This was a snippet from one level inside hoover dam, for a few mins. there are large outdoor environments, too, and tons of stuff not seen here. I wasn't even sure they were going to show game footage as the original deal was to just film jason playing the game, and a reaction. They cut in a few scenese [sic] here and there. Much much more to see and come.
It's remarkable, because of two things: 1 - the number of people who claim they can hear a difference vastly outnumbers the people who *can* hear a difference, and 2 - I've never, ever seen a link to someone's ABX results from anyone who claims they have audiophile++ hearing.
Actually, I guess that would make it the opposite of remarkable. Would that be "tedious"?
You must be in the > 1% of people who can tell the difference between 256 kbps mp3s and cd quality. I assume you've confirmed this via blind ABX tests?
You want proof that dogs are man's best friend? Force your wife and your dog into the trunk of your car and drive over speed-bumps and potholes for 4 hours. Guess which one is happy to see you when you finally open the trunk?
Sounds to me like the the publisher is forcing DRM on the developer, and the developer is saying "Yeah, annoy the hell out of the publisher about this - it's their fault".
At first I thought the $ in 'Micro$oft' was a typo but then I realized it was a cutting, insightful bit of repartee that illuminates the Microsoft Corporation in a way that transcends rhetoric.
And that's not to mention the global warming/climate change implications of eating meat. Personally, I'm not 100% sold on the issue of man-made climate change; but considering the massive amounts of methane (a greenhouse gas far more effective at trapping heat, pound per pound, than CO2) produced by cattle, I've taken to completely disregarding those most vocal of global warming proponents who haven't taken up vegetarianism. Assuming they really and truly believe what they are saying, they need to look to their own hypocrisy first, before attempting to change the behavior of others.
You can't screw up your own DNA by eating meat that has faulty DNA
There are other types of harm than altering one's own DNA. For the sake of argument, let's speculate on the theoretical possibility that a cloned animal's DNA gets corrupted slightly, so that instead of a certain protein it might normally make, it creates prions. I would hope that would cause concern for even the most Pollyanna-ish of consumers. Except for us vegetarians, that is.
I'm somewhat alarmed at this. I travel quite a bit and have all of my CDs and DVDs ripped, encoded, and stored on a NAS on my home network, which I can then FTP into from anywhere and listen to my music collection or watch a movie while I'm out of town. Granted, DVD ripping is technically illegal as far as I understand, but even staunch DRM'ers would be hard-pressed to say that I don't have a right to listen to my own audio files ripped from my own CDs as I see fit. Anyone care to speculate as to the likelihood they would allow this kind of transfer of copywrited media?
Posted this the other day, and it's at least as applicable to this thread.
I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior.
To expound just a bit so it's not pure copy pasta, GE seems to be more conservative under Jeff Immelt than it was under Jack Welch - not necessarily a bad thing, just a difference in leadership style. The only software that they update to the newest and greatest on a regular basis is SAV. I would be incredibly surprised to see Vista rolled out on a site- or business-unit- wide basis, let alone across the entire company. More likely is that the W2K computers are migrated to XP over the next 12-18 months.
I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through.
As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior.
TF2 was developed from the ground up as a new game. Look at Counterstrike: Source -- $27.99 at Amazon. That's after being out for what, 3 years now? And TF2 has been in development for a heck of a lot longer and is far more of a completely new, remade game from TF:C than Counterstrike: Source is from vanilla Counterstrike. Are you arguing that Quake Wars: Enemy Territory should be free since, hey! Castle Wolfenstein:ET was? I can't decide if you're being deliberately disingenuous or if somehow you actually believe what you're saying. In any event, more room on the servers for me:)
You're looking at it the wrong way. I personally would pay $50 for TF2, but let's say it's only worth $29.95 to you. HL2:E1 was $20 at launch. Let's say pOrtal is mediocre and worth less than an average budget game, $10. $30 + $20 + $10 = $60, even in the new math. $45 (or $50, if you don't preorder) is a ridiculous bargain. Don't look at it as having to pay extra -- it's getting two additional games (or 1.5, if you like) -- HL2 and HL2:E1 for free! You can even sell them on the open market and make a bit of cash back, if you're that frugal. What would have been a smarter move, is to have the current prices for the three new games, and charge an extra $1 to get HL2 and HL2:E1. That way, the moaners could feel like they aren't being screwed, and those who don't have any of the games yet could pay a token fee to get 2 more games.
Kudos to Valve for delivering massive amounts of gameplay for so cheap.
ask.com has made significant advances since the time it was askjeeves.com.
They are using Teoma's algorithm. In a few head-to-head comparisons I've done with Google, the results differed slightly but were about equally accurate and useful.
and 5) Because we can provide an honest answer to the question: Is the world a more or less dangerous place if yet another country develops nuclear weapons? My question is, why would you want to live in a more dangerous world?
Now, if you want to argue that the US should eliminate its stockpile of nuclear weapons, you'll get no disagreement from me. But you seem to make the common error of the false dichotomy -- either no countries have nukes, or all countries should have them. It is possible to both be in favor of the US reducing or eliminating their stockpile of weapons, *and* to be against any other countries developing such weapons.
It's a little known fact that this is why Dewey lost to Truman, falling for the old "you vote for me and I'll vote for you" trick. Poor sportsmanship on the part of Harry S, for sure.
And how many people would pay $50 for PacMan if it came out today? Games took one person a few dozen hours to code back in the late 70s; a few people a couple hundred man hours to code in the 80s; a small team two man-years to code in the 90s; and now take teams of 3-4 dozen people perhaps 5 man-years to create (or more -- insert oblig. Duke Nukem joke here). In that sense, economies of scale *are* working, you're right -- but the problem is, how many gamers do you know that will settle for Pac-man graphics? Contrast that with how many debates you've heard about how much Half-Life 2's shadows suck compared to Doom 3, or how dated the graphics are on a 6 month old game.
In the end, it still comes down to paying people to make a game. And since games require more and more people just to develop all the assets for a game, and those people generally don't work for free, the cost will continue to go up. It's amazing that game prices haven't doubled (in nominal terms).
Economies of scale work for items with fixed inputs -- there's no need to redesign the fender of a Ford for each Focus that rolls off of the line. While that exists to some degree in gaming in that engines can be licensed and the distribution media is well-known and already at perhaps the lowest conceivable point price-wise, the assets that make a game, well, a game must be created for each new game. Economies of scale don't work so well when new models, new textures, new renderers, new stories, and new maps must be created for every new game.
Sounds like someone needs to take a basic economics course.
prices in 2007 are still at historically high levels
Sure, in nominal dollars. Considering that the price has been at ~$50ish for new games for coming up on 3 decades now (excepting the average price of N64 carts, which commanded a significant premium of their own), one might instead look to the price when normalized in real dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
It's remarkable, because of two things:
1 - the number of people who claim they can hear a difference vastly outnumbers the people who *can* hear a difference, and
2 - I've never, ever seen a link to someone's ABX results from anyone who claims they have audiophile++ hearing.
Actually, I guess that would make it the opposite of remarkable. Would that be "tedious"?
You must be in the > 1% of people who can tell the difference between 256 kbps mp3s and cd quality. I assume you've confirmed this via blind ABX tests?
ba-dit tchih
You want proof that dogs are man's best friend? Force your wife and your dog into the trunk of your car and drive over speed-bumps and potholes for 4 hours. Guess which one is happy to see you when you finally open the trunk?
Sounds to me like the the publisher is forcing DRM on the developer, and the developer is saying "Yeah, annoy the hell out of the publisher about this - it's their fault".
Why not Start -> Run -> osk ?
Who has time to type all that? Use 'Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz' instead.
At first I thought the $ in 'Micro$oft' was a typo but then I realized it was a cutting, insightful bit of repartee that illuminates the Microsoft Corporation in a way that transcends rhetoric.
And that's not to mention the global warming/climate change implications of eating meat. Personally, I'm not 100% sold on the issue of man-made climate change; but considering the massive amounts of methane (a greenhouse gas far more effective at trapping heat, pound per pound, than CO2) produced by cattle, I've taken to completely disregarding those most vocal of global warming proponents who haven't taken up vegetarianism. Assuming they really and truly believe what they are saying, they need to look to their own hypocrisy first, before attempting to change the behavior of others.
You can't screw up your own DNA by eating meat that has faulty DNA
There are other types of harm than altering one's own DNA. For the sake of argument, let's speculate on the theoretical possibility that a cloned animal's DNA gets corrupted slightly, so that instead of a certain protein it might normally make, it creates prions. I would hope that would cause concern for even the most Pollyanna-ish of consumers. Except for us vegetarians, that is.
I'm somewhat alarmed at this. I travel quite a bit and have all of my CDs and DVDs ripped, encoded, and stored on a NAS on my home network, which I can then FTP into from anywhere and listen to my music collection or watch a movie while I'm out of town. Granted, DVD ripping is technically illegal as far as I understand, but even staunch DRM'ers would be hard-pressed to say that I don't have a right to listen to my own audio files ripped from my own CDs as I see fit. Anyone care to speculate as to the likelihood they would allow this kind of transfer of copywrited media?
Posted this the other day, and it's at least as applicable to this thread. I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior. To expound just a bit so it's not pure copy pasta, GE seems to be more conservative under Jeff Immelt than it was under Jack Welch - not necessarily a bad thing, just a difference in leadership style. The only software that they update to the newest and greatest on a regular basis is SAV. I would be incredibly surprised to see Vista rolled out on a site- or business-unit- wide basis, let alone across the entire company. More likely is that the W2K computers are migrated to XP over the next 12-18 months.
I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior.
What happens if you cancel your order? If you return the CD?
TF2 was developed from the ground up as a new game. Look at Counterstrike: Source -- $27.99 at Amazon. That's after being out for what, 3 years now? And TF2 has been in development for a heck of a lot longer and is far more of a completely new, remade game from TF:C than Counterstrike: Source is from vanilla Counterstrike. Are you arguing that Quake Wars: Enemy Territory should be free since, hey! Castle Wolfenstein:ET was? :)
I can't decide if you're being deliberately disingenuous or if somehow you actually believe what you're saying. In any event, more room on the servers for me
You're looking at it the wrong way. I personally would pay $50 for TF2, but let's say it's only worth $29.95 to you. HL2:E1 was $20 at launch. Let's say pOrtal is mediocre and worth less than an average budget game, $10. $30 + $20 + $10 = $60, even in the new math. $45 (or $50, if you don't preorder) is a ridiculous bargain. Don't look at it as having to pay extra -- it's getting two additional games (or 1.5, if you like) -- HL2 and HL2:E1 for free! You can even sell them on the open market and make a bit of cash back, if you're that frugal. What would have been a smarter move, is to have the current prices for the three new games, and charge an extra $1 to get HL2 and HL2:E1. That way, the moaners could feel like they aren't being screwed, and those who don't have any of the games yet could pay a token fee to get 2 more games.
Kudos to Valve for delivering massive amounts of gameplay for so cheap.
ask.com has made significant advances since the time it was askjeeves.com.
They are using Teoma's algorithm. In a few head-to-head comparisons I've done with Google, the results differed slightly but were about equally accurate and useful.
and 5) Because we can provide an honest answer to the question: Is the world a more or less dangerous place if yet another country develops nuclear weapons? My question is, why would you want to live in a more dangerous world?
Now, if you want to argue that the US should eliminate its stockpile of nuclear weapons, you'll get no disagreement from me. But you seem to make the common error of the false dichotomy -- either no countries have nukes, or all countries should have them. It is possible to both be in favor of the US reducing or eliminating their stockpile of weapons, *and* to be against any other countries developing such weapons.
4) Other countries have signed treaties pledging not to develop such weapons ?
It's a little known fact that this is why Dewey lost to Truman, falling for the old "you vote for me and I'll vote for you" trick. Poor sportsmanship on the part of Harry S, for sure.
And how many people would pay $50 for PacMan if it came out today? Games took one person a few dozen hours to code back in the late 70s; a few people a couple hundred man hours to code in the 80s; a small team two man-years to code in the 90s; and now take teams of 3-4 dozen people perhaps 5 man-years to create (or more -- insert oblig. Duke Nukem joke here). In that sense, economies of scale *are* working, you're right -- but the problem is, how many gamers do you know that will settle for Pac-man graphics? Contrast that with how many debates you've heard about how much Half-Life 2's shadows suck compared to Doom 3, or how dated the graphics are on a 6 month old game.
In the end, it still comes down to paying people to make a game. And since games require more and more people just to develop all the assets for a game, and those people generally don't work for free, the cost will continue to go up. It's amazing that game prices haven't doubled (in nominal terms).
Economies of scale work for items with fixed inputs -- there's no need to redesign the fender of a Ford for each Focus that rolls off of the line. While that exists to some degree in gaming in that engines can be licensed and the distribution media is well-known and already at perhaps the lowest conceivable point price-wise, the assets that make a game, well, a game must be created for each new game. Economies of scale don't work so well when new models, new textures, new renderers, new stories, and new maps must be created for every new game.
Someone needs to get this man a copy of Planescape: Torment stat!