Just to clarify... you aren't implying that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was the first Castlevania game, are you? Because the way that's worded it seems to imply that, but I just want to make sure I'm the one misreading it. If you think it's the first one, then maybe you should get an emulator and play the original Castlevania (which I think was for the NES, but it's been awhile since I've played the original).
What are you talking about nobody tried putting a screen on an MP3 player before the Nano? How old do you think the Nano is? You realize the normal iPod, Creative Zen, etc. have had screens on them long before the Nano, right? How is that innovative. Not to say Apple isn't innovative, because they are in terms of UI, but I think the screen on the Nano was a terrible example of innovation...
The whole "n00b" thing is just a pet peeve of mine, so sorry about that rant. I just kind of see it as part of how these new gamers are trying to call themselves all hardcore when they're really just posers/PlayStation generation. But you seem to have a similar take on it.
Let me know how people react if you expose them to Shenmue as I was/still am shocked that my girlfriend and her sister got into it. My girlfriend plays game a decent amount, but just things like Paper Mario, Nintendogs, etc. (cutesy games that are still fun--and she did have a TurboGrafx 16 and then later on an N64 and GameBoy, no systems since then), but her sister doesn't really play games at all. So I really didn't think it would be something either of them would get into since I always saw it more as an interesting experiment more so than a game (although I can't wait for the next installments to come out--if they ever come out... especially now that Suzuki has left AM2). But if the game really is a game that appeals to the average people (or maybe just women) then maybe its commercial failure was due to bad marketing (and we all know Sega is famous for bad marketing) and maybe if the Wii includes Dreamcast in the VirtualConsole then a new set of people will be exposed to Shenmue and will demand that Sega release the final chapters (since the artwork, story, etc. are all finished). Rumor (from sometime in 2005--in an interview with an anonymous AM2 insider) has it that Shenmue will be coming to one of the new consoles but they didn't say which one nor did they say when--but they said it would be released in its entirety (Ch. 1-16 all in one set), but I haven't read anything about it since then... so it may just be another glimmer of false hope...
Being an old school gamer from back before the playstation, and probably playing online games before 1337 speak crap got into them, then you should know that n00b is really newb or newbie and is used to describe new players and not just people who you think are stupid.
On a more serious/less ranting note... I completely agree with you that the PlayStation generation needs to stop calling themselves hardcore gamers--especially if they aren't willing to try out new games. Hardcore gamers are the people who are willing to give any game a try--especially if its innovative--as long as its controls don't make it unplayable. Hardcore gamers aren't the people who only play the "cool" games or just the "best" games. Hardcore gamers are just as comfortable with Pokemon as they are with Halo 26.592. And as for a game that both him and his girlfriend can enjoy, I would suggest Crazy Taxi, Brain Age, or Shenmue (surprisingly... I didn't think this was a game non-gamers would enjoy until my girlfriend and her sister spent part of their summer going through it).
Did you read TFA? It shows the nominees and highlights the winner... XBox 360 was not a nominee (and probably was inelgible). PS3 was a nominee. The DS Lite was a nominee, as were the Logitech steering wheel, 360 wireless headset, and I think maybe some others.
And an excellent question that is. The Christian/Jewish (possibly Muslim--since that came from Abraham as well) God made man in the image of Himself, but there was a philosopher who once said something along the lines of "if horses created a god then he would be in the image of a horse." Again, I don't remember the exact quote, but basically its suggesting that rather than man having been created in God's image that we created God in our image. Also, if you've ever played Grandia II (and beaten it) the ending has a nice little commentary about this subject as well (it's been awhile but I believe in that case the people created a mechanical deity that ended up destroying and being destroyed by their planet's god--and the church was around to cover up the incident and recreate the mechanical deity).
Yes, but I never thought the Chicken Vs. Egg debate was about literally which came first, but was a symbol for the creationism Vs. evolution debate. With the chicken representing the Genesis "and God created a chicken and it was good" creationism approach and the egg representing "an embryo mutated and became a chicken" evolution approach. Plus, if God just created an egg then that begs some questions: 1) How did the egg hatch (it requires incubation)? 2) How did it survive (with other animals running around and an egg being perfectly tasty food)? 3) After the initial chicken hatched, how did it survive (with it being defenseless and unable to feed itself and again being a tasty snack for one of the other animals)? etc. But really, I look at the two as more symbolic than literal.
God creates chicken.
Chicken lays egg.
The chicken's genetic material does not change.
Their argument is within the framework of an evolutionary worldview.
Except for the whole "God creates chicken" thing then yes, it fits an evolutionary world view. In evolution, the chicken cannot come first--it has to evolve from something else first, and the embryo would have to be formed first and with VERY few exceptions all animals have eggs (although not all animals have eggs external from their body)--I am not counting single celled amoebas and such as animals, especially since the direct evolution from ->chicken would have had to come from something more complex then a single celled amoeba (and more complex then that of a sponge--which is just a colony of single celled organisms working together, if I remember my biology lessons correctly).
I always thought this was a question of science vs. religion... If the egg came first, then clearly the chicken came from evolution (an animal like a chicken laid an egg that then became a chicken). However, if the chicken came first (scientifically impossible) then it was because made the chicken suddenly appear on the planet. So just wait for the ID people to refute this claim...
I realize this... That's why my final statement was "It's in the algorithms, not the format (unless it's a bloated format--which it doesn't appear to be from what I've seen of it)."
It's actually not a word processor (as your sibling correctly points out). ODF is simply a format and as such can't exactly be speed benchmarked. The study that this summary points to is about OpenOffice, which utilizes ODF but is not ODF in and of itself. All it takes is some way to more efficiently utilize/load the data. It's in the algorithms, not the format (unless it's a bloated format--which it doesn't appear to be from what I've seen of it).
I'm not 100% sure about licensing fees, but I thought it was going to be the same (or even less) this time around as compared to MS and Sony. In addition, the dev kits for the Wii are a mere $2,000, which is about 1/10th or less of what Sony and MS charge. You have a point about the ports, but Nintendo has never been a fan of ports, so I doubt they really care... I mean, they'll still be the most profitable of the 3 systems unless they totally screw something up. And it should be noted that they were talking about diversity of titles (which can be first and 2nd party titles), not necessarily increased 3rd party support. Although from what I've been reading, the increased 3rd party support appears to be on its way as well--and if they can sell all 6 million of the units they plan to ship by March 2007, then I think the publishers will pretty quickly jump on the bandwagon...
Samsung also just announced a hybrid hard drive the other day--partially solid state and partially magnetic. Only issue with it is that from the announcement it sounded like it was Windows only. I use Windows and all, but only as one of several other OSes, so unless the harddrive (and all benefits of the hybrid system) can work with the other OSes then count me out... I also though the whole hybrid system would work great on portable media players--huge storage PLUS fast speeds/low battery usage/anit-skip.
I glanced at your guide and then I glanced at your Desktop. Two quick suggestions:
On screenshots for a desktop usable by "everyone" the first screenshot should ABSOLUTELY NOT BE A TERMINAL WINDOW... My grandma wouldn't use a terminal. Oh, and maybe not have the login as 'Root'--although that's a lesser issue since it's just a screenshot.
The other thing is that you may want to consider switching from wxWidgets or GTK+ or whatever you're using to Qt. It has more controls available to it and its considerably easier to create more inviting looking interfaces. While, yes, ease of use and functionality should be the primary focus, there's no reason to sacrifice the look and feel. Qt simply has a much nicer look and feel that user's of Windows and OS X will feel much more at home with, and thus it would be more for "everybody".
That's just some creative criticism for you. But really, overally, it looks like fairly good work, so keep it up! I mean, really my criticism is just sort of nitpicking and is sort of aimed at Unix developers in general.
I definitely agree that Windows Media Player 10 (and below) were pretty crappy UI wise. But I'm still debating about WMP 11 (as I just started playing with the beta). It actually does a lot of things fairly well--like grouping by CD (with an image of the CD), although this would be nicer if you could change the way you view the CD's so that it would be more like picking a CD off of a CD rack (especially since scrolling through 100+ CD's can be tedious in the way it's currently layed out. Of course, on the other hand, what's really annoying about the new version is the way of changing media types and I didn't find it very intuitive to be able to view all my music (I was expacting the link for that to be on the top--but it was near the bottom). Plus, I had to jump through hoops to delete some images from my library that I just wanted deleted from the library (and not my whole computer)--before it used to ask you which you wanted, now it goes by an option setting. So now that I'm thinking about it... WMP11 sucks as well... it just has a pretty gloss:P
Speaking of messengers... I think Trillian Pro (with the exception of SOME of the options menus) is very nicely designed for a messenger--and I'm a huge fan of the history tracking feature that's part of 3.1+ (it's so much nicer than trying to sort through a text log).
Can you please post some good resources for shotgunning wireless and/or ethernet connections? I had been looking into this earlier when I had two connections I could use on campus, but only one computer to use the connections with (and a great desire to combine the two). Even if the free nationwide wireless thing doesn't happen, I would still find this useful for free wireless at Starbucks and other places. As for what I'd need that much bandwidth for... Bittorrent, of course--that way I can increase my upload and download speeds and get those Linux distros (and unlicensed anime) that much faster--while also reaching the 300+% shared ratio that much faster (and, hopefully, without slowing down my browsing experience... which was the main problem I kept running into).
For example, patent-law says that patents *expires* at which point your patent becomes public domain, free for anyone to use as they wish. "regular" property-holders do not have to hand over their property to the public after the property "expires".
Maybe not if the property "expires", but "regular" property holders must hand it over if imminent (or eminent) domain [wikipedia] is declared because your city council has decided the property your house sits on would be better suited for a public park or a McDonalds
I was unaware of the MSX version (and I'm actually unaware of what MSX stands for--is that the Master System?) But that's a very good point/correction that I was unaware of. Still, I wish these 3rd parties would stop playing favorites so much (this includes 3rd parties that develop for Nintendo)--if they want to make an exclusive 3rd party game for one system, they should do the same thing for at least one other system (like Square--even though Nintendo seems to just be getting nods from them, at least they're exclusive titles made just for them). If it weren't for the exclusive 3rd party titles, what would Sony have besides Gran Turismo, Ape Escape, Eye Toy, and a handful of other games (many of them mediocre)? Microsoft would be slightly better off since they just bought development studios to pad their library... Nintendo wouldn't even break a sweat by lacking exclusive 3rd party titles (although they would have a major issue if they don't get the 3rd party support in general that they've lacked in the past 2 generations).
I'm aware of Twin Snakes, but again, that's a remake (and Snake appearing years after he appears on Sony's console). I'm looking for something more along the lines of more than just a nod to Nintendo--something like an exclusive Metal Gear game or at least a Metal Gear game that appears before (or even a simulataneous launch with the Playstation version). And there HAS been a Metal Gear game for XBox as well (which was also a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid--I know it was referred to as MGS 1.5 while in development, but I forget what it's final release name was...)
Don't get me wrong, I'm porbably as psyched as everybody else that's ever played an MGS game to see Solid Snake making an appearance in Super Smash Bros. But considering all of the MGS games are either exclusive to, or arrive a year or more sooner on Sony systems (including their handhelds), is it wise to place him in Super Smash? Doesn't that sort of promote him/MGS, which in turn indirectly promotes PS3 and PSP (where those games appear)? Of course, on the other hand, maybe it's more likely to motivate the MGS fans who were plannning on buying a PS3/PSP and MGS games any way to ALSO purchase a Wii so they can play yet another game with Solid Snake... I guess I can see it going either way, but I really wish Konami/Kojima could show Nintendo some more love (since that's where he got his start) and do at least ONE exclusive Metal Gear game for the Wii...
I'm still waiting for Sonic to be added to Smash Bros., so we can settle once and for all which mascot will win in a bar fight...
As an incoming HCI grad student (but one who isn't working with the CAVE--and coming from CS rather than ME), I agree whol heatedly that the end-all solution to visualization isn't a high def VR simulation. Multi-sensory perception, using force feedback, 3D sound, and possibly other senses (the military is currently experimenting with the use of the tongue as a super sensor to visualize battlefields at night) is a much better solution to fully incapsulating data. However, that does not invalidate the CAVE as a useful tool for other things, namely simulations--particularly for medical training (although here again, force feedback is EXTREMELY useful), military training/simulation, etc. The CAVE is useful for things that require full visual immersion. In addition, I was under the impression that much of the CAVE was funded by grants from the military, John Deere, and other sources (although I'm sure some of it still comes from ISU itself). While I'll admit I'm not a huge VR person, I do think it serves its purpose.
More likely they're withholding the price for one of multiple reasons (I'll list 2):
1) So when MS announces their 360 price drop they can't factor in the price of the Wii
2) So that they can get more PR later on--maybe counter MS's price drop announcement with their launch price announcement (which will be at least $50 or less than the 360 core pack price)
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This is probably blasphemy, but I thought the N64 Castlevania (3-D) was alright... Not nearly as good as the 2D ones, but not all that bad either...
Just to clarify... you aren't implying that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was the first Castlevania game, are you? Because the way that's worded it seems to imply that, but I just want to make sure I'm the one misreading it. If you think it's the first one, then maybe you should get an emulator and play the original Castlevania (which I think was for the NES, but it's been awhile since I've played the original).
What are you talking about nobody tried putting a screen on an MP3 player before the Nano? How old do you think the Nano is? You realize the normal iPod, Creative Zen, etc. have had screens on them long before the Nano, right? How is that innovative. Not to say Apple isn't innovative, because they are in terms of UI, but I think the screen on the Nano was a terrible example of innovation...
Let me know how people react if you expose them to Shenmue as I was/still am shocked that my girlfriend and her sister got into it. My girlfriend plays game a decent amount, but just things like Paper Mario, Nintendogs, etc. (cutesy games that are still fun--and she did have a TurboGrafx 16 and then later on an N64 and GameBoy, no systems since then), but her sister doesn't really play games at all. So I really didn't think it would be something either of them would get into since I always saw it more as an interesting experiment more so than a game (although I can't wait for the next installments to come out--if they ever come out... especially now that Suzuki has left AM2). But if the game really is a game that appeals to the average people (or maybe just women) then maybe its commercial failure was due to bad marketing (and we all know Sega is famous for bad marketing) and maybe if the Wii includes Dreamcast in the VirtualConsole then a new set of people will be exposed to Shenmue and will demand that Sega release the final chapters (since the artwork, story, etc. are all finished). Rumor (from sometime in 2005--in an interview with an anonymous AM2 insider) has it that Shenmue will be coming to one of the new consoles but they didn't say which one nor did they say when--but they said it would be released in its entirety (Ch. 1-16 all in one set), but I haven't read anything about it since then... so it may just be another glimmer of false hope...
On a more serious/less ranting note... I completely agree with you that the PlayStation generation needs to stop calling themselves hardcore gamers--especially if they aren't willing to try out new games. Hardcore gamers are the people who are willing to give any game a try--especially if its innovative--as long as its controls don't make it unplayable. Hardcore gamers aren't the people who only play the "cool" games or just the "best" games. Hardcore gamers are just as comfortable with Pokemon as they are with Halo 26.592. And as for a game that both him and his girlfriend can enjoy, I would suggest Crazy Taxi, Brain Age, or Shenmue (surprisingly... I didn't think this was a game non-gamers would enjoy until my girlfriend and her sister spent part of their summer going through it).
Did you read TFA? It shows the nominees and highlights the winner... XBox 360 was not a nominee (and probably was inelgible). PS3 was a nominee. The DS Lite was a nominee, as were the Logitech steering wheel, 360 wireless headset, and I think maybe some others.
And an excellent question that is. The Christian/Jewish (possibly Muslim--since that came from Abraham as well) God made man in the image of Himself, but there was a philosopher who once said something along the lines of "if horses created a god then he would be in the image of a horse." Again, I don't remember the exact quote, but basically its suggesting that rather than man having been created in God's image that we created God in our image. Also, if you've ever played Grandia II (and beaten it) the ending has a nice little commentary about this subject as well (it's been awhile but I believe in that case the people created a mechanical deity that ended up destroying and being destroyed by their planet's god--and the church was around to cover up the incident and recreate the mechanical deity).
Yes, but I never thought the Chicken Vs. Egg debate was about literally which came first, but was a symbol for the creationism Vs. evolution debate. With the chicken representing the Genesis "and God created a chicken and it was good" creationism approach and the egg representing "an embryo mutated and became a chicken" evolution approach. Plus, if God just created an egg then that begs some questions: 1) How did the egg hatch (it requires incubation)? 2) How did it survive (with other animals running around and an egg being perfectly tasty food)? 3) After the initial chicken hatched, how did it survive (with it being defenseless and unable to feed itself and again being a tasty snack for one of the other animals)? etc. But really, I look at the two as more symbolic than literal.
God creates chicken. Chicken lays egg. The chicken's genetic material does not change. Their argument is within the framework of an evolutionary worldview. Except for the whole "God creates chicken" thing then yes, it fits an evolutionary world view. In evolution, the chicken cannot come first--it has to evolve from something else first, and the embryo would have to be formed first and with VERY few exceptions all animals have eggs (although not all animals have eggs external from their body)--I am not counting single celled amoebas and such as animals, especially since the direct evolution from ->chicken would have had to come from something more complex then a single celled amoeba (and more complex then that of a sponge--which is just a colony of single celled organisms working together, if I remember my biology lessons correctly).
I always thought this was a question of science vs. religion... If the egg came first, then clearly the chicken came from evolution (an animal like a chicken laid an egg that then became a chicken). However, if the chicken came first (scientifically impossible) then it was because made the chicken suddenly appear on the planet. So just wait for the ID people to refute this claim...
I realize this... That's why my final statement was "It's in the algorithms, not the format (unless it's a bloated format--which it doesn't appear to be from what I've seen of it)."
That's sort of my point--it isn't ;-) So the format, itself, cannot be slow. So Microsoft is full of FUD (what else is new?)
It's actually not a word processor (as your sibling correctly points out). ODF is simply a format and as such can't exactly be speed benchmarked. The study that this summary points to is about OpenOffice, which utilizes ODF but is not ODF in and of itself. All it takes is some way to more efficiently utilize/load the data. It's in the algorithms, not the format (unless it's a bloated format--which it doesn't appear to be from what I've seen of it).
I'm not 100% sure about licensing fees, but I thought it was going to be the same (or even less) this time around as compared to MS and Sony. In addition, the dev kits for the Wii are a mere $2,000, which is about 1/10th or less of what Sony and MS charge. You have a point about the ports, but Nintendo has never been a fan of ports, so I doubt they really care... I mean, they'll still be the most profitable of the 3 systems unless they totally screw something up. And it should be noted that they were talking about diversity of titles (which can be first and 2nd party titles), not necessarily increased 3rd party support. Although from what I've been reading, the increased 3rd party support appears to be on its way as well--and if they can sell all 6 million of the units they plan to ship by March 2007, then I think the publishers will pretty quickly jump on the bandwagon...
Samsung also just announced a hybrid hard drive the other day--partially solid state and partially magnetic. Only issue with it is that from the announcement it sounded like it was Windows only. I use Windows and all, but only as one of several other OSes, so unless the harddrive (and all benefits of the hybrid system) can work with the other OSes then count me out... I also though the whole hybrid system would work great on portable media players--huge storage PLUS fast speeds/low battery usage/anit-skip.
On screenshots for a desktop usable by "everyone" the first screenshot should ABSOLUTELY NOT BE A TERMINAL WINDOW... My grandma wouldn't use a terminal. Oh, and maybe not have the login as 'Root'--although that's a lesser issue since it's just a screenshot.
The other thing is that you may want to consider switching from wxWidgets or GTK+ or whatever you're using to Qt. It has more controls available to it and its considerably easier to create more inviting looking interfaces. While, yes, ease of use and functionality should be the primary focus, there's no reason to sacrifice the look and feel. Qt simply has a much nicer look and feel that user's of Windows and OS X will feel much more at home with, and thus it would be more for "everybody".
That's just some creative criticism for you. But really, overally, it looks like fairly good work, so keep it up! I mean, really my criticism is just sort of nitpicking and is sort of aimed at Unix developers in general.
Speaking of messengers... I think Trillian Pro (with the exception of SOME of the options menus) is very nicely designed for a messenger--and I'm a huge fan of the history tracking feature that's part of 3.1+ (it's so much nicer than trying to sort through a text log).
Can you please post some good resources for shotgunning wireless and/or ethernet connections? I had been looking into this earlier when I had two connections I could use on campus, but only one computer to use the connections with (and a great desire to combine the two). Even if the free nationwide wireless thing doesn't happen, I would still find this useful for free wireless at Starbucks and other places. As for what I'd need that much bandwidth for... Bittorrent, of course--that way I can increase my upload and download speeds and get those Linux distros (and unlicensed anime) that much faster--while also reaching the 300+% shared ratio that much faster (and, hopefully, without slowing down my browsing experience... which was the main problem I kept running into).
Maybe not if the property "expires", but "regular" property holders must hand it over if imminent (or eminent) domain [wikipedia] is declared because your city council has decided the property your house sits on would be better suited for a public park or a McDonalds
I was unaware of the MSX version (and I'm actually unaware of what MSX stands for--is that the Master System?) But that's a very good point/correction that I was unaware of. Still, I wish these 3rd parties would stop playing favorites so much (this includes 3rd parties that develop for Nintendo)--if they want to make an exclusive 3rd party game for one system, they should do the same thing for at least one other system (like Square--even though Nintendo seems to just be getting nods from them, at least they're exclusive titles made just for them). If it weren't for the exclusive 3rd party titles, what would Sony have besides Gran Turismo, Ape Escape, Eye Toy, and a handful of other games (many of them mediocre)? Microsoft would be slightly better off since they just bought development studios to pad their library... Nintendo wouldn't even break a sweat by lacking exclusive 3rd party titles (although they would have a major issue if they don't get the 3rd party support in general that they've lacked in the past 2 generations).
I'm aware of Twin Snakes, but again, that's a remake (and Snake appearing years after he appears on Sony's console). I'm looking for something more along the lines of more than just a nod to Nintendo--something like an exclusive Metal Gear game or at least a Metal Gear game that appears before (or even a simulataneous launch with the Playstation version). And there HAS been a Metal Gear game for XBox as well (which was also a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid--I know it was referred to as MGS 1.5 while in development, but I forget what it's final release name was...)
I'm still waiting for Sonic to be added to Smash Bros., so we can settle once and for all which mascot will win in a bar fight...
As an incoming HCI grad student (but one who isn't working with the CAVE--and coming from CS rather than ME), I agree whol heatedly that the end-all solution to visualization isn't a high def VR simulation. Multi-sensory perception, using force feedback, 3D sound, and possibly other senses (the military is currently experimenting with the use of the tongue as a super sensor to visualize battlefields at night) is a much better solution to fully incapsulating data. However, that does not invalidate the CAVE as a useful tool for other things, namely simulations--particularly for medical training (although here again, force feedback is EXTREMELY useful), military training/simulation, etc. The CAVE is useful for things that require full visual immersion. In addition, I was under the impression that much of the CAVE was funded by grants from the military, John Deere, and other sources (although I'm sure some of it still comes from ISU itself). While I'll admit I'm not a huge VR person, I do think it serves its purpose.
Most noticably missing is Super Smash... which all stories up to this point have stated will be a launch title...
1) So when MS announces their 360 price drop they can't factor in the price of the Wii
2) So that they can get more PR later on--maybe counter MS's price drop announcement with their launch price announcement (which will be at least $50 or less than the 360 core pack price)