I didn't think it took anything away from the game and actually improved it. The story is nice and lighthearted, and keeps you wondering what's next. The original Dragon Ball anime where Goku is young is more lighthearted and varied, the characters' names and attitudes are overblown and comical, yet Dragon Ball keeps attracting viewers to its story, simply because it is entertaining. Just because it's not dark and somber doesn't mean it's not entertaining.
This is a Saturday Morning story for an RPG, which makes you feel kind of nostalgic actually, especially if you've been playing RPGs for a while and are used to the old school such as Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy where you'd have to find a bard's lute so he could play, or a witch's broom, or whatever. I mean not every single element had to be an intricate puzzle piece so that the story barely makes any sense in the end.
But I agree with you on the point that the actual gameplay is there, and is great. There's leveling up, random battles, TONS of monsters, items, sidequests, etc. It is an RPG that concentrates on doing what RPGs are good at. Everything that is a classic quality of an RPG and has been perfected over time is present in this game. This game is not a new experimental RPG that is supposed to break out of the box and grab you, it is rather a fine-tuned implementation of what has been already established in the genre.
But personally I wouldn't change the story a bit, it keeps you interested, is soaked in the lore that has been built up since the original, and serves to keep the gameplay going. I think if they tried to make it any more complex or realistic you might actually be bored instead of entertained and really have a reason to skip them. As it is now they are fine.
I think the point is just to say that it wasn't an MS innovation.
Firefox is innovative even without tabbed browsing. IE on the other hand, it's more of a question. Even the things that MS says are their own innovations often aren't, but they just try and claim it as such anyway.
Firefox, NetCaptor, etc, on the other hand, do not go around claiming every single thing they include in their application is their innovation, and innovation drives the market, and nobody else is as innovative, etc etc... But on the other hand, nobody speaks about innovation as much as MS does.
This is why people are sarcastic, and whenever MS includes something that has obvious prior art, they joke about MS claiming it as one of their own innovations.
It is a joke, it's sarcasm, and the point is not to say Firefox is the most innovative, but just to joke about MS saying that they'll try and claim it as one of their own innovations when it comes time for them to write a press release and speak about features that are new to their product, not new in general. Chances are there will be the word "innovative" in there, and chances are MS will want others to think it is them doing the innovation. It is a press release from public relations, which is basically an advertisement.
Since then, MS had released Solitaire, Minesweeper, Fury3 (developed by 3DRealms), and Metal Gear Solid (developed by Konami) but other than that, few games have seen actual internal development from MS itself. Not to mention that these games have hardly seen any action outside the PC, where not all PC owners play games, and which is not nearly as big a market as console gaming.
So While MS may have worked on some games earlier than Sony, MS probably hasn't amassed as much experience as Sony in the gaming world. One of the last major games MS had a hand in on the PC was Metal Gear Solid, and did a terrible job at porting it.
Other games that MS has published such as Crimson Skies, Halo, etc weren't developed by MS but cherry picked from other development studios.
My home page is just my bookmarks.html file, and if I need to search I have a search box with any available engine in (it would be cool for desktop end users if Firefox could customize your bookmarks.html file into a start page for you, add some local weather etc through ForecastFox or something and let you select that as your home page).
I may use Google a lot but it's not my home page and doesn't load up every time I start my browser either (although it doesn't take much time).
It seems to me that this is stating the obvious: the over-sexualized female avatars in games are there to attract male players, not women. If game makers want to draw in a female audience, they need to have characters that women want to play - and that means strong, complex, and capable... not falling out of her clothes.
Actually the sexually attractive avatars are there to attract those sexually attracted to females, whether they happen to be males or females. It is only a matter of time before they do the same to male avatars in games to attract those sexually attracted to males in the same way as the overzealous female avatars.
This is the exact same reason that males or females of certain overzealous forms are used in ANY type of advertising, and it is not just limited to scantily clad or falling-out-of-clothes females. Harlequin-romance-cover males are frequently featured in advertisements geared towards females, and they are already appearing in video games.
Perhaps all of the reporting on this topic is done by males attracted to females, hence why they don't notice the other side of the coin?
This isn't an innate talent or state of being. I've been burned by the gaming industry too many times in my youth and as a result have developed a healty skepticism when it comes to flashy new tech.'
It's good timing because the Revolution is not going to go past 480p on most of its games, so it will be the cheaper console, and nobody will notice a difference in quality.
The MPA President has stated that closing websites and imposing fines is not enough, stating that by 'throw [ing]in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective' in its crusade.
Throwing in jail time to your kid if he spills orange juice will probably make him pay more attention too, but it doesn't mean it's the right solution. Throwing in jail time to prevent someone from taking any action will probably make them hesitant to take the action, but it doesn't mean that the actions deserve punishment either. The very reasoning behind this is nonexistant...
Most people seem to be fine with synaptic, apt-get and aptitude.
Just for the record, I'm not fine with them, and I'll be happy when a ubiquitous alternative comes along, one which is along the lines of adminmenu or YAST. Until then I'm writing shell scripts to help myself and making them available on the forums of the specific distros for which I make them, but it is not as elegant a solution as those GUI tools. And why do the work over again? Hopefully they will open source adminmenu as it is quite good!
Libranet allows adminmenu (screenshot), which makes it well suited for desktops because novice users can easily configure important settings such as Firewall, DNS & IP, manage device drivers, and configure/compile a kernel, through one simple interface similar to KDE's Control Center.
While kernel compiling and other more advanced functions may not be necessary for novice users, it allows people interested in learning more about GNU/Linux a springboard to access its deeper features and perhaps become more proficient with the OS & software.
IMHO, Linux could benefit from more tools such as this, not to hold the hands of people who have no business tweaking such features, but to allow users to "break the ice" with advanced Linux ditro features.
I hope that Adminmenu or YAST could be easily integrated into other distros, as long as these tools don't cry when users want to start tweaking settings from the commandline (then again YAST has a complete curses implementation, which allows you to use the same tool for remote administration as local administration through GUI, neat).
I don't understand what being most popular on the charts has to do with it...
If I download an album and like it, I will buy it. If I don't like it enough, I won't, obviously. But never do I look on the charts to see how the album I'm reviewing is doing to determine whether or not I should buy it.
It seems to me rather, that Blackburn suggests that the only reason the chart toppers top the charts is because consumers are focused on very few artists, as opposed to having their attention drawn to more artists via P2P.
Does this mean that record labels will make less money? No, they are buying the same amount of albums (or more), but the purchases are spread across different bands rather than a select few that the record labels are promoting. The spread is more even, so chart toppers have less sales but those at the bottom of the chart have more sales.
This means that the advertising dollars spent by record labels have less impact, because consumers are getting informed through another channel, by P2P.
I guess it used to be that record labels only needed to find a few would-be chart toppers to guarantee themselves some revenue. But now record labels will have to have a larger pool of more diverse talent to satisfy the consumer who is more aware.
Now the more artists that record labels have available, the more records they will sell. Instead of concentrating on scoring the next flavor-of-the-month that won't be hot very long to get a big flash of sales all at once, record labels should concentrating on keeping lots of diverse and lasting talent.
When you have an XBox in each house it doesn't matter, people still have to buy software instead of subscribing to just MS's services/software or going through MS. Oh yeah, 3rd parties will really want to put their power behind a console where they aren't even guaranteed to sell any of their own software. No. If MS has an Xbox in each house, 3rd parties will support smaller console provider (maybe re-establish Nintendo as king) to dethrone MS. Nobody would let MS have that much power. Not 3rd parties, not consumers, nobody.
I saw mentions of overheating. Could the problem be a result of being one of the first mass-market products to include water cooling? Perhaps shipping the hardware introduced stress that caused unforseen issues with heat seals, or may have introduced cracks that let vapour through, etc?
The only way it would work is if songs were introduced at a neutral price level, and song prices were based on the % of userbase that purchased the song. Songs would have to launch cheap because they wouldn't be popular yet, and price would have to be relative to % of userbase that purchased it because that's the only way to realistically determine how popular it is.
Sounds like the method they're using is just a price gouge, launching at high prices and having popularity determined by arbitrary means.
Its democratic dream offers no defence against viruses, spammers, criminals, hucksters or deranged individuals
But the same can be said about the internet in general. There is no reason to single out Usenet.
your chances of catching a computer virus or a handful of invitations to unspeakable sexual acts is much greater than finding what you were looking for in the first place.
Maybe if you are using Outlook Express, but those who read newsgroups tend to use more advanced software with better search capability and doesn't run arbitrary code with administrator priveledges?
Most who actually read newsgroups do so because they know how to configure their client to do so, and if you know that much, you can already set up a program different from OE and use that.
Seems to me when all is considered, phishing and worms are much bigger problems. Are they just trying to gain positive press by saying they are removing Usenet services by protecting users from a potential threat?
Sony is giving people just an upgraded game system that maybe supports the newest HD video format, pretty much what they gave customers the last time. Sony plans on unveiling their on-line service by the time the X-Box 360 launches, and Sony's launch itself is a while away. We know a lot about the 360 so far and not much about Sony and even less about Nintendo's system (they've only unveiled the controller, and not even the final model!) so it would probably be best to hold off on commenting on what Sony and Nintendo are about at this point. I'm sure that 3rd parties will factor largely into what benefits Sony as well. If the software library is like it is in the current generation, I will be buying the PS3 and Revolution first (but I will eventually own all systems for completeness, I am playing the PS2/GameCube/X-Box/Dreamcast at the moment).
You have to wait for the software to be distributed in such a way that the remote administration methods in Windows can take advantage of it (ex. MSI). On Linux, everything is already in a usable package format, or can be put into one if it isn't. For example, on Windows, there were complaints that Firefox wasn't available in MSI so it wasn't easy to deploy, etc etc... meanwhile on Linux there were none of these problems.
I don't want to have to buy blanks, buy a CD-R, and rip, edit, and burn the shit just so that I get what I wanted to buy in the first place, and what the product should be. They're selling crap, not music CDs.
Allwords defines "Up in arms" as meaning "Openly angry and protesting." In a field where new discoveries lead to a better understanding, and disproving theories means finding answers, why is this the case?
If Sony's DRM is supported, and MS's DRM is supported (don't forget, they want to DRM everything too), and Sony and MS don't like cooperating because they are competitors, there will have to be a way to get Sony and MS products to talk to each other, which will mean there will probably be more people willing to work on stripping the DRM.
If MS's DRM is going to get lots of support, make sure other vendors' products will too, otherwise they will just standardize on MS's DRM and everyone will be forced to go through them. However with their past marketing experience on proprietary technologies (memory stick, minidisc, atrac-3, etc) it doesn't seem like Sony's DRM will become ubiquitous. Granted it will be in their most popular product (PS3), but outside of the actual console and movies, where would the DRM be used? It's not like the same DRM technology will be used to encode documents and e-books and stuff that doesn't have to do with the PS3 or movies, so how would Sony's DRM gain the support needed to have it invade your life the way DRM applied to Microsoft products would?
If it's being used on the most popular games and movies on the PS3 and Blu-Ray... games and movies have a HUGE history of being warezed ASAP, so Sony's DRM will most likely be circumvented and not have much impact.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a Saturday Morning story for an RPG, which makes you feel kind of nostalgic actually, especially if you've been playing RPGs for a while and are used to the old school such as Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy where you'd have to find a bard's lute so he could play, or a witch's broom, or whatever. I mean not every single element had to be an intricate puzzle piece so that the story barely makes any sense in the end.
But I agree with you on the point that the actual gameplay is there, and is great. There's leveling up, random battles, TONS of monsters, items, sidequests, etc. It is an RPG that concentrates on doing what RPGs are good at. Everything that is a classic quality of an RPG and has been perfected over time is present in this game. This game is not a new experimental RPG that is supposed to break out of the box and grab you, it is rather a fine-tuned implementation of what has been already established in the genre.
But personally I wouldn't change the story a bit, it keeps you interested, is soaked in the lore that has been built up since the original, and serves to keep the gameplay going. I think if they tried to make it any more complex or realistic you might actually be bored instead of entertained and really have a reason to skip them. As it is now they are fine.
I think the point is just to say that it wasn't an MS innovation.
Firefox is innovative even without tabbed browsing. IE on the other hand, it's more of a question. Even the things that MS says are their own innovations often aren't, but they just try and claim it as such anyway.
Firefox, NetCaptor, etc, on the other hand, do not go around claiming every single thing they include in their application is their innovation, and innovation drives the market, and nobody else is as innovative, etc etc... But on the other hand, nobody speaks about innovation as much as MS does.
This is why people are sarcastic, and whenever MS includes something that has obvious prior art, they joke about MS claiming it as one of their own innovations.
It is a joke, it's sarcasm, and the point is not to say Firefox is the most innovative, but just to joke about MS saying that they'll try and claim it as one of their own innovations when it comes time for them to write a press release and speak about features that are new to their product, not new in general. Chances are there will be the word "innovative" in there, and chances are MS will want others to think it is them doing the innovation. It is a press release from public relations, which is basically an advertisement.
So While MS may have worked on some games earlier than Sony, MS probably hasn't amassed as much experience as Sony in the gaming world. One of the last major games MS had a hand in on the PC was Metal Gear Solid, and did a terrible job at porting it.
Other games that MS has published such as Crimson Skies, Halo, etc weren't developed by MS but cherry picked from other development studios.
First you get the sugar, then you get the money, then you get the women...
I may use Google a lot but it's not my home page and doesn't load up every time I start my browser either (although it doesn't take much time).
Actually the sexually attractive avatars are there to attract those sexually attracted to females, whether they happen to be males or females. It is only a matter of time before they do the same to male avatars in games to attract those sexually attracted to males in the same way as the overzealous female avatars.
This is the exact same reason that males or females of certain overzealous forms are used in ANY type of advertising, and it is not just limited to scantily clad or falling-out-of-clothes females. Harlequin-romance-cover males are frequently featured in advertisements geared towards females, and they are already appearing in video games.
Perhaps all of the reporting on this topic is done by males attracted to females, hence why they don't notice the other side of the coin?
It's good timing because the Revolution is not going to go past 480p on most of its games, so it will be the cheaper console, and nobody will notice a difference in quality.
Throwing in jail time to your kid if he spills orange juice will probably make him pay more attention too, but it doesn't mean it's the right solution. Throwing in jail time to prevent someone from taking any action will probably make them hesitant to take the action, but it doesn't mean that the actions deserve punishment either. The very reasoning behind this is nonexistant...
It's funny that you're correcting a jamaican impression, as jamaicans frequently do not spell things consistantly and write it down howefer dey like.
It's called the Revolution.
Just for the record, I'm not fine with them, and I'll be happy when a ubiquitous alternative comes along, one which is along the lines of adminmenu or YAST. Until then I'm writing shell scripts to help myself and making them available on the forums of the specific distros for which I make them, but it is not as elegant a solution as those GUI tools. And why do the work over again? Hopefully they will open source adminmenu as it is quite good!
Libranet allows adminmenu (screenshot), which makes it well suited for desktops because novice users can easily configure important settings such as Firewall, DNS & IP, manage device drivers, and configure/compile a kernel, through one simple interface similar to KDE's Control Center.
While kernel compiling and other more advanced functions may not be necessary for novice users, it allows people interested in learning more about GNU/Linux a springboard to access its deeper features and perhaps become more proficient with the OS & software.
IMHO, Linux could benefit from more tools such as this, not to hold the hands of people who have no business tweaking such features, but to allow users to "break the ice" with advanced Linux ditro features.
I hope that Adminmenu or YAST could be easily integrated into other distros, as long as these tools don't cry when users want to start tweaking settings from the commandline (then again YAST has a complete curses implementation, which allows you to use the same tool for remote administration as local administration through GUI, neat).
I don't understand what being most popular on the charts has to do with it...
If I download an album and like it, I will buy it. If I don't like it enough, I won't, obviously. But never do I look on the charts to see how the album I'm reviewing is doing to determine whether or not I should buy it.
It seems to me rather, that Blackburn suggests that the only reason the chart toppers top the charts is because consumers are focused on very few artists, as opposed to having their attention drawn to more artists via P2P.
Does this mean that record labels will make less money? No, they are buying the same amount of albums (or more), but the purchases are spread across different bands rather than a select few that the record labels are promoting. The spread is more even, so chart toppers have less sales but those at the bottom of the chart have more sales.
This means that the advertising dollars spent by record labels have less impact, because consumers are getting informed through another channel, by P2P.
I guess it used to be that record labels only needed to find a few would-be chart toppers to guarantee themselves some revenue. But now record labels will have to have a larger pool of more diverse talent to satisfy the consumer who is more aware.
Now the more artists that record labels have available, the more records they will sell. Instead of concentrating on scoring the next flavor-of-the-month that won't be hot very long to get a big flash of sales all at once, record labels should concentrating on keeping lots of diverse and lasting talent.
When you have an XBox in each house it doesn't matter, people still have to buy software instead of subscribing to just MS's services/software or going through MS. Oh yeah, 3rd parties will really want to put their power behind a console where they aren't even guaranteed to sell any of their own software. No. If MS has an Xbox in each house, 3rd parties will support smaller console provider (maybe re-establish Nintendo as king) to dethrone MS. Nobody would let MS have that much power. Not 3rd parties, not consumers, nobody.
I saw mentions of overheating. Could the problem be a result of being one of the first mass-market products to include water cooling? Perhaps shipping the hardware introduced stress that caused unforseen issues with heat seals, or may have introduced cracks that let vapour through, etc?
This is normal.
No, it's not. This isn't a case of the game developers not knowing what the target system is, having to deal with different configurations, etc.
This is a closed product end to end with software designed specifically for it. 1st party software is crashing, ffs. This isn't normal.
Sounds like the method they're using is just a price gouge, launching at high prices and having popularity determined by arbitrary means.
But the same can be said about the internet in general. There is no reason to single out Usenet.
your chances of catching a computer virus or a handful of invitations to unspeakable sexual acts is much greater than finding what you were looking for in the first place.
Maybe if you are using Outlook Express, but those who read newsgroups tend to use more advanced software with better search capability and doesn't run arbitrary code with administrator priveledges?
Most who actually read newsgroups do so because they know how to configure their client to do so, and if you know that much, you can already set up a program different from OE and use that.
Seems to me when all is considered, phishing and worms are much bigger problems. Are they just trying to gain positive press by saying they are removing Usenet services by protecting users from a potential threat?
Sony is giving people just an upgraded game system that maybe supports the newest HD video format, pretty much what they gave customers the last time. Sony plans on unveiling their on-line service by the time the X-Box 360 launches, and Sony's launch itself is a while away. We know a lot about the 360 so far and not much about Sony and even less about Nintendo's system (they've only unveiled the controller, and not even the final model!) so it would probably be best to hold off on commenting on what Sony and Nintendo are about at this point. I'm sure that 3rd parties will factor largely into what benefits Sony as well. If the software library is like it is in the current generation, I will be buying the PS3 and Revolution first (but I will eventually own all systems for completeness, I am playing the PS2/GameCube/X-Box/Dreamcast at the moment).
You have to wait for the software to be distributed in such a way that the remote administration methods in Windows can take advantage of it (ex. MSI). On Linux, everything is already in a usable package format, or can be put into one if it isn't. For example, on Windows, there were complaints that Firefox wasn't available in MSI so it wasn't easy to deploy, etc etc... meanwhile on Linux there were none of these problems.
I don't want to have to buy blanks, buy a CD-R, and rip, edit, and burn the shit just so that I get what I wanted to buy in the first place, and what the product should be. They're selling crap, not music CDs.
Yes. They are also said to offer Linux as an end user OS on the PS3.
Allwords defines "Up in arms" as meaning "Openly angry and protesting." In a field where new discoveries lead to a better understanding, and disproving theories means finding answers, why is this the case?
If MS's DRM is going to get lots of support, make sure other vendors' products will too, otherwise they will just standardize on MS's DRM and everyone will be forced to go through them. However with their past marketing experience on proprietary technologies (memory stick, minidisc, atrac-3, etc) it doesn't seem like Sony's DRM will become ubiquitous. Granted it will be in their most popular product (PS3), but outside of the actual console and movies, where would the DRM be used? It's not like the same DRM technology will be used to encode documents and e-books and stuff that doesn't have to do with the PS3 or movies, so how would Sony's DRM gain the support needed to have it invade your life the way DRM applied to Microsoft products would?
If it's being used on the most popular games and movies on the PS3 and Blu-Ray... games and movies have a HUGE history of being warezed ASAP, so Sony's DRM will most likely be circumvented and not have much impact.
...if this story were not posted? Would anyone notice?