Are we starting yet another war we can't win? How about we win the war on terror, or the war on drugs, or the war on anything else we declared war on before we start going after the Internet. I don't understand why a war on the Internet is needed anyway?
This country is getting more and more insane by the moment. I was watching CNN one day and they were conducting a poll asking "should we build a wall between the US and Mexico?" and I just imagined the appearance the rest of the world would have of us if we did such an idiotic thing. It's amazing what people are willing to give up and put up with for the illusion of "security" after 9/11. Terrorism can fester in a free society, it's just a fact. Instead of attacking the terrorists themselves, why do we constantly look for other ways to secure our nation? Nation building in Iraq, surveillance at home, and a war on the Internet for "security's sake," everyone is willing to accept the next restriction before it is even mentioned.
I never understood this way of thinking. In my honest opinion, to be part of a system that strives for survival through constant change an improvement is a great and beautiful thing. Why we have to be the kings of the Earth that were specially created to rule over everything is beyond me, and may be our key evolutionary flaw in the end.
This is the same argument I heard in grade school against dinosaur fossils. The idea that God tries to prove his non-existance to those who are doubting in order to recruit better believers. What a load of non-sense that particular line of argument. By that line of argument, the more you do to prove the non-existance of God as you know it, the sketchier the evidence gets, the more God is just testing you. I'm not saying that God definitely doesn't exist, anything is possible, but that argument has got to go.
Not only that but people say windows XP runs slow on this and that, but I used to run XP on a 450mhz box with 128mb of ram. It might not have been ideal, but it ran and it ran perfectly fine. Hardware "requirements" are basically for people who want the OS to run perfect, and even then it's usually kind of slow anyway.
Exactly, and while I don't have all my music on mine, I have much of it. But the ability to be your own DJ in the car, make mixes on the fly, listen to any song whenever you want is the real gain. It's not that you'll listen to all 30gb at one sitting, it's that you can pick from that 30gb and usually find exactly what you wanted to listen to in that moment. I used to have an mp3 CD player in my car, and I eventually still ended up hooking up my mp3 player.
Either that, or maybe they actually like the unique features that the iPod has, namely, synchronization with iTunes. I know that seems like a revalation to all the people around here who think anyone who willingly buys a player that doesn't support Vorbis is a raving lunatic, but you know what? It might just actually be true!
There's a large percentage that buy them because they are "cool." I know of a few people whose parents bought them Ipods and they don't even understand how to use them. One girl didn't even ask for the Ipod and just got one because they are what's in now. A large portion of the sales has to do with being cool, you certainly can't deny that. Now maybe some people, like I assume yourself, are buying them and making an informed decision, which is fine, but don't act like this is always, or perhaps even usually the case.
People constantly look at hardware specs to figure out what a good system will be anymore. It's meaningless. If you want examples just look in the past or the present. How about the PSP, has better graphics capabilities, support for movies, and all other kinds of stuff, how does it fare? Not as well as the DS for other reasons. A lot of the console has to do with the way it is designed and how games play on it, not exactly what they look like.
Maybe not in that regard, but let's see the XBox run Mario or classic Zelda without using some illegal emu and roms that takes chips and crap to make it happen.
First what they do is print confusing ballads in florida to turn people against paper ballets and create an outrage at typical means of voting, then offer a very simple touch screen way of voting without a paper trail. Congratulations, even the symbolic act of picking between the two puppets is on its way out.
To be fair, here in the U.S. is the choice of who runs for high offices really open to much choice? Democrat or Republican, many felt that both choices were awful (and I intend to agree). Pretty much the same can be said of any third party candidate, too. As South Park has explained so well, pretty much every election in history has been about choosing between a douche and a turd, when in reality you wouldn't likely ever choose either one.
what south park leaves out is that there are other parties, or there would be if people would support their induction. I'm so tired of hearing this spout of non-sense that I believe actually partially originates in the media. Which is: yeah both parties suck but what are you going to do vote 3rd party, what a waste of a vote, wouldn't you rather have this guy, he's kind of what you are looking for even if he is the lesser of two evils. We are the ones voting, I say be the change you want to see in the world and vote for whatever party you want today and stop pretending like the two-party system is in our constitution or something.
Make the thing actually authenticate the e-mail address of the sender. If you could make it so the sender e-mail was more than just a "fill in the blank" type of field like a name or anything else, it would be very easy to trace where this stuff comes from and get it to stop.
...that's what a lot of these new age libertarians don't understand. Like was stated above, the market can't solve problems the consumer doesn't know exist. If the problem isn't addressed in the media or apparent to the end user, the customer stays with the company. The market can't solve things like this, sweatshops, the commercial exploitation of all available land, and the list goes on. It's an important point to understand that there is a public interest in regulating some "market activity."
The competitors keep cranking out the crap sequels of stuff nobody wanted in the first place. Maybe some people are interested in halo 3, I'm not, halo 2 wasn't even up to expectations. The truth is that mario, sonic, and zelda have sequels for reasons, they are actually wanted. I could give a shit less about jak or whatever loser substitute for a platformer character they are trying to push on the immitation systems this week, they always seem like second class citizens to the real kings of console games because the games aren't really that innovative to begin with and get lost in a fog of other recent platformer takeover series.
Right, because we all used the original controller when playing these games in emulators. Come on people, the success of the original games might have had something do with the controller, but that's definitely not the only reason they were popular. I played emulators for games multiple times using my keyboard, which is about as far from the original controller as you can get, and that worked just fine for my purposes.
I bought a dual-core system lately and it's really nice to have a system that can handle multiple background processes as well as a foreground process. For instance, my PC is running media center edition and while I'm playing games it can tape shows for me without any slowdown whatsoever, as if the extra processing isn't even taking place. You can do video conversion without having to put your life on hold, and just about everything as far as multi-tasking runs a lot smoother. Now, regardless I did go from a AMD XP 2700+ machine to a AMD X2 4200+ machine which is probably a big jump anyway, but it's the first machine I've seen run at this type of smoothness upon purchase.
Also, I'd like folks to play Spore, and then those crafty Swedes to get into it and find the base rules under the hood, and then we can all go 'Ahh. These critters a'int procedural, they're precalculated imported creature part-sets, categorized into broad sets and parameterised to create many permutations'. That would be pretty amusing.
So in other words you hope they find they aren't procedural but simply procedural?
Morrowind is considered by many to be a fine piece of gaming history, and I admire its ambition...at the same time I don't enjoy playing it simply because of its lack of focus...there's too much to take in, too much to do, too much to see...thusly I often end up wandering lost and alone, cursing the lack of guidance.
I understand why you don't like Morrowind. It almost seems like there are no goals and you are just a wandering soul. However, there are open ended games AKA the sims, where you are given tools for creation and the goals are pretty much your own. There should be reward for achieving things, but sometimes the reward is just in achieving it. In Morrowind maybe you were looking for too much of a plot, when in reality the plot is whatever you do. I found it fun to go around and pilfer from people. So that becomes my plot. There is flexibility involved, such as grand theft auto, which while it has plenty of side things to do, also has a laid out story if you wish to get involved with that. Some of the things I don't like about that game is the same things Will Wright is talking about. Invisible walls, limits forced on the player because they didn't watch the cutscene first. It's distracting and it is no longer needed. Games should instead of relying on "a picks up b" in order to get the plot to continue, maybe evolve and show you what happens if you don't pick up b, let you continue anyway and see if you can survive without the photon gun. It's as easy as a set of simple environmental rules, and objects. If you want to have a plot, that's fine, but stop making the plot fit your cookie cutter mold every single time. Instead of killing the guy if he gets captured by the guards, maybe have him be arrested, detained, and then allow the possibility for escape perhaps. It's the invisible non-sensical walls I don't like. And that's what Will Wright is talking about. Life isn't over just because something happens that shouldn't have, it changes.
It doesn't have to be canned is what he's saying. This spore game, the latest one he's dreaming up isn't canned at all. If it works anything like he says it does, as people create things in their own worlds, these things get uploaded to an internet database which tabulates what these creations would be good for. Then, seamlessly to the player, the world gets populated with new things based upon the need of the individual environment. A nice example might be maybe your ecosystem has too many of a certain type of animal, say a deer, in order to counteract this, more mountain lions are added to the environment. But instead of deer and mountain lions you are talking about created, wholely new lifeforms instead. So if you have too many three legged hairy dog looking things running around, the game might look online for a solution to this problem, as happens in real life, and then a new creature emerges as a competitor to your unbalanced animal. It truly is a revolutionary idea.
Slashdot Mirror
...for rich people with more money than musical taste. 1gb isn't even enough to hold my singles...
Are we starting yet another war we can't win? How about we win the war on terror, or the war on drugs, or the war on anything else we declared war on before we start going after the Internet. I don't understand why a war on the Internet is needed anyway? This country is getting more and more insane by the moment. I was watching CNN one day and they were conducting a poll asking "should we build a wall between the US and Mexico?" and I just imagined the appearance the rest of the world would have of us if we did such an idiotic thing. It's amazing what people are willing to give up and put up with for the illusion of "security" after 9/11. Terrorism can fester in a free society, it's just a fact. Instead of attacking the terrorists themselves, why do we constantly look for other ways to secure our nation? Nation building in Iraq, surveillance at home, and a war on the Internet for "security's sake," everyone is willing to accept the next restriction before it is even mentioned.
I never understood this way of thinking. In my honest opinion, to be part of a system that strives for survival through constant change an improvement is a great and beautiful thing. Why we have to be the kings of the Earth that were specially created to rule over everything is beyond me, and may be our key evolutionary flaw in the end.
This is the same argument I heard in grade school against dinosaur fossils. The idea that God tries to prove his non-existance to those who are doubting in order to recruit better believers. What a load of non-sense that particular line of argument. By that line of argument, the more you do to prove the non-existance of God as you know it, the sketchier the evidence gets, the more God is just testing you. I'm not saying that God definitely doesn't exist, anything is possible, but that argument has got to go.
Not only that but people say windows XP runs slow on this and that, but I used to run XP on a 450mhz box with 128mb of ram. It might not have been ideal, but it ran and it ran perfectly fine. Hardware "requirements" are basically for people who want the OS to run perfect, and even then it's usually kind of slow anyway.
Exactly, and while I don't have all my music on mine, I have much of it. But the ability to be your own DJ in the car, make mixes on the fly, listen to any song whenever you want is the real gain. It's not that you'll listen to all 30gb at one sitting, it's that you can pick from that 30gb and usually find exactly what you wanted to listen to in that moment. I used to have an mp3 CD player in my car, and I eventually still ended up hooking up my mp3 player.
There's a large percentage that buy them because they are "cool." I know of a few people whose parents bought them Ipods and they don't even understand how to use them. One girl didn't even ask for the Ipod and just got one because they are what's in now. A large portion of the sales has to do with being cool, you certainly can't deny that. Now maybe some people, like I assume yourself, are buying them and making an informed decision, which is fine, but don't act like this is always, or perhaps even usually the case.
People constantly look at hardware specs to figure out what a good system will be anymore. It's meaningless. If you want examples just look in the past or the present. How about the PSP, has better graphics capabilities, support for movies, and all other kinds of stuff, how does it fare? Not as well as the DS for other reasons. A lot of the console has to do with the way it is designed and how games play on it, not exactly what they look like.
Right, cuz _nobody_ goes uninsured...
I call horeshit. I work for a 5 person company and I not only have health coverage, but damn good coverage too.
Maybe not in that regard, but let's see the XBox run Mario or classic Zelda without using some illegal emu and roms that takes chips and crap to make it happen.
First what they do is print confusing ballads in florida to turn people against paper ballets and create an outrage at typical means of voting, then offer a very simple touch screen way of voting without a paper trail. Congratulations, even the symbolic act of picking between the two puppets is on its way out.
God forbid Ballmer's children see what innovation is! (how then could they succeed him at microsoft?)
what south park leaves out is that there are other parties, or there would be if people would support their induction. I'm so tired of hearing this spout of non-sense that I believe actually partially originates in the media. Which is: yeah both parties suck but what are you going to do vote 3rd party, what a waste of a vote, wouldn't you rather have this guy, he's kind of what you are looking for even if he is the lesser of two evils. We are the ones voting, I say be the change you want to see in the world and vote for whatever party you want today and stop pretending like the two-party system is in our constitution or something.
Make the thing actually authenticate the e-mail address of the sender. If you could make it so the sender e-mail was more than just a "fill in the blank" type of field like a name or anything else, it would be very easy to trace where this stuff comes from and get it to stop.
...that's what a lot of these new age libertarians don't understand. Like was stated above, the market can't solve problems the consumer doesn't know exist. If the problem isn't addressed in the media or apparent to the end user, the customer stays with the company. The market can't solve things like this, sweatshops, the commercial exploitation of all available land, and the list goes on. It's an important point to understand that there is a public interest in regulating some "market activity."
Really? You sure it wasn't Saturday?
The competitors keep cranking out the crap sequels of stuff nobody wanted in the first place. Maybe some people are interested in halo 3, I'm not, halo 2 wasn't even up to expectations. The truth is that mario, sonic, and zelda have sequels for reasons, they are actually wanted. I could give a shit less about jak or whatever loser substitute for a platformer character they are trying to push on the immitation systems this week, they always seem like second class citizens to the real kings of console games because the games aren't really that innovative to begin with and get lost in a fog of other recent platformer takeover series.
Right, because we all used the original controller when playing these games in emulators. Come on people, the success of the original games might have had something do with the controller, but that's definitely not the only reason they were popular. I played emulators for games multiple times using my keyboard, which is about as far from the original controller as you can get, and that worked just fine for my purposes.
I bought a dual-core system lately and it's really nice to have a system that can handle multiple background processes as well as a foreground process. For instance, my PC is running media center edition and while I'm playing games it can tape shows for me without any slowdown whatsoever, as if the extra processing isn't even taking place. You can do video conversion without having to put your life on hold, and just about everything as far as multi-tasking runs a lot smoother. Now, regardless I did go from a AMD XP 2700+ machine to a AMD X2 4200+ machine which is probably a big jump anyway, but it's the first machine I've seen run at this type of smoothness upon purchase.
I read somewhere that expecting the worst doesn't soften the blow. I saw the demo and unless there's an x-factor here, the game looks incredible.
It's an _alpha_ it's not even a beta. What's wrong with you? Alpha doesn't even mean that all features are intact yet. Or at least it shouldn't.
So in other words you hope they find they aren't procedural but simply procedural?
I understand why you don't like Morrowind. It almost seems like there are no goals and you are just a wandering soul. However, there are open ended games AKA the sims, where you are given tools for creation and the goals are pretty much your own. There should be reward for achieving things, but sometimes the reward is just in achieving it. In Morrowind maybe you were looking for too much of a plot, when in reality the plot is whatever you do. I found it fun to go around and pilfer from people. So that becomes my plot. There is flexibility involved, such as grand theft auto, which while it has plenty of side things to do, also has a laid out story if you wish to get involved with that. Some of the things I don't like about that game is the same things Will Wright is talking about. Invisible walls, limits forced on the player because they didn't watch the cutscene first. It's distracting and it is no longer needed. Games should instead of relying on "a picks up b" in order to get the plot to continue, maybe evolve and show you what happens if you don't pick up b, let you continue anyway and see if you can survive without the photon gun. It's as easy as a set of simple environmental rules, and objects. If you want to have a plot, that's fine, but stop making the plot fit your cookie cutter mold every single time. Instead of killing the guy if he gets captured by the guards, maybe have him be arrested, detained, and then allow the possibility for escape perhaps. It's the invisible non-sensical walls I don't like. And that's what Will Wright is talking about. Life isn't over just because something happens that shouldn't have, it changes.
It doesn't have to be canned is what he's saying. This spore game, the latest one he's dreaming up isn't canned at all. If it works anything like he says it does, as people create things in their own worlds, these things get uploaded to an internet database which tabulates what these creations would be good for. Then, seamlessly to the player, the world gets populated with new things based upon the need of the individual environment. A nice example might be maybe your ecosystem has too many of a certain type of animal, say a deer, in order to counteract this, more mountain lions are added to the environment. But instead of deer and mountain lions you are talking about created, wholely new lifeforms instead. So if you have too many three legged hairy dog looking things running around, the game might look online for a solution to this problem, as happens in real life, and then a new creature emerges as a competitor to your unbalanced animal. It truly is a revolutionary idea.