can mix your outputs.
I normally use HDMI for my video although I have tried component which also looks and sounds great. Since my sound system has HDMI switching I don't want to use my HDTV speakers (they are ok but not fantastic) so I tried the L/R stereo connection from my component cables (sounds quite good). Next I used the optical out since my sound system supports this (Wow! impressive).
Most modern LCD/Plasma HDTV's (720p and/or 1080p) do take HDMI but component is great as well and if you have a good sound system that supports optical, that is the way to go unless your sound system can split off sound from HDMI.
Anyone IMHO who uses composite cables to a HDTV is really doing themselves a disservice, unfortunately many people don't know and if you have a friend who has done this please point it out to them since good component and/or HDMI cables are not that expensive unless you go for the so-called top brands like "Monster", then I think I would shake my head and walk away.
Wow a blast from the past. Landstalker and "Wonderboy in Monster World" where some of favourite games. As far as emulators go my Sega Megadrive (I live in Australia) died many years ago so I do rely on emulators. I still have my SNES but it is too much trouble connecting it to my HDTV and it is so much easier firing up an emulator on my PC which produces a very acceptable picture.
I have played Halo on PC and my experience was an adrenalin rush for about an hour and "meh" after that. I don't have an Xbox360 and since I don't like Microsoft I don't think I will ever get one. Even so most games I have seen for the so called next generation consoles are so "milked" that there are few that make me want to go out an buy them.
I do have a PS3 with backwards capability that I got a good deal on however I end up playing PS2 games on it more than PS3 games. There are some good PS3 games available but I am not going to pay $AU99 (US$89) for them (Wii and Xbox360 new games are about the same price) so I don't mind waiting till they drop in price, because I have so many good PS2 games I have not finished yet. I even have a few Gamecube games that I still play.
Just to add to that list of games for the PS2 that I'd be surprised if a Wii could pull off: Black, Grandia III, Jak II and III, and the first two God of War titles.
I think the Wii could pull off the above games however if you were familiar with the button layout on the PS2 or Xbox then you would be be in for some relearning. The problem from a Wii perspective with RPG's and action adventure games is you need to have your fingers near the buttons and that is why you would need a Gamecube style controller. The motion sensing is fine but it may be next to useless for the above games. Just because you have motion sensing in a controller should not mean you have to slavishly demand it for every game and that appears what all parties are doing for the Wii.
For the PS3 most of the games that use motion sensing only use it sparingly or appropriately which IMHO is a good thing. The only game I am aware of on the PS3 that really made use of the motion sensing controller was Lair although if you care to look, Grand Theft Auto 1V allows motion sensing for bike riding and flying but you don't have to if you prefer the analogue sticks. Like Lair you can get very good and surprisingly excellent intuitive control using motion sensing if you don't violently move the controller.
Good post however I see the following time and time again.
Another way of looking at it is they can write the game specifically for the Wii, for probably half the cost of developing if for the other consoles, not have to worry about porting it, and still have a market that is nearly the same size.
The problem is most people perceive that a game for a standard definition TV is cheaper to program for than a game that targets high definition TV. If that was the case PC games with their very high resolution graphics (eg Crysis) would cost an small fortune and yet games for Windows (err PC's) are nearly always cheaper than console games.
When a new console hits the market and has different hardware it is going to be harder to program for if you are in the business of designing a fundamental game engine and gaming libraries. If you design a good game engine say for a FPS game it is not that difficult designing other FPS games around that same set of libraries and this is why we see lots of FPS games for the Xbox360 and now these same types of games are appearing on the PS3. So it now appears that some good?? gaming software has been developed for the PS3 and is every bit as good as what we see on the Xbx360's. The problem software designers have with the Wii is they originally dismissed it and now they would have to spend a small fortune dumbing down their libraries to work on the Wii, so we see ports from previous consoles.
I hope people don't think that graphics games designers are programmers, although some may the majority are not, graphics designers actually use games development software which is not what a real programmer would consider programming, to the real programmer it just using an application. By far the biggest cost with any game is not actually the software it is the type of people who are needed to actually design and develop the game and a really good innovative game can cost more than a Hollywood movie. A cheaply developed or ported game appears much more preferable to many third party developers than to try and do something that remotely resembles innovation. To be fair the PS3 and Xbox 360 also suffer from this although not as bad (IMHO) as the games for the Wii.
A cheaply made game is just that a "cheaply made game" however if you are marketing that game at uninformed people then you may sell quite a few copies and that is what the gaming houses want. More people play simple games that may last all of 15 minutes than play a RPG or FPS game however these same people will not pay anywhere near what an avid (or rabid if you like) gamer would pay for their more sophisticated games. If the gaming houses thought they could get away with selling shovelware rather than spend the money on developing an innovative game then they would and what we are seeing on the Wii is a lot of shovelware. This is not to say there can't be good games made for the Wii they can, however you normally see PS2, Gamecube and Xbox ports.
Towards the end of the Gamecubes short life we started to see some interesting and innovative games and the graphics were quite good even for standard definition. I am sure people are aware and may have games like "Resident Evil 4", "Twilight Princess" and "Smash Brothers" to name a few but those games originally came out on the Gamecube (RE4 was a good IMHO port to the PS2) so what we see are good games but ported to Wii with only small tweaks to cater for motion sensitive controller. Even games like "Okami" which first came out on the PS2 are a port.
Dammit, you beat me to it. That was the first game I ever played on the Wii. Great game, and the first FPS console game I've liked the interface for.
Actually RE4 as with all the Resident Evil games were all third person survival horror games, with the emphasis on survival since you had to be careful with your ammunition and if you could the best thing to do was just run away. RE4 IMHO was a good game but it was more action adventure than just survival since it was not that difficult to get weapons and ammo. You could run away but I found that you had enough weapons and ammo to just about take on anything.
The game "Codename Veronica" (RE3.5 ??) was more along the line of survival horror but if you beat the game you could play a mini FPS game although I did find that it was much easier to play from a third person perspective.
Hell, even Zelda on the NES had a Master Quest when you ran through it once. This game was just "Hey, do you want to do it again?"
Actually when you beat Zelda I it appeared that you just restarted the game (my first impression was "sigh! more of the same") and it only became apparent that things had changed when you went to the first dungeon and it was much harder although not too hard, but after that while the overland was fairly much the same the enemies were harder and the other dungeons had moved. IMHO this is one game that you really got two games for the price of one.
It was unfortunate that Zelda II (you could restart with all your stats), Zelda III (SNES) and Zelda IV (N64 and Gamecube pack-in with Windwaker) did not continue this although I still liked the games. I was tempted to get "Twilight Princess" for the Gamecube but I can't find it anymore and I am not that tempted to get a Wii since there are only two games (and "milked" ones at that) that I have an interest in and Mario is not one of them.
Maybe you can get a pirate copy for the Xbox 360 but as far as I am aware you can't pirate for the PS3 yet since all native PS3 games are on Bluray so it is not that economical to copy a game which is not that different when the PS2 was brought out since DVD's were quite expensive in 2000.
At the moment Australia does not have a R18 rating having instead the top rating of R15+ which is still technically a child rating, hence the problem with games containing adult content that requires purchase by a person over 18 years of age. From what I can gather it is not the adult content that is the issue of Fallout 3 it is the use of what in many countries (including the US) is illegal drugs for performance enhancement. This is the main reason for Fallout 3 getting the Australian censors uptight.
In Australia the cost of PS3 and Xbox360 games are almost 50% more than what the US pays with games being AU99 (US$87) to AU$119 (US$104) so it can sometimes work out much cheaper to import a PS3 or Xbox360 game although delivery costs makes importing not worth it. Even Wii games for sale in Australia are around about AU$99 (latest releases) so again importing may be cheaper although you have to be careful to get PAL Wii games. The PS3 is region free for High Definition but an Xbox360 game may be region protected (in many cases it's not) so care is needed.
Using something like a Wii mote for controlling the cursor on a PC screen is rather stupid unless you using it to control a game. Consider trying to type something and then needing to move the cursor to some other place. If you had a mouse this is fairly simple by moving the hand onto the mouse and just moving it in two dimensions. Now consider the same action either the Wii like mote you end up having to pick it (it does not look like it will slide easily) up which means you are now moving the pointing device in three dimensions. Does RSI actually mean anything?
Of course you could have one of these and get the best of both worlds although to be fair the Wii mote device does allow more control of a game but for normal business screen work the mouse is still king.
Actually Algol was the precursor of languages like "C", "C++" and "Pascal", so if your Algol program is well written it will be quite readable, however if it isn't, well it will be just like any poorly written program "difficult to maintain".
I know this may come as a shock to some but I have actually seen FORTRAN IV code that was so well written that it was easy to understand 20 years after it was written in the early 1970's. The person who wrote it was a senior research scientist who was about to retire when we found some of his works. It really depends on the person who writes the code and how good they are at documenting.
Perl IMHO is surprisingly easy to learn if you have some programming experience and a good reference book. The hard part of writing Perl as for any language is making it maintainable. I don't consider myself a programmer even though I do programming so I always heavily comment my code since I adopt the attitude that I may have to come back and fix or extend my code some day.
While a complete rewrite could save money in the long run, in the short term this would be very costly.
It wouldn't be near as costly if you only paid the coders minimum wage.
This is why major software companies like to offshore coding. A software company can get two or even three coders offshore to one onshore coder. The trouble is that while the offshore coder can do very good work they are not stupid, once they get enough experience they leave for better paying jobs leaving the coding projects with just "good enough" software, so you are forever training people. Eventually the cost of the overseas coders start to approach that of the onshore coder and the company then looks around for a new country where they can pay cheap wages to highly trained people and the spiral continues.
Note I am not trying to say that offshore coders are bad, a few are, but many are very very good. It is just that these people are not stupid and they have to look out for themselves so I can never fault them for jumping to a new better paying job when one becomes available.
I think there will always be a niche market for every language but if you mean 'come back' like COBOL would become the average developer's language of choice I would curtly retort with a sharp 'ha.'
You're too nice I don't think "ha!" is suitable. Garlic, a cross and a sharp pointy stick would be more appropriate, after all you could argue that you are using these items for the common good of humanity and you may get a medal for it:-)
Actually the link you provided has converters from COBOL to "C", "C++", "Java" and "C#". If these converters/filters produce anything like the output of yacc and lex (open source bison and flex) then the code while runnable is more or less unmaintainable but not to worry you have a job for life if you want;-)
If you read the following the best quote on cobol is as follows: Critics have argued that COBOL's syntax serves mainly to increase the size of programs, at the expense of developing the thinking process needed for software development. In his letter to an editor in 1975 titled "How do we tell truths that might hurt?", computer scientist and Turing Award recipient Edsger Dijkstra remarked that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense".
Lower CTO. You need fewer people to admin Linux machines..or UNIX machines for that matter.
5 to 1 I believe was the ratio.
Actually this depends on what each of your machines are doing. In a well setup Linux environment one person can easily manage 10 to a 100+ machines. Five to seven competent Linux administrators can easily handle over a 1000+ Linux machines on a 24x7 basis. Blades or a mixture of blade and stand alone servers are normally the best way to go about this keeping in mind that you need to take into account disaster recovery of each individual machine so you want something like "Mondo Rescue" to create images of each OS on a weekly basis (no down time) for any bare metal recovery. This is incredibly easy to setup and automate. Backups can be handled by any enterprise backup solution, some can be free and others quite costly but you get what you pay for.
The more complex the environment the better the documentation has to be however too much documentation is also a bad thing. The best way for any administrator to handle a huge Linux or even Linux and Unix environment is to have some general site knowledge and be sensitive to the customer's requirements not necessarily their needs. Diplomacy is paramount when you have a huge IT environment.
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Remember the MiniDisk? The UMD is just a MiniDisk with a Mini DVD and a rounded case. When The MiniDisk came out, it was touted by Sony as the replacement for the Cassette Tape.
The Mini Disk would have replaced the Cassette Tape however the payer was expensive compared to the CD player which eventually did replace the Tape Cassette. The MD is still around today and was a success in the Japanese and Asian market however it did not do all that well in the US and Western market. In many ways the MD was much more superior to the Cassette Tape since it could be recorded on many 100's of thousands of times compared to a few 100 times (if you were lucky) of the Cassette tape. Everyone remember the streams of tape lying on the road from stuffed tapes?
The UMD was a design that was quite good when the psp was first produced and 1.8GB was quite a reasonable capacity for such a small robust device. An open disk (ie. mini DVD) design would have been a catastrophe since it could be easily scratched. You basically have to jump on a UMD to do it damage and even then you may just crack the case and disk can still play.
It is difficult to say what could replace the UMD since even Flash cards today are no were near as cheap as what it takes to produce an UMD disk. On an interesting note you can put in a Memory Stick (Sony or other vendor) into the PSP to extend its storage capacity and if you have the right firmware you can put a lot of older games on it.
I think people should realise that the PSP like the DS a hand-held and given that the screen resolution does not have to be that high vendors don't have to produce high definition games for it hence the overall size of a game will remain within the 1.8GB capacity. Even DS games aren't any were near 1.8GB and I don't see the DS failing because of this any time soon.
I have always had Nintendo consoles from the NES right through to the Gamecube. In addition I have the PS1, PS2 and pS3 and if it was not for the fact that my PS3 is backwards compatible with PS2 games I would have given the so-called next gen consoles a miss. It is not that I don't like some of the Wii games it is just that they all appear to be a rehash of previous games with minor cosmetic differences and this I have also found true (IMHO) of the Xbox360 and PS3 games although that is now starting to slowly change. Still if people like the latest instalment of Mario or the latest FPS game then that is their prerogative. From my perspective I would love to see an innovative game and at the moment all I see is the same old same old.
As for Microsoft well I don't like their ethics so I make it a point of not buying any products of theirs. To be fair though the Xbox360 does have a better selection of games than the PS3 although with backwards compatibility I have hundreds more games to choose from which save me a considerable amount of money and the graphics via my PS3 are enhanced and look exceptionally good on my HDTV while my gamecube games (which did look quite nice on my old SDTV and acceptable on my 37" HDTV) hardly get played at all.
I know it is "all about games" but good graphics helps. A simple test, try playing Zelda 1 on a 37" plus HDTV then play it on a PC with an emulator there is a huge difference, the fun factor is there on both but being able to see an "un-jaggied" Link adds more enjoyment to the game. This is the same when you compare the SD output of the Wii to the HD output of the PS3 or the Xbox360 although to be fair if you only have a small HDTV then the graphical difference between all three consoles is not as noticeable but once you compare on larger HDTV's and they are getting quite affordable then you can really see the difference.
The HD gaming market is going to be a area that Nintendo will have to address and since the purchase of HDTV's is taking off Nintendo better start thinking about a HD capable Wii although I have noticed that the Nintendo name is synonymous with gaming and for many years Nintendo had their monochrome gameboy and still killed off superior full colour hand-helds. It was not until the PSP that they started to have competition. I know the PSP is about 37M to the DS's 80M but that is still good competition compared to other hand-helds.
The Xbox 360 Arcade only has 256mb of storage. The only systems that currently have 'upwards of 80gb' are the Xbox 360 Elite and recent versions of the Playstation 3. Most console owners will either have an earlier Xbox 360 giving them 20gb or 60gb, or an earlier Playstation 3 with 20gb, 40gb or 60gb.
Actually earlier version of the PS3 (US and Japan) had 80GB (the 20GB one was quickly withdrawn) it is only now that this seems to be the standard although you could always install legally and with no loss of warranty any standard 2.5" disk drive internally no mater what type of PS3 you purchased. You can connect any size disk via USB which is great for backup or media storage purposes.
That aside I do think that Nintendo has missed an opportunity here. For games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero the absence of dowloadable content is a big minus point. If they had allowed usb hard drives to be attached for storage it would solve a lot of problems, providing the transfer speed was good enough.
You have a good point here although the way Nintendo is rolling in money at the moment I don't think that is a priority for them although that may change if the take-up of HDTV continues in most first world countries. Still the Wii output even though it is Standard Definition looks quite acceptable on HDTV's smaller than 42" and even if the Wii is relegated to the kids room and only brought out for parties that is still a huge market.
Australia is *far* more down to earth than the US government.
It would be quite a powerful crime fighting tool being able to get a bank robber's licence plate number and being able to track them within minutes of the robbery.
In principle you are right however a bank robber with any clue will steal a car and use that for the robbery then dump the car and change to one or even two other cars to throw of the police. If the thieves are blatant they may even catch a train or bus (sans masks of course).
Actually the police have more chance of identifying a thief from the crime scene and can arrest them while protecting themselves and the public. High speed chases may catch a thief in the end but when a thief perceives they don't have anything to loose they don't care about their life or anyone else's.
What is scary is not so much the thief (yes they are rat bags) but the Governments who erode human rights by using the "greater protection excuse". It is debatable that it provides greater security for the average citizen but the greater the surveillance the more it can be abused but of course we all know that could never happen.
On a side note in NSW Australia where I live all speed and red light cameras require signs warning that a camera is ahead while other states don't have to do this. This is what we would call revenue raising so the NSW Government made it mandatory to have signs placed to avoid being seen as money grabbing (I think it was also close to an election as well). Speed cameras even in NSW do catch speeders (normally doing 10 km/h over the posted limit) but only those who excessively speed and are not paying attention. They did try to get the cameras painted black in some areas but the voter backlash would have made doing this political suicide.
Before buying from anywhere I would do my homework on what type of system I require and how much I would be willing to pay. Since you want a gaming rig I would assume you would go for a good quad core cpu with a quality mother board, at least 4GB memory (dictated by your mother board and possibly your OS) and a good quality graphics card (can cost almost as much as your base PC) that you would be satisfied with for the next two to three years. As for a hard disk I would recommend a a smaller disk for my OS and a larger disk for my main storage. Don't forget an external disk that is capable of backing up your data (your choice) which will add extra but is definately worth it. It is also worth purchasing a good case (450W to 600W) with large fans (lights are fun but not necessary) since large fans are also quiet fans and great for the PC user.
Now for software. Most gamers choose a Microsoft OS because that is what most commercial games run on and you will most likely have to get some virus protection software as well. How you get this is up to you although some shops will build the whole PC for you with an OEM version of MS Vista or even XP (less likely now) for a reasonable price.
Once you have decided on your OS and your hardware you will need to decide on a monitor. This is where the fun starts because you want a good monitor that is 20" to 24" (bigger if you can afford it) but you also want a good response time and reliability so a quality monitor (it will cost more) is a good choice. Actually a good rule of thumb is the monitor should be anything from a quarter to half the price of the computer. If you get a good monitor it normally is worth paying for a nice "practical" computer desk although I would recommend being very careful here since the key word is "practical" not necessarily pretty.
Even after making a choice on hardware you really don't want to buy from a number of shops since you could spend a lot on postal or even driving around. As I have said before some small shops will for a reasonable cost assemble your PC and provide an OEM OS and possibly a warranty if you buy most of the components from them.
Note I have not included a DVD player/recorder or even a DVD/Blu-ray player/recorder which are getting cheaper at US200 (25GB write) but for gaming DVD is fine. You also may want to think about wireless, Buetooth and/or wired Ethernet cards. For gaming a good mouse and keyboard is essential so don't get cheap ones or you will regret it. Wireless can be more expensive but very functional however most rabid gamers prefer wired (the choice is yours).
Like I have said from the start you need to do some homework before you decide. Do this well and you could save a considerable amount of money and at the same time be very happy with your purchase. Remember you get what you pay for so don't try to get the cheapest, get what is the best value for your money.
You buy a special USB stick/SD card, etc. You go to kiosk and get movies. Keep em as long as you want limited to the size of the stick. HD movies take up more space, natch. Kiosk has a thousand or so titles but you can 'pre-order' anything in their collection and have it waiting at your neighborhood kiosk. The website gives you an estimated time when you can pickup your order and it shoots it over a high speed link.
Even the best USB or SD/MC/CF/MS card has a write speed between 1MB/sec and 10MB/s and you really pay for the high speed ones. Even compressing a HD movie to about 8GB to 15GB and you may get 1080p (1920x180 resolution) but this going to take about 15 to 25 minutes to download. I can really see this being a viable method of quickly storing movies.
As for "shooting an order over high speed link". You may be one of the few people in the world that can afford unlimited bandwidth, however many ISP's are starting to put caps on data usage and I don't see this stopping any time soon.
Like it or not the CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray sized disk is still a viable physical size for storing and handling information. Memory cards while good and if you look at the "micro's" can be very small and easy to loose, however even looking in my crystal ball I cannot see them being cheaper than "plastic" media. Blu-ray disks being of the same ilk as CD's or DVD's are not that expensive (about $0.50 in OEM quantities) to manufacture and existing CD/DVD production systems can be upgraded. For those who cannot remember DVD's were quite expensive in 1999 and comparing price to the length of time in the market Blu-ray disks are actually relatively cheaper and much more robust.
This is not to say that Blu-ray won't be superseded, it will, as will CD and DVD as well as flash chips. The question to ask is with what, that is what the pathetic article did not cover.
I think from past experience (Linux 64-bit) that we'll be waiting a long time for Flash on this one... other than that it seems like a great idea to do what they did!
I run 64 bit Fedora 9 on my HP laptop and flash runs fine within my 64 bit Firefox browser. Most of my applications also run 64 bit with the only exceptions being my SNES (zsnes) and Sega Genius/Megadrive (Dgen) native rpm installable (not Wine) emulators and they run fine with a nice GUI front-end as well (Ah nostalgia).
The only thing I can't do on my Fedora laptop is run Microsoft Office since I am not willing to pay for it or pirate it, but who cares since I can run Open Office. For more sophisticated jobs I can use 64 bit software that in the majority of cases is legitimately free.
'After earthquakes and after tsunamis the only structures that still survive are trees,'
Assuming you don't mind the wait for the shaped trees to grow the above sounds good, except I don't think the author thought about forest or even boring old house fires which can be more devastating than earthquakes or tsunamis which can easily be avoided if you pick the right place to live, unfortunately too many people don't. Wood burns when subject to enough heat and even treated wood which can be made fire resistant can give off poisonous fumes.
Note: I only know PHP and Ruby.
Learn javascript. It's by far the most valuable language on that list if you already know PHP and IMHO, the most fun regardless.
Pros:
Cons:
Err no!
.......:-)
Choosing a language is dependent on what is required to do a particular job. Too many people start to program first with a language they are comfortable with and with only a vague idea on what is required, after all you don't program in a compilable language when a few simple or maybe not so simple commands with appropriate options will do the work in a fraction of the time.
When I say "required" I don't mean what you or even the customer wants, it may be but if you analyse the problem from an initial overview and work down to finer details, that is "What do we want to achieve here and how should this be achieved?" Once you get this right and it may take a while so good communication skills are essential, especially if you work with people who's primary language is not yours. Choosing a programming language or even languages if appropriate, should be made only when everyone knows what is required. Getting it "right" is much more appropriate than just picking a programming language and hacking, although it may not be as much fun.
Now I will do the "monkey dance". Write, Test, Document, Write, Test, Document, Write, Test, Document
When time or special circumstance doesn't allow bids, there certainly needs to be a detailed report on the reasons one vendor was chosen over another. Someone needs to put his ass on the line and say "Symphony, StarOffice, Openoffice.org, and Gnome Office don't meet our needs" for reasons a, b, and c. When an accountant comes back to audit the department, he'll back those up or pay the price.
In theory you are correct however that is not the way Government departments work. In Australia we have a taxation year between 1st July to the 30th June and at the beginning of the tax year most Government departments receive a budget allocation. It would be a very courageous IT manager that could go to his/her department head and say we can slash our budget by upto say 60% by choosing open software such as Open Office and the savings could be spent on upgrading the IT infrastructure.
What normally happens in the above scenario is the upgrade never happens because there are few people in authority that will sanction this since they perceive that the old hardware is good enough because you normally can extend the life of the current equipment with open software and the IT managers budget is slashed. Of course when the time comes to replace the ageing equipment the IT manger is accused of overspending.
Most IT managers are well aware (or should be aware) of this double standard and to keep their jobs and credibility take the easy way and buy Microsoft products since all senior department heads know about Microsoft and appear quite amenable to a three or four year hardware and possibly software update cycle even though in the long term it is much more expensive, however this can be easily and consistently budgeted for with only an acceptable increase per year.
Actually it is very easy for IT department heads to justify proprietary software over open software since they only have to point to many Microsoft and so called unbiased web sites that show Microsoft software has a much better Total Cost of Ownership than open software. The "How to Lie with Statistics" technique.
Do I think this is right? I don't but that is Government business politics for you.
No doubt that most games should focus less on technicals and more on entertaining us. What are some of the biggest successes of the last few years? IT's Guitar Hero, Wii and DS. And imagine what these big $20 million budgets on the 360 or PS3 could do if they used lesser tech like last gen graphics engines? You would have alot more variety in art, better loading times, more refined gameplay and many more interesting and new ways to play games. The tradeoff is lesser graphics, but I would take it.
The Wii and DS are respectively a gaming console and hand-held gaming console while "Guitar Hero" is a game. I think the games in no particular order that have been really popular are the Super Mario, Zelda and Metroid franchises. Most games for better or worse that have seen multiple releases such as the games I mentioned previously as well as games like Halo, Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank and sports games too numerous to mention have been very successful. By this I mean have done very well for the profit margin of the particular gaming house.
The problem I see is that there are too many games coming out now that are just "milked" franchises with little if any innovation. To me an example of game innovation in a game franchise is when what was traditionally a 2D side-scrolling and/or platformer game to a full 3D game. The transition for some games IMHO was great for some of course not that good but after awhile we get get to the "same" "same" fare.
Unfortunately we seem to be seeing too much of the same game just dressed up in different finery as the latest so called "innovative" game. It is not that I dislike all franchises but I think that many gaming houses take the easy approach to game development by pushing out similar games which as far as they are concerned if it earns money with little if any innovation and people still continue to buy then they are happy to do this.
As for better graphics I still like some of the old NES games but I don't think they would look good on a HDTV since they are better played on a small screen TV or a PC. The gaming houses are starting to target the HDTV market and that means higher resolution and more realistic games. That is the way the market is going and like it or not that is what Nintendo will have to cater for eventually although if you look as the success of the monochrome Gameboy it could be a while.
As for a HD game (PS3 and Xbox360) costing more than a SD game (PS2, Wii and Gamecube), that's debatable since many game designers use a gaming design tools or applications for the target machine, most graphics designers are not software programmers. The greatest cost for any game is not the actual software but the overall costs associated with initial design through implantation, production and distribution. Once you have a gaming engine such as those used for a FPS game then it very easy to churn out plenty of FPS games and we are seeing plenty of these on the Xbox360 and now the PS3.
I know many people think that the Wii is easier to program for and games should be cheaper. The problem is that many gaming houses are just pushing out "shovel-ware" with the attitude of "if you could develop for the Gamecube you should be able to develop for the Wii". It is just the motion sensing that makes developing for the Wii painful. Some game work well with this type of control some game don't and IMHO most don't.
Most new release games I have seen in Australia are at AU$99 for the Wii and from AU$99 to AU$120 fro PS3 and Xbox360 games so Wii game developers are not passing on their so called development saving to the customer. For those interested AU$1 = US$0.86 and compared for what games are worth in the US we get ripped off, it is no wonder that many gamers here are importing games which for the PS3 is no issue (no region protection) although if we import a Wii game then it must be PAL which means the UK and Europe and some Asian countries and import costs can make this non viable.
The only thing the PS3 lacks as a great BD player is analog outs for audio. You're stuck with HDMI (great if your TV or receiver has it) or you have to use optical, which can downmix the audio depending on the format it is in.
You are wrong on this, it is very easy to configure the PS3 to output in composite (ie. video - standard definition plus L/R stereo - ok but!) or component (ie, L/R stereo - ok but! plus 3 video cables - upto 1080p) or you could use optical sound (on a good sound system it's fantastic) or you could use HDMI. Of course if you really want you can mix your outputs.
I normally use HDMI for my video although I have tried component which also looks and sounds great. Since my sound system has HDMI switching I don't want to use my HDTV speakers (they are ok but not fantastic) so I tried the L/R stereo connection from my component cables (sounds quite good). Next I used the optical out since my sound system supports this (Wow! impressive).
Most modern LCD/Plasma HDTV's (720p and/or 1080p) do take HDMI but component is great as well and if you have a good sound system that supports optical, that is the way to go unless your sound system can split off sound from HDMI.
Anyone IMHO who uses composite cables to a HDTV is really doing themselves a disservice, unfortunately many people don't know and if you have a friend who has done this please point it out to them since good component and/or HDMI cables are not that expensive unless you go for the so-called top brands like "Monster", then I think I would shake my head and walk away.
Wow a blast from the past. Landstalker and "Wonderboy in Monster World" where some of favourite games. As far as emulators go my Sega Megadrive (I live in Australia) died many years ago so I do rely on emulators. I still have my SNES but it is too much trouble connecting it to my HDTV and it is so much easier firing up an emulator on my PC which produces a very acceptable picture.
I have played Halo on PC and my experience was an adrenalin rush for about an hour and "meh" after that. I don't have an Xbox360 and since I don't like Microsoft I don't think I will ever get one. Even so most games I have seen for the so called next generation consoles are so "milked" that there are few that make me want to go out an buy them.
I do have a PS3 with backwards capability that I got a good deal on however I end up playing PS2 games on it more than PS3 games. There are some good PS3 games available but I am not going to pay $AU99 (US$89) for them (Wii and Xbox360 new games are about the same price) so I don't mind waiting till they drop in price, because I have so many good PS2 games I have not finished yet. I even have a few Gamecube games that I still play.
Just to add to that list of games for the PS2 that I'd be surprised if a Wii could pull off: Black, Grandia III, Jak II and III, and the first two God of War titles.
I think the Wii could pull off the above games however if you were familiar with the button layout on the PS2 or Xbox then you would be be in for some relearning. The problem from a Wii perspective with RPG's and action adventure games is you need to have your fingers near the buttons and that is why you would need a Gamecube style controller. The motion sensing is fine but it may be next to useless for the above games. Just because you have motion sensing in a controller should not mean you have to slavishly demand it for every game and that appears what all parties are doing for the Wii.
For the PS3 most of the games that use motion sensing only use it sparingly or appropriately which IMHO is a good thing. The only game I am aware of on the PS3 that really made use of the motion sensing controller was Lair although if you care to look, Grand Theft Auto 1V allows motion sensing for bike riding and flying but you don't have to if you prefer the analogue sticks. Like Lair you can get very good and surprisingly excellent intuitive control using motion sensing if you don't violently move the controller.
Another way of looking at it is they can write the game specifically for the Wii, for probably half the cost of developing if for the other consoles, not have to worry about porting it, and still have a market that is nearly the same size.
The problem is most people perceive that a game for a standard definition TV is cheaper to program for than a game that targets high definition TV. If that was the case PC games with their very high resolution graphics (eg Crysis) would cost an small fortune and yet games for Windows (err PC's) are nearly always cheaper than console games.
When a new console hits the market and has different hardware it is going to be harder to program for if you are in the business of designing a fundamental game engine and gaming libraries. If you design a good game engine say for a FPS game it is not that difficult designing other FPS games around that same set of libraries and this is why we see lots of FPS games for the Xbox360 and now these same types of games are appearing on the PS3. So it now appears that some good?? gaming software has been developed for the PS3 and is every bit as good as what we see on the Xbx360's. The problem software designers have with the Wii is they originally dismissed it and now they would have to spend a small fortune dumbing down their libraries to work on the Wii, so we see ports from previous consoles.
I hope people don't think that graphics games designers are programmers, although some may the majority are not, graphics designers actually use games development software which is not what a real programmer would consider programming, to the real programmer it just using an application. By far the biggest cost with any game is not actually the software it is the type of people who are needed to actually design and develop the game and a really good innovative game can cost more than a Hollywood movie. A cheaply developed or ported game appears much more preferable to many third party developers than to try and do something that remotely resembles innovation. To be fair the PS3 and Xbox 360 also suffer from this although not as bad (IMHO) as the games for the Wii.
A cheaply made game is just that a "cheaply made game" however if you are marketing that game at uninformed people then you may sell quite a few copies and that is what the gaming houses want. More people play simple games that may last all of 15 minutes than play a RPG or FPS game however these same people will not pay anywhere near what an avid (or rabid if you like) gamer would pay for their more sophisticated games. If the gaming houses thought they could get away with selling shovelware rather than spend the money on developing an innovative game then they would and what we are seeing on the Wii is a lot of shovelware. This is not to say there can't be good games made for the Wii they can, however you normally see PS2, Gamecube and Xbox ports.
Towards the end of the Gamecubes short life we started to see some interesting and innovative games and the graphics were quite good even for standard definition. I am sure people are aware and may have games like "Resident Evil 4", "Twilight Princess" and "Smash Brothers" to name a few but those games originally came out on the Gamecube (RE4 was a good IMHO port to the PS2) so what we see are good games but ported to Wii with only small tweaks to cater for motion sensitive controller. Even games like "Okami" which first came out on the PS2 are a port.
Dammit, you beat me to it. That was the first game I ever played on the Wii. Great game, and the first FPS console game I've liked the interface for.
Actually RE4 as with all the Resident Evil games were all third person survival horror games, with the emphasis on survival since you had to be careful with your ammunition and if you could the best thing to do was just run away. RE4 IMHO was a good game but it was more action adventure than just survival since it was not that difficult to get weapons and ammo. You could run away but I found that you had enough weapons and ammo to just about take on anything.
The game "Codename Veronica" (RE3.5 ??) was more along the line of survival horror but if you beat the game you could play a mini FPS game although I did find that it was much easier to play from a third person perspective.
Hell, even Zelda on the NES had a Master Quest when you ran through it once. This game was just "Hey, do you want to do it again?"
Actually when you beat Zelda I it appeared that you just restarted the game (my first impression was "sigh! more of the same") and it only became apparent that things had changed when you went to the first dungeon and it was much harder although not too hard, but after that while the overland was fairly much the same the enemies were harder and the other dungeons had moved. IMHO this is one game that you really got two games for the price of one.
It was unfortunate that Zelda II (you could restart with all your stats), Zelda III (SNES) and Zelda IV (N64 and Gamecube pack-in with Windwaker) did not continue this although I still liked the games. I was tempted to get "Twilight Princess" for the Gamecube but I can't find it anymore and I am not that tempted to get a Wii since there are only two games (and "milked" ones at that) that I have an interest in and Mario is not one of them.
Maybe you can get a pirate copy for the Xbox 360 but as far as I am aware you can't pirate for the PS3 yet since all native PS3 games are on Bluray so it is not that economical to copy a game which is not that different when the PS2 was brought out since DVD's were quite expensive in 2000.
At the moment Australia does not have a R18 rating having instead the top rating of R15+ which is still technically a child rating, hence the problem with games containing adult content that requires purchase by a person over 18 years of age. From what I can gather it is not the adult content that is the issue of Fallout 3 it is the use of what in many countries (including the US) is illegal drugs for performance enhancement. This is the main reason for Fallout 3 getting the Australian censors uptight.
In Australia the cost of PS3 and Xbox360 games are almost 50% more than what the US pays with games being AU99 (US$87) to AU$119 (US$104) so it can sometimes work out much cheaper to import a PS3 or Xbox360 game although delivery costs makes importing not worth it. Even Wii games for sale in Australia are around about AU$99 (latest releases) so again importing may be cheaper although you have to be careful to get PAL Wii games. The PS3 is region free for High Definition but an Xbox360 game may be region protected (in many cases it's not) so care is needed.
Finally an alternative to the mouse.
Hmm I very much doubt it.
Using something like a Wii mote for controlling the cursor on a PC screen is rather stupid unless you using it to control a game. Consider trying to type something and then needing to move the cursor to some other place. If you had a mouse this is fairly simple by moving the hand onto the mouse and just moving it in two dimensions. Now consider the same action either the Wii like mote you end up having to pick it (it does not look like it will slide easily) up which means you are now moving the pointing device in three dimensions. Does RSI actually mean anything?
Of course you could have one of these and get the best of both worlds although to be fair the Wii mote device does allow more control of a game but for normal business screen work the mouse is still king.
Actually Algol was the precursor of languages like "C", "C++" and "Pascal", so if your Algol program is well written it will be quite readable, however if it isn't, well it will be just like any poorly written program "difficult to maintain".
I know this may come as a shock to some but I have actually seen FORTRAN IV code that was so well written that it was easy to understand 20 years after it was written in the early 1970's. The person who wrote it was a senior research scientist who was about to retire when we found some of his works. It really depends on the person who writes the code and how good they are at documenting.
Perl IMHO is surprisingly easy to learn if you have some programming experience and a good reference book. The hard part of writing Perl as for any language is making it maintainable. I don't consider myself a programmer even though I do programming so I always heavily comment my code since I adopt the attitude that I may have to come back and fix or extend my code some day.
While a complete rewrite could save money in the long run, in the short term this would be very costly.
It wouldn't be near as costly if you only paid the coders minimum wage.
This is why major software companies like to offshore coding. A software company can get two or even three coders offshore to one onshore coder. The trouble is that while the offshore coder can do very good work they are not stupid, once they get enough experience they leave for better paying jobs leaving the coding projects with just "good enough" software, so you are forever training people. Eventually the cost of the overseas coders start to approach that of the onshore coder and the company then looks around for a new country where they can pay cheap wages to highly trained people and the spiral continues.
Note I am not trying to say that offshore coders are bad, a few are, but many are very very good. It is just that these people are not stupid and they have to look out for themselves so I can never fault them for jumping to a new better paying job when one becomes available.
I think there will always be a niche market for every language but if you mean 'come back' like COBOL would become the average developer's language of choice I would curtly retort with a sharp 'ha.'
You're too nice I don't think "ha!" is suitable. Garlic, a cross and a sharp pointy stick would be more appropriate, after all you could argue that you are using these items for the common good of humanity and you may get a medal for it :-)
Or, better idea, translate all the COBOL to C++. No teaching needed.
Actually the link you provided has converters from COBOL to "C", "C++", "Java" and "C#". If these converters/filters produce anything like the output of yacc and lex (open source bison and flex) then the code while runnable is more or less unmaintainable but not to worry you have a job for life if you want ;-)
If you read the following the best quote on cobol is as follows:
Critics have argued that COBOL's syntax serves mainly to increase the size of programs, at the expense of developing the thinking process needed for software development. In his letter to an editor in 1975 titled "How do we tell truths that might hurt?", computer scientist and Turing Award recipient Edsger Dijkstra remarked that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense".
Hey it's a quote so please don't shoot me!
Lower CTO. You need fewer people to admin Linux machines..or UNIX machines for that matter. 5 to 1 I believe was the ratio.
Actually this depends on what each of your machines are doing. In a well setup Linux environment one person can easily manage 10 to a 100+ machines. Five to seven competent Linux administrators can easily handle over a 1000+ Linux machines on a 24x7 basis. Blades or a mixture of blade and stand alone servers are normally the best way to go about this keeping in mind that you need to take into account disaster recovery of each individual machine so you want something like "Mondo Rescue" to create images of each OS on a weekly basis (no down time) for any bare metal recovery. This is incredibly easy to setup and automate. Backups can be handled by any enterprise backup solution, some can be free and others quite costly but you get what you pay for.
The more complex the environment the better the documentation has to be however too much documentation is also a bad thing. The best way for any administrator to handle a huge Linux or even Linux and Unix environment is to have some general site knowledge and be sensitive to the customer's requirements not necessarily their needs. Diplomacy is paramount when you have a huge IT environment.