"1) drop it, causing the car to do something completely unintentional"
To be fair, no controller can escape this fate. Heck, one of my peeves about the PS2 is that the shoulder buttons control which chapter you're on when watching a DVD. More than once, the controller fell, landed on the shoulder buttons, and completely screwed up what I was watching.
"2) shift position (I often change from sitting up/lying down multiple times during a gaming session)"
E3 may tell a different story tomorrow, but from what I've read so far this will not be a problem. Granted, if you're using the remote to point at the screen, that probably will not change. As for positional data, though, it's fairly clear they're using a gestural system (not unlike Opera or FireFox's scheme) to perform movement. A sword swing, for example, wouldn't require that you use an arc of the same distance every time. It's probably just looking at the pitch of the remote to work out if you're swinging or not. To put it a little more simply: I don't think the system is looking at exact spatial distances to work out your movement. You'll probably be able to twirl the remote in between your fingers to get a similar result. (At least this is what reivewers who have tried the controller have stated.)
"3) have trouble initially calibrating it (anyone who's ever played a space combat sim knows about "shopping cart wheel syndrome")"
Mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, I can see this exact problem happening just as you've described it. On the other hand, I cannot imagine it being that big of problem. Let's say you 'calibrate' it by pointing the remote at a cursor on the screen three times. Okay, no prob. From then on, when you point at the screen, you see a cursor indicating where it's aiming. At that point, you're not trying to align the remote, but rather you're gesturing for where the cursor should go. In that sense, you could miscalibrate the controller, but it doesn't seem that likely that it'd be the sort of problem that plagues everybody.
"4) damage it (it may prove to be useless if you can't turn off the motion-sensor)"
Erm, you can damage any controller. Lose one button on the PS2 and you're boned. I'll concede, though, that a replacement controller/sensor will likely cost more than a PS2 controller.
"5) try to play in motion (isn't a big selling point of GB that you can play in the car/on a plane?)"
Huh? GB vs. Wii? I'm genuinely confused by this point. There's no mention of playing this system on a plane or in the car. But, I'll take it at face value: The remote is being measured relative to the sensor. The nunchuck uses an acellerometer that would probably be affected by the car turning, but that should be just about it. (Except for the bumping...) I dunno that I'd want to play this system in a moving vehicle. I'll grant you that.
"You must be misremembering, because commcial airliners cannot leave the ground without lowering the flaps at least a few degrees. Leading (slats) and trailing edge flaps are required to produce enough lift on the thin, swept wing of a commercial airliner for a successful take off."
You're quite possibly right, I may not have remembered correctly. I am not a pilot, nor do I know much about flight. I do remember, though, the announcer saying that whatever configuration the pilot had it in, the plane could never have successfully taken off. I question whether or not it was the flaps I was talking about, or another part of the plane... could have gotten my terminology mixed up.
"Can you imagine a simpler interface than a pencil and a paper? If it was all about the interface, then everyone would be a DaVinci."
That example swings both ways. Pencils typically have erasers.
"The only thing interfaces can do is making the first steps easier."
Only thing? No. Interfaces also make common mistakes easier to recover from. This is where things like "Undo", "Recycle Bin", and "[Yes] [No] [Cancel]" come from. That's the point. Shit happens. People make mistakes. Regardless of training, users need the tools to let them know what's happening and give them a way out.
" And if someone wants to be a pilot, he goes trhrough extensive training and tests. This ensures that only people who are mentally and physically able to to fly a plane get to do it. This basically extincts all error sources between console and seat (if you don't count failures due to tiring etc.)."
If anything, this comment supports his point. Despite all of this training, pilot error still occurs. A few years ago I saw a TV show regarding plane crashes. They showed one example of a commercial airliner taking off while its flaps were down. The scary thing about it was the cockpit flight recorder overheard the pilot talking to the co-pilot about a recent crash where the pilot of that plane forgot to raise the flaps. Even though he was aware of the mistake, he made the same mistake, and the plane never stood a chance at a safe take-off.
This is the sort of thing good UI design can prevent. Training can only go so far. You'll find this out soon enough. Sooner or later, you're going to post something on Slashdot and then realize that this site does not have an 'edit post' button. Heck, I cannot even cast stones here. After 10,000 posts, I've made this mistake, too. Even fully trained people with years of experience make mistakes. Ask any commercial pilot, doctor, or dictator-for-life.
One day, a few years from now, your DVD player will cease to function. You'll go to the store to replace it, and you'll find that the HD units don't cost much more than the standard broadcast units. Thinking of the future, and how cheap HD TVs are and how old your standard TV is getting, you'll consider the idea that it's worth a few more bucks to get the more advanced machine.
Yes, you will ultimately choose which way to go, but by the time that happens, E3-06 will have come and gone, and much of the battle will have taken place. There is a possibility that the predictions of the PS3's success will come true and totally wipe HD-DVD off the map by the time you make this choice. Or, maybe HD-DVD won because it's cheaper. Maybe both are on the market and niether is really a bad choice. That all still has to happen, but by then, what you have available to you is in flux. Whatever the outcome, by the time you buy one of these machines, the chances are good you're going to go after the clear winner. In that sense, the decision will already be made for you. To put it another way: It's VERY unlikely you'd get the urge to go buy a DVD-RAM drive.
"I know that it is certainly not top of the line, but I've never had any issues with it myself and it has been my only DVD player for nearly 2 years.'
I have. I've had it freeze with brand new discs. I've had it skip. I've even had it refuse to play. The games all worked fine, but the DVDs didn't. Too bad it didn't start misbehaving until after the 30 day return policy was up.
"Industry analysts are predicting that because of the expense of the standalone players this is EXACTLY how thw "winner" is going to be decided- therefore what Sony and MS say at E3 _is_ going to have a big impact- but everyone knows what they're going to say anyway."
Not a very solid prediction. Everybody who buys a HD video player has an HDTV, everybody who buys an XBOX 360 or PS3 may NOT have an HDTV. I think they're remembering the PS2 as the system that made DVDs widely adopted and thinking history will repeat itself. I don't think they realize that next generation movie discs aren't solving as big of a problem that the DVD did.
"Most of them work by guessing what you wrote based on a dictionary (similar to cellphone texting). Give it anything it can't look up and it'll be close, but more often than not, not quite."
Depends on what you have it set to. My TabletPC is set to read each individual character at a time. It provides little spaces to write each character in, so you don't have to worry about spacing or anything. That's been my favorite, honestly.
"Unauthorized reprint of a manual. A take down notice due to valid infringement? Not much to see here.. Sounds to me like someone wants to bash apple and is grasping at straws to do it."
'How to fix your overheating Mac' is a pretty big straw to grab. One could just as easily say that the Apple fanboys are being too defensive about it. Apple should have let this one be.
"I'm not that impressed, really. Maybe it's shooting over my head. I am sure a dumb sonovabitch, I admit, but what's the big deal? It's like SimEarth only you drive the bugs now? I don't get it."
I'm really impressed with the game, but I wouldn't call you names for not liking it. Frankly, I'm sick of that attitude on the web.
But, anyway, what I got out of it was that you could create a species pretty much from scratch. Then you could guide them through various phases of evolution until you get them to become super aliens that can buzz the galaxy and affect other species. Then, the planets you've touched get uploaded to a server somewhere. Eventually your game goes and downloads those planets so you can see what others have done. Essentially, it's a big open-ended game with a lot of variety. (And humor...)
To me, the game does look slick, but I think it's one of those things that just manages to appeal to several things I like. (sci-fi, evolution, advancing through the ages, behaviour of society, mindless torture of small innocent creatures...) I wouldn't say it's for everybody. I also wouldn't say that those who criticize others for not liking this game have much ground to stand on.
Well, I doubt you'll run off and do what I did, but I'll share my solution to this problem: I use a subscription service, Rhapsody to be precise.
I pay $10/mo. and I have access to my music anywhere I have a net connection. There are many pros/cons to doing this, but here's why *I* do it:
1. I use 3 different computers a day. My desktop, my laptop, and my work computer. In the olden days, I used to have a multi-gig collection of music, but this became difficult to sync up. If I got something new on the desktop, getting it to the laptop was easy, but getting it to the work computer was not.
2. I always want new music. If I find something, it appears on my list, and the other computers get it, too. The side benefit of this is that if a song I'm interested in comes my way, I'm listening to it within 15 seconds.
3. I grew tired of trying to keep gigs of music backed up. I've had two hard drive failures in as many years, and I really don't want to go through the ripping process again. Now I just pay the $10/mo. and I no longer need to keep anything backed up.
4. When I get tired of a song, removing it doesn't mean removing it for good. I suppose the same is true for having your own collection, it's just not something I've ever really liked trying to manage. My playlist shrinks and grows every week. I'm able to keep it managable without it needing to reach the thousands.
5. I'm spending less a year than I used to with albums, but getting more music. I have, however, purchased music that only gave me the 30 second sample, and wished I had my $.99 back.
6. The player isn't half bad. The 'hidden' bar is useful and not an eyesore. You can drop MP3s in there no problem. Searching's easy.
5. The music is cached so you can play when the net isn't connected.
There are other pros, but these are the ones that interest me. To be fair, though, I'm going to list off some cons:
1. If I discontinue, I lose all the music I've rented. (Except the music I've plunked down the money for.) Personally, this is more of a pro to me, but I've heard disatisfaction about this before.
2. They have a WONDERFUL collection of music, and you can start listening to it pretty quick. If some song crosses your mind one day, it's very easy to get it here. BUT: Sometimes their songs aren't there or they disappear. I've had a couple of albums disappear that I had really enjoyed. I'm guessing they had rights issues with the group or something.
3. iPod users need not apply.
4. As I understand it, Rhapsody is Windows only. It *might* be available on the Mac. Last I checked, it wasn't, but that was nearly a year ago. Definitely no Linux support.
5. Although music is cached, you cannot control the size of the cache. (THAT I KNOW OF. Corrections appreciated.) It's always a gig. For 128k music, this is fine, but I've been bitten before. Three is a way to download the songs to alleviate this problem, but I only had this work successfully once. I suspect this is because I had more than one computer using the account, so that was the only computer I could do that with. Weak.
Yep, it's not for everybody, but this service is nearly perfect for me, big music collection and all. I originally only planned on subscribing for a month or two just for shits, wasn't expecting it to suddenly take over as my music collection. I'm not interested in twisting your arm into trying it out. Your question reminded me of the joy I felt recently when I started a new job, downloaded the client, and was listening to all of my music. Before that, it was a long long copy from my laptop. When I read your question, this was immediately the first image that popped into mind. I don't miss the days of massive CD-R backups. Heh.
Well, it's not entirely related to this story, but I figured I'd share a little experience I had. In Feb of 2004, I was laid off. I was in the middle of creating some artwork that I was posting on a web-forum for others to watch the progress on. So, the goal of that piece became to make it ready to throw on my demo reel so I could seek work. I even named a couple of places I was gunning for. Unfortunately, it didn't look as though I was going to finish that piece as soon as I would have like, so I left the thread there and moved on to other stuff.
One year and 3 days later, happily employed, I found a little time one night to resume that piece. Once satisified, I posted the image. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to set my alarm that night. I overslept the next day. When I finally arrived at work, my boss was real happy to see me. You see, this forum I was posting artwork to was the exact same forum that he discovered me with. He read these February posts about gunning for a job at these two other places and became concerned. That, coupled with my lateness to work, gave his imagination a lot to work with. By the time I got there,though, he had discovered the YEAR of the post, and a good laugh was had by all.
There's no real moral to this story unless you seek it. It's just my own little anecdotal evidence that one should be careful about what he or she says on the net. This may seem like common sense, but it is funny how these little things can nip you in the rear. In my case, it was totally accidental.
This probably isn't all that relevent to the story. It might have been a more useful post in another story recently about somebody getting in trouble at work over something found in a search engine. No offense taken if this is considered off-topic, but yeah, employeers can see you on the net. Behave.
"the fact that they have to "defend" the name and spend time explaining the meaning behind it shows that the name is bad."
The fact that people are talking about the name means that it was successful in differentiating itself. Thanks to people like you, Nintendo's one press release has generated more brand/product awareness than a multi-million dollar ad at the Superbowl.
"if the name was good, there wouldn't be any need to "defend" it or try and "convince" people what it means."
If the name was like you're picturing it should be, Nintendo would then be stuck having to "convince" people the product "exists".
"They're right. I remember hordes of people saying "Vista" was a stupid name for the next Microsoft OS, and I thought it was pretty stupid too, but now it doesn't seem out of the ordinary. What about "Virgin"? Pretty funny the first few times you hear it, but it soon takes on a life of its own."
Best example: Dreamcast. The project name was "Katana". The names Genesis and Saturn were thought to be cool. Then, one day, Sega says "Ok, it'll be called... Dreaaaaaamcast". Along with this, the console turned white, and the logo was just a swirl. The comments ranged from "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" to "I'm not going to buy anything that sounds like that!"
Still, though, it was amusing to watch a hoard of people think "I bet I'm the first to make a piss joke!"
PSP games aren't. Liberty City Stories cost me $50. Not a bad game, but it's pale compared to the $50 I spent on San Andreas. The PSP I purchased was defective so I took it back. This little gouge in the price tag is one of the reasons I never bothered replacing it.
Slashdot Mirror
"1) drop it, causing the car to do something completely unintentional"
To be fair, no controller can escape this fate. Heck, one of my peeves about the PS2 is that the shoulder buttons control which chapter you're on when watching a DVD. More than once, the controller fell, landed on the shoulder buttons, and completely screwed up what I was watching.
"2) shift position (I often change from sitting up/lying down multiple times during a gaming session)"
E3 may tell a different story tomorrow, but from what I've read so far this will not be a problem. Granted, if you're using the remote to point at the screen, that probably will not change. As for positional data, though, it's fairly clear they're using a gestural system (not unlike Opera or FireFox's scheme) to perform movement. A sword swing, for example, wouldn't require that you use an arc of the same distance every time. It's probably just looking at the pitch of the remote to work out if you're swinging or not. To put it a little more simply: I don't think the system is looking at exact spatial distances to work out your movement. You'll probably be able to twirl the remote in between your fingers to get a similar result. (At least this is what reivewers who have tried the controller have stated.)
"3) have trouble initially calibrating it (anyone who's ever played a space combat sim knows about "shopping cart wheel syndrome")"
Mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, I can see this exact problem happening just as you've described it. On the other hand, I cannot imagine it being that big of problem. Let's say you 'calibrate' it by pointing the remote at a cursor on the screen three times. Okay, no prob. From then on, when you point at the screen, you see a cursor indicating where it's aiming. At that point, you're not trying to align the remote, but rather you're gesturing for where the cursor should go. In that sense, you could miscalibrate the controller, but it doesn't seem that likely that it'd be the sort of problem that plagues everybody.
"4) damage it (it may prove to be useless if you can't turn off the motion-sensor)"
Erm, you can damage any controller. Lose one button on the PS2 and you're boned. I'll concede, though, that a replacement controller/sensor will likely cost more than a PS2 controller.
"5) try to play in motion (isn't a big selling point of GB that you can play in the car/on a plane?)"
Huh? GB vs. Wii? I'm genuinely confused by this point. There's no mention of playing this system on a plane or in the car. But, I'll take it at face value: The remote is being measured relative to the sensor. The nunchuck uses an acellerometer that would probably be affected by the car turning, but that should be just about it. (Except for the bumping...) I dunno that I'd want to play this system in a moving vehicle. I'll grant you that.
So... does this mean no SGI Laptops?
"You must be misremembering, because commcial airliners cannot leave the ground without lowering the flaps at least a few degrees. Leading (slats) and trailing edge flaps are required to produce enough lift on the thin, swept wing of a commercial airliner for a successful take off."
You're quite possibly right, I may not have remembered correctly. I am not a pilot, nor do I know much about flight. I do remember, though, the announcer saying that whatever configuration the pilot had it in, the plane could never have successfully taken off. I question whether or not it was the flaps I was talking about, or another part of the plane... could have gotten my terminology mixed up.
Apologies for the inaccuracy.
"Can you imagine a simpler interface than a pencil and a paper? If it was all about the interface, then everyone would be a DaVinci."
That example swings both ways. Pencils typically have erasers.
"The only thing interfaces can do is making the first steps easier."
Only thing? No. Interfaces also make common mistakes easier to recover from. This is where things like "Undo", "Recycle Bin", and "[Yes] [No] [Cancel]" come from. That's the point. Shit happens. People make mistakes. Regardless of training, users need the tools to let them know what's happening and give them a way out.
"Does this mean I can finally have my very own Bender!?"
Why? You got a metal ass biting fetish you're willing to drop a few thousand $$$ on?
" And if someone wants to be a pilot, he goes trhrough extensive training and tests. This ensures that only people who are mentally and physically able to to fly a plane get to do it. This basically extincts all error sources between console and seat (if you don't count failures due to tiring etc.)."
If anything, this comment supports his point. Despite all of this training, pilot error still occurs. A few years ago I saw a TV show regarding plane crashes. They showed one example of a commercial airliner taking off while its flaps were down. The scary thing about it was the cockpit flight recorder overheard the pilot talking to the co-pilot about a recent crash where the pilot of that plane forgot to raise the flaps. Even though he was aware of the mistake, he made the same mistake, and the plane never stood a chance at a safe take-off.
This is the sort of thing good UI design can prevent. Training can only go so far. You'll find this out soon enough. Sooner or later, you're going to post something on Slashdot and then realize that this site does not have an 'edit post' button. Heck, I cannot even cast stones here. After 10,000 posts, I've made this mistake, too. Even fully trained people with years of experience make mistakes. Ask any commercial pilot, doctor, or dictator-for-life.
One day, a few years from now, your DVD player will cease to function. You'll go to the store to replace it, and you'll find that the HD units don't cost much more than the standard broadcast units. Thinking of the future, and how cheap HD TVs are and how old your standard TV is getting, you'll consider the idea that it's worth a few more bucks to get the more advanced machine.
Yes, you will ultimately choose which way to go, but by the time that happens, E3-06 will have come and gone, and much of the battle will have taken place. There is a possibility that the predictions of the PS3's success will come true and totally wipe HD-DVD off the map by the time you make this choice. Or, maybe HD-DVD won because it's cheaper. Maybe both are on the market and niether is really a bad choice. That all still has to happen, but by then, what you have available to you is in flux. Whatever the outcome, by the time you buy one of these machines, the chances are good you're going to go after the clear winner. In that sense, the decision will already be made for you. To put it another way: It's VERY unlikely you'd get the urge to go buy a DVD-RAM drive.
"I know that it is certainly not top of the line, but I've never had any issues with it myself and it has been my only DVD player for nearly 2 years.'
I have. I've had it freeze with brand new discs. I've had it skip. I've even had it refuse to play. The games all worked fine, but the DVDs didn't. Too bad it didn't start misbehaving until after the 30 day return policy was up.
"Industry analysts are predicting that because of the expense of the standalone players this is EXACTLY how thw "winner" is going to be decided- therefore what Sony and MS say at E3 _is_ going to have a big impact- but everyone knows what they're going to say anyway."
Not a very solid prediction. Everybody who buys a HD video player has an HDTV, everybody who buys an XBOX 360 or PS3 may NOT have an HDTV. I think they're remembering the PS2 as the system that made DVDs widely adopted and thinking history will repeat itself. I don't think they realize that next generation movie discs aren't solving as big of a problem that the DVD did.
"Most of them work by guessing what you wrote based on a dictionary (similar to cellphone texting). Give it anything it can't look up and it'll be close, but more often than not, not quite."
Depends on what you have it set to. My TabletPC is set to read each individual character at a time. It provides little spaces to write each character in, so you don't have to worry about spacing or anything. That's been my favorite, honestly.
"Unauthorized reprint of a manual. A take down notice due to valid infringement? Not much to see here.. Sounds to me like someone wants to bash apple and is grasping at straws to do it."
'How to fix your overheating Mac' is a pretty big straw to grab. One could just as easily say that the Apple fanboys are being too defensive about it. Apple should have let this one be.
"I'm not that impressed, really. Maybe it's shooting over my head. I am sure a dumb sonovabitch, I admit, but what's the big deal? It's like SimEarth only you drive the bugs now? I don't get it."
I'm really impressed with the game, but I wouldn't call you names for not liking it. Frankly, I'm sick of that attitude on the web.
But, anyway, what I got out of it was that you could create a species pretty much from scratch. Then you could guide them through various phases of evolution until you get them to become super aliens that can buzz the galaxy and affect other species. Then, the planets you've touched get uploaded to a server somewhere. Eventually your game goes and downloads those planets so you can see what others have done. Essentially, it's a big open-ended game with a lot of variety. (And humor...)
To me, the game does look slick, but I think it's one of those things that just manages to appeal to several things I like. (sci-fi, evolution, advancing through the ages, behaviour of society, mindless torture of small innocent creatures...) I wouldn't say it's for everybody. I also wouldn't say that those who criticize others for not liking this game have much ground to stand on.
" I really don't understand what you were trying to say with that "behave" at the end."
Simple: I'm talking to you, not your boss. You control your own actions, therefore you have it within your ability to stay out of trouble.
Well, I doubt you'll run off and do what I did, but I'll share my solution to this problem: I use a subscription service, Rhapsody to be precise.
I pay $10/mo. and I have access to my music anywhere I have a net connection. There are many pros/cons to doing this, but here's why *I* do it:
1. I use 3 different computers a day. My desktop, my laptop, and my work computer. In the olden days, I used to have a multi-gig collection of music, but this became difficult to sync up. If I got something new on the desktop, getting it to the laptop was easy, but getting it to the work computer was not.
2. I always want new music. If I find something, it appears on my list, and the other computers get it, too. The side benefit of this is that if a song I'm interested in comes my way, I'm listening to it within 15 seconds.
3. I grew tired of trying to keep gigs of music backed up. I've had two hard drive failures in as many years, and I really don't want to go through the ripping process again. Now I just pay the $10/mo. and I no longer need to keep anything backed up.
4. When I get tired of a song, removing it doesn't mean removing it for good. I suppose the same is true for having your own collection, it's just not something I've ever really liked trying to manage. My playlist shrinks and grows every week. I'm able to keep it managable without it needing to reach the thousands.
5. I'm spending less a year than I used to with albums, but getting more music. I have, however, purchased music that only gave me the 30 second sample, and wished I had my $.99 back.
6. The player isn't half bad. The 'hidden' bar is useful and not an eyesore. You can drop MP3s in there no problem. Searching's easy.
5. The music is cached so you can play when the net isn't connected.
There are other pros, but these are the ones that interest me. To be fair, though, I'm going to list off some cons:
1. If I discontinue, I lose all the music I've rented. (Except the music I've plunked down the money for.) Personally, this is more of a pro to me, but I've heard disatisfaction about this before.
2. They have a WONDERFUL collection of music, and you can start listening to it pretty quick. If some song crosses your mind one day, it's very easy to get it here. BUT: Sometimes their songs aren't there or they disappear. I've had a couple of albums disappear that I had really enjoyed. I'm guessing they had rights issues with the group or something.
3. iPod users need not apply.
4. As I understand it, Rhapsody is Windows only. It *might* be available on the Mac. Last I checked, it wasn't, but that was nearly a year ago. Definitely no Linux support.
5. Although music is cached, you cannot control the size of the cache. (THAT I KNOW OF. Corrections appreciated.) It's always a gig. For 128k music, this is fine, but I've been bitten before. Three is a way to download the songs to alleviate this problem, but I only had this work successfully once. I suspect this is because I had more than one computer using the account, so that was the only computer I could do that with. Weak.
Yep, it's not for everybody, but this service is nearly perfect for me, big music collection and all. I originally only planned on subscribing for a month or two just for shits, wasn't expecting it to suddenly take over as my music collection. I'm not interested in twisting your arm into trying it out. Your question reminded me of the joy I felt recently when I started a new job, downloaded the client, and was listening to all of my music. Before that, it was a long long copy from my laptop. When I read your question, this was immediately the first image that popped into mind. I don't miss the days of massive CD-R backups. Heh.
Well, it's not entirely related to this story, but I figured I'd share a little experience I had. In Feb of 2004, I was laid off. I was in the middle of creating some artwork that I was posting on a web-forum for others to watch the progress on. So, the goal of that piece became to make it ready to throw on my demo reel so I could seek work. I even named a couple of places I was gunning for. Unfortunately, it didn't look as though I was going to finish that piece as soon as I would have like, so I left the thread there and moved on to other stuff.
One year and 3 days later, happily employed, I found a little time one night to resume that piece. Once satisified, I posted the image. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to set my alarm that night. I overslept the next day. When I finally arrived at work, my boss was real happy to see me. You see, this forum I was posting artwork to was the exact same forum that he discovered me with. He read these February posts about gunning for a job at these two other places and became concerned. That, coupled with my lateness to work, gave his imagination a lot to work with. By the time I got there,though, he had discovered the YEAR of the post, and a good laugh was had by all.
There's no real moral to this story unless you seek it. It's just my own little anecdotal evidence that one should be careful about what he or she says on the net. This may seem like common sense, but it is funny how these little things can nip you in the rear. In my case, it was totally accidental.
This probably isn't all that relevent to the story. It might have been a more useful post in another story recently about somebody getting in trouble at work over something found in a search engine. No offense taken if this is considered off-topic, but yeah, employeers can see you on the net. Behave.
"3) You didn't find it amusing, you felt sicker and sicker with every blow to your crumpling Nintendo fanboi ego."
Nah. A stupid joke is a stupid joke. Sorry, can't blame this one on fanboyism.
"the fact that they have to "defend" the name and spend time explaining the meaning behind it shows that the name is bad."
The fact that people are talking about the name means that it was successful in differentiating itself. Thanks to people like you, Nintendo's one press release has generated more brand/product awareness than a multi-million dollar ad at the Superbowl.
"if the name was good, there wouldn't be any need to "defend" it or try and "convince" people what it means."
If the name was like you're picturing it should be, Nintendo would then be stuck having to "convince" people the product "exists".
"They're right. I remember hordes of people saying "Vista" was a stupid name for the next Microsoft OS, and I thought it was pretty stupid too, but now it doesn't seem out of the ordinary. What about "Virgin"? Pretty funny the first few times you hear it, but it soon takes on a life of its own."
Best example: Dreamcast. The project name was "Katana". The names Genesis and Saturn were thought to be cool. Then, one day, Sega says "Ok, it'll be called... Dreaaaaaamcast". Along with this, the console turned white, and the logo was just a swirl. The comments ranged from "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" to "I'm not going to buy anything that sounds like that!"
Still, though, it was amusing to watch a hoard of people think "I bet I'm the first to make a piss joke!"
"It works on any GBA compatible gameboy and it has spectacular battery life."
Man, my DS has had terrible battery life lately. I think my GF is playing Tetris on mine in the middle of the night.
"They seem to be $30-ish to me."
PSP games aren't. Liberty City Stories cost me $50. Not a bad game, but it's pale compared to the $50 I spent on San Andreas. The PSP I purchased was defective so I took it back. This little gouge in the price tag is one of the reasons I never bothered replacing it.
"My poor original DS wonders why it is so ugly. It sheds a bitter tear."
I read on a tips and tricks site that you can wipe that tear off with the stylus.
"He offers up details on the new server setups, new server sites, and the much-anticipated character transfer service."
Sadly, the new server setups rated poorly during the Ziff Davis Slashdot benchmark.
"You'll have to wait till the SW fans try to shoot you and miss."
Don't panic. It sounds tougher than it really is. You can get right up in their face and they'll STILL miss.
"I don't think you'll get a whole lot of hits on a open source OS at the same place that has a gun counter and offers hunting licenses."
I have the same view that you do about getting a lot of OSS hits at Walmart, but because it has a gun counter...?
I think that's starting to make sense.
:)
Thank you for taking the time to write that. Learn something new every day.